It must be admitted, however, that Renan’s attitude to the problems of knowledge was largely sceptical. While, as we shall see in the following chapter, he extolled science, his attitude to belief and to knowledge was irritating in its vagueness and changeableness. He appeared to pose too much as a dilettante making a show of subtle intellect, rather than a serious thinker of the first rank. His eminence and genius are unquestioned, but he played in a bewitching and frequently bewildering manner with great and serious problems, and one cannot help wishing that this great intellect of his—and it was unquestionably great—was not more steady and was not applied by its owner more steadfastly and courageously to ultimate problems. His writings reflect a bewildering variety of contradictory moods, playful, scathing, serious and mocking. Indeed, he replied in his Feuilles detachées (1892) to the accusations of Amiel by insisting that irony is the philosopher’s last word. For him as for his brilliant fellow-countryman, Anatole France, ironical scepticism is the ultimate product of his reflection upon life. His Examen de Conscience philosophique is his Confession of Faith, written four years before his death, in which he tries to defend his sceptical attitude and to put forward scepticism as an apology for his own uncertainty and his paradoxical changes of view. Irony intermingles with his doubt here too. We do not know, he says, ultimate reality; we do not know whether there be any purpose or end in the universe at all. There may be, but on the other hand it may be a farce and fiasco. By refusing to believe in anything, rejecting both alternatives, Renan argues, with a kind of mental cowardice, we avoid the consequence of being absolutely deceived. He recommended an adoption of mixed belief and doubt, optimism and irony.
This is a surprising attitude in a philosopher and is not characteristic of great modern thinkers, most of whom prefer belief (hypothetical although that be) to non-belief. Doubtless Renan’s early training had a psychological effect which operated perhaps largely unconsciously throughout his life, and his literary and linguistic ability seems to have given him a reputation which was rather that of a man of letters than a philosopher. He had not the mental strength or frankness to face alternatives squarely and to decide to adopt one. Consequently he merited the application of the old proverb about being between two stools. This application was actually made to Renan’s attitude in a critical remark by Renouvier in his Esquisse d’une Classification des Doctrines philosphiques.[[16]] Renouvier had no difficulty in pointing out that the man who hesitates deprives himself of that great reality, the exercise of his own power of free choice, in itself valuable and more akin to reality (whatever be the choice) than a mere “sitting on the fence,” an attitude which, so far from assuring one of getting the advantages of both possibilities as Renan claims, may more justly seem to deprive one of the advantages in both directions. The needs of life demand that we construct beliefs of some sort. We may be wrong and err, but pure scepticism such as Renan advocated is untenable. Life, if it is to be real and earnest, demands of us that we have faith in some values, that we construct some beliefs, some hypotheses, by which we may work.
[16] Vol. ii., p. 395.
Both Renan and Taine exercised a considerable influence upon French thought. While inheriting the positivist outlook they, to a great degree, perhaps unconsciously, undermined the positive position, both by their interest in the humanities, in art, letters and religion and in their metaphysical attitude. Taine, beginning with a rigid naturalism, came gradually to approach an idealistic standpoint in many respects, while Renan, beginning with a dogmatic idealism, came to acute doubt, hypotheses, “dreams” and scepticism. Taine kept his thoughts in too rigid a mould, solidified, while those of Renan seem finally to have existed only in a gaseous state, intangible, vague and hazy. We have observed how the positivist current from Comte was carried over by Vacherot to Taine. In Renan we find that current present also, but it has begun to turn against itself. While we may say that his work reflects in a very remarkable manner the spirit of his time, especially the positivist faith in science, yet we are also able to find in it, in spite of his immense scepticism, the indications of a spiritualist or idealist movement, groping and shaping itself as the century grows older.
II
While the positivist current of thought was working itself out through Vacherot, Taine and Renan to a position which forms a connecting link between Comte and the new spiritualism in which the reaction against positivism and eclecticism finally culminated, another influence was making itself felt independently in the neo-critical philosophy of Renouvier.
We must here note the work and influence of Cournot (1801-1877), which form a very definite link between the doctrines of Comte and those of Renouvier. He owed much to positivism, and he contributed to the formation of neo-criticism by his influence upon Renouvier. Cournot’s Essai sur le Fondement de nos Connaissances appeared in 1851, three years before Renouvier gave to the world the first volume of his Essais de Critique générale. In 1861 Cournot published his Traité de l’Enchaînement des Idées, which was followed by his Considerations sur le Marche des Idées (1872) and Matérialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalisme (1875). These volumes form his contribution to philosophical thought, his remaining works being mainly concerned with political economy and mathematics, a science in which he won distinction.
Like Comte, Cournot opposed the spiritualism, the eclecticism and the psychology of Cousin, but he was possessed of a more philosophic mind than Comte; he certainly had greater philosophical knowledge, was better equipped in the history of philosophy and had much greater respect for metaphysical theory. He shared with Comte, however, an interest in social problems and biology; he also adopted his general attitude to knowledge, but the spirit of Cournot’s work is much less dogmatic than that of the great positivist, and he made no pretensions to be a “pontiff” such as Comte aspired to be. Indeed his lack of pretensions may account partly for the lack of attention with which his work (which is shrewd, thoughtful and reserved) has been treated. He aimed at indicating the foundations of a sound philosophy rather than at offering a system of thought to the public. This temper was the product of his scientific attitude. It was by an examination of the sciences and particularly of the principles upon which they depend that he formulated his group of fundamental doctrines.
He avoided hasty generalisations or a priori constructions and, true to the scientific spirit, based his thought upon the data afforded by experience. He agreed heartily with Comte regarding the relativity of our knowledge. An investigation of this knowledge shows it to be based on three principles—order, chance, and probability. We find order existing in the universe and by scientific methods we try to grasp this order. This involves induction, a method which cannot give us absolute certainty, although it approximates to it. It gives us probability only. There is therefore a reality of chances, and contingency or chance must be admitted as a factor in evolution and in human history.
Cournot foreshadows many of the doctrines of the new spiritualists as well as those of the neo-critical school. Much in his work heralds a Bergson as well as a Renouvier. This is noticeable in his attitude to science and to the problem of contingency or freedom. It is further seen in his doctrine that the vivant is incapable of demonstration, in his view of the soul or higher instinct which he distinguished from the intelligence, in the biological interest displayed in his work (due partly to the work of Bichat[[17]]), and in his idea of a Travail de Création. Unlike Bergson, however, he admits a teleology, for he believed this inseparable from living beings, but he regards it as a hazardous finality, not rigid or inconsistent with freedom.