TAINE, HIPPOLYTE. - Philosopher, historian, man of letters and art critic, b. at Vouziers on 21 Apr. 1828, d. at Paris on 5 March 1893.
Having left the École normale of Paris (1848-51), after a period of teaching (1852-53) cut short by philosophical conflicts, he devoted himself to a long and successful literary career. The Liberal Empire in 1865 called him to teach (aesthetics and theory of the fine arts) at the École polytechnique; the Third Republic brought him to the Académie Française. In an initial phase of his activity he concerned himself with criticism of classicism (Essai sur La Fontaine et ses fables, 1853; Essai sur Tite Live, 1856), of literature (Histoire de la littérature anglaise, 1863) and of art (Philosophie de l'art, 1865-69; De l'idéal dans l'art, 1867). Meanwhile he was elaborating his critique of spiritualism (De personis platonicis [1853]; Les philosophes classiques au XIXe siècle en France [1855-56]; Le positivisme anglais, étude sur Stuart Mill [1864]), which led him to neo-positivism with the work De l'intelligence (1870). Lastly, and matured also through travels (Voyage aux Pyrénées [1855]; Voyage en Italie [1864]; Notes sur l'Angleterre [1872]) and through polemical studies (Essais, Nouveaux essais et Derniers essais de critique et d'histoire [1858]), there sprang from him a new critical-positivist form of political historiography, represented by the great work (1875 ff.) on Les origines de la France contemporaine (Ancien régime, Révolution, Empire). Of autobiographical value are: Notes sur Paris, Vie et opinions de Thomas Graindorge (1863-65).
For T. consciousness is parallel to the existence of man as a nervous system (psychophysical parallelism) and merges with it into a single, neuropsychic reality. The same connection and identity must be established between cognitions and things. T. rivaled Mach (v.) and Maxwell (v.) in proposing the fusion of physiological, sensory and intellectual experience into a single element, or "mental matter," which he recognized in images, as facts that are energetic and capable of composing facts of consciousness and of nature and spiritual relations. This analysis of his had a great following in psychology (James, Bergson).
According to T. art and poetry are to be explained, in the historico-naturalistic determination from which they arise, by three orders of causes: race, natural and social environment, and moment. Of these causes the work of art or literature is a necessary product: only style, or technical form, brings out particular dominant characteristics and elements of individuation, suggested by moral and passional values and by the power to synthesize ideas and feelings.
T. applied the same positive method to the French Revolution, to its antecedents and consequences, with great art as an expositor and narrator, joined with scrupulous care in gathering particular facts from docu-
elementary school; 6 middle schools; 5 higher schools; 19 kindergartens; 2 printing houses; 37 churches and 80 chapels; 45 districts; 37 principal stations and 336 secondary ones. Despite the heavy damage suffered from the war then in progress, this mission has seen the number of the faithful increase and has been able to maintain its various works in a relative state of efficiency.
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mentation and in sifting their causal relations: but his syntheses and inductions, perhaps also for political reasons, are today held to be arbitrary and one-sided.
Bibliography16 works
Santino Caramella