DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--CATEGORIES OF THE UNDERSTANDING
It has often been said that the rôle of intelligence consists in
uniting or grasping the relations of things. An important question,
therefore, to put, is, if we know whereof these relations consist, and
what is the rôle of the mind in the establishment of a relation?
It now and then happens to us to perceive an isolated object, without
comparing it with any other, or endeavouring to find out whether it
differs from or resembles another, or presents with any other a
relation of cause to effect, or of sign to thing signified, or of
co-existence in time and space. Thus, I may see a red colour, and
occupy all the intellect at my disposal in the perception of this
colour, seeing nothing but it, and thinking of nothing but it.
Theoretically, this is not impossible to conceive, and, practically, I
ask myself if these isolated and solitary acts of consciousness do not
sometimes occur.
It certainly seems to me that I have noticed in myself moments of
intellectual tonelessness, when in the country, during the vacation,
I look at the ground, or the grass, without thinking of anything--or
at least, of anything but what I am looking at, and without comparing
my sensation with anything. I do not think we should admit in
principle, as do many philosophers, that "we take no cognisance save
of relations." This is the _principle of relativity_, to which so much
attention has been given. Taken in this narrow sense, it seems to me
in no way imperative for our thoughts. We admit that it is very often
applied, but without feeling obliged to admit that it is of perpetual
and necessary application.
These reserves once made, it remains to remark, that the objects we
perceive very rarely present themselves in a state of perfect
isolation. On the contrary, they are brought near to other objects by
manifold relations of resemblance, of difference, or of connection in
time or space; and, further, they are compared with the ideas which
define them best. We do not have consciousness of an object, but of
the relations existing between several objects. Relation is the new
state produced by the fact that one perceives a plurality of objects,
and perceives them in a group.
Show me two colours in juxtaposition, and I do not see two colours
only, but, in addition, their resemblance in colour or value. Show me
two lines, and I do not see only their respective lengths but their
difference in length. Show me two points marked on a white sheet of
paper, and I do not see only the colour, form, and dimension of the
points, but their distance from each other. In our perceptions, as in
our conceptions, we have perpetually to do with the relations between
things. The more we reflect, the more we understand things, the more
clearly we see their relations; the multiplication of relations is the
measure of the depth of cognition.[25]
The nature of these relations is more difficult to ascertain than that
of objects. It seems to be more subtle. When two sounds make
themselves heard in succession, there is less difficulty in making the
nature of these two sounds understood than the nature of the fact that
one occurs before the other. It would appear that, in the perception
of objects, our mind is passive and reduced to the state of reception,
working like a registering machine or a sensitive surface, while in
the perception of relations it assumes a more important part.
Two principal theories have been advanced, of which one puts the
relations in the things perceived, and the other makes them a work of
the mind. Let us begin with this last opinion. It consists in
supposing that the relations are given to things by the mind itself.
These relations have been termed categories. The question of
categories plays an important part in the history of philosophy. Three
great philosophers, Aristotle, Kant, and Renouvier have drawn up a
list, or, as it is called, a table of them, and this table is very
long. To give a slight idea of it, I will quote a few examples, such
as time, space, being, resemblance, difference, causality, becoming,
finality, &c.
By making the categories the peculiar possession of the mind, we
attribute to these cognitions the essential characteristic of being
anterior to sensation, or, as it is also termed, of existing _a
priori_: we are taught that not only are they not derived from
experience, nor taught us by observation, but further that they are
presupposed by all observation, for they set up, in scholastic jargon,
the conditions which make experience possible. They represent the
personal contribution of the mind to the knowledge of nature, and,
consequently, to admit them is to admit that the mind is not, in the
presence of the world, reduced to the passive state of a _tabula
rasa_, and that the faculties of the mind are not a transformation of
sensation. Only these categories do not supplement sensation, they do
not obviate it, nor allow it to be conjectured beforehand. They remain
empty forms so long as they are not applied to experience; they are
the rules of cognition and not the objects of cognition, the means of
knowing and not the things known; they render knowledge possible, but
do not of themselves constitute it, Experience through the senses
still remains a necessary condition to the knowledge of the external
world. It may be said that the senses give the matter of knowledge,
and that the categories of the understanding give the form of it.
Matter cannot exist without form, nor form without matter; it is the
union of the two which produces cognition.
Such is the simplest idea that can be given of the Kantian theory of
categories, or, if it is preferred to employ the term often used and
much discussed, such is the theory of the Kantian idealism, This
theory, I will say frankly, hardly harmonises with the ideas I have
set forth up to this point. To begin with, let us scrutinise the
relation which can exist between the subject and the object. We have
seen that the existence of the subject is hardly admissible, for it
could only be an object in disguise. Cognition is composed in reality
of an object and an act of consciousness. Now, how can we know if this
act of consciousness, by adding itself to the object, modifies it and
causes it to appear other than it is?
This appears to me an insoluble question, and probably, even, a
factitious one. The idea that an object can be modified in its nature
or in its aspect comes to us through the perception of bodies. We see
that, by attacking a metal with acids, this metal is modified, and
that by heating a body its colour and form become changed; or that by
electrifying a thread it acquires new properties; or that when we
place glasses before our eyes we change the visible aspect of objects;
or that, if we have inflammation of the eyelids, light is painful, and
so on. All these familiar experiments represent to us the varied
changes that a body perceived can undergo; but it must be carefully
remarked that in cases of this kind the alteration in the body is
produced by the action of a second body, that the effect is due to an
intercourse between two objects. On the contrary, when we take the
Kantian hypothesis, that the consciousness modifies that which it
perceives, we are attributing to the consciousness an action which has
been observed in the case of the objects, and are thus transporting
into one domain that which belongs to a different one; and we are
falling into the very common error which consists in losing sight of
the proper nature of the consciousness and making out of it an object.
If we set aside this incorrect assimilation, there no longer remains
any reason for refusing to admit that we perceive things as they are,
and that the consciousness, by adding itself to objects, does not
modify them.
Phenomena and appearances do not, then, strictly speaking, exist. Till
proof to the contrary, we shall admit that everything we perceive is
real, that we perceive things always as they are, or, in other words,
that we always perceive _noumena_.[26]
After having examined the relations of the consciousness with its
objects, let us see what concerns the perception, by the
consciousness, of the relations existing between these objects
themselves. The question is to ascertain whether the _a priorists_ are
right in admitting that the establishment of these relations is the
work of the consciousness. The rôle of synthetic power that is thus
attributed to consciousness is difficult to conceive unless we alter
the definition of consciousness to fit the case. In accordance with
the definition we have given and the idea we have of it, the
consciousness makes us acquainted with what a thing is, but it adds
nothing to it. It is not a power which begets objects, nor is it a
power which begets relations.
Let us carefully note the consequence at which we should arrive, if,
while admitting, on the one hand, that our consciousness lights up and
reveals the objects without creating them, we were, on the other hand,
to admit that it makes up for this passivity by creating relations
between objects. We dare not go so far as to say that this creation of
relations is arbitrary and corresponds in no way to reality; or that,
when we judge two neighbouring or similar objects, the relations of
contiguity and resemblance are pure inventions of our consciousness,
and that these objects are really neither contiguous nor similar.
It must therefore be supposed that the relation is already, in some
manner, attracted into the objects; it must be admitted that our
intelligence does not apply its categories haphazard or from the
caprice of the moment; and it must be admitted that it is led to apply
them because it has perceived in the objects themselves a sign and a
reason which are an invitation to this application, and its
justification. On this hypothesis, therefore, contiguity and
resemblance must exist in the things themselves, and must be
perceived; for without this we should run the risk of finding similar
that which is different, and contiguous that which has no relation of
time or space. Whence it results, evidently, that our consciousness
cannot create the connection completely, and then we are greatly
tempted to conclude that it only possesses the faculty of perceiving
it when it exists in the objects.[27]
According to this conception, the rôle of the consciousness in the
perception of a connection is that of a witness, as in the perception
of objects. The consciousness does not create, but it verifies.
Resemblance is a physical property of objects, like colour; and
contiguity is a physical property of objects, like form. The
connections between the objects form part of the group object and not
of the group consciousness, and they are just as independent of
consciousness as are the objects themselves.
Against this conclusion we must anticipate several objections. One of
them will probably consist in accentuating the difference existing
between the object and the connection from the dynamical point of
view. That the object may be passively contemplated by the
consciousness can be understood, it will be said; but the relation is
not only an object of perception--it is, further, a principle of
action, a power of suggestion, and an agent of change.
It might, then, he supposed that the consciousness here finds a
compensation for the rôle that has been withdrawn from it. If it is
not the thing that creates the relation, it will be said, at least it
is that which creates its efficacity of suggestion. Many psychologists
have supposed that a relation has the power of evocation only when it
has been perceived. The perception of resemblance precedes the action
of resemblance. It is consequently the consciousness which assembles
the ideas and gives them birth by perceiving their relations.
This error, for it is one, has long been wide-spread--indeed, it still
persists.[28] We have, however, no difficulty in understanding that
the perception of a resemblance between two terms supposes them to be
known; so long as only one of the terms is present to the
consciousness, this perception does not exist; it cannot therefore
possess the property of bringing to light the second term. Suggestion
is therefore distinct from recognition; it is when suggestion has
acted, when the resemblance in fact has brought the two terms
together, that the consciousness, taking cognisance of the work
accomplished, verifies the existence of a resemblance, and that this
resemblance explains the suggestion.
Second objection: we are told that the relations between the
objects--that is, the principal categories--must be of a mental
nature, because they are _a priori_. That they are _a priori_ means
that they are at once anterior and superior to the experience. Let us
see what this argument is worth.
It appears that it is somewhat misused. With regard to many of the
categories, we are content to lay down the necessity of an abstract
idea in order to explain the comprehension of a concrete one. It is
said, for example: how can it be perceived that two sensations are
successive, if we do not already possess the idea of time? The
argument is not very convincing, because, for every kind of concrete
perception it is possible to establish an abstract category.
It might be said of colour that it is impossible to perceive it unless
it is known beforehand what colour is; and so on for a heap of other
things. A more serious argument consists in saying that relations are
_a priori_ because they have a character of universality and of
necessity which is not explained by experience, this last being always
contingent and peculiar. But it is not necessary that a function
should be mental for it to be _a priori_. The identification of the _a
priori_ with the mental is entirely gratuitous. We should here draw a
distinction between the two senses of the _a priori_: anteriority and
superiority.
A simple physical mechanism may be _a priori_, in the sense of
anteriority. A house is _a priori_, in regard to the lodgers it
receives; this book is _a priori_, in regard to its future readers.
There is no difficulty in imagining the structure of our nervous
system to be _a priori_, in regard to the excitements which are
propagated in it. A nerve cell is formed, with its protoplasm, its
nucleus and its nucleoli before being irritated; its properties
precede its functions. If it be possible to admit that as a
consequence of ancestral experiences the function has created the
organ, the latter is now formed, and this it is which in its turn
becomes anterior to the function. The notion of _a priori_ has
therefore nothing in it which is repugnant to physical nature.
Let us now take the _a priori_ in the sense of superiority. Certain
judgments of ours are, we are told, universal and necessary, and
through this double character go beyond the evidence of experience.
This is an exact fact which deserves to be explained, but it is not
indispensable to explain it by allowing to the consciousness a source
of special cognitions. The English school of philosophy have already
attacked this problem in connection with the origin of axioms. The
principle of their explanation lies in the virtue of what they have
termed "inseparable association." They have supposed that when an
association is often repeated it creates a habit of thought against
which no further strife is possible. The mechanism of association
itself should then add a special virtue to the contingency of facts. A
hundred repetitions of related facts, for example, would give rise to
so firm an association, that no further repetition would increase it.
I consider this explanation a very sound one in principle. It is right
to put into association something more than into experience. I would
only suggest a slight correction in detail. It is not the association
forged by repetition which has this virtue of conveying the idea of
necessity and universality, it is simply the uncontradicted
association. It has been objected, in fact, and with reason, to the
solution of Mill, that it insists on a long duration of experience,
while axioms appear to be of an irresistible and universal
truthfulness the moment they are conceived. And this is quite just. I
should prefer to lay down as a law that every representation appears
true, and that every link appears necessary and universal as soon as
it is formed. This is its character from the first. It preserves it so
long as no contradiction in fact, in reasoning, or in idea, comes to
destroy it.[29]
What seems to stand out most clearly after all these explanations is
the rôle which we ought to attribute to the consciousness. Two rival
theories have been maintained: that of the mirror-consciousness and
that of the focus-consciousness. It would seem--I merely say it would
seem--that the first of these best harmonises with the preceding
facts. For what seems most probable is, that the consciousness
illuminates and reveals but does not act. The theory of the
focus-consciousness adapts itself less to the mechanism of the
association of ideas.
From this we come quite naturally to see in the intelligence only an
inactive consciousness; at one moment it apprehends an object, and it
is a perception or an idea; at another time it perceives a connection,
and it is a judgment; at yet another, it perceives connections between
connections, and it is an act of reason. But however subtle the object
it contemplates may become, it does not depart from its contemplative
attitude, and cognition is but a consciousness.
One step further, and we should get so far as to admit that the
consciousness serves no purpose whatever, and that it is a useless
luxury, since, if all efficacious virtue is to be found in the
sensations and the ideas which we consider as material facts, the
consciousness which reveals them adds nothing to, takes nothing from
and modifies nothing in them; and everything would go on the same, nor
would anything in this world be changed, if one day the light of
consciousness were, by chance, to be put out. We might imagine a
collection of automatons forming a human society as complicated as,
and not different in appearance from, that of conscious beings; these
automatons would make the same gestures, utter the same words as
ourselves, would dispute, complain, cry, and make love like us; we
might even imagine them capable, like us, of psychology. This is the
thesis of the epiphenomenal consciousness which Huxley has boldly
carried to its uttermost conclusions.
I indicate here these possible conclusions, without discussing them.
It is a question I prefer to leave in suspense; it seems to me that
one can do nothing on this subject but form hypotheses.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 25: At the risk of being deemed too subtle, I ask whether we
are conscious of a relation between objects, or whether that which
occurs is not rather the perception of an object which has been
modified in its nature by its relation with another object.]
[Footnote 26: This conclusion may seem contradictory to that which I
enunciated when studying the constitution of matter. I then asserted
that we only know our sensations and not the excitants which produce
them. But these sensations are matter; they are matter modified by
other matter, viz. our nervous centres.
We therefore take up very distinctly an opposite standpoint to the
principle of _relativity_: in other terms, we reject the phenomenism
of Berkeley.
When we go into metaphysics we are continually astounded to see how
different conceptions of things which have a classic value are
independent of each other. In general, phenomenism is opposed to
substantialism, and it is supposed that those who do not accept the
former doctrine must accept the latter, while, on the contrary, those
who reject substantialism must be phenomenists. We know that it is in
this manner that Berkeley conquered corporeal substantialism and
taught phenomenism; while Hume, more radical than he, went so far as
to question the substantialism of mind. On reflection, it seems to me
that, after having rejected phenomenism, we are in no way constrained
to accept substance. By saying that we perceive things as they are,
and not through a deluding veil, we do not force ourselves to
acknowledge that we perceive the substance of bodies--that is to say,
that something which should be hidden beneath its qualities and should
be distinct from it. The distinction between the body and its
qualities is a thing useful in practice, but it answers to no
perception or observation. The body is only a group, a sheaf of
qualities. If the qualities seem unable to exist of themselves and to
require a subject, this is only a grammatical difficulty, which is due
to the fact that, while calling certain sensations qualities, we
suppose a subject to be necessary. On the other hand, the
representation which we make to ourselves of a material substance and
its rôle as the support of the qualities, is a very naïve and
mechanical representation, thanks to which certain sensations become
the supports of other and less important sensations. It would suffice
to insist on the detail of this representation and on its origin to
show its artificial character. The notion we have of the stability of
bodies and of the persistence of their identity, notwithstanding
certain superficial changes, is the reason for which I thought proper
to attribute a substance to them, that is to say, an invariable
element. But we can attain the same end without this useless
hypothesis; we have only to remark that the identity of the object
lies in the aggregate of its properties, including the name it bears.
If the majority of its properties, especially of those most important
to us, subsists without alteration, or if this alteration, though of
very great extent, takes place insensibly and by slow degrees, we
decide that the object remains the same. We have no need for that
purpose to give it a substance one and indestructible. Thus we are
neither adherents of phenomenism, nor of substantialism.]
[Footnote 27: I borrow from RABIER this argument, which has thoroughly
convinced me (see _Psychologie_, p. 281).]
[Footnote 28: PILON is the psychologist who has the most forcibly
demonstrated that resemblance acts before being perceived. I refer the
readers to my _Psychologie du Raisonnement_, where I have set forth
this little problem in detail.]
[Footnote 29: We think spontaneously of the general and the necessary.
It is this which serves as a basis for the suggestion and the
catchword (_réclame_), and it explains how minds of slender culture
always tend towards absolute assertions and hasty generalisations.]