145. The active being possesses virtually the perfections which it is to acquire; it may be compared to the acorn which contains the mighty oak, whose development depends on circumstances of soil and climate. On the other hand, the inactive being can give itself nothing; it has a state, and it preserves it till some other changes it; and it remains in this new state until another action from without takes it away and communicates another.
146. Activity is a principle of its own or another's changes; this activity may operate in two ways: with intelligence and without it. When the being is intelligent its inclination to that which is known is called will. The will is inclined to the object necessarily or not necessarily: in the first case, it is a necessary spontaneity; in the second, it is a free spontaneity. Liberty, then, does not consist solely in the absence of coaction; it requires the absence of all, even spontaneous, necessity; the will must be able to will or not will the object; if this condition is wanting there is no freewill.
147. It is worthy of remark that our intuition of the external relates only to the inactive, to extension; and that internal intuition relates principally to activity, to consciousness. By the first we know a substratum of changes, since all change seems to take place in extension; by the second we know no subject intuitively, but only the changes themselves. We prove the unity of their subject by reasoning, but we do not see it intuitively.[90] Extension, as such, is presented to us as simply passive: consciousness, as such, is always active; for, even in those cases in which it is most passive, as in sensations, in so far as there is consciousness, it implies activity; for by it the subject gives itself an account, explicitly or implicitly, of the affection experienced.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
POSSIBILITY OF THE ACTIVITY OF BODIES.
148. Having marked the limits of our intuitive knowledge with respect to causality and activity, it is easy to answer the objections against secondary causality, which arise from confounding intuitive and indeterminate ideas; but we have still to examine whether there are true second causes, that is, whether there really is in finite beings a principle of their own and others' changes. Some philosophers, among others the illustrious Malebranche, have denied the efficacy of second causes, thus reducing them to mere occasions. The author of the Investigation de la Vérité goes so far as to maintain that secondary causality not only does not exist, but is impossible.
149. The universe contains two classes of beings,—immaterial beings, and corporeal beings: each presents difficulties which it will be well to examine separately. Let us begin with matter. It is said that matter is incapable of all activity, that its essence is indifferent to every thing, susceptible of any sort of modification. I cannot discover on what this general proposition is founded, nor do I see how it is possible to prove it either by reason or by experience.
150. In order to maintain that matter is completely inactive, or incapable of any activity, it would be necessary to know its essence; but this we do not know. By what right do we deny the possibility of an attribute when we are ignorant of the nature of the object to which it should belong, when we do not know even one of its properties to which this attribute is repugnant? It is true that we deny to matter the possibility of thought, and even of sensation; but we can do so only because we know enough of matter, to establish this impossibility. In matter, whatever may be its intrinsic essence, there are parts, consequently there is multiplicity; and the facts of consciousness necessarily require a being which is one and simple.[91]
It is not the same with respect to activity; for activity, when it does not present the intuitive idea of consciousness, gives us only the indeterminate conception of a principle of changes in itself or in other beings. This does not contradict the idea of multiplicity. Suppose bodies in motion to have a true activity which really produces motion in others, there is no contradiction in this activity being distributed among the different parts of the other body, which at the moment of impact produce their respective effects, causing motion in the parts of the other body with which they come in contact.