Editing Victor Cousin (section)

===Three distinctive points===

There are three distinctive points in Cousin's philosophy. These are his method, the results of his method, and the application of the method and its results to history, especially to the history of philosophy. It is usual to speak of his philosophy as eclecticism. It is eclectic only in a secondary and subordinate sense. All eclecticism that is not self-condemned and inoperative implies a system of doctrine as its basis, in fact, a criterion of truth. Otherwise, as Cousin himself remarks, it is simply a blind and useless [[syncretism]]. And Cousin saw and proclaimed from an early period in his philosophical teaching the necessity of a system on which to base his eclecticism. This is indeed advanced as an illustration or confirmation of the truth of his system, as a proof that the facts of history correspond to his analysis of consciousness. These three points, the method, the results, and the philosophy of history, are with him intimately connected. They are developments in a natural order of sequence. They become in practice [[Epistemology|psychology]], [[ontology]] and [[eclecticism]] in history.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=332}}

Cousin strongly insisted on the importance of method in philosophy. That which he adopts is the ordinary one of observation, analysis and induction. This observational method Cousin regards as that of the 18th century, the method which Descartes began and abandoned, and which Locke and Condillac applied, though imperfectly, and which [[Thomas Reid]] and Kant used with more success. He insists that this is the true method of philosophy as applied to consciousness, in which alone the facts of experience appear. But the proper condition of the application of the method is that it shall not, through prejudice of system, omit a single fact of consciousness. If the authority of consciousness is good in one instance, it is good in all. If not to be trusted in one, it is not to be trusted in any. Previous systems have erred in not presenting the facts of consciousness.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=332}}