This eBook was produced by Andrew Heath
and David Widger
by Edward Bulwer Lytton(Lord Lytton)
Of the many illustrious thinkers whom the schools of France havecontributed to the intellectual philosophy of our age, Victor Cousin,the most accomplished, assigns to Maine de Biran the rank of the mostoriginal.
In the successive developments of his own mind, Maine de Biran may,indeed, be said to represent the change that has been silently at workthroughout the general mind of Europe since the close of the lastcentury. He begins his career of philosopher with blind faith inCondillac and Materialism. As an intellect severely conscientious inthe pursuit of truth expands amidst the perplexities it revolves,phenomena which cannot be accounted for by Condillac's sensuous theoriesopen to his eye. To the first rudimentary life of man, the animal life,"characterized by impressions, appetites, movements, organic in theirorigin and ruled by the Law of Necessity," [1] he is compelled to add,"the second, or human life, from which Free-will and Self-consciousnessemerge." He thus arrives at the union of mind and matter; but still asomething is wanted,—some key to the marvels which neither of theseconditions of vital being suffices to explain. And at last thegrand self-completing Thinker attains to the Third Life of Man in Man'sSoul.
"There are not," says this philosopher, towards the close of his last and loftiest work,—"there are not only two principles opposed to each other in Man,—there are three. For there are in him three lives and three orders of faculties. Though all should be in accord and in harmony between the sensitive and the active faculties which constitute Man, there would still be a nature superior, a third life which would not be satisfied; which would make felt (ferait sentir) the truth that there is another happiness, another wisdom, another perfection, at once above the greatest human happiness, above the highest wisdom, or intellectual and moral perfection of which the human being is susceptible." [2]
Now, as Philosophy and Romance both take their origin in the Principle ofWonder, so in the "Strange Story" submitted to the Public it will beseen that Romance, through the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries,conducts its bewildered hero towards the same goal to which Philosophyleads its luminous Student, through far grander portents of Nature, farhigher visions of Supernatural Power, than Fable can yield to Fancy.That goal is defined in these noble words:—
"The relations (rapports) which exist between the elements and the products of the three lives of Man are the subjects of meditation, the fairest and finest, but also the most difficult. The Stoic Philosophy shows us all which can be most elevated in active life; but it makes abstraction of the animal nature, and absolutely fails to recognize all which belongs to the life of the spirit. Its practical morality is beyond the forces of humanity. Christianity alone embraces the whole Man. It dissimulates none of the sides of his nature, and avails itself of his miseries and his weakness in order to conduct him to his end in showing him all the want that he has of a succor more exalted." [3]
In the passages thus quoted, I imply one of the objects for whichthis tale has been written; and I cite them, with a wish to acknowledgeone of those priceless obligations which writings the lightest and