first is that our perceptions being every thing for us, we are perfectly, completely, and necessarily sure of whatever we actually feel.
The second is that consequently none of our judgments, separately taken, can be erroneous: inasmuch as we see one idea in another it is actually there; but their falsity, when it takes place, is purely relative to anterior judgments, which we permit to subsist; and it consists in this, that we believe the idea in which we perceive a new element to be the same as that we have always had under the same sign, when it is really different, since the new element which we actually see there is incompatible with some of those which we have previously seen; so that to avoid contradiction we must either take away the former or not admit the latter.
From these two facts or principles I deduce here fourteen aphorisms or maxims, which constitute in my opinion the whole art of logic, such as it proceeds from the true science of logic.
According to the last of these aphorisms, which enjoins us to abstain from judging while we have not sufficient data, I speak of the theory of probability.
The science of probability is not the same thing as the calculation of probability. It consists in the research of data and in their combination. The calculation consists only in the latter part: it may be very just, and yet lead to results very false. Of this the mathematicians have not been sufficiently aware. They have taken it for the whole science.
The science of probability is not then a particular science; as a research of data it makes a part of each of the sciences on which these data depend; as a calculation of data it is an employment of the science of quantity.
The science of probability is properly the conjectural part of each of the branches of our knowledge, in some of which calculation may be employed.
But it is necessary to see well what are those of which the ideas are, from their nature, susceptible of shades sufficiently precise and determinate to be referred to the exact divisions of the names of numbers and of cyphers, and in order that in the sequel we may apply to them the rigorous language of the science of quantities. To this again the mathematicians have not paid sufficient attention. They have believed that every thing consisted in calculation, and this has betrayed them into frightful errors.
In the state in which the science of probability is as yet, if it be one, I have thought I should confine myself to this small number of reflections, intended to determine well its nature, its means, and its object.
Second Section
of the
Elements of Ideology, or a treatise on the will and its effects.
Introduction.
SECTION 1.
The faculty of will is a mode and a consequence of the faculty of perception.
We have just finished the examination of our means of knowledge. We must employ them in the study of our faculty of will to complete the history of our intellectual faculties.
The faculty of willing produces in us the ideas of wants and means, of riches and deprivation, of rights and duties, of justice and injustice, which flow from the idea of property, which is itself derived from the idea of personality.
It is necessary therefore first to examine this latter, and to explain beforehand with accuracy what the faculty of willing is.
The faculty of willing is that of finding some one thing preferable to another.
It is a mode and a consequence of the faculty of feeling.
SECTION 2.
From the faculty of will arise the ideas of personality and property.
The self of every one of us is for him his own sensibility.
Thus sensibility alone gives to a certain point, the idea of personality.
But the mode of sensibility, called the will or willing faculty, can alone render this idea of personality complete; it is then only that it can produce the idea of property as we have it.
The idea of property arises then solely from the faculty of will; and moreover it arises necessarily from it, for we cannot have an idea of self without having that of the property in all the faculties of self and in their effects.
If it was not thus, if there was not amongst us a natural and necessary property, there never would have been a conventional or artificial property.
This truth is the foundation of all economy, and of all morality; which are in their principles but one and the same science.
SECTION 3.
From the faculty of will arise all our wants and all our means.
The same intellectual acts emanating from our faculty of will, which cause us to acquire a distinct and complete idea of self, and of exclusive property in all its modes, are also those which render us susceptible of wants, and are the source of all our means of providing for those wants.
For 1st. Every desire is a want, and every want is never but the need of satisfying a desire. Desire is always in itself a pain.
2d. When our sensitive system re-acts on our muscular system these desires have the property of directing our actions, and thus of producing all our means.
Labour, the employment of our force, constitutes our only treasure and our only power.
Thus it is the faculty of will which renders us proprietors of wants and means, of passion and action, of pain and power.
Thence arise the ideas of riches and deprivation.
SECTION 4.
From the faculty of will arise also the ideas of riches and deprivation.
Whatsoever contributes, mediately or immediately, to the satisfaction of our wants is for us a good; that is to say, a thing the possession of which is a good.
To be rich is to possess these goods; to be poor is to be without them.
They arise all from the employment of our faculties, of which they are the effect and representation.
These goods have all two values amongst us; the one is that of the sacrifices they cost to him who produces them, the other that of the advantages which they procure for him who has acquired them.
The labour from which they emanate has then these two values.
Yes, labour has these two values. The one is the sum of the objects necessary to the satisfaction of the wants that arise inevitably in an animated being during the operation of his labour. The other is the mass of utility resulting from this labour.
The latter value is eventual and variable.
The first is natural and necessary. It has not
