i66 SCIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 



possible value in nature receives from art all the increase in value 

 that is possible. '23 



Some Criticisms of Tainc's Criteria 



The general point, that there are degrees of value both in life and 

 in art, is well made in these pages, but a number of import- 

 ant questions are raised by the special character of Taine's 

 argument. 



First, the term 'ideal' in the title seems like a misnomer, especi- 

 ally in view of Taine's rather narrow definition of the word at the 

 outset. 24 Betraying the influence of Hegel's Aesthetics, its use is 

 rendered incongruous by the fact that Taine's aesthetic system is 

 based on a different metaphysics from that of Hegel. 25 'On Force 

 in Art',' 'Degrees of Value in Art', or (using the language of On 

 Intelligence) 'General Characters in Art' — these would all have been 

 more accurate, if less elegant. 



Second, the total impression is too static and sketchy for a 

 work which aims to 'take in the whole of art in a single glance, 

 and comprehend the principle which assigns to each work its 

 rank on the scale'. 26 The section on 'The Converging Degree of 

 EflTects' is a valiant, and suggestive, attempt to save the day by 

 asserting something like the organic principle, but it does not 

 quite succeed. 'Convergence' is an image from mechanics, not 

 from biology; the emphasis on 'unity' 27 would be more just if 

 it recognized 'unity in variety; and it is here that we miss most 

 the sense of complexity which requires dialectical categories. 28 

 In brief, though pointing in the right direction, 29 Taine here is 

 neither thorough nor organic enough; he has not quite succeeded 

 in giving us a complete aesthetic, as he claims to have done. Of 

 course, one must take into consideration the brevity of his 

 attempt, 3 but its relative failure may have resulted not merely 

 from the fact that he was delivering a limited number of lectures, 

 but also from limitations of his point of view. 



For example: a major weakness of Taine's argument is that he 

 treats only those arts which take tnan as their subject-matter; 

 in our century, which has been outstanding for what Ortega y 

 Gasset has called the 'dehumanization of art', this seems especially 

 serious. Thus, Taine has stacked the cards in his own favour; at 

 least, it might be much more difficult (though not necessarily 

 impossible) to apply his value scales to such modern phenomena 

 as the landscape, the still life, and the cubist abstraction in art. 



