Morality and Free Thought (translated from the Revue des duex Mondes) [pp. 494-513]

1875.] MORALITV AND FREE THOUGHT. 497
he seems absorbed in very different problems, it is still de vita
beata which occupies him; he writes a chapter upon it in his
own way. Without recalling those important and attractive
books, The Family, The Philosophy of Happiness, already noticed
here by our fellow laborer and friend, M. Emile Monte gut, read
the work which he has entitled Problems of the i9th Century.
Politics, literature, science, philosophy, religion, such are the
subjects of which he indicates the present situation and seeks
to conjecture the future; ~propos of these subjects so diverse,
we see him ever attentive to the dignity, the perfection-in a
word, the happiness of man. Sometimes he discusses the happiness of the individual; sometimes that of the community.
The most important of his writings, History of Political Science
in its Relations to Morality, has for its inspiring thought the observation of the %ws which can assure the happiness and dignity of men united in a society. On all these questions we
generally agree with Mr. Janet when he affirms a belief, when
he establishes a principle-in a word, when he increases the store
of philosophical knowledge; we differ from him only in the wish
to go further. We would that his dialectics might grasp
something more in the vast field of truth. Wings! wings!
cried the poet. It is the poet, that unconscious poet hidden in
each one of us, that yields to these aspiring tendencies; we
forget that every philosopher is not an inventor, and that adventurous imaginations are hard pressed by methodical explorers. The conquerors of science have not all the same pace.
Some in quick flashes perceive worlds, where perhaps they
will never build a dwelling; others advance step by step, circumspect, cautious, looking right and left, but sure of each
step, and possessing what they have once grasped. It is to the
latter group that Mr. Janet belongs, a true model of the philosophical tactician. Now, if a writer of this temperament utters
words which open to thought new horizons, we may be sure
that they are not random expressions.
This is precisely what attracts me to the new work which
M. Janet has just published; the novelties which he utters acquire a greater interest from the very fact that they come from
him; they would pass unnoticed from other lips; we notice
them from his because they attest an effort and represent a
conquest. The subject of discussion is morality, and all that
this word embraces.