139. Let us give a glance at these ravings. Psychology starts from a fundamental fact—the testimony of consciousness. The human mind cannot think without finding itself; the starting-point of its psychological investigations is the proposition, I think; in this is found the identity of which Fichte speaks—the me is the me. All thought, from the first moment that it exists, perceives itself subject to a law; the perception of every thing involves the perception, either explicit or implicit, of the identity of the thing perceived. In this sense, the most simple formula in which we can express the first law of our perception is: A is A; but this formula is as sterile as it is simple; and it is impossible to conceive how any one could pretend to raise upon it a system of philosophy. This formula, supposing it to be enunciated, involves the existence of the me which enunciates it. It cannot be said that A is A, if there is not a being in which the relation of identity is supposed. If the proposition A = A is true, it is necessary to suppose an A, or a being in which it exists. A purely ideal truth, without any foundation in a real truth, is an absurdity, as we have elsewhere proved and explained at great length.[59]
140. But the existence of an ideal truth, in so far as it is represented in us, that is to say, in so far as it is a fact of our consciousness, is not necessary, but hypothetical, it exists when it exists; but when it exists it may not exist, or when it does not exist it may exist. Necessity cannot be inferred from existence: the testimony of consciousness assures us of the fact; but in this consciousness we find no proof that the fact is necessary, that it has not depended on a higher agent; quite the contrary, the sentiment of our weakness, the shortness of the time to which the recollections of our consciousness extend, the natural and periodical interruptions of them which we experience during sleep, every thing shows that the fact of consciousness is not necessary, and that the being which experiences it has but a little while ago commenced its existence, and might lose it again as soon as the infinite being should cease to preserve it. The me which we perceive within us knows itself, affirms itself; the word supposes itself has no reasonable meaning, unless it mean that the me affirms its existence; but this knowing itself is not producing itself; whoever asserts such an absurdity is under obligation to prove it.
141. In truth it requires all the gravity of Fichte to pretend to connect such a collection of extravagant absurdities into science. It was reserved for modern times to see a man seriously occupied with a system whose existence will, with difficulty, be believed by those who read the history of the aberrations of the human mind. The system of Fichte is already judged by all thinking men, and there is no surer means to make it forgotten than to expose it to the eyes of the judicious reader.
142. Having established the necessary and absolute existence of the me, Fichte proposes to demonstrate that from the me proceeds the not-me, that is to say; all that is not the me. "But the not-me can only be supposed in so far as a me, to which it is opposed, is supposed in the me (in the identical consciousness).
"But the not-me must be supposed in the identical consciousness.
"Therefore the me must also be supposed in it in so far as the not-me is supposed in it."
... "If me = me, all is supposed which is supposed in the me.... "The me and the not-me are both products of original acts of the me, and the consciousness itself is a product of the first original act of the me, of the supposition of the me by itself."[60]
This, then, is how according to Fichte, the not-me, that is to say; this which we call the external world, and all that is not the me, is born of the me; the distinction of one thing from another is a pure illusion, a play of relations by which the me conceives itself as not-me in so far as it limits itself; but the me and the not-me are absolutely identical. "The me and the not-me inasmuch as they are supposed identical and opposed by the conception of mutual limitation, are something in the me (accidents) as divisible substances, supposed by the me, the absolute and illimitable subject, to which nothing is identical and nothing opposed. There all judgments, the logical subject of which is the limitable or determinable me, or something which defines the me, must be limited or defined by something higher; but all judgments, the logical subject of which is the absolutely illimitable me, cannot be determined by any thing higher, because the absolute me is not determined by any thing they are founded on, and defined absolutely by themselves." This is the last result of Fichte's system, the me converted into an absolute being, which is determined by nothing above itself, into an unlimited and illimitable subject, an infinite being, into God. Every thing emanates from this absolute subject. "In so far as the me supposes itself as infinite, its activity (that of supposing itself) is spent on the me itself, and on nothing else than the me. Its whole activity is spent on the me, and this activity is the ground and the compass of all being. The me is therefore infinite in so far as its activity returns to itself, and consequently so far also is its activity infinite as its product, the me, is infinite. (Infinite product, infinite activity; infinite activity, infinite product; this is a circle, but not a vicious one, for it is one from which reason escapes, for it expresses that which is absolutely certain by itself, and for its own sake. Product, activity, and active are here one and the same thing, and we separate them only in order to express ourselves.) The pure activity of the me alone, and the pure me alone are infinite. But pure activity is that which has no object, but returns to itself."
"In so far as the me supposes limits, and, according to what we have said, supposes itself in these limits, its activity is not spent immediately on itself, but on a not-me which is to be opposed to it."[61]
How shall we sum up this doctrine? In the words of Fichte: "In so far as the me is absolute, it is infinite and unlimited. It supposes all that is; and that which is not supposed, is not (for it; and out of it there is nothing). But all that it supposes, it supposes as me; and it supposes the me as all that it supposes. Hence in this respect the me contains in itself all, that is, an infinite, unlimited reality.
"In so far as the me opposes to itself a not-me, it necessarily supposes limits, and supposes itself in these limits. It divides the totality of the being supposed in general between the me and the not-me; so far supposes itself necessarily as finite."[62]
143. Thus Fichte in a few words destroys the reality of the external world, converting it into a modification or development of the activity of the me. Is it necessary to stop any longer to refute such an absurd doctrine, one, too, founded on no proof? I believe not: especially since I have established on solid principles the demonstration of the existence of an external world, and have explained the origin and character of the facts of consciousness, without having recourse to such extravagant absurdities.[63]
CHAPTER XIX.
RELATIONS OF FICHTE'S SYSTEM TO THE DOCTRINES OF KANT.
144. I have already shown[64] how Kant's system leads to Fichte's. When a dangerous principle is established, there is never wanting an author bold enough to deduce its consequences, whatever they may be. The author of the Doctrine of Science, led astray by the doctrines of Kant, establishes the most extravagant pantheism that was ever invented. In concluding his work, he says that he leaves the reader at the point where Kant takes him; he ought rather to have said that he takes the reader at the point where Kant leaves him. The author of the Critic of Pure Reason, by converting space into a purely subjective fact, destroys the reality of extension, and opens the door to those who wish to deduce all nature from the me; and by making time a simple form of the internal sense, he causes the succession of phenomena in time to be considered as mere modifications of the me to the form of which they relate.
145. But it is far from being necessary for us to hunt after deductions; the philosopher himself, in the midst of his obscurity and enigmatical language, does not cease to lay down in the most precise manner this monstrous doctrine. Let us hear how he speaks in his transcendental Logic, where he proposes to explain the relation of the understanding to objects in general, and the possibility of knowing them a priori. "The order and regularity in phenomena, that which we call nature, is consequently our own work; we should not find it there if we had not placed it there by the nature of our mind; for this natural unity must be a necessary unity, that is to say, a certain unity a priori of the connection of the phenomena. But how could we produce a synthetic unity a priori, if there were not in the primitive sources of our mind subjective reasons of this unity a priori, and if these subjective conditions were not at the same time objectively valid, since they are the grounds of the possibility of knowing in general an object in experience?"[65] Who does not see in these words the germ of Fichte's system, which deduces from the me the not-me, that is to say, the world, and gives to nature no other validity than that which it has received from the me?
146. But Kant is still more explicit, where he is explaining the nature and attributes of the understanding. He says: "We have before defined the understanding in different ways; we have called it a spontaneity of knowledge, (in opposition to the receptivity of sensibility,) a faculty of thought, or rather, a faculty of conceptions or judgments; these definitions, rightly explained, are but one. We may now characterize it as a faculty of rules. This character is more fruitful, and comes nearer to the essence of the thing: sensibility gives us forms (of intuition) and the understanding rules. The latter is always applied to the observation of phenomena in order to find in them some rule. The rules, if objective, (if, consequently, necessarily united to the knowledge of the object,) are called laws. Although we know many laws by experience, still these laws are only particular determinations of other higher laws, the highest of which (to which all the others are subjected) proceed a priori from the understanding itself, and are not taken from experience, but, on the contrary, they give to the phenomena their validity, and therefore make experience possible. The understanding, then, is not simply a faculty of making rules for itself, and comparing phenomena; it is also the legislation for nature; that is to say, that without the understanding there would be no nature, or synthetic unity of the multiplicity of phenomena according to certain rules. For the phenomena, as such, cannot exist out of us; on the contrary, they only exist in our sensibility; but this, as the object of the knowledge in an experience, with all that it can contain, is only possible in the unity of the apperception. The unity of the apperception is the transcendental foundation of the necessary legitimacy of all the phenomena in an experience; this unity of the apperception in relation to the multiplicity of the representations (in order to determine the multiplicity by starting from only one) is the rule, and the faculty of these rules is the understanding. All phenomena, then, as possible experiences, are a priori in the understanding, and from it they derive their formal possibility, in the same manner that they are pure intuitions in the sensibility, and are only possible by it in relation to the form."
In the deduction of the pure conceptions of the understanding, Kant not only pretends that the objects of our knowledge are not things in themselves, but that it is impossible that they should be, because we could not then have conceptions a priori. He adds, that the representation of all these phenomena, consequently all objects which we know, are all in the me, and are determinations of my identical me, which expresses the necessity of a universal unity of these determinations in only one and the same apperception.
147. From these passages it clearly follows that Fichte's system, or the ideal pantheism which reduces every thing to modifications of the me, accords with the principles established in the Critic of Pure Reason, and is even expressly laid down, although it does not form its principal object in that work. For the sake of impartiality I cannot do less than refer the reader to the seventeenth chapter of the third book, where I have intimated that the German philosopher attempts to explain his expressions so as to escape idealism, which he professes to refute. But this he seems to me to do only by an inconsequence.
148. However, my opinion of the connection of modern pantheism with the Critik der reinen Vernunft is confirmed even by the Germans. "From these depths," says Rosenkranz, speaking of this work, "the results of the transcendental æsthetics and logic receive a new importance in the great problems of theology, cosmology, morals, and psychology, which was not even suspected by the dull sense of the greater part of its admirers. They know nothing of the chain which unites Fichte's Doctrine of Science, Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism, Hegel's Phenomenology and Logic, and Herbart's Metaphysics, with Kant's Critic....
"I may say that the English and French in particular will understand nothing of the development of German philosophy since Kant, until they have penetrated the Critic of Pure Reason, for we Germans always look to that.... Just as we use the houses, the palaces, the churches, but most of all the towers which rise over every thing to guide us in a large city; so also in contemporary philosophy, amid the labyrinth of its quarrels it is impossible to take a single step with security unless we keep our sight fixed on Kant's Critic. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Herbart made this work the great centre of their operations for attack or defence."[66]
149. I do not mean by this that the German philosophers since Kant have added nothing to the Critic of Pure Reason: I have already observed (in the seventh chapter of the first book) that the cause of the greater obscurity which is found in Fichte's words, proceeds from his having gone farther than Kant in his abstraction of all objectiveness both external and internal, placing himself in I know not what pure primitive act, from which he pretends to deduce every thing; in which he differs from the author of the Critic of Pure Reason, whose labors did not so absolutely annihilate the objectiveness of the internal world, and therefore his observations are less incomprehensible, and even present here and there some few luminous points: I only wished to show the baneful importance of Kant's works, to place those incautious persons on their guard, who, judging from what they have heard, are inclined to regard him as the great restorer of spiritualism and sound philosophy, when, in reality, he is the founder of the most pernicious schools which the history of the human mind has known, and would be one of the most dangerous writers that ever existed, were it not that the obscurity of his ideas, increased by the obscurity of their expression, renders him intolerable to the immense majority of readers, even of those versed in philosophical studies.