Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2). Balmes Jaime Luciano
which has not previously been in the senses: nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu.
Kant says: sensible intuitions of themselves are blind. The scholastics said: sensible species, or those of the imagination, also called phantasmata, are not intelligible.
Kant says: it is necessary to make conceptions sensible by giving them an object in intuition. The scholastics said: it is impossible to understand, either by acquiring science, or by using that already acquired, unless the understanding directs itself to sensible species, "sine conversione ad phantasmata."
Kant says: it is indispensable to render intuitions intelligible by subjecting them to conceptions. The scholastics said: it is necessary to make sensible species intelligible in order that they may be the object of the understanding.
Kant says: we judge by means of conceptions; and that judgment is the mediate cognition of an object, and consequently its representation. The scholastics said: we know objects by means of an intelligible species, which is derived from the sensible species, and is its intelligible representation.
Kant says, that in every judgment there is a conception applicable to many things, and that under this plurality it comprises also a given representation which is referred immediately to its object. The scholastics said, that the intelligible species was applicable to many things, because universal; that, when separated from a sensible and particular species, it abstracts from all material and individuating conditions, and consequently embraces all individual objects in one common representation.
Kant uses the words conception, and to conceive, to denote the intellectual act, form, or whatever it may be, by which the understanding, making use of sensible intuitions, combines the materials offered by sensibility conformably to the laws of the intellectual order. The scholastics likewise taught that the intelligible species, called also species impressed, fecundated the understanding by producing in it an intellectual conception, whence resulted the word, internal locution, or species expressed, which they also styled conception.
Kant says, that the cognition of human intelligence is a cognition by conceptions, not intuitive, but discursive and general, and that out of the sphere of sensibility there is for us no true intuition. The scholastics said: our understanding, in this life, has a necessary relation to the nature of material things, and for this reason it cannot primo et per se, know immaterial substances: hence it happens that we know them perfectly only by certain comparisons with material things, and chiefly by way of removal, per viam remotionis, in a negative way.
53. The sample we have just given is exceedingly interesting, since it enables us to appreciate as they merit the points of similarity in these two systems, which occupy a prominent place in the history of ideology, – a similarity which has not always hitherto been sufficiently noticed, although apparent upon the simple perusal of the German philosopher. Nor is this extraordinary: the study of the scholastics is exceedingly difficult; one must accommodate one's self to the language, the style, the opinions, and the prejudices of their epoch, and travel over much useless ground to collect a little pure ore. Note well, however, that I do not pretend to discover the "Critic of Pure Reason" in the works of the scholastics, I would only mark a fact but little known; it is that whatever is good, fundamental, and conclusive against the sensism of Condillac, in the German philosopher's system, had been said ages before by the scholastics.
Are we hence to infer that Kant took his doctrine from these authors? We cannot say; but we believe it may, with some reason, be asserted, that possibly the German philosopher, a man of vast reading, most retentive memory, and very laborious, may have received certain inspirations, reminiscences of which glimmer through his doctrines. A writer is not a plagiarist, although he make ideas his own which have originated with others. But it is often true that man imagines he creates, when he only recollects.
54. Although the German philosopher agrees with the scholastics in the observation of the primitive faculties of our mind, he differs from them in their application; and whilst they go on preparing a philosophical dogmatism, he marches towards a despairing skepticism. Nothing that all the most eminent philosophers have regarded as indisputable, can stand in the eyes of the German philosopher. True, he has distinguished the sensible from the intelligible order; he has recognized two primitive faculties in our soul; sensibility and the understanding; he has indicated the line which divides them, and carefully remarked that it should never be effaced; but, on the other hand, he has reduced the sensible world to a collection of pure phenomena, and explains space in such a way as to render it extremely difficult to avoid the idealism of Berkeley. He has also, so to speak, walled in the understanding by preventing all communication with it, excepting by sensible experience, and has resolved all the elements that meet in it into empty forms, which lead to nothing when there is question of applying them to the not-sensible, and which can teach us nothing concerning the great ontological, psychological, and cosmological problems which have been the object of the meditations of the profoundest metaphysicians, who, to resolve them, have published a vast amount of sublime doctrines, just cause of a noble pride in the human mind which knows the dignity of its nature, vindicates its lofty origin, and discerns from afar the immensity of its destiny.
CHAPTER IX.
HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE VALUE OF PURE IDEAS
55. Now that we have shown the points of similarity between Kant's system and that of the scholastics, we propose to note their differences chiefly in what concerns the application of these doctrines. To give an idea of the gravity and transcendentalism of these differences, we have only to remark the discrepancy of their results. The Aristotelians built upon their principles a whole system of metaphysical science, which they considered the noblest of sciences, and which, like a rich and brilliant light, fecundates and directs all others; whereas Kant, starting with the same facts, destroys metaphysical science by taking from it all power to know objects in themselves.
56. We here find Kant in opposition not only to the scholastics, properly so called, but also to all the most eminent metaphysicians who had preceded him. On the side of the scholastics in this matter may be cited Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, Saint Thomas, Descartes, Malebranche, Fenelon, and Leibnitz.
57. No one can deny the transcendency of these questions, if he be not totally ignorant how vital it is to the human mind to know if a science superior to the purely sensible order be possible, whereby man may extend his activity beyond the phenomena offered by matter. These questions are exceedingly profound, and must not be lightly treated. The difficulty and the great abstruseness of the objects treated, the importance, the transcendency of the consequences to which they lead, according to the road followed, demand that no labor whatever should be spared to penetrate these matters. It is easy to assure one's self that upon these questions depends the conservation of sound ideas of God and of the human mind; man's most important and lofty considerations.
To give this matter a thorough examination, let us go back to the origin of the divergence of these philosophical opinions, and let us investigate the reason why, starting with the same facts, they arrive at contradictory results. This requires a clear exposition of the opposite doctrines.
58. All philosophers agree in admitting the fact of sensibility; concerning it there can be no doubt; it is a phenomenon attested by consciousness in so palpable a manner, that not even skeptics could ever deny the subjective reality of the appearance, however much they called in question its objective reality. Idealists, when they deny the existence of bodies, do not deny their phenomenal appearance, their appearance to the mental eye under a sensible form. Sensibility then, and the phenomena it exhibits, have in all ages been primary data in ideological and psychological problems; there may be a discrepancy with respect to the nature and consequences of these data, but there can be none as to their existence.
59. The history of ideological science shows us two schools; one of which admits nothing but sensation, and explains all the affections and operations of the mind by the transformation of the senses; while the other admits primitive facts distinct from sensation; other faculties than that of feeling, and recognizes in the mind a line dividing the sensible from the intellectual order.
60. This latter school is divided into two others; one of which regards