BIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS: RACE AND GEOGRAPHY 93 



sion of Latin and Germanic races is corrected somewhat by point- 

 ing out that 'Philologists show us a primitive epoch where Indians, 

 Persians, Germans, Celts, Latins, and Greeks had a language in 

 common and the same degree of culture.' ^o This was presumably 

 followed by separation of the Latin and the Greeks, until finally 

 Greek life took form, under the influence of a mild climate, moun- 

 tainous country, poor soil, and the ever-present sea — all of which, 

 producing a nation of traders and seamen, 'served to arouse the 

 Greek intellect'/^ Their landscape, characterized by clearness of 

 relief and transparency of the atmosphere, makes for 'positive and 

 clear conceptions' /^ Thus, Taine attempts to trace a set of com- 

 plex relationships (religion, politics, and other institutions are also 

 explored) which provided the conditions — we should probably say, 

 some of the conditions — for the classic art of Greek sculpture. 



In sum, Taine himself was very much a victim of 'the Zeitgeist 

 of Scientific Realism', ^3 falling, sometimes all too easily, into the 

 stereotypes of his time. Very much involved, intellectually and 

 emotionally, in national issues, he sometimes rationalized his 

 prejudices in terms of the relatively primitive biological and 

 anthropological science of his day. As Professors Dunn and 

 Dobzhansky have pointed out in an excellent chapter, the Race 

 concept has often been 'clearly ideological, not biological', ^4 and 

 this aspect of Taine's thinking must be clearly recognized. 



Science and Pseudo-Science 



Nevertheless, it seems much too facile to dismiss Taine as 

 merely another precursor of a movement vaguely labelled Nazism, 

 just as it is wrongheaded to condemn 'the Romantic movement' in 

 toto for all the sins committed in its name. Nor do we eliminate 

 problems by recognizing that our predecessors fell short of their 

 perfect solution. 



Justice to Taine's intention, if not his achievement, requires 

 that we recognize his truly scientific purpose. In the chapter on 

 'The Gallic Spirit' which he wrote for the 1861 edition of La 

 Fontaine^ he shows full recognition of the limitations of his know- 

 ledge. After an impressionistic sketch of the French landscape, he 

 admits: 



^ These truths are literary, that is to say, vague; but we have none 

 others at present in this matter, and it is necessary to be content 

 with these, such as they are, while we await the statistical figures 



