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little by little to their veritable origin; while the systematic psychology of Locke, plunging into the question of the origin of our ideas and of our principles, before having determined with precision the characters by which they are actually marked, and admitting no other origin than sensation or reflection, believes that it can find the origin of the idea of cause in sensation; then forced to abandon this origin, it goes from sensation to reflection; but this origin which can give us the idea of voluntary personal cause, can give this idea alone, and not the principle of causality, and consequently cannot explain the knowledge of purely efficient external causes. If then we wish to stop at this narrow origin, what must be done? With this universal and necessary result, that we conceive causes out of ourselves which are not ourselves, it is necessary to confound this other purely accidental fact, that we sometimes conceive these causes, as personal causes; so as to explain the knowledge of exterior causes by simple induction from our own causality, and the principle of causality by reflection, that is, by one of the two adopted origins of all knowledge. But again the conception of exterior causes, as personal and endowed with consciousness, is but an error of the infancy of human reason, and not a law of this reason: we cannot draw from it an explanation of the legitimate, universal, and necessary belief of the human race.

In closing, I must ask pardon for the length of this lecture; but I owed this discussion, though very imperfect, both to the importance of the subject and to the memory of the great metaphysician, who by his very sagacity and his profoundness was led astray upon the steps of Locke. Endowed with an admirable psychological acuteness, M. de Biran penetrated so far into the intimacy of the fact of consciousness which gives us the idea of cause, the idea of the voluntary and personal cause which we are, that he scarcely went out from this fact and from this idea, and neglected too much the principle of causality, confounding thus, like Locke, the antecedent of the principle with the principle itself; or when he tried to explain the principle of

causality, explaining it by a natural induction which transports into the external world consciousness, the will, and all the peculiar attributes of its model, taking a particular, transient, and erroneous application of the principle of causality for this principle, in itself true, universal, and necessary; that is, confounding by a single error, no more the antecedent with the consequent, but the consequent with the antecedent. The theory of M. de Biran is the development of that of Locke; it reproduces it with more extent and profoundness, and exhausts at once its merits and its defects.

LECTURE XX.

ESSAY, SECOND BOOK. OF GOOD AND EVIL. THIRD BOUF

WORDS.

Continuation of the examination of the Second Book of the Essay on the Human Understanding. Of the idea of good and evil. Refutation.-úf the formation and mechanism of ideas in the understanding. Of simple and complex ideas. Of the activity and passivity of the mind in the acquisition of ideas. Of the most general characters of ideas. Of the association of ideas.-Examination of the Third Book of the Essay on the Human Understanding, in regard to words.-Praise due to the author.-Examination of the following propositions: 1st, Do words take their first origin from other words which signify sensible ideas?-2d, Is the signification of words purely arbitrary ?-3d, Are general ideas merely words? Of nominalism and realism.-4th, Are words the sole cause of error, and is all science only a well-constructed language? Conclusion of the examination of the Third Book.

It is* an incontestable fact that, when we have done right or wrong, when we have fulfilled the law of justice or have broken it, we judge that we merit a reward or a punishment; and it is also a fact that we really do receive reward or punishment, 1st. in the approval of conscience or in the bitterness of remorse; 2d, in the esteem or blame of our fellow-men, who, being also moral beings, judge as we do of good and evil, and punish us and reward us according to our acts, sometimes by the pain or the moral recompense of their blame or of their esteem, sometimes by the rewards or the physical pains which positive laws, the legitimate interpreters of natural law, hold ready for generous actions or for derelictions and crimes; 3d, finally, if we look beyond this world, if we conceive of God as we ought to conceive of him, not only as the author of the physical world, but as the

* On the idea of good and evil, of obligation, of merit and demerit, see 1st Series, passim, and particularly Vol. 2, Lecture 20.

father of the moral world, as the substance itself of good and of the moral law, we cannot help conceiving that God holds ready rewards or punishments for those who have fulfilled or broken the law. But suppose that there is neither good nor evil, neither justice nor injustice in itself; suppose that there is no law: there can then be neither merit nor demerit in having broken or fulfilled it; there is no place for punishment or reward; there is no place either for the pleasures of conscience or the pangs of remorse; there is no place either for the approbation or disapprobation of men, either for their esteem or their blame; there is no place either for the punishments or the rewards of society in this life, or in the life to come for the rewards and punishments of the supreme Legislator. The idea of reward and punishment rests, therefore, upon that of merit and demerit, which again rests upon that of a law. Now, what does Locke here do? he draws the idea of good and evil, the moral law and all the rules of our duties, from the fear and the hope of rewards and punishments, human or divine, that is,—to shun every other consideration, and to rest upon the solid ground of scientific method,-he founds the principle upon the consequence; he confounds, no longer as heretofore, the antecedent with the consequent, but the consequent with the antecedent. And whence comes this confusion? from that same source of confusion which we have so many times signalized, the premature search for causes before a sufficient study of effects, the search for the origin of the idea of good and evil, before having carefully stated the characters, and all the characters, of this idea. Permit me to dwell a moment on this important matter.

First, that there is in the human understanding, such as it now is, the idea of good, and the idea of evil, entirely distinct from each other, is what the most superficial observation, provided it be impartial, easily demonstrates. It is a fact, that in the presence of certain actions reason qualifies them as good or bad, as just or unjust, as honest or dishonest. And it is not only in some superior men that reason bears this judgment: there is not

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