Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/120

106 The second part deals with the content of morality. The good cannot be identified with the agreeable, the useful, or the true. The good can be adequately conceived only as a form of the beautiful. In effect the assimilation of the two terms is accomplished by the easy syllogism, "Courage is beautiful, and all virtue is a form of courage." The author maintains that many advantages follow from treating ethics as a branch of æsthetics. Without detracting from the authority of duty, such a treatment permits us to reconcile all the conflicting theories which identify the good with the agreeable, the useful, and the true; for all these conceptions have this in common, that they are all summed up in the beautiful. It also discards the chimæra of a rigorous and logical science of morality. Further, it resolves the antimony of the form and content of morality, and makes it possible to reconcile nature and morality.

In the third part, which treats of the relation of ethics to metaphysics, this reconciliation is attempted. But, as the author underestimates the dualism of nature and morality, he has a comparatively simple task in merging them. On the one hand, nature devotes all its forces to the service of morality, it always tends to morality; and, on the other hand, morality is a great creative power, producing a new nature.

This is the first volume of Cousin's famous translation of the Dialogues of Plato, re-edited in the second edition by Barthélemy-Saint Hilaire. It contains the first tetralogy of Thrasyllus: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phædo, and an introductory essay by the editor on the philosophical and historical significance of Platonism. This initial volume was prepared for the press shortly before the death of Barthélemy, when he was already ninety years of age, and posthumously published under the direction of his literary executor, M. René Millet.

Cousin died in 1867. Early in January of that year Barthélemy visited him in Cannes, in the mild climate of which they had planned to spend the winter together. In one of their conversations, Barthélemy called Cousin's attention to the need of a new edition of his translation of Plato. At that time Cousin was much occupied with other studies, especially with the revision of the twelfth edition of his Histoire générale de la philosophie. Moreover, he had put aside his studies in Plato in 1840, when they had been interrupted by work in the modern period of literature and philosophy and in public education. He felt, therefore, that to return to a revision of this work would require the expenditure of a year in preliminary studies. It was for this reason that he begged Barthélemy thirty years ago to undertake the revision, for which he considered himself less well prepared. Barthélemy, however, was at that time an exceedingly busy man, interested in