Jouffroy, in his theory, assumes that the human race is subject to perpetual movement and transformation, the cause and law of which it is the province of the philosophy of history to investigate. This movement and transformation "must have a principle, and as the effect is limited to man, a principle which acts on him alone. Now what is this principle? Where is it to be sought? Not in the theatre on which man is placed for development. This theatre, which is nature, is common to him with the brutes that do not change; this theatre, besides, is the same to-day that it was yesterday, that it always will be. Human mobility cannot come from this. If it does not come from the theatre, then it must come from the actor. There is a principle of change in man which is not in the brute."

Man's conduct is influenced and determined by two moving forces; the tendencies of his nature, and the views he forms concerning the different ends to which these tendencies aspire. The tendencies are invariable, like human nature itself, so that we cannot find the principle of change in them. The views (les idées de l' intelligence humaine) vary from one time to another, in one country and another. In these, the ideas of human intelligence, then, is to be found the principle of change in human things. "All the changes which take place in the condition of man, all the transformations which it has undergone, proceed, then, from the intelligence, and are the effect of it; the history of these changes, then, in the last analysis is only the history of ideas, which have succeeded one another in human intelligence, or, if it be preferred, the history of the intellectual development of humanity."

Here the principle of all change, therefore of all progress, is assumed to be in man himself, and not in his nature, nor in the tendencies of his nature, but solely in the ideas of his intelligence. By ideas of intelligence, Jouffroy does not mean, we take it, ideas in the Platonic sense, for in this sense the ideas of our intelligence no more change than the tendencies of our nature themselves, but properly the notions or views which we form of those ideas, or of the ends we ought to labor to realize. Now, if the theatre on which we are placed, that is, nature, undergoes no change, that is to say, if no change occurs without to produce a corresponding change within, and if man's nature and tendencies are in themselves necessarily invariable, we would ask whence the principle of the change in even our intelligence? Human

intelligence can be only the result of the factors assumed; and if the factors remain invariable, how is it possible to vary the product?

"The development of the human intelligence," says Jouffroy, in continuation, "is of a two-fold nature; it is spontaneous and reflective." But does this relieve us of our embarrassment? What is the spontaneous development of human intelligence? According to Cousin it is an impersonal development of intelligence, a development in which human freedom, human personality does not intervene, and therefore the agency at work in it is not-me. Whatever change there can be introduced into human intelligence through spontaneity, must in reality come from without, and imply a change in that which Jouffroy tells us changes not. According to Jouffroy himself, the spontaneous development of the intelligence is that which takes place without any intervention of human will, in which we receive ideas from without, from external objects, without having sought them. But man remaining in his nature and tendencies always the same, and the without never changing, it is evident that the principle of change cannot be found in the spontaneous development of the intelligence. Can we find it then in the reflective development of the intelligence?

Jouffroy, in another writing on Philosophy and Common Sense, explains the difference between spontaneity and reflec-. tion by the difference between seeing and looking, hearing and listening. Both he and his master Cousin teach us that reflection adds nothing to the materials furnished by spontaneity. It is altogether retrospective, for we must see before we can look, and we never listen till we have heard. All that we do in reflection they both tell us is to explain, to comprehend what the individual and the race had previously realized from spontaneity.

Now will Jouffroy pretend that no change is introduced into human things, till reflection has passed over the wild weltering chaos of spontaneity, and reduced its confused and discordant elements to systematic clearness, order, and harmony? Not by any means. He contends that both individuals and communities are perpetually changing their ideas spontaneously, and he regards the various religions, not even excepting the Christian, which have at various epochs obtained, and exerted so powerful a control over individuals, nations, and even the race, as the products of the spontaneous development of human intelligence. Even

according to his own doctrine, then, the principle of change in human intelligence cannot be found in reflection. We have shown that, from his premises, the invariability of the outward and the permanency of the inward, man's nature and tendencies, it cannot be found in spontaneity. We ask then again, where will Jouffroy find the principle of change in the human intelligence, in which alone according to him is to be found the principle of change in human things?

This question convicts this humanitarian theory of impotency. Jouffroy seeks to account for the various facts and events which make up the life of humanity, without going out of humanity itself. Vain attempt, for the best of all possible reasons: humanity regarded either in the individual or in the race, does not suffice for itself, does not live by virtue of itself alone. Herein is the condemnation of the theory of development, whether spontaneous or reflective. All in human life is not developed from the original germ. The life of man is a growth, and growth is not development but an accretion, and instead of being effected by unfolding what was originally within, it is effected by assimilating according to an internal law, or vital process, appropriate food from without. This fact, Jouffroy seems to us to have overlooked, and the overlooking of this fact has vitiated his whole theory of history. If the principle of change in human things were alone in humanity itself, then humanity would contain in itself the whole principle of its life, and would have no need of going out of itself in order to live. This would lead to pure idealism, and in fact to absolute egoism.

We e recognize, of course, man's activity, as all who have read our chapters on Synthetic Philosophy, know very well; but he can only act with that which is not himself, never by and in himself alone,-can never see, for instance, where there is nothing to be seen. So, whatever change we find in him, we must account for it by seeking a corresponding change out of him, in combination with which the change in him has been effected. The simple fact, then, that there is movement and transformation in human things, is a proof to us that Jouffroy is wrong in assuming the invariability of nature and of all races except man. Creation, as a whole and in its details, is never the same for any two successive moments. It is in a perpetual change. All changes under the very eye of the spectator, who himself changes with all. The principle of change is to be sought in a source higher

than nature, higher than man, in the principle and cause of all things, in God himself. If God did not contain in himself the principle of change as well as of immutability, he could not be a creator. There is no alternative between the admission of this principle and pantheism, or the absolute unityism, so to speak, of Xenophanes and the old Eleatics. If this principle of change be in God himself, as it must be, or he could not create, for to create is to act, and to act is to change, if, we say, this principle of change be in God himself, the Original and cause of all things, then it must, according to the principle that each creature represents in its own degree the Creator, be found in all the races and individuals of creation. It is by virtue of this principle repeated in all, in a greater or less degree, that all creatures from the highest to the lowest are active, capable of producing effects. We find the principle of change in man, we find it in animals, we find it in nature, and therefore we pronounce all active, and deny the old doctrine of passivity. But the principle is finite in each, and is in no one sufficient to account for the phenomena which its life exhibits. All live by intercommunication, and all changes. take place by intercommunication, action and re-action, but in none without the presence and the active interference of the original principle whence all have sprung.

It has always seemed to us that Jouffroy felt the impotency of his own doctrine. He allows us freedom, scope for our own activity properly so called, only in the sphere of reflection, that is to say, only in contemplating and explaining the past. In a more or less faithful exposition of the past his whole philosophy ends. We see this in his paper De la Sorbonne et des Philosophes, in which he exposes with great acuteness, clearness, and impartiality, the principal characteristics of the controversy between the old theologians and the philosophers of the Voltairian school. Yet he does it as a mere spectator, as one who has no interest in the great questions debated, although those questions are of vital import to the life of humanity. He has nothing to do with them. He stands on the serene heights of a calm philosophical indifferency, from which he can look down unmoved upon the vulgar herd debating the great questions of God and man, life and death, time and eternity. Their insignificance is so great that the earnestness with which they are discussed can scarcely raise a smile on his placid features. Well, M. Jouffroy, what would you have s do?

"Leave things to take their course. You can explain what has been, that is all. For instance, you can convert Christianity into philosophy." And then what? "Why, then,— then, Christianity will disappear, and for religion we shall have philosophy. And then? To this then, Jouffroy seems to have had no answer; and having reached the end of his philosophical career, died, as would die the human race, were they to be restricted to his philosophical theory. The truth is, Jouffroy was always dumb before the future. His doctrine was in reality a doctrine not of progress but of immobility, and he found himself unable to propose any thing for man to do. By restricting himself to human freedom alone, he lost that freedom itself, and reached fatalism through liberty.

We always, even in the days of our greatest admiration for Jouffroy, felt something of this. We found that we could take part in the affairs of our fellow-men, in the church, in the state, or the neighborhood, only at the expense of systematic consistency; and under his influence we found ourselves becoming cold and indifferent, regarding all things as alike worthy, and assuming the only wise way to be to let all things come and go without interposing to hasten or retard, to make them better or worse. It was detecting this tendency in ourselves, that alarmed us, and made us feel how impotent was the eclecticism we were professing. Away with it, we said, on the new waking up of the soul; let us have a philosophy that requires us to do somewhat, and that can tell us what to do,-a philosophy that explains the past only to enlighten and to quicken us in regard to our future action, or let us have none. God's curse and man's curse too, on each and every system of philosophy that is merely retrospective. But enough. Jouffroy has gone where, we doubt not, he will learn that indifferency is not the sublime of philosophy, and where he will see that all truth is living, and that whoso has found it, has always his eyes turned towards the future, and his heart towards the continued progress of his race, for whom he will live and toil, and if need be, die in exile or dungeon, on scaffold

or cross.

III. THE RATIONALISTIC THEORY.

Similar, under more than one aspect, to the theory just dismissed, is that of Cousin, developed in his Cours de l'Histoire de la Philosophie, Professé à la faculté des Let