Part 16

In this, what do they more than add an abstraction to an abstraction, and an hypothesis to an hypothesis? We are here in the presence of facts that are certain and yet perplexing; in presence of an external world, which evidently has not always been such as it is, which had a beginning, which is continuing to develop itself according to certain laws, and which is tending to certain ends; in the presence, too, of man, evidently a being at once one and complex, identical and yet variable. The ancients gave names and explanations to those incontestible facts, but the names and explanations are now rejected! {347} Still, names and explanations are needed; man must put something in the place of God, Creator, and Providence--in the place of mind, and matter, and soul, and body. It is not for the first time that man finds himself confronted by this necessity, or that he essays to satisfy it; many abstractions, many words, have been already employed for this purpose. _God_ was replaced by _nature_, by _substance_, by _cause_; the _human soul_ was transformed into _vital principle_; the vital principle was elevated to the dignity of soul. It seems that these words, these abstractions, have had their time and lost their credit; and so now it is _force_ which replaces _them_; _force_ is mind, _force_ is soul, _force_ creates, _force_ is God. It is enough now that they incorporate force with body; the problem no longer exists; man and the universe are laid bare!

{348}

When Leibnitz, to combat the Idealism of Descartes, and the Pantheism of Spinoza, developed the idea of force, he did not foresee that that very notion would be one day made use of to reduce to nonentities God, the human soul, all real and personal being, all first and final cause; to reduce, in short, everything to a medley of mechanics and dynamics incarnate in matter!

However specious it may appear to superficial minds, or to minds prejudiced in its favor by the peculiar nature of their studies and of their habitual labors, Materialism, like Pantheism, is only an hypothesis--an hypothesis constructed by dint of mere abstractions and purely verbal assertions. These not only disregard or suppress the facts which they pretend to explain, but are in direct contradiction with facts themselves recognized and proved by psychological observation. It is, in effect, an hypothesis, (I am forced here to repeat what I before affirmed of Pantheism,) equally revolting to true science and to common sense.

{349}

The hypothesis of Materialism has but a single merit; it is more consistent than those of the other systems. But even to this merit Materialism loses its title whenever it shrinks from pushing its principles boldly to their consequences, whether philosophical or practical: that is to say, whenever it shrinks from denying man's liberty, a moral law, the necessary principles of the human mind--whenever, in short, it shrinks from proclaiming its ultimate results, which are, as M. Damiron puts them, Fatalism, Egotism, Atheism. Philosophers are right in seeking for truth and in respecting truth for itself and at every risk; but there are some consequences which are the clearest evidence of a vice in principle; and this vice, in Materialism, is the blind forgetfulness of the best proved facts and the most essential elements of human nature.

{350}

Seventh Meditation.

Skepticism.

There are two kinds of Skepticism, experimental Skepticism and systematic Skepticism. Experimental Skepticism is the result of the incertitude which arises in men's minds from the spectacle of the infinite variety, discordance, and mobility of human opinions. Systematic Skepticism, on the other hand, challenges the power itself of the human understanding, and declares it incapable of knowing things in their essence--reality in itself. The one is doubt applied in practice; the other is doubt affirmed as a principle.

{351}

In an essay on Skepticism, written in 1830, M. Jouffroy treated experimental and practical skepticism with great contempt: this skepticism "founds itself," says he, "only upon the apparent contradictions of human judgment. To prove that there is a contradiction either between the results at which each faculty of the mind when taken separately arrives, or between the final results attained by different faculties, as by the sense and by the reason; to establish that there is a contradiction of a like nature between the opinions received by different men or by different nations, or between those opinions themselves, which, at different epochs, have variously for a time contented humanity; then to conclude from all this that the human intelligence regards in turn as true things which are contradictory, and that consequently there is for that intelligence no truth at all: such is all the mechanism in which this second-rate skepticism consists which has fascinated, and still continues to fascinate, whole hosts of little minds. Long ago this skepticism was refuted, and at all its points; long ago the unity of human truth was demonstrated, after having been admitted _à priori_ in all ages by their leading minds. {352} This kind of skepticism is a theme upon which men will long continue to dilate; the darling subject for wits, it merits not to arrest the attention of philosophers."

By way of amends, however, for these remarks, M. Jouffroy makes an immense concession to the systematic skepticism which declares the human mind incapable of knowing things as they really are in themselves, for he admits this skepticism to be rationally legitimate; "the foundation of all belief," says he, "is an act of faith, blind but irresistible. In effect there is no contradiction between faith and skepticism; for man believes by instinct and doubts by reason. ... Skeptics fall into no contradiction when, in the practice of life, they believe their senses, their consciousness, their memory, and when they act in consequence; they obey the laws of their instinctive nature by so believing, and they obey their rational natures by confessing that their beliefs are illegitimate. {353} So we equally excuse humanity which believes, and skepticism which doubts; but we cannot equally excuse the philosophers who have combated skepticism by striving to demonstrate the rational legitimacy of human belief. When men affirm that mankind believes, and that skeptics do so with mankind, they affirm a fact in itself incontestable; when they add that mankind believes itself right in believing, that is to say, virtually admits that the human intelligence sees things as they are, this is true too, and skeptics do not deny it; but when, grappling with skepticism itself, men pretend to show that the human intelligence really sees things as they are, this is a pretension which I cannot understand. What! do they not perceive that this pretension is nothing less than the pretension of demonstrating the human intelligence by the human intelligence, which has been, is, and will be eternally impossible? We believe skepticism forever invincible, because we regard skepticism as the final word of the reason concerning the reason itself." [Footnote 77]

[Footnote 77: Mélanges philosophique, pp. 238-240.]

{354}

I do not agree with M. Jouffroy in his disdain for experimental and practical skepticism. This is not, it is true, a system which philosophers are called upon to refute, but a fact which ought to occupy an important place with them, for by showing to us how incomplete human science is, and human error how frequent, it sets us on our guard against all presumptuous confidence in our own ideas, and against intolerance toward the ideas of others--two of the most dangerous infirmities to which human intelligence and society are liable. But as for the reasoning which impels M. Jouffroy to accept the systematic and definitive skepticism as to the intrinsic reality of things, I repudiate it altogether. If that were, as he says, "the final word of the reason respecting the reason itself," it would be the negation, or to use a better expression, the suicide, of man's reason and of the human intelligence.

{355}

In his discourse which he pronounced in 1813, on resuming his functions at the "Faculté des Lettres," M. Royer-Collard summed up his conclusions upon this fundamental question--conclusions very different, more different essentially than even apparently they are, from those arrived at by M. Jouffroy. Whereas M. Jouffroy believes systematic skepticism forever invincible, "because he regards it as the final word of the reason concerning the reason," M. Royer-Collard, on the contrary, ends his discourse with these words: "We cannot divide man; we cannot assign a part only to skepticism; as soon as skepticism once penetrates into the understanding, in [it?] invades it throughout." I would confirm this conclusion of M. Royer-Collard, by carrying still further the reasoning which led him to it.

{356}

"The most general result," says he, "presented by the history of modern philosophy--its most striking characteristic when contrasted with ancient philosophy--is its skepticism with respect to the existence of the external world; that world in which mankind has so long believed, which begins to reveal itself in us with our existence itself, and in the bosom of which we are forced to perceive ourselves as mere fragments of its immensity. ... I am not here to reason in favor of the received opinion; that opinion needs neither proofs nor defenders; it is rooted deeply enough in our most intimate nature to brave all attack. It is not the world that risks anything at the hands of the philosophers; it is rather the honor of philosophy which suffers some discredit; it is rather philosophy that relieves the vulgar from a part of the respect which philosophy yet demands at its hands, when it gives birth to paradoxes bearing, seemingly, the very impress of folly. {357} Moreover, whether the material world really exist or not, is not a matter in controversy; this question would resolve itself into one still more general--whether all those facilities of ours, of which the authority is indivisible, are organs of truth or organs of falsehood; and upon this point we shall ever be driven to accept the testimony of those very organs. The sole question which belongs to philosophical analysis, consists in examining if it be certain that our faculties attest to us the existence of an external world, and if the human race believes in this existence; for if it believes in it, this universal belief becomes a fact in our intellectual constitution; and whether this fact be a primitive one, or a deduction from any anterior fact--whether it be the immediate teaching of nature or an acquisition by reasoning--it is entitled to its place unmutilated in the synthetic table of science. Has it disappeared? Then the man of philosophy is not the man of nature; science is false, and consequently, the analysis without fidelity; and one may rest assured that philosophers have inserted in the understanding some principle, or some fact, which was not there before; or that they have not collected with care all the principles and facts which are actually there."

{358}

Having thus formalized the question, M. Royer-Collard follows it up with an inquiry as exact as it is profound, of the psychological fact of the perception of the external world which accompanies the fact of sensation: this inquiry leads him to this conclusion:

"Sensation has no object; sensation is merely relative to the sentient being; if not perceived, sensation does not exist. But the perception, which affirms an external existence, supposes two things--the mind which perceives, and the object which is perceived; the being that thinks, and the being that is the subject-matter of thought. Just as the sensation is relative to the mind, so is the act of the perception relative to it also, and just so does it suppose the mind; the object, on the contrary, supposes neither the mind nor the mind's perception. {359} The object does not exist because we perceive it; but we perceive it because it exists--because we are endowed with the faculty of perception. In a city inhabited no longer, there remain no sensation, no idea, no judgment; the houses remain, and even the streets, and with them nature, with all nature's laws, which are not suspended in their course. To the universe, the energetic presence of its Creator suffices; it does not require our presence; the absence of spectators would not make it languish; it existed before us, it will exist after us; its reality is independent of us and of our thoughts--it is absolute. The authority which persuades us of this is no less than that of the consciousness itself; it is the authority of the primitive laws of thought, and to man's mind those laws are absolute laws of truth. The same draught may convey the impression of sweetness and of bitterness, because sensation is relative to the variable state of sensibility, and sensibility itself is relative to organization; but the laws of the mind are an immutable standard. {360} The imperfection of knowledge does not render it uncertain, and although it admits of degrees, it does not admit of contradiction. Our limited faculties do not, it is true, perceive all that there is in things; but still, what they do perceive, is in effect there just as they perceive it. ... If a man call upon me to prove this by reasoning, I shall, in my turn, demand of him, too, that he first prove to me by reasoning that reasoning is more convincing than perception; that he at least prove that the memory, without which there is no such thing as reasoning, is a faculty more to be relied upon than those faculties whose testimony they reject.

"Intellectual life is an uninterrupted succession, not merely of ideas, but of beliefs, explicit or implicit. The beliefs of the mind are the force of the soul and the moving incentives of the will. Whatever determines us to believe we call _evidence_. ... Reason renders no account of what is evident; to condemn it to do so is to annihilate it, for it also has need of an evidence peculiar to itself. {361} Did not reasoning rest upon principles anterior to the reason, analysis would be without end, and synthesis without commencement. The fundamental laws of belief constitute the intelligence itself; and as those laws all flow from the same source, they have the same authority; they judge by the same right; there is no appeal from the tribunal of one to that of another. Whoever revolts against any single one of these laws, revolts against them all, and so abdicates all his nature. Are there weapons of legitimate use against that faculty by which we perceive the external world? These same weapons may be turned against the conscience, the memory, the moral sense, against reason itself. ... Let but, in any single point, the nature of knowledge--the nature, I say, and not the degree--be made subordinate to our means of knowing, and all certitude is at an end; nothing is true, nothing is false. But it is not enough to say this; for all is true and false altogether, since truth and falsehood no longer differ from sweet and bitter. {362} The void itself is then deprived of its absolute nullity: it enters into the domain of the relative; it is something, nothing, according to the conformation of the spectator's eye. The useful is the sole subject that the understanding contemplates, the sole subject for which the heart has to make its laws. A legislation capricious and without efficacy, which applies only shifting rules to actions, and which has none for the intentions and for the desires. This is not mere declamation; all these consequences have been deduced from skeptical doctrines with an exactitude leaving nothing to be either desired or contested. It is then a fact that public and private morality, the order of society and the happiness of individuals, are directly at stake in the controversy between true philosophy and false philosophy respecting the reality of knowledge. For when existences themselves become problems, what force remains to the bond that unites them? We cannot divide the entire man; we cannot assign a part only to skepticism; as soon as skepticism once penetrates into the understanding it invades it throughout." [Footnote 78]

[Footnote 78: Fragments de M. Royer-Collard, in the works of Reid, translation of M. Jouffroy, vol. iv, pp. 426-451.]

{363}

I retrench nothing, change nothing in these remarkable words that express so energetically the conclusions of the common sense of mankind. I would only render them still more complete, by illustrating in its primitive and indestructible unity the fact upon which they are founded. "We cannot divide man," says M. Royer-Collard. Here is precisely the risk that philosophical science incurs, and to which it too often succumbs. It divides man in order to study him; and after having so studied him, when it seeks to deduce from its laborious operation what man in his complete and living reality is, we find the result a strange misapprehension, because science has neglected to re-establish the unity which it broke. {364} It puts together, it is true, the scattered members, but the being itself has disappeared; and then it is that philosophers know not how to solve the problems or to extricate themselves from the doubts by which they are confronted. Entire, living, one, the human being explained himself; mutilated and severed into distinct parts, that being loses all power and falls into obscurity.

What is sensation, what perception, judgment, reasoning, reason, will, consciousness? They are the human being, feeling, perceiving, judging, reasoning, willing, and observing what is passing within him. This is no troop of actors playing, each his part, in a complex drama; but a being single and alive, actor and sole spectator in the drama of his proper life.

What is this one and single being doing when he feels, perceives, judges, reasons, wills, and watches what is occurring within himself? He is taking cognizance at once of himself, and what is not himself. {365} His own existence and the existence of that which is not himself, reveal themselves to him from the very first in those diverse facts and acts which philosophical science discriminates, and calls by the particular names of sensation, perception, judgment, reason, will, consciousness. The primitive and essential fact at the root of all, is the fact itself of the cognizance which man takes of himself, and of what is not himself. A cognizance, at first confused, and always incomplete, but at the same time direct and certain. Not by way of deduction, nor as a mere appearance, but by way of immediate intuition, and as a positive reality, does the human being become aware of his own existence and of that existence which is not his. This fact is lost sight of, or at least is not characterized exactly and as it is in itself, when it is said that man believes naturally and inevitably in his own existence, and in that of the external world. This is a very different thing from _belief:_ it is _knowledge_ itself of that double reality, internal and external, called by the name of Man and World. {366} Philosophers ignore, and they change the nature of this fact, when, merely playing with verbal distinctions and reasonings, they condemn the human mind not to issue forth from itself, when they refuse to it the right to affirm as real, out of the mind and in itself, that which, in the mind and for the mind, the mind yet admits to be true.

The human being may deceive himself, and often does deceive himself in such or such a special affirmation as to external realities; it has of them only a knowledge incomplete, and liable to error; but its general and permanent affirmation as to their existence is still folly justified and legitimate; it knows them as it knows itself, by the same proof and by the same natural process. M. Royer-Collard expresses admirably this great fact when he says: "The universe does not exist because we perceive it; but we perceive it because it exists. ... It needs not our presence; the absence of spectators would not make it languish away; it was before us, it will still be after us; its reality is independent of us: it is absolute."

{367}

Systematic skepticism is not, like Materialism and Pantheism, an hypothesis invented, although unsuccessfully invented, in order to solve the grand problem of soul and body, of finite and infinite; its error is not less considerable, although of a different character. It consists in a defective examination of the primitive fact of the human mind, and in the misapprehension of the nature and the import of that fact. This fact is by no means, as M. Jouffroy affirms, "a faith blind and irresistible," disavowed by rational science; it is really the natural knowledge, and the earliest knowledge acquired by the human being when it enters into activity; a knowledge, confused and incomplete, either of itself or of what is not itself; but still a knowledge direct and certain of the existence of itself, and of the existence of what is not itself. "Man believes by instinct and doubts by reason," adds M. Jouffroy; "skeptics obey the law of their instinctive nature when they believe, like the mass of mankind, in their senses, their consciousness, their memory, and when they act in consequence; so also they obey their rational nature when they confess that their beliefs are illegitimate."

{368}

This is strangely to _ignore_--I permit myself the use of this, here, incorrect expression--at once the reality of facts, and the value of words. What M. Jouffroy terms _instinct_, is the intuitive consciousness of internal reality and of external reality, and this consciousness the human being acquires directly by the complete and indivisible exercise of all his faculties; what he terms _reason_ is the result of the isolated operation of one of the faculties of the human being, who virtually forgets, when he decomposes himself for his own study, what he really is. Skepticism is not the "final word of the reason respecting the reason;" it is the suicide of the reason by a negation falsely termed scientific, of natural evidence, and of the common sense of mankind.

{369}

Eighth Meditation.

Impiety, Recklessness, And Perplexity.

The different systems, of each of which I have endeavored to show the essential and characteristic vice, do not remain confined to learned regions, or to the classes to which, from profession or from taste, man and the world are a special object of study. The breath of science penetrates to a distance, and pervades, unseen itself, places even where ignorance reigns. How often in remote cities and even rural districts, among a population alien to every kind of study, have I met with and discovered the traces of Rationalism, of Positivism, of Pantheism, Materialism, Skepticism; and yet these had been imported, imperceptibly and in manner that the sense could not detect, like a noxious miasma, into places where their very names were unknown; and yet they bore everywhere their natural fruits! {370} There is a contagion in the intellectual as well as in the moral order; and the facility, the rapidity, the universality of communication, which contribute so much to the force and the grandeur of modern civilization, are as much at the disposal of evil as of good, of error as of truth.