Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Jaime Luciano Balmes

"The principle that determines the development of its faculties is simple; even sensations contain it; for, all being of necessity either agreeable or the contrary, the statue is interested in enjoying some and shunning others. The reader will now be convinced that this interest suffices to give occasion to the gradations of the will and the understanding. Judgments, reflection, desires, passions, are only sensations variously transformed. This is why it seemed to us useless to suppose the soul to have received immediately from nature all the sensations with which it is endowed. Nature has given us organs which show us by pleasure or pain what we ought to seek or to avoid; but here she stops, and leaves to experience the task of leading us to contract habits, and finish the work she has commenced.

"This object is new, and shows all the simplicity of the ways of the Author of nature. Is it not a thing worthy of our admiration thus to see, from man's sensibility to pleasure or pain, spring up in him ideas, desires, habits, and talents of various kinds?"—Traite des Sensations. Dessein de l'ouvrage.

What we admire in Condillac is not his system, but his candor; and we wonder yet more that, for a time, he should have had numerous followers of his so poor and superficial system. The author proposes the difficulty, that as there is in our soul nothing but transformed sensations, it is strange that brutes, which also have sensations, should not be endowed with the same faculties as man. Can the reader imagine what profound reason the French philosopher assigned? We doubt it very much. It is a curious thought: "the organ of touch is less perfect in brutes, and consequently it cannot be to them an occasional cause of all the operations which we observe in ourselves." He did well to adopt the motto: nec tamen quasi Pythius Apollo!

ON CHAPTER VI.

(6) The works of the scholastics are worth reading on these points. Treating of the object of science, they are at once exact and profound. It is not easy to think of any thing concerning the classification of truths not explained or indicated by them.

ON CHAPTER VII.

(7) Let us not be thought to judge too severely of the forms adopted by the German philosophers. It is well known how Madame de Staël speaks of them; but happily we can cite in our favor a more competent judge. Schelling, one of the chiefs of German philosophy, says: "The Germans have so long philosophized among themselves, as to gradually depart more and more, in their thoughts and their words, from what is universally intelligible; and the degree of departure therefrom has almost come at last to be the measure of philosophical ability. Examples are not wanting to us. As families which separate from general society, and live wholly among themselves, among other repulsive singularities, come to use expressions intelligible only to themselves, so is it with the Germans in philosophy; and after vain efforts to spread the Kantian philosophy out of Germany, they renounced the attempt to make themselves intelligible to other nations; they became accustomed to regard themselves as the chosen people of philosophy, forgetting that the primary end of philosophy,—an end often neglected, but not the less to be sought for on that account,—is to gain universal consent, by making themselves universally intelligible. This is not to say that we must judge works of thought like exercises in style; but all philosophy not intelligible to all civilized nations, and accessible in every language, cannot, for this reason alone, be the universal and true philosophy."—Schelling's Judgment of V. Cousin, and the state of French and German Philosophy in general. 1834. p. 4.

Schelling flatters himself that German philosophy is about to take a better course with respect to clearness, and adds: "The philosophical writer who, for tens of years past, was unable to depart from the terms and forms of the school, without loss of his scientific reputation, may hereafter emancipate himself from this restraint. He will seek depth of thought; and an absolute incapacity to express himself with clearness, will no longer be regarded as the mark of talent and philosophical inspiration." We have nothing to add to this passage; we would only remind its author that: mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur.

ON CHAPTER VIII.