33. Neither has the association of activities any meaning, except when it expresses the convergence of forces towards one and the same object. If unity be wanting to the point of their direction, their union will express nothing, and the intelligence will have for its object only scattered and unrelated activities.
34. We have then shown that unity is a law of our understanding, founded upon the very nature of things. Absolute being is never found in the composite, but only in the simple, and relative being is not even conceivable, if it be not submitted to unity.
35. We discover in the very nature of our mind, the second origin of its tendency to unity. It in itself is one, is simple, and therefore disposed to assimilate every thing to itself under this same unity and simplicity. It feels that it is one in the midst of multiplicity, permanent even in succession, and under all the immense variety of sensible phenomena, intellectual and moral, which it unceasingly experiences. The inward sense attests with irresistible certainty the identity of the me. This unity, this identity, is as certain, as evident to the child who begins to feel pleasure or pain, and is sure that he is one and the same that experiences both impressions, as they are to the philosopher who has spent long years in profoundly investigating the idea of the me and the unity of consciousness.
The unity and simplicity which we experience in ourselves force us to reduce the composite to the simple, the multiple to the one. The perception of things the most composite refers to a consciousness essentially one: even were we to perceive the whole complicated universe by a single act, this act would be most simple, since otherwise the me could not say, I perceive.
36. Two reasons, then, exist why our mind in all things seeks unity. Objects are unintelligible, except so far as subjected to a certain perceptible unity, to a form, under which the multiple is made one, and the composite simple. The object of the understanding is being, and being consists in the simple. The composite involves an aggregation of simple elements with the relation called union; but unless this be presented under a certain unity, it does not constitute a perceptible object.
Without the indivisible unity of consciousness, no intelligent subject is conceivable. Every intelligent being requires this link to unite the variety of phenomena of which it is the subject. If this unity fail, the phenomena become an informal aggregation, unrelated among themselves: intellectual acts without an intelligent being.
The tendency to unity originates in the perfection of our mind, and is itself a perfection; but it needs to be carefully watched, lest it go astray, and seek real unity there, where only a factitious unity can be found. This exaggeration is the cause of pantheism, the fatal error of our day. Our mind is one, so also is the infinite essence, cause of all finite beings; but the aggregation of these beings is not one, for even when united by many ties, they cease not to be distinct. There is in the world unity of order, of harmony, of origin, and of end; but there is no absolute unity. Number also enters into unity of harmony, but it is incompatible with absolute unity, as reason and experience both show.
[CHAPTER V.]
GENERATION OF THE IDEA OF NUMBER.