TRANSCENDENTAL SCIENCE.--INSUFFICIENCY OF REAL TRUTHS.
64. We have thought proper briefly to refute Condillac's system, not
on account of its intrinsic importance, or because it was not before
in sufficiently bad repute, but in order to clear the field for higher
and more strictly philosophical discussions. We should not omit to
guard philosophy against the prejudice cast upon it by a system as vain
as it is profitless. All that is most sublime in the science of the
mind disappears with the _statue-man_ and transformed sensations: we
vindicate the rights of human reason by showing that before entering
upon more transcendental questions it is indispensable to discard
Condillac's system; just as it is necessary before making a good road
to clear away the brushwood which obstructs the passage.
65. We come now to the proof that in the human intellectual order, such
as it is in this life, there is no one truth the source of all truths;
because no one truth includes them all.
Truths are of two kinds, real and ideal. We call facts, or whatever
exists, real truths; we call the necessary connection of ideas ideal
truths. A real truth may be expressed by the verb _to be_, taken
substantively, or at least it supposes a proposition in which this verb
has been taken in this sense: an ideal truth is expressed by the same
verb taken copulatively, as signifying the necessary relation of a
predicate with a subject, abstracting it, however, from both. _We are_,
that is, _we exist_, expresses a real truth, a fact. _Whoever thinks
exists_, expresses an ideal truth, for it does not affirm that there is
any one who thinks or exists, but that if there is any one who thinks,
he exists; or, in other words, it affirms a necessary relation between
thought and being. To real truths corresponds the real world, the world
of existences; to ideal truths the logical world, that of possibility.
The verb _to be_, is sometimes taken copulatively, although the
relation expressed by it be not necessary: such is the case with all
contingent propositions, and when the predicate does not belong to
the essence of the subject. Sometimes the necessity is conditional,
that is, it supposes a fact; and then there is no absolute necessity,
since the supposed fact is always contingent. When we speak of ideal
truths, we refer to those that express an absolute necessary relation,
abstracting it from all order of existence; and on the other hand,
we understand by real truths all those that suppose a proposition in
which a fact has been established. To this class belong the truths of
natural science, for they all suppose some fact which is the object of
observation.
66. No real finite truth can be the origin of all others. Truth of
this kind is the expression of a particular contingent fact, and
consequently can neither include other real truths or the world of
existences, nor ideal truths which refer only to necessary relations in
the world of possibility.
67. Were we to see intuitively infinite existence, cause of all
existences, we should know a real truth, origin of all others; but
as we know this infinite existence only by discursion and not by
intuition, it follows that we do not know the fact of that existence
in which the reason of all other existences is contained. Neither is
it possible for us, after having by means of discursion reached this
cognition, to explain from this point of view the existence of the
finite by the sole existence of the infinite; for if we abstract the
existence of the finite, the discursion, by which we attained to the
cognition of the infinite, disappears, and then our whole scientific
fabric tumbles to the ground. Demonstrate to a man by means of
discursion the existence of God, and require him, setting aside the
point of departure, and depending upon the sole idea of the infinite,
to explain not only the possibility, but also the reality of creation;
and he cannot do it. If he only sets aside the finite all his reasoning
fails, and no effort can prevent its failing; he is like an architect
who, after having built a superb cupola, is required to support it
although the foundations of the edifice are removed.
68. Take any real truth whatever, the plainest and most certain fact,
and yet we can derive nothing from it if ideal truth comes not to
fecundate it. We exist, we think, we feel; these are indubitable
facts, but science can deduce nothing from them; they are particular
contingent facts, whose existence or non-existence neither affects
other facts nor reaches the world of ideas.
These truths are of the purely sensible order, have not of themselves
any relation with the order of science, nor can they be elevated to it
if not combined with ideal truths. Descartes, when he brought forward
the fact of thought and existence, driven as he was by his attempt
to raise a scientific edifice, passed unawares from the real to the
ideal order. _I think_, he said; and had he stopped here he would have
reduced his philosophy to a simple intuition of consciousness; but
he wished to go farther, he wished to reason, and then of necessity
availed himself of an ideal truth: _whoever thinks exists_. Thus with
a universal and necessary truth he fecundated his individual and
contingent fact; and as he needed some rule to guide him in his onward
march, he sought one in the admissibility of the evidence of ideas.
And thus also we see how this philosopher, who so toiled in search
of unity, came all at once in contact with triplicity: _a fact_, _an
objective truth_, _a criterion_: a fact in the consciousness of the
subject; an objective truth in the necessary relation of thought with
existence; a criterion in the admissibility of the evidence of ideas.
We may defy all the philosophers in the world to reason upon any fact
whatever without the aid of ideal truth. We shall find in all facts the
same sterility as in the fact of consciousness. This is no conjecture,
but a rigid demonstration. Only one existence contains the reason of
all other existences; if, then, we do not immediately and intuitively
know it, we cannot discover any one real truth, origin of all others.
69. Even supposing there to be in the order of creation a fact of such
a nature, that the whole universe is only a simple development of
it, we should not therefore have found the real truth source of all
science, for it would not enable us to make any advance towards the
world of possibility, the ideal order, infinitely superior to that of
finite existences.
If we suppose the progress of natural science to lead to the discovery
of a single, simple law, which presides over the development of
all others, and the application of which, varied according to
circumstances, is a sufficient reason of all the phenomena now referred
to many and very complicated laws; this would, without doubt, be an
immense progress in sciences the object of which is the visible world;
but what would it give us to know of the world of intelligences? What
of the world of possibility?(6)