THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CORE: MASTER FACULTY 121 



Some Critical Conclusions 



The problem of faculties remains on the psychological agenda 

 today, though it is very much more complicated than Taine 

 and his generation realized. '*s How much more difficult then 

 must the 'Master' half of the formula seem to us now! Taine's 

 readiness to assume the rule of one Faculty over the others may 

 be accounted for by his classical background and hierarchical 

 principle, but especially by his interest in abnormal psychology: 

 he 'initiated the French tradition that the normal mind is to 

 be understood by a study of the abnormal' /^ Thus, there is an 

 interesting parallel between his phrase, 'la tendance fixee', and 

 'I'idee fixe', which became a popular expression for what is now 

 called 'obsession'. An old tradition has it that 'Great wits are sure 

 to madness near allied', and it seems natural therefore to attempt 

 to account for literary and artistic 'genius' by a concept which 

 belongs, perhaps, more in abnormal than in normal psychology. 



Nevertheless, one of Taine's central points is that the same basic 

 processes are involved in normal as in abnormal behaviour, and the 

 implication therefore remains that psychology should study 

 'Everyman In His Humour'. In brief, every individual, like every 

 nation, has his Master Faculty; but the poet or painter is one in 

 whom the normal characteristics of the type are more fully 

 developed — -just as the work of art 'makes predominant an essential 

 character' — and therefore, in that sense, more typical. His 'abnor- 

 mality', so to speak, consists in his being most fully normal, or, in 

 philosophical language, 'The Ideal is the real purified.' ^o Such, 

 at least, is Taine's general contention, though it raises issues with 

 which we shall have to be concerned in the next chapter. 



On the whole, the Master Faculty concept, too, must be taken 

 as stating a problem rather than presenting a solution. After all, 

 as with Race, Environment, and Time, it reduces to a kind of 

 truism: the artist writes or paints the way he does, in part at least, 

 because of the kind of man he is. Why else are we interested in the 

 biographies of artists? But the relationship is surely more subtle and 

 complex than Taine usually seems to realize. And, though the 

 principle remains basically sound, its specific applications must 

 be expected to change and develop with the progress of psychology 

 and the social sciences. 



