Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. I (of 2)

CHAPTER XIII.

REPRESENTATION OF CAUSALITY AND IDEALITY

126. Besides the representation of identity, there is what I have called the representation of causality. A being may represent itself, a cause its effect. Productive activity is inconceivable, if the principle of the productive act does not in some manner contain the thing produced. Therefore we say that God, the universal cause of all that does or can exist, contains in his essence all real and possible beings in a virtual or eminent manner. A being can just as well present whatever it contains in itself, as it can represent itself; causality, therefore, under the conditions above explained, may be an origin of representation.

127. And here we would remark how profound a philosopher St. Thomas shows himself to be, when he explains the manner in which God knows his creatures. In his Summa Theologica,7 he asks if God knows things distinct from himself, and answers in the affirmative; not that he regards the divine essence as a mirror, but that by recourse to a more profound consideration he seeks the origin of this knowledge in causality. This is his doctrine in a few words: It is manifest that God knows himself perfectly; therefore he knows all his power, and consequently all the things to which it extends. Another reason, or rather enlargement of the same reason, is, that the being of the first cause is its intellect: all effects pre-exist in God as in their cause; they must, therefore, be in him in an intelligible manner, since they are his intellect itself. God then sees himself by his essence; but he sees other things not in themselves, but in his essence, inasmuch as his essence contains the similitude of everything.

The same doctrine is found in another place,8 where he asks if they who see the divine essence see all things in God.

128. Representation of ideality is that which neither proceeds from the identity of the thing representing with that represented, nor from the relation of cause and effect. Our ideas are of this class, for they are neither identical with their objects nor do they cause them. It is impossible for us to know whether, besides this representative force which we experience in our ideas, there are finite substances capable of representing things distinct from, and not caused by, themselves. Leibnitz maintains that there are such substances; but, as we have seen, his system of monads must be regarded as merely hypothetical. It is better to say nothing than to make conjectures which lead to no result; we shall therefore content ourselves with establishing the following propositions:

I. If any being represent another which is not its effect, it has not this representative force of itself, but has received it from another.

II. The communication of intelligences can only be explained by recurring to a first intelligence, which, being the cause of the others, can give them the force to act upon one another, and consequently to produce representation.

129. Causality may be a principle, but is not a sufficient reason, of representation.

In the first place, a cause cannot represent its effect unless intelligible in itself. Thus, although we attribute to matter an activity of its own, we cannot concede it the power to represent its effects, for want of the indispensable condition of immediate intelligibility.

130. In order that effects may be intelligible in their cause, it must of necessity possess the character of cause in its fulness, by uniting all the conditions and determinations requisite to the production of the effect. Free causes do not represent their effects, because these effects with relation to their causes are found only in the sphere of possibility. The production may be realized, but is not necessary; and thus the possible, but not the real, is seen in the cause. God knows future contingencies, which depend upon the human will, not precisely because he knows the activity of man, but because he sees in himself, without succession of time, not only all that may, but all that will happen; since nothing can exist in the present or in the future without his will or permission. He also knows future contingencies dependent solely on his own will, because he knows from all eternity what he has resolved, and his decrees are indefectible and immutable.

131. Even if we refer to the necessary order of nature, and suppose one or more second causes to be known, it is not possible to see in them all their effects with entire security, unless the cause act in isolation, or all the others are known together with it. As experience shows us that all the parts of nature are in intimate and reciprocal communication, we cannot suppose the above isolation, and consequently the action of every second cause is subjected to the combinations of others, which may either impede or modify its effect. Hence the difficulty of establishing general, and at the same time, perfectly safe laws in all that concerns nature.

132. The preceding considerations, it is to be observed, demonstrate anew the impossibility of transcendental science based upon a fact from which all other facts proceed. Intellectual representation is not explained by substituting necessary emanation for free creation. Even supposing the variety of the universe to be purely phenomenal, and at bottom only a being always one, identical, and absolute, it cannot be denied that the phenomena are governed by certain laws, and subject to various conditions. Either the human intellect can see the absolute in such a way as to discern by a simple intuition whatever is contained in it, all that it is or can be, under all possible forms; or else it is condemned to follow the unfolding of the unconditioned, the absolute, and the permanent, through its conditioned, relative, and variable forms. The former, which is a sort of ridiculous plagiarism from the dogma of beatific vision, is, in treating of the intellect in its present state, so palpable an absurdity, as to merit neither debate nor refutation. The latter subjects the intellect to all the fatigue of investigation, and destroys at one blow all the illusory promises of transcendental science.

133. The understanding is, in its acts, subject to a law of succession, or the idea of time. The same thing obtains in nature, whether it is so verified in reality, or time is considered as a subjective condition which we transfer to objects; be this doctrine of Kant, which we shall in due time examine, as it may, it is certain that succession, at least for us, exists, and that we cannot ignore it. In this hypothesis an infinite evolution can be known to us only in an infinite time. Thus, by a metaphysical necessity, we are unable to know not only the future evolution of the absolute, but also the present and the past. This evolution being absolutely necessary, according to the doctrine to which we have reference, an infinite succession must have preceded us; thus the present organization of the universe must be regarded as one round of an unlimited ladder, which in the past as in the future, has no measure but eternity. We can know the present state of the world solely by observation, and then only to a very limited degree; we must, therefore, of necessity, deduce it from the idea of the absolute, by following it in its infinite evolution. Were this not, however, in itself radically impossible, it would, nevertheless, labor under the inconvenience of being too long a task to be accomplished in the life-time of any one man, or even in that of all men who have ever lived, taken collectively.

134. But let us return to the representation of causality. The ideal representation may be reduced to that of causality; for since a spirit can have no idea of an object not produced by it, unless communicated to it by another spirit, the cause of the thing represented, we infer that all purely ideal representations proceed either directly or indirectly, mediately or immediately, from the cause of the objects known. And since, on the other hand, as we have already seen, the first being knows things distinct from himself only, as he is their cause; we hold the representation of ideality to be reduced to that of causality, thus in part verifying the principle of Vico, the profound Neapolitan thinker: "the intellect only knows what it does."

135. From this doctrine flow two consequences of which we must take note:

I. There are only two primitive sources of intellectual representation: identity and causality. That of ideality is necessarily derived from that of causality.

II. In the real order, the principle of being is identical with the principle of knowledge. That only which gives being can give knowledge. The first cause can give knowledge only in so far as it gives being: it represents because it causes.

136. The representation of ideality, although connected with that of causality, is yet really distinct from it. The explanation of its nature belongs indeed to the treatise on ideas; but we cannot relinquish, without an illustration, a point so closely connected with the problem of intellectual representation.

Some conceive ideas to be a sort of image or copy of the object; but this is true only with respect to the representations of the imagination, that is, the purely corporeal; and even here it is necessary to suppose the external world to be such as the senses present it, which, however, under many aspects, is not true. To be convinced how illusory is the theory founded on the likeness of sensible things, we have only to ask, what the image of a relation is, or, how causality, substance, and being are portrayed. In the perception of these ideas, there is something more profound than any thing apparent in sensible things, something of an entirely different order. Necessity has led us to compare the understanding to an eye which sees, and the idea to an image present; but this is only a comparison; the reality is something more mysterious, more secret, more intimate: there is an ineffable union between the perception and the idea: man cannot explain it, but he experiences it.

137. Our consciousness attests that there is in us unity of being, that the soul is at all times identical with itself, and that it remains constant notwithstanding the variety of ideas and of acts which pass over it, like waves over the surface of a lake. Ideas are a mode of being of the mind: but what is this mode? In what does it consist? Does the production and reproduction of ideas proceed from a distinct cause which continually acts upon our soul, and produces immediately those modes of being which we call representations, or ideas? Or must we admit that there has been given to the mind an activity to produce these representations, subject, however, to the determination of exciting causes? These are questions which, for the present, we shall only indicate.(13)

CHAPTER XIV.

IMPOSSIBILITY OF FINDING THE FIRST PRINCIPLE IN THE IDEAL ORDER

138. We shall in vain seek in the region of ideas for that which we could not find in that of facts, for there is no ideal truth, the origin of all other truths.

Ideal truth only expresses the necessary relation of ideas, abstracting the existence of the objects to which they relate: hence it follows, first of all, that ideal truths are absolutely incapable of producing the knowledge of reality.

No ideal truth can lead to any result in the order of existences, unless there be some fact to which it applies. Otherwise, however fruitful it may be in the order of ideas, it will be absolutely sterile in that of facts. The fact without the ideal truth remains in its isolated individuality, incapable of producing any thing more than cognition of itself: but in return, the ideal truth, apart from the fact, remains purely objective in the logical world, and has no means of descending to that of existences.

139. Let us apply this doctrine to the most certain and most evident ideal principles, to those which contain the most general ideas, and which ought, therefore, to possess the fecundity in question, if, indeed, it be anywhere to be encountered.

"It is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time." This is the famous principle of contradiction, which may undoubtedly claim to be regarded as one source of truth to the human understanding. The ideas contained in it are the clearest and most simple conceivable; in it is affirmed the repugnance of being to not-being, and of not-being to being, at the same time, which is most evident. But what advance can we make with this principle alone? Present it to the most penetrating mind, to the most powerful genius; leave them alone with it, and there will result only a sterile, although pure and most clear intuition. Since it does not affirm that any thing is or is not, nothing can be inferred either for or against any existence: it only offers to the mind this conditional relation: that if any thing does exist, it is repugnant for it not to exist at the same time that it exists, or to exist at the same time that it does not exist. But if the condition of existence or non-existence be not given, yes and no in the real order are indifferent; nothing is known concerning them, however great the evidence in the ideal order.

To pass from the logical world to that of reality, all that is required is a fact to serve as a bridge. If this fact be offered to the understanding, the two banks are joined, and science commences. I feel, I think, I exist: these are facts of consciousness; combine any one of them with the principle of contradiction, and what before were sterile intuitions become prolific ratiocinations, embracing at once the world of ideas, and that of reality.

140. Even in the purely ideal order, the principle of contradiction is sterile unless joined with particular truths of the same order. In geometry, for example, it is often argued thus: such a quantity is either greater or less than another, or equal to it; for otherwise it would be both greater and less, equal and unequal, at the same time, which is absurd. Here the principle of contradiction is effectively applied, not alone, but together with a particular truth which makes such an application available. Thus, in the above argument, no use could be made of the principle of contradiction, to prove equality or inequality were not the existence or non-existence of one of the two previously proved or supposed: since this neither does nor can result from the principle of contradiction which includes, not a particular idea, but the most general ideas presented to the human mind.

141. General truths, of themselves, even in the purely ideal order, lead to nothing, because of the indeterminateness of the ideas which they contain; and, on the other hand, particular truths of themselves produce no result, because they are limited to what they are, making reasoning, which cannot take one step without the aid of general ideas and propositions, impossible. Light results from the union of one with the other; separated they afford only an abstract and vague intuition, or the contemplation of a particular truth, which, limited to a contracted sphere, can give no knowledge of beings considered under a scientific aspect.

142. We shall see when we come to treat of ideas, that our mind has two very distinct classes of them; the one supposes space, and cannot abstract it, such are all geometrical ideas: the other does not relate to space, and includes all non-geometrical ideas. These two orders of ideas are separated by an impassable abyss, if the two orders are not approximated by a simultaneous use of both. The ideal order is not complete without this approximation; and the real order of the universe is turned into a chaos, or rather disappears, if real and ideal truths are not combined, in both the geometrical and non-geometrical orders. From all geometrical ideas imaginable, considered in all their ideal purity, nothing would result for the ideal non-geometrical order, for the world of material, much less of immaterial realities; and, on the other hand, from non-geometrical ideas alone we could not get so much as the idea of a right line. This observation shows that there is for us in the ideal order no one truth, the origin of all other truths; for if we take the geometrical order, we are limited to those combinations which do not go out of it; if the non-geometrical order, we lack the idea of space, without which we lose even the possibility of conceiving the corporeal world.(14)