fully conceded by Menzel, who, however, found little trace of it in
Goethe. Of the author of the philosophy he wrote: "Kant was very far
from assenting to French infidelity and its immoral consequences. He
directed man to himself, to the moral law in his own bosom; and the
fresh breath of life of the old Grecian dignity of man penetrates the
whole of his luminous philosophy." Of Goethe he wrote: "If he ever
acknowledged allegiance to a good spirit, to great ideas, to virtue, he
did it only because they had become the order of the day, for, on the
other hand, he has, again, served every weakness, vanity and folly, if
they were but looked on with favor at the time; in short, like a good
player, he has gone through all the parts." Menzel's book was
translated by a man who had no sympathy with Transcendentalism--Prof. C.
C. Felton; was admired by people of his own school, and was sharply
criticised, especially in the portions relating to Goethe, by the
transcendentalists, who accepted Carlyle's view. He and they put the
most generous interpretations on the masterpieces of the poet, passed by
as incidental, did not see, or in their own mind transfigured, the
objectionable features that Menzel seized on. Too little was ascribed to
the foreign French element that reached the literature of Germany
through Prussia--to Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot--whose ideas fell in
with the unworthier sceptical tendencies of the Kantean system, and
polluted the waters of that clear, cold stream; too much was ascribed to
the noble idealism that was credited with power to glorify all it
touched, and redeem even low things from degradation. If therefore they
apologized for what the sensational moralists blamed, they did it in
good faith, not as excusing the indecency, but as surmounting it. What
they admired was the art, and the aspiration it expressed. The devotees
of the French spirit, in its frivolity and meretricious beauty, they
turned away from with disdain. There was enough of the nobler kind to
engage them. When they went to France they went for what France had in
common with Germany--an idealism of the wholesome, ethical and spiritual
type, which, whether German, French or English, bore always the same
characteristics of beauty and nobleness. Much that was unspiritual, all
that was merely speculative, they passed by. With an appetite for the
generous and inspiring only, they sought the really earnest teachers, of
whom in France there were a few. The influence of those few was great in
proportion to their fewness probably, quite as much as to their merit as
philosophers.
IV.
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN FRANCE.
From the time of Malebranche, who died in 1715, to Maine de Biran,
Royer-Collard, Ampere and Cousin, a period of about a century,
philosophy in France had not borne an honorable name. The French mind
was active; philosophy was a profession; the philosophical world was
larger than in Germany, where it was limited to the Universities. But
France took no lead in speculation, it waited to receive impulse from
other lands; and even then, instead of taking up the impulse and
carrying it on with original and sympathetic force, it was content to
exhibit and reproduce it. The office of expositor, made easy by the
perspicacity of its intellect and the flexibility of its language, was
accepted and discharged with a cleverness that was recognized by all
Europe. Its histories of philosophy, translations, expositions,
reproductions, were admirable for neatness and clearness. The most
obscure systems became intelligible in that limpid and lucid speech,
which reported with faultless dexterity the agile movements of the
Gallic mind, and made popular the most abstruse doctrines of
metaphysics. German philosophy in its original dress was outlandish,
even to practised students in German. The readers of French were many in
England and the United States, and the readers of French, without
severe labor on their part, were put in possession of the essential
ideas of the deep thinkers of the race. The best accounts of human
speculation are in French. Barthelemy Saint Hilaire interprets
Aristotle, and throws important light on Indian Philosophy; Bouillet
translates Plotinus; Emil Saisset translates Spinoza; Tissot and Jules
Barni perform the same service for Kant; Jules Simon and Etienne
Vacherot undertake to make intelligible the School of Alexandria; Paul
Janet explains the dialectics of Plato; Adolphe Franck deals with the
Jewish Kabbala; Charles de Remusat with Anselm, Abelard and Bacon; MM.
Haureau and Rousselot with the philosophy of the middle age; M. Chauvet
with the theories of the human understanding in antiquity. Cousin
published unedited works of Proclus, analyzed the commentaries of
Olympiodorus on the Platonic dialogues, made a complete translation of
Plato, admirable for clearness and strength, and proposed to present,
not of course with his own hand, but by the hands of friendly
fellow-workers, and under his own direction, examples of whatever was
best in every philosophical system. The philosophical work of France is
ably summed up in the report on "Philosophy in France in the nineteenth
century," presented by Felix Ravaisson, member of the Institute, and
published in 1868, under the auspices of the Ministry of Public
Instruction.
The ideas of Locke were brought from London to Paris by Voltaire, who
became acquainted with them during a residence in England, and found
them effective in his warfare against the ecclesiastical institutions of
his country. Through his brilliant interpretations and keen
applications, they gained currency, became fashionable among the wits,
were domesticated with people of culture and elegance, and worked their
way into the religion and politics of the time. It is needless to say
that in his hands full justice was done to their external and material
aspects.
The system found a more exact and methodical expounder in Condillac,
who reduced it to greater simplicity by eliminating from it what in the
original marred its unity, namely reflection, the bent of the mind back
on itself, whereby it took cognizance of impressions made by the outer
world. Taking what remained of the system, the notion that all knowledge
came primarily through the senses, and drawing the conclusion that the
mind itself was a product of sensation, Condillac fashioned a doctrine
which had the merit, such as it was, of utter intelligibleness to the
least instructed mind; a system of materialism naked and unadorned. If
he himself forbore to push his principle to its extreme results,
declining to assert that we were absolutely nothing else than products
of sensation, and surmising that beneath the layers of intelligence and
reason there might lurk a principle that sensation could not account
for, something stable in the midst of the ceaseless instability,
something absolute below everything relative, which might be called
action or will, the popular interpretation of his philosophy took no
account of such subtleties. In vain did his disciple Destutt de Tracy
declare that "the principle of movement is the will, and that the will
is the person, the man himself." The fascination of simplicity proved
more than a match for nicety of distinction, and both were ranked among
materialists.
Cabanis was at no pains to conceal the most repulsive features of the
system. In his work, "The Relations of the Physical and the Moral in
Man," he maintained bluntly the theory that there was no spiritual being
apart from the body; that mind had no substance, no separate existence
of its own, but was in all its parts and qualities a product of the
nervous system; that sensibility of every kind, sentimental,
intelligent, moral, spiritual, including the whole domain of conscious
and unconscious vitality, was a nervous manifestation; that man was
capable of sensation because he had nerves; that he was what he was
because of the wondrous character of the mechanism of sensation; that,
in a word, the perfection of organization was the perfection of
humanity. It was Cabanis who said "the brain secretes thought as the
liver secretes bile." Cabanis modified his philosophy before his death,
but without effect to break the force of his cardinal positions. The
results of such teaching appeared in a morality of selfishness, tending
to self-indulgence--a morality destitute of nobleness and sweetness,
summing up its lessons in the maxims that good is good to eat; that the
pleasurable thing is right, the painful thing wrong; that success is the
measure of rectitude; that the aim of life is the attainment of
happiness, and that happiness means physical enjoyment; that virtue and
vice are names for prudence and for folly,--Virtue being conformity with
the ways of the world, Vice being non-conformity with the ways of the
world; no ideal standard being recognized for the one, no law of
rectitude being confessed for the other. Conscience was regarded as an
artificial habit created by custom or acquiesced in from tradition; the
"categorical imperative" was pronounced the dogmatism of the fanatic.
From such principles atheism naturally proceeded. Atheism not of opinion
merely, but of sentiment and feeling; for at that time "the potencies"
of matter impressed no such awe upon the mind as they have done since;
the "mystery of matter" was unfelt; physiology was an unexplored region;
the materialist simply denied spirit, putting a blank where believers in
religion had been used to find a soul; and had no alternative but to run
sensationalism into sensualism, and to give the senses the flavor of the
ground. With us the sensational philosophy has become refined into a
philosophy of experience, and the materialist finds himself in a region
where to distinguish between matter and spirit is difficult, to say the
least. But a hundred years ago matter was clod, and the passion it
engendered smelt of the charnel-house. The morbid insanities of the
revolution, the orgies in which blood and wine ran together, the savage
glee, the delirium that ensued when the uncertainty of life acting on
the impulse to enjoy life while it lasted, made men ferocious in
clutching at immediate pleasure, attest the consequences that ensued
from such frank adoption of the sensational philosophy as was practised
among the French. Locke was a man of piety, which even his warmest
apologists will hardly claim for Voltaire. The English mind, grave and
thoughtful, trained by religious institutions in religious beliefs, was
less inclined than the French to drive speculative theories to extreme
conclusions. The philosophy of sensationalism culminated, not in the
French Revolution, as has been vulgarly asserted, but in the unbelief
and sensual extravagance that marked one phase of it.
In this there was nothing original; there was no originality in the
reaction that followed, and gave to modern philosophy in France its
spiritual character. Laromiguiere, educated in the school of Condillac,
improved on the suggestion that Condillac had given, and deepened into a
chasm the scratch he had made to indicate a distinction between the
results of sensation and the faculties of the mind. In his analysis of
the mental constitution he came upon two facts that denoted an original
activity in advance of sensation--namely, _attention_ and _desire_: the
former the root of the intellectual, the latter of the moral powers;
both at last resolvable into one principle--attention. This discovery
met with wide and cordial welcome, the popularity of Laromiguiere's
lectures, delivered in 1811, 1812, 1813, revealing the fact that
thoughtful people were prepared for a new metaphysical departure.
Maine de Biran, who more than the rest deserves the name of an original
investigator, a severe, solitary, independent thinker, pupil of no
school and founder of none, brought into strong relief the activity of
the intellect. Thought, he maintained, proceeds from will, which is at
the base of the personality, is, in fact, the essence of personality.
The primary fact is volition. Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am."
Maine de Biran said, "I will, therefore I am." "In every one of my
determinations," he declared, "I recognize myself as being a cause
anterior to its effect and capable of surviving it. I behold myself as
outside of the movement I produce, and independent of time; for this
reason, strictly speaking, I do not _become_, I really and absolutely
_am_." "To be, to act, to will, are the same thing under different
names." Will as the seat of activity; will as the core of personality;
will as the soul of causation: here is the corner-stone for a new
structure to replace the old one of the "Cyclopaedists." Important
deductions followed from such a first principle; the dignity of the
moral being, freedom of the moral will, the nobility of existence, the
persistency of the individual as a ground for continuous effort and
far-reaching hope, the spirituality of man and his destiny. To recover
the will from the mass of sensations that had buried it out of sight,
was the achievement of this philosopher. It was an achievement by which
philosophy was disengaged from physics, and sent forth on a more
cheerful way.
The next steps were taken by disciples of the Scotch
school--Royer-Collard, Victor Cousin and Theodore Jouffroy. The last
translated Reid and Stewart from English into French; the two former
lectured on them. The three, being masters of clear and persuasive
speech, made their ideas popular in France. Cousin's lectures on the
Scotch school, including Reid, were delivered in 1819. The lectures on
Kant were given in 1820. Both courses were full and adequate. Cousin
committed himself to neither, but freely criticised both, laying stress
on the sceptical aspect of the transcendental system as expounded by
Kant.
Cousin's own system was the once famous, now discarded eclecticism,
under cover of which another phase of idealism was presented which found
favor in America. The cardinal principle of eclecticism was that truth
was contained in no system or group of systems, but in all together;
that each had its portion and made its contribution; and that the true
philosophy would be reached by a process of intellectual distillation by
which the essential truth in each would be extracted. A method like this
would have nothing to recommend it but its generosity, if there were no
criterion by which truths could be tested, no philosophical principle,
in short, to govern the selection of materials. Eclecticism must have a
philosophy before proceeding to make one, must have arrived at its
conclusion before entering on its process. And this it did. It will be
seen by the following extracts from his writings what the fundamental
ideas of M. Cousin were, and in what respect they aided the process of
rationalism.
The quotations are from his exposition of eclecticism:
"Facts are the point of departure, if not the limit of philosophy.
Now facts, whatever they may be, exist for us only as they come to
our consciousness. It is there alone that observation seizes them
and describes them, before committing them to induction, which
forces them to reveal the consequences which they contain in their
bosom. The field of philosophical observation is consciousness;
there is no other; but in this nothing is to be neglected;
everything is important, for everything is connected; and if one
part be wanting, complete unity is unattainable. To return within
our consciousness, and scrupulously to study all the phenomena,
their differences and their relations--this is the primary study of
philosophy. Its scientific name is psychology. Psychology is then
the condition and, as it were, the vestibule of philosophy. The
psychological method consists in completely retiring within the
world of consciousness, in order to become familiar in that sphere
where all is reality, but where the reality is so various and so
delicate; and the psychological talent consists in placing
ourselves at will within this interior world, in presenting the
spectacle there displayed to ourselves, and in reproducing freely
and distinctly all the facts which are accidentally and confusedly
brought to our notice by the circumstances of life."...
"The first duty of the psychological method is to retire within the
field of consciousness, where there is nothing but phenomena, that
are all capable of being perceived and judged by observation. Now
as no substantial existence falls under the eye of consciousness,
it follows that the first effect of a rigid application of method
is to postpone the subject of ontology. It postpones it, I say, but
does not destroy it. It is a fact, indeed, attested by observation,
that in this same consciousness, in which there is nothing but
phenomena, there are found notions, whose regular development
passes the limits of consciousness and attains the knowledge of
actual existences. Would you stop the development of these notions?
You would then arbitrarily limit the compass of a fact, you would
attack this fact itself, and thus shake the authority of all other
facts. We must either call in question the authority of
consciousness in itself, or admit this authority without reserve
for all the facts attested by consciousness. The reason is no less
certain and real than the will or the sensibility; its certainty
once admitted we must follow it wherever it rigorously conducts,
though it be even into the depths of ontology. For example, it is a
rational fact attested by consciousness, that in the view of
intelligence, every phenomenon which is presented supposes a cause.
It is a fact, moreover, that this principle of causality is marked
with the characteristics of universality and necessity. If it be
universal and necessary, to limit it would be to destroy it. Now in
the phenomenon of sensation, the principle of causality intervenes
universally and necessarily, and refers this phenomenon to a cause;
and our consciousness testifying that this cause is not the
personal cause which the will represents, it follows that the
principle of causality in its irresistible application conducts to
an impersonal cause, that is to say, to an external cause, which
subsequently, and always irresistibly, the principle of causality
enriches with the characteristics and laws, of which the aggregate
is the Universe. Here then is an existence; but an existence
revealed by a principle which is itself attested by consciousness.
Here is a primary step in ontology, but by the path of psychology,
that is to say, of observation. We are led by similar processes to
the Cause of all causes, to the substantial Cause, to God; and not
only to a God of Power, but to a God of Justice, a God of Holiness;
so that this experimental method, which, applied to a single order
of phenomena, incomplete and exclusive, destroyed ontology and the
higher elements of consciousness, applied with fidelity, firmness
and completeness, to all the phenomena, builds up that which it had
overthrown, and by itself furnishes ontology with a sure and
legitimate instrument. Thus, having commenced with modesty, we can
end with results whose certainty is equalled by their
importance."...
"What physical inquirer, since Euler, seeks anything in nature but
forces and laws? Who now speaks of atoms? And even molecules, the
old atoms revived--who defends them as anything but an hypothesis?
If the fact be incontestable, if modern physics be now employed
only with forces and laws, I draw the rigorous conclusion from it,
that the science of Physics, whether it know it or not, is no
longer material, and that it became spiritual when it rejected
every other method than observation and induction, which can never
lead to aught but forces and laws. Now what is there material in
forces and laws? The physical sciences, then, themselves have
entered into the broad path of an enlightened spiritualism; and
they have only to march with a firm step, and to gain a more and
more profound knowledge of forces and laws, in order to arrive at
more important generalizations. Let us go still further. As it is a
law already recognized of the same reason which governs humanity
and nature, to refer every finite cause and every multiple
law--that is to say, every phenomenal cause and every phenomenal
law--to something absolute, which leaves nothing to be sought
beyond it in relation to existence, that is to say, to a substance;
so this law refers the external world composed of forces and laws
to a substance, which must needs be a cause in order to be the
subject of the causes of this world, which must needs be an
intelligence in order to be the subject of its laws; a substance,
in fine, which must needs be the identity of activity and
intelligence. We have thus arrived accordingly, for the second
time, by observation and induction in the external sphere, at
precisely the same point to which observation and induction have
successively conducted us in the sphere of personality and in that
of reason; consciousness in its triplicity is therefore one; the
physical and moral world is one, science is one, that is to say, in
other words, God is One."...
"Having gained these heights, philosophy becomes more luminous as
well as more grand; universal harmony enters into human thought,
enlarges it, and gives it peace. The divorce of ontology and
psychology, of speculation and observation, of science and
common-sense, is brought to an end by a method which arrives at
speculation by observation, at ontology by psychology, in order
then to confirm observation by speculation, psychology by ontology,
and which starting from the immediate facts of consciousness, of
which the common-sense of the human race is composed, derives from
them the science which contains nothing more than common-sense, but
which elevates that to its purest and most rigid form, and enables
it to comprehend itself. But I here approach a fundamental point.
"If every fact of consciousness contains all the human faculties,
sensibility, free activity, and reason, the me, the not-me, and
their absolute identity; and if every fact of consciousness be
equal to itself, it follows that every man who has the
consciousness of himself possesses and cannot but possess all the
ideas that are necessarily contained in consciousness. Thus every
man, if he knows himself, knows all the rest, nature and God at the
same time with himself. Every man believes in his own existence,
every man therefore believes in the existence of the world and of
God; every man thinks, every man therefore thinks God, if we may so
express it; every human proposition, reflecting the consciousness,
reflects the idea of unity and of being that is essential to
consciousness; every human proposition therefore contains God;
every man who speaks, speaks of God, and every word is an act of
faith and a hymn. Atheism is a barren formula, a negation without
reality, an abstraction of the mind which cannot assert itself
without self-destruction; for every assertion, even though
negative, is a judgment which contains the idea of being, and,
consequently, God in His fulness. Atheism is the illusion of a few
sophists, who place their liberty in opposition to their reason,
and are unable even to give an account to themselves of what they
think; but the human race, which is never false to its
consciousness and never places itself in contradiction to its laws,
possesses the knowledge of God, believes in him, and never ceases
to proclaim Him. In fact, the human race believes in reason and
cannot but believe in it, in that reason which is manifested in
consciousness, in a momentary relation with the me--the pure though
faint reflection of that primitive light which flows from the bosom
of the eternal substance, which is at once substance, cause,
intelligence. Without the manifestation of reason in our
consciousness, there could be no knowledge--neither psychological,
nor, still less, ontological. Reason is, in some sort, the bridge
between psychology and ontology, between consciousness and being;
it rests at the same time on both; it descends from God and
approaches man; it makes its appearance in the consciousness, as a
guest who brings intelligence of an unknown world of which it at
once presents the idea and awakens the want. If reason were
personal, it would have no value, no authority, beyond the limits
of the individual subject. If it remained in the condition of
primitive substance, without manifestation, it would be the same
for the me which would not know itself, as if it were not. It is
necessary therefore that the intelligent substance should manifest
itself; and this manifestation is the appearance of reason in the
consciousness. Reason then is literally a revelation, a necessary
and universal revelation, which is wanting to no man and which
enlightens every man on his coming into the world: _illuminat omnem
hominem venientem in hunc mundum_. Reason is the necessary mediator
between God and man, the [Greek: logos] of Pythagoras and Plato,
the Word made flesh which serves as the interpreter of God and the
teacher of man, divine and human at the same time. It is not,
indeed, the absolute God in his majestic individuality, but his
manifestation in spirit and in truth; it is not the Being of
beings, but it is the revealed God of the human race. As God is
never wanting to the human race and never abandons it, so the
human race believes in God with an irresistible and unalterable
faith, and this unity of faith is its own highest unity....