with a radical vice, which would oblige it to view these phenomena as means of perceiving the truth, whereas they are only eternal sources of deception.
153. There may arise a doubt in this correspondence of general with particular truth, as to which is the principle; that is, whether general truth is truth by means of particular truths, or the contrary. "All the diameters of a circle are equal;" this is a general truth. If we suppose a circle to exist, all its diameters will be equal. We have already seen that the certainty of the general truth neither does nor can reach us through the particular truth; but neither, on the other hand, does the particular stand in need of the general; so that it seems, that even when we abstract all intelligence, capable of perceiving this general truth, the existing circle will not cease to have all its diameters equal.
154. Moreover, if the truth fail in one single instance, it cannot be general; but the particular may be true although it fail in general. The equality of the diameters of an existing circle is, then, a condition necessary to the general truth; but the general truth is not necessary to the equality of the diameters. It is true in general that all diameters are equal, since this is verified in all either existing or possible, and the general truth is only the expression of this verification; but yet it does not appear that the diameters, in any one particular case, are equal by reason of the general truth. It is true that one particular whole is greater than one of its parts, although considered in itself, abstracted from all general truth; but it would not be true that the whole is greater than one of its parts, if in any one particular whole, the axiom should fail.
155. It would seem that from these observations we could infer that the truth of principles depends upon the truth of facts, and not vice versa. Nevertheless, if we reflect more upon this matter, we shall discover that truth is not based upon particular facts, but upon something superior to them.
I. We cannot from a particular fact infer a universal truth; but from universal truth we can infer the truth of all particular existing or possible facts. The reason why this consequence is legitimate is found in the necessary connection of the predicate and subject; and this necessity cannot be discovered in particular facts of their own nature contingent.
II. Neither can the reason of this necessity be found in the simple proposition enunciating it, since this establishes nothing, but only expresses. The enunciation is true, because it expresses the truth; but the existence of the truth does not depend upon its enunciation.
III. Nor can it depend upon our ideas; for these are not productive of things; all imaginable perceptions cannot change one iota of reality. The idea may express a thing, but does not make it. The relation of ideas with each other, in so far avails as it expresses the relation of objects; if for one moment we permit ourselves to doubt this correspondence, our reason becomes reduced to utter impotence, to a vain illusion of that which ought to be of no account. The properties of the triangle are contained in the idea we have of it; but if this idea were purely subjective, if it had no exact or approximate relation to any real or possible object, it and all that is built upon it, would be mere phenomena of our mind, would signify absolutely nothing, and would have no more weight than the ravings of a madman.
IV. The reason of necessary truths can in nowise be discovered in our understanding; every one perceives them, without thinking of others or even of himself. Truth existed before any individual; and when we shall have disappeared, it will continue the same, it will lose nothing.
V. All men, although they neither do nor can agree, perceive certain necessary truths; all individual intelligences, therefore, have drunk at some common fountain; therefore universal reason exists.
CHAPTER XXV.
IN WHAT DOES UNIVERSAL REASON CONSIST?
156. What is universal reason? If we consider it as a simple idea, as an abstraction from individual reason, as something separate from them, but not real, we strike upon the very rock we try to shun. We endeavor to assign a cause of the unity of human reason; and appeal to universal reason; and then to explain in what universal reason consists, we recur to an abstraction from individual reason. Evidently, this is a vicious circle; we place the cause of a fact so fruitful in an abstraction, in a generalization of the very thing we have to explain; we assign to a great effect a cause totally insufficient, which has no existence out of our understanding, and which only grows out of the very effect whose origin we are investigating.
157. A real fact must have a real principle; a universal phenomenon must have a universal cause; a phenomenon independent of all finite intelligence must spring from some cause independent of all finite intelligence. There is, then, a universal reason, the origin of all finite reason, the source of all truth, the light of all intelligences, the bond of all beings. There is, then, above all phenomena, above all finite individuals, a being, in which is found the reason of all beings, a great unity, in which is found the bond of all order, and of all the community of other beings.
The unity, therefore, of all human reason affords a complete demonstration of the existence of God. The universal reason is; but universal reason is an unmeaning word, unless it denote an intelligent, active being, a being by essence, the producer of all beings, of all intelligences, the cause of all, and the light of all.
158. Impersonal reason, of which some philosophers speak, is an unmeaning word. Either there exists a reason distinct from ours, or there does not: if it does exist, it is not impersonal; if it does not exist, it is impossible to explain the community of human reason: this community would be to us a phenomenon, which we might call impersonal reason, or any thing else we pleased, without it therefore being possible for us to assign it any origin: it would be an effect without a cause; a fact without a sufficient reason.
159. The understanding extends to a world of possibilities, and there discovers a connection of necessary relations, some of dependence, others of contradiction: but if there were no reality whereon to found the possibility, this would be an absurdity; if nothing existed, nothing would be possible.
Upon nothing, nothing can be founded; consequently, not even possibility. The connection of necessary relations which we discover in possible beings, must have a primitive type to which they refer: but in nothing there are no types.
160. The assemblage of human understandings cannot establish possibility. No one of them considered isolately is necessary to general truth; and all together cannot have what no one of them has. We conceive necessary truth, absolutely abstracted from the human understanding: individual understandings appear and disappear, but work no change in the relations of possible beings: on the contrary, the understanding needs, in order to exercise its functions, a collection of pre-existing truths, and without them it cannot work.
What any one individual understanding requires, all require. Their union does not increase the strength of each one: since this union is nothing more than an assemblage formed in our mind, and may not correspond to any thing in reality except the individual understandings, and their respective strength.
161. Necessary truths, therefore, exist before human reason; but their pre-existence is an unmeaning word, if they be not referred to a being, the origin of all reality, and the foundation of all possibility. There is then no impersonal reason properly so called; there is a community of reason in so far as one and the same light illumines all finite intelligences; God the creator of them all.
CHAPTER XXVI.
REMARKS ON THE REAL FOUNDATION OF PURE POSSIBILITY
162. Since the argument proving the necessity of a being in which is laid the foundation of all the relations in the possible order, is one of the most transcendental in all metaphysics, and at the same time one of the most difficult to be perfectly understood, we judge it advisable to enlarge somewhat upon the considerations thrown out in the preceding chapter.
An
