SECTION SEVEN

THE FORCES PRESENT IN A PRIORI REASONING

CHAPTER 3

The starting point of Victor Cousin's philosophy

1429. Victor Cousin, professor of philosophy in the faculty of letters at Paris, derived a great deal of his teaching from the German school. But the clarity of his language, his own mental fertility and the sounder method he used enabled him to set out the teaching more elegantly and brilliantly and, at the same time, render it more popular and more in keeping with normal, human society.

1430. He begins with a fact of consciousness which, according to him, manifests three ideas constituting the very basis of reason.(291) He describes this fact in the following way:
The study of consciousness(292) is the study of humanity. In the philosophical dictionary this study is called 'psychology'. In consciousness there are as many phenomena as in the external world, but all the facts of consciousness can be reassumed, and are reassumed (as I have shown on other occasions) in a single, constant, permanent, universal fact which remains through all possible circumstances and is present in the consciousness of a shepherd or of a Leibniz. The only condition it requires is the act of consciousness itself.(293)

He goes on to describe this principal fact:

As long as a human being does not know or perceive himself, he has no consciousness of self; he knows and perceives nothing.(294) We cannot know anything except in so far as we are for ourselves,(295) that is, in so far as we know that we are. All knowledge, therefore, implies the knowledge of oneself,(296) although not a developed knowledge. It implies that we know at least that we are.(297) As long as a human being does not exist for himself, he is as though he were not; but from the instant that he knows himself (and note that I am not speaking of a developed, scientific knowledge), he knows himself only on condition that he knows everything else in the way he knows himself.(298) Everything is given in everything.(299) When human beings perceive themselves, and even as they appear to themselves, they are already mentally in touch with all that they can apprehend later.

Let us see how Cousin explains his opinion that in any knowledge of ourselves all the rest is to be found. I hope I will not burden my readers if I quote the entire passage from this rather flamboyant philosopher. He says:

When I perceive myself, I discern myself from all that I am not.(300) In perceiving myself from all that I am not, I do two things: 1. I affirm myself as existing; 2. I also affirm as existing that from which I distinguish myself.(301) I am not myself, I am not this self which remains separate from all that is foreign to me unless I distinguish myself from all the rest;(302) and distinguishing oneself from something is to suppose as existent(303) that from which one distinguishes oneself. We do not find ourselves except by finding something that surrounds us and consequently limits us.(304) Try to turn back on yourselves a little and you will see that the ego which you are is the ego limited on all sides by exterior objects.(305) The ego is, therefore, finite, and in so far as it is limited and finite, it is the ego.(306) But if the exterior world limits the ego and becomes an impediment to all my senses, the ego also acts on the exterior world, modifies it, opposes its action and to some degree imposes its own action upon it. This degree of action, although weak, is a boundary or limit of the external world.(307) So the world or the non-ego which, in its opposition to the ego is the limit of the ego, is in its turn contradicted, modified and limited by the ego. At the same time, therefore, as the ego is constrained to acknowledge itself as limited, terminated and finite, it marks out in its turn the external world (the non-ego, from which it distinguishes itself) as terminated, limited and finite.(308) This is the mutual opposition in which we find ourselves, and it is as permanent in our consciousness as our consciousness is permanent.(309)

Up to this point we have been listening to the language of Fichte. Cousin now goes forward unhesitatingly, taking Schelling, as he thinks, for companion. He says:

Careful consideration shows us that this opposition is summed up in a single, identical notion, that is, the notion of what is finite. This ego that we are is finite; the non-ego which limits the ego is equally finite and limited by the ego.(310) Although limited in different degrees, they are both limited; we are therefore still in the sphere of the finite. Is there nothing more in consciousness?
At the moment that consciousness perceives the ego as finite in its opposition to the non-ego, which is equally finite, it refers this limited, relative and contingent ego and the ego to a higher, absolute and necessary unity which contains them in itself and unfolds them. All the characteristics of this unity are opposite to those which the ego finds in itself and in the non-ego, which is analogous to it.(311) This unity is absolute, just as the ego and the non-ego are relative; and it is a substance,(312) just as the ego and the non-ego, although substantial through their relationship with substance, are in themselves simple phenomena and, like phenomena, limited and subject to appearance and disappearance.(313) Moreover, this higher unity is a cause as well as a substance. Indeed, the ego feels itself only in its acts, that is, as a cause that acts on the exterior world.(314) The exterior world enters the knowledge of the ego only through the impressions it makes upon the ego, that is, through the sensations experienced but not produced by the ego which, because it cannot destroy the sensations or refer them to itself, refers them to a cause, to something foreign to itself. This cause outside the ego is the world and, like the ego, is finite.(315) The unity, in other words, the substance-cause containing the ego and the non-ego, must in consequence of its nature be an infinite cause.(316)

1431. We must not confuse the order of real things with the order of ideas, which are present only to the mind. In the order of real things it is clear that no contingent, limited ens can subsist unless an absolute, necessary ens exists to give the contingent ens existence. But granted the subsistence of limited, contingent entia, can they be perceived without need of the perception of the absolute, necessary being which has given them existence? This question appertains to the order of knowledge and to the way in which we perceive. It is not to be confused with the previous question.

1432. The direct method to follow in resolving this second question is certainly not that of examining the relationship of contingent with necessary ens. This would mean having recourse to the order of real things, although our present question deals with the search for the order and nature of ideas and perceptions. The true, natural method can only consist in taking intellective perception as it is in fact, observing it, and submitting it to analysis. We must not examine it a priori as it should be, but be content with acknowledging it as it is.

All Cousin's arguments are reduced to establishing how perception should be. This is an abuse of a priori reasoning. Substantially he is saying: 'The finite cannot stand without the infinite; therefore the finite cannot be perceived without the infinite.' The principle is true, the consequence is false. The principle pertains to the order of real things; the consequences pertain to the order of ideas. The two orders have been confused. What is true in the first order need not necessarily be believed as true in the second order, unless it has been proved.

We must not begin, therefore, by imposing laws on the nature of our knowledge. Our ability does not extend that far. We must rather begin from experience, take the fact of knowledge as it is, not as we think it ought to be, analyse it and see what it contains. Then we can see what laws it follows.

But perception is limited and terminated in the objects perceived (cf. vol. 2, 514-517). It does not go a step beyond them. If the object is single and limited, the term of perception is equally single and limited. But doesn't the perceived object exist in dependence upon other objects? That is true, but the perception of that object exists independently of the perception of the objects on which the prior object depends. I can perceive and know a child in its own, proper existence without knowing its parents; I can know a brook without knowing its source; I can know a fruit without having seen the plant on which it has grown. Nevertheless, the child does not exist without the parents, the brook without the source, the fruit without the plant. Equally, I can perceive what is limited without positively perceiving what is unlimited, although what is limited cannot be without the unlimited. And if we wish to analyse carefully the intellective perception of limited entia, we shall find that, although intellective perception includes an incipient concept of what is unlimited (the idea of being), it has no positive knowledge, no perception of an unlimited, subsistent ens. This distinction between the positive part and the empty or incipient part of our ideas is sufficient to dissolve all apparent reasons serving as a basis for Cousin's opinion, which I regret I cannot share.

1433. I shall prove this proposition in the way I have proved the preceding proposition. I shall first ask the reader to follow a careful analysis of the act of perception, and then further illuminate the proof by making use of a quality common to the act of perception and any action of a finite ens. For still greater clarification again, I shall set out the whole argument in a series of propositions.

First proposition: Experience shows that every action of a limited ens has a term, either outside the agent or at least distinct from the beginning of the action. Indeed, the action of a limited ens, which begins, proceeds and finishes, is a kind of movement through which the activity of the ens passes from its state of virtuality or potency, and produces its effect. This effect, the term of the activity which unfolds and moves outwardly, is always different from the principle and root of the act. If it were in no way different, it would not be possible to conceive that any change had taken place. The concept of change contains essentially diversity and distinction.

If the action terminates outside the acting ens, this must come about through a kind of touch or extremely close, continuous union with the externally produced effect at the moment of its production. When the effect has been produced, it is detached, or seems to have been detached, from the action of the cause which produces the effect. Sometimes the cause ceases altogether, and the effect remains alone, perfectly distinct and exterior. The law governing the activity of every ens, therefore, is that it should move from inside itself outwards. In other words, the root of the activity is in the intimate nature of the agent, while the term is either at the extremity of, or altogether outside the agent. It follows as a corollary that the first term of the action of a finite ens is never its own root-entity.

1434. Second proposition: If every new action of entia proceeds from within to without entia, this must also occur relative to the human understanding when it acts in perception. This, too, is confirmed by experience. The agent who understands, therefore, can never have himself as the first object of his intellective faculty.

1435. Third proposition: The term of perception is its object: the object of perception is that which human beings perceive and know through perception. This proposition is obvious. Its corollary states that what is perceived with the act of perception is simply the object of the perception and nothing more. If human beings were to perceive something different from the object of perception, this perceived thing would be the object by definition.

1436. Conclusion. Therefore the human being, an intellective ens, cannot perceive himself but only something else presented to him as object. Experience confirms this: human beings do not perceive themselves except by means of a reflective movement through which they return upon themselves. The exterior world, on the contrary, is perceived with a direct perception by means of which human beings abandon and forget themselves, as it were, in order to go out to know the world where their perception terminates and where they arrive as a result of the limitation of their limited object.

The exterior world is not the ego who perceives; in the same way, the perception of the exterior world and that of the ego are two essentially distinct perceptions. It is impossible for human beings to perceive these two objects (the first time) with an identical perception, not only because they are essentially distinct, but also because they are presented to us by two essentially different feelings, that is, by an interior feeling and by external sensations. As a result, the act of perception in these two perceptions takes a contrary direction: the act of perceiving the world goes from inside out, while the act of perceiving oneself has as it were a circular direction(317) from within to within. But the same act cannot have two contrary directions, and it is absurd to say that a single, first perception perceives the ego and the world as one.

This false belief could have originated from confusion between feeling and intellective perception. In perceiving the world, or any other object, we are always accompanied by the feeling of ourselves. The conclusion, therefore, is that we also perceive ourselves intellectually. The consequence is not valid, however: feeling is essentially different from intellective perception.

1437. The threefold perception described by Professor Cousin as the beginning of the operations of the human spirit is, therefore, non-existent. The human spirit, when it first moves to perceive something, can perceive only what feeling administers to it. Just as feeling is twofold, that is, feeling of ourselves and of exterior things, so the spirit has only two kinds of essentially different perceptions, perception of itself and of the external world.

The perception of what is infinite is not experienced in this life because the infinite being does not manifest itself to our spirit as subsistent. We have, therefore, only a negative or incipient idea of the infinite being drawn from reflection which reasons about perceptions of self and the world, and through which we acknowledge that these finite entia could not be, unless there were something through which they were.
The human spirit, therefore, must take as its first step one of the two intellective perceptions mentioned above, either 1. that of the world, or 2. that of itself. Because these perceptions are mutually exclusive, the human spirit must start from one or the other; it cannot start from both.(318)

The analysis of both these perceptions shows that the human spirit, whether it begins its activity with one or the other, could not begin with either unless it first had an essential, interior intuition. This intuition is not of a being subsisting in itself, but of being in all its universality, initial being, as we have called it, which makes itself most common to all things. This conception, prior to all that is acquired in the mind, has to be taken as the true principle of philosophy, just as it is from this first conception that every human being begins his acts of reasoning. The peasant talking about his flocks and furrows, as well as the intellectual meditating on the movement of the stars and on the divine nature, depends upon this conception.

(291) Lesson 5, 21st March 1828, p. 15.

(292) Too much care cannot be taken about precise expression when a discussion is reduced to its final terms. When an argument is greatly developed, the least defect in expression is fatal and the seed of serious errors in the consequences. I do not think it useless, therefore, to note even the smallest inexactitude in what Professor Cousin states. Here, for example, I note that the statement, 'The study of consciousness is the study of humanity', although very true in one sense, nevertheless presents another, false sense. Consciousness is intellective, and as such leads us to things outside consciousness which are needed for the study of humanity. The word 'consciousness', therefore, either expresses a subjective affection or leads to objects outside us which differ from our consciousness in their act of existence. In the former case, it is not true that the study of humanity is bound up with this consciousness. The study of humanity is completed through the study of these objects, although they are not in our consciousness.

(293) The words 'constant', 'permanent,' 'universal', and so on, are not to be understood in their rigorous sense. The fact of consciousness is indeed conditioned. It requires that consciousness begin, that it act. But the individual consciousness of human beings is not necessary nor has it always existed. Even the fact which manifests itself in our own contingent consciousness did not always exist.

(294) Being in all its universality is known by us before we have the idea of ourselves and long before we have consciousness of ourselves. We know being in all its universality even when we have only a pure feeling of ourselves, not knowledge of ourselves (cf. vol. 2, 439 ss.). Again, we know the external world, or at least our animality, before we know ourselves as persons.

(295) This phrase, 'We are for ourselves', is completely true only in Fichte's system, in which the ego posits itself with its own proper activity. But this new activity totally lacks sufficient reason, as I said (cf. 1388). Hence the ego which posits, determines and freely creates itself is a chimera when applied to the human being. It is true, however, that the passage from not having consciousness of self to having it is truly marvellous. It does indeed add something to ourselves, and through it we acquire a new mode of being.

(296) I deny this. All knowledge implies the feeling of oneself but not the knowledge of oneself.

(297) We know that we are, that is, we have the idea of our existence, after we have the idea of existence in general.

(298) When we know that we are, we also know what we are. In other words, when we know our existence, we also have the idea of our specific essence, as St. Augustine maintained in other words (cf. fn. 128, and 1201). This is not the case with many other things whose existence we can know without knowing what they are positively. What we know of them is simply a relationship with something that we know positively.

(299) This is one of those striking phrases that say nothing in particular. It seems obvious to me that what is necessary does not embrace what is contingent (real), nor does anything contingent embrace any other contingent thing not depending on it. Therefore, everything is not given in everything.

(300) This is equivocal. If I perceived only myself, I would still not know the rest in any way. If the sentence means that I would not confuse myself with anything else, which I do not know, its meaning is only too obvious; but if it means that I distinguish myself from other things with a positive act, as Cousin intends, this can never be an indispensable condition of the immediate perception of myself.

(301) I deny this consequence. The reason for my denial is found in the previous footnote. Because I do not think in any way of all that I am not, there is no possibility of confusing myself with what I am not thinking, that is, with what I do not know. Not thinking of something is a non-affirmation of its existence.

(302) I repeat that it is enough for me to distinguish myself negatively, that is, it is enough for me not to know all other things, and to know myself alone in order for me to be distinguished from everything else. Cousin's reasoning supposes as true the very thing under examination and hence begs the question. Let us imagine that it were true that in our first knowledge of ourselves we perceived all other things. Only in this case would it be true that we could not perceive ourselves except by affirming at the same time the existence of the other things - existence distinct from ourselves.

(303) I grant this if we are speaking of distinguishing ourselves with a positive act, but I do not need to posit any act to ascertain that a thing perceived by me may not be confused with something else which I do not know. Let us imagine that I perceive the cupola of St. Peter's basilica. Do I have to perceive the leaning tower of Pisa as well in order not to confuse one with the other? Or affirm the existence of the Sixtine obelisk in order to say that I have perceived distinctly the Vatican Apollo? One perception is distinct from another of its nature, not through a positive act by which I separate it from other things by affirming its existence. I do not deny, however, that I form a more distinct notion of each thing when I find and note greater differences between them, especially if they are alike.

(304) We are limited by other things only in so far as they are part of our constitution; it is our nature itself that is limited. We perceive our limits therefore when we perceive our nature, which in itself is essentially distinct from other natures.

(305) External things not constituting human nature can put limits to the exercise of our faculties and to the effects that these faculties can produce outside themselves. This, however, is only a consequence, an effect; it is not an essential limitation of human nature. It is not the world which limits us essentially; if the external world did not exist, we would still be limited.

(306) Not in so far as it is limited by exterior things, but in so far as it has an internal limitation, intrinsic to its nature.

(307) The exterior world does not receive its limitation from the ego, but has it in itself, in its own nature. We cannot even say, properly speaking, that the ego limits the action of the forces of the exterior world. It simply modifies its effects; the quantity of action of these forces remains the same. When the ego and the forces in the world are reciprocally opposed to one another, they sometimes impede one another in their movements and effects, and sometimes they help and stimulate one another.

(308) All this is false, as we said in the preceding footnotes. The world would still be limited, even if human beings did not exist.

(309) We feel ourselves by means of a fundamental feeling. This feeling of ourselves accompanies the sensations which we receive from the exterior world. These sensations partly limit us, and partly remove our natural limitation which results from total absence of external sensible perceptions and the ignorance present in us prior to our acquisition of sensations.

(310) See the preceding footnotes.

(311) The analysis of intellective perception does not provide all this. But it does tell us that human beings, in perceiving something finite, such as themselves, or some real external thing (all external things are so independent in their concept that one can be perceived without the other), refer what is finite, perceived with feeling, to the idea of being in all its universality, and through this relationship understand the finite thing. In this first operation being is an absolute, necessary unity, but only in the logical order, where it is not apprehended as a real being having subsistence in itself. In this respect, it would be recognised as substance and real cause. In the first perception, therefore, something absolute is present, that is, being as the beginning of knowledge, but not being as subsistent, that is, substance and supreme cause.

(312) The idea of being contained in perception is not yet a subsistence for us, and cannot therefore be called a substance or efficient cause; it is simply a formal cause. It is, of course, true that by reflection on being itself, one can arrive at knowledge of the necessary existence of a first, subsistent Being, the complement of ideal Being. This does not mean, however, that we have perceived it in the first intellective act; it does mean that we have some indication, some likeness of it, and a condition and rule enabling us to acknowledge it. In a word, we have a kind of incipient introduction to first, subsistent Being. A person may ask for directions to some place, and be told: 'This is the way'. He sees and perceives the right road, but he has not yet perceived his destination. He simply knows the way to go. Another person may be taught how to measure height, but this does not mean that he has calculated the altitude of any particular position. Knowing the way or rule for discovering things, or knowledge, is not at all the same as having the thing or the knowledge. Consequently if, in the analysis of perception or indeed in the very first act of our intelligence, we find a datum, a way or a rule according to which we can reason to the knowledge of the existence of a first, absolute Being, an essential subsistence and cause of everything, it does not follow from this that the existence of such a Being is given to us in our first intellection. Still less must we conclude that we perceive the same Being in the first of our perceptions.

(313) The intellective myself, having appeared once, does not disappear; it is immortal. The elements of matter do not disappear; only the various ways in which they come together.

(314) It also feels itself interiorly, and because it feels itself it feels the exterior world. However, it adverts to feeling itself only after it has felt the exterior world.

(315) Here Cousin presupposes that the human spirit 1. feels itself modified by the exterior world; 2. unable to refer these modifications to itself, refers them to an exterior agent, that is, to the world; 3. resorts finally to an unlimited cause because the world is limited. But are these not three essentially successive steps? Our spirit cannot refer its sensations to the exterior world before having first experienced the sensations themselves. Nor can it resort to the final cause without first having experienced sensations, referred them to the world, and found that the limited world requires some unlimited being. If these three steps are successive, they cannot all be found in the first act of consciousness. First, the sensations have to enter this act; then the thought of the exterior world, that is, the perception of bodies; and thirdly reflection, by which we finally raise ourselves to God.

(316) Lesson, 21st March 1829.

(317) I realise that this language is metaphorical. It does, however, express clearly the essential difference between the act with which the world is perceived and the act with which one perceives oneself.

(318) St. Thomas makes the development of the human understanding begin with the perception of the sensible world. Only after this has been perceived, he thinks, does the intellect turn back on itself. And this is true. There is nothing that can move our reason to look at itself for the sake of seeing and knowing itself (an almost unnatural movement, one might say) unless it has been drawn from its natural calm by stimulation from external things, which first attract the attention of the understanding. In this respect, the understanding can be likened to the eye which never sees itself first, but turns its gaze on the exterior bodies which make up the scene it first perceives. In fact, the eye would never see itself without a mirror in which it beholds not itself but its image, as it sees the exterior body of the amalgam-coated glass. However, this second part of the similarity does not, properly speaking, harmonise with the understanding which in contradistinction to sense possesses a reflective power enabling it, as Dante says, 'upon itself, itself to turn'. Nevertheless before reflection, the understanding must be put into motion and drawn towards its direct act (cf. S. T., I, q. 87, art. 1).