Idealism
Idealism is an exceedingly complex system, varying much with varying authors, very polymorphous, and consequently very difficult to discuss.
The ancient hylozoism, the monadism of Leibnitz, and the recent panpsychism of M. Strong are only different forms of the same doctrine.
Like spiritualism, with which it is connected by many ties, idealism is a philosophy which expresses some disdain for matter, but the thoughts which have sought to shelter themselves under this philosophy are so varied that it would be perilous to try to define them briefly.
There can be discussed in idealism a certain number of affirmations which form the basis of the system. None of these affirmations is, strictly speaking, demonstrated or demonstrable; but they offer very different degrees of probability, and it is for this reason that we shall notice them.
Amongst these affirmations there are some that we have already met with in our study of the definition of sensation; others will be newer to us.
1. Here is one which seems to arise directly from the facts, and appears for a long time to have constituted an impregnable position for idealists. It may be expressed in three words: esse est percipi.
Starting with the observation that every time we bear witness to the existence of the external world, it is because we perceive it, idealists admit that the existence of this external world shares exactly the lot of our perception, and that like it it is discontinuous and intermittent. When we close our eyes, it ceases to exist, like a torch which is extinguished, and lights up again when we open them. We have already discussed this proposition, and have shown that it contains nothing imperative; and we may very well decline to subscribe to it.
2. There follows a second proposition, barely distinct from the previous one. There should be nothing else in objects but that which we perceive, and that of which we have consciousness should be, in the fullest possible acceptation of the words, the measure of what is. Consequently there should be no need to seek, under the object perceived, another and larger reality, a source from which might flow wider knowledge than that we at present possess. This is as disputable as the preceding affirmation, and for the same reasons.
3. The third proposition is the heart of the idealist thesis. It is sometimes presented as a deduction from the foregoing, but it is nevertheless thoroughly distinct from it, and the preceding affirmations might legitimately be accepted and this new one rejected. This proposition may be expressed thus: Everything that is perceived is psychical.
It is not only idealists who subscribe to this opinion, however, and we have seen, when dealing with the definition of matter, that it is widely spread. We understand by it that the objects we perceive exist in the consciousness, are of the consciousness, and are constituted by ideas; the whole world is nothing but idea and representation; and, since our mind is taken to be of a psychical nature, the result is that everything, absolutely everything, the person who knows and the thing known, are all psychical. This is panpsychism. Flournoy, on this point, says, with a charm coloured by irony: "We henceforth experience a sweet family feeling, we find ourselves, so to speak, at home in the midst of this universe ..."[45] We have demonstrated above that the unity here attained is purely verbal, since we cannot succeed in suppressing the essential differences of things.
4. Now comes an affirmation on the genesis of things. After having admitted that the object is an idea of the mind, one of its manifestations, or one of its moods, the idealists go so far as to say that the consciousness is the generating power of ideas, and, consequently, the generating cause of the universe. It is thought which creates the world. That is the final conclusion.
I indicated, beforehand, in the chapters on the definition of sensation and on the distinction between the consciousness and the object, the reasons which lead me to reject the premises of idealism. It will be sufficient to offer here a criticism on its last conclusion: "It is the mind that creates the world."
This thesis strikes at the duality—consciousness and object; it gives the supremacy to the consciousness by making of the object an effect or property of the former. We can object that this genesis cannot be clearly represented, and that for the very simple reason that it is impossible to clearly accept "mind" as a separate entity and distinct from matter. It is easy to affirm this separation, thanks to the psittacism of the words, which are here used like counterfeit coin, but we cannot represent it to ourselves, for it corresponds to nothing. The consciousness constitutes all that is mental in the world; nothing else can be described as mental. Now this consciousness only exists as an act; it is, in other terms, an incomplete form of existence, which does not exist apart from its object, of which the true name is matter. It is therefore very difficult to understand this affirmation, "It is the mind that creates the world," since to be able to do so, we should have to imagine a consciousness without an object.
Moreover, should we even succeed in doing so, we should be none the more disposed, on that account, to give assent to this proposition. Consciousness and matter represent to us the most different and antithetical terms of the whole of the knowable. Were the hypothesis to be advanced that one of these elements is capable of engendering the other, we should immediately have to ask ourselves why this generating power and this pre-eminence should be attributed to one rather than to the other element. Who can claim that one solution is more clear, more reasonable, or more probable than the other?
One of the great advantages of the history of philosophy here asserts itself. This history shows us that different minds when reflecting on the same problems have come to conceive solutions which have appeared to them clear, and consequently were possible; now, as these solutions are often contradictory, nothing shows better than their collation the distance between possibility and fact. Thus the materialists, who, like the idealists, have put forward a genetic theory of the mind, have conceived mind as produced by matter;—a conception diametrically opposed to that of the idealists. It may be said that these two conceptions, opposed in sense, annul each other, and that each of these two philosophical systems has rendered us service by demonstrating the error of the opposing system.