OUR HERITAGE FROM TAINE 203 



One final note to our revaluation of an aesthetic system which, 

 though its implications are ultimately 'political', in the best sense 

 of that much-abused word, may seem at the farthest possible 

 remove from matters of state. It will be recalled that Taine's 

 attempt to achieve a balance between such opposites as the con- 

 crete and the universal, the Romantic and the Classical, and 

 empiricism and metaphysics, reflected a conception of France's 

 role as a mediator in Europe between extremes represented by 

 England and Germany. ^9 It was with this in mind that, imme- 

 diately after completing On Intelligence (late in 1869), he began 

 collecting notes for a work on Germany and German literature, 

 comparable to the History oj English Literature^ though more modest 

 in scope. 30 



Analogies to the present situation, less than a century later, 

 are not far to seek. Now the stakes are higher; weapons are more 

 efficient, and the stage of war has been enlarged to include the 

 entire globe of the earth; but, now as before, the conflict is between 

 East and West, and men of science, reason, and good will are 

 seeking to find a middle way — a 'third force' — to prevent the 

 battle which many pessimists consider inevitable. In this respect, 

 for example, the works of a man like F. S. C. Northrop present 

 interesting parallels to those of Taine: he too has attempted to 

 distinguish national and 'racial' traits (though, of course, he has 

 left the biological fallacies, to which Taine fell victim, far behind) 

 according to a principle which correlates intellectual, aesthetic, 

 social, and other elements in organic wholes; he too has been 

 attempting to bridge the gap which still yawns between the 

 sciences and the humanities, ^i 



But, unfortunately, Taine's enterprise did not stand to survive, 

 much more than the proverbial snowball in Hell. When Prussian 

 troops began their march to Paris in July of 1870 — despite the 

 fact that, as Taine wrote to his mother on 24 July: 'In my circle 

 of friends and throughout my journey from the frontier, everybody 

 was against the war . . .'^2 — Taine, with his fine sense of intellectual 

 probity, gave up his immediate job of trying to understand the 

 Germans: 'We can no longer be impartial.' ^^ And, after the defeat 

 of France and the unhappy events which followed establishment 

 of the Commune in 1871, he resolved to turn all his thoughts and 

 eflforts homeward and wrote the Origins of Contemporary France in 

 search of the causes of 'la debacle'. 



As our representatives talk in the councils of the United Nations 



