Rational psychology; or, The subjective idea and objective law of all intelligence

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Contents

PAGE

1. What Rational Psychology is 14

2. The Ends to which the Conclusions of Rational Psychology

Chapter I. The Sense In Its Subjective Idea

FIRST DIYISION.

THE IDEA IN THE PURE INTUITION.

§ I.— The Attainment of an a priori Position 81

1. The Primitive Intuition for all Phenomena of an External

Sense 84

2. The Primitive Intuition for all Phenomena of an Internal

§ II. — The Process op an a priori construction of Real Form

in Pure Space and Time 91

1. The Construction of Real Form in Pure Space. 93

2. The Construction of Real Form in Pure Time 95

§ III. — The Primitive Elements of all possible Forms in Pure

Space and Time 98

1. Unity 99

2. Plurality 101

3. Totality 102

Vm CONTENTS.

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§ lY. — The UmTY op Self-Consciousness 105

1. More than Simple Act 1 06

2. More tlian Unity of Conjoining Agency 106

3. More than Unity of Agency and Unity of Consciousness 110

SECOJ^D DIVISION.

THEIDEA IN THE EMPIRICAL INTUITION.

§ I, — The Attainment of an a priori Position through a Pro-

LEPSIS 117

§ II.^-The Primitive Elements of all Possible Anticipation

OF Appearance in the Sense 120

1. Reality 122

2. Particularity 123

3. Peculiarity 124

§ III. — The a PRIORI Determination of what Diversity there

MUST BE IN all QUALITY 121

1. Intensive 129

2. Extensive .' 130

3. Protensive. 131

§ IV. — ^The Construction of the Homogeneous Diversity of all

POSSIBLE Quality into Form. 132

1. Diversity as Intensive 1 35

2. Diversity as Extensive 136

3. Diversity as Protensive 133

§ V. — The Conclusive Determination of the Sense in its Subjective Idea 143

Other representations of the Sense 145

Chapter II. The Sense In Its Objective Law

§ I. — Transcendental Science is conditioned upon a Law in

THE Facts conformed to an a priori Idea 154

§ II. — ^The Colligation op Facts 159

1. Facts connected with Obscure Perception 161

2. The Relative Capabilities of the different Organs of Sense 166

'3. Deceptive Appearance 177

CONTENTS. JX

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§ IIT. — The Consilience of Facts 184

Drawing and Painting 186

Spy-Glass and Engraved Figures 191

Perspective and Dioramic Eepresentations 192

Appendix To The Sexse

'An Ontological Demonstration of the Valid Being of the Phenomenal 197

1. Of the Inner Plienomena 198

2. Of the Outer Phenomena 200

P A R T I I .

THE TJN"I>ER,ST^^lSJ"r>i:N-G}-.

I. The Necessity for a Higher Intellectual Agency than ant

IN the Sense. 203

IL The Exposition of this Higher Agency as Understanding. . 207

CHAPTER I.

THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS SUBJECTIVE IDEA.

§ I. — The Understanding necessarily Discursive 213

§ II. — Space and Time the necessary Media for Determining

Connection through a Discursus 221

§ III. — Space and Time exclude all Determined Experience

except through the connections of the Notional 227

1. Tlie Plienomena only may be given, and we may attempt to

Construct tlieir Places and Periods by tbem 228

2. The one Whole of Space and of Time may be assumed, and

the Attempt made to Determine Phenomenal Places and Periods by them 230

3. The Supposition that perhaps a Notional Connective for the

Phenomena may determine these Phenomena in their Places and Periods in the whole of Space and of Time, and so may give both the Phenomena and their Space and Time in an Objective Experience 237

X CONTENTS.

PAQB

g lY. — The Primitive Elements of the Operation or Connection, GIVING A Possible Experience Determined in Space AND Time 238

1. In Space : Substance and Accidence 239

2. In Time : as having Three Modes : — 243

Perpetual Time : Source and Event 246

Successive Time: Cause and Effect 249

Simultaneous Time : Action and Reaction 252

§ Y. — Some of the a priori Principles in a Nature of Things. 256

1. Substance: giving Permanence, Impenetrability, Inertia, etc. 258

2. Cause: giving a Change in Things, a Train of Events, etc 267

3. Action and Reaction: giving Co-existence, Concomitance, etc. 278

§ "VI. — False Systems of a Universal Nature Exposed in

their Delusive a priori Conditions 282

1. When the Phenomenal is Elevated to a Notional in the Un-

derstanding 286

2. "When the Notional i.? Degraded to a Yague Phenomenal, or

entirely Excluded 310

CHAPTER II.

THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS OBJECTIVE LAW.

§ I. — Space and Time each as a whole 330

§ II. — The Determination of Experience in one whole of

Space and of Time 332

1. Experience in Universal Space 333

2. Experience in Universal Time 340

§ III. — The Determination of an Experience in its Particular

Places and Periods 346

1. Particular Determination of Places in Space 347

2. Particular Determination of Periods in Time 352

Appendix To The Understanding

An Ontological Demonstration of the Yalid Being of the

Notional 370

1. Idealism against Materialism 374

2. Materialism against Idealism 376

3. Accordance of Consciousness and Reason against Pyrrhonism. 880

CONTENTS.

Part III. Pa6»

Tes Functioi^ and Province of the Reason » » . . , 381

CHAPTER I.

THE REASON IN ITS SUBJECTIVE IDEA.

§ I. — The Attainment of the Absolute, as an a priori Position FOR THE Reason 397

§ IL — The Determination of Personalify to the Absolute 411

Primitive Elements of Comprehension : —

1. Pure Spontaneity 415

2. Pure Autonomy 420

3. Pure Liberty 438

§ III. — The a priori Comprehension op Nature in the Pure

Personality of the Absolute 446

CHAPTER II.

the reason in its objective law.

Finite and Absolute Personality 461

§ I, — The Pacts of a Comprehending Reason which come

within the Compass of a Finite Personality 468

1. Esthetic Facts 472

2. Mathematical Facts 476

3. Philosophical Facts 480

4. Psycholo2:ical Facts 483

5. Ethical Facts 484

§ II. — The Facts of a Comprehending Reason which come

within the Compass of an Absolute Personality 507

1. Facts Evincive of a Universal Recognition of an Absolute Per-

sonality 510

2. The Fact of a Comprehendino: Operation for Universal Xature

is only by the Compass of this Absolute Personality 529

Xn CONTENTS.

APPEXDIX TO THE REASON.

PAGE

An OjrroLOGiCAL Demonstratiox op the Valid Being of the

Supernatural 54.0

1. The Valid Bein^ of the Soul 540

2. The Valid Existence of God 542

3. The Validity of the Soul's Immortality 542

Introduction

Psychology is the Science of J^find. Em2nrical I'sychology attains the flicts of mind and arranges them in a system. The elements are solely the facts given in experience, and the criterion of their reality is the clear testimony of consciousness. When, between any number of minds there is an alleged contradiction of consciousness, the umpire is found in the general consciousness of mankind. What this general consciousness is, may be attained in various ways ; from the languages, laws, manners and customs, proverbial sayings, literature and history of the race ; and a fair appeal and decision here must be final, for any fact excluded thereby must be alterum genus^ and should also be excluded from the philosophical system. Such an appeal to general consciousness may properly be termed the tribunal of Common Sense.

Rational Psychology is a very different process for attaining to a Science of Mind, and lies originally in a very different field from experience, althor.gh it ultimately brings all its attainments within an experience. As this is the specific subject designed for present investigation, it is important as preliminary thereto, that we attain a clear apprehension of what it is ; and it may also be of advantage to^ examine some of the ends to which it may be applied, and thus beforehand see some of the uses to which it may be made subservient.

I. An explanation of what Rational Psychology ifc

In thics science, we pass from tne lacts oi experience wholly out beyond it, and seek for the ratioiiale of experience itself in the necessary and universal principles which must be conditional for all facts of a possible experience. We seek to determine how it is possible for an experience to be, from those a priori conditions which render all the functions of an intellectual agency themselves intelligible. In the conclusions of this science it becomes competent for us to affirm, not as from mere experience we may, that this is — but, from these necessary and universal principles, that this must he. The intellect is itself investigated and known through the principles which must necessarily control all its agency, and thereby the intellect itself is expounded in its constituent functions and laws of operation.

An illustration of what such a Science of Mind is, may be given by a reference to other things as subjects of rational comprehension. Whatever may be placed in the double aspect of its empirical fxcts and its conditional principles, may be used for such a purpose. Thus Astronomy has its sublime and astonishing facts, gathered through a long period of patient and careful observation. Experience has been competent to attain the appearances and movements of the heavenly bodies ; the satellites of some of the planets, and their relations to their primaries ; the ajoparent changes of figure and place in some, and the occasional tran- Bits or occultations of others. The jreneral relations of dif

WHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. l^

ferent portions of our solar system have in this way been found ; the sun put in its place at the center, the planets put in their places in their orbits around it, with the direction, distance, and time of periodical revolution accurately determined. A complete diagram of the solar system may thus be made from the results of experience alone, and all that belongs to formal Astronomy be finished. In this process, through experience, we are competent to affirm, so the solar system is. But if now, on the other hand, beyond experience, we may somehow attam to the cognition of an invisible force, which must work through the system directly as the quantity of matter and inversely as the squares of the distance, we shall be competent to take this as an a priori principle, determining experience itself, and quite independently of all observation may affirm, so the solar system, must be.

Again, I take a body of a triangular form, and by accurate mensuration find that any two of its sides are together greater than the third side. Another triangular body, of diffiirent size and proportion of its sides, is also accurately measured, and the same fact is again found. The mensuration of the first did not help to the attainment of the fact in the last, but an experiment only ascertained that so it is. Repeated experiments may have been made of a vast number of triangular forms, isosceles, right-angled, and scalene, and of them all, at last, T may make the same affirmation, this is ; but from experience I am not warranted to include any thing else than so it is, and in so many cases as the experiment has reached. When, however, I construct for myself a triangle in pure space, and intuitively perceive the relations of its sides, I do not need any experiment, but ean make tliis intuition valid universally, and affirm for all possible triangles, so the facts must he.

Such everywhere is the distinction between an empirical and a rational process. In the one we have the facts as they appear ; in the other, we have the conditioning principle which determines their appearance, and which makes our experience of them possible. And now, the human mind, as an intelligent and free agent, may as readily as any other subject, admit of an investigation under each of these aspects. Facts as given in experience, and those arranged in an orderly system as they appear in consciousness, constitute Pyschology in that important division which we have denominated Empirical: and those principles which give the necessary and universal laws to experience, and by which intelligence itself is alone made intelligible, are the elements for a higher Psychological Science which we term Rational. So far as this science is made to proceed, it will give an exposition of the human mind not merely in the facts of experience, but in the more adequate and comprehensive manner, according to the necessary laws of its being and action as a free intelligence. It will, moreover, afford a position from which we may overlook the whole field of possible human science, and determine a complete circumscription to our experience ; demonstrating what is possible, and the validity of that which is real. In it is the science of all sciences, inasmuch as it gives an exposition of Intelligence itself.

Such, also, is truly a transcendental philosophy inasmuch as it transcends experience, and goes up to those necessary sources from which all possible experience must originate ; but not transcendental in that sense in which the name has

WHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 18. Il

become a derision and reproach by the perversion of tlioee who liave assumed it and dishonored it, and with whom it has been a transcending of all light and meaning, and gohig oif into a region of mere dreams and shadows. A true transcendental philosophy dwells perpetually in the purest light, and sustahis itself by the soundest demonstrations ; nor is it practicable, by any other method of investigation, to draw a clear line between empiricism and science, assumption and demonstration, facts which aj^pear to be and principles which must be.

Pure Mathematics, and, in a different field, pure Physics also, proceed in the fom and sure steps of a demonstrated science, because they go out utterly beyond all appearance, and attain their elements from a region transcending all that experience can reach. They deal with the necessary and the universal, and hence, as resting upon that which must control all experience and make it possible, it can never occur that any facts in experience should come in contradiction to them. Nor can any thing assumed to be philosophy and attempting to pass itself off as science, and least of all psychological science, take the high road of a sound and vaHd demonstration, except it shall both start from and lay its course by, the stern demand and rigid rule of necessary princii^les. True science must be both supported and directed by those ultimate truths, which are selfaffirmed in their own light, and which both must be, and must everywhere and evermore be. An empirical system may defend itself and maintain its integrity against all that shall assail it from within ; but where the skeptic resolutely goes out beyond those assumptions which are conditional for it, and calls in question the stability of its very foundation, it

IB INTRODUCTION.

is Utterly helpless. Thus, the telescope brings distant objects within the reach of observation, and thereby vastly enlarges the sphere of vision. By its aid we may go on in tlie addition of one newly discovered phenomenon to another in the broad fields of space, and enlarge the system embraced in experimental astronomy to the maximum of power which may be attained for our glasses. We need have no other solicitude for the validity of our system as empirical, save only in the assurance of a correct observation. If any doubts spring up within the facts of our science, we can repeat the observation at pleasure and dispel them. But when, at length, we encounter the skeptic who will not shut himself up within our conditioning assumption of the validity of telescopic observation, and seriously questions the correctness of this w^hole manner of appearances, and of seeing new objects through magnifying glasses, most surely we shall avail nothing in attempting to cure this skepticism by multiplying our experiments and making such objects to appear through the telescope, nor even by forcing the skeptic to the consciousness that he sees them there himself. He is assailing the system from a point utterly beyond all the facts of observation, and with fatal effect disturbing the integrity of astronomical science in its very foundation, and must needs be met in the very point of his doubts and forced to the conviction that the laws of telescopic vision are valid. And surely this can not be done by looking through the telescope,' nor even by taking it to pieces and subjecting all its parts to careful inspection. We shall be obliged to attain those optical princij^les which are conditional for all making of telescopes, and thus know how telescopic

WHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. 19

rision is possible in its own conditioning laws, and determine what must he by a rational demonstration, and ic this process only can we force snch an assailing skepticism from its position.

As is the telescope an instrument for the eye, so is the eye, and all the organism of sense, an instrument for the intellect. While we are solicitous about the facts as they appear in the sense merely, we shall find no difficulty in building up our empirical system and maintaining the validity of our philosophy. Yea, if we wish to take the mental organism itself in pieces and examine its varied phenomena, and put all together again according to observed connections and relationships, an empirical psychology may be thus readily attained, and a system of mental science completed. But when we meet with a skepticism which plants its objections back of all experience, and doubts altogether about this whole matter of api)earance in the senses, then are we doing absolutely nothing for science except as we also go back of experience, and by a rigid transcendental demonstration determine from the conditioning principles of all intelligence how experience in the senses is possible to be ; and then, by this, also demonstrate in the facts their validity, inasmuch as they are found actually to be, what from their conditioning laws it has already been seen that they must be. There is a skepticism which resolutely and perseveringly questions all validity of experience, and doubts the whole testimony of consciousness relatively to the reality of all being ; yea, that founds itself upon an alleged contradiction of reason and consciousness, and thereby demonstrates the necessity of absolute and universal skepticism ; and while to such all experience must be a mere seeming to 5e, with no reality, this can certainly never be cured by any repetition of appearances merely as they seem to be. A solid basis for science is here attainable by no other possible process than through the insight and conclusions of a Kational Psychology. The want is both seen and felt, that something not of experience should be given, by which to demonstrate the validity of experience; nor will thinking minds be long deeply interested in any speculations which do not attempt, at least, to go up to the original and conditioning sources of all knowledge.

The history of philosophy furnishes here ample instruction. Those investigations only which have sought to rise to their conditioning principles, in reference to the subject in hand, have laid any very strong grasp upon the philosophical mind, or fixed the attention of tliinking men for any long period. More especially is this true in reference to all philosophy which subjects the human mind to examination, and gives its theory for expounding man's intellectual and moral agency. If the whole be left to repose upon the mere affirmations of common sense, and thus the whole science be circumscribed by the limits of general experience in consciousness, it can not meet this philosophical want, and will not hold the interest of philosophical minds. The point of all dangerous skepticism is wholly out of and beyond the experience in which common sense originates, and if this is not at all sought for, and the efibrt, at least, made to reach this point and demolish the skepticism, the influence of the work must be limited to those minds which have not yet seen the difficulty, and felt the need of a bigher demonstration. Thus, whatever the subject under

WHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. 21

examination may be, the skej)ticism which endangers it as a philosophy will ever lie at its foundation, and can only be met by going back of its facts and giving validity to its conditioning principles ; and such studies as are directed to such a 2jriori principles will alone possess any philosophical interest.

This is the very spirit of the far-famed Socratic method of 2)hiloso23hizing, and in this lies its influence and its interest. By a series of skillful interrogatories, Socrates forced the disciple back to the elementary principles of the subject under discussion, and made him to seek some conditioning truth, clear in its own light, and on which all subsequent deductions might be seen to be safely dependent. The scholar was in this way made cautious and docile, and the sophist was driven to expose his own ignorance amid all his shallow pretensions. Plato, the most illustrious of his disciples, and the world's great teacher in philosophy, still more thoroughly pursued science up to her primitive sources. The Intellectual Idea was taken as the archetype and ^?^forming essence, and only in this could facts be made intelligible, and by this only could nature be interpreted. Aristotle, in succession, no less rigidly forced philosophy upward to the science of first principles. His investigations regarded the modes in which nature manifests herself in facts and phenomena, rather than the inherent forces and laws which condition her development ; yet it is only through these conditioning laws that any portion of nature can be adequately expounded. He sought rather to reduce science to its logical elements, and to find here the conditioning sources of all correct concluding in judgments. These sages of antiquity have held their power over the

22 IIJ^TKODUCTION.

philosophic thinking of ages, and their voice has penetrated through more than twenty centuries, and is still distinct to teach all wlio have ears to hear.

The dialectical conflicts of the school-men, long exercised the minds of men in the most subtle and often empty speculations, and ultimately exhausted all the resources of eyllogistic disputation, and wearied the world with its abstract terms and dry logical distinctions. Descartes sought to bring oack philosophy again to the study of things in their first principles. The germ of his system lies in the following extract : " It is absurd to suppose that which thinks not to be in the very time in which it thinks. And hence this cognition — Ithink^ therefore I am — is the first and most certain which may occur to any one philosophizing in order." Thought, as the essence of spirit, and extension as the essence of matter, make up the universe of being, and as opposites and incommunicable in their own nature, are brought and held together in communion through the doctrine of " divine assistance." Sj^inoza identified thought and extension in a higher substance, and made all modes of spiritual and material being only a manifested development of this higher existence. Leibnitz sublimated all being into indivisible atoms, and as thus indistinguishable by any outer, they must be distinguished eacli from each by an inner peculiarity, and which, analagous to mind, is a faculty of representing. Every atom with its inner representation-force was thus a monad, and when representing in unconsciousness, is matter; when partially conscious, is animal ; when in full self-consciousness, is human soul ; and the Absolute Monad arranges all the representations through a " pveSstablished harmony."

WHAT EATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. 23

Lord Bacon, also, as the great modern expounder of Inductive Philosophy, urges to the investigation of nature not in scattered and isolated facts, but in their inherent laws which bind them together in systematic unity. An intellectual analysis into fact and law, matter and form, must be made through all subjects of science, and thus nature must be dissolved, not chemically by fire, but intellectually as by a divine fire. And Locke, again, turned his inquiry to primitive sources that he might accurately circumscribe the entire field of human knowledge. While he has laid the foundation for only a very partial philosophy in the rejection of all a priori knowledge, yet from the force and clearness of his investigation of sensation and experience, he has for more than a century and a half held sway over much the larger portion of the philosophic mind of Britain and America. Out of this system have arisen the idealism of Berkely, the vibration theory of Hartley, the materialism of Diderot and Helvetius, the universal skepticism of Ilume, and, for the counteraction of the last, the common sense basis for all philosophy as assumed by Reid and most of the Scotch Metaphysicians.

And once more only, it may emphatically be said that for more than half a century the deep and strong current of German thought has been impelled and directed in its course by the profound critical investigations of Kant, rel;v live to tlie origin and validity of all knowledge. He says, *'Up to tiiis time it has been received that all our cognition must regulate itself according to the objects; yet all attempts to make out something a priori by rjeims of conceptions concerning such, whereby our cognitions would be extended, have proved under this supposition aboi-tiv**

24 INTKODUCTION.

Let it be once, therefore, tried whether we do not succeed better in the problems of metaphysics, when we admit that the objects must reguhite themselves according to our cognitions." This reversed order of investigation is the peculiarity of the Critical Philosophy, and is analogous to that change in the stand-point for all investigation which occurred in astronomy, when the sun was put in the centci' of the system and the observer carried around it, instead of the spectator being himself at rest and the sun revolving. And we need to add merely this remark, that in general, whether as disciples or opponents of Kant, the thinking mind in Germany, and of those who have been aroused by German speculations, have found the interest of the investigations to he in the deep and earnest search after determining principles. Nor is this fact at all discredited by the querulous complaints and captious reproaches from such as find the ground of these speculations too high for the attention they have given to them, since there is at least the interest to have seemed to have formed a judgment about that which they have not as yet at all comprehended.

The prevailing system of metaphysics must necessarily strongly affect all cotemporary physical investigation, and very much mold all natural science after its own forms. All philosophy must strike its i-oots in the reason, and its first principles must be found or assumed from beyond the empirical, and entirely within the transcendental. The physical can find no law of exposition save in the metaphysical. It is in this field that the foundations of all systematic pliilosophy must be laid, for if these are assumptions solely, their concl isions, whether salutary or dangerous, can neither be sustained nor refuted by other assumptions.

WHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. 25

Assumption and counter-assumption may forever stand, the one over against the other, and there sliall be no force, in either to demoUsh its opposite. We must be able to g^ over into its metaphysical region, and secure here a legitimate possession, or we can never give to our assumed science authority in its own right to eject the intruding skeptic, nor forbid that he should any where at pleasure erect his fortifications in hostility. An empirical system, standing upon assumptions, can at the best only maintain itself in possession while its original right remains unquestioned. When the title-deeds are contested in the grounds of their valid authority, it can not avail to produce any of the declarations and statements within them, but we must confirm their legitimacy by somethmg beyond the instrument itself, and hold possession from the evidence that they reach back and take hold on the original powers of sovereignty. The most incorrigible skepticism may remain utterly undisturbed in any philosophy, except as it is competent to give to its first principles a sound and clear a priori demonstration.

And here we would remark, that it enters into the very essence of Rational Psychology, to make this a priori investigation of the human intellect ; to attain the idea of intelligence, trom the conditions which make an intellectual agency possible, and thereby determine how, if there bo intelligence, it must be both in function and operation ; and then find the facts which shall evince that such intellectual agency is not only possible as idea in void thought, but is also actual as valid being in reality. Such an attainment in psychological science, may open the way to the determination of the validity of all science, inasmuch as in this pro-

20 INTEODUOTIOA*.

cess we attain the very laws of human intelligence itself, und may tiierefore use our position for determining the valid Jjuing of the objects given through such an intellectual agency. And this introduces another preliminary topic for exammation, to which we will now turn our attention.

II. The ends to which the coxclusions of Rational Psychology may be rendered subservient.

Rational Psychology is itself a science, and complete in its own department. It gives the Mind, through all its functions of intellectual agency, in the conditioning laws which control all its operations and interpret all its processes of knowledge ; and wdien thus completed it has filled its own measure and answered its own end. But interesting as is this Science of the Mind, and worthy to be pursued for its own sake, and competent to give satisfaction even when resting within its own conclusions, yet is there the opportunity of starting from its results, and making its conclusions subservient to further advances. It may be rendered directly instrumental in the solution of some of the most interesting and difficult problems within the A\hole compass of the sciences. Indeed, through no other process is it practicable to obtain a position, from whence some of the highest points in philosophy may be brought w^ithin the range of direct examination.