Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Jaime Luciano Balmes

86. If Kant had wished to present a more seductive example, he ought to have made use of a theory in mechanics, the application of which to the present case presents, if not more difficulty, at least a more deceitful appearance; I mean the resultant of a system of forces and their point of application.

When several forces act upon a line, a plane, or a solid, they produce an effect equal to that one force alone, which is called the resultant: this force has a determinate direction and a point of application, as though it were simple or had not emanated from others; why cannot this be applied to thought? Why may not a thing, although it is simple, be the product of the concurrence of various agents? This example is more specious, because it presents the result of the composition concentrated in a point, but if we examine it well, we shall find that it proves nothing against us.

The disparity is this: thought is a simple act in itself, whilst the resultant of the forces is so only in its relation to the effect experienced, which is all that comes under our calculation. If two forces are applied at the two extremities of an inflexible right line the effect will be the same as though we applied one force equal to the sum of them both at one point of the line, at a distance from either extremity inversely proportioned to the value of the first forces. But the unity of this effect depends on the cohesion of the parts, which, not permitting isolated motions, must make the force act on a single point; but the component forces do not cease to be distinct and separate, so that at the moment the cohesion should cease, the respective parts would each feel the action of the force corresponding to it, and move in the direction and with the velocity which the force impresses on them. If, while the cohesion lasts, it were possible to give each of the component forces the consciousness of its action, there would be two consciousnesses really distinct, which could never form one common consciousness, and could only be united in the production of an effect. If the point of their application should have the consciousness of the action which it experiences, it might have a consciousness similar to that of the action of one force, equal to the sum of the components, if it did not know the manner in which their action is transmitted to it; but from the moment that it becomes conscious of their respective action, it would know that the result is owing to the impossibility of each of them producing its effect in an isolated manner. If, therefore, we compare the thinking subject to this point of application of the forces, we must attribute to this subject the consciousness of the origin of the representations which concur in the production of the whole effect.

Perhaps it may be said that by the very analysis of the example, we have prepared the way for the triumph of the adversaries of the simplicity of the soul; because after arbitrary suppositions we have at last come to a simple effect inherent in a simple thing, and produced by the concurrence of various agents; but if we look closer to it, we shall find that this pretended triumph was never farther from being realized than it is in the last result to which we are led by the analysis of the forces. For, in order to arrive at a simple result produced by the concurrence of various forces, we also require a simple point in which this result is concentrated. Then, and precisely because we have arrived at this simplicity, we can abstract the component forces, and consider the result as a simple effect, produced by a simple force, and inherent in a simple subject, which is the indivisible point, to which we consider the force as applied. Therefore, continuing the comparison, we ought to say that, whatever may be the number of the agents concurring in the production of the thought, this thought must reside in a simple subject, and in that case the simplicity of the soul is admitted. It is true that we should then suppose a certain number of agents acting on the soul in order to produce the thought; but the thought once produced, the soul alone would be the thinking subject, just as the indivisible point is the only one which unites the action of the component forces.

Thus all that our adversaries would have gained would be the burden of the ridiculous invention of the concurrence of agents, and be forced notwithstanding, to admit a simple thinking substance, which is all that we proposed to demonstrate.

87. Kant pretends that it is impossible to deduce from experience the necessary unity of the thinking subject, as the condition of the possibility of all thought, because experience reveals no necessity, and the conception of absolute unity belongs to an order different from that which we are here considering. It is certain that experience alone does not reveal any necessity; for it is limited to particular, contingent facts, and does not reach the universal reason of objects; but this is not true of experience regarded objectively, or in relation to the cognition of the general reasons of things; for although this cognition, considered subjectively as an individual act, is a contingent fact, still inasmuch as it exists it represents a true necessity in certain objects; unless we wish to renounce the certainty of all the sciences, mathematics included.

It is clear that in speaking of thought and the thinking subject, we cannot forget experience, since it is impossible to abstract the basis of all psychological investigations,—I think,—a proposition which expresses a fact of consciousness, an act of internal experience; but with this experience is combined the idea of unity in general, or the exclusion of distinction and multiplicity from the act of thought and from the thinking subject. Thus the demonstration of the simplicity of the soul follows in the same path as all demonstrations which are confined to the purely ideal order, and which consequently are formed of one premise which contains a necessary truth, and another which establishes a fact of experience. In the present instance, the necessary premise is the very definition of unity and simplicity; the other expresses the fact experienced, that is, the nature of the thought, as it is revealed in consciousness.

88. Hence the demonstration of the simplicity of thinking beings is not limited to the human mind, but extends to all the subjects in which the fact of consciousness exists. When Kant says we cannot extend this demonstration, because we then go out of the field of experience, we reply with this argument: our demonstration is founded on the idea of unity and the fact of consciousness; the idea of unity is general, and consequently is valid in all cases; the fact of consciousness is a thing which is found in every thinking being, since thought is inconceivable without a subject, which may say, I think; therefore, we proceed legitimately in extending the demonstration of simplicity, unless you mean to give to the word think a very different meaning from that which we all give to it, in which case we go out of the arena of philosophy and enter on a discussion of words.

89. We must have received the idea of a thinking being from internal experience: we may expand or restrict this idea, increasing or decreasing its perfection; but at bottom it remains always the same, and we cannot conceive thought in another being without attributing to it something similar to what we experience in ourselves. In this respect Kant is therefore right when he says that if we wish to represent to ourselves a thinking being we must put ourselves in the place of the object. According to him, we require for thought the absolute unity of the subject, only because without this unity it would be impossible to say, I think; since, although the totality of the thought may be distributed among the various subjects, the subjective me cannot be divided or separated, and every thought supposes this me. The proposition, I think, is the foundation on which psychology raises the edifice of its knowledge: Kant admits this, but I cannot understand why, admitting that this proposition is the form of the apperception which is joined with and precedes all experience, he still says that it is not experimental; as though the thought were not just as subject to a real experience as its form; whereas if we closely examine it, we should rather say that the form is experienced than the thought itself, on the supposition that the latter is distinct whilst the form is identical in every instance; for the form in itself is only the consciousness of the unity identical in the midst of diversity.

90. In conceiving this absolute unity in the me, we do not, as Kant pretends, conceive a topical unity, but a real unity, if we suppose it to remain really the same through the variety of thought. When we enunciate this unity in the proposition, I think, we do not speak of a form in the abstract, common to all perceptions, but of something positive which is within us, and the reality of which is indispensable to the possibility of thought.