ABSTRACT
The principal source of information about Taine's life has been the Vie et Correspondance, edited by his wife and daughter, but in his will he left categorical instructions that anything of a personal or intimate nature should be expunged from the material they used in compiling this work. This preoccupation reflects Taine's argument in relation to the devalued nature of the self, in the work of psychology which is central to this study, and can be seen to be intrinsic to a mentality shared by many of his generation of thinkers and artists. The calm afforded by his formulation of a role for himself as an interpreter of the truths of others, rather than the founder of a new philosophy, and his evolution of a consolation for his loneliness, released in Taine an emotional as well as an intellectual tension.
