Appendix 14. - (230)

When I set out to find the characteristics of electric or magnetic fluid, I am still ignorant of what they are. However, having discovered them and wanting to know if these are indeed what I am looking for, it is sufficient to know if they have the true characteristics of the current. As soon as I know they are true, I know that they are precisely what I am seeking, because I am seeking only truth, whatever it may be. I must therefore have within me the power to distinguish what is true from what is false. In other words, I must have foreknowledge of truth in order to recognise it in its particular acts, wherever I find it. To have prior knowledge of truth is the same as having its type within me. By means of this type, I am able in comparing different views to know which is in conformity with the type and therefore true, and which is out of harmony and consequently false. The fact is that unless I had within myself foreknowledge of the distinctive characteristics of truth, I could never recognise it as truth when I encountered it and would therefore lack the faculty to discern truth from falsehood. The possession in my mind of the distinctive characteristics of truth is identical with knowing it as it is. It means having before me the features, a certain type, an exemplar, a prior concept, a form of truth.

It is on these grounds alone that Plato's observation is conclusive in stating that we have to accept that the true face of truth is present in us. Otherwise we would not be able to form any judgment (and I shall show that this face or primal type is simply the innate concept of being, THE SOLE FORM OF REASON). However, it is not conclusive in stating that we have necessarily to accept in us as many types as there are judgments, or as the ideas acquired by such judgments. As I have said, as soon as we have within ourselves the sign enabling us to recognise truth and error, we are able to apply it to an infinite number of things, to anything we wish. From this point on, we have the faculty for judging, discerning and savouring the truth which everywhere presents the same appearance. In short, we have the power to judge things through our possession of a rule. One rule alone is adequate for all things because in all of them we are seeking one thing alone, what is true and what is false; in short, what IS.

If we wish to analyse Plato's statement in greater depth, we can undertake a threefold investigation: 1. sometimes we seek and learn truths, whatever they may be, by using our reason as occasion offers; 2. sometimes we seek new truths related to something already known under some other aspect; and lastly 3. sometimes we seek truths already included in certain ideas even though we have not reflected upon them or perceived them clearly and individually.
We carry out this third sort of investigation whenever we analyse some idea. In this case, we add nothing to our stock of knowledge (analytical judgments), but merely attempt to grasp in fragmented, divided form that which we already possess in combined, united form. We acquire or increase only our reflective knowledge; initially we possessed intuitive, spontaneous knowledge of it. In analyses of this kind, we investigate what we know in one mode in order to understand it in another. Knowing it in the second way, that is, knowing it in analytical and differentiated form, serves different purposes unavailable to synthetical, undifferentiated knowledge. The type of argument devised by Plato cannot apply to this sort of investigation which does not attempt to discover a completely new truth but to find the components, as it were, of something already known as a whole.
If we wish to consider the parts of this whole as new truths when known as parts, this third kind of investigation can then be reduced to and classified with the second kind.

The second species of investigation takes place when we are looking for something which in itself is totally unknown to us but which refers, nevertheless, to something which we do know. For example, if I wish to measure the specific gravity of various bodies, I set out to investigate something of which I am completely ignorant. However, I do know about the bodies to which gravity relates, and I am aware of the general notion of gravity. So when I discover, as a result of experiments, the unknown, specific gravity I am seeking, I can certainly know that it is the result I am seeking because I know the bodies to which this gravity must belong. The relationship between the gravity being sought and these bodies specifies what I am seeking and fixes it for me so firmly that, as soon as I come across it, I recognise it as what I am seeking although I did not know it previously. Certain external features mark off and indicate the thing so clearly that it cannot be mistaken for others when it is found, even though it was previously unknown. Let us imagine that someone says to me: 'The person I shall greet is the one you must seize.' I do not need to know the man by sight to be right; I only need to recognise him from the description I have been given which marks him off unerringly. In this kind of investigation, therefore, when I am seeking and discover some truth, I recognise it as what I have been searching for, not because I knew it previously, but because I knew beforehand its relationship with something I already knew. This relationship acts as a sign which, provided the relationship is quite determinate, enables me to recognise what I am seeking. Thus, all so-called determinate algebraic problems lead me to find a result completely new to me simply because I have been given the conditions serving to determine the result fully. Plato's argument, therefore, has no place in an investigation of this sort either, because I do not need any prior knowledge of this truth to recognise it when I find it. All I need to know is some relationship suitable for connecting it with something previously known.

But in the first of the three kinds of investigation which I outlined, we do not seek determinate truths which we have set out to investigate, but merely seek, or rather discover, the truths which we encounter, as occasion presents while our intellective faculties develop. For example, as soon as we come into the world, we receive a large number of sensations from the realities surrounding us. Because we are open to such sensations and endowed with reason, we say something to ourselves whenever our sensories are stimulated. For example, we say to ourselves: 'There is something external to me' or rather, especially when we are particularly affected, we inevitably begin to think and say with each sensation: 'There is something here, something else there, and so on.' This internal message, not yet expressed in words, is an assent to what comes before our mind. We assent to the existence of external real things; this internal assent is a judgment enabling us to know of the existence of entities that are distinct from ourselves. In other words, we attribute existence to them just as we attribute existence to ourselves, and thus produce objects for ourselves (synthetical judgments). It is in these primal judgments, where we need to have some prior conception of existence, that we require some sign or indication enabling us to know that the existence of bodies is a truth. Here, Plato's argument is solid; in this third kind of investigation, or rather in these discoveries of truth, we need something innate within us to distinguish the truth intuitively, almost at sight. We do not know it through its relationships with other truths which, in our assumption, are still unacquired.

The fact is that all the problems we have been discussing disappear if we suppose that from the beginning we have impressed within us the distinctive, common note of truth (as we shall see, this note is the idea of existence). By this note, we apprehend the first truths which come to us, not because we are seeking precisely these truths, but because we are looking for all truths in general. Or rather, we are alert and watchful to receive them from any source whatever because reason desires nothing more keenly than these truths. We grasp them in a natural way, as things congenial to our mind. Grasping determinate truths is, as I said, the same as judging that something is true. Perceiving bodies with our reason means judging that it is true that bodies exist or (which amounts to the same) assenting internally to their existence. When we have reached this stage and come to possess a number of truths, we can easily explain how the second type of investigation is possible. Known truths are related and enable us to determine other, still unknown truths which can thus become the particular object of our curiosity and our investigations. It is precisely at this point that investigation into truth begins; the first category of investigations is more accurately defined as perception or discovery. In the same way, in the third kind of investigations it is not difficult to explain how to obtain the ideas we analyse.

Plato, who did not differentiate between the three ways in which I carry out my investigations, or at least find the truth, extended the difficulty of which we are speaking to every investigation into truth, although it is present only in the first kind. This explains why his solution failed to be true and perfect.