No argument could be more common-place and sophistical. Kant does not admit the substantiality of the soul, because we cannot take the substance itself and present it in sensible intuition; but then he ought not to speak of pure intellectual conceptions of logical functions, or of ideas; for all these are things which are out of the order of sensibility, and therefore cannot be given us in the sensible intuition. Yet they really exist as internal phenomena, as subjective facts, of which Kant is continually talking, and to which he devotes the greater part of his Critic of Pure Reason. Will it, perchance, be said that the pure idea of relation means nothing, because we cannot present an abstract relation in sensible intuition? Will it be said that the principles from which proceed the phenomena of attraction, affinity, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, light, and all that charms or astonishes us in nature,—will it be said that they do not exist, that they are not permanent things, but empty words, because we cannot represent them in sensible intuition? Such a manner of arguing is unworthy of a philosopher. It might be excusable in an uneducated person, accustomed only to the phenomena of sensibility, who had never descended to the depths of the soul in the sphere of pure intelligence,—such a person might be pardoned if, when we speak of a spirit, a cause, or a substance, he should ask, what is it? and require us to show the insensible under a sensible form: but one who pretends to excel all philosophers, ancient or modern, one who from the inaccessible height of his wisdom looks down with such sovereign contempt on all the arguments which were before regarded as conclusive, ought to produce some other title of his superiority than merely saying: one cannot conceive the possibility of such a manner of existing: we have no internal intuition of this permanent thing which you speak of; the me is only the consciousness of my thought. What then! is any thing more necessary in order to prove what we propose, than this consciousness. Is not this consciousness one amid the variety of our thoughts? Is there not a point connecting yesterday's, to-day's, and to-morrow's thought? Different and contradictory as they are, do they not all belong to the same thing, to this thing which we call the me, and which authorizes us to say: I who think to-day, am the same who thought yesterday, and who will think to-morrow? Can any reasoning be clearer or more convincing than affirming the real permanence which we perceive in the internal testimony of our consciousness? I do not see my substance, you may say, I have no intuition of it; I only perceive my consciousness. What more do you want? This consciousness which you experience, which is one amid multiplicity, identical amid distinction, constant amid variety, and permanent in the midst of the succession of the phenomena which appear and disappear; this consciousness, which is no one of your individual thoughts, which endures while they pass away, not to return; this consciousness presents to you the substantiality of your soul, it presents it in a certain manner in intuition, not in the intuition of sensations, but in the intuition of the internal sense, as a thing affecting you deeply, and the presence of which you cannot doubt, as you do not doubt the pleasure or pain in the act by which you experience it.
58. In attacking the psychological for the substantiality of the soul, Kant supposes that those who make use of it, attempt to prove the substantiality of the soul by starting from the pure and simple category of substance. This mistake might have occasioned the form in which Kant presents this argument; but we have seen that, whether intentionally or not, this form is arranged in the best manner for affording weak points for the attacks of the philosopher. Open any treatise on psychology and you will find that although the general idea of substance is employed, it is only made use of after it has been legitimated by a fact of experience; it is not inferred from the pure category of substance that the soul is a substance; but only after we have established the idea of substance as a general type, we scrutinize the depth of consciousness to see if there is any thing there to which this type may apply. This is what has been done in the preceding paragraphs, and if Kant had wished to be more exact in his account of the opinions of his adversaries, he would not have said that the first argument of rational psychology only gives a light, which is pretended to be true, when it presents the constant logical subject of the thought, as the cognition of the real subject of the inherence. "Far from its being possible," he says, "to infer these properties from the pure and simple category of a substance, on the contrary, the permanence of a given object cannot be taken as a principle, except by starting from experience, when we wish to apply to it the empirically general conception of a substance." The philosopher is right: the properties of the pure and simple category of a substance cannot take us out of the ideal order, unless we rest on a fact of experience; but he forgets a part of the psychological argument when he adds that in the present case we have not placed at the foundation any experience, and that we have only drawn our conclusions from the conception of the relation of every thought to the me as the common subject with which this thought is connected. The experience exists in this very consciousness of the relation of all thoughts to the me; in this point with which they are all connected; the relation to the me is not possible if the me is not something; thoughts cannot be connected in the me if the me is a pure nothing. "Referring the thought to the me," Kant goes on to say, "we cannot establish this permanence by a certain observation; because, although the me is found at the bottom of every thought, besides that there is no intuition to distinguish it from every other perceptible object, it is connected with this representation." It is true that we do not perceive the permanent me in the same manner that we do the objects of the other intuitions; but we perceive it by the internal sense, by that presence, of which we cannot doubt, and which, as Kant himself confesses, makes us refer all thoughts to the me as to a common subject which connects them.
59. "It may be observed," he says, "that this representation (that of the me) is constantly reproduced in every thought; but not that it is a fixed and permanent intuition in which variable thoughts succeed each other." There is an evident contradiction in this passage. The representation of the me is constantly reproduced in every thought: but the me either means nothing, or it means something identical with itself; for if the me which thinks to-day is not the me which thought yesterday, the word me means something very different from what all the world understands by it; therefore, if the representation of the me returns in every thought, the me is the same in every thought; therefore the me is fixed and permanent, and consequently the me is a substance in which all variable thoughts succeed.
60. I cannot see any answer to this argument, founded on Kant's own words when establishing a phenomenon, the existence of which he was unable to place in doubt, namely, the presence of the me in every thought. This is not the place to examine the philosophical questions on the uninterruptedness of consciousness, or whether there is any time in which the soul does not think, and is not conscious of itself. Many philosophers believe there is such an interruption; and they rest their opinion on our experience when asleep, and our not recollecting what happens to us in that state; but Leibnitz thinks that thought is never entirely extinguished, that there is never an absolute pause of consciousness, that our thought is a light which sheds but little lustre at times, but which never goes entirely out. Whichever of these opinions be the true one, the permanence of the substance of the soul is beyond a doubt; and it is worthy of remark that the interruption of thought and of consciousness, far from favoring those who oppose the permanence of the soul, confounds them in a most conclusive manner. For if it is impossible to conceive, without supposing something permanent, how different phenomena, continued in an uninterrupted series, are connected in consciousness; it is still more inconceivable how they can be connected, if we suppose this series to be interrupted, and a certain space of time to intervene between the existence of the connected phenomena.
61. Let A, B, C, D be thoughts which are continued without any interval of time between them, and Q the consciousness through which they pass; if this Q is not something, it is impossible to conceive how the terms of the series can be connected, and, how, notwithstanding their difference and diversity, there is found at the bottom of them all something constant and identical, which we call the me, and by virtue of which we can say: I, who think D, am the same who thought C, and B, and A.
But if the consciousness is interrupted, if some hours have passed between C and D, during which there was no thought, no consciousness, it is still more inconceivable how at the bottom of the thought me there is found the same me which was in the thought C; it is still more inconceivable, because in thinking D we may say: I, who think D, am the same who thought C, and who have been for a certain time deprived of thought. Without something permanent, something which lasts during the succession, how explain this connection? Are we, perchance, speaking of unknown facts? Is not this our daily experience on awaking? If this is not conclusive, let us deny consciousness, let us deny reason; but let us not waste time in talking philosophy.
[CHAPTER X.]
KANT'S OPINION OF THE ARGUMENT WHICH HE CALLS PARALOGISM OF PERSONALITY.