I was born in the south, under the very sun. I have yet, for the most part, lived in regions either of the north, or bordering upon the north, regions so frequently immersed in mists. When under their pale sky we look towards the horizon, a fog of greater or less density limits the view; the vision itself might penetrate much farther, but an external obstacle arrests it; it does not find there the light it needs. Regard now the horizon under the pure and brilliant sky of the south; the plains, distant as well as near, are bathed in light; the human eye can penetrate there as far as its organization permits. If it pierces no farther, it is not for want of light, but because its proper and natural force has attained its limit: the mind knows that there are spaces beyond that which the eye traverses, but the eye penetrates them not. This is an image of what happens to the mind itself when contemplating and studying the universe: it reaches a point where its clear sight, that is to say its positive appreciation, halts, not that it finds there the end of things themselves, but the limit of man's scientific appreciation of them; other realities present themselves to him; he has a glimpse of them; he believes in them spontaneously and naturally; it is not given to him to grasp them and to measure them; but he can neither ignore them, nor know them, neither have positive knowledge of them, nor refrain from having faith in them.
I cannot deny myself the pleasure of citing what I wrote thirteen years ago upon the same subject, when philosophically examining the real meaning of the word faith. "The object of every religious belief," said I, "is in a certain, a large measure, inaccessible to human science. Human science may establish that object's reality; it may arrive at the boundary of this mysterious world; and assure itself of the existence there of facts with which man's destiny is connected; but it is not given to it so to attain the facts themselves as to subject them to its examination.
"Their incapacity to do so has struck more than one philosopher, and has led them to the conclusion that no such reality exists, that every religious belief contemplates subjects simply chimerical. Others, shutting their eyes to their own incompetency, have dashed daringly forwards towards the sphere of the supernatural; and just as if they had succeeded in penetrating into it, they have described its facts, resolved its problems, assigned its laws. It is difficult to say who shows more foolish arrogance, the man who maintains that that of which he cannot have positive knowledge has no real existence, or the man who pretends to be able to know everything that actually exists. However this may be, mankind has never for a single day assented to either assertion: man's instincts and his actions have constantly disavowed both the negation of the disbeliever and the confidence of the theologian. In spite of the former, he has persisted in believing in the existence of the unknown world, and in the reality of the relations which connect him with it: and notwithstanding the powerful influences of the latter, he has refused to admit their having attained their object—raised the veil; and so man has continued to agitate the same problems, to pursue the same truths, as ardently and as laboriously as at the first day, just as if nothing had been done at all." [Footnote 23]
[Footnote 23: Meditations et Êtudes Morales, p. 170. Paris, 1851.]
I have just read again the excellent compendium given by M. Cousin in his General History of Philosophy from the most Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. He establishes that all the philosophical labours of the human understanding have terminated in four great systems—sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism—the sole actors in that intellectual arena where, in all ages and amongst all nations, they are in turn in the position of combatants and of sovereigns. And, after having clearly characterised in their origin and their development these four systems, M. Cousin adds, "As for their intrinsic merits, habituate yourselves to this principle: they have existed; therefore they had their reason to exist; therefore they are true at least in part. Error is the law of our nature: to it we are condemned; and in all our opinions and all our words there is always a large allowance to be made for error, and too often for absurdity. But absolute absurdity does not enter into the mind of man; it is the excellence of man's thought, that without some leaven of truth it admits nothing, and absolute error is impossible. The four systems which have just been rapidly laid before you have had each their existence; therefore they contain truth, still without being entirely true. Partially true, and partially false, these systems reappear at all the great epochs. Time cannot destroy any one of them, nor can it beget any new one, because time develops and perfects the human mind, though without changing its nature and its fundamental tendencies. Time does no more than multiply and vary almost infinitely the combinations of the four simple and elementary systems. Hence originate those countless systems which history collects and which it is its office to explain." [Footnote 24]
[Footnote 24: Histoire Générale de la Philosophic depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu'à la fin du XVIII Siècle, par M. Victor Cousin, pp. 4-31. 1863.]
M. Cousin excels in explaining these numberless philosophical combinations, and in tracing them all back to the four great systems which he has defined; but there is a fact still more important than the variety of these combinations, and which calls itself for explanation. Why did these four essential systems—sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism, appear from the most ancient times? why have they continued to reproduce themselves always and everywhere, with deductions more or less logical, with greater or less ability, but still fundamentally always and everywhere the same? Why, upon these supreme questions, did the human mind achieve at so early a period, what may be termed, it is true, but essays at a solution, but which essays in some sort have exhausted the mind rather than satisfied it? How is it that these different systems, invented with such promptitude, have never been able either to come to an accord, nor has any one been able to prevail decidedly against another and to cause itself to be received as the truth? Why has philosophy, or, to speak more precisely, why have metaphysics, remained essentially stationary; great at their birth, but destined not to grow: whereas the other sciences—those styled natural sciences—have been essentially progressive: at first feeble, and making in succession conquest after conquest; these they have been able to retain, until they have formed a domain day by day more extended and less contested?
The very fact that suggests these questions contains the answer to them. Man has, upon the fundamental subject of metaphysics, a primitive light, rather the heritage and dowry of human nature, than the conquest of human science. The metaphysician appropriates it as a torch to lighten him on his obscure and ill-defined path. He finds in man himself a point of departure at once profound and certain; but his aim is God; that is to say, an aim above his reach.
Must we, then, renounce the study of the great questions which form the subject of metaphysics as a vain labour, where the human mind is turning indefinitely in the same circle, incapable not only of attaining the object which it is pursuing, but of making any advance in its pursuit?