Charles Augustin Sainte-Claire de Taine

“ The Origines differ from the rest of Taine's work in that, although he applies to a period of history the method which he had already applied to literature and the arts, he is unable to approach his subject in the same spirit; he loses his philosophic calm; he cannot help writing as a man and a Frenchman, and he lets his feelings have play; but what the work loses thus in impartiality it gains in life.
Taine was the philosopher of the epoch which succeeded the era of romanticism in France. ”

“ He considers everything as a mathematical problem, whether it be the universe or a work of art: "C'cst beau comme un syllogisme," he said of a sonata of Beethoven. Taine's theory of the universe, his doctrine, his method of writing criticism and history, his philosophical system, are all the result of this logical gift, this passion for reasoning, classification and abstraction. But Taine's imaginative quality was as remarkable as his power of logic; hence the most satisfactory definition of Taine's predominating faculty would be one which comprehended the two gifts. ”

“ In certain writings enumerated by him, M. Taine says: “The reader will see all the wealth that may be drawn from a literary work: when the work is rich, and one knows how to interpret it, we find there the psychology of a soul, frequently of an age, now and then of a race.” Partially true. And M. Taine might have instanced the Confessions of St. Augustine, but he does not. We may indeed find what he indicates under certain conditions, for, as he very correctly adds, “their utility grows with their perfection.” Unfortunately, such works occur in literature at the rarest intervals. ”

“ Behind every shell is a monk, a priest, or a bishop, whose piety and whose virtues are not subjects of agreeable contemplation to a writer who announces his belief that religion is a mere human invention; that man makes a religion as he paints a portrait or constructs a steam-engine. Thus M. Taine states it: “Let us take first the three chief works of human intelligence—religion, art, philosophy” (p. 15) .
Accordingly, of the great minds of Anglo-Saxon England during whole centuries we see nothing in M. Taine’s pages. ”

“ He cannot, like Balzac, leave morality out of account, and treat a passion, [331] however loathsome, as that great tale-teller did, from the only safe ground of belief, that it is a force, and that force of whatever kind is good. It is essential to an artist of that superior grade, M. Taine holds, no matter how vile his subject, to show its education and temptations, the form of brain or habits of mind that have reinforced the natural tendency, to deduce it from its cause, to place its circumstances around it, and to develop its effects to their extremes. ”

“ Taine served science unfalteringly, without looking forward to any possible fruits or result. In his work we find neither enthusiasm nor bitterness, neither hope nor yet despair; merely a hopeless resignation. ”

“ Germain, in a house whose windows have a clear view of the Hôtel des Invalides across the gardens of the Sacre-Cœur. I would say that I found Taine particularly courteous and cordial, were it not that I met no French gentleman who in any other society would not be distinguished for perfection of manner and winning kindness.
Taine has often been urged by friends who have been in America to visit the United States, both with a view to repair his somewhat shattered health and to write a book about us after the manner of his Notes on England. He always says he will do so ”

“ The natural man, whom the Revolution discovered and brought to the surface, is, according to Taine, a vicious and destructive brute, not to be tolerated unless caught young, and perseveringly disciplined and controlled.
Taine is not a historian, but a pathologist, and his work, the most scientific we possess, and in part the most exhaustive, is not history. By his energy in extracting formulas and accumulating knowledge, by the crushing force with which he masses it to sustain conclusions, he is the strongest Frenchman of his time, and his indictment is the weightiest that was ever drawn up. ”

“ Nature and history have chosen for us in advance; it is for us to adapt ourselves to them as it is certain they will accommodate themselves to us. The social and political mould into which a nation may enter and remain is not subject to its will, but determined by its character and its past." From this point of view, M. Taine came to the conclusion that his country needed, first of all, to be studied systematically, and the present work is the first of a series which together are designed to constitute a philosophic study of modern France. ”

“ In his own house, his wife and mother often look melancholy, especially during Easter week; if he is old, or becomes ill, his conscience disturbs him; this conscience, through habit and heredity, is Catholic: he craves absolution at the last moment at the priest's hands, and says to himself that, at the last moment, he may not probably be absolved.3191 In other respects, he would find it difficult to satisfy himself that his legal property is legitimate property; for, not only is it not so rightfully before the tribunal of conscience, but again it is not so in fact on the market ”

“ He accepted Man and society, as they appeared to him, he described his findings without compassion for the hang-ups of his prejudiced countrymen. He described Man as a gregarious animal living for a brief spell in a remote corner of space, whose different cultures and nations had evolved haphazardly in time, carried along by forces and events exceeding our comprehension, blindly following their innate drives. These drives were followed with cunning but rarely with far-sighted wisdom. Taine, the prophet, has more than ever something to tell us. ”

“ Taine was the mouthpiece of this period, or rather one of its most authoritative spokesmen.
Many attempts have been made to apply one of Taine's favourite theories to himself, and to define his predominant and preponderant faculty. Some critics have held that it was the power of logic, a power which was at the same time the source of his weakness and of his strength. He had a passion for abstraction. "Every man and every book," he said, "can be summed up in three pages, and those three pages can. ”

“ As to style M. Taine does not find that the natural or simple prevails sufficiently. The tone is too passionate. The imaginative or poetic side of allusion is so uniformly dwelt on, that the descriptions cease to be subsidiary, and the minute details of pain or pleasure wrought out by them become active [327] agencies in the tale. So vivid and eager is the display of fancy that everything is borne along with it; imaginary objects take the precision of real ones; living thoughts are controlled by inanimate things; the chimes console the poor old ticket-porter ”

“ An omnipotent legislator cannot depreciate himself; like a king he is condemned to self-admiration in his public capacity. "There were not thirty deputies amongst us," says a witness, "who thought differently from Raynal," but "in each other's presence the credit of the Revolution, the perspective of its blessings, was an article of faith which had to be believed in;" and, against their own reason, against their conscience, the moderates, caught in the net of their own acts, join the revolutionaries to complete the Revolution. ”

“ Taine, with the last strength of his evil life, profanely cursed the woman that his gold had bought to serve his licentious will--and cursing--died; Aaron King--inspired by the character and purity of the woman he loved, and by whom he knew he was loved, and dreaming of their comradeship that was to be--dedicated himself anew to the ministry of his art and so entered into that more abundant life which belongs by divine right to all who will claim it. ”

“ The man of the people in France, by virtue of being a Gaul, has a dry, limited imagination; he is not inclined to veneration, but is rather mocking, critical and insubordinate at the powers above him, with a hereditary undertone of distrust and envy at every man who wears a cloth suit and who eats and drinks without doing manual labor.—At this time, his clergy do not excite his envy, but his pity ”

“ A writer who announces in the preface of his work that the only conclusion at which he is able to arrive, after a profound study of the most interesting and stormy period of modern history, is that the government of human beings is an extremely difficult task, will look in vain for sympathy from all who have adopted any special theory as to the best way in which that task should be accomplished. Yet, in spite of Taine's political nihilism, it would be a grave error to suppose that he has no general principle to enounce, or no plan of government to propound. ”

“ Not only do they utter these sentiments but they give them proof. "At this moment," says a contemporary,4258 "the most active pity animates all breasts; the great dread of the opulent is to appear insensible." The archbishop of Paris, subsequently followed and stoned, is the donator of 100,000 crowns to the hospital of the Hôtel-Dieu. The intendant Berthier, who is to be massacred, draws up the new assessment-roll of the Ile-de-France, equalizing the taille, which act allows him to abate the rate, at first, an eighth, and next, a quarter4259. ”

“ Horace Walpole, who returns to France in 1765,4218 and whose good sense anticipates the danger, is astonished at such imprudence: "I dined to day with a dozen scholars and scientists, and although all the servants were around us and listening, the conversation was much more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament, than I would allow at my own table in England even if a single footman was present." People dogmatize everywhere. "Joking is as much out of fashion as jumping jacks and tumblers. Our good folks have no time to laugh! There is God and the king to be hauled down first ”

“ From the filthiness of low life, I dare say, but how about the elegant fleshliness of the previous school? France will have to undergo a complete turning inside out before this loses its hold upon the national mind; as a proof of which I may mention the fact that a man who knew as much of the world and of books as Taine does, one day said to me that the best advice he could offer to a foreigner who thought of devoting himself to letters was to carry back with him, to his own country, Balzac, Stendhal and Mérimée. ”

“ He wants to create new sentiments, impose natural religion on the individual, civic education, uniform ways and habits, Jacobin conduct, Spartan virtue; in short, nothing is to be left in a human being that is not prescribed, enforced and constrained.—Henceforth, there is opposed to the Revolution, not alone the partisans of the ancient régime—priests, nobles, parliamentarians, royalists, and Catholics—but, again, every person imbued with European civilization, every member of a regular family, any possessor of a capital, large or small ”

“ Taine to meet the artist. The figure in the picture, standing with uplifted glass and drunken pose at the head of the table--with bestial, lust-worn face, disease-shrunken limbs, and dying, licentious eyes fixed upon the beautiful girl musician--might easily have been Mr. Taine himself. The distinguished writers, and critics; the representatives of the social world and of wealth; Conrad Lagrange with cold, cynical, mocking, smile; Mrs. Taine with her pretense of modest dress that only emphasized her immodesty ”

“ As the positivists, M. Taine denies metaphysics, all metaphysical (spiritual) beings, God, and the human soul, and like them he substitutes for these others of his own fashioning. From Messrs. Comte and Littré he separates only on a single point. To the cause humanity he prefers the cause nature. There is no disputing about tastes. We add merely a word on one of the fundamental maxims of M. Taine's method. The philosopher, he says, must be in the study of science perfectly disinterested, and even to the degree of forgetting that he is a father, a son, a husband, a citizen. ”

“ To take only the most important of these, it is clear that, according to the average of human life,2211 one-half of the population is composed of children, and, besides this, one-half of the adults are women. In every twenty inhabitants eighteen are Catholic, of whom sixteen are believers, at least through habit and tradition. Twenty-five out of twenty-six millions of Frenchmen cannot read, one million at the most being able to do so ”

“ He rates too high his own prestige in France and in the countries annexed to her, the balance of confidence and zeal on which he may rely. But these errors are rather the product of his will than of his intelligence, he recognizes them at intervals; if he has illusions it is because he fabricates them; left to himself his good sense would rest infallible, it is only his passions which blurred the lucidity of his intellect.—As to the other two atlases, the topographical and the military, they are as complete and as exact as ever ”

“ He warns us against young hungry men's natural desire to mass behind a tribune and follow him onwards, they hope, along the high road to excitement, fame, power and riches. He warns us against our readiness to believe in myth and metaphysics, demonstrating how Man will believe anything, even the most mystical or incomprehensible religion or ideology, provided it is preached by his leaders. History, as seen by Taine, is one long series of such adventures and horrors and nowhere was this more evident than in France before, during and after the Revolution in 1789. ”