Читать книгу Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good - Victor Cousin - Страница 9

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Résumé of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the origin of universal and necessary principles.—Danger of this question, and its necessity.—Different forms under which truth presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms: theory of spontaneity and reflection.—The primitive form of principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form, and gives them their actual form.—Examination and refutation of the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an induction founded on particular notions.

We may regard as a certain conquest of the experimental method and of true psychological analysis, the establishment of principles which at the same time that they are given to us by the surest of all experiences, that of consciousness, have a bearing superior to experience, and open to us regions inaccessible to empiricism. We have recognized such principles at the head of nearly all the sciences; then, searching among our different faculties for that which may have given them to us, we have ascertained that it is impossible to refer them to any other faculty than to that general faculty of knowing which we call reason, very different from reasoning, to which it furnishes its laws.

That is the point at which we have arrived. But is it possible to stop there?

In human intelligence, as it is now developed, universal and necessary principles are offered to us under forms in some sort consecrated. The principle of causality, for example, is thus enounced to us:—Every thing that begins to appear necessarily has a cause. Other principles have this same axiomatic form. But have they always had it, and did they spring from the human mind with this logical and scholastic apparel, as Minerva sprang all armed from the head of Jupiter? With what characters did they show themselves at first, before taking those in which they are now clothed, and which can scarcely be their primitive characters? In a word, is it possible to find the origin of universal and necessary principles, and the route which they must have followed in order to arrive at what they are to-day? A new problem, the importance of which it is easy to feel; for, if it can be resolved, what light will be shed upon these principles! On the other hand, what difficulties must be encountered! How can we penetrate to the sources of human knowledge, which are concealed, like those of the Nile? Is it not to be feared that, in plunging into the obscure past, instead of truth, one may encounter an hypothesis; that, attaching himself, then, to this hypothesis, he may transport it from the past to the present, and that, being deceived in regard to the origin of principles, he may be led to misconceive their actual and certain characters, or, at least, to mutilate and enfeeble those which the adopted origin would not easily explain? This danger is so great, this rock is so celebrated in shipwrecks, that before braving it one should know how to take many precautions against the seductions of the spirit of the system. It is even conceived that great philosophers, who were timid in no place, have suppressed the perilous problem. In fact, by undertaking to grapple with this problem at first, Locke and Condillac went far astray,[25] and it must be said, corrupted all philosophy at its source. The empirical school, which lauds the experimental method so much, turns its back upon it, thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the actual characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by consciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. Reid[26] and Kant[27] showed themselves much more observing by confining themselves within the limits of the present, through fear of losing themselves in the darkness of the past. Both freely treat of universal and necessary principles in the form which they now have, without asking what was their primitive form. We much prefer this wise circumspection to the adventurous spirit of the empirical school. Nevertheless, when a problem is given out, so long as it is not solved, it troubles and besets the human mind. Philosophy ought not to shun it then, but its duty is to approach it only with extreme prudence and a severe method.

We cannot recollect too well, for the sake of others and ourselves, that the primitive state of human cognitions is remote from us; we can scarcely bring it within the reach of our vision and submit it to observation; the actual state, on the contrary, is always at our disposal: it is sufficient for us to enter into ourselves, to fathom consciousness by reflection, and make it give up what it contains. Setting out from certain facts, we shall not be liable to wander subsequently into hypotheses, or if, in ascending to the primitive state, we fall into any error, we shall be able to perceive it and repair it by the aid of the truth which an impartial observation shall have given us; every origin which shall not legitimately end at the point where we are, is by that alone convicted of being false, and will deserve to be discarded.[28]

You know that a large portion of the last year was spent upon this question. We took, one by one, universal and necessary questions submitted to our examination, in order to determine the origin of each one of them, its primitive form, and the different forms which have successively clothed it; only after having operated thus upon a sufficiently large number of principles, did we come slowly to a general conclusion, and that conclusion we believe ourselves entitled to express here briefly as the solid result of a most circumspect analysis, and, at least, a most methodical labor. We must either renew before you this labor, this analysis, and thereby run the risk of not being able to complete the long course that we have marked out for ourselves, or we must limit ourselves to reminding you of the essential traits of the theory at which we arrived.

This theory, moreover, is in itself so simple, that, without the dress of regular demonstrations upon which it is founded, its own evidence will sufficiently establish it. It wholly rests upon the distinction between the different forms under which truth is presented to us. It is, in its somewhat arid generality, as follows:

1st. One can perceive truth in two different ways. Sometimes one perceives it in such or such a particular circumstance. For example, in presence of two apples or two stones, and of two other similar objects placed by the side of the first, I perceive this truth with absolute certainty, viz., that these two stones and these two other stones make four stones—which is in some sort a concrete apperception of the truth, because the truth is given to us in regard to real and determinate objects. Sometimes I also affirm in a general manner that two and two equal four, abstracting every determinate object—which is the abstract conception of truth.

Now, of these two ways of knowing truth, which precedes in the chronological order of human knowledge? Is it not certain, may it not be avowed by every one, that the particular precedes the general, that the concrete precedes the abstract, that we begin by perceiving such or such a determinate truth, in such or such a case, at such or such a moment, in such or such a place, before conceiving a general truth, independently of every application and different circumstances of place and time?

2d. We can perceive the same truth without asking ourselves this question: Have we the ability not to admit this truth? We perceive it, then, by virtue alone of the intelligence which has been given us, and which enters spontaneously into exercise; or rather, we try to doubt the truth which we perceive, we attempt to deny it; we are not able to do it, and then it is presented to reflection as superior to all possible negation; it appears to us no longer only as a truth, but as a necessary truth.

Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflection, that reflection supposes an anterior operation, and that this operation, in order not to be one of reflection, and not to suppose another before it, must be entirely spontaneous; that thus the spontaneous and instinctive intuition of truth precedes its reflection and necessary conception?

Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the individual and in the race. It is, par excellence, the philosophic faculty; it sometimes engenders doubt and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, for being rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force of habit as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous intuition is the true logic of nature. It presides over the acquisition of nearly all our cognitions. Children, the people, three-fourths of the human race never pass beyond it, and rest there with boundless security.

The question of the origin of human cognitions is thus resolved for us in the simplest manner: it is enough for us to determine that operation of the mind which precedes all others, without which no other would take place, and which is the first exercise, and the first form of our faculty of knowing.[29]

Since every thing that bears the character of reflection cannot be primitive, and supposes an anterior state, it follows, that the principles which are the subject of our study could not have possessed at first the reflective and abstract character with which they are now marked, that they must have shown themselves at their origin in some particular circumstance, under a concrete and determinate form, and that in time they were disengaged from this form, in order to be invested with their actual, abstract, and universal form. These are the two ends of the chain; it remains for us to seek how the human mind has been from one to the other, from the primitive state to the actual state, from the concrete state to the abstract state.

How can we go from the concrete to the abstract? Evidently by that well-known operation which is called abstraction. Thus far, nothing is more simple. But it is necessary to discriminate between two sorts of abstractions.

In presence of several particular objects, you omit the characters which distinguish them, and separately consider a character which is common to them all—you abstract this character. Examine the nature and conditions of this abstraction; it proceeds by means of comparison, and it is founded on a certain number of particular and different cases. Take an example: examine how we form the abstract and general idea of color. Place before my eyes for the first time a white object. Can I here at the first step immediately arrive at a general idea of color? Can I at first place on one side the whiteness, and on the other side the color? Analyze what passes within you. You experience a sensation of whiteness. Omit the individuality of this sensation, and you wholly destroy it; you cannot neglect the whiteness, and preserve or abstract the color; for, a single color being given, which is a white color, if you take away that, there remains to you absolutely nothing in regard to color. Let a blue object succeed this white object, then a red object, etc.; having sensations differing from each other, you can neglect their differences, and only consider what they have in common, that they are sensations of sight, that is to say, colors, and you thus obtain the abstract and general idea of color. Take another example: if you had never smelled but a single flower, the violet, for instance, would you have had the idea of odor in general? No. The odor of the violet would be for you the only odor, beyond which you would not seek, you could not even imagine another. But if to the odor of the violet is added that of the rose, and other different odors, in a greater or less number, provided there be several, and a comparison be possible, and consequently, knowledge of their differences and their resemblances, then you will be able to form the general idea of odor. What is there in common between the odor of one flower and that of another flower, except that they have been smelled by aid of the same organ, and by the same person? What here renders generalization possible, is the unity of the sentient subject which remembers having been modified, while remaining the same, by different sensations; now, this subject can feel itself identical under different modifications, and it can conceive in the qualities of the object felt some resemblance and some dissimilarity, only on the condition of a certain number of sensations experienced, of odors smelled. In that case, but in that case alone, there can be comparison, abstraction, and generalization, because there are different and similar elements.

In order to arrive at the abstract form of universal and necessary principles, we have no need of all this labor. Let us take again, for example, the principle of cause. If you suppose six particular cases from which you have abstracted this principle, it will contain neither more nor less ideas than if you had deduced it from a single one. To be able to say that the event which I see must have a cause, it is not indispensable to have seen several events succeed each other. The principle which compels me to pronounce this judgment, is already complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in respect to its object, it cannot change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the greater or less number of its applications. The only difference that it is subject to in regard to us, is, that we apply it whether we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its particular application. The question is not to eliminate the particularity of the phenomenon, wherein it appears to us, whether it be the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity of a cause for every thing that begins to exist. Here, it is not because I have been the same, or have been affected in the same manner in several different cases, that I have come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf falls: at the same instant I think, I believe, I declare that this falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man has been killed: at the same instant I believe, I proclaim that this death must have a cause. Each one of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances, and something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them cannot but have a cause. Now, I am perfectly able to disengage the universal from the particular, in regard to the first fact as well as in regard to the second fact, for the universal is in the first quite as well as in the second. In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in the first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the third, nor in a thousandth; for a thousand are not nearer than one to the infinite, to absolute universality. It is the same, and still more evidently, with necessity. Pay particular attention to this point: if necessity is not in the first fact, it cannot be in any; for necessity cannot be formed little by little, and by successive increment. If, at the first murder that I see, I do not exclaim that this murder necessarily has a cause, at the thousandth murder, although it shall have been proved that all the others have had causes, I shall have the right to think that this new murder has, very probably, also its cause; but I shall never have the right to declare that it necessarily has a cause. But when necessity and universality are already in a single case, that case alone is sufficient to entitle us to deduce them from it.[30]

We have established the existence of universal and necessary principles: we have marked their origin; we have shown that they appear to us at first from a particular fact, and we have shown by what process, by what sort of abstraction the mind disengages them from the determinate and concrete form which envelops them, but does not constitute them. Our task, then, seems accomplished. But it is not—we must defend the solution which we have just presented to you of the problem of the origin of principles against the theory of an eminent metaphysician, whose just authority might seduce you. M. Maine de Biran[31] is, like us, the declared adversary of the philosophy of sensation—he admits universal and necessary principles; but the origin which he assigns to them, puts them, according to us, in peril, and would lead back by a detour to the empirical school.

Universal and necessary principles, if expressed in propositions, embrace several terms. For example, in the principle that every phenomenon supposes a cause; and in this, that every quality supposes a substance, by the side of the ideas of quality and phenomenon are met the ideas of cause and substance, which seem the foundation of these two principles. M. de Biran pretends that the two ideas are anterior to the two principles which contain them, and that we at first find these ideas in ourselves in the consciousness that we are cause and substance, and that, these ideas once being thus acquired, induction transports them out of ourselves, makes us conceive causes and substances wherever there are phenomena and qualities, and that the principles of cause and substance are thus explained. I beg pardon of my illustrious friend; but it is impossible to admit in the least degree this explanation.

The possession of the origin of the idea of cause is by no means sufficient for the possession of the origin of the principle of causality; for the idea and the principle are things essentially different. You have established, I would say to M. de Biran, that the idea of cause is found in that of productive volition:—you will to produce certain effects, and you produce them; hence the idea of a cause, of a particular cause, which is yourself; but between this fact and the axiom that all phenomena which appear necessarily have a cause, there is a gulf.

You believe that you can bridge it over by induction. The idea of cause once found in ourselves, induction applies it, you say, wherever a new phenomenon appears. But let us not be deceived by words, and let us account for this extraordinary induction. The following dilemma I submit with confidence to the loyal dialectics of M. de Biran:

Is the induction of which you speak universal and necessary? Then it is a different name for the same thing. An induction which forces us universally and necessarily to associate the idea of cause with that of every phenomenon that begins to appear is precisely what is called the principle of causality. On the contrary, is this induction neither universal nor necessary? It cannot supply the place of the principle of cause, and the explanation destroys the thing to be explained.

It follows from this that the only true result of these various psychological investigations is, that the idea of personal and free cause precedes all exercise of the principle of causality, but without explaining it.

The theory which we combat is much more powerless in regard to other principles which, far from being exercised before the ideas from which it is pretended to deduce them, precede them, and even give birth to them. How have we acquired the idea of time and that of space, except by aid of the principle that the bodies and events, which we see are in time and in space? We have seen[32] that, without this principle, and confined to the data of the senses and consciousness, neither time nor space would exist for us. Whence have we deduced the idea of the infinite, except from the principle that the finite supposes the infinite, that all finite and defective things, which we perceive by our senses and feel within us, are not sufficient for themselves, and suppose something infinite and perfect? Omit the principle, and the idea of the infinite is destroyed. Evidently this idea is derived from the application of the principle, and it is not the principle which is derived from the idea.

Let us dwell a little longer on the principle of substances. The question is to know whether the idea of subject, of substance, precedes or follows the exercise of the principle. Upon what ground could the idea of substance be anterior to the principle that every quality supposes a substance? Upon the ground alone that substance be the object of self-observation, as cause is said to be. When I produce a certain effect, I may perceive myself in action and as cause; in that case, there would be no need of the intervention of any principle; but it is not, it cannot be, the same, when the question is concerning the substance which is the basis of the phenomena of consciousness, of our qualities, our acts, our faculties even; for this substance is not directly observable; it does not perceive itself, it conceives itself. Consciousness perceives sensation, volition, thought, it does not perceive their subject. Who has ever perceived the soul? Has it not been necessary, in order to attain this invisible essence, to set out from a principle which has the power to bind the visible to the invisible, phenomenon to being, to wit, the principle of substances?[33] The idea of substance is necessarily posterior to the application of the principle, and, consequently, it cannot explain its formation.

Let us be well understood. We do not mean to say that we have in the mind the principle of substances before perceiving a phenomenon, quite ready to apply the principle to the phenomenon, when it shall present itself; we only say that it is impossible for us to perceive a phenomenon without conceiving at the same instant a substance, that is to say, to the power of perceiving a phenomenon, either by the senses or by consciousness, is joined that of conceiving the substance in which it inheres. The facts thus take place:—the perception of phenomena and the conception of the substance which is their basis are not successive, they are simultaneous. Before this impartial analysis fall at once two equal and opposite errors—one, that experience, exterior or interior, can beget principles; the other, that principles precede experience.[34]

To sum up, the pretension of explaining principles by the ideas which they contain, is a chimerical one. In supposing that all the ideas which enter into principles are anterior to them, it is necessary to show how principles are deduced from these ideas—which is the first and radical difficulty. Moreover, it is not true that in all cases ideas precede principles, for often principles precede ideas—a second difficulty equally insurmountable. But whether ideas are anterior or posterior to principles, principles are always independent of them; they surpass them by all the superiority of universal and necessary principles over simple ideas.[35]

We should, perhaps, beg your pardon for the austerity of this lecture. But philosophical questions must be treated philosophically: it does not belong to us to change their character. On other subjects, another language. Psychology has its own language, the entire merit of which is a severe precision, as the highest law of psychology itself is the shunning of every hypothesis, and an inviolable respect for facts. This law we have religiously followed. While investigating the origin of universal and necessary principles, we have especially endeavored not to destroy the thing to be explained by a systematic explanation. Universal and necessary principles have come forth in their integrity from our analysis. We have given the history of the different forms which they successively assume, and we have shown, that in all these changes they remain the same, and of the same authority, whether they enter spontaneously and involuntarily into exercise, and apply themselves to particular and determinate objects, or reflection turns them back upon themselves in order to interrogate them in regard to their nature, or abstraction makes them appear under the form in which their universality and their necessity are manifest. Their certainty is the same under all their forms, in all their applications; it has neither generation nor origin; it is not born such or such a day, and it does not increase with time, for it knows no degrees. We have not commenced by believing a little in the principle of causality, of substances, of time, of space, of the infinite, etc., then believing a little more, then believing wholly. These principles have been, from the beginning, what they will be in the end, all-powerful, necessary, irresistible. The conviction which they give is always absolute, only it is not always accompanied by a clear consciousness. Leibnitz himself has no more confidence in the principle of causality, and even in his favorite principle of sufficient reason, than the most ignorant of men; but the latter applies these principles without reflecting on their power, by which he is unconsciously governed, whilst Leibnitz is astonished at their power, studies it, and for all explanation, refers it to the human mind, and to the nature of things, that is to say, he elevates, to borrow the fine expression of M. Royer-Collard,[36] the ignorance of the mass of men to its highest source. Such is, thank heaven, the only difference that separates the peasant from the philosopher, in regard to those great principles of every kind which, in one way or another, discover to men the same truths indispensable to their physical, intellectual, and moral existence, and, in their ephemeral life, on the circumscribed point of space and time where fortune has thrown them, reveal to them something of the universal, the necessary, and the infinite.