Kitabı oku: «Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)», sayfa 5

CHAPTER XI.
TWO COGNITIONS: INTUITIVE AND DISCURSIVE

76. Now that I have explained sensible, I pass to intellectual intuition. There are two modes of knowing; the one is intuitive, the other discursive. Intuitive cognition is that in which the object is presented to the understanding, such as it is, and upon which the perceptive faculty has to exercise no function but that of contemplation; it is therefore called intuition, from intueri, to see.

77. This intuition may take place in two ways. It may either present the object itself to the perceptive faculty, and unite them without any intermediacy; or by the intervention of an idea or representation, capable of putting the perceptive faculty in action, so that it may, without the necessity of combination, see the object in this representation. The first requires the object perceived to be intelligible by itself, since otherwise there could be no union of the object understood with the subject understanding; the second needs a representation to supply the place of the object, and consequently it is not indispensable that this should be immediately intelligible.⁹

78. Discursive cognition is that in which the understanding does not have the object itself present, but forms it itself, so to speak, by uniting in one whole conception several partial conceptions, whose connection in one subject it has found out by ratiocination.

In order to render more apparent the difference between intuitive and discursive cognition, I will illustrate it by an example. "We see a man; his physiognomy is presented to us, such as it is; no combinations are necessary, none could possibly make him appear differently. We see his characteristic features, such as they are; but the collection of them is not a thing produced by our combinations; it is an object given to the perceptive faculty which has nothing to do but to perceive it." When an object is offered to our understanding in this way, the cognition we have of it will be intuitive.

We have said that the object of intellectual intuition may be united immediately to the perceptive faculty, or that it may be presented to it by a medium which acts the part of the object. Keeping in view the same example, we might say that these two classes of intuitions correspond to those of the man seen by himself, or in his portrait. There would be in both cases intuition of his physiognomy, but no combination would be necessary, and none could possibly form it.

But suppose some one to tell us of a person whom we have never seen, and whose portrait cannot be shown to us. He would be obliged, in order to give us an idea of his physiognomy, to enumerate one by one his characteristic features, by the union of which we shall form an idea of the likeness he has just described. To this imaginary representation may be compared discursive cognition, by which, although we do not see the object, we in some sense construct it, as it were, from the assemblage of those ideas which we have by means of discursion interlinked, and formed into one whole conception representing the object.

79. Kant, in his Critic of Pure Reason, speaks repeatedly of intuitive and discursive cognition; but he does not explain with perfect clearness the distinctive characteristics of these two classes of cognition. Let it not, however, be supposed that the discovery of these two ways of perceiving is due to the German philosopher. Many ages before him, the theologians had known them; nor could it be otherwise, since the distinction between intuition and discursion is intimately connected with one of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity.

It is well known that our religion admits the possibility and reality of a true cognition of God, even in this life. The sacred text tells us that we may know God by his works; that the invisible things of God are manifested to us by his visible creatures; that the heavens narrate his glory, and the firmament announces the works of his hands; that they who have thus known God are inexcusable, because they have not glorified him as they ought; but this same religion teaches us that the Blessed, in the life to come, will know him in a very different manner, will see him as he is, face to face. It was Christianity then that marked the difference between intuitive and discursive cognitions, between the cognition by which the understanding, proceeding from effects to their cause, and uniting in it the ideas of wisdom, omnipotence, goodness, holiness, and infinite perfection, rises to God; and the cognition in which the mind does not need to advance, drawing its conclusions by aid of discursion, from various conceptions, in order to force from them an idea of God, in which the Infinite Being will offer himself clearly to the eyes of the mind, not in a conception elaborated by reason, nor under the sublime mysteries of faith, but such as he is, in himself, as an object given immediately to the perceptive faculty, not as an object discovered by the force of discursion, or presented under august shadows. And here we find another proof of the great profoundness hidden under the dogmas of the Christian religion. This distinction is to be met with in the catechism, and yet who would have suspected that religion had taught us a doctrine so important to ideological science? If the child be asked, who is God, he replies by enumerating his perfections, and showing thereby that he knows him. If you ask this same child, to what end man has been created, he will answer, to see God, etc.

Here again is the distinction between discursive cognition, or by conceptions, and intuitive cognitions; with the former one is said, simply to know, with the latter to see.

CHAPTER XII.
THE SENSISM OF KANT

80. Kant maintained that while in the present life, we have only sensible intuition; and he considers the possibility of a purely intellectual intuition, whether for our own or for other minds doubtful. But as we have seen elsewhere (ch. IX.) that he does not attribute any value to conceptions separated from intuition, we infer that he is, notwithstanding his long dissertations upon the pure understanding, a confirmed sensist; and that the authors of the Critic of Pure Reason, and of the Treatise on Sensations, differ much less than at first sight might be supposed. If our mind has no other intuition than the sensible, and the conceptions of the pure understanding are, if they do not include some one of these intuitions, nothing but empty forms; if when we abstract these intuitions, there are in the understanding only purely logical functions, which mean nothing, and in no sense deserve to be called cognitions; it follows that there is in our mind nothing but sensations, which may be methodically distributed in conceptions, as if packed away in a kind of hut, where they are registered and preserved. According to this philosopher, the understanding is reduced so low, that Condillac himself might admit it.

81. Indeed, in the system of sensations transformed, the mind is supposed to possess a transforming force, since otherwise, it would be impossible to explain all ideological phenomena by mere sensation, and the very title of the system would be a contradiction. This being so, would any sensistic scruple have prevented Condillac from admitting the synthesis of the imagination, the relations of all sensible intuitions to the unity of apperception, and finally, a variety of logical functions, to classify and compare sensible intuitions? So far is this from being the case, it would seem that the root of all these doctrines might be found in the system of the French philosopher, whose fundamental principles, when summed up, amount to this: that nothing can be seen in the mind besides sensations; but he does not therefore deny it a force capable of transforming, classifying, and generalizing them.

82. Here, then, is another check to the originality of the German philosopher; he has, to combat sensism, said in substance just what, ages before, all the schools repeated; and now when he undertakes to follow a new road to the explanation of the purely intellectual order, he falls into Condillac's system. His empty conceptions, without meaning, without application, beyond the sensible order, amount to no more than what Condillac taught when analyzing the generation of ideas, and showing how they flowed from sensations by means of successive transformations. Could there be any difficulty, it would be concerning words, not things: no sensist ought to hesitate accepting whole and entire the Critic of Pure Reason, when once he has seen what applications the German spiritualist makes of his doctrines. It would be very desirable for those who insist that the spiritualism of Kant is decidedly destructive of Condillac's sensism, to weigh well these observations.

CHAPTER XIII.
EXISTENCE OF PURE INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

83. It is not true that the human mind even in this life has no intuition other than the sensible. There are within us many non-sensible phenomena, of which we are clearly conscious. Reflection, comparison, abstraction, election, and all the acts of the understanding and will, include nothing of the sensible. We should like to know, to what species of sensibility, abstract ideas, and the acts by which we perceive them, belong; these among others: I desire, I do not desire, I choose this, I prefer this to that. Not one of these acts can be presented by sensible intuition; they are facts of an order superior to the sphere of sensibility, and yet we have in our mind a clear and lively consciousness of them; we reflect upon them, make them the object of our studies, distinguish them one from another, and classify them in a thousand different ways. These facts are presented to us immediately; we know them, not by discursion, but by intuition; therefore it is false that the intuition of the soul refers to none but sensible phenomena, for it encounters within itself an expanded series of non-sensible phenomena, which are given to it in intuition.

84. It is of no use to say that these internal phenomena are empty forms, and mean nothing, unless referred to a sensible intuition. Whatever they may be, they are something distinct from this same sensible intuition; and we perceive this something, not by discursion, but by intuition; therefore, besides sensible intuition, there is another of the purely intellectual order.

The question is not whether these pure conceptions have, or have not, a certain power to enable us to know objects in themselves; but it is simply to ascertain if they do exist, and if they are sensible. That they exist, is certain; consciousness attests this fact, and all ideologists admit it. That they are sensible, cannot be maintained without destroying their nature; and least of all can Kant maintain this, since he has so carefully distinguished between sensible intuition and these conceptions.

85. This sea of non-sensible phenomena, which we experience within us, is like a mirror wherein the depths of the intellectual world are reflected. Minds, it is true, are not presented immediately to our perception, and to know them we need a discursive process; but we shall, upon careful examination, find in this intuition of our inward phenomena the representation, imperfect though it be, of what is verified in intelligences of a superior order. Thus we have in a certain mode idea-images, since there can be no better image of one thought than another thought, nor of one act of the will than another act of the will. Thus we know minds distinct from our own, by a kind of mediate, not immediate, intuition, in so far as they are presented to our consciousness as the image in a mirror.

86. The communication of minds by means of speech and other natural or conventional signs, is a fact of experience intimately connected with all intellectual, moral, and physical necessities. When a mind is put into communication with another, the cognition it has of what passes in the other is not by mere general conceptions, but by a kind of intuition, which although mediate, does not therefore fail to be true. The thought, or affection of another communicated to our mind by means of speech, excites in us a thought, or affection, similar to that of the mind communicating them. We do, then, not only know, but see, in our own consciousness, the consciousness of another; and so perfect is at times the likeness, that we anticipate all that he is about to tell us, and unroll within ourselves the same series of phenomena that are verified in the mind of him with whom we are in communication. It happens thus when we say: "I understand perfectly what N. thinks, what he wants, what he is trying to express."

87. This observation seems to us of great service to place beyond all doubt that there are in our mind, independently of the sensible order, conceptions, not empty, but referable to a determinate object. The cognition of the phenomena of the purely intellectual order, transmitted to us by means of speech, or other signs, does not destroy the character of the intuition, since we here find all the necessary conditions assembled; internal representation, and its relation to a determinate object affecting us.

88. This analysis of ideological facts, whose existence cannot be doubted, demonstrates the falseness of Kant's doctrine, that there are in our mind none but sensible intuitions; as well as the non-existence of the German philosopher's problem: whether it is possible, or not, for objects to be given to other minds in an intuition other than the sensible. This very problem is found solved within us, since the attentive observation of the internal phenomena, and the reciprocal communication of minds, has given us to know not only the possibility, but also the existence of intuitions different from the sensible.

CHAPTER XIV.
VALUE OF INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTIONS. – ABSTRACTION MADE FROM INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

89. Although we should admit that our mind can have no intuition but the sensible, it could not thence be inferred that conceptions of the purely intellectual order are empty forms, and in nowise conducive to the knowledge of objects in themselves. It has always been understood that general ideas are not intuitive, since by the very fact that they are general they cannot be referred immediately to a determinate object; and yet no one ever doubted that they could serve to give us true cognitions.

90. It is certain that general ideas, of themselves alone, do not lead to any positive result; or, in other words, they do not make us know existing beings; but if they be joined to other particular ones, a reciprocal influence is established between them, from which cognition results. When we make the general affirmation: "Every contingent being requires a cause;" this proposition, although very true, means nothing in the order of facts, if we abstract the existence of contingent beings and causes of every kind. In such a case, the proposition will express a relation of ideas, not of facts: the cognition which results therefrom will be merely ideal, not positive.

91. This relation of ideas tacitly involves a condition, which gives them, so far as facts are concerned, a hypothetical value; for, when we affirm that every contingent being must have a cause, we are not to be understood to affirm a relation of ideas destitute of all possible application; but rather, on the contrary, to intend that if any contingent being exists, it must have a cause.

92. In order that this hypothetical value of ideas may be converted into a positive value, nothing is necessary but that the condition involved in the general proposition: "Every contingent being must have a cause," be verified. Of itself alone this teaches us nothing concerning the real world; but from the moment that experience shows us a single contingent being, the general proposition, before sterile, becomes exceedingly fruitful. So soon as experience shows us a contingent being, we know the necessity of its cause; we also infer the necessity of the proportions, which the activity producing must preserve with the thing produced; knowing the qualities of the latter, we infer those which ought to be found in the former. In this manner, resting upon two bases, one of which is ideal truth and the other real truth, or data supplied by experience, we construct a true positive science referred to determinate facts.

93. Since the being that thinks necessarily has consciousness of itself, no thinking being can be limited to the cognition of purely ideal truths. Even if we were to suppose it perfectly isolated from all other beings, in absolute non-communication with every thing not itself, so as neither to exert any influence upon them, nor to be influenced by them, it could not be reduced to the cognition of a purely ideal order; for, by the very fact that it is thinking, it is conscious of itself, and consciousness is essentially a particular fact, a cognition of a determinate being, since without it there could be no consciousness.

94. This observation overturns to its very foundation the system which pretends to bar all communication between the real and ideal orders. It shows also that experience is not only possible, but absolutely necessary to every thinking being, since consciousness is by its very nature an experience, and the clearest and surest experience. The truths of the ideal order are then necessarily interlinked with those of the real order: to suppose all intercommunication between them impossible, is to disown a fundamental fact of ideological and psychological science, consciousness.

95. To render the truth and exactness of the preceding doctrine more evident, let us suppose a man, or rather a human mind, absolutely ignorant of the existence of an external world, of every body, and even of every spirit; one that knows nothing concerning its own origin or destiny, but one that would nevertheless at the same time exercise its intellectual activity, without which it would be a lifeless thing, and could offer no field to observation. Let us suppose him to have general ideas, such as of being and of not-being, of substance and accidents, of the absolute and the conditioned, of the necessary and contingent. Manifestly he may combine them in various ways, and arrive at the same purely ideal results to which we ourselves arrive. There is no supposition more favorable to a series of abstract cognitions independent of experience, and yet not even in this case would the truths known be limited to the purely ideal order; it would even here be impossible for them not to descend to the real order, if the thinking being were not dispossessed of all consciousness of itself.

Indeed, by the very fact that a being is supposed capable of thinking, it is supposed able to say to itself, I think. This act is eminently experimental, and it needs only to be united with general truths in a common consciousness, to enable the isolated being to rise above itself, and create for itself a positive science, by which to pass from the world of ideas to that of facts. The instability of its thoughts, and the permanence of the being that experiences them, offer to it a practical case in which the general ideas of substance and accident are particularized. The successive appearance and disappearance of its own conceptions will show to it the ideas of being and of not-being realized; the recollection of the time when its own operations commenced, beyond which the memory of its existence does not extend, will enable it to know the contingency of his own being; and this fact, combined with the general principles which express the relations between contingent and necessary beings, will suggest to the thought that there must be another that communicated to it its existence.

CHAPTER XV.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE VALUE OF GENERAL CONCEPTIONS

96. However vague the ideas an isolated being would form of objects distinct from itself, they will never be so vague as not to refer to a real thing. The mind may not know the nature of this reality, but it knows for certain that it exists. A man blind from his birth can form no clear idea of colors, nor of the sensation of seeing; but is he therefore ignorant that sensation exists, and that the words, color, seeing, and others which refer to sight, have a positive and determinate object? Certainly not. The blind man does not know in what these things, of which he hears, consist, but he knows that they are something; those of his conceptions that refer to them may be called imperfect, but they are not vain; the words by which he expresses them, have for him a positive, although incomplete meaning.

97. There is a great difference between incomplete and indeterminate conceptions; the former may refer to a positive thing, although imperfectly known; the latter include nothing but a relation of ideas, meaning nothing in the order of facts. We will render this difference more apparent by explaining the example of the preceding paragraph.

A man blind from his birth has no intuition of colors, nor of any thing that refers to the sense of sight; but he is sure that there exist external facts which correspond to an internal affection called seeing. This idea is incomplete, but it has a determinate object. The words of those who possess the sense of sight reveal to him its existence; he knows not, what it is, but, that it is; in other words, he does not know its essence, but its existence. Let us now suppose the possibility of an order of sensations different from ours, and in nowise resembling those which we experience, to be called in question. The conception referred to the new sensations would not only be incomplete, but would have no relation to any real object. The general idea, then, of affection of a sensitive being, will be all that our mind will have; but it will know nothing of its existence, and can form only mere conjectures as to the conditions of its possibility. This example illustrates our idea. We find in the man blind from his birth, who hears of what pertains to the sense of sight, an incomplete conception, but one to which the existence of a series of facts, known to his mind, corresponds. But in ourselves, if we reflect upon a kind of sensations different from our own, we find conceptions, having, indeed, a general object, but of whose realization we know nothing.

98. Thus is it explained how our mind, without having intuition of a thing, can, nevertheless, know it, and be perfectly certain of its existence. We have here demonstrated that conceptions may, although they do not refer to a sensible intuition, have a value, not only in the order of ideas, but also in that of facts.

99. In order to prove the sterility of all conception beyond sensible intuition, Kant adduces one reason, which is, that we cannot define the categories and the principles which flow from them without referring to the objects of sensibility. This is no proof at all; for, in the first place, the impossibility of a definition does not always arise from the fact that the conception to be defined is empty; but it very frequently results from the conception being simple, and consequently not susceptible of a division into parts that may be expressed by words. How will he define the idea of being? No matter how he attempts to define it, the thing to be defined will enter into the definition: the words, thing, reality, existence, all signify being.

It is very natural, since sensible intuition is the basis of our relations with the external world, and consequently with our fellow-men, that when we purpose to express any relation whatever, we should call to our aid sensible applications; but we are not thence to infer that there is not in our mind, independently of them, a real truth contained in the conception which we wish to explain.

100. This capacity of knowing objects under general ideas, is a characteristic property of our mind, and we cannot, in our inability to penetrate to the essence of things, think without this indispensable auxiliary. In the ordinary course of human affairs, it often happens that we need to know the existence of a thing and of some of its attributes, but do not require a perfect knowledge of it. In such cases, general ideas, aided by some data of experience, put us in mediate communication with the object not presented to our intuition. But why cannot the same thing be verified with respect to non-sensible beings, which alone are the object of intellectual intuitions? I know not what exception can be taken to these observations, founded as they are upon observation of internal phenomena, and confirmed by common sense.