some end. Always has he found his inspiration in his cause, and his success may always be measured by the magnitude of that cause, and the ardor of his attachment to it.

American scholars we shall have; but only in proportion as the scholar weds himself to American principles, and becomes the interpreter of American life. A national literature, we have said, is the expression of the national life. It is the attempt to embody the great idea, or ideas, on which the nation is founded; and it proceeds from the vigorous and continued efforts of scholars to realize that idea, or those ideas, in practical life. The idea of this nation is that of democratic freedom, the equal rights of all men. No man, however learned he may be, however great in all the senses of greatness, viewed simply as an individual, who does not entertain this great idea, who does not love it, and struggle to realize it in all our social institutions, in our whole practical life, can be a contributor to American literature. We care not how much he may write; how rapid and extensive a sale his works may find; how beautifully in point of style they may be written; how much they may be praised in reviews, or admired in saloons; they shall not live and be placed among the national classics. They have no vitality for the nation, for they meet no great national want, satisfy no national craving.

In order to rear up American scholars, and produce a truly American literature, we would not do as the author of the oration before us, declaim against American literature as it is, against the servility, and want of originality and independence of the American mind; nor would we impose a specific discipline on the aspirants to scholarship. We would talk little about the want of freedom; we would not trouble ourselves at all about literature, as such. We would engage heart and soul in the great American work. We would make all the young men around us see and feel that there is here a great work, a glorious work, to be done. We would show them a work they can

do, and fire them with the zeal and energy to do it. We would present them a great and kindling cause to espouse; wake up in them a love for their like, make them see a divine worth in every brother man, long to raise up every man to the true position of a man, to secure the complete triumph of the democracy, and to enable every man to comprehend and respect himself, and be a man. If we can succeed in doing this, we can make them true scholars, and scholars who shall do honor to their country, and add glory to Humanity. When our educated men acquire faith in democratic institutions, and a love for the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of the human race, we shall have scholars enough, and a literature which will disclose to the whole world the superiority of freedom over slavery.

Let Mr. Emerson, let all who have the honor of their country or of their race at heart, turn their whole attention to the work of convincing the educated and the fashionable, that democracy is worthy of their sincerest homage, and of making them feel the longing to labor in its ennobling cause; and then he and they may cease to be anxious as to the literary results. It will be because a man has felt with the American people, espoused their cause, bound himself to it for life or for death, time or eternity, that he becomes able to adorn American literature; not because he has lived apart, refused" to serve society," held lone reveries, and looked on sunsets, and sunrise. If he speak a word, "posterity shall not willingly let die," it will not be because he has prepared himself to speak, by a scholastic asceticism, but by loving his countrymen. and sympathizing with them Editor

ART. II.- Cours de Philosophie professé à la Faculté des Lettres pendant l'année 1818, par M. V. Cousin, sur le fondement des idées absolues du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien; publié avec son autorisation et d'après les meilleures rédactions de ce Cours, par M. Adolphe Garnier, maître de conferences à la École Normale. Paris. 1836. 8vo. pp. 391.

M. COUSIN, the principal founder of the Eclectic Philosophy in France, is thought by many in this country to be merely a philosophical dreamer, a fanciful framer of hypotheses, a bold generalizer, without solid judgment, or true science. An impression to this effect was conveyed some months since, in an article in one of our most respectable periodicals, by the teacher of philosophy in the oldest and best endowed University in the country, an article, by the way, which nothing but the youth and inexperience of its author could induce us to pardon. But nothing is more unjust than this impression. M. Cousin is the farthest in the world from being a mere theorizer, or from founding his philosophy, as some allege, on mere a priori reasoning. They who censure him for his "eloquent generalizations" give us ample proof, that they are ignorant of both the method and the spirit of his philosophy. Would they but attain to a tolerable acquaintance with his writings, they would at once. perceive that he is most remarkable for those very qualities which they most strenuously deny him; and we cannot refrain from reminding them, that they have no moral right to condemn a man of whom they know comparatively nothing, or to sit in judgment on a system of philosophy which they will not take the pains to comprehend. Understand, and then judge, is an old maxim, and a good one, and sorry are we to find occasion to repeat it.

There is manifested, in a quarter from which we ought to be able to look for better things, a singular pertinacity in confounding M. Cousin with certain

persons among ourselves, who, for some reason not known to us, have received the appellation of Transcendentalists. This is altogether unpardonable. If they who persist in doing this know no better, they are deplorably ignorant; if they do know better, we leave it to their own consciences to settle their claims to morality. We assure our readers that M. Cousin has very little in common with those they are in the habit of calling Transcendentalists. He professes no philosophy which transcends experience, unless by experience be understood merely that of the senses; he differs entirely as to his method from the New German philosophy represented by Schelling and Hegel, and on many essential points in the application and results of his method from Kant, the father of the Transcendental Philosophy, with whom we perceive there is a strong disposition to class him. He cannot be classed with Kant, nor with any of the Germans. He has all that Germany can give that is worth having, and much which Germany cannot give. Profited much he undoubtedly has by his study of Kant, and by his acquaintance with Schelling and Hegel; but he is the disciple of none of them. He has some things in common with the Scotch school; but he leaves that school at an immeasurable distance behind him.

Nor is it just to assert, as some do, that he is merely reproducing the old Alexandrian philosophy or Neoplatonism. The Alexandrians called themselves Eclectics, and Eclecticism was no doubt in their intention; but they failed utterly in their attempt to realize it. "Their school had the decided and brilliant character of an exclusive school," and ended in exclusive mysticism, a tendency to which no man, however lynx-eyed he may be, can discover in Cousin. The slightest acquaintance with his writings is sufficient to convince any man, at all familiar with the Alexandrian philosophy, that Cousin has done quite another thing than to reproduce it. He has given us a faithful account of it; he has criticised it with great judgment, pointed out its vices, and shown us why it

failed to realize the Eclecticism to which it aspired. Indeed, he is so far from being a Neoplatonist that he is not even a Platonist; at least he is no more a

follower of Plato than he is of Aristotle. He reverences Plato and Aristotle as philosophers by way of eminence; the first as having given birth to philosophic ideas, and the latter as having reduced them to order, and given them their language, which is still the language of philosophy; but properly speaking he is the disciple of neither. He has translated Plato and enabled us to comprehend him; he is devoting much attention to Aristotle, and doing what he can to raise up the Stagyrite from the neglect into which he has fallen, since the ruin of the Scholastic Philosophy. If he himself is remarkable for one thing more than another, it is for the freedom and independence with which he seeks and accepts truth wherever he can find it.

In this

We say again that M. Cousin is not a Transcendentalist, as the term appears to be understood in this community. It is not easy to determine what people mean by the term Transcendentalist; but we suppose they mean to designate by it, when they use it as a term of reproach, a man who, in philosophizing, disregards experience and builds on principles obtained not by experience, but by reasoning a priori. sense, Cousin is no Transcendentalist. Nor indeed. was Kant. Kant's method was as truly experimental as Bacon's or Locke's. He starts with the proposition that "all our knowledge begins with experience." (Dass alle unsere Erkenntniss mit der Erfahrung anfange, daran ist gar kein Zweifel.) But experience is possible only on certain conditions. If the human mind be in its origin a mere blank sheet, as Locke represents it, incapable of furnishing from its own. resources any element of experience, we must admit with Hume that no experience is possible, and that every sane philosopher must needs be a skeptic. If we admit the possibility of experience, we must admit certain a priori conditions of experience; that is, we