THE OBJECTIVE VALUE OF IDEAS.
247. The transition from subject to object, from subjective appearance
to objective reality, is a problem which vexes fundamental philosophy.
Consciousness will not permit us to doubt that certain things _appear_
to us in such a manner; but _are_ they in reality what they appear to
us? How are we to know this? What shall assure us of this conformity of
the idea with the object?
The question does not relate solely to sensations; it also extends to
purely intellectual ideas, even to those inundated with that internal
light which we call evidence. "What I evidently see in the idea of a
thing, is as I see it," philosophers have said, and all mankind with
them. No one doubts what is presented to him as evidently true. But how
prove that evidence is a legitimate criterion of truth?
248. "God is truthful," says Descartes, "and could not have deceived
us; He could not have taken pleasure in making us the victims of
perpetual illusions." All this is true. But the skeptic will ask how
we know that God is truthful, or even that he exists. If we found
the veracity of God on the idea of an infinitely perfect being, as
Descartes does, there is still the same difficulty with respect
to the correspondence of the idea with the object. If we draw the
demonstration of the veracity and existence of God from the ideas of
necessary and contingent beings, of effect and cause, of order and
intelligence, we again meet the same obstacle, and are still unable to
pass from the idea to the object.
No matter how much we cavil, we shall never get out of this circle,
we shall always return to the same point. The mind cannot think out
of itself; what it knows, it knows by means of its ideas; if these
deceive, it has nothing left to set it right. All rectification, all
proof must employ these ideas, and these, in their turn, require new
proof and rectification.
249. Many books of philosophy exaggerate the illusions of the senses,
and the difficulty of assuring ourselves of the sensible reality, when
they solve this question: "I perceive it to be so; but is it as I
perceive?" These same books immediately afterwards speak of the order
of ideas with security equal to their mistrust in the sensible order.
This does not seem very logical, for phenomena relating to the senses,
may be examined by the light of reason, and it may be seen how far they
agree with it: but what touch-stone have we for the phenomena of reason
itself? If there be difficulty in the sensible, there is likewise in
the intellectual, and the more serious, since it affects the very basis
of all cognitions, even those which relate to sensations.
If we doubt the existence of the external world which the senses
present to us, we may appeal to the connection of the sensations with
causes not in us; and so deduce by demonstration the relations of the
appearances with the reality: but this requires the ideas of cause
and effect; we must have some truth, some general principles, as for
example, that nothing can produce itself, and others similar, without
which we cannot take one step.
250. We do not believe any satisfactory reason can be given for the
veracity of the criterion of evidence, although it is impossible not
to yield to it. The connection, therefore, of evidence with reality,
and consequently, the transition from the idea to the object, are
primitive facts of our nature, a necessary law of our understanding,
the foundation of all that it contains,--a foundation which in its turn
rests, and can rest only on God, the Creator of our soul.
251. We must observe the contradiction into which those philosophers
fall who say: I cannot doubt what is subjective, what affects myself,
what I feel within myself; but I have no right to go out of myself,
and affirm that what I think is in reality as I think. Do you know
that you feel, that you think, that you have within you such or such
an appearance? Can you prove it? Evidently you cannot. You yield to a
fact, to an internal necessity which forces you to _believe_ that you
think, that you feel, or that such a thing appears to you; but then
there is equal necessity in the connection of the object with the idea,
an equal necessity forces you to _believe_ that what _appears_ to you
to be in such or such a condition is as it appears. Neither case admits
of demonstration; in both there is an indeclinable necessity: where,
then, is philosophy, when it is attempted to establish so great a
difference between things which admit of none?
Fichte says: "It is impossible to explain in a precise manner how a
philosopher can get beyond the _me_:"[21] and we may with equal reason
say, that we cannot conceive how he has been able to raise a system
upon the _me_. To what does he appeal? To a fact of consciousness, that
is, to a necessity. And is not the assent to evidence, the certainty
to which the reality apparently corresponds, also a necessity? On what
does Fichte found his system of the _me_ and the _not-me_? We have
only to read his works to see that he only founds it on considerations
which suppose a value in certain ideas, a truth in certain judgments.
Otherwise it is impossible to speak or to think: and this even he
himself admits when, in commencing his investigations on the principle
of our cognitions, he utters the words we have just quoted. He then
confesses that we cannot take one step without trusting all the laws
of general logic, which are _not always demonstrated, but are supposed
tacitly admitted_. And what are these laws, without objective truths?
What are they without the value of ideas, without correspondence with
objects? Fichte says rightly, it is a circle; but he can no more get
out of it than other philosophers.
[21] _Wissenschaftslehre._ Erster Theil. § 3.
252. To take from ideas their objective value, to reduce them to mere
subjective phenomena, to resist that internal necessity which obliges
us to admit the correspondence of the soul to objects, is to destroy
the very consciousness of the soul. This must have been seen, and this
we think we can most evidently demonstrate.
253. We have consciousness of ourselves. We now abstract what we
feel, what we are; but we know that we feel and that we are. This
experience is so clear, so vivid, that we cannot resist the truth
of what it attests to us. But this _me_ is not only the _me_ of the
present instant, it is also the _me_ of yesterday, and of all prior
time of which we have consciousness. We are the same that we were
yesterday, the being in which this succession is verified, to which
this variety of appearances is presented. The consciousness of the
_me_ then includes the identity of a being at distinct times, in
various situations, with different ideas, and diverse affections,--the
identity of a being which _endures_ and is the same throughout the
changes succeeding in it. If this duration of identity be broken,
if I be not sure that I am the same _me_ that I was previously, the
consciousness of the _me_ is destroyed. There would exist a series
of unconnected facts, isolated acts of consciousness, but not that
intimate consciousness I now experience. This cannot be doubted; every
man feels it in himself; it admits neither discussion nor proof in
any one, it requires them of no one. The moment this consciousness of
identity fails, we are in our own eyes annihilated; whatever we may be
in reality, for ourselves we are nothing. What is the consciousness
of a being, formed from a series of acts of consciousness, without
connection or mutual relation? It is a being revealed successively to
itself, yet not as itself, but as a new being, a being which is born
and dies, and dies and is born before its eyes, without its knowing
that what is born is what died, or that what died is what was born:
it is a light which burns and is extinguished, and again burns and is
again extinguished, without its knowing that it is the same light.
254. This consciousness is completely destroyed by those who deny the
connection between the idea and object.
_Demonstration._--In the instant A, I have no other subjective
presence of my acts than the very act I am at that moment performing:
I cannot therefore be certain that I have had any previously, if
they be not represented in the present idea; there is therefore a
connection between this idea and its object. Attending then simply
to the phenomena of consciousness, to the mere consciousness of the
subject, we find that we do, by an irresistible necessity, attribute an
objective value to ideas, an objective truth to judgments.
255. Without this objective truth, all certain recollection even of
internal phenomena, and by a legitimate consequence, all reasoning,
judgment, and thought, are impossible.
Recollection is of past acts. When we recollect them, they already are
not; for, if they were, we should not have recollection, but present
consciousness of them. Even when in the act of recollecting them we
have other similar acts, these are not the same, for something of past
time always enters into the idea of recollection. Therefore, we can
have no certainty of them, but by their connection with the present
act, their correspondence with the idea presenting them to us.
256. We have said that if, in internal phenomena, the certainty of
the objective truth fail, all reasoning is impossible. In fact, all
reasoning supposes a _succession_ of acts; when one of them exists
in the mind, the other does not exist; therefore, continued minute
recollections are required, lest the chain be broken; and thus, without
this chain, there is no reasoning; without recollection this chain
is not; without objective truth, there is no certain recollection;
therefore, without objective truth there is no reasoning.
257. All judgments also seem impossible. Judgments are of two classes:
some require demonstration, others do not. Those that require
demonstration would be impossible, for there can be no demonstration
without reasoning, and reasoning in this case is impossible. As to
those that do not need demonstration, because they shine with immediate
evidence; all of them, not relating to the present act of the soul, in
the very instant when the judgment is pronounced, would be impossible.
Therefore, there could be no judgment but that of the present act,
that is, the consciousness of the present without relation to the
preceding. But it is remarkable that even with respect to the acts of
consciousness, this judgment would be little less than impossible; for
when we form a judgment upon an act of consciousness, this we do not
by this act, but by a reflex act. This reflection requires succession,
and succession cannot be known with certainty if there be no objective
truth.
It is even very doubtful if the judgments of immediate evidence
would be possible. They suppose, as we explained in the preceding
chapter, relation of the partial conceptions into which the whole is
decomposed; and how can there be decomposition without succession? If
there is succession, there is recollection; if there is recollection,
there is no immediate presence of the thing recollected.
258. Such consequences are astounding, but they are inevitable. If we
destroy objective truth, all rational thought disappears. Such thought
includes a certain continuity of acts corresponding to different
instants; if this continuity be broken, the human thought ceases to
be what it is, ceases to exist as _reason_. It is a series of acts
which have no sort of connection, and which lead to nothing. In such a
case, all expression, all words fail; nothing has a fixed value; every
thing is ingulfed in obscurity. Thus it is in the intellectual and
moral order as in the material; and man has not even the comfort of
possessing himself; he vanishes from himself like an empty shadow.
259. Sensations may also exist as an unconnected series, but there
will be no certain recollection of them, since the objective truth
is wanting; past sensations exist only as past, and, consequently,
as simple objects. All intellectual reflection upon them will be
impossible, for reflection is not sensation; sensation is an object of
reflection, not reflection itself. Thus, the ignorant man has the same
sensation as the philosopher, but not the same reflection upon it. A
thousand times we have sensations without reflecting that we have them.
Sensible is very different from intellectual consciousness; the former
is the simple presence of the sensation, or the sensation itself; the
latter is the act of the intellect occupied with the sensation.
260. This distinction is also found in all purely intellectual acts:
the reflection upon the act is not the act itself. One is the object of
the other; they are not identical, and are often found separated. If,
then, there were no objective truth, reflection would be impossible.
261. It is likewise difficult to comprehend how any act of the
consciousness of the _me_, even as present, can be possible. We have
already seen the _me_ disappear when the series of recollections is
broken, and without objective truth it is not even possible to conceive
the _me_ for one instant. The _me_ thinking knows the _me_ thought only
as object. Whether it _perceive_ or _know_ it, to account to itself
for itself, it must reflect upon itself, and take itself for its own
object; and there being no objective truth, it is inconceivable how an
object can have any value.
It follows from this, that they who oppose objectiveness, attack a
fundamental law of our mind, destroy thought, even consciousness, and
every thing subjective which could serve as its basis.
262. In their arguments against objective certainty, its opponents are
accustomed to depend upon the errors into which it leads us. The madman
believes he sees objects, which do not exist; the lunatic believes
firmly in his disconnected thoughts; and why may not that which
deceives us in one instance, also deceive us in another, and all cases?
Can that be a certain criterion which sometimes fails? Why not stop
with the purely subjective? The madman, the lunatic, are deceived in
the object, not in the subject; although what they think is not true,
it is still very true and certain that they think it.
This is a specious objection; but it does not remove the difficulties
under which the system, in favor of which it is adduced, labors; and
it may, on the other hand, be solved in so far as it tends to weaken
objective truth.
The madman, the lunatic, have also recollections of things that
never existed. These recollections do not relate solely to external,
but likewise to their internal acts. The madman who calls himself
king, acts in accordance with his thought, with what he felt when
crowned, when dethroned; and yet, these intellectual phenomena never
existed. And, however this may be, he himself may have produced these
recollections. We hold, then, that the criterion with respect to memory
is wrong in this case, and can be of avail in no case. Therefore, even,
although we had not shown that without objective truth there is no
recollection even of the internal, the arguments of our adversaries
would have sufficed. This objection, if it prove any thing, confirms
all that we have advanced in demonstrating that without objectiveness
there is no consciousness properly so called, and this even our
opponents do not admit.
263. Moreover, we at once see what weight an argument based on
craziness should have at the tribunal of reason. It all, at the most,
only proves the weakness of our nature, that in some unfortunate
individuals the established order of humanity is reversed; that the
rule of truth, as it exists in so weak a creature, admits of some
exceptions; but these exceptions are known, for their characters are
marked. The exception does not destroy, it only confirms the rule.(25)