154 SCIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 



this logical participation, this liETS^is of the particular in the 

 general, without transforming it into an ontological statement in 

 which two fundamental forms of reality are posited.' ^"^ The central 

 point was rather that, with the development of the relational 

 concept, a higher synthesis has been achieved in which the pro- 

 blem of reality, as such, has become 'unreal'. 



The individual — though it is inexhaustible, i.e., cannot ever 

 be fully known — yet, 'as an infinitely distant point, determines 

 the direction of knowledge'. ^s At the opposite extreme, the uni- 

 versal type — such as the species, 'horse', and the chemical element, 

 'hydrogen' — is seen as a necessary means by which we approach 

 the ideal limits of knowledge, and its scientific function seems 

 quite 'real'; at the very least, the metaphysical issue of its status 

 may still be kept open. For thinkers like Cassirer, its 'substance' is 

 synonymous with, nothing but, its 'function'. However, neither the 

 individual nor the type has any meaning without the other; both 

 are equally abstractions. In Cohen's words: 'We do not have pure 

 particulars any more than pure universals, to begin with. . . . 

 Definite individuals are, therefore, the goals or limits rather than 

 the data of scientific method. When we attain knowledge of 

 particulars we see that their nature depends upon the universal 

 connections which make them what they are.'69 Cohen's final 

 solution for this 'pseudo-problem' lies in what he calls the prin- 

 ciple of polarity: 'The eflforts of the human intellect may be 

 viewed as a tension between two poles — one to do justice to the 

 fullness of the concrete case before us, the other to grasp an under- 

 lying abstract universal principle that controls much more than the 

 one case before us.'^^ 



In brief, Taine seems to have anticipated many of the important 

 criticisms of the natural type from the point of view of its sub- 

 stantiability, or lack of it, at least as revealed in the writings of 

 such unrepentant rationalists, solidly grounded in the methods 

 and findings of twentieth-century science, as Cassirer and Cohen. 

 Though Taine is optimistic, in the fashion so characteristic of his 

 century, "71 he is far from naive concerning the problems of making 

 the Ideal and the Real agree. The fact that many today, like 

 Cassirer, skirt the ontological issue, has not settled it, and Taine's 

 solution still remains possible, at least as an article of scientific 

 faith. 



The most questionable part of Taine's analysis, from our less 

 optimistic standpoint, would be his behef in the possibility of 



