to experiences of this kind (Journal intime, by Naville; Maine de Biran, sa vie et ses pensées, 1857.—Cf. also Rapports du physique et du moral, Œuvres philos.,IV).—Maine de Biran takes issue with de Maistre and his school as well as with Condillac. According to them in the last analysis the soul is likewise passive, because it receives everything from the authorities (just as, according to Condillac, from external objects).
De Biran discovers both the origin of the categories (especially causality) and the basis of morality in the consciousness of volitional activity.—Later on his psychologism culminated in mysticism, on account of the fact that he—in adherence to Kant's distinction between phenomena and thing-in-itself—regarded "la vie de l'esprit" as an immediate participation in something which transcends every phenomenon, and places this "life of the spirit" above "la vie humaine," the active life of reason and of will (Nouveaux essais d'anthropologie, 1859).
The famous physicist, A. M. Ampère (1775-1836), with whose philosophical ideas we are acquainted more particularly from his interesting correspondence with Biran (published by Barthelemy St. Hilaire in Philosophie des deux Amperes), was led, by the theory of his friend, to investigations concerning the combinations of sensations and ideas which are independent of our conscious activity. He distinguishes blending (concretion) and' association of independent ideas (commemoration); to the first he ascribes immediate recognition. In epistemology he departs from Biran (and Kant) by ascribing absolute validity to the relative concepts (causality, number, time, space) and discovers in them a bridge from phenomena to things-in-themselves (Essai sur la philosophie des sciences, 1834-43).
