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FUNDAMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
by
REV. JAMES BALMES.
Translated from the Spanish by
Henry F. Brownson, M.A.
In Two Volumes.
VOL. I.
New York:
D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 164 William Street,
Boston:--128 Federal Street.
Montreal:--Cor. of Notre Dame and St. Francis Xavier Sts.
1856.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856,
By D. & J. Sadlier & Co.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
New York:
Billin & Brother, Printers, XX North William St.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
BOOK FIRST.
ON CERTAINTY.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Importance and Utility of the Question of Certainty 3
II. True State of the Question 7
III. Certainty of the Human Race and Philosophical Certainty 14
IV. Existence of Transcendental Science in the Absolute
Intellectual Order 24
V. Transcendental Science in the Human Intellectual Order
cannot emanate from the Senses 32
VI. Transcendental Science.--Insufficiency of Real Truths 37
VII. The Philosophy of the Me cannot produce Transcendental
Science 41
VIII. Universal Identity 56
IX. Universal Identity,--Continued 64
X. Problem of Representation: Monads of Leibnitz 67
XI. Problem of Representation examined 71
XII. Immediate Intelligibility 76
XIII. Representation of Causality and Ideality 83
XIV. Impossibility of Finding the first Principle in the
Ideal Order 89
XV. The Indispensable Condition of all Human
Knowledge.--Means of perceiving Truth 92
XVI. Confusion of Ideas in Disputes on the Fundamental
Principle 102
XVII. Thought and Existence.--Descartes' Principle 105
XVIII. The Principle of Descartes, continued.--His Method 111
XIX. Value of the Principle, I Think:--Its Analysis 118
XX. True Sense of the Principle of Contradiction.--Kant's
Opinion 126
XXI. Does the Principle of Contradiction merit the Title of
Fundamental; and if so, in what Sense? 140
XXII. The Principle of Evidence 146
XXIII. The Criterion of Consciousness 151
XXIV. The Criterion of Evidence 157
XXV. The Objective Value of Ideas 163
XXVI. Can all Cognitions be reduced to the Perception of
Identity? 171
XXVII. Continuation of the same subject 176
XXVIII. Continuation of the same subject 183
XXIX. Are there true Synthetic Judgments _a priori_ in the
Sense of Kant? 188
XXX. Vico's Criterion 200
XXXI. Continuation of the same subject 212
XXXII. The Criterion on Common Sense 219
XXXIII. Error of Lamennais on Common Consent 230
XXXIV. Summary and Conclusion 253
BOOK SECOND.
ON SENSATION.
I. Sensation in Itself 249
II. Matter is incapable of Sensation 255
III. Sleep and Waking 263
IV. Relation of Sensations to an External World 267
V. An Idealist Hypothesis 273
VI. Is the External and Immediate Cause of Sensations a Free
Cause? 276
VII. Analysis of the Objectiveness of Sensations 279
VIII. Sensation of Extension 283
IX. Objectiveness of the Sensation of Extension 287
X. Force of Touch to make Sensations Objective 293
XI. Inferiority of Touch compared with other Senses 296
XII. Can Sight alone give us the Idea of a Surface? 302
XIII. Cheselden's Blind Man 310
XIV. Can Sight give us the Idea of a Solid? 315
XV. Sight and Motion 319
XVI. Possibility of other Senses 324
XVII. Existence of New Senses 328
XVIII. Solution of Lamennais' Objection 333
BOOK THIRD.
EXTENSION AND SPACE.
I. Extension Inseparable from the Idea of Body 339
II. Extension not Perceptible as the Direct and Immediate
Object of Sensations 345
III. Scientific Fruitfulness of the Idea of Extension 348
IV. Reality of Extension 357
V. Geometrical Exactness Realized in Nature 360
VI. Remarks on Extension 365
VII. Space.--Nothing 369
VIII. Descartes and Leibnitz on Space 375
IX. Opinion of those who attribute to Space a Nature
distinct from Bodies 380
X. Opinion of those who hold Space to be the Immensity of
God 382
XI. Fenelon's Opinion 386
XII. What Space consists in 391
XIII. New Difficulties 396
XIV. Another Important Consequence 400
XV. Illusion of Fixed Points in Space 403
XVI. Observations on Kant's Opinion 407
XVII. Inability of Kant's Doctrine to solve the Problem of
the Possibility of Experience 415
XVIII. The Problem of Sensible Experience 418
XIX. Extension abstracted from Phenomena 421
XX. Are there Absolute Magnitudes? 427
XXI. Pure Intelligibility of the Extended World 432
XXII. Infinite Divisibility 436
XXIII. Unextended Points 439
XXIV. A Conjecture on the Transcendental Notion of Extension 442
XXV. Harmony of the Real, Phenomenal, and Ideal Orders 446
XXVI. Character of the Relations of the Real Order to the
Phenomenal 450
XXVII. Whether every Thing must be in some Place 452
XXVIII. Contingency of Corporeal Relations 459
XXIX. Solution of two Difficulties 462
XXX. Passive Sensibility 466
XXXI. Possibility of a greater Sphere in active Sensibility 469
XXXII. Possibility of the Penetration of Bodies 480
XXXIII. A Triumph of Religion in the Field of Philosophy 483
XXXIV. Conclusion and Summing up 489
NOTES TO BOOK FIRST 495
NOTE TO BOOK SECOND 514
NOTES TO BOOK THIRD 517
INTRODUCTION.
The following translation of the great work of the lamented
James Balmes on Philosophy, was undertaken at my suggestion and
recommendation, and thus far I hold myself responsible for it. I have
compared a considerable portion of it with the original, and as far as
I have compared it, I have found it faithfully executed. The translator
appears to me to have rendered the author's thought with exactness and
precision, in a style not inferior to his own.
I have not added, as was originally contemplated, any Notes to those
of the author. To have done so, would have swelled the volumes to an
unreasonable size, and upon further consideration, they did not seem
to me to be necessary. They would, in fact, have been an impertinence
on my part, and the reader will rather thank me for not having done
it. The work goes forth, therefore, as it came from the hands of its
illustrious author, with no addition or abbreviation, or change, except
what was demanded by the difference between the Spanish and English
idioms.
James Balmes, in whose premature death in 1849, the friends of
religion and science have still to deplore a serious loss, was one of
the greatest writers and profoundest thinkers of Spain, and indeed
of our times. He is well and favorably known to the American public
by his excellent work on European civilization,--a work which has
been translated into the principal languages of Europe. In that work
he proved himself a man of free and liberal thought, of brilliant
genius, and varied and profound learning. But his work on the bases of
philosophy is his master-piece, and, taken as a whole, the greatest
work that has been published on that important subject in the
nineteenth century.
Yet it is rather as a criticism on the various erroneous systems of
philosophy in modern times, than as containing a system of philosophy
itself, that I have wished it translated and circulated in English.
As a refutation of Bacon, Locke, Hume, and Condillac, Kant, Fichte,
Schelling, and Spinoza, it is a master-piece, and leaves little to
desire. In determining the fundamental principles of philosophy, and
constructing a system in accordance with the real world, the author is
not always, in my judgment, successful, and must yield to his Italian
contemporary, the unhappy Abbate Gioberti.
When criticizing the errors of others, the distinguished author
reasons as an ontologist, but when developing his own system, he is
almost a psychologist. His ontology is usually sound, indeed, and
his conclusions are for the most part just, but not always logically
obtained. He recognizes no philosophical formula which embraces the
whole subject-matter of philosophy, and does not appear to be aware
that the _primum philosophicum_ is and must be a synthesis; and hence
he falls into what we may call, not eclecticism, but syncretism.
This is owing to the fact that his genius is critical rather than
constructive, and more apt to demolish than to build up.
What I regard as the chief error of the illustrious Spaniard, is his
not recognizing that conceptions without intuitions are, as Kant justly
maintains, empty, purely subjective, the mind itself; and hence, while
denying that we have intuition of the infinite, contending that we
have a real and objectively valid conception of it. Throughout his
book the reader will find him maintaining that the human mind may, by
discursion, attain to valid conceptions of a reality which transcends
intuition. This I regard as an error. Discursion is an act of
reflection, and though there is always less there can never be more in
reflection than in intuition. If we have no intuition of the infinite,
we have and can have no proper conception of it, and what is taken
to be a conception of it is simply the human mind itself, and of no
objective application or validity.
The excellent author is misled on this point, by supposing that in
intuition of the intelligible the mind is the actor and not simply the
spectator, and that an intuition of the infinite implies an infinite
intuition. In both cases he is mistaken. In intuition we are simply
spectators, and the object affirms itself to us. In intuition of the
infinite, it is not we who perceive and affirm the infinite, by our
own intellectual act, but the infinite that reveals and affirms itself
to our intellect. In apprehending the infinite as thus revealed and
affirmed, we of course apprehend it in a finite, not in an infinite
manner. That which is intuitively apprehended is infinite, but the
subjective apprehension is finite. The limitation is on the part of the
subject, not on the part of the object.
The error arises from failing to distinguish sharply between intuition
and reflection. In intuition the principal and primary actor is the
intelligible object. In reflection it is the intellective subject; in
the intuitive order the object presents itself as it is, with its own
characteristics; in the reflective order it is represented with the
limitations and characteristics of the thinking subject. As the subject
is limited, its conceptions are limited, and represent the infinite
not as infinite, but as the not-finite; and it is in the reflective
order, if we operate on our conceptions, instead of our intuitions,
only by a discursive process that we can come to the conclusion that
the not-finite is the infinite. The author not distinguishing the two
orders, and taking conceptions which belong to the reflective order
as if they belonged to the intuitive order, supposes that we may
have valid conceptions beyond the sphere of intuition. But a little
reflection should have taught him that, if he had no intuition, he
could have no conception of the infinite.
Following St. Thomas and all philosophers of the first order,
the author very properly maintains that it is by the divine
intelligibility, or the divine light, that the human mind sees whatever
it does see; but he shrinks from saying that we have intuition of God
himself. So far as we are to understand intuition of God as intuition,
or open vision of him as he is in himself, he is undoubtedly right.
But objects are intelligible only in the light of God, and it is only
by this light that we apprehend them. Do we ever apprehend objects by
the light of God without apprehending the light which renders them
apprehensible? In apprehending the object, we apprehend first of all
the light which is the medium of its apprehension. The light of God is
God, and if we have intuition of the light, we must have intuition of
him who is the true light that "enlighteneth every man coming into this
world." We cannot see God as he is in himself, not because he is not
intelligible in himself, but because of the excess of his light, which
dazzles and blinds our eyes through their weakness. So, very few of us
can look steadily in the face of the sun without being dazzled, yet not
therefore is it to be said we cannot and do not see the sun.
The author does not seem to be aware that _substance_ as distinguished
from being or existence is an abstraction, and therefore purely
subjective, and no object of intuition. Abstract from a thing all its
properties or attributes, and you have remaining simply zero. The
substance is properly the concrete thing itself, and in the real order
is distinguishable simply from its phenomena, or _accidents_,--an
abstract term,--not from its so-called attributes or properties.
Hence, the question, so much disputed, whether we perceive substances
themselves, is only the question, whether we see things themselves or
only their phenomena. This question the Scottish school of Reid and
Sir William Hamilton, have settled forever, and if it had not, Balmes
has done it, making the correction I have suggested, in a manner that
leaves nothing further to be said.
The author's proofs of the fact of creation are strong and well
put, but fail to be absolutely conclusive in consequence of his not
recognizing intuition of the creative act. They all presuppose this
intuition, and are conclusive, because we in reality have it; but by
denying that we have it, the author renders them formally inconclusive.
We have intuition of God, real and necessary being, we have also
intuition of things or existences, and therefore must have intuition
of the creative act, for things or existences are only the external
terminus of the creative act itself. Hence it is that Gioberti very
properly makes the ideal formula, or _primum philosophicum_, the
synthetic judgment, _Ens creat existentias_. Real and necessary Being
creates existences. This formula or judgment in all its terms is given
intuitively, and simultaneously, and it is because it is so given we
are able at one blow to confound the skeptic, the atheist, and the
pantheist. The illustrious Spaniard, uses in all his argument this
formula, but he does so unconsciously, in contradiction, in fact, to
his express statements, because he could not reason a moment, form a
single conclusion without it. His argument in itself is good, but his
explication of it is sometimes in fault.
If the learned and excellent author had recognized the fact that we
have intuition of the creative act of the first cause, and the further
fact that all second causes, in their several spheres and degree,
imitate or copy the first, he would have succeeded better in explaining
their operation. He does not seem to perceive clearly that the _nexus_
which binds together cause and effect is the act of the cause, which is
in its own nature causative of the effect, and by denying all intuition
of this _nexus_, he seems to leave us in the position where Hume left
us, because it is impossible to attain by discursion to any objective
reality of which we have no intuition.
These are all or nearly all the criticisms I am disposed to make upon
the admirable work of Balmes. They are important, no doubt, but really
detract much less from its value than it would seem. It has, in spite
of these defects, rare and positive merits. The author has not indeed
a synthetic genius, but his powers of analysis are unsurpassed, and
as far as my philosophical reading goes, unequalled. He has not given
us the last word of philosophy, but he has given us precisely the
work most needed in the present anarchical state of philosophical
science. Not one of the errors to be detected in his work is peculiar
to himself, and the most that the most ill-natured critic can say
against him is, that, while he retains and defends all the truth in
the prevailing philosophy of the schools, he has not escaped all its
errors. Wherever he departs from scholastic tradition he follows truth,
and is defective only where that tradition is itself defective. He has
advanced far, corrected innumerable errors, poured a flood of light on
a great variety of profound, intricate, and important problems, without
introducing a new or adding any thing to confirm an old error. This is
high praise, but the philosophic reader will concede that it is well
merited.
The work is well adapted to create a taste for solid studies. It is
written in a calm, clear, and dignified style, sometimes rising to true
eloquence. The author threw his whole mind and soul into his work, and
shows himself everywhere animated by a pure and noble spirit, free from
all pride of opinion, all love of theorizing, and all dogmatism. He
evidently writes solely for the purpose of advancing the cause of truth
and virtue, religion and civilization, and the effect of his writings
on the heart is no less salutary than their effect on the mind.
I have wished the work to be translated and given to the English
and American public, not as a work free from all objections, but as
admirably adapted to the present state of the English and American
mind, as admirably fitted to correct the more dangerous errors now
prevalent among us, and to prepare the way for the elaboration of a
positive philosophy worthy of the name. We had nothing in English
to compare with it, and it is far better adapted to the English and
American genius than the misty speculations we are importing, and
attempting to naturalize, from Germany. It will lead no man into any
error which he does not already entertain, and few, perhaps none, can
read it without positive benefit, at least without getting rid of many
errors.
With these remarks I commit these volumes to the public, bespeaking
for them a candid consideration. The near relation in which I stand
to the translator makes me anxious that his labors should be received
with a kindly regard. He who translates well a good book from a foreign
language into his own, does a service to his country next to that of
writing a good book himself.
O. A. BROWNSON.
AUGUST 7, 1856.
BOOK FIRST.
ON CERTAINTY.
FUNDAMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.
IMPORTANCE AND UTILITY OF THE QUESTION OF CERTAINTY.
1. We should begin the study of philosophy by examining the question of
certainty; before raising the edifice, we must lay the foundation.
Ever since there has been philosophy, that is, ever since men first
reflected on themselves and the beings around them, they have been
engaged with those questions which have for their object the basis
of human knowledge, and this shows that on this subject serious
difficulties are encountered. Inquirers, however, have not been
discouraged by the sterility of philosophical labors; and this shows
that in the last term of the investigation an object of high importance
is discovered.
Philosophers have cavilled in the most extravagant manner upon the
questions of certainty; on few subjects has the history of the human
mind presented such lamentable aberrations. This consideration may
excite suspicion that such investigations offer nothing solid to the
mind, and serve only to feed the vanity of the sophist. But here, as
elsewhere, we attribute no exaggerated importance to the opinions of
philosophers, and we are very far from believing that they ought to be
regarded as the legitimate representatives of human reason. It cannot,
however, be denied that they are in the intellectual order the most
active portion of the human race. When the whole body of philosophers
dispute, humanity itself may be said to dispute. Every fact affecting
the human race merits a thorough examination; to undervalue it, on
account of the sophisms which envelop it, is to fall into the worst
of all sophisms. There should be no contradiction between reason and
common sense; yet such a contradiction there would be, if we should,
in the name of common sense, contemn what occupies the reason of the
most enlightened minds. Oftentimes it happens that what is grave and
significant, that which makes a thinking man meditate, is the result
neither of a disputation, nor of the arguments therein adduced, but
the simple existence of the dispute itself. In itself it is sometimes
of little importance, but by reason of what it indicates, of great
consequence.
2. All philosophical questions are in some manner involved in that of
certainty. When we have completely unfolded this, we have examined
under one aspect or another all that human reason can conceive of God,
man, and the universe. At first sight it may perhaps seem to be the
simple foundation of the scientific structure; but in this foundation,
if we carefully examine it, we shall see the whole edifice represented:
it is a plane whereon is projected, visibly and in fair perspective,
the whole body it is to support.
3. However limited may be the direct and immediate result of these
investigations, they are of incalculable advantage. It is highly
important to acquire science, but not less important to know its
limits. Near these limits there are shoals which the navigator ought to
know. It is by examining the question of certainty that we ascertain
the limits of human science.
In descending to the depths to which these questions lead us, the
understanding grows dim, and the heart is awed with a religious fear.
A moment ago we were contemplating the edifice of human knowledge,
and grew proud to see it with its colossal dimensions, its beautiful
forms, its fine and bold construction; we enter it, and are led through
deep caverns, and, as if by enchantment, the foundation seems to be
subtilized, to evaporate, and the superb edifice remains floating in
the air.
4. It must be remarked that in entering on the examination of
the question of certainty, we do not conceal from ourselves its
difficulties. To conceal would not be to solve them; on the contrary,
the first condition necessary to their complete solution, is to see
them with perfect clearness, and to feel their full force. It is no
humiliation to the human understanding to seek those limits beyond
which it cannot pass, but it is to elevate and confirm it. Thus the
intrepid naturalist, when in search of some object he has penetrated
to the bowels of the earth, feels a mixture of terror and pride to be
thus buried in subterranean caverns, with just light enough to see
immense masses barely suspended above his head and unfathomable abysses
beneath his feet. There is something sublime, something attractive
and captivating in the obscurity of the mysteries of science, in
uncertainty itself, in the very assaults of doubt, threatening to
destroy in one instant the work accomplished by the human mind only in
the space of long ages. The greatest men have at all times enjoyed the
contemplation of these mysteries. The genius which spread its wings
over the east, over Greece and Rome, over the schools of the Middle
Ages, is the same we now behold in modern Europe. Plato, Aristotle,
St. Augustine, Abelard, St. Anselm, St. Thomas of Aquin, Luis Vives,
Bacon, Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibnitz, all, each in his own way,
felt the sublime inspiration of philosophy.
Whatever tends to raise man to lofty contemplation in the sanctuary of
his soul, contributes to his aggrandizement; for it separates him from
natural objects, reminds him of his noble origin, and proclaims to him
his high destiny. In a mechanical and sensual age, when every thing
seems opposed to the activity of the powers of the soul, except when
they administer to the wants of the body, it is well to renew those
great questions in which the mind roams free and untrammelled over
unbounden realms of space.
Only intellect can examine itself. The stone falls, but knows not that
it falls; the ray calcines and pulverizes, ignorant of its power; the
flower knows not that its beauty is enchanting; and the brute beast
follows his instincts, but asks not the reason of them. Man alone, a
fragile organization, appearing for a moment on earth again to return
to the dust, harbors a spirit, which first inspects the external world,
and then, anxious to ascertain its own nature, enters into itself as
into a sanctuary, and becomes its own oracle. What am I? What do I do?
What do I think? What phenomena do I experience within myself? Why am I
subject to them? What is their cause, their order of production, their
relations? The mind asks itself these questions,--serious and difficult
indeed, but noble and sublime questions; an unfailing proof that there
is within us something superior to inert matter susceptible only of
motion and a variety of forms, that there is something, which, by an
internal activity, spontaneous and rooted in our very nature, presents
us an image of that infinite Activity, a single act of whose will
created the world from nothing.(1)