Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
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Title: Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Author: Jaime Luciano Balmes
Translator: Henry F. Brownson
Release date: June 20, 2015 [eBook #49244]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FUNDAMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, VOL. 2 (OF 2) ***
FUNDAMENTAL
PHILOSOPHY.
BY
REV. JAMES BALMES.
_TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH_
BY
HENRY F. BROWNSON, M.A.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
New York:
D. & J. SADLIER & CO., 164 WILLIAM STREET,
BOSTON:--128 FEDERAL STREET.
MONTREAL:--COR. OF NOTRE DAME AND ST. FRANCIS XAVIER STS.
1856.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856,
By D. & J. SADLIER & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
NEW YORK:
BILLIN & BROTHER, PRINTERS, XX NORTH WILLIAM ST.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
BOOK FOURTH.
ON IDEAS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Cursory View of Sensism 3
II. Condillac's Statue 6
III. Difference between Geometrical Ideas and the
Sensible Representations which accompany them 12
IV. The Idea and the Intellectual Act 15
V. Comparison of Geometrical with Non-Geometrical
Ideas 20
VI. In what the Geometrical Idea consists; and what
are its Relations with Sensible Intuition 25
VII. The Acting Intellect of the Aristotelians 29
VIII. Kant and the Aristotelians 33
IX. Historical View of the Value of Pure Ideas 42
X. Sensible Intuition 50
XI. Two Cognitions: Intuitive and Discursive 54
XII. The Sensism of Kant 57
XIII. Existence of Pure Intellectual Intuition 59
XIV. Value of Intellectual Conceptions.--Abstraction
made from Intellectual Intuition 62
XV. Illustrations of the Value of General
Conceptions 65
XVI. Value of Principles, independently of Sensible
Intuition 68
XVII. Relations of Intuition with the rank of the
Perceptive Being 71
XVIII. Aspirations of the Human Soul 74
XIX. Elements and variety of the characters of
Sensible Representation 76
XX. Intermediate Representations between Sensible
Intuition and the Intellectual Act 81
XXI. Determinate and Indeterminate Ideas 84
XXII. Limits of our Intuition 88
XXIII. Of the Necessity involved in Ideas 92
XXIV. Existence of Universal Reason 96
XXV. In what does Universal Reason consist? 99
XXVI. Remarks on the Real Foundation of Pure
Possibility 102
XXVII. Individual and Intellectual Phenomena
explained by the Universal Subsisting Reason 105
XXVIII. Observations on the Relation of Language to
Ideas 108
XXIX. Origin and Character of the relation between
Language and Ideas 112
XXX. Innate Ideas 115
BOOK FIFTH.
IDEA OF BEING.
I. Idea of Being 125
II. Simplicity and Indeterminateness of the Idea of
Being 127
III. Substantive and Copulative Being 129
IV. Being, the Object of the Understanding, is not
the Possible, Inasmuch as Possible 134
V. A Difficulty Solved 138
VI. In what Sense the Idea of Being is the Form of
the Understanding 141
VII. All Science is founded in the Postulate of
Existence 143
VIII. The foundation of Pure Possibility, and the
Condition of its Existence 147
IX. Idea of Negation 150
X. Identity; Distinction; Unity; Multiplicity 153
XI. Origin of the Idea of Being 155
XII. Distinction between Essence and Existence 161
XIII. Kant's Opinion of Reality and Negation 164
XIV. Recapitulation and Consequences of the Doctrine
concerning the Idea of Being 168
BOOK SIXTH.
UNITY AND NUMBER.
I. Preliminary Considerations on the Idea of Unity 175
II. What is Unity? 176
III. Unity and Simplicity 180
IV. Origin of the Tendency of our Mind to Unity 183
V. Generation of the Idea of Number 187
VI. Connection of the Ideas of Number with their
Signs 191
VII. Analysis of the Idea of Number in Itself and
its Relations with Signs 194
BOOK SEVENTH.
ON TIME.
I. Importance and Difficulty of the Subject 201
II. Is Time the Measure of Movement? 203
III. Similarities and Differences between Time and
Space 206
IV. Definition of Time 211
V. Time is Nothing Absolute 213
VI. Difficulties in the explanation of Velocity 215
VII. Fundamental Explanation of Succession 219
VIII. What is Co-existence? 223
IX. Present, Past, and Future 226
X. Application of the preceding Doctrine to several
important Questions 231
XI. The Analysis of the Idea of Time confirms its
resemblance to the Idea of Space 234
XII. Relations of the Idea of Time to Experience 236
XIII. Kant's Opinion 239
XIV. Fundamental Explanation of the Objective Possibility
and of the Necessity of the Idea of Time 242
XV. Important Corollaries 243
XVI. Pure Ideal Time and Empirical Time 245
XVII. Relations of the Idea of Time and the
Principle of Contradiction 247
XVIII. Summing up 254
XIX. A glance at the Ideas of Space, Number, and
Time 257
BOOK EIGHTH.
THE INFINITE.
I. Transitory View of the Actual State of
Philosophy 263
II. Importance and Anomaly of the Questions on the
Idea of the Infinite 268
III. Have we the Idea of the Infinite? 269
IV. The Limit 272
V. Considerations on the Application of the Idea of
the Infinite to continuous quantities, and to
Discrete Quantities, in so far as these last are
expressed in Series 274
VI. Origin of the Vagueness and Apparent Contradictions
in the Application of the Idea of the Infinite 278
VII. Fundamental Explanation of the Abstract Idea
of the Infinite 281
VIII. The Definition of Infinity confirmed by
Application to Extension 285
IX. Conception of an Infinite Number 289
X. Conception of Infinite Extension 292
XI. Possibility of Infinite Extension 294
XII. Solution of Various Objections against the
Possibility of an Infinite Extension 296
XIII. Existence of Infinite Extension 302
XIV. Possibility of an Actual Infinite Number 304
XV. Idea of Absolutely Infinite Being 311
XVI. All the Reality contained in Indeterminate
Conceptions is affirmed of God 315
XVII. All that is not contradictory in Intuitive
Ideas is affirmed of God 317
XVIII. Intelligence and the Absolutely Infinite
Being 321
XIX. Summing up 324
BOOK NINTH.
ON SUBSTANCE.
I. Name and General Idea of Substance 331
II. Application of the Idea of Substance to
Corporeal Objects 333
III. Definition of Corporeal Substance 338
IV. Relation of Corporeal Substance to its
Accidents 340
V. Considerations on Corporeal Substance in Itself 344
VI. Substantiality of the Human Me 347
VII. Relation of the Proposition, I Think, to the
Substantiality of the Me 349
VIII. Remarks on the Soul's Intuition of Itself 352
IX. Kant's Opinion of the Arguments proving the
Substantiality of the Soul 355
X. Kant's Opinion of the Argument which he calls
Paralogism of Personality 366
XI. Simplicity of the Soul 377
XII. Kant's Opinion of the Argument proving the
Simplicity of the Soul 381
XIII. In what manner the Idea of Substance may be
applied to God 394
XIV. An important Remark, and Summary 397
XV. Pantheism examined in the Order of Ideas 399
XVI. Pantheism examined in the Order of External
Facts 403
XVII. Pantheism examined in the Order of Internal
Facts 406
XVIII. Fichte's Pantheistic System 409
XIX. Relations of Fichte's System to the Doctrines
of Kant 424
XX. Contradiction of Pantheism to the Primary Facts
of the Human Mind 429
XXI. Rapid glances at the Principal Arguments of
Pantheists 434
BOOK TENTH.
NECESSITY AND CAUSALITY.
I. Necessity 439
II. The Unconditioned 442
III. Immutability of Necessary and Unconditioned
Being 445
IV. Ideas of Cause and Effect 448
V. Origin of the Notion of Causality 451
VI. Formula and Demonstration of the Principle of
Causality 454
VII. The Principle of Precedency 457
VIII. Causality in Itself.--Insufficiency and Error
of some Explanations 467
IX. Necessary and sufficient Conditions of true
Absolute Causality 474
X. Secondary Causality 476
XI. Fundamental Explanation of the Origin of the
Obscurity of Ideas in what relates to Causality 479
XII. Causality of Pure Force of the Will 483
XIII. Activity 486
XIV. Possibility of the Activity of Bodies 493
XV. Conjectures as to the Existence of Corporeal
Activity 496
XVI. Internal Causality 500
XVII. Remarks on Spontaneity 508
XVIII. Final Causality;--Morality 513
XIX. Various Explanations of Morality 520
XX. Fundamental Explanation of the Moral Order 527
XXI. A Glance at the Work 543
BOOK FOURTH.
ON IDEAS.
FUNDAMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.
CURSORY VIEW OF SENSISM.
1. Having spoken of sensations, we come now to ideas. We must, however,
before making this transition, inquire if there be in our mind ought
else than sensation, if all the inward phenomena which we experience be
ought else than sensations transformed.
Man, when he rises from the sphere of sensations, from those phenomena
which place him in relation with the external world, meets a new order
of phenomena, of whose presence he is equally conscious. He cannot
reflect upon sensations without being conscious of something more
than sensation; nor on the recollection or the inward representation
of sensations, without discovering something distinct both from the
recollection and from the representation.
2. According to Aristotle, there is nothing in the understanding which
has not first been in the senses; and the schools have for long ages
re-echoed this thought of the philosopher: _nihil est in intellectu
quod prius non fuerit in sensu_. The order, therefore, of human
knowledge, is from the external to the internal. Descartes pretended
that we ought to invert this order, and proceed from the internal to
the external. Malebranche, his disciple, went farther, and was of
opinion that the understanding, enfolded in itself, should hold only
the least possible intercourse with the external world. According to
him, no atmosphere is so fatal to intellectual health as that of the
world of the senses; sensations are an inexhaustible fountain of error,
and the imagination is an enchantress only the more dangerous because
she has fixed her dwelling at the very portal of the intellect, which,
with her seductive beauty and gorgeous ornaments, she hopes to rule at
her pleasure.
3. Locke strove to rehabilitate the old Aristotelian maxim, joined,
however, to the criterion of observation: besides sensation he admitted
only reflection, but he taught that the mind was endowed with innate
faculties. His disciple, Condillac, not satisfied with this, taught
that all the actions of our mind were simply sensations transformed:
instead of distinguishing with Locke two sources of our ideas, the
senses and reflection, he thought it more exact to admit only one, as
well because reflection is in its root only sensation, as because it is
rather the channel by which ideas originating in the senses pass, than
their source.
Judgment, reflection, desires, and passions are in Condillac's
estimation nothing else than sensation transformed in various modes.
It seemed to him, therefore, very idle to suppose the mind to have
received immediately from nature the faculties with which it is
endowed. Nature has given us organs which show us by pleasure or pain
what we ought to seek or to avoid; but here she stops, and leaves to
experience the task of leading us to contract habits and finish the
work she has commenced.[1]
[1] _Traité des Sensations._ Préface.
4. In view of this system, in which not even natural faculties are
conceded to the soul, and those which it does possess are considered
as only simple effects of sensation, it is worthy of remark how soon
its author contradicts himself; for, almost in the same breath, he
professes to be an occasionalist, and pretends that the impressions of
our organization are nothing more than the occasion of our sensations.
Can there be a natural faculty more inexplicable than that of placing
one's self in relation with objects which do not produce sensations,
but are only the occasion of their production. If such a faculty as
this be conceded to the mind, why may we not admit others? Is not that
a very singular natural faculty which perceives by means of causes
operating only occasionally? In this case, is there not attributed
to the mind a natural faculty of producing sensations on occasion of
organic impressions, or is it not supposed to be an immediate relation
with another and superior being which produces them? Why may not this
internal activity, this receptivity, apply itself to ideas? Why must
not other innate faculties be conceded to the mind? And why does he
pretend not to suppose them, when his whole argument is based upon the
supposition of their existence?
Hostile as he professes to be to hypotheses and systems, Condillac
is eminently addicted both to systems and hypotheses. He imagines
an origin and a nature of ideas of his own, and to them he insists
that every thing must conform. To give a better idea of Condillac's
opinions, and to combat them at once successfully and loyally, we will
briefly analyze the groundwork of his _Treatise on Sensations_, the
book on which he most prides himself, and in which he flatters himself
to have given to his doctrine its highest degree of clearness and
certainty.
CHAPTER II.
CONDILLAC'S STATUE.
5. Condillac supposes a statue, which he animates successively with
each of the senses: then beginning with the sense of smell, he says;
"So long as our statue is limited to the sense of smell, its knowledge
cannot go beyond odors; it can neither have any idea of extension, of
space, or of any thing beyond itself, nor of other sensations, such
as color, sound, taste."[2] If, according to the conditions of the
supposition, all activity and every faculty be denied to this statue,
it certainly can have no other idea or sensation, and it may be added
that even its sensation of smell will be for it no idea.
[2] Chap. I.
"If we present it a rose," continues Condillac, "to us it will be a
statue which smells a rose; but for itself it will be only the smell
of a rose. It will then be the smell of the rose, the pink, the
jasmine, or the violet, according to the objects which operate upon
its organ; in a word, with respect to it, these odors are only its
own modifications and manners of being, and it cannot believe itself
any thing else, since these are the only sensations of which it is
susceptible."
6. It is very obvious that at the first step, the statue must take
a great leap. Close upon the apparent simplicity of the sensible
phenomenon, _reflection_, one of those acts which suppose the intellect
already well developed, is introduced. First the statue believes
itself something; it believes itself the odor; next consciousness
of itself in relation to the impression it has just received, is
attributed to it; then it is made to form a kind of judgment, whereby
it affirms the identity of itself with the sensation. This, however,
is impossible, unless we have something besides bare sensation; but we
neither have nor can have at this stage any thing beyond this purely
passive impression, an isolated phenomenon, upon which there can be
no reflection of any kind whatever; and the statue can have no other
reflection of itself than this sensation, which in the reflective
order has no title to be so called. Condillac's hypothesis rigorously
applied, presents only a phenomenon leading to nothing; and the moment
he leaves sensation to develop it, he admits an activity in the mind
distinct and very different from sensation, which destroys his whole
system.
The statue confined to the sensation of smell will never believe itself
smell; such a belief is a judgment, and supposes comparison, no trace
of which can be discovered in the sensible phenomenon, considered in
all its purity, as Condillac requires in his hypothesis. He begins his
analytical investigations by introducing conditions which he at the
same time supposes to be eliminated. He undertakes to explain every
thing by sensation alone, and his first step is to amalgamate sensation
with operations of a very different order.
7. Condillac calls the capacity of feeling, when applied to the
impression received, attention. So if there be but one sensation, there
can be but one attention. If various sensations succeeding each other
leave some trace in the memory of the statue, the attention will, when
a new sensation is presented, be divided between the present and the
past. The attention directed at one and the same time to two sensations
becomes comparison. Similarities and differences are perceived by
comparison, and this perception is a judgment. All this is done with
sensations alone; therefore attention, memory, comparison, and judgment
are nothing but sensations transformed. In appearance nothing clearer,
more simple, or more ingenuous; in reality nothing more confused or
false.
8. First of all, this definition of attention is not exact. The
capacity of feeling, by the very fact of being in exercise, is applied
to the impression. It does not feel when the sensitive faculty is not
in exercise, and this is not in exercise except when applied to the
impression. Consequently, attention would be nothing but the act of
feeling; all sensation would be attention, and all attention sensation;
a meaning which no one ever yet gave to these words.
9. Attention is the application of the mind to something; and this
application supposes the exercise of an activity concentrated upon its
object. Properly speaking, when the mind holds itself entirely passive,
it is not attentive; and with respect to sensations it is attentive
when by a reflex act we know that we feel. Without this cognition there
can be no attention, but only sensation more or less active, according
to the degree in which it affects our sensibility. If Condillac means
to call the more vivid sensation attention, the word is improperly
used; for it ordinarily happens that they who feel with the greatest
vividness are precisely those who are distinguished for their want of
attention. Sensation is the affection of a passive faculty; attention
is the exercise of an activity; and hence it is that brutes do not
participate of it except inasmuch as they possess a principle of
activity to direct their sensitive faculties to a determinate object.
10. Is the perception of the difference of the smell of the rose and
that of the pink a sensation? If we are answered that it is not, we
infer that the judgment is not the sensation transformed; for it is
not even a sensation. If we are told that it is one sensation, we
then observe that if it be either that of the rose or that of the
pink, it follows that with one alone of these sensations we shall have
comparative perception, which is absurd. If we are answered that it is
both together, we must either interpret this expression rigorously, and
then we shall have a sensation which will at once be that of the pink
and that of the rose, the one remaining distinct from the other so as
to satisfy the conditions of comparison; or we must interpret it so
as to mean that the two sensations are united; in which case we gain
nothing, for the difficulty will be to show how co-existence produces
comparison, and judgment, or the perception of the difference.
The sensation of the pink is only that of the pink, and that of the
rose only that of the rose. The instant you attempt to compare them,
you suppose in the mind an act by which it perceives the difference;
and if you attribute to it any thing more than pure sensation, you add
a faculty distinct from sensation, namely that of comparing sensations,
and appreciating their similarities and differences.
11. This comparison, this intellectual force, which calls the two
extremes into a common arena, without confounding them, discovers the
points in which they are alike or unlike each other, and, as it were,
comes in and decides between them, is distinct from the sensation; it
is the effect of an activity of a different order, and its development
must depend on sensations as exciting causes, as a condition _sine
qua non_; but this is all it has to do with sensations themselves; it
is essentially distinct from them, and cannot be confounded with them
without destroying the idea of comparison, and rendering it impossible.
No judgment is possible without the ideas of identity or similarity,
and these ideas are not sensations. Sensations are particular facts
which never leave their own sphere, nor can be applied from one thing
to another. The ideas of similarity and identity have something in
common applicable to many facts.
12. What next happens to a being limited to the faculty of experiencing
various sensations? It will receive without comparing them. It is
certain that when it feels in one manner it will not feel in another,
that one sensation is not another; but this sensitive being will take
no notice of the variety. Sensations will succeed sensations, but will
not be compared with each other. Even supposing them to be remembered,
the memory of them will be nothing more than a less intense repetition
of the same sensations. If it be admitted that this sensitive
being compares them, and perceives their relations of identity or
distinction, of similarity or difference, a series of reflex acts are
admitted which are not sensations.
13. Nor can the memory, properly so called, of sensations, be explained
by them alone; and here again Condillac is wrong. The statue may
recollect to-day the sensation of the smell of the rose which it
received yesterday, and this recollection may exist in two ways:
first, by the internal reproduction of the sensation without any
external cause, or relation to time past, and consequently without
any relation to the prior existence of a similar sensation; and then
this recollection is not for the statue a recollection properly so
called, but only a sensation more or less vivid: secondly, by an
internal reproduction with relation to the existence of the same or
another similar sensation at a preceding time, in which recollection
essentially consists; and here there is something more than sensation;
here are the ideas of succession, time, priority, and identity, or
similarity, all distinct and separable from sensation.
Two entirely distinct sensations may be referred to the same time in
the memory; and then the time will be identical, and the sensations
distinct. The sensation may exist without any recollection of the
time it before existed, or even without any recollection of having
ever existed; consequently, sensation involves no relation of time;
they are distinct and very different matters, and Condillac deceives
himself when he undertakes to explain the memory of sensations by mere
sensations.
14. These reflections utterly refute Condillac's system. Either he
admits something besides sensation or he does not; if he does, he
violates his own original supposition; if he does not, he cannot
explain any abstract idea, nor even the sensitive memory: he will
therefore be obliged to admit with Locke reflection upon sensations,
and for the same reason, other faculties of the soul.
15. It is easy to comprehend why certain philosophers have maintained
that all our ideas come from the senses, if we understand them to
mean that sensations awaken our internal activity, and, so to speak,
supply the intellect with materials: but it is not so easy to see
how it can be advanced as a certain, clear, and exceedingly simple
truth that there is in our mind nothing but these materials, these
sensations. We have only to fix our attention for a moment upon what
passes within us to discover many phenomena distinct from sensation,
and various faculties which have nothing to do with sensation. If
Condillac had been satisfied with maintaining that these faculties
needed sensation as a kind of excitement in order to be developed, he
would have advanced nothing contrary to sound philosophy: but for him
to pretend that all that is excited and all that is developed is only
the principle which excites, and to insist that this is confirmed by
actual observation, is openly to contradict observation itself, and
to render it absolutely impossible for him to make the least progress
in the explanation of intellectual activity, unless he abandons the
supposition upon which his whole system is founded. Nevertheless,
the author of the _Treatise on Sensations_ seems to be perfectly
satisfied with his system: the actual impression is the sensation;
the recollection of the sensation is the intellectual idea. If this
is not sound, it is at least deceptive: with the appearance of nice
observation he stops at the surface of things, and does not fatigue the
pupil. Every thing comes from sensation; but this is because Condillac
makes his statue talk as he pleases, without paying the least attention
to his hypothesis of sensation alone.
16. This system, by reason of its philosophical meagerness, is fatal to
all moral ideas. What becomes of morality if there are no ideas, except
sensations? What becomes of duty if every thing is reduced to sensible
necessity, to pleasure or pain? And what becomes of God, and of all
man's relations to God?
CHAPTER III.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GEOMETRICAL IDEAS AND THE SENSIBLE REPRESENTATIONS
WHICH ACCOMPANY THEM.
17. Sensible representations always accompany our intellectual ideas.
This is why in reflecting upon the latter we are apt to confound them
with the former. We say, in reflecting upon them, not in making use of
them. We none of us, have any trouble in making use of ideas according
to circumstances; the error lies in the reflex, not in the direct act.
It will be well to bear this last observation in mind.
18. It is next to impossible for the geometrician to meditate upon the
triangle without revolving in his imagination, the image of a triangle
as he has seen it drawn a thousand times; and he will, for this reason,
be disposed to believe that the idea of the triangle is nothing else
than this sensible representation. Were it thus, Condillac's assertion
that the idea is only the recollection of the sensation would be
verified in the idea of the triangle. In fact, this representation is
the sensation repeated: the only difference between the two affections
of the mind is that the actual sensation is caused by the actual
presence of its object, wherefore it is more fixed and vivid. To prove
that the difference is not essential, but consists only in degree, it
is sufficient to observe, that if the imaginary representation attain a
high degree of vividness we cannot distinguish it from sensation, as it
happens to the visionary, and as we have all experienced in our dreams.
19. By noticing the following facts, we shall readily perceive how
different the idea of the triangle is from its imaginary representation.
I. The idea of the triangle is one, and is common to all triangles of
every size and kind; the representation of it is multiple, and varies
in size and form.
II. When we reason upon the properties of the triangle, we proceed
from a fixed and necessary idea; the representation changes at every
instant, not so, however, the unity of the idea.
III. The idea of a triangle of any kind in particular is clear
and evident; we see its properties in the clearest manner; the
representation on the contrary is vague and confused, thus it is
difficult to distinguish a right-angled from an acute-angled triangle,
or even a slightly inclined obtuse-angled triangle. The idea corrects
these errors or rather abstracts them; it makes use of the imaginary
figure only as an auxiliary, in the same manner as we give our
demonstrations when we draw figures upon paper, abstracting their
exactness or inexactness, often when we know that they are not exact,
which they cannot always be.
IV. The idea of the triangle is the same to the man born blind and
to him who has sight; and the proof of this is that both, in their
arguments and geometrical uses, develop it in precisely the same
manner. The representation is different, for us it is a picture,
which it cannot be for the blind man. When he meditates upon the
triangle he neither has, nor can have, in his imagination, the same
sensible representation as we, since he wants all that can relate to
the sensation of sight. If the blind man experiences any accompanying
representation of the idea, he can have received it only from the
sense of touch; and in the case of large triangles, the three sides of
which cannot be touched at the same time, the representation must be a
successive series of sensations of touch, just as the recollection of a
piece of music is essentially a successive representation. With us the
representation of the triangle is almost always simultaneous, excepting
the case of exceedingly large triangles, much larger than we usually
see, in which case, especially when we are unaccustomed to consider
such, it seems necessary to go on extending the lines successively.
20. What has been said of the triangle, the simplest of all figures,
may with still greater reason be said of all others, many of which
cannot be distinctly represented by the imagination, as we see in
many-sided figures; and even the circle, which for facility of
representation rivals the triangle, we cannot so perfectly imagine as
to distinguish it from an ellipse whose foci are only at a trifling
distance from each other.
CHAPTER IV.
THE IDEA AND THE INTELLECTUAL ACT.
21. Having shown that geometrical ideas are not sensible
representations, we can safely conclude that no kind of ideas are.
Could there be a difficulty concerning any, it would be concerning
geometrical ideas, for the objects of the latter can be sensibly
represented. When objects have no figure, they cannot be perceived by
any of the senses; to speak in such a case of sensible representations
is to fall into a contradiction.
22. These considerations draw a dividing line between the intellect
and the imagination; a line which all the scholastics drew, which
Descartes and Malebranche respected and made still more prominent,
but which Locke began to efface, and Condillac entirely obliterated.
All the scholastics recognized this line; but they, like many others,
used a language which, unless well understood, was of a character
to obscure it. They called every idea an image of the object, and
explained the act of the understanding as if there were a kind of form
in the understanding which expressed the object, just as a picture
presented to the eyes offers them the image of the thing pictured. This
language arose from the continual comparison which is very naturally
made between seeing and understanding. When objects are not present we
make use of their pictures, and thus, since objects themselves cannot
be present to our understanding, we conceive an interior form which
performs the part of a picture. On the other hand, sensible things
are the only ones which are strictly susceptible of representation;
we never discover within ourselves the form in which the objects
are portrayed, except in the case of imaginary representations; and
therefore it was rash to call this an idea, and every idea an imaginary
representation, in which the whole system of Condillac consists.
23. St. Thomas calls the representations of the imagination
_phantasmata_, and says that so long as the soul is united to the body
we cannot understand except _per conversionem ad phantasmata_; that is,
unless the representation of the imagination, which serves as material
for the formation of the idea, and assists in clearing it up, and
heightening its colors, precedes and accompanies the intellectual act.
Experience teaches that whenever we understand, certain sensible forms
relative to the object which occupies us, exist in our imagination.
Now, they are the images of the figure and color of the object, if it
have any; now, the images of those with which they are compared, or the
words which denote them in the language we habitually speak. Thus, even
when thinking of God, the very act by which we affirm that he is most
pure spirit, offers a kind of representation to the imagination under a
sensible form. When we speak of eternity, we see the _Ancient of days_,
as we have often seen him represented in our churches; when we speak of
the infinite intelligence, we imagine perhaps a sea of light; infinite
mercy, we picture to ourselves as a pitying likeness; justice, with
angry countenance. To force ourselves to form some conception of the
creation, we fancy a spring whence light and life both flow, and thus
also we endeavor to render immensity sensible by imagining unlimited
extension.
The imagination always accompanies the idea, but is not itself the
idea; and we perceive the evident and unimpeachable proof of the
distinction between the two, if we ask ourselves, while in the very
act of imagining a sea of light, an old man, an angry or placid
countenance, a fountain or extension, if God is any one of these, or
any thing resembling them; for, we very promptly answer, no, that this
would be impossible. All this demonstrates the existence of an idea
which has no connection with these representations, but essentially
excludes what is contained in them.
24. What we have said of the idea of God, may be said of many other
ideas. Rarely do we understand any thing into which the idea of
relation does not enter as an indispensable element. How then is
relation represented? In the imagination, in a thousand different
manners; as the point of contact of two objects; as the link which
unites them. But is relation any one of these? No! When we inquire in
what it does consist, is there the slightest shadow of doubt that it is
no one of these? Certainly not.
25. It is an error to call every idea an image, if you mean to consider
ideas as something distinct from the intellectual act, which places
itself before the understanding when it is in the exercise of its
functions. An image is that which represents, as a likeness: and how, I
ask, do we know that this representation or likeness exists? And how do
we know that in order to reason we need an internal form, which is, as
it were, a picture of the object? What is a picture beyond the sensible
order? There are, it is true, similarities in the intellectual order,
but not in the sense in which we perceive them in the material order.
I think; so does my neighbor: here is a similarity, since the same
thing is found in both one and the other, identical in species, but not
in number. But this similarity is of a different order from that of
sensible similarities.
26. When we understand, we know that which is in the object understood;
but whether this be understood by a simple act of the intellect, or
a medium be required to represent the similarity, we do not know. We
understand the thing, not the idea; and it is as difficult to say
how the intellect perceives without the idea, as it is to say how the
supposed representation refers to its object. How does our idea refer
to an object? If by itself, then by itself alone, since it is purely
internal, it refers to the external, and requires no intermediary to
place the subject in relation with external objects. What it does,
the intellectual act of itself alone can also do. If we perceive the
relation of the idea with the object by means of another idea, this
intermediate idea presents the same difficulty as the preceding idea;
and so at last we must come to a case in which there is a transition
from the intellect to the object without any intermediary.
If we see an object which is the image of another not known, we shall
see the object in itself, but we shall not know that it has the
relation of image, unless informed that it has: we shall know its
reality, but not its representation. The same will happen in ideas
which are images; these, therefore, do not at all explain how the
transition from the internal act to the object is made; for this would
require them to do for the understanding that which we find them unable
to do for themselves.
27. There is something mysterious in the intellectual act, which men
seek to explain in a thousand different ways, by rendering sensible
what they inwardly experience. Hence so many metaphorical expressions,
useful only so long as they serve merely to call and fix the attention,
and give an account of the phenomenon, but hurtful to science if they
go beyond these limits, if it be forgotten that they are metaphors, and
are never to be confounded with the reality.
By intelligence we see what there is in things, we experience the act
of perception; but when we reflect upon it we grope in the dark, as if
there were a dense cloud about the very source of light, preventing us
from seeing it with clearness. Thus the firmament is at times flooded
with the light of the sun, although the sun is encircled with clouds
and hidden from our view, so that we cannot even determine its position
upon the horizon.
28. One cause of obscurity in this matter is the very effort to
clear it up. The act of the understanding is, in its objective part,
exceedingly luminous, since by it we see what there is in objects;
but in its subjective nature, or in itself, it is an internal fact,
simple indeed, but incapable of being explained by words. This is not
a peculiarity of the intellectual act, it is common to all internal
phenomena. What is it to see, to taste, to hear? What is a sensation,
or feeling of any kind whatsoever? It is an inward phenomenon, of which
we are conscious, but which we cannot decompose into parts; nor can we
explain with words the combination of these parts. A word is enough to
indicate the phenomenon, but this word has no meaning for him who does
not now experience this phenomenon, or has not oat some former time
experienced it. No possible explanations would ever enable a man born
blind to understand color, or a deaf man sound.
The act of understanding belongs to this class; it is a simple fact
which we can point out, but not explain. An explanation supposes
various notions, the combination of which may be expressed by language;
in the intellectual act there are none of these. When we have said,
I think, or, I understand, we have said all. This simplicity is not
destroyed by objective multiplicity; the act by which we compare two or
more objects is just as simple as the act by which we perceive a single
object. If one act be not enough, more will follow; and finally one act
will unite or sum them all up; but it will not be a composite act.
CHAPTER V.
COMPARISON OF GEOMETRICAL WITH NON-GEOMETRICAL IDEAS.
29. The idea is a very different thing from the sensible
representation, but it has certain necessary relations with it which
it will be well to examine. When we say _necessary_, we speak only
of the manner in which our mind, in its actual state, understands,
abstracting the intelligence of other spirits, and even that of the
human mind when subject to other conditions than those imposed by its
present union with the body. So soon as we quit the sphere in which
our experience operates, we must be very cautious how we lay down
general propositions, and take care not to extend to all intelligences
qualities which are possibly peculiar to our own, and which, even
with respect to it, will perhaps be entirely changed in another life.
Having made these previous observations, which will be found of great
utility to mark the limits of things there is danger of confounding,
we now proceed to examine the relations of our ideas with sensible
representations.
30. A classification of our ideas into geometrical and non-geometrical
naturally occurs when we fix our attention upon the difference of
objects to which our ideas may refer. The former embrace the whole
sensible world so far as it can be perceived in the representation
of space; the latter include every kind of being, whether sensible
or not, and suppose a primitive element which is the representation
of extension. In their divisions and subdivisions the latter present
simply the idea of extension, limited and combined in different ways;
but they offer nothing in relation to the representation of space, and
even when they refer to it, they only consider it inasmuch as numbered
by the various parts into which it may be divided. Hence the line which
in mathematics separates geometry from universal arithmetic; the former
is founded upon the idea of extension, whereas the latter considers
only numbers, whether determinate, as in arithmetic properly so called,
or indeterminate, as in algebra.
31. Here we have to note the superiority of non-geometrical to
geometrical ideas,--a superiority plainly visible in the two branches
of mathematics, universal arithmetic and geometry. Arithmetic never
requires the aid of geometry, but geometry at every step needs that
of arithmetic. Arithmetic and algebra may both be studied from their
simplest elementary notions to their highest complications without
ever once involving the idea of extension, and consequently without
making use of one single geometrical idea. Even infinitesimal calculus,
in a manner originating in geometrical considerations, has been
emancipated from them and formed into a science perfectly independent
of the idea of extension. On the contrary, geometry cannot take a
single step without the aid of arithmetic. The comparison of angles
is a fundamental point in the science of geometry, but it cannot be
made except by measuring them; and their measure is an arc of the
circumference divided into a certain number of degrees, which must
be counted; and thus we come to the idea of number, the operation of
counting, that is, into the field of arithmetic.
The very proof by superposition, notwithstanding its eminently
geometrical character, stands in need of numeration, inasmuch as
the superposition is repeated. We do not require the idea of number
to demonstrate by means of superposition the equality of two arcs
perfectly equal; but in order to appreciate the relation of their
quantity we compare two unequal arcs and follow the method of placing
the less upon the greater several times, _we count_, we make use of
the idea of _number_, and find we have entered upon the ground of
arithmetic. We discover the equality of two radii of a circle, when
we compare them by superposition, abstracting the idea of number; but
if we would know the relation of the diameter to the radii, we employ
the idea of _two_; we say the diameter is twice the radius, and again
enter the domains of arithmetic. As we proceed in the combination of
geometrical ideas, we make use of more and more arithmetical ideas.
Thus the idea of the number _three_ necessarily enters into the
triangle; and the _sum of three_ and the _sum of two_ both enter into
one of its most essential properties; the _sum_ of the _three_ angles
of a triangle is equal to _two_ right angles.
32. The idea of number cannot be replaced by the sensible intuition
of the figure whose properties and relations are under discussion. In
many cases this intuition is impossible, as, for example, in many-sided
figures. We have little difficulty in representing to our imagination
a triangle, or even a quadrilateral figure, but the difficulty is
greater in the case of the pentagon, and greater still in the hexagon
and heptagon; and when the figure attains a great number of sides, one
after another escapes the sensible intuition, until it becomes utterly
impossible to appreciate it by mere intuition. Who can distinctly
imagine a thousand-sided figure?
33. This superiority of non-geometrical over geometrical ideas is very
remarkable, since it shows that the sphere of intellectual activity
expands in proportion as it rises above sensible intuition. Extension,
as we have before seen,[3] serves as the basis not only of geometry,
but also of the natural sciences, inasmuch as it represents in a
sensible manner the intensity of certain phenomena; but it can by no
means enable us to penetrate their inmost nature, and guide us from
that which appears to that which is. This and other subordinate ideas
are, so to speak, inert, and from them springs no vital principle to
fecundate our understanding, and still less the reality; they are
an unfathomable depth in which our intellectual activity may toil,
perfectly certain of never finding any thing in it which we ourselves
have not placed there; they are a lifeless object which lends itself
to all imaginable combinations without ever being capable of producing
any thing, or of containing any thing not given to it. The naturalists
in considering inertness as a property of matter, have perhaps regarded
more than they are aware the idea of extension, which presents the
inertness most completely.
[3] Book III.
34. The ideas of number, cause, and substance abound in results,
and are applicable to all branches of science. We can scarcely
speak without expressing them; it might almost be said that they
are constituent elements of intelligence, since without them it
vanishes like a passing illusion. They extend to every thing, apply
to every thing, and are necessary, whenever objects are offered to
the intellectual activity, in order that the intellect can perceive
and combine them. It makes no difference whether the objects be
sensible or insensible, whether there be question of our intelligence
or of others subject to different laws; whenever we conceive the act
of understanding we conceive also these primitive ideas as elements
indispensable to the realization of the intellectual act. They exist
and are combined independently of the existence, and even of the
possibility, of the sensible world; and they would also exist in a
world of pure intelligences, even if the sensible universe were nothing
but an illusion or an absurd chimera.
On the other hand, take geometrical ideas and remove them from the
sensible sphere; and all that you base upon them will be only unmeaning
words. The ideas of substance, cause, and relation do not flow from
geometrical ideas; if we regard them alone, we see an immense field
extending into regions of unbounded space; but the coldness and
silence of death reign there. If we would introduce beings, life, and
motion into this field we must seek them elsewhere; we must use other
ideas, and combine them, so that life, activity, and motion may result
from their combination, in order that geometrical ideas may contain
something besides this inert, immovable, and vacant mass, such as we
imagine the regions of space to be beyond the confines of the world.
35. Geometrical ideas, properly so called, as distinguished from
sensible representations, are not simple ideas, since they necessarily
involve the ideas of relation and number. Geometry cannot advance one
step without comparing them; and this comparison almost always takes
place by the intervention of the idea of number. Hence it is that
geometrical ideas, apparently so unlike purely arithmetical ideas,
are really identical with them so far as their form or purely ideal
character is concerned; and are only distinguishable from them when
they refer to a determinate matter, such as extension as presented in
its sensible representation. The inferiority therefore of geometrical
ideas already mentioned, only refers to their matter, or to their
sensible representations, which are presupposed to be an indispensable
element.
36. Another consequence of this doctrine, is the unity of the pure
understanding, and its distinction from the sensitive faculties.
For, the very fact that the same ideas apply alike to sensible and
to insensible objects, with no other difference than that arising
from the diversity of the matter perceived, proves that above the
sensitive faculties there is another faculty with an activity of
its own, and elements distinct from sensible representations. This
is the centre where all intellectual perceptions unite, and where
that intrinsic force resides, which, although excited by sensible
representations, develops itself by its own power, makes itself master
of these impressions, and converts them, so to speak, by a mysterious
assimilation, into its own substance.
37. Here we repeat what we have already remarked, concerning the
profound ideological meaning involved in the _acting intellect_ of the
Aristotelians, so ridiculed because not understood. But we leave this
point and proceed to the careful analysis of geometrical ideas, to
discover, if possible, a glimpse of some ray of light amid the profound
darkness which envelops the nature and origin of our ideas.
CHAPTER VI.
IN WHAT THE GEOMETRICAL IDEA CONSISTS; AND WHAT ARE ITS RELATIONS WITH
SENSIBLE INTUITION.
38. In the preceding chapters we have distinguished between pure
ideas and sensible representations, and we seem to have sufficiently
demonstrated the difference between them, although we limited ourselves
to the geometrical order. But we have not explained the idea in itself;
we have said what it is not, but not what it is; and although we have
shown the impossibility of explaining simple ideas, and the necessity
of our being satisfied with indicating them, we do not wish to be
confined to this observation, which may seem to elude the difficulty
rather than to solve it. Only after due investigations, by which we
shall be better able to understand what is meant by _designate_, will
it be allowable to confine ourselves to their designation, for it will
then be seen that we have not eluded the difficulty. Let us begin with
geometrical ideas.
39. Is a geometrical idea, without any accompanying or preceding
sensible representation, possible? It would seem that we can have
none. What meaning has the idea of the triangle if not referred to
lines forming angles and enclosing a space? And what do lines, angles,
and space mean, without sensible intuition? A line is a series of
points, but it represents nothing determinate, nothing susceptible
of geometrical combinations, except it be referred to that sensible
intuition in which the point appears to us as an element generating by
its movement that continuity which we call a line. What would become
of angles without the real or possible representation of these lines?
What would become of the area of the triangle were we to abstract a
space, a surface which is or may be represented? We might challenge all
the ideologists in the world to assign any sense to the words used in
geometry if absolute abstraction be made all sensible representation.
40. Geometrical ideas, such as we conceive them, have a necessary
relation to sensible intuition. In order the better to understand
this relation, let us define the triangle to be the figure enclosed
by three right lines. This definition involves the following ideas:
space, enclosed, three, lines. With a space and three lines which
do not enclose the figure, we have no triangle; the word _enclosed_
cannot therefore be omitted. If you enclose a space, but with more than
three lines, the result will not be a triangle; and if you take less
than three lines you can have no enclosure. The idea of _three_ is
therefore necessary to the idea of the triangle. It is useless to add
that the idea of _line_ is as necessary as the others, since without
it no triangle can be conceived. Different and distinct ideas, it is
true, are here combined, but they are all referred to one sensible
intuition, although in an indeterminate manner. We here abstract
the longness or shortness of the lines and their forming larger or
smaller angles. But we cannot thus abstract in the case of determinate
intuitions; for every determinate intuition has its own peculiar
qualities; otherwise it would not be a determinate representation, and
consequently not sensible as it is supposed to be. But although the
reference be to an indeterminate intuition, it always supposes some
intuition either actual or possible, since otherwise the material of
combination would be wanting to the understanding; and the four ideas
involved in the triangle would be empty and unmeaning forms, and their
combination extravagant if not absurd.
41. The idea then of the triangle seems to be simply the intellectual
perception of the relation between the lines presented to the
sensible intuition, considered in all its generality, without any
determining circumstance limiting it to particular cases or species.
This explanation admits nothing intermediate between the sensible
representation and the intellectual act, which, exercising its activity
upon the materials presented by sensible intuition, perceives their
relations, and this pure and simple perception constitutes the idea.
42. We shall understand this better if, instead of the triangle, we
take a many-sided figure, such as a polygon of a million sides, which
cannot be clearly presented to the sensible intuition. The idea of
this figure is as simple as that of the triangle; we perceive it by
an intellectual act, express it by a single word, and can calculate
its properties and relations with the same exactness and certainty as
we can those of the triangle, although it is absolutely impossible to
represent it distinctly to our imagination. When we reflect upon what
it offers to the intellectual act, we notice the same elements as in
the idea of the triangle, with this single difference that the number
three is changed into _million_. We can have no sensible representation
of all these lines; but the understanding has sufficiently combined the
idea of line with that of number to perceive its object, a million.
Here, then, we perceive the same elements as in the triangle; but
it is upon these elements, considered in general without any other
determination than results from the fixed number, that the perceptive
act operates.
43. The idea of a polygon in general, abstracting the number of its
sides, offers in its sensible representation, nothing determinate to
the mind, nothing but the abstract idea of a right line, the general
idea of an enclosed space. The relation which these objects of the
intellectual, act even in the midst of their indeterminateness,
have amongst themselves, is perceived by the intellectual act. This
perceptive act is the idea. Every thing beyond this is useless, and not
only useless but affirmed without reason.
44. It will perhaps be asked how the understanding can perceive
what passes without it, since sensible intuition is a function of a
faculty distinct from the understanding? In reply, we shall abstract
the questions discussed in the schools concerning the powers of the
mind, and be content to remark that whether these be really distinct
among themselves, or only one power exercising its activity upon
different objects and in different manners, it will be alike necessary
to admit a consciousness common to all the faculties. The soul which
feels, thinks, recollects, desires, is one and the same, and is
alike conscious of all these acts. Whatever be the nature of the
faculties by which she performs these acts, she it is that performs
them and knows that she performs them. There is then in the soul a
single consciousness, the common centre where dwells the inward
sense of every activity exercised, and of every affection received,
to whatever order they may belong. However, supposing the case the
most unfavorable to our theory, that the faculty to which sensible
intuition corresponds, is really distinct from the faculty which
perceives the relations of the objects offered by sensible intuition;
does it therefore follow that the understanding cannot without
something intermediate exercise its activity upon objects presented
by this intuition? Certainly not. The act of pure understanding and
that of sensible intuition, are indeed different, but they meet in
consciousness, as in a common field; and there they come in contact,
the one exercising its perceptive activity upon the material supplied
by the other.
CHAPTER VII.
THE ACTING INTELLECT OF THE ARISTOTELIANS.
45. I shall now briefly explain the scholastic theory of the manner in
which the understanding knows material things. This explanation will
show how much reason we had to assert that this doctrine of the schools
can be ridiculed only when not understood, and that, whatever its
foundation, it cannot be denied to possess an ideological importance.
46. The schoolmen began with this principle of Aristotle, _nihil est in
intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu_; "There is nothing in the
understanding which has not previously been in the senses." Conformably
to this principle they maintained that before the soul received
impressions from the senses, the understanding was like a clean table
upon which nothing had been written: _sicut tabula rasa in qua nihil
est scriptum_. According to this doctrine all our knowledge flows from
the senses; and at first sight the system of the schools might seem to
be very similar to, if not identical with, that of Condillac. Both seek
the origin of our cognitions in sensation; both teach that there is no
idea in our understanding prior to sensation. But the two systems are,
notwithstanding these apparent similarities, very different, and even
diametrically opposed.
47. The fundamental principle of Condillac's theory is, that sensation
is the sole operation of the mind; and that whatever exists in our
mind is nothing more than the sensation transformed in various ways.
Prior to sensible impressions, this philosopher admits no faculty;
the development of sensation is all that fecundates the soul, not by
exciting its faculties, but by generating them. The school of the
Aristotelians took, indeed, sensations for the starting-point, but did
not consider them as producing intelligence; on the contrary, they were
very careful to mark the limits of the sensitive faculties, and of the
understanding in which they recognized a peculiar and innate activity
altogether superior to the faculties of the sensible order. We have
only to open any one of the innumerable works of this school, to meet
on every page such words as _intellectual force_, _light of reason_,
_participation in the divine light_, and others in the same style, in
which a primary activity of our mind, not communicated by sensations,
but prior to them all, is expressly recognized. The acting intellect,
_intellectus agens_, which figures so much in this ideological system,
was a standing condemnation of the system of transformed sensation
advocated by Condillac.
48. The Aristotelians, governed by their favorite idea of explaining
every thing by matter and form, modified the meaning of these words
according to the exigencies of the objects to which they applied them,
and considered the faculties of the soul as a class of forces incapable
of acting unless united to a form which brought them into action.
Thus they explained sensations by species, or forms, which placed the
sensitive power in act. The imagination was a force which, although it
sometimes rose above the external senses, contained nothing but species
of the sensible order, subject also to the necessary conditions of this
faculty. These species were the forms which placed the imaginative
force in act, and without which it could not exercise its functions.
The Aristotelians, after having thus explained the phenomena of the
external senses, and of the imagination, undertook to explain those
of the intellectual order; and in this they displayed their genius by
inventing an auxiliary which they named the _acting intellect_. The
necessity of making two principles in seeming contradiction accord, was
the reason of this invention.
On the one hand the Aristotelians held that our cognitions all flowed
from the senses; and on the other they asserted that there was an
essential and intrinsic difference between feeling and understanding.
Having drawn this dividing line, the sensitive and intellectual orders
were separated; but as it was on the other side requisite to establish
some communication between these two orders, it was necessary for them,
if they wished to save the principle, that all our ideas come from the
senses, to discover some point where the two channels might unite.
The cognition of material things could not be denied to the pure
understanding; but as this was not an innate cognition and could not
be acquired by it, they were under the necessity of establishing
some communication by means of which the understanding might
comprehend objects without soiling its purity by sensible species. The
imagination contained them, already purified from the grossness of the
external senses; in it they existed more aerial, purer, and less remote
from immateriality; but they were still at an immense distance from the
intellectual order, and had themselves to support the burden of those
material conditions which never allowed them to attain the altitude
necessary to be put in communication with the pure understanding. In
order to know, the understanding requires forms to unite themselves to
it intimately; and although it be true that it discerned them far down
in the lower regions of the sensitive faculties, yet it could descend
to them without compromising its dignity, and denying its own nature.
In this conflict they required a mediator; it was the acting intellect.
We will now proceed to explain the attributes of this faculty.
49. The sensible species contained in the imagination, the true picture
of the external world, were not of themselves intelligible, because
enveloped, not with matter properly so called, but with material
forms, to which the intellectual act could only indirectly refer. If
they could have discovered a faculty capable of rendering intelligible
what is not intelligible, this difficult problem would have been
satisfactorily solved; as in this case the mysterious transformer by
applying its activity to the sensible species, would elevate them from
the category of imaginary species, _phantasmata_, to that of pure ideas
or sensible species, and thus make them serve the intellectual act.
This faculty is the acting intellect; a real magician which possesses
the wonderful secret of stripping sensible species of their material
conditions, of smoothing every roughness which prevents them from
coming in contact with the pure understanding, and transforms the gross
food of the sensitive faculties into the purest ambrosia, fit to be
served at the repast of spirits.
50. This invention merits to be called ingenious rather than
extravagant, poetical rather than ridiculous. But its most remarkable
feature is, that it involves a profound philosophical sense, as well
because it marks an ideological fact of the highest importance, as
because it indicates the true way of explaining the phenomena of
intelligence in their relations to the sensible world. This remarkable
fact is the difference, even with respect to material objects, between
sensible representations and pure ideas. The indication of the true
way consists in presenting the intellectual activity as operating upon
sensible species, and converting them into food for the mind.
Let us leave the poetical part to the explanation of the schools, and
see if what it involves be worth as much, to say the least, as what
Kant advanced when, combating sensism, he distinguished between the
pure understanding and sensible intuitions.
CHAPTER VIII.
KANT AND THE ARISTOTELIANS.
51. Lest I be accused of levity in comparing Kant's philosophy with
that of the schools, in what relates to the distinction between the
sensitive and intellectual faculties, I shall give a rapid examination
of this philosopher's doctrine so far as the present matter is
concerned.
Since the German philosopher is in the habit of expressing himself with
great obscurity, and of using an obsolete language liable to different
interpretations, I shall insert his own words, so that the reader may
judge for himself, and rectify any inaccuracies into which I may fall,
in comparing Kant's doctrine with that of the Aristotelians.
"In whatever manner," says Kant, "and by whatever means a cognition
may be referred to objects, that which makes the cognition refer
immediately to things, and to which all thought is a means, is
_intuition_. This intuition exists only inasmuch as the object is given
us, which is not possible, at least for us men, except so far as it
affects the mind in some way. The capacity of receiving impressions
by the manner in which objects affect us is called _sensibility_. By
means of sensibility objects are given to us: it alone supplies us with
_intuitions_: but they are thought by the understanding, and from it
arise _conceptions_. All thought must ultimately be referred, either
directly, or indirectly by means of certain signs, to intuitions, and
consequently to sensibility, since no object can be given to us in any
other.
"The action of an object upon the representative faculty, so far as we
are affected by it, is _sensation_. The intuition, which is referred to
an object by means of sensation, is called _empirical_. The immediate
object of an empirical intuition is called a _phenomenon_."[4]
[4] _Transcendental Æsthetics_, § 1.
The distinction between the faculty of feeling and that of conceiving
is fundamental in Kant's system: and we see that he gives it a hasty
exposition before beginning his investigations on _Æsthetics_ or the
theory of sensibility. Further on, in treating of the operations of the
understanding, he has more fully developed his doctrine: and by the
emphasis he puts upon it, it would seem evident that he regarded it as
of high importance, and perhaps as a discovery of a region entirely
unknown to the philosophical world. Thus he speaks of it in his
_Transcendental Logic_:
"Our knowledge proceeds from two intellectual sources; the first
is the capacity of receiving representations, (the receptivity of
impressions,) the second is the faculty of knowing an object by these
representations, (the spontaneity of conceptions.) By the former the
object is given to us; by the latter, it is _thought_ in relation to
this representation (as mere determination of the mind.) Intuition
and conception constitute the elements of all our knowledge; so that
neither conceptions without an intuition in some manner corresponding
to them, nor an intuition without conceptions, can give knowledge.
* * * * *
"We call _sensibility_ the capacity (receptivity) of our mind to
receive representations, so far as affected in any way whatever:
on the contrary, the faculty of producing representations, or the
_spontaneity_ of knowledge, is called _understanding_. Our nature is
such that there can be no intuition not _sensible_, that is to say,
which only comprehends the manner in which we are affected by objects.
The _understanding_ is the faculty of _thinking_ the object of sensible
intuition. Neither of these properties of the soul is preferable to
the other. Without sensibility no object could be given to us; without
the understanding none could be thought. Thoughts without contents are
empty; intuitions without conceptions are blind. It is, then, just
as necessary to make conceptions sensible,--that is, to give them an
object in intuition, as to make intuitions intelligible, by subjecting
them to conceptions. These two faculties or capacities cannot
interchange their functions. The understanding can perceive nothing,[5]
and the senses can think nothing. Knowledge results only from their
union. Their attributes, therefore, ought not to be confounded; on the
contrary, there is every reason to distinguish them, and to separate
them with great care. We distinguish then the science of the laws of
sensibility in general, that is to say, _Æsthetics_, from the science
of the laws of the understanding in general, that is, from _Logic_."[6]
[5] He speaks of intuitive perception, not of perception in general.
[6] _Transcendental Logic._ Introduction.
Mark well the meaning of this doctrine. Two facts are established;
sensible intuition, and the conception of it; consequently the
existence of two faculties, sensibility, and the understanding, is
affirmed. To the first correspond sensible representations; to the
latter conceptions. These two faculties, though different, are closely
interlinked; and they are mutually necessary in order to produce
cognitions. But how do they give each other that mutual aid they stand
in need of?
"The understanding," Kant elsewhere says, "has been thus far defined
only negatively, as a not-sensible faculty of knowing." But as we can
have no intuition independently of sensibility, it follows that the
understanding is not a faculty of intuition. Excepting intuition, there
remains no way of knowing other than by conceptions; wherefore we infer
that the knowledge of every intellect, at least every human intellect,
is a knowledge by conceptions; not intuitive, but discursive. All
intuitions, as sensible, rest upon affections, and consequently, all
conceptions upon functions. I understand by functions, the unity of
action necessary to arrange different representations under one common
representation. Conceptions, then, are grounded on the spontaneity of
thought, as sensible intuitions on the receptivity of impressions. The
understanding can make no use of these conceptions except to judge by
means of them, and as intuition is the only representation which has
an immediate object, no conception can ever be immediately referred
to an object, but only to some other representation of this object,
whether this be an intuition, or even a conception. _Judgment_ is the
mediate cognition of an object, and consequently the representation of
a representation of the object. In every judgment there is a conception
applicable to many things, and under this plurality it comprises also
a given representation, immediately referable to the object. Thus, in
the judgment: _all bodies are divisible_; the conception of _divisible_
is common to different conceptions, among which that of body is the
one it here particularly refers to. But this conception of body
relates to certain phenomena we have in view; these objects are then
mediately represented by the conception of divisibility. All judgments
are functions of unity in our representations, since instead of one
immediate representation, there comes in another more elevated, which
includes the first and many others, and conduces to the cognition of
the object; and a great number of possible cognitions are reduced to
one alone. But we may reduce all the operations of the understanding
to judgment; so that the understanding in general may be represented
as _a faculty of judging_; because, from what has been said, it is
the faculty of thinking. Thought is cognition by conceptions; but
conceptions, as predicates of possible judgments, may be referred to
any representation whatever of an object, however indeterminate. Thus
the conception of body signifies something, for example, a metal, which
may be known by this conception. It is then a conception only because
it contains in itself other representations by means of which it may be
referred to objects. It is then the attribute of a possible judgment,
for instance, of this: _every metal is a body_.[7]
[7] _Transc. Log. Transc. Anal._ Book I., Chap. I., Sec. I.
52. There are in this doctrine of Kant, two things to be distinguished:
first, the facts upon which it is based; and secondly, the manner in
which he examines and applies them, and the consequences he deduces
from them.
We detect at once a radical difference, as far as the observation
of ideological facts is concerned, between Kant's system and that
of Condillac. While the latter discovers in the mind no fact but
sensation, no immediate faculty more noble than that of feeling, the
former upholds as a fundamental principle the distinction between
sensibility and the understanding. And here the German triumphs over
the French philosopher, for in his support stand both observation and
experience. But this triumph over sensism had already been obtained
by many philosophers, the scholastics in particular. With Kant and
Condillac they admitted that all our cognitions came from the senses;
but they had also noted what Kant afterwards saw, but Condillac did not
discover that sensations by themselves alone could never suffice to
explain all the phenomena of our soul, and that, besides the sensitive
faculty, it was necessary to admit another very different, called
understanding.
Kant regarded sensations as materials furnished to the understanding,
which it combined in various ways, and reduced to conceptions.
"Thoughts without contents," he said, "are empty; intuitions
without conceptions are blind. It is then just as necessary to make
conceptions sensible, that is, to give them an object in intuition, as
to make intuitions intelligible by subjecting them to conceptions."
Who does not perceive in this passage, the _acting intellect_ of
the Aristotelians, although expressed in other words? Substitute
_sensible species_ for _sensible intuition_, _intelligible species_
for _conception_ and we recognize a doctrine very like that of the
scholastics. Let us see. Kant says: to enable us to acquire knowledge,
the action of the senses, or sensible experience is necessary. The
scholastics said: there is nothing in the understanding which has not
previously been in the senses: _nihil est in intellectu quod prius non
fuerit in sensu_.
Kant says: sensible intuitions of themselves are blind. The scholastics
said: sensible species, or those of the imagination, also called
_phantasmata_, are not intelligible.
Kant says: it is necessary to make conceptions sensible by giving
them an object in intuition. The scholastics said: it is impossible
to understand, either by acquiring science, or by using that already
acquired, unless the understanding directs itself to sensible species,
"_sine conversione ad phantasmata_."
Kant says: it is indispensable to render intuitions intelligible by
subjecting them to conceptions. The scholastics said: it is necessary
to make sensible species intelligible in order that they may be the
object of the understanding.
Kant says: we judge by means of conceptions; and that judgment is the
mediate cognition of an object, and consequently its representation.
The scholastics said: we know objects by means of an intelligible
species, which is derived from the sensible species, and is its
intelligible representation.
Kant says, that in every judgment there is a conception applicable
to many things, and that under this plurality it comprises also a
given representation which is referred immediately to its object. The
scholastics said, that the intelligible species was applicable to many
things, because universal; that, when separated from a sensible and
particular species, it abstracts from all material and _individuating_
conditions, and consequently embraces all individual objects in one
common representation.
Kant uses the words _conception_, and _to conceive_, to denote
the intellectual act, form, or whatever it may be, by which the
understanding, making use of sensible intuitions, combines the
materials offered by sensibility conformably to the laws of the
intellectual order. The scholastics likewise taught that the
intelligible species, called also species _impressed_, fecundated the
understanding by producing in it an intellectual conception, whence
resulted the _word_, internal locution, or species _expressed_, which
they also styled _conception_.
Kant says, that the cognition of human intelligence is a cognition by
conceptions, not intuitive, but discursive and general, and that out
of the sphere of sensibility there is for us no true intuition. The
scholastics said: our understanding, in this life, has a necessary
relation to the nature of material things, and for this reason it
cannot _primo et per se_, know immaterial substances: hence it happens
that we know them perfectly only by certain comparisons with material
things, and chiefly by way of removal, _per viam remotionis_, in a
negative way.
53. The sample we have just given is exceedingly interesting, since
it enables us to appreciate as they merit the points of similarity in
these two systems, which occupy a prominent place in the history of
ideology,--a similarity which has not always hitherto been sufficiently
noticed, although apparent upon the simple perusal of the German
philosopher. Nor is this extraordinary: the study of the scholastics
is exceedingly difficult; one must accommodate one's self to the
language, the style, the opinions, and the prejudices of their epoch,
and travel over much useless ground to collect a little pure ore. Note
well, however, that I do not pretend to discover the "_Critic of Pure
Reason_" in the works of the scholastics, I would only mark a fact but
little known; it is that whatever is good, fundamental, and conclusive
against the sensism of Condillac, in the German philosopher's system,
had been said ages before by the scholastics.
Are we hence to infer that Kant took his doctrine from these authors?
We cannot say; but we believe it may, with some reason, be asserted,
that possibly the German philosopher, a man of vast reading, most
retentive memory, and very laborious, may have received certain
inspirations, reminiscences of which glimmer through his doctrines.
A writer is not a plagiarist, although he make ideas his own which
have originated with others. But it is often true that man imagines he
creates, when he only recollects.
54. Although the German philosopher agrees with the scholastics in
the observation of the primitive faculties of our mind, he differs
from them in their application; and whilst they go on preparing a
philosophical dogmatism, he marches towards a despairing skepticism.
Nothing that all the most eminent philosophers have regarded as
indisputable, can stand in the eyes of the German philosopher. True,
he has distinguished the sensible from the intelligible order; he
has recognized two primitive faculties in our soul; sensibility and
the understanding; he has indicated the line which divides them,
and carefully remarked that it should never be effaced; but, on the
other hand, he has reduced the sensible world to a collection of pure
phenomena, and explains space in such a way as to render it extremely
difficult to avoid the idealism of Berkeley. He has also, so to
speak, walled in the understanding by preventing all communication
with it, excepting by sensible experience, and has resolved all the
elements that meet in it into empty forms, which lead to nothing when
there is question of applying them to the not-sensible, and which can
teach us nothing concerning the great ontological, psychological, and
cosmological problems which have been the object of the meditations of
the profoundest metaphysicians, who, to resolve them, have published a
vast amount of sublime doctrines, just cause of a noble pride in the
human mind which knows the dignity of its nature, vindicates its lofty
origin, and discerns from afar the immensity of its destiny.
CHAPTER IX.
HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE VALUE OF PURE IDEAS.
55. Now that we have shown the points of similarity between Kant's
system and that of the scholastics, we propose to note their
differences chiefly in what concerns the application of these
doctrines. To give an idea of the gravity and transcendentalism of
these differences, we have only to remark the discrepancy of their
results. The Aristotelians built upon their principles a whole system
of metaphysical science, which they considered the noblest of sciences,
and which, like a rich and brilliant light, fecundates and directs
all others; whereas Kant, starting with the same facts, destroys
metaphysical science by taking from it all power to know objects in
themselves.
56. We here find Kant in opposition not only to the scholastics,
properly so called, but also to all the most eminent metaphysicians who
had preceded him. On the side of the scholastics in this matter may be
cited Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, Saint Thomas,
Descartes, Malebranche, Fenelon, and Leibnitz.
57. No one can deny the transcendency of these questions, if he be
not totally ignorant how vital it is to the human mind to know if a
science superior to the purely sensible order be possible, whereby man
may extend his activity beyond the phenomena offered by matter. These
questions are exceedingly profound, and must not be lightly treated.
The difficulty and the great abstruseness of the objects treated, the
importance, the transcendency of the consequences to which they lead,
according to the road followed, demand that no labor whatever should be
spared to penetrate these matters. It is easy to assure one's self that
upon these questions depends the conservation of sound ideas of God and
of the human mind; man's most important and lofty considerations.
To give this matter a thorough examination, let us go back to the
origin of the divergence of these philosophical opinions, and let us
investigate the reason why, starting with the same facts, they arrive
at contradictory results. This requires a clear exposition of the
opposite doctrines.
58. All philosophers agree in admitting the fact of sensibility;
concerning it there can be no doubt; it is a phenomenon attested by
consciousness in so palpable a manner, that not even skeptics could
ever deny the subjective reality of the appearance, however much they
called in question its objective reality. Idealists, when they deny the
existence of bodies, do not deny their phenomenal appearance, their
appearance to the mental eye under a sensible form. Sensibility then,
and the phenomena it exhibits, have in all ages been primary data in
ideological and psychological problems; there may be a discrepancy with
respect to the nature and consequences of these data, but there can be
none as to their existence.
59. The history of ideological science shows us two schools; one of
which admits nothing but sensation, and explains all the affections and
operations of the mind by the transformation of the senses; while the
other admits primitive facts distinct from sensation; other faculties
than that of feeling, and recognizes in the mind a line dividing the
sensible from the intellectual order.
60. This latter school is divided into two others; one of which regards
the sensible order as not only distinct, but also separate from the
intellectual order, and in some sense at war with it; and it therefore
maintains that the intellectual can receive nothing from the sensible
order, except malign exhortations which either mislead it, or enervate
its activity. Hence the system of innate ideas in all its purity; hence
the metaphysics of an intellectual order entirely exempt from sensible
impressions, metaphysics which, cultivated by eminent geniuses, has
in modern times been professed by the author of the _Investigation
of Truth_, with sublime exaggeration. The other ramification of the
school also admits the pure intellectual order, but does not hold it
to be contaminated by being brought into communication with sensible
phenomena; on the contrary, it is rather inclined to believe that the
problems of human intelligence, such as it exists in this life, cannot
be resolved without fixing the mind upon the aforesaid communication.
61. Experience teaches that this communication exists, conformably
to a law of the human mind, and that to contend against the law is
to struggle against a truth attested by consciousness: to attempt to
destroy it would be a rash undertaking, a kind of mental suicide.
For this reason, the school of which we have just spoken, accepts
the facts, such as internal experience presents them, and endeavors
to explain them by indicating the points where the sensible and
intellectual orders may come into communication without being destroyed
or confounded.
62. The school that admits the existence of the two orders, the
sensible and the intellectual, and at the same time admits the
possibility and the reality of their reciprocal communication and
influence, has, for its fundamental principle, that the origin of
all cognition is in the senses, these being the exciting causes of
intellectual activity, and a kind of laborers who supply it with
materials, which it then combines in the manner necessary to raise the
scientifical structure.
63. Thus far, Kant and the scholastics agree; but here they separate at
a point of the greatest importance, and the result is that they pass
on to conflicting consequences. The scholastics believed that there
were in the understanding true ideas having true objects, and that
they might discuss them, independently of the sensible order, with
perfect security. They even admitted the principle that there can be
nothing in the understanding which was not previously in the senses;
but pretended, nevertheless, that there really was something in the
understanding, which might conduce to the knowledge of the truth of
immaterial, as well as of material things in themselves. The ideas of
the purely intellectual order originate in the senses as movers of the
intellectual activity; but this activity, by means of abstraction and
other operations, forms to itself ideas of its own, by whose aid it may
go beyond the sensible order in its search for truth.
64. In their explanation of the purely intellectual order,
metaphysicians, both scholastics and anti-scholastics agree, so far as
there is question of giving a real objective value to ideas, and of
making them a sure means of discovering truth independently of sensible
phenomena. However much these schools disagree as to the origin of
ideas, they agree in all that relates to their reality and value.
65. Kant, at the same time that he admits the principle of the
scholastics, that all our cognitions come from the senses, and
recognizes with them the necessity of acknowledging a purely
intellectual order, a series of conceptions different from sensible
intuition, maintains that these conceptions are not pure cognitions,
but empty forms, which of themselves mean nothing, teach the mind
nothing, and cannot, in the least, aid us to know the reality of
things. These conceptions mean nothing unless filled, so to speak, with
sensible intuitions. If these intuitions are wanting, they correspond
to nothing, and can be of none but a purely logical use; that is to
say, the understanding will think upon and combine them, without,
indeed, falling into contradiction, but also without ever coming to any
conclusion.
"That the understanding," Kant says, "can never make a transcendental,
but only an empirical use, either of its _a priori_ principles, or
of its conceptions, is a principle which, if known with conviction,
leads to the most important consequences. The transcendental use of a
conception in any principle, consists in referring it to things, _in
general, and in themselves_; whilst the empirical use is in referring
the conception to phenomena alone, that is, to the objects of a
possible experience, by which we may easily see that this latter use is
the only one that can stand. To every conception is necessary, first
of all, a logical form of a conception in general, of the thought:
and secondly, the possibility of subjecting to it an object, to which
it may refer; but without this object it wants all sense, it contains
nothing, although it may involve the logical function necessary to
form a conception by means of certain data. The object cannot be given
to a conception except in intuition; and although pure intuition may
be _a priori_ possible before the object, it cannot, however, receive
its object, and consequently its objective value, otherwise than by
the empirical intuition of which it is the form. All conceptions and
with them all principles, although they be possible _a priori_, do,
notwithstanding, refer to empirical intuitions, that is, to data of
possible experience. _Without this they have no objective value; they
are nothing but a mere play, whether of the imagination or of the
understanding_, with the respective representations of the one or the
other faculty.
* * * * *
"That the same is the case with all the categories and principles
formed from them, is apparent from this, that we cannot really define
a single one of them; that is to say, we cannot render the possibility
of their object intelligible without attending to the conditions
of sensibility, and consequently to the form of the appearances;
conditions to which these categories must be confined as to their sole
objects. If this condition be taken away, all meaning, that is, all
relation to the object is destroyed, and by no example can we be made
to conceive what is the proper meaning of these conceptions.
* * * * *
"If no account be made of all the conditions of sensibility which
denote them (he is speaking of the categories) as conceptions of a
possible empirical use, if they be taken to be conceptions of things
in general, and consequently, of transcendental use, nothing remains
to be done, so far as they are concerned, but to preserve the logical
functions in judgments, as the condition of the possibility of the
things themselves, without being able to show in what case, their
application and their object, and consequently they themselves, may, in
the pure understanding, and without the intervention of sensibility,
have a meaning and an objective value.
* * * * *
"It incontestably follows from what has been said, that pure
conceptions of the understanding can _never have a transcendental
use_, but only an empirical use; and that the principles of the pure
understanding do not refer to the objects of the senses, except when
the senses are in relation with the general conditions of a possible
experience; _but never to things in general_, without relation to the
way in which we may perceive them."[8]
[8] _Transcendental Logic._ Book II., Chap. III.
66. Thus Kant destroys all metaphysical science, and, involved in its
deplorable ruins, perish the most fundamental, most precious, and
most sacred ideas of the human mind. According to him, transcendental
analysis makes us see that the understanding can never pass the limits
of sensibility, the only limits within which objects are given to us
in intuition. These principles which were regarded as eternal pillars
of the scientific edifice sink into empty forms, into words without
meaning, so soon as they rise from the sphere of sensibility.
Ontology, with its transcendental doctrines, avails not in the eyes
of the German philosopher to explain the nature and origin of things.
"These principles," he says, "are simply principles of the exposition
of phenomena; and the _proud name of an ontology_ which pretends to
give an _a priori_, synthetic cognition of things, in a systematic
doctrine, for example, _the principle of causality_, ought to be
replaced by the modest denomination of simple _analysis of the pure
understanding_."
67. It would be hard to find a more noxious doctrine. What is left
to the human mind when all means of rising from the sensible sphere
are taken away? To what is our understanding reduced, if its most
fundamental ideas, and its noblest principles can teach nothing
concerning the nature of things? If the corporeal world is for us
nothing but a collection of sensible phenomena, beyond which we
can know nothing, our cognitions have nothing real, they are all
purely subjective; the soul lives on illusions, and vanishes with
its imaginary creations, to which there is nothing to correspond in
reality. Space is but a subjective form; time is but a subjective form;
pure ideas are empty conceptions, and all in us is subjective. We
know nothing of objects, we are totally ignorant of what is; we know
only what _appears_. This is pure skepticism; assuredly it was not
necessary to consume so much time in analytical investigations to get
thus far. The doctrine of Kant presents no extravagance so outrageous,
no error so hideous, as the works of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; but
it contains the germ of the greatest extravagance, and of the most
fatal errors. He has made a philosophical revolution, which some have
incautiously deemed a progress; but doubtless they did not detect the
skepticism it contains, which is the more dangerous, the more it is
enveloped in analytical forms.
68. Notwithstanding the importance justly attached to the refutation of
the German philosopher's errors, I do not deem it necessary to combat
his doctrines step by step; this system of refutation labors under the
serious objection that it gives little satisfaction to the reader, who
seems to see one edifice torn down, but not replaced by another. I
consider it more useful carefully to examine questions as they arise in
the order of their subjects, to establish my opinion as best I can, and
there to refute Kant's errors as I find them obstructing the march of
truth. It is ordinarily very easy to say what a thing is not; but it is
not so easy to say what it is; and it is not proper that the advocates
of sound doctrine should be charged with impugning false doctrines,
and not caring to expose their own. We believe that in these matters
sound philosophy may be presented to the light of the day struggling
against error, and that it ought not to rest satisfied with being the
instrument of war to overthrow its adversary, but that it should
aspire to found a noble and enduring edifice upon the very site the
other occupied.
The minds of men are not satisfied with simple refutations; they desire
to have a doctrine substituted in the place of the one impugned.
Whoever impugns, denies; and the understanding is not satisfied with
negations; it wants affirmation, for it cannot live without positive
truth.
We have permitted ourselves this brief digression, which is indeed far
from being useless; for at the sight of the transcendency of the German
philosopher's errors I have recollected the necessity of careful,
assiduous, and profound labor to oppose this deluge of errors which
threatens to inundate the whole field of truth; and we could not do
less than insist upon this point, and observe that it is not enough to
tear down, but that it is also necessary to build up. Refutations will
soon come; but let positive doctrines abound. It is not enough to cover
the long line of frontiers where error makes its attacks, with light
and active troops which may fall upon the enemy; it is necessary to
found colonies, foci of cultivation and civilization, who will defend
the country, at the same time that they make it flourish and prosper.
CHAPTER X.
SENSIBLE INTUITION.
69. Intuition, properly so called, consists in the act of the soul by
which it perceives an object that effects it: this the signification of
the Latin word derived from the verb _intueri_, to see a thing which is
present, indicates.
70. Intuition belongs only to perceptive powers, to those by which
the subject affected distinguishes between its affection and the
object causing it. We do not pretend to say that this must be a reflex
distinction, but simply that the internal act must refer to an object.
If we suppose a being to experience various affections, but to neither
refer them to any object, nor reflect upon them itself; this being can
never with propriety be said to have true intuition, for intuition
seems to involve the exercise of an activity occupied with a present
object. The object of intuition need not always be an external being;
it may be an affection or action of the soul made objective by a reflex
act.
71. The sensations which are with the greatest propriety called
intuitive, are those of sight and touch; for, since it is impossible
for us, when we perceive extension, to regard it as a purely subjective
fact, the acts of seeing and feeling necessarily involve relation
to an object. The other senses, although they may have a certain
relation to extension, do not perceive it directly, so that were they
to stand alone, they would partake more of the affective than of the
intuitive; that is, the soul would be affected by the sensations, but
would be under no necessity of referring them to external objects.
If reflection made upon these sensations come to teach, as in effect
it would teach that their cause is a being distinct from those that
experience them, there would be no true intuition; not for the senses,
because they would remain foreign to complex combinations; nor for the
understanding, because it would then know the cause of the sensations,
not by intuition, but by discursion.
72. We infer from this, that not every sensation is an intuition;
and that the imaginary reproductions of past sensations, or the
imaginary production of possible sensations, although repeatedly styled
intuitions, are, since they do not refer to an object, unworthy of the
name. We ought, nevertheless, to observe that the phenomena of purely
internal sensibility do, perhaps, owe to the habit of reflection their
non-reference to objects. Reflection perceives the difference of
time, the more or less vividness of sensations, their greater or less
constant connection, and also other circumstances; and it is enabled
by these to distinguish between representations which do really refer
to an object, such as external sensations, and those that have only a
past or possible object, such as purely internal representations. Thus
experience teaches us that the purely internal sensibility, wholly
abandoned to itself, transfers whatever is presented to it to the
external world, without the aid of reflection, and converts imaginary
appearances into realities. This is verified in sleep, or even in our
waking hours, when by some cerebral inversion the sensibility works by
itself alone, and entirely free of reflection.
73. The reason why the sensibility left to itself, renders all its
impressions objective, is to be looked for in the fact, that being a
non-reflective faculty, it cannot distinguish between a purely internal
affection, and one coming from without. Since comparison, however
inconsiderable it may be, always implies reflection, sensibility does
not compare. Hence it happens that when the subject does nothing
but feel, it cannot appreciate the differences of sensations, by
calculating the degrees of their vividness, nor ever perceive the
existence or want of order and constancy in their connection.
The faculty of feeling is perfectly blind to all but its determinate
object; whatever it does not discover in this so far as it is its
object, does in no manner exist for it. We can now see why, when left
to itself, it will render its impressions objective, and believe itself
intuitive by converting simple appearances into realities.
74. It is worthy of notice, that of the sensitive faculties, some
would always be intuitive, that is, would always refer to an external
object, if reflection did not accompany them; whilst others would never
be intuitive, not even if separated from reflection, or unaccompanied
by those which are by their nature intuitive. To the former class
belong the representative faculties, properly so called, that is, those
which affect the sensitive subject by presenting to it a form, the real
or apparent image of an object. Such are those of sight and of touch,
which can neither exist nor be conceived without this representation.
Other sensations, on the contrary, offer no form to the sensitive
subject; they are simple affections of the subject, although they
proceed from an external cause; if we refer them to objects, this we do
by reflection; and when this warns us that we have in attributing to
the object not only the principle of causality, but also the sensation
in itself, carried the reference too far, we easily recognize the
illusion, and lay it aside. This does not occur in representative
sensations; no one, no matter how great efforts he may make, will ever
be able to persuade himself that beyond himself there is nothing real,
nothing resembling the sensible representation in which objects are
presented as extended.
75. When we say that some sensations would not be intuitive were they
not accompanied by reflection, we do not mean to say that man refers
them to an object, after explicit reflection, for we cannot forget what
we have already said when explaining at length the instinctive way in
which our faculties develop themselves prior to all reflection, in
their relations with the corporeal world; but only that no necessary
relation to an object as represented can be discovered in these
sensations considered in themselves, and in perfect isolation; and
that, probably, if a confused reflection be not mingled with the
instinct which makes us render them objective, there at least enters
some influence of other sensations, which are by their proper object
representative.
CHAPTER XI.
TWO COGNITIONS: INTUITIVE AND DISCURSIVE.
76. Now that I have explained sensible, I pass to intellectual
intuition. There are two modes of knowing; the one is intuitive, the
other discursive. Intuitive cognition is that in which the object
is presented to the understanding, such as it is, and upon which
the perceptive faculty has to exercise no function but that of
contemplation; it is therefore called _intuition_, from _intueri_, to
see.
77. This intuition may take place in two ways. It may either present
the object itself to the perceptive faculty, and unite them without
any intermediacy; or by the intervention of an idea or representation,
capable of putting the perceptive faculty in action, so that it
may, without the necessity of combination, see the object in this
representation. The first requires the object perceived to be
intelligible by itself, since otherwise there could be no union of the
object understood with the subject understanding; the second needs a
representation to supply the place of the object, and consequently it
is not indispensable that this should be immediately intelligible.[9]
[9] See what has been said concerning _representation_, _immediate
intelligibility_, and _representation of causality and ideality_, in
Chapters X., XI., XII., and XIII., of Book I. of this work.
78. Discursive cognition is that in which the understanding does not
have the object itself present, but forms it itself, so to speak, by
uniting in one whole conception several partial conceptions, whose
connection in one subject it has found out by ratiocination.
In order to render more apparent the difference between intuitive and
discursive cognition, I will illustrate it by an example. "We see a
man; his physiognomy is presented to us, such as it is; no combinations
are necessary, none could possibly make him appear differently. We
see his characteristic features, such as they are; but the collection
of them is not a thing produced by our combinations; it is an object
given to the perceptive faculty which has nothing to do but to perceive
it." When an object is offered to our understanding in this way, the
cognition we have of it will be intuitive.
We have said that the object of intellectual intuition may be united
immediately to the perceptive faculty, or that it may be presented
to it by a medium which acts the part of the object. Keeping in view
the same example, we might say that these two classes of intuitions
correspond to those of the man seen by himself, or in his portrait.
There would be in both cases intuition of his physiognomy, but no
combination would be necessary, and none could possibly form it.
But suppose some one to tell us of a person whom we have never seen,
and whose portrait cannot be shown to us. He would be obliged, in order
to give us an idea of his physiognomy, to enumerate one by one his
characteristic features, by the union of which we shall form an idea of
the likeness he has just described. To this imaginary representation
may be compared discursive cognition, by which, although we do not
see the object, we in some sense construct it, as it were, from
the assemblage of those ideas which we have by means of discursion
interlinked, and formed into one whole conception representing the
object.
79. Kant, in his _Critic of Pure Reason_, speaks repeatedly of
intuitive and discursive cognition; but he does not explain with
perfect clearness the distinctive characteristics of these two classes
of cognition. Let it not, however, be supposed that the discovery of
these two ways of perceiving is due to the German philosopher. Many
ages before him, the theologians had known them; nor could it be
otherwise, since the distinction between intuition and discursion is
intimately connected with one of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity.
It is well known that our religion admits the possibility and reality
of a true cognition of God, even in this life. The sacred text tells
us that we may know God by his works; that the invisible things of God
are manifested to us by his visible creatures; that the heavens narrate
his glory, and the firmament announces the works of his hands; that
they who have thus known God are inexcusable, because they have not
glorified him as they ought; but this same religion teaches us that
the Blessed, in the life to come, will know him in a very different
manner, will see him as he is, face to face. It was Christianity then
that marked the difference between intuitive and discursive cognitions,
between the cognition by which the understanding, proceeding from
effects to their cause, and uniting in it the ideas of wisdom,
omnipotence, goodness, holiness, and infinite perfection, rises to
God; and the cognition in which the mind does not need to advance,
drawing its conclusions by aid of discursion, from various conceptions,
in order to force from them an idea of God, in which the Infinite
Being will offer himself clearly to the eyes of the mind, not in a
conception elaborated by reason, nor under the sublime mysteries of
faith, but such as he is, in himself, as an object given immediately
to the perceptive faculty, not as an object discovered by the force
of discursion, or presented under august shadows. And here we find
another proof of the great profoundness hidden under the dogmas of
the Christian religion. This distinction is to be met with in the
catechism, and yet who would have suspected that religion had taught us
a doctrine so important to ideological science? If the child be asked,
who is God, he replies by enumerating his perfections, and showing
thereby that he knows him. If you ask this same child, to what end man
has been created, he will answer, to _see_ God, etc.
Here again is the distinction between discursive cognition, or by
conceptions, and intuitive cognitions; with the former one is said,
simply to _know_, with the latter to _see_.
CHAPTER XII.
THE SENSISM OF KANT.
80. Kant maintained that while in the present life, we have only
sensible intuition; and he considers the possibility of a purely
intellectual intuition, whether for our own or for other minds
doubtful. But as we have seen elsewhere (ch. IX.) that he does not
attribute any value to conceptions separated from intuition, we
infer that he is, notwithstanding his long dissertations upon the
pure understanding, a confirmed sensist; and that the authors of the
_Critic of Pure Reason_, and of the _Treatise on Sensations_, differ
much less than at first sight might be supposed. If our mind has no
other intuition than the sensible, and the conceptions of the pure
understanding are, if they do not include some one of these intuitions,
nothing but empty forms; if when we abstract these intuitions, there
are in the understanding only purely logical functions, which mean
nothing, and in no sense deserve to be called cognitions; it follows
that there is in our mind nothing but sensations, which may be
methodically distributed in conceptions, as if packed away in a kind
of hut, where they are registered and preserved. According to this
philosopher, the understanding is reduced so low, that Condillac
himself might admit it.
81. Indeed, in the system of sensations transformed, the mind is
supposed to possess a transforming force, since otherwise, it would be
impossible to explain all ideological phenomena by mere sensation, and
the very title of the system would be a contradiction. This being so,
would any sensistic scruple have prevented Condillac from admitting
_the synthesis of the imagination_, the relations of all sensible
intuitions to the _unity of apperception_, and finally, a variety of
logical functions, to classify and compare sensible intuitions? So far
is this from being the case, it would seem that the root of all these
doctrines might be found in the system of the French philosopher, whose
fundamental principles, when summed up, amount to this: that nothing
can be seen in the mind besides sensations; but he does not therefore
deny it a force capable of transforming, classifying, and generalizing
them.
82. Here, then, is another check to the originality of the German
philosopher; he has, to combat sensism, said in substance just what,
ages before, all the schools repeated; and now when he undertakes to
follow a new road to the explanation of the purely intellectual order,
he falls into Condillac's system. His empty conceptions, without
meaning, without application, beyond the sensible order, amount to no
more than what Condillac taught when analyzing the generation of ideas,
and showing how they flowed from sensations by means of successive
transformations. Could there be any difficulty, it would be concerning
words, not things: no sensist ought to hesitate accepting whole and
entire the _Critic of Pure Reason_, when once he has seen what
applications the German spiritualist makes of his doctrines. It would
be very desirable for those who insist that the spiritualism of Kant
is decidedly destructive of Condillac's sensism, to weigh well these
observations.
CHAPTER XIII.
EXISTENCE OF PURE INTELLECTUAL INTUITION.
83. It is not true that the human mind even in this life has
no intuition other than the sensible. There are within us many
non-sensible phenomena, of which we are clearly conscious. Reflection,
comparison, abstraction, election, and all the acts of the
understanding and will, include nothing of the sensible. We should like
to know, to what species of sensibility, abstract ideas, and the acts
by which we perceive them, belong; these among others: _I desire_, _I
do not desire_, _I choose this_, _I prefer this to that_. Not one of
these acts can be presented by sensible intuition; they are facts of
an order superior to the sphere of sensibility, and yet we have in
our mind a clear and lively consciousness of them; we reflect upon
them, make them the object of our studies, distinguish them one from
another, and classify them in a thousand different ways. These facts
are presented to us immediately; we know them, not by discursion, but
by intuition; therefore it is false that the intuition of the soul
refers to none but sensible phenomena, for it encounters within itself
an expanded series of non-sensible phenomena, which are given to it in
intuition.
84. It is of no use to say that these internal phenomena are empty
forms, and mean nothing, unless referred to a sensible intuition.
Whatever they may be, they are something distinct from this same
sensible intuition; and we perceive this something, not by discursion,
but by intuition; therefore, besides sensible intuition, there is
another of the purely intellectual order.
The question is not whether these pure conceptions have, or have not,
a certain power to enable us to know objects in themselves; but it
is simply to ascertain if they do exist, and if they are sensible.
That they exist, is certain; consciousness attests this fact, and all
ideologists admit it. That they are sensible, cannot be maintained
without destroying their nature; and least of all can Kant maintain
this, since he has so carefully distinguished between sensible
intuition and these conceptions.
85. This sea of non-sensible phenomena, which we experience within
us, is like a mirror wherein the depths of the intellectual world
are reflected. Minds, it is true, are not presented immediately to
our perception, and to know them we need a discursive process; but
we shall, upon careful examination, find in this intuition of our
inward phenomena the representation, imperfect though it be, of what
is verified in intelligences of a superior order. Thus we have in a
certain mode idea-images, since there can be no better image of one
thought than another thought, nor of one act of the will than another
act of the will. Thus we know minds distinct from our own, by a kind of
mediate, not immediate, intuition, in so far as they are presented to
our consciousness as the image in a mirror.
86. The communication of minds by means of speech and other natural or
conventional signs, is a fact of experience intimately connected with
all intellectual, moral, and physical necessities. When a mind is put
into communication with another, the cognition it has of what passes
in the other is not by mere general conceptions, but by a kind of
intuition, which although mediate, does not therefore fail to be true.
The thought, or affection of another communicated to our mind by means
of speech, excites in us a thought, or affection, similar to that of
the mind communicating them. We do, then, not only know, but _see_, in
our own consciousness, the consciousness of another; and so perfect
is at times the likeness, that we anticipate all that he is about to
tell us, and unroll within ourselves the same series of phenomena that
are verified in the mind of him with whom we are in communication. It
happens thus when we say: "I understand perfectly what N. thinks, what
he wants, what he is trying to express."
87. This observation seems to us of great service to place beyond
all doubt that there are in our mind, independently of the sensible
order, conceptions, not empty, but referable to a determinate object.
The cognition of the phenomena of the purely intellectual order,
transmitted to us by means of speech, or other signs, does not destroy
the character of the intuition, since we here find all the necessary
conditions assembled; internal representation, and its relation to a
determinate object affecting us.
88. This analysis of ideological facts, whose existence cannot be
doubted, demonstrates the falseness of Kant's doctrine, that there are
in our mind none but sensible intuitions; as well as the non-existence
of the German philosopher's problem: whether it is possible, or not,
for objects to be given to other minds in an intuition other than
the sensible. This very problem is found solved within us, since the
attentive observation of the internal phenomena, and the reciprocal
communication of minds, has given us to know not only the possibility,
but also the existence of intuitions different from the sensible.
CHAPTER XIV.
VALUE OF INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTIONS.--ABSTRACTION MADE FROM INTELLECTUAL
INTUITION.
89. Although we should admit that our mind can have no intuition but
the sensible, it could not thence be inferred that conceptions of the
purely intellectual order are empty forms, and in nowise conducive to
the knowledge of objects in themselves. It has always been understood
that general ideas are not intuitive, since by the very fact that they
are general they cannot be referred _immediately_ to a determinate
object; and yet no one ever doubted that they could serve to give us
true cognitions.
90. It is certain that general ideas, of themselves alone, do not lead
to any positive result; or, in other words, they do not make us know
existing beings; but if they be joined to other particular ones, a
reciprocal influence is established between them, from which cognition
results. When we make the general affirmation: "Every contingent being
requires a cause;" this proposition, although very true, means nothing
in the order of facts, if we abstract the existence of contingent
beings and causes of every kind. In such a case, the proposition will
express a relation of ideas, not of facts: the cognition which results
therefrom will be merely ideal, not positive.
91. This relation of ideas tacitly involves a condition, which gives
them, so far as facts are concerned, a hypothetical value; for, when
we affirm that every contingent being must have a cause, we are not to
be understood to affirm a relation of ideas destitute of all possible
application; but rather, on the contrary, to intend that if any
contingent being exists, it must have a cause.
92. In order that this hypothetical value of ideas may be converted
into a positive value, nothing is necessary but that the condition
involved in the general proposition: "Every contingent being must
have a cause," be verified. Of itself alone this teaches us nothing
concerning the real world; but from the moment that experience
shows us a single contingent being, the general proposition, before
sterile, becomes exceedingly fruitful. So soon as experience shows us
a contingent being, we know the necessity of its cause; we also infer
the necessity of the proportions, which the activity producing must
preserve with the thing produced; knowing the qualities of the latter,
we infer those which ought to be found in the former. In this manner,
resting upon two bases, one of which is ideal truth and the other real
truth, or data supplied by experience, we construct a true positive
science referred to determinate facts.
93. Since the being that thinks necessarily has consciousness of
itself, no thinking being can be limited to the cognition of purely
ideal truths. Even if we were to suppose it perfectly isolated from
all other beings, in absolute non-communication with every thing
not itself, so as neither to exert any influence upon them, nor to
be influenced by them, it could not be reduced to the cognition of a
purely ideal order; for, by the very fact that it is thinking, it is
conscious of itself, and consciousness is essentially a particular
fact, a cognition of a determinate being, since without it there could
be no consciousness.
94. This observation overturns to its very foundation the system which
pretends to bar all communication between the real and ideal orders.
It shows also that experience is not only possible, but absolutely
necessary to every thinking being, since consciousness is by its
very nature an experience, and the clearest and surest experience.
The truths of the ideal order are then necessarily interlinked with
those of the real order: to suppose all intercommunication between
them impossible, is to disown a fundamental fact of ideological and
psychological science, consciousness.
95. To render the truth and exactness of the preceding doctrine more
evident, let us suppose a man, or rather a human mind, absolutely
ignorant of the existence of an external world, of every body, and
even of every spirit; one that knows nothing concerning its own origin
or destiny, but one that would nevertheless at the same time exercise
its intellectual activity, without which it would be a lifeless thing,
and could offer no field to observation. Let us suppose him to have
general ideas, such as of being and of not-being, of substance and
accidents, of the absolute and the conditioned, of the necessary and
contingent. Manifestly he may combine them in various ways, and arrive
at the same purely ideal results to which we ourselves arrive. There
is no supposition more favorable to a series of abstract cognitions
independent of experience, and yet not even in this case would the
truths known be limited to the purely ideal order; it would even
here be impossible for them not to descend to the real order, if the
thinking being were not dispossessed of all consciousness of itself.
Indeed, by the very fact that a being is supposed capable of thinking,
it is supposed able to say to itself, _I think_. This act is eminently
experimental, and it needs only to be united with general truths in
a common consciousness, to enable the isolated being to rise above
itself, and create for itself a positive science, by which to pass from
the world of ideas to that of facts. The instability of its thoughts,
and the permanence of the being that experiences them, offer to it a
practical case in which the general ideas of substance and accident
are particularized. The successive appearance and disappearance of its
own conceptions will show to it the ideas of being and of not-being
realized; the recollection of the time when its own operations
commenced, beyond which the memory of its existence does not extend,
will enable it to know the contingency of his own being; and this
fact, combined with the general principles which express the relations
between contingent and necessary beings, will suggest to the thought
that there must be another that communicated to it its existence.
CHAPTER XV.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE VALUE OF GENERAL CONCEPTIONS.
96. However vague the ideas an isolated being would form of objects
distinct from itself, they will never be so vague as not to refer to
a real thing. The mind may not know the nature of this reality, but
it knows for certain that it exists. A man blind from his birth can
form no clear idea of colors, nor of the sensation of seeing; but
is he therefore ignorant that sensation exists, and that the words,
color, seeing, and others which refer to sight, have a positive and
determinate object? Certainly not. The blind man does not know in what
these things, of which he hears, consist, but he knows that they are
something; those of his conceptions that refer to them may be called
imperfect, but they are not vain; the words by which he expresses them,
have for him a positive, although incomplete meaning.
97. There is a great difference between incomplete and indeterminate
conceptions; the former may refer to a positive thing, although
imperfectly known; the latter include nothing but a relation of ideas,
meaning nothing in the order of facts. We will render this difference
more apparent by explaining the example of the preceding paragraph.
A man blind from his birth has no intuition of colors, nor of any
thing that refers to the sense of sight; but he is sure that there
exist external facts which correspond to an internal affection called
_seeing_. This idea is incomplete, but it has a determinate object.
The words of those who possess the sense of sight reveal to him its
existence; he knows not, what it is, but, that it is; in other words,
he does not know its essence, but its existence. Let us now suppose
the possibility of an order of sensations different from ours, and in
nowise resembling those which we experience, to be called in question.
The conception referred to the new sensations would not only be
incomplete, but would have no relation to any real object. The general
idea, then, of affection of a sensitive being, will be all that our
mind will have; but it will know nothing of its existence, and can
form only mere conjectures as to the conditions of its possibility.
This example illustrates our idea. We find in the man blind from his
birth, who hears of what pertains to the sense of sight, an incomplete
conception, but one to which the existence of a series of facts, known
to his mind, corresponds. But in ourselves, if we reflect upon a kind
of sensations different from our own, we find conceptions, having,
indeed, a general object, but of whose realization we know nothing.
98. Thus is it explained how our mind, without having intuition of a
thing, can, nevertheless, know it, and be perfectly certain of its
existence. We have here demonstrated that conceptions may, although
they do not refer to a sensible intuition, have a value, not only in
the order of ideas, but also in that of facts.
99. In order to prove the sterility of all conception beyond sensible
intuition, Kant adduces one reason, which is, that we cannot define the
categories and the principles which flow from them without referring to
the objects of sensibility. This is no proof at all; for, in the first
place, the impossibility of a definition does not always arise from the
fact that the conception to be defined is empty; but it very frequently
results from the conception being simple, and consequently not
susceptible of a division into parts that may be expressed by words.
How will he define the idea of _being_? No matter how he attempts to
define it, the thing to be defined will enter into the definition: the
words, thing, reality, existence, all signify _being_.
It is very natural, since sensible intuition is the basis of our
relations with the external world, and consequently with our
fellow-men, that when we purpose to express any relation whatever, we
should call to our aid sensible applications; but we are not thence
to infer that there is not in our mind, independently of them, a real
truth contained in the conception which we wish to explain.
100. This capacity of knowing objects under general ideas, is a
characteristic property of our mind, and we cannot, in our inability to
penetrate to the essence of things, think without this indispensable
auxiliary. In the ordinary course of human affairs, it often happens
that we need to know the existence of a thing and of some of its
attributes, but do not require a perfect knowledge of it. In such
cases, general ideas, aided by some data of experience, put us in
mediate communication with the object not presented to our intuition.
But why cannot the same thing be verified with respect to non-sensible
beings, which alone are the object of intellectual intuitions? I know
not what exception can be taken to these observations, founded as they
are upon observation of internal phenomena, and confirmed by common
sense.
CHAPTER XVI.
VALUE OF PRINCIPLES, INDEPENDENTLY OF SENSIBLE INTUITION.
101. The principle of contradiction, indispensable condition of all
certainty, of all truth, and without which the external world, and
intelligence itself, would become a chaos, offers us a good example of
the intrinsic value of purely intellectual conceptions independent of
sensible intuition.
No determinate idea is united to the conception of being when we affirm
the impossibility of a thing being and not-being at the same time, or
the exclusion of not-being by being; and so far we absolutely abstract
all sensible intuition. Whatever be its object, whatever its nature
and the relations of its existence; be it corporeal or incorporeal,
composite or simple, accident or substance, contingent or necessary,
finite or infinite, always will it be found true that being excludes
not-being; the absolute incompatibility of these two extremes will
always be verified, so that the affirmation of the one is always, in
all cases, and under all imaginable suppositions, the negation of the
other.
This being so, to limit the value of these conceptions to sensible
intuition, would be to destroy the principle of contradiction. The
limitation of the principle is equivalent to its nullification. Its
absolute universality is closely allied to its absolute necessity;
if it be curtailed, it is made contingent; for, if the principle of
contradiction may fail us in one instance, it fails us in all. To
admit the possibility of what is absurd, is to deny its absurdity.
If the contradiction of being and not-being does not exist in every
supposition, it exists in no supposition.
102. The difficulty is to know how the transition from the principle
of contradiction to real truths, is made; because not affirming any
thing determinate in it, but solely the repugnance of yes to no, and
of no to yes, we assert that it would be impossible to affirm either
one of these extremes without denying the other; and as on the other
hand, it is impossible, if we confine ourselves to the principle of
contradiction, for it to include any thing more than the most general
relation between two general ideas, we conclude that it is of itself
alone, perfectly sterile and unable to conduct us to any positive
result. This is all true; but it contradicts in no point what we have
said concerning the intrinsic value of general conceptions.
We have remarked that truths of the purely ideal order have none but a
hypothetical value, and that in order to produce a positive science,
they require facts to which they may apply. We have also remarked,
that experience furnishes these facts, and that every thinking being
possesses one at least, consciousness of itself. Every thinking being
will therefore, provided it discover in its own consciousness facts
to which it may apply it, make a positive use of the principle of
contradiction.
103. Even were we to admit the supposition that there is in our mind
no intuition but the sensible, it could not therefore be concluded
that general principles, and more particularly that of contradiction,
can have no positive value; because, if we suppose these principles
combined with sensible intuition to produce a cognition of other beings
out of the order of sensibility, it would follow that we really know
them, although they were not given to us in immediate intuition. And
this is verified in the human mind, when it rises by discursion to
the cognition of the non-sensible. On the one hand, the data furnished
by experience, and on the other, general and necessary truths, form
a connection constituting a positive science, which guides us with
perfect security to the cognition of objects not subject to immediate
experience.
This theory is so clear, so evident, so rooted in the consciousness of
our own acts, so perfectly in accordance with all that we observe in
the proceedings of the human mind, that it causes us a strange surprise
to meet philosophers, whose erroneous doctrines oblige us to explain
and defend it.
104. The transition from the known to the unknown is a proceeding
characteristic of our understanding; and this transition is impossible
if the reality of every cognition, not referred to an intuition, be
denied. Whatever is presented to us in this latter way, is given to us,
is present to our sight, and we have no necessity of seeking it. If,
therefore, no object be really known, unless offered in intuition, all
intellectual progress becomes impossible: all the advances of our mind
are reduced to combinations of the forms presented to the sensibility,
and even these lead to nothing whenever they cease to be intuitive;
that is, when they no longer relate to determinate objects immediately
perceived. The _Critic of Pure Reason_ is the destruction of all
reason: for it examines itself with suicidal intent, or in order to
prove that it contains nothing positive.
Science cannot survive the reduction of general principles to one
only value relative to sensible intuitions. What we have demonstrated
concerning the principle of contradiction, is _a fortiori_ applicable
to all other principles. If this be not saved, all must perish in the
wreck. Moreover, the very basis of the necessity involved in these
principles is threatened. We know nothing, save that there is within
us a series of phenomena which _seem_ necessary. But what use can we
make of them beyond the subjective order? None at all. Behold us then
in the most perfect skepticism, condemned to simple appearances, with
no means of knowing any reality.
105. No! the human mind is not condemned to so despairing a sterility:
reason is not an empty word; ratiocination is not a puerile play, only
fit to serve as an amusement. In the midst of the prepossessions,
errors, and extravagance of human misery, towers on high that force,
that admirable activity, by which the mind springs beyond itself,
_knows_ what it does not _see_, and _foresees_ what it will one day
_feel_. Nature is veiled to our eyes; impenetrable secrets surround
us; whichever way we turn deep shadows hide the reality of objects:
but through this darkness we discern from afar some scintillation of
light. Notwithstanding the profound silence which reigns over the sea
of beings, whose surges toss us about like imperceptible atoms in the
immensity of the ocean, we hear at times mysterious voices tell us the
course we must keep to reach unknown shores.
CHAPTER XVII.
RELATIONS OF INTUITION WITH THE RANK OF THE PERCEPTIVE BEING.
106. The perfection of intelligence involves extension and clearness
of its intuitions; the more perfect it is, the more intuitive it will
be. The infinite intelligence does not know by discursion, but by
intuition: it does not need to seek objects: it sees them all before
itself. It sees with intuition of identity what belongs to its own
essence, and with intuition of causality every thing that does or can
exist outside of itself. Other minds have an intuition so much the more
perfect as they are more elevated in the order to which they belong; so
that cognition by conceptions indicates an imperfection of intelligence.
107. The relations of one being with other beings will therefore depend
upon the rank it holds in the scale of the universe. God, infinite
being, and the cause of all that does or can exist, has intimate and
immediate relations with the whole universe, considered not only in its
entireness but even in its smallest particles. There is consequently
in God a most perfect representation of all beings taken not only in
their generality, but also in their minutest differences. The Being,
cause of all, does not know objects by vague conceptions, by means of
representations which only show what all beings have in common, but as
he has made their slightest differences, they must be presented to him
with perfect clearness. His cognition is founded upon a reality which
is himself; his understanding does not fluctuate through an ideal and
hypothetical world; but, fixed with clearest intuition upon infinite
reality, he sees all that the infinite being is, and all that it can
produce with its infinite activity. For God there is no experience
proceeding from without, for nothing can exert any influence upon him;
all his experience consists in the knowledge and love of himself.
108. Created beings, occupying a determinate place in the scale of the
universe, relate to it only under certain aspects. Their relations with
their fellow beings are brought to a point of view, to which their
perceptive faculties are subordinated. The representativeness, which
they contain in themselves, must be proportionate to the cognition
that has to produce it. Hence it follows that every intelligent being
will have its representativeness adapted to the functions it has to
exercise in the universe. If the being do not pertain to the order of
intelligences, its perceptive faculties will be limited to sensible
intuitions, in a measure corresponding to the place it is destined to
occupy.
109. We have seen that general ideas and the intuition of determinate
objects fecundate the intellectual faculties. From this we infer that
every intelligence stands in need of intuitions, if its cognitions are
not to be limited to a purely hypothetical order.
The human mind, destined to a union with the body, and to a continual
communication with the corporeal universe, has received the gift of
sensible intuition as the basis of its relations with bodies. The same
is the case with brutes. Sensible intuition has been given to them
because they must have continual relations with the external world:
but, being confined to the functions of animal life, they have no
intuitions superior to the sphere of sensibility, nor do they possess
the force necessary to convert sensible representations into objects of
intellectual combinations.
110. There is an immense difference between brutes and man, in the
scale of beings. Since every intelligence is conscious of itself, and
can fix its attention upon its acts, the human mind knows its own
intuitively, and therefore discovers in itself an intuition superior to
the sensible. Besides these intuitions, we have the power of discursion
by which we form representations, and by them attain to the cognition
of objects not offered immediately to our perception.
Thus, starting with the data furnished by external and internal
experience, and aided by those general principles which involve the
primary conditions of every intelligence and of every being, we are
enabled to penetrate to the world of reality, and to know, although
imperfectly, the assemblage of beings which constitute the universe,
and the infinite cause which made them all.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ASPIRATIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL.
111. A close observation of internal phenomena shows that the human
soul aspires to something far beyond all that it actually possesses.
Not satisfied with the objects given to it in immediate intuition, it
darts forward in pursuit of others of a superior order; and even in
those that are offered to it immediately, it is not contented with the
aspect under which they _appear_, but seeks to know what they _are_.
The purely individual does not satisfy the soul. Nailed to one point
in the immense scale of beings, it is unwilling to limit itself to the
perception of those that are in its environs, and form, as it were,
the atmosphere wherein it must live; it aspires to the cognition of
those that precede and follow it, and seeks to know the connection, to
discover the law from which results the ineffable harmony that presides
over the creation. It finds its purest pleasures in rising from the
sphere where the limitation of its faculties holds it confined. Its
activity is greater than its strength; its desires superior to its
being.
112. We discover the same phenomenon in the sentiment and the will as
in the understanding. Man has, to satisfy his necessities, and provide
for the preservation of the individual and of the race, sensations and
sentiments which direct him to determinate objects; but at the side of
these affections, limited to the sphere in which he is circumscribed,
he experiences sentiments of a more elevated character, which make him
spring beyond his orbit, and absorb, so to speak, his individuality in
the ocean of infinity.
When man comes in contact with nature in herself, despoiled of all
conditions relating to individuals, he experiences an indefinable
sentiment, a kind of foretaste of the infinite. Go into an uninhabited
region and sit down by the sea side; hark to the deafening roar of
the waves breaking at your feet, and the whistling of the winds which
have raised them; with eyes fixed on this immensity, see the azure
line where the vault of heaven unites with the waters of the ocean:
stand on a vast and desert plain, or in the heart of ancient forests;
contemplate in the silence of night the firmament studded with stars,
following their course in tranquillity, as they have followed it for
ages past, and will follow it for ages to come: without effort, or
labor of any kind, abandon yourself to the spontaneous movements of
your soul, and you will see how sentiments spring up in it and move it
to its very centre; how they elevate it above itself, and absorb it, as
it were, in immensity. Its individuality vanishes from its own eyes, as
it feels the harmony presiding over that immense creation of which it
forms but a most insignificant part. In such solemn moments is it that
inspired genius chants the glories of creation, and lifts one corner of
the veil that hides the resplendent throne of the supreme Creator from
the eye of mortals.
113. That calm, grave, and profound sentiment which masters us on such
occasions, has no relation to individual objects; it is an expansion
of the soul at a touch of nature, as the flower expands to the rays of
the sun in the morning, it is a divine attraction by which the author
of all created things raises us above the dust in which we drag out our
brief days. Thus the heart and the understanding harmonize; thus the
one foretastes what the other knows; thus we are warned in different
ways, that the exercise of our faculties is not limited to the narrow
orbit conceded to us upon this earth. Let us be on our guard, lest the
heart be frozen with the coldness of insensibility, and the torch of
the understanding quenched by the devastating blasts of skepticism.
CHAPTER XIX.
ELEMENTS AND VARIETY OF THE CHARACTERS OF SENSIBLE REPRESENTATION.
114. I now come to examine the primitive elements of our mental
combinations. I shall begin with their sensible elements. Extension
enters into every act of representative sensibility; without it nothing
is represented to us, and sensations are reduced to mere affections of
the soul, having no relation to any object.
115. Extension, of itself, abstracted from its limitability, is
susceptible of no combination; it only offers a vague, indefinite,
immense representation, from which nothing distinct of itself results.
But if limitability be joined to extension, figurability, that is, the
infinite field over which geometrical science extends, will result.
116. _Extension_ and _limitability_ are then the two elements of
sensible intuition. These elements may be offered to us in two ways,
either joined to sensations which present to us determinate objects,
or as productions of our own internal activity. If we see the disc
of the moon, we have an intuition of the former class; and if we
study the properties of a circle by producing within ourselves its
representation, this will be an intuition of the latter class.
117. This internal activity, by which, at our will or caprice, we
produce an indefinite number of representations, with an indefinite
variety of forms, is an important phenomenon and one worthy of
attention. It shows us that the productive activity is not limited
to the purely intellectual order, since we detect it in the sensible
order, not in any way whatever, but as unrolled on an infinite scale.
Suppose a right line to be produced to infinity, besides it and in the
same plane, we may infinite other lines; the variety of angles in which
we may consider the position of the different lines will extend to the
infinite; so that with right lines alone, the productive activity in
the order of sensibility will know no limit. If we substitute curves
for right lines, their combinations in form, in nature, in their
respective positions and relations with determinate axes, will likewise
be infinite: so that without quitting the sensible order, we discover
within ourselves a force productive of infinite representations, and
one needing no elements besides terminable or figurable extension.
118. The representative sensible faculty develops itself sometimes by
the presence of an object; at other times, spontaneously, without any
dependence on the will; and finally, at other times, in consequence of
a free act. This is not the place to examine in what way the phenomenon
of representation is connected with the affections of the corporeal
organs; at present, we propose only to designate and explain facts in
the ideological sphere, absolutely abstracting their physiological
aspect.
Among the sensible representations just classified, which we may call
_passive_, _spontaneous_, and _free_, there are differences worthy of
observation.
119. Passive representation is given to the soul, independently of
its activity. If we be placed in presence of an object, with our eyes
open, it will be impossible not to see it, or even not to see it in
a certain manner, if we do not change the direction of our eyesight
or other condition of vision. For this reason, the soul seems, in the
exercise of its senses, to be purely passive, since its representations
necessarily depend on the conditions to which its corporeal organs in
their relation to objects, are subject.
120. Spontaneous representation, or the faculty productive of sensible
representations, seems also, since it operates independently of
external objects and of the will, to be more or less passive, and its
exercise to depend upon organic affections. And the fact that these
sensations are wont to exist without any order, or at most, if they
are recollections of old sensations, with that only which they had at
another time, appears to indicate it. It is also worthy of note that
these representations are sometimes offered to us, in spite of all the
efforts of the will to dissipate and forget them: some are so tenacious
as for a long time to triumph over all the resistance of freewill.
It is not easy to explain this phenomenon without recurring to organic
causes, which, on determinate occasions, produce the same effect upon
the soul, as the impressions of the external senses. It is certain that
the internal representation reaches, in certain cases, so high a point
of vividness, that the subject confounds it with the impressions of the
senses. This can only be explained by saying that the interior organic
affection has become so powerful, as to be equivalent to that which the
impression of an object operating upon the external organ, could have
caused.
121. In this spontaneous production it is to be remarked that present
representations do not always correspond with others previously
received; but a power of combination is developed in them from which
result imaginary objects entirely new. This combination is sometimes
exercised in a perfectly blind manner, and then follow extravagant
results; but, at other times, this activity subjected to certain
conditions produces, independently of free will, objects artistically
beautiful and sublime.
Genius is nothing else than the spontaneity of the imagination and
sentiment, developed in subordination to the conditions of the
beautiful. Artists, not gifted with genius, do not lack strength of
will to produce works of genius; nor are they wanting in imagination
to reproduce a beautiful object if they have once seen it; they do not
lack discernment and taste to distinguish and admire beautiful objects,
nor are they ignorant of the rules of art or of all that can be said to
explain the character of beauty; what they lack is that instinctively
fine spontaneity which develops itself in the most recondite
sinuosities of the soul, and far from being dependent upon the free
will of its possessor, directs and domineers over him, pursues him in
sleep as in the hours of waking, in the time of recreation as in that
of business, and often consumes the very existence of the privileged
man, as a furious fire bursts the sides of the frail cage that holds it.
122. Free production occurs when representations are offered to us by
command of our will, and under the conditions it prescribes, as in
works of art, and in the combinations of those figures which constitute
the object of the science of geometry.
123. This _a priori_ construction cannot be referred to a type existing
in our imagination; since, as this type would then be the sensible
representation itself, it would not need to be constructed. How then
is it possible to form a representation of which we have not already
the image? It is not enough to possess the elements, that is, figurable
extension, since with them infinite figures may be constructed;
something else then is needed, something to serve as a rule, in order
that the desired representation may result.
For the better understanding of this, I would observe that sensible
intuitions are allied to general conceptions, by whose aid they may
be reconstructed. Although, in reality, no sensible representation
is offered to us, of any figure whatsoever, for example, a regular
hexagon; the conception formed of the ideas, _six_, _line_, _equality
of angles_, is all that we need to produce in our interior the sensible
representation of the hexagon, and to construct it within us, if we
require it.
This shows us that the free activity producing determinate sensible
representations is based upon general conceptions, which, though
independent of sensibility, refer to it in an indeterminate manner.
Hence, also, it follows, that the understanding may, if it observe the
conditions to which the elements furnished by sensibility in their
respective cases, are subject, conceive the sensible indeterminately,
without the intellectual act being referred to any determinate
intuition.
124. If we analyze the object of these general conceptions, referred
to sensible intuition, also considered in general, the understanding,
while occupied in them, seems to be taken up with things not distinctly
offered to it, but retained only by certain signs; confident, however,
that it can develop whatever they involve, and contemplate it with
perfect clearness.
CHAPTER XX.
INTERMEDIATE REPRESENTATIONS BETWEEN SENSIBLE INTUITION AND THE
INTELLECTUAL ACT.
125. The question now occurs, whether the understanding, in order to
perceive the geometrical relations offered in sensible intuition,
does or does not need some intermediate representations which bring
it into contact with the sensible order?[10] Such a necessity would,
at first sight, seem to exist, since, as the understanding is a
non-sensible faculty, sensible elements cannot be its immediate object.
But on maturer examination, it seems more probable that there is no
necessity of any thing intermediate, except some sign to connect the
sensible elements, and to show the point where they must unite, and the
conditions to which they are subject. As this sign may, however, be a
word, or something else, susceptible of a sensible representation, its
mediation will not at all solve the difficulty; since the question will
always recur: How is the understanding placed in communication with the
sensible sign?
[10] See Chap. VI.
This difficulty arises from the faculty of the soul being considered,
not only as distinct, but also, as separate, and as exercising each one
of its faculties in its own peculiar and exclusive sphere, entirely
isolated from that of all others. This mode of considering the
faculties of the soul, though favorable to the classification of their
operations, does not accord with the teachings of experience.
It cannot be denied that we observe within ourselves, affections and
operations, very unlike each other, and arising from distinct objects,
and producing very different results. This has led to a distinction
of faculties, and in some degree, to a separation of their functions,
so as to prevent them from mixing together and being confounded. But
there can be no doubt that all the affections and operations of the
soul are, as consciousness reveals, bound to a common centre. Whatever
becomes of the distinction of the faculties among themselves, it is
very certain, as consciousness tells us, that it is one and the same
being that thinks, feels, desires, acts, or suffers: it is certain
that this same consciousness reveals to us the intimate communication
of all the operations of the soul. We instantaneously reflect upon the
impression received; we instantaneously experience an agreeable or
disagreeable sensation in consequence of a reflection which occurs to
us: we reflect upon the will; we seek or repudiate the object of our
thought; there is, so to speak, within us a boiling spring of phenomena
of different kinds, all interlinked, modified, produced, reproduced,
and mutually influenced by each other in their incessant communication.
We are conscious of all these; we encounter them all in one common
field, which is the subject that experiences them. What necessity,
then, is there to imagine intermediate beings in order to bring the
faculties of the soul into communication with each other? Why may it
not with its activity, called understanding, occupy itself immediately
with sensible representations and affections and with all that is in
its consciousness? Supposing this consciousness in its indivisible
unity to comprise all the variety of internal phenomena, it does not
therefore follow that the intellectual activity of the soul cannot be
referred to whatever it contains of active or receptive, without its
being necessary to imagine species to serve as courtiers between the
faculties, to announce to one what has taken place in the other.
126. The _acting intellect_ of the Aristotelians, admissible in sound
philosophy so far as it denotes an activity of the mind applied to
sensible representations, does not seem alike admissible, if it be
supposed to be the producer of new representations distinct from
the intellectual act itself. The understanding is all activity; the
receptivity of the soul has nothing to do with it, but to proportion
its materials; and the conceptions elaborated in presence of these
materials, seem to be nothing else than the exercise of this same
activity, subject on the one hand to the conditions required by the
thing understood, and subordinated on the other hand to the general
conditions of every intelligence.
127. I do not mean to say that the intellectual act does not refer
to any object. I replace the idea by other acts of the soul, or by
affections or representations of some kind or other, whether active
or passive. This being so, if I am asked, for example, what is the
immediate object of the intellectual act perceiving of determinate
sensible intuition, I reply that it is the intuition itself. If the
difficulty of explaining the union of such different things be urged,
I answer: first, that this union exists in the unity of consciousness,
as the internal sense attests: second, that the same difficulty
militates against those who pretend that the understanding elaborates
an intelligible species, which it takes from the sensible intuition;
and how, I may ask, does the understanding place itself in contact
with this intuition when it would elaborate its intelligible species.
If this immediate contact be impossible in the one case, it will be
equally so in the other; and if they concede it to be possible in their
own case, they cannot deny it to be possible in ours also.
When the understanding refers to no determinate intuition, but only
to sensible intuitions in general, its immediate object is their
possibility also in general, subject to the conditions of the object
considered in general, and to those of every intelligence; among which,
the principle of contradiction holds a primary place.
CHAPTER XXI.
DETERMINATE AND INDETERMINATE IDEAS.
128. We must, under pain of falling into sensism, by limiting the
understanding to the perception and combination of objects presented by
sensibility, admit other than intellectual acts referable to sensible
objects in general. And what, in this case, is the object of the
intellectual act, is a question as difficult as it is interesting.
129. The pure understanding can exercise its functions either upon
determinate or indeterminate ideas; that is, upon ideas which contain
something determinate, something realizable in a being, that is or
may be offered to our perception, or upon ideas which represent
general relations, without application to any object. Care should be
taken not to confound general with indeterminate, or particular with
determinate ideas. Every intermediate idea is a general idea, but not
_vice versa_. The idea of _being_ is general and indeterminate; that
of _intelligence_ is general but determinate. The particular idea
refers to an individual; the determinate to a property, and it does not
cease to be determinate although we abstract all relation in it to an
existing individual. This distinction opens the way to considerations
of the highest importance.
130. When the understanding proceeds by indeterminate conceptions, its
principal object seems to be _being_ in its greatest universality. This
is the radical and fundamental idea, round which all other ideas are
grouped. From the idea of being springs the principle of contradiction,
with its infinite applications to every class of objects; from it also
flow the ideas of substance and accidents, of cause and effect, of the
necessary and the contingent, and every thing contained in the science
of ontology, called for this very reason _ontology_, or the science of
being.
131. There is nothing in those conceptions which express the general
relations of all beings, to characterize them until they quit their
purely metaphysical sphere and descend into the field of reality.
In order to be able to conceive of a real being, we require it to be
presented to us with some property. Being and not-being, substance
and accidents, cause and effect, are, when combined with something
positive, highly fruitful ideas; but taken in general, with nothing
determinate assigned to them, they do not offer us any existing, or
even possible object.
132. The idea of being presents us that of a _thing_ in the abstract;
but if we would conceive of this as existing or as possible, we must
imagine this thing to be something with characteristic properties.
Whenever we hear an existing thing spoken of, we instinctively ask what
it is, and what is its nature. God is essentially being, is infinite
being; but nothing would be represented to our mind were we to conceive
of him only as of being, and not also as intelligent, active, free
being endowed with all the other perfections of his infinite essence.
133. The idea of substance offers us that of a permanent being, which
does not, like a modification, inhere in another. This idea, taken
in its generality without other determination than that added to the
idea of being, by that of subsistence, offers us nothing real or
realizable. Permanence in general, subsistence by itself, non-inherence
in a subject, do not suffice to enable a substance to exist or to be
possible; some characteristic mark, some attribute is also needed, as
corporeal, intelligent, free, or any other you please, to determine the
general idea of substance.
134. The same may be said of the idea of cause, or productive
activity. An active thing, in general, offers us nothing either real
or possible. In order to conceive an existing activity, we must refer
to a determinate activity; the idea of acting, or of being able to
act, in general, does not suffice; we must represent it to ourselves,
as exercising itself in one way or another, referring to determinate
objects, producing, not beings in general, but beings having their own
characteristic attributes. True, we do not need to know what these
attributes are; but we do need to know that they exist with their
determinateness.
The most universal cause conceivable is God, the first and infinite
cause; and although we do not conceive of him as of cause in the
abstract, regarding the simple idea of productive activity, but
we attach to the general idea of cause the ideas of free will and
intelligence. When we say that God is omnipotent, we assign an infinite
sphere to his power; we do not know the characteristic attributes
of all the beings which can be created by this infinite activity;
but we are certain that every existing or possible being must have
a determinate nature; and we do not conceive it to be possible for
a being to be produced, which, without any determination, would be
nothing but being.
135. We do not meet this determination, indispensable as it is
to us, if we would conceive of the existence or possibility of a
being, in indeterminate ideas, but must take it from experience;
wherefore, if our understanding were limited to the combination of
those relations offered in indeterminate conceptions, it would be
condemned to a perfectly sterile science. We have already seen (Chap.
XIV.) that the absolute non-communication of the real with the
ideal order is impossible if the intelligible order be not deprived
of all consciousness of itself. It is not enough to know, that such
a communication exists, but we must ascertain in what points it is
verified, and how far it extends.
136. Before passing to this investigation, we would observe, that the
doctrine explained in this chapter is not to be confounded with that
of the fourteenth chapter. There, it was shown that general ideas of
themselves alone, have only a purely hypothetical value, and lead
to nothing because they are not combined with any thing positive,
furnished by experience; here, we have proved that indeterminate ideas
of being, substance, and cause, do not of themselves alone suffice
to enable us to conceive of any thing either existing or possible,
if they be not accompanied by some determinate idea, which gives a
character to the general ideas. There, a hypothetical value, with
respect to their existence, was allotted to general ideas: here, we
affirm it to be necessary for these ideas to be accompanied by some
property that shall render them capable of constituting an essence,
at least in the possible order. These are very different things, and
must not be confounded; hence the importance of not forgetting the
distinction between general and indeterminate, and between particular
and determinate ideas.
CHAPTER XXII.
LIMITS OF OUR INTUITION.
137. Could we assign limits to the field of experience, and
determine exactly how much they inclose, we could also determine the
characteristics by which a being may be presented to us as existing or
as possible.
138. Passive sensibility, active sensibility, understanding, and will,
are, if we be not mistaken, all that our understanding contains; and
this is why we cannot conceive of any attribute characteristic of
being, except these four. Let us examine these, each in its turn, and
with the care required by the importance of the results which will
follow this demarcation.
139. By passive sensibility we understand the form under which bodies
are presented. As we have already explained it in several places, this
form is reducible to figured or bounded extension.
It cannot be denied that this attribute contains a true determination,
as there is nothing more determinate than objects presented to our
senses, with extension, and figure, and other properties annexed
to these fundamental attributes. Motion and impenetrability are
determinations which accompany extension, or rather they are relations
of extension. To us, motion is the change of the situations of a
body in space, or the alteration in the positions of the extension
of a body, with respect to the extension of space. Impenetrability
is the reciprocal exclusion of two extensions. The idea of solid and
liquid, of hard and soft, and other similar ideas, express relations
of the extension of a body to their admission, with greater or less
resistance, of the extension of another in one and the same place.
Questions upon the nature of extension have no place here. Extension
is, so far as we are concerned, a determinate object, presented to us
in the clearest intuition. The attribute of passive sensibility has
ever been regarded as one of the most characteristic determinations;
and this is why it has been made to enter as a fundamental
classification in the scale of beings. The distinctions of corporeal
and incorporeal, of material and immaterial, of sensible and
insensible, are of as frequent use in ordinary language as in that of
the schools; and it is obvious that the words, corporeal, material, and
sensible, although not perfectly synonymous under some aspects, are
usually taken to be such, in so far as they express a kind of beings,
whose characteristic properties are those forms under which they are
offered to our senses.
140. Active sensibility is the faculty of feeling; and is to us an
object of immediate experience, since we have it within us. From the
clear presence of sensitive acts, we may easily conceive what feeling
is in other subjects than ourselves. We have no consciousness of what
passes in another subject when it sees; but we know what it is to see;
it is in others the same as in ourselves. In our own consciousness that
of others is portrayed. We well know what is spoken of, when we hear a
sensitive being mentioned; and this too by a perfectly determinate, not
by a vague idea. If the question be raised, whether other senses are
possible, the idea of a being endowed with them, loses a certain amount
of its determinateness: our understanding has no intuition of what it
would be; it discourses upon the reality or possibility by means of
general conceptions.
141. Understanding, or the force of conceiving and combining,
independently of the sensible order, is another of the data furnished
by our own experience. As this is a fact of consciousness, we know it
by intuition, not by abstract ideas; it is the exercise of an activity
which we feel within ourselves; it is the _me_ which we ourselves are.
This activity, by reason of its very union, its identity with the
subject perceiving it, is present to us in so intimate a manner that we
find no difficulty in perceiving it.
The idea of understanding is intuitive to us, not indeterminate, since
it presents an object which is immediately given to our perception in
our soul itself. When we speak of understanding, we fix our views upon
what passes within ourselves, and we see greater or less perfection
in the scale of intelligent beings portrayed in the gradation of the
cognitions which we experience within ourselves; and when we would
conceive of a far higher understanding, we enlarge and perfect the type
we have discovered within ourselves; just as we represent to ourselves
greater, more perfect, and more beautiful sensible objects, than those
we see, without quitting the sphere of sensibility, but making use of
the elements it furnishes to us, and enlarging and embellishing them so
as to attain to that ideal type already conceived of in our imagination.
142. The will, although an inseparable companion of the understanding,
and even necessary to its existence, is nevertheless a very different
faculty from it; for the will offers to our intuition a series of
phenomena very unlike the phenomena of the understanding. To understand
is not to will; a thing may be known, and yet not willed. One and the
same act of the understanding may unite at various times, or in diverse
subjects, very different if not contradictory acts of the will; to will
and to not will; or inclination and aversion.
The cognition of that series of phenomena called _acts of the will_,
is not a general but a particular, not an abstract but an intuitive,
cognition. What necessity is there of abstraction or discursion to
ascertain what we will or do not will, what we love or what we abhor?
This cognition is intuitive, so far as the acts of our own will are
concerned; and although we have no immediate intuition of what the
will of others is, we know perfectly well what passes in them, from
seeing it in some degree manifested by what we ourselves experience.
When we hear the acts of another's will spoken of, have we, by chance,
any difficulty in conceiving the object in question? Are we obliged
to proceed discursively by abstract ideas? Certainly not! The same
occurs in others as in ourselves. When they will, or do not will, they
experience just what we ourselves experience when we will or do not
will. The consciousness of our will is the image of all others existing
or possible. We conceive that will to be more or less perfect, which
unites in a higher or lower degree the actual or possible perfections
of our own: and if we would conceive a will of infinite perfection, we
must elevate to an infinite degree the actual or possible perfection
which we discover in the finite will.
143. When the Sacred Text tells us that man is created to the image
and likeness of God, it teaches us a truth highly luminous, whether
considered in a purely philosophical or in a supernatural aspect. We
discover in our soul, in this image of infinite intelligence, not
only a multitude of general ideas which carry us beyond the limits
of sensibility, but also an admirable representation wherein we
contemplate, as in a mirror, every thing that passes in that infinite
sea which cannot be known by immediate intuition so long as we remain
in this life. This representation is imperfect, is enigmatical; but
it is a true representation: in its minutest particles, infinitely
increased, we may contemplate the infinite; its feeblest brilliance
reflects back to us the splendor of infinity. The slight spark struck
from the flint may lead the imagination to that ocean of fire,
discovered by astronomers in the orb of day.
CHAPTER XXIII.
OF THE NECESSITY INVOLVED IN IDEAS.
144. In all ideas, even in those that relate to contingent facts, there
is something of the necessary, something from which science may spring,
but something which cannot emanate from experience, however multiplied
we suppose it. Every induction resulting from experience is confined to
a limited number of facts,--a number, which, even if augmented by all
the experience of all men of all ages, would still remain infinitely
below universality, which extends to all that is possible.
Moreover, however little we reflect upon the certainty of the truths
intimately connected with experience, such as are arithmetical and
geometrical truths, we cannot fail to perceive that the confidence with
which we build upon them is not founded upon induction, but that we
assent to them independently of any particular fact, and consider their
truth as absolutely necessary, although we cannot verify it by the
touchstone of experience.
145. The verification of ideas by facts is in many cases impossible,
because the weakness of our perception and of our senses, and the
coarseness of the instruments we use, fail to render us certain that
the facts correspond exactly to the ideas. It is sometimes absolutely
impossible to establish this proof, since geometrical truth supposes
conditions such as cannot be realized in practice.
146. Let us apply these observations to the simplest truths of
geometry. Certainly no one will doubt the solidity of the proof called
superposition: that is to say, if one of two lines, or surfaces, be
placed upon the other, and they exactly correspond, they will be equal.
This truth cannot depend upon experience: first, because experience
is limited to a certain number of cases, whereas the proposition
is general. To say that one serves for all is to say that there
is a general principal, independent of experience, since, without
recognizing an intrinsic necessity in this truth, the universal could
in no other way be deduced from the particular. Secondly, because even
where experience avails, it is impossible for us to make it exact,
since superposition made in the most delicate manner imaginable, can
never attain to geometrical exactness, which repudiates the minutest
difference in any point.
It is an elementary theorem, that the three angles of a triangle are
equal to two right angles. This truth does not rest upon experience:
first, because the universal cannot be deduced from the particular;
secondly, because, however delicate be the instruments for measuring
angles, they cannot measure them with geometrical exactness; thirdly,
because geometry supposes conditions which we cannot realize in
practice; lines have no thickness, and the vertices of angles are
indivisible points.
147. If general principles depended upon experience they would cease
to be general, and would be limited to a certain number of cases.
Neither would their enunciation be absolute, even for the cases
already observed; for it would of necessity be reduced to what had
been observed, that is to say, to a little more or less, but never be
perfect exactness. Consequently we could not assert that the three
angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles; all that
we could say would be, that so far as our experience goes, we have
observed that in all triangles the three angles are very nearly equal
to two right angles.
This would obviously destroy all necessary truths; and even
mathematical truths would be no more certain than the reports of adepts
in any profession who recount to us their observations concerning their
respective objects.
148. There can be no science without necessary truths; and even the
cognition of contingent truths would become exceedingly difficult
without them. How do we collect the facts furnished by observation, and
adjust them? Is it not by applying certain general truths to them, as,
for example, those of numeration? Otherwise we could have no perfect
confidence in them, nor in the results of observation.
149. Human reason cannot live, if it abandon this treasure of necessary
truths which constitute its common patrimony. Individual reason could
take no more than a few short steps, overwhelmed as it constantly
would be with the mass of observations; distracted unceasingly by the
verifications to which it would always have to recur; in want of some
light to serve for all objects; and prohibited ever from simplifying,
by uniting the rays of science in a common centre.
General reason would also cease to be, and men would no longer
understand each other: every one would be confined to his own
experience: and since there would be in the experiences of all men,
nothing necessary, nothing to connect them, there would be no unity
in them all together: all the sciences would be a field of confusion,
to which all restoration of order would be utterly impossible. No
language could have been formed; or even if formed could be preserved.
We meet in the simplest enunciations of language, as well as in the
complication of a long discourse, an abundance of general and necessary
truths, which serve as the woof for the weaving-in of contingent truths.
150. To inquire, therefore, if there are necessary truths, is to
inquire, if individual, if general reason exists; if what we call
reason, and discover in all men, really exists, or is but a fantastical
illusion. This reason does exist: to deny it is to deny ourselves: not
to wish to admit it, is to reject the testimony of our consciousness,
which assures us that it is in the depth of our soul; it is to make
impotent efforts to destroy a conviction irresistibly imposed by nature.
151. And here I would remark that this community of reason among all
men of all ages and of all climes; this admirable unity, discoverable
in the midst of so much variety; this fundamental accord which neither
the diversity nor the contradiction of views can destroy, evidently
proves that all human souls have one common origin; that thought is not
a work of chance; that, besides human intelligences, there is another
which serves as their support, illuminates them, and has, from the
first moment of their existence, endowed them with all the faculties
needed to perceive, and to know what they perceived. The admirable
order which reigns throughout the material world, the concert, the
unity of plan discoverable in it, are not a more conclusive proof of
the existence of God, than are the order, the concert, the unity,
offered by reason in its assent to necessary truths.
For our own part, we ingenuously confess, that we can discover no more
solid, more conclusive, or more clear proof of the existence of God,
than that deduced from the world of intelligences. Beyond this it has
another advantage, which is, that it takes for its point of departure
the act most immediate to us, the consciousness of our own acts. It is
true, the proof best adapted to the capacity of ordinary men, is the
one founded on the admirable order reigning over the corporeal world:
but this is because they are unaccustomed to meditate upon insensible
objects, upon what passes within themselves; wherefore it is that they
abound more in direct cognitions than in power of reflection.
The atheist asks how we can be certain of the existence of God, and
demands an apparition of the divinity: very well, this apparition
exists, not without, but within us: and although it may be pardonable
for men of little reflection not to perceive it, most certainly it
is not pardonable for those who pretend to be adepts in metaphysical
science, not even to endeavor to discover it. The system of
Malebranche, which makes men see every thing in God, cannot be
sustained, but it shows a very profound thinker.
CHAPTER XXIV.
EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL REASON.
152. General truths have some relation to particular truths; for since
they are not a vain illusion, they must of necessity be connected with
some object either existing or possible. Whatever exists is particular;
not even possible being can be conceived of, if it be not, so to speak,
particularized in the regions of possibility. God himself, being by
essence, is not a being in abstract, but an infinite reality. In him,
the general idea of the plenitude of being, of all perfection, of
infinity, is, so to speak, particularized.
General truths would then be vain illusions did they not refer to
something particular either existing or possible. Without this
relation, cognition would be a purely subjective phenomenon; science
would have no object; knowledge would be had, but there would be
nothing known.
The appearance of knowing is never offered to us as a purely subjective
fact; that is to say, when we think we know, we think we know something
either within or without us, according to the matters which occupy us.
Supposing, then, the phenomenon of cognition to be purely subjective,
and to become objective for itself, we should have what would
constantly lead us into error; for the human reason would be infected
with a radical vice, which would oblige it to view these phenomena as
means of perceiving the truth, whereas they are only eternal sources of
deception.
153. There may arise a doubt in this correspondence of general with
particular truth, as to which is the principle; that is, whether
general truth is truth by means of particular truths, or the contrary.
"All the diameters of a circle are equal;" this is a general truth.
If we suppose a circle to exist, all its diameters will be equal. We
have already seen that the certainty of the general truth neither
does nor can reach us through the particular truth; but neither, on
the other hand, does the particular stand in need of the general; so
that it seems, that even when we abstract all intelligence, capable of
perceiving this general truth, the existing circle will not cease to
have all its diameters equal.
154. Moreover, if the truth fail in one single instance, it cannot be
general; but the particular may be true although it fail in general.
The equality of the diameters of an existing circle is, then, a
condition necessary to the general truth; but the general truth is not
necessary to the equality of the diameters. It is true in general that
all diameters are equal, since this is verified in all either existing
or possible, and the general truth is only the expression of this
verification; but yet it does not appear that the diameters, in any one
particular case, are equal by reason of the general truth. It is true
that one particular whole is greater than one of its parts, although
considered in itself, abstracted from all general truth; but it would
not be true that the whole is greater than one of its parts, if in any
one particular whole, the axiom should fail.
155. It would seem that from these observations we could infer that
the truth of principles depends upon the truth of facts, and not _vice
versa_. Nevertheless, if we reflect more upon this matter, we shall
discover that truth is not based upon particular facts, but upon
something superior to them.
I. We cannot from a particular fact infer a universal truth; but from
universal truth we can infer the truth of all particular existing or
possible facts. The reason why this consequence is legitimate is found
in the necessary connection of the predicate and subject; and this
necessity cannot be discovered in particular facts of their own nature
contingent.
II. Neither can the reason of this necessity be found in the simple
proposition enunciating it, since this establishes nothing, but only
expresses. The enunciation is true, because it expresses the truth; but
the existence of the truth does not depend upon its enunciation.
III. Nor can it depend upon our ideas; for these are not productive of
things; all imaginable perceptions cannot change one iota of reality.
The idea may express a thing, but does not make it. The relation of
ideas with each other, in so far avails as it expresses the relation
of objects; if for one moment we permit ourselves to doubt this
correspondence, our reason becomes reduced to utter impotence, to a
vain illusion of that which ought to be of no account. The properties
of the triangle are contained in the idea we have of it; but if this
idea were purely subjective, if it had no exact or approximate relation
to any real or possible object, it and all that is built upon it, would
be mere phenomena of our mind, would signify absolutely nothing, and
would have no more weight than the ravings of a madman.
IV. The reason of necessary truths can in nowise be discovered in our
understanding; every one perceives them, without thinking of others or
even of himself. Truth existed before any individual; and when we shall
have disappeared, it will continue the same, it will lose nothing.
V. All men, although they neither do nor can agree, perceive certain
necessary truths; all individual intelligences, therefore, have drunk
at some common fountain; therefore universal reason exists.
CHAPTER XXV.
IN WHAT DOES UNIVERSAL REASON CONSIST?
156. What is universal reason? If we consider it as a simple idea, as
an abstraction from individual reason, as something separate from them,
but not real, we strike upon the very rock we try to shun. We endeavor
to assign a cause of the unity of human reason; and appeal to universal
reason; and then to explain in what universal reason consists, we recur
to an abstraction from individual reason. Evidently, this is a vicious
circle; we place the cause of a fact so fruitful in an abstraction, in
a generalization of the very thing we have to explain; we assign to a
great effect a cause totally insufficient, which has no existence out
of our understanding, and which only grows out of the very effect whose
origin we are investigating.
157. A real fact must have a real principle; a universal phenomenon
must have a universal cause; a phenomenon independent of all finite
intelligence must spring from some cause independent of all finite
intelligence. There is, then, a universal reason, the origin of all
finite reason, the source of all truth, the light of all intelligences,
the bond of all beings. There is, then, above all phenomena, above
all finite individuals, a being, in which is found the reason of all
beings, a great unity, in which is found the bond of all order, and of
all the community of other beings.
The unity, therefore, of all human reason affords a complete
demonstration of the existence of God. The universal reason is; but
universal reason is an unmeaning word, unless it denote an intelligent,
active being, a being by essence, the producer of all beings, of all
intelligences, the cause of all, and the light of all.
158. _Impersonal reason_, of which some philosophers speak, is an
unmeaning word. Either there exists a reason distinct from ours, or
there does not: if it does exist, it is not impersonal; if it does not
exist, it is impossible to explain the community of human reason: this
community would be to us a phenomenon, which we might call impersonal
reason, or any thing else we pleased, without it therefore being
possible for us to assign it any origin: it would be an effect without
a cause; a fact without a sufficient reason.
159. The understanding extends to a world of possibilities, and there
discovers a connection of necessary relations, some of dependence,
others of contradiction: but if there were no reality whereon to found
the possibility, this would be an absurdity; if nothing existed,
nothing would be possible.
Upon nothing, nothing can be founded; consequently, not even
possibility. The connection of necessary relations which we discover in
possible beings, must have a primitive type to which they refer: but in
nothing there are no types.
160. The assemblage of human understandings cannot establish
possibility. No one of them considered isolately is necessary to
general truth; and all together cannot have what no one of them has.
We conceive necessary truth, absolutely abstracted from the human
understanding: individual understandings appear and disappear, but work
no change in the relations of possible beings: on the contrary, the
understanding needs, in order to exercise its functions, a collection
of pre-existing truths, and without them it cannot work.
What any one individual understanding requires, all require. Their
union does not increase the strength of each one: since this
union is nothing more than an assemblage formed in our mind, and
may not correspond to any thing in reality except the individual
understandings, and their respective strength.
161. Necessary truths, therefore, exist before human reason; but their
pre-existence is an unmeaning word, if they be not referred to a being,
the origin of all reality, and the foundation of all possibility. There
is then no impersonal reason properly so called; there is a community
of reason in so far as one and the same light illumines all finite
intelligences; God the creator of them all.
CHAPTER XXVI.
REMARKS ON THE REAL FOUNDATION OF PURE POSSIBILITY.
162. Since the argument proving the necessity of a being in which is
laid the foundation of all the relations in the possible order, is one
of the most transcendental in all metaphysics, and at the same time one
of the most difficult to be perfectly understood, we judge it advisable
to enlarge somewhat upon the considerations thrown out in the preceding
chapter.
An example, in which we undertake to establish the possibility of
things, independently of a being in which is found the reason of all,
will serve our purpose better than abstract reflections.
163. "Two circles of equal diameters are equal." This proposition is
evidently true. Let us analyze its meaning. The proposition refers
to the possible order, and abstracts absolutely the existence of the
circles and of the diameters. No case is excepted; all are comprised in
the proposition.
164. Neither does the truth refer to our mode of understanding; but on
the contrary, we conceive it as independent of our thought. Were we
asked, what would become of this truth were we not to exist, we should
without hesitation reply that it would be the same, that it acquired
nothing by our existence, that it would lose nothing by our extinction.
If we believed this truth to depend in any way upon us, it would cease
to be what it is, it would no longer be a necessary but a contingent
truth.
165. Nor is the corporeal world indispensable to the truth and
necessity of the proposition: on the contrary, if we suppose no body
to exist, the proposition would lose none of its truth, necessity, or
universality.
166. What would happen, if, withdrawing all bodies, all sensible
representations, and even all intelligences, we should imagine absolute
and universal nothing? We see the truth of the proposition even on this
supposition; for it is impossible for us to hold it to be false. On
every supposition, our understanding sees a connection which it cannot
destroy: the condition once established, the result will infallibly
follow.
167. An absolutely necessary connection, founded neither on us, nor
on the external world, which exists before any thing we can imagine,
and subsists after we have annihilated all by an effort of our
understanding, must be based upon something, it cannot have nothing for
its origin: to say this, would be to assert a necessary fact without a
sufficient reason.
168. It is true that in the proposition now before us, nothing real is
affirmed; but if we reflect carefully, we find even here the greatest
difficulty for those who deny a real foundation to pure possibility.
What is remarkable in this phenomenon, is precisely this, that our
understanding feels itself forced to give its assent to a proposition
which affirms an absolutely necessary connection without any relation
to an existing object. It is conceivable that an intelligence affected
by other beings may know their nature and relations; but it is not so
easy of comprehension how it can discover their nature and relations in
an absolutely necessary manner, when it abstracts all existence, when
the ground upon which the eyes of the understanding are fixed, is the
abyss of nothing.
169. We deceive ourselves when we imagine it possible to abstract
all existence. Even when we suppose our mind to have lost sight of
every thing, a very easy supposition, granting that we find in our
consciousness the contingency of our being, the understanding still
perceives a possible order, and imagines it to be all occupied with
pure possibility, independent of a being on which it is based. We
repeat, that this is an illusion, which disappears so soon as we
reflect upon it. In pure nothing, nothing is possible; there are
no relations, no connections of any kind; in nothing there are no
combinations, it is a ground upon which nothing can be pictured.
170. The objectivity of our ideas and the perception of necessary
relations in a possible order, reveal a communication of our
understanding with a being on which is founded all possibility. This
possibility can be explained on no supposition except that which makes
the communication consist in the action of God giving to our mind
faculties perceptive of the necessary relation of certain ideas, based
upon necessary being, and representative of his infinite essence.
171. Without this communication the order of pure possibility means
nothing: none of the combinations referable to it contain any truth:
and this ruins all science. There can be no necessary relations if
there be no necessity upon which they are based, and where they are
represented; if this condition be wanting, all cognitions must refer to
something actually existing; they are even limited to what _appears_,
to what affects us, and they cannot affirm any thing beyond the actual
order. Science, in this supposition, is unworthy of the name; it is
nothing but a collection of facts, gathered together in the field of
experience; we cannot say: "This will be, or will not be; this may be,
or may not be;" we are necessarily limited to what is; or, rather,
we ought to confine ourselves to that which affects us by simple
appearances, and never be able to rise above the sphere of individual
phenomena.
CHAPTER XXVII.
INDIVIDUAL AND INTELLECTUAL PHENOMENA EXPLAINED BY THE UNIVERSAL
SUBSISTING REASON.
172. Starting from the phenomena observable in individual reason,
we have arrived at universal reason. Let us, so to speak, make the
counterproof; taking this universal subsisting reason, let us see if
individual reason in itself and in its phenomena can be explained by it.
I. What are necessary truths? They are the relations of beings, such
as they are represented in the being which contains the plenitude of
being. These necessary truths, then, stand in need of no individual
finite reason; their reason is found in an infinite being.
II. The essence of all beings, abstracted from all particular beings,
is something real, not in itself, and separately, but in the being
which contains the plenitude of every thing.
III. On this supposition science is not full of empty words, nor of
mere creations of our reason, but of necessary relations represented in
a necessary being, and known by it from all eternity.
IV. Science is possible; there is some necessity in contingent objects;
their destruction does not destroy the eternal types of all being, the
only object of science.
V. All individual reason, sprung from the same source, participates in
one same light, lives one same life, has one and the same patrimony, is
indivisible in the creative principle, but divisible in creatures. The
unity, then, or rather the uniformity or community of human reason is
possible, is necessary.
VI. The reason, then, of all men is united by the infinite
intelligence: God then is in us; and the most profound philosophical
truth is contained in these words of the Apostle: "In ipso vivimus,
movemur, et sumus."
VII. All philosophy, therefore, which seeks to explain reason, by
isolating it, considers only particular phenomena unconnected by a
general bond, pretends to construct the magnificent fabric of our
reason upon particular facts alone, but does not appeal to a common
origin, to one source of light whence all lights have sprung, is
a false philosophy, is superficial, at war with theory, and in
contradiction with facts. When we reflect upon this, we can but pity
Locke, and still more Condillac, and their explanations of human reason
by sensations alone.
VIII. Thus we understand why we cannot give the reason of many things;
we see them; they are thus: they are necessary; more we cannot say. A
triangle is not a circle: what reason can we assign for this? None!
It is so; this is all. But why? Because there does actually exist an
immediate necessity in the relation represented in the infinite being,
which is truth by essence. The same infinite intelligence sees no
greater reason of itself, than in itself. It finds every thing, and
the relations of all things in the plenitude of its being; but beyond
them is nothing. He gave to individual reason, when creating it, an
intuition of these relations: no discursion proves them; we see them;
this is all.
IX. Some even who admit the subjective value of ideas, either doubting
or denying their objectivity, lose sight of this fact. They seek an
argument, where there is need only of a vision; they demand degrees
where there are none. When human reason sees certain truths, it
cannot go farther and doubt of them. It is subject to a primitive
law of its nature, which it cannot abstract without ceasing to be
what it is. By the very act of seeing the object it is sure of it;
the difference between subjectivity and objectivity falls within the
space of inferences, but not within that of immediate reason, or the
understanding of necessary truths.
173. We leave it to the reader's judgment whether the preceding
explanation is more satisfactory than that by _impersonal reason_;
the theory we have attempted to expound has been held by all the most
eminent metaphysicians. With God, all is clear; without God, all is
a chaos. This is true in the order of facts, and not less so in the
order of ideas. Our perception is also a fact; our ideas likewise are
facts; over all presides an admirable order; a chain which cannot be
destroyed unites all; but neither this order nor this chain depends
upon this. The word _reason_ has a profound meaning, for it refers
to the infinite intelligence. What is true for the reason of one man
cannot be false for the reason of another; there are, independently
of all communication among human minds, and of all intuition, truths
necessary for all. We must, if we would explain this unity, rise above
ourselves, must elevate ourselves to that great unity in which every
thing originates, and to which every thing tends.
174. This point of view is high, but it is the only one; if we depart
from it we can see nothing, but are fo
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