52. There are in this doctrine of Kant, two things to be distinguished: first, the facts upon which it is based; and secondly, the manner in which he examines and applies them, and the consequences he deduces from them.
We detect at once a radical difference, as far as the observation of ideological facts is concerned, between Kant's system and that of Condillac. While the latter discovers in the mind no fact but sensation, no immediate faculty more noble than that of feeling, the former upholds as a fundamental principle the distinction between sensibility and the understanding. And here the German triumphs over the French philosopher, for in his support stand both observation and experience. But this triumph over sensism had already been obtained by many philosophers, the scholastics in particular. With Kant and Condillac they admitted that all our cognitions came from the senses; but they had also noted what Kant afterwards saw, but Condillac did not discover that sensations by themselves alone could never suffice to explain all the phenomena of our soul, and that, besides the sensitive faculty, it was necessary to admit another very different, called understanding.
Kant regarded sensations as materials furnished to the understanding, which it combined in various ways, and reduced to conceptions. "Thoughts without contents," he said, "are empty; intuitions without conceptions are blind. It is then just as necessary to make conceptions sensible, that is, to give them an object in intuition, as to make intuitions intelligible by subjecting them to conceptions." Who does not perceive in this passage, the acting intellect of the Aristotelians, although expressed in other words? Substitute sensible species for sensible intuition, intelligible species for conception and we recognize a doctrine very like that of the scholastics. Let us see. Kant says: to enable us to acquire knowledge, the action of the senses, or sensible experience is necessary. The scholastics said: there is nothing in the understanding which has not previously been in the senses: nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu.
Kant says: sensible intuitions of themselves are blind. The scholastics said: sensible species, or those of the imagination, also called phantasmata, are not intelligible.
Kant says: it is necessary to make conceptions sensible by giving them an object in intuition. The scholastics said: it is impossible to understand, either by acquiring science, or by using that already acquired, unless the understanding directs itself to sensible species, "sine conversione ad phantasmata."
Kant says: it is indispensable to render intuitions intelligible by subjecting them to conceptions. The scholastics said: it is necessary to make sensible species intelligible in order that they may be the object of the understanding.
Kant says: we judge by means of conceptions; and that judgment is the mediate cognition of an object, and consequently its representation. The scholastics said: we know objects by means of an intelligible species, which is derived from the sensible species, and is its intelligible representation.
Kant says, that in every judgment there is a conception applicable to many things, and that under this plurality it comprises also a given representation which is referred immediately to its object. The scholastics said, that the intelligible species was applicable to many things, because universal; that, when separated from a sensible and particular species, it abstracts from all material and individuating conditions, and consequently embraces all individual objects in one common representation.
Kant uses the words conception, and to conceive, to denote the intellectual act, form, or whatever it may be, by which the understanding, making use of sensible intuitions, combines the materials offered by sensibility conformably to the laws of the intellectual order. The scholastics likewise taught that the intelligible species, called also species impressed, fecundated the understanding by producing in it an intellectual conception, whence resulted the word, internal locution, or species expressed, which they also styled conception.
Kant says, that the cognition of human intelligence is a cognition by conceptions, not intuitive, but discursive and general, and that out of the sphere of sensibility there is for us no true intuition. The scholastics said: our understanding, in this life, has a necessary relation to the nature of material things, and for this reason it cannot primo et per se, know immaterial substances: hence it happens that we know them perfectly only by certain comparisons with material things, and chiefly by way of removal, per viam remotionis, in a negative way.
53. The sample we have just given is exceedingly interesting, since it enables us to appreciate as they merit the points of similarity in these two systems, which occupy a prominent place in the history of ideology, a similarity which has not always hitherto been sufficiently noticed, although apparent upon the simple perusal of the German philosopher. Nor is this extraordinary: the study of the scholastics is exceedingly difficult; one must accommodate one's self to the language, the style, the opinions, and the prejudices of their epoch, and travel over much useless ground to collect a little pure ore. Note well, however, that I do not pretend to discover the "Critic of Pure Reason" in the works of the scholastics, I would only mark a fact but little known; it is that whatever is good, fundamental, and conclusive against the sensism of Condillac, in the German philosopher's system, had been said ages before by the scholastics.
Are we hence to infer that Kant took his doctrine from these authors? We cannot say; but we believe it may, with some reason, be asserted, that possibly the German philosopher, a man of vast reading, most retentive memory, and very laborious, may have received certain inspirations, reminiscences of which glimmer through his doctrines. A writer is not a plagiarist, although he make ideas his own which have originated with others. But it is often true that man imagines he creates, when he only recollects.
54. Although the German philosopher agrees with the scholastics in the observation of the primitive faculties of our mind, he differs from them in their application; and whilst they go on preparing a philosophical dogmatism, he marches towards a despairing skepticism. Nothing that all the most eminent philosophers have regarded as indisputable, can stand in the eyes of the German philosopher. True, he has distinguished the sensible from the intelligible order; he has recognized two primitive faculties in our soul; sensibility and the understanding; he has indicated the line which divides them, and carefully remarked that it should never be effaced; but, on the other hand, he has reduced the sensible world to a collection of pure phenomena, and explains space in such a way as to render it extremely difficult to avoid the idealism of Berkeley. He has also, so to speak, walled in the understanding by preventing all communication with it, excepting by sensible experience, and has resolved all the elements that meet in it into empty forms, which lead to nothing when there is question of applying them to the not-sensible, and which can teach us nothing concerning the great ontological, psychological, and cosmological problems which have been the object of the meditations of the profoundest metaphysicians, who, to resolve them, have published a vast amount of sublime doctrines, just cause of a noble pride in the human mind which knows the dignity of its nature, vindicates its lofty origin, and discerns from afar the immensity of its destiny.
CHAPTER IX.
HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE VALUE OF PURE IDEAS
55. Now that we have shown the points of similarity between Kant's system and that of the scholastics, we propose to note their differences chiefly in what concerns the application of these doctrines. To give an idea of the gravity and transcendentalism of these differences, we have only to remark the discrepancy of their results. The Aristotelians built upon their principles a whole system of metaphysical science, which they considered the noblest of sciences, and which, like a rich and brilliant light, fecundates and directs all others; whereas Kant, starting with the same facts, destroys metaphysical science by taking from it all power to know objects in themselves.
56. We here find Kant in opposition not only to the scholastics, properly so called, but also to all the most eminent metaphysicians who had preceded him. On the side of the scholastics in this matter may be cited Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, Saint Thomas, Descartes, Malebranche, Fenelon, and Leibnitz.
57. No one can deny the transcendency of these questions, if he be not totally ignorant how vital it is to the human mind to know if a science superior to the purely sensible order be possible, whereby man may extend his activity beyond the phenomena offered by matter. These questions are exceedingly profound, and must not be lightly treated. The difficulty and the great abstruseness of the objects treated, the importance, the transcendency of the consequences to which they lead, according to the road followed, demand that no labor whatever should be spared to penetrate these matters. It is easy to assure one's self that upon these questions depends the conservation of sound ideas of God and of the human mind; man's most important and lofty considerations.
To give this matter a thorough examination, let us go back to the origin of the divergence of these philosophical opinions, and let us investigate the reason why, starting with the same facts, they arrive at contradictory results. This requires a clear exposition of the opposite doctrines.
58. All philosophers agree in admitting the fact of sensibility; concerning it there can be no doubt; it is a phenomenon attested by consciousness in so palpable a manner, that not even skeptics could ever deny the subjective reality of the appearance, however much they called in question its objective reality. Idealists, when they deny the existence of bodies, do not deny their phenomenal appearance, their appearance to the mental eye under a sensible form. Sensibility then, and the phenomena it exhibits, have in all ages been primary data in ideological and psychological problems; there may be a discrepancy with respect to the nature and consequences of these data, but there can be none as to their existence.
59. The history of ideological science shows us two schools; one of which admits nothing but sensation, and explains all the affections and operations of the mind by the transformation of the senses; while the other admits primitive facts distinct from sensation; other faculties than that of feeling, and recognizes in the mind a line dividing the sensible from the intellectual order.
60. This latter school is divided into two others; one of which regards the sensible order as not only distinct, but also separate from the intellectual order, and in some sense at war with it; and it therefore maintains that the intellectual can receive nothing from the sensible order, except malign exhortations which either mislead it, or enervate its activity. Hence the system of innate ideas in all its purity; hence the metaphysics of an intellectual order entirely exempt from sensible impressions, metaphysics which, cultivated by eminent geniuses, has in modern times been professed by the author of the Investigation of Truth, with sublime exaggeration. The other ramification of the school also admits the pure intellectual order, but does not hold it to be contaminated by being brought into communication with sensible phenomena; on the contrary, it is rather inclined to believe that the problems of human intelligence, such as it exists in this life, cannot be resolved without fixing the mind upon the aforesaid communication.
61. Experience teaches that this communication exists, conformably to a law of the human mind, and that to contend against the law is to struggle against a truth attested by consciousness: to attempt to destroy it would be a rash undertaking, a kind of mental suicide. For this reason, the school of which we have just spoken, accepts the facts, such as internal experience presents them, and endeavors to explain them by indicating the points where the sensible and intellectual orders may come into communication without being destroyed or confounded.
62. The school that admits the existence of the two orders, the sensible and the intellectual, and at the same time admits the possibility and the reality of their reciprocal communication and influence, has, for its fundamental principle, that the origin of all cognition is in the senses, these being the exciting causes of intellectual activity, and a kind of laborers who supply it with materials, which it then combines in the manner necessary to raise the scientifical structure.
63. Thus far, Kant and the scholastics agree; but here they separate at a point of the greatest importance, and the result is that they pass on to conflicting consequences. The scholastics believed that there were in the understanding true ideas having true objects, and that they might discuss them, independently of the sensible order, with perfect security. They even admitted the principle that there can be nothing in the understanding which was not previously in the senses; but pretended, nevertheless, that there really was something in the understanding, which might conduce to the knowledge of the truth of immaterial, as well as of material things in themselves. The ideas of the purely intellectual order originate in the senses as movers of the intellectual activity; but this activity, by means of abstraction and other operations, forms to itself ideas of its own, by whose aid it may go beyond the sensible order in its search for truth.
64. In their explanation of the purely intellectual order, metaphysicians, both scholastics and anti-scholastics agree, so far as there is question of giving a real objective value to ideas, and of making them a sure means of discovering truth independently of sensible phenomena. However much these schools disagree as to the origin of ideas, they agree in all that relates to their reality and value.
65. Kant, at the same time that he admits the principle of the scholastics, that all our cognitions come from the senses, and recognizes with them the necessity of acknowledging a purely intellectual order, a series of conceptions different from sensible intuition, maintains that these conceptions are not pure cognitions, but empty forms, which of themselves mean nothing, teach the mind nothing, and cannot, in the least, aid us to know the reality of things. These conceptions mean nothing unless filled, so to speak, with sensible intuitions. If these intuitions are wanting, they correspond to nothing, and can be of none but a purely logical use; that is to say, the understanding will think upon and combine them, without, indeed, falling into contradiction, but also without ever coming to any conclusion.
"That the understanding," Kant says, "can never make a transcendental, but only an empirical use, either of its a priori principles, or of its conceptions, is a principle which, if known with conviction, leads to the most important consequences. The transcendental use of a conception in any principle, consists in referring it to things, in general, and in themselves; whilst the empirical use is in referring the conception to phenomena alone, that is, to the objects of a possible experience, by which we may easily see that this latter use is the only one that can stand. To every conception is necessary, first of all, a logical form of a conception in general, of the thought: and secondly, the possibility of subjecting to it an object, to which it may refer; but without this object it wants all sense, it contains nothing, although it may involve the logical function necessary to form a conception by means of certain data. The object cannot be given to a conception except in intuition; and although pure intuition may be a priori possible before the object, it cannot, however, receive its object, and consequently its objective value, otherwise than by the empirical intuition of which it is the form. All conceptions and with them all principles, although they be possible a priori, do, notwithstanding, refer to empirical intuitions, that is, to data of possible experience. Without this they have no objective value; they are nothing but a mere play, whether of the imagination or of the understanding, with the respective representations of the one or the other faculty.