sensational doctrine as lying beyond cavil or doubt. All our faculties accordingly, in their primary origin, he considers to be derived from sensation, or the faculty of receiving impressions. The power of movement upon which he insists so much, is to be distinguished from that of feeling,' only as the branch is distinguished from the stem. But whilst there is this avowed identity, arising from the acceptance of commonlyreceived notions, the mixture of foreign principles ferments discordantly with them. For example, he protests against confounding under the term sensation, two different orders of facts, passive sensibility, and the activity which causes motion, because the term 'sensation' preserves always, from its primitive signification, a meaning essentially passive. There is movement, De Biran shows, not only in those muscular motions that are perceptible, but in others. I move,' he says, 'when I stretch my arm, or change my posture, but I move also when I fix my look, or hear attentively, and even in 'solitary meditation, in the midst of apparent repose, I recognise 'whenever I fix my attention, the employment of motive force applied to the organs of the brain. There is movement, in a word, wherever there is a consciousness of effort.' This consciousness of effort is, indeed, according to M. de Biran, the chief fact to be observed in the analysis of mental phenomena. The sense of personal existence, even, is drawn from it, for effort' supposes a subject which determines the movement, and an object which resists. Now, to separate all impressions from the 'self,' which feels them, is the fundamental condition of all knowledge. 'But the faculty of perception, i.e. of distinguishing our different impressions from one another and from the "self" which feels them, is not an attribute of the purely sensitive being, but 'depends absolutely upon the voluntary power of movement. There is no ground for treating sensation in a general and 'abstract manner, in order afterwards to deduce the phenomena of intelligence from its transformations, because sensations 'properly so called remain always "simple modes," which could never transform themselves in any way. In supposing the mind to be identified with its modifications, Bonnet and 'Condillac make it impossible to lay any real foundation for personality; for personality supposes a subject which dis'tinguishes itself from its modes, instead of identifying itself nearly synonymous with those which M. de Biran uses in order to heap reproach and condemnation upon it. Vogt loudly proclaims, that the brain secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile, and the kidneys secrete urine.' (See his Vorlesungen über dem Menschen, seine Bildung in der Schöpfung und in der Geschichte. Giessen, 1863.) Activity of the Mind in Sensation. 311 'with them."* In like manner, De Biran shows that unless we distinguish the activity of the mind from mere sensibility, there can be no memory, and no natural signs or language. The active mind, on the contrary, recognises its own identity, whenever it acts, and the reproduction of the same acts gives a solid basis for our recollections.' For example, when the hand resumes or tends to resume the same form which it had when 'it touched or embraced a globe, the individual finds himself ' in almost the same active state as that in which he has been; 'he perceives-he still touches, so to speak, by thought, an 'absent globe.'t This power of reproducing states of consciousness, which have formerly existed, together with the ability of recognising their identity or resemblance, becomes the basis, of natural signs which are simply these free reproductions or copies of former movements, and of the conventional signs of language. This distinction between the active and the passive elements which M. de Biran traced even in these impressions on the senses that are the most passive in appearance, was justified and established by a fundamental observation on the force of habit. Constant repetition produces exactly opposite effects, according as one or other of these elements prevail. Sensations of smell, taste, cold, and heat, grow fainter with long continuance, and are almost lost at last. On the contrary, when activity of the mind is exercised in the functions of the sense, the more frequently the act is repeated, the more easy, accurate and clear our knowledge becomes. We cannot, therefore,' he concludes, 'deduce these two classes of impression from only one and the same faculty, for then we must suppose that this faculty 'becomes, at the same time, more inert and more active by the same cause of habit.'‡ The discordance between the nascent thought of the solitary thinker, and the reigning philosophy which he professes to accept, comes into open light in a striking paragraph, where the origin of the idea of cause is discussed. In most explicit terms, M. de Biran drives the sensational doctrine to the extreme consequences to which Hume inevitably leads it. The 'idea of cause,' he affirms, 'is an effect of imagination, and 'includes no other relation than that of habitual succession; and the proposition, There is no effect without a cause, has the 'same logical value as the other proposition-the sun goes from ' east to west.'§ Yet at the bottom of this very passage there • Euvres Inedites, Introduction, pp. 20, 21. + Euvres Phil., Ed. Cousin, p. 51. Ibid, p. 74. is a note explaining that the idea of cause comes to us, in its origin, from the exercise of our own activity, and transports itself from the "me" to nature.' M. Naville may well comment upon this flagrant contradiction: We must choose 'between these discrepant statements. If the notion of cause 'is nothing else than that of succession, then the belief in our ' own motive power is illusory; if the notion of cause founds itself upon a fact of consciousness, it is not simply a result of imagination. M. de Biran will not be slow in making his 'decision. The point of his departure, and the future reserved for his thought, meet openly, and collide in the passage that 'has been quoted, and it would be difficult to discover a more 'curious example of indecision in a philosopher divided between 'his own real tendencies and a doctrine which he thinks he accepts.'-(Introduction, page 25.) This confusion of two struggling principles was soon ended. The alien principle which had grown up unconsciously in the bosom of thoughts that were rooted in the popular belief, but which drew its life from M. de Biran's own meditations, gained the ascendancy. And in this victory the death-blow was struck at the doctrine which reigned in France, without any rival, for half a century. France was not dependent, as has been supposed, upon Scotland or Germany for the revival of a spiritual philosophy. Royer-Collard and Jouffroy, who transfused the Scotch philosophy, and Cousin, who transfused the German philosophy into French literature, were preceded by M. de Biran, who, without any adventitious guidance, pursuing the development of his own original and profound thought, established the indestructible bases of that noble spiritual doctrine which these other thinkers constructed, and which they furnished richly with foreign spoils. The Institute proposed for competition the following subject:-'In what way may the faculty of thinking be analysed, and what elementary faculties are to be ' recognised in it? M. de Biran again entered the lists, and again his essay was crowned. This essay, entitled 'Memoire 'sur la decomposition de la pensée,' was a declaration of war against sensationalism; and, as M. Cousin says (Fragm. Philos., tome deuxième, p. 65), 'It singularly honours the judges and testifies to their sincere love of truth, that they crowned in 1805 the new memoir, which, under the most polished expres'sions, announced to them an adversary.' The doctrine, which was now articulately formed in M. de Biran's mind, and which he expounds and argues in his second memoir, henceforth occupies his whole mind for years. In 1807 he forwarded a Memoire sur l'aperception imme Member of the Corps Legislatif.' 313 diate,' to compete for a prize offered by the Academy of Berlin, which only failed to gain the prize because it had been sent anonymously. In 1811, his Memoir upon the relations of the physical and the moral in man,' gained the prize offered by the Academy of Copenhagen. These essays applied, illustrated and established by new observations the leading ideas of his system. In like manner, having founded a society at Bergerac for scientific investigations and discussion, he contributed to it important papers, which had the same object in view. And when he again resumed his residence in Paris, and became the centre of that brilliant corps of savans and professors, who, by their enthusiasm, erudition, and eloquence, overwhelmed the effete theories of Materialism; and won splendid triumphs in the service of spiritual philosophy upon many fields of science, history, and pure speculation, De Biran was still deepening the foundations and enlarging the scope of that system which in his country solitude he had conceived and fixed in its grand outlines. The results of all these long meditations and ample research were gathered into an important work, in which he proposed to combine the substance of all his preceding essays, and 'to exhibit at once the bases and the applications, the fundamental ideas and the details of his doctrine.'-(Introduction, page 53.) This great work, which he called 'L'Essai sur les Fondements 'de la Psychologie,' was lost to the public for nearly forty years, but has, at length, been published-giving occasion for our article. The circumstances which brought M. de Biran to Paris, and retained him there till his death, exhibit a striking contrast between the opening years of his manhood, and its close. He was embroiled in the fierce politics of the finale of Napoleon's reign, and of the Restoration. After holding official position in his native department, he was unanimously elected member of the Corps Legislatif by that department in 1809. In 1813, when Napoleon felt the first shock of his coming doom, in the swift reverses that followed his unexampled career of victory, and when he appealed for the assistance of all the powers of the state, the Corps Legislatif seized the opportunity to make known to Napoleon the woes and wants of the country. M. de Biran was one of the famous commission which demanded from Napoleon before levying 300,000 fresh soldiers to repel the armies that assailed the empire on every side, solid guarantees for the peace of Europe and the liberty of French citizens. It was in answer One of these papers was published in Cousin's edition, under the title New considerations upon sleep, dreams, and somnambulism.' to this commission that the Emperor declared with sublime arrogance, that 'He alone represented France,' and that the 'nation had more need of him than he had of the nation.' M. de Biran before this, had been a Royalist. The fascination of military glory had not blinded him to the miserable thraldom and impoverishment of his country. He felt the heel of the oppressor, and saw the arid waste it stamped upon the fair provinces of France. He groaned for liberty. Like many others, he welcomed, therefore, the deliverance promised by the allies, and dreaded a new triumph by Bonaparte which should rivet his tyranny upon the French people, if not on Europe. The short sketch of his life given by E. Naville, reproduces the enthusiasm of the first restoration, the flight, and agitation of 'The Hundred Days,' and the relief, even to Frenchmen like M. de Biran, when the news of Waterloo dispelled the nightmarevision of a triumphant Empire. The restoration of Bonaparte's 'empire meant to him the Revolution taking its course, war 'without, oppression and suffering within. It was, in fine, the 'degradation of the French nation, which forgetting so many recent experiences, delivered itself to its oppressor.'-(Vie de Maine de Biran, page 55.) From the commencement of the reign of Louis XVIII., M. de Biran held a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, and in 1816 he was made Councillor of State. He took indeed little part in the stormy debates of the period, being ill qualified for public discussion by his excessive sensibility; but he suffered the more from the excitement of these debates and the keen interest he took in political subjects. Still his chief interest was in his study. When he entered it, the tempests of the outer world were forgotten, and he searched with a luminous eye that quiet inner world of the mind whose mysterious depths he had watched so long. Nor could his original and spontaneous genius rest contented with past researches and acquisitions. The vivid controversies of the philosophical coterie, which assembled weekly at his house, and the stimulus of wide philosophical reading, revealed to him grave defects in his system of psychology. But more than controversy or reading, or even original speculation, M. de Biran's heart asserted its incompleteness, and urged him to higher truth than he had yet discovered. The commotions of public life swept away the gossamer tissue of his stoical dreams. Happiness had been the vain pursuit of this philosopher. When in the flower of youth he credulously believed that the senses were the source of knowledge, he imagined them to be likewise the spring of our happiness. Happiness was then, in |