[21] On this relationship see James’s Will to Believe, p. 143, 1897, and the dedications in his Some Problems of Philosophy (to Renouvier), and his Principles of Psychology (to Pillon), also Letters of William James, September i8th, 1892.
Renouvier’s enthusiasm for his periodical did not, however, abate his energy or ardour for more lasting work. He undertook the task of revising and augmenting his great work, the Essais de Critique générale, and added to the series another (fifth) Essay, in four volumes. He also issued in 1876 the curious work Uchronie, a history of “what might have been” (in his view) the development of European civilisation. Together with Pillon he translated Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature.
Meanwhile the Critique philosophique continued to combat any symptoms of a further coup d’état, and “to uphold strictly republican principles and to fight all that savoured of Caesar or imperialism.” In 1878 a quarterly supplement La Critique religieuse was added to attack the Roman Catholic Church and to diminish its power in France.[[22]]
[22] The significance of this effort is more fully dealt with in our last chapter.
Articles which had appeared in this quarterly were published as Esquisse d’une Classification systématique des Doctrines philosophiques in 1885 in two volumes, the second of which contained the important Confession of Faith of Renouvier, entitled, How I arrived at this Conclusion.
His thought assumed a slightly new form towards the close of the century, at the end of which he published, in conjunction with his disciple Prat, a remarkable volume, which took a prize at the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, to which rather late in the day he was admitted as a member at the age of eighty-five. In its title La Nouvelle Monadologie, and method it reveals the influence of Leibnitz.
The close of the century shows us Renouvier as an old man, still an enormous worker, celebrating his eighty-sixth birthday by planning and writing further volumes (Les Dilemmes de la Métaphysique pure and its sequel, Histoire et Solution des Problèmes métaphysiques). This “grand old man” of modern French philosophy lived on into the early years of the twentieth century, still publishing, still writing to the last. His final volume, Le Personnalisme, was a restatement of his philosophy, issued when he was in his eighty-ninth year. He died “in harness” in 1903, dictating to his friend Prat a résumé of his thought on important points and leaving an unpublished work on the philosophy of Kant.[[23]]
[23] The résumé was published by Prat a couple of years later as Derniers Entretiens, the volume on the Doctrine de Kant, followed in 1906.
Renouvier’s career is a striking one and we have sketched it somewhat fully here because of its showing more distinctly than that of Taine or Renan the reflections of contemporary history upon the thinking minds who lived through the years 1848-51 and 1870-71. Renouvier was a young spirit in the year of the revolution, 1848, and lived right on through the coup d’état, the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, the Third Republic, and he foresaw and perhaps influenced the Republic’s attitude to the Roman Church. His career is the most significant and enlightening one to follow of all the thinkers who come within our period. Let us note that he never held any academic or public teaching appointment. His life was in the main a secluded one and, like Comte, he found the University a limited preserve closed against him and his philosophy, dominated by the declining eclecticism which drew its inspiration from Cousin. Only gradually did his influence make itself felt to such a degree that the University was compelled to take notice of it. Now his work is more appreciated, but not as much as it might be, and outside his own country he is little known. The student finds his writings somewhat difficult owing to the author’s heavy style. He has none of the literary ease and brilliance of a Renan. But his work was great and noble, animated by a passion for truth and a hatred of philosophical “shams” and a current of deep moral earnestness colours all his work. He had considerable power as a critic, for the training of the Ecole Polytechnique produced a strictly logical temper in his work, which is that of a true philosopher, not that of a merely brilliant litterateur or dilettante, and he must be regarded as one of the intellectual giants of the century.
While we see in Positivism a system of thought which opposed itself to Eclecticism, we find in the philosophy of Renouvier a system of doctrine which is opposed to both Eclecticism and Positivism. Indeed Renouvier puts up a strong mental fight against both of these systems; the latter he regarded as an ambitious conceit. He agreed, however, with Comte and with Cournot upon the relativity of our knowledge. “I accept,” he says, “one fundamental principle of the Positivist School—namely, the reduction of knowledge to the laws of phenomena.”[[24]] The author of the Essais de Critique générale considered himself, however, to be the apostolic successor, not of Comte, but of Kant. The title of neo-criticisme[[25]] which he gave to his philosophy shows his affinity with the author of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. This is very noticeable in his method of treating the problem of knowledge by criticising the human mind and especially in his giving a preference to moral considerations.[[26]] It would be, however, very erroneous to regard Renouvier as a disciple of Kant, for he amends and rejects many of the doctrines of the German philosopher. We have noted the fact that he translated Hume; we must observe also that Hume’s influence is very strongly marked in Renouvier’s “phenomenalism.”[[27]] “Renouvier is connected with Hume,” says Pillon, in the preface he contributed to the translation,[[28]] “as much as with Kant. . . . He reconciles Hume and Kant. . . . Something is lacking in Hume, the notion of law; something is superfluous in Kant, the notion of substance. It was necessary to unite the phenomenalism of Hume with the a priori teaching of Kant. This was the work accomplished by Renouvier.”