ii8 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



The philosophical basis of Taine's psychology becomes even 

 clearer in his treatment 'Of the Different Kinds of Knowledge' in 

 the second part. Basically, 'external perception is a true hallucina- 

 tion' ^O; hence we can learn much about the normal operations of 

 the mind by comparing them to, and distinguishing them from, 

 their abnormal states. The analysis of 'powers' is carried further 

 in accounting for 'The Knowledge of Bodies', which are treated 

 as ^Certain possibilities and certain necessities of sensations. . . '.^i Such 

 a definition is true of people, as it is of things: 'This man is, first, 

 the permanent possibility of tactual, visual, and other sensations, 

 which I experience in his neighbourhood; and further, he is a 

 distinct series of sensations, images, ideas, and volitions, con- 

 joined to the tendencies by which this series is accomplished.' ^2 



Thus, 'The Knowledge of Mind' is arrived at by a synthesis of 

 elements: 'Let us reunite in one group and one bundle all these 

 capacities and faculties, common or special, which are met with 

 in any one, and we shall know what he is, in knowing what he 

 contains.' 33 Again, we postulate no separate metaphysical entity: 

 'Thus, faculty and capacity are wholly relative terms . . . the 

 word never does more than state that the conditions of an event 

 or of a class of events are present.' ^4 The Ego, or Self, is defined as 

 'the permanent possibility of certain events under certain condi- 

 tions, and the permanent necessity of the same events under the 

 same conditions, with the addition of a complementary one, all 

 these events having a common and distinctive character, that of 

 appearing as internal'. ^ 5 Since it is a delicate equilibrium of com- 

 plex forces, it may easily deviate from its normal form, and 'nearly 

 as we are situated to ourselves, we may deceive ourselves in many 

 ways respecting our self. 3 6 Nevertheless, despite the enormous 

 complications involved, the analysis of these faculties, and ulti- 

 mately of the laws which govern their operations, is the problem 

 which psychology presents. 



After the knowledge of bodies and minds in their interrelations, 

 we pass finally to 'The Knowledge of General Things', by which 

 Taine means, though the word does not occur here, universals, or 

 natural types. Despite cautious disavowals, this concluding 

 Book IV is an approach to the empirical metaphysics, based on 

 psychology, of whose desirability Taine wrote so often. 37 As in 

 M. Paul's speculations in The Classic Philosophers, where the notion 

 was broached somewhat tentatively, 38 the 'type' or species is 

 central here: these 'general characters' are 'the most important 



