We are far from believing that M. Cousin thought himself a pantheist, for we do not think he ever understood his own system. He was more than most men the dupe of words, and, though not destitute of philosophical genius, philosophy was never his natural vocation, any more than it was his original destination. He was always, as we have said, the littérateur rather than the philosopher. Much allowance should also, no doubt, be made for the unsettled state of philosophy in France when he became, under Royer-Collard, master of conferences in the Normal School of Paris, and the confused state of philosophical language that was then in use. Throughout his whole ontology, he is misled by taking the word substance instead of ens or being. He says that he understands by substance, when he asserts, as he does, that there is only one substance, what the fathers and doctors of the church mean by the one supreme, necessary, absolute, and eternal being, the Ego sum Qui sum, I am that I am, of Exodus, the name under which God revealed himself to Moses. This is an improper use of the word. No doubt being is substance, or substantial, but the two terms are not equivalents. Being has primary reference to that which is, as opposed to that which is not, or nothing; substance is something, and so far coincides with being, but something in opposition to attribute, mode, or accident, or something capable of supporting attributes, modes, or accidents. Being is absolute in and of itself, and therefore strictly speaking one, and it is only in a loose sense that we speak of beings in the plural number, or call creatures beings. There is and can be but one only being, God, for he only can say, Ego sum Qui sum, and whatever existences there may be distinguished from him have their being not in themselves, but in him, according to what St. Paul says, "in him we live, and move, and have our being: in ipso vivimus, et movemur, et sumus." There is in this view nothing pantheistic, for being is complete in itself and sufficient for itself. Consequently, there can be nothing distinguishable from being except placed by the free creative act of being, that is, creation or creatures. The creature is not being, but it holds from being by the creative act, and may be and is a substance, distinct from the divine substance. Being is one, substances may be manifold. Hence, in the ideal formula, the first term or category is ens, not substans or substantia.
Cousin, misled by Descartes and Spinoza, and only imperfectly acquainted with the scholastic philosophy, adopts the term substance instead of being, and maintains sturdily, from first to last, that there is and can be but one substance. Whence it follows that all not in that one substance is unsubstantial and phenomenal, without attributes, modes, or activity. Creatures may have their being in God and yet be substances and capable of acting from their own centre as second causes; but, if there is only one substance, they cannot themselves be substances in any sense at all, and can be only attributes, modes, or phenomena of the one only substance, or God. God alone is in himself their substance and reality, and their activity is really his activity. By taking for his first category substance instead of ens or being, M. Cousin found himself obliged virtually to deny the second. He says he calls the second category phenomena, only in opposition to the one universal substance, that he holds them to relative or finite substances. This shows his honorable intentions, but it cannot avail him, for he says over and over again that there is and can be but one substance. Either substance is one and one only, he says formally, or it is nothing. The unity of substance is vital in his system, and unity of substance is the essential principle, of pantheism. He himself defines substance as that which exists in itself and not in another.
M. Cousin say pantheism is the divinization of nature, or nature taken in its totality as God. But this is sheer atheism or naturalism, not pantheism. The essence of pantheism is in the denial of substantial creation or the creation of substances. The pantheist can, in a certain manner, even admit creation, the creation of modes or phenomena, and there are few pantheists who do not assert as much. The test is as to the creation of substance, or existences that can support attributes, modes, or accidents of their own, instead of being simply attributes, modes, or accidents of the one substance, and thus capable of acting from their own centre as proper second causes. He who denies the creation of such existences is a pantheist, and he who affirms it is a theist and no pantheist, however he may err in other matters. Had M. Cousin understood this, he would have seen that he had not escaped the error of Spinoza. With only one substance, it is impossible to assert the creation of substances. The substance of the soul and of the world, if there is only one substance, is God, and they are only phenomenal or mere appearances; the only activity in the universe is that of God; and what we call our acts are his acts. Whatever is done, whether good or evil, he does it, not only as causa eminens or causa causarum, but as direct and immediate actor. The moral consequences of such a doctrine are easy to be seen, and need not be dwelt upon.
No doubt M. Cousin, when repelling the charge of pantheism preferred against him, on the ground of his maintaining that there is only one substance, thought he had said enough in saying that he used the word phenomena in the sense of finite or relative substances; but if there is only one substance, how can there be any finite and relative substances? And he, also, should have considered that his use of the word phenomena was the worst word he could have chosen to convey the idea of substance, however finite, for it stands opposed to substance. He says le moi and le non-moi are in relation to substance phenomenal. Who from this could conclude them to be themselves substances? He says he could not maintain that they are modes or appearances of substance only, because he maintains that they are forces, causes. But it sometimes happens to a philosopher to be in contradiction with himself, and always to the pantheist, because pantheism is supremely sophistical and self-contradictory. It admits of no clear, consistent, logical statement. Besides, no man can always be on his guard, and when his system is false, the force of truth and his good sense and just feeling will often get the better of his system. He has, indeed, said the soul (le moi) and the world (le non-moi) are forces, causes; but he has also said, as his system requires him to say, that their substantial activity is the activity of the one only substance, which is God.
It were easy to justify these criticisms by any number of citations from M. Cousin's several works, but it is not necessary, for we are attempting neither a formal exposition nor a formal refutation of his system; we are merely pointing out some of his errors and mistakes, for the benefit of young and ingenuous students of philosophy, who need to be shown what it is necessary to shun on the points taken up. Most, if not all, of M. Cousin's mistakes and errors arose from his having considered the question of method before he had settled that of principles. He says a philosopher's whole philosophy is in his method. Tell me what is such or such a philosopher's method, and I will tell you his philosophy. But this is not true, unless by method he means both principles and method taken together. Method is the application of principles, and presupposes them, and till they are determined it is impossible to determine the method to be adopted or pursued. The human mind has a method given it in its very constitution, and we cannot treat the question of method till we have ascertained the principles of that constitution. Principles are not found or obtained by the exercise of our faculties, because without them the mind can neither operate nor even exist. Principles are and must be given by the creator of the mind itself. To treat the question of method before we have ascertained what principles are thus given, is to proceed in the dark and to lose our way.
Undoubtedly, every philosopher must begin the construction of his philosophy by the analysis of thought, either as presented him in consciousness or as represented in language, or both together. This is a mental necessity. Since philosophy deals only with thought or what is presented in thought, its first step must be to ascertain what are the elements of thought. So far as this analysis is psychological, philosophy begins in psychology; but whether what is called the psychological method is or is not to be adopted, we cannot determine till we have ascertained the elements, and ascertained whether they are all psychological or not. If on inquiry it should turn out that in every thought there is both a psychological and an ontological element given simultaneously and in an indissoluble synthesis, it is manifest that the exclusively psychological method would lead only to error. It would leave out the onto logical element, and be unable to present in its true character even the psychological; for, if the psychological element in the real order and in thought exists only in relation with the ontological, it can be apprehended and treated in its true character only in that relation. Whether such be the fact or not, how are we to determine till we know what are the principles alike of all the knowable and of all the real—that is, have determined the categories?
The error of the psychological method is not that it asserts the necessity of beginning our philosophizing with the analysis of thought, or what M. Cousin calls, not very properly, the fact of consciousness, but in proceeding to study the facts of the human soul, as if man were an isolated existence, and the only thing existing; and after having observed and classified these facts, either stopping with them, as does Sir William Hamilton, or proceeding by way of induction, as most psychologists do, to the conclusion of ontological principles—an induction which both Sir William Hamilton and Schelling have proved, in their criticisms of Cousin's method, is invalid, because no induction is valid that concludes beyond the facts or particulars from which it is made. The facts being all psychological, nothing not psychological can be concluded from them. Cousin feels the force of this criticism, but, without conceding that his method is wrong or defective, seeks to avoid it by alleging that among the facts of consciousness are some which, though revealed by consciousness or contained in thought, are some which are not psychological, and hence psychology leads of itself not by way of induction, but directly, to ontology. The answer is pertinent, for if it be true that there is an ontological element in every thought, the analysis of thought discloses it. But, hampered and blinded by his method, Cousin fails, as we have seen, to disengage a really ontological element, and in his blundering explanation of it deprives it of all real ontological character. His God is anthropomorphous, when not a generalization or a pure abstraction. What deceives the exclusive psychologists, and makes them regard their inductions of ontology from psychological facts as valid, is the very important fact that there are no exclusively psychological facts; and in their psychology, though not recognized by them as such, and according to their method ought not to be such, there are real ontological elements—elements which are not psychological, and without which there could be no psychological elements. These elements place us directly in relation with the ontological reality, and the mistake is in not seeing or recognizing this fact, and in assuming that the ontological reality, instead of being given, as it is, intuitively, is obtained by induction from the psychological. Ontology as an induction or a logical conclusion is sophistical and false; as given intuitively in the first principles of thought, it is well founded and true. The mistake arises from having attempted to settle the question of method before having settled the question of principles. The simple fact is that the soul is not the only existence, nor an isolated existence. It exists and operates only in relation with its creator and upholder, with the external world, and with other men or society, so that there are and can be no purely psychological facts. The soul severed from God, or the creative act of God, cannot live, cannot exist, but drops into the nothing it was before it was created. Principles are given, not found or obtained by our own activity, for, as we have said, the mind cannot operate without principles. The principles, as most philosophers tell us, are self-evident, or evidence themselves. If real principles, they are and must be alike the principles of being and of knowing, of science and reality. They must include in their real relations both the psychological and the ontological. As the psychological does not and cannot exist without the ontological, and, indeed, not without the creative act of the ontological, science is possible only on condition that the ontological and the psychological, as to their ideal principles, are intuitively given, and given in their real synthesis, as it has been abundantly shown they are given in the ideal formula. The ontological and psychological being given intuitively and simultaneously in their real relation, it follows necessarily that neither the exclusively psychological method nor the exclusively ontological method can be accepted, and that the method must be synthetic, because the principles themselves are given in their real synthesis. Clearly, then, the principles must determine the method, not the method the principles. It is not true, then, to say that all one's philosophy is in one's method, but that it is all in one's principles. If M. Cousin had begun by ascertaining what are the principles of thought, necessarily asserted in every thought and without which no thought is possible, he could never have fallen into his pantheism, which every thought repudiates, and which cannot even be asserted without self-contradiction, because in every thought there is given as essential to the very existence of thought the express contradictory of pantheism of every form.
M. Cousin professes to be able, from the method a philosopher follows in philosophizing, to foretell his philosophy; but although we would speak with the greatest respect of our former master, from whom we received no little benefit, we must say that we have never met a man, equally learned and equally able, so singularly unhappy in explaining the systems of the various schools of philosophy of which he professes to give the history. We cannot now call to mind a single instance in which he has seized and presented the kernel of the philosophical system he has undertaken to explain. He makes the Theaetetus of Plato an argument against the sensists, or the doctrine of the origin of all our ideas in sensation—when one has but to read that Dialogue to perceive that what Plato is seeking to prove is that the knowledge of the sensible, which is multiple, variable, and evanescent, is no real science at all. Plato is not discussing at all the question of how we know, but what we must know in order to have real science. Cousin's exposition of what he calls the Alexandrian theodicy, or of neoplatonism, is, notwithstanding he had edited the works of Proclus, a marvel of misapprehension alike of the Alexandrian doctrine and of Christian theology. He describes with a sneer the scholastic philosophy as being merely "a commentary on the Holy Scriptures and texts from the fathers." He edited the works of Descartes, but never understood more of that celebrated philosopher than enough to imbibe some of his worst errors. He has borrowed much, directly or indirectly, from Spinoza, but never comprehended his system of pantheism, as is evident from his judgment that Spinoza erred only in being too devout and too filled and penetrated with God!
He misapprehends entirely Leibnitz's doctrine of substance, as we have already seen. His own system is in its psychological part borrowed chiefly from Kant, and in its ontological part from Hegel, neither of whom has he ever understood. He has the errors of these two distinguished Germans without their truths or their logical firmness. And perhaps there was no system of philosophy, of which he undertook to give an account, that he less understood than his own. He seems, after having learned something of the great mediaeval philosophers in preparing his work, Philosophic Scholastique, to have had some suspicions that he had talked very foolishly, and had been the dupe of his own youthful zeal and enthusiasm; for, though he afterward published a new edition of his works without any essential alteration, as we infer from the fact that they were placed at Rome on the Index, he published, as far as we are aware, no new philosophical work, and turned his attention to other subjects. Even in his work on the Scholastics, as well as in his account of Jansenism in his work on Madame de Sablé, we recollect no re-assertion of his pantheism, nor even an unorthodox opinion.