History of English Literature Volume 1 (of 3)Taine, Hippolyte
History
History of English Literature Volume 1 (of 3)
Taine, Hippolyte
English literature -- History and criticism
After having observed in a man and noted down one, two, three, and then
a multitude of, sentiments, do these suffice and does your knowledge of
him seem complete? Does a memorandum book constitute a psychology? It is
not a psychology, and here, as elsewhere, the search for causes must
follow the collection of facts. It matters not what the facts may be,
whether physical or moral, they always spring from causes; there are
causes for ambition, for courage, for veracity, as well as for
digestion, for muscular action, and for animal heat. Vice and virtue are
products like vitriol and sugar; every complex fact grows out of the
simple facts with which it is affiliated and on which it depends. We
must therefore try to ascertain what simple facts underlie moral
qualities the same as we ascertain those that underlie physical
qualities, and, for example, let us take the first fact that comes to
hand, a religious system of music, that of a Protestant church. A
certain inward cause has inclined the minds of worshippers towards these
grave, monotonous melodies, a cause much greater than its effect; that
is to say, a general conception of the veritable outward forms of
worship which man owes to God; it is this general conception which has
shaped the architecture of the temple, cast out statues, dispensed with
paintings, effaced ornaments, shortened ceremonies, confined the members
of a congregation to high pews which cut off the view, and governed the
thousand details of decoration, posture, and all other externals. This
conception itself again proceeds from a more general cause, an idea of
human conduct in general, inward and outward, prayers, actions,
dispositions of every sort that man is bound to maintain toward the
Deity; it is this which has enthroned the doctrine of grace, lessened
the importance of the clergy, transformed the sacraments, suppressed
observances, and changed the religion of discipline into one of
morality. This conception, in its turn, depends on a third one, still
more general, that of moral perfection as this is found in a perfect
God, the impeccable judge, the stern overseer, who regards every soul as
sinful, meriting punishment, incapable of virtue or of salvation, except
through a stricken conscience which He provokes and the renewal of the
heart which He brings about. Here is the master conception, consisting
of duty erected into the absolute sovereign of human life, and which
prostrates all other ideals at the feet of the moral ideal. Here we
reach what is deepest in man; for, to explain this conception, we must
consider the race he belongs to, say the German, the Northman, the
formation and character of his intellect, his ways in general of
thinking and feeling, that tardiness and frigidity of sensation which
keeps him from rashly and easily falling under the empire of sensual
enjoyments, that bluntness of taste, that irregularity and those
outbursts of conception which arrest in him the birth of refined and
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