Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good

by Victor Cousin

And were it possible to reduce universal and necessary principles to general principles, in order to employ and apply these principles thus abased, and to found upon them any reasoning whatever, it would be necessary to admit what is called in logic the principle of contradiction, viz., that a thing cannot at the same time be and not be, in order to maintain the integrity of each part of the reasoning; as well as the principle of sufficient reason, which alone establishes their connection and the legitimacy of the conclusion. Now, these two principles, without which there is no reasoning, are themselves universal and necessary principles; so that the circle is manifest.

Even were we to destroy in thought all existences, save that of a single mind, we should be compelled to place in that mind, in order that it might exercise itself at all—and the mind is such only on the condition that it thinks—several necessary principles; it would be beyond the power of thought to conceive it deprived of the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason.

How many times have we demonstrated the vanity of the efforts of the empirical school to disturb the existence or weaken the bearing of universal and necessary principles! Listen to this school: it will say to you that the principle of cause, given by us as universal and necessary, is, after all, only a habit of the mind, which, seeing in nature a fact succeeding another fact, puts between these that connection which we have called the relation of effect to cause. This explanation is nothing but the destruction, not only of the principle of causality, but even of the notion of cause. The senses show me two balls, one of which begins to move, the other of which moves after it. Suppose that this succession is renewed and continues; it will be constancy added to succession; it will by no means be the connection of a causative power with its effect; for example, that which consciousness attests to us is the least effort of volition. Thus a consequent empiricist, like Hume,[19] easily proves that no sensible experience legitimately gives the idea of cause.

What we say of the notion of cause we might say of all notions of the same kind. Let us at least instance those of substance and unity.

The senses perceive only qualities, phenomena. I touch the extension, I see the color, I am sensible of the odor; but do our senses attain the substance that is extended, colored, or odorous? On this point Hume[20] indulges in pleasantries. He asks which one of our senses takes cognizance of substance. What, then, according to him and in the system of empiricism, is the notion of substance? An illusion like the notion of cause.

Neither do the senses give us unity; for unity is identity, is simplicity, and the senses show us every thing in succession and composition. The works of art possess unity only because Art, that is to say, the mind of man puts it there. If we perceive unity in the works of nature, it is not the senses that discover it to us. The arrangement of the different parts of an object may contain unity, but it is a unity of organization, an ideal and moral unity which the mind alone conceives, and which escapes the senses.

If the senses are not able to explain simple notions, much less still are they able to explain the principles in which these notions are met, which are universal and necessary. In fact, the senses clearly perceive such and such facts, but it is impossible for them to embrace what is universal; experience attests what is, it does not reach what cannot but be.

We go farther. Not only is empiricism unable to explain universal and necessary principles; but we maintain that, without these principles, empiricism cannot even account for the knowledge of the sensible world.

Take away the principle of causality, and the human mind is condemned never to go out of itself and its own modifications. All the sensations of hearing, of smell, of taste, of touch, of feeling even, cannot inform you what their cause is, nor whether they have a cause. But give to the human mind the principle of causality, admit that every sensation, as well as every phenomenon, every change, every event, has a cause, as evidently we are not the cause of certain sensations, and that especially these sensations must have a cause, and we are naturally led to recognize for those sensations causes different from ourselves, and that is the first notion of an exterior world. The universal and necessary principle of causality alone gives it and justifies it. Other principles of the same order increase and develop it.

As soon as you know that there are external objects, I ask you whether you do not conceive them in a place that contains them. In order to deny it, it would be necessary to deny that every body is in a place, that is to say, to reject a truth of physics, which is at the same time a principle of metaphysics, as well as an axiom of common sense. But the place that contains a body is often itself a body, which is only more capacious than the first. This new body is in its turn in a place. Is this new place also a body? Then it is contained in another place more extended, and so on; so that it is impossible for you to conceive a body which is not in a place; and you arrive at the conception of a boundless and infinite place, that contains all limited places and all possible bodies: that boundless and infinite place is space.