CHAPTER XIV 



OUR HERITAGE FROM TAINE 



Need for a Balanced View 



OUR journey through Taine's philosophy of criticism — 

 I starting with formulation of his central problem of the 

 relation between science and judgment, passing through 

 the philosophical foundations of his system and the chief cate- 

 gories of analysis he employed, and ending with a critical discus- 

 sion of his proposed solution — is finished. However, after so long 

 and intimate an acquaintance, it seems proper that we pause 

 briefly for a backward glance and final estimate of his limitations 

 and permanent value. 



Unfortunately, discussions of Taine have too often been charac- 

 terized by their heat rather than by their light; he has frequently 

 been the subject of virulent attacks and ardent defences, rather 

 than of balanced understanding. The habit of being a storm 

 centre, characteristic of his entire career, was fully evident first 

 in the polemical study of The Classic Philosophers (1857) and was 

 renewed in his last decades with each additional volume of The 

 Origins of Contemporary France^ as a result, critics and scholars have 

 tended to fall into opposite and mutually exclusive camps as 

 Taineans and anti-Taineans. Many disciples and followers, 

 though not given to slavish imitation, have paid Taine the high 

 compliment of emulation, successful and unsuccessful, and thus 

 his method tended to dominate two generations of literary study 

 in Europe and America, producing such outstanding works as 

 George Brandes' Main Currents of Nineteenth Century Literature and 

 V. L. Parrington's Main Curre?its in American Thought. At the oppo- 

 site extreme, he has been subject to the less sincere flattery of abuse 

 (similar to that which Irving Babbitt heaped on Rousseau as the 

 scapegoat for attacks on Romanticism), and, in such a work as 



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