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

5. Condillac supposes a statue, which he animates successively with each of the senses: then beginning with the sense of smell, he says; "So long as our statue is limited to the sense of smell, its knowledge cannot go beyond odors; it can neither have any idea of extension, of space, or of any thing beyond itself, nor of other sensations, such as color, sound, taste."2 If, according to the conditions of the supposition, all activity and every faculty be denied to this statue, it certainly can have no other idea or sensation, and it may be added that even its sensation of smell will be for it no idea.

"If we present it a rose," continues Condillac, "to us it will be a statue which smells a rose; but for itself it will be only the smell of a rose. It will then be the smell of the rose, the pink, the jasmine, or the violet, according to the objects which operate upon its organ; in a word, with respect to it, these odors are only its own modifications and manners of being, and it cannot believe itself any thing else, since these are the only sensations of which it is susceptible."

6. It is very obvious that at the first step, the statue must take a great leap. Close upon the apparent simplicity of the sensible phenomenon, reflection, one of those acts which suppose the intellect already well developed, is introduced. First the statue believes itself something; it believes itself the odor; next consciousness of itself in relation to the impression it has just received, is attributed to it; then it is made to form a kind of judgment, whereby it affirms the identity of itself with the sensation. This, however, is impossible, unless we have something besides bare sensation; but we neither have nor can have at this stage any thing beyond this purely passive impression, an isolated phenomenon, upon which there can be no reflection of any kind whatever; and the statue can have no other reflection of itself than this sensation, which in the reflective order has no title to be so called. Condillac's hypothesis rigorously applied, presents only a phenomenon leading to nothing; and the moment he leaves sensation to develop it, he admits an activity in the mind distinct and very different from sensation, which destroys his whole system.

The statue confined to the sensation of smell will never believe itself smell; such a belief is a judgment, and supposes comparison, no trace of which can be discovered in the sensible phenomenon, considered in all its purity, as Condillac requires in his hypothesis. He begins his analytical investigations by introducing conditions which he at the same time supposes to be eliminated. He undertakes to explain every thing by sensation alone, and his first step is to amalgamate sensation with operations of a very different order.

7. Condillac calls the capacity of feeling, when applied to the impression received, attention. So if there be but one sensation, there can be but one attention. If various sensations succeeding each other leave some trace in the memory of the statue, the attention will, when a new sensation is presented, be divided between the present and the past. The attention directed at one and the same time to two sensations becomes comparison. Similarities and differences are perceived by comparison, and this perception is a judgment. All this is done with sensations alone; therefore attention, memory, comparison, and judgment are nothing but sensations transformed. In appearance nothing clearer, more simple, or more ingenuous; in reality nothing more confused or false.

8. First of all, this definition of attention is not exact. The capacity of feeling, by the very fact of being in exercise, is applied to the impression. It does not feel when the sensitive faculty is not in exercise, and this is not in exercise except when applied to the impression. Consequently, attention would be nothing but the act of feeling; all sensation would be attention, and all attention sensation; a meaning which no one ever yet gave to these words.

9. Attention is the application of the mind to something; and this application supposes the exercise of an activity concentrated upon its object. Properly speaking, when the mind holds itself entirely passive, it is not attentive; and with respect to sensations it is attentive when by a reflex act we know that we feel. Without this cognition there can be no attention, but only sensation more or less active, according to the degree in which it affects our sensibility. If Condillac means to call the more vivid sensation attention, the word is improperly used; for it ordinarily happens that they who feel with the greatest vividness are precisely those who are distinguished for their want of attention. Sensation is the affection of a passive faculty; attention is the exercise of an activity; and hence it is that brutes do not participate of it except inasmuch as they possess a principle of activity to direct their sensitive faculties to a determinate object.

10. Is the perception of the difference of the smell of the rose and that of the pink a sensation? If we are answered that it is not, we infer that the judgment is not the sensation transformed; for it is not even a sensation. If we are told that it is one sensation, we then observe that if it be either that of the rose or that of the pink, it follows that with one alone of these sensations we shall have comparative perception, which is absurd. If we are answered that it is both together, we must either interpret this expression rigorously, and then we shall have a sensation which will at once be that of the pink and that of the rose, the one remaining distinct from the other so as to satisfy the conditions of comparison; or we must interpret it so as to mean that the two sensations are united; in which case we gain nothing, for the difficulty will be to show how co-existence produces comparison, and judgment, or the perception of the difference.

The sensation of the pink is only that of the pink, and that of the rose only that of the rose. The instant you attempt to compare them, you suppose in the mind an act by which it perceives the difference; and if you attribute to it any thing more than pure sensation, you add a faculty distinct from sensation, namely that of comparing sensations, and appreciating their similarities and differences.

11. This comparison, this intellectual force, which calls the two extremes into a common arena, without confounding them, discovers the points in which they are alike or unlike each other, and, as it were, comes in and decides between them, is distinct from the sensation; it is the effect of an activity of a different order, and its development must depend on sensations as exciting causes, as a condition sine qua non; but this is all it has to do with sensations themselves; it is essentially distinct from them, and cannot be confounded with them without destroying the idea of comparison, and rendering it impossible.

No judgment is possible without the ideas of identity or similarity, and these ideas are not sensations. Sensations are particular facts which never leave their own sphere, nor can be applied from one thing to another. The ideas of similarity and identity have something in common applicable to many facts.

12. What next happens to a being limited to the faculty of experiencing various sensations? It will receive without comparing them. It is certain that when it feels in one manner it will not feel in another, that one sensation is not another; but this sensitive being will take no notice of the variety. Sensations will succeed sensations, but will not be compared with each other. Even supposing them to be remembered, the memory of them will be nothing more than a less intense repetition of the same sensations. If it be admitted that this sensitive being compares them, and perceives their relations of identity or distinction, of similarity or difference, a series of reflex acts are admitted which are not sensations.

13. Nor can the memory, properly so called, of sensations, be explained by them alone; and here again Condillac is wrong. The statue may recollect to-day the sensation of the smell of the rose which it received yesterday, and this recollection may exist in two ways: first, by the internal reproduction of the sensation without any external cause, or relation to time past, and consequently without any relation to the prior existence of a similar sensation; and then this recollection is not for the statue a recollection properly so called, but only a sensation more or less vivid: secondly, by an internal reproduction with relation to the existence of the same or another similar sensation at a preceding time, in which recollection essentially consists; and here there is something more than sensation; here are the ideas of succession, time, priority, and identity, or similarity, all distinct and separable from sensation.

Two entirely distinct sensations may be referred to the same time in the memory; and then the time will be identical, and the sensations distinct. The sensation may exist without any recollection of the time it before existed, or even without any recollection of having ever existed; consequently, sensation involves no relation of time; they are distinct and very different matters, and Condillac deceives himself when he undertakes to explain the memory of sensations by mere sensations.

14. These reflections utterly refute Condillac's system. Either he admits something besides sensation or he does not; if he does, he violates his own original supposition; if he does not, he cannot explain any abstract idea, nor even the sensitive memory: he will therefore be obliged to admit with Locke reflection upon sensations, and for the same reason, other faculties of the soul.

15. It is easy to comprehend why certain philosophers have maintained that all our ideas come from the senses, if we understand them to mean that sensations awaken our internal activity, and, so to speak, supply the intellect with materials: but it is not so easy to see how it can be advanced as a certain, clear, and exceedingly simple truth that there is in our mind nothing but these materials, these sensations. We have only to fix our attention for a moment upon what passes within us to discover many phenomena distinct from sensation, and various faculties which have nothing to do with sensation. If Condillac had been satisfied with maintaining that these faculties needed sensation as a kind of excitement in order to be developed, he would have advanced nothing contrary to sound philosophy: but for him to pretend that all that is excited and all that is developed is only the principle which excites, and to insist that this is confirmed by actual observation, is openly to contradict observation itself, and to render it absolutely impossible for him to make the least progress in the explanation of intellectual activity, unless he abandons the supposition upon which his whole system is founded. Nevertheless, the author of the Treatise on Sensations seems to be perfectly satisfied with his system: the actual impression is the sensation; the recollection of the sensation is the intellectual idea. If this is not sound, it is at least deceptive: with the appearance of nice observation he stops at the surface of things, and does not fatigue the pupil. Every thing comes from sensation; but this is because Condillac makes his statue talk as he pleases, without paying the least attention to his hypothesis of sensation alone.

16. This system, by reason of its philosophical meagerness, is fatal to all moral ideas. What becomes of morality if there are no ideas, except sensations? What becomes of duty if every thing is reduced to sensible necessity, to pleasure or pain? And what becomes of God, and of all man's relations to God?