LECTURES
ON
THE TRUE, THE. BEAUTIFUL,
AND THE GOOD.
BY M. W COUSIN.
LNCREASED BY
T1RiNtLATED1. WITH TI1E APPROBATION OF M. COUSIN, BY
0. W. WIGHT',
T tIANSLATOR OF COUSIN'S " COURSE OF TIIE HISTORY OF MOIDERN PHILOSOPHY," AlI EIIOAI
EDITOR OF TIlE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAIM hAMILTON, BART., AUT1OR
C(F'I1',IE RO-MANCE OF AITELA.RD AND TIE.LOISE,"' ETC., ETO.
"God is the life of the soul,,s the soul is thle life of the body."
T1ir PLATO.NISTS ANDI THT FATIUAIRt.
NEV~ YORK:
D. APPLETON  & COMPANY, 90, 92 & 94 GRAND ST.
LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN.
1871.




ENTEluRED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S54,
By D. APPLETON & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of!NTew York.




T)
SIR WILLIAM  IHAMILTON, BART.,,rofzszor of TLogic anb  E rctlapIg2 ir in tf)e Zlnifierit! of Ei-liburtg:
WIIlO HAS CLEARLY ELUCIDATED, AND, WITII GREAT ERlUDITION,
SKETCHED THE HIISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF
COMMON SENSE;
WIIO, FOLLOW~ING IN TIIE FOOTSTEPS OF HIIS ILLUSTRIOUS COUNTRYMAN, REID
HAS ESTABLISHED THE DOCTRINE OF TIIE
IMMEDIATENESS OF PERCEPTION,
THEREBY FORTIFYING PIIILOSOPHY AGAINST TIIE ASSAULTS OF SKEPTICISM;
VWIIO, TAKING A STEP IN ADVANCE OF ALL OTIIERS,
HAS GIVEN TO TIIE WNORLD A DOCTRINE OF TIlE
CONDITIONED,
THE ORIGINALITY AND IMlPORTANCE OF'WHICI- ARE ACKNOWrLEDGED ITY TllQ
FEW QUALIFIED TO JUDGE IN SUCII MATTERS; WTIIOSE
NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS
COMPLETES THE IIITHIERTO UNFINISIIED WORKS OF ARISTOTLE;
THIS TRANSLATION  OF M. COUSIN'S
g~Stunre   21Y tf~  Elt1ey  tie  aelOtifulfi           fa l tIe 61aff,
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
IN ADMIRATION OF A PROFOUND AND INDEPENDENT TI-NKER,
OF AN INCOMPARABLE MASTER OF PHILOSOPI-IC CRITICISM;
AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM FOR A MAN IN WVHOM GENIUS
AND ALMOST UNEQUALLED LEARNING
HAVE BEEN ADORNED BY
TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND GOODNESS OF LIFE.








AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
FOR sonie time past we have been asked, on various
sides, to collect in a body of doctrine thle tlleories'scatr
tered in our different works, and to sum up, in just pro11ortions, what'men are pleased to call our philosophy.
This re'szu?% was wholly made.  WAe 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, fi'om  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, inl
the hope that they will thus be accessible to a greater
1 lst Series of our workl, C'oers de l'Histoire de la P-'hilosop7hie -Moderns, five
volumes.




8                 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
number of readers, and that their true character will the
better appear.
The eighteen lectures that compose this volume llarve
in fact the particular trait that, if the history of philosI-)phy furnishes their frame-work, philosophy itself occupies in them  the first place, and that, instead of researches of erudition and criticism, they present a regtular exposition of the doctrine which was at first fixed
in our mind, which has not ceased to preside over our
lablor.
This book, then, contains the abridged but exact expression of our convictions on the fundamental points of.
-hilosophic science.  In it will be openly seen the
method that is the soul of ourl 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, Testhetics, 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.




AUTHOR S PREP.ACE.                 9
Eclecticism is persistently represented as the doctrine
to which men deign to attach our naime. We declare
that eclecticisml 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
mnost 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 ill
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
Mi. Royer-Collard came to re-establish in public instruction, whilst Yi. de Chateaubriand, Mfadame de Stahl, and
1M. Quatremere de Quincy transferred it into literatuire
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 th  li;mits of this world it shows a




10o              AUTHIORnS PREFACE.
God, author and type of humanity, whl%, after lhaving
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 demagogua 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 mnonarchy.
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 strength.
ened 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 partlhuelarly to you that we address this work, young men
whom we no longer know, but wbhom awe bear in our
heart, because you are the seed and the hope of the




AUTHOR'S PREFACE.                1 l
L;ture. 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 materialismn
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 them
selves 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 L'rance, democracy will always traverse liberty, that it brings all right into disorder, and
through disorder into dictatorship. Ask, then, only a
mnoderated liberty, and attach yourself to that with all
thlle 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 wevaknesses, 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




12                 AUTHOR' S PREFACE.
generous ambition.  Whatever career you embrace, prc.
pose to yourselves an elevated aim, and put in its service
an unalterable constancy.  Sursamn cordac, 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 Yon as
our last word, our final lecture.
V. COUSIN.
fane 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
_s an Appendix' at the end of the volume, on various
The Appendix has been translated by Mr. N. E. S. A. IIanillton of
the British Museum, who is alone entitled to credit,and alciie raspon.
t bi,-TRS




AUT1HORIS PREFACE.               13
works of French masters which we have quite recently
seen in England, which have confirmed and increased
our old admiration for olur national art of the seventeenth century.
xrovmboe 1; 1853.








TRANSLATOR'S  PREFA(CE.
Tin nature of this publication is sufficiently explained
il) 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 carefuilly shunned idioms peculiar to the French;
on the othler, 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 wlholly 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
larther explanation is necessary.




I 6            TRlANSLATOR S PREFACE.
This is, perhaps, in a philosophical point of view,
the most important of all AI. 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, ale 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
Aowards 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,
freed.om, immortality.




TRAxNSLATOR S PREFACE.              17
Grateiful to an itlndulgent public, on both sides of tile
ocean, for a kindly and very favorable reception of our
version of MI. Cousin's " Course of thle 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 lalways those,
and the most gifted, too, who feel the need of understanding themselves -believing that his eloquence, his
elevated sentiment, and elevated thought, will affbrd,ratification to a refined taste, a chaste imlagination,
and a disciplined mindl
0. W. 2WIGHT.
Lornox, Dec. 21, 1853




ADVERTISEMENT.
Tna  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.
EDIN-BURGIt, 38 GEOIrGE]-STREET,
Dec. 26, 1853.




THE STEM.
CONTENTS.
A UTHOR'S PEEFACEE................Page 7
T1'ANSLATOR'S PPEFACE...15............. 15
DISCOURSE PIRONOUNCED 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 tho,
three Problems of the True, the Beautifal, and the Good.
PART FIRST.-THE TRUE.
LECTURE I. -THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY
PItINCIPLES...........................................  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.-E-xamples
of different linds of such principles.-Distinction between universal and
necessary principles arndl 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 wlhich discovers to us these
principles.-The study of universal and necessary principles introduces
us to the hig'hest parts of philosophy.
LECTURE II -ORIGI N  OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.................................................  1
Resuzne  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
2




20                           CONTENTS.
that form, and gives them their actual form.-Examination and refutatior
of the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an indu-e
tion founded on particular notions.
LECTURE III.-ON  THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY
PRINCIPLES.............................                  ag......... Pge 65
Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism. —-Recurrence to the
theory cf spontaneity and reflection.
LECTURE IV.-GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPES.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; Fduelon; Bossuet; Leibnitz.-Truth the mediator between God and man. —Essential distinctions.
LECTURE V.-ON MIYSTICISMI.............................. 02
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.-A-ixture of superstition and abstraction in mysticism.-Conclusion of the first part of the course.
PART SECOND.-THE BEAUTIFUL.
LECTURE VI.-THIE BEAUTIFUL IN THE M1IND ON 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 beautifuil.-Preeminence of reason.-Sentiment of the beautiful; different from sensation
and desire.-Distinction between the sentiment of the beautiful and that
of the stublirne.-Imagination. -Influence of sentiment on imagination.influence of imagination on sentiment. —Theory of taste.




CONTENTS.                            21
LEoTURE VII. —THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS...........Page 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. MIoral beauty. —Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.God, the first principle of the beautiful.-Theory of Plato.
LIEOTURE 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. Quatremenre 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 religions sentimenrt. —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.-FRENCII ART IN TIIHE 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:-Cornleille. Racine.  Moliere. La Fontaine. Boileau.-Painting:- Lesueur.  Poussin.  Le Lorrain.  Champagne. - Engraving. -
Sculpture:-Sarrazin.  Tb 3 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 iot be sought,




CONTENTS.
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.-TIE ETIIICS OF INTEREST.............         Page 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.-OTiIER 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
ialone. —The- ethics founded on the punishments and rewards of' another
life.
LECTURE XIV.-TRuE PRINCIPLES OF ETIICS..............            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 foulding 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.-Ilarmony 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 reslpect and develop the moral person.-Social ethics,-duties
of justice and duties of charity.-Civil society. Government. Law.'The
right to punish.




CONTENTS.                            23
LECrnE XVI.- GoD  TIE PRINCIPLE  OF THE IDEA  OF THE
GOOD...........................................Page 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...............................            871








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 fiom  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 aind 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.' Placed at the entrance of the new times, let us know,
We have so much felt the necessity of understanding well the philosophyof the century that ours succeeds, that three times we have undertaken the




626                  OPENING  DISCOURSE.
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 ardmit any but those which, after a serious examination, might appear to him  evident.  But he perceived that
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.




PHILOSOPHY IN  THE NINETEENTH  CENTURY                 27
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,' 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.2
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.3  The true method,
1 This word was used by the old English writers, and there is no reason
why it should not be retained.
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., Philosophle
Moderne, as well as Fragnments de PPhilosophie Cartesienne; 5th Series, Ilnstruction Peubliue, vol. ii., Dyfense de 1' Uhiversite et de la Philosophie, p.
112. etc.
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




2t0                  oPENlNG  DISCOURSE.
again, is more than once effaced in the hands of his first succes.
30rs, 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
Ifumain 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 genelal, 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.'  In fact, nothing
is durable except that which is founded upon a sound method;
of Cartesianism, a 2}opos the Teibnitii Anineadversiones ad Cartesii Principia
Philosophice.
See on  Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, 2cl Series, vol. ii., lectures
11 and 12; gd Series, vol. iv., Introduction azax aev-res PlPilosopiques de u l 2
Me Biraie, p. 288; and the Fragnments de Philosophie C artisienne, passim.




PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.             29..me destroys all the rest; time, which re-collects, feciuadates, ag
grandizes 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 fiiend of truth is to search for the usefuil
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 gireat 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.' 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 himOn Locke, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1., especially 2d Series, vol. iii.,
ticamen du Systmne de Locke.




30                   OPENING  DISCOURSE.
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' firom
the true experimental method, and has strayed farther on the
route of abstractions, even verbal abstractions; but,; stran!Ee
enough, no one is severer than he against hypotheses, save that
of the statue-man.  The author of the TraitS 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.2  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?  tHe undertakes'a
profound examination of the faculty of knowing; the title of his
principal work is, Critique of Pure Reason;3 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,4 the successor of Kant, who died but a few
years since; there, again, the analysis of thought is given as the
founcldzion of philosophy.  Kant was so firmly established in the
subject of knowledge, that he could scarcely go out of it-t.hat,
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
1 ist Series, vol.iii., lectures 2 and 3.
1ss Series, vol. iv., lectures on the Scotch School.
See on Kant and the Critique of Pure Peason, vol. v. of the 1st Series,
whe e 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.
On Fichte, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture. 12; 3d Series, vol. iv., Infroduction
Iux Esuvres de I. de.Biarn, p. 324.




PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.                 31
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 fieedom  and with grief, that the
eighteenth centuly 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.'  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
lWe expressed ourselves thus in December, 1817, when, following the
great wars of the Revolution, and after the downfall of the empire, the conlstitutional monarchy, still poorly establishedl, 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.




32                  OPENING DISCOURSE.'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 poiLt 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 harmoni.
ous 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!een Iincldered by not understanding better her own. interests, by




PHILOSOPIPY IN TIIE NINETE'AENTH CENTURY.         33
riot 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  theim a general doctrine,
which is successively and perpetually purified and aggrandized.
Not, indeed, that I would recommend that blind syncretisit
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 thelm 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, fiom  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.l  We then extended
it to a greater number of questions and theories; we touched
the principal points of the intellectual and moral order,2 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 Kcenigsberg.  We can-at the present time, therefore, embrace all the schools of the eighteenth century, and all
the problems which they agitated.
1st Series, vol. i., Course of 1816.
na id., Conrse of 1817'.




34                  OPENING DISCOURSE.
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 zesthetics, 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 prir ipal 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 schoo',
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.  WVe 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



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.             35
portant part. But when the empirical school pretends that al
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, notwithstand.
ing, 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 bktt does
not explain, and which are directly suggested to us by the pcwer
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 svmething which we place above the history of
philosophy, and, consequently, above eclecticism,-philosophy
itself.
The history of phi4osophy 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
3




OPENING  DISCOURSE.
order to render the false of no account, to disengage anc 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.i
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,n 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
en thie legitimate employment ancl the imperative conditions ofeclecticism,
see 3d Series, Fragaments Philosopligques, vol. iv., preface of the first edition,
p. 41, &c., especially the article entitled -De Ice Philosophie en Belg2que, pp.
228 and 229.
2We have translated his excellent Mcanucal of the History of Philosophy.
See tbe second edition, vol. ii., Svo., 1839.




PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTIH CENTURY.           37
Its, and in our times, the illustrious man who has been pleased to
-all 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 tco 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.




38                 OPENING DISOOURSE.
You will here see, then, brought together in a short space, or.
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.




PART FIRST.
THE TRUE.
LE CT U RE I.
THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PIRINCIPLES,
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,




40                    LECTURE FIRST.
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.'
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 x ithout axioms
and definitions, that is to say, without absolute principles.
I 1st Series of our Course, vol. i.




THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES.             41
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 l
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? 




42                    LECTURE FFIRST.
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 2
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




THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES.               43
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 ol
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.,t 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 em



14                    LECTURE FIRST.
pirist, like Humle,1 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 Hume2 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 embrac3 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 uni.
versal 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.
11st Series, vol. i.         A Tid.




THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES.                45
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. nBut 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.  Othei
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 i
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 ot
space. Th.e intervention of a superior principle is, therefore, here
necessary.




46                    LECTURE FIRST.
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,1 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'1st Series, vol. i., Fragments of the Course of 1817.




THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES.                 47
every thing that might seem personal and hazardous; and, instead
of examining, criticising,' and reconstituting the classification
which the philosophy of Kcenigsberg 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 t(
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
1 ee that criticism, 1st Series, vol. v., Kant, lecture 8.




48                       LECTURE FIRST.
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 ill 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, desiies, 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.'
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
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 283 and 24: R7fistoire du moi; ibid., Des faits de'onscience; vol. iii., lecture 3, Exacmen de lae Theorie des Facult's dans Condillac;
vol. iv., lecture 21, des Faccults selon Reid; vol. v., lecture 8, Examen de la
Theorie de  tant; 3d Series, vol iv., Preface de la Premiere Edition, Examen
4es Lefons de il. L];aromiguieire, Introduction azxe (Euveres de M. de BZiran, eta.




THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES.               49
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.]
1 This lecture or. the existence of universal and necessary principles, which
was easily comprehended, in 1818, by an auditory to which long discussions




n,10                     LECTURE FIRST.
This point of departure we have found, and we do not abandon
it.  We remain immovably attached to it.  The study of uni
versal 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.
had already been presented during the two previous years, appearing here
without thle 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 1UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
r.?sume  of the preceding Lecture. A new question, %hat of the origin of
universal and necessary principles.-Danger of this question, and its nocessity.-Different forms nnder 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 fromr
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 rime 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
4




52                   LECTURE SECOND.
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 I 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 a  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,' 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 con
sciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without
guidance, into the'pursuit-of their origin.  Reid2 and Kant'
showed themselves much more observing by confining themselves'First Series, vol. iv., lectures 1, 2, and 3.
Tbid., vol. iv., etc.  3 Ibid., vol. v., lecture 8.




THE ORIGIN  OF PRINCIPLES.                      53
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 our-,selves, 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 ilmpartial 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.'
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
We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and confirmed by the
errors of those who have dared t<' 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 aMd
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
Leibnit-z 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, Cond;ilac; lecture 3, almost entire, and lecture 8, p. 260; 2cd Series,
vol. iii., Excamen du Systemze de Locke, lecture 16, p. 77-87; 3cd Series, vol,
iv.,.xzamilzatioel of tie Leczlwes Of.M. o!emnquie're, p. 268.




54                   I, ECTURE SECONgD.
the origin of each one of them, its primitive form, and the dif;
ferent forms which have successively clothed it; only after hav
ing 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 marled put 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, withoutJ 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:
Ist. 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 so't
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 foulr,
abstracting every determinate object, —which is the abstract con
ception 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?




TME ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES.                      511
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, o)ar 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.'
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 SpontaneMit et de la Rcyexion; vol. iv. of the same Series,
Examnination of Reid's Philosophy, passimr; vol. v., Examination of Kant's
System, lecture 8; 2d Series, vol. i., pgasgsin; vol. iii., Lectures on Judgmnent; 8d Series,'ragyments Plciiosopyhiqus, vol. iv., preface of the first edi



56                     LECTURE SECOND.
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 fiom the concrete to the abstract?  Evidently
by that well-known operation which is called abstraction.  Thus
flar, 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 timne 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,
tion, 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'rinciples; in
the fifth, On Mysticism; and in the eleventh, Primary Data of Comlnleu
Sense.




THE OHRIGIN OF PRINCIPLES.                57
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 nulmber, 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




58                    LECTURE SECOND.
pronounce this judgment, is already complete in thefirst 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 nobJto 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 manl 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 filst 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




THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES.                   59
necessity and universality are already in a single case, that case
alone is sufficient to entitle us to deduce them from it.'
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'
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'On immediate abstraction and comparative abstraction, see 1st Series,
vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and everywhere in our other
Courses.
2 On M.. de Biran, on his merits and defects, see our Introduction at the
nead of his Works.




60                   LECTURE SECOND.
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 caus
ality; 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
fromn 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




THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES.                    61
seen' 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 somlething infinite and perfectl2 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 fiom 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, voltion, thought, it does not perceive their
subject.  Who has ever perceived the soul?  HIas 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?2  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 meau to say that we'See lecture 1.
2 See vol. i. of the 1st Series, course of 1816, and 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture
[8, p. 140-146.




62                      LECTURE SECOND.
have in the mind the principle of substances before perceiving a
phenomenon, quite ready to apply the principle to the phenoinenon, 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.'
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.2
We should, perhaps, beg your pardon for the austerity of this
1We have developed this analysis, and elucidated these results in the 17th
lecture of vol. ii. of the 2d Series.
2 We have already twice recurred, and more in detail, to the impossibility
of legitimately explaining universal and necessary principles by ally associationi or induction whatever, founded upon any particular idea, 2d Series, vol.
iii., -Examen dcb Systeme de Locoke, lecture 19, p. 166; and 3d Series, vol. iv.,
titroduction  azux Euvres de Al de Bircan, 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 Phliloso7lhy and
literatciure, etc., by Sir Williamn Hamilton, London, 1852. Appendix 1, p. 588.




THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES.                 63
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, allpowerful, 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
Tnind, and to the nature of things, that is to say, he elevates, to




644                     LECTURE SECOND.
borrow the fine expression of M. Royer-Collard,' the ignorance
of the mass of men to its highest source.  Such is, thank heaven,
the olily 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, thle necessary, and the infinite.'1 uvres 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 froml
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 psy —
chology to logic.
We have defended against Locke and his school the necessity
and universality of certain principles. We now come to Kant,
wvllo 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.




66                    LECTURE THIRD.
If the principle of causality is only a law of our mind, the ex
ternal 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 meetrng 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



THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES.                     67
cording to the strong expression of M. Royer-Collarrd, "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'n 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 spealing of his genius, merit for him this name
-undertaken with fIume an ingenious and learned controversy;
lie 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. VWe
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.'
1 On conceptualism, as well as on nominalism and realism, see the Iz-trodauction to the izedited wooirks of Abelard, and also Ist Series, vol. iv., lecture
21, p. 457; 2cl Series, vol. iii., lecture 20, p. 215, and the work already cited
on the.Aetphpysics 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
utnited to a plan. And it is necessary there should really be in nature species
5




68                      LECTURE THIRD.
The reproach which a sound philosophy will content itself Ni ith
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 itself of the human
inind, 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 truie, were there
no mind 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 or
der 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 our 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' 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'tle truth, and, in the spontaneous apperception,
and a plan, if every thing has been made with weight and measure, crm poum
dere et smenzsusra, without which our very ideas of species and a plan would
only be chimeras, and human science a systematic illusion. If it is pretenlded
lhat t.here are inclividuals 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 thereis 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."' See preceding lecture.




THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES.                  69
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-establishlled 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 Awe 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




7O                    LECTURE THIRD.
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 upon itself, examis es 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 sentitmant, 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 intrenchlllent 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 nze
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,;n consciousnesp, and then we have knowledge.  Consciousness is




THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES.                   71
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.'
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, fiom  every thing that constitutes personality, is
nevertheless personal, since we have a consciousness of it, and
since it is thus marked with subjectivity l  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
On the just limits of the personality and the impersonality of reason, see:te following lecture, near the close.




72                     LECTURE THIRD.
name; for it is demanding that this intelligence and this reason
should cease to have consciousness of themselves, whilst this is
preciselywhat characterizes intelligence and reason.1  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 condemnned 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 be, " why we are convinced by our
senses, by consciousness, by our faculties, is an impossiblae 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
1 We have everywhere mnaintained, that consciousness is the condition, or
rather the necessary form of intelligelnce  Not to go beyond this volume,
see farther on, lecture 5.




THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES.                  73
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." 1
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 U'linterruptecl succession, not
only of ideas, but of explicit ol 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." 
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.'1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 494.
2 Euvrres de Reid, vol. iii., p. 450.




74                      LECTURE THRID.
3d. Moreover, the value of principles is above all denionstration.  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.l
1 We have not thought it best to make this lecture lengthy by an expos —
tion and detailed refutation of the  rit~ique of Pure Reason and its sad conelusion; 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 tho
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.
)bject of the lecture: What is the uitimate basis of absolute truthg —
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; Funleon; 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:
VWhat, 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




a76                   LECTU R1   FOURPTH.
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  l 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 respondIn 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 p'art 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.1
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.  lie 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' See our work entitled, Metacphysics of Aristotle, 2d edition, passimn. In
Aristotle himself, see especially Metacphysics, book vii., chap. xii., and book
xiii., chap. ix.




GOD TIHE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.'
have no other reality than that of the objects to which they are
applied? It is the same with principles of which universals are
tlie 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 Imay 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




Zs                      LECTURE FOURTH.
and equivocal state.  And how?  By applying to them  a prin
ciple 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 tile 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.'
This theory, which conducts from  absolute truth to absolute
being, is not new in the history of philosophy: it goes back to
Plato.
Plato,2 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 call discover; this something universal and
one he called Idea.
Ideas, which possess universality and unity, do not come fron?
material, changing, and mobile things, to which they are applied,
and which render them  intelligible.  On the other hand, it is not
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 farther on, part ii., God, t7ze Piibnciple of Beauty, and part iii., God, the PrincZple of the Good, and the last
lecture, which sums up the whole course.
2 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 fPlato and
Aristotle, especially 3d Series, vol. i., a few words on the language of thd
Theory of Ideas, p. 121; our work on the 7tetaphysics of Aristotle; p. 48 and
149, and our translation of Plato, passirn.




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.                 79
the human mind that constitutes ideas; for man is not the ineas.
ure of truth.
Plato calls Ideas veritable beings, ro- o0vrws o'vc4C, 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 Tinaeus
might be objected to him,' 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.2
Will it be said that this ideal world forms a distinct unity, a
itnity 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." 3  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'Aristotle first stated this; modern peripatetics have repeated it; and
after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient philosophy, and plhilosophlly in general, by giving the appearance of absurdity to its most illustrious representative.'See particularly p. 121 of the Ti;naeus, vol. xii. of our translation.
Repu2blic, book vi., vol. x. of our translation, p. 57.




8 0                   LECTURE FOURTH.
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
fiom 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 con.eluding 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."   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 Phcedras, neglected, as it would seem designedly, by the detractors of Plato  "In this transition, (the soul) contemplates
justice, contemplates wisdom, contemplates science, not that
whlerein 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..7 21 " 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, inasmtchi as he is with them." 
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.4
_ Rep2blic, book vii., p. 20  2 Phcedrts, vol. vi., p. 51.
Plzcedrus, vol. vi., p. 55.  4 Vol. xi., p. 261.




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.                  81
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 Gocl, book x., chap. ii., and in chap. ix. of
book vii. of the Confessions, he goes to the extent of comparing
the Platonic doctrlne 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."'
"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'Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 17: Idex sun.t foJrmce qutedam pri naipales et
rationes rerum stabiles atlque incommutabiles, quce ipsce formatce non seunt ad
per hoe ceteernoa ac senaper eodemn modo sese hnabentes, quce in divina intelligqentia
continentur..




82                       LECTURE FOURTH.
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.'
"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." 2
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."3   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,
Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 18. Singulac igitur propriis creat a sunt rationiibits. Eias autern rationes utbi arbitrandiuen est esse nisi in mnente Creatoris?
non enim extra se fuidquclan intuebleatu,  et secuendum id constitueret fuood constituebadt: nan ho7 opinari sc8rileyrein est.
2Ibid. See also, book of the Conrfessionzs, book ii. of the Free Wtrilt, book
xii. of the Trinity, book vii. of the City of God, &c.
3Suzmma totines theologice. Primm partis qumst. xii. art. 11. Ad tertium
dicendum, touod omnnia d icimus in Deo videre, et seceundusa ipsunz de onznibus
jcdicare, in quantunm per participationemn sui lumninis omsnia cognoscimus et
dijudicamus.  Yan? et isuzm lumen n atitcrae rationis 2artici atio  qutechtdm est
divini luminis.




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.                83
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 ptit 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 _Mditations,
in the Responses aux Objections, in the Principes, under the nmost
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 1Plato 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.' But under these differences,
On the doctrine of Descartes, and on the proof of the existence of God
6




84:                    LECTURE FOURTH.
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.  Foi
this reason, Descartes belongs to the falllmily 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.'
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 iUniversal truths, Malebranche does
not hesitate to absolutely confound the reason that is in us with
the divine reason itself.  Moreover, according to Malebranchle, 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
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 Sc.vants for the year 1850.
See on MAalebranche, 2cl Series, lecture 2, andcl 3d Series, vol. iii., lifodlern
Philosoph7y, as well as the'Fag7znents qo' Cartesian Philosopzhy; 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."




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.                85
proper object of,the mind is tile universal, the idea.; and as the
idea is in God, it is in God that we see all things.  WVe 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
rendle s the knowledge that we have of them almost unworthy of
the name of knowledge.  It is reason, differenm in us fiom 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 dee 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 whiclhwe 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:'
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'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 }orlks of
F2neloib. Versailles, 1820. See vol. i., p. 80.




886                  LECTURE FOURTH.
the infinite is in me as well as that of lines, numbers, and circle,
-..   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 nme 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 amn
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. lviM....




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.                87
TLat 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 l
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




8 8                   LECTURE FOURTH.
that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world?... Thi
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 tcW
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 ime 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. 28.1  " 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
Edit. de Versailles, p. 145.




GOD TILE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.                89
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
isin me, it is more than myself; it seems to me every thing, and
myself nothing.  I can neither efface, ubscure, 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' 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 himn...."
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
It is not necessary to remark how incorrect are the expressions, i'epreseee&'ttion of the infinite, image of t7he infinite, especially infinite inzage 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 imagiaation, but of the unlderstanding, of reason. See 1st Series, vol. v., lecture
6, p. 223, 224.




90                    LECTURE  FOURTH.
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.'
Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philosophySt. 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 lie was nourished by the reading of St. Augustine, and out of the schools he
found spread abroad the philosophy of Descartes.  lie adopted
it, and had no difficulty in reconciling it with that of St. Augustine, while, upon more than one point, it corroborated the doec
trine 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.2  In the passages'By a trifling anachronism, for which we shall be pardoned, we have he le
joined to the TraitM de la Connaceissance de Die, et de Soi-menme, so long known,
the Logique, which was only published in 1828.
2 4th Series, vol. i., preface of the 1st edition of Pascal: c" 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,




GOD THIE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.                  91
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
test 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 fiom  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
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 cldue, 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."




92                   LECTURE'FOURTHI.
consider each angle of this triangle as less than a light 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 mu-.
table, and consequently, the ideas that represent to me these
truths are eternal.  WTere 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, (r 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




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.              93
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 froll our senses.;"




94                   LECTURE FOURTH..
Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Selfl  Chap. iv, sect.
5.. iztelligence has for its object eternal truths, which are nothing
else than God himself in whom  they are always subsisting and
perfectly understood.
"..   VWe 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 tile 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 miotion 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 existelce, 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
mlaker, through fear of lacking the recognition of his maker,'The best, or, rather, only good edition is that which was published from
mn authentic copy, in 1846, by Lecoffre.




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.                  9'5
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 know-.ng 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.
"i f I seek how, where, an&c 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 incomprehensible1 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
lr)inciples of our being or not.  In that, then, we see, with all
These words, d'une ce'ttaine rnaniekre qul7 m'est ilcomprehenssble, e'est en
lui, dis-el arm not in the first edition of 1722.




DO                  ZLECTURE FOURTH.
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 welldisposed 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
theml 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, le 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 wisdonl
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 nmuch 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...."




GOD TIHE PRINCIPLE OF PRINnCIPLES.              9
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? lWhere 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 cormmunicate 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 makte
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.  "Tihe senses do not convey to the soul




98                    LECTURE FOURTH.
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 Icweis, 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."'
The same doctrine is in the Principiac  Philosophice seu Theses
in Gratiamn Principis Eugenii.  1" The intelligence of God is the
region of eternal truths, and the ideas that depend upon them."'
Theodicea, part ii., sect. 189.'  "It must not be said with the
Scotists that eternal truths woild 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."
Nouveauzx Essais sur l'Entendernent 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
1 Leibnitzii Opera, edit. Deutens, vol. ii., p. 17.   2 Ibid., p. 24.
91st edition, Amsterdam, 1710, p. 354, edit. of M. de Jaucourt, Amster'
ianm, 1747, vol. ii., p. 93.




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.               99
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, firom Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicans 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 nmake 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,




tOO                     LECTURE  FOURTH.
-against the error of making the reason of man purely individual, and against the error of confounding it with truth and the
divine reason.' 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
1 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 callthose mad who do not admit the relations of numbers, the difference
between the beautiful and the ugly, the just and tle unjust. Why l 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."-lbid., 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."




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES.               101
relation to the person in which it resides, and must also possess I
know not what character of universality, of necessity even, ih
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 ill 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.




LECTURE T.
ON MYSTICISM.
Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and mysticism. Myfticism 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 natnre. —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.
W~HETHER 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 fromn 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 phenom
enon that appears to their eyes, they did not admit that thi,




ON IMYSTICISM.                   103
phenomenon nas 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, fiom the finite to the infinite,
from the imperfect to the perfect, and also, friom necessary and
universal trutlhs, which surround us on every side, tio 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 Godc.  This desperate and ambitious dream is mysticism.
It behooves us to separate with care this chimera, that is not
without danger, fiom 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




10[4                  LECTURE FIFTH.
need of God, ill 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 bodyv. 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




ON aMYSTICISM.                      105,thou.ght 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 n-ot 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 itnmortal source.  The heart is insatiable,
because it aspires after the infinite.  This sentiment, this need ot
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
wthout doubt, but they do not express it more than the caprice
andt 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,




106                     LECTURE FIFTH.
The mindl 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.' 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 fiom 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 baclk submissive to the first inspiraltions 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' See the preceding lectures.




ON  tMYSTICISM.                      107
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;.ar from  clipping its divine
wings, it develops them, and nourishes them, as Plato' 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.  0 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 isawakened, and flies away.
Charming image of what takes place in the soul, when to the
serene and unsuspecti ng confidence of sentiment succeeds reflection
with its bitter train.  This is perhaps also the lmeaning of the
biblical account of the tree of knowledge.2   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, troules 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
See the zPhcedms and the Banulet, vol. vii. of our translation.
2 We shall not be accused of perverting the holy Scriptures by these analogies, for we give thein only as analogies, and St. Augustine and Bossuet are
full of such.




108                     LECTURE FIBTH.
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.
Mysticismn 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, beautifil, 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.




ON MYSTICISM.                      109
Mysticism goes farthler: 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
longoer the courageous perseverance of the good man, who, in
strugling 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 compo dlld
phenomenon, it is natural that the most apparent element should
cover and dim the most obscure.
Moreover, what relations, what deceptive resemblances between
T:hese 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' 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 a In order to be moved by certain ideas, is it not necessary to have possessed them in some degree?  To absorb reason
See part ii., The Beautifud, lecture 6, and part. iii., lecture 18, on the
Miorals qf Sentiment. See also our P'ascal, preface of the last edition, p. 8,
etc., vol. i. of the 4th Series.




110                   LECTURE FIFTH.
in sentiment is to stifle the cause in the effe~. 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 easorn. 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 Goa
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 males 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. H:ence the extravagances of that mysticism so severely
and so justly condemned by Bossuet and the Church in quiet.




ON MYSTICISM.                       111
ismi.   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
n the strife, or rathem 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
See the admirable work of Possuet, Instaeu6ion, str tes ctats d' Oraisoan




I12                    LECTURE FIFTH.
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' 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; Jt 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
trauths, 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, independently2 of the truth that manifests it, and it imagines itself to possess
Lecture 4.
2 See especially in our writings the regular and detailed refutation of the
double extravagance of considering substance apart from its determinations




ON MYSTICISM.                         113
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 intel.
ligence; for intelligence, if elevated as it might be, always Slupposes 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.
and its qualities, or of considering its qualities and its faculties apart from
the being that possesses them. 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 3, On Conzdillac,
and vol. v., lectures 5 and 6, On, Kanft. 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. swick, 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, trlnsitory 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
inot able, say these philosophers, Mr. Dugald Stewart, for example, to attain
being in itself; it is permitted us to know only phenomnena 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. Te
consider the determinations of being independently of the being which
possasses 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."




144                     LECTUTRE FIFTH.
How could the school of Alexandria. how  could Plotinus, its
founder,' in the midst of the lights of the Greek and Latin civili.
zation, have arrived  at such a strange notion of the Divinity~
By the abuse of Platonism, by the corruption of the best and
severest mnethod, 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.2 The God of
Plato is not called merely unity, he is called  the Good; he is
not the lifeless substance of the Eleatics;3 he is endowed with
ifje and movement;4 strong expressions that show how much the
God of the Platonic metaphysics differs from  that of mysticism.
This God is the father of the wuorld.5   He is also the father of
truth, that light of spirits.6   He dwells in the midst of Ideas
uwhich nmake him a trute God inasmuch as he is with thez.7  He
possesses august and holy intelligence:s  He has made the world
1 On the school of Alexandria, see 2cd Series, vol. ii., Sketch of ca General
Hfisto'ry of Philosophy, lecture 8, p. 211, and 3cl Series, vol. i., passim.
2 See the previous lecture.
3 cd Series, vol. i.  Ancient Philosoqphy, article Xelnophanzes, and article
Zenzo.
Tfle Soyphist, vol. xi. of our translation, p. 261.
5 Tiszceuzs, vol. xii, p. 117.   6 Republic, book vii., p. 70 of vol. x.
7  Phazdrus7 vol. vi., p. 55.
8 T7/e Sophist, p. 261, 262. The following little-known and decisive pas
sage, which wme have translated for the first time, must be cited:-" Stranzger'
But what, by Zeus I 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? -Tmealtetus. That would




ON MYSTICISM.                        11t
without any external necessity, and for the sole reason that he is
good.'  In fine, he is beauty without mixture, unalterable, immortal, that makes him who has caught a glimpse of it disdain
all earthly beauties.2  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.' 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 tlnd 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
be consenting, dear Eleatus, to a very strange assertion.-SStranger. Or, indeed, shall we accord to this being intelligence while we refuse him life?Tleattetus. That cannot be. —Stransger. 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.
-Tlzeatetus. 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 inc unreasonable."
1 Timccus, p. 119: " Let us say that the cause which led the supreme
ordainer to produce and compose this universe.was, that lie was good."
2 Bouquet, discourse of Diotimus, vol. vi., and the 2d part of this vol.-,
The Beautiful, lecture 7.
3 Republic. Ibd. 8
8




116                    LECTURE FIFTH.
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
uznnalmalbe, as Plotinus says.  This principle, which exists not,
for a still strongoer 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
thlought, 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,




ON MYESTICISM.                     117
tonsciousness is the sign of the me, that is to say, of that which
is most determinate: the being who says, mze, 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
(X'x5cc'g).  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.
Maln, 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 elemlent as
essential to being as unity itself.  If, then, reality is in determination, it follows that God is the most determinate of beings.




118                     LECTURE FIFETI.
Aristotle is much more Platonic than Plotinus, when he says
that God is the thought of thought,' 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 lowr
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, Reflectioni
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 psych.ology, Alexandrian mysticism  imagined that diversitv 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 isforced to put in God what it calls failings, not having seen that
these pretended failings are the very signs of his infinite perfec-.
tion.
The theory of ecstasy is at once the necessary condition and,
the condemnation of the theory of absolute unity.  Without abBook xii. of the 2Meta2pysics. De a M/tap/ysique d'Ar'istotle, 2d edition.
p. 200, etc.




ON MYSTICISM.                        119
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.l
The Alexandrian mysticism  is the most learned and tte 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 fronm  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
I On this fundamlental point, see lecture 3, in thist 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 consciousnessthat is to say, difference. There calln 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 mnay thus express myself, the life of the
divine intelligence -.., etc."




120                    LECTURE FIFTH.
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 Laotseul 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 Timcezts and the Republic by subtile commentaries, and exhibiting to the eyes of the multitude sometimes the sacred vale,2
sometimes the shrine of the good goddess,3 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.
WNhen the Christian religion triumphed, it brought humanity
nlder 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
1Vol. ii. of the 2dcl Series, Sketch of a Generall I:istoWy of Philos~ophy, leelures 5 and 6, On2 the IJzdia1, _Philosophy.
2 See the PthuTyphron, vol. i. of our translation.
3 Lucien, Apuleins, Lucius of Patras.




ON MYSTICISM.                       121
human mind had broken with the philosophy of the Middle Age,
without yet having arrived at modern philosophy.l  The Paracelsuses and the Von Hielmonts renewed the Apolloniuses and the
Jamblicuses, abusing some chemical and medical knowledge, as
the former had abused the Socratic and Platonic method, alteredc
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 senseless2 persons who contest with me in
the morning the solidest and best-established proofs of the existIence of the soul and God, and propose to me in the evening to
inake 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 m e:
-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 condlitions imposedl upon human nature.  Charron first said, and
12d Series, vol. ii., Sketchl of a General Histtory of Philosop7hy, lecture 10,
On the Philosophy of the Renraissance.
2 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 cf perfect clairvoyance of soul, obtainedl 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
skepticisni.




122                    LECTURE FIFTH.
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 trhe
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, espe
zially to the practice of the good.




PART SECOND
THE BEAUTIFUL.
LECTUIRE VI.
THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF 1IMAN.
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.-Preeminence of reason.-Sentiment of the beautiful; different from sensation
and desire.-Distinction between the sentiment of the beautiful and that
of the sublime.-Imagination. —Infiuence 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,




124                    LECTruRE SIXTH.
the absolute authority of reason, and the truths which it discovers,
Then, the truths that reason revealed to us have themselves re.
vealed 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
faniliar to Plato and Aristotle, but which scholasticism had not
entertained, to which our great philosophy of the seventeenth
centuiy had remained almost a stranger.'  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 helad
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; hlie knows not what the ideal is;;e delights in a kind of -nature, at once common and mannered,
1Except the estimable.Essay on thze Beaui/ful, by P. Andr6, a disciple of
Malebranche, whose life was considerably prolonged into the eighteenth
century.  On P. Andr6, see 3d Series, vol iii.,.Modern Pilosophy, p.
207, 516.




THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN.               120
suach 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.'  It was worthy of the
Scotch' school and Kants 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 tie 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
1See in the works of Diderct, Pensges st?'y la Scunpture, Zes Salons, etc.
2 See 1st Series, vol. iv., explained and estimated, the theories of HI-utcheson and Reid.
2 The theory of Kant is found in the Critique of Jadgmzent, and in the Oboervations on the Sentiment of' te Beauti/fl and the Sublime. See the excellent translation made by M. Barny, 2 vols., 1846.




126                  LECTURE SIXTH.
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 ol
beauty. Does one ever say: This is: a beautiful taste, this is a




THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND Oi AOF.        127
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 Leauty. Do not pictures, ordinary in
coloring, often move us more deeply than many dazzling product
tions, 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




'128                   LECTURE SIXTH,
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 samle thing?  Is it because those who feel like you are
more numerous than those who feel like me?  But here the
number of voices ileans 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




THE BEAUTIFU-L IN THE MI-ND OF MAN.            129
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 somne 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
aibsurdity 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 degrees 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
>f sentiment, which is different fr'om  sensation, which so nearly




130                     LECTURE SIXTH.
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 Smith1
are in our eyes very different philosophers from  Condillac and
Helvetius;2 but we believe that we have sufficiently established1
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 imy mind the great discoveries of Descartes and Newton,
1 On IHutcheson 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.
2 See the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Condillac and Hel-'
vetius, Ibid., vol. iii.
s See lecture 5, in this vol.




THE  BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN.             131
the exploits of the great Conde, the virtue of St. Vincent de
Paul; elevate me still higher; awaken in me the obscure and toe
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 ealescimus 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 ol' the beautiful is to itself its own satisfaction.
Desire is burning, impetuous, sad.  The sentiment of the beau.
tiful, 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 Arid.
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.




132                   LECTURE SIXTH.
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 per



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN.               133
fectly 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 efdorescence.
Let us consider, onl 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 t.he aspect of a-} inaccessible mountain, at the foot of whicb




134                  LECTURE SIXTH.
the ocean breaks? Do the sweet light of day and a melodious
voice produce upon you the same effect as darkness and silence l
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 IHorace, 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 Traitd  des Sensations and the Critique
of Putre 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 evenin the absence of this object;, this is memory..




THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF >tAN.            135
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 trahts, 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 thema 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 themn, and carry into the exercise of all their faculties this
same force ol emotion.  Take away sentiment and all else is inan




1336                  LECTURE SIXTH.
imate; 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 eniploy 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, embel



T HE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN.            137
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-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 extilguished 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




138                    LECTURE SIXTH.
nlertioned,- taste, so ill treated, so arbitrarily limited in aL
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 a 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 datings of genius, and will he not carry
into criticism a narrow severity, a reason very little reasonablesince 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




THE BEAUTIUL IN THE MIND OF MAN.              139
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.




LECTUtRE VII.
rHE BEAUTIFUL IN  OBJECTS.
Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful: the beautifil
cannot be reduced to what is usefull. —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
Df the beautiful: we do not wish to enumerate nor discuss them
all; we will designate the most important.1
There is one very gross, which defines the beautiful as that
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 Ilcppias of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation. The P/Zkdrmus, vol. vi.,
contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own theory; but it is in the Banqlet
(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.




TIE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.                 141
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' 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,
See the Hippias.




142                  LECTURE SEVENTH.
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.  WVe 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




THE BEAUTIFTUL IN OBJECTS.                143
explains oetter what is free, varied, and negligen\  in certain
beauties.
All these theories which refer beauty to order, harmiony, 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




[44-                  LECTURE SEVENTH.
not less real.  The universal laws that govern bodies, those lthat
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 degrada
tions?
Plotinus, in his treatise On the Beautiful,' 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 l What is the common quality
which, being found in these two objects, ranges them  undere 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 diverFirst Ennead, book vi., in the work of M. B. Saint-lillaire, on the School
a. Aflexandr'ica the translation of this morsel of Plotinus, p. 197.




THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.                  145
sities 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 worlks.
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.  WVe 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.  mWinkelmann, who was not a metaphysician,
but a learned antiquarian, a man of taste without system, made
a celebrated analysis of the Apollo.l  It is curious to study it.'Winkelmann has twice described the Apollo, History qf Alrt 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




14 6                    LECTURE SEVENTH.
What Winkelhnann 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 mathe 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." —bid., vol. ii., book iv., chap.
vi., Art cunder 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'ceuvre 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 intelligeuce 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
unage of that of Bacchus, where breathed voluptuousness. Like the tender
branches of the vine, his beautifu.l 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




THE BEAUTIFUL IN  OBJECTrS.                  147
jestic 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' contrasts strongly with the type of Grecian beauty; but look at him on his death-bed, at the moment
of drinking the hemlock, conversing with his disciples on the immortality of the soul, and his face will appear to you sublime.2
At the highest point of moral grandeur, Socrates expires: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."' See the last part of' the Banquzet, the discourse of Alcibiades, p. 326 of
vol. vi. of our translation.
2 We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of David, which
10




148                    LECTURE SEVENTH.
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.
Coisider 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 fi'om 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 amost 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
appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted, above its reputation.
Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admiire Plato listening to his master,
as it were fiorm the bottom of his soul, without looking at him, with his back
urned upon the scene that is passing, and lost in the contemplation of the
2itelligible world.




TIlE BEAUTIFUL IN  OBJECTS.                  140,vilIl impress -us as symbols of thought.  WVe have said that with
man, and with the animal even, the figulre 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 appealing?  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.'
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.
We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so clear to us, confirmed
by the authority of one of the severest ancl most circumspect minds:- -it
may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 23. The Scotch philosopher
terminates his Esscay oen Tacste with these words, which happily remind os 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,"




150                  LECTURE SEVENTH.
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 theo
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 cobl
ors, 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,' 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 mora. 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 con
tentment 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 indefat
igable solicitude of Providence, its benefits everywhere manifest
in the smallest as well as in the greatest phenomena of naturei
Part iii., lecture 15.




THE BEAUTFUL IN OBJECTS.                 151
whlich 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 an d
-the sublime.  God is, par excellence, the beautiful-for what obiect 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 Inlfinite, 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 w rd that we are able to find for all
enigmas.  Limited beings as we are, we comprehend nothing in
somlparison 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



I M         2         LECTURIE SEVENTH.
selves under the weight of his infinitude, we experience by turnsi
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 firom.
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, 11no0 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.
"0 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




THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.               153
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 chlarms that are
condemned to perish, to whom it should be given to see face tc
face, under its sole form, the divine beauty!' 
I Vol vi. of our translation, p. 81{-818




LECTURE VIII
ON ART.
Genus: —its attribute is creative power.-Refutation of the opinion that art
is the imitation of nature.-M. Emeric David, and M. Quatremere do
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.
WVe 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.




ON ART.                         155
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.




156                   LECTURE EIGHTH.
Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation; for absolute crea
tion 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 uniited
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 idegTl, 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




oN ART.                        15 7
tlhat have no model in nature, that imitate nothing elsC 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 th;e 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 tate, 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




158                   LECTURE EIGHTH.
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
out, 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 antigue sculpture,
and what would be the best mneans of attaining it?  The successful competitor, M. Emeric David,' maintained the opinion than
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 whoml  I do not fear to compare with Winkelmann, the
future author of the Olympic Jupiter,2 M. Quatremere de Quincy,
in some ingenious and profound disquisitions,3 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-.Reclerchmes sur l'Art Statuai2re. Paris, 1805.
2 Paris, 8!15, in folio, an eminent work that tvill subsist even when time
shall have destroyed some of its details.
s Since reprinted under the title of Eessais sur.'FIdeal dans ses ApFi,.ations
Pratiques. Paris, 1837.




ON ART'.                        159,iques 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  eTog, which signifies only, according to M.
Emeic David, a form seen by the eye.  Plato would have been
much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of the worcld, eos.
M. Quatremere de Quincy confounds his unequal adversary by
two admirable texts, one from the Timzcus, 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,l 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
lre who fixes his eye upon what is transitory, with this perishable
model will make nothing beautiful."
" Phidias,' 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."'Translation of Plato, vol. xii., Timceus, p. 116.
2 Orator: "Neque enim ille artifex (Phidias) curm faceret Jovis formami
ant Minervoe, contemplabatur aliqueml a quo similitudiniem duceret; sed
ipsius in mente insidebat species pulehritudinis eximia qunclam, quam intlnenls, in eaque defixus, ad illiuns similitudinem artem et mnanurm dirigebat."




16 0                   LECTURE EIGHTH.
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?  "As," he says, c" 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 tromn-l'oeil,2 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 isjnlOt to put on the stage pale phantoms of the past, but per.
sonages 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  imagic 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 r-especting history, especially without ever going beyond the imperative conditions of
human nature.  IIas 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.  HIas it been
too human, too real, too nude? it has fallen short of its end; it
has then attained it no better.
1 _iaceolta di lett. Sullc pitt., i., p. 83. " Esseado ce restia e de' btloni gindici e di be/le donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mni viene alla mnente."
" A picture representing a broken glass over several subjects painted ol
the canvas, by which thle ey.e is deceived."




ON ART.                        161.
Ill sison 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
PRoman 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 Pllclre!" 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 fiightful 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




162                   LECTURE EIGHTT.
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 charmn
of the ideal  it must then do its own work; the artist has done




ON ART.                         163
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 froIm 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 dclegraded.  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 _Eschylus 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 de11




164                   LECTURE EIGHTH.
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 Ciambuei; 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;1 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 worlk 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 aspiles 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.'Vassarli, Vie de RapEhael.




LE TU RE 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 resnze' 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
beaut;.  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 tl e 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, accordinog
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




166                    LECTURE NINTH.
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
fart 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,' 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 beautifull
X Lecture 6




THE DIFFERENT ARTS.                    167
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 enlighltened 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 mor,
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, cartes ingenuce.  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.




t 68                   LECTURE NINTIH.
Eloquence does not propose to itself to produce in the soul ol
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 per.,
suade.  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 amcng the moderns, think only of the interest of the cause confided to their
4enius, 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 fiom
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.1
As much must be said of history and philosophy.  The philosopher speaks and writes.  Can he, then, like the orator, find
accents which mialke truth enter the soul, colors and forms that
mnake 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
See the Gorgias, with the Argu'ymenzt, vol. iii. of our translation o
Plato.




THE DIFFERENT ARTS.                     169
thle rilval of Demosthenes and Bossuet;' 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.  Thucydicles, Polybius, and Tacitus undertake any thing
else than procuring new emotions for an idle curiosity or a wornout 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.  Architect'ure
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 conve1 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 Pasagl, 4th Series, Literlaturer
vol. i.




170                    LECTURE NINTI.
nience, 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.1  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' artist of great talent, I
have little taste, I confess, for that artifice that is forced to give
to marble the rnorbidezza 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
See the Jipiter Olym2pien of M. Quatremere de Quincy.
8 Allusion to the Magdeleine of Canova, which was then to be seen in thb
galler- of M. de Sommariva.




THE DIFFERENT ARTS.                   171
mountain, now descend and seem to precipitate themselves into
bottomless abysses?  If the auditor is not informed of the sub.
ject, 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 plenomena; 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' 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
9poesis; 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 fos
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
See the Tempest of Haydn, among the pLnoforte works of this master.




172                   LECTURE NINTH.
long as we have not determined the nature of the unity of which
we would speak.  True unity, is unity of expression, and variet3
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




THE DIFFEtENT ARTS.                   173
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.' 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 all 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
See lecture 6.




Mt4                     LECTURE NINTHT.
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,' during the solemnities of the Catholic worship,
1 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 fKorales sur les Destination des Ouvrages de
1tArt, 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 nlave 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 ealch 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 exe



THE DIFFEILENT ARTS.                     17
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 sentim
ments 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,
abov'e 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 surlpasses 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.
cute that music; but these voices seem to be those of angels, oldl 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 Mile. de Valliere in the Hadeleine acx Gcarmt7lites, 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."




t16                   LECTURE NINTH.
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 thai, 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 pro-.
found 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 thle arts,-the art par excellence, which




THE DIFFERENT ARTS..[7
comprises all others, to which  they aspire, which none can
reach.
W~hen 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
v while asking him for the dead body of his son, more than one verse
of Virgil, entire scenes of the Cid and the Polyezucte, the prayer of:Esther kneeling before the Lord, the choruses of Esther and Athalie. In the celebrated song of Pergolese, Stabat Mckter Dolorosa,
we may ask which moves most, the music or the words. The  Dies
irce, 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, uniqae, 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!




LECTURE X.
FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but the differer:t
schools of art. Example: —French art in the seventeenth century. French
poetry:-Corneille. Racine. Moliere.  La Fontaine. 130ileau.-Painting: — Lesueur.  Poussin.  Le Lorrain.  Champagne. - Engraving. --
Sculpture:-Sarrazin. The Anguiers. Girardon. Pujet.-Le N6tre. —
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 ex —
press 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 discalaned, that even in China.some shade of beauty can be found,
our eclecticism does not make us waver in regard to the sentiment
~f true beauty and the supreme rule of art.  What we demand




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   179
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 greatestecentury
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, COesar, Charlemagne,
perhaps excel them.  But Alexander has but a single contemporary that can be compared with him, his father Philip; Casar
cannot even have suspected that Octavius would one day be.
12




180                   LECTURE TENTIH.
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 maneuvres, 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 mocerns, 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, IEschylus, 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 pas-:sions; he does not seek to rouse terror and pity, as demands
Aristotle, who limits himself to erecting into maxims the practice




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   181
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.ife 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 Cesar, 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.'  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;
lhe neither loves nor understands politics and war.  When he
imitates Corneille, for example, in Alexander, and even in Mith-'One is reminded of the expression of the great Condl: 1" Where then
has Corneille learned polities and war?"




182                     LECTURE TENTH.
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 lie has need of being sustained by Tacitus or holy Scripture.'  With woman he is at his ease, and he makes the.a think
and speak with perfect truth, set off by exquiste art.  Demand of
him  neither Emilie, Cornelie, nor Pauline; but listen to Andromaque, Monime, Ber6nice, and Phedre!  There, even in imitating, he is original, and leaves the ancients very far behind hinm.
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
1It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the original all
the passages of Britannicuns 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 cr-mne on the spectators:
Juez combien ce coup frappe tous les esprits;
La moitie s'6ponvante et sort avec des cris;
Mais ceux qui de la cour out un plus long usage
Sur les yeux de CUsar composent leur visage.
Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales aind seems nothing more than
a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre pencil-strokes
of the great Roman painter:  1" Trepidatur a circumsedentibus, diffugiant
imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus, resistunt defixi et Neronem intuentes."




FRENCH ART IN THIE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.  183
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 Telenaque.  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 extinguisher by the first breath of disgrace.
Moliere is, in comparison with Aristophanes, what Corneille is,
in comparison with Shakspeare.  The author of Pututs, the
Wcasps, and the Cloutds, 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.r maginaire (the iypochondriac),
les Femnmes Savantes (the Learned  onzomen), le Tartzefe (the
lypocrite), 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.




184                  LECTURE TENTH.
Of all fabulists, ancient and modern, does any one, even the
ingenious, the pure, the elegant Phzedrus, 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 Womeln (I'Ecole des Fenmmes)
and long before the Hypocrite (le Tartuzfe), and the Misanthrope,
proclaimed Moliere the master in the art of verse. It was he
who, in 1677, after the failure of Phdlre, 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.l  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 monarh, —" 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
See the letter to Perrault.




FRENCtH  ART IN  THE SEVENTEENTH  CENTURIY.   1]8
taste for the beautiful and the honest; he is a poet by force of
soul and good sense.  More tian once his heart dictated to him
the most pathetic verses:
"In vain against the Cid a minister is leagued,
All Paris for Chimene has thel 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:2
"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 instrnucted by Jesus Christ,
Combating for the Church, has, in the Church itself,
Suffered more than one ontrage and more than one anathema,' etc.
" Wandering, poor, banished, proscribed, persecuted;
And even by his death their ill-extinguished rage
HIad never left his ashes in repose,
If God himself here by his holy flock
From these devouring wolves had not concealed his bones." 3
These are, I think, poets sufficiently great, and we have more
of them  still: I mean those charming or sublime minds who
En vain contre le Cid ministre se ligne,
Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrique, etc.
Apr s qu'un peu de terre, obtenu par prigre,
Pour jamais dans 1a tombe cut enferme Moliere, etc.
2 Aux pieds de cet antel de structure grossiere,
Git sans pompe, enf'erm8 dcans une vile biere,
Le plus savant mortel qui jamais ait 6crit;
Arnaud, qui sur la grace instruit par Jsnus-Christ,
Combattant pour l'Eglise, a, dans l'Eglise m~me,
Souffert plus d'un outrage et plus cl'un anathemc, etc.
Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, pers6cut6;
Et meme par sa mort leur fureur mal eteinte
N'aurait jamais laisse ses cendres en repos,
Si Dieu lui-lm6me ici de son ouaille sainte
A ces loups d6vornnts n'avait cach6 les os.
These verses did not appear till after the death of Boilean, and they are




18 6                      LECTUIRE TENTH.
have elevated prose to poetry.  Greece alone, in her most beauti.
futl days, offers, perhaps, such a variety of admirable prose writers.
Who can enumerate them?  At first, Rabelais and MIontaigne;
later, Descartes, Pascal, and Malebranche; La Rochefoucauld and
La Bruyelre;  Retz  and  Saint-Simon;  Bourdaloue, Flechier,
Fenelon, and Bossuet; add to these so many eminent women, at
their head Madame de Sevign6e; while Montesquieu, Voltaire,
RIousseau, and Buffon are still to come.1
Bvy what strange diversity could a country, in which the mental
not well known. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, in a letter to Brossette, rightly
said that these are "the most beautiful verses that M. ZDespreaux ever
made."
4th Series of our works, LITERIATURE, book i., P'eface, 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 B1acon, 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 le is alone....    France can easily
show a list of more than twenty prose writers of genius: Froissard, Rabelais,
Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Moliere, Iletz, La Bruydre,
Malebranche, Bossuet, Fenelon, Fldchier, Bonrdaloue, Massillon, Mime. de
SBvignie, Saint-Simon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, J. J. Rlousseanu; without speaking of so many more that would be in the first rank everywhere
else, —Amiot, Calvin, Pasquier, D'Aubign6, Charron, Balzac, Vaugelas, P6lisson, Nicole, Flenry, Bolssi, Saint-Evremont, AMine. de Lafayette, Mine de
MIaintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Hamilton, Le Sage, Pr6vost, 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 clays, 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 m)
opinion, are the two greatest masters of human language, with manifest diiferences, 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 I-Iomer, 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 anid profound study?"




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   187
arts were carried to such perfection, remain ordinary in the othei
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 Pichelieu?  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 commericement of the seventeenth century.  France at that mloment 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,:
new prose, begin to appear, which, during an entire century, bear
firuits 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 reasoln
alas! also at the expense of soul, which is forgotten, repudiated,




188                  LECTURE TENTH.
proscribed. At this moment, color and form are the order of the
day, in poetry, in painting, in every thing.  We are begirning 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! 1 Ie 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 thirtyeight, in that cloister of Chartreux, which his pencil has ilmmortalized.  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.
See the APPENDIX, at the end of the volume.




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   18[9
Lesueur is a genius wholly French.  Scarcely having escaped
h'om the hands of Simon Vouet, he formed himself according to
the model which he had in the soul. Hee 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 prlogress 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 n.e.
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 His



190                    LECTURE TENTH.
tory of St.  lartin and St. Benedict has not come down to us
entire; but the two fragments of it that we possess, the Mass of
St. Mai-tin, 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 lMuses 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
carly meditation, humiliation, irapture fartlher?  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,'-it is that of the Olympic Jupiter, animated by a new
spirit.  The lMass 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 palmn, 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
See the APPENDIX.




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   191
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'outvre 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, Magclalen, 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 fiont,
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
MJ/ass 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!
This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of St. Gervais




192                  LECTURE TENTH.
Now, regard the Afuses,-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 color
ing; 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 Eidamidas, and the Dance of tHuman
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
it fornmed the altar-piece, and in the foreground there was the admirable
Bearinzq of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum.




FRENCH ART IN riHE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   193
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 (CUne), the St. FranFois 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 1' 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
1 Such a law was the first act of the first assembly of affranchiseld Greece,
and all the friends of art have applauded it from end to end of civilized
Europe.




194                   LECTURE TENTI.
acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish
canvasses, in truth of an admirable color, but without nobleness
and moral expression.' 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,2
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 alre as admirable as those of a fragment of the Panathencea,
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.
I See the APPENDIX.
2 The Seven Sacraments of Poussin are now in the 13ridgewater Gallery,
See the APPENDIX.




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   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,' by going to see at the Louvre what remains to us of the great Frenchl 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 D)eath of Adonis,
the Rape of the Sabines,2 Eliezer and -Rebecca, rMoses saved fronz
the W'aters, the Infant Jesus on the Kneees of the Virgin and St.
Joseph standing by,3 especially the Manna in the Desert, the
Judg. ment of Solomon, the' Blind Men of Jericho, the W'oman
taken in Adultery, the Inspiratiozn 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 masteis 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 Del uge some signs of a trembling hand: the
See the APPENDIX.
a 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 froln her mother with 1an air at once passionate and restrained. In
order to appi eciate this picture, compare it with that of David in tile ensemzBe
and in the details.' In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage. lie governs tlhe
whole scene;.he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy.
13g




196                   LECTURE TENTH.
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
lrcadia.  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 Philippede 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 minuntains, 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




FRENCH  ART IN  TIE SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.   197
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 g'randeur 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 rivel, 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
Landscapqe represents a vast champagne filled with trees, and
lighted by the rising sun,-in it there is freshness and-already
-warmth, mnystery, 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 dancirng
by the side of their flocks.'
Is it not strange, that Champagne has been put in the Flemish
school l?2  He was born at Brussels, it is true, but he came very
early to Paris, and his true master was Poussin, who counselled
him.  lHe de?oted his talent to France, lived there, died- there,
and what is decisive, his manner is wholly French.  Will it be
The pictures of Clanude Lorrain, of lwhich we have just spoken, are in the
Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst the Mouscum of Madrill
alone possesses almost as many, while there are in England more than fifty,
and those the most adlmirable. See the APPENDIX.
2The last Niotice of tfhe Pictares exhibited inr the Gallery qof the Aletional Jfasum o/ the Louvre, 1852, althoungh its author, LI. Villot, is surely a mani oS
incontestable knowledge and taste, persists in placing Champagne in the
Flemish school..E- revanckze, a learned foreigner, M. Waagen, claims him
for the French school.  Kunstweirke and Kiiznstler in Paris, Berlin., i889,
p. 651.




198                     LECTURE TENTH.
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.'  Champagne
worked both for the convent of the Carmelitis 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 LastSuppe2r
(Cune) 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 mu&ch of the  iepast
with Simon thle 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 theml to St. Ambrose. Those
four figures fill the temple, lighted above all in the obscurity of
1 Well appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to his benefits.
One day when an envoy cf Richelieu said to him that he had only to ask
freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune, Champagne respondefI 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. B'libien, Ealtretiens,
1st edition, 4to., part v., p.. 171; and de Piles, Abvigi de le, Vie des P'eintres,
2d edition, p. 500.-"-As he had much love for justice and truth, provided
he satisfied what they both demanded, lie easily passed over all the rest." —
b'crtoZoge de Port-Royal, p. 336.




FRENCII ART IN THE SEVENTEENTII CENTURY.   199
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.l
I certainly admire Champagne asan historical painter, and even
as a landscape painter; but he is perhaps greatest as a portrait
piainter.  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 PortRoyal be lost, all Port-Royal mig.ht be found in Champagne.
Among those portraits we see the inflexible Saint-Cyran,2 as well
as his persecutor, the imperious Richelieu.3   We see, too, the
learned, the intrepid Antoine Arnaud, to whom the contemporaries of Bossuet decreed the name of Great; 4 and Mine. Angelique
Arnaud, with her naive and  strong figure.5  Among  them  is
mother Agnes and the humble daughter of Champagne himself,
sister St. Suzanne.6  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
s,'edico  anicnaCumn  et corporum, etc.  There is possessed the
J See the APPrrNDIX.
2 The original is in the Museum of Grenoble; but see the engraving of
MNorin; see also that of Daret, after the beautiful design of Demonstier.
In the Museum of the Louvre; see also the engraving of MLorin.
The original is now in the Chiateaa of Sabl6, belonging to the Marquis of
Roug6; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The beautiful enuraving of Edelinek was made after a different original, attributed to a inephew
ef Champagne.
The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of Rouge; thle ad.
uirable engraving of Van Sechupen may take its place.
" In the Museum.




200                     LECTURE TENTH.
Christian stoicism of Port-Royal in its imposing austerity.  Add1
to all these portraits that of Champagne;' for the painter mav
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-gqrdce,
so celebrated by Moliele, which is perhaps the greatest page of
painting in the worldll!    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. lRemark  also  the brilliant and  sweet
eoloring which should at least obtain flavor 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
tlhere remains to us a magnificent translation in the beautiful el.graving of Gerard Audcran.  What profound expression in the
Plague of _Cacuts,3 and in the St. Clacrles yiving the Comnz'unionz
In the Museum, and engraved by GOrard Edelinck.
2 Lc Gloire de  Val-de- Grce, in 4to, 1669, with a frontispiece and vignettes.
AMoliere 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-graece is composed of fonr 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, introducecl 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 whtom are distinguished Joan of Are, Charlemnagne, etc.
s Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the Plague of l)atrid
(la Peste de David). What lhas become of the, original?




FRENCH  ART IN  THE SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.   201
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 pridle Valentin, who died young and was so full of
promise; Stella, the worthy friend of Poussin, the uncle of Claucline, Antoinette, and Francoise Stella; Lahyre, who has so much
spirit and taste;' Sebastien Bourdon, so animated and elevated;2
the Lenains, who sometimes have the naivetW  of Lesueur and the
color of Champagne; BPourguignon, full of fire and enthusiasm;
Jouvenet, whose composition is so good;3 finally, besides so many
others, Lebrun, whom  it is llow 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.4
Since we have spoken somewhat extensively of painting, would
it not be unjust to pass in silence over engraving, its dauThter,
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 L6onardl Gautier make
1 See his Landscape at Suznset, and the Batlhers (les Bign,euses), an agreeable scene somewhat blemished by careless drawing.
2 It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In his lJoly Famnily
the figoure of the Virgin, without being celestial, admirably expresses meditation and reflection. We lost some timne ago the most important work Of
S. Bourdon, the Skpt (EWwres de HAisiricorde. See the APPE NDIX.
3 See especially his Ectreenie Unction,.
4 The picture that is called le Silence, which represents the sleep of the infint 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
d.istory of the highest order; ancd in the Alexanrder  visiting with Lphestioln
t/le Mothlze and the WiVfe o1' Darisius, one knows not which to admire most, t-l
noble ordering of the whole or tlle iinit 4xpression of the figures.




202                     LECTURE TENTH.
in somne 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, Hluret, 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 dmnhand
him  from nNanteuil, but fromn Huret, Miclhel Lasne, and Daret,'
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.2  Morin and Mellan were able to see it, and transmit- it
in its glorious youth.  Morin is the Champagne of engriaving:
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, B1rulle,
Jansenius, Saint-Cyran, Marillac, Bentivoglio, RIichelieu, Mazarin,
It seems that Lesueur sometimes fLrnished Daret with designs. It is
indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design of his chef. 
d'oeuvre, the portrait of Armanld de Bourbon, prince de Conti, represented in
hlis earliest youth, and in an abb6, 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.
2 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.Cond6, g'ro;ing old; Turenue, old; Fouquet and Matthien Mole, some years
before the fill 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.




FRENCH  ART IN  THE SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.   203
still young, and Retz, when he was only a coadjutor.'  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 singlm line, it seems that from  his hancds
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.2
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,8 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:4 —one at Florence, before
Michael Angelo, and especially with Michael Angelo; the other
1 If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest and most neglocted portion of the seventeenth century, that which Voltaire almost wholly
omitted, I would set him to collecting the works of Morin.
2 Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated painters of his
time, he is himhnalf 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 lhtrocdtction a lc Vie Devote, and
to the beautiful frontispieces of the writings of Richelieu, from the press of
the Louvre.
3 This was the opinion of Winkelmnann 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 descriled
in the /Mtsio r'eal Barbonico.
4 There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age: the innumerable figtures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues that are ciiscovered
every day sufficiently testify it.  The imacyers of that tinle certainly had
much spirit and imagination; but, at least in every thing that we have seen,
ber.aty is absent, and taste wanting.




204                     LECTURE TENTII.
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;1 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.  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 )r scattered them, were arrested before the painting's
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.
-Go and. see at the-Museum of Versailles the statue of Francis I., and say
whether any Italian, except the author of the Lauzrent de  edclicis, has - mace
any thing like it. - See also in the Museium of tile Louvre, the statue of Ad-,nAiral Cliabot.
2 Sarazin died in -1660, Leseur in 1655, Poussin in 1665, Descartes in
1650, Pascal in 166S, and the genius of Corneille did not extend beyond that
epoch.




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.   205
leum erected to tlhe 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, Catrity. There were four basreliefs in bronze, representing, the Triumphs of Renownz, Ti)m'e,
Death, and Eternity.  In the TriumZ2h of Death, the artist had
represented a certain  number of illustrious moderns, amlong
whom  he had placed himself by the side of Michael Angelo.'
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 distance2 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 Caldinal de Berulle.  On those meditative
and penetrating features, in those eyes raised to heaven, breathes
the soul of that g'reat servant of God, who died at the altar like
a warrior on the field of honor.  He prays God for his dear
Lenoir, tlftse des Alonumnents i'anegais, vol. v., p. 87-91, and the Musse
Royale des Mlonuments Firangais 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 Chamcnbre des Comntes, was placed in
tihe Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in bronze. It must not be confounded with the other monument that the Coades 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; sec' the
description in Lenoir, vol. v., p. 23-25,. and especially in the Anluacie de
P' Yonne P0our 1842, p. 175, etc.
a Rue d'Enfer, No. 67.




206                      LECTURE TENTH.
Carmelites.   That head is perfectly  natural, as Champagne
might have painted it, and has a severe grace that reminds one
of Lesueur and Poussin.'
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 Franl 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
Barbancon de Cany, and Gasparde de la Chatre.'  The mausoleum  of Henri de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse in 1632,
which is still seen at Moulins, in the church of the ancient con
vent of the daughters of Sailte-Marie, is an important workl of
the same artist, in which force is manifest, with a little heaviness.3
To  Michel Anguier are attributed  the statues of the duke and
duchess of Tresmes,- and that of their illustrious son, Potier, Marquis of Gevres.4  Behold in him the intrepid companion of Conde,
1 The Mnseum of the Louvre possesses only a very small nnmber of Sarazin's woiks, and those of very little importance:-a bust of Pierre Seguier,
strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and the small funeral monument
of I-Iennequin, Abbe of Bernay, member of Parliament, who died in 1651,
which is a chef-d'aeuvre of elegance.
2 These three sta aes were united in the Museum des Petils-Augyustins,
Lenoir, eiusiee-seoyal, etc., p. 94; we know not why they have been separated;
Jacques-Anguste de Thou has been placed in the Louvre, and his two wives
at Versailles.
3 Franqois Anguier hald made a marble tomb of Cardinal de Brnullc, which
was in the oratory o[ _due St. Ifonzourc.  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 Crlestins, and was seen in 1815 at the
museum des Petit —Azugustics, Lenoir, ibid., p. 103; it is now in the Louvre.
It is an obelisk, the four sides of which are covered with allegorical basreliefs. The pedestal, also ornamented with bas-reliefs, has four felnale figures;n marble, representing the cardinal virtues.
Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 937 and 100. See his portrait, painted by
Champagne, and engraved by Morin.




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.    207
arrested in his course at thiirty-two yeals of age before Thiorville,
after the battle of Rocroy, already  lieutenant-general, and when'
Conld  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, Ch/itillon,
La AMoussaye.  One of the best works of Michel Anguier is the
monument of Henri de Chabot, that other cornpaniion, that faithfuli
friend of Condc, 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 Malrguerite, 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'ace of Chabot has every beauty, as if to answer to its reputation,
6ut the beauty is that of one dying.  The body has alleady the
languor of death, longuyescit m-oriens, with I know  not what antique grace.  This morsel, if the drawing were more sevelre, would
rival the Dying Gladiator, of which it reminds one, which it perhaps even imitates.'
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.
1 Group in white marble which was at the C6lestins, a church near the
hitel of Rohan-Chabot in the Place Royale; re-collected in the Museum de,
Petits-A'tgaustins, Lenoir, ibid., p. 97; it is now' at Versailles. We - must not
pass over that beautiful production, the mausoleum of Jacques de Souvre.,
Granhdl Prior of France, the brother of the beautiful Marchioness de Sabl S
a mausoleum that came from Saint-Jean de Latran, passed through the Museum des Petits-Aucgustins, 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 museumn.




'208                    LECTURE TENTH.
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 scatterecd works of Girarclon, here for the mausoleum of the Gondis,'
there for that of the Castellans,' that of Louvois,3 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 sever;ty, 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,4 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 profo/lndly naturlal.  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'At first at Notre-Dame, the natural place for the tombs of the Gondis
then at the Augustins, now at Versailles.
2 In the Church St. Germain des Pres.
At the Capuehins, then at the Angustins, then at Versailles.
4See, on these nionuments, 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 1658.




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   209
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
andcl 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 Noftre.  Le Noftre 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 arrangeument 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 froml 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,' the
1 Quatremere de Quincy, Iistoire de lce Vie et des Otevrclges de p1lus Ciibrlses
Architectes, vol. ii., p. 145: —' There could scarcely be toundc in any country
an e2vsemble so grand, which offers with so mulch unity and regularity an
aspect at once more varied andc picturesque, especially in the facade of the




210                     LECTURE  TENTH.
portal of Saint-Gervais, and the great hall of the Palais de Jus
tice, by the same architect; the Palais Cardinal and the Sorbonne
of Lemercier;' the cupola of Val-de-Grace by Lemuet;2 the triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis by Francois Blondel; Versailles, and especially the Invalides, of AMansart.3   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 esplanacle, 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
entrance."  Unfortunately this unity has disappeared, thanks to the constructions that have since been added to the primitive work.' 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.
2 Quatremere de Quincy, TBid., p. 257: —~ The cupola of this edifice is one
of the finest in Europe."
s 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 eigllteenth.




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.   211
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,I 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.2  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
1 See the engraving of Pirelle. Sauval, vol. ii., p. 66 and p. 131, says that
the ]htet of Conde was mncygnlficently built, that it was the most nmctaZfcent qf
-le time.
2 Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see the APPENDIX):
-" Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de Cond6, Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an oratory painted
by Lesueur in the h6tel of Cond6. The altar-piece represents a Niativity,
that of the ceiling a Celestial Glory. The wainscot is enriched with severld
figures and with a quantity of ornaments worked with great rare.'
14




212-                    LECTURE TENTIH.
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.l  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 themul
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
The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is itself
Li 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&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-lde-Grace of Lemercier with the dome
of Lemuet, and judge what would be the effect of such an edifice I




FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUIRY..213
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
thro-wn 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,




214                     LECTURE TENTH.
stops there and devotes itself to imitation,-its principal object
is to reproduce reality, movement, life, which are for it the supreme beauty.   The Franice 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.'
I In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouf:froy, who already under our auspices, had presented to thefacUltd 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 hle may not be wanting to
- 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.-Disinteresteclness 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 Esthetics.  The idea of the good is the whole of ethics.
It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics to conmine 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 degree 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




216                 LEIC'URE ELEVENTH.
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 m:nost difficult trials.
It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the mnetaphysics and esthetics 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




PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMM3ION SENSE.              217
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 regalrd, 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 s waddling-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 himn 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.1  The philosophy of the eighi See 2d Series, vol. ii., leet. 11 and 12; 4th Series, vol. ii., last pagesi 
Jacqueline Pascal, and the Fragnents of the C(artesia~n Ph7ilosophley, p. 469.




218                 LECTURE ELEVENTH.
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 Contrat Social and Lacedemone.  Condillac' studies
the human mind in a statue whose senses enter into exercise under the magic wand of a systelmatic 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 hon
1Ist Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3, Condillac.




PRIMARIY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.             219
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-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




220                 LECTURE ELEVENTH.
them man everywhere, and more and more, claiming his liberty,
This word liberty is as old as man himself.  What then! Me.i
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




PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.             221
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 ttwo 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.'
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 amn 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
See the Theory of Sentiment, part i., lecture 5.




'222                LECTUIRIE ZELEVENTTH.
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 goc~. This is
the reason why admiration is already by itself sc 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 finle




PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.            223
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




LECTURE ELEVENTH.
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 ill
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: —lst, 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 hinl 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 princip]es 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



PRIMRARY NOTIONS OF COMM:ON SENSE.            225
stitutions resides in the respect that these principles bear with
them and extend to every thing that participates in tlem.  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 overtlhrown, 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.  Wiithout 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 chimera1
I again appeal to languages, to individual consciousness, to the




226                 LECTURE ELEVENTH.
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
th.tt 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 dcsire, between duty and interest, between




PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.              227
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 ale the sincere and impartial, but somewhat confused, somewhat gross notions of common sense.
Hlere 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 refine.
15




228                  LECTURE ELEVENTH.
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 cornbated
the philosophy of sensation in the metaphysics which it substituted for Cartesianism, and in the deplorable zesthetics, 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 bh
the subject of the next lecture.




LECTURE XII.
TIHE  ETHICS  OF  INTEREST.'
Exposition of the doctrine of ilnterest.-What there is of truth in this doc,
trine.-Its defects.  lst) 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.
TiE 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, —plysical 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.2
l 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.
2 The word bonhsmeu, 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 indi



230                   LECTURE TWELFTH.
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 Lo 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
cates 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.




IHE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                 231
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 anticipatiilg it, as far as in him  lies, by continual penitence and in
mnute 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
af action, —without winds the vessel no longer proceeds, and soon




23.2                 LECTURE TWEFTIH.
sinks in the deep.  Suppose a being that lacks love of self, thl
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 cliharity,-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
isentiments as powerfil, 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




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                  233
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.'  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.
On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3cl Series, Fraginents PhJilosopl7iques, vol. iv., our Excanination of the Lectures of' Xl. Ld'
~nomegtuie e.




234                   LECTURE TWELFTH.
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 deveiopments.
When an agreeable sensation, after having chlarmed 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 cullllination, 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 ii
which the soul possesses and governs itself.




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                 235
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 2  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 aldently the object that alone
call 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 fieer
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 thoug'hts 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




236                 LECTURE TWELFTTH.
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 voluntlary 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 knfow 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 miangledl 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.'
On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see the EZani->
aat.in, already cited, of the Lelures of f. Laromegueibe.




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                 237
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 othe', 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 cnce 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.  WhTEt 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.




238                  LECTURE TWELFTH.
2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good ie
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 thle 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 propose< 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 dan ger in remaining faithful to him and advantage in separating myself firom  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 ad.
vantages'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's 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




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                  239
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 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 i
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
larg'e 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.' But this principle is precisely the opposite of the
1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: " In the doctrine of interest, every man seeks
$le useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by dint of pruden.oe




:40                  LECTURE TWELFTH.
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
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 l e 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."




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                 241
of the old Ioman.  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 PetitesMaisons, 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 ne, er 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 so6phisms: 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 con,




242                 LECTURE TWVELER.
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.
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 Ius. 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 tomorrow.  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 accommoda
tion, 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




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                243
obey, for we are fiee;' 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 whillwind, of the thunderbolt,
that of one of the forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it,
16




241                  LECTURE TWELTrH.
it is only a fearful and terrible thing, it is not a person, —it may
inspire, in the highest degree, fear and bope,-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 hace 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.'
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 manr 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,~ 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
I See the development of the idea of right, lectures 14 and 15.
S ee lecture 14, Theory of liberty.




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                2'15
otaher, 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 theit
nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune.'God has made us with powers unequal in regard to all thesc
things.  Here equality is against nature and eternal order; foi
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 firee 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




246                  LECTURE TWELFTH.,
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 beauti.
ful, the most powerful, etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the
advantages I have rece.7ed.  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




TI'E ETHICS OF INTEREST.                247
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,. i
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 lie 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 




248                  LECTURE TWELFTH.
ts it seems, to put him again in the right way.  Instead of thla.t
he is punished.  And for what, I pray you?  For being dleceived.
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
a nimal. 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 satisfact
tion, 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 chastise.
ments 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 recoinpense of virtue by happiness, and of reparation for a fault by proportionate suffering.l
We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being
contradicted either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine o!
1 See the preceding lecture, and lecct:les 14 and 15.




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                249
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
prcsuaded 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 whatevei' exists.'  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.  H-Iow 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 suc'h 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 deve vlp 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
hiuman 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, inJ 1st part, lecture 1.




250                    LECTURE TWELFTI.
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.1
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,-1no 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 iHelvetius will, perhaps, claim  the glory of
hlaving 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.2
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
See lecture 16.
2 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 Ho)bes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series.




THE ETHICS OF INTEREST.                   251
then be much troubled to satisfy our desires.  But we press
against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse, and
unequal powers.  When rlight 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 themlselves, 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 tlhings.  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 end.
less troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a
necessary circle.




252                   LECTURE TWELFTrH.
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.'
Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth centuty, 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 immodeiate 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 fiee 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
1 These words sufficiently larlk the generous epoch in which we pronounlce
them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a noble youth,
~when M. de Chateaubriancl covered the Restoration with his own glory,
when M. Royer-Collarcl presided over public instruction, M. Pasquier, M.
Lain6, M. de Serre over justice and tile interior, Mlarshal 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 ot
the councils of the crown; when finally, Louis XVIII. separated himself,
like Henrv IV., from his oldest servants in order to be the king of the whole
aation.: 




THE ETHICS O(F INoTEREST.                 D5o3
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 Poussli.  The ethics of pleasllre 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.2
No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean as enervated as epicureanism.  HIuman 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
(Eavres 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 distern them as just and Lnjust. Skepticism has no light that does not paOl
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."




254:                LECTURE TWELFTH.
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 faithfullv common sense and entire human consciousness.




LECTUIRE XIII.
OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.
Tihe 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,
call 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 culpa



2 5 6                LECTURE THIRTEENTH.
ble joys and the successes that are not legitimate.  It wounds,
rends, bites, thus to speak, and thereby receives its name.1  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 calculationl 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 nay fellow-men inspires me with sadness,
and a glad face disposes me to joy:
Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflent
Humanli vnltus.
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
tlhat 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,' JA'drve —to bite. is the main root of emonrdscl —remorse.




OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.              257:
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 tc
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 suiffer for the fault that
lie 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 u, 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.




258               LECTURE THIRTEENTH.
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 gained 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.




OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.              259
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
foi 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 iglzara 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 enjoy17




260                LECTURE THIRTEENTIf.
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 soight 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
owln lang'uage, 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




OTHERI DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.              261
ected 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 cilrcle to derive
the knowledge of the good from that which vould not exist
without this knowledge.'
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 aclknowledclged 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 emu-.ation, -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
See 1st part, lecture 5, On flysticism, and 2cl part, lecture 6, 0n, the Sen.tinent of the Beautiftl. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv. Lletailed refuitation o!
the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith.




262                LECTURE THIRTEENTH.
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 formn
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 t'escribed
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 inl 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 legislations equal
for all-?




OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.               263
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 consequeiitly feel for it the most lively compassion.  With mere
imagination one also represents to himself better and feels more
what passes'n 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 Airabeau, and we excuse them  on
account of the corruption of their centutry.  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,
mnore 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 sup.
port. But, delivered up to'tself, 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 obli.
gation 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




261~                  LECTURE THIRTEENTiH.
from sentiment to passion, from  generosity to selfishness, ascend
iung 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 rulle that they propose is too mobile to be universally
obligatoryTl
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 wrollng 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 cirWe do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. I-e has marked the
defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage, from
which we borrow some traits.  teav'es 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 sentimesnt. 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 samne time that we perceive these qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a judgment), we
feel for the person a love milngled with respect, and solnetimes an admiration
that is full of tenderness. A bad action,, a loose and perfidious character,
excite a contrary perception andc sentiment. The internal approbation of
conscience and remorse are sentiments attachled 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 maintabs1 this, we annihilate moral distinctions....  Let ethics be wholly in
sentiment, and nothing is in itself good, nothincg 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
sasne action is at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection
of the spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenolmena; obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty
into utility. S uch are the ethics of Epicurns: Di easlio'a piis!"




OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.                  265
cumstances, it may demand, not only a passing sacrifice, but an
irreparable sacrifice, that of life.  Now, the wisest calculations ol
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 con mit 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 seeling general interest
before all, we escape, it is true, that vice of soul which is called
selfishness, but w.Ve 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
thouglht 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.'
1In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who, for sonme timne
had numerous partisans in Elnga c:, and even il France.




266                LECTURE THIRTEENTH.
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.
WTe 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;' but it becomes impossible, if it is necessary
to seek, before acting, what is the interest not only of myself, but
See lecture 12.




OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.                    267
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 I 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?
flow much place you leave for sophism  in that complaisant and
enigmatical law of general interest!'  It will not be very difficult
1 st 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 -l.fortunate 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 uncertaihny 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 refilled is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have received a deposit fiom 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,-wh-at 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 retaiii
the sum which is necessary to you? Intrepid reasoner, placed in the altelrnative 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




268                   LECTURE THIRTEENTH.
always to find some remote reason of general interest, which will
excuse us from  being  faithful in the present moment to  our
fiiends, 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,
Detter 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 towardls ourselves.  But this is retrenching precisely those
of our duties that most surely guarantee the exercise of all the
rest.'  The most constant relations that I sustain are with that
do. A vanquishing enemy or a furious people threaten destruction to a
whole city, if there be not delivered up to them the heacl of such a mall,
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, lie 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."
1 See lecture 15, Prsivate cnd Public Ethics.




OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.                    269
being which is myself.  I am my own most habitual society.  1
bear in myself, as Plato' 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 cf the moral law, and
the sovereign motive of hu.m-anity 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,' as we have
done for the true and the beautiful,' it is certain that, firom 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 understand.
ing 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 wisdoam, 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.4
Plato, Repuzblic, vol. ix. and x. of our translation.
2 Lecture 16.                         3 Lectures 4 ancl 7,
4- This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it early
against the theory of Occain, which was quite similar to that which we comrnbit. See our Sketch of ac General listory of Philosop7ly, 2d Series, vol. ii.,




270                  LECTURE THIRTEENTH.
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 fundanmental 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 malke it evil to respect his word, to
love ti'uth, 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
lect. 9, On Scholasticism. Here are two decisive passages from St. Thomas,
1st book of the Searmation aycainst the Gentiles, chap. lxxxvii: "Per prvadicta autem excluditur error dicenti-lum omnia procedere a Deo secundumn
simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia
Deus vult. Quod etiam divins Scripturie contrariatur, qun Deurn perhibet
seclclnum ordinem sapientia sum 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 voluntatr
dependere aliqua ratione."




OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.              2TI
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 princi2pii.
Another petitio plrincipoii 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 




272                LECTURE THIRTEENTIH.
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.
B3ut 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 in.
fluences our fears and hopes,-aye, health, the passing cloud, s
ray of the sun, a cup of coffee, a thousand causes of this kiind.  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,t who yield to or resist those fears and hopes according to
the disposition 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 cemerit; recompense is not then recompense, nor
See the famous calculnus applied to the immortality of the soul, Des Pel.
sees de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235, and p. 289-296.




OTHERI DEFECTIVE PREINCIPLES.             273
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.'
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.
Lecture 16.




LECTU R E XIV.
TRUE  PRINCIPLES  OF  ETHICS.
Description of the different facts that compose the moral phenomena.Analysis of each of these facts:-lst, 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. —3c, 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 inter.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.               275
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.
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.' 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
)nly 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. anlipathy, an aversion, a horror, that are not related to what' On indignation, see lecture 11.




276               LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
injures us, but to acts whose remotest influence cannot react
us, that we detest for the sole reason that we judge them to
be bad i!
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.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.                277
Indignation equally supposes in him who is the object of it another 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.  Caln 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 mnost 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



278                LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
responds 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 o-lr 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 mlore
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 dutv,-a




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.               275
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 mly 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.1  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 paRsions, nor on account of the injury done or threatened to my itlterest, 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
On remorse, see lecture 11.




280                LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
good and evil; they reappear in remorse.  In vain interest coun
selled me to appropriate the deposit that had been confided te
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 nme in vain, I appeal
fromn it to a better justice, and this justice is already declared in
me by sentiments that press upon each other in my soul.  I




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.                 281
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,l binds pain to
transgression, trouble to passion, misery to faithlessness, vice, an(d
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,2 that of the
good is a simple, primitive, indecomposable judgment.
See the Gorgias, with the Arg.ument, vol. iii. of our translation.
2 Lectures 1 and 6.




282                LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
Like them, again, it is hot arbitrary. We canhot 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.1
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
1 Lectures 2, 3, and 6.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.               283
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; 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. WVe 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 oi
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.
1st part, lecture 2.




284                 LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by the singul
lar 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  r less necessary,' 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 mle 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 Hlelvetius, 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
Lecture 2.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS,               285
-rime?  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
u~ 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.'
Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinction between good and evil; and is itself the foundation of liberty.  If
1st part, lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture 8.




28 6               LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
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 Dnature 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 nc need of being confirmed
by the latter; as if, after all, my liberty ought not to be a fact
for me.' 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 onl 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
1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.                  2S7
that I will this or that, I am  equally conscious 3f 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 alwayssubsisting attribute of will.'
The will, we have seen,2 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 pa, sion, 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'See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st Series, vol.
iii., lecture 1, ocke, p. 71; lecture 3, Condillac, p. 116, 149, etc.; vol. iv.,
lecture 23, Reid, p. 541-5Z4; 2cl Series, vol. iii., Examisnation of the Systenm
of Locke, lecture 25..' Lecture 12.




288                LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
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.'
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
I See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true principle o!
political economy, p. 278-802.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.               289
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
iights, 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 can.not 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 2 Because they have been fiee
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 lib.erty, 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




290               LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
the former, to wit, that if this man has acted well he lhas melited
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, arorcling 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.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.               291
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 repent-.ance, 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 canll 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 lawfiul 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 in.dependent 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 recognitioni 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 de19




292                LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
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, —in this relation, andl not in the pain alone, is the truth as well as the shame
of chastisement.'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.'
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 fiom 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 lhe time has not come to sound these mysterious'Le crime fait Ia honte et non pas I'6chafaud.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.               293
prospects.'  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 accol.paniment,
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.'See lecture 16, Cod, the Princi2le of the Idea of the G(ood.




9294              LECTURE FOURTEENTIH.
The spectacle of a good action. done by another also has somer
thing 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. WTe 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 himn 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. i 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 constitutionm
to aid us in doing good. In their diversity and mobility, they




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.               295
Cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation which must be
equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure and benefi
cent 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 -eimbrace, there can Db only different systems like the different parts of this phenomenon, consequently imperfect systemns, systems always at war with each
other.
WVe 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
rests 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 afmnities  of
ethics, metaphysics, and Easthetics.
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




296                LECTURE FOURTEENTH.I
from the ethics of interest and the ethics of sentiment.  We ad.
mit 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 demerii, 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 ot
reason that is sometimes uncertain, or to succor the will wavering
in the presence of an obscure or painful duty.  In order to resist
Jde violence of culpable passions, the aid of generous passions is




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.                 29'
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 firom 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.'
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,
See lecture 16.




298                LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
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 ail
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, aind found ethics on religion,
instead of giving religion to ethics as their necessary perfection l
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 bad 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.'
The time of exclusive theories has gone by; to renew &hern is
to perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, being founded
upon a real fact, rightly refuses the sacrifice of this fact; and it;On Jacobi, see Tennemann's Munuac of the History of Philosophy, vcl.
iii., p). 818, etc.




TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.                 299
meets in hostile theories anl equal right and an equal resistance.
Hence the perpetual return of the same systems, always at wat
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 a
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
clhemistry 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 l 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
fiee in fulfilling it, that loves the good, and judges that the fulfilmlent 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 prinaci



300                 LECTURE FOURTEENTH.
pie   Sucll 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.'' On this important question of method, see lecture 12.




LECTUIRE 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.-Indivicldual ethics.  It is not towards the individual, but
towards the moral person that one is obligated. Principle of all individlal
duties,-to respect and develop the moral person.-Social ethics, —duties
of justice and duties of chaity. —Civil society. Government. Law  The
right to punish.
W~E 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




302                  LECTUtRE FIFTEENrTH.
reason iimposes 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
vour 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
whl-ch ale called the duties of man towards himself.
At first sight, it is strange that man should have duties towards
himself.  Man, being firee, 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
tlat he is endowed with liberty, as well as intelligence, I conclude




PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.                303
that he call 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, butnot 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 fieely renounce them?  Are the




304                 LECTURE FIFTEENTH.
two contracting parties here mne and myself?  By no means; one
of the contracting parties is not ne, 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 firom 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 premieditated, 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



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.                 305
elration 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.l
Veracity is also a great virtue.  Falsehood, by breaking the
naturlal 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
See the Republic, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation.




306                LECTURE FIFTEENTH.
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




PRIVATE  AND  PUBLIC  ETHICS.                      307
with other men.;  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
On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that errolr, 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 SaintLambert, 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 genleral and essential character. Tlberein
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, whrllic, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal manl
often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to
well-ordered human life. Through f'ear of asceticism, the philosophy of the
eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only considered
the virtues usefnl to society. That was retrenching many virtues, and the
best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self  HIow make a virtue of
it, when virtue is defined ca disposition to conztbibute to th7e liacpiness 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 stillt 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 dimlinished. 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 aliplies himself to govern himself, and pursue,
without cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circumstances,
you may rely upon that man; he Aill know how, in case of need, to be usefai
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 usefful
virtues, but.the reciprocal is not always true. One may be beneficent without being virtuous; one is not virtuous without being beneficent.'
20




308                LECTURE FIFTEENTI.
of certain external circumstances to affranchise an intelligent and
free being from all obligation towards his liberty and his inteiligence. Ill 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 net 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 mlore 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




PRIVATE A-BD PUBLIC ETHICS.                309,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
perhalps its most sacred possessionI ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you,
inasmuch as it is the necessary instrument of your person.
1have 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.1
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
2 On the true foundation of property see the preceding lecture.




310                    LECTURE FIFTEENTH,
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 subsists7
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.l
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. either restrained their liberty, nor smothcred 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 l  One who is unfortunate is suffering be
fore 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
1Voluntary 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 ounr
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
nand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate; eternal justice
would protest against a contract, which, were it supported by desires, recipfocal desires most authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws,
is none the less void of all right, because, as 3Bossuet very truly said, there
is no right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human lawni
against the law of laws, against natural law.'




PRIVATE AND PUBICTO ETHICS.                311
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 gove 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 band 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



312                   LEOCTUTRE  FIFTEENTH.
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.
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.'
1 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, Montesquiea
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 withl 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
Hlobbee,, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for Rousseau, the state is the eol.
lection 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,
ar rather lends them. Force, in l'h/ Citizen, is the foundation of society, of




PRIVATE AN.D P UBLIC ETHICS.                   313
The philosophy of the last century delighted in such questions too
much.  How can we demand light fiom the regions of da-rkness,
and the explanation of reiality 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 g'reatest number?  He delivers
order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone institute. In the
Chontrat 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, anid particularly from conventions and contracts, there are
rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for p-rinciples 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."




.314                  LECTURE FIFTEENTH.
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.'  Without reflection, without convention, he claims
1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "1 What!" somewhere says Montesquien,
" man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for
society 1 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 mloral
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 eachel  Who would be
blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of human nature fobr society a
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




PRIVATE AND  PUBLIC ETHICS.                    315
the hand, the experience, the love of those -whom he sees mlade
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,' 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
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.'
1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283:;" We do not hold from a compact our quality
as man, andl 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 ol
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




316                   LECTURE FIFTEENTIL
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 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.'
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."
1 Lecture 12.




PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.                  317
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 another. 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 ownl 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




318                 LECTURE IFIFTEENTiT.
of all against all.  Society makes the moral power of government,
as government makes the security of society.  Pascal is wrongl
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, indepen&cnt, deriving
from  itself its force and legitimacy, and consequently made to
rule.  No error is deeper and more dangerous.  Thereby it is
thouglht 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'See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.




PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.                 319
another, it escapes all repression.  So government cannot be6
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?
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.'  Government
owes to the citizens, in a certain measure, to guard their wellbeing, 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 havebeen 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' See our pamphlet entitled Justice and Chca,'ity, composed in 1848, in the
midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of lib.
erty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of true charity, private and civil.




'320                   LECTURE FIFTEENTH.
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 frorm  the idea of demerit.'  In'See on the theory of penalty, the Gorgicas, vol. iii. of the translation of
Plato, and our argument, p. 867: " 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 woulcd be quite as preventive. Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except
in its utility for himn who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,-andc that,
too, is one of the possible efiects 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 unljust act, man thinks, and cannot but think
that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishmlent. 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 in-flicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought. Right
here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident, and most




PRIVATE AND  PUBLIC  ETHICS..                 321
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
propel' 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 reslured 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-whliat
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, inr demlonstrating 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 en it
rests the sublime theory of expiation.




322                  LECTURE FIFTEENTH.
pairing his crime.  The culpable man is still a mall; 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, cas
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




PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.                323
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 dyrasty 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 parliamentsan 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
21




324                    LECTURE FIFTEENTH.
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.'
As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectmes on IIobbes, 1st Series,
vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and politicdJ 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 tile 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
-elieve that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789,
and in particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be obta_'ned only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,-6th Series, POLITICAL
DISouRsEs,  with, ca introductia  on the pr'inciples of thle Fren-lh Revolution
wznd representative goverlnSent.




LECTURE XVI.
GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THIE GOOD.
Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation of m ral
truth, of the good, and of the moral person. —Liberty of God.-The divine
justice and charity.-Gocl 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 older 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 ac absolute truth,' and has forced us to seek its supreme
reason in a real and substantial being, forces us hllere 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 soniewhere 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 alitolute 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?
1 Lectures 4 and 7.




326                LECTURE SIXTEENTH.
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 con
sidered in its fundamental attributes.  Our mind distinguishes
them, because it can comprehend them  nilly 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.
AMan 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 a.. that is essential in the effect.  What particularly
belongs to the effect, is inferiority, is a lack, is imperfection: fiomn
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




GOD TIE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA  OF THE GOOD.  327
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,' 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 simple argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes," 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,&
J Sucn is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without excepting the
oest —that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most popular of all, the Piofessioe de Fhi. u Vicaire Savoyard. See our small work entitled Philosophie
Populaire, 3d edition, p. 82.
2 On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st, lecture 4; see also 1st
Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture 6.
s Iiiagnments de Philosophie Cartsienne, 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 inaccesible heights of an eternity and existence that are absolute,
void of thought, of liberty, of love, similar to nonentity itself, and a thou-,and times inferior, in his infinity and eternity, to an hour of our finite and




328                  LECTURE SIXT:EENTH.
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.'
Before all, if man is free,'can it be that God is not free? Not
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 fiee, God would be beneath man. Wouldit 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.  HIe 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.'
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."
1This 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.
2 ad Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition: "Without vail
subtilty,. there is a real distinction between free will and spontaneous liber




GOD  THE PRINCIPLE  OF THE  IDEA  OF THE  GOOD.  329
In the sam.  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,
ty. Arbitrary freedom  is volition with the appearance of deliberation be.tween 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 dl'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 fromn 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 inappro —
priate]y 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 maybe 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
ourr 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, lie has acted
freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of
having been able to choose the other part. IIis nature, all-powerfurl, 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 llechanical operation of necessity.  Such is the principle and the true charaoter cf the divine action."




330                LECTURE SIXTEENTH.
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."' 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 posBess.  It is egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart,
Timaeus, p. 119, vol. xii. of our translation.




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 331
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.




332                 LECTURE SIXTEENTH.
The great physician HufelandI 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 hap'piness 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.
1 De I'Art de rolonger sa Vie, etc.




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 333
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 vivacitymay 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



334                  LECTURE SIXTEENTH.
made?  No.  That cannot be, and is not.  That cannot be, fot
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:eject
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 he
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.' The body is composed of
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 knLow any phenomenon of consciousness, the phenomena of sensa
tion, 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, figurel, colored, odorous, savory, etc. On the other hand, it




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA  OF THE GOOD.  33 5
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,
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 samne 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 t:he whole idea of spirit, and the whole
idea of matter i See, therefore, all t at must be done in order to bring back




336                     LECTURE SIXTEENTH.
even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple?   Is
the me nmore 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,
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 1,
Locke. " Locke pretends that we cannot be certain by the contem2leation of
our ozvn 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 nme 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 mne, 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-clay
than you were yesterday, and you are not less yourself to-day than you were
yesterday. This identity and this indivisible unity of the mne 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 adc ifinitum; 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, not
what is extended simple."




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE COOD.  337'
hnerefore, the very essence of the person.  Belief in the spirituality of the soul is involved in the belief of this identity of the'e, 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.'  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.2  This need of the infinite is the mainrpring of scientific curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love
also stops and rests only there.  On the route it niay 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-' See 1st part, lecture 1.     2 See lecture 5, Jfysticism.




338                 LECTURE SIXTEENTIH.
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,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 tomorrow 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 illtreated?  But a being that should remain incomplete and unfinished, that should not attain the end which all his instincts
proclaim  fot him, would be a monster in the eternal order,-a
problem mu.,f 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 be



GOD TI-IE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE C0OOD.  339
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 flight 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 lendino 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 wi h God all is just, all is good.'
4 ~th 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 facther in heaven. W;Vhat 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."
22




.340                LECTURE SIXTEENTEH.
We now know what God truly is. WVe have already seen twc
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




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 341
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.l  In his great humility, Pascal forgets two
tlings,-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 ac-.
cording 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
See our discussion on the Pensies de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series,




342                 LECTURE SIXTEENTH.
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 rerhain 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 Platowho was so evidently embarrassed between his beautiful doctrines




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 343
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;' 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 beerL his tender and grateful sympathy for such a religion! If he had come in our own times, in that age given up;o 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'See the end of the first book of the Republic, vol. ix. of our translation.




344                  LECTURE SIXTEENTH.
not, the sentiments at least of a Montesquieu,' of a Turgot,' of s
Franklin,a and very far from putting the Christian religion and f,
good philosophy at war with each other, he would have beer
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 HIippone, do not
seek in him the subtile and profound metaphysician who cominbated  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 D e la Connaissance de Dieu et
Esprit des Lois, pcassim.
2 Torks of TurgotC, vol. ii., Discours en Sorbonne sur les Avcantaqes gue l'ta
blissement du Uhristianism ca proczurs as Genre Hemnain, etc.
a In the Corresxpondence, 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 thq
works of Franklin immediately at hand.




GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD.  345
Soi-menme, is no longer, and at the same time he is always, the
author of the Sermons, of the Elevations, and the incomparable
Catechisme de MiZeaux.  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.'
1 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,
pcassvim,; 5th Series, vol. ii., Discour's a Ic Cgamgbre des Paris pour le Dcfence
de 1' Universitg et de la P]hilosophie. 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 Hermnopolis. 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.
RE S U        OF   D O C T R I N E.
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 theodica, ancl 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;1 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 nine-' Still living in 1818, died in 1828.




RESUME OF DOCTRINE.                      347
teenth century;' the ashes of his most illustrious disciple, Fichte,"
are scarcely cold. The other renowned philosophers of Germany
still live,3 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 AngloFrench 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 scay to this irreproachable' In 1804.                         2 Died, 1814.
8 This was said in ti18. Since then, Jacobi, Hegel, and Schleiermacher,
with so many others, have disappeared. Schelling alone survives the ruins
of the German philosophy.




848                LECTURE SVENTEENTIT.
genius, —Sapcere azede. 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 Kcenigsberg.
In general, in the history of philosophy, we are in favor of systems that are themselves in favor of reason.  Accordingly, in antiqulity, 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




RESUME OF DOCTRINE.                   349
systems are not absurd.  Without giving the lie to the most cer.
tain 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 Huztman 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
en our organs, and a movement of the vital functions.
Man is not a pure spirit; hix has a body which is for the spirit
bometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, always an inseparable




50                 LECT URE SEVENTEENTH.
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,' 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.2 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 msthetics, while severely distinguishing between the beautiful and the agreeable, we have
shown that the agreeable is the constant accompaniment of the
beautiful,3 and that if art has for its supreme law the expression
of the ideal, it must express it under an animated and living form
1FRAGMENTS DE PHTLOSOPHIE CARTESIENNE, p. 429: Des Ravppor's (tl Cart&#ioisme et du Spinozisme.
9 Part 1st, lectures 1 and 2.        s Part 2d.




RESUME OF DOCTRINE.                  35]
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
lhappiness, 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.'
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
tile last, some trace of human nature. One truly believes him-' Part 8d.




352                 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH.
self to be in the realm of shades, per inania regna..   The Essay
on the Humanc  Uizderstanding 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.2
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. frimn 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.3  There are two parts in Kant,-the
analytical part, and the dialectical part, as he calls-them.4 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
On Condillac, 1st Series, vol. i., pcassim, and particularly vol. iii., lectures
2 and 3.
2 We have never spoken of Locke except with sincere respect, even while
1com1bating him. See 1st Series, vol. i., course of 1817, Discours d' OQveltua7re,
vol. ii. lecture 1. and especially 2cl Series, vol. iii., passim.'See 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on Reid.
4 _Ibid., vol. v.




RESUME OF DOCTRINE.                    353
philosophic genius,-they are filled with treasures of observation
and analysis.'
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 everywhbre
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. Phe-.
nomenea 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 sensiFor 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 oun
design; bnt a young and skilful professor of philosophy, a graduate of the
Normal School, has been willing to supply our place, andi 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 zea., and pursues it with courage and talent.




354                LECTURE SEVENTEENTH.
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,the truth which they gave uas 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 esthetics 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




RESUME OF DOCTRINE.                   355
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,' 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 circurnstances of life, when passion and sophism obscure to our eyes
Part 1st, Lecture 3.
23




3 5 6               LECTURE SEVENTEENTH.
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 thlat 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 lunpractised analysis, reason in its natural
and spontaneous exercise is confounded with sentiment by a
multitude of resemblances.'  Sentiment, is intimately attached to
reason; it is its sensible form.  At the foundation of sentiment
is reason, \which communicates to it its authlolity, 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 ain 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 iasufficient; you will see that what reveals the infinite and perfect
being is precisely reason itself;2 and that, in turn, it is this rev1 Lecture 51, jlysticism.'This pretended proof of sentiment is in fact, the ('artesian proof itself..See lectures 4 and 16.




RESuIME OF DOCTRINE.                     357
e!ation of the infinite by reason, which, passing into sentiment,
produces the emotion and the inspiration that we have mentioned.
Mlay 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 fiom that of reason, but re.
flects it more vividly in the depths of the soul, that we confide
ourselves, in order to preserve all great truths in the soiul of the
ignorant, and even to save them in the mind of the philosopher
fiom 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 manll of taste.  In order to communicate life to
the canvas, to the marble, to speech, it rnmust 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 m3.akes 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.  I-ow 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 reasoninag 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




358                LECTURE SEVENTEENTH.
beauty of sentiment.  We are with Hutcheson against Hobbe!
with Rousseau against Helvetius, with the author of Woldemar'
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, lfter 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
ditrect; it goes straight to its object, without passing through
analysis, abstraction, and deduction, excellent operations without
doubt, but they suppose a primary opelation, the pure and simple
apperception of the truth.2  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
sen:iment which emanates from  it, and science, art, and ethics
lack firm and solid bases.
Psychology, sesthetics, 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 fartlher, without ascending to the
principles of these principles, to the reason of reason, to thle source
1 M. Jacobi. See the.fManual of tlze.Histoy of Philosophy, by Tennemanna
vol. ii., p. 318.
2 On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st prt, lect. 2 and 3.




RESUMtIE OF DOCTRINE.                 359
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, theni, tri., 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
subla.st 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 nothino 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,' absolute truth is in God,-it is God hinlself under one of his phases.  Since Plato, the greatest minds,
Saint Augustine, Descartes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, agree in putting ill'Lectures 4 and 5.




11360                LECTURE SEVENTEENT'l'
God, as in their source, the principles of knowledge as well a.i
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 trulth
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 fiom 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 lhe 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 insignificanit portion, every thing, in spite of
mnore 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 celtainty, the evidence of the moral order that we bear in ourselves.  This olrder
supposes the harmony of virtue land goodness; it therefore requires it.  Without doubt this harmony al'leady appears in the
visible world, in the natural consequences of good and ba d actions,
in society which punishes and rewards, in public esteem and con.




SU2ME OF DOCTRINE.                       361
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.  Trhere must, then, be a being who takes it
upon himself to fulfil, in a time that he has reserved to himself,
and in a maLnner that will be propel, 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 asthetics,
especially on that of ethics, we elevate ourselves to the same principle, the common centre, the last foundation, of all trutl, all
beauty, all goodness.  T'l'he 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.
VWe 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 perfeet and the most holy.  As long as philosophy has not reached
natural religion, —and by this we mean, not the religion at which:nan 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 mnan a faLther, 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




362               LECTURE SEVENTEENTH.
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 ot
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 imarked 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.




RESUME OF DOCTRINE.                   363
thus ending at a God wholly abstract, good perhaps for the
schools, but not sufficient for the human race.  We have giver
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 suffeirings, 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 ab —
straction.  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.' 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, aild
muitiplicity unity; for unity and multiplicity are united in me.
Why then should they not be in God?  Moreover, far fiom
altering unity in me, multiplicity develops it and makes its pro.
1 See particularly lecture 5.




364                 LECTURE SEVENTEE7ITH.
ductiveness appear.  So the richness of the determinations arld
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 ancl
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 canl neither
love nor contemplate in God t-le 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 himn; it considers in hinl
particularly the claracters 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 clhimerical abstraction, by always keeping in mind both the
nature of God, by which he escapes all relation with us, —uecessity, eternity, infinity, and at the same time those of his attributes
vwhich are our own attributes transferred to him, for the very
simple reason that they came from him.
I amn  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




RiSuIME OF DOCTRINE.                   365
else of my faculties.  Take away my faculties and the consciousness that attests them to me, and I am not for myself.  It is thle
same with God,-take away nature and the soul, and every sign
of God disappears.  It is therefore in nature and thle 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 my-self only by my acts;
that is certain; and what is not less certain is, that all my acts
dco 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,
thlougAht can always add to it.  To the myriads of worlds that
compose the totality of the world, may be added new worlds.
But God %s 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 workl.  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 bottoml  atheism.  On thle 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.




366                   LECTURE SEVENTEENTH.
To distinguish is not to separate.  I distinguish myself, but dc
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.'
W1 e 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 clay 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 every thing,
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




RESUME OF DOCTRINE.                      367
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 resumen.  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
indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it; and, further,
as it has been said, it comprehends 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, minglecl 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,'Dens vivus et Dens obsconditus.' "




3 6 8               LECTURE SEVENTEENTiH.
the foundation of knowledge.  Reason is the faculty itself of
knowingl; it has filrnished 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;
wve have gone quite naturally from  knowledge to its objects by
the road that the human race pursues, that Kant sought in vain,
or rather misconceivecl  at pleasure, to wit, that treason which
must be aldmitted entire or rejected entire, which reveals to us
existences as well as truths.  Therefore, after having recalled al1
the great metaphysical, esthetical, and molral truths, we have ieferred them  to their principle; with the human race we have
pronounced the nam-e of God, who explains all thlings, because he
has made all things, whom all our faculties require,-rieason, the
heart, the senses, since lhe is the author of all our faculties.
This doctrine is so simple, is to such an extent in all our
powers, is so conforumed to all our instincts, that it scarcely appears a philosophic doctrine, and, at. the same time, if you examine it lmore closely, if you compare it with all celebrated doctrines, you 7will find that it is related to them  and differs friom
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.  3But 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. muclh
more.  The spirit that animates it is that which of old inspired
Socrates, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, which makles your, hearts
beat whean 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, andl 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, wo do




RESUME OF DOCTRINE.                    369
not fear to repzelt trhat ate 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!








APPENDIX.
PAGE 188: "What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur!"
It is perceived that we have followed, as regards his death, tile 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 franfais,
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 try th. The notice of Lesueur's death, extracted for the first
time from t he Register of Deaths of the 2Caris7h c7hurch of Saint-Louis
in the isle of Notre-Damze, 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-Darne, 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 Gouss6, 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 Gouss6 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.
24




4392                       APPENDIX.
In the other particulars our rapid sketch of Lesueur's history re,
mains untouched. HIe 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.  -Ie 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 fellowlaborers 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 nmust 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
beaded 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.lJJtseztm.  One never tires of contemplating these grand per



APPENDIX.                         373
r'imsances even in the obscurity of that ill-lighted room.  Nothing
cotld 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 Lesue-urs.  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 Lesueutr which are in England, that which
we regret most not having seen is Alexacnder and his Pl/ysiciacr,
painted for MI. 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 Il. Waangen's excellent work, (Cuvres cl'Art et Artistes en
Ancyleterre, 2 vols., Berlin, 1837 and 1838.
WVe were both consoled and agreeably surprised on our return, to
meet, in the valuable gallery of MI. le Comte d'Houdetot, an ancient
peer of France, and free member of tle 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 hI. Houdetot or in England?
The painting sold in London in 1800 certainly came from the Orleans'




374                        APPENDIX.
gallery, which would seem most likely to have possessed the original
On the other hand, it is impossible M. HIoudetot'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.l
We borrow M. Waagen's description of the works of Lesueur, found
by that eminent critic in the English collections:']he Queenr oj
Sheba before Solo0non, the property of the Duke of Devonshire, vol.
i., p. 245.  Christ at the foot of thie Cross supp;ortecd by his Family,
belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury, vol. ii., p. 463, " the sentiment
deep and truthful," remarks M. Waagen.  Thle Jcagdalen 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 kDeath of Gernmanicus, "'a rich and noble
composition, completely in Poussin's style," remaruks 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 Pounssin attributed to Lesueur.
The author of Mzusies d'Allenmange et dzel iussie (Paris, 1844) mentions at Berlin a Saint Bruno adoring the Cross in his Cell, opening
tlpon a landscape, and pretends that this picture is as pathetic as the
best Saint Brunos in the Mluseumn 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 Rozm, 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, Thle inrfcnt Moioses 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
1 This is the sketch which Felibien so justly praises, part v., p. 37,. of the
-:st edition, in 4to.




LESUEUR.                         375
a real Lesueur should have 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 mighlit;
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 ofl
the Emperor's uncle. This celebrated picture, Christ oith _ alrtha
and Alfary, formed at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, a pendent to the
clartyrdom of St. Lawvrence. Will it be believed that the French
Government lost the opportunity, and permitted this little chefd'a6uevre 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 Aiass, 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 Aluseum at Brussels, a charming
little Lesueur, The Saviour giving his -Blessing, and in the Museums
of Grenoble and Montpelier several fragments of the tHistory oj
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 shoilcl 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 Bacchuzs, 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




376                       APPENDIX.
French, was sold at Paris for the sum of 17,000 francs, to a foreigner,
Mr. Hope.
MIiserable contrast! w]ile five or six hulndred thousand friancls have
been given for a Virgin by AMurillo, which is now turning the hleads
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 thlis 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: "'VWe endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the
Seven Satccra7ments, and for not having known how to keep friol Elingland 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 Sacracme7nts save from the engravings of Pesne, we made
a journey to London, to see with our own eyes, and j-udge 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 TIM
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 Museunm, those of Lord Ellesmnere and the Marquis of Westminster, and, at some miles from London, the collection at Dulwich'
College, celebrated in England, thougqh 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, atn exhibition of ancient
p)aintings, 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, whlat
riches would remainl buried in the mansions of the aristocracy or unl




POUSSIN.                          377
known cabinets of provincial amateurs! The society, having, at itx
head the greatest names of England, enjoys a certain aluthority, 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, Suutherland, the
Earls of Derby and Suffolk, and numerous other great men, besides
bankers, merlchants, scvants, 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 defiay
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.  Agpollo OvatchiZng thze ~herds
of Aclmetus; a Sec-po1rt, both belonging to the Earl of Leicester, and
Psyche and Amzo7r, the property of ~Mr. Perkins; a preteiided Lesueur,
the Death of the Virg-in, from the Earl of Suffolk; seven Sebastian
Bourdons, the Seven Wok7os of lfMeicy,' lent by the Earl of Yarborough; a landscape by Gaspar Poussin, but not one saorceaue 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 theim of the highest value.  We will confine ourselves
to the recapitulation of three, the Embarkation of St. Ursula, a laige
landscape, and the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.
1st. Thfe Eml barzamtion of St. Ursulac, which was painted for the
Barberini, and adorned their palace at Roome until the year 1760,
when an English amateur purchased it fiom the Princess Barberini,
with other works of the first class.  This picture is 3 feet 8 inches
11igh, 4 feet 11 inches wide.
2d. The large landscape is 4 feet 11 inches highl, 6 feet 7 inches
This great work has been long in England, as remarked by'Mariette, see
tihe Abecedario, just published, article S. Bourdlon, vol. i., p. 171. It appears
to have been a favorite work of Bourdon, he havinog himself engraved it, see
de Piles, A6b)qg de la Vie des Peinttres, 2d edition, p. 494, and the Peintrd
gravenl?'.franais, of M. Robert Dumesnil, vol. i., p. 131, etc. The copperplates of the SeverS iMorks /.Mercy are at th-e Louvre.




3178                       APPENDIX.
wide. Rebecca is seen, with her relatives and servants, waiting the
arrival of Isaac, who comes from afar to celebrate their marriage.
3d. The Embain,7cation of the Queen of Sheeba, going to visit Solo.
eon, formed a pendent to the preceding figure, which it resembles
in its dimensions. It is both a sea and landscape drawing. X.
Waagen declares it to be the most beautiful morceza  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, ost, as
well as the famous Book of Truth, Libro di Veritac, 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 Embclakation of the Quee?  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.' The author of the hMusies d'Allemacgne et de EPussie, 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 vzorceauz, which he does
not hesitate to declare equal to the most celebrated chefs-d'-'uvre of
that master, in Paris or London, called the 1forningy, the NMoon, the
Evening, and the Night.  They are fiom Mahulnaison.  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 Gaspar'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.
2 The Libro di Vetita 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'A,4
franFais, tom. i., p. 435, et seq.




rorrssrs.                        379
Two other landscapes are from the palace Corsini, and two fonom 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. 165.  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 Aq'cccdias,' 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 seen that Poussin had here
endeavored to contend with Mlichael Angelo, even at the expense of
beauty.  It is said the commission for this work was given by Cardinal Barberini. It comes fiom 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 Elducation of Bacchvus, 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 Foztntain, 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.
1The first composition of Arcadia, truly precious could it have beer
placed in the Louvre beside the second and better production, is in Eng
land, the property of the Duke of Devonshire.




380                        APPENDIX.
We believe that it has never been engraved. It forms a happy addl.
tion to the two other compositions consecrated by Poussin to Phocion, and which have been so admirably engraved by Baudet, Phocion
cacrried out of the City of Athenzs, and the Tomb' of Phociom.
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 beionged 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 calne 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. M1. 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 Fdirbung voqn seltenster Frische, tHelle mnd Kliarhfeit in allen Thleilen). It has been
engraved by Huart, and accurately copied by Landon, under the
title of Dcanse de Fcatns et de Bcacchantes.
No. 65. Cephaluhs and Autror. 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 C9mpantions chctaged into Stones by
looking on the Gorgon. Perseus, having rescued Andromeda from:




POUSSIN.                         381
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 sleeving NXyjmph, sulrisecd by Lore and Satyrs, engraved by Daul16, 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 Marini 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.  Hle bequeathed it to his brother, the MIarquis 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 Marqcuis 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. LCa Galerie dlt dhc cl' Orlkeans at Palatis-~oyal, 2
volumes in folio; 2. Recueil d'estavcrnes d'apre's les plus beaux tableaux
et dessins gui sent en FrGance dcans le cabinet clu roi et celzti de i1Zonseigneeur le due d' Orlacens, 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 Il usical Party, from  the




382                      APPENDIX.
Orleans Gallery, and engraved in the Galerie du Palais-Royal
three Bourguignons, four Gaspars, four fine Claudes, described by
3I. Waagen, vol. i., p. 331, the two former described in the catalogue
as Nos. 11 and 41 were painted in 1664 for M. do Bourlemont, a
gentleman of Lorraine; the former, Demosthenes by the Sect-side,
offers a fine contrast between majestic ruins and nature eternally
young and fresh; the second, Jlfoses at the Burning Bush, a thirdl,
No. 103, of the year 1657, was likewise painted for a Frenchman, M.
de Lagarde, and represents the ltfetcamorphosis of Ap2uleius into a
Sh7ephlerd; 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 ifoses striking thc
Boc7e with his Rod.
It would be difficult to describe the religious sensations which took
possession of us wvhilst contemplating the Seven Sacraments.  Whatever M3. 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
RPoman school. As each Saeramnent is a vast scene in which the
smallest details go to enhance the effect of the whole, so the Sevenz
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. B rczos 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, circeuz praccordia ludit;
he penetrates not deep; moves not the inner fibres of our being: for
why?  he himself was not so moved. Hle snatches us firom eanrth, and
transports us into the serene atmosphere of eternal beauty; but the
mournful side of life, the sublime emotions of the heart, magnanimity,




POUssIN.                        383
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 cf Pescaria was not of the company
of the Fornarina; and what cor:.non ground could the chaste lover
of the second Beatrice, the Dante of painting and of sculpture, the
intrepid engineer who defended Florence, the melancholy,i~uthor of
the Last Judgment and of Lorenzo di Jfedici, have with such men as
Perugino boldly professing atheism, at the same time that he painted,
at the highest price possible, the most delicate M[adonnas; 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 Mlarc' 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 amnaenurs, 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 Cond6 and the
young 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 Polyeucte, 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




384                          APPENDIX.
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 Sere? Sacralmenlts, 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 Orcdination, could have employed mnore gravity and
nmajesty 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 peiiod, 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,' in the distanc%, and above
the heights, are descried edifices rising and in decay.  Doubtless,
the Ext;reme Unlction is the most p'athetic; affects and a/ttracts us
most by its various qualities, particularly by a certain austere grace
shed  around the imnages of death;2 but, unhappily, this striking
In the first set of the Seven SacrameneCzts, executed for the Chevalier del
Pozzo, now in England, the property of the Dnuke 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. P'oussin 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 tihe mind of every ar.tist, painter, sculptor, poet,
or composer.
2 Poussin writes to M. de Chanteloup, April 25, 1644 (Lettrcs de Poussin,
Paris, 1824), " I am working briskly at the Extremse ULaction, which is indeed
a subject worthy of Apelles, who was very fond of representing the dying."
I-e 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 welldisposed, until I hlave put it in fair train for a sketch. It is to contain seventeen figures of men, women, and childiren, young and old, one part of whom
are drowned in tears, whilst tile others pray for the dying. I will not clescribe it to you more in detail. In this, my clmunsy pell is quite unfit, it
requires a gilded and well-set pencil. The principal figures are two feet
high; the painting wrill he about the size of your Jlcnane, but of better proportion.",;  Flibien, a friend and confidant of Poussin, likewise remarks
(zlt retieus, etc., part iv., p. 293), that the fxtreme  5Uiecion was one of the
jintings which pleased llim most. We learn at length, from Poussin's let



POUSSIN.                            385
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 tle beautiful drawing preserved in the museum of the
Louvre.'
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 ztate.  This last
process Poussin appears to have adopted in the lfloses striking the
Roc7k wizth his Staff, incomparably the finest of all the Stri kings of the.Rock which proceeded from  his pencil.  This masterpiece is well
known, from  the engraving by Baudet, and has passed, with the
Seven Sacrcameents, 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
ters, that he finished it and sent it into France in this same year, 1644.
Fe6ibien informs us that in 1646 he completed the Confirmation, in  1647 the
b'aptism, the Penance, the Orcdination and the Eucharist, and that he sent the
last sacrament, that of _ibJarriage, at the commencement of the year 1648.
Bellori (le Vite de Pittori, etc., Rome, 1672) gives a full and detailed doscription of the Extreme Unctior  a nd, as he lived with Poussin, it seems credlible
that his explanations are for the most part those lie had himself receivedl
from the great artist.
1The clrawing of the E.tremne Unctioln is at the Louvre; the drawings of
the five other sacraments are in the richll cabinet of M. de la Salle. that of the
seventh is the property of the well -known print seller, MI. Defer.




386                       APPENDIX.
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 chlarm.
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 _a's 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 Rocroy 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 Cmesar, and the finle portraits of Albert Durer
and Holbein, French art makes so small a figure, there is a Poussin'
of particularly fine color, Satyrs fiZding a iYVyJlnph.  The transparent and lustrous body of the nymph forms the entire picture.  It is
1 There is here likewise a charminlg Francis II., wholly from the hand of
Clonet, and the portrait of F6nelon by Rigaud, whicli may be the original or
at all events is not inferior to the painting in the gallery at Versailles.




ProUSSIN.                         387
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
Al. 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, Hobb6ma, Cuyp, Both, Potter, and others,
-who, to our idea, fade completely before sorLle 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 1601.  Of tlese
paintings, the greatest and most important is perhlaps the Sermon on0
the 2fount.  Poussit appears -w\orthily by the side of Lorrain in the
gallery at Grosvenor-street. A1. Waagen admires particularly C(alisto
changed into a -Bear, and plcaced by Jqp2iter azmong tlhe Constellations,
and still more a Virgin woith the infant Jesus szuwrounded by Angels.
EIe extols in this mzorceat the. surpassi:lg clearness of coloring, the
noble and melancholy sentiment of nature, together with a warm and
powerful tone.  N{. Waagen places this painting amongst the masterpieces of the French painter (gehbrt zu dem vortrefllichsteu7 was ich von
ih/n ke7n7e).  Whilst fully concurring in this judgment, we beg leave
to point out in the same gallery two other canvases of Poussin, two
delicious pieces firom the ewsel, first a touching episode in iJfoses stsil/ing tihe Rockc, in the gallery of Lord Ellesmere, of a imother who,
heedless of herself, hastens to give her children drink, whilst their
father bends in thanksgiving to God; the other, Children at lZlay.
Never did a Imore delightfult scene come fiom  the pencil of Albano.
Two children loo.k, laughing, at each other; another to the right
holds a butterfly on his finger; a fourth endeavors to catch a butterfly w-hich is flying from him; a fif,;h, 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, Ni. Noel
Desenfans, to form hiln a collection of pictures.  The misfortunes of
Stanislas, and the dismemberment of Poland left on N,. Desenfans'
hands all he had collected; these he made a present of to a friend of
25




;388                       APPENDIX.
his, Ai. Bourgeois, a pailter, who still further enriched this fine col[
lection, 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.  ML. Waagen, who visited it, pronounces,judgment with some severity.  The catalogue is ill-compiled, it is
true, but in this it does not differ froln numnerous other catalogues.
MAediocrity is fiequently 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 wlhich even M. Wangen cannot refuse his admiration.
We will, first of all, mention without describing them, a Lenain,
two Bourguignons, three portraits by RIigaud, or after Rigaud, a
Louis XIV., a Boileau, and another personage unknown to us, two
Lebruns, the lfcssaecre of the Innocents, and floratius CUoeCes defending the Bridge, in which Al. 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 RFte chancmptre by Watteau, and a Viezo near
R~ome, by Joseph Vernet.  Of Poussin, the catalogue points out
eighteen, of which the following is a list:
No. 115. The Ecducation of Bcacchu s; 142, a Landscapee; 249, a
-IRoly PFcamily; 253, the Apparition of thle Angels to Abcahcam; 260,
c LCandsca e; 269, the Destrluction of Iioebe; 279, a Landscape;
291, the Adoration of the Mlragi; 292, a Landscacpe; 295, the Inspiration of the Poet; 300, the FEducationl of Jupiter; 305, the
Sriuvm)ph of David; 310, the FFlight into Egypt; 315, -Renald and
Ar'micda; 316, Veznus and liercury; 325, Jupiteqr and Antiope;
336, the Assumption of the Virgin; 352, Children.
Of these eighteen pictures: M. Waagen singles out five, which he
thus characterizes:
Thze Assump2tion 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 Earbe lcraftiges und l laares Bild).
Child:?en, No. 352.  Replete  Nith loveliness and charm.  The
Trizmnph of David, No. 305.  A rich picture, but theatrical.
Juipiter suc7cled by the goat Asnalthlea, No. 300.  A clharming
lomposition, transparent tone.  A.Landsccale, No. 260.  A well



POUSSIN.                        389
drawn landscape, breathing a profound sentiment (of nature; but
which has become rather blackened.
We are unable to recognize in the Triulnh 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,
wvhich, in its passion for what it styles reality, fancies it perceives
the theatrical in whatever is noble. We admit that at the close ot
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 AI. Waagen is, that he did not
notice at Dulwich numerous rnorceaux of Poussin, which well merited
his attention; amongst others, the Adoracltion of the Xagi, 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 ha nd, 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 hmuan
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




390                       APPENDIX.
he delighted, although we do not see in him the exquisite piety of
LesTeur 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 disl.lays itself in its greatest freedoma and elevation. Arcadia is a lesson of high philosophy under
the form of an idyll.  The Testeament of Eudamidcas portrays the
sublime confidence of friendship.  Time Rescuing Truth fromn the
assasdts of Envy and Discord, the Ballet of Humnan Life, are celebrated models of this style. We have had the good fortune to meet
at Dulwich with a work of Poussin's ahInost unknown, and of whose
existence we had not even an idea, sparkling at the same time wcrh
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,
markled No. 295, and described in the catalogue as  h'lze lnspiration
of the Poet, a delightful subject. and treated in the most delightful
manner. Fancy the fireshest landscape, in the foreground a harmlonious group of three personages. The poet, on bended knee, carlies
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:notion of his hands ancd his whole body. Beside Apollo, the Mluse
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 AM. 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 d-rawing, in the composition, in the expression.  Nothing




POUSSIN.                        391
theatrical or vulgar: trutL combined with beauty.  The whole scene
conveys unmixed delight, and its impression is at once serene and
profound. In our idea, The Insp~iration of the Poet may be ranked
as almost equal with Tl/he Arcadcia.
Notwithstanding this, The Inspliration 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 Bibliothqeue Nat-' nale.  We
hope that these few words may suggest to some French engraver the
idea of undertaking the very easy pilgrimage to Dnlwich, 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.








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