spect for forms is very favorable to the support of law; but this respect, such as it exists in Germany, induces the habit of such punctual and precise proceedings, that they hardly know how to open a new path to reach an object, though it be straight before them.

Philosophical speculations are only suited to a small number of thinking men; and, far from serving to combine the strength of a nation, they only place the ignorant and the enlightened at too great a distance from each other. There are too many new, and not enough common ideas circulating in Germany, for the knowledge of men and things. Common ideas are necessary for the conduct of life; business requires the spirit of execution rather than that of invention: whatever is odd in the different modes of thinking in Germany, tends to separate them from each other; for the thoughts and interests which unite men together must be of a simple nature, and of striking truth.

Contempt of danger, of suffering, and of death, is not suffi ciently universal in all the classes of the German nation. Doubtless, life has more value for men capable of sentiments and ideas, than for those who leave behind them neither trace nor remembrance; but, as poetical enthusiasm gathers fresh vigor from the highest degree of learning, rational firmness. ought to fill the place of the instinct of ignorance. It belongs alone to philosophy, founded upon religion, to inspire an unalterable courage under all contingencies.

If, however, Philosophy has not appeared to be all-powerful in this respect in Germany, we must not therefore despise her; she supports, she enlightens every man, individually; but a government alone can excite that moral electricity which makes the whole nation feel the same sentiment. We are more offended with the Germans, when we see them deficient in energy, than with the Italians, whose political situation has

manic nations, awakened by oppression, have lent to their governments the force wanting to them, in order to resist the power of French armies and it has been seen, by the heroic conduct of sovereigns and peoples, how much the fortune of the world is influenced by opinion.

enfeebled their character for several centuries. The Italians, through the whole of life, by their grace and their imagination, preserve a sort of prolonged right to childhood; but the rude physiognomy and manners of the Germans appear to promise a manly soul, and we are disagreeably surprised not to find it. In a word, timidity of character is pardoned when it is confessed; and in this way the Italians have a peculiar frankness, which excites a kind of interest in their favor; while the Germans, not daring to avow that weakness which fits them so ill, are energetic flatterers and vigorous slaves. They give a harsh accent to their words, to hide the suppleness of their opinions, and they make use of philosophical reasonings to explain that which is the most unphilosophical thing in the world-respect for power, and the effeminacy of fear, which turns this respect into admiration.

To such contrasts as these we must attribute that German gracelessness, which it is the fashion to mimic in the comedies of all countries. It is allowable to be heavy and stiff, while we remain severe and firm; but if this natural stiffness be clothed with the false smile of servility, then all that remains is to be exposed to merited ridicule. In short, there is a certain want of address in the German character, prejudicial even to those who have the selfish intent of sacrificing every thing to their interest; and we are so much the more provoked with them, because they lose the honors of virtue without attaining the profits of adroit management.

While we confess the German philosophy to be inadequate to form a nation, we must also acknowledge that the disciples of the new school are much nearer than any of the others to the attainment of strength of character; they dream of it, they desire it, they conceive it; but they often fail in the pursuit. There are few Germans who can even write upon politics. The greater portion of those who meddle with this subject are systematic, and frequently unintelligible. When there 's a question of transcendental metaphysics, when an attempt. is made to plunge into the darkness of nature, any view, however indefinite it may be, is not to be despised; every presenti

ment may guide; every approach to the mark is something. It is not thus with the affairs of the world; it is possible to know them; it is necessary, therefore, to foresee them clearly Obscurity of style, when we treat of thoughts without bounds, is sometimes the very indication of a comprehensive understanding; but obscurity, in our analysis of the affairs of life, only proves that we do not comprehend them.

When we introduce metaphysics into business, they confound, for the sake of excusing every thing; and we thus provide a dark fog for the asylum of conscience. This employment of metaphysics would require address, if every thing was not reduced in our times to two very simple and clear ideas, interest or duty. Men of energy, whichever of these two directions they follow, go right onward to the mark, without embracing theories which no longer deceive or persuade anybody.

See, then, it may be said, you are reduced to extol, like us, experience and observation. I have never denied that both were necessary for those who meddle with the interests of this world; but it is in the conscience of man that we ought to find the ideal principle of a conduct externally directed by sage calculations. Divine sentiments are subject here below to earthly things; it is the condition of our existence. The beautiful is within our souls, and the struggle is without. We must fight for the cause of eternity, but with the weapons of time; no individual can attain the whole dignity of the human character either by speculative philosophy or by the knowledge of affairs exclusively; and free institutions alone have the advantage of building up a system of public morals in a nation, and of giving exalted sentiments an opportunity of displaying themselves in the practical conduct of life.

CHAPTER XII.

OF ETHICS FOUNDED ON PERSONAL INTEREST.

THE French writers have been perfectly right in consider ing the ethics founded on interest as the consequence of those metaphysics which attributed all our ideas to our sensations If there is nothing in the soul but what sensation has introduced, the agreeable or the disagreeable ought to be the sole motive of our volitions.' Helvetius, Diderot, Saint-Lambert,

1 "The philosophy of sensation, setting out from a single fact, agreeable or painful sensation, necessarily arrives in ethics at a single principle,-interest. The whole of the system may be explained as follows:

"Man is sensible to pleasure and pain: he shuns the one and seeks the other. That is his first instinct, and this instinct will never abandon him. Pleasure may change so far as its object is concerned, and be diversified in a thousand ways: but whatever form it takes,-physical pleasure, intellectual pleasure, moral pleasure, it is always pleasure that man pursues. "The agreeable generalized is the useful; and the greatest possible sum of pleasure, whatever it may be, no longer concentrated within such or such an instant, but distributed over a certain extent of duration, is happiness.

"Happiness, like pleasure, is relative to him who experiences it; it is essentially personal. Ourselves, and ourselves alone we love, in loving pleasure and happiness.

"Interest is that which prompts us to seek in every thing our pleasure and our happiness.

"If happiness is the sole end of life, interest is the sole motive of all our ictions.

"Man is only sensible to his interest, but he understands it well or ill. Much art is necessary in order to be happy. We are not ready to give ourselves up to all the pleasures that are offered on the highway of life, without examining whether these pleasures do not conceal many a pain. Present pleasure is not every thing,—it is necessary to take thought for the future; it is necessary to know how to renounce joys that may bring regret, and sacrifice pleasure to happiness, that is to say, to pleasure still, but pleasure more enduring and less intoxicating. The pleasures of the body are not the only ones,-there are other pleasures, those of mind, even those of opinion: the sage tempers them by each other.

have not deviated from this direction; and they have explained all actions (including the devotion of martyrs) by self-love. The English, who, for the most part, profess the experimental philosophy in metaphysics, have yet never brought themselves to support a moral system founded upon interest. Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Smith, etc., have declared the moral sense and sympathy to be the source of all virtue. Hume himself, the most skeptical of the English philosophers, could not read without disgust this theory of self-love, which deformed the beauty of the soul. Nothing is more opposite than this system to the whole of their opinions in Germany: consequently, their philosophical and moral writers, at the head of whom we must place Kant, Fichte, and Jacobi, have combated it with

success.

"The ethics of interest are nothing else than the ethics of perfected pleasure, substituting happiness for pleasure, the useful for the agreeable prudence for passion. It admits, like the human race, the words good and evil, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, punishment and reward, but it explains them in its own way. The good is that which in the eyes of reason is conformed to our true interest; evil is that which is contrary to our true interest. Virtue is that wisdom which knows how to resist the enticement of passions, discerns what is truly useful, and surely proceeds to happiness. Vice is that aberration of mind and character that sacrifices happiness to pleasures without duration or full of dangers. Merit and demerit, punishment and reward, are the consequences of virtue and vice :for not knowing how to seek happiness by the road of wisdom, we are punished by not attaining it. The ethics of interest do not pretend to destroy any of the duties consecrated by public opinion; it establishes that all are conformed to our personal interest, and it is thereby that they are duties. To do good to men is the surest means of making them do good to us; and it is also the means of acquiring their esteem, their good-will, and their sympathy,-always agrecable, and often useful. Disinterestedness itself has its explanation. Doubtless there is no disinterestedness in the vulgar sense of the word, that is to say, a real sacrifice of self, which is absurd, but there is the sacrifice of present interest to future interest, of gross and sensual passion to a nobler and more delicate pleasure. Sometimes one renders to himself a bad account of the pleasure that he pursues. and in fault of seeing clearly into his own heart, invents that chimera of disinterestedness of which human nature is incapable, which it cannot even comprehend.

It will be conceded that this explanation of the ethics of interest is not overcharged, that it is faithful.”—(Cousin, Lectures on the True, the Beauti ful, and the Good, pp. 229–231.)—Ed.