OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : MAY 28, 1S67. 319 



In all these positions, and especially in the often difficult management 

 of the affairs of the Coast Survey, his extraordinary influence and success 

 may be attributed to his sterling honesty and simplicity as well as fixedness 

 of purpose, to the even balance of a symmetrically developed and well- 

 stored mind, to a quiet winning persuasiveness which, on a personal 

 interview, rarely failed to convert even an opponent into a friend, and, 

 in a word, to a consummate practical wisdom and shrewdness which 

 may somewhat remind us of his distinguished ancestor. The conduct 

 of affairs and details of administration which absorbed most of his 

 best years, and for which he was so peculiarly fitted, took from him 

 the opportunity of doing much that he had planned and might have 

 done in original investigation. But even in this field he has left a 

 name not unworthy of his lineage. 



Victor Cousin, the only Foreign Honorary Member deceased 

 during the past year, died at Paris, about the middle of January last, 

 in the 75th year of his age. His career has been long, brilliant, and 

 prosperous. For nearly half a century his name has been indisputably 

 the first among the philosophers of France, while his numerous writ- 

 ings have occupied and rewarded the attention, not only of the special 

 students of psychological and metaphysical science, but of educated and 

 thoughtful men generally. Though not well fitted either by his tastes 

 or habits to gain political distinction, or to hold high office in the state, 

 he was for a while a prominent member of that remarkable group 

 of men, eminent in letters and science, who were the legislators and 

 statesmen of France under Louis Philippe ; he was created Councillor 

 of State, member of the Royal Council of Public Instruction, Peer of 

 France, and finally entered the Cabinet under the short-lived ministry 

 of Thiers, in 1840, as Minister of Public Instruction. After the de- 

 feat of that ministry, he retired to his old pursuits and apartments in 

 the Sorbonne, where he occupied, as a bachelor, the same rooms almost 

 continuously for nearly thirty-five years, constantly employed on his 

 numerous and successful publications, collecting a noble library, amass- 

 ing an ample fortune, and leaving at his death both his books and 

 money for the encouragement of philosophical studies. 



That Cousin was able to accomplish so much, though he began life 

 without any extraneous advantages, indicates what has been the essen- 

 tially democratic constitution of society in France during the first half 

 of the present century, whatever may have been for the time its 

 nominal form of government. Mobility of fortune and station, splendid 



