What did Hippolyte Taine mean by moment in his theory of literary criticism?

In his theory of literary criticism, the French critic Hippolyte Taine proposed that any work of art is the product of three primary conditioning factors: race, milieu, and moment.12

By moment, Taine referred to the momentum of past and present cultural traditions. Along with race (the inherited temperament or disposition of a people) and milieu (the social, political, and geographical environment), moment served as a scientific tool for Taine to analyze the causal forces behind a writer's work and the psychology of their era.12

Taine believed that by examining these three factors, one could move beyond subjective interpretation to achieve a more objective, scientific understanding of literature and cultural history.123