But philosophy would be worth little if it had not at its disposal more extensive resources than those of a song-writer.  M. Cousin therefore looked the difficulty in the face.  Victory is always good.  But how shall young Frenchmen be made to hear this with regard to that signal defeat of the armies of France?  Listen:  “It is not populations which appear on battle-fields, but ideas and causes.  So at Leipzig and at Waterloo two causes came to the encounter, the cause of paternal monarchy and that of military democracy.  Which of them carried the day, Gentlemen?  Neither the one nor the other.  Who was the conqueror and who the conquered at Waterloo?  Gentlemen, there were none conquered. (Applause.) No, I protest that there were none:  the only conquerors were European civilization and the map. (Unanimous and prolonged applause.)"[150]

To make the youth of Paris applaud at the remembrance of Waterloo is perhaps one of the most brilliant triumphs of eloquence which the annals of history record.  But this rhetorical success is not a triumph of truth.  There were those who were conquered at Waterloo; and, to judge by what has been going on for some time past in Europe, it would seem that those who were conquered are bent on taking their revenge.  We may infer from these facts that all triumphs are not good, since truth may be for a moment overcome by a false philosophy tricked out in the deceitful adornments of eloquence.

But let us admit, whatever our opinion on the subject, that the Waterloo rock has been passed successfully; we have not yet pointed out the main difficulty which rises up in the way of this system.  If victory is good, it seems at first sight that defeat is bad.  But defeat is the necessary condition of victory; and being the condition of good, it seems therefore that it also is good; and the mind comes logically to this conclusion:  “Victory is good;—­defeat is good, since it is the condition of victory;—­all is good.”  We set out with the glorification of victory, and, lo! we are arrived at the glorification of fact.  All that is, has the right to be; in the eyes of the modern savant whatever is, is right.  M. Cousin laid down the principle; he laid it down in a general manner in his philosophical eclecticism, of which it was easy to make use, as has in fact been done, in a sense contrary to his real intentions.  Our young critics, wasting an inheritance of which they do not appear always to recognize the origin, are doing nothing else, very often, than catching as they die away the last vibrations of that surpassing eloquence.

In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right and good:  such is the axiom for which the labors of more than one modern historian had prepared us.  We are to seek for the relation of facts one to another, that is to explain; and all that we explain, we must approve.  Let us follow out this thought in a few examples.