A certainty that sensations correspond to external objects is necessary to the wants of life. Upon this all men without exception are agreed. Reflection cannot despoil us of our natural inclination; and although reason, when most it cavils, may shake the foundations of this belief, it never succeeds in convicting it of error. Even they who give the most weight to such cavils, cannot prove that bodies do not exist: they can only say that we do not know that they exist.
The natural inclination then possesses upon this point all the characteristics necessary to elevate it to the rank of an infallible criterion: it is irresistible, universal, satisfies a great necessity of life, and stands the test of reason.
As to qualities, the direct objects of sensation, it is not necessary for us that they exist in bodies themselves; it is enough that these bodies have something which produces in us, in some way or other, a corresponding impression. It is of little moment whether a green, or orange color be, or be not, a quality of objects, so long as they have some quality which produces in us the sensation of green, or orange color, as the case may be. The ordinary wants of life are not at all affected by this question; and man's relations with the sensible world would not be disturbed by the generalization of philosophical analysis. There is, perhaps, a kind of disenchantment of nature, since, despoiled of sensations, it is not nearly so beautiful; but the enchantment still continues with most men; and philosophy itself, except in brief moments of reflection, is subject to it; and even in these moments it experiences an enchantment of a different kind, as it considers how much of the beauty attributed to objects, belong to man in his own right, and that the simple exercise of a sensible being's harmonious faculties suffices to make the whole universe glow with splendor and glory.
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
ERROR OF LAMENNAIS ON COMMON CONSENT
329. The instinctive faith in human authority, of which we have just treated, is a fact attested by experience, and one which no philosopher has presumed to call in doubt. This faith, duly directed by reason, constitutes one criterion of truth. The errors to which it may sometimes lead are inherent in human weakness, and are amply compensated for by the advantages derived from it by society and individuals.
A celebrated writer undertook to include all criteria in that of human authority, resolutely affirming "common consent,
sensus communis
, to be to us the only seal of truth."
33
33
Lamennais,
Essai sur l'Indifference en Matière de Religion
. T. 2, C. 13.
His system, as strange as erroneous, in which words as unlike as
sensus
and
consensus
are confounded, is defended with that eloquent exaggeration characteristic of its eminent author; but profound philosophy does not always accompany eloquence. The sad fate of this genius, as brilliant as erring, shows the results of such a doctrine; it opens an abyss which swallows up all truth, and the author himself was the first to fall into it. To appeal to the authority of others in all things, and for all things, is to despoil the individual of every criterion, to annihilate them all, not excepting the very one he attempts to establish. It is inconceivable how such a system could have found favor with so gifted an intellect. We feel, when reading the eloquent pages of its development, an undefinable pain to see such brilliant passages squandered on the repetition of all the common-places of skepticism, ending in a most glaring paradox, and the least philosophical system imaginable.
Lamennais calls common sense the only criterion; nevertheless, we have only to glance at the others to be convinced that this new criterion is sterile, and could not produce them.
330. The testimony of consciousness, in the first place, cannot rest in any sense upon the authority of others. Formed as it is by a series of acts intimately present to our own mind, and, as without it, it is not possible for us even to conceive individual thought, it must evidently exist prior to the application of any criterion, since no criterion is possible to him who does not think.
Under a scientific aspect nothing can be weaker than his pretended refutation of Descartes' principle. "When, trying to rise from his methodical doubt, Descartes establishes this proposition,
I think, therefore I am
, he passes an immense abyss, and lays in the clouds the corner-stone of the edifice he is about to raise; for, strictly speaking, we cannot say
I think
, we cannot say
I am
, we cannot say
therefore
, or affirm anything as a consequence."
34
34
Ibid.
Descartes' principle merited a more careful examination from whoever would invent a system. To oppose to it that we cannot say
therefore
, is to repeat the worn-out argument of the schools; and to affirm that we cannot say
I think
, is to contradict a fact of consciousness not denied even by skeptics. In place of this, we will explain at due length what is, or at least, what ought to be, the sense of Descartes' principle.
If, according to Lamennais, we cannot say
I think
, still less can we say that others think; and as his system recognizes one only criterion, common consent, which absolutely needs the thought of others, it follows that Lamennais has laid his corner-stone higher in the clouds than he who founded philosophy upon a fact of consciousness.
331. A criterion, especially when it pretends to be the only one, ought to have these two conditions: to apply to all cases, and not to suppose another. Now the criterion of common consent is precisely that which is farthest from possessing these conditions: prior to it is the testimony of consciousness; prior also to it is the testimony of the senses, for we cannot know the consent of others if sight or hearing do not make us certain of it.
332. In many cases this criterion is impossible; in many others it is exceedingly difficult if not wholly impossible. To what point is common consent needed? If the word
common
refers to the whole human race, how are the suffrages of all mankind to be recognized? If the consent need not be unanimous, to what point does the contradiction, or the simple non-assent of some, destroy the legitimacy of the criterion?
333. Lamennais' error consists in taking the effect for the cause, and the cause for the effect. We detect certain truths, upon which all men are agreed, and we say: the guaranty that each one is right is the consent of all. If we analyze this well, we shall perceive that the reason of each individual's certainty is not the consent of others; but on the contrary the reason why all agree is that each one for himself feels obliged to give his assent. In this universal voting of the human race, each one gives his own vote, impelled in a certain sense by nature herself; and as all experience the same impulse, all vote alike. Lamennais says every one votes in the same way, because all vote so; but he does not observe that then the voting could never begin nor end. This comparison is not an accidental satire, but a strictly philosophical argument, to which there can be no reply; it suffices to show the system of Lamennais to be unfounded and contradictory; just as, on the other hand, it indicates the origin of the equivocation, the taking the effect for the cause.
334. Lamennais, in order to prove his criterion to be the only one, appeals to the testimony of consciousness. In our opinion this testimony establishes directly the contrary. Who ever waited for the authority of others to be certain of the existence of bodies? Do we not see even brutes, by force of a natural impulse, making, in their own way, their sensations objective? Had we not in giving our assent to the words of men some other criterion than common consent, we could never believe any one, for the simple reason that it would be impossible to be certain of what others say or think without beginning by believing some one. Does the child refer to the authority of others before giving faith to what its mother recounts? Does it not rather obey the natural instinct communicated to it by the beneficent hand of the Creator? It does not believe because all believe; but all children believe because each one of them believes: their individual belief does not spring from a general belief, but rather the general belief is formed from the assemblage of individual beliefs; it is not natural because universal, but universal because natural.
335. Lamennais' chief argument consists in this: that in certain cases in order to make sure of the truth relatively to the other criteria, we appeal to that of common consent, and that folly itself is only the deviation from this consent. If you tell a man that his eyes deceive him as to an object which he sees, he instinctively turns to other men, and asks them if they do not see it in the same way. If all agree that he is wrong, and he is satisfied they are in earnest, he will experience a momentary vacillation of his faith in the testimony of sight; he will approach the object, will take a different position, or adopt whatever other means may seem to him best suited to make sure that he is right. If he still sees the object in the same way, and the same persons and others who arrive persist in assuring him that the thing is not as he sees it, he will distrust the testimony of sight, and believe himself subject to some infirmity affecting his sight. To this is the argument of Lamennais reduced. What results from it? Nothing to support the system of common consent. True, the other criteria are, in exceptional circumstances, liable to error; in certain cases when a doubt arises an appeal is taken to the testimony of others: but why? Simply, in order to make sure that one has not labored under one of those derangements to which human misery is subject. We know that what is natural is general; and he who doubts inquires of others, that he may ascertain if he has by some accident been out of his ordinary natural state. Who sees not the unreasonableness of raising an exceptional means to the rank of sole and general criterion? Who sees not the extravagance of asserting that we are assured of the testimony of the senses by the authority of other men, solely because, in extreme cases fearing some derangement of our organs, we ask others if something appears to them as it does to us?
336. Greater exaggeration we cannot have than that of Lamennais, when he affirms "that the exact sciences are also founded on common consent; that in this they enjoy no privilege, and that the very term
exact
, is one of those empty titles under which man seeks to conceal his weakness; that geometry itself only exists by virtue of a tacit convention, a convention which may be thus expressed:
we are obliged to hold such principles to be certain, and we pronounce every one a rebel to common sense, that is, to the authority of the number, who shall demand a demonstration of them
." This is an intolerable exaggeration. The arguments which he adduces in his notes to prove the intrinsic uncertainty of mathematics are exceedingly feeble; and some of them might make us suspect the author of the
Essai sur l'Indifference
to be a less profound philosopher than eloquent writer.
I am not ignorant of what has been advanced against the certainty of the exact sciences, nor of the difficulties they present when called before the tribunal of metaphysics. In the first volume of
Protestantism compared with Catholicity
, I consecrated a chapter to what I call
instinct of faith
; and this instinct, I there maintained, also exercises its influence upon the exact sciences. These I do not place above moral sciences; I esteem these latter the more; but I must avoid an exaggeration that would destroy them all.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
337. In concluding this book, I wish to give a summary of my views on certainty, wherein I shall show the connection between the doctrines exposed in the different chapters.
When philosophy meets a necessary fact its duty is to accept it. Such a fact is certainty. To dispute its existence, is to dispute the splendor of the sun at mid-day. Mankind are certain of many things; philosophers, skeptics not excluded, are equally so. Absolute skepticism is impossible.
Setting aside the question of certainty, philosophy is free from extravagance, and is established in the domain of reason; it can there examine how we acquire certainty, and upon what it is based.
The human race is endowed with certainty as a quality annexed to life, a spontaneous result of the development of the soul's faculties. Certainty is natural; consequently it precedes all philosophy, and is independent of the opinions of men. For the same reason the question of certainty, although important to the knowledge of the laws to which our mind is subject, is, and always will be, unproductive of practical results. It is a dividing line fixed by reason lest at any time something should descend from the realm of abstraction prejudicial to society or individuals. Thus from its first investigations, philosophy forms a kind of alliance with good sense; they mutually promise never to be hostile to each other.
When we examine the foundations of certainty a question arises upon the first principle of human cognitions: does it exist, and what is it?
This question may have a double meaning. It may either mean a primitive truth containing all others, as the seed does plants and fruits; or simply a resting-point. The former gives rise to the question of transcendental science; the latter is the cause of the disputes in the schools on the preference of different truths in relation to the dignity of first principle.
If truth exists, there must be means of knowing it, hence the question of the value of criteria.
There is in the order of being one truth, the origin of all truths, God, who is also in the absolute intellectual order the origin of all truths. In the human intellectual order there is no one truth, the origin of all others; neither is there in the real, nor in the ideal order. The philosophy of the
me
can be of no account in establishing transcendental science. The doctrine of absolute identity is an absurdity; besides, it explains nothing.
The problem of representation is here proposed. The representation may be of identity, causality, or ideality. The last is founded on the preceding, but is distinct from it.
Besides the problem of representation we examined that of immediate intelligibility, a difficult problem, but one of the greatest importance to a perfect knowledge of the world of intelligences.
The disputes on the value of different principles, as to which has the right to be called fundamental, originate in a confusion of ideas. We attempt to compare things of very diverse orders, whereas this is impossible. Descartes' principle is the enunciation of a simple fact of consciousness; that of contradiction, an objective truth, the indispensable condition of every cognition: that of the Cartesians is the expression of a law of our mind. The three, each in its own way and sphere, are necessary; no one of them is totally independent of the others; the ruin of any one destroys our intelligence.
We have various criteria; but they may all be reduced to three: consciousness, or internal sense, evidence, and intellectual instinct, or common sense. Consciousness embraces all facts intimately present to our soul as purely subjective; evidence extends to all objective truths, upon which our reason is exercised; intellectual instinct is the natural inclination to assent in cases which lie without the domain of consciousness and evidence.
The intellectual instinct obliges us to give an objective value to ideas; in this case it mingles with the truths of evidence, and is, in ordinary language, confounded with evidence.
When the intellectual instinct operates upon non-evident objects and inclines us to assent, it is called
common sense
.
Consciousness and the intellectual instinct constitute the other criteria.
The criterion of evidence includes two things: the appearance of ideas, which belongs to consciousness; the objective value, existing or possible, which belongs to the intellectual instinct.
The testimony of the senses also has two parts: sensation as purely subjective, and this pertains to consciousness; and the belief in the objectiveness of sensations, and this pertains to the intellectual instinct.
The testimony of human authority is composed of that of the senses, which place us in relation with our fellow-men, and that of the intellectual instinct, which induces us to believe them.
Not everything is susceptible of proof; but every criterion stands the test of reason. The criterion of consciousness is a primitive fact of our nature; in that of evidence we discover the indispensable condition of the existence of reason itself; in that of the intellectual instinct by which we make our ideas objective, is found a law of our nature likewise indispensable to the very existence of reason; in that of common sense, properly so called, is the instinctive assent to truths, which, when examined, are seen to be perfectly reasonable; in that of the senses, and in that of human authority, we discover the same thing as in the other cases of common sense, which is a means of satisfying the necessities of sensation, intellectual, and moral life.
The criteria do not conflict with, but mutually aid and confirm each other. Neither is reason at war with nature, nor nature with reason; both are necessary to us; both direct us with certainty, although they are both liable to err, since they belong to a limited and very feeble being.
338. The philosophy which considers man only under a single aspect is incomplete, and in danger of becoming false. So far as certainty is concerned, we must bear in mind this last observation: to become excessively exclusive is to place one's self on the brink of error. We may analyze if we will the sources of truth; but we must not lose sight of their connection when examining them separately. To begin by conceiving a system, and then making everything conform to its demands, is to place truth in the bed of Procrustes. Unity is a great good; but we must be satisfied with the measure imposed upon us by nature. We must seek truth by human means, and in proportion to our capacity. The faculties of our soul are subject to certain laws, which we cannot abstract.
One of the most constant laws of our being is the necessity of a simultaneous exercise of our faculties, not only in order to become certain of truth, but even to discover it. Man joins the greatest multiplicity with simplicity: his soul is one, is endowed with various faculties, and united to a body of such variety and complication as to be called with much reason a little world. His faculties are in intimate and mutual relation; they exert a continuous influence upon each other. To isolate them is to mutilate, and sometimes to extinguish them. This remark is important, for it indicates the radical vice of all exclusive philosophy.
If a man have no sensations, his understanding has no materials, nor has it that stimulus, without which it remains dormant. When God united our soul and body, it was that one might aid the other; wherefore he established that admirable correspondence between the impressions of the body and the affections of the soul, which, therefore, needs the body as a medium, as an instrument, whether the action of the body upon it be supposed to be a true action, or only a simple occasion of causality of a higher order.
If a man, having no sensations, were to think, he would only think as a pure spirit; he would not be in relation with the external world, nor would he be a man in the sense in which we use this word. In such a case the body is superfluous, and there is no reason why it should be united to the soul.
If we admit sensations, and abstract reason, man is converted into a brute. He feels, but does not think: he experiences impressions, but does not combine them, for he is incapable of reflecting. Every thing succeeds in him as a series of necessary, isolated phenomena, which indicate nothing, lead to nothing, and are nothing but affections of a particular being who does not comprehend them, nor render to himself an account of them. It is even difficult to say of what kind are his relations with the external world. Arguing from appearances and analogy, it is probable that brutes also make their sensations objective; but ordinarily, their objectiveness differs from ours. Let us take sleep for example. If brutes sleep, and they probably do sleep, as certain appearances seem to indicate, it would not be strange should they not distinguish as we do between waking and sleeping.
This supposes some reflection upon acts, some comparison between the order and constancy of some, and the disorder and inconstancy of others; a reflection which man makes even in infancy, and continues to make all his life without adverting to it. When we awake from a deep sleep, we sometimes remain for several moments in doubt if we are asleep or awake: this doubt alone supposes a comparative reflection of the two states. What do we do in order to resolve this doubt? We examine the place where we are; and the fact that we are abed, in the silence and darkness of night, indicates that the previous vision had no connection with our situation, and therefore that we were asleep. Without this reflection, the sensations of sleeping and waking would be connected, and all confounded in one and the same class.
The instinct conceded to brutes, but denied to men, shows that reason was given to us in order to appreciate sensations.
There are, then, in man no criteria of truth absolutely isolated. They are all in relation with each other, they mutually affirm and complete each other; for we must note that those truths, of which all men are certain, do in some sense rest upon all the criteria.
Sensations instinctively lead us to believe in the existence of an external world; and if this belief be submitted to the examination of reason, it confirms the same truth, resting upon the general ideas of cause and effect. The pure understanding knows certain principles, and assents to them as to necessary truths. The senses, if these principles be submitted to their experience, confirm them as much as their own perfection, or that of the instruments which they use, permit. "All the radii of a circle are equal." This is a necessary truth. The senses perceive no perfect circle, but they see that the more perfect the instrument is with which they construct it, so much more nearly equal are the radii. "There is no change without a cause to produce it." The senses cannot prove the proposition in all its universality, for they are by nature limited to a determinate number of particular cases; but, so far as their experience goes, they discover the order of such a dependence in the succession of phenomena.
The senses mutually aid each other. The sensation of one sense is compared with those of the others, when there arises a doubt as to its correspondence with its object. We seem to hear the whistling of the wind; but our hearing has more than once deceived us: to make sure of the truth we look at trees or other objects. We see a figure, but there is not light sufficient to distinguish it from a shadow, we approach and touch it.
The intellectual and moral faculties also exercise a salutary influence upon each other. Ideas rectify sentiments, and sentiments ideas. The value of the ideas of one order is verified by those of another order; and the same with sentiments. Pity for one suffering punishment inspires the pardon of all criminals; the indignation inspired at seeing the victims of crime, induces to the application of punishment; both sentiments involve something that is good; but the one would engender impunity, the other cruelty; it is to temper them that the ideas of justice exist. But this justice in its turn might pronounce excessively absolute sentences; justice is one, and the circumstances of peoples very different. Justice only considers the culpability, and consequently pronounces such sentences. A sentence may not be proper; for here come in other moral ideas of a distinct order, the amendment of the guilty joined with reparation made to the injured party; ideas also of public convenience which are not repugnant to sound morals, and which may direct their application.
Complete truth, like perfect good, exists only with harmony. This is a necessary law, and to it man is subject. Since we do not intuitively see the infinite truth in which all truths are one, and all good is one; and as we are in relation with a world of finite, and consequently multiple beings, we need different powers to place us in contact, so to speak, with this variety of truths and finite goods; but as they, in their turn, spring from
one
same principle, and are directed to
one
same end, they are submitted to harmony, which is the unity of multiplicity.
339. With these doctrines we believe philosophy without skepticism to be possible. Examination is not excluded; on the contrary, it is extended and completed. This method has another advantage; it does not make philosophy extravagant, and philosophers exceptional. Philosophy cannot be so generalized as to become popular; human nature is opposed to this; but there is not on the other hand any necessity of condemning it to a misanthropic isolation by force of extravagant professions. In such a case philosophy degenerates into philosophism. Exposition of facts, conscientious examination, clear language; such we conceive sound philosophy to be. This does not require it to cease to be profound, unless by profoundness be meant darkness. The rays of the sun light up the remotest depths of space.
340. I am aware that some philosophers of our age think otherwise, that they deem it necessary, when they examine the fundamental questions of philosophy, to shake the foundations of the world; and yet I have never been able to persuade myself that it was necessary to destroy in order to examine, or that in order to become philosophers we ought to become madmen. We may render the unreasonableness and extravagance of these masters of humanity sensible by an allegory, although the simplicity of my language may somewhat mortify their philosophical profoundness. The reader needs some solace and rest, now that he has followed me through such abstruse treatises, which all the power of the writer does not suffice to illustrate, and still less to render attractive.
A noble, rich, and numerous family preserves in magnificent archives the records of its nobility, alliances, and possessions. Some of these documents are hardly legible, either on account of the handwriting, their great antiquity, or the wear and tear of years. There is also a suspicion t