In the history of aesthetic ideas, the abbot Charles Batteux was less of an innovator than an apt synthesizer of prevailing ideas and a late defender of the classical theory of imitation in the new field of taste and aesthetic experience. Nonetheless, Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe (The fine arts reduced to a single principle; 1746/1969) is generally thought to have provided the first modern classification of the fine arts. In all of his undertakings, Batteux sought to submit the fine arts—as opposed to the practical arts, which seek to fulfill various needs—to a single principle, "both simple and wide-reaching" (Foreword, Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe), that could explain all varieties of art. In keeping with the classical theory of poetry and art, this principle is that art should imitate la...