Robert Ferguson

“ It is in vain to seek for the origin of these necessary truths in sensation. We may torment that faculty as much as we please, but it will never give us any other knowledge but that derived from experience. And as no experience can be infinite, so from experience we can but arrive at general conclusions, and never at absolute certainty. Our notion of space, in which pure mathematics are founded, is not a matter of experience; for, no man, by any of his senses, can measure, or see, or feel any thing but a particular space, which would be limited, but never an infinite space. ”

“ It is impossible for the mind to remain long in doubt, and where it cannot cling to truth it embraces error. Even in those cases in which scepticism has been indulged, the penalty has not been trifling, which attends a wilful separation from the feelings and thoughts common to our species. The picture which the calm and philosophic Hume has given us of the state of his own mind, is truly appalling. He describes himself as afraid to think; for he knows not to what conclusions he may arrive, and what barriers he may create between himself and the rest of mankind. ”

“ Again, when we call the Absolute the principle of all existence, we have the notion merely of a first cause. When, however, we call it the essence of things, and then prove from it that all things are but modes of this first cause, it is evident that we are begging the question. We first make the Absolute the essence of all things, and then prove that all things are but this essence. ”

“ To such, it is in vain to say, that a power which is unconscious of its own existence until it knows itself in man, is not, and cannot be, an object of adoration to the conscious reason. We feel that our consciousness is a higher faculty than that unconscious power; which, after all, is a phantasy of the mind. There may, therefore, be much truth in the moral part of the philosophy of Schelling, or of M. Cousin, and little in the theoretical. No philosophy is entirely false; it is only from its containing some fragment of truth that it ever imposes upon man. ”

“ The law of causality leads us to a first cause, and the law of substance to a real being. Thus reason reveals to us, as absolutely true, the existence of things, of which the senses cannot take any cognizance."
The laws of Reason are therefore absolute; they do not belong to me more than to you; they do not belong to humanity, but govern it, inasmuch as we are forced to acknowledge them, forced to be convinced, forced mentally to obey. They oblige the Will, but do not constrain it. Neither do they belong to external nature. The universe represents them ”

“ For if this were not the case, if the person, was one thing, and will another, then there would be, says M. Cousin, impersonal volitions.
We find ourselves, therefore, placed in a world foreign to us, and between two orders of phenomena, which do not belong to us; those of sense, and those of reason. We perceive, moreover, only by a light, which is not ours; for our personality is our will, and nothing more. It is the Reason which perceives; for to perceive is to know, and the Reason alone knows.
Consciousness is composed of three integrant and inseparable elements. ”

“ In a mathematical demonstration, for example, we are not the authors of our conviction. No act of ours makes it more or less true. Neither is the conviction of the truth confinable to us; for we feel that at all times, in all places, and to all men, the proposition must be true; that is, it is absolutely true; true of an absolute truth. The Reason is manifested in other sciences besides the mathematical. All science [6] is only science inasmuch as it contains necessary truths: we acknowledge these implicitly, and it is out of our power not to acknowledge them. ”

“ It was a law of the reason to strive after the greatest unity: man was constantly governed by a want of it. He unites all the phenomena of mind, and refers them to one substance called the soul. He unites all the phenomena of the sensible world, and calls them matter. After having constituted these two unities, he then elevates his mind to the highest unity, or the Eternal first Cause.
What then has Kant left us that we do know as real and out of the mind? All the phenomena of nature are modifications of mind, and all the laws which govern these phenomena but laws of the mind. ”

“ And though philosophy may elevate the instinct of devotion to the contemplation of a Being which reason can worship, yet mankind will bow down with fervor to the work of their own hands, to stocks and stones, rather than remain without a God. Among the followers of Schelling [7] there are, and there must be, some who have a holy yearning towards the infinite, who live in the consciousness that all around them is alive, and die with the hope of being resolved into that power, which is all in all, the beauty and might of nature, and the majesty of man. ”

“ The fact is, the notion of individual existences separate from the eternal, is not derived from any consideration of the notion of the eternal or absolute, but from a conviction of our own individuality; and no man in his senses believes he is not a being separate and distinct. The mind never confounds itself with matter, or either with the first cause. The enigma of Creation, in spite of the reasoning of the absolutists, is not a whit cleared; and it may be safely asserted, that the human mind is wholly incapable of showing how individual realities proceed from a first cause. ”

“ It is unnecessary to remind the reader that the notion of something eternal is inherent in the human mind. Each of the four forms of belief which comprise all others, start with it. The Atheist calls it eternal nature; the Hylozoist, anima mundi; the Pantheist styles it the absolute; and the Theist, God. Without stopping to dwell on the nature of this absolute force, we shall merely say, that it is considered as an unconscious reason, which is, at the same time, the same as the principle of life. ”

“ Kant's system leads to pure Idealism; this, we are aware, is not admitted by many of his followers, but it is nevertheless true. He denied that the mind was ever capable of knowing what things were in themselves. All that we imagine to be external and extended, is not really so; we make it so; for space is not a real existence, but a mode of the mind; a law, by which the mind perceives things extended, just as the eye perceives all things coloured red, if viewed through red glass. ”

“ But the history of the human mind proves how little our moral notions are dependent on our philosophical reasonings. Locke was a pious Christian in spite of his philosophy; and, in spite of his doctrine, Spinosa was one of the best and most guileless of men. Fichte and Schelling are numbered among the most eloquent advocates of virtue, although the God of the one is a result of the personal force, the Ego—and that of the other, an eternal unconscious Reason. Nature has most happily been more bountiful of instinct than reason. ”

“ If our assent be the effect of reasoning, only show us the process, and we give up the argument. Men differ in what they call good and bad, because it is not in man to dive into the motives of an action; were all motives known, there would be no difference of judgment about them. Reason about the matter as much as you please, there is the fact that we possess a faculty of judging good and evil; a law which we did not make, which we cannot alter, which, therefore, is not our creation, but should be our regulator. ”

“ Schelling, however, has met with an opponent in Jacobi, whose philosophy is daily acquiring ground in Germany, and daily inculcating the maxim, that the boasted absolute reason, which must solve every enigma contained in it, because it is the absolute reason, is, after all, but a poor faculty of a poor worm, man. Jacobi has been called a dreamer, because he has shown that the foundations of reason itself are first principles, which we implicitly believe, and for which there is no evidence from reasoning. ”

“ The Germans do not define reason to be a source of knowledge by means of conclusions, or reasoning, but a source of immediate knowledge, a source of these necessary truths, a faculty which perceives truths without the intervention of any thing else. To limit reason to a mere reasoning faculty is fraught with great danger; for, as it is by no syllogism, no logical process, no reasoning, that we come to a notion of cause, so that notion might be resolved into a mere feeling, which might vary in various individuals ”

“ Without a cause nothing is possible. Hence, too, the Absolute must be looked upon as the foundation of all things possible. But separate these terms from the relation they express between things, and they have no meaning. What is a possibility in itself? What is a necessity in itself? If possibility meant something real, as for example let us suppose it meant Matter, a real existence, and necessity meant Mind, another real existence, then it is true that when we think of an Absolute or principle of all existence, we think also of the grounds of all possibility and necessity in it. ”

“ It is scarcely worth while commenting on so wild a doctrine. It is evident we can have no experience of such an unconscious reason in ourselves. For if an intellectual process, or capacity, or energy, ever did exist without consciousness, as we are by the supposition not at yet conscious, so we cannot know of its existence.
The puzzling phenomena of instinct are looked upon by some as an unconscious reason. A bee constructs its cell, and practically solves a very difficult mathematical proposition, and that without being conscious that the form of the cell is the best possible. ”

“ Thus nature and nature's law, the soul, the Deity, &c. are, as far as we are concerned, but modes of thought. It is true that he takes for granted that there are realities external to us, which are the causes of these modifications of the mind: but what is the meaning of causes out of us, existences besides our own, when outness or space has no reality except in the mind? To us, therefore, the philosophy of Kant seems the most disheartening, cold and miserable, possible. ”

“ To sum up, then,—three phenomena are necessary to constitute consciousness, and they must be co-existent. Without the activity or I, there could be no consciousness, for the person, to be conscious, would not be there; without the external world there could be no cause of sensation; and as the person is conscious only by perceiving, that is by the intervention of the reason, so Reason must be there too. ”

“ From Plato down to himself, every philosopher had traced the origin of our knowledge to something without us; Kant began to examine the mind in itself, and to try to determine what its laws were in themselves ”