Part 27 (1/2)

The false is the pretension of explaining all human knowledge by the acquisitions of the senses; this pretension is the system itself; we reject it, and the system with it. The true is that sensibility, considered in its external and visible organs, and in its internal organs, the invisible seats of the vital functions, is the indispensable condition of the development of all our faculties, not only of the faculties that evidently pertain to sensibility, but of those that seem to be most remote from it. This true side of sensualism we have everywhere recognized and elucidated in metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, and theodicea.

For us, theodicea, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, rest on psychology, and the first principle of our psychology is that the condition of all exercise of mind and soul is an impression made on our organs, and a movement of the vital functions.

Man is not a pure spirit; he has a body which is for the spirit sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, always an inseparable companion. The senses are not, as Plato and Malebranche have too often said, a prison for the soul, but much rather windows looking out upon nature, through which the soul communicates with the universe. There is an entire part of Locke's polemic against the theories of innate ideas that is to our eyes perfectly true. We are the first to invoke experience in philosophy. Experience saves philosophy from hypothesis, from abstraction, from the exclusively deductive method, that is to say, from the geometrical method. It is on account of having abandoned the solid ground of experience, that Spinoza, attaching himself to certain sides of Cartesianism,[267] and closing his eyes to all the others, forgetting its method, its essential character, and its most certain principles, reared a hypothetical system, or made from an arbitrary definition spring with the last degree of rigor a whole series of deductions, which have nothing to do with reality. It is also on account of having exchanged experience for a systematic a.n.a.lysis, that Condillac, an unfaithful disciple of Locke, undertook to draw from a single fact, and from an ill-observed fact, all knowledge, by the aid of a series of verbal transformations, whose last result is a nominalism, like that of the later scholastics. Experience does not contain all science, but it furnishes the conditions of all science. s.p.a.ce is nothing for us without visible and tangible bodies that occupy it, time is nothing without the succession of events, cause without its effects, substance without its modes, law without the phenomena that it rules.[268] Reason would reveal to us no universal and necessary truth, if consciousness and the senses did not suggest to us particular and contingent notions. In aesthetics, while severely distinguis.h.i.+ng between the beautiful and the agreeable, we have shown that the agreeable is the constant accompaniment of the beautiful,[269] and that if art has for its supreme law the expression of the ideal, it must express it under an animated and living form which puts it in relation with our senses, with our imagination, above all, with our heart. In ethics, if we have placed Kant and stoicism far above epicureanism and Helvetius, we have guarded ourselves against an insensibility and an asceticism which are contrary to human nature. We have given to reason neither the duty nor the right to smother the natural pa.s.sions, but to rule them; we have not wished to wrest from the soul the instinct of happiness, without which life would not be supportable for a day, nor society for an hour; we have proposed to enlighten this instinct, to show it the concealed but real harmony which it sustains with virtue, and to open to it infinite prospects.[270]

With these empirical elements, idealism is guarded from that mystical infatuation which, little by little, gains and seizes it when it is wholly alone, and brings it into discredit with sound and severe minds.

In our works--and why should we not say it?--we have often presented the thought of Locke, whom we regard as one of the best and most sensible men that ever lived. He is among those secret and ill.u.s.trious advisers with whom we support our weakness. More than one happy thought we owe to him; and we often ask ourself whether investigations directed with the circ.u.mspect method which we try to carry into ours, would not have been accepted by his sincerity and wisdom. Locke is for us the true representative, the most original, and altogether the most temperate of the empirical school. Tied to a system, he still preserves a rare spirit of liberty,--under the name of reflection he admits another source of knowledge than sensation; and this concession to common sense is very important. Condillac, by rejecting this concession, carried to extremes and spoiled the doctrine of Locke, and made of it a narrow, exclusive, entirely false system,--sensualism, to speak properly. Condillac works upon chimeras reduced to signs, with which he sports at his ease. We seek in vain in his writings, especially in the last, some trace of human nature. One truly believes himself to be in the realm of shades, _per inania regna_.[271] The _Essay on the Human Understanding_ produces the opposite impression. Locke is a disciple of Descartes, whom the excesses of Malebranche have thrown to an opposite excess: he is one of the founders of psychology, he is one of the finest and most profound connoisseurs of human nature, and his doctrine, somewhat unsteady but always moderate, is worthy of having a place in a true eclecticism.[272]

By the side of the philosophy of Locke, there is one much greater, which it is important to preserve from all exaggeration, in order to maintain it in all its height. Founded in antiquity by Socrates, const.i.tuted by Plato, renewed by Descartes, idealism embraces, among the moderns, men of the highest renown. It speaks to man in the name of what is n.o.blest in man. It demands the rights of reason; it establishes in science, in art, and in ethics fixed and invariable principles, and from this imperfect existence it elevates us towards another world, the world of the eternal, of the infinite, of the absolute.

This great philosophy has all our preferences, and we shall not be accused of having given it too little place in these lectures. In the eighteenth century it was especially represented in different degrees by Reid and Kant. We wholly accept Reid, with the exception of his historical views, which are too insufficient, and often mixed with error.[273] There are two parts in Kant,--the a.n.a.lytical part, and the dialectical part, as he calls them.[274] We admit the one and reject the other. In this whole course we have borrowed much from the _Critique of Speculative Reason_, the _Critique of Judgment_, and the _Critique of Practical Reason_. These three works are, in our eyes, admirable monuments of philosophic genius,--they are filled with treasures of observation and a.n.a.lysis.[275]

With Reid and Kant, we recognize reason as the faculty of the true, the beautiful, and the good. It is to its proper virtue that we directly refer knowledge in its humblest and in its most elevated part. All the systematic pretensions of sensualism are broken against the manifest reality of universal and necessary truths which are incontestably in our mind. At each instant, whether we know it or not, we bear universal and necessary judgments. In the simplest propositions is enveloped the principle of substance and being. We cannot take a step in life without concluding from an event in the existence of its cause. These principles are absolutely true, they are true everywhere and always. Now, experience apprises us of what happens here and there, to-day or yesterday; but of what happens everywhere and always, especially of what cannot but happen, how can it apprise us, since it is itself always limited to time and s.p.a.ce? There are, then, in man principles superior to experience.

Such principles can alone give a firm basis to science. Phenomena are the objects of science only so far as they reveal something superior to themselves, that is to say, laws. Natural history does not study such or such an individual, but the generic type that every individual bears in itself, that alone remains unchangeable, when the individuals pa.s.s away and vanish. If there is in us no other faculty of knowing than sensation, we never know aught but what is pa.s.sing in things, and that, too, we know only with the most uncertain knowledge, since sensibility will be its only measure, which is so variable in itself and so different in different individuals. Each of us will have his own science, a science contradictory and fragile, which one moment produces and another destroys, false as well as true, since what is true for me is false for you, and will even be false for me in a little while. Such are science and truth in the doctrine of sensation. On the contrary, necessary and immutable principles found a science necessary and immutable as themselves,--the truth which they gave as is neither mine nor yours, neither the truth of to-day, nor that of to-morrow, but truth in itself.

The same spirit transferred to aesthetics has enabled us to seize the beautiful by the side of the agreeable, and, above different and imperfect beauties which nature offers to us, to seize an ideal beauty, one and perfect, without a model in nature, and the only model worthy of genius.

In ethics we have shown that there is an essential distinction between good and evil; that the idea of the good is an idea just as absolute as the idea of the beautiful and that of the true; that the good is a universal and necessary truth, marked with the particular character that it ought to be practised. By the side of interest, which is the law of sensibility, reason has made us recognize the law of duty, which a free being can alone fulfil. From these ethics has sprung a generous political doctrine, giving to right a sure foundation in the respect due to the person, establis.h.i.+ng true liberty, and true equality, and calling for inst.i.tutions, protective of both, which do not rest on the mobile and arbitrary will of the legislator, whether people or monarch, but on the nature of things, on truth and justice.

From empiricism we have retained the maxim which gives empiricism its whole force--that the conditions of science, of art, of ethics, are in experience, and often in sensible experience. But we profess at the same time this other maxim, that the foundation of science is absolute truth, that the direct foundation of art is absolute beauty, that the direct foundation of ethics and politics is the good, is duty, is right, and that what reveals to us these absolute ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good, is reason. The foundation of our doctrine is, therefore, idealism rightly tempered by empiricism.

But what would be the use of having restored to reason the power of elevating itself to absolute principles, placed above experience, although experience furnishes their external conditions, if, to adopt the language of Kant,[276] these principles have no objective value?

What good could result from having determined with a precision until then unknown the respective domains of experience and reason, if, wholly superior as it is to the senses and experience, reason is captive in their inclosure, and we know nothing beyond with certainty? Thereby, then, we return by a _detour_ to skepticism to which sensualism conducts us directly, and at less expense. To say that there is no principle of causality, or to say that this principle has no force out of the subject that possesses it,--is it not saying the same thing? Kant avows that man has no right to affirm that there are out of him real causes, time, or s.p.a.ce, or that he himself has a spiritual and free soul. This acknowledgment would perfectly satisfy Hume; it would be of very little importance to him that the reason of man, according to Kant, might conceive, and even could not but conceive, the ideas of cause, time, s.p.a.ce, liberty, spirit, provided these ideas are applied to nothing real. I see therein, at most, only a torment for human reason, at once so poor and so rich, so full and so void.

A third doctrine, finding sensation insufficient, and also discontented with reason, which it confounds with reasoning, thinks to approach common sense by making science, art, and ethics rest on sentiment. It would have us confide ourselves to the instinct of the heart, to that instinct, n.o.bler than sensation, and more subtle than reasoning. Is it not the heart, in fact, that feels the beautiful and the good? Is it not the heart that, in all the great circ.u.mstances of life, when pa.s.sion and sophism obscure to our eyes the holy idea of duty and virtue, makes it s.h.i.+ne forth with an irresistible light, and, at the same time, warms us, animates us, and gives us the courage to practise it?

We also have recognized that admirable phenomenon which is called sentiment; we even believe that here will be found a more precise and more complete a.n.a.lysis of it than in the writings where sentiment reigns alone. Yes, there is an exquisite pleasure attached to the contemplation of the truth, to the reproduction of the beautiful, to the practice of the good; there is in us an innate love for all these things; and when great rigor is not aimed at, it may very well be said that it is the heart which discerns truth, that the heart is and ought to be the light and guide of our life.

To the eyes of an unpractised a.n.a.lysis, reason in its natural and spontaneous exercise is confounded with sentiment by a mult.i.tude of resemblances.[277] Sentiment is intimately attached to reason; it is its sensible form. At the foundation of sentiment is reason, which communicates to it its authority, whilst sentiment lends to reason its charm and power. Is not the widest spread and the most touching proof of the existence of G.o.d that spontaneous impulse of the heart which, in the consciousness of our miseries, and at the sight of the imperfections of our race which press upon our attention, irresistibly suggests to us the confused idea of an infinite and perfect being, fills us, at this idea, with an inexpressible emotion, moistens our eyes with tears, or even prostrates us on our knees before him whom the heart reveals to us, even when the reason refuses to believe in him? But look more closely, and you will see that this incredulous reason is reasoning supported by principles whose bearing is insufficient; you will see that what reveals the infinite and perfect being is precisely reason itself;[278] and that, in turn, it is this revelation of the infinite by reason, which, pa.s.sing into sentiment, produces the emotion and the inspiration that we have mentioned. May heaven grant that we shall never reject the aid of sentiment! On the contrary, we invoke it both for others and ourself.

Here we are with the people, or rather we are the people. It is to the light of the heart, which is borrowed from that of reason, but reflects it more vividly in the depths of the soul, that we confide ourselves, in order to preserve all great truths in the soul of the ignorant, and even to save them in the mind of the philosopher from the aberrations or refinements of an ambitious philosophy.

We think, with Quintilian and Vauvenargues, that the n.o.bility of sentiment makes the n.o.bility of thought. Enthusiasm is the principle of great works as well as of great actions. Without the love of the beautiful, the artist will produce only works that are perhaps regular but frigid, that will possibly please the geometrician, but not the man of taste. In order to communicate life to the canvas, to the marble, to speech, it must be born in one's self. It is the heart mingled with logic that makes true eloquence; it is the heart mingled with imagination that makes great poetry. Think of Homer, of Corneille, of Bossuet,--their most characteristic trait is pathos, and pathos is a cry of the soul. But it is especially in ethics that sentiment s.h.i.+nes forth.

Sentiment, as we have already said, is as it were a divine grace that aids us in the fulfilment of the serious and austere law of duty. How often does it happen that in delicate, complicated, difficult situations, we know not how to ascertain wherein is the true, wherein is the good! Sentiment comes to the aid of reasoning which wavers; it speaks, and all uncertainties are dissipated. In listening to its inspirations, we may act imprudently, but we rarely act ill: the voice of the heart is the voice of G.o.d.

We, therefore, give a prominent place to this n.o.ble element of human nature. We believe that man is quite as great by heart as by reason. We have a high regard for the generous writers who, in the looseness of principles and manners in the eighteenth century, opposed the baseness of calculation and interest with the beauty of sentiment. We are with Hutcheson against Hobbes, with Rousseau against Helvetius, with the author of Woldemar[279] against the ethics of egoism or those of the schools. We borrow from them what truth they have, we leave their useless or dangerous exaggerations. Sentiment must be joined to reason; but reason must not be replaced by sentiment. In the first place, it is contrary to facts to take reason for reasoning, and to envelop them in the same criticism. And then, after all, reasoning is the legitimate instrument of reason; its value is determined by that of the principles on which it rests. In the next place, reason, and especially spontaneous reason, is, like sentiment, immediate and direct; it goes straight to its object, without pa.s.sing through a.n.a.lysis, abstraction, and deduction, excellent operations without doubt, but they suppose a primary operation, the pure and simple apperception of the truth.[280]

It is wrong to attribute this apperception to sentiment. Sentiment is an emotion, not a judgment; it enjoys or suffers, it loves or hates, it does not know. It is not universal like reason; and as it still pertains on some side to organization, it even borrows from the organization something of its inconstancy. In fine, sentiment follows reason, and does not precede it. Therefore, in suppressing reason, we suppress the sentiment which emanates from it, and science, art, and ethics lack firm and solid bases.

Psychology, aesthetics, and ethics, have conducted us to an order of investigations more difficult and more elevated, which are mingled with all the others, and crown them--theodicea.

We know that theodicea is the rock of philosophy. We might shun it, and stop in the regions--already very high--of the universal and necessary principles of the true, the beautiful, and the good, without going farther, without ascending to the principles of these principles, to the reason of reason, to the source of truth. But such a prudence is, at bottom, only a disguised skepticism. Either philosophy is not, or it is the last explanation of all things. Is it, then, true that G.o.d is to us an inexplicable enigma,--he without whom the most certain of all things that thus far we have discovered would be for us an insupportable enigma? If philosophy is incapable of arriving at the knowledge of G.o.d, it is powerless; for if it does not possess G.o.d, it possesses nothing.

But we are convinced that the need of knowing has not been given us in vain, and that the desire of knowing the principle of our being bears witness to the right and power of knowing which we have. Accordingly, after having discoursed to you about the true, the beautiful, and the good, we have not feared to speak to you of G.o.d.

More than one road may lead us to G.o.d. We do not pretend to close any of them; but it was necessary for us to follow the one that was open to us, that which the nature and subject of our instruction opened to us.

Universal and necessary truths are not general ideas which our mind draws by way of reasoning from particular things; for particular things are relative and contingent, and cannot contain the universal and necessary. On the other hand, these truths do not subsist by themselves; they would thus be only pure abstractions, suspended in vacuity and without relation to any thing. Truth, beauty, and goodness are attributes and not ent.i.ties. Now there are no attributes without a subject. And as here the question is concerning absolute truth, beauty and goodness, their substance can be nothing else than absolute being.

It is thus that we arrive at G.o.d. Once more, there are many other means of arriving at him; but we hold fast to this legitimate and sure way.

For us, as for Plato, whom we have defended against a too narrow interpretation,[281] absolute truth is in G.o.d,--it is G.o.d himself under one of his phases. Since Plato, the greatest minds, Saint Augustine, Descartes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, agree in putting in G.o.d, as in their source, the principles of knowledge as well as existence. From him things derive at once their intelligibility and their being. It is by the partic.i.p.ation of the divine reason that our reason possesses something absolute. Every judgment of reason envelops a necessary truth, and every necessary truth supposes necessary being.

If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, G.o.d will possess beauty in its plenitude. The father of the world, of its laws, of its ravis.h.i.+ng harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, he is the principle of beauty in nature. It is he whom we adore, without knowing it, under the name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on from beauties to beauties, calls for a final beauty in which it may find repose. It is to him that the artist, discontented with the imperfect beauties of nature and those that he creates himself, comes to ask for higher inspirations.