Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern reasoning, that form
manners, by which it discovers the secret proportions of figures and of
movements? Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which I
have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, the circles,
that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and
their relations? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces
this effect? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so
true,--I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular figure,
and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly? Are there
somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, triangles or circles
existing with this perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed
upon my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and conduct also exist in
some place, whence they communicate to me their immutable truth? Or,
indeed, is it not rather he who has everywhere extended measure,
proportion, truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of
them?... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in the
image of God, capable of understanding truth, which is God himself,
actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards God, where
the truth appears to it as soon as God wills to make the truth appear to
it.... It is an astonishing thing that man understands so many truths,
without understanding at the same time that all truth comes from God,
that it is in God, that it is God himself.... It is certain that God is
the primitive reason of all that exists and has understanding in the
universe; that he is the true original, and that every thing is true by
relation to his eternal idea, that seeking truth is seeking him, and
that finding truth is finding him...."
Chap. v., sect. 14. "The senses do not convey to the soul knowledge of
truth. They excite it, awaken it, and apprize it of certain effects: it
is solicited to search for causes, but it discovers them, it sees their
connections, the principles which put them in motion, only in a superior
light that comes from God, or is God himself. God is, then, truth, which
is always the same to all minds, and the true source of intelligence.
For this reason intelligence beholds the light, breathes, and lives."
At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes to crown these
great testimonies, and to complete their unanimity.
Here is a passage from an important treatise entitled, _Meditationes de
Cognitione, Veritate et Idaeis_, in which Leibnitz declares that primary
notions are the attributes of God. "I know not," he says, "whether man
can perfectly account to himself for his ideas, except by ascending to
primary ideas for which he can no more account, that is to say, to the
absolute attributes of God."[67]
The same doctrine is in the _Principia Philosophiae seu Theses in Gratiam
Principis Eugenii_. "The intelligence of God is the region of eternal
truths, and the ideas that depend upon them."[68]
_Theodicea_, part ii., sect. 189.[69] "It must not be said with the
Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were no
understanding, not even that of God. For, in my opinion, it is the
divine understanding that makes the reality of eternal truths."
_Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain_, book ii., chap. xvii. "The
idea of the absolute is in us internally like that of being. _These
absolutes are nothing else than the attributes of God_, and it may be
said they are just as much the source of ideas as God is in himself the
principle of beings."
_Ibid._, book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded where those ideas
would be if no mind existed, and what would then become of the real
foundation of this certainty of eternal truths? That brings us in fine
to the last foundation of truths, to wit, to that supreme and universal
mind which cannot be destitute of existence, whose understanding, to
speak truly, is the region of eternal truths, as St. Augustine saw and
clearly enough expressed it. And that it may not be thought necessary to
recur to it, we must consider that these necessary truths contain the
determinating reason and the regulative principle of existences
themselves, and, in a word, the laws of the universe. So these
unnecessary truths, being anterior to the existences of contingent
beings, must have their foundation in the existence of a necessary
substance. It is there that I find the original of truths which are
stamped upon our souls, not in the form of propositions, but as sources,
the application and occasions of which will produce actual
enunciations."
So, from Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicians have thought
that absolute truth is an attribute of absolute being. Truth is
incomprehensible without God, as God is incomprehensible without truth.
Truth is placed between human intelligence and the supreme intelligence,
as a kind of mediator. In the lowest degree, as well as at the height of
being, God is everywhere met, for truth is everywhere. Study nature,
elevate yourselves to the laws that govern it and make of it as it were
a living truth:--the more profoundly you understand its laws, the nearer
you approach to God. Study, above all, humanity; humanity is much
greater than nature, for it comes from God as well as nature, and knows
him, while nature is ignorant of him. Especially seek and love truth,
and refer it to the immortal being who is its source. The more you know
of the truth, the more you know of God. The sciences, so far from
turning us away from religion, conduct us to it. Physics, with their
laws, mathematics, with their sublime ideas, especially philosophy,
which cannot take a single step without encountering universal and
necessary principles, are so many stages on the way to Deity, and, thus
to speak, so many temples in which homage is perpetually paid to him.
But in the midst of these high considerations, let us carefully guard
ourselves against two opposite errors, from which men of fine genius
have not always known how to preserve themselves,--against the error of
making the reason of man purely individual, and against the error of
confounding it with truth and the divine reason.[70] If the reason of
man is purely individual because it is in the individual, it can
comprehend nothing that is not individual, nothing that transcends the
limits wherein it is confined. Not only is it unable to elevate itself
to any universal and necessary truth, not only is it unable to have any
idea of it, even any suspicion of it, as one blind from his birth can
have no suspicion that a sun exists; but there is no power, not even
that of God, that by any means could make penetrate the reason of man
any truth of that order absolutely repugnant to its nature; since, for
this end, it would not be sufficient for God to lighten our mind; it
would be necessary to change it, to add to it another faculty. Neither,
on the other hand, must we, with Malebranche, make the reason of man to
such a degree impersonal that it takes the place of truth which is its
object, and of God who is its principle. It is truth that to us is
absolutely impersonal, and not reason. Reason is in man, yet it comes
from God. Hence it is individual and finite, whilst its root is in the
infinite; it is personal by its relation to the person in which it
resides, and must also possess I know not what character of
universality, of necessity even, in order to be capable of conceiving
universal and necessary truths; hence it seems, by turns, according to
the point of view from which it is regarded, pitiable and sublime. Truth
is in some sort lent to human reason, but it belongs to a totally
different reason, to wit, that supreme, eternal, uncreated reason, which
is God himself. The truth in us is nothing else than our object; in God,
it is one of his attributes, as well as justice, holiness, mercy, as we
shall subsequently see. God exists; and so far as he exists, he thinks,
and his thoughts are truths, eternal as himself, which are reflected in
the laws of the universe, which the reason of man has received the power
to attain. Truth is the offspring, the utterance, I was about to say,
the eternal word of God, if it is permitted philosophy to borrow this
divine language from that holy religion which teaches us to worship God
in spirit and in truth. Of old, the theory of Ideas, which manifest God
to men, and remind them of him, had given to Plato the surname of the
precursor; on account of that theory of Ideas he was dear to St.
Augustine, and is invoked by Bossuet. It is by this same theory, wisely
interpreted, and purified by the light of our age, that the new
philosophy is attached to the tradition of great philosophies, and to
that of Christianity.
The last problem that the science of the true presented is resolved:--we
are in possession of the basis of absolute truths. God is substance,
reason, supreme cause, and the unity of all these truths; God, and God
alone, is to us the boundary beyond which we have nothing more to seek.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] See our work entitled, _Metaphysics of Aristotle_, 2d edition,
_passim_. In Aristotle himself, see especially _Metaphysics_, book vii.,
chap. xii., and book xiii., chap. ix.
[45] There are doubtless many other ways of arriving at God, as we shall
successively see; but this is the way of metaphysics. We do not exclude
any of the known and accredited proofs of the existence of God; but we
begin with that which gives all the others. See further on, part ii.,
_God, the Principle of Beauty_, and part iii., _God, the Principle of
the Good_, and the last lecture, which sums up the whole course.
[46] We have said a word on the Platonic theory of ideas, 1st Series,
vol. iv., p. 461 and 522. See also, vol. ii. of the 2d Series, lecture
7, on _Plato and Aristotle_, especially 3d Series, vol. i., a few words
on the _Language of the Theory of Ideas_, p. 121; our work on the
_Metaphysics of Aristotle_, p. 48 and 149, and our translation of Plato,
_passim_.
[47] Aristotle first stated this; modern peripatetics have repeated it;
and after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient philosophy, and
philosophy in general, by giving the appearance of absurdity to its most
illustrious representative.
[48] See particularly p. 121 of the _Timaeus_, vol. xii. of our
translation.
[49] _Republic_, book vi., vol. x. of our translation, p. 57.
[50] _Republic_, book vii., p. 20.
[51] _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., p. 51.
[52] _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., p. 55.
[53] Vol. xi., p. 261.
[54] Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 17: _Idex sunt formae quaedam principales
et rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quae ipsae formatae non
sunt ac per hoc aeternae ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quae in divina
intelligentia continentur_....
[55] Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 18. _Singula igitur propriis creata sunt
rationibus. Has autem rationes ubi arbitrandum est esse nisi in mente
Creatoris? non enim extra se quidquam intuebatur, ut secundum id
constitueret quod constituebat: nam hoc opinari sacrilegum est._
[56] _Ibid._ See also, book of the _Confessions_, book ii. of the _Free
Will_, book xii. of the _Trinity_, book vii. of the _City of God_, &c.
[57] _Summa totius theologiae_. Primae partis quaest. xii. art. 11. _Ad
tertium dicendum, quod omnia dicimus in Deo videre, et secundum ipsum de
omnibus judicare, in quantum per participationem sui luminis omnia
cognoscimus et dijudicamus. Nam et ipsum lumen naturale rationis
participatio quaedam est divini luminis._
[58] On the doctrine of Descartes, and on the proof of the existence of
God and the true process that he employs, see 1st Series, vol. iv.,
lecture 12, p. 64, lecture 22, p. 509-518; vol. v., lecture 6, p. 205;
2d Series, vol. xi., lecture 11; especially the three articles, already
cited, of the _Journal des Savants_ for the year 1850.
[59] See on Malebranche, 2d Series, lecture 2, and 3d Series, vol. iii.,
_Modern Philosophy_, as well as the _Fragments of Cartesian Philosophy_;
preface of the 1st edition of our _Pascal_:--"On this basis, so pure,
Malebranche is not steady; is excessive and rash, I know; narrow and
extreme, I do not fear to say; but always sublime, expressing only one
side of Plato, but expressing it in a wholly Christian spirit and in
angelic language. Malebranche is a Descartes who strays, having found
divine wings, and lost all connection with the earth."
[60] We use the only good edition of the treatise on the Existence of
God, that which the Abbe Gosselin has given in the collection of the
_Works of Fenelon_. Versailles, 1820. See vol. i., p. 80.
[61] Edit. de Versailles, p. 145.
[62] It is not necessary to remark how incorrect are the expressions,
_representation of the infinite, image of the infinite_, especially
_infinite image of the infinite_. We cannot represent to ourselves, we
cannot imagine to ourselves the infinite. We conceive the infinite; the
infinite is not an object of the imagination, but of the understanding,
of reason. See 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 6, p. 223, 224.
[63] By a trifling anachronism, for which we shall be pardoned, we have
here joined to the _Traite de la Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-meme_,
so long known, the _Logique_, which was only published in 1828.
[64] 4th Series, vol. i., preface of the 1st edition of _Pascal_:
"Bossuet, with more moderation, and supported by a good sense which
nothing can shake, is, in his way, a disciple of the same doctrine, only
the extremes of which according to his custom, he shunned. This great
mind, which may have superiors in invention, but has no equal for force
in common sense, was very careful not to place revelation and philosophy
in opposition to each other: he found it the safer and truer way to give
to each its due, to borrow from philosophy whatever natural light it can
give, in order to increase it in turn with the supernatural light, of
which the Church has been made the depository. It is in this sovereign
good sense, capable of comprehending every thing, and uniting every
thing, that resides the supreme originality of Bossuet. He shunned
particular opinions as small minds seek them for the triumph of
self-love. He did not think of himself; he only searched for truth, and
wherever he found it he listened to it, well assured that if the
connection between truths of different orders sometimes escapes us, it
is no reason for closing the eyes to any truth. If we wished to give a
scholastic name to Bossuet, according to the custom of the Middle Age,
we would have to call him the infallible doctor. He is not only one of
the highest, he is also one of the best and solidest intelligences that
ever existed; and this great conciliator has easily reconciled religion
and philosophy, St. Augustine and Descartes, tradition and reason."
[65] The best, or, rather, only good edition is that which was published
from an authentic copy, in 1846, by Lecoffre.
[66] These words, _d'une certaine maniere qui m'est incomprehensible,
c'est en lui, dis-je_, are not in the first edition of 1722.
[67] _Leibnitzii Opera_, edit. Deutens, vol. ii., p. 17.
[68] _Ibid._, p. 24.
[69] 1st edition, Amsterdam, 1710, p. 354, edit. of M. de Jaucourt,
Amsterdam, 1747, vol. ii., p. 93.
[70] We have many times designated these two rocks, for example, 2d
Series, vol. i., lecture 5, p. 92:--"One cannot help smiling when, in
our times, he hears individual reason spoken against. In truth it is a
great waste of declamation, for the reason is not individual; if it
were, we should govern it as we govern our resolutions and our
volitions, we could at any moment change its acts, that is to say, our
conceptions. If these conceptions were merely individual, we should not
think of imposing them upon another individual, for to impose our own
individual and personal conceptions on another individual, on another
person, would be the most extravagant despotism.... We call those mad
who do not admit the relations of numbers, the difference between the
beautiful and the ugly, the just and the unjust. Why? Because we know
that it is not the individual that constitutes these conceptions, or, in
other terms, we know that the reason has something universal and
absolute, that upon this ground it obligates all individuals; and an
individual, at the same time that he knows that he himself is obligated
by it, knows that all others are obligated by it on the same
ground."--_Ibid._, p. 93: "Truth misconceived is thereby neither altered
nor destroyed; it subsists independently of the reason that perceives it
or perceives it ill. Truth in itself is independent of our reason. Its
true subject is the universal and absolute reason."
LECTURE V.
ON MYSTICISM.
Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and
mysticism. Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without
an intermediary.--Two sorts of mysticism.--Mysticism of
sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities--the one
external, the other internal, and corresponding to the soul as
external sensibility corresponds to nature.--Legitimate part of
sentiment.--Its aberrations.--Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus:
God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by
pure thought.--Ecstasy.--Mixture of superstition and abstraction
in mysticism.--Conclusion of the first part of the course.
Whether we turn our attention to the forces and the laws that animate
and govern matter without belonging to it, or as the order of our labors
calls us to do, reflect upon the universal and necessary truths which
our mind discovers but does not constitute, the least systematic use of
reason makes us naturally conclude from the forces and laws of the
universe that there is a first intelligent mover, and from necessary
truths that there is a necessary being who alone is their substance. We
do not perceive God, but we conceive him, upon the faith of this
admirable world exposed to our view, and upon that of this other world,
more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves. By this double road we
succeed in going to God. This natural course is that of all men: it must
be sufficient for a sound philosophy. But there are feeble and
presumptuous minds that do not know how to go thus far, or do not know
how to stop there. Confined to experience, they do not dare to conclude
from what they see in what they do not see, as if at all times, at the
sight of the first phenomenon that appears to their eyes, they did not
admit that this phenomenon has a cause, even when this cause does not
come within the reach of their senses. They do not perceive it, yet they
believe in it, for the simple reason that they necessarily conceive it.
Man and the universe are also facts that cannot but have a cause,
although this cause may neither be seen by our eyes nor touched by our
hands. Reason has been given us for the very purpose of going, and
without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible,
from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and
also, from necessary and universal truths, which surround us on every
side, to their eternal and necessary principle. Such is the natural and
legitimate bearing of reason. It possesses an evidence of which it
renders no account, and is not thereby less irresistible to whomsoever
does not undertake to contest with God the veracity of the faculties
which he has received. But one does not revolt against reason with
impunity. It punishes our false wisdom by giving us up to extravagance.
When one has confined himself to the narrow limits of what he directly
perceives, he is smothered by these limits, wishes to go out of them at
any price, and invokes some other means of knowing; he did not dare to
admit the existence of an invisible God, and now behold him aspiring to
enter into immediate communication with him, as with sensible objects,
and the objects of consciousness. It is an extreme feebleness for a
rational being thus to doubt reason, and it is an incredible rashness,
in this despair of intelligence, to dream of direct communication with
God. This desperate and ambitious dream is mysticism.
It behooves us to separate with care this chimera, that is not without
danger, from the cause that we defend. It behooves us so much the more
to openly break with mysticism, as it seems to touch us more nearly, as
it pretends to be the last word of philosophy, and as by an appearance
of greatness it is able to seduce many a noble soul, especially at one
of those epochs of lassitude, when, after the cruel disappointment of
excessive hopes, human reason, having lost faith in its own power
without having lost the need of God, in order to satisfy this immortal
need, addresses itself to every thing except itself, and in fault of
knowing how to go to God by the way that is open to it, throws itself
out of common sense, and tries the new, the chimerical, even the absurd,
in order to attain the impossible.
Mysticism contains a pusillanimous skepticism in the place of reason,
and, at the same time, a faith blind and carried even to the oblivion of
all the conditions imposed upon human nature. To conceive God under the
transparent veil of the universe and above the highest truths, is at
once too much and too little for mysticism. It does not believe that it
knows God, if it knows him only in his manifestations and by the signs
of his existence: it wishes to perceive him directly, it wishes to be
united to him, sometimes by sentiment, sometimes by some other
extraordinary process.
Sentiment plays so important a part in mysticism, that our first care
must be to investigate the nature and proper function of this
interesting and hitherto ill-studied part of human nature.
It is necessary to distinguish sentiment well from sensation. There are,
in some sort, two sensibilities: one is directed to the external world,
and is charged with transmitting to the soul the impressions that it
sees; the other is wholly interior, and is related to the soul as the
other is to nature,--its function is to receive the impression, and, as
it were, the rebound of what passes in the soul. Have we discovered any
truth? there is something in us which feels joy on account of it. Have
we performed a good action? we receive our reward in a feeling of
satisfaction less vivid, but more delicate and more durable than all the
agreeable sensations that come from the body. It seems as if
intelligence also had its intimate organ, which suffers or enjoys,
according to the state of the intelligence. We bear in ourselves a
profound source of emotion, at once physical and moral, which expresses
the union of our two natures. The animal does not go beyond sensation,
and pure thought belongs only to the angelic nature. The sentiment that
partakes of sensation and thought is the portion of humanity. Sentiment
is, it is true, only an echo of reason; but this echo is sometimes
better understood than reason itself, because it resounds in the most
intimate, the most delicate portions of the soul, and moves the entire
man.
It is a singular, but incontestable fact, that as soon as reason has
conceived truth, the soul attaches itself to it, and loves it. Yes, the
soul loves truth. It is a wonderful thing that a being strayed into one
corner of the universe, alone charged with sustaining himself against so
many obstacles, who, it would seem, has enough to do to think of
himself, to preserve and somewhat embellish his life, is capable of
loving what is not related to him, and exists only in an invisible
world! This disinterested love of truth gives evidence of the greatness
of him who feels it.
Reason takes one step more:--it is not contented with truth, even
absolute truth, when convinced that it possesses it ill, that it does
not possess it as it really is; as long as it has not placed it upon its
eternal basis; having arrived there, it stops as before its impassable
barrier, having nothing more to seek, nothing more to find. Sentiment
follows reason, to which it is attached; it stops, it rests, only in the
love of the infinite being.
In fact, it is the infinite that we love, while we believe that we are
loving finite things, even while loving truth, beauty, virtue. And so
surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms us, that its
highest manifestations do not satisfy us until we have referred them to
their immortal source. The heart is insatiable, because it aspires after
the infinite. This sentiment, this need of the infinite, is at the
foundation of the greatest passions, and the most trifling desires. A
sigh of the soul in the presence of the starry heavens, the melancholy
attached to the passion of glory, to ambition, to all the great emotions
of the soul, express it better without doubt, but they do not express it
more than the caprice and mobility of those vulgar loves, wandering from
object to object in a perpetual circle of ardent desires, of poignant
disquietudes, and mournful disenchantments.
Let us designate another relation between reason and sentiment.