CULTURAL FACTORS: ENVIRONMENT AND TIME 105 



two might be that the latter includes more so-called 'ideal' ele- 

 ments; however, there is no hard-and-fast line drawn by Taine, 

 illustrating his basic tendency to bring together the real and the 

 ideal. Striking examples of the influence of politics on the produc- 

 tion of literature and art include the differences in political 

 organization between the Italics of ancient Rome and the Renais- 

 sance, already cited, and the Norman conquest of England in 

 the eleventh century, i^ In discussing the latter instance, Taine 

 devotes relatively little space ^^ to strictly political factors: as is 

 appropriate in a history of literature, the emphasis is placed 

 on such influences as the French language, literature (in the 

 original and in translation), religion, and 'ideal heroes'. In 

 general, the political considerations to which Taine most fre- 

 quently refers are those of war and peace, foreign and domestic. 20 



A chapter in the Voyage in Italy on the 'Social State' of Naples 

 lumps together 'Politics, Science, and Religion'. This was the 

 period of Garibaldi's struggle, when relations between France and 

 Italy were rather complicated: Taine's report, written in 1865, 

 must have had the same interest that a foreign correspondent's 

 dispatches have today, and his comparisons to recent and con- 

 temporary French history are therefore frequent. The following 

 chapter passes from impressionistic sketches of 'Intellectual and 

 Other Traits' to notes on the opera, and concludes by asking: 

 'In order to develop them [the potentialities of the Italian people, 

 S. J. K.] tell me which government is best, that of a despot which 

 imprisons the wise, or that of a bourgeoisie which founds schools?' 21 

 The impact of politics on the arts has rarely been an academic 

 issue in France, and this was especially true under the Second 

 Empire. 



Interrelations of political and socio-economic issues are treated 

 by Taine in a later chapter of the same work. 22 Interestingly 

 enough for those who may be troubled by Taine's presumed 

 'racism', he argues against those who gave 'blood' reasons for 

 considering the unification of Italy an impossibility: 'I reply to 

 this that the revolution here is not an affair of race, but one of 

 interests and ideas. . . . The middle class, the enlightened, are 

 those who diffuse it by leading the people along with them in 

 their wake, as formerly in the United States during the war of 

 independence. It is a new force, superior to provincial anti- 

 pathies; unknown a hundred years ago; inherent, not in the nerves, in 

 the blood and in the habits, but in the brain, in study and in discussion . . .'.^^ 



