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ticular system of philosophy, our first question is, Where does it belong? Is the author a Sensualist? an Idealist? a Mystic? a Skeptic? or, in fine, an Eclectic? For instance, we propose to study Plato; then, What was Plato? With which of the five systems* shall we class him? Having determined that he is an Idealist, we know then that he is one who attempts with mere conceptions a priori to explain the universe. This determined, we have comprehended Platonism, and may proceed to Aristotle, and go through the same process. Nothing more simple. After having settled the principle of classification, you have nothing to do, but to determine the method of any given philosopher, and, lo, you are instantly master of his whole system!

Now, in our judgment, this is making the matter quite too easy; and, moreover, is amusing us with mere barren classifications, as barren as are the classifications of a modern botanist, which, when learned, leave us as ignorant of the actual plant as we were before. It has the air of being very scientific, but it really tells us nothing of the individual system we would study. It proceeds on a false assumption. All philosophy is not of an exclusively psychological origin; and there are systems not explicable from the psychological point of view. How, on mere psychological principles, explain the difference between Plato and Aristotle, between Roscellin and Guillaume de Champeaux, or between Abélard and his great opponent, Saint Bernard? Psychologically explained, Plato, Proclus, Erigena, St. Anselm of Canterbury, Roscellin, St. Bernard, Saint Thomas, Jordano Bruno, Peter Ramus, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, to mention no more, must all be ranged in the same category. Are there between these no generic differences? Assuredly, Plato was not a Nominalist, and yet his method is that of Roscellin, at least so far as it is

*We say five, for M. Cousin, though officially admitting only four, really contends for five, in that his own system is not one of the four.

possible now to ascertain. Assuredly, Saint Bernard was not a Conceptualist, and yet there is no difference as to method between him and Abélard. Assuredly, never men differed more, one from another, than many of the Scholastics, and yet they all adopt one and the same method; namely, the dialectic method, which rests on the principle of contradiction, the principle of the syllogism. How, then, explain their differences from the point of view of psychology?

The psychological principle of classification is admissible, only when the question concerns a doctrine of science; that is, when the system to be classed is not a system of philosophy, but a doctrine concerning the origin, conditions, and validity of human knowledge. Now, ancient philosophy concerns itself very little with doctrines of science, in this sense, and the scholastic philosophy, never. Plato, indeed, takes up the question of science, but it is in relation to the object of science, not, primarily, in relation to the cognitive subject. In his mind, the question, What is Science? has no reference to the origin, conditions, or validity of human knowledge, psychologically considered, but refers to that in the object, or phenomenon, present to the mind, which must be known in order really to know the object. The refutation of Sensualism, in his Theætetus, is not a refutation of it from the point of view of psychology, but from ontology. In this dialogue Socrates labors to show, not that we have another psychological principle of knowledge than the senses, as M. Cousin, in his argument placed at the head of his translation of this dialogue, teaches, but that what the senses give us is no real science; that we must look deeper into the object, to its essence or idea, before we have attained to any knowledge of it which may properly be denominated science. Plato is a philosopher, not a psychologist; and, if he touches the psychological question, it is always from the point of view of ontology.

Aristotle, again, though he differs from Plato as to his terminology and mode of exposition, adopts, on

this point the same doctrine. He, no doubt, undertakes to construct a doctrine of science; but it is always science objectively considered. The inquiry relates always to what it is necessary to know, in order to have science properly so called. His wisdom, which answers to Plato's science, is never in the knowledge of the mere sensible appearances, nor in that of particulars, but in the knowledge of causes, principles, which is very nearly what Plato means by a knowledge of ideas. His categories, or predicaments, are all ontologically derived and reduced, and are the forms, or the laws, of the object, not, as the categories of Kant, the forms, or laws, of the subject. He, doubtless, has a psychology; he is the father of logic; but his logic is an organon, or instrument, of science, a logic that determines the use of the human mind in advancing science, not the value of the human mind as a cognitive subject, as is the case with the Kantian logic. The Fathers of the Church, especially the Scholastics, no doubt, concern themselves with science, with psychology, with logic, and treat at large of the powers and capacities of the human mind, and often with a sagacity, precision, and depth, which we in vain attempt to equal; but it is always from the point of view of ontology, in the Platonic or Aristotelian sense. How, then, explain their labors, from the point of view of psychology, in the modern sense of the term?

Since the time of Descartes, down to Fichte, if we except Spinoza, Leibnitz, and some doctors of the Church, as Cudworth and Henry More, the question of science has been, primarily, a psychological question. It has been before all a question of the human mind itself, not as to the mode or manner of its use in the advancement of science, but as to its value or capacity, as the subject of science. Can I know? Can I know that I know? What is it, psychologically considered, to know? What is it to know that I know? How do I know? How do I know that I know? These are the problems, and problems very nearly peculiar to modern times. The great philosophers of antiquity, of

the early days of the Church, of the Middle Ages, troubled not themselves, at all, with these problems. We do not mean, of course, to say, that similar questions were not asked in antiquity, for there were then, as well as now, sophists and skeptics; but, that the great men, the men who had doctrines, and whom humanity owns as philosophers, and reveres as having contributed to her growth, ask no such vain questions. In their estimation, to know is to know, and he who says, I know, says all that he does who says, I know that I know. Now, between the systems left us by these great men, and our modern systems, which take their point of departure in psychology, and assume that the first problem relates to the psychological origin, conditions, and validity of our cognitions, there is, in our judgment, not merely a specific, but a generic difference. The last seek to explain the origin, conditions, and validity, of our cognitions; they then seek a doctrine of science, the Wissenschaftlehre of Fichte; the others seek to explain the origin, principle, and genesis of things, and, therefore, seek a doctrine of life. We have, then, two distinct classes of systems, which we may denominate,

1. Doctrines of Science;

2. Doctrines of Life.

These last are the only doctrines which should be included under the term PHILOSOPHY; the others may be termed, if the reader pleases, PSYCHOLOGY.

This division, it may be thought, rests on the distinction between psychology and ontology. Doubtless, M. Cousin and others, whom we must class among the psychologists, admit this distinction, for they, as well as we, speak of ontology; but with them this distinction means only the distinction between the method and its application. With them, ontology is nothing but the psychological method in its development. Such your method, such your ontology. Given a philosopher's psychological doctrine on the origin, conditions, and validity of human cognitions, and his whole doctrine concerning the cause, principle, and genesis of

things is given. Hence the reason and necessity of Eclecticism, which recognizes all the psychological principles of cognition. If you mutilate the subject in forming your psychology, you will mutilate the object in your ontology. You must, then, include the whole subject in your method, if in its application no portion of the object is to be excluded. But this proceeds on the principle, that there can be nothing in the development not in the method. Ontology, given as the development of the psychological method, can; then, contain nothing, not already contained in the psychological principles themselves. It can, then, be only the logical, the ontological generalization, as we shall hereafter see, is quite another affair, only the logical generalization of psychology, and, therefore, can never carry us out of psychology, that is to say, out of the sphere of the subject. Their ontology is, then, no genuine ontology at all; it is nothing but a logical abstraction, and altogether worthless. It is therefore, that the Absolute, God, the Trinity, about which M. Cousin says so much, considered in the light of his own system, are but the veriest abstractions, and as to substantive existence have no being at all out of the mind itself.

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Notwithstanding appearances, then, M. Cousin and the modern psychologists do not make the distinction we recognize, and on which we found our division of all systems into the two classes named. The distinction we contend for is not the distinction between method and its application, for this is common to every possible system, whether of the one division or of the other; nor is it precisely the distinction between ontology and psychology, when this last is taken in its legitimate sense, that is, as the investigation and classification of the faculties of the soul with a view to serve as the organon of advancing science. No philosopher ever failed to have a psychology, for no philosopher was ever yet able to philosophize without serving himself with the human mind as his organon; on the other hand, no psychologist ever sought a doctrine of

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