[186] In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to the _faculte des lettres_, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and particular taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his mind. But of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eustache Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the necessity of addressing to him the public petition that he may not be wanting to a vocation so marked and so elevated. PART THIRD THE GOOD. LECTURE XI. PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. Extent of the question of the good.--Position of the question according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the good, the natural belief of mankind?--The natural beliefs of humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of nature.--Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages, in life, in consciousness.--Disinterestedness and devotedness.--Liberty.--Esteem and contempt.--Respect.--Admiration and indignation.--Dignity.--Empire of opinion.--Ridicule.--Regret and repentance.--Natural and necessary foundations of all justice.--Distinction between fact and right.--Common sense, true and false philosophy. The idea of the true in its developments, comprises psychology, logic, and metaphysics. The idea of the beautiful begets what is called aesthetics. The idea of the good is the whole of ethics. It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics to confine them within the inclosure of individual consciousness. There are public ethics, as well as private ethics, and public ethics embrace, with the relations of men among themselves, so far as men, their relations as citizens and as members of a state. Ethics extend wherever is found in any decree the idea of the good. Now, where does this idea manifest itself more, and where do justice and injustice, virtue and crime, heroism and weakness appear more openly, than on the theatre of civil life? Moreover, is there any thing that has a more decisive influence over manners, even of individuals, than the institutions of peoples and the constitutions of states? If the idea of the good goes thus far, it must be followed thither, as recently the idea of the beautiful has introduced us into the domain of art.