Kitabı oku: «M. Cousin's Course of Philosophy»

Art. XI.—Cours de Philosophie. Par M. V. Cousin, Professeur de Philosophie à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris.—Introduction à l'Histoire de la Philosophie. 8vo. Paris, 1828.

THE delivery of these Lectures excited an unexampled sensation in Paris. Condemned to silence during the reign of Jesuit ascendency, M. Cousin, after eight years of honourable retirement, had again ascended the Chair of Philosophy; and the splendour with which he recommenced his academical career, more than justified the expectation which his recent reputation as a writer, and the memory of his earlier lectures, had inspired. Two thousand auditors listened, in admiration, to the eloquent exposition of doctrines unintelligible to the many; and the oral discussion of philosophy awakened in Paris, and in France, an interest unexampled since the days of Abelard. The daily journals found it necessary to gratify, by their earlier analyses, the impatient curiosity of the public; and the lectures themselves, taken in short-hand, and corrected by the Professor, propagated weekly the influence of his instruction to the remotest provinces of the kingdom.

Nor are the pretensions of his doctrine disproportioned to the attention it has engaged. It professes nothing less than to be the complement and conciliation of all philosophical opinion; and its author claims the glory of placing the key-stone in the arch of science, by the discovery of elements hitherto unobserved among the phenomena of consciousness.

Before proceeding to consider the pretensions of M. Cousin to originality, and of his doctrine to truth, it is necessary to say a few words on the state and relations of philosophy in France.

After the philosophy of Descartes and Malebranche had sunk into oblivion, and from the time that Condillac, exaggerating the too partial principles of Locke, had analysed all knowledge into sensation; Sensualism, as a philosophical theory, became, in France, not only the dominant, but almost the one exclusive opinion. It was believed that reality and truth were limited to experience, and experience was limited to the sphere of sense; while the higher faculties of reflection and reason were thought adequately explained as perceptions, elaborated, purified, sublimated, and transformed. From the mechanical relations of sense with its objects, it was attempted to explain the mysteries of intelligence; the philosophy of mind was soon viewed as a correlative to the philosophy of organisation. The moral nature of man was at last identified with his physical; mind was a reflex of matter,—thought a secretion of the brain.

A philosophy so melancholy in its consequences, and founded on principles thus partial and exaggerated, could not be permanent: a reaction was inevitable. The recoil, which began about twenty years ago, has been gradually increasing; and now it is perhaps even to be apprehended, that its intensity may become excessive. As the poison was of foreign growth, so also has been the antidote. The doctrine of Condillac was a corruption of the doctrine of Locke; and, in returning to a better philosophy, the French are still obeying an impulsion communicated from without. This impulsion may be traced to two different sources,—to the philosophy of Scotland, and to the philosophy of Germany.

In Scotland, a philosophy had sprung up, which, though professing, equally with the doctrine of Condillac, to build only on experience, did not, like that doctrine, limit experience to the relations of sense and its objects. Without vindicating to man more than a relative knowledge of existence, and restricting the science of mind to an observation of the fact of consciousness, it, however, analysed that fact into a greater number of more important elements than had been recognised in the school of Condillac. It showed that phenomena were revealed in thought which could not be resolved into any modification of sense. It proved that intelligence supposed principles, which, as the conditions of its activity, could not be the results of its operation; and that the mind contained notions, which, as primitive, necessary, and universal, were not to be explained as generalizations from the contingent and particular, about which alone our external experience was conversant. The phenomena of mind were thus distinguished from the phenomena of matter; and if the impossibility of materialism were not demonstrated, there was, at least, demonstrated the impossibility of its proof.

This philosophy, and still more the spirit of this philosophy, was calculated to exert a salutary influence on the French. And such an influence it did exert. For a time, indeed, the truth operated in silence; and Reid and Stewart had already modified the philosophy of France, before the French were content to acknowledge themselves their disciples. In the works of Degerando and Laromiguière, may be traced the influence of the Scottish philosophy; but it is to Royer-Collard, and, more recently, to Jouffroy, that our countrymen are indebted for a full acknowledgment of their merits, and for the high and increasing estimation in which their doctrines are now held in France. M. Royer-Collard, whose authority has, in every relation, been exerted only for the benefit of his country, and who, once great as a professor, is now not less illustrious as a statesman, in his lectures, advocated with distinguished ability the principles of the Scottish school; modestly content to follow, while no one was more entitled to lead. M. Jouffroy, by his recent translation of the works of Dr Reid, and by the excellent preface to his version of Mr Dugald Stewart's Outlines of Moral Philosophy, has likewise powerfully co-operated to the establishment, in France, of a philosophy equally opposed to the exclusive Sensualism of Condillac, and to the exclusive Rationalism of the new German school.

Germany may be regarded as the intellectual antipodes of France. The comprehensive and original genius of Leibnitz, itself the ideal abstract of the Teutonic character, had reacted powerfully on the minds of his countrymen, and Rationalism has, from his time, always remained the favourite philosophy of the Germans. On the principle of this doctrine, it is in Reason alone that truth and reality are to be found. Experience affords only the occasions on which intelligence reveals to us the necessary and universal notions of which it is the complement; and these notions afford at once the foundation of all reasoning, and the guarantee of our knowledge of existence. Kant, indeed, pronounced the philosophy of Rationalism to be a mere fabric of delusion. He declared that a science of existence was beyond the compass of our faculties; that pure reason, as purely subjective,^[1] was conscious of nothing but itself, and was unable to demonstrate the reality of aught beyond the phenomena of its personal modifications. But scarcely had the critical philosopher accomplished the recognition of this important principle, the result of which was, to circumscribe the field of speculation by very narrow bounds; than from the very disciples of his school there arose philosophers, who, despising the contracted limits, and the humble results, of a philosophy of observation, re-established, as the predominant opinion, a bolder and more uncompromising Rationalism than any that had ever previously obtained for their countrymen the character of philosophic visionaries—

Gens ratione ferox, et mentem pasta chimæris.

Founded by Fichte, but perfected by Schelling, this doctrine regards experience as unworthy of the name of science; because, as only of the phenomenal, the transitory, the dependent, it is only of that which, having no reality in itself, cannot be established as a proper basis of certainty and knowledge. Philosophy must, therefore, either be abandoned, or we must be able to seize the one, the absolute, the unconditioned, immediately and in itself; and this they profess to do by a kind of intellectual vision. In this act, reason, soaring not only above the world of sense, but beyond the sphere of personal consciousness, boldly places itself at the very centre of absolute being, with which it is, in fact, identified; and thence surveying existence in itself, and in its relations, unveils to us the nature of the Deity, and explains, from first to last, the derivation of all created things. M. Cousin is the apostle of Rationalism in France, and we are willing to admit that the doctrine could not have obtained a more eloquent or devoted advocate. He has consecrated himself, his life, and labours, to philosophy, and to philosophy alone; nor has he approached the sanctuary with unwashed hands. The editor of Proclus, of Descartes, and of Malebranche, the translator and interpreter of Plato, and the promised expositor of Kant, will not be accused of partiality in the choice of his pursuits; while his two works, under the title of Philosophical Fragments, bear ample evidence to the learning, elegance, and distinguished ability of their author. Taking him all in all, in France M. Cousin stands alone: nor can we contemplate his character and accomplishments, without the sincerest admiration, even while we dissent from almost every principle of his philosophy. The developement of his system, in all its points, betrays the influence of the German philosophy on his opinions. His theory is not, however, a scheme of exclusive Rationalism; on the contrary, the peculiarity of his doctrine consists in the attempt to combine the philosophy of experience, and the philosophy of pure reason, into one. The following is a concise statement of the fundamental positions of his system:

Reason, or intelligence, has three integrant elements, three regulative principles, which at once constitute its nature, and govern its manifestations; these three ideas severally suppose each other, and, as inseparable, are equally essential and equally primitive. These ideas are recognised by Aristotle and by Kant, in their several attempts to analyse intelligence into its principles; but though the categories of both philosophers comprise all the elements, in neither list are these elements naturally co-arranged, or reduced to an ultimate simplicity.

The first of these ideas, principles, or elements, though fundamentally one, is variously expressed, under the terms unity, identity, substance, absolute cause, the infinite, pure thought, &c.; we would briefly call it the unconditioned. The second, he denominates plurality, difference, phenomenon, relative cause, the finite, determined thought, &c.; we would term it the conditioned. These two elements are relative and correlative. The first, though absolute, is not conceived as existing absolutely in itself; it is conceived as an absolute cause, as a cause which cannot but pass into operation; in other words, the first element must manifest itself in the second. The two ideas are thus connected together as cause and effect; each is only realised through the other; and this their connexion constitutes the third integrant element of intelligence.

Reason, or intelligence, in which these ideas appear, and which, in fact, they constitute and determine, is not individual, is not ours, is not even human; it is absolute, it is divine. What is personal to us, is our free and voluntary activity; what is not free and not voluntary, is adventitious to man, and does not constitute an integrant part of his individuality. Intelligence is conversant with truth; truth, as necessary and universal, is not the creature of my volition; and reason, which, as the subject of truth, is also universal and necessary, is consequently impersonal. We see, therefore, by a light which is not ours, and reason is a revelation of God in man. The ideas, therefore, of which we are conscious, belong not to us, but to absolute intelligence. They constitute, in fact, the very mode and manner of its existence. For consciousness is only possible under plurality and difference, and intelligence is only possible through consciousness.

The divine nature is essentially comprehensible. For the three ideas constitute the nature of the Deity, and the nature of ideas is to be conceived. God, in fact, exists to us only in so far as he is known, and the degree of our knowledge must always determine the measure of our faith. The relation of God to the universe is therefore manifest, and the creation easily understood. To create, is not to make something out of nothing, for this is contradictory, but to originate from self. We create so often as we exert our free causality, and something is created by us when something begins to be by virtue of the free causality which belongs to us. To create is, therefore, to cause, not with nothing, but with the very essence of our being—with our force, our will, our personality. The divine creation is of the same character. God, as he is a cause, is able to create; as he is an absolute cause, he cannot but create. In creating the universe, he does not draw it from nothing; he draws it from himself. The creation of the universe is thus necessary; it is a manifestation of the Deity, but not the Deity absolutely in himself; it is God passing into activity, but not exhausted in the act.