II. NOTHING could have been simpler than his life. Born in 1828 at Vouziers, in the department of the Ardennes, and early orphaned of his father, he was brought up by a brave mother in a straitness of circumstance akin to poverty. After a brilliant course of study at Paris, he was entered at the Ecole Normale at the age of twenty, and found himself the companion of a number of men who were destined with himself to make their mark in literature Weiss, About, Paradol, that of Sully-Prudhomme in science | proved to his own generation how the and philosophy; while Coppée is a hard passionate pursuit of art may be united student of middle-class and working with the austere and modest service of class manners. The historians apply science. themselves with an almost excessive conscientiousness to the examination of documents and the dissection of details, and make it their highest ambition to have an unerring eye for a text. The philosophers turn to mathematics, to natural history, to physiology, to supply the bases of a more rigorous psychology, a more certain and rational conception of the universe, and a more accurate knowledge of the laws of thought. The study of outward truth on the one hand-the attempt at a faithful representation of the visible and tangible phenomena of life—and, on the other, the search for the under- Gréard, and Fustel de Coulanges. lying truth, for the play of forces and Among these he soon took the first interaction of natural causes which de- rank. He gave proof of his superiority termine these phenomena - this has in the examination for his degree in been the twofold aim of our poets and philosophy; but, at the same time, he painters and sculptors, our novelists showed such independence of mind in and our philosophers, no less than of his treatment of the received eclectic our men of science; and, in spite of doctrines that the examiners rejected the errors into which modern realism him on the ground of heresy, while has betrayed some of its devotees, there admitting that he had taken the first is an incontestable grandeur in this place. The political and religious reunity of effort and of inspiration. It action which marked the opening years was the glory of M. Taine that he, of the government of Napoleon III. above all other men, was intimately was then at its height; and the young cognizant of the mind and spirit of his university, suspected of a leaning to generation; that whether as philoso- independence, was subjected to petty pher, historian, or critic, he represented persecutions which obliged several of it with unapproached precision, and Taine's most distinguished comrades to splendor, and potency; and that he abandon teaching as a profession, and exerted upon it a profound influence. seek their fortunes in journalism. If we discern in him, nevertheless, Taine himself, stigmatized by his desome lingering trace of that classic gree examination as a dangerous charspirit of which he was the life-long acter, was forbidden the entry of the antagonist; if he sometimes mistakes philosophy class-room, and sent to simplicity and clearness for an evidence Besançon as assistant teacher to the of truth; if he was over-fond of abso- sixth form. He resigned, and went to lute formulæ, and of logical systematiz- live in Paris with his mother, and earn ing; if we discover also a touch of his living by private lessons. Meanromanticism in his love for the pictur- while he was studying medicine and esque, and his delight in exuberant and natural science, and acquiring that scitumultuous character; he had, never-entific training which he considered theless, this supreme merit-that he indispensable for a philosopher; and loved and believed in truth for its own by 1853 he had passed his doctorat-èssake, that he trusted to its beneficent influence, that he sought it with sincere and disinterested effort, and that he lettres with a treatise on La Fontaine and his fables. The next year he published his "Essay on Livy," in 1856 1856 his "French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century." his "Travels in the Pyrenees," and in | fresh department of human activity, a new demonstration of his philosophical theories. His "Travels in Italy The success of his books was in- (1868) and his little books on "The stantaneous and phenomenal. He was Philosophy of Art, in Italy, in the recognized at once as a writer, a critic, Netherlands, and in Greece," and "The an historian, a thinker; the Revue des Ideal in Art" (afterwards republished Deux Mondes and the Journal des Dé- in two volumes under the title "The bats sought contributions from him, Philosophy of Art"), displayed all the and he showed the extent of his knowl- resources of a mind capable of giving edge and the force of his thought by the most varied forms and applications applying to the most various literary to a quite immutable basis of doctrine. and historical subjects the philosophical In "Thomas Graindorge" (1867), the theories which he had already com- humorist and satirist of Parisian society pletely elaborated in his two first works. scarcely conceals the personality of the These articles, in which his talent philosopher who in 1870 lays down the shows itself at its supplest, its most laws of thought in his two volumes on sparkling, its most seductive, have been "The Intelligence." He was projectcollected and published in the two vol- ing a work on the will, which should umes of "Critical and Historical Es- complete the exposition of his philososays (1858 and 1865). While still phy, when the war of 1870 broke out, engaged in these excursions amongst and was followed immediately by the the literatures of the world - excur- Commune. Taine was profoundly afsions which led him from Xenophon fected by these events. The developand Plato to Guizot and Michelet, from ment of the political and social situation Marcus Aurelius and Buddhism to the in France, and its relation to the past Mormons and Jean Reynaud, from and the future, seemed to him the Renaud de Montauban to Balzac, and gravest and most pressing of all the from Racine to Jefferson - he was pre-problems which had as yet presented paring a great work in which he was to themselves to his mind, and he resolved apply to a noble literature and a noble to apply to it all his powers of work and race his theory of the conditions of thought, and all the rigor of his method. the development of civilization and His treatise on "Universal Suffrage of intellectual production. In 1864 he and the Manner of Voting," published published his "History of English Lit- in 1871, testifies to the practical moerature” in four volumes. This is his tives which led him to this decision most splendid achievement, and it is and thus it was that to his great literary one of the glories of French literature. work, "The History of English LiteraHenceforth his position was unassail-ture," and his great philosophic work, able. Life smiled on him; the world" The Intelligence," he added his great opened its arms to him. His friends historical work, "The Sources of Conwere the most illustrious men of the temporary France." The mere overtime in science, art, and letters. The hauling of documents was a colossal State sought to repair the wrong it had task; his abstracts filled something like done him by appointing him professor a dozen folio volumes. Then he had to at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and exam- explain the causes of the fall of the iner in history for St. Cyr. His mar- Ancien Régime, to account for the riage, a little later, with a woman of powerlessness of the revolutionary assuperior endowments, created for him semblies to found any durable political at once a wider life, and the conditions system, and to expose the evils due to most favorable to the expansion of his the Napoleonic institutions which still affectionate nature and the patient and reign in France. This task of genercheerful pursuit of his literary labors. His lessons on the history of art gave him the opportunity of seeking, in a ; alization, not abstract and vague, but precise and concrete, involving the classification of thousands of facts and the minute and conscientious study of all that force and vividness of impression manner of institutions, legal, political, and expression which were the peculiar administrative, religious-all this ac- mark and sign manual of his genius. companied by the constant effort of How did he come by these rare and organizing and philosophic thought-seductive qualities? Were they the was pursued for twenty years without inheritance of his race? One might faltering, though not indeed without almost think it, as one reads what M. weariness. With all the alleviations of Michelet says of the population of the his long summer sojourns in the deli- Ardennes: "The race is refined; it is cious retreat he had provided for him- sober, thrifty, intelligent; the face is self at Menthon Saint-Bernard, on the dry and sharply cut. This character of shores of the lake of Annecy, the dryness and severity is not confined to repeated hydropathic cures at Champel, the little Geneva of Sedan; it is almost near Geneva, and the hygienic regu- everywhere the same. The country larity of a life from which the exhaust- and the inhabitants are alike austere ; ing futilities of social distraction were the critical spirit is in the ascendant. rigorously excluded, he had not the It is commonly so among people who physical forces necessary to resist the feel that they themselves are of more strain of that perpetual tension of the value than their possessions." But mind, working always in a given direc- Vouziers is on the borders between tion, and never for a moment inactive. Champagne and the Ardennes; and Never had his perceptions been more with Taine himself the innocent mislucid, nor his faculties more robust than chief of the Champenois, the flash when he wrote those chapters on the and sparkle of the wines of La FonChurch and education in the nine-taine's country (La Fontaine was one teenth century, which were published of his favorite authors), went far to but a year ago. But the body, worn temper the austerity of the Ardennais. out by the exactions of a too hardy soul, refused to go through with the task, and he died on the 5th of March, leaving his great work, of which six volumes had already appeared, unfinished by two or three chapters. III. Yet one hesitates to reckon much on the influence of race in the presence of a nature so exceptional as that of Taine a nature so conscious, reflective, selfdetermining, and in which it is so difficult to separate the intellectual virtues of the thinker from the personal virtues of the man. Perhaps the most striking thing in him was his modesty. It spoke even in his appearance. There was nothing about him to invite a second look. Somewhat below the middle height, with irregular features, and eyes which showed a slight cast behind their spectacles, his figure somewhat mean, especially in his youth, there was nothing SUCH was his life. laborious, simple, serious; elevated and illumined by the consolations of friendship and family, the joys of thought, the love of nature and of art. The character of the man was in perfect harmony with his life. You had only to know him to be convinced of it; for if his life was hidden from the world, no one ever concealed himself less from those who to betray to a careless observer the man had the privilege of associating with him. This great lover of truth was true and sincere in everything, in thought and feeling, in word and action. This man of gigantic intellect was simple, grave, 'and candid as a child; and it is to the simplicity, candor, and seriousness with which he opened his direct and inquiring gaze upon the world and the men who people it, that he owed he was. But when you saw him closer, and Bonnat has successfully caught it goodness of heart. His philosophy, it in his portrait of his friend the only must be admitted, was sufficiently hard portrait of him that exists, for Taine's on the human race, classifying, as it modesty shrank from the photographer did, a good part of it as simply noxious as it shrank from the interviewer. He animals; but in practice he was pitiful, had a horror of fuss and notoriety, and charitable, indulgent, like all humble secluded himself from the world, not men of heart. He had even that rarer simply because his health and his work kindness which consists in avoiding all necessitated it, but because he could that can wound or sadden; and his not endure to be an object of curiosity courtesy, like his modesty, was an affair and to be lionized. It was not from of the heart. He respected the human unsociability, for no one could be more soul; he knew its weakness, and would welcoming, more genial than he, when refrain from lifting a hand upon anythere was either advice to give or an thing that could fortify it against evil opinion to be taken. Not only was he or console it in its affliction. This temexempt from affectation, from airs of per of his may explain the feeling, not importance or any sort of mannerism, easily understood by every one, which but he had the gift of making people prompted him, a Catholic born, but a forget his superiority and putting him- free thinker and a life-long unbeliever, self on a level with the humblest of his to seek interment according to the Protinterlocutors, treating them as friends estant ritual. His aversion to sectaand equals, and making it seem as if he rianism, to noisy demonstrations and had something to learn from them. idle discussions, made him dread a civil And so, indeed, he had. The gift funeral, which might seem an act of was no mere artifice of courtesy or con- overt hostility to religion, and might descension; it belonged to the very be accompanied by tributes intended stuff of his character and ways of think-rather to affront the faithful than to do ing. It came, to begin with, from his honor to his memory. He was glad, simple seriousness. Sensitive as he moreover, to attest his sympathy with was to beauty or cleverness, truth was the great moral and social forces of worth more to him than either. He Christianity. On the other hand, Cathwanted to get at the truth, and he did not care about being praised. Whatever subject he dealt with, whatever person he talked with, he made straight for the heart of things, certain of finding something to learn; and this scientific conception of truth made him attach infinite value to the smallest acquisitions of fact or idea, if only they were precise and accurate. Above all, he liked to converse with men who were specialists in their own art or science, or even trade; he knew how to draw them out, and to utilize their special information in building up his own general conceptions. He preferred a talk on trade with a tradesman, or This goodness, this gentleness, this on toys with a child, to the chatter of modest reserve, this respect for the the drawing-room or the eloquence of feelings of others, betokened, however, empty cleverness. He detested claptrap. Even irony was foreign to him, though he lacked neither playfulness nor the power of satire. His modesty had also its source in his olic burial would have involved an act of adhesion, and a sort of disavowal of his own teaching. He knew that the Protestant Church would grant him its prayers while respecting his independence, and without attributing to him either regrets or hopes which were far from his thoughts. He wished to be borne to his last repose with the simplicity with which he did everything else, without military pomp or academic eulogy, without anything that could lend itself to dispute or controversy, or add to that moral anarchy of which he had endeavored to counteract the effects by unveiling the causes. no feebleness of character, no conventional compliances, no timidity of thought. The pacific nature of the man himself, and his views on the laws of social development combined to give a some He Zeno. His ideal of life was neither the Christian asceticism of the Port-Royalists or the author of the "Imitation," nor the superhuman stoicism of Epictetus; it was the softened and reasonable stoicism of Marcus Aurelius. He lived conformably to this ideal. Is not this praise enough? him a horror of violent revolutions; I say, and not of a saint; for sanctity but few writers have shown in their implies a something moreintellectual life a more courageous and thing of enthusiasm, of asceticism, of straightforward sincerity. He could not the supernatural, which Taine might conceive how any personal considera- admire at a distance, but which he tion could prevent the expression of a made no pretension to possess. serious conviction. He had, without loved and practised virtue; but it was any idea of bravado, compromised his a human virtue, accessible and simple. career when he left the Ecole Normale, In love with truth and reality, he laid by simply saying what he thought. He down for himself no rules which he had quitted the university to take his could not fully keep, any more than he chance in literature without giving him- would have made statements which he self any of the airs. of a martyr or a did not believe it in his power to prove. hero. He had gone on saying what he Those charming sonnets of his on his thought in publication after publication, beloved animal, the cat - that incarnawithout troubling himself as to its effect tion of gravity, suavity, and resigned. on friends or supporters, and without demeanor, that soul of order and of attempting to reply to the attacks of comfort. were something more than a his opponents, since all personal con- play of fancy, or an expression of fondtroversy appeared to him to be damag-ness. They embody his conception of ing to the combatants and useless in the ideal wisdom, which combines the the interests of truth. The straightfor- philosophy of Epicurus with that of ward truthfulness of the "Origines de la France Contemporaine" had offended every party in turn. Nor was it only in confronting others and the world that he had shown this courageous sincerity. He had done what is rarer still, he had shown it towards himself. Early possessed with a distinct idea of the domain allotted to human science, he had forbidden himself to expect of it more than it could give, or to mingle THE theories of philosophers are not with it any foreign element. He had only interesting for their own sake, clearly separated from it the domain of they are interesting for what they tell practical morality and religion. He us of the philosophers who theorized attributed to it no mystic virtue, nor them. Our ideas of things are but the asked of it any rule of life. But on the subjective impression made by the exother hand, in its own territory, he had ternal world on the senses and the followed it without fear, without hesi- brain; what they really explain is our tation, without regrets, without ever own intellectual constitution. Taine's asking whither it was leading him. He favorite theory of the genesis of great had never allowed anything to enter men was that they were the product of into conflict with it. He would have the race, the moment, and the medium; reproached himself with weakness, if and he would go on to discover in the he had stopped to ask whether scientific complex individuality some one leading truth is sombre or cheerful, moral or faculty to which all the others were animmoral. It is the truth, and there is cillary. This fascinating theory has an end of it. It was not to be endured been often criticised, perhaps justly; that sentiment or imagination should but if there are many men of genius to corrupt the probity, the austerity if whom it is difficult to apply it, it applies I may so speak, the chastity-of the quite perfectly to Taine himself. truth. Such a character, such a life, is the life and character of a sage. Of a sage, IV. He is indeed of his country and his race; he is of the lineage of the best French minds; a lover of clear and |