Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/224

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DE MAISTRE
221

the external world. The instincts which presuppose an original motive equipment are intimately related to vital feeling. Hence man is not entirely passive in the presence of the objective world as Condillac had taught (Rapport du physique et du moral de l'homme, 1802). There are a number of separate passages in which he appears to approach closely to materialism — as, e.g., when he says that the brain secretes thought like the liver bile. But it was not his intention to furnish a metaphysics, and in another treatise, posthumously published, he rather expressed himself spiritualistically (Lettre sur les causes premières). — The Élements d' Idéologie (1801) of Destutt de Tracy shows a tendency similar to that of Cabanis. By the term ideology he simply means the theory of ideas. Napoleon, who found the men of this school the pronounced opponents of his despotism, on the other hand used the term "Ideology" sarcastically to describe a visionary and abstract idealism. Picavet has written a learned monograph on the theoretical and practical significance of this whole movement (Les idèologues, 1891).

Maine de Biran (1755-1824) at first likewise cooperated with Cabanis and Tracy. Biranheld high legislative and administrative positions under the republic, the empire and the restoration; but his talents and inclinations were directed towards the inner life. Introspection and analysis gradually led him to ascribe far greater importance to psychical activity than Condillac and the ideologists had done. He held that immediate self-consciousness (apperception immediate) refutes Condillac's theory of passivity. He describes the antithesis of passive states and of inner activity by very interesting analyses. His native temperament seem to have been peculiarly adapted