i68 SCIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 



heroes' are found in epics, and 'creations truly ideal are fertile 

 only in primitive and simple epochs'. 3*7 



However, when Taine passes from consideration of the pre- 

 dominantly moral criteria of 'importance' and 'beneficence' ^8 

 to the more aesthetic and organic criterion of 'The Converging 

 Degree of Effects', the superiority of the primitive is no longer 

 maintained. Instead, historical analysis reveals three stages, of 

 gestation, maturity, and decline. Now the primitive writer is seen 

 as ignorant: 'He is not wanting in inspiration; . . . noble forms flit 

 obscurely through the depths of the soul; but processes are not 

 known; people do not know how to write, how to distribute the 

 parts of a subject, how to employ literary resources.' ^^ Instead 

 of a straight line of evolution from the simple to the complex, with 

 the implication of a falling oflf from primitive greatness, the image 

 is of a seed which gradually comes to flower and then fades. "^^ 

 'In the primitive period the work is still imperfect. '"^i 



The basic source of these, and other, contradictions in The 

 Ideal of Art would seem to be an imperfect blending of static and 

 dynamic elements, ultimately traceable to the conflict within 

 Taine of Spinozistic and Hegelian influences. An attempt is made 

 to fuse these in the concluding formula: 'The masterpiece is that 

 in which the greatest force received the greatest development.^ "^^ The 

 former is, on the whole, treated statically — though 'force' is in- 

 herently a dynamic concept. Thus, what counts in determining 

 the 'importance' and 'beneficence' of a character is its permanence 

 and stability, in a world-picture which has the essential traits of 

 Spinoza's Substance. Health, Love, Civilization, Universal Man 

 are all invoked as logical concepts, which of course are found in 

 reality, but which have a kind of eternal and absolute validity. ^ 3 



In the concluding section on 'The Converging Degree of 

 Effects', however, the entire emphasis shifts from permanence to 

 development, and the spirit changes from that of Spinoza to that of 

 Hegel. Hence the introduction of the concept of growth and 

 maturity (translated, however, characteristically, into the mechan- 

 istic language of convergence) . Since this is the point at which 

 the transition from life to art, from moral character to aesthetic 

 form, is made, it presents the crucial issue. But this shift does not 

 necessarily redound to Taine's discredit: an adequate aesthetic, 

 like an adequate philosophy generally, must do justice to the facts 

 of permanence as well as those of change: and perhaps a more 

 adequate application of the organic principle to the problems of 



