CHAPTER XII 



FROM ANALYSIS TO JUDGMENT 



' The Ideal in Art' 



THE preceding chapter has been both too short and too long. 

 Its treatments of such complex philosophic issues as uni- 

 versals, substance, and the absolute are, of course, brief and 

 inadequate; and yet even these may have seemed like over-long 

 digressions in our critical exposition of Taine's thought. They are, 

 however, directly relevant to, and necessary for, a full understand- 

 ing of the climax of his critical system in the important lectures on \ 

 The Ideal in Art. 



Delivered in the winter of 1 866-1 867, three years before com- j 

 pletion of On Intelligence^ these lectures contain many of the | 

 essential doctrines of that later work in germ; indeed, some of 

 their passages read like lucid and eloquent summaries of the key 

 ideas which we have laboured to extract from Taine's longer and 

 more technical treatise. They open with a forceful statement of | 

 the problem which has been found to be central in Taine, namely, I 

 the relations between scientific analysis and critical judgment, the , 

 former presumably pointing in the direction of relative standards, ; 

 the latter implying the need for some absolute scale of values: j 

 'Can we discover a principle of subordination by which to assign j 

 rank to the diverse products of art?' 1 i 



'At the first glance we are tempted to say, no; the definition 

 which we have given seems to bar the way to this investigation; i 

 it leads one to believe that all the works of art are on a level. . . .'^ ] 

 A large number of examples are cited — culminating in a compari- 

 son of the 'Ledas' of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and 

 Correggio — to illustrate the variety of treatments which different ' 

 writers and artists have given to the same theme. 'Which is to be | 



preferred? And which is the superior character, the charming ! 



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