146 SCIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 



from which they may be deduced. '2 Mill's A System of Logic also 

 has a chapter which treats 'Of Abstraction, or the Formation of 

 Conceptions', 3 but his emphasis is on the point that 'The facts are 

 not connected, except in a merely metaphorical acceptation of the 

 term. The ideas of the facts may become connected, that is, we 

 may be led to think of them together; but this consequence is no 

 more than what may be produced by any casual association.' ^ 

 Taine, however, raises the question of whether — or, perhaps, in 

 what sense — the process of abstraction yields a true product. Is it 

 proper to translate the verb ('to abstract') into a noun 

 ('abstraction')? 



The extreme opposite of Mill on this issue is Hegel, with whose 

 name the modern doctrine of the concreteness of universals is 

 usually associated. Thus, Taine concludes his Preface to The 

 Classic Philosophers by attributing his belief 'that the world 

 discovered by experience thus finds its reason, as well as its image, 

 in the world reproduced by abstraction' to the German thinker: 

 'Such is the idea of nature expounded by Hegel. . . .'^ This will 

 recall our previous discussion of Taine's student criticisms of 

 Hegel, and the points made in Chapter II concerning his agree- 

 ments, disagreements, and misunderstandings of Hegel are 

 relevant here: in sum, Taine thinks of abstraction first as a process, 

 like that which the practising scientist uses, not merely as a formal 

 category of Being; he insists on the methods of hypothesis and 

 verification to ensure that concepts correspond with concrete 

 realities; and he balks at the Kantian and Hegelian distinction 

 between Understanding and Reason. ^ 



Nevertheless, it may be useful to look again at Taine's diflfer- 

 ences with Hegel, in this new context. Hegel's central discussion 

 occurs in his Subjective Logic, which is the third volume of the 

 larger Science of Logic [Wissenschaft der Logik). The first two 

 volumes are concerned with Being {Sein) and Essence {Wesen) 

 respectively, constituting an Objective Logic (or metaphysics) 

 which reinterprets the Kantian categories of the Understanding 

 (Verstand) in terms of the dialectical principle. In the third volume, 

 according to Hegel, the Concept or Notion {Begriff) is revealed in 

 its fullness of development; thus, 'we should begin by regarding 

 the concept in general as the third member in a triad whose other 

 members are being and essence, or, in other words, immediacy and 

 reflection' J 



Hegel's introductory chapter on 'The Concept in General' 



