TAINE, HYPPOLITE. – Philosopher, historian, man of letters and art critic, born at Vonzier on 21 April 1828, died in Paris on 5 March 1893.
After graduating from the École normale in Paris (1848–51), following a brief period of teaching (1852–53) due to philosophical disagreements, he devoted himself to a long and successful literary career. In 1865 the Liberal Empire called him to teach (aesthetics and the theory of the fine arts) at the École polytechnique; the Third Republic brought him into the Académie Française. In the first phase of his activity he concerned himself with criticism of classicism (Essai sur La Fontaine et ses fables, 1853; Essai sur Tite Live, 1856), literature (Histoire de la littérature anglaise, 1863), and art (Philosophie de l’art, 1865–69; De l’idéal dans l’art, 1867). Meanwhile he was developing 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). Finally, also matured through travels (Voyage aux Pyrénées [1855]; Voyage en Italie [1864]; Notes sur l’Angleterre [1872]) and polemical studies (Essais, Nouveaux essais et Derniers essais de critique et d’histoire [1858]), there emerged from him a new critical-positivist form of political historiography, represented by the major work (1875 ff.) on Les origines de la France contemporaine (Ancien régime, Révolution, Empire). Notes sur Paris and Vie et opinions de Thomas Graindorge (1863–65) have autobiographical value.
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. MARCHE (v.) 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 energetic facts capable of composing facts of consciousness and of nature and spiritual relationships. This analysis of his had a considerable following in psychology (James, Bergson).
According to T., art and poetry are to be explained, in the historical-naturalistic determination from which they arise, by three orders of causes: race, the natural and social environment, and the moment. Of these causes the work of art or literature is a necessary product: only style or technical form brings to prominence particular dominant characteristics and elements of individuation, suggested by moral and passionate values and by the power to synthesize ideas and sentiments.
T. applied the same positive method to the French Revolution, its antecedents and consequences, with great skill as an expositor and narrator, combined with scrupulous care in gathering particular facts from the docu-
elementary schools; 6 middle schools; 5 secondary schools; 19 kindergartens; 2 printing presses; 37 churches and 80 chapels; 45 districts; 37 main stations and 336 secondary ones. Despite the considerable damage suffered in the ongoing war, this mission saw the number of the faithful increase and was able to maintain its various works in relative efficiency.
mentation and in assessing their causal relationships; but his syntheses and inductions, perhaps also for political reasons, are today regarded as arbitrary and one-sided.