principles, nor upon empirical principles. It is observation itself, but
observation applied to the higher portion of our knowledge, which
furnishes us with the principles that we seek, with a point of departure
at once solid and elevated.[24]
This point of departure we have found, and we do not abandon it. We
remain immovably attached to it. The study of universal and necessary
principles, considered under their different aspects, and in the great
problems which they solve, is almost the whole of philosophy; it fills
it, measures it, divides it. If psychology is the regular study of the
human mind and its laws, it is evident that that of universal and
necessary principles which preside over the exercise of reason, is the
especial domain of psychology, which in Germany is called rational
psychology, and is very different from empirical psychology. Since logic
is the examination of the value and the legitimacy of our different
means of knowing, its most important employment must be to estimate the
value and the legitimacy of the principles which are the foundations of
our most important cognitions. In fine, the meditation of these same
principles conducts us to theodicea, and opens to us the sanctuary of
philosophy, if we would ascend to their true source, to that sovereign
reason which is the first and last explanation of our own.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] 1st Series of our Course, vol. i.
[19] 1st Series, vol. i.
[20] Ibid.
[21] 1st Series, vol. i., Fragments of the Course of 1817.
[22] See that criticism, 1st Series, vol. v., _Kant_, lecture 8.
[23] This classification of the human faculties, save some differences
more nominal than real, is now generally adopted, and makes the
foundation of the psychology of our times. See our writings, among
others, 1st Series, Course of 1816, lectures 23 and 24: _Histoire du
moi_; ibid., _Des faits de Conscience_; vol. iii., lecture 3, _Examen de
la Theorie des Facultes dans Condillac_; vol. iv., lecture 21, _des
Facultes selon Reid_; vol. v., lecture 8, _Examen de la Theorie de
Kant_; 3d Series, vol iv., _Preface de la Premiere Edition, Examen des
Lecons de M. Laromiguiere, Introduction aux Oeuvres de M. de Biran,
etc._
[24] This lecture on the existence of universal and necessary
principles, which was easily comprehended, in 1818, by an auditory to
which long discussions had already been presented during the two
previous years, appearing here without the support of these
preliminaries, will not perhaps be entirely satisfactory to the reader.
We beseech him to consult carefully the first volume of the 1st Series
of our Course, which contains an abridgment, at least, of the numerous
lectures of 1816 and 1817, of which this is a _resume_; especially to
read in the third, fourth, and fifth volumes of the 1st Series, the
developed analyses, in which, under different forms, universal and
necessary principles are demonstrated as far as may be, and in the third
volume of the 2d Series the lectures devoted to establish against Locke
the same principles.
LECTURE II.
ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
_Resume_ of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the
origin of universal and necessary principles.--Danger of this
question, and its necessity.--Different forms under which truth
presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms:
theory of spontaneity and reflection.--The primitive form of
principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form, and
gives them their actual form.--Examination and refutation of the
theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an
induction founded on particular notions.
We may regard as a certain conquest of the experimental method and of
true psychological analysis, the establishment of principles which at
the same time that they are given to us by the surest of all
experiences, that of consciousness, have a bearing superior to
experience, and open to us regions inaccessible to empiricism. We have
recognized such principles at the head of nearly all the sciences; then,
searching among our different faculties for that which may have given
them to us, we have ascertained that it is impossible to refer them to
any other faculty than to that general faculty of knowing which we call
reason, very different from reasoning, to which it furnishes its laws.
That is the point at which we have arrived. But is it possible to stop
there?
In human intelligence, as it is now developed, universal and necessary
principles are offered to us under forms in some sort consecrated. The
principle of causality, for example, is thus enounced to us:--Every
thing that begins to appear necessarily has a cause. Other principles
have this same axiomatic form. But have they always had it, and did they
spring from the human mind with this logical and scholastic apparel, as
Minerva sprang all armed from the head of Jupiter? With what characters
did they show themselves at first, before taking those in which they are
now clothed, and which can scarcely be their primitive characters? In a
word, is it possible to find the origin of universal and necessary
principles, and the route which they must have followed in order to
arrive at what they are to-day? A new problem, the importance of which
it is easy to feel; for, if it can be resolved, what light will be shed
upon these principles! On the other hand, what difficulties must be
encountered! How can we penetrate to the sources of human knowledge,
which are concealed, like those of the Nile? Is it not to be feared
that, in plunging into the obscure past, instead of truth, one may
encounter an hypothesis; that, attaching himself, then, to this
hypothesis, he may transport it from the past to the present, and that,
being deceived in regard to the origin of principles, he may be led to
misconceive their actual and certain characters, or, at least, to
mutilate and enfeeble those which the adopted origin would not easily
explain? This danger is so great, this rock is so celebrated in
shipwrecks, that before braving it one should know how to take many
precautions against the seductions of the spirit of the system. It is
even conceived that great philosophers, who were timid in no place, have
suppressed the perilous problem. In fact, by undertaking to grapple with
this problem at first, Locke and Condillac went far astray,[25] and it
must be said, corrupted all philosophy at its source. The empirical
school, which lauds the experimental method so much, turns its back upon
it, thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the
actual characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by
consciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without
guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. Reid[26] and Kant[27] showed
themselves much more observing by confining themselves within the
limits of the present, through fear of losing themselves in the darkness
of the past. Both freely treat of universal and necessary principles in
the form which they now have, without asking what was their primitive
form. We much prefer this wise circumspection to the adventurous spirit
of the empirical school. Nevertheless, when a problem is given out, so
long as it is not solved, it troubles and besets the human mind.
Philosophy ought not to shun it then, but its duty is to approach it
only with extreme prudence and a severe method.
We cannot recollect too well, for the sake of others and ourselves, that
the primitive state of human cognitions is remote from us; we can
scarcely bring it within the reach of our vision and submit it to
observation; the actual state, on the contrary, is always at our
disposal: it is sufficient for us to enter into ourselves, to fathom
consciousness by reflection, and make it give up what it contains.
Setting out from certain facts, we shall not be liable to wander
subsequently into hypotheses, or if, in ascending to the primitive
state, we fall into any error, we shall be able to perceive it and
repair it by the aid of the truth which an impartial observation shall
have given us; every origin which shall not legitimately end at the
point where we are, is by that alone convicted of being false, and will
deserve to be discarded.[28]
You know that a large portion of the last year was spent upon this
question. We took, one by one, universal and necessary questions
submitted to our examination, in order to determine the origin of each
one of them, its primitive form, and the different forms which have
successively clothed it; only after having operated thus upon a
sufficiently large number of principles, did we come slowly to a general
conclusion, and that conclusion we believe ourselves entitled to express
here briefly as the solid result of a most circumspect analysis, and, at
least, a most methodical labor. We must either renew before you this
labor, this analysis, and thereby run the risk of not being able to
complete the long course that we have marked out for ourselves, or we
must limit ourselves to reminding you of the essential traits of the
theory at which we arrived.
This theory, moreover, is in itself so simple, that, without the dress
of regular demonstrations upon which it is founded, its own evidence
will sufficiently establish it. It wholly rests upon the distinction
between the different forms under which truth is presented to us. It is,
in its somewhat arid generality, as follows:
1st. One can perceive truth in two different ways. Sometimes one
perceives it in such or such a particular circumstance. For example, in
presence of two apples or two stones, and of two other similar objects
placed by the side of the first, I perceive this truth with absolute
certainty, viz., that these two stones and these two other stones make
four stones,--which is in some sort a concrete apperception of the
truth, because the truth is given to us in regard to real and
determinate objects. Sometimes I also affirm in a general manner that
two and two equal four, abstracting every determinate object,--which is
the abstract conception of truth.
Now, of these two ways of knowing truth, which precedes in the
chronological order of human knowledge? Is it not certain, may it not be
avowed by every one, that the particular precedes the general, that the
concrete precedes the abstract, that we begin by perceiving such or such
a determinate truth, in such or such a case, at such or such a moment,
in such or such a place, before conceiving a general truth,
independently of every application and different circumstances of place
and time?
2d. We can perceive the same truth without asking ourselves this
question: Have we the ability not to admit this truth? We perceive it,
then, by virtue alone of the intelligence which has been given us, and
which enters spontaneously into exercise; or rather, we try to doubt the
truth which we perceive, we attempt to deny it; we are not able to do
it, and then it is presented to reflection as superior to all possible
negation; it appears to us no longer only as a truth, but as a necessary
truth.
Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflection, that
reflection supposes an anterior operation, and that this operation, in
order not to be one of reflection, and not to suppose another before it,
must be entirely spontaneous; that thus the spontaneous and instinctive
intuition of truth precedes its reflection and necessary conception?
Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the individual and in the
race. It is, _par excellence_, the philosophic faculty; it sometimes
engenders doubt and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, for being
rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates
artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force
of habit as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous intuition is the
true logic of nature. It presides over the acquisition of nearly all our
cognitions. Children, the people, three-fourths of the human race never
pass beyond it, and rest there with boundless security.
The question of the origin of human cognitions is thus resolved for us
in the simplest manner: it is enough for us to determine that operation
of the mind which precedes all others, without which no other would take
place, and which is the first exercise, and the first form of our
faculty of knowing.[29]
Since every thing that bears the character of reflection cannot be
primitive, and supposes an anterior state, it follows, that the
principles which are the subject of our study could not have possessed
at first the reflective and abstract character with which they are now
marked, that they must have shown themselves at their origin in some
particular circumstance, under a concrete and determinate form, and that
in time they were disengaged from this form, in order to be invested
with their actual, abstract, and universal form. These are the two ends
of the chain; it remains for us to seek how the human mind has been from
one to the other, from the primitive state to the actual state, from the
concrete state to the abstract state.
How can we go from the concrete to the abstract? Evidently by that
well-known operation which is called abstraction. Thus far, nothing is
more simple. But it is necessary to discriminate between two sorts of
abstractions.
In presence of several particular objects, you omit the characters which
distinguish them, and separately consider a character which is common to
them all--you abstract this character. Examine the nature and conditions
of this abstraction; it proceeds by means of comparison, and it is
founded on a certain number of particular and different cases. Take an
example: examine how we form the abstract and general idea of color.
Place before my eyes for the first time a white object. Can I here at
the first step immediately arrive at a general idea of color? Can I at
first place on one side the whiteness, and on the other side the color?
Analyze what passes within you. You experience a sensation of whiteness.
Omit the individuality of this sensation, and you wholly destroy it; you
cannot neglect the whiteness, and preserve or abstract the color; for, a
single color being given, which is a white color, if you take away
that, there remains to you absolutely nothing in regard to color. Let a
blue object succeed this white object, then a red object, etc.; having
sensations differing from each other, you can neglect their differences,
and only consider what they have in common, that they are sensations of
sight, that is to say, colors, and you thus obtain the abstract and
general idea of color. Take another example: if you had never smelled
but a single flower, the violet, for instance, would you have had the
idea of odor in general? No. The odor of the violet would be for you the
only odor, beyond which you would not seek, you could not even imagine
another. But if to the odor of the violet is added that of the rose, and
other different odors, in a greater or less number, provided there be
several, and a comparison be possible, and consequently, knowledge of
their differences and their resemblances, then you will be able to form
the general idea of odor. What is there in common between the odor of
one flower and that of another flower, except that they have been
smelled by aid of the same organ, and by the same person? What here
renders generalization possible, is the unity of the sentient subject
which remembers having been modified, while remaining the same, by
different sensations; now, this subject can feel itself identical under
different modifications, and it can conceive in the qualities of the
object felt some resemblance and some dissimilarity, only on the
condition of a certain number of sensations experienced, of odors
smelled. In that case, but in that case alone, there can be comparison,
abstraction, and generalization, because there are different and similar
elements.
In order to arrive at the abstract form of universal and necessary
principles, we have no need of all this labor. Let us take again, for
example, the principle of cause. If you suppose six particular cases
from which you have abstracted this principle, it will contain neither
more nor less ideas than if you had deduced it from a single one. To be
able to say that the event which I see must have a cause, it is not
indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other. The
principle which compels me to pronounce this judgment, is already
complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in respect to
its object, it cannot change in itself; it neither increases nor
decreases with the greater or less number of its applications. The only
difference that it is subject to in regard to us, is, that we apply it
whether we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its
particular application. The question is not to eliminate the
particularity of the phenomenon, wherein it appears to us, whether it be
the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to
conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for
every thing that begins to exist. Here, it is not because I have been
the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several different
cases, that I have come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf
falls: at the same instant I think, I believe, I declare that this
falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man has been killed: at the
same instant I believe, I proclaim that this death must have a cause.
Each one of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances,
and something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them cannot but
have a cause. Now, I am perfectly able to disengage the universal from
the particular, in regard to the first fact as well as in regard to the
second fact, for the universal is in the first quite as well as in the
second. In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in the
first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the third, nor in a
thousandth; for a thousand are not nearer than one to the infinite, to
absolute universality. It is the same, and still more evidently, with
necessity. Pay particular attention to this point: if necessity is not
in the first fact, it cannot be in any; for necessity cannot be formed
little by little, and by successive increment. If, at the first murder
that I see, I do not exclaim that this murder necessarily has a cause,
at the thousandth murder, although it shall have been proved that all
the others have had causes, I shall have the right to think that this
new murder has, very probably, also its cause; but I shall never have
the right to declare that it necessarily has a cause. But when
necessity and universality are already in a single case, that case alone
is sufficient to entitle us to deduce them from it.[30]
We have established the existence of universal and necessary principles:
we have marked their origin; we have shown that they appear to us at
first from a particular fact, and we have shown by what process, by what
sort of abstraction the mind disengages them from the determinate and
concrete form which envelops them, but does not constitute them. Our
task, then, seems accomplished. But it is not,--we must defend the
solution which we have just presented to you of the problem of the
origin of principles against the theory of an eminent metaphysician,
whose just authority might seduce you. M. Maine de Biran[31] is, like
us, the declared adversary of the philosophy of sensation,--he admits
universal and necessary principles; but the origin which he assigns to
them, puts them, according to us, in peril, and would lead back by a
_detour_ to the empirical school.
Universal and necessary principles, if expressed in propositions,
embrace several terms. For example, in the principle that every
phenomenon supposes a cause; and in this, that every quality supposes a
substance, by the side of the ideas of quality and phenomenon are met
the ideas of cause and substance, which seem the foundation of these two
principles. M. de Biran pretends that the two ideas are anterior to the
two principles which contain them, and that we at first find these ideas
in ourselves in the consciousness that we are cause and substance, and
that, these ideas once being thus acquired, induction transports them
out of ourselves, makes us conceive causes and substances wherever there
are phenomena and qualities, and that the principles of cause and
substance are thus explained. I beg pardon of my illustrious friend;
but it is impossible to admit in the least degree this explanation.
The possession of the origin of the idea of cause is by no means
sufficient for the possession of the origin of the principle of
causality; for the idea and the principle are things essentially
different. You have established, I would say to M. de Biran, that the
idea of cause is found in that of productive volition:--you will to
produce certain effects, and you produce them; hence the idea of a
cause, of a particular cause, which is yourself; but between this fact
and the axiom that all phenomena which appear necessarily have a cause,
there is a gulf.
You believe that you can bridge it over by induction. The idea of cause
once found in ourselves, induction applies it, you say, wherever a new
phenomenon appears. But let us not be deceived by words, and let us
account for this extraordinary induction. The following dilemma I submit
with confidence to the loyal dialectics of M. de Biran:
Is the induction of which you speak universal and necessary? Then it is
a different name for the same thing. An induction which forces us
universally and necessarily to associate the idea of cause with that of
every phenomenon that begins to appear is precisely what is called the
principle of causality. On the contrary, is this induction neither
universal nor necessary? It cannot supply the place of the principle of
cause, and the explanation destroys the thing to be explained.
It follows from this that the only true result of these various
psychological investigations is, that the idea of personal and free
cause precedes all exercise of the principle of causality, but without
explaining it.
The theory which we combat is much more powerless in regard to other
principles which, far from being exercised before the ideas from which
it is pretended to deduce them, precede them, and even give birth to
them. How have we acquired the idea of time and that of space, except by
aid of the principle that the bodies and events, which we see are in
time and in space? We have seen[32] that, without this principle, and
confined to the data of the senses and consciousness, neither time nor
space would exist for us. Whence have we deduced the idea of the
infinite, except from the principle that the finite supposes the
infinite, that all finite and defective things, which we perceive by our
senses and feel within us, are not sufficient for themselves, and
suppose something infinite and perfect? Omit the principle, and the idea
of the infinite is destroyed. Evidently this idea is derived from the
application of the principle, and it is not the principle which is
derived from the idea.