Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

108. In order to enter on the question of pantheism free from all confusion, let us sum up in a few words all that reason and experience teach concerning substance.

I. Within us there is a being, one, simple, identical, permanent, the subject of the phenomena which we experience.

II. Outside of us there are objects which preserve something constant through the variety of this phenomena.

III. In the idea of substance are contained the ideas of permanence and non-inherence in another as a modification.

IV. The relation of a subject to its modifications, is found in all finite substances.

V. Relation to modifications is not inseparable from the ideas of being, permanence, and non-inherence in another.

VI. An immutable substance implies no contradiction.

VII. To subsist by itself is not the same as to be independent of all other beings. The relation of cause and effect ought not to be confounded with the relation of substance and accident.

VIII. Non-inherence in another is characteristic of substance; but this negative idea must be founded on something positive; on the force to subsist by itself without the necessity of adhering to another.

CHAPTER XV.

PANTHEISM EXAMINED IN THE ORDER OF IDEAS

109. The idea of substance and all its applications, as well to the external as to the internal world, are far from leading us to infer the existence of a single substance; on the contrary, reason according with experience forces us to acknowledge a multitude of substances. Why should we admit only one substance? This is one of the most important questions of philosophy, and from the most ancient times has given occasion to the most serious errors; it consequently deserves a careful investigation.

110. Those who admit only one substance must found their opinion either on the idea of substance or on experience; our mind can have no other recourse than to its primitive ideas, or the teachings of experience. Let us begin with the a priori method or that which is founded on the idea.

111. What do you understand by substance? we ask. If by substance you understand a being subsisting by itself, and by this subsistence you mean that it has no need of another, and never had any need of another in order to exist, then you are speaking of a being that is not caused, of a necessary being which has in itself the sufficient and necessary reason of its existence. If you say this being is only one, or that there is no other of its kind, we agree with you, only we tell you that you take the name of substance in an improper sense. But at bottom the difference would be only in the name; and in order to come to a mutual understanding it is only necessary for us to know that by substance you understand an absolutely necessary, and consequently absolutely independent being. But if you assert that this being is the only one in the sense that there is nothing, and can be nothing beside it, then your assertion is gratuitous and we ask for joint proof.

Why should the necessary being exclude the possibility of other beings? Is it not more reasonable to conclude that it contains the reason of their possibility and existence? The being which has in itself the necessity of existing, must possess activity, and the external term of this activity is production. Why may not other beings be the result of this production? Inasmuch as produced they would be distinct from the being producing them.

112. Without going beyond our ideas we find contingency and multiplicity. Experience reveals a continual succession of forms within us; these appearances are something; they cannot be a pure nothing, for they must be something, though only appearances. In them we behold a continual transition from not-being to being, and from being to not-being; therefore there is a production of something which is not necessary, since it is, and ceases to be; therefore there is something besides the being which is supposed the only one. This argument is founded on the purely internal phenomena, and, therefore, is valid even against the idealists, against those who take from the external world all reality, and reduce it to mere appearances, to simple phenomena of our mind. These appearances exist at least as appearances; they are then something, they are contingent, they are not therefore necessary being. Therefore besides this being there is something which is not it; therefore the system which asserts the existence of only one being is not sustainable.

The idea of a being absolutely independent by reason of its absolute necessity does not exclude the existence of contingent beings; it only shows that the necessary being is the only necessary being, not that it is the only being.

113. Neither does it follow from the idea of necessary being that there cannot be contingent beings, caused, and yet subsisting by themselves in the sense that they are not inherent as modifications in others. Not to be caused and not to be inherent are two very distinct things; the first implies the second, but the second does not imply the first. Every being not caused must be free from inherence, because if it is not caused it is necessary, and contains in itself all that is necessary in order not to inhere in another. If necessary, it must be absolutely independent of all others, which it would not be if it needed them as a modification needs a substance. But not every thing which is not inherent is necessarily not caused, for its cause may have made it such that it does not need to be inherent as a modification in another. It would then depend on another as an effect on its cause, but not as an accident on its substance; there would be between them the relation of causality, but not that of substance; things which we have shown in the last chapter to be very distinct.

114. Never will the pantheists be able to prove that because a thing is not a modification it must be not caused; and this is precisely what they must prove in order to carry their system through in triumph. Once prove that whatever subsists in itself is not caused, and you will have proved whatever subsists in itself to be necessary. And as the necessary being must be only one, you will have proved that there is only one substance.

115. The secret of pantheism is the confounding of non-inherence with absolute independence; and the means of overthrowing its arguments is always to distinguish these two things. All that is not caused is substance, but not all that is substance is uncaused. All that is not caused is necessary and therefore not inherent, but not every substance is necessary. Finite substance is not inherent in another being, but it is caused by another being. It cannot exist without this other being, it is true; but this dependence is not the dependence of a modification on its substance, but that of an effect on its cause.

The cause gives being to the effect; the substance sustains the accident: the cause is not modified by the effect; the substance is modified by the accident. These ideas are clear and distinct; by them pantheism is destroyed in all its transformations, and forced, as old Proteus was by Menelaus, to resume its primitive form. Atheism is its nature, and should be its name. Many of the erroneous systems which disturb the ideal world are founded on an equivocation; to oppose them with success, we must fix ourselves on the point which clears up their equivocation, and not go out of it. The equivocation will assume different forms, but we must not suffer ourselves to be deceived or confounded by it; we must always return to the same distinction and make that the battle-ground. The passage of the immortal poet in the place just alluded to, might be taken as a fable giving an excellent method of defeating sophisms: "Collect all your strength and courage," says the goddess Idothea to Menelaus, "and, throwing yourself upon him, hold him tightly despite all his efforts; for he will metamorphose himself in a thousand ways in order to escape from you: he will take the semblance of all the most savage animals. He will also change himself into water; he will become fire: but let none of these frightful forms terrify you, or force you to let him go; on the contrary, hold him and strain him the more tightly. But as soon as he returns to the first form in which, he was, … then use no more violence, but let him go.50" So it is with pantheism, it will speak of matter, of mind, of the reality of phenomenal, of the me, of the not-me, of subsistence and non-subsistence, of the necessary and the contingent; but do not allow it to go beyond the fundamental ideas, lead it to them; it will at last return to its first form, and when it has returned to this, then let it go, showing it to the world as it is, saying: "See it in its horrible deformity; it has always been what it is now; notwithstanding all its transformations, it is nothing but atheism."

CHAPTER XVI.

PANTHEISM EXAMINED IN THE ORDER OF EXTERNAL FACTS

116. If pantheism is unsustainable in the region of ideas, it is not less so in the field of experience. The latter, far from leading us to the exclusive unity of substance, shows us on all sides multiplicity.

117. There is unity where there is no division, when in the thing that is one no others can be distinguished, when it admits no negative judgment. Nothing of all this is observed in the external world; but a constant experience presents directly the contrary.

118. In the external world division is visible, palpable; there is no other unity than that of order, of direction to an end; besides this, all is multiplicity. The only medium by which we are placed in communication with the external world are the senses, and they encounter multiplicity on every side – sensations distinct in number, diverse in species, graduated in a thousand different ways, distributed into infinite groups, which, although they are connected in this or that point, may be divided and are divided in a thousand others.

119. Multiplicity is as truly revealed by the testimony of the senses as the very existence of objects. If we deny the competency of their testimony in the first, we must deny it also in the second. They not only tell us that such a body exists, but that it is not another body. We know nothing with more certainty than that an external object corresponds to a sensation, that the objects of two distinct sensations are distinct.

To say that the senses are not good judges in this matter, because they are limited to mere sensation, and consequently cannot judge of the objects of the sensation, is to appeal to idealism, for by the same reason we may assert that the senses, limited to mere sensation, cannot give us certainty of the existence of their respective objects.

120. To establish unity outside of ourselves is to annihilate the corporeal world. The idea of extension contradicts unity. In that which is extended some parts are not the others. This is evident, and whoever attempts to doubt it attacks the basis of the certainty of geometry. If the world is something real, it is extended; if it is not extended, we cannot be certain that it is any thing real. We have the same certainty of its extension as of its existence. Its very existence is manifested by the extension presented to our senses. If, then, this extension does not exist, sensations are a mere internal phenomenon, a pure illusion, in so far as we attribute to them a correspondence to the exterior.

121. This argument seems to me one of the most conclusive than can be brought against Spinosa, who, together with the oneness of the substance admits extension, as one of its attributes. The extended is essentially multiplex; it always involves the distinction between its parts; we can always say of it: "The part A is not the part B." Pantheism cannot escape this argument except by taking refuge in pure idealism; and in this respect Fichte and Hegel are more logical than most persons give them credit for being. In order to maintain the exclusive oneness of substance, it is necessary to convert the external world into mere phenomena, whose only reality consists in their being thus presented to us. This is to absorb the world in the me, and concentrate the reality in the idea; but this absorption, this concentration, notwithstanding its obscurity, is a necessary and logical consequence of the principle established. There is absurdity, but there is at least the consequence of the absurdity.

122. Those who call Spinosa the disciple of Descartes, have not observed that there is a necessary contradiction between the two systems. The argument founded on extension, which I have just presented, although conclusive under every hypothesis, is still more so against those who admit with Descartes, that the essence of bodies consists in extension. In that case, the various parts of extension are essentially distinct, since each part constitutes an essence. The essential and substantial multiplicity of bodies would be in proportion to the multiplicity of extension.

123. If you maintain that extension is not the essence of bodies, but an attribute or modification of bodies, whether a determination founded on their essence or an accidental determination, and pretend that this modification or attribute may belong to the only substance, we ask you whether this substance in itself abstracted from extension is simple or composite. If composite, it implies multiplicity, and Spinosa coincides with the common opinion of a corporeal world, composed of many parts, one of which will have no more right than another to be the true substance. For then there would not be a single substance, but one composed of many; and the corporeal universe cannot be called a substance except in the sense in which it is commonly called one, that is, not taking the oneness in a strict sense, but inasmuch as all its parts are connected together, and disposed in a certain order to conspire to the same end. If the substance, the subject of extension is simple, the result will be a simple substance determined or modified by extension, a simple extended substance, which is a contradiction. A thing cannot be conceived as a modification of another unless it is modified by it; this is what the words express. A modification modifies, giving to the thing modified the form of the modification, applying itself to the thing modified. Extension cannot modify except by making the thing modified extended; and to be extended, and to have extension, are absolutely identical expressions. Therefore it is repugnant for a simple substance to have extension for one of its modifications; therefore Spinosa's system is absurd.

CHAPTER XVII.

PANTHEISM EXAMINED IN THE ORDER OF INTERNAL FACTS

124. The multiplicity of substances is no less attested by the consciousness of ourselves, or of the internal world. Our first reflex act reveals within us something which is one, indivisible, and remaining always the same through all the transformations of our being. This unity of the me is indispensable to the connection of all the phenomena in a point; without it all memory, all combination, and all consciousness are impossible; our own being disappears, and there remains only a series of unconnected phenomena. But this unity, which we must take as an internal fact which consciousness places beyond all doubt, and the conviction of which it is impossible for us to withstand, – this unity produces the knowledge of multiplicity. There is something which affects us and which is not ourselves. Our will, our activity, is impotent to resist other activities which act upon us; there is, then, something which is not ourselves, which is independent of us. There is something which is not a modification of ourselves, because very often it does not affect us, does not modify us. This something is a reality, for nothing cannot affect any thing. It is not inherent in us; it is, then, in itself, or in something which is not ourselves. There is, therefore, a substance which is not our substance; and the me and the not-me which have made so much noise in German philosophy, far from leading to the unity of the substance, lead to multiplicity; and destroy pantheism entrenched behind idealism.

125. At the very first we meet at least with duality, the me and the not-me; but carrying our observations a little farther, we find a striking multiplicity.

Our mind is not alone: the consciousness of what we daily experience proves our communication with other minds, which, like our own, have the consciousness of themselves – a sphere of activity of their own, and, like our own mind, are subjected to other activities without their will, and sometimes even against it. The me and the not-me existing for our consciousness, exists also for theirs; what in us alone was duality becomes a wonderful multiplicity by means of the repetition of the same fact which we have experienced in ourselves.

126. To attribute this variety of consciousnesses to the same being, to take them as modifications of the same substance, as revelations of itself to its own eyes, is a gratuitous assertion; and not only gratuitous but absurd.

With full confidence I can defy the greatest philosopher of the world to assign any reason, I do not say satisfactory, but even a specious reason, proving that two individual consciousnesses belong to a common consciousness, or are consciousnesses of the same being.

127. In the first place, this doctrine is in contradiction to common sense, and is rejected with irresistible force by the internal sense of every man. The sentiment of our existence is always accompanied by the sentiment of our distinction from other beings like us. We are not only certain that we exist, but that we are distinct from others; and if in any thing the sentiment of this distinction is profoundly marked, it is in what regards the phenomena of our consciousness. Never at any time, in any country or phase of society, could men be persuaded that the consciousness of all their acts and impressions belonged to one and the same being in which individual consciousnesses were united. It is a bad philosophy which begins by struggling against humanity, and placing itself in open contradiction to an irresistible sentiment of nature.

128. The very idea of consciousness excludes this monstrous absurdity, which attempts to transform individual consciousnesses into modifications of one universal consciousness. Consciousness, that is, the internal sentiment of what a being experiences, is essentially individual, it is, so to speak, incommunicable to every other. To others we communicate the knowledge of our consciousness, but not our consciousness itself. It is an intuition or a sentiment which is completed in the innermost recesses of our being, in that which is most our own. What, then, would that consciousness be which does not belong to us as individuals, which is not our own which is nothing of what we believe it to be, but only a property of an unknown being, – a being of which we have no knowledge, and of which we are only a phenomenon, a passing modification? Where would be the unity of consciousness in the midst of such diversity, opposition, and mutual exclusion? This being, modified by so many consciousnesses, would have no consciousness of its own, for it could give itself no account of what it experiences.

CHAPTER XVIII.

FICHTE'S PANTHEISTIC SYSTEM

129. I am going to fulfil a promise made in the beginning of this work,51 to explain and refute the system of Fichte. We have seen the cabalistic forms employed by the German philosopher to obtain a simple result, which amounted to neither more nor less than Descartes' principle, "I think, therefore, I am." The reader could never imagine that any one should attempt to found pantheism on this fact of consciousness, and that the human mind, because it finds itself, should have the arrogance to maintain that nothing exists beside itself, that whatever there is, proceeds from itself, and what is still more extraordinary, that it is itself produced by itself. In order to believe that such things have been written we have to see them, and therefore in explaining Fichte's system, I shall copy his own words.

Thus, although he may suffer a little from the foreign garb, and the reader may be fatigued with deciphering enigmas, he will have an idea of the matter and of the form of the system, which he could not have, if we should take from the philosopher his extravagant originality, which, however, relates to the form, rather than to the substance.

130. "This act, namely X = I am, is founded on no higher principle."52

This is true to a certain extent, inasmuch as it affirms that in the series of the facts of consciousness, we come to our own existence as the last limit, and can go no farther. The reflex act, by which we perceive our existence, is expressed by the proposition, I am, or, I exist; but this proposition by itself alone, tells us nothing as to the nature of the me, and is very far from proving our absolute independence. On the contrary, from the moment that we begin to reflect, internal facts are presented to us which incline us to believe that our being is dependent on another; and in proportion as we continue to reflect, we acquire a deep conviction of this truth, arising from a rigorous demonstration.

In no way can we affirm that the act, I am, does not depend on any higher principle, if we mean by that, that the act does not spring from any principle of action, and that by itself alone, it produces existence. Besides plainly contradicting common sense, this assertion is without any proof, and is also opposed to the most fundamental notions of sound philosophy.

131. Fichte thinks differently, and without knowing why, he deduces from the above propositions these consequences: "Therefore it (the act, X = I am) is supposed absolutely, and founded on itself, as the principle of a certain (and, as will be seen by the whole Doctrine of Science, of every) act of the human mind, consequently, also of its pure character, – the pure character of activity in itself, abstracted from its particular empirical conditions." It is no great discovery that the character of act is activity; but this character is not pure, since in us no act is pure activity, but it is always a particular exercise of activity.

"Consequently," he continues, "the supposition of the me by itself is its pure activity. The me supposes itself, and it is, in virtue of this mere supposition by itself; and on the other hand, the me is and it supposes its being, by virtue of its mere being. It is at the same time the acting, and the product of the act; the active, and that which is brought about by the activity; act and fact are one and precisely the same thing; and, therefore, I am is the expression of an act, and also of the only one possible, as must be seen from the whole Doctrine of Science."

He that can, may understand what is the meaning of a being which is at the same time producing and produced, principle and term of the same action, cause and effect of the same thing. He that can, may understand the meaning of existing in virtue of a mere action, and exercising this action in virtue of existence. If these be not contradictions, I know not what is. In God, who is infinite being, essence, existence, and action are identical; but we cannot say that the action produces his being, that he supposes himself by his action; we say that he exists necessarily, and that it is therefore impossible that he should have been produced, that he should have passed from not-being to being.

132. There occurs to me here a rational explanation of Fichte's language, an explanation which even if admissible would not excuse the philosopher for expressing very simple things in contradictory terms. However, it is this. The soul is an activity; its essence consists in thought, by which it is manifested to its own eyes, and finds itself in the act of consciousness. In this sense we may say that the soul supposes itself, that is, knows itself, takes itself as subject of a proposition to which it applies the predicate of existence. The soul is the principle of its act of consciousness; and thus it is productive; it is also presented in the act of consciousness as object, hence it may also be said, though inexactly, that in the ideal order it is produced; in this way it is the principle and the term of the action, but under different respects. This explanation, whether more or less founded, is at least reasonable and even intelligible, and the basis on which it rests, that the essence of the soul consists in thought, has the name of Descartes in its favor. Thus although we do not defend the words of Fichte, we might at least defend his ideas. But unfortunately, the philosopher has taken good care to prevent even this; his words could not have been more opposed to it.