344 HISTORY OF LITERATURE 



intellectual pleasures of each age in turn, and to deliver works 

 from the tyranny of chacun son gout. The criticism of Nisard is tonic, 

 but too intensely, therefore narrowly, national. As a philosophical 

 phenomenon it is the aesthetic outcome of the positivism of Comte. 



The present period of criticism in France includes the movement of 

 art for art's sake, whose representatives, de Vigny, Th4ophile Gautier, 

 The'od. de Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Sully-Prudhomme, etc., are 

 called the Parnassiens. This movement is characterized by a revolt 

 against the excesses of the romantic school, and a revival of a more 

 philosophical and rationalistic theory of inspiration. It cultivates 

 accuracy in form, and aims in an aesthetic fashion at sculptural and 

 picturesque effects of style. Its doctrines may, in fact, be compared 

 with the much more refined aestheticism or hedonism of Walter Pater. 

 The period includes, also, important developments in scientific 

 criticism; the esthopsychological of Hennequin, the naturalistic 

 (historically objective) of Taine, the national and eidographic of 

 Brunetiere, the social of Guyau. Taine started out by being frankly 

 and flatly scientific. Literature, he said, is a natural product whose 

 characteristics are to be investigated and recorded, like those of 

 trees and flowers. Criticism is thus a kind of botany applied to human 

 works, and the efforts of the critic are devoted to determining the 

 literary system or organism which is made up of the productions 

 of a given period or nation. Within such a system, when it has 

 been found, will be arranged the authors and their works according 

 to the dominant characteristic of each. The literary activity of any 

 member of such a system is shaped by three influences: (1) The 

 race, or the influence of heredity and temperament; (2) the environ- 

 ment, political, social, and physical; (3) the moment. This threefold 

 formula has vitally affected the literary studies of the nineteenth 

 century. For long it was in everybody's mouth. It is a fact, however, 

 not generally known that the formula did not originate with Taine 

 at all. He derived it beyond a perad venture from Hegel's jEsthetik, 

 vol. i, p. 20: "Sodann gehort jedes Kunstwerk seiner Zeit, seinem 

 Volke, seiner Umgebung an." Brunetiere, who adds to the three 

 conditions specified by Taine the element of individuality (Evolu- 

 tion des Genres dans I'Histoire de la Litterature, vol. I, p. 22), was also 

 anticipated by Hegel (JEsthetik, vol. I, p. 45) : " Denn das Kunstwerk 

 um seiner zugleich materiellen und individuellen Natur willen, geht 

 wesentlich aus besonderen Bedingungen der mannigfachsten Art, 

 wozu vorziiglich Zeit und Ort der Entstehung, dann die bestimmte 

 Indimdualitat des Kunstlers und hauptsachlich die technische 

 Ausbildung der Kunst gehoren, hervor." 



It has been shown by Professors Brunetiere and Dowden that 

 while Taine 's theory has had enormous influence in shaping the 

 destinies of the materialistic movement an inevitable reaction 



