Chapter 5

See charter, patent, close, fine and plea rolls, inquestspost mortemand other records. G. E. C.’sComplete Peerage;Dictionary of National Biography;Notes and Queries, series viii. vol. 7; J. H. Round’sPeerage Studies;Calendars of State Papers; Machyn’sDiary(Camden Society); Chronicles of Capgrave, Wavrin, Adam of Usk, &c.

(O. Ba.)

COURTENAY, RICHARD(d. 1415), English prelate, was a son of Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham Castle, near Exeter, and a grandson of Hugh Courtenay, earl of Devon (d. 1377). Hewas a nephew of William Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury, and a descendant of Edward I. Educated at Exeter College, Oxford, he entered the church, where his advance was rapid. He held several prebends, was dean of St Asaph and then dean of Wells, and became bishop of Norwich in 1413. As chancellor of the university of Oxford, an office to which he was elected in 1407 and again in 1410, Courtenay asserted the independence of the university against Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1411; but the archbishop, supported by Henry IV. and Pope John XXIII, eventually triumphed. Courtenay was a personal friend of Henry V. both before and after he came to the throne; and in 1413, immediately after Henry’s accession, he was made treasurer of the royal household. On two occasions he went on diplomatic errands to France, and he was also employed by Henry on public business at home. Having accompanied the king to Harfleur in August 1415, Courtenay was attacked by dysentery and died on the 15th of September 1415, his body being buried in Westminster Abbey.

Another member of this family,Peter Courtenay(d. 1492), a grandnephew of Richard, also attained high position in the English Church. Educated at Exeter College, Oxford, Peter became dean of Windsor, then dean of Exeter; in 1478 bishop of Exeter; and in 1487 bishop of Winchester in succession to William of Waynflete. With Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and others he attempted to raise a rebellion against Richard III. in 1483, and fled to Brittany when this enterprise failed. Courtenay was restored to his dignities and estates in 1485 by Henry VII., whom he had accompanied to England, and he died on the 23rd of September 1492.

See J. H. Wylie,History of England under Henry IV. (London, 1884-1898).

COURTENAY, WILLIAM(c. 1342-1396), English prelate, was a younger son of Hugh Courtenay, earl of Devon (d. 1377), and through his mother Margaret, daughter of Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, was a great-grandson of Edward I. Being a native of the west of England he was educated at Stapledon Hall, Oxford, and after graduating in law was chosen chancellor of the university in 1367. Courtenay’s ecclesiastical and political career began about the same time. Having been made prebendary of Exeter, of Wells and of York, he was consecrated bishop of Hereford in 1370, was translated to the see of London in 1375, and became archbishop of Canterbury in 1381, succeeding Simon of Sudbury in both these latter positions. As a politician the period of his activity coincides with the years of Edward III.’s dotage, and with practically the whole of Richard II.’s reign. From the first he ranged himself among the opponents of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster; he was a firm upholder of the rights of the English Church, and was always eager to root out Lollardry. In 1373 he declared in convocation that he would not contribute to a subsidy until the evils from which the church suffered were removed; in 1375 he incurred the displeasure of the king by publishing a papal bull against the Florentines; and in 1377 his decided action during the quarrel between John of Gaunt and William of Wykeham ended in a temporary triumph for the bishop. Wycliffe was another cause of difference between Lancaster and Courtenay. In 1377 the reformer appeared before Archbishop Sudbury and Courtenay, when an altercation between the duke and the bishop led to the dispersal of the court, and during the ensuing riot Lancaster probably owed his safety to the good offices of his foe. Having meanwhile become archbishop of Canterbury Courtenay summoned a council, or synod, in London, which condemned the opinions of Wycliffe; he then attacked the Lollards at Oxford, and urged the bishops to imprison heretics. He was for a short time chancellor of England during 1381, and in January 1382 he officiated at the marriage of Richard II. with Anne of Bohemia, afterwards crowning the queen. In 1382 the archbishop’s visitation led to disputes with the bishops of Exeter and Salisbury, and Courtenay was only partially able to enforce the payment of a special tax to meet his expenses on this occasion. During his concluding years the archbishop appears to have upheld the papal authority in England, although not to the injury of the English Church. He protested against the confirmation of the statute of provisors in 1390, and he was successful in slightly modifying the statute of praemunire in 1393. Disliking the extravagance of Richard II. he publicly reproved the king, and after an angry scene the royal threats drove him for a time into Devonshire. In 1386 he was one of the commissioners appointed to reform the kingdom and the royal household, and in 1387 he arranged a peace between Richard and his enemies under Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester. Courtenay died at Maidstone on the 31st of July 1396, and was buried in Canterbury cathedral.

See W. F. Hook,Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. iv. (London, 1860-1876); and W. Stubbs,Constitutional History, vols. ii. and iii. (Oxford, 1895-1896).

COURTESY(O. Fr.curtesie, latercourtoisie), manners or behaviour that suit a court, politeness, due consideration for others. A special application of the word is in the expression “by courtesy,” where something is granted out of favour and not of right, hence “courtesy” titles,i.e.those titles of rank which are given by custom to the eldest sons of dukes, marquesses and earls, usually the second title held by the father; to the younger sons and to the daughters of dukes and marquesses, viz. the prefix “lord” and “lady” with the Christian and surname. For “tenure by the courtesy” seeCurtesy. Another form of the word, “curtsey” or “curtsy,” was early confined to the expression of courtesy or respect by a gesture or bow, now only of the reverence made by a woman, consisting in a bending of the knees accompanied by a lowering of the body.

COURTHOPE, WILLIAM JOHN(1842- ), English writer and historian of poetry, whose father was rector of South Malling, Essex, was born on the 17th of July 1842. From Harrow school he went to New College, Oxford; took first-classes in classical “moderations” and “greats”; and won the Newdigate prize for poetry (1864) and the Chancellor’s English essay (1868). He seemed destined for distinction as a poet, his volume ofLudibria Lunae(1869) being followed in 1870 by the remarkably fineParadise of Birds. But a certain academic quality of mind seemed to check his output in verse and divert it into the field of criticism. Apart from many contributions to the higher journalism, his literary career is associated mainly with his continuation of the edition of Pope’s works, begun by Whitwell Elwin (1816-1900), which appeared in ten volumes from 1871-1889; his life of Addison (Men of Letters series, 1882); hisLiberal Movement in English Literature(1885); and his tenure of the professorship of Poetry at Oxford (1895-1901), which resulted in his elaborateHistory of English Poetry(the first volume appearing in 1895), and hisLife in Poetry(1901). He deals with the history of English poetry as a whole, and in its unity as a result of the national spirit and thought in succeeding ages, and attempts to bring the great poets into relation with this. In 1887 he was appointed a civil service commissioner, being first commissioner in 1892, and being made a C.B. He was made an honorary fellow of his old college at Oxford in 1896, and was given the honorary degrees of D.Litt. by Durham in 1895 and of LL.D. by Edinburgh University in 1898.

COURT LEET, an English petty criminal court for the punishment of small offences. It has been usual to make a distinction between court baron and court leet1as being separate courts, but in the early history of the court leet no such distinctioncan be drawn. At a very early time the lords of manors exercised or claimed certain jurisdictional franchises. Of these the most important was the “view of frankpledge” and its attendant police jurisdiction. Some time in the later middle ages the court baron when exercising these powers gained the name ofleet, and, later, of “court leet.” Thequo warrantoproceedings of Edward I. established a sharp distinction between the court baron, exercising strictly manorial rights, and the court leet, depending for its jurisdiction upon royal franchise. The court leet was a court of record, and its duty was not only to view the pledges but to present by jury all crimes that might happen within the jurisdiction, and punish the same. The steward of the court acted as judge, presiding wholly in a judicial character, the ministerial acts being executed by the bailiff. The court leet began to decline in the 14th century, being superseded by the more modern courts of the justices, but in many cases courts leet were kept up until nearly the middle of the 19th century. Indeed, it cannot be said that they are now actually extinct, as many still survive for formal purposes, and by s. 40 of the Sheriffs Act 1887 they are expressly kept up.

1The history of the word “leet” is very obscure. It appears in Anglo-French documents asleteand in Anglo-Latin asleta. Professor W. W. Skeat has connected it with Old Englishláetan, to let, which is very doubtful, though this is the origin of the use of the word in such expressions as “two-” “three-way leet,” a place where cross-roads meet. TheNew English Dictionarysuggests a connexion with “lathe,” a term which survives as a division of the county of Kent, containing several “hundreds.” This is of Old Norwegian origin, and seems to have meant “landed possessions.” There is also another Old Norwegianléith, a court or judicial assembly, and modern Danish haslaegd, a division of the country for military purposes. J. H. Round (Feudal England, p. 101) points out that the Suffolk hundred was divided for assessment into equal blocks called “leets” (see further F. W. Maitland,Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Soc. Publications I. lxxiii-lxxvi). “Leet” is also used, chiefly in Scotland, for a list of persons nominated for election to an office. This is, apparently, a shortened form of the Frenchélite, elected.

COURT-MARTIAL,a court for the trial of offences against military or naval discipline, or for the administration of martial law. In England courts-martial have inherited part of the jurisdiction of the oldCuria militaris, or court of the chivalry, in which a single marshal and at one time the high constable proceeded “according to the customs and usages of that court, and, in cases omitted according to the civil law,secundum legem armorum” (Coke, 4Ins.17). The modern form of the courts was adopted by ordinance in the time of Charles I., when English soldiers were studying the “articles and military laws” of Gustavus Adolphus and the Dutch military code of Arnheim; it is first recognized by statute in the first Mutiny Act of 1689. The Mutiny Act (with various extensions and amendments) and the statutory articles of war continued to be the sources of military law which courts-martial administered until 1879, when they were codified in the Army Discipline and Regulation Act 1879, which was, in turn, superseded by the Army Act 1881. This act is re-enacted annually by the Army (Annual) Act. The constitution of courts-martial, their procedure, &c., are dealt with underMilitary Law.

Naval Courts-Martial.—The administration of the barbarous naval law of England was long entrusted to the discretion of commanders acting under instructions from the lord high admiral, who was supreme over both the royal and merchant navy. It was the leaders of the Long Parliament who first secured something like a regular tribunal by passing in 1645 an ordinance and articles concerning martial law for the government of the navy. Under this ordinance Blake, Monk and Penn issued instructions for the holding general and ship courts-martial with written records, the one for captains and commanders, the other for subordinate officers and men. Of the latter the mate, gunner and boatswain were members, but the admirals reserved a control over the more serious sentences. Under an act of 1661 the high admiral again received power to issue commissions for holding courts-martial—a power which continues to be exercised by the board of admiralty. During the 18th century, under the auspices of Anson, the jurisdiction was greatly extended, and the Consolidation Act of 1749 was passed in which the penalty of death occurs as frequently as the curses in the commination service. The Naval Articles of War have always been statutory, and the whole system may now be said to rest on the Naval Discipline Act 1866, as amended by the act of 1884. The navy has its courts of inquiry for the confidential investigation of charges “derogatory to the character of an officer and a gentleman.” Under the act of 1866 a court-martial must consist of from five to nine officers of a certain rank, and must be held publicly on board of one of H.M. ships of war, and where at least two such ships are together. The rank of the president depends on that of the prisoner. A judge-advocate attends, and the procedure resembles that in military courts, except that the prisoner is not asked to plead, and the sentence, if not one of death, does not require the confirmation of the commander-in-chief abroad or of the admiralty at home. The court has a large and useful power of finding the prisoner guilty of a less serious offence than that charged, which might well be imitated in the ordinary criminal courts. The death sentence is always carried out by hanging at the yard-arm; Admiral Byng, however, was shot in 1757. The board of admiralty have, under the Naval Discipline Acts, a general power of suspending, annulling, and modifying sentences which are not capital. The jurisdiction extends to all persons belonging to the navy, to land forces and other passengers on board, shipwrecked crews, spies, persons borne on the books of H.M. ships in commission, and civilians on board who endeavour to seduce others from allegiance. The definition of the jurisdiction by locality includes harbours, havens or creeks, lakes or rivers, in or out of the United Kingdom; all places within the jurisdiction of the admiralty; all places on shore out of the United Kingdom; the dockyards, barracks, hospitals, &c., of the service wherever situated; all places on shore in or out of the United Kingdom for all offences punishable under the Articles of War except those specified in section 38 of the Naval Discipline Act 1860, which are punishable by ordinary law. The Royal Marines, while borne on the books of H.M. ships, are subject to the Naval Discipline Acts, and, by an order in council, 1882, when they are embarked on board ship for service on shore; otherwise they are under the Army Acts. By s. 179, sub.-sec. 7, of the Army Act, in the application of the act to the Royal Marines the admiralty is substituted for military authorities.

Authorities.—Simmons,On the Constitution and Practice of Courts-Martial; Clode,Military and Martial Law; Stephens, Gifford and Smith,Manual of Naval Law and Court-Martial Procedure. The earlier writers on courts-martial are Adye (1796), M’Arthur (1813), Maltby (1813, Boston), James (1820), D’Aguilar (1843), and Hough,Precedents in Military Law(1855).

COURTNEY, LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY,Baron(1832- ), English politician and man of letters, eldest son of J. S. Courtney, a banker, was born at Penzance on the 6th of July 1832. At Cambridge, Leonard Courtney was second wrangler and first Smith’s prizeman, and was elected a fellow of his college, St John’s. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1858, was professor of political economy at University College from 1872 to 1875, and in December 1876, after a previous unsuccessful attempt, was elected to parliament for Liskeard in the Liberal interest. He continued to represent the borough, and the district into which it was merged by the Reform Act of 1885, until 1900, when his attitude towards the South African War—he was one of the foremost of the so-called “Pro-Boer” party—compelled his retirement. Until 1885 he was a devoted adherent of Mr Gladstone, particularly in finance and foreign affairs. In 1880 he was under-secretary of state for the home department, in 1881 for the colonies, and in 1882 secretary to the treasury; but he was always a stubborn fighter for principle, and upon finding that the government’s Reform Bill in 1884 contained no recognition of the scheme for proportional representation, to which he was deeply committed, he resigned office. He refused to support Mr Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill in 1885, and was one of those who chiefly contributed to its rejection, and whose reputation for unbending integrity and intellectual eminence gave solidity to the Liberal Unionist party. In 1886 he was elected chairman of committees in the House of Commons, and his efficiency in this office seemed to mark him out for the speakership in 1895. A Liberal Unionist, however, could only be elected by Conservative votes, and he had made himself objectionable to a large section of the party by his independent attitude on various questions, on which his Liberalism outweighed his party loyalty. He would in any case have been incapacitated by an affection of the eyesight, which for a while threatened to withdraw him from public life altogether. After 1895 Mr Courtney’s divergences from the Unionist party on questions other than Irish politics became gradually more marked. He became known in the House of Commons principally for his candid criticism of the measures introduced by his nominal leaders, and he was rather to be ranked among the Opposition than as a Ministerialist; and when the crisis with the Transvaalcame in 1899, Mr Courtney’s views, which remained substantially what they were when he supported the settlement after Majuba in 1881, had plainly become incompatible with his position even as a nominal follower of Lord Salisbury and Mr Chamberlain. He gradually reverted to formal membership of the Liberal party, and in January 1906 unsuccessfully contested a division of Edinburgh as a supporter of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at the general election. Among the birthday honours of 1906 he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Courtney of Penwith (Cornwall). Lord Courtney, who in 1883 married Miss Catherine Potter (an elder sister of Mrs Sidney Webb), was a prominent supporter of the women’s movement. In earlier years he was a regular contributor toThe Times, and he wrote numerous essays in the principal reviews on political and economic subjects. In 1901 he published a book onThe Working Constitution of the United Kingdom.

Two of his brothers, John Mortimer Courtney (b. 1838), and William Prideaux Courtney (b. 1845), also attained public distinction, the former in the government service in Canada (from 1869, retiring in 1906), rising to be deputy-minister of finance, and the latter in the British civil service (1865-1892), and as a prominent man of letters and bibliographer.

COURTOIS, JACQUES(1621-1676) andGUILLAUME(1628-1679). The two French painters who bore these names are also called by the Italian equivalents Giacomo (or Jacopo) Cortese and Guglielmo Cortese. Each of the brothers is likewise named, from his native province, Le Bourguignon, or Il Borgognone.

Jacques Courtois was born at St Hippolyte, near Besançon, in 1621. His father was a painter, and with him Jacques remained studying up to the age of fifteen. Towards 1637 he came to Italy, was hospitably received at Milan by a Burgundian gentleman, and entered, and for three years remained in, the French military service. The sight of some battle-pictures revived his taste for fine art. He went to Bologna, and studied under the friendly tutelage of Guido; thence he proceeded to Rome, where he painted, in the Cistercian monastery, the “Miracle of the Loaves.” Here he took a house and after a while entered upon his own characteristic style of art, that of battle-painting, in which he has been accounted to excel all other old masters; his merits were cordially recognized by the celebrated Cerquozzi, named Michelangelo delle Battaglie. He soon rose from penury to ease, and married a painter’s beautiful daughter, Maria Vagini; she died after seven years of wedded life. Prince Matthias of Tuscany employed Courtois on some striking works in his villa, Lappeggio, representing with much historical accuracy the prince’s military exploits. In Venice also the artist executed for the senator Sagredo some remarkable battle-pieces. In Florence he entered the Society of Jesus, taking the habit in Rome in 1655; it was calumniously rumoured that he adopted this course in order to escape punishment for having poisoned his wife. As a Jesuit father, Courtois painted many works in churches and monasteries of the society. He lived piously in Rome, and died there of apoplexy on the 20th of May 1676 (some accounts say 1670 or 1671). His battle-pieces have movement and fire, warm colouring (now too often blackened), and great command of the brush,—those of moderate dimensions are the more esteemed. They are slight in execution, and tell out best from a distance. Courtois etched with skill twelve battle-subjects of his own composition. The Dantzig painter named in Italy Pandolfo Reschi was his pupil.

Guillaume Courtois, born likewise at St Hippolyte, came to Italy with his brother. He went at once to Rome, and entered the school of Pietro da Cortona. He studied also the Bolognese painters and Giovanni Barbieri, and formed for himself a style with very little express mannerism, partly resembling that of Maratta. He painted the “Battle of Joshua” in the Quirinal Gallery, the “Crucifixion of St Andrew” in the church of that saint on Monte Cavallo, various works for the Jesuits, some also in co-operation with his brother. His last production was Christ admonishing Martha. His draughtsmanship is better than that of Jacques, whom he did not, however, rival in spirit, colour or composition. He also executed some etchings. Guillaume Courtois died of gout on the 15th of June 1679.

COURTRAI(Flemish,Kortryk), an important and once famous town of West Flanders, Belgium, situated on the Lys. Pop. (1904) 34,564. It is now best known for its fine linen, which ranks with that of Larne. The lace factories are also important and employ 5000 hands. But considerable as is the prosperity of modern Courtrai it is but a shadow of what it was in the middle ages during the halcyon period of the Flemish communes. Then Courtrai had a population of 200,000, now it is little over a sixth of that number. On the 11th of July 1302 the great battle of Courtrai (seeInfantry) was fought outside its walls, when the French army, under the count of Artois, was vanquished by the allied burghers of Bruges, Ypres and Courtrai with tremendous loss. As many as 700 pairs of golden spurs were collected on the field from the bodies of French knights and hung up as an offering in an abbey church of the town, which has long disappeared. There are still, however, some interesting remains of Courtrai’s former grandeur. Perhaps the Pont de Broel, with its towers at either end of the bridge, is as characteristic and complete as any monument of ancient Flanders that has come down to modern times. The hôtel de ville, which dated from the earlier half of the 16th century, was restored in 1846, and since then statues have also been added to represent those that formerly ornamented the façade. Two richly and elaborately carved chimney-pieces in the hôtel de ville merit special notice. The one in the council chamber upstairs dates from 1527 and gives an allegorical representation of the Virtues and the Vices. The other, three-quarters of a century later, contains an heraldic representation of the noble families of the town. The church of St Martin dates from the 15th century, but was practically destroyed in 1862 by a fire caused by lightning. It has been restored. The most important building at Courtrai is the church of Notre Dame, which was begun by Count Baldwin IX. in 1191 and finished in 1211. The portal and the choir were reconstructed in the 18th century. In the chapel behind the choir is hung one of Van Dyck’s masterpieces, “The Erection of the Cross.” The chapel of the counts attached to the church dates from 1373, and contained mural paintings of the counts and countesses of Flanders down to the merging of the title in the house of Burgundy. Most if not all of these had become obliterated, but they have now been carefully restored. With questionable judgment portraits have been added of the subsequent holders of the title down to the emperor Francis II. (I. of Austria), the last representative of the houses of Flanders and Burgundy to rule in the Netherlands. Courtrai celebrated the 600th anniversary of the battle mentioned above by erecting a monument on the field in 1902, and also by fêtes and historical processions that continued for a fortnight.

Courtrai, theCortracumof the Romans, ranked as a town from the 7th century onwards. It was destroyed by the Normans, but was rebuilt in the 10th century by Baldwin III. of Flanders, who endowed it with market rights and laid the foundation of its industrial importance by inviting the settlement of foreign weavers. The town was once more burnt, in 1382, by the French after the battle of Roosebeke, but was rebuilt in 1385 by Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy.

COURVOISIER, JEAN JOSEPH ANTOINE(1775-1835), French magistrate and politician, was born at Besançon on the 30th of November 1775. During the revolutionary period he left the country and served in the army of theémigrésand later in that of Austria. In 1801, under the Consulate, he returned to France and established himself as an advocate at Besançon, being appointedconseiller-auditeurto the court of appeal there in 1808. At the Restoration he was made advocate-general by Louis XVIII., resigned and left France during the Hundred Days, and was reappointed after the second Restoration in 1815. In 1817, after the modification of the constitution by theordonnanceof the 5th of September, he was returned to the chamber of deputies, where he attached himself to the left centre and supported the moderate policy of Richelieu and Decazes. He was an eloquent speaker, and master of many subjects; and his proved royalism made it impossible for the ultra-Royalists to discredit him, much as they resented his consistent opposition totheir short-sighted violence. After the revolt at Lyons in 1817 he was nominatedprocureur-généralof the city, and by his sense and moderation did much to restore order and confidence. He was again a member of the chamber from 1819 to 1824, and vigorously opposed the exceptional legislation which the second administration of Richelieu passed under the influence of the ultra-Royalists. In 1824 he failed to secure re-election, and occupied himself with his judicial duties until his nomination as councillor of state in 1827. On the 8th of August 1829 he accepted the offer of the portfolio of justice in the Polignac ministry, but resigned on the 19th of May 1830, when he realized that the government intended to abrogate the Charter and the inevitable revolution that would follow. During the trial of the ex-ministers, in December, he was summoned as a witness, and paid a tribute to the character of his former colleagues which, under the circumstances, argued no little courage. He refused to take office under Louis Philippe, and retired into private life, dying on the 18th of September 1835.

COUSCOUS,orKous-kous(an Arabic word derived fromkaskasa, to pound), a dish common among the inhabitants of North Africa, made of flour rubbed together and steamed over a stew of mutton, fowl, &c., with which it is eaten.

COUSIN, JEAN(1500-1590), French painter, was born at Soucy, near Sens, and began as a glass-painter, his windows in the Sainte Chapelle at Vincennes being considered the finest in France. As a painter of subject pictures he is ranked as the founder of the French school, as having first departed from the practice of portraits. His “Last Judgment,” influenced by Parmigiano, is in the Louvre, and a “Descent from the Cross” (1523) in the museum at Mainz is attributed to him. He was known also as a sculptor, and an engraver, both in etching and on wood, his wood-cuts for Jean le Clerc’s Bible (1596) and other books being his best-known work. He also wrote aLivre de perspective(1560), and aLivre de portraiture(1571).

See Ambroise Firmin-Didot,Étude sur J. Cousin(1872), andRecueil des œuvres choisies de J. Cousin(1873).

COUSIN, VICTOR(1792-1867), French philosopher, the son of a watchmaker, was born in Paris, in the Quartier St Antoine, on the 28th of November 1792. At the age of ten he was sent to the grammar school of the Quartier St Antoine, the Lycée Charlemagne. Here he studied until he was eighteen. The lycée had a connexion with the university, and when Cousin left the secondary school he was “crowned” in the ancient hall of the Sorbonne for the Latin oration delivered by him there, in the general concourse of his school competitors. The classical training of the lycée strongly disposed him to literature. He was already known among his compeers for his knowledge of Greek. From the lycée he passed to the Normal School of Paris, where Laromiguière was then lecturing on philosophy. In the second preface to theFragmens philosophiques, in which he candidly states the varied philosophical influences of his life, Cousin speaks of the grateful emotion excited by the memory of the day in 1811, when he heard Laromiguière for the first time. “That day decided my whole life. Laromiguière taught the philosophy of Locke and Condillac, happily modified on some points, with a clearness and grace which in appearance at least removed difficulties, and with a charm of spiritualbonhomiewhich penetrated and subdued.” Cousin was set forthwith to lecture on philosophy, and he speedily obtained the position of master of conferences (maître de conférences) in the school. The second great philosophical impulse of his life was the teaching of Royer-Collard. This teacher, as he tells us, “by the severity of his logic, the gravity and weight of his words, turned me by degrees, and not without resistance, from the beaten path of Condillac into the way which has since become so easy, but which was then painful and unfrequented, that of the Scottish philosophy.” In 1815-1816 Cousin attained the position ofsuppléant(assistant) to Royer-Collard in the history of modern philosophy chair of the faculty of letters. There was still another thinker who influenced him at this early period,—Maine de Biran, whom Cousin regarded as the unequalled psychological observer of his time in France.

These men strongly influenced both the method and the matter of Cousin’s philosophical thought. To Laromiguière he attributes the lesson of decomposing thought, even though the reduction of it to sensation was inadequate. Royer-Collard taught him that even sensation is subject to certain internal laws and principles which it does not itself explain, which are superior to analysis and the natural patrimony of the mind. De Biran made a special study of the phenomena of the will. He taught him to distinguish in all cognitions, and especially in the simplest facts of consciousness, the fact of voluntary activity, that activity in which our personality is truly revealed. It was through this “triple discipline,” as he calls it, that Cousin’s philosophical thought was first developed, and that in 1815 he entered on the public teaching of philosophy in the Normal School and in the faculty of letters.1He then took up the study of German, worked at Kant and Jacobi, and sought to master thePhilosophy of Natureof Schelling, by which he was at first greatly attracted. The influence of Schelling may be observed very markedly in the earlier form of his philosophy. He sympathized with the principle of faith of Jacobi, but regarded it as arbitrary so long as it was not recognized as grounded in reason. In 1817 he went to Germany, and met Hegel at Heidelberg. In this year appeared Hegel’sEncyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, of which Cousin had one of the earliest copies. He thought Hegel not particularly amiable, but the two became friends. The following year Cousin went to Munich, where he met Schelling for the first time, and spent a month with him and Jacobi, obtaining a deeper insight into thePhilosophy of Nature.

The political troubles of France interfered for a time with his career. In the events of 1814-1815 he took the royalist side. He at first adopted the views of the party known asdoctrinaire, of which Royer-Collard was the philosophicalPolitical troubles.chief. He seems then to have gone farther than his party, and even to have approached the extreme Left. Then came a reaction against liberalism, and in 1821-1822 Cousin was deprived of his offices alike in the faculty of letters and in the Normal School. The Normal School itself was swept away, and Cousin shared at the hands of a narrow and illiberal government the fate of Guizot, who was ejected from the chair of history. This enforced abandonment of public teaching was not wholly an evil. He set out for Germany with a view to further philosophical study. While at Berlin in 1824-1825 he was thrown into prison, either on some ill-defined political charge at the instance of the French police, or on account of certain incautious expressions which he had let fall in conversation. Liberated after six months, he continued under the suspicion of the French government for three years. It was during this period, however, that he thought out and developed what is distinctive in his philosophical doctrine. His eclecticism, his ontology and his philosophy of history were declared in principle and in most of their salient details in theFragmens philosophiques(Paris, 1826). The preface to theFragmens philosophiques.second edition (1833) and theAvertissementto the third (1838) aimed at a vindication of his principles against contemporary criticism. Even the best of his later books, thePhilosophie écossaise(4th ed., 1863), theDu vrai, du beau, et du bien(12th ed., 1872; Eng. trans., 3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1854), and thePhilosophie de Locke(4th ed., 1861) were simply matured revisions of his lectures during the period from 1815 to 1820. The lectures on Locke were first sketched in 1819, and fully developed in the course of 1829.

During the seven years of enforced abandonment of teaching he produced, besides theFragmens, the edition of the works of Proclus (6 vols., 1820-1827), and the works of Descartes (11 vols., 1826). He also commenced hisTranslation of Plato(13 vols.), which occupied his leisure time from 1825 to 1840.

We see in theFragmensvery distinctly the fusion of the different philosophical influences by which his opinions were finally matured. For Cousin was as eclectic in thought and habit of mind as he was in philosophical principle and system. It iswith the publication of theFragmensof 1826 that the first great widening of his reputation is associated. In 1827 followed theCours de l’histoire de la philosophie.

In 1828 M. de Vatimesnil, minister of public instruction in Martignac’s ministry, recalled Cousin and Guizot to their professorial positions in the university. The three years which followed were the period of Cousin’sCareer as a lecturer.greatest triumph as a lecturer. His return to the chair was the symbol of the triumph of constitutional ideas and was greeted with enthusiasm. The hall of the Sorbonne was crowded as the hall of no philosophical teacher in Paris had been since the days of Abelard. The lecturer had a singular power of identifying himself for the time with the system which he expounded and the historical character he portrayed. Clear and comprehensive in the grasp of the general outlines of his subject, he was methodical and vivid in the representation of details. In exposition he had the rare art of unfolding and aggrandizing. There was a rich, deep-toned, resonant eloquence mingled with the speculative exposition; his style of expression was clear, elegant and forcible, abounding in happy turns and striking antitheses. To this was joined a singular power of rhetorical climax. His philosophy exhibited in a striking manner the generalizing tendency of the French intellect, and its logical need of grouping details round central principles.

There was withal a moral elevation in his spiritual philosophy which came home to the hearts of his hearers, and seemed to afford a ground for higher development in national literature and art, and even in politics, than the traditional philosophy of France had appeared capable of yielding. His lectures produced more ardent disciples, imbued at least with his spirit, than those of any other professor of philosophy in France during the 18th century. Tested by the power and effect of his teaching influence, Cousin occupies a foremost place in the rank of professors of philosophy, who like Jacobi, Schelling and Dugald Stewart have united the gifts of speculative, expository and imaginative power. Tested even by the strength of the reaction which his writings have in some cases occasioned, his influence is hardly less remarkable. The taste for philosophy—especially its history—was revived in France to an extent unknown since the 17th century.

Among the men who were influenced by Cousin we may note T. S. Jouffroy, J. P. Damiron, Garnier, J. Barthélemy St Hilaire, F. Ravaisson-Mollien, Rémusat, Jules Simon and A. Franck. Jouffroy and Damiron were first fellow-studentsDisciples and followers.and then disciples. Jouffroy, however, always kept firm to the early—the French and Scottish—impulses of Cousin’s teaching. Cousin continued to lecture regularly for two years and a half after his return to the chair. Sympathizing with the revolution of July, he was at once recognized by the new government as a friend of national liberty. Writing in June 1833 he explains both his philosophical and his political position:—

“I had the advantage of holding united against me for many years both the sensational and the theological school. In 1830 both schools descended into the arena of politics. The sensational school quite naturally produced the demagogic party, and the theological school became quite as naturally absolutism, safe to borrow from time to time the mask of the demagogue in order the better to reach its ends, as in philosophy it is by scepticism that it undertakes to restore theocracy. On the other hand, he who combated any exclusive principle in science was bound to reject also any exclusive principle in the state, and to defend representative government.”

The government was not slow to do him honour. He was induced by the ministry of which his friend Guizot was the head to become a member of the council of public instruction and counsellor of state, and in 1832 he was made a peer of France. He ceased to lecture, but retained the title of professor of philosophy. Finally, he accepted the position of minister of public instruction in 1840 under Thiers. He was besides director of the Normal School and virtual head of the university, and from 1840 a member of the Institute (Academy of the Moral and Political Sciences). His character and his official position at this period gave him great power in the university and in the educational arrangements of the country. In fact, during the seventeen and a half years of the reign of Louis Philippe, Cousin mainly moulded the philosophical and even the literary tendencies of the cultivated class in France.

But the most important work he accomplished during this period was the organization of primary instruction. It was to the efforts of Cousin that France owed her advance, in primary education, between 1830 and 1848. PrussiaRelation to primary education in France.and Saxony had set the national example, and France was guided into it by Cousin. Forgetful of national calamity and of personal wrong, he looked to Prussia as affording the best example of an organized system of national education; and he was persuaded that “to carry back the education of Prussia into France afforded a nobler (if a bloodless) triumph than the trophies of Austerlitz and Jena.” In the summer of 1831, commissioned by the government, he visited Frankfort and Saxony, and spent some time in Berlin. The result was a series of reports to the minister, afterwards published asRapport sur l’état de l’instruction publique dans quelques pays de l’Allemagne et particulièrement en Prusse. (Compare alsoDe l’instruction publique en Hollande, 1837.) His views were readily accepted on his return to France, and soon afterwards through his influence there was passed the law of primary instruction. (See hisExposé des motifs et projet de loi sur l’instruction primaire, présentés à la chambre des députés, séance du 2 janvier 1833.)

In the words of theEdinburgh Review(July 1833), these documents “mark an epoch in the progress of national education, and are directly conducive to results important not only to France but to Europe.” TheReportwas translated into English by Mrs Sarah Austin in 1834. The translation was frequently reprinted in the United States of America. The legislatures of New Jersey and Massachusetts distributed it in the schools at the expense of the states. Cousin remarks that, among all the literary distinctions which he had received, “None has touched me more than the title of foreign member of the American Institute for Education.” To the enlightened views of the ministries of Guizot and Thiers under the citizen-king, and to the zeal and ability of Cousin in the work of organization, France owes what is best in her system of primary education,—a national interest which had been neglected under the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration (seeExposé, p. 17). In the first two years of the reign of Louis Philippe more was done for the education of the people than had been either sought or accomplished in all the history of France. In defence of university studies he stood manfully forth in the chamber of peers in 1844, against the clerical party on the one hand and the levelling or Philistine party on the other. His speeches on this occasion were published in a tractateDéfense de l’université et de la philosophie(1844 and 1845).

This period of official life from 1830 to 1848 was spent, so far as philosophical study was concerned, in revising his former lectures and writings, in maturing them for publication or reissue, and in research into certain periods of thePhilosophical writings.history of philosophy. In 1835 appearedDe la Métaphysique d’Aristote, suivi d’un essai de traduction des deux premiers livres; in 1836,Cours de philosophie professé à la faculté des lettres pendant l’année 1818, andOuvrages inédits d’Abélard. ThisCours de philosophieappeared later in 1854 asDu vrai, du beau, et du bien. From 1825 to 1840 appearedCours de l’histoire de la philosophie, in 1829Manuel de l’histoire de la philosophie de Tennemann, translated from the German. In 1840-1841 we haveCours d’histoire de la philosophie morale au XVIIIesiècle(5 vols.). In 1841 appeared his edition of theŒuvres philosophiques de Maine-de-Biran; in 1842,Leçons de philosophie sur Kant(Eng. trans. A. G. Henderson, 1854), and in the same yearDes Pensées de Pascal. TheNouveaux fragmentswere gathered together and republished in 1847. Later, in 1859, appearedPetri Abaelardi Opera.

During this period Cousin seems to have turned with fresh interest to those literary studies which he had abandoned for speculation under the influence of Laromiguière and Royer-Collard. To this renewed interest we owe his studies of menLiterary studies.and women of note in France in the 17th century. As the results of his work in this line, we have, besides theDes Pensêes de Pascal, 1842,Études sur les femmes et la société du XVIIesiècle, 1853. He has sketched Jacqueline Pascal (1844), Madame de Longueville (1853), the marquise de Sablé (1854), the duchesse de Chevreuse (1856), Madame de Hautefort (1856).

When the reign of Louis Philippe came to a close through the opposition of his ministry, with Guizot at its head, to the demand for electoral reform and through the policy of the Spanish marriages, Cousin, who was opposed to the government on these points, lent his sympathy to Cavaignac and the Provisional government. He published a pamphlet entitledJustice et charité, the purport of which showed the moderation of his political views. It was markedly anti-socialistic. But from this period he passed almost entirely from public life, and ceased to wield the personal influence which he had done during the preceding years. After thecoup d’étatof the 2nd of December, he was deprived of his position as permanent member of the superior council of public instruction. From Napoleon and the Empire he stood aloof. A decree of 1852 placed him along with Guizot and Villemain in the rank of honorary professors. His sympathies were apparently with the monarchy, under certain constitutional safeguards. Speaking in 1853 of the political issues of the spiritual philosophy which he had taught during his lifetime, he says,—“It conducts human societies to the true republic, that dream of all generous souls, which in our time can be realized in Europe only by constitutional monarchy.”2

During the last years of his life he occupied a suite of rooms in the Sorbonne, where he lived simply and unostentatiously. The chief feature of the rooms was his noble library, the cherished collection of a lifetime. He died at Cannes on the 13th of January 1867, in his sixty-fifth year. In the front of the Sorbonne, below the lecture rooms of the faculty of letters, a tablet records an extract from his will, in which he bequeaths his noble and cherished library to the halls of his professorial work and triumphs.

Philosophy.—There are three distinctive points in Cousin’s philosophy. These are his method, the results of his method, and the application of the method and its results to history,—especially to the history of philosophy. It is usual to speak of his philosophy as eclecticism. It is eclectic only in a secondary and subordinate sense. All eclecticism that is not self-condemned and inoperative implies a system of doctrine as its basis,—in fact, a criterion of truth. Otherwise, as Cousin himself remarks, it is simply a blind and useless syncretism. And Cousin saw and proclaimed from an early period in his philosophical teaching the necessity of a system on which to base his eclecticism. This is indeed advanced as an illustration or confirmation of the truth of his system,—as a proof that the facts of history correspond to his analysis of consciousness. These three points—the method, the results, and the philosophy of history—are with him intimately connected; they are developments in a natural order of sequence. They become in practice Psychology, Ontology and Eclecticism in history.

First, as to method. On no point has Cousin more strongly insisted than the importance of method in philosophy. That which he adopts, and the necessity of which he so strongly proclaims, is the ordinary one of observation,Method.analysis and induction. This observational method Cousin regards as that of the 18th century,—the method which Descartes began and abandoned, and which Locke and Condillac applied, though imperfectly, and which Reid and Kant used with more success, yet not completely. He insists that this is the true method of philosophy as applied to consciousness, in which alone the facts of experience appear. But the proper condition of the application of the method is that it shall not through prejudice of system omit a single fact of consciousness. If the authority of consciousness is good in one instance, it is good in all. If not to be trusted in one, it is not to be trusted in any. Previous systems have erred in not presenting the facts of consciousness,i.e.consciousness itself, in their totality. The observational method applied to consciousness gives us the science of psychology. This is the basis and the only proper basis of ontology or metaphysics—the science of being—and of the philosophy of history. To the observation of consciousness Cousin adds induction as the complement of his method, by which he means inference as to reality necessitated by the data of consciousness, and regulated by certain laws found in consciousness, viz. those of reason. By his method of observation and induction as thus explained, his philosophy will be found to be marked off very clearly, on the one hand from the deductive construction of notions of an absolute system, as represented either by Schelling or Hegel, which Cousin regards as based simply on hypothesis and abstraction, illegitimately obtained; and on the other, from that of Kant, and in a sense, of Sir W. Hamilton, both of which in the view of Cousin are limited to psychology, and merely relative or phenomenal knowledge, and issue in scepticism so far as the great realities of ontology are concerned. What Cousin finds psychologically in the individual consciousness, he finds also spontaneously expressed in the common sense or universal experience of humanity. In fact, it is with him the function of philosophy to classify and explain universal convictions and beliefs; but common-sense is not with him philosophy, nor is it the instrument of philosophy; it is simply the material on which the philosophical method works, and in harmony with which its results must ultimately be found.

The three great results of psychological observationResults.are Sensibility, Activity or Liberty, and Reason.

These three facts are different in character, but are not found apart in consciousness. Sensations, or the facts of the sensibility, are necessary; we do not impute them to ourselves. The facts of reason are also necessary, and reason is not less independent of the will than the sensibility. Voluntary facts alone are marked in the eyes of consciousness with the characters of imputability and personality. The will alone is the person orMe. The me is the centre of the intellectual sphere without which consciousness is impossible. We find ourselves in a strange world, between two orders of phenomena which do not belong to us, which we apprehend only on the condition of our distinguishing ourselves from them. Further, we apprehend by means of a light which does not come from ourselves. All light comes from the reason, and it is the reason which apprehends both itself and the sensibility which envelops it, and the will which it obliges but does not constrain. Consciousness, then, is composed of these three integrant and inseparable elements. But Reason is the immediate ground of knowledge and of consciousness itself.

But there is a peculiarity in Cousin’s doctrine of activity or freedom, and in his doctrine of reason, which enters deeply into his system. This is the element of spontaneity in volition and in reason. This is the heart of what isSpontaneity in will.new alike in his doctrine of knowledge and being. Liberty or freedom is a generic term which means a cause or being endowed with self-activity. This is to itself and its own development its own ultimate cause. Free-will is so, although it is preceded by deliberation and determination,i.e.reflection, for we are always conscious that even after determination we are free to will or not to will. But there is a primary kind of volition which has not reflection for its condition, which is yet free and spontaneous. We must have willed thus spontaneously first, otherwise we could not know, before our reflective volition, that we could will and act. Spontaneous volition is free as reflective, but it is the prior act of the two. This view of liberty of will is the only one in accordance with the facts of humanity; it excludes reflective volition, and explains the enthusiasm of the poet and the artist in the act of creation; it explains also the ordinary actions of mankind, which are done as a rule spontaneously and not after reflective deliberation.

But it is in his doctrine of the Reason that the distinctive principle of the philosophy of Cousin lies. The reason given to us by psychological observation, the reason of our consciousness, is impersonal in its nature. We do not make it; its characterImpersonality of reason.is precisely the opposite of individuality; it is universal andnecessary. The recognition of universal and necessary principles in knowledge is the essential point in psychology; it ought to be put first and emphasized to the last that these exist, and that they are wholly impersonal or absolute. The number of these principles, their enumeration and classification, is an important point, but it is secondary to that of the recognition of their true nature. This was the point which Kant missed in his analysis, and this is the fundamental truth which Cousin thinks he has restored to the integrity of philosophy by the method of the observation of consciousness. And how is this impersonality or absoluteness of the conditions of knowledge to be established? The answer is in substance that Kant went wrong in putting necessity first as the criterion of those laws. This brought them within the sphere of reflection, and gave as their guarantee the impossibility of thinking them reversed; and led to their being regarded as wholly relative to human intelligence, restricted to the sphere of the phenomenal, incapable of revealing to us substantial reality—necessary, yet subjective. But this test of necessity is a wholly secondary one; these laws are not thus guaranteed to us; they are each and all given to us, given to our consciousness, in an act of spontaneous apperception or apprehension, immediately, instantaneously, in a sphere above the reflective consciousness, yet within the reach of knowledge. And “all subjectivity with all reflection expires in the spontaneity of apperception. The reason becomes subjective by relation to the voluntary and free self; but in itself it is impersonal; it belongs not to this or to that self in humanity; it belongs not even to humanity. We may say with truth that nature and humanity belong to it, for without its laws both would perish.”

But what is the number of those laws? Kant reviewing the enterprise of Aristotle in modern times has given a complete list of the laws of thought, but it is arbitrary in classification and may be legitimately reduced. According toLaws of reason.Cousin, there are but two primary laws of thought, that of causality and that of substance. From these flow naturally all the others. In the order of nature, that of substance is the first and causality second. In the order of acquisition of our knowledge, causality precedes substance, or rather both are given us in each other, and are contemporaneous in consciousness.

These principles of reason, cause and substance, given thus psychologically, enable us to pass beyond the limits of the relative and subjective to objective and absolute reality,—enable us, in a word, to pass from psychology, or the science of knowledge, to ontology or the science of being. These laws are inextricably mixed in consciousness with the data of volition and sensation, with free activity and fatal action or impression, and they guide us in rising to a personal being, a self or free cause, and to an impersonal reality, a not-me—nature, the world of force—lying out of us, and modifying us. As I refer to myself the act of attention and volition, so I cannot but refer the sensation to some cause, necessarily other than myself, that is, to an external cause, whose existence is as certain for me as my own existence, since the phenomenon which suggests it to me is as certain as the phenomenon which had suggested my reality, and both are given in each other. I thus reach an objective impersonal world of forces which corresponds to the variety of my sensations. The relation of these forces or causes to each other is the order of the universe.

But these two forces, the me and the not-me, are reciprocally limitative. As reason has apprehended these two simultaneous phenomena, attention and sensation, and led us immediately to conceive the two sorts of distinctThe infinite or absolute.causes, correlative and reciprocally finite, to which they are related, so, from the notion of this limitation, we find it impossible under the same guide not to conceive a supreme cause, absolute and infinite, itself the first and last cause of all. This is relatively to self and not-self what these are to their proper effects. This cause is self-sufficient, and is sufficient for the reason. This is God; he must be conceived under the notion of cause, related to humanity and the world. He is absolute substance only in so far as he is absolute cause, and his essence lies precisely in his creative power. He thus creates, and he creates necessarily.

This theodicy of Cousin laid him open obviously enough to the charge of pantheism. This he repels, and his answer may be summed up as follows. Pantheism is properly the deification of the law of phenomena, the universe God.Charge of Pantheism.But I distinguish the two finite causes self and not-self from each other and from the infinite cause. They are not mere modifications of this cause or properties, as with Spinoza,—they are free forces having their power or spring of action in themselves, and this is sufficient for our idea of independent finite reality. I hold this, and I hold the relation of these as effects to the one supreme cause. The God I plead for is neither the deity of Pantheism, nor the absolute unity of the Eleatics, a being divorced from all possibility of creation or plurality, a mere metaphysical abstraction. The deity I maintain is creative, and necessarily creative. The deity of Spinoza and the Eleatics is a mere substance, not a cause in any sense. As to the necessity under which Deity exists of acting or creating, this is the highest form of liberty, it is the freedom of spontaneity, activity without deliberation. His action is not the result of a struggle between passion and virtue. He is free in an unlimited manner; the purest spontaneity in man is but the shadow of the freedom of God. He acts freely but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of being able to choose the opposite part. He cannot deliberate or will as we do. His spontaneous action excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of will and the mechanical operation of necessity.

The elements found in consciousness are also to be found in the history of humanity and in the history of philosophy. In external nature there are expansion and contraction which correspond to spontaneity and reflection. ExternalHistory of philosophy.nature again in contrast with humanity expresses spontaneity; humanity expresses reflection. In human history the East represents the spontaneous stage; the Pagan and Christian world represent stages of reflection.

This was afterwards modified, expanded and more fully expressed by saying that humanity in its universal development has three principal moments. First, in the spontaneous stage, where reflection is not yet developed, and art is imperfect, humanity has thought only of the immensity around it. It is preoccupied by the infinite. Secondly, in the reflective stage, mind has become an object to itself. It thus knows itself explicitly or reflectively. Its own individuality is now the only or at least the supreme thing. This is the moment of the finite. Thirdly, there comes an epoch in which the self or me is subordinated. Mind realizes another power in the universe. The finite and the infinite become two real correlatives in the relation of cause and product. This is the third and highest stage of development, the relation of the finite and the infinite. As philosophy is but the highest expression of humanity, these three moments will be represented in its history. The East typifies the infinite, Greece the finite or reflective epoch, the modern era the stage of relation or correlation of infinite and finite. In theology, the dominant philosophical idea of each of these epochs results in pantheism, polytheism, theism. In politics we have in correspondence also with the idea, monarchy, democracy, constitutionalism.

Eclecticism thus means the application of the psychological method to the history of philosophy. Confronting the various systems co-ordinated as sensualism, idealism, scepticism, mysticism, with the facts of consciousness, theEclecticism.result was reached “that each system expresses an order of phenomena and ideas, which is in truth very real, but which is not alone in consciousness, and which at the same time holds an almost exclusive place in the system; whence it follows that each system is not false but incomplete, and that in re-uniting all incomplete systems, we should have a complete philosophy, adequate to the totality of consciousness.” Philosophy, as thus perfected, would not be a mere aggregation of systems, as is ignorantly supposed, but an integration of the truth in each system after the false or incomplete is discarded.

Such is the system in outline. The historical position of the system lies in its relations to Kant, Schelling and Hegel. Cousin was opposed to Kant in asserting that the unconditioned in the form of infinite or absolute cause is butRelations to Kant, Schelling and Hegel.a mere unrealizable tentative or effort on the part of the mind, something different from a mere negation, yet not equivalent to a positive thought. With Cousin the absolute as the ground of being is grasped positively by the intelligence, and it renders all else intelligible; it is not as with Kant a certain hypothetical or regulative need.

With Schelling again Cousin agrees in regarding this supreme ground of all as positively apprehended, and as a source of development, but he utterly repudiates Schelling’s method. The intellectual intuition either falls under the eye of consciousness, or it does not. If not, how do you know it and its object which are identical? If it does, it comes within the sphere of psychology; and the objections to it as thus a relative, made by Schelling himself, are to be dealt with. Schelling’s intellectual intuition is the mere negation of knowledge.

Again the pure being of Hegel is a mere abstraction,—a hypothesis illegitimately assumed, which he has nowhere sought to vindicate. The very point to be established is the possibility of reaching being per se or pure being; yet in the Hegelian system this is the very thing assumed as a starting-point. Besides this, of course, objections might be made to the method of development, as not only subverting the principle of contradiction, but as galvanizing negation into a means of advancing or developing the whole body of human knowledge and reality. The intellectual intuition of Schelling, as above consciousness, the pure being of Hegel, as an empty abstraction, unvindicated, illegitimately assumed, and arbitrarily developed, are equally useless as bases of metaphysics. This led Cousin, still holding by essential knowledge of being, to ground it in an analysis of consciousness,—in psychology.

The absolute or infinite—the unconditioned ground and source of all reality—is yet apprehended by us as an immediate datum or reality; and it is apprehended in consciousness—under its condition, that, to wit, of distinguishing subject and object, knower and known. The doctrine of Cousin was criticized by Sir W. Hamilton in theEdinburgh Reviewof 1829, and it was animadverted upon about the same time by Schelling. Hamilton’s objections are as follows. The correlation of the ideas of infinite and finite does not necessarily imply their correality, as Cousin supposes; on the contrary, it is a presumption that finite is simply positive and infinite negative of the same—that the finite and infinite are simply contradictory relatives. Of these “the positive alone is real, the negative is only an abstraction of the other, and in the highest generality even an abstraction of thought itself.” A study of the few sentences under this head might have obviated the trifling criticism of Hamilton’s objection which has been set afloat recently, that the denial of a knowledge of the absolute or infinite implies a foregone knowledge of it. How can you deny the reality of that which you do not know? The answer to this is that in the case of contradictory statements—A and not A—the latter is a mere negation of the former, and posits nothing; and the negation of a notion with positive attributes, as the finite, does not extend beyond abolishing the given attributes as an object of thought. The infinite or non-finite is not necessarily known, ere the finite is negated, or in order to negate it; all that needs be known is the finite itself; and the contradictory negation of it implies no positive. Non-organized may or may not correspond to a positive—i.e.an object or notion with qualities contradictory of the organized; but the mere sublation of the organized does not posit it, or suppose that it is known beforehand, or that anything exists corresponding to it. This is one among many flaws in the Hegelian dialectic, and it paralyzes the whole of theLogic. Secondly, the conditions of intelligence, which Cousin allows, necessarily exclude the possibility of knowledge of the absolute—they are held to be incompatible with its unity. Here Schelling and Hamilton argue that Cousin’s absolute is a mere relative. Thirdly, it is objected that in order to deduce the conditioned, Cousin makes his absolute a relative; for he makes it an absolute cause,i.e.a cause existing absolutely under relation. As such it is necessarily inferior to the sum total of its effects, and dependent for reality on these—in a word, a mere potence or becoming. Further, as a theory of creation, it makes creation a necessity, and destroys the notion of the divine. Cousin made no reply to Hamilton’s criticism beyond alleging that Hamilton’s doctrine necessarily restricted human knowledge and certainty to psychology and logic, and destroyed metaphysics by introducing nescience and uncertainty into its highest sphere—theodicy.

The attempt to render the laws of reason or thought impersonal by professing to find them in the sphere of spontaneous apperception, and above reflective necessity, can hardly be regarded as successful. It may be that we first of allCriticism of his philosophy. Impersonality of reason.primitively or spontaneously affirm cause, substance, time, space, &c., in this way. But these are still in each instance given us as realized in a particular form. In no single act of affirmation of cause or substance, much less in such a primitive act, do we affirm the universality of their application. We might thus get particular instances or cases of these laws, but we could never get the laws themselves in their universality, far less absolute impersonality. And as they are not supposed to be mere generalizations from experience, no amount of individual instances of the application of any one of them by us would give it a true universality. The only sure test we have of their universality in our experience is the test of their reflective necessity. We thus after all fall back on reflection as our ground for their universal application; mere spontaneity of apprehension is futile; their universality is grounded in their necessity, not their necessity in their universality. How far and in what sense this ground of necessity renders them personal are of course questions still to be solved.

But if these three correlative facts are immediately given, it seems to be thought possible by Cousin to vindicate them in reflective consciousness. He seeks to trace the steps which the reason has spontaneously and consciously, but irreflectively, followed. And here the question arises—Can we vindicate in a reflective or mediate process this spontaneous apprehension of reality?

The self is found to be a cause of force, free in its action, on the ground that we are obliged to relate the volition of consciousness to the self as its cause, and its ultimate cause. It is not clear from the analysis whether the self is immediately observed as an acting or originating cause, or whether reflection working on the principle of causality is compelled to infer its existence and character. If self is actually so given, we do not need the principle of causality to infer it; if it is not so given, causality could never give us either the notion or the fact of self as a cause or force, far less as an ultimate one. All that it could do would be to warrant a cause of some sort, but not this or that reality as the cause. And further, the principle of causality, if fairly carried out, as universal and necessary, would not allow us to stop at personality or will as the ultimate cause of its effect—volition. Once applied to the facts at all, it would drive us beyond the first antecedent or term of antecedents of volition to a still further cause or ground—in fact, land us in an infinite regress of causes.

The same criticism is even more emphatically applicable to the influence of a not-self, or world of forces, corresponding to our sensations, and the cause of them. Starting from sensation as our basis, causality could never give us this, even though it be allowed that sensation is impersonal to the extent of being independent of our volition. Causality might tell us that a cause there is of sensation somewhere and of some sort; but that this cause is a force or sum of forces, existing in space, independently of us, and corresponding to our sensations, it could never tell us, for the simple reason that such a notion is not supposed to exist in our consciousness. Causality cannot add to the number of our notions,—cannot add to the number of realities we know. All it can do is to necessitate us to think that a cause there is of a given change, butwhatthat cause is it cannot of itself inform us, or even suggest to us, beyond implying that it must be adequateto the effect. Sensation might arise, for aught we know, so far as causality leads us, not from a world of forces at all, but from a will like our own, though infinitely more powerful, acting upon us, partly furthering and partly thwarting us. And indeed such a supposition is, with the principle of causality at work, within the limits of probability, as we are already supposed to know such a reality—a will—in our own consciousness. When Cousin thus set himself to vindicate those points by reflection, he gave up the obvious advantage of his other position that the realities in question are given us in immediate and spontaneous apprehension. The same criticism applies equally to the inference of an absolute cause from the two limited forces which he names self and not-self. Immediate spontaneous apperception may seize this supreme reality; but to vindicate it by reflection as an inference on the principle of causality is impossible. This is a mere paralogism; we can never infer either absolute or infinite from relative or finite.

The truth is that Cousin’s doctrine of the spontaneous apperception of impersonal truth amounts to little more than a presentment in philosophical language of the ordinary convictions and beliefs of mankind. This is important as a preliminary stage, but philosophy properly begins when it attempts to co-ordinate or systematize those convictions in harmony, to conciliate apparent contradiction and opposition, as between the correlative notions of finite and infinite, the apparently conflicting notions of personality and infinitude, self and not-self; in a word, to reconcile the various sides of consciousness with each other. And whether the laws of our reason are the laws of all intelligence and being—whether and how we are to relate our fundamental, intellectual and moral conceptions to what is beyond our experience, or to an infinite being—are problems which Cousin cannot be regarded as having solved. These are in truth the outstanding problems of modern philosophy.

Cousin’s doctrine of spontaneity in volition can hardly be said to be more successful than his impersonality of the reason through spontaneous apperception. Sudden, unpremeditated volition may be the earliest and the most artistic,Volition.but it is not the best. Volition is essentially a free choice between alternatives, and that is best which is most deliberate, because it is most rational. Aristotle touched this point in his distinction betweenβούλησιςandπροαίρεσις. The sudden and unpremeditated wish represented by the former is wholly inferior in character to the free choice of the latter, guided and illumined by intelligence. In this we can deliberately resolve upon what is in our power; in that we are subject to the vain impulse of wishing the impossible. Spontaneity is pleasing, sometimes beautiful, but it is not in this instance the highest quality of the thing to be obtained. That is to be found in a guiding and illumining reflective activity.

Back to Index Next