Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good

by Victor Cousin

It is necessary to distinguish sentiment well from sensation. There are, in some sort, two sensibilities: one is directed to the external world, and is charged with transmitting to the soul the impressions that it sees; the other is wholly interior, and is related to the soul as the other is to nature,—its function is to receive the impression, and, as it were, the rebound of what passes in the soul. Have we discovered any truth? there is something in us which feels joy on account of it. Have we performed a good action? we receive our reward in a feeling of satisfaction less vivid, but more delicate and more durable than all the agreeable sensations that come from the body. It seems as if intelligence also had its intimate organ, which suffers or enjoys, according to the state of the intelligence. We bear in ourselves a profound source of emotion, at once physical and moral, which expresses the union of our two natures. The animal does not go beyond sensation, and pure thought belongs only to the angelic nature. The sentiment that partakes of sensation and thought is the portion of humanity. Sentiment is, it is true, only an echo of reason; but this echo is sometimes better understood than reason itself, because it resounds in the most intimate, the most delicate portions of the soul, and moves the entire man.

It is a singular, but incontestable fact, that as soon as reason has conceived truth, the soul attaches itself to it, and loves it. Yes, the soul loves truth. It is a wonderful thing that a being strayed into one corner of the universe, alone charged with sustaining himself against so many obstacles, who, it would seem, has enough to do to think of himself, to preserve and somewhat embellish his life, is capable of loving what is not related to him, and exists only in an invisible world! This disinterested love of truth gives evidence of the greatness of him who feels it.

Reason takes one step more:—it is not contented with truth, even absolute truth, when convinced that it possesses it ill, that it does not possess it as it really is; as long as it has not placed it upon its eternal basis; having arrived there, it stops as before its impassable barrier, having nothing more to seek, nothing more to find. Sentiment follows reason, to which it is attached; it stops, it rests, only in the love of the infinite being.

In fact, it is the infinite that we love, while we believe that we are loving finite things, even while loving truth, beauty, virtue. And so surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms us, that its highest manifestations do not satisfy us until we have referred them to their immortal source. The heart is insatiable, because it aspires after the infinite. This sentiment, this need of the infinite, is at the foundation of the greatest passions, and the most trifling desires. A sigh of the soul in the presence of the starry heavens, the melancholy attached to the passion of glory, to ambition, to all the great emotions of the soul, express it better without doubt, but they do not express it more than the caprice and mobility of those vulgar loves, wandering from object to object in a perpetual circle of ardent desires, of poignant disquietudes, and mournful disenchantments.

Let us designate another relation between reason and sentiment.

The mind at first precipitates itself towards its object without rendering to itself an account of what it does, of what it perceives, of what it feels. But, with the faculty of thinking, of feeling, it has also that of willing; it possesses the liberty of returning to itself, of reflecting on its own thought and sentiment, of consenting to this, or of resisting it, of abstaining from it, or of reproducing its thought and sentiment, while stamping them with a new character. Spontaneity, reflection,—these are the two great forms of intelligence.[71] One is not the other; but, after all, the latter does little more than develop the former; they contain at bottom the same things:—the point of view alone is different. Every thing that is spontaneous is obscure and confused; reflection carries with it a clear and distinct view.

Reason does not begin by reflection; it does not at first perceive the truth as universal and necessary; consequently, when it passes from idea to being, when it refers truth to the real being that is its subject, it has not sounded, it even has no suspicion of the depth of the chasm it passes; it passes it by means of the power which is in it, but it is not astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished, and undertakes by the aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the opposite of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. Here commences the strife between sophism and common sense, between false science and natural truth, between good and bad philosophy, both of which come from free reflection. The sad and sublime privilege of reflection is error; but reflection is the remedy for the evil it produces. If it can deny natural truth, usually it confirms it, returns to common sense by a longer or shorter circuit; it opposes in vain all the tendencies of human nature, by which it is almost always overcome, and brought back submissive to the first inspirations of reason, fortified by this trial. But there is nothing more in the end than there was at the beginning; only in primitive inspiration there was a power which was ignorant of itself, and in the legitimate results of reflection there is a power which knows itself:—one is the triumph of instinct, the other, that of true science.

Sentiment which accompanies intelligence in all its proceedings presents the same phenomena.

The heart, like reason, pursues the infinite, and the only difference there is in these pursuits is, that sometimes the heart seeks the infinite without knowing that it seeks it, and sometimes it renders to itself an account of the final end of the need of loving what disturbs it. When reflection is added to love, if it finds that the object loved is in fact worthy of being loved, far from enfeebling love, it strengthens it; far from clipping its divine wings, it develops them, and nourishes them, as Plato[72] says. But if the object of love is only a symbol of the true beauty, only capable of exciting the desire of the soul without satisfying it, reflection breaks the charm which held the heart, dissipates the chimera that enchained it. It must be very sure in regard to its attachments, in order to dare to put them to the proof of reflection. O Psyche! Psyche! preserve thy good fortune; do not sound the mystery too deeply. Take care not to bring the fearful light near the invisible lover with whom thy soul is enamored. At the first ray of the fatal lamp love is awakened, and flies away. Charming image of what takes place in the soul, when to the serene and unsuspecting confidence of sentiment succeeds reflection with its bitter train. This is perhaps also the meaning of the biblical account of the tree of knowledge.[73] Before science and reflection are innocence and faith. Science and reflection at first engender doubt, disquietude, distaste for what one possesses, the disturbed pursuit of what one knows not, troubles of mind and soul, sore travail of thought, and, in life, many faults, until innocence, forever lost, is replaced by virtue, simple faith by true science, until love, through so many vanishing illusions, finally succeeds in reaching its true object.

Spontaneous love has the native grace of ignorance and happiness. Reflective love is very different; it is serious, it is great, even in its faults, with the greatness of liberty. Let us not be in haste to condemn reflection: if it often produces egotism, it also produces devotion. What, in fact, is self-devotion? It is giving ourselves freely, with full knowledge of what we are doing. Therein consists the sublimity of love, love worthy of a noble and generous creature, not an ignorant and blind love. When affection has conquered selfishness, instead of loving its object for its own sake, the soul gives itself to its object, and miracle of love, the more it gives the more it possesses, nourishing itself by its own sacrifices, and finding its strength and its joy in its entire self-abandonment. But there is only one being who is worthy of being thus loved, and who can be thus loved without illusions, and without mistakes, at once without limits, and without regret, to wit, the perfect being who alone does not fear reflection, who alone can fill the entire capacity of our heart.