IV.
But is this equivalent to saying that we blame our author for his enterprise, and for the attempt he has made to reconcile criticism with dogmatism? By no means; for we are inclined to believe that this is the very aim that all metaphysic should set before itself at the present day. How, indeed, could we possibly admit that so powerful, so lofty an intellectual effort as that initiated by Kant, which under the name of criticism, of subjective or objective idealism, or even of positivism, has but been the development of his primary thought; that so prodigious a mental movement as this should be absolutely void of meaning, and destined to leave no trace in science? How believe that since the days of Descartes the human intellect has gone mad? Would not this be to express ourselves in the same way as those who, including Descartes himself in this condemnation, have maintained that since St. Thomas the whole course of human thought has been only one long error? Can there be anything more contrary to the laws of the human mind than this hypothesis of absolute truth discovered once for all, leaving no room beside it for anything but error? And besides, what more did Kant do than, under the form of a system (a defective form, no doubt, but hitherto the only one known to philosophy)—what more, we ask, did he than develop and render prominent what had been implicitly contained in the teaching of all preceding metaphysicians? Had not they all assigned a share in human consciousness to the subjective and relative, and very often a larger share than we are led to think, if we only regard their conclusions? Has there, for example, been since the days of Plato a single metaphysician who has denied the knowledge of the senses to be relative, and has the full scope and bearing of this principle been accurately measured? Can that be denied which has been scientifically demonstrated, which Descartes already affirmed, i.e., that light and sound—Nature’s two great languages—are only the products of our physical organization, and that outside of the eye that sees, and the ear that hears, there is nothing external to us but a series of vibrations and undulations, which are neither luminous nor sonorous? Reduced to itself, without the presence of men or animals, matter is merely darkness and silence! What sort of matter may this be, and how little resembling the one we know? But is not, it may be said, the reality of that matter attested at least by resistance, by impact? The reality—yes; but is the very nature of the external thing, as it is in itself, manifested thereby? What is impact, what is resistance, if not a mode of our sensations? To be assured of this, we have but to turn to all that metaphysicians teach us as to the nature of God. All agree in saying that God has no sensations. If God be cognizant of matter, as is indubitable, it follows that He does not know it through sensations similar to ours. The argumentum baculinum which appears so convincing to Sganarelle, would be powerless with regard to a pure spirit, still more an infinite spirit. Now is not this as much as to say that impact is the mode of action bodies exercise on each other, and by which sentient beings are made aware of their existence, but that it is a mode purely relative to the sensibility of finite beings? Say that, we at least admit with Descartes the reality of extension. But what is the real size of the extended things by which we are surrounded, and which according to the shape of our lenses we see enlarged, diminished, or even distorted in a thousand ways? Were it to please God, as Leibnitz has said, to collect the immensity of worlds into a walnut-shell, while preserving the proportion of objects, we should never find it out; and such diminution might be carried on infinitely, without ever reaching any term of smallness. ‘We grant it,’ will be the reply—‘all sensible knowledge is relative; Plato, Malebranche, Leibnitz, have sufficiently told us this; but above the senses there is the understanding, which alone is made for truth. Our senses give us the appearance of things, our understanding makes us see them as they are in themselves.’ Nothing more true, and this is the basis of metaphysics. But the question is, to what point the understanding is separated and separable from sensibility, and reciprocally, to what point sensibility enters into the understanding. Is there anything in us which can really be called understanding pure? Understanding—yes; but pure—no! Man cannot think without images, says Aristotle; this alone demonstrates that our understanding is always obliged to sensibilize its most abstract concepts. Moreover, between pure concepts and the data of sensibility there is still a debatable and obscure region—that, namely, of space and time. And here it is that Kant has made his mark ineffaceably. It is by so doing that he renovated metaphysics. He believed, thought, that both these domains belonged to sensibility and not to intelligence, that they too were only modes of representation—that is to say, modes purely relative to the nature of our mind. On this point also traditional metaphysics came to his support, at least as regards time. For is it not said by all schools whatever that God is not in time, that He is an eternal Now, that past and future are nothing to Him? Is it not this conception which is constantly appealed to as affording the solution of the conflict between divine prescience and human liberty? Now to affirm that God is not in time, and that He sees all portions of time in one sole and eternal present, is not this as much as to say that time is only the mode of representation of finite beings with regard to themselves; that, consequently, it is an image belonging to their finitude, but not to what they are in themselves, since God, who must see them as they are, sees them in an absolutely and radically different manner? Let us add another difference between the human and divine intelligence, pointed out by Bossuet, when he said, “We see things because they are, but they are because God sees them.” Therefore in God intelligence is anterior to things, in us posterior. Now, though we can, through artistic creation, form some idea of an intelligence anterior to things, the analogy is, after all, a coarse one, since in us creative imagination only deals with materials borrowed from without. Hence it follows that our intelligence is but a very imperfect image of the divine. Now, as the latter alone can be the type of veritable intelligence, we can only attribute to ourselves a relative intelligence, subordinated to the conditions of the creature. But does not this amount precisely to saying that we only see things in a subjective and human manner, and that, consequently, we do not know them as they are in themselves? Let us go further still; let us raise ourselves to conceptions of the perfect being, the divine being. Here, too, all metaphysicians agree in acknowledging that we have only an entirely relative view of the Divinity. Is there one who admits that we can, without anthropomorphism, understand literally all the attributes that we impute to the Deity? Has not God Himself defined Himself in Scripture as Deus absconditus, and does not the doctrine of mysteries in every great religion imply that the true essence of the Deity is unknown to us, and that, consequently, the philosophic doctrine of the attributes of God is a purely human conception, by which we strive to represent to ourselves the unrepresentable, and to bring within the grasp of our sensibility and our imagination the august and sublime notion that confounds all created substance?
This is what we are taught by all metaphysic doctrine whatever, and not only by that of Kant, Plato, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Fénelon: all alike teach us that the senses are but a confused and relative knowledge, that space and time are modes of finite existence, that God can only be conceived of by analogy, and not in His essence. Are such conceptions as these very different from those of Kant? And if he has taken them up again under another form, if by isolating he has exaggerated them, his is the merit of having brought them into prominence, of reminding us of them, and forcing us to assign them a more important place in our doctrines. Despite the warnings of the greatest minds, and of all great minds, are we not ceaselessly tempted to yield to the automatic instinct which makes us believe things to be as we see them, makes us suppose the existence of a matter, solid, coloured, sonorous, cold, or hot, such as the senses acquaint us with; makes us believe in an absolute space and time, with which we no longer know how to deal when we think of the true Absolute; makes us conceive of this true Absolute or Goodness as of a species of great man, that we strip of a body, without even reflecting whether we have really the power of representing to ourselves anything absolutely incorporeal? It is against this vulgar current dogmatism, which philosophy has so much trouble in getting rid of, that not only Kant, but every metaphysician, protests. Kant only expounded, under a rigorous and systematic form, all the critical portion of previous metaphysics. To us it seems impossible—with more or less reservation, and without insisting at present too rigidly on the share of the relative and subjective in human knowledge—impossible, we say, not to allow this share, and consequently, in a certain measure, not to give in our adherence to transcendental criticism and idealism. There is, however, as we have seen above, something which escapes from this relativity of all human knowledge: it is the very fact of knowing. This fact has in itself something absolute. I know not whence it comes, I cannot explain it; I marvel that a being should be met with in whom at one time or other what we call knowledge has appeared; but this fact cannot exist without being known by the knower. All knowledge supposes, then, a subject that knows itself—that is to say, who is internally present to himself. Here knowledge comes from within, not from without. Whatever is objective can only appear to me, and is consequently a phenomenon. I only see its outside, and it is only in relation to myself that I can grasp even that outside. But the conscious ego sees itself from within. Shall we say that it appears to itself? I am willing to say so, but as it appears to itself that appearance is a reality, for the form that I give it is my own form. In order that it should become me, I must be me. Every other object has to be given in the first instance before it is perceived; in order that I should see a house, a house must be there. It is not so with the ego. For if at the moment it is given me it is not already me, how is it to become so? How shall I know it as such? And if it be already me, it is already perceived as such. Hence it follows that the external thing may be represented without being, as happens in sleep, while I cannot think without thinking myself, or think myself without existing. All subjectivism, all relativism, all criticism, therefore, are baffled in presence of the ego.
It is from this solid and immovable foundation laid by Descartes at the entrance of science that we may set out to extend the sphere of our knowledge. Everything, it is said, is relative. What matter if that relative be connected by precise and fixed relations with the unknown, if that which is given be a strictly faithful projection of that which is thought? For instance, we do not know the souls of other men in themselves, we have never seen a soul such as it is in itself; those even which are dearest to us are unknown like the rest. But if we suppose all the signs by which they manifest themselves to be sincere, is it not to know them truly and in the only way intelligible to us, to hear their voices, and understand their words, and interpret their actions? No doubt nothing external to ourselves can be known internally by us; but if the exterior be the expression of the interior, is not the one the equivalent of the other? And to ask more would amount to asking to be more than man. Science teaches us that all appearances have a fixed and precise relation to reality. The visible apparent sky is strictly what it ought to be to express the real sky. The deeper our knowledge of things goes, the more we see the perfect conformity of the apparent to the real, the more faithfully do phenomena translate noumena. Are we not, therefore, justified in supposing that these relative noumena, which are still no more than appearances, could be translated in their turn, if only we had the key to them, into other noumena of which they are the form and image? I may say the same about the anthropomorphic representations of Deity. I admit that the Absolute is in its essence above all human representations. But these representations, when we disengage them as much as possible from all sensible elements, are none the less the true expression of that incomprehensible essence in so far as it appears to a human consciousness. If not God in Himself, it is God in relation to me; and it is with only this last that we have to do so long as we are but men.
We do not, therefore, consider it impossible to assign to the critical element its part in metaphysic without denying the objective reality of knowledge. We think that the famous old distinction between being and phenomena, the intelligible and the sensible, still endures, despite the “Kritik” of Kant; or rather, this very “Kritik” itself is, in our eyes, only a hyperbolical but striking manner of expressing this great truth.
Paul Janet.