Besides the problem of representation we examined that of immediate intelligibility, a difficult problem, but one of the greatest importance to a perfect knowledge of the world of intelligences.
The disputes on the value of different principles, as to which has the right to be called fundamental, originate in a confusion of ideas. We attempt to compare things of very diverse orders, whereas this is impossible. Descartes' principle is the enunciation of a simple fact of consciousness; that of contradiction, an objective truth, the indispensable condition of every cognition: that of the Cartesians is the expression of a law of our mind. The three, each in its own way and sphere, are necessary; no one of them is totally independent of the others; the ruin of any one destroys our intelligence.
We have various criteria; but they may all be reduced to three: consciousness, or internal sense, evidence, and intellectual instinct, or common sense. Consciousness embraces all facts intimately present to our soul as purely subjective; evidence extends to all objective truths, upon which our reason is exercised; intellectual instinct is the natural inclination to assent in cases which lie without the domain of consciousness and evidence.
The intellectual instinct obliges us to give an objective value to ideas; in this case it mingles with the truths of evidence, and is, in ordinary language, confounded with evidence.
When the intellectual instinct operates upon non-evident objects and inclines us to assent, it is called common sense.
Consciousness and the intellectual instinct constitute the other criteria.
The criterion of evidence includes two things: the appearance of ideas, which belongs to consciousness; the objective value, existing or possible, which belongs to the intellectual instinct.
The testimony of the senses also has two parts: sensation as purely subjective, and this pertains to consciousness; and the belief in the objectiveness of sensations, and this pertains to the intellectual instinct.
The testimony of human authority is composed of that of the senses, which place us in relation with our fellow-men, and that of the intellectual instinct, which induces us to believe them.