225. Having established the worth of the principles of consciousness, of evidence, and of contradiction, in relation to the dignity of fundamental, we will now examine the intrinsic value of the different criteria. And here the doctrine of the preceding chapters, of which the following are the development and complement, furnishes much light. We will begin with consciousness, or the internal sense.
The testimony of consciousness includes all phenomena, either actively or passively, realized in our soul. It is by its nature purely subjective; so that in itself considered, apart from the intellectual instinct and the light of evidence, it testifies nothing with respect to objects. By it we know what we experience, not what is; we perceive the phenomenon, not the reality; what authorizes us to say: such a thing appears to me; but not, such a thing is.
The transition from subject to object, from the idea representing to the thing represented, from the impression to the cause impressing, belongs to other criteria: consciousness is limited to the interior, or rather, to itself, which is nothing but an act of our soul.
226. We must distinguish between direct and reflex consciousness: the former accompanies every internal phenomenon; the latter does not: the former is natural; the latter philosophical: the former abstracts the act of reason; the latter is one of these acts.
Direct consciousness is the presence of the phenomenon to the mind, whether that phenomenon be a sensation or an idea, an act or an impression, in the intellectual or the moral order.
This distinction shows that direct consciousness accompanies every exercise, whether active or passive, of the faculties of our soul. It is a contradiction to say that these phenomena exist in the soul, and are not present to it.
These phenomena are not modifications like those which occur in insensible things; we here treat of living modifications, so to speak, in a living being; in the idea of these modifications is contained their presence to the mind.
It is impossible for us to have a sensation without experiencing it; for whoever says he has a sensation, says that he experiences a sensation: this experience is its presence; an experienced sensation is a present sensation.
Thought is by its essence, a representation that can neither exist nor be conceived without presence; the name itself shows this, and the idea which we join with it confirms the meaning of the word. When we speak of representation, we understand that there is some real or imaginary object, which mediately or immediately offers itself to the subject. There is then presence in every representation, and consequently in every thought.
If, from what is passive, like sensations and representations, we pass to the active, that is, to the phenomena when the soul freely evolves its force in the intellectual or moral order, in combining or willing, this presence is, if possible, yet more evident. The being that thus acts, does not obey a natural impulse, but motives which it proposes to itself, and to which it may or may not attend. To make intellectual combinations and to exercise acts of the will, without either being present to the soul, are contradictory assertions.