The criticism of Positivism has taught us that there is no knowledge
possible without _à priori_ elements--that is to say, without laws
inherent in thought, which impose themselves upon phenomena, so as to
constitute veritable knowledge. This is the system of Kant, and thus
that system avoids not only empiricism, but scepticism as well, though
commonly confounded with it. For without necessary laws phenomena only
form an arbitrary succession, entirely dependent upon the organization
of the individual; we have no longer anything but individual
sensations. In the Kantian philosophy, however, the individual is
subjected to laws that are superior to himself; these are the laws of
human thought, and even, perhaps, of all thought whatever. These laws
impose themselves on each one of us in a necessary and universal manner,
and by so doing communicate to phenomena an objective reality in this
sense at least, that they are for individuals veritable objects; and
thus it is that mathematical truths are objects to the intellect, even
supposing they should be nowhere realized in any existence independent
of thought.
But are these laws of thought anything else than laws of thought? Do
they really attain to objective reality--to _things in themselves_. Kant
has denied that they do, and our author, in following in his steps,
agrees, or seems to agree, with the "Kritik" of Kant.
Let us then resolve the fundamental laws of the human intellect into
five principal concepts: these are, space and time, forms of
sensibility, substance and cause, laws of external experience, and,
lastly, the Absolute, the final and supreme condition of all knowledge.
Now, according to Kant and our author, these notions, at least the four
first, are at the same time necessary as subjective conditions of
thought, and contradictory so soon as we seek to realize them outside of
thought.
For example, that space and time are found by implication in every
internal or external representation, that they are not the result of
abstraction and generalization, this has been firmly established by
Kant; for the elements from which some have sought to derive them
already imply them. But, at the same time, they are only internal
conditions, of which the objects are unrealizable outside of ourselves,
and the reason of this is given by M. Liard, as follows:--Space and time
have three essential characteristics, they are homogeneous, continuous,
and unlimited. Now, if we seek to make of space and time _things in
themselves_ we may doubtless conceive them as homogeneous and
continuous, but not as unlimited, for no actual magnitude is unlimited;
all magnitude is expressed in numbers, and numbers are necessarily
finite, an infinite number involving a contradiction.
We will not enter into a question here mooted by the author, leading to
what Leibnitz calls the labyrinth of the continued (_Labyrinthus
continui_), or of invisibles; we will content ourselves with pointing
out that the reason here given is not by any means in conformity with
the ideas of Kant--indeed, that it contradicts them. In fact, our author
here applies to the two forms of sensibility the objection that Kant
raised only about real things and the sensible world. The world, indeed,
being composed of parts, can only be conceived as infinite by adding
these parts to each other, and by thus supposing the actual reality of
an infinite number. But it is not so with space, which, not being
composed of parts, is consequently not representable by numbers. "There
is only one single space, there is only one single time," says Kant. The
notion of space is therefore not formed by the infinite addition of
small portions of space and time. These are unities, not numbers. Hence
illimitableness is given with the very intuition. "Space," says Kant,
"is represented as a given infinite magnitude," _als eine gegebene
unendliche Quantität_. Now, so soon as the infinite is _given_, instead
of _being made_ by a mental addition, it seems to us that the above
difficulty vanishes.
Let us pass to the notion of substance and to that of cause. These two
notions are necessary to render possible the connection of phenomena in
the human mind. Our perceptions are, in fact, diverse; if they were only
diverse, and had no unity, there would be no passage from one phenomenon
to another; consciousness would arise and disappear with each
phenomenon, to arise and die anew with the next, and so on. But then
there would be no thought, for in order that thought should exist there
must be at least two different things presented to the unity of
consciousness. In other terms, we should be incapable of perceiving a
changing thing without something that was changeless. Hence this is a
necessary condition of knowledge. Now, let us see whether this condition
can be rendered objective. According to our author it cannot, for if we
subtract from surrounding things all the phenomena that fall under the
domain of the senses, what remains? Nothing. Common-sense, indeed,
believes in substance, but does not mean thereby an abstract and
metaphysical entity, it means the whole of what strikes the senses; when
the phenomenon is opposed to substance nothing is meant but that a new
phenomenon has just added itself to preceding ones. Wood burns; here
wood is the substance, combustion the phenomenon. This is how
common-sense understands the matter; but if we separate from the idea of
wood all that characterizes it as wood, nothing remains but a pure
abstraction, of which common-sense takes no account, and has never so
much as thought. Our author further combats the idea of substance by
appealing to the metaphysical difficulties that it suggests. Is there
only one substance, or are there several? Either hypothesis is equally
difficult to sustain. In other words, substance is nothing more than
that law in virtue of which the mind connects phenomena in one and the
same act of thought.
Here, again, we are obliged to say that the preceding arguments against
the objectivity of the notion of substance are, in our opinion, far from
conclusive. In the first place, it seems to us a false philosophical
method to exclude an object from the human mind because it suggests
difficulties that we are incapable of solving. Every object must be
presented to us as existing before we can judge of the possibility of
that object. Perhaps we do not possess the means of solving all the
questions which the existence of an object may suggest, but this is no
reason why it should not exist. The existence of things cannot be
subordinated to the limits of our understanding; it is this very
principle which seems to us soundest of all in the "Kritik" of Kant.
Even should we be for ever incapable of knowing whether there is one
substance or whether there are many, even should we be for ever doomed
to doubt as to this point, it would not follow that the existence of one
or of many substances were thereby done away with. Moreover, the
criticism of our author goes much further than the imperilling the
objectivity of substance; it really bears against the very notion
itself. If, in fact, every phenomenon being withdrawn, nothing remains
any longer in my mind, it is not merely objective substance that
vanishes, it is the notion itself. What, indeed, is a notion which,
analyzed, comes to naught? And what is this necessary law which is a
nonentity? Our author tells us that if we remove all the accidents there
remains "nothing perceptible to the senses." This is mere tautology, for
it is too evident that nothing sensible ought to remain in the notion,
all sensible accidents having been withdrawn; but what does remain is
that without which phenomena could not be connected. And this is no
empty concept, for how should an empty concept have any uniting power?
And, lastly, when the author, correcting himself, as we think, says that
the notion of substance reduces itself to what he calls a "fundamental
phenomenon," he does nothing but change the word, and in reality reverts
to what we call substance. For in what sense does anything
fundamental--that is to say, that to which other phenomena ultimately
reduce themselves, and which cannot be reduced to any other--still
preserve the name of phenomenon? All this, therefore, is but admitting
under one name what has been denied under another.
The criticism of the notion of cause is quite similar to that of the
notion of substance. It is a notion necessary to the mind, for just as
without substance there can be no mental connection between simultaneous
phenomena, in the same way without cause there can be no connection
between successive phenomena. Causality is the necessary law that
connects each phenomenon with its anterior conditions. Without this law
there could be no science, no induction, no experience. It cannot,
consequently, be derived from experience, since it is the very condition
of it. But do we seek to render cause objective as well as substance? If
so, we must understand it in a different sense. Cause is no longer
merely a phenomenon anterior to another, the antecedent of a consequent.
It is something quite different, it is force, the active power, that
initiates the movement, and of which we find the type in our own
consciousness. Hence, to render cause objective is nothing less than to
spiritualize the universe, to suppose everywhere causes similar to
ours--it is a kind of universal Fetichism. And, further, we fall into
the same difficulties as we did with regard to substance. Is there only
one cause or many causes? Lastly, causation thus understood is of no use
whatever to science, for science has no need at all of metaphysical
forces, that which is necessary to science, and employed by it under the
name of force, being a measurable quantity which it disengages from
phenomena and from experience.
On this new ground the difficulty that confronts critical idealism is
the same as that affecting the notion of substance. It lies in
defending the position against empiricism, from which are borrowed all
the arguments against the reality of the cause, while attempting,
nevertheless, to preserve the notion of it. How succeed in retaining as
an _à priori_ law what empiricism declares to be only an acquired habit?
How explain a law of mind imposing a determined order on external
phenomena? How can the entirely subjective need of relation determine
phenomena to produce themselves in the order desired by our
intelligence? The thunder rolls: my mind, in virtue of an innate law,
insists on this phenomenon being connected with a certain totality of
antecedent phenomena--namely, heat, the formation of clouds charged with
electricity of different kinds, the meeting of these clouds, and the
combination of the two electricities, &c. How and why have these
phenomena produced themselves in order to satisfy my mind? Our author
somewhere reproaches the partisans of innate ideas with supposing ideas
on one side and phenomena on the other. How can he exonerate Kant's
system from this objection? No philosopher ever insisted more than he on
the opposition between matter and form, the former being, as he says,
"given _à posteriori_," the latter ready prepared _à priori_ in the
mind. No philosopher, not even Leibnitz, has more radically separated
sensibility which is passive from the understanding whose principle is
spontaneity. How do these two opposite principles happen to agree? Even
were it pointed out that our senses themselves are innate, since our
sensations are but the manifestation of the specific activity of each
one of them--light, of the optic nerve, sound, of the acoustic--it still
remains certain that our sensations are only subjective as regards their
content and not as regards their origin; they arise in virtue of causes
to us unknown. How should understanding, by aid of a purely mental law,
and in order to its own satisfaction, evoke sensible phenomena from
nothingness, and if it had such a power, it could only be in virtue of
an active force, that is, of a veritable causality? You say that you
require relation, without which there could be no knowledge. And why
must there be knowledge because you feel the need of it? And why should
there not be in the understanding a need of unity and relation that
sensibility does not satisfy? To say that the mind at the same time that
it thinks the law produces phenomena conformable to that law, is to make
the mind itself the cause in the objective and metaphysical sense of the
word--is no other than that universal spiritualism that the author began
by refuting. We are therefore very far from admitting his criticism of
the principles of causality. Let us go on to the notion of the absolute.
M. Liard begins very properly by pointing out the confusion too often
made between the notion of the infinite and that of the absolute. He
says that the infinite can only be strictly understood in the
mathematical sense, but that hence, as Leibnitz has said, the true
infinite is the absolute. He admits the existence in the mind of the
notion of the absolute in so far as it is inseparable from that of the
relative. The Scotch philosopher, Hamilton, had endeavoured to suppress
this notion, and had reproached Kant for not having completely exorcised
the phantom of the absolute,[2] and for having retained it in the
character of _idea_ while contesting its objective existence. It is
remarkable that on this point, so decisive for metaphysics, Hamilton
should have been opposed and refuted by the more modern English
philosophers, who often pass for having pushed the critical and negative
spirit further than he, when, indeed, on this point it is just the
contrary. Herbert Spencer especially is one whom it is interesting to
consult here. He maintains against Hamilton the notion of the absolute
as positive, not negative, "as the correlative notion of the relative,
as the substratum of all thoughts"--I quote verbally--"as the most
important element of our knowledge."[3] He also maintains in opposition
to Hamilton that the affirmation of the absolute is "a knowledge and not
a belief." Only according to him this object that underlies all our
thoughts is absolutely indeterminable by us. We know that it _is_, not
_what_ it is. It is the incomprehensible, the unknowable.
M. Liard seems to us substantially to admit all these conclusions.
"Existence by others," he says, "is not to be understood without
self-existence." "Without the spur of the notion of the absolute, how
comprehend the obstinate persistence of the human mind in transcending
the limits of the relative? Is not this a proof that the relative is not
sufficient to itself?" It is one thing to affirm the absolute, another
to determine its nature. Even granting that we be powerless to speak as
to the essence of the absolute, and that it can never be for us other
than the indeterminable and unknowable, "is it nothing to be assured of
the existence of an unknowable? At all events religious beliefs might in
default of scientific certainty find in an irremovable basis this
conviction."
We see therefore that our author agrees with Mr. Herbert Spencer in
granting the existence of the absolute; he does not seem to reduce it,
as Kant does, to a mere idea. He confines himself to saying that it
cannot be determined. He shows that none of the notions that have been
previously examined can fill up the concept of the absolute. Neither
space, nor time, nor substance, nor cause, nor the totality of
phenomena, can be raised to the notion of absolute. It is therefore
indeterminable. Now, as the absolute is the proper object of
metaphysics, it follows that metaphysics lack an object, having nothing
to say thereon. Hence it is self-condemned, and consequently metaphysics
is not a science.
Such is the conclusion of the second part. The first appeared to raise
us above phenomena by establishing the necessity of thought and of its
fundamental law. But the second confines us within the domains of
thought, and forbids us to go beyond. There is, indeed, a science of
thought, but this science is criticism, not metaphysics. Have we, then,
only escaped from positivism to fall into the abyss of scepticism?
Before explaining in what manner the author has endeavoured to escape
from this abyss, there is room for an important remark on the previous
discussion as to the notion of the absolute. Scepticism on this point
may assume three forms. Either, first, we do not even possess the notion
of it, our notion is entirely negative,--the absolute is the
non-relative, is indeed the relative with a negation: such is the view
of Sir W. Hamilton. Or else, secondly, we have the notion of the
absolute, of being in itself and by itself, of the superlatively real
being, _ens realissimum_, as Kant expresses it, but it is only a notion,
we cannot affirm the existence: this is Kant's doctrine. Or, thirdly, we
have indeed a positive notion of the absolute, and we necessarily affirm
its existence, only we are unable to determine its nature: this is the
conclusion arrived at by Herbert Spencer. Now, of these three doctrines
the two first alone, in our opinion, belong to what may be called
criticism. The third is manifestly a return to dogmatism. The more or
less of determination in the notion of the absolute is only the second
problem of metaphysic; the first is the existence of that absolute. And,
moreover, the doctrine of the divine incomprehensibility has always been
maintained by the greatest metaphysicians as well as the greatest
theologians. All mystics incline to it. There may therefore be room for
debate as to the more or less approximative character of our concepts of
the absolute. That any of these are adequate, or absolutely adequate, is
what no philosopher has ever thought himself obliged to maintain. No
doubt, to define the absolute as the unknowable, is to express the
doctrine under a very rigorous form, but one could hardly refuse to
allow the absolute to be the incomprehensible.
Consequently, then, if the author, as appears to be the case from the
passages we have quoted, thinks with Mr. Herbert Spencer that the notion
of the absolute corresponds to an existence, and if he contents himself
with maintaining its indeterminability, we may, if we like, consider
this to be a singularly attenuated metaphysic, but we are not entitled
to deny that it amounts to a departure from criticism and a return to
metaphysic. If, on the other hand, criticism does at least suppose one
fundamental datum,--thought, namely, and with the thought the
thinking,--we are still forced to grant to Descartes, and consequently
to metaphysic, the existence of the thinking subject; and hence that
science which our author declares not to be one would be found already
in possession of the claim by the single fact of what he has called the
criticism of two fundamental postulates: I think, I am--I think the
absolute, the absolute is. And is this then nothing?
We are therefore of opinion that M. Liard ought to have concluded the
second part of his work as he did the first--that is to say, that he
ought to have shown the insufficiency of criticism as he did that of
positivism. To our mind, criticism supposes metaphysic, as positivism
supposes criticism. Metaphysic contains the reason of criticism, as
criticism does that of positivism. Instead, then, of saying that
metaphysic is not a science, we should rather call it the culminating
point of science. But in place of following this natural order, which
is, indeed, only his own method, our author has preferred to prove
criticism right in the second part of his book, and metaphysic right in
the third, by a sort of _saltus_, not contained in what goes before. He
has chosen to appear nearer to Kant than he really is; has chosen to
carry on his own evolution in Kant's manner, and to rebuild on different
bases what he had demolished; but we shall see that this evolution is in
reality quite different from that of Kant, and that his justification of
criticism is only apparent, or at least if he defends it, this is really
only in order subsequently to undermine it.