Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good

by Victor Cousin

Chap. xxxvii. "Since there is nothing eternal, immutable, independent, but God alone, we must conclude that these truths do not subsist in themselves, but in God alone, and in his eternal ideas, which are nothing else than himself.

"There are those who, in order to verify these eternal truths which we have proposed, and others of the same nature, have figured to themselves eternal essences aside from deity—a pure illusion, which comes from not understanding that in God, as in the source of being, and in his understanding, where resides the art of making and ordering all things, are found primitive ideas, or as St. Augustine says, the eternally subsisting reasons of things. Thus, in the thought of the architect is the primitive idea of a house which he perceives in himself; this intellectual house would not be destroyed by any ruin of houses built according to this interior model; and if the architect were eternal, the idea and the reason of the house would also be eternal. But, without recurring to the mortal architect, there is an immortal architect, or rather a primitive eternally subsisting art in the immutable thought of God, where all order, all measure, all rule, all proportion, all reason, in a word, all truth are found in their origin.

"These eternal verities which our ideas represent, are the true object of science; and this is the reason why Plato, in order to render us truly wise, continually reminds us of these ideas, wherein is seen, not what is formed, but what is, not what is begotten and is corrupt, what appears and vanishes, what is made and defective, but what eternally subsists. It is this intellectual world which that divine philosopher has put in the mind of God before the world was constructed, which is the immutable model of that great work. These are the simple, eternal, immutable, unbegotten, incorruptible ideas to which he refers us, in order to understand truth. This is what has made him say that our ideas, images of the divine ideas, were also immediately derived from the divine ideas, and did not come by the senses, which serve very well, said he, to awaken them, but not to form them in our mind. For if, without having ever seen any thing eternal, we have so clear an idea of eternity, that is to say, of being that is always the same; if, without having perceived a perfect triangle, we understand it distinctly, and demonstrate so many incontestable truths concerning it, it is a mark that these ideas do not come from our senses."

Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self.[65] Chap. iv., sect. 5. Intelligence has for its object eternal truths, which are nothing else than God himself, in whom they are always subsisting and perfectly understood.

"... We have already remarked that the understanding has eternal verities for its object. The standards by which we measure all things are eternal and invariable. We know clearly that every thing in the universe is made according to proportion, from the greatest to the least, from the strongest to the weakest, and we know it well enough to understand that these proportions are related to the principles of eternal truth. All that is demonstrated in mathematics, and in any other science whatever, is eternal and immutable, since the effect of the demonstration is to show that the thing cannot be otherwise than as it is demonstrated to be. So, in order to understand the nature and the properties of things which I know, for example, a triangle, a square, a circle, or the relations of these figures, and all other figures, to each other, it is not necessary that I should find such in nature, and I may be sure that I have never traced, never seen, any that are perfect. Neither is it necessary that I should think that there is motion in the world in order to understand the nature of motion itself, or that of the lines which every motion describes, and the hidden proportions according to which it is developed. When the idea of these things is once awakened in my mind, I know that, whether they have an actual existence or not, so they must be, that it is impossible for them to be of another nature, or to be made in a different way. To come to something that concerns us more nearly, I mean by these principles of eternal truth, that they do not depend on human existence, that, so far as he is capable of reasoning, it is the essential duty of man to live according to reason, and to search for his maker, through fear of lacking the recognition of his maker, if in fault of searching for him, he should be ignorant of him. All these truths, and all those which I deduce from them by sure reasoning, subsist independently of all time. In whatever time I place a human understanding, it will know them, but in knowing them it will find them truths, it will not make them such, for our cognitions do not make their objects, but suppose them. So these truths subsist before all time, before the existence of a human understanding: and were every thing that is made according to the laws of proportion, that is to say, every thing that I see in nature, destroyed except myself, these laws would be preserved in my thought, and I should clearly see that they would always be good and always true, were I also destroyed with the rest.

"If I seek how, where, and in what subject they subsist eternal and immutable, as they are, I am obliged to avow the existence of a being in whom truth is eternally subsisting, in whom it is always understood; and this being must be truth itself, and must be all truth, and from him it is that truth is derived in every thing that exists and has understanding out of him.

"It is, then, in him, in a certain manner, who is incomprehensible[66] to me, it is in him, I say, that I see these eternal truths; and to see them is to turn to him who is immutably all truth, and to receive his light.

"This eternal object is God eternally subsisting, eternally true, eternally truth itself.... It is in this eternal that these eternal truths subsist. It is also by this that I see them. All other men see them as well as myself, and we see them always the same, and as having existed before us. For we know that we have commenced, and we know that these truths have always been. Thus we see them in a light superior to ourselves, and it is in this superior light that we see whether we act well or ill, that is to say, whether we act according to these constitutive principles of our being or not. In that, then, we see, with all other truths, the invariable rules of our conduct, and we see that there are things in regard to which duty is indispensable, and that in things which are naturally indifferent, the true duty is to accommodate ourselves to the greatest good of society. A well-disposed man conforms to the civil laws, as he conforms to custom. But he listens to an inviolable law in himself, which says to him that he must do wrong to no one, that it is better to be injured than to injure.... The man who sees these truths, by these truths judges himself, and condemns himself when he errs. Or, rather, these truths judge him, since they do not accommodate themselves to human judgments, but human judgments are accommodated to them. And the man judges rightly when, feeling these judgments to be variable in their nature, he gives them for a rule these eternal verities.

"These eternal verities which every understanding always perceives the same, by which every understanding is governed, are something of God, or rather, are God himself....

"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, and man is to himself an indubitable proof of this. For, whether he considers himself or extends his vision to the beings that surround him, he sees every thing subjected to certain laws, and to immutable rules of truth. He sees that he understands these laws, at least in part,—he who has neither made himself, nor any part of the universe, however small, and he sees that nothing could have been made had not these laws been elsewhere perfectly understood; and he sees that it is necessary to recognize an eternal wisdom wherein all law, all order, all proportion, have their primitive reason. For it is absurd to suppose that there is so much sequence in truths, so much proportion in things, so much economy in their arrangement, that is to say, in the world, and that this sequence, this proportion, this economy, should nowhere be understood:—and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that there is some one who knows them in their perfection, and that this is he who has made all things...."