VOLUME VII SLICE VI Coucy-le-Château to Crocodile (continued 3)

COURTRAI (Flemish, Kortryk), an important and once famous town of West Flanders, Belgium, situated on the Lys. Pop. (1904) 34,564. It is now best known for its fine linen, which ranks with that of Larne. The lace factories are also important and employ 5000 hands. But considerable as is the prosperity of modern Courtrai it is but a shadow of what it was in the middle ages during the halcyon period of the Flemish communes. Then Courtrai had a population of 200,000, now it is little over a sixth of that number. On the 11th of July 1302 the great battle of Courtrai (see Infantry) was fought outside its walls, when the French army, under the count of Artois, was vanquished by the allied burghers of Bruges, Ypres and Courtrai with tremendous loss. As many as 700 pairs of golden spurs were collected on the field from the bodies of French knights and hung up as an offering in an abbey church of the town, which has long disappeared. There are still, however, some interesting remains of Courtrai’s former grandeur. Perhaps the Pont de Broel, with its towers at either end of the bridge, is as characteristic and complete as any monument of ancient Flanders that has come down to modern times. The hôtel de ville, which dated from the earlier half of the 16th century, was restored in 1846, and since then statues have also been added to represent those that formerly ornamented the façade. Two richly and elaborately carved chimney-pieces in the hôtel de ville merit special notice. The one in the council chamber upstairs dates from 1527 and gives an allegorical representation of the Virtues and the Vices. The other, three-quarters of a century later, contains an heraldic representation of the noble families of the town. The church of St Martin dates from the 15th century, but was practically destroyed in 1862 by a fire caused by lightning. It has been restored. The most important building at Courtrai is the church of Notre Dame, which was begun by Count Baldwin IX. in 1191 and finished in 1211. The portal and the choir were reconstructed in the 18th century. In the chapel behind the choir is hung one of Van Dyck’s masterpieces, “The Erection of the Cross.” The chapel of the counts attached to the church dates from 1373, and contained mural paintings of the counts and countesses of Flanders down to the merging of the title in the house of Burgundy. Most if not all of these had become obliterated, but they have now been carefully restored. With questionable judgment portraits have been added of the subsequent holders of the title down to the emperor Francis II. (I. of Austria), the last representative of the houses of Flanders and Burgundy to rule in the Netherlands. Courtrai celebrated the 600th anniversary of the battle mentioned above by erecting a monument on the field in 1902, and also by fêtes and historical processions that continued for a fortnight.

Courtrai, the Cortracum of the Romans, ranked as a town from the 7th century onwards. It was destroyed by the Normans, but was rebuilt in the 10th century by Baldwin III. of Flanders, who endowed it with market rights and laid the foundation of its industrial importance by inviting the settlement of foreign weavers. The town was once more burnt, in 1382, by the French after the battle of Roosebeke, but was rebuilt in 1385 by Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy.

COURVOISIER, JEAN JOSEPH ANTOINE (1775-1835), French magistrate and politician, was born at Besançon on the 30th of November 1775. During the revolutionary period he left the country and served in the army of the émigrés and later in that of Austria. In 1801, under the Consulate, he returned to France and established himself as an advocate at Besançon, being appointed conseiller-auditeur to the court of appeal there in 1808. At the Restoration he was made advocate-general by Louis XVIII., resigned and left France during the Hundred Days, and was reappointed after the second Restoration in 1815. In 1817, after the modification of the constitution by the ordonnance of the 5th of September, he was returned to the chamber of deputies, where he attached himself to the left centre and supported the moderate policy of Richelieu and Decazes. He was an eloquent speaker, and master of many subjects; and his proved royalism made it impossible for the ultra-Royalists to discredit him, much as they resented his consistent opposition to their short-sighted violence. After the revolt at Lyons in 1817 he was nominated procureur-général of the city, and by his sense and moderation did much to restore order and confidence. He was again a member of the chamber from 1819 to 1824, and vigorously opposed the exceptional legislation which the second administration of Richelieu passed under the influence of the ultra-Royalists. In 1824 he failed to secure re-election, and occupied himself with his judicial duties until his nomination as councillor of state in 1827. On the 8th of August 1829 he accepted the offer of the portfolio of justice in the Polignac ministry, but resigned on the 19th of May 1830, when he realized that the government intended to abrogate the Charter and the inevitable revolution that would follow. During the trial of the ex-ministers, in December, he was summoned as a witness, and paid a tribute to the character of his former colleagues which, under the circumstances, argued no little courage. He refused to take office under Louis Philippe, and retired into private life, dying on the 18th of September 1835.

COUSCOUS, or Kous-kous (an Arabic word derived from kaskasa, to pound), a dish common among the inhabitants of North Africa, made of flour rubbed together and steamed over a stew of mutton, fowl, &c., with which it is eaten.

COUSIN, JEAN (1500-1590), French painter, was born at Soucy, near Sens, and began as a glass-painter, his windows in the Sainte Chapelle at Vincennes being considered the finest in France. As a painter of subject pictures he is ranked as the founder of the French school, as having first departed from the practice of portraits. His “Last Judgment,” influenced by Parmigiano, is in the Louvre, and a “Descent from the Cross” (1523) in the museum at Mainz is attributed to him. He was known also as a sculptor, and an engraver, both in etching and on wood, his wood-cuts for Jean le Clerc’s Bible (1596) and other books being his best-known work. He also wrote a Livre de perspective (1560), and a Livre de portraiture (1571).

See Ambroise Firmin-Didot, Étude sur J. Cousin (1872), and Recueil des œuvres choisies de J. Cousin (1873).

COUSIN, VICTOR (1792-1867), French philosopher, the son of a watchmaker, was born in Paris, in the Quartier St Antoine, on the 28th of November 1792. At the age of ten he was sent to the grammar school of the Quartier St Antoine, the Lycée Charlemagne. Here he studied until he was eighteen. The lycée had a connexion with the university, and when Cousin left the secondary school he was “crowned” in the ancient hall of the Sorbonne for the Latin oration delivered by him there, in the general concourse of his school competitors. The classical training of the lycée strongly disposed him to literature. He was already known among his compeers for his knowledge of Greek. From the lycée he passed to the Normal School of Paris, where Laromiguière was then lecturing on philosophy. In the second preface to the Fragmens philosophiques, in which he candidly states the varied philosophical influences of his life, Cousin speaks of the grateful emotion excited by the memory of the day in 1811, when he heard Laromiguière for the first time. “That day decided my whole life. Laromiguière taught the philosophy of Locke and Condillac, happily modified on some points, with a clearness and grace which in appearance at least removed difficulties, and with a charm of spiritual bonhomie which penetrated and subdued.” Cousin was set forthwith to lecture on philosophy, and he speedily obtained the position of master of conferences (maître de conférences) in the school. The second great philosophical impulse of his life was the teaching of Royer-Collard. This teacher, as he tells us, “by the severity of his logic, the gravity and weight of his words, turned me by degrees, and not without resistance, from the beaten path of Condillac into the way which has since become so easy, but which was then painful and unfrequented, that of the Scottish philosophy.” In 1815-1816 Cousin attained the position of suppléant (assistant) to Royer-Collard in the history of modern philosophy chair of the faculty of letters. There was still another thinker who influenced him at this early period,—Maine de Biran, whom Cousin regarded as the unequalled psychological observer of his time in France.

These men strongly influenced both the method and the matter of Cousin’s philosophical thought. To Laromiguière he attributes the lesson of decomposing thought, even though the reduction of it to sensation was inadequate. Royer-Collard taught him that even sensation is subject to certain internal laws and principles which it does not itself explain, which are superior to analysis and the natural patrimony of the mind. De Biran made a special study of the phenomena of the will. He taught him to distinguish in all cognitions, and especially in the simplest facts of consciousness, the fact of voluntary activity, that activity in which our personality is truly revealed. It was through this “triple discipline,” as he calls it, that Cousin’s philosophical thought was first developed, and that in 1815 he entered on the public teaching of philosophy in the Normal School and in the faculty of letters.1 He then took up the study of German, worked at Kant and Jacobi, and sought to master the Philosophy of Nature of Schelling, by which he was at first greatly attracted. The influence of Schelling may be observed very markedly in the earlier form of his philosophy. He sympathized with the principle of faith of Jacobi, but regarded it as arbitrary so long as it was not recognized as grounded in reason. In 1817 he went to Germany, and met Hegel at Heidelberg. In this year appeared Hegel’s Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, of which Cousin had one of the earliest copies. He thought Hegel not particularly amiable, but the two became friends. The following year Cousin went to Munich, where he met Schelling for the first time, and spent a month with him and Jacobi, obtaining a deeper insight into the Philosophy of Nature.

The political troubles of France interfered for a time with his career. In the events of 1814-1815 he took the royalist side. He at first adopted the views of the party known as doctrinaire, of which Royer-Collard was the philosophical Political troubles. chief. He seems then to have gone farther than his party, and even to have approached the extreme Left. Then came a reaction against liberalism, and in 1821-1822 Cousin was deprived of his offices alike in the faculty of letters and in the Normal School. The Normal School itself was swept away, and Cousin shared at the hands of a narrow and illiberal government the fate of Guizot, who was ejected from the chair of history. This enforced abandonment of public teaching was not wholly an evil. He set out for Germany with a view to further philosophical study. While at Berlin in 1824-1825 he was thrown into prison, either on some ill-defined political charge at the instance of the French police, or on account of certain incautious expressions which he had let fall in conversation. Liberated after six months, he continued under the suspicion of the French government for three years. It was during this period, however, that he thought out and developed what is distinctive in his philosophical doctrine. His eclecticism, his ontology and his philosophy of history were declared in principle and in most of their salient details in the Fragmens philosophiques (Paris, 1826). The preface to the Fragmens philosophiques. second edition (1833) and the Avertissement to the third (1838) aimed at a vindication of his principles against contemporary criticism. Even the best of his later books, the Philosophie écossaise (4th ed., 1863), the Du vrai, du beau, et du bien (12th ed., 1872; Eng. trans., 3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1854), and the Philosophie de Locke (4th ed., 1861) were simply matured revisions of his lectures during the period from 1815 to 1820. The lectures on Locke were first sketched in 1819, and fully developed in the course of 1829.

During the seven years of enforced abandonment of teaching he produced, besides the Fragmens, the edition of the works of Proclus (6 vols., 1820-1827), and the works of Descartes (11 vols., 1826). He also commenced his Translation of Plato (13 vols.), which occupied his leisure time from 1825 to 1840.

We see in the Fragmens very distinctly the fusion of the different philosophical influences by which his opinions were finally matured. For Cousin was as eclectic in thought and habit of mind as he was in philosophical principle and system. It is with the publication of the Fragmens of 1826 that the first great widening of his reputation is associated. In 1827 followed the Cours de l’histoire de la philosophie.

In 1828 M. de Vatimesnil, minister of public instruction in Martignac’s ministry, recalled Cousin and Guizot to their professorial positions in the university. The three years which followed were the period of Cousin’s Career as a lecturer. greatest triumph as a lecturer. His return to the chair was the symbol of the triumph of constitutional ideas and was greeted with enthusiasm. The hall of the Sorbonne was crowded as the hall of no philosophical teacher in Paris had been since the days of Abelard. The lecturer had a singular power of identifying himself for the time with the system which he expounded and the historical character he portrayed. Clear and comprehensive in the grasp of the general outlines of his subject, he was methodical and vivid in the representation of details. In exposition he had the rare art of unfolding and aggrandizing. There was a rich, deep-toned, resonant eloquence mingled with the speculative exposition; his style of expression was clear, elegant and forcible, abounding in happy turns and striking antitheses. To this was joined a singular power of rhetorical climax. His philosophy exhibited in a striking manner the generalizing tendency of the French intellect, and its logical need of grouping details round central principles.

There was withal a moral elevation in his spiritual philosophy which came home to the hearts of his hearers, and seemed to afford a ground for higher development in national literature and art, and even in politics, than the traditional philosophy of France had appeared capable of yielding. His lectures produced more ardent disciples, imbued at least with his spirit, than those of any other professor of philosophy in France during the 18th century. Tested by the power and effect of his teaching influence, Cousin occupies a foremost place in the rank of professors of philosophy, who like Jacobi, Schelling and Dugald Stewart have united the gifts of speculative, expository and imaginative power. Tested even by the strength of the reaction which his writings have in some cases occasioned, his influence is hardly less remarkable. The taste for philosophy—especially its history—was revived in France to an extent unknown since the 17th century.

Among the men who were influenced by Cousin we may note T. S. Jouffroy, J. P. Damiron, Garnier, J. Barthélemy St Hilaire, F. Ravaisson-Mollien, Rémusat, Jules Simon and A. Franck. Jouffroy and Damiron were first fellow-students Disciples and followers. and then disciples. Jouffroy, however, always kept firm to the early—the French and Scottish—impulses of Cousin’s teaching. Cousin continued to lecture regularly for two years and a half after his return to the chair. Sympathizing with the revolution of July, he was at once recognized by the new government as a friend of national liberty. Writing in June 1833 he explains both his philosophical and his political position:—

“I had the advantage of holding united against me for many years both the sensational and the theological school. In 1830 both schools descended into the arena of politics. The sensational school quite naturally produced the demagogic party, and the theological school became quite as naturally absolutism, safe to borrow from time to time the mask of the demagogue in order the better to reach its ends, as in philosophy it is by scepticism that it undertakes to restore theocracy. On the other hand, he who combated any exclusive principle in science was bound to reject also any exclusive principle in the state, and to defend representative government.”

The government was not slow to do him honour. He was induced by the ministry of which his friend Guizot was the head to become a member of the council of public instruction and counsellor of state, and in 1832 he was made a peer of France. He ceased to lecture, but retained the title of professor of philosophy. Finally, he accepted the position of minister of public instruction in 1840 under Thiers. He was besides director of the Normal School and virtual head of the university, and from 1840 a member of the Institute (Academy of the Moral and Political Sciences). His character and his official position at this period gave him great power in the university and in the educational arrangements of the country. In fact, during the seventeen and a half years of the reign of Louis Philippe, Cousin mainly moulded the philosophical and even the literary tendencies of the cultivated class in France.

But the most important work he accomplished during this period was the organization of primary instruction. It was to the efforts of Cousin that France owed her advance, in primary education, between 1830 and 1848. Prussia Relation to primary education in France. and Saxony had set the national example, and France was guided into it by Cousin. Forgetful of national calamity and of personal wrong, he looked to Prussia as affording the best example of an organized system of national education; and he was persuaded that “to carry back the education of Prussia into France afforded a nobler (if a bloodless) triumph than the trophies of Austerlitz and Jena.” In the summer of 1831, commissioned by the government, he visited Frankfort and Saxony, and spent some time in Berlin. The result was a series of reports to the minister, afterwards published as Rapport sur l’état de l’instruction publique dans quelques pays de l’Allemagne et particulièrement en Prusse. (Compare also De l’instruction publique en Hollande, 1837.) His views were readily accepted on his return to France, and soon afterwards through his influence there was passed the law of primary instruction. (See his Exposé des motifs et projet de loi sur l’instruction primaire, présentés à la chambre des députés, séance du 2 janvier 1833.)

In the words of the Edinburgh Review (July 1833), these documents “mark an epoch in the progress of national education, and are directly conducive to results important not only to France but to Europe.” The Report was translated into English by Mrs Sarah Austin in 1834. The translation was frequently reprinted in the United States of America. The legislatures of New Jersey and Massachusetts distributed it in the schools at the expense of the states. Cousin remarks that, among all the literary distinctions which he had received, “None has touched me more than the title of foreign member of the American Institute for Education.” To the enlightened views of the ministries of Guizot and Thiers under the citizen-king, and to the zeal and ability of Cousin in the work of organization, France owes what is best in her system of primary education,—a national interest which had been neglected under the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration (see Exposé, p. 17). In the first two years of the reign of Louis Philippe more was done for the education of the people than had been either sought or accomplished in all the history of France. In defence of university studies he stood manfully forth in the chamber of peers in 1844, against the clerical party on the one hand and the levelling or Philistine party on the other. His speeches on this occasion were published in a tractate Défense de l’université et de la philosophie (1844 and 1845).

This period of official life from 1830 to 1848 was spent, so far as philosophical study was concerned, in revising his former lectures and writings, in maturing them for publication or reissue, and in research into certain periods of the Philosophical writings. history of philosophy. In 1835 appeared De la Métaphysique d’Aristote, suivi d’un essai de traduction des deux premiers livres; in 1836, Cours de philosophie professé à la faculté des lettres pendant l’année 1818, and Ouvrages inédits d’Abélard. This Cours de philosophie appeared later in 1854 as Du vrai, du beau, et du bien. From 1825 to 1840 appeared Cours de l’histoire de la philosophie, in 1829 Manuel de l’histoire de la philosophie de Tennemann, translated from the German. In 1840-1841 we have Cours d’histoire de la philosophie morale au XVIIIe siècle (5 vols.). In 1841 appeared his edition of the Œuvres philosophiques de Maine-de-Biran; in 1842, Leçons de philosophie sur Kant (Eng. trans. A. G. Henderson, 1854), and in the same year Des Pensées de Pascal. The Nouveaux fragments were gathered together and republished in 1847. Later, in 1859, appeared Petri Abaelardi Opera.

During this period Cousin seems to have turned with fresh interest to those literary studies which he had abandoned for speculation under the influence of Laromiguière and Royer-Collard. To this renewed interest we owe his studies of men Literary studies. and women of note in France in the 17th century. As the results of his work in this line, we have, besides the Des Pensêes de Pascal, 1842, Études sur les femmes et la société du XVIIe siècle, 1853. He has sketched Jacqueline Pascal (1844), Madame de Longueville (1853), the marquise de Sablé (1854), the duchesse de Chevreuse (1856), Madame de Hautefort (1856).

When the reign of Louis Philippe came to a close through the opposition of his ministry, with Guizot at its head, to the demand for electoral reform and through the policy of the Spanish marriages, Cousin, who was opposed to the government on these points, lent his sympathy to Cavaignac and the Provisional government. He published a pamphlet entitled Justice et charité, the purport of which showed the moderation of his political views. It was markedly anti-socialistic. But from this period he passed almost entirely from public life, and ceased to wield the personal influence which he had done during the preceding years. After the coup d’état of the 2nd of December, he was deprived of his position as permanent member of the superior council of public instruction. From Napoleon and the Empire he stood aloof. A decree of 1852 placed him along with Guizot and Villemain in the rank of honorary professors. His sympathies were apparently with the monarchy, under certain constitutional safeguards. Speaking in 1853 of the political issues of the spiritual philosophy which he had taught during his lifetime, he says,—“It conducts human societies to the true republic, that dream of all generous souls, which in our time can be realized in Europe only by constitutional monarchy.”2

During the last years of his life he occupied a suite of rooms in the Sorbonne, where he lived simply and unostentatiously. The chief feature of the rooms was his noble library, the cherished collection of a lifetime. He died at Cannes on the 13th of January 1867, in his sixty-fifth year. In the front of the Sorbonne, below the lecture rooms of the faculty of letters, a tablet records an extract from his will, in which he bequeaths his noble and cherished library to the halls of his professorial work and triumphs.

Philosophy.—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 Psychology, Ontology and Eclecticism in history.

First, as to method. On no point has Cousin more strongly insisted than the importance of method in philosophy. That which he adopts, and the necessity of which he so strongly proclaims, is the ordinary one of observation, Method. 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 Reid and Kant used with more success, yet not completely. 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, i.e. consciousness itself, in their totality. The observational method applied to consciousness gives us the science of psychology. This is the basis and the only proper basis of ontology or metaphysics—the science of being—and of the philosophy of history. To the observation of consciousness Cousin adds induction as the complement of his method, by which he means inference as to reality necessitated by the data of consciousness, and regulated by certain laws found in consciousness, viz. those of reason. By his method of observation and induction as thus explained, his philosophy will be found to be marked off very clearly, on the one hand from the deductive construction of notions of an absolute system, as represented either by Schelling or Hegel, which Cousin regards as based simply on hypothesis and abstraction, illegitimately obtained; and on the other, from that of Kant, and in a sense, of Sir W. Hamilton, both of which in the view of Cousin are limited to psychology, and merely relative or phenomenal knowledge, and issue in scepticism so far as the great realities of ontology are concerned. What Cousin finds psychologically in the individual consciousness, he finds also spontaneously expressed in the common sense or universal experience of humanity. In fact, it is with him the function of philosophy to classify and explain universal convictions and beliefs; but common-sense is not with him philosophy, nor is it the instrument of philosophy; it is simply the material on which the philosophical method works, and in harmony with which its results must ultimately be found.

The three great results of psychological observation Results. are Sensibility, Activity or Liberty, and Reason.

These three facts are different in character, but are not found apart in consciousness. Sensations, or the facts of the sensibility, are necessary; we do not impute them to ourselves. The facts of reason are also necessary, and reason is not less independent of the will than the sensibility. Voluntary facts alone are marked in the eyes of consciousness with the characters of imputability and personality. The will alone is the person or Me. The me is the centre of the intellectual sphere without which consciousness is impossible. We find ourselves in a strange world, between two orders of phenomena which do not belong to us, which we apprehend only on the condition of our distinguishing ourselves from them. Further, we apprehend by means of a light which does not come from ourselves. All light comes from the reason, and it is the reason which apprehends both itself and the sensibility which envelops it, and the will which it obliges but does not constrain. Consciousness, then, is composed of these three integrant and inseparable elements. But Reason is the immediate ground of knowledge and of consciousness itself.

But there is a peculiarity in Cousin’s doctrine of activity or freedom, and in his doctrine of reason, which enters deeply into his system. This is the element of spontaneity in volition and in reason. This is the heart of what is Spontaneity in will. new alike in his doctrine of knowledge and being. Liberty or freedom is a generic term which means a cause or being endowed with self-activity. This is to itself and its own development its own ultimate cause. Free-will is so, although it is preceded by deliberation and determination, i.e. reflection, for we are always conscious that even after determination we are free to will or not to will. But there is a primary kind of volition which has not reflection for its condition, which is yet free and spontaneous. We must have willed thus spontaneously first, otherwise we could not know, before our reflective volition, that we could will and act. Spontaneous volition is free as reflective, but it is the prior act of the two. This view of liberty of will is the only one in accordance with the facts of humanity; it excludes reflective volition, and explains the enthusiasm of the poet and the artist in the act of creation; it explains also the ordinary actions of mankind, which are done as a rule spontaneously and not after reflective deliberation.

But it is in his doctrine of the Reason that the distinctive principle of the philosophy of Cousin lies. The reason given to us by psychological observation, the reason of our consciousness, is impersonal in its nature. We do not make it; its character Impersonality of reason. is precisely the opposite of individuality; it is universal and necessary. The recognition of universal and necessary principles in knowledge is the essential point in psychology; it ought to be put first and emphasized to the last that these exist, and that they are wholly impersonal or absolute. The number of these principles, their enumeration and classification, is an important point, but it is secondary to that of the recognition of their true nature. This was the point which Kant missed in his analysis, and this is the fundamental truth which Cousin thinks he has restored to the integrity of philosophy by the method of the observation of consciousness. And how is this impersonality or absoluteness of the conditions of knowledge to be established? The answer is in substance that Kant went wrong in putting necessity first as the criterion of those laws. This brought them within the sphere of reflection, and gave as their guarantee the impossibility of thinking them reversed; and led to their being regarded as wholly relative to human intelligence, restricted to the sphere of the phenomenal, incapable of revealing to us substantial reality—necessary, yet subjective. But this test of necessity is a wholly secondary one; these laws are not thus guaranteed to us; they are each and all given to us, given to our consciousness, in an act of spontaneous apperception or apprehension, immediately, instantaneously, in a sphere above the reflective consciousness, yet within the reach of knowledge. And “all subjectivity with all reflection expires in the spontaneity of apperception. The reason becomes subjective by relation to the voluntary and free self; but in itself it is impersonal; it belongs not to this or to that self in humanity; it belongs not even to humanity. We may say with truth that nature and humanity belong to it, for without its laws both would perish.”

But what is the number of those laws? Kant reviewing the enterprise of Aristotle in modern times has given a complete list of the laws of thought, but it is arbitrary in classification and may be legitimately reduced. According to Laws of reason. Cousin, there are but two primary laws of thought, that of causality and that of substance. From these flow naturally all the others. In the order of nature, that of substance is the first and causality second. In the order of acquisition of our knowledge, causality precedes substance, or rather both are given us in each other, and are contemporaneous in consciousness.

These principles of reason, cause and substance, given thus psychologically, enable us to pass beyond the limits of the relative and subjective to objective and absolute reality,—enable us, in a word, to pass from psychology, or the science of knowledge, to ontology or the science of being. These laws are inextricably mixed in consciousness with the data of volition and sensation, with free activity and fatal action or impression, and they guide us in rising to a personal being, a self or free cause, and to an impersonal reality, a not-me—nature, the world of force—lying out of us, and modifying us. As I refer to myself the act of attention and volition, so I cannot but refer the sensation to some cause, necessarily other than myself, that is, to an external cause, whose existence is as certain for me as my own existence, since the phenomenon which suggests it to me is as certain as the phenomenon which had suggested my reality, and both are given in each other. I thus reach an objective impersonal world of forces which corresponds to the variety of my sensations. The relation of these forces or causes to each other is the order of the universe.

But these two forces, the me and the not-me, are reciprocally limitative. As reason has apprehended these two simultaneous phenomena, attention and sensation, and led us immediately to conceive the two sorts of distinct The infinite or absolute. causes, correlative and reciprocally finite, to which they are related, so, from the notion of this limitation, we find it impossible under the same guide not to conceive a supreme cause, absolute and infinite, itself the first and last cause of all. This is relatively to self and not-self what these are to their proper effects. This cause is self-sufficient, and is sufficient for the reason. This is God; he must be conceived under the notion of cause, related to humanity and the world. He is absolute substance only in so far as he is absolute cause, and his essence lies precisely in his creative power. He thus creates, and he creates necessarily.

This theodicy of Cousin laid him open obviously enough to the charge of pantheism. This he repels, and his answer may be summed up as follows. Pantheism is properly the deification of the law of phenomena, the universe God. Charge of Pantheism. But I distinguish the two finite causes self and not-self from each other and from the infinite cause. They are not mere modifications of this cause or properties, as with Spinoza,—they are free forces having their power or spring of action in themselves, and this is sufficient for our idea of independent finite reality. I hold this, and I hold the relation of these as effects to the one supreme cause. The God I plead for is neither the deity of Pantheism, nor the absolute unity of the Eleatics, a being divorced from all possibility of creation or plurality, a mere metaphysical abstraction. The deity I maintain is creative, and necessarily creative. The deity of Spinoza and the Eleatics is a mere substance, not a cause in any sense. As to the necessity under which Deity exists of acting or creating, this is the highest form of liberty, it is the freedom of spontaneity, activity without deliberation. His action is not the result of a struggle between passion and virtue. He is free in an unlimited manner; the purest spontaneity in man is but the shadow of the freedom of God. He acts freely but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of being able to choose the opposite part. He cannot deliberate or will as we do. His spontaneous action excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of will and the mechanical operation of necessity.

The elements found in consciousness are also to be found in the history of humanity and in the history of philosophy. In external nature there are expansion and contraction which correspond to spontaneity and reflection. External History of philosophy. nature again in contrast with humanity expresses spontaneity; humanity expresses reflection. In human history the East represents the spontaneous stage; the Pagan and Christian world represent stages of reflection.

This was afterwards modified, expanded and more fully expressed by saying that humanity in its universal development has three principal moments. First, in the spontaneous stage, where reflection is not yet developed, and art is imperfect, humanity has thought only of the immensity around it. It is preoccupied by the infinite. Secondly, in the reflective stage, mind has become an object to itself. It thus knows itself explicitly or reflectively. Its own individuality is now the only or at least the supreme thing. This is the moment of the finite. Thirdly, there comes an epoch in which the self or me is subordinated. Mind realizes another power in the universe. The finite and the infinite become two real correlatives in the relation of cause and product. This is the third and highest stage of development, the relation of the finite and the infinite. As philosophy is but the highest expression of humanity, these three moments will be represented in its history. The East typifies the infinite, Greece the finite or reflective epoch, the modern era the stage of relation or correlation of infinite and finite. In theology, the dominant philosophical idea of each of these epochs results in pantheism, polytheism, theism. In politics we have in correspondence also with the idea, monarchy, democracy, constitutionalism.

Eclecticism thus means the application of the psychological method to the history of philosophy. Confronting the various systems co-ordinated as sensualism, idealism, scepticism, mysticism, with the facts of consciousness, the Eclecticism. result was reached “that each system expresses an order of phenomena and ideas, which is in truth very real, but which is not alone in consciousness, and which at the same time holds an almost exclusive place in the system; whence it follows that each system is not false but incomplete, and that in re-uniting all incomplete systems, we should have a complete philosophy, adequate to the totality of consciousness.” Philosophy, as thus perfected, would not be a mere aggregation of systems, as is ignorantly supposed, but an integration of the truth in each system after the false or incomplete is discarded.

Such is the system in outline. The historical position of the system lies in its relations to Kant, Schelling and Hegel. Cousin was opposed to Kant in asserting that the unconditioned in the form of infinite or absolute cause is but Relations to Kant, Schelling and Hegel. a mere unrealizable tentative or effort on the part of the mind, something different from a mere negation, yet not equivalent to a positive thought. With Cousin the absolute as the ground of being is grasped positively by the intelligence, and it renders all else intelligible; it is not as with Kant a certain hypothetical or regulative need.

With Schelling again Cousin agrees in regarding this supreme ground of all as positively apprehended, and as a source of development, but he utterly repudiates Schelling’s method. The intellectual intuition either falls under the eye of consciousness, or it does not. If not, how do you know it and its object which are identical? If it does, it comes within the sphere of psychology; and the objections to it as thus a relative, made by Schelling himself, are to be dealt with. Schelling’s intellectual intuition is the mere negation of knowledge.

Again the pure being of Hegel is a mere abstraction,—a hypothesis illegitimately assumed, which he has nowhere sought to vindicate. The very point to be established is the possibility of reaching being per se or pure being; yet in the Hegelian system this is the very thing assumed as a starting-point. Besides this, of course, objections might be made to the method of development, as not only subverting the principle of contradiction, but as galvanizing negation into a means of advancing or developing the whole body of human knowledge and reality. The intellectual intuition of Schelling, as above consciousness, the pure being of Hegel, as an empty abstraction, unvindicated, illegitimately assumed, and arbitrarily developed, are equally useless as bases of metaphysics. This led Cousin, still holding by essential knowledge of being, to ground it in an analysis of consciousness,—in psychology.

The absolute or infinite—the unconditioned ground and source of all reality—is yet apprehended by us as an immediate datum or reality; and it is apprehended in consciousness—under its condition, that, to wit, of distinguishing subject and object, knower and known. The doctrine of Cousin was criticized by Sir W. Hamilton in the Edinburgh Review of 1829, and it was animadverted upon about the same time by Schelling. Hamilton’s objections are as follows. The correlation of the ideas of infinite and finite does not necessarily imply their correality, as Cousin supposes; on the contrary, it is a presumption that finite is simply positive and infinite negative of the same—that the finite and infinite are simply contradictory relatives. Of these “the positive alone is real, the negative is only an abstraction of the other, and in the highest generality even an abstraction of thought itself.” A study of the few sentences under this head might have obviated the trifling criticism of Hamilton’s objection which has been set afloat recently, that the denial of a knowledge of the absolute or infinite implies a foregone knowledge of it. How can you deny the reality of that which you do not know? The answer to this is that in the case of contradictory statements—A and not A—the latter is a mere negation of the former, and posits nothing; and the negation of a notion with positive attributes, as the finite, does not extend beyond abolishing the given attributes as an object of thought. The infinite or non-finite is not necessarily known, ere the finite is negated, or in order to negate it; all that needs be known is the finite itself; and the contradictory negation of it implies no positive. Non-organized may or may not correspond to a positive—i.e. an object or notion with qualities contradictory of the organized; but the mere sublation of the organized does not posit it, or suppose that it is known beforehand, or that anything exists corresponding to it. This is one among many flaws in the Hegelian dialectic, and it paralyzes the whole of the Logic. Secondly, the conditions of intelligence, which Cousin allows, necessarily exclude the possibility of knowledge of the absolute—they are held to be incompatible with its unity. Here Schelling and Hamilton argue that Cousin’s absolute is a mere relative. Thirdly, it is objected that in order to deduce the conditioned, Cousin makes his absolute a relative; for he makes it an absolute cause, i.e. a cause existing absolutely under relation. As such it is necessarily inferior to the sum total of its effects, and dependent for reality on these—in a word, a mere potence or becoming. Further, as a theory of creation, it makes creation a necessity, and destroys the notion of the divine. Cousin made no reply to Hamilton’s criticism beyond alleging that Hamilton’s doctrine necessarily restricted human knowledge and certainty to psychology and logic, and destroyed metaphysics by introducing nescience and uncertainty into its highest sphere—theodicy.

The attempt to render the laws of reason or thought impersonal by professing to find them in the sphere of spontaneous apperception, and above reflective necessity, can hardly be regarded as successful. It may be that we first of all Criticism of his philosophy. Impersonality of reason. primitively or spontaneously affirm cause, substance, time, space, &c., in this way. But these are still in each instance given us as realized in a particular form. In no single act of affirmation of cause or substance, much less in such a primitive act, do we affirm the universality of their application. We might thus get particular instances or cases of these laws, but we could never get the laws themselves in their universality, far less absolute impersonality. And as they are not supposed to be mere generalizations from experience, no amount of individual instances of the application of any one of them by us would give it a true universality. The only sure test we have of their universality in our experience is the test of their reflective necessity. We thus after all fall back on reflection as our ground for their universal application; mere spontaneity of apprehension is futile; their universality is grounded in their necessity, not their necessity in their universality. How far and in what sense this ground of necessity renders them personal are of course questions still to be solved.

But if these three correlative facts are immediately given, it seems to be thought possible by Cousin to vindicate them in reflective consciousness. He seeks to trace the steps which the reason has spontaneously and consciously, but irreflectively, followed. And here the question arises—Can we vindicate in a reflective or mediate process this spontaneous apprehension of reality?

The self is found to be a cause of force, free in its action, on the ground that we are obliged to relate the volition of consciousness to the self as its cause, and its ultimate cause. It is not clear from the analysis whether the self is immediately observed as an acting or originating cause, or whether reflection working on the principle of causality is compelled to infer its existence and character. If self is actually so given, we do not need the principle of causality to infer it; if it is not so given, causality could never give us either the notion or the fact of self as a cause or force, far less as an ultimate one. All that it could do would be to warrant a cause of some sort, but not this or that reality as the cause. And further, the principle of causality, if fairly carried out, as universal and necessary, would not allow us to stop at personality or will as the ultimate cause of its effect—volition. Once applied to the facts at all, it would drive us beyond the first antecedent or term of antecedents of volition to a still further cause or ground—in fact, land us in an infinite regress of causes.

The same criticism is even more emphatically applicable to the influence of a not-self, or world of forces, corresponding to our sensations, and the cause of them. Starting from sensation as our basis, causality could never give us this, even though it be allowed that sensation is impersonal to the extent of being independent of our volition. Causality might tell us that a cause there is of sensation somewhere and of some sort; but that this cause is a force or sum of forces, existing in space, independently of us, and corresponding to our sensations, it could never tell us, for the simple reason that such a notion is not supposed to exist in our consciousness. Causality cannot add to the number of our notions,—cannot add to the number of realities we know. All it can do is to necessitate us to think that a cause there is of a given change, but what that cause is it cannot of itself inform us, or even suggest to us, beyond implying that it must be adequate to the effect. Sensation might arise, for aught we know, so far as causality leads us, not from a world of forces at all, but from a will like our own, though infinitely more powerful, acting upon us, partly furthering and partly thwarting us. And indeed such a supposition is, with the principle of causality at work, within the limits of probability, as we are already supposed to know such a reality—a will—in our own consciousness. When Cousin thus set himself to vindicate those points by reflection, he gave up the obvious advantage of his other position that the realities in question are given us in immediate and spontaneous apprehension. The same criticism applies equally to the inference of an absolute cause from the two limited forces which he names self and not-self. Immediate spontaneous apperception may seize this supreme reality; but to vindicate it by reflection as an inference on the principle of causality is impossible. This is a mere paralogism; we can never infer either absolute or infinite from relative or finite.

The truth is that Cousin’s doctrine of the spontaneous apperception of impersonal truth amounts to little more than a presentment in philosophical language of the ordinary convictions and beliefs of mankind. This is important as a preliminary stage, but philosophy properly begins when it attempts to co-ordinate or systematize those convictions in harmony, to conciliate apparent contradiction and opposition, as between the correlative notions of finite and infinite, the apparently conflicting notions of personality and infinitude, self and not-self; in a word, to reconcile the various sides of consciousness with each other. And whether the laws of our reason are the laws of all intelligence and being—whether and how we are to relate our fundamental, intellectual and moral conceptions to what is beyond our experience, or to an infinite being—are problems which Cousin cannot be regarded as having solved. These are in truth the outstanding problems of modern philosophy.

Cousin’s doctrine of spontaneity in volition can hardly be said to be more successful than his impersonality of the reason through spontaneous apperception. Sudden, unpremeditated volition may be the earliest and the most artistic, Volition. but it is not the best. Volition is essentially a free choice between alternatives, and that is best which is most deliberate, because it is most rational. Aristotle touched this point in his distinction between βούλησις and προαίρεσις. The sudden and unpremeditated wish represented by the former is wholly inferior in character to the free choice of the latter, guided and illumined by intelligence. In this we can deliberately resolve upon what is in our power; in that we are subject to the vain impulse of wishing the impossible. Spontaneity is pleasing, sometimes beautiful, but it is not in this instance the highest quality of the thing to be obtained. That is to be found in a guiding and illumining reflective activity.

Eclecticism is not open to the superficial objection of proceeding without a system or test in determining the complete or incomplete. But it is open to the objection of assuming that a particular analysis of consciousness has General estimate. reached all the possible elements in humanity and in history, and all their combinations. It may be asked, Can history have that which is not in the individual consciousness? In a sense not; but our analysis may not give all that is there, and we ought not at once to impose that analysis or any formula on history. History is as likely to reveal to us in the first place true and original elements, and combinations of elements in man, as a study of consciousness. Besides, the tendency of applying a formula of this sort to history is to assume that the elements are developed in a certain regular or necessary order, whereas this may not at all be the case; but we may find at any epoch the whole mixed, either crossing or co-operative, as in the consciousness of the individual himself. Further, the question as to how these elements may possibly have grown up in the general consciousness of mankind is assumed to be non-existent or impossible.

It was the tendency of the philosophy of Cousin to outline things and to fill up the details in an artistic and imaginative interest. This is necessarily the case, especially in the application to history of all formulas supposed to be derived either from an analysis of consciousness, or from an abstraction called pure thought. Cousin was observational and generalizing rather than analytic and discriminating. His search into principles was not profound, and his power of rigorous consecutive development was not remarkable. He left no distinctive permanent principle of philosophy. But he left very interesting psychological analyses, and several new, just, and true expositions of philosophical systems, especially that of Locke and the philosophers of Scotland. He was at the same time a man of impressive power, of rare and wide culture, and of lofty aim,—far above priestly conception and Philistine narrowness. He was familiar with the broad lines of nearly every system of philosophy ancient and modern. His eclecticism was the proof of a reverential sympathy with the struggles of human thought to attain to certainty in the highest problems of speculation. It was eminently a doctrine of comprehension and of toleration. In these respects it formed a marked and valuable contrast to the arrogance of absolutism, to the dogmatism of sensationalism, and to the doctrine of church authority, preached by the theological school of his day. His spirit, while it influenced the youth of France, saved them from these influences. As an educational reformer, as a man of letters and learning, who trod “the large and impartial ways of knowledge,” and who swayed others to the same paths, as a thinker influential alike in the action and the reaction to which he led, Cousin stands out conspicuously among the memorable Frenchmen of the 19th century.

Sir W. Hamilton (Discussions, p. 541), one of his most resolute opponents, described Cousin as “A profound and original thinker, a lucid and eloquent writer, a scholar equally at home in ancient and in modern learning, a philosopher superior to all prejudices of age or country, party or profession, and whose lofty eclecticism, seeking truth under every form of opinion, traces its unity even through the most hostile systems.”

Bibliography.—J. Barthélemy St Hilaire, V. Cousin, sa vie et sa correspondence (3 vols., Paris, 1895); H. Höffding, Hist. of Mod. Phil. ii. 311 (Eng. trans., 1900); C. E. Fuchs, Die Philosophie Victor Cousins (Berlin, 1847); J. Alaux, La Philos. de M. Cousin (Paris, 1864); P. Janet, Victor Cousin et son œuvre (Paris, 1885); Jules Simon, V. Cousin (1887); Adolphe Franck, Moralistes et philosophes (1872); J. P. Damiron, Souvenirs de vingt ans d’enseignement (Paris, 1859); H. Taine in Les Philosophes (Paris, 1868), pp. 79-202.

(J. V.; X.)

COUSIN (Fr. cousin, Ital. cugino, Late Lat. cosinus, perhaps a popular and familiar abbreviation of consobrinus, which has the same sense in classical Latin), a term of relationship. Children of brothers and sisters are to each other first cousins, or cousins-german; the children of first cousins are to each other second cousins, and so on; the child of a first cousin is to the first cousin of his father or mother a first cousin once removed.

The word cousin has also, since the 16th century, been used by sovereigns as an honorific style in addressing persons of exalted, but not equal sovereign, rank, the term “brother” being reserved as the style used by one sovereign in addressing another. Thus, in Great Britain, dukes, marquesses and earls are addressed by the sovereign in royal writs, &c., as “cousin.” In France the kings thus addressed princes of the blood royal, cardinals and archbishops, dukes and peers, the marshals of France, the grand officers of the crown and certain foreign princes. In Spain the right to be thus addressed is a privilege of the grandees.

COUSINS, SAMUEL (1801-1887), English mezzotint engraver, was born at Exeter on the 9th of May 1801. He was preeminently the interpreter of Sir Thomas Lawrence, his contemporary. During his apprenticeship to S. W. Reynolds he engraved many of the best amongst the three hundred and sixty little mezzotints illustrating the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds which his master issued in his own name. In the finest of his numerous transcripts of Lawrence, such as “Lady Acland and her Sons,” “Pope Pius VII.” and “Master Lambton,” the distinguishing characteristics of the engraver’s work, brilliancy and force of effect in a high key, corresponded exactly with similar qualities in the painter. After the introduction of steel for engraving purposes about the year 1823, Cousins and his contemporaries were compelled to work on it, because the soft copper previously used for mezzotint plates did not yield a sufficient number of fine impressions to enable the method to compete commercially against line engraving, from which much larger editions were obtainable. The painter-like quality which distinguished the 18th-century mezzotints on copper was wanting in his later works, because the hardness of the steel on which they were engraved impaired freedom of execution and richness of tone, and so enhanced the labour of scraping that he accelerated the work by stipple, etching the details instead of scraping them out of the “ground” in the manner of his predecessors. To this “mixed style,” previously used by Richard Earlom on copper, Cousins added heavy roulette and rocking-tool textures, tending to fortify the darks, when he found that the “burr” even on steel failed to yield enough fine impressions to meet the demand. The effect of his prints in this method after Reynolds and Millais was mechanical and out of harmony with the picturesque technique of these painters, but the phenomenal popularity which Cousins gained for his works at least kept alive and in favour a form of mezzotint engraving during a critical phase of its history. Abraham Raimbach, the line engraver, dated the decline of his own art in England from the appearance in 1837 of Cousins’s print (in the “mixed style”) after Landseer’s “Bolton Abbey.” Such plates as “Miss Peel,” after Lawrence (published in 1833); “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” after Landseer (1857); “The Order of Release” and “The First Minuet,” after Millais (1856 and 1868); “The Strawberry Girl” and “Lavinia, Countess Spencer,” after Reynolds; and “Miss Rich,” after Hogarth (1873-1877), represent various stages of Cousins’s mixed method. It reached its final development in the plates after Millais’s “Cherry Ripe” and “Pomona,” published in 1881 and 1882, when the invention of coating copper-plates with a film of steel to make them yield larger editions led to the revival of pure mezzotint on copper, which has since rendered obsolete the steel plate and the mixed style which it fostered. The fine draughtsmanship of Cousins was as apparent in his prints as in his original lead-pencil portraits exhibited in London in 1882. In 1885 he was elected a full member of the Royal Academy, to which institution he later gave in trust £15,000 to provide annuities for superannuated artists who had not been so successful as himself. One of the most important figures in the history of British engraving, he died in London, unmarried, on the 7th of May 1887.

See George Pycroft, M.R.C.S.E., Memoir of Samuel Cousins, R.A., Member of the Legion of Honour (published for private circulation by E. E. Leggatt, London, 1899); Algernon Graves, Catalogue of the Works of Samuel Cousins, R.A. (published by H. Graves and Co., London, 1888); and Alfred Whitman, Samuel Cousins (published by George Bell & Sons, London, 1904), which contains a catalogue, good illustrations, and much detail useful to the collector and dealer.

(G. P. R.)

COUSTOU, the name of a famous family of French sculptors.

Nicolas Coustou (1658-1733) was the son of a wood-carver at Lyons, where he was born. At eighteen he removed to Paris, to study under C. A. Coysevox, his mother’s brother, who presided over the recently-established Academy of Painting and Sculpture; and at three-and-twenty he gained the Colbert prize, which entitled him to four years’ education at the French Academy at Rome. He afterwards became rector and chancellor of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. From the year 1700 he was a most active collaborator with Coysevox at the palaces of Marly and Versailles. He was remarkable for his facility; and though he was specially influenced by Michelangelo and Algardi, his numerous works are among the most typical specimens of his age now extant. The most famous are “La Seine et la Marne,” “La Saône,” the “Berger Chasseur” in the gardens of the Tuileries, the bas-relief “Le Passage du Rhin” in the Louvre, and the “Descent from the Cross” placed behind the choir altar of Notre Dame at Paris.

His younger brother, Guillaume Coustou (1677-1746), was a sculptor of still greater merit. He also gained the Colbert prize; but refusing to submit to the rules of the Academy, he soon left it, and for some time wandered houseless through the streets of Rome. At length he was befriended by the sculptor Legros, under whom he studied for some time. Returning to Paris, he was in 1704 admitted into the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, of which he afterwards became director; and, like his brother, he was employed by Louis XIV. His finest works are the famous group of the “Horse Tamers,” originally at Marly, now in the Champs Elysées at Paris, the colossal group “The Ocean and the Mediterranean” at Marly, the bronze “Rhône” which formed part of the statue of Louis XIV. at Lyons, and the sculptures at the entrance of the Hôtel des Invalides. Of these latter, the bas-relief representing Louis XIV. mounted and accompanied by Justice and Prudence was destroyed during the Revolution, but was restored in 1815 by Pierre Cartellier from Coustou’s model; the bronze figures of Mars and Minerva, on either side of the doorway, were not interfered with.

Another Guillaume Coustou (1716-1777), the son of Nicolas, also studied at Rome, as winner of the Colbert prize. While to a great extent a copyist of his predecessors, he was much affected by the bad taste of his time, and produced little or nothing of permanent value.

See Louis Gougenot, Éloge de M. Coustou le jeune (1903); Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de l’art français au XVIIIe siècle (1860); Lady Dilke, Gazette des beaux-arts, vol. xxv. (1901) (2 articles).

COUTANCES, WALTER OF (d. 1207), bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of Rouen, commenced his career in the chancery of Henry II., was elected bishop of Lincoln in 1182, and in 1184 obtained, with the king’s help, the see of Rouen. Throughout his career he was much employed in diplomatic and administrative duties. He started with Richard I. for the Third Crusade, but was sent back from Messina to investigate the charges which the barons and the official class had brought against the chancellor, William Longchamp. There was no love lost between the two; and they were popularly supposed to be rivals for the see of Canterbury. The archbishop of Rouen sided with the barons and John, and sanctioned Longchamp’s deposition—a step which was technically warranted by the powers which Richard had given, but by no means calculated to protect the interests of the crown. The Great Council now recognized the archbishop as chief justiciar, and he remained at the head of the government till 1193, when he was replaced by Hubert Walter. The archbishop did good service in the negotiations for Richard’s release, but subsequently quarrelled with his master and laid Normandy under an interdict, because the border stronghold of Château Gaillard in the Vexin had been built on his land without his consent. After Richard’s death the archbishop accepted John as the lawful heir of Normandy and consecrated him as duke. But his personal inclinations leaned to Arthur of Brittany, whom he was with difficulty dissuaded from supporting. The archbishop accepted the French conquest of Normandy with equanimity (1204), although he kept to his old allegiance while the issue of the struggle was in doubt. He did not long survive the conquest, and his later history is a blank.

See W. Stubbs’s editions of Benedictus Abbas, Hoveden and Diceto (Rolls series); R. Howlett’s edition of “William of Newburgh” and “Richard of Devizes” in Chronicles, &c., of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II. and Richard I. (Rolls series). See also the preface to the third volume of Stubbs’s Hoveden, pp. lix.-xcviii.; J. H. Round’s Commune of London, and the French poem on Guillaume le Maréchal (ed. P. Meyer, Soc. de l’Histoire de France).

(H. W. C. D.)

COUTANCES, a town of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement of the department of Manche, 7 m. E. of the English Channel and 58 m. S. of Cherbourg on the Western railway. Pop. (1906) 6089. Coutances is beautifully situated on the right bank of the Soulle on a granitic eminence crowned by the celebrated cathedral of Notre-Dame. The date of this church has been much disputed, but while traces of Romanesque architecture survive, the building is, in the main, Gothic in style and dates from the first half of the 13th century. The slender turrets massed round the western towers and the octagonal central tower, which forms a lantern within, are conspicuous features of the church. In the interior, which comprises the nave with aisles, transept and choir with ambulatory and side chapels, there are fine rose-windows with stained glass of the 14th century, and other works of art. Of the other buildings of Coutances the church of St Pierre, in which Renaissance architecture is mingled with Gothic, and that of St Nicolas, of the 16th and 17th centuries, demand mention. There is an aqueduct of the 14th century to the west of the town. Coutances is a quiet town with winding streets and pleasant boulevards bordering it on the east; on the western slope of the hill there is a public garden. The town is the seat of a bishop, a court of assizes and a sub-prefect; it has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a lycée for boys, a communal college and a training college for girls, and an ecclesiastical seminary. Leather-dressing and wool-spinning are carried on and there is trade in live-stock, in agricultural produce, especially eggs, and in marble.

Coutances is the ancient Cosedia, which before the Roman conquest was one of the chief towns in the country of the Unelli. Towards the end of the 3rd century its name was changed to Constantia, in honour of the emperor Constantius Chlorus, who fortified it. It became the capital of the pagus Constantinus (Cotentin), and in the middle ages was the seat of a viscount. It has been an episcopal see since the 5th century. In the 17th century it was the centre of the revolt of the Nu-pieds, caused by the imposition of the salt-tax (gabelle).

A good bibliography of general works and monographs on the archaeology and the history of the town and diocese of Coutances is given in U. Chevalier, Répertoire des sources, &c., Topo-Bibliographie (Montbéliard, 1894-1899), s.v.

COUTHON, GEORGES (1755-1794), French revolutionist, was born at Orcet, a village in the district of Clermont in Auvergne. He studied law, and was admitted advocate at Clermont in 1785. At this period he was noted for his integrity, gentle-heartedness and charitable disposition. His health was feeble and both legs were paralysed. In 1787 he was a member of the provincial assembly of Auvergne. On the outbreak of the Revolution Couthon, who was now a member of the municipality of Clermont-Ferrand, published his L’Aristocrate converti, in which he revealed himself as a liberal and a champion of constitutional monarchy. He became very popular, was appointed president of the tribunal of the town of Clermont in 1791, and in September of the same year was elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly. His views had meanwhile been embittered by the attempted flight of Louis XVI., and he distinguished himself now by his hostility to the king. A visit to Flanders for the sake of his health brought him into close intercourse and sympathy with Dumouriez. In September 1792 Couthon was elected member of the National Convention, and at the trial of the king voted for the sentence of death without appeal. He hesitated for a time as to which party he should join, but finally decided for that of Robespierre, with whom he had many opinions in common, especially in matters of religion. He was the first to demand the arrest of the proscribed Girondists. On the 30th of May 1793 he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety, and in August was sent as one of the commissioners of the Convention attached to the army before Lyons. Impatient at the slow progress made by the besieging force, he decreed a levée en masse in the department of Puy-de-Dôme, collected an army of 60,000 men, and himself led them to Lyons. When the city was taken, on the 9th of October 1793, although the Convention ordered its destruction, Couthon did not carry out the decree, and showed moderation in the punishment of the rebels. The Republican atrocities began only after Couthon was replaced, on the 3rd of November 1793, by Collot d’Herbois. Couthon returned to Paris, and on the 21st of December was elected president of the Convention. He contributed to the prosecution of the Hébertists, and was responsible for the law of the 22nd Prairial, which in the case of trials before the Revolutionary Tribunal deprived the accused of the aid of counsel or of witnesses or their defence, on the pretext of shortening the proceedings. During the crisis preceding the 9th Thermidor, Couthon showed considerable courage, giving up a journey to Auvergne in order, as he wrote, that he might either die or triumph with Robespierre and liberty. Arrested with Robespierre and Saint-Just, his colleagues in the triumvirate of the Terror, and subjected to indescribable sufferings and insults, he was taken to the scaffold on the same cart with Robespierre on the 28th of July 1794 (10th Thermidor).

See Fr. Mège, Correspondance de Couthon ... suivie de “l’Aristocrate converti,” comédie en deux actes de Couthon (Paris, 1872); and Nouveaux Documents sur Georges Couthon (Clermont-Ferrand, 1890); also F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention (Paris, 1885-1886), ii. 425-443.

COUTTS, THOMAS (1735-1822), English banker and founder of the banking house of Coutts & Co., was born on the 7th of September 1735. He was the fourth son of John Coutts (1699-1751), who carried on business in Edinburgh as a corn factor and negotiator of bills of exchange, and who in 1742 was elected lord provost of the city. The family was originally of Montrose, but one of its members had settled at Edinburgh about 1696. Soon after the death of John Coutts the business was divided into two branches, one carried on in Edinburgh, the other in London. The banking business in London was in the hands of James and Thomas Coutts, sons of John Coutts. From the death of his brother in 1778, Thomas, as surviving partner, became sole head of the firm; and under his direction the banking house rose to the highest distinction. His ambition was to establish his character as a man of business and to make a fortune; and he lived to succeed in this aim and long to enjoy his reputation and wealth. A gentleman in manners, hospitable and benevolent, he counted amongst his friends some of the literary men and the best actors of his day. Of the enormous wealth which came into his hands he made munificent use. His private life was not without its romantic elements. Soon after his settlement in London he married Elizabeth Starkey, a young woman of humble origin, who was in attendance on the daughter of his brother James. They lived happily together, and had three daughters—Susan, married in 1796 to the 3rd earl of Guilford; Frances, married in 1800 to John, 1st marquess of Bute; and Sophia, married in 1793 to Sir Francis Burdett. Mrs Coutts dying in 1815, her husband soon after married the popular actress, Harriet Mellon; and to her he left the whole of his immense fortune. He died in London on the 24th of February 1822. His widow married in 1827 the 9th duke of St Albans, and died ten years later, having bequeathed her property to Angela, youngest daughter of Sir Francis Burdett, who then assumed the additional name and arms of Coutts. In 1871 this lady was created Baroness Burdett-Coutts (q.v.).

See C. Rogers, Genealogical Memoirs of the Families of Colt and Coutts (1879); and R. Richardson, Coutts & Co. (1900).

COUTURE, THOMAS (1815-1879), French painter, was born at Senlis (Oise), and studied under Baron A. J. Gros and Paul Delaroche, winning a Prix de Rome in 1837. He began exhibiting historical and genre pictures at the Salon in 1840, and obtained several medals. His masterpiece was his “Romans in the Decadence of the Empire” (1847), now in the Luxembourg; and his “Love of Money” (1844; at Toulouse), “Falconer” (1855), and “Damocles” (1872), are also good examples.

COUVADE (literally a “brooding,” from Fr. couver, to hatch, Lat. cubare, to lie down), a custom so called in Béarn, prevalent among several peoples in different parts of the world, requiring that the father, at and sometimes before the birth of his child, shall retire to bed and fast or abstain from certain kinds of food, receiving the attentions generally shown to women at their confinements. The existence of the custom in ancient classical times is testified to by Apollonius Rhodius, Diodorus (who refers to its existence among the Corsicans), and Strabo (who noticed it among the Spanish Basques, by whom, as well as by the Gascons, it has been said to be still observed, though the most recent researches entirely discredit this). Travellers, from the time of Marco Polo, who relates its observance in Chinese Turkestan, have found the custom to prevail in China, India, Borneo, Siam, Africa and the Americas. Even in Europe it cannot be said to have entirely disappeared. In certain of the Baltic provinces of Russia the husband, on the lying-in of the wife, takes to his bed and groans in mock pain. One writer believes he found traces of it in the little island of Marken in the Zuyder Zee. Even in rural England, notably in East Anglia, a curiously obstinate belief survives (the prevalence of which in earlier times is proved by references to it in Elizabethan drama) that the pregnancy of the woman affects the man, and the young husband who complains of a toothache is assailed by pleasantries as to his wife’s condition. In Guiana the custom is observed in its most typical form. The woman works to within a few hours of the birth, but some days before her delivery the father leaves his occupations and abstains from certain kinds of animal food lest the child should suffer. Thus the flesh of the agouti is forbidden, lest the child should be lean, and that of the capibara or water-cavy, for fear he should inherit through his father’s gluttony that creature’s projecting teeth. A few hours before delivery the woman goes alone, or with one or two women-friends, into the forest, where the baby is born. She returns as soon as she can stand, to her work, and the man then takes to his hammock and becomes the invalid. He must do no work, must touch no weapons, is forbidden all meat and food, except at first a fermented liquor and after the twelfth day a weak gruel of cassava meal. He must not even smoke, or wash himself, but is waited on hand and foot by the women. So far is the comedy carried that he whines and groans as if in actual pain. Six weeks after the birth of the child he is taken in hand by his relatives, who lacerate his skin and rub him with a decoction of the pepper-plant. A banquet is then held from which the patient is excluded, for he must not leave his bed till several days later; and for six months he must eat the flesh of neither fish nor bird. Almost identical ceremonies have been noticed among the natives of California and New Mexico; while in Greenland and Kamchatka the husband may not work for some time before and after his wife’s confinement. Among the Larkas of Bengal a period of isolation and uncleanness, synchronous with that compulsory on the woman, is imperative for the man, on the conclusion of which the child’s parentage is publicly proclaimed.

No certain explanation can be offered for the custom. The most reasonable view is that adopted by E. B. Tylor, who traces in it the transition from the earlier matriarchal to the later patriarchal system of tribe-organization. Among primitive tribes, and probably in all ages, the former order of society, in which descent and inheritance are reckoned through the mother alone, as being the earliest form of family life, is and was very common, if not universal. The acknowledgment of a relationship between father and son is characteristic of the progress of society towards a true family life. It may well be that the Couvade arose in the father’s desire to emphasize the bond of blood between himself and his child. It is a fact that in some countries the father has to purchase the child from its mother; and in the Roman ceremony of the husband raising the baby from the floor we may trace the savage idea that the male parent must formally proclaim his adoption of and responsibility for the offspring. Max Müller, in his Chips from a German Workshop, endeavoured to find an explanation in primitive “henpecking,” asserting that the unfortunate husband was tyrannized over by “his female relatives and afterwards frightened into superstition,”—that, in fact, the whole fabric of ceremony is reared on nothing but masculine hysteria; but this theory can scarcely be taken seriously. The missionary, Joseph François Lafitau, suspected a psychological reason, assuming the custom to be a dim recollection of original sin, the isolation and fast types of repentance. The explanation of the American Indians is that if the father engaged in any hard or hazardous work, e.g. hunting, or was careless in his diet, the child would suffer and inherit the physical faults and peculiarities of the animals eaten. This belief that a person becomes possessed of the nature and form of the animal he eats is widespread, being as prevalent in the Old World as in the New, but it is insufficient to account for the minute ceremonial details of La Couvade as practised in many lands. It is far more likely that so universal a practice has no trivial beginnings, but is to be considered as a mile-stone marking a great transitional epoch in human progress.

Authorities.—E. B. Tylor’s Early History of Man (1865; 2nd ed. p. 301); F. Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop (1868-1875), ii. 281; Lord Avebury, Origin of Civilisation (1900); Brett’s Indian Tribes of Guiana; Johann Baptist von Spix and Karl F. P. von Martius, Travels in Brazil (1823-1831), ii. 281; J. F. Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages américains (1st ed., 1724); W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe (1900); A. H. Keane’s Ethnology (1896), p. 368 and footnote; A. Giraud-Teulon, Les Origines du mariage et de la famille (Paris, 1884).

COVE, a word mostly used in the sense of a small inlet or sheltered bay in a coast-line. In English dialect usage it is also applied to a cave or to a recess in a mountain-side. The word in O. Eng. is cofa, and cognate forms are found in the Ger. Koben, Norwegian kove, and in various forms in other Teutonic languages. It has no connexion with “alcove,” recess in a room or building, which is derived through the Span. alcoba from Arab. al, the, and qubbah, vault, arch, nor with “cup” or “coop,” nor with “cave” (Lat. cava). The use of the word was first confined to a small chamber or cell or inner recess in a room or building. From this has come the particular application in architecture to any kind of concave moulding, the term being usually applied to the quadrantal curve rising from the cornice of a lofty room to the moulded borders of the horizontal ceiling. The term “coving” is given in half-timbered work to the curved soffit under a projecting window, or in the 18th century to that occasionally found carrying the gutter of a house. In the Musée Plantin at Antwerp the hearth of the fireplace of the upper floor is carved on coving, which forms part of the design of the chimney-piece in the room below. The slang use of “cove” for any male person, like a “fellow,” “chap,” &c., is found in the form “cofe” in T. Harman’s Caveat for Cursetors (1587) and other early quotations. This seems to be identical with the Scots word “cofe,” a pedlar, hawker, which is formed from “coff,” to sell, purchase, cognate with the Ger. kaufen, to buy, and the native English “cheap.” The word “cove,” therefore, is in ultimate origin the same as “chap,” short for “chapman,” a pedlar.

COVELLITE, a mineral species consisting of cupric sulphide, CuS, crystallizing in the hexagonal system. It is of less frequent occurrence in nature than copper-glance, the orthorhombic cuprous sulphide. Crystals are very rare, the mineral being usually found as compact and earthy masses or as a blue coating on other copper sulphides. Hardness 1½-2; specific gravity 4.6. The dark indigo-blue colour is a characteristic feature, and the mineral was early known as indigo-copper (Ger. Kupferindig). The name covellite is taken from N. Covelli, who in 1839 observed crystals of cupric sulphide encrusting Vesuvian lava, the mineral having been formed here by the interaction of hydrogen sulphide and cupric chloride, both of which are volatile volcanic products. Covellite is, however, more commonly found in copper-bearing veins, where it has resulted by the alteration of other copper sulphides, namely chalcopyrite, copper-glance and erubescite. It is found in many copper mines; localities which may be specially mentioned are Sangerhausen in Prussian Saxony, Butte in Montana, and Chile; in the Medicine Bow Mountains of Wyoming a platiniferous covellite is mined, the platinum being present as sperrylite (platinum arsenide).

(L. J. S.)

COVENANT (an O. Fr. form, later convenant, from convenir, to agree, Lat. convenire), a mutual agreement of two or more parties, or an undertaking made by one of the parties. In the Bible the Hebrew word הירב, bĕrīth, is used widely for many kinds of agreements; it is then applied to a contract between two persons or to a treaty between two nations, such as the covenant made between Abimelech and Isaac, representing a treaty between the Israelites and the Philistines (Gen. xxvi. 26, seq.); more particularly to an engagement made between God and men, or such agreements as, by the observance of a religious rite, regarded God as a party to the engagement. Two suggestions have been made for the derivation of bĕrīth: (1) tracing the word from a root “to cut,” and the reference is to the primitive rite of cutting victims into parts, between which the parties to an agreement passed, cf. the Greek ὅρκια τέμνειν, and the account (Gen. xv. 17) of the covenant between God and Abraham, where “a smoking furnace and burning lamp passed between the pieces” of the victims Abraham had sacrificed; (2) connecting it with an Assyrio-Babylonian biritu, fetter, alliance. Bĕrīth was translated in the Septuagint by διαθήκη, which in classical Greek had the meaning of “will”; hence the Vulgate, in the Psalms and the New Testament, translates the word by testamentum, but elsewhere in the Old Testament by foedus or pactum; similarly Wycliffe’s version gives “testament” and “covenant” respectively. The books of Scripture dealing with the old or Mosaic, and new or Christian dispensation are sometimes known as the Books of the Old and the New Covenant. The word appears in the system of theology developed by Johannes Cocceius (q.v.), and known as the “Covenant” or “Federal” Theology, based on the two Covenants of Works or Life made by God with Adam, on condition of obedience, and of grace or redemption, made with Christ. In Scottish ecclesiastical history, covenant appears in the two agreements signed by the members of the Scottish Church in defence of their religious and ecclesiastical systems (see Covenanters).

COVENANT, in law, is the English equivalent of the Lat. conventio, which, although not technical, was the most general word in Roman law for “agreement.” It was frequently used along with pactum, also a general term, but applied especially to agreements to settle a question without carrying it before the courts of law.

The word “covenant” has been used in a variety of senses in English law.

1. In its strict sense, covenant means an agreement under seal, that something has or has not already been done, or shall or shall not be done hereafter (Shep. Touchstone, 160, 162). It is most commonly used with reference to sales or leases of land, but is sometimes applied to any promise or stipulation, whether under seal or not. The person who makes, and is bound to perform, the promise or stipulation is the covenantor: the person in whose favour it is made is the covenantee.

2. Covenants have been subdivided into numerous classes, only a few of which need to be described. It is unnecessary to do more than mention affirmative and negative covenants, joint or several, alternative or disjunctive covenants, dependent or independent covenants. As to collateral covenants, covenants “running with the land,” and covenants in leases (including “usual,” “proper” and “restrictive” covenants), see Landlord and Tenant. But there are other classes as to which something must be said.

A covenant is said to be express when it is created by the express words of the parties to the deed declaratory of their intention. It is not indispensable that the word “covenant” should be used. Any word which clearly indicates the intention of the parties to covenant will suffice. An implied covenant, or covenant in law, “depends for its existence on the intendment and construction of law. There are some words which of themselves do not import an express covenant, yet, being made use of in certain contracts, have a similar operation and are called covenants in law; and they are as effectually binding on the parties as if expressed in the most unequivocal terms” (Platt on Covenants, p. 40). Thus, the word “demise,” used in a lease of deed, raises the implication of a covenant both for “quiet enjoyment” and for title to let; and it has been judicially suggested that a covenant for quiet enjoyment may be implied from any word or words of like import (Budd-Scott v. Daniell, 1902, 2 K.B. p. 359). The Conveyancing Act 1881 provides (§ 7) that in a conveyance for valuable consideration, other than a mortgage, there shall be implied, as against the person who conveys and is expressed to convey as “beneficial owner,” certain qualified covenants—i.e. covenants extending only to the acts or omissions of the vendor, persons through whom he derives title otherwise than by purchase for value, and persons claiming under them—for “right to convey,” “quiet enjoyment,” “freedom from incumbrances” and “further assurance.” Of these statutory covenants for title the only one which requires explanation is the covenant for further assurance. It imports an agreement on the part of the covenantor to do such reasonable acts, in addition to those already performed, as may be necessary for the completion of the transfer made (or intended to be made) at the requirements of the covenantee (Platt on Covenants, p. 341). All these statutory implied covenants “run with the land” (see Landlord and Tenant). Where a mortgagor conveys, and is expressed to convey, as “beneficial owner,” there are implied absolute covenants—i.e. covenants amounting to a warranty against and for the acts and omissions of the whole world—that he has a right to convey, that the mortgagee shall have quiet enjoyment of the property after default, free from incumbrances and for further assurance. Special provisions as to implied covenants by the lessor in leases are made in England by § 7 (B) of the Conveyancing Act 1881 and in Ireland by the Land Act (Ireland) 1860, § 41. The distinction between real and personal covenants is that the former do, while the latter do not, run with the land. An inherent covenant is another name for a real covenant (Shep. Touchstone, 176; Platt, 60). When a covenant relates to an act already done, it is usually termed a covenant executed; where the performance is future, the covenant is termed executory. The covenant for seisin was an assurance to the grantee that the grantor had the estate which he purported to convey. In England it is now included in the covenant for right to convey; but is still in separate use in several states in America. The covenant to stand seised to uses was an assurance by means of which, under the Statute of Uses [1536] (see Uses), a conveyance of an estate might be effected. When such a covenant is made, the legal estate in the land passes at once to the covenantee under the statute. The consideration for the covenant must be relationship by blood or marriage. It is still occasionally though very rarely employed. The covenant not to sue belongs to the law of contract and needs no explanation.

Most of the classes of covenants above mentioned are in use in the United States. In New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Wisconsin and Wyoming the implication of covenants for title has been, with certain exceptions, prohibited by statute. In Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Texas the words grant, bargain and sell, in conveyances in fee, unless specially restricted, amount to qualified covenants that the grantor was seised in fee, free from incumbrances, and for quiet enjoyment (4 Kent, Commentaries, § 473; Bouvier, Law Dictionary, s.v. Covenant). In some of the states a covenant of non-claim, or of warranty, an assurance by the grantor that neither he nor his heirs, nor any other person shall claim any title in the premises conveyed, is in general use.

3. An action of covenant lay for breaking covenant. As to the history of this action see Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, ii. 106; and Holmes, The Common Law, p. 272. There was also a writ of covenant. But this remedy had fallen into disuse before 1830 (see Platt on Covenants, p. 543), and was abolished by the Common Law Procedure Acts. Since the Judicature Acts, an action on a covenant follows the same course as, and is indistinguishable from, any ordinary action for breach of contract. The remedy is by damages, decree of specific performance or injunction to prevent the breach.

The term “covenant” is unknown to Scots law. But its place is filled to some extent by the doctrine of “warrandice.” Many of the British colonies have legislated, as to the implication of covenants for title, on the lines of the English Conveyancing Act 1881; e.g. Tasmania, Conveyancing and Law of Property Act 1884 (47 Vict. No. 10).

As to covenants in restraint of trade see Restraint.

Authorities.—In addition to the authorities cited in the text see: English Law; Goodeve, Law of Real Property (5th ed., London, 1906); C. Foa, Landlord and Tenant (3rd ed., London, 1901); Hamilton, Law of Covenants (London); Fawcett, Law of Landlord and Tenant (3rd ed., London, 1905). American Law: Rawle, Law of Covenants for Title (Boston, 1887); Encyclopaedia of American Law (3rd ed., 1890), vol. viii., tit. “Covenants.”

(A. W. R.)

COVENANTERS, the name given to a party which, originating in the Reformation movement, played an important part in the history of Scotland, and to a lesser extent in that of England, during the 17th century. The Covenanters were thus named because in a series of bands or covenants they bound themselves to maintain the Presbyterian doctrine and polity as the sole religion of their country. The first “godly band” is dated December 1557; but more important is the covenant of 1581, drawn up by John Craig in consequence of the strenuous efforts which the Roman Catholics were making to regain their hold upon Scotland, and called the King’s Confession or National Covenant. Based upon the Confession of Faith of 1560, this document denounced the pope and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church in no measured terms. It was adopted by the General Assembly, signed by King James VI. and his household, and enjoined on persons of all ranks and classes; and was again subscribed in 1590 and 1596. In 1637 Scotland was in a state of turmoil. Charles I. and Archbishop Laud had just met with a reverse in their efforts to impose the English liturgy upon the Scots; and fearing further measures on the part of the king, it occurred to Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston, to revive the National Covenant of 1581. Additional matter intended to suit the document to the special circumstances of the time was added, and the covenant was adopted and signed by a large gathering in Greyfriars’ churchyard, Edinburgh, on the 28th of February 1638, after which copies were sent throughout the country for additional signatures. The subscribers engaged by oath to maintain religion in the state in which it existed in 1580, and to reject all innovations introduced since that time, while professed expressions of loyalty to the king were added. The General Assembly of 1638 was composed of ardent Covenanters, and in 1640 the covenant was adopted by the parliament, and its subscription was required from all citizens. Before this date the Covenanters were usually referred to as Supplicants, but from about this time the former designation began to prevail.

A further development took place in 1643. The leaders of the English parliament, worsted in the Civil War, implored the aid of the Scots, which was promised on condition that the Scottish system of church government was adopted in England. After some haggling a document called the Solemn League and Covenant was drawn up. This was practically a treaty between England and Scotland for the preservation of the reformed religion in Scotland, the reformation of religion in England and Ireland “according to the word of God and the example of the best reformed churches,” and the extirpation of popery and prelacy. It was subscribed by many in both kingdoms and also in Ireland, and was approved by the English parliament, and with some slight modifications by the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Charles I. refused to accept it when he surrendered himself to the Scots in 1646, but he made important concessions in this direction in the “Engagement” made with the Scots in December 1647. Charles II. before landing in Scotland in June 1650 declared by a solemn oath his approbation of both covenants, and this was renewed on the occasion of his coronation at Scone in the following January.

From 1638 to 1651 the Covenanters were the dominant party in Scotland, directing her policy both at home and abroad. Their power, however, which had been seriously weakened by Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar in September 1651, was practically destroyed when Charles II. was restored nine years later. Firmly seated upon the throne Charles renounced the covenants, which in 1662 were declared unlawful oaths, and were to be abjured by all persons holding public offices. Episcopacy was restored, the court of high commission was revived, and ministers who refused to recognize the authority of the bishops were expelled from their livings. Gathering around them many of the Covenanters who clung tenaciously to their standards of faith, these ministers began to preach in the fields, and a period of persecution marked by savage hatred and great brutality began. Further oppressive measures were directed against the Covenanters, who took up arms about 1665, and the struggle soon assumed the proportions of a rebellion. The forces of the crown under John Graham of Claverhouse and others were sent against them, and although the insurgents gained isolated successes, in general they were worsted and were treated with great barbarity. They maintained, however, their cherished covenants with a zeal which persecution only intensified; in 1680 the more extreme members of the party signed a document known as the “Sanquhar Declaration,” and were afterwards called Cameronians from the name of their leader, Richard Cameron (q.v.). They renounced their allegiance to King James and were greatly disappointed when their standards found no place in the religious settlement of 1689, continuing to hold the belief that the covenants should be made obligatory upon the entire nation. The Covenanters had a martyrology of their own, and the halo of romance has been cast around their exploits and their sufferings. Their story, however, especially during the time of their political predominance, is part of the general history of Scotland (q.v.).