"If a man speaks thus, after a careful study of Cousin, it is almost useless to argue with him. He either has not understood the philosopher, or his scepticism is hopelessly obstinate. Intuition, as asserted by Cousin, is not reduced to its proper character, but simply misrepresented, when it is called empirical; for it is the primitive mode of reason, and prior to all experience. It is a revelation of the objective to the subject, and to be a revelation must, of course, come into the consciousness of the subject. Cousin has carefully and repeatedly established the true character of intuition as a disclosure to the understanding in the reason, and free from any touch of subjectivity. Of course, his ontological conclusions rest on a belief in the credibility of reason, and, of course, this credibility can never be established in a logical way, although, metaphysically, it is abundantly established. One may 'assume,' to the end of time, that 'to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, since the object may, for aught that appears, be included in the subject,' but the universal and invincible opinion of the human race has been, and will be, to the contrary of such an assumption.
"As firmly as Reid and Hamilton have established the doctrine of sensible perception, and the objective existence of the material world, has Cousin that of the objective existence of the absolute, and, on the very same ground, the veracity of consciousness. And the mass of mankind have lived in happy ignorance of any necessity for such arguments. When they sowed and reaped, and bought and sold, they never questioned the real existence of the objects they dealt with; nor did they, when the idea of duty or obligation made itself felt in their souls, dream that, 'for such an operation of reason, no objective reality was necessary.'
"Men have an unquestioning but unconquerable belief, that the very idea of obligation implies something outside of them, that obliges. Something other than itself it must be, that commands the soul. Right is a reality, and duty a fact. The philosophy, that does not come round to an enlightened and intelligent holding of the unreflecting belief of mankind, but separates itself from it, is worse than useless. In such wisdom it is indeed 'folly to be wise.' And this philosophic folly comes from insisting on a logical demonstration of what is logically undemonstrable—of what is superior, because anterior to reasoning. We cannot prove to the understanding truths which are the very basis and groundwork of that understanding itself." (Pp. 536, 537.)
This speaks for itself, and concedes, virtually, all we alleged against Cousin's system; at least it convicts us of no misapprehension or misrepresentation of that system; and the reviewer's sneer at our ignorance and incapacity, however much they may enliven his style and strengthen his argument, do not seem to have been specially called for. Yet we think both he and M. Cousin are mistaken when they assume that to demand any other basis for science than the credibility or faith in the trustworthiness of reason, is to demand an impossibility, for a science founded on faith is simply no science at all. There is science only where the mind grasps, and appropriates, not its own faculties only, but the object itself. The reason, personal or impersonal, is the faculty by which we grasp it, or the light by which we behold it; not the object in which the mental action terminates, but the medium by which we attain to the object. If it were otherwise, there might be faith, but not science, and though reason might search for the object, yet it would always be pertinent to ask, Who or what vouches for reason? Descartes answered, The veracity of God, which, in one sense, is true, but not in the sense alleged; for on the Cartesian theory we might ask, what vouches for the veracity of God? The only possible answer would be, it is reason, and we should simply traverse a circle without making the slightest advance.
The difficulty arises from adopting the psychological method of philosophizing, or assuming, as Descartes does in his famous cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore, I exist, that man can think in and of himself, or without the presence and active concurrence of that which is not himself, and which we call the object. Intuition, on Cousin's theory, is the spontaneous operation of reason as opposed to discursion, which is its reflex or reflective operation, but supposes that reason suffices for its own operation. In his course of philosophy professed at the Faculty of Letters in 1818, he says, in the consciousness, that is, in thought, there are two elements, the subject and object; or, in his barbarous dialect, le moi et le non-moi; but he is careful to assert the subject as active and the object as passive. Now, a passive object is as if it were not, and can concur in nothing with the activity of the subject. Then, as all the activity is on the side of the subject, the subject must be able to think in and of itself alone. The fact that I think an existence other than myself, on this theory, is no proof that there is really any other existence than myself till my thought is validated, and I have nothing but thought with which to validate thought.
The cogito, ergo sum is, of course, worthless as an argument, as has often been shown; but there is in it an assumption not generally noted; namely, that man suffices for his own thought, and, therefore, that man is God. God alone suffices, or can suffice, for his own thought, and needs nothing but himself for his thought or his science. He knows himself in himself, and is in himself the infinite Intelligibile, and the infinite Intelligens. He knows in himself all his works, from beginning to end, for he has made them, and all events, for he has decreed them. There is for him no medium of science distinguishable from himself; for he is, as the theologians say, the adequate object of his own intelligence. But man being a creature, and therefore dependent for his existence, his life, and all his operations, interior and exterior, on the support and active concurrence of that which is not himself, does not and cannot suffice for his thought, and he does not and cannot think in and of himself alone, in any manner, mode, form, or degree, or without the active presence and concurrence of the object, as Pierre Leroux has well shown in his otherwise very objectionable Réfutation de l'Eclecticisme. The object being independent of the subject, and not supplied by the subject, must exist a parte rei, since, if it did not, it could not actually concur with the subject in the production of thought. There can arise, therefore, to the true philosopher, no question as to the credibility or trustworthiness of reason, the validity or invalidity of thought. The only question for him is, Do we think? What do we think? He who thinks, knows that he thinks, and what he thinks, for thought is science, and who knows, knows that he knows, and what he knows.
The difficulty which Cousin and the reviewer encounter arises from thus placing the question of method before the question of principles, as we showed in our former article. No such difficulty can arise in the path of him who has settled the question of principles—which are given, not found, or obtained by the action of the subject without them—and follows the method they prescribe. The error, we repeat, arises from the psychological method, which supposes all the activity in thought is in the subject, and supposes reason to be operative in and of itself, or without any objective reality, which reality, on Cousin's system, or by the psychological method, can never be established.
The reviewer concedes that objective reality cannot be established in a logical way, but maintains that there is no need of so establishing it; for "men have an unquestioning, an unconquerable belief that the very idea of obligation implies something outside of them." Nobody denies the belief, but its validity is precisely the matter in question. How do you prove the validity of the idea of obligation? But the reviewer forgets that Cousin makes it the precise end of philosophy to legitimate this belief, and all the universal beliefs of mankind, and convert them from beliefs into science. How can philosophy do this, if obliged to support itself on these very beliefs?
The reviewer follows the last passage with a bit of philosophy of his own; but, as it has no relevancy to the matter in hand, and is, withal, a little too transcendental for our taste, he must excuse us for declining to discuss it. We cannot accept it, for we cannot accept what we do not understand, and it professes to be above all understanding. In fact, the reviewer seems to have a very low opinion of understanding, and no little contempt for logic. He reminds us of a friend we once had, who said to us, one day, that if he trusted his understanding and followed his logic he should go to Rome; but, as neither logic nor understanding is trustworthy or of any account, he should join the Anglican Church, which he incontinently did, and since, we doubt not, found himself at home. Can it be that he is the writer of the article criticising us?
The reviewer, in favoring us with this bit of philosophy of his own, tells us, in support of it, that Sir William Hamilton says, "All thinking is negation." So much the worse, then, for Sir William Hamilton. All thinking is affirmative, and pure negation can neither think nor be thought. Every thought is a judgment, and affirms both the subject thinking and the object thought, and their relation to each other. This, at least sometimes, is the doctrine of Cousin, as any one may ascertain by reading his essays, Du Fait de Conscience and Du Premier et du dernier Fait de Conscience. [Footnote 35] Though even in these essays the doctrine is mixed up with much that is objectionable, and which leads one, after all, to doubt if the philosopher ever clearly perceived the fact, or the bearing of the fact, he asserted. Cousin often sails along near the coast of truth, sometimes almost rubs his bark against it, without perceiving it. But we hasten on.
[Footnote 35: Fragments Philosophiques, t. i. pp. 248, 256.]