Chapter 4

A start to expropriating myself of everything not pertaining to the pure notion of soul

71. In the first place, when the soul says: 'I act', it affirms itself as acting. This affirmation comes about through thought; to affirm is to think. But because the soul thinks itself in this activity, its affirmation about its activity involves a reflection of the soul on itself. If the soul did not reflect in this way, it would not think of itself at all; it would not know itself, that is, it would have no consciousness of itself. But is consciousness of self essential to the soul? To answer this question, we have to see if the soul's reflective thought about itself is of the essence of the soul.

It is certain that reflective thought about the human soul is not essential to it; it is certain that consciousness is not born with the soul, has not begun with it and that there was a time when the soul did not know itself or have any awareness of itself. Only later, after thought had had exterior things different from itself as objects, did the soul begin to turn its thought upon itself.

72. We must not confuse the soul with its consciousness. Still less should we confuse the soul with the act by which the soul says: myself. Again, reflection by the soul is not to be confused with the soul itself. Consciousness, enunciation of myself and reflection are all accidents of the soul; they are not its substance, which in reality is prior to all these accidental modifications. Confusing the soul with these things is the source of immense mistakes and of the delirium in which the Germanic school has been and is lost. After Reinhold proposed the principle of consciousness, Fichte reduced the soul to consciousness itself, thus converting the soul into a reflection which, however - because reflection is an accident - banished substance from his philosophy. Nothing remained except pure accidents. At the end of his arguments, Fichte himself concluded: 'No being exists, only images; all reality is a dream, and thought is the dream of that dream.' German philosophy never emerged from this maze.

73. Fichte began from this proposition, which contains the error I have indicated: 'Myself posits itself.' The proposition is obviously absurd because it supposes that myself begins to act prior to existing. But no being can posit or create itself. He should have said: 'The soul posits myself.' This proposition would mean: 'The soul affirms itself and thus changes into a myself because myself is the soul affirmed by itself.' The distinction between myself and the soul lies here: myself is the soul clothed with the reflection by which it affirms itself. There is nothing odd in the soul's producing this reflection, but it is extremely odd that the soul should be myself, that is, that it should be the soul as reflected upon even before it has made this reflection.

74. Nevertheless, the person who philosophises is already a fully formed myself, who will find it very difficult to somehow disentangle and persuade himself that his myself is man-made, that is, an accidental, non-essential state of his soul or, better still, his very soul constituted in accidental conditions.

Our philosopher will find it easy to argue that the soul which says myself is affirming its very own soul, not any soul - which means that it is myself which affirms itself. It cannot be denied, of course, that there is an identity of substance between myself and its own soul; at the same time, there is certainly diversity on an accidental level where the union of this accident with the soul is indicated by the word myself. On the other hand, if this were not the case, reasoning would be extremely awkward. If myself affirms its very self, it affirms a myself; if it affirms a myself, this myself is already formed before its affirmation. We are going round in a circle.

The difficulty can be put in another way: if myself is formed by affirming itself, how can it be affirmed before it actually is? How does it know that what it is affirming is itself? To know this, it would have to have affirmed the affirming myself along with the affirmed myself and discovered the identity between the two. But it cannot compare the affirming myself with the affirmed unless it has perceived the former as well; to have perceived what affirms is the same as affirming the affirming self. This leads to an infinite series of affirmations because the same argument can always be made about the object of such a judgment which becomes the affirming self. This cannot be the way to explain the peculiar fact of the reflection with which the soul thinks and affirms itself. - If, however, we grasp that the word myself is suitable for the soul only after it has affirmed itself and brought itself to consciousness, not before, the difficulty, which appears extremely serious, vanishes completely. But we still have to explain how the soul succeeds in perceiving itself.

75. To do this, we have to return to the theory of intellective perception which we have explained in the book on ideology and in other places. This theory describes perception as an act of the subject who, in intuiting the essence of being, sees this essence realised in feeling. It is impossible to notice being in feeling unless we first know what being is, that is, unless we first intuit its essence. But granted that a subject has this intuition of being, it is no longer difficult to understand that the subject sees, or rather notices being wherever it is, under every form, and therefore also under the form of feeling, which is one of the three forms in which being is. Granted this, we can understand how the human being as subject perceives himself intellectually; he recognises that this himself is nothing more than a feeling-substance. Just as he perceives all other feelings, so he perceives the feeling that is called himself.

The difficulty remains: how does the subject know that the feeling which he perceives in this case is himself, that is, how does he know the identity of the perceiving self and the perceived self? If this identity can only be known by a comparison between the perceiving self and the perceived self, the perception of ourselves cannot be explained in any way. We have to deny, therefore, that we know this identity by way of comparison between a perceiving and perceived self.

How then is the identity known? It is known directly in the very perception of self. If the subject sees the essence of being in his own feeling in such a way that he judges his own feeling to be an ens, this perception, like all others, contains the feeling that determines what is perceived to be this ens rather than some other. To achieve this, the feeling must be perceived as it is; it is not altered by the perception. It is, therefore, the variety of substantial feelings which gives rise to the variety of beings. The known characteristic, which distinguishes one's own feeling from all others not one's own, must be found in the nature of the feeling.

But what is this known characteristic which enables a person to distinguish his own feeling from all others? As we said before, it must certainly be something, a quid, perceived directly in the feeling itself. This quid, which is in one's own feeling and forms part of one's own feeling, distinguishing it from all others, is precisely that which is incommunicable in the feeling and which gives rise to the title: one's own. If we wish to express this with a general, abstract word we can aptly call it: itselfness. If we then want another word to enunciate the itselfness of the person who speaks and reasons rather than of any person whatsoever, I would propose enriching our philosophical vocabulary with the word: myselfness which corresponds to the much-used German Icheit. Oneselfness, itselfness, myselfness is indeed a quid of feeling, and is felt like all the other parts of feeling and like all other feelings, through the essence of being which is recognised in it. This feelable quid is the principle of individuation.(36) It also becomes the principle of personship, which too exists before being perceived. Granted this, it is clear that in the perception of our own feeling we perceive ourselves, provided the word ourselves, is taken to indicate the ownership of the feeling, that is, the itselfness which is the characteristic note of such feeling.

76. But when we say ourselves are we not perhaps asserting that we have already perceived ourselves? Are we not going round in a circle when we say 'perception of ourselves', which can be translated as 'perception of that which is already perceived'? - The comment is correct, and it reveals language's incapacity to follow the mind faithfully in its operations. Language was invented, in fact, by developed people to express the product of our mental activities, not to follow the operations as they were produced. I beg the reader to give all his attention to this matter, which I shall do my best to explain more at length.

The defect noticed in the phrase 'perception of ourselves' can equally be noticed in the same phrase referred to any other perception whatsoever. When I say 'perception of something, perception of an ens, perception of an object', I make use, and cannot do otherwise, of the words: thing, ens, object. But thing, ens, object already indicate a perceived quid, not a quid waiting to be perceived. Indeed, a quid not yet perceived cannot be called a thing, an ens, an object, because these words cannot be imposed by us on something of whose existence we know nothing. Thing, ens, object indicate that which is in some way. Nothing cannot be called a thing, an ens, an object. Nor can it even be called nothing unless we want to negate things, entia, objects. The word nothing cannot be invented or used except by a person who already knows something. But if the three words we have indicated mean that which persons have already perceived, not that which is still to be perceived, the phrase 'to perceive some thing, to perceive an ens, to perceive an object' is as defective as the phrase 'to perceive oneself'. Both beg the question; both mean 'to perceive what has been perceived.'

77. Does this mean that the activity called perception cannot be expressed in words? - It can be expressed, but only by indirect words, as we have tried to express and describe it. The activity itself however cannot be translated into words because everything that we express must be already perceived; otherwise it could not be expressed. We certainly could not give a name to that which is still not perceived. Perception, if it is to be expressed exactly, must be indicated with the words: 'that action through which the spirit acquires a real object'. This activity can also be called judgment and affirmation because the spirit has not acquired any real object until it has affirmed it, that is, until it has enunciated to itself the interior word: 'It is.' As I said elsewhere, real objects are formed (as objects) by the spirit as it perceives them [App., no. 2].

78. - But if the real object is not present and cannot be named before the spirit has perceived it, what is it prior to perception? - It is a feeling, something felt, but never something understood. It is the matter of some future object of understanding, but it is not yet object; it is ens moving towards formation in the mind, but not yet formed ens. It has no intellective light in itself; it cannot even be named as objects are named. Feeling can only produce interjections, inarticulate sounds or, if you wish, articulate sounds, but not those imposed upon it by the mind, that is, by the mind as it imposes signs upon its objects. The sounds are only natural effects of an efficient, instinctive cause. They are like the wind moaning amidst rocks or sighing amidst plants, but never speaking and never intending to offer some sign to itself or to thoughts that it does not yet have. In the same way, various pleasant or painful sensations of brute animals are the efficient, necessary causes of the different sounds they emit. But these sounds are not words; they are not imposed as arbitrary signs intended to signify objects of the mind.

That which is not perceived in nature remains, therefore, unnamed, just as it is unknown. Nor can it be called a thing, an ens, an object. If we do speak of it, we speak indirectly, as I said. We do this by dissecting the ens, the thing, the object, that is, by removing the perception from what has been perceived. This is the way we come to realise that, by removing the perception, we do not remove the whole of the ens, or thing, or object, but are left with the material element, no longer understood by us, but felt. In other words, we are left with the obscure, altogether unknown feeling.
Applying what has been said to the perception of myself, I maintain that the word myself indicates the entire, totally formed perception. In the object expressed with such a word we perceive a feeling and in it the known characteristic - ownership, myselfness - which distinguishes it from all other feelings.

79. But how, then, can the soul which perceives itself know the identity between itself as perceiving and itself as perceived? This, you remember, is what you yourself maintained must be done when the soul enunciates itself with the word myself. How can it perceive this identity except by comparing itself with itself? - The answer is found in what has been said, but I shall do my best to clarify further this fact by showing that the identity between perceiving and perceived is already present in the perception of selfness.

The term of intellective perception is feeling; anything that cannot be felt cannot be perceived. We could not even perceive our own soul if it were not a feeling, and the term of perception. But we also perceive our operations, which therefore must also be accompanied by feeling. Thus we perceive our very own feeling (our very own soul) with all those activities and operations that modify and unfold it. Now the act with which we perceive the feeling constituting our soul, and which we later express with the word myself or ourselves, is also accompanied by feeling, and it too modifies and actuates our substantial feeling. When we perceive this feeling of our own which is the soul, and we perceive it with all its actualities (because they are all sensible by nature), we must also perceive it with the actuality of the perception of self because it has this actuality in the act of perception and in the feeling concomitant with the actuality. Our soul, therefore, does in a certain implicit way perceive itself perceiving. The act of self-perception can therefore be considered under a twofold respect, that is, as cause of perception or as feeling.

Under the first aspect, it produces perception; under the second, it is the term of perception and is present in the perception itself. Nor should we be surprised that the same act can be both principle and term of perception if we consider that in every perception the term (feeling) is not posterior chronologically to its principle (the perceiving act). Principle and term must be contemporaneous if perception is to arise, because perception is simply the union of the principle and term from which it results. In other words, the soul, in moving itself to perceive itself, finds that, having reached itself with its act, it has already moved to such perception; the principle of the act of perception is embraced by the finalised, perfect perception. Hence the identity of the soul as self-perceiving and as perceived by itself is provided in human beings by the nature of perception. In other words, it is impossible for the perception expressed by the word myself to arise without this identity being included in it.(37)

80. - But why then did you tell us that in order to know the identity between what perceives and what is perceived a second reflection is necessary by means of which we compare ourselves as perceiving with ourselves as perceived and find ourselves identical? - You must note that when I said that, I was analysing myself as we have it present to ourselves, as consciousness gives it to the developed human being. Now it is certain that the philosopher who says: 'Myself perceiving is myself perceived', makes a second reflection (and perhaps one of a higher order again) with which he compares himself to himself. Only of this mental operation made by the philosopher can we use correctly the expression that we previously reproved: 'perception of ourselves' or the other: 'myself perceives myself'. The philosopher does, in fact, perceive the already formed myself. He meditates upon himself, that is, upon what he has previously perceived. As we said, it is the mind which presents to the philosopher the object of his meditation (cf. 57, 60). Fichte, precisely because he did not grasp the distinction between the reflective myself of the philosopher and the myself of first formation, lost himself in an interminable forest of errors. He knew only the myself which is the work of the mind itself, not the naked rudiment given by nature from the beginning to the human spirit. Moreover, this is the path we prefer to follow in order to justify common sense, which gives rise to languages and their different characteristics and expressions, which are always accurate provided they are understood in their original meaning. They become defective and fallible through the fault of individuals who want to use them for some other purpose. Thus if the phrase 'perception of ourselves' is taken to indicate the first perception that we have of our own feeling, it becomes unsuitable and fallacious. It was not designed for this. But if we take it to mean the reflective perception of an already developed human being, it fits exactly, and is true.

Notes

(36) AMS, 784.

(37) This truth was overlooked by Aristotle who also did not see that the first object of the intellective soul is being in general. This led him to say that 'intelligence was intelligence of intelligence' ( *, Metaph., final ch.). This way of speaking is absurd because the intelligence, if it understands itself, already exists and the definition provided begs the question. Nevertheless, Aristotle starts from a true principle when, in seeking the object of the first intellect, he says: 'It is clear that it understands what is most divine and honourable'. But in wishing to define what this is, he halts at intellection itself. He does not attain to being in general and as a result is constrained to define primal intellection as 'the intellection of intellection'. This circle, the same as that which entrapped Fichte, can only be avoided in the system I have proposed.