Chapter 1

THE NATURE OF THE FIRST DIVISION
OF THE BRANCHES OF KNOWLEDGE

1461. Anyone undertaking to form a genealogical tree of all the branches of knowledge has to begin by considering that whatever can be known by human beings forms a single body of knowledge. All previous divisions must be forgotten.
In our essay on the origin of ideas and the criterion of certainty, we have been led to consider all knowledge in this great unity; we ascended from the principle whence all knowledge is derived, and through which it is ascertained and justified. The first division which we met in the application of this principle was that by which all knowledge is divided into formal or pure knowledge and materiated knowledge.

1462. All materiated knowledge supposes some form; form on the other hand has no need of any matter in order to be conceived by the mind. But the rule for good method in dealing with all the branches of knowledge is obviously as follows: `The things which have to be said should be distributed in such an order that what is said first has no need of what is said later in order to be understood and justified. On the contrary, what comes first should throw light on what comes later.’

1463. The form of knowledge is the cause and light of all other cognitions, which exist only as a result of an application of the form to real things. Knowledge about the form must therefore precede all other cognitions, and can be called the first, pure branch of knowledge (ideology). All the others are applied branches of knowledge. This is the first division of the branches of knowledge.

1464. The first, pure branch of knowledge deals solely with ideal being, the form of all the other cognitions, but does not yet offer this being, the supreme rule of the mind, in its application to subsistent things. Logic,(333) therefore, another branch of pure knowledge, which deals with the principles or rules of application of the form of reason, will be a kind of mediator between the first and the applied branches of knowledge.

1465. Let me add here a single observation on the first division of the branches of knowledge according to Bacon. He begins by dividing these branches into three according to the principal powers of reason, memory and imagination. Such a notion enables us to see clearly how backward the teaching on human knowledge was in Bacon’s time. People had still not understood completely, or rather had forgotten, that reason alone generates the branches of knowledge. Memory is simply the deposit of reason; imagination simply provides reason with materials, or clothes the individual branch of knowledge in elegant, external signs. If all this were known, Bacon took no notice of it and found it of no benefit for the division of the branches of knowledge which could not therefore receive from him, and still less from the Encyclopedists, the unity of order that embellishes them and provides them with their striking usefulness.(334)

He went on to apply his comment: `Read as attentively as possible all the definitions and explanations that are normally given of substantial forms, and examine carefully the essence of all those infinite entities which philosophers imagine as they please, and which they then have to divide and subdivide. I am quite certain, and I dare to affirm, that these divisions can do nothing more than stimulate the mind to think the idea of being and cause in general’ (ibid.). This should have been enough to enable Malebranche, good man as he was, to realise that the idea of being to which he referred was deficient; it was not the idea of God, that is, of the supreme reality, as Malebranche thought. If he had noticed this, he would not have been included by that terrible Hardouin in what we may call his catalogue of Atei di consequenza.

Notes

(333) Logic is universal if it contains the principles of application of being to all that is knowable: special, if it contains the rules of application of these principles to the individual branches of applied knowledge.

(334) The metaphysics of antiquity, called the first branch of knowledge and the originator of all other branches, was in substance an `ideology'. But heterogeneous matters were then introduced and confusion arose about teaching which dealt with ideal, mental and real beings. Metaphysics was no longer the first branch of knowledge in the sense which we are using here. But there was another deficiency in scholastic metaphysics considered as the first of the branches of knowledge and the source of other branches. Although recognising metaphysics as the root of the genealogical tree was a beautiful and useful truth, considerable ignorance remained about the way in which to deduce other branches of knowledge from it. As a result, metaphysics was thought to be more fruitful than it actually is, and observation of nature, which alone enables us to know the specific essences of things, was neglected. Things were then defined through abstractions and formalities, and being in general, which of itself is not the essence of anything, took the place of all essences. This important comment comes from Fr. Malebranche who notes: `The intimate presence of the vague idea of generic being' (he meant being in general) `is the cause of all inordinate abstractions of the mind' (Bk, 3, c. 8).