"And yet nothing in Cousin is clearer or more positive than that this 'pure and sublime degree of the reason, when will, reflection, and personality are as yet absent'—this 'intuition and spontaneous revelation, which is the primitive mode of reason'—is objective to the whole subject in every possible sense, and is, consequently, conformed to the objective, and a revelation of it.
"Can the critic have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, 'thirty or thirty-five years ago'? If so, we advise him to refresh his memory by a re-perusal, and perhaps he may withdraw the strange assertion that Cousin held an 'absolute idea to be impersonal, but that it might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained with regard to the categories.' 'The scepticism of Kant,' says Cousin, [Footnote 33] 'rests on his finding the laws of the reason to be subjective, personal to man; but here is a mode of the reason where these same laws are, as it were, deprived of all subjectivity—where the reason shows itself almost entirely impersonal.
"How the critic would wish this impersonal activity to be objective to the 'whole subject,' and not to the 'personal only,' as if there was any greater degree of objectivity in one case than in the other, it is not easy to see. It looks like a distinction without a difference. The abstract and logical distinction is apparent, but though distinct, the 'whole subject,' and the 'human personality,' cannot be separated, so that what is objective to one, shall not be so to the other also. The 'whole subject' is, simply, the thinking, feeling, willing being, which we are, as distinguished from the world external to us. If an idea, then, is revealed to us by what is completely foreign to us—if an act of the reason is spontaneous and unreflective, +hat is, impersonal—what is there that can be more objective to the subject?
"We have said, that such an act is objective to the subject in every possible sense. For we are not to forget the conditions of the case. 'Does one wish,' says Cousin, 'in order to believe in the objectivity and validity of the reason, that it should cease to make its appearance in a particular subject—in man, for instance? But then, if reason is outside of the subject, that is, of myself, it is nothing to me. For me to have consciousness of it, it must descend into me, it must make itself mine, and become in this sense subjective. A reason which is not mine, which, in itself being entirely universal, does not incarnate itself in some manner in my consciousness, is for me as though it did not exist. [Footnote 34] Consequently, to wish that the reason, in order to be trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand an impossibility.'" (Pp. 534, 535.)
[Footnote 33: Lecture viii.]
[Footnote 34: Lectures on Kant, viii.]
We have introduced this long extract in order to give our readers a fair specimen of the reviewer's style and capacity as a reasoner. It will be seen that the reviewer alleges, as proof against us, what is in question—the very thing that he is to prove. We have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, and we know well, and have never thought of denying, that he criticises Kant sharply, says many admirable things against him, and professes to reject his subjectivism; we know, also, that he holds what he calls the impersonal reason to be objective, operating independently of us; all this we know and so stated, we thought, clearly enough, in our article; but we, nevertheless, maintain that he does not make this impersonal reason really objective, but simply independent in its operations of our personality. He holds that reason has two modes of activity—the one personal, the other impersonal; but he recognizes only a distinction of modes, sometimes only a difference of degrees, making, as we have seen, as quoted by the reviewer, the impersonal reason a sublimer "degree" of reason than the personal. He calls the impersonal reason the spontaneous reason, sometimes simply spontaneity. All this is evident enough to any one at all familiar with Cousin's philosophical writings.
But what is this reason which operates in these two modes, impersonal and spontaneous in the one, personal and reflective in the other? As the distinction between the personal and impersonal is, by Cousin's own avowal, a difference simply of modes or degrees, there can be no entitative or substantial difference between them. They are not two different or distinct reasons, but one and the same reason, operating in two different modes or degrees. Now, we demand, what is this one substantive reason operating in these two different degrees or modes? It certainly is not an abstraction, for abstractions are nullities and cannot operate or act at all. What, then, is it? Is it God, or is it man? If you say it is God, then you deny reason to man, make him a brute, unless you identify man with God. If you say it is man, that it is a faculty of the human soul, as Cousin certainly does say—for he makes it our faculty and only faculty of intelligence—then you make it subjective, since nothing is more subjective than one's own faculties. They are the subject itself. Consequently the impersonal reason belongs as truly to man, the subject, as the personal reason, and therefore is not objective, as we said, to the whole subject, but at best only to the will and the personality—what Cousin calls le moi. The most distinguished of the disciples of Cousin was Theodore Jouffroy, who, in his confessions, nearly curses Cousin for having seduced him from his Christian faith, whose loss he so bitterly regretted on his dying-bed, and who was, in Cousin's judgment, as expressed in a letter to the writer of this article, "a true philosopher." This true philosopher and favorite disciple of Cousin illustrates the difference between the impersonal reason and the personal by the difference between seeing and looking, hearing and listening, which corresponds precisely to the difference noted by Leibnitz between what he calls simple perception and apperception. In both cases it is the man who sees, hears, or perceives; but in the latter case, the will intervenes and we not only see, but look, not only perceive, but apperceive.
Now, it is very clear, such being the case, that Cousin does not get out of the sphere of the subject any more than does Kant, and all the arguments he adduces against Kant, apply equally against himself; for he recognizes no actor in thought, or what he calls the fact of consciousness, but the subject. The fact which he alleges, that the impersonal reason necessitates the mind, irresistibly controls it, is no more than Kant says of his categories, which he resolutely maintains are forms of the subject. Hence, as Cousin charges Kant very justly with subjectivism and scepticism, we are equally justified in preferring the same charges against himself. This is what we showed in the article the reviewer is criticising, and to this he should have replied, but, unhappily, has not. He only quotes Cousin to the effect that, "to wish the reason, in order to be trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand an impossibility," which only confirms what we have said.
We pursue in our article the argument still further, and add:
"Reduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin, intuition is empirical, and stands opposed not to reflection, but to discursion, and is simply the immediate and direct perception of the object without the intervention of any process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is, indeed, not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common sense, but it is a sense that renders the distinction between intuition and reflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it does not carry him out of the sphere of the subject, or afford him any basis for his ontological inductions. He has still the question as to the objectivity and reality of the ideal to solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological conclusions, therefore, as a writer in the Christian Examiner told him as long ago as 1836, rest simply on the credibility of reason or faith in its trustworthiness, which can never be established, because it is assumed that, to the operation of reason, no objective reality is necessary, since the object, if impersonal, may, for aught that appears, be included in the subject." (Catholic World, p. 338.)
We quote the reply of the reviewer to this at full length, for no mortal man can abridge or condense it without losing its essence.