[22] See that criticism, 1st Series, vol. v., Kant, lecture 8.
[23] This classification of the human faculties, save some differences more nominal than real, is now generally adopted, and makes the foundation of the psychology of our times. See our writings, among others, 1st Series, Course of 1816, lectures 23 and 24: Histoire du moi; ibid., Des faits de Conscience; vol. iii., lecture 3, Examen de la Théorie des Facultés dans Condillac; vol. iv., lecture 21, des Facultés selon Reid; vol. v., lecture 8, Examen de la Théorie de Kant; 3d Series, vol iv., Preface de la Première Edition, Examen des Leçons de M. Laromiguière, Introduction aux Œuvres de M. de Biran, etc.
[24] This lecture on the existence of universal and necessary principles, which was easily comprehended, in 1818, by an auditory to which long discussions had already been presented during the two previous years, appearing here without the support of these preliminaries, will not perhaps be entirely satisfactory to the reader. We beseech him to consult carefully the first volume of the 1st Series of our Course, which contains an abridgment, at least, of the numerous lectures of 1816 and 1817, of which this is a résumé; especially to read in the third, fourth, and fifth volumes of the 1st Series, the developed analyses, in which, under different forms, universal and necessary principles are demonstrated as far as may be, and in the third volume of the 2d Series the lectures devoted to establish against Locke the same principles.
[25] First Series, vol. iv., lectures 1, 2, and 3.
[26] Ibid., vol. iv., etc.
[27] Ibid., vol. v., lecture 8.
[28] We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and confirmed by the errors of those who have dared to break it, this rule of true psychological analysis, that, before passing to the question of the origin of an idea, a notion, a belief, any principle whatever, the actual characters of this idea, this notion, this belief, this principle, must have been a long time studied and well established, with the firm resolution of not altering them under any pretext whatever in wishing to explain them. We believe that we have, as Leibnitz says, settled this point. See 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and the Opening Discourse; vol. iii., lecture 1, Locke; lecture 2, Condillac; lecture 3, almost entire, and lecture 8, p. 260; 2d Series, vol. iii., Examen du Système de Locke, lecture 16, p. 77-87; 3d Series, vol. iv., Examination of the Lectures of M. Loremquière, p. 268.
[29] This theory of spontaneity and of reflection, which in our view is the key to so many difficulties, continually recurs in our works. One may see, vol. i. of the 1st Series, in a programme of the Course of 1817, and in a fragment entitled De la Spontanéité et de la Réflexion; vol. iv. of the same Series, Examination of Reid's Philosophy, passim; vol. v., Examination of Kant's System, lecture 8; 2d Series, vol. i., passim; vol. iii., Lectures on Judgment; 3d Series, Fragments Philosophiques, vol. iv., preface of the first edition, p. 37, etc.; it will be found in different lectures of this volume, among others, in the third, On the value of Universal and Necessary Principles; in the fifth, On Mysticism; and in the eleventh, Primary Data of Common Sense.
[30] On immediate abstraction and comparative abstraction, see 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and everywhere in our other Courses.
[31] On M. de Biran, on his merits and defects, see our Introduction at the head of his Works.