Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

48. The Aristotelians, governed by their favorite idea of explaining every thing by matter and form, modified the meaning of these words according to the exigencies of the objects to which they applied them, and considered the faculties of the soul as a class of forces incapable of acting unless united to a form which brought them into action. Thus they explained sensations by species, or forms, which placed the sensitive power in act. The imagination was a force which, although it sometimes rose above the external senses, contained nothing but species of the sensible order, subject also to the necessary conditions of this faculty. These species were the forms which placed the imaginative force in act, and without which it could not exercise its functions. The Aristotelians, after having thus explained the phenomena of the external senses, and of the imagination, undertook to explain those of the intellectual order; and in this they displayed their genius by inventing an auxiliary which they named the acting intellect. The necessity of making two principles in seeming contradiction accord, was the reason of this invention.

On the one hand the Aristotelians held that our cognitions all flowed from the senses; and on the other they asserted that there was an essential and intrinsic difference between feeling and understanding. Having drawn this dividing line, the sensitive and intellectual orders were separated; but as it was on the other side requisite to establish some communication between these two orders, it was necessary for them, if they wished to save the principle, that all our ideas come from the senses, to discover some point where the two channels might unite.

The cognition of material things could not be denied to the pure understanding; but as this was not an innate cognition and could not be acquired by it, they were under the necessity of establishing some communication by means of which the understanding might comprehend objects without soiling its purity by sensible species. The imagination contained them, already purified from the grossness of the external senses; in it they existed more aerial, purer, and less remote from immateriality; but they were still at an immense distance from the intellectual order, and had themselves to support the burden of those material conditions which never allowed them to attain the altitude necessary to be put in communication with the pure understanding. In order to know, the understanding requires forms to unite themselves to it intimately; and although it be true that it discerned them far down in the lower regions of the sensitive faculties, yet it could descend to them without compromising its dignity, and denying its own nature. In this conflict they required a mediator; it was the acting intellect. We will now proceed to explain the attributes of this faculty.

49. The sensible species contained in the imagination, the true picture of the external world, were not of themselves intelligible, because enveloped, not with matter properly so called, but with material forms, to which the intellectual act could only indirectly refer. If they could have discovered a faculty capable of rendering intelligible what is not intelligible, this difficult problem would have been satisfactorily solved; as in this case the mysterious transformer by applying its activity to the sensible species, would elevate them from the category of imaginary species, phantasmata, to that of pure ideas or sensible species, and thus make them serve the intellectual act. This faculty is the acting intellect; a real magician which possesses the wonderful secret of stripping sensible species of their material conditions, of smoothing every roughness which prevents them from coming in contact with the pure understanding, and transforms the gross food of the sensitive faculties into the purest ambrosia, fit to be served at the repast of spirits.

50. This invention merits to be called ingenious rather than extravagant, poetical rather than ridiculous. But its most remarkable feature is, that it involves a profound philosophical sense, as well because it marks an ideological fact of the highest importance, as because it indicates the true way of explaining the phenomena of intelligence in their relations to the sensible world. This remarkable fact is the difference, even with respect to material objects, between sensible representations and pure ideas. The indication of the true way consists in presenting the intellectual activity as operating upon sensible species, and converting them into food for the mind.

Let us leave the poetical part to the explanation of the schools, and see if what it involves be worth as much, to say the least, as what Kant advanced when, combating sensism, he distinguished between the pure understanding and sensible intuitions.

CHAPTER VIII.

KANT AND THE ARISTOTELIANS

51. Lest I be accused of levity in comparing Kant's philosophy with that of the schools, in what relates to the distinction between the sensitive and intellectual faculties, I shall give a rapid examination of this philosopher's doctrine so far as the present matter is concerned.

Since the German philosopher is in the habit of expressing himself with great obscurity, and of using an obsolete language liable to different interpretations, I shall insert his own words, so that the reader may judge for himself, and rectify any inaccuracies into which I may fall, in comparing Kant's doctrine with that of the Aristotelians.

"In whatever manner," says Kant, "and by whatever means a cognition may be referred to objects, that which makes the cognition refer immediately to things, and to which all thought is a means, is intuition. This intuition exists only inasmuch as the object is given us, which is not possible, at least for us men, except so far as it affects the mind in some way. The capacity of receiving impressions by the manner in which objects affect us is called sensibility. By means of sensibility objects are given to us: it alone supplies us with intuitions: but they are thought by the understanding, and from it arise conceptions. All thought must ultimately be referred, either directly, or indirectly by means of certain signs, to intuitions, and consequently to sensibility, since no object can be given to us in any other.

"The action of an object upon the representative faculty, so far as we are affected by it, is sensation. The intuition, which is referred to an object by means of sensation, is called empirical. The immediate object of an empirical intuition is called a phenomenon."4

The distinction between the faculty of feeling and that of conceiving is fundamental in Kant's system: and we see that he gives it a hasty exposition before beginning his investigations on Æsthetics or the theory of sensibility. Further on, in treating of the operations of the understanding, he has more fully developed his doctrine: and by the emphasis he puts upon it, it would seem evident that he regarded it as of high importance, and perhaps as a discovery of a region entirely unknown to the philosophical world. Thus he speaks of it in his Transcendental Logic:

"Our knowledge proceeds from two intellectual sources; the first is the capacity of receiving representations, (the receptivity of impressions,) the second is the faculty of knowing an object by these representations, (the spontaneity of conceptions.) By the former the object is given to us; by the latter, it is thought in relation to this representation (as mere determination of the mind.) Intuition and conception constitute the elements of all our knowledge; so that neither conceptions without an intuition in some manner corresponding to them, nor an intuition without conceptions, can give knowledge.

"We call sensibility the capacity (receptivity) of our mind to receive representations, so far as affected in any way whatever: on the contrary, the faculty of producing representations, or the spontaneity of knowledge, is called understanding. Our nature is such that there can be no intuition not sensible, that is to say, which only comprehends the manner in which we are affected by objects. The understanding is the faculty of thinking the object of sensible intuition. Neither of these properties of the soul is preferable to the other. Without sensibility no object could be given to us; without the understanding none could be thought. Thoughts without contents are empty; intuitions without conceptions are blind. It is, then, just as necessary to make conceptions sensible, – that is, to give them an object in intuition, as to make intuitions intelligible, by subjecting them to conceptions. These two faculties or capacities cannot interchange their functions. The understanding can perceive nothing,5 and the senses can think nothing. Knowledge results only from their union. Their attributes, therefore, ought not to be confounded; on the contrary, there is every reason to distinguish them, and to separate them with great care. We distinguish then the science of the laws of sensibility in general, that is to say, Æsthetics, from the science of the laws of the understanding in general, that is, from Logic."6

Mark well the meaning of this doctrine. Two facts are established; sensible intuition, and the conception of it; consequently the existence of two faculties, sensibility, and the understanding, is affirmed. To the first correspond sensible representations; to the latter conceptions. These two faculties, though different, are closely interlinked; and they are mutually necessary in order to produce cognitions. But how do they give each other that mutual aid they stand in need of?

"The understanding," Kant elsewhere says, "has been thus far defined only negatively, as a not-sensible faculty of knowing." But as we can have no intuition independently of sensibility, it follows that the understanding is not a faculty of intuition. Excepting intuition, there remains no way of knowing other than by conceptions; wherefore we infer that the knowledge of every intellect, at least every human intellect, is a knowledge by conceptions; not intuitive, but discursive. All intuitions, as sensible, rest upon affections, and consequently, all conceptions upon functions. I understand by functions, the unity of action necessary to arrange different representations under one common representation. Conceptions, then, are grounded on the spontaneity of thought, as sensible intuitions on the receptivity of impressions. The understanding can make no use of these conceptions except to judge by means of them, and as intuition is the only representation which has an immediate object, no conception can ever be immediately referred to an object, but only to some other representation of this object, whether this be an intuition, or even a conception. Judgment is the mediate cognition of an object, and consequently the representation of a representation of the object. In every judgment there is a conception applicable to many things, and under this plurality it comprises also a given representation, immediately referable to the object. Thus, in the judgment: all bodies are divisible; the conception of divisible is common to different conceptions, among which that of body is the one it here particularly refers to. But this conception of body relates to certain phenomena we have in view; these objects are then mediately represented by the conception of divisibility. All judgments are functions of unity in our representations, since instead of one immediate representation, there comes in another more elevated, which includes the first and many others, and conduces to the cognition of the object; and a great number of possible cognitions are reduced to one alone. But we may reduce all the operations of the understanding to judgment; so that the understanding in general may be represented as a faculty of judging; because, from what has been said, it is the faculty of thinking. Thought is cognition by conceptions; but conceptions, as predicates of possible judgments, may be referred to any representation whatever of an object, however indeterminate. Thus the conception of body signifies something, for example, a metal, which may be known by this conception. It is then a conception only because it contains in itself other representations by means of which it may be referred to objects. It is then the attribute of a possible judgment, for instance, of this: every metal is a body.7

52. There are in this doctrine of Kant, two things to be distinguished: first, the facts upon which it is based; and secondly, the manner in which he examines and applies them, and the consequences he deduces from them.

We detect at once a radical difference, as far as the observation of ideological facts is concerned, between Kant's system and that of Condillac. While the latter discovers in the mind no fact but sensation, no immediate faculty more noble than that of feeling, the former upholds as a fundamental principle the distinction between sensibility and the understanding. And here the German triumphs over the French philosopher, for in his support stand both observation and experience. But this triumph over sensism had already been obtained by many philosophers, the scholastics in particular. With Kant and Condillac they admitted that all our cognitions came from the senses; but they had also noted what Kant afterwards saw, but Condillac did not discover that sensations by themselves alone could never suffice to explain all the phenomena of our soul, and that, besides the sensitive faculty, it was necessary to admit another very different, called understanding.

Kant regarded sensations as materials furnished to the understanding, which it combined in various ways, and reduced to conceptions. "Thoughts without contents," he said, "are empty; intuitions without conceptions are blind. It is then just as necessary to make conceptions sensible, that is, to give them an object in intuition, as to make intuitions intelligible by subjecting them to conceptions." Who does not perceive in this passage, the acting intellect of the Aristotelians, although expressed in other words? Substitute sensible species for sensible intuition, intelligible species for conception and we recognize a doctrine very like that of the scholastics. Let us see. Kant says: to enable us to acquire knowledge, the action of the senses, or sensible experience is necessary. The scholastics said: there is nothing in the understanding which has not previously been in the senses: nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu.

Kant says: sensible intuitions of themselves are blind. The scholastics said: sensible species, or those of the imagination, also called phantasmata, are not intelligible.

Kant says: it is necessary to make conceptions sensible by giving them an object in intuition. The scholastics said: it is impossible to understand, either by acquiring science, or by using that already acquired, unless the understanding directs itself to sensible species, "sine conversione ad phantasmata."

Kant says: it is indispensable to render intuitions intelligible by subjecting them to conceptions. The scholastics said: it is necessary to make sensible species intelligible in order that they may be the object of the understanding.

Kant says: we judge by means of conceptions; and that judgment is the mediate cognition of an object, and consequently its representation. The scholastics said: we know objects by means of an intelligible species, which is derived from the sensible species, and is its intelligible representation.

Kant says, that in every judgment there is a conception applicable to many things, and that under this plurality it comprises also a given representation which is referred immediately to its object. The scholastics said, that the intelligible species was applicable to many things, because universal; that, when separated from a sensible and particular species, it abstracts from all material and individuating conditions, and consequently embraces all individual objects in one common representation.

Kant uses the words conception, and to conceive, to denote the intellectual act, form, or whatever it may be, by which the understanding, making use of sensible intuitions, combines the materials offered by sensibility conformably to the laws of the intellectual order. The scholastics likewise taught that the intelligible species, called also species impressed, fecundated the understanding by producing in it an intellectual conception, whence resulted the word, internal locution, or species expressed, which they also styled conception.

Kant says, that the cognition of human intelligence is a cognition by conceptions, not intuitive, but discursive and general, and that out of the sphere of sensibility there is for us no true intuition. The scholastics said: our understanding, in this life, has a necessary relation to the nature of material things, and for this reason it cannot primo et per se, know immaterial substances: hence it happens that we know them perfectly only by certain comparisons with material things, and chiefly by way of removal, per viam remotionis, in a negative way.

53. The sample we have just given is exceedingly interesting, since it enables us to appreciate as they merit the points of similarity in these two systems, which occupy a prominent place in the history of ideology, – a similarity which has not always hitherto been sufficiently noticed, although apparent upon the simple perusal of the German philosopher. Nor is this extraordinary: the study of the scholastics is exceedingly difficult; one must accommodate one's self to the language, the style, the opinions, and the prejudices of their epoch, and travel over much useless ground to collect a little pure ore. Note well, however, that I do not pretend to discover the "Critic of Pure Reason" in the works of the scholastics, I would only mark a fact but little known; it is that whatever is good, fundamental, and conclusive against the sensism of Condillac, in the German philosopher's system, had been said ages before by the scholastics.

Are we hence to infer that Kant took his doctrine from these authors? We cannot say; but we believe it may, with some reason, be asserted, that possibly the German philosopher, a man of vast reading, most retentive memory, and very laborious, may have received certain inspirations, reminiscences of which glimmer through his doctrines. A writer is not a plagiarist, although he make ideas his own which have originated with others. But it is often true that man imagines he creates, when he only recollects.

54. Although the German philosopher agrees with the scholastics in the observation of the primitive faculties of our mind, he differs from them in their application; and whilst they go on preparing a philosophical dogmatism, he marches towards a despairing skepticism. Nothing that all the most eminent philosophers have regarded as indisputable, can stand in the eyes of the German philosopher. True, he has distinguished the sensible from the intelligible order; he has recognized two primitive faculties in our soul; sensibility and the understanding; he has indicated the line which divides them, and carefully remarked that it should never be effaced; but, on the other hand, he has reduced the sensible world to a collection of pure phenomena, and explains space in such a way as to render it extremely difficult to avoid the idealism of Berkeley. He has also, so to speak, walled in the understanding by preventing all communication with it, excepting by sensible experience, and has resolved all the elements that meet in it into empty forms, which lead to nothing when there is question of applying them to the not-sensible, and which can teach us nothing concerning the great ontological, psychological, and cosmological problems which have been the object of the meditations of the profoundest metaphysicians, who, to resolve them, have published a vast amount of sublime doctrines, just cause of a noble pride in the human mind which knows the dignity of its nature, vindicates its lofty origin, and discerns from afar the immensity of its destiny.

CHAPTER IX.

HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE VALUE OF PURE IDEAS

55. Now that we have shown the points of similarity between Kant's system and that of the scholastics, we propose to note their differences chiefly in what concerns the application of these doctrines. To give an idea of the gravity and transcendentalism of these differences, we have only to remark the discrepancy of their results. The Aristotelians built upon their principles a whole system of metaphysical science, which they considered the noblest of sciences, and which, like a rich and brilliant light, fecundates and directs all others; whereas Kant, starting with the same facts, destroys metaphysical science by taking from it all power to know objects in themselves.

56. We here find Kant in opposition not only to the scholastics, properly so called, but also to all the most eminent metaphysicians who had preceded him. On the side of the scholastics in this matter may be cited Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, Saint Thomas, Descartes, Malebranche, Fenelon, and Leibnitz.

57. No one can deny the transcendency of these questions, if he be not totally ignorant how vital it is to the human mind to know if a science superior to the purely sensible order be possible, whereby man may extend his activity beyond the phenomena offered by matter. These questions are exceedingly profound, and must not be lightly treated. The difficulty and the great abstruseness of the objects treated, the importance, the transcendency of the consequences to which they lead, according to the road followed, demand that no labor whatever should be spared to penetrate these matters. It is easy to assure one's self that upon these questions depends the conservation of sound ideas of God and of the human mind; man's most important and lofty considerations.

To give this matter a thorough examination, let us go back to the origin of the divergence of these philosophical opinions, and let us investigate the reason why, starting with the same facts, they arrive at contradictory results. This requires a clear exposition of the opposite doctrines.

58. All philosophers agree in admitting the fact of sensibility; concerning it there can be no doubt; it is a phenomenon attested by consciousness in so palpable a manner, that not even skeptics could ever deny the subjective reality of the appearance, however much they called in question its objective reality. Idealists, when they deny the existence of bodies, do not deny their phenomenal appearance, their appearance to the mental eye under a sensible form. Sensibility then, and the phenomena it exhibits, have in all ages been primary data in ideological and psychological problems; there may be a discrepancy with respect to the nature and consequences of these data, but there can be none as to their existence.

59. The history of ideological science shows us two schools; one of which admits nothing but sensation, and explains all the affections and operations of the mind by the transformation of the senses; while the other admits primitive facts distinct from sensation; other faculties than that of feeling, and recognizes in the mind a line dividing the sensible from the intellectual order.

60. This latter school is divided into two others; one of which regards the sensible order as not only distinct, but also separate from the intellectual order, and in some sense at war with it; and it therefore maintains that the intellectual can receive nothing from the sensible order, except malign exhortations which either mislead it, or enervate its activity. Hence the system of innate ideas in all its purity; hence the metaphysics of an intellectual order entirely exempt from sensible impressions, metaphysics which, cultivated by eminent geniuses, has in modern times been professed by the author of the Investigation of Truth, with sublime exaggeration. The other ramification of the school also admits the pure intellectual order, but does not hold it to be contaminated by being brought into communication with sensible phenomena; on the contrary, it is rather inclined to believe that the problems of human intelligence, such as it exists in this life, cannot be resolved without fixing the mind upon the aforesaid communication.