Fundamental Philosophy (Vol. 1&2). Jaime Luciano Balmes

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      CHAPTER XXV.

      THE OBJECTIVE VALUE OF IDEAS.

       Table of Contents

      247. The transition from subject to object, from subjective appearance to objective reality, is a problem which vexes fundamental philosophy. Consciousness will not permit us to doubt that certain things appear to us in such a manner; but are they in reality what they appear to us? How are we to know this? What shall assure us of this conformity of the idea with the object?

      The question does not relate solely to sensations; it also extends to purely intellectual ideas, even to those inundated with that internal light which we call evidence. "What I evidently see in the idea of a thing, is as I see it," philosophers have said, and all mankind with them. No one doubts what is presented to him as evidently true. But how prove that evidence is a legitimate criterion of truth?

      248. "God is truthful," says Descartes, "and could not have deceived us; He could not have taken pleasure in making us the victims of perpetual illusions." All this is true. But the skeptic will ask how we know that God is truthful, or even that he exists. If we found the veracity of God on the idea of an infinitely perfect being, as Descartes does, there is still the same difficulty with respect to the correspondence of the idea with the object. If we draw the demonstration of the veracity and existence of God from the ideas of necessary and contingent beings, of effect and cause, of order and intelligence, we again meet the same obstacle, and are still unable to pass from the idea to the object.

      No matter how much we cavil, we shall never get out of this circle, we shall always return to the same point. The mind cannot think out of itself; what it knows, it knows by means of its ideas; if these deceive, it has nothing left to set it right. All rectification, all proof must employ these ideas, and these, in their turn, require new proof and rectification.

      249. Many books of philosophy exaggerate the illusions of the senses, and the difficulty of assuring ourselves of the sensible reality, when they solve this question: "I perceive it to be so; but is it as I perceive?" These same books immediately afterwards speak of the order of ideas with security equal to their mistrust in the sensible order. This does not seem very logical, for phenomena relating to the senses, may be examined by the light of reason, and it may be seen how far they agree with it: but what touch-stone have we for the phenomena of reason itself? If there be difficulty in the sensible, there is likewise in the intellectual, and the more serious, since it affects the very basis of all cognitions, even those which relate to sensations.

      If we doubt the existence of the external world which the senses present to us, we may appeal to the connection of the sensations with causes not in us; and so deduce by demonstration the relations of the appearances with the reality: but this requires the ideas of cause and effect; we must have some truth, some general principles, as for example, that nothing can produce itself, and others similar, without which we cannot take one step.

      250. We do not believe any satisfactory reason can be given for the veracity of the criterion of evidence, although it is impossible not to yield to it. The connection, therefore, of evidence with reality, and consequently, the transition from the idea to the object, are primitive facts of our nature, a necessary law of our understanding, the foundation of all that it contains—a foundation which in its turn rests, and can rest only on God, the Creator of our soul.

      251. We must observe the contradiction into which those philosophers fall who say: I cannot doubt what is subjective, what affects myself, what I feel within myself; but I have no right to go out of myself, and affirm that what I think is in reality as I think. Do you know that you feel, that you think, that you have within you such or such an appearance? Can you prove it? Evidently you cannot. You yield to a fact, to an internal necessity which forces you to believe that you think, that you feel, or that such a thing appears to you; but then there is equal necessity in the connection of the object with the idea, an equal necessity forces you to believe that what appears to you to be in such or such a condition is as it appears. Neither case admits of demonstration; in both there is an indeclinable necessity: where, then, is philosophy, when it is attempted to establish so great a difference between things which admit of none?

      Fichte says: "It is impossible to explain in a precise manner how a philosopher can get beyond the me:"[21] and we may with equal reason say, that we cannot conceive how he has been able to raise a system upon the me. To what does he appeal? To a fact of consciousness, that is, to a necessity. And is not the assent to evidence, the certainty to which the reality apparently corresponds, also a necessity? On what does Fichte found his system of the me and the not-me? We have only to read his works to see that he only founds it on considerations which suppose a value in certain ideas, a truth in certain judgments. Otherwise it is impossible to speak or to think: and this even he himself admits when, in commencing his investigations on the principle of our cognitions, he utters the words we have just quoted. He then confesses that we cannot take one step without trusting all the laws of general logic, which are not always demonstrated, but are supposed tacitly admitted. And what are these laws, without objective truths? What are they without the value of ideas, without correspondence with objects? Fichte says rightly, it is a circle; but he can no more get out of it than other philosophers.

      252. To take from ideas their objective value, to reduce them to mere subjective phenomena, to resist that internal necessity which obliges us to admit the correspondence of the soul to objects, is to destroy the very consciousness of the soul. This must have been seen, and this we think we can most evidently demonstrate.

      253. We have consciousness of ourselves. We now abstract what we feel, what we are; but we know that we feel and that we are. This experience is so clear, so vivid, that we cannot resist the truth of what it attests to us. But this me is not only the me of the present instant, it is also the me of yesterday, and of all prior time of which we have consciousness. We are the same that we were yesterday, the being in which this succession is verified, to which this variety of appearances is presented. The consciousness of the me then includes the identity of a being at distinct times, in various situations, with different ideas, and diverse affections—the identity of a being which endures and is the same throughout the changes succeeding in it. If this duration of identity be broken, if I be not sure that I am the same me that I was previously, the consciousness of the me is destroyed. There would exist a series of unconnected facts, isolated acts of consciousness, but not that intimate consciousness I now experience. This cannot be doubted; every man feels it in himself; it admits neither discussion nor proof in any one, it requires them of no one. The moment this consciousness of identity fails, we are in our own eyes annihilated; whatever we may be in reality, for ourselves we are nothing. What is the consciousness of a being, formed from a series of acts of consciousness, without connection or mutual relation? It is a being revealed successively to itself, yet not as itself, but as a new being, a being which is born and dies, and dies and is born before its eyes, without its knowing that what is born is what died, or that what died is what was born: it is a light which burns and is extinguished, and again burns and is again extinguished, without its knowing that it is the same light.

      254. This consciousness is completely destroyed by those who deny the connection between the idea and object.

      Demonstration.—In the instant A, I have no other subjective presence of my acts than the very act I am at that moment performing: I cannot therefore be certain that I have had any previously, if they be not represented in the present idea; СКАЧАТЬ