I
Since writing, in _Physique de l'Amour_, the chapter on "The Tyranny
of the Nervous System," with its criticism of Lamarck's saying, "the
environment creates the organ," I have come to conceive some doubts on
the legitimacy of my ideas. I am going to state them without definitely
taking sides either against myself or against subjective idealism, to
which in the last analysis I remain in large part faithful.
Idealism is to-day the dominant doctrine in philosophy, which was bound
to come to it, after a period of raillery, for reasoning leads to it
invincibly.
We know that there are two idealisms. It is then prudent, whenever this
word is employed in a context not purely philosophic, to define it.
There are two idealisms, both qualified by a word which is identical
in form, but different in meaning, since one comes from _ideal_, the
other from _idea_. The former is the expression of a moral or religious
state of mind. It is very nearly synonymous with spiritualism, and it
is this that M. Brunetière employs when that hard-hearted man becomes
sentimental on the subject of the "renaissance of idealism." There is
a certain "Revue Idéaliste," marked by a serene religious sentiment,
which belongs to the same clan, and in which it would be a mistake to
seek any enlightenment on Berkeley's doctrine.
The other idealism, which it would have been better to call ideaism,
and which Nietzsche has carried to the point of phenomenalism, is
a philosophical conception of the world. Schopenhauer, who was not
its inventor, has provided it with its best formula--the world is my
representation. That is to say, the world is such as it appears to me.
If it has a real existence in itself, it is inaccessible to me. It is
that which I see it, or feel it, to be.
Schopenhauer's formula withstands every criticism. It is irrefutable.
The doctrine which derives from it, if attacked directly, presents
itself as an impregnable fortress. Every reasoning blunts itself
impotently against it. It has this remarkable quality, that it is as
valid for the sensation, for the sentiment, as for the idea. There
may be based upon it equally, at will, a theory of intelligence, like
Taine's, or a theory of sensibility--something which has not been
yet attempted. Take the hackneyed statement that the same painful
event does not affect with the same intensity two persons whom it
strikes with the same external force. That is idealism. Take the
subject of tastes and of colours (in which Nietzsche found so much
amusement). There too, we have idealism. Whenever we study life,
facts, intelligences, physiologies, sensibilities for the purpose of
finding, not resemblances, but differences, we are practising idealism.
While there is life, there is idealism. That is to say, there are,
according to the species, or even the individual, different ways of
reacting against an external or internal sensation. Everything is
merely representation, for a bird as well as for a man, for a crab as
for a cuttle-fish. Reality is relative. A woman, a nervous man even,
can suffer intensely--perhaps lose consciousness--by imagining the
amputation of a leg, the scraping of the bones. Hardened soldiers,
on the contrary, have undergone such operations without flinching.
A particular taste for cruelty should not be attributed to the
civilizations which countenanced torture, and to those which still
practise it. The refinements which the Chinese bring to physical
punishment are nothing but a very clear indication of insensibility.
That which agonizes a European makes a yellow man smile. But there are,
among men of the same social group, numerous degrees of sensibility.
Pain, like pleasure, is a representation. The formula has been extended
to groups. A people is what it believes itself to be, very much more
than what it actually is. Most social disorders are merely collective
representations.
But it is difficult to explain idealism by an examination of the facts
of sensibility. They are too well known, too generally admitted,
to support a philosophic construction. A point of departure more
extraordinary and less easy to understand is needed. The phenomenon of
vision is generally employed in this connection. It seems simple, but,
when analyzed, it is exceedingly mysterious.
Seeing is the most natural thing in the world. Yet, what do we see,
when we see a tree? A tree, to be sure, but not the tree itself. What
enters us, as object perceived, is not the tree as tree, but the tree
as image. What is the image worth? Is it exact?
So it may be supposed, since it is sensibly the same for the various
persons who perceive it, and since divergences of appreciation begin
only when there come into play judgments conditioned by sentiment or
interest. This supposed exactitude is, in any case, very relative. An
image is an image, a photograph, and it differs from the reality-tree
(pure hypothesis) as much as a round, long, branching, leafy object
differs from a graphic representation, without thickness. It is true
that tactile sensation, or its memory, comes then to our aid, adding
to the tenuousness of the visual image the idea of consistence, of
resistance, without which we have difficulty in conceiving matter. We
can then--and thanks also to our observation of the opposing play of
light and shade--give this vain image its true position in space.
But however complete and concordant may be the actions of our senses,
when it is a question of knowing an object--even when, as in sexual
love, the six senses, including the genital sense, come into play
simultaneously--it is none the less the fact that the object known
remains exterior to ourselves. Besides, this qualification "known" is
little appropriate to the object perceived, since it has an interior
face, inaccessible at first glance to our senses. If we are dealing
with a living being--and all the more if this being be intelligent and
complex--we must exercise all sorts of faculties and devote ourselves
to minute analyses in order to arrive, even then, at a knowledge that
is very nearly illusory.
Knowledge arrives, then, at a certain bankruptcy. It is not very far
from this point to that of proclaiming the uselessness of the external
world as a means of explaining the nature of knowledge itself. It is
only a step from uselessness to reality. The idealistic philosophers
who develop their theory to its logical conclusion, can say, without
paradox, that everything occurs in vision, for example, as if the
object did not exist--as if intelligence, though believing that it
receives aid from the eye, in reality created this object just as far
as it wishes to know it. The phenomenon of hallucinations gives an
appearance of reason to these exasperated idealists. Did not Taine,
who was not exasperated, call sensation a true hallucination? But why
true? That is a word which, in the circumstances, it is difficult to
justify. It would be juster to say that hereditary habit inclines us
to regard certain sensations as true, certain others as false. Perhaps
utility serves us also as guide, and we imagine, in order to reassure
ourselves, an external and fallacious world whose operations correspond
to the movements of our psychology.