Volume 6 — The Cartesian Doubt. [Footnote 36]

The Churchman, an Episcopalian weekly periodical, contains an article of no little philosophic pretension, entitled Science and God, which we propose to make the occasion of a brief discussion of what is known in the philosophic world as the Cartesian Doubt, or Method of Philosophizing. The Churchman begins by saying:

"A distinction is frequently and very justly taken between philosophic and religious scepticism. When Descartes, in order to find firm ground for his philosophical system, declared that he doubted the truth of every thing, even of the existence of the sensible world and the being of God, he did it in the interest of science. He wished to stand upon a principle which could not be denied, to find a first truth which no one could question. And this philosophic scepticism is an essential element in all investigations of truth. It says to every accredited opinion, Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham? By thus exploring the foundation of current beliefs, we come to distinguish those which have real vitality in them, and stand on the rock and not on the sand; and by gathering up the living (true) and casting away the dead, (false,) science goes step by step toward its goal."

Whether Descartes recommended a real or only a feigned doubt, as the first step in the scientific process he defended, has been and still is a disputed point. If it is only a feigned or pretended doubt, it is no real doubt at all, and he who affects it is a real believer all the time. It is a sham doubt, and we have never seen any good in science or in anything else come from shams or shamming. If the doubt is real, and is extended to all things, even to the being of God and our own existence, as Descartes recommends, we are at a loss to understand any process by which it can be scientifically removed. To him who really doubts of everything, even for a moment, nothing can be proved, for he doubts the proofs as well as the propositions to be proved. All proofs must be drawn either from facts or from principles, and none can avail anything with one who holds all facts and principles doubtful. The man who really doubts everything is out of the condition of ever knowing or believing anything. There is no way of refuting a sceptic but by directing his attention to something which he does not and cannot doubt; and if there is nothing of the sort, his refutation is impossible.

Descartes, according to The Churchman, when he declared he doubted the truth of everything, even of the existence of the sensible world and the being of God, did it in the interest of science, in order to find firm ground for his philosophical system. Doubt is ignorance, for no man doubts where he knows. So Descartes sought a firm ground for his philosophical system in universal ignorance! "He wished to stand upon (on) a principle which could not be denied, a first truth which no one could question." If he held there is such a principle, such a first truth, or anything which cannot be denied, he certainly did not and could not doubt of everything. If he doubted the being of God, how could he expect to find such a principle or such a first truth? The Churchman seems to approve of the Cartesian doubt, and says, "This philosophical scepticism is an essential element in all investigations of truth." If this real or feigned scepticism were possible, no investigations could end in anything but doubt, for it would always be possible, whatever the conclusions arrived at, to doubt them. But why can I not investigate the truth I do not doubt or deny?

Moreover, is it lawful, even provisionally, in the interest of science, to doubt, that is, to deny, the being of God? No man has the right to make himself an atheist even for a moment. The obligation to believe in God, to love, serve, and obey him, is a universal moral obligation, and binds every one from the first dawn of reason. To doubt the being of God is to doubt the whole moral order, all the mysteries of faith, the entire Christian religion. And does The Churchman pretend that any man in the interest of science or any other interest has the right voluntarily to do that?

Undoubtedly, every man has the right to interrogate "every accredited opinion" and to demand of it, "Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham?" But the right to question "accredited opinions" is one thing, and the right to question the first principles either of science or of faith is another. A man has no more right voluntarily to deny the truth than he has to lie or steal. The Churchman will not deny this. Then either it holds that all science as all faith is simply opinion, or it deceives itself in supposing that it accepts the Cartesian doubt or adopts his philosophical scepticism. Doubt in the region of simple opinion is very proper. It would be perfectly right for The Churchman to doubt the opinion accredited among Protestants that Rome is a despotism, the papacy a usurpation, the Catholic religion a superstition, or that the church has lost, falsified, corrupted, or overlaid the pure Christian faith, and demand of that opinion, "Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham?" And we have little doubt, if it would do so, that it would find itself exchanging its present opinion for the faith "once delivered to the saints." It is clear enough from the extract we have made that The Churchman means to justify scepticism only in matters of opinion, and that it is far enough from doubting of everything, or supposing that there is nothing real which no man can doubt.

But, if we examine a little more closely this Cartesian method which bids us doubt of everything till we have proved it, we shall find more than one reason for rejecting it. The doubt must be either real or feigned. If the doubt is only feigned for the purpose of investigation, it amounts to nothing, serves no purpose whatever; for every man carries himself with him wherever he goes, and enters into his thought as he is, with all the faith or science he really has. No man ever does or can divest himself of himself. Hence the difficulty we find even in imagining ourselves dead, for even in imagination we think, and in all thinking we think ourselves living, are conscious that we are not dead. In every thought, whatever else we affirm, we affirm our own existence, and this affirmation of our own existence is an essential and inseparable element of every thought. When I attempt to think myself dead, I necessarily think myself as surviving my own death, and as hovering over my own grave. No one ever thinks his own death as the total extinction of his existence, and hence we always think of the grave as dark, lonely, cold, as if something of life or feeling remained in the body buried in it. Men ask for proofs that the soul survives the dissolution of the body, but what they really need is proof that the soul dies. Life we know; but death, in the sense of total extinction of life, we know not; it is no fact of our experience. Life we can conceive, death we cannot. I am always living in my conceptions, and that I die with my body I am utterly unable to think, because I can think myself only as living.

The thinker, then, enters as an indestructible element into every one of his thoughts. Then he must enter as he is and for what he is. His real faith or science enters with him, and no doubt can enter that is not a real doubt. A feigned or factitious doubt, being unreal, does not and cannot enter with him. He is always conscious that he does not entertain it, and therefore can never think as he would if he did. The Christian, firm in his Christian faith, whose soul is clothed with Christian habits, cannot think as an infidel, or even in thought put himself in the infidel's position. Hence one reason why so many defences of Christianity, perfectly conclusive to the believer, fail of their purpose with the unbeliever. Even the unbeliever trained in a Christian community or bred and born under Christian civilization cannot think as one bred and born under paganism. What we assert is, that every man thinks as he is, and cannot think otherwise; simply what all the world means when it says of a writer, "Whatever else he writes, he always writes himself." Men may mimic one another, but always each in his own way. The same words from different writers produce not the same impression upon the reader. Something of himself enters into whatever a man thinks or does, and no translator has ever yet been able to translate an author from one language to another without giving something of himself in his translation. The Cartesian doubt, then, if feigned, factitious, or merely methodical, is impracticable, is unreal, and counts for nothing; for all along the investigator thinks with whatever faith and knowledge he really has; or simply, we cannot feign a doubt we do not feel.

It will be no better if we assume that the doubt recommended is real. No man really doubts what he does not doubt, and no man does or can doubt of everything; for even in doubt the existence of the doubter is affirmed. But suppose a man really does doubt of everything, the Cartesian method will never help him to resolve his doubts. From doubt you can get only doubt. To propose doubt as a method of philosophizing is simply absurd, as absurd as it would be to call scepticism philosophy, faith, or science. The mind that doubts of everything, if such a mind can be supposed, is a perfect blank, and, when the mind is a perfect blank, is totally ignorant of everything, how is it to understand, discover, or know that anything is or exists? There have indeed been men, sometimes men called philosophers, who tell us that the mind is at first a tabula rasa, or blank sheet, and exists without a single character written on it. If so, if it can exist in a state of blank ignorance, how can it, we should like to know, ever become an intelligent mind, or ever know anything more than the sheet of paper on which we are now writing? Intelligence can speak only to intelligence, and no mind absolutely unintelligent can ever be taught or ever come to know anything? But if we assume that the mind is in any degree intelligent, we deny that it can doubt of everything; for there is no intelligence where nothing is known, and what the mind knows it does not and cannot doubt. Either, then, this blank ignorance is impossible, or no intelligence is possible.

But, as we have already said, no man does or can doubt of everything, and hence the Cartesian method is an impossible method. Descartes most likely meant that we should doubt of everything, the external world, and even the being of God, and accept nothing till we have found a principle that cannot be denied, or a first truth that cannot be doubted, from which all that is true or real may be deduced after the manner of the geometricians. He did not mean to deny that there is such first truth or principle, but to maintain that the philosopher should doubt till he has found or obtained it. His error is in taking up the question of method before that of principles or first truths—an error common to nearly all philosophers who have succeeded him, but which we never encounter in the great Gentile philosophers, far less in the great fathers and mediaeval doctors of the church. These always begin with principles, and their principles determine their method. Descartes begins with method, and, as Cousin has justly said, all his philosophy is in his method. But, unhappily, his method, based on doubt, recognizes and conducts to no principles, therefore to no philosophy, to no science, and necessarily leaves the mind in the doubt in which it is held to begin. The discussion of method before discussing principles assumes that the mind is at the outset without principles, or, at least, totally ignorant of principles; and that, being without principles or totally ignorant of them, it is obliged to go forth and seek them, and, if possible, find or obtain them by its own active efforts. But here comes the difficulty, too often overlooked by our modern philosophers. The mind can neither exist nor operate without principles, or what some philosophers call first truths. The mind is constituted mind by the principles, and without them it is nothing and can do nothing. The supposed tabula rasa is simply no mind at all. Principles must be given, not found or obtained. We cannot even doubt without them, for doubt itself is a mental act, and therefore the principles themselves, without which no doubt or denial is possible, are not and cannot be denied or doubted; for even in denying or doubting the mind affirms them. Principles, again, cannot be given the mind without its possessing them, and for the mind to possess a thing is to know it. As the principles create or constitute the mind, the mind always knows them, and what it knows it does not and cannot doubt. The philosopher, as distinguished from the sophist, does not start from doubt, and doubt of everything till he has found something which he cannot doubt; but he starts from the principles themselves, which, being given, are nota per se, or self-evident, and therefore need no proof—in fact, are provable only from the absurd consequences which would follow their denial.

Having begun with a false method, Descartes fails in regard to principles, and takes as the first truth which cannot be doubted what, either in the order of being or knowing, is no first truth or ultimate principle at all. He takes as a principle what is simply a fact—the fact of his own personal existence, or of an internal personal sentiment: Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I exist. Regarded as an argument to prove his existence, as Descartes evidently at first regarded it, this enthymem is a sheer paralogism, and proves nothing; for the consequence only repeats the antecedent; sum is already in cogito. I affirm that I exist in affirming that I think. But pass over this, and give Descartes the benefit of an explanation, which he gives in one of his letters when hard pressed by his acute Jesuit opponent, that he does not pretend to offer it as an argument to prove that he exists, but presents it simply as the fact in which he finds or becomes conscious of his existence. There is no doubt that in the act of thinking I become conscious that I exist; for, as we have already shown, the subject enters into every thought as one of its integral and indestructible elements; but this does not relieve him. He "wished," as says The Churchman, "to stand upon (on) a principle which could not be denied, to find a first truth which no one could question." This principle or first truth he pretends is his own personal existence, expressed in the sophism, I think, therefore I exist, Cogito, ergo sum. We agree, indeed have already proved, that no one can deny or doubt his own personal existence, although it is possible for a man to set forth propositions which, in their logical development, would deny it. But the method Descartes defends permits him to assert nothing which cannot be deduced, after the manner of the geometricians, from the principle or first truth on which he takes his stand; and unless he can so deduce God and the universe, he must deny them.

But from the fact that I exist, that is, from my own personal existence, nothing but myself and what is in me and dependent on me can be deduced. Geometrical or mathematical deduction is nothing but analysis, and analysis can give nothing but the subject analyzed. Now, it so happens that I do not contain God and the external universe in myself. Following the Cartesian method, I can attain, then, to no existence but myself, my own personal phenomena. I can deduce no existence but my own, and am forced, if logical, to doubt or deny all other existence, that is, all existence but my personal existence, and my own interior sentiments and affections. I am the only existence; I am all that is or exists, and hence either I am God or God is not. What is this but the absolute egoism of Fichte?

Descartes himself seems to have felt the difficulty, and to have seen that God cannot, after all, be deduced from the fact of personal existence; he therefore asserts God as an innate idea, and concludes his real and independent being from the idea innate in his own mind. Analysis of his own mind discloses the idea, and from the idea he concludes, after the manner of St. Anselm, that God is. But when I am given as the principle or first truth, how conclude from my idea, which is simply a fact of my interior life, that there is anything independent of me to correspond to it? Here Descartes was forced to depart from his own method, and make what on his system is a most unwarrantable assumption, namely, that the idea, being innate, is deposited by God in the mind, and, as God cannot lie, the idea must be true, and therefore God is. That is, he takes the idea to prove the being of God, and the veracity of God to prove the trustworthiness of the idea! But he was to doubt the being of God till he had geometrically demonstrated it; he therefore must prove that God is before he can appeal to his veracity. His method involved him in a maze of sophistries from which he was never able to escape. God concluded from my idea, innate or otherwise, is only my idea, without any reality independent of me. The argument of St. Anselm is valid only when idea is taken objectively, not subjectively, as Descartes takes it.

What Descartes really meant by innate ideas we do not know, and we are not certain that he knew himself; but he says, somewhere in his correspondence, that, when he calls the idea of God innate, he only means that we have the innate faculty of thinking God. His argument is, "I think God, and therefore God is." Still the difficulty according to his own method remains unsolved.

Given my own personal existence alone as the principle or first truth, it follows that, at least in science, I am sufficient for myself. Then nothing distinguishable from myself is necessary to my thought, and there is no need of my going out of myself to think. How, then, conclude that what in thought seems to be object is really anything distinguishable from myself? I think God, but how conclude from this that God is distinct from and independent of me, or that he is anything but a mode or affection of my own personal existence? The fact is, when we take our own personal existence alone as the principle from which all objects of faith or science are to be deduced, we can never attain to any reality not contained in our existence as the part in the whole, the effect in the cause, or the property in the essence. Exclusive psychology, as has been shown over and over again, can give us only the subjectivism of Kant, or the egoism of Fichte, resulting necessarily in the nihilism, or identity of being and not-being, of Hegel.

The psychologists generally do not, we are aware, concede this; but they are not in fact, whatever they are in theory, exclusive psychologists, and their inductions of God and an external universe are made from ontological as well as from psychological data. They begin their process, indeed, by analyzing the mind, what they call the facts of consciousness, but they always include in their premises non-psychological elements. Their inductions all suppose man and the universe are contingent existences, and as the contingent is inconceivable as contingent without the necessary, they conclude, since the contingent exists, very logically, that there really is also the necessary, or necessary being, which is God. But the necessary, without which their conclusion would and could have no validity, is not a psychological fact or element; otherwise the soul itself would be necessary being, would be itself God. The mistake arises from regarding what philosophers call necessary ideas, such as the idea of the necessary, the universal, the immutable, the eternal, etc., because held by the mind, as psychological, instead of being, as they really are, ontological. Being ontological, real being, the inductions of the psychologists, as they call themselves, do really carry us out of the psychological order, out of the subjective into the objective. But, if their inductions were, as they pretend, from exclusively psychological data, they would have no value beyond the soul itself, and the God concluded would be only a psychological abstraction. Indeed, most psychologists assert more truth than their method allows, are better than their systems. Especially is this the case with Descartes. On his own system, logically developed, he could assert no reality but his own individual soul or personal existence; yet, in point of fact, he asserts nearly all that the Catholic theologian asserts, but he does it inconsistently, illogically, unscientifically, and thus leads his followers to deny everything not assertable by his method.

But, as we have said, Descartes does not attain by his method to a first principle. Not only cannot the being of God and the existence of the external universe be deduced from our own personal existence, but, by his method, our personal existence itself cannot be logically asserted. It is not ultimate, a first principle, or a first truth. Our personal existence cannot stand by itself alone. It is true Descartes says, Cogito, ergo SUM; but I cannot even think by myself alone, and even he does not venture to take sum in the absolute sense of am, as in the incommunicable name by which God reveals himself to Moses, I AM WHO AM, or I AM THAT AM. Even he takes it in the sense of exist, Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I exist. He never dared assert his own personal existence as absolute, underived, eternal, and necessary being; it remained for a Fichte, adopting the Cartesian method, to do that. Between being and existence, essentia and existentia, there is a difference which our philosophers are not always careful to note. Existence is from exstare, and strictly taken, means standing from another, or a derivative and dependent, therefore a contingent existence, or creature, whose being is in another, not in itself. We speak, indeed, of human beings, but men are beings only in a derivative sense, not in the primary or absolute sense. Hence the apostle to the Gentiles says, "In him (God) we live, and move, and are," or have our being. In ourselves we have no being, and are something only as created and upheld by Him who is being itself, or, to speak à la Plato, being in himself. Evidently, then, our personal existence is not ultimate, therefore not the first principle, nor the first truth. The ultimate, at least in the order of being, is not the soul, a contingent existence, but, real being, that is, God himself.

But as we have and can have no personal existence except from God, it is evident that we cannot assert our personal existence by itself alone; and to be able to assert it at all, we must be able to assert the being of God. Now, Descartes tells us that we must doubt the being of God till we can prove it after the manner of the geometricians. But how are we to do this? We cannot, as we have seen, deduce his being from our own personal existence; and what is still more to the purpose, while we deny or doubt his being, we cannot assert or even conceive of our own, because our existence, being derivative, dependent, having not its being in itself, is not intelligible or conceivable in or by itself alone. The contingent is not conceivable without the necessary. They are correlatives, and correlatives connote each other. Now, if we deny or doubt the being of God, we necessarily deny or doubt our own personal existence, impossible and inconceivable without God. With God disappears the existence of the external universe and our own. If, then, it were possible to doubt of the being of God, we should doubt of all things, and should have nothing left with which to prove that God is. God is the first principle in being and in knowing, and if he is denied, all is denied. Atheism is nihilism.

Descartes evidently assumes that it is both possible and lawful to doubt the being of God, nay, that we ought to do so, till we have geometrically demonstrated that he is, and The Churchman tells us that this "scepticism is an essential element in the investigation of truth." We cannot bring ourselves to believe it. God, the theologians tell us, is real and necessary being, the contrary of which cannot be thought, and it is the fool, the Scriptures tell us, that says "in his heart, God is not." The evidence of this is in the fact that we do in every thought think our own existence, and cannot deny it if we would; and in the farther fact that we always do think our own existence as contingent, not as necessary being; and that we cannot think the contingent without at the same time thinking the necessary, as was sufficiently shown in the papers on The Problems of the Age, published sometime since in this Magazine. As there can without God be nothing to be known, we must dissent from The Churchman, as from Descartes himself, that a philosophical scepticism which extends even to the being of God "is an essential element in the investigation of truth." It seems to us the worst way possible to truth, that of beginning by denying all truth, and even the possibility of truth. The man who does so, humanly speaking, puts himself out of the condition of discovering or receiving truth of any sort. He who seeks for the truth should do so with an open mind and heart, and with the conviction that it is. We must open our eyes to the light, if we would behold it, and our hearts to the entrance of truth, if we would have it warm and vivify us. Those men who shut their eyes, compress their lips, and close the aperture of their minds are the last men in the world to discover or to receive the truth, and they must expect to walk in darkness and doubt all their lives. Scepticism is a worse preparation for investigating truth than even credulity, though scepticism and credulity are blood relations, and usually walk hand in hand.

If it were possible to doubt the being of God, or to think a single thought without thinking him, we should prove ourselves independent of him, and therefore deprive ourselves of all possible means of proving that he is. If, for instance, we could think our own existence, as is assumed in the Cartesian enthymem, Cogito, ergo sum, without in the same indissoluble thought thinking God, there would be no necessity of asserting God, and no possible argument by which we could prove his being, or data from which he could be concluded. Man can no more exist and act in the intellectual order, without God, than in the physical order. If you suppose men capable of thinking and reasoning without the intellectual apprehension of the Divine Being, as must be the man who really doubts the being of God, there is no possible reason for asserting God, and it is a matter of no practical moment in the conduct of life whether we believe in God or not. The fact is, no man can doubt the being of God any more than he can his own personal existence. The Cartesian method, if followed strictly, would lead logically to universal nihilism; for he who doubts the being of God must, if logical, doubt of everything, and he who doubts of everything can be convinced of nothing.

We say not only that atheism is absurd, but that it is impossible; and they who with the fool say there is no God, if sincere, deceive themselves, or are deceived by the false methods and theories of philosophers, or sophists rather. No man can think a single thought without thinking both God and himself. The man may not advert, as St. Augustine says, to the fact that he thinks God, but he certainly thinks, as we showed in our article last May, on An Old Quarrel, that which is God. No man ever thinks the imperfect without thinking the perfect, the particular without the universal, the mutable without the immutable, the temporal without the eternal, the contingent without the necessary. The perfect, the universal, the immutable, the eternal, the necessary are not abstract ideas, for there are no abstractions in nature. Abstractions are nullities, and cannot be thought. The ideas must be real, and therefore being; and what is perfect, universal, immutable, eternal, real and necessary being but God? That which is God enters into every one of our thoughts, and can no more be denied or doubted than our own existence. Those poor people who regard themselves as atheists so regard themselves because they do not understand that the so-called abstract or necessary ideas are not simply ideas in the mind or psychological phenomena, but are objective, real being, the eternal, immutable, self-existent God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. No doubt we need instruction and reflection to understand this, but this instruction is within the reach of all men, and every mind of ordinary capacity is adequate to the necessary reflection. In point of fact, it is the philosophers that make atheists, and the atheism is always theoretical, never real.

There is no doubt that a little ingenuity may deduce something like this doctrine from Descartes's assertion of innate ideas, but not in the sense Descartes himself understood the word idea. With Descartes the word idea never means the objective reality, but its image in the mind; never being itself, but its mental representation, leaving it necessary, after having ascertained that we have the idea, to prove that it represents an objective reality—a thing which no man has ever done or ever can do. His subsequent explanation that he meant, by asserting that the idea of God is innate, simply the innate faculty of thinking God, was a nearer approach to the truth perhaps, but did not reach it, because it assumed that the intuition of that which really is God follows the exercise of the faculty of thinking, instead of preceding and constituting it, and is not an à priori but an empirical intuition. If we could suppose the faculty constituted, existing, and operative, without the intuition of real and necessary being, and that the idea is obtained by our thinking, there would still remain the question as to the objective validity of the thought. If Descartes had identified the idea with being regarded as intelligible to us, and represented it as creating or constituting the faculty of thinking, he would have reached the truth; but this he could not do by his method, which required him to recognize as his principle only his own personal existence, and to deduce from it, after the manner of the geometricians, whatever he recognized as true. God, or what is God, could be obtained or presented only by the exercise of our faculty of thinking, and not by the creative act of God affirming himself as the first principle alike of thought and the faculty of thinking.

If Descartes had properly analyzed thought and ascertained its essential and indestructible elements, he would have avoided the error of resolving the thinker into thought, la pensée, which denied the substantive character of the soul and made it purely phenomenal, and have ascertained that, beside the subject or our personal existence, but simultaneously with it, there is affirmed what in the order of reality precedes it,—God himself, under the form, if I may so speak, of real, necessary, universal, eternal, and independent idea or being. There is given in every thought, as its primary and essential element, a real ontological element, without which no thought is possible. This, not our personal existence, is the first truth or principle which every philosopher must recognize, if he would build on a solid foundation and not in the air, and this principle can no more be denied or doubted than our personal existence itself, for without it we could not think our personal existence, nay, could not exist at all, as capable of thought.

But even if, by a just analysis, Descartes had found that this ontological element is a necessary and indestructible element of thought, he would have still greatly, fatally erred if he had taken it as his first principle and refused to admit any existence not logically deducible from it, that is, deducible from it "after the manner of the geometricians," as required by his method. Father Rothenflue, Father Fournier, and the Louvain professors reject the Cartesian psychology, and assume Ens, or being, which they very properly identify with God, as the first principle in science. This is proper. But how do they pass from being to existences, from the necessary to the contingent, from God to creation? We cannot deduce logically existences from being, because logic can deduce from being only what is necessarily contained in being, that is, only being. If we say, given being existences logically follow, we assume with Cousin that God cannot but create, that creation is a necessity of his own nature, and therefore necessary, as necessary as God himself, which denies the contingency of creatures, and identifies them with necessary being. This is precisely what Descartes himself does after he has once got possession, as he supposes, of the idea of God, or proved that God is. Creation on his system is the necessary, not the free act of the Creator.

There are, as has often been remarked, two systems in Descartes, the one psychological and the other ontological; as there are in his great admirer and follower, Victor Cousin. The two systems are found in juxtaposition indeed, but without any logical or genetic relation. Descartes proceeds from his personal existence as his principle, which gives him nothing but his personal existence; then finding that he has the idea of God, for we presume he had been taught his catechism, he takes the idea as his principle, and erects on it a system of ontology. In this last he was followed by Malebranche, a far greater man than himself. Malebranche perceived, what we have shown, that we have direct and immediate intelligence of God, that he, as idea, is the immediate object of the understanding, and that we see all things in him. Hence his well-known Visio in Deo, or Vision in God, which would be true enough if we had the vision of the blest, and could see God as he is in himself; for God sees or knows all things in himself, and has no need to go out of himself to know anything he has made. But this is not the case with us. We do not see things themselves in God, but only their idea or possibility. From the idea of God we may deduce his ability to create, and that the type of all creatable things must be in him; but as creation is on his part a free, not a necessary act, we can, as Malebranche was told at the time, see a possible, but not an actual universe in God; hence, by his vision in God, he attained only to a pure idealism, in which nothing actually distinguishable from God was apprehended or asserted.

Spinoza, greater still than Malebranche, followed also Descartes in his ontological system, and took being, which he calls substance, as his principle. Substance, he said, is one and ultimate, and nothing is to be admitted not obtainable from it by way of logical deduction. Spinoza was too good a logician to suppose that the idea of creation is deducible from the idea of God, for a necessary creation is no creation at all, but the simple evolution of necessary being or substance. Hence nothing is or exists except the one only substance and its modes and attributes. His attributes are infinite, since he is infinite substance; but we know only two, thought and extension. The so-called German ontologists in the main follow Spinoza, and like him admit only being or substance, or its attributes or modes. This system makes what are called creatures, men and things, modes of the Divine Being, in which he manifests his attributes, thought and extension; hence it is justly called pantheism, which, under some of its forms, no one can escape who admits nothing not logically deducible from the idea of substance, being, or God; for deduction, we have said, is simply analysis, and analysis can give only the subject analyzed. As the analysis of my personal existence or the soul can give only me and my attributes, modes, and affections, and therefore the egoism of Fichte, which underlies every purely psychological system, so the analysis of the idea of being can give only being and its modes or attributes, or the pantheism of Spinoza, which underlies the ontology of Descartes, and every system of exclusive ontology.

No philosopher is ever able to develop his whole system, and present it in all its parts, or foresee all its logical consequences. It is only time that can do this, and the vices of a method or a system can be collected fully only from its historical developments. The disciples of Descartes, who in France started with his psychological principle, ended in the pure sensism, or sensation transformed, of Condillac, and those who in Germany started with the same principle, ended in the absolute egoism of Fichte, who completed the subjectivism of Kant, and reached the point where egoism and pantheism become identical. Those, again, who in any country have started with the ontological principle of Descartes and followed his method, have, however they may have attempted to disguise their conclusions, ended in denying creation and asserting some form of pantheism. The materialism which prevailed in the last century, and obtains to a great extent even in the present, is not a historical development of Cartesianism, so much as of the English school founded by Bacon, and developed by Hobbes and Locke, and completed by the French idealogists of Autueil, who were noted for their Anglomania. Cartesianism led rather to what is improperly termed idealism, to the denial of the material universe, or its resolution into pure sensation.

Yet it is instructive to observe that the historical development of the psychological principle represented by Fichte and that of the ontological principle represented by Spinoza terminate in identity. Fichte saw he could not make the soul the first principle without taking it as ultimate and denying its contingency, or that he could not make the soul that from which all that exists proceeds without assuming that the soul, the ego, is God. Hence his twofold ego, the one absolute and the other phenomenal or modal. He thus identifies the soul with God, and concludes that nothing except me and my phenomen, or attributes and modes, is or exists: I am all. Spinoza, starting from the opposite pole, the ontological, finds that he can logically deduce from being only being; and calling being substance, and substance God, he concludes with an invincible logic nothing is or exists, except God and his modes or attributes. The form may differ, but the conclusion is identical with the last conclusion of egoism, and it is noteworthy that even Fichte, in the last transformation of his doctrine, substituted God for the soul, and made God the absolute, and the soul relative and phenomenal, or a mode of the Divine Being.

Whether, then, we start with the soul as first principle or with God, we can never by logical deduction arrive at creation, or be able to assert any existence as distinguishable from the Divine Being. Neither can be taken exclusively as the primum philosophicum, and exclusive ontology is as faulty and as fatal in its consequences as exclusive psychology. The fact is, we can neither doubt the being of God nor our own personal existence; for both are equally essential and indestructible elements of thought, given in the primitive intuition, though being is logically prior to existence, and our primum philosophicum must include both.

But the soul is given in the intuition as contingent, and being is given as necessary. The contingent cannot exist any more than it can be thought without the necessary. It then depends on the necessary, and can exist only as created and upheld by it. The real principle, or primum philosophicum, is then, as has been amply shown in the essays on The Problems of the Age, the ideal formula, Ens creat existentias, or Being creates existences. This presents the ontological principle and the psychological not in juxtaposition merely, but in their real and true relation. This formula enables us to avoid alike pantheism, atheism, idealism, and materialism, and to conform in principle our philosophy to the real order of things and the Catholic faith. But it is only in principle, for Gioberti himself calls the formula ideal. It does not, after all, give us any science of actual existences, or itself furnish its own scientific explication and application. Apply to it the method of Descartes, and lay it down that everything is to be doubted till proved, and we are not much in advance of Cartesianism. We know God is, we know things exist, and God has created or creates them; but we do not know by knowing the formula what God is, what things do or do not exist. It gives us the principles of science, but not the sciences; the law which governs the explication of facts, not the facts themselves. We cannot deduce, after the manner of the geometricians, any actual existence or fact from the formula, nor any of the sciences. There is an empirical element in all the sciences, and none of them can be constructed by logical deduction even from a true ideal formula, and to deny everything not logically deducible from it would leave us in the purely ideal, and practically very little better off than Descartes himself left us. The Cartesian method based on doubt, then, whether we start with an incomplete or a complete ideal formula, can never answer the purpose of the philosopher, or enable us to construct a concrete philosophy that includes the whole body of truth and all the scientific facts of the universe.

We do not pretend that philosophy must embrace all the knowable, omne scibile, in detail; it suffices that it does so in principle. No doubt the ideal formula does this, as in fact always has done the philosophy that has obtained in the Catholic schools. But though the ideas expressed in the ideal formula are intuitive, the constitution of the mind, and basis of all intelligence, and are really asserted in every thought, we very much doubt if they could ever have been reduced to the formula given by Gioberti if men had never received a divine revelation from God, or if they had been left without any positive instruction from their Creator. We are as far as any one can be from building science on faith; but we so far agree with the traditionalists as to hold that revelation is necessary to the full development of reason and its perfect mastery of itself. One great objection to the Cartesian doubt or method is, that it detaches philosophy from theology, and assumes that it can be erected into an independent science sufficient for itself without any aid from supernatural revelation, and free from all allegiance to it. This had never been done nor attempted by any Christian school or even non-Christian school prior to Descartes, unless the pretension of Pomponatius and some others, that things may be theologically true yet philosophically false, and who were promptly condemned by Leo X., be understood as an attempt in that direction. The great fathers of the church and the mediaeval doctors always recognized the synthesis of reason and revelation; and, while they gave to each its part, they seem never to have dreamed of separating them, and of cultivating either as independent of the other; yet they have given us a philosophy which, if not free from all defects, is superior, under the point of view of reason alone, to anything that has elsewhere ever been given under that name. He who would construct a philosophy that can stand the test even of reason must borrow largely from St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas, St. Buonaventura, and the later scholastics.

It is also an objection to the Cartesian doubt that it is not only a complete rupture with revealed theology, but also with tradition, and is an attempt to break the continuity of the life of the race, and to sever the future of humanity from its past. We are among those who regard the catholic beliefs and traditions of mankind as integral elements in the life of the race itself, and indispensable to its continuous progress. The future always has its germ in the past, and a beginning de novo for the individual as for society is alike impossible and undesirable. The Cartesian doubt overlooks this, and requires the individual to disgarnish his mind of every relic and memorial of the past, of everything furnished by his parents and teachers, or the wisdom of ages, and after having become absolutely naked and empty, and made himself as ignorant and impotent as the new-born babe, to receive nothing till he, without experience, without instruction, has by his own unaided powers tested its truth. As reasonable would it be for the new-born infant to refuse the milk from its mother's breast, till it had by the exercise of its faculties settled the question of its wholesomeness.

We object, finally, that it tends to destroy all respect for authority, all reverence for tradition, all regard for the learning and science of other ages and other men, and to puff up the individual with an overweening self-conceit, and sense of his own sufficiency for himself. It renders all education and instruction useless and an impertinence. It tends to crush the social element of our nature, and to create a pure individualism, no less repugnant to government and society than to religion and the divine order, according to which all men are made mutually dependent, one on another. Doubtless, Descartes only developed and gave expression to tendencies which were in his time beginning to be active and strong; but the experience of the civilized world only historically verifies their destructive, anti-philosophical, anti-religious, and anti-social character. Yet his method is still, in substance if not in form, very extensively accepted and followed, as the example of The Churchman itself proves.

We do not by any means believe that Descartes had any suspicion of the real character of his philosophic enterprise. We are far from agreeing with Gioberti that he was a disguised Protestant designedly laboring to complete the work undertaken by Luther. We doubt not that he really accepted the church, as he always professed to do, though most likely he was far enough from being a fervent Catholic; but he was bred a soldier, not a philosopher or a theologian; and though he may have been, and we believe he was for his time, a great mathematician and a respectable physicist, he was always a poor theologian, and a still poorer metaphysician. His natural ability was no doubt worthy of admiration, but he had no genius for metaphysics, and his ignorance of the profounder philosophy of antiquity and of the mediaeval doctors was almost marvellous. He owed in his own day his popularity to the fact that he discoursed on philosophy in the language of the world, free from the stiff formulas, the barbarous locutions, and the dry technicalities of the schools. He owed much to the merits of his style, but still more to the fact that he wrote in the vernacular instead of the Latin tongue, then unusual with writers of philosophical treatises, and non-professional men and court-bred ladies could read him and fancy they understood philosophy. His works were "philosophy-made-easy," and he soon became the vogue in France, and France gives the fashion to the world. But it would be difficult to name a writer who has exerted in almost every direction an equally disastrous influence on modern thought and civilization; not that his intentions were bad, but that his ignorance and presumption were great.

The Cartesian method has no doubt favored that lawless and independent spirit which we see throughout modern society, and which is manifested in those Jacobin revolutions which have struck alike at ecclesiastical and political authority, and at times threatened the civilized world with a new barbarian invasion; but the evil resulting from that method which is now the most to be deplored is the arrogant and independent tone assumed by modern science, and its insolence toward the sacred dogmas of faith. Descartes detached philosophy, and with it all the sciences, from faith, and declared them independent of revelation. It is especially for this that Cousin praises him. But modern so-called science is not contented even with independence; it aspires to dominate and subject faith to itself, or to set up its own conclusions as the infallible test of truth. It makes certain inductions from a very partial survey of facts, concocts certain geological, physiological, ethnological, and philological theories at war with the dogmas of faith, and says with sublime insolence that therefore faith must give way, for science has demonstrated its falsity! If the church condemns its unsupported conclusions, there is forthwith a deafening clamor raised that the church is hostile to science, and denies the freedom of thought and the inalienable rights of the mind! The Churchman sees this, and has written the very article from which we have made our extract to show its injustice; but with what success can it hope to do it, after beginning by approving the Cartesian method and conceding modern science, in principle, all it asks?

We have said and shown over and over again that the church does not condemn science. Facts, no matter of what order, if facts, never do and never can come in collision with her teaching, nor can their real scientific explanations ever conflict with revelation or her dogmas. The church interferes not with the speculations or the theories of the so-called savans, however crude, extravagant, or absurd they may be, unless they put forth conclusions under the name of science which militate against the Christian faith. If they do that, she condemns their conclusions so far as repugnant to that faith. This supervision of the labors of savans she claims and exercises for the protection of her children, and it is as much in the interest of science as of faith that she should do so. If we were to believe what men counted eminent in science tell us, there is not a single Christian dogma which science has not exploded; yet, though modern investigations and discoveries may have exploded several scientific theories once taught in the schools and accepted by Catholics, we speak advisedly when we say science has not exploded a single dogma of the church, or a single proposition of faith she has ever taught. No doubt, many pretendedly scientific conclusions have been drawn and are drawn daily that impugn the faith; but science has not yet confirmed one of them, and we want no better proof that it never will confirm them than the bare fact that they contradict the faith the church believes and teaches. They can all be scientifically refuted, and probably one day will be, but not by the people at large, the simple and unlettered; and therefore it is necessary that the church from time to time should exert her authority to condemn them, and put the faithful on their guard against them. This is no assumption to the injury of science, for in condemning them she seeks only to save the revealed truth which they impugn. It is necessary, also, that men should understand that in science as well as in faith they are not independent of God, and are bound by his word wherever or whatever it speaks. Descartes taught the world to deny this and even God himself till scientifically proved, and hence the pains we have taken to refute his method, to show its unscientific character, and to indicate some of the fatal consequences of adopting it.

We know very well that Bossuet and Fdénélon are frequently classed with the disciples of Descartes, but these men were learned men and great theologians, and they followed Descartes only where he coincided with the general current of Catholic philosophy. Either was a far profounder philosopher than Descartes ever could have been, and neither adopted his method. The same may be said of other eminent men, sometimes called Cartesians. The French place a certain national pride in upholding Descartes, and pardon much to the sophist in consideration of the Frenchman; but this consideration cannot weigh with us any more than it did with the Italian Jesuit, the eminent Father Tapparelli, we believe, who a few years since, in some remarkable papers in La Civiltá Cattolica, gave a most masterly refutation of Descartes's psychological method. Truth is of no nation, and a national philosophy is no more commendable than a national theology, or a national church. It is no doubt to the credit of a nation to have produced a really great philosopher, but it adds nothing to its glory to attempt to make pass for a great philosopher a man who was in reality only a shallow sophist. It was one of the objectionable features in the late M. Cousin that he sought to avail himself of the national prejudices of his countrymen, and to make his system pass for French or the product of French genius. The English are in this respect not less national than the French, and Bacon owes his principal credit with them to the fact that he was a true Englishman. All real philosophy, like all truth, is catholic, not national.

In regard to the scepticism The Churchman deems so essential in the investigation of truth, we have already remarked that a sceptical disposition is the worst possible preparation for that investigation. He who would find truth must open his heart to it, as the sunflower opens her bosom to the sun, and turns her face toward it in whatever quarter of the heavens it may be. Those who, like The Churchman, know not the truth in its unity and catholicity, and substitute opinion for faith, will do well so far to doubt their opinions as to be able thoroughly to investigate them, and ascertain if they have any solid foundation. There are reasons enough why they should distrust their own opinions, and see if the truth is not really where the great majority of the civilized world for ages has told them it is to be found. They ought to doubt, for they have reason to doubt, not of every thing, not of God, not of truth, but of their own opinions, which they know are not science nor faith, and therefore may be false. Scientific men should doubt not science, nor the possibility of science, but their theories, hypotheses, and conjectures till they have proved them; and this all the same whether their theories, hypotheses, and conjectures are taken from the schools or are of their own concoction. But this is something very different from presenting to the world or to one's self the being of God, the creation, the immortality of the soul, and the mysteries of faith as opinions or as theories to be doubted till proven after the manner of geometricians. These are great truths which cannot be reasonably doubted; and, if we find people doubting them, we must, in the best way we can, convince them that their doubts are unreasonable. The believer need not doubt or deny them in order to investigate the grounds of his faith, and to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in him. We advance in the knowledge of truth by means of the truth we have; and the believer is much better fitted for the investigation of truth than the unbeliever, for he knows much better the points that need to be proved, and has his mind and heart in a more normal condition, more in harmony with the real order of things, and is more able to see and recognize truth. But this investigation is not necessary to justify faith in the believer. It is necessary only that the believer may the better comprehend faith in its relations with the general system of things, of which he forms a part, and the more readily meet the objections, doubts, and difficulties of unbelievers. But all cannot enter into this investigation, and master the whole field of theology, philosophy, and the sciences, and those who have not the leisure, the opportunity, and ability to do it, ought not to attempt it. The worst possible service we can render mankind is to teach them that their faith is unreasonable, or that they should hold themselves in suspense till they have done it, each for himself. They who can make the investigation for themselves are comparatively few; and shall no man venture to believe in God and immortality till he has made it? What, then, would become of the great body of the people, the poorer and more numerous classes, who must be almost wholly occupied with procuring the means of subsistence? If the tender mercies of God were no greater than those of the Cartesian philosophers and our Episcopalian Churchman, the poor, the unlettered, the simple, the feeble of intellect would be obliged to live without any rule of duty, without God in the world, or hope in the world to come. For them the guidance and consolations of religion would alike be wanting.

We may see here why the church visits with her censures whatever tends to unsettle or disturb the faith of the people, for which an unbelieving and unreasoning world charges her with denying reason, and being hostile to freedom of thought and scientific investigation. We do not hope to convince the world that it is unjust. The church is willing that every man who can and will think for himself should do so; but the difficulty is, that only here and there one, even at best, does or can so think. It is not that she is unwilling that men should reason, if they will really reason, on the grounds of faith, but that most persons who attempt to do so only reason a little way, just far enough to raise doubts in their minds, doubts which a little more knowledge would solve, and then stop, and refuse or are unable to reason any farther. It is the half-reason, the half-learning, the half-science that does the mischief; as Pope sings:

"A little learning is a dangerous thing: Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, But drinking largely sobers us again."

Many may take "shallow draughts," but very few can "drink deep," and those shallow draughts, which are all that except the very few can take, are more hurtful to both intellectual and moral health than none at all. The church certainly does not encourage those to reason on sacred subjects who can or will reason only far enough to doubt, and to puff themselves up with pride and conceit She, however, teaches all the faith, and gives to every one who will listen to her voice as solid reasons for it as the wisest and most learned and scientific have or can have. In this, however the world may blame or vituperate her, she only pursues the course which experience and common sense approve and pronounce wise and just.

The attempt to educate the mass of the people up to the point of making each individual able to understand and solve all the difficulties in the way of faith has never succeeded, and can never succeed. The mass of the people need and always will have teachers of some sort whom they do and must trust. We see it in politics. In the most democratic state the mass of the people follow like sheep a few leaders, wise and prudent men sometimes, perhaps oftener ignorant but cunning and unscrupulous demagogues. All may be made to understand that in matters of faith the teachers are commissioned by the church, and that the church is commissioned by God himself, who teaches in and through her, and no one has or can have any better reason for believing anything, for none better is conceivable. It is the assumption that the people are to judge for themselves without instructors or instruction that causes so much unbelief in the modern world; but as they have been very extensively told that it is their right to do so, and made to believe it, the church, of course, must meet their factitious wants the best way she can, and educate them up to the highest point possible, and give them all the instruction, not only in the faith, but on its grounds and reasons, they are or can be made capable of receiving. She must do this, not because the people believe or are already enlightened, but because they have learned only just enough to doubt and rebel.