OF ARTS AND SCIENCES: MAY 28, 1867. 323 



glittering generalities and perilous leaps in reasoning ; and the rhet- 

 oric, though ornate, is too often declamatory ; but they must be tried 

 by the writer's national standard, and not by English principles 

 of criticism. They were excellent in their kind, though inferior in 

 depth and originality of thought, and in all the higher merits of philo- 

 sophical disquisition, to the admirable lectures on history delivered 

 at the same period by Guizot. The lectures of the following year, on 

 the philosophy of the eighteenth century, though less popular, were 

 really of a higher quality, more carefully studied, less rhetorical, richer 

 in matter, more precise in statement, and more instructive in expo- 

 sition and criticism. Regarded generally, they are Cousin's best work, 

 his ablest contribution to the history of philosophy. Taken in con- 

 nection with the course of the preceding year, they afford a satis- 

 factory view, an interesting exposition and defence, of the writer's 

 system of philosophy, so far at least as he could be said to have any 

 system sufficiently original to be appropriately designated by his 

 name. He was avowedly an eclectic; not professing to make dis- 

 coveries, or to invent a theory of his own, he chose the humbler but 

 more useful task of expounding and criticising the theories of pre- 

 decessors, adopting some things and rejecting others, and thus piecing 

 together out of selected fragments a body of coherent doctrine. From 

 the Scotch philosophers, as represented by Reid and Stewart, he bor- 

 rowed a method of inquiry, a theory of the foundation of morals, and a 

 refutation of the sensualism and materialism that had been taught by 

 Helvetius and Condillac. Among his countrymen, he was chiefly in- 

 debted to Maine de Biran, whom he followed implicitly in his theories 

 of personality, of causation, and of the freedom of the will. From the 

 Germans, especially from Schelling and Hegel, but with considerable 

 modifications, he adopted his doctrines of the absolute, of the imperson- 

 ality of reason, and of the a priori method of studying the necessary 

 development of historical events. The principal result of Cousin's 

 labors, therefore, may be said to be the reconciliation, and the general 

 adoption in France, of the leading dogmas of the Scotch and German 

 schools of philosophy. 



To have the reputation of being a skilful expounder and critic of other 

 people's opinions may not appear very flattering ; yet such work ought 

 not to be held in light esteem. To break up the distinctions between 

 various schools, to harmonize doctrines which have been made to 

 appear incongruous only because originally incorporated into rival 



