Читать книгу Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2) - Balmes Jaime Luciano - Страница 10

69. Intuition, properly so called, consists in the act of the soul by which it perceives an object that effects it: this the signification of the Latin word derived from the verb intueri, to see a thing which is present, indicates.

70. Intuition belongs only to perceptive powers, to those by which the subject affected distinguishes between its affection and the object causing it. We do not pretend to say that this must be a reflex distinction, but simply that the internal act must refer to an object. If we suppose a being to experience various affections, but to neither refer them to any object, nor reflect upon them itself; this being can never with propriety be said to have true intuition, for intuition seems to involve the exercise of an activity occupied with a present object. The object of intuition need not always be an external being; it may be an affection or action of the soul made objective by a reflex act.

71. The sensations which are with the greatest propriety called intuitive, are those of sight and touch; for, since it is impossible for us, when we perceive extension, to regard it as a purely subjective fact, the acts of seeing and feeling necessarily involve relation to an object. The other senses, although they may have a certain relation to extension, do not perceive it directly, so that were they to stand alone, they would partake more of the affective than of the intuitive; that is, the soul would be affected by the sensations, but would be under no necessity of referring them to external objects. If reflection made upon these sensations come to teach, as in effect it would teach that their cause is a being distinct from those that experience them, there would be no true intuition; not for the senses, because they would remain foreign to complex combinations; nor for the understanding, because it would then know the cause of the sensations, not by intuition, but by discursion.

72. We infer from this, that not every sensation is an intuition; and that the imaginary reproductions of past sensations, or the imaginary production of possible sensations, although repeatedly styled intuitions, are, since they do not refer to an object, unworthy of the name. We ought, nevertheless, to observe that the phenomena of purely internal sensibility do, perhaps, owe to the habit of reflection their non-reference to objects. Reflection perceives the difference of time, the more or less vividness of sensations, their greater or less constant connection, and also other circumstances; and it is enabled by these to distinguish between representations which do really refer to an object, such as external sensations, and those that have only a past or possible object, such as purely internal representations. Thus experience teaches us that the purely internal sensibility, wholly abandoned to itself, transfers whatever is presented to it to the external world, without the aid of reflection, and converts imaginary appearances into realities. This is verified in sleep, or even in our waking hours, when by some cerebral inversion the sensibility works by itself alone, and entirely free of reflection.

73. The reason why the sensibility left to itself, renders all its impressions objective, is to be looked for in the fact, that being a non-reflective faculty, it cannot distinguish between a purely internal affection, and one coming from without. Since comparison, however inconsiderable it may be, always implies reflection, sensibility does not compare. Hence it happens that when the subject does nothing but feel, it cannot appreciate the differences of sensations, by calculating the degrees of their vividness, nor ever perceive the existence or want of order and constancy in their connection.

The faculty of feeling is perfectly blind to all but its determinate object; whatever it does not discover in this so far as it is its object, does in no manner exist for it. We can now see why, when left to itself, it will render its impressions objective, and believe itself intuitive by converting simple appearances into realities.

74. It is worthy of notice, that of the sensitive faculties, some would always be intuitive, that is, would always refer to an external object, if reflection did not accompany them; whilst others would never be intuitive, not even if separated from reflection, or unaccompanied by those which are by their nature intuitive. To the former class belong the representative faculties, properly so called, that is, those which affect the sensitive subject by presenting to it a form, the real or apparent image of an object. Such are those of sight and of touch, which can neither exist nor be conceived without this representation. Other sensations, on the contrary, offer no form to the sensitive subject; they are simple affections of the subject, although they proceed from an external cause; if we refer them to objects, this we do by reflection; and when this warns us that we have in attributing to the object not only the principle of causality, but also the sensation in itself, carried the reference too far, we easily recognize the illusion, and lay it aside. This does not occur in representative sensations; no one, no matter how great efforts he may make, will ever be able to persuade himself that beyond himself there is nothing real, nothing resembling the sensible representation in which objects are presented as extended.

75. When we say that some sensations would not be intuitive were they not accompanied by reflection, we do not mean to say that man refers them to an object, after explicit reflection, for we cannot forget what we have already said when explaining at length the instinctive way in which our faculties develop themselves prior to all reflection, in their relations with the corporeal world; but only that no necessary relation to an object as represented can be discovered in these sensations considered in themselves, and in perfect isolation; and that, probably, if a confused reflection be not mingled with the instinct which makes us render them objective, there at least enters some influence of other sensations, which are by their proper object representative.