philosophy of the century that ours succeeds, that three times we have
undertaken the history of philosophy in the eighteenth century, here
first, in 1818, then in 1819 and 1820, and that is the subject of the
last three volumes of the 1st Series of our works; finally, we resumed
it in 1829, vol. ii. and iii. of the 2d Series.
[4] This word was used by the old English writers, and there is no
reason why it should not be retained.
[5] On the method of Descartes, see 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 20; 2d
Series, vol. i., lecture 2; vol. ii., lecture 11; 3d Series, vol. iii.,
_Philosophie Moderne_, as well as _Fragments de Philosophie
Cartesienne_; 5th Series, _Instruction Publique_, vol. ii., _Defense de
l'Universite et de la Philosophie_, p. 112, etc.
[6] On this return to the scholastic form in Descartes, see 1st Series,
vol iv., lecture 12, especially three articles of the _Journal des
Savants_, August, September, and October, 1850, in which we have
examined anew the principles of Cartesianism, _a propos_ the _Leibnitii
Animadversiones ad Cartesii Principia Philosophiae_.
[7] See on Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, 2d Series, vol. ii.,
lectures 11 and 12; 3d Series, vol. iv., _Introduction aux Oeuvres
Philosophiques de M. de Biran_, p. 288; and the _Fragments de
Philosophie Cartesienne_, passim.
[8] On Locke, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, especially 2d
Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Systeme de Locke_.
[9] 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3.
[10] 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on the Scotch School.
[11] See on Kant and the _Critique of Pure Reason_, vol. v. of the 1st
Series, where that great work is examined with as much extent as that of
Reid in vol. iv., and the _Essay_ of Locke in vol. iii. of the 2d
Series.
[12] On Fichte, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 12; 3d Series, vol. iv.,
_Introduction aux Oeuvres de M. de Biran_, p. 324.
[13] We expressed ourselves thus in December, 1817, when, following the
great wars of the Revolution, and after the downfall of the empire, the
constitutional monarchy, still poorly established, left the future of
France and of the world obscure. It is sad to be obliged to hold the
same language in 1835, over the ruins accumulated around us.
[14] 1st Series, vol. i., Course of 1816.
[15] _Ibid._, Course of 1817.
[16] On the legitimate employment and the imperative conditions of
eclecticism, see 3d Series, _Fragments Philosophiques_, vol. iv.,
preface of the first edition, p. 41, &c., especially the article
entitled _De la Philosophie en Belgique_, pp. 228 and 229.
[17] We have translated his excellent _Manual of the History of
Philosophy_. See the second edition, vol. ii., 8vo., 1839.
PART FIRST.
THE TRUE.
LECTURE I.
THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute
truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is
the problem of the philosophy of our time.--Universal and
necessary principles.--Examples of different kinds of such
principles.--Distinction between universal and necessary
principles and general principles.--Experience alone is
incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and
also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the
knowledge of the sensible world.--Reason as being that faculty
of ours which discovers to us these principles.--The study of
universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest
parts of philosophy.
To-day, as in all time, two great wants are felt by man. The first, the
most imperious, is that of fixed, immutable principles, which depend
upon neither times nor places nor circumstances, and on which the mind
reposes with an unbounded confidence. In all investigations, as long as
we have seized only isolated, disconnected facts, as long as we have not
referred them to a general law, we possess the materials of science, but
there is yet no science. Even physics commence only when universal
truths appear, to which all the facts of the same order that observation
discovers to us in nature may be referred. Plato has said, that there is
no science of the transitory.
This is our first need. But there is another, not less legitimate, the
need of not being the dupe of chimerical principles, of barren
abstractions, of combinations more or less ingenious, but artificial,
the need of resting upon reality and life, the need of experience. The
physical and natural sciences, whose regular and rapid conquests strike
and dazzle the most ignorant, owe their progress to the experimental
method. Hence the immense popularity of this method, which is carried to
such an extent that one would not now condescend to lend the least
attention to a science over which this method should not seem to
preside.
To unite observation and reason, not to lose sight of the ideal of
science to which man aspires, and to search for it and find it by the
route of experience,--such is the problem of philosophy.
Now we address ourselves to your recollections of the last two
years:--have we not established, by the severest experimental method, by
reflection applied to the study of the human mind, with the deliberation
and the rigor which such demonstrations exact,--have we not established
that there are in all men, without distinction, in the wise and the
ignorant, ideas, notions, beliefs, principles which the most determined
skeptic cannot in the slightest degree deny, by which he is
unconsciously, and in spite of himself, governed both in his words and
actions, and which, by a striking contrast with our other knowledges,
are marked with the at once marvellous and incontestable character, that
they are encountered in the most common experience, and that, at the
same time, instead of being circumscribed within the limits of this
experience, they surpass and govern it, universal in the midst of
particular phenomena to which they are applied; necessary, although
mingled with things contingent; to our eyes infinite and absolute, even
while appearing within us in that relative and finite being which we
are? It is not an unpremeditated paradox that we present to you; we are
only expressing here the result of numerous lectures.[18]
It was not difficult for us to show that there are universal and
necessary principles at the head of all sciences.
It is very evident that there are no mathematics without axioms and
definitions, that is to say, without absolute principles.
What would logic become, those mathematics of thought, if you should
take away from it a certain number of principles, which are a little
barbarous, perhaps, in their scholastic form, but must be universal and
necessary in order to preside over all reasoning and every
demonstration?
Are physics possible, if every phenomenon which begins to appear does
not suppose a cause and a law?
Without the principle of final causes, could physiology proceed a single
step, render to itself an account of a single organ, or determine a
single function?
Is not the principle on which the whole of morals rests, the principle
which obligates man to good and lays the foundation of virtue, of the
same nature? Does it not extend to all moral beings, without distinction
of time and place? Can you conceive of a moral being who does not
recognize in the depth of his conscience that reason ought to govern
passion, that it is necessary to preserve sworn faith, and, against the
most pressing interest, to restore the treasure that has been confided
to us?
And these are not mere metaphysical prejudices and formulas of the
schools: I appeal to the most vulgar common sense.
If I should say to you that a murder has just been committed, could you
not ask me when, where, by whom, wherefore? That is to say, your mind is
directed by the universal and necessary principles of time, of space, of
cause, and even of final cause.
If I should say to you that love or ambition caused the murder, would
you not at the same instant conceive a lover, an ambitious person? This
means, again, that there is for you no act without an agent, no quality
and phenomenon without a substance, without a real subject.
If I should say to you that the accused pretends that he is not the same
person who conceived, willed, and executed this murder, and that, at
intervals, his personality has more than once been changed, would you
not say he is a fool if he is sincere, and that, although the acts and
the incidents have varied, the person and the being have remained the
same?
Suppose that the accused should defend himself on this ground, that the
murder must serve his interest; that, moreover, the person killed was so
unhappy that life was a burden to him; that the state loses nothing,
since in place of two worthless citizens it acquires one who becomes
useful to it; that, in fine, mankind will not perish by the loss of an
individual, &c.; to all these reasonings would you not oppose the very
simple response, that this murder, useful perhaps to its author, is not
the less unjust, and that, therefore, under no pretext was it permitted?
The same good sense which admits universal and necessary truths, easily
distinguishes them from those that are not universal and necessary, and
are only general, that is to say, are applied only to a greater or less
number of cases.
For example, the following is a very general truth: the day succeeds the
night; but is it a universal and necessary truth? Does it extend to all
lands? Yes, to all known lands. But does it extend to all possible
lands? No; for it is possible to conceive of lands plunged in eternal
night, another system of the world being given. The laws of the material
world are what they are; they are not necessary. Their Author might have
chosen others. With another system of the world one conceives other
physics, but we cannot conceive other mathematics and other morals. Thus
it is possible to conceive that day and night may not be in the same
relation to each as that in which we see them; therefore the truth that
day succeeds night is a very general truth, perhaps even a universal
truth, but by no means a necessary truth.
Montesquieu has said that liberty is not a fruit of warm climates. I
acknowledge, if it is desired, that heat enervates the spirit, and that
warm countries maintain free governments with difficulty; but it does
not follow that there may be no possible exception to this principle:
moreover, there have been exceptions; hence it is not an absolutely
universal principle, much less is it a necessary principle. Could you
say as much of the principle of cause? Could you in any way conceive, in
any time and in any place, a phenomenon which begins to appear without
a cause, physical or moral?
And were it possible to reduce universal and necessary principles to
general principles, in order to employ and apply these principles thus
abased, and to found upon them any reasoning whatever, it would be
necessary to admit what is called in logic the principle of
contradiction, viz., that a thing cannot at the same time be and not be,
in order to maintain the integrity of each part of the reasoning; as
well as the principle of sufficient reason, which alone establishes
their connection and the legitimacy of the conclusion. Now, these two
principles, without which there is no reasoning, are themselves
universal and necessary principles; so that the circle is manifest.
Even were we to destroy in thought all existences, save that of a single
mind, we should be compelled to place in that mind, in order that it
might exercise itself at all--and the mind is such only on the condition
that it thinks--several necessary principles; it would be beyond the
power of thought to conceive it deprived of the principle of
contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason.
How many times have we demonstrated the vanity of the efforts of the
empirical school to disturb the existence or weaken the bearing of
universal and necessary principles! Listen to this school: it will say
to you that the principle of cause, given by us as universal and
necessary, is, after all, only a habit of the mind, which, seeing in
nature a fact succeeding another fact, puts between these that
connection which we have called the relation of effect to cause. This
explanation is nothing but the destruction, not only of the principle of
causality, but even of the notion of cause. The senses show me two
balls, one of which begins to move, the other of which moves after it.
Suppose that this succession is renewed and continues; it will be
constancy added to succession; it will by no means be the connection of
a causative power with its effect; for example, that which consciousness
attests to us is the least effort of volition. Thus a consequent
empiricist, like Hume,[19] easily proves that no sensible experience
legitimately gives the idea of cause.
What we say of the notion of cause we might say of all notions of the
same kind. Let us at least instance those of substance and unity.
The senses perceive only qualities, phenomena. I touch the extension, I
see the color, I am sensible of the odor; but do our senses attain the
substance that is extended, colored, or odorous? On this point Hume[20]
indulges in pleasantries. He asks which one of our senses takes
cognizance of substance. What, then, according to him and in the system
of empiricism, is the notion of substance? An illusion like the notion
of cause.
Neither do the senses give us unity; for unity is identity, is
simplicity, and the senses show us every thing in succession and
composition. The works of art possess unity only because Art, that is to
say, the mind of man puts it there. If we perceive unity in the works of
nature, it is not the senses that discover it to us. The arrangement of
the different parts of an object may contain unity, but it is a unity of
organization, an ideal and moral unity which the mind alone conceives,
and which escapes the senses.
If the senses are not able to explain simple notions, much less still
are they able to explain the principles in which these notions are met,
which are universal and necessary. In fact, the senses clearly perceive
such and such facts, but it is impossible for them to embrace what is
universal; experience attests what is, it does not reach what cannot but
be.
We go farther. Not only is empiricism unable to explain universal and
necessary principles; but we maintain that, without these principles,
empiricism cannot even account for the knowledge of the sensible world.
Take away the principle of causality, and the human mind is condemned
never to go out of itself and its own modifications. All the sensations
of hearing, of smell, of taste, of touch, of feeling even, cannot inform
you what their cause is, nor whether they have a cause. But give to the
human mind the principle of causality, admit that every sensation, as
well as every phenomenon, every change, every event, has a cause, as
evidently we are not the cause of certain sensations, and that
especially these sensations must have a cause, and we are naturally led
to recognize for those sensations causes different from ourselves, and
that is the first notion of an exterior world. The universal and
necessary principle of causality alone gives it and justifies it. Other
principles of the same order increase and develop it.
As soon as you know that there are external objects, I ask you whether
you do not conceive them in a place that contains them. In order to deny
it, it would be necessary to deny that every body is in a place, that is
to say, to reject a truth of physics, which is at the same time a
principle of metaphysics, as well as an axiom of common sense. But the
place that contains a body is often itself a body, which is only more
capacious than the first. This new body is in its turn in a place. Is
this new place also a body? Then it is contained in another place more
extended, and so on; so that it is impossible for you to conceive a body
which is not in a place; and you arrive at the conception of a boundless
and infinite place, that contains all limited places and all possible
bodies: that boundless and infinite place is space.
And I tell you in this nothing that is not very simple. Look. Do you
deny that this water is in a vase? Do you deny that this vase is in this
hall? Do you deny that this hall is in a larger place, which is in its
turn in another larger still? I can thus carry you on to infinite space.
If you deny a single one of these propositions, you deny all, the first
as well as the last; and if you admit the first, you are forced to admit
the last.
It cannot be supposed that sensibility, which is not able to give us
even the idea of body, alone elevates us to the idea of space. The
intervention of a superior principle is, therefore, here necessary.
As we believe that every body is contained in a place, so we believe
that every event happens in time. Can you conceive an event happening,
except in some point of duration? This duration is extended and
successively increased to your mind's eye, and you end by conceiving it
unlimited like space. Deny duration, and you deny all the sciences that
measure it, you destroy all the natural beliefs upon which human life
reposes. It is hardly necessary to add that sensibility alone no more
explains the notion of time than that of space, both of which are
nevertheless inherent in the knowledge of the external world.
Empiricism is, therefore, convicted of being unable to dispense with
universal and necessary principles, and of being unable to explain them.
Let us pause: either all our preceding works have terminated in nothing
but chimeras, or they permit us to consider as a point definitely
acquired for science, that there are in the human mind, for whomsoever
interrogates it sincerely, principles really stamped with the character
of universality and necessity.
After having established and defended the existence of universal and
necessary principles, we might investigate and pursue this kind of
principles in all the departments of human knowledge, and attempt an
exact and rigorous classification; but illustrious examples have taught
us to fear to compromise truths of the greatest price by mixing with
them conjectures which, in giving brilliancy, perhaps, to the spirit of
philosophy, diminish its authority in the eyes of the wise. We, also,
following the example of Kant, attempted before you, last year,[21] a
classification, even a reduction of universal and necessary principles,
and of all the notions that are connected with them. This work has not
lost for us its importance, but we will not reproduce it. In the
interest of the great cause which we serve, and taking thought here only
to establish upon solid foundations the doctrine which is adapted to the
French genius in the nineteenth century, we will carefully shun every
thing that might seem personal and hazardous; and, instead of examining,
criticising,[22] and reconstituting the classification which the
philosophy of Koenigsberg has given of universal and necessary
principles, we prefer, we find it much more useful, to enable you to
penetrate deeper into the nature of these principles, by showing you
what faculty of ours it is that discovers them to us, and to which they
are related and correspond.
The peculiarity of these principles is, that each one of us in
reflection recognizes that he possesses them, but that he is not their
author. We conceive them and apply them, we do not constitute them. Let
us interrogate our consciousness. Do we refer to ourselves, for example,
the definitions of geometry, as we do certain movements of which we feel
ourselves to be the cause? If it is I who make these definitions, they
are therefore mine, I can unmake them, modify them, change them, even
annihilate them. It is certain that I cannot do it. I am not, then, the
author of them. It has also been demonstrated that the principles of
which we have spoken cannot be derived from sensation, which is
variable, limited, incapable of producing and authorizing any thing
universal and necessary. I arrive, then, at the following consequence,
also necessary:--truth is in me and not by me. As sensibility puts me in
relation with the physical world, so another faculty puts me in
communication with the truths that depend upon neither the world nor me,
and that faculty is reason.
There are in men three general faculties which are always mingled
together, and are rarely exercised except simultaneously, but which
analysis divides in order to study them better, without misconceiving
their reciprocal play, their intimate connection, their indivisible
unity. The first of these faculties is activity, voluntary and free
activity, in which human personality especially appears, and without
which the other faculties would be as if they were not, since we should
not exist for ourselves. Let us examine ourselves at the moment when a
sensation is produced in us; we shall recognize that there is
perception only so far as there is some degree of attention, and that
perception ends at the moment when our activity ends. One does not
recollect what he did in perfect sleep or in a swoon; because then he
had lost voluntary activity, consequently consciousness; consequently,
again, memory. Passion often, in depriving us of liberty, deprives us,
at the same time, of the consciousness of our actions and of ourselves;
then, to use a just and common expression, one knows not what he does.
It is by liberty that man is truly man, that he possesses himself and
governs himself; without it, he falls again under the yoke of nature; he
is, without it, only a more admirable and more beautiful part of nature.
But while I am endowed with activity and liberty, I am also passive in
other respects; I am subject to the laws of the external world; I suffer
and I enjoy without being myself the author of my joys and my
sufferings; I feel rising within me needs, desires, passions, which I
have not made, which by turns fill my life with happiness and misery.
Finally, besides volition and sensibility, man has the faculty of
knowing, has understanding, intelligence, reason, the name matters
little, by means of which he is elevated to truths of different orders,
and among others, to universal and necessary truths, which suppose in
reason, attached to its exercise, principles entirely distinct from the
impressions of the senses and the resolutions of the will.[23]
Voluntary activity, sensibility, reason, are all equally certain.
Consciousness verifies the existence of necessary principles, which
direct the reason quite as well as that of sensations and volitions. I
call every thing real that falls under observation. I suffer; my
suffering is real, inasmuch as I am conscious of it: it is the same with
liberty: it is the same with reason and the principles that govern it.
We can affirm, then, that the existence of universal and necessary
principles rests upon the testimony of observation, and even of the most
immediate and surest observation, that of consciousness.
But consciousness is only a witness,--it makes what is appear; it
creates nothing. It is not because consciousness announces it to you,
that you have produced such or such a movement, that you have
experienced such or such an impression. Neither is it because
consciousness says to us that reason is constrained to admit such or
such a truth, that this truth exists; it is because it exists that it is
impossible for reason not to admit it. The truths that reason attains by
the aid of universal and necessary principles with which it is provided,
are absolute truths; reason does not create them, it discovers them.
Reason is not the judge of its own principles, and cannot account for
them, for it only judges by them, and they are to it its own laws. Much
less does consciousness make these principles, or the truths which they
reveal to us; for consciousness has no other office, no other power than
in some sort to serve as a mirror for reason. Absolute truths are,
therefore, independent of experience and consciousness, and at the same
time, they are attested by experience and consciousness. On the one
hand, these truths declare themselves in experience; on the other, no
experience explains them. Behold how experience and reason differ and
agree, and how, by means of experience, we come to find something which
surpasses it.