[98] See 1st Series, vol. iv., explained and estimated, the theories of Hutcheson and Reid.

[99] The theory of Kant is found in the Critique of Judgment, and in the Observations on the Sentiment of the Beautiful and the Sublime. See the excellent translation made by M. Barny, 2 vols., 1846.

[100] On Hutcheson and Smith, their merits and defects, the part of truth and the part of error, which their philosophy contains, see the detailed lectures which we have devoted to them, 1st Series, vol. iv.

[101] See the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Condillac and Helvetius, Ibid., vol. iii.

[102] See lecture 5, in this vol.

[103] If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and piquant refutation, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of beauty, he may read the Hippias of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation. The PhÆdrus, vol. vi., contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own theory; but it is in the Banquet (Ibid.), and particularly in the discourse of Diotimus, that we must look for the thought of Plato carried to its highest degree of development, and clothed with all the beauty of human language.

[104] See the Hippias.

[105] First Ennead, book vi., in the work of M. B. Saint-Hillaire, on the School of Alexandria, the translation of this morsel of Plotinus, p. 197.

[106] Winkelmann has twice described the Apollo, History of Art among the Ancients, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book iv., chap. iii., Art among the Greeks:—"The Apollo of the Vatican offers us that God in a movement of indignation against the serpent Python, which he has just killed with arrow-shots, and in a sentiment of contempt for a victory so little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist, who proposed to represent the most beautiful of the gods, placed the anger in the nose, which, according to the ancients, was its seat; and the disdain on the lips. He expressed the anger by the inflation of the nostrils, and the disdain by the elevation of the under lip, which causes the same movement in the chin."—Ibid., vol. ii., book iv., chap. vi., Art under the Emperors:—"Of all the antique statues that have escaped the fury of barbarians and the destructive hand of time, the statue of Apollo is, without contradiction, the most sublime. One would say that the artist composed a figure purely ideal, and employed matter only because it was necessary for him to execute and represent his idea. As much as Homer's description of Apollo surpasses the descriptions which other poets have undertaken after him, so much this statue excels all the figures of this god. Its height is above that of man, and its attitude proclaims the divine grandeur with which it is filled. A perennial spring-time, like that which reigns in the happy fields of Elysium, clothes with lovable youth the beautiful body, and shines with sweetness over the noble structure of the limbs. In order to feel the merit of this chef-d'oeuvre of art, we must be penetrated with intellectual beauty, and become, if possible, the creatures of a celestial nature; for there is nothing mortal in it, nothing subject to the wants of humanity. That body, whose forms are not interrupted by a vein, which is not agitated by a nerve, seems animated with a celestial spirit, which circulates like a sweet vapor in all the parts of that admirable figure. The god has just been pursuing Python, against which he has bent, for the first time, his formidable bow; in his rapid course, he has overtaken him, and given him a mortal wound. Penetrated with the conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond his victory. Disdain sits upon his lips; the indignation that he breathes distends his nostrils, and ascends to his eyebrows; but an unchangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. Among all the figures that remain to us of Jupiter, there is none in which the father of the gods approaches the grandeur with which he manifested himself to the intelligence of Homer; but in the traits of the Apollo Belvidere, we find the individual beauties of all the other divinities united, as in that of Pandora. The forehead is the forehead of Jupiter, inclosing the goddess of wisdom; the eyebrows, by their movement, announce his supreme will; the large eyes are those of the queen of the gods, orbed with dignity, and the mouth is an image of that of Bacchus, where breathed voluptuousness. Like the tender branches of the vine, his beautiful locks flow around his head, as if they were lightly agitated by the zephyr's breath. They seem perfumed with the essence of the gods, and are charmingly arranged over his head by the hand of the Graces. At the sight of this marvel of art, I forget every thing else, and my mind takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it with dignity; from admiration I pass to ecstasy; I feel my breast dilating and rising, like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy; I am transported to Delos, and the sacred groves of Syria,—places which Apollo honored with his presence:—the statue seems to be animated as it were with the beauty that sprung of old from the hands of Pygmalion. How can I describe thee, O inimitable master-piece? For this it would be necessary that art itself should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I have just sketched, I lay before thee, as those who came to crown the gods, put their crowns at their feet, not being able to reach their heads."

[107] See the last part of the Banquet, the discourse of Alcibiades, p. 326 of vol. vi. of our translation.

[108] We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of David, which appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted, above its reputation. Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admire Plato listening to his master, as it were from the bottom of his soul, without looking at him, with his back turned upon the scene that is passing, and lost in the contemplation of the intelligible world.

[109] We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so dear to us, confirmed by the authority of one of the severest and most circumspect minds:—it may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 23. The Scotch philosopher terminates his Essay on Taste with these words, which happily remind us of the thought and manner of Plato himself:—"Whether the reasons that I have given to prove that sensible beauty is only the image of moral beauty appear sufficient or not, I hope that my doctrine, in attempting to unite the terrestrial Venus more closely to the celestial Venus, will not seem to have for its object to abase the first, and render her less worthy of the homage that mankind has always paid her."

[110] Part iii., lecture 15.

[111] Vol. vi. of our translation, p. 816-818

[112] Recherches sur l'Art Statuaire. Paris, 1805.

[113] Paris, 1815, in folio, an eminent work that will subsist even when time shall have destroyed some of its details.

[114] Since reprinted under the title of Essais sur l'Ideal dans ses Applications Pratiques. Paris, 1837.

[115] Translation of Plato, vol. xii., TimÆus, p. 116.

[116] Orator: "Neque enim ille artifex (Phidias) cum faceret Jovis formam aut MinervÆ, contemplabatur aliquem a quo similitudinem duceret; sed ipsius in mente insidebat species pulchritudinis eximia quÆdam, quam intuens, in eaque defixus, ad illius similitudinem artem et manum dirigebat."

[117] Raccolta di lett. Sulla pitt., i., p. 83. "Essendo carestia e de' buoni giudici e di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mi viene alla mente."

[118] "A picture representing a broken glass over several subjects painted on the canvas, by which the eye is deceived."

[119] Vassari, Vie de Raphael.

[120] Lecture 6.

[121] See the Gorgias, with the Argument, vol. iii. of our translation of Plato.

[122] There is a Provincial that for vehemence can be compared only to the Philipics, and its fragment on the infinite has the grandeur and magnificence of Bossuet. See our work on the Thoughts of Pascal, 4th Series, Literature, vol. i.

[123] See the Jupiter Olympien of M. QuatremÈre de Quincy.

[124] Allusion to the Magdeleine of Canova, which was then to be seen in the gallery of M. de Sommariva.

[125] See the Tempest of Haydn, among the pianoforte works of this master.

[126] See lecture 6.

[127] I have not myself had the good fortune to hear the religious music of the Vatican. Therefore, I shall let a competent judge, M. QuatremÈre de Quincy, speak, ConsidÉrations Morales sur les Destination des Ouvrages de l'Art, Paris, 1815, p. 98: "Let one call to mind those chants so simple and so touching, that terminate at Rome the funeral solemnities of those three days which the Church particularly devotes to the expression of its grief, in the last week of Lent. In that nave where the genius of Michael Angelo has embraced the duration of ages, from the wonders of creation to the last judgment that must destroy its works, are celebrated, in the presence of the Roman pontiff, those nocturnal ceremonies whose rites, symbols, and plaintive liturgies seem to be so many figures of the mystery of grief to which they are consecrated. The light decreasing by degrees, at the termination of each psalm, you would say that a funeral veil is extended little by little over those religious vaults. Soon the doubtful light of the last lamp allows you to perceive nothing but Christ in the distance, in the midst of clouds, pronouncing his judgments, and some angel executors of his behests. Then, at the bottom of a tribune interdicted to the regard of the profane, is heard the psalm of the penitent king, to which three of the greatest masters of the art have added the modulations of a simple and pathetic chant. No instrument is mingled with those accents. Simple harmonies of voice execute that music; but these voices seem to be those of angels, and their effect penetrates the depths of the soul."

We have cited this beautiful passage—and we could have cited many others, even superior to it—of a man now forgotten, and almost always misunderstood, but whom posterity will put in his place. Let us indicate, at least, the last pages of the same production, on the necessity of leaving the works of art in the place for which they were made, for example, the portrait of Mlle. de ValliÈre in the Madeleine aux CarmÉlites, instead of transferring it to, and exposing it in the apartments of Versailles, "the only place in the world," eloquently says M. QuatremÈre, "which never should have seen it."

[128] One is reminded of the expression of the great CondÉ: "Where then has Corneille learned politics and war?"

[129] It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the original all the passages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus; in them Racine would almost always be found below his model. I will give a single example. In the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus expresses the different effects of the crime on the spectators:

Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more than a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre pencil-strokes of the great Roman painter: "Trepidatur a circumsedentibus, diffugiunt imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus, resistunt defixi et Neronem intuentes."

[130] See the letter to Perrault.

[131]

[132]

[133] These verses did not appear till after the death of Boileau, and they are not well known. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, in a letter to Brossette, rightly said that these are "the most beautiful verses that M. DesprÉaux ever made."

[134] 4th Series of our works, Literature, book i., Preface, p. 3: "It is in prose, perhaps, that our literary glory is most certain.... What modern nation reckons prose writers that approach those of our nation? The country of Shakspeare and Milton does not possess, since Bacon, a single prose writer of the first order [?]; that of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, is in vain proud of Machiavel, whose sound and manly diction, like the thought that it expresses, is destitute of grandeur. Spain, it is true, has produced Cervantes, an admirable writer, but he is alone.... France can easily show a list of more than twenty prose writers of genius: Froissard, Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, MoliÈre, Retz, La BruyÈre, Malebranche, Bossuet, FÉnelon, FlÉchier, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Mme. de SÉvignÉ, Saint-Simon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, J. J. Rousseau; without speaking of so many more that would be in the first rank everywhere else,—Amiot, Calvin, Pasquier, D'AubignÉ, Charron, Balzac, Vaugelas, PÉlisson, Nicole, Fleury, Bussi, Saint-Evremont, Mme. de Lafayette, Mme. de Maintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Hamilton, Le Sage, PrÉvost, Beaumarchais, etc. It may be said with the exactest truth, that French prose is without a rival in modern Europe; and, even in antiquity, superior to the Latin prose, at least in the quantity and variety of models, it has no equal but the Greek prose, in its palmiest days, in the days of Herodotus and Demosthenes. I do not prefer Demosthenes to Pascal, and it would be difficult for me to put Plato himself above Bossuet. Plato and Bossuet, in my opinion, are the two greatest masters of human language, with manifest differences, as well as more than one trait of resemblance; both ordinarily speak like the people, with the last degree of simplicity, and at moments ascending without effort to a poetry as magnificent as that of Homer, ingenious and polished to the most charming delicacy, and by instinct majestic and sublime. Plato, without doubt, has incomparable graces, the supreme serenity, and, as it were, the demi-smile of the divine sage. Bossuet, on his side, has the pathetic, in which he has no rival but the great Corneille. When such writers are possessed, is it not a religion to render them the honor that is their due, that of a regular and profound study?"

[135] See the Appendix, at the end of the volume.

[136] See the Appendix.

[137] This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of St. Gervais. It formed the altar-piece, and in the foreground there was the admirable Bearing of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum.

[138] Such a law was the first act of the first assembly of affranchised Greece, and all the friends of art have applauded it from end to end of civilized Europe.

[139] See the Appendix.

[140] The Seven Sacraments of Poussin are now in the Bridgewater Gallery. See the Appendix.

[141] See the Appendix.

[142] In the midst of this scene of brutal violence, everybody has remarked this delicate trait—a Roman quite young, almost juvenile, while possessing himself by force of a young girl taking refuge in the arms of her mother, asks her from her mother with an air at once passionate and restrained. In order to appreciate this picture, compare it with that of David in the ensemble and in the details.

[143] In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage. He governs the whole scene; he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy.

[144] The pictures of Claude Lorrain, of which we have just spoken, are in the Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst the Museum of Madrid alone possesses almost as many, while there are in England more than fifty, and those the most admirable. See the Appendix.

[145] The last Notice of the Pictures exhibited in the Gallery of the National Museum of the Louvre, 1852, although its author, M. Villot, is surely a man of incontestable knowledge and taste, persists in placing Champagne in the Flemish school. En revanche, a learned foreigner, M. Waagen, claims him for the French school. Kunstwerke and KÜnstler in Paris, Berlin, 1839, p. 651.

[146] Well appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to his benefits. One day when an envoy of Richelieu said to him that he had only to ask freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune, Champagne responded that if M. the Cardinal could make him a more skilful painter than he was, it was the only thing that he asked of his Eminence; but that being impossible, he only desired the honor of his good graces. FÉlibien, Entretiens, 1st edition, 4to., part v., p. 171; and de Piles, AbrÉgÉ de la Vie des Peintres, 2d edition, p. 500.—"As he had much love for justice and truth, provided he satisfied what they both demanded, he easily passed over all the rest."—NÉcrologe de Port-Royal, p. 336.

[147] See the Appendix.

[148] The original is in the Museum of Grenoble; but see the engraving of Morin; see also that of Daret, after the beautiful design of Demonstier.

[149] In the Museum of the Louvre; see also the engraving of Morin.

[150] The original is now in the ChÂteau of SablÉ, belonging to the Marquis of RougÉ; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The beautiful engraving of Edelinck was made after a different original, attributed to a nephew of Champagne.

[151] The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of RougÉ; the admirable engraving of Van Schupen may take its place.

[152] In the Museum.

[153] In the Museum, and engraved by GÉrard Edelinck.

[154] La Gloire du Val-de-GrÂce, in 4to, 1669, with a frontispiece and vignettes. MoliÈre there enters into infinite details on all the parts of the art of painting and the genius of Mignard. He pushes eulogy perhaps to the extent of hyperbole; afterwards, hyperbole gave place to the most shameful indifference. The fresco of the dome of Val-de-grÂce is composed of four rows of figures, which rise in a circle from the base to the vertex of the arch. In the upper part is the Trinity, above which is raised a resplendent sky. Below the Trinity are the celestial powers. Descending a degree, we see the Virgin and the holy personages of the Old and New Testament. Finally, at the lower extremity is Anne of Austria, introduced into paradise by St. Anne and St. Louis, and these three figures are accompanied by a multitude of personages pertaining to the history of France, among whom are distinguished Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, etc.

[155] Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the Plague of David (la Peste de David). What has become of the original?

[156] See his Landscape at Sunset, and the Bathers (les Baigneuses), an agreeable scene somewhat blemished by careless drawing.

[157] It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In his Holy Family the figure of the Virgin, without being celestial, admirably expresses meditation and reflection. We lost some time ago the most important work of S. Bourdon, the Sept Œuvres de MisÉricorde. See the Appendix.

[158] See especially his Extreme Unction.

[159] The picture that is called le Silence, which represents the sleep of the infant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of the infant is of superhuman power. The Battles of Alexander, with their defects, are pages of history of the highest order; and in the Alexander visiting with Ephestion the Mother and the Wife of Darius, one knows not which to admire most, the noble ordering of the whole or the just expression of the figures.

[160] It seems that Lesueur sometimes furnished Daret with designs. It is indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design of his chef-d'oeuvre, the portrait of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, represented in his earliest youth, and in an abbÉ, sustained and surrounded by angels of different size, forming a charming composition. The drawing is completely pure, except some imperfect fore-shortenings. The little angels that sport with the emblems of the future cardinal are full of spirit, and, at the same time, sweetness.

[161] Edelinck saw only the reign of Louis XIV. Nanteuil was able to engrave very few of the great men of the time of Louis XIII., and the regency, and in the latter part of their life; Mazarin, in his last five or six years; CondÉ, growing old; Turenne, old; Fouquet and Matthieu MolÉ, some years before the fall of the one and the death of the other; and he was too often obliged to waste his talent upon a crowd of parliamentarians, ecclesiastics, and obscure financiers.

[162] If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest and most neglected portion of the seventeenth century, that which Voltaire almost wholly omitted, I would set him to collecting the works of Morin.

[163] Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated painters of his time, he is himself the author of great and charming compositions, many of which serve as frontispieces to books. I willingly call attention to that one which is at the head of a folio edition of the Introduction À la Vie DÉvote, and to the beautiful frontispieces of the writings of Richelieu, from the press of the Louvre.

[164] This was the opinion of Winkelmann at the end of the eighteenth century; it is our opinion now, even after all the discoveries that have been made during fifty years, that may be seen in great part retraced and described in the Musio real Barbonico.

[165] There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age: the innumerable figures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues that are discovered every day sufficiently testify it. The imagers of that time certainly had much spirit and imagination; but, at least in everything that we have seen, beauty is absent, and taste wanting.

[166] Go and see at the Museum of Versailles the statue of Francis I., and say whether any Italian, except the author of the Laurent de Medicis, has made any thing like it. See also in the Museum of the Louvre, the statue of Admiral Chabot.

[167] Sarazin died in 1660, Lesueur in 1655, Poussin in 1665, Descartes in 1650, Pascal in 1662, and the genius of Corneille did not extend beyond that epoch.

[168] Lenoir, MusÉe des Monuments FranÇais, vol. v., p. 87-91, and the MusÉe Royale des Monuments FranÇais of 1815, p. 98, 99, 108, 122, and 140. This wonderful monument, erected to Henri de Bourbon, at the expense of his old intendant Perrault, president of the Chambre des Comptes, was placed in the Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in bronze. It must not be confounded with the other monument that the CondÉs erected to the same prince in their family burial-ground at Vallery, near Montereau, in Yonne. This monument is in marble, and by the hand of Michel Anguier; see the description in Lenoir, vol. v., p. 23-25, and especially in the Annuaire de l' Yonne pour 1842, p. 173, etc.

[169] Rue d'Enfer, No. 67.

[170] The Museum of the Louvre possesses only a very small number of Sarazin's works, and those of very little importance:—a bust of Pierre SÉguier, strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and the small funeral monument of Hennequin, AbbÉ of Bernay, member of Parliament, who died in 1651, which is a chef-d'oeuvre of elegance.

[171] These three statues were united in the Museum des Petits-Augustins, Lenoir, MusÉe-royal, etc., p. 94; we know not why they have been separated; Jacques-Auguste de Thou has been placed in the Louvre, and his two wives at Versailles.

[172] FranÇois Anguier had made a marble tomb of Cardinal de BÉrulle, which was in the oratory of Rue St. HonorÉ. It would have been interesting to compare this statue with that of Sarazin, which is still at the Carmelites. FranÇois is also the author of the monument of the Longuevilles, which, before the Revolution, was at the CÉlestins, and was seen in 1815 at the museum des Petits-Augustins, Lenoir, ibid., p. 103; it is now in the Louvre. It is an obelisk, the four sides of which are covered with allegorical bas-reliefs. The pedestal, also ornamented with bas-reliefs, has four female figures in marble, representing the cardinal virtues.

[173] Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 97 and 100. See his portrait, painted by Champagne, and engraved by Morin.

[174] Group in white marble which was at the CÉlestins, a church near the hÔtel of Rohan-Chabot in the Place Royale; re-collected in the Museum des Petits-Augustins, Lenoir, ibid., p. 97; it is now at Versailles. We must not pass over that beautiful production, the mausoleum of Jacques de SouvrÉ, Grand Prior of France, the brother of the beautiful Marchioness de SablÉ; a mausoleum that came from Saint-Jean de Latran, passed through the Museum des Petits-Augustins, and is now found in the Louvre. The sculptures of the porte Saint-Denis are also owed to Michel Anguier, as well as the admirable bust of Colbert, which is in the museum.

[175] At first at Notre-Dame, the natural place for the tombs of the Gondis, then at the Augustins, now at Versailles.

[176] In the Church St. Germain des PrÉs.

[177] At the Capuchins, then at the Augustins, then at Versailles.

[178] See, on these monuments, Lenoir, p. 98, 101, 102. That of Mazarin is now at the Louvre; that of Colbert has been restored to the Church of St. Eustache, and that of Lebrun to the Church St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, as well as the mausoleum, so expressive but a little overstrained, of the mother of Lebrun, by Tuby, and the mausoleum of Jerome Bignon, the celebrated Councillor of State, who died in 1656.

[179] QuatremÈre de Quincy, Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de plus CÉlÈbres Architectes, vol. ii., p. 145:—"There could scarcely be found in any country an ensemble so grand, which offers with so much unity and regularity an aspect at once more varied and picturesque, especially in the faÇade of the entrance." Unfortunately this unity has disappeared, thanks to the constructions that have since been added to the primitive work.

[180] In order to appreciate the beauty of the Sorbonne, one must stand in the lower part of the great court, and from that point consider the effect of the successive elevation, at first of the other part of the court, then of the different stories of the portico, then of the portico itself, of the church, and, finally, of the dome.

[182] We do not speak of the colonnade of the Louvre by Perrault, because in spite of its grand qualities, it begins the decline and marks the passage from the serious to the academic style, from originality to imitation, from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth.

[183] See the engraving of PÉrelle. Sauval, vol. ii., p. 66 and p. 131, says that the hÔtel of CondÉ was magnificently built, that it was the most magnificent of the time.

[184] Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see the Appendix):—"Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de CondÉ, Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an oratory painted by Lesueur in the hÔtel of CondÉ. The altar-piece represents a Nativity, that of the ceiling a Celestial Glory. The wainscot is enriched with several figures and with a quantity of ornaments worked with great care."

[185] The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is itself a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only merit of the Pantheon is its situation on the summit of the hill of St. GeneviÈve, from which it overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on different sides to a considerable distance. Put in its place the Val-de-GrÂce of Lemercier with the dome of Lemuet, and judge what would be the effect of such an edifice!

[186] In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to the facultÉ des lettres, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and particular taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his mind. But of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eustache Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the necessity of addressing to him the public petition that he may not be wanting to a vocation so marked and so elevated.

[187] See 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 11 and 12; 4th Series, vol. ii., last pages of Jacqueline Pascal, and the Fragments of the Cartesian Philosophy, p. 469.

[188] 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3, Condillac.

[189] See the Theory of Sentiment, part i., lecture 5.

[190] On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined those of vol. iii. of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and St. Lambert.

[191] The word bonheur, which has no exact English equivalent, which M. Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the precise sense of the definition given above, we have sometimes translated happiness, sometimes good fortune, sometimes prosperity, sometimes fortune. When one has in mind the thing, he will not be troubled by the more or less exact word that indicates it:—all language, at best, is only symbolic; it bears the same relation to thought as the forms of nature do to the laws that produce and govern them. The true reader never mistakes the symbol for the thing symbolized, the shadow for the reality.

[192] On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3d Series, Fragments Philosophiques, vol. iv., our Examination of the Lectures of M. LaromeguiÈre.

[193] On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see the Examination, already cited, of the Lectures of M. LaromeguiÈre.

[194] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "In the doctrine of interest, every man seeks the useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by dint of prudence and profound combinations, increase in his favor the chances of success; it is impossible that there should not remain some chances against him; he never pursues, then, any thing but a probable result. On the contrary, in the doctrine of duty, I am always sure of obtaining the last end that I propose to myself, moral good. I risk my life to save my fellow; if, through mischance, I miss this end, there is another which does not, which cannot, escape me,—I have aimed at the good, I have been successful. Moral good, being especially in the virtuous intention, is always in my power and within my reach; as to the material good that can result from the action itself, Providence alone disposes of it. Let us felicitate ourselves that Providence has placed our moral destiny in our own hands, by making it depend upon the good and not upon the useful. The will, in order to act in the sad trials of life, has need of being sustained by certainty. Who would be disposed to give his blood for an uncertain end? Success is a complicated problem, that, in order to be solved, exacts all the power of the calculus of probabilities. What labor and what uncertainties does such a calculus involve! Doubt is a very sad preparation for action. But when one proposes before all to do his duty, he acts without any perplexity. Do what you ought, let come what may, is a motto that does not deceive. With such an end, we are sure of never pursuing it in vain."

[195] See the development of the idea of right, lectures 14 and 15.

[196] See lecture 14, Theory of liberty.

[197] See the preceding lecture, and lectures 14 and 15.

[198] 1st part, lecture 1.

[199] See lecture 16.

[200] On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of sensation, see the four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Hobbes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series.

[201] These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which we pronounce them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a noble youth, when M. de ChÂteaubriand covered the Restoration with his own glory, when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M. Pasquier, M. LainÉ, M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal St. Cyr over war, and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when the Duke de Broglie prepared the true legislation of the press, and M. Decazes, the author of the wise and courageous ordinance of September 5, 1816, was at the head of the councils of the crown; when finally, Louis XVIII. separated himself, like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in order to be the king of the whole nation.

[202] Œuvres de Reid, vol. iv., p. 297: "Men are neither as good nor as bad as their principles; and, as there is no skeptic in the street, so I am sure there is no disinterested spectator of human actions who is not compelled to discern them as just and unjust. Skepticism has no light that does not pale before the splendor of that vivid internal light that lightens the objects of moral perception, as the light of day lightens the objects of sensible perception."

[203] Mordre—to bite, is the main root of remords—remorse.

[204] See 1st part, lecture 5, On Mysticism, and 2d part, lecture 6, On the Sentiment of the Beautiful. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv., detailed refutation of the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith.

[205] We do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. He has marked the defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage, from which we borrow some traits. Œuvres de Reid, vol. iii., p. 410, 411: "The perception of the moral qualities of human actions is accompanied by an emotion of the soul that is called sentiment. Sentiment is a support of nature that invites us to good by the attraction of the noblest joys of which man is capable, and turns us from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror with which it inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beautiful action or a noble character, at the same time that we perceive these qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and sometimes an admiration that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a loose and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and sentiment. The internal approbation of conscience and remorse are sentiments attached to the perception of the moral qualities of our own actions.... I do not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true that ethics are wholly in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate moral distinctions.... Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is in itself good, nothing is in itself evil; good and evil are relative; the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each one feels them to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; the same action is at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection of the spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenomena; obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus: Dii meliora piis!"

[206] In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who, for some time, had numerous partisans in England, and even in France.

[207] See lecture 12.

[208] 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174: "If the good is that alone which must be the most useful to the greatest number, where can the good be found, and who can discern it? In order to know whether such an action, which I propose to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure, in spite of its visible and direct utility in the present moment, that it will not become injurious in a future that I do not yet know. I must seek whether, useful to mine and those that surround me, it will not have counter-strokes disastrous to the human race, of which I must think before all. It is important that I should know whether the money that I am tempted to give this unfortunate who needs it, could not be otherwise more usefully employed, in fact, the rule is here the greatest good of the greatest number. In order to follow it, what calculations are imposed on me? In the obscurity of the future, in the uncertainty of the somewhat remote consequences of every action, the surest way is to do nothing that is not related to myself, and the last result of a prudence so refined is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have received a deposit from an opulent neighbor, who is old and sick, a sum of which he has no need, and without which your numerous family runs the risk of dying with famine. He calls on you for this sum,—what will you do? The greatest number is on your side, and the greatest utility also; for this sum is insignificant for your rich neighbor, whilst it will save your family from misery, and perhaps from death. Father of a family, I should like much to know in the name of what principle you would hesitate to retain the sum which is necessary to you? Intrepid reasoner, placed in the alternative of killing this sick old man, or of letting your wife and children die of hunger, in all honesty of conscience you ought to kill him. You have the right, it is even your duty to sacrifice the less advantage of a single person to much the greater advantage of a greater number; and since this principle is the expression of true justice, you are only its minister in doing what you do. A vanquishing enemy or a furious people threaten destruction to a whole city, if there be not delivered up to them the head of such a man, who is, nevertheless, innocent. In the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, this man will be immolated without scruple. It might even be maintained that innocent to the last, he has ceased to be so, since he is an obstacle to the public good. It having once been declared that justice is the interest of the greatest number, the only question is to know where this interest is. Now, here, doubt is impossible, therefore, it is perfectly just to offer innocence as a holocaust to public safety. This consequence must be accepted, or the principle rejected."

[209] See lecture 15, Private and Public Ethics.

[210] Plato, Republic, vol. ix. and x. of our translation.

[211] Lecture 16.

[212] Lectures 4 and 7.

[213] This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it early against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that which we combat. See our Sketch of a General History of Philosophy, 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 9, On Scholasticism. Here are two decisive passages from St. Thomas, 1st book of the Summation against the Gentiles, chap. lxxxvii: "Per prÆdicta autem excluditur error dicentiam omnia procedere a Deo secundum simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia Deus vult. Quod etiam divinÆ ScripturÆ contrariatur, quÆ Deum perhibet secundum ordinem sapientiÆ suÆ omnia fecisse, secundum illud Psalm ciii.: omnia in sapientia fecisti." Ibid., book ii., chap. xxiv.: "Per hoc autem excluditur quorundam error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica divina voluntate dependere aliqua ratione."

[214] See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul, Des PensÉes de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235 and p. 289-296.

[215] Lecture 16.

[216] On indignation, see lecture 11.

[217] On remorse, see lecture 11.

[218] See the Gorgias, with the Argument, vol. iii. of our translation.

[219] Lectures 1 and 6.

[220] Lectures 2, 3, and 6.

[221] 1st part, lecture 2.

[222] Lecture 2.

[223] 1st part, lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture 8.

[224] 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.

[225] See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, Locke, p. 71; lecture 3, Condillac, p. 116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., lecture 23, Reid, p. 541-574; 2d Series, vol. iii., Examination of the System of Locke, lecture 25.

[226] Lecture 12.

[227] See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true principle of political economy, p. 278-302.

[228] Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'Échafaud.

[229] See lecture 16, God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good.

[230] See lecture 16.

[231] On Jacobi, see Tennemann's Manual of the History of Philosophy, vol. iii., p. 318, etc.

[232] On this important question of method, see lecture 12.

[233] See the Republic, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation.

[234] On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too much accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our duties towards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics of Helvetius and Saint-Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235: "To define virtue an habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, is to concentrate virtue into a single one of its applications, is to suppress its general and essential character. Therein is the fundamental vice of the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those ethics are an exaggerated reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of the preceding age, which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man, often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the philosophy of the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only considered the virtues useful to society. That was retrenching many virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self. How make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined a disposition to contribute to the happiness of others? Will it be said that dominion over self is useful to others? But that is not always true; often this dominion is exercised in the solitude of the soul over internal and wholly personal movements; and there it is most painful and most sublime. Were we in a desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist our passions, to command ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a rational and free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither the whole of virtue, nor its most difficult employment. What auxiliaries we have when the question is to do good to our fellow-creatures,—pity, sympathy, natural benevolence! But to resist pride and envy, to combat in the depths of the soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often culpable in its excesses, to suffer and struggle in silence, is the hardest task of a virtuous man. I add that the virtues useful to others have their surest guaranty in those personal virtues that the eighteenth century misconceived. What are goodness, generosity, and beneficence without dominion over self, without the form of soul attached to the religious observance of duty? They are, perhaps, only the emotions of a beautiful nature placed in fortunate circumstances. Take away these circumstances, and, perhaps, the effects will disappear or be diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to be a rational and free being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain faithful to liberty and reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, and pursue, without cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circumstances, you may rely upon that man; he will know how, in case of need, to be useful to others, because there is no true perfection for him without justice and charity. From the care of internal perfection you may draw all the useful virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One may be beneficent without being virtuous; one is not virtuous without being beneficent."

[235] On the true foundation of property see the preceding lecture.

[236] Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had another the desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and had we also the desire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, because desire can never be the title of a right, because there is something in us that is above all desires, participated or not participated, to wit, duty and right,—justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires, and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate; eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right, because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human laws against the law of laws, against natural law."

[237] On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: "Hobbes is not the only one who took the question of the origin of societies as the starting-point of political science. Nearly all the publicists of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu excepted, proceed in the same manner. Rousseau imagines at first a primitive state in which man being no longer savage without being yet civilized, lived happy and free under the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden age of humanity disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, who enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in the shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the abandonment by each and all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the depository of all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for Rousseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by turns are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the despotism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law is not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of natural justice; it is the expression of the general will. This general will is alone free; particular wills are not free. The general will has all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on them, or rather lends them. Force, in The Citizen is the foundation of society, of order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone institute. In the Contrat Social, the general will plays the same part, fulfils the same function. Moreover, the general will scarcely differs in itself from force. In fact, the general will is number, that is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, tyranny under different forms. One may here observe the power of method. If Hobbes, if Rousseau especially had at first studied the idea of right in itself, with the certain characters without which we are not able to conceive it, they would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there are rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for principles and rules; from no convention, since they serve as the foundation to all conventions in order that these conventions may be reputed just;—rights that society consecrates and develops, but does not make,—rights not subject to the caprices of general or particular will, belonging essentially to human nature, and like it, inviolable and sacred."

[238] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "What!" somewhere says Montesquieu, "man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for society! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of the life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The universal and permanent fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This principle shines forth in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in our beliefs. It is true that we love society for the advantages that it brings; but it is none the less true, that we also love it for its own sake, that we seek it independently of all calculation. Solitude saddens us; it is not less deadly to the life of the moral being, than a perfect vacuum is to the life of the physical being. Without society what would become of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful principles of our soul, which establishes between men a community of sentiments, by which each lives in all and all live in each? Who would be blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of human nature for society? And the attraction of the sexes, their union, the love of parents for children,—do they not found a sort of natural society, that is increased and developed by the power of the same causes which produced it? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect each other in the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other in virtue of natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right, charity inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each other succor and consolation. Wonderful thing! God has not left to our wisdom, nor even to experience, the care of forming and preserving society,—he has willed that sociability should be a law of our nature, and a law so imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no distaste even, can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of system was necessary in order to make Hobbes say that society is an accident, as an incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Rousseau the extravagant expression that society is an evil."

[239] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283: "We do not hold from a compact our quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it; or, rather, there is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes itself felt by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds together all beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the sacred ties of a common respect and a common charity.... Laws promulgate duties, but do not give birth to them; they could not violate duties without being unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of laws—that is to say, decisions of the public authority worthy of appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. Nevertheless, although laws have no other virtue than that of declaring what exists before them, we often found on them right and justice, to the great detriment of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and habit despoil reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What then happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a very great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having no superior principle that enables us to judge it,—or we continually change it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not knowing the immutable basis on which written law must rest. In either case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not related to their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and absolute justice."

[240] Lecture 12.

[241] See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.

[242] See our pamphlet entitled Justice and Charity, composed in 1848, in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of true charity, private and civil.

[243] See on the theory of penalty, the Gorgias, vol. iii. of the translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: "The first law of order is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the second law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty. Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,—and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice. Justice is the true foundation of punishment,—personal and social utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought. Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident, and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary spectacle for the people,—what it would not then be; for then the punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just, because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both ways useful, because it is just." This theory of penalty, in demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated in Plato, but is met in several passages, briefly but positively expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.

[244] As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the question of the different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty of the constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a passionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be obtained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,—6th Series, Political Discourses, with an introduction on the principles of the French Revolution and representative government.

[245] Lectures 4 and 7.

[246] Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without excepting the best—that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most popular of all, the Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard. See our small work entitled Philosophie Populaire, 3d edition, p. 82.

[247] On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st, lecture 4; see also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture 6.

[249] This theodicea is here in rÉsumÉ, and in the 4th and 5th lectures of part first, as well as in the lecture that follows. The most important of our different writings, on this point, will be found collected and elucidated by each other, in the Appendix to the 5th lecture of the first volume of the 1st Series.—See our translation of this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, under the title of the History of Modern Philosophy.

[250] 3d Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition: "Without vain subtilty, there is a real distinction between free will and spontaneous liberty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with the appearance of deliberation between different objects, and under this supreme condition, that when, as a consequence of deliberation, we resolve to do this or that, we have the immediate consciousness of having been able, and of being able still, to will the contrary. It is in volition, and in the retinue of phenomena which surround it, that liberty more energetically appears, but it is not thereby exhausted. It is at rare and sublime moments in which liberty is as much greater as it appears less to the eyes of a superficial observation. I have often cited the example of d'Assas. D'Assas did not deliberate; and for all that, was d'Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty? Has the saint who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has come to practise, as it were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which are repugnant to human weakness; has the saint, in order to have gone out from the contradictions and the anguish of this form of liberty which we called volition, fallen below it instead of being elevated above it; and is he nothing more than a blind and passive instrument of grace, as Luther and Calvin have inappropriately wished to call it, by an excessive interpretation of the Augustinian doctrine? No, freedom still remains; and far from being annihilated, its liberty, in being purified, is elevated and ennobled; from the human form of volition it has passed to the almost divine form of spontaneity. Spontaneity is essentially free, although it may be accompanied with no deliberation, and although often, in the rapid motion of its inspired action, it escapes its own observation, and leaves scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness. Let us transfer this exact psychology to theodicea, and we may recognize without hypothesis, that spontaneity is also especially the form of God's liberty. Yes, certainly, God is free; for, among other proofs, it would be absurd that there should be less freedom in the first cause than in one of its effects, humanity; God is free, but not with that liberty which is related to our double nature, and made to contend against passion and error, and painfully to engender virtue and our imperfect knowledge; he is free, with a liberty that is related to his own divine nature, that is a liberty unlimited, infinite, recognizing no obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good and evil, between reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, consequently, cannot will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he could take what we call the bad part? This very supposition is impious. It is necessary to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has acted freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of having been able to choose the other part. His nature, all-powerful, all-just, all-wise, is developed with that spontaneity which contains entire liberty, and excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of volition, and the mechanical operation of necessity. Such is the principle and the true character of the divine action."

[251] TimÆus, p. 119, vol. xii. of our translation.

[252] De l'Art de prolonger sa Vie, etc.

[253] On the spirituality of the soul, see all our writings. We will limit ourselves to two citations. 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 25, p. 859: "It is impossible to know any phenomenon of consciousness, the phenomena of sensation, or volition, or of intelligence, without instantly referring them to a subject one and identical, which is the me; so we cannot know the external phenomena of resistance, of solidity, of impenetrability, of figure, of color, of smell, of taste, etc., without judging that these are not phenomena in appearance, but phenomena which belong to something real, which is solid, impenetrable, figured, colored, odorous, savory, etc. On the other hand, if you did not know any of the phenomena of consciousness, you would never have the least idea of the subject of these phenomena; if you did not know any of the external phenomena of resistance, of solidity, of impenetrability, of figure, of color, etc., you would not have any idea of the subject of these phenomena: therefore the characters, whether of the phenomena of consciousness, or of exterior phenomena, are for you the only signs of the nature of the subjects of these phenomena. In examining the phenomena which fall under the senses, we find between them grave differences upon which it is useless here to insist, and which establish the distinction of primary qualities and of secondary qualities. In the first rank among the primary qualities is solidity, which is given to you in the sensation of resistance, and inevitably accompanied by form, etc. On the contrary, when you examine the phenomena of consciousness, you do not therein find this character of resistance, of solidity, of form, etc.; you do not find that the phenomena of your consciousness have a figure, solidity, impenetrability, resistance; without speaking of secondary qualities which are equally foreign to them, color, savor, sound, smell, etc. Now, as the subject is for us only the collection of the phenomena which reveal it to us, together with its own existence in so far as the subject of the inherence of these phenomena, it follows that, under phenomena marked with dissimilar characters and entirely foreign to each other, the human mind conceives dissimilar and foreign subjects. Thus as solidity and figure have nothing in common with sensation, will, and thought, as every solid is extended for us, and as we place it necessarily in space, while our thoughts, our volitions, our sensations, are for us unextended, and while we cannot conceive them and place them in space, but only in time, the human mind concludes with perfect strictness that the subject of the exterior phenomena has the character of the latter, and that the subject of the phenomena of consciousness has the character of the former; that the one is solid and extended, and that the other is neither solid nor extended. Finally, as that which is solid and extended is divisible, and as that which is neither solid nor extended is indivisible, hence divisibility is attributed to the solid and extended subject, and indivisibility attributed to the subject which is neither extended nor solid. Who of us, in fact, does not believe himself an indivisible being, one and identical, the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow? Well, the word body, the word matter, signifies nothing else than the subject of external phenomena, the most eminent of which are form, impenetrability, solidity, extension, divisibility. The word mind, the word soul, signifies nothing else than the subject of the phenomena of consciousness, thought, will, sensation, phenomena simple, unextended, not solid, etc. Behold the whole idea of spirit, and the whole idea of matter! See, therefore, all that must be done in order to bring back matter to spirit, and spirit to matter: it is necessary to pretend that sensation, volition, thought, are reducible in the last analysis to solidity, extension, figure, divisibility, etc., or that solidity, extension, figure, etc., are reducible to thought, volition, sensation." 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture I, Locke. "Locke pretends that we cannot be certain by the contemplation of our own ideas, that matter cannot think; on the contrary, it is in the contemplation itself of our ideas that we clearly perceive that matter and thought are incompatible. What is thinking? Is it not uniting a certain number of ideas under a certain unity? The simplest judgment supposes several terms united in a subject, one and identical, which is me. This identical me is implied in every real act of knowledge. It has been demonstrated to satiety that comparison exacts an indivisible centre that comprises the different terms of the comparison. Do you take memory? There is no memory possible without the continuation of the same subject that refers to self the different modifications by which it has been successively affected. Finally, consciousness, that indispensable condition of intelligence,—is it not the sentiment of a single being? This is the reason why each man cannot think without saying me, without affirming that he is himself the identical and one subject of his thoughts. I am me and always me, as you are always yourself in the most different acts of your life. You are not more yourself to-day than you were yesterday, and you are not less yourself to-day than you were yesterday. This identity and this indivisible unity of the me inseparable from the least thought, is what is called its spirituality, in opposition to the evident and necessary characters of matter. By what, in fact, do you know matter? It is especially by form, by extension, by something solid that stops you, that resists you in different points of space. But is not a solid essentially divisible? Take the most subtile fluids,—can you help conceiving them as more or less susceptible of division? All thought has its different elements like matter, but in addition it has its unity in the thinking subject, and the subject being taken away, which is one, the total phenomenon no longer exists. Far from that, the unknown subject to which we attach material phenomena is divisible, and divisible ad infinitum; it cannot cease to be divisible without ceasing to exist. Such are the ideas that we have, on the one side, of mind, on the other, of matter. Thought supposes a subject essentially one; matter is infinitely divisible. What is the need of going farther? If any conclusion is legitimate, it is that which distinguishes thought from matter. God can indeed make them exist together, and their co-existence is a certain fact, but he cannot confound them. God can unite thought and matter, he cannot make matter thought, nor what is extended simple."

[254] See 1st part, lecture 1.

[255] See lecture 5, Mysticism.

[256] 4th Series, vol. iii., Santa-Rosa: "After all, the existence of a divine Providence is, to my eyes, a truth clearer than all lights, more certain than all mathematics. Yes, there is a God, a God who is a true intelligence, who consequently has a consciousness of himself, who has made and ordered every thing with weight and measure, whose works are excellent, whose ends are adorable, even when they are veiled from our feeble eyes. This world has a perfect author, perfectly wise and good. Man is not an orphan; he has a father in heaven. What will this father do with his child when he returns to him? Nothing but what is good. Whatever happens, all will be well. Every thing that he has done has been done well; every thing that he shall do, I accept beforehand, and bless. Yes, such is my unalterable faith, and this faith is my support, my refuge, my consolation, my solace in this fearful moment."

[257] See our discussion on the PensÉes de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series.

[258] See the end of the first book of the Republic, vol. ix. of our translation.

[259] Esprit des Lois, passim.

[260] Works of Turgot, vol. ii., Discours en Sorbonne sur les Avantages que l'Établissement du Christianism a procurÉs au Genre Humain, etc.

[261] In the Correspondence, the letter to Dr. Stiles, March 9, 1790, written by Franklin a few months before his death: "I am convinced that the moral and religious system which Jesus Christ has transmitted to us is the best that the world has seen or can see."—We here re-translate, not having the works of Franklin immediately at hand.

[262] We have not ceased to claim, to earnestly call for, the alliance between Christianity and philosophy, as well as the alliance between the monarchy and liberty. See particularly 3d Series, vol. iv., Philosophie Contemporaine, preface of the second edition; 4th Series, vol. i., Pascal, 1st and 2d preface, passim; 5th Series, vol. ii., Discours À la Chambre des Paris pour le Defence de l'UniversitÉ et de la Philosophie. We everywhere profess the most tender veneration for Christianity,—we have only repelled the servitude of philosophy, with Descartes, and the most illustrious doctors of ancient and modern times, from St. Augustine and St. Thomas, to the Cardinal de la Lucerne and the Bishop of Hermopolis. Moreover, we love to think that those quarrels, originating in other times from the deplorable strife between the clergy and the University, have not survived it, and that now all sincere friends of religion and philosophy will give each other the hand, and will work in concert to encourage desponding souls and lift up burdened characters.

[263] Still living in 1818, died in 1828.

[264] In 1804.

[265] Died, 1814.

[266] This was said in 1818. Since then, Jacobi, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, with so many others, have disappeared. Schelling alone survives the ruins of the German philosophy.

[267] Fragments de Philosophie CartÉsienne, p. 429: Des Rapports du CartÉsienisme et du Spinozisme.

[268] Part 1st, lectures 1 and 2.

[269] Part 2d.

[270] Part 3d.

[271] On Condillac, 1st Series, vol. i., passim, and particularly vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3.

[272] We have never spoken of Locke except with sincere respect, even while combating him. See 1st Series, vol. i., course of 1817, Discours d'Ouverture, vol. ii., lecture 1, and especially 2d Series, vol. iii., passim.

[273] See 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on Reid.

[274] Ibid., vol. v.

[275] For more than twenty years we have thought of translating and publishing the three Critiques, joining to them a selection from the smaller productions of Kant. Time has been wanting to us for the completion of our design; but a young and skilful professor of philosophy, a graduate of the Normal School, has been willing to supply our place, and to undertake to give to the French public a faithful and intelligent version of the greatest thinker of the eighteenth century. M. Barni has worthily commenced the useful and difficult enterprise which we have remitted to his zeal, and pursues it with courage and talent.

[276] Part 1st, Lecture 3.

[277] Lecture 5, Mysticism.

[278] This pretended proof of sentiment is in fact, the Cartesian proof itself. See lectures 4 and 16.

[279] M. Jacobi. See the Manual of the History of Philosophy, by Tennemann, vol. ii., p. 318.

[280] On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st part, lect. 2 and 3.

[281] Lectures 4 and 5.

[282] See particularly lecture 5.

[283] We place here this analogous passage on the true measure in which it may be said that God is at once comprehensible and incomprehensible, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 12: "We say in the first place that God is not absolutely incomprehensible, for this manifest reason, that, being the cause of this universe, he passes into it, and is reflected in it, as the cause in the effect; therefore we recognize him. 'The heavens declare his glory.' and 'the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made;' his power, in the thousands of worlds sown in the boundless regions of space; his intelligence in their harmonious laws; finally, that which there is in him most august, in the sentiments of virtue, of holiness, and of love, which the heart of man contains. It must be that God is not incomprehensible to us, for all nations have petitioned him, since the first day of the intellectual life of humanity. God, then, as the cause of the universe, reveals himself to us; but God is not only the cause of the universe, he is also the perfect and infinite cause, possessing in himself, not a relative perfection, which is only a degree of imperfection, but an absolute perfection, an infinity which is not only the finite multiplied by itself in those proportions which the human mind is able always to enumerate, but a true infinity, that is, the absolute negation of all limits, in all the powers of his being. Moreover, it is not true that an indefinite effect adequately expresses an infinite cause; hence it is not true that we are able absolutely to comprehend God by the world and by man, for all of God is not in them. In order absolutely to comprehend the infinite, it is necessary to have an infinite power of comprehension, and that is not granted to us. God, in manifesting himself, retains something in himself which nothing finite can absolutely manifest; consequently, it is not permitted us to comprehend absolutely. There remains, then, in God, beyond the universe and man, something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence in the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new manifestations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible; but even of this incomprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea; for we have the most precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in us a metaphysical refinement, it is a simple and primitive conception which enlightens us from our entrance into this world, both luminous and obscure, explaining everything, and being explained by nothing, because it carries us at first, to the summit and the limit of all explanation. There is something inexplicable for thought,—behold then whither thought tends; there is infinite being,—behold then the necessary principle of all relative and finite beings. Reason explains not the inexplicable, it conceives it. It is not able to comprehend infinity in an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some degree in its indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it; and, further, as it has been said, it comprehend it so far as incomprehensible. It is, therefore, an equal error to call God absolutely comprehensible, and absolutely incomprehensible. He is both invisible and present, revealed and withdrawn in himself, in the world and out of the world, so familiar and intimate with his creatures, that we see him by opening our eyes, that we feel him in feeling our hearts beat, and at the same time inaccessible in his impenetrable majesty, mingled with every thing, and separated from every thing, manifesting himself in universal life, and causing scarcely an ephemeral shadow of his eternal essence to appear there, communicating himself without cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at once the living God, and the God concealed, 'Deus vivus et Deus absconditus.'"

[284] This is the sketch which FÉlibien so justly praises, part v., p. 37, of the 1st edition, in 4to.

[285] This great work has been long in England, as remarked by Mariette, see the Abecedario, just published, article S. Bourdon, vol. i., p. 171. It appears to have been a favorite work of Bourdon, he having himself engraved it, see de Piles, AbrÉgÉ de la Vie des Peintres, 2d edition, p. 494, and the Peintre graveur franÇais, of M. Robert Dumesnil, vol. i., p. 131, etc. The copperplates of the Seven Works of Mercy are at the Louvre.

[286] The Libro di VeritÀ is now the property of the Duke of Devonshire. M. LÉon de Laborde has given a detailed account of it in the Archives de l'Art franÇais, tom. i., p. 435, et seq.

[287] The first composition of Arcadia, truly precious could it have been placed in the Louvre beside the second and better production, is in England, the property of the Duke of Devonshire.

[288] In the first set of the Seven Sacraments, executed for the Chevalier del Pozzo, now in England, the property of the Duke of Rutland, and with which we are acquainted only through engravings, Christ is placed on the left hand; it is less masterly and imposing, and the centre has a vacant appearance. In the second set, painted five or six years after the former for M. de Chanteloup, Christ is placed in the centre: this new disposition changes the entire effect of the piece. Poussin never repeated himself in treating the same subject a second time, but improved on it, aiming ever at perfection. And the memorable answer which he once made to one who inquired of him by what means he had attained to so great perfection, "I never neglected any thing," should be always present to the mind of every artist, painter, sculptor, poet, or composer.

[289] Poussin writes to M. de Chanteloup, April 25, 1644 (Lettres de Poussin, Paris, 1824), "I am working briskly at the Extreme Unction, which is indeed a subject worthy of Apelles, who was very fond of representing the dying." He adds, with a vivacity which seems to indicate that he took a particular fancy to this painting, "I do not intend to quit it whilst I feel thus well-disposed, until I have put it in fair train for a sketch. It is to contain seventeen figures of men, women, and children, young and old, one part of whom are drowned in tears, whilst the others pray for the dying. I will not describe it to you more in detail. In this, my clumsy pen is quite unfit, it requires a gilded and well-set pencil. The principal figures are two feet high; the painting will be about the size of your Manne, but of better proportion." FÉlibien, a friend and confidant of Poussin, likewise remarks (Entretiens, etc., part iv., p. 293), that the Extreme Unction was one of the paintings which pleased him most. We learn at length, from Poussin's letters, that he finished it and sent it into France in this same year, 1644. FÉnoien informs us that in 1646 he completed the Confirmation, in 1647 the Baptism, the Penance, the Ordination and the Eucharist, and that he sent the last sacrament, that of Marriage, at the commencement of the year 1648. Bellori (le Vite de Pittori, etc., Rome, 1672) gives a full and detailed description of the Extreme Unction; and, as he lived with Poussin, it seems credible that his explanations are for the most part those he had himself received from the great artist.

[290] The drawing of the Extreme Unction is at the Louvre; the drawings of the five other sacraments are in the rich cabinet of M. de la Salle, that of the seventh is the property of the well-known print seller, M. Deter.

[291] There is here likewise a charming Francis II., wholly from the hand of Clouet, and the portrait of FÉnelon by Rigaud, which may be the original or at all events is not inferior to the painting in the gallery at Versailles.