Such is our theodicea: it rejects the excesses of all systems, and contains, we believe at least, all that is good in them. From sentiment it borrows a personal God as we ourselves are a person, and from reason a necessary, eternal, infinite God. In the presence of two opposite systems,—one of which, in order to see and feel God in the world, absorbs him in it; the other of which, in order not to confound God with the world, separates him from it and relegates him to an inaccessible solitude,—it gives to both just satisfaction by offering to them a God who is in fact in the world, since the world is his work, but without his essence being exhausted in it, a God who is both absolute unity and unity multiplied, infinite and living, immutable and the principle of movement, supreme intelligence and supreme truth, sovereign justice and sovereign goodness, before whom the world and man are like nonentity, who, nevertheless, is pleased with the world and man, substance eternal, and cause inexhaustible, impenetrable, and everywhere perceptible, who must by turns be sought in truth, admired in beauty, imitated, even at an infinite distance, in goodness and justice, venerated and loved, continually studied with an indefatigable zeal, and in silence adored.
Let us sum up this résumé. Setting out from the observation of ourselves in order to preserve ourselves from hypothesis, we have found in consciousness three orders of facts. We have left to each of them its character, its rank, its bearing, and its limits. Sensation has appeared to us the indispensable condition, but not the foundation of knowledge. Reason is the faculty itself of knowing; it has furnished us with absolute principles, and these absolute principles have conducted us to absolute truths. Sentiment, which pertains at once to sensation and reason, has found a place between both. Setting out from consciousness, but always guided by it, we have penetrated into the region of being; we have gone quite naturally from knowledge to its objects by the road that the human race pursues, that Kant sought in vain, or rather misconceived at pleasure, to wit, that reason which must be admitted entire or rejected entire, which reveals to us existences as well as truths. Therefore, after having recalled all the great metaphysical, æsthetical, and moral truths, we have referred them to their principle; with the human race we have pronounced the name of God, who explains all things, because he has made all things, whom all our faculties require,—reason, the heart, the senses, since he is the author of all our faculties.
This doctrine is so simple, is to such an extent in all our powers, is so conformed to all our instincts, that it scarcely appears a philosophic doctrine, and, at the same time, if you examine it more closely, if you compare it with all celebrated doctrines, you will find that it is related to them and differs from them, that it is none of them and embraces them all, that it expresses precisely the side of them that has made them live and sustains them in history. But that is only the scientific character of the doctrine which we present to you; it has still another character which distinguishes it and recommends it to you much more. The spirit that animates it is that which of old inspired Socrates, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, which makes your hearts beat when you are reading Corneille and Bossuet, which dictated to Vauvenargues the few pages that have immortalized his name, which you feel especially in Reid, sustained by an admirable good sense, and even in Kant, in the midst of, and superior to the embarrassments of his metaphysics, to wit, the taste of the beautiful and the good in all things, the passionate love of honesty, the ardent desire of the moral grandeur of humanity. Yes, we do not fear to repeat that we tend thither by all our views; it is the end to which are related all the parts of our instruction; it is the thought which serves as their connection, and is, thus to speak, their soul. May this thought be always present to you, and accompany you as a faithful and generous friend, wherever fortune shall lead you, under the tent of the soldier, in the office of the lawyer, of the physician, of the savant, in the study of the literary man, as well as in the studio of the artist! Finally, may it sometimes remind you of him who has been to you its very sincere but too feeble interpreter!
APPENDIX.
Page [188]: "What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur!"
It is perceived that we have followed, as regards his death, the tradition, or rather the prejudices current at the present day, and which have misled the best judges before us. But there have appeared in a recent and interesting publication, called Archives de l'Art français, vol. iii., certain incontrovertible documents, never before published, on the life and works of the painter of St. Bruno, which compel us to withdraw certain assertions agreeable to general opinion, but contrary to truth. The notice of Lesueur's death, extracted for the first time from the Register of Deaths of the parish church of Saint-Louis in the isle of Notre-Dame, preserved amongst the archives of the Hotel de Ville at Paris, clearly prove that he did not die at the Chartreux, but in the isle of Notre-Dame, where he dwelt, in the parish of St. Louis, and that he was buried in the church of Saint-Etienne du Mont, the resting-place of Pascal and Racine. It appears also that Lesueur died before his wife, Geneviève Goussé, since the Register of Births of the parish of Saint-Louis, contains under the date 18th February, 1655, a notice of the baptism of a fourth child of Lesueur. Now, Geneviève Goussé must have deceased almost immediately after her confinement, supposing her to have died before her husband's decease, which occurred on the 1st of the following May. If this were the case, we should have found a notice of her death in the Register of Deaths for the year 1655, as we do that of her husband. Such a notice, however, which could alone disprove the probability, and authenticate the vulgar opinion, is nowhere to be found amongst the archives of the Hotel de Ville, at least the author of the Nouvelles Recherches has nowhere been able to meet with it.
In the other particulars our rapid sketch of Lesueur's history remains untouched. He never was in Italy; and according to the account of Guillet de Saint-Georges, which has so long remained in manuscript, he never desired to go there. He was poor, discreet, and pious, tenderly loved his wife, and lived in the closest union with his three brothers and brother-in-law, who were all pupils and fellow-laborers of his. It appears to be a refinement of criticism which denies the current belief of an acquaintance between Lesueur and Poussin. If no document authenticates it, at all events it is not contradicted by any, and appears to us to be highly probable.
Every one admits that Lesueur studied and admired Poussin. It would certainly be strange if he did not seek his acquaintance, which he could have obtained without difficulty, since Poussin was staying at Paris from 1640 to 1642. It would be difficult for them not to have met. After Vouet's death in 1641, Lesueur acquired more and more a peculiar style; and in 1642, at the age of twenty-five, entirely unshackled, and with a taste ripe for the antique and Raphael, he must frequently have been at the Louvre, where Poussin resided. Thus it is natural to suppose that they frequently saw each other and became acquainted, and with their sympathies of character and talent, acquaintance must have resulted in esteem and love. If Poussin's letters do not mention Lesueur, we would remark that neither do they mention Champagne, whose connection with Poussin is not disputed. The argument built on the silence of Guillet de Saint-Georges' account is far from convincing; inasmuch as being intended to be read before a Sitting of the Academy, it could only contain a notice of the great artist's career, without those biographical details in which his friendships would be mentioned. Lastly, it is impossible to deny Poussin's influence upon Lesueur, which it seems to us at least probable was as much due to his counsels as to his example.