148 SCIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 



Qur ideas is nothing more than the formation of names, which are 

 substitutes',^^ and we seem to be confronted by the self-contra- 

 diction which James pointed out.i'^ However, Taine attempts to 

 combine these two emphases by means of a conceptuaHst position 

 in which, as a result of scientific analysis, experimentation, and 

 rectification, 'the acquired general idea corresponds with an 

 actually general thing, that is to say with a group of characters 

 which involve or tend to involve one another, whatever be the 

 individuals and circumstances under which one of them is given\'^^ Citing 

 Goethe's theory that 'the various organs of a plant are nothing 

 more than transformed leaves' as an example, he claims that 'the 

 original type is manifested by fixed relations' ^^ and generally cor- 

 relates 'structure and function'. 20 Thus, 'leaf is a name for a 

 concept which corresponds to something in reality. 



As if in answer to the familiar criticism that the only truly 

 fixed relations are those which are analytic and a priori, '^^ Taine 

 attempts to prove a correspondence between the sciences of con- 

 struction22 and those which are concerned with 'real things'. 

 Thus, a perfectly straight line does not occur in nature, but the 

 idea of one has 'a function and a value. Though constructed on 

 their own accounts', such 'preliminary outlines . . . have a relation 

 with things'. The gap between ideal constructions (the internal 

 relations of which are analytic) and things can be made to 

 disappear either (i) by completing and amending the former, or 

 (2) by reducing and abstracting the latter^^; the former must be 

 exact, 'very general, and, if possible, universal', and simple if they 

 are 'to have a chance of agreeing with things'. ^^ One example of 

 these 'constructions' is the work of the artist, who 'takes a block 

 of marble and hews out the ideal form which Nature has not been 

 able to display to us'. 2 5 



As before, 26 Taine disavows any intention of identifying such 

 fixed relations with 'the mysterious link by which metaphysicians 

 connect cause and eflfect'^^; thus, 'they do not exist outside indivi- 

 duals and events, as Plato taught, nor in a world other than our 

 own'. 28 Nevertheless, he contends, a universal cause 'possesses, 

 in itself, the property of being accompanied, followed, or preceded 

 by' other characters; 'taken apart and in itself, isolated by abstrac- 

 tion, extracted from the various media in which we meet with it, 

 it possesses this property'. 29 



Analogous to the relations between constructions and things 

 are those between deductions and inductions; thus, from the 



