Taken from ‘Theologiae christianae fundamenta et elementa; Vol. 1; (Lausannae)’
The reverend Alexandre César Chavannes, born at Montreux on 30 July 1731 and translated to glory at Lausanne on 2 May 1800, sprang from steadfast Huguenot stock and bore the yoke of Christ and learning with singular constancy. Schooled in philosophy and divinity at the Academy of Lausanne, he was ordained in 1753, served beside his father, and from 1766 until death held the chairs of professor, rector, and librarian, compiling the academy’s first catalogue and its earliest history. During his Basel pastorate he cultivated fellowship with the Bernoulli savants while preaching the evangelical Word to the French Reformed congregation. His magnum opus, Anthropologie ou Science générale de l’homme—a 1788 printed abstract of a vast thirteen-volume manuscript—sought to wed bodily anatomy with the science of the soul, and there he first coined for the French tongue the term ethnologie, charting the study of the nations. In that “new science of man” he forged a pedagogic schema meant to marshal every branch of knowledge toward the cultivation of intellect and virtue. More than three hundred essays for the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon flowed from his tireless pen, trimming the lamps of the Helvetic Enlightenment. Remaining a bachelor, he walked humbly yet cut a broad channel through which modern anthropology still courses, esteeming him a father of its first principles.
Table of Contents:
In man, as a being endued with moral nature, there are distinguished certain faculties whereby he is set apart. Firstly, there is the conscience of himself, accompanied with a sense of good and evil. Secondly, the intellect, which eagerly desireth to know both good and evil, and pronounceth judgments upon them. Thirdly, the will, which steadfastly seeketh after good, abhorreth evil, and followeth the judgments of the intellect in its determinations. Fourthly, the active power, which exerciseth itself through the organs of the body and upon objects without, to lay hold upon good, to cast away evil, and to order its actions according to the determinations of the will.
Moreover, the will and the active power are oft moved by the confused and blind guidance of natural inclinations or affections. These arise from sensations pleasant or unpleasant, and with them are joined certain motions in the body, its organs, blood, and animal spirits. Of this kind are the love of life, the appetite for food and sleep, the desire for things new, diverse, and beautiful, sociability, kindness, gratitude, the longing for all sensible goods, joy, and hope. Opposed unto these are hatred, sorrow, fear, and all affections that spring from the sense of evil. Unto such affections and motions much strength is added by habits formed through the repetition of acts.
From the natural and universal striving of all man's faculties and inclinations toward good, we understand that the chief end of his existence is happiness—such happiness as the nature of things permitteth: pure, all-encompassing, increasing without hindrance, enduring, and eternal. Verily, within himself man findeth an unconquerable desire for this blessed state.
Yet not all things that bear the appearance of good lead unto this true happiness. Nay, rather, without detriment unto it, such goods may be pursued as exclude those more excellent or lasting, or bring forth grievous evils. These are called apparent goods, deceitful, yea, true evils; against which stand true and real goods, even those which, though they seem evil in appearance, establish a foundation for goods most excellent.
That man might strive most rightly toward the end of his existence, there would be required in him certain perfections: firstly, an intellect most pure, which in its judgments clearly, surely, and swiftly discerneth true goods from false; secondly, a will most righteous, steadfastly following the true judgments or dictates of the intellect in its determinations; thirdly, an active power most full, executing the determinations of the will without impediment; fourthly, an absolute subjection of affections, motions, and habits unto these moral faculties. That state wherein all such faculties and inclinations are constantly directed toward real goods, and in a manner most meet for the chief end, is called the state of rectitude, which constituteth perfection. But this perfection in any man hath its bounds, and none other falleth unto human nature save that which is relative, increasing by degrees through a vast scale, even as the intellect groweth purer, the will more righteous, and the active power fuller.
Unto this rectitude and perfection, divers hindrances do oppose themselves. As touching the intellect, there cometh confusion of ideas, ignorance, and prejudices born of the senses, imagination, haste, sloth, and the like. As touching the will, there arise phantasms of the imagination, and chiefly affections, which, when they degenerate into disordered passions, do cloud the intellect with confused images of things, and tempt the will toward any deceitful goods, contrary to the dictate of the intellect, with which they wrestle. As touching the active power, the motions of the body prevail, which, by any outward impression or phantasm of the imagination, are habitually stirred up and refuse all restraint.