"There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their part of truth, as well as their part of error; for the human mind cannot embrace pure, unmixed error any more than the will can pure, unmixed evil; but the eclectic method is not the method of constructing true philosophy any more than it is the method of constructing true Christian theology. The Catholic acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold; but he does not derive it from them, nor arrive at it by studying their systems. He holds it independently of them; and having it already in its unity and integrity, he is able, in studying them, to distinguish what they have that is true from the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same with the philosopher. M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he finally asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical verification, than as the real and original method of constructing philosophy. The name was therefore unhappily chosen, and is now seldom heard." (Catholic World, p. 335.)
Had the reviewer read this passage, he would have seen that we were aware of the fact that latterly Cousin ceased to profess eclecticism save as a method of verification; and if he had read our article through, he would have seen that we were aware that he held spiritualism to be the principle of his system, and that we criticised it as such.
2. Cousin counts scepticism as a system of philosophy. We object, and ask very pertinently, since he holds every system has a truth, and truth is always something affirmative, positive, "What, then, is the truth of scepticism, which is a system of pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but denies that any thing can be affirmed?" Will the reviewer answer the question?
The reviewer, of course, finds us in the wrong. Here is his reply:
"In the history of the progress of the human mind, the phase of scepticism is not to be overlooked. At different periods it has occurred, to wield a strong, sometimes a controlling, often a salutary, influence over the thought of an age. Its work, it is true, is destructive, and not constructive; but not the less as a check and restraint upon fanciful speculation, and the establishment of unsound hypotheses, it has its raison d'être, and contributes, in its way, to the advancement of truth. Nor can the works of Sextus, Pyrrho, Glanvil, Montaigne, Gassendi, or Hume be considered less 'systematic' than those of any dogmatist, merely from their being 'systems of pure negation.'" (P. 533.)
That it is sometimes reasonable and salutary to doubt, as if the reviewer should doubt his extraordinary genius as a philosopher, we readily admit; but what salutary influence has ever been exerted on science or morals by any so-called system of scepticism, which denies the possibility of science, and renders the binding nature of virtue uncertain, we have never yet been able to ascertain. Moreover, a system of pure negation is simply no system at all, for it has no principle and affirms nothing. A sceptical turn of mind is as undesirable as a credulous mind. That the persons named, of whom only one, Pyrrho, professed universal scepticism, and perhaps even he carried his scepticism no farther than to doubt the reality of matter, may have rendered some service to the cause of truth, as the drunken helotae promoted temperance among the Spartan youth, is possible; but they have done it by the truth they asserted, not by the doubt they disseminated. There is, moreover, a great difference between doubting, or suspending our judgment where we are ignorant or where our knowledge is incomplete, and erecting doubt into the principle of a system which assumes all knowledge to be impossible, and that certainty is nowhere attained or attainable. It seems, we confess, a little odd to find a Church Review taking up the defence of scepticism.
3. We assert in our article that M. Cousin, though he professes to come out of the sphere of psychology, and to rise legitimately to ontology, remains always there; and, in point of fact, the ontology he asserts is only an abstraction or generalization of psychological facts. The reviewer is almost shocked at this, and is "tempted to think that the time" we claim to have spent in studying the works of Cousin with some care "might have been better employed in the acquisition of some useful knowledge more within the reach of our 'understanding.'" It is possible. But what has he to allege against what we asserted, and think we proved? Nothing that we can find except that Cousin professes to attain, and perhaps believes he does attain, to real objective existence, and, scientifically, to real ontology. But, my good friend, that is nothing to the purpose. The question is not as to what Cousin professes to have done, or what he has really attempted to do, but what he has actually done. When we allege that the being, the God asserted by Cousin, is, on his system, his principles, and method, only an abstraction or a generalization; you do not prove us wrong by reiterating his assertion that it is real being, that it is the living God, for it is, though you seem not to be aware of it, that very assertion that is denied. We readily concede that Cousin does not profess to rise to ontology by induction from his psychology, but we maintain that the only ontology he attains to is simply an induction from his psychology, and therefore is, and can be, only an abstraction or a generalization. We must here reproduce a passage from our own article.
"What is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert, or, in fact, can assert, is, that ontology is neither an induction nor a deduction from psychological data. God is not, and cannot be, the generalization of our own souls. But it does not follow from this that we do not think that which is God, and that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it from thought and by thinking. What is objected to in the psychologists is the assumption that thought is a purely psychological or subjective fact, and that from this psychological or subjective fact we can, by way of induction, attain to ontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin, and we studied his works with some care thirty or thirty-five years ago, and had the honor of his private correspondence, this he never pretends to do. What he claims is, that in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas which are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do actually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology. That his account of these facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or adequate we do not pretend, but that he professes to recognize them and distinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.
"The defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing, as we have already observed, to identify the absolute or necessary ideas he detects and asserts with God, the only ens necessarium et reale, and in failing to assert them in their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting them only as objective to the human personality. He never succeeded in cutting himself wholly loose from the German nonsense of a subjective-object or objective-subject, and when he had clearly proved an idea to be objective to the reflective reason and the human personality, he did not dare assert it to be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was impersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained with regard to the categories." (Catholic World, PP. 335, 336.)
The reviewer, after snubbing us for our ignorance and ineptness, which are very great, as we are well aware and humbly confess, replies to us in this manner: