Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

called the psychological method of studying the phenomena of the human soul. M. Jouffroy, the pupil, friend, and successor of M. Cousin in the department of the History of Modern Philosophy, in the Faculty of Letters at Paris, who, we regret, has, by his premature death within the year, been lost to philosophy, is, perhaps, the best exponent of this method. He tells us that there are two classes of facts; each class alike real, each alike open to our inspection-facts of the outward, material universe, and the facts of that interior, but ne. vertheless important world which each man carries in himself. The first class we observe by our outward senses, the second by means of an interior light, or sense, called consciousness. Is this Dr. Schmucker's method? And is the adoption of this method what he means by constructing his philosophy on the basis of consciousness? If so, perhaps he is not aware of all the consequences of this method.

This method never carries us out of the subjective; but let that pass. We deceive ourselves, if we suppose the light by which we see in the external world, is different from the light by which we are conscious, or by which we observe in the world within. The percipient agent is the same in both cases; and it is by virtue of the same faculty of intelligence that he observes or knows in one world and the other. The external senses do not observe, nor are they the light by which the man observes; the man himself observes through his external organs by means of his own inherent power of knowing, or faculty of intelligence; and it is by virtue of the same power of knowing, or faculty of intelligence, that he observes in the bosom of consciousness itself.

In the second place, what is called internal observation is not, strictly speaking, internal. If by within is meant within the ME itself, we have no power with which to look within. The ME is the observer, and, therefore, must needs be distinct from the object observed. It is all on the side of the subject, and do the best it can, it cannot, turn it ever so swiftly, get on the side of the object. The object observed, be it then what it may, must be, strictly speaking, exterior to the ME, and, therefore, veritably NOT-ME.

In the third place, these facts, which are called, though improperly, internal facts, are never observed, that is, studied, by immediate consciousness. The fact of consciousness, is the recognition of myself in the intellectual phenomenon, as the subject of the phenomenon; that is, as the subject thinking. The moment I seize this fact, and attempt to examine it, it ceases to be a fact of consciousness; for the fact of consciousness is now myself thinking on this fact, which I remember was a fact of consciousness a moment ago. It is impossible, then, to observe, analyse, and classify the facts of consciousness.

What psychologists study for the facts of consciousness, are the facts of memory. They are, no doubt, an important class of facts; but they are not, and cannot be observed, studied, by immediate consciousness. We can, no doubt, study them by means of memory; but our knowledge of them cannot be more immediate and certain than is our knowledge of many other things. Memory is not always faithful. It does not always, nay it rarely, if ever, reproduces the fact exactly as it was, in all its relations and connexions; and one grand cause, perhaps the chief cause, of the failures of psychologists, has been in the fact that they attempt to construct their systems with these facts alone. If Dr. Schmucker means, then, that he makes the facts of consciousness the basis of his system, he deceives himself; for, instead of observing the facts which he studies, by immediate consciousness, he studies them only by means of the memory.

But this is lingering too long on the very title-page of thework. It is time to proceed at least as far as the Introduction. This the author devotes to what he calls methodology, and to the difference between mathematical and metaphysical reasoning. "It has long been a subject of remark," says the author, " that while the science of mathematics, which discusses the properties and relations of space and number, is accompanied by the most conclusive evidence, and bears conviction with it at every step of its progress, the philosophy of the mind still remains enveloped in comparative darkness and uncertainty, after the intellect of ages has been expended in its investigation.

L

The question arises, are not both similar in their nature, and alike susceptible of demonstrative evidence?" Dr. Schmucker, while he admits that the two sciences may be dissimilar in their nature, yet considers the difference of the results obtained in the one from those obtained in the other, as owing to the different method of investigation adopted in mental science, from that pursued by mathematicians. "The superior force of mathematical reason. ing arises," he says, "from three sources. First, from an intrinsic difference in the nature of the subjects discussed. Secondly, from the more rigidly analytic method of investigation pursued in mathematics. And, thirdly, from a less elegant, indeed, but more precise and perspicuous method of conveying to others the knowledge we have acquired."

The first of these reasons for the superiority of mathematics in clearness and evidence, may have some force; the other two, none. The third is dwelt upon much by English philosophers, and it held a conspicuous rank in the estimation of Leibnitz. But it is a great mistake to attribute the clearness and evidence of mathematics to the peculiar language adopted by mathematicians. Their signs, no doubt, abridge the labor of recording their results, and also the mechanical process of obtaining them; but their science is in no sense dependent on them, and there is not a mathematical problem the solution of which cannot be obtain ed and given out in the ordinary language of reasoning. Then, again, the adoption of a precise, exact, definite, technical language for metaphysics, similar in its character and office to the algebraic signs, as Leibnitz wished, and as some modern metaphysicians seem to judge desirable, would avail us very little. A sign is no sign to us, till we know that it stands for something; and it tells us nothing till we know what that something is which it stands for. Philosophy is not a purely verbal science. It deals with realities, and it is and can be intelligible no far ther than these realities themselves are known.

Nor do we perceive the force of the second reason assigned for the superiority of mathematical reasoning. Reference had to the nature of the subject, mathematical reasoning is not

more rigidly analytic than metaphysical reasoning. The human mind is so constituted that, whatever the subject of its investigations, it must pursue one and the same method, what the Greeks call analysis and synthesis, and we, after the Latins, observation and induction. To hear some Englishmen talk, we might be led to attribute the invention of this method to Lord Bacon; but we may as well attribute to Lord Bacon the invention of the human mind itself. Bacon was no doubt a great man, and rendered important service, if not to science, at least to the sciences; but his merit was not precisely that of the invention of a method of philosophizing. The true method, and the only possible method, is given in the human mind itself. Every ope ration performed by the mind is performed by virtue of this method; without it the mind cannot operate. It cannot observe a fact, declare it to be a fact, or even to appear to be a fact, without a synthetic judgment, which is to a greater or less extent an induction; and without facts, real or supposed, it has no possible basis for any synthetic or inductive operation whatever. There has been a great deal of learned nonsense uttered about the inductive method, especially by Englishmen and their descendant Americans-a method always observed by the human mind in all its investigations, and as faithfully observed and as rigidly followed, in proportion to the extent of his ability and mental operations, by the simplest ploughboy as by a Newton or a Laplace.

The real cause of the difference between the results of mathematics and of metaphysics is, in the fact that mathematics require acquaintance with but a small number of facts, and of facts which are obvious to every eye, and can be learned in a few moments; whereas metaphysical science, dealing with actual life, requires acquaintance with all reality, which is infinite. Mathematical science is merely the science of quantities. Quantity can differ from quantity only in more or less. He then who has the conceptions of more and less, has all the conceptions essential to mathematics; and he who knows how to measure more and less, in any conceivable degree, comprehends the science of mathematics. All beyond this in the whole

science is, as it were, identical proposition piled upon identical proposition, No wonder, then, that mathematics were cultivated at an early day, and soon arrived at a high degree of perfection. We say high degree of perfection; for the science is not yet perfect ed, and it is far from having reached the utmost limits of its applications. But its farther progress, or the progress of its applications, will be found to depend in no small degree on the progress of metaphysics.

With philosophy the case is quite different. Here, instead of two, or at most three ideas, which are all that are required by mathematics, which may be obtained by acquaintance with a single concrete existence besides ourselves, and from which we may proceed by the calculus to the system of the universe, we have an infinite variety of complex ideas, which we can fully master only by an actual acquaintance with all contingent existences. The purpose of philosophy is not, as too many fancy, acquaintance with the relations of abstract ideas, which would give us for resultant only dead abstractions, not of the least conceivable value; but acquaintance with life—acquaintance with all that lives-to know really and truly the nature and law of every living being, from God himself to the veriest monad of his creation. A child can master all the facts essential to the science of mathematics; none but God himself has or can have the knowledge requisite for the construction of a perfect system of philosophy.

Philosophy, then, is and always must be imperfect. Its subject-matter is all Infinity, in all its unity and multiplicity. Man is finite, and can have only a finite knowledge. He can, therefore, never take into his view the whole subject-matter of philosophy, the infinite reality that underlies it. He can see this reality only on the side turned towards him, and comprehend it only under a single aspect. His system, then, though woven with infinite pains, can be at best only relatively true. It will always be defective, inadequate,-falling short of the reality to be comprehended. But man is, through Providence, progressive-has a continuous growth, and therefore becomes able every day to enlighten a larger portion of reality, and to com

prehend more and more of it in his systems. Yet never will he advance so far as to be able to construct a system of philosophy that will abide for ever. The systems of to-day, as mere systems, will always be absorbed by the discoveries and necessary modifications of to-morrow.

This is no doubt a sad conclusion, well adapted to check our pride and presumption, and to teach us modesty and humility in our theorizing; but it is warranted by the whole history of the past, and is a legitimate inference from the finiteness of all our faculties. Saddening, then, as it may be, we must accept it. It is not given to man to build a tower that shall reach to heaven. There is no escaping the floods that will sooner or later come, in some sense, to swallow up our old world. There is no help for it. All that we can ask, then, of the philosopher of today is, that he embrace in his system, not absolute truth, but all the truth, in relation to God, man, and the universe, to which the human race has, thus far,whether naturally or Providentially, attained.

Passing over now the difference between mathematics and philosophy, we touch more especially what Dr. Schmucker calls Methodology. Methodology! Why could he not have used, with Descartes and all the masters of the science, the simple term method? Methodology, if it mean anything, means a discourse on method; but it was not a discourse on method, but method itself, that Dr. Schmucker was to consider. But what is his Methodology, or simply, his method of philosophizing? No man can tell from this Introduction, nor from reading the whole book, or at best can only guess it,

Method is given in the human mind itself; that needs no discussion. What Dr. Schmucker means by Methodology, is doubtless what we should term the application of method. All philosophers, in the strictest sense of the term, adopt one and the same method; they differ, however-and in this consists the difference of their systemsin their mode of applying this one and the same method. The mode of applying method to the construction of philosophical science, is the important matter. Descartes began in doubt, by

doubting all existences but his own. To follow his example, we must begin by doubting all that can be doubted, push doubt to its farthest limits, till we come to that which cannot be doubted, and then admit into our system only what rigidly follows from what has been ascertained to be not doubtful. This is well enough for all those who really entertain the doubt recommended; but all men do not entertain this doubt; and we deceive ourselves whenever we think we have assumed in our systems a doubt which we do not in reality feel. No man can take an artificial point of departure. A man who believes in the existence of God, cannot, even in thought, divest himself of that belief, and place himself in the position of him who really doubts that existence. In his arguments to prove the exist ence of God, he invariably and inevitably assumes the point to be proved, as the basis on which to rest his argument. A man, do his best, cannot divest himself of himself. He cannot assume, really and truly, as his logical point of departure, what is not his real and true point of departure; for he cannot both be and not be at the same moment, as would necessarily be the case were this possible.

The human race has lived a long while, and not altogether in vain. It has ascertained some things; settled some truths. These, in all our philosophizing, we necessarily assume, whether we know it or not, and have the right to assume, as our point of departure. The existence of God has become to the race a fact, which it is no longer necessary to attempt to prove, nor allowable to cali in question. Any alleged facts which go to contradict it, or to make it doubtful, are by that fact proved to be no facts; for it is more certain than any fact which can be brought against it. The same may be said of man's unity, personal identity, moral freedom, and accountability. No matter what may be alleged against these facts, for we have for them the highest degree of certainty that we can have in any case whatever. Your science, or your fact, which contradicts them, is proved, by its contradicting them, to be no science, no fact. All facts of a similar nature the philosopher has the right to assume as so many points settled. His business, then, instead of seeking to create

and answer a doubt that he does not feel, is to ascertain what the human race has thus far established. This has not to be established over again. When ascertained, it is so much capital in advance. Our business is merely to add to it, and transmit it to our successors enlarged, to be transmitted by them to their successors still more enlarged.

The next thing with regard to method-and concerning this as well as the foregoing Dr. Schmucker is silentis that we confine ourselves to the order of facts which belong to the special science we are constructing, and not conclude to one subject from the facts of another and a different subject. This rule is violated by phrenologists, who are perpetually concluding to what must be true of man, from what they observe, or fancy they observe, to be true of animals, forgetting that between man and animals there is a distance, and that man has and can have no animal nature. Man is not an animal, but an animal transformed. The great merit of Bacon, under the head of method, consists in his having contended earnestly for this rule. He has been called the father of the inductive method, simply and solely, we apprehend, from his having laid down, and insisted on this rule.

This rule, all important as it may be when rigidly understood and applied, has been too strenuously insisted on in English and American science. Each special science is supposed to have a separate and an independent foundation, to the confusion and virtual destruction, as we have already seen, of all catholic science. This has come from a too violent and too long continued reaction against the Scholastics. The Scholastics were said, and to some extent justly said, to subject physics to their metaphysics, and their metaphysics to their theology. They concluded from their theology to their me taphysics, and from their metaphysics to what must be true in nature; instead of going forth into nature, and ascertaining with open eyes what she contained. In this way they committed some gross errors, for which, however, science has amply avenged herself. It was against this method of studying nature that Bacon entered his protest.

In point of principle, however, the

much decried Scholastics were by no means so far in the wrong as the disciples of Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac, have supposed. The universe is constructed by Intelligence, in its own image, or after one and the same divine Idea. Man was made in the image of God. The human soul is the finite representative of the Infinite Intelligence, to which it corresponds in all respects; that is, so far as the finite can correspond to the infi. nite. The universe, outward nature, corresponds to man, and is therefore, as we may say, the image of the image of God. There is, then, one and the same law of intelligence running from the Infinite Reason down to the faintest echo of it, in the simplest monad God has created. All things are created according to one and the same law, and this law is the law of all intelligence. We may say, then, with the Hegelians, though not, if we understand them, precisely in their sense, that a perfect system of logic were a complete system of the universe. The universe, if we may so speak, is the logic of the Creator, and a perfect system of logic would be a key to all its mysteries, and enable us to comprehend as thoroughly the operations of the material universe, as the operations of the human mind itself.

There is nothing extravagant or unheard of in this statement. It contains nothing not in a degree verified by Naturalists everyday. Fulton constructs his steamboat by his logic, before he does by his handicraft; and Franklin establishes by reasoning the identity of lightning and the electric fluid, before he draws the lightning from the cloud, and makes it run down the silken cord of his kite and charge his Leyden Jar. Every scientific man, for the most part, succeeds in his theory before he does in his experiments. Very few important scientific discoveries are made by accident, or without having been, to some extent, predicted. Naturalists reason and say, "It must be so;" and then go forth and interrogate Nature, who answers, "It is so." These, and similar facts which might be indefinitely multiplied, prove not merely the uniformity of nature, and that its order does not change; but that nature has, if we may so speak, a rational basis, is made in the image of mind, and that its laws are, as Plato asserted, ideas or

images of the laws or principles of Intelligence, Reason, Novs, Aoyos.

Assuming the fact, for which we here contend, and which we hold to be unquestionable, the Scholastics were far from being wrong in principle. So far as we have a true system of theology we have the right to conclude from it to metaphysics. So far as we have a true system of metaphysics, we have the right to conclude from it to the facts of physical science. Metaphysical science has the right to preside over all mathematical and physical science. It does and will give the law to the mathematical and physical sciences, even if we try to have it otherwise, for it determines the character of the facts on which they are founded. We do not see the whole fact; and the fact we see and analyze varies as varies the metaphysical light in which we contemplate it; as the landscape varies as we shift the position from which we view it. But as our metaphysics are by no means perfect, we must never venture to rely solely on conclusions from metaphysical science to the facts of physical nature, till we have, to the best of our ability, corrected or modified them by actual observation and experiment in the bosom of nature herself.

Dr. Schmucker's error, under the head of method, seems to us to be in attempting to construct a science of the human mind by confining himself to a single class of facts, namely, the mere facts of memory, called by our modern psychologues, facts of consciousness, and which we have seen are insufficient for his purpose. Speaking of himself, in his preface, he says,

[ocr errors]

He then resolved to study exclusively his own mind, and for ten years he read no book on this subject. During this period, he spent much of his time in the examination of his own mental phenomena, and having travelled over the whole ground, and employed the leisure of several additional years, to review and mature his views, he now presents to the public the following outline of a system as in all its parts the result of original, analytic induction." But it does not seem to have occurred to him, that he might possibly have overlooked some one or more of the mental phenomena, and seen some of them but dimly, in a partial or even a false light; that in a word

« AnteriorContinuar »