Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science
Appendix 4. (149).
G. B. Venturi, who is to be the more admired because he wrote when the school of Locke held sway (1784-1801), clearly saw that a fundamental feeling must precede all acquired sensations. While Venturi, Araldi and other great Italians quietly pursued their investigations, their voices were drowned by those who swore `on the words of the master'. But the Italians' writings have survived to the great credit of their authors. Let me use Venturi's authority to confirm what I have said about the existence of an animal feeling anterior to all sensations:
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Even before our vast nervous system is touched by the outside world, it apparently feels in every part an empty, vague, infinite extension in which all sensations arise, are divided and come to rest. Space seems to be the fundamental human sensation, and according to Kant, a priori knowledge. This sensation does not begin to exist as a result of metaphysical reflection on the order of co-existent things; it witnessed the first spark of existence in us and could perhaps have claimed innate dignity if Locke's cruel decree had not condemned innate ideas. The internal pressure of all the parts of our body on our nerves, without the action of external bodies, is alone sufficient to create the idea of the confused, indefinite and immense space our spirit experiences as we fall asleep or faint. We must not be surprised therefore if to the human imagination the most assertive and consistent of all ideas is that of extension. All the ideas of the physical world rest upon it and all the wonders of artificial memory spring from it; all philosophical dreams begin and end with it. Extension is the dark, interminable spirit and the black chaos described in all Cosmogonies of history. It is that pure emptiness which, once entered by the ecstatic mind of the contemplating Brahmin, leads him to believe that he is blessed and holy. For Descartes, it forms the substance of bodies; for Spinoza, it is God. It is the primitive foundation on which we have built all our ideas, the cloth woven by the contribution of each of our senses. The senses of sight and touch have delineated forms and shapes because they are appropriately equipped. But taste, smell and hearing which lack such forms place their objects in space only in a vague, imperfect way, until helped and taught by sight and touch (Riflessioni sulla conoscenza dello spazio, che noi possiamo ricavar dall'udito, at the end of Indagine fisica sui colori, coronata dalla Società Italiana, 2nd. edition, Modena, 10th year of the Republic (1801)). |
The following observations are not intended to detract in any way from this admirable passage of Venturi: 1. What he says about Kant's form of external sense is inaccurate. Although the form endows acquired sensations with space, it does not suppose any preceding feeling. However, we must bear in mind that at the time Venturi was writing, Kant's teaching was almost unknown in Italy. 2. Extension, as a mode of feeling (real extension), is not to be confused with the idea of extension (ideal extension). 3. Extension is in no way the foundation of our ideas, because it is found in feeling, which cannot be confused with ideas. However it is an element in the matter of all the natural knowledge we have in this life.