The philosophic method in conformity with the Classic Sprit. —Ideology.—Abuse of the mathematical process.—Condillac, Rousseau, Mably, Condorcet, Volney, SieyÈs, Cabanis, and de Tracy.—Excesses of simplification and boldness of organization. The natural process of the classic spirit is to pursue in every research, with the utmost confidence, without either reserve or precaution, the mathematical method: to derive, limit and isolate a few of the simplest generalized notions and then, setting experience aside, comparing them, combining them, and, from the artificial compound thus obtained, by pure reasoning, deduce all the consequences they involve. It is so deeply implanted as to be equally encountered in both centuries, as well with Descartes, Malebranche3238 and the partisans of innate ideas as with the partisans of sensation, of physical needs and of primary instinct, Condillac, Rousseau, HelvÉtius, and later, Condorcet, Volney, SieyÈs, Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy. In vain do the latter assert that they are the followers of Bacon and reject (the theory of) innate ideas; with another starting point than the Cartesians they pursue the same path, and, as with the Cartesians, after borrowing a little, they leave experience behind them. In this vast moral and social world, they only remove the superficial bark from the human tree with its innumerable roots and branches; they are unable to penetrate to or grasp at anything beyond it; their hands cannot contain more. They have no suspicion of anything outside of it; the classic spirit, with limited comprehension, is not far-reaching. To them the bark is the entire tree, and, the operation once completed, they retire, bearing along with them the dry, dead epidermis, never returning to the trunk itself. Through intellectual incapacity and literary pride they omit the characteristic detail, the animating fact, the specific circumstance, the significant, convincing and complete example. Scarcely one of these is found in the "Logique" and in the "TraitÉ des Sensations" by Condillac, in the "IdÉologie" by Destutt de Tracy, or in the "Rapports du Physique et du Morale" by Cabanis.3239 Never, with them, are we on the solid and visible ground of personal observation and narration, but always in the air, in the empty space of pure generalities. Condillac declares that the arithmetical method is adapted to psychology and that the elements of our ideas can be defined by a process analogous "to the rule of three." SieyÈs holds history in profound contempt, and believes that he had "perfected the science of politics"3240 at one stroke, through an effort of the brain, in the style of Descartes, who thus discovers analytic geometry. Destutt de Tracy, in undertaking to comment on Montesquieu, finds that the great historian has too servilely confined himself to history, and attempts to do the work over again by organizing society as it should be, instead of studying society as it is.—Never were such systematic and superficial institutions built up with such a moderate extract of human nature.3241 Condillac, employing sensation, animates a statue, and then, by a process of pure reasoning, following up its effects, as he supposes, on smell, taste, hearing, sight and touch, fashions a complete human soul. Rousseau, by means of a contract, founds political association, and, with this given idea, pulls down the constitution, government and laws of every balanced social system. In a book which serves as the philosophical testament of the century,3242 Condorcet declares that this method is the "final step of philosophy, that which places a sort of eternal barrier between humanity and its ancient infantile errors." "By applying it to morals, politics and political economy the moral sciences have progressed nearly as much as the natural sciences. With its help we have been able to discover the rights of man." As in mathematics, they have been deduced from one primordial statement only, which statement, similar to a first principle in mathematics, becomes a fact of daily experience, seen by all and therefore self-evident.—This school of thought is to endure throughout the Revolution, the Empire and even into the Restoration,3243 together with the tragedy of which it is the sister, with the classic spirit their common parent, a primordial, sovereign power, as dangerous as it is useful, as destructive as it is creative, as capable of propagating error as truth, as astonishing in the rigidity of its code, the narrow-mindedness of its yoke and in the uniformity of its works as in the duration of its reign and the universality of its ascendancy.3244 3201 (return) 3202 (return) 3203 (return) 3204 (return) 3205 (return) 3206 (return) 3207 (return) 3208 (return) 3209 (return) 3210 (return) 3211 (return) 3212 (return) 3213 (return) 3214 (return) 3215 (return) 3216 (return) 3217 (return) 3218 (return) 3219 (return) 3220 (return) 3221 (return) 3222 (return) 3223 (return) 3224 (return) 3225 (return) 3226 (return) 3227 (return) 3228 (return) 3229 (return) 3230 (return) 3231 (return) 3232 (return) 3233 (return) 3234 (return) 3235 (return) 3236 (return) 3237 (return) 3238 (return) 3239 (return) 3240 (return) 3241 (return) 3242 (return) 3243 (return) 3244 (return) |