Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Jaime Luciano Balmes

180. We must not confound what is expressed by the proposition I think with the proposition itself. The thing itself and the form are here very different: the nature of the form may make us conceive ambiguous ideas of the thing itself: the thing itself is a most simple fact; the form is a logical combination, and includes very heterogeneous elements. This demands explanation.

The fact of consciousness, in itself considered, abstracts all relations; it is nothing but itself, leads to nothing but itself; it is the presence of the act or impression, or rather it is the act, the impression itself, which is present to the mind. There is no combination of ideas, no analysis of conceptions; when it comes to this latter, it leaves the territory of pure consciousness, and enters the objective regions of intellectual activity. But as language is to express the products of this activity, and as it is cast, so to say, not in the mould of consciousness, but in that of the intellect, it is impossible for us to speak without some logical or ideal combination. Were we seeking an expression of pure consciousness, unmixed with intellectual elements, we should seek it not in language, but in the natural sign of grief, joy, or some other passion; in this alone is it expressed spontaneously and uncombined with foreign elements, that something passes in our mind, that we are conscious of something; but the instant that we speak, we express something more than pure consciousness: the external world indicates the internal, the product of intellectual activity, its conception; and this involves a subject and an object, and therefore pertains to an order far superior to that of consciousness.

181. To demonstrate the truth of what we have just said, let us examine the expression, I think. This is a true proposition, and it may, without being in the least changed, be presented under a strictly logical form, I am thinking. Here we have a subject, a predicate, and a copula. The subject is I; that is to say, we at once find the idea of a being, the subject of acts and impressions, the possessor of an activity expressed in the predicate. This I is then presented to us as something far superior to the order of pure consciousness; it is nothing less than the idea of substance. We will analyze more at length what is contained under it.

We have, in the first place, the idea of unity: the I has no meaning, if it do not denote that something is one and identical, notwithstanding the plurality and diversity realized in it. The experimental unity of consciousness draws with it, as a rigid consequence, the unity of the being possessing it. This being is the subject; and in it are realized the variations without which it would be impossible to say I. We hold then that in so simple an expression the ideas of unity and its relation to plurality, of substance and its relations to accidents, are contained; that is, the idea of the soul, although expressive of a most simple unity, is, under the logical aspect, composite, and contains many things pertaining to the ideal order, and not to be found in pure consciousness. The idea of the soul, strictly speaking, although in a certain sense common to all men, is in itself highly philosophical, for it involves a combination of elements belonging to the intellectual order.

182. The predicate thinking is the expression of a general idea, comprehending not only all thought, but also all phenomena which immediately affect the mind. These phenomena, considered in what they have in common, under the general idea of present to the mind, are expressed in the word thinking.

The relation of the predicate with the subject, or the agreement of thinking with the soul, also expresses an analysis worthy of attention. We at once detect a decomposition of the conception of the soul into two ideas; that of the subject of various modifications, and that of thinking. Otherwise the proposition has no meaning, or rather its expression becomes impossible. The idea of subject involves the ideas of unity and substance, and that of thinking involves the idea of activity, or of passivity, so to speak, accompanied by consciousness.

183. To render the proposition possible, we must suppose the decomposition of the ideas to commence at some point, that is, either in the idea of the soul we find that of thinking, or in that of thinking we find that of the soul. Fixing ourselves in the soul, and abstracting thinking, we meet with the idea of subject, or of substance in general; and there, however much we cavil, we shall never find the idea of thinking. The soul in itself is not manifested to us; we know it by thought; in thought therefore we must fix the point of departure, not in the soul; wherefore in the above proposition, what is primitively known is rather the predicate than the subject; and of the two conceptions, that of subject has rather the character of a thing contained, than of a thing containing.

The soul by itself, so to speak, springs up with the presence of thought. If the intellectual activity is concentrated in search of its first basis, it finds it, not in the pure subject, but in its acts, that is, in its thoughts. These last are then the first object of reflective intellectual activity, its first element of combination, its first datum for the solution of the problem. Fixing its sight on this element, it discovers a unity in the midst of plurality, a being that remains the same through the ebb and flow of the phenomena of consciousness; and this identity is incontestably asserted by consciousness itself. The idea of the soul then is taken from that of thought, and consequently the subject springs from the predicate, rather than the predicate from the subject.

184. The thought from which we derive the idea of the soul is not thought in general, but thought realized, existing in ourselves. But this reality is sterile unless offered to the mind under a general idea; for it is evident that the soul does not come from one single act, since it is unity, the subject of plurality. To arrive at the idea of the soul we require unity of consciousness, and this we know only as we have experienced it, that is, so far as we perceive the relation of the one to the multiple, of a subject to its modifications.