Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Jaime Luciano Balmes

"On s'excuse de n'avoir point dit que l'espace est le sensorium de Dieu, mais seulement comme son sensorium. Il semble que l'un est aussi peu convenable et aussi peu intelligible que l'autre....

"Si Dieu sent ce qui ce passe dans le monde, par le moyen d'un sensorium, il semble que les choses agissent sur lui, et qu'ainsi il est comme on conçoit l'âme du monde. On m'impute de répéter les objections, sans prendre connaissance des réponses; mais je ne vois point qu'on ait satisfait à cette difficulté; on ferait mieux de renoncer tout à fait à ce sensorium prétendu."

For the rest of this interesting discussion, I refer the reader to the works of Leibnitz. These extracts may serve to show what importance eminent philosophers attributed to the questions on space.

ON CHAPTER XVII.

(31) In order that the reader may form a perfect conception of Kant's opinion of space, and judge for himself whether there is or not the contradiction which we have intimated, I extract a few passages from his works.

"The transcendental conception of phenomena[64] in space is a critical observation that, in general nothing perceived in space is any thing in itself; that space is, moreover, a form of things, and would belong to them if considered in themselves; but that objects in themselves are wholly unknown to us, and those things which we call external objects, are only the pure representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, and whose true correlative, that is to say, the thing in itself, is for this reason wholly unknown, and will always remain so; for experience can tell us nothing of it.

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"It is altogether certain, and not merely possible or probable, that space and time, as the necessary conditions of all experience, both internal and external, are purely subjective conditions of all our intuitions. It is therefore equally certain that all objects in relation with space and time, are only simple phenomena and not things in themselves, if considered according to the manner in which they are given us. Much may be said a prior of the form of objects, but nothing of the thing in itself, which serves as the ground of these phenomena."—Transc. Æsth. I.

This doctrine of Kant's brought upon him the charge of idealism, and drew from the German philosopher explanations which some look upon as a manifest contradiction.

Here is how Kant defends himself from idealism: "When I say that in space and time the intuitions of external objects, and of the mind, represent these two things as they affect our senses, I do not mean to say that objects are a pure appearance; for in the phenomenon, the objects, and even the properties which we attribute to them, are always considered as something really given; but that as this quality of being given depends only on the manner of perception of the subject in its relation with the object given, this object as phenomenon, is different from what it is as object in itself. I do not say that bodies merely seem to be external, or that my soul merely seems to have been given me in consciousness. When I assert that the qualities of space and time (in conformity to which I place the body and the soul as the condition of their existence) exist only in my mode of intuition, and not in the objects themselves, I should do wrong to convert into a mere appearance what I must take for a phenomenon; but this does not occur, if my principle of the ideality of all our sensible intuitions is admitted. On the contrary, if an objective reality is given to all these forms of sensible representations, every thing is inevitably converted into a pure appearance; for, if space and time are considered as qualities which, as to their possibility, must be found in the things themselves, and we reflect on the absurdities which follow, since two infinite things, which can neither be substances, nor any thing inherent in a substance, but which are still something existent, and even the necessary condition of the existence of all things would still subsist, though all the rest were annihilated, we cannot blame Berkeley for reducing bodies to a mere appearance."—Ibid. 2d Edition.