Course of the History of Modern Philosophy. By M. Victor Cousin. Translated by O. W. Wight. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. 8vo.
The thinking portion of the reading public are under great obligations to Mr. Wight for his vigorous and accurate version of Cousin’s master work, and to the Messrs. Appletons for the beautiful dress in which it fitly appears. It belongs, indeed, to that rare class of works which illustrate the intellectual history of the age in which they are produced; and it deserves the attention of all readers who desire to take the first step in acquiring a taste for metaphysics. It is composed of two courses of lectures, originally delivered in Paris to large and enthusiastic audiences, whose admiration of the splendid eloquence of the lecturer soon compelled them to love the subject likewise; and when published, their influence was felt in every country into which the French language and literature penetrates, and caused a revival in philosophy, which somewhat amazed its hard and dry cultivators from its peculiarity and its extent. These lectures, indeed, made metaphysical science popular everywhere. Men and women read Victor Cousin as they read Scott and Byron. His bold and dazzling generalizations, expressed in a style of singular clearness, energy and vehemence, stimulated the most jaded minds; and the dictatorial confidence with which he settled all the problems of history, philosophy and religion, and the ease with which his solutions were comprehended, made him the universal favorite. There was something captivating, too, in the theory by which he reconciled all the various systems in his eclectic and electric method. There are four systems, sensualism, idealism, skepticism, and mysticism, each having its root in consciousness, each containing an element of truth, and each wrong as an exclusive system. Select from these what is true, place the four partial truths in their relations, and the result is the eclectic philosophy. This is a loose, short-hand statement, in unphilosophic language, of Cousin’s scheme.
It must be admitted that Cousin’s system did not long hold its ground. After the first surprise was over, the metaphysicians par eminence began to attack him with great fury, and gave him some blows from which he has never recovered; and the public, who had been carried away by his eloquence, forgot him as soon as another novelty appeared. The result has been, that of late he has not been estimated according to his real merits. He most certainly has not done what he pretended to do. He has not reconciled the philosophers or the philosophies; he has hardly formed a school; his disciples have expired, recanted, or left the inclusive for some more satisfactory exclusive system. But he is still a metaphysician of uncommon power, acuteness, insight, genius; his works are full of important truths and principles, which stimulate the mind to independent thought; his information is immense; and he is the most brilliant, comprehensible and readable of all the historians of philosophy. He is to metaphysical history what Macaulay is to civil history; and we do not see why the present work is not as capable of holding the pleased and breathless attention of the intelligent reader as the “History of the Revolution of 1688.” There is in both writers the same confident manner of settling controversies about which centuries of disputants have wrangled; and, on the first blush, it seems impossible to resist the statements of either of them, as both drive directly at the common sense of men; are clear and brilliant, while their opponents are obscure and dull; and never leave the impression of an undefined something outside of the limits of their respective systems, to puzzle and torture their readers with a latent doubt. “I wish,” said Lord Melbourne, “that I knew any thing as well as Tom Macaulay knows every thing.” This “I know,” and “I am sure,” this absence of self-distrust, is as characteristic of Cousin as Macaulay; and the mischief is that after reading either, we are apt to be as satisfied as they are themselves, and think we have thoroughly mastered the matter.
It would be impossible in our limited space to convey an idea of the contents of these volumes. Beginning with the proposition that philosophy is a special want and necessary product of the human mind, and the last development of thought, Cousin proceeds to show that it has existed in every epoch of humanity, is a real element of universal history, and contains the explanation of its various parts. He thus explains Indian Civilization by the Bhagavad-Gita, the age of Pericles by the philosophy of Socrates, the sixteenth century by the philosophy of Descartes, the eighteenth century by the philosophy of Condillac and Helvetius. He then states the psychological method in history, a method which is neither empirical or speculative, but combines the two, seeking in history the development of the human reason. After stating the fundamental ideas of history, which are the fundamental ideas of the human reason, namely, the Infinite, the finite, and the relation between the two, he treats the great epochs of history as answering to the successive development of these ideas. The influence of geography, of nations, and of great men, in history, is then stated with great eloquence, force, and subtle complication of truth and paradox. Some vigorous sketches of the historians of humanity and philosophy, in which their merits are luminously exhibited and their defects acutely analyzed, are followed by a view of the philosophy of the 19th century. The eclectic tendency of European society and philosophy is noted, and the necessity is shown of a new general history of philosophy to explain the new movement of thought. Next follows a picture of the eighteenth century, with the character and method of its philosophy. Its different systems are not peculiar to that century; and the origin, natural development, relative utility, and intrinsic merit of Sensualism, Idealism, Skepticism, and Mysticism, the four classes into which all ideas fall, are vigorously and clearly stated. The history of these is then given, in a splendid review of the Hindoo, Greek, Scholastic, and modern philosophies; and the sensualism of the eighteenth century is traced to all its sources. A criticism of Locke, running through ten lectures, and generally considered to be the ablest of Cousin’s productions, concludes the work.
It will be seen, even from this bold outline, that all the questions which have puzzled human reason, and to which it has at different periods given different answers, are stated and discussed in Cousin’s work. The splendor and the beauty, the unwearied energy and the rapid movement of his style, carry the reader on to the end with hardly a pause of distrust or fatigue; and we hope that a translation, executed with such a lavish expenditure of intelligence and industry as Mr. Wight’s, will meet with its due reward in an extensive circulation. Certainly nothing which can by courtesy be called a library can afford to be without it.
The Works of Daniel Webster. Boston: Little & Brown, 6 vols. 8vo.
This beautiful edition of the works of one of the greatest statesmen that the country has produced, contains all the speeches and legal arguments in the former editions of Mr. Webster’s writings, together with the numerous orations and addresses he has made since the year 1841, and the masterly state papers which he produced while Secretary of State in the administration of General Harrison. To these are added the celebrated letter to Chevalier Hulseman, written while in his present station. The collection is edited with much care and ability by the Hon. Edward Everett. The biography of Mr. Webster by the editor, is a clear, candid, elaborate, and somewhat frigid view of his whole life as a statesman and lawyer, giving an accurate statement of the various circumstances under which the great efforts of his mind were produced, and placing the reader in a position to appreciate their importance. The tone of the biography is cautiously moderate, indulging in none of the fervors of eulogy or exaggerations of friendship, and, on the whole, not coming up to the enthusiastic praise with which Mr. Webster’s powers are commonly mentioned by those who have had most occasion to dread or decry their exercise. Mr. Everett seems to have felt too acutely the delicacy of his position, as the biographer of a living friend; and, shrinking from the responsibility of pouring out in glowing words his own admiration of his subject, is content to import all such perilous matter from the dashing and vivid pages of Mr. March.
It seems to us, also, that Mr. Everett gives little evidence in his biography of a sustained and vigorous conception of Mr. Webster’s mind and character. We do not mean that his epithets are not appropriate, that his judgments are not accurate, that his generalities are not abstractly just; but he evinces no power of diffusing the results of analysis through the veins of narration, of making the reader feel constantly that he is following the life of a man as peculiar and individual as he is great. The Websterian quality of the subject never flashes once out from Mr. Everett’s elegant sentences. Take any page from the biography and compare it with any paragraph in the speeches, and the defect we have noticed will be apparent to the most unapprehensive reader. There is no mental and moral agreement between them. It would seem to be one duty of the biographer to translate into intelligible form the vague impression which the works of the subject of the biography leaves on the most superficial mind; to detect, to fix, to embody the subtle spirit which, emanating from character, gives unity and individuality equally to the events of a man’s life and the productions of a man’s mind. A man of the large dimensions and massive force of Mr. Webster, whose personality stamps itself so readily upon the imagination, and groups fit words round its own image by a kind of magnetism, offers few obstacles to a right psychological treatment; and we are somewhat astonished that a man of Mr. Everett’s various talents and accomplishments should have failed in this important part of the biographer’s duty.