I20 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



kind of literature or art was the product of a particular Master 

 Faculty, we are often not sure whether that faculty is understood 

 to have resided in the individual artist or in his Race-Environ- 

 ment-Time. Most frequently both seem to be intended: the 'state 

 of mind' of the artist as well as the more general 'state of mind^' — 

 something like the German Zeitgeist — of which he is a product and 

 example. 



This ambiguity seems to follow from the fact that Taine treats 

 psychology as both effect and cause. Thus, the 'elementary moral 

 states' mentioned in the 'Introduction' to the History are both 

 products of Race-Environment-Time and, once produced, them- 

 selves the most immediate, universal, and permanent causes: 

 'religions, philosophies, poetries, industries, the framework of 

 society and of families, are in fact only the imprints stamped by 

 their seal'.^^ 



This constant shuttling back and forth between the individual 

 and society can be illustrated by the following remarks on Racine, 

 which are fairly typical: 



'Like Shakespeare and Sophocles, Racine is a national poet; 

 nothing more French than his theatre; we recognize there the species 

 and the degree of our feelings and our faculties . . . his genius is the image 

 of ours; his work is the history of the passions written for our use; 

 he suits us in his faults and his merits; he is the best interpreter of 

 the heart for our race.''^^ 



'There are Racine's surroundings; it is to this spirit of the race and 

 the age that his own spirit adapted itself If climates exist in the 

 physical world, they are also to be found in the moral world. '^6 



The Master Faculty is found both (i) in the great national poet 



and (2) in the national spirit and tradition; to disentangle the two 



seems as hopeless as finding a solution to the riddle of the chicken 



and the tgg. 



Thus, Master Faculty leads us directly to a central problem of 



both individual and social psychology. If On Intelligence represents 



Taine's effort to develop the concept in the context of individual 



psychology, the bulk of his other writings do the same for what 



Wundt, and others, have treated as Volkerpsychologie: 'Believing 



in the concrete rather than the abstract, Taine thought of this 



Folk-Psychology as the real sphere of applied psychology and 



deserves the credit of introducing to France this product of German 

 thought.'47 



