Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

...

through the identity of the subject (WE) which feels, perceives intellectively, and reflects. . . . Cause is a being performing an action outside of itself (effect). . . . Sensible quality cannot stand alone without a substance. Action cannot stand alone without a cause. . . . Thus the intellect completes sensation and arrives at substance; completes perception and arrives at cause" (New Essay, vol. ii. §§ 622-625).

Substance and accident.

94.

The reality which does not by itself constitute a perceivable being is called accident, and the being to which this reality belongs is called its substance, as being the immediate substratum of the accident; in other words, that wherein the accident is known and affirmed as subsisting.

Why

the child, which has not perceived itself, is compelled by the principle of sub

stance to attribute its own sensations to bodies.

95.

Before proceeding further, let us reply to an accessory difficulty which may very naturally arise in the mind of the reader. It may be said, You have supposed that, given sensations, we perceive ourselves and our sensations as modifications of ourselves. But this is not the fact. The child, when it receives its first sensations, perceives external bodies rather than itself, and even its own sensations it attributes to bodies, believing these to have colour, taste, sound, etc. This, I reply, is certainly true of the child, and is a fresh proof that, in the child, the perception of bodies, as I have already stated, precedes the perception of itself. But this does not affect the principle of

substance. The child, for the very reason that it has not yet arrived at the perception of itself, is compelled by the law of its understanding, which obeys the principle of substance, to attribute to bodies its own sensations, for the plain reason that, in virtue of this principle, it cannot perceive sensations without attributing them to a being. Being unable, therefore, to attribute them to itself, since it has not yet perceived itself, it attributes them to bodies-to the foreign agent which operates in it and whose force and activity it perceives bound up with every one of its own sensations. So closely, indeed, is the agent bound up with the sensation produced by it, that the closest attention and reflection are required in order to separate the two.

96.

not follow

principle

stance is

It may now be replied, Then the principle of It does substance is fallacious, causing us to attribute our that the own sensations to bodies and look upon them as of subaccidents of these. But this is not really the case. fallacious. It is not the principle of substance that causes us to attribute our sensations to external bodies rather than to ourselves. This principle obliges us only to affirm a substance when we have a feeling of accidents, not to specify what substance it is. We have, therefore, to be on our guard and see that the substance which we affirm is the substance to which the accidents properly belong. If The errros in this respect we commit errors, we have a faculty mit in re

we com

ferring accidents to the

wrong substance may be corrected.

whereby we can correct them. Thus, through careful reflection, we come afterwards to recognize that sensations are accidents of ourselves, and not of bodies, although they are felt by us at the same time and place as the bodies which act upon our feeling. Indeed, in the last analysis, a force acting in us is our only concept of these. Now, if we have a faculty whereby we may correct our errors, nothing more is required in order to confute scepticism and secure to us the possession of the truth.

The principle which ought to enable us accurately to distinguish, within sensation, the subjective element from the extra-subjective is the following:-Whatever enters into sensation considered in itself (and not in the mode in which it is produced) is subjective; and all that enters into the concept of our passivity, as attested to us by consciousness, is extra-subjective" (New Essay, vol. ii. § 881). In other words, sensation, as such, is subjective; whereas sensitive perception, that is, the feeling of passivity, involving as it does, when reflected on, the notion of activity, is extrasubjective (cf. under § 78).

The principle of substance is the intuition of the essence of being, the first and universal truth.

97.

What, then, is the principle of substance? It is simply the application of the idea of being to those felt realities which are not sufficient of themselves to form a perceivable being; it is the law of perception. But perception is infallible (§§ 64–70) ; hence also the principle of substance is infallible. We say that a given felt reality sometimes does not by itself constitute a perceivable being. Be

fore we can say this, we must know what constitutes a perceivable being, and this is the same thing as knowing what the essence of being,

This we know by

which we affirm in feeling, is.
nature. Hence the principle of substance is no-
thing else but the intuition of the essence of being
applied to reality. We are able to affirm it of
certain realities (substances); of certain others
(accidents) we cannot affirm it, unless they are
united with the first. In making this distinction.
we are guided by the essence of being itself,
which cannot be realized in the second without
the first a circumstance which shows that in being
there is an intrinsic order. But the intuition of
the essence of being does not admit error; it is
the intuition of truth itself. Hence the principle
of substance does not admit error, but is essentially

true.

It must not be supposed from this that Rosmini holds. to the doctrine of a single substance in the Spinozistic sense. Substance is not mere being, but being applied to feeling. If being be separated from the terms of sense, it is no longer substance. Substance is being, employed to render cognition of realities possible, and, when not so employed, becomes a mere abstraction. (See New Essay, vol. ii. § 659, n.)

98.

conditions

The condition of perception, therefore, is that One of the in every feeling it must affirm a being, Reflec- of reflection has many other conditions which it tends to principle

tion is the

of cause.

establish. One of these is the principle of cause, whose nature and veracity we must now show.

In regard to the principle of cause, see under § 93. Cause may be defined as the substance of action. Of course, such cause does not include what, since Aristotle's time, has been called final cause (rò ou Evεka), which can exist only for, and act only through, intelligence, and which is known prior to the action whose substance it becomes. "The principle of cause," says Rosmini, "descends from the principle of contradiction, and hence from the principle of cognition. The principle of cause may be expressed thus: Every event (everything that begins) has a cause which produces it. . . . This proposition is entirely equivalent to this other: It is impossible for intelligence to think an event without thinking a cause that has produced it. In order to show that an event without a cause cannot be thought, we must show that the concept of such an event would involve a contradiction. . . . To say that what does not exist acts, is a contradiction. But to say, An event is without a cause, is equivalent to saying, What does not exist acts. Therefore an event without a cause is a contradiction. . . . To conceive an operation (a change) without a being is to conceive without conceiving, which is a contradiction. Indeed, the principle of cognition says, The object of cognition is being; hence, without a being, there can be no conceiving. . . . An event is an operation (a change). If, therefore, this operation has no cause, it is conceived as isolated, without any being to which it belongs. It is therefore an operation without being, or, which is the same thing, that operates which does not exist" (New Essay, vol. ii. § 569).

Various orders of reflection.

99.

We have already stated wherein reflection consists. It is an act wherein the mind considers the objects of perception, or of previous reflections, in relation to the essence of being. Let

« ZurückWeiter »