In general, in the history of philosophy, we are in favor of systems that are themselves in favor of reason. Accordingly, in antiquity, we side with Plato against his adversaries; among the moderns, with Descartes against Locke, with Reid against Hume, with Kant against both Condillac and Smith. But while we acknowledge reason as a power superior to sensation and sentiment, as being, _par excellence_, the faculty of every kind of knowledge, the faculty of the true, the faculty of the beautiful, the faculty of the good, we are persuaded that reason cannot be developed without conditions that are foreign to it, cannot suffice for the government of man without the aid of another power: that power which is not reason, which reason cannot do without, is sentiment; those conditions, without which reason cannot be developed, are the senses. It is seen what for us is the importance of sensation and sentiment: how, consequently, it is impossible for us absolutely to condemn either the philosophy of sensation, or, much more, that of sentiment. Such are the very simple foundations of our eclecticism. It is not in us the fruit of a desire for innovation, and for making ourself a place apart among the historians of philosophy; no, it is philosophy itself that imposes on us our historical views. It is not our fault if God has made the human soul larger than all systems, and we also aver that we are also much rejoiced that all systems are not absurd. Without giving the lie to the most certain facts signalized and established by ourself, it was indeed necessary, on finding them scattered in the history of philosophy, to recognize and respect them, and if the history of philosophy, thus considered, no longer appeared a mass of senseless systems, a chaos, without light, and without issue; if, on the contrary, it became, in some sort, a living philosophy, that was, it should seem, a progress on which one might felicitate himself, one of the most fortunate conquests of the nineteenth century, the very triumphing of the philosophic spirit. We have, therefore, no doubt in regard to the excellence of the enterprise; the whole question for us is in the execution. Let us see, let us compare what we have done with what we have wished to do. Let us ask, in the first place, whether we have been just towards that great philosophy represented in antiquity by Aristotle, whose best model among the moderns is the wise author of the Essay on the _Human Understanding_.