87. It is curious to observe how easily men, the most skeptical in the simplest things, suddenly become dogmatic at the very point where the greatest motives of doubt are presented. With them the external world is either a pure appearance, or a being having no resemblance to the conception formed of it by the human race: the criterion of evidence, that of consciousness, and that of common sense have little power to command assent: the crowd alone should be satisfied with such weak foundations; the philosopher demands others far more solid. But strange as it may seem, the very philosopher who styled reality a deceitful appearance, and saw obscurity in what the human race considered luminous, so soon as he quitted the world of phenomena and arrived in the dominions of the absolute, finds himself illumined by a mysterious splendor, he requires no discussion, but by a most pure intuition, he sees the unconditioned, the infinite, the one in which every thing multiplex is involved, the great reality, the basis of all phenomena, the great All which re-unites in its breast all existences, re-assumes every thing, and absorbs every thing into most perfect identity. He fixes his philosophic eye upon this focus of light and life, sees it roll out like the ocean of existence in vast billows, and thus explains what is various by what is one, the composite by the simple, the finite by the infinite. All these prodigies do not require him to leave himself; he has only to go on destroying all that is empirical, to ascend even to pure act by mysterious by-paths unknown to all except himself. This me, which may have believed itself an existence perishable and dependent on another superior existence, is astounded at finding itself so great; it discovers in itself the origin of all beings, or, more correctly speaking, the only being, of which all others are but phenomenal existences; it is the universe itself become by a gradual development conscious of itself: whatever is without itself, and at first appears distinct, is only itself, a reflection of itself, presented to its eyes, and unfolded under a thousand different forms like a magnificent panorama.
Let not the reader think we have imagined a system for the sake of combatting it; the doctrine which we have here exposed, is the doctrine of Schelling.
88. One cause of this error is the obscurity of the problem of knowing. To know, is an immanent action, having, at the same time, relation to an external object, excepting those cases in which the intelligent being becomes, by a reflex act, its own object. In order to know a truth, whatever it may be, the mind does not quit itself; it does not operate beyond itself; its own consciousness tells it that it remains, and that its activity is developed, within itself.
This immanent action extends to objects the most distant in time and place, and the most unlike in their nature. How is the mind to come in contact with them? How is it to ascertain whether their representation conforms to reality? There can be no cognition without this representation; without conformity, there is no truth, cognition is a pure illusion to which nothing corresponds, and the human understanding is unceasingly the sport of vain appearances.
Undeniably this problem is liable to very serious difficulties, which perhaps the science of man, while in this life, cannot solve. Here arise all the ideological and psychological questions ever treated by the most eminent metaphysicians. However, as it is not our intention to anticipate what is to be hereafter considered, we shall confine ourselves to the point of view indicated by our present question of certainty and its fundamental principle.
89. Consciousness attests the fact of representation; without this there is no thought; and the affirmation I think is, if not the origin of all philosophy, at least its indispensable condition.
90. Whence comes the representation? How is a being placed in such communication with other beings, and this not by a transient but by an immanent act? How explain the conformity between the representation and the object? Does not this mystery indicate that there is unity, identity, at the bottom of all things, that the being which knows, is the very being known, which appears to itself under a distinct form, and that what we call realities are only phenomena of one and the same being, always identical, infinitely active, which develops its strength in various ways, and forms by its development what we call the universe? No! This neither is nor can be! It is an absurdity which the most extravagant reason cannot accept: it is a resource as desperate as it is impotent to explain a mystery, if you will, but one a thousand times less obscure than the system which pretends to clear it up.
91. Universal identity explains nothing, but greatly confuses everything; it does not dissipate the difficulty, but strengthens it, and renders it insolvable. It certainly is no easy matter to explain how the mind obtains the representation of things distinct from itself; but it is no easier to show how the mind can have the representation of itself. If there is unity, complete identity between the subject and the object, how are the two presented to us as distinct things? How can duality proceed from unity, or diversity spring from identity?
It is a fact testified by experience, not the experience of external objects, but that of consciousness, by that which is most hidden in our soul, that there is in every cognition a subject and an object, perception and the thing perceived, and without this difference the act is not possible. Even when by an effort of reflection, we take ourselves for our own object, the duality appears; if it does not exist, we imagine it, for without this fiction we cannot think.
92. Even in the most intimate and concentrated reflection, duality, upon careful examination, is to be found, not by fiction, as it might seem at first sight, but in reality. When the understanding turns upon itself, it does not see its own essence, for it has no direct intuition of itself: it sees its acts, and these it takes for its object. The reflex act is not the act reflected. When I think that I think, the first thought is distinct from the second, and so distinct that one succeeds the other, for the reflective thought can exist only subsequently to the thought reflected.
93. This is confirmed by a profound analysis of reflection. Is reflection possible without an object reflected upon? Evidently not. What is this object in the present case? The thought itself: then this thought must have preceded the reflection. If it be supposed that they must not of necessity follow in different instants of time, and that the dependence is saved, notwithstanding the simultaneousness, still the force of the argument is not lost; we grant, but do not concede, that the simultaneousness is possible; but the dependence at least is not possible without distinction. Dependence is a relation; relation supposes opposition of extremes; and this opposition draws with it distinction.
94. That these acts are distinct, although simultaneous, may be demonstrated in another manner. One of them, that reflected upon, may exist without the reflex act. We continually think, without thinking that we think; and the same may be proved true of every reflection whatever, whether it is occupied with the act thought, or it disappears and leaves only the direct act: these acts are, therefore, not only distinct but separable; therefore, the duality of the subject and the object exists not only in the external world, but also in that which is the most intimate and pure in our soul.
95. It avails not to say that the object of reflection is not any determinate act, but thought in general. This is in many cases false; for we not only think that we think, but that we think a determinate thing. Moreover, although the object of reflection is sometimes thought in general, not even then does the duality disappear: in that case the subjective act is an individual act, existing in a determinate instant of time, and its object is thought in general, that is, an idea representative of all thought, an idea which involves a sort of confused recollection of all past acts, or of what is called activity, intellectual force. The duality then exists more evidently, if possible, than when the object is a determinate thought. In one instance at least two individual acts are compared; but in this case an individual act is compared with an abstract idea, a thing existing in one instant of time with an idea that either abstracts it, or confusedly embraces all that has passed since the epoch when the consciousness of the reflecting being commenced.
96. These arguments have much greater weight when directed against