The thinking portion of the reading public are under great obligations to Mr. Wight for his vigorous and accurate version of Cousin’s master work, and to the Messrs. Appletons for the beautiful dress in which it fitly appears. It belongs, indeed, to that rare class of works which illustrate the intellectual history of the age in which they are produced; and it deserves the attention of all readers who desire to take the first step in acquiring a taste for metaphysics. It is composed of two courses of lectures, originally delivered in Paris to large and enthusiastic audiences, whose admiration of the splendid eloquence of the lecturer soon compelled them to love the subject likewise; and when published, their influence was felt in every country into which the French language and literature penetrates, and caused a revival in philosophy, which somewhat amazed its hard and dry cultivators from its peculiarity and its extent. These lectures, indeed, made metaphysical science popular everywhere. Men and women read Victor Cousin as they read Scott and Byron. His bold and dazzling generalizations, expressed in a style of singular clearness, energy and vehemence, stimulated the most jaded minds; and the dictatorial confidence with which he settled all the problems of history, philosophy and religion, and the ease with which his solutions were comprehended, made him the universal favorite. There was something captivating, too, in the theory by which he reconciled all the various systems in his eclectic and electric method. There are four systems, sensualism, idealism, skepticism, and mysticism, each having its root in consciousness, each containing an element of truth, and each wrong as an exclusive system. Select from these what is true, place the four partial truths in their relations, and the result is the eclectic philosophy. This is a loose, short-hand statement, in unphilosophic language, of Cousin’s scheme.