OF THE GOOD. 235 



unifying principle which would allow the phenomena 

 of life to be mechanically explained and altruism to 

 be deduced from egoism. To do this they had re- 

 course to the principle of transformism, the potency 

 of which had not been recognised by Comte himself. 

 This led them to study more closely the philosophy 

 of Evolution as it had been elaborated in this country 

 by Darwin and Spencer. 



The disciple of Comte who went the greatest length 

 in this direction was Littre ; but it was also much 

 strengthened on one side by several eminent leaders 

 in the natural and medical sciences, and on the other 

 by two of the most brilliant writers of the last gen- 

 eration Ernest Eenan and Hippolyte Taine. 1 They 

 introduced the positive spirit into history, aesthetics, and 

 general literature, cultivating fields of research such as 

 Psychology and ^Esthetics, which had met with very 

 insufficient attention in Comte's own writings. They 

 emancipated positivism from Comtisrn, from the letter 

 and canons of its founder's system, and it is doubtful 

 how many of those who now so glibly use the term 

 have ever read a line of the ' Philosophic Positive.' 



But for philosophical thought in their country, Eenan 

 and Taine did more than this : they were quite as much 

 students of Hegelianism as of Positivism ; they combined 



1 " Hippolyte Taine, encore do- 

 mine", a vrai dire, par des theories 

 metaphysiques, telles que le mon- 

 isme logique de Spinoza ou de 

 Hegel, apres etre descendu analy- 

 tiquement des signes aux images, 

 des images aux sensations et de 

 celles-ci a leurs elements consti- 

 tutifs, qu'il trouvait dans des 

 sensations elementaires, homogenes 



et imperceptibles, correspondant a 

 des ensembles de reflexes du systeme 

 nerveux, essayait, a partir de la 

 sensation ainsi co^ue, de recon- 

 struire synthetiquement, sans rien 

 emprunter qu' a 1'exp^rience, tout 

 le mecanisme de la connaissance." 

 E. Boutroux in "La Philosophic 

 en France " ; ' Revue de Metaphy- 

 sique et de Morale ' (1908, p. 690). 



