HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE VALUE OF PURE IDEAS.
55. Now that we have shown the points of similarity between Kant's
system and that of the scholastics, we propose to note their
differences chiefly in what concerns the application of these
doctrines. To give an idea of the gravity and transcendentalism of
these differences, we have only to remark the discrepancy of their
results. The Aristotelians built upon their principles a whole system
of metaphysical science, which they considered the noblest of sciences,
and which, like a rich and brilliant light, fecundates and directs
all others; whereas Kant, starting with the same facts, destroys
metaphysical science by taking from it all power to know objects in
themselves.
56. We here find Kant in opposition not only to the scholastics,
properly so called, but also to all the most eminent metaphysicians who
had preceded him. On the side of the scholastics in this matter may be
cited Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, Saint Thomas,
Descartes, Malebranche, Fenelon, and Leibnitz.
57. No one can deny the transcendency of these questions, if he be
not totally ignorant how vital it is to the human mind to know if a
science superior to the purely sensible order be possible, whereby man
may extend his activity beyond the phenomena offered by matter. These
questions are exceedingly profound, and must not be lightly treated.
The difficulty and the great abstruseness of the objects treated, the
importance, the transcendency of the consequences to which they lead,
according to the road followed, demand that no labor whatever should be
spared to penetrate these matters. It is easy to assure one's self that
upon these questions depends the conservation of sound ideas of God and
of the human mind; man's most important and lofty considerations.
To give this matter a thorough examination, let us go back to the
origin of the divergence of these philosophical opinions, and let us
investigate the reason why, starting with the same facts, they arrive
at contradictory results. This requires a clear exposition of the
opposite doctrines.
58. All philosophers agree in admitting the fact of sensibility;
concerning it there can be no doubt; it is a phenomenon attested by
consciousness in so palpable a manner, that not even skeptics could
ever deny the subjective reality of the appearance, however much they
called in question its objective reality. Idealists, when they deny the
existence of bodies, do not deny their phenomenal appearance, their
appearance to the mental eye under a sensible form. Sensibility then,
and the phenomena it exhibits, have in all ages been primary data in
ideological and psychological problems; there may be a discrepancy with
respect to the nature and consequences of these data, but there can be
none as to their existence.
59. The history of ideological science shows us two schools; one of
which admits nothing but sensation, and explains all the affections and
operations of the mind by the transformation of the senses; while the
other admits primitive facts distinct from sensation; other faculties
than that of feeling, and recognizes in the mind a line dividing the
sensible from the intellectual order.
60. This latter school is divided into two others; one of which regards
the sensible order as not only distinct, but also separate from the
intellectual order, and in some sense at war with it; and it therefore
maintains that the intellectual can receive nothing from the sensible
order, except malign exhortations which either mislead it, or enervate
its activity. Hence the system of innate ideas in all its purity; hence
the metaphysics of an intellectual order entirely exempt from sensible
impressions, metaphysics which, cultivated by eminent geniuses, has
in modern times been professed by the author of the _Investigation
of Truth_, with sublime exaggeration. The other ramification of the
school also admits the pure intellectual order, but does not hold it
to be contaminated by being brought into communication with sensible
phenomena; on the contrary, it is rather inclined to believe that the
problems of human intelligence, such as it exists in this life, cannot
be resolved without fixing the mind upon the aforesaid communication.
61. Experience teaches that this communication exists, conformably
to a law of the human mind, and that to contend against the law is
to struggle against a truth attested by consciousness: to attempt to
destroy it would be a rash undertaking, a kind of mental suicide.
For this reason, the school of which we have just spoken, accepts
the facts, such as internal experience presents them, and endeavors
to explain them by indicating the points where the sensible and
intellectual orders may come into communication without being destroyed
or confounded.
62. The school that admits the existence of the two orders, the
sensible and the intellectual, and at the same time admits the
possibility and the reality of their reciprocal communication and
influence, has, for its fundamental principle, that the origin of
all cognition is in the senses, these being the exciting causes of
intellectual activity, and a kind of laborers who supply it with
materials, which it then combines in the manner necessary to raise the
scientifical structure.
63. Thus far, Kant and the scholastics agree; but here they separate at
a point of the greatest importance, and the result is that they pass
on to conflicting consequences. The scholastics believed that there
were in the understanding true ideas having true objects, and that
they might discuss them, independently of the sensible order, with
perfect security. They even admitted the principle that there can be
nothing in the understanding which was not previously in the senses;
but pretended, nevertheless, that there really was something in the
understanding, which might conduce to the knowledge of the truth of
immaterial, as well as of material things in themselves. The ideas of
the purely intellectual order originate in the senses as movers of the
intellectual activity; but this activity, by means of abstraction and
other operations, forms to itself ideas of its own, by whose aid it may
go beyond the sensible order in its search for truth.
64. In their explanation of the purely intellectual order,
metaphysicians, both scholastics and anti-scholastics agree, so far as
there is question of giving a real objective value to ideas, and of
making them a sure means of discovering truth independently of sensible
phenomena. However much these schools disagree as to the origin of
ideas, they agree in all that relates to their reality and value.
65. Kant, at the same time that he admits the principle of the
scholastics, that all our cognitions come from the senses, and
recognizes with them the necessity of acknowledging a purely
intellectual order, a series of conceptions different from sensible
intuition, maintains that these conceptions are not pure cognitions,
but empty forms, which of themselves mean nothing, teach the mind
nothing, and cannot, in the least, aid us to know the reality of
things. These conceptions mean nothing unless filled, so to speak, with
sensible intuitions. If these intuitions are wanting, they correspond
to nothing, and can be of none but a purely logical use; that is to
say, the understanding will think upon and combine them, without,
indeed, falling into contradiction, but also without ever coming to any
conclusion.
"That the understanding," Kant says, "can never make a transcendental,
but only an empirical use, either of its _a priori_ principles, or
of its conceptions, is a principle which, if known with conviction,
leads to the most important consequences. The transcendental use of a
conception in any principle, consists in referring it to things, _in
general, and in themselves_; whilst the empirical use is in referring
the conception to phenomena alone, that is, to the objects of a
possible experience, by which we may easily see that this latter use is
the only one that can stand. To every conception is necessary, first
of all, a logical form of a conception in general, of the thought:
and secondly, the possibility of subjecting to it an object, to which
it may refer; but without this object it wants all sense, it contains
nothing, although it may involve the logical function necessary to
form a conception by means of certain data. The object cannot be given
to a conception except in intuition; and although pure intuition may
be _a priori_ possible before the object, it cannot, however, receive
its object, and consequently its objective value, otherwise than by
the empirical intuition of which it is the form. All conceptions and
with them all principles, although they be possible _a priori_, do,
notwithstanding, refer to empirical intuitions, that is, to data of
possible experience. _Without this they have no objective value; they
are nothing but a mere play, whether of the imagination or of the
understanding_, with the respective representations of the one or the
other faculty.
* * * * *
"That the same is the case with all the categories and principles
formed from them, is apparent from this, that we cannot really define
a single one of them; that is to say, we cannot render the possibility
of their object intelligible without attending to the conditions
of sensibility, and consequently to the form of the appearances;
conditions to which these categories must be confined as to their sole
objects. If this condition be taken away, all meaning, that is, all
relation to the object is destroyed, and by no example can we be made
to conceive what is the proper meaning of these conceptions.
* * * * *
"If no account be made of all the conditions of sensibility which
denote them (he is speaking of the categories) as conceptions of a
possible empirical use, if they be taken to be conceptions of things
in general, and consequently, of transcendental use, nothing remains
to be done, so far as they are concerned, but to preserve the logical
functions in judgments, as the condition of the possibility of the
things themselves, without being able to show in what case, their
application and their object, and consequently they themselves, may, in
the pure understanding, and without the intervention of sensibility,
have a meaning and an objective value.
* * * * *
"It incontestably follows from what has been said, that pure
conceptions of the understanding can _never have a transcendental
use_, but only an empirical use; and that the principles of the pure
understanding do not refer to the objects of the senses, except when
the senses are in relation with the general conditions of a possible
experience; _but never to things in general_, without relation to the
way in which we may perceive them."[8]
[8] _Transcendental Logic._ Book II., Chap. III.
66. Thus Kant destroys all metaphysical science, and, involved in its
deplorable ruins, perish the most fundamental, most precious, and
most sacred ideas of the human mind. According to him, transcendental
analysis makes us see that the understanding can never pass the limits
of sensibility, the only limits within which objects are given to us
in intuition. These principles which were regarded as eternal pillars
of the scientific edifice sink into empty forms, into words without
meaning, so soon as they rise from the sphere of sensibility.
Ontology, with its transcendental doctrines, avails not in the eyes
of the German philosopher to explain the nature and origin of things.
"These principles," he says, "are simply principles of the exposition
of phenomena; and the _proud name of an ontology_ which pretends to
give an _a priori_, synthetic cognition of things, in a systematic
doctrine, for example, _the principle of causality_, ought to be
replaced by the modest denomination of simple _analysis of the pure
understanding_."
67. It would be hard to find a more noxious doctrine. What is left
to the human mind when all means of rising from the sensible sphere
are taken away? To what is our understanding reduced, if its most
fundamental ideas, and its noblest principles can teach nothing
concerning the nature of things? If the corporeal world is for us
nothing but a collection of sensible phenomena, beyond which we
can know nothing, our cognitions have nothing real, they are all
purely subjective; the soul lives on illusions, and vanishes with
its imaginary creations, to which there is nothing to correspond in
reality. Space is but a subjective form; time is but a subjective form;
pure ideas are empty conceptions, and all in us is subjective. We
know nothing of objects, we are totally ignorant of what is; we know
only what _appears_. This is pure skepticism; assuredly it was not
necessary to consume so much time in analytical investigations to get
thus far. The doctrine of Kant presents no extravagance so outrageous,
no error so hideous, as the works of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; but
it contains the germ of the greatest extravagance, and of the most
fatal errors. He has made a philosophical revolution, which some have
incautiously deemed a progress; but doubtless they did not detect the
skepticism it contains, which is the more dangerous, the more it is
enveloped in analytical forms.
68. Notwithstanding the importance justly attached to the refutation of
the German philosopher's errors, I do not deem it necessary to combat
his doctrines step by step; this system of refutation labors under the
serious objection that it gives little satisfaction to the reader, who
seems to see one edifice torn down, but not replaced by another. I
consider it more useful carefully to examine questions as they arise in
the order of their subjects, to establish my opinion as best I can, and
there to refute Kant's errors as I find them obstructing the march of
truth. It is ordinarily very easy to say what a thing is not; but it is
not so easy to say what it is; and it is not proper that the advocates
of sound doctrine should be charged with impugning false doctrines,
and not caring to expose their own. We believe that in these matters
sound philosophy may be presented to the light of the day struggling
against error, and that it ought not to rest satisfied with being the
instrument of war to overthrow its adversary, but that it should
aspire to found a noble and enduring edifice upon the very site the
other occupied.
The minds of men are not satisfied with simple refutations; they desire
to have a doctrine substituted in the place of the one impugned.
Whoever impugns, denies; and the understanding is not satisfied with
negations; it wants affirmation, for it cannot live without positive
truth.
We have permitted ourselves this brief digression, which is indeed far
from being useless; for at the sight of the transcendency of the German
philosopher's errors I have recollected the necessity of careful,
assiduous, and profound labor to oppose this deluge of errors which
threatens to inundate the whole field of truth; and we could not do
less than insist upon this point, and observe that it is not enough to
tear down, but that it is also necessary to build up. Refutations will
soon come; but let positive doctrines abound. It is not enough to cover
the long line of frontiers where error makes its attacks, with light
and active troops which may fall upon the enemy; it is necessary to
found colonies, foci of cultivation and civilization, who will defend
the country, at the same time that they make it flourish and prosper.