New Essay Volume 3

Appendix 14. (1273)

[Victor Cousin and inspiration]

The history of inspired human beings tells us that inspiration is usually accompanied by a kind of sacred enthusiasm. This arises from the extraordinary action exercised by God in souls when he communicates his secrets to them, and from the wonderful mysteries he reveals to them. Moreover this kind of enthusiasm is an effect which frequently accompanies divine inspiration or revelation; it is not inspiration or revelation itself. In fact God seems to have revealed things to holy people without arousing any extraordinary excitation in their souls, as for example, when he spoke to them in dreams and gave them ordinary commands (like the journey into Egypt) without revealing new, fundamental mysteries.

The general mass of people however have sometimes confused the effect of inspiration with inspiration or revelation itself. They are unaware that a kind of enthusiasm or wonderful, sublime, intellectual excitation can spring from natural causes, as they do from first reflections, with which human beings discover great truths. It is unfortunate that Cousin has accepted this popular equivocation, and confused natural, poetic inspiration with divine and truly supernatural inspiration. Because both are marked by a kind of enthusiasm, he has confused what comes from human nature with what comes from God; he has confused false religions with true religion, as if all came from the same source simply because they produce a similar effect in nature. But would false religions have been pale imitations if they did not in some way resemble the truth? It is the duty of philosophy to distinguish things which although similar are different; it must not allow itself to be duped by similarity as the mass of people are. Professor Cousin says:

Such is the fact of the first affirmation prior to any reflection and devoid of any negation. This is the fact which the human race has called inspiration. In all languages, inspiration is different from reflection. It is an apperception of truths, that is, of essential fundamental truths, without the intervention of the will or personality. Inspiration does not belong to us; relative to it, we are simple spectators, not agents. Our whole action consists in being aware of what happens. There is certainly activity here, but not a reflective, willed, personal activity. The characteristic of inspiration is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is accompanied by a powerful. Emotion which snatches the soul from its ordinary, subordinate state and releases the sublime, divine part of the soul's nature: Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo [It is God in us, whose action fills us with enthusiasm]. - This explains why at the beginning of civilisation anyone who possessed the wonderful gift of inspiration to a greater degree than others was taken to be God's confidant and interpreter. - Here we have the sacred origin of prophecy, priesthood and worship.

Many different elements are mingled and confused in this passage. It seems that the author's imagination, after rapidly amassing many things, has clouded the calm insight with which he often analyses difficult subjects. In my opinion, therefore, the defects in the passage are the following:

1. Genuine, divine inspiration and revelation of God should have been distinguished from simple, natural knowledge which, although it may attain the sublimity of poetical inspiration, does not exceed natural limits. There is no doubt that natural knowledge can be called a participation in eternal, absolute reason, but this truth must not be abused by being confused with supernatural revelation, which philosophy can accept without finding it contradictory and impossible.

2. A distinction should have been made between inspiration resulting in enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm popularly called inspiration simply because the human being feels himself wonderfully and nobly passive in its regard.

3. Professor Cousin should have kept in mind that imposture causes false religions and simulates true religions. He should not have referred to a single origin falsehood and truth, pretence and sincerity, religion and superstition, or (to use the words of our author) prophecy, priesthood and worship in general.

4. He should not have said that spontaneous knowledge, which easily generates enthusiasm, is void of all reflection - spontaneous knowledge comes from a first, general reflection. He thus confused direct knowledge with popular knowledge.

5. He should not have excluded personality, that is, the personal activity proper to popular knowledge, and left only activity similar to that of a spectator at a play.

We must note that being aware is precisely the fact under discussion; anyone aware of something has already acted by apprehending the thing. He may be passive but he is the subject, the person who intervenes. The objects of his thoughts are the play, the only play there is. He is the actor in these thoughts just as the person on stage is the actor in the play. He does not create ideas but moves from one to the other, uniting and dividing them. It is not as though another is thinking for him and he sees what the other is thinking, nor do the thoughts move and act on their own account as though a subject had only to contemplate their movement. This is not accurate observation of nature. Thoughts, whether spontaneous or reflective, cannot be divided from the subject in the way that a stage is divided from the spectator. Passive or active, the person subsists; experiencing or operating, the person is identical, except that in experience something is supposed outside the person. It is false therefore to say that the Prosfessor's 'spontaneous affirmation' is what the human race has called 'inspiration'.