Taine was a student of the Ecole Normale, and in 1851 was appointed to teach philosophy at Nevers. The _coup d’état_, however, changed his career, and he turned to literature as his main field, writing a work on La Fontaine for his doctorate in 1853. In the year of Comte’s death (1857) Taine published his book, _Les Philosophes français du XIXe Siècle_, in which he turned his powerful batteries of criticism upon the vague spiritualism professed by Cousin and officially favoured in France at that time.[6] By his adverse criticism of Cousin and the Eclectic School, Taine placed his influence upon the side of the positivist followers of Comte. It would, however, be erroneous to regard him as a mere disciple of Comte, as Taine’s positivism was in its general form a wider doctrine, yet more rigorously scientific in some respects than that of Comte. There was also an important difference in their attitude to metaphysics. Taine upheld strongly the value, and, indeed, the necessity, of a metaphysical doctrine. He never made much of any debt or allegiance to Comte. [6] See his chapter xii. on “The Success of Eclecticism,” pp. 283-307. Cousin, he criticises at length; De Biran, Royer-Collard and Jouffroy are included in his censures. We might mention that this book was first issued in the form of articles in the _Revue de l’Instruction publique_ during the years 1855, 1856. In 1860 a volume dealing with the _Philosophy of Art_ appeared from his pen, in which he not only endeavoured to relate the art of a period to the general environment in which it arose, but, in addition, he dealt with certain psychological aspects of the problem. Largely as a result of the talent displayed in this work, he was appointed in 1864 to tne chair of the History of Art and Æsthetics in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Taine’s interest in philosophy, and especially in psychological problems, was more prominently demon strated in his book _De l’Intelligence_, the two volumes of which appeared in 1870. In this work he takes a strict view of the human intelligence as a mechanism, the workings of which he sets forth in a precise and cold manner. His treatment of knowledge is akin, in some respects, to the doctrines of the English Utilitarian and Evolutionary School as represented by John Stuart Mill, Bain and Spencer. The main feature of the Darwinian doctrine is set by Taine in the foreground of epistemology. There is, according to him, “a struggle for existence” in the realm of the individual consciousness no less than in the external world. This inner conflict is between psychical elements which, when victorious, result in sense-perception. This awareness, or _hallucination vraie_, is not knowledge of a purely speculative character; it is (as, at a later date, Bergson was to maintain in his doctrine of perception) essentially bound up with action, with the instinct and mechanism of movement.