Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

24. Hence, we do not conceive the accidents of bodies as possible without a subject in which they are inherent; and that substances are not inherent in another being, but are conceived and really exist without this inherence. A figure cannot exist without a thing figured, but the thing figured may still exist, through all other things are destroyed. The analysis of the nature of substance shows that its existence supposes the existence of another being which produced it; but relation between them is that of cause and effect, not of inherence, or that of the subject and its modification.

25. These last observations explain another mark of corporeal substances. In the third chapter of this book we found the three characteristics of being, the relation of the permanent to the variable, and the subject of the variations; we now find a fourth, which is a negation, non-inherence in another. This negative characteristic is included in the positive one, permanent subject of variations; for it is clear that in conceiving a subject permanent amid variations we do not include inherence, but rather deny it, at least implicitly. Non-inherence supposes something positive, something on which is founded the denial of the necessity of being inherent. What is this something? We know not. We know that it exists, but its explanation is beyond our reach. It is probably inexplicable without the intuition of the essence of things; – an intuition which we have not.

CHAPTER V.

CONSIDERATIONS ON CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE IN ITSELF

26. The idea of substance, such as we have thus far explained it, implies a relation to accidents in general. The idea we are now examining is not that of an indeterminate substance, but of corporeal substance; and it must be confessed that it is difficult to conceive a particular corporeal substance without any accident. If I take from the paper, on which I am writing, its figure, extension, and all that relates to my senses, what is there left for me to conceive something particular and determinate, something which is not the idea of being in general, but of this being in particular? It is clear that, in order that the object may not disappear altogether, and losing its individuality be confounded in the universal idea, I must reserve something by which I can say this: that is to say, that which is here, or which has affected me in this or that manner, or has been the subject of such or such modifications. I consider at least its position with respect to other bodies, or its causality in relation to the effects which it has produced in me, or its nature as the subject of determinate accidents. Just as the idea of finite substance in general involves relation to certain accidents in general, the idea of a particular substance involves relation to particular accidents.

27. We find this relation in our mode of conceiving corporeal substance; we cannot assert that it is involved in the nature of the substance. This nature is unknown to us, and when we attempt to examine it, we pass to another question, that of the essence of bodies.

28. Neither can we say how far the identity of the corporeal substance continues under its different transformations. The partisans of corpuscular philosophy consider all transformations as mere local motions, and all the variations which we see in bodies as mere results of the different position of the corpuscles among themselves. Leibnitz resolved matter into an infinity of monads, differing from the atoms of Epicurus, but conducing to the substantial invariability of bodies, which are only a collection of indivisible substances, which he calls monads. The Aristotelians believed that, of the changes of bodies, some were accidental, as figure, motion, density, warmth, cold, etc.; others substantial, as the change of wood to ashes. But in all the variety of systems, all admit something permanent, the subject of the changes. The Atomists and Leibnitz evidently admitted the identity of the subject. As to the Aristotelians, although the change which introduced a substantial form different from the first substantially transformed the being, so that after the change of the substantial form it could not be said that one was substantially the other, they still thought there was a common subject in these substantial transformations, and this was what they called the first matter, materia prima. All systems of philosophy admit this clear and evident truth, that in the midst of the transformations of the corporeal world, there is something permanent.

29. This corporeal substance being a reality, must not only exist, but it must be something determinate. This substantial determination of the body, which makes it this particular thing, and distinguishes it in its internal nature, in its essence, from all other bodies of other species, the Aristotelians called the substantial form. The subject of this form, or actuality, which was common to all bodies, they called the materia prima, which was a pure potentiality, a sort of medium between pure nothing and actual being.

30. Ever since there have been schools of philosophy, these points have been disputed; and it is probable they always will be; but it is to very little purpose. We know the existence of the corporeal world, we know its relations to ourselves, we know its properties and its laws, so far as they are subject to our observation; but its intrinsic nature is beyond the reach of our senses, or our instruments. Increased acuteness of observation and improvement in the power and delicacy of instruments, discovers new mysteries, and man finds the barriers which he believed the ne plus ultra, removed from him as he advances. Will he ever be able to pass them? Will he ever make the entire circuit of this scientific world? Is the knowledge of the intrinsic nature of the subject of this infinity of phenomena which astonish us, reserved to the future? It is hard to believe it. The telescope, becoming more perfect, extends the limits of the universe, and seems to behold the infinitely great; the perfection of the microscope, advancing in the opposite direction, regards the infinitely little. Where are the limits? It is probable that man is not permitted to reach them while in this world. The mind of man in its fruitful activity, struggles alternately after the two extremes, but just as he flatters himself he is reaching the last limit, he feels that something stronger than himself withholds him from attaining the object of his noble desires; it is the chain that binds him to the mortal body, and obstructs the flight of his pure spirit.

CHAPTER VI.

SUBSTANTIALITY OF THE HUMAN ME

31. We have not found perfect unity in corporeal substances: all that are subject to our senses may be resolved into a number of others equally substances in their turn; a body is rather an aggregate of substances, than one substance. We do not find the unity in the bodies; we attribute it to them either inasmuch as they form a common link of our sensations, or inasmuch as we consider the different substances subordinated to one being and governing substance. Thus the parts of an animated body constitute a sort of unity, inasmuch as they are subordinate to the principle which animates them.

32. We do not conclude from this that true unity does not exist in bodies; if we could know their essence, we should doubtless discover it, whether in the monads, as maintained by Leibnitz, or in something else more or less resembling them. Although this knowledge of their essence is denied us, reason leads us to this unity. The composite is formed of parts; if these parts are in turn formed of others, we must at last come to something which has no parts; here we find the indivisible, or rather, the true unity. This reasoning is equally valid, even though we suppose matter to be infinitely divisible. Infinite divisibility would suppose an infinity of parts into which any body may be divided: these parts would therefore exist; these infinitesimal elements would be real: the unity would be in them.

33. Independently of the external world, we find the idea of substance in ourselves; consciousness reveals its real application and perfect unity. Consciousness makes known to us that we think, desire, feel, and experience an infinity of affections, some of which are subject to our will and are the product of the internal activity of our soul; others are independent of us, they come without our will, and often against it, and it is not always in our power to reproduce them even if we wish it.

This ebb and flow of ideas, volitions, and sentiments, have a point in which they are connected, a subject which receives them, remembers them, combines them, and seeks or avoids them; this being, of which we are internally conscious, philosophers have called the me. It is one and identical under all transformations; this unity, this identity, is an indisputable fact which consciousness reveals to us. Who could make us doubt that the me which thinks at the present moment is not the same which thought yesterday, which thought years ago? Notwithstanding the variety of thoughts and desires, the changes of opinion and will, who could deprive us of the firm and deep conviction which we have that we are the same who experience them all, that there is something here within us which is the subject of them all?

34. If there were not something in us permanent in the midst of this variety, the consciousness of the me would be impossible. Memory and combination would also be impossible; for there would be within us only a succession of unconnected phenomena. Thinking is impossible without something which thinks and remains identical under the variety of the forms of thought. There is, therefore, within us a simple subject which connects all the changes which occur in it: there is a substance. In it there is unity: the unity which we only find in corporeal substances after an infinite series of decompositions, is presented to us in the spiritual substance, at the first instant, as a simple internal fact, without which, all the phenomena which we perceive within us are absurd, and all experience of the external world impossible.

Without the unity of the me there can be no sensation, and without sensation no experience of the beings around us.

CHAPTER VII.

RELATION OF THE PROPOSITION, I THINK, TO THE SUBSTANTIALITY OF THE ME

35. The proposition, I think, can have no sense unless we admit that the soul is a substance. Philosophy loses its resting-point, and all that experience within us is a series of unconnected phenomena, incapable of being observed, or subjected to any rule.

36. My present thought is not individually my thought of yesterday, as my thought of to-morrow will not be my thought of to-day. These thoughts, considered in themselves and abstracted from a subject in which they are found, have no connection with one another: perhaps their objects are without any relation to each other, or even contradictory; perhaps the thought of to-day is the denial of the thought of yesterday.

37. The same is true of all thoughts, all acts of the will, of all sentiments, imaginary representations, and sensations, and, in general, of all that I experience within myself. Turning my attention to all internal affections, whatever they may be, I see in them only a series of phenomena, a sort of current of existences passing away and disappearing, some never to return, others to reappear at a different time, expressly presenting this difference. The reappearance is not individual, but similar: the affection which is repeated is not the same, but another resembling it. When the affection returns, I am conscious of its presence at the time, and conscious of its presence at a previous time; this double consciousness constitutes recollection, makes me distinguish between the two affections, and necessarily implies the judgment that one is not the other. There would be no recollection, if the affection recalling were identified with the affection recalled. A thing presents itself, but does not recall itself.

38. Therefore every thing passes away within us never to return, the disappearance is real, the reappearance but apparent; that which ceases to be can never return to be again; there may be a similar thing, but not the same; that which was, is passed, and time does not retrace its steps.

39. Therefore, the series of internal phenomena, considered in themselves and abstracted from the subject in which they reside, are necessarily unconnected, and there is no way of subordinating the terms of the series to any law, or connecting link.

40. Still this law exists in all our intellectual acts; reason, without laws which govern it, would be the greatest of absurdities; this link is found in all our affections. That they pass from us with their distinction and difference and resemblance is a fact of our mind, to which we are subjected, as to a primitive and inevitable condition of our existence.

41. The proposition, I think, in the sense in which the word think includes all internal affections, does not relate to isolated phenomena alone, but it necessarily implies a point, which we call the me, in which these phenomena are connected. If this point does not exist, if it is not one and identical, the thought of to-day can have no connection with the thought of yesterday: they are two distinct things, at different times, and perhaps contradictory: when I say to-day, I think, and mean that the I is the same as in the proposition, I thought yesterday, my language would be absurd; if they are mere phenomena, two thoughts without any connecting link, the me is nothing, I cannot say, I thought, I think; but I must say there was thought, there is thought. If, then, you ask me, where? in whom? I must reply, that there is no where, no who; I must deny the supposition, and confine myself to repeating, there was thought, there is thought.

42. To say me, it is necessary to suppose a permanent reality; a reality, because that which is not real is nothing; permanent, because that which passes away disappears, ceases to be, and cannot serve as the point to unite other things.

CHAPTER VIII.

REMARKS ON THE SOUL'S INTUITION OF ITSELF

43. The permanent reality of the me, considered in itself and abstracted from the things which pass within it, is a fact which we perceive in our intuition, and which we express in all our words. If this presence, this internal experience, be what is called the intuition of the soul, then we have intuition of our soul. This intuition is reproduced in every particular intuition, and in all internal affections in general; for, although they are isolated phenomena, they imply the intuition of the me, because they imply the consciousness of themselves.

44. The variety of isolated phenomena instead of proving any thing against the unity of the intuition of the me, on the contrary, evidently confirms it. If we conceived only one fixed and identical thought, there would be less necessity of uniting with it the idea of a subject in which it resides; but when there is a multitude of different phenomena, which cannot co-exist without contradiction, we must refer them to something constant, or else the internal world is converted into an absolute chaos.

45. The soul has, therefore, an intuition of itself; that is to say, it is conscious of its unity in multiplicity, of its identity in diversity, of its permanence in succession, of its constant duration in the appearance and disappearance of phenomena. Either we must admit this, or we must renounce the legitimacy of all testimony of consciousness, and embrace the most complete skepticism that ever existed, extending it both to the internal and to the external world.

46. We find within us the realization of the indeterminate conceptions of being, unity, permanence, and subject of modifications; this realization is revealed by consciousness, and is confirmed by the logical analysis of the series of phenomena in their relation to a point of connection.

47. All that is included in the idea of finite substance is contained in these four terms: being, one, permanent, and the subject of modifications. All this is in our soul, and we perceive by experience that we are internally affected by it. If this perception is called intuition, we have intuition of the substantiality of our soul.

48. The thinking being not only perceives itself but it knows itself as a real object, to which, by means of reflection, it applies the ideas of being, unity, permanence, and the subject of modifications. Therefore the soul may be the true predicate of propositions resting on logic and consciousness.

49. Have we any other intuition of the soul, besides that which has just been explained? To this I answer, that we have not while in this life, and at the same time I ask whether any other than that of consciousness is possible. Accustomed as we are to sensible intuitions which imply extension in space, we ask what the soul is in itself, and we do not seem to be satisfied without seeing its image. Leaving the order of sensibility and rising to the purely intellectual sphere, who knows whether we can say that there is no other intuition of the soul than that which we now have; whether the soul in itself, in the unity and simplicity of its entity, is the force which we perceive; whether this force is the subject of the modifications, the substance, without its being necessary to imagine another support in which this force might reside? Why may not this force be subsistent? Why must we imagine another substratum to support it? If it were so, if we must apply to the substance of the soul what the great Leibnitz thought applicable to all substances, making the idea of substance to consist in the idea of force; why may we not say that the pressure of the internal sense, the consciousness of itself, is all the intuition of itself which the soul can have?

50. You may ask me, what is the soul separated from the body? What will it perceive and know of itself, when it exists alone? As though it did not now perceive and know alone, or as though the organs, which it uses, could perceive or think. Does it, perchance, know how it uses them, or even know otherwise than by experience that it uses them at all? Is it not alone in the depths of its activity with its thoughts and the acts of its will, its sentiments, its joy and its sadness, its pleasures and its pains? Say, then, that perhaps we do not form sufficiently clear ideas of the mode of consciousness which we shall have of ourselves after this life; say that perhaps other intuitions of our self are possible; but do not imagine the soul as inconceivable alone. Leave me thought, will, sentiment, all that is internally present to my consciousness, to find myself; I ask no more. Give me communication with other beings, which affect me or are affected by me, which transmit to me thoughts and wills, which cause me pleasure or pain; I need nothing more in order to have a world which I can very well conceive. I am ignorant of the quality of the things, not of their possibility: the soul changes its state, not its nature.

CHAPTER IX.

KANT'S OPINION OF THE ARGUMENTS PROVING THE SUBSTANTIALITY OF THE SOUL

51. The psychological arguments in favor of the substantiality of the soul are mere paralogisms, in Kant's opinion; although they prove an ideal substance, they can never lead to a real substance. Besides the arguments with which this philosopher attacks the psychological proof of the substantiality of the soul, he had also a personal argument, which, considering the weakness of the human heart, was very powerful. He had either to place the substantiality of the soul in doubt, or else consent to the ruin of his whole system. "It would be," he says, "a great and even the only stumbling-block in our whole critique, if there were a possibility of demonstrating a priori that all thinking beings are in themselves simple substances, and (which is a consequence of the principle of this demonstration) are inseparably accompanied by personality and the consciousness of their existence distinct from all matter. For, in this case, if we had taken a single step out of the world of the senses, we should have entered into the field of the noumena, and no one would dispute our right to extend farther into it, to build in it, and, according to each one's good luck, to take possession of it."43

52. In Kant's conception, the first paralogism of pure psychology in favor of the substantiality of the soul is the following: – "Every thing, the representation of which is the absolute substance of our judgments, and which cannot serve as a determination of any thing else, is a substance. The me, as thinking being, is the absolute substance of all possible judgments, and this representation of itself cannot be the predicate of any thing else; therefore the me, as thinking being, is a substance."

These are the terms in which he presents the psychological reasoning which he proposes to attack, in the first edition of his Critic of Pure Reason; in the second edition, wishing to be more clear, or, perhaps, more obscure, he expresses the same argument in these words: – "That which cannot be thought otherwise than as subject, does not exist otherwise than as subject, and is therefore substance. Now a thinking being, regarded merely as such, cannot be thought otherwise than as subject. Therefore it exists only as such, that is, as substance." We must confess that if psychology could find no clearer expounders than Kant, and should have to use in its demonstrations the forms which this philosopher employs in these passages, it would have but a small number of proselytes, for the simple reason that very few could understand its language. I am sure that but few readers would be convinced by the syllogisms proving the substantiality of the soul, such as Kant presents them; in this way there is a great advantage in the position of the philosopher; for he has to prove that an argument, the force of which has not been felt, has no force. But let us suppose the philosopher to descend from the Olympus of incomprehensible abstractions, and deign to use the humble language of mortals, presenting the psychological argument under a more simple form, who knows but what the conviction which it would produce would be somewhat more difficult to destroy? Let us see.

53. A substance is a being remaining identical with itself, a permanent reality in which different modifications occur. But there is within me this reality which, remaining identical, has a variety of thoughts, acts of the will, sentiments, and sensations, as is revealed by consciousness. Therefore that which is within me is a substance.

I defy all the philosophers in the world to point out a false, or even a doubtful proposition in this syllogism, or to show a fault in the consequence, without placing themselves in open contradiction with the testimony of consciousness on the one hand, and with all the laws of human reason on the other.

54. Kant pretends that the argument in favor of the substantiality of the soul is not conclusive, because the pure categories, and consequently that of substance also, have absolutely no objective value, except in so far as applied to the diversity of an intuition subject to them: that is to say, the conception of substance is a purely logical function, without any objective value or meaning except as referred to sensible things, and as soon as we leave the sphere of sensibility, it can lead to no result. It is evident that the substantiality of the soul cannot be the object of sensible intuition; consequently, to apply to the soul the idea of substance is to extend the conception beyond what its nature allows. It must be confessed that Kant's reasoning is conclusive, if we admit his principles; and here we have a proof of the necessity of combating certain theories, which, because they are in the realm of abstractions, seem innocent, but in reality are most dangerous, on account of the results to which they lead. Such is the system of Kant as denying the objective value of the pure categories, and this is why I have combated it,44 demonstrating: I. That indeterminate conceptions, and the general principles founded on them, have an objective value beyond the field of sensible experience, in respect to beings which are in nowise subject to our intuition; II. That it is not true that we have only sensible intuition, for we have intuitive knowledge of a pure intellectual order, above the sphere of sensibility. This doctrine overthrows the whole of Kant's argument, for it destroys its foundation.