Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2). Balmes Jaime Luciano
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 example, in which we undertake to establish the possibility of things, independently of a being in which is found the reason of all, will serve our purpose better than abstract reflections.
163. "Two circles of equal diameters are equal." This proposition is evidently true. Let us analyze its meaning. The proposition refers to the possible order, and abstracts absolutely the existence of the circles and of the diameters. No case is excepted; all are comprised in the proposition.
164. Neither does the truth refer to our mode of understanding; but on the contrary, we conceive it as independent of our thought. Were we asked, what would become of this truth were we not to exist, we should without hesitation reply that it would be the same, that it acquired nothing by our existence, that it would lose nothing by our extinction. If we believed this truth to depend in any way upon us, it would cease to be what it is, it would no longer be a necessary but a contingent truth.
165. Nor is the corporeal world indispensable to the truth and necessity of the proposition: on the contrary, if we suppose no body to exist, the proposition would lose none of its truth, necessity, or universality.
166. What would happen, if, withdrawing all bodies, all sensible representations, and even all intelligences, we should imagine absolute and universal nothing? We see the truth of the proposition even on this supposition; for it is impossible for us to hold it to be false. On every supposition, our understanding sees a connection which it cannot destroy: the condition once established, the result will infallibly follow.
167. An absolutely necessary connection, founded neither on us, nor on the external world, which exists before any thing we can imagine, and subsists after we have annihilated all by an effort of our understanding, must be based upon something, it cannot have nothing for its origin: to say this, would be to assert a necessary fact without a sufficient reason.
168. It is true that in the proposition now before us, nothing real is affirmed; but if we reflect carefully, we find even here the greatest difficulty for those who deny a real foundation to pure possibility. What is remarkable in this phenomenon, is precisely this, that our understanding feels itself forced to give its assent to a proposition which affirms an absolutely necessary connection without any relation to an existing object. It is conceivable that an intelligence affected by other beings may know their nature and relations; but it is not so easy of comprehension how it can discover their nature and relations in an absolutely necessary manner, when it abstracts all existence, when the ground upon which the eyes of the understanding are fixed, is the abyss of nothing.
169. We deceive ourselves when we imagine it possible to abstract all existence. Even when we suppose our mind to have lost sight of every thing, a very easy supposition, granting that we find in our consciousness the contingency of our being, the understanding still perceives a possible order, and imagines it to be all occupied with pure possibility, independent of a being on which it is based. We repeat, that this is an illusion, which disappears so soon as we reflect upon it. In pure nothing, nothing is possible; there are no relations, no connections of any kind; in nothing there are no combinations, it is a ground upon which nothing can be pictured.
170. The objectivity of our ideas and the perception of necessary relations in a possible order, reveal a communication of our understanding with a being on which is founded all possibility. This possibility can be explained on no supposition except that which makes the communication consist in the action of God giving to our mind faculties perceptive of the necessary relation of certain ideas, based upon necessary being, and representative of his infinite essence.
171. Without this communication the order of pure possibility means nothing: none of the combinations referable to it contain any truth: and this ruins all science. There can be no necessary relations if there be no necessity upon which they are based, and where they are represented; if this condition be wanting, all cognitions must refer to something actually existing; they are even limited to what appears, to what affects us, and they cannot affirm any thing beyond the actual order. Science, in this supposition, is unworthy of the name; it is nothing but a collection of facts, gathered together in the field of experience; we cannot say: "This will be, or will not be; this may be, or may not be;" we are necessarily limited to what is; or, rather, we ought to confine ourselves to that which affects us by simple appearances, and never be able to rise above the sphere of individual phenomena.
CHAPTER XXVII.
INDIVIDUAL AND INTELLECTUAL PHENOMENA EXPLAINED BY THE UNIVERSAL SUBSISTING REASON
172. Starting from the phenomena observable in individual reason, we have arrived at universal reason. Let us, so to speak, make the counterproof; taking this universal subsisting reason, let us see if individual reason in itself and in its phenomena can be explained by it.
I. What are necessary truths? They are the relations of beings, such as they are represented in the being which contains the plenitude of being. These necessary truths, then, stand in need of no individual finite reason; their reason is found in an infinite being.
II. The essence of all beings, abstracted from all particular beings, is something real, not in itself, and separately, but in the being which contains the plenitude of every thing.
III. On this supposition science is not full of empty words, nor of mere creations of our reason, but of necessary relations represented in a necessary being, and known by it from all eternity.
IV. Science is possible; there is some necessity in contingent objects; their destruction does not destroy the eternal types of all being, the only object of science.
V. All individual reason, sprung from the same source, participates in one same light, lives one same life, has one and the same patrimony, is indivisible in the creative principle, but divisible in creatures. The unity, then, or rather the uniformity or community of human reason is possible, is necessary.
VI. The reason, then, of all men is united by the infinite intelligence: God then is in us; and the most profound philosophical truth is contained in these words of the Apostle: "In ipso vivimus, movemur, et sumus."
VII. All philosophy, therefore, which seeks