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 antecedent, or any reason, without even taking the trouble to show on what he bases it, Fichte assures us that the first principle must express an act. Why may it not be an objective truth? This, at least, would have deserved some attention, for all preceding schools, the Cartesian included, located the first principle among objective truths, not among acts. Descartes himself needed an objective truth in order to establish the fact of thought and existence. "Whoever thinks exists," or, in other words, "whoever does not exist cannot think."
80. This last remark shows one of the radical vices affecting the doctrine of Fichte and other Germans, who attribute an altogether unmerited importance to subjective philosophy. They accuse others of too easily making the transition from the subject to the object, but forget that they, at the same time pass, unauthorised by any reason or title, from objective thought to the pure subject. Confining ourselves to the passage of Fichte just cited, what, we ask, will an act be which neither is nor can be presented among the empirical determinations of our consciousness? The principle in question is not exempted from being known because it is absolute; for if we do not know it, we cannot assert that it is absolute; and if it is not, and cannot be presented among the empirical determinations of our consciousness, it neither is nor can be known. Man knows not that which is not present in his consciousness.
The absolute principle upon which all consciousness rests, and which makes it possible, either does or does not belong to consciousness. If the former, it is liable to all the difficulties affecting the other acts of consciousness; if the latter, it cannot be the object of observation, and therefore we can know nothing of it.
Fichte confesses that in order to arrive at the primitive act, and separate from it all that does not really belong to it, we must suppose the rules of all reflection to be valid, and start with some one of the many universally admitted propositions. "Conceding us," he says, "this proposition, you must, at the same time, concede as act that which we desire to place as the principle of the whole Doctrine of Science; and the result of the reflection must be that this act is conceded to us as the principle together with the proposition. We take any fact of empirical consciousness, and strip it one after another of all its empirical determinations, until reduced to all its purity it contains that only which thought cannot absolutely exclude, and from which nothing further can be taken."[5]
These words show that the German philosopher proposed ascending to a perfectly pure and wholly indeterminate act of consciousness, which, however, is impossible. Either he takes the act in a very broad sense, and understands by it the substratum of all consciousness, in which case he only expresses in other words the idea of substance; or else he speaks of an act properly so called, that is, of some exercise of that activity, that spontaneity which we feel within ourselves; and in this sense the act of consciousness cannot be separated from all determination without destroying its individuality and existence. Man cannot think without thinking something, desire without desiring something, feel without feeling something, or reflect upon internal acts without fixing his reflection upon something. There is some determination in every act of consciousness: an act perfectly pure, abstracted from every thing, and wholly indeterminate, is impossible, absolutely impossible; subjectively, because the act of consciousness, although considered in the subject, requires some determination; objectively, because such an act is inconceivable as individual, and consequently as existing, since it offers nothing determinate to the mind.
81. Fichte's indeterminate act is only the idea of act in general. He imagined he had made a great discovery when he conceived nothing in the groundwork but the principle of act, that is, the idea of substance applied to that active being whose existence consciousness itself makes known to us.
If we may be allowed to say candidly what we think, our opinion is, that Fichte, with all his analytical investigations, has not advanced philosophy one step towards the discovery of the first principle. We see from what has already been said how easy it is to stop him by simply demanding an account of the suppositions made on the first page of his book. Still, wishing, as we do, to oppose him with all fairness, we will not take up his ideas without allowing him to explain them himself.
"Every one admits the proposition: A is A; just as that A = A, because such is the meaning of the logical copula; and indeed without the least deliberation we perceive and affirm its complete certainty. Should any one ask a demonstration of it, we should by no means give any, but should maintain that the proposition is absolutely certain, that is, without any further foundation. Thus incontestibly proceeding with general consent, we claim the right to suppose something absolutely.
"We do not, in affirming the preceding proposition to be certain in itself, suppose that A is. The proposition A is A, is not equivalent to this: A is, or, there is an A. (To be placed without a predicate has an entirely different meaning from to be with a predicate, whereof more hereafter.) If we make A denote a space contained between two straight lines, the proposition remains exact, although the proposition, A is, be evidently false. But, we assert: if A is, A is thus. The question is in no wise whether A is in general or not. The question is not of the contents of the proposition, but only of its form; not whereof we know something, but what we know of any object whatever.
"Consequently, by the above assertion, that the proposition is absolutely certain, this is established, that between the if and the thus there is a necessary connection; and it is this necessary connection between both which is supposed absolutely and without other foundation. I call this necessary connection provisionally = X."
All this show of analysis amounts only to what every logical student knows, that in every