Recent Spiritualist Philosophy in France [pp. 679-697]

IN FRANCE.
temperament. The method, the turn of mind, even the doctrine,
are all unlike. There is nothing common but a certain general
direction of the thought, the use of certain formulas, and a final
analogous tendency. In place of those brilliant electrical flashes,
encompassed with darkness, which characterize the intuitive and
bold method of M. Ravaisson, we have, on the contrary, a systematic and sustained thought, kept up from the first line to the
last, as in that remarkable work upon the Foundation of Inductioga. The connection is so close that the entire work forms a
single knot, or rather a succession of knots, one fastened upon
the other, requiring the same amount of effort to disentangle
from the first to the very last. Nothing to give the mind rest,
nothing to conciliate, nothing to throw light. It is scarcely as
easy reading as a treatise on Algebra, with the difference that the
algebraic language, being absolutely precise, requires only attention and patience; whereas the indeterminate signs of the
language of philosophy darken and weary the thought, unless
the author constantly comes to one's aid by defining their meaning. But this M. Lachelier seldom does. Hence, his book, going
to the depth of things, imposes upon the mind an excessive fatigue, which a little consideration on the part of the author
would have notably diminished.
This laborious method has its source in a spirit naturally pe netrating and profound, which can be satisfied with nothing com mon, which digs to so great a depth, that one asks, with uneasi ness, if there is indeed any solid ground under its feet. One is
carried down from stratum to stratum, and knows not whether
there is a last one. When one believes himself in possession of
the truth, he finds that it was only an appearance; that below
that appearance there is a verity more true, which, after all, is
itself nothing but an appearance, so that at last when there
seems to be a pause and a cry: "Here we are, it is found," we
mistrust ourselves, and we say involuntarily that there is noth ing to hinder the malicious enchanter from dissipating this form
of truth as well as the others, and from leaving us in a bottom less void. Thus while the author in that work strives above all
to find for science a solid and immovable base, he makes rather
the impression of a transcendental skepticism, with mysticism as
the vanishing point of the perspective. Meanwhile the charm of
the thought is so powerful, that one prefers the risk of that limit
1874.]
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