be taken to be conceptions of things in general, and consequently, of transcendental use, nothing remains to be done, so far as they are concerned, but to preserve the logical functions in judgments, as the condition of the possibility of the things themselves, without being able to show in what case, their application and their object, and consequently they themselves, may, in the pure understanding, and without the intervention of sensibility, have a meaning and an objective value.
"It incontestably follows from what has been said, that pure conceptions of the understanding can never have a transcendental use, but only an empirical use; and that the principles of the pure understanding do not refer to the objects of the senses, except when the senses are in relation with the general conditions of a possible experience; but never to things in general, without relation to the way in which we may perceive them."8
66. Thus Kant destroys all metaphysical science, and, involved in its deplorable ruins, perish the most fundamental, most precious, and most sacred ideas of the human mind. According to him, transcendental analysis makes us see that the understanding can never pass the limits of sensibility, the only limits within which objects are given to us in intuition. These principles which were regarded as eternal pillars of the scientific edifice sink into empty forms, into words without meaning, so soon as they rise from the sphere of sensibility.
Ontology, with its transcendental doctrines, avails not in the eyes of the German philosopher to explain the nature and origin of things. "These principles," he says, "are simply principles of the exposition of phenomena; and the proud name of an ontology which pretends to give an a priori, synthetic cognition of things, in a systematic doctrine, for example, the principle of causality, ought to be replaced by the modest denomination of simple analysis of the pure understanding."
67. It would be hard to find a more noxious doctrine. What is left to the human mind when all means of rising from the sensible sphere are taken away? To what is our understanding reduced, if its most fundamental ideas, and its noblest principles can teach nothing concerning the nature of things? If the corporeal world is for us nothing but a collection of sensible phenomena, beyond which we can know nothing, our cognitions have nothing real, they are all purely subjective; the soul lives on illusions, and vanishes with its imaginary creations, to which there is nothing to correspond in reality. Space is but a subjective form; time is but a subjective form; pure ideas are empty conceptions, and all in us is subjective. We know nothing of objects, we are totally ignorant of what is; we know only what appears. This is pure skepticism; assuredly it was not necessary to consume so much time in analytical investigations to get thus far. The doctrine of Kant presents no extravagance so outrageous, no error so hideous, as the works of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; but it contains the germ of the greatest extravagance, and of the most fatal errors. He has made a philosophical revolution, which some have incautiously deemed a progress; but doubtless they did not detect the skepticism it contains, which is the more dangerous, the more it is enveloped in analytical forms.
68. Notwithstanding the importance justly attached to the refutation of the German philosopher's errors, I do not deem it necessary to combat his doctrines step by step; this system of refutation labors under the serious objection that it gives little satisfaction to the reader, who seems to see one edifice torn down, but not replaced by another. I consider it more useful carefully to examine questions as they arise in the order of their subjects, to establish my opinion as best I can, and there to refute Kant's errors as I find them obstructing the march of truth. It is ordinarily very easy to say what a thing is not; but it is not so easy to say what it is; and it is not proper that the advocates of sound doctrine should be charged with impugning false doctrines, and not caring to expose their own. We believe that in these matters sound philosophy may be presented to the light of the day struggling against error, and that it ought not to rest satisfied with being the instrument of war to overthrow its adversary, but that it should aspire to found a noble and enduring edifice upon the very site the other occupied.
The minds of men are not satisfied with simple refutations; they desire to have a doctrine substituted in the place of the one impugned. Whoever impugns, denies; and the understanding is not satisfied with negations; it wants affirmation, for it cannot live without positive truth.
We have permitted ourselves this brief digression, which is indeed far from being useless; for at the sight of the transcendency of the German philosopher's errors I have recollected the necessity of careful, assiduous, and profound labor to oppose this deluge of errors which threatens to inundate the whole field of truth; and we could not do less than insist upon this point, and observe that it is not enough to tear down, but that it is also necessary to build up. Refutations will soon come; but let positive doctrines abound. It is not enough to cover the long line of frontiers where error makes its attacks, with light and active troops which may fall upon the enemy; it is necessary to found colonies, foci of cultivation and civilization, who will defend the country, at the same time that they make it flourish and prosper.
CHAPTER X.
SENSIBLE INTUITION
69. Intuition, properly so called, consists in the act of the soul by which it perceives an object that effects it: this the signification of the Latin word derived from the verb intueri, to see a thing which is present, indicates.
70. Intuition belongs only to perceptive powers, to those by which the subject affected distinguishes between its affection and the object causing it. We do not pretend to say that this must be a reflex distinction, but simply that the internal act must refer to an object. If we suppose a being to experience various affections, but to neither refer them to any object, nor reflect upon them itself; this being can never with propriety be said to have true intuition, for intuition seems to involve the exercise of an activity occupied with a present object. The object of intuition need not always be an external being; it may be an affection or action of the soul made objective by a reflex act.
71. The sensations which are with the greatest propriety called intuitive, are those of sight and touch; for, since it is impossible for us, when we perceive extension, to regard it as a purely subjective fact, the acts of seeing and feeling necessarily involve relation to an object. The other senses, although they may have a certain relation to extension, do not perceive it directly, so that were they to stand alone, they would partake more of the affective than of the intuitive; that is, the soul would be affected by the sensations, but would be under no necessity of referring them to external objects. If reflection made upon these sensations come to teach, as in effect it would teach that their cause is a being distinct from those that experience them, there would be no true intuition; not for the senses, because they would remain foreign to complex combinations; nor for the understanding, because it would then know the cause of the sensations, not by intuition, but by discursion.
72. We infer from this, that not every sensation is an intuition; and that the imaginary reproductions of past sensations, or the imaginary production of possible sensations, although repeatedly styled intuitions, are, since they do not refer to an object, unworthy of the name. We ought, nevertheless, to observe that the phenomena of purely internal sensibility do, perhaps, owe to the habit of reflection their non-reference to objects. Reflection perceives the difference of time, the more or less vividness of sensations, their greater or less constant connection, and also other circumstances; and it is enabled by these to distinguish between representations which do really refer to an object, such as external sensations, and those that have only a past or possible object, such as purely internal representations. Thus experience teaches us that the purely internal sensibility, wholly abandoned to itself, transfers whatever is presented to it to the external world, without the aid of reflection, and converts imaginary appearances into realities. This is verified in sleep, or even in our waking hours, when by some cerebral inversion the sensibility works by itself alone, and entirely free of reflection.
73. The reason why the sensibility left to itself, renders all its impressions objective, is to be looked for
