SECTION EIGHT

THE FIRST DIVISION OF THE BRANCHES
OF KNOWLEDGE

CHAPTER 3

The starting point of the system of human knowledge

1468. The system of human knowledge must therefore start from a reflective observation that we make on our own natural cognition. By means of this observation we recognise and discern in ourselves the idea of being. Having found this, and using it as a universal means, we discover and note all our other cognitions. But here we come face to face with an objection. Because we possess the direct intuition of the idea of being before reflective observation on it, would it not be more in keeping with nature if the system of human knowledge started from the intuition of being rather than from reflection on and recognition of the intuition?

The total lack of force behind this objection will be seen if we distinguish four questions which are normally confused because one is solved with an answer appropriate to another - and the answer comes easily to mind. This seems to me the principal reason why learned people have never yet agreed on the method to be followed in scientific treatises. The four questions of which I am speaking are as follows.

1469. First question. What is the starting point in initial human development?
External sensation is the starting point. Exterior sensations are certainly the first steps with which we develop our powers. Those who have observed this truth, but without distinguishing the beginning of real development in human beings from the beginning of philosophy, conclude that philosophy must begin from the treatise on sensations. They imagine that in the field of systematic knowledge they can take the same steps that they took at the beginning of their development. They do not see that if they were faithful to this principle of method, they would have to be children again and renounce any advance towards philosophy. It would be absolutely impossible to keep to this method.

1470. Second question. What is the starting point for the human spirit?
The idea of being is the starting point. Any intellective step whatsoever of the spirit always supposes and requires the prior intellection of being. However, this cannot be the starting point of philosophy. The spirit of a person wishing to philosophise is not in the same state as that of the spirit of someone taking the first step along the way of understanding. The would-be philosopher must have already developed intellectually and come to the point in which he thinks and desires to turn back and ask himself the reason for his own development. He must therefore reflect, or turn his attention back on his first steps, and what his first steps already supposed in him, to seek their justification and certainty at source.

1471. Third question. What is the starting point of those who begin to philosophise?
As we said, those who begin to philosophise are already in the process of development. But they can only start from the point in which they find themselves. It is impossible to do otherwise. Condillac and Bonnet speak imaginatively about returning to the first source of knowledge, and fabricate a statue endowed with a single sense. But for good or ill they take an enormous jump in doing this. They leap an abyss, totally forgetting the intellectual state in which they find themselves, and presenting themselves as spectators, with another nature, in order to observe the effect of the first sensations experienced by a human being, although this period has passed them by forever.

1472. Fourth question. What is the starting point of philosophy as a branch of knowledge, that is, of the system of human knowledge?
We must not confuse the starting point of the person who begins to philosophise with the starting point of philosophy that is already formed. Philosophy, when formed, is not the first, but the final step of those who dedicate themselves to philosophy; this is philosophy at its best. The order in philosophy, therefore, can be only the absolute order between truths. Those who begin to philosophise have not yet found this order; they are as it were groping for it, and can start only from the state in which they find themselves. Then they must retrace all the previous steps of their development, submit them to rigorous examination and thus throw a clearer light of certainty upon them.

Philosophy, on the other hand, must begin by first establishing that luminous point from which is derived the splendour of certainty and truth which serves all other cognitions, and by means of which these cognitions are ascertained and justified.
Let us take a horse-race as an example. When the race begins, the jockeys line up on their mounts at the start. But to get to the starting-post, they must come from somewhere. This accidental point from which they first set out to reach the start is an image of the starting point for those who begin to philosophise; the starting-post of the race is an image of the starting point of philosophy.

But what draws us to philosophise? The stimulus is reflective observation on ourselves, which alone is capable of enabling us to see clearly and advert to the luminous point which serves as the starting point of the whole system of knowledge. This luminous point is the idea of being, the form of reason, and the formal cause of human knowledge.