TAINE'S STUDENT CORRESPONDENCE AND NOTEBOOKS 215 



expresses the same thing as existence, but the former does it in relation 

 to conception^ and the latter, in relation to perception. Thus, perception is 

 anterior to conception. '"^^ 



He concluded the discussion as follows: 



*This long labour has led us to discover the various meanings 

 of the words raison d'etre. Nothing is more important than this 

 analysis. It is through the raison d'etre that beings are bound to one 

 another, and that, having possession of one, we can possess all the 

 others. That is, truthfully speaking, the basis of philosophic science, 

 since it is the means of knowing the whole. And I see no other 

 means for that. The doctrine of real causality, of God as cause, 

 being impossible, there remains only that of logical causality.' -o 



This was the same distinction between logical and metaphysical 

 necessity which had been central to his criticism of Spinoza 

 the previous year: T have been much in error on the nature of the 

 absolute. I did not observe that the notion is not the intuition. 

 . . . One does not arrive at anything by supposing at first a pure 

 possibility, as Spinoza did.'^i The further element that was neces- 

 sary, if one were to pass from essence to existence, was that of 

 'power' or, as he usually named it in his later writings, 'force' : 



'It seems to me that here is the solution. What exists before 

 Socrates is his power of existing at a determined moment, and not 

 himself ... To be logical, it is necessary to destroy the divine 

 world, as Hegel did, or the real world, as Spinoza did. Genera and 

 types are neither res nor nomina, but powers, virtual modes of 

 determination for the absolute. . . .'^^ 



Schelling was also criticized on the same score. 



However, that Taine thought of this 'power' as more than (his 

 conception of) the Aristotelian 'potentiality' is clear from what 

 he wrote near the conclusion of the Philosophy, Dogmatism notebook: 



'It will be necessary to prove that induction gives me not only, 

 as Schelling says, the Infinite-finite, nor, as Hegel says, the Idea 

 in process, nor, as Aristotle says, the Idea in action; but indeed 

 Being (absolute) made manifest (absolutely). '^^ 



He might have added Spinoza to the list: 



'The first idea ought to be concrete; it ought to be that of 

 determinate being, in action, not that of pure being. Spinoza did 



