ON SUBSTANCE.
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CHAPTER I.
NAME AND GENERAL IDEA OF SUBSTANCE.
1. What is substance? Have we a clear and distinct idea of it? The disputes of philosophers concerning the idea of substance and the continual applications which we make of it, prove two things: first, that the idea of substance exists; and secondly, that its clearness and distinctness are not all that could be desired. A mere name, containing no idea, could not so strongly draw the attention of all philosophers, nor be used so generally, even in ordinary language; a clear and distinct idea could not give occasion to so much dispute.
2. The importance of this idea may be seen in the results to which philosophers are led, according to the way in which they explain it. The entire system of Spinosa is founded on wrong definition of substance.
3. In the present question as in many others, it does not seem to be the shortest way to begin with a definition, unless the thing defined is only a name: to define a thing is to explain it, and we cannot explain it if we are ignorant of what it is, and we are ignorant, or are supposed to be ignorant of this, when we enter on investigations in order to ascertain what it is. If philosophers, at the beginning of their treatises, would not say, substance is this, but only, this is what I understand by substance, they would escape a number of difficulties.
4. After defining the name of substance, and making a clear and distinct idea correspond to it, it is still necessary to show how far the idea represents objects really existing, or, whether it belongs to the class of ideas expressing only the relation of different ideas, without our having any means of ascertaining whether this relation is found in the positive world or not; that is to say, whether the idea of substance is only the work of our understanding, a mere result of the combination of certain ideas, or is furnished us by experience itself. I shall try not to fall into any of these faults; I know not, however, whether I can escape them. For this purpose, I shall first analyze the word, with respect to its etymological sense, and then examine the various meanings which have been given to it. The analysis of words is very useful for the analysis of ideas: words often contain a great deal of truth, which we lose by not attending to their common meaning.
5. The word substance, substantia, implies something which is under, substat, which is the subject on which other things are placed; just as its correlative, accident or modification, expresses something which happens to the subject, accidit; something which modifies it, which is in it, as a mode of being, modus.
6. By substance we seem to understand something constant in the midst of variation, something which, although it is in various ways successively, according to the variety of modifications which affect it, remains constant and identical under different transformations. When we say that the substance has received any new modification, although we understand by this that the substance is, in a new mode, we do not mean that it is different in itself, that it has lost its internal primitive being, and taken a new being; but we only consider this change as external, and as leaving untouched a certain base, which is what we call substance.
If it were not so, if we did not conceive something constant and identical under modifications, we could not distinguish substance from its modifications. The modification passes from not-being to being, and from being to not-being; now it is, and now it resigns its post to another and very different modification. But the substance is the same under different modifications; it does not pass from not-being to being with the succession of its modifications. From the moment that we attribute to substance the instability which belongs to its modifications, it ceases to be distinguishable from them.
Ordinary language confirms this truth. When there is a variation of modifications we say that the substance changes, that is, we conceive something which existed before the change, and exists after it. We say that a modification has entirely disappeared; we do not say this of the substance, but only that it is, or is presented to us, in a different manner. We therefore conceive something which remains constant and identical under different modifications: the subject in which these changes occur, this something which does not disappear with the disappearance of the modifications, which is not changed internally with these changes, we call substance, substantia, substratum.
APPLICATION OF THE IDEA OF SUBSTANCE TO CORPOREAL OBJECTS.
7. Let us apply the ideas contained in that of substance to a corporeal object: this will help explain these ideas, and perhaps suggest others.
The paper on which I am writing is susceptible of various modifications: I may write on it a thousand different things, in various characters, and in different colors; I may fold it in various ways, and give it an infinite variety of positions in relation to the objects around it, and I may move it in all imaginable directions. Under this infinity of changes there is something constant, something which does not change. There are many new things, but there is one which is not new, which is always the same. There is one which suffers these changes, but retains something which does not change. If I make the paper blue and then red, that which is now red is the same that was blue, and before that white, and to this which is constant all those changes are referred. If a white paper is shown me, and then another paper that is blue, and then one that is red, it is clear that it is not the same as though I gave all these transformations to the same paper. The impression which the color produces in me remains the same; in what, then, does the difference consist? The difference is, that in the one case there is something permanent, which has passed through successive changes; in the other case this something is not the same, but is another and different thing. In the one case there are different modifications; in the other there are different substances.
8. Let us go deeper into the matter. If we only received the successive impressions without any means of referring them to the same object, to connect them in a common point, we should find no difference between the two cases of which we have been speaking. If a piece of white paper be placed before us, and, after turning our eyes aside for a moment, we find a blue paper in the same place, with the same dimensions, and after again turning our eyes aside we find a red paper: it is clear that it would be impossible for us to distinguish, by the mere succession of the visual impressions, whether the same paper has been differently colored in succession, or different papers have been substituted for the first. But if we keep our eyes on the place where the paper is, we see whether the paper is colored or changed. In the first case, the appearance of the new color will continue with the same sensation of the paper, unmoved, the transformation is made without our losing sight of it, and the paper receives the continued succession of its motions and positions under the hand of the one who colors it. We are then sure that the paper is the same, because there has been a continuity of sensation, or rather a connection of the different colors with a third, resulting from the situation of the paper and its motions, and from all that by which we know what is common to the first and the second. But if there is no new coloring of the paper, but a substitution of a differently colored paper, we see that the first paper is taken away; the whole order of the sensation is interrupted, and new sensations are presented. These last have no connection with the first; there is, consequently, for us a different thing.
9. This shows how the idea of substance with respect to bodies is generated in us, or, to speak more properly, how we apply the idea of substance to bodies. When we discover a link which unites the different sensations in one point, we call that in which they are united, substance. And as we meet in nature with many of these points which are independent of one another, we naturally say there are many corporeal substances.
10. When we perceive an impression we never call it a substance, if we refer it to an object, or consider it as objective: for the object is not, of itself alone, capable of connecting various sensations. We receive the sensations of red, and not only ordinary people, but even philosophers, when not philosophizing, make the color objective, and consider the red, not as a simple sensation, but as an external quality. No one would call this quality by itself a substance; for it is not capable, of itself alone, of connecting other impressions or qualities. If there is a change of color the red disappears, and the new impression is connected in the order of time with the sensation of the red, but does not reside in it. If there is a change of form, although the red continues, we do not conceive this color as the necessary link between the two forms, because we know that the continuance of the red is indifferent to the variety of form, which may be changed with or without the continuance of this color.
As in general we have experienced that no sensation is necessarily connected with another, and that among sensations connected at a common point, some disappear without the rest disappearing, we infer that none of them is a necessary link; and therefore, although we make them objective, we do not give them the character of a substance, of any thing remaining identical through changes, of which it is, as it were, the recipient.
11. There is a property in bodies which is necessary to all sensations, or at least, to the two principal sensations of sight and touch. This property is extension, which, whether considered subjectively or objectively, we regard as a recipient of all sensations. We neither see nor imagine the white or black; we neither touch nor imagine the hard or the soft, the warm or the cold, without the extension in which the whiteness or blackness, the hardness or softness, the warmth or the cold reside. Thus extension might perhaps merit the honor of substance, if it were not subject to another condition, which deprives it of this title.
Although when we conceive extension in general, in the abstract, considering it as a mere continuity, we absolutely abstract it from all form; when we have need of an applied extension as the recipient of sensations, it is impossible to find it without a determinate form and figure. We do not see a color simply, but we see it in a circular, triangular, or other extension. These forms are confounded with extension itself as its applications; and do not serve as a link for other sensations. Sometimes, it is true, the same figure receives different colors, different positions, different degrees of heat or cold, etc., but the contrary also sometimes occurs, and with the same color, and the same degree of heat or cold, with the same continuance of the other sensations, the object changes its form; just as a red circle may become a green circle, a red object may become circular, and afterwards triangular. In the first case, the circular figure is the link connecting the sensations of the colors; in the second, the color is the link connecting the figures.
12. Having deprived extension of the honor of substance, as well as all other sensations, in so far as objective; we may observe that all these variations in the objects are successive, and the sensations are connected with each other. Thus the same circle may take different colors; and the same color different figures; the colors may be again changed, and the first reproduced, the figure remaining the same; or the first figure may be reproduced, the colors remaining the same. We conclude that under this variety there is something constant, that under this multiplicity there is something which is one; that under this succession of being and not-being there is something permanent; and this which is constant, one, and permanent, the recipient of these changes, the point outside of us which connects them, and enables us to conceive them connected,—this is what we call substance.
CHAPTER III.
DEFINITION OF CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE.
13. What is the permanent subject of transformations in the sensible order? Is it a pure illusion? Is it a reality? What reality can it be? Does it not seem rather an abstraction? A thing which is no color, but lends itself all colors; which is none of the qualities which we experience, but the subject and cause of them all; which is no form, but accommodates itself to all forms; which is not pure extension, because this is an abstraction, and it is something which serves as the ground of other things; a corporeal object which, in itself, can affect none of the senses; what is it? Is it what the Aristotelians call an occult quality, a mysterious, and fantastic being, a mere illusion? Let us examine it by the light of experience.
14. Let us take a piece of wax and without letting it go out of our hands paint it different colors successively, subject it to different degrees of temperature, softening it by warming, and then cooling it; let us give it different forms, of a globe, a cylinder, a parallelopipedon, a table, a vase, or a statue; do all these changes take place in the same thing? Yes. Is this thing not a color, or a figure, or a degree of temperature? No; because all these qualities were and ceased to be whilst the thing remained the same. How do I know that the thing remained the same? Because there was a continuity of sensation in the eye fixed upon the object; in the touch which, although it felt the modifications of warm and cold, hard and soft, experienced also an uninterrupted sensation of an object, which remained constantly in the hand, and the weight of which was continuously felt. Therefore there is something there which is not the modifications, but is that which is modified, something common to them all, which receives and connects them, outside of me and within me.
15. Examining one conception of this permanent something, we find that, after abstracting its qualities, we have:
I. The idea of being. We say the thing, the something, the subject, etc., we therefore speak of a being, of a quality. Without the reality there is nothing; and nothing cannot be the subject of modifications, or the link connecting impressions.
II. The idea of being, which we here find, is not pure, it is not being alone. The qualities exist, are beings, and still we do not confound them with the subject.
III. That which accompanies the idea of being is the idea of permanence amidst succession, and the relation of this permanence as the point of connection, the immovable centre in the midst of succession.
16. If, therefore, we wished to define substance, we could only say that it is a permanent being in which occur the changes which are presented to us in the sensible phenomena. Our knowledge is all reduced to this; all that we can add beside, is only hypothesis or conjecture. In vain you ask me, what is this being? Give me the intuition of the essence of corporeal things, and I will tell you; but while I know them only by their effects, that is, the impressions which they produce in me, I cannot answer you. I know that it is something; I know its relation to its forms; I know that the forms are in the subject, and are not the subject; but here is the limit of my knowledge. The object corresponding to the idea composed of a permanent being and its relation to various forms is what I call corporeal substance.
17. Since the substance changes its accidents, remaining the same itself, it follows that its existence is independent of the accidents. Abstracting, for the present, whether it can or cannot exist without any, I only affirm that none in particular is necessary to it. Here we must take note of the difference between substance in itself, and in the medium by which it is manifested to us, and placed in active or passive communication with us. The accidents are this medium; they are the transitory forms it puts on. How can we know the existence of bodies, except by sensations? The object of sensation is not substance in its inner nature, but only its qualities as affecting us.
RELATION OF CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE TO ITS ACCIDENTS.
18. In the idea of corporeal substance the idea of permanence is perfectly included, the idea of unity only imperfectly. The unity which we conceive in every corporeal substance is a factitious unity; since that which is constant is not one but an aggregate of many, as is proved by the divisibility of matter; out of every corporeal substance we may make many which will have the same right as the first to be called substances. A piece of wood is a substance; but we may slit it into several pieces which will be equally substances. These pieces, joined together, formed what are called one substance; but it is clear that this unity was very imperfect, and was rather a union than a unity, and that if we consider it as one, it was in relation to the unity of effect which it produced in us, by the connection which it gave to our sensations and to the phenomena which resulted from it.
19. Hence, every corporeal substance involves multiplicity, or combination of the elements which compose it. Experience informs us that this combination is not permanent; there is, consequently, no corporeal substance which does not imply at least one modification, namely, the arrangement of its parts. Abstracting the changes which this modification may undergo, it can never be confounded with the substance: although the bodies might be presented constantly to our senses with the same arrangement of the parts, the permanent being would be in the parts, not in their arrangement. The latter is something external which is added to the thing existing; there can be no union and combination without parts which are united and combined.
20. A difference which we observe between the substance and its modifications is, that the substance is independent of the modifications, but the modifications are not independent of the substance. The substance, while remaining the same, changes its accidents, but an accident cannot change its substance and remain the same. The same block may receive different figures successively; but a figure, numerically the same, cannot pass from one block to another. Two blocks may have a similar or a different figure, whether cubic, spherical, or pyramidal, and one may take the figure of the other; but in that case, the figures are not identical, but similar, they are specifically but not numerically the same.
21. If I am asked how I know that there is only similarity and not numerical identity in the figures which bodies take successively, that there is no permanence in the figures which change their subject, and consequently that the same figure cannot pass from one substance to another, in the same manner that the same substance passes from one figure to another; I shall not find it difficult to prove what I assert.
There is no one who does not see what an extravagant thing it would be for a cubic figure to leave a body and pass to another. What is this figure separated from the body? How is it preserved during the transition? Why is it not exactly the same in both, but presented with slight modifications? Has it undergone a modification in its passage from one body to another? Then there would be a modification of a modification, and the figure in itself abstracted from all body, would be a kind of substance of a secondary order, permanent under modifications. These are but absurd dreams in which that is applied to the concrete which belongs to the idea only in the abstract. This transition of the forms would suppose their separate existence, and thus we might have all kinds of abstract figures, cubes, spheres, circles, triangles, etc., subsisting in themselves without application to any thing figured.
22. A still stricter demonstration of this truth is possible. If we suppose a figure, numerically the same, to pass from one body to another; the block A, which loses the cubic form, transmits it to the body B. Now, this individual form cannot be in both at the same time. Suppose that after the cubic form has left the block A, we turn it back before it has touched the body B, evidently it will not be the same in both: therefore the body B has not acquired the same, but only a similar form. It is also evident that in order to give the cubic form, we need not take it from another; therefore, the form of one is not individually that of the other; otherwise we should have to say that it is and is not, that it is preserved and ceases to exist at the same time.
23. The term transmission or communication of motion, which is so much used in physical science, expresses something real so long as limited to the phenomenon which is under calculation; but it would be an absurdity, if it meant that the same motion which was in one body has passed to another. The sum of the quantities of motion is the same in elastic bodies after impact as before it; the velocity being divided between them, and the one gaining what the other loses. This is proved by calculation, and confirmed by experience. But it is evident that one body does not impart the same individual velocity which it contained to the other body; for not only can the velocity not be separated from the body and pass from one subject to another; but it cannot even be conceived except as a relation, the idea of which includes the ideas of a body moved, of space, and of time. It is true that Q representing the quantity of the motion before impact, the value of Q remains the same after impact; but this only expresses the phenomenon in relation to its effects, as subject to calculation; not that the velocity in the second member of the equation is composed of the parts of the first. Let A and B represent two bodies, the individual masses of which are expressed by these two letters; and V, v their respective velocities before impact. The quantity of motion will be Q = A × V + B × v. After impact there will be a new velocity which we may call w, and the quantity of motion will be Q = A × w + B × u. Mathematically speaking, the value of Q will be the same; but this only means that if the results of the motion be expressed in lines or numbers, we shall have the same after impact as before it; it does not and cannot mean that in the velocity u, considered as united to the subject, there is a portion of velocity which has been detached from V to be joined to v.
24. Hence, we do not conceive the accidents of bodies as possible without a subject in which they are inherent; and that substances are not inherent in another being, but are conceived and really exist without this inherence. A figure cannot exist without a thing figured, but the thing figured may still exist, through all other things are destroyed. The analysis of the nature of substance shows that its existence supposes the existence of another being which produced it; but relation between them is that of cause and effect, not of inherence, or that of the subject and its modification.
25. These last observations explain another mark of corporeal substances. In the third chapter of this book we found the three characteristics of being, the relation of the permanent to the variable, and the subject of the variations; we now find a fourth, which is a negation, non-inherence in another. This negative characteristic is included in the positive one, permanent subject of variations; for it is clear that in conceiving a subject permanent amid variations we do not include inherence, but rather deny it, at least implicitly. Non-inherence supposes something positive, something on which is founded the denial of the necessity of being inherent. What is this something? We know not. We know that it exists, but its explanation is beyond our reach. It is probably inexplicable without the intuition of the essence of things;—an intuition which we have not.
CONSIDERATIONS ON CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE IN ITSELF.
26. The idea of substance, such as we have thus far explained it, implies a relation to accidents in general. The idea we are now examining is not that of an indeterminate substance, but of corporeal substance; and it must be confessed that it is difficult to conceive a particular corporeal substance without any accident. If I take from the paper, on which I am writing, its figure, extension, and all that relates to my senses, what is there left for me to conceive something particular and determinate, something which is not the idea of being in general, but of this being in particular? It is clear that, in order that the object may not disappear altogether, and losing its individuality be confounded in the universal idea, I must reserve something by which I can say this: that is to say, that which is here, or which has affected me in this or that manner, or has been the subject of such or such modifications. I consider at least its position with respect to other bodies, or its causality in relation to the effects which it has produced in me, or its nature as the subject of determinate accidents. Just as the idea of finite substance in general involves relation to certain accidents in general, the idea of a particular substance involves relation to particular accidents.
27. We find this relation in our mode of conceiving corporeal substance; we cannot assert that it is involved in the nature of the substance. This nature is unknown to us, and when we attempt to examine it, we pass to another question, that of the essence of bodies.
28. Neither can we say how far the identity of the corporeal substance continues under its different transformations. The partisans of corpuscular philosophy consider all transformations as mere local motions, and all the variations which we see in bodies as mere results of the different position of the corpuscles among themselves. Leibnitz resolved matter into an infinity of monads, differing from the atoms of Epicurus, but conducing to the substantial invariability of bodies, which are only a collection of indivisible substances, which he calls monads. The Aristotelians believed that, of the changes of bodies, some were accidental, as figure, motion, density, warmth, cold, etc.; others substantial, as the change of wood to ashes. But in all the variety of systems, all admit something permanent, the subject of the changes. The Atomists and Leibnitz evidently admitted the identity of the subject. As to the Aristotelians, although the change which introduced a substantial form different from the first substantially transformed the being, so that after the change of the substantial form it could not be said that one was substantially the other, they still thought there was a common subject in these substantial transformations, and this was what they called the first matter, materia prima. All systems of philosophy admit this clear and evident truth, that in the midst of the transformations of the corporeal world, there is something permanent.
29. This corporeal substance being a reality, must not only exist, but it must be something determinate. This substantial determination of the body, which makes it this particular thing, and distinguishes it in its internal nature, in its essence, from all other bodies of other species, the Aristotelians called the substantial form. The subject of this form, or actuality, which was common to all bodies, they called the materia prima, which was a pure potentiality, a sort of medium between pure nothing and actual being.
30. Ever since there have been schools of philosophy, these points have been disputed; and it is probable they always will be; but it is to very little purpose. We know the existence of the corporeal world, we know its relations to ourselves, we know its properties and its laws, so far as they are subject to our observation; but its intrinsic nature is beyond the reach of our senses, or our instruments. Increased acuteness of observation and improvement in the power and delicacy of instruments, discovers new mysteries, and man finds the barriers which he believed the ne plus ultra, removed from him as he advances. Will he ever be able to pass them? Will he ever make the entire circuit of this scientific world? Is the knowledge of the intrinsic nature of the subject of this infinity of phenomena which astonish us, reserved to the future? It is hard to believe it. The telescope, becoming more perfect, extends the limits of the universe, and seems to behold the infinitely great; the perfection of the microscope, advancing in the opposite direction, regards the infinitely little. Where are the limits? It is probable that man is not permitted to reach them while in this world. The mind of man in its fruitful activity, struggles alternately after the two extremes, but just as he flatters himself he is reaching the last limit, he feels that something stronger than himself withholds him from attaining the object of his noble desires; it is the chain that binds him to the mortal body, and obstructs the flight of his pure spirit.
SUBSTANTIALITY OF THE HUMAN ME.
31. We have not found perfect unity in corporeal substances: all that are subject to our senses may be resolved into a number of others equally substances in their turn; a body is rather an aggregate of substances, than one substance. We do not find the unity in the bodies; we attribute it to them either inasmuch as they form a common link of our sensations, or inasmuch as we consider the different substances subordinated to one being and governing substance. Thus the parts of an animated body constitute a sort of unity, inasmuch as they are subordinate to the principle which animates them.
32. We do not conclude from this that true unity does not exist in bodies; if we could know their essence, we should doubtless discover it, whether in the monads, as maintained by Leibnitz, or in something else more or less resembling them. Although this knowledge of their essence is denied us, reason leads us to this unity. The composite is formed of parts; if these parts are in turn formed of others, we must at last come to something which has no parts; here we find the indivisible, or rather, the true unity. This reasoning is equally valid, even though we suppose matter to be infinitely divisible. Infinite divisibility would suppose an infinity of parts into which any body may be divided: these parts would therefore exist; these infinitesimal elements would be real: the unity would be in them.
33. Independently of the external world, we find the idea of substance in ourselves; consciousness reveals its real application and perfect unity. Consciousness makes known to us that we think, desire, feel, and experience an infinity of affections, some of which are subject to our will and are the product of the internal activity of our soul; others are independent of us, they come without our will, and often against it, and it is not always in our power to reproduce them even if we wish it.
This ebb and flow of ideas, volitions, and sentiments, have a point in which they are connected, a subject which receives them, remembers them, combines them, and seeks or avoids them; this being, of which we are internally conscious, philosophers have called the me. It is one and identical under all transformations; this unity, this identity, is an indisputable fact which consciousness reveals to us. Who could make us doubt that the me which thinks at the present moment is not the same which thought yesterday, which thought years ago? Notwithstanding the variety of thoughts and desires, the changes of opinion and will, who could deprive us of the firm and deep conviction which we have that we are the same who experience them all, that there is something here within us which is the subject of them all?
34. If there were not something in us permanent in the midst of this variety, the consciousness of the me would be impossible. Memory and combination would also be impossible; for there would be within us only a succession of unconnected phenomena. Thinking is impossible without something which thinks and remains identical under the variety of the forms of thought. There is, therefore, within us a simple subject which connects all the changes which occur in it: there is a substance. In it there is unity: the unity which we only find in corporeal substances after an infinite series of decompositions, is presented to us in the spiritual substance, at the first instant, as a simple internal fact, without which, all the phenomena which we perceive within us are absurd, and all experience of the external world impossible.
Without the unity of the me there can be no sensation, and without sensation no experience of the beings around us.
RELATION OF THE PROPOSITION, I THINK, TO THE SUBSTANTIALITY OF THE ME.
35. The proposition, I think, can have no sense unless we admit that the soul is a substance. Philosophy loses its resting-point, and all that experience within us is a series of unconnected phenomena, incapable of being observed, or subjected to any rule.
36. My present thought is not individually my thought of yesterday, as my thought of to-morrow will not be my thought of to-day. These thoughts, considered in themselves and abstracted from a subject in which they are found, have no connection with one another: perhaps their objects are without any relation to each other, or even contradictory; perhaps the thought of to-day is the denial of the thought of yesterday.
37. The same is true of all thoughts, all acts of the will, of all sentiments, imaginary representations, and sensations, and, in general, of all that I experience within myself. Turning my attention to all internal affections, whatever they may be, I see in them only a series of phenomena, a sort of current of existences passing away and disappearing, some never to return, others to reappear at a different time, expressly presenting this difference. The reappearance is not individual, but similar: the affection which is repeated is not the same, but another resembling it. When the affection returns, I am conscious of its presence at the time, and conscious of its presence at a previous time; this double consciousness constitutes recollection, makes me distinguish between the two affections, and necessarily implies the judgment that one is not the other. There would be no recollection, if the affection recalling were identified with the affection recalled. A thing presents itself, but does not recall itself.
38. Therefore every thing passes away within us never to return, the disappearance is real, the reappearance but apparent; that which ceases to be can never return to be again; there may be a similar thing, but not the same; that which was, is passed, and time does not retrace its steps.
39. Therefore, the series of internal phenomena, considered in themselves and abstracted from the subject in which they reside, are necessarily unconnected, and there is no way of subordinating the terms of the series to any law, or connecting link.
40. Still this law exists in all our intellectual acts; reason, without laws which govern it, would be the greatest of absurdities; this link is found in all our affections. That they pass from us with their distinction and difference and resemblance is a fact of our mind, to which we are subjected, as to a primitive and inevitable condition of our existence.
41. The proposition, I think, in the sense in which the word think includes all internal affections, does not relate to isolated phenomena alone, but it necessarily implies a point, which we call the me, in which these phenomena are connected. If this point does not exist, if it is not one and identical, the thought of to-day can have no connection with the thought of yesterday: they are two distinct things, at different times, and perhaps contradictory: when I say to-day, I think, and mean that the I is the same as in the proposition, I thought yesterday, my language would be absurd; if they are mere phenomena, two thoughts without any connecting link, the me is nothing, I cannot say, I thought, I think; but I must say there was thought, there is thought. If, then, you ask me, where? in whom? I must reply, that there is no where, no who; I must deny the supposition, and confine myself to repeating, there was thought, there is thought.
42. To say me, it is necessary to suppose a permanent reality; a reality, because that which is not real is nothing; permanent, because that which passes away disappears, ceases to be, and cannot serve as the point to unite other things.
CHAPTER VIII.
REMARKS ON THE SOUL'S INTUITION OF ITSELF.
43. The permanent reality of the me, considered in itself and abstracted from the things which pass within it, is a fact which we perceive in our intuition, and which we express in all our words. If this presence, this internal experience, be what is called the intuition of the soul, then we have intuition of our soul. This intuition is reproduced in every particular intuition, and in all internal affections in general; for, although they are isolated phenomena, they imply the intuition of the me, because they imply the consciousness of themselves.
44. The variety of isolated phenomena instead of proving any thing against the unity of the intuition of the me, on the contrary, evidently confirms it. If we conceived only one fixed and identical thought, there would be less necessity of uniting with it the idea of a subject in which it resides; but when there is a multitude of different phenomena, which cannot co-exist without contradiction, we must refer them to something constant, or else the internal world is converted into an absolute chaos.
45. The soul has, therefore, an intuition of itself; that is to say, it is conscious of its unity in multiplicity, of its identity in diversity, of its permanence in succession, of its constant duration in the appearance and disappearance of phenomena. Either we must admit this, or we must renounce the legitimacy of all testimony of consciousness, and embrace the most complete skepticism that ever existed, extending it both to the internal and to the external world.
46. We find within us the realization of the indeterminate conceptions of being, unity, permanence, and subject of modifications; this realization is revealed by consciousness, and is confirmed by the logical analysis of the series of phenomena in their relation to a point of connection.
47. All that is included in the idea of finite substance is contained in these four terms: being, one, permanent, and the subject of modifications. All this is in our soul, and we perceive by experience that we are internally affected by it. If this perception is called intuition, we have intuition of the substantiality of our soul.
48. The thinking being not only perceives itself but it knows itself as a real object, to which, by means of reflection, it applies the ideas of being, unity, permanence, and the subject of modifications. Therefore the soul may be the true predicate of propositions resting on logic and consciousness.
49. Have we any other intuition of the soul, besides that which has just been explained? To this I answer, that we have not while in this life, and at the same time I ask whether any other than that of consciousness is possible. Accustomed as we are to sensible intuitions which imply extension in space, we ask what the soul is in itself, and we do not seem to be satisfied without seeing its image. Leaving the order of sensibility and rising to the purely intellectual sphere, who knows whether we can say that there is no other intuition of the soul than that which we now have; whether the soul in itself, in the unity and simplicity of its entity, is the force which we perceive; whether this force is the subject of the modifications, the substance, without its being necessary to imagine another support in which this force might reside? Why may not this force be subsistent? Why must we imagine another substratum to support it? If it were so, if we must apply to the substance of the soul what the great Leibnitz thought applicable to all substances, making the idea of substance to consist in the idea of force; why may we not say that the pressure of the internal sense, the consciousness of itself, is all the intuition of itself which the soul can have?
50. You may ask me, what is the soul separated from the body? What will it perceive and know of itself, when it exists alone? As though it did not now perceive and know alone, or as though the organs, which it uses, could perceive or think. Does it, perchance, know how it uses them, or even know otherwise than by experience that it uses them at all? Is it not alone in the depths of its activity with its thoughts and the acts of its will, its sentiments, its joy and its sadness, its pleasures and its pains? Say, then, that perhaps we do not form sufficiently clear ideas of the mode of consciousness which we shall have of ourselves after this life; say that perhaps other intuitions of our self are possible; but do not imagine the soul as inconceivable alone. Leave me thought, will, sentiment, all that is internally present to my consciousness, to find myself; I ask no more. Give me communication with other beings, which affect me or are affected by me, which transmit to me thoughts and wills, which cause me pleasure or pain; I need nothing more in order to have a world which I can very well conceive. I am ignorant of the quality of the things, not of their possibility: the soul changes its state, not its nature.
CHAPTER IX.
KANT'S OPINION OF THE ARGUMENTS PROVING THE SUBSTANTIALITY OF THE SOUL.
51. The psychological arguments in favor of the substantiality of the soul are mere paralogisms, in Kant's opinion; although they prove an ideal substance, they can never lead to a real substance. Besides the arguments with which this philosopher attacks the psychological proof of the substantiality of the soul, he had also a personal argument, which, considering the weakness of the human heart, was very powerful. He had either to place the substantiality of the soul in doubt, or else consent to the ruin of his whole system. "It would be," he says, "a great and even the only stumbling-block in our whole critique, if there were a possibility of demonstrating a priori that all thinking beings are in themselves simple substances, and (which is a consequence of the principle of this demonstration) are inseparably accompanied by personality and the consciousness of their existence distinct from all matter. For, in this case, if we had taken a single step out of the world of the senses, we should have entered into the field of the noumena, and no one would dispute our right to extend farther into it, to build in it, and, according to each one's good luck, to take possession of it."[43]
52. In Kant's conception, the first paralogism of pure psychology in favor of the substantiality of the soul is the following:—"Every thing, the representation of which is the absolute substance of our judgments, and which cannot serve as a determination of any thing else, is a substance. The me, as thinking being, is the absolute substance of all possible judgments, and this representation of itself cannot be the predicate of any thing else; therefore the me, as thinking being, is a substance."
These are the terms in which he presents the psychological reasoning which he proposes to attack, in the first edition of his Critic of Pure Reason; in the second edition, wishing to be more clear, or, perhaps, more obscure, he expresses the same argument in these words:—"That which cannot be thought otherwise than as subject, does not exist otherwise than as subject, and is therefore substance. Now a thinking being, regarded merely as such, cannot be thought otherwise than as subject. Therefore it exists only as such, that is, as substance." We must confess that if psychology could find no clearer expounders than Kant, and should have to use in its demonstrations the forms which this philosopher employs in these passages, it would have but a small number of proselytes, for the simple reason that very few could understand its language. I am sure that but few readers would be convinced by the syllogisms proving the substantiality of the soul, such as Kant presents them; in this way there is a great advantage in the position of the philosopher; for he has to prove that an argument, the force of which has not been felt, has no force. But let us suppose the philosopher to descend from the Olympus of incomprehensible abstractions, and deign to use the humble language of mortals, presenting the psychological argument under a more simple form, who knows but what the conviction which it would produce would be somewhat more difficult to destroy? Let us see.
53. A substance is a being remaining identical with itself, a permanent reality in which different modifications occur. But there is within me this reality which, remaining identical, has a variety of thoughts, acts of the will, sentiments, and sensations, as is revealed by consciousness. Therefore that which is within me is a substance.
I defy all the philosophers in the world to point out a false, or even a doubtful proposition in this syllogism, or to show a fault in the consequence, without placing themselves in open contradiction with the testimony of consciousness on the one hand, and with all the laws of human reason on the other.
54. Kant pretends that the argument in favor of the substantiality of the soul is not conclusive, because the pure categories, and consequently that of substance also, have absolutely no objective value, except in so far as applied to the diversity of an intuition subject to them: that is to say, the conception of substance is a purely logical function, without any objective value or meaning except as referred to sensible things, and as soon as we leave the sphere of sensibility, it can lead to no result. It is evident that the substantiality of the soul cannot be the object of sensible intuition; consequently, to apply to the soul the idea of substance is to extend the conception beyond what its nature allows. It must be confessed that Kant's reasoning is conclusive, if we admit his principles; and here we have a proof of the necessity of combating certain theories, which, because they are in the realm of abstractions, seem innocent, but in reality are most dangerous, on account of the results to which they lead. Such is the system of Kant as denying the objective value of the pure categories, and this is why I have combated it,[44] demonstrating: I. That indeterminate conceptions, and the general principles founded on them, have an objective value beyond the field of sensible experience, in respect to beings which are in nowise subject to our intuition; II. That it is not true that we have only sensible intuition, for we have intuitive knowledge of a pure intellectual order, above the sphere of sensibility. This doctrine overthrows the whole of Kant's argument, for it destroys its foundation.
55. The German philosopher seems to have perceived the weak point in his reasoning, and therefore he tries to give the psychological argument in such terms as to show a transition from the ideal order to the real, keeping out of sight the point which unites things so distant. His language is purely ideological: "Every thing, the representation of which is the absolute substance of our judgments, and which cannot serve as a determination of any thing else, is a substance." Observe that he defines substance by the representation and the incapacity of serving as a determination of any thing else; that is, by purely ideological or dialectic attributes. The form which he employs in the second edition suffers from the same defect. "That which cannot be thought otherwise than as subject, does not exist otherwise than as subject, and is, therefore, substance." Why does he not tell us that the substance here spoken of is a permanent being, in which the modifications are realized, but which remains identical with itself? Why does he speak only of representation, of thought, of the determination or predicate? Because it helped his purpose to present the argument as a sophism in which there is a transition from one order to another entirely different order; because it was for his interest to give an obscure form, so that he could make the following observations:—"In the major, a being is spoken of which can be thought under any view in general, and consequently, also, as it is given in the intuition. But, in the minor, the same being is spoken of in so far as it is regarded as subject, in relation only to thought and the unity of consciousness, but not at the same time in relation to the intuition by which the unity is given to the thought as its object. Consequently the conclusion follows only by a fallacy, per sophisma figurÆ dictionis." And in a note he says: "Thought is taken in the two premises in an entirely different sense; in the major, as belonging to an object in general, and such, consequently, as it may be given in the intuition; but in the minor only as it is in relation to the consciousness of self, where it is not thought in any object, but is merely represented in relation to itself, as subject, as the form of the thought. In the first case, a thing is spoken of which can only be thought as subject; but, in the second, thought is spoken of, not things, since abstraction is made of all objects; and in the thought the me always serves as subject of the consciousness; hence the conclusion which follows is not, that I cannot exist otherwise than as subject, but only, that I cannot make use of myself in the thought of my existence, otherwise than as subject of the judgment, which is an identical proposition, revealing absolutely nothing concerning the manner of my existence.[45] It makes one indignant to see a man attempt, by such a confusion of ideas and of words, to rob the human mind of its existence; for it amounts to the same thing, to deny that it is a substance. It makes one indignant to see a philosopher pretend, by such an absurd confusion, to attack one of the clearest, most evident, and most irresistible arguments which can be presented to human reason. I thought yesterday, I think to-day: in all the variety of my situations, I find myself the same and not another; this reality, which remains identical in the midst of diversity, I call my soul; therefore my soul is a permanent reality, the subject of modifications; therefore it is a substance. Can any thing be clearer?"
56. Psychology does, it is true, make use of the general idea of substance in proving the substantiality of the soul: but it appeals to a fact of experience, to the testimony of consciousness, in order to apply this idea to the present case. What does Kant mean when he pretends to have demonstrated that the conception of a thing which can exist of itself as subject, but not as mere attribute, does not involve any objective reality? When he speaks of subject, does he mean a real subject, the subject of modifications? Then the soul is a subject; but we do not say that it is a subject only; we conceive its reality under this aspect without, therefore, denying that it has other characters: on the contrary, we expressly acknowledge that it is an active principle, which implies something more that the mere subject of modifications, for this last is a passive, rather than an active, quality. If by subject Kant understands the logical subject, we deny that this is exclusively the character of the soul in such a way that it cannot logically be the attribute or predicate of a proposition.
57. "The conception of a thing," says Kant, "which can exist as its own subject, but not as a mere predicate, draws with it no objective reality; that is, one cannot know whether any object corresponds to it, since one cannot conceive the possibility of such a manner of existing, consequently there is absolutely no cognition. In order that it may indicate under the denomination of substance, an object which may be given, in order that it may be a cognition, a constant intuition must be placed at the foundation, as the indispensable condition of the objective reality of a conception, namely, that by which alone the object is given. But we have nothing constant in the internal intuition, for the me is only the consciousness of my thought; if, therefore, we confine ourselves to the thought alone, the necessary condition of the application of the conception of substance, that is, of a subject subsisting in itself as thinking being."[46]
No argument could be more common-place and sophistical. Kant does not admit the substantiality of the soul, because we cannot take the substance itself and present it in sensible intuition; but then he ought not to speak of pure intellectual conceptions of logical functions, or of ideas; for all these are things which are out of the order of sensibility, and therefore cannot be given us in the sensible intuition. Yet they really exist as internal phenomena, as subjective facts, of which Kant is continually talking, and to which he devotes the greater part of his Critic of Pure Reason. Will it, perchance, be said that the pure idea of relation means nothing, because we cannot present an abstract relation in sensible intuition? Will it be said that the principles from which proceed the phenomena of attraction, affinity, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, light, and all that charms or astonishes us in nature,—will it be said that they do not exist, that they are not permanent things, but empty words, because we cannot represent them in sensible intuition? Such a manner of arguing is unworthy of a philosopher. It might be excusable in an uneducated person, accustomed only to the phenomena of sensibility, who had never descended to the depths of the soul in the sphere of pure intelligence,—such a person might be pardoned if, when we speak of a spirit, a cause, or a substance, he should ask, what is it? and require us to show the insensible under a sensible form: but one who pretends to excel all philosophers, ancient or modern, one who from the inaccessible height of his wisdom looks down with such sovereign contempt on all the arguments which were before regarded as conclusive, ought to produce some other title of his superiority than merely saying: one cannot conceive the possibility of such a manner of existing: we have no internal intuition of this permanent thing which you speak of; the me is only the consciousness of my thought. What then! is any thing more necessary in order to prove what we propose, than this consciousness. Is not this consciousness one amid the variety of our thoughts? Is there not a point connecting yesterday's, to-day's, and to-morrow's thought? Different and contradictory as they are, do they not all belong to the same thing, to this thing which we call the me, and which authorizes us to say: I who think to-day, am the same who thought yesterday, and who will think to-morrow? Can any reasoning be clearer or more convincing than affirming the real permanence which we perceive in the internal testimony of our consciousness? I do not see my substance, you may say, I have no intuition of it; I only perceive my consciousness. What more do you want? This consciousness which you experience, which is one amid multiplicity, identical amid distinction, constant amid variety, and permanent in the midst of the succession of the phenomena which appear and disappear; this consciousness, which is no one of your individual thoughts, which endures while they pass away, not to return; this consciousness presents to you the substantiality of your soul, it presents it in a certain manner in intuition, not in the intuition of sensations, but in the intuition of the internal sense, as a thing affecting you deeply, and the presence of which you cannot doubt, as you do not doubt the pleasure or pain in the act by which you experience it.
58. In attacking the psychological for the substantiality of the soul, Kant supposes that those who make use of it, attempt to prove the substantiality of the soul by starting from the pure and simple category of substance. This mistake might have occasioned the form in which Kant presents this argument; but we have seen that, whether intentionally or not, this form is arranged in the best manner for affording weak points for the attacks of the philosopher. Open any treatise on psychology and you will find that although the general idea of substance is employed, it is only made use of after it has been legitimated by a fact of experience; it is not inferred from the pure category of substance that the soul is a substance; but only after we have established the idea of substance as a general type, we scrutinize the depth of consciousness to see if there is any thing there to which this type may apply. This is what has been done in the preceding paragraphs, and if Kant had wished to be more exact in his account of the opinions of his adversaries, he would not have said that the first argument of rational psychology only gives a light, which is pretended to be true, when it presents the constant logical subject of the thought, as the cognition of the real subject of the inherence. "Far from its being possible," he says, "to infer these properties from the pure and simple category of a substance, on the contrary, the permanence of a given object cannot be taken as a principle, except by starting from experience, when we wish to apply to it the empirically general conception of a substance." The philosopher is right: the properties of the pure and simple category of a substance cannot take us out of the ideal order, unless we rest on a fact of experience; but he forgets a part of the psychological argument when he adds that in the present case we have not placed at the foundation any experience, and that we have only drawn our conclusions from the conception of the relation of every thought to the me as the common subject with which this thought is connected. The experience exists in this very consciousness of the relation of all thoughts to the me; in this point with which they are all connected; the relation to the me is not possible if the me is not something; thoughts cannot be connected in the me if the me is a pure nothing. "Referring the thought to the me," Kant goes on to say, "we cannot establish this permanence by a certain observation; because, although the me is found at the bottom of every thought, besides that there is no intuition to distinguish it from every other perceptible object, it is connected with this representation." It is true that we do not perceive the permanent me in the same manner that we do the objects of the other intuitions; but we perceive it by the internal sense, by that presence, of which we cannot doubt, and which, as Kant himself confesses, makes us refer all thoughts to the me as to a common subject which connects them.
59. "It may be observed," he says, "that this representation (that of the me) is constantly reproduced in every thought; but not that it is a fixed and permanent intuition in which variable thoughts succeed each other." There is an evident contradiction in this passage. The representation of the me is constantly reproduced in every thought: but the me either means nothing, or it means something identical with itself; for if the me which thinks to-day is not the me which thought yesterday, the word me means something very different from what all the world understands by it; therefore, if the representation of the me returns in every thought, the me is the same in every thought; therefore the me is fixed and permanent, and consequently the me is a substance in which all variable thoughts succeed.
60. I cannot see any answer to this argument, founded on Kant's own words when establishing a phenomenon, the existence of which he was unable to place in doubt, namely, the presence of the me in every thought. This is not the place to examine the philosophical questions on the uninterruptedness of consciousness, or whether there is any time in which the soul does not think, and is not conscious of itself. Many philosophers believe there is such an interruption; and they rest their opinion on our experience when asleep, and our not recollecting what happens to us in that state; but Leibnitz thinks that thought is never entirely extinguished, that there is never an absolute pause of consciousness, that our thought is a light which sheds but little lustre at times, but which never goes entirely out. Whichever of these opinions be the true one, the permanence of the substance of the soul is beyond a doubt; and it is worthy of remark that the interruption of thought and of consciousness, far from favoring those who oppose the permanence of the soul, confounds them in a most conclusive manner. For if it is impossible to conceive, without supposing something permanent, how different phenomena, continued in an uninterrupted series, are connected in consciousness; it is still more inconceivable how they can be connected, if we suppose this series to be interrupted, and a certain space of time to intervene between the existence of the connected phenomena.
61. Let A, B, C, D be thoughts which are continued without any interval of time between them, and Q the consciousness through which they pass; if this Q is not something, it is impossible to conceive how the terms of the series can be connected, and, how, notwithstanding their difference and diversity, there is found at the bottom of them all something constant and identical, which we call the me, and by virtue of which we can say: I, who think D, am the same who thought C, and B, and A.
But if the consciousness is interrupted, if some hours have passed between C and D, during which there was no thought, no consciousness, it is still more inconceivable how at the bottom of the thought me there is found the same me which was in the thought C; it is still more inconceivable, because in thinking D we may say: I, who think D, am the same who thought C, and who have been for a certain time deprived of thought. Without something permanent, something which lasts during the succession, how explain this connection? Are we, perchance, speaking of unknown facts? Is not this our daily experience on awaking? If this is not conclusive, let us deny consciousness, let us deny reason; but let us not waste time in talking philosophy.
KANT'S OPINION OF THE ARGUMENT WHICH HE CALLS PARALOGISM OF PERSONALITY.
62. Kant attacks the argument founded on the testimony of consciousness in a particular manner in the examination of what he calls the Paralogism of Personality. He gives the argument in this form; "Whatever has the consciousness of its numerical identity at different times is, by this fact alone, a person; this is verified of the soul; therefore soul is a person." Kant uses the word person in a very incorrect sense: it not only means an intelligent substance, but one that is the complete principle of its actions, independently of all connection with any other substance, or a union with a supposition. At any rate, the German philosopher understands here by person an intelligent substance; and in this sense he proposes to combat the argument proving the personality of the soul.
63. "If I wish," he says, "to know by experience the numerical identity of any external object, I apply my attention to that which is constant in the phenomenon, to which all the rest is referred, as a determination to its subject; and I observe the identity of the subject at the time in which the determination changes. I am an object of the internal sense, and time is only the form of this sense; I therefore refer all my successive determinations, and each one of them in particular, to that which is numerically identical, in all time, that is, in the form of the internal intuition of myself. Hence the personality of the soul ought only to be deduced or concluded as a proposition perfectly identical with consciousness in time; consequently, this proposition is valid a priori, because it does not really announce any thing else than that in all the time in which I am conscious of myself, I am conscious of this time as a thing, which is a part of my unity. This is the same as to say: All this time is in me as individual unity, or rather, I am in all this time with numerical identity."
It would have been desirable if Kant had shown why the internal sense of the numerical identity may be expressed by the proposition; all this time is in me as an individual unity, or in this other; in all the time in which I am conscious of myself, I am conscious of this time as a thing, which is a part of my unity. It is true that the numerical unity is perceived in the diversity of time; but it is not true that we are conscious of time as a thing which is a part of us. He is treating of the consciousness of self, as it is found in the greatest part of mankind, who, far from considering time as a thing which is a part of themselves, regard it as a sort of vague extension or succession in which they and all that is variable exist.
It is well known that philosophers themselves dispute on the true nature of time; and that it is the form of the internal sense is an opinion of Kant's, which is not accepted by many others, and which, as I have shown,[47] he explains badly and proves still worse, although he pretends to have raised his theory to the height of an incontestible doctrine. Whether time is an internal or an external form, whether, even, it is an illusion or a reality, we perceive our numerical identity in its succession; therefore when the German philosopher bases himself on his theory of time, in order to attack the solidity of the argument of consciousness, he rests on a supposition which we are not required to admit, and what is more, he explains this sentiment of identity in terms which no one ever used before him. If he wishes to make time enter into the sentiment of numerical identity, he might say: I find myself in all this time in a numerical identity, or: all this time has passed over me as over an individual unit; but not that we are conscious of time as a thing which is a part of ourselves. If we look to consciousness, we should rather be inclined to believe that time is a sort of successive extension, in which we live, and by which our existence is measured.
64. "The identity of the person," continues Kant, "must inevitably be found in my consciousness; but if I regard myself from the point of view of another (as the object of his external intuition) this other observer conceives me only in time; for, in the apperception, time is not strictly represented except within me; therefore he will not conclude my objective permanence from the me, which he admits, and which accompanies all representations in all time in my consciousness, and in a perfect identity. The time in which the observer places me not being the same which is found in my own sensibility, but that which accompanies his intuition, it follows that the identity which is necessarily joined to my consciousness, is not joined to his, that is, to the external intuition of my subject." It is difficult to understand precisely what Kant means in this passage, and it seems very doubtful whether he understood it himself; however, let us see what can be deduced from it against the permanence of the soul.
The German philosopher admits that the identity of the person is inevitably found in our consciousness; that is, the me finds itself numerically identical in the diversity of time. It is also true that a strange observer conceives the me only in time, that is, if one man reflects on the soul of another man, he conceives it only in time. But this does not show why Kant says that the observer would not infer from this the objective permanence of the soul observed. What would happen would be this. If the man who reflects on the soul of another man believes that same passes in the soul of this man which he perceives within himself, he will infer that the other soul is permanent, for the same reason that he affirms the permanence of his own soul. It is true that as he cannot enter into the consciousness of the other, he can only know it by external marks; but if he is convinced that these marks are sufficient to denote a series of phenomena of consciousness similar to those which he experiences in himself, he will infer that the soul which he observes is as permanent as his own. What does Kant mean then, when he says that the identity which is necessarily connected with my consciousness, is not connected with that of the observer? Who ever doubted this truth? Who ever supposed that the perception of the identity in relation to one's own consciousness is not very different from that which relates to another's? Our own identity is revealed to us by immediate consciousness; the identity of another is shown to us by a series of external phenomena which lead us by reasoning and analogy to the conviction that outside of us there are beings similar to ourselves.
65. "The identity of the consciousness of myself at different times," Kant goes on to say, "is only a formal condition of my thoughts and their connection; but it does not prove the numerical identity of my subject, in which, notwithstanding the logical identity of the me, such a change may take place, as to render it impossible to preserve the identity of this me, which does not prevent our always attributing to it the identical me, which me may still preserve in another state, and even in the metamorphosis of the subject, the thought of the previous subject, and transmit to it all that comes afterwards." This is precisely what Kant ought to have explained; because the phenomenon of the sentiment of identity in the midst of continual variety, is what irresistibly inclines us to believe that the me is something permanent. It is not true that we have only the topical identity of the me, for we are not speaking of the subject of a proposition, but of a real subject, experienced, perceived in the depth of our consciousness.
Kant imagines that he can explain this sentiment of identity with great simplicity. I will try to express his strange opinion in an intelligible manner. Let A, B, C, D, E, ... be instants of time, and let a, b, c, d, e, ... be thoughts or any other internal phenomena, corresponding to them. At the instant A, the thought a exists. At the instant B, the thought b succeeds. At the instant B, the soul which existed at the instant A, no longer exists. The soul at the instant B, is something entirely new; it is not a but b. The same is true of all the rest. But how, you will say, is it possible for the soul at all these instants to believe itself the same? It is very simple: the subject a transmits the thought to the subject b; b transmits its own and a's to c. Nothing remains identical; but the consciousness of the identity always lasts. Does not such an hypothesis seem truly wonderful and philosophical? What could be imagined clearer and more satisfactory?
The reader may perhaps think that I am jesting, and that I present Kant's opinion under a ridiculous aspect for the sake of combating it more easily; but it is just the reverse; the exposition which I have just made of Kant's philosophy is more serious than his own. These are his words: "One elastic ball striking another in a right line, communicates to the latter its whole motion, and consequently its whole state (considering only their positions in space). Admit now, by analogy with these bodies, certain substances, of which one transmits representations to another, with the consciousness which accompanies them; we may then conceive a whole series of such representations, in which the first communicates its state, and the consciousness of its state to the second; the second communicates its state, together with that of the preceding substance, to the third; the third, in like manner, communicates the states of both of the preceding substances together with its own, and the consciousness which accompanies them to the fourth. The last of the series will then have the consciousness of all the states of the substances which preceded it, as of its own; because these states, and the consciousness of these states have been transmitted to it. Still it will not have been the same person in all these states."
Kant, in trying to refute the psychological argument founded on consciousness, overthrows and destroys the character of consciousness: a transmitted consciousness is not a true consciousness; it is only the cognition of a previous thought.
These substances, existing successively and transmitting their consciousness from one to another, would be something distinct from the act of consciousness, or they would not. If distinct, we must admit a subject of the consciousness, which in itself, and as subject, does not come under the sensible intuition; and consequently we may argue ad hominem, and retort Kant's objection against himself. If these transitory substances are only the act of the consciousness, when the act ceases, nothing remains of the substances, and therefore, there is nothing transmissible.
Transmission supposes something which may be transmitted; if, then, the act of consciousness is transmitted, it must be something permanent in itself, in the midst of the succession of the substances; and this is a very strange conclusion to which the German philosopher is brought by his theory of transmission. All psychologists had said that the substance of the soul is permanent, and its phenomena transitory; now, on the contrary, we find that the transitory is the substance, and that which is permanent is the phenomenon, or the act of consciousness which is transmitted.
66. Perhaps it may be answered that by transmission is not meant the communication of any thing constant, but merely the succession of phenomena united by any tie among themselves. Thus, supposing the instants A, B, C, D, the acts of consciousness, a, b, c, d, corresponding to them, will not be strictly identical in number, but successive, and connected. But this reply, which avoids the necessity of admitting the permanence of the act of consciousness, explains nothing, and makes it incomprehensible, how, at the instant D, for example, there can be consciousness of the acts c, b, a, which there is an irresistible inclination to believe have at bottom something numerically identical. When d exists there is no longer any thing of c left; there is no substance remaining, because, by the supposition there either is no such substance, or it is something transitory; there is no act of consciousness remaining, because a is numerically distinct from c, and besides, we have seen that the permanence of the phenomena cannot be admitted. Therefore it is absolutely impossible to explain or to comprehend how there can be in the act a the representation of c.
67. To say that the phenomena are united by any tie whatever is to elude the difficulty by a foolish play upon words. What is the meaning, in this case, of uniting, of a tie? They are metaphors which if they mean any thing must express the permanence of some thing amid the variety of the phenomena; the tie, the bond, must extend to the various things which it connects and unites: therefore it must be common to them all; and this something, whatever it be, which remains constant in variety, we call substance.
68. The mere succession of the phenomena or acts of consciousness is not sufficient to transmit the belief of the numerical identity; if it were, all men would be conscious of the previous acts of others. Let a, b, be two successive acts of consciousness: if, in order that the act b, which is numerically distinct from a, may represent the numerical identity of consciousness, it is sufficient that b should succeed a; since this succession is met with in the acts of consciousness of different men, it must follow that all men have consciousness of all the acts of the others. Risum tematis? And yet this conclusion is absolutely necessary: it cannot be avoided by saying that there is a form of the internal sense, and that the succession takes place in each man in his respective internal sense, and that therefore the succession of the internal phenomena of one is in a different time, in a different form from what it is in another. The words, respective internal sense, internal form of each man, have a meaning, if we admit something permanent in our interior; but if there is nothing but successive phenomena, the word respective is absurd, because there can be no respective internal sense if there is nothing to which it can refer. Suppose the man M, and the man N be merely a succession of phenomena, and in each one there is only a mere succession: there is the same reason why the phenomena of N should be connected with each other as with those of M. Therefore, if there is a community of consciousness in the phenomena of M, without any other sufficient reason than the mere succession, this community should be found in all the phenomena, because they all have the same sufficient reason.
69. It must be observed that in all this argument, I abstract the nature of the substance of the soul, and only purpose to demonstrate that we must admit something constant in the midst of the variety of the phenomena, and common to them all. Call it a tie, a form, an act of consciousness, or what you will, it is either something real or it is not. If it is not something real, whoever expresses it, employs a word without any meaning: if it is something real, the substantiality of the soul is acknowledged, because a permanent reality is admitted in the midst of the variety of the phenomena. We, who admit this substantiality, do not pretend that the soul can be given in sensible intuition, nor that we can express in an exact definition its internal properties abstracted from the phenomena which we experience in it. What we say is, that we know its real existence, its permanence, and its numerical identity in the midst of the succession and diversity of the phenomena. Therefore from the moment that it is admitted that there is within us something real, permanent, and numerically identical in the midst of diversity, the substantiality of the soul, which we defend, is admitted. Disputes may arise on the distinctive character of its nature; whether it is or is not a force, as Leibnitz maintained, whether its essence consists in thought, as was the opinion of Descartes: but these questions are foreign to the matter now in hand. Is there something real and permanent amid the variety of internal phenomena? If there is not, the consciousness of numerical identity is absurd; if there is, then the substantiality of the soul is demonstrated.
70. "The opinion of some ancient philosophers," says Kant, "that all is transitory and nothing constant in the world, although it cannot be maintained if we admit substances, still it cannot be refuted by the unity of consciousness; because we cannot even judge by consciousness, whether, as something, we are or are not permanent; for we attribute to our identical me only that of which we have consciousness, and thus we must necessarily judge that we are precisely the same in all the durations of which we are conscious." Kant expressly acknowledges that the judgment that we are the same is necessary, that is, that the identity of the me is for us a necessary fact of consciousness. It would be difficult to imagine a confession more injurious and more conclusive against the arguments of the German philosopher. If we are forced to judge ourselves identical, if consciousness tell us so, can we deny or doubt this identity without destroying the fundamental fact of all psychological investigations, and consequently falling into the most complete skepticism? If the testimony of consciousness is not valid, if the judgment to which it necessarily forces us is not certain, what shall we catch hold of in order that we may not be precipitated into the most absolute skepticism? where shall we look for a solid foundation for the edifice of our knowledge?
71. "But," Kant continues, "from the point of view of another, we cannot hold this judgment valid, because, finding in the soul no other constant phenomenon than the representation of the me which accompanies and unites all the other phenomena, we can never decide that this me (a simple thought) is not as fleeting as the other thoughts, which are respectively connected by it." Do not, then, admit that the representation of the me, although essentially representing an identity, is valid; say that, although transitory it necessarily brings us to the illusion of permanence; but draw also all the consequences of this doctrine, and maintain that human reason avails nothing, absolutely nothing; say that recollection is a pure illusion, that although we are necessarily induced to believe that the thought which we now have is the recollection of another previous thought, that all this is pure illusion; that we are not sure that there is the relation of recollection, and that we only know that at present we have the consciousness of a thought which seems to us connected with another previous thought; say too that reasoning has no validity, for all conviction of ideas is impossible without memory; and that, although an internal representation necessarily produces an assent, we must distrust the judgment which necessity demands: say too that all that we think, all that we perceive, all that we will, all that we experience within us, cannot enable us to know any thing, that we are condemned to a complete impotence of acquiring any certainty of any thing; and that the language of every philosopher should be the following: "This now seems so; I am conscious of it; I know nothing further; I experience a necessity of believing it, but perhaps this belief is a pure illusion; I know nothing of the external world; I know nothing either of the internal world; all knowledge is denied me; I myself am only a succession of phenomena which pass away and disappear; an irresistible necessity impels me to believe that these phenomena have a common tie, but this tie is nothing; because when a phenomenon disappears nothing is before it; if I acknowledge any reality, no matter what, I fall into the substantiality of the soul, which I have resolved not to admit; all is illusion, all is nothing, because, as I am not even certain of the facts of consciousness, I am not certain even of the illusion." Who can encounter such consequences?
CHAPTER XI.
SIMPLICITY OF THE SOUL.
72. I have confined myself in the preceding chapters to proving the substantiality of the soul; to do which it was only necessary to demonstrate by the testimony of consciousness that there is within us a permanent reality, the subject of the modifications which we experience. I shall now demonstrate that this substance is simple.
To proceed methodically, let us fix the meaning of the word simple. When many beings are united and form a collection, the result is called a composite being; so that there is a true composition wherever beings substantially distinct are united; the band which unites them may be of different species, which produces the diversity of compositions. Simplicity is opposed to composition; the idea of simplicity essentially excludes the idea of composition; as this last includes a number of distinct things which are united to form a whole, the idea of simplicity essentially excludes the idea of number of things united to form a whole. Therefore the simple is strictly one, and there is simplicity in a substance when it is not a collection of substances.
When, therefore, we say the substance of the soul is simple, we mean that it is not a collection of substances, but one substance.
73. The idea of simplicity thus determined with exactness, let us see if it belongs to our soul. As the soul is not given us in intuition after the manner of sensible things, and we only know it by the presence of the internal sense, and by the phenomena which we experience in the depths of our consciousness, we must examine these two sources to see if we can find simplicity in them.
It is an indisputable fact that in all our acts, in all our internal affections, we perceive the identity of the me.[48] There is no identity between things that are distinct: consequently the internal sense at once rejects the multiplicity of the soul. It may be said that this identity does not exist between distinct substances, but that a composite substance is identical with itself, and perhaps the identity revealed by consciousness is only the identity of a composite with itself: but this reply is destroyed by merely examining the testimony of consciousness. That which we perceive as various and multiple is not the me, but that which takes place in the me: we think, we will, we perceive different things; but consciousness attests that what thinks them, wills them, and perceives them, is one and the same, the me. Therefore, the testimony of consciousness alone proves the simplicity of the soul; for it is impossible to explain otherwise how we perceive within us the permanent unity amid the multitude of internal phenomena.
74. Abstracting the testimony of the internal sense, and looking only at the nature of the internal phenomena, it may be demonstrated that the subject of them is a simple substance. If it were not so, the thinking substance would be composed of various substances; let us see what would follow from this supposition. Let the component substances be three, for example, A, B, C; I say that this collection cannot think. To demonstrate it with the most complete evidence, let us take this judgment: metal is a body, and let us see if it is possible for the collection of A, B, C, to form this judgment. Let us suppose the representation of the subject, metal, to be in the substance A; the idea of the predicate, body, to be in B; and the general idea of the relation of the predicate to the subject, or the copula, is, to be in C; can a judgment be the result? By no means. A will perceive the metal, B the body, and C the general idea of the copula, is. Each of these substances will have consciousness of its own; but as it is not conscious of what is in the other two, it can form no judgment, for this essentially consists in the relation of the predicate to the subject.
75. If you say that each of the substances contains the representations of the three things, we shall have three judgments, and there will not be one thinking being, but three. Besides, either of the three substances A, B, C, is composed of others, or it is not. If it is not, is simple, and we have a simple and perceptive substance, why then suppose three when one is enough? If it is composed of others, the difficulty is increased; for supposing A to be formed of two substances, which we may call m, n; the representation of metal which was in A will be distributed between m and n, in which case, far from obtaining a judgment, we should not even have a subject; for it would not be possible to form the representation of metal, supposing it to be divided between m and n.
If it is not possible to form a judgment, or even the idea of one term, it is evident that all reasoning and thought would be impossible; for reasoning implies a connection of judgments from which it deduces the conclusion contained in the premises.
76. Acts of the will are also impossible in a composite substance; there is no will where there is no cognition, and this latter is, as we have just seen, inseparable from simplicity. But we may extend the demonstration still further. An act of the will implies an inclination, tendency, or whatever it may be called, towards an object known. Let us suppose the two substances A and B to compose a substance which has a will; and let us suppose all that is necessary for the act of willing to be divided between them in such manner that the knowledge of the object willed is in it, and the inclination or tendency in B; I say such an act or will is absurd. To feel the force of this truth let us suppose that the act of the will is to be formed of the cognition of one man, and the inclination of another towards the object known by the first; the pure cognition of one is not the act of the will, and the inclination of the other towards an object is impossible unless he has the cognition of the object towards which he is inclined, because this is equivalent to supposing a relation without any term to which it relates. These contradictions must be admitted by every one who denies the simplicity of the substances which will; for either the inclination and the cognition must be divided between the parts of the substances, or all concentrated in one part, and then the others are unnecessary.
Moreover, the substances composing the substance which will are either simple or composite; if simple, then there are simple substances which know and will; if composite, each act of the will would be an aggregate of the action of the parts, and what would an act of the will be which should consist in an aggregate?
77. The union which we conceive in distinct substances is either juxtaposition in space, simultaneousness in time, or the concourse of forces producing a common effect: juxtaposition in space or simultaneousness of time does not help us to explain thought, the act of the will, nor any internal phenomena; and neither does the concourse of forces producing a common effect solve the problem. On this supposition we should have to conceive internal phenomena as the products of an elaboration to which various substances have occurred. Let us for a moment admit this absurdity; we advance nothing by it, for we then ask, where does the phenomenon reside? If in all the substances jointly it must be in itself composite, and its consciousness would also be composite; none of the component substances could say I with respect to this phenomenon; there would, therefore, be a multiplicity of consciousnesses. Either these consciousnesses would be united in a point in order to form a common consciousness, or they would not. If they are united, their point of union must be a simple substance, or we relapse into the multiplicity of consciousnesses: if they are not united, the different internal consciousnesses of each man will be like the consciousnesses of different men; each substance will think its own, without knowing what the other thinks.
78. Finally, this divisibility of substance and of consciousness will extend to infinity, or it will not; if the former, instead of one thinking being, there will be an infinite number of thinking beings within each one of us; if the latter, we must come to simple substances with thought and consciousness, which is precisely what our adversaries are opposed to. Infinite divisibility does not save them from simplicity; the division separates the parts, but it supposes them distinct; therefore, infinite division must suppose an infinite number of simple beings which make the division possible.
KANT'S OPINION OF THE ARGUMENT PROVING THE SIMPLICITY OF THE SOUL.
79. Kant calls the argument, by which we have just proved the simplicity of the soul, the second paralogism of psychology. He gives it in these terms: "Every thing, the action of which can never be conceived as the concurrence of many agents, is simple: the soul or thinking substance is of this nature; therefore the soul is simple." The German philosopher admits that this argument is not a mere sophism, invented by some dogmatist for the purpose of giving his assertions a slight appearance of truth; and he confesses that it seems to defy the most attentive examination and the most profound reflection. Still he flatters himself that he can expose its fallacy, showing that this principal support of rational psychology is a false foundation, and that, consequently, the whole edifice of this science is built in the air.
80. Kant observes that the nervus probandi of the argument is in the fact that many representations cannot form a thought, except inasmuch as they are contained in the absolute unity of the thinking subject; "but no one," he says, "can prove this proposition by conceptions. Where could he begin? The proposition: 'A thought can only be the effect of the absolute unity of the thinking subject,' cannot be analyzed; the unity of thought (and even thought results from many representations) is collective; and as to simple conceptions, their unity may just as well be referred to the collective unity of substances which contribute to produce the thought (just as the motion of a body is the motion of all its parts) as to the absolute unity of the subject. The necessity of the supposition of a simple substance cannot consequently be known by the rule of identity in a composite thought. No one who understands the reason of the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori, as we have explained them above, will dare to affirm that this proposition can be known synthetically, and perfectly a priori, or by pure conceptions." This reasoning is pure sophistry, and will vanish in the light of evidence.
81. In the first place, it is not correct to say that all thoughts result from many representations; in the perception of a simple idea, as of being, for example, there are not many representations; therefore Kant's argument fails at the first step; for if there be even one thought which requires simplicity, it has already been demonstrated that, if the soul is simple in one instance it cannot cease to be so in another.
82. Let us now examine how the diversity of representations enter into those thoughts which admit of this diversity. When these representations form what is called a thought, they are united, as it were, in a point which requires the unity of the perception and of the subject perceiving. In the thought called judgment various representations are combined, that of the subject and that of the object; but these different representations do not constitute the thought called judgment, except inasmuch as they are presented as connected with the relation which authorizes us to affirm or deny the predicate of the subject; therefore at the bottom of the diversity there is unity, that is to say, the relation; therefore the thought by which this relation is perceived is one, and the action of perceiving is essentially one, notwithstanding the variety of the representations.
83. There is no order in our thoughts except as we compare them with each other: all our intellectual acts are reduced to the perception and comparison of ideas; in perception there is simplicity, as there must also be in comparisons, since there can be no comparison of that which is varied, except by reducing the varied to that which is one, that is, to the relation which is perceived in the comparison. Therefore in every thought there is unity; thought can never be conceived as the concurrence of many agents; therefore the proposition, which Kant considered indemonstrable, is demonstrated,—that many representations cannot form a thought except in so far as they are contained in the absolute unity of a thinking subject.
84. Let us present the same demonstration under a stricter form. Suppose A, B, C, to be the three agents concurring in the formation of the thought; each part will yield its contingent; let us suppose a to correspond to the first, b to the second, and c to the third, the result will be the union composed of a, b, and c; this will be the thought; it will therefore be triple and can never constitute a point of comparison; therefore, we must either reject this hypothesis, or deny thought. Kant's sophism proceeds from his attending solely to the diversity of the representations, and abstracting the unity which is always met with in the perception of this diversity; hence it is nothing strange that he does not find unity in the conception of thought. He presents this conception incompletely, or rather, falsely; he presents thought as a collection of representations, and not as a most simple point in which representations unite, in order to be perceived in the relation which they have among themselves. The diversity of the representations does not form a collection after the manner of sensible objects; the thought, in which the relation of two different triangles is known, cannot be expressed by the sum of the figures of the two triangles; it is something different from them; something which is in the midst of them; which unites them by comparing them, and which joins their diversity in the unity of their relation.
85. The example brought by Kant manifests the rudeness of his idea of the character of the union of the representations in the formation of a whole thought. The unity of the thought is, he says, collective, and may be referred to the collective unity of many substances, just as the motion of a body is the motion composed of all the parts of the body. Here we see clearly wherein Kant's equivocation consists; he takes the collection of the representations for the thought which relates to them, and therefore it is no wonder that he cannot see the unity implied in the diversity, on the supposition that this diversity has to be thought.
To carry conviction to the farthest point, let us take this example of motion, and suppose a cube to be moved. Let us call its eight verticles A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H; they all move, and the collection of their motions, with those of the points which are between them, forms the whole motion. What is there common in the result of this concurrence of agents? Nothing, except juxtaposition in space, and the relation which they preserve by the equal velocity of the motion. But the motion of the vertex H is not the motion of the vertex A, as is evident if we consider that the vertex A may be cut off from the cube, and remain at rest without discontinuing or altering the motion of the vertex H; therefore, the two motions are things absolutely distinct. It is evident that the same holds true with respect to the other points; therefore the unity of the composite motion is purely factitious; what there is, in reality, is a multiplicity of substances, and of motions, without any other than a purely extrinsical connection, the relation of positions in space.
Let us change the vertices into representations, and see what will be the result. Do they exist without any other connection than their co-existence? Then they do not form a thought, but only a collection of phenomena which may be considered as a union of things, but not a thought; in that case the sum of all the representations will be similar to the sum of the motions; but it will produce no result in relation to the object which we are now examining. If we give these representations a point of union, that is, the relation under which they are perceived, we shall have a thought; but what has this act, which is one and most simple, in common with, the totality of a number of points in motion?
86. If Kant had wished to present a more seductive example, he ought to have made use of a theory in mechanics, the application of which to the present case presents, if not more difficulty, at least a more deceitful appearance; I mean the resultant of a system of forces and their point of application.
When several forces act upon a line, a plane, or a solid, they produce an effect equal to that one force alone, which is called the resultant: this force has a determinate direction and a point of application, as though it were simple or had not emanated from others; why cannot this be applied to thought? Why may not a thing, although it is simple, be the product of the concurrence of various agents? This example is more specious, because it presents the result of the composition concentrated in a point, but if we examine it well, we shall find that it proves nothing against us.
The disparity is this: thought is a simple act in itself, whilst the resultant of the forces is so only in its relation to the effect experienced, which is all that comes under our calculation. If two forces are applied at the two extremities of an inflexible right line the effect will be the same as though we applied one force equal to the sum of them both at one point of the line, at a distance from either extremity inversely proportioned to the value of the first forces. But the unity of this effect depends on the cohesion of the parts, which, not permitting isolated motions, must make the force act on a single point; but the component forces do not cease to be distinct and separate, so that at the moment the cohesion should cease, the respective parts would each feel the action of the force corresponding to it, and move in the direction and with the velocity which the force impresses on them. If, while the cohesion lasts, it were possible to give each of the component forces the consciousness of its action, there would be two consciousnesses really distinct, which could never form one common consciousness, and could only be united in the production of an effect. If the point of their application should have the consciousness of the action which it experiences, it might have a consciousness similar to that of the action of one force, equal to the sum of the components, if it did not know the manner in which their action is transmitted to it; but from the moment that it becomes conscious of their respective action, it would know that the result is owing to the impossibility of each of them producing its effect in an isolated manner. If, therefore, we compare the thinking subject to this point of application of the forces, we must attribute to this subject the consciousness of the origin of the representations which concur in the production of the whole effect.
Perhaps it may be said that by the very analysis of the example, we have prepared the way for the triumph of the adversaries of the simplicity of the soul; because after arbitrary suppositions we have at last come to a simple effect inherent in a simple thing, and produced by the concurrence of various agents; but if we look closer to it, we shall find that this pretended triumph was never farther from being realized than it is in the last result to which we are led by the analysis of the forces. For, in order to arrive at a simple result produced by the concurrence of various forces, we also require a simple point in which this result is concentrated. Then, and precisely because we have arrived at this simplicity, we can abstract the component forces, and consider the result as a simple effect, produced by a simple force, and inherent in a simple subject, which is the indivisible point, to which we consider the force as applied. Therefore, continuing the comparison, we ought to say that, whatever may be the number of the agents concurring in the production of the thought, this thought must reside in a simple subject, and in that case the simplicity of the soul is admitted. It is true that we should then suppose a certain number of agents acting on the soul in order to produce the thought; but the thought once produced, the soul alone would be the thinking subject, just as the indivisible point is the only one which unites the action of the component forces.
Thus all that our adversaries would have gained would be the burden of the ridiculous invention of the concurrence of agents, and be forced notwithstanding, to admit a simple thinking substance, which is all that we proposed to demonstrate.
87. Kant pretends that it is impossible to deduce from experience the necessary unity of the thinking subject, as the condition of the possibility of all thought, because experience reveals no necessity, and the conception of absolute unity belongs to an order different from that which we are here considering. It is certain that experience alone does not reveal any necessity; for it is limited to particular, contingent facts, and does not reach the universal reason of objects; but this is not true of experience regarded objectively, or in relation to the cognition of the general reasons of things; for although this cognition, considered subjectively as an individual act, is a contingent fact, still inasmuch as it exists it represents a true necessity in certain objects; unless we wish to renounce the certainty of all the sciences, mathematics included.
It is clear that in speaking of thought and the thinking subject, we cannot forget experience, since it is impossible to abstract the basis of all psychological investigations,—I think,—a proposition which expresses a fact of consciousness, an act of internal experience; but with this experience is combined the idea of unity in general, or the exclusion of distinction and multiplicity from the act of thought and from the thinking subject. Thus the demonstration of the simplicity of the soul follows in the same path as all demonstrations which are confined to the purely ideal order, and which consequently are formed of one premise which contains a necessary truth, and another which establishes a fact of experience. In the present instance, the necessary premise is the very definition of unity and simplicity; the other expresses the fact experienced, that is, the nature of the thought, as it is revealed in consciousness.
88. Hence the demonstration of the simplicity of thinking beings is not limited to the human mind, but extends to all the subjects in which the fact of consciousness exists. When Kant says we cannot extend this demonstration, because we then go out of the field of experience, we reply with this argument: our demonstration is founded on the idea of unity and the fact of consciousness; the idea of unity is general, and consequently is valid in all cases; the fact of consciousness is a thing which is found in every thinking being, since thought is inconceivable without a subject, which may say, I think; therefore, we proceed legitimately in extending the demonstration of simplicity, unless you mean to give to the word think a very different meaning from that which we all give to it, in which case we go out of the arena of philosophy and enter on a discussion of words.
89. We must have received the idea of a thinking being from internal experience: we may expand or restrict this idea, increasing or decreasing its perfection; but at bottom it remains always the same, and we cannot conceive thought in another being without attributing to it something similar to what we experience in ourselves. In this respect Kant is therefore right when he says that if we wish to represent to ourselves a thinking being we must put ourselves in the place of the object. According to him, we require for thought the absolute unity of the subject, only because without this unity it would be impossible to say, I think; since, although the totality of the thought may be distributed among the various subjects, the subjective me cannot be divided or separated, and every thought supposes this me. The proposition, I think, is the foundation on which psychology raises the edifice of its knowledge: Kant admits this, but I cannot understand why, admitting that this proposition is the form of the apperception which is joined with and precedes all experience, he still says that it is not experimental; as though the thought were not just as subject to a real experience as its form; whereas if we closely examine it, we should rather say that the form is experienced than the thought itself, on the supposition that the latter is distinct whilst the form is identical in every instance; for the form in itself is only the consciousness of the unity identical in the midst of diversity.
90. In conceiving this absolute unity in the me, we do not, as Kant pretends, conceive a topical unity, but a real unity, if we suppose it to remain really the same through the variety of thought. When we enunciate this unity in the proposition, I think, we do not speak of a form in the abstract, common to all perceptions, but of something positive which is within us, and the reality of which is indispensable to the possibility of thought.
91. The German philosopher further says: "This subjective condition of all knowledge cannot with propriety be converted into a condition of the possibility of a knowledge of the objects; that is, into a conception of thinking being in general, since we cannot represent this being to ourselves without putting ourselves in its place by the formula of our consciousness." I do not believe that the psychologists who have pretended that they could demonstrate the simplicity of the soul, ever flattered themselves with arriving at a perfect idea of thinking beings, or denied that we obtain the type of this idea from our own experience; what they have pretended is, that reason leads them to infer that there is absolute unity of the subject wherever there is a thinking being; whether its thought may belong to a higher or lower order than our own.
92. When Kant observes that the subject in which the thought inheres is only indicated in a transcendental way, without its properties being discovered, and that, therefore, we do not know the simplicity of the subject itself, he declares a fact which is in some sense admissible, but he deduces from it a false consequence. It is true that we only know the substance of the soul by the presence of the internal sense, and by its relation to its acts; and consequently that the soul in itself abstracted from all the phenomena which we experience, is not given in immediate intuitions, and that when we arrive at this point we are reduced to the idea of a simple being, but this indeterminateness, and vagueness, in the knowledge of the substance of the soul, does not prevent our knowing its simplicity, if this simplicity is revealed by the internal sense, and also by the nature of the phenomena by which we know the thinking subject.
93. Some persons may believe that the indeterminateness of the knowledge of the substance of the soul is a fact recently discovered by the German philosopher; but it is easy to show that it had been observed long before, and is laid down in a very special and interesting manner in the writings of St. Thomas. This eminent metaphysician proposes the question whether the intellectual soul knows itself by its essence, utrum anima intellectiva seipsam cognoscat per suam essentiam, and after the various remarks on intelligence, and the intelligibility of objects, he solves it in these remarkable words: "Our understanding does not know itself by its essence, but by its act; and this in two ways: in one way, in particular; inasmuch as Sortes or Plato perceives that he has an intellectual soul, because he perceives that he understands: in the second way, in general; inasmuch as we consider the nature of the human mind in the act of the understanding. But it is true that we derive the judgment and efficacy of the knowledge by which we know the nature of the soul, by the light of the divine truth of which our intellect participates, and in which are contained the reasons of all things, as was said above. Hence, Augustine says, in the ninth book on the Trinity: We have intuition of the inviolable truth by which we perfectly determine, as far as possible, not what the mind of each man is, but what it should be according to the eternal reasons. But there is a difference between these two cognitions, for, to have the first, we only need the presence of the mind, which is the principle of the act by which the mind perceives itself, and, therefore, we say that it knows itself by its presence; but for the second, the presence of the mind is not sufficient, but a careful and subtile investigation is necessary. Hence many are ignorant of the nature of the soul, and many also have erred on the nature of the soul; wherefore in the tenth book on the Trinity, Augustine, speaking of this investigation, says: The soul should not try to see itself as something absent, but endeavor to distinguish itself as something present; that is, to know its difference from other things, which is to know its quiddity and nature."[49]
94. It is to be observed that St. Thomas admits two cognitions of the soul by itself;—that of its presence, as we perceive it in perceiving our thought, percipit se habere animam intellectivam ex hoc quod percipit se intelligere; and another which we deduce from the analysis of the intellectual act reasoning from general considerations, and reflecting on the light which the eternal reasons shed upon this fact of experience. This is how St. Thomas explains the knowledge of presence or consciousness contained in the proposition, I think; and the general knowledge which we deduce from the same intellectual act in its relations to the unity of the subject exercising it. That this last contains something abstract and indeterminate no one denies; and when Kant calls attention to it, he tells us nothing which the holy Doctor had not already told us when he expressly affirmed that the soul knows itself not in its essence, but in its acts. These few laconic words express all the truth which is contained in Kant's diffuse explanation of the limitation of our cognition to the acts of consciousness, and the absence of the intuitive knowledge of the substance of the soul, the transcendental subject of the thought.
IN WHAT MANNER THE IDEA OF SUBSTANCE MAY BE APPLIED TO GOD.
95. In the idea of substance as formed from the beings around us and from the testimony of our consciousness we find the relation to changes which occur in it as their subject or recipient. But we have before remarked that besides this relation there is a negation of inherence in another as the modifications are inherent in the substance; this negation implies a perfection which exempts it from the necessity of inherence to which the changeable and transitory beings which we call accidents or modifications are subject. As we are ignorant of the intrinsic essence of substances, we do not know what this perfection is; yet we cannot doubt that it exists in the very nature of the subject, and is independent of the modifications which transform it. If then the essence of the substance must consist in any thing, it must be in this perfection of which we have a knowledge, but not an intuitive cognition. When therefore substance is defined in relation to accidents, quod substat accidentibus, it is rather defined by the manner in which it is presented to us than by what it is in itself.
96. Hence, of the two definitions usually received in the schools: Ens per se subsistens, a being subsisting by itself, and, id quod substat accidentibus, the subject of accidents; the first is the more correct, because it comes nearer the expression of what it is in itself. Although we know finite substances only inasmuch as revealed by accidents, and even our own mind knows itself only in its acts, reason tells us that in order to be known things must exist, and in order that our mind may find in them something permanent, it is necessary that this something should be in them. Our knowledge does not produce its objects; in order to be known they must exist.
97. These reflections manifest the possibility of the existence of a substance not subject to accidents or change of any kind; and that this substance not only does not lose the character of substance by being immutable, but possesses it in a much more perfect degree. The perfection of substance is not in its changes but in what is permanent in it, not in having a succession of modifications inherent in it, but in existing in such a manner as not to need to inhere in another. The substance which should possess this permanence, this perfection enabling it to exist by itself, and at the same time should have no modification, should experience no change, would be infinitely superior to all other substances. This substance is God.
98. Now it is easy to answer the question whether when applied to God the idea of substance is understood in the same sense as when applied to creatures; or, to speak in the terms of the schools, whether it is taken univocally or analogously.
99. In the idea of every substance is contained the idea of being; what does not exist cannot be a substance. Inasmuch as we conceive being as a reality, as opposed to nothingness, the idea of being belongs both to God and to creatures: God is, that is to say, God is a real thing, not nothing. But if from this general idea, such as we conceive it in opposition to nothingness, we pass to its realization in objects, to the manner of its application, so to speak, we find all the difference that there is between the contingent and the necessary, the finite and the infinite. Although we do not intuitively see the infinite being, nor the essence of finite beings, still we have evident knowledge that the word being applied to the infinite means something very different from what it does when applied to the finite.
100. In the idea of substance is also contained the idea of something permanent; this permanence belongs also to God: the infinite being is essentially permanent.
101. In the substances around us we find this permanence combined with the succession of the modifications which affect them; these changes are impossible in God. The relation to modifications is a characteristic quality of finite substances.
102. Substances are not inherent in others as modifications are inherent in them; this non-inherence also belongs to the divine substance.
103. Substances must contain something which exempts them from the necessity of inherence and raises them above the things which so rapidly succeed each other, and in their existence always need another to sustain them; this perfection is found in the divine substance which is being essentially, the fountain of perfection.
104. It follows from this analysis that all the perfection contained in the idea of substance may be applied to the infinite being; and that all that is contained in this idea which cannot be applied to this being is what implies negation or imperfection.
CHAPTER XIV.
AN IMPORTANT REMARK, AND SUMMARY.
105. When we say, that a substance is a being subsisting by itself, we do not mean that it is a being which has absolutely no need of another for its existence. To confound these two things would produce a frightful confusion of ideas, and is itself produced by a not less frightful confusion of the relation of cause and effect with the relation of substance and accidents.
106. The relation of cause and effect consists in the cause giving the effect its being; the relation of substance and accident consists in the substance serving as subject to the accident. So great is the difference between these two relations that not only does reason show them to be distinct, but at every moment experience presents them as separate. Our soul is the subject of many accidents in the production of which it has no part, but on the contrary opposed to their production as far as it is able. Such are all painful sensations, all disagreeable impressions, all troublesome thoughts which present themselves in spite of us, and when we wish to think of something else. In these cases the soul is the subject, and not the cause: it has the relation of substance to things of which it is not the cause, and with respect to which it is entirely passive. If I am not greatly mistaken, this example is conclusive, and marks the line which divides causality from substance, effect from accident.
107. To be subsistent by itself expresses an exclusion; if this exclusion is referred to causality, to be subsistent by itself is to be not caused; if referred to inherence, it means to be not inherent in another as accidents are in their substance. When substance is defined a being subsistent in itself, it is understood in the second sense, not in the first, and this distinction is sufficient to overthrow the whole system of Spinoza, and all the pantheists, whatever be the aspect under which they present their error.
108. In order to enter on the question of pantheism free from all confusion, let us sum up in a few words all that reason and experience teach concerning substance.
I. Within us there is a being, one, simple, identical, permanent, the subject of the phenomena which we experience.
II. Outside of us there are objects which preserve something constant through the variety of this phenomena.
III. In the idea of substance are contained the ideas of permanence and non-inherence in another as a modification.
IV. The relation of a subject to its modifications, is found in all finite substances.
V. Relation to modifications is not inseparable from the ideas of being, permanence, and non-inherence in another.
VI. An immutable substance implies no contradiction.
VII. To subsist by itself is not the same as to be independent of all other beings. The relation of cause and effect ought not to be confounded with the relation of substance and accident.
VIII. Non-inherence in another is characteristic of substance; but this negative idea must be founded on something positive; on the force to subsist by itself without the necessity of adhering to another.
CHAPTER XV.
PANTHEISM EXAMINED IN THE ORDER OF IDEAS.
109. The idea of substance and all its applications, as well to the external as to the internal world, are far from leading us to infer the existence of a single substance; on the contrary, reason according with experience forces us to acknowledge a multitude of substances. Why should we admit only one substance? This is one of the most important questions of philosophy, and from the most ancient times has given occasion to the most serious errors; it consequently deserves a careful investigation.
110. Those who admit only one substance must found their opinion either on the idea of substance or on experience; our mind can have no other recourse than to its primitive ideas, or the teachings of experience. Let us begin with the a priori method or that which is founded on the idea.
111. What do you understand by substance? we ask. If by substance you understand a being subsisting by itself, and by this subsistence you mean that it has no need of another, and never had any need of another in order to exist, then you are speaking of a being that is not caused, of a necessary being which has in itself the sufficient and necessary reason of its existence. If you say this being is only one, or that there is no other of its kind, we agree with you, only we tell you that you take the name of substance in an improper sense. But at bottom the difference would be only in the name; and in order to come to a mutual understanding it is only necessary for us to know that by substance you understand an absolutely necessary, and consequently absolutely independent being. But if you assert that this being is the only one in the sense that there is nothing, and can be nothing beside it, then your assertion is gratuitous and we ask for joint proof.
Why should the necessary being exclude the possibility of other beings? Is it not more reasonable to conclude that it contains the reason of their possibility and existence? The being which has in itself the necessity of existing, must possess activity, and the external term of this activity is production. Why may not other beings be the result of this production? Inasmuch as produced they would be distinct from the being producing them.
112. Without going beyond our ideas we find contingency and multiplicity. Experience reveals a continual succession of forms within us; these appearances are something; they cannot be a pure nothing, for they must be something, though only appearances. In them we behold a continual transition from not-being to being, and from being to not-being; therefore there is a production of something which is not necessary, since it is, and ceases to be; therefore there is something besides the being which is supposed the only one. This argument is founded on the purely internal phenomena, and, therefore, is valid even against the idealists, against those who take from the external world all reality, and reduce it to mere appearances, to simple phenomena of our mind. These appearances exist at least as appearances; they are then something, they are contingent, they are not therefore necessary being. Therefore besides this being there is something which is not it; therefore the system which asserts the existence of only one being is not sustainable.
The idea of a being absolutely independent by reason of its absolute necessity does not exclude the existence of contingent beings; it only shows that the necessary being is the only necessary being, not that it is the only being.
113. Neither does it follow from the idea of necessary being that there cannot be contingent beings, caused, and yet subsisting by themselves in the sense that they are not inherent as modifications in others. Not to be caused and not to be inherent are two very distinct things; the first implies the second, but the second does not imply the first. Every being not caused must be free from inherence, because if it is not caused it is necessary, and contains in itself all that is necessary in order not to inhere in another. If necessary, it must be absolutely independent of all others, which it would not be if it needed them as a modification needs a substance. But not every thing which is not inherent is necessarily not caused, for its cause may have made it such that it does not need to be inherent as a modification in another. It would then depend on another as an effect on its cause, but not as an accident on its substance; there would be between them the relation of causality, but not that of substance; things which we have shown in the last chapter to be very distinct.
114. Never will the pantheists be able to prove that because a thing is not a modification it must be not caused; and this is precisely what they must prove in order to carry their system through in triumph. Once prove that whatever subsists in itself is not caused, and you will have proved whatever subsists in itself to be necessary. And as the necessary being must be only one, you will have proved that there is only one substance.
115. The secret of pantheism is the confounding of non-inherence with absolute independence; and the means of overthrowing its arguments is always to distinguish these two things. All that is not caused is substance, but not all that is substance is uncaused. All that is not caused is necessary and therefore not inherent, but not every substance is necessary. Finite substance is not inherent in another being, but it is caused by another being. It cannot exist without this other being, it is true; but this dependence is not the dependence of a modification on its substance, but that of an effect on its cause.
The cause gives being to the effect; the substance sustains the accident: the cause is not modified by the effect; the substance is modified by the accident. These ideas are clear and distinct; by them pantheism is destroyed in all its transformations, and forced, as old Proteus was by Menelaus, to resume its primitive form. Atheism is its nature, and should be its name. Many of the erroneous systems which disturb the ideal world are founded on an equivocation; to oppose them with success, we must fix ourselves on the point which clears up their equivocation, and not go out of it. The equivocation will assume different forms, but we must not suffer ourselves to be deceived or confounded by it; we must always return to the same distinction and make that the battle-ground. The passage of the immortal poet in the place just alluded to, might be taken as a fable giving an excellent method of defeating sophisms: "Collect all your strength and courage," says the goddess Idothea to Menelaus, "and, throwing yourself upon him, hold him tightly despite all his efforts; for he will metamorphose himself in a thousand ways in order to escape from you: he will take the semblance of all the most savage animals. He will also change himself into water; he will become fire: but let none of these frightful forms terrify you, or force you to let him go; on the contrary, hold him and strain him the more tightly. But as soon as he returns to the first form in which, he was, ... then use no more violence, but let him go.[50]" So it is with pantheism, it will speak of matter, of mind, of the reality of phenomenal, of the me, of the not-me, of subsistence and non-subsistence, of the necessary and the contingent; but do not allow it to go beyond the fundamental ideas, lead it to them; it will at last return to its first form, and when it has returned to this, then let it go, showing it to the world as it is, saying: "See it in its horrible deformity; it has always been what it is now; notwithstanding all its transformations, it is nothing but atheism."
PANTHEISM EXAMINED IN THE ORDER OF EXTERNAL FACTS.
116. If pantheism is unsustainable in the region of ideas, it is not less so in the field of experience. The latter, far from leading us to the exclusive unity of substance, shows us on all sides multiplicity.
117. There is unity where there is no division, when in the thing that is one no others can be distinguished, when it admits no negative judgment. Nothing of all this is observed in the external world; but a constant experience presents directly the contrary.
118. In the external world division is visible, palpable; there is no other unity than that of order, of direction to an end; besides this, all is multiplicity. The only medium by which we are placed in communication with the external world are the senses, and they encounter multiplicity on every side—sensations distinct in number, diverse in species, graduated in a thousand different ways, distributed into infinite groups, which, although they are connected in this or that point, may be divided and are divided in a thousand others.
119. Multiplicity is as truly revealed by the testimony of the senses as the very existence of objects. If we deny the competency of their testimony in the first, we must deny it also in the second. They not only tell us that such a body exists, but that it is not another body. We know nothing with more certainty than that an external object corresponds to a sensation, that the objects of two distinct sensations are distinct.
To say that the senses are not good judges in this matter, because they are limited to mere sensation, and consequently cannot judge of the objects of the sensation, is to appeal to idealism, for by the same reason we may assert that the senses, limited to mere sensation, cannot give us certainty of the existence of their respective objects.
120. To establish unity outside of ourselves is to annihilate the corporeal world. The idea of extension contradicts unity. In that which is extended some parts are not the others. This is evident, and whoever attempts to doubt it attacks the basis of the certainty of geometry. If the world is something real, it is extended; if it is not extended, we cannot be certain that it is any thing real. We have the same certainty of its extension as of its existence. Its very existence is manifested by the extension presented to our senses. If, then, this extension does not exist, sensations are a mere internal phenomenon, a pure illusion, in so far as we attribute to them a correspondence to the exterior.
121. This argument seems to me one of the most conclusive than can be brought against Spinosa, who, together with the oneness of the substance admits extension, as one of its attributes. The extended is essentially multiplex; it always involves the distinction between its parts; we can always say of it: "The part A is not the part B." Pantheism cannot escape this argument except by taking refuge in pure idealism; and in this respect Fichte and Hegel are more logical than most persons give them credit for being. In order to maintain the exclusive oneness of substance, it is necessary to convert the external world into mere phenomena, whose only reality consists in their being thus presented to us. This is to absorb the world in the me, and concentrate the reality in the idea; but this absorption, this concentration, notwithstanding its obscurity, is a necessary and logical consequence of the principle established. There is absurdity, but there is at least the consequence of the absurdity.
122. Those who call Spinosa the disciple of Descartes, have not observed that there is a necessary contradiction between the two systems. The argument founded on extension, which I have just presented, although conclusive under every hypothesis, is still more so against those who admit with Descartes, that the essence of bodies consists in extension. In that case, the various parts of extension are essentially distinct, since each part constitutes an essence. The essential and substantial multiplicity of bodies would be in proportion to the multiplicity of extension.
123. If you maintain that extension is not the essence of bodies, but an attribute or modification of bodies, whether a determination founded on their essence or an accidental determination, and pretend that this modification or attribute may belong to the only substance, we ask you whether this substance in itself abstracted from extension is simple or composite. If composite, it implies multiplicity, and Spinosa coincides with the common opinion of a corporeal world, composed of many parts, one of which will have no more right than another to be the true substance. For then there would not be a single substance, but one composed of many; and the corporeal universe cannot be called a substance except in the sense in which it is commonly called one, that is, not taking the oneness in a strict sense, but inasmuch as all its parts are connected together, and disposed in a certain order to conspire to the same end. If the substance, the subject of extension is simple, the result will be a simple substance determined or modified by extension, a simple extended substance, which is a contradiction. A thing cannot be conceived as a modification of another unless it is modified by it; this is what the words express. A modification modifies, giving to the thing modified the form of the modification, applying itself to the thing modified. Extension cannot modify except by making the thing modified extended; and to be extended, and to have extension, are absolutely identical expressions. Therefore it is repugnant for a simple substance to have extension for one of its modifications; therefore Spinosa's system is absurd.
PANTHEISM EXAMINED IN THE ORDER OF INTERNAL FACTS.
124. The multiplicity of substances is no less attested by the consciousness of ourselves, or of the internal world. Our first reflex act reveals within us something which is one, indivisible, and remaining always the same through all the transformations of our being. This unity of the me is indispensable to the connection of all the phenomena in a point; without it all memory, all combination, and all consciousness are impossible; our own being disappears, and there remains only a series of unconnected phenomena. But this unity, which we must take as an internal fact which consciousness places beyond all doubt, and the conviction of which it is impossible for us to withstand,—this unity produces the knowledge of multiplicity. There is something which affects us and which is not ourselves. Our will, our activity, is impotent to resist other activities which act upon us; there is, then, something which is not ourselves, which is independent of us. There is something which is not a modification of ourselves, because very often it does not affect us, does not modify us. This something is a reality, for nothing cannot affect any thing. It is not inherent in us; it is, then, in itself, or in something which is not ourselves. There is, therefore, a substance which is not our substance; and the me and the not-me which have made so much noise in German philosophy, far from leading to the unity of the substance, lead to multiplicity; and destroy pantheism entrenched behind idealism.
125. At the very first we meet at least with duality, the me and the not-me; but carrying our observations a little farther, we find a striking multiplicity.
Our mind is not alone: the consciousness of what we daily experience proves our communication with other minds, which, like our own, have the consciousness of themselves—a sphere of activity of their own, and, like our own mind, are subjected to other activities without their will, and sometimes even against it. The me and the not-me existing for our consciousness, exists also for theirs; what in us alone was duality becomes a wonderful multiplicity by means of the repetition of the same fact which we have experienced in ourselves.
126. To attribute this variety of consciousnesses to the same being, to take them as modifications of the same substance, as revelations of itself to its own eyes, is a gratuitous assertion; and not only gratuitous but absurd.
With full confidence I can defy the greatest philosopher of the world to assign any reason, I do not say satisfactory, but even a specious reason, proving that two individual consciousnesses belong to a common consciousness, or are consciousnesses of the same being.
127. In the first place, this doctrine is in contradiction to common sense, and is rejected with irresistible force by the internal sense of every man. The sentiment of our existence is always accompanied by the sentiment of our distinction from other beings like us. We are not only certain that we exist, but that we are distinct from others; and if in any thing the sentiment of this distinction is profoundly marked, it is in what regards the phenomena of our consciousness. Never at any time, in any country or phase of society, could men be persuaded that the consciousness of all their acts and impressions belonged to one and the same being in which individual consciousnesses were united. It is a bad philosophy which begins by struggling against humanity, and placing itself in open contradiction to an irresistible sentiment of nature.
128. The very idea of consciousness excludes this monstrous absurdity, which attempts to transform individual consciousnesses into modifications of one universal consciousness. Consciousness, that is, the internal sentiment of what a being experiences, is essentially individual, it is, so to speak, incommunicable to every other. To others we communicate the knowledge of our consciousness, but not our consciousness itself. It is an intuition or a sentiment which is completed in the innermost recesses of our being, in that which is most our own. What, then, would that consciousness be which does not belong to us as individuals, which is not our own which is nothing of what we believe it to be, but only a property of an unknown being,—a being of which we have no knowledge, and of which we are only a phenomenon, a passing modification? Where would be the unity of consciousness in the midst of such diversity, opposition, and mutual exclusion? This being, modified by so many consciousnesses, would have no consciousness of its own, for it could give itself no account of what it experiences.
FICHTE'S PANTHEISTIC SYSTEM.
129. I am going to fulfil a promise made in the beginning of this work,[51] to explain and refute the system of Fichte. We have seen the cabalistic forms employed by the German philosopher to obtain a simple result, which amounted to neither more nor less than Descartes' principle, "I think, therefore, I am." The reader could never imagine that any one should attempt to found pantheism on this fact of consciousness, and that the human mind, because it finds itself, should have the arrogance to maintain that nothing exists beside itself, that whatever there is, proceeds from itself, and what is still more extraordinary, that it is itself produced by itself. In order to believe that such things have been written we have to see them, and therefore in explaining Fichte's system, I shall copy his own words.
Thus, although he may suffer a little from the foreign garb, and the reader may be fatigued with deciphering enigmas, he will have an idea of the matter and of the form of the system, which he could not have, if we should take from the philosopher his extravagant originality, which, however, relates to the form, rather than to the substance.
130. "This act, namely X = I am, is founded on no higher principle."[52]
This is true to a certain extent, inasmuch as it affirms that in the series of the facts of consciousness, we come to our own existence as the last limit, and can go no farther. The reflex act, by which we perceive our existence, is expressed by the proposition, I am, or, I exist; but this proposition by itself alone, tells us nothing as to the nature of the me, and is very far from proving our absolute independence. On the contrary, from the moment that we begin to reflect, internal facts are presented to us which incline us to believe that our being is dependent on another; and in proportion as we continue to reflect, we acquire a deep conviction of this truth, arising from a rigorous demonstration.
In no way can we affirm that the act, I am, does not depend on any higher principle, if we mean by that, that the act does not spring from any principle of action, and that by itself alone, it produces existence. Besides plainly contradicting common sense, this assertion is without any proof, and is also opposed to the most fundamental notions of sound philosophy.
131. Fichte thinks differently, and without knowing why, he deduces from the above propositions these consequences: "Therefore it (the act, X = I am) is supposed absolutely, and founded on itself, as the principle of a certain (and, as will be seen by the whole Doctrine of Science, of every) act of the human mind, consequently, also of its pure character,—the pure character of activity in itself, abstracted from its particular empirical conditions." It is no great discovery that the character of act is activity; but this character is not pure, since in us no act is pure activity, but it is always a particular exercise of activity.
"Consequently," he continues, "the supposition of the me by itself is its pure activity. The me supposes itself, and it is, in virtue of this mere supposition by itself; and on the other hand, the me is and it supposes its being, by virtue of its mere being. It is at the same time the acting, and the product of the act; the active, and that which is brought about by the activity; act and fact are one and precisely the same thing; and, therefore, I am is the expression of an act, and also of the only one possible, as must be seen from the whole Doctrine of Science."
He that can, may understand what is the meaning of a being which is at the same time producing and produced, principle and term of the same action, cause and effect of the same thing. He that can, may understand the meaning of existing in virtue of a mere action, and exercising this action in virtue of existence. If these be not contradictions, I know not what is. In God, who is infinite being, essence, existence, and action are identical; but we cannot say that the action produces his being, that he supposes himself by his action; we say that he exists necessarily, and that it is therefore impossible that he should have been produced, that he should have passed from not-being to being.
132. There occurs to me here a rational explanation of Fichte's language, an explanation which even if admissible would not excuse the philosopher for expressing very simple things in contradictory terms. However, it is this. The soul is an activity; its essence consists in thought, by which it is manifested to its own eyes, and finds itself in the act of consciousness. In this sense we may say that the soul supposes itself, that is, knows itself, takes itself as subject of a proposition to which it applies the predicate of existence. The soul is the principle of its act of consciousness; and thus it is productive; it is also presented in the act of consciousness as object, hence it may also be said, though inexactly, that in the ideal order it is produced; in this way it is the principle and the term of the action, but under different respects. This explanation, whether more or less founded, is at least reasonable and even intelligible, and the basis on which it rests, that the essence of the soul consists in thought, has the name of Descartes in its favor. Thus although we do not defend the words of Fichte, we might at least defend his ideas. But unfortunately, the philosopher has taken good care to prevent even this; his words could not have been more opposed to it.
"We now consider once more," he says, "the proposition: me is me.
"The me is supposed absolutely. If it is admitted that the me which in the above proposition stands in the place of the formal subject is the me supposed absolutely; and that in the place of the predicate means the existing me; it is expressed in the judgment which is absolutely valid, that both are completely one, or supposed absolutely; that the me is, because it has supposed itself."
Every judgment implies identity of the predicate and the subject; but in the proposition: me is me, the identity is not only implied but explicitly asserted; for which reason, the proposition belongs to the class of what are termed identical propositions, because its predicate explains nothing concerning the idea of the subject, but only repeats it. Whence then does Fichte deduce that the me exists because it has supposed itself? So far we have only the me saying: me is me; it affirms itself and thus supposes itself as subject and predicate of a proposition: but it is clearer than day-light that to suppose by affirming is altogether different from supposing by producing: on the contrary, common sense and reason alike teach that the existence of the thing affirmed is necessary to the legitimacy of the affirmation. To confound these two ideas, to consider it the same thing to affirm as to suppose by producing, is an inconceivable absurdity.[53]
133. Explaining this in a note, Fichte adds what follows: "It is also certainly so according to the logical form of every proposition. In the proposition A = A, the first A is that which is supposed in the me either absolutely as the me itself, or on any other ground as every determined not-me. In this case the me represents the absolute subject, and hence the first A is called the subject. The second A denotes what the me, which takes itself as the object of reflection, finds as supposed in itself because it has first supposed it in itself. The judging me predicates something, not properly of A, but of itself, namely, that it finds an A in itself; and hence the second A is called the predicate. So in the proposition: A = B, A denotes that which is supposed now; B that which is found already supposed. It represents the transition of the me from the act of supposing to the reflection on that which is supposed."
What does Fichte mean by this comparison of ideas and of language? Does he mean that in this proposition the me is subject and predicate according to the different aspects under which it is considered? Does he mean that the me, in so far as it occupies the place of subject, expresses simply existence, and that as predicate it is presented as an object of reflection? What does he mean by the word suppose? If he means by it to produce, how is it possible for a thing which is not to produce itself? If he means by it the manifestation of itself, so that the object manifested may serve as the logical term of a proposition, why does he tell us that the me exists because it supposes itself? But let us follow the German philosopher in his wandering deductions.
134. "The me in the first acceptation and that in the second must be absolutely the same. We can therefore invert the above proposition and say: the me supposes itself, absolutely because it is. It supposes itself by its mere being, and is by its mere supposition."
Without defining the sense of the word suppose, without saying any thing more than what all the world knows; that the me is the me; he infers that the me exists because it supposes itself, and supposes itself because it exists: he identifies existence with supposition without even noticing that at least some preliminary remarks were necessary before placing himself in direct opposition with common sense and the doctrines of all philosophers, including Descartes, who make existence necessary for action, and regard it as a contradiction for a thing to be active without existing. Leibnitz thought that there was nothing and could be nothing without a sufficient reason; but thanks to the author of the Doctrine of Science, we may henceforth people the world at pleasure with finite or infinite beings, and if asked whence they came, we may answer that they have been supposed; if we are further asked why they have been supposed, we may answer; because they exist; and if still again asked why they exist, we may say, because they have been supposed; thus we may pass from supposition to existence, and from existence to supposition, without any danger of refutation.
135. Although this philosophy is any thing but clear, it seems to have satisfied its author, who goes on with admirable gravity to say: "Thus, then, it is perfectly clear in what sense we here use the word me, and we are led to a determinate explanation of the me as absolute subject. Every thing whose being (existence) consists solely in its supposing itself as being, is the me, as absolute subject. So far as it supposes itself, it is; and so far as it is, it supposes itself; and the me is therefore absolute and necessary for the me. That which is not for itself is no me." Ideal pantheism could not be established more explicitly, and at the same time more gratuitously; one is astonished to find one's self seriously occupied with such extravagances. They have made a noise, because they have not been known; they ought therefore to be presented to the reader as they are, even at the risk of fatiguing him.
136. Fichte tries to make his ideas clearer, but we may be always sure that each explanation will add to their obscurity. Let us permit him to continue:
"Explanation! One often hears the question asked, what was I before I came to the consciousness of myself? The natural answer to this is: I was nothing at all; for I was not the me. The me is only in so far as it is conscious of itself. The possibility of this question is founded on a confusion of the me as subject, and the me as object of the reflection of the absolute subject, and is entirely inadmissible. The me represents itself, takes itself so far under the form of the representation, and is now for the first time something, an object; consciousness receives under this form a substratum which is, and although without actual consciousness, is here thought corporeally. Such a case is considered, and it is asked: what was then the me; that is, what is the substratum of consciousness? But even then we think the absolute subject as that which has intuition of this substratum, together with it, although we do not take note of it; we also, without taking note of it, at the same time think that which we pretended to abstract, and thus fall into a contradiction. We can think absolutely nothing without at the same time thinking the me as conscious of of itself; we can never abstract our own consciousness: hence all questions of this kind are unanswerable; for they would be, if well understood, unaskable."
That the me did not exist as the object of its reflection before it had consciousness of itself, is an evident truth; before thinking itself, it does not think itself; who ever doubted it? But the difficulty is, whether the me is any thing, independently of its own reflections or its objectiveness in relation to itself; that is, whether there is in the me any thing more than the being thought by itself. The question is not contradictory, but it is one which naturally presents itself to reason and to common sense; for reason as well as common sense resist the taking as identical, that which exists, and that which is known; that which knows itself, and that which produces itself. We are not now examining whether we have or have not a clear idea of the substratum of consciousness; but it is curious to hear the German philosopher remark that when we do not conceive the me as the object of reflection, we conceive it under a bodily form. This is to confound imagination with ideas, things, as I have elsewhere[54] shown, which are very different.
137. It follows from Fichte's doctrine that the existence of the me consists in its supposing itself by means of consciousness; and that if consciousness should not exist, the me would not exist. In this case to be and to be known are the same thing. Although I might ask Fichte for his proofs of so extravagant an assertion, I shall confine myself to insisting on the difficulty which he proposes, and which he only eludes by a confusion of ideas. What would the me be, if it were not conscious of itself? If to exist is to have consciousness, when there is no consciousness there is no existence. Fichte answers that the me without consciousness is not the me, in which case, it does not exist; but that the question rests on an impossible supposition, the abstraction of consciousness. "We can think absolutely nothing," he says, "without at the same time thinking the me as conscious of itself; we can never abstract our own consciousness." I say again; these words do not solve the difficulty; they only elude it. I pass over his assertion that consciousness is the same as existence: but it is certain that we conceive an instant in which the me is not conscious of itself. Has this conception never been realized? Has there, or has there not, been an instant in which the me was not conscious of itself? If we admit this instant, we must admit that at this instant the me did not exist; therefore it never could have existed, unless Fichte will concede that the me depends on a superior being, and thus admit the doctrine of creation. If we do not admit this instant, the me has always existed, and with the consciousness of itself; therefore the me is an eternal and immutable intelligence; it is God. There is no way for Fichte to escape this dilemma. There is no room here for the distinction between the me as subject and the me as object: we are speaking of the me as having consciousness of itself,—that consciousness in which Fichte makes its existence consist,—and we ask whether this me has always existed or not; if the first, the me is God; if the second, you must either acknowledge creation, or hold that a being which does not exist can give itself existence.
138. Fichte does not retreat from the first consequence, and although he does not call me God, he gives it all the attributes of divinity. "If the me," he says, "is only in so far as it supposes itself, it is only for the supposing, and supposes only for being. The me is for the me,—but if it supposes itself absolutely as it is, it supposes itself necessary, and is necessary, for the me. I am only for myself; but I am necessary for myself—(in saying for myself I always suppose my being.)
"To suppose itself, and to be, are, speaking of the me, entirely the same. The proposition: I am, because I have supposed myself, can, therefore, be also expressed in this manner: I am absolutely, because I am.
"Moreover, the me which supposes itself, and the me which is, are entirely identical; they are one and the same thing. The me is for that which it supposes itself; and it supposes itself as that which it is. Therefore, I am absolutely, what I am.
"The immediate expression of the act which we have now developed would be the following formula: I am absolutely, that is, I am absolutely, because I am; and am absolutely, what I am; both for the me.
"But if the enunciation of this act is intended to be placed at the head of a doctrine of science, it should be expressed somewhat in the following manner: The me originally supposes its own being absolutely."[55]
There is only one fact which is clear in all this extravagance of expression; and that is, the pantheism openly professed by Fichte; the deification of the me, and, consequently, the absorption of all reality in the me. The me ceases to be a limited spirit; it is an infinite reality. Fichte does not deny it: "The me determines itself, the absolute totality of reality is ascribed to the me. The me can determine itself only as reality, for it is supposed absolutely as reality, and no negation whatever is supposed in it.[56]
"But reality is supposed in the me. Therefore the me must be supposed as the absolute totality of reality, (therefore as a quantity, which contains all quantities, and which may be a measure for them all;) and this, too, originally and absolutely, if the synthesis, which we have just explained problematically, be possible, and the contradiction is to be solved in a satisfactory manner. Therefore:
"The me supposes absolutely, without any foundation, and under no possible condition, the absolute totality of reality, as a quantity, than which, by virtue of this supposition, none greater is possible; and this absolute maximum of reality it supposes in itself. All that is supposed in the me is reality: and all reality that is, is supposed in the me....
... "The conception of reality is similar to the conception of activity. All reality is supposed in the me, is the same as: All activity is supposed in the me, and reversely; all in the me is reality, is the same as: The me is only active; it is the me only in so far as it is active; and in so far as it is not active, it is the not-me."[57]
"Only in the understanding is there reality; it is the faculty of the actual; in it the ideal first becomes real."[58]
"The me is only that which it supposes itself; it is infinite; that is, it supposes itself infinite....
"Without the infinity of the me,—without a productive faculty whose tendency is unlimited and illimitable,—it is impossible to explain the possibility of representation."
139. Let us give a glance at these ravings. Psychology starts from a fundamental fact—the testimony of consciousness. The human mind cannot think without finding itself; the starting-point of its psychological investigations is the proposition, I think; in this is found the identity of which Fichte speaks—the me is the me. All thought, from the first moment that it exists, perceives itself subject to a law; the perception of every thing involves the perception, either explicit or implicit, of the identity of the thing perceived. In this sense, the most simple formula in which we can express the first law of our perception is: A is A; but this formula is as sterile as it is simple; and it is impossible to conceive how any one could pretend to raise upon it a system of philosophy. This formula, supposing it to be enunciated, involves the existence of the me which enunciates it. It cannot be said that A is A, if there is not a being in which the relation of identity is supposed. If the proposition A = A is true, it is necessary to suppose an A, or a being in which it exists. A purely ideal truth, without any foundation in a real truth, is an absurdity, as we have elsewhere proved and explained at great length.[59]
140. But the existence of an ideal truth, in so far as it is represented in us, that is to say, in so far as it is a fact of our consciousness, is not necessary, but hypothetical, it exists when it exists; but when it exists it may not exist, or when it does not exist it may exist. Necessity cannot be inferred from existence: the testimony of consciousness assures us of the fact; but in this consciousness we find no proof that the fact is necessary, that it has not depended on a higher agent; quite the contrary, the sentiment of our weakness, the shortness of the time to which the recollections of our consciousness extend, the natural and periodical interruptions of them which we experience during sleep, every thing shows that the fact of consciousness is not necessary, and that the being which experiences it has but a little while ago commenced its existence, and might lose it again as soon as the infinite being should cease to preserve it. The me which we perceive within us knows itself, affirms itself; the word supposes itself has no reasonable meaning, unless it mean that the me affirms its existence; but this knowing itself is not producing itself; whoever asserts such an absurdity is under obligation to prove it.
141. In truth it requires all the gravity of Fichte to pretend to connect such a collection of extravagant absurdities into science. It was reserved for modern times to see a man seriously occupied with a system whose existence will, with difficulty, be believed by those who read the history of the aberrations of the human mind. The system of Fichte is already judged by all thinking men, and there is no surer means to make it forgotten than to expose it to the eyes of the judicious reader.
142. Having established the necessary and absolute existence of the me, Fichte proposes to demonstrate that from the me proceeds the not-me, that is to say; all that is not the me. "But the not-me can only be supposed in so far as a me, to which it is opposed, is supposed in the me (in the identical consciousness).
"But the not-me must be supposed in the identical consciousness.
"Therefore the me must also be supposed in it in so far as the not-me is supposed in it."
... "If me = me, all is supposed which is supposed in the me.... "The me and the not-me are both products of original acts of the me, and the consciousness itself is a product of the first original act of the me, of the supposition of the me by itself."[60]
This, then, is how according to Fichte, the not-me, that is to say; this which we call the external world, and all that is not the me, is born of the me; the distinction of one thing from another is a pure illusion, a play of relations by which the me conceives itself as not-me in so far as it limits itself; but the me and the not-me are absolutely identical. "The me and the not-me inasmuch as they are supposed identical and opposed by the conception of mutual limitation, are something in the me (accidents) as divisible substances, supposed by the me, the absolute and illimitable subject, to which nothing is identical and nothing opposed. There all judgments, the logical subject of which is the limitable or determinable me, or something which defines the me, must be limited or defined by something higher; but all judgments, the logical subject of which is the absolutely illimitable me, cannot be determined by any thing higher, because the absolute me is not determined by any thing they are founded on, and defined absolutely by themselves." This is the last result of Fichte's system, the me converted into an absolute being, which is determined by nothing above itself, into an unlimited and illimitable subject, an infinite being, into God. Every thing emanates from this absolute subject. "In so far as the me supposes itself as infinite, its activity (that of supposing itself) is spent on the me itself, and on nothing else than the me. Its whole activity is spent on the me, and this activity is the ground and the compass of all being. The me is therefore infinite in so far as its activity returns to itself, and consequently so far also is its activity infinite as its product, the me, is infinite. (Infinite product, infinite activity; infinite activity, infinite product; this is a circle, but not a vicious one, for it is one from which reason escapes, for it expresses that which is absolutely certain by itself, and for its own sake. Product, activity, and active are here one and the same thing, and we separate them only in order to express ourselves.) The pure activity of the me alone, and the pure me alone are infinite. But pure activity is that which has no object, but returns to itself."
"In so far as the me supposes limits, and, according to what we have said, supposes itself in these limits, its activity is not spent immediately on itself, but on a not-me which is to be opposed to it."[61]
How shall we sum up this doctrine? In the words of Fichte: "In so far as the me is absolute, it is infinite and unlimited. It supposes all that is; and that which is not supposed, is not (for it; and out of it there is nothing). But all that it supposes, it supposes as me; and it supposes the me as all that it supposes. Hence in this respect the me contains in itself all, that is, an infinite, unlimited reality.
"In so far as the me opposes to itself a not-me, it necessarily supposes limits, and supposes itself in these limits. It divides the totality of the being supposed in general between the me and the not-me; so far supposes itself necessarily as finite."[62]
143. Thus Fichte in a few words destroys the reality of the external world, converting it into a modification or development of the activity of the me. Is it necessary to stop any longer to refute such an absurd doctrine, one, too, founded on no proof? I believe not: especially since I have established on solid principles the demonstration of the existence of an external world, and have explained the origin and character of the facts of consciousness, without having recourse to such extravagant absurdities.[63]
CHAPTER XIX.
RELATIONS OF FICHTE'S SYSTEM TO THE DOCTRINES OF KANT.
144. I have already shown[64] how Kant's system leads to Fichte's. When a dangerous principle is established, there is never wanting an author bold enough to deduce its consequences, whatever they may be. The author of the Doctrine of Science, led astray by the doctrines of Kant, establishes the most extravagant pantheism that was ever invented. In concluding his work, he says that he leaves the reader at the point where Kant takes him; he ought rather to have said that he takes the reader at the point where Kant leaves him. The author of the Critic of Pure Reason, by converting space into a purely subjective fact, destroys the reality of extension, and opens the door to those who wish to deduce all nature from the me; and by making time a simple form of the internal sense, he causes the succession of phenomena in time to be considered as mere modifications of the me to the form of which they relate.
145. But it is far from being necessary for us to hunt after deductions; the philosopher himself, in the midst of his obscurity and enigmatical language, does not cease to lay down in the most precise manner this monstrous doctrine. Let us hear how he speaks in his transcendental Logic, where he proposes to explain the relation of the understanding to objects in general, and the possibility of knowing them a priori. "The order and regularity in phenomena, that which we call nature, is consequently our own work; we should not find it there if we had not placed it there by the nature of our mind; for this natural unity must be a necessary unity, that is to say, a certain unity a priori of the connection of the phenomena. But how could we produce a synthetic unity a priori, if there were not in the primitive sources of our mind subjective reasons of this unity a priori, and if these subjective conditions were not at the same time objectively valid, since they are the grounds of the possibility of knowing in general an object in experience?"[65] Who does not see in these words the germ of Fichte's system, which deduces from the me the not-me, that is to say, the world, and gives to nature no other validity than that which it has received from the me?
146. But Kant is still more explicit, where he is explaining the nature and attributes of the understanding. He says: "We have before defined the understanding in different ways; we have called it a spontaneity of knowledge, (in opposition to the receptivity of sensibility,) a faculty of thought, or rather, a faculty of conceptions or judgments; these definitions, rightly explained, are but one. We may now characterize it as a faculty of rules. This character is more fruitful, and comes nearer to the essence of the thing: sensibility gives us forms (of intuition) and the understanding rules. The latter is always applied to the observation of phenomena in order to find in them some rule. The rules, if objective, (if, consequently, necessarily united to the knowledge of the object,) are called laws. Although we know many laws by experience, still these laws are only particular determinations of other higher laws, the highest of which (to which all the others are subjected) proceed a priori from the understanding itself, and are not taken from experience, but, on the contrary, they give to the phenomena their validity, and therefore make experience possible. The understanding, then, is not simply a faculty of making rules for itself, and comparing phenomena; it is also the legislation for nature; that is to say, that without the understanding there would be no nature, or synthetic unity of the multiplicity of phenomena according to certain rules. For the phenomena, as such, cannot exist out of us; on the contrary, they only exist in our sensibility; but this, as the object of the knowledge in an experience, with all that it can contain, is only possible in the unity of the apperception. The unity of the apperception is the transcendental foundation of the necessary legitimacy of all the phenomena in an experience; this unity of the apperception in relation to the multiplicity of the representations (in order to determine the multiplicity by starting from only one) is the rule, and the faculty of these rules is the understanding. All phenomena, then, as possible experiences, are a priori in the understanding, and from it they derive their formal possibility, in the same manner that they are pure intuitions in the sensibility, and are only possible by it in relation to the form."
In the deduction of the pure conceptions of the understanding, Kant not only pretends that the objects of our knowledge are not things in themselves, but that it is impossible that they should be, because we could not then have conceptions a priori. He adds, that the representation of all these phenomena, consequently all objects which we know, are all in the me, and are determinations of my identical me, which expresses the necessity of a universal unity of these determinations in only one and the same apperception.
147. From these passages it clearly follows that Fichte's system, or the ideal pantheism which reduces every thing to modifications of the me, accords with the principles established in the Critic of Pure Reason, and is even expressly laid down, although it does not form its principal object in that work. For the sake of impartiality I cannot do less than refer the reader to the seventeenth chapter of the third book, where I have intimated that the German philosopher attempts to explain his expressions so as to escape idealism, which he professes to refute. But this he seems to me to do only by an inconsequence.
148. However, my opinion of the connection of modern pantheism with the Critik der reinen Vernunft is confirmed even by the Germans. "From these depths," says Rosenkranz, speaking of this work, "the results of the transcendental Æsthetics and logic receive a new importance in the great problems of theology, cosmology, morals, and psychology, which was not even suspected by the dull sense of the greater part of its admirers. They know nothing of the chain which unites Fichte's Doctrine of Science, Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism, Hegel's Phenomenology and Logic, and Herbart's Metaphysics, with Kant's Critic....
"I may say that the English and French in particular will understand nothing of the development of German philosophy since Kant, until they have penetrated the Critic of Pure Reason, for we Germans always look to that.... Just as we use the houses, the palaces, the churches, but most of all the towers which rise over every thing to guide us in a large city; so also in contemporary philosophy, amid the labyrinth of its quarrels it is impossible to take a single step with security unless we keep our sight fixed on Kant's Critic. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Herbart made this work the great centre of their operations for attack or defence."[66]
149. I do not mean by this that the German philosophers since Kant have added nothing to the Critic of Pure Reason: I have already observed (in the seventh chapter of the first book) that the cause of the greater obscurity which is found in Fichte's words, proceeds from his having gone farther than Kant in his abstraction of all objectiveness both external and internal, placing himself in I know not what pure primitive act, from which he pretends to deduce every thing; in which he differs from the author of the Critic of Pure Reason, whose labors did not so absolutely annihilate the objectiveness of the internal world, and therefore his observations are less incomprehensible, and even present here and there some few luminous points: I only wished to show the baneful importance of Kant's works, to place those incautious persons on their guard, who, judging from what they have heard, are inclined to regard him as the great restorer of spiritualism and sound philosophy, when, in reality, he is the founder of the most pernicious schools which the history of the human mind has known, and would be one of the most dangerous writers that ever existed, were it not that the obscurity of his ideas, increased by the obscurity of their expression, renders him intolerable to the immense majority of readers, even of those versed in philosophical studies.
CHAPTER XX.
CONTRADICTION OF PANTHEISM TO THE PRIMARY FACTS OF THE HUMAN MIND.
150. I do not know how any philosopher who has meditated on the human mind can incline to pantheism. The deeper we go into the me from which it is pretended to deduce such an absurd system, the more we discover the contradiction in which pantheism appears in respect to the primary ideas and facts of our mind. My development of this observation will be brief, for it turns on questions largely examined in their respective places.
151. We have seen (Bk. VI., Ch. V.) that the idea of number is found in every understanding, and experience teaches that we employ it explicitly or implicitly in almost all our words. We scarcely speak without using the plural, and this can have no meaning without the supposition of the idea of number. Pantheism reduces all existence to an absolute unity; multiplicity either has no real existence, or is limited to phenomena, which, in the judgment of some followers of this system, contain no reality of any sort, and, in the opinion of all pantheists, can contain no substantial reality. According to them, therefore, the idea of number either has no correspondence in the reality, or it relates only to modes of being, to the various modifications of the same being, and therefore does not extend to the beings themselves, for in this system there is only one being. If this be so, how is it that the idea of number exists in our understanding? how is it that we conceive not only many modes of being, but many beings? In the system of the pantheists not only is there no multiplicity of beings, but it is impossible that there should be; why, then, has our understanding this radical vice which necessarily leads it to conceive the multiplicity of things, if this multiplicity is absurd? why is this ideal defect confirmed by experience which also necessarily leads us to believe that there are many distinct things?
152. In the system of the pantheists our understanding is only a modification, a manifestation of the only substance; but it is impossible to explain this disagreement between the phenomenon and the reality, this necessary error into which the phenomenon of the substance leads us in respect to the substance itself. If we are a mere manifestation of the unity, why do we find the idea of multiplicity as a primitive fact within us? Why this continual contradiction between the being and its appearances? If we are all one same unit, whence do we obtain the idea of number? If the phenomena of experience are only evolutions, so to speak, of this one unit, why do we feel ourselves irresistibly inclined to suppose multiplicity in the phenomena, and to multiply the things in which they succeed?
153. The idea of distinction opposed to that of unity is also fundamental in our mind;[67] yet pantheism gives it no correspondence in the reality. If there is only being, if all is identical, there is nothing distinct, and the idea of distinction is a pure chimera. In this system distinction not only does not exist, but it is impossible; consequently the idea of distinction is absurd; therefore one of the primary facts of our mind is a contradiction.
154. Negative judgments form a considerable part of the wealth of our understanding;[68] pantheism destroys them. In this system the proposition: A is not B, can never be true; for, if all is identical, one thing cannot be denied of another, there would be no distinct things, there would be no one or another; all would be one; the negative judgment must be limited to the following: in reality A is the same as B, there is only the appearance of distinction; B is A existing or presented differently.
155. The idea of relation is also absurd in the pantheistic system; there is no relation without a term of reference, and there is no reference without distinction. According to the pantheists the subject referred and the term of the reference are absolutely identical; there are, consequently, no true, but only apparent, relations; thus we find another of the primary facts of our understanding radically absurd, because it is in contradiction with the reality, and even with the possibility.
156. The support of all our knowledge, the principle of contradiction, it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time, is without meaning, and can have no real or possible application, if the doctrine of pantheism be admitted. When we say that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time, we understand that there is the possibility of not-being; in our mind the idea of being excludes that of not-being only with respect to the same thing and at the same time. If there is only one being, and all other being is impossible, it follows that the idea of not-being is absolutely contradictory, and all the propositions in which it is expressed are absurd. There is in this case only one being which is every thing, to this being negation of being can never be applied; this negation, then, is absolutely absurd, and another idea of our mind is absolutely contradictory.
157. The idea of contingency is also contradictory if pantheism be admitted; all that can be is, and all that does not exist is impossible; therefore when we distinguish contingency from necessity we contradict both the reality and the possibility. Hence there is another primary illusion of our mind which presents to us as possible, and even existent, that which in itself is absurd.
158. Neither can the ideas of finite and infinite co-exist in the system. One of them must be contradictory; if the only being is infinite, there is and can be nothing finite; therefore the opposition between the finite and the infinite is a chimera of our mind, to which there is nothing in reality corresponding. There is only one thing; it must be finite or infinite; in either case, one of these terms must disappear, one of these ideas is contradictory, since it is in opposition to an absolute necessity.
159. The system of absolute unity destroys the idea of order. In this idea is contained the arrangement of distinct things, distributed in a convenient manner to conspire to an end. If there is no distinction there is no order, and the distinction is impossible if there is absolute unity. The idea of order is still one of the fundamental ideas of our mind; literary and artistic unity, and in general that of all sensible beauty, is the unity of order: substitute for this absolute unity, and you destroy all beauty of the imagination; art becomes absorbed by chaos.
160. It is useless to add that pantheism destroys liberty of will; this liberty of which we are so clearly and vividly conscious, and which accompanies us through every moment of our existence. In this monstrous system absolute unity is inseparable from absolute necessity; the existent and the possible are confounded; nothing which is can cease to be; nothing which is not can be. The action must spring from the only substance by a spontaneous development; understanding by spontaneity the absence of an external cause; but this action cannot but exist, it will be an irradiation, as it were, of the only substance, just as light radiates from luminous bodies. Without liberty of will merit is absurd; a being that acts by absolute necessity can have no merit or demerit. Then laws are to no purpose, rewards and punishments useless; the history of individuals as of all mankind is only a history of the phases of the only substance, which goes on eternally developing itself in subjection to absolutely necessary conditions which have no other foundation than the substance itself.
161. Pantheism not only destroys freedom of will, but it renders unintelligible all affections which relate to another. If there is only one being, what mean the sentiments of love, respect, gratitude, and in general, all those which suppose a person distinct from the me which experiences them? No matter how distinct we suppose the term of these affections, they can never have any; and although they seem to proceed from different principles, they spring from only one. The man who loves one man and hates another is the me loving and hating itself; appearances denote diversity and opposition, but at bottom there is unity, identity. Who can accept such absurdities?
162. Thus pantheism, after destroying the intellectual man, annihilates the moral man; after declaring the fundamental ideas of our mind contradictory, it attacks the most precious fact of our consciousness,—the freedom of will; it destroys the sentiments of the heart, denying our individuality, it precipitates us all into the deep abyss of the only substance, the absolute being, confounding and identifying us with it, till we lose within it our own existence, as the molecules of a grain of dust are lost in the immensity of space.
CHAPTER XXI.
RAPID GLANCES AT THE PRINCIPAL ARGUMENTS OF PANTHEISTS.
163. The principal arguments on which pantheism rests are founded on the unity of science, the universality of the idea of being, the absoluteness and exclusiveness of the idea of substance, and the absoluteness and exclusiveness of the conception of the infinite.
164. Science must be one, say the pantheists, and it cannot be completely so, unless there is unity of being. Science must be certain, and there cannot be absolute certainty, unless there is identity of the being which knows with the thing known.
The solution of these difficulties consists in denying the gratuitous propositions on which they are founded.
It is not true that human science must be one, nor that unity of being is necessary for the unity of science. They must prove both these assertions; to triumph in a discussion it is not enough to assert. Far from either of them being sufficiently proved, they are both contradicted by reason and by experience. It is unnecessary to repeat here, what I have explained at full length when treating of the possibility and existence of transcendental science as well in the absolute intellectual order as in the human. For this I refer the reader to the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of the first book.
The second proposition which exacts the identity of the subject knowing with the object known, has also been sufficiently refuted. I have elsewhere shown that the system of universal identity does not help to explain the problem of representation, and I have proved by incontestible arguments, that besides the representation of identity, there are the representations of causality and ideality.[69] I have also demonstrated the objective value of ideas, in so far as distinguished from objects, founding my proof on the unity of consciousness.[70]
The doctrines of Kant which convert the external world into a purely subjective fact, and thus give rise to Fichte's transcendental idealism, are refuted in the second book, where I have demonstrated the objectiveness of sensations,—in the third book, where I have proved the reality of extension, and in the seventh book, where I have proved that time is not a pure form of the internal sense.
165. The argument founded on the idea of the universality of being, that is, the impossibility of more than one being, because the idea of being is absolute and embraces every thing, is a sophism in which there is a transition from the ideal order to the real, by which an indeterminate and abstract idea is converted into an absolute being. To form a perfect conception of this idea and its relations to the reality, see what has been said in the fifth book, when treating of the idea of being.
166. Spinosa, Fichte, Cousin, Krause, and all who have taught pantheism under one form or another, start with a wrong definition of substance. It is impossible to overrate the necessity of acquiring clear and distinct ideas of this definition, for there is no doubt but that here is the origin of the error of the pantheists, and the secret to put a stop to their progress. When one examines profoundly the principles of systems which have made so much noise in the philosophical world, one is surprised at contemplating their insubsistency in its nakedness. The doctrines summed up in Chapter XIV. should be kept always in sight.
167. In the importance and transcendency of the definition, the notion of the infinite may compete with that of substance. It is incredible to what extent this word has been abused without any care to explain its different senses, or its origin, or the legitimacy of its applications.
All the arguments which the pantheists pretend to found on the idea of the infinite vanish like smoke when we clearly understand the character, the origin, and the application of this idea.[71]
168. I will conclude with one remark. I am profoundly convinced that the most baneful systems in philosophy arise in great part from confusion of ideas, and the superficiality with which the most fundamental points of ontology, ideology, and psychology are examined. My ruling idea in the present work is to prevent this evil; this is why I have so greatly extended the part of fundamental philosophy, abstracting, as far as possible, all secondary questions. These last are easily answered, after we have once acquired a clear and exact knowledge of the fundamental ideas of human science. (4)
