without which all other is but doubt and presumption. I will only
examine, in a brief digression, if this knowledge is possible. Plato,
as I have said, made the whole edifice of his doctrine rest upon it;
he taught, according to Socrates, that ignorance of one’s self
involves all ignorance, all mistakes, all vices, and all misfortunes;
whereas knowledge of one’s self, on the contrary, draws all virtue and
all goodness[483]: so that it cannot be doubted that this knowledge
might be considered possible, since its impossibility merely
questioned would render its system null and void. However, as Socrates
had said that he knew nothing, in order to distinguish himself from
the sophists of his day who pretended to know everything; as Plato had
constantly used in his teachings that sort of dialectic which,
proceeding toward truth by doubt, consists in defining things for what
they are, knowing their essence, distinguishing those which are real
from those which are only illusory; and above all as the favourite
maxim of these two philosophers had been that it was necessary to
renounce all manner of prejudices, not pretending to know that of
which one is ignorant, and giving assent only to clear and evident
truths; it came to pass that the disciples of these great men, having
lost sight of the real spirit of their doctrine, took the means for
the end; and imagining that the perfection of wisdom was in the doubt
which leads to it, established as fundamental maxim, that the wise man
ought neither to affirm nor deny anything; but to hold his assent
suspended between the _pro_ and _con_ of each thing.[484] Arcesilaus,
who declared himself the chief of this revolution, was a man of vast
intellect, endowed with much physical and moral means, an imposing
presence, and very eloquent,[485] but imbued with that secret terror
which prevents concentrating upon the things that one regards as
sacred and forbidden; audacious and almost impious to all outward
appearance, he was, in reality, timid and superstitious.[486]
Impressed with the inadequacy of his researches to discover the
certainty of certain principles, his vanity had persuaded him that
this certainty was undiscoverable, since he, Arcesilaus, did not find
it; and his superstition acting in accord with his vanity, he finally
believed that the ignorance of man is an effect of the will of God;
and that, according to the meaning of a passage from Hesiod that he
cited unceasingly, the Divinity has spread an impenetrable veil
between it and the human understanding.[487] Also he named the effect
of this ignorance, _Acatalepsy_, that is to say incomprehensibility,
or impossibility to raise the veil.[488] His disciples in great
numbers adopted this incomprehensibility and applied it to all sorts
of subjects; now denying, then affirming the same thing; placing a
principle, and overthrowing it the next moment; becoming entangled
themselves in captious arguments in order to prove that they knew
nothing, and making for themselves the calamitous glory of ignoring
good and evil, and of being unable to distinguish virtue from
vice.[489] Dismal effect of an early error! Arcesilaus became the
convincing proof of what I have repeated touching the golden mean and
the similitude of extremes: once having left the path of truth, he
became through weakness and through superstition the head of a crowd
of audacious atheists, who, after having called in question the
principles upon which logic and morals repose, placed there those of
religion and overthrew them. Vainly he essayed to arrest the movement
of which he had been the cause by establishing two doctrines: the one
public, wherein he taught skepticism; the other secret, wherein he
maintained dogmatism[490]: the time was no longer favourable for this
distinction. All that he gained was to let another usurp the glory and
to give his name to the new sect of doubters. It was Pyrrho who had
this honour. This man, of a character as firm as impassive, to whom
living or dying was a matter of indifference, who preferred nothing to
something, whom a precipice opening beneath his feet would be unable
to swerve from his path, gathered under his colours all those who made
a philosophical profession of doubting everything, of recognizing
nowhere the character of truth, and he gave them a sort of doctrine
wherein wisdom was placed in the most complete uncertainty, felicity
in the most absolute inertia, and genius in the art of stifling all
kinds of genius by the accumulation of contradictory reasonings.[491]
Pyrrho had much contempt for men, as was obvious from the doctrine
which he gave them. He had constantly on his lips this line of Homer:
“Even as are the generations of leaves such are those likewise of
men.”[492]
I pause a moment here, in order that the reader may observe, that
although the thought of Hesiod, concerning the veil that the gods had
spread between them and men, and which gave rise to Arcesilaus
establishing his acatalepsy, had originated in India,[493] it had
never had the same results there; and this, because the Brahmans, in
teaching that this veil existed and that it even bewildered the vulgar
by a series of illusory phenomena, have never said that it was
impossible to raise it; because this might have been an attack on the
power of the will of man and its perfectibility, to which they put no
limit. We shall see further on that such was also the idea of
Pythagoras. Let us return to the Skeptics.
The writer to whom we owe a comparative history of the systems of
philosophy, written with thought and impartiality, has felt keenly
that skepticism ought to be considered under two relations: as
skepticism of criticism and reform, necessary to correct the
presumption of the human mind and to destroy its prejudices; as
skepticism absolute and determined, which confounds in a common
proscription both truth and error.[494] The first, of which Socrates
gave the example, and which Bacon and Descartes have revived, is a
sort of intellectual remedy that Providence prepares for healing one
of the most fatal maladies of the human mind, that kind of
presumptuous ignorance which makes one believe that he knows that
which he does not know: the second, which is only the excess and abuse
of the first, is this same remedy transformed into poison by an
aberration of the human reason which transports it beyond the
circumstances which invoke its action, and employs it to devour itself
and to exhaust in their source all the causes which cooperate in the
progress of human understanding.[495] Arcesilaus was the first to
introduce it into the Academy by exaggerating the maxims of Socrates,
and Pyrrho made a special system of destruction in it, under the name
of _Pyrrhonism_. This system, welcomed in Greece, soon infected it
with its venom, notwithstanding the vigorous resistance of Zeno the
Stoic, whom Providence had raised up to oppose its ravages.[496]
Carried to Rome by Carneades, the head of the third academy, it
alarmed with its maxims subversive of public morals, Cato the Censor,
who confounding it with philosophy conceived for it an implacable
hatred.[497] This rigid republican, hearing Carneades speak against
justice, denying the existence of virtues, attacking the Divine
Providence, and questioning the fundamental verities of religion, held
in contempt a science which could bring forth such arguments.[498] He
urged the return of the Greek philosophy, so that the Roman youth
might not be imbued with its errors; but the evil was done. The
destructive germs that Carneades had left, fermented secretly in the
heart of the State, developed under the first favourable conditions,
increased and produced at last that formidable colossus, which, after
taking possession of the public mind, having obscured the most
enlightened ideas of good and evil, annihilated religion, and
delivered the Republic to disorder, civil wars, and destruction; and
raising itself again with the Roman Empire, withering the principles
of the life it had received, necessitated the institution of a new
cult and thus was exposed to the incursion of foreign errors and the
arms of the barbarians. This colossus, victim of its own fury, after
having torn and devoured itself was buried beneath the shams that it
had heaped up; Ignorance seated upon its _débris_ governed Europe,
until Bacon and Descartes came and resuscitating, as much as was
possible for them the Socratic skepticism, endeavoured by its means to
turn minds toward the research of truth. But they might not have done
so well, had they not also awakened certain remnants of Pyrrhonic
skepticism, which, being sustained with their passions and their
prejudices, soon resulted in bewildering their disciples. This new
skepticism, naïve in Montaigne, dogmatic in Hobbes, disguised in
Locke, masterly in Bayle, paradoxical but seductive in the greater
number of the eighteenth-century writers, hidden now beneath the
surface of what is called Experimental philosophy, lures the mind on
toward a sort of empirical routine, and unceasingly denying the past,
discouraging the future, aims by all kinds of means to retard the
progress of the human mind. It is no more even the character of truth;
and the proof of this character that the modern skeptics demand _ad
infinitum_,[499] is the demonstration of the very possibility of
understanding this character and of proving it: a new subtlety that
they have deduced from the unfruitful efforts that certain thinkers
have made recently in Germany, to give to the possibility of the
knowledge of self, a basis which they have not given.
I will relate in my next Examination, what has hindered these savants
from finding this basis. I must, before terminating this one, show to
my readers how I believe one can distinguish the two kinds of
skepticism of which I have just spoken. A simple question put to a
skeptic philosopher will indicate whether he belongs to the school of
Socrates or Pyrrho. He must before entering into any discussion reply
clearly to this demand: Do you admit of any difference whatever
between that which is and that which is not? If the skeptic belongs to
the school of Socrates, he will necessarily admit a difference and he
will explain it, which will make him recognized at once. If on the
contrary, he belongs to that of Pyrrho, he will respond in one of
three ways: either that he admits a difference, or that he admits
none, or that he does not know whether one exists. If he admits it
without explaining it, he is beaten; if he does not admit it, he falls
into absurdity; if he pretends not to distinguish it, he becomes
foolish and ridiculous.
He is beaten, if he admits a difference between that which is and that
which is not; because that difference, admitted, proves the existence
of being; the existence of being proves that of the skeptic who
replies; and that existence proved, proves all the others, whether one
considers them in him, or outside of him, which is the same thing for
the moment.
He falls into absurdity, if he does not admit any difference between
that which is and that which is not, for then one can prove to him
that 1 is equal to 0, and that the part is as great as the whole.
He becomes foolish and ridiculous, if he dares to say that he does not
know whether a difference really exists between that which is, and
that which is not; for then one asks him what he did at the age of six
months, at one year, two years, two weeks ago, yesterday? Whatever he
replies, he will become the object of ridicule.
Behold the Pyrrhonian beaten, that is to say, the one who professes to
doubt everything; since a single acknowledged difference bringing him
irresistibly to a certainty, and since one certainty militates against
all the others, there is no further doubt; and since, doubting no
further, it is only a question then of knowing what he ought, or ought
not to doubt: this is the true character of the skeptic of the
Socratic School.
23. _Abstain thou if ’tis evil; persevere if good._
But although one may bring the absolute skeptic to agree that a
difference between good and evil can indeed exist, as he is forced to
agree that one does exist between that which is and that which is not,
just as I have demonstrated in my preceding Examination; would he not
be right in saying, that to know in general, that good and evil can
differ and consequently exist separately, does not prevent confounding
them in particular; and that he can doubt that man may be able to make
the distinction, until one may have proved to him that not alone their
knowledge, but that some sort of knowledge is possible? Assuredly,
this is pushing doubt very far. One could dispense with replying to
this, since the skeptic already interrogated concerning the difference
existing between what is and what is not has been forced to admit it
and to acquire thus some sort of knowledge of being; but let us forget
this, in order to examine why the savants of Germany have inadequately
removed a difficulty which they have imposed upon themselves.
It is Kant, one of the ablest minds that Europe has produced since the
extinction of learning, who, resolved to terminate with a single blow
the struggle springing up unceasingly between dogmatism and
skepticism, has been the first to form the bold project of creating a
science which should determine, _a priori_, the possibility, the
principles, and the limits of all knowledge.[500] This science, which
he named _Critical Philosophy_, or method of judgment,[501] he has
developed in several works of considerable length and very difficult
of comprehension. I do not intend here to make an explanation of this
science; for this labour, out of place in these Examinations, would
carry me too far. My intention is only to show the point wherein it
has given way, and how it has furnished new weapons for the skeptics,
in not holding well to the promise that it had made of determining the
principle of knowledge. Therefore, I will suppose the doctrine of Kant
understood or partially so. Several works, circulated somewhat
extensively in France, have unravelled it sufficiently to the
savants.[502] I will only say what the authors of these works have
been unable to say, and this will be the general result of the
impression that the study of this doctrine has made upon me: it is
that Kant, who pretends to found all his doctrine upon principles, _a
priori_, abstraction being made of all the underlying notions of
experience, and who, rising into an ideal sphere there to consider
reason in an absolute way, independent of its effects so as to deduce
from it a theory transcendental and purely intelligible, concerning
the principle of knowledge, has done precisely the opposite from what
he wished to do; for not finding what he sought, he has found what he
has not sought, that is to say, the essence of matter. Let the
disciples of this philosophy give attention to what I say. I have
known several systems of philosophy and I have put considerable force
into penetrating them; but I can affirm that there exists not a single
one upon the face of the earth, wherein the primitive matter of which
the Universe is composed may be characterized by traits as striking as
in that of Kant. I believe it impossible either to understand it
better or to depict it better. He uses neither figures, nor symbols;
he tells what he sees with a candour which would have been appalling
to Pythagoras and Plato; for what the Koenigsberg professor advances
concerning both the existence and the non-existence of this
matter,[503] and of its intuitive reality, and of its phenomenal
illusion, and of its essential forms, time and space, and of the
labour that the mind exercises upon this equivocal being, which,
always being engendered, never, however, exists; all this, taught in
the mysteries, was only clearly revealed to the initiate. Listen a
moment to what has transpired in India: it is the fundamental axiom of
the _Vedantic_ school, the illustrious disciples of Vyasa and of
Sankarâchârya, an axiom in accordance with the dogmas of the sacred
books.
Matter exists [say these philosophers], but not of an
existence such as is imagined by the vulgar; it exists but
it has no essence independent of intellectual perceptions;
for existence and perceptibility are, in this case,
convertible terms. The sage knows that appearances and their
exterior sensations are purely illusory and that they would
vanish into nothingness, if the Divine energy which alone
sustains them was for an instant suspended.[504]
I beg the disciples of Kant to give attention to this passage, and to
remember what Plato has said of the same, that, sometimes matter
exists and sometimes it does not exist[505]; as Justin the martyr, and
Cyril of Alexandria have reproached him for it; and as Plutarch and
Chalcidius have strongly remarked it,[506] in seeking to excuse this
apparent contradiction.
Let us endeavour now to call attention to the point where Kant is led
astray. This point, in the philosophical course that this savant meant
to pursue, seemed at first of very slight importance; but the
deviation that it causes, although small and almost imperceptible at
the first instant, determines none the less a divergent line, which,
turning aside more and more from the right line proportionably as it
is prolonged, is found to strike at an enormous distance from the mark
where Kant hoped it would arrive. This deviating point――who would have
believed it――is found in the misinterpretation and the misapplication
of a word. All the attention of the reader is required here. What I am
about to say, in demonstrating the error of the German philosopher,
will serve to supplement all that I have said pertaining to the
doctrine of Pythagoras.
Kant, whether through imitation of the ancient philosophers or through
the effect of his own learning which had made him desirous of knowing
the truth, has considered man under three principal modifications
which he calls faculties. In my twelfth Examination I have said that
such was the doctrine of Pythagoras. Plato, who followed in everything
the metaphysics of this great genius, distinguished in Man as in the
Universe, the body, soul, and spirit; and placed, in each of the
modifications of the particular or universal unity which constituted
them, the analogous faculties which, becoming developed in their turn,
gave birth to three new modifications whose productive unity they
became[507]; so that each ternary is represented in its development,
under the image of the triple Ternary, and formed by its union with
the Unity, first the Quaternary and afterwards the Decade.[508] Now
the German philosopher, without explaining the principle which led him
to consider man under three principal faculties, states them; without
saying to what particular modification he attributes them, that is,
without foreseeing if these faculties are physical, animistic or
intellectual; if they belong to the body, to the soul, or to the mind:
a first mistake which leads him to a second of which I am about to
speak.
In order to express these three facilities, Kant makes use of three
words taken from his own tongue and concerning the meaning of which it
is well to fix our attention. He has named the first of these
faculties _Empfindlichkeit_, the second, _Verstand_, and the third,
_Vernunft_. These three words are excellent; it is only a question of
clearly understanding and explaining them.
The word _Empfindlichkeit_ expresses that sort of faculty which
consists in collecting from without, feeling from within, and finding
good or bad.[509] It has been very well rendered in French by the word
_sensibilité_.
The word _Verstand_ designates that sort of faculty which consists in
reaching afar, being carried from a central point to all other points
of the circumference to seize them.[510] It has been quite well
rendered in French by the word _entendement_.
The word _Vernunft_ is applied to that sort of faculty, which consists
in choosing at a distance, in wishing, in selecting, in electing that
which is good.[511] It is expressed by the word _raison_; but this
expresses it very poorly, whatever may be the real meaning given it by
Kant.
This philosopher ought to have realized more fully the origin of this
word and he should have made a more just application; then his system
would have taken another direction and he would have attained his
goal. He would have made us see, and he would have seen himself, the
reality, namely, _intelligence_ and not reason.
One can easily see that the faculty which Kant designates by the word
_Empfindlichkeit_, sense perception, belongs to the physical part of
man; and that which he expresses by the word _Verstand_, the
understanding, resides in his animistic part; but one cannot see at
all that what he names _Vernunft_, and which he continually confounds
with reason, may be able in any manner to dominate in his intellectual
part. For this, it would be necessary that he should consider it under
the relation of the intelligence; which he has not done. It is very
true that he has wished to place it constantly in the mind, by
representing the three faculties of which man is composed as a sort of
hierarchy, of which sense perception occupies the base, understanding
the centre, and reason the summit; or as one of his translators said,
imagining this hierarchy under the emblem of an empire, of which sense
perception constitutes the subjects, understanding the agents or
ministers, and reason the sovereign or legislator.[512] I cannot
conceive how Kant, by giving the word _Vernunft_, the meaning of the
Latin word _ratio_, has been able to say that it is the highest degree
of the activity of a mind which has the power of all its liberty, and
the consciousness of all its strength[513]: there is nothing more
false. Reason does not exist in liberty, but on the contrary, in
necessity. Its movement, which is geometric, is always forced: it is
an inference from the point of departure, and nothing more. Let us
examine this carefully. The Latin word _ratio_, whose meaning Kant has
visibly followed, has never translated exactly the Greek word _logos_,
in the sense of _word_; and if the Greek philosophers have substituted
sometimes the _logos_ for _nous_, or the word for the intelligence, by
taking the effect for the cause, it is wrong when the Romans have
tried to imitate them, by using _ratio_, in place of _mens_, or
_intelligentia_. In this they have proved their ignorance and have
disclosed the calamitous ravages that skepticism had already made
among them. The word _ratio_ springs from the root _ra_ or _rat_,
which in all the tongues where it has been received, has carried the
idea of a _ray_, a straight line drawn from one point to another.[514]
Thus reason, far from being free as Kant has pretended, is what is the
most constrained in nature: it is a geometric line, always subject to
the point whence it emanates, and forced to strike the point toward
which it is directed under penalty of ceasing to be itself; that is to
say, of ceasing to be straight. Now, reason not being free in its
course, is neither good nor bad in itself; it is always analogous to
the principle of which it is the inference. Its nature is to go
straight; its perfection is nothing else. One goes straight in every
way, in every direction, high, low, to right, to left; one reasons
correctly in truth as in error, in vice as in virtue: all depends upon
the principle from which one sets out, and upon the manner in which
one looks at things. Reason does not give this principle; it is no
more master of the end which it goes to attain, than the straight line
drawn upon the ground is master of the point toward which it tends.
This end and this point are determined beforehand, by the position of
the reasoner or by geometry.