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

German and French Philosophy.
The next passage, which we had designed to give, can only
be made tolerably intelligible, by a brief notice of some things
previously asserted, in relation to the fundamental constituents
of human reason. We give the author's own words, at least,
those employed to express the result of an extended train of
reasoning:
"Reason, however it may develope itself, to whatever it
may be applied, can conceive nothing, except by means of
two ideas, which always preside over its exercises, viz. the
idea of unity and multiplicity, of the finite and infinite, of
existence and its manifestation, of substance and phenomenon,
of the absolute cause and second cause, of the absolute and
relative, of the necessary and contingent, of boundless and
finite space, of eternity and time, &c. When we rank together the first terms of these propositions a profound analysis
identifies them; the same is true in relation to all the second
terms, so that from all these propositions compared and combined, there results a single proposition, a single formula,
which is the formula of thought itself, and which may be expressed according to the case, by the one and the multiple,
time and eternity, finite and infinite space, &c. Finally, the
two terms of this so comprehensive formula, do not constitute merely a dualism, in which the first term is upon one
side, and the second upon the other, without any other relation, except to be perceived at the same time by reason; they
have another essential relation, unity, existence, substance,
immensity, eternity, &c. the first term of the formula is
cause, absolute cause necessarily developing itself in the second term, viz. multiplicity, the finite, phenomenon, the relative, &c. The result of all this, is, that the two terms and
their relation of generation, which derives the second from the
first, are the three integral elements of human reason."
We now give a passage that may have to some of our readers the appearance of novelty, if not of truth; a bold attempt
to subject infinite depth to the easy measurement of the very
finite line employed by human thought:
"There are in human reason two elements and their relation; three elements, then-three ideas. These three ideas
are by no means the arbitrary product of human reason; so
far from that, in their triplicity and their unity, they consti
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