Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/322

Rh 302 M A I M A I 1680 square miles than the States of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. In the war against secession the service of the State was prompt and efficient. Maine sent to the front 72,000 men, of whom not less than 20,000 gave their lives for the cause. These volunteers were distributed in thirty-two regiments of infantry, two regiments of cavalry, one regiment of artillery, one battalion of sharpshooters, and 6764 enlistments in the navy. The whole amount of State and municipal debt incurred in raising and equipping these troops was about $12,000,000. The United States afterwards reimbursed the State to th.e amount of $668,284, most of which was applied to form a sinking fund for extinguishing the war debt at maturity. The State also provided pensions for its disabled soldiers and their families. (J. L. C.) MAINE DE BIRAN, FRANSOIS-PIERRE-GONTHIER (1766-1824), a distinguished philosopher of France, the son of a physician, was born at Bergerac November 29, 1766. After studying with distinction under the doctrin aires of Perigueux, he entered the life-guards of Louis XVI., and was present at Versailles on the notable 5th and 6th of October 1789. On the breaking up of the garde du corps, Maine de Biran retired to his patrimonial inheritance of Grateloup, near Bergerac, where his sequestered residence and limited income preserved him from the horrors of the Revolution. It was at this period that, as he says himself, he &quot; passed per saltum from frivolity to philosophy.&quot; The forced leisure of this fearful time decided the vocation of his life. He combined, in a more than ordinary degree, subtle sensitiveness to external influences with singular acuteness in surveying and analysing internal phenomena. The modes of the mind and their organic causes or condi tions were alike submitted to his scrutiny. He began his philosophical studies with psychology, and he made psycho logy the study of his life. When the Reign of Terror was succeeded by calmer days, Maine de Biran was called to take part in the administrative and political affairs of his country. After his exclusion from the council of the Five Hundred on being suspected of royalism, he took part with his friend Laine in the commission of 1813, which gave expression for the first time to direct opposition to the will of the emperor. After the Restoration he held the office of treasurer to the chamber of deputies, and habitually retired during the autumn recess to his native district to pursue his favourite study. He died 16th July 1824. Maine de Biran s philosophical reputation has suffered from two causes the obscure, laboured quality of his style, and the un fortunate mode of publication of his writings. In all his work there is evidence of thorough originality of thinking, but in the expression of his thoughts this very originality is so far a disad vantage in that it imposes on him a mode of exposition little calculated to attract and retain the attention of a reader. During his life, moreover, but few, and these the least characteristic of his works, were formally published. An essay on habit (Sur I Influence de I Habitude, 1803), a critical review of Laromiguiere s lectures (1817), and the philosophical portion of the article Leibnitz in the Biographic Universelle (1819) appeared during his lifetime. A long memoir on the analysis of thought (Sur la Decomposition de la Pensee], crowned by the Institute in 1805, was sent to press, but, for some reason, was not finally printed. His manuscripts, very large in quantity, were not made accessible in their entirety to Cousin when that writer desired to prepare a collective edition of De Biran s works. In 1834 the writings above enumer ated, together with the important essay entitled Nouvelles con siderations sur les rapports du rjhysique et du, moral de Thomme, were published by Cousin, and in 1841 there were added three volumes by the same editor, under the title (Em-res philosophiques de Maine de Limn. The manuscripts from which Cousin had prepared this edition were, however, in a most imperfect condition, and it was known that some memoirs to which De Biran attached the greatest importance were still in obscurity. In 1845 a large mass of manuscript was placed by De Biran s son in the hands of F. M. E. Naville. The labour of preparing these for publication, interrupted by the death of Naville in 1846, was continued by his son, E. Naville, and completed, with the aid of M. Debrit, in 1859. The CEuvres ineditcs de M. de Biran, 3 vols., rendered it possible for the first time to obtain a connected view of a very remarkable monument of philosophical development. In these volumes the most important work is that entitled Essai sur les fondemcnts de la psychologic et sur scs rapports avec Vttude de la nature, which represents the completest stage of De Biran s thinking. A later stage is represented *?y the fragments of a projected work entitled Nouveaux Essais d Anthropologie, in which the psychology of the earlier treatise is developed in the direction of a somewhat mystical inetaphysic. De Biran s first essays in philosophy were written avowedly from the point of view of Locke and Condillac, but even in them he was brought to signalize the essential fact on which his later speculation turns. Dealing with the formation of habits, he is compelled to note that passive impressions, however transformed, do not furnish a complete or adequate explanation. With Laromiguiere he dis tinguishes attention as an active effort, of no less importance than the passive receptivity of sense, and with Butler distinguishes passively formed customs from active habits. Prolonged medita tion, evidenced in the occasional writings, prize essays, and the like of the subsequent years, brought him to the far-reaching conclusion that Condillac s notion of passive receptivity as the one source of conscious experience was not only an error in fact but an error of method, in short, that the mechanical mode of viewing conscious ness as formed by external influence was fallacious and deceptive. For it he proposed to substitute the genetic method, whereby human conscious experience might be exhibited as growing or developing from its essential basis in connexion with external conditions. The essential basis he finds in the real consciousness of self as an active striving power, and the stages of its development, correspond ing to what one may call the relative importance of the external conditions and the reflective clearness of self-consciousness, he designates as the affective, the perceptive, and the reflective. These stages are characterized with much skill and psychological acuteness, and in connexion therewith De Biran treats most of the obscure problems which arise in dealing with conscious experience, such as the mode by which the organism is cognized, the mode by which the organism is distinguished from extra-organic things, and the nature of those general ideas by which the relations of things are known to us cause, power, force, &c. His views are always suggestive, and the best recent psychology in France is but a reproduction of some of them. In the latest stage of his speculation De Biran distinguishes the animal existence from the human, under which the three forms above noted are classed, and both from the life of the spirit, in which human thought is brought into relation with the supersensible, divine system of things. This stage, as above said, is left imperfect. Altogether De Biran s work presents a very remarkable specimen of deep metaphysical thinking directed by preference to the psychological aspect of experience. It is almost a solitary instance of an effort to treat psychology in a wide and philosophical manner. The CEuvres ineditcs of De Biran by Naville contain an intro ductory study. Special monographs on him are Merten, Etude critique sur Maine de Biran, 1865 ; E. Naville, Maine de Biran, sa vie et ses pensecs, 2d ed., 1874 ; Gerard, Maine de Biran, essai sur sa philosorjhie, 1876. MAINE-ET-LOIRE, a western department of France, lying between 47 and 47 50 N. lat., and between 15 E. and 1 20 W. long., consists of the southern portion of the former province of Anjou, and is bounded on the N. by the departments of Mayenne and Sarthe, on the E. by Indre-et-Loire, on the S. by Deux-Sevres and Vendde, on the W. by Loire-infe rieure, and on the N.W. by Ille-et- Vilaine. The extreme length from north-east to south west is about 78 miles ; the breadth from north to south ranges from 25 to 50 miles, and the area is 2750 square miles. The capital, Angers, lies 162 miles south-west from Paris. The department is made up of two distinct regions, the line of demarcation running from south-east to north-west, and passing through Angers ; that to the south consists of granites, felspars, and a continuation of the geological formations of Brittany and Vendee ; to the north, on the contrary, schists, limestone, and chalk pre vail. The general elevation of the latter region is but small, and none of its eminences exceed 330 feet in height ; the former, on the contrary, has a surface richly varied with deep winding valleys clothed with woods and thickets, though the highest points are under 700 feet. The department belongs entirely to the basin of the Loire, which traverses it from east to west by a valley varying in breadth from about 1 to 5 miles ; the bed is wide but shallow, and full of islands, the depth of the water in summer being at some places little more than 2 feet. The floods which occur are sudden and destructive.