M.v. Cousin

Lectures on the True, the Beautiful and the Good M.v. Cousin

For some time past we have been asked, on various sides, to collect in a body of doctrine the theories scattered in our different works, and to sum up, in just proportions, what men are pleased to call our philosophy. This résumé was wholly made. We had only to take again the lectures already quite old, but little known, because they belonged to a time when the courses of the Faculté des Lettres had scarcely any influence beyond the Quartier Latin, and, also, because they could be found only in a considerable collection, comprising all our first instruction, from 1815 to 1821. These lectures were there, as it were, lost in the crowd. We have drawn them hence, and give them apart, severely corrected, in the hope that they will thus be accessible to a greater number of readers, and that their true character will the better appear. The eighteen lectures that compose this volume have in fact the particular trait that, if the history of philosophy furnishes their framework, philosophy itself occupies in them the first place, and that, instead of researches of erudition and criticism, they present a regular exposition of the doctrine which was at first fixed in our mind, which has not ceased to preside over our labors. This book, then, contains the abridged but exact expression of our convictions on the fundamental points of philosophic science. In it will be openly seen the method that is the soul of our enterprise, our principles, our processes, our results.