Читать книгу Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good - Victor Cousin - Страница 12

Table of Contents

Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute truth?—Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us, in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it; refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself; defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.—Plato; St. Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fénelon; Bossuet; Leibnitz.—Truth the mediator between God and man.—Essential distinctions.

We have justified the principles that govern our intelligence; we have become confident that there is truth outside of us, that there are verities worthy of that name, which we can perceive, which we do not make, which are not solely conceptions of our mind, which would still exist although our mind should not perceive them. Now this other problem naturally presents itself: What, then, in themselves, are these universal and necessary truths? where do they reside? whence do they come? We do not raise this problem, and the problems that it embraces; the human mind itself proposes them, and it is fully satisfied only when it has resolved them, and when it has reached the extreme limit of knowledge that it is within its power to attain.

It is certain that the principles which, in all the orders of knowledge, discover to us absolute and necessary truths, constitute part of our reason, which surely makes its dwelling in us, and is intimately connected with personality in the depths of intellectual life. It follows that the truth, which reason reveals to us, falls thereby into close relation with the subject that perceives it, and seems only a conception of our mind. Nevertheless, as we have proved, we perceive truth, we are not the authors of it. If the person that I am, if the individual me does not, perhaps, explain the whole of reason, how could it explain truth, and absolute truth? Man, limited and passing away, perceives necessary, eternal, infinite truth; that is for him a privilege sufficiently high; but he is neither the principle that sustains truth, nor the principle that gives it being. Man may say, My reason; but give him credit for never having dared to say, My truth.

If absolute truths are beyond man who perceives them, once more, where are they, then? A peripatetic would respond—In nature. Is it, in fact, necessary to seek for them any other subject than the beings themselves which they govern? What are the laws of nature, except certain properties which our mind disengages from the beings and phenomena in which they are met, in order to consider them apart? Mathematical principles are nothing more. For example, the axiom thus expressed—The whole is greater than any of its parts, is true of any whole and part whatever. The principle of contradiction, considered in its logical title, as the condition of all our judgments, of all our reasonings, constitutes a part of the essence of all being, and no being can exist without containing it. The universal exists, says Aristotle, but it does not exist apart from particular beings.[44]

This theory which considers universals as having their basis in things, is a progress towards the pure conceptualism which we have in the beginning indicated and shunned. Aristotle is much more of a realist than Abelard and Kant. He is quite right in maintaining that universals are in particular things, for particular things could not be without universals; universals give to them their fixity, even for a day, and their unity. But from the fact that universals are in particular beings, is it necessary to conclude that they, wholly and exclusively, reside there, and that they have no other reality than that of the objects to which they are applied? It is the same with principles of which universals are the constitutive elements. It is, it is true, in the particular fact, of a particular cause producing a particular event, that is given us the universal principle of causality; but this principle is much more extensive than the facts, for it is applied, not only to this fact, but to a thousand others. The particular fact contains the principle, but it does not wholly contain it, and, far from giving the basis of the principle, it is based upon it. As much may be said of other principles.

Perhaps it will be replied that, if a principle is certainly more extensive than such a fact, or such a being, it is not more extensive than all facts and all beings, and that nature, considered as a whole, can explain that which each particular being does not explain. But nature, in its totality, is still only a finite and contingent thing, whilst the principles to be explained have a necessary and infinite bearing. The idea of the infinite can come neither from any particular being, nor from the whole of beings. Entire nature will not furnish us the idea of perfection, for all the beings of nature are imperfect. Absolute principles govern, then, all facts and all beings, they do not spring from them.

Will it be necessary to come to the opinion, then, that absolute truths, being explicable neither by humanity nor by nature, subsist by themselves, and are to themselves their own foundation and their own subject?

But this opinion contains still more absurdities than the preceding; for, I ask, what are truths, absolute or contingent, that exist by themselves, out of things in which they are found, and out of the intelligence that conceives them? Truth is, then, only a realized abstraction. There are no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail against good sense; and if such is the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle is right in his opposition to it. But such a theory is only a chimera that Aristotle created for the pleasure of combating it.

Let us hasten to remove absolute truths from this ambiguous and equivocal state. And how? By applying to them a principle which should now be familiar to you. Yes, truth necessarily appeals to something beyond itself. As every phenomenon has its subject of inherence, as our faculties, our thoughts, our volitions, our sensations, exist only in a being which is ourselves, so truth supposes a being in which it resides, and absolute truths suppose a being absolute as themselves, wherein they have their final foundation. We come thus to something absolute, which is no longer suspended in the vagueness of abstraction, but is a being substantially existing. This being, absolute and necessary, since it is the subject of necessary and absolute truths, this being which is at the foundation of truth as its very essence, in a single word, is called God.[45]

This theory, which conducts from absolute truth to absolute being, is not new in the history of philosophy: it goes back to Plato.

Plato,[46] in searching for the principles of knowledge clearly saw, with Socrates his master, that the least definition, without which there can be no precise knowledge, supposes something universal and one, which does not come within the reach of the senses, which reason alone can discover; this something universal and one he called Idea.

Ideas, which possess universality and unity, do not come from material, changing, and mobile things, to which they are applied, and which render them intelligible. On the other hand, it is not the human mind that constitutes ideas; for man is not the measure of truth.

Plato calls Ideas veritable beings, τὰ οντως ὄντα, since they alone communicate to sensible things and to human cognitions their truth and their unity. But does it follow that Plato gives to Ideas a substantial existence, that he makes of them beings properly so called? It is important that no cloud should be left on this fundamental point of the Platonic theory.

At first, if any one should pretend that in Plato Ideas are beings subsisting by themselves, without interconnection and without relation to a common centre, numerous passages of the Timaeus might be objected to him,[47] in which Plato speaks of Ideas as forming in their whole an ideal unity, which is the reason of the unity of the visible world.[48]

Will it be said that this ideal world forms a distinct unity, a unity separate from God? But, in order to sustain this assertion, it is necessary to forget so many passages of the Republic, in which the relations of truth and science with the Good, that is to say, with God, are marked in brilliant characters.

Let not that magnificent comparison be forgotten, in which, after having said that the sun produces in the physical world light and life, Socrates adds: "So thou art able to say, intelligible beings not only hold from the Good that which renders them intelligible, but also their being and their essence."[49] So, intelligible beings, that is to say, Ideas, are not beings that exist by themselves.

Men go on repeating with assurance that the Good, in Plato, is only the idea of the good, and that an idea is not God. I reply, that the Good is in fact an idea, according to Plato, but that the idea here is not a pure conception of the mind, an object of thought, as the peripatetic school understood it; I add, that the Idea of the Good is in Plato the first of Ideas, and that, for this reason, while remaining for us an object of thought, it is confounded as to existence with God. If the Idea of the Good is not God himself, how will the following passage, also taken from the Republic, be explained? "At the extreme limits of the intellectual world is the Idea of the Good, which is perceived with difficulty, but, in fine, cannot be perceived without concluding that it is the source of all that is beautiful and good; that in the visible world it produces light, and the star whence the light directly comes, that in the invisible world it directly produces truth and intelligence."[50] Who can produce, on the one hand, the sun and light, on the other, truth and intelligence, except a real being?

But all doubt disappears before the following passages from the Phædrus, neglected, as it would seem designedly, by the detractors of Plato: "In this transition, (the soul) contemplates justice, contemplates wisdom, contemplates science, not that wherein enters change, nor that which shows itself different in the different objects which we are pleased to call beings, but science as it exists in that which is called being, par excellence. … "[51]—"It belongs to the soul to conceive the universal, that is to say, that which, in the diversity of sensations, can be comprehended under a rational unity. This is the remembrance of what the soul has seen during its journey in the train of Deity, when, disdaining what we improperly call beings, it looked upwards to the only true being. So it is just that the thought of the philosopher should alone have wings; for its remembrance is always as much as possible with the things which make God a true God, inasmuch as he is with them."[52]

So the objects of the philosopher's contemplation, that is to say, Ideas, are in God, and it is by these, by his essential union with these, that God is the true God, the God who, as Plato admirably says in the Sophist, participates in august and holy intelligence.[53]

It is therefore certain, that, in the true Platonic theory, Ideas are not beings in the vulgar sense of the word, beings which would be neither in the mind of man, nor in nature, nor in God, and would subsist only by themselves. No, Plato considers Ideas as being at once the principles of sensible things, of which they are the laws, and the principles also of human knowledge, which owes to them its light, its rule, and its end, and the essential attributes of God, that is to say, God himself.

Plato is truly the father of the doctrine which we have explained, and the great philosophers who have attached themselves to his school have always professed this same doctrine.

The founder of Christian metaphysics, St. Augustine, is a declared disciple of Plato: everywhere he speaks, like Plato, of the relation of human reason to the divine reason, and of truth to God. In the City of God, book x., chap. ii., and in chap. ix. of book vii. of the Confessions, he goes to the extent of comparing the Platonic doctrine with that of St. John.

He adopts, without reserve, the theory of Ideas. Book of Eighty-three Questions, question 46: "Ideas are the primordial forms, and, as it were, the immutable reasons of things; they are not created, they are eternal, and always the same: they are contained in the divine intelligence; and without being subject to birth and death, they are the types according to which is formed every thing that is born and dies."[54]

"What man, pious, and penetrated with true religion, would dare to deny that all things that exist, that is to say, all things that, each of its kind, possess a determinate nature, have been created by God? This point being once conceded, can it be said that God has created things without reason? If it is impossible to say or think this, it follows that all things have been created with reason. But the reason of the existence of a man cannot be the same as the reason of the existence of a horse; that is absurd; each thing has therefore been created by virtue of a reason that is peculiar to it. Now, where can these reasons be, except in the mind of the Creator? For he saw nothing out of himself, which he could use as a model for creating what he created: such an opinion would be sacrilege.[55]

"If the reasons of things to be created and things created are contained in the divine intelligence, and if there is nothing in the divine intelligence but the eternal and immutable, the reasons of things which Plato calls Ideas, are the eternal and immutable truths, by the participation in which every thing that is is such as it is."[56]

St. Thomas himself, who scarcely knew Plato, and who was often enough held by Aristotle in a kind of empiricism, carried away by Christianity and St. Augustine, let the sentiment escape him, "that our natural reason is a sort of participation in the divine reason, that to this we owe our knowledge and our judgments, that this is the reason why it is said, that we see every thing in God."[57] There are in St. Thomas many other similar passages, of perhaps an expressive Platonism, which is not the Platonism of Plato, but of the Alexandrians.

The Cartesian philosophy, in spite of its profound originality, and its wholly French character, is full of the Platonic spirit. Descartes has no thought of Plato, whom apparently he has never read; in nothing does he imitate or resemble him: nevertheless, from the first, he is met in the same regions with Plato, whither he goes by a different route.

The notion of the infinite and the perfect is for Descartes what the universal, the Idea, is for Plato. No sooner has Descartes found by consciousness that he thinks, than he concludes from this that he exists, then, in course, by consciousness still, he recognizes himself as imperfect, full of defects, limitations, miseries, and, at the same time, conceives something infinite and perfect. He possesses the idea of the infinite and the perfect; but this idea is not his own work, for he is imperfect; it must then have been put into him by another being endowed with perfection, whom he conceives, whom he does not possess:—that being is God. Such is the process by which Descartes, setting out from his own thought, and his own being, elevated himself to God. This process, so simple, which he so simply exposes in the Discours de la Méthode, he will put successively, in the Méditations, in the Résponses aux Objections, in the Principes, under the most diverse forms, he will accommodate it, if it is necessary, to the language of the schools, in order that it may penetrate into them. After all, this process is compelled to conclude, from the idea of the infinite and the perfect, in the existence of a cause of this idea, adequate, at least, to the idea itself, that is to say, infinite and perfect. One sees that the first difference between Plato and Descartes is, that the ideas which in Plato are at once conceptions of our mind, and the principles of things, are for Descartes, as well as for all modern philosophy, only our conceptions, amongst which that of the infinite and perfect occupies the first place; the second difference is, that Plato goes from ideas to God by the principle of substances, if we may be allowed to use this technical language of modern philosophy; whilst Descartes employs rather the principle of causality, and concludes—well understood without syllogism—from the idea of the infinite and the perfect in a cause also perfect and infinite.[58] But under these differences, and in spite of many more, is a common basis, a genius the same, which at first elevates us above the senses, and, by the intermediary of marvellous ideas that are incontestably in us, bears us towards him who alone can be their substance, who is the infinite and perfect author of our idea of infinity and perfection. For this reason, Descartes belongs to the family of Plato and Socrates.

The idea of the perfect and the finite being once introduced into the philosophy of the seventeenth century, it becomes there for the successors of Descartes what the theory of ideas became for the successors of Plato.

Among the French writers, Malebranche, perhaps, reminds us with the least disadvantage, although very imperfectly still, of the manner of Plato: he sometimes expresses its elevation and grace; but he is far from possessing the Socratic good sense, and, it must be confessed, no one has clouded more the theory of ideas by exaggerations of every kind which he has mingled with them.[59] Instead of establishing that there is in the human reason, wholly personal as it is by its intimate relation with our other faculties, something also which is not personal, something universal which permits it to elevate itself to universal truths, Malebranche does not hesitate to absolutely confound the reason that is in us with the divine reason itself. Moreover, according to Malebranche, we do not directly know particular things, sensible objects; we know them only by ideas; it is the intelligible extension and not the material extension that we immediately perceive; in vision the proper object of the mind is the universal, the idea; and as the idea is in God, it is in God that we see all things. We can understand how well-formed minds must have been shocked by such a theory; but it is not just to confound Plato with his brilliant and unfaithful disciple. In Plato, sensibility directly attains sensible things; it makes them known to us as they are, that is to say, as very imperfect and undergoing perpetual change, which renders the knowledge that we have of them almost unworthy of the name of knowledge. It is reason, different in us from sensibility, which, above sensible objects, discovers to us the universal, the idea, and gives a knowledge solid and durable. Having once attained ideas, we have reached God himself, in whom they have their foundation, who finishes and consummates true knowledge. But we have no need of God, nor of ideas, in order to perceive sensible objects, which are defective and changing; for this our senses are sufficient. Reason is distinct from the senses; it transcends the imperfect knowledge of what they are capable; it attains the universal, because it possesses something universal itself; it participates in the divine reason, but it is not the divine reason; it is enlightened by it, it comes from it—it is not it.

Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Descartes in the treatise, de l'Existence de Dieu. The second part is entirely Cartesian in method, in the order and sequence of the proofs. Nevertheless, Malebranche also appears there, especially in the fourth chapter, on the nature of ideas, and he predominates in all the metaphysical portions of the first part. After the explanations which we have given, it will not be difficult for you to discern what is true and what is at times excessive in the passages which follow:[60]

Part i., chap. lii. "Oh! how great is the mind of man! It bears in itself what astonishes itself and infinitely surpasses itself. Its ideas are universal, eternal, and immutable. … The idea of the infinite is in me as well as that of lines, numbers, and circles. … —Chap. liv. Besides this idea of the infinite, I have also universal and immutable notions, which are the rule of all my judgments. I can judge of nothing except by consulting them, and it is not in my power to judge against what they represent to me. My thoughts, far from being able to correct this rule, are themselves corrected in spite of me by this superior rule, and they are irresistibly adjusted to its decision. Whatever effort of mind I may make, I can never succeed in doubting that two and two are four; that the whole is not greater than any of its parts; that the centre of a perfect circle is not equidistant from all points of the circumference. I am not at liberty to deny these propositions; and if I deny these truths, or others similar to them, I have in me something that is above me, that forces me to the conclusion. This fixed and immutable rule is so internal and so intimate that I am inclined to take it for myself; but it is above me since it corrects me, redresses me, and puts me in defiance against myself, and reminds me of my impotence. It is something that suddenly inspires me, provided I listen to it, and I am never deceived except in not listening to it. … This internal rule is what I call my reason. … —Chap. lv. In truth my reason is in me; for I must continually enter into myself in order to find it. But the higher reason which corrects me when necessary, which I consult, exists not by me, and makes no part of me. This rule is perfect and immutable; I am changing and imperfect. When I am deceived, it does not lose its integrity. When I am undeceived, it is not this that returns to its end: it is this which, without ever having deviated, has the authority over me to remind me of my error, and to make me return. It is a master within, which makes me keep silent, which makes me speak, which makes me believe, which makes me doubt, which makes me acknowledge my errors or confirm my judgments. Listening to it, I am instructed; listening to myself, I err. This master is everywhere, and its voice makes itself heard, from end to end of the universe, in all men as well as in me. … —Chap. lvi. … That which appears the most in us and seems to be the foundation of ourselves, I mean our reason, is that which is least of all our own, which we are constrained to believe to be especially borrowed. We receive without cessation, and at all moments, a reason superior to us, as we breathe without cessation the air, which is a foreign body. … —Chap. lvii. The internal and universal master always and everywhere speaks the same truths. We are not this master. It is true that we often speak without it, and more loftily than it. But we are then deceived, we are stammering, we do not understand ourselves. We even fear to see that we are deceived, and we close the ear through fear of being humiliated by its corrections. Without doubt, man, who fears being corrected by this incorruptible reason, who always wanders in not following it, is not that perfect, universal, immutable reason which corrects him in spite of himself. In all things we find, as it were, two principles within us. One gives, the other receives; one wants, the other supplies; one is deceived, the other corrects; one goes wrong by its own inclination, the other rectifies it. … Each one feels within himself a limited and subaltern reason, which wanders when it escapes a complete subordination, which is corrected only by returning to the yoke of another superior, universal, and immutable power. So every thing in us bears the mark of a subaltern, limited, partial, borrowed reason, which needs another to correct it at every moment. All men are rational, because they possess the same reason which is communicated to them in different degrees. There is a certain number of wise men; but the wisdom which they receive, as it were, from the fountain-head, which makes them what they are, is one and the same. … —Chap. lviii. Where is this wisdom? Where is this reason, which is both common and superior to all the limited and imperfect reasons of the human race? Where, then, is this oracle which is never silent, against which the vain prejudices of peoples are always impotent? Where is this reason which we ever need to consult, which comes to us to inspire us with the desire of listening to its voice? Where is this light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. … The substance of the human eye is not light; on the contrary, the eye borrows at each moment the light of the sun's rays. So my mind is not the primitive reason, the universal and immutable truth, it is only the medium that conducts this original light, that is illuminated by it. … —Chap. lx. I find two reasons in myself—one is myself, the other is above me. That which is in me is very imperfect, faulty, uncertain, preoccupied, precipitate, subject to aberration, changing, conceited, ignorant, and limited; in fine, it possesses nothing but what it borrows. The other is common to all men, and is superior to all; it is perfect, eternal, immutable, always ready to communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that are deceived, in fine, incapable of ever being exhausted or divided, although it gives itself to those who desire it. Where is this perfect reason, that is so near me and so different from me? Where is it? It must be something real. … Where is this supreme reason? Is it not God that I am seeking?"

Part ii., chap. i., sect. 28.[61] "I have in me the idea of the infinite and of infinite perfection. … Give me a finite thing as great as you please—let it quite transcend the reach of my senses, so that it becomes, as it were, infinite to my imagination; it always remains finite in my mind; I conceive a limit to it, even when I cannot imagine it. I am not able to mark the limit; but I know that it exists; and far from confounding it with the infinite, I conceive it as infinitely distant from the idea that I have of the veritable infinite. If one speaks to me of the indefinite as a mean between the two extremes of the infinite and the limited, I reply, that it signifies nothing, that, at least, it only signifies something truly finite, whose boundaries escape the imagination without escaping the mind. … Sect. 29. Where have I obtained this idea, which is so much above me, which infinitely surpasses me, which astonishes me, which makes me disappear in my own eyes, which renders the infinite present to me? Whence does it come? Where have I obtained it? … Once more, whence comes this marvellous representation of the infinite, which pertains to the infinite itself, which resembles nothing finite? It is in me, it is more than myself; it seems to me every thing, and myself nothing. I can neither efface, obscure, diminish, nor contradict it. It is in me; I have not put it there, I have found it there; and I have found it there only because it was already there before I sought it. It remains there invariable, even when I do not think of it, when I think of something else. I find it whenever I seek it, and it often presents itself when I am not seeking it. It does not depend upon me; I depend upon it. … Moreover, who has made this infinite representation of the infinite, so as to give it to me? Has it made itself? Has the infinite image[62] of the infinite had no original, according to which it has been made, no real cause that has produced it? Where are we in relation to it? And what a mass of extravagances! It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to conclude that it is the infinitely perfect being that renders himself immediately present to me, when I conceive him, and that he himself is the idea which I have of him. … "

Chap. iv., sect. 49. " … My ideas are myself; for they are my reason. … My ideas, and the basis of myself, or of my mind, appear but the same thing. On the other hand, my mind is changing, uncertain, ignorant, subject to error, precipitate in its judgments, accustomed to believe what it does not clearly understand, and to judge without having sufficiently consulted its ideas, which are by themselves certain and immutable. My ideas, then, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. What shall I believe, then, they can be? … What then! are my ideas God? They are superior to my mind, since they rectify and correct it; they have the character of the Divinity, for they are universal and immutable like God; they really subsist, according to a principle that we have already established: nothing exists so really as that which is universal and immutable. If that which is changing, transitory, and derived, truly exists, much more does that which cannot change, and is necessary. It is then necessary to find in nature something existing and real, that is, my ideas, something that is within me, and is not myself, that is superior to me, that is in me even when I am not thinking of it, with which I believe myself to be alone, as though I were only with myself, in fine, that is more present to me, and more intimate than my own foundation. I know not what this something, so admirable, so familiar, so unknown, can be, except God."

Let us now hear the most solid, the most authoritative of the Christian doctors of the seventeenth century—let us hear Bossuet in his Logic, and in the Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self.[63]

Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philosophy—St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Descartes. He had been taught at the college of Navarre the doctrine of St. Thomas, that is to say, a modified peripateticism; at the same time he was nourished by the reading of St. Augustine, and out of the schools he found spread abroad the philosophy of Descartes. He adopted it, and had no difficulty in reconciling it with that of St. Augustine, while, upon more than one point, it corroborated the doctrine of St. Thomas. Bossuet invented nothing in philosophy; he received every thing, but every thing united and purified, thanks to that supreme good sense which in him is a quality predominating over force, grandeur, and eloquence.[64] In the passages which I am about to exhibit to you, which I hope you will impress upon your memories, you will not find the grace of Malebranche, the exhaustless abundance of Fenelon; you will find what is better than either, to wit, clearness and precision—all the rest in him is in some sort an addition to these.

Fenelon disengages badly enough the process which conducts from ideas, from universal and necessary truths, to God. Bossuet renders to himself a strict account of this process, and marks it with force; it is the principle that we have invoked, that which concludes from attributes in a subject, from qualities in a being, from laws in a legislator, from eternal verities in an eternal mind that comprehends them and eternally possesses them. Bossuet cites St. Augustine, cites Plato himself, interprets him and defends him in advance against those who would make Platonic ideas beings subsisting by themselves, whilst they really exist only in the mind of God.

Logic, book i., chap. xxxvi. "When I consider a rectilineal triangle as a figure bounded by three straight lines, and having three angles equal to two right angles, neither more nor less; and when I pass from this to an equilateral triangle with its three sides and its three angles equal, whence it follows, that I consider each angle of this triangle as less than a right angle; and when I come again to consider a right-angled triangle, and what I clearly see in this idea, in connection with the preceding ideas, that the two angles of this triangle are necessarily acute, and that these two acute angles are exactly equal to one right angle, neither more nor less—I see nothing contingent and mutable, and consequently, the ideas that represent to me these truths are eternal. Were there not in nature a single equilateral or right-angled triangle, or any triangle whatever, every thing that I have just considered would remain always true and indubitable. In fact, I am not sure of having ever seen an equilateral or rectilineal triangle. Neither the rule nor the dividers could assure me that any human hand, however skilful, could ever make a line exactly straight, or sides and angles perfectly equal to each other. In strictness, we should only need a microscope, in order, not to understand, but to see at a glance, that the lines which we trace deviate from straightness, and differ in length. We have never seen, then, any but imperfect images of equilateral, rectilineal, or isosceles triangles, since they neither exist in nature, nor can be constructed by art. Nevertheless, what we see of the nature and the properties of a triangle, independently of every existing triangle, is certain and indubitable. Place an understanding in any given time, or at any point in eternity, thus to speak, and it will see these truths equally manifest; they are, therefore, eternal. Since the understanding does not give being to truth, but is only employed in perceiving truth, it follows, that were every created understanding destroyed, these truths would immutably subsist. … "

Chap. xxxvii. "Since there is nothing eternal, immutable, independent, but God alone, we must conclude that these truths do not subsist in themselves, but in God alone, and in his eternal ideas, which are nothing else than himself.

"There are those who, in order to verify these eternal truths which we have proposed, and others of the same nature, have figured to themselves eternal essences aside from deity—a pure illusion, which comes from not understanding that in God, as in the source of being, and in his understanding, where resides the art of making and ordering all things, are found primitive ideas, or as St. Augustine says, the eternally subsisting reasons of things. Thus, in the thought of the architect is the primitive idea of a house which he perceives in himself; this intellectual house would not be destroyed by any ruin of houses built according to this interior model; and if the architect were eternal, the idea and the reason of the house would also be eternal. But, without recurring to the mortal architect, there is an immortal architect, or rather a primitive eternally subsisting art in the immutable thought of God, where all order, all measure, all rule, all proportion, all reason, in a word, all truth are found in their origin.

"These eternal verities which our ideas represent, are the true object of science; and this is the reason why Plato, in order to render us truly wise, continually reminds us of these ideas, wherein is seen, not what is formed, but what is, not what is begotten and is corrupt, what appears and vanishes, what is made and defective, but what eternally subsists. It is this intellectual world which that divine philosopher has put in the mind of God before the world was constructed, which is the immutable model of that great work. These are the simple, eternal, immutable, unbegotten, incorruptible ideas to which he refers us, in order to understand truth. This is what has made him say that our ideas, images of the divine ideas, were also immediately derived from the divine ideas, and did not come by the senses, which serve very well, said he, to awaken them, but not to form them in our mind. For if, without having ever seen any thing eternal, we have so clear an idea of eternity, that is to say, of being that is always the same; if, without having perceived a perfect triangle, we understand it distinctly, and demonstrate so many incontestable truths concerning it, it is a mark that these ideas do not come from our senses."

Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self.[65] Chap. iv., sect. 5. Intelligence has for its object eternal truths, which are nothing else than God himself, in whom they are always subsisting and perfectly understood.

" … We have already remarked that the understanding has eternal verities for its object. The standards by which we measure all things are eternal and invariable. We know clearly that every thing in the universe is made according to proportion, from the greatest to the least, from the strongest to the weakest, and we know it well enough to understand that these proportions are related to the principles of eternal truth. All that is demonstrated in mathematics, and in any other science whatever, is eternal and immutable, since the effect of the demonstration is to show that the thing cannot be otherwise than as it is demonstrated to be. So, in order to understand the nature and the properties of things which I know, for example, a triangle, a square, a circle, or the relations of these figures, and all other figures, to each other, it is not necessary that I should find such in nature, and I may be sure that I have never traced, never seen, any that are perfect. Neither is it necessary that I should think that there is motion in the world in order to understand the nature of motion itself, or that of the lines which every motion describes, and the hidden proportions according to which it is developed. When the idea of these things is once awakened in my mind, I know that, whether they have an actual existence or not, so they must be, that it is impossible for them to be of another nature, or to be made in a different way. To come to something that concerns us more nearly, I mean by these principles of eternal truth, that they do not depend on human existence, that, so far as he is capable of reasoning, it is the essential duty of man to live according to reason, and to search for his maker, through fear of lacking the recognition of his maker, if in fault of searching for him, he should be ignorant of him. All these truths, and all those which I deduce from them by sure reasoning, subsist independently of all time. In whatever time I place a human understanding, it will know them, but in knowing them it will find them truths, it will not make them such, for our cognitions do not make their objects, but suppose them. So these truths subsist before all time, before the existence of a human understanding: and were every thing that is made according to the laws of proportion, that is to say, every thing that I see in nature, destroyed except myself, these laws would be preserved in my thought, and I should clearly see that they would always be good and always true, were I also destroyed with the rest.

"If I seek how, where, and in what subject they subsist eternal and immutable, as they are, I am obliged to avow the existence of a being in whom truth is eternally subsisting, in whom it is always understood; and this being must be truth itself, and must be all truth, and from him it is that truth is derived in every thing that exists and has understanding out of him.

"It is, then, in him, in a certain manner, who is incomprehensible[66] to me, it is in him, I say, that I see these eternal truths; and to see them is to turn to him who is immutably all truth, and to receive his light.

"This eternal object is God eternally subsisting, eternally true, eternally truth itself. … It is in this eternal that these eternal truths subsist. It is also by this that I see them. All other men see them as well as myself, and we see them always the same, and as having existed before us. For we know that we have commenced, and we know that these truths have always been. Thus we see them in a light superior to ourselves, and it is in this superior light that we see whether we act well or ill, that is to say, whether we act according to these constitutive principles of our being or not. In that, then, we see, with all other truths, the invariable rules of our conduct, and we see that there are things in regard to which duty is indispensable, and that in things which are naturally indifferent, the true duty is to accommodate ourselves to the greatest good of society. A well-disposed man conforms to the civil laws, as he conforms to custom. But he listens to an inviolable law in himself, which says to him that he must do wrong to no one, that it is better to be injured than to injure. … The man who sees these truths, by these truths judges himself, and condemns himself when he errs. Or, rather, these truths judge him, since they do not accommodate themselves to human judgments, but human judgments are accommodated to them. And the man judges rightly when, feeling these judgments to be variable in their nature, he gives them for a rule these eternal verities.

"These eternal verities which every understanding always perceives the same, by which every understanding is governed, are something of God, or rather, are God himself. …

"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, and man is to himself an indubitable proof of this. For, whether he considers himself or extends his vision to the beings that surround him, he sees every thing subjected to certain laws, and to immutable rules of truth. He sees that he understands these laws, at least in part—he who has neither made himself, nor any part of the universe, however small, and he sees that nothing could have been made had not these laws been elsewhere perfectly understood; and he sees that it is necessary to recognize an eternal wisdom wherein all law, all order, all proportion, have their primitive reason. For it is absurd to suppose that there is so much sequence in truths, so much proportion in things, so much economy in their arrangement, that is to say, in the world, and that this sequence, this proportion, this economy, should nowhere be understood:—and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that there is some one who knows them in their perfection, and that this is he who has made all things. … "

Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates that the soul knows by the imperfection of its own intelligence that there is elsewhere a perfect intelligence.

In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of truth to God.

"Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so pure, of truth? Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern reasoning, that form manners, by which it discovers the secret proportions of figures and of movements? Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which I have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, the circles, that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and their relations? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces this effect? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so true—I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular figure, and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly? Are there somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, triangles or circles existing with this perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed upon my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and conduct also exist in some place, whence they communicate to me their immutable truth? Or, indeed, is it not rather he who has everywhere extended measure, proportion, truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of them? … It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in the image of God, capable of understanding truth, which is God himself, actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards God, where the truth appears to it as soon as God wills to make the truth appear to it. … It is an astonishing thing that man understands so many truths, without understanding at the same time that all truth comes from God, that it is in God, that it is God himself. … It is certain that God is the primitive reason of all that exists and has understanding in the universe; that he is the true original, and that every thing is true by relation to his eternal idea, that seeking truth is seeking him, and that finding truth is finding him. … "

Chap. v., sect. 14. "The senses do not convey to the soul knowledge of truth. They excite it, awaken it, and apprize it of certain effects: it is solicited to search for causes, but it discovers them, it sees their connections, the principles which put them in motion, only in a superior light that comes from God, or is God himself. God is, then, truth, which is always the same to all minds, and the true source of intelligence. For this reason intelligence beholds the light, breathes, and lives."

At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes to crown these great testimonies, and to complete their unanimity.

Here is a passage from an important treatise entitled, Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Idæis, in which Leibnitz declares that primary notions are the attributes of God. "I know not," he says, "whether man can perfectly account to himself for his ideas, except by ascending to primary ideas for which he can no more account, that is to say, to the absolute attributes of God."[67]

The same doctrine is in the Principia Philosophiæ seu Theses in Gratiam Principis Eugenii. "The intelligence of God is the region of eternal truths, and the ideas that depend upon them."[68]

Theodicea, part ii., sect. 189.[69] "It must not be said with the Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were no understanding, not even that of God. For, in my opinion, it is the divine understanding that makes the reality of eternal truths."

Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain, book ii., chap. xvii. "The idea of the absolute is in us internally like that of being. These absolutes are nothing else than the attributes of God, and it may be said they are just as much the source of ideas as God is in himself the principle of beings."

Ibid., book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded where those ideas would be if no mind existed, and what would then become of the real foundation of this certainty of eternal truths? That brings us in fine to the last foundation of truths, to wit, to that supreme and universal mind which cannot be destitute of existence, whose understanding, to speak truly, is the region of eternal truths, as St. Augustine saw and clearly enough expressed it. And that it may not be thought necessary to recur to it, we must consider that these necessary truths contain the determinating reason and the regulative principle of existences themselves, and, in a word, the laws of the universe. So these unnecessary truths, being anterior to the existences of contingent beings, must have their foundation in the existence of a necessary substance. It is there that I find the original of truths which are stamped upon our souls, not in the form of propositions, but as sources, the application and occasions of which will produce actual enunciations."

So, from Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicians have thought that absolute truth is an attribute of absolute being. Truth is incomprehensible without God, as God is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human intelligence and the supreme intelligence, as a kind of mediator. In the lowest degree, as well as at the height of being, God is everywhere met, for truth is everywhere. Study nature, elevate yourselves to the laws that govern it and make of it as it were a living truth:—the more profoundly you understand its laws, the nearer you approach to God. Study, above all, humanity; humanity is much greater than nature, for it comes from God as well as nature, and knows him, while nature is ignorant of him. Especially seek and love truth, and refer it to the immortal being who is its source. The more you know of the truth, the more you know of God. The sciences, so far from turning us away from religion, conduct us to it. Physics, with their laws, mathematics, with their sublime ideas, especially philosophy, which cannot take a single step without encountering universal and necessary principles, are so many stages on the way to Deity, and, thus to speak, so many temples in which homage is perpetually paid to him.

But in the midst of these high considerations, let us carefully guard ourselves against two opposite errors, from which men of fine genius have not always known how to preserve themselves,—against the error of making the reason of man purely individual, and against the error of confounding it with truth and the divine reason.[70] If the reason of man is purely individual because it is in the individual, it can comprehend nothing that is not individual, nothing that transcends the limits wherein it is confined. Not only is it unable to elevate itself to any universal and necessary truth, not only is it unable to have any idea of it, even any suspicion of it, as one blind from his birth can have no suspicion that a sun exists; but there is no power, not even that of God, that by any means could make penetrate the reason of man any truth of that order absolutely repugnant to its nature; since, for this end, it would not be sufficient for God to lighten our mind; it would be necessary to change it, to add to it another faculty. Neither, on the other hand, must we, with Malebranche, make the reason of man to such a degree impersonal that it takes the place of truth which is its object, and of God who is its principle. It is truth that to us is absolutely impersonal, and not reason. Reason is in man, yet it comes from God. Hence it is individual and finite, whilst its root is in the infinite; it is personal by its relation to the person in which it resides, and must also possess I know not what character of universality, of necessity even, in order to be capable of conceiving universal and necessary truths; hence it seems, by turns, according to the point of view from which it is regarded, pitiable and sublime. Truth is in some sort lent to human reason, but it belongs to a totally different reason, to wit, that supreme, eternal, uncreated reason, which is God himself. The truth in us is nothing else than our object; in God, it is one of his attributes, as well as justice, holiness, mercy, as we shall subsequently see. God exists; and so far as he exists, he thinks, and his thoughts are truths, eternal as himself, which are reflected in the laws of the universe, which the reason of man has received the power to attain. Truth is the offspring, the utterance, I was about to say, the eternal word of God, if it is permitted philosophy to borrow this divine language from that holy religion which teaches us to worship God in spirit and in truth. Of old, the theory of Ideas, which manifest God to men, and remind them of him, had given to Plato the surname of the precursor; on account of that theory of Ideas he was dear to St. Augustine, and is invoked by Bossuet. It is by this same theory, wisely interpreted, and purified by the light of our age, that the new philosophy is attached to the tradition of great philosophies, and to that of Christianity.