"ready" and "full" men. He writes thus, his manner being that of an unequalled talker, too earnest in his purpose, and too conscious of the merits of his cause to care for the mere graces of style. His is the eloquence of thought and feeling rather than of metaphors and epithets. His sentences are not polished like Macaulay's, nor cadenced like Robertson's; but they convey his meaning, and gain his end quite as well as if he had spent weeks on every chapter. His style is not rapid and direct, like a rapier thrust, but rather wide-sweeping, like the swing of a battle-axe, which comes down blow after blow.

ART. III.

REJOINDER TO THE "CATHOLIC WORLD."1

WE should not take notice of this somewhat lengthy reply to our Article in the January number of this Review, did we not feel that we owe our readers, as well as the "Catholic World," some apology for the cavalier tone of that Article, and its abrupt and strong expressions. The assumption of such a tone is perhaps never in good taste, and certainly is never good policy, for it is a kind of begging the question at issue the question, namely, of your opponent's incompetence, which it is the very object of your argument to establish. But while making these admissions, and expressing this regret, our clear recollection of the temper of mind in which we wrote acquits us of any intention to indulge in personalities, nor can we find on reperusal of the Article any intemperance of language, so excessive, as justly to call down upon us such a rebuke as this:

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Considering the general character of Episcopalians, we expected, if not much profound philosophy, or any very rigid logic, at least the courtesy and fairness of the well-bred gentleman, such as we might expect from a cultivated and polished pagan. We regret to say that we have been disappointed."

The fling at the Church, which may be found less delicately expressed in a previous passage, seems scarcely called for. But indeed while we feel that our own sins, although they may have been "set down in malice," are without excuse, their burden is

1 "The Church Review and Victor Cousin," Catholic World, April, 1868.

easier to bear when we find the writer voluntarily abandoning the vantage-ground of a calm dignity which yet remained to him, and descending, at least, to our level, to dispute with us a field of gibes and sarcasms, which we willingly yield to him unfought. For the rest we must leave it to the impartial judgment of those competent to judge, to pronounce, whether these Articles of the "Catholic World" are especially "entitled to be treated gravely and respectfully," whoever is their author, and whether they do not on the contrary offer, if not an excuse, at least, an explanation of our manner of treating them.

On another point also we are obliged to plead guilty to a violation of strict etiquette. The writer says we had no authority for charging the authorship of the Article we reviewed to Dr. Brownson, since that Article was signed by no name. We cannot deny that, however plainly and palpably a man's writings may reveal their author, so long as he seeks to hide that authorship behind the shelter of a periodical, he has a right to have his sanctuary respected, and the vail he has drawn over himself treated as if it were really a disguise. We therefore offer our apologies to Dr. Brownson for having replied to him by name, whether the assumption that led us to do so were correct or incorrect, on which point the writer of these Articles leaves us in some doubt. He seems to intimate that we were mistaken in our conjecture, but he does not distinctly say so; nor has Dr. Brownson - if this intimation is to be relied upon, and he is not the writer-ever repelled the imputation to him of the Article in question, or, so far as we know, said anything that will throw light upon the matter. To some readers of these two Articles the point may perhaps seem sufficiently settled by the writer's remark that no man in this country can speak with more authority on Cousin's Philosophy than Dr. Brownson, and that none was accounted by him a more trustworthy expositor of his system. Such a man, they may conclude, cannot be the author of these Articles.

Having said thus much for the past, let us take a hasty glance at the present Article. The writer enumerates nine "principal charges," to each of which he replies at length. We have time only to touch briefly upon some of these points, since important matters claim our attention; indeed it seems unnecessary to enter into a reconsideration of them all.

The writer repeats thus his cavil at Skepticism being made a Philosophy :

"Cousin counts Skepticism as a system of Philosophy. We object, and ask very pertinently, since he holds every system has a truth, and truth is always something affirmative, positive, what then is the truth of Skepticism which is a system of pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but denies that anything can be affirmed?' Will the Reviewer answer the question?"

This very "denial that anything can be affirmed," is equivalent to a most positive affirmation, and has a basis of truth, though the truth be distorted to error. But the writer does not take the word Skepticism in Cousin's sense. In the latter's use of it the term is quasi technical, and signifies something different from Skepticism, viewed simply as unbelief, or pure negation. It means a phase of human thought; the appearance of common sense upon the scene of Philosophy to test the systems of dogmatism by the negative thinking of the understanding.

"Moreover a system of pure negation is simply no system at all, for it has no principle, and affirms nothing."

This obvious truth did not escape Cousin, and it was not to any such system of "pure negation "destitute of principle, that he gave the name of Skepticism. But here the writer does not use the word system in Cousin's sense. Cousin, in studying the history of Philosophy in its various particular systems of different ages and countries, arrives at the general truth, that there are four, and only four, possible forms, or phases of thought, that must always and everywhere subsist, because the mind of man is always and everywhere the same; that under the influences of each succeeding age, now one, now another of these phases is developed, now among this people, and in this country, and now among another nation, and in another region. To these forms of thought, or directions of the mind, he gives the names of Idealism, Sensualism, Skepticism, and Mysticism. He calls them, it is true, systems of Philosophy, but it is in a plainly different sense from that in which he calls their writings the systems of Kant, or of Spinoza; for these former are rather systems of systems. This, of necessity, was a new use of these old words, for they were taken to express a new idea, and when we are familiar with Cousin's thought, and accept the language in which he explains it, we see no room for objection to either. It augurs ill for one's power to tread the higher paths of his Philosophy, to stumble on such smooth ground.

". . . . What salutary influence has ever been exerted on Science or Morals by any so-called system of skepticism which denies the possibility of Science, and renders the binding nature of Virtue [obligation?] uncertain, we have never yet been able to ascertain."

That a reader of the history of Philosophy should have failed to see the salutary influence which Hume, for instance, — who in Cousin's classification belongs to the Skeptical System, exerted on Science, and ultimately on Morals, by striking an almost mortal blow at the prevailing Sensism of his time, is surprising. Without Hume there would have been no Reed, and, probably, no Kant. The skeptical results of his Philosophy were the direct incentive, as every one knows, to the reaction from the principles of Locke to deepen spiritualistic views.

The writer next returns to the attack on Cousin's ontology, and re-states his position. The only way to meet his argument is to carry the question deeper, but a subject so profound cannot be treated within the limits of such a paper as this in a way at all adequate to itself, or satisfactory to ourselves. ourselves with offering some suggestions that may serve to show how far his criticism is from reaching Cousin's thought, and how little, consequently, it troubles it.

We must content

Cousin, the writer says, does not make his impersonal reason really objective, but, simply, independent of our personality. Between the personal, and impersonal reason, he recognizes only a distinction of modes. Therefore, there can be no essential difference between them.

"Now, we demand, what is this one substantive reason operating in these two different degrees or modes? It certainly is not an abstraction, for abstractions are nullities, and cannot operate or act at all. What then is it? Is it God, or is it man? If you say it is God, then you deny reason to man, make him a brute, unless you identify man with God. If you say it is man, that it is a faculty of the human soul, as Cousin certainly does say for he makes it our faculty, and only faculty of intelligence, then you make it subjective, since nothing is more subjective than one's own faculties. They are the subject itself. Consequently the impersonal reason belongs as truly to man, the subject, as the personal reason, and therefore is not objective, as we said, to the whole subject, but only to the will and personality."1

1 For a direct answer to this point, see Du Vrai du Beau du Bien, Leçon IV., pp. 100, 101.

What solution the writer himself would give of this difficulty does not appear. As he puts it, the best that can be done with it seems to be the identification of man with God a not altogether satisfactory result, but in truth no such difficulty exists for one who will comprehend the nature of reason. Mind very certainly is not an abstraction, and to the question, "is it God or is it man," we answer it is both, or, if one pleases, it is in both. God is the infinite Spirit, man is a finite spirit. Cousin, it is true, speaks of reason as the faculty of knowing, and, in the connection in which he uses it, such language is sufficiently exact, but he well knew that a true conception of mind can never be attained if we regard it merely as an attribute of the individual, for in fact it constitutes the person. We cannot sever and disjoin the personality though we may distinguish its elements in thought. Personality is the union of reason and will; for while freedom is the essence of personality, a freedom which shall not be self-conscious is inconceivable. Consequently, Reason is not a mere faculty of the subject, it is a necessary element in the subject. But its pure activity, the impersonal Reason, is objective to freedom, as the writer admits Cousin to have established. What, then, remains for it to be objective to? Nothing but itself. To demand, therefore, that Reason be objective to the "whole subject," is to require a contradiction that it be objective to itself. Do you still say that this Voice which makes itself heard in your soul, speaking with an independence beyond your power to influence or control, is merely a subjective phenomenon? Do you still say, "all this is nothing if Reason be not objective to the whole subject'"?

Then we grant your demand; you shall have your contradiction. Reason is objective to the whole subject—it is objective to itself. The writer pursues:

.... He [Cousin] says there are in thought, or consciousness, two elements, the subject and object; or in his barbarous dialect, le moi et le non-moi; but he is careful to assert the subject as active, and the object as passive. Now a passive object is as if it were not, and can concur in nothing with the activity of the subject. Then as all the activity is on the side of the subject, the subject must be able to think in, and of itself alone."

The writer has not arrived at an insight into self-determination, the form of the constitution of mind. Self-determined being exists dually, (A) as determining, and (B) as determined. As