UNIVERSAL IDENTITY.
85. In order to give unity to science, some appeal to universal
identity; this, however, is not to discover unity, but to take refuge
in chaos. Universal identity is not only an absurdity, but a groundless
hypothesis. Excepting the unity of consciousness, we find in ourselves
nothing that is one; but multiplicity of ideas, perceptions, judgments,
acts of the will, impressions of various kinds; and in relation to
external objects, we perceive multitude in the beings which surround
us, or as some pretend, in their appearances. Where then are unity and
identity, for we can neither find them within nor without ourselves?
86. If it be said that nothing is offered to us but phenomena, and
that we do not attain to the reality, the absolute and identical
unity hidden beneath them, we can reply with this dilemma: either our
experience is confined to phenomena, or it reaches the very nature
of things: if the former, we cannot know what is concealed under the
phenomena, nor absolute and identical unity; if the latter, then nature
is not one but multiplex, for we everywhere encounter multiplicity.
87. It is curious to observe how easily men, the most skeptical in the
simplest things, suddenly become dogmatic at the very point where the
greatest motives of doubt are presented. With them the external world
is either a pure appearance, or a being having no resemblance to the
conception formed of it by the human race: the criterion of evidence,
that of consciousness, and that of common sense have little power to
command assent: the crowd alone should be satisfied with such weak
foundations; the philosopher demands others far more solid. But strange
as it may seem, the very philosopher who styled reality a deceitful
appearance, and saw obscurity in what the human race considered
luminous, so soon as he quitted the world of phenomena and arrived in
the dominions of the absolute, finds himself illumined by a mysterious
splendor, he requires no discussion, but by a most pure intuition, he
sees the unconditioned, the infinite, the one in which every thing
multiplex is involved, the great reality, the basis of all phenomena,
the great All which re-unites in its breast all existences, re-assumes
every thing, and absorbs every thing into most perfect identity. He
fixes his philosophic eye upon this focus of light and life, sees
it roll out like the ocean of existence in vast billows, and thus
explains what is various by what is one, the composite by the simple,
the finite by the infinite. All these prodigies do not require him to
leave himself; he has only to go on destroying all that is empirical,
to ascend even to pure act by mysterious by-paths unknown to all
except himself. This _me_, which may have believed itself an existence
perishable and dependent on another superior existence, is astounded
at finding itself so great; it discovers in itself the origin of all
beings, or, more correctly speaking, the only being, of which all
others are but phenomenal existences; it is the universe itself become
by a gradual development conscious of itself: whatever is without
itself, and at first appears distinct, is only itself, a reflection of
itself, presented to its eyes, and unfolded under a thousand different
forms like a magnificent panorama.
Let not the reader think we have imagined a system for the sake of
combatting it; the doctrine which we have here exposed, is the doctrine
of Schelling.
88. One cause of this error is the obscurity of the problem of knowing.
To know, is an immanent action, having, at the same time, relation to
an external object, excepting those cases in which the intelligent
being becomes, by a reflex act, its own object. In order to know a
truth, whatever it may be, the mind does not quit itself; it does not
operate beyond itself; its own consciousness tells it that it remains,
and that its activity is developed, within itself.
This immanent action extends to objects the most distant in time and
place, and the most unlike in their nature. How is the mind to come in
contact with them? How is it to ascertain whether their representation
conforms to reality? There can be no cognition without this
representation; without conformity, there is no truth, cognition is a
pure illusion to which nothing corresponds, and the human understanding
is unceasingly the sport of vain appearances.
Undeniably this problem is liable to very serious difficulties, which
perhaps the science of man, while in this life, cannot solve. Here
arise all the ideological and psychological questions ever treated by
the most eminent metaphysicians. However, as it is not our intention
to anticipate what is to be hereafter considered, we shall confine
ourselves to the point of view indicated by our present question of
certainty and its fundamental principle.
89. Consciousness attests the fact of representation; without this
there is no thought; and the affirmation _I think_ is, if not the
origin of all philosophy, at least its indispensable condition.
90. Whence comes the representation? How is a being placed in such
communication with other beings, and this not by a transient but by an
immanent act? How explain the conformity between the representation
and the object? Does not this mystery indicate that there is unity,
identity, at the bottom of all things, that the being which knows, is
the very being known, which appears to itself under a distinct form,
and that what we call realities are only phenomena of one and the
same being, always identical, infinitely active, which develops its
strength in various ways, and forms by its development what we call the
universe? No! This neither is nor can be! It is an absurdity which the
most extravagant reason cannot accept: it is a resource as desperate as
it is impotent to explain a mystery, if you will, but one a thousand
times less obscure than the system which pretends to clear it up.
91. Universal identity explains nothing, but greatly confuses
everything; it does not dissipate the difficulty, but strengthens it,
and renders it insolvable. It certainly is no easy matter to explain
how the mind obtains the representation of things distinct from itself;
but it is no easier to show how the mind can have the representation of
itself. If there is unity, complete identity between the subject and
the object, how are the two presented to us as distinct things? How can
duality proceed from unity, or diversity spring from identity?
It is a fact testified by experience, not the experience of external
objects, but that of consciousness, by that which is most hidden in
our soul, that there is in every cognition a subject and an object,
perception and the thing perceived, and without this difference the
act is not possible. Even when by an effort of reflection, we take
ourselves for our own object, the duality appears; if it does not
exist, we imagine it, for without this fiction we cannot think.
92. Even in the most intimate and concentrated reflection, duality,
upon careful examination, is to be found, not by fiction, as it might
seem at first sight, but in reality. When the understanding turns
upon itself, it does not see its own essence, for it has no direct
intuition of itself: it sees its acts, and these it takes for its
object. The reflex act is not the act reflected. When I think that I
think, the first thought is distinct from the second, and so distinct
that one succeeds the other, for the reflective thought can exist only
subsequently to the thought reflected.
93. This is confirmed by a profound analysis of reflection. Is
reflection possible without an object reflected upon? Evidently not.
What is this object in the present case? The thought itself: then this
thought must have preceded the reflection. If it be supposed that they
must not of necessity follow in different instants of time, and that
the dependence is saved, notwithstanding the simultaneousness, still
the force of the argument is not lost; we grant, but do not concede,
that the simultaneousness is possible; but the dependence at least is
not possible without distinction. Dependence is a relation; relation
supposes opposition of extremes; and this opposition draws with it
distinction.
94. That these acts are distinct, although simultaneous, may be
demonstrated in another manner. One of them, that reflected upon, may
exist without the reflex act. We continually think, without thinking
that we think; and the same may be proved true of every reflection
whatever, whether it is occupied with the act thought, or it disappears
and leaves only the direct act: these acts are, therefore, not only
distinct but separable; therefore, the duality of the subject and the
object exists not only in the external world, but also in that which is
the most intimate and pure in our soul.
95. It avails not to say that the object of reflection is not any
determinate act, but thought in general. This is in many cases false;
for we not only think that we think, but that we think a determinate
thing. Moreover, although the object of reflection is sometimes thought
in general, not even then does the duality disappear: in that case
the subjective act is an individual act, existing in a determinate
instant of time, and its object is thought in general, that is, an
idea representative of all thought, an idea which involves a sort
of confused recollection of all past acts, or of what is called
activity, intellectual force. The duality then exists more evidently,
if possible, than when the object is a determinate thought. In one
instance at least two individual acts are compared; but in this case
an individual act is compared with an abstract idea, a thing existing
in one instant of time with an idea that either abstracts it, or
confusedly embraces all that has passed since the epoch when the
consciousness of the reflecting being commenced.
96. These arguments have much greater weight when directed against
those philosophers who place the essence of the mind not in the power
of thinking but in thought itself; who give to the _me_ no other
existence than what springs from its own knowledge, affirming that
it exists only because it _supposes_ itself, by knowing itself, and
only in so far as it _supposes_ itself, that is, in so far as it knows
itself. With this system there is duality, or rather plurality, not
only in the acts, but even in the _me_ itself; because this _me_ is an
act, and acts follow like a series of fluxions developed to infinity.
Thus, far from saving the unity and identity of subject and object,
plurality and multiplicity are established in the subject itself; and
the unity of consciousness itself, in danger of being broken by the
cavils of philosophers, is forced to take refuge in the obscurity of
invincible nature.
97. We have thus incontestably proved that there is in us a duality
of subject and object, that without it knowledge is inconceivable,
and that representation itself is a contradiction unless in one
sense or another we admit things really distinct in the recesses of
intelligence. We beg to observe that we have a sublime type of this
distinction in the august mystery of the Trinity, the fundamental dogma
of our holy religion, covered, indeed, with an impenetrable veil, but
which sends forth light to illustrate the profoundest questions of
philosophy. This mystery is not explained by feeble man, but is for him
a sublime explanation. Thus Plato availed himself of glimmerings from
this focus as a treasure of immense value to philosophical theories;
thus the Holy Fathers and theologians, in endeavoring to throw some
light upon it by arguments of congruity, have illustrated the most
occult mysteries of human thought.
98. The upholders of universal identity, besides contradicting a
primitive and fundamental fact of consciousness, signally fail in
their efforts to explain by it either the origin of intellectual
representation or its conformity to its object. Evidently no man has
an intuition of the nature of the individual _me_, and still less of
the absolute being which these philosophers suppose as the _substratum_
of whatever exists or appears. It is impossible for them to explain _a
priori_, without this intuition, the representation of objects or their
conformity to the representation. The fact, therefore, on which they
would base their whole philosophy, either does not exist, or is unknown
to us: in neither case can it serve as the foundation of a system.
Were this fact to exist, it could not be presented to our mind by
any enunciation to which we could arrive by reasoning. It must be
seen rather than known; either occupy the first place or none. If we
begin to reason without taking this fact for our basis, we start from
the apparent in order to attain to what truly is; we make use of an
illusion to arrive at reality. Thus it evidently follows from the
system of our adversaries that philosophy must either start with the
most powerful intuition, or else it cannot advance a single step.
99. The schools distinguish between the principle of being and the
principle of knowledge, _principium essendi et principium cognoscendi_;
but this distinction has no place in the system which we oppose; being
is there confounded with knowledge; what exists, exists because it is
known, and it exists only in so far as it is known. To draw out the
series of cognitions, is to develop the series of existences. They
are not even two parallel movements; they are but one movement; the
_me_ is the universe, and the universe is the _me_; whatever exists
is a development of the primitive fact, is the fact itself which is
displayed under different forms, extending like an infinite ocean; its
position is unlimited space; its duration eternity.(8)