BIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS: RACE AND GEOGRAPHY 95 



indicating that 'their greatest masterpiece is the drama of 

 Shakespeare'. ^1 



The idea of racial 'purity' is a canard which Taine sometimes 

 seems to accept. Thus, in his treatment of the relations of the 

 Saxons and Normans in England, he seems to correlate 'poetic 

 genius' and purity of race: 'The race finally remains Saxon. If the 

 old poetic genius disappears after the Conquest, it is as a river 

 disappears, and flows for a while underground. In five centuries 

 it will emerge once more.'^^ pje seems to associate some of the 

 superiority of literature and art in England and the Netherlands 

 with the fact that the Germanic race in those countries 'drove out, 

 destroyed and replaced the ancient inhabitants, its blood, pure, or 

 almost pure, still flowing in the veins of the men now occupying the 

 same soil'.^^ But, on the other hand, he is careful to do justice to 

 both the 'French' and the 'English' elements in Chaucer, and 

 these elements are shown to have come from his Environment and 

 Time, rather than from a 'racial' heritage; Taine simply associates 

 the more 'original' part of Chaucer's genius with the English 

 character: 'Is it already the English positive common sense and 

 aptitude for seeing the inside of things which begins to appear?'^^ 



On the whole, the main force of Taine's many voyages and 

 studies of foreign literatures and schools of art was the very 

 opposite of Nazi chauvinism and 'master race' theories. His basic 

 purpose was rather to correct such super-nationalistic tendencies 

 as were threatening intellectual life in the France of the Second 

 Empire and to help his people to better understand the English, 

 Germans, Italians, Greeks, Dutch, and so forth. He could be as 

 bitingly critical of the French as he was of the English or Germans. 

 See, for example, the many satirical sketches in the Notes on Paris 

 and the brilliant discussion of the virtues and limitations of the 

 French 'talent for speaking well' which opens the essay on 

 'Racine'. 55 And if he desired for his people the noble role of 

 mediator in Europe between extremes of East and West, and North 

 and South, who can very well blame him? 



One reason why our generation should seek to understand what 

 Taine meant by his concept of Race is that we are so far from 

 having solved the problem ourselves. Thus, Professor Guerard 

 feels, on the one hand, that 'ethnic races are artificial, and none 

 the less real', and, on the other, that their study, as part of 'col- 

 lective psychology', is 'as dangerous as it is attractive'. 56 Mere 

 changes of terminology do not solve problems: unfortunately, 



