Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. I (of 2)

UNIVERSAL IDENTITY

85. In order to give unity to science, some appeal to universal identity; this, however, is not to discover unity, but to take refuge in chaos. Universal identity is not only an absurdity, but a groundless hypothesis. Excepting the unity of consciousness, we find in ourselves nothing that is one; but multiplicity of ideas, perceptions, judgments, acts of the will, impressions of various kinds; and in relation to external objects, we perceive multitude in the beings which surround us, or as some pretend, in their appearances. Where then are unity and identity, for we can neither find them within nor without ourselves?

86. If it be said that nothing is offered to us but phenomena, and that we do not attain to the reality, the absolute and identical unity hidden beneath them, we can reply with this dilemma: either our experience is confined to phenomena, or it reaches the very nature of things: if the former, we cannot know what is concealed under the phenomena, nor absolute and identical unity; if the latter, then nature is not one but multiplex, for we everywhere encounter multiplicity.

87. It is curious to observe how easily men, the most skeptical in the simplest things, suddenly become dogmatic at the very point where the greatest motives of doubt are presented. With them the external world is either a pure appearance, or a being having no resemblance to the conception formed of it by the human race: the criterion of evidence, that of consciousness, and that of common sense have little power to command assent: the crowd alone should be satisfied with such weak foundations; the philosopher demands others far more solid. But strange as it may seem, the very philosopher who styled reality a deceitful appearance, and saw obscurity in what the human race considered luminous, so soon as he quitted the world of phenomena and arrived in the dominions of the absolute, finds himself illumined by a mysterious splendor, he requires no discussion, but by a most pure intuition, he sees the unconditioned, the infinite, the one in which every thing multiplex is involved, the great reality, the basis of all phenomena, the great All which re-unites in its breast all existences, re-assumes every thing, and absorbs every thing into most perfect identity. He fixes his philosophic eye upon this focus of light and life, sees it roll out like the ocean of existence in vast billows, and thus explains what is various by what is one, the composite by the simple, the finite by the infinite. All these prodigies do not require him to leave himself; he has only to go on destroying all that is empirical, to ascend even to pure act by mysterious by-paths unknown to all except himself. This me, which may have believed itself an existence perishable and dependent on another superior existence, is astounded at finding itself so great; it discovers in itself the origin of all beings, or, more correctly speaking, the only being, of which all others are but phenomenal existences; it is the universe itself become by a gradual development conscious of itself: whatever is without itself, and at first appears distinct, is only itself, a reflection of itself, presented to its eyes, and unfolded under a thousand different forms like a magnificent panorama.

Let not the reader think we have imagined a system for the sake of combatting it; the doctrine which we have here exposed, is the doctrine of Schelling.

88. One cause of this error is the obscurity of the problem of knowing. To know, is an immanent action, having, at the same time, relation to an external object, excepting those cases in which the intelligent being becomes, by a reflex act, its own object. In order to know a truth, whatever it may be, the mind does not quit itself; it does not operate beyond itself; its own consciousness tells it that it remains, and that its activity is developed, within itself.

This immanent action extends to objects the most distant in time and place, and the most unlike in their nature. How is the mind to come in contact with them? How is it to ascertain whether their representation conforms to reality? There can be no cognition without this representation; without conformity, there is no truth, cognition is a pure illusion to which nothing corresponds, and the human understanding is unceasingly the sport of vain appearances.

Undeniably this problem is liable to very serious difficulties, which perhaps the science of man, while in this life, cannot solve. Here arise all the ideological and psychological questions ever treated by the most eminent metaphysicians. However, as it is not our intention to anticipate what is to be hereafter considered, we shall confine ourselves to the point of view indicated by our present question of certainty and its fundamental principle.

89. Consciousness attests the fact of representation; without this there is no thought; and the affirmation I think is, if not the origin of all philosophy, at least its indispensable condition.

90. Whence comes the representation? How is a being placed in such communication with other beings, and this not by a transient but by an immanent act? How explain the conformity between the representation and the object? Does not this mystery indicate that there is unity, identity, at the bottom of all things, that the being which knows, is the very being known, which appears to itself under a distinct form, and that what we call realities are only phenomena of one and the same being, always identical, infinitely active, which develops its strength in various ways, and forms by its development what we call the universe? No! This neither is nor can be! It is an absurdity which the most extravagant reason cannot accept: it is a resource as desperate as it is impotent to explain a mystery, if you will, but one a thousand times less obscure than the system which pretends to clear it up.

91. Universal identity explains nothing, but greatly confuses everything; it does not dissipate the difficulty, but strengthens it, and renders it insolvable. It certainly is no easy matter to explain how the mind obtains the representation of things distinct from itself; but it is no easier to show how the mind can have the representation of itself. If there is unity, complete identity between the subject and the object, how are the two presented to us as distinct things? How can duality proceed from unity, or diversity spring from identity?

It is a fact testified by experience, not the experience of external objects, but that of consciousness, by that which is most hidden in our soul, that there is in every cognition a subject and an object, perception and the thing perceived, and without this difference the act is not possible. Even when by an effort of reflection, we take ourselves for our own object, the duality appears; if it does not exist, we imagine it, for without this fiction we cannot think.

92. Even in the most intimate and concentrated reflection, duality, upon careful examination, is to be found, not by fiction, as it might seem at first sight, but in reality. When the understanding turns upon itself, it does not see its own essence, for it has no direct intuition of itself: it sees its acts, and these it takes for its object. The reflex act is not the act reflected. When I think that I think, the first thought is distinct from the second, and so distinct that one succeeds the other, for the reflective thought can exist only subsequently to the thought reflected.

93. This is confirmed by a profound analysis of reflection. Is reflection possible without an object reflected upon? Evidently not. What is this object in the present case? The thought itself: then this thought must have preceded the reflection. If it be supposed that they must not of necessity follow in different instants of time, and that the dependence is saved, notwithstanding the simultaneousness, still the force of the argument is not lost; we grant, but do not concede, that the simultaneousness is possible; but the dependence at least is not possible without distinction. Dependence is a relation; relation supposes opposition of extremes; and this opposition draws with it distinction.

94. That these acts are distinct, although simultaneous, may be demonstrated in another manner. One of them, that reflected upon, may exist without the reflex act. We continually think, without thinking that we think; and the same may be proved true of every reflection whatever, whether it is occupied with the act thought, or it disappears and leaves only the direct act: these acts are, therefore, not only distinct but separable; therefore, the duality of the subject and the object exists not only in the external world, but also in that which is the most intimate and pure in our soul.

95. It avails not to say that the object of reflection is not any determinate act, but thought in general. This is in many cases false; for we not only think that we think, but that we think a determinate thing. Moreover, although the object of reflection is sometimes thought in general, not even then does the duality disappear: in that case the subjective act is an individual act, existing in a determinate instant of time, and its object is thought in general, that is, an idea representative of all thought, an idea which involves a sort of confused recollection of all past acts, or of what is called activity, intellectual force. The duality then exists more evidently, if possible, than when the object is a determinate thought. In one instance at least two individual acts are compared; but in this case an individual act is compared with an abstract idea, a thing existing in one instant of time with an idea that either abstracts it, or confusedly embraces all that has passed since the epoch when the consciousness of the reflecting being commenced.

96. These arguments have much greater weight when directed against those philosophers who place the essence of the mind not in the power of thinking but in thought itself; who give to the me no other existence than what springs from its own knowledge, affirming that it exists only because it supposes itself, by knowing itself, and only in so far as it supposes itself, that is, in so far as it knows itself. With this system there is duality, or rather plurality, not only in the acts, but even in the me itself; because this me is an act, and acts follow like a series of fluxions developed to infinity. Thus, far from saving the unity and identity of subject and object, plurality and multiplicity are established in the subject itself; and the unity of consciousness itself, in danger of being broken by the cavils of philosophers, is forced to take refuge in the obscurity of invincible nature.

97. We have thus incontestably proved that there is in us a duality of subject and object, that without it knowledge is inconceivable, and that representation itself is a contradiction unless in one sense or another we admit things really distinct in the recesses of intelligence. We beg to observe that we have a sublime type of this distinction in the august mystery of the Trinity, the fundamental dogma of our holy religion, covered, indeed, with an impenetrable veil, but which sends forth light to illustrate the profoundest questions of philosophy. This mystery is not explained by feeble man, but is for him a sublime explanation. Thus Plato availed himself of glimmerings from this focus as a treasure of immense value to philosophical theories; thus the Holy Fathers and theologians, in endeavoring to throw some light upon it by arguments of congruity, have illustrated the most occult mysteries of human thought.

98. The upholders of universal identity, besides contradicting a primitive and fundamental fact of consciousness, signally fail in their efforts to explain by it either the origin of intellectual representation or its conformity to its object. Evidently no man has an intuition of the nature of the individual me, and still less of the absolute being which these philosophers suppose as the substratum of whatever exists or appears. It is impossible for them to explain a priori, without this intuition, the representation of objects or their conformity to the representation. The fact, therefore, on which they would base their whole philosophy, either does not exist, or is unknown to us: in neither case can it serve as the foundation of a system.

Were this fact to exist, it could not be presented to our mind by any enunciation to which we could arrive by reasoning. It must be seen rather than known; either occupy the first place or none. If we begin to reason without taking this fact for our basis, we start from the apparent in order to attain to what truly is; we make use of an illusion to arrive at reality. Thus it evidently follows from the system of our adversaries that philosophy must either start with the most powerful intuition, or else it cannot advance a single step.

99. The schools distinguish between the principle of being and the principle of knowledge, principium essendi et principium cognoscendi; but this distinction has no place in the system which we oppose; being is there confounded with knowledge; what exists, exists because it is known, and it exists only in so far as it is known. To draw out the series of cognitions, is to develop the series of existences. They are not even two parallel movements; they are but one movement; the me is the universe, and the universe is the me; whatever exists is a development of the primitive fact, is the fact itself which is displayed under different forms, extending like an infinite ocean; its position is unlimited space; its duration eternity.(8) (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER IX.

UNIVERSAL IDENTITY, – CONTINUED

100. These systems, as absurd as they are fatal, although under distinct forms, and by various means, they tend to prepare the way for pantheism, contain a profound truth which, disfigured by vain cavils, seems to be an abyss of darkness, whereas it is in itself a ray of most brilliant light.

The human mind seeks that by reason to which it is impelled by an intellectual instinct; how to reduce plurality to unity, to re-unite, as it were, all the variety of existences in a point from which they all proceed, and in which they are all absorbed. The understanding knows that the conditioned must be included in the unconditioned, the relative in the absolute, the finite in the infinite, the various in the one. In this, all religions, all schools of philosophy agree. The proclamation of this truth belongs to no one of them exclusively; it is to be met with in all countries of the world, in primitive times, back even to the cradle of the human race. Beautiful, sublime tradition! Preserved through all generations, amid the ebb and flow of events, it offers us the idea of the Divinity presiding over the origin and destiny of the universe.

101. Yes! The unity sought by philosophers is the Divinity itself, – the Divinity whose glory the firmament declares, and whose august face of ineffable splendor appears to us in our inmost consciousness. Yes! it is the Divinity which enlightens and guides the true philosopher, but blinds and confounds the proud sophist; it is what the true philosopher calls God, and venerates and adores in the sanctuary of his soul, but what the insensate philosopher, with sacrilegious profanation, calls the me. Considering its personality, its consciousness, its infinite intelligence, and its most perfect liberty, it is the foundation and the copestone of religion: distinct from the world, it produced the world from nothing, and preserves and governs it, and leads it by mysterious paths to the destiny assigned in its immutable decrees.

102. There is then unity in the world; there is unity in philosophy. In this all agree; the difference is that some separate, with the greatest care, the finite from the infinite, the thing created from the creative power, unity from multiplicity, and maintain the necessary communication between the free will of the omnipotent agent and finite existences, between the wisdom of the sovereign intelligence and the fixed course of the universe: while others, affected with melancholy blindness, confound the effect with the cause, the finite with the infinite, the various with the one, and reproduce in the domain of philosophy the chaos of primeval times; but all scattering and in frightful confusion, without any hope of order or union: the earth of these philosophers is void, and darkness is upon the face of their deep; the spirit of God has not moved over the waters to fecundate the chaos, and produce oceans of life and light out of darkness and death.

The absurd systems invented by philosophical vanity explain nothing; the system of religion, which is that also of sound philosophy, and of all mankind, explains everything: the intellectual, as well as the corporeal world, is a chaos to the human mind the instant it abandons the idea of God: restore this and order reappears.

103. The two capital problems: whence the intellectual representation, and whence its conformity to objects, have with us a most simple explanation. Our understanding, although limited, participates in the infinite light; this light is not that which exists in God himself, but a semblance communicated to a being created according to his image.

Illumined by this light, objects shine upon the eyes of our mind, whether because they are in communication with it by means unknown to us, or because the representation is given to us directly by God, in the presence of objects.

The conformity of the representation to the thing represented, results from the divine veracity. An infinitely perfect God cannot take pleasure in deceiving his creatures. Such is the theory of Descartes and Malebranche, eminent thinkers, who took no step in the intellectual order, without looking to the Author of all light, and who never wrote a page on which the name of God was not traced.

104. As will hereafter be seen, Malebranche admitted that man sees every thing in God, even in this life; but his system, far from identifying the human me with the infinite being, carefully distinguishes them, not finding other means to sustain and enlighten the former than by approximating and uniting it to the second. To read the great metaphysician's immortal work is enough to convince one that his system was not that of this pure, primitive intuition, which is an act required of all empiricism, and which seems to rise within the limits of philosophy, from that intuition of the simple fact, the origin of all ideas and all facts, in which one of the dogmas of our religion, the beatific vision, seems realized upon earth in the domain of philosophy. These are senseless pretensions, and as far from the mind as from the system of Malebranche.(9) (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER X.

PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION: MONADS OF LEIBNITZ

105. The pretension to find a real truth, the fountain of all others, is dangerous in the extreme, however indifferent it may at first sight appear. Pantheism, and the deification of the me, two systems which coincide at bottom, are a consequence not easy to be avoided if it be attempted to establish all human science upon one fact.

106. The real truth or fact, which would serve as the basis of all science, should be immediately perceived, otherwise it would lack the character of origin and basis of other truths; because the medium by which it should be perceived would itself have the better right to the title of first truth. If this intermediate fact were the cause of the other, evidently this latter would not be primitive; and if the priority were given to the order of knowledge instead of the order of being, we should still have the same difficulty as now to explain the transition from subject to object, or the legitimacy of the medium by which we perceive the primitive fact.

Since then, the immediate presence, the intimate union of the understanding with the thing known is necessary, it is clear that as the me has this immediate presence only for itself and its own acts, the fact sought for must be the me itself. That which is immediately present to us is the facts of consciousness; by them we place ourselves in communication with what is distinct from us. In case then that we must find a primitive fact, the origin of all others, this fact must be the me. If we deny this consequence, we must deny the possibility of finding any fact which may be the source of transcendental science. Here we see how the apparently most innocent philosophical pretensions lead to fatal results.

107. There is here certainly very little chance for evasion, but there is one so specious as to merit an examination.

The fact, which is the scientific origin of all others, is not necessarily their true origin. By distinguishing between the principle of being and the principle of knowledge, all difficulty seems to be avoided. It is absurd and contrary to common sense, that the me is the origin of all that exists; but not that it is the representative principle of all that is or can be known. Representation is not synonymous with causality. Ideas represent but do not cause the objects represented. Why, then, is it not possible to admit a fact representative of all that the human understanding can know? It is certain that the perception of this fact must be immediate, that is, it must be supposed intimately present to the understanding perceiving it; for which reason, it can be nothing else than the me: this, however, is not to deify the me, but only to concede to it a representative force, which may have been given to it by a superior being. It makes the me not an universal cause, but a mirror which reflects the internal and external worlds.

This explanation reminds us of the famous system of monads advanced by Leibnitz; an ingenious system indeed, the lofty flight of one of the mightiest geniuses that ever honored the human race. The whole world formed of invisible beings, all representative of the same universe, whereof they are a part, but by a representation adequate to their respective categories, and in conformity to their corresponding point of view, according to the place which they occupy, unrolling themselves in an immense series, which, commencing with the lowest order, goes on ascending to the very portal of infinity; and at the uppermost point of existences is the monad, which, in itself contains the reason of all things, which has produced them from nothing, given to them their representative force, and distributed them into their proper categories, establishing among them a sort of parallelism of perception, will, action, and motion, in such a manner that, without any one communicating any thing to another, they all move on in most perfect conformity, in ineffable harmony. This is grand, beautiful, and wonderful; a colossal hypothesis which the genius of Leibnitz alone could ever have conceived.

108. Having paid this tribute of admiration to the eminent author of the Monadology, we observe that its gigantic conception is only an hypothesis which all the talent of its inventor could never base upon a single fact capable of giving to it an appearance of probability. Omitting the very serious difficulties, which this system, doubtless against the will of its author, opposes to the explanation of free will, we shall confine ourselves to the examination of the bearings of this system upon the question now before us.

In the first place, the representation of the monads, being a mere hypothesis, can serve to explain nothing, unless philosophy is to be made the sport of ingenious combination. The me is a monad, that is, an indivisible unity; of this there can be no doubt. The me is a monad representative of the universe: this is an absolutely gratuitous assertion, and until it is proved in some way or other, we have the right to ignore it.

109. Now, suppose the representative force, as understood by Leibnitz, to exist in the me; this hypothesis does not impugn what has been said against the primitive origin of transcendental science. On close inspection, the hypothesis of Leibnitz will be found to explain the origin of ideas, but not their connection. Make the soul a mirror, in which, by an effect of the creative will, every thing is represented; still it does not explain the order of these representations, show how one of them springs from another, or assign to them any other bond than the unity of consciousness. This system then is quite out of the question: we are not disputing on the manner in which representations exist in the soul, nor on their origin; but we are examining the opinion which pretends to found all science upon a single fact, and to unfold all ideas as simple modifications of that fact. This Leibnitz never said, nor can any thing be found in any of his works to indicate such a thought. Moreover, the difference between this system of Monadology and that of the German Philosophers, which we impugn, is too palpable to escape any one.

I. So far is Leibnitz from advocating universal identity, that he establishes an infinite plurality and multiplicity: his monads are beings really different and distinct among themselves.

II. The whole universe, composed of monads, proceeded, according to Leibnitz, from one infinite monad; and this procession was not by emanation, but by creation.

III. In the infinite monad, in God, Leibnitz places the sufficient reason of every thing.

IV. Knowledge has been freely given by God himself to the monads.

V. This knowledge, and the consciousness of it, belong to the monads individually, and Leibnitz never even remotely took into consideration this foundation of all things, which by its transformation ascends from nature to consciousness, or descends from the region of consciousness and is converted into nature.

110. These differences so marked need no comments; they show most evidently that the philosophers of modern Germany cannot shield themselves under the name of Leibnitz; although, in truth, these philosophers have no failing of that kind: far from seeking guides, they all aspire to originality, and this is one principal cause of their extravagance, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, all pretend to be founders of a philosophy; and Kant was so governed by the same ambition, that he made very important alterations in the second edition of his Critic of Pure Reason, lest he should be taken for a plagiarist from Berkeley's idealism.(10) (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER XI.