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قراءة كتاب Essays in Rationalism
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not have produced that greater similitude of a man, and a particular man, by chance (the alternative of this supposition, according to our experience, being that it must have used certain so-called laws of nature); this collective experience of ours, equally assuring us on the one hand, that the only way of the painter’s achieving these effects is by design, and on the other, that the only way of the looking-glass’s doing so, is by the natural agencies referred to.
5. The human experience on which the decision of this question must be founded—though not at the present era essentially different—may yet be said to be considerably so from what it was in certain former periods. In no times could mankind think and observe without becoming aware of these two principles of order—whether you call them facts or inferences—as a portion of their familiar experience. And so far as they might have compared them, they must have abundantly seen that the natural one is more powerful than the artificial one, and that the straight line or the circle must seek its perfection much rather from the plummet or the revolving radius, than from the pencil of Apelles.
6. Thus the essential point of the existence of the two principles has always been known, but the idea of their respective spheres and limits, of the efficient prevalence of each within our experience, has fluctuated in society. Art and handicraft are, of course, peculiarly competent to appreciate the artificial principle of order, while physical science is especially conversant with the natural one. As the ancients were equal to the moderns in the former pursuits, but vastly inferior to them in the latter, they must so far have had a tendency to think more of the designing principle, and less of the other principle than we do. But it must be remembered, that one or other of these two principles, or at least the arbitrament between them, is the animating basis of all religion, and of all religious sects and persuasions; and further, that of these two principles, the religion founded on the artificial one, which is the one traditionally derived to us, is liable to be, and is wont to be, a far more powerful religion (because it deals far more intensely in personification, having reference singly to some supposed artist) than either the religion that is constituted by the natural principle, or that which results from a mixture of the two principles. And indeed, I will incidentally say that this last kind of religion seems to me to have much analogy on its side, and that the old idea of “the two principles” might, on several grounds besides the present one, and in several respects, perhaps, be found to shadow forth a certain amount of most important truth and applicability.
7. To return. By considering the state of religion and of religious belief in the times of Socrates and Cicero, in connection with the state of art, handicraft, and science, in the same time, and coincidently taking care not to forget that religious sentiment (that at least of the kind which had in their era already been, and much more since has been, communicated from the east to the west) is an incomparably more vigorous impeller of opinion, than reason and argument; we shall have some of the principal data, and in a main matter shall be prepared to use them judiciously in any inquiry we might make, why it was that Socrates and Cicero, having their attention arrested by the artificial principle of order and arrangement, seemed absolutely to forget the existence of the natural one, and why in consequence it was, that the latter wrote to this effect: “He who can look up to the heavenly vault, and doubt the existence of a one personal God, the designer and governor of all things, is equivalent to a madman”; and why, further, we, spite of our vast physical science, are prone to the same fallacy.
8. Having thus proved that the argument of the Theist generally, as well as the particular one advanced by S. D. C. at p. 27, is, by being based on the erroneous statement that there is only one means known to human experience, of producing phenomena identical with those that are the product of design, and that this one is design itself; there being, on the contrary, two such means, one of which is not design; having, I say, proved that your argument, by being so based, is invalid, I find I must fully agree with you, that there is evidence of “an unmistakable cosmical unity.”
9. The true inquiry, therefore, is, which of those two principles of order is, in the agency inquired into, the agent under these circumstances, and whether both, and how far, under our ignorance of what may be (a most important point that is carefully to be considered) we are entitled to affirm as indubitable, to denounce as contradictory, to advance as probable, to conjecture, to surmise, or to speculate on this question.
THE TRUTH OF FIRST PRINCIPLES.
1. You ask “my idea on the impossibility of proving the truth of First Principles?”
By “truth” you mean the ascertained existence of any idea or thing, and the ascertained consistency of any statement with some such idea or thing.
By “principles” you mean not simply cardinal propositions, but cardinal propositions that we have ascertained to be true.
By “first principles” you mean the indubitably true but unprovable elementary principles of all our knowledge. You mean that these principles are the ground whereon we build in our reasonings; all that we build upon them must, in consequence of being so built, admit of being “proved” whether we have built rightly—that is, admit of being subjected to the test whether the reasoning is correct; but these “first principles” are confessedly exempted from this test, and yet are received as true, no less than the others that have sustained this ordeal. You ask the meaning of this privilege, whether it is right; and, if so, to what propriety or necessity of the case it is due?
2. You ask, “How is truth ascertained to be truth?” or, in other words, “What is the criterion of truth?”
With respect to the first query—In accordance with the definition I have above given of truth, it would seem that it must have two sources, experience and reason, experience who notifies the existence of certain ideas or things, and reason, who forms propositions suggested by them. Experience, therefore, acts the simple part of supplying all the materials of truth; while reason, besides his acknowledged office of judge of all truth, exercises the quite different function of being himself the purveyor of a portion of it.
So indubitable is it that truth can have these two sources only, that even fanaticism would be found confessing the principle; while it appeals to the experience of those who agree with it, as well as professes to be reasonable.
First principles must, accordingly, be of two kinds. Of those that are based upon experience, I will give the following instances:—I hear the chirping of a bird, and I see an inkstand before me. That I have the sensation of hearing and seeing in these two cases, are facts of which it is impossible I can doubt. Reason perceives that these are primary facts or first principles, neither admitting nor requiring any proof, testified by consciousness, and self-evidently verified on that testimony.
By reason, of course is meant the reason of all mankind—that is, of all who are presumably competent to judge on the subject. So that any just or reasonable confidence in the verdict of my own reason—in this or in any other matter, presupposes a due comparison of my own reason with that of others, nay, in some cases, a consideration of the supposably more enlightened reason of future times.
I discriminate first principles from derived ones thus:—“I see the sun,” is a first principle to me; “you see it,” is a first principle to you; by comparing these two ideas, each attains the derived principle that the other sees what he does, and the further derived principle that the sun is an existence independent of both. His own existence is, indeed, to every one the first principle, by means of which he infers the existence of other things and beings.
In coming now to the other kind of first principles, consisting of propositions formed by reason, we perceive that these show symptoms of still further difference from the above, than that which results from the difference of their source, of difference that affects their philosophical character, and their technical right to the name under which they present themselves to us. In short, the primary philosophy has not yet settled their title.
They are perceived by us to be true by an act of reason called intuition. Not similarly, however, does our reason inform us that they really are first principles, and our science is hitherto unequal to this inquiry.
Take, for instance, the following celebrated thesis, so often cited as the most fundamental of all the propositions of reason, insomuch as to be tacitly implied in all our reasonings; which yet we are not sure is a first principle, all that can be said in favor of its pretensions being that we can find no one who is able to reduce it to more primary elements:—
It is impossible for a thing at the same time to be and not to be.
Any one agreeing, as every one must, that this is true, might still justly put the query, Why is it impossible? thereby calling its assertion in question, demanding its credentials of proof, seeking some ground for its truth other than its own testimony, and hypothesising some other proposition more fundamental than it of which it would be a derivative, and by all and each of these proceedings, rejecting its claim to be a first principle.
Its resisting our analysis is a good subjective ground for our ranking this and other similar propositions among our first principles. But they could only have the true claim by its being made clear that the inability results from the nature of the case, and not from our own incompetency.
This test is borne by the former description of first principles; we are able to see that the instances I adduced, such as the statements, “I see the sun,” “I see an inkstand,” “I hear a bird,” “I am conscious that I exist,” evade our power of ordinary proving, because they do not admit of such proof.
When we perceive that no one can answer this query, we are prompted to another. Why cannot we answer it? whence our inability? what prevents us? But here also we find ourselves completely in the dark, which is somewhat strange, considering that in every human pursuit, whether of science or any other, when we wish to do a thing and cannot do it, we are generally able to specify some particular, either of self-defect or outward impediment that is supposed to be in fault. But I imagine, if the reader were to experiment on the specimen I have given, he would not only find himself to fail in solving the problem, Why is it that a thing cannot at once be and not be? but would not have a word to advance in the way of accounting for his failure.
These remarks apply to all other propositions of the sort. Euclid’s axioms, which undoubtedly aim to be as elementary as possible, and therefore may be said to aim to be first principles, are confessedly, under this aspect, unsatisfactory to the learned. “Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.” Every one is inclined to ask, Why? “A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.” Again, Why?
The sum of the above strictures on this kind of so-called first principles, is—1. That they have not made good their title, and therefore are not to be accredited with it. 2. That there is a decided presumption against that title from the doubt and dissatisfaction with which it is met, where want of candor and intelligence cannot be imputed, especially when it is considered that the other, the sensuous experimental kind of first principles, have so frank an acceptance. 3. It seems to be absolutely provable, and I suppose I have above incidentally proved it, that they are not first principles. 4. The task is set to metaphysics of supplying the most satisfactory proof of all by bringing to light such propositions as would be perceived to underlie these so-called first principles, and to be the real first principles to which the others would give precedence.
As regards their name, it being so much in point, excuses the old remark that the elements of our knowledge stand in a reversed order in respect to this knowledge to what they assume in our process of acquiring it. A first principle, therefore, means also a last one; it is the last in whatsoever endeavors to descend to the bottom or to penetrate to the source of our knowledge, but it becomes the first when we trace it from this source through its derivative ideas.
The investigating act should not be confounded with the prospecting one. The sensible horizon of subjective vision can, by no mediation, be exalted into the real horizon of truth, wherein the genuine first principles that bound human capability are exclusively to be found.
It may be asked, apart from the inquiry what first principles there are, Is there a necessity that some first principles should be? So it seems from the data of the case. It is patent to common observation that the mind of man is recipient of ideas from the things that surround it. The contact of its apprehending faculty with the things it apprehends, must, it would seem, constitute first principles. After it has got them it might conceivably elicit from them derived principles, but the original ones cannot be thus derived, since there are none earlier from which to derive them.
Again, it is to be inquired, Does the mind, in receiving its ideas, possess and exercise in reference to the things on which it operates, a copying faculty or a transforming faculty? Does it import them simply in their native character, in the way a mirror does the object it reflects, or does it manufacture, cook, and assimilate them, so as to change them into something partaking of its own?
And, if it changes them, what is the extent of the change? Does it go so far only as the semi-idealism of Locke, or extend into the absolute idealism of the German school?
Because these questions have been wont to puzzle either the learned, or the public, or both, it does not follow that they are difficult. I suppose them to admit of decided answers before a supposed competent audience.
As I am unprovided with proof, although I suppose it is to be provable, that first principles of reason must needs be, I must speculate for a moment on the possibility of a proposition of the form of “two and two make four,” being derived from one of the form of “I scent the rose,” for this seems to be the alternative of there being no first principles of reason. Evidently I must confess to having no grounds for pronouncing such a derivation impossible, though I must grant it to be paradoxical. Our mal-cultivation of non-material science, and the imperfection of our metaphysics, is probably the only cause of the strange predicament.
No doubt M. Cousin, and several other eminent teachers of youth, to whose office it belongs to