It might, then, he supposed that the consciousness here finds a compensation for the rôle that has been withdrawn from it. If it is not the thing that creates the relation, it will be said, at least it is that which creates its efficacity of suggestion. Many psychologists have supposed that a relation has the power of evocation only when it has been perceived. The perception of resemblance precedes the action of resemblance. It is consequently the consciousness which assembles the ideas and gives them birth by perceiving their relations.
This error, for it is one, has long been wide-spread—indeed, it still persists.[28] We have, however, no difficulty in understanding that the perception of a resemblance between two terms supposes them to be known; so long as only one of the terms is present to the consciousness, this perception does not exist; it cannot therefore possess the property of bringing to light the second term. Suggestion is therefore distinct from recognition; it is when suggestion has acted, when the resemblance in fact has brought the two terms together, that the consciousness, taking cognisance of the work accomplished, verifies the existence of a resemblance, and that this resemblance explains the suggestion.
Second objection: we are told that the relations between the objects—that is, the principal categories—must be of a mental nature, because they are a priori. That they are a priori means that they are at once anterior and superior to the experience. Let us see what this argument is worth.
It appears that it is somewhat misused. With regard to many of the categories, we are content to lay down the necessity of an abstract idea in order to explain the comprehension of a concrete one. It is said, for example: how can it be perceived that two sensations are successive, if we do not already possess the idea of time? The argument is not very convincing, because, for every kind of concrete perception it is possible to establish an abstract category.
It might be said of colour that it is impossible to perceive it unless it is known beforehand what colour is; and so on for a heap of other things. A more serious argument consists in saying that relations are a priori because they have a character of universality and of necessity which is not explained by experience, this last being always contingent and peculiar. But it is not necessary that a function should be mental for it to be a priori. The identification of the a priori with the mental is entirely gratuitous. We should here draw a distinction between the two senses of the a priori: anteriority and superiority.
A simple physical mechanism may be a priori, in the sense of anteriority. A house is a priori, in regard to the lodgers it receives; this book is a priori, in regard to its future readers. There is no difficulty in imagining the structure of our nervous system to be a priori, in regard to the excitements which are propagated in it. A nerve cell is formed, with its protoplasm, its nucleus and its nucleoli before being irritated; its properties precede its functions. If it be possible to admit that as a consequence of ancestral experiences the function has created the organ, the latter is now formed, and this it is which in its turn becomes anterior to the function. The notion of a priori has therefore nothing in it which is repugnant to physical nature.
Let us now take the a priori in the sense of superiority. Certain judgments of ours are, we are told, universal and necessary, and through this double character go beyond the evidence of experience. This is an exact fact which deserves to be explained, but it is not indispensable to explain it by allowing to the consciousness a source of special cognitions. The English school of philosophy have already attacked this problem in connection with the origin of axioms. The principle of their explanation lies in the virtue of what they have termed "inseparable association." They have supposed that when an association is often repeated it creates a habit of thought against which no further strife is possible. The mechanism of association itself should then add a special virtue to the contingency of facts. A hundred repetitions of related facts, for example, would give rise to so firm an association, that no further repetition would increase it.
I consider this explanation a very sound one in principle. It is right to put into association something more than into experience. I would only suggest a slight correction in detail. It is not the association forged by repetition which has this virtue of conveying the idea of necessity and universality, it is simply the uncontradicted association. It has been objected, in fact, and with reason, to the solution of Mill, that it insists on a long duration of experience, while axioms appear to be of an irresistible and universal truthfulness the moment they are conceived. And this is quite just. I should prefer to lay down as a law that every representation appears true, and that every link appears necessary and universal as soon as it is formed. This is its character from the first. It preserves it so long as no contradiction in fact, in reasoning, or in idea, comes to destroy it.[29]
What seems to stand out most clearly after all these explanations is the rôle which we ought to attribute to the consciousness. Two rival theories have been maintained: that of the mirror-consciousness and that of the focus-consciousness. It would seem—I merely say it would seem—that the first of these best harmonises with the preceding facts. For what seems most probable is, that the consciousness illuminates and reveals but does not act. The theory of the focus-consciousness adapts itself less to the mechanism of the association of ideas.
From this we come quite naturally to see in the intelligence only an inactive consciousness; at one moment it apprehends an object, and it is a perception or an idea; at another time it perceives a connection, and it is a judgment; at yet another, it perceives connections between connections, and it is an act of reason. But however subtle the object it contemplates may become, it does not depart from its contemplative attitude, and cognition is but a consciousness.