CONTENTS. ART. V. The Recent Financial Panic .. PAGE. Report of the Association of the Chambers of Commerce, VI. Professor Boole.. 125 .. 141 1. Various Papers on Linear Transformations, Differential 2. The Mathematical Analysis of Logic. By the same. 3. An Investigation of the Laws of Thought. By the same. 4. Treatise on Differential Equations. By the same. 1859. 6. A Treatise on Differential Equations. Supplementary VII. Reform and the State of Parties.. 1. A Bill to Amend the Representation of the People in 2. Electoral Returns, 1865, 1866. 3. The New Reform Bill. By R. DUDLEY BAXTER, M.A. 182 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 231 THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER 1, 1866. 1857. ART. I.-(1.) Maine de Biran: Sa Vie et ses Pensées. Publiées par E. NAVILLE. Paris: J. Cherbuliez. (2.) Euvres Inedites de M. de Biran. Publiées par ERNEST NAVILLE, avec la collaboration de MARC-DEBRIT. Paris: Dezobry, E. Magdeleine, et Cie. 1859. (3.) Euvres Philosophiques de M. de Biran. Editées par M. COUSIN. Paris Ladrange. 1841. (4.) Fragments Philosophiques. Par V. COUSIN. Tome deuxième, 1838. (Containing Introduction to the Posthumous Work of M. de Biran.') Stat nominis magni umbra. For many years Maine de Biran has been the shade of a great name,' and nothing more. Оссаsionally, this shade lowers vaguely and vastly upon the distant horizon of English thought,* but ere it has gathered itself into The following passage, which introduces the preface of Bulwer's 'Strange Story,' may be instanced in illustration of the references that allure and perplex English readers with reference to the illustrious Unknown. It will also serve to whet the edge of desire in our own readers, and to indicate the course of thought our article pursues. Of the many illustrious thinkers whom the school of France has contributed 'to the intellectual philosophy of our age, Victor Cousin, the most accom'plished, assigns to Maine de Biran the rank of the most original. In the successive developments of his own mind, Maine de Biran may, indeed, be said to represent the change that has been silently at work throughout the general mind of Europe since the close of the last century. He begins his career of philosopher with blind faith in Condillac and 'Materialism. As an intellect, severely conscientious in the pursuit of truth, expands amidst the perplexities it revolves, phenomena, which 'cannot be accounted for by Condillac's sensuous theories, open to his eye. To the first rudimentary life of man, the animal life "characterised by 'impressions, appetites, movements, organic in their origin, and ruled by 'the Law of Necessity," he is compelled to add "the second or human life, 'from which free-will and self-consciousness emerge." He thus arrives at 'the union of mind and matter; but still a something is wanted, some key NO. LXXXVIII. Y distinct form, or unveiled its cloudy features, other and nearer objects have crowded it out of view. We are thus haunted by the recollection of a name and a presence which has some mysterious significance, but whose secret we have not fathomed. We purpose, in this article, to discover the secret, to exhibit in definite form and English dress, the thoughts of an eminent French philosopher, whose name has had a sort of cabalistic virtue, but whose works have, hitherto, been wholly unknown in our country. In humbler fashion, the critic's pen will thus rival the poet's, and of 'the form of things unknown,' Turn them to shape, and give to airy nothings, It is not in England alone, that M. de Biran has had a phantomal existence. Among his compatriots he has fared no better. M. Naville, thus introduces his admirable little work, M. de Biran, sa Vie et ses Pénsees' (1857),-which was issued as an avant-courier of the large and important volumes, which he published in 1859, and by which he has redintegrated M. de Biran's philosophic history and system. M. de Biran has now 'been dead 33 years. The public, however, has only had a most incomplete exposition of the doctrines of this philosopher, whom · to the marvels which neither of these conditions of vital being suffices to explain. And at last the grand self-completing thinker arrives at the 'third life of man in man's soul. "There are not," says this philosopher, towards the close of his last and loftiest work, There are not only two principles opposed to each other in man, there are three. For there are, in him, three lives and three orders of faculties. Though all should be in accord and in harmony between the sensitive and the active faculties 'which constitute man, there would still be a nature superior, a third life, which would not be satisfied; which would make felt (ferait sentir) the truth that there is another happiness, another wisdom, another perfection, at once above the greatest human happiness, above the highest wisdom, or intellectual and moral perfection of which the human being is susceptible." It will be seen that romance, through the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries, conducts its bewildered hero towards the same goal to which philosophy leads its luminous student through far grander portents of nature, far higher visions of supernatural power, than fable can yield to fancy. That goal is defined in these noble words: "The relations (rapports) which exist between the elements and the products of the three lives of man are the subject of meditation, the fairest and finest, but also the most difficult. The stoic philosophy shows us all which can be most elevated in active life, but it makes abstraction of the animal nature, and absolutely fails to recognise all which belongs to the life of the spirit. Its practical morality is beyond the forces of humanity. Christianity alone embraces the whole man. It dissimulates none of the sides of his 'nature, and avails itself of his miseries and his weakness in order to 'conduct him to his end in showing him all the want that he has of a succour more exalted." The Founder of Spiritual Philosophy in France. 303 M. Cousin has pronounced "the greatest philosopher that has 'distinguished France since Malebranche." One entire epoch in the development of his theories is almost unknown. His most 'important works are unpublished. Hence, although his name is often mentioned, he is not much read or well-known, even in France. England and Germany have kept an almost absolute 'silence in respect to him. In a word, if he has a distinguished place in the history of philosophy, he has not yet obtained his rightful place in that history.' There can be no doubt that M. de Biran has earned a seat of honour among the illustrious Masters of Philosophy. He has been enthroned by the unanimous voice of his contemporaries, who inaugurated the brilliant reign of spiritual philosophy in France. Royer-Collard, who first clearly broke the spell, and smote the ascendancy, of the fashionable Condillacism in the Sorbonne, by expounding the principles of the Scottish philosophy, avows of M. de Biran, Il est notre maître à tous;' and Cousin, in addition to the emphatic sentence which is quoted above, loves, in other passages, to expatiate on the subtlety and originality of De Biran's views. Of all the masters in 'France,' he writes, M. de Biran is assuredly the most original, if he is not the greatest. M. de Lamoriguiere, whilst modifying Condillac in certain points, continues his system. M. Royer-Collard belongs to the Scotch philosophy, which he would infallibly have surpassed by the rigour and natural power ' of his reason, if he had prosecuted those labours, which were 'not the least solid portion of his fame. As for me, I belong to 'both the Scotch and the German philosophies. M. de Biran, ' alone, is his own master, and is formed by his own meditations.' (Fragments Philosoph., tome deuxième, pp. 63, 64.) And again, in his second famous preface to the first volume of his Fragments, M. Cousin attests his gratitude to his teachers at the Sorbonne-M. de Lamoriguiere and M. Royer-Collard, and then adds, Along with these two eminent professors, I had the 'farther advantage of knowing a man, without equal in France, for his talent of internal observation, the fineness and depth ' of his psychological sense. I mean M. de Biran.' (Fragment Philosoph., tome première, p. 24.) During the late years of his life, M. de Biran resided chiefly in Paris, and when there, a reunion of his friends, among whom were reckoned all the leading philosophers of the time, assembled, every Friday, in his house. Among these were Royer-Collard, Cousin, Ampère, Guizot, Stapfer, G. Cuvier, &c. The place which De Biran held in this very select and illustrious society, is attested by F. M. L. Naville (father of the editor of the books to which we have referred), who visited Paris in the spring of 1824, and had the honour of meeting its members in one of these gatherings. 'Whenever,' M. Naville writes, 'the conversation turned upon philosophy, as it often did, M. de Biran incontestably took the 'lead. Though all the scholars, who composed that assembly were still living, I would none the less affirm, without any fear of correction, that each of them had then the consciousness of 'inferiority, and heard the great philosopher with a respectful 'attention, which seemed to repeat the confession of RoyerCollard, "He is the master of us all." It is not, however, the influence or the renown of this obscure philosopher, which chiefly interests us in M. de Biran, or induces us, at the present time, to sketch his history and analyse his system for English readers. He still lives and moves in modern thought. With Kant in Germany, and Reid in Scotland, he was the first to assail the ghastly Materialism which had shed a Upas-blight over the whole of Europe during the eighteenth century. In France, he was the herald of a new day; the morning star who shone in the gray dawn which ushered in the sunburst of spiritual philosophy, whose radiance fired the schools and the literature of France, in the beginning of this century; and which, though clouded, has continued to be the daylight of our age. In studying then the life of M. de Biran, we trace to their fountain-head some of the thoughts which have elevated and renewed our century. He was the child of the eighteenth century; he imbibed its teaching and spirit. He became the man of the nineteenth century, its teacher, and guide. And to trace the progress of his mind in this marvellous growth and change, to watch the first awakening of those ideas which, dawning gently in his mind, have since shone widely upon the world, is like watching the break of morning, which 'Round about Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray' ere it lifts up the firmament of light above the earth. Moreover, the philosophical questions which M. de Biran more especially and most profoundly investigated, are recovering the foremost place in philosophical investigation. M. de Biran was a psychologist-not a metaphysician. He sounded the depths of consciousness, and scrutinised its facts. And the order of mental phenomena, which he most attentively and accurately observed, were those relating to the Will. Many have studied the laws and faculties of the Reason. De Biran entered another province of the human soul, and made it his own. And, in our day, many causes contribute to reveal the supreme impor |