io6 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



A famous example of Taine's recognition of more strictly eco- 

 nomic influences on literature is his essay on Balzac, which 

 begins: 'Balzac was a business man, and a business man in 

 debt'; 24 Zola and others, however, were to make much more of 

 the theme of 'money' than Taine generally does. More frequently, 

 he correlates transformations of society with changing currents of 

 ideas and states of mind, as in his discussion of fifteenth-century 

 Florence. 25 



Just as, in his treatment of Race, Taine was led astray by his 

 imperfect knowledge of the facts of heredity, so in his treatment of 

 milieu he reveals the limitations of the social sciences in his day. 

 These limitations, together with his fondness for abstractions, led 

 him to write concerning 'social mediums' 2 6 in a fashion which we 

 find exasperatingly vague and comparatively useless today. As a 

 result, Paul Lacombe, after admitting Taine's importance as a 

 pioneer, 27 could have a field-day finding fault with Taine's 

 psychological and sociological generalizations; Lacombe stressed 

 particularly such facts as the influences of cultural traditions and 

 changing literary reputations, of which Taine was insufficiently 

 aware, and emphasized the roles of individuals in art production 

 and the need for closer study of the 'general psychology of the 

 artist'. 28 In general, he found Taine somewhat a victim of his 

 own system and given to oversimplification: 'Taine did not 

 recognize the complexity of the science which he was discussing. '29 



One has only to compare the 'Introduction' to the History with 

 the wealth of sociological material included in Albert L. Guerard's 

 Literature and Society to realize the elementary nature of Taine's 

 sociology: '. . . Taine was satisfied with a very general hint: 

 anthropology was still in swaddling clothes at the time.'^o Thus, 

 today, 'As a rule, anthropology is applied to literature, ndt directly, 

 but through sociology', ^1 and Taine did not pay sufficient atten- 

 tion to what L. L. Schucking has more recently called The Sociology 

 of Literary Taste ^ which considers such problems as the sociological 

 position of the artist and the attitudes of artist and public to one 

 another. Taine approached that sort of discussion, perhaps, in 

 The Philosophy of Art in Greece, where a section on 'Institutions' 

 considers the 'Orchestral' and 'Gymnastic' systems and the reU- 

 gious institutions of ancient Greece; beginning: 'If ever the 

 correspondence of art with life disclosed itself through visible 

 traits, it is in the history of Greek statuary.' ^2 



Instead of the more precise sort of sociological analysis to which 



