REPRESENTATION OF CAUSALITY AND IDEALITY.
126. Besides the representation of identity, there is what I have
called the representation of causality. A being may represent itself,
a cause its effect. Productive activity is inconceivable, if the
principle of the productive act does not in some manner contain the
thing produced. Therefore we say that God, the universal cause of all
that does or can exist, contains in his essence all real and possible
beings in a virtual or eminent manner. A being can just as well present
whatever it contains in itself, as it can represent itself; causality,
therefore, under the conditions above explained, may be an origin of
representation.
127. And here we would remark how profound a philosopher St. Thomas
shows himself to be, when he explains the manner in which God knows
his creatures. In his _Summa Theologica_,[7] he asks if God knows
things distinct from himself, and answers in the affirmative; not that
he regards the divine essence as a mirror, but that by recourse to a
more profound consideration he seeks the origin of this knowledge in
causality. This is his doctrine in a few words: It is manifest that
God knows himself perfectly; therefore he knows all his power, and
consequently all the things to which it extends. Another reason, or
rather enlargement of the same reason, is, that the being of the first
cause is its intellect: all effects pre-exist in God as in their cause;
they must, therefore, be in him in an intelligible manner, since they
are his intellect itself. God then sees himself by his essence; but he
sees other things not in themselves, but in his essence, inasmuch as
his essence contains the similitude of everything.
[7] P. 1^a, Q. 14^a, A. 5^o.
The same doctrine is found in another place,[8] where he asks if they
who see the divine essence see all things in God.
[8] Q. 12^a, A. 8^o.
128. Representation of ideality is that which neither proceeds from the
identity of the thing representing with that represented, nor from the
relation of cause and effect. Our ideas are of this class, for they
are neither identical with their objects nor do they cause them. It is
impossible for us to know whether, besides this representative force
which we experience in our ideas, there are finite substances capable
of representing things distinct from, and not caused by, themselves.
Leibnitz maintains that there are such substances; but, as we have
seen, his system of monads must be regarded as merely hypothetical.
It is better to say nothing than to make conjectures which lead to no
result; we shall therefore content ourselves with establishing the
following propositions:
I. If any being represent another which is not its effect, it has not
this representative force of itself, but has received it from another.
II. The communication of intelligences can only be explained by
recurring to a first intelligence, which, being the cause of the
others, can give them the force to act upon one another, and
consequently to produce representation.
129. Causality may be a principle, but is not a sufficient reason, of
representation.
In the first place, a cause cannot represent its effect unless
intelligible in itself. Thus, although we attribute to matter an
activity of its own, we cannot concede it the power to represent
its effects, for want of the indispensable condition of immediate
intelligibility.
130. In order that effects may be intelligible in their cause, it must
of necessity possess the character of cause in its fulness, by uniting
all the conditions and determinations requisite to the production of
the effect. Free causes do not represent their effects, because these
effects with relation to their causes are found only in the sphere of
possibility. The production may be realized, but is not necessary; and
thus the possible, but not the real, is seen in the cause. God knows
future contingencies, which depend upon the human will, not precisely
because he knows the activity of man, but because he sees in himself,
without succession of time, not only all that may, but all that will
happen; since nothing can exist in the present or in the future without
his will or permission. He also knows future contingencies dependent
solely on his own will, because he knows from all eternity what he has
resolved, and his decrees are indefectible and immutable.
131. Even if we refer to the necessary order of nature, and suppose
one or more second causes to be known, it is not possible to see in
them all their effects with entire security, unless the cause act in
isolation, or all the others are known together with it. As experience
shows us that all the parts of nature are in intimate and reciprocal
communication, we cannot suppose the above isolation, and consequently
the action of every second cause is subjected to the combinations
of others, which may either impede or modify its effect. Hence the
difficulty of establishing general, and at the same time, perfectly
safe laws in all that concerns nature.
132. The preceding considerations, it is to be observed, demonstrate
anew the impossibility of transcendental science based upon a fact
from which all other facts proceed. Intellectual representation is
not explained by substituting necessary emanation for free creation.
Even supposing the variety of the universe to be purely phenomenal,
and at bottom only a being always one, identical, and absolute, it
cannot be denied that the phenomena are governed by certain laws, and
subject to various conditions. Either the human intellect can see the
absolute in such a way as to discern by a simple intuition whatever is
contained in it, all that it is or can be, under all possible forms;
or else it is condemned to follow the unfolding of the unconditioned,
the absolute, and the permanent, through its conditioned, relative, and
variable forms. The former, which is a sort of ridiculous plagiarism
from the dogma of beatific vision, is, in treating of the intellect in
its present state, so palpable an absurdity, as to merit neither debate
nor refutation. The latter subjects the intellect to all the fatigue of
investigation, and destroys at one blow all the illusory promises of
transcendental science.
133. The understanding is, in its acts, subject to a law of succession,
or the idea of time. The same thing obtains in nature, whether it is so
verified in reality, or time is considered as a subjective condition
which we transfer to objects; be this doctrine of Kant, which we shall
in due time examine, as it may, it is certain that succession, at
least for us, exists, and that we cannot ignore it. In this hypothesis
an infinite evolution can be known to us only in an infinite time.
Thus, by a metaphysical necessity, we are unable to know not only the
future evolution of the absolute, but also the present and the past.
This evolution being absolutely necessary, according to the doctrine
to which we have reference, an infinite succession must have preceded
us; thus the present organization of the universe must be regarded as
one round of an unlimited ladder, which in the past as in the future,
has no measure but eternity. We can know the present state of the
world solely by observation, and then only to a very limited degree; we
must, therefore, of necessity, deduce it from the idea of the absolute,
by following it in its infinite evolution. Were this not, however,
in itself radically impossible, it would, nevertheless, labor under
the inconvenience of being too long a task to be accomplished in the
life-time of any one man, or even in that of all men who have ever
lived, taken collectively.
134. But let us return to the representation of causality. The ideal
representation may be reduced to that of causality; for since a spirit
can have no idea of an object not produced by it, unless communicated
to it by another spirit, the cause of the thing represented, we infer
that all purely ideal representations proceed either directly or
indirectly, mediately or immediately, from the cause of the objects
known. And since, on the other hand, as we have already seen, the first
being knows things distinct from himself only, as he is their cause; we
hold the representation of ideality to be reduced to that of causality,
thus in part verifying the principle of Vico, the profound Neapolitan
thinker: "the intellect only knows what it does."
135. From this doctrine flow two consequences of which we must take
note:
I. There are only two primitive sources of intellectual representation:
identity and causality. That of ideality is necessarily derived from
that of causality.
II. In the real order, the principle of being is identical with the
principle of knowledge. That only which gives being can give knowledge.
The first cause can give knowledge only in so far as it gives being: it
represents because it causes.
136. The representation of ideality, although connected with that
of causality, is yet really distinct from it. The explanation of
its nature belongs indeed to the treatise on ideas; but we cannot
relinquish, without an illustration, a point so closely connected with
the problem of intellectual representation.
Some conceive ideas to be a sort of image or copy of the object;
but this is true only with respect to the representations of the
imagination, that is, the purely corporeal; and even here it is
necessary to suppose the external world to be such as the senses
present it, which, however, under many aspects, is not true. To be
convinced how illusory is the theory founded on the likeness of
sensible things, we have only to ask, what the image of a relation
is, or, how causality, substance, and being are portrayed. In the
perception of these ideas, there is something more profound than any
thing apparent in sensible things, something of an entirely different
order. Necessity has led us to compare the understanding to an eye
which sees, and the idea to an image present; but this is only a
comparison; the reality is something more mysterious, more secret, more
intimate: there is an ineffable union between the perception and the
idea: man cannot explain it, but he experiences it.
137. Our consciousness attests that there is in us unity of being, that
the soul is at all times identical with itself, and that it remains
constant notwithstanding the variety of ideas and of acts which pass
over it, like waves over the surface of a lake. Ideas are a mode of
being of the mind: but what is this mode? In what does it consist?
Does the production and reproduction of ideas proceed from a distinct
cause which continually acts upon our soul, and produces immediately
those modes of being which we call representations, or ideas? Or must
we admit that there has been given to the mind an activity to produce
these representations, subject, however, to the determination of
exciting causes? These are questions which, for the present, we shall
only indicate.(13)