considered, is an internal phenomenon, which, apart from objective truths, teaches us nothing. It has, indeed, a scientific value, if considered under the general ideas of being, cause, effect, principle or product of activity, modification, or its relations with its subject, which is the substratum of other similar acts; that is, if it be considered as a particular case, comprised in the general ideas as a contingent phenomenon, to be appreciated by the help of necessary truths, as an experimental fact to which a theory may be applied.
The reflex act is only a cognition of a cognition, feeling, or some other internal phenomenon; and therefore all reflection upon consciousness presupposes a prior direct act. The object of this direct act is not the me; the fundamental principle of the cognition therefore is not the me, as the object known, but only as the necessary condition, since there cannot be thought without a thinking subject.
74. These considerations destroy the very foundations of the system of Fichte, and that of all who take the human me as their point of departure on the voyage of science. The me, in itself, is not presented to us; we know it only by its acts; and herein it participates of a quality of other objects, the essence of which is not immediately offered to us, but only what emanates from it by the exercise of their activity upon us.
Thus guided by objective and necessary truths, which are the laws of our understanding, the type of the relations of beings, and consequently a sure standard of them, we ascend by reasoning to the cognition of things themselves. We know that our mind is simple, because it thinks, whereas the composite, the multiplex cannot think. It is thus we know the me. We are conscious of its thinking activity, and this is the material furnished by the fact, but then comes the principle, the objective truth to illumine the fact, and show the repugnance between thought and composition, and the necessary connection between simplicity and consciousness.
Upon examination, this reasoning will be found to apply not only to the me, but to every thinking being; and this is why we can extend our demonstration to all such beings: the me, therefore, which applies this truth, does not create, it only knows it, and knows itself to be a particular case comprised in the general rule.
75. To pretend that truth has its source in the subjective me, is to begin by supposing the me to be an absolute, infinite being, the origin of all truths, and the reason of all beings; which is equivalent to making philosophy commence by deifying the human understanding. But as one individual has no more right to this deification than another, to admit it is to establish a rational pantheism, which, as we shall hereafter see, is nearly, if not quite, identical with absolute pantheism.
If we suppose individual reason to be only a phenomenon of the one absolute reason, and consequently what we call spirits not to be true substances, but modifications of a single spirit, and each particular consciousness to be only a manifestation of the universal consciousness, we can then conceive why the source of all truth is sought in the me, and why we interrogate our own consciousness as a kind of oracle through which the universal consciousness speaks. But the difficulty is that such a supposition is gratuitous, and that they who thus seek the reason of all truths, begin by establishing the most incomprehensible and absurd of propositions. Who will persuade us that our consciousness is only the modification of another? Who will make us believe that what we call the me is common to all men, to all intelligent beings, and that the only difference between them is the difference of the modifications of one absolute being? Why, then, is not this absolute being conscious of every consciousness which it comprises? Why does it not know that which it contains, and by which it is modified? Why does it believe itself multiplex, if indeed it be one? Where is the bond of this multiplicity? If each particular consciousness were only a modification, would it preserve its unity, and a connected series of all that happens to it, when this series, this unity is wanting to the substance which it modifies?
76. However this may be, not even by supposing pantheism, can the friends of subjective philosophy at all advance their pretensions. With pantheism they legitimate, so to speak, their pretension, but do not realize it. They call themselves gods, and as such, have a reason for the source of truth being in them; but as there is in their consciousness only one apparition of their divinity only one phase of the orb of light, they can only see in it what it presents to them; and their divinity finds itself subjected to certain laws which make it impossible for it to give the light demanded by philosophy.
77. If we interrogate our consciousness upon necessary truths, we shall perceive that, far from pretending to found or to create them, it both knows and confesses them to be independent of itself. If, thinking of this proposition: "It is impossible for a thing to be, and not be at the same time;" we ask ourselves if the truth of this originates in our thought, consciousness at once answers that it does not. The proposition was true before our consciousness existed; and should it now cease to exist, the proposition would still be true; true, also, when we do not think of it: the soul is as an eye which contemplates the sun, but is not, therefore, necessary to the existence of the sun.
78. Another consideration demonstrates the sterility of all philosophy which seeks in the me alone the sole and universal origin of human knowledge. Every cognition requires an object; purely subjective cognition is inconceivable; although we suppose the subject and object to be identified, duality of relation, real or conceived, is still necessary; that is, the subject as known must stand in a certain opposition—opposition at least conceived—with itself as subject knowing. Now, what is the object sought in the primitive act? Is it something not the subject? Then the philosophy of the subject falls into the current of other philosophies, since in this something which is not the subject are objective truths. Is it the subject itself? Then we ask, is it the subject in itself or in its acts; if the subject in its acts, then the philosophy is reduced to ideological analysis, and has no special characteristic; if the subject in itself, we say it is not known intuitively, and least of all can they who call it the absolute pretend to this cognition; it is for them even more than for others a dark abyss. In vain will you stoop over this abyss, and shout for truth; the dull rumbling which reaches your ears is only the echo of your own voice; the profound cavern rolls back to you only your own words still more hollow and mysterious.
79. Eminent among the philosophers most given to empty cavils is the author of the Doctrine of Science, Fichte, of whose system Madame de Staël ingenuously remarked, that it very much resembled the awakening of Pygmalion's statue from sleep, which, turning alternately to itself and to its pedestal said, I am, I am not.
Fichte says, in the beginning of his work entitled Doctrine of Science, that he proposes to seek the most absolute principle, the absolutely unconditioned principle of all human knowledge. This his method is erroneous: he begins by supposing what is unknown, and does not even suspect that there may be a true multiplicity in the basis of human cognitions. We believe that there may be, and that there really is such a multiplicity, that the sources of our knowledge are various, and of different orders, and that we cannot reduce them to unity without leaving man and ascending to God. We repeat it, this equivocation has become exceedingly general, and its only result has been uselessly to fatigue inquiring minds or to drive them to extravagant systems.
Few philosophers have toiled harder than Fichte after this absolute principle; and yet, to speak plainly, he accomplishes nothing; he either repeats Descartes' principle, or amuses himself with a play upon words. We feel pity at seeing him labor so earnestly to so little purpose. We beg the reader to follow us with patience in our examination of the German philosopher's doctrine, not with the hope of finding a thread to serve as a clue to the Dædalus of philosophy, but in order to judge, with a knowledge of the cause, doctrines which have made so much noise in the world.
"If this principle," says Fichte, "is absolutely the first, it can neither be defined nor demonstrated. It must express the act, which neither is nor can be presented among the empirical determinations of our consciousness, but rather lies at the bottom of all consciousness, and alone makes consciousness possible."[4]
Without any
