Revue Encyclopedique. Par M. V. Cousin [pp. 358-377]

German and French Philosophy.
the same perception (la meme aperception.) Reason does
not modify itself at pleasure: you do not think because you
will, your understanding is not free. What do I say, gentle men? It is this: you do not make your own reason, it does
not belong to yourselves. All that is free is your own,
what is not free is not your own, liberty alone is personali ty. We caln hardly refrain from laughing, when, at the
present day, we hear reason spoken against, as a thing
belonging to the individual. In truth this a great liberty
of declamation, for there is nothing less individual than reason; if it were individual it would be personal, it would be
free; we should have power over it, as we have power over
our resolutions and acts of the will; we should continually
change its acts, that is to say, its conceptions. If the conceptions of reason were only individual, we should not think of
imposing them upon others; for to impose individual, personal conceptions upon another individual, would be despotism the most outrageous and extravagant. What is purely
individual in me, has no value beyond myself. But the case
is otherwise (in regard to reason.) We at once declare those
persons insane who do not admit the mathematical relations of
numbers, who do not admit the difference between the beautiful and the ugly, between justice and injustice. Why? Because we know it is not the individual who constitutes these
conceptions, or, in other words, that reason in itself is not individual, but universal and absolute, and by this title it binids
individuals; each individual feeling, not only that he is bound,
but that others are bound by the same authority. Reason,
then, is not individual, it is not our own; it is not human:
for, I repeat, that which constitutes man in his intrinsic personality, is his activity and free will; all that is not voluntary
and free is added to man, but not an integral part of man. If
these things are admitted, I admit that ideas are the conceptions of this eternal and absolute reason, which we do not
constitute for ourselves, but which manifests itself in us and
is the law of all individuals: this reason, that Fenelon always
found at the end of his researches, from which he endeavoured
in vain to separate himself, and which, constantly returning
in spite of all his efforts, in all his thoughts, the lowest or
most sublime, drew from him this grand conjecture,'0 reason, reason, is it not thou whom I seek?' If such an admission be made, I feel no difficulty to admit that ideas are conceptions of human reason, but yet of reason in itself. But
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