Part 3 (1/2)

The possession of the origin of the idea of cause is by no means sufficient for the possession of the origin of the principle of causality; for the idea and the principle are things essentially different. You have established, I would say to M. de Biran, that the idea of cause is found in that of productive volition:--you will to produce certain effects, and you produce them; hence the idea of a cause, of a particular cause, which is yourself; but between this fact and the axiom that all phenomena which appear necessarily have a cause, there is a gulf.

You believe that you can bridge it over by induction. The idea of cause once found in ourselves, induction applies it, you say, wherever a new phenomenon appears. But let us not be deceived by words, and let us account for this extraordinary induction. The following dilemma I submit with confidence to the loyal dialectics of M. de Biran:

Is the induction of which you speak universal and necessary? Then it is a different name for the same thing. An induction which forces us universally and necessarily to a.s.sociate the idea of cause with that of every phenomenon that begins to appear is precisely what is called the principle of causality. On the contrary, is this induction neither universal nor necessary? It cannot supply the place of the principle of cause, and the explanation destroys the thing to be explained.

It follows from this that the only true result of these various psychological investigations is, that the idea of personal and free cause precedes all exercise of the principle of causality, but without explaining it.

The theory which we combat is much more powerless in regard to other principles which, far from being exercised before the ideas from which it is pretended to deduce them, precede them, and even give birth to them. How have we acquired the idea of time and that of s.p.a.ce, except by aid of the principle that the bodies and events, which we see are in time and in s.p.a.ce? We have seen[32] that, without this principle, and confined to the data of the senses and consciousness, neither time nor s.p.a.ce would exist for us. Whence have we deduced the idea of the infinite, except from the principle that the finite supposes the infinite, that all finite and defective things, which we perceive by our senses and feel within us, are not sufficient for themselves, and suppose something infinite and perfect? Omit the principle, and the idea of the infinite is destroyed. Evidently this idea is derived from the application of the principle, and it is not the principle which is derived from the idea.

Let us dwell a little longer on the principle of substances. The question is to know whether the idea of subject, of substance, precedes or follows the exercise of the principle. Upon what ground could the idea of substance be anterior to the principle that every quality supposes a substance? Upon the ground alone that substance be the object of self-observation, as cause is said to be. When I produce a certain effect, I may perceive myself in action and as cause; in that case, there would be no need of the intervention of any principle; but it is not, it cannot be, the same, when the question is concerning the substance which is the basis of the phenomena of consciousness, of our qualities, our acts, our faculties even; for this substance is not directly observable; it does not perceive itself, it conceives itself.

Consciousness perceives sensation, volition, thought, it does not perceive their subject. Who has ever perceived the soul? Has it not been necessary, in order to attain this invisible essence, to set out from a principle which has the power to bind the visible to the invisible, phenomenon to being, to wit, the principle of substances?[33] The idea of substance is necessarily posterior to the application of the principle, and, consequently, it cannot explain its formation.

Let us be well understood. We do not mean to say that we have in the mind the principle of substances before perceiving a phenomenon, quite ready to apply the principle to the phenomenon, when it shall present itself; we only say that it is impossible for us to perceive a phenomenon without conceiving at the same instant a substance, that is to say, to the power of perceiving a phenomenon, either by the senses or by consciousness, is joined that of conceiving the substance in which it inheres. The facts thus take place:--the perception of phenomena and the conception of the substance which is their basis are not successive, they are simultaneous. Before this impartial a.n.a.lysis fall at once two equal and opposite errors--one, that experience, exterior or interior, can beget principles; the other, that principles precede experience.[34]

To sum up, the pretension of explaining principles by the ideas which they contain, is a chimerical one. In supposing that all the ideas which enter into principles are anterior to them, it is necessary to show how principles are deduced from these ideas,--which is the first and radical difficulty. Moreover, it is not true that in all cases ideas precede principles, for often principles precede ideas,--a second difficulty equally insurmountable. But whether ideas are anterior or posterior to principles, principles are always independent of them; they surpa.s.s them by all the superiority of universal and necessary principles over simple ideas.[35]

We should, perhaps, beg your pardon for the austerity of this lecture.

But philosophical questions must be treated philosophically: it does not belong to us to change their character. On other subjects, another language. Psychology has its own language, the entire merit of which is a severe precision, as the highest law of psychology itself is the shunning of every hypothesis, and an inviolable respect for facts. This law we have religiously followed. While investigating the origin of universal and necessary principles, we have especially endeavored not to destroy the thing to be explained by a systematic explanation. Universal and necessary principles have come forth in their integrity from our a.n.a.lysis. We have given the history of the different forms which they successively a.s.sume, and we have shown, that in all these changes they remain the same, and of the same authority, whether they enter spontaneously and involuntarily into exercise, and apply themselves to particular and determinate objects, or reflection turns them back upon themselves in order to interrogate them in regard to their nature, or abstraction makes them appear under the form in which their universality and their necessity are manifest. Their certainty is the same under all their forms, in all their applications; it has neither generation nor origin; it is not born such or such a day, and it does not increase with time, for it knows no degrees. We have not commenced by believing a little in the principle of causality, of substances, of time, of s.p.a.ce, of the infinite, etc., then believing a little more, then believing wholly. These principles have been, from the beginning, what they will be in the end, all-powerful, necessary, irresistible. The conviction which they give is always absolute, only it is not always accompanied by a clear consciousness. Leibnitz himself has no more confidence in the principle of causality, and even in his favorite principle of sufficient reason, than the most ignorant of men; but the latter applies these principles without reflecting on their power, by which he is unconsciously governed, whilst Leibnitz is astonished at their power, studies it, and for all explanation, refers it to the human mind, and to the nature of things, that is to say, he elevates, to borrow the fine expression of M. Royer-Collard,[36] the ignorance of the ma.s.s of men to its highest source. Such is, thank heaven, the only difference that separates the peasant from the philosopher, in regard to those great principles of every kind which, in one way or another, discover to men the same truths indispensable to their physical, intellectual, and moral existence, and, in their ephemeral life, on the circ.u.mscribed point of s.p.a.ce and time where fortune has thrown them, reveal to them something of the universal, the necessary, and the infinite.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] First Series, vol. iv., lectures 1, 2, and 3.

[26] _Ibid._, vol. iv., etc.

[27] _Ibid._, vol. v., lecture 8.

[28] We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and confirmed by the errors of those who have dared to break it, this rule of true psychological a.n.a.lysis, that, before pa.s.sing to the question of the origin of an idea, a notion, a belief, any principle whatever, the actual characters of this idea, this notion, this belief, this principle, must have been a long time studied and well established, with the firm resolution of not altering them under any pretext whatever in wis.h.i.+ng to explain them. We believe that we have, as Leibnitz says, settled this point. See 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and the Opening Discourse; vol. iii., lecture 1, _Locke_; lecture 2, _Condillac_; lecture 3, almost entire, and lecture 8, p. 260; 2d Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Systeme de Locke_, lecture 16, p. 77-87; 3d Series, vol. iv., _Examination of the Lectures of M. Loremquiere_, p.

268.

[29] This theory of spontaneity and of reflection, which in our view is the key to so many difficulties, continually recurs in our works. One may see, vol. i. of the 1st Series, in a programme of the Course of 1817, and in a fragment ent.i.tled _De la Spontaneite et de la Reflexion_; vol. iv. of the same Series, Examination of Reid's Philosophy, _pa.s.sim_; vol. v., Examination of Kant's System, lecture 8; 2d Series, vol. i., _pa.s.sim_; vol. iii., Lectures on Judgment; 3d Series, _Fragments Philosophiques_, vol. iv., preface of the first edition, p. 37, etc.; it will be found in different lectures of this volume, among others, in the third, On the value of Universal and Necessary Principles; in the fifth, On Mysticism; and in the eleventh, Primary Data of Common Sense.

[30] On immediate abstraction and comparative abstraction, see 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and everywhere in our other Courses.

[31] On M. de Biran, on his merits and defects, see our _Introduction_ at the head of his Works.

[32] See lecture 1.

[33] See vol. i. of the 1st Series, course of 1816, and 2d Series, vol.

iii., lecture 18, p. 140-146.

[34] We have developed this a.n.a.lysis, and elucidated these results in the 17th lecture of vol. ii. of the 2d Series.

[35] We have already twice recurred, and more in detail, to the impossibility of legitimately explaining universal and necessary principles by any a.s.sociation or induction whatever, founded upon any particular idea, 2d Series, vol. iii., _Examen du Systeme de Locke_, lecture 19, p. 166; and 3d Series, vol. iv., _Introduction aux Oeuvres de M. de Biran_, p. 319. We have also made known the opinion of Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 489. Finally, the profoundest of Reid's disciples, the most enlightened judge that we know of things philosophical, Sir W. Hamilton, professor of logic in the University of Edinburgh, has not hesitated to adopt the conclusions of our discussion, to which he is pleased to refer his readers:--_Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, etc._, by Sir William Hamilton, London, 1852. Appendix I, p. 588.

[36] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iv., p. 435. ”When we revolt against primitive facts, we equally misconceive the const.i.tution of our intelligence and the end of philosophy. Is explaining a fact any thing else than deriving it from another fact, and if this kind of explanation is to terminate at all, does it not suppose facts inexplicable? The science of the human mind will have been carried to the highest degree of perfection it can attain, it will be complete, when it shall know how to derive ignorance from the most elevated source.”

LECTURE III.