VALUE OF PRINCIPLES, INDEPENDENTLY OF SENSIBLE INTUITION.
101. The principle of contradiction, indispensable condition of all
certainty, of all truth, and without which the external world, and
intelligence itself, would become a chaos, offers us a good example of
the intrinsic value of purely intellectual conceptions independent of
sensible intuition.
No determinate idea is united to the conception of being when we affirm
the impossibility of a thing being and not-being at the same time, or
the exclusion of not-being by being; and so far we absolutely abstract
all sensible intuition. Whatever be its object, whatever its nature
and the relations of its existence; be it corporeal or incorporeal,
composite or simple, accident or substance, contingent or necessary,
finite or infinite, always will it be found true that being excludes
not-being; the absolute incompatibility of these two extremes will
always be verified, so that the affirmation of the one is always, in
all cases, and under all imaginable suppositions, the negation of the
other.
This being so, to limit the value of these conceptions to sensible
intuition, would be to destroy the principle of contradiction. The
limitation of the principle is equivalent to its nullification. Its
absolute universality is closely allied to its absolute necessity;
if it be curtailed, it is made contingent; for, if the principle of
contradiction may fail us in one instance, it fails us in all. To
admit the possibility of what is absurd, is to deny its absurdity.
If the contradiction of being and not-being does not exist in every
supposition, it exists in no supposition.
102. The difficulty is to know how the transition from the principle
of contradiction to real truths, is made; because not affirming any
thing determinate in it, but solely the repugnance of yes to no, and
of no to yes, we assert that it would be impossible to affirm either
one of these extremes without denying the other; and as on the other
hand, it is impossible, if we confine ourselves to the principle of
contradiction, for it to include any thing more than the most general
relation between two general ideas, we conclude that it is of itself
alone, perfectly sterile and unable to conduct us to any positive
result. This is all true; but it contradicts in no point what we have
said concerning the intrinsic value of general conceptions.
We have remarked that truths of the purely ideal order have none but a
hypothetical value, and that in order to produce a positive science,
they require facts to which they may apply. We have also remarked,
that experience furnishes these facts, and that every thinking being
possesses one at least, consciousness of itself. Every thinking being
will therefore, provided it discover in its own consciousness facts
to which it may apply it, make a positive use of the principle of
contradiction.
103. Even were we to admit the supposition that there is in our mind
no intuition but the sensible, it could not therefore be concluded
that general principles, and more particularly that of contradiction,
can have no positive value; because, if we suppose these principles
combined with sensible intuition to produce a cognition of other beings
out of the order of sensibility, it would follow that we really know
them, although they were not given to us in immediate intuition. And
this is verified in the human mind, when it rises by discursion to
the cognition of the non-sensible. On the one hand, the data furnished
by experience, and on the other, general and necessary truths, form
a connection constituting a positive science, which guides us with
perfect security to the cognition of objects not subject to immediate
experience.
This theory is so clear, so evident, so rooted in the consciousness of
our own acts, so perfectly in accordance with all that we observe in
the proceedings of the human mind, that it causes us a strange surprise
to meet philosophers, whose erroneous doctrines oblige us to explain
and defend it.
104. The transition from the known to the unknown is a proceeding
characteristic of our understanding; and this transition is impossible
if the reality of every cognition, not referred to an intuition, be
denied. Whatever is presented to us in this latter way, is given to us,
is present to our sight, and we have no necessity of seeking it. If,
therefore, no object be really known, unless offered in intuition, all
intellectual progress becomes impossible: all the advances of our mind
are reduced to combinations of the forms presented to the sensibility,
and even these lead to nothing whenever they cease to be intuitive;
that is, when they no longer relate to determinate objects immediately
perceived. The _Critic of Pure Reason_ is the destruction of all
reason: for it examines itself with suicidal intent, or in order to
prove that it contains nothing positive.
Science cannot survive the reduction of general principles to one
only value relative to sensible intuitions. What we have demonstrated
concerning the principle of contradiction, is _a fortiori_ applicable
to all other principles. If this be not saved, all must perish in the
wreck. Moreover, the very basis of the necessity involved in these
principles is threatened. We know nothing, save that there is within
us a series of phenomena which _seem_ necessary. But what use can we
make of them beyond the subjective order? None at all. Behold us then
in the most perfect skepticism, condemned to simple appearances, with
no means of knowing any reality.
105. No! the human mind is not condemned to so despairing a sterility:
reason is not an empty word; ratiocination is not a puerile play, only
fit to serve as an amusement. In the midst of the prepossessions,
errors, and extravagance of human misery, towers on high that force,
that admirable activity, by which the mind springs beyond itself,
_knows_ what it does not _see_, and _foresees_ what it will one day
_feel_. Nature is veiled to our eyes; impenetrable secrets surround
us; whichever way we turn deep shadows hide the reality of objects:
but through this darkness we discern from afar some scintillation of
light. Notwithstanding the profound silence which reigns over the sea
of beings, whose surges toss us about like imperceptible atoms in the
immensity of the ocean, we hear at times mysterious voices tell us the
course we must keep to reach unknown shores.