Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good

by Victor Cousin

• [Lecture IV.]—God the Principle of Principles [75]

• Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute truth?—Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us, in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it; refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself; defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.—Plato; St. Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fénelon; Bossuet; Leibnitz.—Truth the mediator between God and man.—Essential distinctions.

• [Lecture V.]—On Mysticism [102]

• Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and mysticism. Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without an intermediary.—Two sorts of mysticism.—Mysticism of sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities—the one external, the other internal, and corresponding to the soul as external sensibility corresponds to nature.—Legitimate part of sentiment.—Its aberrations.—Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus: God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by pure thought.—Ecstasy.—Mixture of superstition and abstraction in mysticism.—Conclusion of the first part of the course.

[PART SECOND.—THE BEAUTIFUL.]

• [LECTURE VI.]—The Beautiful in the Mind of Man [123]

• The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art is, as in the investigation of the true, to commence by psychology.—Faculties of the soul that unite in the perception of the beautiful.—The senses give only the agreeable; reason alone gives the idea of the beautiful.—Refutation of empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the beautiful.—Pre-eminence of reason.—Sentiment of the beautiful; different from sensation and desire.—Distinction between the sentiment of the beautiful and that of the sublime.—Imagination.—Influence of sentiment on imagination.—Influence of imagination on sentiment.—Theory of taste.

• [Lecture VII.]—The Beautiful in Objects [140]

• Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful: the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.—Nor to convenience.—Nor to proportion.—Essential characters of the beautiful.—Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral beauty.—Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.—God, the first principle of the beautiful.—Theory of Plato.