We referred to no Romish theologian in particular; but if the reviewer wants names, we give him the names of St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas of Aquino, Fonseca, Suarez, Malebranche, even Cardinal Gerdll, and Gioberti, the last, in fact, a contemporary of Cousin, whose Considerazioni sopra le dottrine del Cousin prove his immense superiority over him, and of the others named with him. Cousin may have admired the great Gallican churchmen of the seventeenth century, but intimately understand them as theologians, he did not, if we may judge from his writings; moreover, all the great churchmen of that century were not Frenchmen. As great, if not greater, were found among Italians, Spaniards, Poles, and Germans, though less known to the Protestant world. Has the reviewer forgotten, or has he never known, the great men that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries flourished in the great religious orders, the Dominicans, Franciscans, the Augustinians, and especially the Jesuits—men whose learning, genius, and ability were surpassed only by their humility and sanctity?
But we spoke not of Cousin's little knowledge of churchmen, but of his little knowledge of Catholic theology. The reviewer here, probably, is not a competent judge, not being himself a Catholic theologian, and being comparatively a stranger to Catholic theology; but we will accept even his judgment in the case. Cousin denies that there is anything in his philosophy not in consonance with Christianity and the church; he denies that his philosophy impugns the dogma of the Word or the Trinity, and challenges proof to the contrary. Yet what does the reviewer think of Cousin's resolution of the Trinity, as cited some pages back, in his own language, into God, nature, and humanity? He says God is triple. "Cest-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité." Is that in consonance with Catholic theology?
Then, of the Word, after having proved in his way that the ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good are necessary and absolute ideas, and identified them with the impersonal reason, and the impersonal reason with the Logos, he asks what then? Are they God? No, gentlemen, they are not God, he answers, but the Word of God, thus plainly denying the Word of God to be God. Does that prove he knew intimately Catholic theology? What says the reviewer of Cousin's doctrine of inspiration and revelation? That doctrine is, that inspiration and revelation are the spontaneous operations of the impersonal reason as distinguished from the reflective operations of the personal reason, which is pure rationalism. Is that Catholic theology, or does it indicate much knowledge of Catholic theology, to say it is in consonance with that theology?
In his criticism on the Alexandrians or Neoplatonists, he blames them for representing the multiple, the finite, what they call creation, as a fall, and for not placing them on the same line with unity, the infinite, or God considered in himself. Is that in accordance with Catholicity, or is it a proof of his knowledge of Catholic theology to assert that it is, and to challenge the world to prove the contrary? But enough. No Catholic theologian, not dazzled by Cousin's style, or carried away by his glowing eloquence and brilliant generalizations, can read his philosophical works without feeling that he was no Christian believer, and that he neither knew nor respected Catholic faith or theology. In his own mind he reduced Catholic faith to the primitive beliefs of the race, inspired by the impersonal reason, and as he never contradicted these as he understood them, he persuaded himself that his philosophy did not impugn Christianity and the church.
9. The reviewer says:
"One more extract, by way of capping the climax. Seemingly ignorant of Cousin's criticism upon De Bonald's now exploded theory of language, and his exposition of De Biran's, the critic thinks, 'He would have done well to have studied more carefully the remarkable work of De Bonald; had he done so, he might have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate without language.' Has this man not read what Cousin has written, on the origin, purpose, uses, and effects of language, that he represents him as believing that the reflective reason can operate without language, without signs!" (P. 547.)
If M. Cousin maintains that the reflective reason cannot operate without language, as in some sense he does, it is in a sense different from that in which we implied he had need to learn that fact. We were objecting to the spiritualism—we should say intellectism, or noeticism—which he professed, that it assumed that we can have pure intellections. Cousin's doctrine is that, though we apprehend the intelligible only on the occasion of some sensible affection, yet we do apprehend it without a sensible medium. This doctrine we denied, and maintained, in opposition, that, being the union of soul and body, man has, and can have in this life, no pure intellections, and that we apprehend the intelligible, as distinguished from the sensible, only through the medium of the sensible or of a sensible representation, as taught by Aristotle and St. Thomas. The sensists teach that we can apprehend only the sensible, and that our science is limited to our sensations and inductions therefrom; the pure transcendentalists, or pure spiritualists, assert that we can and do apprehend immediately the noetic, or, as they say, the spiritual; the peripatetics hold that we apprehend it, but only through the medium of sensible representation; Cousin, in his eclecticism, makes the sensation the occasion of the apprehension of the intelligible, but not its medium. On his theory the sensible is no more a medium of noetic apprehension than on that of the transcendentalists; for the occasion of doing a thing is very different from the medium of doing it.
Now, language is for us the sign or sensible representation of the intelligible, and, as every thought includes the apprehension of the intelligible, therefore to every thought language, of some sort, is essential. The reviewer stumbles, and supposes that we are accusing Cousin of being ignorant of what he is not ignorant, because he supposes that we mean by reflective reason the discursive as distinguished from the intuitive faculty of the soul, which, if he had comprehended at all our philosophy, he would have seen is not the case. Intuition with us is ideal, not empirical. It is not our act, whether spontaneous or reflective, but a divine judgment affirmed by the Creator to us, and constituting us capable of intelligence, of reason, and reasoning. Reflective reason is our reason, and the reflex of the divine judgment, or the divine reason, directly and immediately affirmed to us by the Creator in the very act of creating us. Not only discursion, then, but what both Cousin and the reviewer call intuition, or immediate apprehension, is an operation of the reflective reason. Hence, to the operation of reason in the simple, direct apprehension of the intelligible, as well as in discursion or reasoning, language of some sort, as a sensible medium, is necessary and indispensable. When the reviewer will prove to us that Cousin held, or in any sense admitted this, he will tell us something of Cousin that we did not know before, and we will then give him leave to abuse us to his heart's content.