Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

84. Let us present the same demonstration under a stricter form. Suppose A, B, C, to be the three agents concurring in the formation of the thought; each part will yield its contingent; let us suppose a to correspond to the first, b to the second, and c to the third, the result will be the union composed of a, b, and c; this will be the thought; it will therefore be triple and can never constitute a point of comparison; therefore, we must either reject this hypothesis, or deny thought. Kant's sophism proceeds from his attending solely to the diversity of the representations, and abstracting the unity which is always met with in the perception of this diversity; hence it is nothing strange that he does not find unity in the conception of thought. He presents this conception incompletely, or rather, falsely; he presents thought as a collection of representations, and not as a most simple point in which representations unite, in order to be perceived in the relation which they have among themselves. The diversity of the representations does not form a collection after the manner of sensible objects; the thought, in which the relation of two different triangles is known, cannot be expressed by the sum of the figures of the two triangles; it is something different from them; something which is in the midst of them; which unites them by comparing them, and which joins their diversity in the unity of their relation.

85. The example brought by Kant manifests the rudeness of his idea of the character of the union of the representations in the formation of a whole thought. The unity of the thought is, he says, collective, and may be referred to the collective unity of many substances, just as the motion of a body is the motion composed of all the parts of the body. Here we see clearly wherein Kant's equivocation consists; he takes the collection of the representations for the thought which relates to them, and therefore it is no wonder that he cannot see the unity implied in the diversity, on the supposition that this diversity has to be thought.

To carry conviction to the farthest point, let us take this example of motion, and suppose a cube to be moved. Let us call its eight verticles A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H; they all move, and the collection of their motions, with those of the points which are between them, forms the whole motion. What is there common in the result of this concurrence of agents? Nothing, except juxtaposition in space, and the relation which they preserve by the equal velocity of the motion. But the motion of the vertex H is not the motion of the vertex A, as is evident if we consider that the vertex A may be cut off from the cube, and remain at rest without discontinuing or altering the motion of the vertex H; therefore, the two motions are things absolutely distinct. It is evident that the same holds true with respect to the other points; therefore the unity of the composite motion is purely factitious; what there is, in reality, is a multiplicity of substances, and of motions, without any other than a purely extrinsical connection, the relation of positions in space.

Let us change the vertices into representations, and see what will be the result. Do they exist without any other connection than their co-existence? Then they do not form a thought, but only a collection of phenomena which may be considered as a union of things, but not a thought; in that case the sum of all the representations will be similar to the sum of the motions; but it will produce no result in relation to the object which we are now examining. If we give these representations a point of union, that is, the relation under which they are perceived, we shall have a thought; but what has this act, which is one and most simple, in common with, the totality of a number of points in motion?

86. If Kant had wished to present a more seductive example, he ought to have made use of a theory in mechanics, the application of which to the present case presents, if not more difficulty, at least a more deceitful appearance; I mean the resultant of a system of forces and their point of application.

When several forces act upon a line, a plane, or a solid, they produce an effect equal to that one force alone, which is called the resultant: this force has a determinate direction and a point of application, as though it were simple or had not emanated from others; why cannot this be applied to thought? Why may not a thing, although it is simple, be the product of the concurrence of various agents? This example is more specious, because it presents the result of the composition concentrated in a point, but if we examine it well, we shall find that it proves nothing against us.

The disparity is this: thought is a simple act in itself, whilst the resultant of the forces is so only in its relation to the effect experienced, which is all that comes under our calculation. If two forces are applied at the two extremities of an inflexible right line the effect will be the same as though we applied one force equal to the sum of them both at one point of the line, at a distance from either extremity inversely proportioned to the value of the first forces. But the unity of this effect depends on the cohesion of the parts, which, not permitting isolated motions, must make the force act on a single point; but the component forces do not cease to be distinct and separate, so that at the moment the cohesion should cease, the respective parts would each feel the action of the force corresponding to it, and move in the direction and with the velocity which the force impresses on them. If, while the cohesion lasts, it were possible to give each of the component forces the consciousness of its action, there would be two consciousnesses really distinct, which could never form one common consciousness, and could only be united in the production of an effect. If the point of their application should have the consciousness of the action which it experiences, it might have a consciousness similar to that of the action of one force, equal to the sum of the components, if it did not know the manner in which their action is transmitted to it; but from the moment that it becomes conscious of their respective action, it would know that the result is owing to the impossibility of each of them producing its effect in an isolated manner. If, therefore, we compare the thinking subject to this point of application of the forces, we must attribute to this subject the consciousness of the origin of the representations which concur in the production of the whole effect.

Perhaps it may be said that by the very analysis of the example, we have prepared the way for the triumph of the adversaries of the simplicity of the soul; because after arbitrary suppositions we have at last come to a simple effect inherent in a simple thing, and produced by the concurrence of various agents; but if we look closer to it, we shall find that this pretended triumph was never farther from being realized than it is in the last result to which we are led by the analysis of the forces. For, in order to arrive at a simple result produced by the concurrence of various forces, we also require a simple point in which this result is concentrated. Then, and precisely because we have arrived at this simplicity, we can abstract the component forces, and consider the result as a simple effect, produced by a simple force, and inherent in a simple subject, which is the indivisible point, to which we consider the force as applied. Therefore, continuing the comparison, we ought to say that, whatever may be the number of the agents concurring in the production of the thought, this thought must reside in a simple subject, and in that case the simplicity of the soul is admitted. It is true that we should then suppose a certain number of agents acting on the soul in order to produce the thought; but the thought once produced, the soul alone would be the thinking subject, just as the indivisible point is the only one which unites the action of the component forces.

Thus all that our adversaries would have gained would be the burden of the ridiculous invention of the concurrence of agents, and be forced notwithstanding, to admit a simple thinking substance, which is all that we proposed to demonstrate.

87. Kant pretends that it is impossible to deduce from experience the necessary unity of the thinking subject, as the condition of the possibility of all thought, because experience reveals no necessity, and the conception of absolute unity belongs to an order different from that which we are here considering. It is certain that experience alone does not reveal any necessity; for it is limited to particular, contingent facts, and does not reach the universal reason of objects; but this is not true of experience regarded objectively, or in relation to the cognition of the general reasons of things; for although this cognition, considered subjectively as an individual act, is a contingent fact, still inasmuch as it exists it represents a true necessity in certain objects; unless we wish to renounce the certainty of all the sciences, mathematics included.

It is clear that in speaking of thought and the thinking subject, we cannot forget experience, since it is impossible to abstract the basis of all psychological investigations, —I think, – a proposition which expresses a fact of consciousness, an act of internal experience; but with this experience is combined the idea of unity in general, or the exclusion of distinction and multiplicity from the act of thought and from the thinking subject. Thus the demonstration of the simplicity of the soul follows in the same path as all demonstrations which are confined to the purely ideal order, and which consequently are formed of one premise which contains a necessary truth, and another which establishes a fact of experience. In the present instance, the necessary premise is the very definition of unity and simplicity; the other expresses the fact experienced, that is, the nature of the thought, as it is revealed in consciousness.

88. Hence the demonstration of the simplicity of thinking beings is not limited to the human mind, but extends to all the subjects in which the fact of consciousness exists. When Kant says we cannot extend this demonstration, because we then go out of the field of experience, we reply with this argument: our demonstration is founded on the idea of unity and the fact of consciousness; the idea of unity is general, and consequently is valid in all cases; the fact of consciousness is a thing which is found in every thinking being, since thought is inconceivable without a subject, which may say, I think; therefore, we proceed legitimately in extending the demonstration of simplicity, unless you mean to give to the word think a very different meaning from that which we all give to it, in which case we go out of the arena of philosophy and enter on a discussion of words.

89. We must have received the idea of a thinking being from internal experience: we may expand or restrict this idea, increasing or decreasing its perfection; but at bottom it remains always the same, and we cannot conceive thought in another being without attributing to it something similar to what we experience in ourselves. In this respect Kant is therefore right when he says that if we wish to represent to ourselves a thinking being we must put ourselves in the place of the object. According to him, we require for thought the absolute unity of the subject, only because without this unity it would be impossible to say, I think; since, although the totality of the thought may be distributed among the various subjects, the subjective me cannot be divided or separated, and every thought supposes this me. The proposition, I think, is the foundation on which psychology raises the edifice of its knowledge: Kant admits this, but I cannot understand why, admitting that this proposition is the form of the apperception which is joined with and precedes all experience, he still says that it is not experimental; as though the thought were not just as subject to a real experience as its form; whereas if we closely examine it, we should rather say that the form is experienced than the thought itself, on the supposition that the latter is distinct whilst the form is identical in every instance; for the form in itself is only the consciousness of the unity identical in the midst of diversity.

90. In conceiving this absolute unity in the me, we do not, as Kant pretends, conceive a topical unity, but a real unity, if we suppose it to remain really the same through the variety of thought. When we enunciate this unity in the proposition, I think, we do not speak of a form in the abstract, common to all perceptions, but of something positive which is within us, and the reality of which is indispensable to the possibility of thought.

91. The German philosopher further says: "This subjective condition of all knowledge cannot with propriety be converted into a condition of the possibility of a knowledge of the objects; that is, into a conception of thinking being in general, since we cannot represent this being to ourselves without putting ourselves in its place by the formula of our consciousness." I do not believe that the psychologists who have pretended that they could demonstrate the simplicity of the soul, ever flattered themselves with arriving at a perfect idea of thinking beings, or denied that we obtain the type of this idea from our own experience; what they have pretended is, that reason leads them to infer that there is absolute unity of the subject wherever there is a thinking being; whether its thought may belong to a higher or lower order than our own.

92. When Kant observes that the subject in which the thought inheres is only indicated in a transcendental way, without its properties being discovered, and that, therefore, we do not know the simplicity of the subject itself, he declares a fact which is in some sense admissible, but he deduces from it a false consequence. It is true that we only know the substance of the soul by the presence of the internal sense, and by its relation to its acts; and consequently that the soul in itself abstracted from all the phenomena which we experience, is not given in immediate intuitions, and that when we arrive at this point we are reduced to the idea of a simple being, but this indeterminateness, and vagueness, in the knowledge of the substance of the soul, does not prevent our knowing its simplicity, if this simplicity is revealed by the internal sense, and also by the nature of the phenomena by which we know the thinking subject.

93. Some persons may believe that the indeterminateness of the knowledge of the substance of the soul is a fact recently discovered by the German philosopher; but it is easy to show that it had been observed long before, and is laid down in a very special and interesting manner in the writings of St. Thomas. This eminent metaphysician proposes the question whether the intellectual soul knows itself by its essence, utrum anima intellectiva seipsam cognoscat per suam essentiam, and after the various remarks on intelligence, and the intelligibility of objects, he solves it in these remarkable words: "Our understanding does not know itself by its essence, but by its act; and this in two ways: in one way, in particular; inasmuch as Sortes or Plato perceives that he has an intellectual soul, because he perceives that he understands: in the second way, in general; inasmuch as we consider the nature of the human mind in the act of the understanding. But it is true that we derive the judgment and efficacy of the knowledge by which we know the nature of the soul, by the light of the divine truth of which our intellect participates, and in which are contained the reasons of all things, as was said above. Hence, Augustine says, in the ninth book on the Trinity: We have intuition of the inviolable truth by which we perfectly determine, as far as possible, not what the mind of each man is, but what it should be according to the eternal reasons. But there is a difference between these two cognitions, for, to have the first, we only need the presence of the mind, which is the principle of the act by which the mind perceives itself, and, therefore, we say that it knows itself by its presence; but for the second, the presence of the mind is not sufficient, but a careful and subtile investigation is necessary. Hence many are ignorant of the nature of the soul, and many also have erred on the nature of the soul; wherefore in the tenth book on the Trinity, Augustine, speaking of this investigation, says: The soul should not try to see itself as something absent, but endeavor to distinguish itself as something present; that is, to know its difference from other things, which is to know its quiddity and nature."49

94. It is to be observed that St. Thomas admits two cognitions of the soul by itself; – that of its presence, as we perceive it in perceiving our thought, percipit se habere animam intellectivam ex hoc quod percipit se intelligere; and another which we deduce from the analysis of the intellectual act reasoning from general considerations, and reflecting on the light which the eternal reasons shed upon this fact of experience. This is how St. Thomas explains the knowledge of presence or consciousness contained in the proposition, I think; and the general knowledge which we deduce from the same intellectual act in its relations to the unity of the subject exercising it. That this last contains something abstract and indeterminate no one denies; and when Kant calls attention to it, he tells us nothing which the holy Doctor had not already told us when he expressly affirmed that the soul knows itself not in its essence, but in its acts. These few laconic words express all the truth which is contained in Kant's diffuse explanation of the limitation of our cognition to the acts of consciousness, and the absence of the intuitive knowledge of the substance of the soul, the transcendental subject of the thought.

CHAPTER XIII.

IN WHAT MANNER THE IDEA OF SUBSTANCE MAY BE APPLIED TO GOD

95. In the idea of substance as formed from the beings around us and from the testimony of our consciousness we find the relation to changes which occur in it as their subject or recipient. But we have before remarked that besides this relation there is a negation of inherence in another as the modifications are inherent in the substance; this negation implies a perfection which exempts it from the necessity of inherence to which the changeable and transitory beings which we call accidents or modifications are subject. As we are ignorant of the intrinsic essence of substances, we do not know what this perfection is; yet we cannot doubt that it exists in the very nature of the subject, and is independent of the modifications which transform it. If then the essence of the substance must consist in any thing, it must be in this perfection of which we have a knowledge, but not an intuitive cognition. When therefore substance is defined in relation to accidents, quod substat accidentibus, it is rather defined by the manner in which it is presented to us than by what it is in itself.

96. Hence, of the two definitions usually received in the schools: Ens per se subsistens, a being subsisting by itself, and, id quod substat accidentibus, the subject of accidents; the first is the more correct, because it comes nearer the expression of what it is in itself. Although we know finite substances only inasmuch as revealed by accidents, and even our own mind knows itself only in its acts, reason tells us that in order to be known things must exist, and in order that our mind may find in them something permanent, it is necessary that this something should be in them. Our knowledge does not produce its objects; in order to be known they must exist.

97. These reflections manifest the possibility of the existence of a substance not subject to accidents or change of any kind; and that this substance not only does not lose the character of substance by being immutable, but possesses it in a much more perfect degree. The perfection of substance is not in its changes but in what is permanent in it, not in having a succession of modifications inherent in it, but in existing in such a manner as not to need to inhere in another. The substance which should possess this permanence, this perfection enabling it to exist by itself, and at the same time should have no modification, should experience no change, would be infinitely superior to all other substances. This substance is God.

98. Now it is easy to answer the question whether when applied to God the idea of substance is understood in the same sense as when applied to creatures; or, to speak in the terms of the schools, whether it is taken univocally or analogously.

99. In the idea of every substance is contained the idea of being; what does not exist cannot be a substance. Inasmuch as we conceive being as a reality, as opposed to nothingness, the idea of being belongs both to God and to creatures: God is, that is to say, God is a real thing, not nothing. But if from this general idea, such as we conceive it in opposition to nothingness, we pass to its realization in objects, to the manner of its application, so to speak, we find all the difference that there is between the contingent and the necessary, the finite and the infinite. Although we do not intuitively see the infinite being, nor the essence of finite beings, still we have evident knowledge that the word being applied to the infinite means something very different from what it does when applied to the finite.

100. In the idea of substance is also contained the idea of something permanent; this permanence belongs also to God: the infinite being is essentially permanent.

101. In the substances around us we find this permanence combined with the succession of the modifications which affect them; these changes are impossible in God. The relation to modifications is a characteristic quality of finite substances.

102. Substances are not inherent in others as modifications are inherent in them; this non-inherence also belongs to the divine substance.

103. Substances must contain something which exempts them from the necessity of inherence and raises them above the things which so rapidly succeed each other, and in their existence always need another to sustain them; this perfection is found in the divine substance which is being essentially, the fountain of perfection.

104. It follows from this analysis that all the perfection contained in the idea of substance may be applied to the infinite being; and that all that is contained in this idea which cannot be applied to this being is what implies negation or imperfection.

CHAPTER XIV.

AN IMPORTANT REMARK, AND SUMMARY

105. When we say, that a substance is a being subsisting by itself, we do not mean that it is a being which has absolutely no need of another for its existence. To confound these two things would produce a frightful confusion of ideas, and is itself produced by a not less frightful confusion of the relation of cause and effect with the relation of substance and accidents.

106. The relation of cause and effect consists in the cause giving the effect its being; the relation of substance and accident consists in the substance serving as subject to the accident. So great is the difference between these two relations that not only does reason show them to be distinct, but at every moment experience presents them as separate. Our soul is the subject of many accidents in the production of which it has no part, but on the contrary opposed to their production as far as it is able. Such are all painful sensations, all disagreeable impressions, all troublesome thoughts which present themselves in spite of us, and when we wish to think of something else. In these cases the soul is the subject, and not the cause: it has the relation of substance to things of which it is not the cause, and with respect to which it is entirely passive. If I am not greatly mistaken, this example is conclusive, and marks the line which divides causality from substance, effect from accident.

107. To be subsistent by itself expresses an exclusion; if this exclusion is referred to causality, to be subsistent by itself is to be not caused; if referred to inherence, it means to be not inherent in another as accidents are in their substance. When substance is defined a being subsistent in itself, it is understood in the second sense, not in the first, and this distinction is sufficient to overthrow the whole system of Spinoza, and all the pantheists, whatever be the aspect under which they present their error.