Having begun with a false method, Descartes fails in regard to principles, and takes as the first truth which cannot be doubted what, either in the order of being or knowing, is no first truth or ultimate principle at all. He takes as a principle what is simply a fact—the fact of his own personal existence, or of an internal personal sentiment: Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I exist. Regarded as an argument to prove his existence, as Descartes evidently at first regarded it, this enthymem is a sheer paralogism, and proves nothing; for the consequence only repeats the antecedent; sum is already in cogito. I affirm that I exist in affirming that I think. But pass over this, and give Descartes the benefit of an explanation, which he gives in one of his letters when hard pressed by his acute Jesuit opponent, that he does not pretend to offer it as an argument to prove that he exists, but presents it simply as the fact in which he finds or becomes conscious of his existence. There is no doubt that in the act of thinking I become conscious that I exist; for, as we have already shown, the subject enters into every thought as one of its integral and indestructible elements; but this does not relieve him. He "wished," as says The Churchman, "to stand upon (on) a principle which could not be denied, to find a first truth which no one could question." This principle or first truth he pretends is his own personal existence, expressed in the sophism, I think, therefore I exist, Cogito, ergo sum. We agree, indeed have already proved, that no one can deny or doubt his own personal existence, although it is possible for a man to set forth propositions which, in their logical development, would deny it. But the method Descartes defends permits him to assert nothing which cannot be deduced, after the manner of the geometricians, from the principle or first truth on which he takes his stand; and unless he can so deduce God and the universe, he must deny them.
But from the fact that I exist, that is, from my own personal existence, nothing but myself and what is in me and dependent on me can be deduced. Geometrical or mathematical deduction is nothing but analysis, and analysis can give nothing but the subject analyzed. Now, it so happens that I do not contain God and the external universe in myself. Following the Cartesian method, I can attain, then, to no existence but myself, my own personal phenomena. I can deduce no existence but my own, and am forced, if logical, to doubt or deny all other existence, that is, all existence but my personal existence, and my own interior sentiments and affections. I am the only existence; I am all that is or exists, and hence either I am God or God is not. What is this but the absolute egoism of Fichte?
Descartes himself seems to have felt the difficulty, and to have seen that God cannot, after all, be deduced from the fact of personal existence; he therefore asserts God as an innate idea, and concludes his real and independent being from the idea innate in his own mind. Analysis of his own mind discloses the idea, and from the idea he concludes, after the manner of St. Anselm, that God is. But when I am given as the principle or first truth, how conclude from my idea, which is simply a fact of my interior life, that there is anything independent of me to correspond to it? Here Descartes was forced to depart from his own method, and make what on his system is a most unwarrantable assumption, namely, that the idea, being innate, is deposited by God in the mind, and, as God cannot lie, the idea must be true, and therefore God is. That is, he takes the idea to prove the being of God, and the veracity of God to prove the trustworthiness of the idea! But he was to doubt the being of God till he had geometrically demonstrated it; he therefore must prove that God is before he can appeal to his veracity. His method involved him in a maze of sophistries from which he was never able to escape. God concluded from my idea, innate or otherwise, is only my idea, without any reality independent of me. The argument of St. Anselm is valid only when idea is taken objectively, not subjectively, as Descartes takes it.
What Descartes really meant by innate ideas we do not know, and we are not certain that he knew himself; but he says, somewhere in his correspondence, that, when he calls the idea of God innate, he only means that we have the innate faculty of thinking God. His argument is, "I think God, and therefore God is." Still the difficulty according to his own method remains unsolved.
Given my own personal existence alone as the principle or first truth, it follows that, at least in science, I am sufficient for myself. Then nothing distinguishable from myself is necessary to my thought, and there is no need of my going out of myself to think. How, then, conclude that what in thought seems to be object is really anything distinguishable from myself? I think God, but how conclude from this that God is distinct from and independent of me, or that he is anything but a mode or affection of my own personal existence? The fact is, when we take our own personal existence alone as the principle from which all objects of faith or science are to be deduced, we can never attain to any reality not contained in our existence as the part in the whole, the effect in the cause, or the property in the essence. Exclusive psychology, as has been shown over and over again, can give us only the subjectivism of Kant, or the egoism of Fichte, resulting necessarily in the nihilism, or identity of being and not-being, of Hegel.
The psychologists generally do not, we are aware, concede this; but they are not in fact, whatever they are in theory, exclusive psychologists, and their inductions of God and an external universe are made from ontological as well as from psychological data. They begin their process, indeed, by analyzing the mind, what they call the facts of consciousness, but they always include in their premises non-psychological elements. Their inductions all suppose man and the universe are contingent existences, and as the contingent is inconceivable as contingent without the necessary, they conclude, since the contingent exists, very logically, that there really is also the necessary, or necessary being, which is God. But the necessary, without which their conclusion would and could have no validity, is not a psychological fact or element; otherwise the soul itself would be necessary being, would be itself God. The mistake arises from regarding what philosophers call necessary ideas, such as the idea of the necessary, the universal, the immutable, the eternal, etc., because held by the mind, as psychological, instead of being, as they really are, ontological. Being ontological, real being, the inductions of the psychologists, as they call themselves, do really carry us out of the psychological order, out of the subjective into the objective. But, if their inductions were, as they pretend, from exclusively psychological data, they would have no value beyond the soul itself, and the God concluded would be only a psychological abstraction. Indeed, most psychologists assert more truth than their method allows, are better than their systems. Especially is this the case with Descartes. On his own system, logically developed, he could assert no reality but his own individual soul or personal existence; yet, in point of fact, he asserts nearly all that the Catholic theologian asserts, but he does it inconsistently, illogically, unscientifically, and thus leads his followers to deny everything not assertable by his method.
But, as we have said, Descartes does not attain by his method to a first principle. Not only cannot the being of God and the existence of the external universe be deduced from our own personal existence, but, by his method, our personal existence itself cannot be logically asserted. It is not ultimate, a first principle, or a first truth. Our personal existence cannot stand by itself alone. It is true Descartes says, Cogito, ergo SUM; but I cannot even think by myself alone, and even he does not venture to take sum in the absolute sense of am, as in the incommunicable name by which God reveals himself to Moses, I AM WHO AM, or I AM THAT AM. Even he takes it in the sense of exist, Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I exist. He never dared assert his own personal existence as absolute, underived, eternal, and necessary being; it remained for a Fichte, adopting the Cartesian method, to do that. Between being and existence, essentia and existentia, there is a difference which our philosophers are not always careful to note. Existence is from exstare, and strictly taken, means standing from another, or a derivative and dependent, therefore a contingent existence, or creature, whose being is in another, not in itself. We speak, indeed, of human beings, but men are beings only in a derivative sense, not in the primary or absolute sense. Hence the apostle to the Gentiles says, "In him (God) we live, and move, and are," or have our being. In ourselves we have no being, and are something only as created and upheld by Him who is being itself, or, to speak à la Plato, being in himself. Evidently, then, our personal existence is not ultimate, therefore not the first principle, nor the first truth. The ultimate, at least in the order of being, is not the soul, a contingent existence, but, real being, that is, God himself.
But as we have and can have no personal existence except from God, it is evident that we cannot assert our personal existence by itself alone; and to be able to assert it at all, we must be able to assert the being of God. Now, Descartes tells us that we must doubt the being of God till we can prove it after the manner of the geometricians. But how are we to do this? We cannot, as we have seen, deduce his being from our own personal existence; and what is still more to the purpose, while we deny or doubt his being, we cannot assert or even conceive of our own, because our existence, being derivative, dependent, having not its being in itself, is not intelligible or conceivable in or by itself alone. The contingent is not conceivable without the necessary. They are correlatives, and correlatives connote each other. Now, if we deny or doubt the being of God, we necessarily deny or doubt our own personal existence, impossible and inconceivable without God. With God disappears the existence of the external universe and our own. If, then, it were possible to doubt of the being of God, we should doubt of all things, and should have nothing left with which to prove that God is. God is the first principle in being and in knowing, and if he is denied, all is denied. Atheism is nihilism.
Descartes evidently assumes that it is both possible and lawful to doubt the being of God, nay, that we ought to do so, till we have geometrically demonstrated that he is, and The Churchman tells us that this "scepticism is an essential element in the investigation of truth." We cannot bring ourselves to believe it. God, the theologians tell us, is real and necessary being, the contrary of which cannot be thought, and it is the fool, the Scriptures tell us, that says "in his heart, God is not." The evidence of this is in the fact that we do in every thought think our own existence, and cannot deny it if we would; and in the farther fact that we always do think our own existence as contingent, not as necessary being; and that we cannot think the contingent without at the same time thinking the necessary, as was sufficiently shown in the papers on The Problems of the Age, published sometime since in this Magazine. As there can without God be nothing to be known, we must dissent from The Churchman, as from Descartes himself, that a philosophical scepticism which extends even to the being of God "is an essential element in the investigation of truth." It seems to us the worst way possible to truth, that of beginning by denying all truth, and even the possibility of truth. The man who does so, humanly speaking, puts himself out of the condition of discovering or receiving truth of any sort. He who seeks for the truth should do so with an open mind and heart, and with the conviction that it is. We must open our eyes to the light, if we would behold it, and our hearts to the entrance of truth, if we would have it warm and vivify us. Those men who shut their eyes, compress their lips, and close the aperture of their minds are the last men in the world to discover or to receive the truth, and they must expect to walk in darkness and doubt all their lives. Scepticism is a worse preparation for investigating truth than even credulity, though scepticism and credulity are blood relations, and usually walk hand in hand.
If it were possible to doubt the being of God, or to think a single thought without thinking him, we should prove ourselves independent of him, and therefore deprive ourselves of all possible means of proving that he is. If, for instance, we could think our own existence, as is assumed in the Cartesian enthymem, Cogito, ergo sum, without in the same indissoluble thought thinking God, there would be no necessity of asserting God, and no possible argument by which we could prove his being, or data from which he could be concluded. Man can no more exist and act in the intellectual order, without God, than in the physical order. If you suppose men capable of thinking and reasoning without the intellectual apprehension of the Divine Being, as must be the man who really doubts the being of God, there is no possible reason for asserting God, and it is a matter of no practical moment in the conduct of life whether we believe in God or not. The fact is, no man can doubt the being of God any more than he can his own personal existence. The Cartesian method, if followed strictly, would lead logically to universal nihilism; for he who doubts the being of God must, if logical, doubt of everything, and he who doubts of everything can be convinced of nothing.