135. From this doctrine flow two consequences of which we must take note:
I. There are only two primitive sources of intellectual representation: identity and causality. That of ideality is necessarily derived from that of causality.
II. In the real order, the principle of being is identical with the principle of knowledge. That only which gives being can give knowledge. The first cause can give knowledge only in so far as it gives being: it represents because it causes.
136. The representation of ideality, although connected with that of causality, is yet really distinct from it. The explanation of its nature belongs indeed to the treatise on ideas; but we cannot relinquish, without an illustration, a point so closely connected with the problem of intellectual representation.
Some conceive ideas to be a sort of image or copy of the object; but this is true only with respect to the representations of the imagination, that is, the purely corporeal; and even here it is necessary to suppose the external world to be such as the senses present it, which, however, under many aspects, is not true. To be convinced how illusory is the theory founded on the likeness of sensible things, we have only to ask, what the image of a relation is, or, how causality, substance, and being are portrayed. In the perception of these ideas, there is something more profound than any thing apparent in sensible things, something of an entirely different order. Necessity has led us to compare the understanding to an eye which sees, and the idea to an image present; but this is only a comparison; the reality is something more mysterious, more secret, more intimate: there is an ineffable union between the perception and the idea: man cannot explain it, but he experiences it.
137. Our consciousness attests that there is in us unity of being, that the soul is at all times identical with itself, and that it remains constant notwithstanding the variety of ideas and of acts which pass over it, like waves over the surface of a lake. Ideas are a mode of being of the mind: but what is this mode? In what does it consist? Does the production and reproduction of ideas proceed from a distinct cause which continually acts upon our soul, and produces immediately those modes of being which we call representations, or ideas? Or must we admit that there has been given to the mind an activity to produce these representations, subject, however, to the determination of exciting causes? These are questions which, for the present, we shall only indicate.[(13)]
[CHAPTER XIV.]
IMPOSSIBILITY OF FINDING THE FIRST PRINCIPLE IN THE IDEAL ORDER.