450 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



had been formed under the influence of two men who were both 

 strongly opposed to this tendency of the age, and who clung to 

 idealism, coupled, in Bonnet's case, with a broad Christianity, 

 and in Haller's with a morbid form of Protestantism. There was, 

 I imagine, little that was original in de Saussure's philosophical 

 lectures, and their chief importance for us is as further indications 

 of the bent of his intellect, and of the cautious, if open-minded, 

 attitude which characterised him in all matters, both of research 

 and speculation. It may be interesting if, without attempting to 

 follow in any detail de Saussure's expositions as reproduced by 

 Naville, I attempt briefly to indicate his general line of thought. 

 In the fundamental controversy that divided the philosophic 

 world in the years preceding the French Revolution de Saussure 

 was not on the side of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists. He 

 was frankly opposed to the wave of materialism that was spreading 

 from France over Western Europe. He affirmed strenuously 

 the existence of spirit, and that the connection with matter, in 

 which alone we know it, is temporary and unessential ; he 

 regarded body and soul as concomitants capable of action on 

 each other. He believed in free will, without which there can be, 

 he argued, no morality. He postulated the existence of a supreme 

 energy or Being outside creation, who not only sets it going but 

 keeps it running, who, in philosophical language, is not only 

 transcendent but also immanent. To this Being, whom he 

 designated God, he attributed a benevolence which calls for the 

 worship and gratitude of mankind. He affirmed the survival of 

 the human soul on the ground that, unlike the body, it is one and 

 indivisible, and incapable, therefore, of dissolution, and he held 

 that a future life is postulated as a sanction for morality in the 

 present. He urged that the desire for immortality implanted 

 in mankind may be taken as an argument in its favour, 

 and that the creative will would appear to have endowed the 

 soul with a tendency to progress towards its own ultimate 

 perfection. He was careful to separate philosophy from re- 

 ligion at any rate, from its established forms. But he avoided 

 in any way committing himself to a positive attitude towards 

 current creeds ; he goes no further than the negative statement 

 that there is nothing in philosophy to make a special intervention 

 of God in the world incredible, and that we ought to receive 



