M. Taine starts out with the assumption that the literature of any given country is the exponent of its mental life, or, as he states it (p. 20), “I am about to write the history of a literature, and to seek in it for the psychology of a people.” In France and Germany, we are told, history has been revolutionized by the study of their literatures.
“It was perceived,” says M. Taine, “that a work of literature is not a mere play of imagination, a solitary caprice of a heated brain, but a transcript of contemporary manners, a type of a certain kind of mind. It was concluded that one might retrace, from the monuments of literature, the style of man’s feelings and thoughts for centuries back. The attempt was made, and it succeeded.”
Unquestionably the style of man’s feelings may be traced in literature for centuries back. That is M. Taine’s first approach. But between the successful insight into this or that writer’s opinions and modes of thought and the opinions and modes of thought of a nation, the void is so enormous--unless, indeed, we dangerously reason from particulars to generals--as to require to fill it more subjective literary productions than any country has ever yet produced.
From this system it would follow that if a nation has no literature it can have no history. If it have--as is too often the case--no literature but that of a despotism or of a dominant minority, it follows that you cannot discern a single idea nor hear a single pulsation of the heart of a great people. But granting the literature to exist, although we are told that a work “is not a mere play of the imagination,” we nevertheless know full well that some of the most brilliant portions of every literature are precisely what that phrase describes. Beyond that, we also know that all writers are not only not sincere, but too often unfaithful because too often venal, and cannot therefore be relied upon.
In certain writings enumerated by him, M. Taine says: “The reader will see all the wealth that may be drawn from a literary work: _when the work is rich, and one knows how to interpret it_, we find there the psychology of a soul, frequently of an age, now and then of a race.” Partially true. And M. Taine might have instanced the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine, but he does not. We may indeed find what he indicates under certain conditions, for, as he very correctly adds, “their utility grows with their perfection.” Unfortunately, such works occur in literature at the rarest intervals.