Modern French Philosophy | Page 5

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vie divine. In his religious psychology he upheld the great Christian
doctrines of divine love and grace as against the less human attitude of
the Stoics. He still insists upon the power of will and action and is an
enemy of the religious vice of quietism. In his closing years De Biran
penned his ideas upon our realisation of the divine love by intuition.
His intense interest in the inner life of the spirit gives De Biran's
Journal Intime a rank among the illuminating writings upon religious
psychology.
Maine de Biran was nothing if not a psychologist. The most absurd
statement ever made about him was that he was "the French Kant."
This is very misleading, for De Biran's genius showed itself in his
psychological power and not in critical metaphysics. The importance of
his work and his tremendous influence upon our period, especially
upon the new spiritualism, will be apparent. Indeed he himself foresaw
the great possibilities which lay open to philosophy along the lines he
laid down. "_Qui sait,_" he remarked,_*_ "_tout ce que peut la
réflection concentrée et s'il n'y a pas un nouveau monde intérieur qui
pourra être découvert un jour par quelque 'Colomb métaphysicien.'_"
With Maine de Biran began the movement in French philosophy which
worked through the writings of Ravaisson, Lachelier, Guyau, Boutroux
and particularly Bergson. A careful examination of the philosophy of
this last thinker shows how great is his debt to Maine de Biran, whose
inspiration he warmly acknowledges.
[Footnote _*_ : Pensées, p. 213.]
But it is only comparatively recently that Maine de Biran has come to
his own and that his real power and influence have been recognised.
There are two reasons for this, firstly the lack of publication of his
writings, and secondly his being known for long only through the work
of Cousin and the Eclectics, who were imperfectly acquainted with his

work. Upon this school of thought he had some little influence which
was immediate and personal, but Cousin, although he edited some of
his unpublished work, failed to appreciate its originality and value.
So for a time De Biran's influence waned when that of Cousin himself
faded. Maine de Biran stands quite in a different category from the
Eclectics, as a unique figure at a transition period, the herald of the best
that was to be in the thought of the century. Cousin and the Eclectic
school, however, gained the official favour, and eclecticism was for
many years the "official philosophy."
II
This Eclectic School was due to the work of various thinkers, of whom
we may cite Laromiguière (1756-1837), who marks the transition from
Condillac, Royer-Collard (1763-1845), who, abandoning Condillac,
turned for inspiration to the Scottish School (particularly to Reid),
Victor Cousin (1792-1867), Jouffroy (1796-1842) and Paul Janet
(1823-1899), the last of the notable eclectics. Of these "the chief" was
Cousin. His personality dominated this whole school of thought, his
ipse dixit was the criterion of orthodoxy, an orthodoxy which we must
note was supported by the powers of officialdom.
He rose from the Ecole Normale Supérieure to a professorship at the
Sorbonne, which he held from the Restoration (1815 to 1830), with a
break of a few years during which his course was suspended. These
years he spent in Germany, to which country attention had been
attracted by the work of Madame de Staël, _De l'Allemagne_ (1813).
From 1830 to the beginning of our period (1851) Cousin, as director of
the Ecole Normale Supérieure, as a pair de France and a minister of
state, organised and controlled the education of his country. He thus
exercised a very great influence over an entire generation of Frenchmen,
to whom he propounded the doctrines of his spiritualism.
His teaching was marked by a strong reaction against the doctrines of
the previous century, which had given such value to the data of sense.
Cousin abhorred the materialism involved in these doctrines, which he
styled _une doctrine désolante_, and he endeavoured to raise the

dignity and conception of man as a spiritual being. In the Preface to his
Lectures of 1818, _Du Vrai, du Beau et du Bien_ (Edition of 1853),
published first in 1846, he lays stress upon the elements of his
philosophy, which he presents as a true spiritualism, for it subordinates
the sensory and sensual to the spiritual. He upholds the essentially
spiritual nature of man, his liberty, moral responsibility and obligation,
the dignity of human virtue, disinterestedness, charity, justice and
beauty. These fruits of the spirit reveal, Cousin claimed, a God who is
both the author and the ideal type of humanity, a Being who is not
indifferent to the welfare and happiness of his creatures. There is a vein
of romanticism about Cousin, and in him may be seen the same spirit
which, on the