i64 SCIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 



Some of the issues raised by this position have already been 

 considered, and an attempt has been made in the previous chapter 

 to translate it into terms more congenial to twentieth-century 

 thought. In general, our discussion has sought to understand 

 universals in their functional relationships; treated them as ideal 

 limits for scientific investigation of potentialities; and found that 

 the tendency towards organicism in modern science lends sup- 

 port to Taine's hierarchical principle. However, we have stressed 

 the relative and hypothetical status of all such concepts; and have 

 felt the need for caution in using conclusions which depend for 

 their justification on settlement of the ultimate issues of Substance 

 and the Absolute. 



Scales of Value 



Taine's applications of his hierarchical principle to criticism 

 are developed through an elaborate set of analogies designed to 

 prove (or based on the assumption) that there is a correspondence 

 between the hierarchy of reality and that of works of art: 'At the 

 apex of nature are sovereign forces which master all others; at the 

 apex of art are masterpieces which surpass all others; both heights 

 are on a level, and the sovereign forces of nature are declared 

 through the masterpieces of art.' ^^ How is this transition accom- 

 plished, and what are the hierarchies involved? 



In an introductory section, Taine is careful to define his use of 

 the word 'ideal' as follows: '^Things pass from the real to the ideal 

 when the artist reproduces them by modifying them according to 

 his idea\ and this involves a process of abstraction, like that of the 

 scientist, except that art renders essential character 'more apparent 

 and powerful'. 13 This implies, not only that the gap between the 

 Real and Ideal is not, in its nature, unbridgeable, i^ but that the 

 artist, in his own way, makes the leap. Referring to 'characters', 

 Taine writes: 'When they traverse the intellect of the writer or of 

 the artist, in order to pass from the real world into the ideal world, 

 they lose nothing of what they are. . . .'^^ Such an assumption of per- 

 fect, almost transparent, correspondence and communication 

 seems rather doubtful, though great art often produces that 

 illusion', in any case, it is pre-semantic, and whether or not such 

 translation is possible, the process is surely more complex than 

 Taine's analysis would make it out to be.^^ 



With this qualification — namely, that the correspondence of 

 'the ideal in art' with 'the ideal in nature' is more an article of 



