Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Institutes of Metaphysic (1875)/Section 1/Proposition 10
PROPOSITION X.
SENSE AND INTELLECT.
DEMONSTRATION.
OBSERVATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS.
Comment on data of proof of this proposition.1. The truth of this proposition, although dimly surmised and vaguely contended for in the higher schools of speculation, has never been proved until now. Two premises were required for its proof: it was requisite to show, first, that some one thing, or rather element must be known along with all the presentations of sense; and, secondly, that this thing, or element, could not be known as material. These, and only these, are competent data of proof in this case. But no system hitherto propounded has ever distinctly shown what this one thing or element is, or even that there is any such thing or element; much less has any previous system ever proved that this element could not be known to be material. The data of proof, therefore, were wanting in all previous systems—and, consequently, this proposition, to whatever extent, or in whatever form, it may have been enunciated, has until now remained undemonstrated. Neither of the two premises would, without the other, have been of any avail in proving it. We might show that self must be known along with all the presentations of sense; but if self could be known as material, or as a presentation of sense, no ground would be afforded for the inference that mere objects of sense could never be objects of cognition. Again, we might prove that self could not be known as material, or as a presentation of sense; but unless the postulate were also true that self must be known along with all the sensible presentations, we should be equally deprived of a rational ground for our conclusion. But these two premises are now established institutional articles; and it is conceived that, taken together, they afford an impregnable demonstration of the proposition before us.
Tenth counter-proposition.2. Tenth Counter-proposition.—"Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuit sensu"—that is, "Nothing but mere objects of sense can ever be objects of cognition; in other words, whatever has a place in the intellect can contain only such elements as have had a place in the senses: or otherwise expressed—the senses, by themselves, and the senses only, are competent to place any knowable or intelligible thing before the mind." This counter-proposition is certainly, in the highest degree, consonant with our natural, or ordinary, or unphilosophical habits of thought.
The Leibnitzian restriction of counter-proposition.3. The well-known limitation of this maxim by Leibnitz, who, to the words "nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuit in sensu, " added the restriction, nisi ipse intellectus may, perhaps, deserve a passing comment. Had Leibnitz said that intellect must know itself along with all that it apprehends by the aid of the senses, and had he proved that intellect could not know itself as material, his amendment would have been all that could be required to constitute a true proposition. Perhaps this was his meaning; but if so, it finds no adequate expression in his words, for these merely declare that nothing is in the intellect (except itself) which was not taken in through the senses—a position which does not prove that the intellect cannot know itself to be material, and which does not even affirm that all mere objects of sense are incognisable by intelligence. If the intellect merely is in itself, without being at all times known to itself, mere sensible or material objects—that is, objects known without any subject being known along with them—may very well be apprehended. The Leibnitzian restriction goes for nothing.
comment on the translation here of the counter-proposition.4. The counter-proposition, in its original language, is not altogether unambiguous. The version of it given above is purposely extreme, in order that it may stand forth freed from all equivocation. That the words will bear this interpretation is Undoubted. It will be apparent, also, before we have done, that in no other sense will they yield anything like a consistent, or even an intelligible, doctrine; and that every attempt to qualify them (short of the correction and subversion which they receive from Prop. X.) has only resulted in "confusion worse confounded."
The counter proposition is equally contradictory, whether accepted without, or with, a restriction.5. This counter-proposition is erroneous and contradictory, not only because it affirms that all our knowledge is merely sensible, but because it affirms that any of it is merely sensible. It affirms that the whole of our cognitions are due to the senses solely. No doubt that position is false and contradictory; but it is equally false and contradictory, if we suppose it merely to mean that some of our cognitions are due to the senses solely. Because (by Prop. I.) it has been settled that every one of our cognitions must contain and present an element (to wit, the me) which (by Prop. VIII.) cannot come through the senses. So that to whatever extent the counter-proposition is adopted, it is equally contradictory: it is contradictory if taken in all its latitude; it is just as contradictory if taken in a more restricted sense.
The counter-proposition is the foundation of "sensualism"—character of sensualism.6. The scholastic brocard, which has been adopted as the tenth counter-proposition, is the fundamental article in the creed of that school of philosophers who are called "the sensualists"—no insinuation being implied in this designation, that they are more addicted to carnal indulgences than their opponents; but the term being used simply to signify that, in their estimation, the whole mass of human knowledge is ultimately referable to, and originally derived from, the senses. They sometimes take, and get, credit for being the only philosophers who refer our knowledge wholly to experience. All philosophers, however, whatever school they may belong to, do the same, unless Kant is to be considered as an exception. In distinguishing between our cognitions, according as they come from without, or are originated from within, this philosopher seems to refer the former class only to experience. But this is obviously a very arbitrary and unwarrantable limitation of the term. If the mind has any innate, or native, or a priori, cognitions, these are to be traced to experience (to an experience of their necessity), just as much as its acquired, or a posteriori, knowledge is to be referred to that source. Indeed, it is obvious that all knowledge is itself experience, and that the two terms are merely different names for the same thing. To say that all knowledge comes from experience, is simply to say that all knowledge is knowledge—a tautological truism which admits of no sort of discussion. But to say that all knowledge comes from sensible experience, is to affirm that all knowledge is mere sensible knowledge, and that is a very different position. It is one on which much controversy has been expended. It is exactly the counter-proposition which Proposition X. convicts of contradicting two necessary truths of reason, and accordingly subverts.
The anti-sensual psychology merely restricts the counter-proposition—leaves he contradiction uncorrected.7. Psychology has frequently challenged the validity of this counter-proposition; but her efforts having been directed merely to its limitation, the contradiction which it involves has remained uncorrected; for, as has been said, the counter-proposition is equally contradictory, whether it be taken in all its latitude, or under some restriction. The psychologists have merely rejected it in its broader acceptation. They deny that the whole of our knowledge is derived from the senses, but they concede that some of it is referable to that single source. The psychological limitation is this: It is not true, says the psychologist, that all our cognitions come to us through the senses; but it is certainly true that some of them are due solely to that source—not meaning that the data furnished by the senses are mere elements of cognition, but that they are actual cognitions themselves. The anti-sensualist movement which, for a considerable time past, has shown itself in the philosophy of this country, of France, and of Germany, has certainly not got beyond this qualified repudiation of the scholastic dogma on which sensualism if founded. This qualified repudiation, which is equivalent to a modified acceptance, leaves the contradiction precisely where it was.
The root of the mischief. History of distinction between sense and intellect.8. The root of the mischief is to be found in the obliteration, in modern times, of the cardinal distinction between Sense and Intellect which was taken at a very early period by the Greek philosophers, and which it is most essential to the progress of all definite and well-regulated speculation to restore, and to uphold in its original stringency. This distinction is perhaps the most important that was ever drawn in philosophy. And, therefore, the history of the various fortunes which it has undergone, and of the controversies and perplexities which have arisen from confounding it, cannot be out of place in a work which professes to furnish the text of all metaphysical annotation. This, too, is the proposition under which the discussion referred to appropriately falls.
Aim and procedure of Greek metaphysics.9. It has been stated elsewhere (Prop. IV., Obs. 20), that the aim of the early Greek metaphysic, in so far as it was of an epistemological character, was the explanation of the conversion of the unintelligible into the intelligible—of the process through which the unknowable passed into the knowable—of the change which the not-to-be-understood had to undergo in becoming the to-be-understood. Hence it, of course, fixes its starting-point in the absolutely unknowable and unintelligible; that is, in the contradictory, or, as we should nowadays say, in plainer language, in the utterly nonsensical. To suppose that the aim of this philosophy was to explain how that which was already knowable and intelligible, became knowable and intelligible, would be to impute to it an amount of ineptitude which it was reserved for a much later generation of theorists to incur. This, then, is its problem, to explain how the contradictory becomes comprehensible; and the following is the way in which it goes to work. It fixes Sense as the faculty of the contradictory, the faculty of nonsense (δύναμις τοῦ ἀλόγου). This faculty seizes on the nonsensical, the contradictory, the unintelligible (τὰ ἀλόγα or τὸ ἀνοήτα). It lays hold of the material universe per se, and this, in that unsupplemented condition, is the absurd, the senseless, the insane, the incomprehensible to all intellect (τὸ ἀλόγον). The problem, now, is to explain how this world of nonsense, apprehended by this faculty of nonsense, becomes the world of intelligence, the knowable and known universe (τὸ νοήτον). And this conversion is explained by the contribution of some element which Intellect (νοῦς) supplies out of its own resources, and adds to the world of nonsense, which then, being supplemented by this heterogeneous element, starts out of the night of contradiction into the daylight of completed cognition. What this element is these old philosophers did not find it so easy to explain.
10. In dealing with the history of philosophical A rule for the historian of philosophy.opinion, the only way to reach clear and satisfactory results is to begin by giving a philosopher credit, in the first instance, for such tenets as the general scope of his observations appears most to countenance, and afterwards to balance the account by debiting him with such deductions as he may be liable to on the score of ambiguity or imperfect fulfilment of his intention; in fact, by first taking into view his aim as if he had accomplished it, and then by pointing out how far, in his confusion, he may have missed or fallen short of it. On no other principle than this can the behests of a critical history of philosophy be fulfilled, or her books kept free from embarrassment. Because merely to exhibit the efforts of speculative thinking in the crude and inexplicit forms in which they may have been originally propounded, affords no insight into their true import and tendency. No purpose of any kind is answered when the recorder of philosophical opinions states, as he is too often in the habit of doing, a confused and ambiguous doctrine in terms equally ambiguous and confused.
This rule observed in the Institutes.11. This being understood, it will be proper to proceed as we have begun, and to lay out the doctrines now under consideration in a distinct and explicit shape, and as if they had been expounded in that shape by the early Greek speculators—for that these doctrines were theirs by implication, and that their aim was such as has been described, however unsteady their procedure may have been, is certain. What abatements may be required will be seen when we come to show forth their ambiguities, and the consequences of these ambiguities on the subsequent progress of speculation. To resume, then, the thread of the discussion.
Return to history of distinction between sense and intellect.12. From what has been already said, it is obvious that the distinction drawn by the old philosophers between sense and intellect was as extreme as it is possible to conceive. Not that they regarded sense and intellect as two distinct and separate faculties; their distinction was more complete and thorough-going than that. They rather regarded them as two distinct and opposite poles or factors of one and the same faculty, or rather of one and the same mind. Sense was the factor which seized and brought before the mind the unintelligible and nonsensical data which intellect had to transmute into the knowable and known. In that state these data were absolutely incomprehensible by the mind. They were as yet no objects of cognition. They became objects of cognition only after the intellect, wakening into action, transferred over upon them some element of its own, which gave completion to their inchoation. By means of this additional element an object of cognition was formed; and the mind was able to apprehend it by apprehending the two elements together—the elements, namely, which had been supplied by the senses, and that additional contribution, whatever it was, which intellect had furnished. By this process, which cannot be directly observed while in operation, but only recovered by means of philosophical reflection, the nonsensical things of sense become the intelligible things of intellect. The material universe assumes the finished character which it presents to the intelligence of all mankind; it ceases to be incompleted, incomprehensible, and absurd. The senses, however, have still no dealings with this universe, in so far as it is known or cogitable, but only in so far as it is unintelligible and contradictory. That is particularly to be borne in mind as the very soul of these old philosophies. The senses cannot, even in the smallest degree, execute the office of intellect; they are occupied only with unmitigated nonsense. Consequently, they can have no share either in redeeming this contradictory—that is, in rendering it intelligible—or in intelligently cognising it when redeemed. Their sole function is to bring it before the intellect, which, however, cannot apprehend it unless it apprehend something else (τὸ ἕτερον, according to the old systems; or itself, according to these Institutes) as well.
13. The following illustration will explain this Illustration of early Greek doctrine.position exactly: Let us suppose that the contradictory, the anoetic, is more than nothing (0), but less than anything (1). But this (the more than 0, but less than 1) is what no intellect can apprehend. That is precisely what the Greek philosophers affirm; and they affirm it of the whole sensible world, considered per se. Matter, by and in itself, is more than nothing, yet less than one. This is by far the best symbol or figure by which it can be expressed. But that is nonsense and a contradiction. Precisely so. Unless it were nonsense, these old philosophers could not have commenced their operations. They had to explain how nonsense becomes sense. They must accordingly be allowed their nonsense, their contradictory. If a man has to make clay into bricks, he must at any rate be furnished with clay. Accordingly, they hold that the whole sensible or material world is nonsense and a contradiction. But nonsense cannot be apprehended. True, say they, it cannot be apprehended by the factor or faculty of intellect; but it can be taken up by that factor of the mind whose special function it is to lay hold of nonsense; and this factor is the complement of the senses. These are specially fitted and commissioned to lay hold of the nonsensical; they seize upon that which is more than nothing but less than anything; they bring before intellect the incomprehensible world of matter per se, and having done so, intellect then contributes the element which is required to change nonsense into sense; it adds to that which is more than 0 but less than 1, the additament which is required to make it 1: it confers on the mere sensible world the element necessary to its apprehension; it thus converts the contradictory into the comprehensible, and constitutes and compasses the intelligible.
The old philosophers were right in their problem—in their way of working it, and in fixing sense as the faculty of nonsense.14. There can be no question that the old philosophers were right both in their conception of the true problem of philosophy, and in their manner of working it. The conversion of the unintelligible into the intelligible—to exhibit how that conversion is effected was the problem they took in hand; and this is one of the forms, and one of the very best, in which the highest problem of speculation can be presented. Their next step was to find and fix their unintelligible, their contradictory; because if there was no unintelligible, or if it could not be found, of course there was an end both to the problem and to its solution. Accordingly they fixed matter per se as the contradictory. But if this contradictory is to be converted into the noncontradictory, it must be brought, in some way or other, before the mind. Their next step, therefore, was to find the means by which this was effected. The senses were held to be these means. The function assigned to the senses was that of bringing before the mind that which was absolutely unintelligible. And thus in tracing back into its history the distinction between sense and intellect, we perceive that, consistently with the character of the problem of the earlier philosophy, and with the method of working it, the senses, although they had to execute a most important function, were fixed, of necessity, as faculties of absolute nonsense—an opinion with which the doctrine advanced in this tenth proposition entirely coincides. Sense was thus fixed as essentially distinct from intellect.
A reason why the truth of this doctrine is not obvious15. The reason why the truth of this doctrine is not at once obvious is, because, although the mind always really apprehends more than what the senses place before it, still it apparently apprehends no more than what the senses place before it. This, at least, is its predicament in its ordinary moods. Hence, it supposes that the senses place before it, not what is nonsensical, but what is intelligible. Its own contribution, however, makes all the difference. If this were abstracted, the residue must be absolutely incomprehensible, because the additament in question (the known self) is necessary, not only to the constitution of the knowledge of this or of that order of intelligence, but to the constitution of the knowledge of intelligence universally. If the inferior animals have no cognisance of themselves (and there is good reason to believe that they have none, although no opinion is here offered on this point), in that case, with all their senses, they are mere incarnate absurdities, gazing upon unredeemed contradiction.
Βλέποντες ἔβλεπον μάτην,
κλύοντες οὐκ ἤκουον
Æsch., Prom., 447.
Difficultyand difference of opinion as to intellectual element.16. The old philosophers experienced more difficulty in determining the character of the other mental factor—the office, namely, of intellect as contrasted with sense—and in explaining the nature of the intellectual element which changes chaos into cosmos, the supplement which converts a world rolling in contradictory nonsense (the whole material universe per se) into a world radiant with beauty, order, and intelligence. According to Pythagoras, this conversion was effected by means of "numbers," a pure contribution of intellect. According to Plato, it was effected by means of "ideas." According to these Institutes, it is accomplished by the me being always of necessity apprehended along with whatever is apprehended. This is the light of chaos, the harmoniser of contradictory discord—the orderer of unutterable disorder—the source both of unity and plurality—the only transmuter of senselessness into sense. The three systems agree in this respect, that the intellectual element is a "universal;" and that the sensible element is a "singular" or "particular"—only there is this difference as to what the universal is: with Pythagoras it was "number; "with Plato it was "idea;" with this system it is the "ego."
ambiguities of the old philosophers17. Having thus stated the doctrine of the early speculators in distinct and explicit terms, we have now to balance the account. Considerable deductions must be made on the score of ambiguity and confusion, although not to such an extent as to throw the smallest suspicion on the accuracy of the exposition just given of their views, in so far as intention and aim are concerned. The old philosophers did not explain themselves at all clearly. Their problem was not distinctly enunciated; and what was still more misleading, instead of calling sense the faculty of nonsense, which was unquestionably their meaning, they laid it down simply as the faculty of sense; and instead of calling sensible things nonsensical things, they were usually satisfied with calling them sensible things, or at least they were not at pains to announce with unmistakable precision that sensible things (τὰ αἰσθητὰ) are strictly identical with senseless or contradictory things (τὰ ἀνοήτα).
Three misconceptions arising out of these ambiguities.18. Out of these ambiguities the three following leading misconceptions have arisen—mistakes which, now pervading the whole body of speculative science, have rendered the study of metaphysic a discipline of distraction, instead of what it ought to be, an exercise of clear and systematic thinking. First, The problem having been obscurely expressed, succeeding philosophers have taken it up, as if the question for consideration was, How does the intelligible become intelligible? not, How does the unintelligible become intelligible? Intimately connected with this misconception are the other two. Secondly, Sense, not having been fixed with sufficient precision as the faculty of nonsense, came to be regarded as a kind of intellect. Of course, if it is not altogether a senseless or nonsensical capacity, it must be to some extent an intellectual power. The ambiguity in the old speculations allowed sense to be regarded as a sort of cognitive endowment, or, at any rate, as possessing, to some extent, a capacity of cognition. And, accordingly, as such it is now actually fixed by the whole psychology at present in vogue. No pains, at least, are taken by any existing system to guard against this misconception. Thirdly, Sensible things not having been laid down by the old philosophers with sufficient distinctness as absolutely nonsensical and contradictory things, came, in the course of time, to be looked upon as a kind of intelligible things; for, of course, whatever is not thoroughly nonsensical must be, in some way, and to some extent, comprehensible.
19. These three misconceptions, and their baneful Comment on first misconception.effects on the growth of philosophy, must be noticed somewhat more particularly. First, The true and original problem was, How does the unintelligible, the nonsensical, or, in the language of the old schools, "the sensible," become the intelligible? In other words, how is knowing effected?—what is knowable and known? That, more than two thousand years ago, was the leading question of philosophy (in so far as philosophy was epistemological, and not ontological), as it still is of these Institutes. But owing to some indistinctness in the original enunciation, this problem has been converted into the very futile inquiry, How does the intelligible become the intelligible? how does that which is knowable and known, become that which is knowable and known? how does something become what it already is? This is the problem of philosophy as now entertained by the cultivators of psychology, in so far as psychology ventures into the region of the higher metaphysics. The material universe is assumed to be that which is already intelligible, and non-contradictory in itself; and no sooner is it confronted with a precipient mind than a cognisance of it takes place. That statement is held nowadays to be sound philosophy—to be information which a man is not only entitled to communicate, but to be paid for communicating!
20. The second misconception is of a piece with Comment on second misconception.the first. The two hang inseparably together. The psychologists, those arch-corrupters of philosophy, have confounded the old distinction between sense and intellect, by supposing that sense was to some extent invested with the functions of intellect Whether they conceived that the material universe per se was to some extent intelligible, because the senses were a sort of intellect capable of cognising it, or, conversely, that the senses were a sort of intellect capable of this cognisance, because the material universe per se was to some extent intelligible, is a point not worth inquiring into. Certain it is that these two positions go together in the ordinary books upon psychology. Matter, or its qualities at least, are held to be cognisable per se, and the senses are held to be, in their own way, a sort of cognitive power—a kind of intellect. But if the senses are a sort of intellect, what sort of intellect is intellect? If the senses execute the office of the intellect, what function has the intellect to perform? If the senses are promoted into the place of the intellect, the intellect must go elsewhere—it must "move on." If the senses are it, and execute its work, it must be something else, and must execute some other work. What that something else is, and what that other work is, no mortal psychologist has ever told, or ever can tell. The curse of an everlasting darkness rests upon all his labours. The attempt, indeed, to face systems which, while they profess to distinguish the mental functions and faculties, thus hopelessly confuse them, is to encounter a prospect too alarming for the eye of reason to contemplate.
Comment on third misconception21. Worse remains to be told. Thirdly, if the data of sense, the sensibles of the older schools (τὰ αἰσθητά, sensibilia) are construed by psychology as a sort of intelligibles, pray what are the intelligibles of these older systems? (νόητα, intelligibilia). If the sensibles are advanced into the place of the intelligibles, the intelligibles must be translated into something else. What is that something else? Nobody knows, and nobody can know; for there is nothing else for them to be. Yet the whole philosophical world has been hunting, day and night, after these elusory phantoms through eighty generations of men. We have had expositors of Plato, commentator after commentator, talking of their great master's super-sensible world as something very sublime—something very different from the sensible world in which the lot of us poor ordinary mortals is cast—insinuating, moreover, that they had got a glimpse of this grand supra-mundane territory. Rank impostors. Not one of them ever saw so much as the fringes of its borders; for there is no such world for them to see; and Plato never referred them to any such incomprehensible sphere. This terra incognita is a mere dream—a fable, a blunder of their own invention. Plato's intelligible world is our sensible world. We shall see by-and-by in the Ontology that this announcement may require a very slight modification, but one so slight that meanwhile it may be proclaimed, in the broadest terms, that Plato's intelligible or supersensible is our sensible world—just the material universe which we see and hear and handle: this, and nothing but this, is Plato's ideal and intelligible home. But then,—his sensible world must be moved a peg downwards. It must be thrust down into the regions of nonsense. It must be called, as we have properly called it, and as he certainly meant to call, and sometimes did call it, the nonsensical world, the world of pure infatuation, of downright contradiction, of unalloyed absurdity; and this the whole material universe is, when divorced from the element which makes it a knowable and cogitable thing. Take away from the understood the element which renders it understandible, and nonsense must remain behind. Take away from the intelligible world—that is, from the system of things by which we are surrounded—the essential element which enables us, and all intelligence, to know and apprehend it, and it must lapse into utter and unutterable absurdity. It becomes—not nothing—remember that—not nothing, for nothing, just as much as thing, requires the presence of the element which we have supposed to be withdrawn; but it becomes more than nothing, yet less than anything;[1] what the logicians term "an excluded middle." The material world is not annihilated when the intelligible element is withdrawn—as some rash and short-sighted idealists seem inclined to suppose. Very far from that; but it is worse, or rather better, than annihilated: it is reduced to the predicament of a contradiction, and banished to the purgatory of nonsense.
Key to the Greek philosophy22. Understand by Plato's sensible world (τὸ αἰσθητόν, τὸ ἄλογον, τὸ ἀνόητον, τὸ γιγνόμενον) the absolutely incomprehensible and contradictory, and understand by his intelligible or real world (τὸ ὄντως ὄν) the sensible world as we now actually behold it, and his whole philosophy becomes luminous and plain. (This statement may require, as has been said, a slight qualification hereafter). But understand by his sensible world what we mean by the sensible world, and the case becomes altogether hopeless, confused beyond all extrication. Because, what then is his intelligible world? A thing not to be explained, either by himself, or by any man of woman born. There cannot be a doubt that his sensible world is the world with the element of all intelligibility taken out; but that must be appropriately termed the nonsensical or unintelligible world; and just as little can there be any doubt that his intelligible world is the world with the element of all intelligibility put in; but this is what we, nowadays, usually call the sensible world. So that, to preserve the relation between the two terms, in the sense in which Plato understood them—indeed, to understand the relation in the only acceptation in which it can be understood—we must bear in mind that the contrast which, in his phraseology, was indicated by the words sensible and intelligible, must be signalised, in modern speech, by the terms nonsensical and sensible, for the latter word is used nowadays very generally, instead of the word "intelligible." These remarks supply a key, and the only key, to the entire philosophy of ancient Greece. This key, however, seems to have been mislaid until now. If this is denied, the denier must be prepared to point out some place in any book, ancient or modern, in which one intelligible word is uttered about Plato's intelligible world. When that is done, this presumptive claim shall be relinquished, and the key given up to its proper owner.
23. We have now got to the root of the sensualist maxim which constitutes Counter-proposition X. Return to counter-propositon. It is founded on a confusion of the distinction between sense and intellect.It is founded on the obliteration of the distinction which, at an early period, was drawn, although not very clearly, between sense and intellect. If this distinction be not kept up in all its stringency—that is to say, unless it be held that the functions of the two are altogether disparate, and that the senses are totally incompetent to execute the office of intelligence—the distinction had much better be abandoned. This is what the extreme sensualists maintain. The doctrine had been continually gaining ground, either per incuriam, or by design, that the senses were to some extent intellectual, were capable of cognition, or were competent to place intelligible data before the mind. But if sense can act as intellect, what is the use of intellect—why any intellect at all? If sense can intelligently apprehend anything, why can it not intelligently apprehend everything? Let man diligently cultivate his senses, and his advances in knowledge shall be immense. And why not? All that is wanted is a commencement. This is found in the admission that the senses possess an inherent tincture, a nascent capacity, of intelligence. Their data are not in themselves nonsensical. Once admit this, and the plea of intellect is at an end. Why multiply faculties without necessity? These considerations led by degrees to the adoption of the counter-proposition in all its latitude. All cognition was held to be mere sensation, and all intellect was sense. The logic of the extreme sensualists is impregnable on the ground which they assume, to wit, the concession, that the senses are not altogether faculties of nonsense. How is their argument to be met?
The Lockian and Kantian psychology in limiting the counter-proposition effect no subversion of sensualism.24. Not, certainly, by the psychological assertion, that the senses are not so intelligent as the intellect, that the intellect is more intelligent than the senses. This sorry plea, which reduces the distinction between sense and intellect to a mere difference of degree, and relinquishes it as an absolute difference of nature, has done no good, but much harm, by adding confusion to what before was only error. It is indeed the very plea on which the whole strength of sensualism is founded—only sensualism has the advantage in this respect, that by carrying the doctrine forth to its legitimate issue—in other words, by obliterating the distinction completely—it eliminates the confusion, retaining only the error. It is unnecessary to argue against so futile a doctrine, although the whole psychological fraternity have embraced it. Considered as a bulwark against even the most extreme sensualism, its impotence is too obvious to require to be pointed out. A lower order of intellect, which is sense, and a higher order of sense, which is intellect,—not assuredly in that perplexed way is our mental economy administered. Nature, under Providence, works by finer means than the clumsy expedients which psychology gives her credit for. If we must have error, let us have it uncomplicated with confusion. If we must have sensualism, let us have it clear and undiluted. Vain are all the compromises of psychology—worse than vain, for they make error doubly obnoxious by rendering it plausible. In vain did Locke, whose hand it chiefly was, in modern times, that let loose the flood of sensualism—in vain did he make a stand in defence of the degraded intellect. A protest is impotent against a principle, and his own principle condemned him. He had acknowledged sense as an intellectual power; and hence, with all his saving clauses, he was swept away before the roaring torrent. In vain did Kant endeavour to stem the flood. He, too, had admitted that the senses, if they did not supply perfect cognitions, furnished, at any rate, some sort of intelligible data to the mind: so down he went, with all his categories, into the vortices of sensualism.
Kant's doctrine impotent against sensualism. 25. It may seem unfair to class Kant among the sensualists, of whom he was so unflinching an opponent. Nevertheless, the classification is correct. Many a philosopher lends unintentional support to the very doctrine he strenuously denounces, and unintentional opposition to the very doctrine he strenuously recommends. Thus has it been with Kant. The inconsistency would not signify were it not vital. But in Kant's case the inconsistency is vital: it touches an essential part; it saps the foundation of his system. Kant's error, when traced to its source, is to be found in his refusal to assume, as his foundation, some necessary truth of reason—some law binding on intelligence, simply considered as such. In consequence of this deliberate neglect, he was unable to fix "things in themselves" (dinge an sich) as contradictory. Hence, if things in themselves (matter per se) are not contradictory, the sensible impressions—the intuitions, as he calls them—to which these things give rise, need not be contradictory either. But if they are not contradictory, they must, when presented to the mind, be, to some extent at least, intelligible. At any rate, when supplemented by the intuition of space, which Kant calls the form of the sensory, and which he regards as a pure mental contribution, they must present some apprehensible appearance. This, accordingly, is Kant's doctrine. The sensible intuitions, though at first scattered, disjointed, and undigested, are not altogether nonsensical. They are in some degree intelligible. They are merely reduced to a higher degree of order and luminosity when united to the form of the sensory (space), and subjugated to the categories of the understanding. If this be a misconception of Kant's doctrine, it is one which he has been at no pains to guard against. At all events, whatever Kant may have intended to say (and the evidence that he did intend to say it is very insufficient), he has certainly not said that the sensible intuitions, the space in which they are contained, together with all the mental categories that may be applied to them, are, one and all of them, absolutely contradictory and absurd, unless the me is known along with them. But unless Kant maintained that position, he effected no subversion of sensualism. Unless he held that sense, considered simply as such, is a faculty of nonsense, and that the sensible data, considered simply as such, are contradictory, he did nothing to uphold the essential distinction between sense and intellect. This, however, he does not appear to have held. He regarded the distinction, not as a difference of nature, but as a mere difference of degree. But this is to obliterate the distinction. A small man is as much a man as a big man; and a small or inferior cognitive power (sense, according to Kant) is as much a cognitive power as a great or superior cognitive power (intellect, according to Kant). The only true opposition is between intellect and non-intellect. Intellect is intelligent, and its objects are intelligible. Sense is non-intelligent, and its objects are nonsensical. All knowledge is intellectual knowledge—mere sensible knowledge is a contradiction. This is the only distinction between sense and intellect which is a distinction, or which can be understood. It is the only ground on which sensualism can be effectually overthrown. The other distinction is a distinction without a difference—one which cannot be understood, and which leaves sensualism standing as before.
The statement in par. 4, and the charge in par. 7, are borne out by the foregoing remarks.26. These remarks may be sufficient to establish the correctness of the statement made in Observation 4, that every attempt to qualify or restrict the counter-proposition short of its subversion by Proposition X., has only had the effect of adding confusion to error, (for what has been proved in regard to Kant, may very well be assumed in regard to other psychologists), and that the scholastic maxim, if accepted at all, ought to be accepted in all its latitude. They also bear out the charge advanced in Observation 7, that the anti-sensual psychology of Kant and others has left the contradiction involved in sensualism uncorrected. This contradiction consists not merely in the assertion that the data of sense are alone intelligible to the mind, but in the opinion that any of these data are at all intelligible to the mind before the mind has supplemented them with itself, and apprehended, not them, but the synthesis of them and itself. This opinion is nowhere distinctly overthrown by the philosophy of Kant; and therefore our conclusion is, that instead of his system having destroyed sensualism, the sensualism latent in his system has rather destroyed it.
Kant sometimes nearly right. He errs through a neglect of necessary truth.27. It must be confessed, however, that Kant is sometimes very nearly right. All that he wanted was a firm grasp of the principle, which he seems at times to have got hold of, namely, that the senses supplied no cognitions, but mere elements of cognition. This principle necessarily fixes the sensible elements of cognition as contradictory—as data not to be known on any terms by any intelligence when placed out of relation to the me, the other complemental element of all cognition. Here, however, Kant would have been hampered by the fetters of his own system; for, indulging in an unwarrantable hypothesis, he denies the strict universality and necessity of any intellectual law, (that is, its necessity and universality in relation to intelligence, considered simply as intelligence). So that he could scarcely have profited by the principle referred to, even if he had adhered to it with unflinching consistency, which he certainly does not. He falls just as often, perhaps oftener, over into the counter-statement, that the sensible intuitions are not mere elements, but are a kind of cognition. In fact, it is evident that the misinterpretation of the Platonic analysis, in which elements were mistaken for kinds, and which, as we have seen, (see Prop. VI.), has played such havoc in philosophy generally, has carried its direful influence even into the psychological museum of Kant, and exhibits its fatal presence in all his elaborate preparations.
The true compromise between Sense and Intellect.28. It may appear to some that psychology, in adopting the counter-proposition with the qualification that sense is, to some extent, or within certain limits, a cognitive faculty, has wisely steered a middle course between two extremes, by which the Scylla of an excessive sensualism is avoided on the one hand, and the Charybdis of an extravagant intellectualism on the other. The truth, however, is, that the compromise here attempted is one which leads inevitably to an extreme, and runs psychology, as might be shown from the history of this pretended science, into one or other of the very excesses which she is anxious to avoid. Moderation—compromise is the essence of all that is good; it is merely another name for order; it is the means by which Providence itself works. But the compromise, if it is to be true and effectual, and a preservative against extremes, must be one of nature's forming, and not of man's manufacturing. It must be brought about by natural laws, and not by artificial conjectures. All our knowledge is itself the result of a compromise between sense and intellect—two endowments, each of which is impotent without the other. And, therefore, to affirm that sense alone, or that intellect alone, is capable of affording cognition, or that either by itself can place anything but contradiction before the mind, is to supersede the natural compromise, and to set up a new one, which is a mere figment of the fancy. This is not moderation; this is not steering a safe via media. This kind of compromise is not the compromise which nature has set on foot. This tampering with the truth is the initiatory step which, if once taken, is sure to land us in the perdition of an extreme. Because, if sense, uncompanioned by intellect, can furnish any knowledge, why can it not furnish all knowledge, to the mind? That smashing question supersedes intellect, and an extravagant sensualism is enthroned. Again, if intellect, unaided by the senses (that is, by certain modes of apprehension, either the same as, or different from, ours), can supply any knowledge to the mind, why need it look to the senses for any of the materials of cognition? An excessive intellectualism—a wild idealism—is the result; and a subjective phantasmagoria of shadows usurps the place of a real and richly—diversified creation. In point of fact, philosophy has, ere now, been hurried into these two extremes—a consequence entirely attributable to the circumstance that, losing sight of the natural compromise between sense and intellect, she has supposed that this compromise was effected within each of them; that is to say, that each of them was capable, in its own way, of cognition. The only safe opinion to hold is, that the two constitute one capacity of cognition, and can bring knowledge to the mind only when in joint operation.—(For further information, see Prop. XVII., and, in particular, Obs. 21 et seq.)
- ↑ This is precisely what is meant by the term γιγνόμενον. Γίγνομαι means to become—that is, to be becoming something—that is, to be in the transition between nothing and something—that is, to be more than nothing, but less than anything. (Compare what is said about the fluxional character of material things. Prop. VII. Obss. 14, et seq.)