260 PHILOSOPHY 



method and main outlines; but he also left open a way of 

 interpreting problems which, taken up and developed by 

 PASCAL, has furnished the method for all succeeding anti- 

 rationalistic and romantic philosophies. In the eight- 

 eenth century the ENCYCLOPAEDISTS, extending the 

 method of Descartes to psychological, social, ethical and 

 religious phenomena, sketched the outlines of all future 

 materialism. At the same time ROUSSEAU, continuing 

 the tradition of Pascal in his own unique way, inaugurated 

 the romantic movement. 



At the very beginning of the nineteenth century 

 appear two thinkers whose ideas and methods of proced- 

 ure were destined to develop into the two most opposed 

 tendencies in French philosophy to-day. MAINE DE 

 BIRAN, in his "Essai sur les fondements de la psychologic 

 et sur ses rapports avec 1'etude de la nature," 1812, re- 

 affirmed the tendency, employed so successfully by 

 Descartes, of making self-conscious analysis the basis for 

 metaphysics. On the one hand, he attached himself to 

 the Ideologists who continued the tradition of CON- 

 DILLAC'S sensational psychology; but, on the other, he 

 so deepened the scope of this psychology that he made 

 it reveal the inner consciousness of man as a continually 

 unfolding dynamic process in which the sense of effort is 

 central and in which man's freedom is revealed. On the 

 basis of this psychological analysis Maine de Biran sug- 

 gested the possibilities of a spiritualistic interpretation 

 not only of human nature but also of physical nature. 

 This suggestion, taken up and developed by Victor 

 COUSIN, Felix RAVAISSON, Jules LACHELIER, Emile 

 BOUTROUX, Henri BERGSON, and others, has continued 

 down to the present day as one of the most original 

 strands of idealistic thought in the nineteenth century. 



Unfortunately COUSIN mingled Maine de Biran's fruitful 

 suggestions with diverse and incongruous elements 



