EXISTENCE OF PURE INTELLECTUAL INTUITION.
83. It is not true that the human mind even in this life has
no intuition other than the sensible. There are within us many
non-sensible phenomena, of which we are clearly conscious. Reflection,
comparison, abstraction, election, and all the acts of the
understanding and will, include nothing of the sensible. We should like
to know, to what species of sensibility, abstract ideas, and the acts
by which we perceive them, belong; these among others: _I desire_, _I
do not desire_, _I choose this_, _I prefer this to that_. Not one of
these acts can be presented by sensible intuition; they are facts of
an order superior to the sphere of sensibility, and yet we have in
our mind a clear and lively consciousness of them; we reflect upon
them, make them the object of our studies, distinguish them one from
another, and classify them in a thousand different ways. These facts
are presented to us immediately; we know them, not by discursion, but
by intuition; therefore it is false that the intuition of the soul
refers to none but sensible phenomena, for it encounters within itself
an expanded series of non-sensible phenomena, which are given to it in
intuition.
84. It is of no use to say that these internal phenomena are empty
forms, and mean nothing, unless referred to a sensible intuition.
Whatever they may be, they are something distinct from this same
sensible intuition; and we perceive this something, not by discursion,
but by intuition; therefore, besides sensible intuition, there is
another of the purely intellectual order.
The question is not whether these pure conceptions have, or have not,
a certain power to enable us to know objects in themselves; but it
is simply to ascertain if they do exist, and if they are sensible.
That they exist, is certain; consciousness attests this fact, and all
ideologists admit it. That they are sensible, cannot be maintained
without destroying their nature; and least of all can Kant maintain
this, since he has so carefully distinguished between sensible
intuition and these conceptions.
85. This sea of non-sensible phenomena, which we experience within
us, is like a mirror wherein the depths of the intellectual world
are reflected. Minds, it is true, are not presented immediately to
our perception, and to know them we need a discursive process; but
we shall, upon careful examination, find in this intuition of our
inward phenomena the representation, imperfect though it be, of what
is verified in intelligences of a superior order. Thus we have in a
certain mode idea-images, since there can be no better image of one
thought than another thought, nor of one act of the will than another
act of the will. Thus we know minds distinct from our own, by a kind of
mediate, not immediate, intuition, in so far as they are presented to
our consciousness as the image in a mirror.
86. The communication of minds by means of speech and other natural or
conventional signs, is a fact of experience intimately connected with
all intellectual, moral, and physical necessities. When a mind is put
into communication with another, the cognition it has of what passes
in the other is not by mere general conceptions, but by a kind of
intuition, which although mediate, does not therefore fail to be true.
The thought, or affection of another communicated to our mind by means
of speech, excites in us a thought, or affection, similar to that of
the mind communicating them. We do, then, not only know, but _see_, in
our own consciousness, the consciousness of another; and so perfect
is at times the likeness, that we anticipate all that he is about to
tell us, and unroll within ourselves the same series of phenomena that
are verified in the mind of him with whom we are in communication. It
happens thus when we say: "I understand perfectly what N. thinks, what
he wants, what he is trying to express."
87. This observation seems to us of great service to place beyond
all doubt that there are in our mind, independently of the sensible
order, conceptions, not empty, but referable to a determinate object.
The cognition of the phenomena of the purely intellectual order,
transmitted to us by means of speech, or other signs, does not destroy
the character of the intuition, since we here find all the necessary
conditions assembled; internal representation, and its relation to a
determinate object affecting us.
88. This analysis of ideological facts, whose existence cannot be
doubted, demonstrates the falseness of Kant's doctrine, that there are
in our mind none but sensible intuitions; as well as the non-existence
of the German philosopher's problem: whether it is possible, or not,
for objects to be given to other minds in an intuition other than
the sensible. This very problem is found solved within us, since the
attentive observation of the internal phenomena, and the reciprocal
communication of minds, has given us to know not only the possibility,
but also the existence of intuitions different from the sensible.