Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Jaime Luciano Balmes

10. We have seen that extension in itself is not the direct object of sensation. What, then, is it? What is its nature?

There are two things which may be considered in the idea of extension: that which it is in us, and that which it represents to us; or, in other words, its relation to the subject, and its relation to the object. The first being subject to immediate observation, inasmuch as it exists within us, is difficult but not impossible to explain. The second is more difficult, and almost impossible to explain, because it is a very abstract and transcendental idea, and also requires a series of arguments, the thread of which may be broken without the one who reasons perceiving it.

11. Extension in us is not a sensation, but an idea. Sometimes we imagine it under a sensible form, confounding it with a determinate object; at other times we picture it to ourselves as a vague obscurity in which bodies are placed; but these are only fictions of the imagination. A man born blind can have none of these internal representations, and yet he forms a very good conception of extension. We ourselves in thinking of extension abstract all these forms under which we imagine it.

Two different sensations, those of sight and touch, produce the same idea of extension. This is conclusive proof that extension is rather intelligible than sensible.

Whatever may be the relation of extension to sensation, we cannot deny that it is an idea if we reflect that it is the foundation of the whole science of geometry. Thus, although we form various images of extension, they are only the particular forms with which the mind clothes the idea, if we may use the expression, according to the circumstances of the case. That which is fundamental and essential in the idea, is of a different and higher order, and has nothing in common with the applications which the mind makes in order to explain and apply it. This idea includes dimensions, but not determined or applied; they are mere conceptions which represent nothing in particular.

12. The idea of extension is a primitive fact of our mind. It is not produced by sensations, but precedes them, if not in time, at least in the order of being. There is no ground for asserting that the idea of extension exists in the mind prior to the first impression of the senses, but unless extension serves as their basis these impressions are inconceivable. Whether this idea is innate or developed, or produced in the mind by the impressions, there can be no doubt that it is distinct from them, necessary to them, and independent of any one of them in particular.

It may be that when these impressions are first received extension may not be known as a separate idea; but it is certain that it is afterwards separated and stripped of the corporeal form, and spiritualized, and that this phenomenon may be occasioned but not caused by the sensation.

In sight, abstracting extension, there is color, but we cannot discover in it any thing from which we can produce so fruitful an idea as that of extension. Even at first we see that the color itself is not perceptible without extension, and so far from extension being produced by color, it is on the contrary an indispensable condition without which color cannot be perceived.

Colors as the objects of sensation are only individual phenomena, which have no connection with one another nor with the general idea of extension. What has been said of them will equally apply to all the impressions of touch.