Two principal and different states of passive and active capacity of
being determined[3] can be distinguished in man; in like manner two
states of passive and active determination.[4] The explanation of this
proposition leads us most readily to our end.
The condition of the state of man before destination or direction is
given him by the impression of the senses is an unlimited capacity of
being determined. The infinite of time and space is given to his
imagination for its free use; and, because nothing is settled in this
kingdom of the possible, and therefore nothing is excluded from it, this
state of absence of determination can be named an _empty infiniteness_,
which must not by any means be confounded with an infinite void.
Now it is necessary that his sensuous nature should be modified, and
that in the indefinite series of possible determinations one alone
should become real. One perception must spring up in it. That which, in
the previous state of determinableness, was only an empty potency
becomes now an active force, and receives contents; but, at the same
time, as an active force it receives a limit, after having been, as a
simple power, unlimited. Reality exists now, but the infinite has
disappeared. To describe a figure in space, we are obliged to _limit_
infinite space; to represent to ourselves a change in time, we are
obliged to _divide_ the totality of time. Thus we only arrive at reality
by limitation, at the positive, at a real _position_, by _negation_ or
exclusion; to determination, by the suppression of our free
determinableness.
But mere exclusion would never beget a reality, nor would a mere
sensuous impression ever give birth to a perception, if there were not
something from which it was excluded, if by an absolute act of the mind
the negation were not referred to something positive, and if opposition
did not issue out of non-position. This act of the mind is styled
judging or thinking, and the result is named _thought_.
Before we determine a place in space, there is no space for us; but
without absolute space we could never determine a place. The same is the
case with time. Before we have an instant, there is no time to us: but
without infinite time—eternity—we should never have a representation of
the instant. Thus, therefore, we can only arrive at the whole by the
part, to the unlimited through limitation; but reciprocally we only
arrive at the part through the whole, at limitation through the
unlimited.
It follows from this, that when it is affirmed of beauty that it
mediates for man, the transition from feeling to thought, this must not
be understood to mean that beauty can fill up the gap that separates
feeling from thought, the passive from the active. This gap is infinite;
and, without the interposition of a new and independent faculty, it is
impossible for the general to issue from the individual, the necessary
from the contingent. Thought is the immediate act of this absolute
power, which, I admit, can only be manifested in connection with
sensuous impressions, but which in this manifestation depends so little
on the sensuous that it reveals itself specially in an opposition to it.
The spontaneity or autonomy with which it acts excludes every foreign
influence; and it is not in as far as it _helps_ thought—which
comprehends a manifest contradiction—but only in as far as it procures
for the intellectual faculties the freedom to manifest themselves in
conformity with their proper laws. It does it only because the beautiful
can become a means of leading man from matter to form, from feeling to
laws, from a limited existence to an absolute existence.
But this assumes that the freedom of the intellectual faculties can be
balked, which appears contradictory to the conception of an autonomous
power. For a power which only receives the matter of its activity from
without can only be hindered in its action by the privation of this
matter, and consequently by way of negation; it is therefore a
misconception of the nature of the mind to attribute to the sensuous
passions the power of oppressing positively the freedom of the mind.
Experience does indeed present numerous examples where the rational
forces appear compressed in proportion to the violence of the sensuous
forces. But instead of deducing this spiritual weakness from the energy
of passion, this passionate energy must rather be explained by the
weakness of the human mind. For the sense can only have a sway such as
this over man when the mind has spontaneously neglected to assert its
power.
Yet in trying by these explanations to move one objection, I appear to
have exposed myself to another, and I have only saved the autonomy of
the mind at the cost of its unity. For how can the mind derive at the
same time from itself the principles of inactivity and of activity, if
it is not itself divided, and if it is not in opposition with itself?
Here we must remember that we have before us, not the infinite mind, but
the finite. The finite mind is that which only becomes active through
the passive, only arrives at the absolute through limitation, and only
acts and fashions in as far as it receives matter. Accordingly, a mind
of this nature must associate with the impulse towards form or the
absolute, an impulse towards matter or limitation, conditions without
which it could not have the former impulse nor satisfy it. How can two
such opposite tendencies exist together in the same being? This is a
problem that can no doubt embarrass the metaphysician, but not the
transcendental philosopher. The latter does not presume to explain the
possibility of things, but he is satisfied with giving a solid basis to
the knowledge that makes us understand the possibility of experience.
And as experience would be equally impossible without this autonomy in
the mind, and without the absolute unity of the mind, it lays down these
two conceptions as two conditions of experience equals necessary without
troubling itself any more to reconcile them. Moreover, this immanence of
two fundamental impulses does not in any degree contradict the absolute
unity of the mind, as soon as the mind itself, its _selfhood_, is
distinguished from those two motors. No doubt, these two impulses
_exist_ and _act in it_, but _itself_ is neither matter nor form, nor
the sensuous nor reason, and this is a point that does not seem always
to have occurred to those who only look upon the mind as itself acting
when its acts are in harmony with reason, and who declare it passive
when its acts contradict reason.
Arrived at its development, each of these two fundamental impulsions
tends of necessity and by its nature to satisfy itself; but precisely
because each of them has a necessary tendency, and both nevertheless
have an opposite tendency, this twofold constraint mutually destroys
itself, and the will preserves an entire freedom between them both. It
is therefore the will that conducts itself like a _power_—as the basis
of reality—with respect to both these impulses; but neither of them can
by itself act as a power with respect to the other. A violent man, by
his positive tendency to justice, which never fails in him, is turned
away from injustice; nor can a temptation of pleasure, however strong,
make a strong character violate its principles. There is in man no other
power than his will; and death alone, which destroys man, or some
privation of self-consciousness, is the only thing that can rob man of
his internal freedom.
An _external_ necessity determines our condition, our existence in time,
by means of the sensuous. The latter is quite involuntary, and directly
it is produced in us we are necessarily passive. In the same manner an
_internal_ necessity awakens our personality in connection with
sensations, and by its antagonism with them; for consciousness cannot
depend on the will, which presupposes it. This primitive manifestation
of personality is no more a merit to us than its privation is a defect
in us. Reason can only be required in a being who is self-conscious, for
reason is an absolute consecutiveness and universality of consciousness;
before this is the case he is not a man, nor can any act of humanity be
expected from him. The _metaphysician_ can no more explain the
limitation imposed by sensation on a free and autonomous mind than the
_natural philosopher_ can understand the infinite, which is revealed in
consciousness in connection with these limits. Neither abstraction nor
experience can bring us back to the source whence issue our ideas of
necessity and of universality: this source is concealed in its origin in
time from the observer, and its super-sensuous origin from the
researches of the metaphysician. But, to sum up in a few words,
consciousness is there, and, together with its immutable unity, the law
of all that _is_ for man is established, as well as of all that is to be
_by_ man, for his understanding and his activity. The ideas of truth and
of right present themselves inevitable, incorruptible, immeasurable,
even in the age of sensuousness; and without our being able to say why
or how, we see eternity in time, the necessary following the contingent.
It is thus that, without any share on the part of the subject, the
sensation and self-consciousness arise, and the origin of both is beyond
our volition, as it is out of the sphere of our knowledge.
But as soon as these two faculties have passed into action, and man has
verified by his experience, through the medium of sensation, a
determinate existence, and through the medium of consciousness its
absolute existence, the two fundamental impulses exert their influence
directly their object is given. The sensuous impulse is awakened with
the experience of life—with the beginning of the individual; the
rational impulsion with the experience of law—with the beginning of his
personality; and it is only when these two inclinations have come into
existence that the human type is realized. Up to that time, everything
takes place in man according to the law of necessity; but now the hand
of _nature_ lets him go, and it is for _him_ to keep upright humanity,
which nature places as a germ in his heart. And thus we see that
directly the two opposite and fundamental impulses exercise their
influence in him, both lose their constraint, and the autonomy of two
necessities gives birth to freedom.