1

doubt whether such a rhetorician is at heart a Transcendentalist. Certain lines from one of Toppan's translations 1 ought to dispel at once from our minds any misgivings on this score. The accomplishment of our end or of our good, and the accomplishment of the end or the good of other beings is, according to Jouffroy, our duty, the moral law. It arises "from a certain number of truths a priori, which, in making their appearance in our understanding, illuminate the creation with a searchlight, reveal the meaning of it, solve the problem and unfold its law. Experience excites in us the manifestation of these truths, but it does not produce them; they exist a priori, and they are, therefore, universal, absolute, necessarily conceived." The Transcendental note in these lines is in truth so obvious as to bear striking resemblance to the tenor of Kant's thoughts concerning the categorical imperative.

Jouffroy was, we know, an Eclectic. He seized here and there upon the quintessence of philosophy in philosophy and set it forth in fresh form in his own writings. Let us, then, conclude our exposition of his Eclecticism with a few excerpts, of a noteworthy Transcendental trend, from his lectures in the various American translations:

"By an irresistible tendency, thought arises from individual to social order, from social to human order, from human to universal order. Universal order supposes a universal maker, of whom it is at once the thought and work. Human intelligence then ascends even to God, and there it finally rests, because there it finally discovers the source of that immense stream which the inflexible logic of principles governing it obliges it to ascend."

"High as is my respect for the popular mind, I yet think this popular mind rather fitted to recognize truth than to discover it; of all the great truths which have influenced the destinies of the human race, I know not one which originated in the instinct of the mass; they have all been the discoveries of gifted individuals, and the fruit of the solitary meditations of thinking men."

"Truth is order conceived, as beauty is order realized. In other words, absolute truth, the perfect truth, which we imagine in the Deity, and of which we only possess fragments in ourselves—is not, and cannot be,

Theoretical Views.

anything more than the eternal laws of that order which all things tend to fulfil, and all rational beings are bound voluntarily to advance."

"Our capacities are ours, but are not ourselves; our nature is ours, but is not ourselves; that alone is ourselves which takes possession of our nature and of our capacities, and which makes them ours; we are found entirely in the power which we have of mastering ourselves; it is the action of this power which constitutes our personality."

"There is no contradiction between faith and skepticism; for man believes by instinct and doubts by reason."

Jouffroy did not seek in philosophy merely the origin and nature of ethical ideas and the nature in general of the human understanding. He made, as well, philosophical inquiries about God and his works, about the universe and its ends, about death and the hereafter; and he troubled his spirit a deal to arrive at right conclusions concerning these problems. Jouffroy manifests in the course of his investigations above all else two distinctive qualities, — fineness of observation and clearness of reasoning. And these two qualities enabled him, under all circumstances, broadly speaking, to analyse with acumen and infer with sureness.

With his power of observation and proficiency in generalization, Jouffroy distinguishes carefully in man the spiritual from the vital principles which are the main objects of the two sciences - psychology and physiology. He shadows forth, too, quite distinctly the simple spiritual being in the midst of natural phenomena; and then, by means of subtle analysis, proves reason to be the bond between the spiritual and material in man. The moral in the social order, according to Jouffroy, is simply the law of conduct in consonance with the ends of human nature and human reason.

Jouffroy evinces in his make-up, from beginning to end, a deal of the artist and man of religion as well as the idealistic and ethical eclectic philosopher. He sees in the beautiful a religious phase of the good; and he perceives in justice and sympathy a moral side. The truth, to him, is order in thought; the good is order in conduct; the beautiful order in form. These religious and artistic conceptions he brings out especially happily in his "Cours de droit naturel" and in his doctrines "d'Esthétique."

Jouffroy is not only a remarkable thinker, he is also a gracious and, at times, even a brilliant writer. He had, as his utterances

plainly show, integrity of spirit, elevation of mind, fineness of feeling, analytical acumen. Although not particularly powerful as a philosophical lecturer and writer, he yet expresses himself with unusual distinction. There is in his utterances, indeed, a certain intangible modesty, sage reticence, delicate forthcoming of a noble soul, that invests what he says with a charm beyond and above what could be achieved by mere power.

But Jouffroy, like his predecessor, Cousin, errs somewhat on the side of the superficial. He undertakes almost too wide a survey in the province of philosophy; touches too generally only on the summits in systems of ethics; descends too infrequently to specific details. He undoubtedly had the genius for drawing up orderly expositions and effecting clever generalizations; but he had not the genius for organic and consistent synthesis. He not unseldom is swayed in one lecture toward idealism, and in another toward materialism, and always he manifests a slight bent toward an orthodox monism.

It is evident that he vaguely respected the word science and enjoyed the exercise of pure reason; but the exercise of inexorable rationality concerning problems in philosophy was almost as alien to him as it was to Amiel. He appears to have been perpetually a prey to conscientious misgivings.

Jouffroy, in short, seems always to have felt it more or less necessary to doubt, to doubt the validity of psychological ethics apart from religious sensibility, and to doubt the validity of religious sensibility apart from psychological ethics. He never, however, in his chief utterances, departs widely from a discreet psychological standpoint. He is in certain respects in the field of philosophy, like his contemporary and colleague, Cousin, too much inclined to be a mediator, a moderator, an opportunist. He has the merits and the defects of the eclectic philosophers in particular and the system of nineteenth-century eclecticism in general.

4. TRANSCENDENTALISM IN FRENCH DRESS

In the course of the development of philosophy in France in the nineteenth century, at the time when the Transcendental philosophy of Kant and his followers was beginning to have vogue, one may

almost invariably detect a note of order and a consecutiveness standing forth throughout the process of development. Rationalism, more or less humanistic and utilitarian in nature, seems indeed to constitute from first to last-despite idealistic, Transcendental, or whatever other tendencies in the air - the keynote of French philosophy. This element of rationalism, at all events, appears to be conspicuously present in the idealistic philosophy in France of the early nineteenth century, the eclectic philosophy of the Restoration Period.

There are discernible, too, in the philosophy of France in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, two kinds of rationalism; they might be described respectively as naturalistic rationalism and as ethical rationalism. The first order, more or less impractical, is embodied in the sentimental philosophy of Rousseau and his various disciples. The other order, savoring more of the normal and practical, is well set forth in the psychological philosophy of Royer-Collard and Maine de Biran. Both these orders tend to slide into one, blended with the Transcendental philosophy current in France at the time, in the compromise philosophy of the Eclectics Cousin and Jouffroy. And the eclectic philosophy of Cousin and Jouffroy, under the influence of French civilization, appears gradually to slide off into the somewhat abnormal, socialistic, and utilitarian philosophy of the French philanthropist, Fourier.

Philibert Damiron tells us in a characteristically orderly and consecutive French way, in his exposition of French philosophy,' that there were in France during the first decennia of the nineteenth century three schools, (1) the Sensualistic, (2) the Theological, and (3) the Spiritualistic Schools. This intelligent classification of Damiron is, in a general sense, skilfully adopted and developed by Paul Janet, a pupil of Cousin, in the essay entitled "Le Spiritualisme français ou xix siècle.”2

Janet declares, in brief, that philosophy in France at the end of the Revolution and at the beginning of the nineteenth century was entirely dominated by the Sensationalistic School of philosophy,

1 Ph. Damiron, Essais sur l'histoire de la philosophie en France au XIX siècle, Paris, 1828.

'Q. v. Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 75, 1868, pp. 353–385.

the philosophy of Condillac; the physiological Condillacism was represented by Cabanis (1757-1808), and the ideological Condillacism was represented by De Tracy (1754-1836). Then there naturally set in a reaction against the Sensationalistic, or Sensualistic, School. The reactionary faction is known as the Theological School: De Bonald (1754-1840), the first of the theologians, declared revelation to be the principle of all knowledge; the Abbé de Lamennais (1782-1854) is notable as the chief advocate of theological skepticism in the nineteenth century; and Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), dreamed of a vast religious renovation, and is reputed the founder of modern Ultramontanism. And, finally, there came into being, the Spiritualistic, or Psychological School, which was entirely independent of theology; sought in psychology the principles of ethics and theology; and incarnated, withal, in some measure, the modern Transcendental tendencies of Kant.

The Psychological School, which we have already discussed at considerable length, was at first represented by Royer-Collard (1766-1824), and later by the French Eclectics, Victor Cousin, and his disciple, Théodore Jouffroy. But the idealistic psychological Eclecticism of Cousin and Jouffroy is simply an orderly and logical outcome of the philosophy in France immediately preceding. A careful analysis of nineteenth century French Eclecticism clearly shows, indeed, in greater or less degree, elements of the prior Sensualistic, Theological, and Spiritualistic Schools, — intermixed more or less with certain exotic elements of Scotch Idealism and German Transcendentalism.

The organization of institutions of higher learning in France, in the early nineteenth century, opened for philosophers brilliant careers of letters and helped to accentuate the idealistic and rationalistic tendencies in French philosophy. Among the most noteworthy of the men who held professorships of philosophy in the universities were the French Eclectics, Cousin and Jouffroy. In describing these two distinguished exponents of idealistic rationalism in France in the nineteenth century, one writer says of Victor Cousin, " tempérament imaginatif, passionnait l'histoire de la philosophie par de vives allusions que l'auditoire saissait au vol. Il déroulait tous les systèmes, et l'infini, en belles phrases harmoni