an object is a necessary condition of thought. "Reason," says A., "stands in a receptive relation to its object." But A. differs from Parmenides in limiting this identity of thought with its object to immaterial things. The identity is one of form, not of matter. The true reality of everything consists in its manifestation or function, and this is identified by the Aristotelians with the logical essence. Hence, when reason is declared to be receptive of the essence, it is declared to enter into, and find itself identical with, the functions in which reality consists. The objects of reason are moments in the life of reason. The dependence of the human on a universal reason, ascribed to A., is an interpretation discordant with the system.
Through Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire we have the most important matter of Ampère's letters, though with serious and inexplicable mutilations. None of Biran's letters have been published. Those here brought to the attention of the readers of the Rev. de Mét. are drafts of letters written to Ampère. They never went through the post, and it is therefore difficult to give any exact date. The subjects treated in these letters are: 1. determination of the ultimate and fundamental fact of psychology, 2. construction from this of a complete classification of psychological phenomena, 3. discovery of a passage from psychology to metaphysics—from the subjective to the objective. Of these four letters dating between the years 1806-1817 the first one is to Brédin apropos of Biran's conversations with Ampère on the sensation of movement; the second to Lacoste on a difference of opinion between Biran and Ampère relative to the essence of the soul; the third to Ampère on the sense of effort and the muscular sense; the fourth on the difference between the feeling which is the consequent of an action and which becomes the determining principle of its repetition, and the desire which calls it forth.
