In the two centuries after Descartes France, so great in science, history, and literature, had produced no original philosopher, although general ideas derived from English thought were extensively circulated for the purpose of discrediting the old order in Church and State. When this work had been done with a thoroughness going far beyond the intention of the first reformers a reaction set in, and the demand arose for something more conservative than the so-called sensualism and materialistic atheism of the pre-revolutionary times. A certain originality and speculative disinterestedness must be allowed to Maine de Biran (1766-1824), who, some years after Fichte—but, as would seem, independently of him—referred to man's voluntary activity as a source of à priori knowledge. A greater immediate impression was produced by Royer-Collard (1763-1845), who, as Professor at the Sorbonne in 1811, imported the common-sense spiritualism of Reid (1710-1796) as an antidote to the then reigning theories of Condillac (1715-1780), who, improving on Locke, abolished reflection as a distinct source of our ideas. Then came Victor Cousin (1792-1867), a brilliant rhetorician, and, after Madame de Staël, the first to popularise German philosophy in France. As
Professor at the Sorbonne in the last years of the Bourbon monarchy he distinctly taught a pantheistic Absolutism compounded of Schelling and Hegel; but, whether from conviction or opportunism, this was silently withdrawn, and a so-called eclectic philosophy put in its place. According to Cousin, in all countries and all ages, from ancient India to modern Europe, speculation has developed under the four contrasted forms of sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism. Each is true in what it asserts, false in what it denies, and the right method is to preserve the positive while rejecting the negative elements of all four. But neither the master nor his disciples have ever consistently answered the vital question, what those elements are.
Hamilton and the Philosophy of the Conditioned.
Among other valuable contributions to the history of philosophy, Victor Cousin had lectured very agreeably on the philosophy of Kant, accepting the master's arguments for the apriorism of space and time, but rejecting his reduction of them to mere subjective forms as against common sense. He had not gone into Kant's destructive criticism of all metaphysics, and this was now to be turned against him by an unexpected assailant. Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856), afterwards widely celebrated as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh, began his philosophical career by an essay on "The Philosophy of the Conditioned" in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1829, controverting the Absolutism both of Cousin and of his master, Schelling. The reviewer had acquired some not very accurate knowledge of Kant in Germany ten years before; and he uses this, with other rather flimsy
erudition, to establish the principle that to think is to condition, and that therefore the Absolute cannot be thought—cannot be conceived. Hamilton enjoyed the reputation of having read "all that mortal man had ever written about philosophy"; but this evidently did not include Hegel, who certainly had performed the feat declared to be impossible. Thirty years later the philosophy of the conditioned attained a sudden but transient notoriety, thanks to the use made of it by Hamilton's disciple, H. L. Mansel, in his Bampton Lectures on The Limits of Religious Thought (1858). The object of these was to prove that, as we know nothing about Things-in-themselves, nothing told about God in the Bible or the Creeds can be rejected à priori as incredible. As an apology, the book failed utterly, its only effect being to prepare public opinion for the Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer and Huxley.
Auguste Comte.
The brilliant audiences that hung spell-bound on the lips of Victor Cousin as he unrolled before them the Infinite, the Finite, and the relation between the two, little knew that France's only great philosopher since Descartes was working in obscurity among them. Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the founder of Positivism, belonged to a Catholic and Legitimist family. By profession a mathematical teacher, he fell early under the influence of the celebrated St. Simon, a mystical socialist who exercised a powerful attraction on others besides Comte. The connection lasted four years, when they quarrelled; indeed Comte's character was such as to make permanent co-operation with him impossible, except on terms of absolute agreement with his opinions and submission to his will. At a
subsequent period he obtained some fairly well-paid employment at the École Polytechnique, but lost it again owing to the injurious terms in which he spoke of his colleagues. In his later years he lived on a small annuity made up by contributions from his admirers.
