Page:History of Freedom.djvu/633

HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 589 \ whom he has brought into line, and in his scrupulous fairness to\vards all whose attempted systems he has analysed. He is hearty in appreciating talent of every kind, but he is discriminating in his judgment of ideas, and rarely sympathetic. Where the best thoughts of the ablest men are to be displayed, it would be tempting to present an array of luminous points or a chaplet of polished gems. I n the hands of such artists as Stahl or Cousin they would start into high relief with a convincing lucidity that would rouse the exhibited writers to confess that they had never known they were so clever. Without transfiguration the effect might, be attained by sometimes stringing the most significant words of the original. Excepting one unduly favoured competitor, who fills two pages with untranslated French, there is little direct quotation. Cournot is one of those \vho, having been overlooked at first, are here raised to prominence. He is urgently, and justly, recommended to the attention of students. "They will find that every page bears the impress of patient, independent, and sagacious thought. I believe I have not met with a more genuine thinker in the course of my investigations. He was a man of the finest intellectual qualities, of a powerful and absolutely truthful mind." But then we are warned that Cournot never wrote a line for the general reader, and accordingly he is not permitted to speak for himself. Yet it was this thoughtful Frenchman \vho said: "Aueune idée parmi celles qui se réfèrent à l'ordre des faits naturels ne tient de plus près à la famille des idées religieuses que l'idée du progrès, et n'est plus propre à devenir Ie principe d'une sorte de foi religieuse pour ceux qui n'en ont pas d'autres. Elle a, comme la foi religieuse, la vertu de relever les âmes et les caractères." The successive theories gain neither in clearness nor in contrast by the order in which they stand. As other countries are reserved for other volumes, Cousin precedes Hegel, who was his master, whilst Quetelet is barely mentioned in his own place, and has to wait for Buckle, if not for Oettingen and Rümelin, before he comes on for