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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the
+good, by Victor Cousin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good
+
+Author: Victor Cousin
+
+Translator: O. W. Wight
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2011 [EBook #36208]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES ON THE TRUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Dave Morgan, Susan Skinner and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LECTURES
+
+ON
+
+THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL
+AND THE GOOD.
+
+BY M. V. COUSIN.
+
+INCREASED BY
+
+An Appendix on French Art.
+
+TRANSLATED, WITH THE APPROBATION OF M. COUSIN, BY
+
+O. W. WIGHT,
+
+TRANSLATOR OF COUSIN'S "COURSE OF THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY,"
+AMERICAN EDITOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART.,
+AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF ABELARD AND HELOISE," ETC., ETC.
+
+"God is the life of the soul, as the soul is the life of the body."
+                                    THE PLATONISTS AND THE FATHERS.
+
+NEW YORK:
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
+549 & 551 BROADWAY.
+1872.
+
+
+
+
+Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854,
+
+BY D. APPLETON & CO.,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
+for the Southern District of New York.
+
+
+
+
+                               TO
+
+                  SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART.,
+
+ Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh:
+
+     WHO HAS CLEARLY ELUCIDATED, AND, WITH GREAT ERUDITION,
+
+           SKETCHED THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF
+
+                          COMMON SENSE;
+
+WHO, FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HIS ILLUSTRIOUS COUNTRYMAN, REID
+
+              HAS ESTABLISHED THE DOCTRINE OF THE
+
+                  IMMEDIATENESS OF PERCEPTION,
+
+  THEREBY FORTIFYING PHILOSOPHY AGAINST THE ASSAULTS OF SKEPTICISM;
+
+          WHO, TAKING A STEP IN ADVANCE OF ALL OTHERS,
+
+            HAS GIVEN TO THE WORLD A DOCTRINE OF THE
+
+                          CONDITIONED,
+
+   THE ORIGINALITY AND IMPORTANCE OF WHICH ARE ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE
+
+          FEW QUALIFIED TO JUDGE IN SUCH MATTERS; WHOSE
+
+                 NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS
+
+       COMPLETES THE HITHERTO UNFINISHED WORKS OF ARISTOTLE;
+
+               THIS TRANSLATION OF M. COUSIN'S
+
+        Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good,
+
+                 IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
+
+       IN ADMIRATION OF A PROFOUND AND INDEPENDENT THINKER,
+
+        OF AN INCOMPARABLE MASTER OF PHILOSOPHIC CRITICISM;
+
+           AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM FOR A MAN IN WHOM GENIUS
+
+                AND ALMOST UNEQUALLED LEARNING
+
+                     HAVE BEEN ADORNED BY
+
+             TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND GOODNESS OF LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+For some time past we have been asked, on various sides, to collect in a
+body of doctrine the theories scattered in our different works, and to
+sum up, in just proportions, what men are pleased to call our
+philosophy.
+
+This _résumé_ was wholly made. We had only to take again the lectures
+already quite old, but little known, because they belonged to a time
+when the courses of the Faculté des Lettres had scarcely any influence
+beyond the Quartier Latin, and, also, because they could be found only
+in a considerable collection, comprising all our first instruction, from
+1815 to 1821.[1] These lectures were there, as it were, lost in the
+crowd. We have drawn them hence, and give them apart, severely
+corrected, in the hope that they will thus be accessible to a greater
+number of readers, and that their true character will the better appear.
+
+The eighteen lectures that compose this volume have in fact the
+particular trait that, if the history of philosophy furnishes their
+frame-work, philosophy itself occupies in them the first place, and
+that, instead of researches of erudition and criticism, they present a
+regular exposition of the doctrine which was at first fixed in our mind,
+which has not ceased to preside over our labors.
+
+This book, then, contains the abridged but exact expression of our
+convictions on the fundamental points of philosophic science. In it will
+be openly seen the method that is the soul of our enterprise, our
+principles, our processes, our results.
+
+Under these three heads, the True, the Beautiful, the Good, we embrace
+psychology, placed by us at the head of all philosophy, æsthetics,
+ethics, natural right, even public right to a certain extent, finally
+theodicea, that perilous _rendez-vous_ of all systems, where different
+principles are condemned or justified by their consequences.
+
+It is the affair of our book to plead its own cause. We only desire that
+it may be appreciated and judged according to what it really is, and not
+according to an opinion too much accredited.
+
+Eclecticism is persistently represented as the doctrine to which men
+deign to attach our name. We declare that eclecticism is very dear to
+us, for it is in our eyes the light of the history of philosophy; but
+the source of that light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the most
+important and most useful applications of the philosophy which we teach,
+but it is not its principle.
+
+Our true doctrine, our true flag is spiritualism, that philosophy as
+solid as generous, which began with Socrates and Plato, which the Gospel
+has spread abroad in the world, which Descartes put under the severe
+forms of modern genius, which in the seventeenth century was one of the
+glories and forces of our country, which perished with the national
+grandeur in the eighteenth century, which at the commencement of the
+present century M. Royer-Collard came to re-establish in public
+instruction, whilst M. de Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, and M.
+Quatremère de Quincy transferred it into literature and the arts. To it
+is rightly given the name of spiritualism, because its character in fact
+is that of subordinating the senses to the spirit, and tending, by all
+the means that reason acknowledges, to elevate and ennoble man. It
+teaches the spirituality of the soul, the liberty and responsibility of
+human actions, moral obligation, disinterested virtue, the dignity of
+justice, the beauty of charity; and beyond the limits of this world it
+shows a God, author and type of humanity, who, after having evidently
+made man for an excellent end, will not abandon him in the mysterious
+development of his destiny. This philosophy is the natural ally of all
+good causes. It sustains religious sentiment; it seconds true art, poesy
+worthy of the name, and a great literature; it is the support of right;
+it equally repels the craft of the demagogue and tyranny; it teaches all
+men to respect and value themselves, and, little by little, it conducts
+human societies to the true republic, that dream of all generous souls
+which in our times can be realized in Europe only by constitutional
+monarchy.
+
+To aid, with all our power, in setting up, defending, and propagating
+this noble philosophy, such is the object that early inspired us, that
+has sustained during a career already lengthy, in which difficulties
+have not been wanting. Thank God, time has rather strengthened than
+weakened our convictions, and we end as we began: this new edition of
+one of our first works is a last effort in favor of the holy cause for
+which we have combated nearly forty years.
+
+May our voice be heard by new generations as it was by the serious youth
+of the Restoration! Yes, it is particularly to you that we address this
+work, young men whom we no longer know, but whom we bear in our heart,
+because you are the seed and the hope of the future. We have shown you
+the principle of our evils and their remedy. If you love liberty and
+your country, shun what has destroyed them. Far from you be that sad
+philosophy which preaches to you materialism and atheism as new
+doctrines destined to regenerate the world: they kill, it is true, but
+they do not regenerate. Do not listen to those superficial spirits who
+give themselves out as profound thinkers, because after Voltaire they
+have discovered difficulties in Christianity: measure your progress in
+philosophy by your progress in tender veneration for the religion of the
+Gospel. Be well persuaded that, in France, democracy will always
+traverse liberty, that it brings all right into disorder, and through
+disorder into dictatorship. Ask, then, only a moderated liberty, and
+attach yourself to that with all the powers of your soul. Do not bend
+the knee to fortune, but accustom yourselves to bow to law. Entertain
+the noble sentiment of respect. Know how to admire,--possess the worship
+of great men and great things. Reject that enervating literature, by
+turns gross and refined, which delights in painting the miseries of
+human nature, which caresses all our weaknesses, which pays court to the
+senses and the imagination, instead of speaking to the soul and
+awakening thought. Guard yourselves against the malady of our century,
+that fatal taste of an accommodating life, incompatible with all
+generous ambition. Whatever career you embrace, propose to yourselves an
+elevated aim, and put in its service an unalterable constancy. _Sursum
+corda_, value highly your heart, wherein is seen all philosophy, that
+which we have retained from all our studies, which we have taught to
+your predecessors, which we leave to you as our last word, our final
+lecture.
+
+                                                    V. COUSIN.
+
+    _June 15, 1853._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A too indulgent public having promptly rendered necessary a new edition
+of this book, we are forced to render it less unworthy of the suffrages
+which it has obtained, by reviewing it with severe attention, by
+introducing a mass of corrections in detail, and a considerable number
+of additions, among which the only ones that need be indicated here are
+some pages on Christianity at the end of Lecture XVI., and the notes
+placed as an Appendix[2] at the end of the volume, on various works of
+French masters which we have quite recently seen in England, which have
+confirmed and increased our old admiration for our national art of the
+seventeenth century.
+
+    _November 1, 1853._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] 1st Series of our work, _Cours de l'Histoire de la Philosophie
+Moderne_, five volumes.
+
+[2] The Appendix has been translated by Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton of the
+British Museum, who is alone entitled to credit and alone
+responsible.--TR.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+The nature of this publication is sufficiently explained in the preface
+of M. Cousin.
+
+We have attempted to render his book, without comment, faithfully into
+English. Not only have we endeavored to give his thought without
+increase or diminution, but have also tried to preserve the main
+characteristics of his style. On the one hand, we have carefully shunned
+idioms peculiar to the French; on the other, when permitted by the laws
+of structure common to both languages, we have followed the general
+order of sentences, even the succession of words. It has been our aim to
+make this work wholly Cousin's in substance, and in form as nearly his
+as possible, with a total change of dress. That, however, we may have
+nowhere missed a shade of meaning, nowhere introduced a gallicism, is
+too much to be hoped for, too much to be demanded.
+
+M. Cousin, in his Philosophical Discussions, defines the terms that he
+uses. In the translation of these we have maintained uniformity, so that
+in this regard no farther explanation is necessary.
+
+This is, perhaps, in a philosophical point of view, the most important
+of all M. Cousin's works, for it contains a complete summary and lucid
+exposition of the various parts of his system. It is now the last word
+of European philosophy, and merits serious and thoughtful attention.
+
+This and many more like it, are needed in these times, when noisy and
+pretentious demagogues are speaking of metaphysics with idiotic
+laughter, when utilitarian statesmen are sneering at philosophy, when
+undisciplined sectarians of every kind are decrying it; when, too,
+earnest men, in state and church, men on whose shoulders the social
+world really rests, are invoking philosophy, not only as the best
+instrument of the highest culture and the severest mental discipline,
+but also as the best human means of guiding politics towards the
+eternally true and the eternally just, of preserving theology from the
+aberrations of a zeal without knowledge, and from the perversion of the
+interested and the cunning; when many an artist, who feels the nobility
+of his calling, who would address the mind of man rather than his
+senses, is asking a generous philosophy to explain to him that ravishing
+and torturing Ideal which is ever eluding his grasp, which often
+discourages unless understood; when, above all, devout and tender souls
+are learning to prize philosophy, since, in harmony with Revelation, it
+strengthens their belief in God, freedom, immortality.
+
+Grateful to an indulgent public, on both sides of the ocean, for a
+kindly and very favorable reception of our version of M. Cousin's
+"Course of the History of Modern Philosophy," we add this translation of
+his "Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good," hoping that his
+explanation of human nature will aid some in solving the grave problem
+of life,--for there are always those, and the most gifted, too, who feel
+the need of understanding themselves,--believing that his eloquence, his
+elevated sentiment, and elevated thought, will afford gratification to a
+refined taste, a chaste imagination, and a disciplined mind.
+
+                                                    O. W. WIGHT.
+
+    LONDON, Dec. 21, 1853
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+The Publishers have to express their thanks to M. COUSIN for his cordial
+concurrence, and especially for his kindness in transmitting the sheets
+of the French original as printed, so that this translation appears
+almost simultaneously with it.
+
+    EDINBURGH, 38 GEORGE-STREET,
+        Dec. 26, 1853.
+
+
+
+
+THE STEM.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE                                               _Page_  7
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE                                                  15
+
+DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED AT THE OPENING OF THE COURSE.--PHILOSOPHY
+OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY                                             25
+
+    Spirit and general principles of the Course.--Object of the
+    Lectures of this year:--application of the principles of which
+    an exposition is given, to the three Problems of the True, the
+    Beautiful, and the Good.
+
+
+PART FIRST.--THE TRUE.
+
+LECTURE I.--THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES       39
+
+    Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute
+    truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is
+    the problem of the philosophy of our time.--Universal and
+    necessary principles.--Examples of different kinds of such
+    principles.--Distinction between universal and necessary
+    principles and general principles.--Experience alone is
+    incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and
+    also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the
+    knowledge of the sensible world.--Reason as being that faculty
+    of ours which discovers to us these principles.--The study of
+    universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest
+    parts of philosophy.
+
+LECTURE II.--ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES             51
+
+    _Résumé_ of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the
+    origin of universal and necessary principles.--Danger of this
+    question, and its necessity.--Different forms under which truth
+    presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms:
+    theory of spontaneity and reflection.--The primitive form of
+    principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form,
+    and gives them their actual form.--Examination and refutation of
+    the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by
+    an induction founded on particular notions.
+
+LECTURE III.--ON THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES      65
+
+    Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism.--Recurrence to
+    the theory of spontaneity and reflection.
+
+LECTURE IV.--GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES                          75
+
+    Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute
+    truth?--Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us,
+    in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We
+    perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular
+    beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it;
+    refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself;
+    defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.--Plato; St.
+    Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fénelon; Bossuet;
+    Leibnitz.--Truth the mediator between God and man.--Essential
+    distinctions.
+
+LECTURE V.--ON MYSTICISM                                             102
+
+    Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and
+    mysticism. Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without
+    an intermediary.--Two sorts of mysticism.--Mysticism of
+    sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities--the one
+    external, the other internal, and corresponding to the soul as
+    external sensibility corresponds to nature.--Legitimate part of
+    sentiment.--Its aberrations.--Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus:
+    God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by
+    pure thought.--Ecstasy.--Mixture of superstition and abstraction
+    in mysticism.--Conclusion of the first part of the course.
+
+
+PART SECOND.--THE BEAUTIFUL.
+
+LECTURE VI.--THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN                        123
+
+    The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art
+    is, as in the investigation of the true, to commence by
+    psychology.--Faculties of the soul that unite in the perception
+    of the beautiful.--The senses give only the agreeable; reason
+    alone gives the idea of the beautiful.--Refutation of
+    empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the
+    beautiful.--Pre-eminence of reason.--Sentiment of the beautiful;
+    different from sensation and desire.--Distinction between the
+    sentiment of the beautiful and that of the
+    sublime.--Imagination.--Influence of sentiment on
+    imagination.--Influence of imagination on sentiment.--Theory of
+    taste.
+
+LECTURE VII.--THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS                               140
+
+    Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful:
+    the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.--Nor to
+    convenience.--Nor to proportion.--Essential characters of the
+    beautiful.--Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the
+    sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral
+    beauty.--Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.--God, the
+    first principle of the beautiful.--Theory of Plato.
+
+LECTURE VIII.--ON ART                                                154
+
+    Genius:--its attribute is creative power.--Refutation of the
+    opinion that art is the imitation of nature--M. Emeric David,
+    and M. Quatremère de Quincy.--Refutation of the theory of
+    illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite
+    the passions of terror and pity.--Nor even directly the moral
+    and religious sentiment.--The proper and direct object of art is
+    to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this
+    idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the
+    affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation
+    of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.--True mission of
+    art.
+
+LECTURE IX.--THE DIFFERENT ARTS                                      165
+
+    Expression is the general law of art.--Division of
+    arts.--Distinction between liberal arts and trades.--Eloquence
+    itself, philosophy, and history do not make a part of the fine
+    arts.--That the arts gain nothing by encroaching upon each
+    other, and usurping each other's means and
+    processes.--Classification of the arts:--its true principle is
+    expression.--Comparison of arts with each other.--Poetry the
+    first of arts.
+
+LECTURE X.--FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY                    178
+
+    Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but
+    the different schools of art. Example:--French art in the
+    seventeenth century. French poetry:--Corneille. Racine. Molière.
+    La Fontaine. Boileau.--Painting:--Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain.
+    Champagne.--Engraving.--Sculpture:--Sarrazin. The Anguiers.
+    Girardon. Pujet.--Le Nôtre.--Architecture.
+
+
+PART THIRD.--THE GOOD.
+
+LECTURE XI.--PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE                         215
+
+    Extent of the question of the good.--Position of the question
+    according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the
+    good, the natural belief of mankind?--The natural beliefs of
+    humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of nature.--
+    Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages, in life,
+    in consciousness.--Disinterestedness and devotedness.--Liberty.--
+    Esteem and contempt.--Respect.--Admiration and indignation.--
+    Dignity.--Empire of opinion.--Ridicule.--Regret and repentance.--
+    Natural and necessary foundations of all justice.--Distinction
+    between fact and right.--Common sense, true and false philosophy.
+
+LECTURE XII.--THE ETHICS OF INTEREST                                 229
+
+    Exposition of the doctrine of interest.--What there is of truth
+    in this doctrine.--Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and
+    desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the
+    fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot
+    explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the
+    principle of merit and demerit.--Consequences of the ethics of
+    interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to
+    despotism.
+
+LECTURE XIII.--OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES                            255
+
+    The ethics of sentiment.--The ethics founded on the principle of
+    the interest of the greatest number.--The ethics founded on the
+    will of God alone.--The ethics founded on the punishments and
+    rewards of another life.
+
+LECTURE XIV.--TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS                              274
+
+    Description of the different facts that compose the moral
+    phenomena.--Analysis of each of these facts:--1st, Judgment and
+    idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation
+    between the true and the good.--2d, Obligation. Refutation of
+    the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from
+    obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of the
+    good.--3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion
+    of liberty.--4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments
+    and rewards.--5th, Moral sentiments.--Harmony of all these facts
+    in nature and science.
+
+LECTURE XV.--PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS                               301
+
+    Application of the preceding principles.--General formula of
+    interest,--to obey reason.--Rule for judging whether an action
+    is or is not conformed to reason,--to elevate the motive of this
+    action into a maxim of universal legislation.--Individual
+    ethics. It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral
+    person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual
+    duties,--to respect and develop the moral person.--Social
+    ethics,--duties of justice and duties of charity.--Civil
+    society. Government. Law. The right to punish.
+
+LECTURE XVI.--GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD              325
+
+    Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation
+    of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty
+    of God.--The divine justice and charity.--God the sanction of
+    the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and
+    demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from
+    final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Worship.--Moral
+    beauty of Christianity.
+
+LECTURE XVII.--RÉSUMÉ OF DOCTRINE                                    346
+
+    Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the
+    three orders of facts on which this doctrine rests, with the
+    relation of each one of them to the modern school that has
+    recognized and developed it, but almost always exaggerated
+    it.--Experience and empiricism.--Reason and idealism.--Sentiment
+    and mysticism.--Theodicea. Defects of different known
+    systems.--The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the
+    character of certainty and reality that this process gives to
+    it.
+
+
+APPENDIX                                                             371
+
+
+
+
+LECTURES
+
+ON
+
+THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD.
+
+
+
+
+DISCOURSE
+
+PRONOUNCED AT THE OPENING OF THE COURSE,
+
+DECEMBER 4, 1817.
+
+
+
+
+PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
+
+    Spirit and general principles of the Course.--Object of the
+    Lectures of this year:--application of the principles of which
+    an exposition is given, to the three Problems of the True, the
+    Beautiful, and the Good.
+
+
+It seems natural that a century, in its beginning, should borrow its
+philosophy from the century that preceded it. But, as free and
+intelligent beings, we are not born merely to continue our predecessors,
+but to increase their work, and also to do our own. We cannot accept
+from them an inheritance except under the condition of improving it. Our
+first duty is, then, to render to ourselves an account of the philosophy
+of the eighteenth century; to recognize its character and its
+principles, the problems which it agitated, and the solutions which it
+gave of them; to discern, in fine, what it transmits to us of the true
+and the productive, and what it also leaves of the sterile and the
+false, in order that, with reflective choice, we may embrace the former
+and reject the latter.[3] Placed at the entrance of the new times, let
+us know, first of all, with what views we would occupy ourselves.
+Moreover,--why should I not say it?--after two years of instruction, in
+which the professor, in some sort, has been investigating himself, one
+has a right to demand of him what he is; what are his most general
+principles on all the essential parts of philosophic science; what flag,
+in fine, in the midst of parties which contend with each other so
+violently, he proposes for you, young men, who frequent this auditory,
+and who are called upon to participate in a destiny still so uncertain
+and so obscure in the nineteenth century, to follow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not patriotism, it is a profound sentiment of truth and justice,
+which makes us place the whole philosophy now expanded in the world
+under the invocation of the name of Descartes. Yes, the whole of modern
+philosophy is the work of this great man, for it owes to him the spirit
+that animates it, and the method that constitutes its power.
+
+After the downfall of scholasticism and the mournful disruptures of the
+sixteenth century, the first object which the bold good sense of
+Descartes proposed to itself was to make philosophy a human science,
+like astronomy, physiology, medicine, subject to the same uncertainties
+and to the same aberrations, but capable also of the same progress.
+
+Descartes encountered the skepticism spread on every side in the train
+of so many revolutions, ambitious hypotheses, born out of the first use
+of an ill-regulated liberty, and the old formulas surviving the ruins of
+scholasticism. In his courageous passion for truth, he resolved to
+reject, provisorily at least, all the ideas that hitherto he had
+received without controlling them, firmly decided not to admit any but
+those which, after a serious examination, might appear to him evident.
+But he perceived that there was one thing which he could not reject,
+even provisorily, in his universal doubt,--that thing was the existence
+itself of his doubt, that is to say, of his thought; for although all
+the rest might be only an illusion, this fact, that he thought, could
+not be an illusion. Descartes, therefore, stopped at this fact, of an
+irresistible evidence, as at the first truth which he could accept
+without fear. Recognizing at the same time that thought is the necessary
+instrument of all the investigations which he might propose to himself,
+as well as the instrument of the human race in the acquisition of its
+natural knowledges,[4] he devoted himself to a regular study of it, to
+the analysis of thought as the condition of all legitimate philosophy,
+and upon this solid foundation he reared a doctrine of a character at
+once certain and living, capable of resisting skepticism, exempt from
+hypotheses, and affranchised from the formulas of the schools.
+
+Thus the analysis of thought, and of the mind which is the subject of
+it, that is to say, psychology, has become the point of departure, the
+most general principle, the important method of modern philosophy.[5]
+
+Nevertheless, it must indeed be owned, philosophy has not entirely lost,
+and sometimes still retains, since Descartes and in Descartes himself,
+its old habits. It rarely belongs to the same man to open and run a
+career, and usually the inventor succumbs under the weight of his own
+invention. So Descartes, after having so well placed the point of
+departure for all philosophical investigation, more than once forgets
+analysis, and returns, at least in form, to the ancient philosophy.[6]
+The true method, again, is more than once effaced in the hands of his
+first successors, under the always increasing influence of the
+mathematical method.
+
+Two periods may be distinguished in the Cartesian era,--one in which the
+method, in its newness, is often misconceived; the other, in which one
+is forced, at least, to re-enter the salutary way opened by Descartes.
+To the first belong Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz himself; to the
+second, the philosophers of the eighteenth century.
+
+Without doubt Malebranche, upon some points, descended very far into
+interior investigation; but most of the time he gave himself up to
+wander in an imaginary world, and lost sight of the real world. It is
+not a method that is wanting to Spinoza, but a good method; his error
+consists in having applied to philosophy the geometrical method, which
+proceeds by axioms, definitions, theorems, corollaries; no one has made
+less use of the psychological method; that is the principle and the
+condemnation of his system. The _Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement
+Humain_ exhibit Leibnitz opposing observation to observation, analysis
+to analysis; but his genius usually hovers over science, instead of
+advancing in it step by step; hence the results at which he arrives are
+often only brilliant hypotheses, for example, the pre-established
+harmony, now relegated among the analogous hypotheses of occasional
+causes and a plastic mediator. In general, the philosophy of the
+seventeenth century, by not employing with sufficient rigor and firmness
+the method with which Descartes had armed it, produced little else than
+systems, ingenious without doubt, bold and profound, but often also
+rash,--systems that have failed to keep their place in science.[7] In
+fact, nothing is durable except that which is founded upon a sound
+method; time destroys all the rest; time, which re-collects,
+fecundates, aggrandizes the least germs of truth deposited in the
+humblest analyses, strikes without pity, engulfs hypotheses, even those
+of genius. Time takes a step, and arbitrary systems are overturned; the
+statues of their authors alone remain standing over their ruins. The
+task of the friend of truth is to search for the useful remains of them,
+that survive and can serve for new and more solid constructions.
+
+The philosophy of the eighteenth century opens the second period of the
+Cartesian era; it proposed to itself to apply the method already
+discovered and too much neglected,--it applied itself to the analysis of
+thought. Disabused of ambitious and sterile attempts, and, like
+Descartes, disdainful of the past, the eighteenth century dared to think
+that every thing in philosophy was to be done over again, and that, in
+order not to wander anew, it was necessary to set out with the modest
+study of man. Instead, therefore, of building up all at once systems
+risked upon the universality of things, it undertook to examine what man
+knows, what he can know; it brought back entire philosophy to the study
+of our faculties, as physics had just been brought back to the study of
+the properties of bodies,--which was giving to philosophy, if not its
+end, at least its true beginning.
+
+The great schools which divide the eighteenth century are the English
+and French school, the Scotch school, and the German school, that is to
+say, the school of Locke and Condillac, that of Reid, that of Kant. It
+is impossible to misconceive the common principle which animates them,
+the unity of their method. When one examines with impartiality the
+method of Locke, he sees that it consists in the analysis of thought;
+and it is thereby that Locke is a disciple, not of Bacon and Hobbes, but
+of our great countryman, Descartes.[8] To study the human understanding
+as it is in each one of us, to recognize its powers, and also its
+limits, is the problem which the English philosopher proposed to
+himself, and which he attempted to solve. I do not wish to judge here
+of the solution which he gave of this problem; I limit myself to
+indicating clearly what was for him the fundamental problem. Condillac,
+the French disciple of Locke, made himself everywhere the apostle of
+analysis; and analysis was also in him, or at least should have been,
+the study of thought. No philosopher, not even Spinoza, has wandered
+farther than Condillac[9] from the true experimental method, and has
+strayed farther on the route of abstractions, even verbal abstractions;
+but, strange enough, no one is severer than he against hypotheses, save
+that of the statue-man. The author of the _Traité des Sensations_ has
+very unfaithfully practised analysis; but he speaks of it without
+cessation. The Scotch school combats Locke and Condillac; it combats
+them, but with their own arms, with the same method which it pretends to
+apply better.[10] In Germany, Kant wishes to replace in light and honor
+the superior element of human consciousness, left in the shade, and
+decried by the philosophy of his times; and for that end, what does he
+do? He undertakes a profound examination of the faculty of knowing; the
+title of his principal work is, _Critique of Pure Reason_;[11] it is a
+critique, that is to say again, an analysis; the method of Kant is then
+no other than that of Locke and Reid. Follow it until it reaches the
+hands of Fichte,[12] the successor of Kant, who died but a few years
+since; there, again, the analysis of thought is given as the foundation
+of philosophy. Kant was so firmly established in the subject of
+knowledge, that he could scarcely go out of it--that, in fact, he never
+did legitimately go out of it. Fichte plunged into the subject of
+knowledge so deeply that he buried himself in it, and absorbed in the
+human _me_ all existences, as well as all sciences--sad shipwreck of
+analysis, which signalizes at once its greatest effort and its rock!
+
+The same spirit, therefore, governs all the schools of the eighteenth
+century; this century disdains arbitrary formulas; it has a horror for
+hypotheses, and attaches itself, or pretends to attach itself, to the
+observation of facts, and particularly to the analysis of thought.
+
+Let us acknowledge with freedom and with grief, that the eighteenth
+century applied analysis to all things without pity and without measure.
+It cited before its tribunal all doctrines, all sciences; neither the
+metaphysics of the preceding age, with their imposing systems, nor the
+arts with their prestige, nor the governments with their ancient
+authority, nor the religions with their majesty,--nothing found favor
+before it. Although it spied abysses at the bottom of what it called
+philosophy, it threw itself into them with a courage which is not
+without grandeur; for the grandeur of man is to prefer what he believes
+to be truth to himself. The eighteenth century let loose tempests.
+Humanity no more progressed, except over ruins. The world was again
+agitated in that state of disorder in which it had already been once
+seen, at the decline of the ancient beliefs, and before the triumphs of
+Christianity, when men wandered through all contraries, without power to
+rest anywhere, given up to every disquietude of spirit, to every misery
+of heart, fanatical and atheistical, mystical and incredulous,
+voluptuous and sanguinary.[13] But if the philosophy of the eighteenth
+century has left us a vacuity for an inheritance, it has also left us an
+energetic and fecund love of truth. The eighteenth century was the age
+of criticism and destructions; the nineteenth should be that of
+intelligent rehabilitations. It belongs to it to find in a profounder
+analysis of thought the principles of the future, and with so many
+remains to raise, in fine, an edifice that reason may be able to
+acknowledge.
+
+A feeble but zealous workman, I come to bring my stone; I come to do my
+work; I come to extract from the midst of the ruins what has not
+perished, what cannot perish. This course is at once a return to the
+past, an effort towards the future. I propose neither to attack nor to
+defend any of the three great schools that divide the eighteenth
+century. I will not attempt to perpetuate and envenom the warfare which
+divides them, complacently designating the differences which separate
+them, without taking an account of the community of method which unites
+them. I come, on the contrary, a devoted soldier of philosophy, a common
+friend of all the schools which it has produced, to offer to all the
+words of peace.
+
+The unity of modern philosophy, as we have said, resides in its method,
+that is to say, in the analysis of thought--a method superior to its own
+results, for it contains in itself the means of repairing the errors
+that escape it, of indefinitely adding new riches to riches already
+acquired. The physical sciences themselves have no other unity. The
+great physicians who have appeared within two centuries, although united
+amongst themselves by the same point of departure and by the same end,
+generally accepted, have nevertheless proceeded with independence and in
+ways often opposite. Time has re-collected in their different theories
+the part of truth that produced them and sustained them; it has
+neglected their errors from which they were unable to extricate
+themselves, and uniting all the discoveries worthy of the name, it has
+little by little formed of them a vast and harmonious whole. Modern
+philosophy has also been enriched during the two centuries with a
+multitude of exact observations, of solid and profound theories, for
+which it is indebted to the common method. What has hindered her from
+progressing at an equal pace with the physical sciences whose sister she
+is? She has been hindered by not understanding better her own interests,
+by not tolerating diversities that are inevitable, that are even
+useful, and by not profiting by the truths which all the particular
+doctrines contain, in order to deduce from them a general doctrine,
+which is successively and perpetually purified and aggrandized.
+
+Not, indeed, that I would recommend that blind syncretism which
+destroyed the school of Alexandria, which attempted to bring contrary
+systems together by force; what I recommend is an enlightened
+eclecticism, which, judging with equity, and even with benevolence, all
+schools, borrows from them what they possess of the true, and neglects
+what in them is false. Since the spirit of party has hitherto succeeded
+so ill with us, let us try the spirit of conciliation. Human thought is
+immense. Each school has looked at it only from its own point of view.
+This point of view is not false, but it is incomplete, and moreover, it
+is exclusive. It expresses but one side of truth, and rejects all the
+others. The question is not to decry and recommence the work of our
+predecessors, but to perfect it in reuniting, and in fortifying by that
+reunion, all the truths scattered in the different systems which the
+eighteenth century has transmitted to us.
+
+Such is the principle to which we have been conducted by two years of
+study upon modern philosophy, from Descartes to our times. This
+principle, badly disengaged at first, we applied for the first time
+within the narrowest limits, and only to theories relative to the
+question of personal existence.[14] We then extended it to a greater
+number of questions and theories; we touched the principal points of the
+intellectual and moral order,[15] and at the same time that we were
+continuing the investigations of our illustrious predecessor, M.
+Royer-Collard, upon the schools of France, England, and Scotland, we
+commenced the study new among us, the difficult but interesting and
+fecund study, of the philosophy of Koenigsberg. We can at the present
+time, therefore, embrace all the schools of the eighteenth century, and
+all the problems which they agitated.
+
+Philosophy, in all times, turns upon the fundamental ideas of the true,
+the beautiful, and the good. The idea of the true, philosophically
+developed, is psychology, logic, metaphysic; the idea of the good is
+private and public morals; the idea of the beautiful is that science
+which, in Germany, is called æsthetics, the details of which pertain to
+the criticism of literature, the criticism of arts, but whose general
+principles have always occupied a more or less considerable place in the
+researches, and even in the teaching of philosophers, from Plato and
+Aristotle to Hutcheson and Kant.
+
+Upon these essential points which constitute the entire domain of
+philosophy, we will successively interrogate the principal schools of
+the eighteenth century.
+
+When we examine them all with attention, we can easily reduce them to
+two,--one of which, in the analysis of thought, the common subject of
+all their works, gives to sensation an excessive part; the other of
+which, in this same analysis, going to the opposite extreme, deduces
+consciousness almost wholly from a faculty different from that of
+sensation--reason. The first of these schools is the empirical school,
+of which the father, or rather the wisest representative, is Locke, and
+Condillac the extreme representative; the second is the spiritualistic
+or rationalistic school, as it is called, which reckons among its
+illustrious interpreters Reid, who is the most irreproachable, and Kant,
+who is the most systematic. Surely there is truth in these two schools,
+and truth is a good which must be taken wherever one finds it. We
+willingly admit, with the empirical school, that the senses have not
+been given us in vain; that this admirable organization which elevates
+us above all other animate beings, is a rich and varied instrument,
+which it would be folly to neglect. We are convinced that the spectacle
+of the world is a permanent source of sound and sublime instruction.
+Upon this point neither Aristotle, nor Bacon, nor Locke, has in us an
+adversary, but a disciple. We acknowledge, or rather we proclaim, that
+in the analysis of human knowledge, it is necessary to assign to the
+senses an important part. But when the empirical school pretends that
+all that passes beyond the reach of the senses is a chimera, then we
+abandon it, and go over to the opposite school. We profess to believe,
+for example, that, without an agreeable impression, never should we have
+conceived the beautiful, and that, notwithstanding, the beautiful is not
+merely the agreeable; that, thank heaven, happiness is usually added to
+virtue, but that the idea itself of virtue is essentially different from
+that of happiness. On this point we are openly of the opinion of Reid
+and Kant. We have also established, and will again establish, that the
+reason of man is in possession of principles which sensation precedes
+but does not explain, and which are directly suggested to us by the
+power of reason alone. We will follow Kant thus far, but not farther.
+Far from following him, we will combat him, when, after having
+victoriously defended the great principles of every kind against
+empiricism, he strikes them with sterility, in pretending that they have
+no value beyond the inclosure of the reason which possesses them,
+condemning also to impotence that same reason which he has just elevated
+so high, and opening the way to a refined and learned skepticism which,
+after all, ends at the same abyss with ordinary skepticism.
+
+You perceive that we shall be by turns with Locke, with Reid, and with
+Kant, in that just and strong measure which is called eclecticism.
+
+Eclecticism is in our eyes the true historical method, and it has for us
+all the importance of the history of philosophy; but there is something
+which we place above the history of philosophy, and, consequently, above
+eclecticism,--philosophy itself.
+
+The history of philosophy does not carry its own light with it, it is
+not its own end. How could eclecticism, which has no other field than
+history, be our only, our primary, object?
+
+It is, doubtless, just, it is of the highest utility, to discriminate in
+each system what there is true in it from what there is false in it;
+first, in order to appreciate this system rightly; then, in order to
+render the false of no account, to disengage and re-collect the true,
+and thus to enrich and aggrandize philosophy by history. But you
+conceive that we must already know what truth is, in order to recognize
+it, and to distinguish it from the error with which it is mixed; so that
+the criticism of systems almost demands a system, so that the history of
+philosophy is constrained to first borrow from philosophy the light
+which it must one day return to it with usury.
+
+In fine, the history of philosophy is only a branch, or rather an
+instrument, of philosophical science. Surely it is the interest which we
+feel for philosophy that alone attaches us to its history; it is the
+love of truth which makes us everywhere pursue its vestiges, and
+interrogate with a passionate curiosity those who before us have also
+loved and sought truth.
+
+Thus philosophy is at once the supreme object and the torch of the
+history of philosophy. By this double title it has a right to preside
+over our instruction.
+
+In regard to this, one word of explanation, I beg you.
+
+He who is speaking before you to-day is, it is true, officially charged
+only with the course of the history of philosophy; in that is our task,
+and in that, once more, our guide shall be eclecticism.[16] But, we
+confess, if philosophy has not the right to present itself here in some
+sort on the first plan; if it should appear only behind its history, it
+in reality holds dominion; and to it all our wishes, as well as all our
+efforts, are related. We hold, doubtless, in great esteem, both Brucker
+and Tennemann,[17] so wise, so judicious; nevertheless our models, our
+veritable masters, always present to our thought, are, in antiquity,
+Plato and Socrates, among the moderns, Descartes, and, why should I
+hesitate to say it, among us, and in our times, the illustrious man who
+has been pleased to call us to this chair. M. Royer-Collard was also
+only a professor of the history of philosophy; but he rightly pretended
+to have an opinion in philosophy; he served a cause which he has
+transmitted to us, and we will serve it in our turn.
+
+This great cause is known to you; it is that of a sound and generous
+philosophy, worthy of our century by the severity of its methods, and
+answering to the immortal wants of humanity, setting out modestly from
+psychology, from the humble study of the human mind, in order to elevate
+itself to the highest regions, and to traverse metaphysics, æsthetics,
+theodicea, morals, and politics.
+
+Our enterprise is not then simply to renew the history of philosophy by
+eclecticism; we also wish, we especially wish, and history well
+understood, thanks to eclecticism, will therein powerfully assist us, to
+deduce from the study of systems, their strifes, and even their ruins, a
+system which may be proof against criticism, and which can be accepted
+by your reason, and also by your heart, noble youth of the nineteenth
+century!
+
+In order to fulfil this great object, which is our veritable mission to
+you, we shall dare this year, for the first and for the last time, to go
+beyond the narrow limits which are imposed upon us. In the history of
+the philosophy of the eighteenth century, we have resolved to leave a
+little in the shade the history of philosophy, in order to make
+philosophy itself appear, and while exhibiting to you the distinctive
+traits of the principal doctrines of the last century, to expose to you
+the doctrine which seems to us adapted to the wants and to the spirit of
+our times, and still, to explain it to you briefly, but in its full
+extent, instead of dwelling upon some one of its parts, as hitherto we
+have done. With years we will correct, we will task ourselves to
+aggrandize and elevate our work. To-day we present it you very imperfect
+still, but established upon foundations which we believe solid, and
+already stamped with a character that will not change.
+
+You will here see, then, brought together in a short space, our
+principles, our processes, our results. We ardently desire to recommend
+them to you, young men, who are the hope of science as well as of your
+country. May we at least be able, in the vast career which we have to
+run, to meet in you the same kindness which hitherto has sustained us.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] We have so much felt the necessity of understanding well the
+philosophy of the century that ours succeeds, that three times we have
+undertaken the history of philosophy in the eighteenth century, here
+first, in 1818, then in 1819 and 1820, and that is the subject of the
+last three volumes of the 1st Series of our works; finally, we resumed
+it in 1829, vol. ii. and iii. of the 2d Series.
+
+[4] This word was used by the old English writers, and there is no
+reason why it should not be retained.
+
+[5] On the method of Descartes, see 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 20; 2d
+Series, vol. i., lecture 2; vol. ii., lecture 11; 3d Series, vol. iii.,
+_Philosophie Moderne_, as well as _Fragments de Philosophie
+Cartésienne_; 5th Series, _Instruction Publique_, vol. ii., _Défense de
+l'Université et de la Philosophie_, p. 112, etc.
+
+[6] On this return to the scholastic form in Descartes, see 1st Series,
+vol iv., lecture 12, especially three articles of the _Journal des
+Savants_, August, September, and October, 1850, in which we have
+examined anew the principles of Cartesianism, _à propos_ the _Leibnitii
+Animadversiones ad Cartesii Principia Philosophiæ_.
+
+[7] See on Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, 2d Series, vol. ii.,
+lectures 11 and 12; 3d Series, vol. iv., _Introduction aux Oeuvres
+Philosophiques de M. de Biran_, p. 288; and the _Fragments de
+Philosophie Cartésienne_, passim.
+
+[8] On Locke, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, especially 2d
+Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Système de Locke_.
+
+[9] 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3.
+
+[10] 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on the Scotch School.
+
+[11] See on Kant and the _Critique of Pure Reason_, vol. v. of the 1st
+Series, where that great work is examined with as much extent as that of
+Reid in vol. iv., and the _Essay_ of Locke in vol. iii. of the 2d
+Series.
+
+[12] On Fichte, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 12; 3d Series, vol. iv.,
+_Introduction aux Oeuvres de M. de Biran_, p. 324.
+
+[13] We expressed ourselves thus in December, 1817, when, following the
+great wars of the Revolution, and after the downfall of the empire, the
+constitutional monarchy, still poorly established, left the future of
+France and of the world obscure. It is sad to be obliged to hold the
+same language in 1835, over the ruins accumulated around us.
+
+[14] 1st Series, vol. i., Course of 1816.
+
+[15] _Ibid._, Course of 1817.
+
+[16] On the legitimate employment and the imperative conditions of
+eclecticism, see 3d Series, _Fragments Philosophiques_, vol. iv.,
+preface of the first edition, p. 41, &c., especially the article
+entitled _De la Philosophie en Belgique_, pp. 228 and 229.
+
+[17] We have translated his excellent _Manual of the History of
+Philosophy_. See the second edition, vol. ii., 8vo., 1839.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST.
+
+THE TRUE.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
+
+    Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute
+    truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is
+    the problem of the philosophy of our time.--Universal and
+    necessary principles.--Examples of different kinds of such
+    principles.--Distinction between universal and necessary
+    principles and general principles.--Experience alone is
+    incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and
+    also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the
+    knowledge of the sensible world.--Reason as being that faculty
+    of ours which discovers to us these principles.--The study of
+    universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest
+    parts of philosophy.
+
+
+To-day, as in all time, two great wants are felt by man. The first, the
+most imperious, is that of fixed, immutable principles, which depend
+upon neither times nor places nor circumstances, and on which the mind
+reposes with an unbounded confidence. In all investigations, as long as
+we have seized only isolated, disconnected facts, as long as we have not
+referred them to a general law, we possess the materials of science, but
+there is yet no science. Even physics commence only when universal
+truths appear, to which all the facts of the same order that observation
+discovers to us in nature may be referred. Plato has said, that there is
+no science of the transitory.
+
+This is our first need. But there is another, not less legitimate, the
+need of not being the dupe of chimerical principles, of barren
+abstractions, of combinations more or less ingenious, but artificial,
+the need of resting upon reality and life, the need of experience. The
+physical and natural sciences, whose regular and rapid conquests strike
+and dazzle the most ignorant, owe their progress to the experimental
+method. Hence the immense popularity of this method, which is carried to
+such an extent that one would not now condescend to lend the least
+attention to a science over which this method should not seem to
+preside.
+
+To unite observation and reason, not to lose sight of the ideal of
+science to which man aspires, and to search for it and find it by the
+route of experience,--such is the problem of philosophy.
+
+Now we address ourselves to your recollections of the last two
+years:--have we not established, by the severest experimental method, by
+reflection applied to the study of the human mind, with the deliberation
+and the rigor which such demonstrations exact,--have we not established
+that there are in all men, without distinction, in the wise and the
+ignorant, ideas, notions, beliefs, principles which the most determined
+skeptic cannot in the slightest degree deny, by which he is
+unconsciously, and in spite of himself, governed both in his words and
+actions, and which, by a striking contrast with our other knowledges,
+are marked with the at once marvellous and incontestable character, that
+they are encountered in the most common experience, and that, at the
+same time, instead of being circumscribed within the limits of this
+experience, they surpass and govern it, universal in the midst of
+particular phenomena to which they are applied; necessary, although
+mingled with things contingent; to our eyes infinite and absolute, even
+while appearing within us in that relative and finite being which we
+are? It is not an unpremeditated paradox that we present to you; we are
+only expressing here the result of numerous lectures.[18]
+
+It was not difficult for us to show that there are universal and
+necessary principles at the head of all sciences.
+
+It is very evident that there are no mathematics without axioms and
+definitions, that is to say, without absolute principles.
+
+What would logic become, those mathematics of thought, if you should
+take away from it a certain number of principles, which are a little
+barbarous, perhaps, in their scholastic form, but must be universal and
+necessary in order to preside over all reasoning and every
+demonstration?
+
+Are physics possible, if every phenomenon which begins to appear does
+not suppose a cause and a law?
+
+Without the principle of final causes, could physiology proceed a single
+step, render to itself an account of a single organ, or determine a
+single function?
+
+Is not the principle on which the whole of morals rests, the principle
+which obligates man to good and lays the foundation of virtue, of the
+same nature? Does it not extend to all moral beings, without distinction
+of time and place? Can you conceive of a moral being who does not
+recognize in the depth of his conscience that reason ought to govern
+passion, that it is necessary to preserve sworn faith, and, against the
+most pressing interest, to restore the treasure that has been confided
+to us?
+
+And these are not mere metaphysical prejudices and formulas of the
+schools: I appeal to the most vulgar common sense.
+
+If I should say to you that a murder has just been committed, could you
+not ask me when, where, by whom, wherefore? That is to say, your mind is
+directed by the universal and necessary principles of time, of space, of
+cause, and even of final cause.
+
+If I should say to you that love or ambition caused the murder, would
+you not at the same instant conceive a lover, an ambitious person? This
+means, again, that there is for you no act without an agent, no quality
+and phenomenon without a substance, without a real subject.
+
+If I should say to you that the accused pretends that he is not the same
+person who conceived, willed, and executed this murder, and that, at
+intervals, his personality has more than once been changed, would you
+not say he is a fool if he is sincere, and that, although the acts and
+the incidents have varied, the person and the being have remained the
+same?
+
+Suppose that the accused should defend himself on this ground, that the
+murder must serve his interest; that, moreover, the person killed was so
+unhappy that life was a burden to him; that the state loses nothing,
+since in place of two worthless citizens it acquires one who becomes
+useful to it; that, in fine, mankind will not perish by the loss of an
+individual, &c.; to all these reasonings would you not oppose the very
+simple response, that this murder, useful perhaps to its author, is not
+the less unjust, and that, therefore, under no pretext was it permitted?
+
+The same good sense which admits universal and necessary truths, easily
+distinguishes them from those that are not universal and necessary, and
+are only general, that is to say, are applied only to a greater or less
+number of cases.
+
+For example, the following is a very general truth: the day succeeds the
+night; but is it a universal and necessary truth? Does it extend to all
+lands? Yes, to all known lands. But does it extend to all possible
+lands? No; for it is possible to conceive of lands plunged in eternal
+night, another system of the world being given. The laws of the material
+world are what they are; they are not necessary. Their Author might have
+chosen others. With another system of the world one conceives other
+physics, but we cannot conceive other mathematics and other morals. Thus
+it is possible to conceive that day and night may not be in the same
+relation to each as that in which we see them; therefore the truth that
+day succeeds night is a very general truth, perhaps even a universal
+truth, but by no means a necessary truth.
+
+Montesquieu has said that liberty is not a fruit of warm climates. I
+acknowledge, if it is desired, that heat enervates the spirit, and that
+warm countries maintain free governments with difficulty; but it does
+not follow that there may be no possible exception to this principle:
+moreover, there have been exceptions; hence it is not an absolutely
+universal principle, much less is it a necessary principle. Could you
+say as much of the principle of cause? Could you in any way conceive, in
+any time and in any place, a phenomenon which begins to appear without
+a cause, physical or moral?
+
+And were it possible to reduce universal and necessary principles to
+general principles, in order to employ and apply these principles thus
+abased, and to found upon them any reasoning whatever, it would be
+necessary to admit what is called in logic the principle of
+contradiction, viz., that a thing cannot at the same time be and not be,
+in order to maintain the integrity of each part of the reasoning; as
+well as the principle of sufficient reason, which alone establishes
+their connection and the legitimacy of the conclusion. Now, these two
+principles, without which there is no reasoning, are themselves
+universal and necessary principles; so that the circle is manifest.
+
+Even were we to destroy in thought all existences, save that of a single
+mind, we should be compelled to place in that mind, in order that it
+might exercise itself at all--and the mind is such only on the condition
+that it thinks--several necessary principles; it would be beyond the
+power of thought to conceive it deprived of the principle of
+contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason.
+
+How many times have we demonstrated the vanity of the efforts of the
+empirical school to disturb the existence or weaken the bearing of
+universal and necessary principles! Listen to this school: it will say
+to you that the principle of cause, given by us as universal and
+necessary, is, after all, only a habit of the mind, which, seeing in
+nature a fact succeeding another fact, puts between these that
+connection which we have called the relation of effect to cause. This
+explanation is nothing but the destruction, not only of the principle of
+causality, but even of the notion of cause. The senses show me two
+balls, one of which begins to move, the other of which moves after it.
+Suppose that this succession is renewed and continues; it will be
+constancy added to succession; it will by no means be the connection of
+a causative power with its effect; for example, that which consciousness
+attests to us is the least effort of volition. Thus a consequent
+empiricist, like Hume,[19] easily proves that no sensible experience
+legitimately gives the idea of cause.
+
+What we say of the notion of cause we might say of all notions of the
+same kind. Let us at least instance those of substance and unity.
+
+The senses perceive only qualities, phenomena. I touch the extension, I
+see the color, I am sensible of the odor; but do our senses attain the
+substance that is extended, colored, or odorous? On this point Hume[20]
+indulges in pleasantries. He asks which one of our senses takes
+cognizance of substance. What, then, according to him and in the system
+of empiricism, is the notion of substance? An illusion like the notion
+of cause.
+
+Neither do the senses give us unity; for unity is identity, is
+simplicity, and the senses show us every thing in succession and
+composition. The works of art possess unity only because Art, that is to
+say, the mind of man puts it there. If we perceive unity in the works of
+nature, it is not the senses that discover it to us. The arrangement of
+the different parts of an object may contain unity, but it is a unity of
+organization, an ideal and moral unity which the mind alone conceives,
+and which escapes the senses.
+
+If the senses are not able to explain simple notions, much less still
+are they able to explain the principles in which these notions are met,
+which are universal and necessary. In fact, the senses clearly perceive
+such and such facts, but it is impossible for them to embrace what is
+universal; experience attests what is, it does not reach what cannot but
+be.
+
+We go farther. Not only is empiricism unable to explain universal and
+necessary principles; but we maintain that, without these principles,
+empiricism cannot even account for the knowledge of the sensible world.
+
+Take away the principle of causality, and the human mind is condemned
+never to go out of itself and its own modifications. All the sensations
+of hearing, of smell, of taste, of touch, of feeling even, cannot inform
+you what their cause is, nor whether they have a cause. But give to the
+human mind the principle of causality, admit that every sensation, as
+well as every phenomenon, every change, every event, has a cause, as
+evidently we are not the cause of certain sensations, and that
+especially these sensations must have a cause, and we are naturally led
+to recognize for those sensations causes different from ourselves, and
+that is the first notion of an exterior world. The universal and
+necessary principle of causality alone gives it and justifies it. Other
+principles of the same order increase and develop it.
+
+As soon as you know that there are external objects, I ask you whether
+you do not conceive them in a place that contains them. In order to deny
+it, it would be necessary to deny that every body is in a place, that is
+to say, to reject a truth of physics, which is at the same time a
+principle of metaphysics, as well as an axiom of common sense. But the
+place that contains a body is often itself a body, which is only more
+capacious than the first. This new body is in its turn in a place. Is
+this new place also a body? Then it is contained in another place more
+extended, and so on; so that it is impossible for you to conceive a body
+which is not in a place; and you arrive at the conception of a boundless
+and infinite place, that contains all limited places and all possible
+bodies: that boundless and infinite place is space.
+
+And I tell you in this nothing that is not very simple. Look. Do you
+deny that this water is in a vase? Do you deny that this vase is in this
+hall? Do you deny that this hall is in a larger place, which is in its
+turn in another larger still? I can thus carry you on to infinite space.
+If you deny a single one of these propositions, you deny all, the first
+as well as the last; and if you admit the first, you are forced to admit
+the last.
+
+It cannot be supposed that sensibility, which is not able to give us
+even the idea of body, alone elevates us to the idea of space. The
+intervention of a superior principle is, therefore, here necessary.
+
+As we believe that every body is contained in a place, so we believe
+that every event happens in time. Can you conceive an event happening,
+except in some point of duration? This duration is extended and
+successively increased to your mind's eye, and you end by conceiving it
+unlimited like space. Deny duration, and you deny all the sciences that
+measure it, you destroy all the natural beliefs upon which human life
+reposes. It is hardly necessary to add that sensibility alone no more
+explains the notion of time than that of space, both of which are
+nevertheless inherent in the knowledge of the external world.
+
+Empiricism is, therefore, convicted of being unable to dispense with
+universal and necessary principles, and of being unable to explain them.
+
+Let us pause: either all our preceding works have terminated in nothing
+but chimeras, or they permit us to consider as a point definitely
+acquired for science, that there are in the human mind, for whomsoever
+interrogates it sincerely, principles really stamped with the character
+of universality and necessity.
+
+After having established and defended the existence of universal and
+necessary principles, we might investigate and pursue this kind of
+principles in all the departments of human knowledge, and attempt an
+exact and rigorous classification; but illustrious examples have taught
+us to fear to compromise truths of the greatest price by mixing with
+them conjectures which, in giving brilliancy, perhaps, to the spirit of
+philosophy, diminish its authority in the eyes of the wise. We, also,
+following the example of Kant, attempted before you, last year,[21] a
+classification, even a reduction of universal and necessary principles,
+and of all the notions that are connected with them. This work has not
+lost for us its importance, but we will not reproduce it. In the
+interest of the great cause which we serve, and taking thought here only
+to establish upon solid foundations the doctrine which is adapted to the
+French genius in the nineteenth century, we will carefully shun every
+thing that might seem personal and hazardous; and, instead of examining,
+criticising,[22] and reconstituting the classification which the
+philosophy of Koenigsberg has given of universal and necessary
+principles, we prefer, we find it much more useful, to enable you to
+penetrate deeper into the nature of these principles, by showing you
+what faculty of ours it is that discovers them to us, and to which they
+are related and correspond.
+
+The peculiarity of these principles is, that each one of us in
+reflection recognizes that he possesses them, but that he is not their
+author. We conceive them and apply them, we do not constitute them. Let
+us interrogate our consciousness. Do we refer to ourselves, for example,
+the definitions of geometry, as we do certain movements of which we feel
+ourselves to be the cause? If it is I who make these definitions, they
+are therefore mine, I can unmake them, modify them, change them, even
+annihilate them. It is certain that I cannot do it. I am not, then, the
+author of them. It has also been demonstrated that the principles of
+which we have spoken cannot be derived from sensation, which is
+variable, limited, incapable of producing and authorizing any thing
+universal and necessary. I arrive, then, at the following consequence,
+also necessary:--truth is in me and not by me. As sensibility puts me in
+relation with the physical world, so another faculty puts me in
+communication with the truths that depend upon neither the world nor me,
+and that faculty is reason.
+
+There are in men three general faculties which are always mingled
+together, and are rarely exercised except simultaneously, but which
+analysis divides in order to study them better, without misconceiving
+their reciprocal play, their intimate connection, their indivisible
+unity. The first of these faculties is activity, voluntary and free
+activity, in which human personality especially appears, and without
+which the other faculties would be as if they were not, since we should
+not exist for ourselves. Let us examine ourselves at the moment when a
+sensation is produced in us; we shall recognize that there is
+perception only so far as there is some degree of attention, and that
+perception ends at the moment when our activity ends. One does not
+recollect what he did in perfect sleep or in a swoon; because then he
+had lost voluntary activity, consequently consciousness; consequently,
+again, memory. Passion often, in depriving us of liberty, deprives us,
+at the same time, of the consciousness of our actions and of ourselves;
+then, to use a just and common expression, one knows not what he does.
+It is by liberty that man is truly man, that he possesses himself and
+governs himself; without it, he falls again under the yoke of nature; he
+is, without it, only a more admirable and more beautiful part of nature.
+But while I am endowed with activity and liberty, I am also passive in
+other respects; I am subject to the laws of the external world; I suffer
+and I enjoy without being myself the author of my joys and my
+sufferings; I feel rising within me needs, desires, passions, which I
+have not made, which by turns fill my life with happiness and misery.
+Finally, besides volition and sensibility, man has the faculty of
+knowing, has understanding, intelligence, reason, the name matters
+little, by means of which he is elevated to truths of different orders,
+and among others, to universal and necessary truths, which suppose in
+reason, attached to its exercise, principles entirely distinct from the
+impressions of the senses and the resolutions of the will.[23]
+
+Voluntary activity, sensibility, reason, are all equally certain.
+Consciousness verifies the existence of necessary principles, which
+direct the reason quite as well as that of sensations and volitions. I
+call every thing real that falls under observation. I suffer; my
+suffering is real, inasmuch as I am conscious of it: it is the same with
+liberty: it is the same with reason and the principles that govern it.
+We can affirm, then, that the existence of universal and necessary
+principles rests upon the testimony of observation, and even of the most
+immediate and surest observation, that of consciousness.
+
+But consciousness is only a witness,--it makes what is appear; it
+creates nothing. It is not because consciousness announces it to you,
+that you have produced such or such a movement, that you have
+experienced such or such an impression. Neither is it because
+consciousness says to us that reason is constrained to admit such or
+such a truth, that this truth exists; it is because it exists that it is
+impossible for reason not to admit it. The truths that reason attains by
+the aid of universal and necessary principles with which it is provided,
+are absolute truths; reason does not create them, it discovers them.
+Reason is not the judge of its own principles, and cannot account for
+them, for it only judges by them, and they are to it its own laws. Much
+less does consciousness make these principles, or the truths which they
+reveal to us; for consciousness has no other office, no other power than
+in some sort to serve as a mirror for reason. Absolute truths are,
+therefore, independent of experience and consciousness, and at the same
+time, they are attested by experience and consciousness. On the one
+hand, these truths declare themselves in experience; on the other, no
+experience explains them. Behold how experience and reason differ and
+agree, and how, by means of experience, we come to find something which
+surpasses it.
+
+So the philosophy which we teach rests neither upon hypothetical
+principles, nor upon empirical principles. It is observation itself, but
+observation applied to the higher portion of our knowledge, which
+furnishes us with the principles that we seek, with a point of departure
+at once solid and elevated.[24]
+
+This point of departure we have found, and we do not abandon it. We
+remain immovably attached to it. The study of universal and necessary
+principles, considered under their different aspects, and in the great
+problems which they solve, is almost the whole of philosophy; it fills
+it, measures it, divides it. If psychology is the regular study of the
+human mind and its laws, it is evident that that of universal and
+necessary principles which preside over the exercise of reason, is the
+especial domain of psychology, which in Germany is called rational
+psychology, and is very different from empirical psychology. Since logic
+is the examination of the value and the legitimacy of our different
+means of knowing, its most important employment must be to estimate the
+value and the legitimacy of the principles which are the foundations of
+our most important cognitions. In fine, the meditation of these same
+principles conducts us to theodicea, and opens to us the sanctuary of
+philosophy, if we would ascend to their true source, to that sovereign
+reason which is the first and last explanation of our own.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] 1st Series of our Course, vol. i.
+
+[19] 1st Series, vol. i.
+
+[20] Ibid.
+
+[21] 1st Series, vol. i., Fragments of the Course of 1817.
+
+[22] See that criticism, 1st Series, vol. v., _Kant_, lecture 8.
+
+[23] This classification of the human faculties, save some differences
+more nominal than real, is now generally adopted, and makes the
+foundation of the psychology of our times. See our writings, among
+others, 1st Series, Course of 1816, lectures 23 and 24: _Histoire du
+moi_; ibid., _Des faits de Conscience_; vol. iii., lecture 3, _Examen de
+la Théorie des Facultés dans Condillac_; vol. iv., lecture 21, _des
+Facultés selon Reid_; vol. v., lecture 8, _Examen de la Théorie de
+Kant_; 3d Series, vol iv., _Preface de la Première Edition, Examen des
+Leçons de M. Laromiguière, Introduction aux Oeuvres de M. de Biran,
+etc._
+
+[24] This lecture on the existence of universal and necessary
+principles, which was easily comprehended, in 1818, by an auditory to
+which long discussions had already been presented during the two
+previous years, appearing here without the support of these
+preliminaries, will not perhaps be entirely satisfactory to the reader.
+We beseech him to consult carefully the first volume of the 1st Series
+of our Course, which contains an abridgment, at least, of the numerous
+lectures of 1816 and 1817, of which this is a _résumé_; especially to
+read in the third, fourth, and fifth volumes of the 1st Series, the
+developed analyses, in which, under different forms, universal and
+necessary principles are demonstrated as far as may be, and in the third
+volume of the 2d Series the lectures devoted to establish against Locke
+the same principles.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
+
+    _Résumé_ of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the
+    origin of universal and necessary principles.--Danger of this
+    question, and its necessity.--Different forms under which truth
+    presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms:
+    theory of spontaneity and reflection.--The primitive form of
+    principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form, and
+    gives them their actual form.--Examination and refutation of the
+    theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an
+    induction founded on particular notions.
+
+
+We may regard as a certain conquest of the experimental method and of
+true psychological analysis, the establishment of principles which at
+the same time that they are given to us by the surest of all
+experiences, that of consciousness, have a bearing superior to
+experience, and open to us regions inaccessible to empiricism. We have
+recognized such principles at the head of nearly all the sciences; then,
+searching among our different faculties for that which may have given
+them to us, we have ascertained that it is impossible to refer them to
+any other faculty than to that general faculty of knowing which we call
+reason, very different from reasoning, to which it furnishes its laws.
+
+That is the point at which we have arrived. But is it possible to stop
+there?
+
+In human intelligence, as it is now developed, universal and necessary
+principles are offered to us under forms in some sort consecrated. The
+principle of causality, for example, is thus enounced to us:--Every
+thing that begins to appear necessarily has a cause. Other principles
+have this same axiomatic form. But have they always had it, and did they
+spring from the human mind with this logical and scholastic apparel, as
+Minerva sprang all armed from the head of Jupiter? With what characters
+did they show themselves at first, before taking those in which they are
+now clothed, and which can scarcely be their primitive characters? In a
+word, is it possible to find the origin of universal and necessary
+principles, and the route which they must have followed in order to
+arrive at what they are to-day? A new problem, the importance of which
+it is easy to feel; for, if it can be resolved, what light will be shed
+upon these principles! On the other hand, what difficulties must be
+encountered! How can we penetrate to the sources of human knowledge,
+which are concealed, like those of the Nile? Is it not to be feared
+that, in plunging into the obscure past, instead of truth, one may
+encounter an hypothesis; that, attaching himself, then, to this
+hypothesis, he may transport it from the past to the present, and that,
+being deceived in regard to the origin of principles, he may be led to
+misconceive their actual and certain characters, or, at least, to
+mutilate and enfeeble those which the adopted origin would not easily
+explain? This danger is so great, this rock is so celebrated in
+shipwrecks, that before braving it one should know how to take many
+precautions against the seductions of the spirit of the system. It is
+even conceived that great philosophers, who were timid in no place, have
+suppressed the perilous problem. In fact, by undertaking to grapple with
+this problem at first, Locke and Condillac went far astray,[25] and it
+must be said, corrupted all philosophy at its source. The empirical
+school, which lauds the experimental method so much, turns its back upon
+it, thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the
+actual characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by
+consciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without
+guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. Reid[26] and Kant[27] showed
+themselves much more observing by confining themselves within the
+limits of the present, through fear of losing themselves in the darkness
+of the past. Both freely treat of universal and necessary principles in
+the form which they now have, without asking what was their primitive
+form. We much prefer this wise circumspection to the adventurous spirit
+of the empirical school. Nevertheless, when a problem is given out, so
+long as it is not solved, it troubles and besets the human mind.
+Philosophy ought not to shun it then, but its duty is to approach it
+only with extreme prudence and a severe method.
+
+We cannot recollect too well, for the sake of others and ourselves, that
+the primitive state of human cognitions is remote from us; we can
+scarcely bring it within the reach of our vision and submit it to
+observation; the actual state, on the contrary, is always at our
+disposal: it is sufficient for us to enter into ourselves, to fathom
+consciousness by reflection, and make it give up what it contains.
+Setting out from certain facts, we shall not be liable to wander
+subsequently into hypotheses, or if, in ascending to the primitive
+state, we fall into any error, we shall be able to perceive it and
+repair it by the aid of the truth which an impartial observation shall
+have given us; every origin which shall not legitimately end at the
+point where we are, is by that alone convicted of being false, and will
+deserve to be discarded.[28]
+
+You know that a large portion of the last year was spent upon this
+question. We took, one by one, universal and necessary questions
+submitted to our examination, in order to determine the origin of each
+one of them, its primitive form, and the different forms which have
+successively clothed it; only after having operated thus upon a
+sufficiently large number of principles, did we come slowly to a general
+conclusion, and that conclusion we believe ourselves entitled to express
+here briefly as the solid result of a most circumspect analysis, and, at
+least, a most methodical labor. We must either renew before you this
+labor, this analysis, and thereby run the risk of not being able to
+complete the long course that we have marked out for ourselves, or we
+must limit ourselves to reminding you of the essential traits of the
+theory at which we arrived.
+
+This theory, moreover, is in itself so simple, that, without the dress
+of regular demonstrations upon which it is founded, its own evidence
+will sufficiently establish it. It wholly rests upon the distinction
+between the different forms under which truth is presented to us. It is,
+in its somewhat arid generality, as follows:
+
+1st. One can perceive truth in two different ways. Sometimes one
+perceives it in such or such a particular circumstance. For example, in
+presence of two apples or two stones, and of two other similar objects
+placed by the side of the first, I perceive this truth with absolute
+certainty, viz., that these two stones and these two other stones make
+four stones,--which is in some sort a concrete apperception of the
+truth, because the truth is given to us in regard to real and
+determinate objects. Sometimes I also affirm in a general manner that
+two and two equal four, abstracting every determinate object,--which is
+the abstract conception of truth.
+
+Now, of these two ways of knowing truth, which precedes in the
+chronological order of human knowledge? Is it not certain, may it not be
+avowed by every one, that the particular precedes the general, that the
+concrete precedes the abstract, that we begin by perceiving such or such
+a determinate truth, in such or such a case, at such or such a moment,
+in such or such a place, before conceiving a general truth,
+independently of every application and different circumstances of place
+and time?
+
+2d. We can perceive the same truth without asking ourselves this
+question: Have we the ability not to admit this truth? We perceive it,
+then, by virtue alone of the intelligence which has been given us, and
+which enters spontaneously into exercise; or rather, we try to doubt the
+truth which we perceive, we attempt to deny it; we are not able to do
+it, and then it is presented to reflection as superior to all possible
+negation; it appears to us no longer only as a truth, but as a necessary
+truth.
+
+Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflection, that
+reflection supposes an anterior operation, and that this operation, in
+order not to be one of reflection, and not to suppose another before it,
+must be entirely spontaneous; that thus the spontaneous and instinctive
+intuition of truth precedes its reflection and necessary conception?
+
+Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the individual and in the
+race. It is, _par excellence_, the philosophic faculty; it sometimes
+engenders doubt and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, for being
+rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates
+artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force
+of habit as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous intuition is the
+true logic of nature. It presides over the acquisition of nearly all our
+cognitions. Children, the people, three-fourths of the human race never
+pass beyond it, and rest there with boundless security.
+
+The question of the origin of human cognitions is thus resolved for us
+in the simplest manner: it is enough for us to determine that operation
+of the mind which precedes all others, without which no other would take
+place, and which is the first exercise, and the first form of our
+faculty of knowing.[29]
+
+Since every thing that bears the character of reflection cannot be
+primitive, and supposes an anterior state, it follows, that the
+principles which are the subject of our study could not have possessed
+at first the reflective and abstract character with which they are now
+marked, that they must have shown themselves at their origin in some
+particular circumstance, under a concrete and determinate form, and that
+in time they were disengaged from this form, in order to be invested
+with their actual, abstract, and universal form. These are the two ends
+of the chain; it remains for us to seek how the human mind has been from
+one to the other, from the primitive state to the actual state, from the
+concrete state to the abstract state.
+
+How can we go from the concrete to the abstract? Evidently by that
+well-known operation which is called abstraction. Thus far, nothing is
+more simple. But it is necessary to discriminate between two sorts of
+abstractions.
+
+In presence of several particular objects, you omit the characters which
+distinguish them, and separately consider a character which is common to
+them all--you abstract this character. Examine the nature and conditions
+of this abstraction; it proceeds by means of comparison, and it is
+founded on a certain number of particular and different cases. Take an
+example: examine how we form the abstract and general idea of color.
+Place before my eyes for the first time a white object. Can I here at
+the first step immediately arrive at a general idea of color? Can I at
+first place on one side the whiteness, and on the other side the color?
+Analyze what passes within you. You experience a sensation of whiteness.
+Omit the individuality of this sensation, and you wholly destroy it; you
+cannot neglect the whiteness, and preserve or abstract the color; for, a
+single color being given, which is a white color, if you take away
+that, there remains to you absolutely nothing in regard to color. Let a
+blue object succeed this white object, then a red object, etc.; having
+sensations differing from each other, you can neglect their differences,
+and only consider what they have in common, that they are sensations of
+sight, that is to say, colors, and you thus obtain the abstract and
+general idea of color. Take another example: if you had never smelled
+but a single flower, the violet, for instance, would you have had the
+idea of odor in general? No. The odor of the violet would be for you the
+only odor, beyond which you would not seek, you could not even imagine
+another. But if to the odor of the violet is added that of the rose, and
+other different odors, in a greater or less number, provided there be
+several, and a comparison be possible, and consequently, knowledge of
+their differences and their resemblances, then you will be able to form
+the general idea of odor. What is there in common between the odor of
+one flower and that of another flower, except that they have been
+smelled by aid of the same organ, and by the same person? What here
+renders generalization possible, is the unity of the sentient subject
+which remembers having been modified, while remaining the same, by
+different sensations; now, this subject can feel itself identical under
+different modifications, and it can conceive in the qualities of the
+object felt some resemblance and some dissimilarity, only on the
+condition of a certain number of sensations experienced, of odors
+smelled. In that case, but in that case alone, there can be comparison,
+abstraction, and generalization, because there are different and similar
+elements.
+
+In order to arrive at the abstract form of universal and necessary
+principles, we have no need of all this labor. Let us take again, for
+example, the principle of cause. If you suppose six particular cases
+from which you have abstracted this principle, it will contain neither
+more nor less ideas than if you had deduced it from a single one. To be
+able to say that the event which I see must have a cause, it is not
+indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other. The
+principle which compels me to pronounce this judgment, is already
+complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in respect to
+its object, it cannot change in itself; it neither increases nor
+decreases with the greater or less number of its applications. The only
+difference that it is subject to in regard to us, is, that we apply it
+whether we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its
+particular application. The question is not to eliminate the
+particularity of the phenomenon, wherein it appears to us, whether it be
+the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to
+conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for
+every thing that begins to exist. Here, it is not because I have been
+the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several different
+cases, that I have come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf
+falls: at the same instant I think, I believe, I declare that this
+falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man has been killed: at the
+same instant I believe, I proclaim that this death must have a cause.
+Each one of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances,
+and something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them cannot but
+have a cause. Now, I am perfectly able to disengage the universal from
+the particular, in regard to the first fact as well as in regard to the
+second fact, for the universal is in the first quite as well as in the
+second. In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in the
+first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the third, nor in a
+thousandth; for a thousand are not nearer than one to the infinite, to
+absolute universality. It is the same, and still more evidently, with
+necessity. Pay particular attention to this point: if necessity is not
+in the first fact, it cannot be in any; for necessity cannot be formed
+little by little, and by successive increment. If, at the first murder
+that I see, I do not exclaim that this murder necessarily has a cause,
+at the thousandth murder, although it shall have been proved that all
+the others have had causes, I shall have the right to think that this
+new murder has, very probably, also its cause; but I shall never have
+the right to declare that it necessarily has a cause. But when
+necessity and universality are already in a single case, that case alone
+is sufficient to entitle us to deduce them from it.[30]
+
+We have established the existence of universal and necessary principles:
+we have marked their origin; we have shown that they appear to us at
+first from a particular fact, and we have shown by what process, by what
+sort of abstraction the mind disengages them from the determinate and
+concrete form which envelops them, but does not constitute them. Our
+task, then, seems accomplished. But it is not,--we must defend the
+solution which we have just presented to you of the problem of the
+origin of principles against the theory of an eminent metaphysician,
+whose just authority might seduce you. M. Maine de Biran[31] is, like
+us, the declared adversary of the philosophy of sensation,--he admits
+universal and necessary principles; but the origin which he assigns to
+them, puts them, according to us, in peril, and would lead back by a
+_detour_ to the empirical school.
+
+Universal and necessary principles, if expressed in propositions,
+embrace several terms. For example, in the principle that every
+phenomenon supposes a cause; and in this, that every quality supposes a
+substance, by the side of the ideas of quality and phenomenon are met
+the ideas of cause and substance, which seem the foundation of these two
+principles. M. de Biran pretends that the two ideas are anterior to the
+two principles which contain them, and that we at first find these ideas
+in ourselves in the consciousness that we are cause and substance, and
+that, these ideas once being thus acquired, induction transports them
+out of ourselves, makes us conceive causes and substances wherever there
+are phenomena and qualities, and that the principles of cause and
+substance are thus explained. I beg pardon of my illustrious friend;
+but it is impossible to admit in the least degree this explanation.
+
+The possession of the origin of the idea of cause is by no means
+sufficient for the possession of the origin of the principle of
+causality; for the idea and the principle are things essentially
+different. You have established, I would say to M. de Biran, that the
+idea of cause is found in that of productive volition:--you will to
+produce certain effects, and you produce them; hence the idea of a
+cause, of a particular cause, which is yourself; but between this fact
+and the axiom that all phenomena which appear necessarily have a cause,
+there is a gulf.
+
+You believe that you can bridge it over by induction. The idea of cause
+once found in ourselves, induction applies it, you say, wherever a new
+phenomenon appears. But let us not be deceived by words, and let us
+account for this extraordinary induction. The following dilemma I submit
+with confidence to the loyal dialectics of M. de Biran:
+
+Is the induction of which you speak universal and necessary? Then it is
+a different name for the same thing. An induction which forces us
+universally and necessarily to associate the idea of cause with that of
+every phenomenon that begins to appear is precisely what is called the
+principle of causality. On the contrary, is this induction neither
+universal nor necessary? It cannot supply the place of the principle of
+cause, and the explanation destroys the thing to be explained.
+
+It follows from this that the only true result of these various
+psychological investigations is, that the idea of personal and free
+cause precedes all exercise of the principle of causality, but without
+explaining it.
+
+The theory which we combat is much more powerless in regard to other
+principles which, far from being exercised before the ideas from which
+it is pretended to deduce them, precede them, and even give birth to
+them. How have we acquired the idea of time and that of space, except by
+aid of the principle that the bodies and events, which we see are in
+time and in space? We have seen[32] that, without this principle, and
+confined to the data of the senses and consciousness, neither time nor
+space would exist for us. Whence have we deduced the idea of the
+infinite, except from the principle that the finite supposes the
+infinite, that all finite and defective things, which we perceive by our
+senses and feel within us, are not sufficient for themselves, and
+suppose something infinite and perfect? Omit the principle, and the idea
+of the infinite is destroyed. Evidently this idea is derived from the
+application of the principle, and it is not the principle which is
+derived from the idea.
+
+Let us dwell a little longer on the principle of substances. The
+question is to know whether the idea of subject, of substance, precedes
+or follows the exercise of the principle. Upon what ground could the
+idea of substance be anterior to the principle that every quality
+supposes a substance? Upon the ground alone that substance be the object
+of self-observation, as cause is said to be. When I produce a certain
+effect, I may perceive myself in action and as cause; in that case,
+there would be no need of the intervention of any principle; but it is
+not, it cannot be, the same, when the question is concerning the
+substance which is the basis of the phenomena of consciousness, of our
+qualities, our acts, our faculties even; for this substance is not
+directly observable; it does not perceive itself, it conceives itself.
+Consciousness perceives sensation, volition, thought, it does not
+perceive their subject. Who has ever perceived the soul? Has it not been
+necessary, in order to attain this invisible essence, to set out from a
+principle which has the power to bind the visible to the invisible,
+phenomenon to being, to wit, the principle of substances?[33] The idea
+of substance is necessarily posterior to the application of the
+principle, and, consequently, it cannot explain its formation.
+
+Let us be well understood. We do not mean to say that we have in the
+mind the principle of substances before perceiving a phenomenon, quite
+ready to apply the principle to the phenomenon, when it shall present
+itself; we only say that it is impossible for us to perceive a
+phenomenon without conceiving at the same instant a substance, that is
+to say, to the power of perceiving a phenomenon, either by the senses or
+by consciousness, is joined that of conceiving the substance in which it
+inheres. The facts thus take place:--the perception of phenomena and the
+conception of the substance which is their basis are not successive,
+they are simultaneous. Before this impartial analysis fall at once two
+equal and opposite errors--one, that experience, exterior or interior,
+can beget principles; the other, that principles precede experience.[34]
+
+To sum up, the pretension of explaining principles by the ideas which
+they contain, is a chimerical one. In supposing that all the ideas which
+enter into principles are anterior to them, it is necessary to show how
+principles are deduced from these ideas,--which is the first and radical
+difficulty. Moreover, it is not true that in all cases ideas precede
+principles, for often principles precede ideas,--a second difficulty
+equally insurmountable. But whether ideas are anterior or posterior to
+principles, principles are always independent of them; they surpass them
+by all the superiority of universal and necessary principles over simple
+ideas.[35]
+
+We should, perhaps, beg your pardon for the austerity of this lecture.
+But philosophical questions must be treated philosophically: it does not
+belong to us to change their character. On other subjects, another
+language. Psychology has its own language, the entire merit of which is
+a severe precision, as the highest law of psychology itself is the
+shunning of every hypothesis, and an inviolable respect for facts. This
+law we have religiously followed. While investigating the origin of
+universal and necessary principles, we have especially endeavored not to
+destroy the thing to be explained by a systematic explanation. Universal
+and necessary principles have come forth in their integrity from our
+analysis. We have given the history of the different forms which they
+successively assume, and we have shown, that in all these changes they
+remain the same, and of the same authority, whether they enter
+spontaneously and involuntarily into exercise, and apply themselves to
+particular and determinate objects, or reflection turns them back upon
+themselves in order to interrogate them in regard to their nature, or
+abstraction makes them appear under the form in which their universality
+and their necessity are manifest. Their certainty is the same under all
+their forms, in all their applications; it has neither generation nor
+origin; it is not born such or such a day, and it does not increase with
+time, for it knows no degrees. We have not commenced by believing a
+little in the principle of causality, of substances, of time, of space,
+of the infinite, etc., then believing a little more, then believing
+wholly. These principles have been, from the beginning, what they will
+be in the end, all-powerful, necessary, irresistible. The conviction
+which they give is always absolute, only it is not always accompanied by
+a clear consciousness. Leibnitz himself has no more confidence in the
+principle of causality, and even in his favorite principle of sufficient
+reason, than the most ignorant of men; but the latter applies these
+principles without reflecting on their power, by which he is
+unconsciously governed, whilst Leibnitz is astonished at their power,
+studies it, and for all explanation, refers it to the human mind, and to
+the nature of things, that is to say, he elevates, to borrow the fine
+expression of M. Royer-Collard,[36] the ignorance of the mass of men to
+its highest source. Such is, thank heaven, the only difference that
+separates the peasant from the philosopher, in regard to those great
+principles of every kind which, in one way or another, discover to men
+the same truths indispensable to their physical, intellectual, and moral
+existence, and, in their ephemeral life, on the circumscribed point of
+space and time where fortune has thrown them, reveal to them something
+of the universal, the necessary, and the infinite.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] First Series, vol. iv., lectures 1, 2, and 3.
+
+[26] _Ibid._, vol. iv., etc.
+
+[27] _Ibid._, vol. v., lecture 8.
+
+[28] We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and confirmed by the
+errors of those who have dared to break it, this rule of true
+psychological analysis, that, before passing to the question of the
+origin of an idea, a notion, a belief, any principle whatever, the
+actual characters of this idea, this notion, this belief, this
+principle, must have been a long time studied and well established, with
+the firm resolution of not altering them under any pretext whatever in
+wishing to explain them. We believe that we have, as Leibnitz says,
+settled this point. See 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of
+1817, and the Opening Discourse; vol. iii., lecture 1, _Locke_; lecture
+2, _Condillac_; lecture 3, almost entire, and lecture 8, p. 260; 2d
+Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Système de Locke_, lecture 16, p. 77-87;
+3d Series, vol. iv., _Examination of the Lectures of M. Loremquière_, p.
+268.
+
+[29] This theory of spontaneity and of reflection, which in our view is
+the key to so many difficulties, continually recurs in our works. One
+may see, vol. i. of the 1st Series, in a programme of the Course of
+1817, and in a fragment entitled _De la Spontanéité et de la Réflexion_;
+vol. iv. of the same Series, Examination of Reid's Philosophy, _passim_;
+vol. v., Examination of Kant's System, lecture 8; 2d Series, vol. i.,
+_passim_; vol. iii., Lectures on Judgment; 3d Series, _Fragments
+Philosophiques_, vol. iv., preface of the first edition, p. 37, etc.; it
+will be found in different lectures of this volume, among others, in the
+third, On the value of Universal and Necessary Principles; in the fifth,
+On Mysticism; and in the eleventh, Primary Data of Common Sense.
+
+[30] On immediate abstraction and comparative abstraction, see 1st
+Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and everywhere in our
+other Courses.
+
+[31] On M. de Biran, on his merits and defects, see our _Introduction_
+at the head of his Works.
+
+[32] See lecture 1.
+
+[33] See vol. i. of the 1st Series, course of 1816, and 2d Series, vol.
+iii., lecture 18, p. 140-146.
+
+[34] We have developed this analysis, and elucidated these results in
+the 17th lecture of vol. ii. of the 2d Series.
+
+[35] We have already twice recurred, and more in detail, to the
+impossibility of legitimately explaining universal and necessary
+principles by any association or induction whatever, founded upon any
+particular idea, 2d Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Système de Locke_,
+lecture 19, p. 166; and 3d Series, vol. iv., _Introduction aux Oeuvres
+de M. de Biran_, p. 319. We have also made known the opinion of Reid,
+1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 489. Finally, the profoundest of
+Reid's disciples, the most enlightened judge that we know of things
+philosophical, Sir W. Hamilton, professor of logic in the University of
+Edinburgh, has not hesitated to adopt the conclusions of our discussion,
+to which he is pleased to refer his readers:--_Discussions on Philosophy
+and Literature, etc._, by Sir William Hamilton, London, 1852. Appendix
+I, p. 588.
+
+[36] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iv., p. 435. "When we revolt against
+primitive facts, we equally misconceive the constitution of our
+intelligence and the end of philosophy. Is explaining a fact any thing
+else than deriving it from another fact, and if this kind of explanation
+is to terminate at all, does it not suppose facts inexplicable? The
+science of the human mind will have been carried to the highest degree
+of perfection it can attain, it will be complete, when it shall know how
+to derive ignorance from the most elevated source."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+ON THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
+
+    Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism.--Recurrence to
+    the theory of spontaneity and reflection.
+
+
+After having recognized the existence of universal and necessary
+principles, their actual characters, and their primitive characters, we
+have to examine their value, and the legitimacy of the conclusions which
+may be drawn from them,--we pass from psychology to logic.
+
+We have defended against Locke and his school the necessity and
+universality of certain principles. We now come to Kant, who recognizes
+with us these principles, but confines their power within the limits of
+the subject that conceives them, and, so far as subjective, declares
+them to be without legitimate application to any object, that is to say,
+without objectivity, to use the language of the philosopher of
+Koenigsberg, which, right or wrong, begins to pass into the
+philosophic language of Europe.
+
+Let us comprehend well the import of this new discussion. The principles
+that govern our judgments, that preside over most sciences, that rule
+our actions,--have they in themselves an absolute truth, or are they
+only regulating laws of our thought? The question is, to know whether it
+is true in itself, that every phenomenon has a cause, and every quality
+a subject, whether every thing extended is really in space, and every
+succession in time, etc. If it is not absolutely true that every quality
+has its subject of inherence, it is not, then, certain, that we have a
+soul, a real substance of all the qualities which consciousness
+attests. If the principle of causality is only a law of our mind, the
+external world, which this principle discovers to us, loses its reality,
+it is only a succession of phenomena, without any effective action over
+each other, as Hume would have it, and even the impressions of our
+senses are destitute of causes. Matter exists no more than the soul.
+Nothing exists; every thing is reduced to mobile appearances, given up
+to a perpetual becoming, which again is accomplished we know not where,
+since in reality there is neither time nor space. Since the principle of
+sufficient reason only serves to put in motion human curiosity, once in
+possession of the fatal secret that it can attain nothing real, this
+curiosity would be very good to weary itself in searching for reasons
+which inevitably escape it, and in discovering relations which
+correspond only to the wants of our mind, and do not in the least
+correspond to the nature of things. In fine, if the principle of
+causality, of substances, of final causes, of sufficient reason, are
+only our modes of conception, God, whom all these principles reveal to
+us, will no more be any thing but the last of chimeras, which vanishes
+with all the others in the breath of the Critique.
+
+Kant has established, as well as Reid and ourself, the existence of
+universal and necessary principles; but an involuntary disciple of his
+century, an unconscious servant of the empirical school, to which he
+places himself in the attitude of an adversary, he makes to it the
+immense concession that these principles are applied only to the
+impressions of sensibility, that their part is to put these impressions
+in a certain order, but that beyond these impressions, beyond
+experience, their power expires. This concession has ruined the whole
+enterprise of the German philosopher.
+
+This enterprise was at once honest and great. Kant, grieved at the
+skepticism of his times, proposed to arrest it by fairly meeting it. He
+thought to disarm Hume by conceding to him that our highest conceptions
+do not extend themselves beyond the inclosure of the human mind; and at
+the same time, he supposed that he had sufficiently vindicated the human
+mind by restoring to it the universal and necessary principles which
+direct it. But, according to the strong expression of M. Royer-Collard,
+"one does not encounter skepticism,--as soon as he has penetrated into
+the human understanding he has completely taken it by storm." A severe
+circumspection is one thing, skepticism is another. Doubt is not only
+permitted, it is commanded by reason itself in the employment and
+legitimate applications of our different faculties; but when it is
+applied to the legitimacy itself of our faculties, it no longer
+elucidates reason, it overwhelms it. In fact, with what would you have
+reason defend herself, when she has called herself in question? Kant
+himself, then, overturned the dogmatism which he proposed at once to
+restrain and save, at least in morals, and he put German philosophy upon
+a route, at the end of which was an abyss. In vain has this great
+man--for his intentions and his character, without speaking of his
+genius, merit for him this name--undertaken with Hume an ingenious and
+learned controversy; he has been vanquished in this controversy, and
+Hume remains master of the field of battle.
+
+What matters it, in fact, whether there may or may not be in the human
+mind universal and necessary principles, if these principles only serve
+to classify our sensations, and to make us ascend, step by step, to
+ideas that are most sublime, but have for ourselves no reality? The
+human mind is, then, as Kant himself well expressed it, like a banker
+who should take bills ranged in order on his desk for real values;--he
+possesses nothing but papers. We have thus returned, then, to that
+conceptualism of the middle age, which, concentrating truth within the
+human intelligence, makes the nature of things a phantom of intelligence
+projecting itself everywhere out of itself, at once triumphant and
+impotent, since it produces every thing, and produces only chimeras.[37]
+
+
+The reproach which a sound philosophy will content itself with making to
+Kant, is, that his system is not in accordance with facts. Philosophy
+can and must separate itself from the crowd for the explanation of
+facts; but, it cannot be too often repeated, it must not in the
+explanation destroy what it pretends to explain; otherwise it does not
+explain, it imagines. Here, the important fact which it is the question
+to explain is the belief of the human mind, and the system of Kant
+annihilates it.
+
+In fact, when we are speaking of the truth of universal and necessary
+principles, we do not believe they are true only for us:--we believe
+them to be true in themselves, and still true, were there no minds of
+ours to conceive them. We regard them as independent of us; they seem to
+us to impose themselves upon our intelligence by the force of the truth
+that is in them. So, in order to express faithfully what passes within
+us, it would be necessary to reverse the proposition of Kant, and
+instead of saying with him, that these principles are the necessary laws
+of our mind, therefore they have no absolute value out of mind; we
+should much rather say, that these principles have an absolute value in
+themselves, therefore we cannot but believe them.
+
+And even this necessity of belief with which the new skepticism arms
+itself, is not the indispensable condition of the application of
+principles. We have established[38] that the necessity of believing
+supposes reflection, examination, an effort to deny and the want of
+power to do it; but before all reflection, intelligence spontaneously
+seizes the truth, and, in the spontaneous apperception, is not the
+sentiment of necessity, nor consequently that character of subjectivity
+of which the German school speaks so much.
+
+Let us, then, here recur to that spontaneous intuition of truth, which
+Kant knew not, in the circle where his profoundly reflective and
+somewhat scholastic habits held him captive.
+
+Is it true that there is no judgment, even affirmative in form, which is
+not mixed with negation?
+
+It seems indeed that every affirmative judgment is at the same time
+negative; in fact, to affirm that a thing exists, is to deny its
+non-existence; as every negative judgment is at the same time
+affirmative; for to deny the existence of a thing, is to affirm its
+non-existence. If it is so, then every judgment, whatever may be its
+form, affirmative or negative, since these two forms come back to each
+other, supposes a pre-established doubt in regard to the existence of
+the thing in question, supposes some exercise of reflection, in the
+course of which the mind feels itself constrained to bear such or such a
+judgment, so that at this point of view the foundation of the judgment
+seems to be in its necessity; and then recurs the celebrated
+objection:--if you judge thus only because it is impossible for you not
+to do it, you have for a guaranty of the truth nothing but yourself and
+your own ways of conceiving; it is the human mind that transports its
+laws out of itself; it is the subject that makes the object out of its
+own image, without ever going beyond the inclosure of subjectivity.
+
+We respond, going directly to the root of the difficulty:--it is not
+true that all our judgments are negative. We admit that in the
+reflective state every affirmative judgment supposes a negative
+judgment, and reciprocally. But is reason exercised only on the
+condition of reflection? Is there not a primitive affirmation which
+implies no negation? As we often act without deliberating on our action,
+without premeditating it, and as we manifest in this case an activity
+that is free still, but free with a liberty that is not reflective; so
+reason often perceives the truth without traversing doubt or error.
+Reflection is a return to consciousness, or to an operation wholly
+different from it. We do not find, then, in any primitive fact, that
+every judgment which contains it presupposes another in which it is not.
+We thus arrive at a judgment free from all reflection, to an affirmation
+without any mixture of negation, to an immediate intuition, the
+legitimate child of the natural energy of thought, like the inspiration
+of the poet, the instinct of the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet.
+Such is the first act of the faculty of knowing. If one contradicts this
+primitive affirmation, the faculty of knowing falls back up upon itself,
+examines itself, attempts to call in doubt the truth it has perceived;
+it cannot; it affirms anew what it had affirmed at first; it adheres to
+the truth already recognized, but with a new sentiment, the sentiment
+that it is not in its power to divest itself of the evidence of this
+same truth; then, but only then, appears that character of necessity and
+subjectivity that some would turn against the truth, as though truth
+could lose its own value, while penetrating deeper into the mind and
+there triumphing over doubt; as though reflective evidence of it were
+the less evidence; as though, moreover, the necessary conception of it
+were the only form, the primary form of the perception of truth. The
+skepticism of Kant, to which good sense so easily does justice, is
+driven to the extreme and forced within its intrenchment by the
+distinction between spontaneous reason and reflective reason. Reflection
+is the theatre of the combats which reason engages in with itself, with
+doubt, sophism, and error. But above reflection is a sphere of light and
+peace, where reason perceives truth without returning on itself, for the
+sole reason that truth is truth, and because God has made the reason to
+perceive it, as he has made the eye to see and the ear to hear.
+
+Analyze, in fact, with impartiality, the fact of spontaneous
+apperception, and you will be sure that it has nothing subjective in it
+except what it is impossible it should not have, to wit, the _me_ which is
+mingled with the fact without constituting it. The _me_ inevitably enters
+into all knowledge, since it is the subject of it. Reason directly
+perceives truth; but it is in some sort augmented, in consciousness, and
+then we have knowledge. Consciousness is there its witness, and not its
+judge; its only judge is reason, a faculty subjective and objective
+together, according to the language of Germany, which immediately
+attains absolute truth, almost without personal intervention on our
+part, although it might not enter into exercise if personality did not
+precede or were not added to it.[39]
+
+Spontaneous apperception constitutes natural logic. Reflective
+conception is the foundation of logic properly so called. One is based
+upon itself, _verum index sui_; the other is based upon the
+impossibility of the reason, in spite of all its efforts, not betaking
+itself to truth and believing in it. The form of the first is an
+affirmation accompanied with an absolute security, and without the least
+suspicion of a possible negation; the form of the second is reflective
+affirmation, that is to say, the impossibility of denying and the
+necessity of affirming. The idea of negation governs ordinary logic,
+whose affirmations are only the laborious product of two negations.
+Natural logic proceeds by affirmations stamped with a simple faith,
+which instinct alone produces and sustains.
+
+Now, will Kant reply that this reason, which is much purer than that
+which he has known and described, which is wholly pure, which is
+conceived as something disengaged from reflection, from volition, from
+every thing that constitutes personality, is nevertheless personal,
+since we have a consciousness of it, and since it is thus marked with
+subjectivity? To this argument we have nothing to respond, except that
+it is destroyed in the excess of its pretension. In fact, if, that
+reason may not be subjective, we must in no way participate in it, and
+must not have even a consciousness of its exercise, then there is no
+means of ever escaping this reproach of subjectivity, and the ideal of
+objectivity which Kant pursued is a chimerical, extravagant ideal,
+above, or rather beneath, all true intelligence, all reason worthy the
+name; for it is demanding that this intelligence and this reason should
+cease to have consciousness of themselves, whilst this is precisely what
+characterizes intelligence and reason.[40] Does Kant mean, then, that
+reason, in order to possess a really objective power, cannot make its
+appearance in a particular subject, that it must be, for example, wholly
+outside of the subject which I am? Then it is nothing for me; a reason
+that is not mine, that, under the pretext of being universal, infinite,
+and absolute in its essence, does not fall under the perception of my
+consciousness, is for me as if it were not. To wish that reason should
+wholly cease to be subjective, is to demand something impossible to God
+himself. No, God himself can understand nothing except in knowing it,
+with his intelligence and with the consciousness of this intelligence.
+There is subjectivity, then, in divine knowledge itself; if this
+subjectivity involves skepticism, God is also condemned to skepticism,
+and he can no more escape from it than men; or indeed, if this is too
+ridiculous, if the knowledge which God has of the exercise of his own
+intelligence does not involve skepticism for him, neither do the
+knowledge which we have of the exercise of our intelligence, and the
+subjectivity attached to this knowledge, involve it for us.
+
+In truth, when we see the father of German philosophy thus losing
+himself in the labyrinth of the problem of the subjectivity and the
+objectivity of first principles, we are tempted to pardon Reid for
+having disdained this problem, for limiting himself to repeating that
+the absolute truth of universal and necessary principles rests upon the
+veracity of our faculties, and that upon the veracity of our faculties
+we are compelled to accept their testimony. "To explain," says he, "why
+we are convinced by our senses, by consciousness, by our faculties, is
+an impossible thing; we say--this is so, it cannot be otherwise, and we
+can go no farther. Is not this the expression of an irresistible belief,
+of a belief which is the voice of nature, and against which we contend
+in vain? Do we wish to penetrate farther, to demand of our faculties,
+one by one, what are their titles to our confidence, and to refuse them
+confidence until they have produced their claims? Then, I fear that this
+extreme wisdom would conduct us to folly, and that, not having been
+willing to submit to the common lot of humanity, we should be deprived
+of the light of common sense."[41]
+
+Let us support ourselves also by the following admirable passage of him
+who is, for so many reasons, the venerated master of the French
+philosophy of the nineteenth century. "Intellectual life," says M.
+Royer-Collard, "is an uninterrupted succession, not only of ideas, but
+of explicit or implicit beliefs. The beliefs of the mind are the powers
+of the soul and the motives of the will. That which determines us to
+belief we call evidence. Reason renders no account of evidence; to
+condemn reason to account for evidence, is to annihilate it, for it
+needs itself an evidence which is fitted for it. These are fundamental
+laws of belief which constitute intelligence, and as they flow from the
+same source they have the same authority; they judge by the same right;
+there is no appeal from the tribunal of one to that of another. He who
+revolts against a single one revolts against all, and abdicates his
+whole nature."[42]
+
+Let us deduce the consequences of the facts of which we have just given
+an exposition.
+
+1st. The argument of Kant, which is based upon the character of
+necessity in principles in order to weaken their objective authority,
+applies only to the form imposed by reflection on these principles, and
+does not reach their spontaneous application, wherein the character of
+necessity no longer appears.
+
+2d. After all, to conclude with the human race from the necessity of
+believing in the truth of what we believe, is not to conclude badly; for
+it is reasoning from effect to cause, from the sign to the thing
+signified.
+
+3d. Moreover, the value of principles is above all demonstration.
+Psychological analysis seizes, takes, as it were, by surprise, in the
+fact of intuition, an affirmation that is absolute, that is inaccessible
+to doubt; it establishes it; and this is equivalent to demonstration. To
+demand any other demonstration than this, is to demand of reason an
+impossibility, since absolute principles, being necessary to all
+demonstration, could only be demonstrated by themselves.[43]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[37] On conceptualism, as well as on nominalism and realism, see the
+_Introduction to the inedited works of Abelard_, and also 1st Series,
+vol. iv., lecture 21, p. 457; 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 20, p. 215,
+and the work already cited on the _Metaphysics of Aristotle_, p. 49:
+"Nothing exists in this world which has not its law more general than
+itself. There is no individual that is not related to a species; there
+are no phenomena bound together that are not united to a plan. And it is
+necessary there should really be in nature species and a plan, if every
+thing has been made with weight and measure, _cum pondere et mensura_,
+without which our very ideas of species and a plan would only be
+chimeras, and human science a systematic illusion. If it is pretended
+that there are individuals and no species, things in juxtaposition and
+no plan; for example, human individuals more or less different, and no
+human type, and a thousand other things of the same sort, well and good;
+but in that case there is nothing general in the world, except in the
+human understanding, that is to say, in other terms, the world and
+nature are destitute of order and reason except in the head of man."
+
+[38] See preceding lecture.
+
+[39] On the just limits of the personality and the impersonality of
+reason, see the following lecture, near the close.
+
+[40] We have everywhere maintained, that consciousness is the condition,
+or rather the necessary form of intelligence. Not to go beyond this
+volume, see farther on, lecture 5.
+
+[41] 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 494.
+
+[42] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iii., p. 450.
+
+[43] We have not thought it best to make this lecture lengthy by an
+exposition and detailed refutation of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and
+its sad conclusion; the little that we say of it is sufficient for our
+purpose, which is much less historical than dogmatical. We refer the
+reader to a volume that we have devoted to the father of German
+philosophy, 1st Series, vol. v., in which we have again taken up and
+developed some of the arguments that are here used, in which we believe
+that we have irresistibly exposed the capital defect of the
+transcendental logic of Kant, and of the whole German school, that it
+leads to skepticism, inasmuch as it raises superhuman, chimerical,
+extravagant problems, and, when well understood, cannot solve them. See
+especially lectures 6 and 8.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.
+
+    Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute
+    truth?--Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us,
+    in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We
+    perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular
+    beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it;
+    refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself;
+    defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.--Plato; St.
+    Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fénelon; Bossuet;
+    Leibnitz.--Truth the mediator between God and man.--Essential
+    distinctions.
+
+
+We have justified the principles that govern our intelligence; we have
+become confident that there is truth outside of us, that there are
+verities worthy of that name, which we can perceive, which we do not
+make, which are not solely conceptions of our mind, which would still
+exist although our mind should not perceive them. Now this other problem
+naturally presents itself: What, then, in themselves, are these
+universal and necessary truths? where do they reside? whence do they
+come? We do not raise this problem, and the problems that it embraces;
+the human mind itself proposes them, and it is fully satisfied only when
+it has resolved them, and when it has reached the extreme limit of
+knowledge that it is within its power to attain.
+
+It is certain that the principles which, in all the orders of knowledge,
+discover to us absolute and necessary truths, constitute part of our
+reason, which surely makes its dwelling in us, and is intimately
+connected with personality in the depths of intellectual life. It
+follows that the truth, which reason reveals to us, falls thereby into
+close relation with the subject that perceives it, and seems only a
+conception of our mind. Nevertheless, as we have proved, we perceive
+truth, we are not the authors of it. If the person that I am, if the
+individual _me_ does not, perhaps, explain the whole of reason, how
+could it explain truth, and absolute truth? Man, limited and passing
+away, perceives necessary, eternal, infinite truth; that is for him a
+privilege sufficiently high; but he is neither the principle that
+sustains truth, nor the principle that gives it being. Man may say, My
+reason; but give him credit for never having dared to say, My truth.
+
+If absolute truths are beyond man who perceives them, once more, where
+are they, then? A peripatetic would respond--In nature. Is it, in fact,
+necessary to seek for them any other subject than the beings themselves
+which they govern? What are the laws of nature, except certain
+properties which our mind disengages from the beings and phenomena in
+which they are met, in order to consider them apart? Mathematical
+principles are nothing more. For example, the axiom thus expressed--The
+whole is greater than any of its parts, is true of any whole and part
+whatever. The principle of contradiction, considered in its logical
+title, as the condition of all our judgments, of all our reasonings,
+constitutes a part of the essence of all being, and no being can exist
+without containing it. The universal exists, says Aristotle, but it does
+not exist apart from particular beings.[44]
+
+This theory which considers universals as having their basis in things,
+is a progress towards the pure conceptualism which we have in the
+beginning indicated and shunned. Aristotle is much more of a realist
+than Abelard and Kant. He is quite right in maintaining that universals
+are in particular things, for particular things could not be without
+universals; universals give to them their fixity, even for a day, and
+their unity. But from the fact that universals are in particular beings,
+is it necessary to conclude that they, wholly and exclusively, reside
+there, and that they have no other reality than that of the objects to
+which they are applied? It is the same with principles of which
+universals are the constitutive elements. It is, it is true, in the
+particular fact, of a particular cause producing a particular event,
+that is given us the universal principle of causality; but this
+principle is much more extensive than the facts, for it is applied, not
+only to this fact, but to a thousand others. The particular fact
+contains the principle, but it does not wholly contain it, and, far from
+giving the basis of the principle, it is based upon it. As much may be
+said of other principles.
+
+Perhaps it will be replied that, if a principle is certainly more
+extensive than such a fact, or such a being, it is not more extensive
+than all facts and all beings, and that nature, considered as a whole,
+can explain that which each particular being does not explain. But
+nature, in its totality, is still only a finite and contingent thing,
+whilst the principles to be explained have a necessary and infinite
+bearing. The idea of the infinite can come neither from any particular
+being, nor from the whole of beings. Entire nature will not furnish us
+the idea of perfection, for all the beings of nature are imperfect.
+Absolute principles govern, then, all facts and all beings, they do not
+spring from them.
+
+Will it be necessary to come to the opinion, then, that absolute truths,
+being explicable neither by humanity nor by nature, subsist by
+themselves, and are to themselves their own foundation and their own
+subject?
+
+But this opinion contains still more absurdities than the preceding;
+for, I ask, what are truths, absolute or contingent, that exist by
+themselves, out of things in which they are found, and out of the
+intelligence that conceives them? Truth is, then, only a realized
+abstraction. There are no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail
+against good sense; and if such is the Platonic theory of ideas,
+Aristotle is right in his opposition to it. But such a theory is only a
+chimera that Aristotle created for the pleasure of combating it.
+
+Let us hasten to remove absolute truths from this ambiguous and
+equivocal state. And how? By applying to them a principle which should
+now be familiar to you. Yes, truth necessarily appeals to something
+beyond itself. As every phenomenon has its subject of inherence, as our
+faculties, our thoughts, our volitions, our sensations, exist only in a
+being which is ourselves, so truth supposes a being in which it resides,
+and absolute truths suppose a being absolute as themselves, wherein they
+have their final foundation. We come thus to something absolute, which
+is no longer suspended in the vagueness of abstraction, but is a being
+substantially existing. This being, absolute and necessary, since it is
+the subject of necessary and absolute truths, this being which is at the
+foundation of truth as its very essence, in a single word, is called
+_God_.[45]
+
+This theory, which conducts from absolute truth to absolute being, is
+not new in the history of philosophy: it goes back to Plato.
+
+Plato,[46] in searching for the principles of knowledge clearly saw,
+with Socrates his master, that the least definition, without which there
+can be no precise knowledge, supposes something universal and one, which
+does not come within the reach of the senses, which reason alone can
+discover; this something universal and one he called _Idea_.
+
+Ideas, which possess universality and unity, do not come from material,
+changing, and mobile things, to which they are applied, and which render
+them intelligible. On the other hand, it is not the human mind that
+constitutes ideas; for man is not the measure of truth.
+
+Plato calls Ideas veritable beings, [Greek: ta ontôs onta], since they
+alone communicate to sensible things and to human cognitions their truth
+and their unity. But does it follow that Plato gives to Ideas a
+substantial existence, that he makes of them beings properly so called?
+It is important that no cloud should be left on this fundamental point
+of the Platonic theory.
+
+At first, if any one should pretend that in Plato Ideas are beings
+subsisting by themselves, without interconnection and without relation
+to a common centre, numerous passages of the _Timaeus_ might be objected
+to him,[47] in which Plato speaks of Ideas as forming in their whole an
+ideal unity, which is the reason of the unity of the visible world.[48]
+
+Will it be said that this ideal world forms a distinct unity, a unity
+separate from God? But, in order to sustain this assertion, it is
+necessary to forget so many passages of the _Republic_, in which the
+relations of truth and science with the Good, that is to say, with God,
+are marked in brilliant characters.
+
+Let not that magnificent comparison be forgotten, in which, after having
+said that the sun produces in the physical world light and life,
+Socrates adds: "So thou art able to say, intelligible beings not only
+hold from the _Good_ that which renders them intelligible, but also
+their being and their essence."[49] So, intelligible beings, that is to
+say, Ideas, are not beings that exist by themselves.
+
+Men go on repeating with assurance that the Good, in Plato, is only the
+idea of the good, and that an idea is not God. I reply, that the Good is
+in fact an idea, according to Plato, but that the idea here is not a
+pure conception of the mind, an object of thought, as the peripatetic
+school understood it; I add, that the Idea of the Good is in Plato the
+first of Ideas, and that, for this reason, while remaining for us an
+object of thought, it is confounded as to existence with God. If the
+Idea of the Good is not God himself, how will the following passage,
+also taken from the _Republic_, be explained? "At the extreme limits of
+the intellectual world is the Idea of the Good, which is perceived with
+difficulty, but, in fine, cannot be perceived without concluding that it
+is the source of all that is beautiful and good; that in the visible
+world it produces light, and the star whence the light directly comes,
+that in the invisible world it directly produces truth and
+intelligence."[50] Who can produce, on the one hand, the sun and light,
+on the other, truth and intelligence, except a real being?
+
+But all doubt disappears before the following passages from the
+_Phædrus_, neglected, as it would seem designedly, by the detractors of
+Plato: "In this transition, (the soul) contemplates justice,
+contemplates wisdom, contemplates science, not that wherein enters
+change, nor that which shows itself different in the different objects
+which we are pleased to call beings, but science as it exists in that
+which is called being, _par excellence_...."[51]--"It belongs to the
+soul to conceive the universal, that is to say, that which, in the
+diversity of sensations, can be comprehended under a rational unity.
+This is the remembrance of what the soul has seen during its journey _in
+the train of Deity_, when, disdaining what we improperly call beings, it
+looked upwards to the only true being. So it is just that the thought of
+the philosopher should alone have wings; for its remembrance is always
+as much as possible with _the things which make God a true God, inasmuch
+as he is with them_."[52]
+
+So the objects of the philosopher's contemplation, that is to say,
+Ideas, are in God, and it is by these, by his essential union with
+these, that God is the true God, the God who, as Plato admirably says in
+the _Sophist_, participates in _august and holy intelligence_.[53]
+
+It is therefore certain, that, in the true Platonic theory, Ideas are
+not beings in the vulgar sense of the word, beings which would be
+neither in the mind of man, nor in nature, nor in God, and would subsist
+only by themselves. No, Plato considers Ideas as being at once the
+principles of sensible things, of which they are the laws, and the
+principles also of human knowledge, which owes to them its light, its
+rule, and its end, and the essential attributes of God, that is to say,
+God himself.
+
+Plato is truly the father of the doctrine which we have explained, and
+the great philosophers who have attached themselves to his school have
+always professed this same doctrine.
+
+The founder of Christian metaphysics, St. Augustine, is a declared
+disciple of Plato: everywhere he speaks, like Plato, of the relation of
+human reason to the divine reason, and of truth to God. In the _City of
+God_, book x., chap. ii., and in chap. ix. of book vii. of the
+_Confessions_, he goes to the extent of comparing the Platonic doctrine
+with that of St. John.
+
+He adopts, without reserve, the theory of Ideas. _Book of Eighty-three
+Questions_, question 46: "Ideas are the primordial forms, and, as it
+were, the immutable reasons of things; they are not created, they are
+eternal, and always the same: they are contained in the divine
+intelligence; and without being subject to birth and death, they are the
+types according to which is formed every thing that is born and
+dies."[54]
+
+"What man, pious, and penetrated with true religion, would dare to deny
+that all things that exist, that is to say, all things that, each of its
+kind, possess a determinate nature, have been created by God? This point
+being once conceded, can it be said that God has created things without
+reason? If it is impossible to say or think this, it follows that all
+things have been created with reason. But the reason of the existence
+of a man cannot be the same as the reason of the existence of a horse;
+that is absurd; each thing has therefore been created by virtue of a
+reason that is peculiar to it. Now, where can these reasons be, except
+in the mind of the Creator? For he saw nothing out of himself, which he
+could use as a model for creating what he created: such an opinion would
+be sacrilege.[55]
+
+"If the reasons of things to be created and things created are contained
+in the divine intelligence, and if there is nothing in the divine
+intelligence but the eternal and immutable, the reasons of things which
+Plato calls Ideas, are the eternal and immutable truths, by the
+participation in which every thing that is is such as it is."[56]
+
+St. Thomas himself, who scarcely knew Plato, and who was often enough
+held by Aristotle in a kind of empiricism, carried away by Christianity
+and St. Augustine, let the sentiment escape him, "that our natural
+reason is a sort of participation in the divine reason, that to this we
+owe our knowledge and our judgments, that this is the reason why it is
+said, that we see every thing in God."[57] There are in St. Thomas many
+other similar passages, of perhaps an expressive Platonism, which is not
+the Platonism of Plato, but of the Alexandrians.
+
+The Cartesian philosophy, in spite of its profound originality, and its
+wholly French character, is full of the Platonic spirit. Descartes has
+no thought of Plato, whom apparently he has never read; in nothing does
+he imitate or resemble him: nevertheless, from the first, he is met in
+the same regions with Plato, whither he goes by a different route.
+
+The notion of the infinite and the perfect is for Descartes what the
+universal, the Idea, is for Plato. No sooner has Descartes found by
+consciousness that he thinks, than he concludes from this that he
+exists, then, in course, by consciousness still, he recognizes himself
+as imperfect, full of defects, limitations, miseries, and, at the same
+time, conceives something infinite and perfect. He possesses the idea of
+the infinite and the perfect; but this idea is not his own work, for he
+is imperfect; it must then have been put into him by another being
+endowed with perfection, whom he conceives, whom he does not
+possess:--that being is God. Such is the process by which Descartes,
+setting out from his own thought, and his own being, elevated himself to
+God. This process, so simple, which he so simply exposes in the
+_Discours de la Méthode_, he will put successively, in the
+_Méditations_, in the _Résponses aux Objections_, in the _Principes_,
+under the most diverse forms, he will accommodate it, if it is
+necessary, to the language of the schools, in order that it may
+penetrate into them. After all, this process is compelled to conclude,
+from the idea of the infinite and the perfect, in the existence of a
+cause of this idea, adequate, at least, to the idea itself, that is to
+say, infinite and perfect. One sees that the first difference between
+Plato and Descartes is, that the ideas which in Plato are at once
+conceptions of our mind, and the principles of things, are for
+Descartes, as well as for all modern philosophy, only our conceptions,
+amongst which that of the infinite and perfect occupies the first place;
+the second difference is, that Plato goes from ideas to God by the
+principle of substances, if we may be allowed to use this technical
+language of modern philosophy; whilst Descartes employs rather the
+principle of causality, and concludes--well understood without
+syllogism--from the idea of the infinite and the perfect in a cause also
+perfect and infinite.[58] But under these differences, and in spite of
+many more, is a common basis, a genius the same, which at first elevates
+us above the senses, and, by the intermediary of marvellous ideas that
+are incontestably in us, bears us towards him who alone can be their
+substance, who is the infinite and perfect author of our idea of
+infinity and perfection. For this reason, Descartes belongs to the
+family of Plato and Socrates.
+
+The idea of the perfect and the finite being once introduced into the
+philosophy of the seventeenth century, it becomes there for the
+successors of Descartes what the theory of ideas became for the
+successors of Plato.
+
+Among the French writers, Malebranche, perhaps, reminds us with the
+least disadvantage, although very imperfectly still, of the manner of
+Plato: he sometimes expresses its elevation and grace; but he is far
+from possessing the Socratic good sense, and, it must be confessed, no
+one has clouded more the theory of ideas by exaggerations of every kind
+which he has mingled with them.[59] Instead of establishing that there
+is in the human reason, wholly personal as it is by its intimate
+relation with our other faculties, something also which is not personal,
+something universal which permits it to elevate itself to universal
+truths, Malebranche does not hesitate to absolutely confound the reason
+that is in us with the divine reason itself. Moreover, according to
+Malebranche, we do not directly know particular things, sensible
+objects; we know them only by ideas; it is the intelligible extension
+and not the material extension that we immediately perceive; in vision
+the proper object of the mind is the universal, the idea; and as the
+idea is in God, it is in God that we see all things. We can understand
+how well-formed minds must have been shocked by such a theory; but it is
+not just to confound Plato with his brilliant and unfaithful disciple.
+In Plato, sensibility directly attains sensible things; it makes them
+known to us as they are, that is to say, as very imperfect and
+undergoing perpetual change, which renders the knowledge that we have of
+them almost unworthy of the name of knowledge. It is reason, different
+in us from sensibility, which, above sensible objects, discovers to us
+the universal, the idea, and gives a knowledge solid and durable. Having
+once attained ideas, we have reached God himself, in whom they have
+their foundation, who finishes and consummates true knowledge. But we
+have no need of God, nor of ideas, in order to perceive sensible
+objects, which are defective and changing; for this our senses are
+sufficient. Reason is distinct from the senses; it transcends the
+imperfect knowledge of what they are capable; it attains the universal,
+because it possesses something universal itself; it participates in the
+divine reason, but it is not the divine reason; it is enlightened by it,
+it comes from it,--it is not it.
+
+Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Descartes in the
+treatise, _de l'Existence de Dieu_. The second part is entirely
+Cartesian in method, in the order and sequence of the proofs.
+Nevertheless, Malebranche also appears there, especially in the fourth
+chapter, on the nature of ideas, and he predominates in all the
+metaphysical portions of the first part. After the explanations which we
+have given, it will not be difficult for you to discern what is true and
+what is at times excessive in the passages which follow:[60]
+
+Part i., chap. lii. "Oh! how great is the mind of man! It bears in
+itself what astonishes itself and infinitely surpasses itself. Its ideas
+are universal, eternal, and immutable.... The idea of the infinite is
+in me as well as that of lines, numbers, and circles....--Chap. liv.
+Besides this idea of the infinite, I have also universal and immutable
+notions, which are the rule of all my judgments. I can judge of nothing
+except by consulting them, and it is not in my power to judge against
+what they represent to me. My thoughts, far from being able to correct
+this rule, are themselves corrected in spite of me by this superior
+rule, and they are irresistibly adjusted to its decision. Whatever
+effort of mind I may make, I can never succeed in doubting that two and
+two are four; that the whole is not greater than any of its parts; that
+the centre of a perfect circle is not equidistant from all points of the
+circumference. I am not at liberty to deny these propositions; and if I
+deny these truths, or others similar to them, I have in me something
+that is above me, that forces me to the conclusion. This fixed and
+immutable rule is so internal and so intimate that I am inclined to take
+it for myself; but it is above me since it corrects me, redresses me,
+and puts me in defiance against myself, and reminds me of my impotence.
+It is something that suddenly inspires me, provided I listen to it, and
+I am never deceived except in not listening to it.... This internal rule
+is what I call my reason....--Chap. lv. In truth my reason is in me; for
+I must continually enter into myself in order to find it. But the higher
+reason which corrects me when necessary, which I consult, exists not by
+me, and makes no part of me. This rule is perfect and immutable; I am
+changing and imperfect. When I am deceived, it does not lose its
+integrity. When I am undeceived, it is not this that returns to its end:
+it is this which, without ever having deviated, has the authority over
+me to remind me of my error, and to make me return. It is a master
+within, which makes me keep silent, which makes me speak, which makes me
+believe, which makes me doubt, which makes me acknowledge my errors or
+confirm my judgments. Listening to it, I am instructed; listening to
+myself, I err. This master is everywhere, and its voice makes itself
+heard, from end to end of the universe, in all men as well as in
+me....--Chap. lvi.... That which appears the most in us and seems to be
+the foundation of ourselves, I mean our reason, is that which is least
+of all our own, which we are constrained to believe to be especially
+borrowed. We receive without cessation, and at all moments, a reason
+superior to us, as we breathe without cessation the air, which is a
+foreign body....--Chap. lvii. The internal and universal master always
+and everywhere speaks the same truths. We are not this master. It is
+true that we often speak without it, and more loftily than it. But we
+are then deceived, we are stammering, we do not understand ourselves. We
+even fear to see that we are deceived, and we close the ear through fear
+of being humiliated by its corrections. Without doubt, man, who fears
+being corrected by this incorruptible reason, who always wanders in not
+following it, is not that perfect, universal, immutable reason which
+corrects him in spite of himself. In all things we find, as it were, two
+principles within us. One gives, the other receives; one wants, the
+other supplies; one is deceived, the other corrects; one goes wrong by
+its own inclination, the other rectifies it.... Each one feels within
+himself a limited and subaltern reason, which wanders when it escapes a
+complete subordination, which is corrected only by returning to the yoke
+of another superior, universal, and immutable power. So every thing in
+us bears the mark of a subaltern, limited, partial, borrowed reason,
+which needs another to correct it at every moment. All men are rational,
+because they possess the same reason which is communicated to them in
+different degrees. There is a certain number of wise men; but the wisdom
+which they receive, as it were, from the fountain-head, which makes them
+what they are, is one and the same....--Chap. lviii. Where is this
+wisdom? Where is this reason, which is both common and superior to all
+the limited and imperfect reasons of the human race? Where, then, is
+this oracle which is never silent, against which the vain prejudices of
+peoples are always impotent? Where is this reason which we ever need to
+consult, which comes to us to inspire us with the desire of listening to
+its voice? Where is this light _that lighteneth every man that cometh
+into the world_.... The substance of the human eye is not light; on the
+contrary, the eye borrows at each moment the light of the sun's rays. So
+my mind is not the primitive reason, the universal and immutable truth,
+it is only the medium that conducts this original light, that is
+illuminated by it....--Chap. lx. I find two reasons in myself,--one is
+myself, the other is above me. That which is in me is very imperfect,
+faulty, uncertain, preoccupied, precipitate, subject to aberration,
+changing, conceited, ignorant, and limited; in fine, it possesses
+nothing but what it borrows. The other is common to all men, and is
+superior to all; it is perfect, eternal, immutable, always ready to
+communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that are
+deceived, in fine, incapable of ever being exhausted or divided,
+although it gives itself to those who desire it. Where is this perfect
+reason, that is so near me and so different from me? Where is it? It
+must be something real.... Where is this supreme reason? Is it not God
+that I am seeking?"
+
+Part ii., chap. i., sect. 28.[61] "I have in me the idea of the infinite
+and of infinite perfection.... Give me a finite thing as great as you
+please--let it quite transcend the reach of my senses, so that it
+becomes, as it were, infinite to my imagination; it always remains
+finite in my mind; I conceive a limit to it, even when I cannot imagine
+it. I am not able to mark the limit; but I know that it exists; and far
+from confounding it with the infinite, I conceive it as infinitely
+distant from the idea that I have of the veritable infinite. If one
+speaks to me of the indefinite as a mean between the two extremes of the
+infinite and the limited, I reply, that it signifies nothing, that, at
+least, it only signifies something truly finite, whose boundaries escape
+the imagination without escaping the mind.... Sect. 29. Where have I
+obtained this idea, which is so much above me, which infinitely
+surpasses me, which astonishes me, which makes me disappear in my own
+eyes, which renders the infinite present to me? Whence does it come?
+Where have I obtained it?... Once more, whence comes this marvellous
+representation of the infinite, which pertains to the infinite itself,
+which resembles nothing finite? It is in me, it is more than myself; it
+seems to me every thing, and myself nothing. I can neither efface,
+obscure, diminish, nor contradict it. It is in me; I have not put it
+there, I have found it there; and I have found it there only because it
+was already there before I sought it. It remains there invariable, even
+when I do not think of it, when I think of something else. I find it
+whenever I seek it, and it often presents itself when I am not seeking
+it. It does not depend upon me; I depend upon it.... Moreover, who has
+made this infinite representation of the infinite, so as to give it to
+me? Has it made itself? Has the infinite image[62] of the infinite had
+no original, according to which it has been made, no real cause that has
+produced it? Where are we in relation to it? And what a mass of
+extravagances! It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to conclude that
+it is the infinitely perfect being that renders himself immediately
+present to me, when I conceive him, and that he himself is the idea
+which I have of him...."
+
+Chap. iv., sect. 49. "... My ideas are myself; for they are my
+reason.... My ideas, and the basis of myself, or of my mind, appear but
+the same thing. On the other hand, my mind is changing, uncertain,
+ignorant, subject to error, precipitate in its judgments, accustomed to
+believe what it does not clearly understand, and to judge without having
+sufficiently consulted its ideas, which are by themselves certain and
+immutable. My ideas, then, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. What
+shall I believe, then, they can be?... What then! are my ideas God?
+They are superior to my mind, since they rectify and correct it; they
+have the character of the Divinity, for they are universal and immutable
+like God; they really subsist, according to a principle that we have
+already established: nothing exists so really as that which is universal
+and immutable. If that which is changing, transitory, and derived, truly
+exists, much more does that which cannot change, and is necessary. It is
+then necessary to find in nature something existing and real, that is,
+my ideas, something that is within me, and is not myself, that is
+superior to me, that is in me even when I am not thinking of it, with
+which I believe myself to be alone, as though I were only with myself,
+in fine, that is more present to me, and more intimate than my own
+foundation. I know not what this something, so admirable, so familiar,
+so unknown, can be, except God."
+
+Let us now hear the most solid, the most authoritative of the Christian
+doctors of the seventeenth century--let us hear Bossuet in his _Logic_,
+and in the _Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self_.[63]
+
+Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philosophy--St.
+Augustine, St. Thomas, and Descartes. He had been taught at the college
+of Navarre the doctrine of St. Thomas, that is to say, a modified
+peripateticism; at the same time he was nourished by the reading of St.
+Augustine, and out of the schools he found spread abroad the philosophy
+of Descartes. He adopted it, and had no difficulty in reconciling it
+with that of St. Augustine, while, upon more than one point, it
+corroborated the doctrine of St. Thomas. Bossuet invented nothing in
+philosophy; he received every thing, but every thing united and
+purified, thanks to that supreme good sense which in him is a quality
+predominating over force, grandeur, and eloquence.[64] In the passages
+which I am about to exhibit to you, which I hope you will impress upon
+your memories, you will not find the grace of Malebranche, the
+exhaustless abundance of Fenelon; you will find what is better than
+either, to wit, clearness and precision--all the rest in him is in some
+sort an addition to these.
+
+Fenelon disengages badly enough the process which conducts from ideas,
+from universal and necessary truths, to God. Bossuet renders to himself
+a strict account of this process, and marks it with force; it is the
+principle that we have invoked, that which concludes from attributes in
+a subject, from qualities in a being, from laws in a legislator, from
+eternal verities in an eternal mind that comprehends them and eternally
+possesses them. Bossuet cites St. Augustine, cites Plato himself,
+interprets him and defends him in advance against those who would make
+Platonic ideas beings subsisting by themselves, whilst they really exist
+only in the mind of God.
+
+_Logic_, book i., chap. xxxvi. "When I consider a rectilineal triangle
+as a figure bounded by three straight lines, and having three angles
+equal to two right angles, neither more nor less; and when I pass from
+this to an equilateral triangle with its three sides and its three
+angles equal, whence it follows, that I consider each angle of this
+triangle as less than a right angle; and when I come again to consider a
+right-angled triangle, and what I clearly see in this idea, in
+connection with the preceding ideas, that the two angles of this
+triangle are necessarily acute, and that these two acute angles are
+exactly equal to one right angle, neither more nor less--I see nothing
+contingent and mutable, and consequently, the ideas that represent to me
+these truths are eternal. Were there not in nature a single equilateral
+or right-angled triangle, or any triangle whatever, every thing that I
+have just considered would remain always true and indubitable. In fact,
+I am not sure of having ever seen an equilateral or rectilineal
+triangle. Neither the rule nor the dividers could assure me that any
+human hand, however skilful, could ever make a line exactly straight, or
+sides and angles perfectly equal to each other. In strictness, we should
+only need a microscope, in order, not to understand, but to see at a
+glance, that the lines which we trace deviate from straightness, and
+differ in length. We have never seen, then, any but imperfect images of
+equilateral, rectilineal, or isosceles triangles, since they neither
+exist in nature, nor can be constructed by art. Nevertheless, what we
+see of the nature and the properties of a triangle, independently of
+every existing triangle, is certain and indubitable. Place an
+understanding in any given time, or at any point in eternity, thus to
+speak, and it will see these truths equally manifest; they are,
+therefore, eternal. Since the understanding does not give being to
+truth, but is only employed in perceiving truth, it follows, that were
+every created understanding destroyed, these truths would immutably
+subsist...."
+
+Chap. xxxvii. "Since there is nothing eternal, immutable, independent,
+but God alone, we must conclude that these truths do not subsist in
+themselves, but in God alone, and in his eternal ideas, which are
+nothing else than himself.
+
+"There are those who, in order to verify these eternal truths which we
+have proposed, and others of the same nature, have figured to themselves
+eternal essences aside from deity--a pure illusion, which comes from
+not understanding that in God, as in the source of being, and in his
+understanding, where resides the art of making and ordering all things,
+are found primitive ideas, or as St. Augustine says, the eternally
+subsisting reasons of things. Thus, in the thought of the architect is
+the primitive idea of a house which he perceives in himself; this
+intellectual house would not be destroyed by any ruin of houses built
+according to this interior model; and if the architect were eternal, the
+idea and the reason of the house would also be eternal. But, without
+recurring to the mortal architect, there is an immortal architect, or
+rather a primitive eternally subsisting art in the immutable thought of
+God, where all order, all measure, all rule, all proportion, all reason,
+in a word, all truth are found in their origin.
+
+"These eternal verities which our ideas represent, are the true object
+of science; and this is the reason why Plato, in order to render us
+truly wise, continually reminds us of these ideas, wherein is seen, not
+what is formed, but what is, not what is begotten and is corrupt, what
+appears and vanishes, what is made and defective, but what eternally
+subsists. It is this intellectual world which that divine philosopher
+has put in the mind of God before the world was constructed, which is
+the immutable model of that great work. These are the simple, eternal,
+immutable, unbegotten, incorruptible ideas to which he refers us, in
+order to understand truth. This is what has made him say that our ideas,
+images of the divine ideas, were also immediately derived from the
+divine ideas, and did not come by the senses, which serve very well,
+said he, to awaken them, but not to form them in our mind. For if,
+without having ever seen any thing eternal, we have so clear an idea of
+eternity, that is to say, of being that is always the same; if, without
+having perceived a perfect triangle, we understand it distinctly, and
+demonstrate so many incontestable truths concerning it, it is a mark
+that these ideas do not come from our senses."
+
+_Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self._[65] Chap. iv., sect. 5.
+_Intelligence has for its object eternal truths, which are nothing else
+than God himself, in whom they are always subsisting and perfectly
+understood._
+
+"... We have already remarked that the understanding has eternal
+verities for its object. The standards by which we measure all things
+are eternal and invariable. We know clearly that every thing in the
+universe is made according to proportion, from the greatest to the
+least, from the strongest to the weakest, and we know it well enough to
+understand that these proportions are related to the principles of
+eternal truth. All that is demonstrated in mathematics, and in any other
+science whatever, is eternal and immutable, since the effect of the
+demonstration is to show that the thing cannot be otherwise than as it
+is demonstrated to be. So, in order to understand the nature and the
+properties of things which I know, for example, a triangle, a square, a
+circle, or the relations of these figures, and all other figures, to
+each other, it is not necessary that I should find such in nature, and I
+may be sure that I have never traced, never seen, any that are perfect.
+Neither is it necessary that I should think that there is motion in the
+world in order to understand the nature of motion itself, or that of the
+lines which every motion describes, and the hidden proportions according
+to which it is developed. When the idea of these things is once awakened
+in my mind, I know that, whether they have an actual existence or not,
+so they must be, that it is impossible for them to be of another nature,
+or to be made in a different way. To come to something that concerns us
+more nearly, I mean by these principles of eternal truth, that they do
+not depend on human existence, that, so far as he is capable of
+reasoning, it is the essential duty of man to live according to reason,
+and to search for his maker, through fear of lacking the recognition of
+his maker, if in fault of searching for him, he should be ignorant of
+him. All these truths, and all those which I deduce from them by sure
+reasoning, subsist independently of all time. In whatever time I place a
+human understanding, it will know them, but in knowing them it will find
+them truths, it will not make them such, for our cognitions do not make
+their objects, but suppose them. So these truths subsist before all
+time, before the existence of a human understanding: and were every
+thing that is made according to the laws of proportion, that is to say,
+every thing that I see in nature, destroyed except myself, these laws
+would be preserved in my thought, and I should clearly see that they
+would always be good and always true, were I also destroyed with the
+rest.
+
+"If I seek how, where, and in what subject they subsist eternal and
+immutable, as they are, I am obliged to avow the existence of a being in
+whom truth is eternally subsisting, in whom it is always understood; and
+this being must be truth itself, and must be all truth, and from him it
+is that truth is derived in every thing that exists and has
+understanding out of him.
+
+"It is, then, in him, in a certain manner, who is incomprehensible[66]
+to me, it is in him, I say, that I see these eternal truths; and to see
+them is to turn to him who is immutably all truth, and to receive his
+light.
+
+"This eternal object is God eternally subsisting, eternally true,
+eternally truth itself.... It is in this eternal that these eternal
+truths subsist. It is also by this that I see them. All other men see
+them as well as myself, and we see them always the same, and as having
+existed before us. For we know that we have commenced, and we know that
+these truths have always been. Thus we see them in a light superior to
+ourselves, and it is in this superior light that we see whether we act
+well or ill, that is to say, whether we act according to these
+constitutive principles of our being or not. In that, then, we see, with
+all other truths, the invariable rules of our conduct, and we see that
+there are things in regard to which duty is indispensable, and that in
+things which are naturally indifferent, the true duty is to accommodate
+ourselves to the greatest good of society. A well-disposed man conforms
+to the civil laws, as he conforms to custom. But he listens to an
+inviolable law in himself, which says to him that he must do wrong to no
+one, that it is better to be injured than to injure.... The man who sees
+these truths, by these truths judges himself, and condemns himself when
+he errs. Or, rather, these truths judge him, since they do not
+accommodate themselves to human judgments, but human judgments are
+accommodated to them. And the man judges rightly when, feeling these
+judgments to be variable in their nature, he gives them for a rule these
+eternal verities.
+
+"These eternal verities which every understanding always perceives the
+same, by which every understanding is governed, are something of God, or
+rather, are God himself....
+
+"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, and man is to
+himself an indubitable proof of this. For, whether he considers himself
+or extends his vision to the beings that surround him, he sees every
+thing subjected to certain laws, and to immutable rules of truth. He
+sees that he understands these laws, at least in part,--he who has
+neither made himself, nor any part of the universe, however small, and
+he sees that nothing could have been made had not these laws been
+elsewhere perfectly understood; and he sees that it is necessary to
+recognize an eternal wisdom wherein all law, all order, all proportion,
+have their primitive reason. For it is absurd to suppose that there is
+so much sequence in truths, so much proportion in things, so much
+economy in their arrangement, that is to say, in the world, and that
+this sequence, this proportion, this economy, should nowhere be
+understood:--and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these
+things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that there is some
+one who knows them in their perfection, and that this is he who has made
+all things...."
+
+Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates that the soul
+knows by the imperfection of its own intelligence that there is
+elsewhere a perfect intelligence.
+
+In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of truth to God.
+
+"Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so pure, of truth?
+Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern reasoning, that form
+manners, by which it discovers the secret proportions of figures and of
+movements? Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which I
+have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, the circles,
+that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and
+their relations? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces
+this effect? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so
+true,--I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular figure,
+and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly? Are there
+somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, triangles or circles
+existing with this perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed
+upon my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and conduct also exist in
+some place, whence they communicate to me their immutable truth? Or,
+indeed, is it not rather he who has everywhere extended measure,
+proportion, truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of
+them?... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in the
+image of God, capable of understanding truth, which is God himself,
+actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards God, where
+the truth appears to it as soon as God wills to make the truth appear to
+it.... It is an astonishing thing that man understands so many truths,
+without understanding at the same time that all truth comes from God,
+that it is in God, that it is God himself.... It is certain that God is
+the primitive reason of all that exists and has understanding in the
+universe; that he is the true original, and that every thing is true by
+relation to his eternal idea, that seeking truth is seeking him, and
+that finding truth is finding him...."
+
+Chap. v., sect. 14. "The senses do not convey to the soul knowledge of
+truth. They excite it, awaken it, and apprize it of certain effects: it
+is solicited to search for causes, but it discovers them, it sees their
+connections, the principles which put them in motion, only in a superior
+light that comes from God, or is God himself. God is, then, truth, which
+is always the same to all minds, and the true source of intelligence.
+For this reason intelligence beholds the light, breathes, and lives."
+
+At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes to crown these
+great testimonies, and to complete their unanimity.
+
+Here is a passage from an important treatise entitled, _Meditationes de
+Cognitione, Veritate et Idæis_, in which Leibnitz declares that primary
+notions are the attributes of God. "I know not," he says, "whether man
+can perfectly account to himself for his ideas, except by ascending to
+primary ideas for which he can no more account, that is to say, to the
+absolute attributes of God."[67]
+
+The same doctrine is in the _Principia Philosophiæ seu Theses in Gratiam
+Principis Eugenii_. "The intelligence of God is the region of eternal
+truths, and the ideas that depend upon them."[68]
+
+_Theodicea_, part ii., sect. 189.[69] "It must not be said with the
+Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were no
+understanding, not even that of God. For, in my opinion, it is the
+divine understanding that makes the reality of eternal truths."
+
+_Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain_, book ii., chap. xvii. "The
+idea of the absolute is in us internally like that of being. _These
+absolutes are nothing else than the attributes of God_, and it may be
+said they are just as much the source of ideas as God is in himself the
+principle of beings."
+
+_Ibid._, book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded where those ideas
+would be if no mind existed, and what would then become of the real
+foundation of this certainty of eternal truths? That brings us in fine
+to the last foundation of truths, to wit, to that supreme and universal
+mind which cannot be destitute of existence, whose understanding, to
+speak truly, is the region of eternal truths, as St. Augustine saw and
+clearly enough expressed it. And that it may not be thought necessary to
+recur to it, we must consider that these necessary truths contain the
+determinating reason and the regulative principle of existences
+themselves, and, in a word, the laws of the universe. So these
+unnecessary truths, being anterior to the existences of contingent
+beings, must have their foundation in the existence of a necessary
+substance. It is there that I find the original of truths which are
+stamped upon our souls, not in the form of propositions, but as sources,
+the application and occasions of which will produce actual
+enunciations."
+
+So, from Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicians have thought
+that absolute truth is an attribute of absolute being. Truth is
+incomprehensible without God, as God is incomprehensible without truth.
+Truth is placed between human intelligence and the supreme intelligence,
+as a kind of mediator. In the lowest degree, as well as at the height of
+being, God is everywhere met, for truth is everywhere. Study nature,
+elevate yourselves to the laws that govern it and make of it as it were
+a living truth:--the more profoundly you understand its laws, the nearer
+you approach to God. Study, above all, humanity; humanity is much
+greater than nature, for it comes from God as well as nature, and knows
+him, while nature is ignorant of him. Especially seek and love truth,
+and refer it to the immortal being who is its source. The more you know
+of the truth, the more you know of God. The sciences, so far from
+turning us away from religion, conduct us to it. Physics, with their
+laws, mathematics, with their sublime ideas, especially philosophy,
+which cannot take a single step without encountering universal and
+necessary principles, are so many stages on the way to Deity, and, thus
+to speak, so many temples in which homage is perpetually paid to him.
+
+But in the midst of these high considerations, let us carefully guard
+ourselves against two opposite errors, from which men of fine genius
+have not always known how to preserve themselves,--against the error of
+making the reason of man purely individual, and against the error of
+confounding it with truth and the divine reason.[70] If the reason of
+man is purely individual because it is in the individual, it can
+comprehend nothing that is not individual, nothing that transcends the
+limits wherein it is confined. Not only is it unable to elevate itself
+to any universal and necessary truth, not only is it unable to have any
+idea of it, even any suspicion of it, as one blind from his birth can
+have no suspicion that a sun exists; but there is no power, not even
+that of God, that by any means could make penetrate the reason of man
+any truth of that order absolutely repugnant to its nature; since, for
+this end, it would not be sufficient for God to lighten our mind; it
+would be necessary to change it, to add to it another faculty. Neither,
+on the other hand, must we, with Malebranche, make the reason of man to
+such a degree impersonal that it takes the place of truth which is its
+object, and of God who is its principle. It is truth that to us is
+absolutely impersonal, and not reason. Reason is in man, yet it comes
+from God. Hence it is individual and finite, whilst its root is in the
+infinite; it is personal by its relation to the person in which it
+resides, and must also possess I know not what character of
+universality, of necessity even, in order to be capable of conceiving
+universal and necessary truths; hence it seems, by turns, according to
+the point of view from which it is regarded, pitiable and sublime. Truth
+is in some sort lent to human reason, but it belongs to a totally
+different reason, to wit, that supreme, eternal, uncreated reason, which
+is God himself. The truth in us is nothing else than our object; in God,
+it is one of his attributes, as well as justice, holiness, mercy, as we
+shall subsequently see. God exists; and so far as he exists, he thinks,
+and his thoughts are truths, eternal as himself, which are reflected in
+the laws of the universe, which the reason of man has received the power
+to attain. Truth is the offspring, the utterance, I was about to say,
+the eternal word of God, if it is permitted philosophy to borrow this
+divine language from that holy religion which teaches us to worship God
+in spirit and in truth. Of old, the theory of Ideas, which manifest God
+to men, and remind them of him, had given to Plato the surname of the
+precursor; on account of that theory of Ideas he was dear to St.
+Augustine, and is invoked by Bossuet. It is by this same theory, wisely
+interpreted, and purified by the light of our age, that the new
+philosophy is attached to the tradition of great philosophies, and to
+that of Christianity.
+
+The last problem that the science of the true presented is resolved:--we
+are in possession of the basis of absolute truths. God is substance,
+reason, supreme cause, and the unity of all these truths; God, and God
+alone, is to us the boundary beyond which we have nothing more to seek.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[44] See our work entitled, _Metaphysics of Aristotle_, 2d edition,
+_passim_. In Aristotle himself, see especially _Metaphysics_, book vii.,
+chap. xii., and book xiii., chap. ix.
+
+[45] There are doubtless many other ways of arriving at God, as we shall
+successively see; but this is the way of metaphysics. We do not exclude
+any of the known and accredited proofs of the existence of God; but we
+begin with that which gives all the others. See further on, part ii.,
+_God, the Principle of Beauty_, and part iii., _God, the Principle of
+the Good_, and the last lecture, which sums up the whole course.
+
+[46] We have said a word on the Platonic theory of ideas, 1st Series,
+vol. iv., p. 461 and 522. See also, vol. ii. of the 2d Series, lecture
+7, on _Plato and Aristotle_, especially 3d Series, vol. i., a few words
+on the _Language of the Theory of Ideas_, p. 121; our work on the
+_Metaphysics of Aristotle_, p. 48 and 149, and our translation of Plato,
+_passim_.
+
+[47] Aristotle first stated this; modern peripatetics have repeated it;
+and after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient philosophy, and
+philosophy in general, by giving the appearance of absurdity to its most
+illustrious representative.
+
+[48] See particularly p. 121 of the _Timaeus_, vol. xii. of our
+translation.
+
+[49] _Republic_, book vi., vol. x. of our translation, p. 57.
+
+[50] _Republic_, book vii., p. 20.
+
+[51] _Phædrus_, vol. vi., p. 51.
+
+[52] _Phædrus_, vol. vi., p. 55.
+
+[53] Vol. xi., p. 261.
+
+[54] Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 17: _Idex sunt formæ quædam principales
+et rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quæ ipsæ formatæ non
+sunt ac per hoc æternæ ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quæ in divina
+intelligentia continentur_....
+
+[55] Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 18. _Singula igitur propriis creata sunt
+rationibus. Has autem rationes ubi arbitrandum est esse nisi in mente
+Creatoris? non enim extra se quidquam intuebatur, ut secundum id
+constitueret quod constituebat: nam hoc opinari sacrilegum est._
+
+[56] _Ibid._ See also, book of the _Confessions_, book ii. of the _Free
+Will_, book xii. of the _Trinity_, book vii. of the _City of God_, &c.
+
+[57] _Summa totius theologiæ_. Primæ partis quæst. xii. art. 11. _Ad
+tertium dicendum, quod omnia dicimus in Deo videre, et secundum ipsum de
+omnibus judicare, in quantum per participationem sui luminis omnia
+cognoscimus et dijudicamus. Nam et ipsum lumen naturale rationis
+participatio quædam est divini luminis._
+
+[58] On the doctrine of Descartes, and on the proof of the existence of
+God and the true process that he employs, see 1st Series, vol. iv.,
+lecture 12, p. 64, lecture 22, p. 509-518; vol. v., lecture 6, p. 205;
+2d Series, vol. xi., lecture 11; especially the three articles, already
+cited, of the _Journal des Savants_ for the year 1850.
+
+[59] See on Malebranche, 2d Series, lecture 2, and 3d Series, vol. iii.,
+_Modern Philosophy_, as well as the _Fragments of Cartesian Philosophy_;
+preface of the 1st edition of our _Pascal_:--"On this basis, so pure,
+Malebranche is not steady; is excessive and rash, I know; narrow and
+extreme, I do not fear to say; but always sublime, expressing only one
+side of Plato, but expressing it in a wholly Christian spirit and in
+angelic language. Malebranche is a Descartes who strays, having found
+divine wings, and lost all connection with the earth."
+
+[60] We use the only good edition of the treatise on the Existence of
+God, that which the Abbé Gosselin has given in the collection of the
+_Works of Fenelon_. Versailles, 1820. See vol. i., p. 80.
+
+[61] Edit. de Versailles, p. 145.
+
+[62] It is not necessary to remark how incorrect are the expressions,
+_representation of the infinite, image of the infinite_, especially
+_infinite image of the infinite_. We cannot represent to ourselves, we
+cannot imagine to ourselves the infinite. We conceive the infinite; the
+infinite is not an object of the imagination, but of the understanding,
+of reason. See 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 6, p. 223, 224.
+
+[63] By a trifling anachronism, for which we shall be pardoned, we have
+here joined to the _Traité de la Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-même_,
+so long known, the _Logique_, which was only published in 1828.
+
+[64] 4th Series, vol. i., preface of the 1st edition of _Pascal_:
+"Bossuet, with more moderation, and supported by a good sense which
+nothing can shake, is, in his way, a disciple of the same doctrine, only
+the extremes of which according to his custom, he shunned. This great
+mind, which may have superiors in invention, but has no equal for force
+in common sense, was very careful not to place revelation and philosophy
+in opposition to each other: he found it the safer and truer way to give
+to each its due, to borrow from philosophy whatever natural light it can
+give, in order to increase it in turn with the supernatural light, of
+which the Church has been made the depository. It is in this sovereign
+good sense, capable of comprehending every thing, and uniting every
+thing, that resides the supreme originality of Bossuet. He shunned
+particular opinions as small minds seek them for the triumph of
+self-love. He did not think of himself; he only searched for truth, and
+wherever he found it he listened to it, well assured that if the
+connection between truths of different orders sometimes escapes us, it
+is no reason for closing the eyes to any truth. If we wished to give a
+scholastic name to Bossuet, according to the custom of the Middle Age,
+we would have to call him the infallible doctor. He is not only one of
+the highest, he is also one of the best and solidest intelligences that
+ever existed; and this great conciliator has easily reconciled religion
+and philosophy, St. Augustine and Descartes, tradition and reason."
+
+[65] The best, or, rather, only good edition is that which was published
+from an authentic copy, in 1846, by Lecoffre.
+
+[66] These words, _d'une certaine manière qui m'est incompréhensible,
+c'est en lui, dis-je_, are not in the first edition of 1722.
+
+[67] _Leibnitzii Opera_, edit. Deutens, vol. ii., p. 17.
+
+[68] _Ibid._, p. 24.
+
+[69] 1st edition, Amsterdam, 1710, p. 354, edit. of M. de Jaucourt,
+Amsterdam, 1747, vol. ii., p. 93.
+
+[70] We have many times designated these two rocks, for example, 2d
+Series, vol. i., lecture 5, p. 92:--"One cannot help smiling when, in
+our times, he hears individual reason spoken against. In truth it is a
+great waste of declamation, for the reason is not individual; if it
+were, we should govern it as we govern our resolutions and our
+volitions, we could at any moment change its acts, that is to say, our
+conceptions. If these conceptions were merely individual, we should not
+think of imposing them upon another individual, for to impose our own
+individual and personal conceptions on another individual, on another
+person, would be the most extravagant despotism.... We call those mad
+who do not admit the relations of numbers, the difference between the
+beautiful and the ugly, the just and the unjust. Why? Because we know
+that it is not the individual that constitutes these conceptions, or, in
+other terms, we know that the reason has something universal and
+absolute, that upon this ground it obligates all individuals; and an
+individual, at the same time that he knows that he himself is obligated
+by it, knows that all others are obligated by it on the same
+ground."--_Ibid._, p. 93: "Truth misconceived is thereby neither altered
+nor destroyed; it subsists independently of the reason that perceives it
+or perceives it ill. Truth in itself is independent of our reason. Its
+true subject is the universal and absolute reason."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+ON MYSTICISM.
+
+    Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and
+    mysticism. Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without
+    an intermediary.--Two sorts of mysticism.--Mysticism of
+    sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities--the one
+    external, the other internal, and corresponding to the soul as
+    external sensibility corresponds to nature.--Legitimate part of
+    sentiment.--Its aberrations.--Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus:
+    God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by
+    pure thought.--Ecstasy.--Mixture of superstition and abstraction
+    in mysticism.--Conclusion of the first part of the course.
+
+
+Whether we turn our attention to the forces and the laws that animate
+and govern matter without belonging to it, or as the order of our labors
+calls us to do, reflect upon the universal and necessary truths which
+our mind discovers but does not constitute, the least systematic use of
+reason makes us naturally conclude from the forces and laws of the
+universe that there is a first intelligent mover, and from necessary
+truths that there is a necessary being who alone is their substance. We
+do not perceive God, but we conceive him, upon the faith of this
+admirable world exposed to our view, and upon that of this other world,
+more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves. By this double road we
+succeed in going to God. This natural course is that of all men: it must
+be sufficient for a sound philosophy. But there are feeble and
+presumptuous minds that do not know how to go thus far, or do not know
+how to stop there. Confined to experience, they do not dare to conclude
+from what they see in what they do not see, as if at all times, at the
+sight of the first phenomenon that appears to their eyes, they did not
+admit that this phenomenon has a cause, even when this cause does not
+come within the reach of their senses. They do not perceive it, yet they
+believe in it, for the simple reason that they necessarily conceive it.
+Man and the universe are also facts that cannot but have a cause,
+although this cause may neither be seen by our eyes nor touched by our
+hands. Reason has been given us for the very purpose of going, and
+without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible,
+from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and
+also, from necessary and universal truths, which surround us on every
+side, to their eternal and necessary principle. Such is the natural and
+legitimate bearing of reason. It possesses an evidence of which it
+renders no account, and is not thereby less irresistible to whomsoever
+does not undertake to contest with God the veracity of the faculties
+which he has received. But one does not revolt against reason with
+impunity. It punishes our false wisdom by giving us up to extravagance.
+When one has confined himself to the narrow limits of what he directly
+perceives, he is smothered by these limits, wishes to go out of them at
+any price, and invokes some other means of knowing; he did not dare to
+admit the existence of an invisible God, and now behold him aspiring to
+enter into immediate communication with him, as with sensible objects,
+and the objects of consciousness. It is an extreme feebleness for a
+rational being thus to doubt reason, and it is an incredible rashness,
+in this despair of intelligence, to dream of direct communication with
+God. This desperate and ambitious dream is mysticism.
+
+It behooves us to separate with care this chimera, that is not without
+danger, from the cause that we defend. It behooves us so much the more
+to openly break with mysticism, as it seems to touch us more nearly, as
+it pretends to be the last word of philosophy, and as by an appearance
+of greatness it is able to seduce many a noble soul, especially at one
+of those epochs of lassitude, when, after the cruel disappointment of
+excessive hopes, human reason, having lost faith in its own power
+without having lost the need of God, in order to satisfy this immortal
+need, addresses itself to every thing except itself, and in fault of
+knowing how to go to God by the way that is open to it, throws itself
+out of common sense, and tries the new, the chimerical, even the absurd,
+in order to attain the impossible.
+
+Mysticism contains a pusillanimous skepticism in the place of reason,
+and, at the same time, a faith blind and carried even to the oblivion of
+all the conditions imposed upon human nature. To conceive God under the
+transparent veil of the universe and above the highest truths, is at
+once too much and too little for mysticism. It does not believe that it
+knows God, if it knows him only in his manifestations and by the signs
+of his existence: it wishes to perceive him directly, it wishes to be
+united to him, sometimes by sentiment, sometimes by some other
+extraordinary process.
+
+Sentiment plays so important a part in mysticism, that our first care
+must be to investigate the nature and proper function of this
+interesting and hitherto ill-studied part of human nature.
+
+It is necessary to distinguish sentiment well from sensation. There are,
+in some sort, two sensibilities: one is directed to the external world,
+and is charged with transmitting to the soul the impressions that it
+sees; the other is wholly interior, and is related to the soul as the
+other is to nature,--its function is to receive the impression, and, as
+it were, the rebound of what passes in the soul. Have we discovered any
+truth? there is something in us which feels joy on account of it. Have
+we performed a good action? we receive our reward in a feeling of
+satisfaction less vivid, but more delicate and more durable than all the
+agreeable sensations that come from the body. It seems as if
+intelligence also had its intimate organ, which suffers or enjoys,
+according to the state of the intelligence. We bear in ourselves a
+profound source of emotion, at once physical and moral, which expresses
+the union of our two natures. The animal does not go beyond sensation,
+and pure thought belongs only to the angelic nature. The sentiment that
+partakes of sensation and thought is the portion of humanity. Sentiment
+is, it is true, only an echo of reason; but this echo is sometimes
+better understood than reason itself, because it resounds in the most
+intimate, the most delicate portions of the soul, and moves the entire
+man.
+
+It is a singular, but incontestable fact, that as soon as reason has
+conceived truth, the soul attaches itself to it, and loves it. Yes, the
+soul loves truth. It is a wonderful thing that a being strayed into one
+corner of the universe, alone charged with sustaining himself against so
+many obstacles, who, it would seem, has enough to do to think of
+himself, to preserve and somewhat embellish his life, is capable of
+loving what is not related to him, and exists only in an invisible
+world! This disinterested love of truth gives evidence of the greatness
+of him who feels it.
+
+Reason takes one step more:--it is not contented with truth, even
+absolute truth, when convinced that it possesses it ill, that it does
+not possess it as it really is; as long as it has not placed it upon its
+eternal basis; having arrived there, it stops as before its impassable
+barrier, having nothing more to seek, nothing more to find. Sentiment
+follows reason, to which it is attached; it stops, it rests, only in the
+love of the infinite being.
+
+In fact, it is the infinite that we love, while we believe that we are
+loving finite things, even while loving truth, beauty, virtue. And so
+surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms us, that its
+highest manifestations do not satisfy us until we have referred them to
+their immortal source. The heart is insatiable, because it aspires after
+the infinite. This sentiment, this need of the infinite, is at the
+foundation of the greatest passions, and the most trifling desires. A
+sigh of the soul in the presence of the starry heavens, the melancholy
+attached to the passion of glory, to ambition, to all the great emotions
+of the soul, express it better without doubt, but they do not express it
+more than the caprice and mobility of those vulgar loves, wandering from
+object to object in a perpetual circle of ardent desires, of poignant
+disquietudes, and mournful disenchantments.
+
+Let us designate another relation between reason and sentiment.
+
+The mind at first precipitates itself towards its object without
+rendering to itself an account of what it does, of what it perceives, of
+what it feels. But, with the faculty of thinking, of feeling, it has
+also that of willing; it possesses the liberty of returning to itself,
+of reflecting on its own thought and sentiment, of consenting to this,
+or of resisting it, of abstaining from it, or of reproducing its thought
+and sentiment, while stamping them with a new character. Spontaneity,
+reflection,--these are the two great forms of intelligence.[71] One is
+not the other; but, after all, the latter does little more than develop
+the former; they contain at bottom the same things:--the point of view
+alone is different. Every thing that is spontaneous is obscure and
+confused; reflection carries with it a clear and distinct view.
+
+Reason does not begin by reflection; it does not at first perceive the
+truth as universal and necessary; consequently, when it passes from idea
+to being, when it refers truth to the real being that is its subject, it
+has not sounded, it even has no suspicion of the depth of the chasm it
+passes; it passes it by means of the power which is in it, but it is not
+astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished, and
+undertakes by the aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the
+opposite of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. Here
+commences the strife between sophism and common sense, between false
+science and natural truth, between good and bad philosophy, both of
+which come from free reflection. The sad and sublime privilege of
+reflection is error; but reflection is the remedy for the evil it
+produces. If it can deny natural truth, usually it confirms it, returns
+to common sense by a longer or shorter circuit; it opposes in vain all
+the tendencies of human nature, by which it is almost always overcome,
+and brought back submissive to the first inspirations of reason,
+fortified by this trial. But there is nothing more in the end than there
+was at the beginning; only in primitive inspiration there was a power
+which was ignorant of itself, and in the legitimate results of
+reflection there is a power which knows itself:--one is the triumph of
+instinct, the other, that of true science.
+
+Sentiment which accompanies intelligence in all its proceedings presents
+the same phenomena.
+
+The heart, like reason, pursues the infinite, and the only difference
+there is in these pursuits is, that sometimes the heart seeks the
+infinite without knowing that it seeks it, and sometimes it renders to
+itself an account of the final end of the need of loving what disturbs
+it. When reflection is added to love, if it finds that the object loved
+is in fact worthy of being loved, far from enfeebling love, it
+strengthens it; far from clipping its divine wings, it develops them,
+and nourishes them, as Plato[72] says. But if the object of love is only
+a symbol of the true beauty, only capable of exciting the desire of the
+soul without satisfying it, reflection breaks the charm which held the
+heart, dissipates the chimera that enchained it. It must be very sure in
+regard to its attachments, in order to dare to put them to the proof of
+reflection. O Psyche! Psyche! preserve thy good fortune; do not sound
+the mystery too deeply. Take care not to bring the fearful light near
+the invisible lover with whom thy soul is enamored. At the first ray of
+the fatal lamp love is awakened, and flies away. Charming image of what
+takes place in the soul, when to the serene and unsuspecting confidence
+of sentiment succeeds reflection with its bitter train. This is perhaps
+also the meaning of the biblical account of the tree of knowledge.[73]
+Before science and reflection are innocence and faith. Science and
+reflection at first engender doubt, disquietude, distaste for what one
+possesses, the disturbed pursuit of what one knows not, troubles of mind
+and soul, sore travail of thought, and, in life, many faults, until
+innocence, forever lost, is replaced by virtue, simple faith by true
+science, until love, through so many vanishing illusions, finally
+succeeds in reaching its true object.
+
+Spontaneous love has the native grace of ignorance and happiness.
+Reflective love is very different; it is serious, it is great, even in
+its faults, with the greatness of liberty. Let us not be in haste to
+condemn reflection: if it often produces egotism, it also produces
+devotion. What, in fact, is self-devotion? It is giving ourselves
+freely, with full knowledge of what we are doing. Therein consists the
+sublimity of love, love worthy of a noble and generous creature, not an
+ignorant and blind love. When affection has conquered selfishness,
+instead of loving its object for its own sake, the soul gives itself to
+its object, and miracle of love, the more it gives the more it
+possesses, nourishing itself by its own sacrifices, and finding its
+strength and its joy in its entire self-abandonment. But there is only
+one being who is worthy of being thus loved, and who can be thus loved
+without illusions, and without mistakes, at once without limits, and
+without regret, to wit, the perfect being who alone does not fear
+reflection, who alone can fill the entire capacity of our heart.
+
+Mysticism corrupts sentiment by exaggerating its power.
+
+Mysticism begins by suppressing in man reason, or, at least, it
+subordinates and sacrifices reason to sentiment.
+
+Listen to mysticism: it says that by the heart alone is man in relation
+with God. All that is great, beautiful, infinite, eternal, love alone
+reveals to us. Reason is only a lying faculty. Because it may err, and
+does err, it is said that it always errs. Reason is confounded with
+every thing that it is not. The errors of the senses, and of reasoning,
+the illusions of the imagination, even the extravagances of passion,
+which sometimes give rise to those of mind, every thing is laid to the
+charge of reason. Its imperfections are triumphed over, its miseries are
+complacently exhibited; the most audacious dogmatical system--since it
+aspires to put man and God in immediate communication--borrows against
+reason all the arms of skepticism.
+
+Mysticism goes farther: it attacks liberty itself; it orders liberty to
+renounce itself, in order to identify itself by love with him from whom
+the infinite separates us. The ideal of virtue is no longer the
+courageous perseverance of the good man, who, in struggling against
+temptation and suffering, makes life holy; it is no longer the free and
+enlightened devotion of a loving soul; it is the entire and blind
+abandonment of ourselves, of our will, of our being, in a barren
+contemplation of thought, in a prayer without utterance, and almost
+without consciousness.
+
+The source of mysticism is in that incomplete view of human nature,
+which knows not how to discern in it what therein is most profound,
+which betakes itself to what is therein most striking, most seizing,
+and, consequently, also most seizable. We have already said that reason
+is not noisy, and often is not heard, whilst its echo of sentiment
+loudly resounds. In this compound phenomenon, it is natural that the
+most apparent element should cover and dim the most obscure.
+
+Moreover, what relations, what deceptive resemblances between these two
+faculties! Without doubt, in their development, they manifestly differ;
+when reason becomes reasoning, one easily distinguishes its heavy
+movement from the flight of sentiment; but spontaneous reason is almost
+confounded with sentiment,--there is the same rapidity, the same
+obscurity. Add that they pursue the same object, and almost always go
+together. It is not, then, astonishing that they should be confounded.
+
+A wise philosophy distinguishes[74] them without separating them.
+Analysis demonstrates that reason precedes, and that sentiment follows.
+How can we love what we are ignorant of? In order to enjoy the truth, is
+it not necessary to know it more or less? In order to be moved by
+certain ideas, is it not necessary to have possessed them in some
+degree? To absorb reason in sentiment is to stifle the cause in the
+effect. When one speaks of the light of the heart, he designates,
+without knowing it, that light of the spontaneous reason which discovers
+to us truth by a pure and immediate intuition entirely opposite to the
+slow and laborious processes of the reflective reason and reasoning.
+
+Sentiment by itself is a source of emotion, not of knowledge. The sole
+faculty of knowledge is reason. At bottom, if sentiment is different
+from sensation, it nevertheless pertains on all sides to general
+sensibility, and it is, like it, variable; it has, like it, its
+interruptions, its vivacity, and its lassitude, its exaltation and its
+short-comings. The inspirations of sentiment, then, which are
+essentially mobile and individual, cannot be raised to a universal and
+absolute rule. It is not so with reason; it is constantly the same in
+each one of us, the same in all men. The laws that govern its exercise
+constitute the common legislation of all intelligent beings. There is no
+intelligence that does not conceive some universal and necessary truth,
+and, consequently, the infinite being who is its principle. These grand
+objects being once known excite in the souls of all men the emotions
+that we have endeavored to describe. These emotions partake of the
+dignity of reason and the mobility of imagination and sensibility.
+Sentiment is the harmonious and living relation between reason and
+sensibility. Suppress one of the two terms, and what becomes of the
+relation? Mysticism pretends to elevate man directly to God, and does
+not see that in depriving reason of its power, it really deprives him of
+that which makes him know God, and puts him in a just communication with
+God by the intermediary of eternal and infinite truth.
+
+The fundamental error of mysticism is, that it discards this
+intermediary, as if it were a barrier and not a tie: it makes the
+infinite being the direct object of love. But such a love can be
+sustained only by superhuman efforts that end in folly. Love tends to
+unite itself with its object: mysticism absorbs love in its object.
+Hence the extravagances of that mysticism so severely and so justly
+condemned by Bossuet and the Church in quietism.[75] Quietism lulls to
+sleep the activity of man, extinguishes his intelligence, substitutes
+indolent and irregular contemplation for the seeking of truth and the
+fulfilment of duty. The true union of the soul with God is made by truth
+and virtue. Every other union is a chimera, a peril, sometimes a crime.
+It is not permitted man to reject, under any pretext, that which makes
+him man, that which renders him capable of comprehending God, and
+expressing in himself an imperfect image of God, that is to say, reason,
+liberty, conscience. Without doubt, virtue has its prudence, and if we
+must never yield to passion, there are diverse ways of combating it in
+order to conquer it. One can let it subside, and resignation and silence
+may have their legitimate employment. There is a portion of truth, of
+utility even, in the _Spiritual Letters_, even in the _Maxims of the
+Saints_. But, in general, it is unsafe to anticipate in this world the
+prerogatives of death, and to dream of sanctity when virtue alone is
+required of us, when virtue is so difficult to attain, even imperfectly.
+The best quietism can, at most, be only a halt in the course, a truce in
+the strife, or rather another manner of combating. It is not by flight
+that battles are gained; in order to gain them it is necessary to come
+to an engagement, so much the more as duty consists in combating still
+more than in conquering. Of the two opposite extremes--stoicism and
+quietism--the first, taken all in all, is preferable to the second; for
+if it does not always elevate man to God, it maintains, at least, human
+personality, liberty, conscience, whilst quietism, in abolishing these,
+abolishes the entire man. Oblivion of life and its duties, inertness,
+sloth, death of soul,--such are the fruits of that love of God, which is
+lost in the sterile contemplation of its object, provided it does not
+cause still sadder aberrations! There comes a moment when the soul that
+believes itself united with God, puffed up with this imaginary
+possession, despises both the body and human personality to such an
+extent that all its actions become indifferent to it, and good and evil
+are in its eyes the same. Thus it is that fanatical sects have been seen
+mingling crime and devotion, finding in one the excuse, often even the
+motive, of the other, and prefacing infamous irregularities or
+abominable cruelties with mystic transports,--deplorable consequences of
+the chimera of pure love, of the pretension of sentiment to rule over
+reason, to serve alone as a guide to the human soul, and to put itself
+in direct communication with God, without the intermediary of the
+visible world, and without the still surer intermediary of intelligence
+and truth.
+
+But it is time to pass to another kind of mysticism, more singular, more
+learned, more refined, and quite as unreasonable, although it presents
+itself in the very name of reason.
+
+We have seen[76] that reason, if one of the principles which govern it
+be destroyed, cannot lay hold of truth, not even absolute truths of the
+intellectual and moral order; it refers all universal, necessary,
+absolute truths, to the being that alone can explain them, because in
+him alone are necessary and absolute existence, immutability, and
+infinity. God is the substance of uncreated truths, as he is the cause
+of created existences. Necessary truths find in God their natural
+subject. If God has not arbitrarily made them,--which is not in
+accordance with their essence and his,--he constitutes them, inasmuch as
+they are himself. His intelligence possesses them as the manifestations
+of itself. As long as our intelligence has not referred them to the
+divine intelligence, they are to it an effect without cause, a
+phenomenon without substance. It refers them, then, to their cause and
+their substance. And in that it obeys an imperative need, a fixed
+principle of reason.
+
+Mysticism breaks in some sort the ladder that elevates us to infinite
+substance: it regards this substance alone, independently[77] of the
+truth that manifests it, and it imagines itself to possess also the
+pure absolute, pure unity, being in itself. The advantage which
+mysticism here seeks, is to give to thought an object wherein there is
+no mixture, no division, no multiplicity, wherein every sensible and
+human element has entirely disappeared. But in order to obtain this
+advantage, it must pay the cost of it. It is a very simple means of
+freeing theodicea from every shade of anthropomorphism; it is reducing
+God to an abstraction, to the abstraction of being in itself. Being in
+itself, it is true, is free from all division, but upon the condition
+that it have no attribute, no quality, and even that it be deprived of
+knowledge and intelligence; for intelligence, if elevated as it might
+be, always supposes the distinction between the intelligent subject and
+the intelligible object. A God from whom absolute unity excludes
+intelligence, is the God of the mystic philosophy.
+
+How could the school of Alexandria, how could Plotinus, its
+founder,[78] in the midst of the lights of the Greek and Latin
+civilization, have arrived at such a strange notion of the Divinity? By
+the abuse of Platonism, by the corruption of the best and severest
+method, that of Socrates and Plato.
+
+The Platonic method, the dialectic process, as its author calls it,
+searches in particular, variable, contingent things, for what they also
+have general, durable, one, that is to say, their Idea, and is thus
+elevated to Ideas, as to the only true objects of intelligence, in order
+to be elevated still from these Ideas, which are arranged in an
+admirable hierarchy, to the first of all, beyond which intelligence has
+nothing more to conceive, nothing more to seek. By rejecting in finite
+things their limit, their individuality, we attain genera, Ideas, and,
+by them, their sovereign principle. But this principle is not the last
+of genera, nor the last of abstractions; it is a real and substantial
+principle.[79] The God of Plato is not called merely unity, he is called
+the Good; he is not the lifeless substance of the Eleatics;[80] he is
+endowed with _life and movement_;[81] strong expressions that show how
+much the God of the Platonic metaphysics differs from that of mysticism.
+This God is the _father of the world_.[82] He is also the father of
+truth, that light of spirits.[83] He dwells in the midst of Ideas _which
+make him a true God inasmuch as he is with them_.[84] He possesses
+_august and holy intelligence_.[85] He has made the world without any
+external necessity, and for the sole reason that he is good.[86] In
+fine, he is beauty without mixture, unalterable, immortal, that makes
+him who has caught a glimpse of it disdain all earthly beauties.[87] The
+beautiful, the absolute good, is too dazzling to be looked on directly
+by the eye of mortal; it must at first be contemplated in the images
+that reveal it to us, in truth, in beauty, in justice, as they are met
+here below, and among men, as the eye of one who has been a chained
+captive from infancy, must be gradually habituated to the light of the
+sun.[88] Our reason, enlightened by true science, can perceive this
+light of spirits; reason rightly led can go to God, and there is no
+need, in order to reach him, of a particular and mysterious faculty.
+
+Plotinus erred by pushing to excess the Platonic dialectics, and by
+extending them beyond the boundary where they should stop. In Plato they
+terminate at ideas, at the idea of the good, and produce an intelligent
+and good God; Plotinus applies them without limit, and they lead him
+into an abyss of mysticism. If all truth is in the general, and if all
+individuality is imperfection, it follows, that as long as we are able
+to generalize, as long as it is possible for us to overlook any
+difference, to exclude any determination, we shall not be at the limit
+of dialectics. Its last object, then, will be a principle without any
+determination. It will not spare in God being itself. In fact, if we say
+that God is a being, by the side of and above being, we place unity, of
+which being partakes, and which it cannot disengage, in order to
+consider it alone. Being is not here simple, since it is at once being
+and unity; unity alone is simple, for one cannot go beyond that. And
+still when we say unity, we determine it. True absolute unity must,
+then, be something absolutely indeterminate, which is not, which,
+properly speaking, cannot be named, the _unnamable_, as Plotinus says.
+This principle, which exists not, for a still stronger reason, cannot
+think, for all thought is still a determination, a manner of being. So
+being and thought are excluded from absolute unity. If Alexandrianism
+admits them, it is only as a forfeiture, a degradation of unity.
+Considered in thought, and in being, the supreme principle is inferior
+to itself; only in the pure simplicity of its indefinable essence is it
+the last object of science, and the last term of perfection.
+
+In order to enter into communication with such a God, the ordinary
+faculties are not sufficient, and the theodicea of the school of
+Alexandria imposes upon it a quite peculiar psychology.
+
+In the truth of things, reason conceives absolute unity as an attribute
+of absolute being, but not as something in itself, or, if it considers
+it apart, it knows that it considers only an abstraction. Does one wish
+to make absolute unity something else than an attribute of an absolute
+being, or an abstraction, a conception of human intelligence? Reason
+could accept nothing more on any condition. Will this barren unity be
+the object of love? But love, much more than reason, aspires after a
+real object. One does not love substance in general, but a substance
+that possesses such or such a character. In human friendships, suppress
+all the qualities of a person, or modify them, and you modify or
+suppress the love. This does not prove that you do not love this person;
+it only proves that the person is not for you without his qualities.
+
+So neither reason nor love can attain the absolute unity of mysticism.
+In order to correspond to such an object, there must be in us something
+analogous to it, there must be a mode of knowing that implies the
+abolition of consciousness. In fact, consciousness is the sign of the
+_me_, that is to say, of that which is most determinate: the being who
+says, _me_, distinguishes himself essentially from every other; that is
+for us the type itself of individuality. Consciousness should degrade
+the ideal of dialectic knowledge, or every division, every determination
+must be wanting, in order to respond to the absolute unity of its
+object. This mode of pure and direct communication with God, which is
+not reason, which is not love, which excludes consciousness, is ecstasy
+([Greek: ekstasis]). This word, which Plotinus first applied to this
+singular state of the soul, expresses this separation from ourselves
+which mysticism exacts, and of which it believes man capable. Man, in
+order to communicate with absolute being, must go out of himself. It is
+necessary that thought should reject all determinate thought, and, in
+falling back within its own depths, should arrive at such an oblivion of
+itself, that consciousness should vanish or seem to vanish. But that is
+only an image of ecstasy; what it is in itself, no one knows; as it
+escapes all consciousness, it escapes memory, escapes reflection, and
+consequently all expression, all human speech.
+
+This philosophical mysticism rests upon a radically false notion of
+absolute being. By dint of wishing to free God from all the conditions
+of finite existence, one comes to deprive him of all the conditions of
+existence itself; one has such a fear that the infinite may have
+something in common with the finite, that he does not dare to recognize
+that being is common to both, save difference of degree, as if all that
+is not were not nothingness itself! Absolute being possesses absolute
+unity without any doubt, as it possesses absolute intelligence; but,
+once more, absolute unity without a real subject of inherence is
+destitute of all reality. Real and determinate are synonyms. What
+constitutes a being is its special nature, its essence. A being is
+itself only on the condition of not being another; it cannot but have
+characteristic traits. All that is, is such or such. Difference is an
+element as essential to being as unity itself. If, then, reality is in
+determination, it follows that God is the most determinate of beings.
+Aristotle is much more Platonic than Plotinus, when he says that God is
+the thought of thought,[89] that he is not a simple power, but a power
+effectively acting, meaning thereby that God to be perfect, ought to
+have nothing in himself that is not completed. To finite nature it
+belongs to be, in a certain sense, indeterminate, since being finite, it
+has always in itself powers that are not realized; this indetermination
+diminishes as these powers are realized. So true divine unity is not
+abstract unity, it is the precise unity of perfect being in which every
+thing is accomplished. At the summit of existence, still more than at
+its low degree, every thing is determinate, every thing is developed,
+every thing is distinct, every thing is one. The richness of
+determinations is a certain sign of the plenitude of being. Reflection
+distinguishes these determinations from each other, but it is not
+necessary that it should in these distinctions see the limits. In us,
+for example, does the diversity of our faculties and their richest
+development divide the _me_ and alter the identity and the unity of the
+person? Does each one of us believe himself less than himself, because
+he possesses sensibility, reason, and will? No, surely. It is the same
+with God. Not having employed a sufficient psychology, Alexandrian
+mysticism imagined that diversity of attributes is incompatible with
+simplicity of essence, and through fear of corrupting simple and pure
+essence, it made of it an abstraction. By a senseless scruple, it feared
+that God would not be sufficiently perfect, if it left him all his
+perfections; it regards them as imperfections, being as a degradation,
+creation as a fall; and, in order to explain man and the universe, it is
+forced to put in God what it calls failings, not having seen that these
+pretended failings are the very signs of his infinite perfection.
+
+The theory of ecstasy is at once the necessary condition and the
+condemnation of the theory of absolute unity. Without absolute unity as
+the direct object of knowledge, of what use is ecstasy in the subject of
+knowledge? Ecstasy, far from elevating man to God, abases him below man;
+for it effaces in him thought, by taking away its condition, which is
+consciousness. To suppress consciousness, is to render all knowledge
+impossible; it is not to comprehend the perfection of this mode of
+knowing, wherein the limitation of subject and object gives at once the
+simplest, most immediate, and most determinate knowledge.[90]
+
+The Alexandrian mysticism is the most learned and the profoundest of all
+known mysticisms. In the heights of abstraction where it loses itself,
+it seems very far from popular superstitions; and yet the school of
+Alexandria unites ecstatic contemplation and theurgy. These are two
+things, in appearance, incompatible, but they pertain to the same
+principle, to the pretension of directly perceiving what inevitably
+escapes all our efforts. On the one hand, a refined mysticism aspires to
+God by ecstasy; on the other, a gross mysticism thinks to seize him by
+the senses. The processes, the faculties employed, differ, but the
+foundation is the same, and from this common foundation necessarily
+spring the most opposite extravagances. Apollonius of Tyanus is a
+popular Alexandrianist, and Jamblicus is Plotinus become a priest,
+mystagogue, and hierophant. A new worship shone forth by miracles; the
+ancient worship would have its own miracles, and philosophers boasted
+that they could make the divinity appear before other men. They had
+demons for themselves, and, in some sort, for their own orders; the gods
+were not only invoked, but evoked. Ecstasy for the initiates, theurgy
+for the crowd.
+
+At all times and in all places, these two mysticisms have given each
+other the hand. In India and in China, the schools where the most
+subtile idealism is taught, are not far from pagodas of the most abject
+idolatry. One day the Bhagavad-Gita or Lao-tseu[91] is read, an
+indefinable God is taught, without essential and determinate attributes;
+the next day there is shown to the people such or such a form, such or
+such a manifestation of this God, who, not having a form that belongs to
+him, can receive all forms, and being only substance in itself, is
+necessarily the substance of every thing, of a stone and a drop of
+water, of a dog, a hero, and a sage. So, in the ancient world under
+Julien, for example, the same man was at once professor in the school of
+Athens and guardian of the temple of Minerva or Cybele, by turns
+obscuring the _Timæus_ and the _Republic_ by subtile commentaries, and
+exhibiting to the eyes of the multitude sometimes the sacred vale,[92]
+sometimes the shrine of the good goddess,[93] and in either function, as
+priest or philosopher, imposing on others and himself, under taking to
+ascend above the human mind and falling miserably below it, paying in
+some sort the penalty of an unintelligible metaphysics, in lending
+himself to the most shameless superstitions.
+
+When the Christian religion triumphed, it brought humanity under a
+discipline that puts a rein upon this deplorable mysticism. But how many
+times has it brought back, under the reign of spiritual religion, all
+the extravagances of the religions of nature! It was to appear
+especially at the _renaissance_ of the schools and of the genius of
+Paganism in the sixteenth century, when the human mind had broken with
+the philosophy of the Middle Age, without yet having arrived at modern
+philosophy.[94] The Paracelsuses and the Von Helmonts renewed the
+Apolloniuses and the Jamblicuses, abusing some chemical and medical
+knowledge, as the former had abused the Socratic and Platonic method,
+altered in its character, and turned from its true object. And so, in
+the midst of the eighteenth century, has not Swedenborg united in his
+own person an exalted mysticism and a sort of magic, opening thus the
+way to those senseless[95] persons who contest with me in the morning
+the solidest and best-established proofs of the existence of the soul
+and God, and propose to me in the evening to make me see otherwise than
+with my eyes, and to make me hear otherwise than with my ears, to make
+me use all my faculties otherwise than by their natural organs,
+promising me a superhuman science, on the condition of first losing
+consciousness, thought, liberty, memory, all that constitutes me an
+intelligent and moral being. I should know all, then, but at the cost of
+knowing nothing that I should know. I should elevate myself to a
+marvellous world, which, awakened and in a natural state, I am not even
+able to suspect, of which no remembrance will remain to me:--a mysticism
+at once gross and chimerical, which perverts both psychology and
+physiology; an imbecile ecstasy, renewed without genius from the
+Alexandrine ecstasy; an extravagance which has not even the merit of a
+little novelty, and which history has seen reappearing at all epochs of
+ambition and impotence.
+
+This is what we come to when we wish to go beyond the conditions imposed
+upon human nature. Charron first said, and after him Pascal repeated
+it, that whoever would become an angel becomes a beast. The remedy for
+all these follies is a severe theory of reason, of what it can and what
+it cannot do; of reason enveloped first in the exercise of the senses,
+than elevating itself to universal and necessary ideas, referring them
+to their principle, to a being infinite and at the same time real and
+substantial, whose existence it conceives, but whose nature it is always
+interdicted to penetrate and comprehend. Sentiment accompanies and
+vivifies the sublime intuitions of reason, but we must not confound
+these two orders of facts, much less smother reason in sentiment.
+Between a finite being like man and God, absolute and infinite
+substance, there is the double intermediary of that magnificent universe
+open to our gaze, and of those marvellous truths which reason conceives,
+but has not made more than the eye makes the beauties it perceives. The
+only means that is given us of elevating ourselves to the Being of
+beings, without being dazzled and bewildered, is to approach him by the
+aid of a divine intermediary; that is to say, to consecrate ourselves to
+the study and the love of truth, and, as we shall soon see, to the
+contemplation and reproduction of the beautiful, especially to the
+practice of the good.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[71] See the preceding lectures.
+
+[72] See the _Phædrus_ and the _Banquet_, vol. vii. of our translation.
+
+[73] We shall not be accused of perverting the holy Scriptures by these
+analogies, for we give them only as analogies, and St. Augustine and
+Bossuet are full of such.
+
+[74] See part ii., _The Beautiful_, lecture 6, and part iii., lecture
+13, on the _Morals of Sentiment_. See also our _Pascal_, preface of the
+last edition, p. 8, etc., vol. i. of the 4th Series.
+
+[75] See the admirable work of Bossuet, _Instruction sur les états
+d'Oraison_.
+
+[76] Lecture 4.
+
+[77] See especially in our writings the regular and detailed refutation
+of the double extravagance of considering substance apart from its
+determinations and its qualities, or of considering its qualities and
+its facilities apart from the being that possesses them. 1st Series,
+vol. iii., lecture 3, _On Condillac_, and vol. v., lectures 5 and 6, _On
+Kant_. We say, the same Series, vol. iv., p. 56: "There are philosophers
+beyond the Rhine, who, to appear very profound, are not contented with
+qualities and phenomena, and aspire to pure substance, to being in
+itself. The problem stated as follows, is quite insoluble: the knowledge
+of such a substance is impossible, for this very simple reason, that
+such a substance does not exist. Being in itself, _das Ding in sich_,
+which Kant seeks, escapes him, and this does not humiliate Kant and
+philosophy; for there is no being in itself. The human mind may form to
+itself an abstract and general idea of being, but this idea has no real
+object in nature. All being is determinate, if it is real; and to be
+determinate is to possess certain modes of being, transitory and
+accidental, or constant and essential. Knowledge of being in itself is
+then not merely interdicted to the human mind; it is contrary to the
+nature of things. At the other extreme of metaphysics is a powerless
+psychology, which, by fear of a hollow ontology, is condemned to
+voluntary ignorance. We are not able, say these philosophers, Mr. Dugald
+Stewart, for example, to attain being in itself; it is permitted us to
+know only phenomena and qualities: so that, in order not to wander in
+search of the substance of the soul, they do not dare affirm its
+spirituality, and devote themselves to the study of its different
+faculties. Equal error, equal chimera! There are no more qualities
+without being, than being without qualities. No being is without its
+determinations, and reciprocally its determinations are not without it.
+To consider the determinations of being independently of the being which
+possesses them, is no longer to observe; it is to abstract, to make an
+abstraction quite as extravagant as that of being considered
+independently of its qualities."
+
+[78] On the school of Alexandria, see 2d Series, vol. ii., _Sketch of a
+General History of Philosophy_, lecture 8, p. 211, and 3d Series, vol.
+i., _passim_.
+
+[79] See the previous lecture.
+
+[80] 3d Series, vol. i., _Ancient Philosophy_, article _Xenophanes_, and
+article _Zeno_.
+
+[81] _The Sophist_, vol. xi. of our translation, p. 261.
+
+[82] _Timæus_, vol. xii., p. 117.
+
+[83] _Republic_, book vii., p. 70 of vol. x.
+
+[84] _Phædrus_, vol. vi., p. 55.
+
+[85] _The Sophist_, p. 261, 262. The following little-known and decisive
+passage, which we have translated for the first time, must be
+cited:--"_Stranger._ But what, by Zeus! shall we be so easily persuaded
+that in reality, motion, life, soul, intelligence, do not belong to
+absolute being? that this being neither lives nor thinks, that this
+being remains immobile, immutable, without having part in august and
+holy intelligence?--_Theatetus._ That would be consenting, dear Eleatus,
+to a very strange assertion.--_Stranger._ Or, indeed, shall we accord to
+this being intelligence while we refuse him life?--_Theatetus._ That
+cannot be.--_Stranger._ Or, again, shall we say that there is in him
+intelligence and life, but that it is not in a soul that he possesses
+them?--_Theatetus._ And how could he possess them otherwise?--_Stranger._
+In fine, that, endowed with intelligence, soul, and life, all animated
+as he is, he remains incomplete immobility.--_Theatetus._ All that seems
+to me unreasonable."
+
+[86] _Timæus_, p. 119: "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme
+ordainer to produce and compose this universe was, that he was good."
+
+[87] _Bouquet_, discourse of Diotimus, vol. vi., and the 2d part of this
+vol., _The Beautiful_, lecture 7.
+
+[88] _Republic._ _Ibid._
+
+[89] Book xii. of the _Metaphysics_. _De la Métaphysique d'Aristotle_,
+2d edition, p. 200, etc.
+
+[90] On this fundamental point, see lecture 3, in this vol.--2d Series,
+vol. i., lecture 5, p. 97. "The peculiarity of intelligence is not the
+power of knowing, but knowing in fact. On what condition is there
+intelligence for us? It is not enough that there should be in us a
+principle of intelligence; this principle must be developed and
+exercised, and take itself as the object of its intelligence. The
+necessary condition of intelligence is consciousness--that is to say,
+difference. There can be consciousness only where there are several
+terms, one of which perceives the other, and at the same time perceives
+itself. That is knowing, and knowing self; that is intelligence.
+Intelligence without consciousness is the abstract possibility of
+intelligence, it is not real intelligence. Transfer this from human
+intelligence to divine intelligence, that is to say, refer ideas, I mean
+ideas in the sense of Plato, of St. Augustine, of Bossuet, of Leibnitz,
+to the only intelligence to which they can belong, and you will have, if
+I may thus express myself, the life of the divine intelligence ...,
+etc."
+
+[91] Vol. ii. of the 2d Series, _Sketch of a General History of
+Philosophy_, lectures 5 and 6, _On the Indian Philosophy_.
+
+[92] See the _Euthyphron_, vol. i. of our translation.
+
+[93] Lucien, Apuleius, Lucius of Patras.
+
+[94] 2d Series, vol. ii., _Sketch of a General History of Philosophy_,
+lecture 10, _On the Philosophy of the Renaissance_.
+
+[95] One was then ardently occupied with magnetism, and more than a
+magnetizer, half a materialist, half a visionary, pretended to convert
+us to a system of perfect clairvoyance of soul, obtained by means of
+artificial sleep. Alas! the same follies are now renewed. Conjunctions
+are the fashion. Spirits are interrogated, and they respond! Only let
+there be consciousness that one does not interrogate, and superstition
+alone counterpoises skepticism.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN.
+
+    The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art
+    is, as in the investigation of the true, to commence by
+    psychology.--Faculties of the soul that unite in the perception
+    of the beautiful.--The senses give only the agreeable; reason
+    alone gives the idea of the beautiful.--Refutation of
+    empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the
+    beautiful.--Pre-eminence of reason.--Sentiment of the beautiful;
+    different from sensation and desire.--Distinction between the
+    sentiment of the beautiful and that of the
+    sublime.--Imagination.--Influence of sentiment on
+    imagination.--Influence of imagination on sentiment.--Theory of
+    taste.
+
+
+Let us recall in a few words the results at which we have arrived.
+
+Two exclusive schools are opposed to each other in the eighteenth
+century; we have combated both, and each by the other. To empiricism we
+have opposed the insufficiency of sensation, and its own inevitable
+necessity to idealism. We have admitted, with Locke and Condillac, in
+regard to the origin of knowledge, particular and contingent ideas,
+which we owe to the senses and consciousness; and above the senses and
+consciousness, the direct sources of all particular ideas, we have
+recognized, with Reid and Kant, a special faculty, different from
+sensation and consciousness, but developed with them,--reason, the lofty
+source of universal and necessary truths. We have established, against
+Kant, the absolute authority of reason, and the truths which it
+discovers. Then, the truths that reason revealed to us have themselves
+revealed to us their eternal principle,--God. Finally, this rational
+spiritualism, which is both the faith of the human race and the doctrine
+of the greatest minds of antiquity and modern times, we have carefully
+distinguished from a chimerical and dangerous mysticism. Thus the
+necessity of experience and the necessity of reason, the necessity of a
+real and infinite being which is the first and last foundation of truth,
+a severe distinction between spiritualism and mysticism, are the great
+principles which we have been able to gather from the first part of this
+course.
+
+The second part, the study of the beautiful, will give us the same
+results elucidated and aggrandized by a new application.
+
+It was the eighteenth century that introduced, or rather brought back
+into philosophy, investigations on the beautiful and art, so familiar to
+Plato and Aristotle, but which scholasticism had not entertained, to
+which our great philosophy of the seventeenth century had remained
+almost a stranger.[96] One comprehends that it did not belong to the
+empirical school to revive this noble part of philosophic science. Locke
+and Condillac did not leave a chapter, not even a single page, on the
+beautiful. Their followers treated beauty with the same disdain; not
+knowing very well how to explain it in their system, they found it more
+convenient not to perceive it at all. Diderot, it is true, had an
+enthusiasm for beauty and art, but enthusiasm was never so ill placed.
+Diderot had genius; but, as Voltaire said of him, his was a head in
+which every thing fermented without coming to maturity. He scattered
+here and there a mass of ingenious and often contradictory perceptions;
+he has no principles; he abandons himself to the impression of the
+moment; he knows not what the ideal is; he delights in a kind of nature,
+at once common and mannered, such as one might expect from the author
+of the _Interprétation de la Nature_, the _Père de Famille_, the _Neveu
+de Rameau_, and _Jacques le Fataliste_. Diderot is a fatalist in art as
+well as in philosophy; he belongs to his times and his school, with a
+grain of poetry, sensibility, and imagination.[97] It was worthy of the
+Scotch[98] school and Kant[99] to give a place to the beautiful in their
+doctrine. They considered it in the soul and in nature; but they did not
+even touch the difficult question of the reproduction of the beautiful
+by the genius of man. We will try to embrace this great subject in its
+whole extent, and we are about to offer at least a sketch of a regular
+and complete theory of beauty and art.
+
+Let us begin by establishing well the method that must preside over
+these investigations.
+
+One can study the beautiful in two ways:--either out of us, in itself
+and in the objects, whatever they may be, that bear its impress; or in
+the mind of man, in the faculties that attain it, in the ideas or
+sentiments that it excites in us. Now, the true method, which must now
+be familiar to you, makes setting out from man to arrive at things a law
+for us. Therefore psychological analysis will here again be our point of
+departure, and the study of the state of the soul in presence of the
+beautiful will prepare us for that of the beautiful considered in itself
+and its objects.
+
+Let us interrogate the soul in the presence of beauty.
+
+Is it not an incontestable fact that before certain objects, under very
+different circumstances, we pronounce the following judgment:--This
+object is beautiful? This affirmation is not always explicit. Sometimes
+it manifests itself only by a cry of admiration; sometimes it silently
+rises in the mind that scarcely has a consciousness of it. The forms of
+this phenomenon vary, but the phenomenon is attested by the most common
+and most certain observation, and all languages bear witness of it.
+
+Although sensible objects, with most men, oftenest provoke the judgment
+of the beautiful, they do not alone possess this advantage; the domain
+of beauty is more extensive than the domain of the physical world
+exposed to our view; it has no bounds but those of entire nature, and of
+the soul and genius of man. Before an heroic action, by the remembrance
+of a great sacrifice; even by the thought of the most abstract truths
+firmly united with each other in a system admirable at once for its
+simplicity and its productiveness; finally, before objects of another
+order, before the works of art, this same phenomenon is produced in us.
+We recognize in all these objects, however different, a common quality
+in regard to which our judgment is pronounced, and this quality we call
+beauty.
+
+The philosophy of sensation, in faithfulness to itself, should have
+attempted to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable.
+
+Without doubt, beauty is almost always agreeable to the senses, or at
+least it must not wound them. Most of our ideas of the beautiful come to
+us by sight and hearing, and all the arts, without exception, are
+addressed to the soul through the body. An object which makes us suffer,
+were it the most beautiful in the world, very rarely appears to us such.
+Beauty has little influence over a soul occupied with grief.
+
+But if an agreeable sensation often accompanies the idea of the
+beautiful, we must not conclude that one is the other.
+
+Experience testifies that all agreeable things do not appear beautiful,
+and that, among agreeable things, those which are most so are not the
+most beautiful,--a sure sign that the agreeable is not the beautiful;
+for if one is identical with the other, they should never be separated,
+but should always be commensurate with each other.
+
+Far from this, whilst all our senses give us agreeable sensations, only
+two have the privilege of awakening in us the idea of beauty. Does one
+ever say: This is a beautiful taste, this is a beautiful smell?
+Nevertheless, one should say it, if the beautiful is the agreeable. On
+the other hand, there are certain pleasures of odor and taste that move
+sensibility more than the greatest beauties of nature and art; and even
+among the perceptions of hearing and sight, those are not always the
+most vivid that most excite in us the idea of beauty. Do not pictures,
+ordinary in coloring, often move us more deeply than many dazzling
+productions, more seductive to the eye, less touching to the soul? I say
+farther; sensation not only does not produce the idea of the beautiful,
+but sometimes stifles it. Let an artist occupy himself with the
+reproduction of voluptuous forms; while pleasing the senses, he
+disturbs, he repels in us the chaste and pure idea of beauty. The
+agreeable is not, then, the measure of the beautiful, since in certain
+cases it effaces it and makes us forget it; it is not, then, the
+beautiful, since it is found, and in the highest degree, where the
+beautiful is not.
+
+This conducts us to the essential foundation of the distinction between
+the idea of the beautiful and the sensation of the agreeable, to wit,
+the difference already explained between sensibility and reason.
+
+When an object makes you experience an agreeable sensation, if one asks
+you why this object is agreeable to you, you can answer nothing, except
+that such is your impression; and if one informs you that this same
+object produces upon others a different impression and displeases them,
+you are not much astonished, because you know that sensibility is
+diverse, and that sensations must not be disputed. Is it the same when
+an object is not only agreeable to you, but when you judge that it is
+beautiful? You pronounce, for example, that this figure is noble and
+beautiful, that this sunrise or sunset is beautiful, that
+disinterestedness and devotion are beautiful, that virtue is beautiful;
+if one contests with you the truth of these judgments, then you are not
+as accommodating as you were just now; you do not accept the dissent as
+an inevitable effect of different sensibilities, you no longer appeal to
+your sensibility which naturally terminates in you, you appeal to an
+authority which is made for others as well as you, that of reason; you
+believe that you have the right of accusing him with error who
+contradicts your judgment, for here your judgment rests no longer on
+something variable and individual, like an agreeable or painful
+sensation. The agreeable is confined for us within the inclosure of our
+own organization, where it changes every moment, according to the
+perpetual revolutions of this organization, according to health and
+sickness, the state of the atmosphere, that of our nerves, etc. But it
+is not so with beauty; beauty, like truth, belongs to none of us; no one
+has the right to dispose of it arbitrarily, and when we say: this is
+true, this is beautiful, it is no longer the particular and variable
+impression of our sensibility that we express, it is the absolute
+judgment that reason imposes on all men.
+
+Confound reason and sensibility, reduce the idea of the beautiful to the
+sensation of the agreeable, and taste no longer has a law. If a person
+says to me, in the presence of the Apollo Belvidere, that he feels
+nothing more agreeable than in presence of any other statue, that it
+does not please him at all, that he does not feel its beauty, I cannot
+dispute his impression; but if this person thence concludes that the
+Apollo is not beautiful, I proudly contradict him, and declare that he
+is deceived. Good taste is distinguished from bad taste; but what does
+this distinction signify, if the judgment of the beautiful is resolved
+into a sensation? You say to me that I have no taste. What does that
+mean? Have I not senses like you? Does not the object which you admire
+act upon me as well as upon you? Is not the impression which I feel as
+real as that which you feel? Whence comes it, then, that you are
+right,--you who only give expression to the impression which you feel,
+and that I am wrong,--I who do precisely the same thing? Is it because
+those who feel like you are more numerous than those who feel like me?
+But here the number of voices means nothing? The beautiful being defined
+as that which produces on the senses an agreeable impression, a thing
+that pleases a single man, though it were frightfully ugly in the eyes
+of all the rest of the human race, must, nevertheless, and very
+legitimately, be called beautiful by him who receives from it an
+agreeable impression, for, so far as he is concerned, it satisfies the
+definition. There is, then, no true beauty; there are only relative and
+changing beauties, beauties of circumstance, custom, fashion, and all
+these beauties, however different, will have a right to the same
+respect, provided they meet sensibilities to which they are agreeable.
+And as there is nothing in this world, in the infinite diversity of our
+dispositions, which may not please some one, there will be nothing that
+is not beautiful; or, to speak more truly, there will be nothing either
+beautiful or ugly, and the Hottentot Venus will equal the Venus de
+Medici. The absurdity of the consequences demonstrates the absurdity of
+the principle. But there is only one means of escaping these
+consequences, which is to repudiate the principle, and recognize the
+judgment of the beautiful as an absolute judgment, and, as such,
+entirely different from sensation.
+
+Finally, and this is the last rock of empiricism, is there in us only
+the idea of an imperfect and finite beauty, and while we are admiring
+the real beauties that nature furnishes, are we not elevating ourselves
+to the idea of a superior beauty, which Plato, with great excellence of
+expression, calls the Idea of the beautiful, which, after him, all men
+of delicate taste, all true artists call the Ideal? If we establish
+decrees in the beauty of things, is it not because we compare them,
+often without noticing it, with this ideal, which is to us the measure
+and rule of all our judgments in regard to particular beauties? How
+could this idea of absolute beauty enveloped in all our judgments on the
+beautiful,--how could this ideal beauty, which it is impossible for us
+not to conceive, be revealed to us by sensation, by a faculty variable
+and relative like the objects that it perceives?
+
+The philosophy which deduces all our ideas from the senses falls to the
+ground, then, before the idea of the beautiful. It remains to see
+whether this idea can be better explained by means of sentiment, which
+is different from sensation, which so nearly resembles reason that good
+judges have often taken it for reason, and have made it the principle of
+the idea of the beautiful as well as that of the good. It is already a
+progress, without doubt, to go from sensation to sentiment, and
+Hutcheson and Smith[100] are in our eyes very different philosophers
+from Condillac and Helvetius;[101] but we believe that we have
+sufficiently established[102] that, in confounding sentiment with
+reason, we deprive it of its foundation and rule, that sentiment,
+particular and variable in its nature, different to different men, and
+in each man continually changing, cannot be sufficient for itself.
+Nevertheless, if sentiment is not a principle, it is a true and
+important fact, and, after having distinguished it well from reason, we
+ourselves proceed to elevate it far above sensation, and elucidate the
+important part it plays in the perception of beauty.
+
+Place yourself before an object of nature, wherein men recognize beauty,
+and observe what takes place within you at the sight of this object. Is
+it not certain that, at the same time that you judge that it is
+beautiful, you also feel its beauty, that is to say, that you experience
+at the sight of it a delightful emotion, and that you are attracted
+towards this object by a sentiment of sympathy and love? In other cases
+you judge otherwise, and feel an opposite sentiment. Aversion
+accompanies the judgment of the ugly, as love accompanies the judgment
+of the beautiful. And this sentiment is awakened not only in presence of
+the objects of nature: all objects, whatever they may be, that we judge
+to be ugly or beautiful, have the power to excite in us this sentiment.
+Vary the circumstances as much as you please, place me before an
+admirable edifice or before a beautiful landscape; represent to my mind
+the great discoveries of Descartes and Newton, the exploits of the
+great Condé, the virtue of St. Vincent de Paul; elevate me still higher;
+awaken in me the obscure and too much forgotten idea of the infinite
+being; whatever you do, as often as you give birth within me to the idea
+of the beautiful, you give me an internal and exquisite joy, always
+followed by a sentiment of love for the object that caused it.
+
+The more beautiful the object is, the more lively is the joy which it
+gives the soul, and the more profound is the love without being
+passionate. In admiration judgment rules, but animated by sentiment. Is
+admiration increased to the degree of impressing upon the soul an
+emotion, an ardor that seems to exceed the limits of human nature? this
+state of the soul is called enthusiasm:
+
+    "Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
+
+The philosophy of sensation explains sentiment, as well as the idea of
+the beautiful, only by changing its nature. It confounds it with
+agreeable sensation, and, consequently, for it the love of beauty can be
+nothing but desire. There is no theory more contradicted by facts.
+
+What is desire? It is an emotion of the soul which has, for its avowed
+or secret end, possession. Admiration is in its nature respectful,
+whilst desire tends to profane its object.
+
+Desire is the offspring of need. It supposes, then, in him who
+experiences it, a want, a defect, and, to a certain point, suffering.
+The sentiment of the beautiful is to itself its own satisfaction.
+
+Desire is burning, impetuous, sad. The sentiment of the beautiful, free
+from all desire, and always without fear, elevates and warms the soul,
+and may transport it even to enthusiasm, without making it know the
+troubles of passion. The artist sees only the beautiful where the
+sensual man sees only the alluring and the frightful. On a vessel tossed
+by a tempest, while the passengers tremble at the sight of the
+threatening waves, and at the sound of the thunder that breaks over
+their heads, the artist remains absorbed in the contemplation of the
+sublime spectacle. Vernet has himself lashed to the mast in order to
+contemplate for a longer time the storm in its majestic and terrible
+beauty. When he knows fear, when he participates in the common feeling,
+the artist vanishes, there no more remains any thing but the man.
+
+The sentiment of the beautiful is so far from being desire, that each
+excludes the other. Let me take a common example. Before a table loaded
+with meats and delicious wines, the desire of enjoyment is awakened, but
+not the sentiment of the beautiful. Suppose that if, instead of thinking
+of the pleasures which all these things spread before my eyes promise
+me, I only take notice of the manner in which they are arranged and set
+upon the table, and the order of the feast, the sentiment of the
+beautiful might in some degree be produced; but surely this will be
+neither the need nor the desire of appropriating this symmetry, this
+order.
+
+It is the property of beauty not to irritate and inflame desire, but to
+purify and ennoble it. The more beautiful a woman is,--I do not mean
+that common and gross beauty which Reubens in vain animates with his
+brilliant coloring, but that ideal beauty which antiquity and Raphael
+understood so well,--the more, at the sight of this noble creature is
+desire tempered by an exquisite and delicate sentiment, and is sometimes
+even replaced by a disinterested worship. If the Venus of the Capitol,
+or the Saint Cecilia, excites in you sensual desires, you are not made
+to feel the beautiful. So the true artist addresses himself less to the
+senses than to the soul; in painting beauty he only seeks to awaken in
+us sentiment; and when he has carried this sentiment as far as
+enthusiasm, he has obtained the last triumph of art.
+
+The sentiment of the beautiful is, therefore, a special sentiment, as
+the idea of the beautiful is a simple idea. But is this sentiment, one
+in itself, manifested only in a single way, and applied only to a single
+kind of beauty? Here again--here, as always--let us interrogate
+experience.
+
+When we have before our eyes an object whose forms are perfectly
+determined, and the whole easy to embrace,--a beautiful flower, a
+beautiful statue, an antique temple of moderate size,--each of our
+faculties attaches itself to this object, and rests upon it with an
+unalloyed satisfaction. Our senses easily perceive its details; our
+reason seizes the happy harmony of all its parts. Should this object
+disappear, we can distinctly represent it to ourselves, so precise and
+fixed are its forms. The soul in this contemplation feels again a sweet
+and tranquil joy, a sort of efflorescence.
+
+Let us consider, on the other hand, an object with vague and indefinite
+forms, which may nevertheless be very beautiful: the impression which we
+experience is without doubt a pleasure still, but it is a pleasure of a
+different order. This object does not call forth all our powers like the
+first. Reason conceives it, but the senses do not perceive the whole of
+it, and imagination does not distinctly represent it to itself. The
+senses and the imagination try in vain to attain its last limits; our
+faculties are enlarged, are inflated, thus to speak, in order to embrace
+it, but it escapes and surpasses them. The pleasure that we feel comes
+from the very magnitude of the object; but, at the same time, this
+magnitude produces in us I know not what melancholy sentiment, because
+it is disproportionate to us. At the sight of the starry heavens, of the
+vast sea, of gigantic mountains, admiration is mingled with sadness.
+These objects, in reality finite, like the world itself, seem to us
+infinite, in our want of power to comprehend their immensity, and,
+resembling what is truly without bounds, they awaken in us the idea of
+the infinite, that idea which at once elevates and confounds our
+intelligence. The corresponding sentiment which the soul experiences is
+an austere pleasure.
+
+In order to render the difference which we wish to mark more
+perceptible, examples may be multiplied. Are you affected in the same
+way at the sight of a meadow, variegated in its rather limited
+dimensions, whose extent the eye can easily take in, and at the aspect
+of an inaccessible mountain, at the foot of which the ocean breaks? Do
+the sweet light of day and a melodious voice produce upon you the same
+effect as darkness and silence? In the intellectual and moral order, are
+you moved in the same way when a rich and good man opens his purse to
+the indigent, and when a magnanimous man gives hospitality to his enemy,
+and saves him at the peril of his own life? Take some light poetry in
+which measure, spirit, and grace, everywhere predominate; take an ode,
+and especially an epistle of Horace, or some small verses of Voltaire,
+and compare them with the Iliad, or those immense Indian poems that are
+filled with marvellous events, wherein the highest metaphysics are
+united to recitals by turns graceful or pathetic, those poems that have
+more than two hundred thousand verses, whose personages are gods or
+symbolic beings; and see whether the impressions that you experience
+will be the same. As a last example, suppose, on the one hand, a writer
+who, with two or three strokes of the pen, sketches an analysis of
+intelligence, agreeable and simple, but without depth, and, on the
+other, a philosopher who engages in a long labor in order to arrive at
+the most rigorous decomposition of the faculty of knowing, and unfolds
+to you a long chain of principles and consequences,--read the _Traité
+des Sensations_ and _the Critique of Pure Reason_, and, even leaving out
+of the account the truth and the falsehood they may contain, with
+reference solely to the beautiful, compare your impressions.
+
+These are, then, two very different sentiments; different names have
+also been given them: one has been more particularly called the
+sentiment of the beautiful, the other that of the sublime.
+
+In order to complete the study of the different faculties that enter
+into the perception of beauty, after reason and sentiment, it remains to
+us to speak of a faculty not less necessary, which animates them and
+vivifies them,--imagination.
+
+When sensation, judgment, and sentiment have been produced by the
+occasion of an external object, they are reproduced even in the absence
+of this object; this is memory.
+
+Memory is double:--not only do I remember that I have been in the
+presence of a certain object, but I represent to myself this absent
+object as it was, as I have seen, felt, and judged it:--the remembrance
+is then an image. In this last case, memory has been called by some
+philosophers imaginative memory. Such is the foundation of imagination;
+but imagination is something more still.
+
+The mind, applying itself to the images furnished by memory, decomposes
+them, chooses between their different traits, and forms of them new
+images. Without this new power, imagination would be captive in the
+circle of memory.
+
+The gift of being strongly affected by objects and reproducing their
+absent or vanished images, and the power of modifying these images so as
+to compose of them new ones,--do they fully constitute what men call
+imagination? No, or at least, if these are indeed the proper elements of
+imagination, there must be something else added, to wit, the sentiment
+of the beautiful in all its degrees. By this means is a great
+imagination preserved and kindled. Did the careful reading of Titus
+Livius enable the author of the _Horaces_ to vividly represent to
+himself some of the scenes described, to seize their principal traits
+and combine them happily? From the outset, sentiment, love of the
+beautiful, especially of the morally beautiful, were requisite; there
+was required that great heart whence sprang the word of the ancient
+Horace.
+
+Let us be well understood. We do not say that sentiment is imagination,
+we say that it is the source whence imagination derives its inspirations
+and becomes productive. If men are so different in regard to
+imagination, it is because some are cold in presence of objects, cold in
+the representations which they preserve of them, cold also in the
+combinations which they form of them, whilst others, endowed with a
+particular sensibility, are vividly moved by the first impressions of
+objects, preserve strong recollections of them, and carry into the
+exercise of all their faculties this same force of emotion. Take away
+sentiment and all else is inanimate; let it manifest itself, and every
+thing receives warmth, color, and life.
+
+It is then impossible to limit imagination, as the word seems to demand,
+to images properly so called, and to ideas that are related to physical
+objects. To remember sounds, to choose between them, to combine them in
+order to draw from them new effects,--does not this belong to
+imagination, although sound is not an image? The true musician does not
+possess less imagination than the painter. Imagination is conceded to
+the poet when he retraces the images of nature; will this same faculty
+be refused him when he retraces sentiments? But, besides images and
+sentiments, does not the poet employ the high thoughts of justice,
+liberty, virtue, in a word, moral ideas? Will it be said that in moral
+paintings, in pictures of the intimate life of the soul, either graceful
+or energetic, there is no imagination?
+
+You see what is the extent of imagination: it has no limits, it is
+applied to all things. Its distinctive character is that of deeply
+moving the soul in the presence of a beautiful object, or by its
+remembrance alone, or even by the idea alone of an imaginary object. It
+is recognized by the sign that it produces, by the aid of its
+representations, the same impression as, and even an impression more
+vivid than, nature by the aid of real objects. If beauty, absent and
+dreamed of, does not affect you as much as, and more than, present
+beauty, you may have a thousand other gifts,--that of imagination has
+been refused you.
+
+In the eyes of imagination, the real world languishes in comparison with
+its own fictions. One may feel that imagination is his master by the
+_ennui_ that real and present things give him. The phantoms of imagination
+have a vagueness, an indefiniteness of form, which moves a thousand
+times more than the clearness and distinctness of actual perceptions.
+And then, unless we are wholly mad,--and passion does not always render
+this service,--it is very difficult to see reality otherwise than as it
+is not, that is to say, very imperfectly. On the other hand, one makes
+of an image what he wishes, unconsciously metamorphoses it, embellishes
+it to his own liking. There is at the bottom of the human soul an
+infinite power of feeling and loving to which the entire world does not
+answer, still less a single one of its creatures, however charming. All
+mortal beauty, viewed near by, does not suffice for this insatiable
+power which it excites and cannot satisfy. But from afar, its effects
+disappear or are diminished, shades are mingled and confounded in the
+clear-obscure of memory and dream, and the objects please more because
+they are less determinate. The peculiarity of men of imagination is,
+that they represent men and things otherwise than as they are, and that
+they have a passion for such fantastic images. Those that are called
+positive men, are men without imagination, who perceive only what they
+see, and deal with reality as it is instead of transforming it. They
+have, in general, more reason than sentiment; they may be seriously,
+profoundly honest; they will never be either poets or artists. What
+makes the poet or artist is, with a foundation of good sense and
+reason--without which all the rest is useless--a sensitive, even a
+passionate heart; above all, a vivid, a powerful imagination.
+
+If sentiment acts upon imagination, we see that imagination returns with
+usury to sentiment what it gives.
+
+This pure and ardent passion, this worship of beauty that makes the
+great artist, can be found only in a man of imagination. In fact, the
+sentiment of the beautiful may be awakened in each one of us before any
+beautiful object; but, when this object has disappeared, if its image
+does not subsist vivaciously retraced, the sentiment which it for a
+moment excited is little by little effaced; it may be revived at the
+sight of another object, but only to be extinguished again,--always
+dying to be born again at hazard; not being nourished, increased,
+exalted by the vivacious and continuous reproduction of its object in
+the imagination, it wants that inspiring power, without which there is
+no artist, no poet.
+
+A word more on another faculty, which is not a simple faculty, but a
+happy combination of those which have just been mentioned,--taste, so
+ill treated, so arbitrarily limited in all theories.
+
+If, after having heard a beautiful poetical or musical work, admired a
+statue or a picture, you are able to recall what your senses have
+perceived, to see again the absent picture, to hear again the sounds
+that no longer exist; in a word, if you have imagination, you possess
+one of the conditions without which there is no true taste. In fact, in
+order to relish the works of imagination, is it not necessary to have
+taste? Do we not need, in order to feel an author, not to equal him,
+without doubt, but to resemble him in some degree? Will not a man of
+sensible, but dry and austere mind, like Le Batteux or Condillac, be
+insensible to the happy darings of genius, and will he not carry into
+criticism a narrow severity, a reason very little reasonable--since he
+does not comprehend all the parts of human nature,--an intolerance that
+mutilates and blemishes art while thinking to purify it?
+
+On the other hand, imagination does not suffice for the appreciation of
+beauty. Moreover, that vivacity of imagination so precious to taste,
+when it is somewhat restrained, produces, when it rules, only a very
+imperfect taste, which, not having reason for a basis, carelessly
+judges, runs the risk of misunderstanding the greatest beauty,--beauty
+that is regulated. Unity in composition, harmony of all the parts, just
+proportion of details, skilful combination of effects, discrimination,
+sobriety, measure, are so many merits it will little feel, and will not
+put in their place. Imagination has doubtless much to do with works of
+art; but, in fine, it is not every thing. Is it only imagination that
+makes the _Polyeucte_ and the _Misanthrope_, two incomparable marvels?
+Is there not, also, in the profound simplicity of plan, in the measured
+development of action, in the sustained truth of characters, a superior
+reason, different from imagination which furnishes the superior colors,
+and from sensibility that gives the passion?
+
+Besides imagination and reason, the man of taste ought to possess an
+enlightened but ardent love of beauty; he must take delight in meeting
+it, must search for it, must summon it. To comprehend and demonstrate
+that a thing is not beautiful, is an ordinary pleasure, an ungrateful
+task; but to discern a beautiful thing, to be penetrated with its
+beauty, to make it evident, and make others participate in our
+sentiment, is an exquisite joy, a generous task. Admiration is, for him
+who feels it, at once a happiness and an honor. It is a happiness to
+feel deeply what is beautiful; it is an honor to know how to recognize
+it. Admiration is the sign of an elevated reason served by a noble
+heart. It is above a small criticism, that is skeptical and powerless;
+but it is the soul of a large criticism, a criticism that is productive:
+it is, thus to speak, the divine part of taste.
+
+After having spoken of taste which appreciates beauty, shall we say
+nothing of genius which makes it live again? Genius is nothing else than
+taste in action, that is to say, the three powers of taste carried to
+their culmination, and armed with a new and mysterious power, the power
+of execution. But we are already entering upon the domain of art. Let us
+wait, we shall soon find art again and the genius that accompanies it.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[96] Except the estimable _Essay on the Beautiful_, by P. André, a
+disciple of Malebranche, whose life was considerably prolonged into the
+eighteenth century. On P. André, see 3d Series, vol. iii., _Modern
+Philosophy_, p. 207, 516.
+
+[97] See in the works of Diderot, _Pensées sur la Sculpture, les
+Salons_, etc.
+
+[98] See 1st Series, vol. iv., explained and estimated, the theories of
+Hutcheson and Reid.
+
+[99] The theory of Kant is found in the _Critique of Judgment_, and in
+the _Observations_ on the _Sentiment of the Beautiful and the Sublime_.
+See the excellent translation made by M. Barny, 2 vols., 1846.
+
+[100] On Hutcheson and Smith, their merits and defects, the part of
+truth and the part of error, which their philosophy contains, see the
+detailed lectures which we have devoted to them, 1st Series, vol. iv.
+
+[101] See the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Condillac and
+Helvetius, _Ibid._, vol. iii.
+
+[102] See lecture 5, in this vol.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.
+
+    Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful:
+    the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.--Nor to
+    convenience.--Nor to proportion.--Essential characters of the
+    beautiful.--Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the
+    sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral
+    beauty.--Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.--God, the
+    first principle of the beautiful.--Theory of Plato.
+
+
+We have made known the beautiful in ourselves, in the faculties that
+perceive it and appreciate it, in reason, sentiment, imagination, taste;
+we come, according to the order determined by the method, to other
+questions: What is the beautiful in objects? What is the beautiful taken
+in itself? What are its characters and different species? What, in fine,
+is its first and last principle? All these questions must be treated,
+and, if possible, solved. Philosophy has its point of departure in
+psychology; but, in order to attain also its legitimate termination, it
+must set out from man, and reach things themselves.
+
+The history of philosophy offers many theories on the nature of the
+beautiful: we do not wish to enumerate nor discuss them all; we will
+designate the most important.[103]
+
+There is one very gross, which defines the beautiful as that which
+pleases the senses, that which procures an agreeable impression. We will
+not stop at this opinion. We have sufficiently refuted it in showing
+that it is impossible to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable.
+
+A sensualism a little more wise puts the useful in the place of the
+agreeable, that is to say, changes the form of the same principle.
+Neither is the beautiful the object which procures for us in the present
+moment an agreeable but fugitive sensation, it is the object which can
+often procure for us this same sensation or others similar. No great
+effort of observation or reasoning is necessary to convince us that
+utility has nothing to do with beauty. What is useful is not always
+beautiful. What is beautiful is not always useful, and what is at once
+useful and beautiful is beautiful for some other reason than its
+utility. Observe a lever or a pulley: surely nothing is more useful.
+Nevertheless, you are not tempted to say that this is beautiful. Have
+you discovered an antique vase admirably worked? You exclaim that this
+vase is beautiful, without thinking to seek of what use it may be to
+you. Finally, symmetry and order are beautiful things, and at the same
+time, are useful things, because they economize space, because objects
+symmetrically disposed are easier to find when one wants them; but that
+is not what makes for us the beauty of symmetry, for we immediately
+seize this kind of beauty, and it is often late enough before we
+recognize the utility that is found in it. It even sometimes happens,
+that after having admired the beauty of an object, we are not able to
+divine its use, although it may have one. The useful is, then, entirely
+different from the beautiful, far from being its foundation.
+
+A celebrated and very ancient[104] theory makes the beautiful consist in
+the perfect suitableness of means to their end. Here the beautiful is no
+longer the useful, it is the suitable; these two ideas must be
+distinguished. A machine produces excellent effects, economy of time,
+work, etc.; it is therefore useful. If, moreover, examining its
+construction, I find that each piece is in its place, and that all are
+skilfully disposed for the result which they should produce; even
+without regarding the utility of this result, as the means are well
+adapted to their end, I judge that there is suitableness in it. We are
+already approaching the idea of the beautiful; for we are no longer
+considering what is useful, but what is proper. Now, we have not yet
+attained the true character of beauty; there are, in fact, objects very
+well adapted to their end, which we do not call beautiful. A bench
+without ornament and without elegance, provided it be solid, provided
+all the parts are firmly connected, provided one may sit down on it with
+safety, provided it may be for this purpose suitable, agreeable even,
+may give an example of the most perfect adaptation of means to an end;
+it will not, therefore, be said that this bench is beautiful. There is
+here always this difference between suitableness and utility, that an
+object to be beautiful has no need of being useful, but that it is not
+beautiful if it does not possess suitableness, if there is in it a
+disagreement between the end and the means.
+
+Some have thought to find the beautiful in proportion, and this is, in
+fact, one of the conditions of beauty, but it is not the only one. It is
+very certain, that an object ill-proportioned cannot be beautiful. There
+is in all beautiful objects, however far they may be from geometric
+form, a sort of living geometry. But, I ask, is it proportion that is
+dominant in this slender tree, with flexible and graceful branches, with
+rich and shady foliage? What makes the terrible beauty of a storm, what
+makes that of a great picture, of an isolated verse, or a sublime ode?
+It is not, I know, wanting in law and rule, neither is it law and rule:
+often, even what at first strikes us is an apparent irregularity. It is
+absurd to pretend that what makes us admire all these things and many
+more, is the same quality that makes us admire a geometric figure, that
+is to say, the exact correspondence of parts.
+
+What we say of proportion may be said of order, which is something less
+mathematical than proportion, but scarcely explains better what is
+free, varied, and negligent in certain beauties.
+
+All these theories which refer beauty to order, harmony, and proportion,
+are at foundation only one and the same theory which in the beautiful
+sees unity before all. And surely unity is beautiful; it is an important
+part of beauty, but it is not the whole of beauty.
+
+The most probable theory of the beautiful is that which composes it of
+two contrary and equally necessary elements, unity and variety. Behold a
+beautiful flower. Without doubt, unity, order, proportion, symmetry
+even, are in it; for, without these qualities, reason would be absent
+from it, and all things are made with a marvellous reason. But, at the
+same time, what a diversity! How many shades in the color, what richness
+in the least details! Even in mathematics, what is beautiful is not an
+abstract principle, it is a principle carrying with itself a long chain
+of consequences. There is no beauty without life, and life is movement,
+is diversity.
+
+Unity and variety are applied to all orders of beauty. Let us rapidly
+run over these different orders.
+
+In the first place, there are beautiful objects, to speak properly, and
+sublime objects. A beautiful object, we have seen, is something
+completed, circumscribed, limited, which all our faculties easily
+embrace, because the different parts are on a somewhat narrow scale. A
+sublime object is that which, by forms not in themselves
+disproportionate, but less definite and more difficult to seize, awakens
+in us the sentiment of the infinite.
+
+There are two very distinct species of beauty. But reality is
+inexhaustible, and in all the degrees of reality there is beauty.
+
+Among sensible objects, colors, sounds, figures, movements, are capable
+of producing the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. All these
+beauties are arranged under that species of beauty which, right or
+wrong, is called physical beauty.
+
+If from the world of sense we elevate ourselves to that of mind, truth,
+and science, we shall find there beauties more severe, but not less
+real. The universal laws that govern bodies, those that govern
+intelligences, the great principles that contain and produce long
+deductions, the genius that creates, in the artist, poet, or
+philosopher,--all these are beautiful, as well as nature herself: this
+is what is called intellectual beauty.
+
+Finally, if we consider the moral world and its laws, the idea of
+liberty, virtue, and devotedness, here the austere justice of an
+Aristides, there the heroism of a Leonidas, the prodigies of charity or
+patriotism, we shall certainly find a third order of beauty that still
+surpasses the other two, to wit, moral beauty.
+
+Neither let us forget to apply to all these beauties the distinction
+between the beautiful and the sublime. There are, then, the beautiful
+and the sublime at once in nature, in ideas, in sentiments, in actions.
+What an almost infinite variety in beauty!
+
+After having enumerated all these differences, could we not reduce them?
+They are incontestable; but, in this diversity is there not unity? Is
+there not a single beauty of which all particular beauties are only
+reflections, shades, degrees, or degradations?
+
+Plotinus, in his treatise _On the Beautiful_,[105] proposed to himself
+this question. He asks--What is the beautiful in itself? I see clearly
+that such or such a form is beautiful, that such or such an action is
+also beautiful; but why and how are these two objects, so dissimilar,
+beautiful? What is the common quality which, being found in these two
+objects, ranges them under the general idea of the beautiful?
+
+It is necessary to answer this question, or the theory of beauty is a
+maze without issue; one applies the same name to the most diverse
+things, without understanding the real unity that authorizes this unity
+of name.
+
+Either the diversities which we have designated in beauty are such that
+it is impossible to discover their relation, or these diversities are
+especially apparent, and have their harmony, their concealed unity.
+
+Is it pretended that this unity is a chimera? Then physical beauty,
+moral beauty, and intellectual beauty, are strangers to each other.
+What, then, will the artist do? He is surrounded by different beauties,
+and he must make a work; for such is the recognized law of art. But if
+this unity that is imposed upon him is a factitious unity, if there are
+in nature only essentially dissimilar beauties, art deceives and lies to
+us. Let it be explained, then, how falsehood is the law of art. That
+cannot be; the unity that art expresses, it must have somewhere caught a
+glimpse of, in order to transport it into its works.
+
+We neither retract the distinction between the beautiful and the
+sublime, nor the other distinctions just now indicated; but it is
+necessary to re-unite after having distinguished them. These
+distinctions and these re-unions are not contradictory: the great law of
+beauty, like that of truth, is unity as well as variety. All is one, and
+all is diverse. We have divided beauty into three great
+classes--physical beauty, intellectual beauty, and moral beauty. We must
+now seek the unity of these three sorts of beauty. Now, we think that
+they resolve themselves into one and the same beauty, moral beauty,
+meaning by that, with moral beauty properly so called, all spiritual
+beauty.
+
+Let us put this opinion to the proof of facts.
+
+Place yourself before that statue of Apollo which is called Apollo
+Belvidere, and observe attentively what strikes you in that
+master-piece. Winkelmann, who was not a metaphysician, but a learned
+antiquarian, a man of taste without system, made a celebrated analysis
+of the Apollo.[106] It is curious to study it. What Winkelmann extols
+before all, is the character of divinity stamped upon the immortal youth
+that invests that beautiful body, upon the height, a little above that
+of man, upon the majestic altitude, upon the imperious movement, upon
+the _ensemble_, and all the details of the person. The forehead is
+indeed that of a god,--an unalterable placidity dwells upon it. Lower
+down, humanity reappears somewhat; and that is very necessary, in order
+to interest humanity in the works of art. In that satisfied look, in the
+distension of the nostrils, in the elevation of the under lip, are at
+once felt anger mingled with disdain, pride of victory, and the little
+fatigue which it has cost. Weigh well each word of Winkelmann: you will
+find there a moral impression. The tone of the learned antiquary is
+elevated, little by little, to enthusiasm, and his analysis becomes a
+hymn to spiritual beauty.
+
+Instead of a statue, observe a real and living man. Regard that man who,
+solicited by the strongest motives to sacrifice duty to fortune,
+triumphs over interest, after an heroic struggle, and sacrifices fortune
+to virtue. Regard him at the moment when he is about to take this
+magnanimous resolution; his face will appear to you beautiful, because
+it expresses the beauty of his soul. Perhaps, under all other
+circumstances, the face of the man is common, even trivial; here,
+illuminated by the soul which it manifests, it is ennobled, and takes an
+imposing character of beauty. So, the natural face of Socrates[107]
+contrasts strongly with the type of Grecian beauty; but look at him on
+his death-bed, at the moment of drinking the hemlock, convening with his
+disciples on the immortality of the soul, and his face will appear to
+you sublime.[108]
+
+At the highest point of moral grandeur, Socrates expires:--you have
+before your eyes no longer any thing but his dead body; the dead face
+preserves its beauty, as long as it preserves traces of the mind that
+animated it; but little by little the expression is extinguished or
+disappears; the face then becomes vulgar and ugly. The expression of
+death is hideous or sublime,--hideous at the aspect of the decomposition
+of the matter that no longer retains the spirit,--sublime when it
+awakens in us the idea of eternity.
+
+Consider the figure of man in repose: it is more beautiful than that of
+an animal, the figure of an animal is more beautiful than the form of
+any inanimate object. It is because the human figure, even in the
+absence of virtue and genius, always reflects an intelligent and moral
+nature, it is because the figure of an animal reflects sentiment at
+least, and something of soul, if not the soul entire. If from man and
+the animal we descend to purely physical nature, we shall still find
+beauty there, as long as we find there some shade of intelligence, I
+know not what, that awakens in us some thought, some sentiment. Do we
+arrive at some piece of matter that expresses nothing, that signifies
+nothing, neither is the idea of beauty applied to it. But every thing
+that exists is animated. Matter is shaped and penetrated by forces that
+are not material, and it obeys laws that attest an intelligence
+everywhere present. The most subtile chemical analysis does not reach a
+dead and inert nature, but a nature that is organized in its own way,
+that is neither deprived of forces nor laws. In the depths of the earth,
+as in the heights of the heavens, in a grain of sand as in a gigantic
+mountain, an immortal spirit shines through the thickest coverings. Let
+us contemplate nature with the eye of the soul as well as with the eye
+of the body:--everywhere a moral expression will strike us, and the
+forms of things will impress us as symbols of thought. We have said
+that with man, and with the animal even, the figure is beautiful on
+account of the expression. But, when you are on the summit of the Alps,
+or before the immense Ocean, when you behold the rising or setting of
+the sun, at the beginning or the close of the day, do not these imposing
+pictures produce on you a moral effect? Do all these grand spectacles
+appear only for the sake of appearing? Do we not regard them as
+manifestations of an admirable power, intelligence, and wisdom? And,
+thus to speak, is not the face of nature expressive like that of man?
+
+Form cannot be simply a form, it must be the form of something. Physical
+beauty is, then, the sign of an internal beauty, which is spiritual and
+moral beauty; and this is the foundation, the principle, the unity of
+the beautiful.[109]
+
+All the beauties that we have just enumerated and reduced compose what
+is called the really beautiful. But, above real beauty, is a beauty of
+another order--ideal beauty. The ideal resides neither in an individual,
+nor in a collection of individuals. Nature or experience furnishes us
+the occasion of conceiving it, but it is essentially distinct. Let it
+once be conceived, and all natural figures, though never so beautiful,
+are only images of a superior beauty which they do not realize. Give me
+a beautiful action, and I will imagine one still more beautiful. The
+Apollo itself is open to criticism in more than one respect. The ideal
+continually recedes as we approach it. Its last termination is in the
+infinite, that is to say, in God; or, to speak more correctly, the true
+and absolute ideal is nothing else than God himself.
+
+God, being the principle of all things, must for this reason be that of
+perfect beauty, and, consequently, of all natural beauties that express
+it more or less imperfectly; he is the principle of beauty, both as
+author of the physical world and as father of the intellectual and moral
+world.
+
+Is it not necessary to be a slave of the senses and of appearances in
+order to stop at movements, at forms, at sounds, at colors, whose
+harmonious combinations produce the beauty of this visible world, and
+not to conceive behind this scene so magnificent and well regulated, the
+orderer, the geometer, the supreme artist?
+
+Physical beauty serves as an envelope to intellectual and moral beauty.
+
+What can be the principle of intellectual beauty, that splendor of the
+true, except the principle of all truth?
+
+Moral beauty comprises, as we shall subsequently see,[110] two distinct
+elements, equally but diversely beautiful, justice and charity, respect
+and love of men. He who expresses in his conduct justice and charity,
+accomplishes the most beautiful of all works; the good man is, in his
+way, the greatest of all artists. But what shall we say of him who is
+the very substance of justice and the exhaustless source of love? If our
+moral nature is beautiful, what must be the beauty of its author! His
+justice and goodness are everywhere, both in us and out of us. His
+justice is the moral order that no human law makes, that all human laws
+are forced to express, that is preserved and perpetuated in the world by
+its own force. Let us descend into ourselves, and consciousness will
+attest the divine justice in the peace and contentment that accompany
+virtue, in the troubles and tortures that are the invariable punishments
+of vice and crime. How many times, and with what eloquence, have men
+celebrated the indefatigable solicitude of Providence, its benefits
+everywhere manifest in the smallest as well as in the greatest phenomena
+of nature, which we forget so easily because they have become so
+familiar to us, but which, on reflection, call forth our mingled
+admiration and gratitude, and proclaim a good God, full of love for his
+creatures!
+
+Thus, God is the principle of the three orders of beauty that we have
+distinguished, physical beauty, intellectual beauty, moral beauty.
+
+In him also are reunited the two great forms of the beautiful
+distributed in each of these three orders, to wit, the beautiful and the
+sublime. God is, _par excellence_, the beautiful--for what object
+satisfies more all our faculties, our reason, our imagination, our
+heart! He offers to reason the highest idea, beyond which it has nothing
+more to seek; to imagination the most ravishing contemplation; to the
+heart a sovereign object of love. He is, then, perfectly beautiful; but
+is he not sublime also in other ways? If he extends the horizon of
+thought, it is to confound it in the abyss of his greatness. If the soul
+blooms at the spectacle of his goodness, has it not also reason to be
+affrighted at the idea of his justice, which is not less present to it?
+God is at once mild and terrible. At the same time that he is the life,
+the light, the movement, the ineffable grace of visible and finite
+nature, he is also called the Eternal, the Invisible, the Infinite, the
+Absolute Unity, and the Being of beings. Do not these awful attributes,
+as certain as the first, produce in the highest degree in the
+imagination and the soul that melancholy emotion excited by the sublime?
+Yes, God is for us the type and source of the two great forms of beauty,
+because he is to us at once an impenetrable enigma and still the
+clearest word that we are able to find for all enigmas. Limited beings
+as we are, we comprehend nothing in comparison with that which is
+without limits, and we are able to explain nothing without that same
+thing which is without limits. By the being that we possess, we have
+some idea of the infinite being of God; by the nothingness that is in
+us, we lose ourselves in the being of God; and thus always forced to
+recur to him in order to explain any thing, and always thrown back
+within ourselves under the weight of his infinitude, we experience by
+turns, or rather at the same time, for this God who raises and casts us
+down, a sentiment of irresistible attraction and astonishment, not to
+say insurmountable terror, which he alone can cause and allay, because
+he alone is the unity of the sublime and the beautiful.
+
+Thus absolute being, which is both absolute unity and infinite
+variety,--God, is necessarily the last reason, the ultimate foundation,
+the completed ideal of all beauty. This is the marvellous beauty that
+Diotimus had caught a glimpse of, and thus paints to Socrates in the
+_Banquet_:
+
+"Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from decay as well
+as increase, which is not beautiful in such a part and ugly in such
+another, beautiful only, at such a time, in such a place, in such a
+relation, beautiful for some, ugly for others, beauty that has no
+sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing corporeal, which is not such
+a thought or such a particular science, which resides not in any being
+different from itself, as an animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any
+other thing, which is absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in
+which all other beauties participate, in such a way, nevertheless, that
+their birth or their destruction neither diminishes nor increases, nor
+in the least changes it!... In order to arrive at this perfect beauty,
+it is necessary to commence with the beauties of this lower world, and,
+the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate ourselves
+unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, through all the
+degrees of the scale, from a single beautiful body to two, from two to
+all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from
+beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until from thought to
+thought we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than
+the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing it as it is in itself.
+
+"O my dear Socrates," continued the stranger of Mantinea, "that which
+can give value to this life is the spectacle of the eternal beauty....
+What would be the destiny of a mortal to whom it should be granted to
+contemplate the beautiful without alloy, in its purity and simplicity,
+no longer clothed with the flesh and hues of humanity, and with all
+those vain charms that are condemned to perish, to whom it should be
+given to see face to face, under its sole form, the divine beauty!"[111]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[103] If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and piquant
+refutation, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of beauty,
+he may read the _Hippias_ of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation. The
+_Phædrus_, vol. vi., contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own
+theory; but it is in the _Banquet_ (_Ibid._), and particularly in the
+discourse of Diotimus, that we must look for the thought of Plato
+carried to its highest degree of development, and clothed with all the
+beauty of human language.
+
+[104] See the _Hippias_.
+
+[105] First _Ennead_, book vi., in the work of M. B. Saint-Hillaire, on
+the _School of Alexandria_, the translation of this morsel of Plotinus,
+p. 197.
+
+[106] Winkelmann has twice described the Apollo, _History of Art among
+the Ancients_, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book iv., chap.
+iii., _Art among the Greeks_:--"The Apollo of the Vatican offers us that
+God in a movement of indignation against the serpent Python, which he
+has just killed with arrow-shots, and in a sentiment of contempt for a
+victory so little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist, who proposed to
+represent the most beautiful of the gods, placed the anger in the nose,
+which, according to the ancients, was its seat; and the disdain on the
+lips. He expressed the anger by the inflation of the nostrils, and the
+disdain by the elevation of the under lip, which causes the same
+movement in the chin."--_Ibid._, vol. ii., book iv., chap. vi., _Art
+under the Emperors_:--"Of all the antique statues that have escaped the
+fury of barbarians and the destructive hand of time, the statue of
+Apollo is, without contradiction, the most sublime. One would say that
+the artist composed a figure purely ideal, and employed matter only
+because it was necessary for him to execute and represent his idea. As
+much as Homer's description of Apollo surpasses the descriptions which
+other poets have undertaken after him, so much this statue excels all
+the figures of this god. Its height is above that of man, and its
+attitude proclaims the divine grandeur with which it is filled. A
+perennial spring-time, like that which reigns in the happy fields of
+Elysium, clothes with lovable youth the beautiful body, and shines with
+sweetness over the noble structure of the limbs. In order to feel the
+merit of this _chef-d'oeuvre of art_, we must be penetrated with
+intellectual beauty, and become, if possible, the creatures of a
+celestial nature; for there is nothing mortal in it, nothing subject to
+the wants of humanity. That body, whose forms are not interrupted by a
+vein, which is not agitated by a nerve, seems animated with a celestial
+spirit, which circulates like a sweet vapor in all the parts of that
+admirable figure. The god has just been pursuing Python, against which
+he has bent, for the first time, his formidable bow; in his rapid
+course, he has overtaken him, and given him a mortal wound. Penetrated
+with the conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his
+august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond
+his victory. Disdain sits upon his lips; the indignation that he
+breathes distends his nostrils, and ascends to his eyebrows; but an
+unchangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of
+sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. Among all the figures
+that remain to us of Jupiter, there is none in which the father of the
+gods approaches the grandeur with which he manifested himself to the
+intelligence of Homer; but in the traits of the Apollo Belvidere, we
+find the individual beauties of all the other divinities united, as in
+that of Pandora. The forehead is the forehead of Jupiter, inclosing the
+goddess of wisdom; the eyebrows, by their movement, announce his supreme
+will; the large eyes are those of the queen of the gods, orbed with
+dignity, and the mouth is an image of that of Bacchus, where breathed
+voluptuousness. Like the tender branches of the vine, his beautiful
+locks flow around his head, as if they were lightly agitated by the
+zephyr's breath. They seem perfumed with the essence of the gods, and
+are charmingly arranged over his head by the hand of the Graces. At the
+sight of this marvel of art, I forget every thing else, and my mind
+takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it with dignity;
+from admiration I pass to ecstasy; I feel my breast dilating and rising,
+like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy; I am transported
+to Delos, and the sacred groves of Syria,--places which Apollo honored
+with his presence:--the statue seems to be animated as it were with the
+beauty that sprung of old from the hands of Pygmalion. How can I
+describe thee, O inimitable master-piece? For this it would be necessary
+that art itself should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I have
+just sketched, I lay before thee, as those who came to crown the gods,
+put their crowns at their feet, not being able to reach their heads."
+
+[107] See the last part of the _Banquet_, the discourse of Alcibiades,
+p. 326 of vol. vi. of our translation.
+
+[108] We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of David, which
+appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted, above its
+reputation. Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admire Plato
+listening to his master, as it were from the bottom of his soul, without
+looking at him, with his back turned upon the scene that is passing, and
+lost in the contemplation of the intelligible world.
+
+[109] We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so dear to us,
+confirmed by the authority of one of the severest and most circumspect
+minds:--it may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 23. The
+Scotch philosopher terminates his _Essay on Taste_ with these words,
+which happily remind us of the thought and manner of Plato
+himself:--"Whether the reasons that I have given to prove that sensible
+beauty is only the image of moral beauty appear sufficient or not, I
+hope that my doctrine, in attempting to unite the terrestrial Venus more
+closely to the celestial Venus, will not seem to have for its object to
+abase the first, and render her less worthy of the homage that mankind
+has always paid her."
+
+[110] Part iii., lecture 15.
+
+[111] Vol. vi. of our translation, p. 816-818
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII
+
+ON ART.
+
+    Genius:--its attribute is creative power.--Refutation of the
+    opinion that art is the imitation of nature.--M. Emeric David,
+    and M. Quatremère de Quincy.--Refutation of the theory of
+    illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite
+    the passions of terror and pity.--Nor even directly the moral
+    and religious sentiment.--The proper and direct object of art is
+    to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this
+    idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the
+    affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation
+    of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.--True mission of
+    art.
+
+
+Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in the works of
+nature, he is endowed with the power of reproducing it. At the sight of
+a natural beauty, whatever it may be, physical or moral, his first need
+is to feel and admire. He is penetrated, ravished, as it were
+overwhelmed with the sentiment of beauty. But when the sentiment is
+energetic, he is not a long time sterile. We wish to see again, we wish
+to feel again what caused us so vivid a pleasure, and for that end we
+attempt to revive the beauty that charmed us, not as it was, but as our
+imagination represents it to us. Hence a work original and peculiar to
+man, a work of art. Art is the free reproduction of beauty, and the
+power in us capable of reproducing it is called genius.
+
+What faculties are used in this free reproduction of the beautiful? The
+same that serve to recognize and feel it. Taste carried to the highest
+degree, if you always join to it an additional element, is genius. What
+is this element?
+
+Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called
+taste,--imagination, sentiment, reason.
+
+These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, but they are
+not sufficient for it. What essentially distinguishes genius from taste
+is the attribute of creative power. Taste feels, judges, discusses,
+analyzes, but does not invent. Genius is, before all, inventive and
+creative. The man of genius is not the master of the power that is in
+him; it is by the ardent, irresistible need of expressing what he feels,
+that he is a man of genius. He suffers by withholding the sentiments, or
+images, or thoughts, that agitate his breast. It has been said that
+there is no superior man without some grain of folly; but this folly,
+like that of the cross, is the divine part of reason. This mysterious
+power Socrates called his demon. Voltaire called it the devil in the
+body; he demanded it even in a comedian in order to be a comedian of
+genius. Give to it what name you please, it is certain that there is a
+I-know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it until it has
+delivered itself of what consumes it; until, by expressing them, it has
+solaced its pains and its joys, its emotions, its ideas; until its
+reveries have become living works. Thus two things characterize genius;
+at first, the vivacity of the need it has of producing, then the power
+of producing; for the need without the power is only a malady that
+resembles genius, but is not it. Genius is above all, is essentially,
+the power of doing, of inventing, of creating. Taste is contented with
+observing, with admiring. False genius, ardent and impotent imagination,
+consumes itself in sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least nothing
+great. Genius alone has the power to convert conceptions into creations.
+
+If genius creates it does not imitate.
+
+But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since it does not
+imitate it. Nature is the work of God; man is then the rival of God.
+
+The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival of God; but it is
+the interpreter of him. Nature expresses him in its way, human genius
+expresses him in its own way.
+
+Let us stop a moment at that question so much discussed,--whether art is
+any thing else than the imitation of nature.
+
+Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation; for absolute creation
+belongs only to God. Where can genius find the elements upon which it
+works, except in nature, of which it forms a part? But does it limit
+itself to the reproduction of them as nature furnishes them to it,
+without adding any thing to them which belongs to itself? Is it only a
+copier of reality? Its sole merit, then, is that of the fidelity of the
+copy. And what labor is more sterile than that of copying works
+essentially inimitable on account of the life with which they are
+endowed, in order to obtain an indifferent image of them? If art is a
+servile pupil, it is condemned never to be any thing but an impotent
+pupil.
+
+The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature; but every thing in
+nature is not equally admirable. As we have just said, it has something
+by which it infinitely surpasses art--its life. Besides that, art can,
+in its turn, surpass nature, on the condition of not wishing to imitate
+it too closely. Every natural object, however beautiful, is defective on
+some side. Every thing that is real is imperfect. Here, the horrible and
+the hideous are united to the sublime; there, elegance and grace are
+separated from grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered
+and diverse. To reunite them arbitrarily, to borrow from such a face a
+mouth, eyes from such another, without any rule that governs this choice
+and directs these borrowings, is to compose monsters; to admit a rule,
+is already to admit an ideal different from all individuals. It is this
+ideal that the true artist forms to himself in studying nature. Without
+nature, he never would have conceived this ideal; but with this ideal,
+he judges nature herself, rectifies her, and dares undertake to measure
+himself with her.
+
+The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contemplation.
+Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly purified by reflection
+and vivified by sentiment, it warms genius and inspires it with the
+irresistible need of seeing it realized and living. For this end, genius
+takes in nature all the materials that can serve it, and applying to
+them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo impressed his chisel upon the
+docile marble, makes of them works that have no model in nature, that
+imitate nothing else than the ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in
+some sort a second creation inferior to the first in individuality and
+life, but much superior to it, we do not fear to say, on account of the
+intellectual and moral beauty with which it is impressed.
+
+Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This foundation is
+somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art disengages it, and gives to
+it forms more transparent. On this account, art, when it knows well its
+power and its resources, institutes with nature a contest in which it
+may have the advantage.
+
+Let us establish well the end of art: it is precisely where its power
+lies. The end of art is the expression of moral beauty, by the aid of
+physical beauty. The latter is only a symbol of the former. In nature,
+this symbol is often obscure: art in bringing it to light attains
+effects that nature does not always produce. Nature may please more,
+for, once more, it possesses in an incomparable degree what makes the
+great charm of imagination and sight--life; art touches more, because in
+expressing, above all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly
+to the source of profound emotions. Art can be more pathetic than
+nature, and the pathetic is the sign and measure of great beauty.
+
+Two extremes are equally dangerous--a lifeless ideal, or the absence of
+the ideal. Either we copy the model, and are wanting in true beauty, or
+we work _de tête_, and fall into an ideality without character. Genius
+is a ready and sure perception of the right proportion in which the
+ideal and the natural, form and thought, ought to be united. This union
+is the perfection of art: _chefs-d'oeuvre_ are produced by observing
+it.
+
+It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in teaching art. It
+is asked whether pupils should begin with the study of the ideal or the
+real. I do not hesitate to answer,--by both. Nature herself never offers
+the general without the individual, nor the individual without the
+general. Every figure is composed of individual traits which distinguish
+it from all others, and make its own looks, and, at the same time, it
+has general traits which constitute what is called the human figure.
+These general traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is
+the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of
+design to trace. It would also be good, I believe, in order to preserve
+him from the dry and abstract, to exercise him early in copying some
+natural object, especially a living figure. This would be putting pupils
+to the true school of nature. They would thus become accustomed never to
+sacrifice either of the two essential elements of the beautiful, either
+of the two imperative conditions of art.
+
+But, in uniting these two elements, these two conditions, it is
+necessary to distinguish them, and to know how to put them in their
+place. There is no true ideal without determinate form, there is no
+unity without variety, no genus without individuals, but, in fine, the
+foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is before all,
+the realization of the idea, and not the imitation of such or such a
+particular form.
+
+At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France offered a
+prize for the best answer to the following question: _What were the
+causes of the perfection of the antique sculpture, and what would be the
+best means of attaining it?_ The successful competitor, M. Emeric
+David,[112] maintained the opinion then dominant, that the assiduous
+study of natural beauty had alone conducted the antique art to
+perfection, and that thus the imitation of nature was the only route to
+reach the same perfection. A man whom I do not fear to compare with
+Winkelmann, the future author of the _Olympic Jupiter_,[113] M.
+Quatremère de Quincy, in some ingenious and profound disquisitions,[114]
+combated the doctrine of the laureate, and defended the cause of ideal
+beauty. It is impossible to demonstrate more decidedly, by the entire
+history of Greek sculpture, and by authentic texts from the greatest
+critiques of antiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks was
+not the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, or by
+several, the most beautiful model being always very imperfect, and
+several models not being able to compose a single beauty. The true
+process of the Greek art was the representation of an ideal beauty which
+nature scarcely possessed more in Greece than among us, which it could
+not then offer to the artist. We regret that the honorable laureate,
+since become a member of the Institute, pretended that this expression
+of ideal beauty, if it had been known by the Greeks, would have meant
+_visible beauty_, because ideal comes from [Greek: eidos], which
+signifies only, according to M. Emeric David, a form seen by the eye.
+Plato would have been much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of
+the word [Greek: eidos]. M. Quatremère de Quincy confounds his unequal
+adversary by two admirable texts, one from the _Timæus_, where Plato
+marks with precision in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary
+artist, the other at the commencement of the _Orator_, where Cicero
+explains the manner in which great artists work, in referring to the
+manner of Phidias, that is to say, the most perfect master of the most
+perfect epoch of art.
+
+"The artist,[115] who, with eye fixed upon the immutable being, and
+using such a model, reproduces its idea and its excellence, cannot fail
+to produce a whole whose beauty is complete, whilst he who fixes his eye
+upon what is transitory, with this perishable model will make nothing
+beautiful."
+
+"Phidias,[116] that great artist, when he made the form of Jupiter or
+Minerva, did not contemplate a model a resemblance of which he would
+express; but in the depth of his soul resided a perfect type of beauty,
+upon which he fixed his look, which guided his hand and his art."
+
+Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which Raphael describes
+in the famous letter to Castiglione, which he declares that he followed
+himself for the Galatea?[117] "As," he says, "I am destitute of
+beautiful models, I use a certain ideal which I form for myself."
+
+There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, to imitation: it
+is that which makes illusion the end of art. If this theory be true, the
+ideal beauty of painting is a _tromp-l'oeil_,[118] and its
+master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis that the birds came and pecked at.
+The height of art in a theatrical piece would be to persuade you that
+you are in the presence of reality. What is true in this opinion is,
+that a work of art is beautiful only on the condition of being
+life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic art is not to put on
+the stage pale phantoms of the past, but personages borrowed from
+imagination or history, as you like, but animated, endowed with passion,
+speaking and acting like men and not like shades. It is human nature
+that is to be represented to itself under a magic light that does not
+disfigure it, but ennobles it. This magic is the very genius of art. It
+lifts us above the miseries that besiege us, and transports us to
+regions where we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose sight
+of ourselves, but where we find ourselves transformed to our advantage,
+where all the imperfections of reality have given place to a certain
+perfection, where the language that we speak is more equal and elevated,
+where persons are more beautiful, where the ugly is not admitted, and
+all this while duly respecting history, especially without ever going
+beyond the imperative conditions of human nature. Has art forgotten
+human nature? it has passed beyond its end, it has not attained it; it
+has brought forth nothing but chimeras without interest for our soul.
+Has it been too human, too real, too nude? it has fallen short of its
+end; it has then attained it no better.
+
+Illusion is so little the end of art, that it may be complete and have
+no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, theatrical men have taken
+great pains in these latter times to secure historical accuracy of
+costume. This is all very well; but it is not the most important thing.
+Had you found, and lent to the actor who plays the part of Brutus, the
+very costume that of old the Roman hero wore, it would touch true
+connoisseurs very little. This is not all; when the illusion goes too
+far, the sentiment of art disappears in order to give place to a
+sentiment purely natural, sometimes insupportable. If I believed that
+Iphegenia were in fact on the point of being immolated by her father at
+a distance of twenty paces from me, I should leave the theatre trembling
+with horror. If the Ariadne that I see and hear, were the true Ariadne
+who is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that pathetic scene where
+the poor woman, who already feels herself less loved, asks who then robs
+her of the heart, once so tender, of Theseus, I would do as the young
+Englishman did, who cried out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the
+stage, "It is Phèdre, it is Phèdre!" as if he would warn and save
+Ariadne.
+
+But, it is said, is it not the aim of the poet to excite pity and
+terror? Yes; but at first in a certain measure; then he must mix with
+them some other sentiment that tempers them, or makes them serve another
+end. If the aim of dramatic art were only to excite in the highest
+degree pity and terror, art would be the powerless rival of nature. All
+the misfortunes represented on the stage are very feeble in comparison
+with those sad spectacles which we may see every day. The first hospital
+is fuller of pity and terror than all the theatres in the world. What
+should the poet do in the theory that we combat? He should transfer to
+the stage the greatest possible reality, and move us powerfully by
+shocking our senses with the sight of frightful pains. The great resort
+of the pathetic would then be the representation of death, especially
+that of the greatest torture. Quite on the contrary, there is an end of
+art when sensibility is too much excited. To take, again, an example
+that we have already employed, what constitutes the beauty of a
+tempest, of a shipwreck? What attracts us to those great scenes of
+nature? It is certainly not pity and terror,--these poignant and
+lacerating sentiments would much sooner keep us away. An emotion very
+different from these is necessary, which triumphs over us, in order to
+retain us by the shore; this emotion is the pure sentiment of the
+beautiful and the sublime, excited and kept alive by the grandeur of the
+spectacle, by the vast extent of the sea, the rolling of the foaming
+waves, and the imposing sound of the thunder. But do we think for a
+single instant that there are in the midst of the sea the unfortunate
+who are suffering, and are, perhaps, about to perish? From that moment
+the spectacle becomes to us insupportable. It is so in art. Whatever
+sentiment it proposes to excite in us, must always be tempered and
+governed by that of the beautiful. If it only produces pity or terror
+beyond a certain limit, especially physical pity or terror, it revolts,
+and no longer charms; it loses the effect that belongs to it in exchange
+for a foreign and vulgar effect.
+
+For this same reason, I cannot accept another theory, which, confounding
+the sentiment of the beautiful with the moral and religious sentiment,
+puts art in the service of religion and morals, and gives it for its end
+to make us better and elevate us to God. There is here an essential
+distinction to be made. If all beauty covers a moral beauty, if the
+ideal mounts unceasingly towards the infinite, art, which expresses
+ideal beauty, purifies the soul in elevating it towards the infinite,
+that is to say, towards God. Art, then, produces the perfection of the
+soul, but it produces it indirectly. The philosopher who investigates
+effects and causes, knows what is the ultimate principle of the
+beautiful and its certain, although remote, effects. But the artist is
+before all things an artist; what animates him is the sentiment of the
+beautiful; what he wishes to make pass into the soul of the spectator is
+the same sentiment that fills his own. He confides himself to the virtue
+of beauty; he fortifies it with all the power, all the charm of the
+ideal; it must then do its own work; the artist has done his when he
+has procured for some noble souls the exquisite sentiment of beauty.
+This pure and disinterested sentiment is a noble ally of the moral and
+religious sentiments; it awakens, preserves, and develops them, but it
+is a distinct and special sentiment. So art, which is founded on this
+sentiment, which is inspired by it, which expands it, is in its turn an
+independent power. It is naturally associated with all that ennobles the
+soul, with morals and religion; but it springs only from itself.
+
+Let us confine our thought strictly within its proper limits. In
+vindicating the independence, the proper dignity, and the particular end
+of art, we do not intend to separate it from religion, from morals, from
+country. Art draws its inspirations from these profound sources, as well
+as from the ever open source of nature. But it is not less true that
+art, the state, religion, are powers which have each their world apart
+and their own effects; they mutually help each other; they should not
+serve each other. As soon as one of them wanders from its end, it errs,
+and is degraded. Does art blindly give itself up to the orders of
+religion and the state? In losing its liberty, it loses its charm and
+its empire.
+
+Ancient Greece and modern Italy are continually cited as triumphant
+examples of what the alliance of art, religion, and the state can do.
+Nothing is more true, if the question is concerning their union; nothing
+is more false, if the question is concerning the servitude of art. Art
+in Greece was so little the slave of religion, that it little by little
+modified the symbols, and, to a certain extent, the spirit itself, by
+its free representations. There is a long distance between the
+divinities that Greece received from Egypt and those of which it has
+left immortal exemplars. Are those primitive artists and poets, as Homer
+and Dedalus are called, strangers to this change? And in the most
+beautiful epoch of art, did not Æschylus and Phidias carry a great
+liberty into the religious scenes which they exposed to the gaze of the
+people, in the theatre, or in front of the temples? In Italy as in
+Greece, as everywhere, art is at first in the hands of priesthoods and
+governments; but, as it increases its importance and is developed, it
+more and more conquers its liberty. Men speak of the faith that animated
+the artists and vivified their works; that is true of the time of Giotto
+and Ciambuë; but after Angelico de Fiesole, at the end of the fifteenth
+century, in Italy, I perceive especially the faith of art in itself and
+the worship of beauty. Raphael was about to become a cardinal;[119] yes,
+but always painting Galatea, and without quitting Fornarine. Once more,
+let us exaggerate nothing; let us distinguish, not separate; let us
+unite art, religion, and country, but let not their union injure the
+liberty of each. Let us be thoroughly penetrated with the thought, that
+art is also to itself a kind of religion. God manifests himself to us by
+the idea of the true, by the idea of the good, by the idea of the
+beautiful. Each one of them leads to God, because it comes from him.
+True beauty is ideal beauty, and ideal beauty is a reflection of the
+infinite. So, independently of all official alliance with religion and
+morals, art is by itself essentially religious and moral; for, far from
+wanting its own law, its own genius, it everywhere expresses in its
+works eternal beauty. Bound on all sides to matter by inflexible laws,
+working upon inanimate stone, upon uncertain and fugitive sounds, upon
+words of limited and finite signification, art communicates to them,
+with the precise form that is addressed to such or such a sense, a
+mysterious character that is addressed to the imagination and the soul,
+takes them away from reality, and bears them sweetly or violently into
+unknown regions. Every work of art, whatever may be its form, small or
+great, figured, sung, or uttered,--every work of art, truly beautiful or
+sublime, throws the soul into a gentle or severe reverie that elevates
+it towards the infinite. The infinite is the common limit after which
+the soul aspires upon the wings of imagination as well as reason, by the
+route of the sublime and the beautiful, as well as by that of the true
+and the good. The emotion that the beautiful produces turns the soul
+from this world; it is the beneficent emotion that art produces for
+humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[112] _Recherches sur l'Art Statuaire._ Paris, 1805.
+
+[113] Paris, 1815, in folio, an eminent work that will subsist even when
+time shall have destroyed some of its details.
+
+[114] Since reprinted under the title of _Essais sur l'Ideal dans ses
+Applications Pratiques_. Paris, 1837.
+
+[115] Translation of Plato, vol. xii., _Timæus_, p. 116.
+
+[116] _Orator:_ "Neque enim ille artifex (Phidias) cum faceret Jovis
+formam aut Minervæ, contemplabatur aliquem a quo similitudinem duceret;
+sed ipsius in mente insidebat species pulchritudinis eximia quædam, quam
+intuens, in eaque defixus, ad illius similitudinem artem et manum
+dirigebat."
+
+[117] _Raccolta di lett._ _Sulla pitt._, i., p. 83. "_Essendo carestia e
+de' buoni giudici e di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mi
+viene alla mente._"
+
+[118] "A picture representing a broken glass over several subjects
+painted on the canvas, by which the eye is deceived."
+
+[119] Vassari, _Vie de Raphael_.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+THE DIFFERENT ARTS.
+
+    Expression is the general law of art.--Division of
+    arts.--Distinction between liberal arts and trades.--Eloquence
+    itself, philosophy, and history do not make a part of the fine
+    arts.--That the arts gain nothing by encroaching upon each
+    other, and usurping each other's means and
+    processes.--Classification of the arts:--its true principle is
+    expression.--Comparison of arts with each other.--Poetry the
+    first of arts.
+
+
+A _résumé_ of the last lecture would be a definition of art, of its end
+and law. Art is the free reproduction of the beautiful, not of a single
+natural beauty, but of ideal beauty, as the human imagination conceives
+it by the aid of data which nature furnishes it. The ideal beauty
+envelops the infinite:--the end of art is, then, to produce works that,
+like those of nature, or even in a still higher degree, may have the
+charm of the infinite. But how and by what illusion can we draw the
+infinite from the finite? This is the difficulty of art, and its glory
+also. What bears us towards the infinite in natural beauty? The ideal
+side of this beauty. The ideal is the mysterious ladder that enables the
+soul to ascend from the finite to the infinite. The artist, then, must
+devote himself to the representation of the ideal. Every thing has its
+ideal. The first care of the artist will be, then, whatever he does, to
+penetrate at first to the concealed ideal of his subject, for his
+subject has an ideal,--in order to render it, in the next place, more or
+less striking to the senses and the soul, according to the conditions
+which the very materials that he employs--the stone, the color, the
+sound, the language--impose on him.
+
+So, to express the ideal of the infinite in one way or another, is the
+law of art; and all the arts are such only by their relation to the
+sentiment of the beautiful and the infinite which they awaken in the
+soul, by the aid of that high quality of every work of art that is
+called expression.
+
+Expression is essentially ideal: what expression tries to make felt, is
+not what the eye can see and the hand touch, evidently it is something
+invisible and impalpable.
+
+The problem of art is to reach the soul through the body. Art offers to
+the senses forms, colors, sounds, words, so arranged that they excite in
+the soul, concealed behind the senses, the inexpressible emotion of
+beauty.
+
+Expression is addressed to the soul as form is addressed to the senses.
+Form is the obstacle of expression, and, at the same time, is its
+imperative, necessary, only means. By working upon form, by bending it
+to its service, by dint of care, patience, and genius, art succeeds in
+converting an obstacle into a means.
+
+By their object, all arts are equal; all are arts only because they
+express the invisible. It cannot be too often repeated, that expression
+is the supreme law of art. The thing to express is always the same,--it
+is the idea, the spirit, the soul, the invisible, the infinite. But, as
+the question is concerning the expression of this one and the same
+thing, by addressing ourselves to the senses which are diverse, the
+difference of the senses divides art into different arts.
+
+We have seen, that, of the five senses which have been given to
+man,[120] three--taste, smell, and touch--are incapable of producing in
+us the sentiment of beauty. Joined to the other two, they may contribute
+to the understanding of this sentiment; but alone and by themselves they
+cannot produce it. Taste judges of the agreeable, not of the beautiful.
+No sense is less allied to the soul and more in the service of the body;
+it flatters, it serves the grossest of all masters, the stomach. If
+smell sometimes seems to participate in the sentiment of the beautiful,
+it is because the odor is exhaled from an object that is already
+beautiful, that is beautiful for some other reason. Thus the rose is
+beautiful for its graceful form, for the varied splendor of its colors;
+its odor is agreeable, it is not beautiful. Finally, it is not touch
+alone that judges of the regularity of forms, but touch enlightened by
+sight.
+
+There remain two senses to which all the world concedes the privilege of
+exciting in us the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. They seem to
+be more particularly in the service of the soul. The sensations which
+they give have something purer, more intellectual. They are less
+indispensable for the material preservation of the individual. They
+contribute to the embellishment rather than to the sustaining of life.
+They procure us pleasures in which our personality seems less interested
+and more self-forgetful. To these two senses, then, art should be
+addressed, is addressed, in fact, in order to reach the soul. Hence the
+division of arts into two great classes,--arts addressed to hearing,
+arts addressed to sight; on the one hand, music and poetry; on the
+other, painting, with engraving, sculpture, architecture, gardening.
+
+It will, perhaps, seem strange that we rank among the arts neither
+eloquence, nor history, nor philosophy.
+
+The arts are called the fine arts, because their sole object is to
+produce the disinterested emotion of beauty, without regard to the
+utility either of the spectator or the artist. They are also called the
+liberal arts, because they are the arts of free men and not of slaves,
+which affranchise the soul, charm and ennoble existence; hence the sense
+and origin of those expressions of antiquity, _artes liberales_, _artes
+ingenuæ_. There are arts without nobility, whose end is practical and
+material utility; they are called trades, such as that of the
+stove-maker and the mason. True art may be joined to them, may even
+shine in them, but only in the accessories and the details.
+
+Eloquence, history, philosophy, are certainly high employments of
+intelligence; they have their dignity, their eminence, which nothing
+surpasses, but rigorously speaking, they are not arts.
+
+Eloquence does not propose to itself to produce in the soul of the
+auditors the disinterested sentiment of beauty. It may also produce this
+effect, but without having sought it. Its direct end, which it can
+subordinate to no other, is to convince, to persuade. Eloquence has a
+client which before all it must save or make triumph. It matters little,
+whether this client be a man, a people, or an idea. Fortunate is the
+orator if he elicits the expression: That is beautiful! for it is a
+noble homage rendered to his talent; unfortunate is he if he does not
+elicit this, for he has missed his end. The two great types of political
+and religious eloquence, Demosthenes in antiquity, Bossuet among the
+moderns, think only of the interest of the cause confided to their
+genius, the sacred cause of country and that of religion; whilst at
+bottom Phidias and Raphael work to make beautiful things. Let us hasten
+to say, what the names of Demosthenes and Bossuet command us to say,
+that true eloquence, very different from that of rhetoric, disdains
+certain means of success; it asks no more than to please, but without
+any sacrifice unworthy of it; every foreign ornament degrades it. Its
+proper character is simplicity, earnestness--I do not mean affected
+earnestness, a designed and artful gravity, the worst of all
+deceptions--I mean true earnestness, that springs from sincere and
+profound conviction. This is what Socrates understood by true
+eloquence.[121]
+
+As much must be said of history and philosophy. The philosopher speaks
+and writes. Can he, then, like the orator, find accents which make truth
+enter the soul, colors and forms that make it shine forth evident and
+manifest to the eyes of intelligence? It would be betraying his cause to
+neglect the means that can serve it; but the profoundest art is here
+only a means, the aim of philosophy is elsewhere; whence it follows that
+philosophy is not an art. Without doubt, Plato is a great artist; he is
+the peer of Sophocles and Phidias, as Pascal is sometimes the rival of
+Demosthenes and Bossuet;[122] but both would have blushed if they had
+discovered at the bottom of their soul another design, another aim than
+the service of truth and virtue.
+
+History does not relate for the sake of relating; it does not paint for
+the sake of painting; it relates and paints the past that it may be the
+living lesson of the future. It proposes to instruct new generations by
+the experience of those who have gone before them, by exhibiting to them
+a faithful picture of great and important events, with their causes and
+their effects, with general designs and particular passions, with the
+faults, virtues, and crimes that are found mingled together in human
+things. It teaches the excellence of prudence, courage, and great
+thoughts profoundly meditated, constantly pursued, and executed with
+moderation and force. It shows the vanity of immoderate pretensions, the
+power of wisdom and virtue, the impotence of folly and crime.
+Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus undertake any thing else than
+procuring new emotions for an idle curiosity or a worn-out imagination;
+they doubtless desire to interest and attract, but more to instruct;
+they are the avowed masters of statesmen and the preceptors of mankind.
+
+The sole object of art is the beautiful. Art abandons itself as soon as
+it shuns this. It is often constrained to make concessions to
+circumstances, to external conditions that are imposed upon it; but it
+must always retain a just liberty. Architecture and the art of gardening
+are the least free of arts; they are subjected to unavoidable obstacles;
+it belongs to the genius of the artist to govern these obstacles, and
+even to draw from them happy effects, as the poet turns the slavery of
+metre and rhyme into a source of unexpected beauties. Extreme liberty
+may carry art to a caprice which degrades it, as chains too heavy crush
+it. It is the death of architecture to subject it to convenience, to
+_comfort_. Is the architect obliged to subordinate general effect and
+the proportions of the edifice to such or such a particular end that is
+prescribed to him? He takes refuge in details, in pediments, in friezes,
+in all the parts that have not utility for a special object, and in them
+he becomes a true artist. Sculpture and painting, especially music and
+poetry, are freer than architecture and the art of gardening. One can
+also shackle them, but they disengage themselves more easily.
+
+Similar by their common end, all the arts differ by the particular
+effects which they produce, and by the processes which they employ. They
+gain nothing by exchanging their means and confounding the limits that
+separate them. I bow before the authority of antiquity; but, perhaps,
+through habit and a remnant of prejudice, I have some difficulty in
+representing to myself with pleasure statues composed of several metals,
+especially painted statues.[123] Without pretending that sculpture has
+not to a certain point its color, that of perfectly pure matter, that
+especially which the hand of time impresses upon it, in spite of all the
+seductions of a contemporaneous[124] artist of great talent, I have
+little taste, I confess, for that artifice that is forced to give to
+marble the _morbidezza_ of painting. Sculpture is an austere muse; it
+has its graces, but they are those of no other art. Flesh-color must
+remain a stranger to it: there would nothing more remain to communicate
+to it but the movement of poetry and the indefiniteness of music! And
+what will music gain by aiming at the picturesque, when its proper
+domain is the pathetic? Give to the most learned symphonist a storm to
+render. Nothing is easier to imitate than the whistling of the winds and
+the noise of thunder. But by what combinations of harmony will he
+exhibit to the eyes the glare of the lightning rending all of a sudden
+the veil of the night, and what is most fearful in the tempest, the
+movement of the waves that now ascend like a mountain, now descend and
+seem to precipitate themselves into bottomless abysses? If the auditor
+is not informed of the subject, he will never suspect it, and I defy him
+to distinguish a tempest from a battle. In spite of science and genius,
+sounds cannot paint forms. Music, when well guided, will guard itself
+from contending against the impossible; it will not undertake to express
+the tumult and strife of the waves and other similar phenomena; it will
+do more: with sounds it will fill the soul with the sentiments that
+succeed each other in us during the different scenes of the tempest.
+Haydn will thus become[125] the rival, even the vanquisher of the
+painter, because it has been given to music to move and agitate the soul
+more profoundly than painting.
+
+Since the _Laocoon_ of Lessing, it is no longer permitted to repeat,
+without great reserve, the famous axiom,--_Ut pictura poesis_; or, at
+least, it is very certain that painting cannot do every thing that
+poetry can do. Everybody admires the picture of Rumor, drawn by Virgil;
+but let a painter try to realize this symbolic figure; let him represent
+to us a huge monster with a hundred eyes, a hundred mouths, and a
+hundred ears, whose feet touch the earth, whose head is lost in the
+clouds, and such a figure will become very ridiculous.
+
+So the arts have a common end, and entirely different means. Hence the
+general rules common to all, and particular rules for each. I have
+neither time nor space to enter into details on this point. I limit
+myself to repeating, that the great law which governs all others, is
+expression. Every work of art that does not express an idea signifies
+nothing; in addressing itself to such or such a sense, it must penetrate
+to the mind, to the soul, and bear thither a thought, a sentiment
+capable of touching or elevating it. From this fundamental rule all the
+others are derived; for example, that which is continually and justly
+recommended,--composition. To this is particularly applied the precept
+of unity and variety. But, in saying this, we have said nothing so long
+as we have not determined the nature of the unity of which we would
+speak. True unity, is unity of expression, and variety is made only to
+spread over the entire work the idea or the single sentiment that it
+should express. It is useless to remark, that between composition thus
+defined, and what is often called composition, as the symmetry and
+arrangement of parts according to artificial rules, there is an abyss.
+True composition is nothing else than the most powerful means of
+expression.
+
+Expression not only furnishes the general rules of art, it also gives
+the principle that allows of their classification.
+
+In fact, every classification, supposes a principle that serves as a
+common measure.
+
+Such a principle has been sought in pleasure, and the first of arts has
+seemed that which gives the most vivid joys. But we have proved that the
+object of art is not pleasure:--the more or less of pleasure that an art
+procures cannot, then, be the true measure of its value.
+
+This measure is nothing else than expression. Expression being the
+supreme end, the art that most nearly approaches it is the first of all.
+
+All true arts are expressive, but they are diversely so. Take music; it
+is without contradiction the most penetrating, the profoundest, the most
+intimate art. There is physically and morally between a sound and the
+soul a marvellous relation. It seems as though the soul were an echo in
+which the sound takes a new power. Extraordinary things are recounted of
+the ancient music. And it must not be believed that the greatness of
+effect supposes here very complicated means. No, the less noise music
+makes, the more it touches. Give some notes to Pergolese, give him
+especially some pure and sweet voices, and he returns a celestial charm,
+bears you away into infinite spaces, plunges you into ineffable
+reveries. The peculiar power of music is to open to the imagination a
+limitless career, to lend itself with astonishing facility to all the
+moods of each one, to arouse or calm, with the sounds of the simplest
+melody, our accustomed sentiments, our favorite affections. In this
+respect music is an art without a rival:--however, it is not the first
+of arts.
+
+Music pays for the immense power that has been given it; it awakens more
+than any other art the sentiment of the infinite, because it is vague,
+obscure, indeterminate in its effects. It is just the opposite art to
+sculpture, which bears less towards the infinite, because every thing in
+it is fixed with the last degree of precision. Such is the force and at
+the same time the feebleness of music, that it expresses every thing and
+expresses nothing in particular. Sculpture, on the contrary, scarcely
+gives rise to any reverie, for it clearly represents such a thing and
+not such another. Music does not paint, it touches; it puts in motion
+imagination, not the imagination that reproduces images, but that which
+makes the heart beat, for it is absurd to limit imagination to the
+domain of images.[126] The heart, once touched, moves all the rest of
+our being; thus music, indirectly, and to a certain point, can recall
+images and ideas; but its direct and natural power is neither on the
+representative imagination nor intelligence, it is on the heart, and
+that is an advantage sufficiently beautiful.
+
+The domain of music is sentiment, but even there its power is more
+profound than extensive, and if it expresses certain sentiments with an
+incomparable force, it expresses but a very small number of them. By way
+of association, it can awaken them all, but directly it produces very
+few of them, and the simplest and the most elementary, too,--sadness and
+joy with their thousand shades. Ask music to express magnanimity,
+virtuous resolution, and other sentiments of this kind, and it will be
+just as incapable of doing it, as of painting a lake or a mountain. It
+goes about it as it can; it employs the slow, the rapid, the loud, the
+soft, etc., but imagination has to do the rest, and imagination does
+only what it pleases. The same measure reminds one of a mountain,
+another of the ocean; the warrior finds in it heroic inspirations, the
+recluse religious inspirations. Doubtless, words determine musical
+expression, but the merit then is in the word, not in the music; and
+sometimes the word stamps the music with a precision that destroys it,
+and deprives it of its proper effects--vagueness, obscurity, monotony,
+but also fulness and profundity, I was about to say infinitude. I do not
+in the least admit that famous definition of song:--a noted declamation.
+A simple declamation rightly accented is certainly preferable to
+stunning accompaniments; but to music must be left its character, and
+its defects and advantages must not be taken away from it. Especially it
+must not be turned aside from its object, and there must not be demanded
+from it what it could not give. It is not made to express complicated
+and factitious sentiment, nor terrestrial and vulgar sentiments. Its
+peculiar charm is to elevate the soul towards the infinite. It is
+therefore naturally allied to religion, especially to that religion of
+the infinite, which is at the same time the religion of the heart; it
+excels in transporting to the feet of eternal mercy the soul trembling
+on the wings of repentance, hope, and love. Happy are those, who, at
+Rome, in the Vatican,[127] during the solemnities of the Catholic
+worship, have heard the melodies of Leo, Durante, and Pergolese, on the
+old consecrated text! They have entered heaven for a moment, and their
+souls have been able to ascend thither without distinction of rank,
+country, even belief, by those invisible and mysterious steps, composed,
+thus to speak, of all the simple, natural, universal sentiments, that
+everywhere on earth draw from the bosom of the human creature a sigh
+towards another world!
+
+Between sculpture and music, those two opposite extremes, is painting,
+nearly as precise as the one, nearly as touching as the other. Like
+sculpture, it marks the visible forms of objects, but adds to them life;
+like music, it expresses the profoundest sentiments of the soul, and
+expresses them all. Tell me what sentiment does not come within the
+province of the painter? He has entire nature at his disposal, the
+physical world, and the moral world, a churchyard, a landscape, a
+sunset, the ocean, the great scenes of civil and religious life, all the
+beings of creation, above all, the figure of man, and its expression,
+that living mirror of what passes in the soul. More pathetic than
+sculpture, clearer than music, painting is elevated, in my opinion,
+above both, because it expresses beauty more under all its forms, and
+the human soul in all the richness and variety of its sentiments.
+
+But the art _par excellence_, that which surpasses all others, because
+it is incomparably the most expressive, is poetry.
+
+Speech is the instrument of poetry; poetry fashions it to its use, and
+idealizes it, in order to make it express ideal beauty. Poetry gives to
+it the charm and power of measure; it makes of it something intermediary
+between the ordinary voice and music, something at once material and
+immaterial, finite, clear, and precise, like contours and forms the most
+definite, living and animated like color, pathetic and infinite like
+sound. A word in itself, especially a word chosen and transfigured by
+poetry, is the most energetic and universal symbol. Armed with this
+talisman, poetry reflects all the images of the sensible world, like
+sculpture and painting; it reflects sentiment like painting and music,
+with all its varieties, which music does not attain, and in their rapid
+succession that painting cannot follow, as precise and immobile as
+sculpture; and it not only expresses all that, it expresses what is
+inaccessible to every other art, I mean thought, entirely distinct from
+the senses and even from sentiment,--thought that has no forms,--thought
+that has no color, that lets no sound escape, that does not manifest
+itself in any way,--thought in its highest flight, in its most refined
+abstraction.
+
+Think of it. What a world of images, of sentiments, of thoughts at once
+distinct and confused, are excited within us by this one word--country!
+and by this other word, brief and immense,--God! What is more clear and
+altogether more profound and vast!
+
+Tell the architect, the sculptor, the painter, even the musician, to
+call forth also by a single stroke all the powers of nature and the
+soul! They cannot, and by that they acknowledge the superiority of
+speech and poetry.
+
+They proclaim it themselves, for they take poetry for their own measure;
+they esteem their own works, and demand that they should be esteemed, in
+proportion as they approach the poetic ideal. And the human race does as
+artists do: a beautiful picture, a noble melody, a living and expressive
+statue, gives rise to the exclamation--How poetical! This is not an
+arbitrary comparison; it is a natural judgment which makes poetry the
+type of the perfection of all the arts,--the art _par excellence_,
+which comprises all others, to which they aspire, which none can reach.
+
+When the other arts would imitate the works of poetry, they usually err,
+losing their own genius, without robbing poetry of its genius. But
+poetry constructs according to its own taste palaces and temples, like
+architecture; it makes them simple or magnificent; all orders, as well
+as all systems, obey it; the different ages of art are the same to it;
+it reproduces, if it pleases, the classic or the Gothic, the beautiful
+or the sublime, the measured or the infinite. Lessing has been able,
+with the exactest justice, to compare Homer to the most perfect
+sculptor; with such precision are the forms which that marvellous chisel
+gives to all beings determined! And what a painter, too, is Homer! and,
+of a different kind, Dante! Music alone has something more penetrating
+than poetry, but it is vague, limited, and fugitive. Besides its
+clearness, its variety, its durability, poetry has also the most
+pathetic accents. Call to mind the words that Priam utters at the feet
+of Achilles while asking him for the dead body of his son, more than one
+verse of Virgil, entire scenes of the _Cid_ and the _Polyeucte_, the
+prayer of Esther kneeling before the Lord, the choruses of _Esther_ and
+_Athalie_. In the celebrated song of Pergolese, _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_,
+we may ask which moves most, the music or the words. The _Dies iræ, Dies
+illa_, recited only, produces the most terrible effect. In those fearful
+words, every blow tells, so to speak; each word contains a distinct
+sentiment, an idea at once profound and determinate. The intellect
+advances at each step, and the heart rushes on in its turn. Human speech
+idealized by poetry has the depth and brilliancy of musical notes; it is
+luminous as well as pathetic; it speaks to the mind as well as to the
+heart; it is in that inimitable, unique, and embraces all extremes and
+all contraries in a harmony that redoubles their reciprocal effect, in
+which, by turns, appear and are developed, all images, all sentiments,
+all ideas, all the human faculties, all the inmost recesses of the soul,
+all the forms of things, all real and all intelligible worlds!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[120] Lecture 6.
+
+[121] See the _Gorgias_, with the _Argument_, vol. iii. of our
+translation of Plato.
+
+[122] There is a _Provincial_ that for vehemence can be compared only to
+the _Philipics_, and its fragment on the infinite has the grandeur and
+magnificence of Bossuet. See our work on the _Thoughts of Pascal_, 4th
+Series, _Literature_, vol. i.
+
+[123] See the _Jupiter Olympien_ of M. Quatremère de Quincy.
+
+[124] Allusion to the _Magdeleine_ of Canova, which was then to be seen
+in the gallery of M. de Sommariva.
+
+[125] See the _Tempest_ of Haydn, among the pianoforte works of this
+master.
+
+[126] See lecture 6.
+
+[127] I have not myself had the good fortune to hear the religious music
+of the Vatican. Therefore, I shall let a competent judge, M. Quatremère
+de Quincy, speak, _Considérations Morales sur les Destination des
+Ouvrages de l'Art_, Paris, 1815, p. 98: "Let one call to mind those
+chants so simple and so touching, that terminate at Rome the funeral
+solemnities of those three days which the Church particularly devotes to
+the expression of its grief, in the last week of Lent. In that nave
+where the genius of Michael Angelo has embraced the duration of ages,
+from the wonders of creation to the last judgment that must destroy its
+works, are celebrated, in the presence of the Roman pontiff, those
+nocturnal ceremonies whose rites, symbols, and plaintive liturgies seem
+to be so many figures of the mystery of grief to which they are
+consecrated. The light decreasing by degrees, at the termination of each
+psalm, you would say that a funeral veil is extended little by little
+over those religious vaults. Soon the doubtful light of the last lamp
+allows you to perceive nothing but Christ in the distance, in the midst
+of clouds, pronouncing his judgments, and some angel executors of his
+behests. Then, at the bottom of a tribune interdicted to the regard of
+the profane, is heard the psalm of the penitent king, to which three of
+the greatest masters of the art have added the modulations of a simple
+and pathetic chant. No instrument is mingled with those accents. Simple
+harmonies of voice execute that music; but these voices seem to be those
+of angels, and their effect penetrates the depths of the soul."
+
+We have cited this beautiful passage--and we could have cited many
+others, even superior to it--of a man now forgotten, and almost always
+misunderstood, but whom posterity will put in his place. Let us
+indicate, at least, the last pages of the same production, on the
+necessity of leaving the works of art in the place for which they were
+made, for example, the portrait of Mlle. de Vallière in the _Madeleine
+aux Carmélites_, instead of transferring it to, and exposing it in the
+apartments of Versailles, "the only place in the world," eloquently says
+M. Quatremère, "which never should have seen it."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+    Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but
+    the different schools of art. Example:--French art in the
+    seventeenth century. French poetry:--Corneille. Racine. Molière.
+    La Fontaine. Boileau.--Painting:--Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain.
+    Champagne.--Engraving.--Sculpture:--Sarrazin. The Anguiers.
+    Girardon. Pujet.--Le Nôtre.--Architecture.
+
+
+We believe that we have firmly established that all kinds of beauty,
+although most dissimilar in appearance, may, when subjected to a serious
+examination, be reduced to spiritual and moral beauty; that expression,
+therefore, is at once the true object and the first law of art; that all
+arts are such only so far as they express the idea concealed under the
+form, and are addressed to the soul through the senses; finally, that in
+expression the different arts find the true measure of their relative
+value, and the most expressive art must be placed in the first rank.
+
+If expression judges the different arts, does it not naturally follow,
+that by the same title it can also judge the different schools which, in
+each art, dispute with each other the empire of taste?
+
+There is not one of these schools that does not represent in its own way
+some side of the beautiful, and we are disposed to embrace all in an
+impartial and kindly study. We are eclectics in the arts as well as in
+metaphysics. But, as in metaphysics, the knowledge of all systems, and
+the portion of truth that is in each, enlightens without enfeebling our
+convictions; so, in the history of arts, while holding the opinion that
+no school must be disdained, that even in China some shade of beauty can
+be found, our eclecticism does not make us waver in regard to the
+sentiment of true beauty and the supreme rule of art. What we demand of
+the different schools, without distinction of time or place, what we see
+in the south as well as in the north, at Florence, Rome, Venice, and
+Seville, as well as at Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris,--wherever there
+are men, is something human, is the expression of a sentiment or an
+idea.
+
+A criticism that should be founded on the principle of expression, would
+somewhat derange, it must be confessed, received judgments, and would
+carry some disorder into the hierarchy of the renowned. We do not
+undertake such a revolution; we only propose to confirm, or at least
+elucidate our principle by an example, and by an example that is at our
+hand.
+
+There is in the world a school formerly illustrious, now very lightly
+treated:--this school is the French school of the seventeenth century.
+We would replace it in honor, by recalling attention to the qualities
+that make its glory.
+
+We have worked with constancy to reinstate among us the philosophy of
+Descartes, unworthily sacrificed to the philosophy of Locke, because
+with its defects it possesses in our view the incomparable merit of
+subordinating the senses to the mind, of elevating and ennobling man. So
+we profess a serious and reflective admiration for our national art of
+the seventeenth century, because, without disguising what is wanting to
+it, we find in it what we prefer to every thing else, grandeur united to
+good sense and reason, simplicity and force, genius of composition,
+especially that of expression.
+
+France, careless of her glory, does not appear to have the least notion
+that she reckons in her annals perhaps the greatest century of humanity,
+that which embraces the greatest number of extraordinary men of every
+kind. When, I pray you, have politicians like Henry IV., Richelieu,
+Mazarin, Colbert, Louis XIV. been seen giving each other the hand? I do
+not pretend that each of them has no rival, even superiors. Alexander,
+Cæsar, Charlemagne, perhaps excel them. But Alexander has but a single
+contemporary that can be compared with him, his father Philip; Cæsar
+cannot even have suspected that Octavius would one day be worthy of
+him; Charlemagne is a colossus in a desert; whilst among us these five
+men succeed each other without an interval, press upon each other, and
+have, thus to speak, a single soul. And by what officers were they
+served! Is Condé really inferior to Alexander, Hannibal, and Cæsar; for
+among his predecessors we must not look for other rivals? Who among them
+surpasses him in the extent and justness of his conceptions, in
+quickness of sight, in rapidity of manoeuvres, in the union of
+impetuosity and firmness, in the double glory of taker of cities and
+gainer of battles? Add that he dealt with generals like Merci and
+William, that he had under him Turenne and Luxemburg, without speaking
+of so many other soldiers who were reared in that admirable school, and
+at the hour of reverse still sufficed to save France.
+
+What other time, at least among the moderns, has seen flourishing
+together so many poets of the first order? We have, it is true, neither
+Homer, nor Dante, nor Milton, nor even Tasso. The epic, with its
+primitive simplicity, is interdicted us. But in the drama we scarcely
+have equals. It is because dramatic poetry is the poetry that is adapted
+to us, moral poetry _par excellence_, which represents man with his
+different passions armed against each other, the violent contentions
+between virtue and crime, the freaks of fortune, the lessons of
+providence, and in a narrow compass, too, in which the events press upon
+each other without confusion, in which the action rapidly progresses
+towards the crisis that must reveal what is most intimate to the heart
+of the personages.
+
+Let us dare to say what we think, that, in our opinion, Æschylus,
+Sophocles, and Euripides, together, do not equal Corneille; for none of
+them has known and expressed like him what is of all things most truly
+touching, a great soul at war with itself, between a generous passion
+and duty. Corneille is the creator of a new pathetic unknown to
+antiquity and to all the moderns before him. He disdains to address
+common and subaltern passions; he does not seek to rouse terror and
+pity, as demands Aristotle, who limits himself to erecting into maxims
+the practice of the Greeks. Corneille seems to have read Plato, and
+followed his precepts:--he addresses a most elevated part of human
+nature, the noblest passion, the one nearest virtue,--admiration; and
+from admiration carried to its culmination he draws the most powerful
+effects. Shakspeare, we admit, is superior to Corneille in extent and
+richness of dramatic genius. Entire human nature seems at his disposal,
+and he reproduces the different scenes of life in their beauty and
+deformity, in their grandeur and baseness. He excels in painting the
+terrible or the gentle passions. Othello is jealousy, Lady Macbeth is
+ambition, as Juliet and Desdemona are the immortal names of youthful and
+unfortunate love. But if Corneille has less imagination, he has more
+soul. Less varied, he is more profound. If he does not put upon the
+stage so many different characters, those that he does put on it are the
+greatest that can be offered to humanity. The scenes that he gives are
+less heart-rending, but at once more delicate and more sublime. What is
+the melancholy of Hamlet, the grief of King Lear, even the disdainful
+intrepidity of Cæsar, in comparison with the magnanimity of Augustus
+striving to be master of himself as well as the universe, in comparison
+with Chimène sacrificing love to honor, especially in comparison with
+Pauline, not suffering even at the bottom of her heart an involuntary
+sigh for the one that she must not love? Corneille always confines
+himself to the highest regions. He is by turns Roman and Christian. He
+is the interpreter of heroes, the chanter of virtue, the poet of
+warriors and politicians.[128] And it must not be forgotten that
+Shakspeare is almost alone in his times, whilst after Corneille comes
+Racine, who would suffice for the poetical glory of a nation.
+
+Racine assuredly cannot be compared with Corneille for dramatic genius;
+he is more the man of letters; he has not the tragic soul; he neither
+loves nor understands politics and war. When he imitates Corneille, for
+example, in Alexander, and even in Mithridates, he imitates him badly
+enough. The scene, so vaunted, of Mithridates exposing his plan of
+campaign to his sons is a morsel of the finest rhetoric, which cannot be
+compared with the political and military scenes of Cinna and Sertorius,
+especially with that first scene of the Death of Pompey, in which you
+witness a counsel as true, as grand, as profound as ever could have been
+one of the counsels of Richelieu or Mazarin. Racine was not born to
+paint heroes, but he paints admirably man with his natural passions, and
+the most natural as well as the most touching of all, love. So he
+particularly excels in feminine characters. For men he has need of being
+sustained by Tacitus or holy Scripture.[129] With woman he is at his
+ease, and he makes them think and speak with perfect truth, set off by
+exquisite art. Demand of him neither Emilie, Cornélie, nor Pauline; but
+listen to Andromaque, Monime, Bérénice, and Phèdre! There, even in
+imitating, he is original, and leaves the ancients very far behind him.
+Who has taught him that charming delivery, those graceful troubles, that
+purity even in feebleness, that melancholy, sometimes even that depth,
+with that marvellous language which seems the natural accent of woman's
+heart? It is continually repeated that Racine wrote better than
+Corneille:--say only that the two wrote very differently, and like men
+in very different epochs. One has two sovereign qualities, which belong
+to his own nature and his times, a _naïveté_ and grandeur, the other is
+not _naïve_, but he has too much taste not to be always simple, and he
+supplies the place of grandeur, forever lost, with consummate elegance.
+Corneille speaks the language of statesmen, soldiers, theologians,
+philosophers, and clever women; of Richelieu, Rohan, Saint-Cyran,
+Descartes, and Pascal; of mother Angélique Arnaud and mother Madeleine
+de Saint-Joseph; the language which Molière still spoke, which Bossuet
+preserved to his last breath. Racine speaks that of Louis XIV. and the
+women who were the ornament of his court. I suppose that thus spoke
+Madame, the amiable, sprightly, and unfortunate Henriette; thus wrote
+the author of the _Princesse de Clèves_ and the author of _Télémaque_.
+Or, rather, this language is that of Racine himself, of that feeble and
+tender soul, which passed quickly from love to devotion, which uttered
+its complaints in lyric poetry, which was wholly poured out in the
+choruses of _Esther_ and _Athalie_, and in the _Cantiques Spirituels_;
+that soul, so easy to be moved, that a religious ceremony or a
+representation of _Esther_ at Saint-Cyr touched to tears, that pitied
+the misfortunes of the people, that found in its pity and its charity
+the courage to speak one day the truth to Louis XIV., and was
+extinguished by the first breath of disgrace.
+
+Molière is, in comparison with Aristophanes, what Corneille is, in
+comparison with Shakspeare. The author of _Plutus_, the _Wasps_, and the
+_Clouds_, has doubtless an imagination, an explosive buffoonery, a
+creative power, above all comparison. Molière has not as great poetical
+conceptions: he has more, perhaps; he has characters. His coloring is
+less brilliant, his graver is more penetrating. He has engraved in the
+memory of men a certain number of irregularities and vices which will
+ever be called _l'Avare_ (_the Miser_), _le Malade Imaginaire_ (the
+_Hypochondriac_), _les Femmes Savantes_ (the _Learned Women_), _le
+Tartufe_ (the _Hypocrite_), and _Don Juan_, not to speak of the
+_Misanthrope_, a piece apart, touching as pleasant, which is not
+addressed to the crowd, and cannot be popular, because it expresses a
+ridicule rare enough, excess in the passion of truth and honor.
+
+Of all fabulists, ancient and modern, does any one, even the ingenious,
+the pure, the elegant Phædrus, approach our La Fontaine? He composes his
+personages, and puts them in action with the skill of Molière; he knows
+how to take on occasion the tone of Horace, and mingle an ode with a
+fable; he is at once the most naïve, and the most refined of writers,
+and his art disappears in its very perfection. We do not speak of the
+tales, first, because we condemn the kind, then, because La Fontaine
+displays in them qualities more Italian than French, a narrative full of
+nature, malice, and grace, but without any of those profound, tender,
+melancholy traits, that place among the greatest poets of all time the
+author of the _Two Pigeons_ (_Deux Pigeons_), the _Old Man_
+(_Vieillard_), and the _Three Young Persons_ (_Gens_).
+
+We do not hesitate to put Boileau among these great men. He comes after
+them, it is true, but he belongs to their company: he comprehends them,
+loves them, sustains them. It was he, who, in 1663, after the _School of
+Women_ (_l'Ecole des Femmes_) and long before the _Hypocrite_ (_le
+Tartufe_), and the _Misanthrope_, proclaimed Molière the master in the
+art of verse. It was he who, in 1677, after the failure of _Phèdre_,
+defended the vanquisher of Euripides against the successes of Pradon. It
+was he who, in advance of posterity, first put in light what is new and
+entirely original in the plays of Corneille.[130] He saved the pension
+of the old tragedian by offering the sacrifice of his own. Louis XIV.
+asking him what writer most honored his reign, Boileau answered, that it
+was Molière; and when the great king in his decline persecuted
+Port-Royal, and wished to lay hands on Arnaud, he encountered a man of
+letters, who said to the face of the imperious monarch,--"Your Majesty
+in vain seeks M. Arnaud, you are too fortunate to find him." Boileau is
+somewhat wanting in imagination and invention; but he is great in the
+energetic sentiment of truth and justice; he carries to the extent of
+passion taste for the beautiful and the honest; he is a poet by force
+of soul and good sense. More than once his heart dictated to him the
+most pathetic verses:
+
+    "In vain against the Cid a minister is leagued,[131]
+    All Paris for Chimène the eyes of Rodrique," etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "After a little spot of earth, obtained by prayer,
+    Forever in the tomb had inclosed Molière," etc.
+
+And this epitaph of Arnaud, so simple and so grand:[132]
+
+    "At the feet of this altar of structure gross,
+    Lies without pomp, inclosed in a coffin vile,
+    The most learned mortal that ever wrote;
+    Arnaud, who in grace instructed by Jesus Christ,
+    Combating for the Church, has, in the Church itself,
+    Suffered more than one outrage and more than one anathema," etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Wandering, poor, banished, proscribed, persecuted;
+    And even by his death their ill-extinguished rage
+    Had never left his ashes in repose,
+    If God himself here by his holy flock
+    From these devouring wolves had not concealed his bones."[133]
+
+These are, I think, poets sufficiently great, and we have more of them
+still: I mean those charming or sublime minds who have elevated prose
+to poetry. Greece alone, in her most beautiful days, offers, perhaps,
+such a variety of admirable prose writers. Who can enumerate them? At
+first, Rabelais and Montaigne; later, Descartes, Pascal, and
+Malebranche; La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère; Retz and Saint-Simon;
+Bourdaloue, Fléchier, Fénelon, and Bossuet; add to these so many eminent
+women, at their head Madame de Sévigné; while Montesquieu, Voltaire,
+Rousseau, and Buffon are still to come.[134]
+
+By what strange diversity could a country, in which the mental arts
+were carried to such perfection, remain ordinary in the other arts? Was
+the sentiment of the beautiful wanting, then, to that society so
+polished, to that magnificent court, to those great lords and those
+great ladies passionately loving luxury and elegance, to that public of
+the _élite_, enamored of every kind of glory, whose enthusiasm defended
+the _Cid_ against Richelieu? No; France in the seventeenth century was a
+whole, and produced artists that she can place by the side of her poets,
+her philosophers, her orators.
+
+But, in order to admire our artists, it is necessary to comprehend them.
+
+We do not believe that imagination has been less freely imparted to
+France than to any other nation of Europe. It has even had its reign
+among us. It is fancy that rules in the sixteenth century, and inspires
+the literature and the arts of the _Renaissance_. But a great revolution
+intervened at the commencement of the seventeenth century. France at
+that moment seems to pass from youth to virility. Instead of abandoning
+imagination to itself, we apply ourselves from that moment to restrain
+it without destroying it, to moderate it, as the Greeks did by the aid
+of taste; as in the progress of life and society we learn to repress or
+conceal what is too individual in character. An end is made of the
+literature of the preceding age. A new poetry, a new prose, begin to
+appear, which, during an entire century, bear fruits sufficiently
+beautiful. Art follows the general movement; after having been elegant
+and graceful, it becomes in its turn serious; it no longer aims at
+originality and extraordinary effects; it neither flashes nor dazzles;
+it speaks, above all, to the mind and the soul. Hence its good qualities
+and also its defects. In general, it is somewhat wanting in brilliancy
+and coloring, but it is in the highest degree expressive.
+
+Some time since we have changed all that. We have discovered, somewhat
+late, that we have not sufficient imagination; we are in training to
+acquire it, it is true, at the expense of reason, alas! also at the
+expense of soul, which is forgotten, repudiated, proscribed. At this
+moment, color and form are the order of the day, in poetry, in painting,
+in every thing. We are beginning to run mad with Spanish painting. The
+Flemish and Venetian schools are gaining ground on the schools of
+Florence and Rome. Rossini equals Mozart, and Gluck will soon seem to us
+insipid.
+
+Young artists, who, rightly disgusted with the dry and inanimate manner
+of David, undertake to renovate French painting, who would rob the sun
+of its heat and splendor, remember that of all beings in the world, the
+greatest is still man, and that what is greatest in man is his
+intelligence, and above all, his heart; that it is this heart, then,
+which you must put and develop on your canvas. This is the most elevated
+object of art. In order to reach it, do not make yourselves disciples of
+Flemings, Venetians, and Spaniards; return, return to the masters of our
+great national school of the seventeenth century.
+
+We bow with respectful admiration before the schools of Rome and
+Florence, at once ideal and living; but, those excepted, we maintain
+that the French school equals or surpasses all others. We prefer neither
+Murillo, Rubens, Corregio, nor Titian himself to Lesueur and Poussin,
+because, if the former have an incomparable hand and color, our two
+countrymen are much greater in thought and expression.
+
+What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur![135] He was born at Paris
+about 1617, and he never went out of it. Poor and humble, he passed his
+life in the churches and convents where he worked. The only sweetness of
+his sad days, his only consolation was his wife: he loses her, and goes
+to die, at thirty-eight, in that cloister of Chartreux, which his pencil
+has immortalized. What resemblance at once, and what difference between
+his life and that of Raphael, who also died young, but in the midst of
+pleasures, in honors, and already almost in purple! Our Raphael was not
+the lover of Fornarina and the favorite of a pope: he was Christian; he
+is Christianity in art.
+
+Lesueur is a genius wholly French. Scarcely having escaped from the
+hands of Simon Vouët, he formed himself according to the model which he
+had in the soul. He never saw the sky of Italy. He knew some fragments
+of the antique, some pictures of Raphael, and the designs that Poussin
+sent him. With these feeble resources, and guided by a happy instinct,
+in less than ten years he mounted by a continual progress to the
+perfection of his talent, and expired at the moment when, finally sure
+of himself, he was about to produce new and more admirable
+master-pieces. Follow him from the _St. Bruno_ completed in 1648,
+through the _St. Paul_ of 1649, to the _Vision of St. Benedict_ in 1651,
+and to the _Muses_, scarcely finished before his death. Lesueur went on
+adding to his essential qualities which he owed to his own genius, and
+to the national genius, I mean composition and expression, qualities
+which he had dreamed of, or had caught glimpses of. His design from day
+to day became more pure, without ever being that of the Florentine
+school, and the same is true of his coloring.
+
+In Lesueur every thing is directed towards expression, every thing is in
+the service of the mind, every thing is idea and sentiment. There is no
+affectation, no mannerism; there is a perfect _naïveté_; his figures
+sometimes would seem even a little common, so natural are they, if a
+Divine breath did not animate them. It must not be forgotten that his
+favorite subjects do not exact a brilliant coloring: he oftenest
+retraces scenes mournful or austere. But as in Christianity by the side
+of suffering and resignation is faith with hope, so Lesueur joins to the
+pathetic sweetness and grace; and this man charms me at the same time
+that he moves me.
+
+The works of Lesueur are almost always great wholes that demanded
+profound meditation, and the most flexible talent, in order to preserve
+in them unity of subject, and to give them variety and harmony. The
+_History of St. Bruno_, the founder of the order _des Chartreux_, is a
+vast melancholy poem, in which are represented the different scenes of
+monastic life. The _History of St. Martin and St. Benedict_ has not
+come down to us entire; but the two fragments of it that we possess, the
+_Mass of St. Martin_, and the _Vision of St. Benedict_, allow us to
+compare that great work with every better thing of the kind that has
+been done in Italy, as, to speak sincerely, the _Muses_ and the _History
+of Love_, appear to us to equal at least the Farnesina.
+
+In the _History of St. Bruno_, it is particularly necessary to remark
+St. Bruno, prostrated before a crucifix, the saint reading a letter of
+the pope, his death, his apotheosis. Is it possible to carry meditation,
+humiliation, rapture farther? _St. Paul preaching at Ephesus_ reminds
+one of the _School of Athens_, by the extent of the scene, the
+employment of architecture, and the skilful distribution of groups. In
+spite of the number of personages, and the diversity of episodes, the
+picture wholly centres in St. Paul. He preaches, and upon his words hang
+those who are listening, of every sex, of every age, in the most varied
+attitudes. In that we behold the grand lines of the Roman school, its
+design full of nobleness and truth at the same time. What charming and
+grave heads! What graceful, bold, and always natural movements! Here,
+that child with ringlets, full of _naïve_ enthusiasm; there, that old
+man with bended knees, and hands joined. Are not all those beautiful
+heads, and those draperies, too, worthy of Raphael? But the marvel of
+the picture is the figure of St. Paul,[136]--it is that of the Olympic
+Jupiter, animated by a new spirit. The _Mass of St. Martin_ carries into
+the soul an impression of peace and silence. The _Vision of St.
+Benedict_ has the character of simplicity full of grandeur. A desert,
+the saint on his knees, contemplating his sister, St. Scholastique, who
+is ascending to heaven, borne up by angels, accompanied by two young
+girls, crowned with flowers, and bearing the palm, the symbol of
+virginity. St. Peter and St. Paul show St. Benedict the abode whither
+his sister is going to enjoy eternal peace. A slight ray of the sun
+pierces the cloud. St. Benedict is as it were lifted up from the earth
+by this ecstatic vision. One scarcely desires a more lively color, and
+the expression is divine. Those two virgins, a little too tall, perhaps,
+how beautiful and pure they are! How sweet are those forms! How grave
+and gentle are those faces! The person of the holy monk, with all the
+material accessories, is perfectly natural, for it remains on the earth;
+whilst his face, where his soul shines forth, is wholly ideal, and
+already in heaven.
+
+But the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Lesueur is, in our opinion, the _Descent
+from the Cross_, or rather the enshrouding of Jesus Christ, already
+descended from the cross, whom Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and St.
+John are placing in the shroud. On the left, Magdalen, in tears, kisses
+the feet of Jesus; on the right, are the holy women and the Virgin. It
+is impossible to carry the pathetic farther and preserve beauty. The
+holy women, placed in front, have each their particular grief. While one
+of them abandons herself to despair, an immense but internal and
+thoughtful sadness is upon the face of the mother of the crucified. She
+has comprehended the divine benefit of the redemption of the human race,
+and her grief, sustained by this thought, is calm and resigned. And then
+what dignity in that head! It, in some sort, sums up the whole picture,
+and gives to it its character, that of a profound and subdued emotion. I
+have seen many _Descents from the Cross_; I have seen that of Rubens at
+Antwerp, in which the sanctity of the subject has, as it were,
+constrained the great Flemish painter to join sensibility and sentiment
+to color; none of those pictures have touched me like that of Lesueur.
+All the parts of art are there in the service of expression. The drawing
+is severe and strong; even the color, without being brilliant, surpasses
+that of the _St. Bruno_, the _Mass of St. Martin_, the _St. Paul_, and
+even that of the _Vision of St. Benedict_; as if Lesueur had wished to
+bring together in it all the powers of his soul, all the resources of
+his talent![137]
+
+Now, regard the _Muses_,--other scenes, other beauties, the same genius.
+Those are Pagan pictures, but Christianity is in them also, by reason of
+the adorable chastity with which Lesueur has clothed them. All critics
+have emulously shown the mythological errors into which poor Lesueur
+fell, and they have not wanted occasion to deplore that he had not made
+the journey to Italy and studied antiquity more. But who can have the
+strange idea of searching in Lesueur for an archeology? I seek and find
+in him the very genius of painting. Is not that Terpsichore, well or ill
+named, with a harp a little too strong, it is said, as if the Muse had
+no particular gift, in her modest attitude the symbol of becoming grace?
+In that group of three Muses, to which one may give what name he
+pleases, is not the one that holds upon her knees a book of music, who
+sings or is about to sing, the most ravishing creature, a St. Cecilia
+that preludes just before abandoning herself to the intoxication of
+inspiration? And in those pictures there is brilliancy and coloring; the
+landscape is beautifully lighted, as if Poussin had guided the hand of
+his friend.
+
+Poussin! What a name I pronounce. If Lesueur is the painter of
+sentiment, Poussin is the painter of thought. He is in some sort the
+philosopher of painting. His pictures are religious or moral lectures
+that testify a great mind as well as a great heart. It is sufficient to
+recall the _Seven Sacraments_, the _Deluge_, the _Arcadia_, the _Truth
+that Time frees from the Taints of Envy_, the _Will of Eudamidas_, and
+the _Dance of Human Life_. And the style is equal to the conception.
+Poussin draws like a Florentine, composes like a Frenchman, and often
+equals Lesueur in expression; coloring alone is sometimes wanting to
+him. As well as Racine, he is smitten with the antique beauty, and
+imitates it; but, like Racine, he always remains original. In place of
+the naïveté and unique charm of Lesueur, he has a severe simplicity,
+with a correctness that never abandons him. Remember, too, that he
+cultivated every kind of painting. He is at once a great historical
+painter and a great landscape painter,--he treats religious subjects as
+well as profane subjects, and by turns is inspired by antiquity and the
+Bible. He lived much at Rome, it is true, and died there; but he also
+worked in France, and almost always for France. Scarcely had he become
+known, when Richelieu attracted him to Paris and retained him there,
+loading him with honors, and giving him the commission of first painter
+in ordinary to the king, with the general direction of all the works of
+painting, and all the ornaments of the royal houses. During that sojourn
+of two years in Paris, he made the _Last Supper_ (_Cène_), the _St.
+François Xavier_, the _Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy_.
+It was also to France, to his friend M. de Chantelou, that from Rome he
+addressed the _Inspiration of St. Paul_, as well as the second series of
+the _Seven Sacraments_, an immense composition that, for grandeur of
+thought, can vie with the _Stanze_ of Raphael. I speak of it from the
+engravings; for the _Seven Sacraments_ are no longer in France. Eternal
+shame of the eighteenth century! It was at least necessary to wrest from
+the Greeks the pediments of the Parthenon,--we, we delivered up to
+strangers, we sold all those monuments of French genius which Richelieu
+and Mazarin, with religious care, had collected. Public indignation did
+not avert the act! And there has not since been found in France a king,
+a statesman, to interdict letting the master-pieces of art that honor
+the nation depart without authorization from the national
+territory![138] There has not been found a government which has
+undertaken at least to repurchase those that we have lost, to get back
+again the great works of Poussin, Lesueur, and so many others, scattered
+in Europe, instead of squandering millions to acquire the baboons of
+Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish canvasses, in truth of an
+admirable color, but without nobleness and moral expression.[139] I know
+and I love the Dutch pastorals and the cows of Potter; I am not
+insensible to the sombre and ardent coloring of Zurbaran, to the
+brilliant Italian imitations of Murillo and Velasquez; but in fine, what
+is all that in comparison with serious and powerful compositions like
+the _Seven Sacraments_, for example, that profound representation of
+Christian rites, a work of the highest faculties of the intellect and
+the soul, in which the intellect and the soul will ever find an
+exhaustless subject of study and meditation! Thank God, the graver of
+Pesne has saved them from our ingratitude and barbarity. Whilst the
+originals decorate the gallery of a great English lord,[140] the love
+and the talent of a Pesne, of a Stella, have preserved for us faithful
+copies in those expressive engravings that one never grows tired of
+contemplating, that every time we examine them, reveal to us some new
+side of the genius of our great countryman. Regard especially the
+_Extreme Unction!_ What a sublime and at the same time almost graceful
+scene! One would call it an antique bas-relief, so many groups are
+properly distributed in it, with natural and varied attitudes. The
+draperies are as admirable as those of a fragment of the _Panathenæa_,
+which is in the Louvre. The figures are all beautiful. Beauty of figures
+belongs to sculpture, one is about to say:--yes, but it also belongs to
+painting, if you have yourself the eye of the painter, if you have been
+struck with the expression of those postures, those heads, those
+gestures, and almost those looks; for every thing lives, every thing
+breathes, even in those engravings, and if it were the place, we would
+endeavor to make the reader penetrate with us into those secrets of
+Christian sentiment which are also the secrets of art.
+
+We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the _Seven
+Sacraments_, and for not having known how to keep from England and
+Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign
+collections,[141] by going to see at the Louvre what remains to us of
+the great French artist,--thirty pictures produced at different epochs
+of his life, which, for the most part, worthily sustain his renown,--the
+portrait of _Poussin_, one of the _Bacchanals_ made for Richelieu, _Mars
+and Venus_, the _Death of Adonis_, the _Rape of the Sabines_,[142]
+_Eliezer and Rebecca_, _Moses saved from the Waters_, the _Infant Jesus
+on the Knees of the Virgin and St. Joseph standing by_,[143] especially
+the _Manna in the Desert_, the _Judgment of Solomon_, the _Blind Men of
+Jericho_, the _Woman taken in Adultery_, the _Inspiration of St. Paul_,
+the _Diogenes_, the _Deluge_, the _Arcadia_. Time has turned the color,
+which was never very brilliant; but it has not been able to disturb what
+will make them live forever,--the design, the composition, and the
+expression. The _Deluge_ has remained, and in fact will always be, the
+most striking. After so many masters who have treated the same subject,
+Poussin has found the secret of being original, and more pathetic than
+his predecessors, in representing the solemn moment when the race is
+about to disappear. There are few details; some dead bodies are floating
+upon the abyss; a sinister-looking moon has scarcely risen; a few
+moments and mankind will be no more; the last mother uselessly extends
+her last child to the last father, who cannot take it, and the serpent
+that has destroyed mankind darts forth triumphant. We try in vain to
+find in the Deluge some signs of a trembling hand: the soul that
+sustained and conducted that hand makes itself felt by our soul, and
+profoundly moves it. Stop at that scene of mourning, and almost by its
+side let your eyes rest upon that fresh landscape and upon those
+shepherds that surround a tomb. The most aged, with a knee on the
+ground, reads these words graven upon the stone: _Et in Arcadia ego_,
+and I also lived in Arcadia. At the left a shepherd listens with serious
+attention. At the right is a charming group, composed of a shepherd in
+the spring-time of life, and a young girl of ravishing beauty. An
+artless admiration is painted on the face of the young peasant, who
+looks with happiness on his beautiful companion. As for her, her
+adorable face is not even veiled with the slightest shade; she smiles,
+her hand resting carelessly upon the shoulder of the young man, and she
+has no appearance of comprehending that lecture given to beauty, youth,
+and love. I confess that, for this picture alone, of so touching a
+philosophy, I would give many master-pieces of coloring, all the
+pastorals of Potter, all the badinages of Ostade, all the buffooneries
+of Teniers.
+
+Lesueur and Poussin, by very different but nearly equal titles, are at
+the head of our great painting of the seventeenth century. After them,
+what artists again are Claude Lorrain and Philippe de Champagne?
+
+Do you know in Italy or Holland a greater landscape painter than Claude?
+And seize well his true character. Look at those vast and beautiful
+solitudes, lighted by the first or last rays of the sun, and tell me
+whether those solitudes, those trees, those waters, those mountains,
+that light, that silence,--whether all that nature has a soul, and
+whether those luminous and pure horizons do not lift you involuntarily,
+in ineffable reveries, to the invisible source of beauty and grace!
+Lorrain is, above all, the painter of light, and his works might be
+called the history of light and all its combinations, in small and
+great, when it is poured out over large plains or breaks in the most
+varied accidents, on land, on waters, in the heavens, in its eternal
+source. The human scenes thrown into one corner have no other object
+than to relieve and make appear to advantage the scenes of nature by
+harmony or contrast. In the _Village Fête_, life, noise, movement are in
+front,--peace and grandeur are at the foundation of the landscape, and
+that is truly the picture. The same effect is in the _Cattle Crossing a
+River_. The landscape placed immediately under your eyes has nothing in
+it very rare, we can find such a one anywhere; but follow the
+perspective,--it leads you across flowering fields, a beautiful river,
+ruins, mountains that overlook these ruins, and you lose yourself in
+infinite distances. That Landscape crossed by a river, where a peasant
+waters his herd, means nothing great at first sight. Contemplate it some
+time, and peace, a sort of meditativeness in nature, a well-graduated
+perspective, will, little by little, gain your heart, and give you in
+that small picture a penetrating charm. The picture called a _Landscape_
+represents a vast champagne filled with trees, and lighted by the rising
+sun,--in it there is freshness and--already--warmth, mystery, and
+splendor, with skies of the sweetest harmony. _A Dance at Sunset_
+expresses the close of a beautiful day. One sees in it, one feels in it
+the decline of the heat of the day; in the foreground are some shepherds
+and shepherdesses dancing by the side of their flocks.[144]
+
+Is it not strange, that Champagne has been put in the Flemish
+school?[145] He was born at Brussels, it is true, but he came very early
+to Paris, and his true master was Poussin, who counselled him. He
+devoted his talent to France, lived there, died there, and what is
+decisive, his manner is wholly French. Will it be said that he owes to
+Flanders his color? We respond that this quality is balanced by a grave
+defect that he also owes to Flanders, the want of ideality in the
+figures; and it was from France that he learned how to repair this
+defect by beauty of moral expression. Champagne is inferior to Lesueur
+and Poussin, but he is of their family. He was, also, of those artists
+contemporaneous with Corneille, simple, poor, virtuous, Christian.[146]
+Champagne worked both for the convent of the Carmelites in the _Rue St.
+Jacques_, that venerable abode of ardent and sublime piety, and
+Port-Royal, that place of all others that contained in the smallest
+space the most virtue and genius, so many admirable men and women worthy
+of them. What has become of that famous crucifix that he painted for the
+Church of the Carmelites, a master-piece of perspective that upon a
+horizontal plane appeared perpendicular? It perished with the holy
+house. The _Last Supper_ (_Cène_) is a living picture, on account of the
+truth of all the figures, movements, and postures, but to my eyes it is
+blemished by the absence of the ideal. I am obliged to say as much of
+the _Repast with Simon the Pharisee_. The _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Champagne
+is the _Apparition of St. Gervais and St. Protais to St. Ambrose in a
+Basilica of Milan_. All the qualities of French art are seen in
+it,--simplicity and grandeur in composition, with a profound expression.
+On that canvas are only four personages, the two martyrs and St. Paul,
+who presents them to St. Ambrose. Those four figures fill the temple,
+lighted above all in the obscurity of the night, by the luminous
+apparition. The two martyrs are full of majesty. St. Ambrose, kneeling
+and in prayer, is, as it were, seized with terror.[147]
+
+I certainly admire Champagne as an historical painter, and even as a
+landscape painter; but he is perhaps greatest as a portrait painter. In
+portraits truth and nature are particularly in their place, relieved by
+coloring, and idealized in proper measure by expression. The portraits
+of Champagne are so many monuments in which his most illustrious
+contemporaries will live forever. Every thing about them is strikingly
+real, grave, and severe, with a penetrating sweetness. Should the
+records of Port-Royal be lost, all Port-Royal might be found in
+Champagne. Among those portraits we see the inflexible Saint-Cyran,[148]
+as well as his persecutor, the imperious Richelieu.[149] We see, too,
+the learned, the intrepid Antoine Arnaud, to whom the contemporaries of
+Bossuet decreed the name of Great;[150] and Mme. Angélique Arnaud, with
+her naïve and strong figure.[151] Among them is mother Agnes and the
+humble daughter of Champagne himself, sister St. Suzanne.[152] She has
+just been miraculously cured, and her whole prostrated person bears
+still the impress of a relic of suffering. Mother Agnes, kneeling before
+her, regards her with a look of grateful joy. The place of the scene is
+a poor cell; a wooden cross hanging on the wall, and some straw chairs,
+are all the ornaments. On the picture is the inscription,--_Christo uni
+medico animarum et corporum_, etc. There is possessed the Christian
+stoicism of Port-Royal in its imposing austerity. Add to all these
+portraits that of Champagne;[153] for the painter may be put by the side
+of his personages.
+
+Had France produced in the seventeenth century only these four great
+artists, it would be necessary to give an important place to the French
+school; but she counts many other painters of the greatest merit. Among
+these we may distinguish P. Mignard, so much admired in his times, so
+little known now, and so worthy of being known. How have we been able to
+let fall into oblivion the author of the immense fresco of
+_Val-de-grâce_, so celebrated by Molière, which is perhaps the greatest
+page of painting in the world![154] What strikes at first, in this
+gigantic work, is the order and harmony. Then come a thousand charming
+details and innumerable episodes which form themselves important
+compositions. Remark also the brilliant and sweet coloring which should
+at least obtain favor for so many other beauties of the first order.
+Again, it is to the pencil of Mignard that we owe that ravishing ceiling
+of a small apartment of the King at Versailles, a master-piece now
+destroyed, but of which there remains to us a magnificent translation in
+the beautiful engraving of Gerard Audran. What profound expression in
+the _Plague of Æacus_,[155] and in the _St. Charles giving the
+Communion to the Plague-infected of Milan_! Mignard is recognized as
+one of our best portrait painters: grace, sometimes a little too
+refined, is joined in him to sentiment. The French school can also
+present with pride Valentin, who died young and was so full of promise;
+Stella, the worthy friend of Poussin, the uncle of Claudine, Antoinette,
+and Françoise Stella; Lahyre, who has so much spirit and taste;[156]
+Sébastien Bourdon, so animated and elevated;[157] the Lenains, who
+sometimes have the _naïveté_ of Lesueur and the color of Champagne;
+Bourguignon, full of fire and enthusiasm; Jouvenet, whose composition is
+so good;[158] finally, besides so many others, Lebrun, whom it is now
+the fashion to treat cavalierly, who received from nature, with perhaps
+an immoderate passion for fame, passion for the beautiful of every kind,
+and a talent of admirable flexibility,--the true painter of a great king
+by the richness and dignity of his manner, who, like Louis XIV.,
+worthily closes the seventeenth century.[159]
+
+Since we have spoken somewhat extensively of painting, would it not be
+unjust to pass in silence over engraving, its daughter, or its sister?
+Certainly it is not an art of ordinary importance; we have excelled in
+it; we have above all carried it to its perfection in portraits. Let us
+be equitable to ourselves. What school--and we are not unmindful of
+those of Marc' Antonio, Albert Durer, and Rembrandt--can present such a
+succession of artists of this kind? Thomas de Leu and Léonard Gautier
+make in some sort the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth
+century. Then come a crowd of men of the most diverse talents,--Mellan,
+Michel Lasne, Morin, Daret, Huret, Masson, Nanteuil, Drevet, Van
+Schupen, the Poillys, the Edelincks, and the Audrans. Gérard Edelinck
+and Nanteuil alone have a popular renown, and they merit it by the
+delicacy, splendor, and charm of their graver. But the connoisseurs of
+elevated taste find at least their rivals in engravers now less admired,
+because they do not flatter the eye so much, but have, perhaps, more
+truth and vigor. It must also be said, that the portraits of these two
+masters have not the historic importance of those of their predecessors.
+The _Condé_ of Nanteuil is justly admired; but if we wish to know the
+great Condé, the conqueror of Rocroy and Lens, we must not demand him
+from Nanteuil, but from Huret, Michel Lasne, and Daret,[160] who
+designed and engraved him in all his force and heroic beauty. Edelinck
+and Nanteuil himself scarcely knew and retraced the seventeenth century,
+except at the approach of its decline.[161] Morin and Mellan were able
+to see it, and transmit it in its glorious youth. Morin is the Champagne
+of engraving: he does not engrave, he paints. It is he who represents
+and transmits to posterity the illustrious men of the first half of the
+great century--Henry IV., Louis XIII., the de Thous, Bérulle, Jansenius,
+Saint-Cyran, Marillac, Bentivoglio, Richelieu, Mazarin, still young,
+and Retz, when he was only a coadjutor.[162] Mellan had the same
+advantage. He is the first in date of all the engravers of the
+seventeenth century, and perhaps is also the most expressive. With a
+single line, it seems that from his hands only shades can spring; he
+does not strike at first sight; but the more we regard him, the more he
+seizes, penetrates, and touches, like Lesueur.[163]
+
+Christianity, that is to say, the reign of the spirit, is favorable to
+painting, is particularly expressive. Sculpture seems to be a pagan art;
+for, if it must also contain moral expression, it is always under the
+imperative condition of beauty of form. This is the reason why sculpture
+is as it were natural to antiquity, and appeared there with an
+incomparable splendor, before which painting somewhat paled,[164] whilst
+among the moderns it has been eclipsed by painting, and has remained
+very inferior to it, by reason of the extreme difficulty of bringing
+stone and marble to express Christian sentiment, without which, material
+beauty suffers; so that our sculpture is too insignificant to be
+beautiful, too mannered to be expressive. Since antiquity, there have
+scarcely been two schools of sculpture:[165]--one at Florence, before
+Michael Angelo, and especially with Michael Angelo; the other in
+France, at the _Renaissance_, with Jean Cousin, Goujon, Germain Pilon.
+We may say that these three artists have, as it were, shared among
+themselves grandeur and grace: to the first belong nobility and force,
+with profound knowledge;[166] to the other two, an elegance full of
+charm. Sculpture changes its character in the seventeenth century as
+well as every thing else: it no longer has the same attraction, but it
+finds moral and religious inspiration, which the skilful masters of the
+_Renaissance_ too much lacked. Jean Cousin excepted, is there one of
+them that is superior to Jacques Sarazin? That great artist, now almost
+forgotten, is at once a disciple of the French school and the Italian
+school, and to the qualities that he borrows from his predecessors, he
+adds a moral expression, touching and elevated, which he owes to the
+spirit of the new school. He is, in sculpture, the worthy contemporary
+of Lesueur and Poussin, of Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal. He belongs
+entirely to the reign of Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Mazarin; he did not
+even see that of Louis XIV.[167] Called into France by Richelieu, who
+had also called there Poussin and Champagne, Jacques Sarazin in a few
+years produced a multitude of works of rare elegance and great
+character. What has become of them? The eighteenth century passed over
+them without regarding them. The barbarians that destroyed or scattered
+them, were arrested before the paintings of Lesueur and Poussin,
+protected by a remnant of admiration: while breaking the master-pieces
+of the French chisel, they had no suspicion of the sacrilege they were
+committing against art as well as their country. I was at least able to
+see, some years ago, at the Museum of French Monuments, collected by the
+piety of a friend of the arts, beautiful parts of a superb mausoleum
+erected to the memory of Henri de Bourbon, second of the name, Prince of
+Condé, father of the great Condé, the worthy support, the skilful
+fellow-laborer of Richelieu and Mazarin. This monument was supported by
+four figures of natural grandeur,--_Faith, Prudence, Justice, Charity_.
+There were four bas-reliefs in bronze, representing the _Triumphs of
+Renown, Time, Death_, and _Eternity_. In the _Triumph of Death_, the
+artist had represented a certain number of illustrious moderns, among
+whom he had placed himself by the side of Michael Angelo.[168] We can
+still contemplate in the court of the Louvre, in the pavilion of the
+Horloge, those caryatides of Sarazin at once so majestic and so
+graceful, which are detached with admirable relief and lightness. Have
+Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon done any thing more elegant and lifelike?
+Those females breathe, and are about to move. Take the pains to go a
+short distance[169] to visit the humble chapel that now occupies the
+place of that magnificent church of the Carmelites, once filled with the
+paintings of Champagne, Stella, Lahire, and Lebrun; where the voice of
+Bossuet was heard, where Mlle. de Lavallière and Mme. de Longueville
+were so often seen prostrated, their long hair shorn, and their faces
+bathed in tears. Among the relics that are preserved of the past
+splendor of the holy monastery, consider the noble statue of the
+kneeling Cardinal de Bérulle. On those meditative and penetrating
+features, in those eyes raised to heaven, breathes the soul of that
+great servant of God, who died at the altar like a warrior on the field
+of honor. He prays God for his dear Carmelites. That head is perfectly
+natural, as Champagne might have painted it, and has a severe grace that
+reminds one of Lesueur and Poussin.[170]
+
+Below Sarazin, the Anguiers are still artists that Italy would admire,
+and to whom there is wanting, since the great century, nothing but
+judges worthy of them. These two brothers covered Paris and France with
+the most precious monuments. Look at the tomb of Jacques-Auguste de
+Thou, by François Anguier: the face of the great historian is reflective
+and melancholy, like that of a man weary of the spectacle of human
+things; and nothing is more amiable than the statues of his two wives,
+Marie Barbançon de Cany, and Gasparde de la Châtre.[171] The mausoleum
+of Henri de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse in 1632, which is still
+seen at Moulins, in the church of the ancient convent of the daughters
+of Sainte-Marie, is an important work of the same artist, in which force
+is manifest, with a little heaviness.[172] To Michel Anguier are
+attributed the statues of the duke and duchess of Tresmes, and that of
+their illustrious son, Potier, Marquis of Gêvres.[173] Behold in him the
+intrepid companion of Condé, arrested in his course at thirty-two years
+of age before Thionville, after the battle of Rocroy, already
+lieutenant-general, and when Condé was demanding for him the bâton of a
+marshal of France, deposited on his tomb; behold him young, beautiful,
+brave, like his comrades cut down also in the flower of life, Laval,
+Châtillon, La Moussaye. One of the best works of Michel Anguier is the
+monument of Henri de Chabot, that other companion, that faithful friend
+of Condé, who by the splendor of his valor, especially by the graces of
+his person, knew how to gain the heart, the fortune, and the name of the
+beautiful Marguerite, the daughter of the great Duke of Rohan. The new
+duke died, still young, in 1655, at thirty-nine years of age. He is
+represented lying down, the head inclined and supported by an angel;
+another angel is at his feet. The whole is striking, and the details are
+exquisite. The face of Chabot has every beauty, as if to answer to its
+reputation, but the beauty is that of one dying. The body has already
+the languor of death, _longuescit moriens_, with I know not what antique
+grace. This morsel, if the drawing were more severe, would rival the
+_Dying Gladiator_, of which it reminds one, which it perhaps even
+imitates.[174]
+
+In truth, I wonder that men now dare speak so lightly of Puget and
+Girardon. To Puget qualities of the first order cannot be refused. He
+has the fire, the enthusiasm, the fecundity of genius. The caryatides of
+the Hôtel de Ville of Toulon, which have been brought to the Museum of
+Paris, attest a powerful chisel. The _Milon_ reminds one of the manner
+of Michael Angelo; it is a little overstrained, but it cannot be denied
+that the effect is striking. Do you want a talent more natural, and
+still having force and elevation? Take the trouble to search in the
+Tuileries, in the gardens of Versailles, in several churches of Paris,
+for the scattered works of Girardon, here for the mausoleum of the
+Gondis,[175] there for that of the Castellans,[176] that of
+Louvois,[177] etc.; especially go to see in the church of the Sorbonne
+the mausoleum of Richelieu. The formidable minister is there represented
+in his last moments, sustained by religion and wept by his country. The
+whole person is of a perfect nobility, and the figure has the fineness,
+the severity, the superior distinction given to it by the pencil of
+Champagne, and the gravers of Morin, Michel Lasne, and Mellan.
+
+Finally, I do not regard as a vulgar sculptor Coysevox, who, under the
+influence of Lebrun, unfortunately begins the theatrical style, who
+still has the facility, movement, and elegance of Lebrun himself. He
+reared worthy monuments to Mazarin, Colbert, and Lebrun,[178] and thus
+to speak, sowed busts of the illustrious men of his time. For, remark it
+well, artists then took scarcely any arbitrary and fanciful subjects.
+They worked upon contemporaneous subjects, which, while giving them
+proper liberty, inspired and guided them, and communicated a public
+interest to their works. The French sculpture of the seventeenth
+century, like that of antiquity, is profoundly natural. The churches and
+the monasteries were filled with the statues of those who loved them
+during life, and wished to rest in them after death. Each church of
+Paris was a popular museum. The sumptuous residences of the
+aristocracy--for at that period, there was one in France, like that of
+England at the present time--possessed their secular tombs, statues,
+busts, and portraits of eminent men whose glory belonged to the country
+as well as their own family. On its side, the state did not encourage
+the arts in detail, and, thus to speak, in a small way; it gave them a
+powerful impulse by demanding of them important works, by confiding to
+them vast enterprises. All great things were thus mingled together,
+reciprocally inspired and sustained each other.
+
+One man alone in Europe has left a name in the beautiful art that
+surrounds a chateau or a palace with graceful gardens or magnificent
+parks,--that man is a Frenchman of the seventeenth century, is Le Nôtre.
+Le Nôtre may be reproached with a regularity that is perhaps excessive,
+and a little mannerism in details; but he has two qualities that
+compensate for many defects, grandeur and sentiment. He who designed the
+park of Versailles, who to the proper arrangement of parterres, to the
+movement of fountains, to the harmonious sound of waterfalls, to the
+mysterious shades of groves, has known how to add the magic of infinite
+perspective by means of that spacious walk where the view is extended
+over an immense sheet of water to be lost in the limitless
+distances,--he is a landscape-painter worthy of having a place by the
+side of Poussin and Lorrain.
+
+We had in the middle age our Gothic architecture, like all the nations
+of northern Europe. In the sixteenth century what architects were Pierre
+Lescot, Jean Bullant, and Philibert Delorme! What charming palaces, what
+graceful edifices, the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville of Paris, Chambord,
+and Ecouen! The seventeenth century also had its original architecture,
+different from that of the middle age and that of the _Renaissance_,
+simple, austere, noble, like the poetry of Corneille and the prose of
+Descartes. Study without scholastic prejudice the Luxembourg of de
+Brosses,[179] the portal of Saint-Gervais, and the great hall of the
+Palais de Justice, by the same architect; the Palais Cardinal and the
+Sorbonne of Lemercier;[180] the cupola of Val-de-Grâce by Lemuet;[181]
+the triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis by François Blondel;
+Versailles, and especially the Invalides, of Mansart.[182] Consider with
+attention the last edifice, let it make its impression on your mind and
+soul, and you will easily succeed in recognizing in it a particular
+beauty. It is not a Gothic monument, neither is it an almost Pagan
+monument of the sixteenth century,--it is modern, and also Christian; it
+is vast with measure, elegant with gravity. Contemplate at sunset that
+cupola reflecting the last rays of day, elevating itself gently towards
+the heavens in a slight and graceful curve; cross that imposing
+esplanade, enter that court admirably lighted in spite of its covered
+galleries, bow beneath the dome of that church where Vauban and Turenne
+sleep,--you will not be able to guard yourself from an emotion at once
+religious and military; you will say to yourself that this is indeed the
+asylum of warriors who have reached the evening of life and are prepared
+for eternity!
+
+Since then, what has French architecture become? Once having left
+tradition and national character, it wanders from imitation to
+imitation, and without comprehending the genius of antiquity, it
+unskilfully reproduces its forms. This bastard architecture, at once
+heavy and mannered, is, little by little, substituted for the beautiful
+architecture of the preceding century, and everywhere effaces the
+vestiges of the French spirit. Do you wish a striking example of it? In
+Paris, near the Luxembourg, the Condés had their _hôtel_,[183]
+magnificent and severe, with a military aspect, as it was fitting for
+the dwelling-place of a family of warriors, and within of almost royal
+splendor. Beneath those lofty ceilings had been some time suspended the
+Spanish flags taken at Rocroy. In those vast saloons had been assembled
+the _élite_ of the grandest society that ever existed. In those
+beautiful gardens had been seen promenading Corneille and Madame de
+Sévigné, Molière, Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, in the company of the great
+Condé. The oratory had been painted by the hand of Lesueur.[184] It had
+been easy to repair and preserve the noble habitation. At the end of the
+eighteenth century, a descendant of the Condés sold it to a dismal
+company to build that palace without character and taste which is called
+the Palais-Bourbon. Almost at the same epoch there was a movement made
+to construct a church to the patroness of Paris, to that Geneviève,
+whose legend is so touching and so popular. Was there ever a better
+chance for a national and Christian monument? It was possible to return
+to the Gothic style and even to the Byzantine style. Instead of that
+there was made for us an immense Roman basilica of the Decline. What a
+dwelling for the modest and holy virgin, so dear to the fields that
+bordered upon Lutèce, whose name is still venerated by the poor people
+who inhabit these quarters! Behold the church which has been placed by
+the side of that of Saint-Etienne du Mont, as if to make felt all the
+differences between Christianity and Paganism! For here, in spite of a
+mixture of the most different styles, it is evident that the Pagan style
+predominates. Christian worship cannot be naturalized in this profane
+edifice, which has so many times changed its destination. It is in vain
+to call it anew Saint-Geneviève,--the revolutionary name of Pantheon
+will stick to it.[185] The eighteenth century treated the Madeleine no
+better than Saint-Geneviève. In vain the beautiful sinner wished to
+renounce the joys of the world and attach herself to the poverty of
+Jesus Christ. She has been brought back to the pomp and luxury that she
+repudiated; she has been put in a rich palace, all shining with gold,
+which might very well be a temple of Venus, for certainly it has not the
+severe grace of the Pantheon, of which it is the most vulgar copy. How
+far we are from the Invalides, from Val-de-Grâce, and the Sorbonne, so
+admirably appropriated to their object, wherein appears so well the hand
+of the century and the country which reared them!
+
+While architecture thus strays, it is natural that painting should seek
+above every thing color and brilliancy, that sculpture should apply
+itself to become Pagan again, that poetry itself, receding for two
+centuries, should abjure the worship of thought for that of fancy, that
+it should everywhere go borrowing images from Spain, Italy, and Germany,
+that it should run after subaltern and foreign qualities which it will
+not attain, and abandon the grand qualities of the French genius.
+
+It will be said that the Christian sentiment which animated Lesueur and
+the artists of the seventeenth century is wanting to those of ours; it
+is extinguished, and cannot be rekindled. In the first place, is that
+very certain? Native faith is dead, but cannot reflective faith take its
+place? Christianity is exhaustless; it has infinite resources, and
+admirable flexibility; there are a thousand ways of arriving at it and
+returning to it, because it has itself a thousand phases that answer to
+the most different dispositions, to all the wants, to all the mobility
+of the heart. What it loses on one side, it gains on another; and as it
+has produced our civilization, it is called to follow it in all its
+vicissitudes. Either every religion will perish in this world, or
+Christianity will endure, for it is not in the power of thought to
+conceive a more perfect religion. Artists of the nineteenth century, do
+not despair of God and yourselves. A superficial philosophy has thrown
+you far from Christianity considered in a strict sense; another
+philosophy can bring you near it again by making you see it with another
+eye. And then, if the religious sentiment is weakened, are there not
+other sentiments that can make the heart of man beat, and fecundate
+genius? Plato has said, that beauty is always old and always new. It is
+superior to all its forms, it belongs to all countries and all times; it
+belongs to all beliefs, provided these beliefs be serious and profound,
+and the need be felt of expressing and spreading them. If, then, we have
+not arrived at the boundary assigned to the grandeur of France, if we
+are not beginning to descend into the shade of death, if we still truly
+live, if there remain to us convictions, of whatever kind they may be,
+thereby even remains to us, or at least may remain to us, what made the
+glory of our fathers, what they did not carry with them to the tomb,
+what had already survived all revolutions, Greece, Rome, the Middle Age,
+what does not belong to any temporary or ephemeral accident, what
+subsists and is continually found in the focus of consciousness--I mean
+moral inspiration, immortal as the soul.
+
+Let us terminate here, and sum up this defence of the national art.
+There are in arts, as well as in letters and philosophy, two contrary
+schools. One tends to the ideal in all things,--it seeks, it tries to
+make appear the spirit concealed under the form, at once manifested and
+veiled by nature; it does not so much wish to please the senses and
+flatter the imagination as to enlarge the intellect and move the soul.
+The other, enamored of nature, stops there and devotes itself to
+imitation,--its principal object is to reproduce reality, movement,
+life, which are for it the supreme beauty. The France of the seventeenth
+century, the France of Descartes, Corneille, and Bossuet, highly
+spiritual in philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, was also highly
+spiritual in the arts. The artists of that great epoch participate in
+its general character, and represent it in their way. It is not true
+that they lacked imagination, more than Pascal and Bossuet lacked it.
+But inasmuch as they do not suffer imagination to usurp the dominion
+that does not belong to it, inasmuch as they subject its order, even its
+impetuosity, to the reign of reason and the inspirations of the heart,
+it seems that it is not so strong when it is only disciplined and
+regulated. As we have said, they excel in composition, especially in
+expression. They always have a thought, and a moral and elevated
+thought. For this reason they are dear to us, their cause interests us,
+is in some sort our own cause, and so this homage rendered to their
+misunderstood glory naturally crowns these lectures devoted to true
+beauty, that is to say, moral beauty.
+
+May these lectures be able to make it known, and, above all, loved! May
+they be able also to inspire some one of you with the idea of devoting
+himself to studies so beautiful, of devoting to them his life, and
+attaching to them his name! The sweetest recompense of a professor who
+is not too unworthy of that title, is to see rapidly following in his
+footsteps young and noble spirits who easily pass him and leave him far
+behind them.[186]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[128] One is reminded of the expression of the great Condé: "Where then
+has Corneille learned politics and war?"
+
+[129] It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the
+original all the passages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus; in them
+Racine would almost always be found below his model. I will give a
+single example. In the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus
+expresses the different effects of the crime on the spectators:
+
+    Juez combien ce coup frappe tous les esprits;
+    La moitié s'épouvante et sort avec des cris;
+    Mais ceux qui de la cour ont un plus long usage
+    Sur les yeux de César composent leur visage.
+
+Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more
+than a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre
+pencil-strokes of the great Roman painter: "Trepidatur a
+circumsedentibus, diffugiunt imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus,
+resistunt defixi et Neronem intuentes."
+
+[130] See the letter to Perrault.
+
+[131]
+
+    En vain contre le Cid ministre se ligue,
+    Tout Paris pour Chimène a les yeux de Rodrique, etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Après qu'un peu de terre, obtenu par prière,
+    Pour jamais dans la tombe eut enfermé Molière, etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+[132]
+
+    Aux pieds de cet autel de structure grossière,
+    Git sans pompe, enfermé dans une vile bière,
+    Le plus savant mortel qui jamais ait écrit;
+    Arnaud, qui sur la grâce instruit par Jésus-Christ,
+    Combattant pour l'Eglise, a, dans l'Eglise même,
+    Souffert plus d'un outrage et plus d'un anathème, etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, persécuté;
+    Et même par sa mort leur fureur mal éteinte
+    N'aurait jamais laissé ses cendres en repos,
+    Si Dieu lui-même ici de son ouaille sainte
+    A ces loups dévorants n'avait caché les os.
+
+
+
+[133] These verses did not appear till after the death of Boileau, and
+they are not well known. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, in a letter to
+Brossette, rightly said that these are "the most beautiful verses that
+M. Despréaux ever made."
+
+[134] 4th Series of our works, LITERATURE, book i., _Preface_, p. 3: "It
+is in prose, perhaps, that our literary glory is most certain.... What
+modern nation reckons prose writers that approach those of our nation?
+The country of Shakspeare and Milton does not possess, since Bacon, a
+single prose writer of the first order [?]; that of Dante, Petrarch,
+Ariosto, and Tasso, is in vain proud of Machiavel, whose sound and manly
+diction, like the thought that it expresses, is destitute of grandeur.
+Spain, it is true, has produced Cervantes, an admirable writer, but he
+is alone.... France can easily show a list of more than twenty prose
+writers of genius: Froissard, Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La
+Rochefoucauld, Molière, Retz, La Bruyère, Malebranche, Bossuet, Fénelon,
+Fléchier, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Mme. de Sévigné, Saint-Simon,
+Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, J. J. Rousseau; without speaking of so
+many more that would be in the first rank everywhere else,--Amiot,
+Calvin, Pasquier, D'Aubigné, Charron, Balzac, Vaugelas, Pélisson,
+Nicole, Fleury, Bussi, Saint-Evremont, Mme. de Lafayette, Mme. de
+Maintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Hamilton, Le Sage, Prévost,
+Beaumarchais, etc. It may be said with the exactest truth, that French
+prose is without a rival in modern Europe; and, even in antiquity,
+superior to the Latin prose, at least in the quantity and variety of
+models, it has no equal but the Greek prose, in its palmiest days, in
+the days of Herodotus and Demosthenes. I do not prefer Demosthenes to
+Pascal, and it would be difficult for me to put Plato himself above
+Bossuet. Plato and Bossuet, in my opinion, are the two greatest masters
+of human language, with manifest differences, as well as more than one
+trait of resemblance; both ordinarily speak like the people, with the
+last degree of simplicity, and at moments ascending without effort to a
+poetry as magnificent as that of Homer, ingenious and polished to the
+most charming delicacy, and by instinct majestic and sublime. Plato,
+without doubt, has incomparable graces, the supreme serenity, and, as it
+were, the demi-smile of the divine sage. Bossuet, on his side, has the
+pathetic, in which he has no rival but the great Corneille. When such
+writers are possessed, is it not a religion to render them the honor
+that is their due, that of a regular and profound study?"
+
+[135] See the APPENDIX, at the end of the volume.
+
+[136] See the APPENDIX.
+
+[137] This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of St.
+Gervais. It formed the altar-piece, and in the foreground there was the
+admirable Bearing of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum.
+
+[138] Such a law was the first act of the first assembly of affranchised
+Greece, and all the friends of art have applauded it from end to end of
+civilized Europe.
+
+[139] See the APPENDIX.
+
+[140] The _Seven Sacraments_ of Poussin are now in the Bridgewater
+Gallery. See the APPENDIX.
+
+[141] See the APPENDIX.
+
+[142] In the midst of this scene of brutal violence, everybody has
+remarked this delicate trait--a Roman quite young, almost juvenile,
+while possessing himself by force of a young girl taking refuge in the
+arms of her mother, asks her from her mother with an air at once
+passionate and restrained. In order to appreciate this picture, compare
+it with that of David in the _ensemble_ and in the details.
+
+[143] In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage. He
+governs the whole scene; he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy.
+
+[144] The pictures of Claude Lorrain, of which we have just spoken, are
+in the Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst the Museum of
+Madrid alone possesses almost as many, while there are in England more
+than fifty, and those the most admirable. See the APPENDIX.
+
+[145] The last _Notice of the Pictures exhibited in the Gallery of the
+National Museum of the Louvre_, 1852, although its author, M. Villot, is
+surely a man of incontestable knowledge and taste, persists in placing
+Champagne in the Flemish school. _En revanche_, a learned foreigner, M.
+Waagen, claims him for the French school. _Kunstwerke and Künstler in
+Paris_, Berlin, 1839, p. 651.
+
+[146] Well appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to his
+benefits. One day when an envoy of Richelieu said to him that he had
+only to ask freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune,
+Champagne responded that if M. the Cardinal could make him a more
+skilful painter than he was, it was the only thing that he asked of his
+Eminence; but that being impossible, he only desired the honor of his
+good graces. Félibien, _Entretiens_, 1st edition, 4to., part v., p. 171;
+and de Piles, _Abrégé de la Vie des Peintres_, 2d edition, p. 500.--"As
+he had much love for justice and truth, provided he satisfied what they
+both demanded, he easily passed over all the rest."--_Nécrologe de
+Port-Royal_, p. 336.
+
+[147] See the APPENDIX.
+
+[148] The original is in the Museum of Grenoble; but see the engraving
+of Morin; see also that of Daret, after the beautiful design of
+Demonstier.
+
+[149] In the Museum of the Louvre; see also the engraving of Morin.
+
+[150] The original is now in the Château of Sablé, belonging to the
+Marquis of Rougé; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The
+beautiful engraving of Edelinck was made after a different original,
+attributed to a nephew of Champagne.
+
+[151] The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of Rougé;
+the admirable engraving of Van Schupen may take its place.
+
+[152] In the Museum.
+
+[153] In the Museum, and engraved by Gérard Edelinck.
+
+[154] _La Gloire du Val-de-Grâce_, in 4to, 1669, with a frontispiece and
+vignettes. Molière there enters into infinite details on all the parts
+of the art of painting and the genius of Mignard. He pushes eulogy
+perhaps to the extent of hyperbole; afterwards, hyperbole gave place to
+the most shameful indifference. The fresco of the dome of Val-de-grâce
+is composed of four rows of figures, which rise in a circle from the
+base to the vertex of the arch. In the upper part is the Trinity, above
+which is raised a resplendent sky. Below the Trinity are the celestial
+powers. Descending a degree, we see the Virgin and the holy personages
+of the Old and New Testament. Finally, at the lower extremity is Anne of
+Austria, introduced into paradise by St. Anne and St. Louis, and these
+three figures are accompanied by a multitude of personages pertaining to
+the history of France, among whom are distinguished Joan of Arc,
+Charlemagne, etc.
+
+[155] Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the _Plague of David_
+(_la Peste de David_). What has become of the original?
+
+[156] See his _Landscape at Sunset_, and the _Bathers_ (_les
+Baigneuses_), an agreeable scene somewhat blemished by careless drawing.
+
+[157] It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In his _Holy
+Family_ the figure of the Virgin, without being celestial, admirably
+expresses meditation and reflection. We lost some time ago the most
+important work of S. Bourdon, the _Sept Oeuvres de Miséricorde_. See
+the APPENDIX.
+
+[158] See especially his _Extreme Unction_.
+
+[159] The picture that is called _le Silence_, which represents the
+sleep of the infant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of the
+infant is of superhuman power. The _Battles of Alexander_, with their
+defects, are pages of history of the highest order; and in the
+_Alexander visiting with Ephestion the Mother and the Wife of Darius_,
+one knows not which to admire most, the noble ordering of the whole or
+the just expression of the figures.
+
+[160] It seems that Lesueur sometimes furnished Daret with designs. It
+is indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design of his
+_chef-d'oeuvre_, the portrait of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti,
+represented in his earliest youth, and in an abbé, sustained and
+surrounded by angels of different size, forming a charming composition.
+The drawing is completely pure, except some imperfect fore-shortenings.
+The little angels that sport with the emblems of the future cardinal are
+full of spirit, and, at the same time, sweetness.
+
+[161] Edelinck saw only the reign of Louis XIV. Nanteuil was able to
+engrave very few of the great men of the time of Louis XIII., and the
+regency, and in the latter part of their life; Mazarin, in his last five
+or six years; Condé, growing old; Turenne, old; Fouquet and Matthieu
+Molé, some years before the fall of the one and the death of the other;
+and he was too often obliged to waste his talent upon a crowd of
+parliamentarians, ecclesiastics, and obscure financiers.
+
+[162] If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest and most
+neglected portion of the seventeenth century, that which Voltaire almost
+wholly omitted, I would set him to collecting the works of Morin.
+
+[163] Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated painters of
+his time, he is himself the author of great and charming compositions,
+many of which serve as frontispieces to books. I willingly call
+attention to that one which is at the head of a folio edition of the
+_Introduction à la Vie Dévote_, and to the beautiful frontispieces of
+the writings of Richelieu, from the press of the Louvre.
+
+[164] This was the opinion of Winkelmann at the end of the eighteenth
+century; it is our opinion now, even after all the discoveries that have
+been made during fifty years, that may be seen in great part retraced
+and described in the _Musio real Barbonico_.
+
+[165] There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age: the innumerable
+figures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues that are
+discovered every day sufficiently testify it. The _imagers_ of that time
+certainly had much spirit and imagination; but, at least in everything
+that we have seen, beauty is absent, and taste wanting.
+
+[166] Go and see at the Museum of Versailles the statue of Francis I.,
+and say whether any Italian, except the author of the _Laurent de
+Medicis_, has made any thing like it. See also in the Museum of the
+Louvre, the statue of Admiral Chabot.
+
+[167] Sarazin died in 1660, Lesueur in 1655, Poussin in 1665, Descartes
+in 1650, Pascal in 1662, and the genius of Corneille did not extend
+beyond that epoch.
+
+[168] Lenoir, _Musée des Monuments Français_, vol. v., p. 87-91, and the
+_Musée Royale des Monuments Français_ of 1815, p. 98, 99, 108, 122, and
+140. This wonderful monument, erected to Henri de Bourbon, at the
+expense of his old intendant Perrault, president of the _Chambre des
+Comptes_, was placed in the Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in
+bronze. It must not be confounded with the other monument that the
+Condés erected to the same prince in their family burial-ground at
+Vallery, near Montereau, in Yonne. This monument is in marble, and by
+the hand of Michel Anguier; see the description in Lenoir, vol. v., p.
+23-25, and especially in the _Annuaire de l'Yonne pour_ 1842, p. 173,
+etc.
+
+[169] Rue d'Enfer, No. 67.
+
+[170] The Museum of the Louvre possesses only a very small number of
+Sarazin's works, and those of very little importance:--a bust of Pierre
+Séguier, strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and the small
+funeral monument of Hennequin, Abbé of Bernay, member of Parliament, who
+died in 1651, which is a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of elegance.
+
+[171] These three statues were united in the Museum des
+_Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _Musée-royal_, etc., p. 94; we know not why
+they have been separated; Jacques-Auguste de Thou has been placed in the
+Louvre, and his two wives at Versailles.
+
+[172] François Anguier had made a marble tomb of Cardinal de Bérulle,
+which was in the oratory of _Rue St. Honoré_. It would have been
+interesting to compare this statue with that of Sarazin, which is still
+at the Carmelites. François is also the author of the monument of the
+Longuevilles, which, before the Revolution, was at the Célestins, and
+was seen in 1815 at the museum des _Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _ibid._,
+p. 103; it is now in the Louvre. It is an obelisk, the four sides of
+which are covered with allegorical bas-reliefs. The pedestal, also
+ornamented with bas-reliefs, has four female figures in marble,
+representing the cardinal virtues.
+
+[173] Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 97 and 100. See his portrait,
+painted by Champagne, and engraved by Morin.
+
+[174] Group in white marble which was at the Célestins, a church near
+the _hôtel_ of Rohan-Chabot in the _Place Royale_; re-collected in the
+Museum _des Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _ibid._, p. 97; it is now at
+Versailles. We must not pass over that beautiful production, the
+mausoleum of Jacques de Souvré, Grand Prior of France, the brother of
+the beautiful Marchioness de Sablé; a mausoleum that came from
+Saint-Jean de Latran, passed through the Museum _des Petits-Augustins_,
+and is now found in the Louvre. The sculptures of the porte Saint-Denis
+are also owed to Michel Anguier, as well as the admirable bust of
+Colbert, which is in the museum.
+
+[175] At first at Notre-Dame, the natural place for the tombs of the
+Gondis, then at the Augustins, now at Versailles.
+
+[176] In the Church St. Germain des Prés.
+
+[177] At the Capuchins, then at the Augustins, then at Versailles.
+
+[178] See, on these monuments, Lenoir, p. 98, 101, 102. That of Mazarin
+is now at the Louvre; that of Colbert has been restored to the Church of
+St. Eustache, and that of Lebrun to the Church St. Nicholas du
+Chardonnet, as well as the mausoleum, so expressive but a little
+overstrained, of the mother of Lebrun, by Tuby, and the mausoleum of
+Jerome Bignon, the celebrated Councillor of State, who died in 1656.
+
+[179] Quatremère de Quincy, _Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de plus
+Célèbres Architectes_, vol. ii., p. 145:--"There could scarcely be found
+in any country an _ensemble_ so grand, which offers with so much unity
+and regularity an aspect at once more varied and picturesque, especially
+in the façade of the entrance." Unfortunately this unity has
+disappeared, thanks to the constructions that have since been added to
+the primitive work.
+
+[180] In order to appreciate the beauty of the Sorbonne, one must stand
+in the lower part of the great court, and from that point consider the
+effect of the successive elevation, at first of the other part of the
+court, then of the different stories of the portico, then of the portico
+itself, of the church, and, finally, of the dome.
+
+[181] Quatremère de Quincy, _Ibid._, p. 257:--"The cupola of this
+edifice is one of the finest in Europe."
+
+[182] We do not speak of the colonnade of the Louvre by Perrault,
+because in spite of its grand qualities, it begins the decline and marks
+the passage from the serious to the academic style, from originality to
+imitation, from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth.
+
+[183] See the engraving of Pérelle. Sauval, vol. ii., p. 66 and p. 131,
+says that the _hôtel_ of Condé was _magnificently built_, that it was
+_the most magnificent of the time_.
+
+[184] Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see the
+APPENDIX):--"Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de Condé,
+Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an
+oratory painted by Lesueur in the _hôtel_ of Condé. The altar-piece
+represents a _Nativity_, that of the ceiling a _Celestial Glory_. The
+wainscot is enriched with several figures and with a quantity of
+ornaments worked with great care."
+
+[185] The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is
+itself a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only merit of
+the Pantheon is its situation on the summit of the hill of St.
+Geneviève, from which it overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on
+different sides to a considerable distance. Put in its place the
+Val-de-Grâce of Lemercier with the dome of Lemuet, and judge what would
+be the effect of such an edifice!
+
+[186] In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was
+M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to the
+_faculté des lettres_, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis
+on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and particular
+taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his mind. But
+of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our lectures, no one
+was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of beauty or art than the
+author of the beautiful articles on Eustache Lesueur, the Cathedral of
+Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all the knowledge, and, what
+is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge of every kind of
+beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the necessity of
+addressing to him the public petition that he may not be wanting to a
+vocation so marked and so elevated.
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD
+
+THE GOOD.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.
+
+    Extent of the question of the good.--Position of the question
+    according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the
+    good, the natural belief of mankind?--The natural beliefs of
+    humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of
+    nature.--Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages,
+    in life, in consciousness.--Disinterestedness and
+    devotedness.--Liberty.--Esteem and
+    contempt.--Respect.--Admiration and
+    indignation.--Dignity.--Empire of opinion.--Ridicule.--Regret
+    and repentance.--Natural and necessary foundations of all
+    justice.--Distinction between fact and right.--Common sense,
+    true and false philosophy.
+
+
+The idea of the true in its developments, comprises psychology, logic,
+and metaphysics. The idea of the beautiful begets what is called
+æsthetics. The idea of the good is the whole of ethics.
+
+It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics to confine them
+within the inclosure of individual consciousness. There are public
+ethics, as well as private ethics, and public ethics embrace, with the
+relations of men among themselves, so far as men, their relations as
+citizens and as members of a state. Ethics extend wherever is found in
+any decree the idea of the good. Now, where does this idea manifest
+itself more, and where do justice and injustice, virtue and crime,
+heroism and weakness appear more openly, than on the theatre of civil
+life? Moreover, is there any thing that has a more decisive influence
+over manners, even of individuals, than the institutions of peoples and
+the constitutions of states? If the idea of the good goes thus far, it
+must be followed thither, as recently the idea of the beautiful has
+introduced us into the domain of art.
+
+Philosophy usurps no foreign power; but it is not disposed to relinquish
+its right of examination over all the great manifestations of human
+nature. All philosophy that does not terminate in ethics, is hardly
+worthy of the name, and all ethics that do not terminate at least in
+general views on society and government, are powerless ethics, that have
+neither counsels nor rules to give humanity in its most difficult
+trials.
+
+It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the metaphysics and
+æsthetics that we have taught evidently involve such a doctrine of
+morality and not such another, that, accordingly, the question of the
+good, that question so fertile and so vast, is for us wholly solved, and
+that we can deduce, by way of reasoning, the moral theory that is
+derived from our theory of the beautiful and our theory of the true. We
+might do this, perhaps, but we will not. This would be abandoning the
+method that we have hitherto followed, that method that proceeds by
+observation, and not by deduction, and makes consulting experience a law
+to itself. We do not grow weary of experience. Let us attach ourselves
+faithfully to the psychological method; it has its delays; it condemns
+us to more than one repetition, but it places us in the beginning, and a
+long time retains us at the source of all reality, and all light.
+
+The first maxim of the psychological method is this: True philosophy
+invents nothing, it establishes and describes what is. Now here, what
+is, is the natural and permanent belief of the being that we are
+studying, to wit, man. What is, then, in relation to the good, the
+natural and permanent belief of the human race? Such is, in our eyes,
+the first question.
+
+With us, in fact, the human race does not take one side, and philosophy
+the other. Philosophy is the interpreter of the human race. What the
+human race thinks and believes, often unconsciously, philosophy
+re-collects, explains, establishes. It is the faithful and complete
+expression of human nature, and human nature is entire in each of us
+philosophers, and in every other man. Among us, it is attained by
+consciousness; among other men, it manifests itself in their words and
+actions. Let us, then, interrogate the latter and the former; let us
+especially interrogate our own consciousness; let us clearly recognize
+what the human race thinks; we shall then see what should be the office
+of philosophy.
+
+Is there a human language known to us that has not different expressions
+for good and evil, for just and unjust? Is there any language, in which,
+by the side of the words pleasure, interest, utility, happiness, are not
+also found the words sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotedness, virtue?
+Do not all languages, as well as all nations, speak of liberty, duty,
+and right?
+
+Here, perhaps, some disciple of Condillac and Helvetius will ask us
+whether, in this regard, we possess authentic dictionaries of the
+language of savage tribes found by voyagers in the isles of the ocean?
+No; but we have not made our philosophic religion out of the
+superstitions and prejudices of a certain school. We absolutely deny
+that it is necessary to study human nature in the famous savage of
+Aveyron, or in the like of him of the isles of the ocean, or the
+American continent. The savage state offers us humanity in
+swaddling-clothes, thus to speak, the germ of humanity, but not humanity
+entire. The true man is the perfect man of his kind; true human nature
+is human nature arrived at its development, as true society is also
+perfected society. We do not think it worth the while to ask a savage
+his opinion on the Apollo Belvidere, neither will we ask him for the
+principles that constitute the moral nature of man, because in him this
+moral nature is only sketched and not completed. Our great philosophy of
+the seventeenth century was sometimes a little too much pleased with
+hypotheses in which God plays the principal part, and crushes human
+liberty.[187] The philosophy of the eighteenth century threw itself
+into the opposite extreme; it had recourse to hypotheses of a totally
+different character, among others, to a pretended natural state, whence
+it undertook, with infinite pains, to draw society and man as we now see
+them. Rousseau plunged into the forests, in order to find there the
+model of liberty and equality. That is the commencement of his politics.
+But wait a little, and soon you will see the apostle of the natural
+state, driven, by a necessary inconsequence, from one excess to an
+opposite excess, instead of the sweets of savage liberty, proposing to
+us the _Contrat Social and Lacédémone_. Condillac[188] studies the human
+mind in a statue whose senses enter into exercise under the magic wand
+of a systematic analysis, and are developed in the measure and progress
+that are convenient to him. The statue successively acquires our five
+senses, but there is one thing that it does not acquire, that is, a mind
+like the human mind, and a soul like ours. And this was what was then
+called the experimental method! Let us leave there all those hypotheses.
+In order to understand reality, let us study it, and not imagine it. Let
+us take humanity as it is incontestably shown to us in its actual
+characters, and not as it may have been in a primitive, purely
+hypothetical state, in those unformed lineaments or that degradation
+which is called the savage state. In that, without doubt, may be found
+signs or _souvenirs_ of humanity, and, if this were the plea, we might,
+in our turn, examine the recitals of voyages, and find, even in that
+darkness of infancy or decrepitude, admirable flashes of light, noble
+instincts, which already appear, or still subsist, presaging or
+recalling humanity. But, for the sake of exactness of method and true
+analysis, we turn our eyes from infancy and the savage state, in order
+to direct them towards the being who is the sole object of our studies,
+the actual man, the real and completed man.
+
+Do you know a language, a people, which does not possess the word
+disinterested virtue? Who is especially called an honest man? Is it the
+skilful calculator, devoting himself to making his own affairs the best
+possible, or he who, under all circumstances, is disposed to observe
+justice against his apparent or real interest? Take away the idea that
+an honest man is capable, to a certain degree, of resisting the
+attractions of personal interest, and of making some sacrifices for
+opinion, for propriety, for that which is or appears honest, and you
+take away the foundation of that title of honest man, even in the most
+ordinary sense. That disposition to prefer what is good to our pleasure,
+to our personal utility, in a word, to interest--that disposition more
+or less strong, more or less constant, more or less tested, measures the
+different degrees of virtue. A man who carries disinterestedness as far
+as devotion, is called a hero, let him be concealed in the humblest
+condition, or placed on a public stage. There is devotedness in obscure
+as well as in exalted stations. There are heroes of probity, of honor,
+of loyalty, in the relations of ordinary life, as well as heroes of
+courage and patriotism in the counsels of peoples and at the head of
+armies. All these names, with their meaning well recognized, are in all
+languages, and constitute a certain and universal fact. We may explain
+this fact, but on one imperative condition, that in explaining we do not
+destroy it. Now, is the idea and the word disinterestedness explained to
+us by reducing disinterestedness to interest? This is what common sense
+invincibly repels.
+
+Poets have no system,--they address themselves to men as they really
+are, in order to produce in them certain effects. Is it skilful
+selfishness or disinterested virtue that poets celebrate? Do they demand
+our applause for the success of fortunate address, or for the voluntary
+sacrifices of virtue? The poet knows that there is at the foundation of
+the human soul I know not what marvellous power of disinterestedness and
+devotedness. In addressing himself to this instinct of the heart, he is
+sure of awakening a sublime echo, of opening every source of the
+pathetic.
+
+Consult the annals of the human race, and you will find in them man
+everywhere, and more and more, claiming his liberty. This word liberty
+is as old as man himself. What then! Men wish to be free, and man
+himself should not be free! The word nevertheless exists with the most
+determined signification. It signifies that man believes himself a free
+being, not only animated and sensible, but endowed with will, a will
+that belongs to him, that consequently cannot admit over itself the
+tyranny of another will which would make, in regard to him, the office
+of fatality, even were it that of the most beneficent fatality. Do you
+suppose that the word liberty could ever have been formed, if the thing
+itself did not exist? None but a free being could possess the idea of
+liberty. Will it be said that the liberty of man is only an illusion?
+The wishes of the human race are then the most inexplicable
+extravagance. In denying the essential distinction between liberty and
+fatality, we contradict all languages and all received notions; we have,
+it is true, the advantage of absolving tyrants, but we degrade heroes.
+They have, then, fought and died for a chimera!
+
+All languages contain the words esteem and contempt. To esteem, to
+despise,--these are universal expressions, certain phenomena, from which
+an impartial analysis can draw the highest notions. Can we despise a
+being who, in his acts, should not be free, a being who should not know
+the good, and should not feel himself obligated to fulfil it? Suppose
+that the good is not essentially different from the evil, suppose that
+there is in the world only interest more or less well understood, that
+there is no real duty, and that man is not essentially a free being,--it
+is impossible to explain rationally the word contempt. It is the same
+with the word esteem.
+
+Esteem is a fact which, faithfully expressed, contains a complete
+philosophy as solid as generous. Esteem has two certain characters: 1st,
+It is a disinterested sentiment in the soul of him who feels it; 2d, It
+is applied only to disinterested acts. We do not esteem at will, and
+because it is our interest to esteem. Neither do we esteem an action or
+a person because they have been successful. Success, fortunate
+calculation, may make us envied; it does not bring esteem, which has
+another price.
+
+Esteem in a certain degree, and under certain circumstances, is
+respect,--respect, a holy and sacred word which the most subtile or the
+loosest analysis will never degrade to expressing a sentiment that is
+related to ourselves, and is applied to actions crowned by fortune.
+
+Take again these two words, these two facts analogous to the first two,
+admiration and indignation. Esteem and contempt are rather judgments;
+indignation and admiration are sentiments, but sentiments that pertain
+to intelligence and envelop a judgment.[189]
+
+Admiration is an essentially disinterested sentiment. See whether there
+is any interest in the world that has the power to give you admiration
+for any thing or any person. If you were interested, you might feign
+admiration, but you would not feel it. A tyrant with death in his hand,
+may constrain you to appear to admire, but not to admire in reality.
+Even affection does not determine admiration; whilst a heroic trait,
+even in an enemy, compels you to admire.
+
+The phenomenon opposed to admiration is indignation. Indignation is no
+more anger than admiration is desire. Anger is wholly personal.
+Indignation is never directly related to us; it may have birth in the
+midst of circumstances wherein we are engaged, but the foundation and
+the dominant character of the phenomenon in itself is to be
+disinterested. Indignation is in its nature generous. If I am a victim
+of an injustice, I may feel at once anger and indignation, anger against
+him that injures me, indignation towards him who is unjust to one of his
+fellow-men. We may be indignant towards ourselves; we are indignant
+towards every thing that wounds the sentiment of justice. Indignation
+covers a judgment, the judgment that he who commits such or such an
+action, whether against us, or even for us, does an action unworthy,
+contrary to our dignity, to his own dignity, to human dignity. The
+injury sustained is not the measure of indignation, as the advantage
+received is not that of admiration. We felicitate ourselves on
+possessing or having acquired a useful thing; but we never admire, on
+that account, either ourselves or the thing that we have just acquired.
+So we repel the stone that wounds us, we do not feel indignant towards
+it.
+
+Admiration elevates and ennobles the soul. The generous parts of human
+nature are disengaged and exalted in presence of, and as it were in
+contact with, the image of the good. This is the reason why admiration
+is already by itself so beneficent, even should it be deceived in its
+object. Indignation is the result of these same generous parts of the
+soul, which, wounded by injustice, are highly roused and protest in the
+name of offended human dignity.
+
+Look at men in action, and you will see them imposing upon themselves
+great sacrifices in order to conquer the suffrages of their fellows. The
+empire of opinion is immense,--vanity alone does not explain it; it
+doubtless also pertains to vanity, but it has deeper and better roots.
+We judge that other men are, like us, sensible to good and evil, that
+they distinguish between virtue and vice, that they are capable of being
+indignant and admiring, of esteeming and respecting, as well as
+despising. This power is in us, we have consciousness of it, we know
+that other men possess it as well as we, and it is this power that
+frightens us. Opinion is our own consciousness transferred to the
+public, and there disengaged from all complaisance and armed with an
+inflexible severity. To the remorse in our own hearts, responds the
+shame in that second soul which we have made ourselves, and is called
+public opinion. We must not be astonished at the sweets of popularity.
+We are more sure of having done well, when to the testimony of our
+consciousness we are able to join that of the consciousness of our
+fellow-men. There is only one thing that can sustain us against opinion,
+and even place us above it: it is the firm and sure testimony of our
+consciousness, because, in fine, the public and the whole human race
+are compelled to judge us according to appearance, whilst we judge
+ourselves infallibly and by the most certain of all knowledge.
+
+Ridicule is the fear of opinion in small things. The force of ridicule
+is wholly in the supposition that there is a common taste, a common type
+of what is proper, that directs men in their judgments, and even in
+their pleasantries, which in their way are also judgments. Without this
+supposition, ridicule falls of itself, and pleasantry loses its sting.
+But it is immortal, as well as the distinction between good and evil,
+between the beautiful and the ugly, between what is proper and what is
+improper.
+
+When we have not succeeded in any measure undertaken for our interest
+and prosperity, we experience a sentiment of pain that is called regret.
+But we do not confound regret with that other sentiment that rises in
+the soul when we are conscious of having done something morally bad.
+This sentiment is also a pain, but of quite a different nature,--it is
+remorse, repentance. That we have lost in play, for example, is
+disagreeable to us; but if, in gaining, we have the consciousness of
+having deceived our adversary, we experience a very different sentiment.
+
+We might prolong and vary these examples. We have said enough to be
+entitled to conclude that human language and the sentiments that it
+expresses are inexplicable, if we do not admit the essential distinction
+between good and evil, between virtue and crime, crime founded on
+interest, virtue founded on disinterestedness.
+
+Disturb this distinction, and you disturb human life and entire society.
+Permit me to take an extreme, tragic, and terrible example. Here is a
+man that has just been judged. He has been condemned to death, and is
+about to be executed--to be deprived of life. And why? Place yourself in
+the system that does not admit the essential distinction between good
+and evil, and ponder on what is stupidly atrocious in this act of human
+justice. What has the condemned done? Evidently a thing indifferent in
+itself. For if there is no other outward distinction than that of
+pleasure and pain, I defy any one to qualify any human action, whatever
+it may be, as criminal, without the most absurd inconsequence. But this
+thing, indifferent in itself, a certain number of men, called
+legislators, have declared to be a crime. This purely arbitrary
+declaration has found no echo in the heart of this man. He has not been
+able to feel the justice of it, since there is nothing in itself just.
+He has therefore done, without remorse, what this declaration
+arbitrarily interdicted. The court proceeds to prove to him that he has
+not succeeded, but not that he has done contrary to justice, for there
+is no justice. I maintain that every condemnation, be it to death, or to
+any punishment whatever, imperatively supposes, in order to be any thing
+else than a repression of violence by violence, the four following
+points:--1st, That there is an essential distinction between good and
+evil, justice and injustice, and that to this distinction is attached,
+for every intelligent and free being, the obligation of conforming to
+good and justice; 2d, That man is an intelligent and free being, capable
+of comprehending this distinction, and the obligation that accompanies
+it, and of adhering to it naturally, independently of all convention,
+and every positive law; capable also of resisting the temptations that
+bear him towards evil and injustice, and of fulfilling the sacred law of
+natural justice; 3d, That every act contrary to justice deserves to be
+repressed by force, and even punished in reparation of the fault
+committed, and independently too of all law and all convention; 4th,
+That man naturally recognizes the distinction between the merit and
+demerit of actions, as he recognizes the distinction between the just
+and the unjust, and knows that every penalty applied to an unjust act is
+itself most strictly just.
+
+Such are the foundations of that power of judging and punishing which is
+entire society. Society has not made those principles for its own use;
+they are much anterior to it, they are contemporaneous with thought and
+the soul, and upon these rests society, with its laws and its
+institutions. Laws are legitimate by their relation to these eternal
+laws. The surest power of institutions resides in the respect that
+these principles bear with them and extend to every thing that
+participates in them. Education develops them, it does not create them.
+They direct the legislator who makes the law, and the judge who applies
+it. They are present to the accused brought before the tribunal, they
+inspire every just sentence, they give it authority in the soul of the
+condemned, and in that of the spectator, and they consecrate the
+employment of force necessary for his execution. Take away a single one
+of these principles, and all human justice is overthrown, no longer is
+there any thing but a mass of arbitrary conventions which no one in
+conscience is bound to respect, which may be violated without remorse,
+which are sustained only by the display of extreme punishments. The
+decisions of such a justice are not true judgments, but acts of force,
+and civil society is only an arena where men contend with each other
+without duties and rights, without any other object than that of
+procuring for themselves the greatest possible amount of enjoyment, of
+procuring it by conquest and preserving it by force or cunning, save
+throwing over all that the cloak of hypocritical laws.
+
+It is true, such is the aspect under which skepticism makes us consider
+society and human justice, driving us through despair to revolt and
+disorder, and bringing us back through despair again to quite another
+yoke than that of reason and virtue, to that regulated disorder which is
+called despotism. The spectacle of human things, viewed coolly, and
+without the spirit of system, is, thank God, less sombre. Without doubt,
+society and human justice have still many imperfections which time
+discovers and corrects; but it may be said, that in general they rest on
+truth and natural equity. The proof of it is, that society everywhere
+subsists, and is even developed. Moreover, facts, were they such as the
+melancholy pen of a Pascal or a Rousseau represent them to be, facts are
+not all,--before facts is right; and this idea of right alone, if it is
+real, suffices to overturn an abasing system, and save human dignity.
+Now, is the idea of right a chimera? I again appeal to languages, to
+individual consciousness, to the human race,--is it not true that fact
+is everywhere distinguished from right, fact which too often, perhaps,
+but not always, as it is said, is opposed to right; and right that
+subdues and rules fact, or protests against it? What word is it that
+restrains most in human societies? Is it not that of right? Look for a
+language that does not contain it. On all sides, society is bristling
+with rights. There is even a distinction made between natural right and
+positive right, between what is legal and what is equitable. It is
+proclaimed that force should be in the service of right, and not right
+at the mercy of force. The triumphs of force, wherever we perceive them,
+either under our eyes, or by the aid of history in bygone centuries, or
+by favor of universal publicity beyond the ocean, and in foreign
+continents, rouse indignation in the disinterested spectator or reader.
+On the contrary, he who inscribes on his banner the name of right, by
+that alone interests us; the cause of right, or what we suppose to be
+the cause of right, is for us the cause of humanity. It is also a fact,
+and an incontestable fact, that in the eyes of man fact is not every
+thing, and that the idea of right is a universal idea, graven in shining
+and ineffaceable characters, if not in the visible world, at least in
+that of thought and the soul; concerning that is the question; it is
+also that which in the long run reforms and governs the other.
+
+Individual consciousness, conceived and transferred to the entire
+species, is called common sense. It is common sense that has made, that
+sustains, that develops languages, natural and permanent beliefs,
+society and its fundamental institutions. Grammarians have not invented
+languages, nor legislators societies, nor philosophers general beliefs.
+All these things have not been personally done, but by the whole
+world,--by the genius of humanity.
+
+Common sense is deposited in its works. All languages, and all human
+institutions contain the ideas and the sentiments that we have just
+called to mind and described, and especially the distinction between
+good and evil, between justice and injustice, between free will and
+desire, between duty and interest, between virtue and happiness, with
+the profoundly rooted belief that happiness is a recompense due to
+virtue, and that crime in itself deserves to be punished, and calls for
+the reparation of a just suffering.
+
+These things are attested by the words and actions of men. Such are the
+sincere and impartial, but somewhat confused, somewhat gross notions of
+common sense.
+
+Here begins the part of philosophy. It has before it two different
+routes; it can do one of two things: either accept the notions of common
+sense, elucidate them, thereby develop and increase them, and, by
+faithfully expressing them, fortify the natural beliefs of humanity; or,
+preoccupied with such or such a principle, impose it upon the natural
+data of common sense, admit those that agree with this principle,
+artificially bend the others to these, or openly deny them; this is what
+is called making a system.
+
+Philosophic systems are not philosophy; they try to realize the idea of
+it, as civil institutions try to realize that of justice, as the arts
+express in their way infinite beauty, as the sciences pursue universal
+science. Philosophic systems are necessarily very imperfect, otherwise
+there never would have been two systems in the world. Fortunate are
+those that go on doing good, that expand in the minds and souls of men,
+with some innocent errors, the sacred love of the true, the beautiful,
+and the good! But philosophic systems follow their times much more than
+they direct them; they receive their spirit from the hands of their age.
+Transferred to France towards the close of the regency and under the
+reign of Louis XV., the philosophy of Locke gave birth there to a
+celebrated school, which for a long time governed and still subsists
+among us, protected by ancient habits, but in radical opposition to our
+new institutions and our new wants. Sprung from the bosom of tempests,
+nourished in the cradle of a revolution, brought up under the bad
+discipline of the genius of war, the nineteenth century cannot recognize
+its image and find its instincts in a philosophy born under the
+influence of the voluptuous refinements of Versailles, admirably fitted
+for the decrepitude of an arbitrary monarchy, but not for the laborious
+life of a young liberty surrounded with perils. As for us, after having
+combated the philosophy of sensation in the metaphysics which it
+substituted for Cartesianism, and in the deplorable æsthetics, now too
+accredited, under which succumbed our great national art of the
+seventeenth century, we do not hesitate to combat it again in the ethics
+that were its necessary product, the ethics of interest.
+
+The exposition and refutation of these pretended ethics will be the
+subject of the next lecture.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[187] See 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 11 and 12; 4th Series, vol. ii.,
+last pages of _Jacqueline Pascal_, and the _Fragments of the Cartesian
+Philosophy_, p. 469.
+
+[188] 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3, _Condillac_.
+
+[189] See the Theory of Sentiment, part i., lecture 5.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XII.
+
+THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.[190]
+
+    Exposition of the doctrine of interest.--What there is of truth
+    in this doctrine.--Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and
+    desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the
+    fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot
+    explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the
+    principle of merit and demerit.--Consequences of the ethics of
+    interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to
+    despotism.
+
+
+The philosophy of sensation, setting out from a single fact, agreeable
+or painful sensation, necessarily arrives in ethics at a single
+principle,--interest. The whole of the system may be explained as
+follows:
+
+Man is sensible to pleasure and pain: he shuns the one and seeks the
+other. That is his first instinct, and this instinct will never abandon
+him. Pleasure may change so far as its object is concerned, and be
+diversified in a thousand ways: but whatever form it takes,--physical
+pleasure, intellectual pleasure, moral pleasure, it is always pleasure
+that man pursues.
+
+The agreeable generalized is the useful; and the greatest possible sum
+of pleasure, whatever it may be, no longer concentrated within such or
+such an instant, but distributed over a certain extent of duration, is
+happiness.[191]
+
+Happiness, like pleasure, is relative to him who experiences it; it is
+essentially personal. Ourselves, and ourselves alone we love, in loving
+pleasure and happiness.
+
+Interest is that which prompts us to seek in every thing our pleasure
+and our happiness.
+
+If happiness is the sole end of life, interest is the sole motive of all
+our actions.
+
+Man is only sensible to his interest, but he understands it well or ill.
+Much art is necessary in order to be happy. We are not ready to give
+ourselves up to all the pleasures that are offered on the highway of
+life, without examining whether these pleasures do not conceal many a
+pain. Present pleasure is not every thing,--it is necessary to take
+thought for the future; it is necessary to know how to renounce joys
+that may bring regret, and sacrifice pleasure to happiness, that is to
+say, to pleasure still, but pleasure more enduring and less
+intoxicating. The pleasures of the body are not the only ones,--there
+are other pleasures, those of mind, even those of opinion: the sage
+tempers them by each other.
+
+The ethics of interest are nothing else than the ethics of perfected
+pleasure, substituting happiness for pleasure, the useful for the
+agreeable, prudence for passion. It admits, like the human race, the
+words good and evil, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, punishment and
+reward, but it explains them in its own way. The good is that which in
+the eyes of reason is conformed to our true interest; evil is that which
+is contrary to our true interest. Virtue is that wisdom which knows how
+to resist the enticement of passions, discerns what is truly useful, and
+surely proceeds to happiness. Vice is that aberration of mind and
+character that sacrifices happiness to pleasures without duration or
+full of dangers. Merit and demerit, punishment and reward, are the
+consequences of virtue and vice:--for not knowing how to seek happiness
+by the road of wisdom, we are punished by not attaining it. The ethics
+of interest do not pretend to destroy any of the duties consecrated by
+public opinion; it establishes that all are conformed to our personal
+interest, and it is thereby that they are duties. To do good to men is
+the surest means of making them do good to us; and it is also the means
+of acquiring their esteem, their good will, and their sympathy,--always
+agreeable, and often useful. Disinterestedness itself has its
+explanation. Doubtless there is no disinterestedness in the vulgar sense
+of the word, that is to say, a real sacrifice of self, which is absurd,
+but there is the sacrifice of present interest to future interest, of
+gross and sensual passion to a nobler and more delicate pleasure.
+Sometimes one renders to himself a bad account of the pleasure that he
+pursues, and in fault of seeing clearly into his own heart, invents that
+chimera of disinterestedness of which human nature is incapable, which
+it cannot even comprehend.
+
+It will be conceded that this explanation of the ethics of interest is
+not overcharged, that it is faithful.
+
+We go further,--we acknowledge that these ethics are an extreme, but, up
+to a certain point, a legitimate reaction against the excessive rigor of
+stoical ethics, especially ascetic ethics that smother sensibility
+instead of regulating it, and, in order to save the soul from passions,
+demands of it a sacrifice of all the passions of nature that resembles a
+suicide.
+
+Man was not made to be a sublime slave, like Epictetus, employed in
+supporting bad fortune well without trying to surmount it, nor, like the
+author of the _Imitation_, the angelic inhabitant of a cloister, calling
+for death as a fortunate deliverance, and anticipating it, as far as in
+him lies, by continual penitence and in mute adoration. The love of
+pleasure, even the passions, have a place among the needs of humanity.
+Suppress the passions, and it is true there is no more excess; neither
+is there any mainspring of action,--without winds the vessel no longer
+proceeds, and soon sinks in the deep. Suppose a being that lacks love
+of self, the instinct of preservation, the horror of suffering,
+especially the horror of death, who has neither the love of pleasure nor
+the love of happiness, in a word, destitute of all personal
+interest,--such a being will not long resist the innumerable causes of
+destruction that surround and besiege him; he will not remain a day.
+Never can a single family, nor the least society be formed or
+maintained. He who has made man has not confided the care of his work to
+virtue alone, to devotedness and sublime charity,--he has willed that
+the duration and development of the race and human society should be
+placed upon simpler and surer foundations; and this is the reason why he
+has given to man the love of self, the instinct of preservation, the
+taste of pleasure and happiness, the passions that animate life, hope
+and fear, love, ambition, personal interest, in fine, a powerful,
+permanent, universal motive that urges us on to continually ameliorate
+our condition upon the earth.
+
+So we do not contest with the ethics of interest the reality of their
+principle,--we are convinced that this principle exists, that it has a
+right to be. The only question that we raise is the following:--The
+principle of interest is true in itself, but are there not other
+principles quite as true, quite as real? Man seeks pleasure and
+happiness, but are there not in him other needs, other sentiments as
+powerful, as vital? The first and universal principle of human life is
+the need of the individual to preserve himself; but would this principle
+suffice to support human life and society entire and as we behold it?
+
+Just as the existence of the body does not hinder that of the soul, and
+reciprocally, so in the ample bosom of humanity and the profound designs
+of divine Providence, the principles that differ most do not exclude
+each other.
+
+The philosophy of sensation continually appeals to experience. We also
+invoke experience; and it is experience that has given us certain facts
+mentioned in the preceding lecture, which constitute the primary notions
+of common sense. We admit the facts that serve as a foundation for the
+system of interest, and reject the system. The facts are true in their
+proper bearing,--the system is false in attributing to them an
+excessive, limitless bearing; and it is false again in denying other
+facts quite as incontestable. A sound philosophy holds for its primary
+law to collect all real facts and respect the real differences that also
+distinguish them. What it pursues before all, is not unity, but
+truth.[192] Now the ethics of interest mutilate truth,--they choose
+among facts those that agree with them, and reject all the others, which
+are precisely the very facts of morality. Exclusive and intolerant, they
+deny what they do not explain,--they form a whole well united, which, as
+an artificial work, may have its merit, but is broken to pieces as soon
+as it comes to encounter human nature with its grand parts.
+
+We are about to show that the ethics of interest, an offspring of the
+philosophy of sensation, are in contradiction with a certain number of
+phenomena, which human nature presents to whomsoever interrogates it
+without the spirit of system.
+
+1st. We have established, not in the name of a system, but in the name
+of the most common experience, that entire humanity believes in the
+existence, in each of its members, of a certain force, a certain power
+that is called liberty. Because it believes in liberty in the
+individual, it desires that this liberty should be respected and
+protected in society. Liberty is a fact that the consciousness of each
+of us attests to him, which, moreover, is enveloped in all the moral
+phenomena that we have signalized, in moral approbation and
+disapprobation, in esteem and contempt, in admiration and indignation,
+in merit and demerit, in punishment and reward. We ask the philosophy of
+sensation and the ethics of interest what they do with this universal
+phenomena which all the beliefs of humanity suppose, on which entire
+life, private and public, turns.
+
+Every system of ethics, whatever it may be, which contains, I do not say
+a rule, but a simple advice, implicitly admits liberty. When the ethics
+of interest advise a man to sacrifice the agreeable to the useful, it
+apparently admits that man is free to follow or not to follow this
+advice. But in philosophy it does not suffice to admit a fact, there
+must be the right to admit it. Now, most moralists of interest deny the
+liberty of man, and no one has the right to admit it in a system that
+derives the entire human soul, all its faculties as well as all its
+ideas, from sensation alone and its developments.
+
+When an agreeable sensation, after having charmed our soul, quits it and
+vanishes, the soul experiences a sort of suffering, a want, a need,--it
+is agitated, disquieted. This disquietude, at first vague and
+indecisive, is soon determined; it is borne towards the object that has
+pleased us, whose absence makes us suffer. This movement of the soul,
+more or less vivid, is desire.
+
+Is there in desire any of the characters of liberty? What is it called
+to be free? Each one knows that he is free, when he knows that he is
+master of his action, that he can begin it, arrest it, or continue it as
+he pleases. We are free, when before acting we have taken the resolution
+to act, knowing well that we are able to take the opposite resolution. A
+free act is that of which, by the infallible testimony of my
+consciousness, I know that I am the cause, for which, therefore, I
+regard myself as responsible. God, the world, the body, can produce in
+me a thousand movements; these movements may seem to the eyes of an
+external observer to be voluntary acts; but any error is impossible to
+consciousness,--it distinguishes every movement not voluntary, whatever
+it may be, from a voluntary act.
+
+True activity is voluntary and free activity. Desire is just the
+opposite. Desire, carried to its culmination, is passion; but language,
+as well as consciousness, says that man is passive in passion; and the
+more vivid passion is, the more imperative are its movements, the
+farther is it from the type of true activity in which the soul possesses
+and governs itself.
+
+I am no more free in desire than in the sensation that precedes and
+determines it. If an agreeable object is presented to me, am I able not
+to be agreeably moved? If it is a painful object, am I able not to be
+painfully moved? And so, when this agreeable sensation has disappeared,
+if memory and imagination remind me of it, is it in my power not to
+suffer from no longer experiencing it, is it in my power not to feel the
+need of experiencing it again, and to desire more or less ardently the
+object that alone can appease the disquietude and suffering of my soul?
+
+Observe well what takes place within you in desire; you recognize in it
+a blind emotion, that, without any deliberation on your part, and
+without the intervention of your will, rises or falls, increases or
+diminishes. One does not desire, and cease to desire, according to his
+will.
+
+Will often combats desire, as it often also yields to it; it is not,
+therefore, desire. We do not reproach the sensations that objects
+produce, nor even the desires that these sensations engender; we do
+reproach ourselves for the consent of the will to these desires, and the
+acts that follow, for these acts are in our power.
+
+Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and leads man into
+acts that he does not impute to himself, for they are not voluntary. It
+is even the refuge of many of the accused; they lay their faults to the
+violence of desire and passion, which have not left them masters of
+themselves.
+
+If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire the freer we
+should be. Evidently the contrary is true. As the violence of desire
+increases, the dominion of man over himself decreases; and as desire is
+weakened and passion extinguished, man repossesses himself.
+
+I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. That two facts
+differ, it does not follow that they must be without relation to each
+other. By removing certain objects, or even by merely diverting our
+thoughts away from the pleasure that they can give us, we are able, to a
+certain extent, to turn aside and elude the sensible effects of these
+objects, and escape the desire which they might excite in us. One may
+also, by surrounding himself with certain objects, in some sort manage
+himself, and produce in himself sensations and desires which for that
+are not more voluntary than would be the impression made upon us by a
+stone with which we should strike ourselves. By yielding to these
+desires, we lend them a new force, and we moderate them by a skilful
+resistance. One even has some power over the organs of the body, and, by
+applying to them an appropriate regimen, he goes so far as to modify
+their functions. All this proves that there is in us a power different
+from the senses and desire, which, without disposing of them, sometimes
+exercises over them an indirect authority.
+
+Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelligence. To will
+and to know are two things essentially different. We do not judge as we
+will, but according to the necessary laws of the judgment and the
+understanding. The knowledge of truth is not a resolution of the will.
+It is not the will that declares, for example, that body is extended,
+that it is in space, that every phenomenon has a cause, etc. Yet the
+will has much power over intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that
+we work, that we give attention, for a longer or a shorter time, more or
+less intense, to certain things; consequently, it is the will that
+develops and increases intelligence, as it might let it languish and
+become extinguished. It must, then, be avowed that there is in us a
+supreme power that presides over all our faculties, over intelligence as
+well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, and is mingled
+with them, governs them, or leaves them to their natural development,
+making appear, even in its absence, the character that belongs to it,
+since the man that is deprived of it avows that he is no longer master
+of himself, that he is not himself, so true is it that human personality
+resides particularly in that prominent power that is called the
+will.[193]
+
+Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, and yet so
+manifest! Strange confounding of will and desire, wherein the most
+opposite schools meet each other, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Condillac,
+the philosophy of the seventeenth century, and that of the eighteenth!
+One, a despiser of humanity, by an extreme and ill-understood piety,
+strips man of his own activity, in order to concentrate it in God; the
+other transfers it to nature. In both man is a mere instrument, nothing
+else than a mode of God or a product of nature. When desire is once
+taken as the type of human activity, there is an end of all liberty and
+personality. A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to
+facts, carries through common sense to better results. By distinguishing
+between the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely
+determining self, it restores the true activity that characterizes human
+personality. The will is the infallible sign and the peculiar power of a
+real and effective being; for how could he who should be only a mode of
+another being find in his own borrowed being a power capable of willing
+and producing acts of which he should feel himself the cause, and the
+responsible cause?
+
+If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from passive phenomena,
+cannot explain true activity, voluntary and free activity, we might
+regard it as demonstrated that this same philosophy cannot give a true
+doctrine of morality, for all ethics suppose liberty. In order to impose
+rules of action on a being, it is necessary that this being should be
+capable of fulfilling or violating them. What makes the good and evil of
+an action is not the action itself, but the intention that has
+determined it. Before every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the
+intention, and to the intention the punishment is attached. Where, then,
+liberty is wanting, where there is nothing but desire and passion, not
+even a shade of morality subsists. But we do not wish to reject, by the
+previous question, the ethics of sensation. We proceed to examine in
+itself the principle that they lay down, and to show that from this
+principle can be deduced neither the idea of good and evil, nor any of
+the moral ideas that are attached to it.
+
+2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good is nothing else
+than the useful. By substituting the useful for the agreeable, without
+changing the principle, there has been contrived a convenient refuge
+against many difficulties; for it will always be possible to distinguish
+interest well understood from apparent and vulgar interest. But even
+under this somewhat refined form, the doctrine that we are examining
+none the less destroys the distinction between good and evil.
+
+If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, I must
+consider only one thing when an action is proposed to me to do,--what
+advantages can result from it to me?
+
+So I make the supposition that a friend, whose innocence is known to me,
+falls into disfavor with a king, or opinion--a mistress more jealous and
+imperious than all kings,--and that there is danger in remaining
+faithful to him and advantage in separating myself from him; if, on one
+side, the danger is certain, and on the other the advantage is
+infallible, it is clear that I must either abandon my unfortunate
+friend, or renounce the principle of interest--of interest well
+understood.
+
+But it will be said to me:--think on the uncertainty of human things;
+remember that misfortune may also overtake you, and do not abandon your
+friend, through fear that you may one day be abandoned.
+
+I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, but the
+present is certain; if I can reap great and unmistakable advantages from
+an action, it would be absurd to sacrifice them to the chance of a
+possible misfortune. Besides, according to my supposition, all the
+chances of the future are in my favor,--this is the hypothesis that we
+have made.
+
+Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal interest is the only
+rational principle, the public reason must be with me. If it were
+against me, it would be an objection against the truth of the principle.
+For how could a true principle, rationally applied, be revolting to the
+public conscience?
+
+Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I feel for having
+followed the truth, if the principle of interest is in fact moral truth?
+On the contrary, I should feel satisfaction on account of it.
+
+The rewards and punishments of another life remain. But how are we to
+believe in another life, in a system that confines human consciousness
+within the limits of transformed sensation?
+
+I have, then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. And mankind
+nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity; and, if I am wanting in it, I
+am dishonored.
+
+If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil are not in the act
+itself, but in its happy or unhappy results.
+
+Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There is a man who has
+calculated badly." Whence it follows that, if this man, in doing what he
+did, could have escaped punishment, he would have calculated well, and
+his conduct would have been laudable. The action then becomes good or
+ill according to the issue. Every act is of itself indifferent, and it
+is lot that qualifies it.
+
+If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calculation is the
+highest wisdom; it is even virtue!
+
+But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. It supposes, with
+long experience of life, a sure insight, capable of discerning all the
+consequences of actions, a head strong and large enough to embrace and
+weigh their different chances. The young man, the ignorant, the poor in
+mind, are not able to distinguish between the good and the evil, the
+honest and the dishonest. And even in supposing the most consummate
+prudence, what place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things,
+for chance and the unforeseen! In truth, in the system of interest well
+understood, there must be great knowledge in order to be an honest man.
+Much less is requisite for ordinary virtue, whose motto has always been:
+Do what you ought, let come what may.[194] But this principle is
+precisely the opposite of the principle of interest. It is necessary to
+choose between them. If interest is the only principle avowed by reason,
+disinterestedness is a lie and madness, and literally an
+incomprehensible monster in well-ordered human nature.
+
+Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and thereby it does
+not simply mean that wise selfishness that deprives itself of a pleasure
+for a surer, more delicate, or more durable pleasure. No one has ever
+believed that it was the nature or the degree of the pleasure sought
+that constituted disinterestedness. This name is awarded only to the
+sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may be, to a motive free from all
+interest. And the human race, not only thus understands
+disinterestedness, but it believes that such a disinterestedness exists;
+it believes the human soul capable of it. It admires the devotedness of
+Regulus, because it does not see what interest could have impelled that
+great man to go far from his country to seek, among cruel enemies, a
+frightful death, when he might have lived tranquil and even honored in
+the midst of his family and his fellow-citizens.
+
+But glory, it will be said, the passion of glory inspired Regulus; it
+is, then, interest still that explains the apparent heroism of the old
+Roman. Admit, then, that this manner of understanding his interest is
+even ridiculously absurd, and that heroes are very unskilful and
+inconsistent egoists. Instead of erecting statues, with the deceived
+human race, to Regulus, d'Assas, and St. Vincent de Paul, true
+philosophy must send them to the Petites-Maisons, that a good regime may
+cure them of generosity, charity, and greatness of soul, and restore
+them to the sane state, the normal state, the state in which man only
+thinks of himself, and knows no other law, no other principle of action
+than his interest.
+
+3d. If there is no liberty, if there is no essential distinction between
+good and evil, if there is only interest well or ill understood, there
+can be no obligation.
+
+It is at first very evident that obligation supposes a being capable of
+fulfilling it, that duty is applied only to a free being. Then the
+nature of obligation is such, that if we are delinquent in fulfilling
+it, we feel ourselves culpable, whilst if, instead of understanding our
+interest well, we have understood it ill, there follows only a single
+thing, that we are unfortunate. Are, then, being culpable and being
+unfortunate the same thing? These are two ideas radically different. You
+may advise me to understand my interest well, under penalty of falling
+into misfortune; you cannot command me to see clearly in regard to my
+interest under penalty of crime.
+
+Imprudence has never been considered a crime. When it is morally
+accused, it is much less as being wrong than as attesting vices of the
+soul, lightness, presumption, feebleness.
+
+As we have said, our true interest is often most difficult of
+discernment. Obligation is always immediate and manifest. In vain
+passion and desire combat it; in vain the reasoning that passion trains
+for its attendance, like a docile slave, tries to smother it under a
+mass of sophisms: the instinct of conscience, a cry of the soul, an
+intuition of reason, different from reasoning, is sufficient to repel
+all sophisms, and make obligation appear.
+
+However pressing may be the solicitations of interest, we may always
+enter into contest and arrangement with it. There are a thousand ways of
+being happy. You assure me that, by conducting myself in such a manner,
+I shall arrive at fortune. Yes, but I love repose more than fortune, and
+with happiness alone in view, activity is not better than sloth. Nothing
+is more difficult than to advise any one in regard to his interest,
+nothing is easier than to advise him in regard to honor.
+
+After all, in practice, the useful is resolved into the agreeable, that
+is to say, into pleasure. Now, in regard to pleasure, every thing
+depends on humor and temperament. When there is neither good nor evil in
+itself, there are no pleasures more or less noble, more or less
+elevated; there are only pleasures that are more or less agreeable to
+us. Every thing depends on the nature of each one. This is the reason
+why interest is so capricious. Each one understands it as it pleases
+him, because each one is the judge of what pleases him. One is more
+moved by pleasures of the senses; another by pleasures of mind and
+heart. To the latter, the passion of glory takes the place of pleasures
+of the senses; to the former, the pleasure of dominion appears much
+superior to that of glory. Each man has his own passions, each man,
+then, has his own way of understanding his interest; and even my
+interest of to-day is not my interest of to-morrow. The revolutions of
+health, age, and events greatly modify our tastes, our humors. We are
+ourselves perpetually changing, and with us change our desires and our
+interests.
+
+It is not so with obligation. It exists not, or it is absolute. The idea
+of obligation implies that of something inflexible. That alone is a duty
+from which one cannot be loosed under any pretext, and is, by the same
+title, a duty for all. There is one thing before which all the caprices
+of my mind, of my imagination, of my sensibility must disappear,--the
+idea of the good with the obligation which it involves. To this supreme
+command I can oppose neither my humor, nor circumstances, nor even
+difficulties. This law admits of no delay, no accommodation, no excuse.
+When it speaks, be it to you or me, in whatever place, under whatever
+circumstance, in whatever disposition we may be, it only remains for us
+to obey. We are able not to obey, for we are free; but every
+disobedience to the law appears to ourselves a fault more or less grave,
+a bad use of our liberty. And the violated law has its immediate penal
+sanction in the remorse that it inflicts upon us.
+
+The only penalty that is brought upon us by the counsels of prudence,
+comprehended more or less well, followed more or less well, is, in the
+final account, more or less happiness or unhappiness. Now I pray you, am
+I obligated to be happy? Can obligation depend upon happiness, that is
+to say, on a thing that it is equally impossible for me to always seek
+and obtain at will? If I am obligated, it must be in my power to fulfil
+the obligation imposed. But my liberty has but little power over my
+happiness, which depends upon a thousand circumstances independent of
+me, whilst it is all in all in regard to virtue, for virtue is only an
+employment of liberty. Moreover, happiness is in itself, morally,
+neither better nor worse than unhappiness. If I understand my interest
+badly, I am punished for it by regret, not by remorse. Unhappiness can
+overwhelm me; it does not disgrace me, if it is not the consequence of
+some vice of the soul.
+
+Not that I would renew stoicism and say to suffering, Thou art no evil.
+No, I earnestly advise man to escape suffering as much as he can, to
+understand well his interest, to shun unhappiness and seek happiness. I
+only wish to establish that happiness is one thing and virtue another,
+that man necessarily aspires after happiness, but that he is only
+obligated to virtue, and that consequently, by the side of and above
+interest well understood is a moral law, that is to say, as
+consciousness attests, and the whole human race avows, an imperative
+prescription of which one cannot voluntarily divest himself without
+crime and shame.
+
+4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by a necessary
+consequence, it does not more account for that of right; for duty and
+right reciprocally suppose each other.
+
+Might and right must not be confounded. A being might have immense
+power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, that of one of the
+forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it, it is only a fearful
+and terrible thing, it is not a person,--it may inspire, in the highest
+degree, fear and hope,--it has no right to respect; one has no duties
+towards it.
+
+Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty.
+
+They are born at the same time, are developed and perish together. It
+might even be said that duty and right make one, and are the same being,
+having a face on two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your
+respect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I am a free
+being? But you are yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right
+and your duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in
+me of an equal duty.[195]
+
+I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone,
+is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ;
+for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are
+the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses,
+mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the
+free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not
+free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I.
+There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and
+by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat
+of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different
+instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether
+material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not
+it,[196] for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only
+free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will
+recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,--they
+are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law,
+and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil
+it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the
+ability to do the other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of
+liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is
+false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich,
+beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate;
+for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their
+nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. God has
+made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality
+is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as
+well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality
+is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of
+ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True
+equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God
+has made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, but
+even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle with the furies of
+pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domination, so, and by virtue
+of the same principle, it does not more aspire to a chimerical equality
+of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an
+equality, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes; it
+asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit,
+respect. Respect, an equal respect of the sacred right of being free in
+every thing that constitutes the person, that person which is truly man;
+this is what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather
+imperatively demand. Respect must not be confounded with homage. I
+render homage to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by
+that I mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is
+foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in every
+thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality exacts on the
+part of all only the same respect for what each one possesses equally in
+himself, both young and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and
+poor, both the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman and man,
+whatever has consciousness of being a person and not a thing. The equal
+respect of common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right; it
+is the virtue of each and the security of all; by an admirable
+agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. Such
+is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, which has made the
+hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of all virtuous and
+enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that
+true philosophy pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of
+Plato to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free
+legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration of rights,
+and the immortal works of the constituent Assembly.
+
+The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that condemns it to
+consequences as disastrous as those of the principle of liberty are
+beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it justifies passion, which
+is desire in all its force--passion, which is precisely the opposite of
+liberty. It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the passions,
+it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders each man
+much less happy on account of what he possesses, than miserable on
+account of what he lacks; it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye
+of envy and contempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or
+tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of
+desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My
+interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under
+the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born
+the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful,
+etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received.
+If fate has given me birth in a rank little elevated, with a moderate
+fortune, limited talents, and immense desires--for it cannot too often
+be repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite--I shall do
+every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to increase my power, my
+fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on account of my position in this world,
+in order to change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true,
+without enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not
+produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanity and
+ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power; interest, then,
+claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The need of security
+brings me back from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to
+my profit; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt servant of a
+tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those two scourges of liberty, the
+only rampart is the universal sentiment of right, founded on the firm
+distinction between good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest
+and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and
+conscience.
+
+5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary consequences of the
+doctrine of interest.
+
+A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, cannot
+violate it, knowing that he should and may follow it, without
+immediately recognizing that he merits punishment. The idea of
+punishment is not an artificial idea, borrowed from the profound
+calculations of legislators; legislations rest upon the natural idea of
+punishment. This idea, corresponding to that of liberty and justice, is
+necessarily wanting where the former two do not exist. Does he who
+obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the attraction of pleasure and
+happiness, supposing that, without any other motive than that of
+interest, he does an act conformed, externally at least, to the rule of
+justice, merit any thing by doing such an action? Not the least in the
+world. Conscience attributes to him no merit, and no one owes him thanks
+or recompense, for he only thinks of himself. On the other hand, if he
+injures others in wishing to serve himself, he does not feel culpable,
+and no one can say to him that he has merited punishment. A free being
+who wills what he does, who has a law, and can conform to it, or break
+it, is alone responsible for his acts. But what responsibility can there
+be in the absence of liberty and a recognized and accepted rule of
+justice? The man of sensation and desire tends to his own good under the
+law of interest, as the stone is drawn towards the centre of the earth
+under the law of gravitation, as the needle points to the pole. Man may
+err in the pursuit of his interest. In this case, what is to be done!
+As it seems, to put him again in the right way. Instead of that, he is
+punished. And for what, I pray you? For being deceived. But error merits
+advice, not punishment. Punishment has, in the system of interest, no
+more the sanction of moral sense than recompense. Punishment is only an
+act of personal defence on the part of society; it is an example which
+it gives, in order to inspire a salutary terror. These motives are
+excellent, if it be added that this punishment is just in itself, that
+it is merited, and that it is legitimately applied to the action
+committed. Omit that, and the other motives lose their authority, and
+there remains only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then
+the culprit is not punished; he is smitten, or even put to death, as the
+animal that injures instead of serving is put to death without scruple.
+The condemned does not bow his head to the wholesome reparation due to
+justice, but to the weight of irons or the stroke of the axe. The
+chastisement is not a legitimate satisfaction, an expiation which,
+comprehended by the culprit, reconciles him in his own eyes with the
+order that he has violated. It is a storm that he could not escape; it
+is the thunder-bolt that falls upon him; it is a force more powerful
+than his own, which compasses and overthrows him. The appearance of
+public chastisements acts, without doubt, upon the imagination of
+peoples; but it does not enlighten their reason and speak to their
+conscience; it intimidates them, perhaps; it does not soften them. So
+recompense is only an additional attraction, added to all the others.
+As, properly speaking, there is no merit, recompense is simply an
+advantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained without
+attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded and effaced the great
+institution, natural and divine, of the recompense of virtue by
+happiness, and of reparation for a fault by proportionate
+suffering.[197]
+
+We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being contradicted
+either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine of interest is
+incompatible with the most certain facts, with the strongest convictions
+of humanity. Let us add, that this doctrine is not less incompatible
+with the hope of another world, where the principle of justice will be
+better realized than in this.
+
+I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics can arrive at an
+infinite being, author of the universe and man. I am well persuaded that
+it cannot. For every proof of the existence of God supposes in the human
+mind principles of which sensation renders no account,--for example, the
+universal and necessary principle of causality, without which I should
+have no need of seeking, no power of finding the cause of whatever
+exists.[198] All that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of
+interest, man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has no right to
+put in God that of which he finds no trace either in the world or in
+himself. The God of the ethics of interest must be analogous to the man
+of these same ethics. How could they attribute to him the justice and
+the love--I mean disinterested love--of which they cannot have the least
+idea? The God that they can admit loves himself, and loves only himself.
+And reciprocally, not considering him as the supreme principle of
+charity and justice, we can neither love nor honor him, and the only
+worship that we can render him, is that of the fear with which his
+omnipotence inspires us.
+
+What holy hope could we then found upon such a God? And we who have some
+time grovelled upon this earth, thinking only of ourselves, seeking only
+pleasure and a pitiable happiness, what sufferings nobly borne for
+justice, what generous efforts to maintain and develop the dignity of
+our soul, what virtuous affections for other souls, can we offer to the
+Father of humanity as titles to his merciful justice? The principle that
+most persuades the human race of the immortality of the soul is still
+the necessary principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here
+below its exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of finding it,
+inspires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, who has not put in
+our hearts the law of justice to violate it himself in regard to
+us.[199] Now, we have just seen that the ethics of interest destroy the
+principle of merit and demerit, both in this world, and above all, in
+the world to come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond this
+world,--no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and wholly
+good, against the sports of fortune and the imperfections of human
+justice. Every thing is completed for man between birth and death, in
+spite of the instincts and presentiments of his heart, and even the
+principles of his reason.
+
+The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory of having
+freed humanity from the fears and hopes that turn it aside from its true
+interests. It is a service which mankind will appreciate. But since they
+confine our whole destiny to this world, let us demand of them what lot
+so worthy of envy they have in reserve for us here, what social order
+they charge with our good fortune, what politics, in fine, are derived
+from their ethics.[200]
+
+You already know. We have demonstrated that the philosophy of sensation
+knows neither true liberty nor true right. What, in fact, is will for
+this philosophy? It is desire. What, then, is right? The power of
+satisfying desires. On this score, man is not free, and right is might.
+
+Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. Desire comes of
+need which man does not make, which he submits to. He submits in the
+same way to desire. To reduce will to desire is to annihilate liberty;
+it is worse still, it is to put it where it is not; it is to create a
+mendacious liberty that becomes an instrument of crime and misery. To
+call man to such a liberty is to open his soul to infinite desires,
+which it is impossible for him to satisfy. Desire is in its nature
+without limits, and our power is very limited. If we were alone in this
+world, we should even then be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But
+we press against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse,
+and unequal powers. When right is the force that is in each of us,
+equality of rights is a chimera,--all rights are unequal, since all
+forces are unequal and can never cease to be so. It is, therefore,
+necessary to renounce equality as well as liberty; or if one invents a
+false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity in pursuit
+of a phantom.
+
+Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest give to
+politics. From such elements I defy all the politics of the school of
+sensation and interest to produce a single day of liberty and happiness
+for the human race.
+
+When right is might, the natural state of men among themselves, is war.
+All desiring the same things, they are all necessarily enemies; and in
+this war, woe to the feeble, to the feeble in body and the feeble in
+mind! The stronger are the masters by perfect right. Since right is
+might, the feeble may complain of nature that has not made them strong,
+and not complain of the strong man who uses his right in oppressing
+them. The feeble then call deception to their aid; and it is in this
+strife between cunning and force that humanity combats with itself.
+
+Yes, if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, with
+different forces pitted against each other, war, a war sometimes
+declared and bloody, sometimes silent and full of meannesses, is in the
+nature of things. No social art can change this nature,--it may be more
+or less covered; it always reappears, overcomes and rends the veil with
+which a mendacious legislation envelops it. Dream, then, of liberty for
+beings that are not free, of equality between beings that are
+essentially different, of respect for rights where there is no right,
+and of the establishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of
+inimical passions! From such a foundation can spring only endless
+troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a
+necessary circle.
+
+This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of principles which all
+the metamorphoses of sensation do not engender, and for which interest
+cannot account, which none the less subsist to the honor and for the
+safety of humanity. These principles are those that time has little by
+little drawn from Christianity in order to give them for the guidance of
+modern societies. You will find them written in the glorious declaration
+of rights that forever broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the
+constitutional monarchy. They are in the charter that governs us, in our
+laws, in our institutions, in our manners, in the air that we breathe.
+They serve at once as foundations for our society and the new philosophy
+necessary to a new order.[201]
+
+Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, so many
+distinguished, so many honest souls could let themselves be seduced by a
+system that must have been revolting to all their sentiments. I will
+answer by reminding you that the eighteenth century was an immoderate
+reaction against the faults into which had sadly fallen the old age of a
+great century and a great king, that is to say, the revocation of the
+edict of Nantes, the persecution of all free and elevated philosophy, a
+narrow and suspicious devotion, and intolerance, with its usual
+companion, hypocrisy. These excesses must have produced opposite
+excesses. Mme. de Maintenon opened the route to Mme. de Pompadour. After
+the mode of devotion comes that of license; it takes every thing by
+storm. It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy even,
+and accordingly to the people. It carried away the best spirits, even
+genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy in the place of the national
+philosophy, culpable, persecuted as it had been, for not being
+irreconcilable with Christianity. A disciple of Locke, whom Locke had
+discarded, Condillac, took the place of Descartes, as the author of
+_Candide_ and _la Pucelle_ had taken the place of Corneille and Bossuet,
+as Boucher and Vanloo had taken the place of Lesueur and Poussin. The
+ethics of pleasure and interest were the necessary ethics of that epoch.
+It must not be supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says
+M. Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their
+principles[202]. No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean
+as enervated as epicureanism. Human weakness practically baffles
+virtuous theories; in return, thank God, the instinct of the heart
+condemns to inconsistency the honest man who errs in bad theories.
+Accordingly, in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most
+disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign of the
+philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. But it is none the
+less true, that the philosophy of sensation is false, and the ethics of
+interest destructive of all morality.
+
+I should perhaps make an apology for so long a lecture; but it was
+necessary to combat seriously a doctrine of morality radically
+incompatible with that which I would make penetrate your minds and your
+souls. It was especially necessary for me to strip the ethics of
+interest of that false appearance of liberty which they usurp in vain. I
+maintain, on the contrary, that they are the ethics of slaves, and send
+them back to the time when they ruled. Now, the principle of interest
+being destroyed, I propose to examine other principles also, less false
+without doubt, but still defective, exclusive, and incomplete, upon
+which celebrated systems have pretended to found ethics. I will
+successively combat these principles taken in themselves, and will then
+bring them together, reduced to their just value, in a theory large
+enough to contain all the true elements of morality, in order to express
+faithfully common sense and entire human consciousness.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[190] On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined those of
+vol. iii. of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and St.
+Lambert.
+
+[191] The word _bonheur_, which has no exact English equivalent, which
+M. Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the precise sense of the
+definition given above, we have sometimes translated happiness,
+sometimes good fortune, sometimes prosperity, sometimes fortune. When
+one has in mind the thing, he will not be troubled by the more or less
+exact word that indicates it:--all language, at best, is only symbolic;
+it bears the same relation to thought as the forms of nature do to the
+laws that produce and govern them. The true reader never mistakes the
+symbol for the thing symbolized, the shadow for the reality.
+
+[192] On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3d Series,
+_Fragments Philosophiques_, vol. iv., our _Examination of the Lectures
+of M. Laromeguière_.
+
+[193] On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see the
+_Examination_, already cited, _of the Lectures of M. Laromeguière_.
+
+[194] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "In the doctrine of interest, every
+man seeks the useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by
+dint of prudence and profound combinations, increase in his favor the
+chances of success; it is impossible that there should not remain some
+chances against him; he never pursues, then, any thing but a probable
+result. On the contrary, in the doctrine of duty, I am always sure of
+obtaining the last end that I propose to myself, moral good. I risk my
+life to save my fellow; if, through mischance, I miss this end, there is
+another which does not, which cannot, escape me,--I have aimed at the
+good, I have been successful. Moral good, being especially in the
+virtuous intention, is always in my power and within my reach; as to the
+material good that can result from the action itself, Providence alone
+disposes of it. Let us felicitate ourselves that Providence has placed
+our moral destiny in our own hands, by making it depend upon the good
+and not upon the useful. The will, in order to act in the sad trials of
+life, has need of being sustained by certainty. Who would be disposed to
+give his blood for an uncertain end? Success is a complicated problem,
+that, in order to be solved, exacts all the power of the calculus of
+probabilities. What labor and what uncertainties does such a calculus
+involve! Doubt is a very sad preparation for action. But when one
+proposes before all to do his duty, he acts without any perplexity. Do
+what you ought, let come what may, is a motto that does not deceive.
+With such an end, we are sure of never pursuing it in vain."
+
+[195] See the development of the idea of right, lectures 14 and 15.
+
+[196] See lecture 14, Theory of liberty.
+
+[197] See the preceding lecture, and lectures 14 and 15.
+
+[198] 1st part, lecture 1.
+
+[199] See lecture 16.
+
+[200] On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of sensation,
+see the four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and refutation
+of the doctrine of Hobbes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series.
+
+[201] These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which we
+pronounce them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a
+noble youth, when M. de Châteaubriand covered the Restoration with his
+own glory, when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M.
+Pasquier, M. Lainé, M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal
+St. Cyr over war, and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when
+the Duke de Broglie prepared the true legislation of the press, and M.
+Decazes, the author of the wise and courageous ordinance of September 5,
+1816, was at the head of the councils of the crown; when finally, Louis
+XVIII. separated himself, like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in
+order to be the king of the whole nation.
+
+[202] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iv., p. 297: "Men are neither as good
+nor as bad as their principles; and, as there is no skeptic in the
+street, so I am sure there is no disinterested spectator of human
+actions who is not compelled to discern them as just and unjust.
+Skepticism has no light that does not pale before the splendor of that
+vivid internal light that lightens the objects of moral perception, as
+the light of day lightens the objects of sensible perception."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.
+
+    The ethics of sentiment.--The ethics founded on the principle of
+    the interest of the greatest number.--The ethics founded on the
+    will of God alone.--The ethics founded on the punishments and
+    rewards of another life.
+
+
+Against the ethics of interest, all generous souls take refuge in the
+ethics of sentiment. The following are some of the facts on which these
+ethics are supported, and by which they seem to be authorized.
+
+When we have done a good action, is it not certain that we experience a
+pleasure of a certain nature, which is to us the reward of this action?
+This pleasure does not come from the senses--it has neither its
+principle nor its measure in an impression made upon our organs. Neither
+is it confounded with the joy of satisfied personal interest,--we are
+not moved in the same manner, in thinking that we have succeeded, and in
+thinking that we have been honest. The pleasure attached to the
+testimony of a good conscience is pure; other pleasures are much
+alloyed. It is durable, whilst the others quickly pass away. Finally, it
+is always within our reach. Even in the midst of misfortune, man bears
+in himself a permanent source of exquisite joys, for he always has the
+power of doing right, whilst success, dependent upon a thousand
+circumstances of which we are not the masters, can give only an
+occasional and precarious pleasure.
+
+As virtue has its joys, so crime has its pains. The suffering that
+follows a fault is the just recompense for the pleasure that we have
+found in it, and is often born with it. It poisons culpable joys and the
+successes that are not legitimate. It wounds, rends, bites, thus to
+speak, and thereby receives its name.[203] To be man, is sufficient to
+understand this suffering,--it is remorse.
+
+Here are other facts equally incontestable:
+
+I perceive a man whose face bears the marks of distress and misery.
+There is nothing in this that reaches and injures me; nevertheless,
+without reflection or calculation, the sight alone of this suffering man
+makes me suffer. This sentiment is pity, compassion, whose general
+principle is sympathy.
+
+The sadness of one of my fellow-men inspires me with sadness, and a glad
+face disposes me to joy:
+
+    Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflent
+    Humani vultus.
+
+The joy of others has an echo in our souls, and their sufferings, even
+their physical sufferings, communicate themselves to us almost
+physically. Not as exaggerated as it has been supposed was that
+expression of Mme. de Sévigné to her sick daughter: I have a pain in
+your breast.
+
+Our soul feels the need of putting itself in unison, and, as it were, in
+equilibrium with that of others. Hence those electric movements, thus to
+speak, that run through large assemblies. One receives the
+counter-stroke of the sentiments of his neighbors,--admiration and
+enthusiasm are contagious, as well as pleasantry and ridicule. Hence
+again the sentiment with which the author of a virtuous action inspires
+us. We feel a pleasure analogous to that which he feels himself. But are
+we witnesses of a bad action? our souls refuse to participate in the
+sentiments that animate the culpable man,--they have for him a true
+aversion, what is called antipathy.
+
+We do not forget a third order of facts that pertain to the preceding,
+but differ from them.
+
+We not only sympathize with the author of a virtuous action, we wish
+him well, we voluntarily do good to him, in a certain degree we love
+him. This love goes as far as enthusiasm when it has for its object a
+sublime act and a hero. This is the principle of the homages, of the
+honors that humanity renders to great men. And this sentiment does not
+pertain solely to others,--we apply it to ourselves by a sort of return
+that is not egoism. Yes, it may be said that we love ourselves when we
+have done well. The sentiment that others owe us, if they are just, we
+accord to ourselves,--that sentiment is benevolence.
+
+On the contrary, do we witness a bad action? We experience for the
+author of this action antipathy; moreover we wish him evil,--we desire
+that he should suffer for the fault that he has committed, and in
+proportion to the gravity of the fault. For this reason great culprits
+are odious to us, if they do not compensate for their crimes by deep
+remorse, or by great virtues mingled with their crimes. This sentiment
+is not malevolence. Malevolence is a personal and interested sentiment,
+which makes us wish evil to others, because they are an obstacle to us.
+Hatred does not ask whether such a man is virtuous or vicious, but
+whether he obstructs us, surpasses us, or injures us. The sentiment of
+which we are speaking is a sort of hatred, but a generous hatred that
+neither springs from interest nor envy, but from a shocked conscience.
+It is turned against us when we do evil, as well as against others.
+
+Moral satisfaction is not sympathy, neither is sympathy, to speak
+rigorously, benevolence. But these three phenomena have the common
+character of all being sentiments. They give birth to three different
+and analogous systems of ethics.
+
+According to certain philosophers, a good action is that which is
+followed by moral satisfaction, a bad action is that which is followed
+by remorse. The good or bad character of an action is at first attested
+to us by the sentiment that accompanies it. Then, this sentiment, with
+its moral signification, we attribute to other men; for we judge that
+they do as we do, that in presence of the same actions they feel the
+same sentiments.
+
+Other philosophers have assigned the same part to sympathy or
+benevolence.
+
+For these the sign and measure of the good is in the sentiments of
+affection and benevolence which we feel for a moral agent. Does a man
+excite in us by such or such an action a more or less vivid disposition
+to wish him well, a desire to see and even make him happy? we may say
+that this action is good. If, by a series of actions of the same kind,
+he makes this disposition and this desire permanent in us, we judge that
+he is a virtuous man. Does he excite an opposite desire, an opposite
+disposition? he appears to us a dishonest man.
+
+For the former, the good is that with which we naturally sympathize. Has
+a man devoted himself to death through love for his country? this heroic
+action awakens in us, in a certain degree, the same sentiments that
+inspired him. Bad passions are not thus echoed in our hearts, unless
+they find us already very corrupt, and have interest for their
+accomplice; but even then there is something in us that revolts against
+these passions, and in the most depraved soul subsists a concealed
+sentiment of sympathy for the good, and antipathy for the evil.
+
+These different systems may be reduced to a single one, which is called
+the ethics of sentiment.
+
+It is not difficult to show the difference which separates these ethics
+from those of egoism. Egoism is the exclusive love of self, is the
+thoughtful and permanent search for our own pleasure and our own
+well-being.
+
+What is there more opposed to interest than benevolence? In benevolence,
+far from wishing others well by reason of our interest, we will
+voluntarily risk something, we will make some sacrifice in order to
+serve an honest man who has coined our heart. If even in this sacrifice
+the soul feels a pleasure, this pleasure is only the involuntary
+accompaniment of sentiment, it is not the end proposed,--we feel it
+without having sought it. It is, indeed, permitted the soul to taste
+this pleasure, for it is nature herself that attaches it to
+benevolence.
+
+Sympathy, like benevolence, is related to another than ourselves,--our
+interest is not its starting-point. The soul is so constituted that it
+is capable of suffering on account of the sufferings of an enemy. That a
+man does a noble action, although it opposes our interests, awakens in
+us a certain sympathy for that action and its author.
+
+The attempt has been made to explain the compassion with which the
+suffering of one of our fellow-men inspires us by the fear that we have
+of feeling it in our turn. But the unhappiness for which we feel
+compassion, is often so far from us and threatens us so little, that it
+would be absurd to fear it. Doubtless, that sympathy may have existence
+it is necessary to experience suffering,--_non ignara mali_. For how do
+you suppose that I can be sensible to evils of which I form to myself no
+idea? But that is only the condition of sympathy. It is not at all
+necessary to conclude that it is only a remembrance of our own ills or
+the fear of ills to come.
+
+No recurrence to ourselves can account for sympathy. In the first place,
+it is involuntary, like antipathy. Then it cannot be supposed that we
+sympathize with any one in order to win his benevolence; for he who is
+its object often knows not what we feel. What benevolence are we
+seeking, when we sympathize with men that we have never seen, that we
+never shall see, with men that are no more?
+
+Egoism admits all pleasures; it repels none; it may, if it is
+enlightened, if it has become delicate and refined, recommend, as more
+durable and less alloyed, the pleasures of sentiment. The ethics of
+sentiment would then be confounded with those of egoism, if they should
+prescribe obedience to sentiment for the pleasure that we find in it.
+There would, then, be no disinterestedness in it,--the individual would
+be the centre and sole end of all his actions. But such is not the case.
+The charm of the pleasures of conscience comes from the very fact that
+we are forgetful of self in the action that has produced them. So if
+nature has joined to sympathy and benevolence a true enjoyment, it is
+on condition that these sentiments remain as they are, pure and
+disinterested; you must only think of the object of your sympathy and
+benevolence in order that benevolence and sympathy may receive their
+recompense in the pleasure which they give. Otherwise, this pleasure no
+longer has its reason for existence, and it is wanting as soon as it
+sought for itself. No metamorphose of interest can produce a pleasure
+attached to disinterestedness alone.
+
+The ethics of egoism are only a perpetual falsehood,--they preserve the
+names consecrated by ethics, but they abolish ethics themselves; they
+deceive humanity by speaking to humanity its own language, concealing
+under this borrowed language a radical opposition to all the instincts,
+to all the ideas that form the treasure of mankind. On the contrary, if
+sentiment is not the good itself, it is its faithful companion and
+useful auxiliary. It is as it were the sign of the presence of the good,
+and renders the accomplishment of it more easy. We always have sophisms
+at our disposal, in order to persuade ourselves that our true interest
+is to satisfy present passion; but sophism has less influence over the
+mind when the mind is in some sort defended by the heart. Nothing is,
+therefore, more salutary than to excite and preserve in the soul those
+noble sentiments that lift us above the slavery of personal interest.
+The habit of participating in the sentiments of virtuous men disposes us
+to act like them. To cultivate in ourselves benevolence and sympathy is
+to fertilize the source of charity and love, is to nourish and develop
+the germ of generosity and devotion.
+
+It is seen that we render sincere homage to the ethics of sentiment.
+These ethics are true,--only they are not sufficient for themselves;
+they need a principle which authorizes them.
+
+I act well, and I feel on account of it an internal satisfaction: I do
+evil, and feel remorse on account of it. These two sentiments do not
+qualify the act that I have just done, since they follow it. Would it be
+possible for us to feel any internal satisfaction for having acted well
+if we did not judge that we had acted well?--any remorse for having
+done evil, if we did not judge that we had done evil? At the same time
+that we do such or such an act, a natural and instinctive judgment
+characterizes it, and it is in consequence of this judgment that our
+sensibility is moved. Sentiment is not this primitive and immediate
+judgment; far from forming the basis of the idea of the good, it
+supposes it. It is manifestly a vicious circle to derive the knowledge
+of the good from that which would not exist without this knowledge.[204]
+
+So is it not because we find a good action that we sympathize with it?
+Is it not because the dispositions of a man appear to us conformed to
+the idea of justice, that we are inclined to participate in them with
+him? Moreover, if sympathy were the true criterion of the good, every
+thing for which we feel sympathy would be good. But sympathy is not only
+related to things in their nature moral, we also sympathize with the
+grief and the joy that have nothing to do with virtue and crime. We even
+sympathize with physical sufferings. Moral sympathy is only a case of
+general sympathy. It must even be acknowledged that sympathy is not
+always in accordance with right. We sometimes sympathize with certain
+sentiments that we condemn, because, without being in themselves
+bad--which would prevent all sympathy--they give an inclination to the
+greatest faults; for example, love, which comes so near to irregularity,
+and emulation, that so quickly leads to ambition.
+
+Benevolence also is not always determined by the good alone. And, again,
+when it is applied to a virtuous man, it supposes a judgment by which we
+pronounce that this man is virtuous. It is not because we wish the
+author of an action well that we judge that this action is good; it is
+because we judge that this action is good that we wish its author well.
+This is not all. In the sentiment of benevolence is enveloped a new
+judgment which is not in sympathy. This judgment is the following: the
+author of a good action deserves to be happy, as the author of a bad
+action deserves to suffer in order to expiate it. This is the reason why
+we desire happiness for the one and reparatory suffering for the other.
+Benevolence is little else than the sensible form of this judgment.
+
+All these sentiments, therefore, suppose an anterior and superior
+judgment. Everywhere and always the same vicious circle. From the fact
+that the sentiments which we have just described have a moral character,
+it is concluded that they constitute the idea of the good, whilst it is
+the idea of the good that communicates to them the character that we
+perceive in them.
+
+Another difficulty is, that sentiments pertain to sensibility, and
+borrow from it something of its relative and changing nature. It is,
+then, very necessary that all men should be made to enjoy with the same
+delicacy the pleasures of the heart. There are gross natures and natures
+refined. If your desires are impetuous and violent, will not the idea of
+the pleasures of virtue be in you much more easily overcome by the force
+of passion than if nature had given you a tranquil temperament? The
+state of the atmosphere, health, sickness, calm or rouse our moral
+sensibility. Solitude, by delivering man up to himself, leaves to
+remorse all its energy, the presence of death redoubles it; but the
+world, noise, force of example, habit, without power to smother it, in
+some sort stun it. The spirit has a little season of rest. We are not
+always in the vein of enthusiasm. Courage itself has its intermissions.
+We know the celebrated expression: He was one day brave. Humor has its
+vicissitudes that influence our most intimate sentiments. The purest,
+the most ideal sentiment still pertains on some side to organization.
+The inspiration of the poet, the passion of the lover, the enthusiasm of
+the martyr, have their languors and shortcomings that often depend on
+very pitiable material causes. On those perpetual fluctuations of
+sentiment, is it possible to ground a legislation equal for all?
+
+Sympathy and benevolence do not escape the conditions of all the
+phenomena of sensibility. We do not all possess in the same degree the
+power of feeling what others experience. Those who have suffered most
+best comprehend suffering, and consequently feel for it the most lively
+compassion. With mere imagination one also represents to himself better
+and feels more what passes in the souls of his fellow-man. One feels
+more sympathy for physical pleasures and pains, another for pleasures
+and pains of soul; and each of these sympathies has in each of us its
+degrees and variations. They not only differ, they often oppose each
+other. Sympathy for talent weakens the indignation that outraged virtue
+produces. We overlook many things in Voltaire, in Rousseau, in Mirabeau,
+and we excuse them on account of the corruption of their century. The
+sympathy caused by the pain of a condemned person renders less lively
+the just antipathy excited by his crime. Thus turns and wavers at each
+step that sympathy which some would set up as the supreme arbiter of the
+good. Benevolence does not vary less. We have souls naturally more or
+less affectionate, more or less animated. And, then, like sympathy,
+benevolence receives the counter-stroke of different passions that are
+mingled with it. Friendship, for example, often renders us, in spite of
+ourselves, more benevolent than justice would wish.
+
+Is it not a rule of prudence not to listen to, without always disdaining
+them, the inspirations--often capricious--of the heart? Governed by
+reason, sentiment becomes to it an admirable support. But, delivered up
+to itself, in a little while it degenerates into passion, and passion is
+fantastic, excessive, unjust; it gives to the soul spring and energy,
+but generally troubles and perverts it. It is even not very far from
+egoism, and it usually terminates in that, wholly generous as it is or
+seems to be in the beginning. Unless we always keep in sight the good
+and the inflexible obligation that is attached to it, unless we always
+keep in sight this fixed and immutable point, the soul knows not where
+to betake itself on that moving ground that is called sensibility; it
+floats from sentiment to passion, from generosity to selfishness,
+ascending one day to the pitch of enthusiasm, and the next day
+descending to all the miseries of personality.
+
+Thus the ethics of sentiment, although superior to those of interest,
+are not less insufficient: 1st. They give as the foundation of the idea
+of the good what is founded on this same idea; 2d. The rule that they
+propose is too mobile to be universally obligatory.[205]
+
+There is another system of which I will also say, as of the preceding,
+that it is not false, but incomplete and insufficient.
+
+The partisans of the ethics of utility and happiness have tried to save
+their principle by generalizing it. According to them, the good can be
+nothing but happiness; but egoism is wrong in understanding by that the
+happiness of the individual; we must understand by it the general
+happiness.
+
+Let us establish, in the first place, that the new principle is entirely
+opposed to that of personal interest, for, according to circumstances,
+it may demand, not only a passing sacrifice, but an irreparable
+sacrifice, that of life. Now, the wisest calculations of personal
+interest cannot go thus far.
+
+And, notwithstanding, this principle is far from containing true ethics
+and the whole of ethics.
+
+The principle of general interest leans towards disinterestedness, and
+this is certainly much; but disinterestedness is the condition of
+virtue, not virtue itself. We may commit an injustice with the most
+entire disinterestedness. From the fact that an action does not profit
+him who does it, it does not follow that it may not be in itself very
+unjust, in seeking general interest before all, we escape, it is true,
+that vice of soul which is called selfishness, but we may fall into a
+thousand iniquities. Or, indeed, it must be felt, that general interest
+is always conformed to justice. But these two ideas are not adequate to
+each other. If they very often go together, they are sometimes also
+separated. Themistocles proposed to the Athenians to burn the fleet of
+the allies that was in the port of Athens, and thus to secure to
+themselves the supremacy. The project is useful, says Aristides, but it
+is unjust, and on account of this simple speech, the Athenians renounce
+an advantage that must be purchased by an injustice. Observe that
+Themistocles had no particular interest in that; he thought only of the
+interest of his country. But, had he hazarded or given his life in order
+to engage the Athenians in such an act, he would only have been
+consecrating--what has often been seen--an admirable devotion to a
+course in itself immoral.
+
+To this it is replied, that if, in the example cited, justice and
+interest exclude each other, it is because the interest was not
+sufficiently general; and the celebrated maxim is arrived at, that one
+must sacrifice himself to his family, his family to the city, the city
+to country, country to humanity, that, in fine, the good is the interest
+of the greatest number.[206]
+
+When you have gone thus far, you have not yet attained even the idea of
+justice. The interest of humanity, like that of the individual, may
+accord in fact with justice, for in that there is certainly no
+incompatibility, but the two things are none the more identical, so that
+we cannot say with exactness that the interest of humanity is the
+foundation of justice. A single case, even a single hypothesis, in which
+the interest of humanity should not accord with the good, is sufficient
+to enable us to conclude that one is not essentially the other.
+
+We go farther: if it is the interest of humanity that constitutes and
+measures justice, that only is unjust which this interest declares to be
+so. But you are not able to affirm absolutely, that, in any
+circumstance, the interest of humanity will not demand such or such an
+action; and if it demands it, by virtue of your principle, it will be
+necessary to do it, whatever it may be, and to do it inasmuch as it is
+just.
+
+You order me to sacrifice particular interest to general interest. But
+in the name of what do you order me to do this? Is it in the name of
+interest? If interest, as such, must touch me, evidently my interest
+must also touch me, and I do not see why I should sacrifice it to that
+of others.
+
+The supreme end of human life, you say, is happiness. I hence conclude
+very reasonably, that the supreme end of my life is my happiness.
+
+In order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it must be called
+for by some other principle than happiness itself.
+
+Consider to what perplexity this famous principle of the greatest good
+of the greatest number condemns me. I have already much difficulty in
+discerning my true interest in the obscurity of the future; by
+substituting for the infallible voice of justice the uncertain
+calculations of personal interest, you have not rendered action easy for
+me;[207] but it becomes impossible, if it is necessary to seek, before
+acting, what is the interest not only of myself, but of my family, not
+only of my family, but of my country, not only of my country, but of
+humanity. What! must I embrace the entire world in my foresight? What!
+is such the price of virtue? You impose upon me a knowledge that God
+alone possesses. Am I in his counsels so as to adjust my actions
+according to his decrees? The philosophy of history and the wisest
+diplomacy are not, then, sufficient for conducting ourselves well.
+Imagine, therefore, that there is no mathematical science of human life.
+Chance and liberty confound the profoundest calculations, overturn the
+best-established fortunes, relieve the most desperate miseries, mingle
+good fortune and bad, confound all foresight.
+
+And would you establish ethics on a foundation so mobile? How much place
+you leave for sophism in that complaisant and enigmatical law of general
+interest![208] It will not be very difficult always to find some remote
+reason of general interest, which will excuse us from being faithful in
+the present moment to our friends, when they shall be in misfortune. A
+man in adversity addresses himself to my generosity. But could I not
+employ my money in a way more useful to humanity? Will not the country
+have need of it to-morrow? Let us virtuously keep it for the country
+then. Moreover, even where the interest of all seems evident, there
+still remains some chance of error; it is, therefore, better to
+withhold. It will always be wisdom to withhold. Yes, when it is
+necessary, in order to do well, to be sure of serving the greatest
+interest of the greatest number, none but the rash and senseless will
+dare to act. The principle of general interest will produce, I admit,
+great devotedness, but it will also produce great crimes. Is it not in
+the name of this principle that fanatics of every kind, fanatics in
+religion, fanatics in liberty, fanatics in philosophy, taking it upon
+themselves to understand the eternal interest of humanity, have engaged
+in abominable acts, mingled often with a sublime disinterestedness?
+
+Another error of this system is that it confounds the good itself with
+one of its applications. If the good is the greatest interest of the
+greatest number, the consequence is clear, that there are only public
+and social ethics, and no private ethics; there is only a single class
+of duties, duties towards others, and there are no duties towards
+ourselves. But this is retrenching precisely those of our duties that
+most surely guarantee the exercise of all the rest.[209] The most
+constant relations that I sustain are with that being which is myself.
+I am my own most habitual society. I bear in myself, as Plato[210] has
+well said, a whole world of ideas, sentiments, desires, passions,
+emotions, which claim a legislation. This necessary legislation is
+suppressed.
+
+Let us also say a word on a system that, under sublime appearances,
+conceals a vicious principle.
+
+There are persons who believe that they are magnifying God, by placing
+in his will alone the foundation of the moral law, and the sovereign
+motive of humanity in the punishments and rewards that it has pleased
+him to attach to the respect and violation of his will.
+
+Let us understand what we are about in a matter of such delicacy.
+
+It is certain, and we shall establish it for the good,[211] as we have
+done for the true and the beautiful,[212] it is certain that, from
+explanations to explanations, we come to be convinced that God is
+definitively the supreme principle of ethics, so that it may be very
+truly said, that the good is the expression of his will, since his will
+is itself the expression of the eternal and absolute justice that
+resides in him. God wills, without doubt, that we should act according
+to the law of justice that he has put in our understanding and our
+heart; but it is not at all necessary to conclude that he has
+arbitrarily instituted this law. Far from that, justice is in the will
+of God only because it has its roots in his intelligence and wisdom,
+that is to say, in his most intimate nature and essence.
+
+While making, then, every reservation in regard to what is true in the
+system that founds ethics on the will of God, we must show what there is
+in this system, as it is presented to us, false, arbitrary, and
+incompatible with ethics themselves.[213]
+
+In the first place, it does not pertain to the will, whatever it may
+be, to institute the good, any more than it belongs to it to institute
+the true and the beautiful. I have no idea of the will of God except by
+my own, to be sure with the differences that separate what is finite
+from what is infinite. Now, I cannot by my will found the least truth.
+Is it because my will is limited? No; were it armed with infinite power,
+it would, in this respect, be equally impotent. Such is the nature of my
+will that, in doing a thing, it is conscious of the power to do the
+opposite; and that is not an accidental character of the will, it is its
+fundamental character; if, then, it is supposed that truth, or that
+first part of it which is called justice, has been established as it is
+by an act of volition, human or Divine, it must be acknowledged that
+another act might have established it otherwise, and made what is now
+just unjust, and what is unjust just. But such mobility is contrary to
+the nature of justice and truth. In fact, moral truths are as absolute
+as metaphysical truths. God cannot make effects exist without a cause,
+phenomena without a substance; neither can he make it evil to respect
+his word, to love truth, to repress one's passions. The principles of
+ethics are immutable axioms like those of geometry. Of moral laws
+especially must be said what Montesquieu said of all laws in
+general,--they are necessary relations that are derived from the nature
+of things.
+
+Let us suppose that the good and the just are derived from the divine
+will; on the divine will obligation will also rest. But can any will
+whatever be the foundation of obligation? The divine will is the will
+of an omnipotent being, and I am a feeble being. This relation of a
+feeble being to an omnipotent being, does not contain in itself any
+moral idea. One may be forced to obey the stronger, but he is not
+obligated to do it. The sovereign orders of the will of God, if his will
+could for a moment be separated from his other attributes, would not
+contain the least ray of justice; and, consequently, there would not
+descend into my soul the least shade of obligation.
+
+One will exclaim,--It is not the arbitrary will of God that makes the
+foundation of obligation and justice; it is his just will. Very well.
+Every thing changes then. It is not the pure will of God that obligates
+us, it is the motive itself that determines his will, that is to say,
+the justice passed into his will. The distinction between the just and
+the unjust is not then the work of his will.
+
+One of two things. Either we found ethics on the will of God alone, and
+then the distinction between good and evil, just and unjust, is
+gratuitous, and moral obligation does not exist; or you give authority
+to the will of God by justice, which, in your hypothesis, must have
+received from the will of God its authority, which is a _petitio
+principii_.
+
+Another _petitio principii_ still more evident. In the first place, you
+are compelled, in order legitimately to draw justice from the will of
+God, to suppose that this will is just, or I defy any one to show that
+this will alone can ever form the basis of justice. Moreover, evidently
+you cannot comprehend what a just will of God is, if you do not already
+possess the idea of justice. This idea, then, does not come from that of
+the will of God.
+
+On the one hand, you may have, and you do have, the idea of justice,
+without understanding the will of God; on the other, you cannot conceive
+the justice of the divine will, without having conceived justice
+elsewhere.
+
+Are not these reasons sufficient, I pray you, to conclude that the sole
+will of God is not for us the principle of the idea of the good?
+
+And now, behold the natural consummation of the ethical system that we
+are examining:--the just and the unjust are what it has pleased God to
+declare such, by attaching to them the rewards and punishments of
+another life. The divine will manifests itself here only by an arbitrary
+order; it adds to this order promises and threats.
+
+But to what human faculty are addressed the promise and threat of the
+chastisements and the rewards of another life? To the same one that in
+this life fears pain and seeks pleasure, shuns unhappiness and desires
+happiness, that is to say, to sensibility animated by imagination, that
+is to say, again, to what is most changing in each of us and most
+different in the human species. The joys and sufferings of another life
+excite in us the two most vivid but most mobile passions, hope and fear.
+Every thing influences our fears and hopes,--aye, health, the passing
+cloud, a ray of the sun, a cup of coffee, a thousand causes of this
+kind. I have known men, even philosophers, who on certain days hoped
+more, and other days less. And such a basis some would give to ethics!
+Then it is doing nothing else than proposing for human conduct an
+interested motive. The calculation which I obey is purer, if you will;
+the happiness that one makes me hope for is greater; but I see in that
+no justice that obligates me, no virtue and no vice in me, who know or
+do not know how to make this calculation, not having a head as strong as
+that of Pascal,[214] who yield to or resist those fears and hopes
+according to the deposition of my sensibility and my imagination, over
+which I have no power. Finally, the pains and pleasures of the future
+life are instituted on the ground of punishments and rewards. Now, none
+but actions in themselves good or bad can be rewarded and punished. If
+already there is in itself no good, no law that in conscience we are
+obligated to follow, there is neither merit nor demerit; recompense is
+not then recompense, nor penalty penalty, since they are such only on
+the condition of being the complement and the sanction of the idea of
+the good. Where this idea does not pre-exist, there remain, instead of
+recompense and penalty, only the attraction of pleasure and the fear of
+suffering, added to a prescription deprived in itself of morality. In
+that we come back to the punishments of earth invented for the purpose
+of frightening popular imagination, and supported solely on the decrees
+of legislators, on an abstraction of good and evil, of justice and
+injustice, of merit and demerit. It is the worst human justice that is
+found thus transported into heaven. We shall see that the human soul has
+foundation somewhat solider.[215]
+
+These different systems, false or incomplete, having been rejected, we
+arrive at the doctrine that is to our eyes perfect truth, because it
+admits only certain facts, neglects none, and maintains for all of them
+their character and rank.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[203] _Mordre_--to bite, is the main root of _remords_--remorse.
+
+[204] See 1st part, lecture 5, _On Mysticism_, and 2d part, lecture 6,
+_On the Sentiment of the Beautiful_. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv.,
+detailed refutation of the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith.
+
+[205] We do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. He has marked the
+defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage,
+from which we borrow some traits. _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iii., p.
+410, 411: "The perception of the moral qualities of human actions is
+accompanied by an emotion of the soul that is called _sentiment_.
+Sentiment is a support of nature that invites us to good by the
+attraction of the noblest joys of which man is capable, and turns us
+from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror with which it
+inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beautiful
+action or a noble character, at the same time that we perceive these
+qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a
+judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and
+sometimes an admiration that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a
+loose and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and
+sentiment. The internal approbation of conscience and remorse are
+sentiments attached to the perception of the moral qualities of our own
+actions.... I do not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true
+that ethics are wholly in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate
+moral distinctions.... Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is
+in itself good, nothing is in itself evil; good and evil are relative;
+the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each one feels them
+to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; the same action is
+at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection of the
+spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenomena;
+obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty
+into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus: _Dii meliora piis_!"
+
+[206] In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who, for some
+time, had numerous partisans in England, and even in France.
+
+[207] See lecture 12.
+
+[208] 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174: "If the good is that alone which
+must be the most useful to the greatest number, where can the good be
+found, and who can discern it? In order to know whether such an action,
+which I propose to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure, in
+spite of its visible and direct utility in the present moment, that it
+will not become injurious in a future that I do not yet know. I must
+seek whether, useful to mine and those that surround me, it will not
+have counter-strokes disastrous to the human race, of which I must think
+before all. It is important that I should know whether the money that I
+am tempted to give this unfortunate who needs it, could not be otherwise
+more usefully employed, in fact, the rule is here the greatest good of
+the greatest number. In order to follow it, what calculations are
+imposed on me? In the obscurity of the future, in the uncertainty of the
+somewhat remote consequences of every action, the surest way is to do
+nothing that is not related to myself, and the last result of a prudence
+so refined is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have received a
+deposit from an opulent neighbor, who is old and sick, a sum of which he
+has no need, and without which your numerous family runs the risk of
+dying with famine. He calls on you for this sum,--what will you do? The
+greatest number is on your side, and the greatest utility also; for this
+sum is insignificant for your rich neighbor, whilst it will save your
+family from misery, and perhaps from death. Father of a family, I should
+like much to know in the name of what principle you would hesitate to
+retain the sum which is necessary to you? Intrepid reasoner, placed in
+the alternative of killing this sick old man, or of letting your wife
+and children die of hunger, in all honesty of conscience you ought to
+kill him. You have the right, it is even your duty to sacrifice the less
+advantage of a single person to much the greater advantage of a greater
+number; and since this principle is the expression of true justice, you
+are only its minister in doing what you do. A vanquishing enemy or a
+furious people threaten destruction to a whole city, if there be not
+delivered up to them the head of such a man, who is, nevertheless,
+innocent. In the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, this
+man will be immolated without scruple. It might even be maintained that
+innocent to the last, he has ceased to be so, since he is an obstacle to
+the public good. It having once been declared that justice is the
+interest of the greatest number, the only question is to know where this
+interest is. Now, here, doubt is impossible, therefore, it is perfectly
+just to offer innocence as a holocaust to public safety. This
+consequence must be accepted, or the principle rejected."
+
+[209] See lecture 15, _Private and Public Ethics_.
+
+[210] Plato, _Republic_, vol. ix. and x. of our translation.
+
+[211] Lecture 16.
+
+[212] Lectures 4 and 7.
+
+[213] This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it
+early against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that which
+we combat. See our _Sketch of a General History of Philosophy_, 2d
+Series, vol. ii., lect. 9, _On Scholasticism_. Here are two decisive
+passages from St. Thomas, 1st book of the _Summation against the
+Gentiles_, chap. lxxxvii: "Per prædicta autem excluditur error dicentiam
+omnia procedere a Deo secundum simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo
+oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia Deus vult. Quod etiam divinæ
+Scripturæ contrariatur, quæ Deum perhibet secundum ordinem sapientiæ suæ
+omnia fecisse, secundum illud Psalm ciii.: omnia in sapientia fecisti."
+_Ibid._, book ii., chap. xxiv.: "Per hoc autem excluditur quorundam
+error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica divina voluntate dependere aliqua
+ratione."
+
+[214] See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul,
+_Des Pensées de Pascal_, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235 and p.
+289-296.
+
+[215] Lecture 16.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.
+
+    Description of the different facts that compose the moral
+    phenomena.--Analysis of each of these facts:--1st, Judgment and
+    idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation
+    between the true and the good.--2d, Obligation. Refutation of
+    the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from
+    obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of the
+    good.--3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion
+    of liberty.--4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments
+    and rewards.--5th, Moral sentiments.--Harmony of all these facts
+    in nature and science.
+
+
+Philosophic criticism is not confined to discerning the errors of
+systems; it especially consists in recognizing and disengaging the
+truths mixed with these errors. The truths scattered in different
+systems compose the whole truth which each of these almost always
+expresses on a single side. So, the systems that we have just run over
+and refuted deliver up to us, in some sort, divided and opposed to each
+other, all the essential elements of human morality. The only question
+is to collect them, in order to restore the entire moral phenomenon. The
+history of philosophy, thus understood, prepares the way for or confirms
+psychological analysis, as psychological analysis receives from the
+history of philosophy its light. Let us, then, interrogate ourselves in
+presence of human actions, and faithfully collect, without altering them
+by any preconceived system, the ideas and the sentiments of every kind
+that the spectacle of these actions produce in us.
+
+There are actions that are agreeable or disagreeable to us, that procure
+us advantages or injure us, in a word, that are, in one way or another,
+directly or indirectly, addressed to our interest. We are rejoiced with
+actions that are useful to us, and shun those that may injure us. We
+seek earnestly and with the greatest effort what seems to us our
+interest.
+
+This is an incontestable fact. Here is another fact that is not less
+incontestable.
+
+There are actions that have no relation to us, that, consequently, we
+cannot estimate and judge on the ground of our interest, that we
+nevertheless qualify as good or bad.
+
+Suppose that before your eyes a man, strong and armed, falls upon
+another man, feeble and disarmed, whom he maltreats and kills, in order
+to take away his purse. Such an action does not reach you in any way,
+and, notwithstanding, it fills you with indignation.[216] You do every
+thing in your power that this murderer may be arrested and delivered up
+to justice; you demand that he shall be punished, and if he is punished
+in one way or another, you think that it is just; your indignation is
+appeased only after a chastisement proportioned to the crime committed
+has been inflicted on the culprit. I repeat that in this you neither
+hope nor fear any thing for yourself. Were you placed in an inaccessible
+fortress, from the top of which you might witness this scene of murder,
+you would feel these sentiments none the less.
+
+This is only a rude picture of what takes place in you at the sight of a
+crime. Apply now a little reflection and analysis to the different
+traits of which this picture is composed, without destroying their
+nature, and you will have a complete philosophic theory.
+
+What is it that first strikes you in what you have experienced? It is
+doubtless the indignation, the instinctive horror that you have felt.
+There is, then, in the soul a power of raising indignation that is
+foreign to all personal interests! There are, then, in us sentiments of
+which we are not the end! There is an antipathy, an aversion, a horror,
+that are not related to what injures us, but to acts whose remotest
+influence cannot reach us, that we detest for the sole reason that we
+judge them to be bad!
+
+Yes, we judge them to be bad. A judgment is enveloped under the
+sentiments that we have just mentioned. In fact, in the midst of the
+indignation that transports you, let one tell you that all this generous
+anger pertains to your particular organization, and that, after all, the
+action that takes place is indifferent,--you revolt against such an
+explanation, you exclaim that the action is bad in itself; you not only
+express a sentiment, you pronounce a judgment. The next day after the
+action, when the feelings that agitated your soul have been quieted, you
+none the less still judge that the action was bad; you judge thus six
+months after, you judge thus always and everywhere; and it is because
+you judge that this action is in itself bad, that you bear this other
+judgment, that it should not have been done.
+
+This double judgment is at the foundation of sentiment; otherwise
+sentiment would be without reason. If the action is not bad in itself,
+if he who has done it was not obligated not to do it, the indignation
+that we experience is only a physical emotion, an excitement of the
+senses, of the imagination, of the heart,--a phenomenon destitute of
+every moral character, like the trouble that visits us before some
+frightful scene of nature. You cannot rationally feel indignation for
+the author of an indifferent action. Every sentiment of disinterested
+anger against the author of an action supposes in him who feels it, this
+double conviction:--1st, That the action is in itself bad; 2d, That it
+should not have been done.
+
+This sentiment also supposes that the author of this action has himself
+a consciousness of the evil that he has done, and of the obligation that
+he has violated; for without this he would have acted like a brutal and
+blind force, not like an intelligent and moral force, and we should have
+felt towards him no more indignation than towards a rock that falls on
+our head, towards a torrent that sweeps us away into an abyss.
+
+Indignation equally supposes in him who is the object of it an other
+character still, to wit, that he is free,--that he could do or not do
+what he has done. It is evident that the agent must be free in order to
+be responsible.
+
+You desire that the murderer may be arrested and delivered up to
+justice, you desire that he may be punished; when he has been arrested,
+delivered up to justice, and punished, you are satisfied. What does that
+mean? Is it a capricious movement of the imagination and heart? No. Calm
+or indignant, at the moment of the crime or a long time after, without
+any spirit of personal vengeance, since you are not the least interested
+in this affair, you none the less declare that the murderer ought to be
+punished. If, instead of receiving a punishment, the culpable man makes
+his crime a stepping-stone to fortune, you still declare that, far from
+deserving prosperity, he deserves to suffer in reparation of his fault;
+you protest against lot, and appeal to a superior justice. This judgment
+philosophers have called the judgment of merit and demerit. I suppose,
+in the mind of man, the idea of a supreme law that attaches happiness to
+virtue, unhappiness to crime. Omit the idea of this law, and the
+judgment of merit and demerit is without foundation. Omit this judgment,
+and indignation against prosperous crime and the neglect of virtue is an
+unintelligible, even an impossible sentiment, and never, at the sight of
+crime, would you think of demanding the chastisement of a criminal.
+
+All the parts of the moral phenomenon are connected together; all are
+equally certain parts,--destroy one, and you completely overturn the
+whole phenomenon. The most common observation bears witness to all these
+facts, and the least subtle logic easily discovers their connection. It
+is necessary to renounce even sentiment, or it must be avowed that
+sentiment covers a judgment, the judgment of the essential distinction
+between good and evil, that this distinction involves an obligation,
+that this obligation is applied to an intelligent and free agent; in
+fine, it must be observed that the distinction between merit and
+demerit, that corresponds to the distinction between good and evil,
+contains the principle of the natural harmony between virtue and
+happiness.
+
+What have we done thus far? We have done as the physicist or chemist
+does, who submits a composite body to analysis and reduces it to its
+simple elements. The only difference here is that the phenomenon to
+which our analysis is applied is in us, instead of being out of us.
+Besides, the processes employed are exactly the same; there is in them
+neither system nor hypothesis; there are only experience and the most
+immediate induction.
+
+In order to render experience more certain, we may vary it. Instead of
+examining what takes place in us when we are spectators of bad or good
+actions in another, let us interrogate our own consciousness when we are
+doing well or ill. In this case, the different elements of the moral
+phenomenon are still more striking, and their order appears more
+distinctly.
+
+Suppose that a dying friend has confided to me a more or less important
+deposit, charging me to remit it after his death to a person whom he has
+designated to me alone, and who himself knows not what has been done in
+his favor. He who confided to me the deposit dies, and carries with him
+his secret; he for whom the deposit has been made to me has no knowledge
+of it; if, then, I wish to appropriate this deposit to myself, no one
+will ever be able to suspect me. In this case what should I do? It is
+difficult to imagine circumstances more favorable for crime. If I
+consult only interest, I ought not to hesitate to return the deposit. If
+I hesitate, in the system of interest, I am senseless, and I revolt
+against the law of my nature. Doubt alone, in the impunity that is
+assured me, would betray in me a principle different from interest.
+
+But naturally I do not doubt, I believe with the most entire certainty,
+that the deposit confided to me does not belong to me, that it has been
+confided to me to be remitted to another, and that to this other it
+belongs. Take away interest, and I should not even think of returning
+this deposit,--it is interest alone that tempts me. It tempts me, it
+does not bear me away without resistance. Hence the struggle between
+interest and duty,--a struggle filled with troubles, opposite
+resolutions, by turns taken and abandoned; it energetically attests the
+presence of a principle of action different from interest and quite as
+powerful.
+
+Duty succumbs, interest triumphs over it. I retain the deposit that has
+been confided to me, and apply it to my own wants, and to the wants of
+my family; it makes me rich, and in appearance happy; but I internally
+suffer with that bitter and secret suffering that is called
+remorse.[217] The fact is certain; it has been a thousand times
+described; all languages contain the word, and there is no one who, in
+some degree, has not experienced the thing, that sharp gnawing at the
+heart which is caused by every fault, great or small, as long as it has
+not been expiated. This painful recollection follows me in the midst of
+pleasures and prosperity. The applauses of the crowd are not able to
+silence this inexorable witness. Only a long habit of sin and crime, an
+accumulation of oft-repeated faults, can compass this sentiment, at once
+avenging and expiatory. When it is stifled, every resource is lost, and
+an end is made of the soul's life; as long as it endures, the sacred
+fire is not wholly extinguished.
+
+Remorse is a suffering of a particular character. In remorse I do not
+suffer on account of such an impression made upon my senses, nor on
+account of the thwarting of my natural passions, nor on account of the
+injury done or threatened to my interest, nor by the disquietude of my
+hopes and the agony of my fears: no, I suffer without any external
+cause, yet I suffer in the most cruel manner. I suffer for the sole
+reason that I have a consciousness of having committed a bad action
+which I knew I was obligated not to commit, which I was able not to
+commit, which leaves behind it a chastisement that I know to be
+deserved. No exact analysis can take away from remorse, without
+destroying it, a single one of these elements. Remorse contains the idea
+of good and evil, of an obligatory law, of liberty, of merit and
+demerit. All these ideas were already in the struggle between good and
+evil; they reappear in remorse. In vain interest counselled me to
+appropriate the deposit that had been confided to me; something said to
+me, and still says to me, that to appropriate it is to do evil, is to
+commit an injustice; I judged, and judge, thus, not such a day, but
+always, not under such a circumstance, but under all circumstances. In
+vain I say to myself that the person to whom I ought to remit this
+deposit has no need of it, and that it is necessary to me; I judge that
+a deposit must be respected without regard to persons, and the
+obligation that is imposed on me appears inviolable and absolute. Having
+taken upon myself this obligation, I believe by this fact alone that I
+have the power to fulfil it: this is not all; I am directly conscious of
+this power, I know with the most certain knowledge that I am able to
+keep this deposit or to remit it to the lawful owner; and it is
+precisely because I am conscious of this power that I judge that I have
+deserved punishment for not having made the use of it for which it was
+given me. It is, in fine, because I have a lively consciousness of all
+that, that I experience this sentiment of indignation against myself,
+this suffering of remorse which expresses in itself the moral phenomenon
+entire.
+
+According to the rules of the experimental method, let us take an
+opposite course; let us suppose that, in spite of the suggestions of
+interest, in spite of the pressing goad of misery, in order to be
+faithful to pledged faith, I send the deposit to the person that had
+been designated to me; instead of the painful scene that just now passed
+in consciousness, there passes another quite as real, but very
+different. I know that I have done well; I know that I have not obeyed a
+chimera, an artificial and mendacious law, but a law true, universal,
+obligatory upon all intelligent and free beings. I know that I have made
+a good use of my liberty; I have of this liberty, by the very use that I
+have made of it, a sentiment more distinct, more energetic, and, in some
+sort, triumphant. Every opinion would accuse me in vain, I appeal from
+it to a better justice, and this justice is already declared in me by
+sentiments that press upon each other in my soul. I respect myself,
+esteem myself, and believe that I have a right to the esteem of others;
+I have the sentiment of my dignity; I feel for myself only sentiments of
+affection opposed to that species of horror for myself with which I was
+just now inspired. Instead of remorse, I feel an incomparable joy that
+no one can deprive me of, that, were every thing else wanting to me,
+would console and support me. This sentiment of pleasure is as
+penetrating, as profound as was the remorse. It expresses the
+satisfaction of all the generous principles of human nature, as remorse
+represented their revolt. It testifies by the internal happiness that it
+gives me to the sublime accord between happiness and virtue, whilst
+remorse is the first link in that fatal chain, that chain of iron and
+adamant, which, according to Plato,[218] binds pain to transgression,
+trouble to passion, misery to faithlessness, vice, and crime.
+
+Moral sentiment is the echo of all the moral judgments and entire moral
+life. It is so striking that it has been regarded by a somewhat
+superficial philosophy as sufficient to found entire ethics; and,
+nevertheless, we have just seen that this admirable sentiment would not
+exist without the different judgments that we have just enumerated; it
+is their consequence, but not their principle; it supplies, but does not
+constitute them; it does not take their place, but sums them up.
+
+Now that we are in possession of all the elements of human morality, we
+proceed to take these elements one by one, and submit them to a detailed
+analysis.
+
+That which is most apparent in the complex phenomenon that we are
+studying is sentiment; but its foundation is judgment.
+
+The judgment of good and evil is the principle of all that follows it;
+but this judgment rests only on the constitution itself of human nature,
+like the judgment of the true and the judgment of the beautiful. As well
+as these two judgments,[219] that of the good is a simple, primitive,
+indecomposable judgment.
+
+Like them, again, it is not arbitrary. We cannot but fear this judgment
+in presence of certain acts; and, in fearing it, we know that it does
+not make good or evil, but declares it. The reality of moral
+distinctions is revealed by this judgment, but it is independent of it,
+as beauty is independent of the eye that perceives it, as universal and
+necessary truths are independent of the reason that discovers them.[220]
+
+Good and evil are real characters of human actions, although these
+characters might not be seen with our eyes nor touched with our hands.
+The moral qualities of an action are none the less real for not being
+confounded with the material qualities of this action. This is the
+reason why actions materially identical may be morally very different. A
+homicide is always a homicide; nevertheless, it is often a crime, it is
+also often a legitimate action, for example, when it is not done for the
+sake of vengeance, nor for the sake of interest, in a strict case of
+self-defence.
+
+It is not the spilling of blood that makes the crime, it is the spilling
+of innocent blood. Innocence and crime, good and evil, do not reside in
+such or such an external circumstance determined one for all. Reason
+recognizes them with certainty under the most different appearances, in
+circumstances sometimes the same and sometimes dissimilar.
+
+Good and evil almost always appear to us connected with particular
+actions; but it is not on account of what is particular in them that
+these actions are good or bad. So when I declare that the death of
+Socrates is unjust, and that the devotion of Leonidas is admirable, it
+is the unjust death of a wise man that I condemn, and the devotion of a
+hero that I admire. It is not important whether this hero be called
+Leonidas or d'Assas, whether the immolated sage be called Socrates or
+Bailly.
+
+The judgment of the good is at first applied to particular actions, and
+it gives birth to general principles which in course serve us as rules
+for judging all actions of the same kind. As after having judged that
+such a particular phenomenon has such a particular cause, we elevate
+ourselves to the general principle that every phenomenon has its
+cause;[221] so we erect into a general rule the moral judgment that we
+have borne in regard to a particular fact. Thus, at first we admire the
+death of Leonidas, thence we elevate ourselves to the principle that it
+is good to die for one's country. We already possess the principle in
+its first application to Leonidas; otherwise, this particular
+application would not have been legitimate, it would not have been even
+possible; but we possess it implicitly; as soon as it is disengaged, it
+appears to us under its universal and pure form, and we apply it to all
+analogous cases.
+
+Ethics have their axioms like other sciences; and these axioms are
+rightly called in all languages moral truths.
+
+It is good not to violate one's oath, and in this is also involved a
+truth. In fact, an oath is founded in the truth of things,--its good is
+only derived. Moral truths considered in themselves have no less
+certainty than mathematical truths. The idea of a deposit being given, I
+ask whether the idea of faithfully keeping it is not necessarily
+attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the idea that
+its three angles are equal to two right angles. You may withhold a
+deposit; but, in withholding it, do not believe that you change the
+nature of things, nor that you make it possible for a deposit ever to
+become property. These two ideas exclude each other. You have only a
+false semblance of property; and all the efforts of passion, all the
+sophisms of interest will not reverse the essential differences. This is
+the reason why moral truth is so troublesome,--it is because, like all
+truth, it is what it is, and does not bend to any caprice. Always the
+same and always present, in spite of all our efforts, it inexorably
+condemns, with a voice always heard, but not always listened to, the
+sensible and the culpable will which thinks to hinder it from being by
+denying it, or rather by pretending to deny it.
+
+Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by the singular
+character that, as soon as we perceive them, they appear to us as the
+rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is made to be remitted
+to its legitimate possessor, it is necessary to remit it to him. To the
+necessity of believing is here added the necessity of practising.
+
+The necessity of practising is obligation. Moral truths, in the eyes of
+reason necessary, are to the will obligatory.
+
+Moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is
+absolute. As necessary truths are not more or less necessary,[222] so
+obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of
+importance between different obligations; but there are no degrees in
+the same obligation. We are not somewhat obligated, almost obligated; we
+are either wholly obligated, or not at all.
+
+If obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For, if the
+obligation of to-day were not the obligation of to-morrow, if what is
+obligatory for me were not so for you, obligation would differ from
+itself, would be relative and contingent.
+
+This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation is so certain and
+so manifest, in spite of all the efforts of the doctrine of interest to
+obscure it, that one of the profoundest moralists of modern philosophy,
+particularly struck with this fact, has regarded it as the principle of
+the whole of ethics. By separating duty from interest which ruins it,
+and from sentiment which enervates it, Kant restored to ethics their
+true character. He elevated himself very high in the century of
+Helvetius, in elevating himself to the holy law of duty; but he still
+did not ascend high enough, he did not reach the reason itself of duty.
+
+The good for Kant is what is obligatory. But logically, whence comes the
+obligation of performing an action, if not from the intrinsic goodness
+of this act? Is it not because that, in the order of reason, it is
+absolutely impossible to regard a deposit as a property, that we cannot
+appropriate it to ourselves without a crime? If one action must be
+performed, and another action must not, it is because there is
+apparently an essential difference between these two acts. To found the
+good on obligation, instead of founding obligation on the good, is,
+therefore, to take the effect for the cause, is to draw the principle
+from the consequence.
+
+If I ask an honest man who, in spite of the suggestions of misery, has
+respected the deposit that was intrusted to him, why he respected it, he
+will answer me,--because it was my duty. If I persist, and ask why it
+was his duty, he will very rightly answer,--because it was just, because
+it was good. That point having been reached, all answers are stopped;
+but questions also are stopped. No one allows a duty to be imposed upon
+him without rendering to himself a reason for it; but as soon as it is
+recognized that this duty is imposed upon us because it is just, the
+mind is satisfied; for it reaches a principle beyond which it has
+nothing more to seek, justice being its own principle. First truths
+carry with them their reason for being. Now, justice, the essential
+distinction between good and evil in the relations of men among
+themselves, is the primary truth of ethics.
+
+Justice is not a consequence, since we cannot ascend to another more
+elevated principle; and duty is not, rigorously speaking, a principle,
+since it supposes a principle above it, that explains and authorizes it,
+to wit, justice.
+
+Moral truth no more becomes relative and subjective, to take for a
+moment the language of Kant, in appearing to us obligatory, than truth
+becomes relative and subjective in appearing to us necessary; for in the
+very nature of truth and the good must be sought the reason of necessity
+and obligation. But if we stop at obligation and necessity, as Kant did,
+in ethics as well as in metaphysics, without knowing it, and even
+against our intention, we destroy, or at least weaken truth and the
+good.[223]
+
+Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinction between good
+and evil; and is itself the foundation of liberty. If man has duties,
+he must possess the faculty of fulfilling them, of resisting desire,
+passion, and interest, in order to obey law. He ought to be free,
+therefore he is free, or human nature is in contradiction with itself.
+The direct certainty of obligation implies the corresponding certainty
+of liberty.
+
+This proof of liberty is doubtless good; but Kant is deceived in
+supposing it the only legitimate proof. It is very strange that he
+should have preferred the authority of reasoning to that of
+consciousness, as if the former had no need of being confirmed by the
+latter; as if, after all, my liberty ought not to be a fact for me.[224]
+Empiricism must be greatly feared to distrust the testimony of
+consciousness; and, after such a distrust, one must be very credulous to
+have a boundless faith in reasoning. We do not believe in our liberty as
+we believe in the movement of the earth. The profoundest persuasion that
+we have of it comes from the continual experience that we carry with
+ourselves.
+
+Is it true that in presence of an act to be done I am able to will or
+not to will to do it? In that lies the whole question of liberty.
+
+Let us clearly distinguish between the power of doing and the power of
+willing. The will has, without doubt, in its service and under its
+empire, the most of our faculties; but that empire, which is real, is
+very limited. I will to move my arm, and I am often able to do it,--in
+that resides, as it were, the physical power of will; but I am not
+always able to move my arm, if the muscles are paralyzed, if the
+obstacle to be overcome is too strong, &c.; the execution does not
+always depend on me; but what always depends on me is the resolution
+itself. The external effects may be hindered, my resolution itself can
+never be hindered. In its own domain, will is sovereign.
+
+And I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. I feel in
+myself, before its determination, the force that can determine itself in
+such a manner or in such another. At the same time that I will this or
+that, I am equally conscious of the power to will the opposite; I am
+conscious of being master of my resolution, of the ability to arrest it,
+continue it, repress it. When the voluntary act ceases, the
+consciousness of the power does not cease,--it remains with the power
+itself, which is superior to all its manifestations. Liberty is
+therefore the essential and always-subsisting attribute of will.[225]
+
+The will, we have seen,[226] is neither desire nor passion,--it is
+exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the license of
+desires and passions. Man is a slave in desire and passion, he is free
+only in will. That they may not elsewhere be confounded, liberty and
+anarchy must not be confounded in psychology. Passions abandoning
+themselves to their caprices, is anarchy. Passions concentrated upon a
+dominant passion, is tyranny. Liberty consists in the struggle of will
+against this tyranny and this anarchy. But this combat must have an aim,
+and this aim is the duty of obeying reason, which is our true sovereign,
+and justice, which reason reveals to us and prescribes for us. The duty
+of obeying reason is the law of will, and will is never more itself than
+when it submits to its law. We do not possess ourselves, as long as to
+the domination of desire, of passion, of interest, reason does not
+oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and justice free us from the
+yoke of passions, without imposing upon us another yoke. For, once more,
+to obey them, is not to abdicate liberty, but to save it, to apply it to
+its legitimate use.
+
+It is in liberty, and in the agreement of liberty with reason and
+justice, that man belongs to himself, to speak properly. He is a person
+only because he is a free being enlightened by reason.
+
+What distinguishes a person from a simple thing, is especially the
+difference between liberty and its opposite. A thing is that which is
+not free, consequently that which does not belong to itself, that which
+has no self, which has only a numerical individuality, a perfect effigy
+of true individuality, which is that of person.
+
+A thing, not belonging to itself, belongs to the first person that takes
+possession of it and puts his mark on it.
+
+A thing is not responsible for the movements which it has not willed, of
+which it is even ignorant. Person alone is responsible, for it is
+intelligent and free; and it is responsible for the use of its
+intelligence and freedom.
+
+A thing has no dignity; dignity is only attached to person.
+
+A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which person confers on
+it. It is purely an instrument whose whole value consists in the use
+that the person using it derives from it.[227]
+
+Obligation implies liberty; where liberty is not, duty is wanting, and
+with duty right is wanting also.
+
+It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, that I have the
+duty of respecting it, and the right to make it respected by you. My
+duty is the exact measure of my right. The one is in direct ratio with
+the other. If I had no sacred duty to respect what makes my person, that
+is to say, my intelligence and my liberty, I should not have the right
+to defend it against your injuries. But as my person is inviolable and
+sacred in itself, it follows that, considered in relation to me, it
+imposes on me a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on
+me a right.
+
+I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that I am by abandoning
+myself to passion, to vice and crime, and I am not permitted to let it
+be degraded by you.
+
+The person is inviolable; and it alone is inviolable.
+
+It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of consciousness,
+but in all its legitimate manifestations, in its acts, in the product
+of its acts, even in the instruments that it makes its own by using
+them.
+
+Therein is the foundation of the sanctity of property. The first
+property is the person. All other properties are derived from that.
+Think of it well. It is not property in itself that has rights, it is
+the proprietor, it is the person that stamps upon it, with its own
+character, its right and its title.
+
+The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without degrading
+itself,--it is to itself inalienable. The person has no right over
+itself; it cannot treat itself as a thing, cannot sell itself, cannot
+destroy itself, cannot in any way abolish its free will and its liberty,
+which are its constituent elements.
+
+Why has the child already some rights? Because it will be a free being.
+Why have the old man, returned to infancy, and the insane man still some
+rights? Because they have been free beings. We even respect liberty in
+its first glimmerings or its last vestiges. Why, on the other hand, have
+the insane man and the imbecile old man no longer all their rights?
+Because they have lost liberty. Why do we enchain the furious madman?
+Because he has lost knowledge and liberty. Why is slavery an abominable
+institution? Because it is an outrage upon what constitutes humanity.
+This is the reason why, in fine, certain extreme devotions are sometimes
+sublime faults, and no one is permitted to offer them, much less to
+demand them. There is no legitimate devotion against the very essence of
+right, against liberty, against justice, against the dignity of the
+human person.
+
+We have not been able to speak of liberty, without indicating a certain
+number of moral notions of the highest importance which it contains and
+explains; but we could not pursue this development without encroaching
+upon the domain of private and public ethics and anticipating the
+following lecture.
+
+We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenomenon, the
+judgment of merit and demerit.
+
+At the same time that we judge that a man has done a good or bad action,
+we bear this other judgment quite as necessary as the former, to wit,
+that if this man has acted well he has merited a reward, and if he has
+acted ill, he has merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with this
+judgment as with that of the good. It may be outwardly expressed in a
+more or less lively manner, according as it is mingled with more or less
+energetic feelings. Sometimes it will be only a benevolent disposition
+towards the virtuous agent, and an unfavorable disposition towards the
+culpable agent; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indignation. In some
+cases one will make himself the executor of the judgment that he bears,
+he will crown the hero and load the criminal with chains. But when all
+your feelings are calmed, when enthusiasm has cooled as well as
+indignation, when time and separation have rendered an action almost
+indifferent to you, you none the less persist in judging that the author
+of this action merits a reward or a punishment, according to the quality
+of the action. You decide that you were right in the sentiments that you
+felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare them legitimate.
+
+The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the judgment of
+good and evil. In fact, he who does an action without knowing whether it
+is good or bad, has neither merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with
+him the same as with those physical agents that accomplish the most
+beneficent or the most destructive works, to which we never think of
+attributing knowledge and will, consequently accountability. Why are
+there no penalties attached to involuntary crimes? Because for that very
+reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes that the question
+of premeditation is so grave in all criminal processes. Why is the
+child, up to a certain age, subject to none but light punishments?
+Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and
+demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward and punishment.
+The author of an injurious but involuntary action is condemned to an
+indemnity corresponding to the damage done; he is not condemned to a
+punishment properly so called.
+
+Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. When these conditions are
+fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest themselves, and involve reward and
+punishment.
+
+Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural
+right that others have to punish us, and, if we may thus speak, the
+right that we have to be punished. This expression may seem paradoxical,
+nevertheless it is true. A culpable man, who, opening his eyes to the
+light of the good, should comprehend the necessity of expiation, not
+only by internal repentance, without which all the rest is in vain, but
+also by a real and effective suffering, such a culpable man would have
+the right to claim the punishment that alone can reconcile him with
+order. And such reclamations are not so rare. Do we not every day see
+criminals denouncing themselves and offering themselves up to avenge the
+public? Others prefer to satisfy justice, and do not have recourse to
+the pardon that law places in the hands of the monarch in order to
+represent in the state charity and mercy, as tribunals represent in it
+justice. This is a manifest proof of the natural and profound roots of
+the idea of punishment and reward.
+
+Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful debt, punishment and
+reward; but reward must not be confounded with merit, nor punishment
+with demerit; this would be confounding cause and effect, principle and
+consequence. Even were reward and punishment not to take place, merit
+and demerit would subsist. Punishment and reward satisfy merit and
+demerit, but do not constitute them. Suppress all reward and all
+punishment and you do not thereby suppress merit and demerit; on the
+contrary, suppress merit and demerit, and there are no longer true
+punishments and true rewards. Unmerited goods and honors are only
+material advantages; reward is essentially moral, and its value is
+independent of its form. One of those crowns of oak that the early
+Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all the riches in the
+world, when it is the sign of the recognition and the admiration of a
+people. To reward is to give in return. He who is rewarded must have
+first given something in order to deserve to be rewarded. Reward
+accorded to merit is a debt; reward without merit is a charity or a
+theft. It is the same with punishment. It is the relation of pain to a
+fault,--in this relation, and not in the pain alone, is the truth as
+well as the shame of chastisement.
+
+    'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.[228]
+
+There are two things that must be unceasingly repeated, because they are
+equally true,--the first is, that the good is good in itself, and ought
+to be pursued whatever may be the consequences; the second is, that the
+consequences of the good cannot fail to be fortunate. Happiness,
+separated from the good, is only a fact to which is attached no moral
+idea; but, as an effect of the good, it enters into the moral order and
+completes it.
+
+Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappiness, are a
+contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes sacrifice, that is to say,
+suffering, it is of eternal justice that the sacrifice, generously
+accepted and courageously borne, have for a reward the very happiness
+that has been sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice that crime be
+punished by the unhappiness of the culpable happiness which it has tried
+to obtain by stealth.
+
+Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches pleasure and pain
+to good and evil? Most of the time even here below. For order rules in
+this world, since the world endures. If order is sometimes disturbed,
+and happiness and unhappiness are not always distributed in right
+proportion to crime and virtue, still the absolute judgment of the good,
+the absolute judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and
+demerit, subsist inviolable and imprescriptible,--we remain convinced
+that he who has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot in
+that fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-establish the
+sacred harmony between virtue and happiness by the means that to him
+belong. But the time has not come to sound these mysterious
+prospects.[229] It is sufficient for us, but it was necessary to mark
+them, in order to show the nature and the end of moral truth.
+
+We terminate this analysis of the different parts of the complex
+phenomenon of morality by recalling that one which is the most apparent
+of all, which, however, is only the accompaniment, and, thus to speak,
+the echo of all the others--sentiment. Sentiment has for its object to
+render sensible to the soul the tie between virtue and happiness. It is
+the direct and vital application of the law of merit and demerit. It
+precedes and authorizes the punishments and rewards that society
+institutes. It is the internal model according to which the imagination,
+guided by faith, represents to itself the punishments and rewards of the
+divine city. The world that we place beyond this is, in great part, our
+own heart transported into heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just
+that it should return thither.
+
+We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of sentiment; we have
+sufficiently explained them in the last lecture. A few words will
+replace them under your eyes.
+
+We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its author, another or
+ourselves, without experiencing a particular pleasure, analogous to that
+which is attached to the perception of the beautiful; and we cannot
+witness a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also
+analogous to that which the sight of an ugly and deformed object excites
+in us. This sentiment is profoundly different from agreeable or
+disagreeable sensation.
+
+Are we the authors of the good action? We feel a satisfaction that we do
+not confound with any other. It is not the triumph of interest nor that
+of pride,--it is the pleasure of modest honesty or dignified virtue that
+renders justice to itself. Are we the authors of the bad action? We feel
+offended conscience groaning within us. Sometimes it is only an
+importunate reclamation, sometimes it is a bitter agony. Remorse is a
+suffering the more poignant on account of our feeling that it is
+deserved.
+
+The spectacle of a good action done by another also has something
+delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that responds to
+whatever is noble and good in others. When interest does not lead us
+astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of him who has done
+well. We feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate him. We
+elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it not already for the
+good man an exquisite reward to make the noble sentiments that animate
+him thus pass into the hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad
+action, instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful
+and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute like
+remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid that tempers
+even the sentiment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us.
+We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we mourn over human
+weakness, and, by a melancholy return upon ourselves, we are less moved
+to anger than to pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous
+anger, by a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a
+sweet reward to excite a noble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always
+fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around us
+pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt.
+
+Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence for its author.
+He inspires us with an affectionate disposition. Even without knowing
+it, we would love to do good to him; we desire that he may be happy,
+because we judge that he deserves to be. Antipathy also passes from the
+action to the person, and engenders against him a sort of bad will, for
+which we do not blame ourselves, because we feel it to be disinterested
+and find it legitimate.
+
+Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, and their
+opposites are sentiments and not judgments; but they are sentiments that
+accompany judgments, the judgment of the good, especially that of merit
+and demerit. These sentiments have been given us by the sovereign Author
+of our moral constitution to aid us in doing good. In their diversity
+and mobility, they cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation
+which must be equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure
+and beneficent witnesses of the harmony between virtue and happiness.
+
+These are the facts as presented by a faithful description, as brought
+to light by a detailed analysis.
+
+Without facts all is chimera; without a severe distinction of facts, all
+is confusion; but, also, without the knowledge of their relations,
+instead of a single vast doctrine, like the total phenomenon that we
+have undertaken to embrace, there can be only different systems like the
+different parts of this phenomenon, consequently imperfect systems,
+systems always at war with each other.
+
+We set out from common sense; for the object of true science is not to
+contradict common sense, but to explain it, and for this end we must
+commence by recognizing it. We have at first painted in its simplicity,
+even in the gross, the phenomenon of morality. Then we have separated
+its elements, and carefully marked the characteristic traits of each of
+them. It only remains for us to re-collect them all, to seize their
+relations, and thus to find again, but more precise and more clear, the
+primitive unity that served us as a point of departure.
+
+Beneath all facts analysis has shown us a primitive fact, which vests
+only on itself,--the judgment of the good. We do not sacrifice other
+facts to that, but we must establish that it is the first both in date
+and in importance.
+
+By its close resemblance to the judgment of the true and the beautiful,
+the judgment of the good has shown us the affinities of ethics,
+metaphysics, and æsthetics.
+
+The good, so essentially united to the true, is distinguished from it in
+that it is practical truth. The good is obligatory. These two ideas are
+inseparable, but not identical. For obligation rests on the good,--in
+this intimate alliance, from the good obligation borrows its universal
+and absolute character.
+
+The obligatory good is the moral law. Therein is for us the foundation
+of all ethics. Thereby it is that we separate ourselves from the ethics
+of interest and the ethics of sentiment. We admit all the facts, but we
+do not admit them in the same rank.
+
+To the moral law in the reason of man corresponds liberty in action.
+Liberty is deduced from obligation, and moreover it is a fact of an
+irresistible evidence.
+
+Man as a being free and subject to obligation, is a moral person. The
+idea of person contains several moral notions, among others that of
+right. Person alone can have rights.
+
+To all these ideas is added that of merit and demerit, which serves as
+their sanction.
+
+Merit and demerit suppose the distinction between good and evil,
+obligation and liberty, and give birth to the idea of reward and
+punishment.
+
+It is on the condition that the good may be an object of reason, that
+ethics can have an immovable basis. We have therefore insisted on the
+rational character of the idea of the good, but without misconceiving
+the part of sentiment.
+
+We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which is stirred in
+us in the train of reason itself, from physical sensibility, which needs
+an impression made upon the organs in order to enter into exercise.
+
+All our moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to
+them. The sight of an action which we judge to be good gives us
+pleasure,--the consciousness of having performed an obligatory act, and
+of having performed it freely, is also a pleasure; the judgment of merit
+and demerit makes our hearts beat by taking the form of sympathy and
+benevolence.
+
+It must be avowed that the law of duty, although it ought to be
+fulfilled for its own sake, would be an ideal almost inaccessible to
+human weakness, if to its austere prescriptions were not added some
+inspiration of the heart. Sentiment is in some sort a natural grace that
+has been given us, either to supply the light of reason that is
+sometimes uncertain, or to succor the will wavering in the presence of
+an obscure or painful duty. In order to resist the violence of culpable
+passions, the aid of generous passions is needed; and when the moral
+law exacts the sacrifice of natural sentiments, of the sweetest and most
+lively instincts, it is fortunate that it can support itself on other
+sentiments, or other instincts which also have their charm and their
+force. Truth enlightens the mind; sentiment warms the soul and leads to
+action. It is not cold reason that determines a Codrus to devote himself
+for his countrymen, a d'Assas to utter, beneath the steel of the enemy,
+the generous cry that brings him death and saves the army. Let us guard
+ourselves, then, from weakening the authority of sentiment; let us honor
+and sustain enthusiasm; it is the source whence spring great and heroic
+actions.
+
+And shall interest be entirely banished from our system? No; we
+recognize in the human soul a desire for happiness which is the work of
+God himself. This desire is a fact,--it must then have its place in a
+system founded upon experience. Happiness is one of the ends of human
+nature; only it is neither its sole end nor its principal end.
+
+Admirable economy of the moral constitution of man! Its supreme end is
+the good, its law is virtue, which often imposes on it suffering, and
+thereby it is the most excellent of all things that we know. But this
+law is very hard and in contradiction with the instinct of happiness.
+Fear nothing,--the beneficent author of our being has placed in our
+souls, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet and amiable
+force of sentiment,--he has, in general, attached happiness to virtue;
+and, for the exceptions, for there are exceptions, at the end of the
+course he has placed hope.[230]
+
+Our doctrine is now known. Its only pretension is to express faithfully
+each fact, to express them all, and to make appear at once their
+differences and their harmony.
+
+Beyond that there is nothing new to attempt in ethics. To admit only a
+single fact and to sacrifice to that all the rest,--such is the beaten
+way. Of all the facts that we have just analyzed, there is not one that
+has not in its turn played the part of sole principle. All the great
+schools of moral philosophy have each seen only one side of
+truth,--fortunate when they have not chosen among the different phases
+of the moral phenomenon, in order to found upon them their entire
+system, precisely those that are least adapted to that end!
+
+Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most manifest facts,
+against common sense, against the very idea of all ethics, found duty,
+virtue, the good, on the desire of happiness alone? It would be proof of
+great blindness and great barrenness. On the other hand, shall we
+immolate the need of happiness, the hope of all reward, human or divine,
+to the abstract idea of the good? The Stoics have done it,--we know with
+what apparent grandeur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine with
+Kant the whole of ethics to obligation? That is straitening still more a
+system that is already very narrow. Moreover, one may hope to surpass
+Kant in extent of views, by a completer knowledge and more faithful
+representation of facts; one cannot hope to be more profound in the
+point of view that he has chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, shall
+we refer to the will of God alone the obligation of virtue, and found
+ethics on religion, instead of giving religion to ethics as their
+necessary perfection? We still invent nothing new, we only renew the
+ethics of the theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular
+school which has had for its adversaries the most illustrious doctors.
+Finally, shall we reduce all morality to sentiment, to sympathy, to
+benevolence? It only remains to follow the footsteps of Hutcheson and
+Smith, abandoned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of a celebrated
+adversary of Kant, Jacobi.[231]
+
+The time of exclusive theories has gone by; to renew them is to
+perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, being founded upon a real
+fact, rightly refuses the sacrifice of this fact; and it meets in
+hostile theories an equal right and an equal resistance. Hence the
+perpetual return of the same systems, always at war with each other, and
+by turns vanquished and victorious. This strife can cease only by means
+of a doctrine that conciliates all systems by comprising all the facts
+that give them authority.
+
+It is not the preconceived design of conciliating systems in history
+that suggests to us the idea of conciliating facts in reality. It is, on
+the contrary, the full possession of all the facts, analogous and
+different, that forces us to absolve and condemn all systems on account
+of the truth that is in each of them, and on account of the errors that
+are mixed with the truth.
+
+It is important to repeat continually, that nothing is so easy as to
+arrange a system, by suppressing or altering the facts that embarrass
+it. But is it, then, the object of philosophy to produce at any cost a
+system, instead of seeking to understand the truth and express it as it
+is?
+
+It is objected that such a doctrine has not sufficient character. But is
+it not sporting with philosophy to demand of it any other character than
+that of truth? Do men complain that modern chemistry has not sufficient
+character, because it limits itself to studying facts in their
+relations, and also in their differences, and because it does not end at
+a single substance? The only true philosophy that is proper for a
+century returned from all exaggerations, is a picture of human nature
+whose first merit is fidelity, which must offer all the traits of the
+original in their right proportion and real harmony. The unity of the
+doctrine that we profess is in that of the human soul, whence we have
+drawn it. Is it not one and the same being that perceives the good, that
+knows that he is obligated to fulfil it, that knows that he is free in
+fulfilling it, that loves the good, and judges that the fulfilment or
+violation of the good justly brings after it reward or punishment,
+happiness or misery? We draw, then, a true unity from the intimate
+relation between all the facts that, as we have seen, imply and sustain
+each other. But by what right is the unity of a doctrine placed in
+allowing in it only a single principle? Such a unity is possible only
+in those regions of mathematical abstraction, where one is not disturbed
+by what is, where one retrenches at will from the object that he is
+studying, in order to simplify it continually, where every thing is
+reduced to pure notions. In the reality all is determined, and
+consequently, all is complex. A science of facts is not a series of
+equations. In it must be found again the life that is in things, life
+with its harmony doubtless, but also with its richness and
+diversity.[232]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[216] On indignation, see lecture 11.
+
+[217] On remorse, see lecture 11.
+
+[218] See the _Gorgias_, with the _Argument_, vol. iii. of our
+translation.
+
+[219] Lectures 1 and 6.
+
+[220] Lectures 2, 3, and 6.
+
+[221] 1st part, lecture 2.
+
+[222] Lecture 2.
+
+[223] 1st part, lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture
+8.
+
+[224] 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.
+
+[225] See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st
+Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, _Locke_, p. 71; lecture 3, _Condillac_, p.
+116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., lecture 23, _Reid_, p. 541-574; 2d Series,
+vol. iii., _Examination of the System of Locke_, lecture 25.
+
+[226] Lecture 12.
+
+[227] See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true
+principle of political economy, p. 278-302.
+
+[228] Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'échafaud.
+
+[229] See lecture 16, _God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good_.
+
+[230] See lecture 16.
+
+[231] On Jacobi, see Tennemann's _Manual of the History of Philosophy_,
+vol. iii., p. 318, etc.
+
+[232] On this important question of method, see lecture 12.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.
+
+    Application of the preceding principles.--General formula of
+    interest,--to obey reason.--Rule for judging whether an action
+    is or is not conformed to reason,--to elevate the motive of this
+    action into a maxim of universal legislation.--Individual
+    ethics. It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral
+    person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual
+    duties,--to respect and develop the moral person.--Social
+    ethics,--duties of justice and duties of charity.--Civil
+    society. Government. Law. The right to punish.
+
+
+We know that there is moral good and that there is moral evil: we know
+that this distinction between good and evil engenders an obligation, a
+law, duty; but we do not yet know what our duties are. The general
+principle of ethics is laid down; it must be followed at least into its
+most important applications.
+
+If duty is only truth become obligatory, and if truth is known only by
+reason, to obey the law of duty, is to obey reason.
+
+But to obey reason is a precept very vague and very abstract:--how can
+we be sure that our action is conformed or is not conformed to reason?
+
+The character of reason being, as we have said, its universality,
+action, in order to be conformed to reason, must possess something
+universal; and as it is the motive itself of the action that gives it
+its morality, it is also the motive that must, if the action is good,
+reflect the character of reason. By what sign, then, do you recognize
+that an action is conformed to reason, that it is good? By the sign that
+the motive of this action being generalized, appears to you a maxim of
+universal legislation, which reason imposes upon all intelligent and
+free beings. If you are not able thus to generalize the motive of an
+action, and if it is the opposite motive that appears to you a universal
+maxim, your action, being opposed to this maxim, is thereby proved to be
+contrary to reason and duty,--it is bad. If neither the motive of your
+action nor the motive of the opposite action can be erected into a
+universal law, the action is neither good nor bad, it is indifferent.
+Such is the ingenious measure that Kant has applied to the morality of
+actions. It makes known with the last degree of clearness where duty is
+and where it is not, as the severe and naked form of syllogism, being
+applied to reasoning, brings out in the precisest manner its error or
+its truth.
+
+To obey reason,--such is duty in itself, the duty superior to all other
+duties, giving to all others their foundation, and being itself founded
+only on the essential relation between liberty and reason.
+
+It may be said that there is only a single duty, that of obeying reason.
+But man having different relations, this single and general duty is
+determined by these different relations, and divided into a
+corresponding number of particular duties.
+
+Of all the beings that we know, there is not one with whom we are more
+constantly in relation than with ourselves. The actions of which man is
+at once the author and the object, have rules as well as other actions.
+Hence that first class of duties which are called the duties of man
+towards himself.
+
+At first sight, it is strange that man should have duties towards
+himself. Man, being free, belongs to himself. What is most to me is
+myself:--this is the first property and the foundation of all other
+properties. Now, is it not the essence of property to be at the free
+disposition of the proprietor, and consequently, am I not able to do
+with myself what I please?
+
+No; from the fact that man is free, from the fact that he belongs only
+to himself, it must not be concluded that he has over himself all power.
+On the contrary, indeed, from the fact alone that he is endowed with
+liberty, as well as intelligence, I conclude that he can no more
+degrade his liberty than his intelligence, without transgressing. It is
+a culpable use of liberty to abdicate it. We have said that liberty is
+not only sacred to others, but is so to itself. To subject it to the
+yoke of passion, instead of increasing it under the liberal discipline
+of duty, is to abase in us what deserves our respect as much as the
+respect of others. Man is not a thing; it has not, then, been permitted
+him to treat himself as a thing.
+
+If I have duties towards myself, it is not towards myself as an
+individual, it is towards the liberty and intelligence that make me a
+free moral person. It is necessary to distinguish closely in us what is
+peculiar to us from what pertains to humanity. Each one of us contains
+in himself human nature with all its essential elements; and, in
+addition, all these elements are in him in a certain manner that is not
+the same in two different men. These particularities make the
+individual, but not the person; and the person alone in us is to be
+respected and held as sacred, because it alone represents humanity.
+Every thing that does not concern the moral person is indifferent. In
+these limits I may consult my tastes, even my fancies to a certain
+extent, because in them there is nothing absolute, because in them good
+and evil are in no way involved. But as soon as an act touches the moral
+person, my liberty is subjected to its law, to reason, which does not
+allow liberty to be turned against itself. For example, if through
+caprice, or melancholy, or any other motive, I condemn myself to an
+abstinence too prolonged, if I impose on myself vigils protracted and
+beyond my strength; if I absolutely renounce all pleasure, and, by these
+excessive privations, endanger my health, my life, my reason, these are
+no longer indifferent actions. Sickness, death, madness, may become
+crimes, if we voluntarily bring them upon ourselves.
+
+I have not established this obligation of self-respect imposed on the
+moral person, therefore I cannot destroy it. Is self-respect founded on
+one of those arbitrary conventions that cease to exist when the two
+contracting parties freely renounce them? Are the two contracting
+parties here _me_ and myself? By no means; one of the contracting
+parties is not _me_, to wit, humanity, the moral person. And there is
+here neither convention nor contract. By the fact alone that the moral
+person is in us, we are obligated towards it, without convention of any
+sort, without contract that can be cancelled, and by the very nature of
+things. Hence it comes that obligation is absolute.
+
+Respect of the moral person in us is the general principle whence are
+derived all individual duties. We will cite some of them.
+
+The most important, that which governs all others, is the duty of
+remaining master of one's self. One may lose possession of himself in
+two ways, either by allowing himself to be carried away, or by allowing
+himself to be overcome, by yielding to enervating passions or to
+overwhelming passions, to anger or to melancholy. On either hand there
+is equal weakness. And I do not speak of the consequences of those vices
+for society and ourselves,--certainly they are very injurious; but they
+are much worse than that, they are already bad in themselves, because in
+themselves they give a blow to moral dignity, because they diminish
+liberty and disturb intelligence.
+
+Prudence is an eminent virtue. I speak of that noble prudence that is
+the moderation in all things, the foresight, the fitness, that preserve
+at once from negligence and that rashness which adorns itself with the
+name of heroism, as cowardice and selfishness sometimes usurp the name
+of prudence. Heroism, without being premeditated, ought always to be
+rational. One may be a hero at intervals; but, in every-day life, it is
+sufficient to be a wise man. We must ourselves hold the reins of our
+life, and not prepare difficulties for ourselves by carelessness or
+bravado, nor create for ourselves useless perils. Doubtless we must know
+how to dare, but still prudence is, if not the principle, at least the
+rule of courage; for true courage is not a blind transport, it is before
+all coolness and self possession in danger. Prudence also teaches
+temperance; it keeps the soul in that state of moderation without which
+man is incapable of recognizing and practising justice. This is the
+reason why the ancients said that prudence is the mother and guardian of
+all the virtues. Prudence is the government of liberty by reason, as
+imprudence is liberty escaped from reason:--on the one side, order, the
+legitimate subordination of our faculties to each other; on the other,
+anarchy and revolt.[233]
+
+Veracity is also a great virtue. Falsehood, by breaking the natural
+alliance between man and truth, deprives him of that which makes his
+dignity. This is the reason why there is no graver insult than giving
+the lie, and why the most honored virtues are sincerity and frankness.
+
+One may degrade the moral person by wounding it in its instruments. For
+this reason the body is to man the object of imperative duties. The body
+may become an obstacle or a means. If you refuse it what sustains and
+strengthens it, or if you demand too much from it by exciting it beyond
+measure, you exhaust it, and by abusing it, deprive yourself of it. It
+is worse still if you pamper it, if you grant every thing to its
+unbridled desires, if you make yourself its slave. It is being
+unfaithful to the soul to enfeeble its servant; it is being much more
+unfaithful to it still, to enslave it to its servant.
+
+But it is not enough to respect the moral person, it is necessary to
+perfect it; it is necessary to labor to return the soul to God better
+than we received it; and it can become so only by a constant and
+courageous exercise. Everywhere in nature, all things are spontaneously
+developed, without willing it, and without knowing it. With man, if the
+will slumbers, the other faculties degenerate into languor and inertion;
+or, carried away by the blind impulse of passion, they are precipitated
+and go astray. It is by the government and education of himself that man
+is great.
+
+Man must, before every thing else, occupy himself with his
+intelligence. It is in fact our intelligence that alone can give us a
+clear sight of the true and the good, that guides liberty by showing it
+the legitimate object of its efforts. No one can give himself another
+mind than the one that he has received, but he may train and strengthen
+it as well as the body, by putting it to a task of some kind, by rousing
+it when it is drowsy, by restraining it when it is carried away, by
+continually proposing to it new objects,--for it is only by continually
+enriching it that it does not grow poor. Sloth benumbs and enervates the
+mind; regular work excites and strengthens it, and work is always in our
+power.
+
+There is an education of liberty as well as our other faculties. It is
+sometimes in subduing the body, sometimes in governing our intelligence,
+especially in resisting our passions, that we learn to be free. We
+encounter opposition at each step,--the only question is not to shun it.
+In this constant struggle liberty is formed and augmented, until it
+becomes a habit.
+
+Finally, there is a culture of sensibility itself. Fortunate are those
+who have received from nature the sacred fire of enthusiasm! They ought
+religiously to preserve it. But there is no soul that does not conceal
+some fortunate vein of it. It is necessary to watch it and pursue, to
+avoid what restrains it, to seek what favors it, and, by an assiduous
+culture, draw from it, little by little, some treasures. If we cannot
+give ourselves sensibility, we can at least develop what we have. We can
+do this by giving ourselves up to it, by seizing all the occasions of
+giving ourselves up to it, by calling to its aid intelligence itself;
+for, the more we know of the beautiful and the good, the more we love
+it. Sentiment thereby only borrows from intelligence what it returns
+with usury. Intelligence in its turn finds, in the heart, a rampart
+against sophism. Noble, sentiments, nourished and developed, preserve
+from those sad systems that please certain spirits so much only because
+their hearts are so small.
+
+Man would still have duties, should he cease to be in relation with
+other men.[234] As long as he preserves any intelligence and any
+liberty, the idea of the good dwells in him, and with it duty. Were we
+cast upon a desert island, duty would follow us thither. It would be
+beyond belief strange that it should be in the power of certain
+external circumstances to affranchise an intelligent and free being from
+all obligation towards his liberty and his intelligence. In the deepest
+solitude he is always and consciously under the empire of a law attached
+to the person itself, which, by obligating him to keep continual watch
+over himself, makes at once his torment and his grandeur.
+
+If the moral person is sacred to me, it is not because it is in me, it
+is because it is the moral person; it is in itself respectable; it will
+be so, then, wherever we meet it.
+
+It is in you as in me, and for the same reason. In relation to me it
+imposes on me a duty; in you it becomes the foundation of a right, and
+thereby imposes on me a new duty in relation to you.
+
+I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself; for truth is the law of your
+reason as of mine. Without doubt there ought to be measure in the
+communication of truth,--all are not capable of it at the same moment
+and in the same degree; it is necessary to portion it out to them in
+order that they may be able to receive it; but, in fine, the truth is
+the proper good of the intelligence; and it is for me a strict duty to
+respect the development of your mind, not to arrest, and even to favor
+its progress towards truth.
+
+I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always the right
+to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so sacred that, even
+when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a certain point, to be
+managed. We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that
+God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an attempt to purify
+them.
+
+I ought to respect you in your affections, which make part of yourself;
+and of all the affections there are none more holy than those of the
+family. There is in us a need of expanding ourselves beyond ourselves,
+yet without dispelling ourselves, of establishing ourselves in some
+souls by a regular and consecrated affection,--to this need the family
+responds. The love of men is something of the general good. The family
+is still almost the individual, and not merely the individual,--it only
+requires us to love as much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It
+attaches one to the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all
+ties--father, mother, child; it gives to this sure succor in the love of
+its parents--to these hope, joy, new life, in their child. To violate
+the conjugal or paternal right, is to violate the person in what is
+perhaps its most sacred possession.
+
+I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you, inasmuch as
+it is the necessary instrument of your person. I have neither the right
+to kill you, nor to wound you, unless I am attacked and threatened; then
+my violated liberty is armed with a new right, the right of defence and
+even constraint.
+
+I owe respect to your goods, for they are the product of your labor; I
+owe respect to your labor, which is your liberty itself in exercise;
+and, if your goods come from an inheritance, I still owe respect to the
+free will that has transmitted them to you.[235]
+
+Respect for the rights of others is called justice; every violation of a
+right is an injustice.
+
+Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person,--to retrench the
+least of our rights, is to diminish our moral person, is, at least, so
+far as that retrenchment goes, to abase us to the condition of a thing.
+
+The greatest of all injustices, because it comprises all others, is
+slavery. Slavery is the subjecting of all the faculties of one man to
+the profit of another man. The slave develops his intelligence a little
+only in the interest of another,--it is not for the purpose of
+enlightening him, but to render him more useful, that some exercise of
+mind is allowed him. The slave has not the liberty of his movements; he
+is attached to the soil, is sold with it, or he is chained to the person
+of a master. The slave should have no affection, he has no family, no
+wife, no children,--he has a female and little ones. His activity does
+not belong to him, for the product of his labor is another's. But, that
+nothing may be wanting to slavery, it is necessary to go farther,--in
+the slave must be destroyed the inborn sentiment of liberty, in him must
+be extinguished all idea of right; for, as long as this idea subsists,
+slavery is uncertain, and to an odious power may respond the terrible
+right of insurrection, that last resort of the oppressed against the
+abuse of force.[236]
+
+Justice, respect for the person in every thing that constitutes the
+person, is the first duty of man towards his fellow-man. Is this duty
+the only one?
+
+When we have respected the person of others, when we have neither
+restrained their liberty, nor smothered their intelligence, nor
+maltreated their body, nor outraged their family, nor injured their
+goods, are we able to say that we have fulfilled the whole law in regard
+to them? One who is unfortunate is suffering before us. Is our
+conscience satisfied, if we are able to bear witness to ourselves that
+we have not contributed to his sufferings? No; something tells that it
+is still good to give him bread, succor, consolation.
+
+There is here an important distinction to be made. If you have remained
+hard and insensible at the sight of another's misery, conscience cries
+out against you; and yet this man who is suffering, who, perhaps, is
+ready to die, has not the least right over the least part of your
+fortune, were it immense; and, if he used violence for the purpose of
+wresting from you a single penny, he would commit a crime. We here meet
+a new order of duties that do not correspond to rights. Man may resort
+to force in order to make his rights respected; he cannot impose on
+another any sacrifice whatever. Justice respects or restores; charity
+gives, and gives freely.
+
+Charity takes from us something in order to give it to our fellow-men.
+If it goes so far as to inspire us to renounce our dearest interests, it
+is called devotedness.
+
+It certainly cannot be said that to be charitable is not obligatory. But
+this obligation must not be regarded as precise, as inflexible as the
+obligation to be just. Charity is a sacrifice; and who can find the rule
+of sacrifice, the formula of self-renunciation? For justice, the formula
+is clear,--to respect the rights of another. But charity knows neither
+rule nor limit. It transcends all obligation. Its beauty is precisely in
+its liberty.
+
+But it must be acknowledged that charity also has its dangers. It tends
+to substitute its own action for the action of him whom it wishes to
+help; it somewhat effaces his personality, and makes itself in some sort
+his providence,--a formidable part for a mortal! In order to be useful
+to others, one imposes himself on them, and runs the risk of violating
+their natural rights. Love, in giving itself, enslaves. Doubtless it is
+not interdicted us to act upon another. We can always do it through
+petition and exhortation. We can also do it by threatening, when we see
+one of our fellows engaged in a criminal or senseless action. We have
+even the right to employ force when passion carries away liberty and
+makes the person disappear. So we may, we even ought to prevent by force
+the suicide of one of our fellow-men. The legitimate power of charity is
+measured by the more or less liberty and reason possessed by him to whom
+it is applied. What delicacy, then, is necessary in the exercise of this
+perilous virtue! How can we estimate with sufficient certainty the
+degree of liberty still possessed by one of our fellow-men to know how
+far we may substitute ourselves for him in the guiding of his destiny?
+And when, in order to assist a feeble soul, we take possession of it,
+who is sufficiently sure of himself not to go farther, not to pass from
+the person governed to the love of domination itself? Charity is often
+the commencement and the excuse, and always the pretext of usurpation.
+In order to have the right of abandoning one's self to the emotions of
+charity, it is necessary to be fortified against one's self by a long
+exercise of justice.
+
+To respect the rights of others and do good to men, to be at once just
+and charitable,--such are social ethics in the two elements that
+constitute them.
+
+We speak of social ethics, and we do not yet know what society is. Let
+us look around us:--everywhere society exists, and where it is not, man
+is not man. Society is a universal fact which must have universal
+foundations.
+
+Let us avoid at first the question of the origin of society.[237] The
+philosophy of the last century delighted in such questions too much. How
+can we demand light from the regions of darkness, and the explanation of
+reality from an hypothesis? Why go back to a pretended primitive state
+in order to account for a present state which may be studied in itself
+in its unquestionable characters? Why seek what may have been in the
+germ that which may be perceived, that which it is the question to
+understand, completed and perfect? Moreover, there is great peril in
+starting with the question of the origin of society. Has such or such an
+origin been found? Actual society is arranged according to the type of
+the primitive society that has been dreamed of, and political society is
+delivered up to the mercy of historical romances. This one imagines that
+the primitive state is violence, and he sets out from that in order to
+authorize the right of the strongest, and to consecrate despotism. That
+one thinks that he has found in the family the first form of society,
+and he compares government to the father of a family, and subjects to
+children; society in his eyes is a minor that must be held in tutelage
+in the hands of the paternal power, which in the origin is absolute, and
+consequently, must remain so. Or has one thrown himself to the extreme
+of the opposite opinion, and into the hypothesis of an agreement, of a
+contract that expresses the will of all or of the greatest number? He
+delivers up to the mobile will of the crowd the eternal laws of justice
+and the inalienable rights of the person. Finally, are powerful
+religious institutions found in the cradle of society? It is hence
+concluded, that power belongs of right to priesthoods, which have the
+secret of the designs of God, and represent his sovereign authority.
+Thus a vicious method in philosophy leads to a deplorable political
+system,--the commencement is made in hypothesis, and the termination is
+in anarchy or tyranny.
+
+True politics do not depend on more or less well directed historical
+researches into the profound night of a past forever vanished, and of
+which no vestige subsists: they rest on the knowledge of human nature.
+
+Wherever society is, wherever it was, it has for its foundations:--1st,
+The need that we have of our fellow-creatures, and the social instincts
+that man bears in himself; 2d, The permanent and indestructible idea and
+sentiment of justice and right.
+
+Man, feeble and powerless when he is alone, profoundly feels the need
+that he has of the succor of his fellow-creatures in order to develop
+his faculties, to embellish his life, and even to preserve it.[238]
+Without reflection, without convention, he claims the hand, the
+experience, the love of those whom he sees made like himself. The
+instinct of society is in the first cry of the child that calls for the
+mother's help without knowing that it has a mother, and in the eagerness
+of the mother to respond to the cries of the child. It is in the
+feelings for others that nature has put in us--pity, sympathy,
+benevolence. It is in the attraction of the sexes, in their union, in
+the love of parents for their children, and in the ties of every kind
+that these first ties engender. If Providence has attached so much
+sadness to solitude, so much charm to society, it is because society is
+indispensable for the preservation of man and for his happiness, for his
+intellect and moral development.
+
+But if need and instinct begin society, it is justice that completes it.
+
+In the presence of another man, without any external law, without any
+compact,[239] it is sufficient that I know that he is a man, that is to
+say, that he is intelligent and free, in order to know that he has
+rights, and to know that I ought to respect his rights as he ought to
+respect mine. As he is no freer than I am, nor I than he, we recognize
+towards each other equal rights and equal duties. If he abuses his force
+to violate the equality of our rights, I know that I have the right to
+defend myself and make myself respected; and if a third party is found
+between us, without any personal interest in the quarrel, he knows that
+it is his right and his duty to use force in order to protect the
+feeble, and even to make the oppressor expiate his injustice by a
+chastisement. Therein is already seen entire society with its essential
+principles,--justice, liberty, equality, government, and punishment.
+
+Justice is the guaranty of liberty. True liberty does not consist in
+doing what we will, but in doing what we have a right to do. Liberty of
+passion and caprice would have for its consequence the enslavement of
+the weakest to the strongest, and the enslavement of the strongest
+themselves to their unbridled desires. Man is truly free in the interior
+of his consciousness only in resisting passion and obeying justice;
+therein also is the type of true social liberty. Nothing is falser than
+the opinion that society diminishes our mutual liberty; far from that,
+it secures it, develops it: what it suppresses is not liberty; it is its
+opposite, passion. Society no more injures liberty than justice, for
+society is nothing else than the very idea of justice realized.
+
+In securing liberty, justice secures equality also. If men are unequal
+in physical force and intelligence, they are equal in so far as they are
+free beings, and consequently equally worthy of respect. All men, when
+they bear the sacred character of the moral person, are to be respected,
+by the same title, and in the same degree.[240]
+
+The limit of liberty is in liberty itself; the limit of right is in
+duty. Liberty is to be respected, but provided it injure not the liberty
+of an other. I ought to let you do what you please, but on the condition
+that nothing which you do will injure my liberty. For then, in virtue of
+my right of liberty, I should regard myself as obligated to repress the
+aberrations of your will, in order to protect my own and that of others.
+Society guaranties the liberty of each one, and if one citizen attacks
+that of another, he is arrested in the name of liberty. For example,
+religious liberty is sacred; you may, in the secret of consciousness,
+invent for yourself the most extravagant superstition; but if you wish
+publicly to inculcate an immoral worship, you threaten the liberty and
+reason of your citizens: such preaching is interdicted.
+
+From the necessity of repressing springs the necessity of a constituted
+repressive force.
+
+Rigorously, this force is in us; for if I am unjustly attacked, I have
+the right to defend myself. But, in the first place, I may not be the
+strongest; in the second place, no one is an impartial judge in his own
+cause, and what I regard or give out as an act of legitimate defence may
+be an act of violence and oppression.
+
+So the protection of the rights of each one demands an impartial and
+disinterested force, that may be superior to all particular forces.
+
+This disinterested party, armed with the power necessary to secure and
+defend the liberty of all, is called government.
+
+The right of government expresses the rights of all and each. It is the
+right of personal defence transferred to a public force, to the profit
+of common liberty.
+
+Government is not, then, a power distinct from and independent of
+society; it draws from society its whole force. It is not what it has
+seemed to two opposite schools of publicists,--to those who sacrifice
+society to government,--to those who consider government as the enemy of
+society. If government did not represent society, it would be only a
+material, illegitimate, and soon powerless force; and without
+government, society would be a war of all against all. Society makes
+the moral power of government, as government makes the security of
+society. Pascal is wrong[241] when he says, that not being able to make
+what is just powerful, men have made what is powerful just. Government,
+in principle at least, is precisely what Pascal desired,--justice armed
+with force.
+
+It is a sad and false political system that places society and
+government, authority and liberty, in opposition to each other, by
+making them come from two different sources, by presenting them as two
+contrary principles. I often hear the principle of authority spoken of
+as a principle apart, independent, deriving from itself its force and
+legitimacy, and consequently made to rule. No error is deeper and more
+dangerous. Thereby it is thought to confirm the principle of authority;
+far from that, from it is taken away its solidest foundation.
+Authority--that is to say, legitimate and moral authority--is nothing
+else than justice, and justice is nothing else than the respect of
+liberty; so that there is not therein two different and contrary
+opinions, but one and the same principle, of equal certainty and equal
+grandeur, under all its forms and in all its applications.
+
+Authority, it is said, comes from God: doubtless; but whence comes
+liberty, whence comes humanity? To God must be referred every thing that
+is excellent on the earth; and nothing is more excellent than liberty.
+Reason, which in man commands liberty, commands it according to its
+nature; and the first law that reason imposes on liberty is that of
+self-respect.
+
+Authority is so much the stronger as its true title is better
+understood; and obedience is the easiest when, instead of degrading, it
+honors; when, instead of resembling servitude, it is at once the
+condition and guaranty of liberty.
+
+The mission, the end of government, is to make justice, the protector of
+the common liberty, reign. Whence it follows, that as long as the
+liberty of one citizen does not injure the liberty of another, it
+escapes all repression. So government cannot be severe against
+falsehood, intemperance, imprudence, levity, avarice, egoism, except
+when these vices become prejudicial to others. Moreover, it is not
+necessary to confine government within too narrow limits. Government,
+which represents society, is also a moral person; it has a heart like
+the individual; it has generosity, goodness, charity. There are
+legitimate, and even universally admired facts, that are not explained,
+if the function of government is reduced to the protection of rights
+alone.[242] Government owes to the citizens, in a certain measure, to
+guard their well-being, to develop their intelligence, to fortify their
+morality, for the interest of society, and even for the interest of
+humanity. Hence sometimes for government the formidable right of using
+force in order to do good to men. But we are here touching upon that
+delicate point where charity inclines to despotism. Too much
+intelligence and wisdom, therefore, cannot be demanded in the employment
+of a power perhaps necessary, but dangerous.
+
+Now, on what condition is government exercised? Is an act of its own
+will sufficient for it in order to employ to its own liking under all
+circumstances, as it shall understand them, the power that has been
+confided to it? Government must have been thus exercised in early
+society, and in the infancy of the art of governing. But the power,
+exercised by men, may go astray in different ways, either through
+weakness or through excess of force. It must, then, have a rule superior
+to itself, a public and known rule, that may be a lesson for the
+citizens, and for the government a rein and support: that rule is called
+law.
+
+Universal and absolute law is natural justice, which cannot be written,
+but speaks to the reason and heart of all. Written laws are the formulas
+wherein it is sought to express, with the least possible imperfection,
+what natural justice requires in such or such determined circumstances.
+
+If laws propose to express in each thing natural justice, which is
+universal and absolute justice, one of the necessary conditions of a
+good law is the universality of its character. It is necessary to
+examine in an abstract and general manner what is required by justice in
+such or such a case, to the end that this case being presented may be
+judged according to the rule laid down, without regard to circumstances,
+place, time, or person.
+
+The collection of those rules or laws that govern the social relations
+of individuals is called positive right. Positive right rests wholly on
+natural right, which at once serves as its foundation, measure, and
+limit. The supreme law of every positive law is that it be not opposed
+to natural law: no law can impose on us a false duty, nor deprive us of
+a true right.
+
+The sanction of law is punishment. We have already seen that the right
+to punish springs from the idea of demerit.[243] In the universal
+order, to God alone it belongs to apply a punishment to all faults,
+whatever they may be. In the social order, government is invested with
+the right to punish only for the purpose of protecting liberty by
+imposing a just reparation on those who violate it. Every fault that is
+not contrary to justice, and does not strike at liberty, escapes, then,
+social retribution. Neither is the right to punish the right of avenging
+one's self. To render evil for evil, to demand an eye for an eye, a
+tooth for a tooth, is the barbarous form of a justice without light; for
+the evil that I do you will not take away the evil that you have done
+me. It is not the pain felt by the victim that demands a corresponding
+pain; it is violated justice that imposes on the culpable man the
+expiation of suffering. Such is the morality of penalty. The principle
+of penalty is not the reparation of damage caused. If I have caused you
+damage without intending it, I pay you an indemnity; that is not a
+penalty, for I am not culpable; whilst if I have committed a crime, in
+spite of the material indemnity for the evil that I have done, I owe a
+reparation to justice by a proper suffering, and in that truly consists
+the penalty.
+
+What is the exact proportion of chastisements and crimes? This question
+cannot receive an absolute solution. What is here immutable, is that the
+act opposed to justice merits a punishment, and that the more unjust the
+act is, the severer ought to be the punishment. But by the side of the
+right to punish is the duty of correcting. To the culprit must be left
+the possibility of repairing his crime. The culpable man is still a
+man; he is not a thing of which we ought to rid ourselves as soon as it
+becomes injurious, a stone that falls on our heads, that we throw into a
+gulf that it may wound no more. Man is a rational being, capable of
+comprehending good and evil, of repenting, and of being one day
+reconciled with order. These truths have given birth to works that honor
+the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.
+The conception of houses of correction reminds one of those early times
+of Christianity when punishment consisted in an expiation that permitted
+the culprit to return through repentance to the ranks of the just. Here
+intervenes, as we have just indicated, the principle of charity, which
+is very different from the principle of justice. To punish is just, to
+ameliorate is charitable. In what measure ought those two principles to
+be united? Nothing is more delicate, more difficult to determine. It is
+certain that justice ought to govern. In undertaking the amendment of
+the culprit, government usurps, with a very generous usurpation, the
+rights of religion; but it ought not to go so far as to forget its
+proper function and its rigorous duty.
+
+Let us pause on the threshold of politics, properly so called. Nothing
+in them but these principles is fixed and invariable; all else is
+relative. The constitutions of states have something absolute by their
+relation to the inviolable rights which they ought to guarantee; but
+they also have a relative side by the variable forms with which they are
+clothed, according to times, places, manners, history. The supreme rule
+of which philosophy reminds politics, is that politics ought, in
+consulting all circumstances, to seek always those social forms and
+institutions that best realize those eternal principles. Yes, they are
+eternal; because they are drawn from no arbitrary hypothesis, because
+they rest on the immutable nature of man, on the all-powerful instincts
+of the heart, on the indestructible notion of justice, and the sublime
+idea of charity, on the consciousness of person, liberty, and equality,
+on duty and right, on merit and demerit. Such are the foundations of
+all true society, worthy of the beautiful name of human society, that is
+to say, formed of free and rational beings; and such are the maxims that
+ought to direct every government worthy of its mission, which knows that
+it is not dealing with beasts but with men, which respects them and
+loves them.
+
+Thank God, French society has always marched by the light of this
+immortal idea, and the dynasty that has been at its head for some
+centuries has always guided it in these generous ways. It was Louis le
+Gros, who, in the Middle Age, emancipated the communes; it was Philippe
+le Bel who instituted parliaments--an independent and gratuitous
+justice; it was Henri IV. who began religious liberty; it was Louis
+XIII. and Louis XIV. who, while they undertook to give to France her
+natural frontiers, and almost succeeded in it, labored to unite more and
+more all parts of the nation, to put a regular administration in the
+place of feudal anarchy, and to reduce the great vassals to a simple
+aristocracy, from day to day deprived of every privilege but that of
+serving the common country in the first rank. It was a king of France
+who, comprehending the new wants, and associating himself with the
+progress of the times, attempted to substitute for that very real, but
+confused and formless representative government, that was called the
+assemblies of the nobility, the clergy, and the _tiers état_, the true
+representative government that is proper for great civilized nations,--a
+glorious and unfortunate attempt that, if royalty had then been served
+by a Richelieu, a Mazarin, or a Colbert, might have terminated in a
+necessary reform, that, through the fault of every one, ended in a
+revolution full of excess, violence, and crime, redeemed and covered by
+an incomparable courage, a sincere patriotism, and the most brilliant
+triumphs. Finally, it was the brother of Louis XVI. who, enlightened and
+not discouraged by the misfortunes of his family, spontaneously gave to
+France that liberal and wise constitution of which our fathers had
+dreamed, about which Montesquieu had written, which, loyally adhered to,
+and necessarily developed, is admirably fitted for the present time,
+and sufficient for a long future. We are fortunate in finding in the
+Charter the principles that we have just explained, that contain our
+views and our hopes for France and humanity.[244]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[233] See the _Republic_, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation.
+
+[234] On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too
+much accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our
+duties towards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics
+of Helvetius and Saint-Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235: "To define virtue
+an habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, is to
+concentrate virtue into a single one of its applications, is to suppress
+its general and essential character. Therein is the fundamental vice of
+the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those ethics are an exaggerated
+reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of the preceding age,
+which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man, often fell
+into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to
+well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the philosophy of
+the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only
+considered the virtues useful to society. That was retrenching many
+virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self. How
+make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined a _disposition to contribute
+to the happiness of others_? Will it be said that dominion over self is
+useful to others? But that is not always true; often this dominion is
+exercised in the solitude of the soul over internal and wholly personal
+movements; and there it is most painful and most sublime. Were we in a
+desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist our passions, to
+command ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a rational and
+free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither the
+whole of virtue, nor its most difficult employment. What auxiliaries we
+have when the question is to do good to our fellow-creatures,--pity,
+sympathy, natural benevolence! But to resist pride and envy, to combat
+in the depths of the soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often
+culpable in its excesses, to suffer and struggle in silence, is the
+hardest task of a virtuous man. I add that the virtues useful to others
+have their surest guaranty in those personal virtues that the eighteenth
+century misconceived. What are goodness, generosity, and beneficence
+without dominion over self, without the form of soul attached to the
+religious observance of duty? They are, perhaps, only the emotions of a
+beautiful nature placed in fortunate circumstances. Take away these
+circumstances, and, perhaps, the effects will disappear or be
+diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to be a rational and free
+being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain faithful to liberty and
+reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, and pursue, without
+cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circumstances, you
+may rely upon that man; he will know how, in case of need, to be useful
+to others, because there is no true perfection for him without justice
+and charity. From the care of internal perfection you may draw all the
+useful virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One may be
+beneficent without being virtuous; one is not virtuous without being
+beneficent."
+
+[235] On the true foundation of property see the preceding lecture.
+
+[236] Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by
+force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had another the
+desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to
+be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and
+had we also the desire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him
+serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize
+for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, because desire can never be
+the title of a right, because there is something in us that is above all
+desires, participated or not participated, to wit, duty and
+right,--justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires,
+and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity
+forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it
+extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate;
+eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it
+supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed
+and converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right,
+because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no
+contracts, no conventions, no human laws against the law of laws,
+against natural law."
+
+[237] On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge,
+see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: "Hobbes is not the
+only one who took the question of the origin of societies as the
+starting-point of political science. Nearly all the publicists of the
+eighteenth century, Montesquieu excepted, proceed in the same manner.
+Rousseau imagines at first a primitive state in which man being no
+longer savage without being yet civilized, lived happy and free under
+the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden age of humanity
+disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, who
+enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order
+cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in
+the shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is
+formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the abandonment by each
+and all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the
+community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the depository of
+all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for
+Rousseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by turns
+are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the
+despotism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law
+is not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of
+natural justice; it is the expression of the general will. This general
+will is alone free; particular wills are not free. The general will has
+all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on
+them, or rather lends them. Force, in _The Citizen_ is the foundation of
+society, of order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone
+institute. In the _Contrat Social_, the general will plays the same
+part, fulfils the same function. Moreover, the general will scarcely
+differs in itself from force. In fact, the general will is number, that
+is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, tyranny under different
+forms. One may here observe the power of method. If Hobbes, if Rousseau
+especially had at first studied the idea of right in itself, with the
+certain characters without which we are not able to conceive it, they
+would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from
+positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there
+are rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for
+principles and rules; from no convention, since they serve as the
+foundation to all conventions in order that these conventions may be
+reputed just;--rights that society consecrates and develops, but does
+not make,--rights not subject to the caprices of general or particular
+will, belonging essentially to human nature, and like it, inviolable and
+sacred."
+
+[238] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "What!" somewhere says Montesquieu,
+"man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for
+society! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of
+the life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The universal and
+permanent fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This
+principle shines forth in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in
+our beliefs. It is true that we love society for the advantages that it
+brings; but it is none the less true, that we also love it for its own
+sake, that we seek it independently of all calculation. Solitude saddens
+us; it is not less deadly to the life of the moral being, than a perfect
+vacuum is to the life of the physical being. Without society what would
+become of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful principles of our
+soul, which establishes between men a community of sentiments, by which
+each lives in all and all live in each? Who would be blind enough not to
+see in that an energetic call of human nature for society? And the
+attraction of the sexes, their union, the love of parents for
+children,--do they not found a sort of natural society, that is
+increased and developed by the power of the same causes which produced
+it? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect each other in
+the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other in virtue of
+natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right, charity
+inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each other
+succor and consolation. Wonderful thing! God has not left to our wisdom,
+nor even to experience, the care of forming and preserving society,--he
+has willed that sociability should be a law of our nature, and a law so
+imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no distaste even,
+can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of system was
+necessary in order to make Hobbes say that society is an accident, as an
+incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Rousseau the extravagant
+expression that society is an evil."
+
+[239] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283: "We do not hold from a compact our
+quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it; or, rather,
+there is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes
+itself felt by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds
+together all beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the
+sacred ties of a common respect and a common charity.... Laws promulgate
+duties, but do not give birth to them; they could not violate duties
+without being unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of
+laws--that is to say, decisions of the public authority worthy of
+appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. Nevertheless, although
+laws have no other virtue than that of declaring what exists before
+them, we often found on them right and justice, to the great detriment
+of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and habit despoil
+reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What then
+happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a very
+great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having
+no superior principle that enables us to judge it,--or we continually
+change it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not
+knowing the immutable basis on which written law must rest. In either
+case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not related to
+their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and
+absolute justice."
+
+[240] Lecture 12.
+
+[241] See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.
+
+[242] See our pamphlet entitled _Justice and Charity_, composed in 1848,
+in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the
+dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of
+true charity, private and civil.
+
+[243] See on the theory of penalty, the _Gorgias_, vol. iii. of the
+translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: "The first law of order
+is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related
+to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the second
+law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by
+punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty.
+Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of
+the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime
+by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is
+one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for
+punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still
+more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their
+pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment
+except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective
+virtue,--and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment,
+but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must
+be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice.
+Justice is the true foundation of punishment,--personal and social
+utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after
+every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred
+demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to
+the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice
+has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be
+inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought.
+Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident,
+and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only
+that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even
+result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary
+spectacle for the people,--what it would not then be; for then the
+punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public
+conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just,
+because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both
+ways useful, because it is just." This theory of penalty, in
+demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two
+theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives
+them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated
+in Plato, but is met in several passages, briefly but positively
+expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.
+
+[244] As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general
+principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st
+Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the
+civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the
+question of the different forms of government, and established the truth
+and beauty of the constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i.,
+lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental
+parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both
+liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the
+unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a passionate
+reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best,
+asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to
+serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the
+principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we
+demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in
+particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be
+obtained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,--6th Series,
+POLITICAL DISCOURSES, _with an introduction on the principles of the
+French Revolution and representative government_.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD.
+
+    Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation
+    of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty
+    of God.--The divine justice and charity.--God the sanction of
+    the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and
+    demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from
+    final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Worship.--Moral
+    beauty of Christianity.
+
+
+The moral order has been confirmed,--we are in possession of moral
+truth, of the idea of the good, and the obligation that is attached to
+it. Now, the same principle that has not permitted us to stop at
+absolute truth,[245] and has forced us to seek its supreme reason in a
+real and substantial being, forces us here again to refer the idea of
+the good to the being who is its first and last foundation.
+
+Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, cannot
+remain in a state of abstraction. In us it is only conceived. There must
+somewhere be a being who not only conceives it, but constituted it.
+
+As all beautiful things and all true things are related--these to a
+unity that is absolute truth, and those to another unity that is
+absolute beauty, so all moral principles participate in the same
+principle, which is the good. We thus elevate ourselves to the
+conception of the good in itself, of absolute good, superior to all
+particular duties, and determined in these duties. Now, can the absolute
+good be any thing else than an attribute of him who, properly speaking,
+is alone absolute being?
+
+Would it be possible that there might be several absolute beings, and
+that the being in whom are realized absolute truth and absolute beauty
+might not also be the one who is the principle of absolute good? The
+very idea of the absolute implies absolute unity. The true, the
+beautiful, and the good, are not three distinct essences; they are one
+and the same essence considered in its fundamental attributes. Our mind
+distinguishes them, because it can comprehend them only by division;
+but, in the being in whom they reside, they are indivisibly united; and
+this being at once triple and one, who sums up in himself perfect
+beauty, perfect truth, and the supreme good, is nothing else than God.
+
+So God is necessarily the principle of moral truth and the good. He is
+also the type of the moral person that we carry in us.
+
+Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed with reason and
+liberty. He is capable of virtue, and virtue has in him two principal
+forms, respect of others, and love of others, justice and charity.
+
+Can there be among the attributes possessed by the creature something
+essential not possessed by the Creator? Whence does the effect draw its
+reality and its being, except from its cause? What it possesses, it
+borrows and receives. The cause at least contains all that is essential
+in the effect. What particularly belongs to the effect, is inferiority,
+is a lack, is imperfection: from the fact alone that it is dependent and
+derived, it bears in itself the signs and the conditions of dependence.
+If, then, we cannot legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the
+effect in that of the cause, we can and must conclude from the
+excellence of the effect in the perfection of the cause, otherwise there
+would be something prominent in the effect which would be without cause.
+
+Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new nor subtle;
+but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged and elucidated, and it is,
+to our eyes, firm against every test. It is by the aid of this
+principle that we can, up to a certain point, penetrate into the true
+nature of God.
+
+God is not a being of logic, whose nature can be explained by way of
+deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out from a
+first attribute, we have deduced the attributes of God from each other,
+after the manner of geometricians and the schoolmen, what do we
+possess,[246] I pray you, but abstractions? It is necessary to leave
+these vain dialectics in order to arrive at a real and living God.
+
+The first notion that we have of God, to wit, the notion of an infinite
+being, is itself given to us independently of all experience. It is the
+consciousness of ourselves, as being at once, and as being limited, that
+elevates us directly to the conception of a being who is the principle
+of our being, and is himself without bounds. This solid and single
+argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes,[247] opens to us a way
+that must be followed, in which Descartes too quickly stopped. If the
+being that we possess forces us to recur to a cause which possesses
+being in an infinite degree, all that we have of being, that is to say,
+of substantial attributes, equally requires an infinite cause. Then, God
+will no longer be merely the infinite, abstract, or at least
+indeterminate being in which reason and the heart know not where to
+betake themselves,[248] he will be a real and determined being, a moral
+person like ours and psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a
+theodicea at once sublime and related to us.[249]
+
+Before all, if man is free, can it be that God is not free? No one
+contends that he who is cause of all causes, who has no cause but
+himself, can be dependent on any thing whatever. But in freeing God from
+all external constraint, Spinoza subjects him to an internal and
+mathematical necessity, wherein he finds the perfection of being. Yes,
+of being which is not a person; but the essential character of personal
+being is precisely liberty. If, then, God were not free, God would be
+beneath man. Would it not be strange that the creature should have the
+marvellous power of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and
+that the being who has made him should be subjected to a necessary
+development, whose cause is only in himself, without doubt, but, in
+fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical or metaphysical, but very
+inferior to the personal and voluntary cause that we are, and of which
+we have the clearest consciousness? God is therefore free, since we are
+free. But he is not free as we are free; for God is at once all that we
+are, and nothing that we are. He possesses the same attributes that we
+possess, but elevated to infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty,
+joined to an infinite intelligence; and, as his intelligence is
+infallible, excepted from the uncertainties of deliberation, and
+perceiving at a glance where the good is, so his liberty spontaneously,
+and without effort, fulfils it.[250]
+
+In the same manner as we transfer to God the liberty that is the
+foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and charity. In
+man, justice and charity are virtues; in God, they are attributes. What
+is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, is in him his very nature.
+If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and the sign
+of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that the perfect being
+should not know and respect the rights of the lowest beings, since it is
+he, moreover, who has imparted to them those rights. In God resides a
+sovereign justice, which renders to each one his due, not according to
+deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, if
+man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, of
+forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of devoting
+himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of
+another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite degree, this
+disinterested tenderness, this charity, the supreme virtue of the human
+person? Yes, there is in God an infinite tenderness for his creatures:
+he at first manifested it in giving us the being that he might have
+withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable signs of his
+divine providence. Plato knew this love of God well, and expressed it in
+those great words, "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme
+ordainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; and
+he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, he willed that
+all things should be, as much as possible, like himself."[251]
+Christianity went farther: according to the divine doctrine, God so
+loved men that he gave them his only Son. God is inexhaustible in his
+charity, as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to give
+more to the creature; he gives him every thing that he can receive
+without ceasing to be a creature; he gives him every thing, even
+himself, so far as the creature is in him and he in the creature. At the
+same time nothing can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally
+expands and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power,
+infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon
+the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we possess. It is
+egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart, even by the side of
+the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we lose by
+self-devotion: it is egoism that makes us call devotion a sacrifice.
+
+If God is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing but what is
+good and just; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing that he wills he
+can do, and consequently does do. The world is the work of God; it is
+therefore perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end.
+
+And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that seems to accuse
+the justice and goodness of God.
+
+A principle that is attached to the very idea of the good, says to us
+that every moral agent deserves a reward when he does good, and a
+punishment when he does evil. This principle is universal and necessary:
+it is absolute. If this principle has not its application in this world,
+it must either be a lie, or this world is ordered ill.
+
+Now, it is a fact that the good is not always followed by happiness, nor
+evil always by unhappiness.
+
+Let us, in the first place, remark that if the fact exists, it is rare
+enough, and seems to present the character of an exception.
+
+Virtue is a struggle against passion; this struggle, full of dignity, is
+also full of pain; but, on one side, crime is condemned to much harder
+pains; on the other, those of virtue are of short duration; they are a
+necessary and almost always beneficent trial.
+
+Virtue has its pains, but the greatest happiness is still with it, as
+the greatest unhappiness is with crime; and such is the case in small
+and great, in the secret of the soul, and on the theatre of life, in the
+obscurest conditions and in the most conspicuous situations.
+
+Good and bad health are, after all, the greatest part of happiness or
+unhappiness. In this regard, compare temperance and its opposite, order
+and disorder, virtue and vice; I mean a temperance truly temperate, and
+not an atrabilarious asceticism, a rational virtue, and not a fierce
+virtue.
+
+The great physician Hufeland[252] remarks that the benevolent sentiments
+are favorable to health, and that the malevolent sentiments are opposed
+to it. Violent and sinful passions irritate, inflame, and carry trouble
+into the organization as well as the soul; the benevolent affections
+preserve the measured and harmonious play of all the functions.
+
+Hufeland again remarks that the greatest longevities pertain to wise and
+well-regulated lives.
+
+Thus, for health, strength, and life, virtue is better than vice: it is
+already much, it seems to me.
+
+I surely mean to speak of conscience only after health; but, in fine,
+with the body, our most constant host is conscience. Peace or trouble of
+conscience decides internal happiness or unhappiness. At this point of
+view, compare again order and disorder, virtue and vice.
+
+And without us, in society, to whom come esteem and contempt,
+consideration and infamy? Certainly opinion has its mistakes, but they
+are not long. In general, if charlatans, intriguers, impostors of every
+kind, for some time surreptitiously get suffrages, it must be that a
+sustained honesty is the surest and the almost infallible means of
+reaching a good renown.
+
+I regret that upon this point time does not allow of any development. It
+would have afforded me delight, after having distinguished virtue from
+happiness, to show them to you almost always united by the admirable law
+of merit and demerit. I should have been pleased to show you this
+beneficent law already governing human destiny, and called to preside
+over it more exactly from day to day by the ever-increasing progress of
+lights in governments and peoples, by the perfecting of civil and
+judicial institutions. It would have been my wish to make pass into your
+minds and hearts the consoling conviction that, after all, justice is
+already in this world, and that the surest road to happiness is still
+that of virtue.
+
+This was the opinion of Socrates and Plato; and it is also that of
+Franklin, and I gather it from my personal experience and an attentive
+examination of human life. But I admit that there are exceptions; and
+were there but one exception, it would be necessary to explain it.
+
+Suppose a man, young, beautiful, rich, amiable, and loved, who, placed
+between the scaffold and the betrayal of a sacred cause, voluntarily
+mounts the scaffold at twenty years of age. What do you make of this
+noble victim? The law of merit and demerit seems here suspended. Do you
+dare blame virtue, or how in this world do you accord to it the
+recompense that it has not sought, but is its due?
+
+By careful search you will find more than one case analogous to that.
+
+The laws of this world are general; they turn aside to suit no one: they
+pursue their course without regard to the merit or demerit of any. If a
+man is born with a bad temperament, it is in virtue of certain obscure
+but undeviating physical laws, to which he is subject, like the animal
+and the plant, and he suffers during his whole life, although personally
+innocent. He is brought up in the midst of flames, epidemics, calamities
+that strike at hazard the good as well as the bad.
+
+Human justice condemns many that are innocent, it is true, but it
+absolves, in fault of proof, more than one who is culpable. Besides, it
+knows only certain derelictions. What faults, what basenesses occur in
+the dark, which do not receive merited chastisement! In like manner,
+what obscure devotions of which God is the sole witness and judge!
+Without doubt nothing escapes the eye of conscience, and the culpable
+soul cannot escape remorse. But remorse is not always in exact relation
+with the fault committed; its vivacity may depend on a nature more or
+less delicate, on education and habit. In a word, if it is in general
+very true that the law of merit and demerit is fulfilled in this world,
+it is not fulfilled with mathematical rigor.
+
+What must we conclude from this? That the world is ill-made? No. That
+cannot be, and is not. That cannot be, for incontestably the world has a
+just and good author; that is not, for, in fact, we see order reigning
+in the world; and it would be absurd to misconceive the manifest order
+that almost everywhere shines forth on account of a few phenomena that
+we cannot refer to order. The universe endures, therefore it is well
+made. The pessimism of Voltaire is still more opposed to the aggregate
+of facts than an absolute optimism. Between these two systematic
+extremes which facts deny, the human race places the hope of another
+life. It has found it very irrational to reject a necessary law on
+account of some infractions; it has, therefore, maintained the law; and
+from infractions it has only concluded that they ought to be referred to
+the law, that there will be a reparation. Either this conclusion must be
+admitted, or the two great principles previously admitted, that God is
+just, and that the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be
+rejected.
+
+Now, to reject these two principles is to totally overthrow all human
+belief.
+
+To maintain them, is implicitly to admit that actual life must be,
+elsewhere terminated or continued.
+
+But is this continuation of the person possible? After the dissolution
+of the body, can any thing of us remain?
+
+In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which awaits the
+reward or punishment of its good or bad actions, is united to a
+body,--it lives with the body, makes use of it, and, in a certain
+measure, depends on it, but is not it.[253] The body is composed of
+parts, may decrease or increase; is divisible, essentially divisible,
+and even infinitely divisible. But that something that has consciousness
+of itself, that says, _I_, _me_, that feels itself to be free and
+responsible, does it not also feel that there is in it no division,
+even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple? Is the
+_me_ more or less _me_? Is there a half of _me_, a quarter of _me_? I
+cannot divide my person. It remains identical to itself under the
+diversity of the phenomena that manifest it. This identity, this
+indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. Spirituality is,
+therefore, the very essence of the person. Belief in the spirituality of
+the soul is involved in the belief of this identity of the _me_, which
+no rational being has ever called in question. Accordingly, there is not
+the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul does not essentially
+differ from the body. Add that when we say the soul, we mean to say, and
+do say the person, which is not separated from the consciousness of the
+attributes that constitute it, thought and will. The being without
+consciousness is not a person. It is the person that is identical, one,
+simple. Its attributes, in developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible,
+it is indissoluble, and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in
+order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, it does
+not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the soul is the
+necessary foundation of immortality. The law of merit and demerit is the
+direct demonstration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysical
+proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most celebrated, most
+popular, at once the most convincing and the most persuasive.
+
+What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to fortify them in
+the heart! The following, for example, is a presumption of great value
+for any one that believes in the virtue of sentiment and instinct.
+
+Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute as that which
+refers every event to a cause.[254] Man has, therefore, an end. This end
+is revealed in all his thoughts, in all his ways, in all his sentiments,
+in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he
+thinks, he thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, tends to the
+infinite.[255] This need of the infinite is the mainspring of scientific
+curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love also stops and rests
+only there. On the route it may experience lively joys; but a secret
+bitterness that is mingled with them soon makes it feel their
+insufficiency and emptiness. Often, while ignorant of its true object,
+it asks whence comes that fatal disenchantment by which all its
+successes, all its pleasures are successively extinguished. If it knew
+how to read itself, it would recognize that if nothing here below
+satisfies it, it is because its object is more elevated, because the
+true bourne after which it aspires is infinite perfection. Finally, like
+thought and love, human activity is without limits. Who can say where it
+shall stop? Behold this earth almost known. Soon another world will be
+necessary for us. Man is journeying towards the infinite, which is
+always receding before him, which he always pursues. He conceives it, he
+feels it, he bears it, thus to speak, in himself,--how should his end be
+elsewhere? Hence that unconquerable instinct of immortality, that
+universal hope of another life to which all worships, all poesies, all
+traditions bear witness. We tend to the infinite with all our powers;
+death comes to interrupt the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes
+it unfinished. It is, therefore, likely that there is something after
+death, since at death nothing in us is terminated. Look at the flower
+that to-morrow will not be. To-day, at least, it is entirely developed:
+we can conceive nothing more beautiful of its kind; it has attained its
+perfection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of which I have the
+clearest idea and the most invincible need, for which I feel that I am
+born,--in vain I call for it, in vain I labor for it; it escapes me, and
+leaves me only hope. Shall this hope be deceived? All beings attain
+their end; should man alone not attain his? Should the greatest of
+creatures be the most ill-treated? But a being that should remain
+incomplete and unfinished, that should not attain the end which all his
+instincts proclaim for him, would be a monster in the eternal order,--a
+problem much more difficult to solve than the difficulties that have
+been raised against the immortality of the soul. In our opinion, this
+tendency of all the desires and all the powers of the soul towards the
+infinite, elucidated by the principle of final causes, is a serious and
+important confirmation of the moral proof and the metaphysical proof of
+another life.
+
+When we have collected all the arguments that authorize belief in
+another life, and when we have thus arrived at a satisfying
+demonstration, there remains an obstacle to be overcome. Imagination
+cannot contemplate without fright that unknown which is called death.
+The greatest philosopher in the world, says Pascal, on a plank wider
+than it is necessary in order to go without danger from one side of an
+abyss to the other, cannot think without trembling on the abyss that is
+beneath him. It is not reason, it is imagination that frightens him; it
+is also imagination that in great part causes that remnant of doubt,
+that trouble, that secret anxiety which the firmest faith cannot always
+succeed in overcoming in the presence of death. The religious man
+experiences this terror, but he knows whence it comes, and he surmounts
+it by attaching himself to the solid hopes furnished him by reason and
+the heart. Imagination is a child that must be educated, by putting it
+under the discipline and government of better faculties; it must be
+accustomed to go to intelligence for aid instead of troubling
+intelligence with its phantoms. Let us acknowledge that there is a
+terrible step to be taken when we meet death. Nature trembles when face
+to face with the unknown eternity. It is wise to present ourselves there
+with all our forces united,--reason and the heart lending each other
+mutual support, the imagination being subdued or charmed. Let us
+continually repeat that, in death as in life, the soul is sure to find
+God, and that with God all is just, all is good.[256]
+
+We now know what God truly is. We have already seen two of his adorable
+attributes,--truth and beauty. The most august attribute is revealed to
+us,--holiness. God is the holy of holies, as the author of the moral law
+and the good, as the principle of liberty, justice, and charity, as the
+dispenser of penalty and reward. Such a God is not an abstract God, but
+an intelligent and free person, who has made us in his own image, from
+whom we hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose
+judgments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our acts of
+charity; it is his justice that governs our justice, that of our
+societies and our laws. If we do not continually remind ourselves that
+he is infinite, we degrade his nature; but he would be for us as if he
+were not, if his infinite essence had no forms that pertain to us, the
+proper forms of our reason and our soul.
+
+By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment that is _par
+excellence_ the religious sentiment. All the beings with whom we are in
+relation awaken in us different sentiments, according to the qualities
+that we perceive in them; and should he who possesses all perfections
+excite in us no particular sentiment? When we think upon the infinite
+essence of God, when we are penetrated with his omnipotence, when we are
+reminded that the moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the
+fulfilment and the violation of this law recompenses and penalties which
+he dispenses with an inflexible justice, we cannot guard ourselves
+against an emotion of respect and fear at the idea of such a grandeur.
+Then, if we come to consider that this all-powerful being has indeed
+wished to create us, us of whom he has no need, that in creating us he
+has loaded us with benefits, that he has given us this admirable
+universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, society for ennobling our
+life in that of our fellow-men, reason for thinking, the heart for
+loving, liberty for acting; without disappearing, respect and fear are
+tinged with a sweeter sentiment, that of love. Love, when it is applied
+to feeble and limited beings, inspires us with a desire to do good to
+them; but in itself it proposes to itself no advantage from the person
+loved; we love a beautiful or good object, because it is beautiful or
+good, without at first regarding whether this love may be useful to its
+object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, love, when it ascends
+to God, is a pure homage rendered to his perfections; it is the natural
+overflow of the soul towards a being infinitely lovable.
+
+Respect and love compose adoration. True adoration does not exist
+without possessing both of these sentiments. If you consider only the
+all-powerful God, master of heaven and earth, author and avenger of
+justice, you crush man beneath the weight of the grandeur of God and his
+own feebleness, you condemn him to a continual trembling in the
+uncertainty of God's judgments, you make him hate the world, life, and
+himself, for every thing is full of misery. Towards this extreme,
+Port-Royal inclines. Read the _Pensées de Pascal_.[257] In his great
+humility, Pascal forgets two things,--the dignity of man and the love of
+God. On the other hand, if you see only the good God and the indulgent
+father, you incline to a chimerical mysticism. By substituting love for
+fear, little by little with fear, we run the risk of losing respect. God
+is no more a master, he is no more even a father; for the idea of a
+father still to a certain point involves that of a respectful fear; he
+is no more any thing but a friend, sometimes even a lover. True
+adoration does not separate love and respect; it is respect animated by
+love.
+
+Adoration is a universal sentiment. It differs in degrees according to
+different natures; it takes the most different forms; it is often even
+ignorant of itself; sometimes it is revealed by an exclamation springing
+from the heart, in the midst of the great scenes of nature and life,
+sometimes it silently rises in the mute and penetrated soul; it may err
+in its expressions, even in its object; but at bottom it is always the
+same. It is a spontaneous, irresistible emotion of the soul; and when
+reason is applied to it, it is declared just and legitimate. What, in
+fact, is more just than to fear the judgments of him who is holiness
+itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and will judge them
+according to the highest justice? What, too, is more just than to love
+perfect goodness and the source of all love? Adoration is at first a
+natural sentiment; reason makes it a duty.
+
+Adoration confined to the sanctuary of the soul is what is called
+internal worship--the necessary principle of all public worships.
+
+Public worship is no more an arbitrary institution than society and
+government, language and arts. All these things have their roots in
+human nature. Adoration abandoned to itself, would easily degenerate
+into dreams and ecstasy, or would be dissipated in the rush of affairs
+and the necessities of every day. The more energetic it is, the more it
+tends to express itself outwardly in acts that realize it, to take a
+sensible, precise, and regular form, which, by a proper reaction on the
+sentiment that produced it, awakens it when it slumbers, sustains it
+when it languishes, and also protects it against extravagances of every
+kind to which it might give birth in so many feeble or unbridled
+imaginations. Philosophy, then, lays the natural foundation of public
+worship in the internal worship of adoration. Having arrived at that
+point, it stops, equally careful not to betray its rights and not to go
+beyond them, to run over, in its whole extent and to its farthest limit,
+the domain of natural reason, as well as not to usurp a foreign domain.
+
+But philosophy does not think of trespassing on the ground of theology;
+it wishes to remain faithful to itself, and also to follow its true
+mission, which is to love and favor every thing that tends to elevate
+man, since it heartily applauds the awakening of religious and Christian
+sentiment in all noble souls, after the ravages that have been made on
+every hand, for more than a century, by a false and sad philosophy.
+What, in fact, would not have been the joy of a Socrates and a Plato if
+they had found the human race in the arms of Christianity! How happy
+would Plato--who was so evidently embarrassed between his beautiful
+doctrines and the religion of his times, who managed so carefully with
+that religion even when he avoided it, who was forced to take from it
+the best possible part, in order to aid a favorable interpretation of
+his doctrine--have been, if he had had to do with a religion which
+presents to man, as at once its author and its model, the sublime and
+mild Crucified, of whom he had an extraordinary presentiment, whom he
+almost described in the person of a just man dying on the cross;[258] a
+religion which came to announce, or at least to consecrate and expand
+the idea of the unity of God and that of the unity of the human race;
+which proclaims the equality of all souls before the divine law, which
+thereby has prepared and maintains civil equality; which prescribes
+charity still more than justice, which teaches man that he does not live
+by bread alone, that he is not wholly contained in his senses and his
+body, that he has a soul, a free soul, whose value is infinite, above
+the value of all worlds, that life is a trial, that its true object is
+not pleasure, fortune, rank, none of those things that do not pertain to
+our real destiny, and are often more dangerous than useful, but is that
+alone which is always in our power, in all situations and all
+conditions, from end to end of the earth, to wit, the improvement of the
+soul by itself, in the holy hope of becoming from day to day less
+unworthy of the regard of the Father of men, of the examples given by
+him, and of his promises. If the greatest moralist that ever lived could
+have seen these admirable teachings, which in germ were already at the
+foundation of his spirit, of which more than one trait can be found in
+his works, if he had seen them consecrated, maintained, continually
+recalled to the heart and imagination of man by sublime and touching
+institutions, what would have been his tender and grateful sympathy for
+such a religion! If he had come in our own times, in that age given up
+to revolutions, in which the best souls were early infected by the
+breath of skepticism, in default of the faith of an Augustine, of an
+Anselm, of a Thomas, of a Bossuet, he would have had, we doubt not, the
+sentiments at least of a Montesquieu,[259] of a Turgot,[260] of a
+Franklin,[261] and very far from putting the Christian religion and a
+good philosophy at war with each other, he would have been forced to
+unite them, to elucidate and fortify them by each other. That great mind
+and that great heart, which dictated to him the _Phedon_, the _Gorgias_,
+the _Republic_, would also have taught him that such books are made for
+a few sages, that there is needed for the human race a philosophy at
+once similar and different, that this philosophy is a religion, and that
+this desirable and necessary religion is the Gospel. We do not hesitate
+to say that, without religion, philosophy, reduced to what it can
+laboriously draw from perfected natural reason, addresses itself to a
+very small number, and runs the risk of remaining without much influence
+on manners and life; and that, without philosophy, the purest religion
+is no security against many superstitions, which little by little bring
+all the rest, and for that reason it may see the best minds escaping its
+influence, as was the case in the eighteenth century. The alliance
+between true religion and true philosophy is, then, at once natural and
+necessary; natural by the common basis of the truths which they
+acknowledge; necessary for the better service of humanity. Philosophy
+and religion differ only in the forms that distinguish, without
+separating them. Another auditory, other forms, and another language.
+When St. Augustine speaks to all the faithful in the church of Hippone,
+do not seek in him the subtile and profound metaphysician who combated
+the Academicians with their own arms, who supports himself on the
+Platonic theory of ideas, in order to explain the creation. Bossuet, in
+the treatise _De la Connaissance de Dieu et Soi-même_, is no longer,
+and at the same time he is always, the author of the _Sermons_, of the
+_Elévations_, and the incomparable _Catéchisme de Meaux_. To separate
+religion and philosophy has always been, on one side or the other, the
+pretension of small, exclusive, and fanatical minds; the duty, more
+imperative now than ever, of whomsoever has for either a serious and
+enlightened love, is to bring together and unite, instead of dividing
+and wasting the powers of the mind and the soul, in the interest of the
+common cause and the great object which the Christian religion and
+philosophy pursue, each in its own way,--I mean the moral grandeur of
+humanity.[262]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[245] Lectures 4 and 7.
+
+[246] Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without
+excepting the best--that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most
+popular of all, the _Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard_. See our
+small work entitled _Philosophie Populaire_, 3d edition, p. 82.
+
+[247] On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st, lecture 4; see
+also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture
+6.
+
+[248] _Fragments de Philosophie Cartésienne_, p. 24: "The infinite
+being, inasmuch as infinite, is not a mover, a cause; neither is he,
+inasmuch as infinite, an intelligence; neither is he a will; neither is
+he a principle of justice, nor much less a principle of love. We have no
+right to impute to him all these attributes in virtue of the single
+argument that every contingent being supposes a being that is not so,
+that every finite supposes an infinite. The God given by this argument
+is the God of Spinoza, is rigorously so; but he is almost as though he
+were not, at least for us who with difficulty perceive him in the
+inaccessible heights of an eternity and existence that are absolute,
+void of thought, of liberty, of love, similar to nonentity itself, and a
+thousand times inferior, in his infinity and eternity, to an hour of our
+finite and perishable existence, if during this fleeting hour we know
+what we are, if we think, if we love something else than ourselves, if
+we feel capable of freely sacrificing to an idea the few minutes that
+have been accorded to us."
+
+[249] This theodicea is here _in résumé_, and in the 4th and 5th
+lectures of part first, as well as in the lecture that follows. The most
+important of our different writings, on this point, will be found
+collected and elucidated by each other, in the Appendix to the 5th
+lecture of the first volume of the 1st Series.--See our translation of
+this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, under the title of the History
+of Modern Philosophy.
+
+[250] 3d Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition: "Without
+vain subtilty, there is a real distinction between free will and
+spontaneous liberty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with the appearance
+of deliberation between different objects, and under this supreme
+condition, that when, as a consequence of deliberation, we resolve to do
+this or that, we have the immediate consciousness of having been able,
+and of being able still, to will the contrary. It is in volition, and in
+the retinue of phenomena which surround it, that liberty more
+energetically appears, but it is not thereby exhausted. It is at rare
+and sublime moments in which liberty is as much greater as it appears
+less to the eyes of a superficial observation. I have often cited the
+example of d'Assas. D'Assas did not deliberate; and for all that, was
+d'Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty? Has the saint
+who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has come to practise,
+as it were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which are repugnant
+to human weakness; has the saint, in order to have gone out from the
+contradictions and the anguish of this form of liberty which we called
+volition, fallen below it instead of being elevated above it; and is he
+nothing more than a blind and passive instrument of grace, as Luther and
+Calvin have inappropriately wished to call it, by an excessive
+interpretation of the Augustinian doctrine? No, freedom still remains;
+and far from being annihilated, its liberty, in being purified, is
+elevated and ennobled; from the human form of volition it has passed to
+the almost divine form of spontaneity. Spontaneity is essentially free,
+although it may be accompanied with no deliberation, and although often,
+in the rapid motion of its inspired action, it escapes its own
+observation, and leaves scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness.
+Let us transfer this exact psychology to theodicea, and we may recognize
+without hypothesis, that spontaneity is also especially the form of
+God's liberty. Yes, certainly, God is free; for, among other proofs, it
+would be absurd that there should be less freedom in the first cause
+than in one of its effects, humanity; God is free, but not with that
+liberty which is related to our double nature, and made to contend
+against passion and error, and painfully to engender virtue and our
+imperfect knowledge; he is free, with a liberty that is related to his
+own divine nature, that is a liberty unlimited, infinite, recognizing no
+obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good and evil, between
+reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, consequently,
+cannot will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he could
+take what we call the bad part? This very supposition is impious. It is
+necessary to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has
+acted freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the
+consciousness of having been able to choose the other part. His nature,
+all-powerful, all-just, all-wise, is developed with that spontaneity
+which contains entire liberty, and excludes at once the efforts and the
+miseries of volition, and the mechanical operation of necessity. Such is
+the principle and the true character of the divine action."
+
+[251] _Timæus_, p. 119, vol. xii. of our translation.
+
+[252] _De l'Art de prolonger sa Vie_, etc.
+
+[253] On the spirituality of the soul, see all our writings. We will
+limit ourselves to two citations. 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 25, p.
+859: "It is impossible to know any phenomenon of consciousness, the
+phenomena of sensation, or volition, or of intelligence, without
+instantly referring them to a subject one and identical, which is the
+_me_; so we cannot know the external phenomena of resistance, of
+solidity, of impenetrability, of figure, of color, of smell, of taste,
+etc., without judging that these are not phenomena in appearance, but
+phenomena which belong to something real, which is solid, impenetrable,
+figured, colored, odorous, savory, etc. On the other hand, if you did
+not know any of the phenomena of consciousness, you would never have the
+least idea of the subject of these phenomena; if you did not know any of
+the external phenomena of resistance, of solidity, of impenetrability,
+of figure, of color, etc., you would not have any idea of the subject of
+these phenomena: therefore the characters, whether of the phenomena of
+consciousness, or of exterior phenomena, are for you the only signs of
+the nature of the subjects of these phenomena. In examining the
+phenomena which fall under the senses, we find between them grave
+differences upon which it is useless here to insist, and which establish
+the distinction of primary qualities and of secondary qualities. In the
+first rank among the primary qualities is solidity, which is given to
+you in the sensation of resistance, and inevitably accompanied by form,
+etc. On the contrary, when you examine the phenomena of consciousness,
+you do not therein find this character of resistance, of solidity, of
+form, etc.; you do not find that the phenomena of your consciousness
+have a figure, solidity, impenetrability, resistance; without speaking
+of secondary qualities which are equally foreign to them, color, savor,
+sound, smell, etc. Now, as the subject is for us only the collection of
+the phenomena which reveal it to us, together with its own existence in
+so far as the subject of the inherence of these phenomena, it follows
+that, under phenomena marked with dissimilar characters and entirely
+foreign to each other, the human mind conceives dissimilar and foreign
+subjects. Thus as solidity and figure have nothing in common with
+sensation, will, and thought, as every solid is extended for us, and as
+we place it necessarily in space, while our thoughts, our volitions, our
+sensations, are for us unextended, and while we cannot conceive them and
+place them in space, but only in time, the human mind concludes with
+perfect strictness that the subject of the exterior phenomena has the
+character of the latter, and that the subject of the phenomena of
+consciousness has the character of the former; that the one is solid and
+extended, and that the other is neither solid nor extended. Finally, as
+that which is solid and extended is divisible, and as that which is
+neither solid nor extended is indivisible, hence divisibility is
+attributed to the solid and extended subject, and indivisibility
+attributed to the subject which is neither extended nor solid. Who of
+us, in fact, does not believe himself an indivisible being, one and
+identical, the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow? Well, the word
+body, the word matter, signifies nothing else than the subject of
+external phenomena, the most eminent of which are form, impenetrability,
+solidity, extension, divisibility. The word mind, the word soul,
+signifies nothing else than the subject of the phenomena of
+consciousness, thought, will, sensation, phenomena simple, unextended,
+not solid, etc. Behold the whole idea of spirit, and the whole idea of
+matter! See, therefore, all that must be done in order to bring back
+matter to spirit, and spirit to matter: it is necessary to pretend that
+sensation, volition, thought, are reducible in the last analysis to
+solidity, extension, figure, divisibility, etc., or that solidity,
+extension, figure, etc., are reducible to thought, volition, sensation."
+1st Series, vol. iii., lecture I, _Locke_. "Locke pretends that we
+cannot be certain _by the contemplation of our own ideas_, that matter
+cannot think; on the contrary, it is in the contemplation itself of our
+ideas that we clearly perceive that matter and thought are incompatible.
+What is thinking? Is it not uniting a certain number of ideas under a
+certain unity? The simplest judgment supposes several terms united in a
+subject, one and identical, which is _me_. This identical _me_ is
+implied in every real act of knowledge. It has been demonstrated to
+satiety that comparison exacts an indivisible centre that comprises the
+different terms of the comparison. Do you take memory? There is no
+memory possible without the continuation of the same subject that refers
+to self the different modifications by which it has been successively
+affected. Finally, consciousness, that indispensable condition of
+intelligence,--is it not the sentiment of a single being? This is the
+reason why each man cannot think without saying _me_, without affirming
+that he is himself the identical and one subject of his thoughts. I am
+_me_ and always _me_, as you are always yourself in the most different
+acts of your life. You are not more yourself to-day than you were
+yesterday, and you are not less yourself to-day than you were yesterday.
+This identity and this indivisible unity of the _me_ inseparable from
+the least thought, is what is called its spirituality, in opposition to
+the evident and necessary characters of matter. By what, in fact, do you
+know matter? It is especially by form, by extension, by something solid
+that stops you, that resists you in different points of space. But is
+not a solid essentially divisible? Take the most subtile fluids,--can
+you help conceiving them as more or less susceptible of division? All
+thought has its different elements like matter, but in addition it has
+its unity in the thinking subject, and the subject being taken away,
+which is one, the total phenomenon no longer exists. Far from that, the
+unknown subject to which we attach material phenomena is divisible, and
+divisible _ad infinitum_; it cannot cease to be divisible without
+ceasing to exist. Such are the ideas that we have, on the one side, of
+mind, on the other, of matter. Thought supposes a subject essentially
+one; matter is infinitely divisible. What is the need of going farther?
+If any conclusion is legitimate, it is that which distinguishes thought
+from matter. God can indeed make them exist together, and their
+co-existence is a certain fact, but he cannot confound them. God can
+unite thought and matter, he cannot make matter thought, nor what is
+extended simple."
+
+[254] See 1st part, lecture 1.
+
+[255] See lecture 5, _Mysticism_.
+
+[256] 4th Series, vol. iii., _Santa-Rosa_: "After all, the existence of
+a divine Providence is, to my eyes, a truth clearer than all lights,
+more certain than all mathematics. Yes, there is a God, a God who is a
+true intelligence, who consequently has a consciousness of himself, who
+has made and ordered every thing with weight and measure, whose works
+are excellent, whose ends are adorable, even when they are veiled from
+our feeble eyes. This world has a perfect author, perfectly wise and
+good. Man is not an orphan; he has a father in heaven. What will this
+father do with his child when he returns to him? Nothing but what is
+good. Whatever happens, all will be well. Every thing that he has done
+has been done well; every thing that he shall do, I accept beforehand,
+and bless. Yes, such is my unalterable faith, and this faith is my
+support, my refuge, my consolation, my solace in this fearful moment."
+
+[257] See our discussion on the _Pensées de Pascal_, vol. i. of the 4th
+Series.
+
+[258] See the end of the first book of the _Republic_, vol. ix. of our
+translation.
+
+[259] _Esprit des Lois_, _passim_.
+
+[260] Works of Turgot, vol. ii., _Discours en Sorbonne sur les Avantages
+que l'établissement du Christianism a procurés au Genre Humain_, etc.
+
+[261] In the _Correspondence_, the letter to Dr. Stiles, March 9, 1790,
+written by Franklin a few months before his death: "I am convinced that
+the moral and religious system which Jesus Christ has transmitted to us
+is the best that the world has seen or can see."--We here re-translate,
+not having the works of Franklin immediately at hand.
+
+[262] We have not ceased to claim, to earnestly call for, the alliance
+between Christianity and philosophy, as well as the alliance between the
+monarchy and liberty. See particularly 3d Series, vol. iv., _Philosophie
+Contemporaine_, preface of the second edition; 4th Series, vol. i.,
+_Pascal_, 1st and 2d preface, _passim_; 5th Series, vol. ii., _Discours
+à la Chambre des Paris pour le Defence de l'Université et de la
+Philosophie_. We everywhere profess the most tender veneration for
+Christianity,--we have only repelled the servitude of philosophy, with
+Descartes, and the most illustrious doctors of ancient and modern times,
+from St. Augustine and St. Thomas, to the Cardinal de la Lucerne and the
+Bishop of Hermopolis. Moreover, we love to think that those quarrels,
+originating in other times from the deplorable strife between the clergy
+and the University, have not survived it, and that now all sincere
+friends of religion and philosophy will give each other the hand, and
+will work in concert to encourage desponding souls and lift up burdened
+characters.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+RÉSUMÉ OF DOCTRINE.
+
+    Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the
+    three orders of facts on which this doctrine rests, with the
+    relation of each one of them to the modern school that has
+    recognized and developed it, but almost always exaggerated
+    it.--Experience and empiricism.--Reason and idealism.--Sentiment
+    and mysticism.--Theodicea. Defects of different known
+    systems.--The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the
+    character of certainty and reality that this process gives to
+    it.
+
+
+Having arrived at the limit of this course, we have a final task to
+perform,--it is necessary to recall its general spirit and most
+important results.
+
+From the first lecture, I have signalized to you the spirit that should
+animate this instruction,--a spirit of free inquiry, recognizing with
+joy the truth wherever found, profiting by all the systems that the
+eighteenth century has bequeathed to our times, but confining itself to
+none of them.
+
+The eighteenth century has left to us as an inheritance three great
+schools which still endure--the English and French school, whose chief
+is Locke, among whose most accredited representatives are Condillac,
+Helvetius, and Saint-Lambert; the Scotch school, with so many celebrated
+names, Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, Beattie, Ferguson, and Dugald
+Stewart;[263] the German school, or rather school of Kant, for, of all
+the philosophers beyond the Rhine, the philosopher of Koenigsberg is
+almost the only one who belongs to history. Kant died at the beginning
+of the nineteenth century;[264] the ashes of his most illustrious
+disciple, Fichte,[265] are scarcely cold. The other renowned
+philosophers of Germany still live,[266] and escape our valuation.
+
+But this is only an ethnographical enumeration of the schools of the
+eighteenth century. It is above all necessary to consider them in their
+characters, analogous or opposite. The Anglo-French school particularly
+represents empiricism and sensualism, that is to say, an almost
+exclusive importance attributed in all parts of human knowledge to
+experience in general, and especially to sensible experience. The Scotch
+school and the German school represent a more or less developed
+spiritualism. Finally, there are philosophers, for example, Hutcheson,
+Smith, and others, who, mistrusting the senses and reason, give the
+supremacy to sentiment.
+
+Such are the philosophic schools in the presence of which the nineteenth
+century is placed.
+
+We are compelled to avow, that none of these, to our eyes, contains the
+entire truth. It has been demonstrated that a considerable part of
+knowledge escapes sensation, and we think that sentiment is a basis
+neither sufficiently firm, nor sufficiently broad, to support all human
+science. We are, therefore, rather the adversary than the partisan of
+the school of Locke and Condillac, and of that of Hutcheson and Smith.
+Are we on that account the disciple of Reid and Kant? Yes, certainly, we
+declare our preference for the direction impressed upon philosophy by
+these two great men. We regard Reid as common sense itself, and we
+believe that we thus eulogize him in a manner that would touch him most.
+Common sense is to us the only legitimate point of departure, and the
+constant and inviolable rule of science. Reid never errs; his method is
+true, his general principles are incontestable, but we will willingly
+say to this irreproachable genius,--_Sapere aude_. Kant is far from
+being as sure a guide as Reid. Both excel in analysis; but Reid stops
+there, and Kant builds upon analysis a system irreconcilable with it. He
+elevates reason above sensation and sentiment; he shows with great skill
+how reason produces by itself, and by the laws attached to its exercise,
+nearly all human knowledge; there is only one misfortune, which is that
+all this fine edifice is destitute of reality. Dogmatical in analysis,
+Kant is skeptical in his conclusions. His skepticism is the most
+learned, most moral, that ever existed; but, in fine, it is always
+skepticism. This is saying plainly enough that we are far from belonging
+to the school of the philosopher of Koenigsberg.
+
+In general, in the history of philosophy, we are in favor of systems
+that are themselves in favor of reason. Accordingly, in antiquity, we
+side with Plato against his adversaries; among the moderns, with
+Descartes against Locke, with Reid against Hume, with Kant against both
+Condillac and Smith. But while we acknowledge reason as a power superior
+to sensation and sentiment, as being, _par excellence_, the faculty of
+every kind of knowledge, the faculty of the true, the faculty of the
+beautiful, the faculty of the good, we are persuaded that reason cannot
+be developed without conditions that are foreign to it, cannot suffice
+for the government of man without the aid of another power: that power
+which is not reason, which reason cannot do without, is sentiment; those
+conditions, without which reason cannot be developed, are the senses. It
+is seen what for us is the importance of sensation and sentiment: how,
+consequently, it is impossible for us absolutely to condemn either the
+philosophy of sensation, or, much more, that of sentiment.
+
+Such are the very simple foundations of our eclecticism. It is not in us
+the fruit of a desire for innovation, and for making ourself a place
+apart among the historians of philosophy; no, it is philosophy itself
+that imposes on us our historical views. It is not our fault if God has
+made the human soul larger than all systems, and we also aver that we
+are also much rejoiced that all systems are not absurd. Without giving
+the lie to the most certain facts signalized and established by ourself,
+it was indeed necessary, on finding them scattered in the history of
+philosophy, to recognize and respect them, and if the history of
+philosophy, thus considered, no longer appeared a mass of senseless
+systems, a chaos, without light, and without issue; if, on the contrary,
+it became, in some sort, a living philosophy, that was, it should seem,
+a progress on which one might felicitate himself, one of the most
+fortunate conquests of the nineteenth century, the very triumphing of
+the philosophic spirit.
+
+We have, therefore, no doubt in regard to the excellence of the
+enterprise; the whole question for us is in the execution. Let us see,
+let us compare what we have done with what we have wished to do.
+
+Let us ask, in the first place, whether we have been just towards that
+great philosophy represented in antiquity by Aristotle, whose best model
+among the moderns is the wise author of the Essay on the _Human
+Understanding_.
+
+There is in the philosophy of sensation what is true and what is false.
+The false is the pretension of explaining all human knowledge by the
+acquisitions of the senses; this pretension is the system itself; we
+reject it, and the system with it. The true is that sensibility,
+considered in its external and visible organs, and in its internal
+organs, the invisible seats of the vital functions, is the indispensable
+condition of the development of all our faculties, not only of the
+faculties that evidently pertain to sensibility, but of those that seem
+to be most remote from it. This true side of sensualism we have
+everywhere recognized and elucidated in metaphysics, æsthetics, ethics,
+and theodicea.
+
+For us, theodicea, ethics, æsthetics, metaphysics, rest on psychology,
+and the first principle of our psychology is that the condition of all
+exercise of mind and soul is an impression made on our organs, and a
+movement of the vital functions.
+
+Man is not a pure spirit; he has a body which is for the spirit
+sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, always an inseparable
+companion. The senses are not, as Plato and Malebranche have too often
+said, a prison for the soul, but much rather windows looking out upon
+nature, through which the soul communicates with the universe. There is
+an entire part of Locke's polemic against the theories of innate ideas
+that is to our eyes perfectly true. We are the first to invoke
+experience in philosophy. Experience saves philosophy from hypothesis,
+from abstraction, from the exclusively deductive method, that is to say,
+from the geometrical method. It is on account of having abandoned the
+solid ground of experience, that Spinoza, attaching himself to certain
+sides of Cartesianism,[267] and closing his eyes to all the others,
+forgetting its method, its essential character, and its most certain
+principles, reared a hypothetical system, or made from an arbitrary
+definition spring with the last degree of rigor a whole series of
+deductions, which have nothing to do with reality. It is also on account
+of having exchanged experience for a systematic analysis, that
+Condillac, an unfaithful disciple of Locke, undertook to draw from a
+single fact, and from an ill-observed fact, all knowledge, by the aid of
+a series of verbal transformations, whose last result is a nominalism,
+like that of the later scholastics. Experience does not contain all
+science, but it furnishes the conditions of all science. Space is
+nothing for us without visible and tangible bodies that occupy it, time
+is nothing without the succession of events, cause without its effects,
+substance without its modes, law without the phenomena that it
+rules.[268] Reason would reveal to us no universal and necessary truth,
+if consciousness and the senses did not suggest to us particular and
+contingent notions. In æsthetics, while severely distinguishing between
+the beautiful and the agreeable, we have shown that the agreeable is the
+constant accompaniment of the beautiful,[269] and that if art has for
+its supreme law the expression of the ideal, it must express it under an
+animated and living form which puts it in relation with our senses,
+with our imagination, above all, with our heart. In ethics, if we have
+placed Kant and stoicism far above epicureanism and Helvetius, we have
+guarded ourselves against an insensibility and an asceticism which are
+contrary to human nature. We have given to reason neither the duty nor
+the right to smother the natural passions, but to rule them; we have not
+wished to wrest from the soul the instinct of happiness, without which
+life would not be supportable for a day, nor society for an hour; we
+have proposed to enlighten this instinct, to show it the concealed but
+real harmony which it sustains with virtue, and to open to it infinite
+prospects.[270]
+
+With these empirical elements, idealism is guarded from that mystical
+infatuation which, little by little, gains and seizes it when it is
+wholly alone, and brings it into discredit with sound and severe minds.
+In our works--and why should we not say it?--we have often presented the
+thought of Locke, whom we regard as one of the best and most sensible
+men that ever lived. He is among those secret and illustrious advisers
+with whom we support our weakness. More than one happy thought we owe to
+him; and we often ask ourself whether investigations directed with the
+circumspect method which we try to carry into ours, would not have been
+accepted by his sincerity and wisdom. Locke is for us the true
+representative, the most original, and altogether the most temperate of
+the empirical school. Tied to a system, he still preserves a rare spirit
+of liberty,--under the name of reflection he admits another source of
+knowledge than sensation; and this concession to common sense is very
+important. Condillac, by rejecting this concession, carried to extremes
+and spoiled the doctrine of Locke, and made of it a narrow, exclusive,
+entirely false system,--sensualism, to speak properly. Condillac works
+upon chimeras reduced to signs, with which he sports at his ease. We
+seek in vain in his writings, especially in the last, some trace of
+human nature. One truly believes himself to be in the realm of shades,
+_per inania regna_.[271] The _Essay on the Human Understanding_ produces
+the opposite impression. Locke is a disciple of Descartes, whom the
+excesses of Malebranche have thrown to an opposite excess: he is one of
+the founders of psychology, he is one of the finest and most profound
+connoisseurs of human nature, and his doctrine, somewhat unsteady but
+always moderate, is worthy of having a place in a true eclecticism.[272]
+
+By the side of the philosophy of Locke, there is one much greater, which
+it is important to preserve from all exaggeration, in order to maintain
+it in all its height. Founded in antiquity by Socrates, constituted by
+Plato, renewed by Descartes, idealism embraces, among the moderns, men
+of the highest renown. It speaks to man in the name of what is noblest
+in man. It demands the rights of reason; it establishes in science, in
+art, and in ethics fixed and invariable principles, and from this
+imperfect existence it elevates us towards another world, the world of
+the eternal, of the infinite, of the absolute.
+
+This great philosophy has all our preferences, and we shall not be
+accused of having given it too little place in these lectures. In the
+eighteenth century it was especially represented in different degrees by
+Reid and Kant. We wholly accept Reid, with the exception of his
+historical views, which are too insufficient, and often mixed with
+error.[273] There are two parts in Kant,--the analytical part, and the
+dialectical part, as he calls them.[274] We admit the one and reject the
+other. In this whole course we have borrowed much from the _Critique of
+Speculative Reason_, the _Critique of Judgment_, and the _Critique of
+Practical Reason_. These three works are, in our eyes, admirable
+monuments of philosophic genius,--they are filled with treasures of
+observation and analysis.[275]
+
+With Reid and Kant, we recognize reason as the faculty of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good. It is to its proper virtue that we directly
+refer knowledge in its humblest and in its most elevated part. All the
+systematic pretensions of sensualism are broken against the manifest
+reality of universal and necessary truths which are incontestably in our
+mind. At each instant, whether we know it or not, we bear universal and
+necessary judgments. In the simplest propositions is enveloped the
+principle of substance and being. We cannot take a step in life without
+concluding from an event in the existence of its cause. These principles
+are absolutely true, they are true everywhere and always. Now,
+experience apprises us of what happens here and there, to-day or
+yesterday; but of what happens everywhere and always, especially of what
+cannot but happen, how can it apprise us, since it is itself always
+limited to time and space? There are, then, in man principles superior
+to experience.
+
+Such principles can alone give a firm basis to science. Phenomena are
+the objects of science only so far as they reveal something superior to
+themselves, that is to say, laws. Natural history does not study such or
+such an individual, but the generic type that every individual bears in
+itself, that alone remains unchangeable, when the individuals pass away
+and vanish. If there is in us no other faculty of knowing than
+sensation, we never know aught but what is passing in things, and that,
+too, we know only with the most uncertain knowledge, since sensibility
+will be its only measure, which is so variable in itself and so
+different in different individuals. Each of us will have his own
+science, a science contradictory and fragile, which one moment produces
+and another destroys, false as well as true, since what is true for me
+is false for you, and will even be false for me in a little while. Such
+are science and truth in the doctrine of sensation. On the contrary,
+necessary and immutable principles found a science necessary and
+immutable as themselves,--the truth which they gave as is neither mine
+nor yours, neither the truth of to-day, nor that of to-morrow, but truth
+in itself.
+
+The same spirit transferred to æsthetics has enabled us to seize the
+beautiful by the side of the agreeable, and, above different and
+imperfect beauties which nature offers to us, to seize an ideal beauty,
+one and perfect, without a model in nature, and the only model worthy of
+genius.
+
+In ethics we have shown that there is an essential distinction between
+good and evil; that the idea of the good is an idea just as absolute as
+the idea of the beautiful and that of the true; that the good is a
+universal and necessary truth, marked with the particular character that
+it ought to be practised. By the side of interest, which is the law of
+sensibility, reason has made us recognize the law of duty, which a free
+being can alone fulfil. From these ethics has sprung a generous
+political doctrine, giving to right a sure foundation in the respect due
+to the person, establishing true liberty, and true equality, and calling
+for institutions, protective of both, which do not rest on the mobile
+and arbitrary will of the legislator, whether people or monarch, but on
+the nature of things, on truth and justice.
+
+From empiricism we have retained the maxim which gives empiricism its
+whole force--that the conditions of science, of art, of ethics, are in
+experience, and often in sensible experience. But we profess at the same
+time this other maxim, that the foundation of science is absolute truth,
+that the direct foundation of art is absolute beauty, that the direct
+foundation of ethics and politics is the good, is duty, is right, and
+that what reveals to us these absolute ideas of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good, is reason. The foundation of our doctrine is,
+therefore, idealism rightly tempered by empiricism.
+
+But what would be the use of having restored to reason the power of
+elevating itself to absolute principles, placed above experience,
+although experience furnishes their external conditions, if, to adopt
+the language of Kant,[276] these principles have no objective value?
+What good could result from having determined with a precision until
+then unknown the respective domains of experience and reason, if, wholly
+superior as it is to the senses and experience, reason is captive in
+their inclosure, and we know nothing beyond with certainty? Thereby,
+then, we return by a _detour_ to skepticism to which sensualism conducts
+us directly, and at less expense. To say that there is no principle of
+causality, or to say that this principle has no force out of the subject
+that possesses it,--is it not saying the same thing? Kant avows that man
+has no right to affirm that there are out of him real causes, time, or
+space, or that he himself has a spiritual and free soul. This
+acknowledgment would perfectly satisfy Hume; it would be of very little
+importance to him that the reason of man, according to Kant, might
+conceive, and even could not but conceive, the ideas of cause, time,
+space, liberty, spirit, provided these ideas are applied to nothing
+real. I see therein, at most, only a torment for human reason, at once
+so poor and so rich, so full and so void.
+
+A third doctrine, finding sensation insufficient, and also discontented
+with reason, which it confounds with reasoning, thinks to approach
+common sense by making science, art, and ethics rest on sentiment. It
+would have us confide ourselves to the instinct of the heart, to that
+instinct, nobler than sensation, and more subtle than reasoning. Is it
+not the heart, in fact, that feels the beautiful and the good? Is it not
+the heart that, in all the great circumstances of life, when passion and
+sophism obscure to our eyes the holy idea of duty and virtue, makes it
+shine forth with an irresistible light, and, at the same time, warms us,
+animates us, and gives us the courage to practise it?
+
+We also have recognized that admirable phenomenon which is called
+sentiment; we even believe that here will be found a more precise and
+more complete analysis of it than in the writings where sentiment reigns
+alone. Yes, there is an exquisite pleasure attached to the contemplation
+of the truth, to the reproduction of the beautiful, to the practice of
+the good; there is in us an innate love for all these things; and when
+great rigor is not aimed at, it may very well be said that it is the
+heart which discerns truth, that the heart is and ought to be the light
+and guide of our life.
+
+To the eyes of an unpractised analysis, reason in its natural and
+spontaneous exercise is confounded with sentiment by a multitude of
+resemblances.[277] Sentiment is intimately attached to reason; it is its
+sensible form. At the foundation of sentiment is reason, which
+communicates to it its authority, whilst sentiment lends to reason its
+charm and power. Is not the widest spread and the most touching proof of
+the existence of God that spontaneous impulse of the heart which, in the
+consciousness of our miseries, and at the sight of the imperfections of
+our race which press upon our attention, irresistibly suggests to us the
+confused idea of an infinite and perfect being, fills us, at this idea,
+with an inexpressible emotion, moistens our eyes with tears, or even
+prostrates us on our knees before him whom the heart reveals to us, even
+when the reason refuses to believe in him? But look more closely, and
+you will see that this incredulous reason is reasoning supported by
+principles whose bearing is insufficient; you will see that what reveals
+the infinite and perfect being is precisely reason itself;[278] and
+that, in turn, it is this revelation of the infinite by reason, which,
+passing into sentiment, produces the emotion and the inspiration that we
+have mentioned. May heaven grant that we shall never reject the aid of
+sentiment! On the contrary, we invoke it both for others and ourself.
+Here we are with the people, or rather we are the people. It is to the
+light of the heart, which is borrowed from that of reason, but reflects
+it more vividly in the depths of the soul, that we confide ourselves, in
+order to preserve all great truths in the soul of the ignorant, and even
+to save them in the mind of the philosopher from the aberrations or
+refinements of an ambitious philosophy.
+
+We think, with Quintilian and Vauvenargues, that the nobility of
+sentiment makes the nobility of thought. Enthusiasm is the principle of
+great works as well as of great actions. Without the love of the
+beautiful, the artist will produce only works that are perhaps regular
+but frigid, that will possibly please the geometrician, but not the man
+of taste. In order to communicate life to the canvas, to the marble, to
+speech, it must be born in one's self. It is the heart mingled with
+logic that makes true eloquence; it is the heart mingled with
+imagination that makes great poetry. Think of Homer, of Corneille, of
+Bossuet,--their most characteristic trait is pathos, and pathos is a cry
+of the soul. But it is especially in ethics that sentiment shines forth.
+Sentiment, as we have already said, is as it were a divine grace that
+aids us in the fulfilment of the serious and austere law of duty. How
+often does it happen that in delicate, complicated, difficult
+situations, we know not how to ascertain wherein is the true, wherein is
+the good! Sentiment comes to the aid of reasoning which wavers; it
+speaks, and all uncertainties are dissipated. In listening to its
+inspirations, we may act imprudently, but we rarely act ill: the voice
+of the heart is the voice of God.
+
+We, therefore, give a prominent place to this noble element of human
+nature. We believe that man is quite as great by heart as by reason. We
+have a high regard for the generous writers who, in the looseness of
+principles and manners in the eighteenth century, opposed the baseness
+of calculation and interest with the beauty of sentiment. We are with
+Hutcheson against Hobbes, with Rousseau against Helvetius, with the
+author of Woldemar[279] against the ethics of egoism or those of the
+schools. We borrow from them what truth they have, we leave their
+useless or dangerous exaggerations. Sentiment must be joined to reason;
+but reason must not be replaced by sentiment. In the first place, it is
+contrary to facts to take reason for reasoning, and to envelop them in
+the same criticism. And then, after all, reasoning is the legitimate
+instrument of reason; its value is determined by that of the principles
+on which it rests. In the next place, reason, and especially spontaneous
+reason, is, like sentiment, immediate and direct; it goes straight to
+its object, without passing through analysis, abstraction, and
+deduction, excellent operations without doubt, but they suppose a
+primary operation, the pure and simple apperception of the truth.[280]
+It is wrong to attribute this apperception to sentiment. Sentiment is an
+emotion, not a judgment; it enjoys or suffers, it loves or hates, it
+does not know. It is not universal like reason; and as it still pertains
+on some side to organization, it even borrows from the organization
+something of its inconstancy. In fine, sentiment follows reason, and
+does not precede it. Therefore, in suppressing reason, we suppress the
+sentiment which emanates from it, and science, art, and ethics lack firm
+and solid bases.
+
+Psychology, æsthetics, and ethics, have conducted us to an order of
+investigations more difficult and more elevated, which are mingled with
+all the others, and crown them--theodicea.
+
+We know that theodicea is the rock of philosophy. We might shun it, and
+stop in the regions--already very high--of the universal and necessary
+principles of the true, the beautiful, and the good, without going
+farther, without ascending to the principles of these principles, to the
+reason of reason, to the source of truth. But such a prudence is, at
+bottom, only a disguised skepticism. Either philosophy is not, or it is
+the last explanation of all things. Is it, then, true that God is to us
+an inexplicable enigma,--he without whom the most certain of all things
+that thus far we have discovered would be for us an insupportable
+enigma? If philosophy is incapable of arriving at the knowledge of God,
+it is powerless; for if it does not possess God, it possesses nothing.
+But we are convinced that the need of knowing has not been given us in
+vain, and that the desire of knowing the principle of our being bears
+witness to the right and power of knowing which we have. Accordingly,
+after having discoursed to you about the true, the beautiful, and the
+good, we have not feared to speak to you of God.
+
+More than one road may lead us to God. We do not pretend to close any of
+them; but it was necessary for us to follow the one that was open to us,
+that which the nature and subject of our instruction opened to us.
+
+Universal and necessary truths are not general ideas which our mind
+draws by way of reasoning from particular things; for particular things
+are relative and contingent, and cannot contain the universal and
+necessary. On the other hand, these truths do not subsist by themselves;
+they would thus be only pure abstractions, suspended in vacuity and
+without relation to any thing. Truth, beauty, and goodness are
+attributes and not entities. Now there are no attributes without a
+subject. And as here the question is concerning absolute truth, beauty
+and goodness, their substance can be nothing else than absolute being.
+It is thus that we arrive at God. Once more, there are many other means
+of arriving at him; but we hold fast to this legitimate and sure way.
+
+For us, as for Plato, whom we have defended against a too narrow
+interpretation,[281] absolute truth is in God,--it is God himself under
+one of his phases. Since Plato, the greatest minds, Saint Augustine,
+Descartes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, agree in putting in God, as in their
+source, the principles of knowledge as well as existence. From him
+things derive at once their intelligibility and their being. It is by
+the participation of the divine reason that our reason possesses
+something absolute. Every judgment of reason envelops a necessary truth,
+and every necessary truth supposes necessary being.
+
+If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, God will possess beauty
+in its plenitude. The father of the world, of its laws, of its ravishing
+harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, he is the principle
+of beauty in nature. It is he whom we adore, without knowing it, under
+the name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on from beauties to
+beauties, calls for a final beauty in which it may find repose. It is to
+him that the artist, discontented with the imperfect beauties of nature
+and those that he creates himself, comes to ask for higher inspirations.
+It is in him that are summed up the main forms of every kind of beauty,
+the beautiful and the sublime, since he satisfies all our faculties by
+his perfections, and overwhelms them with his infinitude.
+
+God is the principle of moral truths, as well as of all other truths.
+All our duties are comprised in justice and charity. These two great
+precepts have not been made by us; they have been imposed on us; from
+whom, then, can they come, except from a legislator essentially just and
+good? Therein, in our opinion, is an invincible demonstration of the
+divine justice and charity:--this demonstration elucidates and sustains
+all others. In this immense universe, of which we catch a glimpse of a
+comparatively insignificant portion, every thing, in spite of more than
+one obscurity, seems ordered in view of general good, and this plan
+attests a Providence. To the physical order which one in good faith can
+scarcely deny, add the certainty, the evidence of the moral order that
+we bear in ourselves. This order supposes the harmony of virtue and
+goodness; it therefore requires it. Without doubt this harmony already
+appears in the visible world, in the natural consequences of good and
+bad actions, in society which punishes and rewards, in public esteem and
+contempt, especially in the troubles and joys of conscience. Although
+this necessary law of order is not always exactly fulfilled, it
+nevertheless ought to be, or the moral order is not satisfied, and the
+intimate nature of things, their moral nature, remains violated,
+troubled, perverted. There must, then, be a being who takes it upon
+himself to fulfil, in a time that he has reserved to himself, and in a
+manner that will be proper, the order of which he has put in us the
+inviolable need; and this being is again, God.
+
+Thus, on all sides, on that of metaphysics, on that of æsthetics,
+especially on that of ethics, we elevate ourselves to the same
+principle, the common centre, the last foundation, of all truth, all
+beauty, all goodness. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are only
+different revelations of the same being. Human intelligence,
+interrogated in regard to all these ideas which are incontestably in it,
+always makes us the same response; it sends us back to the same
+explanation,--at the foundation of all, above all, God, always God.
+
+We have arrived, then, from degree to degree, at religion. We are in
+fellowship with the great philosophies which all proclaim a God, and, at
+the same time, with the religions that cover the earth, with the
+Christian religion, incomparably the most perfect and the most holy. As
+long as philosophy has not reached natural religion,--and by this we
+mean, not the religion at which man arrives in that hypothetical state
+that is called the state of nature, but the religion which is revealed
+to us by the natural light accorded to all men,--it remains beneath all
+worship, even the most imperfect, which at least gives to man a father,
+a witness, a consoler, a judge. A true theodicea borrows in some sort
+from all religious beliefs their common principle, and returns it to
+them surrounded with light, elevated above all uncertainty, guarded
+against all attack. Philosophy may present itself in its turn to
+mankind; it also has a right to man's confidence, for it speaks to him
+of God in the name of all his needs and all his faculties, in the name
+of reason and sentiment.
+
+Observe that we have arrived at these high conclusions without any
+hypothesis, by the aid of processes at once very simple and perfectly
+rigorous. Truths of different orders being given, truths which have not
+been made by us, and are not sufficient for themselves, we have ascended
+from these truths to their author, as one goes from the effect to the
+cause, from the sign to the thing signified, from phenomenon to being,
+from quality to subject. These two principles--that every effect
+supposes a cause, and every quality a subject--are universal and
+necessary principles. They have been put by us in their full light, and
+demonstrated in the manner in which principles undemonstrable, because
+they are primitive, can be demonstrated. Moreover, to what are these
+necessary principles applied? To metaphysical and moral truths, which
+are also necessary. It was therefore necessary to conclude in the
+existence of a cause and a necessary being, or, indeed, it was necessary
+to deny either the necessity of the principle of cause and the principle
+of substance, or the necessity of the truths to which we applied them,
+that is to say, to renounce all notions of common sense; for these very
+principles and these truths, with their character of universality and
+necessity, compose common sense.
+
+Not only is it certain that every effect supposes a cause, and every
+quality a being, but it is equally certain that an effect of such a
+nature supposes a cause of the same nature, and that a quality or an
+attribute marked with such or such essential characters supposes a being
+in which these same characters are again found in an eminent degree.
+Whence it follows, that we have very legitimately concluded from truth
+in an intelligent cause and substance, from beauty in a being supremely
+beautiful, and from a moral law composed at once of justice and charity
+in a legislator supremely just and supremely good.
+
+And we have not made a geometrical and algebraical theodicea, after the
+example of many philosophers, and the most illustrious. We have not
+deduced the attributes of God from each other, as the different terms of
+an equation are converted, or as from one property of a triangle the
+other properties are deduced, thus ending at a God wholly abstract,
+good perhaps for the schools, but not sufficient for the human race. We
+have given to theodicea a surer foundation--psychology. Our God is
+doubtless also the author of the world, but he is especially the father
+of humanity; his intelligence is ours, with the necessity of essence and
+infinite power added. So our justice and our charity, related to their
+immortal exemplar, give us an idea of the divine justice and charity.
+Therein we see a real God, with whom we can sustain a relation also
+real, whom we can comprehend and feel, and who in his turn can
+comprehend and feel our efforts, our sufferings, our virtues, our
+miseries. Made in his image, conducted to him by a ray of his own being,
+there is between him and us a living and sacred tie.
+
+Our theodicea is therefore free at once from hypothesis and abstraction.
+By preserving ourselves from the one, we have preserved ourselves from
+the other. Consenting to recognize God only in his signs visible to the
+eyes and intelligible to the mind, it is on infallible evidence that we
+have elevated ourselves to God. By a necessary consequence, setting out
+from real effects and real attributes, we have arrived at a real cause
+and a real substance, at a cause having in power all its essential
+effects, at a substance rich in attributes. I wonder at the folly of
+those who, in order to know God better, consider him, they say, in his
+pure and absolute essence, disengaged from all limitative determination.
+I believe that I have forever removed the root of such an
+extravagance.[282] No; it is not true that the diversity of
+determinations, and, consequently, of qualities and attributes, destroys
+the absolute unity of a being; the infallible proof of it is that my
+unity is not the least in the world altered by the diversity of my
+faculties. It is not true that unity excludes multiplicity, and
+multiplicity unity; for unity and multiplicity are united in me. Why
+then should they not be in God? Moreover, far from altering unity in me,
+multiplicity develops it and makes its productiveness appear. So the
+richness of the determinations and the attributes of God is exactly the
+sign of the plenitude of his being. To neglect his attributes, is
+therefore to impoverish him; we do not say enough, it is to annihilate
+him,--for a being without attributes exists not; and the abstraction of
+being, human or divine, finite or infinite, relative or absolute, is
+nonentity.
+
+Theodicea has two rocks,--one, which we have just signalized to you, is
+abstraction, the abuse of dialectics; it is the vice of the schools and
+metaphysics. If we are forced to shun this rock, we run the risk of
+being dashed against the opposite rock, I mean that fear of reasoning
+that extends to reason, that excessive predominance of sentiment, which
+developing in us the loving and affectionate faculties at the expense of
+all the others, throws us into anthropomorphism without criticism, and
+makes us institute with God an intimate and familiar intercourse in
+which we are somewhat too forgetful of the august and fearful majesty of
+the divine being. The tender and contemplative soul can neither love nor
+contemplate in God the necessity, the eternity, the infinity, that do
+not come within the sphere of imagination and the heart, that are only
+conceived. It therefore neglects them. Neither does it study God in
+truth of every kind, in physics, metaphysics, and ethics, which manifest
+him; it considers in him particularly the characters to which affection
+is attached. In adoration, Fenelon retrenches all fear that nothing but
+love may subsist, and Mme. Guyon ends by loving God as a lover.
+
+We escape these opposite excesses of a refined sentimentality and a
+chimerical abstraction, by always keeping in mind both the nature of
+God, by which he escapes all relation with us,--necessity, eternity,
+infinity, and at the same time those of his attributes which are our own
+attributes transferred to him, for the very simple reason that they came
+from him.
+
+I am able to conceive God only in his manifestations and by the signs
+which he gives of his existence, as I am able to conceive any being only
+by the attributes of that being, a cause only by its effects, as I am
+able to conceive myself only by the exercise of my faculties. Take away
+my faculties and the consciousness that attests them to me, and I am not
+for myself. It is the same with God,--take away nature and the soul, and
+every sign of God disappears. It is therefore in nature and the soul
+that he must be sought and found.
+
+The universe, which comprises nature and man, manifests God. Is this
+saying that it exhausts God? By no means. Let us always consult
+psychology. I know myself only by my acts; that is certain; and what is
+not less certain is, that all my acts do not exhaust, do not equal my
+power and my substance; for my power, at least that of my will, can
+always add an act to all those which it has already produced, and it has
+the consciousness, at the same time that it is exercised, of containing
+in itself something to be exercised still. Of God and the world must be
+said two things in appearance contrary,--we know God only by the world,
+and God is essentially distinct and different from the world. The first
+cause, like all secondary causes, manifests itself only by its effects;
+it can even be conceived only by them, and it surpasses them by all of
+the difference between the Creator and the created, the perfect and the
+imperfect. The world is indefinite; it is not infinite; for, whatever
+may be its quantity, thought can always add to it. To the myriads of
+worlds that compose the totality of the world, may be added new worlds.
+But God is infinite, absolutely infinite in his essence, and an
+indefinite series cannot equal the infinite; for the indefinite is
+nothing else than the finite more or less multiplied and capable of
+continuous multiplication. The world is a whole which has its harmony;
+for a God could make only a complete and harmonious work. The harmony of
+the world corresponds to the unity of God, as indefinite quantity is a
+defective sign of the infinity of God. To say that the world is God, is
+to admit only the world and deny God. Give to this whatever name you
+please, it is at bottom atheism. On the one hand, to suppose that the
+world is void of God, and that God is separate from the world, is an
+insupportable and almost impossible abstraction. To distinguish is not
+to separate. I distinguish myself, but do not separate myself from my
+qualities and my acts. So God is not the world, although he is in it
+everywhere present in spirit and in truth.[283]
+
+Such is our theodicea: it rejects the excesses of all systems, and
+contains, we believe at least, all that is good in them. From sentiment
+it borrows a personal God as we ourselves are a person, and from reason
+a necessary, eternal, infinite God. In the presence of two opposite
+systems,--one of which, in order to see and feel God in the world,
+absorbs him in it; the other of which, in order not to confound God with
+the world, separates him from it and relegates him to an inaccessible
+solitude,--it gives to both just satisfaction by offering to them a God
+who is in fact in the world, since the world is his work, but without
+his essence being exhausted in it, a God who is both absolute unity and
+unity multiplied, infinite and living, immutable and the principle of
+movement, supreme intelligence and supreme truth, sovereign justice and
+sovereign goodness, before whom the world and man are like nonentity,
+who, nevertheless, is pleased with the world and man, substance eternal,
+and cause inexhaustible, impenetrable, and everywhere perceptible, who
+must by turns be sought in truth, admired in beauty, imitated, even at
+an infinite distance, in goodness and justice, venerated and loved,
+continually studied with an indefatigable zeal, and in silence adored.
+
+Let us sum up this _résumé_. Setting out from the observation of
+ourselves in order to preserve ourselves from hypothesis, we have found
+in consciousness three orders of facts. We have left to each of them its
+character, its rank, its bearing, and its limits. Sensation has appeared
+to us the indispensable condition, but not the foundation of knowledge.
+Reason is the faculty itself of knowing; it has furnished us with
+absolute principles, and these absolute principles have conducted us to
+absolute truths. Sentiment, which pertains at once to sensation and
+reason, has found a place between both. Setting out from consciousness,
+but always guided by it, we have penetrated into the region of being; we
+have gone quite naturally from knowledge to its objects by the road that
+the human race pursues, that Kant sought in vain, or rather misconceived
+at pleasure, to wit, that reason which must be admitted entire or
+rejected entire, which reveals to us existences as well as truths.
+Therefore, after having recalled all the great metaphysical, æsthetical,
+and moral truths, we have referred them to their principle; with the
+human race we have pronounced the name of God, who explains all things,
+because he has made all things, whom all our faculties require,--reason,
+the heart, the senses, since he is the author of all our faculties.
+
+This doctrine is so simple, is to such an extent in all our powers, is
+so conformed to all our instincts, that it scarcely appears a
+philosophic doctrine, and, at the same time, if you examine it more
+closely, if you compare it with all celebrated doctrines, you will find
+that it is related to them and differs from them, that it is none of
+them and embraces them all, that it expresses precisely the side of them
+that has made them live and sustains them in history. But that is only
+the scientific character of the doctrine which we present to you; it has
+still another character which distinguishes it and recommends it to you
+much more. The spirit that animates it is that which of old inspired
+Socrates, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, which makes your hearts beat when
+you are reading Corneille and Bossuet, which dictated to Vauvenargues
+the few pages that have immortalized his name, which you feel especially
+in Reid, sustained by an admirable good sense, and even in Kant, in the
+midst of, and superior to the embarrassments of his metaphysics, to wit,
+the taste of the beautiful and the good in all things, the passionate
+love of honesty, the ardent desire of the moral grandeur of humanity.
+Yes, we do not fear to repeat that we tend thither by all our views; it
+is the end to which are related all the parts of our instruction; it is
+the thought which serves as their connection, and is, thus to speak,
+their soul. May this thought be always present to you, and accompany you
+as a faithful and generous friend, wherever fortune shall lead you,
+under the tent of the soldier, in the office of the lawyer, of the
+physician, of the savant, in the study of the literary man, as well as
+in the studio of the artist! Finally, may it sometimes remind you of him
+who has been to you its very sincere but too feeble interpreter!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[263] Still living in 1818, died in 1828.
+
+[264] In 1804.
+
+[265] Died, 1814.
+
+[266] This was said in 1818. Since then, Jacobi, Hegel, and
+Schleiermacher, with so many others, have disappeared. Schelling alone
+survives the ruins of the German philosophy.
+
+[267] FRAGMENTS DE PHILOSOPHIE CARTÉSIENNE, p. 429: _Des Rapports du
+Cartésienisme et du Spinozisme_.
+
+[268] Part 1st, lectures 1 and 2.
+
+[269] Part 2d.
+
+[270] Part 3d.
+
+[271] On Condillac, 1st Series, vol. i., _passim_, and particularly vol.
+iii., lectures 2 and 3.
+
+[272] We have never spoken of Locke except with sincere respect, even
+while combating him. See 1st Series, vol. i., course of 1817, _Discours
+d'Ouverture_, vol. ii., lecture 1, and especially 2d Series, vol. iii.,
+_passim_.
+
+[273] See 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on Reid.
+
+[274] _Ibid._, vol. v.
+
+[275] For more than twenty years we have thought of translating and
+publishing the three _Critiques_, joining to them a selection from the
+smaller productions of Kant. Time has been wanting to us for the
+completion of our design; but a young and skilful professor of
+philosophy, a graduate of the Normal School, has been willing to supply
+our place, and to undertake to give to the French public a faithful and
+intelligent version of the greatest thinker of the eighteenth century.
+M. Barni has worthily commenced the useful and difficult enterprise
+which we have remitted to his zeal, and pursues it with courage and
+talent.
+
+[276] Part 1st, Lecture 3.
+
+[277] Lecture 5, _Mysticism_.
+
+[278] This pretended proof of sentiment is in fact, the Cartesian proof
+itself. See lectures 4 and 16.
+
+[279] M. Jacobi. See the _Manual of the History of Philosophy_, by
+Tennemann, vol. ii., p. 318.
+
+[280] On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st part, lect. 2
+and 3.
+
+[281] Lectures 4 and 5.
+
+[282] See particularly lecture 5.
+
+[283] We place here this analogous passage on the true measure in which
+it may be said that God is at once comprehensible and incomprehensible,
+1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 12: "We say in the first place that
+God is not absolutely incomprehensible, for this manifest reason, that,
+being the cause of this universe, he passes into it, and is reflected in
+it, as the cause in the effect; therefore we recognize him. 'The heavens
+declare his glory.' and 'the invisible things of him from the creation
+of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
+made;' his power, in the thousands of worlds sown in the boundless
+regions of space; his intelligence in their harmonious laws; finally,
+that which there is in him most august, in the sentiments of virtue, of
+holiness, and of love, which the heart of man contains. It must be that
+God is not incomprehensible to us, for all nations have petitioned him,
+since the first day of the intellectual life of humanity. God, then, as
+the cause of the universe, reveals himself to us; but God is not only
+the cause of the universe, he is also the perfect and infinite cause,
+possessing in himself, not a relative perfection, which is only a degree
+of imperfection, but an absolute perfection, an infinity which is not
+only the finite multiplied by itself in those proportions which the
+human mind is able always to enumerate, but a true infinity, that is,
+the absolute negation of all limits, in all the powers of his being.
+Moreover, it is not true that an indefinite effect adequately expresses
+an infinite cause; hence it is not true that we are able absolutely to
+comprehend God by the world and by man, for all of God is not in them.
+In order absolutely to comprehend the infinite, it is necessary to have
+an infinite power of comprehension, and that is not granted to us. God,
+in manifesting himself, retains something in himself which nothing
+finite can absolutely manifest; consequently, it is not permitted us to
+comprehend absolutely. There remains, then, in God, beyond the universe
+and man, something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence in the
+immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of
+the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, whence
+he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new
+manifestations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible; but even of
+this incomprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea; for we have
+the most precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in us a
+metaphysical refinement, it is a simple and primitive conception which
+enlightens us from our entrance into this world, both luminous and
+obscure, explaining everything, and being explained by nothing, because
+it carries us at first, to the summit and the limit of all explanation.
+There is something inexplicable for thought,--behold then whither
+thought tends; there is infinite being,--behold then the necessary
+principle of all relative and finite beings. Reason explains not the
+inexplicable, it conceives it. It is not able to comprehend infinity in
+an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some degree in its
+indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it; and,
+further, as it has been said, it comprehend it so far as
+incomprehensible. It is, therefore, an equal error to call God
+absolutely comprehensible, and absolutely incomprehensible. He is both
+invisible and present, revealed and withdrawn in himself, in the world
+and out of the world, so familiar and intimate with his creatures, that
+we see him by opening our eyes, that we feel him in feeling our hearts
+beat, and at the same time inaccessible in his impenetrable majesty,
+mingled with every thing, and separated from every thing, manifesting
+himself in universal life, and causing scarcely an ephemeral shadow of
+his eternal essence to appear there, communicating himself without
+cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at once the living God, and the
+God concealed, '_Deus vivus et Deus absconditus_.'"
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+Page 188: "What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur!"
+
+It is perceived that we have followed, as regards his death, the
+tradition, or rather the prejudices current at the present day, and
+which have misled the best judges before us. But there have appeared in
+a recent and interesting publication, called _Archives de l'Art
+français_, vol. iii., certain incontrovertible documents, never before
+published, on the life and works of the painter of St. Bruno, which
+compel us to withdraw certain assertions agreeable to general opinion,
+but contrary to truth. The notice of Lesueur's death, extracted for the
+first time from the _Register of Deaths of the parish church of
+Saint-Louis in the isle of Notre-Dame_, preserved amongst the archives
+of the Hotel de Ville at Paris, clearly prove that he did not die at the
+Chartreux, but in the isle of Notre-Dame, where he dwelt, in the parish
+of St. Louis, and that he was buried in the church of Saint-Etienne du
+Mont, the resting-place of Pascal and Racine. It appears also that
+Lesueur died before his wife, Geneviève Goussé, since the _Register of
+Births_ of the parish of Saint-Louis, contains under the date 18th
+February, 1655, a notice of the baptism of a fourth child of Lesueur.
+Now, Geneviève Goussé must have deceased almost immediately after her
+confinement, supposing her to have died before her husband's decease,
+which occurred on the 1st of the following May. If this were the case,
+we should have found a notice of her death in the _Register of Deaths_
+for the year 1655, as we do that of her husband. Such a notice, however,
+which could alone disprove the probability, and authenticate the vulgar
+opinion, is nowhere to be found amongst the archives of the Hotel de
+Ville, at least the author of the _Nouvelles Recherches_ has nowhere
+been able to meet with it.
+
+In the other particulars our rapid sketch of Lesueur's history remains
+untouched. He never was in Italy; and according to the account of
+Guillet de Saint-Georges, which has so long remained in manuscript, he
+never desired to go there. He was poor, discreet, and pious, tenderly
+loved his wife, and lived in the closest union with his three brothers
+and brother-in-law, who were all pupils and fellow-laborers of his. It
+appears to be a refinement of criticism which denies the current belief
+of an acquaintance between Lesueur and Poussin. If no document
+authenticates it, at all events it is not contradicted by any, and
+appears to us to be highly probable.
+
+Every one admits that Lesueur studied and admired Poussin. It would
+certainly be strange if he did not seek his acquaintance, which he could
+have obtained without difficulty, since Poussin was staying at Paris
+from 1640 to 1642. It would be difficult for them not to have met. After
+Vouet's death in 1641, Lesueur acquired more and more a peculiar style;
+and in 1642, at the age of twenty-five, entirely unshackled, and with a
+taste ripe for the antique and Raphael, he must frequently have been at
+the Louvre, where Poussin resided. Thus it is natural to suppose that
+they frequently saw each other and became acquainted, and with their
+sympathies of character and talent, acquaintance must have resulted in
+esteem and love. If Poussin's letters do not mention Lesueur, we would
+remark that neither do they mention Champagne, whose connection with
+Poussin is not disputed. The argument built on the silence of Guillet de
+Saint-Georges' account is far from convincing; inasmuch as being
+intended to be read before a Sitting of the Academy, it could only
+contain a notice of the great artist's career, without those
+biographical details in which his friendships would be mentioned.
+Lastly, it is impossible to deny Poussin's influence upon Lesueur, which
+it seems to us at least probable was as much due to his counsels as to
+his example.
+
+Page 190: "But the marvel of the picture is the figure of St. Paul."
+
+We have recently seen, at Hampton Court, the seven cartoons of Raphael,
+which should not be looked at, still less criticised, but on bended
+knee. Behold Raphael arrived at the summit of his art, and in the last
+years of life! And these were but drawings for tapestry! These drawings
+alone would reward the journey to England, even were the figures from
+the friezes of the Parthenon not at the _British Museum_. One never
+tires of contemplating these grand performances even in the obscurity
+of that ill-lighted room. Nothing could be more noble, more magnificent,
+more imposing, more majestic. What draperies, what attitudes, what
+forms! Notwithstanding the absence of color, the effect is immense; the
+mind is struck, at once charmed and transported; but the soul, we can
+speak for ourselves, remains well-nigh insensible. We request any one to
+compare carefully the sixth cartoon, clearly one of the finest,
+representing the Preaching of St. Paul at Ephesus, with the painting we
+have described of Lesueur's. One, immediately and at the first sight,
+transports you into the regions of the ideal; the other is less striking
+at first, but stay, consider it well, study it in detail, then take in
+the whole: by degrees you are overcome by an ever-increasing emotion.
+Above all, examine in both the principal character, St. Paul. Here, you
+behold the fine long folds of a superb robe which at once envelops and
+sets off his height, whilst the figure is in shade, and the little you
+see of it has nothing striking. There he confronts you, inspired,
+terrible, majestic. Now say which side lays claim to moral effect.
+
+Page 193: "The great works of Lesueur, Poussin, and so many others
+scattered over Europe."
+
+Of all the paintings of Lesueur which are in England, that which we
+regret most not having seen is _Alexander and his Physician_, painted
+for M. de Nouveau, director-general of the _Postes_, which passed from
+the Hotel Nouveau to the Place Royale in the Orleans Gallery, from
+thence into England, where it was bought by Lady Lucas at the great
+London sale in 1800. The sale catalogue, with the prices and names of
+the purchasers, will be found at the end of vol. i. of M. Waagen's
+excellent work, _Oeuvres d'Art et Artistes en Angleterre_, 2 vols.,
+Berlin, 1837 and 1838.
+
+We were both consoled and agreeably surprised on our return, to meet, in
+the valuable gallery of M. le Comte d'Houdetot, an ancient peer of
+France, and free member of the Academy of Fine Arts, with another
+Alexander and his physician Philip, in which the hand of Lesueur cannot
+be mistaken. The composition of the entire piece is perfect. The drawing
+is exquisite. The amplitude and nobleness of the draperies recall those
+of Raphael. The form of Alexander fine and languid; the person of Philip
+the physician grave and imposing. The coloring, though not powerful, is
+finely blended in tone. Now, where is the true original, is it with M.
+Houdetot or in England? The painting sold in London in 1800 certainly
+came from the Orleans' gallery, which would seem most likely to have
+possessed the original. On the other hand, it is impossible M.
+Houdetot's picture is a copy. They must, therefore, both be equally the
+work of Lesueur, who has in this instance treated the same subject twice
+over, as he has likewise done the Preaching of St. Paul; of which there
+is another, smaller than that at the Louvre, but equally admirable, at
+the Place Royale, belonging to M. Girou de Buzariengues, corresponding
+member of the Academy of Sciences.[284]
+
+We borrow M. Waagen's description of the works of Lesueur, found by that
+eminent critic in the English collections: _The Queen of Sheba before
+Solomon_, the property of the Duke of Devonshire, vol. i., p. 245.
+_Christ at the foot of the Cross supported by his Family_, belonging to
+the Earl of Shrewsbury, vol. ii., p. 463, "the sentiment deep and
+truthful," remarks M. Waagen. _The Magdalen pouring the ointment on the
+feet of Jesus_, the property of Lord Exeter, vol. ii., p. 485, "a
+picture full of the purest sentiment;" lastly, in the possession of M.
+Miles, a _Death of Germanicus_, "a rich and noble composition,
+completely in Poussin's style," remarks M. Waagen, vol. ii., p. 356. Let
+us add that this last work is not met with in any catalogue, ancient or
+modern. We ask ourselves whether this may not be a copy of the
+Germanicus of Poussin attributed to Lesueur.
+
+The author of _Musées d'Allemagne et du Russie_ (Paris, 1844) mentions
+at Berlin a _Saint Bruno adoring the Cross in his Cell, opening upon a
+landscape_, and pretends that this picture is as pathetic as the best
+Saint Brunos in the Museum at Paris. It is probably a sketch, like the
+one we have, or one of the wanting panels; for as for the pictures
+themselves, there were never more than twenty-two at the Chartreux, and
+these are at the Louvre. Perhaps, however, it may be the picture which
+Lesueur made for M. Bernard de Rozé, see Florent Lecomte, vol. iii., p.
+98, which represented a Carthusian in a cell. At St. Petersburg, the
+catalogue of the Hermitage mentions seven pictures of Lesueur, one of
+which, _The infant Moses exposed on the Nile_, is admitted by the author
+cited to be authentic. Can this be one of two _Moses_ which were painted
+by Lesueur for M. de Nouveau, as we learn from Guillet de Saint-Georges?
+Unless M. Viardot is deceived, and mistakes a copy for an original, we
+must regret that a real Lesueur should Lave been suffered to stray to
+St. Petersburg, with many of Poussin's most beautiful Claudes (see p.
+474), Mignards, Sebastian Bourdons, Gaspars, Stellas, and Valentins.
+
+Some years ago, at the sale of Cardinal Fesch's gallery, we might have
+acquired one of Lesueur's finest pieces, executed for the church of
+Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, which had got, by some chance, into the
+possession of Chancellor Pontchartrain, afterwards into that of the
+Emperor's uncle. This celebrated picture, _Christ with Martha and Mary_,
+formed at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, a pendent to the _Martyrdom of St.
+Lawrence_. Will it be believed that the French Government lost the
+opportunity, and permitted this little _chef-d'oeuvre_ to pass into
+the hands of the King of Bavaria? A good copy at Marseilles was thought,
+doubtless, sufficient, and the original was left to find its way to the
+gallery at Munich, and meet again the _St. Louis on his knees at Mass_,
+which the catalogue of that gallery attributes to Lesueur, on what
+ground we are not aware. In conclusion, we may mention that there is in
+the Museum at Brussels, a charming little Lesueur, _The Saviour giving
+his Blessing_, and in the Museums of Grenoble and Montpelier several
+fragments of the _History of Tobias_, painted for M. de Fieubet.
+
+Page 193: "Those master-pieces of art that honor the nation depart
+without authorization from the national territory! There has not been
+found a government which has undertaken at least to repurchase those
+that we have lost, to get back again the great works of Poussin,
+Lesueur, and so many others, scattered in Europe, instead of squandering
+millions to acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or
+Spanish canvases, in truth of an admirable color, but without nobleness
+and moral expression."
+
+Shall we give a recent instance of the small value we appear to set on
+Poussin? We blush to think that in 1848 we should have permitted the
+noble collection of M. de Montcalm to pass into England. One picture
+escaped: it was put up to sale in Paris on the 5th of March, 1850. It
+was a charming Poussin, undoubtedly authentic, from the Orleans gallery,
+and described at length in the catalogue of Dubois de Saint-Gelais. It
+represented the _Birth of Bacchus_, and by its variety of scenes and
+multitude of ideas, showed it belonged to Poussin's best period. We must
+do Normandy, rather the city of Rouen, the justice to say, that it made
+an effort to acquire it, but it was unsupported by Government; and this
+composition, wholly French, was sold at Paris for the sum of 17,000
+francs, to a foreigner, Mr. Hope.
+
+Miserable contrast! while five or six hundred thousand francs have been
+given for a _Virgin_ by Murillo, which is now turning the heads of all
+who behold it. I confess that mine has entirely resisted. I admire the
+freshness, the sweetness, the harmony of color; but every other superior
+quality which one looks to find in such a subject is wanting, or at
+least escaped me. Ecstasy never transfigured that face, which is neither
+noble nor great. The lovely infant before me does not seem sensible of
+the profound mystery accomplished in her. What, then, can there be in
+this vaunted Virgin which so catches the multitude? She is supported by
+beautiful angels, in a fine dress, of a charming color, the effect of
+all which is doubtless highly pleasant.
+
+Page 195: "We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the _Seven
+Sacraments_, and for not having known how to keep from England and
+Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign
+collections," etc.
+
+After having expressed our regret that we were unacquainted with the
+_Seven Sacraments_ save from the engravings of Pesne, we made a journey
+to London, to see with our own eyes, and judge for ourselves these
+famous pictures, with many others of our great countryman, now fallen
+into the possession of England, through our culpable indifference, and
+which have been brought under our notice by M Waagen.
+
+In the few days we were able to dedicate to this little journey, we had
+to examine four galleries: the National Gallery, answering to our
+Museum, those of Lord Ellesmere and the Marquis of Westminster, and, at
+some miles from London, the collection at Dulwich College, celebrated in
+England, though but little known on the continent.
+
+We likewise visited another collection, resulting from an institution
+which might easily be introduced into France, to the decided advantage
+of art and taste. A society has been formed in England, called the
+British Institution for promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom.
+Every year it has, in London, an exhibition of ancient paintings, to
+which individual galleries send their choice pieces, so that in a
+certain number of years all the most remarkable pictures in England pass
+under the public eye. But for this exhibition, what riches would remain
+buried in the mansions of the aristocracy or unknown cabinets of
+provincial amateurs! The society, having at its head the greatest names
+of England, enjoys a certain authority, and all ranks respond eagerly to
+its appeal.
+
+We ourselves saw the list of persons who this year contributed to the
+exhibition; there were her Majesty the Queen, the Dukes of Bedford,
+Devonshire, Newcastle, Northumberland, Sutherland, the Earls of Derby
+and Suffolk, and numerous other great men, besides bankers, merchants,
+_savants_, and artists. The exhibition is public, but not free, as you
+must pay both for admission and the printed catalogue. The money thus
+acquired is appropriated to defray the expenses of the exhibition;
+whatever remains is employed in the purchase of pictures, which are then
+presented to the National Gallery.
+
+At this year's exhibition we saw three of Claude Lorrain's, which well
+sustained the name of that master. _Apollo watching the herds of
+Admetus_; a _Sea-port_, both belonging to the Earl of Leicester, and
+_Psyche and Amor_, the property of Mr. Perkins; a pretended Lesueur, the
+_Death of the Virgin_, from the Earl of Suffolk; seven Sebastian
+Bourdons, the _Seven Works of Mercy_,[285] lent by the Earl of
+Yarborough; a landscape by Gaspar Poussin, but not one _morceau_ of his
+illustrious brother-in-law's.
+
+We were more fortunate in the National Gallery.
+
+There, to begin, what admirable Claudes! We counted as many as ten, some
+of them of the highest value. We will confine ourselves to the
+recapitulation of three, the Embarkation of St. Ursula, a large
+landscape, and the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.
+
+1st. _The Embarkation of St. Ursula_, which was painted for the
+Barberini, and adorned their palace at Rome until the year 1760, when an
+English amateur purchased it from the Princess Barberini, with other
+works of the first class. This picture is 3 feet 8 inches high, 4 feet
+11 inches wide.
+
+2d. The large landscape is 4 feet 11 inches high, 6 feet 7 inches wide.
+Rebecca is seen, with her relatives and servants, waiting the arrival of
+Isaac, who comes from afar to celebrate their marriage.
+
+3d. _The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba_, going to visit Solomon,
+formed a pendent to the preceding figure, which it resembles in its
+dimensions. It is both a sea and landscape drawing, M. Waagen declares
+it to be the most beautiful _morceau_ of the kind he is acquainted with,
+and asserts that Lorrain has here attained perfection, vol. i., p. 211.
+This masterpiece was executed by Claude for his protector, the Duke de
+Bouillon. It is signed "Claude GE. I. V., faict pour son Altesse le Duc
+de Bouillon, anno 1648." Doubtless the great Duke de Bouillon, eldest
+brother of Turenne. This French work, destined, too, for France, she has
+now forever lost, as well as the famous Book of Truth, _Libro di
+Verità_, in which Claude collected the drawings of all his paintings,
+drawings which may be themselves regarded as finished pictures. This
+invaluable treasure was, like the _Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba_,
+for a long time in the hands of a French broker, who would willingly
+have relinquished it to the Government, but failing to find purchasers
+in Paris in the last century, ultimately sold it for a mere nothing into
+Holland, whence it has passed into England.[286] The author of the
+_Musées d'Allemagne et de Russie_, mentions that in the gallery of the
+Hermitage at St. Petersburg, amongst a large number of Claudes, whose
+authenticity he appears to admit, there are four _morceaux_, which he
+does not hesitate to declare equal to the most celebrated
+_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of that master, in Paris or London, called the
+_Morning_, the _Noon_, the _Evening_, and the _Night_. They are from
+Malmaison. Thus the sale of the gallery of an empress has in our own
+time enriched Russia, as, twenty-five years before, the sale of the
+Orleans gallery enriched England.
+
+In the National Gallery, along with the serene and quiet landscapes of
+Lorrain, are five of Caspar's, depicting nature under an opposite
+aspect--rugged and wild localities, and tempests. One of the most
+remarkable represents Eneas and Dido seeking shelter in a grotto from
+the violence of a storm. The figures are from the pencil of Albano, and
+for a length of time remained in the palace Falconieri. Two other
+landscapes are from the palace Corsini, and two from the palace Colonna.
+
+But to return to our real subject, which is Poussin. There are eight
+paintings by his hand in the National Gallery, all worthy of mention. M.
+Waagen has merely spoken of them in general terms, but we shall proceed
+to give a description in detail.
+
+Of these eight paintings, only one, representing the plague of Ashdod,
+is taken from sacred history. This is described in the printed catalogue
+as No. 105. The Israelites having been vanquished by the Philistines,
+the ark was taken by the victors and placed in the temple of Dagon at
+Ashdod. The idol falls before the ark, and the Philistines are smitten
+with the pestilence. This canvas is 4 feet 3 inches high, and 6 feet 8
+inches, wide. A sketch or copy of the _Plague of the Philistines_ is in
+the Museum of the Louvre, and has been engraved by Picard. Poussin was,
+in fact, fond of repeating a subject; there are two sets of the _Seven
+Sacraments_, two _Arcadias_,[287] two or three _Moses striking the
+Rock_, &c. The science of painting is here employed to portray the scene
+in all its terrors, and display every horror of the pestilence, and it
+would seem that Poussin had here endeavored to contend with Michael
+Angelo, even at the expense of beauty. It is said the commission for
+this work was given by Cardinal Barberini. It comes from the palace of
+Colonna. The subjects of the remaining seven pictures in the National
+Gallery are mythological, and may be nearly all referred to the early
+epoch of Poussin's career, when he paid tribute to the genius of the
+16th century, and yielded to the influence of Marini.
+
+No. 39. The _Education of Bacchus_, a subject chosen by Poussin more
+than once. On a small canvas 2 feet 3 inches high, and 3 feet 1 inch
+wide.
+
+No. 40. Another small picture 1 foot 6 inches high, and 3 feet 4 inches
+broad: _Phocion washing his Feet at a Public Fountain_, a touching
+emblem of the purity and simplicity of his life. To heighten this rustic
+scene, and impart its meaning, the painter shows us the trophies of the
+noble warrior hung on the trunk of a tree at a little distance. The
+whole composition is striking and full of animation. We believe that it
+has never been engraved. It forms a happy addition to the two other
+compositions consecrated by Poussin to Phocion, and which have been so
+admirably engraved by Baudet, _Phocion carried out of the City of
+Athens_, and the _Tomb of Phocion_.
+
+No. 42. Here is one of the three bacchanals painted by Poussin for the
+Duke de Montmorency. The two others are said to be in the collection of
+Lord Ashburnham. This bacchanal is 4 feet 8 inches high, and 3 feet 1
+inch wide. In a warm landscape Bacchus is sleeping surrounded by nymphs,
+satyrs, and centaurs, whilst Silenus appears under an arbor attended by
+sylvan figures.
+
+No. 62. Another bacchanal, which may be considered one of Poussin's
+masterpieces. According to M. Waagen, it belonged to the Colonna
+collection, but the catalogue, published _by authority_, states that it
+was originally the property of the Comte de Vaudreueili, that it
+afterwards came into the hands of M. de Calonne, whence it passed into
+England, and ultimately found its way into the hands of Mr. Hamlet, from
+whom it was purchased by Parliament, and placed in the National Gallery.
+It is 3 feet 8 inches high, and 4 feet 8 inches wide. Its subject is a
+dance of fauns and bacchantes, which is interrupted by a satyr, who
+attempts to take liberties with a nymph. Besides the main subject, there
+are numerous spirited and graceful episodes, particularly two infants
+endeavoring to catch in a cup the juice of a bunch of grapes supported
+in air, and pressed by a bacchante of slim and fine form. The
+composition is full of fire, energy, and spirit. There is not a single
+group, not a figure, which will not repay an attentive study. M. Waagen
+does not hesitate to pronounce it one of Poussin's finest. He admires
+the truth and variety of heads, the freshness of color, and the
+transparent tone (_die Färbung von seltenster Frische, Helle und
+Klarheit in allen Theilen_). It has been engraved by Huart, and
+accurately copied by Landon, under the title of _Danse de Fauns et de
+Bacchantes_.
+
+No. 65. _Cephalus and Aurora._ Aurora, captivated by the beauty of
+Cephalus, endeavors to separate him from his wife Procris. Being
+unsuccessful, in a fit of jealousy she gives to Cephalus the dart which
+causes the death of his adored spouse. 3 feet 2 inches high, 4 feet 2
+inches wide.
+
+No. 83. A large painting, 5 feet 6 inches high, and 8 feet wide,
+representing _Phineas and his Companions changed into Stones by looking
+on the Gorgon_. Perseus, having rescued Andromeda from the sea monster,
+obtains her hand from her father Cepheus, who celebrates their nuptials
+with a magnificent feast. Phineas, to whom Andromeda had been betrothed,
+rushes in upon the festivity at the head of a troop of armed men. A
+combat ensues, in which Perseus, being nearly overcome, opposes to his
+enemies the head of Medusa, by which they are instantly changed to
+stone. This composition is full of vigor, with brilliant coloring,
+although somewhat crude. It is nowhere mentioned, and we are not aware
+of its having been engraved.
+
+No. 91. A charming little drawing, 2 feet 2 inches high, 1 foot 8 inches
+wide: _A sleeping Nymph, surprised by Lore and Satyrs_, engraved by
+Daullé, also in Landon's work.
+
+Passing from the National Gallery to that of Bridgewater, we come upon
+another phase of Poussin's genius, and encounter not the disciple of
+Mariai but the disciple of the gospel, the graces of mythology giving
+way to the austerity and sublimity of Christianity. Such is the account
+of what we came to see; we looked for much, and found more than we
+expected.
+
+The Bridgewater Gallery is so named after its founder, the Duke of
+Bridgewater, by whom it was formed about the middle of the eighteenth
+century. He bequeathed it to his brother, the Marquis of Stafford, on
+the condition of his leaving it to his second son, Lord Francis Egerton,
+now Lord Ellesmere. The best part of this collection was engraved during
+the life of the Marquis of Stafford, by Ottley, under the title of the
+Stafford Gallery, in 4 vols. folio.
+
+It occupies the first place in England amongst private collections, on
+account of the number of masterpieces of the Italian, and Dutch, and
+French schools. A large number of paintings were added to it from the
+Orleans Gallery, and we could not repress a feeling of regret to meet at
+Cleveland Square with so many masterpieces formerly belonging to France,
+and which have been engraved in the two celebrated works: 1. _La Galerie
+du duc d'Orléans au Palais-Royal_, 2 volumes in folio; 2. _Recueil
+d'estampes d'après les plus beaux tableaux et dessins qui sont en France
+dans le cabinet du roi et celui de Monseigneur le duc d'Orléans_, 1729,
+2 volumes in folio; a most valuable collection known also under the name
+of the _Cabinet of Crozat_. This admirable collection is deposited in a
+building worthy of it, in a veritable palace, and consists of nearly 300
+paintings. The French school is here well represented. The _Musical
+Party_, from the Orleans Gallery, and engraved in the _Galerie du
+Palais-Royal_, three Bourguignons, four Gaspars, four fine Claudes,
+described by M. Waagen, vol. i., p. 331, the two former described in the
+catalogue as Nos. 11 and 41 were painted in 1664 for M. de Bourlemont, a
+gentleman of Lorraine; the former, _Demosthenes by the Sea-side_, offers
+a fine contrast between majestic ruins and nature eternally young and
+fresh; the second, _Moses at the Burning Bush_, a third, No. 103, of the
+year 1657, was likewise painted for a Frenchman, M. de Lagarde, and
+represents the _Metamorphosis of Apuleius into a Shepherd_; lastly,
+there is a fourth, No. 97, the freshest idyll that ever was, a _View of
+the Cascatelles of Tivoli_.
+
+The memory of these charming compositions, however, soon fades before
+the view of the eight grand pictures of Poussin, marked in the catalogue
+Nos. 62-69, the _Seven Sacraments_, and _Moses striking the Rock with
+his Rod_.
+
+It would be difficult to describe the religious sensations which took
+possession of us whilst contemplating the _Seven Sacraments_. Whatever
+M. Waagen may please to assert, there is certainly nothing theatrical
+about them. The beauty of ancient statuary is here animated and
+enlivened by the spirit of Christianity, and the genius of the painter.
+The moral expression is of the most exalted character, and is left to be
+noticed less in the details than in the general composition. In fact, it
+is in composition that Poussin excels, and, in this respect, we do not
+think he has any superior, not even of the Florentine and Roman school.
+As each _Sacrament_ is a vast scene in which the smallest details go to
+enhance the effect of the whole, so the _Seven Sacraments_ form a
+harmonious entirety, a single work, representing the development of the
+Christian life by means of its most august ceremonies, in the same way
+as the twenty-two _St. Brunos_ of Lesueur express the whole monastic
+life, the intention of the variety being to give a truer conception of
+its unity. Can any one, in sincerity, say as much as this for the
+_Stanze_ of the Vatican? Have they a common sentiment? Is the sentiment
+profound, and, indeed, Christian? No doubt Raphael elevates the soul,
+whatever is beautiful cannot fail to do that; but he touches only the
+surface, _circum præcordia ludit_; he penetrates not deep; moves not the
+inner fibres of our being: for why? he himself was not so moved. He
+snatches us from earth, and transports us into the serene atmosphere of
+eternal beauty; but the mournful side of life, the sublime emotions of
+the heart, magnanimity, heroism, in a word, moral grandeur, this he
+does not express; and why was this? because he did not possess it in
+himself, because it was not to be met with around him in the Italy of
+the 16th century, in a society semi-pagan, superstitious, and impious,
+given up to every vice and disorder, which Luther could not even catch a
+glimpse of without raging with horror, and meditating a revolution. From
+this corrupt basis, thinly hidden by a fictitious politeness, two great
+figures, Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, show themselves. But the
+noble widow of the Marquis of Pescaria was not of the company of the
+Fornarina; and what common ground could the chaste lover of the second
+Beatrice, the Dante of painting and of sculpture, the intrepid engineer
+who defended Florence, the melancholy author of _the Last Judgment_ and
+of _Lorenzo di Medici_, have with such men as Perugino boldly professing
+atheism, at the same time that he painted, at the highest price
+possible, the most delicate Madonnas; and his worthy friend Aretino,
+atheist, and moreover hypocrite, writing with the same hand his infamous
+sonnets and the life of the Holy Virgin; and Giulio Romano, who lent his
+pencil to the wildest debaucheries, and Marc' Antonio, who engraved
+them? Such is the world in which Raphael lived, and which early taught
+him to worship material beauty, the purest taste in design, if not the
+strongest, fine drawing, sweet contours, of light, of color, but which
+always hides from him the highest beauty, that is, moral beauty. Poussin
+belongs to a very different world. Thanks to God, he had learned to know
+in France others besides artists without faith or morals, elegant
+amateurs, rich prelates, and compliant beauties. He had seen with his
+eyes heroes, saints, and statesmen. He must have met, at the court of
+Louis XIII., between 1640 and 1642, the young Condé and the voting
+Turenne, St. Vincent de Paul, Mademoiselle de Vigean, and Mademoiselle
+de Lafayette; had shaken hands with Richelieu, with Lesueur, with
+Champagne, and no doubt also with Corneille. Like the last, he is grave
+and masculine; he has the sentiment of the great, and strives to reach
+it. If, above every thing, he is an artist, if his long career is an
+assiduous and indefatigable study of beauty, it is pre-eminently moral
+beauty that strikes him: and when he represents historic or Christian
+scenes, one feels he is there, like the author of the Cid, of Cinna, and
+of Polyeuete, in his natural element. He shows, assuredly, much spirit
+and grace in his mythologies, and like Corneille in several of his
+elegies and in the Declaration of Love to Psyche: but also like him, it
+is in the thoughtful and noble style that Poussin excels: it is on the
+moral ground that he has a place exalted and apart in the history of
+art.
+
+It is not our intention to describe the _Seven Sacraments_, which has
+been done by others more competent to the task than ourselves. We will
+only inquire whether Bossuet himself, in speaking of the sacrament of
+the _Ordination_, could have employed more gravity and majesty than
+Poussin has done in the noble painting, so well preserved, in the
+gallery of Lord Ellesmere. It is worthy of remark, in this as in the
+other paintings of Poussin's best period, how admirably the landscape
+accords with the historic portion. Whilst the foreground is occupied
+with the great scene in which Christ transmits his power to St. Peter
+before the assembled apostles,[288] in the distance, and above the
+heights, are descried edifices rising and in decay. Doubtless, the
+_Extreme Unction_ is the most pathetic; affects and attracts us most by
+its various qualities, particularly by a certain austere grace shed
+around the images of death;[289] but, unhappily, this striking
+composition has almost totally disappeared under the black tint, which
+has little by little gained on the other colors, and obscured the whole
+painting, so that we are well-nigh reduced to the engraving of Pesne,
+and the beautiful drawing preserved in the museum of the Louvre.[290]
+
+Most unhappily a technical error, into which even the most
+inconsiderable painter would not now fall, has deprived posterity of one
+half of Poussin's labors. He was in the habit of covering his canvas
+with a preparation of red, which has been changed by the effect of time
+into black, and thus absorbed the other colors, destroying the effect of
+the etherial perspective. As every one knows, this does not occur with a
+white preparation, which, instead of destroying the colors, preserves
+them for a length of time in their original state. This last process
+Poussin appears to have adopted in the _Moses striking the Rock with his
+Staff_, incomparably the finest of all the _Strikings of the Rock_ which
+proceeded from his pencil. This masterpiece is well known, from the
+engraving by Baudet, and has passed, with the _Seven Sacraments_, from
+the Orleans gallery into the collection at Bridgewater. What unity is in
+this vast composition, and yet what variety in the action, the pose, the
+features of the figures! It consists of twenty different pictures, and
+yet is but one; and not even one of the episodes could be taken away
+without considerable injury to the _ensemble_ of the piece. At the same
+time, what fine coloring! The impastation is both solid and light, and
+the colors are combined in the happiest manner. No doubt they might
+possess greater brilliancy; but the severity of the subject agrees well
+with a moderate tone. It is important to remember this. In the first
+place, every subject demands its proper color: in the second, grave
+subjects require a certain amount of coloring, which, however, must not
+be exceeded. Although the highest art does not consist in coloring, it
+would nevertheless be folly to regard it as of small importance: for, in
+that case, drawing would be every thing, and color might be altogether
+dispensed with. In attempting too far to please the eye, the risk is
+incurred of not going beyond and penetrating to the soul. On the other
+hand, want of color, or what is perhaps still worse, a disagreeable,
+crude, and improper coloring, while it offends the eye, likewise impairs
+the moral effect, and deprives even beauty of its charm. Color is to
+painting what harmony is to poetry and prose. There is equal defect
+whether in the case of too much or too little harmony, while one same
+harmony continued must be looked upon as a serious fault. Is Corneille
+happily inspired? His harmony, like his words, are true, beautiful,
+admirable in their variety. The tones differ with his different
+characters, but are always consistent with the conditions of harmony
+imposed by poesy. Is he negligent? his style then becomes rude,
+unpolished, at times intolerable. The harmony of Racine is slightly
+monotonous, his men talk like women, and his lyre was but one tone, that
+of a natural and refined elegance. There is but one man amongst us who
+speaks in every tone and in all languages, who has colors and accents
+for every subject, _naïve_ and sublime, vividly correct yet unaffectedly
+simple. Sweet as Racine in his lament of Madame, masculine and vigorous
+as Corneille or Tacitus when he comes to describe Retz or Cromwell,
+clear as the battle trumpet when his strain is Roeroy or Condé,
+suggestive of the equal and varied flow of a mighty river in the
+majestic harmony of his Discourse on Universal History, a History which,
+in the grandeur and extent of its composition, in its vanquished
+difficulties, its depth of art, where art even ceases to appear as such,
+in its perfect unity, and, at the same time, almost infinite variety of
+tone and style, is perhaps the most finished work which has ever come
+from the hand of man.
+
+To return to Poussin. At Hampton Court, where, by the side of the seven
+cartoons of Raphael, the nine magnificent Montegnas representing the
+triumph of Cæsar, and the fine portraits of Albert Durer and Holbein,
+French art makes so small a figure, there is a Poussin[291] of
+particularly fine color, _Satyrs finding a Nymph_. The transparent and
+lustrous body of the nymph forms the entire picture. It is a study of
+design and color, evidently of the period when Poussin, to perfect
+himself in every branch of his art, made copies from Titian.
+
+Time fails us to give the least idea of the rich gallery of the Marquess
+of Westminster, in Grosvenor-street. We refer for this to what M. Waagen
+has said, vol. ii., p. 113-130. The Flemish and Dutch schools
+preponderate in this gallery. One sees there in all their glory the
+three great masters of that school, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt,
+accompanied by a numerous suite of inferior masters, at present much in
+vogue, Hobbéma, Cuyp, Both, Potter, and others, who, to our idea, fade
+completely before some half-dozen by Claude of all sizes, of every
+variety of subject, and nearly all of the best time of the great
+landscape-painter, between 1651 and 1661. Of these paintings, the
+greatest and most important is perhaps the _Sermon on the Mount_.
+Poussin appears worthily by the side of Lorrain in the gallery at
+Grosvenor-street. M. Waagen admires particularly _Calisto changed into a
+Bear, and placed by Jupiter among the Constellations_, and still more a
+_Virgin with the infant Jesus surrounded by Angels_. He extols in this
+_morceau_ the surpassing clearness of coloring, the noble and melancholy
+sentiment of nature, together with a warm and powerful tone. M. Waagen
+places this painting amongst the masterpieces of the French painter
+(_gehört zu dem vortrefflichsten was ich von ihm kenne_). Whilst fully
+concurring in this judgment, we beg leave to point out in the same
+gallery two other canvases of Poussin, two delicious pieces from the
+easel, first a touching episode in _Moses striking the Rock_, in the
+gallery of Lord Ellesmere, of a mother who, heedless of herself, hastens
+to give her children drink, whilst their father bends in thanksgiving to
+God; the other, _Children at play_. Never did a more delightful scene
+come from the pencil of Albano. Two children look, laughing, at each
+other; another to the right holds a butterfly on his finger; a fourth
+endeavors to catch a butterfly which is flying from him; a fifth,
+stooping, takes fruit from a basket.
+
+But we must quit the London galleries to betake ourselves to that which
+forms the ornament of the college situated in the charming village of
+Dulwich.
+
+Stanislas, king of Poland, charged a London amateur, M. Noël Desenfans,
+to form him a collection of pictures. The misfortunes of Stanislas, and
+the dismemberment of Poland left on M. Desenfans' hands all he had
+collected; these he made a present of to a friend of his, M. Bourgeois,
+a painter, who still further enriched this fine collection, and
+bequeathed it, at his death, to Dulwich College, where it now is in a
+very commodious and well-lighted building. It consists of nearly 350
+paintings. M. Waagen, who visited it, pronounces judgment with some
+severity. The catalogue is ill-compiled, it is true, but in this it does
+not differ from numerous other catalogues. Mediocrity is frequently
+placed side by side with excellence, and copies given as originals; this
+is the case with more than one gallery. This one, however, has to us the
+merit of containing a considerable number of French paintings, to some
+of which even M. Waagen cannot refuse his admiration.
+
+We will, first of all, mention without describing them, a Lenain, two
+Bourguignons, three portraits by Rigaud, or after Rigaud, a Louis XIV.,
+a Boileau, and another personage unknown to us, two Lebruns, the
+_Massacre of the Innocents_, and _Horatius Cocles defending the Bridge_,
+in which M. Waagen discovers happy imitations of Poussin, three or four
+Gaspars and seven Claude Lorrains, the beauty of most of which is a
+sufficient guarantee of their authenticity; together with a very fine
+_Fête champêtre_ by Watteau, and a _View near Rome_, by Joseph Vernet.
+Of Poussin, the catalogue points out eighteen, of which the following is
+a list:
+
+No. 115. _The Education of Bacchus_; 142, _a Landscape_; 249, _a Holy
+Family_; 253, _the Apparition of the Angels to Abraham_; 260, _a
+Landscape_; 269, _the Destruction of Niobe_; 279, _a Landscape_; 291,
+_the Adoration of the Magi_; 292, _a Landscape_; 295, _the Inspiration
+of the Poet_; 300, _the Education of Jupiter_; 305, _the Triumph of
+David_; 310, _the Flight into Egypt_; 315, _Renald and Armida_; 316,
+_Venus and Mercury_; 325, _Jupiter and Antiope_; 336, _the Assumption of
+the Virgin_; 352, _Children_.
+
+Of these eighteen pictures, M. Waagen singles out five, which he thus
+characterizes:
+
+_The Assumption of the Virgin_, No. 336. In a landscape of powerful
+poesy, the Virgin is carried off to heaven in clouds of gold: a small
+picture, of which the sentiment is noble and pure, the coloring strong
+and transparent (_in der Farbe kraftiges und klaares Bild_). _Children_,
+No. 352. Replete with loveliness and charm. _The Triumph of David_, No.
+305. A rich picture, but theatrical.
+
+_Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea_, No. 300. A charming composition,
+transparent tone. _A Landscape_, No. 260. A well-drawn landscape,
+breathing a profound sentiment of nature; but which has become rather
+blackened.
+
+We are unable to recognize in the _Triumph of David_ the theatrical
+character which shocked M. Waagen. On the contrary, we perceive a bold
+and almost wild expression, a great deal of passion finely subdued.
+
+A triumph must always contain some formality; here, however, there is
+the least possible, and that with which we are struck is its vigor and
+truth to nature. The giant's head stuck on the pike has the grandest
+effect: and we believe that the able German critic has, in this
+instance, likewise yielded to the prejudices of his country, which, in
+its passion for what it styles reality, fancies it perceives the
+theatrical in whatever is noble. We admit that at the close of the
+seventeenth century, under Louis XIV. and Lebrun, the noble was merged
+in the theatrical and academic; but under Louis XIII. and the Regency,
+in the time of Corneille and Poussin, the academic and theatrical style
+was wholly unknown. We entreat the sagacious critic not to forget this
+distinction between the divisions of the seventeenth century, nor to
+confound the master with his disciples, who, although they were still
+great, had slightly degenerated, and who were oppressed by the taste of
+the age of Louis XIV.
+
+But our gravest reproach against M. Waagen is, that he did not notice at
+Dulwich numerous _morceaux_ of Poussin, which well merited his
+attention; amongst others, the _Adoration of the Magi_, far superior,
+for its coloring, to that in the Museum at Paris; and, above all, a
+picture which seems to us a masterpiece in the difficult art of
+conveying a philosophic idea under the living form of a myth and an
+allegory.
+
+In this art, Poussin excelled: he is pre-eminently a philosophical
+artist, a thinker assisted by all the resources of the science of
+design. He has ever an idea which guides his hand, and which is his main
+object. Let us not tire to reiterate this: it is moral beauty which he
+everywhere seeks, both in nature and humanity. As we have stated in
+relation to the sacrament of _Ordination_, the landscapes of Poussin are
+almost always designed to set off and heighten human life, whilst Claude
+is essentially a landscape painter, with whom both history and humanity
+are made subservient to nature. Subjects derived from Christianity were
+exactly suited to Poussin, inasmuch as they afforded the sublimest types
+of that moral grandeur in which he delighted, although we do not see in
+him the exquisite piety of Lesueur and Champagne; and if Christian
+greatness speaks to his soul, it appears to do so with no authority
+beyond that of Phocion, of Scipio, or of Germanicus. Sometimes neither
+sacred nor profane history suffices him: he invents, he imagines, he has
+recourse to moral and philosophic allegory. It is here, perhaps, that he
+is most original, and that his imagination displays itself in its
+greatest freedom and elevation. _Arcadia_ is a lesson of high philosophy
+under the form of an idyll. _The Testament of Eudamidas_ portrays the
+sublime confidence of friendship. _Time Rescuing Truth from the assaults
+of Envy and Discord_, _the Ballet of Human Life_, are celebrated models
+of this style. We have had the good fortune to meet at Dulwich with a
+work of Poussin's almost unknown, and of whose existence we had not even
+an idea, sparkling at the same time with the style we have been
+describing, and with the most eminent qualities of the chief of the
+French school.
+
+This work, entirely new to us, is a picture of very small size, marked
+No. 295, and described in the catalogue as _The Inspiration of the
+Poet_, a delightful subject, and treated in the most delightful manner.
+Fancy the freshest landscape, in the foreground a harmonious group of
+three personages. The poet, on bended knee, carries to his lips the
+sacred cup which Apollo, the god of poesy, has presented to him. Whilst
+he quaffs, inspiration seizes him, his face is transfigured, and the
+sacred intoxication becomes apparent in the motion of his hands and his
+whole body. Beside Apollo, the Muse prepares to collect the songs of the
+poet. Above this group, a genius, frolicking in air, weaves a chaplet,
+whilst other genii scatter flowers. In the background, the clearest
+horizon. Grace, spirit, depth--this enchanting composition unites the
+whole. Added to this, the color is well-grounded and of great
+brilliancy.
+
+It is very singular that neither Bellori nor Félibien, who both lived on
+terms of intimacy with Poussin, and are still his best historians, say
+not a word of this work. It is not referred to in the catalogues of
+Florent Lecomte, of Gault de St. Germain, or of Castellan; nor does M.
+Waagen himself, who, having been at Dulwich, must have seen it there,
+make the least mention of it. We are, therefore, ignorant in what year,
+on what occasion, and for whom this delicious little painting was
+executed: but the hand of Poussin is seen throughout, in the drawing, in
+the composition, in the expression. Nothing theatrical or vulgar: truth
+combined with beauty. The whole scene conveys unmixed delight, and its
+impression is at once serene and profound. In our idea, _The Inspiration
+of the Poet_ may be ranked as almost equal with _The Arcadia_.
+
+Notwithstanding this, _The Inspiration_ has never been engraved, at
+least we have not met with it in any of the rich collections of
+engravings from Poussin we have been enabled to consult, those of M. de
+Baudicour, of M. Gatteaux, member of the Academy of Fine Arts, and
+lastly, the cabinet of prints in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_. We hope
+that these few words may suggest to some French engraver the idea of
+undertaking the very easy pilgrimage to Dulwich, and making known to the
+lovers of national art an ingenious and touching production of Poussin,
+strayed and lost, as it, were, in a foreign collection.
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[284] This is the sketch which Félibien so justly praises, part v., p.
+37, of the 1st edition, in 4to.
+
+[285] This great work has been long in England, as remarked by Mariette,
+see the _Abecedario_, just published, article S. Bourdon, vol. i., p.
+171. It appears to have been a favorite work of Bourdon, he having
+himself engraved it, see de Piles, _Abrégé de la Vie des Peintres_, 2d
+edition, p. 494, and the _Peintre graveur français_, of M. Robert
+Dumesnil, vol. i., p. 131, etc. The copperplates of the _Seven Works of
+Mercy_ are at the Louvre.
+
+[286] The _Libro di Verità_ is now the property of the Duke of
+Devonshire. M. Léon de Laborde has given a detailed account of it in the
+_Archives de l'Art français_, tom. i., p. 435, et seq.
+
+[287] The first composition of _Arcadia_, truly precious could it have
+been placed in the Louvre beside the second and better production, is in
+England, the property of the Duke of Devonshire.
+
+[288] In the first set of the _Seven Sacraments_, executed for the
+Chevalier del Pozzo, now in England, the property of the Duke of
+Rutland, and with which we are acquainted only through engravings,
+Christ is placed on the left hand; it is less masterly and imposing, and
+the centre has a vacant appearance. In the second set, painted five or
+six years after the former for M. de Chanteloup, Christ is placed in the
+centre: this new disposition changes the entire effect of the piece.
+Poussin never repeated himself in treating the same subject a second
+time, but improved on it, aiming ever at perfection. And the memorable
+answer which he once made to one who inquired of him by what means he
+had attained to so great perfection, "I never neglected any thing,"
+should be always present to the mind of every artist, painter, sculptor,
+poet, or composer.
+
+[289] Poussin writes to M. de Chanteloup, April 25, 1644 (Lettres de
+Poussin, Paris, 1824), "I am working briskly at the _Extreme Unction_,
+which is indeed a subject worthy of Apelles, who was very fond of
+representing the dying." He adds, with a vivacity which seems to
+indicate that he took a particular fancy to this painting, "I do not
+intend to quit it whilst I feel thus well-disposed, until I have put it
+in fair train for a sketch. It is to contain seventeen figures of men,
+women, and children, young and old, one part of whom are drowned in
+tears, whilst the others pray for the dying. I will not describe it to
+you more in detail. In this, my clumsy pen is quite unfit, it requires a
+gilded and well-set pencil. The principal figures are two feet high; the
+painting will be about the size of your _Manne_, but of better
+proportion." Félibien, a friend and confidant of Poussin, likewise
+remarks (_Entretiens_, etc., part iv., p. 293), that the _Extreme
+Unction_ was one of the paintings which pleased him most. We learn at
+length, from Poussin's letters, that he finished it and sent it into
+France in this same year, 1644. Fénoien informs us that in 1646 he
+completed the _Confirmation_, in 1647 the _Baptism_, the _Penance_, the
+_Ordination_ and the _Eucharist_, and that he sent the last sacrament,
+that of _Marriage_, at the commencement of the year 1648. Bellori (_le
+Vite de Pittori_, etc., Rome, 1672) gives a full and detailed
+description of the _Extreme Unction_; and, as he lived with Poussin, it
+seems credible that his explanations are for the most part those he had
+himself received from the great artist.
+
+[290] The drawing of the _Extreme Unction_ is at the Louvre; the
+drawings of the five other sacraments are in the rich cabinet of M. de
+la Salle, that of the seventh is the property of the well-known print
+seller, M. Deter.
+
+[291] There is here likewise a charming Francis II., wholly from the
+hand of Clouet, and the portrait of Fénelon by Rigaud, which may be the
+original or at all events is not inferior to the painting in the gallery
+at Versailles.
+
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+Shrubs grown in the United States. By FRANK J. SCOTT. Complete in one
+Elegant Quarto Volume of 618 pages. Is printed on tinted paper, bound in
+green morocco cloth, bevelled boards, with uncut edges, gilt top. Price,
+$8.00.
+
+    This elegant work is the only book published on the especial
+    subject indicated by the title. Its aim and object are to aid
+    persons of moderate incomes, who are not fully posted on the
+    arts of decorative gardening, to beautify their homes, to
+    suggest and illustrate the simple means with which _beautiful
+    home-surroundings_ may be realized on _small ground_, and with
+    little cost; also to assist in giving an intelligent direction
+    to the desires and a satisfactory result for the labors of those
+    who are engaged in embellishing houses, as well as those whose
+    imaginations are warm with the hopes of homes that are yet to
+    be.
+
+
+LIFE OF MAJOR JOHN ANDRÉ. By WINTHORP SARGENT. A new and revised
+edition. 1 vol., 12mo, with Portraits of the Author and Editor. Price,
+$2.50.
+
+    This work is an important contribution to our historical
+    literature--"a volume," says Robert C. Winthrop, "full of
+    attractive and valuable matter, and displaying the fruit of rich
+    culture and rare accomplishments." The "Life of André" has been
+    fortunate in receiving the commendation, at home and abroad, of
+    careful critics and distinguished historians.
+
+
+THE TWO GUARDIANS; OR HOME IN THIS WORLD. By the author of "The Heir of
+Redclyffe." 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. Forming one of the
+volumes of the new illustrated edition of Miss Yonge's popular novels.
+Volumes already published: "The Heir of Redclyffe," 2 vols.;
+"Heartsease," 2 vols.; "Daisy Chain," 2 vols.; "Beechcroft," 1 vol.
+
+
+THE RECOVERY OF JERUSALEM. An Account of the Recent Excavations and
+Discoveries in the Holy City. By CAPTAIN WILSON, R. E., and CAPTAIN
+WARREN, R. E. With an Introductory Chapter by Dean Stanley. Cloth, 8vo.
+With fifty Illustrations. Price, $3.50.
+
+    "That this volume may bring home to the English public a more
+    definite knowledge of what the Palestine Exploration Fund has
+    been doing, and hopes to do, than can be gathered from partial
+    and isolated reports, or from popular lectures, must be the
+    desire of every one who judges the Bible to be the most
+    precious, as it is the most profound, book in the world, and who
+    deems nothing small or unimportant that shall tend to throw
+    light upon its meaning, and to remove the obscurities which time
+    and distance have caused to rest upon some of its
+    pages."--_Globe._
+
+
+THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST, and its Relations to the
+Principles and Practice of Christianity. By WM. STROUD, M. D. With a
+Letter on the Subject by SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON, Bart., M. D. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.
+
+    Dr. William Stroud's treatise on "The Physical Cause of the
+    Death of Christ, and its Relation to the Principles and Practice
+    of Christianity," although now first reprinted in this country,
+    has maintained, for the last quarter of a century, a great
+    reputation in England. It is, in its own place, a masterpiece.
+    "It could have been composed," says Dr. Stroud's biographer,
+    "only by a man characterized by a combination of superior
+    endowments. It required, on the one hand, a profound
+    acquaintance with medical subjects and medical literature. It
+    required, on the other, an equally profound acquaintance with
+    the Bible, and with theology in general." The object of the
+    treatise is to demonstrate an important physical fact connected
+    with the death of Christ--namely, that it was caused by rupture
+    of the heart--and to point out its relation to the principles
+    and practice of Christianity.
+
+
+WESTWARD BY RAIL: THE NEW ROUTE TO THE EAST. By W. F. RAE. 1 vol., 12mo.
+Cloth. 390 pages. Price, $2.00.
+
+    The author of this work, one of the editors of the London _Daily
+    News_, was a stanch defender of the Union, and his work is one
+    of the most just and appreciative books on America yet published
+    by an Englishman.
+
+    "There is a quiet and subtle charm, as well as a deep and true
+    romantic interest, in the story of the railway
+    journey."--_Westminster Review._
+
+    "He has given us a very pleasant and instructive book, which we
+    heartily commend to the attention of all thoughtful and
+    inquiring readers."--_Glasgow Mail._
+
+    "He has written a most readable, interesting, and attractive
+    account of a journey which is long enough to be worth the
+    complete description he has given it."--_Observer._
+
+
+THE REVELATION OF JOHN, with Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and
+Practical. Designed for both Pastors and People. By Rev. HENRY COWLES,
+D. D. 1 vol., 12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50.
+
+D. Appleton & Co. also publish by the same Author: "Minor Prophets."
+12mo, cloth. Price, $2.00; "Ezekiel and Daniel." 12mo, cloth. $2.25;
+"Isaiah." With Notes, $2.25; "Jeremiah." 1 vol., 12mo. $2.00; "Proverbs,
+Ecclesiastes, and Songs of Solomon." $2.00.
+
+
+A TREATISE ON DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. By WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D.,
+Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System, and of Clinical
+Medicine, in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College; Physician-in-chief
+to the New-York State Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System, etc.
+With Forty-five Illustrations. 1 vol., 8vo, 750 pages. Price, $5.00.
+
+    "In the following work I have endeavored to present a 'Treatise
+    on Diseases of the Nervous System' which, without being
+    superficial, would be concise and explicit, and which, while
+    making no claim to being exhaustive, would nevertheless be
+    sufficiently complete for the instruction and guidance of those
+    who might be disposed to seek information from its pages. How
+    far I have been successful will soon be determined by the
+    judgment of those more competent than myself to form an unbiased
+    opinion.
+
+    "One feature I may, however, with justice claim for this work,
+    and that is, that it rests, to a great extent, on my own
+    observation and experience, and is, therefore, no mere
+    compilation. The reader will readily perceive that I have views
+    of my own on every disease considered, and that I have not
+    hesitated to express them."--_Extract from the Preface._
+
+    Over fifty diseases of the nervous system, including insanity,
+    are considered in this treatise.
+
+
+ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SEVERE AND PROTRACTED MUSCULAR EXERCISE,
+with Special Reference to its Influence upon the Excretion of Nitrogen.
+By AUSTIN FLINT, Jr., M. D., Professor of Physiology in the Bellevue
+Hospital Medical College, New York. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.
+
+
+APPLETONS' HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN TRAVEL. Northern and Eastern Tour. New
+edition, revised for the Summer of 1871. Including New York, New Jersey,
+Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New
+Hampshire, Vermont, and the British Dominion, being a Guide to Niagara,
+the White Mountains, the Alleghanies, the Catskills, the Adirondacks,
+the Berkshire Hills, the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, Lake George, Lake
+Memphremagog, Saratoga, Newport, Cape May, the Hudson, and other Famous
+Localities; with full Descriptive Sketches of the Cities, Towns, Rivers,
+Lakes, Waterfalls, Mountains, Hunting and Fishing Grounds,
+Watering-places, Sea-side Resorts, and all scenes and objects of
+importance and interest within the district named. With Maps and various
+Skeleton Tours, arranged as suggestions and guides to the Traveller. One
+vol., 12mo. Flexible cloth. Price, $2.00.
+
+
+JAMES GORDON'S WIFE. A Novel. 8vo. Paper. Price, 50 cents.
+
+    "An interesting novel, pleasantly written, refined in tone, and
+    easy in style."--_London Globe._
+
+    "This novel is conceived and executed in the purest spirit. The
+    illustrations of society in its various phases are cleverly and
+    spiritedly done."--_London Post._
+
+
+THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. By HERBERT SPENCER. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth.
+Price, $2.50.
+
+    This work is thought by many able judges to be the most original
+    and valuable contribution to the science of mind that has
+    appeared in the present century. John Stuart Mill says it is
+    "one of the finest examples we possess of the psychological
+    method in its full power." Dr. McCosh says "his bold
+    generalizations are always suggestive, and some may in the end
+    be established in the profoundest laws of the knowable
+    universe." George Ripley says "Spencer is as keen an analyst as
+    is known in the history of Philosophy. I do not except either
+    Aristotle or Kant, whom he greatly resembles."
+
+
+NIGEL BARTRAM'S IDEAL. A Novel. By FLORENCE WILFORD. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper
+covers. Price, 50 cents.
+
+    This is a novel of marked originality and high literary merit.
+    The heroine is one of the loveliest and purest characters of
+    recent fiction, and the detail of her adventures in the arduous
+    task of overcoming her husband's prejudices and jealousies forms
+    an exceedingly interesting plot. The book is high in tone and
+    excellent in style.
+
+
+GOOD FOR NOTHING. A Novel. By WHYTE MELVILLE. Author of "Digby Grand,"
+"The Interpreter," etc. 1 vol., 8vo, 210 pages. Price, 60 cents.
+
+    "The interest of the reader in the story, which for the most
+    part is laid in England, is enthralling from the beginning to
+    the end. The moral tone is altogether unexceptionable."--_The
+    Chronicle._
+
+
+A HAND-BOOK OF LAW, for Business Men; containing an Epitome of the Law
+of Contracts, Bills and Notes, interest, Guaranty and Suretyship,
+Assignments for Creditors, Agents, Factors, and Brokers, Sales,
+Mortgages, and Liens, Patents and Copyrights, Trade-Marks, the Good-Will
+of a Business, Carriers, Insurance, Shipping, Arbitrations, Statutes of
+Limitation, Partnership, with an Appendix, containing Forms of
+Instruments used in the Transaction of Business. By WILLIAM TRACY, LL. D.
+1 vol., 8vo, 679 pages. Half basil, $5.50; library leather, $6.50.
+
+    This work is an epitome of those branches of law which affect
+    the ordinary transactions of BUSINESS MEN. _It is not proposed
+    by it to make every man a lawyer_, but to give a man of business
+    a convenient and reliable book of reference, to assist him in
+    the solution of questions relating to his rights and duties,
+    which are constantly arising, and to guide him in conducting his
+    negotiations.
+
+    In preparing it, the aim has been to set forth, IN PLAIN
+    LANGUAGE, the rules which constitute the doctrines of law which
+    are examined, _and to illustrate the same by decisions of the
+    Courts in which they are recognized_, WITH MARGINAL REFERENCES
+    TO THE VOLUMES WHERE THE CASES MAY BE FOUND.
+
+
+NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED; with Fifty-nine Illustrations. A Descriptive Text
+and a Map of the City. An entirely new edition, brought down to date,
+with new Illustrations. Price, 50 cents.
+
+    "There has never been published so beautiful a guide-book to New
+    York as this is. A suitable letter-press accompanies the
+    woodcuts, the whole forming a picture of New York such as no
+    other book affords."--_New York World._
+
+
+THE NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In Illustration of
+the Manners and Morals of the Age. By WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C. 1
+vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50.
+
+    Mr. Forsyth, in his instructive and entertaining volume, has
+    succeeded in showing that much real information concerning the
+    morals as well as the manners of our ancestors may be gathered
+    from the novelists of the last century. With judicial
+    impartiality he examines and cross-examines the witnesses,
+    laying all the evidence before the reader. Essayists as well as
+    novelists are called up. The Spectator, The Tatler, The World,
+    The Connoisseur, add confirmation strong to the testimony of
+    Parson Adams, Trulliber, Trunnion, Squire Western, the "Fool of
+    Quality," "Betsey Thoughtless," and the like. A chapter on dress
+    is suggestive of comparison. Costume is a subject on which
+    novelists, like careful artists, are studiously precise.
+
+
+REMINISCENCES OF FIFTY YEARS. By MARK BOYD. 1 vol., 12mo, 390 pp. Price,
+$1.75.
+
+    Mr. Boyd has seen much of life at home and abroad. He has
+    enjoyed the acquaintance or friendship of many illustrious men,
+    and he has the additional advantage of remembering a number of
+    anecdotes told by his father, who possessed a retentive memory
+    and a wide circle of distinguished friends. The book, as the
+    writer acknowledges, is a perfect _olla podrida_. There is
+    considerable variety in the anecdotes. Some relate to great
+    generals, like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Clyde; some to
+    artists and men of letters, and these include the names of
+    Campbell, Rogers, Thackeray, and David Roberts; some to
+    statesmen, and among others, to Pitt, who was a friend of Mr.
+    Boyd's father, to Lords Palmerston, Brougham, and Derby; some to
+    discoverers, like Sir John Franklin and Sir John Ross: and
+    others--among which may be reckoned, perhaps, the most amusing
+    in the volume--to persons wholly unknown to fame, or to manners
+    and customs now happily obsolete.
+
+
+FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE FOR UNSCIENTIFIC PEOPLE. A Series of Detached
+Essays, Lectures, and Reviews. By JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. 422 pages. Price, $2.00.
+
+PROF. TYNDALL IS THE POET OF MODERN SCIENCE.
+
+    This is a book of genius--one of those rare productions that
+    come but once in a generation. Prof. Tyndall is not only a bold,
+    broad, and original thinker, but one of the most eloquent and
+    attractive of writers. In this volume he goes over a large range
+    of scientific questions, giving us the latest views in the most
+    lucid and graphic language, so that the subtlest order of
+    invisible changes stand out with all the vividness of
+    stereoscopic perspective. Though a disciplined scientific
+    thinker, Prof. Tyndall is also a poet, alive to all beauty, and
+    kindles into a glow of enthusiasm at the harmonies and wonder of
+    Nature which he sees on every side. To him science is no mere
+    dry inventory of prosaic facts, but a disclosure of the Divine
+    order of the world, and fitted to stir the highest feelings of
+    our nature.
+
+
+GABRIELLE ANDRÉ. An Historical Novel. By S. BARING-GOULD, author of
+"Myths of the Middle Ages." 1 vol., 8vo. Paper covers. Price, 60 cents.
+
+    Those who take an interest in comparing the effects of the
+    present French Revolution on the Church with that of 1789 will
+    find in this work a great deal of information illustrating the
+    feeling in the State and Church of France at that period. The
+    _Literary Churchman_ says: "The book is a remarkably able one,
+    full of vigorous and often exceedingly beautiful writing and
+    description."
+
+
+MUSINGS OVER THE CHRISTIAN YEAR AND LYRA INNOCENTIUM. By CHARLOTTE MARY
+YONGE, together with a few Gleanings of Recollection, gathered by
+Several Friends. 1 vol. Thick 12mo, 431 pages. Price, $2.00.
+
+    Miss Yonge has here produced a volume which will possess great
+    interest in the eyes of Churchmen, who have for so many years
+    enjoyed the privilege of reading the exquisite poetry of the
+    "Christian Year" by Rev. John Keble. Miss Yonge gives her own
+    experience of the uninterrupted intercourse of thirty years:
+    then there are the "Recollections," by Francis M. Wilbraham: a
+    few words of "Personal Description," by Rev. T. Simpson Evans;
+    then follow the "Musings," one each of the poems illustrative of
+    the "Christian Year and Lyra Innocentium."
+
+
+THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. A New Illustrated Edition.
+2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.
+
+To be followed by HEARTSEASE.
+
+    "The first of her writings which made a sensation here was the
+    'Heir,' and what a sensation it was! Referring to the remains of
+    the tear-washed covers of the copy aforesaid, we find it
+    belonged to the 'eighth thousand.' How many thousands have been
+    issued since by the publishers, to supply the demand for new,
+    and the places of drowned, dissolved, or swept away old copies,
+    we do not attempt to conjecture. Not individuals merely, but
+    households--consisting in great part of tender-hearted young
+    damsels--were plunged into mourning. With a tolerable
+    acquaintance with fictitious heroes (not to speak of real ones),
+    from Sir Charles Grandison down to the nursery idol, Carlton, we
+    have little hesitation in pronouncing Sir Guy Morville, or
+    Redclyffe, Baronet, the most admirable one we ever met with, in
+    story or out. The glorious, joyous boy, the brilliant, ardent
+    child of genius and of fortune, crowned with the beauty of his
+    early holiness, and overshadowed with the darkness of his
+    hereditary gloom, and the soft and touching sadness of his early
+    death--what a caution is there! What a vision!"--Extract from a
+    review of "The Heir of Redclyffe," and "Heartsease," in the
+    _North American Review_ for April.
+
+
+A COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE; mainly abridged from Dr.
+William Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," but comprising important
+Additions and Improvements from the Works of Robinson, Gesenius, Furst,
+Pape, Pott, Winer, Keil, Lange, Kitto, Fairbairn, Alexander, Barnes,
+Bush, Thomson, Stanley, Porter, Tristram, King, Ayre, and many other
+eminent scholars, commentators, travellers, and authors in various
+departments. Designed to be a Complete Guide in regard to the
+Pronunciation and Signification of Scriptural Names; the Solution of
+Difficulties respecting the Interpretation, Authority, and Harmony of
+the Old and New Testaments; the History and Description of Biblical
+Customs, Events, Places, Persons, Animals, Plants, Minerals, and other
+things concerning which information is needed for an intelligent and
+thorough study of the Holy Scriptures, and of the Books of the
+Apocrypha. Illustrated with Five Hundred Maps and Engravings. Edited by
+Rev. SAMUEL W. BARNUM. Complete in one large royal octavo volume of
+1,234 pages. Price, in cloth binding, $5.00; in library sheep, $6.00; in
+half morocco, $7.50.
+
+
+LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. Notes of Two Courses of Lectures before the Royal
+Institution of Great Britain. By JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.
+
+    "For the benefit of those who attended his Lectures on Light and
+    Electricity at the Royal Institution. Prof. Tyndall prepared
+    with much care a series of notes, summing up briefly and clearly
+    the leading facts and principles of these sciences. The notes
+    proved so serviceable to those for whom they were designed that
+    they were widely sought by students and teachers, and Prof.
+    Tyndall had them reprinted in two small books. Under the
+    conviction that they will be equally appreciated by instructors
+    and learners in this country, they are here combined and
+    republished in a single volume."--_Extract from Preface._
+
+
+THE DESCENT OF MAN AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX. By CHARLES DARWIN,
+M. A. With Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $4.00.
+
+    "We can find no fault with Mr. Darwin's facts, or the
+    application of them."--_Utica Herald._
+
+    "The theory is now indorsed by many eminent scientists, who at
+    first combated it, including Sir Charles Lyell, probably the
+    most learned of living geologists."--_Evening Bulletin._
+
+
+ON THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. By ST. GEORGE MIVART, F. R. S. 1 vol., 12mo.
+Cloth, with Illustrations. Price, $1.75.
+
+    "Mr. Mivart has succeeded in producing a work which will clear
+    the ideas of biologists and theologians, and which treats the
+    most delicate questions in a manner which throws light upon most
+    of them, and tears away the barriers of intolerance on each
+    side."--_British Medical Journal._
+
+
+MARQUIS AND MERCHANT. A Novel. By MORTIMER COLLINS. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper
+covers. Price, 50 cents.
+
+    "We will not compare Mr. Collins, as a novelist, with Mr.
+    Disraeli, but, nevertheless, the qualities which have made Mr.
+    Disraeli's fictions so widely popular are to be found in no
+    small degree in the pages of the author of 'Marquis and
+    Merchant.'"--_Times._
+
+
+HEARTSEASE. A Novel. By the author of the "Heir of Redclyffe." An
+Illustrated Edition. 2 vols., 12mo. Price, $2.00.
+
+    This is the second of the series of Miss Yonge's novels, now
+    being issued in a new and beautiful style with illustrations.
+    Since this novel was first published a new generation of readers
+    have appeared. Nothing in the English language can equal the
+    delineation of character which she so beautifully portrays.
+
+
+WHAT TO READ, AND HOW TO READ, being Classified Lists of Choice Reading,
+with appropriate hints and remarks, adapted to the general reader, to
+subscribers, to libraries, and to persons intending to form collections
+of books. Brought down to September, 1870. By CHARLES H. MOORE, M. D. 1
+vol., 12mo. Paper Covers, 50 cents. Cloth. Price, 75 cents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Note.
+
+The following errors in the original text have been corrected in this
+version:
+
+Page 20: Mind on Man changed to Mind of Man
+
+Page 21: Le Notre changed to Le Nôtre
+
+Page 44: empirist changed to empiricist
+
+Page 75: Fénélon; changed to Fénelon;
+
+Page 99: metaphysicans changed to metaphysicians
+
+Page 117: [Greek: ektasis] changed to [Greek: ekstasis]
+
+Page 136: added missing comma after receives warmth
+
+Page 165: resumé changed to résumé
+
+Page 182: exquiste changed to exquisite
+
+Page 184: monarh changed to monarch
+
+Page 245: missing semi-colon added after duty and right
+
+Page 268: destrnction changed to destruction
+
+Page 270: depeudere changed to dependere
+
+Page 321: missing quotation mark added after because it is just.
+
+Page 327: inaccesible changed to inaccessible
+
+Page 356: iufinite changed to infinite
+
+Page 360: sinee changed to since
+
+Page 363: extravagauce changed to extravagance
+
+Page 366: obsconditus changed to absconditus
+
+Page 374: Nonveau changed to Nouveau
+          Allemange changed to Allemagne
+
+Page 399: analysist changed to analyst
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on the true, the beautiful
+and the good, by Victor Cousin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES ON THE TRUE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 36208-8.txt or 36208-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the
+good, by Victor Cousin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good
+
+Author: Victor Cousin
+
+Translator: O. W. Wight
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2011 [EBook #36208]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES ON THE TRUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Dave Morgan, Susan Skinner and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>LECTURES<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%">ON</span><br />
+<br />
+THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL
+AND THE GOOD.</h1>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: x-large;">BY M. V. COUSIN.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: small;">INCREASED BY</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: large;"><b>An Appendix on French Art.</b></p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: small">TRANSLATED, WITH THE APPROBATION OF M. COUSIN, BY</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: x-large;">O. W. WIGHT,</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: small">TRANSLATOR OF COUSIN'S "COURSE OF THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY," AMERICAN
+EDITOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART., AUTHOR
+OF "THE ROMANCE OF ABELARD AND HELOISE," ETC., ETC.</p>
+
+<p class="center">"God is the life of the soul, as the soul is the life of the body."<br />
+<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 12em;">The Platonists and the Fathers.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><br />
+NEW YORK:<br />
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,<br />
+549 &amp; 551 BROADWAY.<br />
+1872.
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">Entered</span>, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854,<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">By D. APPLETON &amp; CO.,</span><br />
+<br />
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States<br />
+for the Southern District of New York.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class='center'>
+TO<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: x-large;">SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART.,</span><br />
+<br />
+<b>Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh:</b><br />
+<br />
+WHO HAS CLEARLY ELUCIDATED, AND, WITH GREAT ERUDITION,<br />
+<br />
+SKETCHED THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: large;">COMMON SENSE;</span><br />
+<br />
+WHO, FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HIS ILLUSTRIOUS COUNTRYMAN, REID<br />
+<br />
+HAS ESTABLISHED THE DOCTRINE OF THE<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: large;">IMMEDIATENESS OF PERCEPTION,</span><br />
+<br />
+THEREBY FORTIFYING PHILOSOPHY AGAINST THE ASSAULTS OF SKEPTICISM;<br />
+<br />
+WHO, TAKING A STEP IN ADVANCE OF ALL OTHERS,<br />
+<br />
+HAS GIVEN TO THE WORLD A DOCTRINE OF THE<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: large;">CONDITIONED,</span><br />
+<br />
+THE ORIGINALITY AND IMPORTANCE OF WHICH ARE ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE<br />
+<br />
+FEW QUALIFIED TO JUDGE IN SUCH MATTERS; WHOSE<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: large;">NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS</span><br />
+<br />
+COMPLETES THE HITHERTO UNFINISHED WORKS OF ARISTOTLE;<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: large;">THIS TRANSLATION OF M. COUSIN'S</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good,</b></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: large;">IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,</span><br />
+<br />
+IN ADMIRATION OF A PROFOUND AND INDEPENDENT THINKER,<br />
+<br />
+OF AN INCOMPARABLE MASTER OF PHILOSOPHIC CRITICISM;<br />
+<br />
+AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM FOR A MAN IN WHOM GENIUS<br />
+<br />
+AND ALMOST UNEQUALLED LEARNING<br />
+<br />
+HAVE BEEN ADORNED BY<br />
+<br />
+TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND GOODNESS OF LIFE.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">{7}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AUTHORS_PREFACE" id="AUTHORS_PREFACE"></a>AUTHOR'S PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>For some time past we have been asked, on various sides, to collect in a
+body of doctrine the theories scattered in our different works, and to
+sum up, in just proportions, what men are pleased to call our
+philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>This <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> was wholly made. We had only to take again the lectures
+already quite old, but little known, because they belonged to a time
+when the courses of the Facult&eacute; des Lettres had scarcely any influence
+beyond the Quartier Latin, and, also, because they could be found only
+in a considerable collection, comprising all our first instruction, from
+1815 to 1821.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> These lectures were there, as it were, lost in the
+crowd. We have drawn them hence, and give them apart, severely
+corrected, in the hope that they will thus be accessible to a greater<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">{8}</a></span>
+number of readers, and that their true character will the better appear.</p>
+
+<p>The eighteen lectures that compose this volume have in fact the
+particular trait that, if the history of philosophy furnishes their
+frame-work, philosophy itself occupies in them the first place, and
+that, instead of researches of erudition and criticism, they present a
+regular exposition of the doctrine which was at first fixed in our mind,
+which has not ceased to preside over our labors.</p>
+
+<p>This book, then, contains the abridged but exact expression of our
+convictions on the fundamental points of philosophic science. In it will
+be openly seen the method that is the soul of our enterprise, our
+principles, our processes, our results.</p>
+
+<p>Under these three heads, the True, the Beautiful, the Good, we embrace
+psychology, placed by us at the head of all philosophy, &aelig;sthetics,
+ethics, natural right, even public right to a certain extent, finally
+theodicea, that perilous <i>rendez-vous</i> of all systems, where different
+principles are condemned or justified by their consequences.</p>
+
+<p>It is the affair of our book to plead its own cause. We only desire that
+it may be appreciated and judged according to what it really is, and not
+according to an opinion too much accredited.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">{9}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Eclecticism is persistently represented as the doctrine to which men
+deign to attach our name. We declare that eclecticism is very dear to
+us, for it is in our eyes the light of the history of philosophy; but
+the source of that light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the most
+important and most useful applications of the philosophy which we teach,
+but it is not its principle.</p>
+
+<p>Our true doctrine, our true flag is spiritualism, that philosophy as
+solid as generous, which began with Socrates and Plato, which the Gospel
+has spread abroad in the world, which Descartes put under the severe
+forms of modern genius, which in the seventeenth century was one of the
+glories and forces of our country, which perished with the national
+grandeur in the eighteenth century, which at the commencement of the
+present century M. Royer-Collard came to re-establish in public
+instruction, whilst M. de Chateaubriand, Madame de Sta&euml;l, and M.
+Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy transferred it into literature and the arts. To it
+is rightly given the name of spiritualism, because its character in fact
+is that of subordinating the senses to the spirit, and tending, by all
+the means that reason acknowledges, to elevate and ennoble man. It
+teaches the spirituality of the soul, the liberty and responsibility of
+human actions, moral obligation, disinterested virtue, the dignity of
+justice, the beauty of charity; and beyond the limits of this world it
+shows a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">{10}</a></span> God, author and type of humanity, who, after having evidently
+made man for an excellent end, will not abandon him in the mysterious
+development of his destiny. This philosophy is the natural ally of all
+good causes. It sustains religious sentiment; it seconds true art, poesy
+worthy of the name, and a great literature; it is the support of right;
+it equally repels the craft of the demagogue and tyranny; it teaches all
+men to respect and value themselves, and, little by little, it conducts
+human societies to the true republic, that dream of all generous souls
+which in our times can be realized in Europe only by constitutional
+monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>To aid, with all our power, in setting up, defending, and propagating
+this noble philosophy, such is the object that early inspired us, that
+has sustained during a career already lengthy, in which difficulties
+have not been wanting. Thank God, time has rather strengthened than
+weakened our convictions, and we end as we began: this new edition of
+one of our first works is a last effort in favor of the holy cause for
+which we have combated nearly forty years.</p>
+
+<p>May our voice be heard by new generations as it was by the serious youth
+of the Restoration! Yes, it is particularly to you that we address this
+work, young men whom we no longer know, but whom we bear in our heart,
+because you are the seed and the hope of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">{11}</a></span> future. We have shown you
+the principle of our evils and their remedy. If you love liberty and
+your country, shun what has destroyed them. Far from you be that sad
+philosophy which preaches to you materialism and atheism as new
+doctrines destined to regenerate the world: they kill, it is true, but
+they do not regenerate. Do not listen to those superficial spirits who
+give themselves out as profound thinkers, because after Voltaire they
+have discovered difficulties in Christianity: measure your progress in
+philosophy by your progress in tender veneration for the religion of the
+Gospel. Be well persuaded that, in France, democracy will always
+traverse liberty, that it brings all right into disorder, and through
+disorder into dictatorship. Ask, then, only a moderated liberty, and
+attach yourself to that with all the powers of your soul. Do not bend
+the knee to fortune, but accustom yourselves to bow to law. Entertain
+the noble sentiment of respect. Know how to admire,&mdash;possess the worship
+of great men and great things. Reject that enervating literature, by
+turns gross and refined, which delights in painting the miseries of
+human nature, which caresses all our weaknesses, which pays court to the
+senses and the imagination, instead of speaking to the soul and
+awakening thought. Guard yourselves against the malady of our century,
+that fatal taste of an accommodating life, incompatible with all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">{12}</a></span>
+generous ambition. Whatever career you embrace, propose to yourselves an
+elevated aim, and put in its service an unalterable constancy. <i>Sursum
+corda</i>, value highly your heart, wherein is seen all philosophy, that
+which we have retained from all our studies, which we have taught to
+your predecessors, which we leave to you as our last word, our final
+lecture.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;"><span style="margin-right: 8em;">V. COUSIN.</span></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>June 15, 1853.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A too indulgent public having promptly rendered necessary a new edition
+of this book, we are forced to render it less unworthy of the suffrages
+which it has obtained, by reviewing it with severe attention, by
+introducing a mass of corrections in detail, and a considerable number
+of additions, among which the only ones that need be indicated here are
+some pages on Christianity at the end of Lecture XVI., and the notes
+placed as an Appendix<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> at the end of the volume, on various<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">{13}</a></span> works of
+French masters which we have quite recently seen in England, which have
+confirmed and increased our old admiration for our national art of the
+seventeenth century.</p>
+
+<p><i>November 1, 1853.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">{15}</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TRANSLATORS_PREFACE" id="TRANSLATORS_PREFACE"></a>TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The nature of this publication is sufficiently explained in the preface
+of M. Cousin.</p>
+
+<p>We have attempted to render his book, without comment, faithfully into
+English. Not only have we endeavored to give his thought without
+increase or diminution, but have also tried to preserve the main
+characteristics of his style. On the one hand, we have carefully shunned
+idioms peculiar to the French; on the other, when permitted by the laws
+of structure common to both languages, we have followed the general
+order of sentences, even the succession of words. It has been our aim to
+make this work wholly Cousin's in substance, and in form as nearly his
+as possible, with a total change of dress. That, however, we may have
+nowhere missed a shade of meaning, nowhere introduced a gallicism, is
+too much to be hoped for, too much to be demanded.</p>
+
+<p>M. Cousin, in his Philosophical Discussions, defines the terms that he
+uses. In the translation of these we have maintained uniformity, so that
+in this regard no farther explanation is necessary.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">{16}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This is, perhaps, in a philosophical point of view, the most important
+of all M. Cousin's works, for it contains a complete summary and lucid
+exposition of the various parts of his system. It is now the last word
+of European philosophy, and merits serious and thoughtful attention.</p>
+
+<p>This and many more like it, are needed in these times, when noisy and
+pretentious demagogues are speaking of metaphysics with idiotic
+laughter, when utilitarian statesmen are sneering at philosophy, when
+undisciplined sectarians of every kind are decrying it; when, too,
+earnest men, in state and church, men on whose shoulders the social
+world really rests, are invoking philosophy, not only as the best
+instrument of the highest culture and the severest mental discipline,
+but also as the best human means of guiding politics towards the
+eternally true and the eternally just, of preserving theology from the
+aberrations of a zeal without knowledge, and from the perversion of the
+interested and the cunning; when many an artist, who feels the nobility
+of his calling, who would address the mind of man rather than his
+senses, is asking a generous philosophy to explain to him that ravishing
+and torturing Ideal which is ever eluding his grasp, which often
+discourages unless understood; when, above all, devout and tender souls
+are learning to prize philosophy, since, in harmony with Revelation, it
+strengthens their belief in God, freedom, immortality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">{17}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Grateful to an indulgent public, on both sides of the ocean, for a
+kindly and very favorable reception of our version of M. Cousin's
+"Course of the History of Modern Philosophy," we add this translation of
+his "Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good," hoping that his
+explanation of human nature will aid some in solving the grave problem
+of life,&mdash;for there are always those, and the most gifted, too, who feel
+the need of understanding themselves,&mdash;believing that his eloquence, his
+elevated sentiment, and elevated thought, will afford gratification to a
+refined taste, a chaste imagination, and a disciplined mind.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;"><span style="margin-right: 8em;">O. W. WIGHT.</span></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">London</span>, Dec. 21, 1853</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">{18}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>ADVERTISEMENT.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Publishers have to express their thanks to M. <span class="smcap">Cousin</span> for his cordial
+concurrence, and especially for his kindness in transmitting the sheets
+of the French original as printed, so that this translation appears
+almost simultaneously with it.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 2em;">Edinburgh, 38 George-street,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Dec. 26, 1853.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">{19}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE STEM.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<ul class='TOC'>
+<li><span class="smcap"><a href="#AUTHORS_PREFACE">Author's Preface</a></span>                                      <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_7"><i>Page</i>  7</a></span><br /></li>
+</ul>
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#TRANSLATORS_PREFACE">Translator's Preface</a></span>                                         <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_15">15</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#DISCOURSE">Discourse Pronounced at the Opening of the Course.</a>&mdash;Philosophy
+of the Nineteenth Century</span>                                        <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Spirit and general principles of the Course.&mdash;Object of the
+Lectures of this year:&mdash;application of the principles of which an
+exposition is given, to the three Problems of the True, the
+Beautiful, and the Good.</li></ul>
+
+
+<p class='center'><a href="#PART_FIRST">PART FIRST.&mdash;THE TRUE.</a></p>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_I">Lecture I.</a>&mdash;The Existence of Universal and Necessary
+Principles</span>                                                       <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_39">39</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute
+truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is
+the problem of the philosophy of our time.&mdash;Universal and
+necessary principles.&mdash;Examples of different kinds of such
+principles.&mdash;Distinction between universal and necessary
+principles and general principles.&mdash;Experience alone is incapable
+of explaining universal and necessary principles, and also
+incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the
+knowledge of the sensible world.&mdash;Reason as being that faculty of
+ours which discovers to us these principles.&mdash;The study of
+universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest
+parts of philosophy.</li></ul>
+
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_II">Lecture II.</a>&mdash;Origin of Universal and Necessary Principles</span>    <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_51">51</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li><i>R&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the
+origin of universal and necessary principles.&mdash;Danger of this
+question, and its necessity.&mdash;Different forms under which truth
+presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms:
+theory of spontaneity and reflection.&mdash;The primitive form of
+principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form, and
+gives them their actual form.&mdash;Examination and refutation of the
+theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an
+induction founded on particular notions.</li></ul><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">{20}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_III">Lecture III.</a>&mdash;On the Value of Universal and Necessary
+Principles</span>                                                       <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_65">65</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism.&mdash;Recurrence to
+the theory of spontaneity and reflection.</li></ul>
+
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_IV">Lecture IV.</a>&mdash;God the Principle of Principles</span>                 <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_75">75</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute
+truth?&mdash;Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us,
+in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We
+perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular
+beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it;
+refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself;
+defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.&mdash;Plato; St. Augustine;
+Descartes; Malebranche; F&eacute;nelon; Bossuet; Leibnitz.&mdash;Truth the
+mediator between God and man.&mdash;Essential distinctions.</li></ul>
+
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_V">Lecture V.</a>&mdash;On Mysticism</span>                                    <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_102">102</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and mysticism.
+Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without an
+intermediary.&mdash;Two sorts of mysticism.&mdash;Mysticism of sentiment.
+Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities&mdash;the one external, the
+other internal, and corresponding to the soul as external
+sensibility corresponds to nature.&mdash;Legitimate part of
+sentiment.&mdash;Its aberrations.&mdash;Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus:
+God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by pure
+thought.&mdash;Ecstasy.&mdash;Mixture of superstition and abstraction in
+mysticism.&mdash;Conclusion of the first part of the course.</li></ul>
+
+
+<p class='center'><a href="#PART_SECOND">PART SECOND.&mdash;THE BEAUTIFUL.</a></p>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_VI">LECTURE VI.</a>&mdash;The Beautiful in the Mind of Man</span>               <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art
+is, as in the investigation of the true, to commence by
+psychology.&mdash;Faculties of the soul that unite in the perception
+of the beautiful.&mdash;The senses give only the agreeable; reason
+alone gives the idea of the beautiful.&mdash;Refutation of empiricism,
+that confounds the agreeable and the beautiful.&mdash;Pre-eminence of
+reason.&mdash;Sentiment of the beautiful; different from sensation and
+desire.&mdash;Distinction between the sentiment of the beautiful and
+that of the sublime.&mdash;Imagination.&mdash;Influence of sentiment on
+imagination.&mdash;Influence of imagination on sentiment.&mdash;Theory of
+taste.</li></ul><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">{21}</a></span></p>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_VII">Lecture VII.</a>&mdash;The Beautiful in Objects</span>                      <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_140">140</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful:
+the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.&mdash;Nor to
+convenience.&mdash;Nor to proportion.&mdash;Essential characters of the
+beautiful.&mdash;Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the
+sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral
+beauty.&mdash;Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.&mdash;God, the
+first principle of the beautiful.&mdash;Theory of Plato.</li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_VIII">Lecture VIII.</a>&mdash;On Art</span>                                       <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_154">154</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Genius:&mdash;its attribute is creative power.&mdash;Refutation of the
+opinion that art is the imitation of nature&mdash;M. Emeric David, and
+M. Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy.&mdash;Refutation of the theory of illusion.
+That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite the
+passions of terror and pity.&mdash;Nor even directly the moral and
+religious sentiment.&mdash;The proper and direct object of art is to
+produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this idea
+and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the affinity
+between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation of ideal
+beauty to its principle, which is God.&mdash;True mission of art.</li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_IX">Lecture IX.</a>&mdash;The Different Arts</span>                             <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_165">165</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Expression is the general law of art.&mdash;Division of
+arts.&mdash;Distinction between liberal arts and trades.&mdash;Eloquence
+itself, philosophy, and history do not make a part of the fine
+arts.&mdash;That the arts gain nothing by encroaching upon each other,
+and usurping each other's means and processes.&mdash;Classification of
+the arts:&mdash;its true principle is expression.&mdash;Comparison of arts
+with each other.&mdash;Poetry the first of arts.</li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_X">Lecture X.</a>&mdash;French Art in the Seventeenth Century</span>           <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_178">178</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but
+the different schools of art. Example:&mdash;French art in the
+seventeenth century. French poetry:&mdash;Corneille. Racine. Moli&egrave;re.
+La Fontaine. Boileau.&mdash;Painting:&mdash;Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain.
+Champagne.&mdash;Engraving.&mdash;Sculpture:&mdash;Sarrazin. The Anguiers.
+Girardon. Pujet.&mdash;Le N&ocirc;tre.&mdash;Architecture.</li></ul>
+
+
+<p class='center'><a href="#PART_THIRD">PART THIRD.&mdash;THE GOOD.</a></p>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_XI">Lecture XI.</a>&mdash;Primary Notions of Common Sense</span>                <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_215">215</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Extent of the question of the good.&mdash;Position of the question
+according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the
+good, the natural belief of mankind?&mdash;The natural beliefs of
+humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of
+nature.&mdash;Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages,
+in life, in consciousness.&mdash;Disinterestedness and
+devotedness.&mdash;Liberty.&mdash;Esteem and
+contempt.&mdash;Respect.&mdash;Admiration and
+indignation.&mdash;Dignity.&mdash;Empire of opinion.&mdash;Ridicule.&mdash;Regret and
+repentance.&mdash;Natural and necessary foundations of all
+justice.&mdash;Distinction between fact and right.&mdash;Common sense, true
+and false philosophy.</li></ul><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">{22}</a></span></p>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_XII">Lecture XII.</a>&mdash;The Ethics of Interest</span>                        <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_229">229</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Exposition of the doctrine of interest.&mdash;What there is of truth
+in this doctrine.&mdash;Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and
+desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the
+fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot
+explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the
+principle of merit and demerit.&mdash;Consequences of the ethics of
+interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to
+despotism.</li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_XIII">Lecture XIII.</a>&mdash;Other Defective Principles</span>                   <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_255">255</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>The ethics of sentiment.&mdash;The ethics founded on the principle of
+the interest of the greatest number.&mdash;The ethics founded on the
+will of God alone.&mdash;The ethics founded on the punishments and
+rewards of another life.</li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_XIV">Lecture XIV.</a>&mdash;True Principles of Ethics</span>                     <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_274">274</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li>Description of the different facts that compose the moral
+phenomena.&mdash;Analysis of each of these facts:&mdash;1st, Judgment and
+idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation
+between the true and the good.&mdash;2d, Obligation. Refutation of the
+doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from obligation
+instead of founding obligation on the idea of the good.&mdash;3d,
+Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion of
+liberty.&mdash;4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments and
+rewards.&mdash;5th, Moral sentiments.&mdash;Harmony of all these facts in
+nature and science.</li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_XV">Lecture XV.</a>&mdash;Private and Public Ethics</span>                      <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_301">301</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Application of the preceding principles.&mdash;General formula of
+interest,&mdash;to obey reason.&mdash;Rule for judging whether an action is
+or is not conformed to reason,&mdash;to elevate the motive of this
+action into a maxim of universal legislation.&mdash;Individual ethics.
+It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral person
+that one is obligated. Principle of all individual duties,&mdash;to
+respect and develop the moral person.&mdash;Social ethics,&mdash;duties of
+justice and duties of charity.&mdash;Civil society. Government. Law.
+The right to punish.</li></ul><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">{23}</a></span></p>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_XVI">Lecture XVI.</a>&mdash;God the Principle of the Idea of the Good</span>     <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_325">325</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation
+of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.&mdash;Liberty of
+God.&mdash;The divine justice and charity.&mdash;God the sanction of the
+moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and
+demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from
+final causes.&mdash;Religious sentiment.&mdash;Adoration.&mdash;Worship.&mdash;Moral
+beauty of Christianity.</li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><span class="smcap"><a href="#LECTURE_XVII">Lecture XVII.</a>&mdash;R&eacute;sum&eacute; of Doctrine</span>                           <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_346">346</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOCSub'><li>Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the three
+orders of facts on which this doctrine rests, with the relation
+of each one of them to the modern school that has recognized and
+developed it, but almost always exaggerated it.&mdash;Experience and
+empiricism.&mdash;Reason and idealism.&mdash;Sentiment and
+mysticism.&mdash;Theodicea. Defects of different known systems.&mdash;The
+process that conducts to true theodicea, and the character of
+certainty and reality that this process gives to it.</li></ul>
+
+<ul class='TOC'><li><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a>                                                             <span class='tocright'><a href="#Page_371">371</a></span></li></ul>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">{24}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">{25}</a></span></p>
+<h1>LECTURES<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">ON</span><br />
+<br />
+THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD.</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DISCOURSE" id="DISCOURSE"></a><span style="font-size: larger;">DISCOURSE</span><br />
+<br />
+PRONOUNCED AT THE OPENING OF THE COURSE,<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap" style="font-size: smaller;">December</span> 4, 1817.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PHILOSOPHY_IN_THE_NINETEENTH_CENTURY" id="PHILOSOPHY_IN_THE_NINETEENTH_CENTURY"></a>PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Spirit and general principles of the Course.&mdash;Object of the
+Lectures of this year:&mdash;application of the principles of which
+an exposition is given, to the three Problems of the True, the
+Beautiful, and the Good.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It seems natural that a century, in its beginning, should borrow its
+philosophy from the century that preceded it. But, as free and
+intelligent beings, we are not born merely to continue our predecessors,
+but to increase their work, and also to do our own. We cannot accept
+from them an inheritance except under the condition of improving it. Our
+first duty is, then, to render to ourselves an account of the philosophy
+of the eighteenth century; to recognize its character and its
+principles, the problems which it agitated, and the solutions which it
+gave of them; to discern, in fine, what it transmits to us of the true
+and the productive, and what it also leaves of the sterile and the
+false, in order that, with reflective choice, we may embrace the former
+and reject the latter.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Placed at the entrance of the new times, let
+us know,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">{26}</a></span> first of all, with what views we would occupy ourselves.
+Moreover,&mdash;why should I not say it?&mdash;after two years of instruction, in
+which the professor, in some sort, has been investigating himself, one
+has a right to demand of him what he is; what are his most general
+principles on all the essential parts of philosophic science; what flag,
+in fine, in the midst of parties which contend with each other so
+violently, he proposes for you, young men, who frequent this auditory,
+and who are called upon to participate in a destiny still so uncertain
+and so obscure in the nineteenth century, to follow.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is not patriotism, it is a profound sentiment of truth and justice,
+which makes us place the whole philosophy now expanded in the world
+under the invocation of the name of Descartes. Yes, the whole of modern
+philosophy is the work of this great man, for it owes to him the spirit
+that animates it, and the method that constitutes its power.</p>
+
+<p>After the downfall of scholasticism and the mournful disruptures of the
+sixteenth century, the first object which the bold good sense of
+Descartes proposed to itself was to make philosophy a human science,
+like astronomy, physiology, medicine, subject to the same uncertainties
+and to the same aberrations, but capable also of the same progress.</p>
+
+<p>Descartes encountered the skepticism spread on every side in the train
+of so many revolutions, ambitious hypotheses, born out of the first use
+of an ill-regulated liberty, and the old formulas surviving the ruins of
+scholasticism. In his courageous passion for truth, he resolved to
+reject, provisorily at least, all the ideas that hitherto he had
+received without controlling them, firmly decided not to admit any but
+those which, after a serious examination, might appear to him evident.
+But he perceived that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">{27}</a></span> there was one thing which he could not reject,
+even provisorily, in his universal doubt,&mdash;that thing was the existence
+itself of his doubt, that is to say, of his thought; for although all
+the rest might be only an illusion, this fact, that he thought, could
+not be an illusion. Descartes, therefore, stopped at this fact, of an
+irresistible evidence, as at the first truth which he could accept
+without fear. Recognizing at the same time that thought is the necessary
+instrument of all the investigations which he might propose to himself,
+as well as the instrument of the human race in the acquisition of its
+natural knowledges,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> he devoted himself to a regular study of it, to
+the analysis of thought as the condition of all legitimate philosophy,
+and upon this solid foundation he reared a doctrine of a character at
+once certain and living, capable of resisting skepticism, exempt from
+hypotheses, and affranchised from the formulas of the schools.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the analysis of thought, and of the mind which is the subject of
+it, that is to say, psychology, has become the point of departure, the
+most general principle, the important method of modern philosophy.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, it must indeed be owned, philosophy has not entirely lost,
+and sometimes still retains, since Descartes and in Descartes himself,
+its old habits. It rarely belongs to the same man to open and run a
+career, and usually the inventor succumbs under the weight of his own
+invention. So Descartes, after having so well placed the point of
+departure for all philosophical investigation, more than once forgets
+analysis, and returns, at least in form, to the ancient philosophy.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>
+The true method,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">{28}</a></span> again, is more than once effaced in the hands of his
+first successors, under the always increasing influence of the
+mathematical method.</p>
+
+<p>Two periods may be distinguished in the Cartesian era,&mdash;one in which the
+method, in its newness, is often misconceived; the other, in which one
+is forced, at least, to re-enter the salutary way opened by Descartes.
+To the first belong Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz himself; to the
+second, the philosophers of the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Without doubt Malebranche, upon some points, descended very far into
+interior investigation; but most of the time he gave himself up to
+wander in an imaginary world, and lost sight of the real world. It is
+not a method that is wanting to Spinoza, but a good method; his error
+consists in having applied to philosophy the geometrical method, which
+proceeds by axioms, definitions, theorems, corollaries; no one has made
+less use of the psychological method; that is the principle and the
+condemnation of his system. The <i>Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement
+Humain</i> exhibit Leibnitz opposing observation to observation, analysis
+to analysis; but his genius usually hovers over science, instead of
+advancing in it step by step; hence the results at which he arrives are
+often only brilliant hypotheses, for example, the pre-established
+harmony, now relegated among the analogous hypotheses of occasional
+causes and a plastic mediator. In general, the philosophy of the
+seventeenth century, by not employing with sufficient rigor and firmness
+the method with which Descartes had armed it, produced little else than
+systems, ingenious without doubt, bold and profound, but often also
+rash,&mdash;systems that have failed to keep their place in science.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> In
+fact, nothing is durable except that which is founded upon a sound
+method;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">{29}</a></span> time destroys all the rest; time, which re-collects,
+fecundates, aggrandizes the least germs of truth deposited in the
+humblest analyses, strikes without pity, engulfs hypotheses, even those
+of genius. Time takes a step, and arbitrary systems are overturned; the
+statues of their authors alone remain standing over their ruins. The
+task of the friend of truth is to search for the useful remains of them,
+that survive and can serve for new and more solid constructions.</p>
+
+<p>The philosophy of the eighteenth century opens the second period of the
+Cartesian era; it proposed to itself to apply the method already
+discovered and too much neglected,&mdash;it applied itself to the analysis of
+thought. Disabused of ambitious and sterile attempts, and, like
+Descartes, disdainful of the past, the eighteenth century dared to think
+that every thing in philosophy was to be done over again, and that, in
+order not to wander anew, it was necessary to set out with the modest
+study of man. Instead, therefore, of building up all at once systems
+risked upon the universality of things, it undertook to examine what man
+knows, what he can know; it brought back entire philosophy to the study
+of our faculties, as physics had just been brought back to the study of
+the properties of bodies,&mdash;which was giving to philosophy, if not its
+end, at least its true beginning.</p>
+
+<p>The great schools which divide the eighteenth century are the English
+and French school, the Scotch school, and the German school, that is to
+say, the school of Locke and Condillac, that of Reid, that of Kant. It
+is impossible to misconceive the common principle which animates them,
+the unity of their method. When one examines with impartiality the
+method of Locke, he sees that it consists in the analysis of thought;
+and it is thereby that Locke is a disciple, not of Bacon and Hobbes, but
+of our great countryman, Descartes.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> To study the human understanding
+as it is in each one of us, to recognize its powers, and also its
+limits, is the problem which the English philosopher proposed to
+him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">{30}</a></span>self, and which he attempted to solve. I do not wish to judge here
+of the solution which he gave of this problem; I limit myself to
+indicating clearly what was for him the fundamental problem. Condillac,
+the French disciple of Locke, made himself everywhere the apostle of
+analysis; and analysis was also in him, or at least should have been,
+the study of thought. No philosopher, not even Spinoza, has wandered
+farther than Condillac<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> from the true experimental method, and has
+strayed farther on the route of abstractions, even verbal abstractions;
+but, strange enough, no one is severer than he against hypotheses, save
+that of the statue-man. The author of the <i>Trait&eacute; des Sensations</i> has
+very unfaithfully practised analysis; but he speaks of it without
+cessation. The Scotch school combats Locke and Condillac; it combats
+them, but with their own arms, with the same method which it pretends to
+apply better.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> In Germany, Kant wishes to replace in light and honor
+the superior element of human consciousness, left in the shade, and
+decried by the philosophy of his times; and for that end, what does he
+do? He undertakes a profound examination of the faculty of knowing; the
+title of his principal work is, <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>;<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> it is a
+critique, that is to say again, an analysis; the method of Kant is then
+no other than that of Locke and Reid. Follow it until it reaches the
+hands of Fichte,<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> the successor of Kant, who died but a few years
+since; there, again, the analysis of thought is given as the foundation
+of philosophy. Kant was so firmly established in the subject of
+knowledge, that he could scarcely go out of it&mdash;that, in fact, he never
+did legitimately go out of it. Fichte plunged into the subject of
+knowledge so deeply that he buried himself in it, and absorbed in the
+human <i>me</i> all existences, as well as all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">{31}</a></span> sciences&mdash;sad shipwreck of
+analysis, which signalizes at once its greatest effort and its rock!</p>
+
+<p>The same spirit, therefore, governs all the schools of the eighteenth
+century; this century disdains arbitrary formulas; it has a horror for
+hypotheses, and attaches itself, or pretends to attach itself, to the
+observation of facts, and particularly to the analysis of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Let us acknowledge with freedom and with grief, that the eighteenth
+century applied analysis to all things without pity and without measure.
+It cited before its tribunal all doctrines, all sciences; neither the
+metaphysics of the preceding age, with their imposing systems, nor the
+arts with their prestige, nor the governments with their ancient
+authority, nor the religions with their majesty,&mdash;nothing found favor
+before it. Although it spied abysses at the bottom of what it called
+philosophy, it threw itself into them with a courage which is not
+without grandeur; for the grandeur of man is to prefer what he believes
+to be truth to himself. The eighteenth century let loose tempests.
+Humanity no more progressed, except over ruins. The world was again
+agitated in that state of disorder in which it had already been once
+seen, at the decline of the ancient beliefs, and before the triumphs of
+Christianity, when men wandered through all contraries, without power to
+rest anywhere, given up to every disquietude of spirit, to every misery
+of heart, fanatical and atheistical, mystical and incredulous,
+voluptuous and sanguinary.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> But if the philosophy of the eighteenth
+century has left us a vacuity for an inheritance, it has also left us an
+energetic and fecund love of truth. The eighteenth century was the age
+of criticism and destructions; the nineteenth should be that of
+intelligent rehabilitations. It belongs to it to find in a profounder
+analysis of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">{32}</a></span> thought the principles of the future, and with so many
+remains to raise, in fine, an edifice that reason may be able to
+acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>A feeble but zealous workman, I come to bring my stone; I come to do my
+work; I come to extract from the midst of the ruins what has not
+perished, what cannot perish. This course is at once a return to the
+past, an effort towards the future. I propose neither to attack nor to
+defend any of the three great schools that divide the eighteenth
+century. I will not attempt to perpetuate and envenom the warfare which
+divides them, complacently designating the differences which separate
+them, without taking an account of the community of method which unites
+them. I come, on the contrary, a devoted soldier of philosophy, a common
+friend of all the schools which it has produced, to offer to all the
+words of peace.</p>
+
+<p>The unity of modern philosophy, as we have said, resides in its method,
+that is to say, in the analysis of thought&mdash;a method superior to its own
+results, for it contains in itself the means of repairing the errors
+that escape it, of indefinitely adding new riches to riches already
+acquired. The physical sciences themselves have no other unity. The
+great physicians who have appeared within two centuries, although united
+amongst themselves by the same point of departure and by the same end,
+generally accepted, have nevertheless proceeded with independence and in
+ways often opposite. Time has re-collected in their different theories
+the part of truth that produced them and sustained them; it has
+neglected their errors from which they were unable to extricate
+themselves, and uniting all the discoveries worthy of the name, it has
+little by little formed of them a vast and harmonious whole. Modern
+philosophy has also been enriched during the two centuries with a
+multitude of exact observations, of solid and profound theories, for
+which it is indebted to the common method. What has hindered her from
+progressing at an equal pace with the physical sciences whose sister she
+is? She has been hindered by not understanding better her own interests,
+by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">{33}</a></span> not tolerating diversities that are inevitable, that are even
+useful, and by not profiting by the truths which all the particular
+doctrines contain, in order to deduce from them a general doctrine,
+which is successively and perpetually purified and aggrandized.</p>
+
+<p>Not, indeed, that I would recommend that blind syncretism which
+destroyed the school of Alexandria, which attempted to bring contrary
+systems together by force; what I recommend is an enlightened
+eclecticism, which, judging with equity, and even with benevolence, all
+schools, borrows from them what they possess of the true, and neglects
+what in them is false. Since the spirit of party has hitherto succeeded
+so ill with us, let us try the spirit of conciliation. Human thought is
+immense. Each school has looked at it only from its own point of view.
+This point of view is not false, but it is incomplete, and moreover, it
+is exclusive. It expresses but one side of truth, and rejects all the
+others. The question is not to decry and recommence the work of our
+predecessors, but to perfect it in reuniting, and in fortifying by that
+reunion, all the truths scattered in the different systems which the
+eighteenth century has transmitted to us.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the principle to which we have been conducted by two years of
+study upon modern philosophy, from Descartes to our times. This
+principle, badly disengaged at first, we applied for the first time
+within the narrowest limits, and only to theories relative to the
+question of personal existence.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> We then extended it to a greater
+number of questions and theories; we touched the principal points of the
+intellectual and moral order,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and at the same time that we were
+continuing the investigations of our illustrious predecessor, M.
+Royer-Collard, upon the schools of France, England, and Scotland, we
+commenced the study new among us, the difficult but interesting and
+fecund study, of the philosophy of K&oelig;nigsberg. We can at the present
+time, therefore, embrace all the schools of the eighteenth century, and
+all the problems which they agitated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">{34}</a></span></p><p>Philosophy, in all times, turns upon the fundamental ideas of the true,
+the beautiful, and the good. The idea of the true, philosophically
+developed, is psychology, logic, metaphysic; the idea of the good is
+private and public morals; the idea of the beautiful is that science
+which, in Germany, is called &aelig;sthetics, the details of which pertain to
+the criticism of literature, the criticism of arts, but whose general
+principles have always occupied a more or less considerable place in the
+researches, and even in the teaching of philosophers, from Plato and
+Aristotle to Hutcheson and Kant.</p>
+
+<p>Upon these essential points which constitute the entire domain of
+philosophy, we will successively interrogate the principal schools of
+the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>When we examine them all with attention, we can easily reduce them to
+two,&mdash;one of which, in the analysis of thought, the common subject of
+all their works, gives to sensation an excessive part; the other of
+which, in this same analysis, going to the opposite extreme, deduces
+consciousness almost wholly from a faculty different from that of
+sensation&mdash;reason. The first of these schools is the empirical school,
+of which the father, or rather the wisest representative, is Locke, and
+Condillac the extreme representative; the second is the spiritualistic
+or rationalistic school, as it is called, which reckons among its
+illustrious interpreters Reid, who is the most irreproachable, and Kant,
+who is the most systematic. Surely there is truth in these two schools,
+and truth is a good which must be taken wherever one finds it. We
+willingly admit, with the empirical school, that the senses have not
+been given us in vain; that this admirable organization which elevates
+us above all other animate beings, is a rich and varied instrument,
+which it would be folly to neglect. We are convinced that the spectacle
+of the world is a permanent source of sound and sublime instruction.
+Upon this point neither Aristotle, nor Bacon, nor Locke, has in us an
+adversary, but a disciple. We acknowledge, or rather we proclaim, that
+in the analysis of human knowledge, it is necessary to assign to the
+senses an im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">{35}</a></span>portant part. But when the empirical school pretends that
+all that passes beyond the reach of the senses is a chimera, then we
+abandon it, and go over to the opposite school. We profess to believe,
+for example, that, without an agreeable impression, never should we have
+conceived the beautiful, and that, notwithstanding, the beautiful is not
+merely the agreeable; that, thank heaven, happiness is usually added to
+virtue, but that the idea itself of virtue is essentially different from
+that of happiness. On this point we are openly of the opinion of Reid
+and Kant. We have also established, and will again establish, that the
+reason of man is in possession of principles which sensation precedes
+but does not explain, and which are directly suggested to us by the
+power of reason alone. We will follow Kant thus far, but not farther.
+Far from following him, we will combat him, when, after having
+victoriously defended the great principles of every kind against
+empiricism, he strikes them with sterility, in pretending that they have
+no value beyond the inclosure of the reason which possesses them,
+condemning also to impotence that same reason which he has just elevated
+so high, and opening the way to a refined and learned skepticism which,
+after all, ends at the same abyss with ordinary skepticism.</p>
+
+<p>You perceive that we shall be by turns with Locke, with Reid, and with
+Kant, in that just and strong measure which is called eclecticism.</p>
+
+<p>Eclecticism is in our eyes the true historical method, and it has for us
+all the importance of the history of philosophy; but there is something
+which we place above the history of philosophy, and, consequently, above
+eclecticism,&mdash;philosophy itself.</p>
+
+<p>The history of philosophy does not carry its own light with it, it is
+not its own end. How could eclecticism, which has no other field than
+history, be our only, our primary, object?</p>
+
+<p>It is, doubtless, just, it is of the highest utility, to discriminate in
+each system what there is true in it from what there is false in it;
+first, in order to appreciate this system rightly; then, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">{36}</a></span> order to
+render the false of no account, to disengage and re-collect the true,
+and thus to enrich and aggrandize philosophy by history. But you
+conceive that we must already know what truth is, in order to recognize
+it, and to distinguish it from the error with which it is mixed; so that
+the criticism of systems almost demands a system, so that the history of
+philosophy is constrained to first borrow from philosophy the light
+which it must one day return to it with usury.</p>
+
+<p>In fine, the history of philosophy is only a branch, or rather an
+instrument, of philosophical science. Surely it is the interest which we
+feel for philosophy that alone attaches us to its history; it is the
+love of truth which makes us everywhere pursue its vestiges, and
+interrogate with a passionate curiosity those who before us have also
+loved and sought truth.</p>
+
+<p>Thus philosophy is at once the supreme object and the torch of the
+history of philosophy. By this double title it has a right to preside
+over our instruction.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to this, one word of explanation, I beg you.</p>
+
+<p>He who is speaking before you to-day is, it is true, officially charged
+only with the course of the history of philosophy; in that is our task,
+and in that, once more, our guide shall be eclecticism.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> But, we
+confess, if philosophy has not the right to present itself here in some
+sort on the first plan; if it should appear only behind its history, it
+in reality holds dominion; and to it all our wishes, as well as all our
+efforts, are related. We hold, doubtless, in great esteem, both Brucker
+and Tennemann,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> so wise, so judicious; nevertheless our models, our
+veritable masters, always present to our thought, are, in antiquity,
+Plato and Socrates, among the moderns, Descartes, and, why should I
+hesitate to say it, among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">{37}</a></span> us, and in our times, the illustrious man who
+has been pleased to call us to this chair. M. Royer-Collard was also
+only a professor of the history of philosophy; but he rightly pretended
+to have an opinion in philosophy; he served a cause which he has
+transmitted to us, and we will serve it in our turn.</p>
+
+<p>This great cause is known to you; it is that of a sound and generous
+philosophy, worthy of our century by the severity of its methods, and
+answering to the immortal wants of humanity, setting out modestly from
+psychology, from the humble study of the human mind, in order to elevate
+itself to the highest regions, and to traverse metaphysics, &aelig;sthetics,
+theodicea, morals, and politics.</p>
+
+<p>Our enterprise is not then simply to renew the history of philosophy by
+eclecticism; we also wish, we especially wish, and history well
+understood, thanks to eclecticism, will therein powerfully assist us, to
+deduce from the study of systems, their strifes, and even their ruins, a
+system which may be proof against criticism, and which can be accepted
+by your reason, and also by your heart, noble youth of the nineteenth
+century!</p>
+
+<p>In order to fulfil this great object, which is our veritable mission to
+you, we shall dare this year, for the first and for the last time, to go
+beyond the narrow limits which are imposed upon us. In the history of
+the philosophy of the eighteenth century, we have resolved to leave a
+little in the shade the history of philosophy, in order to make
+philosophy itself appear, and while exhibiting to you the distinctive
+traits of the principal doctrines of the last century, to expose to you
+the doctrine which seems to us adapted to the wants and to the spirit of
+our times, and still, to explain it to you briefly, but in its full
+extent, instead of dwelling upon some one of its parts, as hitherto we
+have done. With years we will correct, we will task ourselves to
+aggrandize and elevate our work. To-day we present it you very imperfect
+still, but established upon foundations which we believe solid, and
+already stamped with a character that will not change.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">{38}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>You will here see, then, brought together in a short space, our
+principles, our processes, our results. We ardently desire to recommend
+them to you, young men, who are the hope of science as well as of your
+country. May we at least be able, in the vast career which we have to
+run, to meet in you the same kindness which hitherto has sustained us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">{39}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_FIRST" id="PART_FIRST"></a>PART FIRST.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE TRUE.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_I" id="LECTURE_I"></a>LECTURE I.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute
+truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is
+the problem of the philosophy of our time.&mdash;Universal and
+necessary principles.&mdash;Examples of different kinds of such
+principles.&mdash;Distinction between universal and necessary
+principles and general principles.&mdash;Experience alone is
+incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and
+also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the
+knowledge of the sensible world.&mdash;Reason as being that faculty
+of ours which discovers to us these principles.&mdash;The study of
+universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest
+parts of philosophy.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>To-day, as in all time, two great wants are felt by man. The first, the
+most imperious, is that of fixed, immutable principles, which depend
+upon neither times nor places nor circumstances, and on which the mind
+reposes with an unbounded confidence. In all investigations, as long as
+we have seized only isolated, disconnected facts, as long as we have not
+referred them to a general law, we possess the materials of science, but
+there is yet no science. Even physics commence only when universal
+truths appear, to which all the facts of the same order that observation
+discovers to us in nature may be referred. Plato has said, that there is
+no science of the transitory.</p>
+
+<p>This is our first need. But there is another, not less legitimate, the
+need of not being the dupe of chimerical principles, of barren
+abstractions, of combinations more or less ingenious, but artificial,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">{40}</a></span>
+the need of resting upon reality and life, the need of experience. The
+physical and natural sciences, whose regular and rapid conquests strike
+and dazzle the most ignorant, owe their progress to the experimental
+method. Hence the immense popularity of this method, which is carried to
+such an extent that one would not now condescend to lend the least
+attention to a science over which this method should not seem to
+preside.</p>
+
+<p>To unite observation and reason, not to lose sight of the ideal of
+science to which man aspires, and to search for it and find it by the
+route of experience,&mdash;such is the problem of philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Now we address ourselves to your recollections of the last two
+years:&mdash;have we not established, by the severest experimental method, by
+reflection applied to the study of the human mind, with the deliberation
+and the rigor which such demonstrations exact,&mdash;have we not established
+that there are in all men, without distinction, in the wise and the
+ignorant, ideas, notions, beliefs, principles which the most determined
+skeptic cannot in the slightest degree deny, by which he is
+unconsciously, and in spite of himself, governed both in his words and
+actions, and which, by a striking contrast with our other knowledges,
+are marked with the at once marvellous and incontestable character, that
+they are encountered in the most common experience, and that, at the
+same time, instead of being circumscribed within the limits of this
+experience, they surpass and govern it, universal in the midst of
+particular phenomena to which they are applied; necessary, although
+mingled with things contingent; to our eyes infinite and absolute, even
+while appearing within us in that relative and finite being which we
+are? It is not an unpremeditated paradox that we present to you; we are
+only expressing here the result of numerous lectures.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was not difficult for us to show that there are universal and
+necessary principles at the head of all sciences.</p>
+
+<p>It is very evident that there are no mathematics without axioms and
+definitions, that is to say, without absolute principles.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">{41}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What would logic become, those mathematics of thought, if you should
+take away from it a certain number of principles, which are a little
+barbarous, perhaps, in their scholastic form, but must be universal and
+necessary in order to preside over all reasoning and every
+demonstration?</p>
+
+<p>Are physics possible, if every phenomenon which begins to appear does
+not suppose a cause and a law?</p>
+
+<p>Without the principle of final causes, could physiology proceed a single
+step, render to itself an account of a single organ, or determine a
+single function?</p>
+
+<p>Is not the principle on which the whole of morals rests, the principle
+which obligates man to good and lays the foundation of virtue, of the
+same nature? Does it not extend to all moral beings, without distinction
+of time and place? Can you conceive of a moral being who does not
+recognize in the depth of his conscience that reason ought to govern
+passion, that it is necessary to preserve sworn faith, and, against the
+most pressing interest, to restore the treasure that has been confided
+to us?</p>
+
+<p>And these are not mere metaphysical prejudices and formulas of the
+schools: I appeal to the most vulgar common sense.</p>
+
+<p>If I should say to you that a murder has just been committed, could you
+not ask me when, where, by whom, wherefore? That is to say, your mind is
+directed by the universal and necessary principles of time, of space, of
+cause, and even of final cause.</p>
+
+<p>If I should say to you that love or ambition caused the murder, would
+you not at the same instant conceive a lover, an ambitious person? This
+means, again, that there is for you no act without an agent, no quality
+and phenomenon without a substance, without a real subject.</p>
+
+<p>If I should say to you that the accused pretends that he is not the same
+person who conceived, willed, and executed this murder, and that, at
+intervals, his personality has more than once been changed, would you
+not say he is a fool if he is sincere, and that, although the acts and
+the incidents have varied, the person and the being have remained the
+same?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">{42}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Suppose that the accused should defend himself on this ground, that the
+murder must serve his interest; that, moreover, the person killed was so
+unhappy that life was a burden to him; that the state loses nothing,
+since in place of two worthless citizens it acquires one who becomes
+useful to it; that, in fine, mankind will not perish by the loss of an
+individual, &amp;c.; to all these reasonings would you not oppose the very
+simple response, that this murder, useful perhaps to its author, is not
+the less unjust, and that, therefore, under no pretext was it permitted?</p>
+
+<p>The same good sense which admits universal and necessary truths, easily
+distinguishes them from those that are not universal and necessary, and
+are only general, that is to say, are applied only to a greater or less
+number of cases.</p>
+
+<p>For example, the following is a very general truth: the day succeeds the
+night; but is it a universal and necessary truth? Does it extend to all
+lands? Yes, to all known lands. But does it extend to all possible
+lands? No; for it is possible to conceive of lands plunged in eternal
+night, another system of the world being given. The laws of the material
+world are what they are; they are not necessary. Their Author might have
+chosen others. With another system of the world one conceives other
+physics, but we cannot conceive other mathematics and other morals. Thus
+it is possible to conceive that day and night may not be in the same
+relation to each as that in which we see them; therefore the truth that
+day succeeds night is a very general truth, perhaps even a universal
+truth, but by no means a necessary truth.</p>
+
+<p>Montesquieu has said that liberty is not a fruit of warm climates. I
+acknowledge, if it is desired, that heat enervates the spirit, and that
+warm countries maintain free governments with difficulty; but it does
+not follow that there may be no possible exception to this principle:
+moreover, there have been exceptions; hence it is not an absolutely
+universal principle, much less is it a necessary principle. Could you
+say as much of the principle of cause? Could you in any way conceive, in
+any time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">{43}</a></span> and in any place, a phenomenon which begins to appear without
+a cause, physical or moral?</p>
+
+<p>And were it possible to reduce universal and necessary principles to
+general principles, in order to employ and apply these principles thus
+abased, and to found upon them any reasoning whatever, it would be
+necessary to admit what is called in logic the principle of
+contradiction, viz., that a thing cannot at the same time be and not be,
+in order to maintain the integrity of each part of the reasoning; as
+well as the principle of sufficient reason, which alone establishes
+their connection and the legitimacy of the conclusion. Now, these two
+principles, without which there is no reasoning, are themselves
+universal and necessary principles; so that the circle is manifest.</p>
+
+<p>Even were we to destroy in thought all existences, save that of a single
+mind, we should be compelled to place in that mind, in order that it
+might exercise itself at all&mdash;and the mind is such only on the condition
+that it thinks&mdash;several necessary principles; it would be beyond the
+power of thought to conceive it deprived of the principle of
+contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason.</p>
+
+<p>How many times have we demonstrated the vanity of the efforts of the
+empirical school to disturb the existence or weaken the bearing of
+universal and necessary principles! Listen to this school: it will say
+to you that the principle of cause, given by us as universal and
+necessary, is, after all, only a habit of the mind, which, seeing in
+nature a fact succeeding another fact, puts between these that
+connection which we have called the relation of effect to cause. This
+explanation is nothing but the destruction, not only of the principle of
+causality, but even of the notion of cause. The senses show me two
+balls, one of which begins to move, the other of which moves after it.
+Suppose that this succession is renewed and continues; it will be
+constancy added to succession; it will by no means be the connection of
+a causative power with its effect; for example, that which consciousness
+attests to us is the least effort of volition. Thus a consequent
+em<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">{44}</a></span>piricist, like Hume,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> easily proves that no sensible experience
+legitimately gives the idea of cause.</p>
+
+<p>What we say of the notion of cause we might say of all notions of the
+same kind. Let us at least instance those of substance and unity.</p>
+
+<p>The senses perceive only qualities, phenomena. I touch the extension, I
+see the color, I am sensible of the odor; but do our senses attain the
+substance that is extended, colored, or odorous? On this point Hume<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>
+indulges in pleasantries. He asks which one of our senses takes
+cognizance of substance. What, then, according to him and in the system
+of empiricism, is the notion of substance? An illusion like the notion
+of cause.</p>
+
+<p>Neither do the senses give us unity; for unity is identity, is
+simplicity, and the senses show us every thing in succession and
+composition. The works of art possess unity only because Art, that is to
+say, the mind of man puts it there. If we perceive unity in the works of
+nature, it is not the senses that discover it to us. The arrangement of
+the different parts of an object may contain unity, but it is a unity of
+organization, an ideal and moral unity which the mind alone conceives,
+and which escapes the senses.</p>
+
+<p>If the senses are not able to explain simple notions, much less still
+are they able to explain the principles in which these notions are met,
+which are universal and necessary. In fact, the senses clearly perceive
+such and such facts, but it is impossible for them to embrace what is
+universal; experience attests what is, it does not reach what cannot but
+be.</p>
+
+<p>We go farther. Not only is empiricism unable to explain universal and
+necessary principles; but we maintain that, without these principles,
+empiricism cannot even account for the knowledge of the sensible world.</p>
+
+<p>Take away the principle of causality, and the human mind is condemned
+never to go out of itself and its own modifications.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">{45}</a></span> All the sensations
+of hearing, of smell, of taste, of touch, of feeling even, cannot inform
+you what their cause is, nor whether they have a cause. But give to the
+human mind the principle of causality, admit that every sensation, as
+well as every phenomenon, every change, every event, has a cause, as
+evidently we are not the cause of certain sensations, and that
+especially these sensations must have a cause, and we are naturally led
+to recognize for those sensations causes different from ourselves, and
+that is the first notion of an exterior world. The universal and
+necessary principle of causality alone gives it and justifies it. Other
+principles of the same order increase and develop it.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as you know that there are external objects, I ask you whether
+you do not conceive them in a place that contains them. In order to deny
+it, it would be necessary to deny that every body is in a place, that is
+to say, to reject a truth of physics, which is at the same time a
+principle of metaphysics, as well as an axiom of common sense. But the
+place that contains a body is often itself a body, which is only more
+capacious than the first. This new body is in its turn in a place. Is
+this new place also a body? Then it is contained in another place more
+extended, and so on; so that it is impossible for you to conceive a body
+which is not in a place; and you arrive at the conception of a boundless
+and infinite place, that contains all limited places and all possible
+bodies: that boundless and infinite place is space.</p>
+
+<p>And I tell you in this nothing that is not very simple. Look. Do you
+deny that this water is in a vase? Do you deny that this vase is in this
+hall? Do you deny that this hall is in a larger place, which is in its
+turn in another larger still? I can thus carry you on to infinite space.
+If you deny a single one of these propositions, you deny all, the first
+as well as the last; and if you admit the first, you are forced to admit
+the last.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be supposed that sensibility, which is not able to give us
+even the idea of body, alone elevates us to the idea of space. The
+intervention of a superior principle is, therefore, here necessary.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">{46}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As we believe that every body is contained in a place, so we believe
+that every event happens in time. Can you conceive an event happening,
+except in some point of duration? This duration is extended and
+successively increased to your mind's eye, and you end by conceiving it
+unlimited like space. Deny duration, and you deny all the sciences that
+measure it, you destroy all the natural beliefs upon which human life
+reposes. It is hardly necessary to add that sensibility alone no more
+explains the notion of time than that of space, both of which are
+nevertheless inherent in the knowledge of the external world.</p>
+
+<p>Empiricism is, therefore, convicted of being unable to dispense with
+universal and necessary principles, and of being unable to explain them.</p>
+
+<p>Let us pause: either all our preceding works have terminated in nothing
+but chimeras, or they permit us to consider as a point definitely
+acquired for science, that there are in the human mind, for whomsoever
+interrogates it sincerely, principles really stamped with the character
+of universality and necessity.</p>
+
+<p>After having established and defended the existence of universal and
+necessary principles, we might investigate and pursue this kind of
+principles in all the departments of human knowledge, and attempt an
+exact and rigorous classification; but illustrious examples have taught
+us to fear to compromise truths of the greatest price by mixing with
+them conjectures which, in giving brilliancy, perhaps, to the spirit of
+philosophy, diminish its authority in the eyes of the wise. We, also,
+following the example of Kant, attempted before you, last year,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> a
+classification, even a reduction of universal and necessary principles,
+and of all the notions that are connected with them. This work has not
+lost for us its importance, but we will not reproduce it. In the
+interest of the great cause which we serve, and taking thought here only
+to establish upon solid foundations the doctrine which is adapted to the
+French genius in the nineteenth century, we will carefully shun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">{47}</a></span> every
+thing that might seem personal and hazardous; and, instead of examining,
+criticising,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> and reconstituting the classification which the
+philosophy of K&oelig;nigsberg has given of universal and necessary
+principles, we prefer, we find it much more useful, to enable you to
+penetrate deeper into the nature of these principles, by showing you
+what faculty of ours it is that discovers them to us, and to which they
+are related and correspond.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiarity of these principles is, that each one of us in
+reflection recognizes that he possesses them, but that he is not their
+author. We conceive them and apply them, we do not constitute them. Let
+us interrogate our consciousness. Do we refer to ourselves, for example,
+the definitions of geometry, as we do certain movements of which we feel
+ourselves to be the cause? If it is I who make these definitions, they
+are therefore mine, I can unmake them, modify them, change them, even
+annihilate them. It is certain that I cannot do it. I am not, then, the
+author of them. It has also been demonstrated that the principles of
+which we have spoken cannot be derived from sensation, which is
+variable, limited, incapable of producing and authorizing any thing
+universal and necessary. I arrive, then, at the following consequence,
+also necessary:&mdash;truth is in me and not by me. As sensibility puts me in
+relation with the physical world, so another faculty puts me in
+communication with the truths that depend upon neither the world nor me,
+and that faculty is reason.</p>
+
+<p>There are in men three general faculties which are always mingled
+together, and are rarely exercised except simultaneously, but which
+analysis divides in order to study them better, without misconceiving
+their reciprocal play, their intimate connection, their indivisible
+unity. The first of these faculties is activity, voluntary and free
+activity, in which human personality especially appears, and without
+which the other faculties would be as if they were not, since we should
+not exist for ourselves. Let us examine ourselves at the moment when a
+sensation is produced in us; we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">{48}</a></span> shall recognize that there is
+perception only so far as there is some degree of attention, and that
+perception ends at the moment when our activity ends. One does not
+recollect what he did in perfect sleep or in a swoon; because then he
+had lost voluntary activity, consequently consciousness; consequently,
+again, memory. Passion often, in depriving us of liberty, deprives us,
+at the same time, of the consciousness of our actions and of ourselves;
+then, to use a just and common expression, one knows not what he does.
+It is by liberty that man is truly man, that he possesses himself and
+governs himself; without it, he falls again under the yoke of nature; he
+is, without it, only a more admirable and more beautiful part of nature.
+But while I am endowed with activity and liberty, I am also passive in
+other respects; I am subject to the laws of the external world; I suffer
+and I enjoy without being myself the author of my joys and my
+sufferings; I feel rising within me needs, desires, passions, which I
+have not made, which by turns fill my life with happiness and misery.
+Finally, besides volition and sensibility, man has the faculty of
+knowing, has understanding, intelligence, reason, the name matters
+little, by means of which he is elevated to truths of different orders,
+and among others, to universal and necessary truths, which suppose in
+reason, attached to its exercise, principles entirely distinct from the
+impressions of the senses and the resolutions of the will.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Voluntary activity, sensibility, reason, are all equally certain.
+Consciousness verifies the existence of necessary principles, which
+direct the reason quite as well as that of sensations and volitions. I
+call every thing real that falls under observation. I suffer; my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">{49}</a></span>
+suffering is real, inasmuch as I am conscious of it: it is the same with
+liberty: it is the same with reason and the principles that govern it.
+We can affirm, then, that the existence of universal and necessary
+principles rests upon the testimony of observation, and even of the most
+immediate and surest observation, that of consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>But consciousness is only a witness,&mdash;it makes what is appear; it
+creates nothing. It is not because consciousness announces it to you,
+that you have produced such or such a movement, that you have
+experienced such or such an impression. Neither is it because
+consciousness says to us that reason is constrained to admit such or
+such a truth, that this truth exists; it is because it exists that it is
+impossible for reason not to admit it. The truths that reason attains by
+the aid of universal and necessary principles with which it is provided,
+are absolute truths; reason does not create them, it discovers them.
+Reason is not the judge of its own principles, and cannot account for
+them, for it only judges by them, and they are to it its own laws. Much
+less does consciousness make these principles, or the truths which they
+reveal to us; for consciousness has no other office, no other power than
+in some sort to serve as a mirror for reason. Absolute truths are,
+therefore, independent of experience and consciousness, and at the same
+time, they are attested by experience and consciousness. On the one
+hand, these truths declare themselves in experience; on the other, no
+experience explains them. Behold how experience and reason differ and
+agree, and how, by means of experience, we come to find something which
+surpasses it.</p>
+
+<p>So the philosophy which we teach rests neither upon hypothetical
+principles, nor upon empirical principles. It is observation itself, but
+observation applied to the higher portion of our knowledge, which
+furnishes us with the principles that we seek, with a point of departure
+at once solid and elevated.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">{50}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This point of departure we have found, and we do not abandon it. We
+remain immovably attached to it. The study of universal and necessary
+principles, considered under their different aspects, and in the great
+problems which they solve, is almost the whole of philosophy; it fills
+it, measures it, divides it. If psychology is the regular study of the
+human mind and its laws, it is evident that that of universal and
+necessary principles which preside over the exercise of reason, is the
+especial domain of psychology, which in Germany is called rational
+psychology, and is very different from empirical psychology. Since logic
+is the examination of the value and the legitimacy of our different
+means of knowing, its most important employment must be to estimate the
+value and the legitimacy of the principles which are the foundations of
+our most important cognitions. In fine, the meditation of these same
+principles conducts us to theodicea, and opens to us the sanctuary of
+philosophy, if we would ascend to their true source, to that sovereign
+reason which is the first and last explanation of our own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">{51}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_II" id="LECTURE_II"></a>LECTURE II.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>R&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the
+origin of universal and necessary principles.&mdash;Danger of this
+question, and its necessity.&mdash;Different forms under which truth
+presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms:
+theory of spontaneity and reflection.&mdash;The primitive form of
+principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form, and
+gives them their actual form.&mdash;Examination and refutation of the
+theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an
+induction founded on particular notions.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We may regard as a certain conquest of the experimental method and of
+true psychological analysis, the establishment of principles which at
+the same time that they are given to us by the surest of all
+experiences, that of consciousness, have a bearing superior to
+experience, and open to us regions inaccessible to empiricism. We have
+recognized such principles at the head of nearly all the sciences; then,
+searching among our different faculties for that which may have given
+them to us, we have ascertained that it is impossible to refer them to
+any other faculty than to that general faculty of knowing which we call
+reason, very different from reasoning, to which it furnishes its laws.</p>
+
+<p>That is the point at which we have arrived. But is it possible to stop
+there?</p>
+
+<p>In human intelligence, as it is now developed, universal and necessary
+principles are offered to us under forms in some sort consecrated. The
+principle of causality, for example, is thus enounced to us:&mdash;Every
+thing that begins to appear necessarily has a cause. Other principles
+have this same axiomatic form. But have they always had it, and did they
+spring from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">{52}</a></span> human mind with this logical and scholastic apparel, as
+Minerva sprang all armed from the head of Jupiter? With what characters
+did they show themselves at first, before taking those in which they are
+now clothed, and which can scarcely be their primitive characters? In a
+word, is it possible to find the origin of universal and necessary
+principles, and the route which they must have followed in order to
+arrive at what they are to-day? A new problem, the importance of which
+it is easy to feel; for, if it can be resolved, what light will be shed
+upon these principles! On the other hand, what difficulties must be
+encountered! How can we penetrate to the sources of human knowledge,
+which are concealed, like those of the Nile? Is it not to be feared
+that, in plunging into the obscure past, instead of truth, one may
+encounter an hypothesis; that, attaching himself, then, to this
+hypothesis, he may transport it from the past to the present, and that,
+being deceived in regard to the origin of principles, he may be led to
+misconceive their actual and certain characters, or, at least, to
+mutilate and enfeeble those which the adopted origin would not easily
+explain? This danger is so great, this rock is so celebrated in
+shipwrecks, that before braving it one should know how to take many
+precautions against the seductions of the spirit of the system. It is
+even conceived that great philosophers, who were timid in no place, have
+suppressed the perilous problem. In fact, by undertaking to grapple with
+this problem at first, Locke and Condillac went far astray,<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> and it
+must be said, corrupted all philosophy at its source. The empirical
+school, which lauds the experimental method so much, turns its back upon
+it, thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the
+actual characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by
+consciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without
+guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. Reid<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> and Kant<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> showed
+themselves much more observing by confining themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">{53}</a></span> within the
+limits of the present, through fear of losing themselves in the darkness
+of the past. Both freely treat of universal and necessary principles in
+the form which they now have, without asking what was their primitive
+form. We much prefer this wise circumspection to the adventurous spirit
+of the empirical school. Nevertheless, when a problem is given out, so
+long as it is not solved, it troubles and besets the human mind.
+Philosophy ought not to shun it then, but its duty is to approach it
+only with extreme prudence and a severe method.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot recollect too well, for the sake of others and ourselves, that
+the primitive state of human cognitions is remote from us; we can
+scarcely bring it within the reach of our vision and submit it to
+observation; the actual state, on the contrary, is always at our
+disposal: it is sufficient for us to enter into ourselves, to fathom
+consciousness by reflection, and make it give up what it contains.
+Setting out from certain facts, we shall not be liable to wander
+subsequently into hypotheses, or if, in ascending to the primitive
+state, we fall into any error, we shall be able to perceive it and
+repair it by the aid of the truth which an impartial observation shall
+have given us; every origin which shall not legitimately end at the
+point where we are, is by that alone convicted of being false, and will
+deserve to be discarded.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>You know that a large portion of the last year was spent upon this
+question. We took, one by one, universal and necessary questions
+submitted to our examination, in order to determine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">{54}</a></span> the origin of each
+one of them, its primitive form, and the different forms which have
+successively clothed it; only after having operated thus upon a
+sufficiently large number of principles, did we come slowly to a general
+conclusion, and that conclusion we believe ourselves entitled to express
+here briefly as the solid result of a most circumspect analysis, and, at
+least, a most methodical labor. We must either renew before you this
+labor, this analysis, and thereby run the risk of not being able to
+complete the long course that we have marked out for ourselves, or we
+must limit ourselves to reminding you of the essential traits of the
+theory at which we arrived.</p>
+
+<p>This theory, moreover, is in itself so simple, that, without the dress
+of regular demonstrations upon which it is founded, its own evidence
+will sufficiently establish it. It wholly rests upon the distinction
+between the different forms under which truth is presented to us. It is,
+in its somewhat arid generality, as follows:</p>
+
+<p>1st. One can perceive truth in two different ways. Sometimes one
+perceives it in such or such a particular circumstance. For example, in
+presence of two apples or two stones, and of two other similar objects
+placed by the side of the first, I perceive this truth with absolute
+certainty, viz., that these two stones and these two other stones make
+four stones,&mdash;which is in some sort a concrete apperception of the
+truth, because the truth is given to us in regard to real and
+determinate objects. Sometimes I also affirm in a general manner that
+two and two equal four, abstracting every determinate object,&mdash;which is
+the abstract conception of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of these two ways of knowing truth, which precedes in the
+chronological order of human knowledge? Is it not certain, may it not be
+avowed by every one, that the particular precedes the general, that the
+concrete precedes the abstract, that we begin by perceiving such or such
+a determinate truth, in such or such a case, at such or such a moment,
+in such or such a place, before conceiving a general truth,
+independently of every application and different circumstances of place
+and time?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">{55}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>2d. We can perceive the same truth without asking ourselves this
+question: Have we the ability not to admit this truth? We perceive it,
+then, by virtue alone of the intelligence which has been given us, and
+which enters spontaneously into exercise; or rather, we try to doubt the
+truth which we perceive, we attempt to deny it; we are not able to do
+it, and then it is presented to reflection as superior to all possible
+negation; it appears to us no longer only as a truth, but as a necessary
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflection, that
+reflection supposes an anterior operation, and that this operation, in
+order not to be one of reflection, and not to suppose another before it,
+must be entirely spontaneous; that thus the spontaneous and instinctive
+intuition of truth precedes its reflection and necessary conception?</p>
+
+<p>Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the individual and in the
+race. It is, <i>par excellence</i>, the philosophic faculty; it sometimes
+engenders doubt and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, for being
+rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates
+artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force
+of habit as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous intuition is the
+true logic of nature. It presides over the acquisition of nearly all our
+cognitions. Children, the people, three-fourths of the human race never
+pass beyond it, and rest there with boundless security.</p>
+
+<p>The question of the origin of human cognitions is thus resolved for us
+in the simplest manner: it is enough for us to determine that operation
+of the mind which precedes all others, without which no other would take
+place, and which is the first exercise, and the first form of our
+faculty of knowing.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">{56}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Since every thing that bears the character of reflection cannot be
+primitive, and supposes an anterior state, it follows, that the
+principles which are the subject of our study could not have possessed
+at first the reflective and abstract character with which they are now
+marked, that they must have shown themselves at their origin in some
+particular circumstance, under a concrete and determinate form, and that
+in time they were disengaged from this form, in order to be invested
+with their actual, abstract, and universal form. These are the two ends
+of the chain; it remains for us to seek how the human mind has been from
+one to the other, from the primitive state to the actual state, from the
+concrete state to the abstract state.</p>
+
+<p>How can we go from the concrete to the abstract? Evidently by that
+well-known operation which is called abstraction. Thus far, nothing is
+more simple. But it is necessary to discriminate between two sorts of
+abstractions.</p>
+
+<p>In presence of several particular objects, you omit the characters which
+distinguish them, and separately consider a character which is common to
+them all&mdash;you abstract this character. Examine the nature and conditions
+of this abstraction; it proceeds by means of comparison, and it is
+founded on a certain number of particular and different cases. Take an
+example: examine how we form the abstract and general idea of color.
+Place before my eyes for the first time a white object. Can I here at
+the first step immediately arrive at a general idea of color? Can I at
+first place on one side the whiteness, and on the other side the color?
+Analyze what passes within you. You experience a sensation of whiteness.
+Omit the individuality of this sensation, and you wholly destroy it; you
+cannot neglect the whiteness, and preserve or abstract the color; for, a
+single color being given, which is a white color, if you take away
+that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">{57}</a></span> there remains to you absolutely nothing in regard to color. Let a
+blue object succeed this white object, then a red object, etc.; having
+sensations differing from each other, you can neglect their differences,
+and only consider what they have in common, that they are sensations of
+sight, that is to say, colors, and you thus obtain the abstract and
+general idea of color. Take another example: if you had never smelled
+but a single flower, the violet, for instance, would you have had the
+idea of odor in general? No. The odor of the violet would be for you the
+only odor, beyond which you would not seek, you could not even imagine
+another. But if to the odor of the violet is added that of the rose, and
+other different odors, in a greater or less number, provided there be
+several, and a comparison be possible, and consequently, knowledge of
+their differences and their resemblances, then you will be able to form
+the general idea of odor. What is there in common between the odor of
+one flower and that of another flower, except that they have been
+smelled by aid of the same organ, and by the same person? What here
+renders generalization possible, is the unity of the sentient subject
+which remembers having been modified, while remaining the same, by
+different sensations; now, this subject can feel itself identical under
+different modifications, and it can conceive in the qualities of the
+object felt some resemblance and some dissimilarity, only on the
+condition of a certain number of sensations experienced, of odors
+smelled. In that case, but in that case alone, there can be comparison,
+abstraction, and generalization, because there are different and similar
+elements.</p>
+
+<p>In order to arrive at the abstract form of universal and necessary
+principles, we have no need of all this labor. Let us take again, for
+example, the principle of cause. If you suppose six particular cases
+from which you have abstracted this principle, it will contain neither
+more nor less ideas than if you had deduced it from a single one. To be
+able to say that the event which I see must have a cause, it is not
+indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other. The
+principle which compels me to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">{58}</a></span> pronounce this judgment, is already
+complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in respect to
+its object, it cannot change in itself; it neither increases nor
+decreases with the greater or less number of its applications. The only
+difference that it is subject to in regard to us, is, that we apply it
+whether we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its
+particular application. The question is not to eliminate the
+particularity of the phenomenon, wherein it appears to us, whether it be
+the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to
+conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for
+every thing that begins to exist. Here, it is not because I have been
+the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several different
+cases, that I have come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf
+falls: at the same instant I think, I believe, I declare that this
+falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man has been killed: at the
+same instant I believe, I proclaim that this death must have a cause.
+Each one of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances,
+and something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them cannot but
+have a cause. Now, I am perfectly able to disengage the universal from
+the particular, in regard to the first fact as well as in regard to the
+second fact, for the universal is in the first quite as well as in the
+second. In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in the
+first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the third, nor in a
+thousandth; for a thousand are not nearer than one to the infinite, to
+absolute universality. It is the same, and still more evidently, with
+necessity. Pay particular attention to this point: if necessity is not
+in the first fact, it cannot be in any; for necessity cannot be formed
+little by little, and by successive increment. If, at the first murder
+that I see, I do not exclaim that this murder necessarily has a cause,
+at the thousandth murder, although it shall have been proved that all
+the others have had causes, I shall have the right to think that this
+new murder has, very probably, also its cause; but I shall never have
+the right to declare that it necessarily has a cause. But when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">{59}</a></span>
+necessity and universality are already in a single case, that case alone
+is sufficient to entitle us to deduce them from it.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>We have established the existence of universal and necessary principles:
+we have marked their origin; we have shown that they appear to us at
+first from a particular fact, and we have shown by what process, by what
+sort of abstraction the mind disengages them from the determinate and
+concrete form which envelops them, but does not constitute them. Our
+task, then, seems accomplished. But it is not,&mdash;we must defend the
+solution which we have just presented to you of the problem of the
+origin of principles against the theory of an eminent metaphysician,
+whose just authority might seduce you. M. Maine de Biran<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> is, like
+us, the declared adversary of the philosophy of sensation,&mdash;he admits
+universal and necessary principles; but the origin which he assigns to
+them, puts them, according to us, in peril, and would lead back by a
+<i>detour</i> to the empirical school.</p>
+
+<p>Universal and necessary principles, if expressed in propositions,
+embrace several terms. For example, in the principle that every
+phenomenon supposes a cause; and in this, that every quality supposes a
+substance, by the side of the ideas of quality and phenomenon are met
+the ideas of cause and substance, which seem the foundation of these two
+principles. M. de Biran pretends that the two ideas are anterior to the
+two principles which contain them, and that we at first find these ideas
+in ourselves in the consciousness that we are cause and substance, and
+that, these ideas once being thus acquired, induction transports them
+out of ourselves, makes us conceive causes and substances wherever there
+are phenomena and qualities, and that the principles of cause and
+substance are thus explained. I beg pardon of my illustrious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">{60}</a></span> friend;
+but it is impossible to admit in the least degree this explanation.</p>
+
+<p>The possession of the origin of the idea of cause is by no means
+sufficient for the possession of the origin of the principle of
+causality; for the idea and the principle are things essentially
+different. You have established, I would say to M. de Biran, that the
+idea of cause is found in that of productive volition:&mdash;you will to
+produce certain effects, and you produce them; hence the idea of a
+cause, of a particular cause, which is yourself; but between this fact
+and the axiom that all phenomena which appear necessarily have a cause,
+there is a gulf.</p>
+
+<p>You believe that you can bridge it over by induction. The idea of cause
+once found in ourselves, induction applies it, you say, wherever a new
+phenomenon appears. But let us not be deceived by words, and let us
+account for this extraordinary induction. The following dilemma I submit
+with confidence to the loyal dialectics of M. de Biran:</p>
+
+<p>Is the induction of which you speak universal and necessary? Then it is
+a different name for the same thing. An induction which forces us
+universally and necessarily to associate the idea of cause with that of
+every phenomenon that begins to appear is precisely what is called the
+principle of causality. On the contrary, is this induction neither
+universal nor necessary? It cannot supply the place of the principle of
+cause, and the explanation destroys the thing to be explained.</p>
+
+<p>It follows from this that the only true result of these various
+psychological investigations is, that the idea of personal and free
+cause precedes all exercise of the principle of causality, but without
+explaining it.</p>
+
+<p>The theory which we combat is much more powerless in regard to other
+principles which, far from being exercised before the ideas from which
+it is pretended to deduce them, precede them, and even give birth to
+them. How have we acquired the idea of time and that of space, except by
+aid of the principle that the bodies and events, which we see are in
+time and in space? We have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">{61}</a></span> seen<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> that, without this principle, and
+confined to the data of the senses and consciousness, neither time nor
+space would exist for us. Whence have we deduced the idea of the
+infinite, except from the principle that the finite supposes the
+infinite, that all finite and defective things, which we perceive by our
+senses and feel within us, are not sufficient for themselves, and
+suppose something infinite and perfect? Omit the principle, and the idea
+of the infinite is destroyed. Evidently this idea is derived from the
+application of the principle, and it is not the principle which is
+derived from the idea.</p>
+
+<p>Let us dwell a little longer on the principle of substances. The
+question is to know whether the idea of subject, of substance, precedes
+or follows the exercise of the principle. Upon what ground could the
+idea of substance be anterior to the principle that every quality
+supposes a substance? Upon the ground alone that substance be the object
+of self-observation, as cause is said to be. When I produce a certain
+effect, I may perceive myself in action and as cause; in that case,
+there would be no need of the intervention of any principle; but it is
+not, it cannot be, the same, when the question is concerning the
+substance which is the basis of the phenomena of consciousness, of our
+qualities, our acts, our faculties even; for this substance is not
+directly observable; it does not perceive itself, it conceives itself.
+Consciousness perceives sensation, volition, thought, it does not
+perceive their subject. Who has ever perceived the soul? Has it not been
+necessary, in order to attain this invisible essence, to set out from a
+principle which has the power to bind the visible to the invisible,
+phenomenon to being, to wit, the principle of substances?<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> The idea
+of substance is necessarily posterior to the application of the
+principle, and, consequently, it cannot explain its formation.</p>
+
+<p>Let us be well understood. We do not mean to say that we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">{62}</a></span> have in the
+mind the principle of substances before perceiving a phenomenon, quite
+ready to apply the principle to the phenomenon, when it shall present
+itself; we only say that it is impossible for us to perceive a
+phenomenon without conceiving at the same instant a substance, that is
+to say, to the power of perceiving a phenomenon, either by the senses or
+by consciousness, is joined that of conceiving the substance in which it
+inheres. The facts thus take place:&mdash;the perception of phenomena and the
+conception of the substance which is their basis are not successive,
+they are simultaneous. Before this impartial analysis fall at once two
+equal and opposite errors&mdash;one, that experience, exterior or interior,
+can beget principles; the other, that principles precede experience.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>To sum up, the pretension of explaining principles by the ideas which
+they contain, is a chimerical one. In supposing that all the ideas which
+enter into principles are anterior to them, it is necessary to show how
+principles are deduced from these ideas,&mdash;which is the first and radical
+difficulty. Moreover, it is not true that in all cases ideas precede
+principles, for often principles precede ideas,&mdash;a second difficulty
+equally insurmountable. But whether ideas are anterior or posterior to
+principles, principles are always independent of them; they surpass them
+by all the superiority of universal and necessary principles over simple
+ideas.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<p>We should, perhaps, beg your pardon for the austerity of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">{63}</a></span> lecture.
+But philosophical questions must be treated philosophically: it does not
+belong to us to change their character. On other subjects, another
+language. Psychology has its own language, the entire merit of which is
+a severe precision, as the highest law of psychology itself is the
+shunning of every hypothesis, and an inviolable respect for facts. This
+law we have religiously followed. While investigating the origin of
+universal and necessary principles, we have especially endeavored not to
+destroy the thing to be explained by a systematic explanation. Universal
+and necessary principles have come forth in their integrity from our
+analysis. We have given the history of the different forms which they
+successively assume, and we have shown, that in all these changes they
+remain the same, and of the same authority, whether they enter
+spontaneously and involuntarily into exercise, and apply themselves to
+particular and determinate objects, or reflection turns them back upon
+themselves in order to interrogate them in regard to their nature, or
+abstraction makes them appear under the form in which their universality
+and their necessity are manifest. Their certainty is the same under all
+their forms, in all their applications; it has neither generation nor
+origin; it is not born such or such a day, and it does not increase with
+time, for it knows no degrees. We have not commenced by believing a
+little in the principle of causality, of substances, of time, of space,
+of the infinite, etc., then believing a little more, then believing
+wholly. These principles have been, from the beginning, what they will
+be in the end, all-powerful, necessary, irresistible. The conviction
+which they give is always absolute, only it is not always accompanied by
+a clear consciousness. Leibnitz himself has no more confidence in the
+principle of causality, and even in his favorite principle of sufficient
+reason, than the most ignorant of men; but the latter applies these
+principles without reflecting on their power, by which he is
+unconsciously governed, whilst Leibnitz is astonished at their power,
+studies it, and for all explanation, refers it to the human mind, and to
+the nature of things, that is to say, he elevates, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">{64}</a></span> borrow the fine
+expression of M. Royer-Collard,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> the ignorance of the mass of men to
+its highest source. Such is, thank heaven, the only difference that
+separates the peasant from the philosopher, in regard to those great
+principles of every kind which, in one way or another, discover to men
+the same truths indispensable to their physical, intellectual, and moral
+existence, and, in their ephemeral life, on the circumscribed point of
+space and time where fortune has thrown them, reveal to them something
+of the universal, the necessary, and the infinite.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">{65}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_III" id="LECTURE_III"></a>LECTURE III.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">ON THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism.&mdash;Recurrence to
+the theory of spontaneity and reflection.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>After having recognized the existence of universal and necessary
+principles, their actual characters, and their primitive characters, we
+have to examine their value, and the legitimacy of the conclusions which
+may be drawn from them,&mdash;we pass from psychology to logic.</p>
+
+<p>We have defended against Locke and his school the necessity and
+universality of certain principles. We now come to Kant, who recognizes
+with us these principles, but confines their power within the limits of
+the subject that conceives them, and, so far as subjective, declares
+them to be without legitimate application to any object, that is to say,
+without objectivity, to use the language of the philosopher of
+K&oelig;nigsberg, which, right or wrong, begins to pass into the
+philosophic language of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Let us comprehend well the import of this new discussion. The principles
+that govern our judgments, that preside over most sciences, that rule
+our actions,&mdash;have they in themselves an absolute truth, or are they
+only regulating laws of our thought? The question is, to know whether it
+is true in itself, that every phenomenon has a cause, and every quality
+a subject, whether every thing extended is really in space, and every
+succession in time, etc. If it is not absolutely true that every quality
+has its subject of inherence, it is not, then, certain, that we have a
+soul, a real substance of all the qualities which consciousness
+attests.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">{66}</a></span> If the principle of causality is only a law of our mind, the
+external world, which this principle discovers to us, loses its reality,
+it is only a succession of phenomena, without any effective action over
+each other, as Hume would have it, and even the impressions of our
+senses are destitute of causes. Matter exists no more than the soul.
+Nothing exists; every thing is reduced to mobile appearances, given up
+to a perpetual becoming, which again is accomplished we know not where,
+since in reality there is neither time nor space. Since the principle of
+sufficient reason only serves to put in motion human curiosity, once in
+possession of the fatal secret that it can attain nothing real, this
+curiosity would be very good to weary itself in searching for reasons
+which inevitably escape it, and in discovering relations which
+correspond only to the wants of our mind, and do not in the least
+correspond to the nature of things. In fine, if the principle of
+causality, of substances, of final causes, of sufficient reason, are
+only our modes of conception, God, whom all these principles reveal to
+us, will no more be any thing but the last of chimeras, which vanishes
+with all the others in the breath of the Critique.</p>
+
+<p>Kant has established, as well as Reid and ourself, the existence of
+universal and necessary principles; but an involuntary disciple of his
+century, an unconscious servant of the empirical school, to which he
+places himself in the attitude of an adversary, he makes to it the
+immense concession that these principles are applied only to the
+impressions of sensibility, that their part is to put these impressions
+in a certain order, but that beyond these impressions, beyond
+experience, their power expires. This concession has ruined the whole
+enterprise of the German philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>This enterprise was at once honest and great. Kant, grieved at the
+skepticism of his times, proposed to arrest it by fairly meeting it. He
+thought to disarm Hume by conceding to him that our highest conceptions
+do not extend themselves beyond the inclosure of the human mind; and at
+the same time, he supposed that he had sufficiently vindicated the human
+mind by restoring to it the universal and necessary principles which
+direct it. But, ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">{67}</a></span>cording to the strong expression of M. Royer-Collard,
+"one does not encounter skepticism,&mdash;as soon as he has penetrated into
+the human understanding he has completely taken it by storm." A severe
+circumspection is one thing, skepticism is another. Doubt is not only
+permitted, it is commanded by reason itself in the employment and
+legitimate applications of our different faculties; but when it is
+applied to the legitimacy itself of our faculties, it no longer
+elucidates reason, it overwhelms it. In fact, with what would you have
+reason defend herself, when she has called herself in question? Kant
+himself, then, overturned the dogmatism which he proposed at once to
+restrain and save, at least in morals, and he put German philosophy upon
+a route, at the end of which was an abyss. In vain has this great
+man&mdash;for his intentions and his character, without speaking of his
+genius, merit for him this name&mdash;undertaken with Hume an ingenious and
+learned controversy; he has been vanquished in this controversy, and
+Hume remains master of the field of battle.</p>
+
+<p>What matters it, in fact, whether there may or may not be in the human
+mind universal and necessary principles, if these principles only serve
+to classify our sensations, and to make us ascend, step by step, to
+ideas that are most sublime, but have for ourselves no reality? The
+human mind is, then, as Kant himself well expressed it, like a banker
+who should take bills ranged in order on his desk for real values;&mdash;he
+possesses nothing but papers. We have thus returned, then, to that
+conceptualism of the middle age, which, concentrating truth within the
+human intelligence, makes the nature of things a phantom of intelligence
+projecting itself everywhere out of itself, at once triumphant and
+impotent, since it produces every thing, and produces only chimeras.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">{68}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The reproach which a sound philosophy will content itself with making to
+Kant, is, that his system is not in accordance with facts. Philosophy
+can and must separate itself from the crowd for the explanation of
+facts; but, it cannot be too often repeated, it must not in the
+explanation destroy what it pretends to explain; otherwise it does not
+explain, it imagines. Here, the important fact which it is the question
+to explain is the belief of the human mind, and the system of Kant
+annihilates it.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, when we are speaking of the truth of universal and necessary
+principles, we do not believe they are true only for us:&mdash;we believe
+them to be true in themselves, and still true, were there no minds of
+ours to conceive them. We regard them as independent of us; they seem to
+us to impose themselves upon our intelligence by the force of the truth
+that is in them. So, in order to express faithfully what passes within
+us, it would be necessary to reverse the proposition of Kant, and
+instead of saying with him, that these principles are the necessary laws
+of our mind, therefore they have no absolute value out of mind; we
+should much rather say, that these principles have an absolute value in
+themselves, therefore we cannot but believe them.</p>
+
+<p>And even this necessity of belief with which the new skepticism arms itself,
+is not the indispensable condition of the application of principles. We
+have established<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> that the necessity of believing supposes
+reflection, examination, an effort to deny and the want of power to do
+it; but before all reflection, intelligence spontaneously seizes the
+truth, and, in the spontaneous apperception,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">{69}</a></span> is not the sentiment of
+necessity, nor consequently that character of subjectivity of which the
+German school speaks so much.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, then, here recur to that spontaneous intuition of truth, which
+Kant knew not, in the circle where his profoundly reflective and
+somewhat scholastic habits held him captive.</p>
+
+<p>Is it true that there is no judgment, even affirmative in form, which is
+not mixed with negation?</p>
+
+<p>It seems indeed that every affirmative judgment is at the same time
+negative; in fact, to affirm that a thing exists, is to deny its
+non-existence; as every negative judgment is at the same time
+affirmative; for to deny the existence of a thing, is to affirm its
+non-existence. If it is so, then every judgment, whatever may be its
+form, affirmative or negative, since these two forms come back to each
+other, supposes a pre-established doubt in regard to the existence of
+the thing in question, supposes some exercise of reflection, in the
+course of which the mind feels itself constrained to bear such or such a
+judgment, so that at this point of view the foundation of the judgment
+seems to be in its necessity; and then recurs the celebrated
+objection:&mdash;if you judge thus only because it is impossible for you not
+to do it, you have for a guaranty of the truth nothing but yourself and
+your own ways of conceiving; it is the human mind that transports its
+laws out of itself; it is the subject that makes the object out of its
+own image, without ever going beyond the inclosure of subjectivity.</p>
+
+<p>We respond, going directly to the root of the difficulty:&mdash;it is not
+true that all our judgments are negative. We admit that in the
+reflective state every affirmative judgment supposes a negative
+judgment, and reciprocally. But is reason exercised only on the
+condition of reflection? Is there not a primitive affirmation which
+implies no negation? As we often act without deliberating on our action,
+without premeditating it, and as we manifest in this case an activity
+that is free still, but free with a liberty that is not reflective; so
+reason often perceives the truth without traversing doubt or error.
+Reflection is a return to consciousness, or to an operation wholly
+different from it. We do not find, then, in any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">{70}</a></span> primitive fact, that
+every judgment which contains it presupposes another in which it is not.
+We thus arrive at a judgment free from all reflection, to an affirmation
+without any mixture of negation, to an immediate intuition, the
+legitimate child of the natural energy of thought, like the inspiration
+of the poet, the instinct of the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet.
+Such is the first act of the faculty of knowing. If one contradicts this
+primitive affirmation, the faculty of knowing falls back up upon itself,
+examines itself, attempts to call in doubt the truth it has perceived;
+it cannot; it affirms anew what it had affirmed at first; it adheres to
+the truth already recognized, but with a new sentiment, the sentiment
+that it is not in its power to divest itself of the evidence of this
+same truth; then, but only then, appears that character of necessity and
+subjectivity that some would turn against the truth, as though truth
+could lose its own value, while penetrating deeper into the mind and
+there triumphing over doubt; as though reflective evidence of it were
+the less evidence; as though, moreover, the necessary conception of it
+were the only form, the primary form of the perception of truth. The
+skepticism of Kant, to which good sense so easily does justice, is
+driven to the extreme and forced within its intrenchment by the
+distinction between spontaneous reason and reflective reason. Reflection
+is the theatre of the combats which reason engages in with itself, with
+doubt, sophism, and error. But above reflection is a sphere of light and
+peace, where reason perceives truth without returning on itself, for the
+sole reason that truth is truth, and because God has made the reason to
+perceive it, as he has made the eye to see and the ear to hear.</p>
+
+<p>Analyze, in fact, with impartiality, the fact of spontaneous
+apperception, and you will be sure that it has nothing subjective in it
+except what it is impossible it should not have, to wit, the <i>me</i> which is
+mingled with the fact without constituting it. The <i>me</i> inevitably enters
+into all knowledge, since it is the subject of it. Reason directly
+perceives truth; but it is in some sort augmented, in consciousness, and
+then we have knowledge. Consciousness is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">{71}</a></span> there its witness, and not its
+judge; its only judge is reason, a faculty subjective and objective
+together, according to the language of Germany, which immediately
+attains absolute truth, almost without personal intervention on our
+part, although it might not enter into exercise if personality did not
+precede or were not added to it.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>Spontaneous apperception constitutes natural logic. Reflective
+conception is the foundation of logic properly so called. One is based
+upon itself, <i>verum index sui</i>; the other is based upon the
+impossibility of the reason, in spite of all its efforts, not betaking
+itself to truth and believing in it. The form of the first is an
+affirmation accompanied with an absolute security, and without the least
+suspicion of a possible negation; the form of the second is reflective
+affirmation, that is to say, the impossibility of denying and the
+necessity of affirming. The idea of negation governs ordinary logic,
+whose affirmations are only the laborious product of two negations.
+Natural logic proceeds by affirmations stamped with a simple faith,
+which instinct alone produces and sustains.</p>
+
+<p>Now, will Kant reply that this reason, which is much purer than that
+which he has known and described, which is wholly pure, which is
+conceived as something disengaged from reflection, from volition, from
+every thing that constitutes personality, is nevertheless personal,
+since we have a consciousness of it, and since it is thus marked with
+subjectivity? To this argument we have nothing to respond, except that
+it is destroyed in the excess of its pretension. In fact, if, that
+reason may not be subjective, we must in no way participate in it, and
+must not have even a consciousness of its exercise, then there is no
+means of ever escaping this reproach of subjectivity, and the ideal of
+objectivity which Kant pursued is a chimerical, extravagant ideal,
+above, or rather beneath, all true intelligence, all reason worthy the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">{72}</a></span>
+name; for it is demanding that this intelligence and this reason should
+cease to have consciousness of themselves, whilst this is precisely what
+characterizes intelligence and reason.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> Does Kant mean, then, that
+reason, in order to possess a really objective power, cannot make its
+appearance in a particular subject, that it must be, for example, wholly
+outside of the subject which I am? Then it is nothing for me; a reason
+that is not mine, that, under the pretext of being universal, infinite,
+and absolute in its essence, does not fall under the perception of my
+consciousness, is for me as if it were not. To wish that reason should
+wholly cease to be subjective, is to demand something impossible to God
+himself. No, God himself can understand nothing except in knowing it,
+with his intelligence and with the consciousness of this intelligence.
+There is subjectivity, then, in divine knowledge itself; if this
+subjectivity involves skepticism, God is also condemned to skepticism,
+and he can no more escape from it than men; or indeed, if this is too
+ridiculous, if the knowledge which God has of the exercise of his own
+intelligence does not involve skepticism for him, neither do the
+knowledge which we have of the exercise of our intelligence, and the
+subjectivity attached to this knowledge, involve it for us.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, when we see the father of German philosophy thus losing
+himself in the labyrinth of the problem of the subjectivity and the
+objectivity of first principles, we are tempted to pardon Reid for
+having disdained this problem, for limiting himself to repeating that
+the absolute truth of universal and necessary principles rests upon the
+veracity of our faculties, and that upon the veracity of our faculties
+we are compelled to accept their testimony. "To explain," says he, "why
+we are convinced by our senses, by consciousness, by our faculties, is
+an impossible thing; we say&mdash;this is so, it cannot be otherwise, and we
+can go no farther. Is not this the expression of an irresistible belief,
+of a belief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">{73}</a></span> which is the voice of nature, and against which we contend
+in vain? Do we wish to penetrate farther, to demand of our faculties,
+one by one, what are their titles to our confidence, and to refuse them
+confidence until they have produced their claims? Then, I fear that this
+extreme wisdom would conduct us to folly, and that, not having been
+willing to submit to the common lot of humanity, we should be deprived
+of the light of common sense."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>Let us support ourselves also by the following admirable passage of him
+who is, for so many reasons, the venerated master of the French
+philosophy of the nineteenth century. "Intellectual life," says M.
+Royer-Collard, "is an uninterrupted succession, not only of ideas, but
+of explicit or implicit beliefs. The beliefs of the mind are the powers
+of the soul and the motives of the will. That which determines us to
+belief we call evidence. Reason renders no account of evidence; to
+condemn reason to account for evidence, is to annihilate it, for it
+needs itself an evidence which is fitted for it. These are fundamental
+laws of belief which constitute intelligence, and as they flow from the
+same source they have the same authority; they judge by the same right;
+there is no appeal from the tribunal of one to that of another. He who
+revolts against a single one revolts against all, and abdicates his
+whole nature."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>Let us deduce the consequences of the facts of which we have just given
+an exposition.</p>
+
+<p>1st. The argument of Kant, which is based upon the character of
+necessity in principles in order to weaken their objective authority,
+applies only to the form imposed by reflection on these principles, and
+does not reach their spontaneous application, wherein the character of
+necessity no longer appears.</p>
+
+<p>2d. After all, to conclude with the human race from the necessity of
+believing in the truth of what we believe, is not to conclude badly; for
+it is reasoning from effect to cause, from the sign to the thing
+signified.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">{74}</a></span></p><p>3d. Moreover, the value of principles is above all demonstration.
+Psychological analysis seizes, takes, as it were, by surprise, in the
+fact of intuition, an affirmation that is absolute, that is inaccessible
+to doubt; it establishes it; and this is equivalent to demonstration. To
+demand any other demonstration than this, is to demand of reason an
+impossibility, since absolute principles, being necessary to all
+demonstration, could only be demonstrated by themselves.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">{75}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_IV" id="LECTURE_IV"></a>LECTURE IV.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute
+truth?&mdash;Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us,
+in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We
+perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular
+beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it;
+refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself;
+defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.&mdash;Plato; St.
+Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; F&eacute;nelon; Bossuet;
+Leibnitz.&mdash;Truth the mediator between God and man.&mdash;Essential
+distinctions.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have justified the principles that govern our intelligence; we have
+become confident that there is truth outside of us, that there are
+verities worthy of that name, which we can perceive, which we do not
+make, which are not solely conceptions of our mind, which would still
+exist although our mind should not perceive them. Now this other problem
+naturally presents itself: What, then, in themselves, are these
+universal and necessary truths? where do they reside? whence do they
+come? We do not raise this problem, and the problems that it embraces;
+the human mind itself proposes them, and it is fully satisfied only when
+it has resolved them, and when it has reached the extreme limit of
+knowledge that it is within its power to attain.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain that the principles which, in all the orders of knowledge,
+discover to us absolute and necessary truths, constitute part of our
+reason, which surely makes its dwelling in us, and is intimately
+connected with personality in the depths of intellectual life. It
+follows that the truth, which reason reveals to us, falls thereby into
+close relation with the subject that perceives it, and seems only a
+conception of our mind. Nevertheless, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">{76}</a></span> we have proved, we perceive
+truth, we are not the authors of it. If the person that I am, if the
+individual <i>me</i> does not, perhaps, explain the whole of reason, how
+could it explain truth, and absolute truth? Man, limited and passing
+away, perceives necessary, eternal, infinite truth; that is for him a
+privilege sufficiently high; but he is neither the principle that
+sustains truth, nor the principle that gives it being. Man may say, My
+reason; but give him credit for never having dared to say, My truth.</p>
+
+<p>If absolute truths are beyond man who perceives them, once more, where
+are they, then? A peripatetic would respond&mdash;In nature. Is it, in fact,
+necessary to seek for them any other subject than the beings themselves
+which they govern? What are the laws of nature, except certain
+properties which our mind disengages from the beings and phenomena in
+which they are met, in order to consider them apart? Mathematical
+principles are nothing more. For example, the axiom thus expressed&mdash;The
+whole is greater than any of its parts, is true of any whole and part
+whatever. The principle of contradiction, considered in its logical
+title, as the condition of all our judgments, of all our reasonings,
+constitutes a part of the essence of all being, and no being can exist
+without containing it. The universal exists, says Aristotle, but it does
+not exist apart from particular beings.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+
+<p>This theory which considers universals as having their basis in things,
+is a progress towards the pure conceptualism which we have in the
+beginning indicated and shunned. Aristotle is much more of a realist
+than Abelard and Kant. He is quite right in maintaining that universals
+are in particular things, for particular things could not be without
+universals; universals give to them their fixity, even for a day, and
+their unity. But from the fact that universals are in particular beings,
+is it necessary to conclude that they, wholly and exclusively, reside
+there, and that they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">{77}</a></span> have no other reality than that of the objects to
+which they are applied? It is the same with principles of which
+universals are the constitutive elements. It is, it is true, in the
+particular fact, of a particular cause producing a particular event,
+that is given us the universal principle of causality; but this
+principle is much more extensive than the facts, for it is applied, not
+only to this fact, but to a thousand others. The particular fact
+contains the principle, but it does not wholly contain it, and, far from
+giving the basis of the principle, it is based upon it. As much may be
+said of other principles.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it will be replied that, if a principle is certainly more
+extensive than such a fact, or such a being, it is not more extensive
+than all facts and all beings, and that nature, considered as a whole,
+can explain that which each particular being does not explain. But
+nature, in its totality, is still only a finite and contingent thing,
+whilst the principles to be explained have a necessary and infinite
+bearing. The idea of the infinite can come neither from any particular
+being, nor from the whole of beings. Entire nature will not furnish us
+the idea of perfection, for all the beings of nature are imperfect.
+Absolute principles govern, then, all facts and all beings, they do not
+spring from them.</p>
+
+<p>Will it be necessary to come to the opinion, then, that absolute truths,
+being explicable neither by humanity nor by nature, subsist by
+themselves, and are to themselves their own foundation and their own
+subject?</p>
+
+<p>But this opinion contains still more absurdities than the preceding;
+for, I ask, what are truths, absolute or contingent, that exist by
+themselves, out of things in which they are found, and out of the
+intelligence that conceives them? Truth is, then, only a realized
+abstraction. There are no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail
+against good sense; and if such is the Platonic theory of ideas,
+Aristotle is right in his opposition to it. But such a theory is only a
+chimera that Aristotle created for the pleasure of combating it.</p>
+
+<p>Let us hasten to remove absolute truths from this ambiguous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">{78}</a></span> and
+equivocal state. And how? By applying to them a principle which should
+now be familiar to you. Yes, truth necessarily appeals to something
+beyond itself. As every phenomenon has its subject of inherence, as our
+faculties, our thoughts, our volitions, our sensations, exist only in a
+being which is ourselves, so truth supposes a being in which it resides,
+and absolute truths suppose a being absolute as themselves, wherein they
+have their final foundation. We come thus to something absolute, which
+is no longer suspended in the vagueness of abstraction, but is a being
+substantially existing. This being, absolute and necessary, since it is
+the subject of necessary and absolute truths, this being which is at the
+foundation of truth as its very essence, in a single word, is called
+<i>God</i>.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<p>This theory, which conducts from absolute truth to absolute being, is
+not new in the history of philosophy: it goes back to Plato.</p>
+
+<p>Plato,<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> in searching for the principles of knowledge clearly saw,
+with Socrates his master, that the least definition, without which there
+can be no precise knowledge, supposes something universal and one, which
+does not come within the reach of the senses, which reason alone can
+discover; this something universal and one he called <i>Idea</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Ideas, which possess universality and unity, do not come from material,
+changing, and mobile things, to which they are applied, and which render
+them intelligible. On the other hand, it is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">{79}</a></span> the human mind that
+constitutes ideas; for man is not the measure of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Plato calls Ideas veritable beings, <span title="[Greek: ta ont&ocirc;s onta]">&#964;&#8048; &#959;&#957;&#964;&#969;&#962; &#8004;&#957;&#964;&#945;</span>, since they
+alone communicate to sensible things and to human cognitions their truth
+and their unity. But does it follow that Plato gives to Ideas a
+substantial existence, that he makes of them beings properly so called?
+It is important that no cloud should be left on this fundamental point
+of the Platonic theory.</p>
+
+<p>At first, if any one should pretend that in Plato Ideas are beings
+subsisting by themselves, without interconnection and without relation
+to a common centre, numerous passages of the <i>Timaeus</i> might be objected
+to him,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> in which Plato speaks of Ideas as forming in their whole an
+ideal unity, which is the reason of the unity of the visible world.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<p>Will it be said that this ideal world forms a distinct unity, a unity
+separate from God? But, in order to sustain this assertion, it is
+necessary to forget so many passages of the <i>Republic</i>, in which the
+relations of truth and science with the Good, that is to say, with God,
+are marked in brilliant characters.</p>
+
+<p>Let not that magnificent comparison be forgotten, in which, after having
+said that the sun produces in the physical world light and life,
+Socrates adds: "So thou art able to say, intelligible beings not only
+hold from the <i>Good</i> that which renders them intelligible, but also
+their being and their essence."<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> So, intelligible beings, that is to
+say, Ideas, are not beings that exist by themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Men go on repeating with assurance that the Good, in Plato, is only the
+idea of the good, and that an idea is not God. I reply, that the Good is
+in fact an idea, according to Plato, but that the idea here is not a
+pure conception of the mind, an object of thought, as the peripatetic
+school understood it; I add, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">{80}</a></span> the Idea of the Good is in Plato the
+first of Ideas, and that, for this reason, while remaining for us an
+object of thought, it is confounded as to existence with God. If the
+Idea of the Good is not God himself, how will the following passage,
+also taken from the <i>Republic</i>, be explained? "At the extreme limits of
+the intellectual world is the Idea of the Good, which is perceived with
+difficulty, but, in fine, cannot be perceived without concluding that it
+is the source of all that is beautiful and good; that in the visible
+world it produces light, and the star whence the light directly comes,
+that in the invisible world it directly produces truth and
+intelligence."<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> Who can produce, on the one hand, the sun and light,
+on the other, truth and intelligence, except a real being?</p>
+
+<p>But all doubt disappears before the following passages from the
+<i>Ph&aelig;drus</i>, neglected, as it would seem designedly, by the detractors of
+Plato: "In this transition, (the soul) contemplates justice,
+contemplates wisdom, contemplates science, not that wherein enters
+change, nor that which shows itself different in the different objects
+which we are pleased to call beings, but science as it exists in that
+which is called being, <i>par excellence</i>...."<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>&mdash;"It belongs to the
+soul to conceive the universal, that is to say, that which, in the
+diversity of sensations, can be comprehended under a rational unity.
+This is the remembrance of what the soul has seen during its journey <i>in
+the train of Deity</i>, when, disdaining what we improperly call beings, it
+looked upwards to the only true being. So it is just that the thought of
+the philosopher should alone have wings; for its remembrance is always
+as much as possible with <i>the things which make God a true God, inasmuch
+as he is with them</i>."<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<p>So the objects of the philosopher's contemplation, that is to say,
+Ideas, are in God, and it is by these, by his essential union with
+these, that God is the true God, the God who, as Plato admirably says in
+the <i>Sophist</i>, participates in <i>august and holy intelligence</i>.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">{81}</a></span></p><p>It is therefore certain, that, in the true Platonic theory, Ideas are
+not beings in the vulgar sense of the word, beings which would be
+neither in the mind of man, nor in nature, nor in God, and would subsist
+only by themselves. No, Plato considers Ideas as being at once the
+principles of sensible things, of which they are the laws, and the
+principles also of human knowledge, which owes to them its light, its
+rule, and its end, and the essential attributes of God, that is to say,
+God himself.</p>
+
+<p>Plato is truly the father of the doctrine which we have explained, and
+the great philosophers who have attached themselves to his school have
+always professed this same doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>The founder of Christian metaphysics, St. Augustine, is a declared
+disciple of Plato: everywhere he speaks, like Plato, of the relation of
+human reason to the divine reason, and of truth to God. In the <i>City of
+God</i>, book x., chap. ii., and in chap. ix. of book vii. of the
+<i>Confessions</i>, he goes to the extent of comparing the Platonic doctrine
+with that of St. John.</p>
+
+<p>He adopts, without reserve, the theory of Ideas. <i>Book of Eighty-three
+Questions</i>, question 46: "Ideas are the primordial forms, and, as it
+were, the immutable reasons of things; they are not created, they are
+eternal, and always the same: they are contained in the divine
+intelligence; and without being subject to birth and death, they are the
+types according to which is formed every thing that is born and
+dies."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>"What man, pious, and penetrated with true religion, would dare to deny
+that all things that exist, that is to say, all things that, each of its
+kind, possess a determinate nature, have been created by God? This point
+being once conceded, can it be said that God has created things without
+reason? If it is impossible to say or think this, it follows that all
+things have been created<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">{82}</a></span> with reason. But the reason of the existence
+of a man cannot be the same as the reason of the existence of a horse;
+that is absurd; each thing has therefore been created by virtue of a
+reason that is peculiar to it. Now, where can these reasons be, except
+in the mind of the Creator? For he saw nothing out of himself, which he
+could use as a model for creating what he created: such an opinion would
+be sacrilege.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<p>"If the reasons of things to be created and things created are contained
+in the divine intelligence, and if there is nothing in the divine
+intelligence but the eternal and immutable, the reasons of things which
+Plato calls Ideas, are the eternal and immutable truths, by the
+participation in which every thing that is is such as it is."<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>St. Thomas himself, who scarcely knew Plato, and who was often enough
+held by Aristotle in a kind of empiricism, carried away by Christianity
+and St. Augustine, let the sentiment escape him, "that our natural
+reason is a sort of participation in the divine reason, that to this we
+owe our knowledge and our judgments, that this is the reason why it is
+said, that we see every thing in God."<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> There are in St. Thomas many
+other similar passages, of perhaps an expressive Platonism, which is not
+the Platonism of Plato, but of the Alexandrians.</p>
+
+<p>The Cartesian philosophy, in spite of its profound originality, and its
+wholly French character, is full of the Platonic spirit. Descartes has
+no thought of Plato, whom apparently he has never read; in nothing does
+he imitate or resemble him: nevertheless,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">{83}</a></span> from the first, he is met in
+the same regions with Plato, whither he goes by a different route.</p>
+
+<p>The notion of the infinite and the perfect is for Descartes what the
+universal, the Idea, is for Plato. No sooner has Descartes found by
+consciousness that he thinks, than he concludes from this that he
+exists, then, in course, by consciousness still, he recognizes himself
+as imperfect, full of defects, limitations, miseries, and, at the same
+time, conceives something infinite and perfect. He possesses the idea of
+the infinite and the perfect; but this idea is not his own work, for he
+is imperfect; it must then have been put into him by another being
+endowed with perfection, whom he conceives, whom he does not
+possess:&mdash;that being is God. Such is the process by which Descartes,
+setting out from his own thought, and his own being, elevated himself to
+God. This process, so simple, which he so simply exposes in the
+<i>Discours de la M&eacute;thode</i>, he will put successively, in the
+<i>M&eacute;ditations</i>, in the <i>R&eacute;sponses aux Objections</i>, in the <i>Principes</i>,
+under the most diverse forms, he will accommodate it, if it is
+necessary, to the language of the schools, in order that it may
+penetrate into them. After all, this process is compelled to conclude,
+from the idea of the infinite and the perfect, in the existence of a
+cause of this idea, adequate, at least, to the idea itself, that is to
+say, infinite and perfect. One sees that the first difference between
+Plato and Descartes is, that the ideas which in Plato are at once
+conceptions of our mind, and the principles of things, are for
+Descartes, as well as for all modern philosophy, only our conceptions,
+amongst which that of the infinite and perfect occupies the first place;
+the second difference is, that Plato goes from ideas to God by the
+principle of substances, if we may be allowed to use this technical
+language of modern philosophy; whilst Descartes employs rather the
+principle of causality, and concludes&mdash;well understood without
+syllogism&mdash;from the idea of the infinite and the perfect in a cause also
+perfect and infinite.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> But under these differences,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">{84}</a></span> and in spite of
+many more, is a common basis, a genius the same, which at first elevates
+us above the senses, and, by the intermediary of marvellous ideas that
+are incontestably in us, bears us towards him who alone can be their
+substance, who is the infinite and perfect author of our idea of
+infinity and perfection. For this reason, Descartes belongs to the
+family of Plato and Socrates.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the perfect and the finite being once introduced into the
+philosophy of the seventeenth century, it becomes there for the
+successors of Descartes what the theory of ideas became for the
+successors of Plato.</p>
+
+<p>Among the French writers, Malebranche, perhaps, reminds us with the
+least disadvantage, although very imperfectly still, of the manner of
+Plato: he sometimes expresses its elevation and grace; but he is far
+from possessing the Socratic good sense, and, it must be confessed, no
+one has clouded more the theory of ideas by exaggerations of every kind
+which he has mingled with them.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> Instead of establishing that there
+is in the human reason, wholly personal as it is by its intimate
+relation with our other faculties, something also which is not personal,
+something universal which permits it to elevate itself to universal
+truths, Malebranche does not hesitate to absolutely confound the reason
+that is in us with the divine reason itself. Moreover, according to
+Malebranche, we do not directly know particular things, sensible
+objects; we know them only by ideas; it is the intelligible extension
+and not the material extension that we immediately perceive; in vision
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">{85}</a></span> proper object of the mind is the universal, the idea; and as the
+idea is in God, it is in God that we see all things. We can understand
+how well-formed minds must have been shocked by such a theory; but it is
+not just to confound Plato with his brilliant and unfaithful disciple.
+In Plato, sensibility directly attains sensible things; it makes them
+known to us as they are, that is to say, as very imperfect and
+undergoing perpetual change, which renders the knowledge that we have of
+them almost unworthy of the name of knowledge. It is reason, different
+in us from sensibility, which, above sensible objects, discovers to us
+the universal, the idea, and gives a knowledge solid and durable. Having
+once attained ideas, we have reached God himself, in whom they have
+their foundation, who finishes and consummates true knowledge. But we
+have no need of God, nor of ideas, in order to perceive sensible
+objects, which are defective and changing; for this our senses are
+sufficient. Reason is distinct from the senses; it transcends the
+imperfect knowledge of what they are capable; it attains the universal,
+because it possesses something universal itself; it participates in the
+divine reason, but it is not the divine reason; it is enlightened by it,
+it comes from it,&mdash;it is not it.</p>
+
+<p>Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Descartes in the
+treatise, <i>de l'Existence de Dieu</i>. The second part is entirely
+Cartesian in method, in the order and sequence of the proofs.
+Nevertheless, Malebranche also appears there, especially in the fourth
+chapter, on the nature of ideas, and he predominates in all the
+metaphysical portions of the first part. After the explanations which we
+have given, it will not be difficult for you to discern what is true and
+what is at times excessive in the passages which follow:<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p>Part i., chap. lii. "Oh! how great is the mind of man! It bears in
+itself what astonishes itself and infinitely surpasses itself. Its ideas
+are universal, eternal, and immutable.... The idea of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">{86}</a></span> the infinite is
+in me as well as that of lines, numbers, and circles....&mdash;Chap. liv.
+Besides this idea of the infinite, I have also universal and immutable
+notions, which are the rule of all my judgments. I can judge of nothing
+except by consulting them, and it is not in my power to judge against
+what they represent to me. My thoughts, far from being able to correct
+this rule, are themselves corrected in spite of me by this superior
+rule, and they are irresistibly adjusted to its decision. Whatever
+effort of mind I may make, I can never succeed in doubting that two and
+two are four; that the whole is not greater than any of its parts; that
+the centre of a perfect circle is not equidistant from all points of the
+circumference. I am not at liberty to deny these propositions; and if I
+deny these truths, or others similar to them, I have in me something
+that is above me, that forces me to the conclusion. This fixed and
+immutable rule is so internal and so intimate that I am inclined to take
+it for myself; but it is above me since it corrects me, redresses me,
+and puts me in defiance against myself, and reminds me of my impotence.
+It is something that suddenly inspires me, provided I listen to it, and
+I am never deceived except in not listening to it.... This internal rule
+is what I call my reason....&mdash;Chap. lv. In truth my reason is in me; for
+I must continually enter into myself in order to find it. But the higher
+reason which corrects me when necessary, which I consult, exists not by
+me, and makes no part of me. This rule is perfect and immutable; I am
+changing and imperfect. When I am deceived, it does not lose its
+integrity. When I am undeceived, it is not this that returns to its end:
+it is this which, without ever having deviated, has the authority over
+me to remind me of my error, and to make me return. It is a master
+within, which makes me keep silent, which makes me speak, which makes me
+believe, which makes me doubt, which makes me acknowledge my errors or
+confirm my judgments. Listening to it, I am instructed; listening to
+myself, I err. This master is everywhere, and its voice makes itself
+heard, from end to end of the universe, in all men as well as in
+me....&mdash;Chap. lvi....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">{87}</a></span> That which appears the most in us and seems to be
+the foundation of ourselves, I mean our reason, is that which is least
+of all our own, which we are constrained to believe to be especially
+borrowed. We receive without cessation, and at all moments, a reason
+superior to us, as we breathe without cessation the air, which is a
+foreign body....&mdash;Chap. lvii. The internal and universal master always
+and everywhere speaks the same truths. We are not this master. It is
+true that we often speak without it, and more loftily than it. But we
+are then deceived, we are stammering, we do not understand ourselves. We
+even fear to see that we are deceived, and we close the ear through fear
+of being humiliated by its corrections. Without doubt, man, who fears
+being corrected by this incorruptible reason, who always wanders in not
+following it, is not that perfect, universal, immutable reason which
+corrects him in spite of himself. In all things we find, as it were, two
+principles within us. One gives, the other receives; one wants, the
+other supplies; one is deceived, the other corrects; one goes wrong by
+its own inclination, the other rectifies it.... Each one feels within
+himself a limited and subaltern reason, which wanders when it escapes a
+complete subordination, which is corrected only by returning to the yoke
+of another superior, universal, and immutable power. So every thing in
+us bears the mark of a subaltern, limited, partial, borrowed reason,
+which needs another to correct it at every moment. All men are rational,
+because they possess the same reason which is communicated to them in
+different degrees. There is a certain number of wise men; but the wisdom
+which they receive, as it were, from the fountain-head, which makes them
+what they are, is one and the same....&mdash;Chap. lviii. Where is this
+wisdom? Where is this reason, which is both common and superior to all
+the limited and imperfect reasons of the human race? Where, then, is
+this oracle which is never silent, against which the vain prejudices of
+peoples are always impotent? Where is this reason which we ever need to
+consult, which comes to us to inspire us with the desire of listening to
+its voice? Where is this light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">{88}</a></span> <i>that lighteneth every man that cometh
+into the world</i>.... The substance of the human eye is not light; on the
+contrary, the eye borrows at each moment the light of the sun's rays. So
+my mind is not the primitive reason, the universal and immutable truth,
+it is only the medium that conducts this original light, that is
+illuminated by it....&mdash;Chap. lx. I find two reasons in myself,&mdash;one is
+myself, the other is above me. That which is in me is very imperfect,
+faulty, uncertain, preoccupied, precipitate, subject to aberration,
+changing, conceited, ignorant, and limited; in fine, it possesses
+nothing but what it borrows. The other is common to all men, and is
+superior to all; it is perfect, eternal, immutable, always ready to
+communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that are
+deceived, in fine, incapable of ever being exhausted or divided,
+although it gives itself to those who desire it. Where is this perfect
+reason, that is so near me and so different from me? Where is it? It
+must be something real.... Where is this supreme reason? Is it not God
+that I am seeking?"</p>
+
+<p>Part ii., chap. i., sect. 28.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> "I have in me the idea of the infinite
+and of infinite perfection.... Give me a finite thing as great as you
+please&mdash;let it quite transcend the reach of my senses, so that it
+becomes, as it were, infinite to my imagination; it always remains
+finite in my mind; I conceive a limit to it, even when I cannot imagine
+it. I am not able to mark the limit; but I know that it exists; and far
+from confounding it with the infinite, I conceive it as infinitely
+distant from the idea that I have of the veritable infinite. If one
+speaks to me of the indefinite as a mean between the two extremes of the
+infinite and the limited, I reply, that it signifies nothing, that, at
+least, it only signifies something truly finite, whose boundaries escape
+the imagination without escaping the mind.... Sect. 29. Where have I
+obtained this idea, which is so much above me, which infinitely
+surpasses me, which astonishes me, which makes me disappear in my own
+eyes, which renders the infinite present to me? Whence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">{89}</a></span> does it come?
+Where have I obtained it?... Once more, whence comes this marvellous
+representation of the infinite, which pertains to the infinite itself,
+which resembles nothing finite? It is in me, it is more than myself; it
+seems to me every thing, and myself nothing. I can neither efface,
+obscure, diminish, nor contradict it. It is in me; I have not put it
+there, I have found it there; and I have found it there only because it
+was already there before I sought it. It remains there invariable, even
+when I do not think of it, when I think of something else. I find it
+whenever I seek it, and it often presents itself when I am not seeking
+it. It does not depend upon me; I depend upon it.... Moreover, who has
+made this infinite representation of the infinite, so as to give it to
+me? Has it made itself? Has the infinite image<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> of the infinite had
+no original, according to which it has been made, no real cause that has
+produced it? Where are we in relation to it? And what a mass of
+extravagances! It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to conclude that
+it is the infinitely perfect being that renders himself immediately
+present to me, when I conceive him, and that he himself is the idea
+which I have of him...."</p>
+
+<p>Chap. iv., sect. 49. "... My ideas are myself; for they are my
+reason.... My ideas, and the basis of myself, or of my mind, appear but
+the same thing. On the other hand, my mind is changing, uncertain,
+ignorant, subject to error, precipitate in its judgments, accustomed to
+believe what it does not clearly understand, and to judge without having
+sufficiently consulted its ideas, which are by themselves certain and
+immutable. My ideas, then, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. What
+shall I believe, then, they can be?... What then! are my ideas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">{90}</a></span> God?
+They are superior to my mind, since they rectify and correct it; they
+have the character of the Divinity, for they are universal and immutable
+like God; they really subsist, according to a principle that we have
+already established: nothing exists so really as that which is universal
+and immutable. If that which is changing, transitory, and derived, truly
+exists, much more does that which cannot change, and is necessary. It is
+then necessary to find in nature something existing and real, that is,
+my ideas, something that is within me, and is not myself, that is
+superior to me, that is in me even when I am not thinking of it, with
+which I believe myself to be alone, as though I were only with myself,
+in fine, that is more present to me, and more intimate than my own
+foundation. I know not what this something, so admirable, so familiar,
+so unknown, can be, except God."</p>
+
+<p>Let us now hear the most solid, the most authoritative of the Christian
+doctors of the seventeenth century&mdash;let us hear Bossuet in his <i>Logic</i>,
+and in the <i>Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self</i>.<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+<p>Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philosophy&mdash;St.
+Augustine, St. Thomas, and Descartes. He had been taught at the college
+of Navarre the doctrine of St. Thomas, that is to say, a modified
+peripateticism; at the same time he was nourished by the reading of St.
+Augustine, and out of the schools he found spread abroad the philosophy
+of Descartes. He adopted it, and had no difficulty in reconciling it
+with that of St. Augustine, while, upon more than one point, it
+corroborated the doctrine of St. Thomas. Bossuet invented nothing in
+philosophy; he received every thing, but every thing united and
+purified, thanks to that supreme good sense which in him is a quality
+predominating over force, grandeur, and eloquence.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> In the passages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">{91}</a></span>
+which I am about to exhibit to you, which I hope you will impress upon
+your memories, you will not find the grace of Malebranche, the
+exhaustless abundance of Fenelon; you will find what is better than
+either, to wit, clearness and precision&mdash;all the rest in him is in some
+sort an addition to these.</p>
+
+<p>Fenelon disengages badly enough the process which conducts from ideas,
+from universal and necessary truths, to God. Bossuet renders to himself
+a strict account of this process, and marks it with force; it is the
+principle that we have invoked, that which concludes from attributes in
+a subject, from qualities in a being, from laws in a legislator, from
+eternal verities in an eternal mind that comprehends them and eternally
+possesses them. Bossuet cites St. Augustine, cites Plato himself,
+interprets him and defends him in advance against those who would make
+Platonic ideas beings subsisting by themselves, whilst they really exist
+only in the mind of God.</p>
+
+<p><i>Logic</i>, book i., chap. xxxvi. "When I consider a rectilineal triangle
+as a figure bounded by three straight lines, and having three angles
+equal to two right angles, neither more nor less; and when I pass from
+this to an equilateral triangle with its three sides and its three
+angles equal, whence it follows, that I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">{92}</a></span> consider each angle of this
+triangle as less than a right angle; and when I come again to consider a
+right-angled triangle, and what I clearly see in this idea, in
+connection with the preceding ideas, that the two angles of this
+triangle are necessarily acute, and that these two acute angles are
+exactly equal to one right angle, neither more nor less&mdash;I see nothing
+contingent and mutable, and consequently, the ideas that represent to me
+these truths are eternal. Were there not in nature a single equilateral
+or right-angled triangle, or any triangle whatever, every thing that I
+have just considered would remain always true and indubitable. In fact,
+I am not sure of having ever seen an equilateral or rectilineal
+triangle. Neither the rule nor the dividers could assure me that any
+human hand, however skilful, could ever make a line exactly straight, or
+sides and angles perfectly equal to each other. In strictness, we should
+only need a microscope, in order, not to understand, but to see at a
+glance, that the lines which we trace deviate from straightness, and
+differ in length. We have never seen, then, any but imperfect images of
+equilateral, rectilineal, or isosceles triangles, since they neither
+exist in nature, nor can be constructed by art. Nevertheless, what we
+see of the nature and the properties of a triangle, independently of
+every existing triangle, is certain and indubitable. Place an
+understanding in any given time, or at any point in eternity, thus to
+speak, and it will see these truths equally manifest; they are,
+therefore, eternal. Since the understanding does not give being to
+truth, but is only employed in perceiving truth, it follows, that were
+every created understanding destroyed, these truths would immutably
+subsist...."</p>
+
+<p>Chap. xxxvii. "Since there is nothing eternal, immutable, independent,
+but God alone, we must conclude that these truths do not subsist in
+themselves, but in God alone, and in his eternal ideas, which are
+nothing else than himself.</p>
+
+<p>"There are those who, in order to verify these eternal truths which we
+have proposed, and others of the same nature, have figured to themselves
+eternal essences aside from deity&mdash;a pure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">{93}</a></span> illusion, which comes from
+not understanding that in God, as in the source of being, and in his
+understanding, where resides the art of making and ordering all things,
+are found primitive ideas, or as St. Augustine says, the eternally
+subsisting reasons of things. Thus, in the thought of the architect is
+the primitive idea of a house which he perceives in himself; this
+intellectual house would not be destroyed by any ruin of houses built
+according to this interior model; and if the architect were eternal, the
+idea and the reason of the house would also be eternal. But, without
+recurring to the mortal architect, there is an immortal architect, or
+rather a primitive eternally subsisting art in the immutable thought of
+God, where all order, all measure, all rule, all proportion, all reason,
+in a word, all truth are found in their origin.</p>
+
+<p>"These eternal verities which our ideas represent, are the true object
+of science; and this is the reason why Plato, in order to render us
+truly wise, continually reminds us of these ideas, wherein is seen, not
+what is formed, but what is, not what is begotten and is corrupt, what
+appears and vanishes, what is made and defective, but what eternally
+subsists. It is this intellectual world which that divine philosopher
+has put in the mind of God before the world was constructed, which is
+the immutable model of that great work. These are the simple, eternal,
+immutable, unbegotten, incorruptible ideas to which he refers us, in
+order to understand truth. This is what has made him say that our ideas,
+images of the divine ideas, were also immediately derived from the
+divine ideas, and did not come by the senses, which serve very well,
+said he, to awaken them, but not to form them in our mind. For if,
+without having ever seen any thing eternal, we have so clear an idea of
+eternity, that is to say, of being that is always the same; if, without
+having perceived a perfect triangle, we understand it distinctly, and
+demonstrate so many incontestable truths concerning it, it is a mark
+that these ideas do not come from our senses."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">{94}</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self.</i><a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> Chap. iv., sect. 5.
+<i>Intelligence has for its object eternal truths, which are nothing else
+than God himself, in whom they are always subsisting and perfectly
+understood.</i></p>
+
+<p>"... We have already remarked that the understanding has eternal
+verities for its object. The standards by which we measure all things
+are eternal and invariable. We know clearly that every thing in the
+universe is made according to proportion, from the greatest to the
+least, from the strongest to the weakest, and we know it well enough to
+understand that these proportions are related to the principles of
+eternal truth. All that is demonstrated in mathematics, and in any other
+science whatever, is eternal and immutable, since the effect of the
+demonstration is to show that the thing cannot be otherwise than as it
+is demonstrated to be. So, in order to understand the nature and the
+properties of things which I know, for example, a triangle, a square, a
+circle, or the relations of these figures, and all other figures, to
+each other, it is not necessary that I should find such in nature, and I
+may be sure that I have never traced, never seen, any that are perfect.
+Neither is it necessary that I should think that there is motion in the
+world in order to understand the nature of motion itself, or that of the
+lines which every motion describes, and the hidden proportions according
+to which it is developed. When the idea of these things is once awakened
+in my mind, I know that, whether they have an actual existence or not,
+so they must be, that it is impossible for them to be of another nature,
+or to be made in a different way. To come to something that concerns us
+more nearly, I mean by these principles of eternal truth, that they do
+not depend on human existence, that, so far as he is capable of
+reasoning, it is the essential duty of man to live according to reason,
+and to search for his maker, through fear of lacking the recognition of
+his maker,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">{95}</a></span> if in fault of searching for him, he should be ignorant of
+him. All these truths, and all those which I deduce from them by sure
+reasoning, subsist independently of all time. In whatever time I place a
+human understanding, it will know them, but in knowing them it will find
+them truths, it will not make them such, for our cognitions do not make
+their objects, but suppose them. So these truths subsist before all
+time, before the existence of a human understanding: and were every
+thing that is made according to the laws of proportion, that is to say,
+every thing that I see in nature, destroyed except myself, these laws
+would be preserved in my thought, and I should clearly see that they
+would always be good and always true, were I also destroyed with the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>"If I seek how, where, and in what subject they subsist eternal and
+immutable, as they are, I am obliged to avow the existence of a being in
+whom truth is eternally subsisting, in whom it is always understood; and
+this being must be truth itself, and must be all truth, and from him it
+is that truth is derived in every thing that exists and has
+understanding out of him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is, then, in him, in a certain manner, who is incomprehensible<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a>
+to me, it is in him, I say, that I see these eternal truths; and to see
+them is to turn to him who is immutably all truth, and to receive his
+light.</p>
+
+<p>"This eternal object is God eternally subsisting, eternally true,
+eternally truth itself.... It is in this eternal that these eternal
+truths subsist. It is also by this that I see them. All other men see
+them as well as myself, and we see them always the same, and as having
+existed before us. For we know that we have commenced, and we know that
+these truths have always been. Thus we see them in a light superior to
+ourselves, and it is in this superior light that we see whether we act
+well or ill, that is to say, whether we act according to these
+constitutive principles of our being or not. In that, then, we see, with
+all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">{96}</a></span> other truths, the invariable rules of our conduct, and we see that
+there are things in regard to which duty is indispensable, and that in
+things which are naturally indifferent, the true duty is to accommodate
+ourselves to the greatest good of society. A well-disposed man conforms
+to the civil laws, as he conforms to custom. But he listens to an
+inviolable law in himself, which says to him that he must do wrong to no
+one, that it is better to be injured than to injure.... The man who sees
+these truths, by these truths judges himself, and condemns himself when
+he errs. Or, rather, these truths judge him, since they do not
+accommodate themselves to human judgments, but human judgments are
+accommodated to them. And the man judges rightly when, feeling these
+judgments to be variable in their nature, he gives them for a rule these
+eternal verities.</p>
+
+<p>"These eternal verities which every understanding always perceives the
+same, by which every understanding is governed, are something of God, or
+rather, are God himself....</p>
+
+<p>"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, and man is to
+himself an indubitable proof of this. For, whether he considers himself
+or extends his vision to the beings that surround him, he sees every
+thing subjected to certain laws, and to immutable rules of truth. He
+sees that he understands these laws, at least in part,&mdash;he who has
+neither made himself, nor any part of the universe, however small, and
+he sees that nothing could have been made had not these laws been
+elsewhere perfectly understood; and he sees that it is necessary to
+recognize an eternal wisdom wherein all law, all order, all proportion,
+have their primitive reason. For it is absurd to suppose that there is
+so much sequence in truths, so much proportion in things, so much
+economy in their arrangement, that is to say, in the world, and that
+this sequence, this proportion, this economy, should nowhere be
+understood:&mdash;and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these
+things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that there is some
+one who knows them in their perfection, and that this is he who has made
+all things...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">{97}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates that the soul
+knows by the imperfection of its own intelligence that there is
+elsewhere a perfect intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of truth to God.</p>
+
+<p>"Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so pure, of truth?
+Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern reasoning, that form
+manners, by which it discovers the secret proportions of figures and of
+movements? Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which I
+have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, the circles,
+that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and
+their relations? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces
+this effect? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so
+true,&mdash;I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular figure,
+and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly? Are there
+somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, triangles or circles
+existing with this perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed
+upon my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and conduct also exist in
+some place, whence they communicate to me their immutable truth? Or,
+indeed, is it not rather he who has everywhere extended measure,
+proportion, truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of
+them?... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in the
+image of God, capable of understanding truth, which is God himself,
+actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards God, where
+the truth appears to it as soon as God wills to make the truth appear to
+it.... It is an astonishing thing that man understands so many truths,
+without understanding at the same time that all truth comes from God,
+that it is in God, that it is God himself.... It is certain that God is
+the primitive reason of all that exists and has understanding in the
+universe; that he is the true original, and that every thing is true by
+relation to his eternal idea, that seeking truth is seeking him, and
+that finding truth is finding him...."</p>
+
+<p>Chap. v., sect. 14. "The senses do not convey to the soul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">{98}</a></span> knowledge of
+truth. They excite it, awaken it, and apprize it of certain effects: it
+is solicited to search for causes, but it discovers them, it sees their
+connections, the principles which put them in motion, only in a superior
+light that comes from God, or is God himself. God is, then, truth, which
+is always the same to all minds, and the true source of intelligence.
+For this reason intelligence beholds the light, breathes, and lives."</p>
+
+<p>At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes to crown these
+great testimonies, and to complete their unanimity.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a passage from an important treatise entitled, <i>Meditationes de
+Cognitione, Veritate et Id&aelig;is</i>, in which Leibnitz declares that primary
+notions are the attributes of God. "I know not," he says, "whether man
+can perfectly account to himself for his ideas, except by ascending to
+primary ideas for which he can no more account, that is to say, to the
+absolute attributes of God."<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>The same doctrine is in the <i>Principia Philosophi&aelig; seu Theses in Gratiam
+Principis Eugenii</i>. "The intelligence of God is the region of eternal
+truths, and the ideas that depend upon them."<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Theodicea</i>, part ii., sect. 189.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> "It must not be said with the
+Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were no
+understanding, not even that of God. For, in my opinion, it is the
+divine understanding that makes the reality of eternal truths."</p>
+
+<p><i>Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain</i>, book ii., chap. xvii. "The
+idea of the absolute is in us internally like that of being. <i>These
+absolutes are nothing else than the attributes of God</i>, and it may be
+said they are just as much the source of ideas as God is in himself the
+principle of beings."</p>
+
+<p><i>Ibid.</i>, book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded where those ideas
+would be if no mind existed, and what would then become of the real
+foundation of this certainty of eternal truths? That brings us in fine
+to the last foundation of truths, to wit, to that supreme and universal
+mind which cannot be destitute of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">{99}</a></span> existence, whose understanding, to
+speak truly, is the region of eternal truths, as St. Augustine saw and
+clearly enough expressed it. And that it may not be thought necessary to
+recur to it, we must consider that these necessary truths contain the
+determinating reason and the regulative principle of existences
+themselves, and, in a word, the laws of the universe. So these
+unnecessary truths, being anterior to the existences of contingent
+beings, must have their foundation in the existence of a necessary
+substance. It is there that I find the original of truths which are
+stamped upon our souls, not in the form of propositions, but as sources,
+the application and occasions of which will produce actual
+enunciations."</p>
+
+<p>So, from Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicians have thought
+that absolute truth is an attribute of absolute being. Truth is
+incomprehensible without God, as God is incomprehensible without truth.
+Truth is placed between human intelligence and the supreme intelligence,
+as a kind of mediator. In the lowest degree, as well as at the height of
+being, God is everywhere met, for truth is everywhere. Study nature,
+elevate yourselves to the laws that govern it and make of it as it were
+a living truth:&mdash;the more profoundly you understand its laws, the nearer
+you approach to God. Study, above all, humanity; humanity is much
+greater than nature, for it comes from God as well as nature, and knows
+him, while nature is ignorant of him. Especially seek and love truth,
+and refer it to the immortal being who is its source. The more you know
+of the truth, the more you know of God. The sciences, so far from
+turning us away from religion, conduct us to it. Physics, with their
+laws, mathematics, with their sublime ideas, especially philosophy,
+which cannot take a single step without encountering universal and
+necessary principles, are so many stages on the way to Deity, and, thus
+to speak, so many temples in which homage is perpetually paid to him.</p>
+
+<p>But in the midst of these high considerations, let us carefully guard
+ourselves against two opposite errors, from which men of fine genius
+have not always known how to preserve themselves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">{100}</a></span>&mdash;against the error of
+making the reason of man purely individual, and against the error of
+confounding it with truth and the divine reason.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> If the reason of
+man is purely individual because it is in the individual, it can
+comprehend nothing that is not individual, nothing that transcends the
+limits wherein it is confined. Not only is it unable to elevate itself
+to any universal and necessary truth, not only is it unable to have any
+idea of it, even any suspicion of it, as one blind from his birth can
+have no suspicion that a sun exists; but there is no power, not even
+that of God, that by any means could make penetrate the reason of man
+any truth of that order absolutely repugnant to its nature; since, for
+this end, it would not be sufficient for God to lighten our mind; it
+would be necessary to change it, to add to it another faculty. Neither,
+on the other hand, must we, with Malebranche, make the reason of man to
+such a degree impersonal that it takes the place of truth which is its
+object, and of God who is its principle. It is truth that to us is
+absolutely impersonal, and not reason. Reason is in man, yet it comes
+from God. Hence it is individual and finite, whilst its root is in the
+infinite; it is personal by its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">{101}</a></span> relation to the person in which it
+resides, and must also possess I know not what character of
+universality, of necessity even, in order to be capable of conceiving
+universal and necessary truths; hence it seems, by turns, according to
+the point of view from which it is regarded, pitiable and sublime. Truth
+is in some sort lent to human reason, but it belongs to a totally
+different reason, to wit, that supreme, eternal, uncreated reason, which
+is God himself. The truth in us is nothing else than our object; in God,
+it is one of his attributes, as well as justice, holiness, mercy, as we
+shall subsequently see. God exists; and so far as he exists, he thinks,
+and his thoughts are truths, eternal as himself, which are reflected in
+the laws of the universe, which the reason of man has received the power
+to attain. Truth is the offspring, the utterance, I was about to say,
+the eternal word of God, if it is permitted philosophy to borrow this
+divine language from that holy religion which teaches us to worship God
+in spirit and in truth. Of old, the theory of Ideas, which manifest God
+to men, and remind them of him, had given to Plato the surname of the
+precursor; on account of that theory of Ideas he was dear to St.
+Augustine, and is invoked by Bossuet. It is by this same theory, wisely
+interpreted, and purified by the light of our age, that the new
+philosophy is attached to the tradition of great philosophies, and to
+that of Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>The last problem that the science of the true presented is resolved:&mdash;we
+are in possession of the basis of absolute truths. God is substance,
+reason, supreme cause, and the unity of all these truths; God, and God
+alone, is to us the boundary beyond which we have nothing more to seek.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">{102}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_V" id="LECTURE_V"></a>LECTURE V.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">ON MYSTICISM.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and
+mysticism. Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without
+an intermediary.&mdash;Two sorts of mysticism.&mdash;Mysticism of
+sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities&mdash;the one
+external, the other internal, and corresponding to the soul as
+external sensibility corresponds to nature.&mdash;Legitimate part of
+sentiment.&mdash;Its aberrations.&mdash;Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus:
+God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by
+pure thought.&mdash;Ecstasy.&mdash;Mixture of superstition and abstraction
+in mysticism.&mdash;Conclusion of the first part of the course.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Whether we turn our attention to the forces and the laws that animate
+and govern matter without belonging to it, or as the order of our labors
+calls us to do, reflect upon the universal and necessary truths which
+our mind discovers but does not constitute, the least systematic use of
+reason makes us naturally conclude from the forces and laws of the
+universe that there is a first intelligent mover, and from necessary
+truths that there is a necessary being who alone is their substance. We
+do not perceive God, but we conceive him, upon the faith of this
+admirable world exposed to our view, and upon that of this other world,
+more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves. By this double road we
+succeed in going to God. This natural course is that of all men: it must
+be sufficient for a sound philosophy. But there are feeble and
+presumptuous minds that do not know how to go thus far, or do not know
+how to stop there. Confined to experience, they do not dare to conclude
+from what they see in what they do not see, as if at all times, at the
+sight of the first phenomenon that appears to their eyes, they did not
+admit that this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">{103}</a></span> phenomenon has a cause, even when this cause does not
+come within the reach of their senses. They do not perceive it, yet they
+believe in it, for the simple reason that they necessarily conceive it.
+Man and the universe are also facts that cannot but have a cause,
+although this cause may neither be seen by our eyes nor touched by our
+hands. Reason has been given us for the very purpose of going, and
+without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible,
+from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and
+also, from necessary and universal truths, which surround us on every
+side, to their eternal and necessary principle. Such is the natural and
+legitimate bearing of reason. It possesses an evidence of which it
+renders no account, and is not thereby less irresistible to whomsoever
+does not undertake to contest with God the veracity of the faculties
+which he has received. But one does not revolt against reason with
+impunity. It punishes our false wisdom by giving us up to extravagance.
+When one has confined himself to the narrow limits of what he directly
+perceives, he is smothered by these limits, wishes to go out of them at
+any price, and invokes some other means of knowing; he did not dare to
+admit the existence of an invisible God, and now behold him aspiring to
+enter into immediate communication with him, as with sensible objects,
+and the objects of consciousness. It is an extreme feebleness for a
+rational being thus to doubt reason, and it is an incredible rashness,
+in this despair of intelligence, to dream of direct communication with
+God. This desperate and ambitious dream is mysticism.</p>
+
+<p>It behooves us to separate with care this chimera, that is not without
+danger, from the cause that we defend. It behooves us so much the more
+to openly break with mysticism, as it seems to touch us more nearly, as
+it pretends to be the last word of philosophy, and as by an appearance
+of greatness it is able to seduce many a noble soul, especially at one
+of those epochs of lassitude, when, after the cruel disappointment of
+excessive hopes, human reason, having lost faith in its own power
+without having lost the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">{104}</a></span> need of God, in order to satisfy this immortal
+need, addresses itself to every thing except itself, and in fault of
+knowing how to go to God by the way that is open to it, throws itself
+out of common sense, and tries the new, the chimerical, even the absurd,
+in order to attain the impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Mysticism contains a pusillanimous skepticism in the place of reason,
+and, at the same time, a faith blind and carried even to the oblivion of
+all the conditions imposed upon human nature. To conceive God under the
+transparent veil of the universe and above the highest truths, is at
+once too much and too little for mysticism. It does not believe that it
+knows God, if it knows him only in his manifestations and by the signs
+of his existence: it wishes to perceive him directly, it wishes to be
+united to him, sometimes by sentiment, sometimes by some other
+extraordinary process.</p>
+
+<p>Sentiment plays so important a part in mysticism, that our first care
+must be to investigate the nature and proper function of this
+interesting and hitherto ill-studied part of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary to distinguish sentiment well from sensation. There are,
+in some sort, two sensibilities: one is directed to the external world,
+and is charged with transmitting to the soul the impressions that it
+sees; the other is wholly interior, and is related to the soul as the
+other is to nature,&mdash;its function is to receive the impression, and, as
+it were, the rebound of what passes in the soul. Have we discovered any
+truth? there is something in us which feels joy on account of it. Have
+we performed a good action? we receive our reward in a feeling of
+satisfaction less vivid, but more delicate and more durable than all the
+agreeable sensations that come from the body. It seems as if
+intelligence also had its intimate organ, which suffers or enjoys,
+according to the state of the intelligence. We bear in ourselves a
+profound source of emotion, at once physical and moral, which expresses
+the union of our two natures. The animal does not go beyond sensation,
+and pure thought belongs only to the angelic nature. The sentiment that
+partakes of sensation and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">{105}</a></span> thought is the portion of humanity. Sentiment
+is, it is true, only an echo of reason; but this echo is sometimes
+better understood than reason itself, because it resounds in the most
+intimate, the most delicate portions of the soul, and moves the entire
+man.</p>
+
+<p>It is a singular, but incontestable fact, that as soon as reason has
+conceived truth, the soul attaches itself to it, and loves it. Yes, the
+soul loves truth. It is a wonderful thing that a being strayed into one
+corner of the universe, alone charged with sustaining himself against so
+many obstacles, who, it would seem, has enough to do to think of
+himself, to preserve and somewhat embellish his life, is capable of
+loving what is not related to him, and exists only in an invisible
+world! This disinterested love of truth gives evidence of the greatness
+of him who feels it.</p>
+
+<p>Reason takes one step more:&mdash;it is not contented with truth, even
+absolute truth, when convinced that it possesses it ill, that it does
+not possess it as it really is; as long as it has not placed it upon its
+eternal basis; having arrived there, it stops as before its impassable
+barrier, having nothing more to seek, nothing more to find. Sentiment
+follows reason, to which it is attached; it stops, it rests, only in the
+love of the infinite being.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, it is the infinite that we love, while we believe that we are
+loving finite things, even while loving truth, beauty, virtue. And so
+surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms us, that its
+highest manifestations do not satisfy us until we have referred them to
+their immortal source. The heart is insatiable, because it aspires after
+the infinite. This sentiment, this need of the infinite, is at the
+foundation of the greatest passions, and the most trifling desires. A
+sigh of the soul in the presence of the starry heavens, the melancholy
+attached to the passion of glory, to ambition, to all the great emotions
+of the soul, express it better without doubt, but they do not express it
+more than the caprice and mobility of those vulgar loves, wandering from
+object to object in a perpetual circle of ardent desires, of poignant
+disquietudes, and mournful disenchantments.</p>
+
+<p>Let us designate another relation between reason and sentiment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">{106}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The mind at first precipitates itself towards its object without
+rendering to itself an account of what it does, of what it perceives, of
+what it feels. But, with the faculty of thinking, of feeling, it has
+also that of willing; it possesses the liberty of returning to itself,
+of reflecting on its own thought and sentiment, of consenting to this,
+or of resisting it, of abstaining from it, or of reproducing its thought
+and sentiment, while stamping them with a new character. Spontaneity,
+reflection,&mdash;these are the two great forms of intelligence.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> One is
+not the other; but, after all, the latter does little more than develop
+the former; they contain at bottom the same things:&mdash;the point of view
+alone is different. Every thing that is spontaneous is obscure and
+confused; reflection carries with it a clear and distinct view.</p>
+
+<p>Reason does not begin by reflection; it does not at first perceive the
+truth as universal and necessary; consequently, when it passes from idea
+to being, when it refers truth to the real being that is its subject, it
+has not sounded, it even has no suspicion of the depth of the chasm it
+passes; it passes it by means of the power which is in it, but it is not
+astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished, and
+undertakes by the aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the
+opposite of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. Here
+commences the strife between sophism and common sense, between false
+science and natural truth, between good and bad philosophy, both of
+which come from free reflection. The sad and sublime privilege of
+reflection is error; but reflection is the remedy for the evil it
+produces. If it can deny natural truth, usually it confirms it, returns
+to common sense by a longer or shorter circuit; it opposes in vain all
+the tendencies of human nature, by which it is almost always overcome,
+and brought back submissive to the first inspirations of reason,
+fortified by this trial. But there is nothing more in the end than there
+was at the beginning; only in primitive inspiration there was a power
+which was ignorant of itself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">{107}</a></span> and in the legitimate results of
+reflection there is a power which knows itself:&mdash;one is the triumph of
+instinct, the other, that of true science.</p>
+
+<p>Sentiment which accompanies intelligence in all its proceedings presents
+the same phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>The heart, like reason, pursues the infinite, and the only difference
+there is in these pursuits is, that sometimes the heart seeks the
+infinite without knowing that it seeks it, and sometimes it renders to
+itself an account of the final end of the need of loving what disturbs
+it. When reflection is added to love, if it finds that the object loved
+is in fact worthy of being loved, far from enfeebling love, it
+strengthens it; far from clipping its divine wings, it develops them,
+and nourishes them, as Plato<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> says. But if the object of love is only
+a symbol of the true beauty, only capable of exciting the desire of the
+soul without satisfying it, reflection breaks the charm which held the
+heart, dissipates the chimera that enchained it. It must be very sure in
+regard to its attachments, in order to dare to put them to the proof of
+reflection. O Psyche! Psyche! preserve thy good fortune; do not sound
+the mystery too deeply. Take care not to bring the fearful light near
+the invisible lover with whom thy soul is enamored. At the first ray of
+the fatal lamp love is awakened, and flies away. Charming image of what
+takes place in the soul, when to the serene and unsuspecting confidence
+of sentiment succeeds reflection with its bitter train. This is perhaps
+also the meaning of the biblical account of the tree of knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a>
+Before science and reflection are innocence and faith. Science and
+reflection at first engender doubt, disquietude, distaste for what one
+possesses, the disturbed pursuit of what one knows not, troubles of mind
+and soul, sore travail of thought, and, in life, many faults, until
+innocence, forever lost, is replaced by virtue, simple faith by true<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">{108}</a></span>
+science, until love, through so many vanishing illusions, finally
+succeeds in reaching its true object.</p>
+
+<p>Spontaneous love has the native grace of ignorance and happiness.
+Reflective love is very different; it is serious, it is great, even in
+its faults, with the greatness of liberty. Let us not be in haste to
+condemn reflection: if it often produces egotism, it also produces
+devotion. What, in fact, is self-devotion? It is giving ourselves
+freely, with full knowledge of what we are doing. Therein consists the
+sublimity of love, love worthy of a noble and generous creature, not an
+ignorant and blind love. When affection has conquered selfishness,
+instead of loving its object for its own sake, the soul gives itself to
+its object, and miracle of love, the more it gives the more it
+possesses, nourishing itself by its own sacrifices, and finding its
+strength and its joy in its entire self-abandonment. But there is only
+one being who is worthy of being thus loved, and who can be thus loved
+without illusions, and without mistakes, at once without limits, and
+without regret, to wit, the perfect being who alone does not fear
+reflection, who alone can fill the entire capacity of our heart.</p>
+
+<p>Mysticism corrupts sentiment by exaggerating its power.</p>
+
+<p>Mysticism begins by suppressing in man reason, or, at least, it
+subordinates and sacrifices reason to sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>Listen to mysticism: it says that by the heart alone is man in relation
+with God. All that is great, beautiful, infinite, eternal, love alone
+reveals to us. Reason is only a lying faculty. Because it may err, and
+does err, it is said that it always errs. Reason is confounded with
+every thing that it is not. The errors of the senses, and of reasoning,
+the illusions of the imagination, even the extravagances of passion,
+which sometimes give rise to those of mind, every thing is laid to the
+charge of reason. Its imperfections are triumphed over, its miseries are
+complacently exhibited; the most audacious dogmatical system&mdash;since it
+aspires to put man and God in immediate communication&mdash;borrows against
+reason all the arms of skepticism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">{109}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mysticism goes farther: it attacks liberty itself; it orders liberty to
+renounce itself, in order to identify itself by love with him from whom
+the infinite separates us. The ideal of virtue is no longer the
+courageous perseverance of the good man, who, in struggling against
+temptation and suffering, makes life holy; it is no longer the free and
+enlightened devotion of a loving soul; it is the entire and blind
+abandonment of ourselves, of our will, of our being, in a barren
+contemplation of thought, in a prayer without utterance, and almost
+without consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The source of mysticism is in that incomplete view of human nature,
+which knows not how to discern in it what therein is most profound,
+which betakes itself to what is therein most striking, most seizing,
+and, consequently, also most seizable. We have already said that reason
+is not noisy, and often is not heard, whilst its echo of sentiment
+loudly resounds. In this compound phenomenon, it is natural that the
+most apparent element should cover and dim the most obscure.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, what relations, what deceptive resemblances between these two
+faculties! Without doubt, in their development, they manifestly differ;
+when reason becomes reasoning, one easily distinguishes its heavy
+movement from the flight of sentiment; but spontaneous reason is almost
+confounded with sentiment,&mdash;there is the same rapidity, the same
+obscurity. Add that they pursue the same object, and almost always go
+together. It is not, then, astonishing that they should be confounded.</p>
+
+<p>A wise philosophy distinguishes<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> them without separating them.
+Analysis demonstrates that reason precedes, and that sentiment follows.
+How can we love what we are ignorant of? In order to enjoy the truth, is
+it not necessary to know it more or less? In order to be moved by
+certain ideas, is it not necessary to have possessed them in some
+degree? To absorb reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">{110}</a></span> in sentiment is to stifle the cause in the
+effect. When one speaks of the light of the heart, he designates,
+without knowing it, that light of the spontaneous reason which discovers
+to us truth by a pure and immediate intuition entirely opposite to the
+slow and laborious processes of the reflective reason and reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>Sentiment by itself is a source of emotion, not of knowledge. The sole
+faculty of knowledge is reason. At bottom, if sentiment is different
+from sensation, it nevertheless pertains on all sides to general
+sensibility, and it is, like it, variable; it has, like it, its
+interruptions, its vivacity, and its lassitude, its exaltation and its
+short-comings. The inspirations of sentiment, then, which are
+essentially mobile and individual, cannot be raised to a universal and
+absolute rule. It is not so with reason; it is constantly the same in
+each one of us, the same in all men. The laws that govern its exercise
+constitute the common legislation of all intelligent beings. There is no
+intelligence that does not conceive some universal and necessary truth,
+and, consequently, the infinite being who is its principle. These grand
+objects being once known excite in the souls of all men the emotions
+that we have endeavored to describe. These emotions partake of the
+dignity of reason and the mobility of imagination and sensibility.
+Sentiment is the harmonious and living relation between reason and
+sensibility. Suppress one of the two terms, and what becomes of the
+relation? Mysticism pretends to elevate man directly to God, and does
+not see that in depriving reason of its power, it really deprives him of
+that which makes him know God, and puts him in a just communication with
+God by the intermediary of eternal and infinite truth.</p>
+
+<p>The fundamental error of mysticism is, that it discards this
+intermediary, as if it were a barrier and not a tie: it makes the
+infinite being the direct object of love. But such a love can be
+sustained only by superhuman efforts that end in folly. Love tends to
+unite itself with its object: mysticism absorbs love in its object.
+Hence the extravagances of that mysticism so severely and so justly
+condemned by Bossuet and the Church in quiet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">{111}</a></span>ism.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> Quietism lulls to
+sleep the activity of man, extinguishes his intelligence, substitutes
+indolent and irregular contemplation for the seeking of truth and the
+fulfilment of duty. The true union of the soul with God is made by truth
+and virtue. Every other union is a chimera, a peril, sometimes a crime.
+It is not permitted man to reject, under any pretext, that which makes
+him man, that which renders him capable of comprehending God, and
+expressing in himself an imperfect image of God, that is to say, reason,
+liberty, conscience. Without doubt, virtue has its prudence, and if we
+must never yield to passion, there are diverse ways of combating it in
+order to conquer it. One can let it subside, and resignation and silence
+may have their legitimate employment. There is a portion of truth, of
+utility even, in the <i>Spiritual Letters</i>, even in the <i>Maxims of the
+Saints</i>. But, in general, it is unsafe to anticipate in this world the
+prerogatives of death, and to dream of sanctity when virtue alone is
+required of us, when virtue is so difficult to attain, even imperfectly.
+The best quietism can, at most, be only a halt in the course, a truce in
+the strife, or rather another manner of combating. It is not by flight
+that battles are gained; in order to gain them it is necessary to come
+to an engagement, so much the more as duty consists in combating still
+more than in conquering. Of the two opposite extremes&mdash;stoicism and
+quietism&mdash;the first, taken all in all, is preferable to the second; for
+if it does not always elevate man to God, it maintains, at least, human
+personality, liberty, conscience, whilst quietism, in abolishing these,
+abolishes the entire man. Oblivion of life and its duties, inertness,
+sloth, death of soul,&mdash;such are the fruits of that love of God, which is
+lost in the sterile contemplation of its object, provided it does not
+cause still sadder aberrations! There comes a moment when the soul that
+believes itself united with God, puffed up with this imaginary
+possession, despises both the body and human personality to such an
+extent that all its actions become indifferent to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">{112}</a></span> it, and good and evil
+are in its eyes the same. Thus it is that fanatical sects have been seen
+mingling crime and devotion, finding in one the excuse, often even the
+motive, of the other, and prefacing infamous irregularities or
+abominable cruelties with mystic transports,&mdash;deplorable consequences of
+the chimera of pure love, of the pretension of sentiment to rule over
+reason, to serve alone as a guide to the human soul, and to put itself
+in direct communication with God, without the intermediary of the
+visible world, and without the still surer intermediary of intelligence
+and truth.</p>
+
+<p>But it is time to pass to another kind of mysticism, more singular, more
+learned, more refined, and quite as unreasonable, although it presents
+itself in the very name of reason.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> that reason, if one of the principles which govern it
+be destroyed, cannot lay hold of truth, not even absolute truths of the
+intellectual and moral order; it refers all universal, necessary,
+absolute truths, to the being that alone can explain them, because in
+him alone are necessary and absolute existence, immutability, and
+infinity. God is the substance of uncreated truths, as he is the cause
+of created existences. Necessary truths find in God their natural
+subject. If God has not arbitrarily made them,&mdash;which is not in
+accordance with their essence and his,&mdash;he constitutes them, inasmuch as
+they are himself. His intelligence possesses them as the manifestations
+of itself. As long as our intelligence has not referred them to the
+divine intelligence, they are to it an effect without cause, a
+phenomenon without substance. It refers them, then, to their cause and
+their substance. And in that it obeys an imperative need, a fixed
+principle of reason.</p>
+
+<p>Mysticism breaks in some sort the ladder that elevates us to infinite
+substance: it regards this substance alone, independently<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> of the
+truth that manifests it, and it imagines itself to possess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">{113}</a></span> also the
+pure absolute, pure unity, being in itself. The advantage which
+mysticism here seeks, is to give to thought an object wherein there is
+no mixture, no division, no multiplicity, wherein every sensible and
+human element has entirely disappeared. But in order to obtain this
+advantage, it must pay the cost of it. It is a very simple means of
+freeing theodicea from every shade of anthropomorphism; it is reducing
+God to an abstraction, to the abstraction of being in itself. Being in
+itself, it is true, is free from all division, but upon the condition
+that it have no attribute, no quality, and even that it be deprived of
+knowledge and intelligence; for intelligence, if elevated as it might
+be, always supposes the distinction between the intelligent subject and
+the intelligible object. A God from whom absolute unity excludes
+intelligence, is the God of the mystic philosophy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">{114}</a></span></p><p>How could the school of Alexandria, how could Plotinus, its
+founder,<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> in the midst of the lights of the Greek and Latin
+civilization, have arrived at such a strange notion of the Divinity? By
+the abuse of Platonism, by the corruption of the best and severest
+method, that of Socrates and Plato.</p>
+
+<p>The Platonic method, the dialectic process, as its author calls it,
+searches in particular, variable, contingent things, for what they also
+have general, durable, one, that is to say, their Idea, and is thus
+elevated to Ideas, as to the only true objects of intelligence, in order
+to be elevated still from these Ideas, which are arranged in an
+admirable hierarchy, to the first of all, beyond which intelligence has
+nothing more to conceive, nothing more to seek. By rejecting in finite
+things their limit, their individuality, we attain genera, Ideas, and,
+by them, their sovereign principle. But this principle is not the last
+of genera, nor the last of abstractions; it is a real and substantial
+principle.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> The God of Plato is not called merely unity, he is called
+the Good; he is not the lifeless substance of the Eleatics;<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> he is
+endowed with <i>life and movement</i>;<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> strong expressions that show how
+much the God of the Platonic metaphysics differs from that of mysticism.
+This God is the <i>father of the world</i>.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> He is also the father of
+truth, that light of spirits.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> He dwells in the midst of Ideas <i>which
+make him a true God inasmuch as he is with them</i>.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> He possesses
+<i>august and holy intelligence</i>.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> He has made the world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">{115}</a></span> without any
+external necessity, and for the sole reason that he is good.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> In
+fine, he is beauty without mixture, unalterable, immortal, that makes
+him who has caught a glimpse of it disdain all earthly beauties.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> The
+beautiful, the absolute good, is too dazzling to be looked on directly
+by the eye of mortal; it must at first be contemplated in the images
+that reveal it to us, in truth, in beauty, in justice, as they are met
+here below, and among men, as the eye of one who has been a chained
+captive from infancy, must be gradually habituated to the light of the
+sun.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> Our reason, enlightened by true science, can perceive this
+light of spirits; reason rightly led can go to God, and there is no
+need, in order to reach him, of a particular and mysterious faculty.</p>
+
+<p>Plotinus erred by pushing to excess the Platonic dialectics, and by
+extending them beyond the boundary where they should stop. In Plato they
+terminate at ideas, at the idea of the good, and produce an intelligent
+and good God; Plotinus applies them without limit, and they lead him
+into an abyss of mysticism. If all truth is in the general, and if all
+individuality is imperfection, it follows, that as long as we are able
+to generalize, as long as it is possible for us to overlook any
+difference, to exclude any determination, we shall not be at the limit
+of dialectics. Its last object, then, will be a principle without any
+determination. It will not spare in God being itself. In fact, if we say
+that God is a being, by the side of and above being, we place unity, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">{116}</a></span>
+which being partakes, and which it cannot disengage, in order to
+consider it alone. Being is not here simple, since it is at once being
+and unity; unity alone is simple, for one cannot go beyond that. And
+still when we say unity, we determine it. True absolute unity must,
+then, be something absolutely indeterminate, which is not, which,
+properly speaking, cannot be named, the <i>unnamable</i>, as Plotinus says.
+This principle, which exists not, for a still stronger reason, cannot
+think, for all thought is still a determination, a manner of being. So
+being and thought are excluded from absolute unity. If Alexandrianism
+admits them, it is only as a forfeiture, a degradation of unity.
+Considered in thought, and in being, the supreme principle is inferior
+to itself; only in the pure simplicity of its indefinable essence is it
+the last object of science, and the last term of perfection.</p>
+
+<p>In order to enter into communication with such a God, the ordinary
+faculties are not sufficient, and the theodicea of the school of
+Alexandria imposes upon it a quite peculiar psychology.</p>
+
+<p>In the truth of things, reason conceives absolute unity as an attribute
+of absolute being, but not as something in itself, or, if it considers
+it apart, it knows that it considers only an abstraction. Does one wish
+to make absolute unity something else than an attribute of an absolute
+being, or an abstraction, a conception of human intelligence? Reason
+could accept nothing more on any condition. Will this barren unity be
+the object of love? But love, much more than reason, aspires after a
+real object. One does not love substance in general, but a substance
+that possesses such or such a character. In human friendships, suppress
+all the qualities of a person, or modify them, and you modify or
+suppress the love. This does not prove that you do not love this person;
+it only proves that the person is not for you without his qualities.</p>
+
+<p>So neither reason nor love can attain the absolute unity of mysticism.
+In order to correspond to such an object, there must be in us something
+analogous to it, there must be a mode of knowing that implies the
+abolition of consciousness. In fact,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">{117}</a></span> consciousness is the sign of the
+<i>me</i>, that is to say, of that which is most determinate: the being who
+says, <i>me</i>, distinguishes himself essentially from every other; that is
+for us the type itself of individuality. Consciousness should degrade
+the ideal of dialectic knowledge, or every division, every determination
+must be wanting, in order to respond to the absolute unity of its
+object. This mode of pure and direct communication with God, which is
+not reason, which is not love, which excludes consciousness, is ecstasy
+(<span title="[Greek: ekstasis]">&#7956;&#954;&#963;&#964;&#945;&#963;&#953;&#962;</span>). This word, which Plotinus first applied to this
+singular state of the soul, expresses this separation from ourselves
+which mysticism exacts, and of which it believes man capable. Man, in
+order to communicate with absolute being, must go out of himself. It is
+necessary that thought should reject all determinate thought, and, in
+falling back within its own depths, should arrive at such an oblivion of
+itself, that consciousness should vanish or seem to vanish. But that is
+only an image of ecstasy; what it is in itself, no one knows; as it
+escapes all consciousness, it escapes memory, escapes reflection, and
+consequently all expression, all human speech.</p>
+
+<p>This philosophical mysticism rests upon a radically false notion of
+absolute being. By dint of wishing to free God from all the conditions
+of finite existence, one comes to deprive him of all the conditions of
+existence itself; one has such a fear that the infinite may have
+something in common with the finite, that he does not dare to recognize
+that being is common to both, save difference of degree, as if all that
+is not were not nothingness itself! Absolute being possesses absolute
+unity without any doubt, as it possesses absolute intelligence; but,
+once more, absolute unity without a real subject of inherence is
+destitute of all reality. Real and determinate are synonyms. What
+constitutes a being is its special nature, its essence. A being is
+itself only on the condition of not being another; it cannot but have
+characteristic traits. All that is, is such or such. Difference is an
+element as essential to being as unity itself. If, then, reality is in
+determination, it follows that God is the most determinate of beings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">{118}</a></span>
+Aristotle is much more Platonic than Plotinus, when he says that God is
+the thought of thought,<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> that he is not a simple power, but a power
+effectively acting, meaning thereby that God to be perfect, ought to
+have nothing in himself that is not completed. To finite nature it
+belongs to be, in a certain sense, indeterminate, since being finite, it
+has always in itself powers that are not realized; this indetermination
+diminishes as these powers are realized. So true divine unity is not
+abstract unity, it is the precise unity of perfect being in which every
+thing is accomplished. At the summit of existence, still more than at
+its low degree, every thing is determinate, every thing is developed,
+every thing is distinct, every thing is one. The richness of
+determinations is a certain sign of the plenitude of being. Reflection
+distinguishes these determinations from each other, but it is not
+necessary that it should in these distinctions see the limits. In us,
+for example, does the diversity of our faculties and their richest
+development divide the <i>me</i> and alter the identity and the unity of the
+person? Does each one of us believe himself less than himself, because
+he possesses sensibility, reason, and will? No, surely. It is the same
+with God. Not having employed a sufficient psychology, Alexandrian
+mysticism imagined that diversity of attributes is incompatible with
+simplicity of essence, and through fear of corrupting simple and pure
+essence, it made of it an abstraction. By a senseless scruple, it feared
+that God would not be sufficiently perfect, if it left him all his
+perfections; it regards them as imperfections, being as a degradation,
+creation as a fall; and, in order to explain man and the universe, it is
+forced to put in God what it calls failings, not having seen that these
+pretended failings are the very signs of his infinite perfection.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of ecstasy is at once the necessary condition and the
+condemnation of the theory of absolute unity. Without ab<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">{119}</a></span>solute unity as
+the direct object of knowledge, of what use is ecstasy in the subject of
+knowledge? Ecstasy, far from elevating man to God, abases him below man;
+for it effaces in him thought, by taking away its condition, which is
+consciousness. To suppress consciousness, is to render all knowledge
+impossible; it is not to comprehend the perfection of this mode of
+knowing, wherein the limitation of subject and object gives at once the
+simplest, most immediate, and most determinate knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Alexandrian mysticism is the most learned and the profoundest of all
+known mysticisms. In the heights of abstraction where it loses itself,
+it seems very far from popular superstitions; and yet the school of
+Alexandria unites ecstatic contemplation and theurgy. These are two
+things, in appearance, incompatible, but they pertain to the same
+principle, to the pretension of directly perceiving what inevitably
+escapes all our efforts. On the one hand, a refined mysticism aspires to
+God by ecstasy; on the other, a gross mysticism thinks to seize him by
+the senses. The processes, the faculties employed, differ, but the
+foundation is the same, and from this common foundation necessarily
+spring the most opposite extravagances. Apollonius of Tyanus is a
+popular Alexandrianist, and Jamblicus is Plotinus become a priest,
+mystagogue, and hierophant. A new worship shone forth by miracles; the
+ancient worship would have its own miracles, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">{120}</a></span> philosophers boasted
+that they could make the divinity appear before other men. They had
+demons for themselves, and, in some sort, for their own orders; the gods
+were not only invoked, but evoked. Ecstasy for the initiates, theurgy
+for the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>At all times and in all places, these two mysticisms have given each
+other the hand. In India and in China, the schools where the most
+subtile idealism is taught, are not far from pagodas of the most abject
+idolatry. One day the Bhagavad-Gita or Lao-tseu<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> is read, an
+indefinable God is taught, without essential and determinate attributes;
+the next day there is shown to the people such or such a form, such or
+such a manifestation of this God, who, not having a form that belongs to
+him, can receive all forms, and being only substance in itself, is
+necessarily the substance of every thing, of a stone and a drop of
+water, of a dog, a hero, and a sage. So, in the ancient world under
+Julien, for example, the same man was at once professor in the school of
+Athens and guardian of the temple of Minerva or Cybele, by turns
+obscuring the <i>Tim&aelig;us</i> and the <i>Republic</i> by subtile commentaries, and
+exhibiting to the eyes of the multitude sometimes the sacred vale,<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>
+sometimes the shrine of the good goddess,<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> and in either function, as
+priest or philosopher, imposing on others and himself, under taking to
+ascend above the human mind and falling miserably below it, paying in
+some sort the penalty of an unintelligible metaphysics, in lending
+himself to the most shameless superstitions.</p>
+
+<p>When the Christian religion triumphed, it brought humanity under a
+discipline that puts a rein upon this deplorable mysticism. But how many
+times has it brought back, under the reign of spiritual religion, all
+the extravagances of the religions of nature! It was to appear
+especially at the <i>renaissance</i> of the schools and of the genius of
+Paganism in the sixteenth century, when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">{121}</a></span> human mind had broken with
+the philosophy of the Middle Age, without yet having arrived at modern
+philosophy.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> The Paracelsuses and the Von Helmonts renewed the
+Apolloniuses and the Jamblicuses, abusing some chemical and medical
+knowledge, as the former had abused the Socratic and Platonic method,
+altered in its character, and turned from its true object. And so, in
+the midst of the eighteenth century, has not Swedenborg united in his
+own person an exalted mysticism and a sort of magic, opening thus the
+way to those senseless<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> persons who contest with me in the morning
+the solidest and best-established proofs of the existence of the soul
+and God, and propose to me in the evening to make me see otherwise than
+with my eyes, and to make me hear otherwise than with my ears, to make
+me use all my faculties otherwise than by their natural organs,
+promising me a superhuman science, on the condition of first losing
+consciousness, thought, liberty, memory, all that constitutes me an
+intelligent and moral being. I should know all, then, but at the cost of
+knowing nothing that I should know. I should elevate myself to a
+marvellous world, which, awakened and in a natural state, I am not even
+able to suspect, of which no remembrance will remain to me:&mdash;a mysticism
+at once gross and chimerical, which perverts both psychology and
+physiology; an imbecile ecstasy, renewed without genius from the
+Alexandrine ecstasy; an extravagance which has not even the merit of a
+little novelty, and which history has seen reappearing at all epochs of
+ambition and impotence.</p>
+
+<p>This is what we come to when we wish to go beyond the conditions imposed
+upon human nature. Charron first said, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">{122}</a></span> after him Pascal repeated
+it, that whoever would become an angel becomes a beast. The remedy for
+all these follies is a severe theory of reason, of what it can and what
+it cannot do; of reason enveloped first in the exercise of the senses,
+than elevating itself to universal and necessary ideas, referring them
+to their principle, to a being infinite and at the same time real and
+substantial, whose existence it conceives, but whose nature it is always
+interdicted to penetrate and comprehend. Sentiment accompanies and
+vivifies the sublime intuitions of reason, but we must not confound
+these two orders of facts, much less smother reason in sentiment.
+Between a finite being like man and God, absolute and infinite
+substance, there is the double intermediary of that magnificent universe
+open to our gaze, and of those marvellous truths which reason conceives,
+but has not made more than the eye makes the beauties it perceives. The
+only means that is given us of elevating ourselves to the Being of
+beings, without being dazzled and bewildered, is to approach him by the
+aid of a divine intermediary; that is to say, to consecrate ourselves to
+the study and the love of truth, and, as we shall soon see, to the
+contemplation and reproduction of the beautiful, especially to the
+practice of the good.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">{123}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND</h2>
+
+<h2>THE BEAUTIFUL.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VI" id="LECTURE_VI"></a>LECTURE VI.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art
+is, as in the investigation of the true, to commence by
+psychology.&mdash;Faculties of the soul that unite in the perception
+of the beautiful.&mdash;The senses give only the agreeable; reason
+alone gives the idea of the beautiful.&mdash;Refutation of
+empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the
+beautiful.&mdash;Pre-eminence of reason.&mdash;Sentiment of the beautiful;
+different from sensation and desire.&mdash;Distinction between the
+sentiment of the beautiful and that of the
+sublime.&mdash;Imagination.&mdash;Influence of sentiment on
+imagination.&mdash;Influence of imagination on sentiment.&mdash;Theory of
+taste.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Let us recall in a few words the results at which we have arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Two exclusive schools are opposed to each other in the eighteenth
+century; we have combated both, and each by the other. To empiricism we
+have opposed the insufficiency of sensation, and its own inevitable
+necessity to idealism. We have admitted, with Locke and Condillac, in
+regard to the origin of knowledge, particular and contingent ideas,
+which we owe to the senses and consciousness; and above the senses and
+consciousness, the direct sources of all particular ideas, we have
+recognized, with Reid and Kant, a special faculty, different from
+sensation and consciousness, but developed with them,&mdash;reason, the lofty
+source of universal and necessary truths. We have established, against
+Kant,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">{124}</a></span> the absolute authority of reason, and the truths which it
+discovers. Then, the truths that reason revealed to us have themselves
+revealed to us their eternal principle,&mdash;God. Finally, this rational
+spiritualism, which is both the faith of the human race and the doctrine
+of the greatest minds of antiquity and modern times, we have carefully
+distinguished from a chimerical and dangerous mysticism. Thus the
+necessity of experience and the necessity of reason, the necessity of a
+real and infinite being which is the first and last foundation of truth,
+a severe distinction between spiritualism and mysticism, are the great
+principles which we have been able to gather from the first part of this
+course.</p>
+
+<p>The second part, the study of the beautiful, will give us the same
+results elucidated and aggrandized by a new application.</p>
+
+<p>It was the eighteenth century that introduced, or rather brought back
+into philosophy, investigations on the beautiful and art, so familiar to
+Plato and Aristotle, but which scholasticism had not entertained, to
+which our great philosophy of the seventeenth century had remained
+almost a stranger.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> One comprehends that it did not belong to the
+empirical school to revive this noble part of philosophic science. Locke
+and Condillac did not leave a chapter, not even a single page, on the
+beautiful. Their followers treated beauty with the same disdain; not
+knowing very well how to explain it in their system, they found it more
+convenient not to perceive it at all. Diderot, it is true, had an
+enthusiasm for beauty and art, but enthusiasm was never so ill placed.
+Diderot had genius; but, as Voltaire said of him, his was a head in
+which every thing fermented without coming to maturity. He scattered
+here and there a mass of ingenious and often contradictory perceptions;
+he has no principles; he abandons himself to the impression of the
+moment; he knows not what the ideal is; he delights in a kind of nature,
+at once common and mannered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">{125}</a></span> such as one might expect from the author
+of the <i>Interpr&eacute;tation de la Nature</i>, the <i>P&egrave;re de Famille</i>, the <i>Neveu
+de Rameau</i>, and <i>Jacques le Fataliste</i>. Diderot is a fatalist in art as
+well as in philosophy; he belongs to his times and his school, with a
+grain of poetry, sensibility, and imagination.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> It was worthy of the
+Scotch<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> school and Kant<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> to give a place to the beautiful in their
+doctrine. They considered it in the soul and in nature; but they did not
+even touch the difficult question of the reproduction of the beautiful
+by the genius of man. We will try to embrace this great subject in its
+whole extent, and we are about to offer at least a sketch of a regular
+and complete theory of beauty and art.</p>
+
+<p>Let us begin by establishing well the method that must preside over
+these investigations.</p>
+
+<p>One can study the beautiful in two ways:&mdash;either out of us, in itself
+and in the objects, whatever they may be, that bear its impress; or in
+the mind of man, in the faculties that attain it, in the ideas or
+sentiments that it excites in us. Now, the true method, which must now
+be familiar to you, makes setting out from man to arrive at things a law
+for us. Therefore psychological analysis will here again be our point of
+departure, and the study of the state of the soul in presence of the
+beautiful will prepare us for that of the beautiful considered in itself
+and its objects.</p>
+
+<p>Let us interrogate the soul in the presence of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not an incontestable fact that before certain objects, under very
+different circumstances, we pronounce the following judgment:&mdash;This
+object is beautiful? This affirmation is not always explicit. Sometimes
+it manifests itself only by a cry of admiration; sometimes it silently
+rises in the mind that scarcely has a consciousness of it. The forms of
+this phenomenon vary, but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">{126}</a></span> phenomenon is attested by the most common
+and most certain observation, and all languages bear witness of it.</p>
+
+<p>Although sensible objects, with most men, oftenest provoke the judgment
+of the beautiful, they do not alone possess this advantage; the domain
+of beauty is more extensive than the domain of the physical world
+exposed to our view; it has no bounds but those of entire nature, and of
+the soul and genius of man. Before an heroic action, by the remembrance
+of a great sacrifice; even by the thought of the most abstract truths
+firmly united with each other in a system admirable at once for its
+simplicity and its productiveness; finally, before objects of another
+order, before the works of art, this same phenomenon is produced in us.
+We recognize in all these objects, however different, a common quality
+in regard to which our judgment is pronounced, and this quality we call
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>The philosophy of sensation, in faithfulness to itself, should have
+attempted to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable.</p>
+
+<p>Without doubt, beauty is almost always agreeable to the senses, or at
+least it must not wound them. Most of our ideas of the beautiful come to
+us by sight and hearing, and all the arts, without exception, are
+addressed to the soul through the body. An object which makes us suffer,
+were it the most beautiful in the world, very rarely appears to us such.
+Beauty has little influence over a soul occupied with grief.</p>
+
+<p>But if an agreeable sensation often accompanies the idea of the
+beautiful, we must not conclude that one is the other.</p>
+
+<p>Experience testifies that all agreeable things do not appear beautiful,
+and that, among agreeable things, those which are most so are not the
+most beautiful,&mdash;a sure sign that the agreeable is not the beautiful;
+for if one is identical with the other, they should never be separated,
+but should always be commensurate with each other.</p>
+
+<p>Far from this, whilst all our senses give us agreeable sensations, only
+two have the privilege of awakening in us the idea of beauty. Does one
+ever say: This is a beautiful taste, this is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">{127}</a></span> beautiful smell?
+Nevertheless, one should say it, if the beautiful is the agreeable. On
+the other hand, there are certain pleasures of odor and taste that move
+sensibility more than the greatest beauties of nature and art; and even
+among the perceptions of hearing and sight, those are not always the
+most vivid that most excite in us the idea of beauty. Do not pictures,
+ordinary in coloring, often move us more deeply than many dazzling
+productions, more seductive to the eye, less touching to the soul? I say
+farther; sensation not only does not produce the idea of the beautiful,
+but sometimes stifles it. Let an artist occupy himself with the
+reproduction of voluptuous forms; while pleasing the senses, he
+disturbs, he repels in us the chaste and pure idea of beauty. The
+agreeable is not, then, the measure of the beautiful, since in certain
+cases it effaces it and makes us forget it; it is not, then, the
+beautiful, since it is found, and in the highest degree, where the
+beautiful is not.</p>
+
+<p>This conducts us to the essential foundation of the distinction between
+the idea of the beautiful and the sensation of the agreeable, to wit,
+the difference already explained between sensibility and reason.</p>
+
+<p>When an object makes you experience an agreeable sensation, if one asks
+you why this object is agreeable to you, you can answer nothing, except
+that such is your impression; and if one informs you that this same
+object produces upon others a different impression and displeases them,
+you are not much astonished, because you know that sensibility is
+diverse, and that sensations must not be disputed. Is it the same when
+an object is not only agreeable to you, but when you judge that it is
+beautiful? You pronounce, for example, that this figure is noble and
+beautiful, that this sunrise or sunset is beautiful, that
+disinterestedness and devotion are beautiful, that virtue is beautiful;
+if one contests with you the truth of these judgments, then you are not
+as accommodating as you were just now; you do not accept the dissent as
+an inevitable effect of different sensibilities, you no longer appeal to
+your sensibility which naturally terminates in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">{128}</a></span> you, you appeal to an
+authority which is made for others as well as you, that of reason; you
+believe that you have the right of accusing him with error who
+contradicts your judgment, for here your judgment rests no longer on
+something variable and individual, like an agreeable or painful
+sensation. The agreeable is confined for us within the inclosure of our
+own organization, where it changes every moment, according to the
+perpetual revolutions of this organization, according to health and
+sickness, the state of the atmosphere, that of our nerves, etc. But it
+is not so with beauty; beauty, like truth, belongs to none of us; no one
+has the right to dispose of it arbitrarily, and when we say: this is
+true, this is beautiful, it is no longer the particular and variable
+impression of our sensibility that we express, it is the absolute
+judgment that reason imposes on all men.</p>
+
+<p>Confound reason and sensibility, reduce the idea of the beautiful to the
+sensation of the agreeable, and taste no longer has a law. If a person
+says to me, in the presence of the Apollo Belvidere, that he feels
+nothing more agreeable than in presence of any other statue, that it
+does not please him at all, that he does not feel its beauty, I cannot
+dispute his impression; but if this person thence concludes that the
+Apollo is not beautiful, I proudly contradict him, and declare that he
+is deceived. Good taste is distinguished from bad taste; but what does
+this distinction signify, if the judgment of the beautiful is resolved
+into a sensation? You say to me that I have no taste. What does that
+mean? Have I not senses like you? Does not the object which you admire
+act upon me as well as upon you? Is not the impression which I feel as
+real as that which you feel? Whence comes it, then, that you are
+right,&mdash;you who only give expression to the impression which you feel,
+and that I am wrong,&mdash;I who do precisely the same thing? Is it because
+those who feel like you are more numerous than those who feel like me?
+But here the number of voices means nothing? The beautiful being defined
+as that which produces on the senses an agreeable impression, a thing
+that pleases a single man, though it were frightfully ugly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">{129}</a></span> in the eyes
+of all the rest of the human race, must, nevertheless, and very
+legitimately, be called beautiful by him who receives from it an
+agreeable impression, for, so far as he is concerned, it satisfies the
+definition. There is, then, no true beauty; there are only relative and
+changing beauties, beauties of circumstance, custom, fashion, and all
+these beauties, however different, will have a right to the same
+respect, provided they meet sensibilities to which they are agreeable.
+And as there is nothing in this world, in the infinite diversity of our
+dispositions, which may not please some one, there will be nothing that
+is not beautiful; or, to speak more truly, there will be nothing either
+beautiful or ugly, and the Hottentot Venus will equal the Venus de
+Medici. The absurdity of the consequences demonstrates the absurdity of
+the principle. But there is only one means of escaping these
+consequences, which is to repudiate the principle, and recognize the
+judgment of the beautiful as an absolute judgment, and, as such,
+entirely different from sensation.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, and this is the last rock of empiricism, is there in us only
+the idea of an imperfect and finite beauty, and while we are admiring
+the real beauties that nature furnishes, are we not elevating ourselves
+to the idea of a superior beauty, which Plato, with great excellence of
+expression, calls the Idea of the beautiful, which, after him, all men
+of delicate taste, all true artists call the Ideal? If we establish
+decrees in the beauty of things, is it not because we compare them,
+often without noticing it, with this ideal, which is to us the measure
+and rule of all our judgments in regard to particular beauties? How
+could this idea of absolute beauty enveloped in all our judgments on the
+beautiful,&mdash;how could this ideal beauty, which it is impossible for us
+not to conceive, be revealed to us by sensation, by a faculty variable
+and relative like the objects that it perceives?</p>
+
+<p>The philosophy which deduces all our ideas from the senses falls to the
+ground, then, before the idea of the beautiful. It remains to see
+whether this idea can be better explained by means of sentiment, which
+is different from sensation, which so nearly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">{130}</a></span> resembles reason that good
+judges have often taken it for reason, and have made it the principle of
+the idea of the beautiful as well as that of the good. It is already a
+progress, without doubt, to go from sensation to sentiment, and
+Hutcheson and Smith<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> are in our eyes very different philosophers
+from Condillac and Helvetius;<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> but we believe that we have
+sufficiently established<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> that, in confounding sentiment with
+reason, we deprive it of its foundation and rule, that sentiment,
+particular and variable in its nature, different to different men, and
+in each man continually changing, cannot be sufficient for itself.
+Nevertheless, if sentiment is not a principle, it is a true and
+important fact, and, after having distinguished it well from reason, we
+ourselves proceed to elevate it far above sensation, and elucidate the
+important part it plays in the perception of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Place yourself before an object of nature, wherein men recognize beauty,
+and observe what takes place within you at the sight of this object. Is
+it not certain that, at the same time that you judge that it is
+beautiful, you also feel its beauty, that is to say, that you experience
+at the sight of it a delightful emotion, and that you are attracted
+towards this object by a sentiment of sympathy and love? In other cases
+you judge otherwise, and feel an opposite sentiment. Aversion
+accompanies the judgment of the ugly, as love accompanies the judgment
+of the beautiful. And this sentiment is awakened not only in presence of
+the objects of nature: all objects, whatever they may be, that we judge
+to be ugly or beautiful, have the power to excite in us this sentiment.
+Vary the circumstances as much as you please, place me before an
+admirable edifice or before a beautiful landscape; represent to my mind
+the great discoveries of Descartes and Newton,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">{131}</a></span> the exploits of the
+great Cond&eacute;, the virtue of St. Vincent de Paul; elevate me still higher;
+awaken in me the obscure and too much forgotten idea of the infinite
+being; whatever you do, as often as you give birth within me to the idea
+of the beautiful, you give me an internal and exquisite joy, always
+followed by a sentiment of love for the object that caused it.</p>
+
+<p>The more beautiful the object is, the more lively is the joy which it
+gives the soul, and the more profound is the love without being
+passionate. In admiration judgment rules, but animated by sentiment. Is
+admiration increased to the degree of impressing upon the soul an
+emotion, an ardor that seems to exceed the limits of human nature? this
+state of the soul is called enthusiasm:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The philosophy of sensation explains sentiment, as well as the idea of
+the beautiful, only by changing its nature. It confounds it with
+agreeable sensation, and, consequently, for it the love of beauty can be
+nothing but desire. There is no theory more contradicted by facts.</p>
+
+<p>What is desire? It is an emotion of the soul which has, for its avowed
+or secret end, possession. Admiration is in its nature respectful,
+whilst desire tends to profane its object.</p>
+
+<p>Desire is the offspring of need. It supposes, then, in him who
+experiences it, a want, a defect, and, to a certain point, suffering.
+The sentiment of the beautiful is to itself its own satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Desire is burning, impetuous, sad. The sentiment of the beautiful, free
+from all desire, and always without fear, elevates and warms the soul,
+and may transport it even to enthusiasm, without making it know the
+troubles of passion. The artist sees only the beautiful where the
+sensual man sees only the alluring and the frightful. On a vessel tossed
+by a tempest, while the passengers tremble at the sight of the
+threatening waves, and at the sound of the thunder that breaks over
+their heads, the artist remains absorbed in the contemplation of the
+sublime spectacle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">{132}</a></span> Vernet has himself lashed to the mast in order to
+contemplate for a longer time the storm in its majestic and terrible
+beauty. When he knows fear, when he participates in the common feeling,
+the artist vanishes, there no more remains any thing but the man.</p>
+
+<p>The sentiment of the beautiful is so far from being desire, that each
+excludes the other. Let me take a common example. Before a table loaded
+with meats and delicious wines, the desire of enjoyment is awakened, but
+not the sentiment of the beautiful. Suppose that if, instead of thinking
+of the pleasures which all these things spread before my eyes promise
+me, I only take notice of the manner in which they are arranged and set
+upon the table, and the order of the feast, the sentiment of the
+beautiful might in some degree be produced; but surely this will be
+neither the need nor the desire of appropriating this symmetry, this
+order.</p>
+
+<p>It is the property of beauty not to irritate and inflame desire, but to
+purify and ennoble it. The more beautiful a woman is,&mdash;I do not mean
+that common and gross beauty which Reubens in vain animates with his
+brilliant coloring, but that ideal beauty which antiquity and Raphael
+understood so well,&mdash;the more, at the sight of this noble creature is
+desire tempered by an exquisite and delicate sentiment, and is sometimes
+even replaced by a disinterested worship. If the Venus of the Capitol,
+or the Saint Cecilia, excites in you sensual desires, you are not made
+to feel the beautiful. So the true artist addresses himself less to the
+senses than to the soul; in painting beauty he only seeks to awaken in
+us sentiment; and when he has carried this sentiment as far as
+enthusiasm, he has obtained the last triumph of art.</p>
+
+<p>The sentiment of the beautiful is, therefore, a special sentiment, as
+the idea of the beautiful is a simple idea. But is this sentiment, one
+in itself, manifested only in a single way, and applied only to a single
+kind of beauty? Here again&mdash;here, as always&mdash;let us interrogate
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>When we have before our eyes an object whose forms are per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">{133}</a></span>fectly
+determined, and the whole easy to embrace,&mdash;a beautiful flower, a
+beautiful statue, an antique temple of moderate size,&mdash;each of our
+faculties attaches itself to this object, and rests upon it with an
+unalloyed satisfaction. Our senses easily perceive its details; our
+reason seizes the happy harmony of all its parts. Should this object
+disappear, we can distinctly represent it to ourselves, so precise and
+fixed are its forms. The soul in this contemplation feels again a sweet
+and tranquil joy, a sort of efflorescence.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider, on the other hand, an object with vague and indefinite
+forms, which may nevertheless be very beautiful: the impression which we
+experience is without doubt a pleasure still, but it is a pleasure of a
+different order. This object does not call forth all our powers like the
+first. Reason conceives it, but the senses do not perceive the whole of
+it, and imagination does not distinctly represent it to itself. The
+senses and the imagination try in vain to attain its last limits; our
+faculties are enlarged, are inflated, thus to speak, in order to embrace
+it, but it escapes and surpasses them. The pleasure that we feel comes
+from the very magnitude of the object; but, at the same time, this
+magnitude produces in us I know not what melancholy sentiment, because
+it is disproportionate to us. At the sight of the starry heavens, of the
+vast sea, of gigantic mountains, admiration is mingled with sadness.
+These objects, in reality finite, like the world itself, seem to us
+infinite, in our want of power to comprehend their immensity, and,
+resembling what is truly without bounds, they awaken in us the idea of
+the infinite, that idea which at once elevates and confounds our
+intelligence. The corresponding sentiment which the soul experiences is
+an austere pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>In order to render the difference which we wish to mark more
+perceptible, examples may be multiplied. Are you affected in the same
+way at the sight of a meadow, variegated in its rather limited
+dimensions, whose extent the eye can easily take in, and at the aspect
+of an inaccessible mountain, at the foot of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">{134}</a></span> the ocean breaks? Do
+the sweet light of day and a melodious voice produce upon you the same
+effect as darkness and silence? In the intellectual and moral order, are
+you moved in the same way when a rich and good man opens his purse to
+the indigent, and when a magnanimous man gives hospitality to his enemy,
+and saves him at the peril of his own life? Take some light poetry in
+which measure, spirit, and grace, everywhere predominate; take an ode,
+and especially an epistle of Horace, or some small verses of Voltaire,
+and compare them with the Iliad, or those immense Indian poems that are
+filled with marvellous events, wherein the highest metaphysics are
+united to recitals by turns graceful or pathetic, those poems that have
+more than two hundred thousand verses, whose personages are gods or
+symbolic beings; and see whether the impressions that you experience
+will be the same. As a last example, suppose, on the one hand, a writer
+who, with two or three strokes of the pen, sketches an analysis of
+intelligence, agreeable and simple, but without depth, and, on the
+other, a philosopher who engages in a long labor in order to arrive at
+the most rigorous decomposition of the faculty of knowing, and unfolds
+to you a long chain of principles and consequences,&mdash;read the <i>Trait&eacute;
+des Sensations</i> and <i>the Critique of Pure Reason</i>, and, even leaving out
+of the account the truth and the falsehood they may contain, with
+reference solely to the beautiful, compare your impressions.</p>
+
+<p>These are, then, two very different sentiments; different names have
+also been given them: one has been more particularly called the
+sentiment of the beautiful, the other that of the sublime.</p>
+
+<p>In order to complete the study of the different faculties that enter
+into the perception of beauty, after reason and sentiment, it remains to
+us to speak of a faculty not less necessary, which animates them and
+vivifies them,&mdash;imagination.</p>
+
+<p>When sensation, judgment, and sentiment have been produced by the
+occasion of an external object, they are reproduced even in the absence
+of this object; this is memory.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">{135}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Memory is double:&mdash;not only do I remember that I have been in the
+presence of a certain object, but I represent to myself this absent
+object as it was, as I have seen, felt, and judged it:&mdash;the remembrance
+is then an image. In this last case, memory has been called by some
+philosophers imaginative memory. Such is the foundation of imagination;
+but imagination is something more still.</p>
+
+<p>The mind, applying itself to the images furnished by memory, decomposes
+them, chooses between their different traits, and forms of them new
+images. Without this new power, imagination would be captive in the
+circle of memory.</p>
+
+<p>The gift of being strongly affected by objects and reproducing their
+absent or vanished images, and the power of modifying these images so as
+to compose of them new ones,&mdash;do they fully constitute what men call
+imagination? No, or at least, if these are indeed the proper elements of
+imagination, there must be something else added, to wit, the sentiment
+of the beautiful in all its degrees. By this means is a great
+imagination preserved and kindled. Did the careful reading of Titus
+Livius enable the author of the <i>Horaces</i> to vividly represent to
+himself some of the scenes described, to seize their principal traits
+and combine them happily? From the outset, sentiment, love of the
+beautiful, especially of the morally beautiful, were requisite; there
+was required that great heart whence sprang the word of the ancient
+Horace.</p>
+
+<p>Let us be well understood. We do not say that sentiment is imagination,
+we say that it is the source whence imagination derives its inspirations
+and becomes productive. If men are so different in regard to
+imagination, it is because some are cold in presence of objects, cold in
+the representations which they preserve of them, cold also in the
+combinations which they form of them, whilst others, endowed with a
+particular sensibility, are vividly moved by the first impressions of
+objects, preserve strong recollections of them, and carry into the
+exercise of all their faculties this same force of emotion. Take away
+sentiment and all else is inan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">{136}</a></span>imate; let it manifest itself, and every
+thing receives warmth, color, and life.</p>
+
+<p>It is then impossible to limit imagination, as the word seems to demand,
+to images properly so called, and to ideas that are related to physical
+objects. To remember sounds, to choose between them, to combine them in
+order to draw from them new effects,&mdash;does not this belong to
+imagination, although sound is not an image? The true musician does not
+possess less imagination than the painter. Imagination is conceded to
+the poet when he retraces the images of nature; will this same faculty
+be refused him when he retraces sentiments? But, besides images and
+sentiments, does not the poet employ the high thoughts of justice,
+liberty, virtue, in a word, moral ideas? Will it be said that in moral
+paintings, in pictures of the intimate life of the soul, either graceful
+or energetic, there is no imagination?</p>
+
+<p>You see what is the extent of imagination: it has no limits, it is
+applied to all things. Its distinctive character is that of deeply
+moving the soul in the presence of a beautiful object, or by its
+remembrance alone, or even by the idea alone of an imaginary object. It
+is recognized by the sign that it produces, by the aid of its
+representations, the same impression as, and even an impression more
+vivid than, nature by the aid of real objects. If beauty, absent and
+dreamed of, does not affect you as much as, and more than, present
+beauty, you may have a thousand other gifts,&mdash;that of imagination has
+been refused you.</p>
+
+<p>In the eyes of imagination, the real world languishes in comparison with
+its own fictions. One may feel that imagination is his master by the
+<i>ennui</i> that real and present things give him. The phantoms of imagination
+have a vagueness, an indefiniteness of form, which moves a thousand
+times more than the clearness and distinctness of actual perceptions.
+And then, unless we are wholly mad,&mdash;and passion does not always render
+this service,&mdash;it is very difficult to see reality otherwise than as it
+is not, that is to say, very imperfectly. On the other hand, one makes
+of an image what he wishes, unconsciously metamorphoses it, embel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">{137}</a></span>lishes
+it to his own liking. There is at the bottom of the human soul an
+infinite power of feeling and loving to which the entire world does not
+answer, still less a single one of its creatures, however charming. All
+mortal beauty, viewed near by, does not suffice for this insatiable
+power which it excites and cannot satisfy. But from afar, its effects
+disappear or are diminished, shades are mingled and confounded in the
+clear-obscure of memory and dream, and the objects please more because
+they are less determinate. The peculiarity of men of imagination is,
+that they represent men and things otherwise than as they are, and that
+they have a passion for such fantastic images. Those that are called
+positive men, are men without imagination, who perceive only what they
+see, and deal with reality as it is instead of transforming it. They
+have, in general, more reason than sentiment; they may be seriously,
+profoundly honest; they will never be either poets or artists. What
+makes the poet or artist is, with a foundation of good sense and
+reason&mdash;without which all the rest is useless&mdash;a sensitive, even a
+passionate heart; above all, a vivid, a powerful imagination.</p>
+
+<p>If sentiment acts upon imagination, we see that imagination returns with
+usury to sentiment what it gives.</p>
+
+<p>This pure and ardent passion, this worship of beauty that makes the
+great artist, can be found only in a man of imagination. In fact, the
+sentiment of the beautiful may be awakened in each one of us before any
+beautiful object; but, when this object has disappeared, if its image
+does not subsist vivaciously retraced, the sentiment which it for a
+moment excited is little by little effaced; it may be revived at the
+sight of another object, but only to be extinguished again,&mdash;always
+dying to be born again at hazard; not being nourished, increased,
+exalted by the vivacious and continuous reproduction of its object in
+the imagination, it wants that inspiring power, without which there is
+no artist, no poet.</p>
+
+<p>A word more on another faculty, which is not a simple faculty, but a
+happy combination of those which have just been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">{138}</a></span> mentioned,&mdash;taste, so
+ill treated, so arbitrarily limited in all theories.</p>
+
+<p>If, after having heard a beautiful poetical or musical work, admired a
+statue or a picture, you are able to recall what your senses have
+perceived, to see again the absent picture, to hear again the sounds
+that no longer exist; in a word, if you have imagination, you possess
+one of the conditions without which there is no true taste. In fact, in
+order to relish the works of imagination, is it not necessary to have
+taste? Do we not need, in order to feel an author, not to equal him,
+without doubt, but to resemble him in some degree? Will not a man of
+sensible, but dry and austere mind, like Le Batteux or Condillac, be
+insensible to the happy darings of genius, and will he not carry into
+criticism a narrow severity, a reason very little reasonable&mdash;since he
+does not comprehend all the parts of human nature,&mdash;an intolerance that
+mutilates and blemishes art while thinking to purify it?</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, imagination does not suffice for the appreciation of
+beauty. Moreover, that vivacity of imagination so precious to taste,
+when it is somewhat restrained, produces, when it rules, only a very
+imperfect taste, which, not having reason for a basis, carelessly
+judges, runs the risk of misunderstanding the greatest beauty,&mdash;beauty
+that is regulated. Unity in composition, harmony of all the parts, just
+proportion of details, skilful combination of effects, discrimination,
+sobriety, measure, are so many merits it will little feel, and will not
+put in their place. Imagination has doubtless much to do with works of
+art; but, in fine, it is not every thing. Is it only imagination that
+makes the <i>Polyeucte</i> and the <i>Misanthrope</i>, two incomparable marvels?
+Is there not, also, in the profound simplicity of plan, in the measured
+development of action, in the sustained truth of characters, a superior
+reason, different from imagination which furnishes the superior colors,
+and from sensibility that gives the passion?</p>
+
+<p>Besides imagination and reason, the man of taste ought to possess an
+enlightened but ardent love of beauty; he must take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">{139}</a></span> delight in meeting
+it, must search for it, must summon it. To comprehend and demonstrate
+that a thing is not beautiful, is an ordinary pleasure, an ungrateful
+task; but to discern a beautiful thing, to be penetrated with its
+beauty, to make it evident, and make others participate in our
+sentiment, is an exquisite joy, a generous task. Admiration is, for him
+who feels it, at once a happiness and an honor. It is a happiness to
+feel deeply what is beautiful; it is an honor to know how to recognize
+it. Admiration is the sign of an elevated reason served by a noble
+heart. It is above a small criticism, that is skeptical and powerless;
+but it is the soul of a large criticism, a criticism that is productive:
+it is, thus to speak, the divine part of taste.</p>
+
+<p>After having spoken of taste which appreciates beauty, shall we say
+nothing of genius which makes it live again? Genius is nothing else than
+taste in action, that is to say, the three powers of taste carried to
+their culmination, and armed with a new and mysterious power, the power
+of execution. But we are already entering upon the domain of art. Let us
+wait, we shall soon find art again and the genius that accompanies it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">{140}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VII" id="LECTURE_VII"></a>LECTURE VII.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful:
+the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.&mdash;Nor to
+convenience.&mdash;Nor to proportion.&mdash;Essential characters of the
+beautiful.&mdash;Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the
+sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral
+beauty.&mdash;Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.&mdash;God, the
+first principle of the beautiful.&mdash;Theory of Plato.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We have made known the beautiful in ourselves, in the faculties that
+perceive it and appreciate it, in reason, sentiment, imagination, taste;
+we come, according to the order determined by the method, to other
+questions: What is the beautiful in objects? What is the beautiful taken
+in itself? What are its characters and different species? What, in fine,
+is its first and last principle? All these questions must be treated,
+and, if possible, solved. Philosophy has its point of departure in
+psychology; but, in order to attain also its legitimate termination, it
+must set out from man, and reach things themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The history of philosophy offers many theories on the nature of the
+beautiful: we do not wish to enumerate nor discuss them all; we will
+designate the most important.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is one very gross, which defines the beautiful as that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">{141}</a></span> which
+pleases the senses, that which procures an agreeable impression. We will
+not stop at this opinion. We have sufficiently refuted it in showing
+that it is impossible to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable.</p>
+
+<p>A sensualism a little more wise puts the useful in the place of the
+agreeable, that is to say, changes the form of the same principle.
+Neither is the beautiful the object which procures for us in the present
+moment an agreeable but fugitive sensation, it is the object which can
+often procure for us this same sensation or others similar. No great
+effort of observation or reasoning is necessary to convince us that
+utility has nothing to do with beauty. What is useful is not always
+beautiful. What is beautiful is not always useful, and what is at once
+useful and beautiful is beautiful for some other reason than its
+utility. Observe a lever or a pulley: surely nothing is more useful.
+Nevertheless, you are not tempted to say that this is beautiful. Have
+you discovered an antique vase admirably worked? You exclaim that this
+vase is beautiful, without thinking to seek of what use it may be to
+you. Finally, symmetry and order are beautiful things, and at the same
+time, are useful things, because they economize space, because objects
+symmetrically disposed are easier to find when one wants them; but that
+is not what makes for us the beauty of symmetry, for we immediately
+seize this kind of beauty, and it is often late enough before we
+recognize the utility that is found in it. It even sometimes happens,
+that after having admired the beauty of an object, we are not able to
+divine its use, although it may have one. The useful is, then, entirely
+different from the beautiful, far from being its foundation.</p>
+
+<p>A celebrated and very ancient<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> theory makes the beautiful consist in
+the perfect suitableness of means to their end. Here the beautiful is no
+longer the useful, it is the suitable; these two ideas must be
+distinguished. A machine produces excellent effects, economy of time,
+work, etc.; it is therefore useful. If,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">{142}</a></span> moreover, examining its
+construction, I find that each piece is in its place, and that all are
+skilfully disposed for the result which they should produce; even
+without regarding the utility of this result, as the means are well
+adapted to their end, I judge that there is suitableness in it. We are
+already approaching the idea of the beautiful; for we are no longer
+considering what is useful, but what is proper. Now, we have not yet
+attained the true character of beauty; there are, in fact, objects very
+well adapted to their end, which we do not call beautiful. A bench
+without ornament and without elegance, provided it be solid, provided
+all the parts are firmly connected, provided one may sit down on it with
+safety, provided it may be for this purpose suitable, agreeable even,
+may give an example of the most perfect adaptation of means to an end;
+it will not, therefore, be said that this bench is beautiful. There is
+here always this difference between suitableness and utility, that an
+object to be beautiful has no need of being useful, but that it is not
+beautiful if it does not possess suitableness, if there is in it a
+disagreement between the end and the means.</p>
+
+<p>Some have thought to find the beautiful in proportion, and this is, in
+fact, one of the conditions of beauty, but it is not the only one. It is
+very certain, that an object ill-proportioned cannot be beautiful. There
+is in all beautiful objects, however far they may be from geometric
+form, a sort of living geometry. But, I ask, is it proportion that is
+dominant in this slender tree, with flexible and graceful branches, with
+rich and shady foliage? What makes the terrible beauty of a storm, what
+makes that of a great picture, of an isolated verse, or a sublime ode?
+It is not, I know, wanting in law and rule, neither is it law and rule:
+often, even what at first strikes us is an apparent irregularity. It is
+absurd to pretend that what makes us admire all these things and many
+more, is the same quality that makes us admire a geometric figure, that
+is to say, the exact correspondence of parts.</p>
+
+<p>What we say of proportion may be said of order, which is something less
+mathematical than proportion, but scarcely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">{143}</a></span> explains better what is
+free, varied, and negligent in certain beauties.</p>
+
+<p>All these theories which refer beauty to order, harmony, and proportion,
+are at foundation only one and the same theory which in the beautiful
+sees unity before all. And surely unity is beautiful; it is an important
+part of beauty, but it is not the whole of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>The most probable theory of the beautiful is that which composes it of
+two contrary and equally necessary elements, unity and variety. Behold a
+beautiful flower. Without doubt, unity, order, proportion, symmetry
+even, are in it; for, without these qualities, reason would be absent
+from it, and all things are made with a marvellous reason. But, at the
+same time, what a diversity! How many shades in the color, what richness
+in the least details! Even in mathematics, what is beautiful is not an
+abstract principle, it is a principle carrying with itself a long chain
+of consequences. There is no beauty without life, and life is movement,
+is diversity.</p>
+
+<p>Unity and variety are applied to all orders of beauty. Let us rapidly
+run over these different orders.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, there are beautiful objects, to speak properly, and
+sublime objects. A beautiful object, we have seen, is something
+completed, circumscribed, limited, which all our faculties easily
+embrace, because the different parts are on a somewhat narrow scale. A
+sublime object is that which, by forms not in themselves
+disproportionate, but less definite and more difficult to seize, awakens
+in us the sentiment of the infinite.</p>
+
+<p>There are two very distinct species of beauty. But reality is
+inexhaustible, and in all the degrees of reality there is beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Among sensible objects, colors, sounds, figures, movements, are capable
+of producing the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. All these
+beauties are arranged under that species of beauty which, right or
+wrong, is called physical beauty.</p>
+
+<p>If from the world of sense we elevate ourselves to that of mind, truth,
+and science, we shall find there beauties more severe, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">{144}</a></span> not less
+real. The universal laws that govern bodies, those that govern
+intelligences, the great principles that contain and produce long
+deductions, the genius that creates, in the artist, poet, or
+philosopher,&mdash;all these are beautiful, as well as nature herself: this
+is what is called intellectual beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, if we consider the moral world and its laws, the idea of
+liberty, virtue, and devotedness, here the austere justice of an
+Aristides, there the heroism of a Leonidas, the prodigies of charity or
+patriotism, we shall certainly find a third order of beauty that still
+surpasses the other two, to wit, moral beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Neither let us forget to apply to all these beauties the distinction
+between the beautiful and the sublime. There are, then, the beautiful
+and the sublime at once in nature, in ideas, in sentiments, in actions.
+What an almost infinite variety in beauty!</p>
+
+<p>After having enumerated all these differences, could we not reduce them?
+They are incontestable; but, in this diversity is there not unity? Is
+there not a single beauty of which all particular beauties are only
+reflections, shades, degrees, or degradations?</p>
+
+<p>Plotinus, in his treatise <i>On the Beautiful</i>,<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> proposed to himself
+this question. He asks&mdash;What is the beautiful in itself? I see clearly
+that such or such a form is beautiful, that such or such an action is
+also beautiful; but why and how are these two objects, so dissimilar,
+beautiful? What is the common quality which, being found in these two
+objects, ranges them under the general idea of the beautiful?</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary to answer this question, or the theory of beauty is a
+maze without issue; one applies the same name to the most diverse
+things, without understanding the real unity that authorizes this unity
+of name.</p>
+
+<p>Either the diversities which we have designated in beauty are such that
+it is impossible to discover their relation, or these diver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">{145}</a></span>sities are
+especially apparent, and have their harmony, their concealed unity.</p>
+
+<p>Is it pretended that this unity is a chimera? Then physical beauty,
+moral beauty, and intellectual beauty, are strangers to each other.
+What, then, will the artist do? He is surrounded by different beauties,
+and he must make a work; for such is the recognized law of art. But if
+this unity that is imposed upon him is a factitious unity, if there are
+in nature only essentially dissimilar beauties, art deceives and lies to
+us. Let it be explained, then, how falsehood is the law of art. That
+cannot be; the unity that art expresses, it must have somewhere caught a
+glimpse of, in order to transport it into its works.</p>
+
+<p>We neither retract the distinction between the beautiful and the
+sublime, nor the other distinctions just now indicated; but it is
+necessary to re-unite after having distinguished them. These
+distinctions and these re-unions are not contradictory: the great law of
+beauty, like that of truth, is unity as well as variety. All is one, and
+all is diverse. We have divided beauty into three great
+classes&mdash;physical beauty, intellectual beauty, and moral beauty. We must
+now seek the unity of these three sorts of beauty. Now, we think that
+they resolve themselves into one and the same beauty, moral beauty,
+meaning by that, with moral beauty properly so called, all spiritual
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Let us put this opinion to the proof of facts.</p>
+
+<p>Place yourself before that statue of Apollo which is called Apollo
+Belvidere, and observe attentively what strikes you in that
+master-piece. Winkelmann, who was not a metaphysician, but a learned
+antiquarian, a man of taste without system, made a celebrated analysis
+of the Apollo.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> It is curious to study it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">{146}</a></span> What Winkelmann extols
+before all, is the character of divinity stamped upon the immortal youth
+that invests that beautiful body, upon the height, a little above that
+of man, upon the ma<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">{147}</a></span>jestic altitude, upon the imperious movement, upon
+the <i>ensemble</i>, and all the details of the person. The forehead is
+indeed that of a god,&mdash;an unalterable placidity dwells upon it. Lower
+down, humanity reappears somewhat; and that is very necessary, in order
+to interest humanity in the works of art. In that satisfied look, in the
+distension of the nostrils, in the elevation of the under lip, are at
+once felt anger mingled with disdain, pride of victory, and the little
+fatigue which it has cost. Weigh well each word of Winkelmann: you will
+find there a moral impression. The tone of the learned antiquary is
+elevated, little by little, to enthusiasm, and his analysis becomes a
+hymn to spiritual beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of a statue, observe a real and living man. Regard that man who,
+solicited by the strongest motives to sacrifice duty to fortune,
+triumphs over interest, after an heroic struggle, and sacrifices fortune
+to virtue. Regard him at the moment when he is about to take this
+magnanimous resolution; his face will appear to you beautiful, because
+it expresses the beauty of his soul. Perhaps, under all other
+circumstances, the face of the man is common, even trivial; here,
+illuminated by the soul which it manifests, it is ennobled, and takes an
+imposing character of beauty. So, the natural face of Socrates<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a>
+contrasts strongly with the type of Grecian beauty; but look at him on
+his death-bed, at the moment of drinking the hemlock, convening with his
+disciples on the immortality of the soul, and his face will appear to
+you sublime.<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a></p>
+
+<p>At the highest point of moral grandeur, Socrates expires:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">{148}</a></span>&mdash;you have
+before your eyes no longer any thing but his dead body; the dead face
+preserves its beauty, as long as it preserves traces of the mind that
+animated it; but little by little the expression is extinguished or
+disappears; the face then becomes vulgar and ugly. The expression of
+death is hideous or sublime,&mdash;hideous at the aspect of the decomposition
+of the matter that no longer retains the spirit,&mdash;sublime when it
+awakens in us the idea of eternity.</p>
+
+<p>Consider the figure of man in repose: it is more beautiful than that of
+an animal, the figure of an animal is more beautiful than the form of
+any inanimate object. It is because the human figure, even in the
+absence of virtue and genius, always reflects an intelligent and moral
+nature, it is because the figure of an animal reflects sentiment at
+least, and something of soul, if not the soul entire. If from man and
+the animal we descend to purely physical nature, we shall still find
+beauty there, as long as we find there some shade of intelligence, I
+know not what, that awakens in us some thought, some sentiment. Do we
+arrive at some piece of matter that expresses nothing, that signifies
+nothing, neither is the idea of beauty applied to it. But every thing
+that exists is animated. Matter is shaped and penetrated by forces that
+are not material, and it obeys laws that attest an intelligence
+everywhere present. The most subtile chemical analysis does not reach a
+dead and inert nature, but a nature that is organized in its own way,
+that is neither deprived of forces nor laws. In the depths of the earth,
+as in the heights of the heavens, in a grain of sand as in a gigantic
+mountain, an immortal spirit shines through the thickest coverings. Let
+us contemplate nature with the eye of the soul as well as with the eye
+of the body:&mdash;everywhere a moral expression will strike us, and the
+forms of things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">{149}</a></span> will impress us as symbols of thought. We have said
+that with man, and with the animal even, the figure is beautiful on
+account of the expression. But, when you are on the summit of the Alps,
+or before the immense Ocean, when you behold the rising or setting of
+the sun, at the beginning or the close of the day, do not these imposing
+pictures produce on you a moral effect? Do all these grand spectacles
+appear only for the sake of appearing? Do we not regard them as
+manifestations of an admirable power, intelligence, and wisdom? And,
+thus to speak, is not the face of nature expressive like that of man?</p>
+
+<p>Form cannot be simply a form, it must be the form of something. Physical
+beauty is, then, the sign of an internal beauty, which is spiritual and
+moral beauty; and this is the foundation, the principle, the unity of
+the beautiful.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p>
+
+<p>All the beauties that we have just enumerated and reduced compose what
+is called the really beautiful. But, above real beauty, is a beauty of
+another order&mdash;ideal beauty. The ideal resides neither in an individual,
+nor in a collection of individuals. Nature or experience furnishes us
+the occasion of conceiving it, but it is essentially distinct. Let it
+once be conceived, and all natural figures, though never so beautiful,
+are only images of a superior beauty which they do not realize. Give me
+a beautiful action, and I will imagine one still more beautiful. The
+Apollo itself is open to criticism in more than one respect. The ideal
+continually recedes as we approach it. Its last termination is in the
+infinite, that is to say, in God; or, to speak more correctly, the true
+and absolute ideal is nothing else than God himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">{150}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>God, being the principle of all things, must for this reason be that of
+perfect beauty, and, consequently, of all natural beauties that express
+it more or less imperfectly; he is the principle of beauty, both as
+author of the physical world and as father of the intellectual and moral
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not necessary to be a slave of the senses and of appearances in
+order to stop at movements, at forms, at sounds, at colors, whose
+harmonious combinations produce the beauty of this visible world, and
+not to conceive behind this scene so magnificent and well regulated, the
+orderer, the geometer, the supreme artist?</p>
+
+<p>Physical beauty serves as an envelope to intellectual and moral beauty.</p>
+
+<p>What can be the principle of intellectual beauty, that splendor of the
+true, except the principle of all truth?</p>
+
+<p>Moral beauty comprises, as we shall subsequently see,<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> two distinct
+elements, equally but diversely beautiful, justice and charity, respect
+and love of men. He who expresses in his conduct justice and charity,
+accomplishes the most beautiful of all works; the good man is, in his
+way, the greatest of all artists. But what shall we say of him who is
+the very substance of justice and the exhaustless source of love? If our
+moral nature is beautiful, what must be the beauty of its author! His
+justice and goodness are everywhere, both in us and out of us. His
+justice is the moral order that no human law makes, that all human laws
+are forced to express, that is preserved and perpetuated in the world by
+its own force. Let us descend into ourselves, and consciousness will
+attest the divine justice in the peace and contentment that accompany
+virtue, in the troubles and tortures that are the invariable punishments
+of vice and crime. How many times, and with what eloquence, have men
+celebrated the indefatigable solicitude of Providence, its benefits
+everywhere manifest in the smallest as well as in the greatest phenomena
+of nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">{151}</a></span> which we forget so easily because they have become so
+familiar to us, but which, on reflection, call forth our mingled
+admiration and gratitude, and proclaim a good God, full of love for his
+creatures!</p>
+
+<p>Thus, God is the principle of the three orders of beauty that we have
+distinguished, physical beauty, intellectual beauty, moral beauty.</p>
+
+<p>In him also are reunited the two great forms of the beautiful
+distributed in each of these three orders, to wit, the beautiful and the
+sublime. God is, <i>par excellence</i>, the beautiful&mdash;for what object
+satisfies more all our faculties, our reason, our imagination, our
+heart! He offers to reason the highest idea, beyond which it has nothing
+more to seek; to imagination the most ravishing contemplation; to the
+heart a sovereign object of love. He is, then, perfectly beautiful; but
+is he not sublime also in other ways? If he extends the horizon of
+thought, it is to confound it in the abyss of his greatness. If the soul
+blooms at the spectacle of his goodness, has it not also reason to be
+affrighted at the idea of his justice, which is not less present to it?
+God is at once mild and terrible. At the same time that he is the life,
+the light, the movement, the ineffable grace of visible and finite
+nature, he is also called the Eternal, the Invisible, the Infinite, the
+Absolute Unity, and the Being of beings. Do not these awful attributes,
+as certain as the first, produce in the highest degree in the
+imagination and the soul that melancholy emotion excited by the sublime?
+Yes, God is for us the type and source of the two great forms of beauty,
+because he is to us at once an impenetrable enigma and still the
+clearest word that we are able to find for all enigmas. Limited beings
+as we are, we comprehend nothing in comparison with that which is
+without limits, and we are able to explain nothing without that same
+thing which is without limits. By the being that we possess, we have
+some idea of the infinite being of God; by the nothingness that is in
+us, we lose ourselves in the being of God; and thus always forced to
+recur to him in order to explain any thing, and always thrown back
+within our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">{152}</a></span>selves under the weight of his infinitude, we experience by
+turns, or rather at the same time, for this God who raises and casts us
+down, a sentiment of irresistible attraction and astonishment, not to
+say insurmountable terror, which he alone can cause and allay, because
+he alone is the unity of the sublime and the beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Thus absolute being, which is both absolute unity and infinite
+variety,&mdash;God, is necessarily the last reason, the ultimate foundation,
+the completed ideal of all beauty. This is the marvellous beauty that
+Diotimus had caught a glimpse of, and thus paints to Socrates in the
+<i>Banquet</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from decay as well
+as increase, which is not beautiful in such a part and ugly in such
+another, beautiful only, at such a time, in such a place, in such a
+relation, beautiful for some, ugly for others, beauty that has no
+sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing corporeal, which is not such
+a thought or such a particular science, which resides not in any being
+different from itself, as an animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any
+other thing, which is absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in
+which all other beauties participate, in such a way, nevertheless, that
+their birth or their destruction neither diminishes nor increases, nor
+in the least changes it!... In order to arrive at this perfect beauty,
+it is necessary to commence with the beauties of this lower world, and,
+the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate ourselves
+unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, through all the
+degrees of the scale, from a single beautiful body to two, from two to
+all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from
+beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until from thought to
+thought we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than
+the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing it as it is in itself.</p>
+
+<p>"O my dear Socrates," continued the stranger of Mantinea, "that which
+can give value to this life is the spectacle of the eternal beauty....
+What would be the destiny of a mortal to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">{153}</a></span> whom it should be granted to
+contemplate the beautiful without alloy, in its purity and simplicity,
+no longer clothed with the flesh and hues of humanity, and with all
+those vain charms that are condemned to perish, to whom it should be
+given to see face to face, under its sole form, the divine beauty!"<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">{154}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VIII" id="LECTURE_VIII"></a>LECTURE VIII<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">ON ART.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Genius:&mdash;its attribute is creative power.&mdash;Refutation of the
+opinion that art is the imitation of nature.&mdash;M. Emeric David,
+and M. Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy.&mdash;Refutation of the theory of
+illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite
+the passions of terror and pity.&mdash;Nor even directly the moral
+and religious sentiment.&mdash;The proper and direct object of art is
+to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this
+idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the
+affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation
+of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.&mdash;True mission of
+art.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in the works of
+nature, he is endowed with the power of reproducing it. At the sight of
+a natural beauty, whatever it may be, physical or moral, his first need
+is to feel and admire. He is penetrated, ravished, as it were
+overwhelmed with the sentiment of beauty. But when the sentiment is
+energetic, he is not a long time sterile. We wish to see again, we wish
+to feel again what caused us so vivid a pleasure, and for that end we
+attempt to revive the beauty that charmed us, not as it was, but as our
+imagination represents it to us. Hence a work original and peculiar to
+man, a work of art. Art is the free reproduction of beauty, and the
+power in us capable of reproducing it is called genius.</p>
+
+<p>What faculties are used in this free reproduction of the beautiful? The
+same that serve to recognize and feel it. Taste carried to the highest
+degree, if you always join to it an additional element, is genius. What
+is this element?</p>
+
+<p>Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called
+taste,&mdash;imagination, sentiment, reason.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">{155}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, but they are
+not sufficient for it. What essentially distinguishes genius from taste
+is the attribute of creative power. Taste feels, judges, discusses,
+analyzes, but does not invent. Genius is, before all, inventive and
+creative. The man of genius is not the master of the power that is in
+him; it is by the ardent, irresistible need of expressing what he feels,
+that he is a man of genius. He suffers by withholding the sentiments, or
+images, or thoughts, that agitate his breast. It has been said that
+there is no superior man without some grain of folly; but this folly,
+like that of the cross, is the divine part of reason. This mysterious
+power Socrates called his demon. Voltaire called it the devil in the
+body; he demanded it even in a comedian in order to be a comedian of
+genius. Give to it what name you please, it is certain that there is a
+I-know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it until it has
+delivered itself of what consumes it; until, by expressing them, it has
+solaced its pains and its joys, its emotions, its ideas; until its
+reveries have become living works. Thus two things characterize genius;
+at first, the vivacity of the need it has of producing, then the power
+of producing; for the need without the power is only a malady that
+resembles genius, but is not it. Genius is above all, is essentially,
+the power of doing, of inventing, of creating. Taste is contented with
+observing, with admiring. False genius, ardent and impotent imagination,
+consumes itself in sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least nothing
+great. Genius alone has the power to convert conceptions into creations.</p>
+
+<p>If genius creates it does not imitate.</p>
+
+<p>But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since it does not
+imitate it. Nature is the work of God; man is then the rival of God.</p>
+
+<p>The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival of God; but it is
+the interpreter of him. Nature expresses him in its way, human genius
+expresses him in its own way.</p>
+
+<p>Let us stop a moment at that question so much discussed,&mdash;whether art is
+any thing else than the imitation of nature.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">{156}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation; for absolute creation
+belongs only to God. Where can genius find the elements upon which it
+works, except in nature, of which it forms a part? But does it limit
+itself to the reproduction of them as nature furnishes them to it,
+without adding any thing to them which belongs to itself? Is it only a
+copier of reality? Its sole merit, then, is that of the fidelity of the
+copy. And what labor is more sterile than that of copying works
+essentially inimitable on account of the life with which they are
+endowed, in order to obtain an indifferent image of them? If art is a
+servile pupil, it is condemned never to be any thing but an impotent
+pupil.</p>
+
+<p>The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature; but every thing in
+nature is not equally admirable. As we have just said, it has something
+by which it infinitely surpasses art&mdash;its life. Besides that, art can,
+in its turn, surpass nature, on the condition of not wishing to imitate
+it too closely. Every natural object, however beautiful, is defective on
+some side. Every thing that is real is imperfect. Here, the horrible and
+the hideous are united to the sublime; there, elegance and grace are
+separated from grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered
+and diverse. To reunite them arbitrarily, to borrow from such a face a
+mouth, eyes from such another, without any rule that governs this choice
+and directs these borrowings, is to compose monsters; to admit a rule,
+is already to admit an ideal different from all individuals. It is this
+ideal that the true artist forms to himself in studying nature. Without
+nature, he never would have conceived this ideal; but with this ideal,
+he judges nature herself, rectifies her, and dares undertake to measure
+himself with her.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contemplation.
+Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly purified by reflection
+and vivified by sentiment, it warms genius and inspires it with the
+irresistible need of seeing it realized and living. For this end, genius
+takes in nature all the materials that can serve it, and applying to
+them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo impressed his chisel upon the
+docile marble, makes of them works<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">{157}</a></span> that have no model in nature, that
+imitate nothing else than the ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in
+some sort a second creation inferior to the first in individuality and
+life, but much superior to it, we do not fear to say, on account of the
+intellectual and moral beauty with which it is impressed.</p>
+
+<p>Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This foundation is
+somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art disengages it, and gives to
+it forms more transparent. On this account, art, when it knows well its
+power and its resources, institutes with nature a contest in which it
+may have the advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Let us establish well the end of art: it is precisely where its power
+lies. The end of art is the expression of moral beauty, by the aid of
+physical beauty. The latter is only a symbol of the former. In nature,
+this symbol is often obscure: art in bringing it to light attains
+effects that nature does not always produce. Nature may please more,
+for, once more, it possesses in an incomparable degree what makes the
+great charm of imagination and sight&mdash;life; art touches more, because in
+expressing, above all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly
+to the source of profound emotions. Art can be more pathetic than
+nature, and the pathetic is the sign and measure of great beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Two extremes are equally dangerous&mdash;a lifeless ideal, or the absence of
+the ideal. Either we copy the model, and are wanting in true beauty, or
+we work <i>de t&ecirc;te</i>, and fall into an ideality without character. Genius
+is a ready and sure perception of the right proportion in which the
+ideal and the natural, form and thought, ought to be united. This union
+is the perfection of art: <i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i> are produced by observing
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in teaching art. It
+is asked whether pupils should begin with the study of the ideal or the
+real. I do not hesitate to answer,&mdash;by both. Nature herself never offers
+the general without the individual, nor the individual without the
+general. Every figure is composed of individual traits which distinguish
+it from all others, and make its own looks, and, at the same time, it
+has general traits which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">{158}</a></span> constitute what is called the human figure.
+These general traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is
+the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of
+design to trace. It would also be good, I believe, in order to preserve
+him from the dry and abstract, to exercise him early in copying some
+natural object, especially a living figure. This would be putting pupils
+to the true school of nature. They would thus become accustomed never to
+sacrifice either of the two essential elements of the beautiful, either
+of the two imperative conditions of art.</p>
+
+<p>But, in uniting these two elements, these two conditions, it is
+necessary to distinguish them, and to know how to put them in their
+place. There is no true ideal without determinate form, there is no
+unity without variety, no genus without individuals, but, in fine, the
+foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is before all,
+the realization of the idea, and not the imitation of such or such a
+particular form.</p>
+
+<p>At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France offered a
+prize for the best answer to the following question: <i>What were the
+causes of the perfection of the antique sculpture, and what would be the
+best means of attaining it?</i> The successful competitor, M. Emeric
+David,<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> maintained the opinion then dominant, that the assiduous
+study of natural beauty had alone conducted the antique art to
+perfection, and that thus the imitation of nature was the only route to
+reach the same perfection. A man whom I do not fear to compare with
+Winkelmann, the future author of the <i>Olympic Jupiter</i>,<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> M.
+Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy, in some ingenious and profound disquisitions,<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a>
+combated the doctrine of the laureate, and defended the cause of ideal
+beauty. It is impossible to demonstrate more decidedly, by the entire
+history of Greek sculpture, and by authentic texts from the greatest
+cri<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">{159}</a></span>tiques of antiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks was
+not the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, or by
+several, the most beautiful model being always very imperfect, and
+several models not being able to compose a single beauty. The true
+process of the Greek art was the representation of an ideal beauty which
+nature scarcely possessed more in Greece than among us, which it could
+not then offer to the artist. We regret that the honorable laureate,
+since become a member of the Institute, pretended that this expression
+of ideal beauty, if it had been known by the Greeks, would have meant
+<i>visible beauty</i>, because ideal comes from <span title="[Greek: eidos]">&#949;&#7990;&#948;&#959;&#962;</span>, which
+signifies only, according to M. Emeric David, a form seen by the eye.
+Plato would have been much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of
+the word <span title="[Greek: eidos]">&#949;&#7990;&#948;&#959;&#962;</span>. M. Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy confounds his unequal
+adversary by two admirable texts, one from the <i>Tim&aelig;us</i>, where Plato
+marks with precision in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary
+artist, the other at the commencement of the <i>Orator</i>, where Cicero
+explains the manner in which great artists work, in referring to the
+manner of Phidias, that is to say, the most perfect master of the most
+perfect epoch of art.</p>
+
+<p>"The artist,<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> who, with eye fixed upon the immutable being, and
+using such a model, reproduces its idea and its excellence, cannot fail
+to produce a whole whose beauty is complete, whilst he who fixes his eye
+upon what is transitory, with this perishable model will make nothing
+beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Phidias,<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> that great artist, when he made the form of Jupiter or
+Minerva, did not contemplate a model a resemblance of which he would
+express; but in the depth of his soul resided a perfect type of beauty,
+upon which he fixed his look, which guided his hand and his art."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">{160}</a></span></p><p>Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which Raphael describes
+in the famous letter to Castiglione, which he declares that he followed
+himself for the Galatea?<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> "As," he says, "I am destitute of
+beautiful models, I use a certain ideal which I form for myself."</p>
+
+<p>There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, to imitation: it
+is that which makes illusion the end of art. If this theory be true, the
+ideal beauty of painting is a <i>tromp-l'&oelig;il</i>,<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> and its
+master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis that the birds came and pecked at.
+The height of art in a theatrical piece would be to persuade you that
+you are in the presence of reality. What is true in this opinion is,
+that a work of art is beautiful only on the condition of being
+life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic art is not to put on
+the stage pale phantoms of the past, but personages borrowed from
+imagination or history, as you like, but animated, endowed with passion,
+speaking and acting like men and not like shades. It is human nature
+that is to be represented to itself under a magic light that does not
+disfigure it, but ennobles it. This magic is the very genius of art. It
+lifts us above the miseries that besiege us, and transports us to
+regions where we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose sight
+of ourselves, but where we find ourselves transformed to our advantage,
+where all the imperfections of reality have given place to a certain
+perfection, where the language that we speak is more equal and elevated,
+where persons are more beautiful, where the ugly is not admitted, and
+all this while duly respecting history, especially without ever going
+beyond the imperative conditions of human nature. Has art forgotten
+human nature? it has passed beyond its end, it has not attained it; it
+has brought forth nothing but chimeras without interest for our soul.
+Has it been too human, too real, too nude? it has fallen short of its
+end; it has then attained it no better.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">{161}</a></span></p><p>Illusion is so little the end of art, that it may be complete and have
+no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, theatrical men have taken
+great pains in these latter times to secure historical accuracy of
+costume. This is all very well; but it is not the most important thing.
+Had you found, and lent to the actor who plays the part of Brutus, the
+very costume that of old the Roman hero wore, it would touch true
+connoisseurs very little. This is not all; when the illusion goes too
+far, the sentiment of art disappears in order to give place to a
+sentiment purely natural, sometimes insupportable. If I believed that
+Iphegenia were in fact on the point of being immolated by her father at
+a distance of twenty paces from me, I should leave the theatre trembling
+with horror. If the Ariadne that I see and hear, were the true Ariadne
+who is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that pathetic scene where
+the poor woman, who already feels herself less loved, asks who then robs
+her of the heart, once so tender, of Theseus, I would do as the young
+Englishman did, who cried out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the
+stage, "It is Ph&egrave;dre, it is Ph&egrave;dre!" as if he would warn and save
+Ariadne.</p>
+
+<p>But, it is said, is it not the aim of the poet to excite pity and
+terror? Yes; but at first in a certain measure; then he must mix with
+them some other sentiment that tempers them, or makes them serve another
+end. If the aim of dramatic art were only to excite in the highest
+degree pity and terror, art would be the powerless rival of nature. All
+the misfortunes represented on the stage are very feeble in comparison
+with those sad spectacles which we may see every day. The first hospital
+is fuller of pity and terror than all the theatres in the world. What
+should the poet do in the theory that we combat? He should transfer to
+the stage the greatest possible reality, and move us powerfully by
+shocking our senses with the sight of frightful pains. The great resort
+of the pathetic would then be the representation of death, especially
+that of the greatest torture. Quite on the contrary, there is an end of
+art when sensibility is too much excited. To take, again, an example
+that we have already employed, what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">{162}</a></span> constitutes the beauty of a
+tempest, of a shipwreck? What attracts us to those great scenes of
+nature? It is certainly not pity and terror,&mdash;these poignant and
+lacerating sentiments would much sooner keep us away. An emotion very
+different from these is necessary, which triumphs over us, in order to
+retain us by the shore; this emotion is the pure sentiment of the
+beautiful and the sublime, excited and kept alive by the grandeur of the
+spectacle, by the vast extent of the sea, the rolling of the foaming
+waves, and the imposing sound of the thunder. But do we think for a
+single instant that there are in the midst of the sea the unfortunate
+who are suffering, and are, perhaps, about to perish? From that moment
+the spectacle becomes to us insupportable. It is so in art. Whatever
+sentiment it proposes to excite in us, must always be tempered and
+governed by that of the beautiful. If it only produces pity or terror
+beyond a certain limit, especially physical pity or terror, it revolts,
+and no longer charms; it loses the effect that belongs to it in exchange
+for a foreign and vulgar effect.</p>
+
+<p>For this same reason, I cannot accept another theory, which, confounding
+the sentiment of the beautiful with the moral and religious sentiment,
+puts art in the service of religion and morals, and gives it for its end
+to make us better and elevate us to God. There is here an essential
+distinction to be made. If all beauty covers a moral beauty, if the
+ideal mounts unceasingly towards the infinite, art, which expresses
+ideal beauty, purifies the soul in elevating it towards the infinite,
+that is to say, towards God. Art, then, produces the perfection of the
+soul, but it produces it indirectly. The philosopher who investigates
+effects and causes, knows what is the ultimate principle of the
+beautiful and its certain, although remote, effects. But the artist is
+before all things an artist; what animates him is the sentiment of the
+beautiful; what he wishes to make pass into the soul of the spectator is
+the same sentiment that fills his own. He confides himself to the virtue
+of beauty; he fortifies it with all the power, all the charm of the
+ideal; it must then do its own work; the artist has done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">{163}</a></span> his when he
+has procured for some noble souls the exquisite sentiment of beauty.
+This pure and disinterested sentiment is a noble ally of the moral and
+religious sentiments; it awakens, preserves, and develops them, but it
+is a distinct and special sentiment. So art, which is founded on this
+sentiment, which is inspired by it, which expands it, is in its turn an
+independent power. It is naturally associated with all that ennobles the
+soul, with morals and religion; but it springs only from itself.</p>
+
+<p>Let us confine our thought strictly within its proper limits. In
+vindicating the independence, the proper dignity, and the particular end
+of art, we do not intend to separate it from religion, from morals, from
+country. Art draws its inspirations from these profound sources, as well
+as from the ever open source of nature. But it is not less true that
+art, the state, religion, are powers which have each their world apart
+and their own effects; they mutually help each other; they should not
+serve each other. As soon as one of them wanders from its end, it errs,
+and is degraded. Does art blindly give itself up to the orders of
+religion and the state? In losing its liberty, it loses its charm and
+its empire.</p>
+
+<p>Ancient Greece and modern Italy are continually cited as triumphant
+examples of what the alliance of art, religion, and the state can do.
+Nothing is more true, if the question is concerning their union; nothing
+is more false, if the question is concerning the servitude of art. Art
+in Greece was so little the slave of religion, that it little by little
+modified the symbols, and, to a certain extent, the spirit itself, by
+its free representations. There is a long distance between the
+divinities that Greece received from Egypt and those of which it has
+left immortal exemplars. Are those primitive artists and poets, as Homer
+and Dedalus are called, strangers to this change? And in the most
+beautiful epoch of art, did not &AElig;schylus and Phidias carry a great
+liberty into the religious scenes which they exposed to the gaze of the
+people, in the theatre, or in front of the temples? In Italy as in
+Greece, as everywhere, art is at first in the hands of priesthoods and
+governments; but, as it increases its importance and is de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">{164}</a></span>veloped, it
+more and more conquers its liberty. Men speak of the faith that animated
+the artists and vivified their works; that is true of the time of Giotto
+and Ciambu&euml;; but after Angelico de Fiesole, at the end of the fifteenth
+century, in Italy, I perceive especially the faith of art in itself and
+the worship of beauty. Raphael was about to become a cardinal;<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> yes,
+but always painting Galatea, and without quitting Fornarine. Once more,
+let us exaggerate nothing; let us distinguish, not separate; let us
+unite art, religion, and country, but let not their union injure the
+liberty of each. Let us be thoroughly penetrated with the thought, that
+art is also to itself a kind of religion. God manifests himself to us by
+the idea of the true, by the idea of the good, by the idea of the
+beautiful. Each one of them leads to God, because it comes from him.
+True beauty is ideal beauty, and ideal beauty is a reflection of the
+infinite. So, independently of all official alliance with religion and
+morals, art is by itself essentially religious and moral; for, far from
+wanting its own law, its own genius, it everywhere expresses in its
+works eternal beauty. Bound on all sides to matter by inflexible laws,
+working upon inanimate stone, upon uncertain and fugitive sounds, upon
+words of limited and finite signification, art communicates to them,
+with the precise form that is addressed to such or such a sense, a
+mysterious character that is addressed to the imagination and the soul,
+takes them away from reality, and bears them sweetly or violently into
+unknown regions. Every work of art, whatever may be its form, small or
+great, figured, sung, or uttered,&mdash;every work of art, truly beautiful or
+sublime, throws the soul into a gentle or severe reverie that elevates
+it towards the infinite. The infinite is the common limit after which
+the soul aspires upon the wings of imagination as well as reason, by the
+route of the sublime and the beautiful, as well as by that of the true
+and the good. The emotion that the beautiful produces turns the soul
+from this world; it is the beneficent emotion that art produces for
+humanity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">{165}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_IX" id="LECTURE_IX"></a>LECTURE IX.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE DIFFERENT ARTS.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Expression is the general law of art.&mdash;Division of
+arts.&mdash;Distinction between liberal arts and trades.&mdash;Eloquence
+itself, philosophy, and history do not make a part of the fine
+arts.&mdash;That the arts gain nothing by encroaching upon each
+other, and usurping each other's means and
+processes.&mdash;Classification of the arts:&mdash;its true principle is
+expression.&mdash;Comparison of arts with each other.&mdash;Poetry the
+first of arts.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>A <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of the last lecture would be a definition of art, of its end
+and law. Art is the free reproduction of the beautiful, not of a single
+natural beauty, but of ideal beauty, as the human imagination conceives
+it by the aid of data which nature furnishes it. The ideal beauty
+envelops the infinite:&mdash;the end of art is, then, to produce works that,
+like those of nature, or even in a still higher degree, may have the
+charm of the infinite. But how and by what illusion can we draw the
+infinite from the finite? This is the difficulty of art, and its glory
+also. What bears us towards the infinite in natural beauty? The ideal
+side of this beauty. The ideal is the mysterious ladder that enables the
+soul to ascend from the finite to the infinite. The artist, then, must
+devote himself to the representation of the ideal. Every thing has its
+ideal. The first care of the artist will be, then, whatever he does, to
+penetrate at first to the concealed ideal of his subject, for his
+subject has an ideal,&mdash;in order to render it, in the next place, more or
+less striking to the senses and the soul, according to the conditions
+which the very materials that he employs&mdash;the stone, the color, the
+sound, the language&mdash;impose on him.</p>
+
+<p>So, to express the ideal of the infinite in one way or another, is the
+law of art; and all the arts are such only by their relation to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">{166}</a></span> the
+sentiment of the beautiful and the infinite which they awaken in the
+soul, by the aid of that high quality of every work of art that is
+called expression.</p>
+
+<p>Expression is essentially ideal: what expression tries to make felt, is
+not what the eye can see and the hand touch, evidently it is something
+invisible and impalpable.</p>
+
+<p>The problem of art is to reach the soul through the body. Art offers to
+the senses forms, colors, sounds, words, so arranged that they excite in
+the soul, concealed behind the senses, the inexpressible emotion of
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Expression is addressed to the soul as form is addressed to the senses.
+Form is the obstacle of expression, and, at the same time, is its
+imperative, necessary, only means. By working upon form, by bending it
+to its service, by dint of care, patience, and genius, art succeeds in
+converting an obstacle into a means.</p>
+
+<p>By their object, all arts are equal; all are arts only because they
+express the invisible. It cannot be too often repeated, that expression
+is the supreme law of art. The thing to express is always the same,&mdash;it
+is the idea, the spirit, the soul, the invisible, the infinite. But, as
+the question is concerning the expression of this one and the same
+thing, by addressing ourselves to the senses which are diverse, the
+difference of the senses divides art into different arts.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen, that, of the five senses which have been given to
+man,<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> three&mdash;taste, smell, and touch&mdash;are incapable of producing in
+us the sentiment of beauty. Joined to the other two, they may contribute
+to the understanding of this sentiment; but alone and by themselves they
+cannot produce it. Taste judges of the agreeable, not of the beautiful.
+No sense is less allied to the soul and more in the service of the body;
+it flatters, it serves the grossest of all masters, the stomach. If
+smell sometimes seems to participate in the sentiment of the beautiful,
+it is because the odor is exhaled from an object that is already
+beautiful,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">{167}</a></span> that is beautiful for some other reason. Thus the rose is
+beautiful for its graceful form, for the varied splendor of its colors;
+its odor is agreeable, it is not beautiful. Finally, it is not touch
+alone that judges of the regularity of forms, but touch enlightened by
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>There remain two senses to which all the world concedes the privilege of
+exciting in us the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. They seem to
+be more particularly in the service of the soul. The sensations which
+they give have something purer, more intellectual. They are less
+indispensable for the material preservation of the individual. They
+contribute to the embellishment rather than to the sustaining of life.
+They procure us pleasures in which our personality seems less interested
+and more self-forgetful. To these two senses, then, art should be
+addressed, is addressed, in fact, in order to reach the soul. Hence the
+division of arts into two great classes,&mdash;arts addressed to hearing,
+arts addressed to sight; on the one hand, music and poetry; on the
+other, painting, with engraving, sculpture, architecture, gardening.</p>
+
+<p>It will, perhaps, seem strange that we rank among the arts neither
+eloquence, nor history, nor philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>The arts are called the fine arts, because their sole object is to
+produce the disinterested emotion of beauty, without regard to the
+utility either of the spectator or the artist. They are also called the
+liberal arts, because they are the arts of free men and not of slaves,
+which affranchise the soul, charm and ennoble existence; hence the sense
+and origin of those expressions of antiquity, <i>artes liberales</i>, <i>artes
+ingenu&aelig;</i>. There are arts without nobility, whose end is practical and
+material utility; they are called trades, such as that of the
+stove-maker and the mason. True art may be joined to them, may even
+shine in them, but only in the accessories and the details.</p>
+
+<p>Eloquence, history, philosophy, are certainly high employments of
+intelligence; they have their dignity, their eminence, which nothing
+surpasses, but rigorously speaking, they are not arts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">{168}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Eloquence does not propose to itself to produce in the soul of the
+auditors the disinterested sentiment of beauty. It may also produce this
+effect, but without having sought it. Its direct end, which it can
+subordinate to no other, is to convince, to persuade. Eloquence has a
+client which before all it must save or make triumph. It matters little,
+whether this client be a man, a people, or an idea. Fortunate is the
+orator if he elicits the expression: That is beautiful! for it is a
+noble homage rendered to his talent; unfortunate is he if he does not
+elicit this, for he has missed his end. The two great types of political
+and religious eloquence, Demosthenes in antiquity, Bossuet among the
+moderns, think only of the interest of the cause confided to their
+genius, the sacred cause of country and that of religion; whilst at
+bottom Phidias and Raphael work to make beautiful things. Let us hasten
+to say, what the names of Demosthenes and Bossuet command us to say,
+that true eloquence, very different from that of rhetoric, disdains
+certain means of success; it asks no more than to please, but without
+any sacrifice unworthy of it; every foreign ornament degrades it. Its
+proper character is simplicity, earnestness&mdash;I do not mean affected
+earnestness, a designed and artful gravity, the worst of all
+deceptions&mdash;I mean true earnestness, that springs from sincere and
+profound conviction. This is what Socrates understood by true
+eloquence.<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p>
+
+<p>As much must be said of history and philosophy. The philosopher speaks
+and writes. Can he, then, like the orator, find accents which make truth
+enter the soul, colors and forms that make it shine forth evident and
+manifest to the eyes of intelligence? It would be betraying his cause to
+neglect the means that can serve it; but the profoundest art is here
+only a means, the aim of philosophy is elsewhere; whence it follows that
+philosophy is not an art. Without doubt, Plato is a great artist; he is
+the peer of Sophocles and Phidias, as Pascal is sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">{169}</a></span> the rival of
+Demosthenes and Bossuet;<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> but both would have blushed if they had
+discovered at the bottom of their soul another design, another aim than
+the service of truth and virtue.</p>
+
+<p>History does not relate for the sake of relating; it does not paint for
+the sake of painting; it relates and paints the past that it may be the
+living lesson of the future. It proposes to instruct new generations by
+the experience of those who have gone before them, by exhibiting to them
+a faithful picture of great and important events, with their causes and
+their effects, with general designs and particular passions, with the
+faults, virtues, and crimes that are found mingled together in human
+things. It teaches the excellence of prudence, courage, and great
+thoughts profoundly meditated, constantly pursued, and executed with
+moderation and force. It shows the vanity of immoderate pretensions, the
+power of wisdom and virtue, the impotence of folly and crime.
+Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus undertake any thing else than
+procuring new emotions for an idle curiosity or a worn-out imagination;
+they doubtless desire to interest and attract, but more to instruct;
+they are the avowed masters of statesmen and the preceptors of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The sole object of art is the beautiful. Art abandons itself as soon as
+it shuns this. It is often constrained to make concessions to
+circumstances, to external conditions that are imposed upon it; but it
+must always retain a just liberty. Architecture and the art of gardening
+are the least free of arts; they are subjected to unavoidable obstacles;
+it belongs to the genius of the artist to govern these obstacles, and
+even to draw from them happy effects, as the poet turns the slavery of
+metre and rhyme into a source of unexpected beauties. Extreme liberty
+may carry art to a caprice which degrades it, as chains too heavy crush
+it. It is the death of architecture to subject it to conve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">{170}</a></span>nience, to
+<i>comfort</i>. Is the architect obliged to subordinate general effect and
+the proportions of the edifice to such or such a particular end that is
+prescribed to him? He takes refuge in details, in pediments, in friezes,
+in all the parts that have not utility for a special object, and in them
+he becomes a true artist. Sculpture and painting, especially music and
+poetry, are freer than architecture and the art of gardening. One can
+also shackle them, but they disengage themselves more easily.</p>
+
+<p>Similar by their common end, all the arts differ by the particular
+effects which they produce, and by the processes which they employ. They
+gain nothing by exchanging their means and confounding the limits that
+separate them. I bow before the authority of antiquity; but, perhaps,
+through habit and a remnant of prejudice, I have some difficulty in
+representing to myself with pleasure statues composed of several metals,
+especially painted statues.<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> Without pretending that sculpture has
+not to a certain point its color, that of perfectly pure matter, that
+especially which the hand of time impresses upon it, in spite of all the
+seductions of a contemporaneous<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> artist of great talent, I have
+little taste, I confess, for that artifice that is forced to give to
+marble the <i>morbidezza</i> of painting. Sculpture is an austere muse; it
+has its graces, but they are those of no other art. Flesh-color must
+remain a stranger to it: there would nothing more remain to communicate
+to it but the movement of poetry and the indefiniteness of music! And
+what will music gain by aiming at the picturesque, when its proper
+domain is the pathetic? Give to the most learned symphonist a storm to
+render. Nothing is easier to imitate than the whistling of the winds and
+the noise of thunder. But by what combinations of harmony will he
+exhibit to the eyes the glare of the lightning rending all of a sudden
+the veil of the night, and what is most fearful in the tempest, the
+movement of the waves that now ascend like a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">{171}</a></span> mountain, now descend and
+seem to precipitate themselves into bottomless abysses? If the auditor
+is not informed of the subject, he will never suspect it, and I defy him
+to distinguish a tempest from a battle. In spite of science and genius,
+sounds cannot paint forms. Music, when well guided, will guard itself
+from contending against the impossible; it will not undertake to express
+the tumult and strife of the waves and other similar phenomena; it will
+do more: with sounds it will fill the soul with the sentiments that
+succeed each other in us during the different scenes of the tempest.
+Haydn will thus become<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> the rival, even the vanquisher of the
+painter, because it has been given to music to move and agitate the soul
+more profoundly than painting.</p>
+
+<p>Since the <i>Laocoon</i> of Lessing, it is no longer permitted to repeat,
+without great reserve, the famous axiom,&mdash;<i>Ut pictura poesis</i>; or, at
+least, it is very certain that painting cannot do every thing that
+poetry can do. Everybody admires the picture of Rumor, drawn by Virgil;
+but let a painter try to realize this symbolic figure; let him represent
+to us a huge monster with a hundred eyes, a hundred mouths, and a
+hundred ears, whose feet touch the earth, whose head is lost in the
+clouds, and such a figure will become very ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>So the arts have a common end, and entirely different means. Hence the
+general rules common to all, and particular rules for each. I have
+neither time nor space to enter into details on this point. I limit
+myself to repeating, that the great law which governs all others, is
+expression. Every work of art that does not express an idea signifies
+nothing; in addressing itself to such or such a sense, it must penetrate
+to the mind, to the soul, and bear thither a thought, a sentiment
+capable of touching or elevating it. From this fundamental rule all the
+others are derived; for example, that which is continually and justly
+recommended,&mdash;composition. To this is particularly applied the precept
+of unity and variety. But, in saying this, we have said nothing so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">{172}</a></span> long
+as we have not determined the nature of the unity of which we would
+speak. True unity, is unity of expression, and variety is made only to
+spread over the entire work the idea or the single sentiment that it
+should express. It is useless to remark, that between composition thus
+defined, and what is often called composition, as the symmetry and
+arrangement of parts according to artificial rules, there is an abyss.
+True composition is nothing else than the most powerful means of
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>Expression not only furnishes the general rules of art, it also gives
+the principle that allows of their classification.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, every classification, supposes a principle that serves as a
+common measure.</p>
+
+<p>Such a principle has been sought in pleasure, and the first of arts has
+seemed that which gives the most vivid joys. But we have proved that the
+object of art is not pleasure:&mdash;the more or less of pleasure that an art
+procures cannot, then, be the true measure of its value.</p>
+
+<p>This measure is nothing else than expression. Expression being the
+supreme end, the art that most nearly approaches it is the first of all.</p>
+
+<p>All true arts are expressive, but they are diversely so. Take music; it
+is without contradiction the most penetrating, the profoundest, the most
+intimate art. There is physically and morally between a sound and the
+soul a marvellous relation. It seems as though the soul were an echo in
+which the sound takes a new power. Extraordinary things are recounted of
+the ancient music. And it must not be believed that the greatness of
+effect supposes here very complicated means. No, the less noise music
+makes, the more it touches. Give some notes to Pergolese, give him
+especially some pure and sweet voices, and he returns a celestial charm,
+bears you away into infinite spaces, plunges you into ineffable
+reveries. The peculiar power of music is to open to the imagination a
+limitless career, to lend itself with astonishing facility to all the
+moods of each one, to arouse or calm, with the sounds of the simplest
+melody, our accustomed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">{173}</a></span> sentiments, our favorite affections. In this
+respect music is an art without a rival:&mdash;however, it is not the first
+of arts.</p>
+
+<p>Music pays for the immense power that has been given it; it awakens more
+than any other art the sentiment of the infinite, because it is vague,
+obscure, indeterminate in its effects. It is just the opposite art to
+sculpture, which bears less towards the infinite, because every thing in
+it is fixed with the last degree of precision. Such is the force and at
+the same time the feebleness of music, that it expresses every thing and
+expresses nothing in particular. Sculpture, on the contrary, scarcely
+gives rise to any reverie, for it clearly represents such a thing and
+not such another. Music does not paint, it touches; it puts in motion
+imagination, not the imagination that reproduces images, but that which
+makes the heart beat, for it is absurd to limit imagination to the
+domain of images.<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> The heart, once touched, moves all the rest of
+our being; thus music, indirectly, and to a certain point, can recall
+images and ideas; but its direct and natural power is neither on the
+representative imagination nor intelligence, it is on the heart, and
+that is an advantage sufficiently beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>The domain of music is sentiment, but even there its power is more
+profound than extensive, and if it expresses certain sentiments with an
+incomparable force, it expresses but a very small number of them. By way
+of association, it can awaken them all, but directly it produces very
+few of them, and the simplest and the most elementary, too,&mdash;sadness and
+joy with their thousand shades. Ask music to express magnanimity,
+virtuous resolution, and other sentiments of this kind, and it will be
+just as incapable of doing it, as of painting a lake or a mountain. It
+goes about it as it can; it employs the slow, the rapid, the loud, the
+soft, etc., but imagination has to do the rest, and imagination does
+only what it pleases. The same measure reminds one of a mountain,
+another of the ocean; the warrior finds in it heroic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">{174}</a></span> inspirations, the
+recluse religious inspirations. Doubtless, words determine musical
+expression, but the merit then is in the word, not in the music; and
+sometimes the word stamps the music with a precision that destroys it,
+and deprives it of its proper effects&mdash;vagueness, obscurity, monotony,
+but also fulness and profundity, I was about to say infinitude. I do not
+in the least admit that famous definition of song:&mdash;a noted declamation.
+A simple declamation rightly accented is certainly preferable to
+stunning accompaniments; but to music must be left its character, and
+its defects and advantages must not be taken away from it. Especially it
+must not be turned aside from its object, and there must not be demanded
+from it what it could not give. It is not made to express complicated
+and factitious sentiment, nor terrestrial and vulgar sentiments. Its
+peculiar charm is to elevate the soul towards the infinite. It is
+therefore naturally allied to religion, especially to that religion of
+the infinite, which is at the same time the religion of the heart; it
+excels in transporting to the feet of eternal mercy the soul trembling
+on the wings of repentance, hope, and love. Happy are those, who, at
+Rome, in the Vatican,<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> during the solemnities of the Catholic
+worship,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">{175}</a></span> have heard the melodies of Leo, Durante, and Pergolese, on the
+old consecrated text! They have entered heaven for a moment, and their
+souls have been able to ascend thither without distinction of rank,
+country, even belief, by those invisible and mysterious steps, composed,
+thus to speak, of all the simple, natural, universal sentiments, that
+everywhere on earth draw from the bosom of the human creature a sigh
+towards another world!</p>
+
+<p>Between sculpture and music, those two opposite extremes, is painting,
+nearly as precise as the one, nearly as touching as the other. Like
+sculpture, it marks the visible forms of objects, but adds to them life;
+like music, it expresses the profoundest sentiments of the soul, and
+expresses them all. Tell me what sentiment does not come within the
+province of the painter? He has entire nature at his disposal, the
+physical world, and the moral world, a churchyard, a landscape, a
+sunset, the ocean, the great scenes of civil and religious life, all the
+beings of creation, above all, the figure of man, and its expression,
+that living mirror of what passes in the soul. More pathetic than
+sculpture, clearer than music, painting is elevated, in my opinion,
+above both, because it expresses beauty more under all its forms, and
+the human soul in all the richness and variety of its sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>But the art <i>par excellence</i>, that which surpasses all others, because
+it is incomparably the most expressive, is poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Speech is the instrument of poetry; poetry fashions it to its use, and
+idealizes it, in order to make it express ideal beauty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">{176}</a></span> Poetry gives to
+it the charm and power of measure; it makes of it something intermediary
+between the ordinary voice and music, something at once material and
+immaterial, finite, clear, and precise, like contours and forms the most
+definite, living and animated like color, pathetic and infinite like
+sound. A word in itself, especially a word chosen and transfigured by
+poetry, is the most energetic and universal symbol. Armed with this
+talisman, poetry reflects all the images of the sensible world, like
+sculpture and painting; it reflects sentiment like painting and music,
+with all its varieties, which music does not attain, and in their rapid
+succession that painting cannot follow, as precise and immobile as
+sculpture; and it not only expresses all that, it expresses what is
+inaccessible to every other art, I mean thought, entirely distinct from
+the senses and even from sentiment,&mdash;thought that has no forms,&mdash;thought
+that has no color, that lets no sound escape, that does not manifest
+itself in any way,&mdash;thought in its highest flight, in its most refined
+abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>Think of it. What a world of images, of sentiments, of thoughts at once
+distinct and confused, are excited within us by this one word&mdash;country!
+and by this other word, brief and immense,&mdash;God! What is more clear and
+altogether more profound and vast!</p>
+
+<p>Tell the architect, the sculptor, the painter, even the musician, to
+call forth also by a single stroke all the powers of nature and the
+soul! They cannot, and by that they acknowledge the superiority of
+speech and poetry.</p>
+
+<p>They proclaim it themselves, for they take poetry for their own measure;
+they esteem their own works, and demand that they should be esteemed, in
+proportion as they approach the poetic ideal. And the human race does as
+artists do: a beautiful picture, a noble melody, a living and expressive
+statue, gives rise to the exclamation&mdash;How poetical! This is not an
+arbitrary comparison; it is a natural judgment which makes poetry the
+type of the perfection of all the arts,&mdash;the art <i>par excellence</i>,
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">{177}</a></span> comprises all others, to which they aspire, which none can reach.</p>
+
+<p>When the other arts would imitate the works of poetry, they usually err,
+losing their own genius, without robbing poetry of its genius. But
+poetry constructs according to its own taste palaces and temples, like
+architecture; it makes them simple or magnificent; all orders, as well
+as all systems, obey it; the different ages of art are the same to it;
+it reproduces, if it pleases, the classic or the Gothic, the beautiful
+or the sublime, the measured or the infinite. Lessing has been able,
+with the exactest justice, to compare Homer to the most perfect
+sculptor; with such precision are the forms which that marvellous chisel
+gives to all beings determined! And what a painter, too, is Homer! and,
+of a different kind, Dante! Music alone has something more penetrating
+than poetry, but it is vague, limited, and fugitive. Besides its
+clearness, its variety, its durability, poetry has also the most
+pathetic accents. Call to mind the words that Priam utters at the feet
+of Achilles while asking him for the dead body of his son, more than one
+verse of Virgil, entire scenes of the <i>Cid</i> and the <i>Polyeucte</i>, the
+prayer of Esther kneeling before the Lord, the choruses of <i>Esther</i> and
+<i>Athalie</i>. In the celebrated song of Pergolese, <i>Stabat Mater Dolorosa</i>,
+we may ask which moves most, the music or the words. The <i>Dies ir&aelig;, Dies
+illa</i>, recited only, produces the most terrible effect. In those fearful
+words, every blow tells, so to speak; each word contains a distinct
+sentiment, an idea at once profound and determinate. The intellect
+advances at each step, and the heart rushes on in its turn. Human speech
+idealized by poetry has the depth and brilliancy of musical notes; it is
+luminous as well as pathetic; it speaks to the mind as well as to the
+heart; it is in that inimitable, unique, and embraces all extremes and
+all contraries in a harmony that redoubles their reciprocal effect, in
+which, by turns, appear and are developed, all images, all sentiments,
+all ideas, all the human faculties, all the inmost recesses of the soul,
+all the forms of things, all real and all intelligible worlds!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">{178}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_X" id="LECTURE_X"></a>LECTURE X.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but
+the different schools of art. Example:&mdash;French art in the
+seventeenth century. French poetry:&mdash;Corneille. Racine. Moli&egrave;re.
+La Fontaine. Boileau.&mdash;Painting:&mdash;Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain.
+Champagne.&mdash;Engraving.&mdash;Sculpture:&mdash;Sarrazin. The Anguiers.
+Girardon. Pujet.&mdash;Le N&ocirc;tre.&mdash;Architecture.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We believe that we have firmly established that all kinds of beauty,
+although most dissimilar in appearance, may, when subjected to a serious
+examination, be reduced to spiritual and moral beauty; that expression,
+therefore, is at once the true object and the first law of art; that all
+arts are such only so far as they express the idea concealed under the
+form, and are addressed to the soul through the senses; finally, that in
+expression the different arts find the true measure of their relative
+value, and the most expressive art must be placed in the first rank.</p>
+
+<p>If expression judges the different arts, does it not naturally follow,
+that by the same title it can also judge the different schools which, in
+each art, dispute with each other the empire of taste?</p>
+
+<p>There is not one of these schools that does not represent in its own way
+some side of the beautiful, and we are disposed to embrace all in an
+impartial and kindly study. We are eclectics in the arts as well as in
+metaphysics. But, as in metaphysics, the knowledge of all systems, and
+the portion of truth that is in each, enlightens without enfeebling our
+convictions; so, in the history of arts, while holding the opinion that
+no school must be disdained, that even in China some shade of beauty can
+be found, our eclecticism does not make us waver in regard to the
+sentiment of true beauty and the supreme rule of art. What we demand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">{179}</a></span> of
+the different schools, without distinction of time or place, what we see
+in the south as well as in the north, at Florence, Rome, Venice, and
+Seville, as well as at Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris,&mdash;wherever there
+are men, is something human, is the expression of a sentiment or an
+idea.</p>
+
+<p>A criticism that should be founded on the principle of expression, would
+somewhat derange, it must be confessed, received judgments, and would
+carry some disorder into the hierarchy of the renowned. We do not
+undertake such a revolution; we only propose to confirm, or at least
+elucidate our principle by an example, and by an example that is at our
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>There is in the world a school formerly illustrious, now very lightly
+treated:&mdash;this school is the French school of the seventeenth century.
+We would replace it in honor, by recalling attention to the qualities
+that make its glory.</p>
+
+<p>We have worked with constancy to reinstate among us the philosophy of
+Descartes, unworthily sacrificed to the philosophy of Locke, because
+with its defects it possesses in our view the incomparable merit of
+subordinating the senses to the mind, of elevating and ennobling man. So
+we profess a serious and reflective admiration for our national art of
+the seventeenth century, because, without disguising what is wanting to
+it, we find in it what we prefer to every thing else, grandeur united to
+good sense and reason, simplicity and force, genius of composition,
+especially that of expression.</p>
+
+<p>France, careless of her glory, does not appear to have the least notion
+that she reckons in her annals perhaps the greatest century of humanity,
+that which embraces the greatest number of extraordinary men of every
+kind. When, I pray you, have politicians like Henry IV., Richelieu,
+Mazarin, Colbert, Louis XIV. been seen giving each other the hand? I do
+not pretend that each of them has no rival, even superiors. Alexander,
+C&aelig;sar, Charlemagne, perhaps excel them. But Alexander has but a single
+contemporary that can be compared with him, his father Philip; C&aelig;sar
+cannot even have suspected that Octavius would one day be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">{180}</a></span> worthy of
+him; Charlemagne is a colossus in a desert; whilst among us these five
+men succeed each other without an interval, press upon each other, and
+have, thus to speak, a single soul. And by what officers were they
+served! Is Cond&eacute; really inferior to Alexander, Hannibal, and C&aelig;sar; for
+among his predecessors we must not look for other rivals? Who among them
+surpasses him in the extent and justness of his conceptions, in
+quickness of sight, in rapidity of man&oelig;uvres, in the union of
+impetuosity and firmness, in the double glory of taker of cities and
+gainer of battles? Add that he dealt with generals like Merci and
+William, that he had under him Turenne and Luxemburg, without speaking
+of so many other soldiers who were reared in that admirable school, and
+at the hour of reverse still sufficed to save France.</p>
+
+<p>What other time, at least among the moderns, has seen flourishing
+together so many poets of the first order? We have, it is true, neither
+Homer, nor Dante, nor Milton, nor even Tasso. The epic, with its
+primitive simplicity, is interdicted us. But in the drama we scarcely
+have equals. It is because dramatic poetry is the poetry that is adapted
+to us, moral poetry <i>par excellence</i>, which represents man with his
+different passions armed against each other, the violent contentions
+between virtue and crime, the freaks of fortune, the lessons of
+providence, and in a narrow compass, too, in which the events press upon
+each other without confusion, in which the action rapidly progresses
+towards the crisis that must reveal what is most intimate to the heart
+of the personages.</p>
+
+<p>Let us dare to say what we think, that, in our opinion, &AElig;schylus,
+Sophocles, and Euripides, together, do not equal Corneille; for none of
+them has known and expressed like him what is of all things most truly
+touching, a great soul at war with itself, between a generous passion
+and duty. Corneille is the creator of a new pathetic unknown to
+antiquity and to all the moderns before him. He disdains to address
+common and subaltern passions; he does not seek to rouse terror and
+pity, as demands Aristotle, who limits himself to erecting into maxims
+the practice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">{181}</a></span> of the Greeks. Corneille seems to have read Plato, and
+followed his precepts:&mdash;he addresses a most elevated part of human
+nature, the noblest passion, the one nearest virtue,&mdash;admiration; and
+from admiration carried to its culmination he draws the most powerful
+effects. Shakspeare, we admit, is superior to Corneille in extent and
+richness of dramatic genius. Entire human nature seems at his disposal,
+and he reproduces the different scenes of life in their beauty and
+deformity, in their grandeur and baseness. He excels in painting the
+terrible or the gentle passions. Othello is jealousy, Lady Macbeth is
+ambition, as Juliet and Desdemona are the immortal names of youthful and
+unfortunate love. But if Corneille has less imagination, he has more
+soul. Less varied, he is more profound. If he does not put upon the
+stage so many different characters, those that he does put on it are the
+greatest that can be offered to humanity. The scenes that he gives are
+less heart-rending, but at once more delicate and more sublime. What is
+the melancholy of Hamlet, the grief of King Lear, even the disdainful
+intrepidity of C&aelig;sar, in comparison with the magnanimity of Augustus
+striving to be master of himself as well as the universe, in comparison
+with Chim&egrave;ne sacrificing love to honor, especially in comparison with
+Pauline, not suffering even at the bottom of her heart an involuntary
+sigh for the one that she must not love? Corneille always confines
+himself to the highest regions. He is by turns Roman and Christian. He
+is the interpreter of heroes, the chanter of virtue, the poet of
+warriors and politicians.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> And it must not be forgotten that
+Shakspeare is almost alone in his times, whilst after Corneille comes
+Racine, who would suffice for the poetical glory of a nation.</p>
+
+<p>Racine assuredly cannot be compared with Corneille for dramatic genius;
+he is more the man of letters; he has not the tragic soul; he neither
+loves nor understands politics and war. When he imitates Corneille, for
+example, in Alexander, and even in Mith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">{182}</a></span>ridates, he imitates him badly
+enough. The scene, so vaunted, of Mithridates exposing his plan of
+campaign to his sons is a morsel of the finest rhetoric, which cannot be
+compared with the political and military scenes of Cinna and Sertorius,
+especially with that first scene of the Death of Pompey, in which you
+witness a counsel as true, as grand, as profound as ever could have been
+one of the counsels of Richelieu or Mazarin. Racine was not born to
+paint heroes, but he paints admirably man with his natural passions, and
+the most natural as well as the most touching of all, love. So he
+particularly excels in feminine characters. For men he has need of being
+sustained by Tacitus or holy Scripture.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> With woman he is at his
+ease, and he makes them think and speak with perfect truth, set off by
+exquisite art. Demand of him neither Emilie, Corn&eacute;lie, nor Pauline; but
+listen to Andromaque, Monime, B&eacute;r&eacute;nice, and Ph&egrave;dre! There, even in
+imitating, he is original, and leaves the ancients very far behind him.
+Who has taught him that charming delivery, those graceful troubles, that
+purity even in feebleness, that melancholy, sometimes even that depth,
+with that marvellous language which seems the natural accent of woman's
+heart? It is continually repeated that Racine wrote better than
+Corneille:&mdash;say only that the two wrote very differently, and like men
+in very different epochs. One has two sovereign qualities, which belong
+to his own nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">{183}</a></span> and his times, a <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> and grandeur, the other is
+not <i>na&iuml;ve</i>, but he has too much taste not to be always simple, and he
+supplies the place of grandeur, forever lost, with consummate elegance.
+Corneille speaks the language of statesmen, soldiers, theologians,
+philosophers, and clever women; of Richelieu, Rohan, Saint-Cyran,
+Descartes, and Pascal; of mother Ang&eacute;lique Arnaud and mother Madeleine
+de Saint-Joseph; the language which Moli&egrave;re still spoke, which Bossuet
+preserved to his last breath. Racine speaks that of Louis XIV. and the
+women who were the ornament of his court. I suppose that thus spoke
+Madame, the amiable, sprightly, and unfortunate Henriette; thus wrote
+the author of the <i>Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i> and the author of <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i>.
+Or, rather, this language is that of Racine himself, of that feeble and
+tender soul, which passed quickly from love to devotion, which uttered
+its complaints in lyric poetry, which was wholly poured out in the
+choruses of <i>Esther</i> and <i>Athalie</i>, and in the <i>Cantiques Spirituels</i>;
+that soul, so easy to be moved, that a religious ceremony or a
+representation of <i>Esther</i> at Saint-Cyr touched to tears, that pitied
+the misfortunes of the people, that found in its pity and its charity
+the courage to speak one day the truth to Louis XIV., and was
+extinguished by the first breath of disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>Moli&egrave;re is, in comparison with Aristophanes, what Corneille is, in
+comparison with Shakspeare. The author of <i>Plutus</i>, the <i>Wasps</i>, and the
+<i>Clouds</i>, has doubtless an imagination, an explosive buffoonery, a
+creative power, above all comparison. Moli&egrave;re has not as great poetical
+conceptions: he has more, perhaps; he has characters. His coloring is
+less brilliant, his graver is more penetrating. He has engraved in the
+memory of men a certain number of irregularities and vices which will
+ever be called <i>l'Avare</i> (<i>the Miser</i>), <i>le Malade Imaginaire</i> (the
+<i>Hypochondriac</i>), <i>les Femmes Savantes</i> (the <i>Learned Women</i>), <i>le
+Tartufe</i> (the <i>Hypocrite</i>), and <i>Don Juan</i>, not to speak of the
+<i>Misanthrope</i>, a piece apart, touching as pleasant, which is not
+addressed to the crowd, and cannot be popular, because it expresses a
+ridicule rare enough, excess in the passion of truth and honor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">{184}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of all fabulists, ancient and modern, does any one, even the ingenious,
+the pure, the elegant Ph&aelig;drus, approach our La Fontaine? He composes his
+personages, and puts them in action with the skill of Moli&egrave;re; he knows
+how to take on occasion the tone of Horace, and mingle an ode with a
+fable; he is at once the most na&iuml;ve, and the most refined of writers,
+and his art disappears in its very perfection. We do not speak of the
+tales, first, because we condemn the kind, then, because La Fontaine
+displays in them qualities more Italian than French, a narrative full of
+nature, malice, and grace, but without any of those profound, tender,
+melancholy traits, that place among the greatest poets of all time the
+author of the <i>Two Pigeons</i> (<i>Deux Pigeons</i>), the <i>Old Man</i>
+(<i>Vieillard</i>), and the <i>Three Young Persons</i> (<i>Gens</i>).</p>
+
+<p>We do not hesitate to put Boileau among these great men. He comes after
+them, it is true, but he belongs to their company: he comprehends them,
+loves them, sustains them. It was he, who, in 1663, after the <i>School of
+Women</i> (<i>l'Ecole des Femmes</i>) and long before the <i>Hypocrite</i> (<i>le
+Tartufe</i>), and the <i>Misanthrope</i>, proclaimed Moli&egrave;re the master in the
+art of verse. It was he who, in 1677, after the failure of <i>Ph&egrave;dre</i>,
+defended the vanquisher of Euripides against the successes of Pradon. It
+was he who, in advance of posterity, first put in light what is new and
+entirely original in the plays of Corneille.<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> He saved the pension
+of the old tragedian by offering the sacrifice of his own. Louis XIV.
+asking him what writer most honored his reign, Boileau answered, that it
+was Moli&egrave;re; and when the great king in his decline persecuted
+Port-Royal, and wished to lay hands on Arnaud, he encountered a man of
+letters, who said to the face of the imperious monarch,&mdash;"Your Majesty
+in vain seeks M. Arnaud, you are too fortunate to find him." Boileau is
+somewhat wanting in imagination and invention; but he is great in the
+energetic sentiment of truth and justice; he carries to the extent of
+passion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">{185}</a></span> taste for the beautiful and the honest; he is a poet by force
+of soul and good sense. More than once his heart dictated to him the
+most pathetic verses:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In vain against the Cid a minister is leagued,<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All Paris for Chim&egrave;ne the eyes of Rodrique," etc.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"After a little spot of earth, obtained by prayer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forever in the tomb had inclosed Moli&egrave;re," etc.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>And this epitaph of Arnaud, so simple and so grand:<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"At the feet of this altar of structure gross,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies without pomp, inclosed in a coffin vile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The most learned mortal that ever wrote;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arnaud, who in grace instructed by Jesus Christ,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Combating for the Church, has, in the Church itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suffered more than one outrage and more than one anathema," etc.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Wandering, poor, banished, proscribed, persecuted;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And even by his death their ill-extinguished rage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had never left his ashes in repose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If God himself here by his holy flock<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From these devouring wolves had not concealed his bones."<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These are, I think, poets sufficiently great, and we have more of them
+still: I mean those charming or sublime minds who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">{186}</a></span> have elevated prose
+to poetry. Greece alone, in her most beautiful days, offers, perhaps,
+such a variety of admirable prose writers. Who can enumerate them? At
+first, Rabelais and Montaigne; later, Descartes, Pascal, and
+Malebranche; La Rochefoucauld and La Bruy&egrave;re; Retz and Saint-Simon;
+Bourdaloue, Fl&eacute;chier, F&eacute;nelon, and Bossuet; add to these so many eminent
+women, at their head Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute;; while Montesquieu, Voltaire,
+Rousseau, and Buffon are still to come.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a></p>
+
+<p>By what strange diversity could a country, in which the mental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">{187}</a></span> arts
+were carried to such perfection, remain ordinary in the other arts? Was
+the sentiment of the beautiful wanting, then, to that society so
+polished, to that magnificent court, to those great lords and those
+great ladies passionately loving luxury and elegance, to that public of
+the <i>&eacute;lite</i>, enamored of every kind of glory, whose enthusiasm defended
+the <i>Cid</i> against Richelieu? No; France in the seventeenth century was a
+whole, and produced artists that she can place by the side of her poets,
+her philosophers, her orators.</p>
+
+<p>But, in order to admire our artists, it is necessary to comprehend them.</p>
+
+<p>We do not believe that imagination has been less freely imparted to
+France than to any other nation of Europe. It has even had its reign
+among us. It is fancy that rules in the sixteenth century, and inspires
+the literature and the arts of the <i>Renaissance</i>. But a great revolution
+intervened at the commencement of the seventeenth century. France at
+that moment seems to pass from youth to virility. Instead of abandoning
+imagination to itself, we apply ourselves from that moment to restrain
+it without destroying it, to moderate it, as the Greeks did by the aid
+of taste; as in the progress of life and society we learn to repress or
+conceal what is too individual in character. An end is made of the
+literature of the preceding age. A new poetry, a new prose, begin to
+appear, which, during an entire century, bear fruits sufficiently
+beautiful. Art follows the general movement; after having been elegant
+and graceful, it becomes in its turn serious; it no longer aims at
+originality and extraordinary effects; it neither flashes nor dazzles;
+it speaks, above all, to the mind and the soul. Hence its good qualities
+and also its defects. In general, it is somewhat wanting in brilliancy
+and coloring, but it is in the highest degree expressive.</p>
+
+<p>Some time since we have changed all that. We have discovered, somewhat
+late, that we have not sufficient imagination; we are in training to
+acquire it, it is true, at the expense of reason, alas! also at the
+expense of soul, which is forgotten, repudiated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">{188}</a></span> proscribed. At this
+moment, color and form are the order of the day, in poetry, in painting,
+in every thing. We are beginning to run mad with Spanish painting. The
+Flemish and Venetian schools are gaining ground on the schools of
+Florence and Rome. Rossini equals Mozart, and Gluck will soon seem to us
+insipid.</p>
+
+<p>Young artists, who, rightly disgusted with the dry and inanimate manner
+of David, undertake to renovate French painting, who would rob the sun
+of its heat and splendor, remember that of all beings in the world, the
+greatest is still man, and that what is greatest in man is his
+intelligence, and above all, his heart; that it is this heart, then,
+which you must put and develop on your canvas. This is the most elevated
+object of art. In order to reach it, do not make yourselves disciples of
+Flemings, Venetians, and Spaniards; return, return to the masters of our
+great national school of the seventeenth century.</p>
+
+<p>We bow with respectful admiration before the schools of Rome and
+Florence, at once ideal and living; but, those excepted, we maintain
+that the French school equals or surpasses all others. We prefer neither
+Murillo, Rubens, Corregio, nor Titian himself to Lesueur and Poussin,
+because, if the former have an incomparable hand and color, our two
+countrymen are much greater in thought and expression.</p>
+
+<p>What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur!<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> He was born at Paris
+about 1617, and he never went out of it. Poor and humble, he passed his
+life in the churches and convents where he worked. The only sweetness of
+his sad days, his only consolation was his wife: he loses her, and goes
+to die, at thirty-eight, in that cloister of Chartreux, which his pencil
+has immortalized. What resemblance at once, and what difference between
+his life and that of Raphael, who also died young, but in the midst of
+pleasures, in honors, and already almost in purple! Our Raphael was not
+the lover of Fornarina and the favorite of a pope: he was Christian; he
+is Christianity in art.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">{189}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lesueur is a genius wholly French. Scarcely having escaped from the
+hands of Simon Vou&euml;t, he formed himself according to the model which he
+had in the soul. He never saw the sky of Italy. He knew some fragments
+of the antique, some pictures of Raphael, and the designs that Poussin
+sent him. With these feeble resources, and guided by a happy instinct,
+in less than ten years he mounted by a continual progress to the
+perfection of his talent, and expired at the moment when, finally sure
+of himself, he was about to produce new and more admirable
+master-pieces. Follow him from the <i>St. Bruno</i> completed in 1648,
+through the <i>St. Paul</i> of 1649, to the <i>Vision of St. Benedict</i> in 1651,
+and to the <i>Muses</i>, scarcely finished before his death. Lesueur went on
+adding to his essential qualities which he owed to his own genius, and
+to the national genius, I mean composition and expression, qualities
+which he had dreamed of, or had caught glimpses of. His design from day
+to day became more pure, without ever being that of the Florentine
+school, and the same is true of his coloring.</p>
+
+<p>In Lesueur every thing is directed towards expression, every thing is in
+the service of the mind, every thing is idea and sentiment. There is no
+affectation, no mannerism; there is a perfect <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>; his figures
+sometimes would seem even a little common, so natural are they, if a
+Divine breath did not animate them. It must not be forgotten that his
+favorite subjects do not exact a brilliant coloring: he oftenest
+retraces scenes mournful or austere. But as in Christianity by the side
+of suffering and resignation is faith with hope, so Lesueur joins to the
+pathetic sweetness and grace; and this man charms me at the same time
+that he moves me.</p>
+
+<p>The works of Lesueur are almost always great wholes that demanded
+profound meditation, and the most flexible talent, in order to preserve
+in them unity of subject, and to give them variety and harmony. The
+<i>History of St. Bruno</i>, the founder of the order <i>des Chartreux</i>, is a
+vast melancholy poem, in which are represented the different scenes of
+monastic life. The <i>His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">{190}</a></span>tory of St. Martin and St. Benedict</i> has not
+come down to us entire; but the two fragments of it that we possess, the
+<i>Mass of St. Martin</i>, and the <i>Vision of St. Benedict</i>, allow us to
+compare that great work with every better thing of the kind that has
+been done in Italy, as, to speak sincerely, the <i>Muses</i> and the <i>History
+of Love</i>, appear to us to equal at least the Farnesina.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>History of St. Bruno</i>, it is particularly necessary to remark
+St. Bruno, prostrated before a crucifix, the saint reading a letter of
+the pope, his death, his apotheosis. Is it possible to carry meditation,
+humiliation, rapture farther? <i>St. Paul preaching at Ephesus</i> reminds
+one of the <i>School of Athens</i>, by the extent of the scene, the
+employment of architecture, and the skilful distribution of groups. In
+spite of the number of personages, and the diversity of episodes, the
+picture wholly centres in St. Paul. He preaches, and upon his words hang
+those who are listening, of every sex, of every age, in the most varied
+attitudes. In that we behold the grand lines of the Roman school, its
+design full of nobleness and truth at the same time. What charming and
+grave heads! What graceful, bold, and always natural movements! Here,
+that child with ringlets, full of <i>na&iuml;ve</i> enthusiasm; there, that old
+man with bended knees, and hands joined. Are not all those beautiful
+heads, and those draperies, too, worthy of Raphael? But the marvel of
+the picture is the figure of St. Paul,<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a>&mdash;it is that of the Olympic
+Jupiter, animated by a new spirit. The <i>Mass of St. Martin</i> carries into
+the soul an impression of peace and silence. The <i>Vision of St.
+Benedict</i> has the character of simplicity full of grandeur. A desert,
+the saint on his knees, contemplating his sister, St. Scholastique, who
+is ascending to heaven, borne up by angels, accompanied by two young
+girls, crowned with flowers, and bearing the palm, the symbol of
+virginity. St. Peter and St. Paul show St. Benedict the abode whither
+his sister is going to enjoy eternal peace. A slight ray of the sun
+pierces the cloud. St. Benedict is as it were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">{191}</a></span> lifted up from the earth
+by this ecstatic vision. One scarcely desires a more lively color, and
+the expression is divine. Those two virgins, a little too tall, perhaps,
+how beautiful and pure they are! How sweet are those forms! How grave
+and gentle are those faces! The person of the holy monk, with all the
+material accessories, is perfectly natural, for it remains on the earth;
+whilst his face, where his soul shines forth, is wholly ideal, and
+already in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>But the <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i> of Lesueur is, in our opinion, the <i>Descent
+from the Cross</i>, or rather the enshrouding of Jesus Christ, already
+descended from the cross, whom Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and St.
+John are placing in the shroud. On the left, Magdalen, in tears, kisses
+the feet of Jesus; on the right, are the holy women and the Virgin. It
+is impossible to carry the pathetic farther and preserve beauty. The
+holy women, placed in front, have each their particular grief. While one
+of them abandons herself to despair, an immense but internal and
+thoughtful sadness is upon the face of the mother of the crucified. She
+has comprehended the divine benefit of the redemption of the human race,
+and her grief, sustained by this thought, is calm and resigned. And then
+what dignity in that head! It, in some sort, sums up the whole picture,
+and gives to it its character, that of a profound and subdued emotion. I
+have seen many <i>Descents from the Cross</i>; I have seen that of Rubens at
+Antwerp, in which the sanctity of the subject has, as it were,
+constrained the great Flemish painter to join sensibility and sentiment
+to color; none of those pictures have touched me like that of Lesueur.
+All the parts of art are there in the service of expression. The drawing
+is severe and strong; even the color, without being brilliant, surpasses
+that of the <i>St. Bruno</i>, the <i>Mass of St. Martin</i>, the <i>St. Paul</i>, and
+even that of the <i>Vision of St. Benedict</i>; as if Lesueur had wished to
+bring together in it all the powers of his soul, all the resources of
+his talent!<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">{192}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now, regard the <i>Muses</i>,&mdash;other scenes, other beauties, the same genius.
+Those are Pagan pictures, but Christianity is in them also, by reason of
+the adorable chastity with which Lesueur has clothed them. All critics
+have emulously shown the mythological errors into which poor Lesueur
+fell, and they have not wanted occasion to deplore that he had not made
+the journey to Italy and studied antiquity more. But who can have the
+strange idea of searching in Lesueur for an archeology? I seek and find
+in him the very genius of painting. Is not that Terpsichore, well or ill
+named, with a harp a little too strong, it is said, as if the Muse had
+no particular gift, in her modest attitude the symbol of becoming grace?
+In that group of three Muses, to which one may give what name he
+pleases, is not the one that holds upon her knees a book of music, who
+sings or is about to sing, the most ravishing creature, a St. Cecilia
+that preludes just before abandoning herself to the intoxication of
+inspiration? And in those pictures there is brilliancy and coloring; the
+landscape is beautifully lighted, as if Poussin had guided the hand of
+his friend.</p>
+
+<p>Poussin! What a name I pronounce. If Lesueur is the painter of
+sentiment, Poussin is the painter of thought. He is in some sort the
+philosopher of painting. His pictures are religious or moral lectures
+that testify a great mind as well as a great heart. It is sufficient to
+recall the <i>Seven Sacraments</i>, the <i>Deluge</i>, the <i>Arcadia</i>, the <i>Truth
+that Time frees from the Taints of Envy</i>, the <i>Will of Eudamidas</i>, and
+the <i>Dance of Human Life</i>. And the style is equal to the conception.
+Poussin draws like a Florentine, composes like a Frenchman, and often
+equals Lesueur in expression; coloring alone is sometimes wanting to
+him. As well as Racine, he is smitten with the antique beauty, and
+imitates it; but, like Racine, he always remains original. In place of
+the na&iuml;vet&eacute; and unique charm of Lesueur, he has a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">{193}</a></span> severe simplicity,
+with a correctness that never abandons him. Remember, too, that he
+cultivated every kind of painting. He is at once a great historical
+painter and a great landscape painter,&mdash;he treats religious subjects as
+well as profane subjects, and by turns is inspired by antiquity and the
+Bible. He lived much at Rome, it is true, and died there; but he also
+worked in France, and almost always for France. Scarcely had he become
+known, when Richelieu attracted him to Paris and retained him there,
+loading him with honors, and giving him the commission of first painter
+in ordinary to the king, with the general direction of all the works of
+painting, and all the ornaments of the royal houses. During that sojourn
+of two years in Paris, he made the <i>Last Supper</i> (<i>C&egrave;ne</i>), the <i>St.
+Fran&ccedil;ois Xavier</i>, the <i>Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy</i>.
+It was also to France, to his friend M. de Chantelou, that from Rome he
+addressed the <i>Inspiration of St. Paul</i>, as well as the second series of
+the <i>Seven Sacraments</i>, an immense composition that, for grandeur of
+thought, can vie with the <i>Stanze</i> of Raphael. I speak of it from the
+engravings; for the <i>Seven Sacraments</i> are no longer in France. Eternal
+shame of the eighteenth century! It was at least necessary to wrest from
+the Greeks the pediments of the Parthenon,&mdash;we, we delivered up to
+strangers, we sold all those monuments of French genius which Richelieu
+and Mazarin, with religious care, had collected. Public indignation did
+not avert the act! And there has not since been found in France a king,
+a statesman, to interdict letting the master-pieces of art that honor
+the nation depart without authorization from the national
+territory!<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> There has not been found a government which has
+undertaken at least to repurchase those that we have lost, to get back
+again the great works of Poussin, Lesueur, and so many others, scattered
+in Europe, instead of squandering millions to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">{194}</a></span> acquire the baboons of
+Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish canvasses, in truth of an
+admirable color, but without nobleness and moral expression.<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> I know
+and I love the Dutch pastorals and the cows of Potter; I am not
+insensible to the sombre and ardent coloring of Zurbaran, to the
+brilliant Italian imitations of Murillo and Velasquez; but in fine, what
+is all that in comparison with serious and powerful compositions like
+the <i>Seven Sacraments</i>, for example, that profound representation of
+Christian rites, a work of the highest faculties of the intellect and
+the soul, in which the intellect and the soul will ever find an
+exhaustless subject of study and meditation! Thank God, the graver of
+Pesne has saved them from our ingratitude and barbarity. Whilst the
+originals decorate the gallery of a great English lord,<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> the love
+and the talent of a Pesne, of a Stella, have preserved for us faithful
+copies in those expressive engravings that one never grows tired of
+contemplating, that every time we examine them, reveal to us some new
+side of the genius of our great countryman. Regard especially the
+<i>Extreme Unction!</i> What a sublime and at the same time almost graceful
+scene! One would call it an antique bas-relief, so many groups are
+properly distributed in it, with natural and varied attitudes. The
+draperies are as admirable as those of a fragment of the <i>Panathen&aelig;a</i>,
+which is in the Louvre. The figures are all beautiful. Beauty of figures
+belongs to sculpture, one is about to say:&mdash;yes, but it also belongs to
+painting, if you have yourself the eye of the painter, if you have been
+struck with the expression of those postures, those heads, those
+gestures, and almost those looks; for every thing lives, every thing
+breathes, even in those engravings, and if it were the place, we would
+endeavor to make the reader penetrate with us into those secrets of
+Christian sentiment which are also the secrets of art.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">{195}</a></span></p><p>We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the <i>Seven
+Sacraments</i>, and for not having known how to keep from England and
+Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign
+collections,<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> by going to see at the Louvre what remains to us of
+the great French artist,&mdash;thirty pictures produced at different epochs
+of his life, which, for the most part, worthily sustain his renown,&mdash;the
+portrait of <i>Poussin</i>, one of the <i>Bacchanals</i> made for Richelieu, <i>Mars
+and Venus</i>, the <i>Death of Adonis</i>, the <i>Rape of the Sabines</i>,<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a>
+<i>Eliezer and Rebecca</i>, <i>Moses saved from the Waters</i>, the <i>Infant Jesus
+on the Knees of the Virgin and St. Joseph standing by</i>,<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> especially
+the <i>Manna in the Desert</i>, the <i>Judgment of Solomon</i>, the <i>Blind Men of
+Jericho</i>, the <i>Woman taken in Adultery</i>, the <i>Inspiration of St. Paul</i>,
+the <i>Diogenes</i>, the <i>Deluge</i>, the <i>Arcadia</i>. Time has turned the color,
+which was never very brilliant; but it has not been able to disturb what
+will make them live forever,&mdash;the design, the composition, and the
+expression. The <i>Deluge</i> has remained, and in fact will always be, the
+most striking. After so many masters who have treated the same subject,
+Poussin has found the secret of being original, and more pathetic than
+his predecessors, in representing the solemn moment when the race is
+about to disappear. There are few details; some dead bodies are floating
+upon the abyss; a sinister-looking moon has scarcely risen; a few
+moments and mankind will be no more; the last mother uselessly extends
+her last child to the last father, who cannot take it, and the serpent
+that has destroyed mankind darts forth triumphant. We try in vain to
+find in the Deluge some signs of a trembling hand: the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">{196}</a></span> soul that
+sustained and conducted that hand makes itself felt by our soul, and
+profoundly moves it. Stop at that scene of mourning, and almost by its
+side let your eyes rest upon that fresh landscape and upon those
+shepherds that surround a tomb. The most aged, with a knee on the
+ground, reads these words graven upon the stone: <i>Et in Arcadia ego</i>,
+and I also lived in Arcadia. At the left a shepherd listens with serious
+attention. At the right is a charming group, composed of a shepherd in
+the spring-time of life, and a young girl of ravishing beauty. An
+artless admiration is painted on the face of the young peasant, who
+looks with happiness on his beautiful companion. As for her, her
+adorable face is not even veiled with the slightest shade; she smiles,
+her hand resting carelessly upon the shoulder of the young man, and she
+has no appearance of comprehending that lecture given to beauty, youth,
+and love. I confess that, for this picture alone, of so touching a
+philosophy, I would give many master-pieces of coloring, all the
+pastorals of Potter, all the badinages of Ostade, all the buffooneries
+of Teniers.</p>
+
+<p>Lesueur and Poussin, by very different but nearly equal titles, are at
+the head of our great painting of the seventeenth century. After them,
+what artists again are Claude Lorrain and Philippe de Champagne?</p>
+
+<p>Do you know in Italy or Holland a greater landscape painter than Claude?
+And seize well his true character. Look at those vast and beautiful
+solitudes, lighted by the first or last rays of the sun, and tell me
+whether those solitudes, those trees, those waters, those mountains,
+that light, that silence,&mdash;whether all that nature has a soul, and
+whether those luminous and pure horizons do not lift you involuntarily,
+in ineffable reveries, to the invisible source of beauty and grace!
+Lorrain is, above all, the painter of light, and his works might be
+called the history of light and all its combinations, in small and
+great, when it is poured out over large plains or breaks in the most
+varied accidents, on land, on waters, in the heavens, in its eternal
+source. The human scenes thrown into one corner have no other object<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">{197}</a></span>
+than to relieve and make appear to advantage the scenes of nature by
+harmony or contrast. In the <i>Village F&ecirc;te</i>, life, noise, movement are in
+front,&mdash;peace and grandeur are at the foundation of the landscape, and
+that is truly the picture. The same effect is in the <i>Cattle Crossing a
+River</i>. The landscape placed immediately under your eyes has nothing in
+it very rare, we can find such a one anywhere; but follow the
+perspective,&mdash;it leads you across flowering fields, a beautiful river,
+ruins, mountains that overlook these ruins, and you lose yourself in
+infinite distances. That Landscape crossed by a river, where a peasant
+waters his herd, means nothing great at first sight. Contemplate it some
+time, and peace, a sort of meditativeness in nature, a well-graduated
+perspective, will, little by little, gain your heart, and give you in
+that small picture a penetrating charm. The picture called a <i>Landscape</i>
+represents a vast champagne filled with trees, and lighted by the rising
+sun,&mdash;in it there is freshness and&mdash;already&mdash;warmth, mystery, and
+splendor, with skies of the sweetest harmony. <i>A Dance at Sunset</i>
+expresses the close of a beautiful day. One sees in it, one feels in it
+the decline of the heat of the day; in the foreground are some shepherds
+and shepherdesses dancing by the side of their flocks.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a></p>
+
+<p>Is it not strange, that Champagne has been put in the Flemish
+school?<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> He was born at Brussels, it is true, but he came very early
+to Paris, and his true master was Poussin, who counselled him. He
+devoted his talent to France, lived there, died there, and what is
+decisive, his manner is wholly French. Will it be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">{198}</a></span> said that he owes to
+Flanders his color? We respond that this quality is balanced by a grave
+defect that he also owes to Flanders, the want of ideality in the
+figures; and it was from France that he learned how to repair this
+defect by beauty of moral expression. Champagne is inferior to Lesueur
+and Poussin, but he is of their family. He was, also, of those artists
+contemporaneous with Corneille, simple, poor, virtuous, Christian.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a>
+Champagne worked both for the convent of the Carmelites in the <i>Rue St.
+Jacques</i>, that venerable abode of ardent and sublime piety, and
+Port-Royal, that place of all others that contained in the smallest
+space the most virtue and genius, so many admirable men and women worthy
+of them. What has become of that famous crucifix that he painted for the
+Church of the Carmelites, a master-piece of perspective that upon a
+horizontal plane appeared perpendicular? It perished with the holy
+house. The <i>Last Supper</i> (<i>C&egrave;ne</i>) is a living picture, on account of the
+truth of all the figures, movements, and postures, but to my eyes it is
+blemished by the absence of the ideal. I am obliged to say as much of
+the <i>Repast with Simon the Pharisee</i>. The <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i> of Champagne
+is the <i>Apparition of St. Gervais and St. Protais to St. Ambrose in a
+Basilica of Milan</i>. All the qualities of French art are seen in
+it,&mdash;simplicity and grandeur in composition, with a profound expression.
+On that canvas are only four personages, the two martyrs and St. Paul,
+who presents them to St. Ambrose. Those four figures fill the temple,
+lighted above all in the obscurity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">{199}</a></span> the night, by the luminous
+apparition. The two martyrs are full of majesty. St. Ambrose, kneeling
+and in prayer, is, as it were, seized with terror.<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a></p>
+
+<p>I certainly admire Champagne as an historical painter, and even as a
+landscape painter; but he is perhaps greatest as a portrait painter. In
+portraits truth and nature are particularly in their place, relieved by
+coloring, and idealized in proper measure by expression. The portraits
+of Champagne are so many monuments in which his most illustrious
+contemporaries will live forever. Every thing about them is strikingly
+real, grave, and severe, with a penetrating sweetness. Should the
+records of Port-Royal be lost, all Port-Royal might be found in
+Champagne. Among those portraits we see the inflexible Saint-Cyran,<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a>
+as well as his persecutor, the imperious Richelieu.<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> We see, too,
+the learned, the intrepid Antoine Arnaud, to whom the contemporaries of
+Bossuet decreed the name of Great;<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> and Mme. Ang&eacute;lique Arnaud, with
+her na&iuml;ve and strong figure.<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> Among them is mother Agnes and the
+humble daughter of Champagne himself, sister St. Suzanne.<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> She has
+just been miraculously cured, and her whole prostrated person bears
+still the impress of a relic of suffering. Mother Agnes, kneeling before
+her, regards her with a look of grateful joy. The place of the scene is
+a poor cell; a wooden cross hanging on the wall, and some straw chairs,
+are all the ornaments. On the picture is the inscription,&mdash;<i>Christo uni
+medico animarum et corporum</i>, etc. There is possessed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">{200}</a></span> Christian
+stoicism of Port-Royal in its imposing austerity. Add to all these
+portraits that of Champagne;<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> for the painter may be put by the side
+of his personages.</p>
+
+<p>Had France produced in the seventeenth century only these four great
+artists, it would be necessary to give an important place to the French
+school; but she counts many other painters of the greatest merit. Among
+these we may distinguish P. Mignard, so much admired in his times, so
+little known now, and so worthy of being known. How have we been able to
+let fall into oblivion the author of the immense fresco of
+<i>Val-de-gr&acirc;ce</i>, so celebrated by Moli&egrave;re, which is perhaps the greatest
+page of painting in the world!<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> What strikes at first, in this
+gigantic work, is the order and harmony. Then come a thousand charming
+details and innumerable episodes which form themselves important
+compositions. Remark also the brilliant and sweet coloring which should
+at least obtain favor for so many other beauties of the first order.
+Again, it is to the pencil of Mignard that we owe that ravishing ceiling
+of a small apartment of the King at Versailles, a master-piece now
+destroyed, but of which there remains to us a magnificent translation in
+the beautiful engraving of Gerard Audran. What profound expression in
+the <i>Plague of &AElig;acus</i>,<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> and in the <i>St. Charles giving the
+Communion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">{201}</a></span> to the Plague-infected of Milan</i>! Mignard is recognized as
+one of our best portrait painters: grace, sometimes a little too
+refined, is joined in him to sentiment. The French school can also
+present with pride Valentin, who died young and was so full of promise;
+Stella, the worthy friend of Poussin, the uncle of Claudine, Antoinette,
+and Fran&ccedil;oise Stella; Lahyre, who has so much spirit and taste;<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a>
+S&eacute;bastien Bourdon, so animated and elevated;<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> the Lenains, who
+sometimes have the <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> of Lesueur and the color of Champagne;
+Bourguignon, full of fire and enthusiasm; Jouvenet, whose composition is
+so good;<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> finally, besides so many others, Lebrun, whom it is now
+the fashion to treat cavalierly, who received from nature, with perhaps
+an immoderate passion for fame, passion for the beautiful of every kind,
+and a talent of admirable flexibility,&mdash;the true painter of a great king
+by the richness and dignity of his manner, who, like Louis XIV.,
+worthily closes the seventeenth century.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a></p>
+
+<p>Since we have spoken somewhat extensively of painting, would it not be
+unjust to pass in silence over engraving, its daughter, or its sister?
+Certainly it is not an art of ordinary importance; we have excelled in
+it; we have above all carried it to its perfection in portraits. Let us
+be equitable to ourselves. What school&mdash;and we are not unmindful of
+those of Marc' Antonio, Albert Durer, and Rembrandt&mdash;can present such a
+succession of artists of this kind? Thomas de Leu and L&eacute;onard Gautier
+make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">{202}</a></span> in some sort the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth
+century. Then come a crowd of men of the most diverse talents,&mdash;Mellan,
+Michel Lasne, Morin, Daret, Huret, Masson, Nanteuil, Drevet, Van
+Schupen, the Poillys, the Edelincks, and the Audrans. G&eacute;rard Edelinck
+and Nanteuil alone have a popular renown, and they merit it by the
+delicacy, splendor, and charm of their graver. But the connoisseurs of
+elevated taste find at least their rivals in engravers now less admired,
+because they do not flatter the eye so much, but have, perhaps, more
+truth and vigor. It must also be said, that the portraits of these two
+masters have not the historic importance of those of their predecessors.
+The <i>Cond&eacute;</i> of Nanteuil is justly admired; but if we wish to know the
+great Cond&eacute;, the conqueror of Rocroy and Lens, we must not demand him
+from Nanteuil, but from Huret, Michel Lasne, and Daret,<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> who
+designed and engraved him in all his force and heroic beauty. Edelinck
+and Nanteuil himself scarcely knew and retraced the seventeenth century,
+except at the approach of its decline.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> Morin and Mellan were able
+to see it, and transmit it in its glorious youth. Morin is the Champagne
+of engraving: he does not engrave, he paints. It is he who represents
+and transmits to posterity the illustrious men of the first half of the
+great century&mdash;Henry IV., Louis XIII., the de Thous, B&eacute;rulle, Jansenius,
+Saint-Cyran, Marillac, Bentivoglio, Richelieu, Mazarin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">{203}</a></span> still young,
+and Retz, when he was only a coadjutor.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> Mellan had the same
+advantage. He is the first in date of all the engravers of the
+seventeenth century, and perhaps is also the most expressive. With a
+single line, it seems that from his hands only shades can spring; he
+does not strike at first sight; but the more we regard him, the more he
+seizes, penetrates, and touches, like Lesueur.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a></p>
+
+<p>Christianity, that is to say, the reign of the spirit, is favorable to
+painting, is particularly expressive. Sculpture seems to be a pagan art;
+for, if it must also contain moral expression, it is always under the
+imperative condition of beauty of form. This is the reason why sculpture
+is as it were natural to antiquity, and appeared there with an
+incomparable splendor, before which painting somewhat paled,<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> whilst
+among the moderns it has been eclipsed by painting, and has remained
+very inferior to it, by reason of the extreme difficulty of bringing
+stone and marble to express Christian sentiment, without which, material
+beauty suffers; so that our sculpture is too insignificant to be
+beautiful, too mannered to be expressive. Since antiquity, there have
+scarcely been two schools of sculpture:<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a>&mdash;one at Florence, before
+Michael Angelo, and especially with Michael Angelo; the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">{204}</a></span> in
+France, at the <i>Renaissance</i>, with Jean Cousin, Goujon, Germain Pilon.
+We may say that these three artists have, as it were, shared among
+themselves grandeur and grace: to the first belong nobility and force,
+with profound knowledge;<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a> to the other two, an elegance full of
+charm. Sculpture changes its character in the seventeenth century as
+well as every thing else: it no longer has the same attraction, but it
+finds moral and religious inspiration, which the skilful masters of the
+<i>Renaissance</i> too much lacked. Jean Cousin excepted, is there one of
+them that is superior to Jacques Sarazin? That great artist, now almost
+forgotten, is at once a disciple of the French school and the Italian
+school, and to the qualities that he borrows from his predecessors, he
+adds a moral expression, touching and elevated, which he owes to the
+spirit of the new school. He is, in sculpture, the worthy contemporary
+of Lesueur and Poussin, of Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal. He belongs
+entirely to the reign of Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Mazarin; he did not
+even see that of Louis XIV.<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> Called into France by Richelieu, who
+had also called there Poussin and Champagne, Jacques Sarazin in a few
+years produced a multitude of works of rare elegance and great
+character. What has become of them? The eighteenth century passed over
+them without regarding them. The barbarians that destroyed or scattered
+them, were arrested before the paintings of Lesueur and Poussin,
+protected by a remnant of admiration: while breaking the master-pieces
+of the French chisel, they had no suspicion of the sacrilege they were
+committing against art as well as their country. I was at least able to
+see, some years ago, at the Museum of French Monuments, collected by the
+piety of a friend of the arts, beautiful parts of a superb mauso<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">{205}</a></span>leum
+erected to the memory of Henri de Bourbon, second of the name, Prince of
+Cond&eacute;, father of the great Cond&eacute;, the worthy support, the skilful
+fellow-laborer of Richelieu and Mazarin. This monument was supported by
+four figures of natural grandeur,&mdash;<i>Faith, Prudence, Justice, Charity</i>.
+There were four bas-reliefs in bronze, representing the <i>Triumphs of
+Renown, Time, Death</i>, and <i>Eternity</i>. In the <i>Triumph of Death</i>, the
+artist had represented a certain number of illustrious moderns, among
+whom he had placed himself by the side of Michael Angelo.<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a> We can
+still contemplate in the court of the Louvre, in the pavilion of the
+Horloge, those caryatides of Sarazin at once so majestic and so
+graceful, which are detached with admirable relief and lightness. Have
+Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon done any thing more elegant and lifelike?
+Those females breathe, and are about to move. Take the pains to go a
+short distance<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> to visit the humble chapel that now occupies the
+place of that magnificent church of the Carmelites, once filled with the
+paintings of Champagne, Stella, Lahire, and Lebrun; where the voice of
+Bossuet was heard, where Mlle. de Lavalli&egrave;re and Mme. de Longueville
+were so often seen prostrated, their long hair shorn, and their faces
+bathed in tears. Among the relics that are preserved of the past
+splendor of the holy monastery, consider the noble statue of the
+kneeling Cardinal de B&eacute;rulle. On those meditative and penetrating
+features, in those eyes raised to heaven, breathes the soul of that
+great servant of God, who died at the altar like a warrior on the field
+of honor. He prays God for his dear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">{206}</a></span> Carmelites. That head is perfectly
+natural, as Champagne might have painted it, and has a severe grace that
+reminds one of Lesueur and Poussin.<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p>
+
+<p>Below Sarazin, the Anguiers are still artists that Italy would admire,
+and to whom there is wanting, since the great century, nothing but
+judges worthy of them. These two brothers covered Paris and France with
+the most precious monuments. Look at the tomb of Jacques-Auguste de
+Thou, by Fran&ccedil;ois Anguier: the face of the great historian is reflective
+and melancholy, like that of a man weary of the spectacle of human
+things; and nothing is more amiable than the statues of his two wives,
+Marie Barban&ccedil;on de Cany, and Gasparde de la Ch&acirc;tre.<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> The mausoleum
+of Henri de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse in 1632, which is still
+seen at Moulins, in the church of the ancient convent of the daughters
+of Sainte-Marie, is an important work of the same artist, in which force
+is manifest, with a little heaviness.<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> To Michel Anguier are
+attributed the statues of the duke and duchess of Tresmes, and that of
+their illustrious son, Potier, Marquis of G&ecirc;vres.<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> Behold in him the
+intrepid companion of Cond&eacute;,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">{207}</a></span> arrested in his course at thirty-two years
+of age before Thionville, after the battle of Rocroy, already
+lieutenant-general, and when Cond&eacute; was demanding for him the b&acirc;ton of a
+marshal of France, deposited on his tomb; behold him young, beautiful,
+brave, like his comrades cut down also in the flower of life, Laval,
+Ch&acirc;tillon, La Moussaye. One of the best works of Michel Anguier is the
+monument of Henri de Chabot, that other companion, that faithful friend
+of Cond&eacute;, who by the splendor of his valor, especially by the graces of
+his person, knew how to gain the heart, the fortune, and the name of the
+beautiful Marguerite, the daughter of the great Duke of Rohan. The new
+duke died, still young, in 1655, at thirty-nine years of age. He is
+represented lying down, the head inclined and supported by an angel;
+another angel is at his feet. The whole is striking, and the details are
+exquisite. The face of Chabot has every beauty, as if to answer to its
+reputation, but the beauty is that of one dying. The body has already
+the languor of death, <i>longuescit moriens</i>, with I know not what antique
+grace. This morsel, if the drawing were more severe, would rival the
+<i>Dying Gladiator</i>, of which it reminds one, which it perhaps even
+imitates.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a></p>
+
+<p>In truth, I wonder that men now dare speak so lightly of Puget and
+Girardon. To Puget qualities of the first order cannot be refused. He
+has the fire, the enthusiasm, the fecundity of genius. The caryatides of
+the H&ocirc;tel de Ville of Toulon, which have been brought to the Museum of
+Paris, attest a powerful chisel. The <i>Milon</i> reminds one of the manner
+of Michael Angelo; it is a little overstrained, but it cannot be denied
+that the effect is striking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">{208}</a></span> Do you want a talent more natural, and
+still having force and elevation? Take the trouble to search in the
+Tuileries, in the gardens of Versailles, in several churches of Paris,
+for the scattered works of Girardon, here for the mausoleum of the
+Gondis,<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> there for that of the Castellans,<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> that of
+Louvois,<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> etc.; especially go to see in the church of the Sorbonne
+the mausoleum of Richelieu. The formidable minister is there represented
+in his last moments, sustained by religion and wept by his country. The
+whole person is of a perfect nobility, and the figure has the fineness,
+the severity, the superior distinction given to it by the pencil of
+Champagne, and the gravers of Morin, Michel Lasne, and Mellan.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, I do not regard as a vulgar sculptor Coysevox, who, under the
+influence of Lebrun, unfortunately begins the theatrical style, who
+still has the facility, movement, and elegance of Lebrun himself. He
+reared worthy monuments to Mazarin, Colbert, and Lebrun,<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> and thus
+to speak, sowed busts of the illustrious men of his time. For, remark it
+well, artists then took scarcely any arbitrary and fanciful subjects.
+They worked upon contemporaneous subjects, which, while giving them
+proper liberty, inspired and guided them, and communicated a public
+interest to their works. The French sculpture of the seventeenth
+century, like that of antiquity, is profoundly natural. The churches and
+the monasteries were filled with the statues of those who loved them
+during life, and wished to rest in them after death. Each church of
+Paris was a popular museum. The sumptuous residences of the
+aristocracy&mdash;for at that period, there was one in France, like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">{209}</a></span> that of
+England at the present time&mdash;possessed their secular tombs, statues,
+busts, and portraits of eminent men whose glory belonged to the country
+as well as their own family. On its side, the state did not encourage
+the arts in detail, and, thus to speak, in a small way; it gave them a
+powerful impulse by demanding of them important works, by confiding to
+them vast enterprises. All great things were thus mingled together,
+reciprocally inspired and sustained each other.</p>
+
+<p>One man alone in Europe has left a name in the beautiful art that
+surrounds a chateau or a palace with graceful gardens or magnificent
+parks,&mdash;that man is a Frenchman of the seventeenth century, is Le N&ocirc;tre.
+Le N&ocirc;tre may be reproached with a regularity that is perhaps excessive,
+and a little mannerism in details; but he has two qualities that
+compensate for many defects, grandeur and sentiment. He who designed the
+park of Versailles, who to the proper arrangement of parterres, to the
+movement of fountains, to the harmonious sound of waterfalls, to the
+mysterious shades of groves, has known how to add the magic of infinite
+perspective by means of that spacious walk where the view is extended
+over an immense sheet of water to be lost in the limitless
+distances,&mdash;he is a landscape-painter worthy of having a place by the
+side of Poussin and Lorrain.</p>
+
+<p>We had in the middle age our Gothic architecture, like all the nations
+of northern Europe. In the sixteenth century what architects were Pierre
+Lescot, Jean Bullant, and Philibert Delorme! What charming palaces, what
+graceful edifices, the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville of Paris, Chambord,
+and Ecouen! The seventeenth century also had its original architecture,
+different from that of the middle age and that of the <i>Renaissance</i>,
+simple, austere, noble, like the poetry of Corneille and the prose of
+Descartes. Study without scholastic prejudice the Luxembourg of de
+Brosses,<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">{210}</a></span> portal of Saint-Gervais, and the great hall of the
+Palais de Justice, by the same architect; the Palais Cardinal and the
+Sorbonne of Lemercier;<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> the cupola of Val-de-Gr&acirc;ce by Lemuet;<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a>
+the triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis by Fran&ccedil;ois Blondel;
+Versailles, and especially the Invalides, of Mansart.<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> Consider with
+attention the last edifice, let it make its impression on your mind and
+soul, and you will easily succeed in recognizing in it a particular
+beauty. It is not a Gothic monument, neither is it an almost Pagan
+monument of the sixteenth century,&mdash;it is modern, and also Christian; it
+is vast with measure, elegant with gravity. Contemplate at sunset that
+cupola reflecting the last rays of day, elevating itself gently towards
+the heavens in a slight and graceful curve; cross that imposing
+esplanade, enter that court admirably lighted in spite of its covered
+galleries, bow beneath the dome of that church where Vauban and Turenne
+sleep,&mdash;you will not be able to guard yourself from an emotion at once
+religious and military; you will say to yourself that this is indeed the
+asylum of warriors who have reached the evening of life and are prepared
+for eternity!</p>
+
+<p>Since then, what has French architecture become? Once having left
+tradition and national character, it wanders from imitation to
+imitation, and without comprehending the genius of antiquity, it
+unskilfully reproduces its forms. This bastard architecture, at once
+heavy and mannered, is, little by little, substituted for the beautiful
+architecture of the preceding century, and everywhere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">{211}</a></span> effaces the
+vestiges of the French spirit. Do you wish a striking example of it? In
+Paris, near the Luxembourg, the Cond&eacute;s had their <i>h&ocirc;tel</i>,<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a>
+magnificent and severe, with a military aspect, as it was fitting for
+the dwelling-place of a family of warriors, and within of almost royal
+splendor. Beneath those lofty ceilings had been some time suspended the
+Spanish flags taken at Rocroy. In those vast saloons had been assembled
+the <i>&eacute;lite</i> of the grandest society that ever existed. In those
+beautiful gardens had been seen promenading Corneille and Madame de
+S&eacute;vign&eacute;, Moli&egrave;re, Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, in the company of the great
+Cond&eacute;. The oratory had been painted by the hand of Lesueur.<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> It had
+been easy to repair and preserve the noble habitation. At the end of the
+eighteenth century, a descendant of the Cond&eacute;s sold it to a dismal
+company to build that palace without character and taste which is called
+the Palais-Bourbon. Almost at the same epoch there was a movement made
+to construct a church to the patroness of Paris, to that Genevi&egrave;ve,
+whose legend is so touching and so popular. Was there ever a better
+chance for a national and Christian monument? It was possible to return
+to the Gothic style and even to the Byzantine style. Instead of that
+there was made for us an immense Roman basilica of the Decline. What a
+dwelling for the modest and holy virgin, so dear to the fields that
+bordered upon Lut&egrave;ce, whose name is still venerated by the poor people
+who inhabit these quarters! Behold the church which has been placed by
+the side of that of Saint-Etienne du Mont, as if to make felt all the
+differences between Christianity and Paganism! For here, in spite of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">{212}</a></span>
+mixture of the most different styles, it is evident that the Pagan style
+predominates. Christian worship cannot be naturalized in this profane
+edifice, which has so many times changed its destination. It is in vain
+to call it anew Saint-Genevi&egrave;ve,&mdash;the revolutionary name of Pantheon
+will stick to it.<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> The eighteenth century treated the Madeleine no
+better than Saint-Genevi&egrave;ve. In vain the beautiful sinner wished to
+renounce the joys of the world and attach herself to the poverty of
+Jesus Christ. She has been brought back to the pomp and luxury that she
+repudiated; she has been put in a rich palace, all shining with gold,
+which might very well be a temple of Venus, for certainly it has not the
+severe grace of the Pantheon, of which it is the most vulgar copy. How
+far we are from the Invalides, from Val-de-Gr&acirc;ce, and the Sorbonne, so
+admirably appropriated to their object, wherein appears so well the hand
+of the century and the country which reared them!</p>
+
+<p>While architecture thus strays, it is natural that painting should seek
+above every thing color and brilliancy, that sculpture should apply
+itself to become Pagan again, that poetry itself, receding for two
+centuries, should abjure the worship of thought for that of fancy, that
+it should everywhere go borrowing images from Spain, Italy, and Germany,
+that it should run after subaltern and foreign qualities which it will
+not attain, and abandon the grand qualities of the French genius.</p>
+
+<p>It will be said that the Christian sentiment which animated Lesueur and
+the artists of the seventeenth century is wanting to those of ours; it
+is extinguished, and cannot be rekindled. In the first place, is that
+very certain? Native faith is dead, but cannot reflective faith take its
+place? Christianity is exhaustless; it has infinite resources, and
+admirable flexibility; there are a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">{213}</a></span> thousand ways of arriving at it and
+returning to it, because it has itself a thousand phases that answer to
+the most different dispositions, to all the wants, to all the mobility
+of the heart. What it loses on one side, it gains on another; and as it
+has produced our civilization, it is called to follow it in all its
+vicissitudes. Either every religion will perish in this world, or
+Christianity will endure, for it is not in the power of thought to
+conceive a more perfect religion. Artists of the nineteenth century, do
+not despair of God and yourselves. A superficial philosophy has thrown
+you far from Christianity considered in a strict sense; another
+philosophy can bring you near it again by making you see it with another
+eye. And then, if the religious sentiment is weakened, are there not
+other sentiments that can make the heart of man beat, and fecundate
+genius? Plato has said, that beauty is always old and always new. It is
+superior to all its forms, it belongs to all countries and all times; it
+belongs to all beliefs, provided these beliefs be serious and profound,
+and the need be felt of expressing and spreading them. If, then, we have
+not arrived at the boundary assigned to the grandeur of France, if we
+are not beginning to descend into the shade of death, if we still truly
+live, if there remain to us convictions, of whatever kind they may be,
+thereby even remains to us, or at least may remain to us, what made the
+glory of our fathers, what they did not carry with them to the tomb,
+what had already survived all revolutions, Greece, Rome, the Middle Age,
+what does not belong to any temporary or ephemeral accident, what
+subsists and is continually found in the focus of consciousness&mdash;I mean
+moral inspiration, immortal as the soul.</p>
+
+<p>Let us terminate here, and sum up this defence of the national art.
+There are in arts, as well as in letters and philosophy, two contrary
+schools. One tends to the ideal in all things,&mdash;it seeks, it tries to
+make appear the spirit concealed under the form, at once manifested and
+veiled by nature; it does not so much wish to please the senses and
+flatter the imagination as to enlarge the intellect and move the soul.
+The other, enamored of nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">{214}</a></span> stops there and devotes itself to
+imitation,&mdash;its principal object is to reproduce reality, movement,
+life, which are for it the supreme beauty. The France of the seventeenth
+century, the France of Descartes, Corneille, and Bossuet, highly
+spiritual in philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, was also highly
+spiritual in the arts. The artists of that great epoch participate in
+its general character, and represent it in their way. It is not true
+that they lacked imagination, more than Pascal and Bossuet lacked it.
+But inasmuch as they do not suffer imagination to usurp the dominion
+that does not belong to it, inasmuch as they subject its order, even its
+impetuosity, to the reign of reason and the inspirations of the heart,
+it seems that it is not so strong when it is only disciplined and
+regulated. As we have said, they excel in composition, especially in
+expression. They always have a thought, and a moral and elevated
+thought. For this reason they are dear to us, their cause interests us,
+is in some sort our own cause, and so this homage rendered to their
+misunderstood glory naturally crowns these lectures devoted to true
+beauty, that is to say, moral beauty.</p>
+
+<p>May these lectures be able to make it known, and, above all, loved! May
+they be able also to inspire some one of you with the idea of devoting
+himself to studies so beautiful, of devoting to them his life, and
+attaching to them his name! The sweetest recompense of a professor who
+is not too unworthy of that title, is to see rapidly following in his
+footsteps young and noble spirits who easily pass him and leave him far
+behind them.<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">{215}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_THIRD" id="PART_THIRD"></a>PART THIRD</h2>
+
+<h2>THE GOOD.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XI" id="LECTURE_XI"></a>LECTURE XI.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Extent of the question of the good.&mdash;Position of the question
+according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the
+good, the natural belief of mankind?&mdash;The natural beliefs of
+humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of
+nature.&mdash;Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages,
+in life, in consciousness.&mdash;Disinterestedness and
+devotedness.&mdash;Liberty.&mdash;Esteem and
+contempt.&mdash;Respect.&mdash;Admiration and
+indignation.&mdash;Dignity.&mdash;Empire of opinion.&mdash;Ridicule.&mdash;Regret
+and repentance.&mdash;Natural and necessary foundations of all
+justice.&mdash;Distinction between fact and right.&mdash;Common sense,
+true and false philosophy.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The idea of the true in its developments, comprises psychology, logic,
+and metaphysics. The idea of the beautiful begets what is called
+&aelig;sthetics. The idea of the good is the whole of ethics.</p>
+
+<p>It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics to confine them
+within the inclosure of individual consciousness. There are public
+ethics, as well as private ethics, and public ethics embrace, with the
+relations of men among themselves, so far as men, their relations as
+citizens and as members of a state. Ethics extend wherever is found in
+any decree the idea of the good. Now, where does this idea manifest
+itself more, and where do justice and injustice, virtue and crime,
+heroism and weakness appear more openly, than on the theatre of civil
+life? Moreover, is there any thing that has a more decisive influence
+over manners, even of individuals, than the institutions of peoples and
+the constitutions of states? If the idea of the good goes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">{216}</a></span> thus far, it
+must be followed thither, as recently the idea of the beautiful has
+introduced us into the domain of art.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy usurps no foreign power; but it is not disposed to relinquish
+its right of examination over all the great manifestations of human
+nature. All philosophy that does not terminate in ethics, is hardly
+worthy of the name, and all ethics that do not terminate at least in
+general views on society and government, are powerless ethics, that have
+neither counsels nor rules to give humanity in its most difficult
+trials.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the metaphysics and
+&aelig;sthetics that we have taught evidently involve such a doctrine of
+morality and not such another, that, accordingly, the question of the
+good, that question so fertile and so vast, is for us wholly solved, and
+that we can deduce, by way of reasoning, the moral theory that is
+derived from our theory of the beautiful and our theory of the true. We
+might do this, perhaps, but we will not. This would be abandoning the
+method that we have hitherto followed, that method that proceeds by
+observation, and not by deduction, and makes consulting experience a law
+to itself. We do not grow weary of experience. Let us attach ourselves
+faithfully to the psychological method; it has its delays; it condemns
+us to more than one repetition, but it places us in the beginning, and a
+long time retains us at the source of all reality, and all light.</p>
+
+<p>The first maxim of the psychological method is this: True philosophy
+invents nothing, it establishes and describes what is. Now here, what
+is, is the natural and permanent belief of the being that we are
+studying, to wit, man. What is, then, in relation to the good, the
+natural and permanent belief of the human race? Such is, in our eyes,
+the first question.</p>
+
+<p>With us, in fact, the human race does not take one side, and philosophy
+the other. Philosophy is the interpreter of the human race. What the
+human race thinks and believes, often unconsciously, philosophy
+re-collects, explains, establishes. It is the faithful and complete
+expression of human nature, and human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">{217}</a></span> nature is entire in each of us
+philosophers, and in every other man. Among us, it is attained by
+consciousness; among other men, it manifests itself in their words and
+actions. Let us, then, interrogate the latter and the former; let us
+especially interrogate our own consciousness; let us clearly recognize
+what the human race thinks; we shall then see what should be the office
+of philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Is there a human language known to us that has not different expressions
+for good and evil, for just and unjust? Is there any language, in which,
+by the side of the words pleasure, interest, utility, happiness, are not
+also found the words sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotedness, virtue?
+Do not all languages, as well as all nations, speak of liberty, duty,
+and right?</p>
+
+<p>Here, perhaps, some disciple of Condillac and Helvetius will ask us
+whether, in this regard, we possess authentic dictionaries of the
+language of savage tribes found by voyagers in the isles of the ocean?
+No; but we have not made our philosophic religion out of the
+superstitions and prejudices of a certain school. We absolutely deny
+that it is necessary to study human nature in the famous savage of
+Aveyron, or in the like of him of the isles of the ocean, or the
+American continent. The savage state offers us humanity in
+swaddling-clothes, thus to speak, the germ of humanity, but not humanity
+entire. The true man is the perfect man of his kind; true human nature
+is human nature arrived at its development, as true society is also
+perfected society. We do not think it worth the while to ask a savage
+his opinion on the Apollo Belvidere, neither will we ask him for the
+principles that constitute the moral nature of man, because in him this
+moral nature is only sketched and not completed. Our great philosophy of
+the seventeenth century was sometimes a little too much pleased with
+hypotheses in which God plays the principal part, and crushes human
+liberty.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> The philosophy of the eigh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">{218}</a></span>teenth century threw itself
+into the opposite extreme; it had recourse to hypotheses of a totally
+different character, among others, to a pretended natural state, whence
+it undertook, with infinite pains, to draw society and man as we now see
+them. Rousseau plunged into the forests, in order to find there the
+model of liberty and equality. That is the commencement of his politics.
+But wait a little, and soon you will see the apostle of the natural
+state, driven, by a necessary inconsequence, from one excess to an
+opposite excess, instead of the sweets of savage liberty, proposing to
+us the <i>Contrat Social and Lac&eacute;d&eacute;mone</i>. Condillac<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a> studies the human
+mind in a statue whose senses enter into exercise under the magic wand
+of a systematic analysis, and are developed in the measure and progress
+that are convenient to him. The statue successively acquires our five
+senses, but there is one thing that it does not acquire, that is, a mind
+like the human mind, and a soul like ours. And this was what was then
+called the experimental method! Let us leave there all those hypotheses.
+In order to understand reality, let us study it, and not imagine it. Let
+us take humanity as it is incontestably shown to us in its actual
+characters, and not as it may have been in a primitive, purely
+hypothetical state, in those unformed lineaments or that degradation
+which is called the savage state. In that, without doubt, may be found
+signs or <i>souvenirs</i> of humanity, and, if this were the plea, we might,
+in our turn, examine the recitals of voyages, and find, even in that
+darkness of infancy or decrepitude, admirable flashes of light, noble
+instincts, which already appear, or still subsist, presaging or
+recalling humanity. But, for the sake of exactness of method and true
+analysis, we turn our eyes from infancy and the savage state, in order
+to direct them towards the being who is the sole object of our studies,
+the actual man, the real and completed man.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know a language, a people, which does not possess the word
+disinterested virtue? Who is especially called an hon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">{219}</a></span>est man? Is it the
+skilful calculator, devoting himself to making his own affairs the best
+possible, or he who, under all circumstances, is disposed to observe
+justice against his apparent or real interest? Take away the idea that
+an honest man is capable, to a certain degree, of resisting the
+attractions of personal interest, and of making some sacrifices for
+opinion, for propriety, for that which is or appears honest, and you
+take away the foundation of that title of honest man, even in the most
+ordinary sense. That disposition to prefer what is good to our pleasure,
+to our personal utility, in a word, to interest&mdash;that disposition more
+or less strong, more or less constant, more or less tested, measures the
+different degrees of virtue. A man who carries disinterestedness as far
+as devotion, is called a hero, let him be concealed in the humblest
+condition, or placed on a public stage. There is devotedness in obscure
+as well as in exalted stations. There are heroes of probity, of honor,
+of loyalty, in the relations of ordinary life, as well as heroes of
+courage and patriotism in the counsels of peoples and at the head of
+armies. All these names, with their meaning well recognized, are in all
+languages, and constitute a certain and universal fact. We may explain
+this fact, but on one imperative condition, that in explaining we do not
+destroy it. Now, is the idea and the word disinterestedness explained to
+us by reducing disinterestedness to interest? This is what common sense
+invincibly repels.</p>
+
+<p>Poets have no system,&mdash;they address themselves to men as they really
+are, in order to produce in them certain effects. Is it skilful
+selfishness or disinterested virtue that poets celebrate? Do they demand
+our applause for the success of fortunate address, or for the voluntary
+sacrifices of virtue? The poet knows that there is at the foundation of
+the human soul I know not what marvellous power of disinterestedness and
+devotedness. In addressing himself to this instinct of the heart, he is
+sure of awakening a sublime echo, of opening every source of the
+pathetic.</p>
+
+<p>Consult the annals of the human race, and you will find in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">{220}</a></span> them man
+everywhere, and more and more, claiming his liberty. This word liberty
+is as old as man himself. What then! Men wish to be free, and man
+himself should not be free! The word nevertheless exists with the most
+determined signification. It signifies that man believes himself a free
+being, not only animated and sensible, but endowed with will, a will
+that belongs to him, that consequently cannot admit over itself the
+tyranny of another will which would make, in regard to him, the office
+of fatality, even were it that of the most beneficent fatality. Do you
+suppose that the word liberty could ever have been formed, if the thing
+itself did not exist? None but a free being could possess the idea of
+liberty. Will it be said that the liberty of man is only an illusion?
+The wishes of the human race are then the most inexplicable
+extravagance. In denying the essential distinction between liberty and
+fatality, we contradict all languages and all received notions; we have,
+it is true, the advantage of absolving tyrants, but we degrade heroes.
+They have, then, fought and died for a chimera!</p>
+
+<p>All languages contain the words esteem and contempt. To esteem, to
+despise,&mdash;these are universal expressions, certain phenomena, from which
+an impartial analysis can draw the highest notions. Can we despise a
+being who, in his acts, should not be free, a being who should not know
+the good, and should not feel himself obligated to fulfil it? Suppose
+that the good is not essentially different from the evil, suppose that
+there is in the world only interest more or less well understood, that
+there is no real duty, and that man is not essentially a free being,&mdash;it
+is impossible to explain rationally the word contempt. It is the same
+with the word esteem.</p>
+
+<p>Esteem is a fact which, faithfully expressed, contains a complete
+philosophy as solid as generous. Esteem has two certain characters: 1st,
+It is a disinterested sentiment in the soul of him who feels it; 2d, It
+is applied only to disinterested acts. We do not esteem at will, and
+because it is our interest to esteem. Neither do we esteem an action or
+a person because they have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">{221}</a></span> been successful. Success, fortunate
+calculation, may make us envied; it does not bring esteem, which has
+another price.</p>
+
+<p>Esteem in a certain degree, and under certain circumstances, is
+respect,&mdash;respect, a holy and sacred word which the most subtile or the
+loosest analysis will never degrade to expressing a sentiment that is
+related to ourselves, and is applied to actions crowned by fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Take again these two words, these two facts analogous to the first two,
+admiration and indignation. Esteem and contempt are rather judgments;
+indignation and admiration are sentiments, but sentiments that pertain
+to intelligence and envelop a judgment.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a></p>
+
+<p>Admiration is an essentially disinterested sentiment. See whether there
+is any interest in the world that has the power to give you admiration
+for any thing or any person. If you were interested, you might feign
+admiration, but you would not feel it. A tyrant with death in his hand,
+may constrain you to appear to admire, but not to admire in reality.
+Even affection does not determine admiration; whilst a heroic trait,
+even in an enemy, compels you to admire.</p>
+
+<p>The phenomenon opposed to admiration is indignation. Indignation is no
+more anger than admiration is desire. Anger is wholly personal.
+Indignation is never directly related to us; it may have birth in the
+midst of circumstances wherein we are engaged, but the foundation and
+the dominant character of the phenomenon in itself is to be
+disinterested. Indignation is in its nature generous. If I am a victim
+of an injustice, I may feel at once anger and indignation, anger against
+him that injures me, indignation towards him who is unjust to one of his
+fellow-men. We may be indignant towards ourselves; we are indignant
+towards every thing that wounds the sentiment of justice. Indignation
+covers a judgment, the judgment that he who commits such or such an
+action, whether against us, or even for us, does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">{222}</a></span> an action unworthy,
+contrary to our dignity, to his own dignity, to human dignity. The
+injury sustained is not the measure of indignation, as the advantage
+received is not that of admiration. We felicitate ourselves on
+possessing or having acquired a useful thing; but we never admire, on
+that account, either ourselves or the thing that we have just acquired.
+So we repel the stone that wounds us, we do not feel indignant towards
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Admiration elevates and ennobles the soul. The generous parts of human
+nature are disengaged and exalted in presence of, and as it were in
+contact with, the image of the good. This is the reason why admiration
+is already by itself so beneficent, even should it be deceived in its
+object. Indignation is the result of these same generous parts of the
+soul, which, wounded by injustice, are highly roused and protest in the
+name of offended human dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Look at men in action, and you will see them imposing upon themselves
+great sacrifices in order to conquer the suffrages of their fellows. The
+empire of opinion is immense,&mdash;vanity alone does not explain it; it
+doubtless also pertains to vanity, but it has deeper and better roots.
+We judge that other men are, like us, sensible to good and evil, that
+they distinguish between virtue and vice, that they are capable of being
+indignant and admiring, of esteeming and respecting, as well as
+despising. This power is in us, we have consciousness of it, we know
+that other men possess it as well as we, and it is this power that
+frightens us. Opinion is our own consciousness transferred to the
+public, and there disengaged from all complaisance and armed with an
+inflexible severity. To the remorse in our own hearts, responds the
+shame in that second soul which we have made ourselves, and is called
+public opinion. We must not be astonished at the sweets of popularity.
+We are more sure of having done well, when to the testimony of our
+consciousness we are able to join that of the consciousness of our
+fellow-men. There is only one thing that can sustain us against opinion,
+and even place us above it: it is the firm and sure testimony of our
+consciousness, because, in fine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">{223}</a></span> the public and the whole human race
+are compelled to judge us according to appearance, whilst we judge
+ourselves infallibly and by the most certain of all knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Ridicule is the fear of opinion in small things. The force of ridicule
+is wholly in the supposition that there is a common taste, a common type
+of what is proper, that directs men in their judgments, and even in
+their pleasantries, which in their way are also judgments. Without this
+supposition, ridicule falls of itself, and pleasantry loses its sting.
+But it is immortal, as well as the distinction between good and evil,
+between the beautiful and the ugly, between what is proper and what is
+improper.</p>
+
+<p>When we have not succeeded in any measure undertaken for our interest
+and prosperity, we experience a sentiment of pain that is called regret.
+But we do not confound regret with that other sentiment that rises in
+the soul when we are conscious of having done something morally bad.
+This sentiment is also a pain, but of quite a different nature,&mdash;it is
+remorse, repentance. That we have lost in play, for example, is
+disagreeable to us; but if, in gaining, we have the consciousness of
+having deceived our adversary, we experience a very different sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>We might prolong and vary these examples. We have said enough to be
+entitled to conclude that human language and the sentiments that it
+expresses are inexplicable, if we do not admit the essential distinction
+between good and evil, between virtue and crime, crime founded on
+interest, virtue founded on disinterestedness.</p>
+
+<p>Disturb this distinction, and you disturb human life and entire society.
+Permit me to take an extreme, tragic, and terrible example. Here is a
+man that has just been judged. He has been condemned to death, and is
+about to be executed&mdash;to be deprived of life. And why? Place yourself in
+the system that does not admit the essential distinction between good
+and evil, and ponder on what is stupidly atrocious in this act of human
+justice. What has the condemned done? Evidently a thing indifferent in
+itself. For if there is no other outward distinction than that of
+pleasure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">{224}</a></span> and pain, I defy any one to qualify any human action, whatever
+it may be, as criminal, without the most absurd inconsequence. But this
+thing, indifferent in itself, a certain number of men, called
+legislators, have declared to be a crime. This purely arbitrary
+declaration has found no echo in the heart of this man. He has not been
+able to feel the justice of it, since there is nothing in itself just.
+He has therefore done, without remorse, what this declaration
+arbitrarily interdicted. The court proceeds to prove to him that he has
+not succeeded, but not that he has done contrary to justice, for there
+is no justice. I maintain that every condemnation, be it to death, or to
+any punishment whatever, imperatively supposes, in order to be any thing
+else than a repression of violence by violence, the four following
+points:&mdash;1st, That there is an essential distinction between good and
+evil, justice and injustice, and that to this distinction is attached,
+for every intelligent and free being, the obligation of conforming to
+good and justice; 2d, That man is an intelligent and free being, capable
+of comprehending this distinction, and the obligation that accompanies
+it, and of adhering to it naturally, independently of all convention,
+and every positive law; capable also of resisting the temptations that
+bear him towards evil and injustice, and of fulfilling the sacred law of
+natural justice; 3d, That every act contrary to justice deserves to be
+repressed by force, and even punished in reparation of the fault
+committed, and independently too of all law and all convention; 4th,
+That man naturally recognizes the distinction between the merit and
+demerit of actions, as he recognizes the distinction between the just
+and the unjust, and knows that every penalty applied to an unjust act is
+itself most strictly just.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the foundations of that power of judging and punishing which is
+entire society. Society has not made those principles for its own use;
+they are much anterior to it, they are contemporaneous with thought and
+the soul, and upon these rests society, with its laws and its
+institutions. Laws are legitimate by their relation to these eternal
+laws. The surest power of in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">{225}</a></span>stitutions resides in the respect that
+these principles bear with them and extend to every thing that
+participates in them. Education develops them, it does not create them.
+They direct the legislator who makes the law, and the judge who applies
+it. They are present to the accused brought before the tribunal, they
+inspire every just sentence, they give it authority in the soul of the
+condemned, and in that of the spectator, and they consecrate the
+employment of force necessary for his execution. Take away a single one
+of these principles, and all human justice is overthrown, no longer is
+there any thing but a mass of arbitrary conventions which no one in
+conscience is bound to respect, which may be violated without remorse,
+which are sustained only by the display of extreme punishments. The
+decisions of such a justice are not true judgments, but acts of force,
+and civil society is only an arena where men contend with each other
+without duties and rights, without any other object than that of
+procuring for themselves the greatest possible amount of enjoyment, of
+procuring it by conquest and preserving it by force or cunning, save
+throwing over all that the cloak of hypocritical laws.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, such is the aspect under which skepticism makes us consider
+society and human justice, driving us through despair to revolt and
+disorder, and bringing us back through despair again to quite another
+yoke than that of reason and virtue, to that regulated disorder which is
+called despotism. The spectacle of human things, viewed coolly, and
+without the spirit of system, is, thank God, less sombre. Without doubt,
+society and human justice have still many imperfections which time
+discovers and corrects; but it may be said, that in general they rest on
+truth and natural equity. The proof of it is, that society everywhere
+subsists, and is even developed. Moreover, facts, were they such as the
+melancholy pen of a Pascal or a Rousseau represent them to be, facts are
+not all,&mdash;before facts is right; and this idea of right alone, if it is
+real, suffices to overturn an abasing system, and save human dignity.
+Now, is the idea of right a chimera? I again appeal to languages, to
+individual consciousness, to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">{226}</a></span> human race,&mdash;is it not true that fact
+is everywhere distinguished from right, fact which too often, perhaps,
+but not always, as it is said, is opposed to right; and right that
+subdues and rules fact, or protests against it? What word is it that
+restrains most in human societies? Is it not that of right? Look for a
+language that does not contain it. On all sides, society is bristling
+with rights. There is even a distinction made between natural right and
+positive right, between what is legal and what is equitable. It is
+proclaimed that force should be in the service of right, and not right
+at the mercy of force. The triumphs of force, wherever we perceive them,
+either under our eyes, or by the aid of history in bygone centuries, or
+by favor of universal publicity beyond the ocean, and in foreign
+continents, rouse indignation in the disinterested spectator or reader.
+On the contrary, he who inscribes on his banner the name of right, by
+that alone interests us; the cause of right, or what we suppose to be
+the cause of right, is for us the cause of humanity. It is also a fact,
+and an incontestable fact, that in the eyes of man fact is not every
+thing, and that the idea of right is a universal idea, graven in shining
+and ineffaceable characters, if not in the visible world, at least in
+that of thought and the soul; concerning that is the question; it is
+also that which in the long run reforms and governs the other.</p>
+
+<p>Individual consciousness, conceived and transferred to the entire
+species, is called common sense. It is common sense that has made, that
+sustains, that develops languages, natural and permanent beliefs,
+society and its fundamental institutions. Grammarians have not invented
+languages, nor legislators societies, nor philosophers general beliefs.
+All these things have not been personally done, but by the whole
+world,&mdash;by the genius of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Common sense is deposited in its works. All languages, and all human
+institutions contain the ideas and the sentiments that we have just
+called to mind and described, and especially the distinction between
+good and evil, between justice and injustice, between free will and
+desire, between duty and interest, between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">{227}</a></span> virtue and happiness, with
+the profoundly rooted belief that happiness is a recompense due to
+virtue, and that crime in itself deserves to be punished, and calls for
+the reparation of a just suffering.</p>
+
+<p>These things are attested by the words and actions of men. Such are the
+sincere and impartial, but somewhat confused, somewhat gross notions of
+common sense.</p>
+
+<p>Here begins the part of philosophy. It has before it two different
+routes; it can do one of two things: either accept the notions of common
+sense, elucidate them, thereby develop and increase them, and, by
+faithfully expressing them, fortify the natural beliefs of humanity; or,
+preoccupied with such or such a principle, impose it upon the natural
+data of common sense, admit those that agree with this principle,
+artificially bend the others to these, or openly deny them; this is what
+is called making a system.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophic systems are not philosophy; they try to realize the idea of
+it, as civil institutions try to realize that of justice, as the arts
+express in their way infinite beauty, as the sciences pursue universal
+science. Philosophic systems are necessarily very imperfect, otherwise
+there never would have been two systems in the world. Fortunate are
+those that go on doing good, that expand in the minds and souls of men,
+with some innocent errors, the sacred love of the true, the beautiful,
+and the good! But philosophic systems follow their times much more than
+they direct them; they receive their spirit from the hands of their age.
+Transferred to France towards the close of the regency and under the
+reign of Louis XV., the philosophy of Locke gave birth there to a
+celebrated school, which for a long time governed and still subsists
+among us, protected by ancient habits, but in radical opposition to our
+new institutions and our new wants. Sprung from the bosom of tempests,
+nourished in the cradle of a revolution, brought up under the bad
+discipline of the genius of war, the nineteenth century cannot recognize
+its image and find its instincts in a philosophy born under the
+influence of the voluptuous refine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">{228}</a></span>ments of Versailles, admirably fitted
+for the decrepitude of an arbitrary monarchy, but not for the laborious
+life of a young liberty surrounded with perils. As for us, after having
+combated the philosophy of sensation in the metaphysics which it
+substituted for Cartesianism, and in the deplorable &aelig;sthetics, now too
+accredited, under which succumbed our great national art of the
+seventeenth century, we do not hesitate to combat it again in the ethics
+that were its necessary product, the ethics of interest.</p>
+
+<p>The exposition and refutation of these pretended ethics will be the
+subject of the next lecture.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">{229}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XII" id="LECTURE_XII"></a>LECTURE XII.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Exposition of the doctrine of interest.&mdash;What there is of truth
+in this doctrine.&mdash;Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and
+desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the
+fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot
+explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the
+principle of merit and demerit.&mdash;Consequences of the ethics of
+interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to
+despotism.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The philosophy of sensation, setting out from a single fact, agreeable
+or painful sensation, necessarily arrives in ethics at a single
+principle,&mdash;interest. The whole of the system may be explained as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>Man is sensible to pleasure and pain: he shuns the one and seeks the
+other. That is his first instinct, and this instinct will never abandon
+him. Pleasure may change so far as its object is concerned, and be
+diversified in a thousand ways: but whatever form it takes,&mdash;physical
+pleasure, intellectual pleasure, moral pleasure, it is always pleasure
+that man pursues.</p>
+
+<p>The agreeable generalized is the useful; and the greatest possible sum
+of pleasure, whatever it may be, no longer concentrated within such or
+such an instant, but distributed over a certain extent of duration, is
+happiness.<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">{230}</a></span></p><p>Happiness, like pleasure, is relative to him who experiences it; it is
+essentially personal. Ourselves, and ourselves alone we love, in loving
+pleasure and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Interest is that which prompts us to seek in every thing our pleasure
+and our happiness.</p>
+
+<p>If happiness is the sole end of life, interest is the sole motive of all
+our actions.</p>
+
+<p>Man is only sensible to his interest, but he understands it well or ill.
+Much art is necessary in order to be happy. We are not ready to give
+ourselves up to all the pleasures that are offered on the highway of
+life, without examining whether these pleasures do not conceal many a
+pain. Present pleasure is not every thing,&mdash;it is necessary to take
+thought for the future; it is necessary to know how to renounce joys
+that may bring regret, and sacrifice pleasure to happiness, that is to
+say, to pleasure still, but pleasure more enduring and less
+intoxicating. The pleasures of the body are not the only ones,&mdash;there
+are other pleasures, those of mind, even those of opinion: the sage
+tempers them by each other.</p>
+
+<p>The ethics of interest are nothing else than the ethics of perfected
+pleasure, substituting happiness for pleasure, the useful for the
+agreeable, prudence for passion. It admits, like the human race, the
+words good and evil, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, punishment and
+reward, but it explains them in its own way. The good is that which in
+the eyes of reason is conformed to our true interest; evil is that which
+is contrary to our true interest. Virtue is that wisdom which knows how
+to resist the enticement of passions, discerns what is truly useful, and
+surely proceeds to happiness. Vice is that aberration of mind and
+character that sacrifices happiness to pleasures without duration or
+full of dangers. Merit and demerit, punishment and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">{231}</a></span> reward, are the
+consequences of virtue and vice:&mdash;for not knowing how to seek happiness
+by the road of wisdom, we are punished by not attaining it. The ethics
+of interest do not pretend to destroy any of the duties consecrated by
+public opinion; it establishes that all are conformed to our personal
+interest, and it is thereby that they are duties. To do good to men is
+the surest means of making them do good to us; and it is also the means
+of acquiring their esteem, their good will, and their sympathy,&mdash;always
+agreeable, and often useful. Disinterestedness itself has its
+explanation. Doubtless there is no disinterestedness in the vulgar sense
+of the word, that is to say, a real sacrifice of self, which is absurd,
+but there is the sacrifice of present interest to future interest, of
+gross and sensual passion to a nobler and more delicate pleasure.
+Sometimes one renders to himself a bad account of the pleasure that he
+pursues, and in fault of seeing clearly into his own heart, invents that
+chimera of disinterestedness of which human nature is incapable, which
+it cannot even comprehend.</p>
+
+<p>It will be conceded that this explanation of the ethics of interest is
+not overcharged, that it is faithful.</p>
+
+<p>We go further,&mdash;we acknowledge that these ethics are an extreme, but, up
+to a certain point, a legitimate reaction against the excessive rigor of
+stoical ethics, especially ascetic ethics that smother sensibility
+instead of regulating it, and, in order to save the soul from passions,
+demands of it a sacrifice of all the passions of nature that resembles a
+suicide.</p>
+
+<p>Man was not made to be a sublime slave, like Epictetus, employed in
+supporting bad fortune well without trying to surmount it, nor, like the
+author of the <i>Imitation</i>, the angelic inhabitant of a cloister, calling
+for death as a fortunate deliverance, and anticipating it, as far as in
+him lies, by continual penitence and in mute adoration. The love of
+pleasure, even the passions, have a place among the needs of humanity.
+Suppress the passions, and it is true there is no more excess; neither
+is there any mainspring of action,&mdash;without winds the vessel no longer
+proceeds, and soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">{232}</a></span> sinks in the deep. Suppose a being that lacks love
+of self, the instinct of preservation, the horror of suffering,
+especially the horror of death, who has neither the love of pleasure nor
+the love of happiness, in a word, destitute of all personal
+interest,&mdash;such a being will not long resist the innumerable causes of
+destruction that surround and besiege him; he will not remain a day.
+Never can a single family, nor the least society be formed or
+maintained. He who has made man has not confided the care of his work to
+virtue alone, to devotedness and sublime charity,&mdash;he has willed that
+the duration and development of the race and human society should be
+placed upon simpler and surer foundations; and this is the reason why he
+has given to man the love of self, the instinct of preservation, the
+taste of pleasure and happiness, the passions that animate life, hope
+and fear, love, ambition, personal interest, in fine, a powerful,
+permanent, universal motive that urges us on to continually ameliorate
+our condition upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p>So we do not contest with the ethics of interest the reality of their
+principle,&mdash;we are convinced that this principle exists, that it has a
+right to be. The only question that we raise is the following:&mdash;The
+principle of interest is true in itself, but are there not other
+principles quite as true, quite as real? Man seeks pleasure and
+happiness, but are there not in him other needs, other sentiments as
+powerful, as vital? The first and universal principle of human life is
+the need of the individual to preserve himself; but would this principle
+suffice to support human life and society entire and as we behold it?</p>
+
+<p>Just as the existence of the body does not hinder that of the soul, and
+reciprocally, so in the ample bosom of humanity and the profound designs
+of divine Providence, the principles that differ most do not exclude
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>The philosophy of sensation continually appeals to experience. We also
+invoke experience; and it is experience that has given us certain facts
+mentioned in the preceding lecture, which constitute the primary notions
+of common sense. We admit the facts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">{233}</a></span> that serve as a foundation for the
+system of interest, and reject the system. The facts are true in their
+proper bearing,&mdash;the system is false in attributing to them an
+excessive, limitless bearing; and it is false again in denying other
+facts quite as incontestable. A sound philosophy holds for its primary
+law to collect all real facts and respect the real differences that also
+distinguish them. What it pursues before all, is not unity, but
+truth.<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> Now the ethics of interest mutilate truth,&mdash;they choose
+among facts those that agree with them, and reject all the others, which
+are precisely the very facts of morality. Exclusive and intolerant, they
+deny what they do not explain,&mdash;they form a whole well united, which, as
+an artificial work, may have its merit, but is broken to pieces as soon
+as it comes to encounter human nature with its grand parts.</p>
+
+<p>We are about to show that the ethics of interest, an offspring of the
+philosophy of sensation, are in contradiction with a certain number of
+phenomena, which human nature presents to whomsoever interrogates it
+without the spirit of system.</p>
+
+<p>1st. We have established, not in the name of a system, but in the name
+of the most common experience, that entire humanity believes in the
+existence, in each of its members, of a certain force, a certain power
+that is called liberty. Because it believes in liberty in the
+individual, it desires that this liberty should be respected and
+protected in society. Liberty is a fact that the consciousness of each
+of us attests to him, which, moreover, is enveloped in all the moral
+phenomena that we have signalized, in moral approbation and
+disapprobation, in esteem and contempt, in admiration and indignation,
+in merit and demerit, in punishment and reward. We ask the philosophy of
+sensation and the ethics of interest what they do with this universal
+phenomena which all the beliefs of humanity suppose, on which entire
+life, private and public, turns.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">{234}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every system of ethics, whatever it may be, which contains, I do not say
+a rule, but a simple advice, implicitly admits liberty. When the ethics
+of interest advise a man to sacrifice the agreeable to the useful, it
+apparently admits that man is free to follow or not to follow this
+advice. But in philosophy it does not suffice to admit a fact, there
+must be the right to admit it. Now, most moralists of interest deny the
+liberty of man, and no one has the right to admit it in a system that
+derives the entire human soul, all its faculties as well as all its
+ideas, from sensation alone and its developments.</p>
+
+<p>When an agreeable sensation, after having charmed our soul, quits it and
+vanishes, the soul experiences a sort of suffering, a want, a need,&mdash;it
+is agitated, disquieted. This disquietude, at first vague and
+indecisive, is soon determined; it is borne towards the object that has
+pleased us, whose absence makes us suffer. This movement of the soul,
+more or less vivid, is desire.</p>
+
+<p>Is there in desire any of the characters of liberty? What is it called
+to be free? Each one knows that he is free, when he knows that he is
+master of his action, that he can begin it, arrest it, or continue it as
+he pleases. We are free, when before acting we have taken the resolution
+to act, knowing well that we are able to take the opposite resolution. A
+free act is that of which, by the infallible testimony of my
+consciousness, I know that I am the cause, for which, therefore, I
+regard myself as responsible. God, the world, the body, can produce in
+me a thousand movements; these movements may seem to the eyes of an
+external observer to be voluntary acts; but any error is impossible to
+consciousness,&mdash;it distinguishes every movement not voluntary, whatever
+it may be, from a voluntary act.</p>
+
+<p>True activity is voluntary and free activity. Desire is just the
+opposite. Desire, carried to its culmination, is passion; but language,
+as well as consciousness, says that man is passive in passion; and the
+more vivid passion is, the more imperative are its movements, the
+farther is it from the type of true activity in which the soul possesses
+and governs itself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">{235}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I am no more free in desire than in the sensation that precedes and
+determines it. If an agreeable object is presented to me, am I able not
+to be agreeably moved? If it is a painful object, am I able not to be
+painfully moved? And so, when this agreeable sensation has disappeared,
+if memory and imagination remind me of it, is it in my power not to
+suffer from no longer experiencing it, is it in my power not to feel the
+need of experiencing it again, and to desire more or less ardently the
+object that alone can appease the disquietude and suffering of my soul?</p>
+
+<p>Observe well what takes place within you in desire; you recognize in it
+a blind emotion, that, without any deliberation on your part, and
+without the intervention of your will, rises or falls, increases or
+diminishes. One does not desire, and cease to desire, according to his
+will.</p>
+
+<p>Will often combats desire, as it often also yields to it; it is not,
+therefore, desire. We do not reproach the sensations that objects
+produce, nor even the desires that these sensations engender; we do
+reproach ourselves for the consent of the will to these desires, and the
+acts that follow, for these acts are in our power.</p>
+
+<p>Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and leads man into
+acts that he does not impute to himself, for they are not voluntary. It
+is even the refuge of many of the accused; they lay their faults to the
+violence of desire and passion, which have not left them masters of
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire the freer we
+should be. Evidently the contrary is true. As the violence of desire
+increases, the dominion of man over himself decreases; and as desire is
+weakened and passion extinguished, man repossesses himself.</p>
+
+<p>I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. That two facts
+differ, it does not follow that they must be without relation to each
+other. By removing certain objects, or even by merely diverting our
+thoughts away from the pleasure that they can give us, we are able, to a
+certain extent, to turn aside and elude the sensible effects of these
+objects, and escape the desire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">{236}</a></span> which they might excite in us. One may
+also, by surrounding himself with certain objects, in some sort manage
+himself, and produce in himself sensations and desires which for that
+are not more voluntary than would be the impression made upon us by a
+stone with which we should strike ourselves. By yielding to these
+desires, we lend them a new force, and we moderate them by a skilful
+resistance. One even has some power over the organs of the body, and, by
+applying to them an appropriate regimen, he goes so far as to modify
+their functions. All this proves that there is in us a power different
+from the senses and desire, which, without disposing of them, sometimes
+exercises over them an indirect authority.</p>
+
+<p>Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelligence. To will
+and to know are two things essentially different. We do not judge as we
+will, but according to the necessary laws of the judgment and the
+understanding. The knowledge of truth is not a resolution of the will.
+It is not the will that declares, for example, that body is extended,
+that it is in space, that every phenomenon has a cause, etc. Yet the
+will has much power over intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that
+we work, that we give attention, for a longer or a shorter time, more or
+less intense, to certain things; consequently, it is the will that
+develops and increases intelligence, as it might let it languish and
+become extinguished. It must, then, be avowed that there is in us a
+supreme power that presides over all our faculties, over intelligence as
+well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, and is mingled
+with them, governs them, or leaves them to their natural development,
+making appear, even in its absence, the character that belongs to it,
+since the man that is deprived of it avows that he is no longer master
+of himself, that he is not himself, so true is it that human personality
+resides particularly in that prominent power that is called the
+will.<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">{237}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, and yet so
+manifest! Strange confounding of will and desire, wherein the most
+opposite schools meet each other, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Condillac,
+the philosophy of the seventeenth century, and that of the eighteenth!
+One, a despiser of humanity, by an extreme and ill-understood piety,
+strips man of his own activity, in order to concentrate it in God; the
+other transfers it to nature. In both man is a mere instrument, nothing
+else than a mode of God or a product of nature. When desire is once
+taken as the type of human activity, there is an end of all liberty and
+personality. A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to
+facts, carries through common sense to better results. By distinguishing
+between the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely
+determining self, it restores the true activity that characterizes human
+personality. The will is the infallible sign and the peculiar power of a
+real and effective being; for how could he who should be only a mode of
+another being find in his own borrowed being a power capable of willing
+and producing acts of which he should feel himself the cause, and the
+responsible cause?</p>
+
+<p>If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from passive phenomena,
+cannot explain true activity, voluntary and free activity, we might
+regard it as demonstrated that this same philosophy cannot give a true
+doctrine of morality, for all ethics suppose liberty. In order to impose
+rules of action on a being, it is necessary that this being should be
+capable of fulfilling or violating them. What makes the good and evil of
+an action is not the action itself, but the intention that has
+determined it. Before every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the
+intention, and to the intention the punishment is attached. Where, then,
+liberty is wanting, where there is nothing but desire and passion, not
+even a shade of morality subsists. But we do not wish to reject, by the
+previous question, the ethics of sensation. We proceed to examine in
+itself the principle that they lay down, and to show that from this
+principle can be deduced neither the idea of good and evil, nor any of
+the moral ideas that are attached to it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">{238}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good is nothing else
+than the useful. By substituting the useful for the agreeable, without
+changing the principle, there has been contrived a convenient refuge
+against many difficulties; for it will always be possible to distinguish
+interest well understood from apparent and vulgar interest. But even
+under this somewhat refined form, the doctrine that we are examining
+none the less destroys the distinction between good and evil.</p>
+
+<p>If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, I must
+consider only one thing when an action is proposed to me to do,&mdash;what
+advantages can result from it to me?</p>
+
+<p>So I make the supposition that a friend, whose innocence is known to me,
+falls into disfavor with a king, or opinion&mdash;a mistress more jealous and
+imperious than all kings,&mdash;and that there is danger in remaining
+faithful to him and advantage in separating myself from him; if, on one
+side, the danger is certain, and on the other the advantage is
+infallible, it is clear that I must either abandon my unfortunate
+friend, or renounce the principle of interest&mdash;of interest well
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>But it will be said to me:&mdash;think on the uncertainty of human things;
+remember that misfortune may also overtake you, and do not abandon your
+friend, through fear that you may one day be abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, but the
+present is certain; if I can reap great and unmistakable advantages from
+an action, it would be absurd to sacrifice them to the chance of a
+possible misfortune. Besides, according to my supposition, all the
+chances of the future are in my favor,&mdash;this is the hypothesis that we
+have made.</p>
+
+<p>Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal interest is the only
+rational principle, the public reason must be with me. If it were
+against me, it would be an objection against the truth of the principle.
+For how could a true principle, rationally applied, be revolting to the
+public conscience?</p>
+
+<p>Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I feel for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">{239}</a></span> having
+followed the truth, if the principle of interest is in fact moral truth?
+On the contrary, I should feel satisfaction on account of it.</p>
+
+<p>The rewards and punishments of another life remain. But how are we to
+believe in another life, in a system that confines human consciousness
+within the limits of transformed sensation?</p>
+
+<p>I have, then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. And mankind
+nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity; and, if I am wanting in it, I
+am dishonored.</p>
+
+<p>If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil are not in the act
+itself, but in its happy or unhappy results.</p>
+
+<p>Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There is a man who has
+calculated badly." Whence it follows that, if this man, in doing what he
+did, could have escaped punishment, he would have calculated well, and
+his conduct would have been laudable. The action then becomes good or
+ill according to the issue. Every act is of itself indifferent, and it
+is lot that qualifies it.</p>
+
+<p>If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calculation is the
+highest wisdom; it is even virtue!</p>
+
+<p>But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. It supposes, with
+long experience of life, a sure insight, capable of discerning all the
+consequences of actions, a head strong and large enough to embrace and
+weigh their different chances. The young man, the ignorant, the poor in
+mind, are not able to distinguish between the good and the evil, the
+honest and the dishonest. And even in supposing the most consummate
+prudence, what place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things,
+for chance and the unforeseen! In truth, in the system of interest well
+understood, there must be great knowledge in order to be an honest man.
+Much less is requisite for ordinary virtue, whose motto has always been:
+Do what you ought, let come what may.<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> But this principle is
+precisely the opposite of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">{240}</a></span> principle of interest. It is necessary to
+choose between them. If interest is the only principle avowed by reason,
+disinterestedness is a lie and madness, and literally an
+incomprehensible monster in well-ordered human nature.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and thereby it does
+not simply mean that wise selfishness that deprives itself of a pleasure
+for a surer, more delicate, or more durable pleasure. No one has ever
+believed that it was the nature or the degree of the pleasure sought
+that constituted disinterestedness. This name is awarded only to the
+sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may be, to a motive free from all
+interest. And the human race, not only thus understands
+disinterestedness, but it believes that such a disinterestedness exists;
+it believes the human soul capable of it. It admires the devotedness of
+Regulus, because it does not see what interest could have impelled that
+great man to go far from his country to seek, among cruel enemies, a
+frightful death, when he might have lived tranquil and even honored in
+the midst of his family and his fellow-citizens.</p>
+
+<p>But glory, it will be said, the passion of glory inspired Regulus; it
+is, then, interest still that explains the apparent heroism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">{241}</a></span> of the old
+Roman. Admit, then, that this manner of understanding his interest is
+even ridiculously absurd, and that heroes are very unskilful and
+inconsistent egoists. Instead of erecting statues, with the deceived
+human race, to Regulus, d'Assas, and St. Vincent de Paul, true
+philosophy must send them to the Petites-Maisons, that a good regime may
+cure them of generosity, charity, and greatness of soul, and restore
+them to the sane state, the normal state, the state in which man only
+thinks of himself, and knows no other law, no other principle of action
+than his interest.</p>
+
+<p>3d. If there is no liberty, if there is no essential distinction between
+good and evil, if there is only interest well or ill understood, there
+can be no obligation.</p>
+
+<p>It is at first very evident that obligation supposes a being capable of
+fulfilling it, that duty is applied only to a free being. Then the
+nature of obligation is such, that if we are delinquent in fulfilling
+it, we feel ourselves culpable, whilst if, instead of understanding our
+interest well, we have understood it ill, there follows only a single
+thing, that we are unfortunate. Are, then, being culpable and being
+unfortunate the same thing? These are two ideas radically different. You
+may advise me to understand my interest well, under penalty of falling
+into misfortune; you cannot command me to see clearly in regard to my
+interest under penalty of crime.</p>
+
+<p>Imprudence has never been considered a crime. When it is morally
+accused, it is much less as being wrong than as attesting vices of the
+soul, lightness, presumption, feebleness.</p>
+
+<p>As we have said, our true interest is often most difficult of
+discernment. Obligation is always immediate and manifest. In vain
+passion and desire combat it; in vain the reasoning that passion trains
+for its attendance, like a docile slave, tries to smother it under a
+mass of sophisms: the instinct of conscience, a cry of the soul, an
+intuition of reason, different from reasoning, is sufficient to repel
+all sophisms, and make obligation appear.</p>
+
+<p>However pressing may be the solicitations of interest, we may always
+enter into contest and arrangement with it. There are a thousand ways of
+being happy. You assure me that, by con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">{242}</a></span>ducting myself in such a manner,
+I shall arrive at fortune. Yes, but I love repose more than fortune, and
+with happiness alone in view, activity is not better than sloth. Nothing
+is more difficult than to advise any one in regard to his interest,
+nothing is easier than to advise him in regard to honor.</p>
+
+<p>After all, in practice, the useful is resolved into the agreeable, that
+is to say, into pleasure. Now, in regard to pleasure, every thing
+depends on humor and temperament. When there is neither good nor evil in
+itself, there are no pleasures more or less noble, more or less
+elevated; there are only pleasures that are more or less agreeable to
+us. Every thing depends on the nature of each one. This is the reason
+why interest is so capricious. Each one understands it as it pleases
+him, because each one is the judge of what pleases him. One is more
+moved by pleasures of the senses; another by pleasures of mind and
+heart. To the latter, the passion of glory takes the place of pleasures
+of the senses; to the former, the pleasure of dominion appears much
+superior to that of glory. Each man has his own passions, each man,
+then, has his own way of understanding his interest; and even my
+interest of to-day is not my interest of to-morrow. The revolutions of
+health, age, and events greatly modify our tastes, our humors. We are
+ourselves perpetually changing, and with us change our desires and our
+interests.</p>
+
+<p>It is not so with obligation. It exists not, or it is absolute. The idea
+of obligation implies that of something inflexible. That alone is a duty
+from which one cannot be loosed under any pretext, and is, by the same
+title, a duty for all. There is one thing before which all the caprices
+of my mind, of my imagination, of my sensibility must disappear,&mdash;the
+idea of the good with the obligation which it involves. To this supreme
+command I can oppose neither my humor, nor circumstances, nor even
+difficulties. This law admits of no delay, no accommodation, no excuse.
+When it speaks, be it to you or me, in whatever place, under whatever
+circumstance, in whatever disposition we may be, it only remains for us
+to obey. We are able not to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">{243}</a></span> obey, for we are free; but every
+disobedience to the law appears to ourselves a fault more or less grave,
+a bad use of our liberty. And the violated law has its immediate penal
+sanction in the remorse that it inflicts upon us.</p>
+
+<p>The only penalty that is brought upon us by the counsels of prudence,
+comprehended more or less well, followed more or less well, is, in the
+final account, more or less happiness or unhappiness. Now I pray you, am
+I obligated to be happy? Can obligation depend upon happiness, that is
+to say, on a thing that it is equally impossible for me to always seek
+and obtain at will? If I am obligated, it must be in my power to fulfil
+the obligation imposed. But my liberty has but little power over my
+happiness, which depends upon a thousand circumstances independent of
+me, whilst it is all in all in regard to virtue, for virtue is only an
+employment of liberty. Moreover, happiness is in itself, morally,
+neither better nor worse than unhappiness. If I understand my interest
+badly, I am punished for it by regret, not by remorse. Unhappiness can
+overwhelm me; it does not disgrace me, if it is not the consequence of
+some vice of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>Not that I would renew stoicism and say to suffering, Thou art no evil.
+No, I earnestly advise man to escape suffering as much as he can, to
+understand well his interest, to shun unhappiness and seek happiness. I
+only wish to establish that happiness is one thing and virtue another,
+that man necessarily aspires after happiness, but that he is only
+obligated to virtue, and that consequently, by the side of and above
+interest well understood is a moral law, that is to say, as
+consciousness attests, and the whole human race avows, an imperative
+prescription of which one cannot voluntarily divest himself without
+crime and shame.</p>
+
+<p>4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by a necessary
+consequence, it does not more account for that of right; for duty and
+right reciprocally suppose each other.</p>
+
+<p>Might and right must not be confounded. A being might have immense
+power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, that of one of the
+forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">{244}</a></span> it is only a fearful
+and terrible thing, it is not a person,&mdash;it may inspire, in the highest
+degree, fear and hope,&mdash;it has no right to respect; one has no duties
+towards it.</p>
+
+<p>Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty.</p>
+
+<p>They are born at the same time, are developed and perish together. It
+might even be said that duty and right make one, and are the same being,
+having a face on two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your
+respect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I am a free
+being? But you are yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right
+and your duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in
+me of an equal duty.<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p>
+
+<p>I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone,
+is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ;
+for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are
+the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses,
+mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the
+free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not
+free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I.
+There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and
+by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat
+of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different
+instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether
+material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not
+it,<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only
+free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will
+recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,&mdash;they
+are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law,
+and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil
+it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the
+ability to do the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">{245}</a></span> other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of
+liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is
+false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich,
+beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate;
+for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their
+nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. God has
+made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality
+is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as
+well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality
+is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of
+ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True
+equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God
+has made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, but
+even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle with the furies of
+pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domination, so, and by virtue
+of the same principle, it does not more aspire to a chimerical equality
+of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an
+equality, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes; it
+asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit,
+respect. Respect, an equal respect of the sacred right of being free in
+every thing that constitutes the person, that person which is truly man;
+this is what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather
+imperatively demand. Respect must not be confounded with homage. I
+render homage to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by
+that I mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is
+foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in every
+thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality exacts on the
+part of all only the same respect for what each one possesses equally in
+himself, both young and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and
+poor, both the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman and man,
+whatever has consciousness of being a person and not a thing. The equal
+respect of common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right; it
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">{246}</a></span> the virtue of each and the security of all; by an admirable
+agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. Such
+is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, which has made the
+hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of all virtuous and
+enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that
+true philosophy pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of
+Plato to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free
+legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration of rights,
+and the immortal works of the constituent Assembly.</p>
+
+<p>The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that condemns it to
+consequences as disastrous as those of the principle of liberty are
+beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it justifies passion, which
+is desire in all its force&mdash;passion, which is precisely the opposite of
+liberty. It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the passions,
+it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders each man
+much less happy on account of what he possesses, than miserable on
+account of what he lacks; it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye
+of envy and contempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or
+tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of
+desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My
+interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under
+the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born
+the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful,
+etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received.
+If fate has given me birth in a rank little elevated, with a moderate
+fortune, limited talents, and immense desires&mdash;for it cannot too often
+be repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite&mdash;I shall do
+every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to increase my power, my
+fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on account of my position in this world,
+in order to change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true,
+without enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not
+produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">{247}</a></span> and
+ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power; interest, then,
+claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The need of security
+brings me back from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to
+my profit; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt servant of a
+tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those two scourges of liberty, the
+only rampart is the universal sentiment of right, founded on the firm
+distinction between good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest
+and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and
+conscience.</p>
+
+<p>5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary consequences of the
+doctrine of interest.</p>
+
+<p>A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, cannot
+violate it, knowing that he should and may follow it, without
+immediately recognizing that he merits punishment. The idea of
+punishment is not an artificial idea, borrowed from the profound
+calculations of legislators; legislations rest upon the natural idea of
+punishment. This idea, corresponding to that of liberty and justice, is
+necessarily wanting where the former two do not exist. Does he who
+obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the attraction of pleasure and
+happiness, supposing that, without any other motive than that of
+interest, he does an act conformed, externally at least, to the rule of
+justice, merit any thing by doing such an action? Not the least in the
+world. Conscience attributes to him no merit, and no one owes him thanks
+or recompense, for he only thinks of himself. On the other hand, if he
+injures others in wishing to serve himself, he does not feel culpable,
+and no one can say to him that he has merited punishment. A free being
+who wills what he does, who has a law, and can conform to it, or break
+it, is alone responsible for his acts. But what responsibility can there
+be in the absence of liberty and a recognized and accepted rule of
+justice? The man of sensation and desire tends to his own good under the
+law of interest, as the stone is drawn towards the centre of the earth
+under the law of gravitation, as the needle points to the pole. Man may
+err in the pursuit of his interest. In this case, what is to be done!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">{248}</a></span>
+As it seems, to put him again in the right way. Instead of that, he is
+punished. And for what, I pray you? For being deceived. But error merits
+advice, not punishment. Punishment has, in the system of interest, no
+more the sanction of moral sense than recompense. Punishment is only an
+act of personal defence on the part of society; it is an example which
+it gives, in order to inspire a salutary terror. These motives are
+excellent, if it be added that this punishment is just in itself, that
+it is merited, and that it is legitimately applied to the action
+committed. Omit that, and the other motives lose their authority, and
+there remains only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then
+the culprit is not punished; he is smitten, or even put to death, as the
+animal that injures instead of serving is put to death without scruple.
+The condemned does not bow his head to the wholesome reparation due to
+justice, but to the weight of irons or the stroke of the axe. The
+chastisement is not a legitimate satisfaction, an expiation which,
+comprehended by the culprit, reconciles him in his own eyes with the
+order that he has violated. It is a storm that he could not escape; it
+is the thunder-bolt that falls upon him; it is a force more powerful
+than his own, which compasses and overthrows him. The appearance of
+public chastisements acts, without doubt, upon the imagination of
+peoples; but it does not enlighten their reason and speak to their
+conscience; it intimidates them, perhaps; it does not soften them. So
+recompense is only an additional attraction, added to all the others.
+As, properly speaking, there is no merit, recompense is simply an
+advantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained without
+attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded and effaced the great
+institution, natural and divine, of the recompense of virtue by
+happiness, and of reparation for a fault by proportionate
+suffering.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a></p>
+
+<p>We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being contradicted
+either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">{249}</a></span> interest is
+incompatible with the most certain facts, with the strongest convictions
+of humanity. Let us add, that this doctrine is not less incompatible
+with the hope of another world, where the principle of justice will be
+better realized than in this.</p>
+
+<p>I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics can arrive at an
+infinite being, author of the universe and man. I am well persuaded that
+it cannot. For every proof of the existence of God supposes in the human
+mind principles of which sensation renders no account,&mdash;for example, the
+universal and necessary principle of causality, without which I should
+have no need of seeking, no power of finding the cause of whatever
+exists.<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> All that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of
+interest, man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has no right to
+put in God that of which he finds no trace either in the world or in
+himself. The God of the ethics of interest must be analogous to the man
+of these same ethics. How could they attribute to him the justice and
+the love&mdash;I mean disinterested love&mdash;of which they cannot have the least
+idea? The God that they can admit loves himself, and loves only himself.
+And reciprocally, not considering him as the supreme principle of
+charity and justice, we can neither love nor honor him, and the only
+worship that we can render him, is that of the fear with which his
+omnipotence inspires us.</p>
+
+<p>What holy hope could we then found upon such a God? And we who have some
+time grovelled upon this earth, thinking only of ourselves, seeking only
+pleasure and a pitiable happiness, what sufferings nobly borne for
+justice, what generous efforts to maintain and develop the dignity of
+our soul, what virtuous affections for other souls, can we offer to the
+Father of humanity as titles to his merciful justice? The principle that
+most persuades the human race of the immortality of the soul is still
+the necessary principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here
+below its exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of finding it,
+in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">{250}</a></span>spires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, who has not put in
+our hearts the law of justice to violate it himself in regard to
+us.<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a> Now, we have just seen that the ethics of interest destroy the
+principle of merit and demerit, both in this world, and above all, in
+the world to come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond this
+world,&mdash;no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and wholly
+good, against the sports of fortune and the imperfections of human
+justice. Every thing is completed for man between birth and death, in
+spite of the instincts and presentiments of his heart, and even the
+principles of his reason.</p>
+
+<p>The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory of having
+freed humanity from the fears and hopes that turn it aside from its true
+interests. It is a service which mankind will appreciate. But since they
+confine our whole destiny to this world, let us demand of them what lot
+so worthy of envy they have in reserve for us here, what social order
+they charge with our good fortune, what politics, in fine, are derived
+from their ethics.<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a></p>
+
+<p>You already know. We have demonstrated that the philosophy of sensation
+knows neither true liberty nor true right. What, in fact, is will for
+this philosophy? It is desire. What, then, is right? The power of
+satisfying desires. On this score, man is not free, and right is might.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. Desire comes of
+need which man does not make, which he submits to. He submits in the
+same way to desire. To reduce will to desire is to annihilate liberty;
+it is worse still, it is to put it where it is not; it is to create a
+mendacious liberty that becomes an instrument of crime and misery. To
+call man to such a liberty is to open his soul to infinite desires,
+which it is impossible for him to satisfy. Desire is in its nature
+without limits, and our power is very limited. If we were alone in this
+world, we should even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">{251}</a></span> then be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But
+we press against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse,
+and unequal powers. When right is the force that is in each of us,
+equality of rights is a chimera,&mdash;all rights are unequal, since all
+forces are unequal and can never cease to be so. It is, therefore,
+necessary to renounce equality as well as liberty; or if one invents a
+false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity in pursuit
+of a phantom.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest give to
+politics. From such elements I defy all the politics of the school of
+sensation and interest to produce a single day of liberty and happiness
+for the human race.</p>
+
+<p>When right is might, the natural state of men among themselves, is war.
+All desiring the same things, they are all necessarily enemies; and in
+this war, woe to the feeble, to the feeble in body and the feeble in
+mind! The stronger are the masters by perfect right. Since right is
+might, the feeble may complain of nature that has not made them strong,
+and not complain of the strong man who uses his right in oppressing
+them. The feeble then call deception to their aid; and it is in this
+strife between cunning and force that humanity combats with itself.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, with
+different forces pitted against each other, war, a war sometimes
+declared and bloody, sometimes silent and full of meannesses, is in the
+nature of things. No social art can change this nature,&mdash;it may be more
+or less covered; it always reappears, overcomes and rends the veil with
+which a mendacious legislation envelops it. Dream, then, of liberty for
+beings that are not free, of equality between beings that are
+essentially different, of respect for rights where there is no right,
+and of the establishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of
+inimical passions! From such a foundation can spring only endless
+troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a
+necessary circle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">{252}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of principles which all
+the metamorphoses of sensation do not engender, and for which interest
+cannot account, which none the less subsist to the honor and for the
+safety of humanity. These principles are those that time has little by
+little drawn from Christianity in order to give them for the guidance of
+modern societies. You will find them written in the glorious declaration
+of rights that forever broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the
+constitutional monarchy. They are in the charter that governs us, in our
+laws, in our institutions, in our manners, in the air that we breathe.
+They serve at once as foundations for our society and the new philosophy
+necessary to a new order.<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, so many
+distinguished, so many honest souls could let themselves be seduced by a
+system that must have been revolting to all their sentiments. I will
+answer by reminding you that the eighteenth century was an immoderate
+reaction against the faults into which had sadly fallen the old age of a
+great century and a great king, that is to say, the revocation of the
+edict of Nantes, the persecution of all free and elevated philosophy, a
+narrow and suspicious devotion, and intolerance, with its usual
+companion, hypocrisy. These excesses must have produced opposite
+excesses. Mme. de Maintenon opened the route to Mme. de Pompadour. After
+the mode of devotion comes that of license; it takes every thing by
+storm. It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy even,
+and accordingly to the people. It carried away the best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">{253}</a></span> spirits, even
+genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy in the place of the national
+philosophy, culpable, persecuted as it had been, for not being
+irreconcilable with Christianity. A disciple of Locke, whom Locke had
+discarded, Condillac, took the place of Descartes, as the author of
+<i>Candide</i> and <i>la Pucelle</i> had taken the place of Corneille and Bossuet,
+as Boucher and Vanloo had taken the place of Lesueur and Poussin. The
+ethics of pleasure and interest were the necessary ethics of that epoch.
+It must not be supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says
+M. Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their
+principles<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a>. No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean
+as enervated as epicureanism. Human weakness practically baffles
+virtuous theories; in return, thank God, the instinct of the heart
+condemns to inconsistency the honest man who errs in bad theories.
+Accordingly, in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most
+disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign of the
+philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. But it is none the
+less true, that the philosophy of sensation is false, and the ethics of
+interest destructive of all morality.</p>
+
+<p>I should perhaps make an apology for so long a lecture; but it was
+necessary to combat seriously a doctrine of morality radically
+incompatible with that which I would make penetrate your minds and your
+souls. It was especially necessary for me to strip the ethics of
+interest of that false appearance of liberty which they usurp in vain. I
+maintain, on the contrary, that they are the ethics of slaves, and send
+them back to the time when they ruled. Now, the principle of interest
+being destroyed, I propose to examine other principles also, less false
+without doubt, but still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">{254}</a></span> defective, exclusive, and incomplete, upon
+which celebrated systems have pretended to found ethics. I will
+successively combat these principles taken in themselves, and will then
+bring them together, reduced to their just value, in a theory large
+enough to contain all the true elements of morality, in order to express
+faithfully common sense and entire human consciousness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">{255}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XIII" id="LECTURE_XIII"></a>LECTURE XIII.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The ethics of sentiment.&mdash;The ethics founded on the principle of
+the interest of the greatest number.&mdash;The ethics founded on the
+will of God alone.&mdash;The ethics founded on the punishments and
+rewards of another life.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Against the ethics of interest, all generous souls take refuge in the
+ethics of sentiment. The following are some of the facts on which these
+ethics are supported, and by which they seem to be authorized.</p>
+
+<p>When we have done a good action, is it not certain that we experience a
+pleasure of a certain nature, which is to us the reward of this action?
+This pleasure does not come from the senses&mdash;it has neither its
+principle nor its measure in an impression made upon our organs. Neither
+is it confounded with the joy of satisfied personal interest,&mdash;we are
+not moved in the same manner, in thinking that we have succeeded, and in
+thinking that we have been honest. The pleasure attached to the
+testimony of a good conscience is pure; other pleasures are much
+alloyed. It is durable, whilst the others quickly pass away. Finally, it
+is always within our reach. Even in the midst of misfortune, man bears
+in himself a permanent source of exquisite joys, for he always has the
+power of doing right, whilst success, dependent upon a thousand
+circumstances of which we are not the masters, can give only an
+occasional and precarious pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>As virtue has its joys, so crime has its pains. The suffering that
+follows a fault is the just recompense for the pleasure that we have
+found in it, and is often born with it. It poisons culpa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">{256}</a></span>ble joys and the
+successes that are not legitimate. It wounds, rends, bites, thus to
+speak, and thereby receives its name.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a> To be man, is sufficient to
+understand this suffering,&mdash;it is remorse.</p>
+
+<p>Here are other facts equally incontestable:</p>
+
+<p>I perceive a man whose face bears the marks of distress and misery.
+There is nothing in this that reaches and injures me; nevertheless,
+without reflection or calculation, the sight alone of this suffering man
+makes me suffer. This sentiment is pity, compassion, whose general
+principle is sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>The sadness of one of my fellow-men inspires me with sadness, and a glad
+face disposes me to joy:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Humani vultus.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The joy of others has an echo in our souls, and their sufferings, even
+their physical sufferings, communicate themselves to us almost
+physically. Not as exaggerated as it has been supposed was that
+expression of Mme. de S&eacute;vign&eacute; to her sick daughter: I have a pain in
+your breast.</p>
+
+<p>Our soul feels the need of putting itself in unison, and, as it were, in
+equilibrium with that of others. Hence those electric movements, thus to
+speak, that run through large assemblies. One receives the
+counter-stroke of the sentiments of his neighbors,&mdash;admiration and
+enthusiasm are contagious, as well as pleasantry and ridicule. Hence
+again the sentiment with which the author of a virtuous action inspires
+us. We feel a pleasure analogous to that which he feels himself. But are
+we witnesses of a bad action? our souls refuse to participate in the
+sentiments that animate the culpable man,&mdash;they have for him a true
+aversion, what is called antipathy.</p>
+
+<p>We do not forget a third order of facts that pertain to the preceding,
+but differ from them.</p>
+
+<p>We not only sympathize with the author of a virtuous action,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">{257}</a></span> we wish
+him well, we voluntarily do good to him, in a certain degree we love
+him. This love goes as far as enthusiasm when it has for its object a
+sublime act and a hero. This is the principle of the homages, of the
+honors that humanity renders to great men. And this sentiment does not
+pertain solely to others,&mdash;we apply it to ourselves by a sort of return
+that is not egoism. Yes, it may be said that we love ourselves when we
+have done well. The sentiment that others owe us, if they are just, we
+accord to ourselves,&mdash;that sentiment is benevolence.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, do we witness a bad action? We experience for the
+author of this action antipathy; moreover we wish him evil,&mdash;we desire
+that he should suffer for the fault that he has committed, and in
+proportion to the gravity of the fault. For this reason great culprits
+are odious to us, if they do not compensate for their crimes by deep
+remorse, or by great virtues mingled with their crimes. This sentiment
+is not malevolence. Malevolence is a personal and interested sentiment,
+which makes us wish evil to others, because they are an obstacle to us.
+Hatred does not ask whether such a man is virtuous or vicious, but
+whether he obstructs us, surpasses us, or injures us. The sentiment of
+which we are speaking is a sort of hatred, but a generous hatred that
+neither springs from interest nor envy, but from a shocked conscience.
+It is turned against us when we do evil, as well as against others.</p>
+
+<p>Moral satisfaction is not sympathy, neither is sympathy, to speak
+rigorously, benevolence. But these three phenomena have the common
+character of all being sentiments. They give birth to three different
+and analogous systems of ethics.</p>
+
+<p>According to certain philosophers, a good action is that which is
+followed by moral satisfaction, a bad action is that which is followed
+by remorse. The good or bad character of an action is at first attested
+to us by the sentiment that accompanies it. Then, this sentiment, with
+its moral signification, we attribute to other men; for we judge that
+they do as we do, that in presence of the same actions they feel the
+same sentiments.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">{258}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Other philosophers have assigned the same part to sympathy or
+benevolence.</p>
+
+<p>For these the sign and measure of the good is in the sentiments of
+affection and benevolence which we feel for a moral agent. Does a man
+excite in us by such or such an action a more or less vivid disposition
+to wish him well, a desire to see and even make him happy? we may say
+that this action is good. If, by a series of actions of the same kind,
+he makes this disposition and this desire permanent in us, we judge that
+he is a virtuous man. Does he excite an opposite desire, an opposite
+disposition? he appears to us a dishonest man.</p>
+
+<p>For the former, the good is that with which we naturally sympathize. Has
+a man devoted himself to death through love for his country? this heroic
+action awakens in us, in a certain degree, the same sentiments that
+inspired him. Bad passions are not thus echoed in our hearts, unless
+they find us already very corrupt, and have interest for their
+accomplice; but even then there is something in us that revolts against
+these passions, and in the most depraved soul subsists a concealed
+sentiment of sympathy for the good, and antipathy for the evil.</p>
+
+<p>These different systems may be reduced to a single one, which is called
+the ethics of sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>It is not difficult to show the difference which separates these ethics
+from those of egoism. Egoism is the exclusive love of self, is the
+thoughtful and permanent search for our own pleasure and our own
+well-being.</p>
+
+<p>What is there more opposed to interest than benevolence? In benevolence,
+far from wishing others well by reason of our interest, we will
+voluntarily risk something, we will make some sacrifice in order to
+serve an honest man who has coined our heart. If even in this sacrifice
+the soul feels a pleasure, this pleasure is only the involuntary
+accompaniment of sentiment, it is not the end proposed,&mdash;we feel it
+without having sought it. It is, indeed, permitted the soul to taste
+this pleasure, for it is nature herself that attaches it to
+benevolence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">{259}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sympathy, like benevolence, is related to another than ourselves,&mdash;our
+interest is not its starting-point. The soul is so constituted that it
+is capable of suffering on account of the sufferings of an enemy. That a
+man does a noble action, although it opposes our interests, awakens in
+us a certain sympathy for that action and its author.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt has been made to explain the compassion with which the
+suffering of one of our fellow-men inspires us by the fear that we have
+of feeling it in our turn. But the unhappiness for which we feel
+compassion, is often so far from us and threatens us so little, that it
+would be absurd to fear it. Doubtless, that sympathy may have existence
+it is necessary to experience suffering,&mdash;<i>non ignara mali</i>. For how do
+you suppose that I can be sensible to evils of which I form to myself no
+idea? But that is only the condition of sympathy. It is not at all
+necessary to conclude that it is only a remembrance of our own ills or
+the fear of ills to come.</p>
+
+<p>No recurrence to ourselves can account for sympathy. In the first place,
+it is involuntary, like antipathy. Then it cannot be supposed that we
+sympathize with any one in order to win his benevolence; for he who is
+its object often knows not what we feel. What benevolence are we
+seeking, when we sympathize with men that we have never seen, that we
+never shall see, with men that are no more?</p>
+
+<p>Egoism admits all pleasures; it repels none; it may, if it is
+enlightened, if it has become delicate and refined, recommend, as more
+durable and less alloyed, the pleasures of sentiment. The ethics of
+sentiment would then be confounded with those of egoism, if they should
+prescribe obedience to sentiment for the pleasure that we find in it.
+There would, then, be no disinterestedness in it,&mdash;the individual would
+be the centre and sole end of all his actions. But such is not the case.
+The charm of the pleasures of conscience comes from the very fact that
+we are forgetful of self in the action that has produced them. So if
+nature has joined to sympathy and benevolence a true enjoy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">{260}</a></span>ment, it is
+on condition that these sentiments remain as they are, pure and
+disinterested; you must only think of the object of your sympathy and
+benevolence in order that benevolence and sympathy may receive their
+recompense in the pleasure which they give. Otherwise, this pleasure no
+longer has its reason for existence, and it is wanting as soon as it
+sought for itself. No metamorphose of interest can produce a pleasure
+attached to disinterestedness alone.</p>
+
+<p>The ethics of egoism are only a perpetual falsehood,&mdash;they preserve the
+names consecrated by ethics, but they abolish ethics themselves; they
+deceive humanity by speaking to humanity its own language, concealing
+under this borrowed language a radical opposition to all the instincts,
+to all the ideas that form the treasure of mankind. On the contrary, if
+sentiment is not the good itself, it is its faithful companion and
+useful auxiliary. It is as it were the sign of the presence of the good,
+and renders the accomplishment of it more easy. We always have sophisms
+at our disposal, in order to persuade ourselves that our true interest
+is to satisfy present passion; but sophism has less influence over the
+mind when the mind is in some sort defended by the heart. Nothing is,
+therefore, more salutary than to excite and preserve in the soul those
+noble sentiments that lift us above the slavery of personal interest.
+The habit of participating in the sentiments of virtuous men disposes us
+to act like them. To cultivate in ourselves benevolence and sympathy is
+to fertilize the source of charity and love, is to nourish and develop
+the germ of generosity and devotion.</p>
+
+<p>It is seen that we render sincere homage to the ethics of sentiment.
+These ethics are true,&mdash;only they are not sufficient for themselves;
+they need a principle which authorizes them.</p>
+
+<p>I act well, and I feel on account of it an internal satisfaction: I do
+evil, and feel remorse on account of it. These two sentiments do not
+qualify the act that I have just done, since they follow it. Would it be
+possible for us to feel any internal satisfaction for having acted well
+if we did not judge that we had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">{261}</a></span> acted well?&mdash;any remorse for having
+done evil, if we did not judge that we had done evil? At the same time
+that we do such or such an act, a natural and instinctive judgment
+characterizes it, and it is in consequence of this judgment that our
+sensibility is moved. Sentiment is not this primitive and immediate
+judgment; far from forming the basis of the idea of the good, it
+supposes it. It is manifestly a vicious circle to derive the knowledge
+of the good from that which would not exist without this knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a></p>
+
+<p>So is it not because we find a good action that we sympathize with it?
+Is it not because the dispositions of a man appear to us conformed to
+the idea of justice, that we are inclined to participate in them with
+him? Moreover, if sympathy were the true criterion of the good, every
+thing for which we feel sympathy would be good. But sympathy is not only
+related to things in their nature moral, we also sympathize with the
+grief and the joy that have nothing to do with virtue and crime. We even
+sympathize with physical sufferings. Moral sympathy is only a case of
+general sympathy. It must even be acknowledged that sympathy is not
+always in accordance with right. We sometimes sympathize with certain
+sentiments that we condemn, because, without being in themselves
+bad&mdash;which would prevent all sympathy&mdash;they give an inclination to the
+greatest faults; for example, love, which comes so near to irregularity,
+and emulation, that so quickly leads to ambition.</p>
+
+<p>Benevolence also is not always determined by the good alone. And, again,
+when it is applied to a virtuous man, it supposes a judgment by which we
+pronounce that this man is virtuous. It is not because we wish the
+author of an action well that we judge that this action is good; it is
+because we judge that this action is good that we wish its author well.
+This is not all. In the sentiment of benevolence is enveloped a new
+judgment which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">{262}</a></span> not in sympathy. This judgment is the following: the
+author of a good action deserves to be happy, as the author of a bad
+action deserves to suffer in order to expiate it. This is the reason why
+we desire happiness for the one and reparatory suffering for the other.
+Benevolence is little else than the sensible form of this judgment.</p>
+
+<p>All these sentiments, therefore, suppose an anterior and superior
+judgment. Everywhere and always the same vicious circle. From the fact
+that the sentiments which we have just described have a moral character,
+it is concluded that they constitute the idea of the good, whilst it is
+the idea of the good that communicates to them the character that we
+perceive in them.</p>
+
+<p>Another difficulty is, that sentiments pertain to sensibility, and
+borrow from it something of its relative and changing nature. It is,
+then, very necessary that all men should be made to enjoy with the same
+delicacy the pleasures of the heart. There are gross natures and natures
+refined. If your desires are impetuous and violent, will not the idea of
+the pleasures of virtue be in you much more easily overcome by the force
+of passion than if nature had given you a tranquil temperament? The
+state of the atmosphere, health, sickness, calm or rouse our moral
+sensibility. Solitude, by delivering man up to himself, leaves to
+remorse all its energy, the presence of death redoubles it; but the
+world, noise, force of example, habit, without power to smother it, in
+some sort stun it. The spirit has a little season of rest. We are not
+always in the vein of enthusiasm. Courage itself has its intermissions.
+We know the celebrated expression: He was one day brave. Humor has its
+vicissitudes that influence our most intimate sentiments. The purest,
+the most ideal sentiment still pertains on some side to organization.
+The inspiration of the poet, the passion of the lover, the enthusiasm of
+the martyr, have their languors and shortcomings that often depend on
+very pitiable material causes. On those perpetual fluctuations of
+sentiment, is it possible to ground a legislation equal for all?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">{263}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sympathy and benevolence do not escape the conditions of all the
+phenomena of sensibility. We do not all possess in the same degree the
+power of feeling what others experience. Those who have suffered most
+best comprehend suffering, and consequently feel for it the most lively
+compassion. With mere imagination one also represents to himself better
+and feels more what passes in the souls of his fellow-man. One feels
+more sympathy for physical pleasures and pains, another for pleasures
+and pains of soul; and each of these sympathies has in each of us its
+degrees and variations. They not only differ, they often oppose each
+other. Sympathy for talent weakens the indignation that outraged virtue
+produces. We overlook many things in Voltaire, in Rousseau, in Mirabeau,
+and we excuse them on account of the corruption of their century. The
+sympathy caused by the pain of a condemned person renders less lively
+the just antipathy excited by his crime. Thus turns and wavers at each
+step that sympathy which some would set up as the supreme arbiter of the
+good. Benevolence does not vary less. We have souls naturally more or
+less affectionate, more or less animated. And, then, like sympathy,
+benevolence receives the counter-stroke of different passions that are
+mingled with it. Friendship, for example, often renders us, in spite of
+ourselves, more benevolent than justice would wish.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not a rule of prudence not to listen to, without always disdaining
+them, the inspirations&mdash;often capricious&mdash;of the heart? Governed by
+reason, sentiment becomes to it an admirable support. But, delivered up
+to itself, in a little while it degenerates into passion, and passion is
+fantastic, excessive, unjust; it gives to the soul spring and energy,
+but generally troubles and perverts it. It is even not very far from
+egoism, and it usually terminates in that, wholly generous as it is or
+seems to be in the beginning. Unless we always keep in sight the good
+and the inflexible obligation that is attached to it, unless we always
+keep in sight this fixed and immutable point, the soul knows not where
+to betake itself on that moving ground that is called sensibility; it
+floats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">{264}</a></span> from sentiment to passion, from generosity to selfishness,
+ascending one day to the pitch of enthusiasm, and the next day
+descending to all the miseries of personality.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the ethics of sentiment, although superior to those of interest,
+are not less insufficient: 1st. They give as the foundation of the idea
+of the good what is founded on this same idea; 2d. The rule that they
+propose is too mobile to be universally obligatory.<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is another system of which I will also say, as of the preceding,
+that it is not false, but incomplete and insufficient.</p>
+
+<p>The partisans of the ethics of utility and happiness have tried to save
+their principle by generalizing it. According to them, the good can be
+nothing but happiness; but egoism is wrong in understanding by that the
+happiness of the individual; we must understand by it the general
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Let us establish, in the first place, that the new principle is entirely
+opposed to that of personal interest, for, according to cir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">{265}</a></span>cumstances,
+it may demand, not only a passing sacrifice, but an irreparable
+sacrifice, that of life. Now, the wisest calculations of personal
+interest cannot go thus far.</p>
+
+<p>And, notwithstanding, this principle is far from containing true ethics
+and the whole of ethics.</p>
+
+<p>The principle of general interest leans towards disinterestedness, and
+this is certainly much; but disinterestedness is the condition of
+virtue, not virtue itself. We may commit an injustice with the most
+entire disinterestedness. From the fact that an action does not profit
+him who does it, it does not follow that it may not be in itself very
+unjust, in seeking general interest before all, we escape, it is true,
+that vice of soul which is called selfishness, but we may fall into a
+thousand iniquities. Or, indeed, it must be felt, that general interest
+is always conformed to justice. But these two ideas are not adequate to
+each other. If they very often go together, they are sometimes also
+separated. Themistocles proposed to the Athenians to burn the fleet of
+the allies that was in the port of Athens, and thus to secure to
+themselves the supremacy. The project is useful, says Aristides, but it
+is unjust, and on account of this simple speech, the Athenians renounce
+an advantage that must be purchased by an injustice. Observe that
+Themistocles had no particular interest in that; he thought only of the
+interest of his country. But, had he hazarded or given his life in order
+to engage the Athenians in such an act, he would only have been
+consecrating&mdash;what has often been seen&mdash;an admirable devotion to a
+course in itself immoral.</p>
+
+<p>To this it is replied, that if, in the example cited, justice and
+interest exclude each other, it is because the interest was not
+sufficiently general; and the celebrated maxim is arrived at, that one
+must sacrifice himself to his family, his family to the city, the city
+to country, country to humanity, that, in fine, the good is the interest
+of the greatest number.<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">{266}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When you have gone thus far, you have not yet attained even the idea of
+justice. The interest of humanity, like that of the individual, may
+accord in fact with justice, for in that there is certainly no
+incompatibility, but the two things are none the more identical, so that
+we cannot say with exactness that the interest of humanity is the
+foundation of justice. A single case, even a single hypothesis, in which
+the interest of humanity should not accord with the good, is sufficient
+to enable us to conclude that one is not essentially the other.</p>
+
+<p>We go farther: if it is the interest of humanity that constitutes and
+measures justice, that only is unjust which this interest declares to be
+so. But you are not able to affirm absolutely, that, in any
+circumstance, the interest of humanity will not demand such or such an
+action; and if it demands it, by virtue of your principle, it will be
+necessary to do it, whatever it may be, and to do it inasmuch as it is
+just.</p>
+
+<p>You order me to sacrifice particular interest to general interest. But
+in the name of what do you order me to do this? Is it in the name of
+interest? If interest, as such, must touch me, evidently my interest
+must also touch me, and I do not see why I should sacrifice it to that
+of others.</p>
+
+<p>The supreme end of human life, you say, is happiness. I hence conclude
+very reasonably, that the supreme end of my life is my happiness.</p>
+
+<p>In order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it must be called
+for by some other principle than happiness itself.</p>
+
+<p>Consider to what perplexity this famous principle of the greatest good
+of the greatest number condemns me. I have already much difficulty in
+discerning my true interest in the obscurity of the future; by
+substituting for the infallible voice of justice the uncertain
+calculations of personal interest, you have not rendered action easy for
+me;<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> but it becomes impossible, if it is necessary to seek, before
+acting, what is the interest not only of myself, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">{267}</a></span> of my family, not
+only of my family, but of my country, not only of my country, but of
+humanity. What! must I embrace the entire world in my foresight? What!
+is such the price of virtue? You impose upon me a knowledge that God
+alone possesses. Am I in his counsels so as to adjust my actions
+according to his decrees? The philosophy of history and the wisest
+diplomacy are not, then, sufficient for conducting ourselves well.
+Imagine, therefore, that there is no mathematical science of human life.
+Chance and liberty confound the profoundest calculations, overturn the
+best-established fortunes, relieve the most desperate miseries, mingle
+good fortune and bad, confound all foresight.</p>
+
+<p>And would you establish ethics on a foundation so mobile? How much place
+you leave for sophism in that complaisant and enigmatical law of general
+interest!<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> It will not be very difficult<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">{268}</a></span> always to find some remote
+reason of general interest, which will excuse us from being faithful in
+the present moment to our friends, when they shall be in misfortune. A
+man in adversity addresses himself to my generosity. But could I not
+employ my money in a way more useful to humanity? Will not the country
+have need of it to-morrow? Let us virtuously keep it for the country
+then. Moreover, even where the interest of all seems evident, there
+still remains some chance of error; it is, therefore, better to
+withhold. It will always be wisdom to withhold. Yes, when it is
+necessary, in order to do well, to be sure of serving the greatest
+interest of the greatest number, none but the rash and senseless will
+dare to act. The principle of general interest will produce, I admit,
+great devotedness, but it will also produce great crimes. Is it not in
+the name of this principle that fanatics of every kind, fanatics in
+religion, fanatics in liberty, fanatics in philosophy, taking it upon
+themselves to understand the eternal interest of humanity, have engaged
+in abominable acts, mingled often with a sublime disinterestedness?</p>
+
+<p>Another error of this system is that it confounds the good itself with
+one of its applications. If the good is the greatest interest of the
+greatest number, the consequence is clear, that there are only public
+and social ethics, and no private ethics; there is only a single class
+of duties, duties towards others, and there are no duties towards
+ourselves. But this is retrenching precisely those of our duties that
+most surely guarantee the exercise of all the rest.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a> The most
+constant relations that I sustain are with that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">{269}</a></span> being which is myself.
+I am my own most habitual society. I bear in myself, as Plato<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a> has
+well said, a whole world of ideas, sentiments, desires, passions,
+emotions, which claim a legislation. This necessary legislation is
+suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>Let us also say a word on a system that, under sublime appearances,
+conceals a vicious principle.</p>
+
+<p>There are persons who believe that they are magnifying God, by placing
+in his will alone the foundation of the moral law, and the sovereign
+motive of humanity in the punishments and rewards that it has pleased
+him to attach to the respect and violation of his will.</p>
+
+<p>Let us understand what we are about in a matter of such delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain, and we shall establish it for the good,<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> as we have
+done for the true and the beautiful,<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> it is certain that, from
+explanations to explanations, we come to be convinced that God is
+definitively the supreme principle of ethics, so that it may be very
+truly said, that the good is the expression of his will, since his will
+is itself the expression of the eternal and absolute justice that
+resides in him. God wills, without doubt, that we should act according
+to the law of justice that he has put in our understanding and our
+heart; but it is not at all necessary to conclude that he has
+arbitrarily instituted this law. Far from that, justice is in the will
+of God only because it has its roots in his intelligence and wisdom,
+that is to say, in his most intimate nature and essence.</p>
+
+<p>While making, then, every reservation in regard to what is true in the
+system that founds ethics on the will of God, we must show what there is
+in this system, as it is presented to us, false, arbitrary, and
+incompatible with ethics themselves.<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">{270}</a></span></p><p>In the first place, it does not pertain to the will, whatever it may
+be, to institute the good, any more than it belongs to it to institute
+the true and the beautiful. I have no idea of the will of God except by
+my own, to be sure with the differences that separate what is finite
+from what is infinite. Now, I cannot by my will found the least truth.
+Is it because my will is limited? No; were it armed with infinite power,
+it would, in this respect, be equally impotent. Such is the nature of my
+will that, in doing a thing, it is conscious of the power to do the
+opposite; and that is not an accidental character of the will, it is its
+fundamental character; if, then, it is supposed that truth, or that
+first part of it which is called justice, has been established as it is
+by an act of volition, human or Divine, it must be acknowledged that
+another act might have established it otherwise, and made what is now
+just unjust, and what is unjust just. But such mobility is contrary to
+the nature of justice and truth. In fact, moral truths are as absolute
+as metaphysical truths. God cannot make effects exist without a cause,
+phenomena without a substance; neither can he make it evil to respect
+his word, to love truth, to repress one's passions. The principles of
+ethics are immutable axioms like those of geometry. Of moral laws
+especially must be said what Montesquieu said of all laws in
+general,&mdash;they are necessary relations that are derived from the nature
+of things.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that the good and the just are derived from the divine
+will; on the divine will obligation will also rest. But can any will
+whatever be the foundation of obligation? The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">{271}</a></span> divine will is the will
+of an omnipotent being, and I am a feeble being. This relation of a
+feeble being to an omnipotent being, does not contain in itself any
+moral idea. One may be forced to obey the stronger, but he is not
+obligated to do it. The sovereign orders of the will of God, if his will
+could for a moment be separated from his other attributes, would not
+contain the least ray of justice; and, consequently, there would not
+descend into my soul the least shade of obligation.</p>
+
+<p>One will exclaim,&mdash;It is not the arbitrary will of God that makes the
+foundation of obligation and justice; it is his just will. Very well.
+Every thing changes then. It is not the pure will of God that obligates
+us, it is the motive itself that determines his will, that is to say,
+the justice passed into his will. The distinction between the just and
+the unjust is not then the work of his will.</p>
+
+<p>One of two things. Either we found ethics on the will of God alone, and
+then the distinction between good and evil, just and unjust, is
+gratuitous, and moral obligation does not exist; or you give authority
+to the will of God by justice, which, in your hypothesis, must have
+received from the will of God its authority, which is a <i>petitio
+principii</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Another <i>petitio principii</i> still more evident. In the first place, you
+are compelled, in order legitimately to draw justice from the will of
+God, to suppose that this will is just, or I defy any one to show that
+this will alone can ever form the basis of justice. Moreover, evidently
+you cannot comprehend what a just will of God is, if you do not already
+possess the idea of justice. This idea, then, does not come from that of
+the will of God.</p>
+
+<p>On the one hand, you may have, and you do have, the idea of justice,
+without understanding the will of God; on the other, you cannot conceive
+the justice of the divine will, without having conceived justice
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Are not these reasons sufficient, I pray you, to conclude that the sole
+will of God is not for us the principle of the idea of the good?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">{272}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And now, behold the natural consummation of the ethical system that we
+are examining:&mdash;the just and the unjust are what it has pleased God to
+declare such, by attaching to them the rewards and punishments of
+another life. The divine will manifests itself here only by an arbitrary
+order; it adds to this order promises and threats.</p>
+
+<p>But to what human faculty are addressed the promise and threat of the
+chastisements and the rewards of another life? To the same one that in
+this life fears pain and seeks pleasure, shuns unhappiness and desires
+happiness, that is to say, to sensibility animated by imagination, that
+is to say, again, to what is most changing in each of us and most
+different in the human species. The joys and sufferings of another life
+excite in us the two most vivid but most mobile passions, hope and fear.
+Every thing influences our fears and hopes,&mdash;aye, health, the passing
+cloud, a ray of the sun, a cup of coffee, a thousand causes of this
+kind. I have known men, even philosophers, who on certain days hoped
+more, and other days less. And such a basis some would give to ethics!
+Then it is doing nothing else than proposing for human conduct an
+interested motive. The calculation which I obey is purer, if you will;
+the happiness that one makes me hope for is greater; but I see in that
+no justice that obligates me, no virtue and no vice in me, who know or
+do not know how to make this calculation, not having a head as strong as
+that of Pascal,<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> who yield to or resist those fears and hopes
+according to the deposition of my sensibility and my imagination, over
+which I have no power. Finally, the pains and pleasures of the future
+life are instituted on the ground of punishments and rewards. Now, none
+but actions in themselves good or bad can be rewarded and punished. If
+already there is in itself no good, no law that in conscience we are
+obligated to follow, there is neither merit nor demerit; recompense is
+not then recompense, nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">{273}</a></span> penalty penalty, since they are such only on
+the condition of being the complement and the sanction of the idea of
+the good. Where this idea does not pre-exist, there remain, instead of
+recompense and penalty, only the attraction of pleasure and the fear of
+suffering, added to a prescription deprived in itself of morality. In
+that we come back to the punishments of earth invented for the purpose
+of frightening popular imagination, and supported solely on the decrees
+of legislators, on an abstraction of good and evil, of justice and
+injustice, of merit and demerit. It is the worst human justice that is
+found thus transported into heaven. We shall see that the human soul has
+foundation somewhat solider.<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a></p>
+
+<p>These different systems, false or incomplete, having been rejected, we
+arrive at the doctrine that is to our eyes perfect truth, because it
+admits only certain facts, neglects none, and maintains for all of them
+their character and rank.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">{274}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XIV" id="LECTURE_XIV"></a>LECTURE XIV.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Description of the different facts that compose the moral
+phenomena.&mdash;Analysis of each of these facts:&mdash;1st, Judgment and
+idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation
+between the true and the good.&mdash;2d, Obligation. Refutation of
+the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from
+obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of the
+good.&mdash;3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion
+of liberty.&mdash;4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments
+and rewards.&mdash;5th, Moral sentiments.&mdash;Harmony of all these facts
+in nature and science.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Philosophic criticism is not confined to discerning the errors of
+systems; it especially consists in recognizing and disengaging the
+truths mixed with these errors. The truths scattered in different
+systems compose the whole truth which each of these almost always
+expresses on a single side. So, the systems that we have just run over
+and refuted deliver up to us, in some sort, divided and opposed to each
+other, all the essential elements of human morality. The only question
+is to collect them, in order to restore the entire moral phenomenon. The
+history of philosophy, thus understood, prepares the way for or confirms
+psychological analysis, as psychological analysis receives from the
+history of philosophy its light. Let us, then, interrogate ourselves in
+presence of human actions, and faithfully collect, without altering them
+by any preconceived system, the ideas and the sentiments of every kind
+that the spectacle of these actions produce in us.</p>
+
+<p>There are actions that are agreeable or disagreeable to us, that procure
+us advantages or injure us, in a word, that are, in one way or another,
+directly or indirectly, addressed to our inter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">{275}</a></span>est. We are rejoiced with
+actions that are useful to us, and shun those that may injure us. We
+seek earnestly and with the greatest effort what seems to us our
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>This is an incontestable fact. Here is another fact that is not less
+incontestable.</p>
+
+<p>There are actions that have no relation to us, that, consequently, we
+cannot estimate and judge on the ground of our interest, that we
+nevertheless qualify as good or bad.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose that before your eyes a man, strong and armed, falls upon
+another man, feeble and disarmed, whom he maltreats and kills, in order
+to take away his purse. Such an action does not reach you in any way,
+and, notwithstanding, it fills you with indignation.<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a> You do every
+thing in your power that this murderer may be arrested and delivered up
+to justice; you demand that he shall be punished, and if he is punished
+in one way or another, you think that it is just; your indignation is
+appeased only after a chastisement proportioned to the crime committed
+has been inflicted on the culprit. I repeat that in this you neither
+hope nor fear any thing for yourself. Were you placed in an inaccessible
+fortress, from the top of which you might witness this scene of murder,
+you would feel these sentiments none the less.</p>
+
+<p>This is only a rude picture of what takes place in you at the sight of a
+crime. Apply now a little reflection and analysis to the different
+traits of which this picture is composed, without destroying their
+nature, and you will have a complete philosophic theory.</p>
+
+<p>What is it that first strikes you in what you have experienced? It is
+doubtless the indignation, the instinctive horror that you have felt.
+There is, then, in the soul a power of raising indignation that is
+foreign to all personal interests! There are, then, in us sentiments of
+which we are not the end! There is an antipathy, an aversion, a horror,
+that are not related to what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">{276}</a></span> injures us, but to acts whose remotest
+influence cannot reach us, that we detest for the sole reason that we
+judge them to be bad!</p>
+
+<p>Yes, we judge them to be bad. A judgment is enveloped under the
+sentiments that we have just mentioned. In fact, in the midst of the
+indignation that transports you, let one tell you that all this generous
+anger pertains to your particular organization, and that, after all, the
+action that takes place is indifferent,&mdash;you revolt against such an
+explanation, you exclaim that the action is bad in itself; you not only
+express a sentiment, you pronounce a judgment. The next day after the
+action, when the feelings that agitated your soul have been quieted, you
+none the less still judge that the action was bad; you judge thus six
+months after, you judge thus always and everywhere; and it is because
+you judge that this action is in itself bad, that you bear this other
+judgment, that it should not have been done.</p>
+
+<p>This double judgment is at the foundation of sentiment; otherwise
+sentiment would be without reason. If the action is not bad in itself,
+if he who has done it was not obligated not to do it, the indignation
+that we experience is only a physical emotion, an excitement of the
+senses, of the imagination, of the heart,&mdash;a phenomenon destitute of
+every moral character, like the trouble that visits us before some
+frightful scene of nature. You cannot rationally feel indignation for
+the author of an indifferent action. Every sentiment of disinterested
+anger against the author of an action supposes in him who feels it, this
+double conviction:&mdash;1st, That the action is in itself bad; 2d, That it
+should not have been done.</p>
+
+<p>This sentiment also supposes that the author of this action has himself
+a consciousness of the evil that he has done, and of the obligation that
+he has violated; for without this he would have acted like a brutal and
+blind force, not like an intelligent and moral force, and we should have
+felt towards him no more indignation than towards a rock that falls on
+our head, towards a torrent that sweeps us away into an abyss.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">{277}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Indignation equally supposes in him who is the object of it an other
+character still, to wit, that he is free,&mdash;that he could do or not do
+what he has done. It is evident that the agent must be free in order to
+be responsible.</p>
+
+<p>You desire that the murderer may be arrested and delivered up to
+justice, you desire that he may be punished; when he has been arrested,
+delivered up to justice, and punished, you are satisfied. What does that
+mean? Is it a capricious movement of the imagination and heart? No. Calm
+or indignant, at the moment of the crime or a long time after, without
+any spirit of personal vengeance, since you are not the least interested
+in this affair, you none the less declare that the murderer ought to be
+punished. If, instead of receiving a punishment, the culpable man makes
+his crime a stepping-stone to fortune, you still declare that, far from
+deserving prosperity, he deserves to suffer in reparation of his fault;
+you protest against lot, and appeal to a superior justice. This judgment
+philosophers have called the judgment of merit and demerit. I suppose,
+in the mind of man, the idea of a supreme law that attaches happiness to
+virtue, unhappiness to crime. Omit the idea of this law, and the
+judgment of merit and demerit is without foundation. Omit this judgment,
+and indignation against prosperous crime and the neglect of virtue is an
+unintelligible, even an impossible sentiment, and never, at the sight of
+crime, would you think of demanding the chastisement of a criminal.</p>
+
+<p>All the parts of the moral phenomenon are connected together; all are
+equally certain parts,&mdash;destroy one, and you completely overturn the
+whole phenomenon. The most common observation bears witness to all these
+facts, and the least subtle logic easily discovers their connection. It
+is necessary to renounce even sentiment, or it must be avowed that
+sentiment covers a judgment, the judgment of the essential distinction
+between good and evil, that this distinction involves an obligation,
+that this obligation is applied to an intelligent and free agent; in
+fine, it must be observed that the distinction between merit and
+demerit, that cor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">{278}</a></span>responds to the distinction between good and evil,
+contains the principle of the natural harmony between virtue and
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>What have we done thus far? We have done as the physicist or chemist
+does, who submits a composite body to analysis and reduces it to its
+simple elements. The only difference here is that the phenomenon to
+which our analysis is applied is in us, instead of being out of us.
+Besides, the processes employed are exactly the same; there is in them
+neither system nor hypothesis; there are only experience and the most
+immediate induction.</p>
+
+<p>In order to render experience more certain, we may vary it. Instead of
+examining what takes place in us when we are spectators of bad or good
+actions in another, let us interrogate our own consciousness when we are
+doing well or ill. In this case, the different elements of the moral
+phenomenon are still more striking, and their order appears more
+distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose that a dying friend has confided to me a more or less important
+deposit, charging me to remit it after his death to a person whom he has
+designated to me alone, and who himself knows not what has been done in
+his favor. He who confided to me the deposit dies, and carries with him
+his secret; he for whom the deposit has been made to me has no knowledge
+of it; if, then, I wish to appropriate this deposit to myself, no one
+will ever be able to suspect me. In this case what should I do? It is
+difficult to imagine circumstances more favorable for crime. If I
+consult only interest, I ought not to hesitate to return the deposit. If
+I hesitate, in the system of interest, I am senseless, and I revolt
+against the law of my nature. Doubt alone, in the impunity that is
+assured me, would betray in me a principle different from interest.</p>
+
+<p>But naturally I do not doubt, I believe with the most entire certainty,
+that the deposit confided to me does not belong to me, that it has been
+confided to me to be remitted to another, and that to this other it
+belongs. Take away interest, and I should not even think of returning
+this deposit,&mdash;it is interest alone that tempts me. It tempts me, it
+does not bear me away without resistance. Hence the struggle between
+interest and duty,&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">{279}</a></span> struggle filled with troubles, opposite
+resolutions, by turns taken and abandoned; it energetically attests the
+presence of a principle of action different from interest and quite as
+powerful.</p>
+
+<p>Duty succumbs, interest triumphs over it. I retain the deposit that has
+been confided to me, and apply it to my own wants, and to the wants of
+my family; it makes me rich, and in appearance happy; but I internally
+suffer with that bitter and secret suffering that is called
+remorse.<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> The fact is certain; it has been a thousand times
+described; all languages contain the word, and there is no one who, in
+some degree, has not experienced the thing, that sharp gnawing at the
+heart which is caused by every fault, great or small, as long as it has
+not been expiated. This painful recollection follows me in the midst of
+pleasures and prosperity. The applauses of the crowd are not able to
+silence this inexorable witness. Only a long habit of sin and crime, an
+accumulation of oft-repeated faults, can compass this sentiment, at once
+avenging and expiatory. When it is stifled, every resource is lost, and
+an end is made of the soul's life; as long as it endures, the sacred
+fire is not wholly extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>Remorse is a suffering of a particular character. In remorse I do not
+suffer on account of such an impression made upon my senses, nor on
+account of the thwarting of my natural passions, nor on account of the
+injury done or threatened to my interest, nor by the disquietude of my
+hopes and the agony of my fears: no, I suffer without any external
+cause, yet I suffer in the most cruel manner. I suffer for the sole
+reason that I have a consciousness of having committed a bad action
+which I knew I was obligated not to commit, which I was able not to
+commit, which leaves behind it a chastisement that I know to be
+deserved. No exact analysis can take away from remorse, without
+destroying it, a single one of these elements. Remorse contains the idea
+of good and evil, of an obligatory law, of liberty, of merit and
+demerit. All these ideas were already in the struggle between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">{280}</a></span> good and
+evil; they reappear in remorse. In vain interest counselled me to
+appropriate the deposit that had been confided to me; something said to
+me, and still says to me, that to appropriate it is to do evil, is to
+commit an injustice; I judged, and judge, thus, not such a day, but
+always, not under such a circumstance, but under all circumstances. In
+vain I say to myself that the person to whom I ought to remit this
+deposit has no need of it, and that it is necessary to me; I judge that
+a deposit must be respected without regard to persons, and the
+obligation that is imposed on me appears inviolable and absolute. Having
+taken upon myself this obligation, I believe by this fact alone that I
+have the power to fulfil it: this is not all; I am directly conscious of
+this power, I know with the most certain knowledge that I am able to
+keep this deposit or to remit it to the lawful owner; and it is
+precisely because I am conscious of this power that I judge that I have
+deserved punishment for not having made the use of it for which it was
+given me. It is, in fine, because I have a lively consciousness of all
+that, that I experience this sentiment of indignation against myself,
+this suffering of remorse which expresses in itself the moral phenomenon
+entire.</p>
+
+<p>According to the rules of the experimental method, let us take an
+opposite course; let us suppose that, in spite of the suggestions of
+interest, in spite of the pressing goad of misery, in order to be
+faithful to pledged faith, I send the deposit to the person that had
+been designated to me; instead of the painful scene that just now passed
+in consciousness, there passes another quite as real, but very
+different. I know that I have done well; I know that I have not obeyed a
+chimera, an artificial and mendacious law, but a law true, universal,
+obligatory upon all intelligent and free beings. I know that I have made
+a good use of my liberty; I have of this liberty, by the very use that I
+have made of it, a sentiment more distinct, more energetic, and, in some
+sort, triumphant. Every opinion would accuse me in vain, I appeal from
+it to a better justice, and this justice is already declared in me by
+sentiments that press upon each other in my soul. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">{281}</a></span> respect myself,
+esteem myself, and believe that I have a right to the esteem of others;
+I have the sentiment of my dignity; I feel for myself only sentiments of
+affection opposed to that species of horror for myself with which I was
+just now inspired. Instead of remorse, I feel an incomparable joy that
+no one can deprive me of, that, were every thing else wanting to me,
+would console and support me. This sentiment of pleasure is as
+penetrating, as profound as was the remorse. It expresses the
+satisfaction of all the generous principles of human nature, as remorse
+represented their revolt. It testifies by the internal happiness that it
+gives me to the sublime accord between happiness and virtue, whilst
+remorse is the first link in that fatal chain, that chain of iron and
+adamant, which, according to Plato,<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> binds pain to transgression,
+trouble to passion, misery to faithlessness, vice, and crime.</p>
+
+<p>Moral sentiment is the echo of all the moral judgments and entire moral
+life. It is so striking that it has been regarded by a somewhat
+superficial philosophy as sufficient to found entire ethics; and,
+nevertheless, we have just seen that this admirable sentiment would not
+exist without the different judgments that we have just enumerated; it
+is their consequence, but not their principle; it supplies, but does not
+constitute them; it does not take their place, but sums them up.</p>
+
+<p>Now that we are in possession of all the elements of human morality, we
+proceed to take these elements one by one, and submit them to a detailed
+analysis.</p>
+
+<p>That which is most apparent in the complex phenomenon that we are
+studying is sentiment; but its foundation is judgment.</p>
+
+<p>The judgment of good and evil is the principle of all that follows it;
+but this judgment rests only on the constitution itself of human nature,
+like the judgment of the true and the judgment of the beautiful. As well
+as these two judgments,<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> that of the good is a simple, primitive,
+indecomposable judgment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">{282}</a></span></p><p>Like them, again, it is not arbitrary. We cannot but fear this judgment
+in presence of certain acts; and, in fearing it, we know that it does
+not make good or evil, but declares it. The reality of moral
+distinctions is revealed by this judgment, but it is independent of it,
+as beauty is independent of the eye that perceives it, as universal and
+necessary truths are independent of the reason that discovers them.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a></p>
+
+<p>Good and evil are real characters of human actions, although these
+characters might not be seen with our eyes nor touched with our hands.
+The moral qualities of an action are none the less real for not being
+confounded with the material qualities of this action. This is the
+reason why actions materially identical may be morally very different. A
+homicide is always a homicide; nevertheless, it is often a crime, it is
+also often a legitimate action, for example, when it is not done for the
+sake of vengeance, nor for the sake of interest, in a strict case of
+self-defence.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the spilling of blood that makes the crime, it is the spilling
+of innocent blood. Innocence and crime, good and evil, do not reside in
+such or such an external circumstance determined one for all. Reason
+recognizes them with certainty under the most different appearances, in
+circumstances sometimes the same and sometimes dissimilar.</p>
+
+<p>Good and evil almost always appear to us connected with particular
+actions; but it is not on account of what is particular in them that
+these actions are good or bad. So when I declare that the death of
+Socrates is unjust, and that the devotion of Leonidas is admirable, it
+is the unjust death of a wise man that I condemn, and the devotion of a
+hero that I admire. It is not important whether this hero be called
+Leonidas or d'Assas, whether the immolated sage be called Socrates or
+Bailly.</p>
+
+<p>The judgment of the good is at first applied to particular actions, and
+it gives birth to general principles which in course serve us as rules
+for judging all actions of the same kind. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">{283}</a></span> after having judged that
+such a particular phenomenon has such a particular cause, we elevate
+ourselves to the general principle that every phenomenon has its
+cause;<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> so we erect into a general rule the moral judgment that we
+have borne in regard to a particular fact. Thus, at first we admire the
+death of Leonidas, thence we elevate ourselves to the principle that it
+is good to die for one's country. We already possess the principle in
+its first application to Leonidas; otherwise, this particular
+application would not have been legitimate, it would not have been even
+possible; but we possess it implicitly; as soon as it is disengaged, it
+appears to us under its universal and pure form, and we apply it to all
+analogous cases.</p>
+
+<p>Ethics have their axioms like other sciences; and these axioms are
+rightly called in all languages moral truths.</p>
+
+<p>It is good not to violate one's oath, and in this is also involved a
+truth. In fact, an oath is founded in the truth of things,&mdash;its good is
+only derived. Moral truths considered in themselves have no less
+certainty than mathematical truths. The idea of a deposit being given, I
+ask whether the idea of faithfully keeping it is not necessarily
+attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the idea that
+its three angles are equal to two right angles. You may withhold a
+deposit; but, in withholding it, do not believe that you change the
+nature of things, nor that you make it possible for a deposit ever to
+become property. These two ideas exclude each other. You have only a
+false semblance of property; and all the efforts of passion, all the
+sophisms of interest will not reverse the essential differences. This is
+the reason why moral truth is so troublesome,&mdash;it is because, like all
+truth, it is what it is, and does not bend to any caprice. Always the
+same and always present, in spite of all our efforts, it inexorably
+condemns, with a voice always heard, but not always listened to, the
+sensible and the culpable will which thinks to hinder it from being by
+denying it, or rather by pretending to deny it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">{284}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by the singular
+character that, as soon as we perceive them, they appear to us as the
+rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is made to be remitted
+to its legitimate possessor, it is necessary to remit it to him. To the
+necessity of believing is here added the necessity of practising.</p>
+
+<p>The necessity of practising is obligation. Moral truths, in the eyes of
+reason necessary, are to the will obligatory.</p>
+
+<p>Moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is
+absolute. As necessary truths are not more or less necessary,<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> so
+obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of
+importance between different obligations; but there are no degrees in
+the same obligation. We are not somewhat obligated, almost obligated; we
+are either wholly obligated, or not at all.</p>
+
+<p>If obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For, if the
+obligation of to-day were not the obligation of to-morrow, if what is
+obligatory for me were not so for you, obligation would differ from
+itself, would be relative and contingent.</p>
+
+<p>This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation is so certain and
+so manifest, in spite of all the efforts of the doctrine of interest to
+obscure it, that one of the profoundest moralists of modern philosophy,
+particularly struck with this fact, has regarded it as the principle of
+the whole of ethics. By separating duty from interest which ruins it,
+and from sentiment which enervates it, Kant restored to ethics their
+true character. He elevated himself very high in the century of
+Helvetius, in elevating himself to the holy law of duty; but he still
+did not ascend high enough, he did not reach the reason itself of duty.</p>
+
+<p>The good for Kant is what is obligatory. But logically, whence comes the
+obligation of performing an action, if not from the intrinsic goodness
+of this act? Is it not because that, in the order of reason, it is
+absolutely impossible to regard a deposit as a property, that we cannot
+appropriate it to ourselves without a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">{285}</a></span> crime? If one action must be
+performed, and another action must not, it is because there is
+apparently an essential difference between these two acts. To found the
+good on obligation, instead of founding obligation on the good, is,
+therefore, to take the effect for the cause, is to draw the principle
+from the consequence.</p>
+
+<p>If I ask an honest man who, in spite of the suggestions of misery, has
+respected the deposit that was intrusted to him, why he respected it, he
+will answer me,&mdash;because it was my duty. If I persist, and ask why it
+was his duty, he will very rightly answer,&mdash;because it was just, because
+it was good. That point having been reached, all answers are stopped;
+but questions also are stopped. No one allows a duty to be imposed upon
+him without rendering to himself a reason for it; but as soon as it is
+recognized that this duty is imposed upon us because it is just, the
+mind is satisfied; for it reaches a principle beyond which it has
+nothing more to seek, justice being its own principle. First truths
+carry with them their reason for being. Now, justice, the essential
+distinction between good and evil in the relations of men among
+themselves, is the primary truth of ethics.</p>
+
+<p>Justice is not a consequence, since we cannot ascend to another more
+elevated principle; and duty is not, rigorously speaking, a principle,
+since it supposes a principle above it, that explains and authorizes it,
+to wit, justice.</p>
+
+<p>Moral truth no more becomes relative and subjective, to take for a
+moment the language of Kant, in appearing to us obligatory, than truth
+becomes relative and subjective in appearing to us necessary; for in the
+very nature of truth and the good must be sought the reason of necessity
+and obligation. But if we stop at obligation and necessity, as Kant did,
+in ethics as well as in metaphysics, without knowing it, and even
+against our intention, we destroy, or at least weaken truth and the
+good.<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a></p>
+
+<p>Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinction between good
+and evil; and is itself the foundation of liberty. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">{286}</a></span> man has duties,
+he must possess the faculty of fulfilling them, of resisting desire,
+passion, and interest, in order to obey law. He ought to be free,
+therefore he is free, or human nature is in contradiction with itself.
+The direct certainty of obligation implies the corresponding certainty
+of liberty.</p>
+
+<p>This proof of liberty is doubtless good; but Kant is deceived in
+supposing it the only legitimate proof. It is very strange that he
+should have preferred the authority of reasoning to that of
+consciousness, as if the former had no need of being confirmed by the
+latter; as if, after all, my liberty ought not to be a fact for me.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a>
+Empiricism must be greatly feared to distrust the testimony of
+consciousness; and, after such a distrust, one must be very credulous to
+have a boundless faith in reasoning. We do not believe in our liberty as
+we believe in the movement of the earth. The profoundest persuasion that
+we have of it comes from the continual experience that we carry with
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Is it true that in presence of an act to be done I am able to will or
+not to will to do it? In that lies the whole question of liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Let us clearly distinguish between the power of doing and the power of
+willing. The will has, without doubt, in its service and under its
+empire, the most of our faculties; but that empire, which is real, is
+very limited. I will to move my arm, and I am often able to do it,&mdash;in
+that resides, as it were, the physical power of will; but I am not
+always able to move my arm, if the muscles are paralyzed, if the
+obstacle to be overcome is too strong, &amp;c.; the execution does not
+always depend on me; but what always depends on me is the resolution
+itself. The external effects may be hindered, my resolution itself can
+never be hindered. In its own domain, will is sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>And I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. I feel in
+myself, before its determination, the force that can determine itself in
+such a manner or in such another. At the same time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">{287}</a></span> that I will this or
+that, I am equally conscious of the power to will the opposite; I am
+conscious of being master of my resolution, of the ability to arrest it,
+continue it, repress it. When the voluntary act ceases, the
+consciousness of the power does not cease,&mdash;it remains with the power
+itself, which is superior to all its manifestations. Liberty is
+therefore the essential and always-subsisting attribute of will.<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p>
+
+<p>The will, we have seen,<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> is neither desire nor passion,&mdash;it is
+exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the license of
+desires and passions. Man is a slave in desire and passion, he is free
+only in will. That they may not elsewhere be confounded, liberty and
+anarchy must not be confounded in psychology. Passions abandoning
+themselves to their caprices, is anarchy. Passions concentrated upon a
+dominant passion, is tyranny. Liberty consists in the struggle of will
+against this tyranny and this anarchy. But this combat must have an aim,
+and this aim is the duty of obeying reason, which is our true sovereign,
+and justice, which reason reveals to us and prescribes for us. The duty
+of obeying reason is the law of will, and will is never more itself than
+when it submits to its law. We do not possess ourselves, as long as to
+the domination of desire, of passion, of interest, reason does not
+oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and justice free us from the
+yoke of passions, without imposing upon us another yoke. For, once more,
+to obey them, is not to abdicate liberty, but to save it, to apply it to
+its legitimate use.</p>
+
+<p>It is in liberty, and in the agreement of liberty with reason and
+justice, that man belongs to himself, to speak properly. He is a person
+only because he is a free being enlightened by reason.</p>
+
+<p>What distinguishes a person from a simple thing, is especially the
+difference between liberty and its opposite. A thing is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">{288}</a></span> that which is
+not free, consequently that which does not belong to itself, that which
+has no self, which has only a numerical individuality, a perfect effigy
+of true individuality, which is that of person.</p>
+
+<p>A thing, not belonging to itself, belongs to the first person that takes
+possession of it and puts his mark on it.</p>
+
+<p>A thing is not responsible for the movements which it has not willed, of
+which it is even ignorant. Person alone is responsible, for it is
+intelligent and free; and it is responsible for the use of its
+intelligence and freedom.</p>
+
+<p>A thing has no dignity; dignity is only attached to person.</p>
+
+<p>A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which person confers on
+it. It is purely an instrument whose whole value consists in the use
+that the person using it derives from it.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a></p>
+
+<p>Obligation implies liberty; where liberty is not, duty is wanting, and
+with duty right is wanting also.</p>
+
+<p>It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, that I have the
+duty of respecting it, and the right to make it respected by you. My
+duty is the exact measure of my right. The one is in direct ratio with
+the other. If I had no sacred duty to respect what makes my person, that
+is to say, my intelligence and my liberty, I should not have the right
+to defend it against your injuries. But as my person is inviolable and
+sacred in itself, it follows that, considered in relation to me, it
+imposes on me a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on
+me a right.</p>
+
+<p>I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that I am by abandoning
+myself to passion, to vice and crime, and I am not permitted to let it
+be degraded by you.</p>
+
+<p>The person is inviolable; and it alone is inviolable.</p>
+
+<p>It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of consciousness,
+but in all its legitimate manifestations, in its acts, in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">{289}</a></span> product
+of its acts, even in the instruments that it makes its own by using
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Therein is the foundation of the sanctity of property. The first
+property is the person. All other properties are derived from that.
+Think of it well. It is not property in itself that has rights, it is
+the proprietor, it is the person that stamps upon it, with its own
+character, its right and its title.</p>
+
+<p>The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without degrading
+itself,&mdash;it is to itself inalienable. The person has no right over
+itself; it cannot treat itself as a thing, cannot sell itself, cannot
+destroy itself, cannot in any way abolish its free will and its liberty,
+which are its constituent elements.</p>
+
+<p>Why has the child already some rights? Because it will be a free being.
+Why have the old man, returned to infancy, and the insane man still some
+rights? Because they have been free beings. We even respect liberty in
+its first glimmerings or its last vestiges. Why, on the other hand, have
+the insane man and the imbecile old man no longer all their rights?
+Because they have lost liberty. Why do we enchain the furious madman?
+Because he has lost knowledge and liberty. Why is slavery an abominable
+institution? Because it is an outrage upon what constitutes humanity.
+This is the reason why, in fine, certain extreme devotions are sometimes
+sublime faults, and no one is permitted to offer them, much less to
+demand them. There is no legitimate devotion against the very essence of
+right, against liberty, against justice, against the dignity of the
+human person.</p>
+
+<p>We have not been able to speak of liberty, without indicating a certain
+number of moral notions of the highest importance which it contains and
+explains; but we could not pursue this development without encroaching
+upon the domain of private and public ethics and anticipating the
+following lecture.</p>
+
+<p>We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenomenon, the
+judgment of merit and demerit.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time that we judge that a man has done a good or bad action,
+we bear this other judgment quite as necessary as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">{290}</a></span> the former, to wit,
+that if this man has acted well he has merited a reward, and if he has
+acted ill, he has merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with this
+judgment as with that of the good. It may be outwardly expressed in a
+more or less lively manner, according as it is mingled with more or less
+energetic feelings. Sometimes it will be only a benevolent disposition
+towards the virtuous agent, and an unfavorable disposition towards the
+culpable agent; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indignation. In some
+cases one will make himself the executor of the judgment that he bears,
+he will crown the hero and load the criminal with chains. But when all
+your feelings are calmed, when enthusiasm has cooled as well as
+indignation, when time and separation have rendered an action almost
+indifferent to you, you none the less persist in judging that the author
+of this action merits a reward or a punishment, according to the quality
+of the action. You decide that you were right in the sentiments that you
+felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare them legitimate.</p>
+
+<p>The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the judgment of
+good and evil. In fact, he who does an action without knowing whether it
+is good or bad, has neither merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with
+him the same as with those physical agents that accomplish the most
+beneficent or the most destructive works, to which we never think of
+attributing knowledge and will, consequently accountability. Why are
+there no penalties attached to involuntary crimes? Because for that very
+reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes that the question
+of premeditation is so grave in all criminal processes. Why is the
+child, up to a certain age, subject to none but light punishments?
+Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and
+demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward and punishment.
+The author of an injurious but involuntary action is condemned to an
+indemnity corresponding to the damage done; he is not condemned to a
+punishment properly so called.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">{291}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. When these conditions are
+fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest themselves, and involve reward and
+punishment.</p>
+
+<p>Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural
+right that others have to punish us, and, if we may thus speak, the
+right that we have to be punished. This expression may seem paradoxical,
+nevertheless it is true. A culpable man, who, opening his eyes to the
+light of the good, should comprehend the necessity of expiation, not
+only by internal repentance, without which all the rest is in vain, but
+also by a real and effective suffering, such a culpable man would have
+the right to claim the punishment that alone can reconcile him with
+order. And such reclamations are not so rare. Do we not every day see
+criminals denouncing themselves and offering themselves up to avenge the
+public? Others prefer to satisfy justice, and do not have recourse to
+the pardon that law places in the hands of the monarch in order to
+represent in the state charity and mercy, as tribunals represent in it
+justice. This is a manifest proof of the natural and profound roots of
+the idea of punishment and reward.</p>
+
+<p>Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful debt, punishment and
+reward; but reward must not be confounded with merit, nor punishment
+with demerit; this would be confounding cause and effect, principle and
+consequence. Even were reward and punishment not to take place, merit
+and demerit would subsist. Punishment and reward satisfy merit and
+demerit, but do not constitute them. Suppress all reward and all
+punishment and you do not thereby suppress merit and demerit; on the
+contrary, suppress merit and demerit, and there are no longer true
+punishments and true rewards. Unmerited goods and honors are only
+material advantages; reward is essentially moral, and its value is
+independent of its form. One of those crowns of oak that the early
+Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all the riches in the
+world, when it is the sign of the recognition and the admiration of a
+people. To reward is to give in return. He who is rewarded must have
+first given something in order to de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">{292}</a></span>serve to be rewarded. Reward
+accorded to merit is a debt; reward without merit is a charity or a
+theft. It is the same with punishment. It is the relation of pain to a
+fault,&mdash;in this relation, and not in the pain alone, is the truth as
+well as the shame of chastisement.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are two things that must be unceasingly repeated, because they are
+equally true,&mdash;the first is, that the good is good in itself, and ought
+to be pursued whatever may be the consequences; the second is, that the
+consequences of the good cannot fail to be fortunate. Happiness,
+separated from the good, is only a fact to which is attached no moral
+idea; but, as an effect of the good, it enters into the moral order and
+completes it.</p>
+
+<p>Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappiness, are a
+contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes sacrifice, that is to say,
+suffering, it is of eternal justice that the sacrifice, generously
+accepted and courageously borne, have for a reward the very happiness
+that has been sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice that crime be
+punished by the unhappiness of the culpable happiness which it has tried
+to obtain by stealth.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches pleasure and pain
+to good and evil? Most of the time even here below. For order rules in
+this world, since the world endures. If order is sometimes disturbed,
+and happiness and unhappiness are not always distributed in right
+proportion to crime and virtue, still the absolute judgment of the good,
+the absolute judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and
+demerit, subsist inviolable and imprescriptible,&mdash;we remain convinced
+that he who has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot in
+that fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-establish the
+sacred harmony between virtue and happiness by the means that to him
+belong. But the time has not come to sound these mysterious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">{293}</a></span>
+prospects.<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> It is sufficient for us, but it was necessary to mark
+them, in order to show the nature and the end of moral truth.</p>
+
+<p>We terminate this analysis of the different parts of the complex
+phenomenon of morality by recalling that one which is the most apparent
+of all, which, however, is only the accompaniment, and, thus to speak,
+the echo of all the others&mdash;sentiment. Sentiment has for its object to
+render sensible to the soul the tie between virtue and happiness. It is
+the direct and vital application of the law of merit and demerit. It
+precedes and authorizes the punishments and rewards that society
+institutes. It is the internal model according to which the imagination,
+guided by faith, represents to itself the punishments and rewards of the
+divine city. The world that we place beyond this is, in great part, our
+own heart transported into heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just
+that it should return thither.</p>
+
+<p>We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of sentiment; we have
+sufficiently explained them in the last lecture. A few words will
+replace them under your eyes.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its author, another or
+ourselves, without experiencing a particular pleasure, analogous to that
+which is attached to the perception of the beautiful; and we cannot
+witness a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also
+analogous to that which the sight of an ugly and deformed object excites
+in us. This sentiment is profoundly different from agreeable or
+disagreeable sensation.</p>
+
+<p>Are we the authors of the good action? We feel a satisfaction that we do
+not confound with any other. It is not the triumph of interest nor that
+of pride,&mdash;it is the pleasure of modest honesty or dignified virtue that
+renders justice to itself. Are we the authors of the bad action? We feel
+offended conscience groaning within us. Sometimes it is only an
+importunate reclamation, sometimes it is a bitter agony. Remorse is a
+suffering the more poignant on account of our feeling that it is
+deserved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">{294}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The spectacle of a good action done by another also has something
+delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that responds to
+whatever is noble and good in others. When interest does not lead us
+astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of him who has done
+well. We feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate him. We
+elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it not already for the
+good man an exquisite reward to make the noble sentiments that animate
+him thus pass into the hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad
+action, instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful
+and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute like
+remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid that tempers
+even the sentiment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us.
+We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we mourn over human
+weakness, and, by a melancholy return upon ourselves, we are less moved
+to anger than to pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous
+anger, by a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a
+sweet reward to excite a noble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always
+fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around us
+pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt.</p>
+
+<p>Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence for its author.
+He inspires us with an affectionate disposition. Even without knowing
+it, we would love to do good to him; we desire that he may be happy,
+because we judge that he deserves to be. Antipathy also passes from the
+action to the person, and engenders against him a sort of bad will, for
+which we do not blame ourselves, because we feel it to be disinterested
+and find it legitimate.</p>
+
+<p>Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, and their
+opposites are sentiments and not judgments; but they are sentiments that
+accompany judgments, the judgment of the good, especially that of merit
+and demerit. These sentiments have been given us by the sovereign Author
+of our moral constitution to aid us in doing good. In their diversity
+and mobility, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">{295}</a></span> cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation
+which must be equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure
+and beneficent witnesses of the harmony between virtue and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>These are the facts as presented by a faithful description, as brought
+to light by a detailed analysis.</p>
+
+<p>Without facts all is chimera; without a severe distinction of facts, all
+is confusion; but, also, without the knowledge of their relations,
+instead of a single vast doctrine, like the total phenomenon that we
+have undertaken to embrace, there can be only different systems like the
+different parts of this phenomenon, consequently imperfect systems,
+systems always at war with each other.</p>
+
+<p>We set out from common sense; for the object of true science is not to
+contradict common sense, but to explain it, and for this end we must
+commence by recognizing it. We have at first painted in its simplicity,
+even in the gross, the phenomenon of morality. Then we have separated
+its elements, and carefully marked the characteristic traits of each of
+them. It only remains for us to re-collect them all, to seize their
+relations, and thus to find again, but more precise and more clear, the
+primitive unity that served us as a point of departure.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath all facts analysis has shown us a primitive fact, which vests
+only on itself,&mdash;the judgment of the good. We do not sacrifice other
+facts to that, but we must establish that it is the first both in date
+and in importance.</p>
+
+<p>By its close resemblance to the judgment of the true and the beautiful,
+the judgment of the good has shown us the affinities of ethics,
+metaphysics, and &aelig;sthetics.</p>
+
+<p>The good, so essentially united to the true, is distinguished from it in
+that it is practical truth. The good is obligatory. These two ideas are
+inseparable, but not identical. For obligation rests on the good,&mdash;in
+this intimate alliance, from the good obligation borrows its universal
+and absolute character.</p>
+
+<p>The obligatory good is the moral law. Therein is for us the foundation
+of all ethics. Thereby it is that we separate ourselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">{296}</a></span> from the ethics
+of interest and the ethics of sentiment. We admit all the facts, but we
+do not admit them in the same rank.</p>
+
+<p>To the moral law in the reason of man corresponds liberty in action.
+Liberty is deduced from obligation, and moreover it is a fact of an
+irresistible evidence.</p>
+
+<p>Man as a being free and subject to obligation, is a moral person. The
+idea of person contains several moral notions, among others that of
+right. Person alone can have rights.</p>
+
+<p>To all these ideas is added that of merit and demerit, which serves as
+their sanction.</p>
+
+<p>Merit and demerit suppose the distinction between good and evil,
+obligation and liberty, and give birth to the idea of reward and
+punishment.</p>
+
+<p>It is on the condition that the good may be an object of reason, that
+ethics can have an immovable basis. We have therefore insisted on the
+rational character of the idea of the good, but without misconceiving
+the part of sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which is stirred in
+us in the train of reason itself, from physical sensibility, which needs
+an impression made upon the organs in order to enter into exercise.</p>
+
+<p>All our moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to
+them. The sight of an action which we judge to be good gives us
+pleasure,&mdash;the consciousness of having performed an obligatory act, and
+of having performed it freely, is also a pleasure; the judgment of merit
+and demerit makes our hearts beat by taking the form of sympathy and
+benevolence.</p>
+
+<p>It must be avowed that the law of duty, although it ought to be
+fulfilled for its own sake, would be an ideal almost inaccessible to
+human weakness, if to its austere prescriptions were not added some
+inspiration of the heart. Sentiment is in some sort a natural grace that
+has been given us, either to supply the light of reason that is
+sometimes uncertain, or to succor the will wavering in the presence of
+an obscure or painful duty. In order to resist the violence of culpable
+passions, the aid of generous passions is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">{297}</a></span> needed; and when the moral
+law exacts the sacrifice of natural sentiments, of the sweetest and most
+lively instincts, it is fortunate that it can support itself on other
+sentiments, or other instincts which also have their charm and their
+force. Truth enlightens the mind; sentiment warms the soul and leads to
+action. It is not cold reason that determines a Codrus to devote himself
+for his countrymen, a d'Assas to utter, beneath the steel of the enemy,
+the generous cry that brings him death and saves the army. Let us guard
+ourselves, then, from weakening the authority of sentiment; let us honor
+and sustain enthusiasm; it is the source whence spring great and heroic
+actions.</p>
+
+<p>And shall interest be entirely banished from our system? No; we
+recognize in the human soul a desire for happiness which is the work of
+God himself. This desire is a fact,&mdash;it must then have its place in a
+system founded upon experience. Happiness is one of the ends of human
+nature; only it is neither its sole end nor its principal end.</p>
+
+<p>Admirable economy of the moral constitution of man! Its supreme end is
+the good, its law is virtue, which often imposes on it suffering, and
+thereby it is the most excellent of all things that we know. But this
+law is very hard and in contradiction with the instinct of happiness.
+Fear nothing,&mdash;the beneficent author of our being has placed in our
+souls, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet and amiable
+force of sentiment,&mdash;he has, in general, attached happiness to virtue;
+and, for the exceptions, for there are exceptions, at the end of the
+course he has placed hope.<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a></p>
+
+<p>Our doctrine is now known. Its only pretension is to express faithfully
+each fact, to express them all, and to make appear at once their
+differences and their harmony.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond that there is nothing new to attempt in ethics. To admit only a
+single fact and to sacrifice to that all the rest,&mdash;such is the beaten
+way. Of all the facts that we have just analyzed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">{298}</a></span> there is not one that
+has not in its turn played the part of sole principle. All the great
+schools of moral philosophy have each seen only one side of
+truth,&mdash;fortunate when they have not chosen among the different phases
+of the moral phenomenon, in order to found upon them their entire
+system, precisely those that are least adapted to that end!</p>
+
+<p>Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most manifest facts,
+against common sense, against the very idea of all ethics, found duty,
+virtue, the good, on the desire of happiness alone? It would be proof of
+great blindness and great barrenness. On the other hand, shall we
+immolate the need of happiness, the hope of all reward, human or divine,
+to the abstract idea of the good? The Stoics have done it,&mdash;we know with
+what apparent grandeur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine with
+Kant the whole of ethics to obligation? That is straitening still more a
+system that is already very narrow. Moreover, one may hope to surpass
+Kant in extent of views, by a completer knowledge and more faithful
+representation of facts; one cannot hope to be more profound in the
+point of view that he has chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, shall
+we refer to the will of God alone the obligation of virtue, and found
+ethics on religion, instead of giving religion to ethics as their
+necessary perfection? We still invent nothing new, we only renew the
+ethics of the theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular
+school which has had for its adversaries the most illustrious doctors.
+Finally, shall we reduce all morality to sentiment, to sympathy, to
+benevolence? It only remains to follow the footsteps of Hutcheson and
+Smith, abandoned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of a celebrated
+adversary of Kant, Jacobi.<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a></p>
+
+<p>The time of exclusive theories has gone by; to renew them is to
+perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, being founded upon a real
+fact, rightly refuses the sacrifice of this fact; and it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">{299}</a></span> meets in
+hostile theories an equal right and an equal resistance. Hence the
+perpetual return of the same systems, always at war with each other, and
+by turns vanquished and victorious. This strife can cease only by means
+of a doctrine that conciliates all systems by comprising all the facts
+that give them authority.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the preconceived design of conciliating systems in history
+that suggests to us the idea of conciliating facts in reality. It is, on
+the contrary, the full possession of all the facts, analogous and
+different, that forces us to absolve and condemn all systems on account
+of the truth that is in each of them, and on account of the errors that
+are mixed with the truth.</p>
+
+<p>It is important to repeat continually, that nothing is so easy as to
+arrange a system, by suppressing or altering the facts that embarrass
+it. But is it, then, the object of philosophy to produce at any cost a
+system, instead of seeking to understand the truth and express it as it
+is?</p>
+
+<p>It is objected that such a doctrine has not sufficient character. But is
+it not sporting with philosophy to demand of it any other character than
+that of truth? Do men complain that modern chemistry has not sufficient
+character, because it limits itself to studying facts in their
+relations, and also in their differences, and because it does not end at
+a single substance? The only true philosophy that is proper for a
+century returned from all exaggerations, is a picture of human nature
+whose first merit is fidelity, which must offer all the traits of the
+original in their right proportion and real harmony. The unity of the
+doctrine that we profess is in that of the human soul, whence we have
+drawn it. Is it not one and the same being that perceives the good, that
+knows that he is obligated to fulfil it, that knows that he is free in
+fulfilling it, that loves the good, and judges that the fulfilment or
+violation of the good justly brings after it reward or punishment,
+happiness or misery? We draw, then, a true unity from the intimate
+relation between all the facts that, as we have seen, imply and sustain
+each other. But by what right is the unity of a doctrine placed in
+allowing in it only a single princi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">{300}</a></span>ple? Such a unity is possible only
+in those regions of mathematical abstraction, where one is not disturbed
+by what is, where one retrenches at will from the object that he is
+studying, in order to simplify it continually, where every thing is
+reduced to pure notions. In the reality all is determined, and
+consequently, all is complex. A science of facts is not a series of
+equations. In it must be found again the life that is in things, life
+with its harmony doubtless, but also with its richness and
+diversity.<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">{301}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XV" id="LECTURE_XV"></a>LECTURE XV.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Application of the preceding principles.&mdash;General formula of
+interest,&mdash;to obey reason.&mdash;Rule for judging whether an action
+is or is not conformed to reason,&mdash;to elevate the motive of this
+action into a maxim of universal legislation.&mdash;Individual
+ethics. It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral
+person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual
+duties,&mdash;to respect and develop the moral person.&mdash;Social
+ethics,&mdash;duties of justice and duties of charity.&mdash;Civil
+society. Government. Law. The right to punish.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>We know that there is moral good and that there is moral evil: we know
+that this distinction between good and evil engenders an obligation, a
+law, duty; but we do not yet know what our duties are. The general
+principle of ethics is laid down; it must be followed at least into its
+most important applications.</p>
+
+<p>If duty is only truth become obligatory, and if truth is known only by
+reason, to obey the law of duty, is to obey reason.</p>
+
+<p>But to obey reason is a precept very vague and very abstract:&mdash;how can
+we be sure that our action is conformed or is not conformed to reason?</p>
+
+<p>The character of reason being, as we have said, its universality,
+action, in order to be conformed to reason, must possess something
+universal; and as it is the motive itself of the action that gives it
+its morality, it is also the motive that must, if the action is good,
+reflect the character of reason. By what sign, then, do you recognize
+that an action is conformed to reason, that it is good? By the sign that
+the motive of this action being generalized, appears to you a maxim of
+universal legislation, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">{302}</a></span> reason imposes upon all intelligent and
+free beings. If you are not able thus to generalize the motive of an
+action, and if it is the opposite motive that appears to you a universal
+maxim, your action, being opposed to this maxim, is thereby proved to be
+contrary to reason and duty,&mdash;it is bad. If neither the motive of your
+action nor the motive of the opposite action can be erected into a
+universal law, the action is neither good nor bad, it is indifferent.
+Such is the ingenious measure that Kant has applied to the morality of
+actions. It makes known with the last degree of clearness where duty is
+and where it is not, as the severe and naked form of syllogism, being
+applied to reasoning, brings out in the precisest manner its error or
+its truth.</p>
+
+<p>To obey reason,&mdash;such is duty in itself, the duty superior to all other
+duties, giving to all others their foundation, and being itself founded
+only on the essential relation between liberty and reason.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that there is only a single duty, that of obeying reason.
+But man having different relations, this single and general duty is
+determined by these different relations, and divided into a
+corresponding number of particular duties.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the beings that we know, there is not one with whom we are more
+constantly in relation than with ourselves. The actions of which man is
+at once the author and the object, have rules as well as other actions.
+Hence that first class of duties which are called the duties of man
+towards himself.</p>
+
+<p>At first sight, it is strange that man should have duties towards
+himself. Man, being free, belongs to himself. What is most to me is
+myself:&mdash;this is the first property and the foundation of all other
+properties. Now, is it not the essence of property to be at the free
+disposition of the proprietor, and consequently, am I not able to do
+with myself what I please?</p>
+
+<p>No; from the fact that man is free, from the fact that he belongs only
+to himself, it must not be concluded that he has over himself all power.
+On the contrary, indeed, from the fact alone that he is endowed with
+liberty, as well as intelligence, I conclude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">{303}</a></span> that he can no more
+degrade his liberty than his intelligence, without transgressing. It is
+a culpable use of liberty to abdicate it. We have said that liberty is
+not only sacred to others, but is so to itself. To subject it to the
+yoke of passion, instead of increasing it under the liberal discipline
+of duty, is to abase in us what deserves our respect as much as the
+respect of others. Man is not a thing; it has not, then, been permitted
+him to treat himself as a thing.</p>
+
+<p>If I have duties towards myself, it is not towards myself as an
+individual, it is towards the liberty and intelligence that make me a
+free moral person. It is necessary to distinguish closely in us what is
+peculiar to us from what pertains to humanity. Each one of us contains
+in himself human nature with all its essential elements; and, in
+addition, all these elements are in him in a certain manner that is not
+the same in two different men. These particularities make the
+individual, but not the person; and the person alone in us is to be
+respected and held as sacred, because it alone represents humanity.
+Every thing that does not concern the moral person is indifferent. In
+these limits I may consult my tastes, even my fancies to a certain
+extent, because in them there is nothing absolute, because in them good
+and evil are in no way involved. But as soon as an act touches the moral
+person, my liberty is subjected to its law, to reason, which does not
+allow liberty to be turned against itself. For example, if through
+caprice, or melancholy, or any other motive, I condemn myself to an
+abstinence too prolonged, if I impose on myself vigils protracted and
+beyond my strength; if I absolutely renounce all pleasure, and, by these
+excessive privations, endanger my health, my life, my reason, these are
+no longer indifferent actions. Sickness, death, madness, may become
+crimes, if we voluntarily bring them upon ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>I have not established this obligation of self-respect imposed on the
+moral person, therefore I cannot destroy it. Is self-respect founded on
+one of those arbitrary conventions that cease to exist when the two
+contracting parties freely renounce them? Are the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">{304}</a></span> two contracting
+parties here <i>me</i> and myself? By no means; one of the contracting
+parties is not <i>me</i>, to wit, humanity, the moral person. And there is
+here neither convention nor contract. By the fact alone that the moral
+person is in us, we are obligated towards it, without convention of any
+sort, without contract that can be cancelled, and by the very nature of
+things. Hence it comes that obligation is absolute.</p>
+
+<p>Respect of the moral person in us is the general principle whence are
+derived all individual duties. We will cite some of them.</p>
+
+<p>The most important, that which governs all others, is the duty of
+remaining master of one's self. One may lose possession of himself in
+two ways, either by allowing himself to be carried away, or by allowing
+himself to be overcome, by yielding to enervating passions or to
+overwhelming passions, to anger or to melancholy. On either hand there
+is equal weakness. And I do not speak of the consequences of those vices
+for society and ourselves,&mdash;certainly they are very injurious; but they
+are much worse than that, they are already bad in themselves, because in
+themselves they give a blow to moral dignity, because they diminish
+liberty and disturb intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Prudence is an eminent virtue. I speak of that noble prudence that is
+the moderation in all things, the foresight, the fitness, that preserve
+at once from negligence and that rashness which adorns itself with the
+name of heroism, as cowardice and selfishness sometimes usurp the name
+of prudence. Heroism, without being premeditated, ought always to be
+rational. One may be a hero at intervals; but, in every-day life, it is
+sufficient to be a wise man. We must ourselves hold the reins of our
+life, and not prepare difficulties for ourselves by carelessness or
+bravado, nor create for ourselves useless perils. Doubtless we must know
+how to dare, but still prudence is, if not the principle, at least the
+rule of courage; for true courage is not a blind transport, it is before
+all coolness and self possession in danger. Prudence also teaches
+temperance; it keeps the soul in that state of mod<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">{305}</a></span>eration without which
+man is incapable of recognizing and practising justice. This is the
+reason why the ancients said that prudence is the mother and guardian of
+all the virtues. Prudence is the government of liberty by reason, as
+imprudence is liberty escaped from reason:&mdash;on the one side, order, the
+legitimate subordination of our faculties to each other; on the other,
+anarchy and revolt.<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a></p>
+
+<p>Veracity is also a great virtue. Falsehood, by breaking the natural
+alliance between man and truth, deprives him of that which makes his
+dignity. This is the reason why there is no graver insult than giving
+the lie, and why the most honored virtues are sincerity and frankness.</p>
+
+<p>One may degrade the moral person by wounding it in its instruments. For
+this reason the body is to man the object of imperative duties. The body
+may become an obstacle or a means. If you refuse it what sustains and
+strengthens it, or if you demand too much from it by exciting it beyond
+measure, you exhaust it, and by abusing it, deprive yourself of it. It
+is worse still if you pamper it, if you grant every thing to its
+unbridled desires, if you make yourself its slave. It is being
+unfaithful to the soul to enfeeble its servant; it is being much more
+unfaithful to it still, to enslave it to its servant.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not enough to respect the moral person, it is necessary to
+perfect it; it is necessary to labor to return the soul to God better
+than we received it; and it can become so only by a constant and
+courageous exercise. Everywhere in nature, all things are spontaneously
+developed, without willing it, and without knowing it. With man, if the
+will slumbers, the other faculties degenerate into languor and inertion;
+or, carried away by the blind impulse of passion, they are precipitated
+and go astray. It is by the government and education of himself that man
+is great.</p>
+
+<p>Man must, before every thing else, occupy himself with his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">{306}</a></span>
+intelligence. It is in fact our intelligence that alone can give us a
+clear sight of the true and the good, that guides liberty by showing it
+the legitimate object of its efforts. No one can give himself another
+mind than the one that he has received, but he may train and strengthen
+it as well as the body, by putting it to a task of some kind, by rousing
+it when it is drowsy, by restraining it when it is carried away, by
+continually proposing to it new objects,&mdash;for it is only by continually
+enriching it that it does not grow poor. Sloth benumbs and enervates the
+mind; regular work excites and strengthens it, and work is always in our
+power.</p>
+
+<p>There is an education of liberty as well as our other faculties. It is
+sometimes in subduing the body, sometimes in governing our intelligence,
+especially in resisting our passions, that we learn to be free. We
+encounter opposition at each step,&mdash;the only question is not to shun it.
+In this constant struggle liberty is formed and augmented, until it
+becomes a habit.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, there is a culture of sensibility itself. Fortunate are those
+who have received from nature the sacred fire of enthusiasm! They ought
+religiously to preserve it. But there is no soul that does not conceal
+some fortunate vein of it. It is necessary to watch it and pursue, to
+avoid what restrains it, to seek what favors it, and, by an assiduous
+culture, draw from it, little by little, some treasures. If we cannot
+give ourselves sensibility, we can at least develop what we have. We can
+do this by giving ourselves up to it, by seizing all the occasions of
+giving ourselves up to it, by calling to its aid intelligence itself;
+for, the more we know of the beautiful and the good, the more we love
+it. Sentiment thereby only borrows from intelligence what it returns
+with usury. Intelligence in its turn finds, in the heart, a rampart
+against sophism. Noble, sentiments, nourished and developed, preserve
+from those sad systems that please certain spirits so much only because
+their hearts are so small.</p>
+
+<p>Man would still have duties, should he cease to be in relation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">{307}</a></span> with
+other men.<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> As long as he preserves any intelligence and any
+liberty, the idea of the good dwells in him, and with it duty. Were we
+cast upon a desert island, duty would follow us thither. It would be
+beyond belief strange that it should be in the power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">{308}</a></span> of certain
+external circumstances to affranchise an intelligent and free being from
+all obligation towards his liberty and his intelligence. In the deepest
+solitude he is always and consciously under the empire of a law attached
+to the person itself, which, by obligating him to keep continual watch
+over himself, makes at once his torment and his grandeur.</p>
+
+<p>If the moral person is sacred to me, it is not because it is in me, it
+is because it is the moral person; it is in itself respectable; it will
+be so, then, wherever we meet it.</p>
+
+<p>It is in you as in me, and for the same reason. In relation to me it
+imposes on me a duty; in you it becomes the foundation of a right, and
+thereby imposes on me a new duty in relation to you.</p>
+
+<p>I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself; for truth is the law of your
+reason as of mine. Without doubt there ought to be measure in the
+communication of truth,&mdash;all are not capable of it at the same moment
+and in the same degree; it is necessary to portion it out to them in
+order that they may be able to receive it; but, in fine, the truth is
+the proper good of the intelligence; and it is for me a strict duty to
+respect the development of your mind, not to arrest, and even to favor
+its progress towards truth.</p>
+
+<p>I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always the right
+to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so sacred that, even
+when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a certain point, to be
+managed. We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that
+God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an attempt to purify
+them.</p>
+
+<p>I ought to respect you in your affections, which make part of yourself;
+and of all the affections there are none more holy than those of the
+family. There is in us a need of expanding ourselves beyond ourselves,
+yet without dispelling ourselves, of establishing ourselves in some
+souls by a regular and consecrated affection,&mdash;to this need the family
+responds. The love of men is something of the general good. The family
+is still almost the individual, and not merely the individual,&mdash;it only
+requires us to love as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">{309}</a></span> much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It
+attaches one to the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all
+ties&mdash;father, mother, child; it gives to this sure succor in the love of
+its parents&mdash;to these hope, joy, new life, in their child. To violate
+the conjugal or paternal right, is to violate the person in what is
+perhaps its most sacred possession.</p>
+
+<p>I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you, inasmuch as
+it is the necessary instrument of your person. I have neither the right
+to kill you, nor to wound you, unless I am attacked and threatened; then
+my violated liberty is armed with a new right, the right of defence and
+even constraint.</p>
+
+<p>I owe respect to your goods, for they are the product of your labor; I
+owe respect to your labor, which is your liberty itself in exercise;
+and, if your goods come from an inheritance, I still owe respect to the
+free will that has transmitted them to you.<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></p>
+
+<p>Respect for the rights of others is called justice; every violation of a
+right is an injustice.</p>
+
+<p>Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person,&mdash;to retrench the
+least of our rights, is to diminish our moral person, is, at least, so
+far as that retrenchment goes, to abase us to the condition of a thing.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest of all injustices, because it comprises all others, is
+slavery. Slavery is the subjecting of all the faculties of one man to
+the profit of another man. The slave develops his intelligence a little
+only in the interest of another,&mdash;it is not for the purpose of
+enlightening him, but to render him more useful, that some exercise of
+mind is allowed him. The slave has not the liberty of his movements; he
+is attached to the soil, is sold with it, or he is chained to the person
+of a master. The slave should have no affection, he has no family, no
+wife, no children,&mdash;he has a female and little ones. His activity does
+not belong to him, for the product of his labor is another's. But, that
+nothing may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">{310}</a></span> be wanting to slavery, it is necessary to go farther,&mdash;in
+the slave must be destroyed the inborn sentiment of liberty, in him must
+be extinguished all idea of right; for, as long as this idea subsists,
+slavery is uncertain, and to an odious power may respond the terrible
+right of insurrection, that last resort of the oppressed against the
+abuse of force.<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a></p>
+
+<p>Justice, respect for the person in every thing that constitutes the
+person, is the first duty of man towards his fellow-man. Is this duty
+the only one?</p>
+
+<p>When we have respected the person of others, when we have neither
+restrained their liberty, nor smothered their intelligence, nor
+maltreated their body, nor outraged their family, nor injured their
+goods, are we able to say that we have fulfilled the whole law in regard
+to them? One who is unfortunate is suffering before us. Is our
+conscience satisfied, if we are able to bear witness to ourselves that
+we have not contributed to his sufferings? No; something tells that it
+is still good to give him bread, succor, consolation.</p>
+
+<p>There is here an important distinction to be made. If you have remained
+hard and insensible at the sight of another's misery, conscience cries
+out against you; and yet this man who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">{311}</a></span> is suffering, who, perhaps, is
+ready to die, has not the least right over the least part of your
+fortune, were it immense; and, if he used violence for the purpose of
+wresting from you a single penny, he would commit a crime. We here meet
+a new order of duties that do not correspond to rights. Man may resort
+to force in order to make his rights respected; he cannot impose on
+another any sacrifice whatever. Justice respects or restores; charity
+gives, and gives freely.</p>
+
+<p>Charity takes from us something in order to give it to our fellow-men.
+If it goes so far as to inspire us to renounce our dearest interests, it
+is called devotedness.</p>
+
+<p>It certainly cannot be said that to be charitable is not obligatory. But
+this obligation must not be regarded as precise, as inflexible as the
+obligation to be just. Charity is a sacrifice; and who can find the rule
+of sacrifice, the formula of self-renunciation? For justice, the formula
+is clear,&mdash;to respect the rights of another. But charity knows neither
+rule nor limit. It transcends all obligation. Its beauty is precisely in
+its liberty.</p>
+
+<p>But it must be acknowledged that charity also has its dangers. It tends
+to substitute its own action for the action of him whom it wishes to
+help; it somewhat effaces his personality, and makes itself in some sort
+his providence,&mdash;a formidable part for a mortal! In order to be useful
+to others, one imposes himself on them, and runs the risk of violating
+their natural rights. Love, in giving itself, enslaves. Doubtless it is
+not interdicted us to act upon another. We can always do it through
+petition and exhortation. We can also do it by threatening, when we see
+one of our fellows engaged in a criminal or senseless action. We have
+even the right to employ force when passion carries away liberty and
+makes the person disappear. So we may, we even ought to prevent by force
+the suicide of one of our fellow-men. The legitimate power of charity is
+measured by the more or less liberty and reason possessed by him to whom
+it is applied. What delicacy, then, is necessary in the exercise of this
+perilous virtue! How can we estimate with sufficient certainty the
+de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">{312}</a></span>gree of liberty still possessed by one of our fellow-men to know how
+far we may substitute ourselves for him in the guiding of his destiny?
+And when, in order to assist a feeble soul, we take possession of it,
+who is sufficiently sure of himself not to go farther, not to pass from
+the person governed to the love of domination itself? Charity is often
+the commencement and the excuse, and always the pretext of usurpation.
+In order to have the right of abandoning one's self to the emotions of
+charity, it is necessary to be fortified against one's self by a long
+exercise of justice.</p>
+
+<p>To respect the rights of others and do good to men, to be at once just
+and charitable,&mdash;such are social ethics in the two elements that
+constitute them.</p>
+
+<p>We speak of social ethics, and we do not yet know what society is. Let
+us look around us:&mdash;everywhere society exists, and where it is not, man
+is not man. Society is a universal fact which must have universal
+foundations.</p>
+
+<p>Let us avoid at first the question of the origin of society.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">{313}</a></span> The
+philosophy of the last century delighted in such questions too much. How
+can we demand light from the regions of darkness, and the explanation of
+reality from an hypothesis? Why go back to a pretended primitive state
+in order to account for a present state which may be studied in itself
+in its unquestionable characters? Why seek what may have been in the
+germ that which may be perceived, that which it is the question to
+understand, completed and perfect? Moreover, there is great peril in
+starting with the question of the origin of society. Has such or such an
+origin been found? Actual society is arranged according to the type of
+the primitive society that has been dreamed of, and political society is
+delivered up to the mercy of historical romances. This one imagines that
+the primitive state is violence, and he sets out from that in order to
+authorize the right of the strongest, and to consecrate despotism. That
+one thinks that he has found in the family the first form of society,
+and he compares government to the father of a family, and subjects to
+children; society in his eyes is a minor that must be held in tutelage
+in the hands of the paternal power, which in the origin is absolute, and
+consequently, must remain so. Or has one thrown himself to the extreme
+of the opposite opinion, and into the hypothesis of an agreement, of a
+contract that expresses the will of all or of the greatest number? He
+delivers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">{314}</a></span> up to the mobile will of the crowd the eternal laws of justice
+and the inalienable rights of the person. Finally, are powerful
+religious institutions found in the cradle of society? It is hence
+concluded, that power belongs of right to priesthoods, which have the
+secret of the designs of God, and represent his sovereign authority.
+Thus a vicious method in philosophy leads to a deplorable political
+system,&mdash;the commencement is made in hypothesis, and the termination is
+in anarchy or tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>True politics do not depend on more or less well directed historical
+researches into the profound night of a past forever vanished, and of
+which no vestige subsists: they rest on the knowledge of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever society is, wherever it was, it has for its foundations:&mdash;1st,
+The need that we have of our fellow-creatures, and the social instincts
+that man bears in himself; 2d, The permanent and indestructible idea and
+sentiment of justice and right.</p>
+
+<p>Man, feeble and powerless when he is alone, profoundly feels the need
+that he has of the succor of his fellow-creatures in order to develop
+his faculties, to embellish his life, and even to preserve it.<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a>
+Without reflection, without convention, he claims<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">{315}</a></span> the hand, the
+experience, the love of those whom he sees made like himself. The
+instinct of society is in the first cry of the child that calls for the
+mother's help without knowing that it has a mother, and in the eagerness
+of the mother to respond to the cries of the child. It is in the
+feelings for others that nature has put in us&mdash;pity, sympathy,
+benevolence. It is in the attraction of the sexes, in their union, in
+the love of parents for their children, and in the ties of every kind
+that these first ties engender. If Providence has attached so much
+sadness to solitude, so much charm to society, it is because society is
+indispensable for the preservation of man and for his happiness, for his
+intellect and moral development.</p>
+
+<p>But if need and instinct begin society, it is justice that completes it.</p>
+
+<p>In the presence of another man, without any external law, without any
+compact,<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a> it is sufficient that I know that he is a man, that is to
+say, that he is intelligent and free, in order to know that he has
+rights, and to know that I ought to respect his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">{316}</a></span> rights as he ought to
+respect mine. As he is no freer than I am, nor I than he, we recognize
+towards each other equal rights and equal duties. If he abuses his force
+to violate the equality of our rights, I know that I have the right to
+defend myself and make myself respected; and if a third party is found
+between us, without any personal interest in the quarrel, he knows that
+it is his right and his duty to use force in order to protect the
+feeble, and even to make the oppressor expiate his injustice by a
+chastisement. Therein is already seen entire society with its essential
+principles,&mdash;justice, liberty, equality, government, and punishment.</p>
+
+<p>Justice is the guaranty of liberty. True liberty does not consist in
+doing what we will, but in doing what we have a right to do. Liberty of
+passion and caprice would have for its consequence the enslavement of
+the weakest to the strongest, and the enslavement of the strongest
+themselves to their unbridled desires. Man is truly free in the interior
+of his consciousness only in resisting passion and obeying justice;
+therein also is the type of true social liberty. Nothing is falser than
+the opinion that society diminishes our mutual liberty; far from that,
+it secures it, develops it: what it suppresses is not liberty; it is its
+opposite, passion. Society no more injures liberty than justice, for
+society is nothing else than the very idea of justice realized.</p>
+
+<p>In securing liberty, justice secures equality also. If men are unequal
+in physical force and intelligence, they are equal in so far as they are
+free beings, and consequently equally worthy of respect. All men, when
+they bear the sacred character of the moral person, are to be respected,
+by the same title, and in the same degree.<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">{317}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The limit of liberty is in liberty itself; the limit of right is in
+duty. Liberty is to be respected, but provided it injure not the liberty
+of an other. I ought to let you do what you please, but on the condition
+that nothing which you do will injure my liberty. For then, in virtue of
+my right of liberty, I should regard myself as obligated to repress the
+aberrations of your will, in order to protect my own and that of others.
+Society guaranties the liberty of each one, and if one citizen attacks
+that of another, he is arrested in the name of liberty. For example,
+religious liberty is sacred; you may, in the secret of consciousness,
+invent for yourself the most extravagant superstition; but if you wish
+publicly to inculcate an immoral worship, you threaten the liberty and
+reason of your citizens: such preaching is interdicted.</p>
+
+<p>From the necessity of repressing springs the necessity of a constituted
+repressive force.</p>
+
+<p>Rigorously, this force is in us; for if I am unjustly attacked, I have
+the right to defend myself. But, in the first place, I may not be the
+strongest; in the second place, no one is an impartial judge in his own
+cause, and what I regard or give out as an act of legitimate defence may
+be an act of violence and oppression.</p>
+
+<p>So the protection of the rights of each one demands an impartial and
+disinterested force, that may be superior to all particular forces.</p>
+
+<p>This disinterested party, armed with the power necessary to secure and
+defend the liberty of all, is called government.</p>
+
+<p>The right of government expresses the rights of all and each. It is the
+right of personal defence transferred to a public force, to the profit
+of common liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Government is not, then, a power distinct from and independent of
+society; it draws from society its whole force. It is not what it has
+seemed to two opposite schools of publicists,&mdash;to those who sacrifice
+society to government,&mdash;to those who consider government as the enemy of
+society. If government did not represent society, it would be only a
+material, illegitimate, and soon powerless force; and without
+government, society would be a war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">{318}</a></span> of all against all. Society makes
+the moral power of government, as government makes the security of
+society. Pascal is wrong<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> when he says, that not being able to make
+what is just powerful, men have made what is powerful just. Government,
+in principle at least, is precisely what Pascal desired,&mdash;justice armed
+with force.</p>
+
+<p>It is a sad and false political system that places society and
+government, authority and liberty, in opposition to each other, by
+making them come from two different sources, by presenting them as two
+contrary principles. I often hear the principle of authority spoken of
+as a principle apart, independent, deriving from itself its force and
+legitimacy, and consequently made to rule. No error is deeper and more
+dangerous. Thereby it is thought to confirm the principle of authority;
+far from that, from it is taken away its solidest foundation.
+Authority&mdash;that is to say, legitimate and moral authority&mdash;is nothing
+else than justice, and justice is nothing else than the respect of
+liberty; so that there is not therein two different and contrary
+opinions, but one and the same principle, of equal certainty and equal
+grandeur, under all its forms and in all its applications.</p>
+
+<p>Authority, it is said, comes from God: doubtless; but whence comes
+liberty, whence comes humanity? To God must be referred every thing that
+is excellent on the earth; and nothing is more excellent than liberty.
+Reason, which in man commands liberty, commands it according to its
+nature; and the first law that reason imposes on liberty is that of
+self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>Authority is so much the stronger as its true title is better
+understood; and obedience is the easiest when, instead of degrading, it
+honors; when, instead of resembling servitude, it is at once the
+condition and guaranty of liberty.</p>
+
+<p>The mission, the end of government, is to make justice, the protector of
+the common liberty, reign. Whence it follows, that as long as the
+liberty of one citizen does not injure the liberty of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">{319}</a></span> another, it
+escapes all repression. So government cannot be severe against
+falsehood, intemperance, imprudence, levity, avarice, egoism, except
+when these vices become prejudicial to others. Moreover, it is not
+necessary to confine government within too narrow limits. Government,
+which represents society, is also a moral person; it has a heart like
+the individual; it has generosity, goodness, charity. There are
+legitimate, and even universally admired facts, that are not explained,
+if the function of government is reduced to the protection of rights
+alone.<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a> Government owes to the citizens, in a certain measure, to
+guard their well-being, to develop their intelligence, to fortify their
+morality, for the interest of society, and even for the interest of
+humanity. Hence sometimes for government the formidable right of using
+force in order to do good to men. But we are here touching upon that
+delicate point where charity inclines to despotism. Too much
+intelligence and wisdom, therefore, cannot be demanded in the employment
+of a power perhaps necessary, but dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Now, on what condition is government exercised? Is an act of its own
+will sufficient for it in order to employ to its own liking under all
+circumstances, as it shall understand them, the power that has been
+confided to it? Government must have been thus exercised in early
+society, and in the infancy of the art of governing. But the power,
+exercised by men, may go astray in different ways, either through
+weakness or through excess of force. It must, then, have a rule superior
+to itself, a public and known rule, that may be a lesson for the
+citizens, and for the government a rein and support: that rule is called
+law.</p>
+
+<p>Universal and absolute law is natural justice, which cannot be written,
+but speaks to the reason and heart of all. Written laws are the formulas
+wherein it is sought to express, with the least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">{320}</a></span> possible imperfection,
+what natural justice requires in such or such determined circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>If laws propose to express in each thing natural justice, which is
+universal and absolute justice, one of the necessary conditions of a
+good law is the universality of its character. It is necessary to
+examine in an abstract and general manner what is required by justice in
+such or such a case, to the end that this case being presented may be
+judged according to the rule laid down, without regard to circumstances,
+place, time, or person.</p>
+
+<p>The collection of those rules or laws that govern the social relations
+of individuals is called positive right. Positive right rests wholly on
+natural right, which at once serves as its foundation, measure, and
+limit. The supreme law of every positive law is that it be not opposed
+to natural law: no law can impose on us a false duty, nor deprive us of
+a true right.</p>
+
+<p>The sanction of law is punishment. We have already seen that the right
+to punish springs from the idea of demerit.<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">{321}</a></span> the universal
+order, to God alone it belongs to apply a punishment to all faults,
+whatever they may be. In the social order, government is invested with
+the right to punish only for the purpose of protecting liberty by
+imposing a just reparation on those who violate it. Every fault that is
+not contrary to justice, and does not strike at liberty, escapes, then,
+social retribution. Neither is the right to punish the right of avenging
+one's self. To render evil for evil, to demand an eye for an eye, a
+tooth for a tooth, is the barbarous form of a justice without light; for
+the evil that I do you will not take away the evil that you have done
+me. It is not the pain felt by the victim that demands a corresponding
+pain; it is violated justice that imposes on the culpable man the
+expiation of suffering. Such is the morality of penalty. The principle
+of penalty is not the reparation of damage caused. If I have caused you
+damage without intending it, I pay you an indemnity; that is not a
+penalty, for I am not culpable; whilst if I have committed a crime, in
+spite of the material indemnity for the evil that I have done, I owe a
+reparation to justice by a proper suffering, and in that truly consists
+the penalty.</p>
+
+<p>What is the exact proportion of chastisements and crimes? This question
+cannot receive an absolute solution. What is here immutable, is that the
+act opposed to justice merits a punishment, and that the more unjust the
+act is, the severer ought to be the punishment. But by the side of the
+right to punish is the duty of correcting. To the culprit must be left
+the possibility of re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">{322}</a></span>pairing his crime. The culpable man is still a
+man; he is not a thing of which we ought to rid ourselves as soon as it
+becomes injurious, a stone that falls on our heads, that we throw into a
+gulf that it may wound no more. Man is a rational being, capable of
+comprehending good and evil, of repenting, and of being one day
+reconciled with order. These truths have given birth to works that honor
+the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.
+The conception of houses of correction reminds one of those early times
+of Christianity when punishment consisted in an expiation that permitted
+the culprit to return through repentance to the ranks of the just. Here
+intervenes, as we have just indicated, the principle of charity, which
+is very different from the principle of justice. To punish is just, to
+ameliorate is charitable. In what measure ought those two principles to
+be united? Nothing is more delicate, more difficult to determine. It is
+certain that justice ought to govern. In undertaking the amendment of
+the culprit, government usurps, with a very generous usurpation, the
+rights of religion; but it ought not to go so far as to forget its
+proper function and its rigorous duty.</p>
+
+<p>Let us pause on the threshold of politics, properly so called. Nothing
+in them but these principles is fixed and invariable; all else is
+relative. The constitutions of states have something absolute by their
+relation to the inviolable rights which they ought to guarantee; but
+they also have a relative side by the variable forms with which they are
+clothed, according to times, places, manners, history. The supreme rule
+of which philosophy reminds politics, is that politics ought, in
+consulting all circumstances, to seek always those social forms and
+institutions that best realize those eternal principles. Yes, they are
+eternal; because they are drawn from no arbitrary hypothesis, because
+they rest on the immutable nature of man, on the all-powerful instincts
+of the heart, on the indestructible notion of justice, and the sublime
+idea of charity, on the consciousness of person, liberty, and equality,
+on duty and right, on merit and demerit. Such are the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">{323}</a></span> foundations of
+all true society, worthy of the beautiful name of human society, that is
+to say, formed of free and rational beings; and such are the maxims that
+ought to direct every government worthy of its mission, which knows that
+it is not dealing with beasts but with men, which respects them and
+loves them.</p>
+
+<p>Thank God, French society has always marched by the light of this
+immortal idea, and the dynasty that has been at its head for some
+centuries has always guided it in these generous ways. It was Louis le
+Gros, who, in the Middle Age, emancipated the communes; it was Philippe
+le Bel who instituted parliaments&mdash;an independent and gratuitous
+justice; it was Henri IV. who began religious liberty; it was Louis
+XIII. and Louis XIV. who, while they undertook to give to France her
+natural frontiers, and almost succeeded in it, labored to unite more and
+more all parts of the nation, to put a regular administration in the
+place of feudal anarchy, and to reduce the great vassals to a simple
+aristocracy, from day to day deprived of every privilege but that of
+serving the common country in the first rank. It was a king of France
+who, comprehending the new wants, and associating himself with the
+progress of the times, attempted to substitute for that very real, but
+confused and formless representative government, that was called the
+assemblies of the nobility, the clergy, and the <i>tiers &eacute;tat</i>, the true
+representative government that is proper for great civilized nations,&mdash;a
+glorious and unfortunate attempt that, if royalty had then been served
+by a Richelieu, a Mazarin, or a Colbert, might have terminated in a
+necessary reform, that, through the fault of every one, ended in a
+revolution full of excess, violence, and crime, redeemed and covered by
+an incomparable courage, a sincere patriotism, and the most brilliant
+triumphs. Finally, it was the brother of Louis XVI. who, enlightened and
+not discouraged by the misfortunes of his family, spontaneously gave to
+France that liberal and wise constitution of which our fathers had
+dreamed, about which Montesquieu had written, which, loyally adhered to,
+and necessarily developed, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">{324}</a></span> admirably fitted for the present time,
+and sufficient for a long future. We are fortunate in finding in the
+Charter the principles that we have just explained, that contain our
+views and our hopes for France and humanity.<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">{325}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XVI" id="LECTURE_XVI"></a>LECTURE XVI.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation
+of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.&mdash;Liberty
+of God.&mdash;The divine justice and charity.&mdash;God the sanction of
+the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and
+demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from
+final causes.&mdash;Religious sentiment.&mdash;Adoration.&mdash;Worship.&mdash;Moral
+beauty of Christianity.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The moral order has been confirmed,&mdash;we are in possession of moral
+truth, of the idea of the good, and the obligation that is attached to
+it. Now, the same principle that has not permitted us to stop at
+absolute truth,<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a> and has forced us to seek its supreme reason in a
+real and substantial being, forces us here again to refer the idea of
+the good to the being who is its first and last foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, cannot
+remain in a state of abstraction. In us it is only conceived. There must
+somewhere be a being who not only conceives it, but constituted it.</p>
+
+<p>As all beautiful things and all true things are related&mdash;these to a
+unity that is absolute truth, and those to another unity that is
+absolute beauty, so all moral principles participate in the same
+principle, which is the good. We thus elevate ourselves to the
+conception of the good in itself, of absolute good, superior to all
+particular duties, and determined in these duties. Now, can the absolute
+good be any thing else than an attribute of him who, properly speaking,
+is alone absolute being?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">{326}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Would it be possible that there might be several absolute beings, and
+that the being in whom are realized absolute truth and absolute beauty
+might not also be the one who is the principle of absolute good? The
+very idea of the absolute implies absolute unity. The true, the
+beautiful, and the good, are not three distinct essences; they are one
+and the same essence considered in its fundamental attributes. Our mind
+distinguishes them, because it can comprehend them only by division;
+but, in the being in whom they reside, they are indivisibly united; and
+this being at once triple and one, who sums up in himself perfect
+beauty, perfect truth, and the supreme good, is nothing else than God.</p>
+
+<p>So God is necessarily the principle of moral truth and the good. He is
+also the type of the moral person that we carry in us.</p>
+
+<p>Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed with reason and
+liberty. He is capable of virtue, and virtue has in him two principal
+forms, respect of others, and love of others, justice and charity.</p>
+
+<p>Can there be among the attributes possessed by the creature something
+essential not possessed by the Creator? Whence does the effect draw its
+reality and its being, except from its cause? What it possesses, it
+borrows and receives. The cause at least contains all that is essential
+in the effect. What particularly belongs to the effect, is inferiority,
+is a lack, is imperfection: from the fact alone that it is dependent and
+derived, it bears in itself the signs and the conditions of dependence.
+If, then, we cannot legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the
+effect in that of the cause, we can and must conclude from the
+excellence of the effect in the perfection of the cause, otherwise there
+would be something prominent in the effect which would be without cause.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new nor subtle;
+but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged and elucidated, and it is,
+to our eyes, firm against every test. It is by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">{327}</a></span> aid of this
+principle that we can, up to a certain point, penetrate into the true
+nature of God.</p>
+
+<p>God is not a being of logic, whose nature can be explained by way of
+deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out from a
+first attribute, we have deduced the attributes of God from each other,
+after the manner of geometricians and the schoolmen, what do we
+possess,<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a> I pray you, but abstractions? It is necessary to leave
+these vain dialectics in order to arrive at a real and living God.</p>
+
+<p>The first notion that we have of God, to wit, the notion of an infinite
+being, is itself given to us independently of all experience. It is the
+consciousness of ourselves, as being at once, and as being limited, that
+elevates us directly to the conception of a being who is the principle
+of our being, and is himself without bounds. This solid and single
+argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes,<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a> opens to us a way
+that must be followed, in which Descartes too quickly stopped. If the
+being that we possess forces us to recur to a cause which possesses
+being in an infinite degree, all that we have of being, that is to say,
+of substantial attributes, equally requires an infinite cause. Then, God
+will no longer be merely the infinite, abstract, or at least
+indeterminate being in which reason and the heart know not where to
+betake themselves,<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">{328}</a></span> he will be a real and determined being, a moral
+person like ours and psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a
+theodicea at once sublime and related to us.<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a></p>
+
+<p>Before all, if man is free, can it be that God is not free? No one
+contends that he who is cause of all causes, who has no cause but
+himself, can be dependent on any thing whatever. But in freeing God from
+all external constraint, Spinoza subjects him to an internal and
+mathematical necessity, wherein he finds the perfection of being. Yes,
+of being which is not a person; but the essential character of personal
+being is precisely liberty. If, then, God were not free, God would be
+beneath man. Would it not be strange that the creature should have the
+marvellous power of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and
+that the being who has made him should be subjected to a necessary
+development, whose cause is only in himself, without doubt, but, in
+fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical or metaphysical, but very
+inferior to the personal and voluntary cause that we are, and of which
+we have the clearest consciousness? God is therefore free, since we are
+free. But he is not free as we are free; for God is at once all that we
+are, and nothing that we are. He possesses the same attributes that we
+possess, but elevated to infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty,
+joined to an infinite intelligence; and, as his intelligence is
+infallible, excepted from the uncertainties of deliberation, and
+perceiving at a glance where the good is, so his liberty spontaneously,
+and without effort, fulfils it.<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">{329}</a></span></p><p>In the same manner as we transfer to God the liberty that is the
+foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and charity. In
+man, justice and charity are virtues; in God, they are attributes. What
+is in us the laborious conquest of liberty,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">{330}</a></span> is in him his very nature.
+If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and the sign
+of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that the perfect being
+should not know and respect the rights of the lowest beings, since it is
+he, moreover, who has imparted to them those rights. In God resides a
+sovereign justice, which renders to each one his due, not according to
+deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, if
+man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, of
+forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of devoting
+himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of
+another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite degree, this
+disinterested tenderness, this charity, the supreme virtue of the human
+person? Yes, there is in God an infinite tenderness for his creatures:
+he at first manifested it in giving us the being that he might have
+withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable signs of his
+divine providence. Plato knew this love of God well, and expressed it in
+those great words, "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme
+ordainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; and
+he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, he willed that
+all things should be, as much as possible, like himself."<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a>
+Christianity went farther: according to the divine doctrine, God so
+loved men that he gave them his only Son. God is inexhaustible in his
+charity, as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to give
+more to the creature; he gives him every thing that he can receive
+without ceasing to be a creature; he gives him every thing, even
+himself, so far as the creature is in him and he in the creature. At the
+same time nothing can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally
+expands and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power,
+infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon
+the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we possess. It is
+egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">{331}</a></span> even by the side of
+the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we lose by
+self-devotion: it is egoism that makes us call devotion a sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>If God is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing but what is
+good and just; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing that he wills he
+can do, and consequently does do. The world is the work of God; it is
+therefore perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end.</p>
+
+<p>And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that seems to accuse
+the justice and goodness of God.</p>
+
+<p>A principle that is attached to the very idea of the good, says to us
+that every moral agent deserves a reward when he does good, and a
+punishment when he does evil. This principle is universal and necessary:
+it is absolute. If this principle has not its application in this world,
+it must either be a lie, or this world is ordered ill.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is a fact that the good is not always followed by happiness, nor
+evil always by unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, in the first place, remark that if the fact exists, it is rare
+enough, and seems to present the character of an exception.</p>
+
+<p>Virtue is a struggle against passion; this struggle, full of dignity, is
+also full of pain; but, on one side, crime is condemned to much harder
+pains; on the other, those of virtue are of short duration; they are a
+necessary and almost always beneficent trial.</p>
+
+<p>Virtue has its pains, but the greatest happiness is still with it, as
+the greatest unhappiness is with crime; and such is the case in small
+and great, in the secret of the soul, and on the theatre of life, in the
+obscurest conditions and in the most conspicuous situations.</p>
+
+<p>Good and bad health are, after all, the greatest part of happiness or
+unhappiness. In this regard, compare temperance and its opposite, order
+and disorder, virtue and vice; I mean a temperance truly temperate, and
+not an atrabilarious asceticism, a rational virtue, and not a fierce
+virtue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">{332}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The great physician Hufeland<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> remarks that the benevolent sentiments
+are favorable to health, and that the malevolent sentiments are opposed
+to it. Violent and sinful passions irritate, inflame, and carry trouble
+into the organization as well as the soul; the benevolent affections
+preserve the measured and harmonious play of all the functions.</p>
+
+<p>Hufeland again remarks that the greatest longevities pertain to wise and
+well-regulated lives.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, for health, strength, and life, virtue is better than vice: it is
+already much, it seems to me.</p>
+
+<p>I surely mean to speak of conscience only after health; but, in fine,
+with the body, our most constant host is conscience. Peace or trouble of
+conscience decides internal happiness or unhappiness. At this point of
+view, compare again order and disorder, virtue and vice.</p>
+
+<p>And without us, in society, to whom come esteem and contempt,
+consideration and infamy? Certainly opinion has its mistakes, but they
+are not long. In general, if charlatans, intriguers, impostors of every
+kind, for some time surreptitiously get suffrages, it must be that a
+sustained honesty is the surest and the almost infallible means of
+reaching a good renown.</p>
+
+<p>I regret that upon this point time does not allow of any development. It
+would have afforded me delight, after having distinguished virtue from
+happiness, to show them to you almost always united by the admirable law
+of merit and demerit. I should have been pleased to show you this
+beneficent law already governing human destiny, and called to preside
+over it more exactly from day to day by the ever-increasing progress of
+lights in governments and peoples, by the perfecting of civil and
+judicial institutions. It would have been my wish to make pass into your
+minds and hearts the consoling conviction that, after all, justice is
+already in this world, and that the surest road to happiness is still
+that of virtue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">{333}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was the opinion of Socrates and Plato; and it is also that of
+Franklin, and I gather it from my personal experience and an attentive
+examination of human life. But I admit that there are exceptions; and
+were there but one exception, it would be necessary to explain it.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose a man, young, beautiful, rich, amiable, and loved, who, placed
+between the scaffold and the betrayal of a sacred cause, voluntarily
+mounts the scaffold at twenty years of age. What do you make of this
+noble victim? The law of merit and demerit seems here suspended. Do you
+dare blame virtue, or how in this world do you accord to it the
+recompense that it has not sought, but is its due?</p>
+
+<p>By careful search you will find more than one case analogous to that.</p>
+
+<p>The laws of this world are general; they turn aside to suit no one: they
+pursue their course without regard to the merit or demerit of any. If a
+man is born with a bad temperament, it is in virtue of certain obscure
+but undeviating physical laws, to which he is subject, like the animal
+and the plant, and he suffers during his whole life, although personally
+innocent. He is brought up in the midst of flames, epidemics, calamities
+that strike at hazard the good as well as the bad.</p>
+
+<p>Human justice condemns many that are innocent, it is true, but it
+absolves, in fault of proof, more than one who is culpable. Besides, it
+knows only certain derelictions. What faults, what basenesses occur in
+the dark, which do not receive merited chastisement! In like manner,
+what obscure devotions of which God is the sole witness and judge!
+Without doubt nothing escapes the eye of conscience, and the culpable
+soul cannot escape remorse. But remorse is not always in exact relation
+with the fault committed; its vivacity may depend on a nature more or
+less delicate, on education and habit. In a word, if it is in general
+very true that the law of merit and demerit is fulfilled in this world,
+it is not fulfilled with mathematical rigor.</p>
+
+<p>What must we conclude from this? That the world is ill-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">{334}</a></span>made? No. That
+cannot be, and is not. That cannot be, for incontestably the world has a
+just and good author; that is not, for, in fact, we see order reigning
+in the world; and it would be absurd to misconceive the manifest order
+that almost everywhere shines forth on account of a few phenomena that
+we cannot refer to order. The universe endures, therefore it is well
+made. The pessimism of Voltaire is still more opposed to the aggregate
+of facts than an absolute optimism. Between these two systematic
+extremes which facts deny, the human race places the hope of another
+life. It has found it very irrational to reject a necessary law on
+account of some infractions; it has, therefore, maintained the law; and
+from infractions it has only concluded that they ought to be referred to
+the law, that there will be a reparation. Either this conclusion must be
+admitted, or the two great principles previously admitted, that God is
+just, and that the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be
+rejected.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to reject these two principles is to totally overthrow all human
+belief.</p>
+
+<p>To maintain them, is implicitly to admit that actual life must be,
+elsewhere terminated or continued.</p>
+
+<p>But is this continuation of the person possible? After the dissolution
+of the body, can any thing of us remain?</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which awaits the
+reward or punishment of its good or bad actions, is united to a
+body,&mdash;it lives with the body, makes use of it, and, in a certain
+measure, depends on it, but is not it.<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a> The body is composed of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">{335}</a></span>
+parts, may decrease or increase; is divisible, essentially divisible,
+and even infinitely divisible. But that something that has consciousness
+of itself, that says, <i>I</i>, <i>me</i>, that feels itself to be free and
+responsible, does it not also feel that there is in it no division,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">{336}</a></span>
+even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple? Is the
+<i>me</i> more or less <i>me</i>? Is there a half of <i>me</i>, a quarter of <i>me</i>? I
+cannot divide my person. It remains identical to itself under the
+diversity of the phenomena that manifest it. This identity, this
+indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. Spirituality is,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">{337}</a></span>
+therefore, the very essence of the person. Belief in the spirituality of
+the soul is involved in the belief of this identity of the <i>me</i>, which
+no rational being has ever called in question. Accordingly, there is not
+the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul does not essentially
+differ from the body. Add that when we say the soul, we mean to say, and
+do say the person, which is not separated from the consciousness of the
+attributes that constitute it, thought and will. The being without
+consciousness is not a person. It is the person that is identical, one,
+simple. Its attributes, in developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible,
+it is indissoluble, and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in
+order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, it does
+not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the soul is the
+necessary foundation of immortality. The law of merit and demerit is the
+direct demonstration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysical
+proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most celebrated, most
+popular, at once the most convincing and the most persuasive.</p>
+
+<p>What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to fortify them in
+the heart! The following, for example, is a presumption of great value
+for any one that believes in the virtue of sentiment and instinct.</p>
+
+<p>Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute as that which
+refers every event to a cause.<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> Man has, therefore, an end. This end
+is revealed in all his thoughts, in all his ways, in all his sentiments,
+in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he
+thinks, he thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, tends to the
+infinite.<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a> This need of the infinite is the mainspring of scientific
+curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love also stops and rests
+only there. On the route it may experience lively joys; but a secret
+bitterness that is mingled with them soon makes it feel their
+insufficiency and emptiness. Often, while ignorant of its true object,
+it asks whence comes that fatal disen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">{338}</a></span>chantment by which all its
+successes, all its pleasures are successively extinguished. If it knew
+how to read itself, it would recognize that if nothing here below
+satisfies it, it is because its object is more elevated, because the
+true bourne after which it aspires is infinite perfection. Finally, like
+thought and love, human activity is without limits. Who can say where it
+shall stop? Behold this earth almost known. Soon another world will be
+necessary for us. Man is journeying towards the infinite, which is
+always receding before him, which he always pursues. He conceives it, he
+feels it, he bears it, thus to speak, in himself,&mdash;how should his end be
+elsewhere? Hence that unconquerable instinct of immortality, that
+universal hope of another life to which all worships, all poesies, all
+traditions bear witness. We tend to the infinite with all our powers;
+death comes to interrupt the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes
+it unfinished. It is, therefore, likely that there is something after
+death, since at death nothing in us is terminated. Look at the flower
+that to-morrow will not be. To-day, at least, it is entirely developed:
+we can conceive nothing more beautiful of its kind; it has attained its
+perfection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of which I have the
+clearest idea and the most invincible need, for which I feel that I am
+born,&mdash;in vain I call for it, in vain I labor for it; it escapes me, and
+leaves me only hope. Shall this hope be deceived? All beings attain
+their end; should man alone not attain his? Should the greatest of
+creatures be the most ill-treated? But a being that should remain
+incomplete and unfinished, that should not attain the end which all his
+instincts proclaim for him, would be a monster in the eternal order,&mdash;a
+problem much more difficult to solve than the difficulties that have
+been raised against the immortality of the soul. In our opinion, this
+tendency of all the desires and all the powers of the soul towards the
+infinite, elucidated by the principle of final causes, is a serious and
+important confirmation of the moral proof and the metaphysical proof of
+another life.</p>
+
+<p>When we have collected all the arguments that authorize be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">{339}</a></span>lief in
+another life, and when we have thus arrived at a satisfying
+demonstration, there remains an obstacle to be overcome. Imagination
+cannot contemplate without fright that unknown which is called death.
+The greatest philosopher in the world, says Pascal, on a plank wider
+than it is necessary in order to go without danger from one side of an
+abyss to the other, cannot think without trembling on the abyss that is
+beneath him. It is not reason, it is imagination that frightens him; it
+is also imagination that in great part causes that remnant of doubt,
+that trouble, that secret anxiety which the firmest faith cannot always
+succeed in overcoming in the presence of death. The religious man
+experiences this terror, but he knows whence it comes, and he surmounts
+it by attaching himself to the solid hopes furnished him by reason and
+the heart. Imagination is a child that must be educated, by putting it
+under the discipline and government of better faculties; it must be
+accustomed to go to intelligence for aid instead of troubling
+intelligence with its phantoms. Let us acknowledge that there is a
+terrible step to be taken when we meet death. Nature trembles when face
+to face with the unknown eternity. It is wise to present ourselves there
+with all our forces united,&mdash;reason and the heart lending each other
+mutual support, the imagination being subdued or charmed. Let us
+continually repeat that, in death as in life, the soul is sure to find
+God, and that with God all is just, all is good.<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">{340}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We now know what God truly is. We have already seen two of his adorable
+attributes,&mdash;truth and beauty. The most august attribute is revealed to
+us,&mdash;holiness. God is the holy of holies, as the author of the moral law
+and the good, as the principle of liberty, justice, and charity, as the
+dispenser of penalty and reward. Such a God is not an abstract God, but
+an intelligent and free person, who has made us in his own image, from
+whom we hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose
+judgments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our acts of
+charity; it is his justice that governs our justice, that of our
+societies and our laws. If we do not continually remind ourselves that
+he is infinite, we degrade his nature; but he would be for us as if he
+were not, if his infinite essence had no forms that pertain to us, the
+proper forms of our reason and our soul.</p>
+
+<p>By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment that is <i>par
+excellence</i> the religious sentiment. All the beings with whom we are in
+relation awaken in us different sentiments, according to the qualities
+that we perceive in them; and should he who possesses all perfections
+excite in us no particular sentiment? When we think upon the infinite
+essence of God, when we are penetrated with his omnipotence, when we are
+reminded that the moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the
+fulfilment and the violation of this law recompenses and penalties which
+he dispenses with an inflexible justice, we cannot guard ourselves
+against an emotion of respect and fear at the idea of such a grandeur.
+Then, if we come to consider that this all-powerful being has indeed
+wished to create us, us of whom he has no need, that in creating us he
+has loaded us with benefits, that he has given us this admirable
+universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, society for ennobling our
+life in that of our fellow-men, reason for thinking, the heart for
+loving, liberty for acting; without disappearing, respect and fear are
+tinged with a sweeter sentiment, that of love. Love, when it is applied
+to feeble and limited beings, inspires us with a desire to do good to
+them; but in itself it proposes to itself no advantage from the person
+loved; we love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">{341}</a></span> a beautiful or good object, because it is beautiful or
+good, without at first regarding whether this love may be useful to its
+object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, love, when it ascends
+to God, is a pure homage rendered to his perfections; it is the natural
+overflow of the soul towards a being infinitely lovable.</p>
+
+<p>Respect and love compose adoration. True adoration does not exist
+without possessing both of these sentiments. If you consider only the
+all-powerful God, master of heaven and earth, author and avenger of
+justice, you crush man beneath the weight of the grandeur of God and his
+own feebleness, you condemn him to a continual trembling in the
+uncertainty of God's judgments, you make him hate the world, life, and
+himself, for every thing is full of misery. Towards this extreme,
+Port-Royal inclines. Read the <i>Pens&eacute;es de Pascal</i>.<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> In his great
+humility, Pascal forgets two things,&mdash;the dignity of man and the love of
+God. On the other hand, if you see only the good God and the indulgent
+father, you incline to a chimerical mysticism. By substituting love for
+fear, little by little with fear, we run the risk of losing respect. God
+is no more a master, he is no more even a father; for the idea of a
+father still to a certain point involves that of a respectful fear; he
+is no more any thing but a friend, sometimes even a lover. True
+adoration does not separate love and respect; it is respect animated by
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Adoration is a universal sentiment. It differs in degrees according to
+different natures; it takes the most different forms; it is often even
+ignorant of itself; sometimes it is revealed by an exclamation springing
+from the heart, in the midst of the great scenes of nature and life,
+sometimes it silently rises in the mute and penetrated soul; it may err
+in its expressions, even in its object; but at bottom it is always the
+same. It is a spontaneous, irresistible emotion of the soul; and when
+reason is applied to it, it is declared just and legitimate. What, in
+fact, is more just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">{342}</a></span> than to fear the judgments of him who is holiness
+itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and will judge them
+according to the highest justice? What, too, is more just than to love
+perfect goodness and the source of all love? Adoration is at first a
+natural sentiment; reason makes it a duty.</p>
+
+<p>Adoration confined to the sanctuary of the soul is what is called
+internal worship&mdash;the necessary principle of all public worships.</p>
+
+<p>Public worship is no more an arbitrary institution than society and
+government, language and arts. All these things have their roots in
+human nature. Adoration abandoned to itself, would easily degenerate
+into dreams and ecstasy, or would be dissipated in the rush of affairs
+and the necessities of every day. The more energetic it is, the more it
+tends to express itself outwardly in acts that realize it, to take a
+sensible, precise, and regular form, which, by a proper reaction on the
+sentiment that produced it, awakens it when it slumbers, sustains it
+when it languishes, and also protects it against extravagances of every
+kind to which it might give birth in so many feeble or unbridled
+imaginations. Philosophy, then, lays the natural foundation of public
+worship in the internal worship of adoration. Having arrived at that
+point, it stops, equally careful not to betray its rights and not to go
+beyond them, to run over, in its whole extent and to its farthest limit,
+the domain of natural reason, as well as not to usurp a foreign domain.</p>
+
+<p>But philosophy does not think of trespassing on the ground of theology;
+it wishes to remain faithful to itself, and also to follow its true
+mission, which is to love and favor every thing that tends to elevate
+man, since it heartily applauds the awakening of religious and Christian
+sentiment in all noble souls, after the ravages that have been made on
+every hand, for more than a century, by a false and sad philosophy.
+What, in fact, would not have been the joy of a Socrates and a Plato if
+they had found the human race in the arms of Christianity! How happy
+would Plato&mdash;who was so evidently embarrassed between his beautiful
+doctrines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">{343}</a></span> and the religion of his times, who managed so carefully with
+that religion even when he avoided it, who was forced to take from it
+the best possible part, in order to aid a favorable interpretation of
+his doctrine&mdash;have been, if he had had to do with a religion which
+presents to man, as at once its author and its model, the sublime and
+mild Crucified, of whom he had an extraordinary presentiment, whom he
+almost described in the person of a just man dying on the cross;<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> a
+religion which came to announce, or at least to consecrate and expand
+the idea of the unity of God and that of the unity of the human race;
+which proclaims the equality of all souls before the divine law, which
+thereby has prepared and maintains civil equality; which prescribes
+charity still more than justice, which teaches man that he does not live
+by bread alone, that he is not wholly contained in his senses and his
+body, that he has a soul, a free soul, whose value is infinite, above
+the value of all worlds, that life is a trial, that its true object is
+not pleasure, fortune, rank, none of those things that do not pertain to
+our real destiny, and are often more dangerous than useful, but is that
+alone which is always in our power, in all situations and all
+conditions, from end to end of the earth, to wit, the improvement of the
+soul by itself, in the holy hope of becoming from day to day less
+unworthy of the regard of the Father of men, of the examples given by
+him, and of his promises. If the greatest moralist that ever lived could
+have seen these admirable teachings, which in germ were already at the
+foundation of his spirit, of which more than one trait can be found in
+his works, if he had seen them consecrated, maintained, continually
+recalled to the heart and imagination of man by sublime and touching
+institutions, what would have been his tender and grateful sympathy for
+such a religion! If he had come in our own times, in that age given up
+to revolutions, in which the best souls were early infected by the
+breath of skepticism, in default of the faith of an Augustine, of an
+Anselm, of a Thomas, of a Bossuet, he would have had, we doubt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">{344}</a></span> not, the
+sentiments at least of a Montesquieu,<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a> of a Turgot,<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> of a
+Franklin,<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a> and very far from putting the Christian religion and a
+good philosophy at war with each other, he would have been forced to
+unite them, to elucidate and fortify them by each other. That great mind
+and that great heart, which dictated to him the <i>Phedon</i>, the <i>Gorgias</i>,
+the <i>Republic</i>, would also have taught him that such books are made for
+a few sages, that there is needed for the human race a philosophy at
+once similar and different, that this philosophy is a religion, and that
+this desirable and necessary religion is the Gospel. We do not hesitate
+to say that, without religion, philosophy, reduced to what it can
+laboriously draw from perfected natural reason, addresses itself to a
+very small number, and runs the risk of remaining without much influence
+on manners and life; and that, without philosophy, the purest religion
+is no security against many superstitions, which little by little bring
+all the rest, and for that reason it may see the best minds escaping its
+influence, as was the case in the eighteenth century. The alliance
+between true religion and true philosophy is, then, at once natural and
+necessary; natural by the common basis of the truths which they
+acknowledge; necessary for the better service of humanity. Philosophy
+and religion differ only in the forms that distinguish, without
+separating them. Another auditory, other forms, and another language.
+When St. Augustine speaks to all the faithful in the church of Hippone,
+do not seek in him the subtile and profound metaphysician who combated
+the Academicians with their own arms, who supports himself on the
+Platonic theory of ideas, in order to explain the creation. Bossuet, in
+the treatise <i>De la Connaissance de Dieu et<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">{345}</a></span> Soi-m&ecirc;me</i>, is no longer,
+and at the same time he is always, the author of the <i>Sermons</i>, of the
+<i>El&eacute;vations</i>, and the incomparable <i>Cat&eacute;chisme de Meaux</i>. To separate
+religion and philosophy has always been, on one side or the other, the
+pretension of small, exclusive, and fanatical minds; the duty, more
+imperative now than ever, of whomsoever has for either a serious and
+enlightened love, is to bring together and unite, instead of dividing
+and wasting the powers of the mind and the soul, in the interest of the
+common cause and the great object which the Christian religion and
+philosophy pursue, each in its own way,&mdash;I mean the moral grandeur of
+humanity.<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">{346}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_XVII" id="LECTURE_XVII"></a>LECTURE XVII.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">R&Eacute;SUM&Eacute; OF DOCTRINE.</span></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the
+three orders of facts on which this doctrine rests, with the
+relation of each one of them to the modern school that has
+recognized and developed it, but almost always exaggerated
+it.&mdash;Experience and empiricism.&mdash;Reason and idealism.&mdash;Sentiment
+and mysticism.&mdash;Theodicea. Defects of different known
+systems.&mdash;The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the
+character of certainty and reality that this process gives to
+it.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Having arrived at the limit of this course, we have a final task to
+perform,&mdash;it is necessary to recall its general spirit and most
+important results.</p>
+
+<p>From the first lecture, I have signalized to you the spirit that should
+animate this instruction,&mdash;a spirit of free inquiry, recognizing with
+joy the truth wherever found, profiting by all the systems that the
+eighteenth century has bequeathed to our times, but confining itself to
+none of them.</p>
+
+<p>The eighteenth century has left to us as an inheritance three great
+schools which still endure&mdash;the English and French school, whose chief
+is Locke, among whose most accredited representatives are Condillac,
+Helvetius, and Saint-Lambert; the Scotch school, with so many celebrated
+names, Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, Beattie, Ferguson, and Dugald
+Stewart;<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> the German school, or rather school of Kant, for, of all
+the philosophers beyond the Rhine, the philosopher of K&oelig;nigsberg is
+almost the only one who belongs to history. Kant died at the beginning
+of the nine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">{347}</a></span>teenth century;<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a> the ashes of his most illustrious
+disciple, Fichte,<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a> are scarcely cold. The other renowned
+philosophers of Germany still live,<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a> and escape our valuation.</p>
+
+<p>But this is only an ethnographical enumeration of the schools of the
+eighteenth century. It is above all necessary to consider them in their
+characters, analogous or opposite. The Anglo-French school particularly
+represents empiricism and sensualism, that is to say, an almost
+exclusive importance attributed in all parts of human knowledge to
+experience in general, and especially to sensible experience. The Scotch
+school and the German school represent a more or less developed
+spiritualism. Finally, there are philosophers, for example, Hutcheson,
+Smith, and others, who, mistrusting the senses and reason, give the
+supremacy to sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the philosophic schools in the presence of which the nineteenth
+century is placed.</p>
+
+<p>We are compelled to avow, that none of these, to our eyes, contains the
+entire truth. It has been demonstrated that a considerable part of
+knowledge escapes sensation, and we think that sentiment is a basis
+neither sufficiently firm, nor sufficiently broad, to support all human
+science. We are, therefore, rather the adversary than the partisan of
+the school of Locke and Condillac, and of that of Hutcheson and Smith.
+Are we on that account the disciple of Reid and Kant? Yes, certainly, we
+declare our preference for the direction impressed upon philosophy by
+these two great men. We regard Reid as common sense itself, and we
+believe that we thus eulogize him in a manner that would touch him most.
+Common sense is to us the only legitimate point of departure, and the
+constant and inviolable rule of science. Reid never errs; his method is
+true, his general principles are incontestable, but we will willingly
+say to this irreproachable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">{348}</a></span> genius,&mdash;<i>Sapere aude</i>. Kant is far from
+being as sure a guide as Reid. Both excel in analysis; but Reid stops
+there, and Kant builds upon analysis a system irreconcilable with it. He
+elevates reason above sensation and sentiment; he shows with great skill
+how reason produces by itself, and by the laws attached to its exercise,
+nearly all human knowledge; there is only one misfortune, which is that
+all this fine edifice is destitute of reality. Dogmatical in analysis,
+Kant is skeptical in his conclusions. His skepticism is the most
+learned, most moral, that ever existed; but, in fine, it is always
+skepticism. This is saying plainly enough that we are far from belonging
+to the school of the philosopher of K&oelig;nigsberg.</p>
+
+<p>In general, in the history of philosophy, we are in favor of systems
+that are themselves in favor of reason. Accordingly, in antiquity, we
+side with Plato against his adversaries; among the moderns, with
+Descartes against Locke, with Reid against Hume, with Kant against both
+Condillac and Smith. But while we acknowledge reason as a power superior
+to sensation and sentiment, as being, <i>par excellence</i>, the faculty of
+every kind of knowledge, the faculty of the true, the faculty of the
+beautiful, the faculty of the good, we are persuaded that reason cannot
+be developed without conditions that are foreign to it, cannot suffice
+for the government of man without the aid of another power: that power
+which is not reason, which reason cannot do without, is sentiment; those
+conditions, without which reason cannot be developed, are the senses. It
+is seen what for us is the importance of sensation and sentiment: how,
+consequently, it is impossible for us absolutely to condemn either the
+philosophy of sensation, or, much more, that of sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the very simple foundations of our eclecticism. It is not in us
+the fruit of a desire for innovation, and for making ourself a place
+apart among the historians of philosophy; no, it is philosophy itself
+that imposes on us our historical views. It is not our fault if God has
+made the human soul larger than all systems, and we also aver that we
+are also much rejoiced that all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">{349}</a></span> systems are not absurd. Without giving
+the lie to the most certain facts signalized and established by ourself,
+it was indeed necessary, on finding them scattered in the history of
+philosophy, to recognize and respect them, and if the history of
+philosophy, thus considered, no longer appeared a mass of senseless
+systems, a chaos, without light, and without issue; if, on the contrary,
+it became, in some sort, a living philosophy, that was, it should seem,
+a progress on which one might felicitate himself, one of the most
+fortunate conquests of the nineteenth century, the very triumphing of
+the philosophic spirit.</p>
+
+<p>We have, therefore, no doubt in regard to the excellence of the
+enterprise; the whole question for us is in the execution. Let us see,
+let us compare what we have done with what we have wished to do.</p>
+
+<p>Let us ask, in the first place, whether we have been just towards that
+great philosophy represented in antiquity by Aristotle, whose best model
+among the moderns is the wise author of the Essay on the <i>Human
+Understanding</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There is in the philosophy of sensation what is true and what is false.
+The false is the pretension of explaining all human knowledge by the
+acquisitions of the senses; this pretension is the system itself; we
+reject it, and the system with it. The true is that sensibility,
+considered in its external and visible organs, and in its internal
+organs, the invisible seats of the vital functions, is the indispensable
+condition of the development of all our faculties, not only of the
+faculties that evidently pertain to sensibility, but of those that seem
+to be most remote from it. This true side of sensualism we have
+everywhere recognized and elucidated in metaphysics, &aelig;sthetics, ethics,
+and theodicea.</p>
+
+<p>For us, theodicea, ethics, &aelig;sthetics, metaphysics, rest on psychology,
+and the first principle of our psychology is that the condition of all
+exercise of mind and soul is an impression made on our organs, and a
+movement of the vital functions.</p>
+
+<p>Man is not a pure spirit; he has a body which is for the spirit
+sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, always an inseparable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">{350}</a></span>
+companion. The senses are not, as Plato and Malebranche have too often
+said, a prison for the soul, but much rather windows looking out upon
+nature, through which the soul communicates with the universe. There is
+an entire part of Locke's polemic against the theories of innate ideas
+that is to our eyes perfectly true. We are the first to invoke
+experience in philosophy. Experience saves philosophy from hypothesis,
+from abstraction, from the exclusively deductive method, that is to say,
+from the geometrical method. It is on account of having abandoned the
+solid ground of experience, that Spinoza, attaching himself to certain
+sides of Cartesianism,<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a> and closing his eyes to all the others,
+forgetting its method, its essential character, and its most certain
+principles, reared a hypothetical system, or made from an arbitrary
+definition spring with the last degree of rigor a whole series of
+deductions, which have nothing to do with reality. It is also on account
+of having exchanged experience for a systematic analysis, that
+Condillac, an unfaithful disciple of Locke, undertook to draw from a
+single fact, and from an ill-observed fact, all knowledge, by the aid of
+a series of verbal transformations, whose last result is a nominalism,
+like that of the later scholastics. Experience does not contain all
+science, but it furnishes the conditions of all science. Space is
+nothing for us without visible and tangible bodies that occupy it, time
+is nothing without the succession of events, cause without its effects,
+substance without its modes, law without the phenomena that it
+rules.<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> Reason would reveal to us no universal and necessary truth,
+if consciousness and the senses did not suggest to us particular and
+contingent notions. In &aelig;sthetics, while severely distinguishing between
+the beautiful and the agreeable, we have shown that the agreeable is the
+constant accompaniment of the beautiful,<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a> and that if art has for
+its supreme law the expression of the ideal, it must express it under an
+animated and living form<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">{351}</a></span> which puts it in relation with our senses,
+with our imagination, above all, with our heart. In ethics, if we have
+placed Kant and stoicism far above epicureanism and Helvetius, we have
+guarded ourselves against an insensibility and an asceticism which are
+contrary to human nature. We have given to reason neither the duty nor
+the right to smother the natural passions, but to rule them; we have not
+wished to wrest from the soul the instinct of happiness, without which
+life would not be supportable for a day, nor society for an hour; we
+have proposed to enlighten this instinct, to show it the concealed but
+real harmony which it sustains with virtue, and to open to it infinite
+prospects.<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a></p>
+
+<p>With these empirical elements, idealism is guarded from that mystical
+infatuation which, little by little, gains and seizes it when it is
+wholly alone, and brings it into discredit with sound and severe minds.
+In our works&mdash;and why should we not say it?&mdash;we have often presented the
+thought of Locke, whom we regard as one of the best and most sensible
+men that ever lived. He is among those secret and illustrious advisers
+with whom we support our weakness. More than one happy thought we owe to
+him; and we often ask ourself whether investigations directed with the
+circumspect method which we try to carry into ours, would not have been
+accepted by his sincerity and wisdom. Locke is for us the true
+representative, the most original, and altogether the most temperate of
+the empirical school. Tied to a system, he still preserves a rare spirit
+of liberty,&mdash;under the name of reflection he admits another source of
+knowledge than sensation; and this concession to common sense is very
+important. Condillac, by rejecting this concession, carried to extremes
+and spoiled the doctrine of Locke, and made of it a narrow, exclusive,
+entirely false system,&mdash;sensualism, to speak properly. Condillac works
+upon chimeras reduced to signs, with which he sports at his ease. We
+seek in vain in his writings, especially in the last, some trace of
+human nature. One truly believes him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">{352}</a></span>self to be in the realm of shades,
+<i>per inania regna</i>.<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a> The <i>Essay on the Human Understanding</i> produces
+the opposite impression. Locke is a disciple of Descartes, whom the
+excesses of Malebranche have thrown to an opposite excess: he is one of
+the founders of psychology, he is one of the finest and most profound
+connoisseurs of human nature, and his doctrine, somewhat unsteady but
+always moderate, is worthy of having a place in a true eclecticism.<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a></p>
+
+<p>By the side of the philosophy of Locke, there is one much greater, which
+it is important to preserve from all exaggeration, in order to maintain
+it in all its height. Founded in antiquity by Socrates, constituted by
+Plato, renewed by Descartes, idealism embraces, among the moderns, men
+of the highest renown. It speaks to man in the name of what is noblest
+in man. It demands the rights of reason; it establishes in science, in
+art, and in ethics fixed and invariable principles, and from this
+imperfect existence it elevates us towards another world, the world of
+the eternal, of the infinite, of the absolute.</p>
+
+<p>This great philosophy has all our preferences, and we shall not be
+accused of having given it too little place in these lectures. In the
+eighteenth century it was especially represented in different degrees by
+Reid and Kant. We wholly accept Reid, with the exception of his
+historical views, which are too insufficient, and often mixed with
+error.<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> There are two parts in Kant,&mdash;the analytical part, and the
+dialectical part, as he calls them.<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a> We admit the one and reject the
+other. In this whole course we have borrowed much from the <i>Critique of
+Speculative Reason</i>, the <i>Critique of Judgment</i>, and the <i>Critique of
+Practical Reason</i>. These three works are, in our eyes, admirable
+monuments of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">{353}</a></span> philosophic genius,&mdash;they are filled with treasures of
+observation and analysis.<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a></p>
+
+<p>With Reid and Kant, we recognize reason as the faculty of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good. It is to its proper virtue that we directly
+refer knowledge in its humblest and in its most elevated part. All the
+systematic pretensions of sensualism are broken against the manifest
+reality of universal and necessary truths which are incontestably in our
+mind. At each instant, whether we know it or not, we bear universal and
+necessary judgments. In the simplest propositions is enveloped the
+principle of substance and being. We cannot take a step in life without
+concluding from an event in the existence of its cause. These principles
+are absolutely true, they are true everywhere and always. Now,
+experience apprises us of what happens here and there, to-day or
+yesterday; but of what happens everywhere and always, especially of what
+cannot but happen, how can it apprise us, since it is itself always
+limited to time and space? There are, then, in man principles superior
+to experience.</p>
+
+<p>Such principles can alone give a firm basis to science. Phenomena are
+the objects of science only so far as they reveal something superior to
+themselves, that is to say, laws. Natural history does not study such or
+such an individual, but the generic type that every individual bears in
+itself, that alone remains unchangeable, when the individuals pass away
+and vanish. If there is in us no other faculty of knowing than
+sensation, we never know aught but what is passing in things, and that,
+too, we know only with the most uncertain knowledge, since sensi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">{354}</a></span>bility
+will be its only measure, which is so variable in itself and so
+different in different individuals. Each of us will have his own
+science, a science contradictory and fragile, which one moment produces
+and another destroys, false as well as true, since what is true for me
+is false for you, and will even be false for me in a little while. Such
+are science and truth in the doctrine of sensation. On the contrary,
+necessary and immutable principles found a science necessary and
+immutable as themselves,&mdash;the truth which they gave as is neither mine
+nor yours, neither the truth of to-day, nor that of to-morrow, but truth
+in itself.</p>
+
+<p>The same spirit transferred to &aelig;sthetics has enabled us to seize the
+beautiful by the side of the agreeable, and, above different and
+imperfect beauties which nature offers to us, to seize an ideal beauty,
+one and perfect, without a model in nature, and the only model worthy of
+genius.</p>
+
+<p>In ethics we have shown that there is an essential distinction between
+good and evil; that the idea of the good is an idea just as absolute as
+the idea of the beautiful and that of the true; that the good is a
+universal and necessary truth, marked with the particular character that
+it ought to be practised. By the side of interest, which is the law of
+sensibility, reason has made us recognize the law of duty, which a free
+being can alone fulfil. From these ethics has sprung a generous
+political doctrine, giving to right a sure foundation in the respect due
+to the person, establishing true liberty, and true equality, and calling
+for institutions, protective of both, which do not rest on the mobile
+and arbitrary will of the legislator, whether people or monarch, but on
+the nature of things, on truth and justice.</p>
+
+<p>From empiricism we have retained the maxim which gives empiricism its
+whole force&mdash;that the conditions of science, of art, of ethics, are in
+experience, and often in sensible experience. But we profess at the same
+time this other maxim, that the foundation of science is absolute truth,
+that the direct foundation of art is absolute beauty, that the direct
+foundation of ethics and politics is the good, is duty, is right, and
+that what reveals to us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">{355}</a></span> these absolute ideas of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good, is reason. The foundation of our doctrine is,
+therefore, idealism rightly tempered by empiricism.</p>
+
+<p>But what would be the use of having restored to reason the power of
+elevating itself to absolute principles, placed above experience,
+although experience furnishes their external conditions, if, to adopt
+the language of Kant,<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> these principles have no objective value?
+What good could result from having determined with a precision until
+then unknown the respective domains of experience and reason, if, wholly
+superior as it is to the senses and experience, reason is captive in
+their inclosure, and we know nothing beyond with certainty? Thereby,
+then, we return by a <i>detour</i> to skepticism to which sensualism conducts
+us directly, and at less expense. To say that there is no principle of
+causality, or to say that this principle has no force out of the subject
+that possesses it,&mdash;is it not saying the same thing? Kant avows that man
+has no right to affirm that there are out of him real causes, time, or
+space, or that he himself has a spiritual and free soul. This
+acknowledgment would perfectly satisfy Hume; it would be of very little
+importance to him that the reason of man, according to Kant, might
+conceive, and even could not but conceive, the ideas of cause, time,
+space, liberty, spirit, provided these ideas are applied to nothing
+real. I see therein, at most, only a torment for human reason, at once
+so poor and so rich, so full and so void.</p>
+
+<p>A third doctrine, finding sensation insufficient, and also discontented
+with reason, which it confounds with reasoning, thinks to approach
+common sense by making science, art, and ethics rest on sentiment. It
+would have us confide ourselves to the instinct of the heart, to that
+instinct, nobler than sensation, and more subtle than reasoning. Is it
+not the heart, in fact, that feels the beautiful and the good? Is it not
+the heart that, in all the great circumstances of life, when passion and
+sophism obscure to our eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">{356}</a></span> the holy idea of duty and virtue, makes it
+shine forth with an irresistible light, and, at the same time, warms us,
+animates us, and gives us the courage to practise it?</p>
+
+<p>We also have recognized that admirable phenomenon which is called
+sentiment; we even believe that here will be found a more precise and
+more complete analysis of it than in the writings where sentiment reigns
+alone. Yes, there is an exquisite pleasure attached to the contemplation
+of the truth, to the reproduction of the beautiful, to the practice of
+the good; there is in us an innate love for all these things; and when
+great rigor is not aimed at, it may very well be said that it is the
+heart which discerns truth, that the heart is and ought to be the light
+and guide of our life.</p>
+
+<p>To the eyes of an unpractised analysis, reason in its natural and
+spontaneous exercise is confounded with sentiment by a multitude of
+resemblances.<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a> Sentiment is intimately attached to reason; it is its
+sensible form. At the foundation of sentiment is reason, which
+communicates to it its authority, whilst sentiment lends to reason its
+charm and power. Is not the widest spread and the most touching proof of
+the existence of God that spontaneous impulse of the heart which, in the
+consciousness of our miseries, and at the sight of the imperfections of
+our race which press upon our attention, irresistibly suggests to us the
+confused idea of an infinite and perfect being, fills us, at this idea,
+with an inexpressible emotion, moistens our eyes with tears, or even
+prostrates us on our knees before him whom the heart reveals to us, even
+when the reason refuses to believe in him? But look more closely, and
+you will see that this incredulous reason is reasoning supported by
+principles whose bearing is insufficient; you will see that what reveals
+the infinite and perfect being is precisely reason itself;<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a> and
+that, in turn, it is this rev<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">{357}</a></span>elation of the infinite by reason, which,
+passing into sentiment, produces the emotion and the inspiration that we
+have mentioned. May heaven grant that we shall never reject the aid of
+sentiment! On the contrary, we invoke it both for others and ourself.
+Here we are with the people, or rather we are the people. It is to the
+light of the heart, which is borrowed from that of reason, but reflects
+it more vividly in the depths of the soul, that we confide ourselves, in
+order to preserve all great truths in the soul of the ignorant, and even
+to save them in the mind of the philosopher from the aberrations or
+refinements of an ambitious philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>We think, with Quintilian and Vauvenargues, that the nobility of
+sentiment makes the nobility of thought. Enthusiasm is the principle of
+great works as well as of great actions. Without the love of the
+beautiful, the artist will produce only works that are perhaps regular
+but frigid, that will possibly please the geometrician, but not the man
+of taste. In order to communicate life to the canvas, to the marble, to
+speech, it must be born in one's self. It is the heart mingled with
+logic that makes true eloquence; it is the heart mingled with
+imagination that makes great poetry. Think of Homer, of Corneille, of
+Bossuet,&mdash;their most characteristic trait is pathos, and pathos is a cry
+of the soul. But it is especially in ethics that sentiment shines forth.
+Sentiment, as we have already said, is as it were a divine grace that
+aids us in the fulfilment of the serious and austere law of duty. How
+often does it happen that in delicate, complicated, difficult
+situations, we know not how to ascertain wherein is the true, wherein is
+the good! Sentiment comes to the aid of reasoning which wavers; it
+speaks, and all uncertainties are dissipated. In listening to its
+inspirations, we may act imprudently, but we rarely act ill: the voice
+of the heart is the voice of God.</p>
+
+<p>We, therefore, give a prominent place to this noble element of human
+nature. We believe that man is quite as great by heart as by reason. We
+have a high regard for the generous writers who, in the looseness of
+principles and manners in the eighteenth century, opposed the baseness
+of calculation and interest with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">{358}</a></span> beauty of sentiment. We are with
+Hutcheson against Hobbes, with Rousseau against Helvetius, with the
+author of Woldemar<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a> against the ethics of egoism or those of the
+schools. We borrow from them what truth they have, we leave their
+useless or dangerous exaggerations. Sentiment must be joined to reason;
+but reason must not be replaced by sentiment. In the first place, it is
+contrary to facts to take reason for reasoning, and to envelop them in
+the same criticism. And then, after all, reasoning is the legitimate
+instrument of reason; its value is determined by that of the principles
+on which it rests. In the next place, reason, and especially spontaneous
+reason, is, like sentiment, immediate and direct; it goes straight to
+its object, without passing through analysis, abstraction, and
+deduction, excellent operations without doubt, but they suppose a
+primary operation, the pure and simple apperception of the truth.<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a>
+It is wrong to attribute this apperception to sentiment. Sentiment is an
+emotion, not a judgment; it enjoys or suffers, it loves or hates, it
+does not know. It is not universal like reason; and as it still pertains
+on some side to organization, it even borrows from the organization
+something of its inconstancy. In fine, sentiment follows reason, and
+does not precede it. Therefore, in suppressing reason, we suppress the
+sentiment which emanates from it, and science, art, and ethics lack firm
+and solid bases.</p>
+
+<p>Psychology, &aelig;sthetics, and ethics, have conducted us to an order of
+investigations more difficult and more elevated, which are mingled with
+all the others, and crown them&mdash;theodicea.</p>
+
+<p>We know that theodicea is the rock of philosophy. We might shun it, and
+stop in the regions&mdash;already very high&mdash;of the universal and necessary
+principles of the true, the beautiful, and the good, without going
+farther, without ascending to the principles of these principles, to the
+reason of reason, to the source<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">{359}</a></span> of truth. But such a prudence is, at
+bottom, only a disguised skepticism. Either philosophy is not, or it is
+the last explanation of all things. Is it, then, true that God is to us
+an inexplicable enigma,&mdash;he without whom the most certain of all things
+that thus far we have discovered would be for us an insupportable
+enigma? If philosophy is incapable of arriving at the knowledge of God,
+it is powerless; for if it does not possess God, it possesses nothing.
+But we are convinced that the need of knowing has not been given us in
+vain, and that the desire of knowing the principle of our being bears
+witness to the right and power of knowing which we have. Accordingly,
+after having discoursed to you about the true, the beautiful, and the
+good, we have not feared to speak to you of God.</p>
+
+<p>More than one road may lead us to God. We do not pretend to close any of
+them; but it was necessary for us to follow the one that was open to us,
+that which the nature and subject of our instruction opened to us.</p>
+
+<p>Universal and necessary truths are not general ideas which our mind
+draws by way of reasoning from particular things; for particular things
+are relative and contingent, and cannot contain the universal and
+necessary. On the other hand, these truths do not subsist by themselves;
+they would thus be only pure abstractions, suspended in vacuity and
+without relation to any thing. Truth, beauty, and goodness are
+attributes and not entities. Now there are no attributes without a
+subject. And as here the question is concerning absolute truth, beauty
+and goodness, their substance can be nothing else than absolute being.
+It is thus that we arrive at God. Once more, there are many other means
+of arriving at him; but we hold fast to this legitimate and sure way.</p>
+
+<p>For us, as for Plato, whom we have defended against a too narrow
+interpretation,<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a> absolute truth is in God,&mdash;it is God himself under
+one of his phases. Since Plato, the greatest minds, Saint Augustine,
+Descartes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, agree in putting in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">{360}</a></span> God, as in their
+source, the principles of knowledge as well as existence. From him
+things derive at once their intelligibility and their being. It is by
+the participation of the divine reason that our reason possesses
+something absolute. Every judgment of reason envelops a necessary truth,
+and every necessary truth supposes necessary being.</p>
+
+<p>If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, God will possess beauty
+in its plenitude. The father of the world, of its laws, of its ravishing
+harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, he is the principle
+of beauty in nature. It is he whom we adore, without knowing it, under
+the name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on from beauties to
+beauties, calls for a final beauty in which it may find repose. It is to
+him that the artist, discontented with the imperfect beauties of nature
+and those that he creates himself, comes to ask for higher inspirations.
+It is in him that are summed up the main forms of every kind of beauty,
+the beautiful and the sublime, since he satisfies all our faculties by
+his perfections, and overwhelms them with his infinitude.</p>
+
+<p>God is the principle of moral truths, as well as of all other truths.
+All our duties are comprised in justice and charity. These two great
+precepts have not been made by us; they have been imposed on us; from
+whom, then, can they come, except from a legislator essentially just and
+good? Therein, in our opinion, is an invincible demonstration of the
+divine justice and charity:&mdash;this demonstration elucidates and sustains
+all others. In this immense universe, of which we catch a glimpse of a
+comparatively insignificant portion, every thing, in spite of more than
+one obscurity, seems ordered in view of general good, and this plan
+attests a Providence. To the physical order which one in good faith can
+scarcely deny, add the certainty, the evidence of the moral order that
+we bear in ourselves. This order supposes the harmony of virtue and
+goodness; it therefore requires it. Without doubt this harmony already
+appears in the visible world, in the natural consequences of good and
+bad actions, in society which punishes and rewards, in public esteem and
+con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">{361}</a></span>tempt, especially in the troubles and joys of conscience. Although
+this necessary law of order is not always exactly fulfilled, it
+nevertheless ought to be, or the moral order is not satisfied, and the
+intimate nature of things, their moral nature, remains violated,
+troubled, perverted. There must, then, be a being who takes it upon
+himself to fulfil, in a time that he has reserved to himself, and in a
+manner that will be proper, the order of which he has put in us the
+inviolable need; and this being is again, God.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, on all sides, on that of metaphysics, on that of &aelig;sthetics,
+especially on that of ethics, we elevate ourselves to the same
+principle, the common centre, the last foundation, of all truth, all
+beauty, all goodness. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are only
+different revelations of the same being. Human intelligence,
+interrogated in regard to all these ideas which are incontestably in it,
+always makes us the same response; it sends us back to the same
+explanation,&mdash;at the foundation of all, above all, God, always God.</p>
+
+<p>We have arrived, then, from degree to degree, at religion. We are in
+fellowship with the great philosophies which all proclaim a God, and, at
+the same time, with the religions that cover the earth, with the
+Christian religion, incomparably the most perfect and the most holy. As
+long as philosophy has not reached natural religion,&mdash;and by this we
+mean, not the religion at which man arrives in that hypothetical state
+that is called the state of nature, but the religion which is revealed
+to us by the natural light accorded to all men,&mdash;it remains beneath all
+worship, even the most imperfect, which at least gives to man a father,
+a witness, a consoler, a judge. A true theodicea borrows in some sort
+from all religious beliefs their common principle, and returns it to
+them surrounded with light, elevated above all uncertainty, guarded
+against all attack. Philosophy may present itself in its turn to
+mankind; it also has a right to man's confidence, for it speaks to him
+of God in the name of all his needs and all his faculties, in the name
+of reason and sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>Observe that we have arrived at these high conclusions without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">{362}</a></span> any
+hypothesis, by the aid of processes at once very simple and perfectly
+rigorous. Truths of different orders being given, truths which have not
+been made by us, and are not sufficient for themselves, we have ascended
+from these truths to their author, as one goes from the effect to the
+cause, from the sign to the thing signified, from phenomenon to being,
+from quality to subject. These two principles&mdash;that every effect
+supposes a cause, and every quality a subject&mdash;are universal and
+necessary principles. They have been put by us in their full light, and
+demonstrated in the manner in which principles undemonstrable, because
+they are primitive, can be demonstrated. Moreover, to what are these
+necessary principles applied? To metaphysical and moral truths, which
+are also necessary. It was therefore necessary to conclude in the
+existence of a cause and a necessary being, or, indeed, it was necessary
+to deny either the necessity of the principle of cause and the principle
+of substance, or the necessity of the truths to which we applied them,
+that is to say, to renounce all notions of common sense; for these very
+principles and these truths, with their character of universality and
+necessity, compose common sense.</p>
+
+<p>Not only is it certain that every effect supposes a cause, and every
+quality a being, but it is equally certain that an effect of such a
+nature supposes a cause of the same nature, and that a quality or an
+attribute marked with such or such essential characters supposes a being
+in which these same characters are again found in an eminent degree.
+Whence it follows, that we have very legitimately concluded from truth
+in an intelligent cause and substance, from beauty in a being supremely
+beautiful, and from a moral law composed at once of justice and charity
+in a legislator supremely just and supremely good.</p>
+
+<p>And we have not made a geometrical and algebraical theodicea, after the
+example of many philosophers, and the most illustrious. We have not
+deduced the attributes of God from each other, as the different terms of
+an equation are converted, or as from one property of a triangle the
+other properties are deduced,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">{363}</a></span> thus ending at a God wholly abstract,
+good perhaps for the schools, but not sufficient for the human race. We
+have given to theodicea a surer foundation&mdash;psychology. Our God is
+doubtless also the author of the world, but he is especially the father
+of humanity; his intelligence is ours, with the necessity of essence and
+infinite power added. So our justice and our charity, related to their
+immortal exemplar, give us an idea of the divine justice and charity.
+Therein we see a real God, with whom we can sustain a relation also
+real, whom we can comprehend and feel, and who in his turn can
+comprehend and feel our efforts, our sufferings, our virtues, our
+miseries. Made in his image, conducted to him by a ray of his own being,
+there is between him and us a living and sacred tie.</p>
+
+<p>Our theodicea is therefore free at once from hypothesis and abstraction.
+By preserving ourselves from the one, we have preserved ourselves from
+the other. Consenting to recognize God only in his signs visible to the
+eyes and intelligible to the mind, it is on infallible evidence that we
+have elevated ourselves to God. By a necessary consequence, setting out
+from real effects and real attributes, we have arrived at a real cause
+and a real substance, at a cause having in power all its essential
+effects, at a substance rich in attributes. I wonder at the folly of
+those who, in order to know God better, consider him, they say, in his
+pure and absolute essence, disengaged from all limitative determination.
+I believe that I have forever removed the root of such an
+extravagance.<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a> No; it is not true that the diversity of
+determinations, and, consequently, of qualities and attributes, destroys
+the absolute unity of a being; the infallible proof of it is that my
+unity is not the least in the world altered by the diversity of my
+faculties. It is not true that unity excludes multiplicity, and
+multiplicity unity; for unity and multiplicity are united in me. Why
+then should they not be in God? Moreover, far from altering unity in me,
+multiplicity develops it and makes its pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">{364}</a></span>ductiveness appear. So the
+richness of the determinations and the attributes of God is exactly the
+sign of the plenitude of his being. To neglect his attributes, is
+therefore to impoverish him; we do not say enough, it is to annihilate
+him,&mdash;for a being without attributes exists not; and the abstraction of
+being, human or divine, finite or infinite, relative or absolute, is
+nonentity.</p>
+
+<p>Theodicea has two rocks,&mdash;one, which we have just signalized to you, is
+abstraction, the abuse of dialectics; it is the vice of the schools and
+metaphysics. If we are forced to shun this rock, we run the risk of
+being dashed against the opposite rock, I mean that fear of reasoning
+that extends to reason, that excessive predominance of sentiment, which
+developing in us the loving and affectionate faculties at the expense of
+all the others, throws us into anthropomorphism without criticism, and
+makes us institute with God an intimate and familiar intercourse in
+which we are somewhat too forgetful of the august and fearful majesty of
+the divine being. The tender and contemplative soul can neither love nor
+contemplate in God the necessity, the eternity, the infinity, that do
+not come within the sphere of imagination and the heart, that are only
+conceived. It therefore neglects them. Neither does it study God in
+truth of every kind, in physics, metaphysics, and ethics, which manifest
+him; it considers in him particularly the characters to which affection
+is attached. In adoration, Fenelon retrenches all fear that nothing but
+love may subsist, and Mme. Guyon ends by loving God as a lover.</p>
+
+<p>We escape these opposite excesses of a refined sentimentality and a
+chimerical abstraction, by always keeping in mind both the nature of
+God, by which he escapes all relation with us,&mdash;necessity, eternity,
+infinity, and at the same time those of his attributes which are our own
+attributes transferred to him, for the very simple reason that they came
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>I am able to conceive God only in his manifestations and by the signs
+which he gives of his existence, as I am able to conceive any being only
+by the attributes of that being, a cause only by its effects, as I am
+able to conceive myself only by the exer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">{365}</a></span>cise of my faculties. Take away
+my faculties and the consciousness that attests them to me, and I am not
+for myself. It is the same with God,&mdash;take away nature and the soul, and
+every sign of God disappears. It is therefore in nature and the soul
+that he must be sought and found.</p>
+
+<p>The universe, which comprises nature and man, manifests God. Is this
+saying that it exhausts God? By no means. Let us always consult
+psychology. I know myself only by my acts; that is certain; and what is
+not less certain is, that all my acts do not exhaust, do not equal my
+power and my substance; for my power, at least that of my will, can
+always add an act to all those which it has already produced, and it has
+the consciousness, at the same time that it is exercised, of containing
+in itself something to be exercised still. Of God and the world must be
+said two things in appearance contrary,&mdash;we know God only by the world,
+and God is essentially distinct and different from the world. The first
+cause, like all secondary causes, manifests itself only by its effects;
+it can even be conceived only by them, and it surpasses them by all of
+the difference between the Creator and the created, the perfect and the
+imperfect. The world is indefinite; it is not infinite; for, whatever
+may be its quantity, thought can always add to it. To the myriads of
+worlds that compose the totality of the world, may be added new worlds.
+But God is infinite, absolutely infinite in his essence, and an
+indefinite series cannot equal the infinite; for the indefinite is
+nothing else than the finite more or less multiplied and capable of
+continuous multiplication. The world is a whole which has its harmony;
+for a God could make only a complete and harmonious work. The harmony of
+the world corresponds to the unity of God, as indefinite quantity is a
+defective sign of the infinity of God. To say that the world is God, is
+to admit only the world and deny God. Give to this whatever name you
+please, it is at bottom atheism. On the one hand, to suppose that the
+world is void of God, and that God is separate from the world, is an
+insupportable and almost impossible abstraction.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">{366}</a></span> To distinguish is not
+to separate. I distinguish myself, but do not separate myself from my
+qualities and my acts. So God is not the world, although he is in it
+everywhere present in spirit and in truth.<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">{367}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such is our theodicea: it rejects the excesses of all systems, and
+contains, we believe at least, all that is good in them. From sentiment
+it borrows a personal God as we ourselves are a person, and from reason
+a necessary, eternal, infinite God. In the presence of two opposite
+systems,&mdash;one of which, in order to see and feel God in the world,
+absorbs him in it; the other of which, in order not to confound God with
+the world, separates him from it and relegates him to an inaccessible
+solitude,&mdash;it gives to both just satisfaction by offering to them a God
+who is in fact in the world, since the world is his work, but without
+his essence being exhausted in it, a God who is both absolute unity and
+unity multiplied, infinite and living, immutable and the principle of
+movement, supreme intelligence and supreme truth, sovereign justice and
+sovereign goodness, before whom the world and man are like nonentity,
+who, nevertheless, is pleased with the world and man, substance eternal,
+and cause inexhaustible, impenetrable, and everywhere perceptible, who
+must by turns be sought in truth, admired in beauty, imitated, even at
+an infinite distance, in goodness and justice, venerated and loved,
+continually studied with an indefatigable zeal, and in silence adored.</p>
+
+<p>Let us sum up this <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i>. Setting out from the observation of
+ourselves in order to preserve ourselves from hypothesis, we have found
+in consciousness three orders of facts. We have left to each of them its
+character, its rank, its bearing, and its limits. Sensation has appeared
+to us the indispensable condition, but not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">{368}</a></span> the foundation of knowledge.
+Reason is the faculty itself of knowing; it has furnished us with
+absolute principles, and these absolute principles have conducted us to
+absolute truths. Sentiment, which pertains at once to sensation and
+reason, has found a place between both. Setting out from consciousness,
+but always guided by it, we have penetrated into the region of being; we
+have gone quite naturally from knowledge to its objects by the road that
+the human race pursues, that Kant sought in vain, or rather misconceived
+at pleasure, to wit, that reason which must be admitted entire or
+rejected entire, which reveals to us existences as well as truths.
+Therefore, after having recalled all the great metaphysical, &aelig;sthetical,
+and moral truths, we have referred them to their principle; with the
+human race we have pronounced the name of God, who explains all things,
+because he has made all things, whom all our faculties require,&mdash;reason,
+the heart, the senses, since he is the author of all our faculties.</p>
+
+<p>This doctrine is so simple, is to such an extent in all our powers, is
+so conformed to all our instincts, that it scarcely appears a
+philosophic doctrine, and, at the same time, if you examine it more
+closely, if you compare it with all celebrated doctrines, you will find
+that it is related to them and differs from them, that it is none of
+them and embraces them all, that it expresses precisely the side of them
+that has made them live and sustains them in history. But that is only
+the scientific character of the doctrine which we present to you; it has
+still another character which distinguishes it and recommends it to you
+much more. The spirit that animates it is that which of old inspired
+Socrates, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, which makes your hearts beat when
+you are reading Corneille and Bossuet, which dictated to Vauvenargues
+the few pages that have immortalized his name, which you feel especially
+in Reid, sustained by an admirable good sense, and even in Kant, in the
+midst of, and superior to the embarrassments of his metaphysics, to wit,
+the taste of the beautiful and the good in all things, the passionate
+love of honesty, the ardent desire of the moral grandeur of humanity.
+Yes, we do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">{369}</a></span> not fear to repeat that we tend thither by all our views; it
+is the end to which are related all the parts of our instruction; it is
+the thought which serves as their connection, and is, thus to speak,
+their soul. May this thought be always present to you, and accompany you
+as a faithful and generous friend, wherever fortune shall lead you,
+under the tent of the soldier, in the office of the lawyer, of the
+physician, of the savant, in the study of the literary man, as well as
+in the studio of the artist! Finally, may it sometimes remind you of him
+who has been to you its very sincere but too feeble interpreter!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">{370}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">{371}</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_188">188</a>: "What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur!"</p>
+
+<p>It is perceived that we have followed, as regards his death, the
+tradition, or rather the prejudices current at the present day, and
+which have misled the best judges before us. But there have appeared in
+a recent and interesting publication, called <i>Archives de l'Art
+fran&ccedil;ais</i>, vol. iii., certain incontrovertible documents, never before
+published, on the life and works of the painter of St. Bruno, which
+compel us to withdraw certain assertions agreeable to general opinion,
+but contrary to truth. The notice of Lesueur's death, extracted for the
+first time from the <i>Register of Deaths of the parish church of
+Saint-Louis in the isle of Notre-Dame</i>, preserved amongst the archives
+of the Hotel de Ville at Paris, clearly prove that he did not die at the
+Chartreux, but in the isle of Notre-Dame, where he dwelt, in the parish
+of St. Louis, and that he was buried in the church of Saint-Etienne du
+Mont, the resting-place of Pascal and Racine. It appears also that
+Lesueur died before his wife, Genevi&egrave;ve Gouss&eacute;, since the <i>Register of
+Births</i> of the parish of Saint-Louis, contains under the date 18th
+February, 1655, a notice of the baptism of a fourth child of Lesueur.
+Now, Genevi&egrave;ve Gouss&eacute; must have deceased almost immediately after her
+confinement, supposing her to have died before her husband's decease,
+which occurred on the 1st of the following May. If this were the case,
+we should have found a notice of her death in the <i>Register of Deaths</i>
+for the year 1655, as we do that of her husband. Such a notice, however,
+which could alone disprove the probability, and authenticate the vulgar
+opinion, is nowhere to be found amongst the archives of the Hotel de
+Ville, at least the author of the <i>Nouvelles Recherches</i> has nowhere
+been able to meet with it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">{372}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the other particulars our rapid sketch of Lesueur's history remains
+untouched. He never was in Italy; and according to the account of
+Guillet de Saint-Georges, which has so long remained in manuscript, he
+never desired to go there. He was poor, discreet, and pious, tenderly
+loved his wife, and lived in the closest union with his three brothers
+and brother-in-law, who were all pupils and fellow-laborers of his. It
+appears to be a refinement of criticism which denies the current belief
+of an acquaintance between Lesueur and Poussin. If no document
+authenticates it, at all events it is not contradicted by any, and
+appears to us to be highly probable.</p>
+
+<p>Every one admits that Lesueur studied and admired Poussin. It would
+certainly be strange if he did not seek his acquaintance, which he could
+have obtained without difficulty, since Poussin was staying at Paris
+from 1640 to 1642. It would be difficult for them not to have met. After
+Vouet's death in 1641, Lesueur acquired more and more a peculiar style;
+and in 1642, at the age of twenty-five, entirely unshackled, and with a
+taste ripe for the antique and Raphael, he must frequently have been at
+the Louvre, where Poussin resided. Thus it is natural to suppose that
+they frequently saw each other and became acquainted, and with their
+sympathies of character and talent, acquaintance must have resulted in
+esteem and love. If Poussin's letters do not mention Lesueur, we would
+remark that neither do they mention Champagne, whose connection with
+Poussin is not disputed. The argument built on the silence of Guillet de
+Saint-Georges' account is far from convincing; inasmuch as being
+intended to be read before a Sitting of the Academy, it could only
+contain a notice of the great artist's career, without those
+biographical details in which his friendships would be mentioned.
+Lastly, it is impossible to deny Poussin's influence upon Lesueur, which
+it seems to us at least probable was as much due to his counsels as to
+his example.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_190">190</a>: "But the marvel of the picture is the figure of St. Paul."</p>
+
+<p>We have recently seen, at Hampton Court, the seven cartoons of Raphael,
+which should not be looked at, still less criticised, but on bended
+knee. Behold Raphael arrived at the summit of his art, and in the last
+years of life! And these were but drawings for tapestry! These drawings
+alone would reward the journey to England, even were the figures from
+the friezes of the Parthenon not at the <i>British Museum</i>. One never
+tires of contemplating these grand per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">{373}</a></span>formances even in the obscurity
+of that ill-lighted room. Nothing could be more noble, more magnificent,
+more imposing, more majestic. What draperies, what attitudes, what
+forms! Notwithstanding the absence of color, the effect is immense; the
+mind is struck, at once charmed and transported; but the soul, we can
+speak for ourselves, remains well-nigh insensible. We request any one to
+compare carefully the sixth cartoon, clearly one of the finest,
+representing the Preaching of St. Paul at Ephesus, with the painting we
+have described of Lesueur's. One, immediately and at the first sight,
+transports you into the regions of the ideal; the other is less striking
+at first, but stay, consider it well, study it in detail, then take in
+the whole: by degrees you are overcome by an ever-increasing emotion.
+Above all, examine in both the principal character, St. Paul. Here, you
+behold the fine long folds of a superb robe which at once envelops and
+sets off his height, whilst the figure is in shade, and the little you
+see of it has nothing striking. There he confronts you, inspired,
+terrible, majestic. Now say which side lays claim to moral effect.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_193">193</a>: "The great works of Lesueur, Poussin, and so many others
+scattered over Europe."</p>
+
+<p>Of all the paintings of Lesueur which are in England, that which we
+regret most not having seen is <i>Alexander and his Physician</i>, painted
+for M. de Nouveau, director-general of the <i>Postes</i>, which passed from
+the Hotel Nouveau to the Place Royale in the Orleans Gallery, from
+thence into England, where it was bought by Lady Lucas at the great
+London sale in 1800. The sale catalogue, with the prices and names of
+the purchasers, will be found at the end of vol. i. of M. Waagen's
+excellent work, <i>&OElig;uvres d'Art et Artistes en Angleterre</i>, 2 vols.,
+Berlin, 1837 and 1838.</p>
+
+<p>We were both consoled and agreeably surprised on our return, to meet, in
+the valuable gallery of M. le Comte d'Houdetot, an ancient peer of
+France, and free member of the Academy of Fine Arts, with another
+Alexander and his physician Philip, in which the hand of Lesueur cannot
+be mistaken. The composition of the entire piece is perfect. The drawing
+is exquisite. The amplitude and nobleness of the draperies recall those
+of Raphael. The form of Alexander fine and languid; the person of Philip
+the physician grave and imposing. The coloring, though not powerful, is
+finely blended in tone. Now, where is the true original, is it with M.
+Houdetot or in England? The painting sold in London in 1800 certainly
+came from the Orleans'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">{374}</a></span> gallery, which would seem most likely to have
+possessed the original. On the other hand, it is impossible M.
+Houdetot's picture is a copy. They must, therefore, both be equally the
+work of Lesueur, who has in this instance treated the same subject twice
+over, as he has likewise done the Preaching of St. Paul; of which there
+is another, smaller than that at the Louvre, but equally admirable, at
+the Place Royale, belonging to M. Girou de Buzariengues, corresponding
+member of the Academy of Sciences.<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a></p>
+
+<p>We borrow M. Waagen's description of the works of Lesueur, found by that
+eminent critic in the English collections: <i>The Queen of Sheba before
+Solomon</i>, the property of the Duke of Devonshire, vol. i., p. 245.
+<i>Christ at the foot of the Cross supported by his Family</i>, belonging to
+the Earl of Shrewsbury, vol. ii., p. 463, "the sentiment deep and
+truthful," remarks M. Waagen. <i>The Magdalen pouring the ointment on the
+feet of Jesus</i>, the property of Lord Exeter, vol. ii., p. 485, "a
+picture full of the purest sentiment;" lastly, in the possession of M.
+Miles, a <i>Death of Germanicus</i>, "a rich and noble composition,
+completely in Poussin's style," remarks M. Waagen, vol. ii., p. 356. Let
+us add that this last work is not met with in any catalogue, ancient or
+modern. We ask ourselves whether this may not be a copy of the
+Germanicus of Poussin attributed to Lesueur.</p>
+
+<p>The author of <i>Mus&eacute;es d'Allemagne et du Russie</i> (Paris, 1844) mentions
+at Berlin a <i>Saint Bruno adoring the Cross in his Cell, opening upon a
+landscape</i>, and pretends that this picture is as pathetic as the best
+Saint Brunos in the Museum at Paris. It is probably a sketch, like the
+one we have, or one of the wanting panels; for as for the pictures
+themselves, there were never more than twenty-two at the Chartreux, and
+these are at the Louvre. Perhaps, however, it may be the picture which
+Lesueur made for M. Bernard de Roz&eacute;, see Florent Lecomte, vol. iii., p.
+98, which represented a Carthusian in a cell. At St. Petersburg, the
+catalogue of the Hermitage mentions seven pictures of Lesueur, one of
+which, <i>The infant Moses exposed on the Nile</i>, is admitted by the author
+cited to be authentic. Can this be one of two <i>Moses</i> which were painted
+by Lesueur for M. de Nouveau, as we learn from Guillet de Saint-Georges?
+Unless M. Viardot is deceived, and mistakes a copy for an original, we
+must regret that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">{375}</a></span> a real Lesueur should Lave been suffered to stray to
+St. Petersburg, with many of Poussin's most beautiful Claudes (see p.
+474), Mignards, Sebastian Bourdons, Gaspars, Stellas, and Valentins.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago, at the sale of Cardinal Fesch's gallery, we might have
+acquired one of Lesueur's finest pieces, executed for the church of
+Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, which had got, by some chance, into the
+possession of Chancellor Pontchartrain, afterwards into that of the
+Emperor's uncle. This celebrated picture, <i>Christ with Martha and Mary</i>,
+formed at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, a pendent to the <i>Martyrdom of St.
+Lawrence</i>. Will it be believed that the French Government lost the
+opportunity, and permitted this little <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i> to pass into
+the hands of the King of Bavaria? A good copy at Marseilles was thought,
+doubtless, sufficient, and the original was left to find its way to the
+gallery at Munich, and meet again the <i>St. Louis on his knees at Mass</i>,
+which the catalogue of that gallery attributes to Lesueur, on what
+ground we are not aware. In conclusion, we may mention that there is in
+the Museum at Brussels, a charming little Lesueur, <i>The Saviour giving
+his Blessing</i>, and in the Museums of Grenoble and Montpelier several
+fragments of the <i>History of Tobias</i>, painted for M. de Fieubet.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_193">193</a>: "Those master-pieces of art that honor the nation depart
+without authorization from the national territory! There has not been
+found a government which has undertaken at least to repurchase those
+that we have lost, to get back again the great works of Poussin,
+Lesueur, and so many others, scattered in Europe, instead of squandering
+millions to acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or
+Spanish canvases, in truth of an admirable color, but without nobleness
+and moral expression."</p>
+
+<p>Shall we give a recent instance of the small value we appear to set on
+Poussin? We blush to think that in 1848 we should have permitted the
+noble collection of M. de Montcalm to pass into England. One picture
+escaped: it was put up to sale in Paris on the 5th of March, 1850. It
+was a charming Poussin, undoubtedly authentic, from the Orleans gallery,
+and described at length in the catalogue of Dubois de Saint-Gelais. It
+represented the <i>Birth of Bacchus</i>, and by its variety of scenes and
+multitude of ideas, showed it belonged to Poussin's best period. We must
+do Normandy, rather the city of Rouen, the justice to say, that it made
+an effort to acquire it, but it was unsupported by Government; and this
+composition, wholly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">{376}</a></span> French, was sold at Paris for the sum of 17,000
+francs, to a foreigner, Mr. Hope.</p>
+
+<p>Miserable contrast! while five or six hundred thousand francs have been
+given for a <i>Virgin</i> by Murillo, which is now turning the heads of all
+who behold it. I confess that mine has entirely resisted. I admire the
+freshness, the sweetness, the harmony of color; but every other superior
+quality which one looks to find in such a subject is wanting, or at
+least escaped me. Ecstasy never transfigured that face, which is neither
+noble nor great. The lovely infant before me does not seem sensible of
+the profound mystery accomplished in her. What, then, can there be in
+this vaunted Virgin which so catches the multitude? She is supported by
+beautiful angels, in a fine dress, of a charming color, the effect of
+all which is doubtless highly pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_195">195</a>: "We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the <i>Seven
+Sacraments</i>, and for not having known how to keep from England and
+Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign
+collections," etc.</p>
+
+<p>After having expressed our regret that we were unacquainted with the
+<i>Seven Sacraments</i> save from the engravings of Pesne, we made a journey
+to London, to see with our own eyes, and judge for ourselves these
+famous pictures, with many others of our great countryman, now fallen
+into the possession of England, through our culpable indifference, and
+which have been brought under our notice by M Waagen.</p>
+
+<p>In the few days we were able to dedicate to this little journey, we had
+to examine four galleries: the National Gallery, answering to our
+Museum, those of Lord Ellesmere and the Marquis of Westminster, and, at
+some miles from London, the collection at Dulwich College, celebrated in
+England, though but little known on the continent.</p>
+
+<p>We likewise visited another collection, resulting from an institution
+which might easily be introduced into France, to the decided advantage
+of art and taste. A society has been formed in England, called the
+British Institution for promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom.
+Every year it has, in London, an exhibition of ancient paintings, to
+which individual galleries send their choice pieces, so that in a
+certain number of years all the most remarkable pictures in England pass
+under the public eye. But for this exhibition, what riches would remain
+buried in the mansions of the aristocracy or un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">{377}</a></span>known cabinets of
+provincial amateurs! The society, having at its head the greatest names
+of England, enjoys a certain authority, and all ranks respond eagerly to
+its appeal.</p>
+
+<p>We ourselves saw the list of persons who this year contributed to the
+exhibition; there were her Majesty the Queen, the Dukes of Bedford,
+Devonshire, Newcastle, Northumberland, Sutherland, the Earls of Derby
+and Suffolk, and numerous other great men, besides bankers, merchants,
+<i>savants</i>, and artists. The exhibition is public, but not free, as you
+must pay both for admission and the printed catalogue. The money thus
+acquired is appropriated to defray the expenses of the exhibition;
+whatever remains is employed in the purchase of pictures, which are then
+presented to the National Gallery.</p>
+
+<p>At this year's exhibition we saw three of Claude Lorrain's, which well
+sustained the name of that master. <i>Apollo watching the herds of
+Admetus</i>; a <i>Sea-port</i>, both belonging to the Earl of Leicester, and
+<i>Psyche and Amor</i>, the property of Mr. Perkins; a pretended Lesueur, the
+<i>Death of the Virgin</i>, from the Earl of Suffolk; seven Sebastian
+Bourdons, the <i>Seven Works of Mercy</i>,<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a> lent by the Earl of
+Yarborough; a landscape by Gaspar Poussin, but not one <i>morceau</i> of his
+illustrious brother-in-law's.</p>
+
+<p>We were more fortunate in the National Gallery.</p>
+
+<p>There, to begin, what admirable Claudes! We counted as many as ten, some
+of them of the highest value. We will confine ourselves to the
+recapitulation of three, the Embarkation of St. Ursula, a large
+landscape, and the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.</p>
+
+<p>1st. <i>The Embarkation of St. Ursula</i>, which was painted for the
+Barberini, and adorned their palace at Rome until the year 1760, when an
+English amateur purchased it from the Princess Barberini, with other
+works of the first class. This picture is 3 feet 8 inches high, 4 feet
+11 inches wide.</p>
+
+<p>2d. The large landscape is 4 feet 11 inches high, 6 feet 7 inches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">{378}</a></span> wide.
+Rebecca is seen, with her relatives and servants, waiting the arrival of
+Isaac, who comes from afar to celebrate their marriage.</p>
+
+<p>3d. <i>The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba</i>, going to visit Solomon,
+formed a pendent to the preceding figure, which it resembles in its
+dimensions. It is both a sea and landscape drawing, M. Waagen declares
+it to be the most beautiful <i>morceau</i> of the kind he is acquainted with,
+and asserts that Lorrain has here attained perfection, vol. i., p. 211.
+This masterpiece was executed by Claude for his protector, the Duke de
+Bouillon. It is signed "Claude GE. I. V., faict pour son Altesse le Duc
+de Bouillon, anno 1648." Doubtless the great Duke de Bouillon, eldest
+brother of Turenne. This French work, destined, too, for France, she has
+now forever lost, as well as the famous Book of Truth, <i>Libro di
+Verit&agrave;</i>, in which Claude collected the drawings of all his paintings,
+drawings which may be themselves regarded as finished pictures. This
+invaluable treasure was, like the <i>Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba</i>,
+for a long time in the hands of a French broker, who would willingly
+have relinquished it to the Government, but failing to find purchasers
+in Paris in the last century, ultimately sold it for a mere nothing into
+Holland, whence it has passed into England.<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a> The author of the
+<i>Mus&eacute;es d'Allemagne et de Russie</i>, mentions that in the gallery of the
+Hermitage at St. Petersburg, amongst a large number of Claudes, whose
+authenticity he appears to admit, there are four <i>morceaux</i>, which he
+does not hesitate to declare equal to the most celebrated
+<i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i> of that master, in Paris or London, called the
+<i>Morning</i>, the <i>Noon</i>, the <i>Evening</i>, and the <i>Night</i>. They are from
+Malmaison. Thus the sale of the gallery of an empress has in our own
+time enriched Russia, as, twenty-five years before, the sale of the
+Orleans gallery enriched England.</p>
+
+<p>In the National Gallery, along with the serene and quiet landscapes of
+Lorrain, are five of Caspar's, depicting nature under an opposite
+aspect&mdash;rugged and wild localities, and tempests. One of the most
+remarkable represents Eneas and Dido seeking shelter in a grotto from
+the violence of a storm. The figures are from the pencil of Albano, and
+for a length of time remained in the palace Falconieri.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">{379}</a></span> Two other
+landscapes are from the palace Corsini, and two from the palace Colonna.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to our real subject, which is Poussin. There are eight
+paintings by his hand in the National Gallery, all worthy of mention. M.
+Waagen has merely spoken of them in general terms, but we shall proceed
+to give a description in detail.</p>
+
+<p>Of these eight paintings, only one, representing the plague of Ashdod,
+is taken from sacred history. This is described in the printed catalogue
+as No. 105. The Israelites having been vanquished by the Philistines,
+the ark was taken by the victors and placed in the temple of Dagon at
+Ashdod. The idol falls before the ark, and the Philistines are smitten
+with the pestilence. This canvas is 4 feet 3 inches high, and 6 feet 8
+inches, wide. A sketch or copy of the <i>Plague of the Philistines</i> is in
+the Museum of the Louvre, and has been engraved by Picard. Poussin was,
+in fact, fond of repeating a subject; there are two sets of the <i>Seven
+Sacraments</i>, two <i>Arcadias</i>,<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a> two or three <i>Moses striking the
+Rock</i>, &amp;c. The science of painting is here employed to portray the scene
+in all its terrors, and display every horror of the pestilence, and it
+would seem that Poussin had here endeavored to contend with Michael
+Angelo, even at the expense of beauty. It is said the commission for
+this work was given by Cardinal Barberini. It comes from the palace of
+Colonna. The subjects of the remaining seven pictures in the National
+Gallery are mythological, and may be nearly all referred to the early
+epoch of Poussin's career, when he paid tribute to the genius of the
+16th century, and yielded to the influence of Marini.</p>
+
+<p>No. 39. The <i>Education of Bacchus</i>, a subject chosen by Poussin more
+than once. On a small canvas 2 feet 3 inches high, and 3 feet 1 inch
+wide.</p>
+
+<p>No. 40. Another small picture 1 foot 6 inches high, and 3 feet 4 inches
+broad: <i>Phocion washing his Feet at a Public Fountain</i>, a touching
+emblem of the purity and simplicity of his life. To heighten this rustic
+scene, and impart its meaning, the painter shows us the trophies of the
+noble warrior hung on the trunk of a tree at a little distance. The
+whole composition is striking and full of animation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">{380}</a></span> We believe that it
+has never been engraved. It forms a happy addition to the two other
+compositions consecrated by Poussin to Phocion, and which have been so
+admirably engraved by Baudet, <i>Phocion carried out of the City of
+Athens</i>, and the <i>Tomb of Phocion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>No. 42. Here is one of the three bacchanals painted by Poussin for the
+Duke de Montmorency. The two others are said to be in the collection of
+Lord Ashburnham. This bacchanal is 4 feet 8 inches high, and 3 feet 1
+inch wide. In a warm landscape Bacchus is sleeping surrounded by nymphs,
+satyrs, and centaurs, whilst Silenus appears under an arbor attended by
+sylvan figures.</p>
+
+<p>No. 62. Another bacchanal, which may be considered one of Poussin's
+masterpieces. According to M. Waagen, it belonged to the Colonna
+collection, but the catalogue, published <i>by authority</i>, states that it
+was originally the property of the Comte de Vaudreueili, that it
+afterwards came into the hands of M. de Calonne, whence it passed into
+England, and ultimately found its way into the hands of Mr. Hamlet, from
+whom it was purchased by Parliament, and placed in the National Gallery.
+It is 3 feet 8 inches high, and 4 feet 8 inches wide. Its subject is a
+dance of fauns and bacchantes, which is interrupted by a satyr, who
+attempts to take liberties with a nymph. Besides the main subject, there
+are numerous spirited and graceful episodes, particularly two infants
+endeavoring to catch in a cup the juice of a bunch of grapes supported
+in air, and pressed by a bacchante of slim and fine form. The
+composition is full of fire, energy, and spirit. There is not a single
+group, not a figure, which will not repay an attentive study. M. Waagen
+does not hesitate to pronounce it one of Poussin's finest. He admires
+the truth and variety of heads, the freshness of color, and the
+transparent tone (<i>die F&auml;rbung von seltenster Frische, Helle und
+Klarheit in allen Theilen</i>). It has been engraved by Huart, and
+accurately copied by Landon, under the title of <i>Danse de Fauns et de
+Bacchantes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>No. 65. <i>Cephalus and Aurora.</i> Aurora, captivated by the beauty of
+Cephalus, endeavors to separate him from his wife Procris. Being
+unsuccessful, in a fit of jealousy she gives to Cephalus the dart which
+causes the death of his adored spouse. 3 feet 2 inches high, 4 feet 2
+inches wide.</p>
+
+<p>No. 83. A large painting, 5 feet 6 inches high, and 8 feet wide,
+representing <i>Phineas and his Companions changed into Stones by looking
+on the Gorgon</i>. Perseus, having rescued Andromeda from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">{381}</a></span> the sea monster,
+obtains her hand from her father Cepheus, who celebrates their nuptials
+with a magnificent feast. Phineas, to whom Andromeda had been betrothed,
+rushes in upon the festivity at the head of a troop of armed men. A
+combat ensues, in which Perseus, being nearly overcome, opposes to his
+enemies the head of Medusa, by which they are instantly changed to
+stone. This composition is full of vigor, with brilliant coloring,
+although somewhat crude. It is nowhere mentioned, and we are not aware
+of its having been engraved.</p>
+
+<p>No. 91. A charming little drawing, 2 feet 2 inches high, 1 foot 8 inches
+wide: <i>A sleeping Nymph, surprised by Lore and Satyrs</i>, engraved by
+Daull&eacute;, also in Landon's work.</p>
+
+<p>Passing from the National Gallery to that of Bridgewater, we come upon
+another phase of Poussin's genius, and encounter not the disciple of
+Mariai but the disciple of the gospel, the graces of mythology giving
+way to the austerity and sublimity of Christianity. Such is the account
+of what we came to see; we looked for much, and found more than we
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>The Bridgewater Gallery is so named after its founder, the Duke of
+Bridgewater, by whom it was formed about the middle of the eighteenth
+century. He bequeathed it to his brother, the Marquis of Stafford, on
+the condition of his leaving it to his second son, Lord Francis Egerton,
+now Lord Ellesmere. The best part of this collection was engraved during
+the life of the Marquis of Stafford, by Ottley, under the title of the
+Stafford Gallery, in 4 vols. folio.</p>
+
+<p>It occupies the first place in England amongst private collections, on
+account of the number of masterpieces of the Italian, and Dutch, and
+French schools. A large number of paintings were added to it from the
+Orleans Gallery, and we could not repress a feeling of regret to meet at
+Cleveland Square with so many masterpieces formerly belonging to France,
+and which have been engraved in the two celebrated works: 1. <i>La Galerie
+du duc d'Orl&eacute;ans au Palais-Royal</i>, 2 volumes in folio; 2. <i>Recueil
+d'estampes d'apr&egrave;s les plus beaux tableaux et dessins qui sont en France
+dans le cabinet du roi et celui de Monseigneur le duc d'Orl&eacute;ans</i>, 1729,
+2 volumes in folio; a most valuable collection known also under the name
+of the <i>Cabinet of Crozat</i>. This admirable collection is deposited in a
+building worthy of it, in a veritable palace, and consists of nearly 300
+paintings. The French school is here well represented. The <i>Musical
+Party</i>, from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">{382}</a></span> Orleans Gallery, and engraved in the <i>Galerie du
+Palais-Royal</i>, three Bourguignons, four Gaspars, four fine Claudes,
+described by M. Waagen, vol. i., p. 331, the two former described in the
+catalogue as Nos. 11 and 41 were painted in 1664 for M. de Bourlemont, a
+gentleman of Lorraine; the former, <i>Demosthenes by the Sea-side</i>, offers
+a fine contrast between majestic ruins and nature eternally young and
+fresh; the second, <i>Moses at the Burning Bush</i>, a third, No. 103, of the
+year 1657, was likewise painted for a Frenchman, M. de Lagarde, and
+represents the <i>Metamorphosis of Apuleius into a Shepherd</i>; lastly,
+there is a fourth, No. 97, the freshest idyll that ever was, a <i>View of
+the Cascatelles of Tivoli</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The memory of these charming compositions, however, soon fades before
+the view of the eight grand pictures of Poussin, marked in the catalogue
+Nos. 62-69, the <i>Seven Sacraments</i>, and <i>Moses striking the Rock with
+his Rod</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult to describe the religious sensations which took
+possession of us whilst contemplating the <i>Seven Sacraments</i>. Whatever
+M. Waagen may please to assert, there is certainly nothing theatrical
+about them. The beauty of ancient statuary is here animated and
+enlivened by the spirit of Christianity, and the genius of the painter.
+The moral expression is of the most exalted character, and is left to be
+noticed less in the details than in the general composition. In fact, it
+is in composition that Poussin excels, and, in this respect, we do not
+think he has any superior, not even of the Florentine and Roman school.
+As each <i>Sacrament</i> is a vast scene in which the smallest details go to
+enhance the effect of the whole, so the <i>Seven Sacraments</i> form a
+harmonious entirety, a single work, representing the development of the
+Christian life by means of its most august ceremonies, in the same way
+as the twenty-two <i>St. Brunos</i> of Lesueur express the whole monastic
+life, the intention of the variety being to give a truer conception of
+its unity. Can any one, in sincerity, say as much as this for the
+<i>Stanze</i> of the Vatican? Have they a common sentiment? Is the sentiment
+profound, and, indeed, Christian? No doubt Raphael elevates the soul,
+whatever is beautiful cannot fail to do that; but he touches only the
+surface, <i>circum pr&aelig;cordia ludit</i>; he penetrates not deep; moves not the
+inner fibres of our being: for why? he himself was not so moved. He
+snatches us from earth, and transports us into the serene atmosphere of
+eternal beauty; but the mournful side of life, the sublime emotions of
+the heart, magnanimity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">{383}</a></span> heroism, in a word, moral grandeur, this he
+does not express; and why was this? because he did not possess it in
+himself, because it was not to be met with around him in the Italy of
+the 16th century, in a society semi-pagan, superstitious, and impious,
+given up to every vice and disorder, which Luther could not even catch a
+glimpse of without raging with horror, and meditating a revolution. From
+this corrupt basis, thinly hidden by a fictitious politeness, two great
+figures, Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, show themselves. But the
+noble widow of the Marquis of Pescaria was not of the company of the
+Fornarina; and what common ground could the chaste lover of the second
+Beatrice, the Dante of painting and of sculpture, the intrepid engineer
+who defended Florence, the melancholy author of <i>the Last Judgment</i> and
+of <i>Lorenzo di Medici</i>, have with such men as Perugino boldly professing
+atheism, at the same time that he painted, at the highest price
+possible, the most delicate Madonnas; and his worthy friend Aretino,
+atheist, and moreover hypocrite, writing with the same hand his infamous
+sonnets and the life of the Holy Virgin; and Giulio Romano, who lent his
+pencil to the wildest debaucheries, and Marc' Antonio, who engraved
+them? Such is the world in which Raphael lived, and which early taught
+him to worship material beauty, the purest taste in design, if not the
+strongest, fine drawing, sweet contours, of light, of color, but which
+always hides from him the highest beauty, that is, moral beauty. Poussin
+belongs to a very different world. Thanks to God, he had learned to know
+in France others besides artists without faith or morals, elegant
+amateurs, rich prelates, and compliant beauties. He had seen with his
+eyes heroes, saints, and statesmen. He must have met, at the court of
+Louis XIII., between 1640 and 1642, the young Cond&eacute; and the voting
+Turenne, St. Vincent de Paul, Mademoiselle de Vigean, and Mademoiselle
+de Lafayette; had shaken hands with Richelieu, with Lesueur, with
+Champagne, and no doubt also with Corneille. Like the last, he is grave
+and masculine; he has the sentiment of the great, and strives to reach
+it. If, above every thing, he is an artist, if his long career is an
+assiduous and indefatigable study of beauty, it is pre-eminently moral
+beauty that strikes him: and when he represents historic or Christian
+scenes, one feels he is there, like the author of the Cid, of Cinna, and
+of Polyeuete, in his natural element. He shows, assuredly, much spirit
+and grace in his mythologies, and like Corneille in several of his
+elegies and in the Declaration of Love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">{384}</a></span> to Psyche: but also like him, it
+is in the thoughtful and noble style that Poussin excels: it is on the
+moral ground that he has a place exalted and apart in the history of
+art.</p>
+
+<p>It is not our intention to describe the <i>Seven Sacraments</i>, which has
+been done by others more competent to the task than ourselves. We will
+only inquire whether Bossuet himself, in speaking of the sacrament of
+the <i>Ordination</i>, could have employed more gravity and majesty than
+Poussin has done in the noble painting, so well preserved, in the
+gallery of Lord Ellesmere. It is worthy of remark, in this as in the
+other paintings of Poussin's best period, how admirably the landscape
+accords with the historic portion. Whilst the foreground is occupied
+with the great scene in which Christ transmits his power to St. Peter
+before the assembled apostles,<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> in the distance, and above the
+heights, are descried edifices rising and in decay. Doubtless, the
+<i>Extreme Unction</i> is the most pathetic; affects and attracts us most by
+its various qualities, particularly by a certain austere grace shed
+around the images of death;<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a> but, unhappily, this striking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">{385}</a></span>
+composition has almost totally disappeared under the black tint, which
+has little by little gained on the other colors, and obscured the whole
+painting, so that we are well-nigh reduced to the engraving of Pesne,
+and the beautiful drawing preserved in the museum of the Louvre.<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a></p>
+
+<p>Most unhappily a technical error, into which even the most
+inconsiderable painter would not now fall, has deprived posterity of one
+half of Poussin's labors. He was in the habit of covering his canvas
+with a preparation of red, which has been changed by the effect of time
+into black, and thus absorbed the other colors, destroying the effect of
+the etherial perspective. As every one knows, this does not occur with a
+white preparation, which, instead of destroying the colors, preserves
+them for a length of time in their original state. This last process
+Poussin appears to have adopted in the <i>Moses striking the Rock with his
+Staff</i>, incomparably the finest of all the <i>Strikings of the Rock</i> which
+proceeded from his pencil. This masterpiece is well known, from the
+engraving by Baudet, and has passed, with the <i>Seven Sacraments</i>, from
+the Orleans gallery into the collection at Bridgewater. What unity is in
+this vast composition, and yet what variety in the action, the pose, the
+features of the figures! It consists of twenty different pictures, and
+yet is but one; and not even one of the episodes could be taken away
+without considerable injury to the <i>ensemble</i> of the piece. At the same
+time, what fine coloring! The impastation is both solid and light, and
+the colors are combined in the happiest manner. No doubt they might
+possess greater brilliancy; but the severity of the subject agrees well
+with a moderate tone. It is important to remember this. In the first
+place, every subject demands its proper color: in the second, grave
+subjects require a certain amount of coloring, which, however, must not
+be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">{386}</a></span> exceeded. Although the highest art does not consist in coloring, it
+would nevertheless be folly to regard it as of small importance: for, in
+that case, drawing would be every thing, and color might be altogether
+dispensed with. In attempting too far to please the eye, the risk is
+incurred of not going beyond and penetrating to the soul. On the other
+hand, want of color, or what is perhaps still worse, a disagreeable,
+crude, and improper coloring, while it offends the eye, likewise impairs
+the moral effect, and deprives even beauty of its charm. Color is to
+painting what harmony is to poetry and prose. There is equal defect
+whether in the case of too much or too little harmony, while one same
+harmony continued must be looked upon as a serious fault. Is Corneille
+happily inspired? His harmony, like his words, are true, beautiful,
+admirable in their variety. The tones differ with his different
+characters, but are always consistent with the conditions of harmony
+imposed by poesy. Is he negligent? his style then becomes rude,
+unpolished, at times intolerable. The harmony of Racine is slightly
+monotonous, his men talk like women, and his lyre was but one tone, that
+of a natural and refined elegance. There is but one man amongst us who
+speaks in every tone and in all languages, who has colors and accents
+for every subject, <i>na&iuml;ve</i> and sublime, vividly correct yet unaffectedly
+simple. Sweet as Racine in his lament of Madame, masculine and vigorous
+as Corneille or Tacitus when he comes to describe Retz or Cromwell,
+clear as the battle trumpet when his strain is Roeroy or Cond&eacute;,
+suggestive of the equal and varied flow of a mighty river in the
+majestic harmony of his Discourse on Universal History, a History which,
+in the grandeur and extent of its composition, in its vanquished
+difficulties, its depth of art, where art even ceases to appear as such,
+in its perfect unity, and, at the same time, almost infinite variety of
+tone and style, is perhaps the most finished work which has ever come
+from the hand of man.</p>
+
+<p>To return to Poussin. At Hampton Court, where, by the side of the seven
+cartoons of Raphael, the nine magnificent Montegnas representing the
+triumph of C&aelig;sar, and the fine portraits of Albert Durer and Holbein,
+French art makes so small a figure, there is a Poussin<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a> of
+particularly fine color, <i>Satyrs finding a Nymph</i>. The transparent and
+lustrous body of the nymph forms the entire picture. It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">{387}</a></span> a study of
+design and color, evidently of the period when Poussin, to perfect
+himself in every branch of his art, made copies from Titian.</p>
+
+<p>Time fails us to give the least idea of the rich gallery of the Marquess
+of Westminster, in Grosvenor-street. We refer for this to what M. Waagen
+has said, vol. ii., p. 113-130. The Flemish and Dutch schools
+preponderate in this gallery. One sees there in all their glory the
+three great masters of that school, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt,
+accompanied by a numerous suite of inferior masters, at present much in
+vogue, Hobb&eacute;ma, Cuyp, Both, Potter, and others, who, to our idea, fade
+completely before some half-dozen by Claude of all sizes, of every
+variety of subject, and nearly all of the best time of the great
+landscape-painter, between 1651 and 1661. Of these paintings, the
+greatest and most important is perhaps the <i>Sermon on the Mount</i>.
+Poussin appears worthily by the side of Lorrain in the gallery at
+Grosvenor-street. M. Waagen admires particularly <i>Calisto changed into a
+Bear, and placed by Jupiter among the Constellations</i>, and still more a
+<i>Virgin with the infant Jesus surrounded by Angels</i>. He extols in this
+<i>morceau</i> the surpassing clearness of coloring, the noble and melancholy
+sentiment of nature, together with a warm and powerful tone. M. Waagen
+places this painting amongst the masterpieces of the French painter
+(<i>geh&ouml;rt zu dem vortrefflichsten was ich von ihm kenne</i>). Whilst fully
+concurring in this judgment, we beg leave to point out in the same
+gallery two other canvases of Poussin, two delicious pieces from the
+easel, first a touching episode in <i>Moses striking the Rock</i>, in the
+gallery of Lord Ellesmere, of a mother who, heedless of herself, hastens
+to give her children drink, whilst their father bends in thanksgiving to
+God; the other, <i>Children at play</i>. Never did a more delightful scene
+come from the pencil of Albano. Two children look, laughing, at each
+other; another to the right holds a butterfly on his finger; a fourth
+endeavors to catch a butterfly which is flying from him; a fifth,
+stooping, takes fruit from a basket.</p>
+
+<p>But we must quit the London galleries to betake ourselves to that which
+forms the ornament of the college situated in the charming village of
+Dulwich.</p>
+
+<p>Stanislas, king of Poland, charged a London amateur, M. No&euml;l Desenfans,
+to form him a collection of pictures. The misfortunes of Stanislas, and
+the dismemberment of Poland left on M. Desenfans' hands all he had
+collected; these he made a present of to a friend of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">{388}</a></span> his, M. Bourgeois,
+a painter, who still further enriched this fine collection, and
+bequeathed it, at his death, to Dulwich College, where it now is in a
+very commodious and well-lighted building. It consists of nearly 350
+paintings. M. Waagen, who visited it, pronounces judgment with some
+severity. The catalogue is ill-compiled, it is true, but in this it does
+not differ from numerous other catalogues. Mediocrity is frequently
+placed side by side with excellence, and copies given as originals; this
+is the case with more than one gallery. This one, however, has to us the
+merit of containing a considerable number of French paintings, to some
+of which even M. Waagen cannot refuse his admiration.</p>
+
+<p>We will, first of all, mention without describing them, a Lenain, two
+Bourguignons, three portraits by Rigaud, or after Rigaud, a Louis XIV.,
+a Boileau, and another personage unknown to us, two Lebruns, the
+<i>Massacre of the Innocents</i>, and <i>Horatius Cocles defending the Bridge</i>,
+in which M. Waagen discovers happy imitations of Poussin, three or four
+Gaspars and seven Claude Lorrains, the beauty of most of which is a
+sufficient guarantee of their authenticity; together with a very fine
+<i>F&ecirc;te champ&ecirc;tre</i> by Watteau, and a <i>View near Rome</i>, by Joseph Vernet.
+Of Poussin, the catalogue points out eighteen, of which the following is
+a list:</p>
+
+<p>No. 115. <i>The Education of Bacchus</i>; 142, <i>a Landscape</i>; 249, <i>a Holy
+Family</i>; 253, <i>the Apparition of the Angels to Abraham</i>; 260, <i>a
+Landscape</i>; 269, <i>the Destruction of Niobe</i>; 279, <i>a Landscape</i>; 291,
+<i>the Adoration of the Magi</i>; 292, <i>a Landscape</i>; 295, <i>the Inspiration
+of the Poet</i>; 300, <i>the Education of Jupiter</i>; 305, <i>the Triumph of
+David</i>; 310, <i>the Flight into Egypt</i>; 315, <i>Renald and Armida</i>; 316,
+<i>Venus and Mercury</i>; 325, <i>Jupiter and Antiope</i>; 336, <i>the Assumption of
+the Virgin</i>; 352, <i>Children</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Of these eighteen pictures, M. Waagen singles out five, which he thus
+characterizes:</p>
+
+<p><i>The Assumption of the Virgin</i>, No. 336. In a landscape of powerful
+poesy, the Virgin is carried off to heaven in clouds of gold: a small
+picture, of which the sentiment is noble and pure, the coloring strong
+and transparent (<i>in der Farbe kraftiges und klaares Bild</i>). <i>Children</i>,
+No. 352. Replete with loveliness and charm. <i>The Triumph of David</i>, No.
+305. A rich picture, but theatrical.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea</i>, No. 300. A charming composition,
+transparent tone. <i>A Landscape</i>, No. 260. A well-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">{389}</a></span>drawn landscape,
+breathing a profound sentiment of nature; but which has become rather
+blackened.</p>
+
+<p>We are unable to recognize in the <i>Triumph of David</i> the theatrical
+character which shocked M. Waagen. On the contrary, we perceive a bold
+and almost wild expression, a great deal of passion finely subdued.</p>
+
+<p>A triumph must always contain some formality; here, however, there is
+the least possible, and that with which we are struck is its vigor and
+truth to nature. The giant's head stuck on the pike has the grandest
+effect: and we believe that the able German critic has, in this
+instance, likewise yielded to the prejudices of his country, which, in
+its passion for what it styles reality, fancies it perceives the
+theatrical in whatever is noble. We admit that at the close of the
+seventeenth century, under Louis XIV. and Lebrun, the noble was merged
+in the theatrical and academic; but under Louis XIII. and the Regency,
+in the time of Corneille and Poussin, the academic and theatrical style
+was wholly unknown. We entreat the sagacious critic not to forget this
+distinction between the divisions of the seventeenth century, nor to
+confound the master with his disciples, who, although they were still
+great, had slightly degenerated, and who were oppressed by the taste of
+the age of Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>But our gravest reproach against M. Waagen is, that he did not notice at
+Dulwich numerous <i>morceaux</i> of Poussin, which well merited his
+attention; amongst others, the <i>Adoration of the Magi</i>, far superior,
+for its coloring, to that in the Museum at Paris; and, above all, a
+picture which seems to us a masterpiece in the difficult art of
+conveying a philosophic idea under the living form of a myth and an
+allegory.</p>
+
+<p>In this art, Poussin excelled: he is pre-eminently a philosophical
+artist, a thinker assisted by all the resources of the science of
+design. He has ever an idea which guides his hand, and which is his main
+object. Let us not tire to reiterate this: it is moral beauty which he
+everywhere seeks, both in nature and humanity. As we have stated in
+relation to the sacrament of <i>Ordination</i>, the landscapes of Poussin are
+almost always designed to set off and heighten human life, whilst Claude
+is essentially a landscape painter, with whom both history and humanity
+are made subservient to nature. Subjects derived from Christianity were
+exactly suited to Poussin, inasmuch as they afforded the sublimest types
+of that moral grandeur in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">{390}</a></span> he delighted, although we do not see in
+him the exquisite piety of Lesueur and Champagne; and if Christian
+greatness speaks to his soul, it appears to do so with no authority
+beyond that of Phocion, of Scipio, or of Germanicus. Sometimes neither
+sacred nor profane history suffices him: he invents, he imagines, he has
+recourse to moral and philosophic allegory. It is here, perhaps, that he
+is most original, and that his imagination displays itself in its
+greatest freedom and elevation. <i>Arcadia</i> is a lesson of high philosophy
+under the form of an idyll. <i>The Testament of Eudamidas</i> portrays the
+sublime confidence of friendship. <i>Time Rescuing Truth from the assaults
+of Envy and Discord</i>, <i>the Ballet of Human Life</i>, are celebrated models
+of this style. We have had the good fortune to meet at Dulwich with a
+work of Poussin's almost unknown, and of whose existence we had not even
+an idea, sparkling at the same time with the style we have been
+describing, and with the most eminent qualities of the chief of the
+French school.</p>
+
+<p>This work, entirely new to us, is a picture of very small size, marked
+No. 295, and described in the catalogue as <i>The Inspiration of the
+Poet</i>, a delightful subject, and treated in the most delightful manner.
+Fancy the freshest landscape, in the foreground a harmonious group of
+three personages. The poet, on bended knee, carries to his lips the
+sacred cup which Apollo, the god of poesy, has presented to him. Whilst
+he quaffs, inspiration seizes him, his face is transfigured, and the
+sacred intoxication becomes apparent in the motion of his hands and his
+whole body. Beside Apollo, the Muse prepares to collect the songs of the
+poet. Above this group, a genius, frolicking in air, weaves a chaplet,
+whilst other genii scatter flowers. In the background, the clearest
+horizon. Grace, spirit, depth&mdash;this enchanting composition unites the
+whole. Added to this, the color is well-grounded and of great
+brilliancy.</p>
+
+<p>It is very singular that neither Bellori nor F&eacute;libien, who both lived on
+terms of intimacy with Poussin, and are still his best historians, say
+not a word of this work. It is not referred to in the catalogues of
+Florent Lecomte, of Gault de St. Germain, or of Castellan; nor does M.
+Waagen himself, who, having been at Dulwich, must have seen it there,
+make the least mention of it. We are, therefore, ignorant in what year,
+on what occasion, and for whom this delicious little painting was
+executed: but the hand of Poussin is seen throughout, in the drawing, in
+the composition, in the expression. Nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">{391}</a></span> theatrical or vulgar: truth
+combined with beauty. The whole scene conveys unmixed delight, and its
+impression is at once serene and profound. In our idea, <i>The Inspiration
+of the Poet</i> may be ranked as almost equal with <i>The Arcadia</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding this, <i>The Inspiration</i> has never been engraved, at
+least we have not met with it in any of the rich collections of
+engravings from Poussin we have been enabled to consult, those of M. de
+Baudicour, of M. Gatteaux, member of the Academy of Fine Arts, and
+lastly, the cabinet of prints in the <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Nationale</i>. We hope
+that these few words may suggest to some French engraver the idea of
+undertaking the very easy pilgrimage to Dulwich, and making known to the
+lovers of national art an ingenious and touching production of Poussin,
+strayed and lost, as it, were, in a foreign collection.</p>
+
+
+<p class='center'>FINIS.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3><i>D. APPLETON &amp; CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p style="font-size: x-large;">A History of Philosophy:</p>
+
+<p>An Epitome. By Dr. <span class="smcap">Albert Schwegler</span>. Translated from the original
+German, by <span class="smcap">Julius H. Seelye</span>. 12mo, 365 pages.</p>
+
+<p>This translation is designed to supply a want long felt by both teachers
+and students in our American colleges. We have valuable histories of
+Philosophy in English, but no <i>manual</i> on this subject so clear,
+concise, and comprehensive as the one now presented. Schwegler's work
+bears the marks of great learning, and is evidently written by one who
+has not only studied the original sources for such a history, but has
+thought out for himself the systems of which he treats. He has thus
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+speculation, from Thales to the present time, is presented in its
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+greatly neglected, will, it is hoped, receive a new impulse among
+American students through Mr. Seelye's translation. It is a book,
+moreover, invaluable for reference, and should be in the possession of
+every public and private library.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>From <span class="smcap">L. P. Hickok</span>, Vice-President of Union College.</i></p>
+
+<p>"I have had opportunity to hear a large part of Mr. Seelye's
+translation of Schwegler's History of Philosophy read from
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+invaluable Epitome of the History of Philosophy. It is
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+students of philosophy in the English language, and I have no
+expectation of its more favorable and successful accomplishment
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+other teachers will rejoice to avail themselves of the like
+assistance from it."</p>
+
+<p><i>From <span class="smcap">Henry B. Smith</span>, Professor of Christian Theology, Union
+Theological Seminary, N. Y.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It will well reward diligent study, and is one of the best
+works for a text-book in our colleges upon this neglected branch
+of scientific investigation."</p>
+
+<p><i>From <span class="smcap">N. Porter</span>, Professor of Intellectual Philosophy in Yale
+College.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It is the only book translated from the German which professes
+to give an account of the recent German systems which seems
+adapted to give any intelligible information on the subject to a
+novice."</p>
+
+<p><i>From <span class="smcap">Geo. P. Fisher</span>, Professor of Divinity in Yale College.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It is really the best Epitome of the History of Philosophy now
+accessible to the English student."</p>
+
+<p><i>From <span class="smcap">Joseph Haven</span>, Professor of Mental Philosophy in Amherst
+College.</i></p>
+
+<p>"As a manual and brief summary of the whole range of speculative
+inquiry, I know of no work which strikes me more favorably."</p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class='smcap center' style="font-size: x-large;">Annual Cyclop&aelig;dia</p>
+
+<p class='center'><i>FOR 1870.</i></p>
+
+<p>In addition to its usual information on all the Civil, Political,
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+
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+
+<p>This work is the Tenth of a Series commenced in 1861, and published, one
+volume annually since, in the same style as the "New American
+Cyclop&aelig;dia," and is, in fact, an addendum to that invaluable work. Each
+volume, however, is complete in itself, and is confined to the results
+of its year.</p>
+
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+
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+
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+<p>A TEXT-BOOK OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE, with Particular Reference to
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+Translated from the eighth German edition, by special permission of the
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+
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+
+<p>The translators also take great pleasure in noticing the
+favorable reception of this work in England, showing the
+interest felt there as well as herein the ideas of the modern
+German School of Medicine.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>VERA; OR THE ENGLISH EARL AND THE RUSSIAN PRINCESS. By the Author of
+"The Hotel du Petit St. Jean." 1 vol., 8vo, forming No. 25 of Library of
+Choice Novels. Price, 40 cents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Vera" has been praised by the English press in the highest
+terms. There is a freshness of style, of method and material,
+and the world of English novel-readers have found in them a new
+sensation. The London <i>Saturday Review</i>, speaking of "Vera,"
+says that "it heartily recommends to the public a book which
+cannot fail to please every one who reads it."</p></div>
+
+
+<p>LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. A Series of Familiar Essays on
+Scientific Subjects, Natural Phenomena, etc. By R. A. PROCTOR, B. A., F.
+R. A. S., author of "Saturn and its System," "Other Worlds than Ours,"
+"The Sun," etc. 1 vol. Cloth. 12mo. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Contents.</span>&mdash;Strange Discoveries respecting the Aurora; The
+Earth's Magnetism; Our Chief Timepiece losing Time; Encke, the
+Astronomer; Venus on the Sun's Face; Recent Solar Researches;
+Government Aid to Science; American Alms for British Science;
+The Secret of the North Pole; Is the Gulf Stream a Myth? Floods
+in Switzerland; A Great Tidal Wave; Deep-Sea Dredgings; The
+Tunnel through Mont Cenis; Tornadoes; Vesuvius; The Earthquake
+in Peru; The Greatest Sea Wave ever known; The Usefulness of
+Earthquakes; The Forcing Power of Rain; A Shower of Snow
+Crystals; Long Shots; Influence of Marriage on the Death-Rate;
+The Topographical Survey of India; A Ship attacked by a
+Swordfish; The Safety-Lamp; The Dust we have to Breathe;
+Photographic Ghosts; The Oxford and Cambridge Rowing Styles;
+Betting on Horse-Races, or the State of the Odds; Squaring the
+Circle; A New Theory of Achilles's Shield.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>HEREDITARY GENIUS; an Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. By <span class="smcap">Francis
+Galton</span>, F. R. S. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth. 390 pages. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The author of this book endeavors to show that man's natural
+abilities are derived from inheritance, under exactly the same
+limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole
+organic world. Consequently, as it is easy, notwithstanding the
+limitations, to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of
+dogs or horses, gifted with peculiar powers of reasoning, or of
+doing any thing else, so it would be quite practicable to
+produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages
+during several consecutive generations.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>APPLETONS' EUROPEAN GUIDE-BOOK, Illustrated, including England,
+Scotland, and Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, Northern and Southern
+Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Russia, Denmark,
+Norway, and Sweden; containing a Map of Europe, and Nine other Maps,
+with Plans of Twenty of the Principal Cities, and 120 Engravings. 1
+vol., 12mo. Second Edition, brought down to May, 1871. 720 pages. Red
+French morocco, with a tuck. Price, $6.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the preparation of this Guide-book, the author has sought to
+give, within the limits of a single volume, all the information
+necessary to enable the tourist to find his way, without
+difficulty, from place to place, and to see the objects best
+worth seeing, throughout such parts of Europe as are generally
+visited by American and English travellers."&mdash;<i>Extract from
+Preface.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE ART OF BEAUTIFYING SUBURBAN HOME GROUNDS OF SMALL EXTENT, and the
+best Modes of Laying out, Planting, and Keeping Decorated Grounds.
+Illustrated by upward of Two Hundred Plates and Engravings of Plans for
+Residences and their Grounds, of Trees, and Shrubs, and Garden
+Embellishments. With Descriptions of the Beautiful and Hardy Trees and
+Shrubs grown in the United States. By <span class="smcap">Frank J. Scott</span>. Complete in one
+Elegant Quarto Volume of 618 pages. Is printed on tinted paper, bound in
+green morocco cloth, bevelled boards, with uncut edges, gilt top. Price,
+$8.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This elegant work is the only book published on the especial
+subject indicated by the title. Its aim and object are to aid
+persons of moderate incomes, who are not fully posted on the
+arts of decorative gardening, to beautify their homes, to
+suggest and illustrate the simple means with which <i>beautiful
+home-surroundings</i> may be realized on <i>small ground</i>, and with
+little cost; also to assist in giving an intelligent direction
+to the desires and a satisfactory result for the labors of those
+who are engaged in embellishing houses, as well as those whose
+imaginations are warm with the hopes of homes that are yet to
+be.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>LIFE OF MAJOR JOHN ANDR&Eacute;. By <span class="smcap">Winthorp Sargent</span>. A new and revised
+edition. 1 vol., 12mo, with Portraits of the Author and Editor. Price,
+$2.50.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This work is an important contribution to our historical
+literature&mdash;"a volume," says Robert C. Winthrop, "full of
+attractive and valuable matter, and displaying the fruit of rich
+culture and rare accomplishments." The "Life of Andr&eacute;" has been
+fortunate in receiving the commendation, at home and abroad, of
+careful critics and distinguished historians.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE TWO GUARDIANS; OR HOME IN THIS WORLD. By the author of "The Heir of
+Redclyffe." 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. Forming one of the
+volumes of the new illustrated edition of Miss Yonge's popular novels.
+Volumes already published: "The Heir of Redclyffe," 2 vols.;
+"Heartsease," 2 vols.; "Daisy Chain," 2 vols.; "Beechcroft," 1 vol.</p>
+
+
+<p>THE RECOVERY OF JERUSALEM. An Account of the Recent Excavations and
+Discoveries in the Holy City. By <span class="smcap">Captain Wilson</span>, R. E., and <span class="smcap">Captain
+Warren</span>, R. E. With an Introductory Chapter by Dean Stanley. Cloth, 8vo.
+With fifty Illustrations. Price, $3.50.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"That this volume may bring home to the English public a more
+definite knowledge of what the Palestine Exploration Fund has
+been doing, and hopes to do, than can be gathered from partial
+and isolated reports, or from popular lectures, must be the
+desire of every one who judges the Bible to be the most
+precious, as it is the most profound, book in the world, and who
+deems nothing small or unimportant that shall tend to throw
+light upon its meaning, and to remove the obscurities which time
+and distance have caused to rest upon some of its
+pages."&mdash;<i>Globe.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST, and its Relations to the
+Principles and Practice of Christianity. By <span class="smcap">Wm. Stroud</span>, M. D. With a
+Letter on the Subject by <span class="smcap">Sir James Y. Simpson</span>, Bart., M. D. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Dr. William Stroud's treatise on "The Physical Cause of the
+Death of Christ, and its Relation to the Principles and Practice
+of Christianity," although now first reprinted in this country,
+has maintained, for the last quarter of a century, a great
+reputation in England. It is, in its own place, a masterpiece.
+"It could have been composed," says Dr. Stroud's biographer,
+"only by a man characterized by a combination of superior
+endowments. It required, on the one hand, a profound
+acquaintance with medical subjects and medical literature. It
+required, on the other, an equally profound acquaintance with
+the Bible, and with theology in general." The object of the
+treatise is to demonstrate an important physical fact connected
+with the death of Christ&mdash;namely, that it was caused by rupture
+of the heart&mdash;and to point out its relation to the principles
+and practice of Christianity.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>WESTWARD BY RAIL: THE NEW ROUTE TO THE EAST. By <span class="smcap">W. F. Rae</span>. 1 vol., 12mo.
+Cloth. 390 pages. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The author of this work, one of the editors of the London <i>Daily
+News</i>, was a stanch defender of the Union, and his work is one
+of the most just and appreciative books on America yet published
+by an Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a quiet and subtle charm, as well as a deep and true
+romantic interest, in the story of the railway
+journey."&mdash;<i>Westminster Review.</i></p>
+
+<p>"He has given us a very pleasant and instructive book, which we
+heartily commend to the attention of all thoughtful and
+inquiring readers."&mdash;<i>Glasgow Mail.</i></p>
+
+<p>"He has written a most readable, interesting, and attractive
+account of a journey which is long enough to be worth the
+complete description he has given it."&mdash;<i>Observer.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE REVELATION OF JOHN, with Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and
+Practical. Designed for both Pastors and People. By Rev. <span class="smcap">Henry Cowles</span>,
+D. D. 1 vol., 12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>D. Appleton &amp; Co. also publish by the same Author: "Minor Prophets."
+12mo, cloth. Price, $2.00; "Ezekiel and Daniel." 12mo, cloth. $2.25;
+"Isaiah." With Notes, $2.25; "Jeremiah." 1 vol., 12mo. $2.00; "Proverbs,
+Ecclesiastes, and Songs of Solomon." $2.00.</p>
+
+
+<p>A TREATISE ON DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. By <span class="smcap">William A. Hammond</span>, M.
+D., Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System, and of
+Clinical Medicine, in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College;
+Physician-in-chief to the New-York State Hospital for Diseases of the
+Nervous System, etc. With Forty-five Illustrations. 1 vol., 8vo, 750
+pages. Price, $5.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the following work I have endeavored to present a 'Treatise
+on Diseases of the Nervous System' which, without being
+superficial, would be concise and explicit, and which, while
+making no claim to being exhaustive, would nevertheless be
+sufficiently complete for the instruction and guidance of those
+who might be disposed to seek information from its pages. How
+far I have been successful will soon be determined by the
+judgment of those more competent than myself to form an unbiased
+opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"One feature I may, however, with justice claim for this work,
+and that is, that it rests, to a great extent, on my own
+observation and experience, and is, therefore, no mere
+compilation. The reader will readily perceive that I have views
+of my own on every disease considered, and that I have not
+hesitated to express them."&mdash;<i>Extract from the Preface.</i></p>
+
+<p>Over fifty diseases of the nervous system, including insanity,
+are considered in this treatise.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SEVERE AND PROTRACTED MUSCULAR EXERCISE,
+with Special Reference to its Influence upon the Excretion of Nitrogen.
+By <span class="smcap">Austin Flint</span>, Jr., M. D., Professor of Physiology in the Bellevue
+Hospital Medical College, New York. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.</p>
+
+
+<p>APPLETONS' HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN TRAVEL. Northern and Eastern Tour. New
+edition, revised for the Summer of 1871. Including New York, New Jersey,
+Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New
+Hampshire, Vermont, and the British Dominion, being a Guide to Niagara,
+the White Mountains, the Alleghanies, the Catskills, the Adirondacks,
+the Berkshire Hills, the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, Lake George, Lake
+Memphremagog, Saratoga, Newport, Cape May, the Hudson, and other Famous
+Localities; with full Descriptive Sketches of the Cities, Towns, Rivers,
+Lakes, Waterfalls, Mountains, Hunting and Fishing Grounds,
+Watering-places, Sea-side Resorts, and all scenes and objects of
+importance and interest within the district named. With Maps and various
+Skeleton Tours, arranged as suggestions and guides to the Traveller. One
+vol., 12mo. Flexible cloth. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+
+<p>JAMES GORDON'S WIFE. A Novel. 8vo. Paper. Price, 50 cents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"An interesting novel, pleasantly written, refined in tone, and
+easy in style."&mdash;<i>London Globe.</i></p>
+
+<p>"This novel is conceived and executed in the purest spirit. The
+illustrations of society in its various phases are cleverly and
+spiritedly done."&mdash;<i>London Post.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. By <span class="smcap">Herbert Spencer</span>. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth.
+Price, $2.50.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This work is thought by many able judges to be the most original
+and valuable contribution to the science of mind that has
+appeared in the present century. John Stuart Mill says it is
+"one of the finest examples we possess of the psychological
+method in its full power." Dr. McCosh says "his bold
+generalizations are always suggestive, and some may in the end
+be established in the profoundest laws of the knowable
+universe." George Ripley says "Spencer is as keen an analyst as
+is known in the history of Philosophy. I do not except either
+Aristotle or Kant, whom he greatly resembles."</p></div>
+
+
+<p>NIGEL BARTRAM'S IDEAL. A Novel. By <span class="smcap">Florence Wilford</span>. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper
+covers. Price, 50 cents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This is a novel of marked originality and high literary merit.
+The heroine is one of the loveliest and purest characters of
+recent fiction, and the detail of her adventures in the arduous
+task of overcoming her husband's prejudices and jealousies forms
+an exceedingly interesting plot. The book is high in tone and
+excellent in style.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>GOOD FOR NOTHING. A Novel. By <span class="smcap">Whyte Melville</span>. Author of "Digby Grand,"
+"The Interpreter," etc. 1 vol., 8vo, 210 pages. Price, 60 cents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The interest of the reader in the story, which for the most
+part is laid in England, is enthralling from the beginning to
+the end. The moral tone is altogether unexceptionable."&mdash;<i>The
+Chronicle.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>A HAND-BOOK OF LAW, for Business Men; containing an Epitome of the Law
+of Contracts, Bills and Notes, interest, Guaranty and Suretyship,
+Assignments for Creditors, Agents, Factors, and Brokers, Sales,
+Mortgages, and Liens, Patents and Copyrights, Trade-Marks, the Good-Will
+of a Business, Carriers, Insurance, Shipping, Arbitrations, Statutes of
+Limitation, Partnership, with an Appendix, containing Forms of
+Instruments used in the Transaction of Business. By <span class="smcap">William Tracy</span>, LL.
+D. 1 vol., 8vo, 679 pages. Half basil, $5.50; library leather, $6.50.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This work is an epitome of those branches of law which affect
+the ordinary transactions of <span class="smcap">BUSINESS MEN</span>. <i>It is not proposed
+by it to make every man a lawyer</i>, but to give a man of business
+a convenient and reliable book of reference, to assist him in
+the solution of questions relating to his rights and duties,
+which are constantly arising, and to guide him in conducting his
+negotiations.</p>
+
+<p>In preparing it, the aim has been to set forth, <span class="smcap">IN PLAIN
+LANGUAGE</span>, the rules which constitute the doctrines of law which
+are examined, <i>and to illustrate the same by decisions of the
+Courts in which they are recognized</i>, <span class="smcap">WITH MARGINAL REFERENCES
+TO THE VOLUMES WHERE THE CASES MAY BE FOUND</span>.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED; with Fifty-nine Illustrations. A Descriptive Text
+and a Map of the City. An entirely new edition, brought down to date,
+with new Illustrations. Price, 50 cents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"There has never been published so beautiful a guide-book to New
+York as this is. A suitable letter-press accompanies the
+woodcuts, the whole forming a picture of New York such as no
+other book affords."&mdash;<i>New York World.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In Illustration of
+the Manners and Morals of the Age. By <span class="smcap">William Forsyth</span>, M. A., Q. C. 1
+vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Mr. Forsyth, in his instructive and entertaining volume, has
+succeeded in showing that much real information concerning the
+morals as well as the manners of our ancestors may be gathered
+from the novelists of the last century. With judicial
+impartiality he examines and cross-examines the witnesses,
+laying all the evidence before the reader. Essayists as well as
+novelists are called up. The Spectator, The Tatler, The World,
+The Connoisseur, add confirmation strong to the testimony of
+Parson Adams, Trulliber, Trunnion, Squire Western, the "Fool of
+Quality," "Betsey Thoughtless," and the like. A chapter on dress
+is suggestive of comparison. Costume is a subject on which
+novelists, like careful artists, are studiously precise.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>REMINISCENCES OF FIFTY YEARS. By <span class="smcap">Mark Boyd</span>. 1 vol., 12mo, 390 pp. Price,
+$1.75.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Mr. Boyd has seen much of life at home and abroad. He has
+enjoyed the acquaintance or friendship of many illustrious men,
+and he has the additional advantage of remembering a number of
+anecdotes told by his father, who possessed a retentive memory
+and a wide circle of distinguished friends. The book, as the
+writer acknowledges, is a perfect <i>olla podrida</i>. There is
+considerable variety in the anecdotes. Some relate to great
+generals, like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Clyde; some to
+artists and men of letters, and these include the names of
+Campbell, Rogers, Thackeray, and David Roberts; some to
+statesmen, and among others, to Pitt, who was a friend of Mr.
+Boyd's father, to Lords Palmerston, Brougham, and Derby; some to
+discoverers, like Sir John Franklin and Sir John Ross: and
+others&mdash;among which may be reckoned, perhaps, the most amusing
+in the volume&mdash;to persons wholly unknown to fame, or to manners
+and customs now happily obsolete.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE FOR UNSCIENTIFIC PEOPLE. A Series of Detached
+Essays, Lectures, and Reviews. By <span class="smcap">John Tyndall</span>, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. 422 pages. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Prof. Tyndall is the Poet of Modern Science.</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This is a book of genius&mdash;one of those rare productions that
+come but once in a generation. Prof. Tyndall is not only a bold,
+broad, and original thinker, but one of the most eloquent and
+attractive of writers. In this volume he goes over a large range
+of scientific questions, giving us the latest views in the most
+lucid and graphic language, so that the subtlest order of
+invisible changes stand out with all the vividness of
+stereoscopic perspective. Though a disciplined scientific
+thinker, Prof. Tyndall is also a poet, alive to all beauty, and
+kindles into a glow of enthusiasm at the harmonies and wonder of
+Nature which he sees on every side. To him science is no mere
+dry inventory of prosaic facts, but a disclosure of the Divine
+order of the world, and fitted to stir the highest feelings of
+our nature.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>GABRIELLE ANDR&Eacute;. An Historical Novel. By <span class="smcap">S. Baring-Gould</span>, author of
+"Myths of the Middle Ages." 1 vol., 8vo. Paper covers. Price, 60 cents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Those who take an interest in comparing the effects of the
+present French Revolution on the Church with that of 1789 will
+find in this work a great deal of information illustrating the
+feeling in the State and Church of France at that period. The
+<i>Literary Churchman</i> says: "The book is a remarkably able one,
+full of vigorous and often exceedingly beautiful writing and
+description."</p></div>
+
+
+<p>MUSINGS OVER THE CHRISTIAN YEAR AND LYRA INNOCENTIUM. By <span class="smcap">Charlotte Mary
+Yonge</span>, together with a few Gleanings of Recollection, gathered by
+Several Friends. 1 vol. Thick 12mo, 431 pages. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Miss Yonge has here produced a volume which will possess great
+interest in the eyes of Churchmen, who have for so many years
+enjoyed the privilege of reading the exquisite poetry of the
+"Christian Year" by Rev. John Keble. Miss Yonge gives her own
+experience of the uninterrupted intercourse of thirty years:
+then there are the "Recollections," by Francis M. Wilbraham: a
+few words of "Personal Description," by Rev. T. Simpson Evans;
+then follow the "Musings," one each of the poems illustrative of
+the "Christian Year and Lyra Innocentium."</p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. By <span class="smcap">Charlotte M. Yonge</span>. A New Illustrated Edition.
+2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+<p>To be followed by HEARTSEASE.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The first of her writings which made a sensation here was the
+'Heir,' and what a sensation it was! Referring to the remains of
+the tear-washed covers of the copy aforesaid, we find it
+belonged to the 'eighth thousand.' How many thousands have been
+issued since by the publishers, to supply the demand for new,
+and the places of drowned, dissolved, or swept away old copies,
+we do not attempt to conjecture. Not individuals merely, but
+households&mdash;consisting in great part of tender-hearted young
+damsels&mdash;were plunged into mourning. With a tolerable
+acquaintance with fictitious heroes (not to speak of real ones),
+from Sir Charles Grandison down to the nursery idol, Carlton, we
+have little hesitation in pronouncing Sir Guy Morville, or
+Redclyffe, Baronet, the most admirable one we ever met with, in
+story or out. The glorious, joyous boy, the brilliant, ardent
+child of genius and of fortune, crowned with the beauty of his
+early holiness, and overshadowed with the darkness of his
+hereditary gloom, and the soft and touching sadness of his early
+death&mdash;what a caution is there! What a vision!"&mdash;Extract from a
+review of "The Heir of Redclyffe," and "Heartsease," in the
+<i>North American Review</i> for April.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>A COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE; mainly abridged from Dr.
+William Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," but comprising important
+Additions and Improvements from the Works of Robinson, Gesenius, Furst,
+Pape, Pott, Winer, Keil, Lange, Kitto, Fairbairn, Alexander, Barnes,
+Bush, Thomson, Stanley, Porter, Tristram, King, Ayre, and many other
+eminent scholars, commentators, travellers, and authors in various
+departments. Designed to be a Complete Guide in regard to the
+Pronunciation and Signification of Scriptural Names; the Solution of
+Difficulties respecting the Interpretation, Authority, and Harmony of
+the Old and New Testaments; the History and Description of Biblical
+Customs, Events, Places, Persons, Animals, Plants, Minerals, and other
+things concerning which information is needed for an intelligent and
+thorough study of the Holy Scriptures, and of the Books of the
+Apocrypha. Illustrated with Five Hundred Maps and Engravings. Edited by
+Rev. <span class="smcap">Samuel W. Barnum</span>. Complete in one large royal octavo volume of
+1,234 pages. Price, in cloth binding, $5.00; in library sheep, $6.00; in
+half morocco, $7.50.</p>
+
+
+<p>LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. Notes of Two Courses of Lectures before the Royal
+Institution of Great Britain. By <span class="smcap">John Tyndall</span>, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"For the benefit of those who attended his Lectures on Light and
+Electricity at the Royal Institution. Prof. Tyndall prepared
+with much care a series of notes, summing up briefly and clearly
+the leading facts and principles of these sciences. The notes
+proved so serviceable to those for whom they were designed that
+they were widely sought by students and teachers, and Prof.
+Tyndall had them reprinted in two small books. Under the
+conviction that they will be equally appreciated by instructors
+and learners in this country, they are here combined and
+republished in a single volume."&mdash;<i>Extract from Preface.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>THE DESCENT OF MAN AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX. By <span class="smcap">Charles Darwin</span>,
+M. A. With Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $4.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We can find no fault with Mr. Darwin's facts, or the
+application of them."&mdash;<i>Utica Herald.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The theory is now indorsed by many eminent scientists, who at
+first combated it, including Sir Charles Lyell, probably the
+most learned of living geologists."&mdash;<i>Evening Bulletin.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>ON THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. By <span class="smcap">St. George Mivart</span>, F. R. S. 1 vol., 12mo.
+Cloth, with Illustrations. Price, $1.75.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Mivart has succeeded in producing a work which will clear
+the ideas of biologists and theologians, and which treats the
+most delicate questions in a manner which throws light upon most
+of them, and tears away the barriers of intolerance on each
+side."&mdash;<i>British Medical Journal.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>MARQUIS AND MERCHANT. A Novel. By <span class="smcap">Mortimer Collins</span>. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper
+covers. Price, 50 cents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We will not compare Mr. Collins, as a novelist, with Mr.
+Disraeli, but, nevertheless, the qualities which have made Mr.
+Disraeli's fictions so widely popular are to be found in no
+small degree in the pages of the author of 'Marquis and
+Merchant.'"&mdash;<i>Times.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>HEARTSEASE. A Novel. By the author of the "Heir of Redclyffe." An
+Illustrated Edition. 2 vols., 12mo. Price, $2.00.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This is the second of the series of Miss Yonge's novels, now
+being issued in a new and beautiful style with illustrations.
+Since this novel was first published a new generation of readers
+have appeared. Nothing in the English language can equal the
+delineation of character which she so beautifully portrays.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>WHAT TO READ, AND HOW TO READ, being Classified Lists of Choice Reading,
+with appropriate hints and remarks, adapted to the general reader, to
+subscribers, to libraries, and to persons intending to form collections
+of books. Brought down to September, 1870. By <span class="smcap">Charles H. Moore</span>, M. D. 1
+vol., 12mo. Paper Covers, 50 cents. Cloth. Price, 75 cents.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 1st Series of our work, <i>Cours de l'Histoire de la
+Philosophie Moderne</i>, five volumes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The Appendix has been translated by Mr. N. E. S. A.
+Hamilton of the British Museum, who is alone entitled to credit and
+alone responsible.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tr.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> We have so much felt the necessity of understanding well
+the philosophy of the century that ours succeeds, that three times we
+have undertaken the history of philosophy in the eighteenth century,
+here first, in 1818, then in 1819 and 1820, and that is the subject of
+the last three volumes of the 1st Series of our works; finally, we
+resumed it in 1829, vol. ii. and iii. of the 2d Series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> This word was used by the old English writers, and there is
+no reason why it should not be retained.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> On the method of Descartes, see 1st Series, vol. iv.,
+lecture 20; 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 2; vol. ii., lecture 11; 3d
+Series, vol. iii., <i>Philosophie Moderne</i>, as well as <i>Fragments de
+Philosophie Cart&eacute;sienne</i>; 5th Series, <i>Instruction Publique</i>, vol. ii.,
+<i>D&eacute;fense de l'Universit&eacute; et de la Philosophie</i>, p. 112, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> On this return to the scholastic form in Descartes, see 1st
+Series, vol iv., lecture 12, especially three articles of the <i>Journal
+des Savants</i>, August, September, and October, 1850, in which we have
+examined anew the principles of Cartesianism, <i>&agrave; propos</i> the <i>Leibnitii
+Animadversiones ad Cartesii Principia Philosophi&aelig;</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See on Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, 2d Series, vol.
+ii., lectures 11 and 12; 3d Series, vol. iv., <i>Introduction aux
+&OElig;uvres Philosophiques de M. de Biran</i>, p. 288; and the <i>Fragments de
+Philosophie Cart&eacute;sienne</i>, passim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> On Locke, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, especially
+2d Series, vol. iii., <i>Examen du Syst&egrave;me de Locke</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on the Scotch School.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> See on Kant and the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>, vol. v. of
+the 1st Series, where that great work is examined with as much extent as
+that of Reid in vol. iv., and the <i>Essay</i> of Locke in vol. iii. of the
+2d Series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> On Fichte, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 12; 3d Series, vol.
+iv., <i>Introduction aux &OElig;uvres de M. de Biran</i>, p. 324.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> We expressed ourselves thus in December, 1817, when,
+following the great wars of the Revolution, and after the downfall of
+the empire, the constitutional monarchy, still poorly established, left
+the future of France and of the world obscure. It is sad to be obliged
+to hold the same language in 1835, over the ruins accumulated around
+us.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. i., Course of 1816.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Course of 1817.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> On the legitimate employment and the imperative conditions
+of eclecticism, see 3d Series, <i>Fragments Philosophiques</i>, vol. iv.,
+preface of the first edition, p. 41, &amp;c., especially the article
+entitled <i>De la Philosophie en Belgique</i>, pp. 228 and 229.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> We have translated his excellent <i>Manual of the History of
+Philosophy</i>. See the second edition, vol. ii., 8vo., 1839.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> 1st Series of our Course, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. i., Fragments of the Course of 1817.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> See that criticism, 1st Series, vol. v., <i>Kant</i>, lecture
+8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> This classification of the human faculties, save some
+differences more nominal than real, is now generally adopted, and makes
+the foundation of the psychology of our times. See our writings, among
+others, 1st Series, Course of 1816, lectures 23 and 24: <i>Histoire du
+moi</i>; ibid., <i>Des faits de Conscience</i>; vol. iii., lecture 3, <i>Examen de
+la Th&eacute;orie des Facult&eacute;s dans Condillac</i>; vol. iv., lecture 21, <i>des
+Facult&eacute;s selon Reid</i>; vol. v., lecture 8, <i>Examen de la Th&eacute;orie de
+Kant</i>; 3d Series, vol iv., <i>Preface de la Premi&egrave;re Edition, Examen des
+Le&ccedil;ons de M. Laromigui&egrave;re, Introduction aux &OElig;uvres de M. de Biran,
+etc.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> This lecture on the existence of universal and necessary
+principles, which was easily comprehended, in 1818, by an auditory to
+which long discussions had already been presented during the two
+previous years, appearing here without the support of these
+preliminaries, will not perhaps be entirely satisfactory to the reader.
+We beseech him to consult carefully the first volume of the 1st Series
+of our Course, which contains an abridgment, at least, of the numerous
+lectures of 1816 and 1817, of which this is a <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i>; especially to
+read in the third, fourth, and fifth volumes of the 1st Series, the
+developed analyses, in which, under different forms, universal and
+necessary principles are demonstrated as far as may be, and in the third
+volume of the 2d Series the lectures devoted to establish against Locke
+the same principles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> First Series, vol. iv., lectures 1, 2, and 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, vol. iv., etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, vol. v., lecture 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and
+confirmed by the errors of those who have dared to break it, this rule
+of true psychological analysis, that, before passing to the question of
+the origin of an idea, a notion, a belief, any principle whatever, the
+actual characters of this idea, this notion, this belief, this
+principle, must have been a long time studied and well established, with
+the firm resolution of not altering them under any pretext whatever in
+wishing to explain them. We believe that we have, as Leibnitz says,
+settled this point. See 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of
+1817, and the Opening Discourse; vol. iii., lecture 1, <i>Locke</i>; lecture
+2, <i>Condillac</i>; lecture 3, almost entire, and lecture 8, p. 260; 2d
+Series, vol. iii., <i>Examen du Syst&egrave;me de Locke</i>, lecture 16, p. 77-87;
+3d Series, vol. iv., <i>Examination of the Lectures of M. Loremqui&egrave;re</i>, p.
+268.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> This theory of spontaneity and of reflection, which in our
+view is the key to so many difficulties, continually recurs in our
+works. One may see, vol. i. of the 1st Series, in a programme of the
+Course of 1817, and in a fragment entitled <i>De la Spontan&eacute;it&eacute; et de la
+R&eacute;flexion</i>; vol. iv. of the same Series, Examination of Reid's
+Philosophy, <i>passim</i>; vol. v., Examination of Kant's System, lecture 8;
+2d Series, vol. i., <i>passim</i>; vol. iii., Lectures on Judgment; 3d
+Series, <i>Fragments Philosophiques</i>, vol. iv., preface of the first
+edition, p. 37, etc.; it will be found in different lectures of this
+volume, among others, in the third, On the value of Universal and
+Necessary Principles; in the fifth, On Mysticism; and in the eleventh,
+Primary Data of Common Sense.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> On immediate abstraction and comparative abstraction, see
+1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and everywhere in
+our other Courses.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> On M. de Biran, on his merits and defects, see our
+<i>Introduction</i> at the head of his Works.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_I">lecture 1</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> See vol. i. of the 1st Series, course of 1816, and 2d
+Series, vol. iii., lecture 18, p. 140-146.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> We have developed this analysis, and elucidated these
+results in the 17th lecture of vol. ii. of the 2d Series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> We have already twice recurred, and more in detail, to the
+impossibility of legitimately explaining universal and necessary
+principles by any association or induction whatever, founded upon any
+particular idea, 2d Series, vol. iii., <i>Examen du Syst&egrave;me de Locke</i>,
+lecture 19, p. 166; and 3d Series, vol. iv., <i>Introduction aux &OElig;uvres
+de M. de Biran</i>, p. 319. We have also made known the opinion of Reid,
+1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 489. Finally, the profoundest of
+Reid's disciples, the most enlightened judge that we know of things
+philosophical, Sir W. Hamilton, professor of logic in the University of
+Edinburgh, has not hesitated to adopt the conclusions of our discussion,
+to which he is pleased to refer his readers:&mdash;<i>Discussions on Philosophy
+and Literature, etc.</i>, by Sir William Hamilton, London, 1852. Appendix
+I, p. 588.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>&OElig;uvres de Reid</i>, vol. iv., p. 435. "When we revolt
+against primitive facts, we equally misconceive the constitution of our
+intelligence and the end of philosophy. Is explaining a fact any thing
+else than deriving it from another fact, and if this kind of explanation
+is to terminate at all, does it not suppose facts inexplicable? The
+science of the human mind will have been carried to the highest degree
+of perfection it can attain, it will be complete, when it shall know how
+to derive ignorance from the most elevated source."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> On conceptualism, as well as on nominalism and realism,
+see the <i>Introduction to the inedited works of Abelard</i>, and also 1st
+Series, vol. iv., lecture 21, p. 457; 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 20,
+p. 215, and the work already cited on the <i>Metaphysics of Aristotle</i>, p.
+49: "Nothing exists in this world which has not its law more general
+than itself. There is no individual that is not related to a species;
+there are no phenomena bound together that are not united to a plan. And
+it is necessary there should really be in nature species and a plan, if
+every thing has been made with weight and measure, <i>cum pondere et
+mensura</i>, without which our very ideas of species and a plan would only
+be chimeras, and human science a systematic illusion. If it is pretended
+that there are individuals and no species, things in juxtaposition and
+no plan; for example, human individuals more or less different, and no
+human type, and a thousand other things of the same sort, well and good;
+but in that case there is nothing general in the world, except in the
+human understanding, that is to say, in other terms, the world and
+nature are destitute of order and reason except in the head of man."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> See preceding <a href="#LECTURE_II">lecture</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> On the just limits of the personality and the
+impersonality of reason, see the following <a href="#LECTURE_IV">lecture</a>, near the close.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> We have everywhere maintained, that consciousness is the
+condition, or rather the necessary form of intelligence. Not to go
+beyond this volume, see farther on, <a href="#LECTURE_V">lecture 5</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 494.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>&OElig;uvres de Reid</i>, vol. iii., p. 450.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> We have not thought it best to make this lecture lengthy
+by an exposition and detailed refutation of the <i>Critique of Pure
+Reason</i> and its sad conclusion; the little that we say of it is
+sufficient for our purpose, which is much less historical than
+dogmatical. We refer the reader to a volume that we have devoted to the
+father of German philosophy, 1st Series, vol. v., in which we have again
+taken up and developed some of the arguments that are here used, in
+which we believe that we have irresistibly exposed the capital defect of
+the transcendental logic of Kant, and of the whole German school, that
+it leads to skepticism, inasmuch as it raises superhuman, chimerical,
+extravagant problems, and, when well understood, cannot solve them. See
+especially lectures 6 and 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> See our work entitled, <i>Metaphysics of Aristotle</i>, 2d
+edition, <i>passim</i>. In Aristotle himself, see especially <i>Metaphysics</i>,
+book vii., chap. xii., and book xiii., chap. ix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> There are doubtless many other ways of arriving at God, as
+we shall successively see; but this is the way of metaphysics. We do not
+exclude any of the known and accredited proofs of the existence of God;
+but we begin with that which gives all the others. See further on, <a href="#PART_SECOND">part
+ii.</a>, <i>God, the Principle of Beauty</i>, and <a href="#PART_THIRD">part iii.</a>, <i>God, the Principle
+of the Good</i>, and the last <a href="#LECTURE_XVII">lecture</a>, which sums up the whole course.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> We have said a word on the Platonic theory of ideas, 1st
+Series, vol. iv., p. 461 and 522. See also, vol. ii. of the 2d Series,
+lecture 7, on <i>Plato and Aristotle</i>, especially 3d Series, vol. i., a
+few words on the <i>Language of the Theory of Ideas</i>, p. 121; our work on
+the <i>Metaphysics of Aristotle</i>, p. 48 and 149, and our translation of
+Plato, <i>passim</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Aristotle first stated this; modern peripatetics have
+repeated it; and after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient
+philosophy, and philosophy in general, by giving the appearance of
+absurdity to its most illustrious representative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> See particularly p. 121 of the <i>Timaeus</i>, vol. xii. of our
+translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Republic</i>, book vi., vol. x. of our translation, p. 57.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Republic</i>, book vii., p. 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Ph&aelig;drus</i>, vol. vi., p. 51.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>Ph&aelig;drus</i>, vol. vi., p. 55.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Vol. xi., p. 261.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 17: <i>Idex sunt form&aelig; qu&aelig;dam
+principales et rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, qu&aelig; ips&aelig;
+format&aelig; non sunt ac per hoc &aelig;tern&aelig; ac semper eodem modo sese habentes,
+qu&aelig; in divina intelligentia continentur</i>....</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 18. <i>Singula igitur propriis
+creata sunt rationibus. Has autem rationes ubi arbitrandum est esse nisi
+in mente Creatoris? non enim extra se quidquam intuebatur, ut secundum
+id constitueret quod constituebat: nam hoc opinari sacrilegum est.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> See also, book of the <i>Confessions</i>, book ii. of
+the <i>Free Will</i>, book xii. of the <i>Trinity</i>, book vii. of the <i>City of
+God</i>, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>Summa totius theologi&aelig;</i>. Prim&aelig; partis qu&aelig;st. xii. art.
+11. <i>Ad tertium dicendum, quod omnia dicimus in Deo videre, et secundum
+ipsum de omnibus judicare, in quantum per participationem sui luminis
+omnia cognoscimus et dijudicamus. Nam et ipsum lumen naturale rationis
+participatio qu&aelig;dam est divini luminis.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> On the doctrine of Descartes, and on the proof of the
+existence of God and the true process that he employs, see 1st Series,
+vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 64, lecture 22, p. 509-518; vol. v., lecture 6,
+p. 205; 2d Series, vol. xi., lecture 11; especially the three articles,
+already cited, of the <i>Journal des Savants</i> for the year 1850.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> See on Malebranche, 2d Series, lecture 2, and 3d Series,
+vol. iii., <i>Modern Philosophy</i>, as well as the <i>Fragments of Cartesian
+Philosophy</i>; preface of the 1st edition of our <i>Pascal</i>:&mdash;"On this
+basis, so pure, Malebranche is not steady; is excessive and rash, I
+know; narrow and extreme, I do not fear to say; but always sublime,
+expressing only one side of Plato, but expressing it in a wholly
+Christian spirit and in angelic language. Malebranche is a Descartes who
+strays, having found divine wings, and lost all connection with the
+earth."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> We use the only good edition of the treatise on the
+Existence of God, that which the Abb&eacute; Gosselin has given in the
+collection of the <i>Works of Fenelon</i>. Versailles, 1820. See vol. i., p.
+80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Edit. de Versailles, p. 145.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> It is not necessary to remark how incorrect are the
+expressions, <i>representation of the infinite, image of the infinite</i>,
+especially <i>infinite image of the infinite</i>. We cannot represent to
+ourselves, we cannot imagine to ourselves the infinite. We conceive the
+infinite; the infinite is not an object of the imagination, but of the
+understanding, of reason. See 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 6, p. 223,
+224.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> By a trifling anachronism, for which we shall be pardoned,
+we have here joined to the <i>Trait&eacute; de la Connaissance de Dieu et de
+Soi-m&ecirc;me</i>, so long known, the <i>Logique</i>, which was only published in
+1828.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> 4th Series, vol. i., preface of the 1st edition of
+<i>Pascal</i>: "Bossuet, with more moderation, and supported by a good sense
+which nothing can shake, is, in his way, a disciple of the same
+doctrine, only the extremes of which according to his custom, he
+shunned. This great mind, which may have superiors in invention, but has
+no equal for force in common sense, was very careful not to place
+revelation and philosophy in opposition to each other: he found it the
+safer and truer way to give to each its due, to borrow from philosophy
+whatever natural light it can give, in order to increase it in turn with
+the supernatural light, of which the Church has been made the
+depository. It is in this sovereign good sense, capable of comprehending
+every thing, and uniting every thing, that resides the supreme
+originality of Bossuet. He shunned particular opinions as small minds
+seek them for the triumph of self-love. He did not think of himself; he
+only searched for truth, and wherever he found it he listened to it,
+well assured that if the connection between truths of different orders
+sometimes escapes us, it is no reason for closing the eyes to any truth.
+If we wished to give a scholastic name to Bossuet, according to the
+custom of the Middle Age, we would have to call him the infallible
+doctor. He is not only one of the highest, he is also one of the best
+and solidest intelligences that ever existed; and this great conciliator
+has easily reconciled religion and philosophy, St. Augustine and
+Descartes, tradition and reason."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> The best, or, rather, only good edition is that which was
+published from an authentic copy, in 1846, by Lecoffre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> These words, <i>d'une certaine mani&egrave;re qui m'est
+incompr&eacute;hensible, c'est en lui, dis-je</i>, are not in the first edition of
+1722.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> <i>Leibnitzii Opera</i>, edit. Deutens, vol. ii., p. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> 1st edition, Amsterdam, 1710, p. 354, edit. of M. de
+Jaucourt, Amsterdam, 1747, vol. ii., p. 93.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> We have many times designated these two rocks, for
+example, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 5, p. 92:&mdash;"One cannot help smiling
+when, in our times, he hears individual reason spoken against. In truth
+it is a great waste of declamation, for the reason is not individual; if
+it were, we should govern it as we govern our resolutions and our
+volitions, we could at any moment change its acts, that is to say, our
+conceptions. If these conceptions were merely individual, we should not
+think of imposing them upon another individual, for to impose our own
+individual and personal conceptions on another individual, on another
+person, would be the most extravagant despotism.... We call those mad
+who do not admit the relations of numbers, the difference between the
+beautiful and the ugly, the just and the unjust. Why? Because we know
+that it is not the individual that constitutes these conceptions, or, in
+other terms, we know that the reason has something universal and
+absolute, that upon this ground it obligates all individuals; and an
+individual, at the same time that he knows that he himself is obligated
+by it, knows that all others are obligated by it on the same
+ground."&mdash;<i>Ibid.</i>, p. 93: "Truth misconceived is thereby neither altered
+nor destroyed; it subsists independently of the reason that perceives it
+or perceives it ill. Truth in itself is independent of our reason. Its
+true subject is the universal and absolute reason."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> See the preceding lectures.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> See the <i>Ph&aelig;drus</i> and the <i>Banquet</i>, vol. vii. of our
+translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> We shall not be accused of perverting the holy Scriptures
+by these analogies, for we give them only as analogies, and St.
+Augustine and Bossuet are full of such.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> See part ii., <i>The Beautiful</i>, <a href="#LECTURE_VI">lecture 6</a>, and part iii.,
+<a href="#LECTURE_XIII">lecture 13</a>, on the <i>Morals of Sentiment</i>. See also our <i>Pascal</i>, preface
+of the last edition, p. 8, etc., vol. i. of the 4th Series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> See the admirable work of Bossuet, <i>Instruction sur les
+&eacute;tats d'Oraison</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> <a href="#LECTURE_IV">Lecture 4.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> See especially in our writings the regular and detailed
+refutation of the double extravagance of considering substance apart
+from its determinations and its qualities, or of considering its
+qualities and its facilities apart from the being that possesses them.
+1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 3, <i>On Condillac</i>, and vol. v., lectures
+5 and 6, <i>On Kant</i>. We say, the same Series, vol. iv., p. 56: "There are
+philosophers beyond the Rhine, who, to appear very profound, are not
+contented with qualities and phenomena, and aspire to pure substance, to
+being in itself. The problem stated as follows, is quite insoluble: the
+knowledge of such a substance is impossible, for this very simple
+reason, that such a substance does not exist. Being in itself, <i>das Ding
+in sich</i>, which Kant seeks, escapes him, and this does not humiliate
+Kant and philosophy; for there is no being in itself. The human mind may
+form to itself an abstract and general idea of being, but this idea has
+no real object in nature. All being is determinate, if it is real; and
+to be determinate is to possess certain modes of being, transitory and
+accidental, or constant and essential. Knowledge of being in itself is
+then not merely interdicted to the human mind; it is contrary to the
+nature of things. At the other extreme of metaphysics is a powerless
+psychology, which, by fear of a hollow ontology, is condemned to
+voluntary ignorance. We are not able, say these philosophers, Mr. Dugald
+Stewart, for example, to attain being in itself; it is permitted us to
+know only phenomena and qualities: so that, in order not to wander in
+search of the substance of the soul, they do not dare affirm its
+spirituality, and devote themselves to the study of its different
+faculties. Equal error, equal chimera! There are no more qualities
+without being, than being without qualities. No being is without its
+determinations, and reciprocally its determinations are not without it.
+To consider the determinations of being independently of the being which
+possesses them, is no longer to observe; it is to abstract, to make an
+abstraction quite as extravagant as that of being considered
+independently of its qualities."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> On the school of Alexandria, see 2d Series, vol. ii.,
+<i>Sketch of a General History of Philosophy</i>, lecture 8, p. 211, and 3d
+Series, vol. i., <i>passim</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> See the previous <a href="#LECTURE_IV">lecture</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> 3d Series, vol. i., <i>Ancient Philosophy</i>, article
+<i>Xenophanes</i>, and article <i>Zeno</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> <i>The Sophist</i>, vol. xi. of our translation, p. 261.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> <i>Tim&aelig;us</i>, vol. xii., p. 117.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> <i>Republic</i>, book vii., p. 70 of vol. x.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> <i>Ph&aelig;drus</i>, vol. vi., p. 55.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> <i>The Sophist</i>, p. 261, 262. The following little-known and
+decisive passage, which we have translated for the first time, must be
+cited:&mdash;"<i>Stranger.</i> But what, by Zeus! shall we be so easily persuaded
+that in reality, motion, life, soul, intelligence, do not belong to
+absolute being? that this being neither lives nor thinks, that this
+being remains immobile, immutable, without having part in august and
+holy intelligence?&mdash;<i>Theatetus.</i> That would be consenting, dear Eleatus,
+to a very strange assertion.&mdash;<i>Stranger.</i> Or, indeed, shall we accord to
+this being intelligence while we refuse him life?&mdash;<i>Theatetus.</i> That
+cannot be.&mdash;<i>Stranger.</i> Or, again, shall we say that there is in him
+intelligence and life, but that it is not in a soul that he possesses
+them?&mdash;<i>Theatetus.</i> And how could he possess them
+otherwise?&mdash;<i>Stranger.</i> In fine, that, endowed with intelligence, soul,
+and life, all animated as he is, he remains incomplete
+immobility.&mdash;<i>Theatetus.</i> All that seems to me unreasonable."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> <i>Tim&aelig;us</i>, p. 119: "Let us say that the cause which led the
+supreme ordainer to produce and compose this universe was, that he was
+good."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> <i>Bouquet</i>, discourse of Diotimus, vol. vi., and the 2d
+part of this vol., <i>The Beautiful</i>, <a href="#LECTURE_VII">lecture 7</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> <i>Republic.</i> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Book xii. of the <i>Metaphysics</i>. <i>De la M&eacute;taphysique
+d'Aristotle</i>, 2d edition, p. 200, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> On this fundamental point, see <a href="#LECTURE_III">lecture 3</a>, in this vol.&mdash;2d
+Series, vol. i., lecture 5, p. 97. "The peculiarity of intelligence is
+not the power of knowing, but knowing in fact. On what condition is
+there intelligence for us? It is not enough that there should be in us a
+principle of intelligence; this principle must be developed and
+exercised, and take itself as the object of its intelligence. The
+necessary condition of intelligence is consciousness&mdash;that is to say,
+difference. There can be consciousness only where there are several
+terms, one of which perceives the other, and at the same time perceives
+itself. That is knowing, and knowing self; that is intelligence.
+Intelligence without consciousness is the abstract possibility of
+intelligence, it is not real intelligence. Transfer this from human
+intelligence to divine intelligence, that is to say, refer ideas, I mean
+ideas in the sense of Plato, of St. Augustine, of Bossuet, of Leibnitz,
+to the only intelligence to which they can belong, and you will have, if
+I may thus express myself, the life of the divine intelligence ...,
+etc."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> Vol. ii. of the 2d Series, <i>Sketch of a General History of
+Philosophy</i>, lectures 5 and 6, <i>On the Indian Philosophy</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> See the <i>Euthyphron</i>, vol. i. of our translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Lucien, Apuleius, Lucius of Patras.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> 2d Series, vol. ii., <i>Sketch of a General History of
+Philosophy</i>, lecture 10, <i>On the Philosophy of the Renaissance</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> One was then ardently occupied with magnetism, and more
+than a magnetizer, half a materialist, half a visionary, pretended to
+convert us to a system of perfect clairvoyance of soul, obtained by
+means of artificial sleep. Alas! the same follies are now renewed.
+Conjunctions are the fashion. Spirits are interrogated, and they
+respond! Only let there be consciousness that one does not interrogate,
+and superstition alone counterpoises skepticism.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Except the estimable <i>Essay on the Beautiful</i>, by P.
+Andr&eacute;, a disciple of Malebranche, whose life was considerably prolonged
+into the eighteenth century. On P. Andr&eacute;, see 3d Series, vol. iii.,
+<i>Modern Philosophy</i>, p. 207, 516.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> See in the works of Diderot, <i>Pens&eacute;es sur la Sculpture,
+les Salons</i>, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> See 1st Series, vol. iv., explained and estimated, the
+theories of Hutcheson and Reid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> The theory of Kant is found in the <i>Critique of Judgment</i>,
+and in the <i>Observations</i> on the <i>Sentiment of the Beautiful and the
+Sublime</i>. See the excellent translation made by M. Barny, 2 vols.,
+1846.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> On Hutcheson and Smith, their merits and defects, the
+part of truth and the part of error, which their philosophy contains,
+see the detailed lectures which we have devoted to them, 1st Series,
+vol. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> See the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of
+Condillac and Helvetius, <i>Ibid.</i>, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_V">lecture 5</a>, in this vol.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and
+piquant refutation, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of
+beauty, he may read the <i>Hippias</i> of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation.
+The <i>Ph&aelig;drus</i>, vol. vi., contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own
+theory; but it is in the <i>Banquet</i> (<i>Ibid.</i>), and particularly in the
+discourse of Diotimus, that we must look for the thought of Plato
+carried to its highest degree of development, and clothed with all the
+beauty of human language.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> See the <i>Hippias</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> First <i>Ennead</i>, book vi., in the work of M. B.
+Saint-Hillaire, on the <i>School of Alexandria</i>, the translation of this
+morsel of Plotinus, p. 197.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> Winkelmann has twice described the Apollo, <i>History of
+Art among the Ancients</i>, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book
+iv., chap. iii., <i>Art among the Greeks</i>:&mdash;"The Apollo of the Vatican
+offers us that God in a movement of indignation against the serpent
+Python, which he has just killed with arrow-shots, and in a sentiment of
+contempt for a victory so little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist,
+who proposed to represent the most beautiful of the gods, placed the
+anger in the nose, which, according to the ancients, was its seat; and
+the disdain on the lips. He expressed the anger by the inflation of the
+nostrils, and the disdain by the elevation of the under lip, which
+causes the same movement in the chin."&mdash;<i>Ibid.</i>, vol. ii., book iv.,
+chap. vi., <i>Art under the Emperors</i>:&mdash;"Of all the antique statues that
+have escaped the fury of barbarians and the destructive hand of time,
+the statue of Apollo is, without contradiction, the most sublime. One
+would say that the artist composed a figure purely ideal, and employed
+matter only because it was necessary for him to execute and represent
+his idea. As much as Homer's description of Apollo surpasses the
+descriptions which other poets have undertaken after him, so much this
+statue excels all the figures of this god. Its height is above that of
+man, and its attitude proclaims the divine grandeur with which it is
+filled. A perennial spring-time, like that which reigns in the happy
+fields of Elysium, clothes with lovable youth the beautiful body, and
+shines with sweetness over the noble structure of the limbs. In order to
+feel the merit of this <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre of art</i>, we must be penetrated
+with intellectual beauty, and become, if possible, the creatures of a
+celestial nature; for there is nothing mortal in it, nothing subject to
+the wants of humanity. That body, whose forms are not interrupted by a
+vein, which is not agitated by a nerve, seems animated with a celestial
+spirit, which circulates like a sweet vapor in all the parts of that
+admirable figure. The god has just been pursuing Python, against which
+he has bent, for the first time, his formidable bow; in his rapid
+course, he has overtaken him, and given him a mortal wound. Penetrated
+with the conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his
+august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond
+his victory. Disdain sits upon his lips; the indignation that he
+breathes distends his nostrils, and ascends to his eyebrows; but an
+unchangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of
+sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. Among all the figures
+that remain to us of Jupiter, there is none in which the father of the
+gods approaches the grandeur with which he manifested himself to the
+intelligence of Homer; but in the traits of the Apollo Belvidere, we
+find the individual beauties of all the other divinities united, as in
+that of Pandora. The forehead is the forehead of Jupiter, inclosing the
+goddess of wisdom; the eyebrows, by their movement, announce his supreme
+will; the large eyes are those of the queen of the gods, orbed with
+dignity, and the mouth is an image of that of Bacchus, where breathed
+voluptuousness. Like the tender branches of the vine, his beautiful
+locks flow around his head, as if they were lightly agitated by the
+zephyr's breath. They seem perfumed with the essence of the gods, and
+are charmingly arranged over his head by the hand of the Graces. At the
+sight of this marvel of art, I forget every thing else, and my mind
+takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it with dignity;
+from admiration I pass to ecstasy; I feel my breast dilating and rising,
+like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy; I am transported
+to Delos, and the sacred groves of Syria,&mdash;places which Apollo honored
+with his presence:&mdash;the statue seems to be animated as it were with the
+beauty that sprung of old from the hands of Pygmalion. How can I
+describe thee, O inimitable master-piece? For this it would be necessary
+that art itself should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I have
+just sketched, I lay before thee, as those who came to crown the gods,
+put their crowns at their feet, not being able to reach their heads."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> See the last part of the <i>Banquet</i>, the discourse of
+Alcibiades, p. 326 of vol. vi. of our translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of
+David, which appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted,
+above its reputation. Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admire
+Plato listening to his master, as it were from the bottom of his soul,
+without looking at him, with his back turned upon the scene that is
+passing, and lost in the contemplation of the intelligible world.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so dear
+to us, confirmed by the authority of one of the severest and most
+circumspect minds:&mdash;it may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv.,
+lecture 23. The Scotch philosopher terminates his <i>Essay on Taste</i> with
+these words, which happily remind us of the thought and manner of Plato
+himself:&mdash;"Whether the reasons that I have given to prove that sensible
+beauty is only the image of moral beauty appear sufficient or not, I
+hope that my doctrine, in attempting to unite the terrestrial Venus more
+closely to the celestial Venus, will not seem to have for its object to
+abase the first, and render her less worthy of the homage that mankind
+has always paid her."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> Part iii., <a href="#LECTURE_XV">lecture 15</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Vol. vi. of our translation, p. 816-818</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> <i>Recherches sur l'Art Statuaire.</i> Paris, 1805.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Paris, 1815, in folio, an eminent work that will subsist
+even when time shall have destroyed some of its details.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> Since reprinted under the title of <i>Essais sur l'Ideal
+dans ses Applications Pratiques</i>. Paris, 1837.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Translation of Plato, vol. xii., <i>Tim&aelig;us</i>, p. 116.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> <i>Orator:</i> "Neque enim ille artifex (Phidias) cum faceret
+Jovis formam aut Minerv&aelig;, contemplabatur aliquem a quo similitudinem
+duceret; sed ipsius in mente insidebat species pulchritudinis eximia
+qu&aelig;dam, quam intuens, in eaque defixus, ad illius similitudinem artem et
+manum dirigebat."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> <i>Raccolta di lett.</i> <i>Sulla pitt.</i>, i., p. 83. "<i>Essendo
+carestia e de' buoni giudici e di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea
+che mi viene alla mente.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> "A picture representing a broken glass over several
+subjects painted on the canvas, by which the eye is deceived."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Vassari, <i>Vie de Raphael</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> <a href="#LECTURE_VI">Lecture 6.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> See the <i>Gorgias</i>, with the <i>Argument</i>, vol. iii. of our
+translation of Plato.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> There is a <i>Provincial</i> that for vehemence can be
+compared only to the <i>Philipics</i>, and its fragment on the infinite has
+the grandeur and magnificence of Bossuet. See our work on the <i>Thoughts
+of Pascal</i>, 4th Series, <i>Literature</i>, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> See the <i>Jupiter Olympien</i> of M. Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> Allusion to the <i>Magdeleine</i> of Canova, which was then to
+be seen in the gallery of M. de Sommariva.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> See the <i>Tempest</i> of Haydn, among the pianoforte works of
+this master.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_VI">lecture 6</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> I have not myself had the good fortune to hear the
+religious music of the Vatican. Therefore, I shall let a competent
+judge, M. Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy, speak, <i>Consid&eacute;rations Morales sur les
+Destination des Ouvrages de l'Art</i>, Paris, 1815, p. 98: "Let one call to
+mind those chants so simple and so touching, that terminate at Rome the
+funeral solemnities of those three days which the Church particularly
+devotes to the expression of its grief, in the last week of Lent. In
+that nave where the genius of Michael Angelo has embraced the duration
+of ages, from the wonders of creation to the last judgment that must
+destroy its works, are celebrated, in the presence of the Roman pontiff,
+those nocturnal ceremonies whose rites, symbols, and plaintive liturgies
+seem to be so many figures of the mystery of grief to which they are
+consecrated. The light decreasing by degrees, at the termination of each
+psalm, you would say that a funeral veil is extended little by little
+over those religious vaults. Soon the doubtful light of the last lamp
+allows you to perceive nothing but Christ in the distance, in the midst
+of clouds, pronouncing his judgments, and some angel executors of his
+behests. Then, at the bottom of a tribune interdicted to the regard of
+the profane, is heard the psalm of the penitent king, to which three of
+the greatest masters of the art have added the modulations of a simple
+and pathetic chant. No instrument is mingled with those accents. Simple
+harmonies of voice execute that music; but these voices seem to be those
+of angels, and their effect penetrates the depths of the soul."
+</p><p>
+We have cited this beautiful passage&mdash;and we could have cited many
+others, even superior to it&mdash;of a man now forgotten, and almost always
+misunderstood, but whom posterity will put in his place. Let us
+indicate, at least, the last pages of the same production, on the
+necessity of leaving the works of art in the place for which they were
+made, for example, the portrait of Mlle. de Valli&egrave;re in the <i>Madeleine
+aux Carm&eacute;lites</i>, instead of transferring it to, and exposing it in the
+apartments of Versailles, "the only place in the world," eloquently says
+M. Quatrem&egrave;re, "which never should have seen it."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> One is reminded of the expression of the great Cond&eacute;:
+"Where then has Corneille learned politics and war?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with
+the original all the passages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus; in
+them Racine would almost always be found below his model. I will give a
+single example. In the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus
+expresses the different effects of the crime on the spectators:
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Juez combien ce coup frappe tous les esprits;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">La moiti&eacute; s'&eacute;pouvante et sort avec des cris;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mais ceux qui de la cour ont un plus long usage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sur les yeux de C&eacute;sar composent leur visage.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more
+than a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre
+pencil-strokes of the great Roman painter: "Trepidatur a
+circumsedentibus, diffugiunt imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus,
+resistunt defixi et Neronem intuentes."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> See the letter to Perrault.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">En vain contre le Cid ministre se ligue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tout Paris pour Chim&egrave;ne a les yeux de Rodrique, etc.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i0">Apr&egrave;s qu'un peu de terre, obtenu par pri&egrave;re,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pour jamais dans la tombe eut enferm&eacute; Moli&egrave;re, etc.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aux pieds de cet autel de structure grossi&egrave;re,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Git sans pompe, enferm&eacute; dans une vile bi&egrave;re,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Le plus savant mortel qui jamais ait &eacute;crit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arnaud, qui sur la gr&acirc;ce instruit par J&eacute;sus-Christ,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Combattant pour l'Eglise, a, dans l'Eglise m&ecirc;me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Souffert plus d'un outrage et plus d'un anath&egrave;me, etc.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span>
+<span class="i0">Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, pers&eacute;cut&eacute;;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et m&ecirc;me par sa mort leur fureur mal &eacute;teinte<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">N'aurait jamais laiss&eacute; ses cendres en repos,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Si Dieu lui-m&ecirc;me ici de son ouaille sainte<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A ces loups d&eacute;vorants n'avait cach&eacute; les os.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> These verses did not appear till after the death of
+Boileau, and they are not well known. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, in a
+letter to Brossette, rightly said that these are "the most beautiful
+verses that M. Despr&eacute;aux ever made."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> 4th Series of our works, <span class="smcap">Literature</span>, book i., <i>Preface</i>,
+p. 3: "It is in prose, perhaps, that our literary glory is most
+certain.... What modern nation reckons prose writers that approach those
+of our nation? The country of Shakspeare and Milton does not possess,
+since Bacon, a single prose writer of the first order [?]; that of
+Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, is in vain proud of Machiavel,
+whose sound and manly diction, like the thought that it expresses, is
+destitute of grandeur. Spain, it is true, has produced Cervantes, an
+admirable writer, but he is alone.... France can easily show a list of
+more than twenty prose writers of genius: Froissard, Rabelais,
+Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Moli&egrave;re, Retz, La
+Bruy&egrave;re, Malebranche, Bossuet, F&eacute;nelon, Fl&eacute;chier, Bourdaloue, Massillon,
+Mme. de S&eacute;vign&eacute;, Saint-Simon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, J. J.
+Rousseau; without speaking of so many more that would be in the first
+rank everywhere else,&mdash;Amiot, Calvin, Pasquier, D'Aubign&eacute;, Charron,
+Balzac, Vaugelas, P&eacute;lisson, Nicole, Fleury, Bussi, Saint-Evremont, Mme.
+de Lafayette, Mme. de Maintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Hamilton, Le
+Sage, Pr&eacute;vost, Beaumarchais, etc. It may be said with the exactest
+truth, that French prose is without a rival in modern Europe; and, even
+in antiquity, superior to the Latin prose, at least in the quantity and
+variety of models, it has no equal but the Greek prose, in its palmiest
+days, in the days of Herodotus and Demosthenes. I do not prefer
+Demosthenes to Pascal, and it would be difficult for me to put Plato
+himself above Bossuet. Plato and Bossuet, in my opinion, are the two
+greatest masters of human language, with manifest differences, as well
+as more than one trait of resemblance; both ordinarily speak like the
+people, with the last degree of simplicity, and at moments ascending
+without effort to a poetry as magnificent as that of Homer, ingenious
+and polished to the most charming delicacy, and by instinct majestic and
+sublime. Plato, without doubt, has incomparable graces, the supreme
+serenity, and, as it were, the demi-smile of the divine sage. Bossuet,
+on his side, has the pathetic, in which he has no rival but the great
+Corneille. When such writers are possessed, is it not a religion to
+render them the honor that is their due, that of a regular and profound
+study?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> See the <a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>, at the end of the volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> See the <a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of
+St. Gervais. It formed the altar-piece, and in the foreground there was
+the admirable Bearing of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> Such a law was the first act of the first assembly of
+affranchised Greece, and all the friends of art have applauded it from
+end to end of civilized Europe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> See the <a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> The <i>Seven Sacraments</i> of Poussin are now in the
+Bridgewater Gallery. See the <a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> See the <a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> In the midst of this scene of brutal violence, everybody
+has remarked this delicate trait&mdash;a Roman quite young, almost juvenile,
+while possessing himself by force of a young girl taking refuge in the
+arms of her mother, asks her from her mother with an air at once
+passionate and restrained. In order to appreciate this picture, compare
+it with that of David in the <i>ensemble</i> and in the details.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage.
+He governs the whole scene; he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> The pictures of Claude Lorrain, of which we have just
+spoken, are in the Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst
+the Museum of Madrid alone possesses almost as many, while there are in
+England more than fifty, and those the most admirable. See the
+<a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> The last <i>Notice of the Pictures exhibited in the Gallery
+of the National Museum of the Louvre</i>, 1852, although its author, M.
+Villot, is surely a man of incontestable knowledge and taste, persists
+in placing Champagne in the Flemish school. <i>En revanche</i>, a learned
+foreigner, M. Waagen, claims him for the French school. <i>Kunstwerke and
+K&uuml;nstler in Paris</i>, Berlin, 1839, p. 651.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> Well appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to
+his benefits. One day when an envoy of Richelieu said to him that he had
+only to ask freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune,
+Champagne responded that if M. the Cardinal could make him a more
+skilful painter than he was, it was the only thing that he asked of his
+Eminence; but that being impossible, he only desired the honor of his
+good graces. F&eacute;libien, <i>Entretiens</i>, 1st edition, 4to., part v., p. 171;
+and de Piles, <i>Abr&eacute;g&eacute; de la Vie des Peintres</i>, 2d edition, p. 500.&mdash;"As
+he had much love for justice and truth, provided he satisfied what they
+both demanded, he easily passed over all the rest."&mdash;<i>N&eacute;crologe de
+Port-Royal</i>, p. 336.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> See the <a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> The original is in the Museum of Grenoble; but see the
+engraving of Morin; see also that of Daret, after the beautiful design
+of Demonstier.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> In the Museum of the Louvre; see also the engraving of
+Morin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> The original is now in the Ch&acirc;teau of Sabl&eacute;, belonging to
+the Marquis of Roug&eacute;; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The
+beautiful engraving of Edelinck was made after a different original,
+attributed to a nephew of Champagne.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of
+Roug&eacute;; the admirable engraving of Van Schupen may take its place.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> In the Museum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> In the Museum, and engraved by G&eacute;rard Edelinck.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> <i>La Gloire du Val-de-Gr&acirc;ce</i>, in 4to, 1669, with a
+frontispiece and vignettes. Moli&egrave;re there enters into infinite details
+on all the parts of the art of painting and the genius of Mignard. He
+pushes eulogy perhaps to the extent of hyperbole; afterwards, hyperbole
+gave place to the most shameful indifference. The fresco of the dome of
+Val-de-gr&acirc;ce is composed of four rows of figures, which rise in a circle
+from the base to the vertex of the arch. In the upper part is the
+Trinity, above which is raised a resplendent sky. Below the Trinity are
+the celestial powers. Descending a degree, we see the Virgin and the
+holy personages of the Old and New Testament. Finally, at the lower
+extremity is Anne of Austria, introduced into paradise by St. Anne and
+St. Louis, and these three figures are accompanied by a multitude of
+personages pertaining to the history of France, among whom are
+distinguished Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the <i>Plague
+of David</i> (<i>la Peste de David</i>). What has become of the original?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> See his <i>Landscape at Sunset</i>, and the <i>Bathers</i> (<i>les
+Baigneuses</i>), an agreeable scene somewhat blemished by careless
+drawing.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In
+his <i>Holy Family</i> the figure of the Virgin, without being celestial,
+admirably expresses meditation and reflection. We lost some time ago the
+most important work of S. Bourdon, the <i>Sept &OElig;uvres de Mis&eacute;ricorde</i>.
+See the <a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> See especially his <i>Extreme Unction</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> The picture that is called <i>le Silence</i>, which represents
+the sleep of the infant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of
+the infant is of superhuman power. The <i>Battles of Alexander</i>, with
+their defects, are pages of history of the highest order; and in the
+<i>Alexander visiting with Ephestion the Mother and the Wife of Darius</i>,
+one knows not which to admire most, the noble ordering of the whole or
+the just expression of the figures.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> It seems that Lesueur sometimes furnished Daret with
+designs. It is indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design
+of his <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i>, the portrait of Armand de Bourbon, prince de
+Conti, represented in his earliest youth, and in an abb&eacute;, sustained and
+surrounded by angels of different size, forming a charming composition.
+The drawing is completely pure, except some imperfect fore-shortenings.
+The little angels that sport with the emblems of the future cardinal are
+full of spirit, and, at the same time, sweetness.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> Edelinck saw only the reign of Louis XIV. Nanteuil was
+able to engrave very few of the great men of the time of Louis XIII.,
+and the regency, and in the latter part of their life; Mazarin, in his
+last five or six years; Cond&eacute;, growing old; Turenne, old; Fouquet and
+Matthieu Mol&eacute;, some years before the fall of the one and the death of
+the other; and he was too often obliged to waste his talent upon a crowd
+of parliamentarians, ecclesiastics, and obscure financiers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest
+and most neglected portion of the seventeenth century, that which
+Voltaire almost wholly omitted, I would set him to collecting the works
+of Morin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated
+painters of his time, he is himself the author of great and charming
+compositions, many of which serve as frontispieces to books. I willingly
+call attention to that one which is at the head of a folio edition of
+the <i>Introduction &agrave; la Vie D&eacute;vote</i>, and to the beautiful frontispieces
+of the writings of Richelieu, from the press of the Louvre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> This was the opinion of Winkelmann at the end of the
+eighteenth century; it is our opinion now, even after all the
+discoveries that have been made during fifty years, that may be seen in
+great part retraced and described in the <i>Musio real Barbonico</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age: the
+innumerable figures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues
+that are discovered every day sufficiently testify it. The <i>imagers</i> of
+that time certainly had much spirit and imagination; but, at least in
+everything that we have seen, beauty is absent, and taste wanting.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> Go and see at the Museum of Versailles the statue of
+Francis I., and say whether any Italian, except the author of the
+<i>Laurent de Medicis</i>, has made any thing like it. See also in the Museum
+of the Louvre, the statue of Admiral Chabot.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> Sarazin died in 1660, Lesueur in 1655, Poussin in 1665,
+Descartes in 1650, Pascal in 1662, and the genius of Corneille did not
+extend beyond that epoch.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> Lenoir, <i>Mus&eacute;e des Monuments Fran&ccedil;ais</i>, vol. v., p.
+87-91, and the <i>Mus&eacute;e Royale des Monuments Fran&ccedil;ais</i> of 1815, p. 98, 99,
+108, 122, and 140. This wonderful monument, erected to Henri de Bourbon,
+at the expense of his old intendant Perrault, president of the <i>Chambre
+des Comptes</i>, was placed in the Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in
+bronze. It must not be confounded with the other monument that the
+Cond&eacute;s erected to the same prince in their family burial-ground at
+Vallery, near Montereau, in Yonne. This monument is in marble, and by
+the hand of Michel Anguier; see the description in Lenoir, vol. v., p.
+23-25, and especially in the <i>Annuaire de l' Yonne pour</i> 1842, p. 173,
+etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> Rue d'Enfer, No. 67.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> The Museum of the Louvre possesses only a very small
+number of Sarazin's works, and those of very little importance:&mdash;a bust
+of Pierre S&eacute;guier, strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and
+the small funeral monument of Hennequin, Abb&eacute; of Bernay, member of
+Parliament, who died in 1651, which is a <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i> of elegance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> These three statues were united in the Museum des
+<i>Petits-Augustins</i>, Lenoir, <i>Mus&eacute;e-royal</i>, etc., p. 94; we know not why
+they have been separated; Jacques-Auguste de Thou has been placed in the
+Louvre, and his two wives at Versailles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> Fran&ccedil;ois Anguier had made a marble tomb of Cardinal de
+B&eacute;rulle, which was in the oratory of <i>Rue St. Honor&eacute;</i>. It would have
+been interesting to compare this statue with that of Sarazin, which is
+still at the Carmelites. Fran&ccedil;ois is also the author of the monument of
+the Longuevilles, which, before the Revolution, was at the C&eacute;lestins,
+and was seen in 1815 at the museum des <i>Petits-Augustins</i>, Lenoir,
+<i>ibid.</i>, p. 103; it is now in the Louvre. It is an obelisk, the four
+sides of which are covered with allegorical bas-reliefs. The pedestal,
+also ornamented with bas-reliefs, has four female figures in marble,
+representing the cardinal virtues.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 97 and 100. See his
+portrait, painted by Champagne, and engraved by Morin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> Group in white marble which was at the C&eacute;lestins, a
+church near the <i>h&ocirc;tel</i> of Rohan-Chabot in the <i>Place Royale</i>;
+re-collected in the Museum <i>des Petits-Augustins</i>, Lenoir, <i>ibid.</i>, p.
+97; it is now at Versailles. We must not pass over that beautiful
+production, the mausoleum of Jacques de Souvr&eacute;, Grand Prior of France,
+the brother of the beautiful Marchioness de Sabl&eacute;; a mausoleum that came
+from Saint-Jean de Latran, passed through the Museum <i>des
+Petits-Augustins</i>, and is now found in the Louvre. The sculptures of the
+porte Saint-Denis are also owed to Michel Anguier, as well as the
+admirable bust of Colbert, which is in the museum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> At first at Notre-Dame, the natural place for the tombs
+of the Gondis, then at the Augustins, now at Versailles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> In the Church St. Germain des Pr&eacute;s.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> At the Capuchins, then at the Augustins, then at
+Versailles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> See, on these monuments, Lenoir, p. 98, 101, 102. That of
+Mazarin is now at the Louvre; that of Colbert has been restored to the
+Church of St. Eustache, and that of Lebrun to the Church St. Nicholas du
+Chardonnet, as well as the mausoleum, so expressive but a little
+overstrained, of the mother of Lebrun, by Tuby, and the mausoleum of
+Jerome Bignon, the celebrated Councillor of State, who died in 1656.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy, <i>Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages
+de plus C&eacute;l&egrave;bres Architectes</i>, vol. ii., p. 145:&mdash;"There could scarcely
+be found in any country an <i>ensemble</i> so grand, which offers with so
+much unity and regularity an aspect at once more varied and picturesque,
+especially in the fa&ccedil;ade of the entrance." Unfortunately this unity has
+disappeared, thanks to the constructions that have since been added to
+the primitive work.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> In order to appreciate the beauty of the Sorbonne, one
+must stand in the lower part of the great court, and from that point
+consider the effect of the successive elevation, at first of the other
+part of the court, then of the different stories of the portico, then of
+the portico itself, of the church, and, finally, of the dome.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> Quatrem&egrave;re de Quincy, <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 257:&mdash;"The cupola of
+this edifice is one of the finest in Europe."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> We do not speak of the colonnade of the Louvre by
+Perrault, because in spite of its grand qualities, it begins the decline
+and marks the passage from the serious to the academic style, from
+originality to imitation, from the seventeenth century to the
+eighteenth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> See the engraving of P&eacute;relle. Sauval, vol. ii., p. 66 and
+p. 131, says that the <i>h&ocirc;tel</i> of Cond&eacute; was <i>magnificently built</i>, that
+it was <i>the most magnificent of the time</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see
+the <a href="#APPENDIX"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a>):&mdash;"Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de Cond&eacute;,
+Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an
+oratory painted by Lesueur in the <i>h&ocirc;tel</i> of Cond&eacute;. The altar-piece
+represents a <i>Nativity</i>, that of the ceiling a <i>Celestial Glory</i>. The
+wainscot is enriched with several figures and with a quantity of
+ornaments worked with great care."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London,
+which is itself a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only
+merit of the Pantheon is its situation on the summit of the hill of St.
+Genevi&egrave;ve, from which it overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on
+different sides to a considerable distance. Put in its place the
+Val-de-Gr&acirc;ce of Lemercier with the dome of Lemuet, and judge what would
+be the effect of such an edifice!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this
+course was M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to
+the <i>facult&eacute; des lettres</i>, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a
+thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and
+particular taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his
+mind. But of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our
+lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of
+beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eustache
+Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all
+the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for a
+judge of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to
+the necessity of addressing to him the public petition that he may not
+be wanting to a vocation so marked and so elevated.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> See 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 11 and 12; 4th Series,
+vol. ii., last pages of <i>Jacqueline Pascal</i>, and the <i>Fragments of the
+Cartesian Philosophy</i>, p. 469.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3, <i>Condillac</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> See the Theory of Sentiment, part i., <a href="#LECTURE_V">lecture 5</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined
+those of vol. iii. of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and
+St. Lambert.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> The word <i>bonheur</i>, which has no exact English
+equivalent, which M. Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the
+precise sense of the definition given above, we have sometimes
+translated happiness, sometimes good fortune, sometimes prosperity,
+sometimes fortune. When one has in mind the thing, he will not be
+troubled by the more or less exact word that indicates it:&mdash;all
+language, at best, is only symbolic; it bears the same relation to
+thought as the forms of nature do to the laws that produce and govern
+them. The true reader never mistakes the symbol for the thing
+symbolized, the shadow for the reality.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3d
+Series, <i>Fragments Philosophiques</i>, vol. iv., our <i>Examination of the
+Lectures of M. Laromegui&egrave;re</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will,
+see the <i>Examination</i>, already cited, <i>of the Lectures of M.
+Laromegui&egrave;re</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "In the doctrine of
+interest, every man seeks the useful, but he is not sure of attaining
+it. He may, by dint of prudence and profound combinations, increase in
+his favor the chances of success; it is impossible that there should not
+remain some chances against him; he never pursues, then, any thing but a
+probable result. On the contrary, in the doctrine of duty, I am always
+sure of obtaining the last end that I propose to myself, moral good. I
+risk my life to save my fellow; if, through mischance, I miss this end,
+there is another which does not, which cannot, escape me,&mdash;I have aimed
+at the good, I have been successful. Moral good, being especially in the
+virtuous intention, is always in my power and within my reach; as to the
+material good that can result from the action itself, Providence alone
+disposes of it. Let us felicitate ourselves that Providence has placed
+our moral destiny in our own hands, by making it depend upon the good
+and not upon the useful. The will, in order to act in the sad trials of
+life, has need of being sustained by certainty. Who would be disposed to
+give his blood for an uncertain end? Success is a complicated problem,
+that, in order to be solved, exacts all the power of the calculus of
+probabilities. What labor and what uncertainties does such a calculus
+involve! Doubt is a very sad preparation for action. But when one
+proposes before all to do his duty, he acts without any perplexity. Do
+what you ought, let come what may, is a motto that does not deceive.
+With such an end, we are sure of never pursuing it in vain."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> See the development of the idea of right, lectures <a href="#LECTURE_XIV">14</a> and
+<a href="#LECTURE_XV">15</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_XIV">lecture 14</a>, Theory of liberty.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> See the preceding <a href="#LECTURE_XI">lecture</a>, and lectures <a href="#LECTURE_XIV">14</a> and <a href="#LECTURE_XV">15</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> 1st part, <a href="#LECTURE_I">lecture 1</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_XVI">lecture 16</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of
+sensation, see the four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and
+refutation of the doctrine of Hobbes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which
+we pronounce them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a
+noble youth, when M. de Ch&acirc;teaubriand covered the Restoration with his
+own glory, when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M.
+Pasquier, M. Lain&eacute;, M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal
+St. Cyr over war, and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when
+the Duke de Broglie prepared the true legislation of the press, and M.
+Decazes, the author of the wise and courageous ordinance of September 5,
+1816, was at the head of the councils of the crown; when finally, Louis
+XVIII. separated himself, like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in
+order to be the king of the whole nation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> <i>&OElig;uvres de Reid</i>, vol. iv., p. 297: "Men are neither
+as good nor as bad as their principles; and, as there is no skeptic in
+the street, so I am sure there is no disinterested spectator of human
+actions who is not compelled to discern them as just and unjust.
+Skepticism has no light that does not pale before the splendor of that
+vivid internal light that lightens the objects of moral perception, as
+the light of day lightens the objects of sensible perception."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> <i>Mordre</i>&mdash;to bite, is the main root of
+<i>remords</i>&mdash;remorse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> See 1st part, <a href="#LECTURE_V">lecture 5</a>, <i>On Mysticism</i>, and 2d part,
+<a href="#LECTURE_VI">lecture 6</a>, <i>On the Sentiment of the Beautiful</i>. See, also, 1st Series,
+vol. iv., detailed refutation of the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> We do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. He has
+marked the defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful
+passage, from which we borrow some traits. <i>&OElig;uvres de Reid</i>, vol.
+iii., p. 410, 411: "The perception of the moral qualities of human
+actions is accompanied by an emotion of the soul that is called
+<i>sentiment</i>. Sentiment is a support of nature that invites us to good by
+the attraction of the noblest joys of which man is capable, and turns us
+from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror with which it
+inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beautiful
+action or a noble character, at the same time that we perceive these
+qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a
+judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and
+sometimes an admiration that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a
+loose and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and
+sentiment. The internal approbation of conscience and remorse are
+sentiments attached to the perception of the moral qualities of our own
+actions.... I do not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true
+that ethics are wholly in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate
+moral distinctions.... Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is
+in itself good, nothing is in itself evil; good and evil are relative;
+the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each one feels them
+to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; the same action is
+at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection of the
+spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenomena;
+obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty
+into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus: <i>Dii meliora piis</i>!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who,
+for some time, had numerous partisans in England, and even in France.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_XII">lecture 12</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174: "If the good is that alone
+which must be the most useful to the greatest number, where can the good
+be found, and who can discern it? In order to know whether such an
+action, which I propose to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure,
+in spite of its visible and direct utility in the present moment, that
+it will not become injurious in a future that I do not yet know. I must
+seek whether, useful to mine and those that surround me, it will not
+have counter-strokes disastrous to the human race, of which I must think
+before all. It is important that I should know whether the money that I
+am tempted to give this unfortunate who needs it, could not be otherwise
+more usefully employed, in fact, the rule is here the greatest good of
+the greatest number. In order to follow it, what calculations are
+imposed on me? In the obscurity of the future, in the uncertainty of the
+somewhat remote consequences of every action, the surest way is to do
+nothing that is not related to myself, and the last result of a prudence
+so refined is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have received a
+deposit from an opulent neighbor, who is old and sick, a sum of which he
+has no need, and without which your numerous family runs the risk of
+dying with famine. He calls on you for this sum,&mdash;what will you do? The
+greatest number is on your side, and the greatest utility also; for this
+sum is insignificant for your rich neighbor, whilst it will save your
+family from misery, and perhaps from death. Father of a family, I should
+like much to know in the name of what principle you would hesitate to
+retain the sum which is necessary to you? Intrepid reasoner, placed in
+the alternative of killing this sick old man, or of letting your wife
+and children die of hunger, in all honesty of conscience you ought to
+kill him. You have the right, it is even your duty to sacrifice the less
+advantage of a single person to much the greater advantage of a greater
+number; and since this principle is the expression of true justice, you
+are only its minister in doing what you do. A vanquishing enemy or a
+furious people threaten destruction to a whole city, if there be not
+delivered up to them the head of such a man, who is, nevertheless,
+innocent. In the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, this
+man will be immolated without scruple. It might even be maintained that
+innocent to the last, he has ceased to be so, since he is an obstacle to
+the public good. It having once been declared that justice is the
+interest of the greatest number, the only question is to know where this
+interest is. Now, here, doubt is impossible, therefore, it is perfectly
+just to offer innocence as a holocaust to public safety. This
+consequence must be accepted, or the principle rejected."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_XV">lecture 15</a>, <i>Private and Public Ethics</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> Plato, <i>Republic</i>, vol. ix. and x. of our translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> <a href="#LECTURE_XVI">Lecture 16.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> Lectures <a href="#LECTURE_IV">4</a> and <a href="#LECTURE_VII">7</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged
+in it early against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that
+which we combat. See our <i>Sketch of a General History of Philosophy</i>, 2d
+Series, vol. ii., lect. 9, <i>On Scholasticism</i>. Here are two decisive
+passages from St. Thomas, 1st book of the <i>Summation against the
+Gentiles</i>, chap. lxxxvii: "Per pr&aelig;dicta autem excluditur error dicentiam
+omnia procedere a Deo secundum simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo
+oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia Deus vult. Quod etiam divin&aelig;
+Scriptur&aelig; contrariatur, qu&aelig; Deum perhibet secundum ordinem sapienti&aelig; su&aelig;
+omnia fecisse, secundum illud Psalm ciii.: omnia in sapientia fecisti."
+<i>Ibid.</i>, book ii., chap. xxiv.: "Per hoc autem excluditur quorundam
+error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica divina voluntate dependere aliqua
+ratione."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the
+soul, <i>Des Pens&eacute;es de Pascal</i>, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235 and
+p. 289-296.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> <a href="#LECTURE_XVI">Lecture 16.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> On indignation, see <a href="#LECTURE_XI">lecture 11</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> On remorse, see <a href="#LECTURE_XI">lecture 11</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> See the <i>Gorgias</i>, with the <i>Argument</i>, vol. iii. of our
+translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> Lectures <a href="#LECTURE_I">1</a> and <a href="#LECTURE_VI">6</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> Lectures <a href="#LECTURE_II">2</a>, <a href="#LECTURE_III">3</a>, and <a href="#LECTURE_VI">6</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> 1st part, <a href="#LECTURE_II">lecture 2</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> <a href="#LECTURE_II">Lecture 2.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> 1st part, <a href="#LECTURE_III">lecture 3</a>. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series,
+lecture 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty,
+1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, <i>Locke</i>, p. 71; lecture 3,
+<i>Condillac</i>, p. 116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., lecture 23, <i>Reid</i>, p.
+541-574; 2d Series, vol. iii., <i>Examination of the System of Locke</i>,
+lecture 25.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> <a href="#LECTURE_XII">Lecture 12.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the
+true principle of political economy, p. 278-302.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'&eacute;chafaud.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_XVI">lecture 16</a>, <i>God, the Principle of the Idea of the
+Good</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_XVI">lecture 16</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> On Jacobi, see Tennemann's <i>Manual of the History of
+Philosophy</i>, vol. iii., p. 318, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> On this important question of method, see <a href="#LECTURE_XII">lecture 12</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> See the <i>Republic</i>, book iv., vol. ix., of our
+translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that
+error, too much accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics
+to our duties towards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the
+ethics of Helvetius and Saint-Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235: "To define
+virtue an habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others,
+is to concentrate virtue into a single one of its applications, is to
+suppress its general and essential character. Therein is the fundamental
+vice of the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those ethics are an
+exaggerated reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of the
+preceding age, which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man,
+often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is
+contrary to well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the
+philosophy of the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal
+perfection, and only considered the virtues useful to society. That was
+retrenching many virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example,
+dominion over self. How make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined a
+<i>disposition to contribute to the happiness of others</i>? Will it be said
+that dominion over self is useful to others? But that is not always
+true; often this dominion is exercised in the solitude of the soul over
+internal and wholly personal movements; and there it is most painful and
+most sublime. Were we in a desert, it would still be for us a duty to
+resist our passions, to command ourselves, and to govern our life as it
+becomes a rational and free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue,
+but it is neither the whole of virtue, nor its most difficult
+employment. What auxiliaries we have when the question is to do good to
+our fellow-creatures,&mdash;pity, sympathy, natural benevolence! But to
+resist pride and envy, to combat in the depths of the soul a natural
+desire legitimate in itself, often culpable in its excesses, to suffer
+and struggle in silence, is the hardest task of a virtuous man. I add
+that the virtues useful to others have their surest guaranty in those
+personal virtues that the eighteenth century misconceived. What are
+goodness, generosity, and beneficence without dominion over self,
+without the form of soul attached to the religious observance of duty?
+They are, perhaps, only the emotions of a beautiful nature placed in
+fortunate circumstances. Take away these circumstances, and, perhaps,
+the effects will disappear or be diminished. But when a man, who knows
+himself to be a rational and free being, comprehends that it is his duty
+to remain faithful to liberty and reason, when he applies himself to
+govern himself, and pursue, without cessation, the perfection of his
+nature through all circumstances, you may rely upon that man; he will
+know how, in case of need, to be useful to others, because there is no
+true perfection for him without justice and charity. From the care of
+internal perfection you may draw all the useful virtues, but the
+reciprocal is not always true. One may be beneficent without being
+virtuous; one is not virtuous without being beneficent."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> On the true foundation of property see the preceding
+<a href="#LECTURE_XIV">lecture</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude
+imposed by force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had
+another the desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and
+without limits, to be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a
+staff, a vase, and had we also the desire to make use of him in this
+manner, and to let him serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of
+desires would authorize for neither of us this absolute sacrifice,
+because desire can never be the title of a right, because there is
+something in us that is above all desires, participated or not
+participated, to wit, duty and right,&mdash;justice. To justice it belongs to
+be the rule of our desires, and not to our desires to be the rule of
+justice. Should entire humanity forget its dignity, should it consent to
+its own degradation, should it extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would
+be none the more legitimate; eternal justice would protest against a
+contract, which, were it supported by desires, reciprocal desires most
+authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws, is none the less
+void of all right, because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no
+right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human laws against
+the law of laws, against natural law."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human
+knowledge, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: "Hobbes
+is not the only one who took the question of the origin of societies as
+the starting-point of political science. Nearly all the publicists of
+the eighteenth century, Montesquieu excepted, proceed in the same
+manner. Rousseau imagines at first a primitive state in which man being
+no longer savage without being yet civilized, lived happy and free under
+the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden age of humanity
+disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, who
+enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order
+cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in
+the shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is
+formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the abandonment by each
+and all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the
+community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the depository of
+all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for
+Rousseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by turns
+are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the
+despotism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law
+is not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of
+natural justice; it is the expression of the general will. This general
+will is alone free; particular wills are not free. The general will has
+all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on
+them, or rather lends them. Force, in <i>The Citizen</i> is the foundation of
+society, of order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone
+institute. In the <i>Contrat Social</i>, the general will plays the same
+part, fulfils the same function. Moreover, the general will scarcely
+differs in itself from force. In fact, the general will is number, that
+is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, tyranny under different
+forms. One may here observe the power of method. If Hobbes, if Rousseau
+especially had at first studied the idea of right in itself, with the
+certain characters without which we are not able to conceive it, they
+would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from
+positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there
+are rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for
+principles and rules; from no convention, since they serve as the
+foundation to all conventions in order that these conventions may be
+reputed just;&mdash;rights that society consecrates and develops, but does
+not make,&mdash;rights not subject to the caprices of general or particular
+will, belonging essentially to human nature, and like it, inviolable and
+sacred."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "What!" somewhere says
+Montesquieu, "man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man
+was born for society! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the
+vicissitudes of the life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The
+universal and permanent fact of society attests the principle of
+sociability. This principle shines forth in all our inclinations, in our
+sentiments, in our beliefs. It is true that we love society for the
+advantages that it brings; but it is none the less true, that we also
+love it for its own sake, that we seek it independently of all
+calculation. Solitude saddens us; it is not less deadly to the life of
+the moral being, than a perfect vacuum is to the life of the physical
+being. Without society what would become of sympathy, which is one of
+the most powerful principles of our soul, which establishes between men
+a community of sentiments, by which each lives in all and all live in
+each? Who would be blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of
+human nature for society? And the attraction of the sexes, their union,
+the love of parents for children,&mdash;do they not found a sort of natural
+society, that is increased and developed by the power of the same causes
+which produced it? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect
+each other in the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other
+in virtue of natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right,
+charity inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each
+other succor and consolation. Wonderful thing! God has not left to our
+wisdom, nor even to experience, the care of forming and preserving
+society,&mdash;he has willed that sociability should be a law of our nature,
+and a law so imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no
+distaste even, can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of
+system was necessary in order to make Hobbes say that society is an
+accident, as an incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Rousseau
+the extravagant expression that society is an evil."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283: "We do not hold from a
+compact our quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it;
+or, rather, there is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which
+makes itself felt by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which
+binds together all beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune,
+by the sacred ties of a common respect and a common charity.... Laws
+promulgate duties, but do not give birth to them; they could not violate
+duties without being unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of
+laws&mdash;that is to say, decisions of the public authority worthy of
+appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. Nevertheless, although
+laws have no other virtue than that of declaring what exists before
+them, we often found on them right and justice, to the great detriment
+of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and habit despoil
+reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What then
+happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a very
+great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having
+no superior principle that enables us to judge it,&mdash;or we continually
+change it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not
+knowing the immutable basis on which written law must rest. In either
+case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not related to
+their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and
+absolute justice."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> <a href="#LECTURE_XII">Lecture 12.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> See our pamphlet entitled <i>Justice and Charity</i>, composed
+in 1848, in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind
+of the dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impassable
+limits of true charity, private and civil.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> See on the theory of penalty, the <i>Gorgias</i>, vol. iii. of
+the translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: "The first law of
+order is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is
+related to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the
+second law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by
+punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty.
+Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of
+the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime
+by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is
+one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for
+punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still
+more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their
+pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment
+except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective
+virtue,&mdash;and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment,
+but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must
+be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice.
+Justice is the true foundation of punishment,&mdash;personal and social
+utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after
+every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred
+demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to
+the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice
+has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be
+inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought.
+Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident,
+and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only
+that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even
+result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary
+spectacle for the people,&mdash;what it would not then be; for then the
+punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public
+conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just,
+because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both
+ways useful, because it is just." This theory of penalty, in
+demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two
+theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives
+them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated
+in Plato, but is met in several passages, briefly but positively
+expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the
+most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on
+Hobbes, 1st Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights,
+and the civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even
+touched the question of the different forms of government, and
+established the truth and beauty of the constitutional monarchy. In
+1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained and defended the
+Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government of July, the part
+of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in
+1848; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed
+by a passionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds,
+and the best, asked themselves whether the young American republic was
+not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to
+maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we
+believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of
+1789, and in particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary,
+can be obtained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,&mdash;6th
+Series, <span class="smcap">Political Discourses</span>, <i>with an introduction on the principles of
+the French Revolution and representative government</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> Lectures <a href="#LECTURE_IV">4</a> and <a href="#LECTURE_VII">7</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without
+excepting the best&mdash;that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most
+popular of all, the <i>Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard</i>. See our
+small work entitled <i>Philosophie Populaire</i>, 3d edition, p. 82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st, <a href="#LECTURE_IV">lecture
+4</a>; see also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v.,
+lecture 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> <i>Fragments de Philosophie Cart&eacute;sienne</i>, p. 24: "The
+infinite being, inasmuch as infinite, is not a mover, a cause; neither
+is he, inasmuch as infinite, an intelligence; neither is he a will;
+neither is he a principle of justice, nor much less a principle of love.
+We have no right to impute to him all these attributes in virtue of the
+single argument that every contingent being supposes a being that is not
+so, that every finite supposes an infinite. The God given by this
+argument is the God of Spinoza, is rigorously so; but he is almost as
+though he were not, at least for us who with difficulty perceive him in
+the inaccessible heights of an eternity and existence that are absolute,
+void of thought, of liberty, of love, similar to nonentity itself, and a
+thousand times inferior, in his infinity and eternity, to an hour of our
+finite and perishable existence, if during this fleeting hour we know
+what we are, if we think, if we love something else than ourselves, if
+we feel capable of freely sacrificing to an idea the few minutes that
+have been accorded to us."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> This theodicea is here <i>in r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i>, and in the <a href="#LECTURE_IV">4th</a> and
+<a href="#LECTURE_V">5th</a> lectures of part first, as well as in the <a href="#LECTURE_XVII">lecture</a> that follows. The
+most important of our different writings, on this point, will be found
+collected and elucidated by each other, in the Appendix to the 5th
+lecture of the first volume of the 1st Series.&mdash;See our translation of
+this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, under the title of the History
+of Modern Philosophy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> 3d Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition:
+"Without vain subtilty, there is a real distinction between free will
+and spontaneous liberty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with the
+appearance of deliberation between different objects, and under this
+supreme condition, that when, as a consequence of deliberation, we
+resolve to do this or that, we have the immediate consciousness of
+having been able, and of being able still, to will the contrary. It is
+in volition, and in the retinue of phenomena which surround it, that
+liberty more energetically appears, but it is not thereby exhausted. It
+is at rare and sublime moments in which liberty is as much greater as it
+appears less to the eyes of a superficial observation. I have often
+cited the example of d'Assas. D'Assas did not deliberate; and for all
+that, was d'Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty? Has the
+saint who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has come to
+practise, as it were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which are
+repugnant to human weakness; has the saint, in order to have gone out
+from the contradictions and the anguish of this form of liberty which we
+called volition, fallen below it instead of being elevated above it; and
+is he nothing more than a blind and passive instrument of grace, as
+Luther and Calvin have inappropriately wished to call it, by an
+excessive interpretation of the Augustinian doctrine? No, freedom still
+remains; and far from being annihilated, its liberty, in being purified,
+is elevated and ennobled; from the human form of volition it has passed
+to the almost divine form of spontaneity. Spontaneity is essentially
+free, although it may be accompanied with no deliberation, and although
+often, in the rapid motion of its inspired action, it escapes its own
+observation, and leaves scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness.
+Let us transfer this exact psychology to theodicea, and we may recognize
+without hypothesis, that spontaneity is also especially the form of
+God's liberty. Yes, certainly, God is free; for, among other proofs, it
+would be absurd that there should be less freedom in the first cause
+than in one of its effects, humanity; God is free, but not with that
+liberty which is related to our double nature, and made to contend
+against passion and error, and painfully to engender virtue and our
+imperfect knowledge; he is free, with a liberty that is related to his
+own divine nature, that is a liberty unlimited, infinite, recognizing no
+obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good and evil, between
+reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, consequently,
+cannot will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he could
+take what we call the bad part? This very supposition is impious. It is
+necessary to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has
+acted freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the
+consciousness of having been able to choose the other part. His nature,
+all-powerful, all-just, all-wise, is developed with that spontaneity
+which contains entire liberty, and excludes at once the efforts and the
+miseries of volition, and the mechanical operation of necessity. Such is
+the principle and the true character of the divine action."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> <i>Tim&aelig;us</i>, p. 119, vol. xii. of our translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> <i>De l'Art de prolonger sa Vie</i>, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> On the spirituality of the soul, see all our writings. We
+will limit ourselves to two citations. 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 25,
+p. 859: "It is impossible to know any phenomenon of consciousness, the
+phenomena of sensation, or volition, or of intelligence, without
+instantly referring them to a subject one and identical, which is the
+<i>me</i>; so we cannot know the external phenomena of resistance, of
+solidity, of impenetrability, of figure, of color, of smell, of taste,
+etc., without judging that these are not phenomena in appearance, but
+phenomena which belong to something real, which is solid, impenetrable,
+figured, colored, odorous, savory, etc. On the other hand, if you did
+not know any of the phenomena of consciousness, you would never have the
+least idea of the subject of these phenomena; if you did not know any of
+the external phenomena of resistance, of solidity, of impenetrability,
+of figure, of color, etc., you would not have any idea of the subject of
+these phenomena: therefore the characters, whether of the phenomena of
+consciousness, or of exterior phenomena, are for you the only signs of
+the nature of the subjects of these phenomena. In examining the
+phenomena which fall under the senses, we find between them grave
+differences upon which it is useless here to insist, and which establish
+the distinction of primary qualities and of secondary qualities. In the
+first rank among the primary qualities is solidity, which is given to
+you in the sensation of resistance, and inevitably accompanied by form,
+etc. On the contrary, when you examine the phenomena of consciousness,
+you do not therein find this character of resistance, of solidity, of
+form, etc.; you do not find that the phenomena of your consciousness
+have a figure, solidity, impenetrability, resistance; without speaking
+of secondary qualities which are equally foreign to them, color, savor,
+sound, smell, etc. Now, as the subject is for us only the collection of
+the phenomena which reveal it to us, together with its own existence in
+so far as the subject of the inherence of these phenomena, it follows
+that, under phenomena marked with dissimilar characters and entirely
+foreign to each other, the human mind conceives dissimilar and foreign
+subjects. Thus as solidity and figure have nothing in common with
+sensation, will, and thought, as every solid is extended for us, and as
+we place it necessarily in space, while our thoughts, our volitions, our
+sensations, are for us unextended, and while we cannot conceive them and
+place them in space, but only in time, the human mind concludes with
+perfect strictness that the subject of the exterior phenomena has the
+character of the latter, and that the subject of the phenomena of
+consciousness has the character of the former; that the one is solid and
+extended, and that the other is neither solid nor extended. Finally, as
+that which is solid and extended is divisible, and as that which is
+neither solid nor extended is indivisible, hence divisibility is
+attributed to the solid and extended subject, and indivisibility
+attributed to the subject which is neither extended nor solid. Who of
+us, in fact, does not believe himself an indivisible being, one and
+identical, the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow? Well, the word
+body, the word matter, signifies nothing else than the subject of
+external phenomena, the most eminent of which are form, impenetrability,
+solidity, extension, divisibility. The word mind, the word soul,
+signifies nothing else than the subject of the phenomena of
+consciousness, thought, will, sensation, phenomena simple, unextended,
+not solid, etc. Behold the whole idea of spirit, and the whole idea of
+matter! See, therefore, all that must be done in order to bring back
+matter to spirit, and spirit to matter: it is necessary to pretend that
+sensation, volition, thought, are reducible in the last analysis to
+solidity, extension, figure, divisibility, etc., or that solidity,
+extension, figure, etc., are reducible to thought, volition, sensation."
+1st Series, vol. iii., lecture I, <i>Locke</i>. "Locke pretends that we
+cannot be certain <i>by the contemplation of our own ideas</i>, that matter
+cannot think; on the contrary, it is in the contemplation itself of our
+ideas that we clearly perceive that matter and thought are incompatible.
+What is thinking? Is it not uniting a certain number of ideas under a
+certain unity? The simplest judgment supposes several terms united in a
+subject, one and identical, which is <i>me</i>. This identical <i>me</i> is
+implied in every real act of knowledge. It has been demonstrated to
+satiety that comparison exacts an indivisible centre that comprises the
+different terms of the comparison. Do you take memory? There is no
+memory possible without the continuation of the same subject that refers
+to self the different modifications by which it has been successively
+affected. Finally, consciousness, that indispensable condition of
+intelligence,&mdash;is it not the sentiment of a single being? This is the
+reason why each man cannot think without saying <i>me</i>, without affirming
+that he is himself the identical and one subject of his thoughts. I am
+<i>me</i> and always <i>me</i>, as you are always yourself in the most different
+acts of your life. You are not more yourself to-day than you were
+yesterday, and you are not less yourself to-day than you were yesterday.
+This identity and this indivisible unity of the <i>me</i> inseparable from
+the least thought, is what is called its spirituality, in opposition to
+the evident and necessary characters of matter. By what, in fact, do you
+know matter? It is especially by form, by extension, by something solid
+that stops you, that resists you in different points of space. But is
+not a solid essentially divisible? Take the most subtile fluids,&mdash;can
+you help conceiving them as more or less susceptible of division? All
+thought has its different elements like matter, but in addition it has
+its unity in the thinking subject, and the subject being taken away,
+which is one, the total phenomenon no longer exists. Far from that, the
+unknown subject to which we attach material phenomena is divisible, and
+divisible <i>ad infinitum</i>; it cannot cease to be divisible without
+ceasing to exist. Such are the ideas that we have, on the one side, of
+mind, on the other, of matter. Thought supposes a subject essentially
+one; matter is infinitely divisible. What is the need of going farther?
+If any conclusion is legitimate, it is that which distinguishes thought
+from matter. God can indeed make them exist together, and their
+co-existence is a certain fact, but he cannot confound them. God can
+unite thought and matter, he cannot make matter thought, nor what is
+extended simple."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> See 1st part, <a href="#LECTURE_I">lecture 1</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> See <a href="#LECTURE_V">lecture 5</a>, <i>Mysticism</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> 4th Series, vol. iii., <i>Santa-Rosa</i>: "After all, the
+existence of a divine Providence is, to my eyes, a truth clearer than
+all lights, more certain than all mathematics. Yes, there is a God, a
+God who is a true intelligence, who consequently has a consciousness of
+himself, who has made and ordered every thing with weight and measure,
+whose works are excellent, whose ends are adorable, even when they are
+veiled from our feeble eyes. This world has a perfect author, perfectly
+wise and good. Man is not an orphan; he has a father in heaven. What
+will this father do with his child when he returns to him? Nothing but
+what is good. Whatever happens, all will be well. Every thing that he
+has done has been done well; every thing that he shall do, I accept
+beforehand, and bless. Yes, such is my unalterable faith, and this faith
+is my support, my refuge, my consolation, my solace in this fearful
+moment."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> See our discussion on the <i>Pens&eacute;es de Pascal</i>, vol. i. of
+the 4th Series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> See the end of the first book of the <i>Republic</i>, vol. ix.
+of our translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> <i>Esprit des Lois</i>, <i>passim</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> Works of Turgot, vol. ii., <i>Discours en Sorbonne sur les
+Avantages que l'&eacute;tablissement du Christianism a procur&eacute;s au Genre
+Humain</i>, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> In the <i>Correspondence</i>, the letter to Dr. Stiles, March
+9, 1790, written by Franklin a few months before his death: "I am
+convinced that the moral and religious system which Jesus Christ has
+transmitted to us is the best that the world has seen or can see."&mdash;We
+here re-translate, not having the works of Franklin immediately at
+hand.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> We have not ceased to claim, to earnestly call for, the
+alliance between Christianity and philosophy, as well as the alliance
+between the monarchy and liberty. See particularly 3d Series, vol. iv.,
+<i>Philosophie Contemporaine</i>, preface of the second edition; 4th Series,
+vol. i., <i>Pascal</i>, 1st and 2d preface, <i>passim</i>; 5th Series, vol. ii.,
+<i>Discours &agrave; la Chambre des Paris pour le Defence de l'Universit&eacute; et de
+la Philosophie</i>. We everywhere profess the most tender veneration for
+Christianity,&mdash;we have only repelled the servitude of philosophy, with
+Descartes, and the most illustrious doctors of ancient and modern times,
+from St. Augustine and St. Thomas, to the Cardinal de la Lucerne and the
+Bishop of Hermopolis. Moreover, we love to think that those quarrels,
+originating in other times from the deplorable strife between the clergy
+and the University, have not survived it, and that now all sincere
+friends of religion and philosophy will give each other the hand, and
+will work in concert to encourage desponding souls and lift up burdened
+characters.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> Still living in 1818, died in 1828.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> In 1804.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> Died, 1814.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> This was said in 1818. Since then, Jacobi, Hegel, and
+Schleiermacher, with so many others, have disappeared. Schelling alone
+survives the ruins of the German philosophy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Fragments de Philosophie Cart&eacute;sienne</span>, p. 429: <i>Des
+Rapports du Cart&eacute;sienisme et du Spinozisme</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> Part 1st, lectures <a href="#LECTURE_I">1</a> and <a href="#LECTURE_II">2</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a> <a href="#PART_SECOND">Part 2d.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a> <a href="#PART_THIRD">Part 3d.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> On Condillac, 1st Series, vol. i., <i>passim</i>, and
+particularly vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> We have never spoken of Locke except with sincere
+respect, even while combating him. See 1st Series, vol. i., course of
+1817, <i>Discours d'Ouverture</i>, vol. ii., lecture 1, and especially 2d
+Series, vol. iii., <i>passim</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a> See 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on Reid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, vol. v.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> For more than twenty years we have thought of translating
+and publishing the three <i>Critiques</i>, joining to them a selection from
+the smaller productions of Kant. Time has been wanting to us for the
+completion of our design; but a young and skilful professor of
+philosophy, a graduate of the Normal School, has been willing to supply
+our place, and to undertake to give to the French public a faithful and
+intelligent version of the greatest thinker of the eighteenth century.
+M. Barni has worthily commenced the useful and difficult enterprise
+which we have remitted to his zeal, and pursues it with courage and
+talent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> Part 1st, <a href="#LECTURE_III">Lecture 3</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> <a href="#LECTURE_V">Lecture 5</a>, <i>Mysticism</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> This pretended proof of sentiment is in fact, the
+Cartesian proof itself. See lectures <a href="#LECTURE_IV">4</a> and <a href="#LECTURE_XVI">16</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> M. Jacobi. See the <i>Manual of the History of Philosophy</i>,
+by Tennemann, vol. ii., p. 318.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st
+part, lect. <a href="#LECTURE_II">2</a> and <a href="#LECTURE_III">3</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> Lectures <a href="#LECTURE_IV">4</a> and <a href="#LECTURE_V">5</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> See particularly <a href="#LECTURE_V">lecture 5</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> We place here this analogous passage on the true measure
+in which it may be said that God is at once comprehensible and
+incomprehensible, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 12: "We say in
+the first place that God is not absolutely incomprehensible, for this
+manifest reason, that, being the cause of this universe, he passes into
+it, and is reflected in it, as the cause in the effect; therefore we
+recognize him. 'The heavens declare his glory.' and 'the invisible
+things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
+understood by the things that are made;' his power, in the thousands of
+worlds sown in the boundless regions of space; his intelligence in their
+harmonious laws; finally, that which there is in him most august, in the
+sentiments of virtue, of holiness, and of love, which the heart of man
+contains. It must be that God is not incomprehensible to us, for all
+nations have petitioned him, since the first day of the intellectual
+life of humanity. God, then, as the cause of the universe, reveals
+himself to us; but God is not only the cause of the universe, he is also
+the perfect and infinite cause, possessing in himself, not a relative
+perfection, which is only a degree of imperfection, but an absolute
+perfection, an infinity which is not only the finite multiplied by
+itself in those proportions which the human mind is able always to
+enumerate, but a true infinity, that is, the absolute negation of all
+limits, in all the powers of his being. Moreover, it is not true that an
+indefinite effect adequately expresses an infinite cause; hence it is
+not true that we are able absolutely to comprehend God by the world and
+by man, for all of God is not in them. In order absolutely to comprehend
+the infinite, it is necessary to have an infinite power of
+comprehension, and that is not granted to us. God, in manifesting
+himself, retains something in himself which nothing finite can
+absolutely manifest; consequently, it is not permitted us to comprehend
+absolutely. There remains, then, in God, beyond the universe and man,
+something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence in the
+immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of
+the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, whence
+he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new
+manifestations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible; but even of
+this incomprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea; for we have
+the most precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in us a
+metaphysical refinement, it is a simple and primitive conception which
+enlightens us from our entrance into this world, both luminous and
+obscure, explaining everything, and being explained by nothing, because
+it carries us at first, to the summit and the limit of all explanation.
+There is something inexplicable for thought,&mdash;behold then whither
+thought tends; there is infinite being,&mdash;behold then the necessary
+principle of all relative and finite beings. Reason explains not the
+inexplicable, it conceives it. It is not able to comprehend infinity in
+an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some degree in its
+indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it; and,
+further, as it has been said, it comprehend it so far as
+incomprehensible. It is, therefore, an equal error to call God
+absolutely comprehensible, and absolutely incomprehensible. He is both
+invisible and present, revealed and withdrawn in himself, in the world
+and out of the world, so familiar and intimate with his creatures, that
+we see him by opening our eyes, that we feel him in feeling our hearts
+beat, and at the same time inaccessible in his impenetrable majesty,
+mingled with every thing, and separated from every thing, manifesting
+himself in universal life, and causing scarcely an ephemeral shadow of
+his eternal essence to appear there, communicating himself without
+cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at once the living God, and the
+God concealed, '<i>Deus vivus et Deus absconditus</i>.'"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> This is the sketch which F&eacute;libien so justly praises, part
+v., p. 37, of the 1st edition, in 4to.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> This great work has been long in England, as remarked by
+Mariette, see the <i>Abecedario</i>, just published, article S. Bourdon, vol.
+i., p. 171. It appears to have been a favorite work of Bourdon, he
+having himself engraved it, see de Piles, <i>Abr&eacute;g&eacute; de la Vie des
+Peintres</i>, 2d edition, p. 494, and the <i>Peintre graveur fran&ccedil;ais</i>, of M.
+Robert Dumesnil, vol. i., p. 131, etc. The copperplates of the <i>Seven
+Works of Mercy</i> are at the Louvre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> The <i>Libro di Verit&agrave;</i> is now the property of the Duke of
+Devonshire. M. L&eacute;on de Laborde has given a detailed account of it in the
+<i>Archives de l'Art fran&ccedil;ais</i>, tom. i., p. 435, et seq.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> The first composition of <i>Arcadia</i>, truly precious could
+it have been placed in the Louvre beside the second and better
+production, is in England, the property of the Duke of Devonshire.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> In the first set of the <i>Seven Sacraments</i>, executed for
+the Chevalier del Pozzo, now in England, the property of the Duke of
+Rutland, and with which we are acquainted only through engravings,
+Christ is placed on the left hand; it is less masterly and imposing, and
+the centre has a vacant appearance. In the second set, painted five or
+six years after the former for M. de Chanteloup, Christ is placed in the
+centre: this new disposition changes the entire effect of the piece.
+Poussin never repeated himself in treating the same subject a second
+time, but improved on it, aiming ever at perfection. And the memorable
+answer which he once made to one who inquired of him by what means he
+had attained to so great perfection, "I never neglected any thing,"
+should be always present to the mind of every artist, painter, sculptor,
+poet, or composer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> Poussin writes to M. de Chanteloup, April 25, 1644
+(Lettres de Poussin, Paris, 1824), "I am working briskly at the <i>Extreme
+Unction</i>, which is indeed a subject worthy of Apelles, who was very fond
+of representing the dying." He adds, with a vivacity which seems to
+indicate that he took a particular fancy to this painting, "I do not
+intend to quit it whilst I feel thus well-disposed, until I have put it
+in fair train for a sketch. It is to contain seventeen figures of men,
+women, and children, young and old, one part of whom are drowned in
+tears, whilst the others pray for the dying. I will not describe it to
+you more in detail. In this, my clumsy pen is quite unfit, it requires a
+gilded and well-set pencil. The principal figures are two feet high; the
+painting will be about the size of your <i>Manne</i>, but of better
+proportion." F&eacute;libien, a friend and confidant of Poussin, likewise
+remarks (<i>Entretiens</i>, etc., part iv., p. 293), that the <i>Extreme
+Unction</i> was one of the paintings which pleased him most. We learn at
+length, from Poussin's letters, that he finished it and sent it into
+France in this same year, 1644. F&eacute;noien informs us that in 1646 he
+completed the <i>Confirmation</i>, in 1647 the <i>Baptism</i>, the <i>Penance</i>, the
+<i>Ordination</i> and the <i>Eucharist</i>, and that he sent the last sacrament,
+that of <i>Marriage</i>, at the commencement of the year 1648. Bellori (<i>le
+Vite de Pittori</i>, etc., Rome, 1672) gives a full and detailed
+description of the <i>Extreme Unction</i>; and, as he lived with Poussin, it
+seems credible that his explanations are for the most part those he had
+himself received from the great artist.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> The drawing of the <i>Extreme Unction</i> is at the Louvre;
+the drawings of the five other sacraments are in the rich cabinet of M.
+de la Salle, that of the seventh is the property of the well-known print
+seller, M. Deter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> There is here likewise a charming Francis II., wholly
+from the hand of Clouet, and the portrait of F&eacute;nelon by Rigaud, which
+may be the original or at all events is not inferior to the painting in
+the gallery at Versailles.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>Transcriber's Note.</h3>
+
+<p>The following errors in the original text have been corrected in this version:</p>
+
+<p>Page 20: Mind on Man changed to Mind of Man</p>
+
+<p>Page 21: Le Notre changed to Le N&ocirc;tre</p>
+
+<p>Page 44: empirist changed to empiricist</p>
+
+<p>Page 75: Fénélon; changed to Fénelon;</p>
+
+<p>Page 99: metaphysicans changed to metaphysicians</p>
+
+<p>Page 117: <span title="[Greek: ektasis]">&#7956;&#954;&#964;&#945;&#963;&#953;&#962;</span> changed to <span title="[Greek: ekstasis]">&#7956;&#954;&#963;&#964;&#945;&#963;&#953;&#962;</span></p>
+
+<p>Page 136: added missing comma after receives warmth</p>
+
+<p>Page 165: resumé changed to résumé</p>
+
+<p>Page 182: exquiste changed to exquisite</p>
+
+<p>Page 184: monarh changed to monarch</p>
+
+<p>Page 245: missing semi-colon added after duty and right</p>
+
+<p>Page 268: destrnction changed to destruction</p>
+
+<p>Page 270: depeudere changed to dependere</p>
+
+<p>Page 321: missing quotation mark added after because it is just.</p>
+
+<p>Page 327: inaccesible changed to inaccessible</p>
+
+<p>Page 356: iufinite changed to infinite</p>
+
+<p>Page 360: sinee changed to since</p>
+
+<p>Page 363: extravagauce changed to extravagance</p>
+
+<p>Page 366: obsconditus changed to absconditus</p>
+
+<p>Page 374: Nonveau changed to Nouveau<br />
+Allemange changed to Allemagne</p>
+
+<p>Page 399: analysist changed to analyst</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on the true, the beautiful
+and the good, by Victor Cousin
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the
+good, by Victor Cousin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good
+
+Author: Victor Cousin
+
+Translator: O. W. Wight
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2011 [EBook #36208]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES ON THE TRUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Dave Morgan, Susan Skinner and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LECTURES
+
+ON
+
+THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL
+AND THE GOOD.
+
+BY M. V. COUSIN.
+
+INCREASED BY
+
+An Appendix on French Art.
+
+TRANSLATED, WITH THE APPROBATION OF M. COUSIN, BY
+
+O. W. WIGHT,
+
+TRANSLATOR OF COUSIN'S "COURSE OF THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY,"
+AMERICAN EDITOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART.,
+AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF ABELARD AND HELOISE," ETC., ETC.
+
+"God is the life of the soul, as the soul is the life of the body."
+                                    THE PLATONISTS AND THE FATHERS.
+
+NEW YORK:
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
+549 & 551 BROADWAY.
+1872.
+
+
+
+
+Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854,
+
+BY D. APPLETON & CO.,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
+for the Southern District of New York.
+
+
+
+
+                               TO
+
+                  SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART.,
+
+ Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh:
+
+     WHO HAS CLEARLY ELUCIDATED, AND, WITH GREAT ERUDITION,
+
+           SKETCHED THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF
+
+                          COMMON SENSE;
+
+WHO, FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HIS ILLUSTRIOUS COUNTRYMAN, REID
+
+              HAS ESTABLISHED THE DOCTRINE OF THE
+
+                  IMMEDIATENESS OF PERCEPTION,
+
+  THEREBY FORTIFYING PHILOSOPHY AGAINST THE ASSAULTS OF SKEPTICISM;
+
+          WHO, TAKING A STEP IN ADVANCE OF ALL OTHERS,
+
+            HAS GIVEN TO THE WORLD A DOCTRINE OF THE
+
+                          CONDITIONED,
+
+   THE ORIGINALITY AND IMPORTANCE OF WHICH ARE ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE
+
+          FEW QUALIFIED TO JUDGE IN SUCH MATTERS; WHOSE
+
+                 NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS
+
+       COMPLETES THE HITHERTO UNFINISHED WORKS OF ARISTOTLE;
+
+               THIS TRANSLATION OF M. COUSIN'S
+
+        Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good,
+
+                 IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
+
+       IN ADMIRATION OF A PROFOUND AND INDEPENDENT THINKER,
+
+        OF AN INCOMPARABLE MASTER OF PHILOSOPHIC CRITICISM;
+
+           AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM FOR A MAN IN WHOM GENIUS
+
+                AND ALMOST UNEQUALLED LEARNING
+
+                     HAVE BEEN ADORNED BY
+
+             TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND GOODNESS OF LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+For some time past we have been asked, on various sides, to collect in a
+body of doctrine the theories scattered in our different works, and to
+sum up, in just proportions, what men are pleased to call our
+philosophy.
+
+This _resume_ was wholly made. We had only to take again the lectures
+already quite old, but little known, because they belonged to a time
+when the courses of the Faculte des Lettres had scarcely any influence
+beyond the Quartier Latin, and, also, because they could be found only
+in a considerable collection, comprising all our first instruction, from
+1815 to 1821.[1] These lectures were there, as it were, lost in the
+crowd. We have drawn them hence, and give them apart, severely
+corrected, in the hope that they will thus be accessible to a greater
+number of readers, and that their true character will the better appear.
+
+The eighteen lectures that compose this volume have in fact the
+particular trait that, if the history of philosophy furnishes their
+frame-work, philosophy itself occupies in them the first place, and
+that, instead of researches of erudition and criticism, they present a
+regular exposition of the doctrine which was at first fixed in our mind,
+which has not ceased to preside over our labors.
+
+This book, then, contains the abridged but exact expression of our
+convictions on the fundamental points of philosophic science. In it will
+be openly seen the method that is the soul of our enterprise, our
+principles, our processes, our results.
+
+Under these three heads, the True, the Beautiful, the Good, we embrace
+psychology, placed by us at the head of all philosophy, aesthetics,
+ethics, natural right, even public right to a certain extent, finally
+theodicea, that perilous _rendez-vous_ of all systems, where different
+principles are condemned or justified by their consequences.
+
+It is the affair of our book to plead its own cause. We only desire that
+it may be appreciated and judged according to what it really is, and not
+according to an opinion too much accredited.
+
+Eclecticism is persistently represented as the doctrine to which men
+deign to attach our name. We declare that eclecticism is very dear to
+us, for it is in our eyes the light of the history of philosophy; but
+the source of that light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the most
+important and most useful applications of the philosophy which we teach,
+but it is not its principle.
+
+Our true doctrine, our true flag is spiritualism, that philosophy as
+solid as generous, which began with Socrates and Plato, which the Gospel
+has spread abroad in the world, which Descartes put under the severe
+forms of modern genius, which in the seventeenth century was one of the
+glories and forces of our country, which perished with the national
+grandeur in the eighteenth century, which at the commencement of the
+present century M. Royer-Collard came to re-establish in public
+instruction, whilst M. de Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and M.
+Quatremere de Quincy transferred it into literature and the arts. To it
+is rightly given the name of spiritualism, because its character in fact
+is that of subordinating the senses to the spirit, and tending, by all
+the means that reason acknowledges, to elevate and ennoble man. It
+teaches the spirituality of the soul, the liberty and responsibility of
+human actions, moral obligation, disinterested virtue, the dignity of
+justice, the beauty of charity; and beyond the limits of this world it
+shows a God, author and type of humanity, who, after having evidently
+made man for an excellent end, will not abandon him in the mysterious
+development of his destiny. This philosophy is the natural ally of all
+good causes. It sustains religious sentiment; it seconds true art, poesy
+worthy of the name, and a great literature; it is the support of right;
+it equally repels the craft of the demagogue and tyranny; it teaches all
+men to respect and value themselves, and, little by little, it conducts
+human societies to the true republic, that dream of all generous souls
+which in our times can be realized in Europe only by constitutional
+monarchy.
+
+To aid, with all our power, in setting up, defending, and propagating
+this noble philosophy, such is the object that early inspired us, that
+has sustained during a career already lengthy, in which difficulties
+have not been wanting. Thank God, time has rather strengthened than
+weakened our convictions, and we end as we began: this new edition of
+one of our first works is a last effort in favor of the holy cause for
+which we have combated nearly forty years.
+
+May our voice be heard by new generations as it was by the serious youth
+of the Restoration! Yes, it is particularly to you that we address this
+work, young men whom we no longer know, but whom we bear in our heart,
+because you are the seed and the hope of the future. We have shown you
+the principle of our evils and their remedy. If you love liberty and
+your country, shun what has destroyed them. Far from you be that sad
+philosophy which preaches to you materialism and atheism as new
+doctrines destined to regenerate the world: they kill, it is true, but
+they do not regenerate. Do not listen to those superficial spirits who
+give themselves out as profound thinkers, because after Voltaire they
+have discovered difficulties in Christianity: measure your progress in
+philosophy by your progress in tender veneration for the religion of the
+Gospel. Be well persuaded that, in France, democracy will always
+traverse liberty, that it brings all right into disorder, and through
+disorder into dictatorship. Ask, then, only a moderated liberty, and
+attach yourself to that with all the powers of your soul. Do not bend
+the knee to fortune, but accustom yourselves to bow to law. Entertain
+the noble sentiment of respect. Know how to admire,--possess the worship
+of great men and great things. Reject that enervating literature, by
+turns gross and refined, which delights in painting the miseries of
+human nature, which caresses all our weaknesses, which pays court to the
+senses and the imagination, instead of speaking to the soul and
+awakening thought. Guard yourselves against the malady of our century,
+that fatal taste of an accommodating life, incompatible with all
+generous ambition. Whatever career you embrace, propose to yourselves an
+elevated aim, and put in its service an unalterable constancy. _Sursum
+corda_, value highly your heart, wherein is seen all philosophy, that
+which we have retained from all our studies, which we have taught to
+your predecessors, which we leave to you as our last word, our final
+lecture.
+
+                                                    V. COUSIN.
+
+    _June 15, 1853._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A too indulgent public having promptly rendered necessary a new edition
+of this book, we are forced to render it less unworthy of the suffrages
+which it has obtained, by reviewing it with severe attention, by
+introducing a mass of corrections in detail, and a considerable number
+of additions, among which the only ones that need be indicated here are
+some pages on Christianity at the end of Lecture XVI., and the notes
+placed as an Appendix[2] at the end of the volume, on various works of
+French masters which we have quite recently seen in England, which have
+confirmed and increased our old admiration for our national art of the
+seventeenth century.
+
+    _November 1, 1853._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] 1st Series of our work, _Cours de l'Histoire de la Philosophie
+Moderne_, five volumes.
+
+[2] The Appendix has been translated by Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton of the
+British Museum, who is alone entitled to credit and alone
+responsible.--TR.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+The nature of this publication is sufficiently explained in the preface
+of M. Cousin.
+
+We have attempted to render his book, without comment, faithfully into
+English. Not only have we endeavored to give his thought without
+increase or diminution, but have also tried to preserve the main
+characteristics of his style. On the one hand, we have carefully shunned
+idioms peculiar to the French; on the other, when permitted by the laws
+of structure common to both languages, we have followed the general
+order of sentences, even the succession of words. It has been our aim to
+make this work wholly Cousin's in substance, and in form as nearly his
+as possible, with a total change of dress. That, however, we may have
+nowhere missed a shade of meaning, nowhere introduced a gallicism, is
+too much to be hoped for, too much to be demanded.
+
+M. Cousin, in his Philosophical Discussions, defines the terms that he
+uses. In the translation of these we have maintained uniformity, so that
+in this regard no farther explanation is necessary.
+
+This is, perhaps, in a philosophical point of view, the most important
+of all M. Cousin's works, for it contains a complete summary and lucid
+exposition of the various parts of his system. It is now the last word
+of European philosophy, and merits serious and thoughtful attention.
+
+This and many more like it, are needed in these times, when noisy and
+pretentious demagogues are speaking of metaphysics with idiotic
+laughter, when utilitarian statesmen are sneering at philosophy, when
+undisciplined sectarians of every kind are decrying it; when, too,
+earnest men, in state and church, men on whose shoulders the social
+world really rests, are invoking philosophy, not only as the best
+instrument of the highest culture and the severest mental discipline,
+but also as the best human means of guiding politics towards the
+eternally true and the eternally just, of preserving theology from the
+aberrations of a zeal without knowledge, and from the perversion of the
+interested and the cunning; when many an artist, who feels the nobility
+of his calling, who would address the mind of man rather than his
+senses, is asking a generous philosophy to explain to him that ravishing
+and torturing Ideal which is ever eluding his grasp, which often
+discourages unless understood; when, above all, devout and tender souls
+are learning to prize philosophy, since, in harmony with Revelation, it
+strengthens their belief in God, freedom, immortality.
+
+Grateful to an indulgent public, on both sides of the ocean, for a
+kindly and very favorable reception of our version of M. Cousin's
+"Course of the History of Modern Philosophy," we add this translation of
+his "Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good," hoping that his
+explanation of human nature will aid some in solving the grave problem
+of life,--for there are always those, and the most gifted, too, who feel
+the need of understanding themselves,--believing that his eloquence, his
+elevated sentiment, and elevated thought, will afford gratification to a
+refined taste, a chaste imagination, and a disciplined mind.
+
+                                                    O. W. WIGHT.
+
+    LONDON, Dec. 21, 1853
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+The Publishers have to express their thanks to M. COUSIN for his cordial
+concurrence, and especially for his kindness in transmitting the sheets
+of the French original as printed, so that this translation appears
+almost simultaneously with it.
+
+    EDINBURGH, 38 GEORGE-STREET,
+        Dec. 26, 1853.
+
+
+
+
+THE STEM.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE                                               _Page_  7
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE                                                  15
+
+DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED AT THE OPENING OF THE COURSE.--PHILOSOPHY
+OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY                                             25
+
+    Spirit and general principles of the Course.--Object of the
+    Lectures of this year:--application of the principles of which
+    an exposition is given, to the three Problems of the True, the
+    Beautiful, and the Good.
+
+
+PART FIRST.--THE TRUE.
+
+LECTURE I.--THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES       39
+
+    Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute
+    truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is
+    the problem of the philosophy of our time.--Universal and
+    necessary principles.--Examples of different kinds of such
+    principles.--Distinction between universal and necessary
+    principles and general principles.--Experience alone is
+    incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and
+    also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the
+    knowledge of the sensible world.--Reason as being that faculty
+    of ours which discovers to us these principles.--The study of
+    universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest
+    parts of philosophy.
+
+LECTURE II.--ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES             51
+
+    _Resume_ of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the
+    origin of universal and necessary principles.--Danger of this
+    question, and its necessity.--Different forms under which truth
+    presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms:
+    theory of spontaneity and reflection.--The primitive form of
+    principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form,
+    and gives them their actual form.--Examination and refutation of
+    the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by
+    an induction founded on particular notions.
+
+LECTURE III.--ON THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES      65
+
+    Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism.--Recurrence to
+    the theory of spontaneity and reflection.
+
+LECTURE IV.--GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES                          75
+
+    Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute
+    truth?--Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us,
+    in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We
+    perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular
+    beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it;
+    refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself;
+    defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.--Plato; St.
+    Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fenelon; Bossuet;
+    Leibnitz.--Truth the mediator between God and man.--Essential
+    distinctions.
+
+LECTURE V.--ON MYSTICISM                                             102
+
+    Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and
+    mysticism. Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without
+    an intermediary.--Two sorts of mysticism.--Mysticism of
+    sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities--the one
+    external, the other internal, and corresponding to the soul as
+    external sensibility corresponds to nature.--Legitimate part of
+    sentiment.--Its aberrations.--Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus:
+    God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by
+    pure thought.--Ecstasy.--Mixture of superstition and abstraction
+    in mysticism.--Conclusion of the first part of the course.
+
+
+PART SECOND.--THE BEAUTIFUL.
+
+LECTURE VI.--THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN                        123
+
+    The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art
+    is, as in the investigation of the true, to commence by
+    psychology.--Faculties of the soul that unite in the perception
+    of the beautiful.--The senses give only the agreeable; reason
+    alone gives the idea of the beautiful.--Refutation of
+    empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the
+    beautiful.--Pre-eminence of reason.--Sentiment of the beautiful;
+    different from sensation and desire.--Distinction between the
+    sentiment of the beautiful and that of the
+    sublime.--Imagination.--Influence of sentiment on
+    imagination.--Influence of imagination on sentiment.--Theory of
+    taste.
+
+LECTURE VII.--THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS                               140
+
+    Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful:
+    the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.--Nor to
+    convenience.--Nor to proportion.--Essential characters of the
+    beautiful.--Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the
+    sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral
+    beauty.--Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.--God, the
+    first principle of the beautiful.--Theory of Plato.
+
+LECTURE VIII.--ON ART                                                154
+
+    Genius:--its attribute is creative power.--Refutation of the
+    opinion that art is the imitation of nature--M. Emeric David,
+    and M. Quatremere de Quincy.--Refutation of the theory of
+    illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite
+    the passions of terror and pity.--Nor even directly the moral
+    and religious sentiment.--The proper and direct object of art is
+    to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this
+    idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the
+    affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation
+    of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.--True mission of
+    art.
+
+LECTURE IX.--THE DIFFERENT ARTS                                      165
+
+    Expression is the general law of art.--Division of
+    arts.--Distinction between liberal arts and trades.--Eloquence
+    itself, philosophy, and history do not make a part of the fine
+    arts.--That the arts gain nothing by encroaching upon each
+    other, and usurping each other's means and
+    processes.--Classification of the arts:--its true principle is
+    expression.--Comparison of arts with each other.--Poetry the
+    first of arts.
+
+LECTURE X.--FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY                    178
+
+    Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but
+    the different schools of art. Example:--French art in the
+    seventeenth century. French poetry:--Corneille. Racine. Moliere.
+    La Fontaine. Boileau.--Painting:--Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain.
+    Champagne.--Engraving.--Sculpture:--Sarrazin. The Anguiers.
+    Girardon. Pujet.--Le Notre.--Architecture.
+
+
+PART THIRD.--THE GOOD.
+
+LECTURE XI.--PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE                         215
+
+    Extent of the question of the good.--Position of the question
+    according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the
+    good, the natural belief of mankind?--The natural beliefs of
+    humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of nature.--
+    Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages, in life,
+    in consciousness.--Disinterestedness and devotedness.--Liberty.--
+    Esteem and contempt.--Respect.--Admiration and indignation.--
+    Dignity.--Empire of opinion.--Ridicule.--Regret and repentance.--
+    Natural and necessary foundations of all justice.--Distinction
+    between fact and right.--Common sense, true and false philosophy.
+
+LECTURE XII.--THE ETHICS OF INTEREST                                 229
+
+    Exposition of the doctrine of interest.--What there is of truth
+    in this doctrine.--Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and
+    desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the
+    fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot
+    explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the
+    principle of merit and demerit.--Consequences of the ethics of
+    interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to
+    despotism.
+
+LECTURE XIII.--OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES                            255
+
+    The ethics of sentiment.--The ethics founded on the principle of
+    the interest of the greatest number.--The ethics founded on the
+    will of God alone.--The ethics founded on the punishments and
+    rewards of another life.
+
+LECTURE XIV.--TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS                              274
+
+    Description of the different facts that compose the moral
+    phenomena.--Analysis of each of these facts:--1st, Judgment and
+    idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation
+    between the true and the good.--2d, Obligation. Refutation of
+    the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from
+    obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of the
+    good.--3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion
+    of liberty.--4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments
+    and rewards.--5th, Moral sentiments.--Harmony of all these facts
+    in nature and science.
+
+LECTURE XV.--PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS                               301
+
+    Application of the preceding principles.--General formula of
+    interest,--to obey reason.--Rule for judging whether an action
+    is or is not conformed to reason,--to elevate the motive of this
+    action into a maxim of universal legislation.--Individual
+    ethics. It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral
+    person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual
+    duties,--to respect and develop the moral person.--Social
+    ethics,--duties of justice and duties of charity.--Civil
+    society. Government. Law. The right to punish.
+
+LECTURE XVI.--GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD              325
+
+    Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation
+    of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty
+    of God.--The divine justice and charity.--God the sanction of
+    the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and
+    demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from
+    final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Worship.--Moral
+    beauty of Christianity.
+
+LECTURE XVII.--RESUME OF DOCTRINE                                    346
+
+    Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the
+    three orders of facts on which this doctrine rests, with the
+    relation of each one of them to the modern school that has
+    recognized and developed it, but almost always exaggerated
+    it.--Experience and empiricism.--Reason and idealism.--Sentiment
+    and mysticism.--Theodicea. Defects of different known
+    systems.--The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the
+    character of certainty and reality that this process gives to
+    it.
+
+
+APPENDIX                                                             371
+
+
+
+
+LECTURES
+
+ON
+
+THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD.
+
+
+
+
+DISCOURSE
+
+PRONOUNCED AT THE OPENING OF THE COURSE,
+
+DECEMBER 4, 1817.
+
+
+
+
+PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
+
+    Spirit and general principles of the Course.--Object of the
+    Lectures of this year:--application of the principles of which
+    an exposition is given, to the three Problems of the True, the
+    Beautiful, and the Good.
+
+
+It seems natural that a century, in its beginning, should borrow its
+philosophy from the century that preceded it. But, as free and
+intelligent beings, we are not born merely to continue our predecessors,
+but to increase their work, and also to do our own. We cannot accept
+from them an inheritance except under the condition of improving it. Our
+first duty is, then, to render to ourselves an account of the philosophy
+of the eighteenth century; to recognize its character and its
+principles, the problems which it agitated, and the solutions which it
+gave of them; to discern, in fine, what it transmits to us of the true
+and the productive, and what it also leaves of the sterile and the
+false, in order that, with reflective choice, we may embrace the former
+and reject the latter.[3] Placed at the entrance of the new times, let
+us know, first of all, with what views we would occupy ourselves.
+Moreover,--why should I not say it?--after two years of instruction, in
+which the professor, in some sort, has been investigating himself, one
+has a right to demand of him what he is; what are his most general
+principles on all the essential parts of philosophic science; what flag,
+in fine, in the midst of parties which contend with each other so
+violently, he proposes for you, young men, who frequent this auditory,
+and who are called upon to participate in a destiny still so uncertain
+and so obscure in the nineteenth century, to follow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not patriotism, it is a profound sentiment of truth and justice,
+which makes us place the whole philosophy now expanded in the world
+under the invocation of the name of Descartes. Yes, the whole of modern
+philosophy is the work of this great man, for it owes to him the spirit
+that animates it, and the method that constitutes its power.
+
+After the downfall of scholasticism and the mournful disruptures of the
+sixteenth century, the first object which the bold good sense of
+Descartes proposed to itself was to make philosophy a human science,
+like astronomy, physiology, medicine, subject to the same uncertainties
+and to the same aberrations, but capable also of the same progress.
+
+Descartes encountered the skepticism spread on every side in the train
+of so many revolutions, ambitious hypotheses, born out of the first use
+of an ill-regulated liberty, and the old formulas surviving the ruins of
+scholasticism. In his courageous passion for truth, he resolved to
+reject, provisorily at least, all the ideas that hitherto he had
+received without controlling them, firmly decided not to admit any but
+those which, after a serious examination, might appear to him evident.
+But he perceived that there was one thing which he could not reject,
+even provisorily, in his universal doubt,--that thing was the existence
+itself of his doubt, that is to say, of his thought; for although all
+the rest might be only an illusion, this fact, that he thought, could
+not be an illusion. Descartes, therefore, stopped at this fact, of an
+irresistible evidence, as at the first truth which he could accept
+without fear. Recognizing at the same time that thought is the necessary
+instrument of all the investigations which he might propose to himself,
+as well as the instrument of the human race in the acquisition of its
+natural knowledges,[4] he devoted himself to a regular study of it, to
+the analysis of thought as the condition of all legitimate philosophy,
+and upon this solid foundation he reared a doctrine of a character at
+once certain and living, capable of resisting skepticism, exempt from
+hypotheses, and affranchised from the formulas of the schools.
+
+Thus the analysis of thought, and of the mind which is the subject of
+it, that is to say, psychology, has become the point of departure, the
+most general principle, the important method of modern philosophy.[5]
+
+Nevertheless, it must indeed be owned, philosophy has not entirely lost,
+and sometimes still retains, since Descartes and in Descartes himself,
+its old habits. It rarely belongs to the same man to open and run a
+career, and usually the inventor succumbs under the weight of his own
+invention. So Descartes, after having so well placed the point of
+departure for all philosophical investigation, more than once forgets
+analysis, and returns, at least in form, to the ancient philosophy.[6]
+The true method, again, is more than once effaced in the hands of his
+first successors, under the always increasing influence of the
+mathematical method.
+
+Two periods may be distinguished in the Cartesian era,--one in which the
+method, in its newness, is often misconceived; the other, in which one
+is forced, at least, to re-enter the salutary way opened by Descartes.
+To the first belong Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz himself; to the
+second, the philosophers of the eighteenth century.
+
+Without doubt Malebranche, upon some points, descended very far into
+interior investigation; but most of the time he gave himself up to
+wander in an imaginary world, and lost sight of the real world. It is
+not a method that is wanting to Spinoza, but a good method; his error
+consists in having applied to philosophy the geometrical method, which
+proceeds by axioms, definitions, theorems, corollaries; no one has made
+less use of the psychological method; that is the principle and the
+condemnation of his system. The _Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement
+Humain_ exhibit Leibnitz opposing observation to observation, analysis
+to analysis; but his genius usually hovers over science, instead of
+advancing in it step by step; hence the results at which he arrives are
+often only brilliant hypotheses, for example, the pre-established
+harmony, now relegated among the analogous hypotheses of occasional
+causes and a plastic mediator. In general, the philosophy of the
+seventeenth century, by not employing with sufficient rigor and firmness
+the method with which Descartes had armed it, produced little else than
+systems, ingenious without doubt, bold and profound, but often also
+rash,--systems that have failed to keep their place in science.[7] In
+fact, nothing is durable except that which is founded upon a sound
+method; time destroys all the rest; time, which re-collects,
+fecundates, aggrandizes the least germs of truth deposited in the
+humblest analyses, strikes without pity, engulfs hypotheses, even those
+of genius. Time takes a step, and arbitrary systems are overturned; the
+statues of their authors alone remain standing over their ruins. The
+task of the friend of truth is to search for the useful remains of them,
+that survive and can serve for new and more solid constructions.
+
+The philosophy of the eighteenth century opens the second period of the
+Cartesian era; it proposed to itself to apply the method already
+discovered and too much neglected,--it applied itself to the analysis of
+thought. Disabused of ambitious and sterile attempts, and, like
+Descartes, disdainful of the past, the eighteenth century dared to think
+that every thing in philosophy was to be done over again, and that, in
+order not to wander anew, it was necessary to set out with the modest
+study of man. Instead, therefore, of building up all at once systems
+risked upon the universality of things, it undertook to examine what man
+knows, what he can know; it brought back entire philosophy to the study
+of our faculties, as physics had just been brought back to the study of
+the properties of bodies,--which was giving to philosophy, if not its
+end, at least its true beginning.
+
+The great schools which divide the eighteenth century are the English
+and French school, the Scotch school, and the German school, that is to
+say, the school of Locke and Condillac, that of Reid, that of Kant. It
+is impossible to misconceive the common principle which animates them,
+the unity of their method. When one examines with impartiality the
+method of Locke, he sees that it consists in the analysis of thought;
+and it is thereby that Locke is a disciple, not of Bacon and Hobbes, but
+of our great countryman, Descartes.[8] To study the human understanding
+as it is in each one of us, to recognize its powers, and also its
+limits, is the problem which the English philosopher proposed to
+himself, and which he attempted to solve. I do not wish to judge here
+of the solution which he gave of this problem; I limit myself to
+indicating clearly what was for him the fundamental problem. Condillac,
+the French disciple of Locke, made himself everywhere the apostle of
+analysis; and analysis was also in him, or at least should have been,
+the study of thought. No philosopher, not even Spinoza, has wandered
+farther than Condillac[9] from the true experimental method, and has
+strayed farther on the route of abstractions, even verbal abstractions;
+but, strange enough, no one is severer than he against hypotheses, save
+that of the statue-man. The author of the _Traite des Sensations_ has
+very unfaithfully practised analysis; but he speaks of it without
+cessation. The Scotch school combats Locke and Condillac; it combats
+them, but with their own arms, with the same method which it pretends to
+apply better.[10] In Germany, Kant wishes to replace in light and honor
+the superior element of human consciousness, left in the shade, and
+decried by the philosophy of his times; and for that end, what does he
+do? He undertakes a profound examination of the faculty of knowing; the
+title of his principal work is, _Critique of Pure Reason_;[11] it is a
+critique, that is to say again, an analysis; the method of Kant is then
+no other than that of Locke and Reid. Follow it until it reaches the
+hands of Fichte,[12] the successor of Kant, who died but a few years
+since; there, again, the analysis of thought is given as the foundation
+of philosophy. Kant was so firmly established in the subject of
+knowledge, that he could scarcely go out of it--that, in fact, he never
+did legitimately go out of it. Fichte plunged into the subject of
+knowledge so deeply that he buried himself in it, and absorbed in the
+human _me_ all existences, as well as all sciences--sad shipwreck of
+analysis, which signalizes at once its greatest effort and its rock!
+
+The same spirit, therefore, governs all the schools of the eighteenth
+century; this century disdains arbitrary formulas; it has a horror for
+hypotheses, and attaches itself, or pretends to attach itself, to the
+observation of facts, and particularly to the analysis of thought.
+
+Let us acknowledge with freedom and with grief, that the eighteenth
+century applied analysis to all things without pity and without measure.
+It cited before its tribunal all doctrines, all sciences; neither the
+metaphysics of the preceding age, with their imposing systems, nor the
+arts with their prestige, nor the governments with their ancient
+authority, nor the religions with their majesty,--nothing found favor
+before it. Although it spied abysses at the bottom of what it called
+philosophy, it threw itself into them with a courage which is not
+without grandeur; for the grandeur of man is to prefer what he believes
+to be truth to himself. The eighteenth century let loose tempests.
+Humanity no more progressed, except over ruins. The world was again
+agitated in that state of disorder in which it had already been once
+seen, at the decline of the ancient beliefs, and before the triumphs of
+Christianity, when men wandered through all contraries, without power to
+rest anywhere, given up to every disquietude of spirit, to every misery
+of heart, fanatical and atheistical, mystical and incredulous,
+voluptuous and sanguinary.[13] But if the philosophy of the eighteenth
+century has left us a vacuity for an inheritance, it has also left us an
+energetic and fecund love of truth. The eighteenth century was the age
+of criticism and destructions; the nineteenth should be that of
+intelligent rehabilitations. It belongs to it to find in a profounder
+analysis of thought the principles of the future, and with so many
+remains to raise, in fine, an edifice that reason may be able to
+acknowledge.
+
+A feeble but zealous workman, I come to bring my stone; I come to do my
+work; I come to extract from the midst of the ruins what has not
+perished, what cannot perish. This course is at once a return to the
+past, an effort towards the future. I propose neither to attack nor to
+defend any of the three great schools that divide the eighteenth
+century. I will not attempt to perpetuate and envenom the warfare which
+divides them, complacently designating the differences which separate
+them, without taking an account of the community of method which unites
+them. I come, on the contrary, a devoted soldier of philosophy, a common
+friend of all the schools which it has produced, to offer to all the
+words of peace.
+
+The unity of modern philosophy, as we have said, resides in its method,
+that is to say, in the analysis of thought--a method superior to its own
+results, for it contains in itself the means of repairing the errors
+that escape it, of indefinitely adding new riches to riches already
+acquired. The physical sciences themselves have no other unity. The
+great physicians who have appeared within two centuries, although united
+amongst themselves by the same point of departure and by the same end,
+generally accepted, have nevertheless proceeded with independence and in
+ways often opposite. Time has re-collected in their different theories
+the part of truth that produced them and sustained them; it has
+neglected their errors from which they were unable to extricate
+themselves, and uniting all the discoveries worthy of the name, it has
+little by little formed of them a vast and harmonious whole. Modern
+philosophy has also been enriched during the two centuries with a
+multitude of exact observations, of solid and profound theories, for
+which it is indebted to the common method. What has hindered her from
+progressing at an equal pace with the physical sciences whose sister she
+is? She has been hindered by not understanding better her own interests,
+by not tolerating diversities that are inevitable, that are even
+useful, and by not profiting by the truths which all the particular
+doctrines contain, in order to deduce from them a general doctrine,
+which is successively and perpetually purified and aggrandized.
+
+Not, indeed, that I would recommend that blind syncretism which
+destroyed the school of Alexandria, which attempted to bring contrary
+systems together by force; what I recommend is an enlightened
+eclecticism, which, judging with equity, and even with benevolence, all
+schools, borrows from them what they possess of the true, and neglects
+what in them is false. Since the spirit of party has hitherto succeeded
+so ill with us, let us try the spirit of conciliation. Human thought is
+immense. Each school has looked at it only from its own point of view.
+This point of view is not false, but it is incomplete, and moreover, it
+is exclusive. It expresses but one side of truth, and rejects all the
+others. The question is not to decry and recommence the work of our
+predecessors, but to perfect it in reuniting, and in fortifying by that
+reunion, all the truths scattered in the different systems which the
+eighteenth century has transmitted to us.
+
+Such is the principle to which we have been conducted by two years of
+study upon modern philosophy, from Descartes to our times. This
+principle, badly disengaged at first, we applied for the first time
+within the narrowest limits, and only to theories relative to the
+question of personal existence.[14] We then extended it to a greater
+number of questions and theories; we touched the principal points of the
+intellectual and moral order,[15] and at the same time that we were
+continuing the investigations of our illustrious predecessor, M.
+Royer-Collard, upon the schools of France, England, and Scotland, we
+commenced the study new among us, the difficult but interesting and
+fecund study, of the philosophy of Koenigsberg. We can at the present
+time, therefore, embrace all the schools of the eighteenth century, and
+all the problems which they agitated.
+
+Philosophy, in all times, turns upon the fundamental ideas of the true,
+the beautiful, and the good. The idea of the true, philosophically
+developed, is psychology, logic, metaphysic; the idea of the good is
+private and public morals; the idea of the beautiful is that science
+which, in Germany, is called aesthetics, the details of which pertain to
+the criticism of literature, the criticism of arts, but whose general
+principles have always occupied a more or less considerable place in the
+researches, and even in the teaching of philosophers, from Plato and
+Aristotle to Hutcheson and Kant.
+
+Upon these essential points which constitute the entire domain of
+philosophy, we will successively interrogate the principal schools of
+the eighteenth century.
+
+When we examine them all with attention, we can easily reduce them to
+two,--one of which, in the analysis of thought, the common subject of
+all their works, gives to sensation an excessive part; the other of
+which, in this same analysis, going to the opposite extreme, deduces
+consciousness almost wholly from a faculty different from that of
+sensation--reason. The first of these schools is the empirical school,
+of which the father, or rather the wisest representative, is Locke, and
+Condillac the extreme representative; the second is the spiritualistic
+or rationalistic school, as it is called, which reckons among its
+illustrious interpreters Reid, who is the most irreproachable, and Kant,
+who is the most systematic. Surely there is truth in these two schools,
+and truth is a good which must be taken wherever one finds it. We
+willingly admit, with the empirical school, that the senses have not
+been given us in vain; that this admirable organization which elevates
+us above all other animate beings, is a rich and varied instrument,
+which it would be folly to neglect. We are convinced that the spectacle
+of the world is a permanent source of sound and sublime instruction.
+Upon this point neither Aristotle, nor Bacon, nor Locke, has in us an
+adversary, but a disciple. We acknowledge, or rather we proclaim, that
+in the analysis of human knowledge, it is necessary to assign to the
+senses an important part. But when the empirical school pretends that
+all that passes beyond the reach of the senses is a chimera, then we
+abandon it, and go over to the opposite school. We profess to believe,
+for example, that, without an agreeable impression, never should we have
+conceived the beautiful, and that, notwithstanding, the beautiful is not
+merely the agreeable; that, thank heaven, happiness is usually added to
+virtue, but that the idea itself of virtue is essentially different from
+that of happiness. On this point we are openly of the opinion of Reid
+and Kant. We have also established, and will again establish, that the
+reason of man is in possession of principles which sensation precedes
+but does not explain, and which are directly suggested to us by the
+power of reason alone. We will follow Kant thus far, but not farther.
+Far from following him, we will combat him, when, after having
+victoriously defended the great principles of every kind against
+empiricism, he strikes them with sterility, in pretending that they have
+no value beyond the inclosure of the reason which possesses them,
+condemning also to impotence that same reason which he has just elevated
+so high, and opening the way to a refined and learned skepticism which,
+after all, ends at the same abyss with ordinary skepticism.
+
+You perceive that we shall be by turns with Locke, with Reid, and with
+Kant, in that just and strong measure which is called eclecticism.
+
+Eclecticism is in our eyes the true historical method, and it has for us
+all the importance of the history of philosophy; but there is something
+which we place above the history of philosophy, and, consequently, above
+eclecticism,--philosophy itself.
+
+The history of philosophy does not carry its own light with it, it is
+not its own end. How could eclecticism, which has no other field than
+history, be our only, our primary, object?
+
+It is, doubtless, just, it is of the highest utility, to discriminate in
+each system what there is true in it from what there is false in it;
+first, in order to appreciate this system rightly; then, in order to
+render the false of no account, to disengage and re-collect the true,
+and thus to enrich and aggrandize philosophy by history. But you
+conceive that we must already know what truth is, in order to recognize
+it, and to distinguish it from the error with which it is mixed; so that
+the criticism of systems almost demands a system, so that the history of
+philosophy is constrained to first borrow from philosophy the light
+which it must one day return to it with usury.
+
+In fine, the history of philosophy is only a branch, or rather an
+instrument, of philosophical science. Surely it is the interest which we
+feel for philosophy that alone attaches us to its history; it is the
+love of truth which makes us everywhere pursue its vestiges, and
+interrogate with a passionate curiosity those who before us have also
+loved and sought truth.
+
+Thus philosophy is at once the supreme object and the torch of the
+history of philosophy. By this double title it has a right to preside
+over our instruction.
+
+In regard to this, one word of explanation, I beg you.
+
+He who is speaking before you to-day is, it is true, officially charged
+only with the course of the history of philosophy; in that is our task,
+and in that, once more, our guide shall be eclecticism.[16] But, we
+confess, if philosophy has not the right to present itself here in some
+sort on the first plan; if it should appear only behind its history, it
+in reality holds dominion; and to it all our wishes, as well as all our
+efforts, are related. We hold, doubtless, in great esteem, both Brucker
+and Tennemann,[17] so wise, so judicious; nevertheless our models, our
+veritable masters, always present to our thought, are, in antiquity,
+Plato and Socrates, among the moderns, Descartes, and, why should I
+hesitate to say it, among us, and in our times, the illustrious man who
+has been pleased to call us to this chair. M. Royer-Collard was also
+only a professor of the history of philosophy; but he rightly pretended
+to have an opinion in philosophy; he served a cause which he has
+transmitted to us, and we will serve it in our turn.
+
+This great cause is known to you; it is that of a sound and generous
+philosophy, worthy of our century by the severity of its methods, and
+answering to the immortal wants of humanity, setting out modestly from
+psychology, from the humble study of the human mind, in order to elevate
+itself to the highest regions, and to traverse metaphysics, aesthetics,
+theodicea, morals, and politics.
+
+Our enterprise is not then simply to renew the history of philosophy by
+eclecticism; we also wish, we especially wish, and history well
+understood, thanks to eclecticism, will therein powerfully assist us, to
+deduce from the study of systems, their strifes, and even their ruins, a
+system which may be proof against criticism, and which can be accepted
+by your reason, and also by your heart, noble youth of the nineteenth
+century!
+
+In order to fulfil this great object, which is our veritable mission to
+you, we shall dare this year, for the first and for the last time, to go
+beyond the narrow limits which are imposed upon us. In the history of
+the philosophy of the eighteenth century, we have resolved to leave a
+little in the shade the history of philosophy, in order to make
+philosophy itself appear, and while exhibiting to you the distinctive
+traits of the principal doctrines of the last century, to expose to you
+the doctrine which seems to us adapted to the wants and to the spirit of
+our times, and still, to explain it to you briefly, but in its full
+extent, instead of dwelling upon some one of its parts, as hitherto we
+have done. With years we will correct, we will task ourselves to
+aggrandize and elevate our work. To-day we present it you very imperfect
+still, but established upon foundations which we believe solid, and
+already stamped with a character that will not change.
+
+You will here see, then, brought together in a short space, our
+principles, our processes, our results. We ardently desire to recommend
+them to you, young men, who are the hope of science as well as of your
+country. May we at least be able, in the vast career which we have to
+run, to meet in you the same kindness which hitherto has sustained us.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] We have so much felt the necessity of understanding well the
+philosophy of the century that ours succeeds, that three times we have
+undertaken the history of philosophy in the eighteenth century, here
+first, in 1818, then in 1819 and 1820, and that is the subject of the
+last three volumes of the 1st Series of our works; finally, we resumed
+it in 1829, vol. ii. and iii. of the 2d Series.
+
+[4] This word was used by the old English writers, and there is no
+reason why it should not be retained.
+
+[5] On the method of Descartes, see 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 20; 2d
+Series, vol. i., lecture 2; vol. ii., lecture 11; 3d Series, vol. iii.,
+_Philosophie Moderne_, as well as _Fragments de Philosophie
+Cartesienne_; 5th Series, _Instruction Publique_, vol. ii., _Defense de
+l'Universite et de la Philosophie_, p. 112, etc.
+
+[6] On this return to the scholastic form in Descartes, see 1st Series,
+vol iv., lecture 12, especially three articles of the _Journal des
+Savants_, August, September, and October, 1850, in which we have
+examined anew the principles of Cartesianism, _a propos_ the _Leibnitii
+Animadversiones ad Cartesii Principia Philosophiae_.
+
+[7] See on Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, 2d Series, vol. ii.,
+lectures 11 and 12; 3d Series, vol. iv., _Introduction aux Oeuvres
+Philosophiques de M. de Biran_, p. 288; and the _Fragments de
+Philosophie Cartesienne_, passim.
+
+[8] On Locke, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, especially 2d
+Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Systeme de Locke_.
+
+[9] 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3.
+
+[10] 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on the Scotch School.
+
+[11] See on Kant and the _Critique of Pure Reason_, vol. v. of the 1st
+Series, where that great work is examined with as much extent as that of
+Reid in vol. iv., and the _Essay_ of Locke in vol. iii. of the 2d
+Series.
+
+[12] On Fichte, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 12; 3d Series, vol. iv.,
+_Introduction aux Oeuvres de M. de Biran_, p. 324.
+
+[13] We expressed ourselves thus in December, 1817, when, following the
+great wars of the Revolution, and after the downfall of the empire, the
+constitutional monarchy, still poorly established, left the future of
+France and of the world obscure. It is sad to be obliged to hold the
+same language in 1835, over the ruins accumulated around us.
+
+[14] 1st Series, vol. i., Course of 1816.
+
+[15] _Ibid._, Course of 1817.
+
+[16] On the legitimate employment and the imperative conditions of
+eclecticism, see 3d Series, _Fragments Philosophiques_, vol. iv.,
+preface of the first edition, p. 41, &c., especially the article
+entitled _De la Philosophie en Belgique_, pp. 228 and 229.
+
+[17] We have translated his excellent _Manual of the History of
+Philosophy_. See the second edition, vol. ii., 8vo., 1839.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST.
+
+THE TRUE.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
+
+    Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute
+    truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is
+    the problem of the philosophy of our time.--Universal and
+    necessary principles.--Examples of different kinds of such
+    principles.--Distinction between universal and necessary
+    principles and general principles.--Experience alone is
+    incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and
+    also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the
+    knowledge of the sensible world.--Reason as being that faculty
+    of ours which discovers to us these principles.--The study of
+    universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest
+    parts of philosophy.
+
+
+To-day, as in all time, two great wants are felt by man. The first, the
+most imperious, is that of fixed, immutable principles, which depend
+upon neither times nor places nor circumstances, and on which the mind
+reposes with an unbounded confidence. In all investigations, as long as
+we have seized only isolated, disconnected facts, as long as we have not
+referred them to a general law, we possess the materials of science, but
+there is yet no science. Even physics commence only when universal
+truths appear, to which all the facts of the same order that observation
+discovers to us in nature may be referred. Plato has said, that there is
+no science of the transitory.
+
+This is our first need. But there is another, not less legitimate, the
+need of not being the dupe of chimerical principles, of barren
+abstractions, of combinations more or less ingenious, but artificial,
+the need of resting upon reality and life, the need of experience. The
+physical and natural sciences, whose regular and rapid conquests strike
+and dazzle the most ignorant, owe their progress to the experimental
+method. Hence the immense popularity of this method, which is carried to
+such an extent that one would not now condescend to lend the least
+attention to a science over which this method should not seem to
+preside.
+
+To unite observation and reason, not to lose sight of the ideal of
+science to which man aspires, and to search for it and find it by the
+route of experience,--such is the problem of philosophy.
+
+Now we address ourselves to your recollections of the last two
+years:--have we not established, by the severest experimental method, by
+reflection applied to the study of the human mind, with the deliberation
+and the rigor which such demonstrations exact,--have we not established
+that there are in all men, without distinction, in the wise and the
+ignorant, ideas, notions, beliefs, principles which the most determined
+skeptic cannot in the slightest degree deny, by which he is
+unconsciously, and in spite of himself, governed both in his words and
+actions, and which, by a striking contrast with our other knowledges,
+are marked with the at once marvellous and incontestable character, that
+they are encountered in the most common experience, and that, at the
+same time, instead of being circumscribed within the limits of this
+experience, they surpass and govern it, universal in the midst of
+particular phenomena to which they are applied; necessary, although
+mingled with things contingent; to our eyes infinite and absolute, even
+while appearing within us in that relative and finite being which we
+are? It is not an unpremeditated paradox that we present to you; we are
+only expressing here the result of numerous lectures.[18]
+
+It was not difficult for us to show that there are universal and
+necessary principles at the head of all sciences.
+
+It is very evident that there are no mathematics without axioms and
+definitions, that is to say, without absolute principles.
+
+What would logic become, those mathematics of thought, if you should
+take away from it a certain number of principles, which are a little
+barbarous, perhaps, in their scholastic form, but must be universal and
+necessary in order to preside over all reasoning and every
+demonstration?
+
+Are physics possible, if every phenomenon which begins to appear does
+not suppose a cause and a law?
+
+Without the principle of final causes, could physiology proceed a single
+step, render to itself an account of a single organ, or determine a
+single function?
+
+Is not the principle on which the whole of morals rests, the principle
+which obligates man to good and lays the foundation of virtue, of the
+same nature? Does it not extend to all moral beings, without distinction
+of time and place? Can you conceive of a moral being who does not
+recognize in the depth of his conscience that reason ought to govern
+passion, that it is necessary to preserve sworn faith, and, against the
+most pressing interest, to restore the treasure that has been confided
+to us?
+
+And these are not mere metaphysical prejudices and formulas of the
+schools: I appeal to the most vulgar common sense.
+
+If I should say to you that a murder has just been committed, could you
+not ask me when, where, by whom, wherefore? That is to say, your mind is
+directed by the universal and necessary principles of time, of space, of
+cause, and even of final cause.
+
+If I should say to you that love or ambition caused the murder, would
+you not at the same instant conceive a lover, an ambitious person? This
+means, again, that there is for you no act without an agent, no quality
+and phenomenon without a substance, without a real subject.
+
+If I should say to you that the accused pretends that he is not the same
+person who conceived, willed, and executed this murder, and that, at
+intervals, his personality has more than once been changed, would you
+not say he is a fool if he is sincere, and that, although the acts and
+the incidents have varied, the person and the being have remained the
+same?
+
+Suppose that the accused should defend himself on this ground, that the
+murder must serve his interest; that, moreover, the person killed was so
+unhappy that life was a burden to him; that the state loses nothing,
+since in place of two worthless citizens it acquires one who becomes
+useful to it; that, in fine, mankind will not perish by the loss of an
+individual, &c.; to all these reasonings would you not oppose the very
+simple response, that this murder, useful perhaps to its author, is not
+the less unjust, and that, therefore, under no pretext was it permitted?
+
+The same good sense which admits universal and necessary truths, easily
+distinguishes them from those that are not universal and necessary, and
+are only general, that is to say, are applied only to a greater or less
+number of cases.
+
+For example, the following is a very general truth: the day succeeds the
+night; but is it a universal and necessary truth? Does it extend to all
+lands? Yes, to all known lands. But does it extend to all possible
+lands? No; for it is possible to conceive of lands plunged in eternal
+night, another system of the world being given. The laws of the material
+world are what they are; they are not necessary. Their Author might have
+chosen others. With another system of the world one conceives other
+physics, but we cannot conceive other mathematics and other morals. Thus
+it is possible to conceive that day and night may not be in the same
+relation to each as that in which we see them; therefore the truth that
+day succeeds night is a very general truth, perhaps even a universal
+truth, but by no means a necessary truth.
+
+Montesquieu has said that liberty is not a fruit of warm climates. I
+acknowledge, if it is desired, that heat enervates the spirit, and that
+warm countries maintain free governments with difficulty; but it does
+not follow that there may be no possible exception to this principle:
+moreover, there have been exceptions; hence it is not an absolutely
+universal principle, much less is it a necessary principle. Could you
+say as much of the principle of cause? Could you in any way conceive, in
+any time and in any place, a phenomenon which begins to appear without
+a cause, physical or moral?
+
+And were it possible to reduce universal and necessary principles to
+general principles, in order to employ and apply these principles thus
+abased, and to found upon them any reasoning whatever, it would be
+necessary to admit what is called in logic the principle of
+contradiction, viz., that a thing cannot at the same time be and not be,
+in order to maintain the integrity of each part of the reasoning; as
+well as the principle of sufficient reason, which alone establishes
+their connection and the legitimacy of the conclusion. Now, these two
+principles, without which there is no reasoning, are themselves
+universal and necessary principles; so that the circle is manifest.
+
+Even were we to destroy in thought all existences, save that of a single
+mind, we should be compelled to place in that mind, in order that it
+might exercise itself at all--and the mind is such only on the condition
+that it thinks--several necessary principles; it would be beyond the
+power of thought to conceive it deprived of the principle of
+contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason.
+
+How many times have we demonstrated the vanity of the efforts of the
+empirical school to disturb the existence or weaken the bearing of
+universal and necessary principles! Listen to this school: it will say
+to you that the principle of cause, given by us as universal and
+necessary, is, after all, only a habit of the mind, which, seeing in
+nature a fact succeeding another fact, puts between these that
+connection which we have called the relation of effect to cause. This
+explanation is nothing but the destruction, not only of the principle of
+causality, but even of the notion of cause. The senses show me two
+balls, one of which begins to move, the other of which moves after it.
+Suppose that this succession is renewed and continues; it will be
+constancy added to succession; it will by no means be the connection of
+a causative power with its effect; for example, that which consciousness
+attests to us is the least effort of volition. Thus a consequent
+empiricist, like Hume,[19] easily proves that no sensible experience
+legitimately gives the idea of cause.
+
+What we say of the notion of cause we might say of all notions of the
+same kind. Let us at least instance those of substance and unity.
+
+The senses perceive only qualities, phenomena. I touch the extension, I
+see the color, I am sensible of the odor; but do our senses attain the
+substance that is extended, colored, or odorous? On this point Hume[20]
+indulges in pleasantries. He asks which one of our senses takes
+cognizance of substance. What, then, according to him and in the system
+of empiricism, is the notion of substance? An illusion like the notion
+of cause.
+
+Neither do the senses give us unity; for unity is identity, is
+simplicity, and the senses show us every thing in succession and
+composition. The works of art possess unity only because Art, that is to
+say, the mind of man puts it there. If we perceive unity in the works of
+nature, it is not the senses that discover it to us. The arrangement of
+the different parts of an object may contain unity, but it is a unity of
+organization, an ideal and moral unity which the mind alone conceives,
+and which escapes the senses.
+
+If the senses are not able to explain simple notions, much less still
+are they able to explain the principles in which these notions are met,
+which are universal and necessary. In fact, the senses clearly perceive
+such and such facts, but it is impossible for them to embrace what is
+universal; experience attests what is, it does not reach what cannot but
+be.
+
+We go farther. Not only is empiricism unable to explain universal and
+necessary principles; but we maintain that, without these principles,
+empiricism cannot even account for the knowledge of the sensible world.
+
+Take away the principle of causality, and the human mind is condemned
+never to go out of itself and its own modifications. All the sensations
+of hearing, of smell, of taste, of touch, of feeling even, cannot inform
+you what their cause is, nor whether they have a cause. But give to the
+human mind the principle of causality, admit that every sensation, as
+well as every phenomenon, every change, every event, has a cause, as
+evidently we are not the cause of certain sensations, and that
+especially these sensations must have a cause, and we are naturally led
+to recognize for those sensations causes different from ourselves, and
+that is the first notion of an exterior world. The universal and
+necessary principle of causality alone gives it and justifies it. Other
+principles of the same order increase and develop it.
+
+As soon as you know that there are external objects, I ask you whether
+you do not conceive them in a place that contains them. In order to deny
+it, it would be necessary to deny that every body is in a place, that is
+to say, to reject a truth of physics, which is at the same time a
+principle of metaphysics, as well as an axiom of common sense. But the
+place that contains a body is often itself a body, which is only more
+capacious than the first. This new body is in its turn in a place. Is
+this new place also a body? Then it is contained in another place more
+extended, and so on; so that it is impossible for you to conceive a body
+which is not in a place; and you arrive at the conception of a boundless
+and infinite place, that contains all limited places and all possible
+bodies: that boundless and infinite place is space.
+
+And I tell you in this nothing that is not very simple. Look. Do you
+deny that this water is in a vase? Do you deny that this vase is in this
+hall? Do you deny that this hall is in a larger place, which is in its
+turn in another larger still? I can thus carry you on to infinite space.
+If you deny a single one of these propositions, you deny all, the first
+as well as the last; and if you admit the first, you are forced to admit
+the last.
+
+It cannot be supposed that sensibility, which is not able to give us
+even the idea of body, alone elevates us to the idea of space. The
+intervention of a superior principle is, therefore, here necessary.
+
+As we believe that every body is contained in a place, so we believe
+that every event happens in time. Can you conceive an event happening,
+except in some point of duration? This duration is extended and
+successively increased to your mind's eye, and you end by conceiving it
+unlimited like space. Deny duration, and you deny all the sciences that
+measure it, you destroy all the natural beliefs upon which human life
+reposes. It is hardly necessary to add that sensibility alone no more
+explains the notion of time than that of space, both of which are
+nevertheless inherent in the knowledge of the external world.
+
+Empiricism is, therefore, convicted of being unable to dispense with
+universal and necessary principles, and of being unable to explain them.
+
+Let us pause: either all our preceding works have terminated in nothing
+but chimeras, or they permit us to consider as a point definitely
+acquired for science, that there are in the human mind, for whomsoever
+interrogates it sincerely, principles really stamped with the character
+of universality and necessity.
+
+After having established and defended the existence of universal and
+necessary principles, we might investigate and pursue this kind of
+principles in all the departments of human knowledge, and attempt an
+exact and rigorous classification; but illustrious examples have taught
+us to fear to compromise truths of the greatest price by mixing with
+them conjectures which, in giving brilliancy, perhaps, to the spirit of
+philosophy, diminish its authority in the eyes of the wise. We, also,
+following the example of Kant, attempted before you, last year,[21] a
+classification, even a reduction of universal and necessary principles,
+and of all the notions that are connected with them. This work has not
+lost for us its importance, but we will not reproduce it. In the
+interest of the great cause which we serve, and taking thought here only
+to establish upon solid foundations the doctrine which is adapted to the
+French genius in the nineteenth century, we will carefully shun every
+thing that might seem personal and hazardous; and, instead of examining,
+criticising,[22] and reconstituting the classification which the
+philosophy of Koenigsberg has given of universal and necessary
+principles, we prefer, we find it much more useful, to enable you to
+penetrate deeper into the nature of these principles, by showing you
+what faculty of ours it is that discovers them to us, and to which they
+are related and correspond.
+
+The peculiarity of these principles is, that each one of us in
+reflection recognizes that he possesses them, but that he is not their
+author. We conceive them and apply them, we do not constitute them. Let
+us interrogate our consciousness. Do we refer to ourselves, for example,
+the definitions of geometry, as we do certain movements of which we feel
+ourselves to be the cause? If it is I who make these definitions, they
+are therefore mine, I can unmake them, modify them, change them, even
+annihilate them. It is certain that I cannot do it. I am not, then, the
+author of them. It has also been demonstrated that the principles of
+which we have spoken cannot be derived from sensation, which is
+variable, limited, incapable of producing and authorizing any thing
+universal and necessary. I arrive, then, at the following consequence,
+also necessary:--truth is in me and not by me. As sensibility puts me in
+relation with the physical world, so another faculty puts me in
+communication with the truths that depend upon neither the world nor me,
+and that faculty is reason.
+
+There are in men three general faculties which are always mingled
+together, and are rarely exercised except simultaneously, but which
+analysis divides in order to study them better, without misconceiving
+their reciprocal play, their intimate connection, their indivisible
+unity. The first of these faculties is activity, voluntary and free
+activity, in which human personality especially appears, and without
+which the other faculties would be as if they were not, since we should
+not exist for ourselves. Let us examine ourselves at the moment when a
+sensation is produced in us; we shall recognize that there is
+perception only so far as there is some degree of attention, and that
+perception ends at the moment when our activity ends. One does not
+recollect what he did in perfect sleep or in a swoon; because then he
+had lost voluntary activity, consequently consciousness; consequently,
+again, memory. Passion often, in depriving us of liberty, deprives us,
+at the same time, of the consciousness of our actions and of ourselves;
+then, to use a just and common expression, one knows not what he does.
+It is by liberty that man is truly man, that he possesses himself and
+governs himself; without it, he falls again under the yoke of nature; he
+is, without it, only a more admirable and more beautiful part of nature.
+But while I am endowed with activity and liberty, I am also passive in
+other respects; I am subject to the laws of the external world; I suffer
+and I enjoy without being myself the author of my joys and my
+sufferings; I feel rising within me needs, desires, passions, which I
+have not made, which by turns fill my life with happiness and misery.
+Finally, besides volition and sensibility, man has the faculty of
+knowing, has understanding, intelligence, reason, the name matters
+little, by means of which he is elevated to truths of different orders,
+and among others, to universal and necessary truths, which suppose in
+reason, attached to its exercise, principles entirely distinct from the
+impressions of the senses and the resolutions of the will.[23]
+
+Voluntary activity, sensibility, reason, are all equally certain.
+Consciousness verifies the existence of necessary principles, which
+direct the reason quite as well as that of sensations and volitions. I
+call every thing real that falls under observation. I suffer; my
+suffering is real, inasmuch as I am conscious of it: it is the same with
+liberty: it is the same with reason and the principles that govern it.
+We can affirm, then, that the existence of universal and necessary
+principles rests upon the testimony of observation, and even of the most
+immediate and surest observation, that of consciousness.
+
+But consciousness is only a witness,--it makes what is appear; it
+creates nothing. It is not because consciousness announces it to you,
+that you have produced such or such a movement, that you have
+experienced such or such an impression. Neither is it because
+consciousness says to us that reason is constrained to admit such or
+such a truth, that this truth exists; it is because it exists that it is
+impossible for reason not to admit it. The truths that reason attains by
+the aid of universal and necessary principles with which it is provided,
+are absolute truths; reason does not create them, it discovers them.
+Reason is not the judge of its own principles, and cannot account for
+them, for it only judges by them, and they are to it its own laws. Much
+less does consciousness make these principles, or the truths which they
+reveal to us; for consciousness has no other office, no other power than
+in some sort to serve as a mirror for reason. Absolute truths are,
+therefore, independent of experience and consciousness, and at the same
+time, they are attested by experience and consciousness. On the one
+hand, these truths declare themselves in experience; on the other, no
+experience explains them. Behold how experience and reason differ and
+agree, and how, by means of experience, we come to find something which
+surpasses it.
+
+So the philosophy which we teach rests neither upon hypothetical
+principles, nor upon empirical principles. It is observation itself, but
+observation applied to the higher portion of our knowledge, which
+furnishes us with the principles that we seek, with a point of departure
+at once solid and elevated.[24]
+
+This point of departure we have found, and we do not abandon it. We
+remain immovably attached to it. The study of universal and necessary
+principles, considered under their different aspects, and in the great
+problems which they solve, is almost the whole of philosophy; it fills
+it, measures it, divides it. If psychology is the regular study of the
+human mind and its laws, it is evident that that of universal and
+necessary principles which preside over the exercise of reason, is the
+especial domain of psychology, which in Germany is called rational
+psychology, and is very different from empirical psychology. Since logic
+is the examination of the value and the legitimacy of our different
+means of knowing, its most important employment must be to estimate the
+value and the legitimacy of the principles which are the foundations of
+our most important cognitions. In fine, the meditation of these same
+principles conducts us to theodicea, and opens to us the sanctuary of
+philosophy, if we would ascend to their true source, to that sovereign
+reason which is the first and last explanation of our own.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] 1st Series of our Course, vol. i.
+
+[19] 1st Series, vol. i.
+
+[20] Ibid.
+
+[21] 1st Series, vol. i., Fragments of the Course of 1817.
+
+[22] See that criticism, 1st Series, vol. v., _Kant_, lecture 8.
+
+[23] This classification of the human faculties, save some differences
+more nominal than real, is now generally adopted, and makes the
+foundation of the psychology of our times. See our writings, among
+others, 1st Series, Course of 1816, lectures 23 and 24: _Histoire du
+moi_; ibid., _Des faits de Conscience_; vol. iii., lecture 3, _Examen de
+la Theorie des Facultes dans Condillac_; vol. iv., lecture 21, _des
+Facultes selon Reid_; vol. v., lecture 8, _Examen de la Theorie de
+Kant_; 3d Series, vol iv., _Preface de la Premiere Edition, Examen des
+Lecons de M. Laromiguiere, Introduction aux Oeuvres de M. de Biran,
+etc._
+
+[24] This lecture on the existence of universal and necessary
+principles, which was easily comprehended, in 1818, by an auditory to
+which long discussions had already been presented during the two
+previous years, appearing here without the support of these
+preliminaries, will not perhaps be entirely satisfactory to the reader.
+We beseech him to consult carefully the first volume of the 1st Series
+of our Course, which contains an abridgment, at least, of the numerous
+lectures of 1816 and 1817, of which this is a _resume_; especially to
+read in the third, fourth, and fifth volumes of the 1st Series, the
+developed analyses, in which, under different forms, universal and
+necessary principles are demonstrated as far as may be, and in the third
+volume of the 2d Series the lectures devoted to establish against Locke
+the same principles.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
+
+    _Resume_ of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the
+    origin of universal and necessary principles.--Danger of this
+    question, and its necessity.--Different forms under which truth
+    presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms:
+    theory of spontaneity and reflection.--The primitive form of
+    principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form, and
+    gives them their actual form.--Examination and refutation of the
+    theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an
+    induction founded on particular notions.
+
+
+We may regard as a certain conquest of the experimental method and of
+true psychological analysis, the establishment of principles which at
+the same time that they are given to us by the surest of all
+experiences, that of consciousness, have a bearing superior to
+experience, and open to us regions inaccessible to empiricism. We have
+recognized such principles at the head of nearly all the sciences; then,
+searching among our different faculties for that which may have given
+them to us, we have ascertained that it is impossible to refer them to
+any other faculty than to that general faculty of knowing which we call
+reason, very different from reasoning, to which it furnishes its laws.
+
+That is the point at which we have arrived. But is it possible to stop
+there?
+
+In human intelligence, as it is now developed, universal and necessary
+principles are offered to us under forms in some sort consecrated. The
+principle of causality, for example, is thus enounced to us:--Every
+thing that begins to appear necessarily has a cause. Other principles
+have this same axiomatic form. But have they always had it, and did they
+spring from the human mind with this logical and scholastic apparel, as
+Minerva sprang all armed from the head of Jupiter? With what characters
+did they show themselves at first, before taking those in which they are
+now clothed, and which can scarcely be their primitive characters? In a
+word, is it possible to find the origin of universal and necessary
+principles, and the route which they must have followed in order to
+arrive at what they are to-day? A new problem, the importance of which
+it is easy to feel; for, if it can be resolved, what light will be shed
+upon these principles! On the other hand, what difficulties must be
+encountered! How can we penetrate to the sources of human knowledge,
+which are concealed, like those of the Nile? Is it not to be feared
+that, in plunging into the obscure past, instead of truth, one may
+encounter an hypothesis; that, attaching himself, then, to this
+hypothesis, he may transport it from the past to the present, and that,
+being deceived in regard to the origin of principles, he may be led to
+misconceive their actual and certain characters, or, at least, to
+mutilate and enfeeble those which the adopted origin would not easily
+explain? This danger is so great, this rock is so celebrated in
+shipwrecks, that before braving it one should know how to take many
+precautions against the seductions of the spirit of the system. It is
+even conceived that great philosophers, who were timid in no place, have
+suppressed the perilous problem. In fact, by undertaking to grapple with
+this problem at first, Locke and Condillac went far astray,[25] and it
+must be said, corrupted all philosophy at its source. The empirical
+school, which lauds the experimental method so much, turns its back upon
+it, thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the
+actual characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by
+consciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without
+guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. Reid[26] and Kant[27] showed
+themselves much more observing by confining themselves within the
+limits of the present, through fear of losing themselves in the darkness
+of the past. Both freely treat of universal and necessary principles in
+the form which they now have, without asking what was their primitive
+form. We much prefer this wise circumspection to the adventurous spirit
+of the empirical school. Nevertheless, when a problem is given out, so
+long as it is not solved, it troubles and besets the human mind.
+Philosophy ought not to shun it then, but its duty is to approach it
+only with extreme prudence and a severe method.
+
+We cannot recollect too well, for the sake of others and ourselves, that
+the primitive state of human cognitions is remote from us; we can
+scarcely bring it within the reach of our vision and submit it to
+observation; the actual state, on the contrary, is always at our
+disposal: it is sufficient for us to enter into ourselves, to fathom
+consciousness by reflection, and make it give up what it contains.
+Setting out from certain facts, we shall not be liable to wander
+subsequently into hypotheses, or if, in ascending to the primitive
+state, we fall into any error, we shall be able to perceive it and
+repair it by the aid of the truth which an impartial observation shall
+have given us; every origin which shall not legitimately end at the
+point where we are, is by that alone convicted of being false, and will
+deserve to be discarded.[28]
+
+You know that a large portion of the last year was spent upon this
+question. We took, one by one, universal and necessary questions
+submitted to our examination, in order to determine the origin of each
+one of them, its primitive form, and the different forms which have
+successively clothed it; only after having operated thus upon a
+sufficiently large number of principles, did we come slowly to a general
+conclusion, and that conclusion we believe ourselves entitled to express
+here briefly as the solid result of a most circumspect analysis, and, at
+least, a most methodical labor. We must either renew before you this
+labor, this analysis, and thereby run the risk of not being able to
+complete the long course that we have marked out for ourselves, or we
+must limit ourselves to reminding you of the essential traits of the
+theory at which we arrived.
+
+This theory, moreover, is in itself so simple, that, without the dress
+of regular demonstrations upon which it is founded, its own evidence
+will sufficiently establish it. It wholly rests upon the distinction
+between the different forms under which truth is presented to us. It is,
+in its somewhat arid generality, as follows:
+
+1st. One can perceive truth in two different ways. Sometimes one
+perceives it in such or such a particular circumstance. For example, in
+presence of two apples or two stones, and of two other similar objects
+placed by the side of the first, I perceive this truth with absolute
+certainty, viz., that these two stones and these two other stones make
+four stones,--which is in some sort a concrete apperception of the
+truth, because the truth is given to us in regard to real and
+determinate objects. Sometimes I also affirm in a general manner that
+two and two equal four, abstracting every determinate object,--which is
+the abstract conception of truth.
+
+Now, of these two ways of knowing truth, which precedes in the
+chronological order of human knowledge? Is it not certain, may it not be
+avowed by every one, that the particular precedes the general, that the
+concrete precedes the abstract, that we begin by perceiving such or such
+a determinate truth, in such or such a case, at such or such a moment,
+in such or such a place, before conceiving a general truth,
+independently of every application and different circumstances of place
+and time?
+
+2d. We can perceive the same truth without asking ourselves this
+question: Have we the ability not to admit this truth? We perceive it,
+then, by virtue alone of the intelligence which has been given us, and
+which enters spontaneously into exercise; or rather, we try to doubt the
+truth which we perceive, we attempt to deny it; we are not able to do
+it, and then it is presented to reflection as superior to all possible
+negation; it appears to us no longer only as a truth, but as a necessary
+truth.
+
+Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflection, that
+reflection supposes an anterior operation, and that this operation, in
+order not to be one of reflection, and not to suppose another before it,
+must be entirely spontaneous; that thus the spontaneous and instinctive
+intuition of truth precedes its reflection and necessary conception?
+
+Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the individual and in the
+race. It is, _par excellence_, the philosophic faculty; it sometimes
+engenders doubt and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, for being
+rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates
+artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force
+of habit as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous intuition is the
+true logic of nature. It presides over the acquisition of nearly all our
+cognitions. Children, the people, three-fourths of the human race never
+pass beyond it, and rest there with boundless security.
+
+The question of the origin of human cognitions is thus resolved for us
+in the simplest manner: it is enough for us to determine that operation
+of the mind which precedes all others, without which no other would take
+place, and which is the first exercise, and the first form of our
+faculty of knowing.[29]
+
+Since every thing that bears the character of reflection cannot be
+primitive, and supposes an anterior state, it follows, that the
+principles which are the subject of our study could not have possessed
+at first the reflective and abstract character with which they are now
+marked, that they must have shown themselves at their origin in some
+particular circumstance, under a concrete and determinate form, and that
+in time they were disengaged from this form, in order to be invested
+with their actual, abstract, and universal form. These are the two ends
+of the chain; it remains for us to seek how the human mind has been from
+one to the other, from the primitive state to the actual state, from the
+concrete state to the abstract state.
+
+How can we go from the concrete to the abstract? Evidently by that
+well-known operation which is called abstraction. Thus far, nothing is
+more simple. But it is necessary to discriminate between two sorts of
+abstractions.
+
+In presence of several particular objects, you omit the characters which
+distinguish them, and separately consider a character which is common to
+them all--you abstract this character. Examine the nature and conditions
+of this abstraction; it proceeds by means of comparison, and it is
+founded on a certain number of particular and different cases. Take an
+example: examine how we form the abstract and general idea of color.
+Place before my eyes for the first time a white object. Can I here at
+the first step immediately arrive at a general idea of color? Can I at
+first place on one side the whiteness, and on the other side the color?
+Analyze what passes within you. You experience a sensation of whiteness.
+Omit the individuality of this sensation, and you wholly destroy it; you
+cannot neglect the whiteness, and preserve or abstract the color; for, a
+single color being given, which is a white color, if you take away
+that, there remains to you absolutely nothing in regard to color. Let a
+blue object succeed this white object, then a red object, etc.; having
+sensations differing from each other, you can neglect their differences,
+and only consider what they have in common, that they are sensations of
+sight, that is to say, colors, and you thus obtain the abstract and
+general idea of color. Take another example: if you had never smelled
+but a single flower, the violet, for instance, would you have had the
+idea of odor in general? No. The odor of the violet would be for you the
+only odor, beyond which you would not seek, you could not even imagine
+another. But if to the odor of the violet is added that of the rose, and
+other different odors, in a greater or less number, provided there be
+several, and a comparison be possible, and consequently, knowledge of
+their differences and their resemblances, then you will be able to form
+the general idea of odor. What is there in common between the odor of
+one flower and that of another flower, except that they have been
+smelled by aid of the same organ, and by the same person? What here
+renders generalization possible, is the unity of the sentient subject
+which remembers having been modified, while remaining the same, by
+different sensations; now, this subject can feel itself identical under
+different modifications, and it can conceive in the qualities of the
+object felt some resemblance and some dissimilarity, only on the
+condition of a certain number of sensations experienced, of odors
+smelled. In that case, but in that case alone, there can be comparison,
+abstraction, and generalization, because there are different and similar
+elements.
+
+In order to arrive at the abstract form of universal and necessary
+principles, we have no need of all this labor. Let us take again, for
+example, the principle of cause. If you suppose six particular cases
+from which you have abstracted this principle, it will contain neither
+more nor less ideas than if you had deduced it from a single one. To be
+able to say that the event which I see must have a cause, it is not
+indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other. The
+principle which compels me to pronounce this judgment, is already
+complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in respect to
+its object, it cannot change in itself; it neither increases nor
+decreases with the greater or less number of its applications. The only
+difference that it is subject to in regard to us, is, that we apply it
+whether we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its
+particular application. The question is not to eliminate the
+particularity of the phenomenon, wherein it appears to us, whether it be
+the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to
+conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for
+every thing that begins to exist. Here, it is not because I have been
+the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several different
+cases, that I have come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf
+falls: at the same instant I think, I believe, I declare that this
+falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man has been killed: at the
+same instant I believe, I proclaim that this death must have a cause.
+Each one of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances,
+and something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them cannot but
+have a cause. Now, I am perfectly able to disengage the universal from
+the particular, in regard to the first fact as well as in regard to the
+second fact, for the universal is in the first quite as well as in the
+second. In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in the
+first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the third, nor in a
+thousandth; for a thousand are not nearer than one to the infinite, to
+absolute universality. It is the same, and still more evidently, with
+necessity. Pay particular attention to this point: if necessity is not
+in the first fact, it cannot be in any; for necessity cannot be formed
+little by little, and by successive increment. If, at the first murder
+that I see, I do not exclaim that this murder necessarily has a cause,
+at the thousandth murder, although it shall have been proved that all
+the others have had causes, I shall have the right to think that this
+new murder has, very probably, also its cause; but I shall never have
+the right to declare that it necessarily has a cause. But when
+necessity and universality are already in a single case, that case alone
+is sufficient to entitle us to deduce them from it.[30]
+
+We have established the existence of universal and necessary principles:
+we have marked their origin; we have shown that they appear to us at
+first from a particular fact, and we have shown by what process, by what
+sort of abstraction the mind disengages them from the determinate and
+concrete form which envelops them, but does not constitute them. Our
+task, then, seems accomplished. But it is not,--we must defend the
+solution which we have just presented to you of the problem of the
+origin of principles against the theory of an eminent metaphysician,
+whose just authority might seduce you. M. Maine de Biran[31] is, like
+us, the declared adversary of the philosophy of sensation,--he admits
+universal and necessary principles; but the origin which he assigns to
+them, puts them, according to us, in peril, and would lead back by a
+_detour_ to the empirical school.
+
+Universal and necessary principles, if expressed in propositions,
+embrace several terms. For example, in the principle that every
+phenomenon supposes a cause; and in this, that every quality supposes a
+substance, by the side of the ideas of quality and phenomenon are met
+the ideas of cause and substance, which seem the foundation of these two
+principles. M. de Biran pretends that the two ideas are anterior to the
+two principles which contain them, and that we at first find these ideas
+in ourselves in the consciousness that we are cause and substance, and
+that, these ideas once being thus acquired, induction transports them
+out of ourselves, makes us conceive causes and substances wherever there
+are phenomena and qualities, and that the principles of cause and
+substance are thus explained. I beg pardon of my illustrious friend;
+but it is impossible to admit in the least degree this explanation.
+
+The possession of the origin of the idea of cause is by no means
+sufficient for the possession of the origin of the principle of
+causality; for the idea and the principle are things essentially
+different. You have established, I would say to M. de Biran, that the
+idea of cause is found in that of productive volition:--you will to
+produce certain effects, and you produce them; hence the idea of a
+cause, of a particular cause, which is yourself; but between this fact
+and the axiom that all phenomena which appear necessarily have a cause,
+there is a gulf.
+
+You believe that you can bridge it over by induction. The idea of cause
+once found in ourselves, induction applies it, you say, wherever a new
+phenomenon appears. But let us not be deceived by words, and let us
+account for this extraordinary induction. The following dilemma I submit
+with confidence to the loyal dialectics of M. de Biran:
+
+Is the induction of which you speak universal and necessary? Then it is
+a different name for the same thing. An induction which forces us
+universally and necessarily to associate the idea of cause with that of
+every phenomenon that begins to appear is precisely what is called the
+principle of causality. On the contrary, is this induction neither
+universal nor necessary? It cannot supply the place of the principle of
+cause, and the explanation destroys the thing to be explained.
+
+It follows from this that the only true result of these various
+psychological investigations is, that the idea of personal and free
+cause precedes all exercise of the principle of causality, but without
+explaining it.
+
+The theory which we combat is much more powerless in regard to other
+principles which, far from being exercised before the ideas from which
+it is pretended to deduce them, precede them, and even give birth to
+them. How have we acquired the idea of time and that of space, except by
+aid of the principle that the bodies and events, which we see are in
+time and in space? We have seen[32] that, without this principle, and
+confined to the data of the senses and consciousness, neither time nor
+space would exist for us. Whence have we deduced the idea of the
+infinite, except from the principle that the finite supposes the
+infinite, that all finite and defective things, which we perceive by our
+senses and feel within us, are not sufficient for themselves, and
+suppose something infinite and perfect? Omit the principle, and the idea
+of the infinite is destroyed. Evidently this idea is derived from the
+application of the principle, and it is not the principle which is
+derived from the idea.
+
+Let us dwell a little longer on the principle of substances. The
+question is to know whether the idea of subject, of substance, precedes
+or follows the exercise of the principle. Upon what ground could the
+idea of substance be anterior to the principle that every quality
+supposes a substance? Upon the ground alone that substance be the object
+of self-observation, as cause is said to be. When I produce a certain
+effect, I may perceive myself in action and as cause; in that case,
+there would be no need of the intervention of any principle; but it is
+not, it cannot be, the same, when the question is concerning the
+substance which is the basis of the phenomena of consciousness, of our
+qualities, our acts, our faculties even; for this substance is not
+directly observable; it does not perceive itself, it conceives itself.
+Consciousness perceives sensation, volition, thought, it does not
+perceive their subject. Who has ever perceived the soul? Has it not been
+necessary, in order to attain this invisible essence, to set out from a
+principle which has the power to bind the visible to the invisible,
+phenomenon to being, to wit, the principle of substances?[33] The idea
+of substance is necessarily posterior to the application of the
+principle, and, consequently, it cannot explain its formation.
+
+Let us be well understood. We do not mean to say that we have in the
+mind the principle of substances before perceiving a phenomenon, quite
+ready to apply the principle to the phenomenon, when it shall present
+itself; we only say that it is impossible for us to perceive a
+phenomenon without conceiving at the same instant a substance, that is
+to say, to the power of perceiving a phenomenon, either by the senses or
+by consciousness, is joined that of conceiving the substance in which it
+inheres. The facts thus take place:--the perception of phenomena and the
+conception of the substance which is their basis are not successive,
+they are simultaneous. Before this impartial analysis fall at once two
+equal and opposite errors--one, that experience, exterior or interior,
+can beget principles; the other, that principles precede experience.[34]
+
+To sum up, the pretension of explaining principles by the ideas which
+they contain, is a chimerical one. In supposing that all the ideas which
+enter into principles are anterior to them, it is necessary to show how
+principles are deduced from these ideas,--which is the first and radical
+difficulty. Moreover, it is not true that in all cases ideas precede
+principles, for often principles precede ideas,--a second difficulty
+equally insurmountable. But whether ideas are anterior or posterior to
+principles, principles are always independent of them; they surpass them
+by all the superiority of universal and necessary principles over simple
+ideas.[35]
+
+We should, perhaps, beg your pardon for the austerity of this lecture.
+But philosophical questions must be treated philosophically: it does not
+belong to us to change their character. On other subjects, another
+language. Psychology has its own language, the entire merit of which is
+a severe precision, as the highest law of psychology itself is the
+shunning of every hypothesis, and an inviolable respect for facts. This
+law we have religiously followed. While investigating the origin of
+universal and necessary principles, we have especially endeavored not to
+destroy the thing to be explained by a systematic explanation. Universal
+and necessary principles have come forth in their integrity from our
+analysis. We have given the history of the different forms which they
+successively assume, and we have shown, that in all these changes they
+remain the same, and of the same authority, whether they enter
+spontaneously and involuntarily into exercise, and apply themselves to
+particular and determinate objects, or reflection turns them back upon
+themselves in order to interrogate them in regard to their nature, or
+abstraction makes them appear under the form in which their universality
+and their necessity are manifest. Their certainty is the same under all
+their forms, in all their applications; it has neither generation nor
+origin; it is not born such or such a day, and it does not increase with
+time, for it knows no degrees. We have not commenced by believing a
+little in the principle of causality, of substances, of time, of space,
+of the infinite, etc., then believing a little more, then believing
+wholly. These principles have been, from the beginning, what they will
+be in the end, all-powerful, necessary, irresistible. The conviction
+which they give is always absolute, only it is not always accompanied by
+a clear consciousness. Leibnitz himself has no more confidence in the
+principle of causality, and even in his favorite principle of sufficient
+reason, than the most ignorant of men; but the latter applies these
+principles without reflecting on their power, by which he is
+unconsciously governed, whilst Leibnitz is astonished at their power,
+studies it, and for all explanation, refers it to the human mind, and to
+the nature of things, that is to say, he elevates, to borrow the fine
+expression of M. Royer-Collard,[36] the ignorance of the mass of men to
+its highest source. Such is, thank heaven, the only difference that
+separates the peasant from the philosopher, in regard to those great
+principles of every kind which, in one way or another, discover to men
+the same truths indispensable to their physical, intellectual, and moral
+existence, and, in their ephemeral life, on the circumscribed point of
+space and time where fortune has thrown them, reveal to them something
+of the universal, the necessary, and the infinite.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] First Series, vol. iv., lectures 1, 2, and 3.
+
+[26] _Ibid._, vol. iv., etc.
+
+[27] _Ibid._, vol. v., lecture 8.
+
+[28] We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and confirmed by the
+errors of those who have dared to break it, this rule of true
+psychological analysis, that, before passing to the question of the
+origin of an idea, a notion, a belief, any principle whatever, the
+actual characters of this idea, this notion, this belief, this
+principle, must have been a long time studied and well established, with
+the firm resolution of not altering them under any pretext whatever in
+wishing to explain them. We believe that we have, as Leibnitz says,
+settled this point. See 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of
+1817, and the Opening Discourse; vol. iii., lecture 1, _Locke_; lecture
+2, _Condillac_; lecture 3, almost entire, and lecture 8, p. 260; 2d
+Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Systeme de Locke_, lecture 16, p. 77-87;
+3d Series, vol. iv., _Examination of the Lectures of M. Loremquiere_, p.
+268.
+
+[29] This theory of spontaneity and of reflection, which in our view is
+the key to so many difficulties, continually recurs in our works. One
+may see, vol. i. of the 1st Series, in a programme of the Course of
+1817, and in a fragment entitled _De la Spontaneite et de la Reflexion_;
+vol. iv. of the same Series, Examination of Reid's Philosophy, _passim_;
+vol. v., Examination of Kant's System, lecture 8; 2d Series, vol. i.,
+_passim_; vol. iii., Lectures on Judgment; 3d Series, _Fragments
+Philosophiques_, vol. iv., preface of the first edition, p. 37, etc.; it
+will be found in different lectures of this volume, among others, in the
+third, On the value of Universal and Necessary Principles; in the fifth,
+On Mysticism; and in the eleventh, Primary Data of Common Sense.
+
+[30] On immediate abstraction and comparative abstraction, see 1st
+Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and everywhere in our
+other Courses.
+
+[31] On M. de Biran, on his merits and defects, see our _Introduction_
+at the head of his Works.
+
+[32] See lecture 1.
+
+[33] See vol. i. of the 1st Series, course of 1816, and 2d Series, vol.
+iii., lecture 18, p. 140-146.
+
+[34] We have developed this analysis, and elucidated these results in
+the 17th lecture of vol. ii. of the 2d Series.
+
+[35] We have already twice recurred, and more in detail, to the
+impossibility of legitimately explaining universal and necessary
+principles by any association or induction whatever, founded upon any
+particular idea, 2d Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Systeme de Locke_,
+lecture 19, p. 166; and 3d Series, vol. iv., _Introduction aux Oeuvres
+de M. de Biran_, p. 319. We have also made known the opinion of Reid,
+1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 489. Finally, the profoundest of
+Reid's disciples, the most enlightened judge that we know of things
+philosophical, Sir W. Hamilton, professor of logic in the University of
+Edinburgh, has not hesitated to adopt the conclusions of our discussion,
+to which he is pleased to refer his readers:--_Discussions on Philosophy
+and Literature, etc._, by Sir William Hamilton, London, 1852. Appendix
+I, p. 588.
+
+[36] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iv., p. 435. "When we revolt against
+primitive facts, we equally misconceive the constitution of our
+intelligence and the end of philosophy. Is explaining a fact any thing
+else than deriving it from another fact, and if this kind of explanation
+is to terminate at all, does it not suppose facts inexplicable? The
+science of the human mind will have been carried to the highest degree
+of perfection it can attain, it will be complete, when it shall know how
+to derive ignorance from the most elevated source."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+ON THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
+
+    Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism.--Recurrence to
+    the theory of spontaneity and reflection.
+
+
+After having recognized the existence of universal and necessary
+principles, their actual characters, and their primitive characters, we
+have to examine their value, and the legitimacy of the conclusions which
+may be drawn from them,--we pass from psychology to logic.
+
+We have defended against Locke and his school the necessity and
+universality of certain principles. We now come to Kant, who recognizes
+with us these principles, but confines their power within the limits of
+the subject that conceives them, and, so far as subjective, declares
+them to be without legitimate application to any object, that is to say,
+without objectivity, to use the language of the philosopher of
+Koenigsberg, which, right or wrong, begins to pass into the
+philosophic language of Europe.
+
+Let us comprehend well the import of this new discussion. The principles
+that govern our judgments, that preside over most sciences, that rule
+our actions,--have they in themselves an absolute truth, or are they
+only regulating laws of our thought? The question is, to know whether it
+is true in itself, that every phenomenon has a cause, and every quality
+a subject, whether every thing extended is really in space, and every
+succession in time, etc. If it is not absolutely true that every quality
+has its subject of inherence, it is not, then, certain, that we have a
+soul, a real substance of all the qualities which consciousness
+attests. If the principle of causality is only a law of our mind, the
+external world, which this principle discovers to us, loses its reality,
+it is only a succession of phenomena, without any effective action over
+each other, as Hume would have it, and even the impressions of our
+senses are destitute of causes. Matter exists no more than the soul.
+Nothing exists; every thing is reduced to mobile appearances, given up
+to a perpetual becoming, which again is accomplished we know not where,
+since in reality there is neither time nor space. Since the principle of
+sufficient reason only serves to put in motion human curiosity, once in
+possession of the fatal secret that it can attain nothing real, this
+curiosity would be very good to weary itself in searching for reasons
+which inevitably escape it, and in discovering relations which
+correspond only to the wants of our mind, and do not in the least
+correspond to the nature of things. In fine, if the principle of
+causality, of substances, of final causes, of sufficient reason, are
+only our modes of conception, God, whom all these principles reveal to
+us, will no more be any thing but the last of chimeras, which vanishes
+with all the others in the breath of the Critique.
+
+Kant has established, as well as Reid and ourself, the existence of
+universal and necessary principles; but an involuntary disciple of his
+century, an unconscious servant of the empirical school, to which he
+places himself in the attitude of an adversary, he makes to it the
+immense concession that these principles are applied only to the
+impressions of sensibility, that their part is to put these impressions
+in a certain order, but that beyond these impressions, beyond
+experience, their power expires. This concession has ruined the whole
+enterprise of the German philosopher.
+
+This enterprise was at once honest and great. Kant, grieved at the
+skepticism of his times, proposed to arrest it by fairly meeting it. He
+thought to disarm Hume by conceding to him that our highest conceptions
+do not extend themselves beyond the inclosure of the human mind; and at
+the same time, he supposed that he had sufficiently vindicated the human
+mind by restoring to it the universal and necessary principles which
+direct it. But, according to the strong expression of M. Royer-Collard,
+"one does not encounter skepticism,--as soon as he has penetrated into
+the human understanding he has completely taken it by storm." A severe
+circumspection is one thing, skepticism is another. Doubt is not only
+permitted, it is commanded by reason itself in the employment and
+legitimate applications of our different faculties; but when it is
+applied to the legitimacy itself of our faculties, it no longer
+elucidates reason, it overwhelms it. In fact, with what would you have
+reason defend herself, when she has called herself in question? Kant
+himself, then, overturned the dogmatism which he proposed at once to
+restrain and save, at least in morals, and he put German philosophy upon
+a route, at the end of which was an abyss. In vain has this great
+man--for his intentions and his character, without speaking of his
+genius, merit for him this name--undertaken with Hume an ingenious and
+learned controversy; he has been vanquished in this controversy, and
+Hume remains master of the field of battle.
+
+What matters it, in fact, whether there may or may not be in the human
+mind universal and necessary principles, if these principles only serve
+to classify our sensations, and to make us ascend, step by step, to
+ideas that are most sublime, but have for ourselves no reality? The
+human mind is, then, as Kant himself well expressed it, like a banker
+who should take bills ranged in order on his desk for real values;--he
+possesses nothing but papers. We have thus returned, then, to that
+conceptualism of the middle age, which, concentrating truth within the
+human intelligence, makes the nature of things a phantom of intelligence
+projecting itself everywhere out of itself, at once triumphant and
+impotent, since it produces every thing, and produces only chimeras.[37]
+
+
+The reproach which a sound philosophy will content itself with making to
+Kant, is, that his system is not in accordance with facts. Philosophy
+can and must separate itself from the crowd for the explanation of
+facts; but, it cannot be too often repeated, it must not in the
+explanation destroy what it pretends to explain; otherwise it does not
+explain, it imagines. Here, the important fact which it is the question
+to explain is the belief of the human mind, and the system of Kant
+annihilates it.
+
+In fact, when we are speaking of the truth of universal and necessary
+principles, we do not believe they are true only for us:--we believe
+them to be true in themselves, and still true, were there no minds of
+ours to conceive them. We regard them as independent of us; they seem to
+us to impose themselves upon our intelligence by the force of the truth
+that is in them. So, in order to express faithfully what passes within
+us, it would be necessary to reverse the proposition of Kant, and
+instead of saying with him, that these principles are the necessary laws
+of our mind, therefore they have no absolute value out of mind; we
+should much rather say, that these principles have an absolute value in
+themselves, therefore we cannot but believe them.
+
+And even this necessity of belief with which the new skepticism arms
+itself, is not the indispensable condition of the application of
+principles. We have established[38] that the necessity of believing
+supposes reflection, examination, an effort to deny and the want of
+power to do it; but before all reflection, intelligence spontaneously
+seizes the truth, and, in the spontaneous apperception, is not the
+sentiment of necessity, nor consequently that character of subjectivity
+of which the German school speaks so much.
+
+Let us, then, here recur to that spontaneous intuition of truth, which
+Kant knew not, in the circle where his profoundly reflective and
+somewhat scholastic habits held him captive.
+
+Is it true that there is no judgment, even affirmative in form, which is
+not mixed with negation?
+
+It seems indeed that every affirmative judgment is at the same time
+negative; in fact, to affirm that a thing exists, is to deny its
+non-existence; as every negative judgment is at the same time
+affirmative; for to deny the existence of a thing, is to affirm its
+non-existence. If it is so, then every judgment, whatever may be its
+form, affirmative or negative, since these two forms come back to each
+other, supposes a pre-established doubt in regard to the existence of
+the thing in question, supposes some exercise of reflection, in the
+course of which the mind feels itself constrained to bear such or such a
+judgment, so that at this point of view the foundation of the judgment
+seems to be in its necessity; and then recurs the celebrated
+objection:--if you judge thus only because it is impossible for you not
+to do it, you have for a guaranty of the truth nothing but yourself and
+your own ways of conceiving; it is the human mind that transports its
+laws out of itself; it is the subject that makes the object out of its
+own image, without ever going beyond the inclosure of subjectivity.
+
+We respond, going directly to the root of the difficulty:--it is not
+true that all our judgments are negative. We admit that in the
+reflective state every affirmative judgment supposes a negative
+judgment, and reciprocally. But is reason exercised only on the
+condition of reflection? Is there not a primitive affirmation which
+implies no negation? As we often act without deliberating on our action,
+without premeditating it, and as we manifest in this case an activity
+that is free still, but free with a liberty that is not reflective; so
+reason often perceives the truth without traversing doubt or error.
+Reflection is a return to consciousness, or to an operation wholly
+different from it. We do not find, then, in any primitive fact, that
+every judgment which contains it presupposes another in which it is not.
+We thus arrive at a judgment free from all reflection, to an affirmation
+without any mixture of negation, to an immediate intuition, the
+legitimate child of the natural energy of thought, like the inspiration
+of the poet, the instinct of the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet.
+Such is the first act of the faculty of knowing. If one contradicts this
+primitive affirmation, the faculty of knowing falls back up upon itself,
+examines itself, attempts to call in doubt the truth it has perceived;
+it cannot; it affirms anew what it had affirmed at first; it adheres to
+the truth already recognized, but with a new sentiment, the sentiment
+that it is not in its power to divest itself of the evidence of this
+same truth; then, but only then, appears that character of necessity and
+subjectivity that some would turn against the truth, as though truth
+could lose its own value, while penetrating deeper into the mind and
+there triumphing over doubt; as though reflective evidence of it were
+the less evidence; as though, moreover, the necessary conception of it
+were the only form, the primary form of the perception of truth. The
+skepticism of Kant, to which good sense so easily does justice, is
+driven to the extreme and forced within its intrenchment by the
+distinction between spontaneous reason and reflective reason. Reflection
+is the theatre of the combats which reason engages in with itself, with
+doubt, sophism, and error. But above reflection is a sphere of light and
+peace, where reason perceives truth without returning on itself, for the
+sole reason that truth is truth, and because God has made the reason to
+perceive it, as he has made the eye to see and the ear to hear.
+
+Analyze, in fact, with impartiality, the fact of spontaneous
+apperception, and you will be sure that it has nothing subjective in it
+except what it is impossible it should not have, to wit, the _me_ which is
+mingled with the fact without constituting it. The _me_ inevitably enters
+into all knowledge, since it is the subject of it. Reason directly
+perceives truth; but it is in some sort augmented, in consciousness, and
+then we have knowledge. Consciousness is there its witness, and not its
+judge; its only judge is reason, a faculty subjective and objective
+together, according to the language of Germany, which immediately
+attains absolute truth, almost without personal intervention on our
+part, although it might not enter into exercise if personality did not
+precede or were not added to it.[39]
+
+Spontaneous apperception constitutes natural logic. Reflective
+conception is the foundation of logic properly so called. One is based
+upon itself, _verum index sui_; the other is based upon the
+impossibility of the reason, in spite of all its efforts, not betaking
+itself to truth and believing in it. The form of the first is an
+affirmation accompanied with an absolute security, and without the least
+suspicion of a possible negation; the form of the second is reflective
+affirmation, that is to say, the impossibility of denying and the
+necessity of affirming. The idea of negation governs ordinary logic,
+whose affirmations are only the laborious product of two negations.
+Natural logic proceeds by affirmations stamped with a simple faith,
+which instinct alone produces and sustains.
+
+Now, will Kant reply that this reason, which is much purer than that
+which he has known and described, which is wholly pure, which is
+conceived as something disengaged from reflection, from volition, from
+every thing that constitutes personality, is nevertheless personal,
+since we have a consciousness of it, and since it is thus marked with
+subjectivity? To this argument we have nothing to respond, except that
+it is destroyed in the excess of its pretension. In fact, if, that
+reason may not be subjective, we must in no way participate in it, and
+must not have even a consciousness of its exercise, then there is no
+means of ever escaping this reproach of subjectivity, and the ideal of
+objectivity which Kant pursued is a chimerical, extravagant ideal,
+above, or rather beneath, all true intelligence, all reason worthy the
+name; for it is demanding that this intelligence and this reason should
+cease to have consciousness of themselves, whilst this is precisely what
+characterizes intelligence and reason.[40] Does Kant mean, then, that
+reason, in order to possess a really objective power, cannot make its
+appearance in a particular subject, that it must be, for example, wholly
+outside of the subject which I am? Then it is nothing for me; a reason
+that is not mine, that, under the pretext of being universal, infinite,
+and absolute in its essence, does not fall under the perception of my
+consciousness, is for me as if it were not. To wish that reason should
+wholly cease to be subjective, is to demand something impossible to God
+himself. No, God himself can understand nothing except in knowing it,
+with his intelligence and with the consciousness of this intelligence.
+There is subjectivity, then, in divine knowledge itself; if this
+subjectivity involves skepticism, God is also condemned to skepticism,
+and he can no more escape from it than men; or indeed, if this is too
+ridiculous, if the knowledge which God has of the exercise of his own
+intelligence does not involve skepticism for him, neither do the
+knowledge which we have of the exercise of our intelligence, and the
+subjectivity attached to this knowledge, involve it for us.
+
+In truth, when we see the father of German philosophy thus losing
+himself in the labyrinth of the problem of the subjectivity and the
+objectivity of first principles, we are tempted to pardon Reid for
+having disdained this problem, for limiting himself to repeating that
+the absolute truth of universal and necessary principles rests upon the
+veracity of our faculties, and that upon the veracity of our faculties
+we are compelled to accept their testimony. "To explain," says he, "why
+we are convinced by our senses, by consciousness, by our faculties, is
+an impossible thing; we say--this is so, it cannot be otherwise, and we
+can go no farther. Is not this the expression of an irresistible belief,
+of a belief which is the voice of nature, and against which we contend
+in vain? Do we wish to penetrate farther, to demand of our faculties,
+one by one, what are their titles to our confidence, and to refuse them
+confidence until they have produced their claims? Then, I fear that this
+extreme wisdom would conduct us to folly, and that, not having been
+willing to submit to the common lot of humanity, we should be deprived
+of the light of common sense."[41]
+
+Let us support ourselves also by the following admirable passage of him
+who is, for so many reasons, the venerated master of the French
+philosophy of the nineteenth century. "Intellectual life," says M.
+Royer-Collard, "is an uninterrupted succession, not only of ideas, but
+of explicit or implicit beliefs. The beliefs of the mind are the powers
+of the soul and the motives of the will. That which determines us to
+belief we call evidence. Reason renders no account of evidence; to
+condemn reason to account for evidence, is to annihilate it, for it
+needs itself an evidence which is fitted for it. These are fundamental
+laws of belief which constitute intelligence, and as they flow from the
+same source they have the same authority; they judge by the same right;
+there is no appeal from the tribunal of one to that of another. He who
+revolts against a single one revolts against all, and abdicates his
+whole nature."[42]
+
+Let us deduce the consequences of the facts of which we have just given
+an exposition.
+
+1st. The argument of Kant, which is based upon the character of
+necessity in principles in order to weaken their objective authority,
+applies only to the form imposed by reflection on these principles, and
+does not reach their spontaneous application, wherein the character of
+necessity no longer appears.
+
+2d. After all, to conclude with the human race from the necessity of
+believing in the truth of what we believe, is not to conclude badly; for
+it is reasoning from effect to cause, from the sign to the thing
+signified.
+
+3d. Moreover, the value of principles is above all demonstration.
+Psychological analysis seizes, takes, as it were, by surprise, in the
+fact of intuition, an affirmation that is absolute, that is inaccessible
+to doubt; it establishes it; and this is equivalent to demonstration. To
+demand any other demonstration than this, is to demand of reason an
+impossibility, since absolute principles, being necessary to all
+demonstration, could only be demonstrated by themselves.[43]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[37] On conceptualism, as well as on nominalism and realism, see the
+_Introduction to the inedited works of Abelard_, and also 1st Series,
+vol. iv., lecture 21, p. 457; 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 20, p. 215,
+and the work already cited on the _Metaphysics of Aristotle_, p. 49:
+"Nothing exists in this world which has not its law more general than
+itself. There is no individual that is not related to a species; there
+are no phenomena bound together that are not united to a plan. And it is
+necessary there should really be in nature species and a plan, if every
+thing has been made with weight and measure, _cum pondere et mensura_,
+without which our very ideas of species and a plan would only be
+chimeras, and human science a systematic illusion. If it is pretended
+that there are individuals and no species, things in juxtaposition and
+no plan; for example, human individuals more or less different, and no
+human type, and a thousand other things of the same sort, well and good;
+but in that case there is nothing general in the world, except in the
+human understanding, that is to say, in other terms, the world and
+nature are destitute of order and reason except in the head of man."
+
+[38] See preceding lecture.
+
+[39] On the just limits of the personality and the impersonality of
+reason, see the following lecture, near the close.
+
+[40] We have everywhere maintained, that consciousness is the condition,
+or rather the necessary form of intelligence. Not to go beyond this
+volume, see farther on, lecture 5.
+
+[41] 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 494.
+
+[42] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iii., p. 450.
+
+[43] We have not thought it best to make this lecture lengthy by an
+exposition and detailed refutation of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and
+its sad conclusion; the little that we say of it is sufficient for our
+purpose, which is much less historical than dogmatical. We refer the
+reader to a volume that we have devoted to the father of German
+philosophy, 1st Series, vol. v., in which we have again taken up and
+developed some of the arguments that are here used, in which we believe
+that we have irresistibly exposed the capital defect of the
+transcendental logic of Kant, and of the whole German school, that it
+leads to skepticism, inasmuch as it raises superhuman, chimerical,
+extravagant problems, and, when well understood, cannot solve them. See
+especially lectures 6 and 8.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.
+
+    Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute
+    truth?--Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us,
+    in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We
+    perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular
+    beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it;
+    refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself;
+    defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.--Plato; St.
+    Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fenelon; Bossuet;
+    Leibnitz.--Truth the mediator between God and man.--Essential
+    distinctions.
+
+
+We have justified the principles that govern our intelligence; we have
+become confident that there is truth outside of us, that there are
+verities worthy of that name, which we can perceive, which we do not
+make, which are not solely conceptions of our mind, which would still
+exist although our mind should not perceive them. Now this other problem
+naturally presents itself: What, then, in themselves, are these
+universal and necessary truths? where do they reside? whence do they
+come? We do not raise this problem, and the problems that it embraces;
+the human mind itself proposes them, and it is fully satisfied only when
+it has resolved them, and when it has reached the extreme limit of
+knowledge that it is within its power to attain.
+
+It is certain that the principles which, in all the orders of knowledge,
+discover to us absolute and necessary truths, constitute part of our
+reason, which surely makes its dwelling in us, and is intimately
+connected with personality in the depths of intellectual life. It
+follows that the truth, which reason reveals to us, falls thereby into
+close relation with the subject that perceives it, and seems only a
+conception of our mind. Nevertheless, as we have proved, we perceive
+truth, we are not the authors of it. If the person that I am, if the
+individual _me_ does not, perhaps, explain the whole of reason, how
+could it explain truth, and absolute truth? Man, limited and passing
+away, perceives necessary, eternal, infinite truth; that is for him a
+privilege sufficiently high; but he is neither the principle that
+sustains truth, nor the principle that gives it being. Man may say, My
+reason; but give him credit for never having dared to say, My truth.
+
+If absolute truths are beyond man who perceives them, once more, where
+are they, then? A peripatetic would respond--In nature. Is it, in fact,
+necessary to seek for them any other subject than the beings themselves
+which they govern? What are the laws of nature, except certain
+properties which our mind disengages from the beings and phenomena in
+which they are met, in order to consider them apart? Mathematical
+principles are nothing more. For example, the axiom thus expressed--The
+whole is greater than any of its parts, is true of any whole and part
+whatever. The principle of contradiction, considered in its logical
+title, as the condition of all our judgments, of all our reasonings,
+constitutes a part of the essence of all being, and no being can exist
+without containing it. The universal exists, says Aristotle, but it does
+not exist apart from particular beings.[44]
+
+This theory which considers universals as having their basis in things,
+is a progress towards the pure conceptualism which we have in the
+beginning indicated and shunned. Aristotle is much more of a realist
+than Abelard and Kant. He is quite right in maintaining that universals
+are in particular things, for particular things could not be without
+universals; universals give to them their fixity, even for a day, and
+their unity. But from the fact that universals are in particular beings,
+is it necessary to conclude that they, wholly and exclusively, reside
+there, and that they have no other reality than that of the objects to
+which they are applied? It is the same with principles of which
+universals are the constitutive elements. It is, it is true, in the
+particular fact, of a particular cause producing a particular event,
+that is given us the universal principle of causality; but this
+principle is much more extensive than the facts, for it is applied, not
+only to this fact, but to a thousand others. The particular fact
+contains the principle, but it does not wholly contain it, and, far from
+giving the basis of the principle, it is based upon it. As much may be
+said of other principles.
+
+Perhaps it will be replied that, if a principle is certainly more
+extensive than such a fact, or such a being, it is not more extensive
+than all facts and all beings, and that nature, considered as a whole,
+can explain that which each particular being does not explain. But
+nature, in its totality, is still only a finite and contingent thing,
+whilst the principles to be explained have a necessary and infinite
+bearing. The idea of the infinite can come neither from any particular
+being, nor from the whole of beings. Entire nature will not furnish us
+the idea of perfection, for all the beings of nature are imperfect.
+Absolute principles govern, then, all facts and all beings, they do not
+spring from them.
+
+Will it be necessary to come to the opinion, then, that absolute truths,
+being explicable neither by humanity nor by nature, subsist by
+themselves, and are to themselves their own foundation and their own
+subject?
+
+But this opinion contains still more absurdities than the preceding;
+for, I ask, what are truths, absolute or contingent, that exist by
+themselves, out of things in which they are found, and out of the
+intelligence that conceives them? Truth is, then, only a realized
+abstraction. There are no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail
+against good sense; and if such is the Platonic theory of ideas,
+Aristotle is right in his opposition to it. But such a theory is only a
+chimera that Aristotle created for the pleasure of combating it.
+
+Let us hasten to remove absolute truths from this ambiguous and
+equivocal state. And how? By applying to them a principle which should
+now be familiar to you. Yes, truth necessarily appeals to something
+beyond itself. As every phenomenon has its subject of inherence, as our
+faculties, our thoughts, our volitions, our sensations, exist only in a
+being which is ourselves, so truth supposes a being in which it resides,
+and absolute truths suppose a being absolute as themselves, wherein they
+have their final foundation. We come thus to something absolute, which
+is no longer suspended in the vagueness of abstraction, but is a being
+substantially existing. This being, absolute and necessary, since it is
+the subject of necessary and absolute truths, this being which is at the
+foundation of truth as its very essence, in a single word, is called
+_God_.[45]
+
+This theory, which conducts from absolute truth to absolute being, is
+not new in the history of philosophy: it goes back to Plato.
+
+Plato,[46] in searching for the principles of knowledge clearly saw,
+with Socrates his master, that the least definition, without which there
+can be no precise knowledge, supposes something universal and one, which
+does not come within the reach of the senses, which reason alone can
+discover; this something universal and one he called _Idea_.
+
+Ideas, which possess universality and unity, do not come from material,
+changing, and mobile things, to which they are applied, and which render
+them intelligible. On the other hand, it is not the human mind that
+constitutes ideas; for man is not the measure of truth.
+
+Plato calls Ideas veritable beings, [Greek: ta ontos onta], since they
+alone communicate to sensible things and to human cognitions their truth
+and their unity. But does it follow that Plato gives to Ideas a
+substantial existence, that he makes of them beings properly so called?
+It is important that no cloud should be left on this fundamental point
+of the Platonic theory.
+
+At first, if any one should pretend that in Plato Ideas are beings
+subsisting by themselves, without interconnection and without relation
+to a common centre, numerous passages of the _Timaeus_ might be objected
+to him,[47] in which Plato speaks of Ideas as forming in their whole an
+ideal unity, which is the reason of the unity of the visible world.[48]
+
+Will it be said that this ideal world forms a distinct unity, a unity
+separate from God? But, in order to sustain this assertion, it is
+necessary to forget so many passages of the _Republic_, in which the
+relations of truth and science with the Good, that is to say, with God,
+are marked in brilliant characters.
+
+Let not that magnificent comparison be forgotten, in which, after having
+said that the sun produces in the physical world light and life,
+Socrates adds: "So thou art able to say, intelligible beings not only
+hold from the _Good_ that which renders them intelligible, but also
+their being and their essence."[49] So, intelligible beings, that is to
+say, Ideas, are not beings that exist by themselves.
+
+Men go on repeating with assurance that the Good, in Plato, is only the
+idea of the good, and that an idea is not God. I reply, that the Good is
+in fact an idea, according to Plato, but that the idea here is not a
+pure conception of the mind, an object of thought, as the peripatetic
+school understood it; I add, that the Idea of the Good is in Plato the
+first of Ideas, and that, for this reason, while remaining for us an
+object of thought, it is confounded as to existence with God. If the
+Idea of the Good is not God himself, how will the following passage,
+also taken from the _Republic_, be explained? "At the extreme limits of
+the intellectual world is the Idea of the Good, which is perceived with
+difficulty, but, in fine, cannot be perceived without concluding that it
+is the source of all that is beautiful and good; that in the visible
+world it produces light, and the star whence the light directly comes,
+that in the invisible world it directly produces truth and
+intelligence."[50] Who can produce, on the one hand, the sun and light,
+on the other, truth and intelligence, except a real being?
+
+But all doubt disappears before the following passages from the
+_Phaedrus_, neglected, as it would seem designedly, by the detractors of
+Plato: "In this transition, (the soul) contemplates justice,
+contemplates wisdom, contemplates science, not that wherein enters
+change, nor that which shows itself different in the different objects
+which we are pleased to call beings, but science as it exists in that
+which is called being, _par excellence_...."[51]--"It belongs to the
+soul to conceive the universal, that is to say, that which, in the
+diversity of sensations, can be comprehended under a rational unity.
+This is the remembrance of what the soul has seen during its journey _in
+the train of Deity_, when, disdaining what we improperly call beings, it
+looked upwards to the only true being. So it is just that the thought of
+the philosopher should alone have wings; for its remembrance is always
+as much as possible with _the things which make God a true God, inasmuch
+as he is with them_."[52]
+
+So the objects of the philosopher's contemplation, that is to say,
+Ideas, are in God, and it is by these, by his essential union with
+these, that God is the true God, the God who, as Plato admirably says in
+the _Sophist_, participates in _august and holy intelligence_.[53]
+
+It is therefore certain, that, in the true Platonic theory, Ideas are
+not beings in the vulgar sense of the word, beings which would be
+neither in the mind of man, nor in nature, nor in God, and would subsist
+only by themselves. No, Plato considers Ideas as being at once the
+principles of sensible things, of which they are the laws, and the
+principles also of human knowledge, which owes to them its light, its
+rule, and its end, and the essential attributes of God, that is to say,
+God himself.
+
+Plato is truly the father of the doctrine which we have explained, and
+the great philosophers who have attached themselves to his school have
+always professed this same doctrine.
+
+The founder of Christian metaphysics, St. Augustine, is a declared
+disciple of Plato: everywhere he speaks, like Plato, of the relation of
+human reason to the divine reason, and of truth to God. In the _City of
+God_, book x., chap. ii., and in chap. ix. of book vii. of the
+_Confessions_, he goes to the extent of comparing the Platonic doctrine
+with that of St. John.
+
+He adopts, without reserve, the theory of Ideas. _Book of Eighty-three
+Questions_, question 46: "Ideas are the primordial forms, and, as it
+were, the immutable reasons of things; they are not created, they are
+eternal, and always the same: they are contained in the divine
+intelligence; and without being subject to birth and death, they are the
+types according to which is formed every thing that is born and
+dies."[54]
+
+"What man, pious, and penetrated with true religion, would dare to deny
+that all things that exist, that is to say, all things that, each of its
+kind, possess a determinate nature, have been created by God? This point
+being once conceded, can it be said that God has created things without
+reason? If it is impossible to say or think this, it follows that all
+things have been created with reason. But the reason of the existence
+of a man cannot be the same as the reason of the existence of a horse;
+that is absurd; each thing has therefore been created by virtue of a
+reason that is peculiar to it. Now, where can these reasons be, except
+in the mind of the Creator? For he saw nothing out of himself, which he
+could use as a model for creating what he created: such an opinion would
+be sacrilege.[55]
+
+"If the reasons of things to be created and things created are contained
+in the divine intelligence, and if there is nothing in the divine
+intelligence but the eternal and immutable, the reasons of things which
+Plato calls Ideas, are the eternal and immutable truths, by the
+participation in which every thing that is is such as it is."[56]
+
+St. Thomas himself, who scarcely knew Plato, and who was often enough
+held by Aristotle in a kind of empiricism, carried away by Christianity
+and St. Augustine, let the sentiment escape him, "that our natural
+reason is a sort of participation in the divine reason, that to this we
+owe our knowledge and our judgments, that this is the reason why it is
+said, that we see every thing in God."[57] There are in St. Thomas many
+other similar passages, of perhaps an expressive Platonism, which is not
+the Platonism of Plato, but of the Alexandrians.
+
+The Cartesian philosophy, in spite of its profound originality, and its
+wholly French character, is full of the Platonic spirit. Descartes has
+no thought of Plato, whom apparently he has never read; in nothing does
+he imitate or resemble him: nevertheless, from the first, he is met in
+the same regions with Plato, whither he goes by a different route.
+
+The notion of the infinite and the perfect is for Descartes what the
+universal, the Idea, is for Plato. No sooner has Descartes found by
+consciousness that he thinks, than he concludes from this that he
+exists, then, in course, by consciousness still, he recognizes himself
+as imperfect, full of defects, limitations, miseries, and, at the same
+time, conceives something infinite and perfect. He possesses the idea of
+the infinite and the perfect; but this idea is not his own work, for he
+is imperfect; it must then have been put into him by another being
+endowed with perfection, whom he conceives, whom he does not
+possess:--that being is God. Such is the process by which Descartes,
+setting out from his own thought, and his own being, elevated himself to
+God. This process, so simple, which he so simply exposes in the
+_Discours de la Methode_, he will put successively, in the
+_Meditations_, in the _Responses aux Objections_, in the _Principes_,
+under the most diverse forms, he will accommodate it, if it is
+necessary, to the language of the schools, in order that it may
+penetrate into them. After all, this process is compelled to conclude,
+from the idea of the infinite and the perfect, in the existence of a
+cause of this idea, adequate, at least, to the idea itself, that is to
+say, infinite and perfect. One sees that the first difference between
+Plato and Descartes is, that the ideas which in Plato are at once
+conceptions of our mind, and the principles of things, are for
+Descartes, as well as for all modern philosophy, only our conceptions,
+amongst which that of the infinite and perfect occupies the first place;
+the second difference is, that Plato goes from ideas to God by the
+principle of substances, if we may be allowed to use this technical
+language of modern philosophy; whilst Descartes employs rather the
+principle of causality, and concludes--well understood without
+syllogism--from the idea of the infinite and the perfect in a cause also
+perfect and infinite.[58] But under these differences, and in spite of
+many more, is a common basis, a genius the same, which at first elevates
+us above the senses, and, by the intermediary of marvellous ideas that
+are incontestably in us, bears us towards him who alone can be their
+substance, who is the infinite and perfect author of our idea of
+infinity and perfection. For this reason, Descartes belongs to the
+family of Plato and Socrates.
+
+The idea of the perfect and the finite being once introduced into the
+philosophy of the seventeenth century, it becomes there for the
+successors of Descartes what the theory of ideas became for the
+successors of Plato.
+
+Among the French writers, Malebranche, perhaps, reminds us with the
+least disadvantage, although very imperfectly still, of the manner of
+Plato: he sometimes expresses its elevation and grace; but he is far
+from possessing the Socratic good sense, and, it must be confessed, no
+one has clouded more the theory of ideas by exaggerations of every kind
+which he has mingled with them.[59] Instead of establishing that there
+is in the human reason, wholly personal as it is by its intimate
+relation with our other faculties, something also which is not personal,
+something universal which permits it to elevate itself to universal
+truths, Malebranche does not hesitate to absolutely confound the reason
+that is in us with the divine reason itself. Moreover, according to
+Malebranche, we do not directly know particular things, sensible
+objects; we know them only by ideas; it is the intelligible extension
+and not the material extension that we immediately perceive; in vision
+the proper object of the mind is the universal, the idea; and as the
+idea is in God, it is in God that we see all things. We can understand
+how well-formed minds must have been shocked by such a theory; but it is
+not just to confound Plato with his brilliant and unfaithful disciple.
+In Plato, sensibility directly attains sensible things; it makes them
+known to us as they are, that is to say, as very imperfect and
+undergoing perpetual change, which renders the knowledge that we have of
+them almost unworthy of the name of knowledge. It is reason, different
+in us from sensibility, which, above sensible objects, discovers to us
+the universal, the idea, and gives a knowledge solid and durable. Having
+once attained ideas, we have reached God himself, in whom they have
+their foundation, who finishes and consummates true knowledge. But we
+have no need of God, nor of ideas, in order to perceive sensible
+objects, which are defective and changing; for this our senses are
+sufficient. Reason is distinct from the senses; it transcends the
+imperfect knowledge of what they are capable; it attains the universal,
+because it possesses something universal itself; it participates in the
+divine reason, but it is not the divine reason; it is enlightened by it,
+it comes from it,--it is not it.
+
+Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Descartes in the
+treatise, _de l'Existence de Dieu_. The second part is entirely
+Cartesian in method, in the order and sequence of the proofs.
+Nevertheless, Malebranche also appears there, especially in the fourth
+chapter, on the nature of ideas, and he predominates in all the
+metaphysical portions of the first part. After the explanations which we
+have given, it will not be difficult for you to discern what is true and
+what is at times excessive in the passages which follow:[60]
+
+Part i., chap. lii. "Oh! how great is the mind of man! It bears in
+itself what astonishes itself and infinitely surpasses itself. Its ideas
+are universal, eternal, and immutable.... The idea of the infinite is
+in me as well as that of lines, numbers, and circles....--Chap. liv.
+Besides this idea of the infinite, I have also universal and immutable
+notions, which are the rule of all my judgments. I can judge of nothing
+except by consulting them, and it is not in my power to judge against
+what they represent to me. My thoughts, far from being able to correct
+this rule, are themselves corrected in spite of me by this superior
+rule, and they are irresistibly adjusted to its decision. Whatever
+effort of mind I may make, I can never succeed in doubting that two and
+two are four; that the whole is not greater than any of its parts; that
+the centre of a perfect circle is not equidistant from all points of the
+circumference. I am not at liberty to deny these propositions; and if I
+deny these truths, or others similar to them, I have in me something
+that is above me, that forces me to the conclusion. This fixed and
+immutable rule is so internal and so intimate that I am inclined to take
+it for myself; but it is above me since it corrects me, redresses me,
+and puts me in defiance against myself, and reminds me of my impotence.
+It is something that suddenly inspires me, provided I listen to it, and
+I am never deceived except in not listening to it.... This internal rule
+is what I call my reason....--Chap. lv. In truth my reason is in me; for
+I must continually enter into myself in order to find it. But the higher
+reason which corrects me when necessary, which I consult, exists not by
+me, and makes no part of me. This rule is perfect and immutable; I am
+changing and imperfect. When I am deceived, it does not lose its
+integrity. When I am undeceived, it is not this that returns to its end:
+it is this which, without ever having deviated, has the authority over
+me to remind me of my error, and to make me return. It is a master
+within, which makes me keep silent, which makes me speak, which makes me
+believe, which makes me doubt, which makes me acknowledge my errors or
+confirm my judgments. Listening to it, I am instructed; listening to
+myself, I err. This master is everywhere, and its voice makes itself
+heard, from end to end of the universe, in all men as well as in
+me....--Chap. lvi.... That which appears the most in us and seems to be
+the foundation of ourselves, I mean our reason, is that which is least
+of all our own, which we are constrained to believe to be especially
+borrowed. We receive without cessation, and at all moments, a reason
+superior to us, as we breathe without cessation the air, which is a
+foreign body....--Chap. lvii. The internal and universal master always
+and everywhere speaks the same truths. We are not this master. It is
+true that we often speak without it, and more loftily than it. But we
+are then deceived, we are stammering, we do not understand ourselves. We
+even fear to see that we are deceived, and we close the ear through fear
+of being humiliated by its corrections. Without doubt, man, who fears
+being corrected by this incorruptible reason, who always wanders in not
+following it, is not that perfect, universal, immutable reason which
+corrects him in spite of himself. In all things we find, as it were, two
+principles within us. One gives, the other receives; one wants, the
+other supplies; one is deceived, the other corrects; one goes wrong by
+its own inclination, the other rectifies it.... Each one feels within
+himself a limited and subaltern reason, which wanders when it escapes a
+complete subordination, which is corrected only by returning to the yoke
+of another superior, universal, and immutable power. So every thing in
+us bears the mark of a subaltern, limited, partial, borrowed reason,
+which needs another to correct it at every moment. All men are rational,
+because they possess the same reason which is communicated to them in
+different degrees. There is a certain number of wise men; but the wisdom
+which they receive, as it were, from the fountain-head, which makes them
+what they are, is one and the same....--Chap. lviii. Where is this
+wisdom? Where is this reason, which is both common and superior to all
+the limited and imperfect reasons of the human race? Where, then, is
+this oracle which is never silent, against which the vain prejudices of
+peoples are always impotent? Where is this reason which we ever need to
+consult, which comes to us to inspire us with the desire of listening to
+its voice? Where is this light _that lighteneth every man that cometh
+into the world_.... The substance of the human eye is not light; on the
+contrary, the eye borrows at each moment the light of the sun's rays. So
+my mind is not the primitive reason, the universal and immutable truth,
+it is only the medium that conducts this original light, that is
+illuminated by it....--Chap. lx. I find two reasons in myself,--one is
+myself, the other is above me. That which is in me is very imperfect,
+faulty, uncertain, preoccupied, precipitate, subject to aberration,
+changing, conceited, ignorant, and limited; in fine, it possesses
+nothing but what it borrows. The other is common to all men, and is
+superior to all; it is perfect, eternal, immutable, always ready to
+communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that are
+deceived, in fine, incapable of ever being exhausted or divided,
+although it gives itself to those who desire it. Where is this perfect
+reason, that is so near me and so different from me? Where is it? It
+must be something real.... Where is this supreme reason? Is it not God
+that I am seeking?"
+
+Part ii., chap. i., sect. 28.[61] "I have in me the idea of the infinite
+and of infinite perfection.... Give me a finite thing as great as you
+please--let it quite transcend the reach of my senses, so that it
+becomes, as it were, infinite to my imagination; it always remains
+finite in my mind; I conceive a limit to it, even when I cannot imagine
+it. I am not able to mark the limit; but I know that it exists; and far
+from confounding it with the infinite, I conceive it as infinitely
+distant from the idea that I have of the veritable infinite. If one
+speaks to me of the indefinite as a mean between the two extremes of the
+infinite and the limited, I reply, that it signifies nothing, that, at
+least, it only signifies something truly finite, whose boundaries escape
+the imagination without escaping the mind.... Sect. 29. Where have I
+obtained this idea, which is so much above me, which infinitely
+surpasses me, which astonishes me, which makes me disappear in my own
+eyes, which renders the infinite present to me? Whence does it come?
+Where have I obtained it?... Once more, whence comes this marvellous
+representation of the infinite, which pertains to the infinite itself,
+which resembles nothing finite? It is in me, it is more than myself; it
+seems to me every thing, and myself nothing. I can neither efface,
+obscure, diminish, nor contradict it. It is in me; I have not put it
+there, I have found it there; and I have found it there only because it
+was already there before I sought it. It remains there invariable, even
+when I do not think of it, when I think of something else. I find it
+whenever I seek it, and it often presents itself when I am not seeking
+it. It does not depend upon me; I depend upon it.... Moreover, who has
+made this infinite representation of the infinite, so as to give it to
+me? Has it made itself? Has the infinite image[62] of the infinite had
+no original, according to which it has been made, no real cause that has
+produced it? Where are we in relation to it? And what a mass of
+extravagances! It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to conclude that
+it is the infinitely perfect being that renders himself immediately
+present to me, when I conceive him, and that he himself is the idea
+which I have of him...."
+
+Chap. iv., sect. 49. "... My ideas are myself; for they are my
+reason.... My ideas, and the basis of myself, or of my mind, appear but
+the same thing. On the other hand, my mind is changing, uncertain,
+ignorant, subject to error, precipitate in its judgments, accustomed to
+believe what it does not clearly understand, and to judge without having
+sufficiently consulted its ideas, which are by themselves certain and
+immutable. My ideas, then, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. What
+shall I believe, then, they can be?... What then! are my ideas God?
+They are superior to my mind, since they rectify and correct it; they
+have the character of the Divinity, for they are universal and immutable
+like God; they really subsist, according to a principle that we have
+already established: nothing exists so really as that which is universal
+and immutable. If that which is changing, transitory, and derived, truly
+exists, much more does that which cannot change, and is necessary. It is
+then necessary to find in nature something existing and real, that is,
+my ideas, something that is within me, and is not myself, that is
+superior to me, that is in me even when I am not thinking of it, with
+which I believe myself to be alone, as though I were only with myself,
+in fine, that is more present to me, and more intimate than my own
+foundation. I know not what this something, so admirable, so familiar,
+so unknown, can be, except God."
+
+Let us now hear the most solid, the most authoritative of the Christian
+doctors of the seventeenth century--let us hear Bossuet in his _Logic_,
+and in the _Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self_.[63]
+
+Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philosophy--St.
+Augustine, St. Thomas, and Descartes. He had been taught at the college
+of Navarre the doctrine of St. Thomas, that is to say, a modified
+peripateticism; at the same time he was nourished by the reading of St.
+Augustine, and out of the schools he found spread abroad the philosophy
+of Descartes. He adopted it, and had no difficulty in reconciling it
+with that of St. Augustine, while, upon more than one point, it
+corroborated the doctrine of St. Thomas. Bossuet invented nothing in
+philosophy; he received every thing, but every thing united and
+purified, thanks to that supreme good sense which in him is a quality
+predominating over force, grandeur, and eloquence.[64] In the passages
+which I am about to exhibit to you, which I hope you will impress upon
+your memories, you will not find the grace of Malebranche, the
+exhaustless abundance of Fenelon; you will find what is better than
+either, to wit, clearness and precision--all the rest in him is in some
+sort an addition to these.
+
+Fenelon disengages badly enough the process which conducts from ideas,
+from universal and necessary truths, to God. Bossuet renders to himself
+a strict account of this process, and marks it with force; it is the
+principle that we have invoked, that which concludes from attributes in
+a subject, from qualities in a being, from laws in a legislator, from
+eternal verities in an eternal mind that comprehends them and eternally
+possesses them. Bossuet cites St. Augustine, cites Plato himself,
+interprets him and defends him in advance against those who would make
+Platonic ideas beings subsisting by themselves, whilst they really exist
+only in the mind of God.
+
+_Logic_, book i., chap. xxxvi. "When I consider a rectilineal triangle
+as a figure bounded by three straight lines, and having three angles
+equal to two right angles, neither more nor less; and when I pass from
+this to an equilateral triangle with its three sides and its three
+angles equal, whence it follows, that I consider each angle of this
+triangle as less than a right angle; and when I come again to consider a
+right-angled triangle, and what I clearly see in this idea, in
+connection with the preceding ideas, that the two angles of this
+triangle are necessarily acute, and that these two acute angles are
+exactly equal to one right angle, neither more nor less--I see nothing
+contingent and mutable, and consequently, the ideas that represent to me
+these truths are eternal. Were there not in nature a single equilateral
+or right-angled triangle, or any triangle whatever, every thing that I
+have just considered would remain always true and indubitable. In fact,
+I am not sure of having ever seen an equilateral or rectilineal
+triangle. Neither the rule nor the dividers could assure me that any
+human hand, however skilful, could ever make a line exactly straight, or
+sides and angles perfectly equal to each other. In strictness, we should
+only need a microscope, in order, not to understand, but to see at a
+glance, that the lines which we trace deviate from straightness, and
+differ in length. We have never seen, then, any but imperfect images of
+equilateral, rectilineal, or isosceles triangles, since they neither
+exist in nature, nor can be constructed by art. Nevertheless, what we
+see of the nature and the properties of a triangle, independently of
+every existing triangle, is certain and indubitable. Place an
+understanding in any given time, or at any point in eternity, thus to
+speak, and it will see these truths equally manifest; they are,
+therefore, eternal. Since the understanding does not give being to
+truth, but is only employed in perceiving truth, it follows, that were
+every created understanding destroyed, these truths would immutably
+subsist...."
+
+Chap. xxxvii. "Since there is nothing eternal, immutable, independent,
+but God alone, we must conclude that these truths do not subsist in
+themselves, but in God alone, and in his eternal ideas, which are
+nothing else than himself.
+
+"There are those who, in order to verify these eternal truths which we
+have proposed, and others of the same nature, have figured to themselves
+eternal essences aside from deity--a pure illusion, which comes from
+not understanding that in God, as in the source of being, and in his
+understanding, where resides the art of making and ordering all things,
+are found primitive ideas, or as St. Augustine says, the eternally
+subsisting reasons of things. Thus, in the thought of the architect is
+the primitive idea of a house which he perceives in himself; this
+intellectual house would not be destroyed by any ruin of houses built
+according to this interior model; and if the architect were eternal, the
+idea and the reason of the house would also be eternal. But, without
+recurring to the mortal architect, there is an immortal architect, or
+rather a primitive eternally subsisting art in the immutable thought of
+God, where all order, all measure, all rule, all proportion, all reason,
+in a word, all truth are found in their origin.
+
+"These eternal verities which our ideas represent, are the true object
+of science; and this is the reason why Plato, in order to render us
+truly wise, continually reminds us of these ideas, wherein is seen, not
+what is formed, but what is, not what is begotten and is corrupt, what
+appears and vanishes, what is made and defective, but what eternally
+subsists. It is this intellectual world which that divine philosopher
+has put in the mind of God before the world was constructed, which is
+the immutable model of that great work. These are the simple, eternal,
+immutable, unbegotten, incorruptible ideas to which he refers us, in
+order to understand truth. This is what has made him say that our ideas,
+images of the divine ideas, were also immediately derived from the
+divine ideas, and did not come by the senses, which serve very well,
+said he, to awaken them, but not to form them in our mind. For if,
+without having ever seen any thing eternal, we have so clear an idea of
+eternity, that is to say, of being that is always the same; if, without
+having perceived a perfect triangle, we understand it distinctly, and
+demonstrate so many incontestable truths concerning it, it is a mark
+that these ideas do not come from our senses."
+
+_Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self._[65] Chap. iv., sect. 5.
+_Intelligence has for its object eternal truths, which are nothing else
+than God himself, in whom they are always subsisting and perfectly
+understood._
+
+"... We have already remarked that the understanding has eternal
+verities for its object. The standards by which we measure all things
+are eternal and invariable. We know clearly that every thing in the
+universe is made according to proportion, from the greatest to the
+least, from the strongest to the weakest, and we know it well enough to
+understand that these proportions are related to the principles of
+eternal truth. All that is demonstrated in mathematics, and in any other
+science whatever, is eternal and immutable, since the effect of the
+demonstration is to show that the thing cannot be otherwise than as it
+is demonstrated to be. So, in order to understand the nature and the
+properties of things which I know, for example, a triangle, a square, a
+circle, or the relations of these figures, and all other figures, to
+each other, it is not necessary that I should find such in nature, and I
+may be sure that I have never traced, never seen, any that are perfect.
+Neither is it necessary that I should think that there is motion in the
+world in order to understand the nature of motion itself, or that of the
+lines which every motion describes, and the hidden proportions according
+to which it is developed. When the idea of these things is once awakened
+in my mind, I know that, whether they have an actual existence or not,
+so they must be, that it is impossible for them to be of another nature,
+or to be made in a different way. To come to something that concerns us
+more nearly, I mean by these principles of eternal truth, that they do
+not depend on human existence, that, so far as he is capable of
+reasoning, it is the essential duty of man to live according to reason,
+and to search for his maker, through fear of lacking the recognition of
+his maker, if in fault of searching for him, he should be ignorant of
+him. All these truths, and all those which I deduce from them by sure
+reasoning, subsist independently of all time. In whatever time I place a
+human understanding, it will know them, but in knowing them it will find
+them truths, it will not make them such, for our cognitions do not make
+their objects, but suppose them. So these truths subsist before all
+time, before the existence of a human understanding: and were every
+thing that is made according to the laws of proportion, that is to say,
+every thing that I see in nature, destroyed except myself, these laws
+would be preserved in my thought, and I should clearly see that they
+would always be good and always true, were I also destroyed with the
+rest.
+
+"If I seek how, where, and in what subject they subsist eternal and
+immutable, as they are, I am obliged to avow the existence of a being in
+whom truth is eternally subsisting, in whom it is always understood; and
+this being must be truth itself, and must be all truth, and from him it
+is that truth is derived in every thing that exists and has
+understanding out of him.
+
+"It is, then, in him, in a certain manner, who is incomprehensible[66]
+to me, it is in him, I say, that I see these eternal truths; and to see
+them is to turn to him who is immutably all truth, and to receive his
+light.
+
+"This eternal object is God eternally subsisting, eternally true,
+eternally truth itself.... It is in this eternal that these eternal
+truths subsist. It is also by this that I see them. All other men see
+them as well as myself, and we see them always the same, and as having
+existed before us. For we know that we have commenced, and we know that
+these truths have always been. Thus we see them in a light superior to
+ourselves, and it is in this superior light that we see whether we act
+well or ill, that is to say, whether we act according to these
+constitutive principles of our being or not. In that, then, we see, with
+all other truths, the invariable rules of our conduct, and we see that
+there are things in regard to which duty is indispensable, and that in
+things which are naturally indifferent, the true duty is to accommodate
+ourselves to the greatest good of society. A well-disposed man conforms
+to the civil laws, as he conforms to custom. But he listens to an
+inviolable law in himself, which says to him that he must do wrong to no
+one, that it is better to be injured than to injure.... The man who sees
+these truths, by these truths judges himself, and condemns himself when
+he errs. Or, rather, these truths judge him, since they do not
+accommodate themselves to human judgments, but human judgments are
+accommodated to them. And the man judges rightly when, feeling these
+judgments to be variable in their nature, he gives them for a rule these
+eternal verities.
+
+"These eternal verities which every understanding always perceives the
+same, by which every understanding is governed, are something of God, or
+rather, are God himself....
+
+"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, and man is to
+himself an indubitable proof of this. For, whether he considers himself
+or extends his vision to the beings that surround him, he sees every
+thing subjected to certain laws, and to immutable rules of truth. He
+sees that he understands these laws, at least in part,--he who has
+neither made himself, nor any part of the universe, however small, and
+he sees that nothing could have been made had not these laws been
+elsewhere perfectly understood; and he sees that it is necessary to
+recognize an eternal wisdom wherein all law, all order, all proportion,
+have their primitive reason. For it is absurd to suppose that there is
+so much sequence in truths, so much proportion in things, so much
+economy in their arrangement, that is to say, in the world, and that
+this sequence, this proportion, this economy, should nowhere be
+understood:--and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these
+things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that there is some
+one who knows them in their perfection, and that this is he who has made
+all things...."
+
+Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates that the soul
+knows by the imperfection of its own intelligence that there is
+elsewhere a perfect intelligence.
+
+In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of truth to God.
+
+"Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so pure, of truth?
+Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern reasoning, that form
+manners, by which it discovers the secret proportions of figures and of
+movements? Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which I
+have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, the circles,
+that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and
+their relations? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces
+this effect? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so
+true,--I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular figure,
+and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly? Are there
+somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, triangles or circles
+existing with this perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed
+upon my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and conduct also exist in
+some place, whence they communicate to me their immutable truth? Or,
+indeed, is it not rather he who has everywhere extended measure,
+proportion, truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of
+them?... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in the
+image of God, capable of understanding truth, which is God himself,
+actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards God, where
+the truth appears to it as soon as God wills to make the truth appear to
+it.... It is an astonishing thing that man understands so many truths,
+without understanding at the same time that all truth comes from God,
+that it is in God, that it is God himself.... It is certain that God is
+the primitive reason of all that exists and has understanding in the
+universe; that he is the true original, and that every thing is true by
+relation to his eternal idea, that seeking truth is seeking him, and
+that finding truth is finding him...."
+
+Chap. v., sect. 14. "The senses do not convey to the soul knowledge of
+truth. They excite it, awaken it, and apprize it of certain effects: it
+is solicited to search for causes, but it discovers them, it sees their
+connections, the principles which put them in motion, only in a superior
+light that comes from God, or is God himself. God is, then, truth, which
+is always the same to all minds, and the true source of intelligence.
+For this reason intelligence beholds the light, breathes, and lives."
+
+At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes to crown these
+great testimonies, and to complete their unanimity.
+
+Here is a passage from an important treatise entitled, _Meditationes de
+Cognitione, Veritate et Idaeis_, in which Leibnitz declares that primary
+notions are the attributes of God. "I know not," he says, "whether man
+can perfectly account to himself for his ideas, except by ascending to
+primary ideas for which he can no more account, that is to say, to the
+absolute attributes of God."[67]
+
+The same doctrine is in the _Principia Philosophiae seu Theses in Gratiam
+Principis Eugenii_. "The intelligence of God is the region of eternal
+truths, and the ideas that depend upon them."[68]
+
+_Theodicea_, part ii., sect. 189.[69] "It must not be said with the
+Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were no
+understanding, not even that of God. For, in my opinion, it is the
+divine understanding that makes the reality of eternal truths."
+
+_Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain_, book ii., chap. xvii. "The
+idea of the absolute is in us internally like that of being. _These
+absolutes are nothing else than the attributes of God_, and it may be
+said they are just as much the source of ideas as God is in himself the
+principle of beings."
+
+_Ibid._, book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded where those ideas
+would be if no mind existed, and what would then become of the real
+foundation of this certainty of eternal truths? That brings us in fine
+to the last foundation of truths, to wit, to that supreme and universal
+mind which cannot be destitute of existence, whose understanding, to
+speak truly, is the region of eternal truths, as St. Augustine saw and
+clearly enough expressed it. And that it may not be thought necessary to
+recur to it, we must consider that these necessary truths contain the
+determinating reason and the regulative principle of existences
+themselves, and, in a word, the laws of the universe. So these
+unnecessary truths, being anterior to the existences of contingent
+beings, must have their foundation in the existence of a necessary
+substance. It is there that I find the original of truths which are
+stamped upon our souls, not in the form of propositions, but as sources,
+the application and occasions of which will produce actual
+enunciations."
+
+So, from Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicians have thought
+that absolute truth is an attribute of absolute being. Truth is
+incomprehensible without God, as God is incomprehensible without truth.
+Truth is placed between human intelligence and the supreme intelligence,
+as a kind of mediator. In the lowest degree, as well as at the height of
+being, God is everywhere met, for truth is everywhere. Study nature,
+elevate yourselves to the laws that govern it and make of it as it were
+a living truth:--the more profoundly you understand its laws, the nearer
+you approach to God. Study, above all, humanity; humanity is much
+greater than nature, for it comes from God as well as nature, and knows
+him, while nature is ignorant of him. Especially seek and love truth,
+and refer it to the immortal being who is its source. The more you know
+of the truth, the more you know of God. The sciences, so far from
+turning us away from religion, conduct us to it. Physics, with their
+laws, mathematics, with their sublime ideas, especially philosophy,
+which cannot take a single step without encountering universal and
+necessary principles, are so many stages on the way to Deity, and, thus
+to speak, so many temples in which homage is perpetually paid to him.
+
+But in the midst of these high considerations, let us carefully guard
+ourselves against two opposite errors, from which men of fine genius
+have not always known how to preserve themselves,--against the error of
+making the reason of man purely individual, and against the error of
+confounding it with truth and the divine reason.[70] If the reason of
+man is purely individual because it is in the individual, it can
+comprehend nothing that is not individual, nothing that transcends the
+limits wherein it is confined. Not only is it unable to elevate itself
+to any universal and necessary truth, not only is it unable to have any
+idea of it, even any suspicion of it, as one blind from his birth can
+have no suspicion that a sun exists; but there is no power, not even
+that of God, that by any means could make penetrate the reason of man
+any truth of that order absolutely repugnant to its nature; since, for
+this end, it would not be sufficient for God to lighten our mind; it
+would be necessary to change it, to add to it another faculty. Neither,
+on the other hand, must we, with Malebranche, make the reason of man to
+such a degree impersonal that it takes the place of truth which is its
+object, and of God who is its principle. It is truth that to us is
+absolutely impersonal, and not reason. Reason is in man, yet it comes
+from God. Hence it is individual and finite, whilst its root is in the
+infinite; it is personal by its relation to the person in which it
+resides, and must also possess I know not what character of
+universality, of necessity even, in order to be capable of conceiving
+universal and necessary truths; hence it seems, by turns, according to
+the point of view from which it is regarded, pitiable and sublime. Truth
+is in some sort lent to human reason, but it belongs to a totally
+different reason, to wit, that supreme, eternal, uncreated reason, which
+is God himself. The truth in us is nothing else than our object; in God,
+it is one of his attributes, as well as justice, holiness, mercy, as we
+shall subsequently see. God exists; and so far as he exists, he thinks,
+and his thoughts are truths, eternal as himself, which are reflected in
+the laws of the universe, which the reason of man has received the power
+to attain. Truth is the offspring, the utterance, I was about to say,
+the eternal word of God, if it is permitted philosophy to borrow this
+divine language from that holy religion which teaches us to worship God
+in spirit and in truth. Of old, the theory of Ideas, which manifest God
+to men, and remind them of him, had given to Plato the surname of the
+precursor; on account of that theory of Ideas he was dear to St.
+Augustine, and is invoked by Bossuet. It is by this same theory, wisely
+interpreted, and purified by the light of our age, that the new
+philosophy is attached to the tradition of great philosophies, and to
+that of Christianity.
+
+The last problem that the science of the true presented is resolved:--we
+are in possession of the basis of absolute truths. God is substance,
+reason, supreme cause, and the unity of all these truths; God, and God
+alone, is to us the boundary beyond which we have nothing more to seek.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[44] See our work entitled, _Metaphysics of Aristotle_, 2d edition,
+_passim_. In Aristotle himself, see especially _Metaphysics_, book vii.,
+chap. xii., and book xiii., chap. ix.
+
+[45] There are doubtless many other ways of arriving at God, as we shall
+successively see; but this is the way of metaphysics. We do not exclude
+any of the known and accredited proofs of the existence of God; but we
+begin with that which gives all the others. See further on, part ii.,
+_God, the Principle of Beauty_, and part iii., _God, the Principle of
+the Good_, and the last lecture, which sums up the whole course.
+
+[46] We have said a word on the Platonic theory of ideas, 1st Series,
+vol. iv., p. 461 and 522. See also, vol. ii. of the 2d Series, lecture
+7, on _Plato and Aristotle_, especially 3d Series, vol. i., a few words
+on the _Language of the Theory of Ideas_, p. 121; our work on the
+_Metaphysics of Aristotle_, p. 48 and 149, and our translation of Plato,
+_passim_.
+
+[47] Aristotle first stated this; modern peripatetics have repeated it;
+and after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient philosophy, and
+philosophy in general, by giving the appearance of absurdity to its most
+illustrious representative.
+
+[48] See particularly p. 121 of the _Timaeus_, vol. xii. of our
+translation.
+
+[49] _Republic_, book vi., vol. x. of our translation, p. 57.
+
+[50] _Republic_, book vii., p. 20.
+
+[51] _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., p. 51.
+
+[52] _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., p. 55.
+
+[53] Vol. xi., p. 261.
+
+[54] Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 17: _Idex sunt formae quaedam principales
+et rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quae ipsae formatae non
+sunt ac per hoc aeternae ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quae in divina
+intelligentia continentur_....
+
+[55] Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 18. _Singula igitur propriis creata sunt
+rationibus. Has autem rationes ubi arbitrandum est esse nisi in mente
+Creatoris? non enim extra se quidquam intuebatur, ut secundum id
+constitueret quod constituebat: nam hoc opinari sacrilegum est._
+
+[56] _Ibid._ See also, book of the _Confessions_, book ii. of the _Free
+Will_, book xii. of the _Trinity_, book vii. of the _City of God_, &c.
+
+[57] _Summa totius theologiae_. Primae partis quaest. xii. art. 11. _Ad
+tertium dicendum, quod omnia dicimus in Deo videre, et secundum ipsum de
+omnibus judicare, in quantum per participationem sui luminis omnia
+cognoscimus et dijudicamus. Nam et ipsum lumen naturale rationis
+participatio quaedam est divini luminis._
+
+[58] On the doctrine of Descartes, and on the proof of the existence of
+God and the true process that he employs, see 1st Series, vol. iv.,
+lecture 12, p. 64, lecture 22, p. 509-518; vol. v., lecture 6, p. 205;
+2d Series, vol. xi., lecture 11; especially the three articles, already
+cited, of the _Journal des Savants_ for the year 1850.
+
+[59] See on Malebranche, 2d Series, lecture 2, and 3d Series, vol. iii.,
+_Modern Philosophy_, as well as the _Fragments of Cartesian Philosophy_;
+preface of the 1st edition of our _Pascal_:--"On this basis, so pure,
+Malebranche is not steady; is excessive and rash, I know; narrow and
+extreme, I do not fear to say; but always sublime, expressing only one
+side of Plato, but expressing it in a wholly Christian spirit and in
+angelic language. Malebranche is a Descartes who strays, having found
+divine wings, and lost all connection with the earth."
+
+[60] We use the only good edition of the treatise on the Existence of
+God, that which the Abbe Gosselin has given in the collection of the
+_Works of Fenelon_. Versailles, 1820. See vol. i., p. 80.
+
+[61] Edit. de Versailles, p. 145.
+
+[62] It is not necessary to remark how incorrect are the expressions,
+_representation of the infinite, image of the infinite_, especially
+_infinite image of the infinite_. We cannot represent to ourselves, we
+cannot imagine to ourselves the infinite. We conceive the infinite; the
+infinite is not an object of the imagination, but of the understanding,
+of reason. See 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 6, p. 223, 224.
+
+[63] By a trifling anachronism, for which we shall be pardoned, we have
+here joined to the _Traite de la Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-meme_,
+so long known, the _Logique_, which was only published in 1828.
+
+[64] 4th Series, vol. i., preface of the 1st edition of _Pascal_:
+"Bossuet, with more moderation, and supported by a good sense which
+nothing can shake, is, in his way, a disciple of the same doctrine, only
+the extremes of which according to his custom, he shunned. This great
+mind, which may have superiors in invention, but has no equal for force
+in common sense, was very careful not to place revelation and philosophy
+in opposition to each other: he found it the safer and truer way to give
+to each its due, to borrow from philosophy whatever natural light it can
+give, in order to increase it in turn with the supernatural light, of
+which the Church has been made the depository. It is in this sovereign
+good sense, capable of comprehending every thing, and uniting every
+thing, that resides the supreme originality of Bossuet. He shunned
+particular opinions as small minds seek them for the triumph of
+self-love. He did not think of himself; he only searched for truth, and
+wherever he found it he listened to it, well assured that if the
+connection between truths of different orders sometimes escapes us, it
+is no reason for closing the eyes to any truth. If we wished to give a
+scholastic name to Bossuet, according to the custom of the Middle Age,
+we would have to call him the infallible doctor. He is not only one of
+the highest, he is also one of the best and solidest intelligences that
+ever existed; and this great conciliator has easily reconciled religion
+and philosophy, St. Augustine and Descartes, tradition and reason."
+
+[65] The best, or, rather, only good edition is that which was published
+from an authentic copy, in 1846, by Lecoffre.
+
+[66] These words, _d'une certaine maniere qui m'est incomprehensible,
+c'est en lui, dis-je_, are not in the first edition of 1722.
+
+[67] _Leibnitzii Opera_, edit. Deutens, vol. ii., p. 17.
+
+[68] _Ibid._, p. 24.
+
+[69] 1st edition, Amsterdam, 1710, p. 354, edit. of M. de Jaucourt,
+Amsterdam, 1747, vol. ii., p. 93.
+
+[70] We have many times designated these two rocks, for example, 2d
+Series, vol. i., lecture 5, p. 92:--"One cannot help smiling when, in
+our times, he hears individual reason spoken against. In truth it is a
+great waste of declamation, for the reason is not individual; if it
+were, we should govern it as we govern our resolutions and our
+volitions, we could at any moment change its acts, that is to say, our
+conceptions. If these conceptions were merely individual, we should not
+think of imposing them upon another individual, for to impose our own
+individual and personal conceptions on another individual, on another
+person, would be the most extravagant despotism.... We call those mad
+who do not admit the relations of numbers, the difference between the
+beautiful and the ugly, the just and the unjust. Why? Because we know
+that it is not the individual that constitutes these conceptions, or, in
+other terms, we know that the reason has something universal and
+absolute, that upon this ground it obligates all individuals; and an
+individual, at the same time that he knows that he himself is obligated
+by it, knows that all others are obligated by it on the same
+ground."--_Ibid._, p. 93: "Truth misconceived is thereby neither altered
+nor destroyed; it subsists independently of the reason that perceives it
+or perceives it ill. Truth in itself is independent of our reason. Its
+true subject is the universal and absolute reason."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+ON MYSTICISM.
+
+    Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and
+    mysticism. Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without
+    an intermediary.--Two sorts of mysticism.--Mysticism of
+    sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities--the one
+    external, the other internal, and corresponding to the soul as
+    external sensibility corresponds to nature.--Legitimate part of
+    sentiment.--Its aberrations.--Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus:
+    God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by
+    pure thought.--Ecstasy.--Mixture of superstition and abstraction
+    in mysticism.--Conclusion of the first part of the course.
+
+
+Whether we turn our attention to the forces and the laws that animate
+and govern matter without belonging to it, or as the order of our labors
+calls us to do, reflect upon the universal and necessary truths which
+our mind discovers but does not constitute, the least systematic use of
+reason makes us naturally conclude from the forces and laws of the
+universe that there is a first intelligent mover, and from necessary
+truths that there is a necessary being who alone is their substance. We
+do not perceive God, but we conceive him, upon the faith of this
+admirable world exposed to our view, and upon that of this other world,
+more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves. By this double road we
+succeed in going to God. This natural course is that of all men: it must
+be sufficient for a sound philosophy. But there are feeble and
+presumptuous minds that do not know how to go thus far, or do not know
+how to stop there. Confined to experience, they do not dare to conclude
+from what they see in what they do not see, as if at all times, at the
+sight of the first phenomenon that appears to their eyes, they did not
+admit that this phenomenon has a cause, even when this cause does not
+come within the reach of their senses. They do not perceive it, yet they
+believe in it, for the simple reason that they necessarily conceive it.
+Man and the universe are also facts that cannot but have a cause,
+although this cause may neither be seen by our eyes nor touched by our
+hands. Reason has been given us for the very purpose of going, and
+without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible,
+from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and
+also, from necessary and universal truths, which surround us on every
+side, to their eternal and necessary principle. Such is the natural and
+legitimate bearing of reason. It possesses an evidence of which it
+renders no account, and is not thereby less irresistible to whomsoever
+does not undertake to contest with God the veracity of the faculties
+which he has received. But one does not revolt against reason with
+impunity. It punishes our false wisdom by giving us up to extravagance.
+When one has confined himself to the narrow limits of what he directly
+perceives, he is smothered by these limits, wishes to go out of them at
+any price, and invokes some other means of knowing; he did not dare to
+admit the existence of an invisible God, and now behold him aspiring to
+enter into immediate communication with him, as with sensible objects,
+and the objects of consciousness. It is an extreme feebleness for a
+rational being thus to doubt reason, and it is an incredible rashness,
+in this despair of intelligence, to dream of direct communication with
+God. This desperate and ambitious dream is mysticism.
+
+It behooves us to separate with care this chimera, that is not without
+danger, from the cause that we defend. It behooves us so much the more
+to openly break with mysticism, as it seems to touch us more nearly, as
+it pretends to be the last word of philosophy, and as by an appearance
+of greatness it is able to seduce many a noble soul, especially at one
+of those epochs of lassitude, when, after the cruel disappointment of
+excessive hopes, human reason, having lost faith in its own power
+without having lost the need of God, in order to satisfy this immortal
+need, addresses itself to every thing except itself, and in fault of
+knowing how to go to God by the way that is open to it, throws itself
+out of common sense, and tries the new, the chimerical, even the absurd,
+in order to attain the impossible.
+
+Mysticism contains a pusillanimous skepticism in the place of reason,
+and, at the same time, a faith blind and carried even to the oblivion of
+all the conditions imposed upon human nature. To conceive God under the
+transparent veil of the universe and above the highest truths, is at
+once too much and too little for mysticism. It does not believe that it
+knows God, if it knows him only in his manifestations and by the signs
+of his existence: it wishes to perceive him directly, it wishes to be
+united to him, sometimes by sentiment, sometimes by some other
+extraordinary process.
+
+Sentiment plays so important a part in mysticism, that our first care
+must be to investigate the nature and proper function of this
+interesting and hitherto ill-studied part of human nature.
+
+It is necessary to distinguish sentiment well from sensation. There are,
+in some sort, two sensibilities: one is directed to the external world,
+and is charged with transmitting to the soul the impressions that it
+sees; the other is wholly interior, and is related to the soul as the
+other is to nature,--its function is to receive the impression, and, as
+it were, the rebound of what passes in the soul. Have we discovered any
+truth? there is something in us which feels joy on account of it. Have
+we performed a good action? we receive our reward in a feeling of
+satisfaction less vivid, but more delicate and more durable than all the
+agreeable sensations that come from the body. It seems as if
+intelligence also had its intimate organ, which suffers or enjoys,
+according to the state of the intelligence. We bear in ourselves a
+profound source of emotion, at once physical and moral, which expresses
+the union of our two natures. The animal does not go beyond sensation,
+and pure thought belongs only to the angelic nature. The sentiment that
+partakes of sensation and thought is the portion of humanity. Sentiment
+is, it is true, only an echo of reason; but this echo is sometimes
+better understood than reason itself, because it resounds in the most
+intimate, the most delicate portions of the soul, and moves the entire
+man.
+
+It is a singular, but incontestable fact, that as soon as reason has
+conceived truth, the soul attaches itself to it, and loves it. Yes, the
+soul loves truth. It is a wonderful thing that a being strayed into one
+corner of the universe, alone charged with sustaining himself against so
+many obstacles, who, it would seem, has enough to do to think of
+himself, to preserve and somewhat embellish his life, is capable of
+loving what is not related to him, and exists only in an invisible
+world! This disinterested love of truth gives evidence of the greatness
+of him who feels it.
+
+Reason takes one step more:--it is not contented with truth, even
+absolute truth, when convinced that it possesses it ill, that it does
+not possess it as it really is; as long as it has not placed it upon its
+eternal basis; having arrived there, it stops as before its impassable
+barrier, having nothing more to seek, nothing more to find. Sentiment
+follows reason, to which it is attached; it stops, it rests, only in the
+love of the infinite being.
+
+In fact, it is the infinite that we love, while we believe that we are
+loving finite things, even while loving truth, beauty, virtue. And so
+surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms us, that its
+highest manifestations do not satisfy us until we have referred them to
+their immortal source. The heart is insatiable, because it aspires after
+the infinite. This sentiment, this need of the infinite, is at the
+foundation of the greatest passions, and the most trifling desires. A
+sigh of the soul in the presence of the starry heavens, the melancholy
+attached to the passion of glory, to ambition, to all the great emotions
+of the soul, express it better without doubt, but they do not express it
+more than the caprice and mobility of those vulgar loves, wandering from
+object to object in a perpetual circle of ardent desires, of poignant
+disquietudes, and mournful disenchantments.
+
+Let us designate another relation between reason and sentiment.
+
+The mind at first precipitates itself towards its object without
+rendering to itself an account of what it does, of what it perceives, of
+what it feels. But, with the faculty of thinking, of feeling, it has
+also that of willing; it possesses the liberty of returning to itself,
+of reflecting on its own thought and sentiment, of consenting to this,
+or of resisting it, of abstaining from it, or of reproducing its thought
+and sentiment, while stamping them with a new character. Spontaneity,
+reflection,--these are the two great forms of intelligence.[71] One is
+not the other; but, after all, the latter does little more than develop
+the former; they contain at bottom the same things:--the point of view
+alone is different. Every thing that is spontaneous is obscure and
+confused; reflection carries with it a clear and distinct view.
+
+Reason does not begin by reflection; it does not at first perceive the
+truth as universal and necessary; consequently, when it passes from idea
+to being, when it refers truth to the real being that is its subject, it
+has not sounded, it even has no suspicion of the depth of the chasm it
+passes; it passes it by means of the power which is in it, but it is not
+astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished, and
+undertakes by the aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the
+opposite of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. Here
+commences the strife between sophism and common sense, between false
+science and natural truth, between good and bad philosophy, both of
+which come from free reflection. The sad and sublime privilege of
+reflection is error; but reflection is the remedy for the evil it
+produces. If it can deny natural truth, usually it confirms it, returns
+to common sense by a longer or shorter circuit; it opposes in vain all
+the tendencies of human nature, by which it is almost always overcome,
+and brought back submissive to the first inspirations of reason,
+fortified by this trial. But there is nothing more in the end than there
+was at the beginning; only in primitive inspiration there was a power
+which was ignorant of itself, and in the legitimate results of
+reflection there is a power which knows itself:--one is the triumph of
+instinct, the other, that of true science.
+
+Sentiment which accompanies intelligence in all its proceedings presents
+the same phenomena.
+
+The heart, like reason, pursues the infinite, and the only difference
+there is in these pursuits is, that sometimes the heart seeks the
+infinite without knowing that it seeks it, and sometimes it renders to
+itself an account of the final end of the need of loving what disturbs
+it. When reflection is added to love, if it finds that the object loved
+is in fact worthy of being loved, far from enfeebling love, it
+strengthens it; far from clipping its divine wings, it develops them,
+and nourishes them, as Plato[72] says. But if the object of love is only
+a symbol of the true beauty, only capable of exciting the desire of the
+soul without satisfying it, reflection breaks the charm which held the
+heart, dissipates the chimera that enchained it. It must be very sure in
+regard to its attachments, in order to dare to put them to the proof of
+reflection. O Psyche! Psyche! preserve thy good fortune; do not sound
+the mystery too deeply. Take care not to bring the fearful light near
+the invisible lover with whom thy soul is enamored. At the first ray of
+the fatal lamp love is awakened, and flies away. Charming image of what
+takes place in the soul, when to the serene and unsuspecting confidence
+of sentiment succeeds reflection with its bitter train. This is perhaps
+also the meaning of the biblical account of the tree of knowledge.[73]
+Before science and reflection are innocence and faith. Science and
+reflection at first engender doubt, disquietude, distaste for what one
+possesses, the disturbed pursuit of what one knows not, troubles of mind
+and soul, sore travail of thought, and, in life, many faults, until
+innocence, forever lost, is replaced by virtue, simple faith by true
+science, until love, through so many vanishing illusions, finally
+succeeds in reaching its true object.
+
+Spontaneous love has the native grace of ignorance and happiness.
+Reflective love is very different; it is serious, it is great, even in
+its faults, with the greatness of liberty. Let us not be in haste to
+condemn reflection: if it often produces egotism, it also produces
+devotion. What, in fact, is self-devotion? It is giving ourselves
+freely, with full knowledge of what we are doing. Therein consists the
+sublimity of love, love worthy of a noble and generous creature, not an
+ignorant and blind love. When affection has conquered selfishness,
+instead of loving its object for its own sake, the soul gives itself to
+its object, and miracle of love, the more it gives the more it
+possesses, nourishing itself by its own sacrifices, and finding its
+strength and its joy in its entire self-abandonment. But there is only
+one being who is worthy of being thus loved, and who can be thus loved
+without illusions, and without mistakes, at once without limits, and
+without regret, to wit, the perfect being who alone does not fear
+reflection, who alone can fill the entire capacity of our heart.
+
+Mysticism corrupts sentiment by exaggerating its power.
+
+Mysticism begins by suppressing in man reason, or, at least, it
+subordinates and sacrifices reason to sentiment.
+
+Listen to mysticism: it says that by the heart alone is man in relation
+with God. All that is great, beautiful, infinite, eternal, love alone
+reveals to us. Reason is only a lying faculty. Because it may err, and
+does err, it is said that it always errs. Reason is confounded with
+every thing that it is not. The errors of the senses, and of reasoning,
+the illusions of the imagination, even the extravagances of passion,
+which sometimes give rise to those of mind, every thing is laid to the
+charge of reason. Its imperfections are triumphed over, its miseries are
+complacently exhibited; the most audacious dogmatical system--since it
+aspires to put man and God in immediate communication--borrows against
+reason all the arms of skepticism.
+
+Mysticism goes farther: it attacks liberty itself; it orders liberty to
+renounce itself, in order to identify itself by love with him from whom
+the infinite separates us. The ideal of virtue is no longer the
+courageous perseverance of the good man, who, in struggling against
+temptation and suffering, makes life holy; it is no longer the free and
+enlightened devotion of a loving soul; it is the entire and blind
+abandonment of ourselves, of our will, of our being, in a barren
+contemplation of thought, in a prayer without utterance, and almost
+without consciousness.
+
+The source of mysticism is in that incomplete view of human nature,
+which knows not how to discern in it what therein is most profound,
+which betakes itself to what is therein most striking, most seizing,
+and, consequently, also most seizable. We have already said that reason
+is not noisy, and often is not heard, whilst its echo of sentiment
+loudly resounds. In this compound phenomenon, it is natural that the
+most apparent element should cover and dim the most obscure.
+
+Moreover, what relations, what deceptive resemblances between these two
+faculties! Without doubt, in their development, they manifestly differ;
+when reason becomes reasoning, one easily distinguishes its heavy
+movement from the flight of sentiment; but spontaneous reason is almost
+confounded with sentiment,--there is the same rapidity, the same
+obscurity. Add that they pursue the same object, and almost always go
+together. It is not, then, astonishing that they should be confounded.
+
+A wise philosophy distinguishes[74] them without separating them.
+Analysis demonstrates that reason precedes, and that sentiment follows.
+How can we love what we are ignorant of? In order to enjoy the truth, is
+it not necessary to know it more or less? In order to be moved by
+certain ideas, is it not necessary to have possessed them in some
+degree? To absorb reason in sentiment is to stifle the cause in the
+effect. When one speaks of the light of the heart, he designates,
+without knowing it, that light of the spontaneous reason which discovers
+to us truth by a pure and immediate intuition entirely opposite to the
+slow and laborious processes of the reflective reason and reasoning.
+
+Sentiment by itself is a source of emotion, not of knowledge. The sole
+faculty of knowledge is reason. At bottom, if sentiment is different
+from sensation, it nevertheless pertains on all sides to general
+sensibility, and it is, like it, variable; it has, like it, its
+interruptions, its vivacity, and its lassitude, its exaltation and its
+short-comings. The inspirations of sentiment, then, which are
+essentially mobile and individual, cannot be raised to a universal and
+absolute rule. It is not so with reason; it is constantly the same in
+each one of us, the same in all men. The laws that govern its exercise
+constitute the common legislation of all intelligent beings. There is no
+intelligence that does not conceive some universal and necessary truth,
+and, consequently, the infinite being who is its principle. These grand
+objects being once known excite in the souls of all men the emotions
+that we have endeavored to describe. These emotions partake of the
+dignity of reason and the mobility of imagination and sensibility.
+Sentiment is the harmonious and living relation between reason and
+sensibility. Suppress one of the two terms, and what becomes of the
+relation? Mysticism pretends to elevate man directly to God, and does
+not see that in depriving reason of its power, it really deprives him of
+that which makes him know God, and puts him in a just communication with
+God by the intermediary of eternal and infinite truth.
+
+The fundamental error of mysticism is, that it discards this
+intermediary, as if it were a barrier and not a tie: it makes the
+infinite being the direct object of love. But such a love can be
+sustained only by superhuman efforts that end in folly. Love tends to
+unite itself with its object: mysticism absorbs love in its object.
+Hence the extravagances of that mysticism so severely and so justly
+condemned by Bossuet and the Church in quietism.[75] Quietism lulls to
+sleep the activity of man, extinguishes his intelligence, substitutes
+indolent and irregular contemplation for the seeking of truth and the
+fulfilment of duty. The true union of the soul with God is made by truth
+and virtue. Every other union is a chimera, a peril, sometimes a crime.
+It is not permitted man to reject, under any pretext, that which makes
+him man, that which renders him capable of comprehending God, and
+expressing in himself an imperfect image of God, that is to say, reason,
+liberty, conscience. Without doubt, virtue has its prudence, and if we
+must never yield to passion, there are diverse ways of combating it in
+order to conquer it. One can let it subside, and resignation and silence
+may have their legitimate employment. There is a portion of truth, of
+utility even, in the _Spiritual Letters_, even in the _Maxims of the
+Saints_. But, in general, it is unsafe to anticipate in this world the
+prerogatives of death, and to dream of sanctity when virtue alone is
+required of us, when virtue is so difficult to attain, even imperfectly.
+The best quietism can, at most, be only a halt in the course, a truce in
+the strife, or rather another manner of combating. It is not by flight
+that battles are gained; in order to gain them it is necessary to come
+to an engagement, so much the more as duty consists in combating still
+more than in conquering. Of the two opposite extremes--stoicism and
+quietism--the first, taken all in all, is preferable to the second; for
+if it does not always elevate man to God, it maintains, at least, human
+personality, liberty, conscience, whilst quietism, in abolishing these,
+abolishes the entire man. Oblivion of life and its duties, inertness,
+sloth, death of soul,--such are the fruits of that love of God, which is
+lost in the sterile contemplation of its object, provided it does not
+cause still sadder aberrations! There comes a moment when the soul that
+believes itself united with God, puffed up with this imaginary
+possession, despises both the body and human personality to such an
+extent that all its actions become indifferent to it, and good and evil
+are in its eyes the same. Thus it is that fanatical sects have been seen
+mingling crime and devotion, finding in one the excuse, often even the
+motive, of the other, and prefacing infamous irregularities or
+abominable cruelties with mystic transports,--deplorable consequences of
+the chimera of pure love, of the pretension of sentiment to rule over
+reason, to serve alone as a guide to the human soul, and to put itself
+in direct communication with God, without the intermediary of the
+visible world, and without the still surer intermediary of intelligence
+and truth.
+
+But it is time to pass to another kind of mysticism, more singular, more
+learned, more refined, and quite as unreasonable, although it presents
+itself in the very name of reason.
+
+We have seen[76] that reason, if one of the principles which govern it
+be destroyed, cannot lay hold of truth, not even absolute truths of the
+intellectual and moral order; it refers all universal, necessary,
+absolute truths, to the being that alone can explain them, because in
+him alone are necessary and absolute existence, immutability, and
+infinity. God is the substance of uncreated truths, as he is the cause
+of created existences. Necessary truths find in God their natural
+subject. If God has not arbitrarily made them,--which is not in
+accordance with their essence and his,--he constitutes them, inasmuch as
+they are himself. His intelligence possesses them as the manifestations
+of itself. As long as our intelligence has not referred them to the
+divine intelligence, they are to it an effect without cause, a
+phenomenon without substance. It refers them, then, to their cause and
+their substance. And in that it obeys an imperative need, a fixed
+principle of reason.
+
+Mysticism breaks in some sort the ladder that elevates us to infinite
+substance: it regards this substance alone, independently[77] of the
+truth that manifests it, and it imagines itself to possess also the
+pure absolute, pure unity, being in itself. The advantage which
+mysticism here seeks, is to give to thought an object wherein there is
+no mixture, no division, no multiplicity, wherein every sensible and
+human element has entirely disappeared. But in order to obtain this
+advantage, it must pay the cost of it. It is a very simple means of
+freeing theodicea from every shade of anthropomorphism; it is reducing
+God to an abstraction, to the abstraction of being in itself. Being in
+itself, it is true, is free from all division, but upon the condition
+that it have no attribute, no quality, and even that it be deprived of
+knowledge and intelligence; for intelligence, if elevated as it might
+be, always supposes the distinction between the intelligent subject and
+the intelligible object. A God from whom absolute unity excludes
+intelligence, is the God of the mystic philosophy.
+
+How could the school of Alexandria, how could Plotinus, its
+founder,[78] in the midst of the lights of the Greek and Latin
+civilization, have arrived at such a strange notion of the Divinity? By
+the abuse of Platonism, by the corruption of the best and severest
+method, that of Socrates and Plato.
+
+The Platonic method, the dialectic process, as its author calls it,
+searches in particular, variable, contingent things, for what they also
+have general, durable, one, that is to say, their Idea, and is thus
+elevated to Ideas, as to the only true objects of intelligence, in order
+to be elevated still from these Ideas, which are arranged in an
+admirable hierarchy, to the first of all, beyond which intelligence has
+nothing more to conceive, nothing more to seek. By rejecting in finite
+things their limit, their individuality, we attain genera, Ideas, and,
+by them, their sovereign principle. But this principle is not the last
+of genera, nor the last of abstractions; it is a real and substantial
+principle.[79] The God of Plato is not called merely unity, he is called
+the Good; he is not the lifeless substance of the Eleatics;[80] he is
+endowed with _life and movement_;[81] strong expressions that show how
+much the God of the Platonic metaphysics differs from that of mysticism.
+This God is the _father of the world_.[82] He is also the father of
+truth, that light of spirits.[83] He dwells in the midst of Ideas _which
+make him a true God inasmuch as he is with them_.[84] He possesses
+_august and holy intelligence_.[85] He has made the world without any
+external necessity, and for the sole reason that he is good.[86] In
+fine, he is beauty without mixture, unalterable, immortal, that makes
+him who has caught a glimpse of it disdain all earthly beauties.[87] The
+beautiful, the absolute good, is too dazzling to be looked on directly
+by the eye of mortal; it must at first be contemplated in the images
+that reveal it to us, in truth, in beauty, in justice, as they are met
+here below, and among men, as the eye of one who has been a chained
+captive from infancy, must be gradually habituated to the light of the
+sun.[88] Our reason, enlightened by true science, can perceive this
+light of spirits; reason rightly led can go to God, and there is no
+need, in order to reach him, of a particular and mysterious faculty.
+
+Plotinus erred by pushing to excess the Platonic dialectics, and by
+extending them beyond the boundary where they should stop. In Plato they
+terminate at ideas, at the idea of the good, and produce an intelligent
+and good God; Plotinus applies them without limit, and they lead him
+into an abyss of mysticism. If all truth is in the general, and if all
+individuality is imperfection, it follows, that as long as we are able
+to generalize, as long as it is possible for us to overlook any
+difference, to exclude any determination, we shall not be at the limit
+of dialectics. Its last object, then, will be a principle without any
+determination. It will not spare in God being itself. In fact, if we say
+that God is a being, by the side of and above being, we place unity, of
+which being partakes, and which it cannot disengage, in order to
+consider it alone. Being is not here simple, since it is at once being
+and unity; unity alone is simple, for one cannot go beyond that. And
+still when we say unity, we determine it. True absolute unity must,
+then, be something absolutely indeterminate, which is not, which,
+properly speaking, cannot be named, the _unnamable_, as Plotinus says.
+This principle, which exists not, for a still stronger reason, cannot
+think, for all thought is still a determination, a manner of being. So
+being and thought are excluded from absolute unity. If Alexandrianism
+admits them, it is only as a forfeiture, a degradation of unity.
+Considered in thought, and in being, the supreme principle is inferior
+to itself; only in the pure simplicity of its indefinable essence is it
+the last object of science, and the last term of perfection.
+
+In order to enter into communication with such a God, the ordinary
+faculties are not sufficient, and the theodicea of the school of
+Alexandria imposes upon it a quite peculiar psychology.
+
+In the truth of things, reason conceives absolute unity as an attribute
+of absolute being, but not as something in itself, or, if it considers
+it apart, it knows that it considers only an abstraction. Does one wish
+to make absolute unity something else than an attribute of an absolute
+being, or an abstraction, a conception of human intelligence? Reason
+could accept nothing more on any condition. Will this barren unity be
+the object of love? But love, much more than reason, aspires after a
+real object. One does not love substance in general, but a substance
+that possesses such or such a character. In human friendships, suppress
+all the qualities of a person, or modify them, and you modify or
+suppress the love. This does not prove that you do not love this person;
+it only proves that the person is not for you without his qualities.
+
+So neither reason nor love can attain the absolute unity of mysticism.
+In order to correspond to such an object, there must be in us something
+analogous to it, there must be a mode of knowing that implies the
+abolition of consciousness. In fact, consciousness is the sign of the
+_me_, that is to say, of that which is most determinate: the being who
+says, _me_, distinguishes himself essentially from every other; that is
+for us the type itself of individuality. Consciousness should degrade
+the ideal of dialectic knowledge, or every division, every determination
+must be wanting, in order to respond to the absolute unity of its
+object. This mode of pure and direct communication with God, which is
+not reason, which is not love, which excludes consciousness, is ecstasy
+([Greek: ekstasis]). This word, which Plotinus first applied to this
+singular state of the soul, expresses this separation from ourselves
+which mysticism exacts, and of which it believes man capable. Man, in
+order to communicate with absolute being, must go out of himself. It is
+necessary that thought should reject all determinate thought, and, in
+falling back within its own depths, should arrive at such an oblivion of
+itself, that consciousness should vanish or seem to vanish. But that is
+only an image of ecstasy; what it is in itself, no one knows; as it
+escapes all consciousness, it escapes memory, escapes reflection, and
+consequently all expression, all human speech.
+
+This philosophical mysticism rests upon a radically false notion of
+absolute being. By dint of wishing to free God from all the conditions
+of finite existence, one comes to deprive him of all the conditions of
+existence itself; one has such a fear that the infinite may have
+something in common with the finite, that he does not dare to recognize
+that being is common to both, save difference of degree, as if all that
+is not were not nothingness itself! Absolute being possesses absolute
+unity without any doubt, as it possesses absolute intelligence; but,
+once more, absolute unity without a real subject of inherence is
+destitute of all reality. Real and determinate are synonyms. What
+constitutes a being is its special nature, its essence. A being is
+itself only on the condition of not being another; it cannot but have
+characteristic traits. All that is, is such or such. Difference is an
+element as essential to being as unity itself. If, then, reality is in
+determination, it follows that God is the most determinate of beings.
+Aristotle is much more Platonic than Plotinus, when he says that God is
+the thought of thought,[89] that he is not a simple power, but a power
+effectively acting, meaning thereby that God to be perfect, ought to
+have nothing in himself that is not completed. To finite nature it
+belongs to be, in a certain sense, indeterminate, since being finite, it
+has always in itself powers that are not realized; this indetermination
+diminishes as these powers are realized. So true divine unity is not
+abstract unity, it is the precise unity of perfect being in which every
+thing is accomplished. At the summit of existence, still more than at
+its low degree, every thing is determinate, every thing is developed,
+every thing is distinct, every thing is one. The richness of
+determinations is a certain sign of the plenitude of being. Reflection
+distinguishes these determinations from each other, but it is not
+necessary that it should in these distinctions see the limits. In us,
+for example, does the diversity of our faculties and their richest
+development divide the _me_ and alter the identity and the unity of the
+person? Does each one of us believe himself less than himself, because
+he possesses sensibility, reason, and will? No, surely. It is the same
+with God. Not having employed a sufficient psychology, Alexandrian
+mysticism imagined that diversity of attributes is incompatible with
+simplicity of essence, and through fear of corrupting simple and pure
+essence, it made of it an abstraction. By a senseless scruple, it feared
+that God would not be sufficiently perfect, if it left him all his
+perfections; it regards them as imperfections, being as a degradation,
+creation as a fall; and, in order to explain man and the universe, it is
+forced to put in God what it calls failings, not having seen that these
+pretended failings are the very signs of his infinite perfection.
+
+The theory of ecstasy is at once the necessary condition and the
+condemnation of the theory of absolute unity. Without absolute unity as
+the direct object of knowledge, of what use is ecstasy in the subject of
+knowledge? Ecstasy, far from elevating man to God, abases him below man;
+for it effaces in him thought, by taking away its condition, which is
+consciousness. To suppress consciousness, is to render all knowledge
+impossible; it is not to comprehend the perfection of this mode of
+knowing, wherein the limitation of subject and object gives at once the
+simplest, most immediate, and most determinate knowledge.[90]
+
+The Alexandrian mysticism is the most learned and the profoundest of all
+known mysticisms. In the heights of abstraction where it loses itself,
+it seems very far from popular superstitions; and yet the school of
+Alexandria unites ecstatic contemplation and theurgy. These are two
+things, in appearance, incompatible, but they pertain to the same
+principle, to the pretension of directly perceiving what inevitably
+escapes all our efforts. On the one hand, a refined mysticism aspires to
+God by ecstasy; on the other, a gross mysticism thinks to seize him by
+the senses. The processes, the faculties employed, differ, but the
+foundation is the same, and from this common foundation necessarily
+spring the most opposite extravagances. Apollonius of Tyanus is a
+popular Alexandrianist, and Jamblicus is Plotinus become a priest,
+mystagogue, and hierophant. A new worship shone forth by miracles; the
+ancient worship would have its own miracles, and philosophers boasted
+that they could make the divinity appear before other men. They had
+demons for themselves, and, in some sort, for their own orders; the gods
+were not only invoked, but evoked. Ecstasy for the initiates, theurgy
+for the crowd.
+
+At all times and in all places, these two mysticisms have given each
+other the hand. In India and in China, the schools where the most
+subtile idealism is taught, are not far from pagodas of the most abject
+idolatry. One day the Bhagavad-Gita or Lao-tseu[91] is read, an
+indefinable God is taught, without essential and determinate attributes;
+the next day there is shown to the people such or such a form, such or
+such a manifestation of this God, who, not having a form that belongs to
+him, can receive all forms, and being only substance in itself, is
+necessarily the substance of every thing, of a stone and a drop of
+water, of a dog, a hero, and a sage. So, in the ancient world under
+Julien, for example, the same man was at once professor in the school of
+Athens and guardian of the temple of Minerva or Cybele, by turns
+obscuring the _Timaeus_ and the _Republic_ by subtile commentaries, and
+exhibiting to the eyes of the multitude sometimes the sacred vale,[92]
+sometimes the shrine of the good goddess,[93] and in either function, as
+priest or philosopher, imposing on others and himself, under taking to
+ascend above the human mind and falling miserably below it, paying in
+some sort the penalty of an unintelligible metaphysics, in lending
+himself to the most shameless superstitions.
+
+When the Christian religion triumphed, it brought humanity under a
+discipline that puts a rein upon this deplorable mysticism. But how many
+times has it brought back, under the reign of spiritual religion, all
+the extravagances of the religions of nature! It was to appear
+especially at the _renaissance_ of the schools and of the genius of
+Paganism in the sixteenth century, when the human mind had broken with
+the philosophy of the Middle Age, without yet having arrived at modern
+philosophy.[94] The Paracelsuses and the Von Helmonts renewed the
+Apolloniuses and the Jamblicuses, abusing some chemical and medical
+knowledge, as the former had abused the Socratic and Platonic method,
+altered in its character, and turned from its true object. And so, in
+the midst of the eighteenth century, has not Swedenborg united in his
+own person an exalted mysticism and a sort of magic, opening thus the
+way to those senseless[95] persons who contest with me in the morning
+the solidest and best-established proofs of the existence of the soul
+and God, and propose to me in the evening to make me see otherwise than
+with my eyes, and to make me hear otherwise than with my ears, to make
+me use all my faculties otherwise than by their natural organs,
+promising me a superhuman science, on the condition of first losing
+consciousness, thought, liberty, memory, all that constitutes me an
+intelligent and moral being. I should know all, then, but at the cost of
+knowing nothing that I should know. I should elevate myself to a
+marvellous world, which, awakened and in a natural state, I am not even
+able to suspect, of which no remembrance will remain to me:--a mysticism
+at once gross and chimerical, which perverts both psychology and
+physiology; an imbecile ecstasy, renewed without genius from the
+Alexandrine ecstasy; an extravagance which has not even the merit of a
+little novelty, and which history has seen reappearing at all epochs of
+ambition and impotence.
+
+This is what we come to when we wish to go beyond the conditions imposed
+upon human nature. Charron first said, and after him Pascal repeated
+it, that whoever would become an angel becomes a beast. The remedy for
+all these follies is a severe theory of reason, of what it can and what
+it cannot do; of reason enveloped first in the exercise of the senses,
+than elevating itself to universal and necessary ideas, referring them
+to their principle, to a being infinite and at the same time real and
+substantial, whose existence it conceives, but whose nature it is always
+interdicted to penetrate and comprehend. Sentiment accompanies and
+vivifies the sublime intuitions of reason, but we must not confound
+these two orders of facts, much less smother reason in sentiment.
+Between a finite being like man and God, absolute and infinite
+substance, there is the double intermediary of that magnificent universe
+open to our gaze, and of those marvellous truths which reason conceives,
+but has not made more than the eye makes the beauties it perceives. The
+only means that is given us of elevating ourselves to the Being of
+beings, without being dazzled and bewildered, is to approach him by the
+aid of a divine intermediary; that is to say, to consecrate ourselves to
+the study and the love of truth, and, as we shall soon see, to the
+contemplation and reproduction of the beautiful, especially to the
+practice of the good.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[71] See the preceding lectures.
+
+[72] See the _Phaedrus_ and the _Banquet_, vol. vii. of our translation.
+
+[73] We shall not be accused of perverting the holy Scriptures by these
+analogies, for we give them only as analogies, and St. Augustine and
+Bossuet are full of such.
+
+[74] See part ii., _The Beautiful_, lecture 6, and part iii., lecture
+13, on the _Morals of Sentiment_. See also our _Pascal_, preface of the
+last edition, p. 8, etc., vol. i. of the 4th Series.
+
+[75] See the admirable work of Bossuet, _Instruction sur les etats
+d'Oraison_.
+
+[76] Lecture 4.
+
+[77] See especially in our writings the regular and detailed refutation
+of the double extravagance of considering substance apart from its
+determinations and its qualities, or of considering its qualities and
+its facilities apart from the being that possesses them. 1st Series,
+vol. iii., lecture 3, _On Condillac_, and vol. v., lectures 5 and 6, _On
+Kant_. We say, the same Series, vol. iv., p. 56: "There are philosophers
+beyond the Rhine, who, to appear very profound, are not contented with
+qualities and phenomena, and aspire to pure substance, to being in
+itself. The problem stated as follows, is quite insoluble: the knowledge
+of such a substance is impossible, for this very simple reason, that
+such a substance does not exist. Being in itself, _das Ding in sich_,
+which Kant seeks, escapes him, and this does not humiliate Kant and
+philosophy; for there is no being in itself. The human mind may form to
+itself an abstract and general idea of being, but this idea has no real
+object in nature. All being is determinate, if it is real; and to be
+determinate is to possess certain modes of being, transitory and
+accidental, or constant and essential. Knowledge of being in itself is
+then not merely interdicted to the human mind; it is contrary to the
+nature of things. At the other extreme of metaphysics is a powerless
+psychology, which, by fear of a hollow ontology, is condemned to
+voluntary ignorance. We are not able, say these philosophers, Mr. Dugald
+Stewart, for example, to attain being in itself; it is permitted us to
+know only phenomena and qualities: so that, in order not to wander in
+search of the substance of the soul, they do not dare affirm its
+spirituality, and devote themselves to the study of its different
+faculties. Equal error, equal chimera! There are no more qualities
+without being, than being without qualities. No being is without its
+determinations, and reciprocally its determinations are not without it.
+To consider the determinations of being independently of the being which
+possesses them, is no longer to observe; it is to abstract, to make an
+abstraction quite as extravagant as that of being considered
+independently of its qualities."
+
+[78] On the school of Alexandria, see 2d Series, vol. ii., _Sketch of a
+General History of Philosophy_, lecture 8, p. 211, and 3d Series, vol.
+i., _passim_.
+
+[79] See the previous lecture.
+
+[80] 3d Series, vol. i., _Ancient Philosophy_, article _Xenophanes_, and
+article _Zeno_.
+
+[81] _The Sophist_, vol. xi. of our translation, p. 261.
+
+[82] _Timaeus_, vol. xii., p. 117.
+
+[83] _Republic_, book vii., p. 70 of vol. x.
+
+[84] _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., p. 55.
+
+[85] _The Sophist_, p. 261, 262. The following little-known and decisive
+passage, which we have translated for the first time, must be
+cited:--"_Stranger._ But what, by Zeus! shall we be so easily persuaded
+that in reality, motion, life, soul, intelligence, do not belong to
+absolute being? that this being neither lives nor thinks, that this
+being remains immobile, immutable, without having part in august and
+holy intelligence?--_Theatetus._ That would be consenting, dear Eleatus,
+to a very strange assertion.--_Stranger._ Or, indeed, shall we accord to
+this being intelligence while we refuse him life?--_Theatetus._ That
+cannot be.--_Stranger._ Or, again, shall we say that there is in him
+intelligence and life, but that it is not in a soul that he possesses
+them?--_Theatetus._ And how could he possess them otherwise?--_Stranger._
+In fine, that, endowed with intelligence, soul, and life, all animated
+as he is, he remains incomplete immobility.--_Theatetus._ All that seems
+to me unreasonable."
+
+[86] _Timaeus_, p. 119: "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme
+ordainer to produce and compose this universe was, that he was good."
+
+[87] _Bouquet_, discourse of Diotimus, vol. vi., and the 2d part of this
+vol., _The Beautiful_, lecture 7.
+
+[88] _Republic._ _Ibid._
+
+[89] Book xii. of the _Metaphysics_. _De la Metaphysique d'Aristotle_,
+2d edition, p. 200, etc.
+
+[90] On this fundamental point, see lecture 3, in this vol.--2d Series,
+vol. i., lecture 5, p. 97. "The peculiarity of intelligence is not the
+power of knowing, but knowing in fact. On what condition is there
+intelligence for us? It is not enough that there should be in us a
+principle of intelligence; this principle must be developed and
+exercised, and take itself as the object of its intelligence. The
+necessary condition of intelligence is consciousness--that is to say,
+difference. There can be consciousness only where there are several
+terms, one of which perceives the other, and at the same time perceives
+itself. That is knowing, and knowing self; that is intelligence.
+Intelligence without consciousness is the abstract possibility of
+intelligence, it is not real intelligence. Transfer this from human
+intelligence to divine intelligence, that is to say, refer ideas, I mean
+ideas in the sense of Plato, of St. Augustine, of Bossuet, of Leibnitz,
+to the only intelligence to which they can belong, and you will have, if
+I may thus express myself, the life of the divine intelligence ...,
+etc."
+
+[91] Vol. ii. of the 2d Series, _Sketch of a General History of
+Philosophy_, lectures 5 and 6, _On the Indian Philosophy_.
+
+[92] See the _Euthyphron_, vol. i. of our translation.
+
+[93] Lucien, Apuleius, Lucius of Patras.
+
+[94] 2d Series, vol. ii., _Sketch of a General History of Philosophy_,
+lecture 10, _On the Philosophy of the Renaissance_.
+
+[95] One was then ardently occupied with magnetism, and more than a
+magnetizer, half a materialist, half a visionary, pretended to convert
+us to a system of perfect clairvoyance of soul, obtained by means of
+artificial sleep. Alas! the same follies are now renewed. Conjunctions
+are the fashion. Spirits are interrogated, and they respond! Only let
+there be consciousness that one does not interrogate, and superstition
+alone counterpoises skepticism.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN.
+
+    The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art
+    is, as in the investigation of the true, to commence by
+    psychology.--Faculties of the soul that unite in the perception
+    of the beautiful.--The senses give only the agreeable; reason
+    alone gives the idea of the beautiful.--Refutation of
+    empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the
+    beautiful.--Pre-eminence of reason.--Sentiment of the beautiful;
+    different from sensation and desire.--Distinction between the
+    sentiment of the beautiful and that of the
+    sublime.--Imagination.--Influence of sentiment on
+    imagination.--Influence of imagination on sentiment.--Theory of
+    taste.
+
+
+Let us recall in a few words the results at which we have arrived.
+
+Two exclusive schools are opposed to each other in the eighteenth
+century; we have combated both, and each by the other. To empiricism we
+have opposed the insufficiency of sensation, and its own inevitable
+necessity to idealism. We have admitted, with Locke and Condillac, in
+regard to the origin of knowledge, particular and contingent ideas,
+which we owe to the senses and consciousness; and above the senses and
+consciousness, the direct sources of all particular ideas, we have
+recognized, with Reid and Kant, a special faculty, different from
+sensation and consciousness, but developed with them,--reason, the lofty
+source of universal and necessary truths. We have established, against
+Kant, the absolute authority of reason, and the truths which it
+discovers. Then, the truths that reason revealed to us have themselves
+revealed to us their eternal principle,--God. Finally, this rational
+spiritualism, which is both the faith of the human race and the doctrine
+of the greatest minds of antiquity and modern times, we have carefully
+distinguished from a chimerical and dangerous mysticism. Thus the
+necessity of experience and the necessity of reason, the necessity of a
+real and infinite being which is the first and last foundation of truth,
+a severe distinction between spiritualism and mysticism, are the great
+principles which we have been able to gather from the first part of this
+course.
+
+The second part, the study of the beautiful, will give us the same
+results elucidated and aggrandized by a new application.
+
+It was the eighteenth century that introduced, or rather brought back
+into philosophy, investigations on the beautiful and art, so familiar to
+Plato and Aristotle, but which scholasticism had not entertained, to
+which our great philosophy of the seventeenth century had remained
+almost a stranger.[96] One comprehends that it did not belong to the
+empirical school to revive this noble part of philosophic science. Locke
+and Condillac did not leave a chapter, not even a single page, on the
+beautiful. Their followers treated beauty with the same disdain; not
+knowing very well how to explain it in their system, they found it more
+convenient not to perceive it at all. Diderot, it is true, had an
+enthusiasm for beauty and art, but enthusiasm was never so ill placed.
+Diderot had genius; but, as Voltaire said of him, his was a head in
+which every thing fermented without coming to maturity. He scattered
+here and there a mass of ingenious and often contradictory perceptions;
+he has no principles; he abandons himself to the impression of the
+moment; he knows not what the ideal is; he delights in a kind of nature,
+at once common and mannered, such as one might expect from the author
+of the _Interpretation de la Nature_, the _Pere de Famille_, the _Neveu
+de Rameau_, and _Jacques le Fataliste_. Diderot is a fatalist in art as
+well as in philosophy; he belongs to his times and his school, with a
+grain of poetry, sensibility, and imagination.[97] It was worthy of the
+Scotch[98] school and Kant[99] to give a place to the beautiful in their
+doctrine. They considered it in the soul and in nature; but they did not
+even touch the difficult question of the reproduction of the beautiful
+by the genius of man. We will try to embrace this great subject in its
+whole extent, and we are about to offer at least a sketch of a regular
+and complete theory of beauty and art.
+
+Let us begin by establishing well the method that must preside over
+these investigations.
+
+One can study the beautiful in two ways:--either out of us, in itself
+and in the objects, whatever they may be, that bear its impress; or in
+the mind of man, in the faculties that attain it, in the ideas or
+sentiments that it excites in us. Now, the true method, which must now
+be familiar to you, makes setting out from man to arrive at things a law
+for us. Therefore psychological analysis will here again be our point of
+departure, and the study of the state of the soul in presence of the
+beautiful will prepare us for that of the beautiful considered in itself
+and its objects.
+
+Let us interrogate the soul in the presence of beauty.
+
+Is it not an incontestable fact that before certain objects, under very
+different circumstances, we pronounce the following judgment:--This
+object is beautiful? This affirmation is not always explicit. Sometimes
+it manifests itself only by a cry of admiration; sometimes it silently
+rises in the mind that scarcely has a consciousness of it. The forms of
+this phenomenon vary, but the phenomenon is attested by the most common
+and most certain observation, and all languages bear witness of it.
+
+Although sensible objects, with most men, oftenest provoke the judgment
+of the beautiful, they do not alone possess this advantage; the domain
+of beauty is more extensive than the domain of the physical world
+exposed to our view; it has no bounds but those of entire nature, and of
+the soul and genius of man. Before an heroic action, by the remembrance
+of a great sacrifice; even by the thought of the most abstract truths
+firmly united with each other in a system admirable at once for its
+simplicity and its productiveness; finally, before objects of another
+order, before the works of art, this same phenomenon is produced in us.
+We recognize in all these objects, however different, a common quality
+in regard to which our judgment is pronounced, and this quality we call
+beauty.
+
+The philosophy of sensation, in faithfulness to itself, should have
+attempted to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable.
+
+Without doubt, beauty is almost always agreeable to the senses, or at
+least it must not wound them. Most of our ideas of the beautiful come to
+us by sight and hearing, and all the arts, without exception, are
+addressed to the soul through the body. An object which makes us suffer,
+were it the most beautiful in the world, very rarely appears to us such.
+Beauty has little influence over a soul occupied with grief.
+
+But if an agreeable sensation often accompanies the idea of the
+beautiful, we must not conclude that one is the other.
+
+Experience testifies that all agreeable things do not appear beautiful,
+and that, among agreeable things, those which are most so are not the
+most beautiful,--a sure sign that the agreeable is not the beautiful;
+for if one is identical with the other, they should never be separated,
+but should always be commensurate with each other.
+
+Far from this, whilst all our senses give us agreeable sensations, only
+two have the privilege of awakening in us the idea of beauty. Does one
+ever say: This is a beautiful taste, this is a beautiful smell?
+Nevertheless, one should say it, if the beautiful is the agreeable. On
+the other hand, there are certain pleasures of odor and taste that move
+sensibility more than the greatest beauties of nature and art; and even
+among the perceptions of hearing and sight, those are not always the
+most vivid that most excite in us the idea of beauty. Do not pictures,
+ordinary in coloring, often move us more deeply than many dazzling
+productions, more seductive to the eye, less touching to the soul? I say
+farther; sensation not only does not produce the idea of the beautiful,
+but sometimes stifles it. Let an artist occupy himself with the
+reproduction of voluptuous forms; while pleasing the senses, he
+disturbs, he repels in us the chaste and pure idea of beauty. The
+agreeable is not, then, the measure of the beautiful, since in certain
+cases it effaces it and makes us forget it; it is not, then, the
+beautiful, since it is found, and in the highest degree, where the
+beautiful is not.
+
+This conducts us to the essential foundation of the distinction between
+the idea of the beautiful and the sensation of the agreeable, to wit,
+the difference already explained between sensibility and reason.
+
+When an object makes you experience an agreeable sensation, if one asks
+you why this object is agreeable to you, you can answer nothing, except
+that such is your impression; and if one informs you that this same
+object produces upon others a different impression and displeases them,
+you are not much astonished, because you know that sensibility is
+diverse, and that sensations must not be disputed. Is it the same when
+an object is not only agreeable to you, but when you judge that it is
+beautiful? You pronounce, for example, that this figure is noble and
+beautiful, that this sunrise or sunset is beautiful, that
+disinterestedness and devotion are beautiful, that virtue is beautiful;
+if one contests with you the truth of these judgments, then you are not
+as accommodating as you were just now; you do not accept the dissent as
+an inevitable effect of different sensibilities, you no longer appeal to
+your sensibility which naturally terminates in you, you appeal to an
+authority which is made for others as well as you, that of reason; you
+believe that you have the right of accusing him with error who
+contradicts your judgment, for here your judgment rests no longer on
+something variable and individual, like an agreeable or painful
+sensation. The agreeable is confined for us within the inclosure of our
+own organization, where it changes every moment, according to the
+perpetual revolutions of this organization, according to health and
+sickness, the state of the atmosphere, that of our nerves, etc. But it
+is not so with beauty; beauty, like truth, belongs to none of us; no one
+has the right to dispose of it arbitrarily, and when we say: this is
+true, this is beautiful, it is no longer the particular and variable
+impression of our sensibility that we express, it is the absolute
+judgment that reason imposes on all men.
+
+Confound reason and sensibility, reduce the idea of the beautiful to the
+sensation of the agreeable, and taste no longer has a law. If a person
+says to me, in the presence of the Apollo Belvidere, that he feels
+nothing more agreeable than in presence of any other statue, that it
+does not please him at all, that he does not feel its beauty, I cannot
+dispute his impression; but if this person thence concludes that the
+Apollo is not beautiful, I proudly contradict him, and declare that he
+is deceived. Good taste is distinguished from bad taste; but what does
+this distinction signify, if the judgment of the beautiful is resolved
+into a sensation? You say to me that I have no taste. What does that
+mean? Have I not senses like you? Does not the object which you admire
+act upon me as well as upon you? Is not the impression which I feel as
+real as that which you feel? Whence comes it, then, that you are
+right,--you who only give expression to the impression which you feel,
+and that I am wrong,--I who do precisely the same thing? Is it because
+those who feel like you are more numerous than those who feel like me?
+But here the number of voices means nothing? The beautiful being defined
+as that which produces on the senses an agreeable impression, a thing
+that pleases a single man, though it were frightfully ugly in the eyes
+of all the rest of the human race, must, nevertheless, and very
+legitimately, be called beautiful by him who receives from it an
+agreeable impression, for, so far as he is concerned, it satisfies the
+definition. There is, then, no true beauty; there are only relative and
+changing beauties, beauties of circumstance, custom, fashion, and all
+these beauties, however different, will have a right to the same
+respect, provided they meet sensibilities to which they are agreeable.
+And as there is nothing in this world, in the infinite diversity of our
+dispositions, which may not please some one, there will be nothing that
+is not beautiful; or, to speak more truly, there will be nothing either
+beautiful or ugly, and the Hottentot Venus will equal the Venus de
+Medici. The absurdity of the consequences demonstrates the absurdity of
+the principle. But there is only one means of escaping these
+consequences, which is to repudiate the principle, and recognize the
+judgment of the beautiful as an absolute judgment, and, as such,
+entirely different from sensation.
+
+Finally, and this is the last rock of empiricism, is there in us only
+the idea of an imperfect and finite beauty, and while we are admiring
+the real beauties that nature furnishes, are we not elevating ourselves
+to the idea of a superior beauty, which Plato, with great excellence of
+expression, calls the Idea of the beautiful, which, after him, all men
+of delicate taste, all true artists call the Ideal? If we establish
+decrees in the beauty of things, is it not because we compare them,
+often without noticing it, with this ideal, which is to us the measure
+and rule of all our judgments in regard to particular beauties? How
+could this idea of absolute beauty enveloped in all our judgments on the
+beautiful,--how could this ideal beauty, which it is impossible for us
+not to conceive, be revealed to us by sensation, by a faculty variable
+and relative like the objects that it perceives?
+
+The philosophy which deduces all our ideas from the senses falls to the
+ground, then, before the idea of the beautiful. It remains to see
+whether this idea can be better explained by means of sentiment, which
+is different from sensation, which so nearly resembles reason that good
+judges have often taken it for reason, and have made it the principle of
+the idea of the beautiful as well as that of the good. It is already a
+progress, without doubt, to go from sensation to sentiment, and
+Hutcheson and Smith[100] are in our eyes very different philosophers
+from Condillac and Helvetius;[101] but we believe that we have
+sufficiently established[102] that, in confounding sentiment with
+reason, we deprive it of its foundation and rule, that sentiment,
+particular and variable in its nature, different to different men, and
+in each man continually changing, cannot be sufficient for itself.
+Nevertheless, if sentiment is not a principle, it is a true and
+important fact, and, after having distinguished it well from reason, we
+ourselves proceed to elevate it far above sensation, and elucidate the
+important part it plays in the perception of beauty.
+
+Place yourself before an object of nature, wherein men recognize beauty,
+and observe what takes place within you at the sight of this object. Is
+it not certain that, at the same time that you judge that it is
+beautiful, you also feel its beauty, that is to say, that you experience
+at the sight of it a delightful emotion, and that you are attracted
+towards this object by a sentiment of sympathy and love? In other cases
+you judge otherwise, and feel an opposite sentiment. Aversion
+accompanies the judgment of the ugly, as love accompanies the judgment
+of the beautiful. And this sentiment is awakened not only in presence of
+the objects of nature: all objects, whatever they may be, that we judge
+to be ugly or beautiful, have the power to excite in us this sentiment.
+Vary the circumstances as much as you please, place me before an
+admirable edifice or before a beautiful landscape; represent to my mind
+the great discoveries of Descartes and Newton, the exploits of the
+great Conde, the virtue of St. Vincent de Paul; elevate me still higher;
+awaken in me the obscure and too much forgotten idea of the infinite
+being; whatever you do, as often as you give birth within me to the idea
+of the beautiful, you give me an internal and exquisite joy, always
+followed by a sentiment of love for the object that caused it.
+
+The more beautiful the object is, the more lively is the joy which it
+gives the soul, and the more profound is the love without being
+passionate. In admiration judgment rules, but animated by sentiment. Is
+admiration increased to the degree of impressing upon the soul an
+emotion, an ardor that seems to exceed the limits of human nature? this
+state of the soul is called enthusiasm:
+
+    "Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
+
+The philosophy of sensation explains sentiment, as well as the idea of
+the beautiful, only by changing its nature. It confounds it with
+agreeable sensation, and, consequently, for it the love of beauty can be
+nothing but desire. There is no theory more contradicted by facts.
+
+What is desire? It is an emotion of the soul which has, for its avowed
+or secret end, possession. Admiration is in its nature respectful,
+whilst desire tends to profane its object.
+
+Desire is the offspring of need. It supposes, then, in him who
+experiences it, a want, a defect, and, to a certain point, suffering.
+The sentiment of the beautiful is to itself its own satisfaction.
+
+Desire is burning, impetuous, sad. The sentiment of the beautiful, free
+from all desire, and always without fear, elevates and warms the soul,
+and may transport it even to enthusiasm, without making it know the
+troubles of passion. The artist sees only the beautiful where the
+sensual man sees only the alluring and the frightful. On a vessel tossed
+by a tempest, while the passengers tremble at the sight of the
+threatening waves, and at the sound of the thunder that breaks over
+their heads, the artist remains absorbed in the contemplation of the
+sublime spectacle. Vernet has himself lashed to the mast in order to
+contemplate for a longer time the storm in its majestic and terrible
+beauty. When he knows fear, when he participates in the common feeling,
+the artist vanishes, there no more remains any thing but the man.
+
+The sentiment of the beautiful is so far from being desire, that each
+excludes the other. Let me take a common example. Before a table loaded
+with meats and delicious wines, the desire of enjoyment is awakened, but
+not the sentiment of the beautiful. Suppose that if, instead of thinking
+of the pleasures which all these things spread before my eyes promise
+me, I only take notice of the manner in which they are arranged and set
+upon the table, and the order of the feast, the sentiment of the
+beautiful might in some degree be produced; but surely this will be
+neither the need nor the desire of appropriating this symmetry, this
+order.
+
+It is the property of beauty not to irritate and inflame desire, but to
+purify and ennoble it. The more beautiful a woman is,--I do not mean
+that common and gross beauty which Reubens in vain animates with his
+brilliant coloring, but that ideal beauty which antiquity and Raphael
+understood so well,--the more, at the sight of this noble creature is
+desire tempered by an exquisite and delicate sentiment, and is sometimes
+even replaced by a disinterested worship. If the Venus of the Capitol,
+or the Saint Cecilia, excites in you sensual desires, you are not made
+to feel the beautiful. So the true artist addresses himself less to the
+senses than to the soul; in painting beauty he only seeks to awaken in
+us sentiment; and when he has carried this sentiment as far as
+enthusiasm, he has obtained the last triumph of art.
+
+The sentiment of the beautiful is, therefore, a special sentiment, as
+the idea of the beautiful is a simple idea. But is this sentiment, one
+in itself, manifested only in a single way, and applied only to a single
+kind of beauty? Here again--here, as always--let us interrogate
+experience.
+
+When we have before our eyes an object whose forms are perfectly
+determined, and the whole easy to embrace,--a beautiful flower, a
+beautiful statue, an antique temple of moderate size,--each of our
+faculties attaches itself to this object, and rests upon it with an
+unalloyed satisfaction. Our senses easily perceive its details; our
+reason seizes the happy harmony of all its parts. Should this object
+disappear, we can distinctly represent it to ourselves, so precise and
+fixed are its forms. The soul in this contemplation feels again a sweet
+and tranquil joy, a sort of efflorescence.
+
+Let us consider, on the other hand, an object with vague and indefinite
+forms, which may nevertheless be very beautiful: the impression which we
+experience is without doubt a pleasure still, but it is a pleasure of a
+different order. This object does not call forth all our powers like the
+first. Reason conceives it, but the senses do not perceive the whole of
+it, and imagination does not distinctly represent it to itself. The
+senses and the imagination try in vain to attain its last limits; our
+faculties are enlarged, are inflated, thus to speak, in order to embrace
+it, but it escapes and surpasses them. The pleasure that we feel comes
+from the very magnitude of the object; but, at the same time, this
+magnitude produces in us I know not what melancholy sentiment, because
+it is disproportionate to us. At the sight of the starry heavens, of the
+vast sea, of gigantic mountains, admiration is mingled with sadness.
+These objects, in reality finite, like the world itself, seem to us
+infinite, in our want of power to comprehend their immensity, and,
+resembling what is truly without bounds, they awaken in us the idea of
+the infinite, that idea which at once elevates and confounds our
+intelligence. The corresponding sentiment which the soul experiences is
+an austere pleasure.
+
+In order to render the difference which we wish to mark more
+perceptible, examples may be multiplied. Are you affected in the same
+way at the sight of a meadow, variegated in its rather limited
+dimensions, whose extent the eye can easily take in, and at the aspect
+of an inaccessible mountain, at the foot of which the ocean breaks? Do
+the sweet light of day and a melodious voice produce upon you the same
+effect as darkness and silence? In the intellectual and moral order, are
+you moved in the same way when a rich and good man opens his purse to
+the indigent, and when a magnanimous man gives hospitality to his enemy,
+and saves him at the peril of his own life? Take some light poetry in
+which measure, spirit, and grace, everywhere predominate; take an ode,
+and especially an epistle of Horace, or some small verses of Voltaire,
+and compare them with the Iliad, or those immense Indian poems that are
+filled with marvellous events, wherein the highest metaphysics are
+united to recitals by turns graceful or pathetic, those poems that have
+more than two hundred thousand verses, whose personages are gods or
+symbolic beings; and see whether the impressions that you experience
+will be the same. As a last example, suppose, on the one hand, a writer
+who, with two or three strokes of the pen, sketches an analysis of
+intelligence, agreeable and simple, but without depth, and, on the
+other, a philosopher who engages in a long labor in order to arrive at
+the most rigorous decomposition of the faculty of knowing, and unfolds
+to you a long chain of principles and consequences,--read the _Traite
+des Sensations_ and _the Critique of Pure Reason_, and, even leaving out
+of the account the truth and the falsehood they may contain, with
+reference solely to the beautiful, compare your impressions.
+
+These are, then, two very different sentiments; different names have
+also been given them: one has been more particularly called the
+sentiment of the beautiful, the other that of the sublime.
+
+In order to complete the study of the different faculties that enter
+into the perception of beauty, after reason and sentiment, it remains to
+us to speak of a faculty not less necessary, which animates them and
+vivifies them,--imagination.
+
+When sensation, judgment, and sentiment have been produced by the
+occasion of an external object, they are reproduced even in the absence
+of this object; this is memory.
+
+Memory is double:--not only do I remember that I have been in the
+presence of a certain object, but I represent to myself this absent
+object as it was, as I have seen, felt, and judged it:--the remembrance
+is then an image. In this last case, memory has been called by some
+philosophers imaginative memory. Such is the foundation of imagination;
+but imagination is something more still.
+
+The mind, applying itself to the images furnished by memory, decomposes
+them, chooses between their different traits, and forms of them new
+images. Without this new power, imagination would be captive in the
+circle of memory.
+
+The gift of being strongly affected by objects and reproducing their
+absent or vanished images, and the power of modifying these images so as
+to compose of them new ones,--do they fully constitute what men call
+imagination? No, or at least, if these are indeed the proper elements of
+imagination, there must be something else added, to wit, the sentiment
+of the beautiful in all its degrees. By this means is a great
+imagination preserved and kindled. Did the careful reading of Titus
+Livius enable the author of the _Horaces_ to vividly represent to
+himself some of the scenes described, to seize their principal traits
+and combine them happily? From the outset, sentiment, love of the
+beautiful, especially of the morally beautiful, were requisite; there
+was required that great heart whence sprang the word of the ancient
+Horace.
+
+Let us be well understood. We do not say that sentiment is imagination,
+we say that it is the source whence imagination derives its inspirations
+and becomes productive. If men are so different in regard to
+imagination, it is because some are cold in presence of objects, cold in
+the representations which they preserve of them, cold also in the
+combinations which they form of them, whilst others, endowed with a
+particular sensibility, are vividly moved by the first impressions of
+objects, preserve strong recollections of them, and carry into the
+exercise of all their faculties this same force of emotion. Take away
+sentiment and all else is inanimate; let it manifest itself, and every
+thing receives warmth, color, and life.
+
+It is then impossible to limit imagination, as the word seems to demand,
+to images properly so called, and to ideas that are related to physical
+objects. To remember sounds, to choose between them, to combine them in
+order to draw from them new effects,--does not this belong to
+imagination, although sound is not an image? The true musician does not
+possess less imagination than the painter. Imagination is conceded to
+the poet when he retraces the images of nature; will this same faculty
+be refused him when he retraces sentiments? But, besides images and
+sentiments, does not the poet employ the high thoughts of justice,
+liberty, virtue, in a word, moral ideas? Will it be said that in moral
+paintings, in pictures of the intimate life of the soul, either graceful
+or energetic, there is no imagination?
+
+You see what is the extent of imagination: it has no limits, it is
+applied to all things. Its distinctive character is that of deeply
+moving the soul in the presence of a beautiful object, or by its
+remembrance alone, or even by the idea alone of an imaginary object. It
+is recognized by the sign that it produces, by the aid of its
+representations, the same impression as, and even an impression more
+vivid than, nature by the aid of real objects. If beauty, absent and
+dreamed of, does not affect you as much as, and more than, present
+beauty, you may have a thousand other gifts,--that of imagination has
+been refused you.
+
+In the eyes of imagination, the real world languishes in comparison with
+its own fictions. One may feel that imagination is his master by the
+_ennui_ that real and present things give him. The phantoms of imagination
+have a vagueness, an indefiniteness of form, which moves a thousand
+times more than the clearness and distinctness of actual perceptions.
+And then, unless we are wholly mad,--and passion does not always render
+this service,--it is very difficult to see reality otherwise than as it
+is not, that is to say, very imperfectly. On the other hand, one makes
+of an image what he wishes, unconsciously metamorphoses it, embellishes
+it to his own liking. There is at the bottom of the human soul an
+infinite power of feeling and loving to which the entire world does not
+answer, still less a single one of its creatures, however charming. All
+mortal beauty, viewed near by, does not suffice for this insatiable
+power which it excites and cannot satisfy. But from afar, its effects
+disappear or are diminished, shades are mingled and confounded in the
+clear-obscure of memory and dream, and the objects please more because
+they are less determinate. The peculiarity of men of imagination is,
+that they represent men and things otherwise than as they are, and that
+they have a passion for such fantastic images. Those that are called
+positive men, are men without imagination, who perceive only what they
+see, and deal with reality as it is instead of transforming it. They
+have, in general, more reason than sentiment; they may be seriously,
+profoundly honest; they will never be either poets or artists. What
+makes the poet or artist is, with a foundation of good sense and
+reason--without which all the rest is useless--a sensitive, even a
+passionate heart; above all, a vivid, a powerful imagination.
+
+If sentiment acts upon imagination, we see that imagination returns with
+usury to sentiment what it gives.
+
+This pure and ardent passion, this worship of beauty that makes the
+great artist, can be found only in a man of imagination. In fact, the
+sentiment of the beautiful may be awakened in each one of us before any
+beautiful object; but, when this object has disappeared, if its image
+does not subsist vivaciously retraced, the sentiment which it for a
+moment excited is little by little effaced; it may be revived at the
+sight of another object, but only to be extinguished again,--always
+dying to be born again at hazard; not being nourished, increased,
+exalted by the vivacious and continuous reproduction of its object in
+the imagination, it wants that inspiring power, without which there is
+no artist, no poet.
+
+A word more on another faculty, which is not a simple faculty, but a
+happy combination of those which have just been mentioned,--taste, so
+ill treated, so arbitrarily limited in all theories.
+
+If, after having heard a beautiful poetical or musical work, admired a
+statue or a picture, you are able to recall what your senses have
+perceived, to see again the absent picture, to hear again the sounds
+that no longer exist; in a word, if you have imagination, you possess
+one of the conditions without which there is no true taste. In fact, in
+order to relish the works of imagination, is it not necessary to have
+taste? Do we not need, in order to feel an author, not to equal him,
+without doubt, but to resemble him in some degree? Will not a man of
+sensible, but dry and austere mind, like Le Batteux or Condillac, be
+insensible to the happy darings of genius, and will he not carry into
+criticism a narrow severity, a reason very little reasonable--since he
+does not comprehend all the parts of human nature,--an intolerance that
+mutilates and blemishes art while thinking to purify it?
+
+On the other hand, imagination does not suffice for the appreciation of
+beauty. Moreover, that vivacity of imagination so precious to taste,
+when it is somewhat restrained, produces, when it rules, only a very
+imperfect taste, which, not having reason for a basis, carelessly
+judges, runs the risk of misunderstanding the greatest beauty,--beauty
+that is regulated. Unity in composition, harmony of all the parts, just
+proportion of details, skilful combination of effects, discrimination,
+sobriety, measure, are so many merits it will little feel, and will not
+put in their place. Imagination has doubtless much to do with works of
+art; but, in fine, it is not every thing. Is it only imagination that
+makes the _Polyeucte_ and the _Misanthrope_, two incomparable marvels?
+Is there not, also, in the profound simplicity of plan, in the measured
+development of action, in the sustained truth of characters, a superior
+reason, different from imagination which furnishes the superior colors,
+and from sensibility that gives the passion?
+
+Besides imagination and reason, the man of taste ought to possess an
+enlightened but ardent love of beauty; he must take delight in meeting
+it, must search for it, must summon it. To comprehend and demonstrate
+that a thing is not beautiful, is an ordinary pleasure, an ungrateful
+task; but to discern a beautiful thing, to be penetrated with its
+beauty, to make it evident, and make others participate in our
+sentiment, is an exquisite joy, a generous task. Admiration is, for him
+who feels it, at once a happiness and an honor. It is a happiness to
+feel deeply what is beautiful; it is an honor to know how to recognize
+it. Admiration is the sign of an elevated reason served by a noble
+heart. It is above a small criticism, that is skeptical and powerless;
+but it is the soul of a large criticism, a criticism that is productive:
+it is, thus to speak, the divine part of taste.
+
+After having spoken of taste which appreciates beauty, shall we say
+nothing of genius which makes it live again? Genius is nothing else than
+taste in action, that is to say, the three powers of taste carried to
+their culmination, and armed with a new and mysterious power, the power
+of execution. But we are already entering upon the domain of art. Let us
+wait, we shall soon find art again and the genius that accompanies it.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[96] Except the estimable _Essay on the Beautiful_, by P. Andre, a
+disciple of Malebranche, whose life was considerably prolonged into the
+eighteenth century. On P. Andre, see 3d Series, vol. iii., _Modern
+Philosophy_, p. 207, 516.
+
+[97] See in the works of Diderot, _Pensees sur la Sculpture, les
+Salons_, etc.
+
+[98] See 1st Series, vol. iv., explained and estimated, the theories of
+Hutcheson and Reid.
+
+[99] The theory of Kant is found in the _Critique of Judgment_, and in
+the _Observations_ on the _Sentiment of the Beautiful and the Sublime_.
+See the excellent translation made by M. Barny, 2 vols., 1846.
+
+[100] On Hutcheson and Smith, their merits and defects, the part of
+truth and the part of error, which their philosophy contains, see the
+detailed lectures which we have devoted to them, 1st Series, vol. iv.
+
+[101] See the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Condillac and
+Helvetius, _Ibid._, vol. iii.
+
+[102] See lecture 5, in this vol.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.
+
+    Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful:
+    the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.--Nor to
+    convenience.--Nor to proportion.--Essential characters of the
+    beautiful.--Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the
+    sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral
+    beauty.--Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.--God, the
+    first principle of the beautiful.--Theory of Plato.
+
+
+We have made known the beautiful in ourselves, in the faculties that
+perceive it and appreciate it, in reason, sentiment, imagination, taste;
+we come, according to the order determined by the method, to other
+questions: What is the beautiful in objects? What is the beautiful taken
+in itself? What are its characters and different species? What, in fine,
+is its first and last principle? All these questions must be treated,
+and, if possible, solved. Philosophy has its point of departure in
+psychology; but, in order to attain also its legitimate termination, it
+must set out from man, and reach things themselves.
+
+The history of philosophy offers many theories on the nature of the
+beautiful: we do not wish to enumerate nor discuss them all; we will
+designate the most important.[103]
+
+There is one very gross, which defines the beautiful as that which
+pleases the senses, that which procures an agreeable impression. We will
+not stop at this opinion. We have sufficiently refuted it in showing
+that it is impossible to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable.
+
+A sensualism a little more wise puts the useful in the place of the
+agreeable, that is to say, changes the form of the same principle.
+Neither is the beautiful the object which procures for us in the present
+moment an agreeable but fugitive sensation, it is the object which can
+often procure for us this same sensation or others similar. No great
+effort of observation or reasoning is necessary to convince us that
+utility has nothing to do with beauty. What is useful is not always
+beautiful. What is beautiful is not always useful, and what is at once
+useful and beautiful is beautiful for some other reason than its
+utility. Observe a lever or a pulley: surely nothing is more useful.
+Nevertheless, you are not tempted to say that this is beautiful. Have
+you discovered an antique vase admirably worked? You exclaim that this
+vase is beautiful, without thinking to seek of what use it may be to
+you. Finally, symmetry and order are beautiful things, and at the same
+time, are useful things, because they economize space, because objects
+symmetrically disposed are easier to find when one wants them; but that
+is not what makes for us the beauty of symmetry, for we immediately
+seize this kind of beauty, and it is often late enough before we
+recognize the utility that is found in it. It even sometimes happens,
+that after having admired the beauty of an object, we are not able to
+divine its use, although it may have one. The useful is, then, entirely
+different from the beautiful, far from being its foundation.
+
+A celebrated and very ancient[104] theory makes the beautiful consist in
+the perfect suitableness of means to their end. Here the beautiful is no
+longer the useful, it is the suitable; these two ideas must be
+distinguished. A machine produces excellent effects, economy of time,
+work, etc.; it is therefore useful. If, moreover, examining its
+construction, I find that each piece is in its place, and that all are
+skilfully disposed for the result which they should produce; even
+without regarding the utility of this result, as the means are well
+adapted to their end, I judge that there is suitableness in it. We are
+already approaching the idea of the beautiful; for we are no longer
+considering what is useful, but what is proper. Now, we have not yet
+attained the true character of beauty; there are, in fact, objects very
+well adapted to their end, which we do not call beautiful. A bench
+without ornament and without elegance, provided it be solid, provided
+all the parts are firmly connected, provided one may sit down on it with
+safety, provided it may be for this purpose suitable, agreeable even,
+may give an example of the most perfect adaptation of means to an end;
+it will not, therefore, be said that this bench is beautiful. There is
+here always this difference between suitableness and utility, that an
+object to be beautiful has no need of being useful, but that it is not
+beautiful if it does not possess suitableness, if there is in it a
+disagreement between the end and the means.
+
+Some have thought to find the beautiful in proportion, and this is, in
+fact, one of the conditions of beauty, but it is not the only one. It is
+very certain, that an object ill-proportioned cannot be beautiful. There
+is in all beautiful objects, however far they may be from geometric
+form, a sort of living geometry. But, I ask, is it proportion that is
+dominant in this slender tree, with flexible and graceful branches, with
+rich and shady foliage? What makes the terrible beauty of a storm, what
+makes that of a great picture, of an isolated verse, or a sublime ode?
+It is not, I know, wanting in law and rule, neither is it law and rule:
+often, even what at first strikes us is an apparent irregularity. It is
+absurd to pretend that what makes us admire all these things and many
+more, is the same quality that makes us admire a geometric figure, that
+is to say, the exact correspondence of parts.
+
+What we say of proportion may be said of order, which is something less
+mathematical than proportion, but scarcely explains better what is
+free, varied, and negligent in certain beauties.
+
+All these theories which refer beauty to order, harmony, and proportion,
+are at foundation only one and the same theory which in the beautiful
+sees unity before all. And surely unity is beautiful; it is an important
+part of beauty, but it is not the whole of beauty.
+
+The most probable theory of the beautiful is that which composes it of
+two contrary and equally necessary elements, unity and variety. Behold a
+beautiful flower. Without doubt, unity, order, proportion, symmetry
+even, are in it; for, without these qualities, reason would be absent
+from it, and all things are made with a marvellous reason. But, at the
+same time, what a diversity! How many shades in the color, what richness
+in the least details! Even in mathematics, what is beautiful is not an
+abstract principle, it is a principle carrying with itself a long chain
+of consequences. There is no beauty without life, and life is movement,
+is diversity.
+
+Unity and variety are applied to all orders of beauty. Let us rapidly
+run over these different orders.
+
+In the first place, there are beautiful objects, to speak properly, and
+sublime objects. A beautiful object, we have seen, is something
+completed, circumscribed, limited, which all our faculties easily
+embrace, because the different parts are on a somewhat narrow scale. A
+sublime object is that which, by forms not in themselves
+disproportionate, but less definite and more difficult to seize, awakens
+in us the sentiment of the infinite.
+
+There are two very distinct species of beauty. But reality is
+inexhaustible, and in all the degrees of reality there is beauty.
+
+Among sensible objects, colors, sounds, figures, movements, are capable
+of producing the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. All these
+beauties are arranged under that species of beauty which, right or
+wrong, is called physical beauty.
+
+If from the world of sense we elevate ourselves to that of mind, truth,
+and science, we shall find there beauties more severe, but not less
+real. The universal laws that govern bodies, those that govern
+intelligences, the great principles that contain and produce long
+deductions, the genius that creates, in the artist, poet, or
+philosopher,--all these are beautiful, as well as nature herself: this
+is what is called intellectual beauty.
+
+Finally, if we consider the moral world and its laws, the idea of
+liberty, virtue, and devotedness, here the austere justice of an
+Aristides, there the heroism of a Leonidas, the prodigies of charity or
+patriotism, we shall certainly find a third order of beauty that still
+surpasses the other two, to wit, moral beauty.
+
+Neither let us forget to apply to all these beauties the distinction
+between the beautiful and the sublime. There are, then, the beautiful
+and the sublime at once in nature, in ideas, in sentiments, in actions.
+What an almost infinite variety in beauty!
+
+After having enumerated all these differences, could we not reduce them?
+They are incontestable; but, in this diversity is there not unity? Is
+there not a single beauty of which all particular beauties are only
+reflections, shades, degrees, or degradations?
+
+Plotinus, in his treatise _On the Beautiful_,[105] proposed to himself
+this question. He asks--What is the beautiful in itself? I see clearly
+that such or such a form is beautiful, that such or such an action is
+also beautiful; but why and how are these two objects, so dissimilar,
+beautiful? What is the common quality which, being found in these two
+objects, ranges them under the general idea of the beautiful?
+
+It is necessary to answer this question, or the theory of beauty is a
+maze without issue; one applies the same name to the most diverse
+things, without understanding the real unity that authorizes this unity
+of name.
+
+Either the diversities which we have designated in beauty are such that
+it is impossible to discover their relation, or these diversities are
+especially apparent, and have their harmony, their concealed unity.
+
+Is it pretended that this unity is a chimera? Then physical beauty,
+moral beauty, and intellectual beauty, are strangers to each other.
+What, then, will the artist do? He is surrounded by different beauties,
+and he must make a work; for such is the recognized law of art. But if
+this unity that is imposed upon him is a factitious unity, if there are
+in nature only essentially dissimilar beauties, art deceives and lies to
+us. Let it be explained, then, how falsehood is the law of art. That
+cannot be; the unity that art expresses, it must have somewhere caught a
+glimpse of, in order to transport it into its works.
+
+We neither retract the distinction between the beautiful and the
+sublime, nor the other distinctions just now indicated; but it is
+necessary to re-unite after having distinguished them. These
+distinctions and these re-unions are not contradictory: the great law of
+beauty, like that of truth, is unity as well as variety. All is one, and
+all is diverse. We have divided beauty into three great
+classes--physical beauty, intellectual beauty, and moral beauty. We must
+now seek the unity of these three sorts of beauty. Now, we think that
+they resolve themselves into one and the same beauty, moral beauty,
+meaning by that, with moral beauty properly so called, all spiritual
+beauty.
+
+Let us put this opinion to the proof of facts.
+
+Place yourself before that statue of Apollo which is called Apollo
+Belvidere, and observe attentively what strikes you in that
+master-piece. Winkelmann, who was not a metaphysician, but a learned
+antiquarian, a man of taste without system, made a celebrated analysis
+of the Apollo.[106] It is curious to study it. What Winkelmann extols
+before all, is the character of divinity stamped upon the immortal youth
+that invests that beautiful body, upon the height, a little above that
+of man, upon the majestic altitude, upon the imperious movement, upon
+the _ensemble_, and all the details of the person. The forehead is
+indeed that of a god,--an unalterable placidity dwells upon it. Lower
+down, humanity reappears somewhat; and that is very necessary, in order
+to interest humanity in the works of art. In that satisfied look, in the
+distension of the nostrils, in the elevation of the under lip, are at
+once felt anger mingled with disdain, pride of victory, and the little
+fatigue which it has cost. Weigh well each word of Winkelmann: you will
+find there a moral impression. The tone of the learned antiquary is
+elevated, little by little, to enthusiasm, and his analysis becomes a
+hymn to spiritual beauty.
+
+Instead of a statue, observe a real and living man. Regard that man who,
+solicited by the strongest motives to sacrifice duty to fortune,
+triumphs over interest, after an heroic struggle, and sacrifices fortune
+to virtue. Regard him at the moment when he is about to take this
+magnanimous resolution; his face will appear to you beautiful, because
+it expresses the beauty of his soul. Perhaps, under all other
+circumstances, the face of the man is common, even trivial; here,
+illuminated by the soul which it manifests, it is ennobled, and takes an
+imposing character of beauty. So, the natural face of Socrates[107]
+contrasts strongly with the type of Grecian beauty; but look at him on
+his death-bed, at the moment of drinking the hemlock, convening with his
+disciples on the immortality of the soul, and his face will appear to
+you sublime.[108]
+
+At the highest point of moral grandeur, Socrates expires:--you have
+before your eyes no longer any thing but his dead body; the dead face
+preserves its beauty, as long as it preserves traces of the mind that
+animated it; but little by little the expression is extinguished or
+disappears; the face then becomes vulgar and ugly. The expression of
+death is hideous or sublime,--hideous at the aspect of the decomposition
+of the matter that no longer retains the spirit,--sublime when it
+awakens in us the idea of eternity.
+
+Consider the figure of man in repose: it is more beautiful than that of
+an animal, the figure of an animal is more beautiful than the form of
+any inanimate object. It is because the human figure, even in the
+absence of virtue and genius, always reflects an intelligent and moral
+nature, it is because the figure of an animal reflects sentiment at
+least, and something of soul, if not the soul entire. If from man and
+the animal we descend to purely physical nature, we shall still find
+beauty there, as long as we find there some shade of intelligence, I
+know not what, that awakens in us some thought, some sentiment. Do we
+arrive at some piece of matter that expresses nothing, that signifies
+nothing, neither is the idea of beauty applied to it. But every thing
+that exists is animated. Matter is shaped and penetrated by forces that
+are not material, and it obeys laws that attest an intelligence
+everywhere present. The most subtile chemical analysis does not reach a
+dead and inert nature, but a nature that is organized in its own way,
+that is neither deprived of forces nor laws. In the depths of the earth,
+as in the heights of the heavens, in a grain of sand as in a gigantic
+mountain, an immortal spirit shines through the thickest coverings. Let
+us contemplate nature with the eye of the soul as well as with the eye
+of the body:--everywhere a moral expression will strike us, and the
+forms of things will impress us as symbols of thought. We have said
+that with man, and with the animal even, the figure is beautiful on
+account of the expression. But, when you are on the summit of the Alps,
+or before the immense Ocean, when you behold the rising or setting of
+the sun, at the beginning or the close of the day, do not these imposing
+pictures produce on you a moral effect? Do all these grand spectacles
+appear only for the sake of appearing? Do we not regard them as
+manifestations of an admirable power, intelligence, and wisdom? And,
+thus to speak, is not the face of nature expressive like that of man?
+
+Form cannot be simply a form, it must be the form of something. Physical
+beauty is, then, the sign of an internal beauty, which is spiritual and
+moral beauty; and this is the foundation, the principle, the unity of
+the beautiful.[109]
+
+All the beauties that we have just enumerated and reduced compose what
+is called the really beautiful. But, above real beauty, is a beauty of
+another order--ideal beauty. The ideal resides neither in an individual,
+nor in a collection of individuals. Nature or experience furnishes us
+the occasion of conceiving it, but it is essentially distinct. Let it
+once be conceived, and all natural figures, though never so beautiful,
+are only images of a superior beauty which they do not realize. Give me
+a beautiful action, and I will imagine one still more beautiful. The
+Apollo itself is open to criticism in more than one respect. The ideal
+continually recedes as we approach it. Its last termination is in the
+infinite, that is to say, in God; or, to speak more correctly, the true
+and absolute ideal is nothing else than God himself.
+
+God, being the principle of all things, must for this reason be that of
+perfect beauty, and, consequently, of all natural beauties that express
+it more or less imperfectly; he is the principle of beauty, both as
+author of the physical world and as father of the intellectual and moral
+world.
+
+Is it not necessary to be a slave of the senses and of appearances in
+order to stop at movements, at forms, at sounds, at colors, whose
+harmonious combinations produce the beauty of this visible world, and
+not to conceive behind this scene so magnificent and well regulated, the
+orderer, the geometer, the supreme artist?
+
+Physical beauty serves as an envelope to intellectual and moral beauty.
+
+What can be the principle of intellectual beauty, that splendor of the
+true, except the principle of all truth?
+
+Moral beauty comprises, as we shall subsequently see,[110] two distinct
+elements, equally but diversely beautiful, justice and charity, respect
+and love of men. He who expresses in his conduct justice and charity,
+accomplishes the most beautiful of all works; the good man is, in his
+way, the greatest of all artists. But what shall we say of him who is
+the very substance of justice and the exhaustless source of love? If our
+moral nature is beautiful, what must be the beauty of its author! His
+justice and goodness are everywhere, both in us and out of us. His
+justice is the moral order that no human law makes, that all human laws
+are forced to express, that is preserved and perpetuated in the world by
+its own force. Let us descend into ourselves, and consciousness will
+attest the divine justice in the peace and contentment that accompany
+virtue, in the troubles and tortures that are the invariable punishments
+of vice and crime. How many times, and with what eloquence, have men
+celebrated the indefatigable solicitude of Providence, its benefits
+everywhere manifest in the smallest as well as in the greatest phenomena
+of nature, which we forget so easily because they have become so
+familiar to us, but which, on reflection, call forth our mingled
+admiration and gratitude, and proclaim a good God, full of love for his
+creatures!
+
+Thus, God is the principle of the three orders of beauty that we have
+distinguished, physical beauty, intellectual beauty, moral beauty.
+
+In him also are reunited the two great forms of the beautiful
+distributed in each of these three orders, to wit, the beautiful and the
+sublime. God is, _par excellence_, the beautiful--for what object
+satisfies more all our faculties, our reason, our imagination, our
+heart! He offers to reason the highest idea, beyond which it has nothing
+more to seek; to imagination the most ravishing contemplation; to the
+heart a sovereign object of love. He is, then, perfectly beautiful; but
+is he not sublime also in other ways? If he extends the horizon of
+thought, it is to confound it in the abyss of his greatness. If the soul
+blooms at the spectacle of his goodness, has it not also reason to be
+affrighted at the idea of his justice, which is not less present to it?
+God is at once mild and terrible. At the same time that he is the life,
+the light, the movement, the ineffable grace of visible and finite
+nature, he is also called the Eternal, the Invisible, the Infinite, the
+Absolute Unity, and the Being of beings. Do not these awful attributes,
+as certain as the first, produce in the highest degree in the
+imagination and the soul that melancholy emotion excited by the sublime?
+Yes, God is for us the type and source of the two great forms of beauty,
+because he is to us at once an impenetrable enigma and still the
+clearest word that we are able to find for all enigmas. Limited beings
+as we are, we comprehend nothing in comparison with that which is
+without limits, and we are able to explain nothing without that same
+thing which is without limits. By the being that we possess, we have
+some idea of the infinite being of God; by the nothingness that is in
+us, we lose ourselves in the being of God; and thus always forced to
+recur to him in order to explain any thing, and always thrown back
+within ourselves under the weight of his infinitude, we experience by
+turns, or rather at the same time, for this God who raises and casts us
+down, a sentiment of irresistible attraction and astonishment, not to
+say insurmountable terror, which he alone can cause and allay, because
+he alone is the unity of the sublime and the beautiful.
+
+Thus absolute being, which is both absolute unity and infinite
+variety,--God, is necessarily the last reason, the ultimate foundation,
+the completed ideal of all beauty. This is the marvellous beauty that
+Diotimus had caught a glimpse of, and thus paints to Socrates in the
+_Banquet_:
+
+"Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from decay as well
+as increase, which is not beautiful in such a part and ugly in such
+another, beautiful only, at such a time, in such a place, in such a
+relation, beautiful for some, ugly for others, beauty that has no
+sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing corporeal, which is not such
+a thought or such a particular science, which resides not in any being
+different from itself, as an animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any
+other thing, which is absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in
+which all other beauties participate, in such a way, nevertheless, that
+their birth or their destruction neither diminishes nor increases, nor
+in the least changes it!... In order to arrive at this perfect beauty,
+it is necessary to commence with the beauties of this lower world, and,
+the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate ourselves
+unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, through all the
+degrees of the scale, from a single beautiful body to two, from two to
+all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from
+beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until from thought to
+thought we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than
+the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing it as it is in itself.
+
+"O my dear Socrates," continued the stranger of Mantinea, "that which
+can give value to this life is the spectacle of the eternal beauty....
+What would be the destiny of a mortal to whom it should be granted to
+contemplate the beautiful without alloy, in its purity and simplicity,
+no longer clothed with the flesh and hues of humanity, and with all
+those vain charms that are condemned to perish, to whom it should be
+given to see face to face, under its sole form, the divine beauty!"[111]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[103] If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and piquant
+refutation, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of beauty,
+he may read the _Hippias_ of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation. The
+_Phaedrus_, vol. vi., contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own
+theory; but it is in the _Banquet_ (_Ibid._), and particularly in the
+discourse of Diotimus, that we must look for the thought of Plato
+carried to its highest degree of development, and clothed with all the
+beauty of human language.
+
+[104] See the _Hippias_.
+
+[105] First _Ennead_, book vi., in the work of M. B. Saint-Hillaire, on
+the _School of Alexandria_, the translation of this morsel of Plotinus,
+p. 197.
+
+[106] Winkelmann has twice described the Apollo, _History of Art among
+the Ancients_, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book iv., chap.
+iii., _Art among the Greeks_:--"The Apollo of the Vatican offers us that
+God in a movement of indignation against the serpent Python, which he
+has just killed with arrow-shots, and in a sentiment of contempt for a
+victory so little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist, who proposed to
+represent the most beautiful of the gods, placed the anger in the nose,
+which, according to the ancients, was its seat; and the disdain on the
+lips. He expressed the anger by the inflation of the nostrils, and the
+disdain by the elevation of the under lip, which causes the same
+movement in the chin."--_Ibid._, vol. ii., book iv., chap. vi., _Art
+under the Emperors_:--"Of all the antique statues that have escaped the
+fury of barbarians and the destructive hand of time, the statue of
+Apollo is, without contradiction, the most sublime. One would say that
+the artist composed a figure purely ideal, and employed matter only
+because it was necessary for him to execute and represent his idea. As
+much as Homer's description of Apollo surpasses the descriptions which
+other poets have undertaken after him, so much this statue excels all
+the figures of this god. Its height is above that of man, and its
+attitude proclaims the divine grandeur with which it is filled. A
+perennial spring-time, like that which reigns in the happy fields of
+Elysium, clothes with lovable youth the beautiful body, and shines with
+sweetness over the noble structure of the limbs. In order to feel the
+merit of this _chef-d'oeuvre of art_, we must be penetrated with
+intellectual beauty, and become, if possible, the creatures of a
+celestial nature; for there is nothing mortal in it, nothing subject to
+the wants of humanity. That body, whose forms are not interrupted by a
+vein, which is not agitated by a nerve, seems animated with a celestial
+spirit, which circulates like a sweet vapor in all the parts of that
+admirable figure. The god has just been pursuing Python, against which
+he has bent, for the first time, his formidable bow; in his rapid
+course, he has overtaken him, and given him a mortal wound. Penetrated
+with the conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his
+august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond
+his victory. Disdain sits upon his lips; the indignation that he
+breathes distends his nostrils, and ascends to his eyebrows; but an
+unchangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of
+sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. Among all the figures
+that remain to us of Jupiter, there is none in which the father of the
+gods approaches the grandeur with which he manifested himself to the
+intelligence of Homer; but in the traits of the Apollo Belvidere, we
+find the individual beauties of all the other divinities united, as in
+that of Pandora. The forehead is the forehead of Jupiter, inclosing the
+goddess of wisdom; the eyebrows, by their movement, announce his supreme
+will; the large eyes are those of the queen of the gods, orbed with
+dignity, and the mouth is an image of that of Bacchus, where breathed
+voluptuousness. Like the tender branches of the vine, his beautiful
+locks flow around his head, as if they were lightly agitated by the
+zephyr's breath. They seem perfumed with the essence of the gods, and
+are charmingly arranged over his head by the hand of the Graces. At the
+sight of this marvel of art, I forget every thing else, and my mind
+takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it with dignity;
+from admiration I pass to ecstasy; I feel my breast dilating and rising,
+like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy; I am transported
+to Delos, and the sacred groves of Syria,--places which Apollo honored
+with his presence:--the statue seems to be animated as it were with the
+beauty that sprung of old from the hands of Pygmalion. How can I
+describe thee, O inimitable master-piece? For this it would be necessary
+that art itself should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I have
+just sketched, I lay before thee, as those who came to crown the gods,
+put their crowns at their feet, not being able to reach their heads."
+
+[107] See the last part of the _Banquet_, the discourse of Alcibiades,
+p. 326 of vol. vi. of our translation.
+
+[108] We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of David, which
+appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted, above its
+reputation. Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admire Plato
+listening to his master, as it were from the bottom of his soul, without
+looking at him, with his back turned upon the scene that is passing, and
+lost in the contemplation of the intelligible world.
+
+[109] We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so dear to us,
+confirmed by the authority of one of the severest and most circumspect
+minds:--it may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 23. The
+Scotch philosopher terminates his _Essay on Taste_ with these words,
+which happily remind us of the thought and manner of Plato
+himself:--"Whether the reasons that I have given to prove that sensible
+beauty is only the image of moral beauty appear sufficient or not, I
+hope that my doctrine, in attempting to unite the terrestrial Venus more
+closely to the celestial Venus, will not seem to have for its object to
+abase the first, and render her less worthy of the homage that mankind
+has always paid her."
+
+[110] Part iii., lecture 15.
+
+[111] Vol. vi. of our translation, p. 816-818
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII
+
+ON ART.
+
+    Genius:--its attribute is creative power.--Refutation of the
+    opinion that art is the imitation of nature.--M. Emeric David,
+    and M. Quatremere de Quincy.--Refutation of the theory of
+    illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite
+    the passions of terror and pity.--Nor even directly the moral
+    and religious sentiment.--The proper and direct object of art is
+    to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this
+    idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the
+    affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation
+    of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.--True mission of
+    art.
+
+
+Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in the works of
+nature, he is endowed with the power of reproducing it. At the sight of
+a natural beauty, whatever it may be, physical or moral, his first need
+is to feel and admire. He is penetrated, ravished, as it were
+overwhelmed with the sentiment of beauty. But when the sentiment is
+energetic, he is not a long time sterile. We wish to see again, we wish
+to feel again what caused us so vivid a pleasure, and for that end we
+attempt to revive the beauty that charmed us, not as it was, but as our
+imagination represents it to us. Hence a work original and peculiar to
+man, a work of art. Art is the free reproduction of beauty, and the
+power in us capable of reproducing it is called genius.
+
+What faculties are used in this free reproduction of the beautiful? The
+same that serve to recognize and feel it. Taste carried to the highest
+degree, if you always join to it an additional element, is genius. What
+is this element?
+
+Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called
+taste,--imagination, sentiment, reason.
+
+These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, but they are
+not sufficient for it. What essentially distinguishes genius from taste
+is the attribute of creative power. Taste feels, judges, discusses,
+analyzes, but does not invent. Genius is, before all, inventive and
+creative. The man of genius is not the master of the power that is in
+him; it is by the ardent, irresistible need of expressing what he feels,
+that he is a man of genius. He suffers by withholding the sentiments, or
+images, or thoughts, that agitate his breast. It has been said that
+there is no superior man without some grain of folly; but this folly,
+like that of the cross, is the divine part of reason. This mysterious
+power Socrates called his demon. Voltaire called it the devil in the
+body; he demanded it even in a comedian in order to be a comedian of
+genius. Give to it what name you please, it is certain that there is a
+I-know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it until it has
+delivered itself of what consumes it; until, by expressing them, it has
+solaced its pains and its joys, its emotions, its ideas; until its
+reveries have become living works. Thus two things characterize genius;
+at first, the vivacity of the need it has of producing, then the power
+of producing; for the need without the power is only a malady that
+resembles genius, but is not it. Genius is above all, is essentially,
+the power of doing, of inventing, of creating. Taste is contented with
+observing, with admiring. False genius, ardent and impotent imagination,
+consumes itself in sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least nothing
+great. Genius alone has the power to convert conceptions into creations.
+
+If genius creates it does not imitate.
+
+But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since it does not
+imitate it. Nature is the work of God; man is then the rival of God.
+
+The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival of God; but it is
+the interpreter of him. Nature expresses him in its way, human genius
+expresses him in its own way.
+
+Let us stop a moment at that question so much discussed,--whether art is
+any thing else than the imitation of nature.
+
+Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation; for absolute creation
+belongs only to God. Where can genius find the elements upon which it
+works, except in nature, of which it forms a part? But does it limit
+itself to the reproduction of them as nature furnishes them to it,
+without adding any thing to them which belongs to itself? Is it only a
+copier of reality? Its sole merit, then, is that of the fidelity of the
+copy. And what labor is more sterile than that of copying works
+essentially inimitable on account of the life with which they are
+endowed, in order to obtain an indifferent image of them? If art is a
+servile pupil, it is condemned never to be any thing but an impotent
+pupil.
+
+The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature; but every thing in
+nature is not equally admirable. As we have just said, it has something
+by which it infinitely surpasses art--its life. Besides that, art can,
+in its turn, surpass nature, on the condition of not wishing to imitate
+it too closely. Every natural object, however beautiful, is defective on
+some side. Every thing that is real is imperfect. Here, the horrible and
+the hideous are united to the sublime; there, elegance and grace are
+separated from grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered
+and diverse. To reunite them arbitrarily, to borrow from such a face a
+mouth, eyes from such another, without any rule that governs this choice
+and directs these borrowings, is to compose monsters; to admit a rule,
+is already to admit an ideal different from all individuals. It is this
+ideal that the true artist forms to himself in studying nature. Without
+nature, he never would have conceived this ideal; but with this ideal,
+he judges nature herself, rectifies her, and dares undertake to measure
+himself with her.
+
+The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contemplation.
+Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly purified by reflection
+and vivified by sentiment, it warms genius and inspires it with the
+irresistible need of seeing it realized and living. For this end, genius
+takes in nature all the materials that can serve it, and applying to
+them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo impressed his chisel upon the
+docile marble, makes of them works that have no model in nature, that
+imitate nothing else than the ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in
+some sort a second creation inferior to the first in individuality and
+life, but much superior to it, we do not fear to say, on account of the
+intellectual and moral beauty with which it is impressed.
+
+Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This foundation is
+somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art disengages it, and gives to
+it forms more transparent. On this account, art, when it knows well its
+power and its resources, institutes with nature a contest in which it
+may have the advantage.
+
+Let us establish well the end of art: it is precisely where its power
+lies. The end of art is the expression of moral beauty, by the aid of
+physical beauty. The latter is only a symbol of the former. In nature,
+this symbol is often obscure: art in bringing it to light attains
+effects that nature does not always produce. Nature may please more,
+for, once more, it possesses in an incomparable degree what makes the
+great charm of imagination and sight--life; art touches more, because in
+expressing, above all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly
+to the source of profound emotions. Art can be more pathetic than
+nature, and the pathetic is the sign and measure of great beauty.
+
+Two extremes are equally dangerous--a lifeless ideal, or the absence of
+the ideal. Either we copy the model, and are wanting in true beauty, or
+we work _de tete_, and fall into an ideality without character. Genius
+is a ready and sure perception of the right proportion in which the
+ideal and the natural, form and thought, ought to be united. This union
+is the perfection of art: _chefs-d'oeuvre_ are produced by observing
+it.
+
+It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in teaching art. It
+is asked whether pupils should begin with the study of the ideal or the
+real. I do not hesitate to answer,--by both. Nature herself never offers
+the general without the individual, nor the individual without the
+general. Every figure is composed of individual traits which distinguish
+it from all others, and make its own looks, and, at the same time, it
+has general traits which constitute what is called the human figure.
+These general traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is
+the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of
+design to trace. It would also be good, I believe, in order to preserve
+him from the dry and abstract, to exercise him early in copying some
+natural object, especially a living figure. This would be putting pupils
+to the true school of nature. They would thus become accustomed never to
+sacrifice either of the two essential elements of the beautiful, either
+of the two imperative conditions of art.
+
+But, in uniting these two elements, these two conditions, it is
+necessary to distinguish them, and to know how to put them in their
+place. There is no true ideal without determinate form, there is no
+unity without variety, no genus without individuals, but, in fine, the
+foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is before all,
+the realization of the idea, and not the imitation of such or such a
+particular form.
+
+At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France offered a
+prize for the best answer to the following question: _What were the
+causes of the perfection of the antique sculpture, and what would be the
+best means of attaining it?_ The successful competitor, M. Emeric
+David,[112] maintained the opinion then dominant, that the assiduous
+study of natural beauty had alone conducted the antique art to
+perfection, and that thus the imitation of nature was the only route to
+reach the same perfection. A man whom I do not fear to compare with
+Winkelmann, the future author of the _Olympic Jupiter_,[113] M.
+Quatremere de Quincy, in some ingenious and profound disquisitions,[114]
+combated the doctrine of the laureate, and defended the cause of ideal
+beauty. It is impossible to demonstrate more decidedly, by the entire
+history of Greek sculpture, and by authentic texts from the greatest
+critiques of antiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks was
+not the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, or by
+several, the most beautiful model being always very imperfect, and
+several models not being able to compose a single beauty. The true
+process of the Greek art was the representation of an ideal beauty which
+nature scarcely possessed more in Greece than among us, which it could
+not then offer to the artist. We regret that the honorable laureate,
+since become a member of the Institute, pretended that this expression
+of ideal beauty, if it had been known by the Greeks, would have meant
+_visible beauty_, because ideal comes from [Greek: eidos], which
+signifies only, according to M. Emeric David, a form seen by the eye.
+Plato would have been much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of
+the word [Greek: eidos]. M. Quatremere de Quincy confounds his unequal
+adversary by two admirable texts, one from the _Timaeus_, where Plato
+marks with precision in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary
+artist, the other at the commencement of the _Orator_, where Cicero
+explains the manner in which great artists work, in referring to the
+manner of Phidias, that is to say, the most perfect master of the most
+perfect epoch of art.
+
+"The artist,[115] who, with eye fixed upon the immutable being, and
+using such a model, reproduces its idea and its excellence, cannot fail
+to produce a whole whose beauty is complete, whilst he who fixes his eye
+upon what is transitory, with this perishable model will make nothing
+beautiful."
+
+"Phidias,[116] that great artist, when he made the form of Jupiter or
+Minerva, did not contemplate a model a resemblance of which he would
+express; but in the depth of his soul resided a perfect type of beauty,
+upon which he fixed his look, which guided his hand and his art."
+
+Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which Raphael describes
+in the famous letter to Castiglione, which he declares that he followed
+himself for the Galatea?[117] "As," he says, "I am destitute of
+beautiful models, I use a certain ideal which I form for myself."
+
+There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, to imitation: it
+is that which makes illusion the end of art. If this theory be true, the
+ideal beauty of painting is a _tromp-l'oeil_,[118] and its
+master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis that the birds came and pecked at.
+The height of art in a theatrical piece would be to persuade you that
+you are in the presence of reality. What is true in this opinion is,
+that a work of art is beautiful only on the condition of being
+life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic art is not to put on
+the stage pale phantoms of the past, but personages borrowed from
+imagination or history, as you like, but animated, endowed with passion,
+speaking and acting like men and not like shades. It is human nature
+that is to be represented to itself under a magic light that does not
+disfigure it, but ennobles it. This magic is the very genius of art. It
+lifts us above the miseries that besiege us, and transports us to
+regions where we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose sight
+of ourselves, but where we find ourselves transformed to our advantage,
+where all the imperfections of reality have given place to a certain
+perfection, where the language that we speak is more equal and elevated,
+where persons are more beautiful, where the ugly is not admitted, and
+all this while duly respecting history, especially without ever going
+beyond the imperative conditions of human nature. Has art forgotten
+human nature? it has passed beyond its end, it has not attained it; it
+has brought forth nothing but chimeras without interest for our soul.
+Has it been too human, too real, too nude? it has fallen short of its
+end; it has then attained it no better.
+
+Illusion is so little the end of art, that it may be complete and have
+no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, theatrical men have taken
+great pains in these latter times to secure historical accuracy of
+costume. This is all very well; but it is not the most important thing.
+Had you found, and lent to the actor who plays the part of Brutus, the
+very costume that of old the Roman hero wore, it would touch true
+connoisseurs very little. This is not all; when the illusion goes too
+far, the sentiment of art disappears in order to give place to a
+sentiment purely natural, sometimes insupportable. If I believed that
+Iphegenia were in fact on the point of being immolated by her father at
+a distance of twenty paces from me, I should leave the theatre trembling
+with horror. If the Ariadne that I see and hear, were the true Ariadne
+who is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that pathetic scene where
+the poor woman, who already feels herself less loved, asks who then robs
+her of the heart, once so tender, of Theseus, I would do as the young
+Englishman did, who cried out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the
+stage, "It is Phedre, it is Phedre!" as if he would warn and save
+Ariadne.
+
+But, it is said, is it not the aim of the poet to excite pity and
+terror? Yes; but at first in a certain measure; then he must mix with
+them some other sentiment that tempers them, or makes them serve another
+end. If the aim of dramatic art were only to excite in the highest
+degree pity and terror, art would be the powerless rival of nature. All
+the misfortunes represented on the stage are very feeble in comparison
+with those sad spectacles which we may see every day. The first hospital
+is fuller of pity and terror than all the theatres in the world. What
+should the poet do in the theory that we combat? He should transfer to
+the stage the greatest possible reality, and move us powerfully by
+shocking our senses with the sight of frightful pains. The great resort
+of the pathetic would then be the representation of death, especially
+that of the greatest torture. Quite on the contrary, there is an end of
+art when sensibility is too much excited. To take, again, an example
+that we have already employed, what constitutes the beauty of a
+tempest, of a shipwreck? What attracts us to those great scenes of
+nature? It is certainly not pity and terror,--these poignant and
+lacerating sentiments would much sooner keep us away. An emotion very
+different from these is necessary, which triumphs over us, in order to
+retain us by the shore; this emotion is the pure sentiment of the
+beautiful and the sublime, excited and kept alive by the grandeur of the
+spectacle, by the vast extent of the sea, the rolling of the foaming
+waves, and the imposing sound of the thunder. But do we think for a
+single instant that there are in the midst of the sea the unfortunate
+who are suffering, and are, perhaps, about to perish? From that moment
+the spectacle becomes to us insupportable. It is so in art. Whatever
+sentiment it proposes to excite in us, must always be tempered and
+governed by that of the beautiful. If it only produces pity or terror
+beyond a certain limit, especially physical pity or terror, it revolts,
+and no longer charms; it loses the effect that belongs to it in exchange
+for a foreign and vulgar effect.
+
+For this same reason, I cannot accept another theory, which, confounding
+the sentiment of the beautiful with the moral and religious sentiment,
+puts art in the service of religion and morals, and gives it for its end
+to make us better and elevate us to God. There is here an essential
+distinction to be made. If all beauty covers a moral beauty, if the
+ideal mounts unceasingly towards the infinite, art, which expresses
+ideal beauty, purifies the soul in elevating it towards the infinite,
+that is to say, towards God. Art, then, produces the perfection of the
+soul, but it produces it indirectly. The philosopher who investigates
+effects and causes, knows what is the ultimate principle of the
+beautiful and its certain, although remote, effects. But the artist is
+before all things an artist; what animates him is the sentiment of the
+beautiful; what he wishes to make pass into the soul of the spectator is
+the same sentiment that fills his own. He confides himself to the virtue
+of beauty; he fortifies it with all the power, all the charm of the
+ideal; it must then do its own work; the artist has done his when he
+has procured for some noble souls the exquisite sentiment of beauty.
+This pure and disinterested sentiment is a noble ally of the moral and
+religious sentiments; it awakens, preserves, and develops them, but it
+is a distinct and special sentiment. So art, which is founded on this
+sentiment, which is inspired by it, which expands it, is in its turn an
+independent power. It is naturally associated with all that ennobles the
+soul, with morals and religion; but it springs only from itself.
+
+Let us confine our thought strictly within its proper limits. In
+vindicating the independence, the proper dignity, and the particular end
+of art, we do not intend to separate it from religion, from morals, from
+country. Art draws its inspirations from these profound sources, as well
+as from the ever open source of nature. But it is not less true that
+art, the state, religion, are powers which have each their world apart
+and their own effects; they mutually help each other; they should not
+serve each other. As soon as one of them wanders from its end, it errs,
+and is degraded. Does art blindly give itself up to the orders of
+religion and the state? In losing its liberty, it loses its charm and
+its empire.
+
+Ancient Greece and modern Italy are continually cited as triumphant
+examples of what the alliance of art, religion, and the state can do.
+Nothing is more true, if the question is concerning their union; nothing
+is more false, if the question is concerning the servitude of art. Art
+in Greece was so little the slave of religion, that it little by little
+modified the symbols, and, to a certain extent, the spirit itself, by
+its free representations. There is a long distance between the
+divinities that Greece received from Egypt and those of which it has
+left immortal exemplars. Are those primitive artists and poets, as Homer
+and Dedalus are called, strangers to this change? And in the most
+beautiful epoch of art, did not AEschylus and Phidias carry a great
+liberty into the religious scenes which they exposed to the gaze of the
+people, in the theatre, or in front of the temples? In Italy as in
+Greece, as everywhere, art is at first in the hands of priesthoods and
+governments; but, as it increases its importance and is developed, it
+more and more conquers its liberty. Men speak of the faith that animated
+the artists and vivified their works; that is true of the time of Giotto
+and Ciambue; but after Angelico de Fiesole, at the end of the fifteenth
+century, in Italy, I perceive especially the faith of art in itself and
+the worship of beauty. Raphael was about to become a cardinal;[119] yes,
+but always painting Galatea, and without quitting Fornarine. Once more,
+let us exaggerate nothing; let us distinguish, not separate; let us
+unite art, religion, and country, but let not their union injure the
+liberty of each. Let us be thoroughly penetrated with the thought, that
+art is also to itself a kind of religion. God manifests himself to us by
+the idea of the true, by the idea of the good, by the idea of the
+beautiful. Each one of them leads to God, because it comes from him.
+True beauty is ideal beauty, and ideal beauty is a reflection of the
+infinite. So, independently of all official alliance with religion and
+morals, art is by itself essentially religious and moral; for, far from
+wanting its own law, its own genius, it everywhere expresses in its
+works eternal beauty. Bound on all sides to matter by inflexible laws,
+working upon inanimate stone, upon uncertain and fugitive sounds, upon
+words of limited and finite signification, art communicates to them,
+with the precise form that is addressed to such or such a sense, a
+mysterious character that is addressed to the imagination and the soul,
+takes them away from reality, and bears them sweetly or violently into
+unknown regions. Every work of art, whatever may be its form, small or
+great, figured, sung, or uttered,--every work of art, truly beautiful or
+sublime, throws the soul into a gentle or severe reverie that elevates
+it towards the infinite. The infinite is the common limit after which
+the soul aspires upon the wings of imagination as well as reason, by the
+route of the sublime and the beautiful, as well as by that of the true
+and the good. The emotion that the beautiful produces turns the soul
+from this world; it is the beneficent emotion that art produces for
+humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[112] _Recherches sur l'Art Statuaire._ Paris, 1805.
+
+[113] Paris, 1815, in folio, an eminent work that will subsist even when
+time shall have destroyed some of its details.
+
+[114] Since reprinted under the title of _Essais sur l'Ideal dans ses
+Applications Pratiques_. Paris, 1837.
+
+[115] Translation of Plato, vol. xii., _Timaeus_, p. 116.
+
+[116] _Orator:_ "Neque enim ille artifex (Phidias) cum faceret Jovis
+formam aut Minervae, contemplabatur aliquem a quo similitudinem duceret;
+sed ipsius in mente insidebat species pulchritudinis eximia quaedam, quam
+intuens, in eaque defixus, ad illius similitudinem artem et manum
+dirigebat."
+
+[117] _Raccolta di lett._ _Sulla pitt._, i., p. 83. "_Essendo carestia e
+de' buoni giudici e di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mi
+viene alla mente._"
+
+[118] "A picture representing a broken glass over several subjects
+painted on the canvas, by which the eye is deceived."
+
+[119] Vassari, _Vie de Raphael_.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+THE DIFFERENT ARTS.
+
+    Expression is the general law of art.--Division of
+    arts.--Distinction between liberal arts and trades.--Eloquence
+    itself, philosophy, and history do not make a part of the fine
+    arts.--That the arts gain nothing by encroaching upon each
+    other, and usurping each other's means and
+    processes.--Classification of the arts:--its true principle is
+    expression.--Comparison of arts with each other.--Poetry the
+    first of arts.
+
+
+A _resume_ of the last lecture would be a definition of art, of its end
+and law. Art is the free reproduction of the beautiful, not of a single
+natural beauty, but of ideal beauty, as the human imagination conceives
+it by the aid of data which nature furnishes it. The ideal beauty
+envelops the infinite:--the end of art is, then, to produce works that,
+like those of nature, or even in a still higher degree, may have the
+charm of the infinite. But how and by what illusion can we draw the
+infinite from the finite? This is the difficulty of art, and its glory
+also. What bears us towards the infinite in natural beauty? The ideal
+side of this beauty. The ideal is the mysterious ladder that enables the
+soul to ascend from the finite to the infinite. The artist, then, must
+devote himself to the representation of the ideal. Every thing has its
+ideal. The first care of the artist will be, then, whatever he does, to
+penetrate at first to the concealed ideal of his subject, for his
+subject has an ideal,--in order to render it, in the next place, more or
+less striking to the senses and the soul, according to the conditions
+which the very materials that he employs--the stone, the color, the
+sound, the language--impose on him.
+
+So, to express the ideal of the infinite in one way or another, is the
+law of art; and all the arts are such only by their relation to the
+sentiment of the beautiful and the infinite which they awaken in the
+soul, by the aid of that high quality of every work of art that is
+called expression.
+
+Expression is essentially ideal: what expression tries to make felt, is
+not what the eye can see and the hand touch, evidently it is something
+invisible and impalpable.
+
+The problem of art is to reach the soul through the body. Art offers to
+the senses forms, colors, sounds, words, so arranged that they excite in
+the soul, concealed behind the senses, the inexpressible emotion of
+beauty.
+
+Expression is addressed to the soul as form is addressed to the senses.
+Form is the obstacle of expression, and, at the same time, is its
+imperative, necessary, only means. By working upon form, by bending it
+to its service, by dint of care, patience, and genius, art succeeds in
+converting an obstacle into a means.
+
+By their object, all arts are equal; all are arts only because they
+express the invisible. It cannot be too often repeated, that expression
+is the supreme law of art. The thing to express is always the same,--it
+is the idea, the spirit, the soul, the invisible, the infinite. But, as
+the question is concerning the expression of this one and the same
+thing, by addressing ourselves to the senses which are diverse, the
+difference of the senses divides art into different arts.
+
+We have seen, that, of the five senses which have been given to
+man,[120] three--taste, smell, and touch--are incapable of producing in
+us the sentiment of beauty. Joined to the other two, they may contribute
+to the understanding of this sentiment; but alone and by themselves they
+cannot produce it. Taste judges of the agreeable, not of the beautiful.
+No sense is less allied to the soul and more in the service of the body;
+it flatters, it serves the grossest of all masters, the stomach. If
+smell sometimes seems to participate in the sentiment of the beautiful,
+it is because the odor is exhaled from an object that is already
+beautiful, that is beautiful for some other reason. Thus the rose is
+beautiful for its graceful form, for the varied splendor of its colors;
+its odor is agreeable, it is not beautiful. Finally, it is not touch
+alone that judges of the regularity of forms, but touch enlightened by
+sight.
+
+There remain two senses to which all the world concedes the privilege of
+exciting in us the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. They seem to
+be more particularly in the service of the soul. The sensations which
+they give have something purer, more intellectual. They are less
+indispensable for the material preservation of the individual. They
+contribute to the embellishment rather than to the sustaining of life.
+They procure us pleasures in which our personality seems less interested
+and more self-forgetful. To these two senses, then, art should be
+addressed, is addressed, in fact, in order to reach the soul. Hence the
+division of arts into two great classes,--arts addressed to hearing,
+arts addressed to sight; on the one hand, music and poetry; on the
+other, painting, with engraving, sculpture, architecture, gardening.
+
+It will, perhaps, seem strange that we rank among the arts neither
+eloquence, nor history, nor philosophy.
+
+The arts are called the fine arts, because their sole object is to
+produce the disinterested emotion of beauty, without regard to the
+utility either of the spectator or the artist. They are also called the
+liberal arts, because they are the arts of free men and not of slaves,
+which affranchise the soul, charm and ennoble existence; hence the sense
+and origin of those expressions of antiquity, _artes liberales_, _artes
+ingenuae_. There are arts without nobility, whose end is practical and
+material utility; they are called trades, such as that of the
+stove-maker and the mason. True art may be joined to them, may even
+shine in them, but only in the accessories and the details.
+
+Eloquence, history, philosophy, are certainly high employments of
+intelligence; they have their dignity, their eminence, which nothing
+surpasses, but rigorously speaking, they are not arts.
+
+Eloquence does not propose to itself to produce in the soul of the
+auditors the disinterested sentiment of beauty. It may also produce this
+effect, but without having sought it. Its direct end, which it can
+subordinate to no other, is to convince, to persuade. Eloquence has a
+client which before all it must save or make triumph. It matters little,
+whether this client be a man, a people, or an idea. Fortunate is the
+orator if he elicits the expression: That is beautiful! for it is a
+noble homage rendered to his talent; unfortunate is he if he does not
+elicit this, for he has missed his end. The two great types of political
+and religious eloquence, Demosthenes in antiquity, Bossuet among the
+moderns, think only of the interest of the cause confided to their
+genius, the sacred cause of country and that of religion; whilst at
+bottom Phidias and Raphael work to make beautiful things. Let us hasten
+to say, what the names of Demosthenes and Bossuet command us to say,
+that true eloquence, very different from that of rhetoric, disdains
+certain means of success; it asks no more than to please, but without
+any sacrifice unworthy of it; every foreign ornament degrades it. Its
+proper character is simplicity, earnestness--I do not mean affected
+earnestness, a designed and artful gravity, the worst of all
+deceptions--I mean true earnestness, that springs from sincere and
+profound conviction. This is what Socrates understood by true
+eloquence.[121]
+
+As much must be said of history and philosophy. The philosopher speaks
+and writes. Can he, then, like the orator, find accents which make truth
+enter the soul, colors and forms that make it shine forth evident and
+manifest to the eyes of intelligence? It would be betraying his cause to
+neglect the means that can serve it; but the profoundest art is here
+only a means, the aim of philosophy is elsewhere; whence it follows that
+philosophy is not an art. Without doubt, Plato is a great artist; he is
+the peer of Sophocles and Phidias, as Pascal is sometimes the rival of
+Demosthenes and Bossuet;[122] but both would have blushed if they had
+discovered at the bottom of their soul another design, another aim than
+the service of truth and virtue.
+
+History does not relate for the sake of relating; it does not paint for
+the sake of painting; it relates and paints the past that it may be the
+living lesson of the future. It proposes to instruct new generations by
+the experience of those who have gone before them, by exhibiting to them
+a faithful picture of great and important events, with their causes and
+their effects, with general designs and particular passions, with the
+faults, virtues, and crimes that are found mingled together in human
+things. It teaches the excellence of prudence, courage, and great
+thoughts profoundly meditated, constantly pursued, and executed with
+moderation and force. It shows the vanity of immoderate pretensions, the
+power of wisdom and virtue, the impotence of folly and crime.
+Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus undertake any thing else than
+procuring new emotions for an idle curiosity or a worn-out imagination;
+they doubtless desire to interest and attract, but more to instruct;
+they are the avowed masters of statesmen and the preceptors of mankind.
+
+The sole object of art is the beautiful. Art abandons itself as soon as
+it shuns this. It is often constrained to make concessions to
+circumstances, to external conditions that are imposed upon it; but it
+must always retain a just liberty. Architecture and the art of gardening
+are the least free of arts; they are subjected to unavoidable obstacles;
+it belongs to the genius of the artist to govern these obstacles, and
+even to draw from them happy effects, as the poet turns the slavery of
+metre and rhyme into a source of unexpected beauties. Extreme liberty
+may carry art to a caprice which degrades it, as chains too heavy crush
+it. It is the death of architecture to subject it to convenience, to
+_comfort_. Is the architect obliged to subordinate general effect and
+the proportions of the edifice to such or such a particular end that is
+prescribed to him? He takes refuge in details, in pediments, in friezes,
+in all the parts that have not utility for a special object, and in them
+he becomes a true artist. Sculpture and painting, especially music and
+poetry, are freer than architecture and the art of gardening. One can
+also shackle them, but they disengage themselves more easily.
+
+Similar by their common end, all the arts differ by the particular
+effects which they produce, and by the processes which they employ. They
+gain nothing by exchanging their means and confounding the limits that
+separate them. I bow before the authority of antiquity; but, perhaps,
+through habit and a remnant of prejudice, I have some difficulty in
+representing to myself with pleasure statues composed of several metals,
+especially painted statues.[123] Without pretending that sculpture has
+not to a certain point its color, that of perfectly pure matter, that
+especially which the hand of time impresses upon it, in spite of all the
+seductions of a contemporaneous[124] artist of great talent, I have
+little taste, I confess, for that artifice that is forced to give to
+marble the _morbidezza_ of painting. Sculpture is an austere muse; it
+has its graces, but they are those of no other art. Flesh-color must
+remain a stranger to it: there would nothing more remain to communicate
+to it but the movement of poetry and the indefiniteness of music! And
+what will music gain by aiming at the picturesque, when its proper
+domain is the pathetic? Give to the most learned symphonist a storm to
+render. Nothing is easier to imitate than the whistling of the winds and
+the noise of thunder. But by what combinations of harmony will he
+exhibit to the eyes the glare of the lightning rending all of a sudden
+the veil of the night, and what is most fearful in the tempest, the
+movement of the waves that now ascend like a mountain, now descend and
+seem to precipitate themselves into bottomless abysses? If the auditor
+is not informed of the subject, he will never suspect it, and I defy him
+to distinguish a tempest from a battle. In spite of science and genius,
+sounds cannot paint forms. Music, when well guided, will guard itself
+from contending against the impossible; it will not undertake to express
+the tumult and strife of the waves and other similar phenomena; it will
+do more: with sounds it will fill the soul with the sentiments that
+succeed each other in us during the different scenes of the tempest.
+Haydn will thus become[125] the rival, even the vanquisher of the
+painter, because it has been given to music to move and agitate the soul
+more profoundly than painting.
+
+Since the _Laocoon_ of Lessing, it is no longer permitted to repeat,
+without great reserve, the famous axiom,--_Ut pictura poesis_; or, at
+least, it is very certain that painting cannot do every thing that
+poetry can do. Everybody admires the picture of Rumor, drawn by Virgil;
+but let a painter try to realize this symbolic figure; let him represent
+to us a huge monster with a hundred eyes, a hundred mouths, and a
+hundred ears, whose feet touch the earth, whose head is lost in the
+clouds, and such a figure will become very ridiculous.
+
+So the arts have a common end, and entirely different means. Hence the
+general rules common to all, and particular rules for each. I have
+neither time nor space to enter into details on this point. I limit
+myself to repeating, that the great law which governs all others, is
+expression. Every work of art that does not express an idea signifies
+nothing; in addressing itself to such or such a sense, it must penetrate
+to the mind, to the soul, and bear thither a thought, a sentiment
+capable of touching or elevating it. From this fundamental rule all the
+others are derived; for example, that which is continually and justly
+recommended,--composition. To this is particularly applied the precept
+of unity and variety. But, in saying this, we have said nothing so long
+as we have not determined the nature of the unity of which we would
+speak. True unity, is unity of expression, and variety is made only to
+spread over the entire work the idea or the single sentiment that it
+should express. It is useless to remark, that between composition thus
+defined, and what is often called composition, as the symmetry and
+arrangement of parts according to artificial rules, there is an abyss.
+True composition is nothing else than the most powerful means of
+expression.
+
+Expression not only furnishes the general rules of art, it also gives
+the principle that allows of their classification.
+
+In fact, every classification, supposes a principle that serves as a
+common measure.
+
+Such a principle has been sought in pleasure, and the first of arts has
+seemed that which gives the most vivid joys. But we have proved that the
+object of art is not pleasure:--the more or less of pleasure that an art
+procures cannot, then, be the true measure of its value.
+
+This measure is nothing else than expression. Expression being the
+supreme end, the art that most nearly approaches it is the first of all.
+
+All true arts are expressive, but they are diversely so. Take music; it
+is without contradiction the most penetrating, the profoundest, the most
+intimate art. There is physically and morally between a sound and the
+soul a marvellous relation. It seems as though the soul were an echo in
+which the sound takes a new power. Extraordinary things are recounted of
+the ancient music. And it must not be believed that the greatness of
+effect supposes here very complicated means. No, the less noise music
+makes, the more it touches. Give some notes to Pergolese, give him
+especially some pure and sweet voices, and he returns a celestial charm,
+bears you away into infinite spaces, plunges you into ineffable
+reveries. The peculiar power of music is to open to the imagination a
+limitless career, to lend itself with astonishing facility to all the
+moods of each one, to arouse or calm, with the sounds of the simplest
+melody, our accustomed sentiments, our favorite affections. In this
+respect music is an art without a rival:--however, it is not the first
+of arts.
+
+Music pays for the immense power that has been given it; it awakens more
+than any other art the sentiment of the infinite, because it is vague,
+obscure, indeterminate in its effects. It is just the opposite art to
+sculpture, which bears less towards the infinite, because every thing in
+it is fixed with the last degree of precision. Such is the force and at
+the same time the feebleness of music, that it expresses every thing and
+expresses nothing in particular. Sculpture, on the contrary, scarcely
+gives rise to any reverie, for it clearly represents such a thing and
+not such another. Music does not paint, it touches; it puts in motion
+imagination, not the imagination that reproduces images, but that which
+makes the heart beat, for it is absurd to limit imagination to the
+domain of images.[126] The heart, once touched, moves all the rest of
+our being; thus music, indirectly, and to a certain point, can recall
+images and ideas; but its direct and natural power is neither on the
+representative imagination nor intelligence, it is on the heart, and
+that is an advantage sufficiently beautiful.
+
+The domain of music is sentiment, but even there its power is more
+profound than extensive, and if it expresses certain sentiments with an
+incomparable force, it expresses but a very small number of them. By way
+of association, it can awaken them all, but directly it produces very
+few of them, and the simplest and the most elementary, too,--sadness and
+joy with their thousand shades. Ask music to express magnanimity,
+virtuous resolution, and other sentiments of this kind, and it will be
+just as incapable of doing it, as of painting a lake or a mountain. It
+goes about it as it can; it employs the slow, the rapid, the loud, the
+soft, etc., but imagination has to do the rest, and imagination does
+only what it pleases. The same measure reminds one of a mountain,
+another of the ocean; the warrior finds in it heroic inspirations, the
+recluse religious inspirations. Doubtless, words determine musical
+expression, but the merit then is in the word, not in the music; and
+sometimes the word stamps the music with a precision that destroys it,
+and deprives it of its proper effects--vagueness, obscurity, monotony,
+but also fulness and profundity, I was about to say infinitude. I do not
+in the least admit that famous definition of song:--a noted declamation.
+A simple declamation rightly accented is certainly preferable to
+stunning accompaniments; but to music must be left its character, and
+its defects and advantages must not be taken away from it. Especially it
+must not be turned aside from its object, and there must not be demanded
+from it what it could not give. It is not made to express complicated
+and factitious sentiment, nor terrestrial and vulgar sentiments. Its
+peculiar charm is to elevate the soul towards the infinite. It is
+therefore naturally allied to religion, especially to that religion of
+the infinite, which is at the same time the religion of the heart; it
+excels in transporting to the feet of eternal mercy the soul trembling
+on the wings of repentance, hope, and love. Happy are those, who, at
+Rome, in the Vatican,[127] during the solemnities of the Catholic
+worship, have heard the melodies of Leo, Durante, and Pergolese, on the
+old consecrated text! They have entered heaven for a moment, and their
+souls have been able to ascend thither without distinction of rank,
+country, even belief, by those invisible and mysterious steps, composed,
+thus to speak, of all the simple, natural, universal sentiments, that
+everywhere on earth draw from the bosom of the human creature a sigh
+towards another world!
+
+Between sculpture and music, those two opposite extremes, is painting,
+nearly as precise as the one, nearly as touching as the other. Like
+sculpture, it marks the visible forms of objects, but adds to them life;
+like music, it expresses the profoundest sentiments of the soul, and
+expresses them all. Tell me what sentiment does not come within the
+province of the painter? He has entire nature at his disposal, the
+physical world, and the moral world, a churchyard, a landscape, a
+sunset, the ocean, the great scenes of civil and religious life, all the
+beings of creation, above all, the figure of man, and its expression,
+that living mirror of what passes in the soul. More pathetic than
+sculpture, clearer than music, painting is elevated, in my opinion,
+above both, because it expresses beauty more under all its forms, and
+the human soul in all the richness and variety of its sentiments.
+
+But the art _par excellence_, that which surpasses all others, because
+it is incomparably the most expressive, is poetry.
+
+Speech is the instrument of poetry; poetry fashions it to its use, and
+idealizes it, in order to make it express ideal beauty. Poetry gives to
+it the charm and power of measure; it makes of it something intermediary
+between the ordinary voice and music, something at once material and
+immaterial, finite, clear, and precise, like contours and forms the most
+definite, living and animated like color, pathetic and infinite like
+sound. A word in itself, especially a word chosen and transfigured by
+poetry, is the most energetic and universal symbol. Armed with this
+talisman, poetry reflects all the images of the sensible world, like
+sculpture and painting; it reflects sentiment like painting and music,
+with all its varieties, which music does not attain, and in their rapid
+succession that painting cannot follow, as precise and immobile as
+sculpture; and it not only expresses all that, it expresses what is
+inaccessible to every other art, I mean thought, entirely distinct from
+the senses and even from sentiment,--thought that has no forms,--thought
+that has no color, that lets no sound escape, that does not manifest
+itself in any way,--thought in its highest flight, in its most refined
+abstraction.
+
+Think of it. What a world of images, of sentiments, of thoughts at once
+distinct and confused, are excited within us by this one word--country!
+and by this other word, brief and immense,--God! What is more clear and
+altogether more profound and vast!
+
+Tell the architect, the sculptor, the painter, even the musician, to
+call forth also by a single stroke all the powers of nature and the
+soul! They cannot, and by that they acknowledge the superiority of
+speech and poetry.
+
+They proclaim it themselves, for they take poetry for their own measure;
+they esteem their own works, and demand that they should be esteemed, in
+proportion as they approach the poetic ideal. And the human race does as
+artists do: a beautiful picture, a noble melody, a living and expressive
+statue, gives rise to the exclamation--How poetical! This is not an
+arbitrary comparison; it is a natural judgment which makes poetry the
+type of the perfection of all the arts,--the art _par excellence_,
+which comprises all others, to which they aspire, which none can reach.
+
+When the other arts would imitate the works of poetry, they usually err,
+losing their own genius, without robbing poetry of its genius. But
+poetry constructs according to its own taste palaces and temples, like
+architecture; it makes them simple or magnificent; all orders, as well
+as all systems, obey it; the different ages of art are the same to it;
+it reproduces, if it pleases, the classic or the Gothic, the beautiful
+or the sublime, the measured or the infinite. Lessing has been able,
+with the exactest justice, to compare Homer to the most perfect
+sculptor; with such precision are the forms which that marvellous chisel
+gives to all beings determined! And what a painter, too, is Homer! and,
+of a different kind, Dante! Music alone has something more penetrating
+than poetry, but it is vague, limited, and fugitive. Besides its
+clearness, its variety, its durability, poetry has also the most
+pathetic accents. Call to mind the words that Priam utters at the feet
+of Achilles while asking him for the dead body of his son, more than one
+verse of Virgil, entire scenes of the _Cid_ and the _Polyeucte_, the
+prayer of Esther kneeling before the Lord, the choruses of _Esther_ and
+_Athalie_. In the celebrated song of Pergolese, _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_,
+we may ask which moves most, the music or the words. The _Dies irae, Dies
+illa_, recited only, produces the most terrible effect. In those fearful
+words, every blow tells, so to speak; each word contains a distinct
+sentiment, an idea at once profound and determinate. The intellect
+advances at each step, and the heart rushes on in its turn. Human speech
+idealized by poetry has the depth and brilliancy of musical notes; it is
+luminous as well as pathetic; it speaks to the mind as well as to the
+heart; it is in that inimitable, unique, and embraces all extremes and
+all contraries in a harmony that redoubles their reciprocal effect, in
+which, by turns, appear and are developed, all images, all sentiments,
+all ideas, all the human faculties, all the inmost recesses of the soul,
+all the forms of things, all real and all intelligible worlds!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[120] Lecture 6.
+
+[121] See the _Gorgias_, with the _Argument_, vol. iii. of our
+translation of Plato.
+
+[122] There is a _Provincial_ that for vehemence can be compared only to
+the _Philipics_, and its fragment on the infinite has the grandeur and
+magnificence of Bossuet. See our work on the _Thoughts of Pascal_, 4th
+Series, _Literature_, vol. i.
+
+[123] See the _Jupiter Olympien_ of M. Quatremere de Quincy.
+
+[124] Allusion to the _Magdeleine_ of Canova, which was then to be seen
+in the gallery of M. de Sommariva.
+
+[125] See the _Tempest_ of Haydn, among the pianoforte works of this
+master.
+
+[126] See lecture 6.
+
+[127] I have not myself had the good fortune to hear the religious music
+of the Vatican. Therefore, I shall let a competent judge, M. Quatremere
+de Quincy, speak, _Considerations Morales sur les Destination des
+Ouvrages de l'Art_, Paris, 1815, p. 98: "Let one call to mind those
+chants so simple and so touching, that terminate at Rome the funeral
+solemnities of those three days which the Church particularly devotes to
+the expression of its grief, in the last week of Lent. In that nave
+where the genius of Michael Angelo has embraced the duration of ages,
+from the wonders of creation to the last judgment that must destroy its
+works, are celebrated, in the presence of the Roman pontiff, those
+nocturnal ceremonies whose rites, symbols, and plaintive liturgies seem
+to be so many figures of the mystery of grief to which they are
+consecrated. The light decreasing by degrees, at the termination of each
+psalm, you would say that a funeral veil is extended little by little
+over those religious vaults. Soon the doubtful light of the last lamp
+allows you to perceive nothing but Christ in the distance, in the midst
+of clouds, pronouncing his judgments, and some angel executors of his
+behests. Then, at the bottom of a tribune interdicted to the regard of
+the profane, is heard the psalm of the penitent king, to which three of
+the greatest masters of the art have added the modulations of a simple
+and pathetic chant. No instrument is mingled with those accents. Simple
+harmonies of voice execute that music; but these voices seem to be those
+of angels, and their effect penetrates the depths of the soul."
+
+We have cited this beautiful passage--and we could have cited many
+others, even superior to it--of a man now forgotten, and almost always
+misunderstood, but whom posterity will put in his place. Let us
+indicate, at least, the last pages of the same production, on the
+necessity of leaving the works of art in the place for which they were
+made, for example, the portrait of Mlle. de Valliere in the _Madeleine
+aux Carmelites_, instead of transferring it to, and exposing it in the
+apartments of Versailles, "the only place in the world," eloquently says
+M. Quatremere, "which never should have seen it."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+    Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but
+    the different schools of art. Example:--French art in the
+    seventeenth century. French poetry:--Corneille. Racine. Moliere.
+    La Fontaine. Boileau.--Painting:--Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain.
+    Champagne.--Engraving.--Sculpture:--Sarrazin. The Anguiers.
+    Girardon. Pujet.--Le Notre.--Architecture.
+
+
+We believe that we have firmly established that all kinds of beauty,
+although most dissimilar in appearance, may, when subjected to a serious
+examination, be reduced to spiritual and moral beauty; that expression,
+therefore, is at once the true object and the first law of art; that all
+arts are such only so far as they express the idea concealed under the
+form, and are addressed to the soul through the senses; finally, that in
+expression the different arts find the true measure of their relative
+value, and the most expressive art must be placed in the first rank.
+
+If expression judges the different arts, does it not naturally follow,
+that by the same title it can also judge the different schools which, in
+each art, dispute with each other the empire of taste?
+
+There is not one of these schools that does not represent in its own way
+some side of the beautiful, and we are disposed to embrace all in an
+impartial and kindly study. We are eclectics in the arts as well as in
+metaphysics. But, as in metaphysics, the knowledge of all systems, and
+the portion of truth that is in each, enlightens without enfeebling our
+convictions; so, in the history of arts, while holding the opinion that
+no school must be disdained, that even in China some shade of beauty can
+be found, our eclecticism does not make us waver in regard to the
+sentiment of true beauty and the supreme rule of art. What we demand of
+the different schools, without distinction of time or place, what we see
+in the south as well as in the north, at Florence, Rome, Venice, and
+Seville, as well as at Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris,--wherever there
+are men, is something human, is the expression of a sentiment or an
+idea.
+
+A criticism that should be founded on the principle of expression, would
+somewhat derange, it must be confessed, received judgments, and would
+carry some disorder into the hierarchy of the renowned. We do not
+undertake such a revolution; we only propose to confirm, or at least
+elucidate our principle by an example, and by an example that is at our
+hand.
+
+There is in the world a school formerly illustrious, now very lightly
+treated:--this school is the French school of the seventeenth century.
+We would replace it in honor, by recalling attention to the qualities
+that make its glory.
+
+We have worked with constancy to reinstate among us the philosophy of
+Descartes, unworthily sacrificed to the philosophy of Locke, because
+with its defects it possesses in our view the incomparable merit of
+subordinating the senses to the mind, of elevating and ennobling man. So
+we profess a serious and reflective admiration for our national art of
+the seventeenth century, because, without disguising what is wanting to
+it, we find in it what we prefer to every thing else, grandeur united to
+good sense and reason, simplicity and force, genius of composition,
+especially that of expression.
+
+France, careless of her glory, does not appear to have the least notion
+that she reckons in her annals perhaps the greatest century of humanity,
+that which embraces the greatest number of extraordinary men of every
+kind. When, I pray you, have politicians like Henry IV., Richelieu,
+Mazarin, Colbert, Louis XIV. been seen giving each other the hand? I do
+not pretend that each of them has no rival, even superiors. Alexander,
+Caesar, Charlemagne, perhaps excel them. But Alexander has but a single
+contemporary that can be compared with him, his father Philip; Caesar
+cannot even have suspected that Octavius would one day be worthy of
+him; Charlemagne is a colossus in a desert; whilst among us these five
+men succeed each other without an interval, press upon each other, and
+have, thus to speak, a single soul. And by what officers were they
+served! Is Conde really inferior to Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar; for
+among his predecessors we must not look for other rivals? Who among them
+surpasses him in the extent and justness of his conceptions, in
+quickness of sight, in rapidity of manoeuvres, in the union of
+impetuosity and firmness, in the double glory of taker of cities and
+gainer of battles? Add that he dealt with generals like Merci and
+William, that he had under him Turenne and Luxemburg, without speaking
+of so many other soldiers who were reared in that admirable school, and
+at the hour of reverse still sufficed to save France.
+
+What other time, at least among the moderns, has seen flourishing
+together so many poets of the first order? We have, it is true, neither
+Homer, nor Dante, nor Milton, nor even Tasso. The epic, with its
+primitive simplicity, is interdicted us. But in the drama we scarcely
+have equals. It is because dramatic poetry is the poetry that is adapted
+to us, moral poetry _par excellence_, which represents man with his
+different passions armed against each other, the violent contentions
+between virtue and crime, the freaks of fortune, the lessons of
+providence, and in a narrow compass, too, in which the events press upon
+each other without confusion, in which the action rapidly progresses
+towards the crisis that must reveal what is most intimate to the heart
+of the personages.
+
+Let us dare to say what we think, that, in our opinion, AEschylus,
+Sophocles, and Euripides, together, do not equal Corneille; for none of
+them has known and expressed like him what is of all things most truly
+touching, a great soul at war with itself, between a generous passion
+and duty. Corneille is the creator of a new pathetic unknown to
+antiquity and to all the moderns before him. He disdains to address
+common and subaltern passions; he does not seek to rouse terror and
+pity, as demands Aristotle, who limits himself to erecting into maxims
+the practice of the Greeks. Corneille seems to have read Plato, and
+followed his precepts:--he addresses a most elevated part of human
+nature, the noblest passion, the one nearest virtue,--admiration; and
+from admiration carried to its culmination he draws the most powerful
+effects. Shakspeare, we admit, is superior to Corneille in extent and
+richness of dramatic genius. Entire human nature seems at his disposal,
+and he reproduces the different scenes of life in their beauty and
+deformity, in their grandeur and baseness. He excels in painting the
+terrible or the gentle passions. Othello is jealousy, Lady Macbeth is
+ambition, as Juliet and Desdemona are the immortal names of youthful and
+unfortunate love. But if Corneille has less imagination, he has more
+soul. Less varied, he is more profound. If he does not put upon the
+stage so many different characters, those that he does put on it are the
+greatest that can be offered to humanity. The scenes that he gives are
+less heart-rending, but at once more delicate and more sublime. What is
+the melancholy of Hamlet, the grief of King Lear, even the disdainful
+intrepidity of Caesar, in comparison with the magnanimity of Augustus
+striving to be master of himself as well as the universe, in comparison
+with Chimene sacrificing love to honor, especially in comparison with
+Pauline, not suffering even at the bottom of her heart an involuntary
+sigh for the one that she must not love? Corneille always confines
+himself to the highest regions. He is by turns Roman and Christian. He
+is the interpreter of heroes, the chanter of virtue, the poet of
+warriors and politicians.[128] And it must not be forgotten that
+Shakspeare is almost alone in his times, whilst after Corneille comes
+Racine, who would suffice for the poetical glory of a nation.
+
+Racine assuredly cannot be compared with Corneille for dramatic genius;
+he is more the man of letters; he has not the tragic soul; he neither
+loves nor understands politics and war. When he imitates Corneille, for
+example, in Alexander, and even in Mithridates, he imitates him badly
+enough. The scene, so vaunted, of Mithridates exposing his plan of
+campaign to his sons is a morsel of the finest rhetoric, which cannot be
+compared with the political and military scenes of Cinna and Sertorius,
+especially with that first scene of the Death of Pompey, in which you
+witness a counsel as true, as grand, as profound as ever could have been
+one of the counsels of Richelieu or Mazarin. Racine was not born to
+paint heroes, but he paints admirably man with his natural passions, and
+the most natural as well as the most touching of all, love. So he
+particularly excels in feminine characters. For men he has need of being
+sustained by Tacitus or holy Scripture.[129] With woman he is at his
+ease, and he makes them think and speak with perfect truth, set off by
+exquisite art. Demand of him neither Emilie, Cornelie, nor Pauline; but
+listen to Andromaque, Monime, Berenice, and Phedre! There, even in
+imitating, he is original, and leaves the ancients very far behind him.
+Who has taught him that charming delivery, those graceful troubles, that
+purity even in feebleness, that melancholy, sometimes even that depth,
+with that marvellous language which seems the natural accent of woman's
+heart? It is continually repeated that Racine wrote better than
+Corneille:--say only that the two wrote very differently, and like men
+in very different epochs. One has two sovereign qualities, which belong
+to his own nature and his times, a _naivete_ and grandeur, the other is
+not _naive_, but he has too much taste not to be always simple, and he
+supplies the place of grandeur, forever lost, with consummate elegance.
+Corneille speaks the language of statesmen, soldiers, theologians,
+philosophers, and clever women; of Richelieu, Rohan, Saint-Cyran,
+Descartes, and Pascal; of mother Angelique Arnaud and mother Madeleine
+de Saint-Joseph; the language which Moliere still spoke, which Bossuet
+preserved to his last breath. Racine speaks that of Louis XIV. and the
+women who were the ornament of his court. I suppose that thus spoke
+Madame, the amiable, sprightly, and unfortunate Henriette; thus wrote
+the author of the _Princesse de Cleves_ and the author of _Telemaque_.
+Or, rather, this language is that of Racine himself, of that feeble and
+tender soul, which passed quickly from love to devotion, which uttered
+its complaints in lyric poetry, which was wholly poured out in the
+choruses of _Esther_ and _Athalie_, and in the _Cantiques Spirituels_;
+that soul, so easy to be moved, that a religious ceremony or a
+representation of _Esther_ at Saint-Cyr touched to tears, that pitied
+the misfortunes of the people, that found in its pity and its charity
+the courage to speak one day the truth to Louis XIV., and was
+extinguished by the first breath of disgrace.
+
+Moliere is, in comparison with Aristophanes, what Corneille is, in
+comparison with Shakspeare. The author of _Plutus_, the _Wasps_, and the
+_Clouds_, has doubtless an imagination, an explosive buffoonery, a
+creative power, above all comparison. Moliere has not as great poetical
+conceptions: he has more, perhaps; he has characters. His coloring is
+less brilliant, his graver is more penetrating. He has engraved in the
+memory of men a certain number of irregularities and vices which will
+ever be called _l'Avare_ (_the Miser_), _le Malade Imaginaire_ (the
+_Hypochondriac_), _les Femmes Savantes_ (the _Learned Women_), _le
+Tartufe_ (the _Hypocrite_), and _Don Juan_, not to speak of the
+_Misanthrope_, a piece apart, touching as pleasant, which is not
+addressed to the crowd, and cannot be popular, because it expresses a
+ridicule rare enough, excess in the passion of truth and honor.
+
+Of all fabulists, ancient and modern, does any one, even the ingenious,
+the pure, the elegant Phaedrus, approach our La Fontaine? He composes his
+personages, and puts them in action with the skill of Moliere; he knows
+how to take on occasion the tone of Horace, and mingle an ode with a
+fable; he is at once the most naive, and the most refined of writers,
+and his art disappears in its very perfection. We do not speak of the
+tales, first, because we condemn the kind, then, because La Fontaine
+displays in them qualities more Italian than French, a narrative full of
+nature, malice, and grace, but without any of those profound, tender,
+melancholy traits, that place among the greatest poets of all time the
+author of the _Two Pigeons_ (_Deux Pigeons_), the _Old Man_
+(_Vieillard_), and the _Three Young Persons_ (_Gens_).
+
+We do not hesitate to put Boileau among these great men. He comes after
+them, it is true, but he belongs to their company: he comprehends them,
+loves them, sustains them. It was he, who, in 1663, after the _School of
+Women_ (_l'Ecole des Femmes_) and long before the _Hypocrite_ (_le
+Tartufe_), and the _Misanthrope_, proclaimed Moliere the master in the
+art of verse. It was he who, in 1677, after the failure of _Phedre_,
+defended the vanquisher of Euripides against the successes of Pradon. It
+was he who, in advance of posterity, first put in light what is new and
+entirely original in the plays of Corneille.[130] He saved the pension
+of the old tragedian by offering the sacrifice of his own. Louis XIV.
+asking him what writer most honored his reign, Boileau answered, that it
+was Moliere; and when the great king in his decline persecuted
+Port-Royal, and wished to lay hands on Arnaud, he encountered a man of
+letters, who said to the face of the imperious monarch,--"Your Majesty
+in vain seeks M. Arnaud, you are too fortunate to find him." Boileau is
+somewhat wanting in imagination and invention; but he is great in the
+energetic sentiment of truth and justice; he carries to the extent of
+passion taste for the beautiful and the honest; he is a poet by force
+of soul and good sense. More than once his heart dictated to him the
+most pathetic verses:
+
+    "In vain against the Cid a minister is leagued,[131]
+    All Paris for Chimene the eyes of Rodrique," etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "After a little spot of earth, obtained by prayer,
+    Forever in the tomb had inclosed Moliere," etc.
+
+And this epitaph of Arnaud, so simple and so grand:[132]
+
+    "At the feet of this altar of structure gross,
+    Lies without pomp, inclosed in a coffin vile,
+    The most learned mortal that ever wrote;
+    Arnaud, who in grace instructed by Jesus Christ,
+    Combating for the Church, has, in the Church itself,
+    Suffered more than one outrage and more than one anathema," etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Wandering, poor, banished, proscribed, persecuted;
+    And even by his death their ill-extinguished rage
+    Had never left his ashes in repose,
+    If God himself here by his holy flock
+    From these devouring wolves had not concealed his bones."[133]
+
+These are, I think, poets sufficiently great, and we have more of them
+still: I mean those charming or sublime minds who have elevated prose
+to poetry. Greece alone, in her most beautiful days, offers, perhaps,
+such a variety of admirable prose writers. Who can enumerate them? At
+first, Rabelais and Montaigne; later, Descartes, Pascal, and
+Malebranche; La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere; Retz and Saint-Simon;
+Bourdaloue, Flechier, Fenelon, and Bossuet; add to these so many eminent
+women, at their head Madame de Sevigne; while Montesquieu, Voltaire,
+Rousseau, and Buffon are still to come.[134]
+
+By what strange diversity could a country, in which the mental arts
+were carried to such perfection, remain ordinary in the other arts? Was
+the sentiment of the beautiful wanting, then, to that society so
+polished, to that magnificent court, to those great lords and those
+great ladies passionately loving luxury and elegance, to that public of
+the _elite_, enamored of every kind of glory, whose enthusiasm defended
+the _Cid_ against Richelieu? No; France in the seventeenth century was a
+whole, and produced artists that she can place by the side of her poets,
+her philosophers, her orators.
+
+But, in order to admire our artists, it is necessary to comprehend them.
+
+We do not believe that imagination has been less freely imparted to
+France than to any other nation of Europe. It has even had its reign
+among us. It is fancy that rules in the sixteenth century, and inspires
+the literature and the arts of the _Renaissance_. But a great revolution
+intervened at the commencement of the seventeenth century. France at
+that moment seems to pass from youth to virility. Instead of abandoning
+imagination to itself, we apply ourselves from that moment to restrain
+it without destroying it, to moderate it, as the Greeks did by the aid
+of taste; as in the progress of life and society we learn to repress or
+conceal what is too individual in character. An end is made of the
+literature of the preceding age. A new poetry, a new prose, begin to
+appear, which, during an entire century, bear fruits sufficiently
+beautiful. Art follows the general movement; after having been elegant
+and graceful, it becomes in its turn serious; it no longer aims at
+originality and extraordinary effects; it neither flashes nor dazzles;
+it speaks, above all, to the mind and the soul. Hence its good qualities
+and also its defects. In general, it is somewhat wanting in brilliancy
+and coloring, but it is in the highest degree expressive.
+
+Some time since we have changed all that. We have discovered, somewhat
+late, that we have not sufficient imagination; we are in training to
+acquire it, it is true, at the expense of reason, alas! also at the
+expense of soul, which is forgotten, repudiated, proscribed. At this
+moment, color and form are the order of the day, in poetry, in painting,
+in every thing. We are beginning to run mad with Spanish painting. The
+Flemish and Venetian schools are gaining ground on the schools of
+Florence and Rome. Rossini equals Mozart, and Gluck will soon seem to us
+insipid.
+
+Young artists, who, rightly disgusted with the dry and inanimate manner
+of David, undertake to renovate French painting, who would rob the sun
+of its heat and splendor, remember that of all beings in the world, the
+greatest is still man, and that what is greatest in man is his
+intelligence, and above all, his heart; that it is this heart, then,
+which you must put and develop on your canvas. This is the most elevated
+object of art. In order to reach it, do not make yourselves disciples of
+Flemings, Venetians, and Spaniards; return, return to the masters of our
+great national school of the seventeenth century.
+
+We bow with respectful admiration before the schools of Rome and
+Florence, at once ideal and living; but, those excepted, we maintain
+that the French school equals or surpasses all others. We prefer neither
+Murillo, Rubens, Corregio, nor Titian himself to Lesueur and Poussin,
+because, if the former have an incomparable hand and color, our two
+countrymen are much greater in thought and expression.
+
+What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur![135] He was born at Paris
+about 1617, and he never went out of it. Poor and humble, he passed his
+life in the churches and convents where he worked. The only sweetness of
+his sad days, his only consolation was his wife: he loses her, and goes
+to die, at thirty-eight, in that cloister of Chartreux, which his pencil
+has immortalized. What resemblance at once, and what difference between
+his life and that of Raphael, who also died young, but in the midst of
+pleasures, in honors, and already almost in purple! Our Raphael was not
+the lover of Fornarina and the favorite of a pope: he was Christian; he
+is Christianity in art.
+
+Lesueur is a genius wholly French. Scarcely having escaped from the
+hands of Simon Vouet, he formed himself according to the model which he
+had in the soul. He never saw the sky of Italy. He knew some fragments
+of the antique, some pictures of Raphael, and the designs that Poussin
+sent him. With these feeble resources, and guided by a happy instinct,
+in less than ten years he mounted by a continual progress to the
+perfection of his talent, and expired at the moment when, finally sure
+of himself, he was about to produce new and more admirable
+master-pieces. Follow him from the _St. Bruno_ completed in 1648,
+through the _St. Paul_ of 1649, to the _Vision of St. Benedict_ in 1651,
+and to the _Muses_, scarcely finished before his death. Lesueur went on
+adding to his essential qualities which he owed to his own genius, and
+to the national genius, I mean composition and expression, qualities
+which he had dreamed of, or had caught glimpses of. His design from day
+to day became more pure, without ever being that of the Florentine
+school, and the same is true of his coloring.
+
+In Lesueur every thing is directed towards expression, every thing is in
+the service of the mind, every thing is idea and sentiment. There is no
+affectation, no mannerism; there is a perfect _naivete_; his figures
+sometimes would seem even a little common, so natural are they, if a
+Divine breath did not animate them. It must not be forgotten that his
+favorite subjects do not exact a brilliant coloring: he oftenest
+retraces scenes mournful or austere. But as in Christianity by the side
+of suffering and resignation is faith with hope, so Lesueur joins to the
+pathetic sweetness and grace; and this man charms me at the same time
+that he moves me.
+
+The works of Lesueur are almost always great wholes that demanded
+profound meditation, and the most flexible talent, in order to preserve
+in them unity of subject, and to give them variety and harmony. The
+_History of St. Bruno_, the founder of the order _des Chartreux_, is a
+vast melancholy poem, in which are represented the different scenes of
+monastic life. The _History of St. Martin and St. Benedict_ has not
+come down to us entire; but the two fragments of it that we possess, the
+_Mass of St. Martin_, and the _Vision of St. Benedict_, allow us to
+compare that great work with every better thing of the kind that has
+been done in Italy, as, to speak sincerely, the _Muses_ and the _History
+of Love_, appear to us to equal at least the Farnesina.
+
+In the _History of St. Bruno_, it is particularly necessary to remark
+St. Bruno, prostrated before a crucifix, the saint reading a letter of
+the pope, his death, his apotheosis. Is it possible to carry meditation,
+humiliation, rapture farther? _St. Paul preaching at Ephesus_ reminds
+one of the _School of Athens_, by the extent of the scene, the
+employment of architecture, and the skilful distribution of groups. In
+spite of the number of personages, and the diversity of episodes, the
+picture wholly centres in St. Paul. He preaches, and upon his words hang
+those who are listening, of every sex, of every age, in the most varied
+attitudes. In that we behold the grand lines of the Roman school, its
+design full of nobleness and truth at the same time. What charming and
+grave heads! What graceful, bold, and always natural movements! Here,
+that child with ringlets, full of _naive_ enthusiasm; there, that old
+man with bended knees, and hands joined. Are not all those beautiful
+heads, and those draperies, too, worthy of Raphael? But the marvel of
+the picture is the figure of St. Paul,[136]--it is that of the Olympic
+Jupiter, animated by a new spirit. The _Mass of St. Martin_ carries into
+the soul an impression of peace and silence. The _Vision of St.
+Benedict_ has the character of simplicity full of grandeur. A desert,
+the saint on his knees, contemplating his sister, St. Scholastique, who
+is ascending to heaven, borne up by angels, accompanied by two young
+girls, crowned with flowers, and bearing the palm, the symbol of
+virginity. St. Peter and St. Paul show St. Benedict the abode whither
+his sister is going to enjoy eternal peace. A slight ray of the sun
+pierces the cloud. St. Benedict is as it were lifted up from the earth
+by this ecstatic vision. One scarcely desires a more lively color, and
+the expression is divine. Those two virgins, a little too tall, perhaps,
+how beautiful and pure they are! How sweet are those forms! How grave
+and gentle are those faces! The person of the holy monk, with all the
+material accessories, is perfectly natural, for it remains on the earth;
+whilst his face, where his soul shines forth, is wholly ideal, and
+already in heaven.
+
+But the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Lesueur is, in our opinion, the _Descent
+from the Cross_, or rather the enshrouding of Jesus Christ, already
+descended from the cross, whom Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and St.
+John are placing in the shroud. On the left, Magdalen, in tears, kisses
+the feet of Jesus; on the right, are the holy women and the Virgin. It
+is impossible to carry the pathetic farther and preserve beauty. The
+holy women, placed in front, have each their particular grief. While one
+of them abandons herself to despair, an immense but internal and
+thoughtful sadness is upon the face of the mother of the crucified. She
+has comprehended the divine benefit of the redemption of the human race,
+and her grief, sustained by this thought, is calm and resigned. And then
+what dignity in that head! It, in some sort, sums up the whole picture,
+and gives to it its character, that of a profound and subdued emotion. I
+have seen many _Descents from the Cross_; I have seen that of Rubens at
+Antwerp, in which the sanctity of the subject has, as it were,
+constrained the great Flemish painter to join sensibility and sentiment
+to color; none of those pictures have touched me like that of Lesueur.
+All the parts of art are there in the service of expression. The drawing
+is severe and strong; even the color, without being brilliant, surpasses
+that of the _St. Bruno_, the _Mass of St. Martin_, the _St. Paul_, and
+even that of the _Vision of St. Benedict_; as if Lesueur had wished to
+bring together in it all the powers of his soul, all the resources of
+his talent![137]
+
+Now, regard the _Muses_,--other scenes, other beauties, the same genius.
+Those are Pagan pictures, but Christianity is in them also, by reason of
+the adorable chastity with which Lesueur has clothed them. All critics
+have emulously shown the mythological errors into which poor Lesueur
+fell, and they have not wanted occasion to deplore that he had not made
+the journey to Italy and studied antiquity more. But who can have the
+strange idea of searching in Lesueur for an archeology? I seek and find
+in him the very genius of painting. Is not that Terpsichore, well or ill
+named, with a harp a little too strong, it is said, as if the Muse had
+no particular gift, in her modest attitude the symbol of becoming grace?
+In that group of three Muses, to which one may give what name he
+pleases, is not the one that holds upon her knees a book of music, who
+sings or is about to sing, the most ravishing creature, a St. Cecilia
+that preludes just before abandoning herself to the intoxication of
+inspiration? And in those pictures there is brilliancy and coloring; the
+landscape is beautifully lighted, as if Poussin had guided the hand of
+his friend.
+
+Poussin! What a name I pronounce. If Lesueur is the painter of
+sentiment, Poussin is the painter of thought. He is in some sort the
+philosopher of painting. His pictures are religious or moral lectures
+that testify a great mind as well as a great heart. It is sufficient to
+recall the _Seven Sacraments_, the _Deluge_, the _Arcadia_, the _Truth
+that Time frees from the Taints of Envy_, the _Will of Eudamidas_, and
+the _Dance of Human Life_. And the style is equal to the conception.
+Poussin draws like a Florentine, composes like a Frenchman, and often
+equals Lesueur in expression; coloring alone is sometimes wanting to
+him. As well as Racine, he is smitten with the antique beauty, and
+imitates it; but, like Racine, he always remains original. In place of
+the naivete and unique charm of Lesueur, he has a severe simplicity,
+with a correctness that never abandons him. Remember, too, that he
+cultivated every kind of painting. He is at once a great historical
+painter and a great landscape painter,--he treats religious subjects as
+well as profane subjects, and by turns is inspired by antiquity and the
+Bible. He lived much at Rome, it is true, and died there; but he also
+worked in France, and almost always for France. Scarcely had he become
+known, when Richelieu attracted him to Paris and retained him there,
+loading him with honors, and giving him the commission of first painter
+in ordinary to the king, with the general direction of all the works of
+painting, and all the ornaments of the royal houses. During that sojourn
+of two years in Paris, he made the _Last Supper_ (_Cene_), the _St.
+Francois Xavier_, the _Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy_.
+It was also to France, to his friend M. de Chantelou, that from Rome he
+addressed the _Inspiration of St. Paul_, as well as the second series of
+the _Seven Sacraments_, an immense composition that, for grandeur of
+thought, can vie with the _Stanze_ of Raphael. I speak of it from the
+engravings; for the _Seven Sacraments_ are no longer in France. Eternal
+shame of the eighteenth century! It was at least necessary to wrest from
+the Greeks the pediments of the Parthenon,--we, we delivered up to
+strangers, we sold all those monuments of French genius which Richelieu
+and Mazarin, with religious care, had collected. Public indignation did
+not avert the act! And there has not since been found in France a king,
+a statesman, to interdict letting the master-pieces of art that honor
+the nation depart without authorization from the national
+territory![138] There has not been found a government which has
+undertaken at least to repurchase those that we have lost, to get back
+again the great works of Poussin, Lesueur, and so many others, scattered
+in Europe, instead of squandering millions to acquire the baboons of
+Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish canvasses, in truth of an
+admirable color, but without nobleness and moral expression.[139] I know
+and I love the Dutch pastorals and the cows of Potter; I am not
+insensible to the sombre and ardent coloring of Zurbaran, to the
+brilliant Italian imitations of Murillo and Velasquez; but in fine, what
+is all that in comparison with serious and powerful compositions like
+the _Seven Sacraments_, for example, that profound representation of
+Christian rites, a work of the highest faculties of the intellect and
+the soul, in which the intellect and the soul will ever find an
+exhaustless subject of study and meditation! Thank God, the graver of
+Pesne has saved them from our ingratitude and barbarity. Whilst the
+originals decorate the gallery of a great English lord,[140] the love
+and the talent of a Pesne, of a Stella, have preserved for us faithful
+copies in those expressive engravings that one never grows tired of
+contemplating, that every time we examine them, reveal to us some new
+side of the genius of our great countryman. Regard especially the
+_Extreme Unction!_ What a sublime and at the same time almost graceful
+scene! One would call it an antique bas-relief, so many groups are
+properly distributed in it, with natural and varied attitudes. The
+draperies are as admirable as those of a fragment of the _Panathenaea_,
+which is in the Louvre. The figures are all beautiful. Beauty of figures
+belongs to sculpture, one is about to say:--yes, but it also belongs to
+painting, if you have yourself the eye of the painter, if you have been
+struck with the expression of those postures, those heads, those
+gestures, and almost those looks; for every thing lives, every thing
+breathes, even in those engravings, and if it were the place, we would
+endeavor to make the reader penetrate with us into those secrets of
+Christian sentiment which are also the secrets of art.
+
+We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the _Seven
+Sacraments_, and for not having known how to keep from England and
+Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign
+collections,[141] by going to see at the Louvre what remains to us of
+the great French artist,--thirty pictures produced at different epochs
+of his life, which, for the most part, worthily sustain his renown,--the
+portrait of _Poussin_, one of the _Bacchanals_ made for Richelieu, _Mars
+and Venus_, the _Death of Adonis_, the _Rape of the Sabines_,[142]
+_Eliezer and Rebecca_, _Moses saved from the Waters_, the _Infant Jesus
+on the Knees of the Virgin and St. Joseph standing by_,[143] especially
+the _Manna in the Desert_, the _Judgment of Solomon_, the _Blind Men of
+Jericho_, the _Woman taken in Adultery_, the _Inspiration of St. Paul_,
+the _Diogenes_, the _Deluge_, the _Arcadia_. Time has turned the color,
+which was never very brilliant; but it has not been able to disturb what
+will make them live forever,--the design, the composition, and the
+expression. The _Deluge_ has remained, and in fact will always be, the
+most striking. After so many masters who have treated the same subject,
+Poussin has found the secret of being original, and more pathetic than
+his predecessors, in representing the solemn moment when the race is
+about to disappear. There are few details; some dead bodies are floating
+upon the abyss; a sinister-looking moon has scarcely risen; a few
+moments and mankind will be no more; the last mother uselessly extends
+her last child to the last father, who cannot take it, and the serpent
+that has destroyed mankind darts forth triumphant. We try in vain to
+find in the Deluge some signs of a trembling hand: the soul that
+sustained and conducted that hand makes itself felt by our soul, and
+profoundly moves it. Stop at that scene of mourning, and almost by its
+side let your eyes rest upon that fresh landscape and upon those
+shepherds that surround a tomb. The most aged, with a knee on the
+ground, reads these words graven upon the stone: _Et in Arcadia ego_,
+and I also lived in Arcadia. At the left a shepherd listens with serious
+attention. At the right is a charming group, composed of a shepherd in
+the spring-time of life, and a young girl of ravishing beauty. An
+artless admiration is painted on the face of the young peasant, who
+looks with happiness on his beautiful companion. As for her, her
+adorable face is not even veiled with the slightest shade; she smiles,
+her hand resting carelessly upon the shoulder of the young man, and she
+has no appearance of comprehending that lecture given to beauty, youth,
+and love. I confess that, for this picture alone, of so touching a
+philosophy, I would give many master-pieces of coloring, all the
+pastorals of Potter, all the badinages of Ostade, all the buffooneries
+of Teniers.
+
+Lesueur and Poussin, by very different but nearly equal titles, are at
+the head of our great painting of the seventeenth century. After them,
+what artists again are Claude Lorrain and Philippe de Champagne?
+
+Do you know in Italy or Holland a greater landscape painter than Claude?
+And seize well his true character. Look at those vast and beautiful
+solitudes, lighted by the first or last rays of the sun, and tell me
+whether those solitudes, those trees, those waters, those mountains,
+that light, that silence,--whether all that nature has a soul, and
+whether those luminous and pure horizons do not lift you involuntarily,
+in ineffable reveries, to the invisible source of beauty and grace!
+Lorrain is, above all, the painter of light, and his works might be
+called the history of light and all its combinations, in small and
+great, when it is poured out over large plains or breaks in the most
+varied accidents, on land, on waters, in the heavens, in its eternal
+source. The human scenes thrown into one corner have no other object
+than to relieve and make appear to advantage the scenes of nature by
+harmony or contrast. In the _Village Fete_, life, noise, movement are in
+front,--peace and grandeur are at the foundation of the landscape, and
+that is truly the picture. The same effect is in the _Cattle Crossing a
+River_. The landscape placed immediately under your eyes has nothing in
+it very rare, we can find such a one anywhere; but follow the
+perspective,--it leads you across flowering fields, a beautiful river,
+ruins, mountains that overlook these ruins, and you lose yourself in
+infinite distances. That Landscape crossed by a river, where a peasant
+waters his herd, means nothing great at first sight. Contemplate it some
+time, and peace, a sort of meditativeness in nature, a well-graduated
+perspective, will, little by little, gain your heart, and give you in
+that small picture a penetrating charm. The picture called a _Landscape_
+represents a vast champagne filled with trees, and lighted by the rising
+sun,--in it there is freshness and--already--warmth, mystery, and
+splendor, with skies of the sweetest harmony. _A Dance at Sunset_
+expresses the close of a beautiful day. One sees in it, one feels in it
+the decline of the heat of the day; in the foreground are some shepherds
+and shepherdesses dancing by the side of their flocks.[144]
+
+Is it not strange, that Champagne has been put in the Flemish
+school?[145] He was born at Brussels, it is true, but he came very early
+to Paris, and his true master was Poussin, who counselled him. He
+devoted his talent to France, lived there, died there, and what is
+decisive, his manner is wholly French. Will it be said that he owes to
+Flanders his color? We respond that this quality is balanced by a grave
+defect that he also owes to Flanders, the want of ideality in the
+figures; and it was from France that he learned how to repair this
+defect by beauty of moral expression. Champagne is inferior to Lesueur
+and Poussin, but he is of their family. He was, also, of those artists
+contemporaneous with Corneille, simple, poor, virtuous, Christian.[146]
+Champagne worked both for the convent of the Carmelites in the _Rue St.
+Jacques_, that venerable abode of ardent and sublime piety, and
+Port-Royal, that place of all others that contained in the smallest
+space the most virtue and genius, so many admirable men and women worthy
+of them. What has become of that famous crucifix that he painted for the
+Church of the Carmelites, a master-piece of perspective that upon a
+horizontal plane appeared perpendicular? It perished with the holy
+house. The _Last Supper_ (_Cene_) is a living picture, on account of the
+truth of all the figures, movements, and postures, but to my eyes it is
+blemished by the absence of the ideal. I am obliged to say as much of
+the _Repast with Simon the Pharisee_. The _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Champagne
+is the _Apparition of St. Gervais and St. Protais to St. Ambrose in a
+Basilica of Milan_. All the qualities of French art are seen in
+it,--simplicity and grandeur in composition, with a profound expression.
+On that canvas are only four personages, the two martyrs and St. Paul,
+who presents them to St. Ambrose. Those four figures fill the temple,
+lighted above all in the obscurity of the night, by the luminous
+apparition. The two martyrs are full of majesty. St. Ambrose, kneeling
+and in prayer, is, as it were, seized with terror.[147]
+
+I certainly admire Champagne as an historical painter, and even as a
+landscape painter; but he is perhaps greatest as a portrait painter. In
+portraits truth and nature are particularly in their place, relieved by
+coloring, and idealized in proper measure by expression. The portraits
+of Champagne are so many monuments in which his most illustrious
+contemporaries will live forever. Every thing about them is strikingly
+real, grave, and severe, with a penetrating sweetness. Should the
+records of Port-Royal be lost, all Port-Royal might be found in
+Champagne. Among those portraits we see the inflexible Saint-Cyran,[148]
+as well as his persecutor, the imperious Richelieu.[149] We see, too,
+the learned, the intrepid Antoine Arnaud, to whom the contemporaries of
+Bossuet decreed the name of Great;[150] and Mme. Angelique Arnaud, with
+her naive and strong figure.[151] Among them is mother Agnes and the
+humble daughter of Champagne himself, sister St. Suzanne.[152] She has
+just been miraculously cured, and her whole prostrated person bears
+still the impress of a relic of suffering. Mother Agnes, kneeling before
+her, regards her with a look of grateful joy. The place of the scene is
+a poor cell; a wooden cross hanging on the wall, and some straw chairs,
+are all the ornaments. On the picture is the inscription,--_Christo uni
+medico animarum et corporum_, etc. There is possessed the Christian
+stoicism of Port-Royal in its imposing austerity. Add to all these
+portraits that of Champagne;[153] for the painter may be put by the side
+of his personages.
+
+Had France produced in the seventeenth century only these four great
+artists, it would be necessary to give an important place to the French
+school; but she counts many other painters of the greatest merit. Among
+these we may distinguish P. Mignard, so much admired in his times, so
+little known now, and so worthy of being known. How have we been able to
+let fall into oblivion the author of the immense fresco of
+_Val-de-grace_, so celebrated by Moliere, which is perhaps the greatest
+page of painting in the world![154] What strikes at first, in this
+gigantic work, is the order and harmony. Then come a thousand charming
+details and innumerable episodes which form themselves important
+compositions. Remark also the brilliant and sweet coloring which should
+at least obtain favor for so many other beauties of the first order.
+Again, it is to the pencil of Mignard that we owe that ravishing ceiling
+of a small apartment of the King at Versailles, a master-piece now
+destroyed, but of which there remains to us a magnificent translation in
+the beautiful engraving of Gerard Audran. What profound expression in
+the _Plague of AEacus_,[155] and in the _St. Charles giving the
+Communion to the Plague-infected of Milan_! Mignard is recognized as
+one of our best portrait painters: grace, sometimes a little too
+refined, is joined in him to sentiment. The French school can also
+present with pride Valentin, who died young and was so full of promise;
+Stella, the worthy friend of Poussin, the uncle of Claudine, Antoinette,
+and Francoise Stella; Lahyre, who has so much spirit and taste;[156]
+Sebastien Bourdon, so animated and elevated;[157] the Lenains, who
+sometimes have the _naivete_ of Lesueur and the color of Champagne;
+Bourguignon, full of fire and enthusiasm; Jouvenet, whose composition is
+so good;[158] finally, besides so many others, Lebrun, whom it is now
+the fashion to treat cavalierly, who received from nature, with perhaps
+an immoderate passion for fame, passion for the beautiful of every kind,
+and a talent of admirable flexibility,--the true painter of a great king
+by the richness and dignity of his manner, who, like Louis XIV.,
+worthily closes the seventeenth century.[159]
+
+Since we have spoken somewhat extensively of painting, would it not be
+unjust to pass in silence over engraving, its daughter, or its sister?
+Certainly it is not an art of ordinary importance; we have excelled in
+it; we have above all carried it to its perfection in portraits. Let us
+be equitable to ourselves. What school--and we are not unmindful of
+those of Marc' Antonio, Albert Durer, and Rembrandt--can present such a
+succession of artists of this kind? Thomas de Leu and Leonard Gautier
+make in some sort the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth
+century. Then come a crowd of men of the most diverse talents,--Mellan,
+Michel Lasne, Morin, Daret, Huret, Masson, Nanteuil, Drevet, Van
+Schupen, the Poillys, the Edelincks, and the Audrans. Gerard Edelinck
+and Nanteuil alone have a popular renown, and they merit it by the
+delicacy, splendor, and charm of their graver. But the connoisseurs of
+elevated taste find at least their rivals in engravers now less admired,
+because they do not flatter the eye so much, but have, perhaps, more
+truth and vigor. It must also be said, that the portraits of these two
+masters have not the historic importance of those of their predecessors.
+The _Conde_ of Nanteuil is justly admired; but if we wish to know the
+great Conde, the conqueror of Rocroy and Lens, we must not demand him
+from Nanteuil, but from Huret, Michel Lasne, and Daret,[160] who
+designed and engraved him in all his force and heroic beauty. Edelinck
+and Nanteuil himself scarcely knew and retraced the seventeenth century,
+except at the approach of its decline.[161] Morin and Mellan were able
+to see it, and transmit it in its glorious youth. Morin is the Champagne
+of engraving: he does not engrave, he paints. It is he who represents
+and transmits to posterity the illustrious men of the first half of the
+great century--Henry IV., Louis XIII., the de Thous, Berulle, Jansenius,
+Saint-Cyran, Marillac, Bentivoglio, Richelieu, Mazarin, still young,
+and Retz, when he was only a coadjutor.[162] Mellan had the same
+advantage. He is the first in date of all the engravers of the
+seventeenth century, and perhaps is also the most expressive. With a
+single line, it seems that from his hands only shades can spring; he
+does not strike at first sight; but the more we regard him, the more he
+seizes, penetrates, and touches, like Lesueur.[163]
+
+Christianity, that is to say, the reign of the spirit, is favorable to
+painting, is particularly expressive. Sculpture seems to be a pagan art;
+for, if it must also contain moral expression, it is always under the
+imperative condition of beauty of form. This is the reason why sculpture
+is as it were natural to antiquity, and appeared there with an
+incomparable splendor, before which painting somewhat paled,[164] whilst
+among the moderns it has been eclipsed by painting, and has remained
+very inferior to it, by reason of the extreme difficulty of bringing
+stone and marble to express Christian sentiment, without which, material
+beauty suffers; so that our sculpture is too insignificant to be
+beautiful, too mannered to be expressive. Since antiquity, there have
+scarcely been two schools of sculpture:[165]--one at Florence, before
+Michael Angelo, and especially with Michael Angelo; the other in
+France, at the _Renaissance_, with Jean Cousin, Goujon, Germain Pilon.
+We may say that these three artists have, as it were, shared among
+themselves grandeur and grace: to the first belong nobility and force,
+with profound knowledge;[166] to the other two, an elegance full of
+charm. Sculpture changes its character in the seventeenth century as
+well as every thing else: it no longer has the same attraction, but it
+finds moral and religious inspiration, which the skilful masters of the
+_Renaissance_ too much lacked. Jean Cousin excepted, is there one of
+them that is superior to Jacques Sarazin? That great artist, now almost
+forgotten, is at once a disciple of the French school and the Italian
+school, and to the qualities that he borrows from his predecessors, he
+adds a moral expression, touching and elevated, which he owes to the
+spirit of the new school. He is, in sculpture, the worthy contemporary
+of Lesueur and Poussin, of Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal. He belongs
+entirely to the reign of Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Mazarin; he did not
+even see that of Louis XIV.[167] Called into France by Richelieu, who
+had also called there Poussin and Champagne, Jacques Sarazin in a few
+years produced a multitude of works of rare elegance and great
+character. What has become of them? The eighteenth century passed over
+them without regarding them. The barbarians that destroyed or scattered
+them, were arrested before the paintings of Lesueur and Poussin,
+protected by a remnant of admiration: while breaking the master-pieces
+of the French chisel, they had no suspicion of the sacrilege they were
+committing against art as well as their country. I was at least able to
+see, some years ago, at the Museum of French Monuments, collected by the
+piety of a friend of the arts, beautiful parts of a superb mausoleum
+erected to the memory of Henri de Bourbon, second of the name, Prince of
+Conde, father of the great Conde, the worthy support, the skilful
+fellow-laborer of Richelieu and Mazarin. This monument was supported by
+four figures of natural grandeur,--_Faith, Prudence, Justice, Charity_.
+There were four bas-reliefs in bronze, representing the _Triumphs of
+Renown, Time, Death_, and _Eternity_. In the _Triumph of Death_, the
+artist had represented a certain number of illustrious moderns, among
+whom he had placed himself by the side of Michael Angelo.[168] We can
+still contemplate in the court of the Louvre, in the pavilion of the
+Horloge, those caryatides of Sarazin at once so majestic and so
+graceful, which are detached with admirable relief and lightness. Have
+Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon done any thing more elegant and lifelike?
+Those females breathe, and are about to move. Take the pains to go a
+short distance[169] to visit the humble chapel that now occupies the
+place of that magnificent church of the Carmelites, once filled with the
+paintings of Champagne, Stella, Lahire, and Lebrun; where the voice of
+Bossuet was heard, where Mlle. de Lavalliere and Mme. de Longueville
+were so often seen prostrated, their long hair shorn, and their faces
+bathed in tears. Among the relics that are preserved of the past
+splendor of the holy monastery, consider the noble statue of the
+kneeling Cardinal de Berulle. On those meditative and penetrating
+features, in those eyes raised to heaven, breathes the soul of that
+great servant of God, who died at the altar like a warrior on the field
+of honor. He prays God for his dear Carmelites. That head is perfectly
+natural, as Champagne might have painted it, and has a severe grace that
+reminds one of Lesueur and Poussin.[170]
+
+Below Sarazin, the Anguiers are still artists that Italy would admire,
+and to whom there is wanting, since the great century, nothing but
+judges worthy of them. These two brothers covered Paris and France with
+the most precious monuments. Look at the tomb of Jacques-Auguste de
+Thou, by Francois Anguier: the face of the great historian is reflective
+and melancholy, like that of a man weary of the spectacle of human
+things; and nothing is more amiable than the statues of his two wives,
+Marie Barbancon de Cany, and Gasparde de la Chatre.[171] The mausoleum
+of Henri de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse in 1632, which is still
+seen at Moulins, in the church of the ancient convent of the daughters
+of Sainte-Marie, is an important work of the same artist, in which force
+is manifest, with a little heaviness.[172] To Michel Anguier are
+attributed the statues of the duke and duchess of Tresmes, and that of
+their illustrious son, Potier, Marquis of Gevres.[173] Behold in him the
+intrepid companion of Conde, arrested in his course at thirty-two years
+of age before Thionville, after the battle of Rocroy, already
+lieutenant-general, and when Conde was demanding for him the baton of a
+marshal of France, deposited on his tomb; behold him young, beautiful,
+brave, like his comrades cut down also in the flower of life, Laval,
+Chatillon, La Moussaye. One of the best works of Michel Anguier is the
+monument of Henri de Chabot, that other companion, that faithful friend
+of Conde, who by the splendor of his valor, especially by the graces of
+his person, knew how to gain the heart, the fortune, and the name of the
+beautiful Marguerite, the daughter of the great Duke of Rohan. The new
+duke died, still young, in 1655, at thirty-nine years of age. He is
+represented lying down, the head inclined and supported by an angel;
+another angel is at his feet. The whole is striking, and the details are
+exquisite. The face of Chabot has every beauty, as if to answer to its
+reputation, but the beauty is that of one dying. The body has already
+the languor of death, _longuescit moriens_, with I know not what antique
+grace. This morsel, if the drawing were more severe, would rival the
+_Dying Gladiator_, of which it reminds one, which it perhaps even
+imitates.[174]
+
+In truth, I wonder that men now dare speak so lightly of Puget and
+Girardon. To Puget qualities of the first order cannot be refused. He
+has the fire, the enthusiasm, the fecundity of genius. The caryatides of
+the Hotel de Ville of Toulon, which have been brought to the Museum of
+Paris, attest a powerful chisel. The _Milon_ reminds one of the manner
+of Michael Angelo; it is a little overstrained, but it cannot be denied
+that the effect is striking. Do you want a talent more natural, and
+still having force and elevation? Take the trouble to search in the
+Tuileries, in the gardens of Versailles, in several churches of Paris,
+for the scattered works of Girardon, here for the mausoleum of the
+Gondis,[175] there for that of the Castellans,[176] that of
+Louvois,[177] etc.; especially go to see in the church of the Sorbonne
+the mausoleum of Richelieu. The formidable minister is there represented
+in his last moments, sustained by religion and wept by his country. The
+whole person is of a perfect nobility, and the figure has the fineness,
+the severity, the superior distinction given to it by the pencil of
+Champagne, and the gravers of Morin, Michel Lasne, and Mellan.
+
+Finally, I do not regard as a vulgar sculptor Coysevox, who, under the
+influence of Lebrun, unfortunately begins the theatrical style, who
+still has the facility, movement, and elegance of Lebrun himself. He
+reared worthy monuments to Mazarin, Colbert, and Lebrun,[178] and thus
+to speak, sowed busts of the illustrious men of his time. For, remark it
+well, artists then took scarcely any arbitrary and fanciful subjects.
+They worked upon contemporaneous subjects, which, while giving them
+proper liberty, inspired and guided them, and communicated a public
+interest to their works. The French sculpture of the seventeenth
+century, like that of antiquity, is profoundly natural. The churches and
+the monasteries were filled with the statues of those who loved them
+during life, and wished to rest in them after death. Each church of
+Paris was a popular museum. The sumptuous residences of the
+aristocracy--for at that period, there was one in France, like that of
+England at the present time--possessed their secular tombs, statues,
+busts, and portraits of eminent men whose glory belonged to the country
+as well as their own family. On its side, the state did not encourage
+the arts in detail, and, thus to speak, in a small way; it gave them a
+powerful impulse by demanding of them important works, by confiding to
+them vast enterprises. All great things were thus mingled together,
+reciprocally inspired and sustained each other.
+
+One man alone in Europe has left a name in the beautiful art that
+surrounds a chateau or a palace with graceful gardens or magnificent
+parks,--that man is a Frenchman of the seventeenth century, is Le Notre.
+Le Notre may be reproached with a regularity that is perhaps excessive,
+and a little mannerism in details; but he has two qualities that
+compensate for many defects, grandeur and sentiment. He who designed the
+park of Versailles, who to the proper arrangement of parterres, to the
+movement of fountains, to the harmonious sound of waterfalls, to the
+mysterious shades of groves, has known how to add the magic of infinite
+perspective by means of that spacious walk where the view is extended
+over an immense sheet of water to be lost in the limitless
+distances,--he is a landscape-painter worthy of having a place by the
+side of Poussin and Lorrain.
+
+We had in the middle age our Gothic architecture, like all the nations
+of northern Europe. In the sixteenth century what architects were Pierre
+Lescot, Jean Bullant, and Philibert Delorme! What charming palaces, what
+graceful edifices, the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville of Paris, Chambord,
+and Ecouen! The seventeenth century also had its original architecture,
+different from that of the middle age and that of the _Renaissance_,
+simple, austere, noble, like the poetry of Corneille and the prose of
+Descartes. Study without scholastic prejudice the Luxembourg of de
+Brosses,[179] the portal of Saint-Gervais, and the great hall of the
+Palais de Justice, by the same architect; the Palais Cardinal and the
+Sorbonne of Lemercier;[180] the cupola of Val-de-Grace by Lemuet;[181]
+the triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis by Francois Blondel;
+Versailles, and especially the Invalides, of Mansart.[182] Consider with
+attention the last edifice, let it make its impression on your mind and
+soul, and you will easily succeed in recognizing in it a particular
+beauty. It is not a Gothic monument, neither is it an almost Pagan
+monument of the sixteenth century,--it is modern, and also Christian; it
+is vast with measure, elegant with gravity. Contemplate at sunset that
+cupola reflecting the last rays of day, elevating itself gently towards
+the heavens in a slight and graceful curve; cross that imposing
+esplanade, enter that court admirably lighted in spite of its covered
+galleries, bow beneath the dome of that church where Vauban and Turenne
+sleep,--you will not be able to guard yourself from an emotion at once
+religious and military; you will say to yourself that this is indeed the
+asylum of warriors who have reached the evening of life and are prepared
+for eternity!
+
+Since then, what has French architecture become? Once having left
+tradition and national character, it wanders from imitation to
+imitation, and without comprehending the genius of antiquity, it
+unskilfully reproduces its forms. This bastard architecture, at once
+heavy and mannered, is, little by little, substituted for the beautiful
+architecture of the preceding century, and everywhere effaces the
+vestiges of the French spirit. Do you wish a striking example of it? In
+Paris, near the Luxembourg, the Condes had their _hotel_,[183]
+magnificent and severe, with a military aspect, as it was fitting for
+the dwelling-place of a family of warriors, and within of almost royal
+splendor. Beneath those lofty ceilings had been some time suspended the
+Spanish flags taken at Rocroy. In those vast saloons had been assembled
+the _elite_ of the grandest society that ever existed. In those
+beautiful gardens had been seen promenading Corneille and Madame de
+Sevigne, Moliere, Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, in the company of the great
+Conde. The oratory had been painted by the hand of Lesueur.[184] It had
+been easy to repair and preserve the noble habitation. At the end of the
+eighteenth century, a descendant of the Condes sold it to a dismal
+company to build that palace without character and taste which is called
+the Palais-Bourbon. Almost at the same epoch there was a movement made
+to construct a church to the patroness of Paris, to that Genevieve,
+whose legend is so touching and so popular. Was there ever a better
+chance for a national and Christian monument? It was possible to return
+to the Gothic style and even to the Byzantine style. Instead of that
+there was made for us an immense Roman basilica of the Decline. What a
+dwelling for the modest and holy virgin, so dear to the fields that
+bordered upon Lutece, whose name is still venerated by the poor people
+who inhabit these quarters! Behold the church which has been placed by
+the side of that of Saint-Etienne du Mont, as if to make felt all the
+differences between Christianity and Paganism! For here, in spite of a
+mixture of the most different styles, it is evident that the Pagan style
+predominates. Christian worship cannot be naturalized in this profane
+edifice, which has so many times changed its destination. It is in vain
+to call it anew Saint-Genevieve,--the revolutionary name of Pantheon
+will stick to it.[185] The eighteenth century treated the Madeleine no
+better than Saint-Genevieve. In vain the beautiful sinner wished to
+renounce the joys of the world and attach herself to the poverty of
+Jesus Christ. She has been brought back to the pomp and luxury that she
+repudiated; she has been put in a rich palace, all shining with gold,
+which might very well be a temple of Venus, for certainly it has not the
+severe grace of the Pantheon, of which it is the most vulgar copy. How
+far we are from the Invalides, from Val-de-Grace, and the Sorbonne, so
+admirably appropriated to their object, wherein appears so well the hand
+of the century and the country which reared them!
+
+While architecture thus strays, it is natural that painting should seek
+above every thing color and brilliancy, that sculpture should apply
+itself to become Pagan again, that poetry itself, receding for two
+centuries, should abjure the worship of thought for that of fancy, that
+it should everywhere go borrowing images from Spain, Italy, and Germany,
+that it should run after subaltern and foreign qualities which it will
+not attain, and abandon the grand qualities of the French genius.
+
+It will be said that the Christian sentiment which animated Lesueur and
+the artists of the seventeenth century is wanting to those of ours; it
+is extinguished, and cannot be rekindled. In the first place, is that
+very certain? Native faith is dead, but cannot reflective faith take its
+place? Christianity is exhaustless; it has infinite resources, and
+admirable flexibility; there are a thousand ways of arriving at it and
+returning to it, because it has itself a thousand phases that answer to
+the most different dispositions, to all the wants, to all the mobility
+of the heart. What it loses on one side, it gains on another; and as it
+has produced our civilization, it is called to follow it in all its
+vicissitudes. Either every religion will perish in this world, or
+Christianity will endure, for it is not in the power of thought to
+conceive a more perfect religion. Artists of the nineteenth century, do
+not despair of God and yourselves. A superficial philosophy has thrown
+you far from Christianity considered in a strict sense; another
+philosophy can bring you near it again by making you see it with another
+eye. And then, if the religious sentiment is weakened, are there not
+other sentiments that can make the heart of man beat, and fecundate
+genius? Plato has said, that beauty is always old and always new. It is
+superior to all its forms, it belongs to all countries and all times; it
+belongs to all beliefs, provided these beliefs be serious and profound,
+and the need be felt of expressing and spreading them. If, then, we have
+not arrived at the boundary assigned to the grandeur of France, if we
+are not beginning to descend into the shade of death, if we still truly
+live, if there remain to us convictions, of whatever kind they may be,
+thereby even remains to us, or at least may remain to us, what made the
+glory of our fathers, what they did not carry with them to the tomb,
+what had already survived all revolutions, Greece, Rome, the Middle Age,
+what does not belong to any temporary or ephemeral accident, what
+subsists and is continually found in the focus of consciousness--I mean
+moral inspiration, immortal as the soul.
+
+Let us terminate here, and sum up this defence of the national art.
+There are in arts, as well as in letters and philosophy, two contrary
+schools. One tends to the ideal in all things,--it seeks, it tries to
+make appear the spirit concealed under the form, at once manifested and
+veiled by nature; it does not so much wish to please the senses and
+flatter the imagination as to enlarge the intellect and move the soul.
+The other, enamored of nature, stops there and devotes itself to
+imitation,--its principal object is to reproduce reality, movement,
+life, which are for it the supreme beauty. The France of the seventeenth
+century, the France of Descartes, Corneille, and Bossuet, highly
+spiritual in philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, was also highly
+spiritual in the arts. The artists of that great epoch participate in
+its general character, and represent it in their way. It is not true
+that they lacked imagination, more than Pascal and Bossuet lacked it.
+But inasmuch as they do not suffer imagination to usurp the dominion
+that does not belong to it, inasmuch as they subject its order, even its
+impetuosity, to the reign of reason and the inspirations of the heart,
+it seems that it is not so strong when it is only disciplined and
+regulated. As we have said, they excel in composition, especially in
+expression. They always have a thought, and a moral and elevated
+thought. For this reason they are dear to us, their cause interests us,
+is in some sort our own cause, and so this homage rendered to their
+misunderstood glory naturally crowns these lectures devoted to true
+beauty, that is to say, moral beauty.
+
+May these lectures be able to make it known, and, above all, loved! May
+they be able also to inspire some one of you with the idea of devoting
+himself to studies so beautiful, of devoting to them his life, and
+attaching to them his name! The sweetest recompense of a professor who
+is not too unworthy of that title, is to see rapidly following in his
+footsteps young and noble spirits who easily pass him and leave him far
+behind them.[186]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[128] One is reminded of the expression of the great Conde: "Where then
+has Corneille learned politics and war?"
+
+[129] It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the
+original all the passages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus; in them
+Racine would almost always be found below his model. I will give a
+single example. In the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus
+expresses the different effects of the crime on the spectators:
+
+    Juez combien ce coup frappe tous les esprits;
+    La moitie s'epouvante et sort avec des cris;
+    Mais ceux qui de la cour ont un plus long usage
+    Sur les yeux de Cesar composent leur visage.
+
+Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more
+than a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre
+pencil-strokes of the great Roman painter: "Trepidatur a
+circumsedentibus, diffugiunt imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus,
+resistunt defixi et Neronem intuentes."
+
+[130] See the letter to Perrault.
+
+[131]
+
+    En vain contre le Cid ministre se ligue,
+    Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrique, etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Apres qu'un peu de terre, obtenu par priere,
+    Pour jamais dans la tombe eut enferme Moliere, etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+[132]
+
+    Aux pieds de cet autel de structure grossiere,
+    Git sans pompe, enferme dans une vile biere,
+    Le plus savant mortel qui jamais ait ecrit;
+    Arnaud, qui sur la grace instruit par Jesus-Christ,
+    Combattant pour l'Eglise, a, dans l'Eglise meme,
+    Souffert plus d'un outrage et plus d'un anatheme, etc.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, persecute;
+    Et meme par sa mort leur fureur mal eteinte
+    N'aurait jamais laisse ses cendres en repos,
+    Si Dieu lui-meme ici de son ouaille sainte
+    A ces loups devorants n'avait cache les os.
+
+
+
+[133] These verses did not appear till after the death of Boileau, and
+they are not well known. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, in a letter to
+Brossette, rightly said that these are "the most beautiful verses that
+M. Despreaux ever made."
+
+[134] 4th Series of our works, LITERATURE, book i., _Preface_, p. 3: "It
+is in prose, perhaps, that our literary glory is most certain.... What
+modern nation reckons prose writers that approach those of our nation?
+The country of Shakspeare and Milton does not possess, since Bacon, a
+single prose writer of the first order [?]; that of Dante, Petrarch,
+Ariosto, and Tasso, is in vain proud of Machiavel, whose sound and manly
+diction, like the thought that it expresses, is destitute of grandeur.
+Spain, it is true, has produced Cervantes, an admirable writer, but he
+is alone.... France can easily show a list of more than twenty prose
+writers of genius: Froissard, Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La
+Rochefoucauld, Moliere, Retz, La Bruyere, Malebranche, Bossuet, Fenelon,
+Flechier, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Mme. de Sevigne, Saint-Simon,
+Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, J. J. Rousseau; without speaking of so
+many more that would be in the first rank everywhere else,--Amiot,
+Calvin, Pasquier, D'Aubigne, Charron, Balzac, Vaugelas, Pelisson,
+Nicole, Fleury, Bussi, Saint-Evremont, Mme. de Lafayette, Mme. de
+Maintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Hamilton, Le Sage, Prevost,
+Beaumarchais, etc. It may be said with the exactest truth, that French
+prose is without a rival in modern Europe; and, even in antiquity,
+superior to the Latin prose, at least in the quantity and variety of
+models, it has no equal but the Greek prose, in its palmiest days, in
+the days of Herodotus and Demosthenes. I do not prefer Demosthenes to
+Pascal, and it would be difficult for me to put Plato himself above
+Bossuet. Plato and Bossuet, in my opinion, are the two greatest masters
+of human language, with manifest differences, as well as more than one
+trait of resemblance; both ordinarily speak like the people, with the
+last degree of simplicity, and at moments ascending without effort to a
+poetry as magnificent as that of Homer, ingenious and polished to the
+most charming delicacy, and by instinct majestic and sublime. Plato,
+without doubt, has incomparable graces, the supreme serenity, and, as it
+were, the demi-smile of the divine sage. Bossuet, on his side, has the
+pathetic, in which he has no rival but the great Corneille. When such
+writers are possessed, is it not a religion to render them the honor
+that is their due, that of a regular and profound study?"
+
+[135] See the APPENDIX, at the end of the volume.
+
+[136] See the APPENDIX.
+
+[137] This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of St.
+Gervais. It formed the altar-piece, and in the foreground there was the
+admirable Bearing of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum.
+
+[138] Such a law was the first act of the first assembly of affranchised
+Greece, and all the friends of art have applauded it from end to end of
+civilized Europe.
+
+[139] See the APPENDIX.
+
+[140] The _Seven Sacraments_ of Poussin are now in the Bridgewater
+Gallery. See the APPENDIX.
+
+[141] See the APPENDIX.
+
+[142] In the midst of this scene of brutal violence, everybody has
+remarked this delicate trait--a Roman quite young, almost juvenile,
+while possessing himself by force of a young girl taking refuge in the
+arms of her mother, asks her from her mother with an air at once
+passionate and restrained. In order to appreciate this picture, compare
+it with that of David in the _ensemble_ and in the details.
+
+[143] In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage. He
+governs the whole scene; he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy.
+
+[144] The pictures of Claude Lorrain, of which we have just spoken, are
+in the Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst the Museum of
+Madrid alone possesses almost as many, while there are in England more
+than fifty, and those the most admirable. See the APPENDIX.
+
+[145] The last _Notice of the Pictures exhibited in the Gallery of the
+National Museum of the Louvre_, 1852, although its author, M. Villot, is
+surely a man of incontestable knowledge and taste, persists in placing
+Champagne in the Flemish school. _En revanche_, a learned foreigner, M.
+Waagen, claims him for the French school. _Kunstwerke and Kuenstler in
+Paris_, Berlin, 1839, p. 651.
+
+[146] Well appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to his
+benefits. One day when an envoy of Richelieu said to him that he had
+only to ask freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune,
+Champagne responded that if M. the Cardinal could make him a more
+skilful painter than he was, it was the only thing that he asked of his
+Eminence; but that being impossible, he only desired the honor of his
+good graces. Felibien, _Entretiens_, 1st edition, 4to., part v., p. 171;
+and de Piles, _Abrege de la Vie des Peintres_, 2d edition, p. 500.--"As
+he had much love for justice and truth, provided he satisfied what they
+both demanded, he easily passed over all the rest."--_Necrologe de
+Port-Royal_, p. 336.
+
+[147] See the APPENDIX.
+
+[148] The original is in the Museum of Grenoble; but see the engraving
+of Morin; see also that of Daret, after the beautiful design of
+Demonstier.
+
+[149] In the Museum of the Louvre; see also the engraving of Morin.
+
+[150] The original is now in the Chateau of Sable, belonging to the
+Marquis of Rouge; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The
+beautiful engraving of Edelinck was made after a different original,
+attributed to a nephew of Champagne.
+
+[151] The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of Rouge;
+the admirable engraving of Van Schupen may take its place.
+
+[152] In the Museum.
+
+[153] In the Museum, and engraved by Gerard Edelinck.
+
+[154] _La Gloire du Val-de-Grace_, in 4to, 1669, with a frontispiece and
+vignettes. Moliere there enters into infinite details on all the parts
+of the art of painting and the genius of Mignard. He pushes eulogy
+perhaps to the extent of hyperbole; afterwards, hyperbole gave place to
+the most shameful indifference. The fresco of the dome of Val-de-grace
+is composed of four rows of figures, which rise in a circle from the
+base to the vertex of the arch. In the upper part is the Trinity, above
+which is raised a resplendent sky. Below the Trinity are the celestial
+powers. Descending a degree, we see the Virgin and the holy personages
+of the Old and New Testament. Finally, at the lower extremity is Anne of
+Austria, introduced into paradise by St. Anne and St. Louis, and these
+three figures are accompanied by a multitude of personages pertaining to
+the history of France, among whom are distinguished Joan of Arc,
+Charlemagne, etc.
+
+[155] Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the _Plague of David_
+(_la Peste de David_). What has become of the original?
+
+[156] See his _Landscape at Sunset_, and the _Bathers_ (_les
+Baigneuses_), an agreeable scene somewhat blemished by careless drawing.
+
+[157] It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In his _Holy
+Family_ the figure of the Virgin, without being celestial, admirably
+expresses meditation and reflection. We lost some time ago the most
+important work of S. Bourdon, the _Sept Oeuvres de Misericorde_. See
+the APPENDIX.
+
+[158] See especially his _Extreme Unction_.
+
+[159] The picture that is called _le Silence_, which represents the
+sleep of the infant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of the
+infant is of superhuman power. The _Battles of Alexander_, with their
+defects, are pages of history of the highest order; and in the
+_Alexander visiting with Ephestion the Mother and the Wife of Darius_,
+one knows not which to admire most, the noble ordering of the whole or
+the just expression of the figures.
+
+[160] It seems that Lesueur sometimes furnished Daret with designs. It
+is indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design of his
+_chef-d'oeuvre_, the portrait of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti,
+represented in his earliest youth, and in an abbe, sustained and
+surrounded by angels of different size, forming a charming composition.
+The drawing is completely pure, except some imperfect fore-shortenings.
+The little angels that sport with the emblems of the future cardinal are
+full of spirit, and, at the same time, sweetness.
+
+[161] Edelinck saw only the reign of Louis XIV. Nanteuil was able to
+engrave very few of the great men of the time of Louis XIII., and the
+regency, and in the latter part of their life; Mazarin, in his last five
+or six years; Conde, growing old; Turenne, old; Fouquet and Matthieu
+Mole, some years before the fall of the one and the death of the other;
+and he was too often obliged to waste his talent upon a crowd of
+parliamentarians, ecclesiastics, and obscure financiers.
+
+[162] If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest and most
+neglected portion of the seventeenth century, that which Voltaire almost
+wholly omitted, I would set him to collecting the works of Morin.
+
+[163] Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated painters of
+his time, he is himself the author of great and charming compositions,
+many of which serve as frontispieces to books. I willingly call
+attention to that one which is at the head of a folio edition of the
+_Introduction a la Vie Devote_, and to the beautiful frontispieces of
+the writings of Richelieu, from the press of the Louvre.
+
+[164] This was the opinion of Winkelmann at the end of the eighteenth
+century; it is our opinion now, even after all the discoveries that have
+been made during fifty years, that may be seen in great part retraced
+and described in the _Musio real Barbonico_.
+
+[165] There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age: the innumerable
+figures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues that are
+discovered every day sufficiently testify it. The _imagers_ of that time
+certainly had much spirit and imagination; but, at least in everything
+that we have seen, beauty is absent, and taste wanting.
+
+[166] Go and see at the Museum of Versailles the statue of Francis I.,
+and say whether any Italian, except the author of the _Laurent de
+Medicis_, has made any thing like it. See also in the Museum of the
+Louvre, the statue of Admiral Chabot.
+
+[167] Sarazin died in 1660, Lesueur in 1655, Poussin in 1665, Descartes
+in 1650, Pascal in 1662, and the genius of Corneille did not extend
+beyond that epoch.
+
+[168] Lenoir, _Musee des Monuments Francais_, vol. v., p. 87-91, and the
+_Musee Royale des Monuments Francais_ of 1815, p. 98, 99, 108, 122, and
+140. This wonderful monument, erected to Henri de Bourbon, at the
+expense of his old intendant Perrault, president of the _Chambre des
+Comptes_, was placed in the Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in
+bronze. It must not be confounded with the other monument that the
+Condes erected to the same prince in their family burial-ground at
+Vallery, near Montereau, in Yonne. This monument is in marble, and by
+the hand of Michel Anguier; see the description in Lenoir, vol. v., p.
+23-25, and especially in the _Annuaire de l'Yonne pour_ 1842, p. 173,
+etc.
+
+[169] Rue d'Enfer, No. 67.
+
+[170] The Museum of the Louvre possesses only a very small number of
+Sarazin's works, and those of very little importance:--a bust of Pierre
+Seguier, strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and the small
+funeral monument of Hennequin, Abbe of Bernay, member of Parliament, who
+died in 1651, which is a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of elegance.
+
+[171] These three statues were united in the Museum des
+_Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _Musee-royal_, etc., p. 94; we know not why
+they have been separated; Jacques-Auguste de Thou has been placed in the
+Louvre, and his two wives at Versailles.
+
+[172] Francois Anguier had made a marble tomb of Cardinal de Berulle,
+which was in the oratory of _Rue St. Honore_. It would have been
+interesting to compare this statue with that of Sarazin, which is still
+at the Carmelites. Francois is also the author of the monument of the
+Longuevilles, which, before the Revolution, was at the Celestins, and
+was seen in 1815 at the museum des _Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _ibid._,
+p. 103; it is now in the Louvre. It is an obelisk, the four sides of
+which are covered with allegorical bas-reliefs. The pedestal, also
+ornamented with bas-reliefs, has four female figures in marble,
+representing the cardinal virtues.
+
+[173] Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 97 and 100. See his portrait,
+painted by Champagne, and engraved by Morin.
+
+[174] Group in white marble which was at the Celestins, a church near
+the _hotel_ of Rohan-Chabot in the _Place Royale_; re-collected in the
+Museum _des Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _ibid._, p. 97; it is now at
+Versailles. We must not pass over that beautiful production, the
+mausoleum of Jacques de Souvre, Grand Prior of France, the brother of
+the beautiful Marchioness de Sable; a mausoleum that came from
+Saint-Jean de Latran, passed through the Museum _des Petits-Augustins_,
+and is now found in the Louvre. The sculptures of the porte Saint-Denis
+are also owed to Michel Anguier, as well as the admirable bust of
+Colbert, which is in the museum.
+
+[175] At first at Notre-Dame, the natural place for the tombs of the
+Gondis, then at the Augustins, now at Versailles.
+
+[176] In the Church St. Germain des Pres.
+
+[177] At the Capuchins, then at the Augustins, then at Versailles.
+
+[178] See, on these monuments, Lenoir, p. 98, 101, 102. That of Mazarin
+is now at the Louvre; that of Colbert has been restored to the Church of
+St. Eustache, and that of Lebrun to the Church St. Nicholas du
+Chardonnet, as well as the mausoleum, so expressive but a little
+overstrained, of the mother of Lebrun, by Tuby, and the mausoleum of
+Jerome Bignon, the celebrated Councillor of State, who died in 1656.
+
+[179] Quatremere de Quincy, _Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de plus
+Celebres Architectes_, vol. ii., p. 145:--"There could scarcely be found
+in any country an _ensemble_ so grand, which offers with so much unity
+and regularity an aspect at once more varied and picturesque, especially
+in the facade of the entrance." Unfortunately this unity has
+disappeared, thanks to the constructions that have since been added to
+the primitive work.
+
+[180] In order to appreciate the beauty of the Sorbonne, one must stand
+in the lower part of the great court, and from that point consider the
+effect of the successive elevation, at first of the other part of the
+court, then of the different stories of the portico, then of the portico
+itself, of the church, and, finally, of the dome.
+
+[181] Quatremere de Quincy, _Ibid._, p. 257:--"The cupola of this
+edifice is one of the finest in Europe."
+
+[182] We do not speak of the colonnade of the Louvre by Perrault,
+because in spite of its grand qualities, it begins the decline and marks
+the passage from the serious to the academic style, from originality to
+imitation, from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth.
+
+[183] See the engraving of Perelle. Sauval, vol. ii., p. 66 and p. 131,
+says that the _hotel_ of Conde was _magnificently built_, that it was
+_the most magnificent of the time_.
+
+[184] Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see the
+APPENDIX):--"Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de Conde,
+Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an
+oratory painted by Lesueur in the _hotel_ of Conde. The altar-piece
+represents a _Nativity_, that of the ceiling a _Celestial Glory_. The
+wainscot is enriched with several figures and with a quantity of
+ornaments worked with great care."
+
+[185] The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is
+itself a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only merit of
+the Pantheon is its situation on the summit of the hill of St.
+Genevieve, from which it overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on
+different sides to a considerable distance. Put in its place the
+Val-de-Grace of Lemercier with the dome of Lemuet, and judge what would
+be the effect of such an edifice!
+
+[186] In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was
+M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to the
+_faculte des lettres_, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis
+on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and particular
+taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his mind. But
+of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our lectures, no one
+was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of beauty or art than the
+author of the beautiful articles on Eustache Lesueur, the Cathedral of
+Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all the knowledge, and, what
+is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge of every kind of
+beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the necessity of
+addressing to him the public petition that he may not be wanting to a
+vocation so marked and so elevated.
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD
+
+THE GOOD.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XI.
+
+PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.
+
+    Extent of the question of the good.--Position of the question
+    according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the
+    good, the natural belief of mankind?--The natural beliefs of
+    humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of
+    nature.--Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages,
+    in life, in consciousness.--Disinterestedness and
+    devotedness.--Liberty.--Esteem and
+    contempt.--Respect.--Admiration and
+    indignation.--Dignity.--Empire of opinion.--Ridicule.--Regret
+    and repentance.--Natural and necessary foundations of all
+    justice.--Distinction between fact and right.--Common sense,
+    true and false philosophy.
+
+
+The idea of the true in its developments, comprises psychology, logic,
+and metaphysics. The idea of the beautiful begets what is called
+aesthetics. The idea of the good is the whole of ethics.
+
+It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics to confine them
+within the inclosure of individual consciousness. There are public
+ethics, as well as private ethics, and public ethics embrace, with the
+relations of men among themselves, so far as men, their relations as
+citizens and as members of a state. Ethics extend wherever is found in
+any decree the idea of the good. Now, where does this idea manifest
+itself more, and where do justice and injustice, virtue and crime,
+heroism and weakness appear more openly, than on the theatre of civil
+life? Moreover, is there any thing that has a more decisive influence
+over manners, even of individuals, than the institutions of peoples and
+the constitutions of states? If the idea of the good goes thus far, it
+must be followed thither, as recently the idea of the beautiful has
+introduced us into the domain of art.
+
+Philosophy usurps no foreign power; but it is not disposed to relinquish
+its right of examination over all the great manifestations of human
+nature. All philosophy that does not terminate in ethics, is hardly
+worthy of the name, and all ethics that do not terminate at least in
+general views on society and government, are powerless ethics, that have
+neither counsels nor rules to give humanity in its most difficult
+trials.
+
+It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the metaphysics and
+aesthetics that we have taught evidently involve such a doctrine of
+morality and not such another, that, accordingly, the question of the
+good, that question so fertile and so vast, is for us wholly solved, and
+that we can deduce, by way of reasoning, the moral theory that is
+derived from our theory of the beautiful and our theory of the true. We
+might do this, perhaps, but we will not. This would be abandoning the
+method that we have hitherto followed, that method that proceeds by
+observation, and not by deduction, and makes consulting experience a law
+to itself. We do not grow weary of experience. Let us attach ourselves
+faithfully to the psychological method; it has its delays; it condemns
+us to more than one repetition, but it places us in the beginning, and a
+long time retains us at the source of all reality, and all light.
+
+The first maxim of the psychological method is this: True philosophy
+invents nothing, it establishes and describes what is. Now here, what
+is, is the natural and permanent belief of the being that we are
+studying, to wit, man. What is, then, in relation to the good, the
+natural and permanent belief of the human race? Such is, in our eyes,
+the first question.
+
+With us, in fact, the human race does not take one side, and philosophy
+the other. Philosophy is the interpreter of the human race. What the
+human race thinks and believes, often unconsciously, philosophy
+re-collects, explains, establishes. It is the faithful and complete
+expression of human nature, and human nature is entire in each of us
+philosophers, and in every other man. Among us, it is attained by
+consciousness; among other men, it manifests itself in their words and
+actions. Let us, then, interrogate the latter and the former; let us
+especially interrogate our own consciousness; let us clearly recognize
+what the human race thinks; we shall then see what should be the office
+of philosophy.
+
+Is there a human language known to us that has not different expressions
+for good and evil, for just and unjust? Is there any language, in which,
+by the side of the words pleasure, interest, utility, happiness, are not
+also found the words sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotedness, virtue?
+Do not all languages, as well as all nations, speak of liberty, duty,
+and right?
+
+Here, perhaps, some disciple of Condillac and Helvetius will ask us
+whether, in this regard, we possess authentic dictionaries of the
+language of savage tribes found by voyagers in the isles of the ocean?
+No; but we have not made our philosophic religion out of the
+superstitions and prejudices of a certain school. We absolutely deny
+that it is necessary to study human nature in the famous savage of
+Aveyron, or in the like of him of the isles of the ocean, or the
+American continent. The savage state offers us humanity in
+swaddling-clothes, thus to speak, the germ of humanity, but not humanity
+entire. The true man is the perfect man of his kind; true human nature
+is human nature arrived at its development, as true society is also
+perfected society. We do not think it worth the while to ask a savage
+his opinion on the Apollo Belvidere, neither will we ask him for the
+principles that constitute the moral nature of man, because in him this
+moral nature is only sketched and not completed. Our great philosophy of
+the seventeenth century was sometimes a little too much pleased with
+hypotheses in which God plays the principal part, and crushes human
+liberty.[187] The philosophy of the eighteenth century threw itself
+into the opposite extreme; it had recourse to hypotheses of a totally
+different character, among others, to a pretended natural state, whence
+it undertook, with infinite pains, to draw society and man as we now see
+them. Rousseau plunged into the forests, in order to find there the
+model of liberty and equality. That is the commencement of his politics.
+But wait a little, and soon you will see the apostle of the natural
+state, driven, by a necessary inconsequence, from one excess to an
+opposite excess, instead of the sweets of savage liberty, proposing to
+us the _Contrat Social and Lacedemone_. Condillac[188] studies the human
+mind in a statue whose senses enter into exercise under the magic wand
+of a systematic analysis, and are developed in the measure and progress
+that are convenient to him. The statue successively acquires our five
+senses, but there is one thing that it does not acquire, that is, a mind
+like the human mind, and a soul like ours. And this was what was then
+called the experimental method! Let us leave there all those hypotheses.
+In order to understand reality, let us study it, and not imagine it. Let
+us take humanity as it is incontestably shown to us in its actual
+characters, and not as it may have been in a primitive, purely
+hypothetical state, in those unformed lineaments or that degradation
+which is called the savage state. In that, without doubt, may be found
+signs or _souvenirs_ of humanity, and, if this were the plea, we might,
+in our turn, examine the recitals of voyages, and find, even in that
+darkness of infancy or decrepitude, admirable flashes of light, noble
+instincts, which already appear, or still subsist, presaging or
+recalling humanity. But, for the sake of exactness of method and true
+analysis, we turn our eyes from infancy and the savage state, in order
+to direct them towards the being who is the sole object of our studies,
+the actual man, the real and completed man.
+
+Do you know a language, a people, which does not possess the word
+disinterested virtue? Who is especially called an honest man? Is it the
+skilful calculator, devoting himself to making his own affairs the best
+possible, or he who, under all circumstances, is disposed to observe
+justice against his apparent or real interest? Take away the idea that
+an honest man is capable, to a certain degree, of resisting the
+attractions of personal interest, and of making some sacrifices for
+opinion, for propriety, for that which is or appears honest, and you
+take away the foundation of that title of honest man, even in the most
+ordinary sense. That disposition to prefer what is good to our pleasure,
+to our personal utility, in a word, to interest--that disposition more
+or less strong, more or less constant, more or less tested, measures the
+different degrees of virtue. A man who carries disinterestedness as far
+as devotion, is called a hero, let him be concealed in the humblest
+condition, or placed on a public stage. There is devotedness in obscure
+as well as in exalted stations. There are heroes of probity, of honor,
+of loyalty, in the relations of ordinary life, as well as heroes of
+courage and patriotism in the counsels of peoples and at the head of
+armies. All these names, with their meaning well recognized, are in all
+languages, and constitute a certain and universal fact. We may explain
+this fact, but on one imperative condition, that in explaining we do not
+destroy it. Now, is the idea and the word disinterestedness explained to
+us by reducing disinterestedness to interest? This is what common sense
+invincibly repels.
+
+Poets have no system,--they address themselves to men as they really
+are, in order to produce in them certain effects. Is it skilful
+selfishness or disinterested virtue that poets celebrate? Do they demand
+our applause for the success of fortunate address, or for the voluntary
+sacrifices of virtue? The poet knows that there is at the foundation of
+the human soul I know not what marvellous power of disinterestedness and
+devotedness. In addressing himself to this instinct of the heart, he is
+sure of awakening a sublime echo, of opening every source of the
+pathetic.
+
+Consult the annals of the human race, and you will find in them man
+everywhere, and more and more, claiming his liberty. This word liberty
+is as old as man himself. What then! Men wish to be free, and man
+himself should not be free! The word nevertheless exists with the most
+determined signification. It signifies that man believes himself a free
+being, not only animated and sensible, but endowed with will, a will
+that belongs to him, that consequently cannot admit over itself the
+tyranny of another will which would make, in regard to him, the office
+of fatality, even were it that of the most beneficent fatality. Do you
+suppose that the word liberty could ever have been formed, if the thing
+itself did not exist? None but a free being could possess the idea of
+liberty. Will it be said that the liberty of man is only an illusion?
+The wishes of the human race are then the most inexplicable
+extravagance. In denying the essential distinction between liberty and
+fatality, we contradict all languages and all received notions; we have,
+it is true, the advantage of absolving tyrants, but we degrade heroes.
+They have, then, fought and died for a chimera!
+
+All languages contain the words esteem and contempt. To esteem, to
+despise,--these are universal expressions, certain phenomena, from which
+an impartial analysis can draw the highest notions. Can we despise a
+being who, in his acts, should not be free, a being who should not know
+the good, and should not feel himself obligated to fulfil it? Suppose
+that the good is not essentially different from the evil, suppose that
+there is in the world only interest more or less well understood, that
+there is no real duty, and that man is not essentially a free being,--it
+is impossible to explain rationally the word contempt. It is the same
+with the word esteem.
+
+Esteem is a fact which, faithfully expressed, contains a complete
+philosophy as solid as generous. Esteem has two certain characters: 1st,
+It is a disinterested sentiment in the soul of him who feels it; 2d, It
+is applied only to disinterested acts. We do not esteem at will, and
+because it is our interest to esteem. Neither do we esteem an action or
+a person because they have been successful. Success, fortunate
+calculation, may make us envied; it does not bring esteem, which has
+another price.
+
+Esteem in a certain degree, and under certain circumstances, is
+respect,--respect, a holy and sacred word which the most subtile or the
+loosest analysis will never degrade to expressing a sentiment that is
+related to ourselves, and is applied to actions crowned by fortune.
+
+Take again these two words, these two facts analogous to the first two,
+admiration and indignation. Esteem and contempt are rather judgments;
+indignation and admiration are sentiments, but sentiments that pertain
+to intelligence and envelop a judgment.[189]
+
+Admiration is an essentially disinterested sentiment. See whether there
+is any interest in the world that has the power to give you admiration
+for any thing or any person. If you were interested, you might feign
+admiration, but you would not feel it. A tyrant with death in his hand,
+may constrain you to appear to admire, but not to admire in reality.
+Even affection does not determine admiration; whilst a heroic trait,
+even in an enemy, compels you to admire.
+
+The phenomenon opposed to admiration is indignation. Indignation is no
+more anger than admiration is desire. Anger is wholly personal.
+Indignation is never directly related to us; it may have birth in the
+midst of circumstances wherein we are engaged, but the foundation and
+the dominant character of the phenomenon in itself is to be
+disinterested. Indignation is in its nature generous. If I am a victim
+of an injustice, I may feel at once anger and indignation, anger against
+him that injures me, indignation towards him who is unjust to one of his
+fellow-men. We may be indignant towards ourselves; we are indignant
+towards every thing that wounds the sentiment of justice. Indignation
+covers a judgment, the judgment that he who commits such or such an
+action, whether against us, or even for us, does an action unworthy,
+contrary to our dignity, to his own dignity, to human dignity. The
+injury sustained is not the measure of indignation, as the advantage
+received is not that of admiration. We felicitate ourselves on
+possessing or having acquired a useful thing; but we never admire, on
+that account, either ourselves or the thing that we have just acquired.
+So we repel the stone that wounds us, we do not feel indignant towards
+it.
+
+Admiration elevates and ennobles the soul. The generous parts of human
+nature are disengaged and exalted in presence of, and as it were in
+contact with, the image of the good. This is the reason why admiration
+is already by itself so beneficent, even should it be deceived in its
+object. Indignation is the result of these same generous parts of the
+soul, which, wounded by injustice, are highly roused and protest in the
+name of offended human dignity.
+
+Look at men in action, and you will see them imposing upon themselves
+great sacrifices in order to conquer the suffrages of their fellows. The
+empire of opinion is immense,--vanity alone does not explain it; it
+doubtless also pertains to vanity, but it has deeper and better roots.
+We judge that other men are, like us, sensible to good and evil, that
+they distinguish between virtue and vice, that they are capable of being
+indignant and admiring, of esteeming and respecting, as well as
+despising. This power is in us, we have consciousness of it, we know
+that other men possess it as well as we, and it is this power that
+frightens us. Opinion is our own consciousness transferred to the
+public, and there disengaged from all complaisance and armed with an
+inflexible severity. To the remorse in our own hearts, responds the
+shame in that second soul which we have made ourselves, and is called
+public opinion. We must not be astonished at the sweets of popularity.
+We are more sure of having done well, when to the testimony of our
+consciousness we are able to join that of the consciousness of our
+fellow-men. There is only one thing that can sustain us against opinion,
+and even place us above it: it is the firm and sure testimony of our
+consciousness, because, in fine, the public and the whole human race
+are compelled to judge us according to appearance, whilst we judge
+ourselves infallibly and by the most certain of all knowledge.
+
+Ridicule is the fear of opinion in small things. The force of ridicule
+is wholly in the supposition that there is a common taste, a common type
+of what is proper, that directs men in their judgments, and even in
+their pleasantries, which in their way are also judgments. Without this
+supposition, ridicule falls of itself, and pleasantry loses its sting.
+But it is immortal, as well as the distinction between good and evil,
+between the beautiful and the ugly, between what is proper and what is
+improper.
+
+When we have not succeeded in any measure undertaken for our interest
+and prosperity, we experience a sentiment of pain that is called regret.
+But we do not confound regret with that other sentiment that rises in
+the soul when we are conscious of having done something morally bad.
+This sentiment is also a pain, but of quite a different nature,--it is
+remorse, repentance. That we have lost in play, for example, is
+disagreeable to us; but if, in gaining, we have the consciousness of
+having deceived our adversary, we experience a very different sentiment.
+
+We might prolong and vary these examples. We have said enough to be
+entitled to conclude that human language and the sentiments that it
+expresses are inexplicable, if we do not admit the essential distinction
+between good and evil, between virtue and crime, crime founded on
+interest, virtue founded on disinterestedness.
+
+Disturb this distinction, and you disturb human life and entire society.
+Permit me to take an extreme, tragic, and terrible example. Here is a
+man that has just been judged. He has been condemned to death, and is
+about to be executed--to be deprived of life. And why? Place yourself in
+the system that does not admit the essential distinction between good
+and evil, and ponder on what is stupidly atrocious in this act of human
+justice. What has the condemned done? Evidently a thing indifferent in
+itself. For if there is no other outward distinction than that of
+pleasure and pain, I defy any one to qualify any human action, whatever
+it may be, as criminal, without the most absurd inconsequence. But this
+thing, indifferent in itself, a certain number of men, called
+legislators, have declared to be a crime. This purely arbitrary
+declaration has found no echo in the heart of this man. He has not been
+able to feel the justice of it, since there is nothing in itself just.
+He has therefore done, without remorse, what this declaration
+arbitrarily interdicted. The court proceeds to prove to him that he has
+not succeeded, but not that he has done contrary to justice, for there
+is no justice. I maintain that every condemnation, be it to death, or to
+any punishment whatever, imperatively supposes, in order to be any thing
+else than a repression of violence by violence, the four following
+points:--1st, That there is an essential distinction between good and
+evil, justice and injustice, and that to this distinction is attached,
+for every intelligent and free being, the obligation of conforming to
+good and justice; 2d, That man is an intelligent and free being, capable
+of comprehending this distinction, and the obligation that accompanies
+it, and of adhering to it naturally, independently of all convention,
+and every positive law; capable also of resisting the temptations that
+bear him towards evil and injustice, and of fulfilling the sacred law of
+natural justice; 3d, That every act contrary to justice deserves to be
+repressed by force, and even punished in reparation of the fault
+committed, and independently too of all law and all convention; 4th,
+That man naturally recognizes the distinction between the merit and
+demerit of actions, as he recognizes the distinction between the just
+and the unjust, and knows that every penalty applied to an unjust act is
+itself most strictly just.
+
+Such are the foundations of that power of judging and punishing which is
+entire society. Society has not made those principles for its own use;
+they are much anterior to it, they are contemporaneous with thought and
+the soul, and upon these rests society, with its laws and its
+institutions. Laws are legitimate by their relation to these eternal
+laws. The surest power of institutions resides in the respect that
+these principles bear with them and extend to every thing that
+participates in them. Education develops them, it does not create them.
+They direct the legislator who makes the law, and the judge who applies
+it. They are present to the accused brought before the tribunal, they
+inspire every just sentence, they give it authority in the soul of the
+condemned, and in that of the spectator, and they consecrate the
+employment of force necessary for his execution. Take away a single one
+of these principles, and all human justice is overthrown, no longer is
+there any thing but a mass of arbitrary conventions which no one in
+conscience is bound to respect, which may be violated without remorse,
+which are sustained only by the display of extreme punishments. The
+decisions of such a justice are not true judgments, but acts of force,
+and civil society is only an arena where men contend with each other
+without duties and rights, without any other object than that of
+procuring for themselves the greatest possible amount of enjoyment, of
+procuring it by conquest and preserving it by force or cunning, save
+throwing over all that the cloak of hypocritical laws.
+
+It is true, such is the aspect under which skepticism makes us consider
+society and human justice, driving us through despair to revolt and
+disorder, and bringing us back through despair again to quite another
+yoke than that of reason and virtue, to that regulated disorder which is
+called despotism. The spectacle of human things, viewed coolly, and
+without the spirit of system, is, thank God, less sombre. Without doubt,
+society and human justice have still many imperfections which time
+discovers and corrects; but it may be said, that in general they rest on
+truth and natural equity. The proof of it is, that society everywhere
+subsists, and is even developed. Moreover, facts, were they such as the
+melancholy pen of a Pascal or a Rousseau represent them to be, facts are
+not all,--before facts is right; and this idea of right alone, if it is
+real, suffices to overturn an abasing system, and save human dignity.
+Now, is the idea of right a chimera? I again appeal to languages, to
+individual consciousness, to the human race,--is it not true that fact
+is everywhere distinguished from right, fact which too often, perhaps,
+but not always, as it is said, is opposed to right; and right that
+subdues and rules fact, or protests against it? What word is it that
+restrains most in human societies? Is it not that of right? Look for a
+language that does not contain it. On all sides, society is bristling
+with rights. There is even a distinction made between natural right and
+positive right, between what is legal and what is equitable. It is
+proclaimed that force should be in the service of right, and not right
+at the mercy of force. The triumphs of force, wherever we perceive them,
+either under our eyes, or by the aid of history in bygone centuries, or
+by favor of universal publicity beyond the ocean, and in foreign
+continents, rouse indignation in the disinterested spectator or reader.
+On the contrary, he who inscribes on his banner the name of right, by
+that alone interests us; the cause of right, or what we suppose to be
+the cause of right, is for us the cause of humanity. It is also a fact,
+and an incontestable fact, that in the eyes of man fact is not every
+thing, and that the idea of right is a universal idea, graven in shining
+and ineffaceable characters, if not in the visible world, at least in
+that of thought and the soul; concerning that is the question; it is
+also that which in the long run reforms and governs the other.
+
+Individual consciousness, conceived and transferred to the entire
+species, is called common sense. It is common sense that has made, that
+sustains, that develops languages, natural and permanent beliefs,
+society and its fundamental institutions. Grammarians have not invented
+languages, nor legislators societies, nor philosophers general beliefs.
+All these things have not been personally done, but by the whole
+world,--by the genius of humanity.
+
+Common sense is deposited in its works. All languages, and all human
+institutions contain the ideas and the sentiments that we have just
+called to mind and described, and especially the distinction between
+good and evil, between justice and injustice, between free will and
+desire, between duty and interest, between virtue and happiness, with
+the profoundly rooted belief that happiness is a recompense due to
+virtue, and that crime in itself deserves to be punished, and calls for
+the reparation of a just suffering.
+
+These things are attested by the words and actions of men. Such are the
+sincere and impartial, but somewhat confused, somewhat gross notions of
+common sense.
+
+Here begins the part of philosophy. It has before it two different
+routes; it can do one of two things: either accept the notions of common
+sense, elucidate them, thereby develop and increase them, and, by
+faithfully expressing them, fortify the natural beliefs of humanity; or,
+preoccupied with such or such a principle, impose it upon the natural
+data of common sense, admit those that agree with this principle,
+artificially bend the others to these, or openly deny them; this is what
+is called making a system.
+
+Philosophic systems are not philosophy; they try to realize the idea of
+it, as civil institutions try to realize that of justice, as the arts
+express in their way infinite beauty, as the sciences pursue universal
+science. Philosophic systems are necessarily very imperfect, otherwise
+there never would have been two systems in the world. Fortunate are
+those that go on doing good, that expand in the minds and souls of men,
+with some innocent errors, the sacred love of the true, the beautiful,
+and the good! But philosophic systems follow their times much more than
+they direct them; they receive their spirit from the hands of their age.
+Transferred to France towards the close of the regency and under the
+reign of Louis XV., the philosophy of Locke gave birth there to a
+celebrated school, which for a long time governed and still subsists
+among us, protected by ancient habits, but in radical opposition to our
+new institutions and our new wants. Sprung from the bosom of tempests,
+nourished in the cradle of a revolution, brought up under the bad
+discipline of the genius of war, the nineteenth century cannot recognize
+its image and find its instincts in a philosophy born under the
+influence of the voluptuous refinements of Versailles, admirably fitted
+for the decrepitude of an arbitrary monarchy, but not for the laborious
+life of a young liberty surrounded with perils. As for us, after having
+combated the philosophy of sensation in the metaphysics which it
+substituted for Cartesianism, and in the deplorable aesthetics, now too
+accredited, under which succumbed our great national art of the
+seventeenth century, we do not hesitate to combat it again in the ethics
+that were its necessary product, the ethics of interest.
+
+The exposition and refutation of these pretended ethics will be the
+subject of the next lecture.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[187] See 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 11 and 12; 4th Series, vol. ii.,
+last pages of _Jacqueline Pascal_, and the _Fragments of the Cartesian
+Philosophy_, p. 469.
+
+[188] 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3, _Condillac_.
+
+[189] See the Theory of Sentiment, part i., lecture 5.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XII.
+
+THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.[190]
+
+    Exposition of the doctrine of interest.--What there is of truth
+    in this doctrine.--Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and
+    desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the
+    fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot
+    explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the
+    principle of merit and demerit.--Consequences of the ethics of
+    interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to
+    despotism.
+
+
+The philosophy of sensation, setting out from a single fact, agreeable
+or painful sensation, necessarily arrives in ethics at a single
+principle,--interest. The whole of the system may be explained as
+follows:
+
+Man is sensible to pleasure and pain: he shuns the one and seeks the
+other. That is his first instinct, and this instinct will never abandon
+him. Pleasure may change so far as its object is concerned, and be
+diversified in a thousand ways: but whatever form it takes,--physical
+pleasure, intellectual pleasure, moral pleasure, it is always pleasure
+that man pursues.
+
+The agreeable generalized is the useful; and the greatest possible sum
+of pleasure, whatever it may be, no longer concentrated within such or
+such an instant, but distributed over a certain extent of duration, is
+happiness.[191]
+
+Happiness, like pleasure, is relative to him who experiences it; it is
+essentially personal. Ourselves, and ourselves alone we love, in loving
+pleasure and happiness.
+
+Interest is that which prompts us to seek in every thing our pleasure
+and our happiness.
+
+If happiness is the sole end of life, interest is the sole motive of all
+our actions.
+
+Man is only sensible to his interest, but he understands it well or ill.
+Much art is necessary in order to be happy. We are not ready to give
+ourselves up to all the pleasures that are offered on the highway of
+life, without examining whether these pleasures do not conceal many a
+pain. Present pleasure is not every thing,--it is necessary to take
+thought for the future; it is necessary to know how to renounce joys
+that may bring regret, and sacrifice pleasure to happiness, that is to
+say, to pleasure still, but pleasure more enduring and less
+intoxicating. The pleasures of the body are not the only ones,--there
+are other pleasures, those of mind, even those of opinion: the sage
+tempers them by each other.
+
+The ethics of interest are nothing else than the ethics of perfected
+pleasure, substituting happiness for pleasure, the useful for the
+agreeable, prudence for passion. It admits, like the human race, the
+words good and evil, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, punishment and
+reward, but it explains them in its own way. The good is that which in
+the eyes of reason is conformed to our true interest; evil is that which
+is contrary to our true interest. Virtue is that wisdom which knows how
+to resist the enticement of passions, discerns what is truly useful, and
+surely proceeds to happiness. Vice is that aberration of mind and
+character that sacrifices happiness to pleasures without duration or
+full of dangers. Merit and demerit, punishment and reward, are the
+consequences of virtue and vice:--for not knowing how to seek happiness
+by the road of wisdom, we are punished by not attaining it. The ethics
+of interest do not pretend to destroy any of the duties consecrated by
+public opinion; it establishes that all are conformed to our personal
+interest, and it is thereby that they are duties. To do good to men is
+the surest means of making them do good to us; and it is also the means
+of acquiring their esteem, their good will, and their sympathy,--always
+agreeable, and often useful. Disinterestedness itself has its
+explanation. Doubtless there is no disinterestedness in the vulgar sense
+of the word, that is to say, a real sacrifice of self, which is absurd,
+but there is the sacrifice of present interest to future interest, of
+gross and sensual passion to a nobler and more delicate pleasure.
+Sometimes one renders to himself a bad account of the pleasure that he
+pursues, and in fault of seeing clearly into his own heart, invents that
+chimera of disinterestedness of which human nature is incapable, which
+it cannot even comprehend.
+
+It will be conceded that this explanation of the ethics of interest is
+not overcharged, that it is faithful.
+
+We go further,--we acknowledge that these ethics are an extreme, but, up
+to a certain point, a legitimate reaction against the excessive rigor of
+stoical ethics, especially ascetic ethics that smother sensibility
+instead of regulating it, and, in order to save the soul from passions,
+demands of it a sacrifice of all the passions of nature that resembles a
+suicide.
+
+Man was not made to be a sublime slave, like Epictetus, employed in
+supporting bad fortune well without trying to surmount it, nor, like the
+author of the _Imitation_, the angelic inhabitant of a cloister, calling
+for death as a fortunate deliverance, and anticipating it, as far as in
+him lies, by continual penitence and in mute adoration. The love of
+pleasure, even the passions, have a place among the needs of humanity.
+Suppress the passions, and it is true there is no more excess; neither
+is there any mainspring of action,--without winds the vessel no longer
+proceeds, and soon sinks in the deep. Suppose a being that lacks love
+of self, the instinct of preservation, the horror of suffering,
+especially the horror of death, who has neither the love of pleasure nor
+the love of happiness, in a word, destitute of all personal
+interest,--such a being will not long resist the innumerable causes of
+destruction that surround and besiege him; he will not remain a day.
+Never can a single family, nor the least society be formed or
+maintained. He who has made man has not confided the care of his work to
+virtue alone, to devotedness and sublime charity,--he has willed that
+the duration and development of the race and human society should be
+placed upon simpler and surer foundations; and this is the reason why he
+has given to man the love of self, the instinct of preservation, the
+taste of pleasure and happiness, the passions that animate life, hope
+and fear, love, ambition, personal interest, in fine, a powerful,
+permanent, universal motive that urges us on to continually ameliorate
+our condition upon the earth.
+
+So we do not contest with the ethics of interest the reality of their
+principle,--we are convinced that this principle exists, that it has a
+right to be. The only question that we raise is the following:--The
+principle of interest is true in itself, but are there not other
+principles quite as true, quite as real? Man seeks pleasure and
+happiness, but are there not in him other needs, other sentiments as
+powerful, as vital? The first and universal principle of human life is
+the need of the individual to preserve himself; but would this principle
+suffice to support human life and society entire and as we behold it?
+
+Just as the existence of the body does not hinder that of the soul, and
+reciprocally, so in the ample bosom of humanity and the profound designs
+of divine Providence, the principles that differ most do not exclude
+each other.
+
+The philosophy of sensation continually appeals to experience. We also
+invoke experience; and it is experience that has given us certain facts
+mentioned in the preceding lecture, which constitute the primary notions
+of common sense. We admit the facts that serve as a foundation for the
+system of interest, and reject the system. The facts are true in their
+proper bearing,--the system is false in attributing to them an
+excessive, limitless bearing; and it is false again in denying other
+facts quite as incontestable. A sound philosophy holds for its primary
+law to collect all real facts and respect the real differences that also
+distinguish them. What it pursues before all, is not unity, but
+truth.[192] Now the ethics of interest mutilate truth,--they choose
+among facts those that agree with them, and reject all the others, which
+are precisely the very facts of morality. Exclusive and intolerant, they
+deny what they do not explain,--they form a whole well united, which, as
+an artificial work, may have its merit, but is broken to pieces as soon
+as it comes to encounter human nature with its grand parts.
+
+We are about to show that the ethics of interest, an offspring of the
+philosophy of sensation, are in contradiction with a certain number of
+phenomena, which human nature presents to whomsoever interrogates it
+without the spirit of system.
+
+1st. We have established, not in the name of a system, but in the name
+of the most common experience, that entire humanity believes in the
+existence, in each of its members, of a certain force, a certain power
+that is called liberty. Because it believes in liberty in the
+individual, it desires that this liberty should be respected and
+protected in society. Liberty is a fact that the consciousness of each
+of us attests to him, which, moreover, is enveloped in all the moral
+phenomena that we have signalized, in moral approbation and
+disapprobation, in esteem and contempt, in admiration and indignation,
+in merit and demerit, in punishment and reward. We ask the philosophy of
+sensation and the ethics of interest what they do with this universal
+phenomena which all the beliefs of humanity suppose, on which entire
+life, private and public, turns.
+
+Every system of ethics, whatever it may be, which contains, I do not say
+a rule, but a simple advice, implicitly admits liberty. When the ethics
+of interest advise a man to sacrifice the agreeable to the useful, it
+apparently admits that man is free to follow or not to follow this
+advice. But in philosophy it does not suffice to admit a fact, there
+must be the right to admit it. Now, most moralists of interest deny the
+liberty of man, and no one has the right to admit it in a system that
+derives the entire human soul, all its faculties as well as all its
+ideas, from sensation alone and its developments.
+
+When an agreeable sensation, after having charmed our soul, quits it and
+vanishes, the soul experiences a sort of suffering, a want, a need,--it
+is agitated, disquieted. This disquietude, at first vague and
+indecisive, is soon determined; it is borne towards the object that has
+pleased us, whose absence makes us suffer. This movement of the soul,
+more or less vivid, is desire.
+
+Is there in desire any of the characters of liberty? What is it called
+to be free? Each one knows that he is free, when he knows that he is
+master of his action, that he can begin it, arrest it, or continue it as
+he pleases. We are free, when before acting we have taken the resolution
+to act, knowing well that we are able to take the opposite resolution. A
+free act is that of which, by the infallible testimony of my
+consciousness, I know that I am the cause, for which, therefore, I
+regard myself as responsible. God, the world, the body, can produce in
+me a thousand movements; these movements may seem to the eyes of an
+external observer to be voluntary acts; but any error is impossible to
+consciousness,--it distinguishes every movement not voluntary, whatever
+it may be, from a voluntary act.
+
+True activity is voluntary and free activity. Desire is just the
+opposite. Desire, carried to its culmination, is passion; but language,
+as well as consciousness, says that man is passive in passion; and the
+more vivid passion is, the more imperative are its movements, the
+farther is it from the type of true activity in which the soul possesses
+and governs itself.
+
+I am no more free in desire than in the sensation that precedes and
+determines it. If an agreeable object is presented to me, am I able not
+to be agreeably moved? If it is a painful object, am I able not to be
+painfully moved? And so, when this agreeable sensation has disappeared,
+if memory and imagination remind me of it, is it in my power not to
+suffer from no longer experiencing it, is it in my power not to feel the
+need of experiencing it again, and to desire more or less ardently the
+object that alone can appease the disquietude and suffering of my soul?
+
+Observe well what takes place within you in desire; you recognize in it
+a blind emotion, that, without any deliberation on your part, and
+without the intervention of your will, rises or falls, increases or
+diminishes. One does not desire, and cease to desire, according to his
+will.
+
+Will often combats desire, as it often also yields to it; it is not,
+therefore, desire. We do not reproach the sensations that objects
+produce, nor even the desires that these sensations engender; we do
+reproach ourselves for the consent of the will to these desires, and the
+acts that follow, for these acts are in our power.
+
+Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and leads man into
+acts that he does not impute to himself, for they are not voluntary. It
+is even the refuge of many of the accused; they lay their faults to the
+violence of desire and passion, which have not left them masters of
+themselves.
+
+If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire the freer we
+should be. Evidently the contrary is true. As the violence of desire
+increases, the dominion of man over himself decreases; and as desire is
+weakened and passion extinguished, man repossesses himself.
+
+I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. That two facts
+differ, it does not follow that they must be without relation to each
+other. By removing certain objects, or even by merely diverting our
+thoughts away from the pleasure that they can give us, we are able, to a
+certain extent, to turn aside and elude the sensible effects of these
+objects, and escape the desire which they might excite in us. One may
+also, by surrounding himself with certain objects, in some sort manage
+himself, and produce in himself sensations and desires which for that
+are not more voluntary than would be the impression made upon us by a
+stone with which we should strike ourselves. By yielding to these
+desires, we lend them a new force, and we moderate them by a skilful
+resistance. One even has some power over the organs of the body, and, by
+applying to them an appropriate regimen, he goes so far as to modify
+their functions. All this proves that there is in us a power different
+from the senses and desire, which, without disposing of them, sometimes
+exercises over them an indirect authority.
+
+Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelligence. To will
+and to know are two things essentially different. We do not judge as we
+will, but according to the necessary laws of the judgment and the
+understanding. The knowledge of truth is not a resolution of the will.
+It is not the will that declares, for example, that body is extended,
+that it is in space, that every phenomenon has a cause, etc. Yet the
+will has much power over intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that
+we work, that we give attention, for a longer or a shorter time, more or
+less intense, to certain things; consequently, it is the will that
+develops and increases intelligence, as it might let it languish and
+become extinguished. It must, then, be avowed that there is in us a
+supreme power that presides over all our faculties, over intelligence as
+well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, and is mingled
+with them, governs them, or leaves them to their natural development,
+making appear, even in its absence, the character that belongs to it,
+since the man that is deprived of it avows that he is no longer master
+of himself, that he is not himself, so true is it that human personality
+resides particularly in that prominent power that is called the
+will.[193]
+
+Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, and yet so
+manifest! Strange confounding of will and desire, wherein the most
+opposite schools meet each other, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Condillac,
+the philosophy of the seventeenth century, and that of the eighteenth!
+One, a despiser of humanity, by an extreme and ill-understood piety,
+strips man of his own activity, in order to concentrate it in God; the
+other transfers it to nature. In both man is a mere instrument, nothing
+else than a mode of God or a product of nature. When desire is once
+taken as the type of human activity, there is an end of all liberty and
+personality. A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to
+facts, carries through common sense to better results. By distinguishing
+between the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely
+determining self, it restores the true activity that characterizes human
+personality. The will is the infallible sign and the peculiar power of a
+real and effective being; for how could he who should be only a mode of
+another being find in his own borrowed being a power capable of willing
+and producing acts of which he should feel himself the cause, and the
+responsible cause?
+
+If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from passive phenomena,
+cannot explain true activity, voluntary and free activity, we might
+regard it as demonstrated that this same philosophy cannot give a true
+doctrine of morality, for all ethics suppose liberty. In order to impose
+rules of action on a being, it is necessary that this being should be
+capable of fulfilling or violating them. What makes the good and evil of
+an action is not the action itself, but the intention that has
+determined it. Before every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the
+intention, and to the intention the punishment is attached. Where, then,
+liberty is wanting, where there is nothing but desire and passion, not
+even a shade of morality subsists. But we do not wish to reject, by the
+previous question, the ethics of sensation. We proceed to examine in
+itself the principle that they lay down, and to show that from this
+principle can be deduced neither the idea of good and evil, nor any of
+the moral ideas that are attached to it.
+
+2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good is nothing else
+than the useful. By substituting the useful for the agreeable, without
+changing the principle, there has been contrived a convenient refuge
+against many difficulties; for it will always be possible to distinguish
+interest well understood from apparent and vulgar interest. But even
+under this somewhat refined form, the doctrine that we are examining
+none the less destroys the distinction between good and evil.
+
+If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, I must
+consider only one thing when an action is proposed to me to do,--what
+advantages can result from it to me?
+
+So I make the supposition that a friend, whose innocence is known to me,
+falls into disfavor with a king, or opinion--a mistress more jealous and
+imperious than all kings,--and that there is danger in remaining
+faithful to him and advantage in separating myself from him; if, on one
+side, the danger is certain, and on the other the advantage is
+infallible, it is clear that I must either abandon my unfortunate
+friend, or renounce the principle of interest--of interest well
+understood.
+
+But it will be said to me:--think on the uncertainty of human things;
+remember that misfortune may also overtake you, and do not abandon your
+friend, through fear that you may one day be abandoned.
+
+I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, but the
+present is certain; if I can reap great and unmistakable advantages from
+an action, it would be absurd to sacrifice them to the chance of a
+possible misfortune. Besides, according to my supposition, all the
+chances of the future are in my favor,--this is the hypothesis that we
+have made.
+
+Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal interest is the only
+rational principle, the public reason must be with me. If it were
+against me, it would be an objection against the truth of the principle.
+For how could a true principle, rationally applied, be revolting to the
+public conscience?
+
+Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I feel for having
+followed the truth, if the principle of interest is in fact moral truth?
+On the contrary, I should feel satisfaction on account of it.
+
+The rewards and punishments of another life remain. But how are we to
+believe in another life, in a system that confines human consciousness
+within the limits of transformed sensation?
+
+I have, then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. And mankind
+nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity; and, if I am wanting in it, I
+am dishonored.
+
+If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil are not in the act
+itself, but in its happy or unhappy results.
+
+Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There is a man who has
+calculated badly." Whence it follows that, if this man, in doing what he
+did, could have escaped punishment, he would have calculated well, and
+his conduct would have been laudable. The action then becomes good or
+ill according to the issue. Every act is of itself indifferent, and it
+is lot that qualifies it.
+
+If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calculation is the
+highest wisdom; it is even virtue!
+
+But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. It supposes, with
+long experience of life, a sure insight, capable of discerning all the
+consequences of actions, a head strong and large enough to embrace and
+weigh their different chances. The young man, the ignorant, the poor in
+mind, are not able to distinguish between the good and the evil, the
+honest and the dishonest. And even in supposing the most consummate
+prudence, what place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things,
+for chance and the unforeseen! In truth, in the system of interest well
+understood, there must be great knowledge in order to be an honest man.
+Much less is requisite for ordinary virtue, whose motto has always been:
+Do what you ought, let come what may.[194] But this principle is
+precisely the opposite of the principle of interest. It is necessary to
+choose between them. If interest is the only principle avowed by reason,
+disinterestedness is a lie and madness, and literally an
+incomprehensible monster in well-ordered human nature.
+
+Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and thereby it does
+not simply mean that wise selfishness that deprives itself of a pleasure
+for a surer, more delicate, or more durable pleasure. No one has ever
+believed that it was the nature or the degree of the pleasure sought
+that constituted disinterestedness. This name is awarded only to the
+sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may be, to a motive free from all
+interest. And the human race, not only thus understands
+disinterestedness, but it believes that such a disinterestedness exists;
+it believes the human soul capable of it. It admires the devotedness of
+Regulus, because it does not see what interest could have impelled that
+great man to go far from his country to seek, among cruel enemies, a
+frightful death, when he might have lived tranquil and even honored in
+the midst of his family and his fellow-citizens.
+
+But glory, it will be said, the passion of glory inspired Regulus; it
+is, then, interest still that explains the apparent heroism of the old
+Roman. Admit, then, that this manner of understanding his interest is
+even ridiculously absurd, and that heroes are very unskilful and
+inconsistent egoists. Instead of erecting statues, with the deceived
+human race, to Regulus, d'Assas, and St. Vincent de Paul, true
+philosophy must send them to the Petites-Maisons, that a good regime may
+cure them of generosity, charity, and greatness of soul, and restore
+them to the sane state, the normal state, the state in which man only
+thinks of himself, and knows no other law, no other principle of action
+than his interest.
+
+3d. If there is no liberty, if there is no essential distinction between
+good and evil, if there is only interest well or ill understood, there
+can be no obligation.
+
+It is at first very evident that obligation supposes a being capable of
+fulfilling it, that duty is applied only to a free being. Then the
+nature of obligation is such, that if we are delinquent in fulfilling
+it, we feel ourselves culpable, whilst if, instead of understanding our
+interest well, we have understood it ill, there follows only a single
+thing, that we are unfortunate. Are, then, being culpable and being
+unfortunate the same thing? These are two ideas radically different. You
+may advise me to understand my interest well, under penalty of falling
+into misfortune; you cannot command me to see clearly in regard to my
+interest under penalty of crime.
+
+Imprudence has never been considered a crime. When it is morally
+accused, it is much less as being wrong than as attesting vices of the
+soul, lightness, presumption, feebleness.
+
+As we have said, our true interest is often most difficult of
+discernment. Obligation is always immediate and manifest. In vain
+passion and desire combat it; in vain the reasoning that passion trains
+for its attendance, like a docile slave, tries to smother it under a
+mass of sophisms: the instinct of conscience, a cry of the soul, an
+intuition of reason, different from reasoning, is sufficient to repel
+all sophisms, and make obligation appear.
+
+However pressing may be the solicitations of interest, we may always
+enter into contest and arrangement with it. There are a thousand ways of
+being happy. You assure me that, by conducting myself in such a manner,
+I shall arrive at fortune. Yes, but I love repose more than fortune, and
+with happiness alone in view, activity is not better than sloth. Nothing
+is more difficult than to advise any one in regard to his interest,
+nothing is easier than to advise him in regard to honor.
+
+After all, in practice, the useful is resolved into the agreeable, that
+is to say, into pleasure. Now, in regard to pleasure, every thing
+depends on humor and temperament. When there is neither good nor evil in
+itself, there are no pleasures more or less noble, more or less
+elevated; there are only pleasures that are more or less agreeable to
+us. Every thing depends on the nature of each one. This is the reason
+why interest is so capricious. Each one understands it as it pleases
+him, because each one is the judge of what pleases him. One is more
+moved by pleasures of the senses; another by pleasures of mind and
+heart. To the latter, the passion of glory takes the place of pleasures
+of the senses; to the former, the pleasure of dominion appears much
+superior to that of glory. Each man has his own passions, each man,
+then, has his own way of understanding his interest; and even my
+interest of to-day is not my interest of to-morrow. The revolutions of
+health, age, and events greatly modify our tastes, our humors. We are
+ourselves perpetually changing, and with us change our desires and our
+interests.
+
+It is not so with obligation. It exists not, or it is absolute. The idea
+of obligation implies that of something inflexible. That alone is a duty
+from which one cannot be loosed under any pretext, and is, by the same
+title, a duty for all. There is one thing before which all the caprices
+of my mind, of my imagination, of my sensibility must disappear,--the
+idea of the good with the obligation which it involves. To this supreme
+command I can oppose neither my humor, nor circumstances, nor even
+difficulties. This law admits of no delay, no accommodation, no excuse.
+When it speaks, be it to you or me, in whatever place, under whatever
+circumstance, in whatever disposition we may be, it only remains for us
+to obey. We are able not to obey, for we are free; but every
+disobedience to the law appears to ourselves a fault more or less grave,
+a bad use of our liberty. And the violated law has its immediate penal
+sanction in the remorse that it inflicts upon us.
+
+The only penalty that is brought upon us by the counsels of prudence,
+comprehended more or less well, followed more or less well, is, in the
+final account, more or less happiness or unhappiness. Now I pray you, am
+I obligated to be happy? Can obligation depend upon happiness, that is
+to say, on a thing that it is equally impossible for me to always seek
+and obtain at will? If I am obligated, it must be in my power to fulfil
+the obligation imposed. But my liberty has but little power over my
+happiness, which depends upon a thousand circumstances independent of
+me, whilst it is all in all in regard to virtue, for virtue is only an
+employment of liberty. Moreover, happiness is in itself, morally,
+neither better nor worse than unhappiness. If I understand my interest
+badly, I am punished for it by regret, not by remorse. Unhappiness can
+overwhelm me; it does not disgrace me, if it is not the consequence of
+some vice of the soul.
+
+Not that I would renew stoicism and say to suffering, Thou art no evil.
+No, I earnestly advise man to escape suffering as much as he can, to
+understand well his interest, to shun unhappiness and seek happiness. I
+only wish to establish that happiness is one thing and virtue another,
+that man necessarily aspires after happiness, but that he is only
+obligated to virtue, and that consequently, by the side of and above
+interest well understood is a moral law, that is to say, as
+consciousness attests, and the whole human race avows, an imperative
+prescription of which one cannot voluntarily divest himself without
+crime and shame.
+
+4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by a necessary
+consequence, it does not more account for that of right; for duty and
+right reciprocally suppose each other.
+
+Might and right must not be confounded. A being might have immense
+power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, that of one of the
+forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it, it is only a fearful
+and terrible thing, it is not a person,--it may inspire, in the highest
+degree, fear and hope,--it has no right to respect; one has no duties
+towards it.
+
+Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty.
+
+They are born at the same time, are developed and perish together. It
+might even be said that duty and right make one, and are the same being,
+having a face on two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your
+respect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I am a free
+being? But you are yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right
+and your duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in
+me of an equal duty.[195]
+
+I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone,
+is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ;
+for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are
+the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses,
+mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the
+free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not
+free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I.
+There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and
+by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat
+of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different
+instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether
+material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not
+it,[196] for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only
+free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will
+recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,--they
+are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law,
+and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil
+it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the
+ability to do the other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of
+liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is
+false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich,
+beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate;
+for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their
+nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. God has
+made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality
+is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as
+well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality
+is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of
+ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True
+equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God
+has made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, but
+even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle with the furies of
+pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domination, so, and by virtue
+of the same principle, it does not more aspire to a chimerical equality
+of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an
+equality, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes; it
+asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit,
+respect. Respect, an equal respect of the sacred right of being free in
+every thing that constitutes the person, that person which is truly man;
+this is what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather
+imperatively demand. Respect must not be confounded with homage. I
+render homage to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by
+that I mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is
+foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in every
+thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality exacts on the
+part of all only the same respect for what each one possesses equally in
+himself, both young and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and
+poor, both the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman and man,
+whatever has consciousness of being a person and not a thing. The equal
+respect of common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right; it
+is the virtue of each and the security of all; by an admirable
+agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. Such
+is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, which has made the
+hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of all virtuous and
+enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that
+true philosophy pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of
+Plato to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free
+legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration of rights,
+and the immortal works of the constituent Assembly.
+
+The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that condemns it to
+consequences as disastrous as those of the principle of liberty are
+beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it justifies passion, which
+is desire in all its force--passion, which is precisely the opposite of
+liberty. It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the passions,
+it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders each man
+much less happy on account of what he possesses, than miserable on
+account of what he lacks; it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye
+of envy and contempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or
+tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of
+desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My
+interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under
+the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born
+the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful,
+etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received.
+If fate has given me birth in a rank little elevated, with a moderate
+fortune, limited talents, and immense desires--for it cannot too often
+be repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite--I shall do
+every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to increase my power, my
+fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on account of my position in this world,
+in order to change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true,
+without enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not
+produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanity and
+ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power; interest, then,
+claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The need of security
+brings me back from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to
+my profit; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt servant of a
+tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those two scourges of liberty, the
+only rampart is the universal sentiment of right, founded on the firm
+distinction between good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest
+and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and
+conscience.
+
+5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary consequences of the
+doctrine of interest.
+
+A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, cannot
+violate it, knowing that he should and may follow it, without
+immediately recognizing that he merits punishment. The idea of
+punishment is not an artificial idea, borrowed from the profound
+calculations of legislators; legislations rest upon the natural idea of
+punishment. This idea, corresponding to that of liberty and justice, is
+necessarily wanting where the former two do not exist. Does he who
+obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the attraction of pleasure and
+happiness, supposing that, without any other motive than that of
+interest, he does an act conformed, externally at least, to the rule of
+justice, merit any thing by doing such an action? Not the least in the
+world. Conscience attributes to him no merit, and no one owes him thanks
+or recompense, for he only thinks of himself. On the other hand, if he
+injures others in wishing to serve himself, he does not feel culpable,
+and no one can say to him that he has merited punishment. A free being
+who wills what he does, who has a law, and can conform to it, or break
+it, is alone responsible for his acts. But what responsibility can there
+be in the absence of liberty and a recognized and accepted rule of
+justice? The man of sensation and desire tends to his own good under the
+law of interest, as the stone is drawn towards the centre of the earth
+under the law of gravitation, as the needle points to the pole. Man may
+err in the pursuit of his interest. In this case, what is to be done!
+As it seems, to put him again in the right way. Instead of that, he is
+punished. And for what, I pray you? For being deceived. But error merits
+advice, not punishment. Punishment has, in the system of interest, no
+more the sanction of moral sense than recompense. Punishment is only an
+act of personal defence on the part of society; it is an example which
+it gives, in order to inspire a salutary terror. These motives are
+excellent, if it be added that this punishment is just in itself, that
+it is merited, and that it is legitimately applied to the action
+committed. Omit that, and the other motives lose their authority, and
+there remains only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then
+the culprit is not punished; he is smitten, or even put to death, as the
+animal that injures instead of serving is put to death without scruple.
+The condemned does not bow his head to the wholesome reparation due to
+justice, but to the weight of irons or the stroke of the axe. The
+chastisement is not a legitimate satisfaction, an expiation which,
+comprehended by the culprit, reconciles him in his own eyes with the
+order that he has violated. It is a storm that he could not escape; it
+is the thunder-bolt that falls upon him; it is a force more powerful
+than his own, which compasses and overthrows him. The appearance of
+public chastisements acts, without doubt, upon the imagination of
+peoples; but it does not enlighten their reason and speak to their
+conscience; it intimidates them, perhaps; it does not soften them. So
+recompense is only an additional attraction, added to all the others.
+As, properly speaking, there is no merit, recompense is simply an
+advantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained without
+attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded and effaced the great
+institution, natural and divine, of the recompense of virtue by
+happiness, and of reparation for a fault by proportionate
+suffering.[197]
+
+We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being contradicted
+either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine of interest is
+incompatible with the most certain facts, with the strongest convictions
+of humanity. Let us add, that this doctrine is not less incompatible
+with the hope of another world, where the principle of justice will be
+better realized than in this.
+
+I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics can arrive at an
+infinite being, author of the universe and man. I am well persuaded that
+it cannot. For every proof of the existence of God supposes in the human
+mind principles of which sensation renders no account,--for example, the
+universal and necessary principle of causality, without which I should
+have no need of seeking, no power of finding the cause of whatever
+exists.[198] All that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of
+interest, man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has no right to
+put in God that of which he finds no trace either in the world or in
+himself. The God of the ethics of interest must be analogous to the man
+of these same ethics. How could they attribute to him the justice and
+the love--I mean disinterested love--of which they cannot have the least
+idea? The God that they can admit loves himself, and loves only himself.
+And reciprocally, not considering him as the supreme principle of
+charity and justice, we can neither love nor honor him, and the only
+worship that we can render him, is that of the fear with which his
+omnipotence inspires us.
+
+What holy hope could we then found upon such a God? And we who have some
+time grovelled upon this earth, thinking only of ourselves, seeking only
+pleasure and a pitiable happiness, what sufferings nobly borne for
+justice, what generous efforts to maintain and develop the dignity of
+our soul, what virtuous affections for other souls, can we offer to the
+Father of humanity as titles to his merciful justice? The principle that
+most persuades the human race of the immortality of the soul is still
+the necessary principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here
+below its exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of finding it,
+inspires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, who has not put in
+our hearts the law of justice to violate it himself in regard to
+us.[199] Now, we have just seen that the ethics of interest destroy the
+principle of merit and demerit, both in this world, and above all, in
+the world to come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond this
+world,--no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and wholly
+good, against the sports of fortune and the imperfections of human
+justice. Every thing is completed for man between birth and death, in
+spite of the instincts and presentiments of his heart, and even the
+principles of his reason.
+
+The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory of having
+freed humanity from the fears and hopes that turn it aside from its true
+interests. It is a service which mankind will appreciate. But since they
+confine our whole destiny to this world, let us demand of them what lot
+so worthy of envy they have in reserve for us here, what social order
+they charge with our good fortune, what politics, in fine, are derived
+from their ethics.[200]
+
+You already know. We have demonstrated that the philosophy of sensation
+knows neither true liberty nor true right. What, in fact, is will for
+this philosophy? It is desire. What, then, is right? The power of
+satisfying desires. On this score, man is not free, and right is might.
+
+Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. Desire comes of
+need which man does not make, which he submits to. He submits in the
+same way to desire. To reduce will to desire is to annihilate liberty;
+it is worse still, it is to put it where it is not; it is to create a
+mendacious liberty that becomes an instrument of crime and misery. To
+call man to such a liberty is to open his soul to infinite desires,
+which it is impossible for him to satisfy. Desire is in its nature
+without limits, and our power is very limited. If we were alone in this
+world, we should even then be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But
+we press against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse,
+and unequal powers. When right is the force that is in each of us,
+equality of rights is a chimera,--all rights are unequal, since all
+forces are unequal and can never cease to be so. It is, therefore,
+necessary to renounce equality as well as liberty; or if one invents a
+false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity in pursuit
+of a phantom.
+
+Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest give to
+politics. From such elements I defy all the politics of the school of
+sensation and interest to produce a single day of liberty and happiness
+for the human race.
+
+When right is might, the natural state of men among themselves, is war.
+All desiring the same things, they are all necessarily enemies; and in
+this war, woe to the feeble, to the feeble in body and the feeble in
+mind! The stronger are the masters by perfect right. Since right is
+might, the feeble may complain of nature that has not made them strong,
+and not complain of the strong man who uses his right in oppressing
+them. The feeble then call deception to their aid; and it is in this
+strife between cunning and force that humanity combats with itself.
+
+Yes, if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, with
+different forces pitted against each other, war, a war sometimes
+declared and bloody, sometimes silent and full of meannesses, is in the
+nature of things. No social art can change this nature,--it may be more
+or less covered; it always reappears, overcomes and rends the veil with
+which a mendacious legislation envelops it. Dream, then, of liberty for
+beings that are not free, of equality between beings that are
+essentially different, of respect for rights where there is no right,
+and of the establishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of
+inimical passions! From such a foundation can spring only endless
+troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a
+necessary circle.
+
+This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of principles which all
+the metamorphoses of sensation do not engender, and for which interest
+cannot account, which none the less subsist to the honor and for the
+safety of humanity. These principles are those that time has little by
+little drawn from Christianity in order to give them for the guidance of
+modern societies. You will find them written in the glorious declaration
+of rights that forever broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the
+constitutional monarchy. They are in the charter that governs us, in our
+laws, in our institutions, in our manners, in the air that we breathe.
+They serve at once as foundations for our society and the new philosophy
+necessary to a new order.[201]
+
+Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, so many
+distinguished, so many honest souls could let themselves be seduced by a
+system that must have been revolting to all their sentiments. I will
+answer by reminding you that the eighteenth century was an immoderate
+reaction against the faults into which had sadly fallen the old age of a
+great century and a great king, that is to say, the revocation of the
+edict of Nantes, the persecution of all free and elevated philosophy, a
+narrow and suspicious devotion, and intolerance, with its usual
+companion, hypocrisy. These excesses must have produced opposite
+excesses. Mme. de Maintenon opened the route to Mme. de Pompadour. After
+the mode of devotion comes that of license; it takes every thing by
+storm. It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy even,
+and accordingly to the people. It carried away the best spirits, even
+genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy in the place of the national
+philosophy, culpable, persecuted as it had been, for not being
+irreconcilable with Christianity. A disciple of Locke, whom Locke had
+discarded, Condillac, took the place of Descartes, as the author of
+_Candide_ and _la Pucelle_ had taken the place of Corneille and Bossuet,
+as Boucher and Vanloo had taken the place of Lesueur and Poussin. The
+ethics of pleasure and interest were the necessary ethics of that epoch.
+It must not be supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says
+M. Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their
+principles[202]. No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean
+as enervated as epicureanism. Human weakness practically baffles
+virtuous theories; in return, thank God, the instinct of the heart
+condemns to inconsistency the honest man who errs in bad theories.
+Accordingly, in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most
+disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign of the
+philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. But it is none the
+less true, that the philosophy of sensation is false, and the ethics of
+interest destructive of all morality.
+
+I should perhaps make an apology for so long a lecture; but it was
+necessary to combat seriously a doctrine of morality radically
+incompatible with that which I would make penetrate your minds and your
+souls. It was especially necessary for me to strip the ethics of
+interest of that false appearance of liberty which they usurp in vain. I
+maintain, on the contrary, that they are the ethics of slaves, and send
+them back to the time when they ruled. Now, the principle of interest
+being destroyed, I propose to examine other principles also, less false
+without doubt, but still defective, exclusive, and incomplete, upon
+which celebrated systems have pretended to found ethics. I will
+successively combat these principles taken in themselves, and will then
+bring them together, reduced to their just value, in a theory large
+enough to contain all the true elements of morality, in order to express
+faithfully common sense and entire human consciousness.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[190] On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined those of
+vol. iii. of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and St.
+Lambert.
+
+[191] The word _bonheur_, which has no exact English equivalent, which
+M. Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the precise sense of the
+definition given above, we have sometimes translated happiness,
+sometimes good fortune, sometimes prosperity, sometimes fortune. When
+one has in mind the thing, he will not be troubled by the more or less
+exact word that indicates it:--all language, at best, is only symbolic;
+it bears the same relation to thought as the forms of nature do to the
+laws that produce and govern them. The true reader never mistakes the
+symbol for the thing symbolized, the shadow for the reality.
+
+[192] On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3d Series,
+_Fragments Philosophiques_, vol. iv., our _Examination of the Lectures
+of M. Laromeguiere_.
+
+[193] On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see the
+_Examination_, already cited, _of the Lectures of M. Laromeguiere_.
+
+[194] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "In the doctrine of interest, every
+man seeks the useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by
+dint of prudence and profound combinations, increase in his favor the
+chances of success; it is impossible that there should not remain some
+chances against him; he never pursues, then, any thing but a probable
+result. On the contrary, in the doctrine of duty, I am always sure of
+obtaining the last end that I propose to myself, moral good. I risk my
+life to save my fellow; if, through mischance, I miss this end, there is
+another which does not, which cannot, escape me,--I have aimed at the
+good, I have been successful. Moral good, being especially in the
+virtuous intention, is always in my power and within my reach; as to the
+material good that can result from the action itself, Providence alone
+disposes of it. Let us felicitate ourselves that Providence has placed
+our moral destiny in our own hands, by making it depend upon the good
+and not upon the useful. The will, in order to act in the sad trials of
+life, has need of being sustained by certainty. Who would be disposed to
+give his blood for an uncertain end? Success is a complicated problem,
+that, in order to be solved, exacts all the power of the calculus of
+probabilities. What labor and what uncertainties does such a calculus
+involve! Doubt is a very sad preparation for action. But when one
+proposes before all to do his duty, he acts without any perplexity. Do
+what you ought, let come what may, is a motto that does not deceive.
+With such an end, we are sure of never pursuing it in vain."
+
+[195] See the development of the idea of right, lectures 14 and 15.
+
+[196] See lecture 14, Theory of liberty.
+
+[197] See the preceding lecture, and lectures 14 and 15.
+
+[198] 1st part, lecture 1.
+
+[199] See lecture 16.
+
+[200] On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of sensation,
+see the four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and refutation
+of the doctrine of Hobbes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series.
+
+[201] These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which we
+pronounce them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a
+noble youth, when M. de Chateaubriand covered the Restoration with his
+own glory, when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M.
+Pasquier, M. Laine, M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal
+St. Cyr over war, and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when
+the Duke de Broglie prepared the true legislation of the press, and M.
+Decazes, the author of the wise and courageous ordinance of September 5,
+1816, was at the head of the councils of the crown; when finally, Louis
+XVIII. separated himself, like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in
+order to be the king of the whole nation.
+
+[202] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iv., p. 297: "Men are neither as good
+nor as bad as their principles; and, as there is no skeptic in the
+street, so I am sure there is no disinterested spectator of human
+actions who is not compelled to discern them as just and unjust.
+Skepticism has no light that does not pale before the splendor of that
+vivid internal light that lightens the objects of moral perception, as
+the light of day lightens the objects of sensible perception."
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIII.
+
+OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.
+
+    The ethics of sentiment.--The ethics founded on the principle of
+    the interest of the greatest number.--The ethics founded on the
+    will of God alone.--The ethics founded on the punishments and
+    rewards of another life.
+
+
+Against the ethics of interest, all generous souls take refuge in the
+ethics of sentiment. The following are some of the facts on which these
+ethics are supported, and by which they seem to be authorized.
+
+When we have done a good action, is it not certain that we experience a
+pleasure of a certain nature, which is to us the reward of this action?
+This pleasure does not come from the senses--it has neither its
+principle nor its measure in an impression made upon our organs. Neither
+is it confounded with the joy of satisfied personal interest,--we are
+not moved in the same manner, in thinking that we have succeeded, and in
+thinking that we have been honest. The pleasure attached to the
+testimony of a good conscience is pure; other pleasures are much
+alloyed. It is durable, whilst the others quickly pass away. Finally, it
+is always within our reach. Even in the midst of misfortune, man bears
+in himself a permanent source of exquisite joys, for he always has the
+power of doing right, whilst success, dependent upon a thousand
+circumstances of which we are not the masters, can give only an
+occasional and precarious pleasure.
+
+As virtue has its joys, so crime has its pains. The suffering that
+follows a fault is the just recompense for the pleasure that we have
+found in it, and is often born with it. It poisons culpable joys and the
+successes that are not legitimate. It wounds, rends, bites, thus to
+speak, and thereby receives its name.[203] To be man, is sufficient to
+understand this suffering,--it is remorse.
+
+Here are other facts equally incontestable:
+
+I perceive a man whose face bears the marks of distress and misery.
+There is nothing in this that reaches and injures me; nevertheless,
+without reflection or calculation, the sight alone of this suffering man
+makes me suffer. This sentiment is pity, compassion, whose general
+principle is sympathy.
+
+The sadness of one of my fellow-men inspires me with sadness, and a glad
+face disposes me to joy:
+
+    Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflent
+    Humani vultus.
+
+The joy of others has an echo in our souls, and their sufferings, even
+their physical sufferings, communicate themselves to us almost
+physically. Not as exaggerated as it has been supposed was that
+expression of Mme. de Sevigne to her sick daughter: I have a pain in
+your breast.
+
+Our soul feels the need of putting itself in unison, and, as it were, in
+equilibrium with that of others. Hence those electric movements, thus to
+speak, that run through large assemblies. One receives the
+counter-stroke of the sentiments of his neighbors,--admiration and
+enthusiasm are contagious, as well as pleasantry and ridicule. Hence
+again the sentiment with which the author of a virtuous action inspires
+us. We feel a pleasure analogous to that which he feels himself. But are
+we witnesses of a bad action? our souls refuse to participate in the
+sentiments that animate the culpable man,--they have for him a true
+aversion, what is called antipathy.
+
+We do not forget a third order of facts that pertain to the preceding,
+but differ from them.
+
+We not only sympathize with the author of a virtuous action, we wish
+him well, we voluntarily do good to him, in a certain degree we love
+him. This love goes as far as enthusiasm when it has for its object a
+sublime act and a hero. This is the principle of the homages, of the
+honors that humanity renders to great men. And this sentiment does not
+pertain solely to others,--we apply it to ourselves by a sort of return
+that is not egoism. Yes, it may be said that we love ourselves when we
+have done well. The sentiment that others owe us, if they are just, we
+accord to ourselves,--that sentiment is benevolence.
+
+On the contrary, do we witness a bad action? We experience for the
+author of this action antipathy; moreover we wish him evil,--we desire
+that he should suffer for the fault that he has committed, and in
+proportion to the gravity of the fault. For this reason great culprits
+are odious to us, if they do not compensate for their crimes by deep
+remorse, or by great virtues mingled with their crimes. This sentiment
+is not malevolence. Malevolence is a personal and interested sentiment,
+which makes us wish evil to others, because they are an obstacle to us.
+Hatred does not ask whether such a man is virtuous or vicious, but
+whether he obstructs us, surpasses us, or injures us. The sentiment of
+which we are speaking is a sort of hatred, but a generous hatred that
+neither springs from interest nor envy, but from a shocked conscience.
+It is turned against us when we do evil, as well as against others.
+
+Moral satisfaction is not sympathy, neither is sympathy, to speak
+rigorously, benevolence. But these three phenomena have the common
+character of all being sentiments. They give birth to three different
+and analogous systems of ethics.
+
+According to certain philosophers, a good action is that which is
+followed by moral satisfaction, a bad action is that which is followed
+by remorse. The good or bad character of an action is at first attested
+to us by the sentiment that accompanies it. Then, this sentiment, with
+its moral signification, we attribute to other men; for we judge that
+they do as we do, that in presence of the same actions they feel the
+same sentiments.
+
+Other philosophers have assigned the same part to sympathy or
+benevolence.
+
+For these the sign and measure of the good is in the sentiments of
+affection and benevolence which we feel for a moral agent. Does a man
+excite in us by such or such an action a more or less vivid disposition
+to wish him well, a desire to see and even make him happy? we may say
+that this action is good. If, by a series of actions of the same kind,
+he makes this disposition and this desire permanent in us, we judge that
+he is a virtuous man. Does he excite an opposite desire, an opposite
+disposition? he appears to us a dishonest man.
+
+For the former, the good is that with which we naturally sympathize. Has
+a man devoted himself to death through love for his country? this heroic
+action awakens in us, in a certain degree, the same sentiments that
+inspired him. Bad passions are not thus echoed in our hearts, unless
+they find us already very corrupt, and have interest for their
+accomplice; but even then there is something in us that revolts against
+these passions, and in the most depraved soul subsists a concealed
+sentiment of sympathy for the good, and antipathy for the evil.
+
+These different systems may be reduced to a single one, which is called
+the ethics of sentiment.
+
+It is not difficult to show the difference which separates these ethics
+from those of egoism. Egoism is the exclusive love of self, is the
+thoughtful and permanent search for our own pleasure and our own
+well-being.
+
+What is there more opposed to interest than benevolence? In benevolence,
+far from wishing others well by reason of our interest, we will
+voluntarily risk something, we will make some sacrifice in order to
+serve an honest man who has coined our heart. If even in this sacrifice
+the soul feels a pleasure, this pleasure is only the involuntary
+accompaniment of sentiment, it is not the end proposed,--we feel it
+without having sought it. It is, indeed, permitted the soul to taste
+this pleasure, for it is nature herself that attaches it to
+benevolence.
+
+Sympathy, like benevolence, is related to another than ourselves,--our
+interest is not its starting-point. The soul is so constituted that it
+is capable of suffering on account of the sufferings of an enemy. That a
+man does a noble action, although it opposes our interests, awakens in
+us a certain sympathy for that action and its author.
+
+The attempt has been made to explain the compassion with which the
+suffering of one of our fellow-men inspires us by the fear that we have
+of feeling it in our turn. But the unhappiness for which we feel
+compassion, is often so far from us and threatens us so little, that it
+would be absurd to fear it. Doubtless, that sympathy may have existence
+it is necessary to experience suffering,--_non ignara mali_. For how do
+you suppose that I can be sensible to evils of which I form to myself no
+idea? But that is only the condition of sympathy. It is not at all
+necessary to conclude that it is only a remembrance of our own ills or
+the fear of ills to come.
+
+No recurrence to ourselves can account for sympathy. In the first place,
+it is involuntary, like antipathy. Then it cannot be supposed that we
+sympathize with any one in order to win his benevolence; for he who is
+its object often knows not what we feel. What benevolence are we
+seeking, when we sympathize with men that we have never seen, that we
+never shall see, with men that are no more?
+
+Egoism admits all pleasures; it repels none; it may, if it is
+enlightened, if it has become delicate and refined, recommend, as more
+durable and less alloyed, the pleasures of sentiment. The ethics of
+sentiment would then be confounded with those of egoism, if they should
+prescribe obedience to sentiment for the pleasure that we find in it.
+There would, then, be no disinterestedness in it,--the individual would
+be the centre and sole end of all his actions. But such is not the case.
+The charm of the pleasures of conscience comes from the very fact that
+we are forgetful of self in the action that has produced them. So if
+nature has joined to sympathy and benevolence a true enjoyment, it is
+on condition that these sentiments remain as they are, pure and
+disinterested; you must only think of the object of your sympathy and
+benevolence in order that benevolence and sympathy may receive their
+recompense in the pleasure which they give. Otherwise, this pleasure no
+longer has its reason for existence, and it is wanting as soon as it
+sought for itself. No metamorphose of interest can produce a pleasure
+attached to disinterestedness alone.
+
+The ethics of egoism are only a perpetual falsehood,--they preserve the
+names consecrated by ethics, but they abolish ethics themselves; they
+deceive humanity by speaking to humanity its own language, concealing
+under this borrowed language a radical opposition to all the instincts,
+to all the ideas that form the treasure of mankind. On the contrary, if
+sentiment is not the good itself, it is its faithful companion and
+useful auxiliary. It is as it were the sign of the presence of the good,
+and renders the accomplishment of it more easy. We always have sophisms
+at our disposal, in order to persuade ourselves that our true interest
+is to satisfy present passion; but sophism has less influence over the
+mind when the mind is in some sort defended by the heart. Nothing is,
+therefore, more salutary than to excite and preserve in the soul those
+noble sentiments that lift us above the slavery of personal interest.
+The habit of participating in the sentiments of virtuous men disposes us
+to act like them. To cultivate in ourselves benevolence and sympathy is
+to fertilize the source of charity and love, is to nourish and develop
+the germ of generosity and devotion.
+
+It is seen that we render sincere homage to the ethics of sentiment.
+These ethics are true,--only they are not sufficient for themselves;
+they need a principle which authorizes them.
+
+I act well, and I feel on account of it an internal satisfaction: I do
+evil, and feel remorse on account of it. These two sentiments do not
+qualify the act that I have just done, since they follow it. Would it be
+possible for us to feel any internal satisfaction for having acted well
+if we did not judge that we had acted well?--any remorse for having
+done evil, if we did not judge that we had done evil? At the same time
+that we do such or such an act, a natural and instinctive judgment
+characterizes it, and it is in consequence of this judgment that our
+sensibility is moved. Sentiment is not this primitive and immediate
+judgment; far from forming the basis of the idea of the good, it
+supposes it. It is manifestly a vicious circle to derive the knowledge
+of the good from that which would not exist without this knowledge.[204]
+
+So is it not because we find a good action that we sympathize with it?
+Is it not because the dispositions of a man appear to us conformed to
+the idea of justice, that we are inclined to participate in them with
+him? Moreover, if sympathy were the true criterion of the good, every
+thing for which we feel sympathy would be good. But sympathy is not only
+related to things in their nature moral, we also sympathize with the
+grief and the joy that have nothing to do with virtue and crime. We even
+sympathize with physical sufferings. Moral sympathy is only a case of
+general sympathy. It must even be acknowledged that sympathy is not
+always in accordance with right. We sometimes sympathize with certain
+sentiments that we condemn, because, without being in themselves
+bad--which would prevent all sympathy--they give an inclination to the
+greatest faults; for example, love, which comes so near to irregularity,
+and emulation, that so quickly leads to ambition.
+
+Benevolence also is not always determined by the good alone. And, again,
+when it is applied to a virtuous man, it supposes a judgment by which we
+pronounce that this man is virtuous. It is not because we wish the
+author of an action well that we judge that this action is good; it is
+because we judge that this action is good that we wish its author well.
+This is not all. In the sentiment of benevolence is enveloped a new
+judgment which is not in sympathy. This judgment is the following: the
+author of a good action deserves to be happy, as the author of a bad
+action deserves to suffer in order to expiate it. This is the reason why
+we desire happiness for the one and reparatory suffering for the other.
+Benevolence is little else than the sensible form of this judgment.
+
+All these sentiments, therefore, suppose an anterior and superior
+judgment. Everywhere and always the same vicious circle. From the fact
+that the sentiments which we have just described have a moral character,
+it is concluded that they constitute the idea of the good, whilst it is
+the idea of the good that communicates to them the character that we
+perceive in them.
+
+Another difficulty is, that sentiments pertain to sensibility, and
+borrow from it something of its relative and changing nature. It is,
+then, very necessary that all men should be made to enjoy with the same
+delicacy the pleasures of the heart. There are gross natures and natures
+refined. If your desires are impetuous and violent, will not the idea of
+the pleasures of virtue be in you much more easily overcome by the force
+of passion than if nature had given you a tranquil temperament? The
+state of the atmosphere, health, sickness, calm or rouse our moral
+sensibility. Solitude, by delivering man up to himself, leaves to
+remorse all its energy, the presence of death redoubles it; but the
+world, noise, force of example, habit, without power to smother it, in
+some sort stun it. The spirit has a little season of rest. We are not
+always in the vein of enthusiasm. Courage itself has its intermissions.
+We know the celebrated expression: He was one day brave. Humor has its
+vicissitudes that influence our most intimate sentiments. The purest,
+the most ideal sentiment still pertains on some side to organization.
+The inspiration of the poet, the passion of the lover, the enthusiasm of
+the martyr, have their languors and shortcomings that often depend on
+very pitiable material causes. On those perpetual fluctuations of
+sentiment, is it possible to ground a legislation equal for all?
+
+Sympathy and benevolence do not escape the conditions of all the
+phenomena of sensibility. We do not all possess in the same degree the
+power of feeling what others experience. Those who have suffered most
+best comprehend suffering, and consequently feel for it the most lively
+compassion. With mere imagination one also represents to himself better
+and feels more what passes in the souls of his fellow-man. One feels
+more sympathy for physical pleasures and pains, another for pleasures
+and pains of soul; and each of these sympathies has in each of us its
+degrees and variations. They not only differ, they often oppose each
+other. Sympathy for talent weakens the indignation that outraged virtue
+produces. We overlook many things in Voltaire, in Rousseau, in Mirabeau,
+and we excuse them on account of the corruption of their century. The
+sympathy caused by the pain of a condemned person renders less lively
+the just antipathy excited by his crime. Thus turns and wavers at each
+step that sympathy which some would set up as the supreme arbiter of the
+good. Benevolence does not vary less. We have souls naturally more or
+less affectionate, more or less animated. And, then, like sympathy,
+benevolence receives the counter-stroke of different passions that are
+mingled with it. Friendship, for example, often renders us, in spite of
+ourselves, more benevolent than justice would wish.
+
+Is it not a rule of prudence not to listen to, without always disdaining
+them, the inspirations--often capricious--of the heart? Governed by
+reason, sentiment becomes to it an admirable support. But, delivered up
+to itself, in a little while it degenerates into passion, and passion is
+fantastic, excessive, unjust; it gives to the soul spring and energy,
+but generally troubles and perverts it. It is even not very far from
+egoism, and it usually terminates in that, wholly generous as it is or
+seems to be in the beginning. Unless we always keep in sight the good
+and the inflexible obligation that is attached to it, unless we always
+keep in sight this fixed and immutable point, the soul knows not where
+to betake itself on that moving ground that is called sensibility; it
+floats from sentiment to passion, from generosity to selfishness,
+ascending one day to the pitch of enthusiasm, and the next day
+descending to all the miseries of personality.
+
+Thus the ethics of sentiment, although superior to those of interest,
+are not less insufficient: 1st. They give as the foundation of the idea
+of the good what is founded on this same idea; 2d. The rule that they
+propose is too mobile to be universally obligatory.[205]
+
+There is another system of which I will also say, as of the preceding,
+that it is not false, but incomplete and insufficient.
+
+The partisans of the ethics of utility and happiness have tried to save
+their principle by generalizing it. According to them, the good can be
+nothing but happiness; but egoism is wrong in understanding by that the
+happiness of the individual; we must understand by it the general
+happiness.
+
+Let us establish, in the first place, that the new principle is entirely
+opposed to that of personal interest, for, according to circumstances,
+it may demand, not only a passing sacrifice, but an irreparable
+sacrifice, that of life. Now, the wisest calculations of personal
+interest cannot go thus far.
+
+And, notwithstanding, this principle is far from containing true ethics
+and the whole of ethics.
+
+The principle of general interest leans towards disinterestedness, and
+this is certainly much; but disinterestedness is the condition of
+virtue, not virtue itself. We may commit an injustice with the most
+entire disinterestedness. From the fact that an action does not profit
+him who does it, it does not follow that it may not be in itself very
+unjust, in seeking general interest before all, we escape, it is true,
+that vice of soul which is called selfishness, but we may fall into a
+thousand iniquities. Or, indeed, it must be felt, that general interest
+is always conformed to justice. But these two ideas are not adequate to
+each other. If they very often go together, they are sometimes also
+separated. Themistocles proposed to the Athenians to burn the fleet of
+the allies that was in the port of Athens, and thus to secure to
+themselves the supremacy. The project is useful, says Aristides, but it
+is unjust, and on account of this simple speech, the Athenians renounce
+an advantage that must be purchased by an injustice. Observe that
+Themistocles had no particular interest in that; he thought only of the
+interest of his country. But, had he hazarded or given his life in order
+to engage the Athenians in such an act, he would only have been
+consecrating--what has often been seen--an admirable devotion to a
+course in itself immoral.
+
+To this it is replied, that if, in the example cited, justice and
+interest exclude each other, it is because the interest was not
+sufficiently general; and the celebrated maxim is arrived at, that one
+must sacrifice himself to his family, his family to the city, the city
+to country, country to humanity, that, in fine, the good is the interest
+of the greatest number.[206]
+
+When you have gone thus far, you have not yet attained even the idea of
+justice. The interest of humanity, like that of the individual, may
+accord in fact with justice, for in that there is certainly no
+incompatibility, but the two things are none the more identical, so that
+we cannot say with exactness that the interest of humanity is the
+foundation of justice. A single case, even a single hypothesis, in which
+the interest of humanity should not accord with the good, is sufficient
+to enable us to conclude that one is not essentially the other.
+
+We go farther: if it is the interest of humanity that constitutes and
+measures justice, that only is unjust which this interest declares to be
+so. But you are not able to affirm absolutely, that, in any
+circumstance, the interest of humanity will not demand such or such an
+action; and if it demands it, by virtue of your principle, it will be
+necessary to do it, whatever it may be, and to do it inasmuch as it is
+just.
+
+You order me to sacrifice particular interest to general interest. But
+in the name of what do you order me to do this? Is it in the name of
+interest? If interest, as such, must touch me, evidently my interest
+must also touch me, and I do not see why I should sacrifice it to that
+of others.
+
+The supreme end of human life, you say, is happiness. I hence conclude
+very reasonably, that the supreme end of my life is my happiness.
+
+In order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it must be called
+for by some other principle than happiness itself.
+
+Consider to what perplexity this famous principle of the greatest good
+of the greatest number condemns me. I have already much difficulty in
+discerning my true interest in the obscurity of the future; by
+substituting for the infallible voice of justice the uncertain
+calculations of personal interest, you have not rendered action easy for
+me;[207] but it becomes impossible, if it is necessary to seek, before
+acting, what is the interest not only of myself, but of my family, not
+only of my family, but of my country, not only of my country, but of
+humanity. What! must I embrace the entire world in my foresight? What!
+is such the price of virtue? You impose upon me a knowledge that God
+alone possesses. Am I in his counsels so as to adjust my actions
+according to his decrees? The philosophy of history and the wisest
+diplomacy are not, then, sufficient for conducting ourselves well.
+Imagine, therefore, that there is no mathematical science of human life.
+Chance and liberty confound the profoundest calculations, overturn the
+best-established fortunes, relieve the most desperate miseries, mingle
+good fortune and bad, confound all foresight.
+
+And would you establish ethics on a foundation so mobile? How much place
+you leave for sophism in that complaisant and enigmatical law of general
+interest![208] It will not be very difficult always to find some remote
+reason of general interest, which will excuse us from being faithful in
+the present moment to our friends, when they shall be in misfortune. A
+man in adversity addresses himself to my generosity. But could I not
+employ my money in a way more useful to humanity? Will not the country
+have need of it to-morrow? Let us virtuously keep it for the country
+then. Moreover, even where the interest of all seems evident, there
+still remains some chance of error; it is, therefore, better to
+withhold. It will always be wisdom to withhold. Yes, when it is
+necessary, in order to do well, to be sure of serving the greatest
+interest of the greatest number, none but the rash and senseless will
+dare to act. The principle of general interest will produce, I admit,
+great devotedness, but it will also produce great crimes. Is it not in
+the name of this principle that fanatics of every kind, fanatics in
+religion, fanatics in liberty, fanatics in philosophy, taking it upon
+themselves to understand the eternal interest of humanity, have engaged
+in abominable acts, mingled often with a sublime disinterestedness?
+
+Another error of this system is that it confounds the good itself with
+one of its applications. If the good is the greatest interest of the
+greatest number, the consequence is clear, that there are only public
+and social ethics, and no private ethics; there is only a single class
+of duties, duties towards others, and there are no duties towards
+ourselves. But this is retrenching precisely those of our duties that
+most surely guarantee the exercise of all the rest.[209] The most
+constant relations that I sustain are with that being which is myself.
+I am my own most habitual society. I bear in myself, as Plato[210] has
+well said, a whole world of ideas, sentiments, desires, passions,
+emotions, which claim a legislation. This necessary legislation is
+suppressed.
+
+Let us also say a word on a system that, under sublime appearances,
+conceals a vicious principle.
+
+There are persons who believe that they are magnifying God, by placing
+in his will alone the foundation of the moral law, and the sovereign
+motive of humanity in the punishments and rewards that it has pleased
+him to attach to the respect and violation of his will.
+
+Let us understand what we are about in a matter of such delicacy.
+
+It is certain, and we shall establish it for the good,[211] as we have
+done for the true and the beautiful,[212] it is certain that, from
+explanations to explanations, we come to be convinced that God is
+definitively the supreme principle of ethics, so that it may be very
+truly said, that the good is the expression of his will, since his will
+is itself the expression of the eternal and absolute justice that
+resides in him. God wills, without doubt, that we should act according
+to the law of justice that he has put in our understanding and our
+heart; but it is not at all necessary to conclude that he has
+arbitrarily instituted this law. Far from that, justice is in the will
+of God only because it has its roots in his intelligence and wisdom,
+that is to say, in his most intimate nature and essence.
+
+While making, then, every reservation in regard to what is true in the
+system that founds ethics on the will of God, we must show what there is
+in this system, as it is presented to us, false, arbitrary, and
+incompatible with ethics themselves.[213]
+
+In the first place, it does not pertain to the will, whatever it may
+be, to institute the good, any more than it belongs to it to institute
+the true and the beautiful. I have no idea of the will of God except by
+my own, to be sure with the differences that separate what is finite
+from what is infinite. Now, I cannot by my will found the least truth.
+Is it because my will is limited? No; were it armed with infinite power,
+it would, in this respect, be equally impotent. Such is the nature of my
+will that, in doing a thing, it is conscious of the power to do the
+opposite; and that is not an accidental character of the will, it is its
+fundamental character; if, then, it is supposed that truth, or that
+first part of it which is called justice, has been established as it is
+by an act of volition, human or Divine, it must be acknowledged that
+another act might have established it otherwise, and made what is now
+just unjust, and what is unjust just. But such mobility is contrary to
+the nature of justice and truth. In fact, moral truths are as absolute
+as metaphysical truths. God cannot make effects exist without a cause,
+phenomena without a substance; neither can he make it evil to respect
+his word, to love truth, to repress one's passions. The principles of
+ethics are immutable axioms like those of geometry. Of moral laws
+especially must be said what Montesquieu said of all laws in
+general,--they are necessary relations that are derived from the nature
+of things.
+
+Let us suppose that the good and the just are derived from the divine
+will; on the divine will obligation will also rest. But can any will
+whatever be the foundation of obligation? The divine will is the will
+of an omnipotent being, and I am a feeble being. This relation of a
+feeble being to an omnipotent being, does not contain in itself any
+moral idea. One may be forced to obey the stronger, but he is not
+obligated to do it. The sovereign orders of the will of God, if his will
+could for a moment be separated from his other attributes, would not
+contain the least ray of justice; and, consequently, there would not
+descend into my soul the least shade of obligation.
+
+One will exclaim,--It is not the arbitrary will of God that makes the
+foundation of obligation and justice; it is his just will. Very well.
+Every thing changes then. It is not the pure will of God that obligates
+us, it is the motive itself that determines his will, that is to say,
+the justice passed into his will. The distinction between the just and
+the unjust is not then the work of his will.
+
+One of two things. Either we found ethics on the will of God alone, and
+then the distinction between good and evil, just and unjust, is
+gratuitous, and moral obligation does not exist; or you give authority
+to the will of God by justice, which, in your hypothesis, must have
+received from the will of God its authority, which is a _petitio
+principii_.
+
+Another _petitio principii_ still more evident. In the first place, you
+are compelled, in order legitimately to draw justice from the will of
+God, to suppose that this will is just, or I defy any one to show that
+this will alone can ever form the basis of justice. Moreover, evidently
+you cannot comprehend what a just will of God is, if you do not already
+possess the idea of justice. This idea, then, does not come from that of
+the will of God.
+
+On the one hand, you may have, and you do have, the idea of justice,
+without understanding the will of God; on the other, you cannot conceive
+the justice of the divine will, without having conceived justice
+elsewhere.
+
+Are not these reasons sufficient, I pray you, to conclude that the sole
+will of God is not for us the principle of the idea of the good?
+
+And now, behold the natural consummation of the ethical system that we
+are examining:--the just and the unjust are what it has pleased God to
+declare such, by attaching to them the rewards and punishments of
+another life. The divine will manifests itself here only by an arbitrary
+order; it adds to this order promises and threats.
+
+But to what human faculty are addressed the promise and threat of the
+chastisements and the rewards of another life? To the same one that in
+this life fears pain and seeks pleasure, shuns unhappiness and desires
+happiness, that is to say, to sensibility animated by imagination, that
+is to say, again, to what is most changing in each of us and most
+different in the human species. The joys and sufferings of another life
+excite in us the two most vivid but most mobile passions, hope and fear.
+Every thing influences our fears and hopes,--aye, health, the passing
+cloud, a ray of the sun, a cup of coffee, a thousand causes of this
+kind. I have known men, even philosophers, who on certain days hoped
+more, and other days less. And such a basis some would give to ethics!
+Then it is doing nothing else than proposing for human conduct an
+interested motive. The calculation which I obey is purer, if you will;
+the happiness that one makes me hope for is greater; but I see in that
+no justice that obligates me, no virtue and no vice in me, who know or
+do not know how to make this calculation, not having a head as strong as
+that of Pascal,[214] who yield to or resist those fears and hopes
+according to the deposition of my sensibility and my imagination, over
+which I have no power. Finally, the pains and pleasures of the future
+life are instituted on the ground of punishments and rewards. Now, none
+but actions in themselves good or bad can be rewarded and punished. If
+already there is in itself no good, no law that in conscience we are
+obligated to follow, there is neither merit nor demerit; recompense is
+not then recompense, nor penalty penalty, since they are such only on
+the condition of being the complement and the sanction of the idea of
+the good. Where this idea does not pre-exist, there remain, instead of
+recompense and penalty, only the attraction of pleasure and the fear of
+suffering, added to a prescription deprived in itself of morality. In
+that we come back to the punishments of earth invented for the purpose
+of frightening popular imagination, and supported solely on the decrees
+of legislators, on an abstraction of good and evil, of justice and
+injustice, of merit and demerit. It is the worst human justice that is
+found thus transported into heaven. We shall see that the human soul has
+foundation somewhat solider.[215]
+
+These different systems, false or incomplete, having been rejected, we
+arrive at the doctrine that is to our eyes perfect truth, because it
+admits only certain facts, neglects none, and maintains for all of them
+their character and rank.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[203] _Mordre_--to bite, is the main root of _remords_--remorse.
+
+[204] See 1st part, lecture 5, _On Mysticism_, and 2d part, lecture 6,
+_On the Sentiment of the Beautiful_. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv.,
+detailed refutation of the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith.
+
+[205] We do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. He has marked the
+defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage,
+from which we borrow some traits. _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iii., p.
+410, 411: "The perception of the moral qualities of human actions is
+accompanied by an emotion of the soul that is called _sentiment_.
+Sentiment is a support of nature that invites us to good by the
+attraction of the noblest joys of which man is capable, and turns us
+from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror with which it
+inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beautiful
+action or a noble character, at the same time that we perceive these
+qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a
+judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and
+sometimes an admiration that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a
+loose and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and
+sentiment. The internal approbation of conscience and remorse are
+sentiments attached to the perception of the moral qualities of our own
+actions.... I do not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true
+that ethics are wholly in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate
+moral distinctions.... Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is
+in itself good, nothing is in itself evil; good and evil are relative;
+the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each one feels them
+to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; the same action is
+at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection of the
+spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenomena;
+obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty
+into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus: _Dii meliora piis_!"
+
+[206] In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who, for some
+time, had numerous partisans in England, and even in France.
+
+[207] See lecture 12.
+
+[208] 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174: "If the good is that alone which
+must be the most useful to the greatest number, where can the good be
+found, and who can discern it? In order to know whether such an action,
+which I propose to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure, in
+spite of its visible and direct utility in the present moment, that it
+will not become injurious in a future that I do not yet know. I must
+seek whether, useful to mine and those that surround me, it will not
+have counter-strokes disastrous to the human race, of which I must think
+before all. It is important that I should know whether the money that I
+am tempted to give this unfortunate who needs it, could not be otherwise
+more usefully employed, in fact, the rule is here the greatest good of
+the greatest number. In order to follow it, what calculations are
+imposed on me? In the obscurity of the future, in the uncertainty of the
+somewhat remote consequences of every action, the surest way is to do
+nothing that is not related to myself, and the last result of a prudence
+so refined is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have received a
+deposit from an opulent neighbor, who is old and sick, a sum of which he
+has no need, and without which your numerous family runs the risk of
+dying with famine. He calls on you for this sum,--what will you do? The
+greatest number is on your side, and the greatest utility also; for this
+sum is insignificant for your rich neighbor, whilst it will save your
+family from misery, and perhaps from death. Father of a family, I should
+like much to know in the name of what principle you would hesitate to
+retain the sum which is necessary to you? Intrepid reasoner, placed in
+the alternative of killing this sick old man, or of letting your wife
+and children die of hunger, in all honesty of conscience you ought to
+kill him. You have the right, it is even your duty to sacrifice the less
+advantage of a single person to much the greater advantage of a greater
+number; and since this principle is the expression of true justice, you
+are only its minister in doing what you do. A vanquishing enemy or a
+furious people threaten destruction to a whole city, if there be not
+delivered up to them the head of such a man, who is, nevertheless,
+innocent. In the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, this
+man will be immolated without scruple. It might even be maintained that
+innocent to the last, he has ceased to be so, since he is an obstacle to
+the public good. It having once been declared that justice is the
+interest of the greatest number, the only question is to know where this
+interest is. Now, here, doubt is impossible, therefore, it is perfectly
+just to offer innocence as a holocaust to public safety. This
+consequence must be accepted, or the principle rejected."
+
+[209] See lecture 15, _Private and Public Ethics_.
+
+[210] Plato, _Republic_, vol. ix. and x. of our translation.
+
+[211] Lecture 16.
+
+[212] Lectures 4 and 7.
+
+[213] This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it
+early against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that which
+we combat. See our _Sketch of a General History of Philosophy_, 2d
+Series, vol. ii., lect. 9, _On Scholasticism_. Here are two decisive
+passages from St. Thomas, 1st book of the _Summation against the
+Gentiles_, chap. lxxxvii: "Per praedicta autem excluditur error dicentiam
+omnia procedere a Deo secundum simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo
+oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia Deus vult. Quod etiam divinae
+Scripturae contrariatur, quae Deum perhibet secundum ordinem sapientiae suae
+omnia fecisse, secundum illud Psalm ciii.: omnia in sapientia fecisti."
+_Ibid._, book ii., chap. xxiv.: "Per hoc autem excluditur quorundam
+error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica divina voluntate dependere aliqua
+ratione."
+
+[214] See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul,
+_Des Pensees de Pascal_, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235 and p.
+289-296.
+
+[215] Lecture 16.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XIV.
+
+TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.
+
+    Description of the different facts that compose the moral
+    phenomena.--Analysis of each of these facts:--1st, Judgment and
+    idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation
+    between the true and the good.--2d, Obligation. Refutation of
+    the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from
+    obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of the
+    good.--3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion
+    of liberty.--4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments
+    and rewards.--5th, Moral sentiments.--Harmony of all these facts
+    in nature and science.
+
+
+Philosophic criticism is not confined to discerning the errors of
+systems; it especially consists in recognizing and disengaging the
+truths mixed with these errors. The truths scattered in different
+systems compose the whole truth which each of these almost always
+expresses on a single side. So, the systems that we have just run over
+and refuted deliver up to us, in some sort, divided and opposed to each
+other, all the essential elements of human morality. The only question
+is to collect them, in order to restore the entire moral phenomenon. The
+history of philosophy, thus understood, prepares the way for or confirms
+psychological analysis, as psychological analysis receives from the
+history of philosophy its light. Let us, then, interrogate ourselves in
+presence of human actions, and faithfully collect, without altering them
+by any preconceived system, the ideas and the sentiments of every kind
+that the spectacle of these actions produce in us.
+
+There are actions that are agreeable or disagreeable to us, that procure
+us advantages or injure us, in a word, that are, in one way or another,
+directly or indirectly, addressed to our interest. We are rejoiced with
+actions that are useful to us, and shun those that may injure us. We
+seek earnestly and with the greatest effort what seems to us our
+interest.
+
+This is an incontestable fact. Here is another fact that is not less
+incontestable.
+
+There are actions that have no relation to us, that, consequently, we
+cannot estimate and judge on the ground of our interest, that we
+nevertheless qualify as good or bad.
+
+Suppose that before your eyes a man, strong and armed, falls upon
+another man, feeble and disarmed, whom he maltreats and kills, in order
+to take away his purse. Such an action does not reach you in any way,
+and, notwithstanding, it fills you with indignation.[216] You do every
+thing in your power that this murderer may be arrested and delivered up
+to justice; you demand that he shall be punished, and if he is punished
+in one way or another, you think that it is just; your indignation is
+appeased only after a chastisement proportioned to the crime committed
+has been inflicted on the culprit. I repeat that in this you neither
+hope nor fear any thing for yourself. Were you placed in an inaccessible
+fortress, from the top of which you might witness this scene of murder,
+you would feel these sentiments none the less.
+
+This is only a rude picture of what takes place in you at the sight of a
+crime. Apply now a little reflection and analysis to the different
+traits of which this picture is composed, without destroying their
+nature, and you will have a complete philosophic theory.
+
+What is it that first strikes you in what you have experienced? It is
+doubtless the indignation, the instinctive horror that you have felt.
+There is, then, in the soul a power of raising indignation that is
+foreign to all personal interests! There are, then, in us sentiments of
+which we are not the end! There is an antipathy, an aversion, a horror,
+that are not related to what injures us, but to acts whose remotest
+influence cannot reach us, that we detest for the sole reason that we
+judge them to be bad!
+
+Yes, we judge them to be bad. A judgment is enveloped under the
+sentiments that we have just mentioned. In fact, in the midst of the
+indignation that transports you, let one tell you that all this generous
+anger pertains to your particular organization, and that, after all, the
+action that takes place is indifferent,--you revolt against such an
+explanation, you exclaim that the action is bad in itself; you not only
+express a sentiment, you pronounce a judgment. The next day after the
+action, when the feelings that agitated your soul have been quieted, you
+none the less still judge that the action was bad; you judge thus six
+months after, you judge thus always and everywhere; and it is because
+you judge that this action is in itself bad, that you bear this other
+judgment, that it should not have been done.
+
+This double judgment is at the foundation of sentiment; otherwise
+sentiment would be without reason. If the action is not bad in itself,
+if he who has done it was not obligated not to do it, the indignation
+that we experience is only a physical emotion, an excitement of the
+senses, of the imagination, of the heart,--a phenomenon destitute of
+every moral character, like the trouble that visits us before some
+frightful scene of nature. You cannot rationally feel indignation for
+the author of an indifferent action. Every sentiment of disinterested
+anger against the author of an action supposes in him who feels it, this
+double conviction:--1st, That the action is in itself bad; 2d, That it
+should not have been done.
+
+This sentiment also supposes that the author of this action has himself
+a consciousness of the evil that he has done, and of the obligation that
+he has violated; for without this he would have acted like a brutal and
+blind force, not like an intelligent and moral force, and we should have
+felt towards him no more indignation than towards a rock that falls on
+our head, towards a torrent that sweeps us away into an abyss.
+
+Indignation equally supposes in him who is the object of it an other
+character still, to wit, that he is free,--that he could do or not do
+what he has done. It is evident that the agent must be free in order to
+be responsible.
+
+You desire that the murderer may be arrested and delivered up to
+justice, you desire that he may be punished; when he has been arrested,
+delivered up to justice, and punished, you are satisfied. What does that
+mean? Is it a capricious movement of the imagination and heart? No. Calm
+or indignant, at the moment of the crime or a long time after, without
+any spirit of personal vengeance, since you are not the least interested
+in this affair, you none the less declare that the murderer ought to be
+punished. If, instead of receiving a punishment, the culpable man makes
+his crime a stepping-stone to fortune, you still declare that, far from
+deserving prosperity, he deserves to suffer in reparation of his fault;
+you protest against lot, and appeal to a superior justice. This judgment
+philosophers have called the judgment of merit and demerit. I suppose,
+in the mind of man, the idea of a supreme law that attaches happiness to
+virtue, unhappiness to crime. Omit the idea of this law, and the
+judgment of merit and demerit is without foundation. Omit this judgment,
+and indignation against prosperous crime and the neglect of virtue is an
+unintelligible, even an impossible sentiment, and never, at the sight of
+crime, would you think of demanding the chastisement of a criminal.
+
+All the parts of the moral phenomenon are connected together; all are
+equally certain parts,--destroy one, and you completely overturn the
+whole phenomenon. The most common observation bears witness to all these
+facts, and the least subtle logic easily discovers their connection. It
+is necessary to renounce even sentiment, or it must be avowed that
+sentiment covers a judgment, the judgment of the essential distinction
+between good and evil, that this distinction involves an obligation,
+that this obligation is applied to an intelligent and free agent; in
+fine, it must be observed that the distinction between merit and
+demerit, that corresponds to the distinction between good and evil,
+contains the principle of the natural harmony between virtue and
+happiness.
+
+What have we done thus far? We have done as the physicist or chemist
+does, who submits a composite body to analysis and reduces it to its
+simple elements. The only difference here is that the phenomenon to
+which our analysis is applied is in us, instead of being out of us.
+Besides, the processes employed are exactly the same; there is in them
+neither system nor hypothesis; there are only experience and the most
+immediate induction.
+
+In order to render experience more certain, we may vary it. Instead of
+examining what takes place in us when we are spectators of bad or good
+actions in another, let us interrogate our own consciousness when we are
+doing well or ill. In this case, the different elements of the moral
+phenomenon are still more striking, and their order appears more
+distinctly.
+
+Suppose that a dying friend has confided to me a more or less important
+deposit, charging me to remit it after his death to a person whom he has
+designated to me alone, and who himself knows not what has been done in
+his favor. He who confided to me the deposit dies, and carries with him
+his secret; he for whom the deposit has been made to me has no knowledge
+of it; if, then, I wish to appropriate this deposit to myself, no one
+will ever be able to suspect me. In this case what should I do? It is
+difficult to imagine circumstances more favorable for crime. If I
+consult only interest, I ought not to hesitate to return the deposit. If
+I hesitate, in the system of interest, I am senseless, and I revolt
+against the law of my nature. Doubt alone, in the impunity that is
+assured me, would betray in me a principle different from interest.
+
+But naturally I do not doubt, I believe with the most entire certainty,
+that the deposit confided to me does not belong to me, that it has been
+confided to me to be remitted to another, and that to this other it
+belongs. Take away interest, and I should not even think of returning
+this deposit,--it is interest alone that tempts me. It tempts me, it
+does not bear me away without resistance. Hence the struggle between
+interest and duty,--a struggle filled with troubles, opposite
+resolutions, by turns taken and abandoned; it energetically attests the
+presence of a principle of action different from interest and quite as
+powerful.
+
+Duty succumbs, interest triumphs over it. I retain the deposit that has
+been confided to me, and apply it to my own wants, and to the wants of
+my family; it makes me rich, and in appearance happy; but I internally
+suffer with that bitter and secret suffering that is called
+remorse.[217] The fact is certain; it has been a thousand times
+described; all languages contain the word, and there is no one who, in
+some degree, has not experienced the thing, that sharp gnawing at the
+heart which is caused by every fault, great or small, as long as it has
+not been expiated. This painful recollection follows me in the midst of
+pleasures and prosperity. The applauses of the crowd are not able to
+silence this inexorable witness. Only a long habit of sin and crime, an
+accumulation of oft-repeated faults, can compass this sentiment, at once
+avenging and expiatory. When it is stifled, every resource is lost, and
+an end is made of the soul's life; as long as it endures, the sacred
+fire is not wholly extinguished.
+
+Remorse is a suffering of a particular character. In remorse I do not
+suffer on account of such an impression made upon my senses, nor on
+account of the thwarting of my natural passions, nor on account of the
+injury done or threatened to my interest, nor by the disquietude of my
+hopes and the agony of my fears: no, I suffer without any external
+cause, yet I suffer in the most cruel manner. I suffer for the sole
+reason that I have a consciousness of having committed a bad action
+which I knew I was obligated not to commit, which I was able not to
+commit, which leaves behind it a chastisement that I know to be
+deserved. No exact analysis can take away from remorse, without
+destroying it, a single one of these elements. Remorse contains the idea
+of good and evil, of an obligatory law, of liberty, of merit and
+demerit. All these ideas were already in the struggle between good and
+evil; they reappear in remorse. In vain interest counselled me to
+appropriate the deposit that had been confided to me; something said to
+me, and still says to me, that to appropriate it is to do evil, is to
+commit an injustice; I judged, and judge, thus, not such a day, but
+always, not under such a circumstance, but under all circumstances. In
+vain I say to myself that the person to whom I ought to remit this
+deposit has no need of it, and that it is necessary to me; I judge that
+a deposit must be respected without regard to persons, and the
+obligation that is imposed on me appears inviolable and absolute. Having
+taken upon myself this obligation, I believe by this fact alone that I
+have the power to fulfil it: this is not all; I am directly conscious of
+this power, I know with the most certain knowledge that I am able to
+keep this deposit or to remit it to the lawful owner; and it is
+precisely because I am conscious of this power that I judge that I have
+deserved punishment for not having made the use of it for which it was
+given me. It is, in fine, because I have a lively consciousness of all
+that, that I experience this sentiment of indignation against myself,
+this suffering of remorse which expresses in itself the moral phenomenon
+entire.
+
+According to the rules of the experimental method, let us take an
+opposite course; let us suppose that, in spite of the suggestions of
+interest, in spite of the pressing goad of misery, in order to be
+faithful to pledged faith, I send the deposit to the person that had
+been designated to me; instead of the painful scene that just now passed
+in consciousness, there passes another quite as real, but very
+different. I know that I have done well; I know that I have not obeyed a
+chimera, an artificial and mendacious law, but a law true, universal,
+obligatory upon all intelligent and free beings. I know that I have made
+a good use of my liberty; I have of this liberty, by the very use that I
+have made of it, a sentiment more distinct, more energetic, and, in some
+sort, triumphant. Every opinion would accuse me in vain, I appeal from
+it to a better justice, and this justice is already declared in me by
+sentiments that press upon each other in my soul. I respect myself,
+esteem myself, and believe that I have a right to the esteem of others;
+I have the sentiment of my dignity; I feel for myself only sentiments of
+affection opposed to that species of horror for myself with which I was
+just now inspired. Instead of remorse, I feel an incomparable joy that
+no one can deprive me of, that, were every thing else wanting to me,
+would console and support me. This sentiment of pleasure is as
+penetrating, as profound as was the remorse. It expresses the
+satisfaction of all the generous principles of human nature, as remorse
+represented their revolt. It testifies by the internal happiness that it
+gives me to the sublime accord between happiness and virtue, whilst
+remorse is the first link in that fatal chain, that chain of iron and
+adamant, which, according to Plato,[218] binds pain to transgression,
+trouble to passion, misery to faithlessness, vice, and crime.
+
+Moral sentiment is the echo of all the moral judgments and entire moral
+life. It is so striking that it has been regarded by a somewhat
+superficial philosophy as sufficient to found entire ethics; and,
+nevertheless, we have just seen that this admirable sentiment would not
+exist without the different judgments that we have just enumerated; it
+is their consequence, but not their principle; it supplies, but does not
+constitute them; it does not take their place, but sums them up.
+
+Now that we are in possession of all the elements of human morality, we
+proceed to take these elements one by one, and submit them to a detailed
+analysis.
+
+That which is most apparent in the complex phenomenon that we are
+studying is sentiment; but its foundation is judgment.
+
+The judgment of good and evil is the principle of all that follows it;
+but this judgment rests only on the constitution itself of human nature,
+like the judgment of the true and the judgment of the beautiful. As well
+as these two judgments,[219] that of the good is a simple, primitive,
+indecomposable judgment.
+
+Like them, again, it is not arbitrary. We cannot but fear this judgment
+in presence of certain acts; and, in fearing it, we know that it does
+not make good or evil, but declares it. The reality of moral
+distinctions is revealed by this judgment, but it is independent of it,
+as beauty is independent of the eye that perceives it, as universal and
+necessary truths are independent of the reason that discovers them.[220]
+
+Good and evil are real characters of human actions, although these
+characters might not be seen with our eyes nor touched with our hands.
+The moral qualities of an action are none the less real for not being
+confounded with the material qualities of this action. This is the
+reason why actions materially identical may be morally very different. A
+homicide is always a homicide; nevertheless, it is often a crime, it is
+also often a legitimate action, for example, when it is not done for the
+sake of vengeance, nor for the sake of interest, in a strict case of
+self-defence.
+
+It is not the spilling of blood that makes the crime, it is the spilling
+of innocent blood. Innocence and crime, good and evil, do not reside in
+such or such an external circumstance determined one for all. Reason
+recognizes them with certainty under the most different appearances, in
+circumstances sometimes the same and sometimes dissimilar.
+
+Good and evil almost always appear to us connected with particular
+actions; but it is not on account of what is particular in them that
+these actions are good or bad. So when I declare that the death of
+Socrates is unjust, and that the devotion of Leonidas is admirable, it
+is the unjust death of a wise man that I condemn, and the devotion of a
+hero that I admire. It is not important whether this hero be called
+Leonidas or d'Assas, whether the immolated sage be called Socrates or
+Bailly.
+
+The judgment of the good is at first applied to particular actions, and
+it gives birth to general principles which in course serve us as rules
+for judging all actions of the same kind. As after having judged that
+such a particular phenomenon has such a particular cause, we elevate
+ourselves to the general principle that every phenomenon has its
+cause;[221] so we erect into a general rule the moral judgment that we
+have borne in regard to a particular fact. Thus, at first we admire the
+death of Leonidas, thence we elevate ourselves to the principle that it
+is good to die for one's country. We already possess the principle in
+its first application to Leonidas; otherwise, this particular
+application would not have been legitimate, it would not have been even
+possible; but we possess it implicitly; as soon as it is disengaged, it
+appears to us under its universal and pure form, and we apply it to all
+analogous cases.
+
+Ethics have their axioms like other sciences; and these axioms are
+rightly called in all languages moral truths.
+
+It is good not to violate one's oath, and in this is also involved a
+truth. In fact, an oath is founded in the truth of things,--its good is
+only derived. Moral truths considered in themselves have no less
+certainty than mathematical truths. The idea of a deposit being given, I
+ask whether the idea of faithfully keeping it is not necessarily
+attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the idea that
+its three angles are equal to two right angles. You may withhold a
+deposit; but, in withholding it, do not believe that you change the
+nature of things, nor that you make it possible for a deposit ever to
+become property. These two ideas exclude each other. You have only a
+false semblance of property; and all the efforts of passion, all the
+sophisms of interest will not reverse the essential differences. This is
+the reason why moral truth is so troublesome,--it is because, like all
+truth, it is what it is, and does not bend to any caprice. Always the
+same and always present, in spite of all our efforts, it inexorably
+condemns, with a voice always heard, but not always listened to, the
+sensible and the culpable will which thinks to hinder it from being by
+denying it, or rather by pretending to deny it.
+
+Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by the singular
+character that, as soon as we perceive them, they appear to us as the
+rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is made to be remitted
+to its legitimate possessor, it is necessary to remit it to him. To the
+necessity of believing is here added the necessity of practising.
+
+The necessity of practising is obligation. Moral truths, in the eyes of
+reason necessary, are to the will obligatory.
+
+Moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is
+absolute. As necessary truths are not more or less necessary,[222] so
+obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of
+importance between different obligations; but there are no degrees in
+the same obligation. We are not somewhat obligated, almost obligated; we
+are either wholly obligated, or not at all.
+
+If obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For, if the
+obligation of to-day were not the obligation of to-morrow, if what is
+obligatory for me were not so for you, obligation would differ from
+itself, would be relative and contingent.
+
+This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation is so certain and
+so manifest, in spite of all the efforts of the doctrine of interest to
+obscure it, that one of the profoundest moralists of modern philosophy,
+particularly struck with this fact, has regarded it as the principle of
+the whole of ethics. By separating duty from interest which ruins it,
+and from sentiment which enervates it, Kant restored to ethics their
+true character. He elevated himself very high in the century of
+Helvetius, in elevating himself to the holy law of duty; but he still
+did not ascend high enough, he did not reach the reason itself of duty.
+
+The good for Kant is what is obligatory. But logically, whence comes the
+obligation of performing an action, if not from the intrinsic goodness
+of this act? Is it not because that, in the order of reason, it is
+absolutely impossible to regard a deposit as a property, that we cannot
+appropriate it to ourselves without a crime? If one action must be
+performed, and another action must not, it is because there is
+apparently an essential difference between these two acts. To found the
+good on obligation, instead of founding obligation on the good, is,
+therefore, to take the effect for the cause, is to draw the principle
+from the consequence.
+
+If I ask an honest man who, in spite of the suggestions of misery, has
+respected the deposit that was intrusted to him, why he respected it, he
+will answer me,--because it was my duty. If I persist, and ask why it
+was his duty, he will very rightly answer,--because it was just, because
+it was good. That point having been reached, all answers are stopped;
+but questions also are stopped. No one allows a duty to be imposed upon
+him without rendering to himself a reason for it; but as soon as it is
+recognized that this duty is imposed upon us because it is just, the
+mind is satisfied; for it reaches a principle beyond which it has
+nothing more to seek, justice being its own principle. First truths
+carry with them their reason for being. Now, justice, the essential
+distinction between good and evil in the relations of men among
+themselves, is the primary truth of ethics.
+
+Justice is not a consequence, since we cannot ascend to another more
+elevated principle; and duty is not, rigorously speaking, a principle,
+since it supposes a principle above it, that explains and authorizes it,
+to wit, justice.
+
+Moral truth no more becomes relative and subjective, to take for a
+moment the language of Kant, in appearing to us obligatory, than truth
+becomes relative and subjective in appearing to us necessary; for in the
+very nature of truth and the good must be sought the reason of necessity
+and obligation. But if we stop at obligation and necessity, as Kant did,
+in ethics as well as in metaphysics, without knowing it, and even
+against our intention, we destroy, or at least weaken truth and the
+good.[223]
+
+Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinction between good
+and evil; and is itself the foundation of liberty. If man has duties,
+he must possess the faculty of fulfilling them, of resisting desire,
+passion, and interest, in order to obey law. He ought to be free,
+therefore he is free, or human nature is in contradiction with itself.
+The direct certainty of obligation implies the corresponding certainty
+of liberty.
+
+This proof of liberty is doubtless good; but Kant is deceived in
+supposing it the only legitimate proof. It is very strange that he
+should have preferred the authority of reasoning to that of
+consciousness, as if the former had no need of being confirmed by the
+latter; as if, after all, my liberty ought not to be a fact for me.[224]
+Empiricism must be greatly feared to distrust the testimony of
+consciousness; and, after such a distrust, one must be very credulous to
+have a boundless faith in reasoning. We do not believe in our liberty as
+we believe in the movement of the earth. The profoundest persuasion that
+we have of it comes from the continual experience that we carry with
+ourselves.
+
+Is it true that in presence of an act to be done I am able to will or
+not to will to do it? In that lies the whole question of liberty.
+
+Let us clearly distinguish between the power of doing and the power of
+willing. The will has, without doubt, in its service and under its
+empire, the most of our faculties; but that empire, which is real, is
+very limited. I will to move my arm, and I am often able to do it,--in
+that resides, as it were, the physical power of will; but I am not
+always able to move my arm, if the muscles are paralyzed, if the
+obstacle to be overcome is too strong, &c.; the execution does not
+always depend on me; but what always depends on me is the resolution
+itself. The external effects may be hindered, my resolution itself can
+never be hindered. In its own domain, will is sovereign.
+
+And I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. I feel in
+myself, before its determination, the force that can determine itself in
+such a manner or in such another. At the same time that I will this or
+that, I am equally conscious of the power to will the opposite; I am
+conscious of being master of my resolution, of the ability to arrest it,
+continue it, repress it. When the voluntary act ceases, the
+consciousness of the power does not cease,--it remains with the power
+itself, which is superior to all its manifestations. Liberty is
+therefore the essential and always-subsisting attribute of will.[225]
+
+The will, we have seen,[226] is neither desire nor passion,--it is
+exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the license of
+desires and passions. Man is a slave in desire and passion, he is free
+only in will. That they may not elsewhere be confounded, liberty and
+anarchy must not be confounded in psychology. Passions abandoning
+themselves to their caprices, is anarchy. Passions concentrated upon a
+dominant passion, is tyranny. Liberty consists in the struggle of will
+against this tyranny and this anarchy. But this combat must have an aim,
+and this aim is the duty of obeying reason, which is our true sovereign,
+and justice, which reason reveals to us and prescribes for us. The duty
+of obeying reason is the law of will, and will is never more itself than
+when it submits to its law. We do not possess ourselves, as long as to
+the domination of desire, of passion, of interest, reason does not
+oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and justice free us from the
+yoke of passions, without imposing upon us another yoke. For, once more,
+to obey them, is not to abdicate liberty, but to save it, to apply it to
+its legitimate use.
+
+It is in liberty, and in the agreement of liberty with reason and
+justice, that man belongs to himself, to speak properly. He is a person
+only because he is a free being enlightened by reason.
+
+What distinguishes a person from a simple thing, is especially the
+difference between liberty and its opposite. A thing is that which is
+not free, consequently that which does not belong to itself, that which
+has no self, which has only a numerical individuality, a perfect effigy
+of true individuality, which is that of person.
+
+A thing, not belonging to itself, belongs to the first person that takes
+possession of it and puts his mark on it.
+
+A thing is not responsible for the movements which it has not willed, of
+which it is even ignorant. Person alone is responsible, for it is
+intelligent and free; and it is responsible for the use of its
+intelligence and freedom.
+
+A thing has no dignity; dignity is only attached to person.
+
+A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which person confers on
+it. It is purely an instrument whose whole value consists in the use
+that the person using it derives from it.[227]
+
+Obligation implies liberty; where liberty is not, duty is wanting, and
+with duty right is wanting also.
+
+It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, that I have the
+duty of respecting it, and the right to make it respected by you. My
+duty is the exact measure of my right. The one is in direct ratio with
+the other. If I had no sacred duty to respect what makes my person, that
+is to say, my intelligence and my liberty, I should not have the right
+to defend it against your injuries. But as my person is inviolable and
+sacred in itself, it follows that, considered in relation to me, it
+imposes on me a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on
+me a right.
+
+I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that I am by abandoning
+myself to passion, to vice and crime, and I am not permitted to let it
+be degraded by you.
+
+The person is inviolable; and it alone is inviolable.
+
+It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of consciousness,
+but in all its legitimate manifestations, in its acts, in the product
+of its acts, even in the instruments that it makes its own by using
+them.
+
+Therein is the foundation of the sanctity of property. The first
+property is the person. All other properties are derived from that.
+Think of it well. It is not property in itself that has rights, it is
+the proprietor, it is the person that stamps upon it, with its own
+character, its right and its title.
+
+The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without degrading
+itself,--it is to itself inalienable. The person has no right over
+itself; it cannot treat itself as a thing, cannot sell itself, cannot
+destroy itself, cannot in any way abolish its free will and its liberty,
+which are its constituent elements.
+
+Why has the child already some rights? Because it will be a free being.
+Why have the old man, returned to infancy, and the insane man still some
+rights? Because they have been free beings. We even respect liberty in
+its first glimmerings or its last vestiges. Why, on the other hand, have
+the insane man and the imbecile old man no longer all their rights?
+Because they have lost liberty. Why do we enchain the furious madman?
+Because he has lost knowledge and liberty. Why is slavery an abominable
+institution? Because it is an outrage upon what constitutes humanity.
+This is the reason why, in fine, certain extreme devotions are sometimes
+sublime faults, and no one is permitted to offer them, much less to
+demand them. There is no legitimate devotion against the very essence of
+right, against liberty, against justice, against the dignity of the
+human person.
+
+We have not been able to speak of liberty, without indicating a certain
+number of moral notions of the highest importance which it contains and
+explains; but we could not pursue this development without encroaching
+upon the domain of private and public ethics and anticipating the
+following lecture.
+
+We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenomenon, the
+judgment of merit and demerit.
+
+At the same time that we judge that a man has done a good or bad action,
+we bear this other judgment quite as necessary as the former, to wit,
+that if this man has acted well he has merited a reward, and if he has
+acted ill, he has merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with this
+judgment as with that of the good. It may be outwardly expressed in a
+more or less lively manner, according as it is mingled with more or less
+energetic feelings. Sometimes it will be only a benevolent disposition
+towards the virtuous agent, and an unfavorable disposition towards the
+culpable agent; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indignation. In some
+cases one will make himself the executor of the judgment that he bears,
+he will crown the hero and load the criminal with chains. But when all
+your feelings are calmed, when enthusiasm has cooled as well as
+indignation, when time and separation have rendered an action almost
+indifferent to you, you none the less persist in judging that the author
+of this action merits a reward or a punishment, according to the quality
+of the action. You decide that you were right in the sentiments that you
+felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare them legitimate.
+
+The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the judgment of
+good and evil. In fact, he who does an action without knowing whether it
+is good or bad, has neither merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with
+him the same as with those physical agents that accomplish the most
+beneficent or the most destructive works, to which we never think of
+attributing knowledge and will, consequently accountability. Why are
+there no penalties attached to involuntary crimes? Because for that very
+reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes that the question
+of premeditation is so grave in all criminal processes. Why is the
+child, up to a certain age, subject to none but light punishments?
+Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and
+demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward and punishment.
+The author of an injurious but involuntary action is condemned to an
+indemnity corresponding to the damage done; he is not condemned to a
+punishment properly so called.
+
+Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. When these conditions are
+fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest themselves, and involve reward and
+punishment.
+
+Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural
+right that others have to punish us, and, if we may thus speak, the
+right that we have to be punished. This expression may seem paradoxical,
+nevertheless it is true. A culpable man, who, opening his eyes to the
+light of the good, should comprehend the necessity of expiation, not
+only by internal repentance, without which all the rest is in vain, but
+also by a real and effective suffering, such a culpable man would have
+the right to claim the punishment that alone can reconcile him with
+order. And such reclamations are not so rare. Do we not every day see
+criminals denouncing themselves and offering themselves up to avenge the
+public? Others prefer to satisfy justice, and do not have recourse to
+the pardon that law places in the hands of the monarch in order to
+represent in the state charity and mercy, as tribunals represent in it
+justice. This is a manifest proof of the natural and profound roots of
+the idea of punishment and reward.
+
+Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful debt, punishment and
+reward; but reward must not be confounded with merit, nor punishment
+with demerit; this would be confounding cause and effect, principle and
+consequence. Even were reward and punishment not to take place, merit
+and demerit would subsist. Punishment and reward satisfy merit and
+demerit, but do not constitute them. Suppress all reward and all
+punishment and you do not thereby suppress merit and demerit; on the
+contrary, suppress merit and demerit, and there are no longer true
+punishments and true rewards. Unmerited goods and honors are only
+material advantages; reward is essentially moral, and its value is
+independent of its form. One of those crowns of oak that the early
+Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all the riches in the
+world, when it is the sign of the recognition and the admiration of a
+people. To reward is to give in return. He who is rewarded must have
+first given something in order to deserve to be rewarded. Reward
+accorded to merit is a debt; reward without merit is a charity or a
+theft. It is the same with punishment. It is the relation of pain to a
+fault,--in this relation, and not in the pain alone, is the truth as
+well as the shame of chastisement.
+
+    'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.[228]
+
+There are two things that must be unceasingly repeated, because they are
+equally true,--the first is, that the good is good in itself, and ought
+to be pursued whatever may be the consequences; the second is, that the
+consequences of the good cannot fail to be fortunate. Happiness,
+separated from the good, is only a fact to which is attached no moral
+idea; but, as an effect of the good, it enters into the moral order and
+completes it.
+
+Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappiness, are a
+contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes sacrifice, that is to say,
+suffering, it is of eternal justice that the sacrifice, generously
+accepted and courageously borne, have for a reward the very happiness
+that has been sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice that crime be
+punished by the unhappiness of the culpable happiness which it has tried
+to obtain by stealth.
+
+Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches pleasure and pain
+to good and evil? Most of the time even here below. For order rules in
+this world, since the world endures. If order is sometimes disturbed,
+and happiness and unhappiness are not always distributed in right
+proportion to crime and virtue, still the absolute judgment of the good,
+the absolute judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and
+demerit, subsist inviolable and imprescriptible,--we remain convinced
+that he who has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot in
+that fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-establish the
+sacred harmony between virtue and happiness by the means that to him
+belong. But the time has not come to sound these mysterious
+prospects.[229] It is sufficient for us, but it was necessary to mark
+them, in order to show the nature and the end of moral truth.
+
+We terminate this analysis of the different parts of the complex
+phenomenon of morality by recalling that one which is the most apparent
+of all, which, however, is only the accompaniment, and, thus to speak,
+the echo of all the others--sentiment. Sentiment has for its object to
+render sensible to the soul the tie between virtue and happiness. It is
+the direct and vital application of the law of merit and demerit. It
+precedes and authorizes the punishments and rewards that society
+institutes. It is the internal model according to which the imagination,
+guided by faith, represents to itself the punishments and rewards of the
+divine city. The world that we place beyond this is, in great part, our
+own heart transported into heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just
+that it should return thither.
+
+We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of sentiment; we have
+sufficiently explained them in the last lecture. A few words will
+replace them under your eyes.
+
+We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its author, another or
+ourselves, without experiencing a particular pleasure, analogous to that
+which is attached to the perception of the beautiful; and we cannot
+witness a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also
+analogous to that which the sight of an ugly and deformed object excites
+in us. This sentiment is profoundly different from agreeable or
+disagreeable sensation.
+
+Are we the authors of the good action? We feel a satisfaction that we do
+not confound with any other. It is not the triumph of interest nor that
+of pride,--it is the pleasure of modest honesty or dignified virtue that
+renders justice to itself. Are we the authors of the bad action? We feel
+offended conscience groaning within us. Sometimes it is only an
+importunate reclamation, sometimes it is a bitter agony. Remorse is a
+suffering the more poignant on account of our feeling that it is
+deserved.
+
+The spectacle of a good action done by another also has something
+delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that responds to
+whatever is noble and good in others. When interest does not lead us
+astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of him who has done
+well. We feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate him. We
+elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it not already for the
+good man an exquisite reward to make the noble sentiments that animate
+him thus pass into the hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad
+action, instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful
+and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute like
+remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid that tempers
+even the sentiment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us.
+We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we mourn over human
+weakness, and, by a melancholy return upon ourselves, we are less moved
+to anger than to pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous
+anger, by a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a
+sweet reward to excite a noble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always
+fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around us
+pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt.
+
+Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence for its author.
+He inspires us with an affectionate disposition. Even without knowing
+it, we would love to do good to him; we desire that he may be happy,
+because we judge that he deserves to be. Antipathy also passes from the
+action to the person, and engenders against him a sort of bad will, for
+which we do not blame ourselves, because we feel it to be disinterested
+and find it legitimate.
+
+Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, and their
+opposites are sentiments and not judgments; but they are sentiments that
+accompany judgments, the judgment of the good, especially that of merit
+and demerit. These sentiments have been given us by the sovereign Author
+of our moral constitution to aid us in doing good. In their diversity
+and mobility, they cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation
+which must be equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure
+and beneficent witnesses of the harmony between virtue and happiness.
+
+These are the facts as presented by a faithful description, as brought
+to light by a detailed analysis.
+
+Without facts all is chimera; without a severe distinction of facts, all
+is confusion; but, also, without the knowledge of their relations,
+instead of a single vast doctrine, like the total phenomenon that we
+have undertaken to embrace, there can be only different systems like the
+different parts of this phenomenon, consequently imperfect systems,
+systems always at war with each other.
+
+We set out from common sense; for the object of true science is not to
+contradict common sense, but to explain it, and for this end we must
+commence by recognizing it. We have at first painted in its simplicity,
+even in the gross, the phenomenon of morality. Then we have separated
+its elements, and carefully marked the characteristic traits of each of
+them. It only remains for us to re-collect them all, to seize their
+relations, and thus to find again, but more precise and more clear, the
+primitive unity that served us as a point of departure.
+
+Beneath all facts analysis has shown us a primitive fact, which vests
+only on itself,--the judgment of the good. We do not sacrifice other
+facts to that, but we must establish that it is the first both in date
+and in importance.
+
+By its close resemblance to the judgment of the true and the beautiful,
+the judgment of the good has shown us the affinities of ethics,
+metaphysics, and aesthetics.
+
+The good, so essentially united to the true, is distinguished from it in
+that it is practical truth. The good is obligatory. These two ideas are
+inseparable, but not identical. For obligation rests on the good,--in
+this intimate alliance, from the good obligation borrows its universal
+and absolute character.
+
+The obligatory good is the moral law. Therein is for us the foundation
+of all ethics. Thereby it is that we separate ourselves from the ethics
+of interest and the ethics of sentiment. We admit all the facts, but we
+do not admit them in the same rank.
+
+To the moral law in the reason of man corresponds liberty in action.
+Liberty is deduced from obligation, and moreover it is a fact of an
+irresistible evidence.
+
+Man as a being free and subject to obligation, is a moral person. The
+idea of person contains several moral notions, among others that of
+right. Person alone can have rights.
+
+To all these ideas is added that of merit and demerit, which serves as
+their sanction.
+
+Merit and demerit suppose the distinction between good and evil,
+obligation and liberty, and give birth to the idea of reward and
+punishment.
+
+It is on the condition that the good may be an object of reason, that
+ethics can have an immovable basis. We have therefore insisted on the
+rational character of the idea of the good, but without misconceiving
+the part of sentiment.
+
+We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which is stirred in
+us in the train of reason itself, from physical sensibility, which needs
+an impression made upon the organs in order to enter into exercise.
+
+All our moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to
+them. The sight of an action which we judge to be good gives us
+pleasure,--the consciousness of having performed an obligatory act, and
+of having performed it freely, is also a pleasure; the judgment of merit
+and demerit makes our hearts beat by taking the form of sympathy and
+benevolence.
+
+It must be avowed that the law of duty, although it ought to be
+fulfilled for its own sake, would be an ideal almost inaccessible to
+human weakness, if to its austere prescriptions were not added some
+inspiration of the heart. Sentiment is in some sort a natural grace that
+has been given us, either to supply the light of reason that is
+sometimes uncertain, or to succor the will wavering in the presence of
+an obscure or painful duty. In order to resist the violence of culpable
+passions, the aid of generous passions is needed; and when the moral
+law exacts the sacrifice of natural sentiments, of the sweetest and most
+lively instincts, it is fortunate that it can support itself on other
+sentiments, or other instincts which also have their charm and their
+force. Truth enlightens the mind; sentiment warms the soul and leads to
+action. It is not cold reason that determines a Codrus to devote himself
+for his countrymen, a d'Assas to utter, beneath the steel of the enemy,
+the generous cry that brings him death and saves the army. Let us guard
+ourselves, then, from weakening the authority of sentiment; let us honor
+and sustain enthusiasm; it is the source whence spring great and heroic
+actions.
+
+And shall interest be entirely banished from our system? No; we
+recognize in the human soul a desire for happiness which is the work of
+God himself. This desire is a fact,--it must then have its place in a
+system founded upon experience. Happiness is one of the ends of human
+nature; only it is neither its sole end nor its principal end.
+
+Admirable economy of the moral constitution of man! Its supreme end is
+the good, its law is virtue, which often imposes on it suffering, and
+thereby it is the most excellent of all things that we know. But this
+law is very hard and in contradiction with the instinct of happiness.
+Fear nothing,--the beneficent author of our being has placed in our
+souls, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet and amiable
+force of sentiment,--he has, in general, attached happiness to virtue;
+and, for the exceptions, for there are exceptions, at the end of the
+course he has placed hope.[230]
+
+Our doctrine is now known. Its only pretension is to express faithfully
+each fact, to express them all, and to make appear at once their
+differences and their harmony.
+
+Beyond that there is nothing new to attempt in ethics. To admit only a
+single fact and to sacrifice to that all the rest,--such is the beaten
+way. Of all the facts that we have just analyzed, there is not one that
+has not in its turn played the part of sole principle. All the great
+schools of moral philosophy have each seen only one side of
+truth,--fortunate when they have not chosen among the different phases
+of the moral phenomenon, in order to found upon them their entire
+system, precisely those that are least adapted to that end!
+
+Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most manifest facts,
+against common sense, against the very idea of all ethics, found duty,
+virtue, the good, on the desire of happiness alone? It would be proof of
+great blindness and great barrenness. On the other hand, shall we
+immolate the need of happiness, the hope of all reward, human or divine,
+to the abstract idea of the good? The Stoics have done it,--we know with
+what apparent grandeur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine with
+Kant the whole of ethics to obligation? That is straitening still more a
+system that is already very narrow. Moreover, one may hope to surpass
+Kant in extent of views, by a completer knowledge and more faithful
+representation of facts; one cannot hope to be more profound in the
+point of view that he has chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, shall
+we refer to the will of God alone the obligation of virtue, and found
+ethics on religion, instead of giving religion to ethics as their
+necessary perfection? We still invent nothing new, we only renew the
+ethics of the theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular
+school which has had for its adversaries the most illustrious doctors.
+Finally, shall we reduce all morality to sentiment, to sympathy, to
+benevolence? It only remains to follow the footsteps of Hutcheson and
+Smith, abandoned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of a celebrated
+adversary of Kant, Jacobi.[231]
+
+The time of exclusive theories has gone by; to renew them is to
+perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, being founded upon a real
+fact, rightly refuses the sacrifice of this fact; and it meets in
+hostile theories an equal right and an equal resistance. Hence the
+perpetual return of the same systems, always at war with each other, and
+by turns vanquished and victorious. This strife can cease only by means
+of a doctrine that conciliates all systems by comprising all the facts
+that give them authority.
+
+It is not the preconceived design of conciliating systems in history
+that suggests to us the idea of conciliating facts in reality. It is, on
+the contrary, the full possession of all the facts, analogous and
+different, that forces us to absolve and condemn all systems on account
+of the truth that is in each of them, and on account of the errors that
+are mixed with the truth.
+
+It is important to repeat continually, that nothing is so easy as to
+arrange a system, by suppressing or altering the facts that embarrass
+it. But is it, then, the object of philosophy to produce at any cost a
+system, instead of seeking to understand the truth and express it as it
+is?
+
+It is objected that such a doctrine has not sufficient character. But is
+it not sporting with philosophy to demand of it any other character than
+that of truth? Do men complain that modern chemistry has not sufficient
+character, because it limits itself to studying facts in their
+relations, and also in their differences, and because it does not end at
+a single substance? The only true philosophy that is proper for a
+century returned from all exaggerations, is a picture of human nature
+whose first merit is fidelity, which must offer all the traits of the
+original in their right proportion and real harmony. The unity of the
+doctrine that we profess is in that of the human soul, whence we have
+drawn it. Is it not one and the same being that perceives the good, that
+knows that he is obligated to fulfil it, that knows that he is free in
+fulfilling it, that loves the good, and judges that the fulfilment or
+violation of the good justly brings after it reward or punishment,
+happiness or misery? We draw, then, a true unity from the intimate
+relation between all the facts that, as we have seen, imply and sustain
+each other. But by what right is the unity of a doctrine placed in
+allowing in it only a single principle? Such a unity is possible only
+in those regions of mathematical abstraction, where one is not disturbed
+by what is, where one retrenches at will from the object that he is
+studying, in order to simplify it continually, where every thing is
+reduced to pure notions. In the reality all is determined, and
+consequently, all is complex. A science of facts is not a series of
+equations. In it must be found again the life that is in things, life
+with its harmony doubtless, but also with its richness and
+diversity.[232]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[216] On indignation, see lecture 11.
+
+[217] On remorse, see lecture 11.
+
+[218] See the _Gorgias_, with the _Argument_, vol. iii. of our
+translation.
+
+[219] Lectures 1 and 6.
+
+[220] Lectures 2, 3, and 6.
+
+[221] 1st part, lecture 2.
+
+[222] Lecture 2.
+
+[223] 1st part, lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture
+8.
+
+[224] 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.
+
+[225] See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st
+Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, _Locke_, p. 71; lecture 3, _Condillac_, p.
+116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., lecture 23, _Reid_, p. 541-574; 2d Series,
+vol. iii., _Examination of the System of Locke_, lecture 25.
+
+[226] Lecture 12.
+
+[227] See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true
+principle of political economy, p. 278-302.
+
+[228] Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'echafaud.
+
+[229] See lecture 16, _God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good_.
+
+[230] See lecture 16.
+
+[231] On Jacobi, see Tennemann's _Manual of the History of Philosophy_,
+vol. iii., p. 318, etc.
+
+[232] On this important question of method, see lecture 12.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XV.
+
+PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.
+
+    Application of the preceding principles.--General formula of
+    interest,--to obey reason.--Rule for judging whether an action
+    is or is not conformed to reason,--to elevate the motive of this
+    action into a maxim of universal legislation.--Individual
+    ethics. It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral
+    person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual
+    duties,--to respect and develop the moral person.--Social
+    ethics,--duties of justice and duties of charity.--Civil
+    society. Government. Law. The right to punish.
+
+
+We know that there is moral good and that there is moral evil: we know
+that this distinction between good and evil engenders an obligation, a
+law, duty; but we do not yet know what our duties are. The general
+principle of ethics is laid down; it must be followed at least into its
+most important applications.
+
+If duty is only truth become obligatory, and if truth is known only by
+reason, to obey the law of duty, is to obey reason.
+
+But to obey reason is a precept very vague and very abstract:--how can
+we be sure that our action is conformed or is not conformed to reason?
+
+The character of reason being, as we have said, its universality,
+action, in order to be conformed to reason, must possess something
+universal; and as it is the motive itself of the action that gives it
+its morality, it is also the motive that must, if the action is good,
+reflect the character of reason. By what sign, then, do you recognize
+that an action is conformed to reason, that it is good? By the sign that
+the motive of this action being generalized, appears to you a maxim of
+universal legislation, which reason imposes upon all intelligent and
+free beings. If you are not able thus to generalize the motive of an
+action, and if it is the opposite motive that appears to you a universal
+maxim, your action, being opposed to this maxim, is thereby proved to be
+contrary to reason and duty,--it is bad. If neither the motive of your
+action nor the motive of the opposite action can be erected into a
+universal law, the action is neither good nor bad, it is indifferent.
+Such is the ingenious measure that Kant has applied to the morality of
+actions. It makes known with the last degree of clearness where duty is
+and where it is not, as the severe and naked form of syllogism, being
+applied to reasoning, brings out in the precisest manner its error or
+its truth.
+
+To obey reason,--such is duty in itself, the duty superior to all other
+duties, giving to all others their foundation, and being itself founded
+only on the essential relation between liberty and reason.
+
+It may be said that there is only a single duty, that of obeying reason.
+But man having different relations, this single and general duty is
+determined by these different relations, and divided into a
+corresponding number of particular duties.
+
+Of all the beings that we know, there is not one with whom we are more
+constantly in relation than with ourselves. The actions of which man is
+at once the author and the object, have rules as well as other actions.
+Hence that first class of duties which are called the duties of man
+towards himself.
+
+At first sight, it is strange that man should have duties towards
+himself. Man, being free, belongs to himself. What is most to me is
+myself:--this is the first property and the foundation of all other
+properties. Now, is it not the essence of property to be at the free
+disposition of the proprietor, and consequently, am I not able to do
+with myself what I please?
+
+No; from the fact that man is free, from the fact that he belongs only
+to himself, it must not be concluded that he has over himself all power.
+On the contrary, indeed, from the fact alone that he is endowed with
+liberty, as well as intelligence, I conclude that he can no more
+degrade his liberty than his intelligence, without transgressing. It is
+a culpable use of liberty to abdicate it. We have said that liberty is
+not only sacred to others, but is so to itself. To subject it to the
+yoke of passion, instead of increasing it under the liberal discipline
+of duty, is to abase in us what deserves our respect as much as the
+respect of others. Man is not a thing; it has not, then, been permitted
+him to treat himself as a thing.
+
+If I have duties towards myself, it is not towards myself as an
+individual, it is towards the liberty and intelligence that make me a
+free moral person. It is necessary to distinguish closely in us what is
+peculiar to us from what pertains to humanity. Each one of us contains
+in himself human nature with all its essential elements; and, in
+addition, all these elements are in him in a certain manner that is not
+the same in two different men. These particularities make the
+individual, but not the person; and the person alone in us is to be
+respected and held as sacred, because it alone represents humanity.
+Every thing that does not concern the moral person is indifferent. In
+these limits I may consult my tastes, even my fancies to a certain
+extent, because in them there is nothing absolute, because in them good
+and evil are in no way involved. But as soon as an act touches the moral
+person, my liberty is subjected to its law, to reason, which does not
+allow liberty to be turned against itself. For example, if through
+caprice, or melancholy, or any other motive, I condemn myself to an
+abstinence too prolonged, if I impose on myself vigils protracted and
+beyond my strength; if I absolutely renounce all pleasure, and, by these
+excessive privations, endanger my health, my life, my reason, these are
+no longer indifferent actions. Sickness, death, madness, may become
+crimes, if we voluntarily bring them upon ourselves.
+
+I have not established this obligation of self-respect imposed on the
+moral person, therefore I cannot destroy it. Is self-respect founded on
+one of those arbitrary conventions that cease to exist when the two
+contracting parties freely renounce them? Are the two contracting
+parties here _me_ and myself? By no means; one of the contracting
+parties is not _me_, to wit, humanity, the moral person. And there is
+here neither convention nor contract. By the fact alone that the moral
+person is in us, we are obligated towards it, without convention of any
+sort, without contract that can be cancelled, and by the very nature of
+things. Hence it comes that obligation is absolute.
+
+Respect of the moral person in us is the general principle whence are
+derived all individual duties. We will cite some of them.
+
+The most important, that which governs all others, is the duty of
+remaining master of one's self. One may lose possession of himself in
+two ways, either by allowing himself to be carried away, or by allowing
+himself to be overcome, by yielding to enervating passions or to
+overwhelming passions, to anger or to melancholy. On either hand there
+is equal weakness. And I do not speak of the consequences of those vices
+for society and ourselves,--certainly they are very injurious; but they
+are much worse than that, they are already bad in themselves, because in
+themselves they give a blow to moral dignity, because they diminish
+liberty and disturb intelligence.
+
+Prudence is an eminent virtue. I speak of that noble prudence that is
+the moderation in all things, the foresight, the fitness, that preserve
+at once from negligence and that rashness which adorns itself with the
+name of heroism, as cowardice and selfishness sometimes usurp the name
+of prudence. Heroism, without being premeditated, ought always to be
+rational. One may be a hero at intervals; but, in every-day life, it is
+sufficient to be a wise man. We must ourselves hold the reins of our
+life, and not prepare difficulties for ourselves by carelessness or
+bravado, nor create for ourselves useless perils. Doubtless we must know
+how to dare, but still prudence is, if not the principle, at least the
+rule of courage; for true courage is not a blind transport, it is before
+all coolness and self possession in danger. Prudence also teaches
+temperance; it keeps the soul in that state of moderation without which
+man is incapable of recognizing and practising justice. This is the
+reason why the ancients said that prudence is the mother and guardian of
+all the virtues. Prudence is the government of liberty by reason, as
+imprudence is liberty escaped from reason:--on the one side, order, the
+legitimate subordination of our faculties to each other; on the other,
+anarchy and revolt.[233]
+
+Veracity is also a great virtue. Falsehood, by breaking the natural
+alliance between man and truth, deprives him of that which makes his
+dignity. This is the reason why there is no graver insult than giving
+the lie, and why the most honored virtues are sincerity and frankness.
+
+One may degrade the moral person by wounding it in its instruments. For
+this reason the body is to man the object of imperative duties. The body
+may become an obstacle or a means. If you refuse it what sustains and
+strengthens it, or if you demand too much from it by exciting it beyond
+measure, you exhaust it, and by abusing it, deprive yourself of it. It
+is worse still if you pamper it, if you grant every thing to its
+unbridled desires, if you make yourself its slave. It is being
+unfaithful to the soul to enfeeble its servant; it is being much more
+unfaithful to it still, to enslave it to its servant.
+
+But it is not enough to respect the moral person, it is necessary to
+perfect it; it is necessary to labor to return the soul to God better
+than we received it; and it can become so only by a constant and
+courageous exercise. Everywhere in nature, all things are spontaneously
+developed, without willing it, and without knowing it. With man, if the
+will slumbers, the other faculties degenerate into languor and inertion;
+or, carried away by the blind impulse of passion, they are precipitated
+and go astray. It is by the government and education of himself that man
+is great.
+
+Man must, before every thing else, occupy himself with his
+intelligence. It is in fact our intelligence that alone can give us a
+clear sight of the true and the good, that guides liberty by showing it
+the legitimate object of its efforts. No one can give himself another
+mind than the one that he has received, but he may train and strengthen
+it as well as the body, by putting it to a task of some kind, by rousing
+it when it is drowsy, by restraining it when it is carried away, by
+continually proposing to it new objects,--for it is only by continually
+enriching it that it does not grow poor. Sloth benumbs and enervates the
+mind; regular work excites and strengthens it, and work is always in our
+power.
+
+There is an education of liberty as well as our other faculties. It is
+sometimes in subduing the body, sometimes in governing our intelligence,
+especially in resisting our passions, that we learn to be free. We
+encounter opposition at each step,--the only question is not to shun it.
+In this constant struggle liberty is formed and augmented, until it
+becomes a habit.
+
+Finally, there is a culture of sensibility itself. Fortunate are those
+who have received from nature the sacred fire of enthusiasm! They ought
+religiously to preserve it. But there is no soul that does not conceal
+some fortunate vein of it. It is necessary to watch it and pursue, to
+avoid what restrains it, to seek what favors it, and, by an assiduous
+culture, draw from it, little by little, some treasures. If we cannot
+give ourselves sensibility, we can at least develop what we have. We can
+do this by giving ourselves up to it, by seizing all the occasions of
+giving ourselves up to it, by calling to its aid intelligence itself;
+for, the more we know of the beautiful and the good, the more we love
+it. Sentiment thereby only borrows from intelligence what it returns
+with usury. Intelligence in its turn finds, in the heart, a rampart
+against sophism. Noble, sentiments, nourished and developed, preserve
+from those sad systems that please certain spirits so much only because
+their hearts are so small.
+
+Man would still have duties, should he cease to be in relation with
+other men.[234] As long as he preserves any intelligence and any
+liberty, the idea of the good dwells in him, and with it duty. Were we
+cast upon a desert island, duty would follow us thither. It would be
+beyond belief strange that it should be in the power of certain
+external circumstances to affranchise an intelligent and free being from
+all obligation towards his liberty and his intelligence. In the deepest
+solitude he is always and consciously under the empire of a law attached
+to the person itself, which, by obligating him to keep continual watch
+over himself, makes at once his torment and his grandeur.
+
+If the moral person is sacred to me, it is not because it is in me, it
+is because it is the moral person; it is in itself respectable; it will
+be so, then, wherever we meet it.
+
+It is in you as in me, and for the same reason. In relation to me it
+imposes on me a duty; in you it becomes the foundation of a right, and
+thereby imposes on me a new duty in relation to you.
+
+I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself; for truth is the law of your
+reason as of mine. Without doubt there ought to be measure in the
+communication of truth,--all are not capable of it at the same moment
+and in the same degree; it is necessary to portion it out to them in
+order that they may be able to receive it; but, in fine, the truth is
+the proper good of the intelligence; and it is for me a strict duty to
+respect the development of your mind, not to arrest, and even to favor
+its progress towards truth.
+
+I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always the right
+to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so sacred that, even
+when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a certain point, to be
+managed. We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that
+God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an attempt to purify
+them.
+
+I ought to respect you in your affections, which make part of yourself;
+and of all the affections there are none more holy than those of the
+family. There is in us a need of expanding ourselves beyond ourselves,
+yet without dispelling ourselves, of establishing ourselves in some
+souls by a regular and consecrated affection,--to this need the family
+responds. The love of men is something of the general good. The family
+is still almost the individual, and not merely the individual,--it only
+requires us to love as much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It
+attaches one to the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all
+ties--father, mother, child; it gives to this sure succor in the love of
+its parents--to these hope, joy, new life, in their child. To violate
+the conjugal or paternal right, is to violate the person in what is
+perhaps its most sacred possession.
+
+I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you, inasmuch as
+it is the necessary instrument of your person. I have neither the right
+to kill you, nor to wound you, unless I am attacked and threatened; then
+my violated liberty is armed with a new right, the right of defence and
+even constraint.
+
+I owe respect to your goods, for they are the product of your labor; I
+owe respect to your labor, which is your liberty itself in exercise;
+and, if your goods come from an inheritance, I still owe respect to the
+free will that has transmitted them to you.[235]
+
+Respect for the rights of others is called justice; every violation of a
+right is an injustice.
+
+Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person,--to retrench the
+least of our rights, is to diminish our moral person, is, at least, so
+far as that retrenchment goes, to abase us to the condition of a thing.
+
+The greatest of all injustices, because it comprises all others, is
+slavery. Slavery is the subjecting of all the faculties of one man to
+the profit of another man. The slave develops his intelligence a little
+only in the interest of another,--it is not for the purpose of
+enlightening him, but to render him more useful, that some exercise of
+mind is allowed him. The slave has not the liberty of his movements; he
+is attached to the soil, is sold with it, or he is chained to the person
+of a master. The slave should have no affection, he has no family, no
+wife, no children,--he has a female and little ones. His activity does
+not belong to him, for the product of his labor is another's. But, that
+nothing may be wanting to slavery, it is necessary to go farther,--in
+the slave must be destroyed the inborn sentiment of liberty, in him must
+be extinguished all idea of right; for, as long as this idea subsists,
+slavery is uncertain, and to an odious power may respond the terrible
+right of insurrection, that last resort of the oppressed against the
+abuse of force.[236]
+
+Justice, respect for the person in every thing that constitutes the
+person, is the first duty of man towards his fellow-man. Is this duty
+the only one?
+
+When we have respected the person of others, when we have neither
+restrained their liberty, nor smothered their intelligence, nor
+maltreated their body, nor outraged their family, nor injured their
+goods, are we able to say that we have fulfilled the whole law in regard
+to them? One who is unfortunate is suffering before us. Is our
+conscience satisfied, if we are able to bear witness to ourselves that
+we have not contributed to his sufferings? No; something tells that it
+is still good to give him bread, succor, consolation.
+
+There is here an important distinction to be made. If you have remained
+hard and insensible at the sight of another's misery, conscience cries
+out against you; and yet this man who is suffering, who, perhaps, is
+ready to die, has not the least right over the least part of your
+fortune, were it immense; and, if he used violence for the purpose of
+wresting from you a single penny, he would commit a crime. We here meet
+a new order of duties that do not correspond to rights. Man may resort
+to force in order to make his rights respected; he cannot impose on
+another any sacrifice whatever. Justice respects or restores; charity
+gives, and gives freely.
+
+Charity takes from us something in order to give it to our fellow-men.
+If it goes so far as to inspire us to renounce our dearest interests, it
+is called devotedness.
+
+It certainly cannot be said that to be charitable is not obligatory. But
+this obligation must not be regarded as precise, as inflexible as the
+obligation to be just. Charity is a sacrifice; and who can find the rule
+of sacrifice, the formula of self-renunciation? For justice, the formula
+is clear,--to respect the rights of another. But charity knows neither
+rule nor limit. It transcends all obligation. Its beauty is precisely in
+its liberty.
+
+But it must be acknowledged that charity also has its dangers. It tends
+to substitute its own action for the action of him whom it wishes to
+help; it somewhat effaces his personality, and makes itself in some sort
+his providence,--a formidable part for a mortal! In order to be useful
+to others, one imposes himself on them, and runs the risk of violating
+their natural rights. Love, in giving itself, enslaves. Doubtless it is
+not interdicted us to act upon another. We can always do it through
+petition and exhortation. We can also do it by threatening, when we see
+one of our fellows engaged in a criminal or senseless action. We have
+even the right to employ force when passion carries away liberty and
+makes the person disappear. So we may, we even ought to prevent by force
+the suicide of one of our fellow-men. The legitimate power of charity is
+measured by the more or less liberty and reason possessed by him to whom
+it is applied. What delicacy, then, is necessary in the exercise of this
+perilous virtue! How can we estimate with sufficient certainty the
+degree of liberty still possessed by one of our fellow-men to know how
+far we may substitute ourselves for him in the guiding of his destiny?
+And when, in order to assist a feeble soul, we take possession of it,
+who is sufficiently sure of himself not to go farther, not to pass from
+the person governed to the love of domination itself? Charity is often
+the commencement and the excuse, and always the pretext of usurpation.
+In order to have the right of abandoning one's self to the emotions of
+charity, it is necessary to be fortified against one's self by a long
+exercise of justice.
+
+To respect the rights of others and do good to men, to be at once just
+and charitable,--such are social ethics in the two elements that
+constitute them.
+
+We speak of social ethics, and we do not yet know what society is. Let
+us look around us:--everywhere society exists, and where it is not, man
+is not man. Society is a universal fact which must have universal
+foundations.
+
+Let us avoid at first the question of the origin of society.[237] The
+philosophy of the last century delighted in such questions too much. How
+can we demand light from the regions of darkness, and the explanation of
+reality from an hypothesis? Why go back to a pretended primitive state
+in order to account for a present state which may be studied in itself
+in its unquestionable characters? Why seek what may have been in the
+germ that which may be perceived, that which it is the question to
+understand, completed and perfect? Moreover, there is great peril in
+starting with the question of the origin of society. Has such or such an
+origin been found? Actual society is arranged according to the type of
+the primitive society that has been dreamed of, and political society is
+delivered up to the mercy of historical romances. This one imagines that
+the primitive state is violence, and he sets out from that in order to
+authorize the right of the strongest, and to consecrate despotism. That
+one thinks that he has found in the family the first form of society,
+and he compares government to the father of a family, and subjects to
+children; society in his eyes is a minor that must be held in tutelage
+in the hands of the paternal power, which in the origin is absolute, and
+consequently, must remain so. Or has one thrown himself to the extreme
+of the opposite opinion, and into the hypothesis of an agreement, of a
+contract that expresses the will of all or of the greatest number? He
+delivers up to the mobile will of the crowd the eternal laws of justice
+and the inalienable rights of the person. Finally, are powerful
+religious institutions found in the cradle of society? It is hence
+concluded, that power belongs of right to priesthoods, which have the
+secret of the designs of God, and represent his sovereign authority.
+Thus a vicious method in philosophy leads to a deplorable political
+system,--the commencement is made in hypothesis, and the termination is
+in anarchy or tyranny.
+
+True politics do not depend on more or less well directed historical
+researches into the profound night of a past forever vanished, and of
+which no vestige subsists: they rest on the knowledge of human nature.
+
+Wherever society is, wherever it was, it has for its foundations:--1st,
+The need that we have of our fellow-creatures, and the social instincts
+that man bears in himself; 2d, The permanent and indestructible idea and
+sentiment of justice and right.
+
+Man, feeble and powerless when he is alone, profoundly feels the need
+that he has of the succor of his fellow-creatures in order to develop
+his faculties, to embellish his life, and even to preserve it.[238]
+Without reflection, without convention, he claims the hand, the
+experience, the love of those whom he sees made like himself. The
+instinct of society is in the first cry of the child that calls for the
+mother's help without knowing that it has a mother, and in the eagerness
+of the mother to respond to the cries of the child. It is in the
+feelings for others that nature has put in us--pity, sympathy,
+benevolence. It is in the attraction of the sexes, in their union, in
+the love of parents for their children, and in the ties of every kind
+that these first ties engender. If Providence has attached so much
+sadness to solitude, so much charm to society, it is because society is
+indispensable for the preservation of man and for his happiness, for his
+intellect and moral development.
+
+But if need and instinct begin society, it is justice that completes it.
+
+In the presence of another man, without any external law, without any
+compact,[239] it is sufficient that I know that he is a man, that is to
+say, that he is intelligent and free, in order to know that he has
+rights, and to know that I ought to respect his rights as he ought to
+respect mine. As he is no freer than I am, nor I than he, we recognize
+towards each other equal rights and equal duties. If he abuses his force
+to violate the equality of our rights, I know that I have the right to
+defend myself and make myself respected; and if a third party is found
+between us, without any personal interest in the quarrel, he knows that
+it is his right and his duty to use force in order to protect the
+feeble, and even to make the oppressor expiate his injustice by a
+chastisement. Therein is already seen entire society with its essential
+principles,--justice, liberty, equality, government, and punishment.
+
+Justice is the guaranty of liberty. True liberty does not consist in
+doing what we will, but in doing what we have a right to do. Liberty of
+passion and caprice would have for its consequence the enslavement of
+the weakest to the strongest, and the enslavement of the strongest
+themselves to their unbridled desires. Man is truly free in the interior
+of his consciousness only in resisting passion and obeying justice;
+therein also is the type of true social liberty. Nothing is falser than
+the opinion that society diminishes our mutual liberty; far from that,
+it secures it, develops it: what it suppresses is not liberty; it is its
+opposite, passion. Society no more injures liberty than justice, for
+society is nothing else than the very idea of justice realized.
+
+In securing liberty, justice secures equality also. If men are unequal
+in physical force and intelligence, they are equal in so far as they are
+free beings, and consequently equally worthy of respect. All men, when
+they bear the sacred character of the moral person, are to be respected,
+by the same title, and in the same degree.[240]
+
+The limit of liberty is in liberty itself; the limit of right is in
+duty. Liberty is to be respected, but provided it injure not the liberty
+of an other. I ought to let you do what you please, but on the condition
+that nothing which you do will injure my liberty. For then, in virtue of
+my right of liberty, I should regard myself as obligated to repress the
+aberrations of your will, in order to protect my own and that of others.
+Society guaranties the liberty of each one, and if one citizen attacks
+that of another, he is arrested in the name of liberty. For example,
+religious liberty is sacred; you may, in the secret of consciousness,
+invent for yourself the most extravagant superstition; but if you wish
+publicly to inculcate an immoral worship, you threaten the liberty and
+reason of your citizens: such preaching is interdicted.
+
+From the necessity of repressing springs the necessity of a constituted
+repressive force.
+
+Rigorously, this force is in us; for if I am unjustly attacked, I have
+the right to defend myself. But, in the first place, I may not be the
+strongest; in the second place, no one is an impartial judge in his own
+cause, and what I regard or give out as an act of legitimate defence may
+be an act of violence and oppression.
+
+So the protection of the rights of each one demands an impartial and
+disinterested force, that may be superior to all particular forces.
+
+This disinterested party, armed with the power necessary to secure and
+defend the liberty of all, is called government.
+
+The right of government expresses the rights of all and each. It is the
+right of personal defence transferred to a public force, to the profit
+of common liberty.
+
+Government is not, then, a power distinct from and independent of
+society; it draws from society its whole force. It is not what it has
+seemed to two opposite schools of publicists,--to those who sacrifice
+society to government,--to those who consider government as the enemy of
+society. If government did not represent society, it would be only a
+material, illegitimate, and soon powerless force; and without
+government, society would be a war of all against all. Society makes
+the moral power of government, as government makes the security of
+society. Pascal is wrong[241] when he says, that not being able to make
+what is just powerful, men have made what is powerful just. Government,
+in principle at least, is precisely what Pascal desired,--justice armed
+with force.
+
+It is a sad and false political system that places society and
+government, authority and liberty, in opposition to each other, by
+making them come from two different sources, by presenting them as two
+contrary principles. I often hear the principle of authority spoken of
+as a principle apart, independent, deriving from itself its force and
+legitimacy, and consequently made to rule. No error is deeper and more
+dangerous. Thereby it is thought to confirm the principle of authority;
+far from that, from it is taken away its solidest foundation.
+Authority--that is to say, legitimate and moral authority--is nothing
+else than justice, and justice is nothing else than the respect of
+liberty; so that there is not therein two different and contrary
+opinions, but one and the same principle, of equal certainty and equal
+grandeur, under all its forms and in all its applications.
+
+Authority, it is said, comes from God: doubtless; but whence comes
+liberty, whence comes humanity? To God must be referred every thing that
+is excellent on the earth; and nothing is more excellent than liberty.
+Reason, which in man commands liberty, commands it according to its
+nature; and the first law that reason imposes on liberty is that of
+self-respect.
+
+Authority is so much the stronger as its true title is better
+understood; and obedience is the easiest when, instead of degrading, it
+honors; when, instead of resembling servitude, it is at once the
+condition and guaranty of liberty.
+
+The mission, the end of government, is to make justice, the protector of
+the common liberty, reign. Whence it follows, that as long as the
+liberty of one citizen does not injure the liberty of another, it
+escapes all repression. So government cannot be severe against
+falsehood, intemperance, imprudence, levity, avarice, egoism, except
+when these vices become prejudicial to others. Moreover, it is not
+necessary to confine government within too narrow limits. Government,
+which represents society, is also a moral person; it has a heart like
+the individual; it has generosity, goodness, charity. There are
+legitimate, and even universally admired facts, that are not explained,
+if the function of government is reduced to the protection of rights
+alone.[242] Government owes to the citizens, in a certain measure, to
+guard their well-being, to develop their intelligence, to fortify their
+morality, for the interest of society, and even for the interest of
+humanity. Hence sometimes for government the formidable right of using
+force in order to do good to men. But we are here touching upon that
+delicate point where charity inclines to despotism. Too much
+intelligence and wisdom, therefore, cannot be demanded in the employment
+of a power perhaps necessary, but dangerous.
+
+Now, on what condition is government exercised? Is an act of its own
+will sufficient for it in order to employ to its own liking under all
+circumstances, as it shall understand them, the power that has been
+confided to it? Government must have been thus exercised in early
+society, and in the infancy of the art of governing. But the power,
+exercised by men, may go astray in different ways, either through
+weakness or through excess of force. It must, then, have a rule superior
+to itself, a public and known rule, that may be a lesson for the
+citizens, and for the government a rein and support: that rule is called
+law.
+
+Universal and absolute law is natural justice, which cannot be written,
+but speaks to the reason and heart of all. Written laws are the formulas
+wherein it is sought to express, with the least possible imperfection,
+what natural justice requires in such or such determined circumstances.
+
+If laws propose to express in each thing natural justice, which is
+universal and absolute justice, one of the necessary conditions of a
+good law is the universality of its character. It is necessary to
+examine in an abstract and general manner what is required by justice in
+such or such a case, to the end that this case being presented may be
+judged according to the rule laid down, without regard to circumstances,
+place, time, or person.
+
+The collection of those rules or laws that govern the social relations
+of individuals is called positive right. Positive right rests wholly on
+natural right, which at once serves as its foundation, measure, and
+limit. The supreme law of every positive law is that it be not opposed
+to natural law: no law can impose on us a false duty, nor deprive us of
+a true right.
+
+The sanction of law is punishment. We have already seen that the right
+to punish springs from the idea of demerit.[243] In the universal
+order, to God alone it belongs to apply a punishment to all faults,
+whatever they may be. In the social order, government is invested with
+the right to punish only for the purpose of protecting liberty by
+imposing a just reparation on those who violate it. Every fault that is
+not contrary to justice, and does not strike at liberty, escapes, then,
+social retribution. Neither is the right to punish the right of avenging
+one's self. To render evil for evil, to demand an eye for an eye, a
+tooth for a tooth, is the barbarous form of a justice without light; for
+the evil that I do you will not take away the evil that you have done
+me. It is not the pain felt by the victim that demands a corresponding
+pain; it is violated justice that imposes on the culpable man the
+expiation of suffering. Such is the morality of penalty. The principle
+of penalty is not the reparation of damage caused. If I have caused you
+damage without intending it, I pay you an indemnity; that is not a
+penalty, for I am not culpable; whilst if I have committed a crime, in
+spite of the material indemnity for the evil that I have done, I owe a
+reparation to justice by a proper suffering, and in that truly consists
+the penalty.
+
+What is the exact proportion of chastisements and crimes? This question
+cannot receive an absolute solution. What is here immutable, is that the
+act opposed to justice merits a punishment, and that the more unjust the
+act is, the severer ought to be the punishment. But by the side of the
+right to punish is the duty of correcting. To the culprit must be left
+the possibility of repairing his crime. The culpable man is still a
+man; he is not a thing of which we ought to rid ourselves as soon as it
+becomes injurious, a stone that falls on our heads, that we throw into a
+gulf that it may wound no more. Man is a rational being, capable of
+comprehending good and evil, of repenting, and of being one day
+reconciled with order. These truths have given birth to works that honor
+the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.
+The conception of houses of correction reminds one of those early times
+of Christianity when punishment consisted in an expiation that permitted
+the culprit to return through repentance to the ranks of the just. Here
+intervenes, as we have just indicated, the principle of charity, which
+is very different from the principle of justice. To punish is just, to
+ameliorate is charitable. In what measure ought those two principles to
+be united? Nothing is more delicate, more difficult to determine. It is
+certain that justice ought to govern. In undertaking the amendment of
+the culprit, government usurps, with a very generous usurpation, the
+rights of religion; but it ought not to go so far as to forget its
+proper function and its rigorous duty.
+
+Let us pause on the threshold of politics, properly so called. Nothing
+in them but these principles is fixed and invariable; all else is
+relative. The constitutions of states have something absolute by their
+relation to the inviolable rights which they ought to guarantee; but
+they also have a relative side by the variable forms with which they are
+clothed, according to times, places, manners, history. The supreme rule
+of which philosophy reminds politics, is that politics ought, in
+consulting all circumstances, to seek always those social forms and
+institutions that best realize those eternal principles. Yes, they are
+eternal; because they are drawn from no arbitrary hypothesis, because
+they rest on the immutable nature of man, on the all-powerful instincts
+of the heart, on the indestructible notion of justice, and the sublime
+idea of charity, on the consciousness of person, liberty, and equality,
+on duty and right, on merit and demerit. Such are the foundations of
+all true society, worthy of the beautiful name of human society, that is
+to say, formed of free and rational beings; and such are the maxims that
+ought to direct every government worthy of its mission, which knows that
+it is not dealing with beasts but with men, which respects them and
+loves them.
+
+Thank God, French society has always marched by the light of this
+immortal idea, and the dynasty that has been at its head for some
+centuries has always guided it in these generous ways. It was Louis le
+Gros, who, in the Middle Age, emancipated the communes; it was Philippe
+le Bel who instituted parliaments--an independent and gratuitous
+justice; it was Henri IV. who began religious liberty; it was Louis
+XIII. and Louis XIV. who, while they undertook to give to France her
+natural frontiers, and almost succeeded in it, labored to unite more and
+more all parts of the nation, to put a regular administration in the
+place of feudal anarchy, and to reduce the great vassals to a simple
+aristocracy, from day to day deprived of every privilege but that of
+serving the common country in the first rank. It was a king of France
+who, comprehending the new wants, and associating himself with the
+progress of the times, attempted to substitute for that very real, but
+confused and formless representative government, that was called the
+assemblies of the nobility, the clergy, and the _tiers etat_, the true
+representative government that is proper for great civilized nations,--a
+glorious and unfortunate attempt that, if royalty had then been served
+by a Richelieu, a Mazarin, or a Colbert, might have terminated in a
+necessary reform, that, through the fault of every one, ended in a
+revolution full of excess, violence, and crime, redeemed and covered by
+an incomparable courage, a sincere patriotism, and the most brilliant
+triumphs. Finally, it was the brother of Louis XVI. who, enlightened and
+not discouraged by the misfortunes of his family, spontaneously gave to
+France that liberal and wise constitution of which our fathers had
+dreamed, about which Montesquieu had written, which, loyally adhered to,
+and necessarily developed, is admirably fitted for the present time,
+and sufficient for a long future. We are fortunate in finding in the
+Charter the principles that we have just explained, that contain our
+views and our hopes for France and humanity.[244]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[233] See the _Republic_, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation.
+
+[234] On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too
+much accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our
+duties towards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics
+of Helvetius and Saint-Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235: "To define virtue
+an habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, is to
+concentrate virtue into a single one of its applications, is to suppress
+its general and essential character. Therein is the fundamental vice of
+the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those ethics are an exaggerated
+reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of the preceding age,
+which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man, often fell
+into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to
+well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the philosophy of
+the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only
+considered the virtues useful to society. That was retrenching many
+virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self. How
+make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined a _disposition to contribute
+to the happiness of others_? Will it be said that dominion over self is
+useful to others? But that is not always true; often this dominion is
+exercised in the solitude of the soul over internal and wholly personal
+movements; and there it is most painful and most sublime. Were we in a
+desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist our passions, to
+command ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a rational and
+free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither the
+whole of virtue, nor its most difficult employment. What auxiliaries we
+have when the question is to do good to our fellow-creatures,--pity,
+sympathy, natural benevolence! But to resist pride and envy, to combat
+in the depths of the soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often
+culpable in its excesses, to suffer and struggle in silence, is the
+hardest task of a virtuous man. I add that the virtues useful to others
+have their surest guaranty in those personal virtues that the eighteenth
+century misconceived. What are goodness, generosity, and beneficence
+without dominion over self, without the form of soul attached to the
+religious observance of duty? They are, perhaps, only the emotions of a
+beautiful nature placed in fortunate circumstances. Take away these
+circumstances, and, perhaps, the effects will disappear or be
+diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to be a rational and free
+being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain faithful to liberty and
+reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, and pursue, without
+cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circumstances, you
+may rely upon that man; he will know how, in case of need, to be useful
+to others, because there is no true perfection for him without justice
+and charity. From the care of internal perfection you may draw all the
+useful virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One may be
+beneficent without being virtuous; one is not virtuous without being
+beneficent."
+
+[235] On the true foundation of property see the preceding lecture.
+
+[236] Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by
+force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had another the
+desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to
+be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and
+had we also the desire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him
+serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize
+for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, because desire can never be
+the title of a right, because there is something in us that is above all
+desires, participated or not participated, to wit, duty and
+right,--justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires,
+and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity
+forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it
+extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate;
+eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it
+supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed
+and converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right,
+because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no
+contracts, no conventions, no human laws against the law of laws,
+against natural law."
+
+[237] On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge,
+see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: "Hobbes is not the
+only one who took the question of the origin of societies as the
+starting-point of political science. Nearly all the publicists of the
+eighteenth century, Montesquieu excepted, proceed in the same manner.
+Rousseau imagines at first a primitive state in which man being no
+longer savage without being yet civilized, lived happy and free under
+the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden age of humanity
+disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, who
+enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order
+cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in
+the shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is
+formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the abandonment by each
+and all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the
+community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the depository of
+all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for
+Rousseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by turns
+are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the
+despotism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law
+is not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of
+natural justice; it is the expression of the general will. This general
+will is alone free; particular wills are not free. The general will has
+all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on
+them, or rather lends them. Force, in _The Citizen_ is the foundation of
+society, of order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone
+institute. In the _Contrat Social_, the general will plays the same
+part, fulfils the same function. Moreover, the general will scarcely
+differs in itself from force. In fact, the general will is number, that
+is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, tyranny under different
+forms. One may here observe the power of method. If Hobbes, if Rousseau
+especially had at first studied the idea of right in itself, with the
+certain characters without which we are not able to conceive it, they
+would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from
+positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there
+are rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for
+principles and rules; from no convention, since they serve as the
+foundation to all conventions in order that these conventions may be
+reputed just;--rights that society consecrates and develops, but does
+not make,--rights not subject to the caprices of general or particular
+will, belonging essentially to human nature, and like it, inviolable and
+sacred."
+
+[238] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "What!" somewhere says Montesquieu,
+"man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for
+society! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of
+the life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The universal and
+permanent fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This
+principle shines forth in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in
+our beliefs. It is true that we love society for the advantages that it
+brings; but it is none the less true, that we also love it for its own
+sake, that we seek it independently of all calculation. Solitude saddens
+us; it is not less deadly to the life of the moral being, than a perfect
+vacuum is to the life of the physical being. Without society what would
+become of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful principles of our
+soul, which establishes between men a community of sentiments, by which
+each lives in all and all live in each? Who would be blind enough not to
+see in that an energetic call of human nature for society? And the
+attraction of the sexes, their union, the love of parents for
+children,--do they not found a sort of natural society, that is
+increased and developed by the power of the same causes which produced
+it? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect each other in
+the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other in virtue of
+natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right, charity
+inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each other
+succor and consolation. Wonderful thing! God has not left to our wisdom,
+nor even to experience, the care of forming and preserving society,--he
+has willed that sociability should be a law of our nature, and a law so
+imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no distaste even,
+can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of system was
+necessary in order to make Hobbes say that society is an accident, as an
+incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Rousseau the extravagant
+expression that society is an evil."
+
+[239] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283: "We do not hold from a compact our
+quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it; or, rather,
+there is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes
+itself felt by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds
+together all beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the
+sacred ties of a common respect and a common charity.... Laws promulgate
+duties, but do not give birth to them; they could not violate duties
+without being unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of
+laws--that is to say, decisions of the public authority worthy of
+appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. Nevertheless, although
+laws have no other virtue than that of declaring what exists before
+them, we often found on them right and justice, to the great detriment
+of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and habit despoil
+reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What then
+happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a very
+great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having
+no superior principle that enables us to judge it,--or we continually
+change it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not
+knowing the immutable basis on which written law must rest. In either
+case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not related to
+their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and
+absolute justice."
+
+[240] Lecture 12.
+
+[241] See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.
+
+[242] See our pamphlet entitled _Justice and Charity_, composed in 1848,
+in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the
+dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of
+true charity, private and civil.
+
+[243] See on the theory of penalty, the _Gorgias_, vol. iii. of the
+translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: "The first law of order
+is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related
+to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the second
+law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by
+punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty.
+Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of
+the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime
+by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is
+one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for
+punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still
+more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their
+pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment
+except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective
+virtue,--and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment,
+but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must
+be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice.
+Justice is the true foundation of punishment,--personal and social
+utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after
+every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred
+demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to
+the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice
+has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be
+inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought.
+Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident,
+and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only
+that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even
+result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary
+spectacle for the people,--what it would not then be; for then the
+punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public
+conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just,
+because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both
+ways useful, because it is just." This theory of penalty, in
+demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two
+theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives
+them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated
+in Plato, but is met in several passages, briefly but positively
+expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.
+
+[244] As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general
+principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st
+Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the
+civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the
+question of the different forms of government, and established the truth
+and beauty of the constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i.,
+lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental
+parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both
+liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the
+unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a passionate
+reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best,
+asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to
+serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the
+principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we
+demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in
+particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be
+obtained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,--6th Series,
+POLITICAL DISCOURSES, _with an introduction on the principles of the
+French Revolution and representative government_.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVI.
+
+GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD.
+
+    Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation
+    of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty
+    of God.--The divine justice and charity.--God the sanction of
+    the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and
+    demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from
+    final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Worship.--Moral
+    beauty of Christianity.
+
+
+The moral order has been confirmed,--we are in possession of moral
+truth, of the idea of the good, and the obligation that is attached to
+it. Now, the same principle that has not permitted us to stop at
+absolute truth,[245] and has forced us to seek its supreme reason in a
+real and substantial being, forces us here again to refer the idea of
+the good to the being who is its first and last foundation.
+
+Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, cannot
+remain in a state of abstraction. In us it is only conceived. There must
+somewhere be a being who not only conceives it, but constituted it.
+
+As all beautiful things and all true things are related--these to a
+unity that is absolute truth, and those to another unity that is
+absolute beauty, so all moral principles participate in the same
+principle, which is the good. We thus elevate ourselves to the
+conception of the good in itself, of absolute good, superior to all
+particular duties, and determined in these duties. Now, can the absolute
+good be any thing else than an attribute of him who, properly speaking,
+is alone absolute being?
+
+Would it be possible that there might be several absolute beings, and
+that the being in whom are realized absolute truth and absolute beauty
+might not also be the one who is the principle of absolute good? The
+very idea of the absolute implies absolute unity. The true, the
+beautiful, and the good, are not three distinct essences; they are one
+and the same essence considered in its fundamental attributes. Our mind
+distinguishes them, because it can comprehend them only by division;
+but, in the being in whom they reside, they are indivisibly united; and
+this being at once triple and one, who sums up in himself perfect
+beauty, perfect truth, and the supreme good, is nothing else than God.
+
+So God is necessarily the principle of moral truth and the good. He is
+also the type of the moral person that we carry in us.
+
+Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed with reason and
+liberty. He is capable of virtue, and virtue has in him two principal
+forms, respect of others, and love of others, justice and charity.
+
+Can there be among the attributes possessed by the creature something
+essential not possessed by the Creator? Whence does the effect draw its
+reality and its being, except from its cause? What it possesses, it
+borrows and receives. The cause at least contains all that is essential
+in the effect. What particularly belongs to the effect, is inferiority,
+is a lack, is imperfection: from the fact alone that it is dependent and
+derived, it bears in itself the signs and the conditions of dependence.
+If, then, we cannot legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the
+effect in that of the cause, we can and must conclude from the
+excellence of the effect in the perfection of the cause, otherwise there
+would be something prominent in the effect which would be without cause.
+
+Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new nor subtle;
+but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged and elucidated, and it is,
+to our eyes, firm against every test. It is by the aid of this
+principle that we can, up to a certain point, penetrate into the true
+nature of God.
+
+God is not a being of logic, whose nature can be explained by way of
+deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out from a
+first attribute, we have deduced the attributes of God from each other,
+after the manner of geometricians and the schoolmen, what do we
+possess,[246] I pray you, but abstractions? It is necessary to leave
+these vain dialectics in order to arrive at a real and living God.
+
+The first notion that we have of God, to wit, the notion of an infinite
+being, is itself given to us independently of all experience. It is the
+consciousness of ourselves, as being at once, and as being limited, that
+elevates us directly to the conception of a being who is the principle
+of our being, and is himself without bounds. This solid and single
+argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes,[247] opens to us a way
+that must be followed, in which Descartes too quickly stopped. If the
+being that we possess forces us to recur to a cause which possesses
+being in an infinite degree, all that we have of being, that is to say,
+of substantial attributes, equally requires an infinite cause. Then, God
+will no longer be merely the infinite, abstract, or at least
+indeterminate being in which reason and the heart know not where to
+betake themselves,[248] he will be a real and determined being, a moral
+person like ours and psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a
+theodicea at once sublime and related to us.[249]
+
+Before all, if man is free, can it be that God is not free? No one
+contends that he who is cause of all causes, who has no cause but
+himself, can be dependent on any thing whatever. But in freeing God from
+all external constraint, Spinoza subjects him to an internal and
+mathematical necessity, wherein he finds the perfection of being. Yes,
+of being which is not a person; but the essential character of personal
+being is precisely liberty. If, then, God were not free, God would be
+beneath man. Would it not be strange that the creature should have the
+marvellous power of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and
+that the being who has made him should be subjected to a necessary
+development, whose cause is only in himself, without doubt, but, in
+fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical or metaphysical, but very
+inferior to the personal and voluntary cause that we are, and of which
+we have the clearest consciousness? God is therefore free, since we are
+free. But he is not free as we are free; for God is at once all that we
+are, and nothing that we are. He possesses the same attributes that we
+possess, but elevated to infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty,
+joined to an infinite intelligence; and, as his intelligence is
+infallible, excepted from the uncertainties of deliberation, and
+perceiving at a glance where the good is, so his liberty spontaneously,
+and without effort, fulfils it.[250]
+
+In the same manner as we transfer to God the liberty that is the
+foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and charity. In
+man, justice and charity are virtues; in God, they are attributes. What
+is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, is in him his very nature.
+If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and the sign
+of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that the perfect being
+should not know and respect the rights of the lowest beings, since it is
+he, moreover, who has imparted to them those rights. In God resides a
+sovereign justice, which renders to each one his due, not according to
+deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, if
+man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, of
+forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of devoting
+himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of
+another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite degree, this
+disinterested tenderness, this charity, the supreme virtue of the human
+person? Yes, there is in God an infinite tenderness for his creatures:
+he at first manifested it in giving us the being that he might have
+withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable signs of his
+divine providence. Plato knew this love of God well, and expressed it in
+those great words, "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme
+ordainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; and
+he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, he willed that
+all things should be, as much as possible, like himself."[251]
+Christianity went farther: according to the divine doctrine, God so
+loved men that he gave them his only Son. God is inexhaustible in his
+charity, as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to give
+more to the creature; he gives him every thing that he can receive
+without ceasing to be a creature; he gives him every thing, even
+himself, so far as the creature is in him and he in the creature. At the
+same time nothing can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally
+expands and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power,
+infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon
+the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we possess. It is
+egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart, even by the side of
+the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we lose by
+self-devotion: it is egoism that makes us call devotion a sacrifice.
+
+If God is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing but what is
+good and just; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing that he wills he
+can do, and consequently does do. The world is the work of God; it is
+therefore perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end.
+
+And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that seems to accuse
+the justice and goodness of God.
+
+A principle that is attached to the very idea of the good, says to us
+that every moral agent deserves a reward when he does good, and a
+punishment when he does evil. This principle is universal and necessary:
+it is absolute. If this principle has not its application in this world,
+it must either be a lie, or this world is ordered ill.
+
+Now, it is a fact that the good is not always followed by happiness, nor
+evil always by unhappiness.
+
+Let us, in the first place, remark that if the fact exists, it is rare
+enough, and seems to present the character of an exception.
+
+Virtue is a struggle against passion; this struggle, full of dignity, is
+also full of pain; but, on one side, crime is condemned to much harder
+pains; on the other, those of virtue are of short duration; they are a
+necessary and almost always beneficent trial.
+
+Virtue has its pains, but the greatest happiness is still with it, as
+the greatest unhappiness is with crime; and such is the case in small
+and great, in the secret of the soul, and on the theatre of life, in the
+obscurest conditions and in the most conspicuous situations.
+
+Good and bad health are, after all, the greatest part of happiness or
+unhappiness. In this regard, compare temperance and its opposite, order
+and disorder, virtue and vice; I mean a temperance truly temperate, and
+not an atrabilarious asceticism, a rational virtue, and not a fierce
+virtue.
+
+The great physician Hufeland[252] remarks that the benevolent sentiments
+are favorable to health, and that the malevolent sentiments are opposed
+to it. Violent and sinful passions irritate, inflame, and carry trouble
+into the organization as well as the soul; the benevolent affections
+preserve the measured and harmonious play of all the functions.
+
+Hufeland again remarks that the greatest longevities pertain to wise and
+well-regulated lives.
+
+Thus, for health, strength, and life, virtue is better than vice: it is
+already much, it seems to me.
+
+I surely mean to speak of conscience only after health; but, in fine,
+with the body, our most constant host is conscience. Peace or trouble of
+conscience decides internal happiness or unhappiness. At this point of
+view, compare again order and disorder, virtue and vice.
+
+And without us, in society, to whom come esteem and contempt,
+consideration and infamy? Certainly opinion has its mistakes, but they
+are not long. In general, if charlatans, intriguers, impostors of every
+kind, for some time surreptitiously get suffrages, it must be that a
+sustained honesty is the surest and the almost infallible means of
+reaching a good renown.
+
+I regret that upon this point time does not allow of any development. It
+would have afforded me delight, after having distinguished virtue from
+happiness, to show them to you almost always united by the admirable law
+of merit and demerit. I should have been pleased to show you this
+beneficent law already governing human destiny, and called to preside
+over it more exactly from day to day by the ever-increasing progress of
+lights in governments and peoples, by the perfecting of civil and
+judicial institutions. It would have been my wish to make pass into your
+minds and hearts the consoling conviction that, after all, justice is
+already in this world, and that the surest road to happiness is still
+that of virtue.
+
+This was the opinion of Socrates and Plato; and it is also that of
+Franklin, and I gather it from my personal experience and an attentive
+examination of human life. But I admit that there are exceptions; and
+were there but one exception, it would be necessary to explain it.
+
+Suppose a man, young, beautiful, rich, amiable, and loved, who, placed
+between the scaffold and the betrayal of a sacred cause, voluntarily
+mounts the scaffold at twenty years of age. What do you make of this
+noble victim? The law of merit and demerit seems here suspended. Do you
+dare blame virtue, or how in this world do you accord to it the
+recompense that it has not sought, but is its due?
+
+By careful search you will find more than one case analogous to that.
+
+The laws of this world are general; they turn aside to suit no one: they
+pursue their course without regard to the merit or demerit of any. If a
+man is born with a bad temperament, it is in virtue of certain obscure
+but undeviating physical laws, to which he is subject, like the animal
+and the plant, and he suffers during his whole life, although personally
+innocent. He is brought up in the midst of flames, epidemics, calamities
+that strike at hazard the good as well as the bad.
+
+Human justice condemns many that are innocent, it is true, but it
+absolves, in fault of proof, more than one who is culpable. Besides, it
+knows only certain derelictions. What faults, what basenesses occur in
+the dark, which do not receive merited chastisement! In like manner,
+what obscure devotions of which God is the sole witness and judge!
+Without doubt nothing escapes the eye of conscience, and the culpable
+soul cannot escape remorse. But remorse is not always in exact relation
+with the fault committed; its vivacity may depend on a nature more or
+less delicate, on education and habit. In a word, if it is in general
+very true that the law of merit and demerit is fulfilled in this world,
+it is not fulfilled with mathematical rigor.
+
+What must we conclude from this? That the world is ill-made? No. That
+cannot be, and is not. That cannot be, for incontestably the world has a
+just and good author; that is not, for, in fact, we see order reigning
+in the world; and it would be absurd to misconceive the manifest order
+that almost everywhere shines forth on account of a few phenomena that
+we cannot refer to order. The universe endures, therefore it is well
+made. The pessimism of Voltaire is still more opposed to the aggregate
+of facts than an absolute optimism. Between these two systematic
+extremes which facts deny, the human race places the hope of another
+life. It has found it very irrational to reject a necessary law on
+account of some infractions; it has, therefore, maintained the law; and
+from infractions it has only concluded that they ought to be referred to
+the law, that there will be a reparation. Either this conclusion must be
+admitted, or the two great principles previously admitted, that God is
+just, and that the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be
+rejected.
+
+Now, to reject these two principles is to totally overthrow all human
+belief.
+
+To maintain them, is implicitly to admit that actual life must be,
+elsewhere terminated or continued.
+
+But is this continuation of the person possible? After the dissolution
+of the body, can any thing of us remain?
+
+In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which awaits the
+reward or punishment of its good or bad actions, is united to a
+body,--it lives with the body, makes use of it, and, in a certain
+measure, depends on it, but is not it.[253] The body is composed of
+parts, may decrease or increase; is divisible, essentially divisible,
+and even infinitely divisible. But that something that has consciousness
+of itself, that says, _I_, _me_, that feels itself to be free and
+responsible, does it not also feel that there is in it no division,
+even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple? Is the
+_me_ more or less _me_? Is there a half of _me_, a quarter of _me_? I
+cannot divide my person. It remains identical to itself under the
+diversity of the phenomena that manifest it. This identity, this
+indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. Spirituality is,
+therefore, the very essence of the person. Belief in the spirituality of
+the soul is involved in the belief of this identity of the _me_, which
+no rational being has ever called in question. Accordingly, there is not
+the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul does not essentially
+differ from the body. Add that when we say the soul, we mean to say, and
+do say the person, which is not separated from the consciousness of the
+attributes that constitute it, thought and will. The being without
+consciousness is not a person. It is the person that is identical, one,
+simple. Its attributes, in developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible,
+it is indissoluble, and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in
+order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, it does
+not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the soul is the
+necessary foundation of immortality. The law of merit and demerit is the
+direct demonstration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysical
+proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most celebrated, most
+popular, at once the most convincing and the most persuasive.
+
+What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to fortify them in
+the heart! The following, for example, is a presumption of great value
+for any one that believes in the virtue of sentiment and instinct.
+
+Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute as that which
+refers every event to a cause.[254] Man has, therefore, an end. This end
+is revealed in all his thoughts, in all his ways, in all his sentiments,
+in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he
+thinks, he thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, tends to the
+infinite.[255] This need of the infinite is the mainspring of scientific
+curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love also stops and rests
+only there. On the route it may experience lively joys; but a secret
+bitterness that is mingled with them soon makes it feel their
+insufficiency and emptiness. Often, while ignorant of its true object,
+it asks whence comes that fatal disenchantment by which all its
+successes, all its pleasures are successively extinguished. If it knew
+how to read itself, it would recognize that if nothing here below
+satisfies it, it is because its object is more elevated, because the
+true bourne after which it aspires is infinite perfection. Finally, like
+thought and love, human activity is without limits. Who can say where it
+shall stop? Behold this earth almost known. Soon another world will be
+necessary for us. Man is journeying towards the infinite, which is
+always receding before him, which he always pursues. He conceives it, he
+feels it, he bears it, thus to speak, in himself,--how should his end be
+elsewhere? Hence that unconquerable instinct of immortality, that
+universal hope of another life to which all worships, all poesies, all
+traditions bear witness. We tend to the infinite with all our powers;
+death comes to interrupt the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes
+it unfinished. It is, therefore, likely that there is something after
+death, since at death nothing in us is terminated. Look at the flower
+that to-morrow will not be. To-day, at least, it is entirely developed:
+we can conceive nothing more beautiful of its kind; it has attained its
+perfection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of which I have the
+clearest idea and the most invincible need, for which I feel that I am
+born,--in vain I call for it, in vain I labor for it; it escapes me, and
+leaves me only hope. Shall this hope be deceived? All beings attain
+their end; should man alone not attain his? Should the greatest of
+creatures be the most ill-treated? But a being that should remain
+incomplete and unfinished, that should not attain the end which all his
+instincts proclaim for him, would be a monster in the eternal order,--a
+problem much more difficult to solve than the difficulties that have
+been raised against the immortality of the soul. In our opinion, this
+tendency of all the desires and all the powers of the soul towards the
+infinite, elucidated by the principle of final causes, is a serious and
+important confirmation of the moral proof and the metaphysical proof of
+another life.
+
+When we have collected all the arguments that authorize belief in
+another life, and when we have thus arrived at a satisfying
+demonstration, there remains an obstacle to be overcome. Imagination
+cannot contemplate without fright that unknown which is called death.
+The greatest philosopher in the world, says Pascal, on a plank wider
+than it is necessary in order to go without danger from one side of an
+abyss to the other, cannot think without trembling on the abyss that is
+beneath him. It is not reason, it is imagination that frightens him; it
+is also imagination that in great part causes that remnant of doubt,
+that trouble, that secret anxiety which the firmest faith cannot always
+succeed in overcoming in the presence of death. The religious man
+experiences this terror, but he knows whence it comes, and he surmounts
+it by attaching himself to the solid hopes furnished him by reason and
+the heart. Imagination is a child that must be educated, by putting it
+under the discipline and government of better faculties; it must be
+accustomed to go to intelligence for aid instead of troubling
+intelligence with its phantoms. Let us acknowledge that there is a
+terrible step to be taken when we meet death. Nature trembles when face
+to face with the unknown eternity. It is wise to present ourselves there
+with all our forces united,--reason and the heart lending each other
+mutual support, the imagination being subdued or charmed. Let us
+continually repeat that, in death as in life, the soul is sure to find
+God, and that with God all is just, all is good.[256]
+
+We now know what God truly is. We have already seen two of his adorable
+attributes,--truth and beauty. The most august attribute is revealed to
+us,--holiness. God is the holy of holies, as the author of the moral law
+and the good, as the principle of liberty, justice, and charity, as the
+dispenser of penalty and reward. Such a God is not an abstract God, but
+an intelligent and free person, who has made us in his own image, from
+whom we hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose
+judgments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our acts of
+charity; it is his justice that governs our justice, that of our
+societies and our laws. If we do not continually remind ourselves that
+he is infinite, we degrade his nature; but he would be for us as if he
+were not, if his infinite essence had no forms that pertain to us, the
+proper forms of our reason and our soul.
+
+By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment that is _par
+excellence_ the religious sentiment. All the beings with whom we are in
+relation awaken in us different sentiments, according to the qualities
+that we perceive in them; and should he who possesses all perfections
+excite in us no particular sentiment? When we think upon the infinite
+essence of God, when we are penetrated with his omnipotence, when we are
+reminded that the moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the
+fulfilment and the violation of this law recompenses and penalties which
+he dispenses with an inflexible justice, we cannot guard ourselves
+against an emotion of respect and fear at the idea of such a grandeur.
+Then, if we come to consider that this all-powerful being has indeed
+wished to create us, us of whom he has no need, that in creating us he
+has loaded us with benefits, that he has given us this admirable
+universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, society for ennobling our
+life in that of our fellow-men, reason for thinking, the heart for
+loving, liberty for acting; without disappearing, respect and fear are
+tinged with a sweeter sentiment, that of love. Love, when it is applied
+to feeble and limited beings, inspires us with a desire to do good to
+them; but in itself it proposes to itself no advantage from the person
+loved; we love a beautiful or good object, because it is beautiful or
+good, without at first regarding whether this love may be useful to its
+object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, love, when it ascends
+to God, is a pure homage rendered to his perfections; it is the natural
+overflow of the soul towards a being infinitely lovable.
+
+Respect and love compose adoration. True adoration does not exist
+without possessing both of these sentiments. If you consider only the
+all-powerful God, master of heaven and earth, author and avenger of
+justice, you crush man beneath the weight of the grandeur of God and his
+own feebleness, you condemn him to a continual trembling in the
+uncertainty of God's judgments, you make him hate the world, life, and
+himself, for every thing is full of misery. Towards this extreme,
+Port-Royal inclines. Read the _Pensees de Pascal_.[257] In his great
+humility, Pascal forgets two things,--the dignity of man and the love of
+God. On the other hand, if you see only the good God and the indulgent
+father, you incline to a chimerical mysticism. By substituting love for
+fear, little by little with fear, we run the risk of losing respect. God
+is no more a master, he is no more even a father; for the idea of a
+father still to a certain point involves that of a respectful fear; he
+is no more any thing but a friend, sometimes even a lover. True
+adoration does not separate love and respect; it is respect animated by
+love.
+
+Adoration is a universal sentiment. It differs in degrees according to
+different natures; it takes the most different forms; it is often even
+ignorant of itself; sometimes it is revealed by an exclamation springing
+from the heart, in the midst of the great scenes of nature and life,
+sometimes it silently rises in the mute and penetrated soul; it may err
+in its expressions, even in its object; but at bottom it is always the
+same. It is a spontaneous, irresistible emotion of the soul; and when
+reason is applied to it, it is declared just and legitimate. What, in
+fact, is more just than to fear the judgments of him who is holiness
+itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and will judge them
+according to the highest justice? What, too, is more just than to love
+perfect goodness and the source of all love? Adoration is at first a
+natural sentiment; reason makes it a duty.
+
+Adoration confined to the sanctuary of the soul is what is called
+internal worship--the necessary principle of all public worships.
+
+Public worship is no more an arbitrary institution than society and
+government, language and arts. All these things have their roots in
+human nature. Adoration abandoned to itself, would easily degenerate
+into dreams and ecstasy, or would be dissipated in the rush of affairs
+and the necessities of every day. The more energetic it is, the more it
+tends to express itself outwardly in acts that realize it, to take a
+sensible, precise, and regular form, which, by a proper reaction on the
+sentiment that produced it, awakens it when it slumbers, sustains it
+when it languishes, and also protects it against extravagances of every
+kind to which it might give birth in so many feeble or unbridled
+imaginations. Philosophy, then, lays the natural foundation of public
+worship in the internal worship of adoration. Having arrived at that
+point, it stops, equally careful not to betray its rights and not to go
+beyond them, to run over, in its whole extent and to its farthest limit,
+the domain of natural reason, as well as not to usurp a foreign domain.
+
+But philosophy does not think of trespassing on the ground of theology;
+it wishes to remain faithful to itself, and also to follow its true
+mission, which is to love and favor every thing that tends to elevate
+man, since it heartily applauds the awakening of religious and Christian
+sentiment in all noble souls, after the ravages that have been made on
+every hand, for more than a century, by a false and sad philosophy.
+What, in fact, would not have been the joy of a Socrates and a Plato if
+they had found the human race in the arms of Christianity! How happy
+would Plato--who was so evidently embarrassed between his beautiful
+doctrines and the religion of his times, who managed so carefully with
+that religion even when he avoided it, who was forced to take from it
+the best possible part, in order to aid a favorable interpretation of
+his doctrine--have been, if he had had to do with a religion which
+presents to man, as at once its author and its model, the sublime and
+mild Crucified, of whom he had an extraordinary presentiment, whom he
+almost described in the person of a just man dying on the cross;[258] a
+religion which came to announce, or at least to consecrate and expand
+the idea of the unity of God and that of the unity of the human race;
+which proclaims the equality of all souls before the divine law, which
+thereby has prepared and maintains civil equality; which prescribes
+charity still more than justice, which teaches man that he does not live
+by bread alone, that he is not wholly contained in his senses and his
+body, that he has a soul, a free soul, whose value is infinite, above
+the value of all worlds, that life is a trial, that its true object is
+not pleasure, fortune, rank, none of those things that do not pertain to
+our real destiny, and are often more dangerous than useful, but is that
+alone which is always in our power, in all situations and all
+conditions, from end to end of the earth, to wit, the improvement of the
+soul by itself, in the holy hope of becoming from day to day less
+unworthy of the regard of the Father of men, of the examples given by
+him, and of his promises. If the greatest moralist that ever lived could
+have seen these admirable teachings, which in germ were already at the
+foundation of his spirit, of which more than one trait can be found in
+his works, if he had seen them consecrated, maintained, continually
+recalled to the heart and imagination of man by sublime and touching
+institutions, what would have been his tender and grateful sympathy for
+such a religion! If he had come in our own times, in that age given up
+to revolutions, in which the best souls were early infected by the
+breath of skepticism, in default of the faith of an Augustine, of an
+Anselm, of a Thomas, of a Bossuet, he would have had, we doubt not, the
+sentiments at least of a Montesquieu,[259] of a Turgot,[260] of a
+Franklin,[261] and very far from putting the Christian religion and a
+good philosophy at war with each other, he would have been forced to
+unite them, to elucidate and fortify them by each other. That great mind
+and that great heart, which dictated to him the _Phedon_, the _Gorgias_,
+the _Republic_, would also have taught him that such books are made for
+a few sages, that there is needed for the human race a philosophy at
+once similar and different, that this philosophy is a religion, and that
+this desirable and necessary religion is the Gospel. We do not hesitate
+to say that, without religion, philosophy, reduced to what it can
+laboriously draw from perfected natural reason, addresses itself to a
+very small number, and runs the risk of remaining without much influence
+on manners and life; and that, without philosophy, the purest religion
+is no security against many superstitions, which little by little bring
+all the rest, and for that reason it may see the best minds escaping its
+influence, as was the case in the eighteenth century. The alliance
+between true religion and true philosophy is, then, at once natural and
+necessary; natural by the common basis of the truths which they
+acknowledge; necessary for the better service of humanity. Philosophy
+and religion differ only in the forms that distinguish, without
+separating them. Another auditory, other forms, and another language.
+When St. Augustine speaks to all the faithful in the church of Hippone,
+do not seek in him the subtile and profound metaphysician who combated
+the Academicians with their own arms, who supports himself on the
+Platonic theory of ideas, in order to explain the creation. Bossuet, in
+the treatise _De la Connaissance de Dieu et Soi-meme_, is no longer,
+and at the same time he is always, the author of the _Sermons_, of the
+_Elevations_, and the incomparable _Catechisme de Meaux_. To separate
+religion and philosophy has always been, on one side or the other, the
+pretension of small, exclusive, and fanatical minds; the duty, more
+imperative now than ever, of whomsoever has for either a serious and
+enlightened love, is to bring together and unite, instead of dividing
+and wasting the powers of the mind and the soul, in the interest of the
+common cause and the great object which the Christian religion and
+philosophy pursue, each in its own way,--I mean the moral grandeur of
+humanity.[262]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[245] Lectures 4 and 7.
+
+[246] Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without
+excepting the best--that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most
+popular of all, the _Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard_. See our
+small work entitled _Philosophie Populaire_, 3d edition, p. 82.
+
+[247] On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st, lecture 4; see
+also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture
+6.
+
+[248] _Fragments de Philosophie Cartesienne_, p. 24: "The infinite
+being, inasmuch as infinite, is not a mover, a cause; neither is he,
+inasmuch as infinite, an intelligence; neither is he a will; neither is
+he a principle of justice, nor much less a principle of love. We have no
+right to impute to him all these attributes in virtue of the single
+argument that every contingent being supposes a being that is not so,
+that every finite supposes an infinite. The God given by this argument
+is the God of Spinoza, is rigorously so; but he is almost as though he
+were not, at least for us who with difficulty perceive him in the
+inaccessible heights of an eternity and existence that are absolute,
+void of thought, of liberty, of love, similar to nonentity itself, and a
+thousand times inferior, in his infinity and eternity, to an hour of our
+finite and perishable existence, if during this fleeting hour we know
+what we are, if we think, if we love something else than ourselves, if
+we feel capable of freely sacrificing to an idea the few minutes that
+have been accorded to us."
+
+[249] This theodicea is here _in resume_, and in the 4th and 5th
+lectures of part first, as well as in the lecture that follows. The most
+important of our different writings, on this point, will be found
+collected and elucidated by each other, in the Appendix to the 5th
+lecture of the first volume of the 1st Series.--See our translation of
+this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, under the title of the History
+of Modern Philosophy.
+
+[250] 3d Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition: "Without
+vain subtilty, there is a real distinction between free will and
+spontaneous liberty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with the appearance
+of deliberation between different objects, and under this supreme
+condition, that when, as a consequence of deliberation, we resolve to do
+this or that, we have the immediate consciousness of having been able,
+and of being able still, to will the contrary. It is in volition, and in
+the retinue of phenomena which surround it, that liberty more
+energetically appears, but it is not thereby exhausted. It is at rare
+and sublime moments in which liberty is as much greater as it appears
+less to the eyes of a superficial observation. I have often cited the
+example of d'Assas. D'Assas did not deliberate; and for all that, was
+d'Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty? Has the saint
+who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has come to practise,
+as it were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which are repugnant
+to human weakness; has the saint, in order to have gone out from the
+contradictions and the anguish of this form of liberty which we called
+volition, fallen below it instead of being elevated above it; and is he
+nothing more than a blind and passive instrument of grace, as Luther and
+Calvin have inappropriately wished to call it, by an excessive
+interpretation of the Augustinian doctrine? No, freedom still remains;
+and far from being annihilated, its liberty, in being purified, is
+elevated and ennobled; from the human form of volition it has passed to
+the almost divine form of spontaneity. Spontaneity is essentially free,
+although it may be accompanied with no deliberation, and although often,
+in the rapid motion of its inspired action, it escapes its own
+observation, and leaves scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness.
+Let us transfer this exact psychology to theodicea, and we may recognize
+without hypothesis, that spontaneity is also especially the form of
+God's liberty. Yes, certainly, God is free; for, among other proofs, it
+would be absurd that there should be less freedom in the first cause
+than in one of its effects, humanity; God is free, but not with that
+liberty which is related to our double nature, and made to contend
+against passion and error, and painfully to engender virtue and our
+imperfect knowledge; he is free, with a liberty that is related to his
+own divine nature, that is a liberty unlimited, infinite, recognizing no
+obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good and evil, between
+reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, consequently,
+cannot will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he could
+take what we call the bad part? This very supposition is impious. It is
+necessary to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has
+acted freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the
+consciousness of having been able to choose the other part. His nature,
+all-powerful, all-just, all-wise, is developed with that spontaneity
+which contains entire liberty, and excludes at once the efforts and the
+miseries of volition, and the mechanical operation of necessity. Such is
+the principle and the true character of the divine action."
+
+[251] _Timaeus_, p. 119, vol. xii. of our translation.
+
+[252] _De l'Art de prolonger sa Vie_, etc.
+
+[253] On the spirituality of the soul, see all our writings. We will
+limit ourselves to two citations. 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 25, p.
+859: "It is impossible to know any phenomenon of consciousness, the
+phenomena of sensation, or volition, or of intelligence, without
+instantly referring them to a subject one and identical, which is the
+_me_; so we cannot know the external phenomena of resistance, of
+solidity, of impenetrability, of figure, of color, of smell, of taste,
+etc., without judging that these are not phenomena in appearance, but
+phenomena which belong to something real, which is solid, impenetrable,
+figured, colored, odorous, savory, etc. On the other hand, if you did
+not know any of the phenomena of consciousness, you would never have the
+least idea of the subject of these phenomena; if you did not know any of
+the external phenomena of resistance, of solidity, of impenetrability,
+of figure, of color, etc., you would not have any idea of the subject of
+these phenomena: therefore the characters, whether of the phenomena of
+consciousness, or of exterior phenomena, are for you the only signs of
+the nature of the subjects of these phenomena. In examining the
+phenomena which fall under the senses, we find between them grave
+differences upon which it is useless here to insist, and which establish
+the distinction of primary qualities and of secondary qualities. In the
+first rank among the primary qualities is solidity, which is given to
+you in the sensation of resistance, and inevitably accompanied by form,
+etc. On the contrary, when you examine the phenomena of consciousness,
+you do not therein find this character of resistance, of solidity, of
+form, etc.; you do not find that the phenomena of your consciousness
+have a figure, solidity, impenetrability, resistance; without speaking
+of secondary qualities which are equally foreign to them, color, savor,
+sound, smell, etc. Now, as the subject is for us only the collection of
+the phenomena which reveal it to us, together with its own existence in
+so far as the subject of the inherence of these phenomena, it follows
+that, under phenomena marked with dissimilar characters and entirely
+foreign to each other, the human mind conceives dissimilar and foreign
+subjects. Thus as solidity and figure have nothing in common with
+sensation, will, and thought, as every solid is extended for us, and as
+we place it necessarily in space, while our thoughts, our volitions, our
+sensations, are for us unextended, and while we cannot conceive them and
+place them in space, but only in time, the human mind concludes with
+perfect strictness that the subject of the exterior phenomena has the
+character of the latter, and that the subject of the phenomena of
+consciousness has the character of the former; that the one is solid and
+extended, and that the other is neither solid nor extended. Finally, as
+that which is solid and extended is divisible, and as that which is
+neither solid nor extended is indivisible, hence divisibility is
+attributed to the solid and extended subject, and indivisibility
+attributed to the subject which is neither extended nor solid. Who of
+us, in fact, does not believe himself an indivisible being, one and
+identical, the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow? Well, the word
+body, the word matter, signifies nothing else than the subject of
+external phenomena, the most eminent of which are form, impenetrability,
+solidity, extension, divisibility. The word mind, the word soul,
+signifies nothing else than the subject of the phenomena of
+consciousness, thought, will, sensation, phenomena simple, unextended,
+not solid, etc. Behold the whole idea of spirit, and the whole idea of
+matter! See, therefore, all that must be done in order to bring back
+matter to spirit, and spirit to matter: it is necessary to pretend that
+sensation, volition, thought, are reducible in the last analysis to
+solidity, extension, figure, divisibility, etc., or that solidity,
+extension, figure, etc., are reducible to thought, volition, sensation."
+1st Series, vol. iii., lecture I, _Locke_. "Locke pretends that we
+cannot be certain _by the contemplation of our own ideas_, that matter
+cannot think; on the contrary, it is in the contemplation itself of our
+ideas that we clearly perceive that matter and thought are incompatible.
+What is thinking? Is it not uniting a certain number of ideas under a
+certain unity? The simplest judgment supposes several terms united in a
+subject, one and identical, which is _me_. This identical _me_ is
+implied in every real act of knowledge. It has been demonstrated to
+satiety that comparison exacts an indivisible centre that comprises the
+different terms of the comparison. Do you take memory? There is no
+memory possible without the continuation of the same subject that refers
+to self the different modifications by which it has been successively
+affected. Finally, consciousness, that indispensable condition of
+intelligence,--is it not the sentiment of a single being? This is the
+reason why each man cannot think without saying _me_, without affirming
+that he is himself the identical and one subject of his thoughts. I am
+_me_ and always _me_, as you are always yourself in the most different
+acts of your life. You are not more yourself to-day than you were
+yesterday, and you are not less yourself to-day than you were yesterday.
+This identity and this indivisible unity of the _me_ inseparable from
+the least thought, is what is called its spirituality, in opposition to
+the evident and necessary characters of matter. By what, in fact, do you
+know matter? It is especially by form, by extension, by something solid
+that stops you, that resists you in different points of space. But is
+not a solid essentially divisible? Take the most subtile fluids,--can
+you help conceiving them as more or less susceptible of division? All
+thought has its different elements like matter, but in addition it has
+its unity in the thinking subject, and the subject being taken away,
+which is one, the total phenomenon no longer exists. Far from that, the
+unknown subject to which we attach material phenomena is divisible, and
+divisible _ad infinitum_; it cannot cease to be divisible without
+ceasing to exist. Such are the ideas that we have, on the one side, of
+mind, on the other, of matter. Thought supposes a subject essentially
+one; matter is infinitely divisible. What is the need of going farther?
+If any conclusion is legitimate, it is that which distinguishes thought
+from matter. God can indeed make them exist together, and their
+co-existence is a certain fact, but he cannot confound them. God can
+unite thought and matter, he cannot make matter thought, nor what is
+extended simple."
+
+[254] See 1st part, lecture 1.
+
+[255] See lecture 5, _Mysticism_.
+
+[256] 4th Series, vol. iii., _Santa-Rosa_: "After all, the existence of
+a divine Providence is, to my eyes, a truth clearer than all lights,
+more certain than all mathematics. Yes, there is a God, a God who is a
+true intelligence, who consequently has a consciousness of himself, who
+has made and ordered every thing with weight and measure, whose works
+are excellent, whose ends are adorable, even when they are veiled from
+our feeble eyes. This world has a perfect author, perfectly wise and
+good. Man is not an orphan; he has a father in heaven. What will this
+father do with his child when he returns to him? Nothing but what is
+good. Whatever happens, all will be well. Every thing that he has done
+has been done well; every thing that he shall do, I accept beforehand,
+and bless. Yes, such is my unalterable faith, and this faith is my
+support, my refuge, my consolation, my solace in this fearful moment."
+
+[257] See our discussion on the _Pensees de Pascal_, vol. i. of the 4th
+Series.
+
+[258] See the end of the first book of the _Republic_, vol. ix. of our
+translation.
+
+[259] _Esprit des Lois_, _passim_.
+
+[260] Works of Turgot, vol. ii., _Discours en Sorbonne sur les Avantages
+que l'etablissement du Christianism a procures au Genre Humain_, etc.
+
+[261] In the _Correspondence_, the letter to Dr. Stiles, March 9, 1790,
+written by Franklin a few months before his death: "I am convinced that
+the moral and religious system which Jesus Christ has transmitted to us
+is the best that the world has seen or can see."--We here re-translate,
+not having the works of Franklin immediately at hand.
+
+[262] We have not ceased to claim, to earnestly call for, the alliance
+between Christianity and philosophy, as well as the alliance between the
+monarchy and liberty. See particularly 3d Series, vol. iv., _Philosophie
+Contemporaine_, preface of the second edition; 4th Series, vol. i.,
+_Pascal_, 1st and 2d preface, _passim_; 5th Series, vol. ii., _Discours
+a la Chambre des Paris pour le Defence de l'Universite et de la
+Philosophie_. We everywhere profess the most tender veneration for
+Christianity,--we have only repelled the servitude of philosophy, with
+Descartes, and the most illustrious doctors of ancient and modern times,
+from St. Augustine and St. Thomas, to the Cardinal de la Lucerne and the
+Bishop of Hermopolis. Moreover, we love to think that those quarrels,
+originating in other times from the deplorable strife between the clergy
+and the University, have not survived it, and that now all sincere
+friends of religion and philosophy will give each other the hand, and
+will work in concert to encourage desponding souls and lift up burdened
+characters.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XVII.
+
+RESUME OF DOCTRINE.
+
+    Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the
+    three orders of facts on which this doctrine rests, with the
+    relation of each one of them to the modern school that has
+    recognized and developed it, but almost always exaggerated
+    it.--Experience and empiricism.--Reason and idealism.--Sentiment
+    and mysticism.--Theodicea. Defects of different known
+    systems.--The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the
+    character of certainty and reality that this process gives to
+    it.
+
+
+Having arrived at the limit of this course, we have a final task to
+perform,--it is necessary to recall its general spirit and most
+important results.
+
+From the first lecture, I have signalized to you the spirit that should
+animate this instruction,--a spirit of free inquiry, recognizing with
+joy the truth wherever found, profiting by all the systems that the
+eighteenth century has bequeathed to our times, but confining itself to
+none of them.
+
+The eighteenth century has left to us as an inheritance three great
+schools which still endure--the English and French school, whose chief
+is Locke, among whose most accredited representatives are Condillac,
+Helvetius, and Saint-Lambert; the Scotch school, with so many celebrated
+names, Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, Beattie, Ferguson, and Dugald
+Stewart;[263] the German school, or rather school of Kant, for, of all
+the philosophers beyond the Rhine, the philosopher of Koenigsberg is
+almost the only one who belongs to history. Kant died at the beginning
+of the nineteenth century;[264] the ashes of his most illustrious
+disciple, Fichte,[265] are scarcely cold. The other renowned
+philosophers of Germany still live,[266] and escape our valuation.
+
+But this is only an ethnographical enumeration of the schools of the
+eighteenth century. It is above all necessary to consider them in their
+characters, analogous or opposite. The Anglo-French school particularly
+represents empiricism and sensualism, that is to say, an almost
+exclusive importance attributed in all parts of human knowledge to
+experience in general, and especially to sensible experience. The Scotch
+school and the German school represent a more or less developed
+spiritualism. Finally, there are philosophers, for example, Hutcheson,
+Smith, and others, who, mistrusting the senses and reason, give the
+supremacy to sentiment.
+
+Such are the philosophic schools in the presence of which the nineteenth
+century is placed.
+
+We are compelled to avow, that none of these, to our eyes, contains the
+entire truth. It has been demonstrated that a considerable part of
+knowledge escapes sensation, and we think that sentiment is a basis
+neither sufficiently firm, nor sufficiently broad, to support all human
+science. We are, therefore, rather the adversary than the partisan of
+the school of Locke and Condillac, and of that of Hutcheson and Smith.
+Are we on that account the disciple of Reid and Kant? Yes, certainly, we
+declare our preference for the direction impressed upon philosophy by
+these two great men. We regard Reid as common sense itself, and we
+believe that we thus eulogize him in a manner that would touch him most.
+Common sense is to us the only legitimate point of departure, and the
+constant and inviolable rule of science. Reid never errs; his method is
+true, his general principles are incontestable, but we will willingly
+say to this irreproachable genius,--_Sapere aude_. Kant is far from
+being as sure a guide as Reid. Both excel in analysis; but Reid stops
+there, and Kant builds upon analysis a system irreconcilable with it. He
+elevates reason above sensation and sentiment; he shows with great skill
+how reason produces by itself, and by the laws attached to its exercise,
+nearly all human knowledge; there is only one misfortune, which is that
+all this fine edifice is destitute of reality. Dogmatical in analysis,
+Kant is skeptical in his conclusions. His skepticism is the most
+learned, most moral, that ever existed; but, in fine, it is always
+skepticism. This is saying plainly enough that we are far from belonging
+to the school of the philosopher of Koenigsberg.
+
+In general, in the history of philosophy, we are in favor of systems
+that are themselves in favor of reason. Accordingly, in antiquity, we
+side with Plato against his adversaries; among the moderns, with
+Descartes against Locke, with Reid against Hume, with Kant against both
+Condillac and Smith. But while we acknowledge reason as a power superior
+to sensation and sentiment, as being, _par excellence_, the faculty of
+every kind of knowledge, the faculty of the true, the faculty of the
+beautiful, the faculty of the good, we are persuaded that reason cannot
+be developed without conditions that are foreign to it, cannot suffice
+for the government of man without the aid of another power: that power
+which is not reason, which reason cannot do without, is sentiment; those
+conditions, without which reason cannot be developed, are the senses. It
+is seen what for us is the importance of sensation and sentiment: how,
+consequently, it is impossible for us absolutely to condemn either the
+philosophy of sensation, or, much more, that of sentiment.
+
+Such are the very simple foundations of our eclecticism. It is not in us
+the fruit of a desire for innovation, and for making ourself a place
+apart among the historians of philosophy; no, it is philosophy itself
+that imposes on us our historical views. It is not our fault if God has
+made the human soul larger than all systems, and we also aver that we
+are also much rejoiced that all systems are not absurd. Without giving
+the lie to the most certain facts signalized and established by ourself,
+it was indeed necessary, on finding them scattered in the history of
+philosophy, to recognize and respect them, and if the history of
+philosophy, thus considered, no longer appeared a mass of senseless
+systems, a chaos, without light, and without issue; if, on the contrary,
+it became, in some sort, a living philosophy, that was, it should seem,
+a progress on which one might felicitate himself, one of the most
+fortunate conquests of the nineteenth century, the very triumphing of
+the philosophic spirit.
+
+We have, therefore, no doubt in regard to the excellence of the
+enterprise; the whole question for us is in the execution. Let us see,
+let us compare what we have done with what we have wished to do.
+
+Let us ask, in the first place, whether we have been just towards that
+great philosophy represented in antiquity by Aristotle, whose best model
+among the moderns is the wise author of the Essay on the _Human
+Understanding_.
+
+There is in the philosophy of sensation what is true and what is false.
+The false is the pretension of explaining all human knowledge by the
+acquisitions of the senses; this pretension is the system itself; we
+reject it, and the system with it. The true is that sensibility,
+considered in its external and visible organs, and in its internal
+organs, the invisible seats of the vital functions, is the indispensable
+condition of the development of all our faculties, not only of the
+faculties that evidently pertain to sensibility, but of those that seem
+to be most remote from it. This true side of sensualism we have
+everywhere recognized and elucidated in metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics,
+and theodicea.
+
+For us, theodicea, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, rest on psychology,
+and the first principle of our psychology is that the condition of all
+exercise of mind and soul is an impression made on our organs, and a
+movement of the vital functions.
+
+Man is not a pure spirit; he has a body which is for the spirit
+sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, always an inseparable
+companion. The senses are not, as Plato and Malebranche have too often
+said, a prison for the soul, but much rather windows looking out upon
+nature, through which the soul communicates with the universe. There is
+an entire part of Locke's polemic against the theories of innate ideas
+that is to our eyes perfectly true. We are the first to invoke
+experience in philosophy. Experience saves philosophy from hypothesis,
+from abstraction, from the exclusively deductive method, that is to say,
+from the geometrical method. It is on account of having abandoned the
+solid ground of experience, that Spinoza, attaching himself to certain
+sides of Cartesianism,[267] and closing his eyes to all the others,
+forgetting its method, its essential character, and its most certain
+principles, reared a hypothetical system, or made from an arbitrary
+definition spring with the last degree of rigor a whole series of
+deductions, which have nothing to do with reality. It is also on account
+of having exchanged experience for a systematic analysis, that
+Condillac, an unfaithful disciple of Locke, undertook to draw from a
+single fact, and from an ill-observed fact, all knowledge, by the aid of
+a series of verbal transformations, whose last result is a nominalism,
+like that of the later scholastics. Experience does not contain all
+science, but it furnishes the conditions of all science. Space is
+nothing for us without visible and tangible bodies that occupy it, time
+is nothing without the succession of events, cause without its effects,
+substance without its modes, law without the phenomena that it
+rules.[268] Reason would reveal to us no universal and necessary truth,
+if consciousness and the senses did not suggest to us particular and
+contingent notions. In aesthetics, while severely distinguishing between
+the beautiful and the agreeable, we have shown that the agreeable is the
+constant accompaniment of the beautiful,[269] and that if art has for
+its supreme law the expression of the ideal, it must express it under an
+animated and living form which puts it in relation with our senses,
+with our imagination, above all, with our heart. In ethics, if we have
+placed Kant and stoicism far above epicureanism and Helvetius, we have
+guarded ourselves against an insensibility and an asceticism which are
+contrary to human nature. We have given to reason neither the duty nor
+the right to smother the natural passions, but to rule them; we have not
+wished to wrest from the soul the instinct of happiness, without which
+life would not be supportable for a day, nor society for an hour; we
+have proposed to enlighten this instinct, to show it the concealed but
+real harmony which it sustains with virtue, and to open to it infinite
+prospects.[270]
+
+With these empirical elements, idealism is guarded from that mystical
+infatuation which, little by little, gains and seizes it when it is
+wholly alone, and brings it into discredit with sound and severe minds.
+In our works--and why should we not say it?--we have often presented the
+thought of Locke, whom we regard as one of the best and most sensible
+men that ever lived. He is among those secret and illustrious advisers
+with whom we support our weakness. More than one happy thought we owe to
+him; and we often ask ourself whether investigations directed with the
+circumspect method which we try to carry into ours, would not have been
+accepted by his sincerity and wisdom. Locke is for us the true
+representative, the most original, and altogether the most temperate of
+the empirical school. Tied to a system, he still preserves a rare spirit
+of liberty,--under the name of reflection he admits another source of
+knowledge than sensation; and this concession to common sense is very
+important. Condillac, by rejecting this concession, carried to extremes
+and spoiled the doctrine of Locke, and made of it a narrow, exclusive,
+entirely false system,--sensualism, to speak properly. Condillac works
+upon chimeras reduced to signs, with which he sports at his ease. We
+seek in vain in his writings, especially in the last, some trace of
+human nature. One truly believes himself to be in the realm of shades,
+_per inania regna_.[271] The _Essay on the Human Understanding_ produces
+the opposite impression. Locke is a disciple of Descartes, whom the
+excesses of Malebranche have thrown to an opposite excess: he is one of
+the founders of psychology, he is one of the finest and most profound
+connoisseurs of human nature, and his doctrine, somewhat unsteady but
+always moderate, is worthy of having a place in a true eclecticism.[272]
+
+By the side of the philosophy of Locke, there is one much greater, which
+it is important to preserve from all exaggeration, in order to maintain
+it in all its height. Founded in antiquity by Socrates, constituted by
+Plato, renewed by Descartes, idealism embraces, among the moderns, men
+of the highest renown. It speaks to man in the name of what is noblest
+in man. It demands the rights of reason; it establishes in science, in
+art, and in ethics fixed and invariable principles, and from this
+imperfect existence it elevates us towards another world, the world of
+the eternal, of the infinite, of the absolute.
+
+This great philosophy has all our preferences, and we shall not be
+accused of having given it too little place in these lectures. In the
+eighteenth century it was especially represented in different degrees by
+Reid and Kant. We wholly accept Reid, with the exception of his
+historical views, which are too insufficient, and often mixed with
+error.[273] There are two parts in Kant,--the analytical part, and the
+dialectical part, as he calls them.[274] We admit the one and reject the
+other. In this whole course we have borrowed much from the _Critique of
+Speculative Reason_, the _Critique of Judgment_, and the _Critique of
+Practical Reason_. These three works are, in our eyes, admirable
+monuments of philosophic genius,--they are filled with treasures of
+observation and analysis.[275]
+
+With Reid and Kant, we recognize reason as the faculty of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good. It is to its proper virtue that we directly
+refer knowledge in its humblest and in its most elevated part. All the
+systematic pretensions of sensualism are broken against the manifest
+reality of universal and necessary truths which are incontestably in our
+mind. At each instant, whether we know it or not, we bear universal and
+necessary judgments. In the simplest propositions is enveloped the
+principle of substance and being. We cannot take a step in life without
+concluding from an event in the existence of its cause. These principles
+are absolutely true, they are true everywhere and always. Now,
+experience apprises us of what happens here and there, to-day or
+yesterday; but of what happens everywhere and always, especially of what
+cannot but happen, how can it apprise us, since it is itself always
+limited to time and space? There are, then, in man principles superior
+to experience.
+
+Such principles can alone give a firm basis to science. Phenomena are
+the objects of science only so far as they reveal something superior to
+themselves, that is to say, laws. Natural history does not study such or
+such an individual, but the generic type that every individual bears in
+itself, that alone remains unchangeable, when the individuals pass away
+and vanish. If there is in us no other faculty of knowing than
+sensation, we never know aught but what is passing in things, and that,
+too, we know only with the most uncertain knowledge, since sensibility
+will be its only measure, which is so variable in itself and so
+different in different individuals. Each of us will have his own
+science, a science contradictory and fragile, which one moment produces
+and another destroys, false as well as true, since what is true for me
+is false for you, and will even be false for me in a little while. Such
+are science and truth in the doctrine of sensation. On the contrary,
+necessary and immutable principles found a science necessary and
+immutable as themselves,--the truth which they gave as is neither mine
+nor yours, neither the truth of to-day, nor that of to-morrow, but truth
+in itself.
+
+The same spirit transferred to aesthetics has enabled us to seize the
+beautiful by the side of the agreeable, and, above different and
+imperfect beauties which nature offers to us, to seize an ideal beauty,
+one and perfect, without a model in nature, and the only model worthy of
+genius.
+
+In ethics we have shown that there is an essential distinction between
+good and evil; that the idea of the good is an idea just as absolute as
+the idea of the beautiful and that of the true; that the good is a
+universal and necessary truth, marked with the particular character that
+it ought to be practised. By the side of interest, which is the law of
+sensibility, reason has made us recognize the law of duty, which a free
+being can alone fulfil. From these ethics has sprung a generous
+political doctrine, giving to right a sure foundation in the respect due
+to the person, establishing true liberty, and true equality, and calling
+for institutions, protective of both, which do not rest on the mobile
+and arbitrary will of the legislator, whether people or monarch, but on
+the nature of things, on truth and justice.
+
+From empiricism we have retained the maxim which gives empiricism its
+whole force--that the conditions of science, of art, of ethics, are in
+experience, and often in sensible experience. But we profess at the same
+time this other maxim, that the foundation of science is absolute truth,
+that the direct foundation of art is absolute beauty, that the direct
+foundation of ethics and politics is the good, is duty, is right, and
+that what reveals to us these absolute ideas of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good, is reason. The foundation of our doctrine is,
+therefore, idealism rightly tempered by empiricism.
+
+But what would be the use of having restored to reason the power of
+elevating itself to absolute principles, placed above experience,
+although experience furnishes their external conditions, if, to adopt
+the language of Kant,[276] these principles have no objective value?
+What good could result from having determined with a precision until
+then unknown the respective domains of experience and reason, if, wholly
+superior as it is to the senses and experience, reason is captive in
+their inclosure, and we know nothing beyond with certainty? Thereby,
+then, we return by a _detour_ to skepticism to which sensualism conducts
+us directly, and at less expense. To say that there is no principle of
+causality, or to say that this principle has no force out of the subject
+that possesses it,--is it not saying the same thing? Kant avows that man
+has no right to affirm that there are out of him real causes, time, or
+space, or that he himself has a spiritual and free soul. This
+acknowledgment would perfectly satisfy Hume; it would be of very little
+importance to him that the reason of man, according to Kant, might
+conceive, and even could not but conceive, the ideas of cause, time,
+space, liberty, spirit, provided these ideas are applied to nothing
+real. I see therein, at most, only a torment for human reason, at once
+so poor and so rich, so full and so void.
+
+A third doctrine, finding sensation insufficient, and also discontented
+with reason, which it confounds with reasoning, thinks to approach
+common sense by making science, art, and ethics rest on sentiment. It
+would have us confide ourselves to the instinct of the heart, to that
+instinct, nobler than sensation, and more subtle than reasoning. Is it
+not the heart, in fact, that feels the beautiful and the good? Is it not
+the heart that, in all the great circumstances of life, when passion and
+sophism obscure to our eyes the holy idea of duty and virtue, makes it
+shine forth with an irresistible light, and, at the same time, warms us,
+animates us, and gives us the courage to practise it?
+
+We also have recognized that admirable phenomenon which is called
+sentiment; we even believe that here will be found a more precise and
+more complete analysis of it than in the writings where sentiment reigns
+alone. Yes, there is an exquisite pleasure attached to the contemplation
+of the truth, to the reproduction of the beautiful, to the practice of
+the good; there is in us an innate love for all these things; and when
+great rigor is not aimed at, it may very well be said that it is the
+heart which discerns truth, that the heart is and ought to be the light
+and guide of our life.
+
+To the eyes of an unpractised analysis, reason in its natural and
+spontaneous exercise is confounded with sentiment by a multitude of
+resemblances.[277] Sentiment is intimately attached to reason; it is its
+sensible form. At the foundation of sentiment is reason, which
+communicates to it its authority, whilst sentiment lends to reason its
+charm and power. Is not the widest spread and the most touching proof of
+the existence of God that spontaneous impulse of the heart which, in the
+consciousness of our miseries, and at the sight of the imperfections of
+our race which press upon our attention, irresistibly suggests to us the
+confused idea of an infinite and perfect being, fills us, at this idea,
+with an inexpressible emotion, moistens our eyes with tears, or even
+prostrates us on our knees before him whom the heart reveals to us, even
+when the reason refuses to believe in him? But look more closely, and
+you will see that this incredulous reason is reasoning supported by
+principles whose bearing is insufficient; you will see that what reveals
+the infinite and perfect being is precisely reason itself;[278] and
+that, in turn, it is this revelation of the infinite by reason, which,
+passing into sentiment, produces the emotion and the inspiration that we
+have mentioned. May heaven grant that we shall never reject the aid of
+sentiment! On the contrary, we invoke it both for others and ourself.
+Here we are with the people, or rather we are the people. It is to the
+light of the heart, which is borrowed from that of reason, but reflects
+it more vividly in the depths of the soul, that we confide ourselves, in
+order to preserve all great truths in the soul of the ignorant, and even
+to save them in the mind of the philosopher from the aberrations or
+refinements of an ambitious philosophy.
+
+We think, with Quintilian and Vauvenargues, that the nobility of
+sentiment makes the nobility of thought. Enthusiasm is the principle of
+great works as well as of great actions. Without the love of the
+beautiful, the artist will produce only works that are perhaps regular
+but frigid, that will possibly please the geometrician, but not the man
+of taste. In order to communicate life to the canvas, to the marble, to
+speech, it must be born in one's self. It is the heart mingled with
+logic that makes true eloquence; it is the heart mingled with
+imagination that makes great poetry. Think of Homer, of Corneille, of
+Bossuet,--their most characteristic trait is pathos, and pathos is a cry
+of the soul. But it is especially in ethics that sentiment shines forth.
+Sentiment, as we have already said, is as it were a divine grace that
+aids us in the fulfilment of the serious and austere law of duty. How
+often does it happen that in delicate, complicated, difficult
+situations, we know not how to ascertain wherein is the true, wherein is
+the good! Sentiment comes to the aid of reasoning which wavers; it
+speaks, and all uncertainties are dissipated. In listening to its
+inspirations, we may act imprudently, but we rarely act ill: the voice
+of the heart is the voice of God.
+
+We, therefore, give a prominent place to this noble element of human
+nature. We believe that man is quite as great by heart as by reason. We
+have a high regard for the generous writers who, in the looseness of
+principles and manners in the eighteenth century, opposed the baseness
+of calculation and interest with the beauty of sentiment. We are with
+Hutcheson against Hobbes, with Rousseau against Helvetius, with the
+author of Woldemar[279] against the ethics of egoism or those of the
+schools. We borrow from them what truth they have, we leave their
+useless or dangerous exaggerations. Sentiment must be joined to reason;
+but reason must not be replaced by sentiment. In the first place, it is
+contrary to facts to take reason for reasoning, and to envelop them in
+the same criticism. And then, after all, reasoning is the legitimate
+instrument of reason; its value is determined by that of the principles
+on which it rests. In the next place, reason, and especially spontaneous
+reason, is, like sentiment, immediate and direct; it goes straight to
+its object, without passing through analysis, abstraction, and
+deduction, excellent operations without doubt, but they suppose a
+primary operation, the pure and simple apperception of the truth.[280]
+It is wrong to attribute this apperception to sentiment. Sentiment is an
+emotion, not a judgment; it enjoys or suffers, it loves or hates, it
+does not know. It is not universal like reason; and as it still pertains
+on some side to organization, it even borrows from the organization
+something of its inconstancy. In fine, sentiment follows reason, and
+does not precede it. Therefore, in suppressing reason, we suppress the
+sentiment which emanates from it, and science, art, and ethics lack firm
+and solid bases.
+
+Psychology, aesthetics, and ethics, have conducted us to an order of
+investigations more difficult and more elevated, which are mingled with
+all the others, and crown them--theodicea.
+
+We know that theodicea is the rock of philosophy. We might shun it, and
+stop in the regions--already very high--of the universal and necessary
+principles of the true, the beautiful, and the good, without going
+farther, without ascending to the principles of these principles, to the
+reason of reason, to the source of truth. But such a prudence is, at
+bottom, only a disguised skepticism. Either philosophy is not, or it is
+the last explanation of all things. Is it, then, true that God is to us
+an inexplicable enigma,--he without whom the most certain of all things
+that thus far we have discovered would be for us an insupportable
+enigma? If philosophy is incapable of arriving at the knowledge of God,
+it is powerless; for if it does not possess God, it possesses nothing.
+But we are convinced that the need of knowing has not been given us in
+vain, and that the desire of knowing the principle of our being bears
+witness to the right and power of knowing which we have. Accordingly,
+after having discoursed to you about the true, the beautiful, and the
+good, we have not feared to speak to you of God.
+
+More than one road may lead us to God. We do not pretend to close any of
+them; but it was necessary for us to follow the one that was open to us,
+that which the nature and subject of our instruction opened to us.
+
+Universal and necessary truths are not general ideas which our mind
+draws by way of reasoning from particular things; for particular things
+are relative and contingent, and cannot contain the universal and
+necessary. On the other hand, these truths do not subsist by themselves;
+they would thus be only pure abstractions, suspended in vacuity and
+without relation to any thing. Truth, beauty, and goodness are
+attributes and not entities. Now there are no attributes without a
+subject. And as here the question is concerning absolute truth, beauty
+and goodness, their substance can be nothing else than absolute being.
+It is thus that we arrive at God. Once more, there are many other means
+of arriving at him; but we hold fast to this legitimate and sure way.
+
+For us, as for Plato, whom we have defended against a too narrow
+interpretation,[281] absolute truth is in God,--it is God himself under
+one of his phases. Since Plato, the greatest minds, Saint Augustine,
+Descartes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, agree in putting in God, as in their
+source, the principles of knowledge as well as existence. From him
+things derive at once their intelligibility and their being. It is by
+the participation of the divine reason that our reason possesses
+something absolute. Every judgment of reason envelops a necessary truth,
+and every necessary truth supposes necessary being.
+
+If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, God will possess beauty
+in its plenitude. The father of the world, of its laws, of its ravishing
+harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, he is the principle
+of beauty in nature. It is he whom we adore, without knowing it, under
+the name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on from beauties to
+beauties, calls for a final beauty in which it may find repose. It is to
+him that the artist, discontented with the imperfect beauties of nature
+and those that he creates himself, comes to ask for higher inspirations.
+It is in him that are summed up the main forms of every kind of beauty,
+the beautiful and the sublime, since he satisfies all our faculties by
+his perfections, and overwhelms them with his infinitude.
+
+God is the principle of moral truths, as well as of all other truths.
+All our duties are comprised in justice and charity. These two great
+precepts have not been made by us; they have been imposed on us; from
+whom, then, can they come, except from a legislator essentially just and
+good? Therein, in our opinion, is an invincible demonstration of the
+divine justice and charity:--this demonstration elucidates and sustains
+all others. In this immense universe, of which we catch a glimpse of a
+comparatively insignificant portion, every thing, in spite of more than
+one obscurity, seems ordered in view of general good, and this plan
+attests a Providence. To the physical order which one in good faith can
+scarcely deny, add the certainty, the evidence of the moral order that
+we bear in ourselves. This order supposes the harmony of virtue and
+goodness; it therefore requires it. Without doubt this harmony already
+appears in the visible world, in the natural consequences of good and
+bad actions, in society which punishes and rewards, in public esteem and
+contempt, especially in the troubles and joys of conscience. Although
+this necessary law of order is not always exactly fulfilled, it
+nevertheless ought to be, or the moral order is not satisfied, and the
+intimate nature of things, their moral nature, remains violated,
+troubled, perverted. There must, then, be a being who takes it upon
+himself to fulfil, in a time that he has reserved to himself, and in a
+manner that will be proper, the order of which he has put in us the
+inviolable need; and this being is again, God.
+
+Thus, on all sides, on that of metaphysics, on that of aesthetics,
+especially on that of ethics, we elevate ourselves to the same
+principle, the common centre, the last foundation, of all truth, all
+beauty, all goodness. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are only
+different revelations of the same being. Human intelligence,
+interrogated in regard to all these ideas which are incontestably in it,
+always makes us the same response; it sends us back to the same
+explanation,--at the foundation of all, above all, God, always God.
+
+We have arrived, then, from degree to degree, at religion. We are in
+fellowship with the great philosophies which all proclaim a God, and, at
+the same time, with the religions that cover the earth, with the
+Christian religion, incomparably the most perfect and the most holy. As
+long as philosophy has not reached natural religion,--and by this we
+mean, not the religion at which man arrives in that hypothetical state
+that is called the state of nature, but the religion which is revealed
+to us by the natural light accorded to all men,--it remains beneath all
+worship, even the most imperfect, which at least gives to man a father,
+a witness, a consoler, a judge. A true theodicea borrows in some sort
+from all religious beliefs their common principle, and returns it to
+them surrounded with light, elevated above all uncertainty, guarded
+against all attack. Philosophy may present itself in its turn to
+mankind; it also has a right to man's confidence, for it speaks to him
+of God in the name of all his needs and all his faculties, in the name
+of reason and sentiment.
+
+Observe that we have arrived at these high conclusions without any
+hypothesis, by the aid of processes at once very simple and perfectly
+rigorous. Truths of different orders being given, truths which have not
+been made by us, and are not sufficient for themselves, we have ascended
+from these truths to their author, as one goes from the effect to the
+cause, from the sign to the thing signified, from phenomenon to being,
+from quality to subject. These two principles--that every effect
+supposes a cause, and every quality a subject--are universal and
+necessary principles. They have been put by us in their full light, and
+demonstrated in the manner in which principles undemonstrable, because
+they are primitive, can be demonstrated. Moreover, to what are these
+necessary principles applied? To metaphysical and moral truths, which
+are also necessary. It was therefore necessary to conclude in the
+existence of a cause and a necessary being, or, indeed, it was necessary
+to deny either the necessity of the principle of cause and the principle
+of substance, or the necessity of the truths to which we applied them,
+that is to say, to renounce all notions of common sense; for these very
+principles and these truths, with their character of universality and
+necessity, compose common sense.
+
+Not only is it certain that every effect supposes a cause, and every
+quality a being, but it is equally certain that an effect of such a
+nature supposes a cause of the same nature, and that a quality or an
+attribute marked with such or such essential characters supposes a being
+in which these same characters are again found in an eminent degree.
+Whence it follows, that we have very legitimately concluded from truth
+in an intelligent cause and substance, from beauty in a being supremely
+beautiful, and from a moral law composed at once of justice and charity
+in a legislator supremely just and supremely good.
+
+And we have not made a geometrical and algebraical theodicea, after the
+example of many philosophers, and the most illustrious. We have not
+deduced the attributes of God from each other, as the different terms of
+an equation are converted, or as from one property of a triangle the
+other properties are deduced, thus ending at a God wholly abstract,
+good perhaps for the schools, but not sufficient for the human race. We
+have given to theodicea a surer foundation--psychology. Our God is
+doubtless also the author of the world, but he is especially the father
+of humanity; his intelligence is ours, with the necessity of essence and
+infinite power added. So our justice and our charity, related to their
+immortal exemplar, give us an idea of the divine justice and charity.
+Therein we see a real God, with whom we can sustain a relation also
+real, whom we can comprehend and feel, and who in his turn can
+comprehend and feel our efforts, our sufferings, our virtues, our
+miseries. Made in his image, conducted to him by a ray of his own being,
+there is between him and us a living and sacred tie.
+
+Our theodicea is therefore free at once from hypothesis and abstraction.
+By preserving ourselves from the one, we have preserved ourselves from
+the other. Consenting to recognize God only in his signs visible to the
+eyes and intelligible to the mind, it is on infallible evidence that we
+have elevated ourselves to God. By a necessary consequence, setting out
+from real effects and real attributes, we have arrived at a real cause
+and a real substance, at a cause having in power all its essential
+effects, at a substance rich in attributes. I wonder at the folly of
+those who, in order to know God better, consider him, they say, in his
+pure and absolute essence, disengaged from all limitative determination.
+I believe that I have forever removed the root of such an
+extravagance.[282] No; it is not true that the diversity of
+determinations, and, consequently, of qualities and attributes, destroys
+the absolute unity of a being; the infallible proof of it is that my
+unity is not the least in the world altered by the diversity of my
+faculties. It is not true that unity excludes multiplicity, and
+multiplicity unity; for unity and multiplicity are united in me. Why
+then should they not be in God? Moreover, far from altering unity in me,
+multiplicity develops it and makes its productiveness appear. So the
+richness of the determinations and the attributes of God is exactly the
+sign of the plenitude of his being. To neglect his attributes, is
+therefore to impoverish him; we do not say enough, it is to annihilate
+him,--for a being without attributes exists not; and the abstraction of
+being, human or divine, finite or infinite, relative or absolute, is
+nonentity.
+
+Theodicea has two rocks,--one, which we have just signalized to you, is
+abstraction, the abuse of dialectics; it is the vice of the schools and
+metaphysics. If we are forced to shun this rock, we run the risk of
+being dashed against the opposite rock, I mean that fear of reasoning
+that extends to reason, that excessive predominance of sentiment, which
+developing in us the loving and affectionate faculties at the expense of
+all the others, throws us into anthropomorphism without criticism, and
+makes us institute with God an intimate and familiar intercourse in
+which we are somewhat too forgetful of the august and fearful majesty of
+the divine being. The tender and contemplative soul can neither love nor
+contemplate in God the necessity, the eternity, the infinity, that do
+not come within the sphere of imagination and the heart, that are only
+conceived. It therefore neglects them. Neither does it study God in
+truth of every kind, in physics, metaphysics, and ethics, which manifest
+him; it considers in him particularly the characters to which affection
+is attached. In adoration, Fenelon retrenches all fear that nothing but
+love may subsist, and Mme. Guyon ends by loving God as a lover.
+
+We escape these opposite excesses of a refined sentimentality and a
+chimerical abstraction, by always keeping in mind both the nature of
+God, by which he escapes all relation with us,--necessity, eternity,
+infinity, and at the same time those of his attributes which are our own
+attributes transferred to him, for the very simple reason that they came
+from him.
+
+I am able to conceive God only in his manifestations and by the signs
+which he gives of his existence, as I am able to conceive any being only
+by the attributes of that being, a cause only by its effects, as I am
+able to conceive myself only by the exercise of my faculties. Take away
+my faculties and the consciousness that attests them to me, and I am not
+for myself. It is the same with God,--take away nature and the soul, and
+every sign of God disappears. It is therefore in nature and the soul
+that he must be sought and found.
+
+The universe, which comprises nature and man, manifests God. Is this
+saying that it exhausts God? By no means. Let us always consult
+psychology. I know myself only by my acts; that is certain; and what is
+not less certain is, that all my acts do not exhaust, do not equal my
+power and my substance; for my power, at least that of my will, can
+always add an act to all those which it has already produced, and it has
+the consciousness, at the same time that it is exercised, of containing
+in itself something to be exercised still. Of God and the world must be
+said two things in appearance contrary,--we know God only by the world,
+and God is essentially distinct and different from the world. The first
+cause, like all secondary causes, manifests itself only by its effects;
+it can even be conceived only by them, and it surpasses them by all of
+the difference between the Creator and the created, the perfect and the
+imperfect. The world is indefinite; it is not infinite; for, whatever
+may be its quantity, thought can always add to it. To the myriads of
+worlds that compose the totality of the world, may be added new worlds.
+But God is infinite, absolutely infinite in his essence, and an
+indefinite series cannot equal the infinite; for the indefinite is
+nothing else than the finite more or less multiplied and capable of
+continuous multiplication. The world is a whole which has its harmony;
+for a God could make only a complete and harmonious work. The harmony of
+the world corresponds to the unity of God, as indefinite quantity is a
+defective sign of the infinity of God. To say that the world is God, is
+to admit only the world and deny God. Give to this whatever name you
+please, it is at bottom atheism. On the one hand, to suppose that the
+world is void of God, and that God is separate from the world, is an
+insupportable and almost impossible abstraction. To distinguish is not
+to separate. I distinguish myself, but do not separate myself from my
+qualities and my acts. So God is not the world, although he is in it
+everywhere present in spirit and in truth.[283]
+
+Such is our theodicea: it rejects the excesses of all systems, and
+contains, we believe at least, all that is good in them. From sentiment
+it borrows a personal God as we ourselves are a person, and from reason
+a necessary, eternal, infinite God. In the presence of two opposite
+systems,--one of which, in order to see and feel God in the world,
+absorbs him in it; the other of which, in order not to confound God with
+the world, separates him from it and relegates him to an inaccessible
+solitude,--it gives to both just satisfaction by offering to them a God
+who is in fact in the world, since the world is his work, but without
+his essence being exhausted in it, a God who is both absolute unity and
+unity multiplied, infinite and living, immutable and the principle of
+movement, supreme intelligence and supreme truth, sovereign justice and
+sovereign goodness, before whom the world and man are like nonentity,
+who, nevertheless, is pleased with the world and man, substance eternal,
+and cause inexhaustible, impenetrable, and everywhere perceptible, who
+must by turns be sought in truth, admired in beauty, imitated, even at
+an infinite distance, in goodness and justice, venerated and loved,
+continually studied with an indefatigable zeal, and in silence adored.
+
+Let us sum up this _resume_. Setting out from the observation of
+ourselves in order to preserve ourselves from hypothesis, we have found
+in consciousness three orders of facts. We have left to each of them its
+character, its rank, its bearing, and its limits. Sensation has appeared
+to us the indispensable condition, but not the foundation of knowledge.
+Reason is the faculty itself of knowing; it has furnished us with
+absolute principles, and these absolute principles have conducted us to
+absolute truths. Sentiment, which pertains at once to sensation and
+reason, has found a place between both. Setting out from consciousness,
+but always guided by it, we have penetrated into the region of being; we
+have gone quite naturally from knowledge to its objects by the road that
+the human race pursues, that Kant sought in vain, or rather misconceived
+at pleasure, to wit, that reason which must be admitted entire or
+rejected entire, which reveals to us existences as well as truths.
+Therefore, after having recalled all the great metaphysical, aesthetical,
+and moral truths, we have referred them to their principle; with the
+human race we have pronounced the name of God, who explains all things,
+because he has made all things, whom all our faculties require,--reason,
+the heart, the senses, since he is the author of all our faculties.
+
+This doctrine is so simple, is to such an extent in all our powers, is
+so conformed to all our instincts, that it scarcely appears a
+philosophic doctrine, and, at the same time, if you examine it more
+closely, if you compare it with all celebrated doctrines, you will find
+that it is related to them and differs from them, that it is none of
+them and embraces them all, that it expresses precisely the side of them
+that has made them live and sustains them in history. But that is only
+the scientific character of the doctrine which we present to you; it has
+still another character which distinguishes it and recommends it to you
+much more. The spirit that animates it is that which of old inspired
+Socrates, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, which makes your hearts beat when
+you are reading Corneille and Bossuet, which dictated to Vauvenargues
+the few pages that have immortalized his name, which you feel especially
+in Reid, sustained by an admirable good sense, and even in Kant, in the
+midst of, and superior to the embarrassments of his metaphysics, to wit,
+the taste of the beautiful and the good in all things, the passionate
+love of honesty, the ardent desire of the moral grandeur of humanity.
+Yes, we do not fear to repeat that we tend thither by all our views; it
+is the end to which are related all the parts of our instruction; it is
+the thought which serves as their connection, and is, thus to speak,
+their soul. May this thought be always present to you, and accompany you
+as a faithful and generous friend, wherever fortune shall lead you,
+under the tent of the soldier, in the office of the lawyer, of the
+physician, of the savant, in the study of the literary man, as well as
+in the studio of the artist! Finally, may it sometimes remind you of him
+who has been to you its very sincere but too feeble interpreter!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[263] Still living in 1818, died in 1828.
+
+[264] In 1804.
+
+[265] Died, 1814.
+
+[266] This was said in 1818. Since then, Jacobi, Hegel, and
+Schleiermacher, with so many others, have disappeared. Schelling alone
+survives the ruins of the German philosophy.
+
+[267] FRAGMENTS DE PHILOSOPHIE CARTESIENNE, p. 429: _Des Rapports du
+Cartesienisme et du Spinozisme_.
+
+[268] Part 1st, lectures 1 and 2.
+
+[269] Part 2d.
+
+[270] Part 3d.
+
+[271] On Condillac, 1st Series, vol. i., _passim_, and particularly vol.
+iii., lectures 2 and 3.
+
+[272] We have never spoken of Locke except with sincere respect, even
+while combating him. See 1st Series, vol. i., course of 1817, _Discours
+d'Ouverture_, vol. ii., lecture 1, and especially 2d Series, vol. iii.,
+_passim_.
+
+[273] See 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on Reid.
+
+[274] _Ibid._, vol. v.
+
+[275] For more than twenty years we have thought of translating and
+publishing the three _Critiques_, joining to them a selection from the
+smaller productions of Kant. Time has been wanting to us for the
+completion of our design; but a young and skilful professor of
+philosophy, a graduate of the Normal School, has been willing to supply
+our place, and to undertake to give to the French public a faithful and
+intelligent version of the greatest thinker of the eighteenth century.
+M. Barni has worthily commenced the useful and difficult enterprise
+which we have remitted to his zeal, and pursues it with courage and
+talent.
+
+[276] Part 1st, Lecture 3.
+
+[277] Lecture 5, _Mysticism_.
+
+[278] This pretended proof of sentiment is in fact, the Cartesian proof
+itself. See lectures 4 and 16.
+
+[279] M. Jacobi. See the _Manual of the History of Philosophy_, by
+Tennemann, vol. ii., p. 318.
+
+[280] On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st part, lect. 2
+and 3.
+
+[281] Lectures 4 and 5.
+
+[282] See particularly lecture 5.
+
+[283] We place here this analogous passage on the true measure in which
+it may be said that God is at once comprehensible and incomprehensible,
+1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 12: "We say in the first place that
+God is not absolutely incomprehensible, for this manifest reason, that,
+being the cause of this universe, he passes into it, and is reflected in
+it, as the cause in the effect; therefore we recognize him. 'The heavens
+declare his glory.' and 'the invisible things of him from the creation
+of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
+made;' his power, in the thousands of worlds sown in the boundless
+regions of space; his intelligence in their harmonious laws; finally,
+that which there is in him most august, in the sentiments of virtue, of
+holiness, and of love, which the heart of man contains. It must be that
+God is not incomprehensible to us, for all nations have petitioned him,
+since the first day of the intellectual life of humanity. God, then, as
+the cause of the universe, reveals himself to us; but God is not only
+the cause of the universe, he is also the perfect and infinite cause,
+possessing in himself, not a relative perfection, which is only a degree
+of imperfection, but an absolute perfection, an infinity which is not
+only the finite multiplied by itself in those proportions which the
+human mind is able always to enumerate, but a true infinity, that is,
+the absolute negation of all limits, in all the powers of his being.
+Moreover, it is not true that an indefinite effect adequately expresses
+an infinite cause; hence it is not true that we are able absolutely to
+comprehend God by the world and by man, for all of God is not in them.
+In order absolutely to comprehend the infinite, it is necessary to have
+an infinite power of comprehension, and that is not granted to us. God,
+in manifesting himself, retains something in himself which nothing
+finite can absolutely manifest; consequently, it is not permitted us to
+comprehend absolutely. There remains, then, in God, beyond the universe
+and man, something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence in the
+immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of
+the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, whence
+he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new
+manifestations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible; but even of
+this incomprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea; for we have
+the most precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in us a
+metaphysical refinement, it is a simple and primitive conception which
+enlightens us from our entrance into this world, both luminous and
+obscure, explaining everything, and being explained by nothing, because
+it carries us at first, to the summit and the limit of all explanation.
+There is something inexplicable for thought,--behold then whither
+thought tends; there is infinite being,--behold then the necessary
+principle of all relative and finite beings. Reason explains not the
+inexplicable, it conceives it. It is not able to comprehend infinity in
+an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some degree in its
+indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it; and,
+further, as it has been said, it comprehend it so far as
+incomprehensible. It is, therefore, an equal error to call God
+absolutely comprehensible, and absolutely incomprehensible. He is both
+invisible and present, revealed and withdrawn in himself, in the world
+and out of the world, so familiar and intimate with his creatures, that
+we see him by opening our eyes, that we feel him in feeling our hearts
+beat, and at the same time inaccessible in his impenetrable majesty,
+mingled with every thing, and separated from every thing, manifesting
+himself in universal life, and causing scarcely an ephemeral shadow of
+his eternal essence to appear there, communicating himself without
+cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at once the living God, and the
+God concealed, '_Deus vivus et Deus absconditus_.'"
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+Page 188: "What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur!"
+
+It is perceived that we have followed, as regards his death, the
+tradition, or rather the prejudices current at the present day, and
+which have misled the best judges before us. But there have appeared in
+a recent and interesting publication, called _Archives de l'Art
+francais_, vol. iii., certain incontrovertible documents, never before
+published, on the life and works of the painter of St. Bruno, which
+compel us to withdraw certain assertions agreeable to general opinion,
+but contrary to truth. The notice of Lesueur's death, extracted for the
+first time from the _Register of Deaths of the parish church of
+Saint-Louis in the isle of Notre-Dame_, preserved amongst the archives
+of the Hotel de Ville at Paris, clearly prove that he did not die at the
+Chartreux, but in the isle of Notre-Dame, where he dwelt, in the parish
+of St. Louis, and that he was buried in the church of Saint-Etienne du
+Mont, the resting-place of Pascal and Racine. It appears also that
+Lesueur died before his wife, Genevieve Gousse, since the _Register of
+Births_ of the parish of Saint-Louis, contains under the date 18th
+February, 1655, a notice of the baptism of a fourth child of Lesueur.
+Now, Genevieve Gousse must have deceased almost immediately after her
+confinement, supposing her to have died before her husband's decease,
+which occurred on the 1st of the following May. If this were the case,
+we should have found a notice of her death in the _Register of Deaths_
+for the year 1655, as we do that of her husband. Such a notice, however,
+which could alone disprove the probability, and authenticate the vulgar
+opinion, is nowhere to be found amongst the archives of the Hotel de
+Ville, at least the author of the _Nouvelles Recherches_ has nowhere
+been able to meet with it.
+
+In the other particulars our rapid sketch of Lesueur's history remains
+untouched. He never was in Italy; and according to the account of
+Guillet de Saint-Georges, which has so long remained in manuscript, he
+never desired to go there. He was poor, discreet, and pious, tenderly
+loved his wife, and lived in the closest union with his three brothers
+and brother-in-law, who were all pupils and fellow-laborers of his. It
+appears to be a refinement of criticism which denies the current belief
+of an acquaintance between Lesueur and Poussin. If no document
+authenticates it, at all events it is not contradicted by any, and
+appears to us to be highly probable.
+
+Every one admits that Lesueur studied and admired Poussin. It would
+certainly be strange if he did not seek his acquaintance, which he could
+have obtained without difficulty, since Poussin was staying at Paris
+from 1640 to 1642. It would be difficult for them not to have met. After
+Vouet's death in 1641, Lesueur acquired more and more a peculiar style;
+and in 1642, at the age of twenty-five, entirely unshackled, and with a
+taste ripe for the antique and Raphael, he must frequently have been at
+the Louvre, where Poussin resided. Thus it is natural to suppose that
+they frequently saw each other and became acquainted, and with their
+sympathies of character and talent, acquaintance must have resulted in
+esteem and love. If Poussin's letters do not mention Lesueur, we would
+remark that neither do they mention Champagne, whose connection with
+Poussin is not disputed. The argument built on the silence of Guillet de
+Saint-Georges' account is far from convincing; inasmuch as being
+intended to be read before a Sitting of the Academy, it could only
+contain a notice of the great artist's career, without those
+biographical details in which his friendships would be mentioned.
+Lastly, it is impossible to deny Poussin's influence upon Lesueur, which
+it seems to us at least probable was as much due to his counsels as to
+his example.
+
+Page 190: "But the marvel of the picture is the figure of St. Paul."
+
+We have recently seen, at Hampton Court, the seven cartoons of Raphael,
+which should not be looked at, still less criticised, but on bended
+knee. Behold Raphael arrived at the summit of his art, and in the last
+years of life! And these were but drawings for tapestry! These drawings
+alone would reward the journey to England, even were the figures from
+the friezes of the Parthenon not at the _British Museum_. One never
+tires of contemplating these grand performances even in the obscurity
+of that ill-lighted room. Nothing could be more noble, more magnificent,
+more imposing, more majestic. What draperies, what attitudes, what
+forms! Notwithstanding the absence of color, the effect is immense; the
+mind is struck, at once charmed and transported; but the soul, we can
+speak for ourselves, remains well-nigh insensible. We request any one to
+compare carefully the sixth cartoon, clearly one of the finest,
+representing the Preaching of St. Paul at Ephesus, with the painting we
+have described of Lesueur's. One, immediately and at the first sight,
+transports you into the regions of the ideal; the other is less striking
+at first, but stay, consider it well, study it in detail, then take in
+the whole: by degrees you are overcome by an ever-increasing emotion.
+Above all, examine in both the principal character, St. Paul. Here, you
+behold the fine long folds of a superb robe which at once envelops and
+sets off his height, whilst the figure is in shade, and the little you
+see of it has nothing striking. There he confronts you, inspired,
+terrible, majestic. Now say which side lays claim to moral effect.
+
+Page 193: "The great works of Lesueur, Poussin, and so many others
+scattered over Europe."
+
+Of all the paintings of Lesueur which are in England, that which we
+regret most not having seen is _Alexander and his Physician_, painted
+for M. de Nouveau, director-general of the _Postes_, which passed from
+the Hotel Nouveau to the Place Royale in the Orleans Gallery, from
+thence into England, where it was bought by Lady Lucas at the great
+London sale in 1800. The sale catalogue, with the prices and names of
+the purchasers, will be found at the end of vol. i. of M. Waagen's
+excellent work, _Oeuvres d'Art et Artistes en Angleterre_, 2 vols.,
+Berlin, 1837 and 1838.
+
+We were both consoled and agreeably surprised on our return, to meet, in
+the valuable gallery of M. le Comte d'Houdetot, an ancient peer of
+France, and free member of the Academy of Fine Arts, with another
+Alexander and his physician Philip, in which the hand of Lesueur cannot
+be mistaken. The composition of the entire piece is perfect. The drawing
+is exquisite. The amplitude and nobleness of the draperies recall those
+of Raphael. The form of Alexander fine and languid; the person of Philip
+the physician grave and imposing. The coloring, though not powerful, is
+finely blended in tone. Now, where is the true original, is it with M.
+Houdetot or in England? The painting sold in London in 1800 certainly
+came from the Orleans' gallery, which would seem most likely to have
+possessed the original. On the other hand, it is impossible M.
+Houdetot's picture is a copy. They must, therefore, both be equally the
+work of Lesueur, who has in this instance treated the same subject twice
+over, as he has likewise done the Preaching of St. Paul; of which there
+is another, smaller than that at the Louvre, but equally admirable, at
+the Place Royale, belonging to M. Girou de Buzariengues, corresponding
+member of the Academy of Sciences.[284]
+
+We borrow M. Waagen's description of the works of Lesueur, found by that
+eminent critic in the English collections: _The Queen of Sheba before
+Solomon_, the property of the Duke of Devonshire, vol. i., p. 245.
+_Christ at the foot of the Cross supported by his Family_, belonging to
+the Earl of Shrewsbury, vol. ii., p. 463, "the sentiment deep and
+truthful," remarks M. Waagen. _The Magdalen pouring the ointment on the
+feet of Jesus_, the property of Lord Exeter, vol. ii., p. 485, "a
+picture full of the purest sentiment;" lastly, in the possession of M.
+Miles, a _Death of Germanicus_, "a rich and noble composition,
+completely in Poussin's style," remarks M. Waagen, vol. ii., p. 356. Let
+us add that this last work is not met with in any catalogue, ancient or
+modern. We ask ourselves whether this may not be a copy of the
+Germanicus of Poussin attributed to Lesueur.
+
+The author of _Musees d'Allemagne et du Russie_ (Paris, 1844) mentions
+at Berlin a _Saint Bruno adoring the Cross in his Cell, opening upon a
+landscape_, and pretends that this picture is as pathetic as the best
+Saint Brunos in the Museum at Paris. It is probably a sketch, like the
+one we have, or one of the wanting panels; for as for the pictures
+themselves, there were never more than twenty-two at the Chartreux, and
+these are at the Louvre. Perhaps, however, it may be the picture which
+Lesueur made for M. Bernard de Roze, see Florent Lecomte, vol. iii., p.
+98, which represented a Carthusian in a cell. At St. Petersburg, the
+catalogue of the Hermitage mentions seven pictures of Lesueur, one of
+which, _The infant Moses exposed on the Nile_, is admitted by the author
+cited to be authentic. Can this be one of two _Moses_ which were painted
+by Lesueur for M. de Nouveau, as we learn from Guillet de Saint-Georges?
+Unless M. Viardot is deceived, and mistakes a copy for an original, we
+must regret that a real Lesueur should Lave been suffered to stray to
+St. Petersburg, with many of Poussin's most beautiful Claudes (see p.
+474), Mignards, Sebastian Bourdons, Gaspars, Stellas, and Valentins.
+
+Some years ago, at the sale of Cardinal Fesch's gallery, we might have
+acquired one of Lesueur's finest pieces, executed for the church of
+Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, which had got, by some chance, into the
+possession of Chancellor Pontchartrain, afterwards into that of the
+Emperor's uncle. This celebrated picture, _Christ with Martha and Mary_,
+formed at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, a pendent to the _Martyrdom of St.
+Lawrence_. Will it be believed that the French Government lost the
+opportunity, and permitted this little _chef-d'oeuvre_ to pass into
+the hands of the King of Bavaria? A good copy at Marseilles was thought,
+doubtless, sufficient, and the original was left to find its way to the
+gallery at Munich, and meet again the _St. Louis on his knees at Mass_,
+which the catalogue of that gallery attributes to Lesueur, on what
+ground we are not aware. In conclusion, we may mention that there is in
+the Museum at Brussels, a charming little Lesueur, _The Saviour giving
+his Blessing_, and in the Museums of Grenoble and Montpelier several
+fragments of the _History of Tobias_, painted for M. de Fieubet.
+
+Page 193: "Those master-pieces of art that honor the nation depart
+without authorization from the national territory! There has not been
+found a government which has undertaken at least to repurchase those
+that we have lost, to get back again the great works of Poussin,
+Lesueur, and so many others, scattered in Europe, instead of squandering
+millions to acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or
+Spanish canvases, in truth of an admirable color, but without nobleness
+and moral expression."
+
+Shall we give a recent instance of the small value we appear to set on
+Poussin? We blush to think that in 1848 we should have permitted the
+noble collection of M. de Montcalm to pass into England. One picture
+escaped: it was put up to sale in Paris on the 5th of March, 1850. It
+was a charming Poussin, undoubtedly authentic, from the Orleans gallery,
+and described at length in the catalogue of Dubois de Saint-Gelais. It
+represented the _Birth of Bacchus_, and by its variety of scenes and
+multitude of ideas, showed it belonged to Poussin's best period. We must
+do Normandy, rather the city of Rouen, the justice to say, that it made
+an effort to acquire it, but it was unsupported by Government; and this
+composition, wholly French, was sold at Paris for the sum of 17,000
+francs, to a foreigner, Mr. Hope.
+
+Miserable contrast! while five or six hundred thousand francs have been
+given for a _Virgin_ by Murillo, which is now turning the heads of all
+who behold it. I confess that mine has entirely resisted. I admire the
+freshness, the sweetness, the harmony of color; but every other superior
+quality which one looks to find in such a subject is wanting, or at
+least escaped me. Ecstasy never transfigured that face, which is neither
+noble nor great. The lovely infant before me does not seem sensible of
+the profound mystery accomplished in her. What, then, can there be in
+this vaunted Virgin which so catches the multitude? She is supported by
+beautiful angels, in a fine dress, of a charming color, the effect of
+all which is doubtless highly pleasant.
+
+Page 195: "We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the _Seven
+Sacraments_, and for not having known how to keep from England and
+Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign
+collections," etc.
+
+After having expressed our regret that we were unacquainted with the
+_Seven Sacraments_ save from the engravings of Pesne, we made a journey
+to London, to see with our own eyes, and judge for ourselves these
+famous pictures, with many others of our great countryman, now fallen
+into the possession of England, through our culpable indifference, and
+which have been brought under our notice by M Waagen.
+
+In the few days we were able to dedicate to this little journey, we had
+to examine four galleries: the National Gallery, answering to our
+Museum, those of Lord Ellesmere and the Marquis of Westminster, and, at
+some miles from London, the collection at Dulwich College, celebrated in
+England, though but little known on the continent.
+
+We likewise visited another collection, resulting from an institution
+which might easily be introduced into France, to the decided advantage
+of art and taste. A society has been formed in England, called the
+British Institution for promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom.
+Every year it has, in London, an exhibition of ancient paintings, to
+which individual galleries send their choice pieces, so that in a
+certain number of years all the most remarkable pictures in England pass
+under the public eye. But for this exhibition, what riches would remain
+buried in the mansions of the aristocracy or unknown cabinets of
+provincial amateurs! The society, having at its head the greatest names
+of England, enjoys a certain authority, and all ranks respond eagerly to
+its appeal.
+
+We ourselves saw the list of persons who this year contributed to the
+exhibition; there were her Majesty the Queen, the Dukes of Bedford,
+Devonshire, Newcastle, Northumberland, Sutherland, the Earls of Derby
+and Suffolk, and numerous other great men, besides bankers, merchants,
+_savants_, and artists. The exhibition is public, but not free, as you
+must pay both for admission and the printed catalogue. The money thus
+acquired is appropriated to defray the expenses of the exhibition;
+whatever remains is employed in the purchase of pictures, which are then
+presented to the National Gallery.
+
+At this year's exhibition we saw three of Claude Lorrain's, which well
+sustained the name of that master. _Apollo watching the herds of
+Admetus_; a _Sea-port_, both belonging to the Earl of Leicester, and
+_Psyche and Amor_, the property of Mr. Perkins; a pretended Lesueur, the
+_Death of the Virgin_, from the Earl of Suffolk; seven Sebastian
+Bourdons, the _Seven Works of Mercy_,[285] lent by the Earl of
+Yarborough; a landscape by Gaspar Poussin, but not one _morceau_ of his
+illustrious brother-in-law's.
+
+We were more fortunate in the National Gallery.
+
+There, to begin, what admirable Claudes! We counted as many as ten, some
+of them of the highest value. We will confine ourselves to the
+recapitulation of three, the Embarkation of St. Ursula, a large
+landscape, and the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.
+
+1st. _The Embarkation of St. Ursula_, which was painted for the
+Barberini, and adorned their palace at Rome until the year 1760, when an
+English amateur purchased it from the Princess Barberini, with other
+works of the first class. This picture is 3 feet 8 inches high, 4 feet
+11 inches wide.
+
+2d. The large landscape is 4 feet 11 inches high, 6 feet 7 inches wide.
+Rebecca is seen, with her relatives and servants, waiting the arrival of
+Isaac, who comes from afar to celebrate their marriage.
+
+3d. _The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba_, going to visit Solomon,
+formed a pendent to the preceding figure, which it resembles in its
+dimensions. It is both a sea and landscape drawing, M. Waagen declares
+it to be the most beautiful _morceau_ of the kind he is acquainted with,
+and asserts that Lorrain has here attained perfection, vol. i., p. 211.
+This masterpiece was executed by Claude for his protector, the Duke de
+Bouillon. It is signed "Claude GE. I. V., faict pour son Altesse le Duc
+de Bouillon, anno 1648." Doubtless the great Duke de Bouillon, eldest
+brother of Turenne. This French work, destined, too, for France, she has
+now forever lost, as well as the famous Book of Truth, _Libro di
+Verita_, in which Claude collected the drawings of all his paintings,
+drawings which may be themselves regarded as finished pictures. This
+invaluable treasure was, like the _Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba_,
+for a long time in the hands of a French broker, who would willingly
+have relinquished it to the Government, but failing to find purchasers
+in Paris in the last century, ultimately sold it for a mere nothing into
+Holland, whence it has passed into England.[286] The author of the
+_Musees d'Allemagne et de Russie_, mentions that in the gallery of the
+Hermitage at St. Petersburg, amongst a large number of Claudes, whose
+authenticity he appears to admit, there are four _morceaux_, which he
+does not hesitate to declare equal to the most celebrated
+_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of that master, in Paris or London, called the
+_Morning_, the _Noon_, the _Evening_, and the _Night_. They are from
+Malmaison. Thus the sale of the gallery of an empress has in our own
+time enriched Russia, as, twenty-five years before, the sale of the
+Orleans gallery enriched England.
+
+In the National Gallery, along with the serene and quiet landscapes of
+Lorrain, are five of Caspar's, depicting nature under an opposite
+aspect--rugged and wild localities, and tempests. One of the most
+remarkable represents Eneas and Dido seeking shelter in a grotto from
+the violence of a storm. The figures are from the pencil of Albano, and
+for a length of time remained in the palace Falconieri. Two other
+landscapes are from the palace Corsini, and two from the palace Colonna.
+
+But to return to our real subject, which is Poussin. There are eight
+paintings by his hand in the National Gallery, all worthy of mention. M.
+Waagen has merely spoken of them in general terms, but we shall proceed
+to give a description in detail.
+
+Of these eight paintings, only one, representing the plague of Ashdod,
+is taken from sacred history. This is described in the printed catalogue
+as No. 105. The Israelites having been vanquished by the Philistines,
+the ark was taken by the victors and placed in the temple of Dagon at
+Ashdod. The idol falls before the ark, and the Philistines are smitten
+with the pestilence. This canvas is 4 feet 3 inches high, and 6 feet 8
+inches, wide. A sketch or copy of the _Plague of the Philistines_ is in
+the Museum of the Louvre, and has been engraved by Picard. Poussin was,
+in fact, fond of repeating a subject; there are two sets of the _Seven
+Sacraments_, two _Arcadias_,[287] two or three _Moses striking the
+Rock_, &c. The science of painting is here employed to portray the scene
+in all its terrors, and display every horror of the pestilence, and it
+would seem that Poussin had here endeavored to contend with Michael
+Angelo, even at the expense of beauty. It is said the commission for
+this work was given by Cardinal Barberini. It comes from the palace of
+Colonna. The subjects of the remaining seven pictures in the National
+Gallery are mythological, and may be nearly all referred to the early
+epoch of Poussin's career, when he paid tribute to the genius of the
+16th century, and yielded to the influence of Marini.
+
+No. 39. The _Education of Bacchus_, a subject chosen by Poussin more
+than once. On a small canvas 2 feet 3 inches high, and 3 feet 1 inch
+wide.
+
+No. 40. Another small picture 1 foot 6 inches high, and 3 feet 4 inches
+broad: _Phocion washing his Feet at a Public Fountain_, a touching
+emblem of the purity and simplicity of his life. To heighten this rustic
+scene, and impart its meaning, the painter shows us the trophies of the
+noble warrior hung on the trunk of a tree at a little distance. The
+whole composition is striking and full of animation. We believe that it
+has never been engraved. It forms a happy addition to the two other
+compositions consecrated by Poussin to Phocion, and which have been so
+admirably engraved by Baudet, _Phocion carried out of the City of
+Athens_, and the _Tomb of Phocion_.
+
+No. 42. Here is one of the three bacchanals painted by Poussin for the
+Duke de Montmorency. The two others are said to be in the collection of
+Lord Ashburnham. This bacchanal is 4 feet 8 inches high, and 3 feet 1
+inch wide. In a warm landscape Bacchus is sleeping surrounded by nymphs,
+satyrs, and centaurs, whilst Silenus appears under an arbor attended by
+sylvan figures.
+
+No. 62. Another bacchanal, which may be considered one of Poussin's
+masterpieces. According to M. Waagen, it belonged to the Colonna
+collection, but the catalogue, published _by authority_, states that it
+was originally the property of the Comte de Vaudreueili, that it
+afterwards came into the hands of M. de Calonne, whence it passed into
+England, and ultimately found its way into the hands of Mr. Hamlet, from
+whom it was purchased by Parliament, and placed in the National Gallery.
+It is 3 feet 8 inches high, and 4 feet 8 inches wide. Its subject is a
+dance of fauns and bacchantes, which is interrupted by a satyr, who
+attempts to take liberties with a nymph. Besides the main subject, there
+are numerous spirited and graceful episodes, particularly two infants
+endeavoring to catch in a cup the juice of a bunch of grapes supported
+in air, and pressed by a bacchante of slim and fine form. The
+composition is full of fire, energy, and spirit. There is not a single
+group, not a figure, which will not repay an attentive study. M. Waagen
+does not hesitate to pronounce it one of Poussin's finest. He admires
+the truth and variety of heads, the freshness of color, and the
+transparent tone (_die Faerbung von seltenster Frische, Helle und
+Klarheit in allen Theilen_). It has been engraved by Huart, and
+accurately copied by Landon, under the title of _Danse de Fauns et de
+Bacchantes_.
+
+No. 65. _Cephalus and Aurora._ Aurora, captivated by the beauty of
+Cephalus, endeavors to separate him from his wife Procris. Being
+unsuccessful, in a fit of jealousy she gives to Cephalus the dart which
+causes the death of his adored spouse. 3 feet 2 inches high, 4 feet 2
+inches wide.
+
+No. 83. A large painting, 5 feet 6 inches high, and 8 feet wide,
+representing _Phineas and his Companions changed into Stones by looking
+on the Gorgon_. Perseus, having rescued Andromeda from the sea monster,
+obtains her hand from her father Cepheus, who celebrates their nuptials
+with a magnificent feast. Phineas, to whom Andromeda had been betrothed,
+rushes in upon the festivity at the head of a troop of armed men. A
+combat ensues, in which Perseus, being nearly overcome, opposes to his
+enemies the head of Medusa, by which they are instantly changed to
+stone. This composition is full of vigor, with brilliant coloring,
+although somewhat crude. It is nowhere mentioned, and we are not aware
+of its having been engraved.
+
+No. 91. A charming little drawing, 2 feet 2 inches high, 1 foot 8 inches
+wide: _A sleeping Nymph, surprised by Lore and Satyrs_, engraved by
+Daulle, also in Landon's work.
+
+Passing from the National Gallery to that of Bridgewater, we come upon
+another phase of Poussin's genius, and encounter not the disciple of
+Mariai but the disciple of the gospel, the graces of mythology giving
+way to the austerity and sublimity of Christianity. Such is the account
+of what we came to see; we looked for much, and found more than we
+expected.
+
+The Bridgewater Gallery is so named after its founder, the Duke of
+Bridgewater, by whom it was formed about the middle of the eighteenth
+century. He bequeathed it to his brother, the Marquis of Stafford, on
+the condition of his leaving it to his second son, Lord Francis Egerton,
+now Lord Ellesmere. The best part of this collection was engraved during
+the life of the Marquis of Stafford, by Ottley, under the title of the
+Stafford Gallery, in 4 vols. folio.
+
+It occupies the first place in England amongst private collections, on
+account of the number of masterpieces of the Italian, and Dutch, and
+French schools. A large number of paintings were added to it from the
+Orleans Gallery, and we could not repress a feeling of regret to meet at
+Cleveland Square with so many masterpieces formerly belonging to France,
+and which have been engraved in the two celebrated works: 1. _La Galerie
+du duc d'Orleans au Palais-Royal_, 2 volumes in folio; 2. _Recueil
+d'estampes d'apres les plus beaux tableaux et dessins qui sont en France
+dans le cabinet du roi et celui de Monseigneur le duc d'Orleans_, 1729,
+2 volumes in folio; a most valuable collection known also under the name
+of the _Cabinet of Crozat_. This admirable collection is deposited in a
+building worthy of it, in a veritable palace, and consists of nearly 300
+paintings. The French school is here well represented. The _Musical
+Party_, from the Orleans Gallery, and engraved in the _Galerie du
+Palais-Royal_, three Bourguignons, four Gaspars, four fine Claudes,
+described by M. Waagen, vol. i., p. 331, the two former described in the
+catalogue as Nos. 11 and 41 were painted in 1664 for M. de Bourlemont, a
+gentleman of Lorraine; the former, _Demosthenes by the Sea-side_, offers
+a fine contrast between majestic ruins and nature eternally young and
+fresh; the second, _Moses at the Burning Bush_, a third, No. 103, of the
+year 1657, was likewise painted for a Frenchman, M. de Lagarde, and
+represents the _Metamorphosis of Apuleius into a Shepherd_; lastly,
+there is a fourth, No. 97, the freshest idyll that ever was, a _View of
+the Cascatelles of Tivoli_.
+
+The memory of these charming compositions, however, soon fades before
+the view of the eight grand pictures of Poussin, marked in the catalogue
+Nos. 62-69, the _Seven Sacraments_, and _Moses striking the Rock with
+his Rod_.
+
+It would be difficult to describe the religious sensations which took
+possession of us whilst contemplating the _Seven Sacraments_. Whatever
+M. Waagen may please to assert, there is certainly nothing theatrical
+about them. The beauty of ancient statuary is here animated and
+enlivened by the spirit of Christianity, and the genius of the painter.
+The moral expression is of the most exalted character, and is left to be
+noticed less in the details than in the general composition. In fact, it
+is in composition that Poussin excels, and, in this respect, we do not
+think he has any superior, not even of the Florentine and Roman school.
+As each _Sacrament_ is a vast scene in which the smallest details go to
+enhance the effect of the whole, so the _Seven Sacraments_ form a
+harmonious entirety, a single work, representing the development of the
+Christian life by means of its most august ceremonies, in the same way
+as the twenty-two _St. Brunos_ of Lesueur express the whole monastic
+life, the intention of the variety being to give a truer conception of
+its unity. Can any one, in sincerity, say as much as this for the
+_Stanze_ of the Vatican? Have they a common sentiment? Is the sentiment
+profound, and, indeed, Christian? No doubt Raphael elevates the soul,
+whatever is beautiful cannot fail to do that; but he touches only the
+surface, _circum praecordia ludit_; he penetrates not deep; moves not the
+inner fibres of our being: for why? he himself was not so moved. He
+snatches us from earth, and transports us into the serene atmosphere of
+eternal beauty; but the mournful side of life, the sublime emotions of
+the heart, magnanimity, heroism, in a word, moral grandeur, this he
+does not express; and why was this? because he did not possess it in
+himself, because it was not to be met with around him in the Italy of
+the 16th century, in a society semi-pagan, superstitious, and impious,
+given up to every vice and disorder, which Luther could not even catch a
+glimpse of without raging with horror, and meditating a revolution. From
+this corrupt basis, thinly hidden by a fictitious politeness, two great
+figures, Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, show themselves. But the
+noble widow of the Marquis of Pescaria was not of the company of the
+Fornarina; and what common ground could the chaste lover of the second
+Beatrice, the Dante of painting and of sculpture, the intrepid engineer
+who defended Florence, the melancholy author of _the Last Judgment_ and
+of _Lorenzo di Medici_, have with such men as Perugino boldly professing
+atheism, at the same time that he painted, at the highest price
+possible, the most delicate Madonnas; and his worthy friend Aretino,
+atheist, and moreover hypocrite, writing with the same hand his infamous
+sonnets and the life of the Holy Virgin; and Giulio Romano, who lent his
+pencil to the wildest debaucheries, and Marc' Antonio, who engraved
+them? Such is the world in which Raphael lived, and which early taught
+him to worship material beauty, the purest taste in design, if not the
+strongest, fine drawing, sweet contours, of light, of color, but which
+always hides from him the highest beauty, that is, moral beauty. Poussin
+belongs to a very different world. Thanks to God, he had learned to know
+in France others besides artists without faith or morals, elegant
+amateurs, rich prelates, and compliant beauties. He had seen with his
+eyes heroes, saints, and statesmen. He must have met, at the court of
+Louis XIII., between 1640 and 1642, the young Conde and the voting
+Turenne, St. Vincent de Paul, Mademoiselle de Vigean, and Mademoiselle
+de Lafayette; had shaken hands with Richelieu, with Lesueur, with
+Champagne, and no doubt also with Corneille. Like the last, he is grave
+and masculine; he has the sentiment of the great, and strives to reach
+it. If, above every thing, he is an artist, if his long career is an
+assiduous and indefatigable study of beauty, it is pre-eminently moral
+beauty that strikes him: and when he represents historic or Christian
+scenes, one feels he is there, like the author of the Cid, of Cinna, and
+of Polyeuete, in his natural element. He shows, assuredly, much spirit
+and grace in his mythologies, and like Corneille in several of his
+elegies and in the Declaration of Love to Psyche: but also like him, it
+is in the thoughtful and noble style that Poussin excels: it is on the
+moral ground that he has a place exalted and apart in the history of
+art.
+
+It is not our intention to describe the _Seven Sacraments_, which has
+been done by others more competent to the task than ourselves. We will
+only inquire whether Bossuet himself, in speaking of the sacrament of
+the _Ordination_, could have employed more gravity and majesty than
+Poussin has done in the noble painting, so well preserved, in the
+gallery of Lord Ellesmere. It is worthy of remark, in this as in the
+other paintings of Poussin's best period, how admirably the landscape
+accords with the historic portion. Whilst the foreground is occupied
+with the great scene in which Christ transmits his power to St. Peter
+before the assembled apostles,[288] in the distance, and above the
+heights, are descried edifices rising and in decay. Doubtless, the
+_Extreme Unction_ is the most pathetic; affects and attracts us most by
+its various qualities, particularly by a certain austere grace shed
+around the images of death;[289] but, unhappily, this striking
+composition has almost totally disappeared under the black tint, which
+has little by little gained on the other colors, and obscured the whole
+painting, so that we are well-nigh reduced to the engraving of Pesne,
+and the beautiful drawing preserved in the museum of the Louvre.[290]
+
+Most unhappily a technical error, into which even the most
+inconsiderable painter would not now fall, has deprived posterity of one
+half of Poussin's labors. He was in the habit of covering his canvas
+with a preparation of red, which has been changed by the effect of time
+into black, and thus absorbed the other colors, destroying the effect of
+the etherial perspective. As every one knows, this does not occur with a
+white preparation, which, instead of destroying the colors, preserves
+them for a length of time in their original state. This last process
+Poussin appears to have adopted in the _Moses striking the Rock with his
+Staff_, incomparably the finest of all the _Strikings of the Rock_ which
+proceeded from his pencil. This masterpiece is well known, from the
+engraving by Baudet, and has passed, with the _Seven Sacraments_, from
+the Orleans gallery into the collection at Bridgewater. What unity is in
+this vast composition, and yet what variety in the action, the pose, the
+features of the figures! It consists of twenty different pictures, and
+yet is but one; and not even one of the episodes could be taken away
+without considerable injury to the _ensemble_ of the piece. At the same
+time, what fine coloring! The impastation is both solid and light, and
+the colors are combined in the happiest manner. No doubt they might
+possess greater brilliancy; but the severity of the subject agrees well
+with a moderate tone. It is important to remember this. In the first
+place, every subject demands its proper color: in the second, grave
+subjects require a certain amount of coloring, which, however, must not
+be exceeded. Although the highest art does not consist in coloring, it
+would nevertheless be folly to regard it as of small importance: for, in
+that case, drawing would be every thing, and color might be altogether
+dispensed with. In attempting too far to please the eye, the risk is
+incurred of not going beyond and penetrating to the soul. On the other
+hand, want of color, or what is perhaps still worse, a disagreeable,
+crude, and improper coloring, while it offends the eye, likewise impairs
+the moral effect, and deprives even beauty of its charm. Color is to
+painting what harmony is to poetry and prose. There is equal defect
+whether in the case of too much or too little harmony, while one same
+harmony continued must be looked upon as a serious fault. Is Corneille
+happily inspired? His harmony, like his words, are true, beautiful,
+admirable in their variety. The tones differ with his different
+characters, but are always consistent with the conditions of harmony
+imposed by poesy. Is he negligent? his style then becomes rude,
+unpolished, at times intolerable. The harmony of Racine is slightly
+monotonous, his men talk like women, and his lyre was but one tone, that
+of a natural and refined elegance. There is but one man amongst us who
+speaks in every tone and in all languages, who has colors and accents
+for every subject, _naive_ and sublime, vividly correct yet unaffectedly
+simple. Sweet as Racine in his lament of Madame, masculine and vigorous
+as Corneille or Tacitus when he comes to describe Retz or Cromwell,
+clear as the battle trumpet when his strain is Roeroy or Conde,
+suggestive of the equal and varied flow of a mighty river in the
+majestic harmony of his Discourse on Universal History, a History which,
+in the grandeur and extent of its composition, in its vanquished
+difficulties, its depth of art, where art even ceases to appear as such,
+in its perfect unity, and, at the same time, almost infinite variety of
+tone and style, is perhaps the most finished work which has ever come
+from the hand of man.
+
+To return to Poussin. At Hampton Court, where, by the side of the seven
+cartoons of Raphael, the nine magnificent Montegnas representing the
+triumph of Caesar, and the fine portraits of Albert Durer and Holbein,
+French art makes so small a figure, there is a Poussin[291] of
+particularly fine color, _Satyrs finding a Nymph_. The transparent and
+lustrous body of the nymph forms the entire picture. It is a study of
+design and color, evidently of the period when Poussin, to perfect
+himself in every branch of his art, made copies from Titian.
+
+Time fails us to give the least idea of the rich gallery of the Marquess
+of Westminster, in Grosvenor-street. We refer for this to what M. Waagen
+has said, vol. ii., p. 113-130. The Flemish and Dutch schools
+preponderate in this gallery. One sees there in all their glory the
+three great masters of that school, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt,
+accompanied by a numerous suite of inferior masters, at present much in
+vogue, Hobbema, Cuyp, Both, Potter, and others, who, to our idea, fade
+completely before some half-dozen by Claude of all sizes, of every
+variety of subject, and nearly all of the best time of the great
+landscape-painter, between 1651 and 1661. Of these paintings, the
+greatest and most important is perhaps the _Sermon on the Mount_.
+Poussin appears worthily by the side of Lorrain in the gallery at
+Grosvenor-street. M. Waagen admires particularly _Calisto changed into a
+Bear, and placed by Jupiter among the Constellations_, and still more a
+_Virgin with the infant Jesus surrounded by Angels_. He extols in this
+_morceau_ the surpassing clearness of coloring, the noble and melancholy
+sentiment of nature, together with a warm and powerful tone. M. Waagen
+places this painting amongst the masterpieces of the French painter
+(_gehoert zu dem vortrefflichsten was ich von ihm kenne_). Whilst fully
+concurring in this judgment, we beg leave to point out in the same
+gallery two other canvases of Poussin, two delicious pieces from the
+easel, first a touching episode in _Moses striking the Rock_, in the
+gallery of Lord Ellesmere, of a mother who, heedless of herself, hastens
+to give her children drink, whilst their father bends in thanksgiving to
+God; the other, _Children at play_. Never did a more delightful scene
+come from the pencil of Albano. Two children look, laughing, at each
+other; another to the right holds a butterfly on his finger; a fourth
+endeavors to catch a butterfly which is flying from him; a fifth,
+stooping, takes fruit from a basket.
+
+But we must quit the London galleries to betake ourselves to that which
+forms the ornament of the college situated in the charming village of
+Dulwich.
+
+Stanislas, king of Poland, charged a London amateur, M. Noel Desenfans,
+to form him a collection of pictures. The misfortunes of Stanislas, and
+the dismemberment of Poland left on M. Desenfans' hands all he had
+collected; these he made a present of to a friend of his, M. Bourgeois,
+a painter, who still further enriched this fine collection, and
+bequeathed it, at his death, to Dulwich College, where it now is in a
+very commodious and well-lighted building. It consists of nearly 350
+paintings. M. Waagen, who visited it, pronounces judgment with some
+severity. The catalogue is ill-compiled, it is true, but in this it does
+not differ from numerous other catalogues. Mediocrity is frequently
+placed side by side with excellence, and copies given as originals; this
+is the case with more than one gallery. This one, however, has to us the
+merit of containing a considerable number of French paintings, to some
+of which even M. Waagen cannot refuse his admiration.
+
+We will, first of all, mention without describing them, a Lenain, two
+Bourguignons, three portraits by Rigaud, or after Rigaud, a Louis XIV.,
+a Boileau, and another personage unknown to us, two Lebruns, the
+_Massacre of the Innocents_, and _Horatius Cocles defending the Bridge_,
+in which M. Waagen discovers happy imitations of Poussin, three or four
+Gaspars and seven Claude Lorrains, the beauty of most of which is a
+sufficient guarantee of their authenticity; together with a very fine
+_Fete champetre_ by Watteau, and a _View near Rome_, by Joseph Vernet.
+Of Poussin, the catalogue points out eighteen, of which the following is
+a list:
+
+No. 115. _The Education of Bacchus_; 142, _a Landscape_; 249, _a Holy
+Family_; 253, _the Apparition of the Angels to Abraham_; 260, _a
+Landscape_; 269, _the Destruction of Niobe_; 279, _a Landscape_; 291,
+_the Adoration of the Magi_; 292, _a Landscape_; 295, _the Inspiration
+of the Poet_; 300, _the Education of Jupiter_; 305, _the Triumph of
+David_; 310, _the Flight into Egypt_; 315, _Renald and Armida_; 316,
+_Venus and Mercury_; 325, _Jupiter and Antiope_; 336, _the Assumption of
+the Virgin_; 352, _Children_.
+
+Of these eighteen pictures, M. Waagen singles out five, which he thus
+characterizes:
+
+_The Assumption of the Virgin_, No. 336. In a landscape of powerful
+poesy, the Virgin is carried off to heaven in clouds of gold: a small
+picture, of which the sentiment is noble and pure, the coloring strong
+and transparent (_in der Farbe kraftiges und klaares Bild_). _Children_,
+No. 352. Replete with loveliness and charm. _The Triumph of David_, No.
+305. A rich picture, but theatrical.
+
+_Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea_, No. 300. A charming composition,
+transparent tone. _A Landscape_, No. 260. A well-drawn landscape,
+breathing a profound sentiment of nature; but which has become rather
+blackened.
+
+We are unable to recognize in the _Triumph of David_ the theatrical
+character which shocked M. Waagen. On the contrary, we perceive a bold
+and almost wild expression, a great deal of passion finely subdued.
+
+A triumph must always contain some formality; here, however, there is
+the least possible, and that with which we are struck is its vigor and
+truth to nature. The giant's head stuck on the pike has the grandest
+effect: and we believe that the able German critic has, in this
+instance, likewise yielded to the prejudices of his country, which, in
+its passion for what it styles reality, fancies it perceives the
+theatrical in whatever is noble. We admit that at the close of the
+seventeenth century, under Louis XIV. and Lebrun, the noble was merged
+in the theatrical and academic; but under Louis XIII. and the Regency,
+in the time of Corneille and Poussin, the academic and theatrical style
+was wholly unknown. We entreat the sagacious critic not to forget this
+distinction between the divisions of the seventeenth century, nor to
+confound the master with his disciples, who, although they were still
+great, had slightly degenerated, and who were oppressed by the taste of
+the age of Louis XIV.
+
+But our gravest reproach against M. Waagen is, that he did not notice at
+Dulwich numerous _morceaux_ of Poussin, which well merited his
+attention; amongst others, the _Adoration of the Magi_, far superior,
+for its coloring, to that in the Museum at Paris; and, above all, a
+picture which seems to us a masterpiece in the difficult art of
+conveying a philosophic idea under the living form of a myth and an
+allegory.
+
+In this art, Poussin excelled: he is pre-eminently a philosophical
+artist, a thinker assisted by all the resources of the science of
+design. He has ever an idea which guides his hand, and which is his main
+object. Let us not tire to reiterate this: it is moral beauty which he
+everywhere seeks, both in nature and humanity. As we have stated in
+relation to the sacrament of _Ordination_, the landscapes of Poussin are
+almost always designed to set off and heighten human life, whilst Claude
+is essentially a landscape painter, with whom both history and humanity
+are made subservient to nature. Subjects derived from Christianity were
+exactly suited to Poussin, inasmuch as they afforded the sublimest types
+of that moral grandeur in which he delighted, although we do not see in
+him the exquisite piety of Lesueur and Champagne; and if Christian
+greatness speaks to his soul, it appears to do so with no authority
+beyond that of Phocion, of Scipio, or of Germanicus. Sometimes neither
+sacred nor profane history suffices him: he invents, he imagines, he has
+recourse to moral and philosophic allegory. It is here, perhaps, that he
+is most original, and that his imagination displays itself in its
+greatest freedom and elevation. _Arcadia_ is a lesson of high philosophy
+under the form of an idyll. _The Testament of Eudamidas_ portrays the
+sublime confidence of friendship. _Time Rescuing Truth from the assaults
+of Envy and Discord_, _the Ballet of Human Life_, are celebrated models
+of this style. We have had the good fortune to meet at Dulwich with a
+work of Poussin's almost unknown, and of whose existence we had not even
+an idea, sparkling at the same time with the style we have been
+describing, and with the most eminent qualities of the chief of the
+French school.
+
+This work, entirely new to us, is a picture of very small size, marked
+No. 295, and described in the catalogue as _The Inspiration of the
+Poet_, a delightful subject, and treated in the most delightful manner.
+Fancy the freshest landscape, in the foreground a harmonious group of
+three personages. The poet, on bended knee, carries to his lips the
+sacred cup which Apollo, the god of poesy, has presented to him. Whilst
+he quaffs, inspiration seizes him, his face is transfigured, and the
+sacred intoxication becomes apparent in the motion of his hands and his
+whole body. Beside Apollo, the Muse prepares to collect the songs of the
+poet. Above this group, a genius, frolicking in air, weaves a chaplet,
+whilst other genii scatter flowers. In the background, the clearest
+horizon. Grace, spirit, depth--this enchanting composition unites the
+whole. Added to this, the color is well-grounded and of great
+brilliancy.
+
+It is very singular that neither Bellori nor Felibien, who both lived on
+terms of intimacy with Poussin, and are still his best historians, say
+not a word of this work. It is not referred to in the catalogues of
+Florent Lecomte, of Gault de St. Germain, or of Castellan; nor does M.
+Waagen himself, who, having been at Dulwich, must have seen it there,
+make the least mention of it. We are, therefore, ignorant in what year,
+on what occasion, and for whom this delicious little painting was
+executed: but the hand of Poussin is seen throughout, in the drawing, in
+the composition, in the expression. Nothing theatrical or vulgar: truth
+combined with beauty. The whole scene conveys unmixed delight, and its
+impression is at once serene and profound. In our idea, _The Inspiration
+of the Poet_ may be ranked as almost equal with _The Arcadia_.
+
+Notwithstanding this, _The Inspiration_ has never been engraved, at
+least we have not met with it in any of the rich collections of
+engravings from Poussin we have been enabled to consult, those of M. de
+Baudicour, of M. Gatteaux, member of the Academy of Fine Arts, and
+lastly, the cabinet of prints in the _Bibliotheque Nationale_. We hope
+that these few words may suggest to some French engraver the idea of
+undertaking the very easy pilgrimage to Dulwich, and making known to the
+lovers of national art an ingenious and touching production of Poussin,
+strayed and lost, as it, were, in a foreign collection.
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[284] This is the sketch which Felibien so justly praises, part v., p.
+37, of the 1st edition, in 4to.
+
+[285] This great work has been long in England, as remarked by Mariette,
+see the _Abecedario_, just published, article S. Bourdon, vol. i., p.
+171. It appears to have been a favorite work of Bourdon, he having
+himself engraved it, see de Piles, _Abrege de la Vie des Peintres_, 2d
+edition, p. 494, and the _Peintre graveur francais_, of M. Robert
+Dumesnil, vol. i., p. 131, etc. The copperplates of the _Seven Works of
+Mercy_ are at the Louvre.
+
+[286] The _Libro di Verita_ is now the property of the Duke of
+Devonshire. M. Leon de Laborde has given a detailed account of it in the
+_Archives de l'Art francais_, tom. i., p. 435, et seq.
+
+[287] The first composition of _Arcadia_, truly precious could it have
+been placed in the Louvre beside the second and better production, is in
+England, the property of the Duke of Devonshire.
+
+[288] In the first set of the _Seven Sacraments_, executed for the
+Chevalier del Pozzo, now in England, the property of the Duke of
+Rutland, and with which we are acquainted only through engravings,
+Christ is placed on the left hand; it is less masterly and imposing, and
+the centre has a vacant appearance. In the second set, painted five or
+six years after the former for M. de Chanteloup, Christ is placed in the
+centre: this new disposition changes the entire effect of the piece.
+Poussin never repeated himself in treating the same subject a second
+time, but improved on it, aiming ever at perfection. And the memorable
+answer which he once made to one who inquired of him by what means he
+had attained to so great perfection, "I never neglected any thing,"
+should be always present to the mind of every artist, painter, sculptor,
+poet, or composer.
+
+[289] Poussin writes to M. de Chanteloup, April 25, 1644 (Lettres de
+Poussin, Paris, 1824), "I am working briskly at the _Extreme Unction_,
+which is indeed a subject worthy of Apelles, who was very fond of
+representing the dying." He adds, with a vivacity which seems to
+indicate that he took a particular fancy to this painting, "I do not
+intend to quit it whilst I feel thus well-disposed, until I have put it
+in fair train for a sketch. It is to contain seventeen figures of men,
+women, and children, young and old, one part of whom are drowned in
+tears, whilst the others pray for the dying. I will not describe it to
+you more in detail. In this, my clumsy pen is quite unfit, it requires a
+gilded and well-set pencil. The principal figures are two feet high; the
+painting will be about the size of your _Manne_, but of better
+proportion." Felibien, a friend and confidant of Poussin, likewise
+remarks (_Entretiens_, etc., part iv., p. 293), that the _Extreme
+Unction_ was one of the paintings which pleased him most. We learn at
+length, from Poussin's letters, that he finished it and sent it into
+France in this same year, 1644. Fenoien informs us that in 1646 he
+completed the _Confirmation_, in 1647 the _Baptism_, the _Penance_, the
+_Ordination_ and the _Eucharist_, and that he sent the last sacrament,
+that of _Marriage_, at the commencement of the year 1648. Bellori (_le
+Vite de Pittori_, etc., Rome, 1672) gives a full and detailed
+description of the _Extreme Unction_; and, as he lived with Poussin, it
+seems credible that his explanations are for the most part those he had
+himself received from the great artist.
+
+[290] The drawing of the _Extreme Unction_ is at the Louvre; the
+drawings of the five other sacraments are in the rich cabinet of M. de
+la Salle, that of the seventh is the property of the well-known print
+seller, M. Deter.
+
+[291] There is here likewise a charming Francis II., wholly from the
+hand of Clouet, and the portrait of Fenelon by Rigaud, which may be the
+original or at all events is not inferior to the painting in the gallery
+at Versailles.
+
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+    give, within the limits of a single volume, all the information
+    necessary to enable the tourist to find his way, without
+    difficulty, from place to place, and to see the objects best
+    worth seeing, throughout such parts of Europe as are generally
+    visited by American and English travellers."--_Extract from
+    Preface._
+
+
+THE ART OF BEAUTIFYING SUBURBAN HOME GROUNDS OF SMALL EXTENT, and the
+best Modes of Laying out, Planting, and Keeping Decorated Grounds.
+Illustrated by upward of Two Hundred Plates and Engravings of Plans for
+Residences and their Grounds, of Trees, and Shrubs, and Garden
+Embellishments. With Descriptions of the Beautiful and Hardy Trees and
+Shrubs grown in the United States. By FRANK J. SCOTT. Complete in one
+Elegant Quarto Volume of 618 pages. Is printed on tinted paper, bound in
+green morocco cloth, bevelled boards, with uncut edges, gilt top. Price,
+$8.00.
+
+    This elegant work is the only book published on the especial
+    subject indicated by the title. Its aim and object are to aid
+    persons of moderate incomes, who are not fully posted on the
+    arts of decorative gardening, to beautify their homes, to
+    suggest and illustrate the simple means with which _beautiful
+    home-surroundings_ may be realized on _small ground_, and with
+    little cost; also to assist in giving an intelligent direction
+    to the desires and a satisfactory result for the labors of those
+    who are engaged in embellishing houses, as well as those whose
+    imaginations are warm with the hopes of homes that are yet to
+    be.
+
+
+LIFE OF MAJOR JOHN ANDRE. By WINTHORP SARGENT. A new and revised
+edition. 1 vol., 12mo, with Portraits of the Author and Editor. Price,
+$2.50.
+
+    This work is an important contribution to our historical
+    literature--"a volume," says Robert C. Winthrop, "full of
+    attractive and valuable matter, and displaying the fruit of rich
+    culture and rare accomplishments." The "Life of Andre" has been
+    fortunate in receiving the commendation, at home and abroad, of
+    careful critics and distinguished historians.
+
+
+THE TWO GUARDIANS; OR HOME IN THIS WORLD. By the author of "The Heir of
+Redclyffe." 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. Forming one of the
+volumes of the new illustrated edition of Miss Yonge's popular novels.
+Volumes already published: "The Heir of Redclyffe," 2 vols.;
+"Heartsease," 2 vols.; "Daisy Chain," 2 vols.; "Beechcroft," 1 vol.
+
+
+THE RECOVERY OF JERUSALEM. An Account of the Recent Excavations and
+Discoveries in the Holy City. By CAPTAIN WILSON, R. E., and CAPTAIN
+WARREN, R. E. With an Introductory Chapter by Dean Stanley. Cloth, 8vo.
+With fifty Illustrations. Price, $3.50.
+
+    "That this volume may bring home to the English public a more
+    definite knowledge of what the Palestine Exploration Fund has
+    been doing, and hopes to do, than can be gathered from partial
+    and isolated reports, or from popular lectures, must be the
+    desire of every one who judges the Bible to be the most
+    precious, as it is the most profound, book in the world, and who
+    deems nothing small or unimportant that shall tend to throw
+    light upon its meaning, and to remove the obscurities which time
+    and distance have caused to rest upon some of its
+    pages."--_Globe._
+
+
+THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST, and its Relations to the
+Principles and Practice of Christianity. By WM. STROUD, M. D. With a
+Letter on the Subject by SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON, Bart., M. D. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.
+
+    Dr. William Stroud's treatise on "The Physical Cause of the
+    Death of Christ, and its Relation to the Principles and Practice
+    of Christianity," although now first reprinted in this country,
+    has maintained, for the last quarter of a century, a great
+    reputation in England. It is, in its own place, a masterpiece.
+    "It could have been composed," says Dr. Stroud's biographer,
+    "only by a man characterized by a combination of superior
+    endowments. It required, on the one hand, a profound
+    acquaintance with medical subjects and medical literature. It
+    required, on the other, an equally profound acquaintance with
+    the Bible, and with theology in general." The object of the
+    treatise is to demonstrate an important physical fact connected
+    with the death of Christ--namely, that it was caused by rupture
+    of the heart--and to point out its relation to the principles
+    and practice of Christianity.
+
+
+WESTWARD BY RAIL: THE NEW ROUTE TO THE EAST. By W. F. RAE. 1 vol., 12mo.
+Cloth. 390 pages. Price, $2.00.
+
+    The author of this work, one of the editors of the London _Daily
+    News_, was a stanch defender of the Union, and his work is one
+    of the most just and appreciative books on America yet published
+    by an Englishman.
+
+    "There is a quiet and subtle charm, as well as a deep and true
+    romantic interest, in the story of the railway
+    journey."--_Westminster Review._
+
+    "He has given us a very pleasant and instructive book, which we
+    heartily commend to the attention of all thoughtful and
+    inquiring readers."--_Glasgow Mail._
+
+    "He has written a most readable, interesting, and attractive
+    account of a journey which is long enough to be worth the
+    complete description he has given it."--_Observer._
+
+
+THE REVELATION OF JOHN, with Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and
+Practical. Designed for both Pastors and People. By Rev. HENRY COWLES,
+D. D. 1 vol., 12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50.
+
+D. Appleton & Co. also publish by the same Author: "Minor Prophets."
+12mo, cloth. Price, $2.00; "Ezekiel and Daniel." 12mo, cloth. $2.25;
+"Isaiah." With Notes, $2.25; "Jeremiah." 1 vol., 12mo. $2.00; "Proverbs,
+Ecclesiastes, and Songs of Solomon." $2.00.
+
+
+A TREATISE ON DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. By WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D.,
+Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System, and of Clinical
+Medicine, in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College; Physician-in-chief
+to the New-York State Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System, etc.
+With Forty-five Illustrations. 1 vol., 8vo, 750 pages. Price, $5.00.
+
+    "In the following work I have endeavored to present a 'Treatise
+    on Diseases of the Nervous System' which, without being
+    superficial, would be concise and explicit, and which, while
+    making no claim to being exhaustive, would nevertheless be
+    sufficiently complete for the instruction and guidance of those
+    who might be disposed to seek information from its pages. How
+    far I have been successful will soon be determined by the
+    judgment of those more competent than myself to form an unbiased
+    opinion.
+
+    "One feature I may, however, with justice claim for this work,
+    and that is, that it rests, to a great extent, on my own
+    observation and experience, and is, therefore, no mere
+    compilation. The reader will readily perceive that I have views
+    of my own on every disease considered, and that I have not
+    hesitated to express them."--_Extract from the Preface._
+
+    Over fifty diseases of the nervous system, including insanity,
+    are considered in this treatise.
+
+
+ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SEVERE AND PROTRACTED MUSCULAR EXERCISE,
+with Special Reference to its Influence upon the Excretion of Nitrogen.
+By AUSTIN FLINT, Jr., M. D., Professor of Physiology in the Bellevue
+Hospital Medical College, New York. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.
+
+
+APPLETONS' HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN TRAVEL. Northern and Eastern Tour. New
+edition, revised for the Summer of 1871. Including New York, New Jersey,
+Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New
+Hampshire, Vermont, and the British Dominion, being a Guide to Niagara,
+the White Mountains, the Alleghanies, the Catskills, the Adirondacks,
+the Berkshire Hills, the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, Lake George, Lake
+Memphremagog, Saratoga, Newport, Cape May, the Hudson, and other Famous
+Localities; with full Descriptive Sketches of the Cities, Towns, Rivers,
+Lakes, Waterfalls, Mountains, Hunting and Fishing Grounds,
+Watering-places, Sea-side Resorts, and all scenes and objects of
+importance and interest within the district named. With Maps and various
+Skeleton Tours, arranged as suggestions and guides to the Traveller. One
+vol., 12mo. Flexible cloth. Price, $2.00.
+
+
+JAMES GORDON'S WIFE. A Novel. 8vo. Paper. Price, 50 cents.
+
+    "An interesting novel, pleasantly written, refined in tone, and
+    easy in style."--_London Globe._
+
+    "This novel is conceived and executed in the purest spirit. The
+    illustrations of society in its various phases are cleverly and
+    spiritedly done."--_London Post._
+
+
+THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. By HERBERT SPENCER. 1 vol., 8vo. Cloth.
+Price, $2.50.
+
+    This work is thought by many able judges to be the most original
+    and valuable contribution to the science of mind that has
+    appeared in the present century. John Stuart Mill says it is
+    "one of the finest examples we possess of the psychological
+    method in its full power." Dr. McCosh says "his bold
+    generalizations are always suggestive, and some may in the end
+    be established in the profoundest laws of the knowable
+    universe." George Ripley says "Spencer is as keen an analyst as
+    is known in the history of Philosophy. I do not except either
+    Aristotle or Kant, whom he greatly resembles."
+
+
+NIGEL BARTRAM'S IDEAL. A Novel. By FLORENCE WILFORD. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper
+covers. Price, 50 cents.
+
+    This is a novel of marked originality and high literary merit.
+    The heroine is one of the loveliest and purest characters of
+    recent fiction, and the detail of her adventures in the arduous
+    task of overcoming her husband's prejudices and jealousies forms
+    an exceedingly interesting plot. The book is high in tone and
+    excellent in style.
+
+
+GOOD FOR NOTHING. A Novel. By WHYTE MELVILLE. Author of "Digby Grand,"
+"The Interpreter," etc. 1 vol., 8vo, 210 pages. Price, 60 cents.
+
+    "The interest of the reader in the story, which for the most
+    part is laid in England, is enthralling from the beginning to
+    the end. The moral tone is altogether unexceptionable."--_The
+    Chronicle._
+
+
+A HAND-BOOK OF LAW, for Business Men; containing an Epitome of the Law
+of Contracts, Bills and Notes, interest, Guaranty and Suretyship,
+Assignments for Creditors, Agents, Factors, and Brokers, Sales,
+Mortgages, and Liens, Patents and Copyrights, Trade-Marks, the Good-Will
+of a Business, Carriers, Insurance, Shipping, Arbitrations, Statutes of
+Limitation, Partnership, with an Appendix, containing Forms of
+Instruments used in the Transaction of Business. By WILLIAM TRACY, LL. D.
+1 vol., 8vo, 679 pages. Half basil, $5.50; library leather, $6.50.
+
+    This work is an epitome of those branches of law which affect
+    the ordinary transactions of BUSINESS MEN. _It is not proposed
+    by it to make every man a lawyer_, but to give a man of business
+    a convenient and reliable book of reference, to assist him in
+    the solution of questions relating to his rights and duties,
+    which are constantly arising, and to guide him in conducting his
+    negotiations.
+
+    In preparing it, the aim has been to set forth, IN PLAIN
+    LANGUAGE, the rules which constitute the doctrines of law which
+    are examined, _and to illustrate the same by decisions of the
+    Courts in which they are recognized_, WITH MARGINAL REFERENCES
+    TO THE VOLUMES WHERE THE CASES MAY BE FOUND.
+
+
+NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED; with Fifty-nine Illustrations. A Descriptive Text
+and a Map of the City. An entirely new edition, brought down to date,
+with new Illustrations. Price, 50 cents.
+
+    "There has never been published so beautiful a guide-book to New
+    York as this is. A suitable letter-press accompanies the
+    woodcuts, the whole forming a picture of New York such as no
+    other book affords."--_New York World._
+
+
+THE NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In Illustration of
+the Manners and Morals of the Age. By WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C. 1
+vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50.
+
+    Mr. Forsyth, in his instructive and entertaining volume, has
+    succeeded in showing that much real information concerning the
+    morals as well as the manners of our ancestors may be gathered
+    from the novelists of the last century. With judicial
+    impartiality he examines and cross-examines the witnesses,
+    laying all the evidence before the reader. Essayists as well as
+    novelists are called up. The Spectator, The Tatler, The World,
+    The Connoisseur, add confirmation strong to the testimony of
+    Parson Adams, Trulliber, Trunnion, Squire Western, the "Fool of
+    Quality," "Betsey Thoughtless," and the like. A chapter on dress
+    is suggestive of comparison. Costume is a subject on which
+    novelists, like careful artists, are studiously precise.
+
+
+REMINISCENCES OF FIFTY YEARS. By MARK BOYD. 1 vol., 12mo, 390 pp. Price,
+$1.75.
+
+    Mr. Boyd has seen much of life at home and abroad. He has
+    enjoyed the acquaintance or friendship of many illustrious men,
+    and he has the additional advantage of remembering a number of
+    anecdotes told by his father, who possessed a retentive memory
+    and a wide circle of distinguished friends. The book, as the
+    writer acknowledges, is a perfect _olla podrida_. There is
+    considerable variety in the anecdotes. Some relate to great
+    generals, like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Clyde; some to
+    artists and men of letters, and these include the names of
+    Campbell, Rogers, Thackeray, and David Roberts; some to
+    statesmen, and among others, to Pitt, who was a friend of Mr.
+    Boyd's father, to Lords Palmerston, Brougham, and Derby; some to
+    discoverers, like Sir John Franklin and Sir John Ross: and
+    others--among which may be reckoned, perhaps, the most amusing
+    in the volume--to persons wholly unknown to fame, or to manners
+    and customs now happily obsolete.
+
+
+FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE FOR UNSCIENTIFIC PEOPLE. A Series of Detached
+Essays, Lectures, and Reviews. By JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. 422 pages. Price, $2.00.
+
+PROF. TYNDALL IS THE POET OF MODERN SCIENCE.
+
+    This is a book of genius--one of those rare productions that
+    come but once in a generation. Prof. Tyndall is not only a bold,
+    broad, and original thinker, but one of the most eloquent and
+    attractive of writers. In this volume he goes over a large range
+    of scientific questions, giving us the latest views in the most
+    lucid and graphic language, so that the subtlest order of
+    invisible changes stand out with all the vividness of
+    stereoscopic perspective. Though a disciplined scientific
+    thinker, Prof. Tyndall is also a poet, alive to all beauty, and
+    kindles into a glow of enthusiasm at the harmonies and wonder of
+    Nature which he sees on every side. To him science is no mere
+    dry inventory of prosaic facts, but a disclosure of the Divine
+    order of the world, and fitted to stir the highest feelings of
+    our nature.
+
+
+GABRIELLE ANDRE. An Historical Novel. By S. BARING-GOULD, author of
+"Myths of the Middle Ages." 1 vol., 8vo. Paper covers. Price, 60 cents.
+
+    Those who take an interest in comparing the effects of the
+    present French Revolution on the Church with that of 1789 will
+    find in this work a great deal of information illustrating the
+    feeling in the State and Church of France at that period. The
+    _Literary Churchman_ says: "The book is a remarkably able one,
+    full of vigorous and often exceedingly beautiful writing and
+    description."
+
+
+MUSINGS OVER THE CHRISTIAN YEAR AND LYRA INNOCENTIUM. By CHARLOTTE MARY
+YONGE, together with a few Gleanings of Recollection, gathered by
+Several Friends. 1 vol. Thick 12mo, 431 pages. Price, $2.00.
+
+    Miss Yonge has here produced a volume which will possess great
+    interest in the eyes of Churchmen, who have for so many years
+    enjoyed the privilege of reading the exquisite poetry of the
+    "Christian Year" by Rev. John Keble. Miss Yonge gives her own
+    experience of the uninterrupted intercourse of thirty years:
+    then there are the "Recollections," by Francis M. Wilbraham: a
+    few words of "Personal Description," by Rev. T. Simpson Evans;
+    then follow the "Musings," one each of the poems illustrative of
+    the "Christian Year and Lyra Innocentium."
+
+
+THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. A New Illustrated Edition.
+2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.
+
+To be followed by HEARTSEASE.
+
+    "The first of her writings which made a sensation here was the
+    'Heir,' and what a sensation it was! Referring to the remains of
+    the tear-washed covers of the copy aforesaid, we find it
+    belonged to the 'eighth thousand.' How many thousands have been
+    issued since by the publishers, to supply the demand for new,
+    and the places of drowned, dissolved, or swept away old copies,
+    we do not attempt to conjecture. Not individuals merely, but
+    households--consisting in great part of tender-hearted young
+    damsels--were plunged into mourning. With a tolerable
+    acquaintance with fictitious heroes (not to speak of real ones),
+    from Sir Charles Grandison down to the nursery idol, Carlton, we
+    have little hesitation in pronouncing Sir Guy Morville, or
+    Redclyffe, Baronet, the most admirable one we ever met with, in
+    story or out. The glorious, joyous boy, the brilliant, ardent
+    child of genius and of fortune, crowned with the beauty of his
+    early holiness, and overshadowed with the darkness of his
+    hereditary gloom, and the soft and touching sadness of his early
+    death--what a caution is there! What a vision!"--Extract from a
+    review of "The Heir of Redclyffe," and "Heartsease," in the
+    _North American Review_ for April.
+
+
+A COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE; mainly abridged from Dr.
+William Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," but comprising important
+Additions and Improvements from the Works of Robinson, Gesenius, Furst,
+Pape, Pott, Winer, Keil, Lange, Kitto, Fairbairn, Alexander, Barnes,
+Bush, Thomson, Stanley, Porter, Tristram, King, Ayre, and many other
+eminent scholars, commentators, travellers, and authors in various
+departments. Designed to be a Complete Guide in regard to the
+Pronunciation and Signification of Scriptural Names; the Solution of
+Difficulties respecting the Interpretation, Authority, and Harmony of
+the Old and New Testaments; the History and Description of Biblical
+Customs, Events, Places, Persons, Animals, Plants, Minerals, and other
+things concerning which information is needed for an intelligent and
+thorough study of the Holy Scriptures, and of the Books of the
+Apocrypha. Illustrated with Five Hundred Maps and Engravings. Edited by
+Rev. SAMUEL W. BARNUM. Complete in one large royal octavo volume of
+1,234 pages. Price, in cloth binding, $5.00; in library sheep, $6.00; in
+half morocco, $7.50.
+
+
+LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. Notes of Two Courses of Lectures before the Royal
+Institution of Great Britain. By JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S. 1 vol.,
+12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.
+
+    "For the benefit of those who attended his Lectures on Light and
+    Electricity at the Royal Institution. Prof. Tyndall prepared
+    with much care a series of notes, summing up briefly and clearly
+    the leading facts and principles of these sciences. The notes
+    proved so serviceable to those for whom they were designed that
+    they were widely sought by students and teachers, and Prof.
+    Tyndall had them reprinted in two small books. Under the
+    conviction that they will be equally appreciated by instructors
+    and learners in this country, they are here combined and
+    republished in a single volume."--_Extract from Preface._
+
+
+THE DESCENT OF MAN AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX. By CHARLES DARWIN,
+M. A. With Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $4.00.
+
+    "We can find no fault with Mr. Darwin's facts, or the
+    application of them."--_Utica Herald._
+
+    "The theory is now indorsed by many eminent scientists, who at
+    first combated it, including Sir Charles Lyell, probably the
+    most learned of living geologists."--_Evening Bulletin._
+
+
+ON THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. By ST. GEORGE MIVART, F. R. S. 1 vol., 12mo.
+Cloth, with Illustrations. Price, $1.75.
+
+    "Mr. Mivart has succeeded in producing a work which will clear
+    the ideas of biologists and theologians, and which treats the
+    most delicate questions in a manner which throws light upon most
+    of them, and tears away the barriers of intolerance on each
+    side."--_British Medical Journal._
+
+
+MARQUIS AND MERCHANT. A Novel. By MORTIMER COLLINS. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper
+covers. Price, 50 cents.
+
+    "We will not compare Mr. Collins, as a novelist, with Mr.
+    Disraeli, but, nevertheless, the qualities which have made Mr.
+    Disraeli's fictions so widely popular are to be found in no
+    small degree in the pages of the author of 'Marquis and
+    Merchant.'"--_Times._
+
+
+HEARTSEASE. A Novel. By the author of the "Heir of Redclyffe." An
+Illustrated Edition. 2 vols., 12mo. Price, $2.00.
+
+    This is the second of the series of Miss Yonge's novels, now
+    being issued in a new and beautiful style with illustrations.
+    Since this novel was first published a new generation of readers
+    have appeared. Nothing in the English language can equal the
+    delineation of character which she so beautifully portrays.
+
+
+WHAT TO READ, AND HOW TO READ, being Classified Lists of Choice Reading,
+with appropriate hints and remarks, adapted to the general reader, to
+subscribers, to libraries, and to persons intending to form collections
+of books. Brought down to September, 1870. By CHARLES H. MOORE, M. D. 1
+vol., 12mo. Paper Covers, 50 cents. Cloth. Price, 75 cents.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Note.
+
+The following errors in the original text have been corrected in this
+version:
+
+Page 20: Mind on Man changed to Mind of Man
+
+Page 21: Le Notre changed to Le Notre
+
+Page 44: empirist changed to empiricist
+
+Page 75: Fenelon; changed to Fenelon;
+
+Page 99: metaphysicans changed to metaphysicians
+
+Page 117: [Greek: ektasis] changed to [Greek: ekstasis]
+
+Page 136: added missing comma after receives warmth
+
+Page 165: resume changed to resume
+
+Page 182: exquiste changed to exquisite
+
+Page 184: monarh changed to monarch
+
+Page 245: missing semi-colon added after duty and right
+
+Page 268: destrnction changed to destruction
+
+Page 270: depeudere changed to dependere
+
+Page 321: missing quotation mark added after because it is just.
+
+Page 327: inaccesible changed to inaccessible
+
+Page 356: iufinite changed to infinite
+
+Page 360: sinee changed to since
+
+Page 363: extravagauce changed to extravagance
+
+Page 366: obsconditus changed to absconditus
+
+Page 374: Nonveau changed to Nouveau
+          Allemange changed to Allemagne
+
+Page 399: analysist changed to analyst
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on the true, the beautiful
+and the good, by Victor Cousin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES ON THE TRUE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 36208.txt or 36208.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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