We have, in considering his attitude to science, seen the tenacious manner in which he clings to his dogma of causality or universal necessity. All living things, man included, are held in the firm grip of “the steel pincers of necessity.” Every fact and every law in the universe has its _raison explicative_, as Taine styles it. He quotes with approval, in his treatment of this question at the close of his work _De l’Intelligence_, the words of the great scientist and positivist Claude Bernard: “_Il y a un déterminisme absolu, dans les conditions d’existence des phénomènes naturels, aussi bien pour les corps vivants que pour les corps bruts_.”[4] In Taine and the school of scientists like Bernard, whose opinions on this matter he voices, no room is accorded to freedom. [4] _De l’Intelligence_, vol. 2, p. 480, the quotation from Bernard is to be found in his _Introduction à l’Etude de la Médecine expérimentale_, p. 115. Taine’s belief in universal necessity and his naturalistic outlook led him to regard man from the physical standpoint as a mechanism, from the mental point of view a theorem. Vice and virtue are, to quote his own words, “products just as vitriol or sugar.” This remark having appeared to many thinkers a scandalous assertion, Taine explained in an article contributed to the _Journal des Débats_[5] that he did not mean to say that vice and virtue were, like vitriol or sugar, _chemical_ but they are nevertheless products, _moral_ products, which moral elements bring into being by their assemblage. And, he argues, just as it is necessary in order to make vitriol to know the chemical elements which go to its composition, so in order to create in man the hatred of a lie it is useful to search for the psychological elements which, by their union, produce truthfulness. [5] On December 19th, 1872. Even this explanation of his position, however, did not prevent the assertion being made that such a view entirely does away with all question of moral responsibility. To this criticism Taine objected. “It does not involve moral indifference. We do not excuse a wicked man because we have explained to ourselves the causes of his wickedness. One can be determinist with Leibnitz and nevertheless admit with Leibnitz that man is responsible —that is to say, that the dishonest man is worthy of blame, of censure and punishment, while the honest man is worthy of praise, respect and reward.”