The objector supposes that we think of reality which is unthinkable and compare it with phenomena which are thinkable. The objection further assumes that it is essential to the reality of a person's knowledge that he prove that things appear to all other persons, God, angels and men, precisely as they do to himself. But this is impossible, for it requires that the person not only have knowledge within his own consciousness, but also that he gather the consciousness of all other beings into his own. Besides, should the consciousness of others be revealed to this person, he could know it only through his own faculties, and therefore would attain only illusion, not real knowledge; nor would any communication with other men be possible. 4. It is evident, then, that this theory of the relativity of knowledge issues in complete agnosticism. There would be no knowledge of the secondary properties of matter; and equally there would be no knowledge of its primary properties, nor of motion, nor of the correlation of forces, nor of one's own existence, nor of any reality whatever. "Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all." All, then, that the objection can establish is, that our knowledge, because our minds are finite, is limited, not that it is unreal. Other beings no doubt know objects of which we at present have no conception; and Voltaire's Micromegas from the planet Jupiter with his multitudinous senses is still a possible conception; and the existence of such a being would be no objection against the reality of human knowledge. I come back, therefore, to the principles established in Chapter II. Knowledge is known in its own self-evidence. Its reality does not depend on proof by argument and can never be invalidated by objections. CHAPTER V. WHAT IS KNOWN THROUGH RATIONAL INTUITION. 22. Universal Principles, not Particular Realities. IN the intuition of reason we have immediate and self-evident knowledge of universal and necessary principles. Our consciousness is not merely that they are true, but that they must be true. Thought cannot transcend them but must be regulated by them. When apprehended in reflection they present themselves as judgments and may be formulated in propositions. The knowledge of particular realities is given in sense-perception and self-consciousness. Rational intuition does not give knowledge of these realities, but only of principles always and everywhere true of these realities. It does not give the knowledge of being, but only principles true of all beings; for example, every quality is the quality of some being. It does not give the knowledge of power and cause, but it gives the principle that every beginning or change of existence must be the effect of a cause. In the idea of absolute being, rational intuition does not give the knowledge of being, for that we know in knowing ourselves; but it gives us the principle that uncaused, absolute being must exist. It does not give the knowledge of extension in its three dimensions, but it gives the axioms of geometry and the metaphysical principles that place, considered abstractly from the body occupying it, must be continuous, immovable and unlimited. It does not give the knowledge of personal being, but gives us principles true of all persons; the principles of ethics, as that a rational being ought to obey reason; the principles of logic, as the principle of non-contradiction, "The same thing cannot be and not be at the same time," which Aristotle says is the most fundamental of all first principles.* Thus all rational intuitions are intuitive judgments which may be formulated in propositions. Lotze calls them Grundsätze, fundamental maxims or principles, and thus distinguishes them from Grundbegriffe, fundamental ideas. These principles are the unchanging and universal forms in which Reason recognizes the particular realities known in sense-perception and self-consciousness. Because it * Metaphysics, III. 3. Πασών βεβαιοτάτη ἀρχῶν. i reason it cannot recognize them otherwise than in the unchanging light of reason and as related to and illuminated by its own truths, laws, ideals and ends. John Smith describes the rational intuition as "a naked intuition of eternal truth which never rises nor sets, but always stands still in its vertical and fills the whole horizon of the soul with a mild and gentle light."* 23. Rise and Development in Consciousness. I. Man is so constituted that, as his reason is developed in experience he finds himself under the necessity of thinking according to these principles and incapable of thinking the contrary. An apple-seed has constituent elements which determine from within itself the line of its development, so that, if it grows, it will grow into an apple-tree bearing blossoms and apples. So in the mind of man these principles lie as constituent elements which from within the mind itself determine its development as a reason, and are in the developed reason the norms or standards of all thought. Hence they have been fitly named by Dugald Stewart," constituent elements of reason," and by Hamilton, "primary elements of reason." So Lotze says, they "are at bottom only the peculiar constitution of the reason itself expressed in the form of fundamental laws which regulate its action."† They are not, therefore, ideas and judgments of which we are conscious before all experience, but simply constitutional norms of thought which are developed in experience into standards of rational judgment by which it is possible to distinguish the true from the false and without which the very idea of a rational being is impossible. The mind brings nothing with it but its own constitution, but that is a constitution endowed with the elements of rationality II. A first principle of reason appears in consciousness only on occasion of some experience requiring its application. I must observe motion or change before I inquire what is its cause. But, as Coleridge says, "Though these principles are first revealed to us by experience, they must yet have pre-existed in order to make experience itself possible, even as the eye must exist previously to any particular act of seeing, though by sight alone can we know that we have eyes." It is only in experience that we become aware of those principles of reason which condition all experience. III. These principles regulate thinking and action before they are recognized or enunciated in reflective thought. A savage, if asked whether two straight lines can inclose a space, or whether there can be beginning or change of existence without a cause, may declare his total *Select Discourses, 2d Ed. Cambridge, 1673, pp. 91, 92. ignorance on the subject. Yet the same savage will not attempt to in- "Are yet the fountain light of all our day, IV. The argument against "innate ideas" as presented by Locke has no relevancy to the real doctrine of rational intuitions. Descartes explains that the ideas are natural in the sense that they do not originate from without but in the faculty of intelligence itself; and they are naturally in the intellect, not in act but only potentially; as we say that generosity is natural to some families, and certain diseases to Mikrokosmus: B. ii. chap. 4, Vol. i., p. 247, 248. + Hinterlassene Schriften, Vol. ii., p. 67. Biography, p. 190. others; not that the children suffer from the hereditary disease at or even before birth, "but only that they are born with the faculty or predisposition to contract it."* Leibnitz in his "Critique" of Locke explains that the mind is full of characters which the sense reveals but does not imprint, and compares it to a sculptor finding in a block of marble which he is chiseling veins tracing a Hercules. Prof. Sedgewick illustrates it by comparing the mind to a paper written with invisible ink: "As for knowledge his soul is one unvaried blank; yet this blank has already been touched by a celestial hand, and when plunged in the colors that surround it, takes not its tinge from accident but design and comes forth colored with a glorious pattern."† Rational intuitions are innate only in the sense that they are constituent elements of reason; that, as man becomes conscious of himself in experience, he finds himself a rational being endowed with norms and in possession of principles of reason regulating all his thinking, and constituting him able to discriminate between the true and the false, and to infer the unknown from the known. And this, rationalistic philosophers since Descartes, with more or less clearness, have apprehended and explained. Locke's argument against innate ideas was, even in his day, a striking example of ignoratio elenchi, or philosophical kicking at nothing; yet it has held and still holds its place with skeptics, as if the doctrine which it controverts were really believed by somebody and its refutation would prove that there is no God. A remarkable example is the chapter on "Innate Ideas" in Dr. Büchner's "Kraft und Stoff." Among the inane objections which Descartes ridicules is this, that infants cannot have knowledge and ideas in the foetal condition before birth. Yet Dr. Büchner gravely urges this very objection, as if this trumpery were believed. The principles and doctrines which Dr. Büchner controverts in this chapter are not to be found in modern philosophy or theology. 24. Significance as Regulative Principles. I. Rational Intuitions are void of significance except as applied to beings and their attributes, conditions and relations known in perceptive intuition. From mere a priori principles nothing can be deduced. The principle that every beginning or change has a cause, is void of content until I perceive some being in the exercise of power. Then this principle extends the causal power back to the eternal. Principles known in rational intuition may be compared to the sides, and realities known in perceptive intuition to the rounds of a ladder. The sides Oeuvres de Descartes: Cousin's Ed, Vol. x., pp. 94, 98, 99. †On the Studies of the University, p. 54. Vol. x., p. 107. |