So the philosophy which we teach rests neither upon hypothetical principles, nor upon empirical principles. It is observation itself, but observation applied to the higher portion of our knowledge, which furnishes us with the principles that we seek, with a point of departure at once solid and elevated.[24]
This point of departure we have found, and we do not abandon it. We remain immovably attached to it. The study of universal and necessary principles, considered under their different aspects, and in the great problems which they solve, is almost the whole of philosophy; it fills it, measures it, divides it. If psychology is the regular study of the human mind and its laws, it is evident that that of universal and necessary principles which preside over the exercise of reason, is the especial domain of psychology, which in Germany is called rational psychology, and is very different from empirical psychology. Since logic is the examination of the value and the legitimacy of our different means of knowing, its most important employment must be to estimate the value and the legitimacy of the principles which are the foundations of our most important cognitions. In fine, the meditation of these same principles conducts us to theodicea, and opens to us the sanctuary of philosophy, if we would ascend to their true source, to that sovereign reason which is the first and last explanation of our own.
LECTURE II.
ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.
Résumé of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the origin of universal and necessary principles.—Danger of this question, and its necessity.—Different forms under which truth presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms: theory of spontaneity and reflection.—The primitive form of principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form, and gives them their actual form.—Examination and refutation of the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an induction founded on particular notions.
We may regard as a certain conquest of the experimental method and of true psychological analysis, the establishment of principles which at the same time that they are given to us by the surest of all experiences, that of consciousness, have a bearing superior to experience, and open to us regions inaccessible to empiricism. We have recognized such principles at the head of nearly all the sciences; then, searching among our different faculties for that which may have given them to us, we have ascertained that it is impossible to refer them to any other faculty than to that general faculty of knowing which we call reason, very different from reasoning, to which it furnishes its laws.
That is the point at which we have arrived. But is it possible to stop there?
In human intelligence, as it is now developed, universal and necessary principles are offered to us under forms in some sort consecrated. The principle of causality, for example, is thus enounced to us:—Every thing that begins to appear necessarily has a cause. Other principles have this same axiomatic form. But have they always had it, and did they spring from the human mind with this logical and scholastic apparel, as Minerva sprang all armed from the head of Jupiter? With what characters did they show themselves at first, before taking those in which they are now clothed, and which can scarcely be their primitive characters? In a word, is it possible to find the origin of universal and necessary principles, and the route which they must have followed in order to arrive at what they are to-day? A new problem, the importance of which it is easy to feel; for, if it can be resolved, what light will be shed upon these principles! On the other hand, what difficulties must be encountered! How can we penetrate to the sources of human knowledge, which are concealed, like those of the Nile? Is it not to be feared that, in plunging into the obscure past, instead of truth, one may encounter an hypothesis; that, attaching himself, then, to this hypothesis, he may transport it from the past to the present, and that, being deceived in regard to the origin of principles, he may be led to misconceive their actual and certain characters, or, at least, to mutilate and enfeeble those which the adopted origin would not easily explain? This danger is so great, this rock is so celebrated in shipwrecks, that before braving it one should know how to take many precautions against the seductions of the spirit of the system. It is even conceived that great philosophers, who were timid in no place, have suppressed the perilous problem. In fact, by undertaking to grapple with this problem at first, Locke and Condillac went far astray,[25] and it must be said, corrupted all philosophy at its source. The empirical school, which lauds the experimental method so much, turns its back upon it, thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the actual characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by consciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. Reid[26] and Kant[27] showed themselves much more observing by confining themselves within the limits of the present, through fear of losing themselves in the darkness of the past. Both freely treat of universal and necessary principles in the form which they now have, without asking what was their primitive form. We much prefer this wise circumspection to the adventurous spirit of the empirical school. Nevertheless, when a problem is given out, so long as it is not solved, it troubles and besets the human mind. Philosophy ought not to shun it then, but its duty is to approach it only with extreme prudence and a severe method.
We cannot recollect too well, for the sake of others and ourselves, that the primitive state of human cognitions is remote from us; we can scarcely bring it within the reach of our vision and submit it to observation; the actual state, on the contrary, is always at our disposal: it is sufficient for us to enter into ourselves, to fathom consciousness by reflection, and make it give up what it contains. Setting out from certain facts, we shall not be liable to wander subsequently into hypotheses, or if, in ascending to the primitive state, we fall into any error, we shall be able to perceive it and repair it by the aid of the truth which an impartial observation shall have given us; every origin which shall not legitimately end at the point where we are, is by that alone convicted of being false, and will deserve to be discarded.[28]
You know that a large portion of the last year was spent upon this question. We took, one by one, universal and necessary questions submitted to our examination, in order to determine the origin of each one of them, its primitive form, and the different forms which have successively clothed it; only after having operated thus upon a sufficiently large number of principles, did we come slowly to a general conclusion, and that conclusion we believe ourselves entitled to express here briefly as the solid result of a most circumspect analysis, and, at least, a most methodical labor. We must either renew before you this labor, this analysis, and thereby run the risk of not being able to complete the long course that we have marked out for ourselves, or we must limit ourselves to reminding you of the essential traits of the theory at which we arrived.