Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/554

Rh 522 COUSIN chair of the faculty of letters. But there was still another miud which influenced the young and susceptible philo sopher at this early period. This was Maine-de-Biran, the expounder of the volitional theory of cause, and the upholder of a highly spiritual philosophy. Cousin regarded Maine de-Biran as the unequalled psychological observer of his time in France, alike in the delicacy and the depth of his analysis. All these men strongly influenced both the .method and the matter of his philosophical thought. To Laromiguiere he himsslf attributes the lesson of decom posing thought, even though the reduction of it to sensation was inadequate. Royer-Collard taught him that even sensation is subject to certain internal laws and principles which it does not itself explain, which are superior to analysis and the natural patrimony of the mind. De Biran made a special study of the phenomena of the will. He taught him to distinguish in all cognitions, and especially in the simplest facts of consciousness, the fact of voluntary activity, that activity in which our personality is truly revealed. It was through this &quot; triple discipline,&quot; as he calls it, that Cousin s philosophical thought was first developed, and that in 1815 he entered on the public teaching of philosophy in the Normal School and in the faculty of letters 1. But the energy and impressibility of the young professor were not to be limited by the philo sophical thought of his own country. He betook himself to the study of German, worked at Kant and Jacobi, and then sought to master the Philosophy of Nature of Schelling. By this he was at first greatly attracted. The influence of Schelling became manifest in his teaching, and it may be observed very markedly in the earlier form of his philo sophy. He sympathized with the principle of faith of Jacobi, but regarded it as arbitrary so long as it was not recognized as grounded in reason. In 1817 he went to Germany, and met Hegel at Heidelberg. In this year appeared Hegel s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, of which Cousin had one of the earliest copies. He thought Hegel not particularly amiable ; bub the two became friends. The following year Cousin went to Munich, where he met Schelling for the first time, and spent a month with him and Jacobi, obtaining a deeper insight into the Philosophy of Nature. His contrast of Hegel and Schelling is interesting.. No two people, he tells us, can be more unlike than the master and the disciple. &quot; Hegel lets fall words few and profound, and somewhat enigmatic ; his speech is strong but embarrassed ; his immovable countenance, his clouded forehead, seem the image x&amp;gt;f thought which turns back on itself. Schelling is thought developed. His language is like his look, rapid, full of eclat and life. He is naturally eloquent.&quot; Cousin s future course in life as a professor of philosophy Political seemed now to be determined. But the political troubles troubles. o f the country were to interfere for a time with this promising career. In the events of 1814-15 Cousin took the royalist sids. He at first adopted the views of the party of which Royer-Collard was the philosophical chief, known as doctrinaire. He seems then to have gone further than this party, and even to have approached the extreme Left or Carbonari section of politicians. This has been alleged, though it is not in accordance with the usual moderation of his character and political views. Then came a reaction against liberalism, and in 1821-22 Cousin was deprived of his offices alike in the faculty of letters and in the Normal School. The Normal School itself was swept away. He simply shared at the hands of a narrow and illiberal Government, influenced mainly by the priest hood, the fate of Guizot, who was ejected from the chair of history. Such was the spirit which actuated the fiist 1 Fragmens Fhiloscnihiques, Preface Deuxieme. restoration and the Government of Louis XVIII. This enforced abandonment of public teaching was not wholly an evil to the young speculator. He again set out for Germany with a view to further philosophical study. And here there occurred a curious episode in his life. While at Berlin in 1824-25 he was arrested and thrown into prison, either on some ill-defined political charge at the instance of the French police, or on account of certain incautious expressions which he had let fall in conversation. This imprisonment was in fact the result of the persistent persecution of the man who exercised free thought and preached toleration, at the hands of the priestly party in France, who, ruling a weak king, had already deprived the professor of his public offices. Cousin was liberated at the end of six months, having thus for an abstract philosopher had a tolerable taste of political martyrdom. He continued under the suspicion of the French Government for three years longer. It was during this period, however, that he thought out and developed what is distinctive in his philo sophical doctrine. His eclecticism, ontology, and his philosophy of history were declared in principle and in most of their salient details in the Fragmens Philosophises Fra of 1826. The preface to the second edition (1833) and Phi the Avert issement to the third (1838) aimed at a vindi--^ ^ cation of his principles from hostile contemporary criticism. Even the best of his later books, the Philosophic Ecossaise, the Du Vrai, du Beau, et, du Bien, and the Philosophie de Locke were simply matured revisions of his lectures during the period from 1815 to 1820, The lectures on Locke were first sketched in 1819, and fully developed in the course of 1829. During the seven years of forced abandonment of teach ing, he produced, besides the Fragmens, the edition of the works of Proclus (6 vols. 1820-27), and the works of Des cartes (11 vols., 1826). He also commenced his Translation of Plato (13 vols.), which occupied his leisure time from 1825 to 1840. We see in the Fragmens very distinctly the fusion of the different philosophical influences of his life to which we have referred, and by which his opinions were finally moulded and matured. For Cousin was as eclectic in cast of thought and personal habit of mind, as he was in philo sophical principle and sj T stem. It is with the publication of the Fragmens of 1826 that the first great widening of his reputation is associated. In 1827 followed the Cours de I Histoire de la Philosophie. In 1828 popular feeling forced the king (Charles X.) to a change of ministry, and M. Martignac returned to the constitutional Charter of 1814, which sought to conciliate liberty and order, but which had been most unfaithfully worked under the restoration. A more enlightened and tolerant spirit seems to have arisen, and M. de Vatimesnil, minister of public instruction, recalled Cousin along with Guizot to their professorial positions in the university. Cousin s re-appearance in the chair, &quot; on the occasion,&quot; as he said, &quot;of the return of the constitutional hopes of France,&quot; was marked by an enthusiastic demonstration on the part of students and auditors. The professoriate in Paris reached its golden age, at least in this century, when Guizot, Villemain, and Cousin were now colleagues ia the faculty of letters. The three years which followed 1828 was the period of Care Cousin s greatest distinction and triumph as a lecturer, a lei- He re-appeared in sympathy with the national feeling of the time ; he had suffered for his adherence to popular principles ; his return to the chair was at once a compensa tion for what he had undergone, and the symbol of the triumph of constitutional ideas. This prepared a ready sympathy for him. The hall of the Sorbonne was crowded with auditors as the hall of no philosophical teacher in