can deduce nothing from them; they are particular contingent facts, whose existence or non-existence neither affects other facts nor reaches the world of ideas.
These truths are of the purely sensible order, have not of themselves any relation with the order of science, nor can they be elevated to it if not combined with ideal truths. Descartes, when he brought forward the fact of thought and existence, driven as he was by his attempt to raise a scientific edifice, passed unawares from the real to the ideal order. I think, he said; and had he stopped here he would have reduced his philosophy to a simple intuition of consciousness; but he wished to go farther, he wished to reason, and then of necessity availed himself of an ideal truth: whoever thinks exists. Thus with a universal and necessary truth he fecundated his individual and contingent fact; and as he needed some rule to guide him in his onward march, he sought one in the admissibility of the evidence of ideas. And thus also we see how this philosopher, who so toiled in search of unity, came all at once in contact with triplicity: a fact, an objective truth, a criterion: a fact in the consciousness of the subject; an objective truth in the necessary relation of thought with existence; a criterion in the admissibility of the evidence of ideas.
We may defy all the philosophers in the world to reason upon any fact whatever without the aid of ideal truth. We shall find in all facts the same sterility as in the fact of consciousness. This is no conjecture, but a rigid demonstration. Only one existence contains the reason of all other existences; if, then, we do not immediately and intuitively know it, we cannot discover any one real truth, origin of all others.
69. Even supposing there to be in the order of creation a fact of such a nature, that the whole universe is only a simple development of it, we should not therefore have found the real truth source of all science, for it would not enable us to make any advance towards the world of possibility, the ideal order, infinitely superior to that of finite existences.
If we suppose the progress of natural science to lead to the discovery of a single, simple law, which presides over the development of all others, and the application of which, varied according to circumstances, is a sufficient reason of all the phenomena now referred to many and very complicated laws; this would, without doubt, be an immense progress in sciences the object of which is the visible world; but what would it give us to know of the world of intelligences? What of the world of possibility?(6)
CHAPTER VII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ME CANNOT PRODUCE TRANSCENDENTAL SCIENCE.
70. The testimony of consciousness is sure and irresistible, but it has no connection with that of evidence. The object of the one is a particular and contingent fact; that of the other, a necessary truth. That I now think, is to me absolutely certain; but this thought of mine is not a necessary but a decidedly contingent truth; for I might never have thought, or even existed: it is a purely individual fact, is confined to me, and its existence or non-existence in nowise affects universal truths.
Consciousness is an anchor, not a beacon: it saves the understanding from shipwreck, but does not light it on its way; in the assaults of universal doubt, consciousness is at hand to shield it from destruction; but if asked to direct us, it gives us only particular facts.
These facts have no scientific value, except when made objective, or rather, when the mind, reflecting upon them, bathes them in the light of necessary truths.
We think, we feel, we are free; these are facts; but of themselves they are barren. If we would fecundate them, we must take them as a kind of material of universal truths. Thought becomes immovable, it congeals, if deprived of the impulse of these ideas; sensation is common to us and the brutes; and liberty, without combination of motives presented by reason, has no object, no life.
71. Here we discover the cause of the obscurity and sterility of German philosophy since Fichte. Kant fixed himself upon the subject, without, however, destroying objectivity in the internal world; and therefore his philosophy, although containing many errors, offers to the mind some luminous points: but Fichte went farther, planted himself upon the me, and made no use of objectivity, save when it was necessary to the more solid establishment of a fact of consciousness; and so he found only realms of darkness and contradiction.
Men of gifted minds have labored in vain to make some ray of light emanate from a point condemned to obscurity. The soul sees itself in its own acts; and that it presents immediately to itself facts conducing to its own cognition is the only title it has, more than other beings distinct from it, to be conceived by itself. What would it know were it not to perceive its own thought, its will, and the exercise of all its faculties? How is it to discuss its own nature, if not from data furnished by the testimony of its own acts? The me then does not see itself intuitively; is offered to itself only mediately, by its acts; that is, so far as it is known, it is in the same category as all other external beings, which are all known by their effects upon us.
The me in itself considered, is not a luminous point; it supports the fabric of reason, but is not the rule according to which it is to be constructed. The true light is found in objectivity, for it is properly the object of knowledge. The me can neither be known nor thought, save inasmuch as it makes itself its own object, and consequently places itself on a level with other beings subject to intellectual activity, which operates only by virtue of objective truths.
72. Intelligence cannot be conceived without at least internal objects; but if the understanding do not conceive relations and consequently truths in them, they will be sterile. These truths will have no connection, will be isolated facts, if they involve no necessity; and even those relations which refer to particular facts furnished by experience will not be susceptible of any combination if they do not, at least conditionally, involve some necessity. The brilliancy of the light in the room where I now write is in itself a particular, contingent fact, and science, as such, cannot make it its object except by subjecting the movement of the light to geometrical laws, that is, to necessary truths.
Science then may find a resting-point in the me itself as subject, but no point of departure. The individual is of no service to the universal, nor the contingent to the necessary. Assuredly there would be no such thing as the individual A's science, if the individual A himself did not exist; but the science which stands in need of the individual subject is not science properly so called, but the collection of individual acts by which the individual perceives science. This collection of acts is not the science perceived, which is something common to all intellects, and does not need this or that individual: the fund of truths constituting science does not spring from this collection of individual acts, particular facts, which are lost like minutest drops in the ocean of intelligence.
How then can science be based solely upon the subjective me? How can the object be made to spring from this subject? Consciousness has no connection with science, except in so far as it furnishes facts to which we may apply objective, universal, and necessary principles, independent of all finite individuality, constituting the patrimony of human reason, but not requiring the existence of any man.
73. No analysis of the facts of consciousness will produce the origin of the lights of science. Such an act would be either direct or reflex. If direct, its value is objective not subjective, the act does not found science, but the truth perceived, not the subject but the object, not the me, but that which is seen by the me. If reflex, it supposes another previous act, to wit, the object of reflection, which is primitive, and not the act.
Neither is the combination of the direct with the reflex act of any service to science, except as connected with necessary and objective truths, which are independent of the subject. An act individually
