Levy- Bruhl, L.

English

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MAINE DE BIRAN.(1766-1S24.)IJV PROF. L. LKVV-P.RUHL.AINE DE BIRAN was said by Cousin to have been the firstof French metaphysicians since Malebranche. This is true,especially, if we understand by a metaphysician, as they did in theeighteenth century, a thinker who studies the origin of our knowl-edge, and the genesis of our ideas. Yet this original and deepphilosopher was but little known to his contemporaries. Maine deBiran, though he wrote much, published but little during his life-time, and what he gave to the world was not sufficient to make histhought fully understood. It was Cousin, who, in 1834, and after-wards in 1841, edited part of the manuscripts left by Maine deBiran. Since then other unpublished works have been edited,chiefly by M. Naville. If we have not yet the whole of Maine deBiran's writings, we possess enough to feel assured that no essentialpart of his doctrine now escapes us.Maine de Biran never taught. Being a life-guardsman toLouis the Sixteenth in 1789, and later sub-prefect, and councillorof State, if he was also a philosopher it was in virtue of a strongnatural aptitude and inclination. A sort of instinct irresistiblyimpelled him to make a study of himself. His health being delicate,he was watchful of the slightest changes in his physical conditionand in his consciousness due to surrounding circumstances, andwas consequently predisposed to introspection. "When one haslittle vitality," he writes, "or but a faint conscious sense ofvitality, one is more inclined to observe internal phenomena. Thisis why I became so early in life a psychologist." He heard thesprings of the machine creaking, and he felt his thought strainingor slackening with them.His taste for psychology first found food in Condillac, and thenMAINE DE niRAN. 459in the Ideologists. He became acquainted with Cabanis, and wasafterwards his friend ; and though later he thought that he hadadvanced beyond his doctrine, he never completely rejected it. Buthe also read the Genevese Charles Bonnet, and it was probably byhim that he was led to stud}' the philosophy of Leibnitz, and toseek a psychological interpretation of it that would be in harmonywith his own tendencies. It was at this time that he wrote hisMcmoire sur VHabitude (1805), an original and thoughtful work,which, under a form that suggests Condillac, already manifestsVictor Cousin (1792-1867).many of his own personal and independent views. In the nextperiod he reached the clearest expression of his thought and ex-pounded what he looked upon as his most important theory, towit, the theory of effort, or of the first fact of consciousness.In this he was seconded by his friend Ampere, the celebratedphysicist, whose philosophical work is inseparable from his own.He often enunciated his ideas at philosophical meetings held at hishouse in Paris. Royer-Collard was wont to be present, and also"young Professor Cousin," who comprehended the thought of460 THE OPEN COURT.Maine de Biran marvellously well. In later years, when ill, andanxious to find a "firm and steady prop," Maine de Biran inclinedtowards a mystical and religious kind of philosophy; and he hadyielded himself fully to it before the end of his life.Condillac's psychology had separated, so to speak, consciousness from organism. Convinced that "we never get out of our-selves," he thought himself thus justified in studying only whatreflection and analysis can reach and decompose within ourselves.Now this is an abstraction which Maine de Biran constantly findsto be contradicted by his personal experience. Our humor changes,our attention flags, our self-confidence disappears or returns with-out our knowing how ; is it not because a multitude of dim sensa-tions are produced within us, of which we are made aware only bytheir effects? Thus experimental psychology can as yet describeonly the smallest portion of the soul's phenomena. This sciencebegins with clear apperception, and with the distinction betweenthe "self" and its modifications. But how many things take placein the soul before, during, and after the first consciousness of theself, which will never come within the range of our knowledge !These things Maine de Biran calls pure impressions, or simpleimpressions; they constitute the "affective life." They correspondto Leibnitz's dim and insensible perceptions ; or, perhaps moreexactly, to Cabanis's "sensibility." "These impersonal sensations,which I shall term pure affections, may be considered as the mostimmediate results of functions that underlie a general organic life.... a state previous even to the birth of a conscious and think-ing subject." This was a fruitful thought, which experimentalpsychology has turned to excellent account in our days. Thisscience admits as a principle, as Maine de Biran did, that "simpleimpressions may constitute an absolute sort of existence, sui generis,apart from any distinct personality or consciousness of self. M.Pierre Ganet, for instance, has returned to this hypothesis in orderto explain many surprising cases of hysterical anesthesia andamnesia, of twofold personality, etc.This part of ourselves which escapes our knowledge alsoescapes our power. The affective life is independent of our will,though our* will depends upon it. It is a purely passive basis ofour complex being, from which the Ego can never be separated,and which becomes tense or slack or altered without our being ableto interfere, at any rate directly; a sum of organic dispositions weare the less able to modify since they are the very source of ourpowers and volitions. They result from our temperament, andMAINE DE BIRAN. 461what we call character is but the physiognomy of temperament^astriking phrase, for which we are indebted to Bichat, the physiolo-gist, and which Maine de Biran made his own by exploring itthoroughly.At about the same epoch Schopenhauer in German}' was say-ing the same thing; and though he was in nowise acquainted withthe works of Maine de Biran, there is in this more than a merefortuitous coincidence. Between Schopenhauer's psychology,' andthat of Maine de Biran there lie hidden, under obvious differences,deep analogies. If little attention has hitherto been paid in Franceto this fact, it is because of a predisposition to see in Maine deBiran one of the founders of contemporary spiritualism,—and heis therefore associated with Cousin rather than with Bichat orCabanis.But this interpretation, while not false, is certainly incomplete,and not in harmony with history. Maine de Biran owes nothing toCousin, and was, especially in his two earlier periods, imbued withthe doctrines of Bichat and of the "immortal author of the Rappor/sdu Physique et du Moral.'" Now this was no less true of Schopen-hauer. True, in Schopenhauer the ideas borrowed from Bichatand Cabanis were mingled with other elements taken from Kant,Plato, and Buddhist metaphysics, whereas Maine de Biran con-tented himself with investigating certain problems propounded bythe eighteenth century. Yet both these men alike oppose to theconscious personality of the Ego the dim unconscious backgroundwhich enfolds it, sways it, and even directs it, and predetermines,unknown to ourselves, our thoughts and actions, our intelligenceand character. Only afterwards do their doctrines diverge.Affective life constitutes in us what Maine de Biran calls "ani-mality." Above it, but linked to it, appears "humanity," i. e.,consciousness reflecting on itself and master of itself, personality,or the Ego. This latter begins to exist by itself only when exer-cising free activity or determined effort. Thus—and Maine deBiran likes to remind us that he is here taking up the thought ofLeibnitz- the idea that the human person has of itself is originallythe idea of an active force. The Ego is first of all activity and lib-erty. In other words, the Ego is the soul, insomuch as it perceivesits own existence, but this it perceives only when its activity meets(within the body) with a resistance which it endeavors to over-come.If this observation is correct, the whole structure of Condillac-ism falls to pieces. Sensation is no longer the first fact of con-462 THE OPEN COURT.sciousness, the principle of all the soul's life. The very term"sensation" is abstract and ambiguous, because Condillac did notcarry the analysis far enough. For, if sensation be conceived assimply passive, then it is only an "affective impression," and theEgo does not yet appear : sensation may take place without con-sciousness being aware of it. Does sensation imply a motor reac-tion, conscious and deliberate? Then it resolves itself into a pas-sive and an active element. The latter is intentional effort. In it,and not in any received impression, must we seek the special ori-gin of our active faculties, the pivotal' point of existence and thefoundation of all the simple ideas we may acquire concerning our-selves and our intellectual activity.Yet Maine de Biran does not think that the soul appears to it-self just as it really is. " I was at first rather inclined," he says,"to mistake the inmost feeling of our individuality, or what Icalled the Ego, for the very core of the substance of the soul. ButKant has taught me better. We feel our own individuality ; butthe real substance of our soul we feel no more than any other sub-stance." No doubt the Ego that perceives and judges is the samethat is perceived and judged; but this being which is perceivedand judged has still an inmost core of substance inaccessible toapperception. It may be endowed, as Malebranche thought, witha multitude of properties or attributes which are unknown or do notcome within the range of our inward sense. This inward sense mayindeed assure us that 7ve are thinking ; and on this point Descartes's"I think, therefore I am," is irrefutable. But the most subtleanalysis of this inward sense cannot possibly throw the slightestlight upon our knowledge of ourselves, "as an object, outside ofthought." To believe that, by means of analysis based on purelyinternal experience, we can at length arrive at the notion of a sub-stantial Ego, is to mistake the psychological fact of what is withinus, that is, ourselves in the actual exercise of thought, for the meta-physical notion of the substance which is supposed to remain thesame beyond and beneath thought.Maine de Biran here agrees with Kant, as he says. In Kant,however, the theory of the Ego's knowledge of itself has for itsbasis the whole of the Critique of Pure Reason, and more especiallythe theory of sensible and intellectual knowledge. Maine de Biran,on the contrary, starts from the analysis of the first fact of con-sciousness, and on that analysis he afterwards attempts to found atheory of the understanding and reason. In opposition to the doc-trine of categories, which is quite a priori in Kant, he endeavors toMAINE ])E in KAN. 463maintain a psychological genesis of the general principles ofthought. Thus, because the Ego perceives itself as a cause, Mainede Biran finds therein "the pattern and model of every idea ofpower, force, and cause." Unity, simplicity, existence, etc., areideas which the Ego obtains by means of an abstraction wroughtupon itself, and which in a way isolates its own attributes. If wefind these attributes again in objects, it is because they have been,so to speak, projected by the Ego. In one word, reason is thusheld to be the spontaneous result of a sort of self-analysis of con-sciousness.But this is rather a sketch than a regular theory, and Mainede Biran was suspicious of everything that might carry him beyondthe firm ground of experience. The science he seeks to establishstarts from a fact and must lead only to facts and to the laws whichthey obey. The absolute, as Maine de Biran does not hesitate toconfess, is beyond its grasp. How, he says himself, could all thingsfail to be relative in our eyes, since the very existence of the Ego,the individual personality which is the basis of the thinking being,is relative? The thing called Ego being a compound, or the resultof the union and relation between two substances, can conceive orfeel nothing but as a compound or relation. The very idea of sub-stance seems suspicious to Maine to Biran. The Ego does notfind it within itself, for it apprehends itself as a cause, not as a sub-stance. This idea must, therefore, originate without our knowingit, in the representation of exterior things, space and matter. Itwas this idea that caused the philosophy of Descartes to tend in thedirection of pantheism. It is the secret enemy of personality andliberty; it tends to mingle together in an obscure metaphysicalunity the Ego-person in which everything has its beginning, andthe God-person in which all things end.Though an original and deep psychologist, Maine de Biranwas a timid metaphysician. No doubt the study of the Ego inducedhim to think of it as a " hyperorganic " force, while the inwardsense assured him of his liberty ; but he was fully aware that thereare problems, and most essential ones, to which his doctrine givesno direct answer, the moral problem, "for instance. Therefore hewished to complete his psychology by a reasoned adherence to ageneral system of philosophy in accordance with his inmost tend-encies. In his second period he felt himself won over to Stoicism,which is, in his eyes, a moral philosophy based upon the dignityof the human personality and upon the energy of active effort.But Stoicism expects too much from man's will; and although464 THE OPEN COURT.Christianity, in its turn, makes man too weak and helpless, it wasto Christianity that Maine de Biran turned in the latter years of hislife for the "prop" of which he felt the need. He then wrote hisXouvcaux Essais (f Ant/iropologie, which distinguish in man threelives, one above the other, as it were: sensitive life, which is in usthat of the animal; human life, that is, the life of action and thestruggle of the thinking principle against the instinctive and ani-mal principle; and lastly, divine life, in which animalism is con-quered and the struggle ceases because love has united man to thesupreme source of all beings and all good. And thus, in a sort ofquietism, ended this philosophy which had begun as a continuationof Condillac and Cabanis.

Maine De Biran. (i 766-1 824.) One of the Founders of Modern Psychology. With Portrait of Victor Cousin (1792-1867).

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Maine De Biran. (i 766-1 824.) One of the Founders of Modern Psychology. With Portrait of Victor Cousin (1792-1867).

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