Further, there was the question of genius, the point on which Taine's
theory roused decisive opposition in me. He regarded genius as a summing
up, not as a new starting-point; according to him it was the assemblage
of the original aptitudes of a race and of the peculiarities of a period
in which these aptitudes were properly able to display themselves. He
overlooked the originality of the man of genius, which could not be
explained from his surroundings, the new element which, in genius, was
combined with the summarising of surrounding particles. Before, when
studying Hegel, I had been repelled by the suggestion that what spoke to
us through the artist was only the universally valid, the universal
mind, which, as it were, burnt out the originality of the individual. In
Taine's teaching, nation and period were the new (although more
concrete) abstractions in the place of the universally valid; but here,
too, the particularity of the individual was immaterial. The kernel of
my work was a protest against this theory.
I was even more actively interested in the fundamental question raised
by a scientific view of history. For some years I had been eagerly
searching Comte and Littre, Buckle, Mill and Taine for their opinions on
the philosophy of History. Here, too, though in another form, the
question of the importance of the individual versus the masses presented
itself.
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