Kitabı oku: «Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)», sayfa 28

CHAPTER XI.
SIMPLICITY OF THE SOUL

72. I have confined myself in the preceding chapters to proving the substantiality of the soul; to do which it was only necessary to demonstrate by the testimony of consciousness that there is within us a permanent reality, the subject of the modifications which we experience. I shall now demonstrate that this substance is simple.

To proceed methodically, let us fix the meaning of the word simple. When many beings are united and form a collection, the result is called a composite being; so that there is a true composition wherever beings substantially distinct are united; the band which unites them may be of different species, which produces the diversity of compositions. Simplicity is opposed to composition; the idea of simplicity essentially excludes the idea of composition; as this last includes a number of distinct things which are united to form a whole, the idea of simplicity essentially excludes the idea of number of things united to form a whole. Therefore the simple is strictly one, and there is simplicity in a substance when it is not a collection of substances.

When, therefore, we say the substance of the soul is simple, we mean that it is not a collection of substances, but one substance.

73. The idea of simplicity thus determined with exactness, let us see if it belongs to our soul. As the soul is not given us in intuition after the manner of sensible things, and we only know it by the presence of the internal sense, and by the phenomena which we experience in the depths of our consciousness, we must examine these two sources to see if we can find simplicity in them.

It is an indisputable fact that in all our acts, in all our internal affections, we perceive the identity of the me.⁴⁸ There is no identity between things that are distinct: consequently the internal sense at once rejects the multiplicity of the soul. It may be said that this identity does not exist between distinct substances, but that a composite substance is identical with itself, and perhaps the identity revealed by consciousness is only the identity of a composite with itself: but this reply is destroyed by merely examining the testimony of consciousness. That which we perceive as various and multiple is not the me, but that which takes place in the me: we think, we will, we perceive different things; but consciousness attests that what thinks them, wills them, and perceives them, is one and the same, the me. Therefore, the testimony of consciousness alone proves the simplicity of the soul; for it is impossible to explain otherwise how we perceive within us the permanent unity amid the multitude of internal phenomena.

74. Abstracting the testimony of the internal sense, and looking only at the nature of the internal phenomena, it may be demonstrated that the subject of them is a simple substance. If it were not so, the thinking substance would be composed of various substances; let us see what would follow from this supposition. Let the component substances be three, for example, A, B, C; I say that this collection cannot think. To demonstrate it with the most complete evidence, let us take this judgment: metal is a body, and let us see if it is possible for the collection of A, B, C, to form this judgment. Let us suppose the representation of the subject, metal, to be in the substance A; the idea of the predicate, body, to be in B; and the general idea of the relation of the predicate to the subject, or the copula, is, to be in C; can a judgment be the result? By no means. A will perceive the metal, B the body, and C the general idea of the copula, is. Each of these substances will have consciousness of its own; but as it is not conscious of what is in the other two, it can form no judgment, for this essentially consists in the relation of the predicate to the subject.

75. If you say that each of the substances contains the representations of the three things, we shall have three judgments, and there will not be one thinking being, but three. Besides, either of the three substances A, B, C, is composed of others, or it is not. If it is not, is simple, and we have a simple and perceptive substance, why then suppose three when one is enough? If it is composed of others, the difficulty is increased; for supposing A to be formed of two substances, which we may call m, n; the representation of metal which was in A will be distributed between m and n, in which case, far from obtaining a judgment, we should not even have a subject; for it would not be possible to form the representation of metal, supposing it to be divided between m and n.

If it is not possible to form a judgment, or even the idea of one term, it is evident that all reasoning and thought would be impossible; for reasoning implies a connection of judgments from which it deduces the conclusion contained in the premises.

76. Acts of the will are also impossible in a composite substance; there is no will where there is no cognition, and this latter is, as we have just seen, inseparable from simplicity. But we may extend the demonstration still further. An act of the will implies an inclination, tendency, or whatever it may be called, towards an object known. Let us suppose the two substances A and B to compose a substance which has a will; and let us suppose all that is necessary for the act of willing to be divided between them in such manner that the knowledge of the object willed is in it, and the inclination or tendency in B; I say such an act or will is absurd. To feel the force of this truth let us suppose that the act of the will is to be formed of the cognition of one man, and the inclination of another towards the object known by the first; the pure cognition of one is not the act of the will, and the inclination of the other towards an object is impossible unless he has the cognition of the object towards which he is inclined, because this is equivalent to supposing a relation without any term to which it relates. These contradictions must be admitted by every one who denies the simplicity of the substances which will; for either the inclination and the cognition must be divided between the parts of the substances, or all concentrated in one part, and then the others are unnecessary.

Moreover, the substances composing the substance which will are either simple or composite; if simple, then there are simple substances which know and will; if composite, each act of the will would be an aggregate of the action of the parts, and what would an act of the will be which should consist in an aggregate?

77. The union which we conceive in distinct substances is either juxtaposition in space, simultaneousness in time, or the concourse of forces producing a common effect: juxtaposition in space or simultaneousness of time does not help us to explain thought, the act of the will, nor any internal phenomena; and neither does the concourse of forces producing a common effect solve the problem. On this supposition we should have to conceive internal phenomena as the products of an elaboration to which various substances have occurred. Let us for a moment admit this absurdity; we advance nothing by it, for we then ask, where does the phenomenon reside? If in all the substances jointly it must be in itself composite, and its consciousness would also be composite; none of the component substances could say I with respect to this phenomenon; there would, therefore, be a multiplicity of consciousnesses. Either these consciousnesses would be united in a point in order to form a common consciousness, or they would not. If they are united, their point of union must be a simple substance, or we relapse into the multiplicity of consciousnesses: if they are not united, the different internal consciousnesses of each man will be like the consciousnesses of different men; each substance will think its own, without knowing what the other thinks.

78. Finally, this divisibility of substance and of consciousness will extend to infinity, or it will not; if the former, instead of one thinking being, there will be an infinite number of thinking beings within each one of us; if the latter, we must come to simple substances with thought and consciousness, which is precisely what our adversaries are opposed to. Infinite divisibility does not save them from simplicity; the division separates the parts, but it supposes them distinct; therefore, infinite division must suppose an infinite number of simple beings which make the division possible.

CHAPTER XII.
KANT'S OPINION OF THE ARGUMENT PROVING THE SIMPLICITY OF THE SOUL

79. Kant calls the argument, by which we have just proved the simplicity of the soul, the second paralogism of psychology. He gives it in these terms: "Every thing, the action of which can never be conceived as the concurrence of many agents, is simple: the soul or thinking substance is of this nature; therefore the soul is simple." The German philosopher admits that this argument is not a mere sophism, invented by some dogmatist for the purpose of giving his assertions a slight appearance of truth; and he confesses that it seems to defy the most attentive examination and the most profound reflection. Still he flatters himself that he can expose its fallacy, showing that this principal support of rational psychology is a false foundation, and that, consequently, the whole edifice of this science is built in the air.

80. Kant observes that the nervus probandi of the argument is in the fact that many representations cannot form a thought, except inasmuch as they are contained in the absolute unity of the thinking subject; "but no one," he says, "can prove this proposition by conceptions. Where could he begin? The proposition: 'A thought can only be the effect of the absolute unity of the thinking subject,' cannot be analyzed; the unity of thought (and even thought results from many representations) is collective; and as to simple conceptions, their unity may just as well be referred to the collective unity of substances which contribute to produce the thought (just as the motion of a body is the motion of all its parts) as to the absolute unity of the subject. The necessity of the supposition of a simple substance cannot consequently be known by the rule of identity in a composite thought. No one who understands the reason of the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori, as we have explained them above, will dare to affirm that this proposition can be known synthetically, and perfectly a priori, or by pure conceptions." This reasoning is pure sophistry, and will vanish in the light of evidence.

81. In the first place, it is not correct to say that all thoughts result from many representations; in the perception of a simple idea, as of being, for example, there are not many representations; therefore Kant's argument fails at the first step; for if there be even one thought which requires simplicity, it has already been demonstrated that, if the soul is simple in one instance it cannot cease to be so in another.

82. Let us now examine how the diversity of representations enter into those thoughts which admit of this diversity. When these representations form what is called a thought, they are united, as it were, in a point which requires the unity of the perception and of the subject perceiving. In the thought called judgment various representations are combined, that of the subject and that of the object; but these different representations do not constitute the thought called judgment, except inasmuch as they are presented as connected with the relation which authorizes us to affirm or deny the predicate of the subject; therefore at the bottom of the diversity there is unity, that is to say, the relation; therefore the thought by which this relation is perceived is one, and the action of perceiving is essentially one, notwithstanding the variety of the representations.

83. There is no order in our thoughts except as we compare them with each other: all our intellectual acts are reduced to the perception and comparison of ideas; in perception there is simplicity, as there must also be in comparisons, since there can be no comparison of that which is varied, except by reducing the varied to that which is one, that is, to the relation which is perceived in the comparison. Therefore in every thought there is unity; thought can never be conceived as the concurrence of many agents; therefore the proposition, which Kant considered indemonstrable, is demonstrated, – that many representations cannot form a thought except in so far as they are contained in the absolute unity of a thinking subject.

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.