CHAPTER IX 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CORE: MASTER 



FACULTY 



The Master Faculty Idea in Tai?ie 



NEAR the close of his hfe, Taine reaffirmed his oft-repeated 

 claim that 'for forty years, I have merely practised applied 

 or pure psychology A Anyone seeking to understand the full 

 significance of such a declaration must ask: What are the main 

 features of Taine's psychology, and why is it so central to his 

 entire philosophy of criticism? 



Though the fact has been repeatedly emphasized in previous 

 chapters, 2 the manner in which psychology ran like a golden 

 thread through all Taine's labours can perhaps be most effectively 

 stated by means of a brief glance at the development of the con- 

 cept of Master Faculty. Andre Chevrillon^ finds this aspect of 

 Taine's theory most explicitly stated in the two Prefaces to the 

 Critical and Historical Essays, but, though the terminology used may 

 have varied from period to period, the basic idea was never absent 

 from his work. 



During his student years, Taine already conceived the goal of 

 seeking 'the dominant elements, or abstract generators''^ of 

 civilizations and wrote of the 'Psychology of an historical 

 state'. 5 Psychology was central, not only for history, but also 

 for metaphysics, 6 and his original project for a doctoral thesis 

 was a study of 'The Sensations'.'^ During his first half-decade 

 as a writer in Paris, while producing the early critical and 

 historical works which established his reputation, he never ceased 

 to study for and plan, as his magnum opus, a comprehensive 

 Treatise on Knowledge,^ and he was only diverted from this 

 project by his important History of English Literature and Lectures 

 on Art. 



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