Jaime Balmes - Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

185. It has been remarked that there is great truth and exactness in ordinary language, so much so, that the careful observer is astonished at the recondite wisdom hidden in a language; to see how great, how various, and how delicate are the gradations into which the sense of words is distributed. This is not the fruit of reflection; it is the work of reason operating directly, and consequently making use of ideas without reflecting upon them.

186. In ideological investigations some idea of the idea is sought, and it is not noted that if this be necessary to science, another idea of the other idea may be exacted, and that thus an infinite process may be given. It ought to be borne in mind that in treating of simple facts, as well external as internal, no other explanation of them can be demanded than an exposition.

187. Idea-images are a font of error, and probably all ideas explicable by words are not less so. An idea-image induces the belief that there are in our mind no ideas but sensible representations, and the supposition that every idea can be expressed by words, makes us imagine that to be composite which is simple, and attribute to the substance what belongs to the form.

188. A composite idea seems to be a union, or rather a connected series of ideas, which are either excited simultaneously, or follow each other with great rapidity. Our understanding requires words to bind this collection, to retain the thread which connects them; and hence it is, that when the idea is simple, language is not indispensable. It is said that speech is necessary in order to think, it might sometimes be said with more propriety, that it is necessary in order to recollect .

189. When the object occupying our attention is offered to the sensible intuition, we have no need of speech. We can, when we reflect upon a right line, an angle, a triangle, observe that their imaginary representation is all that we require, and that we do not need to bind these objects together by words. The same thing happens in thinking of unity, or on the numbers two, three, and four, which we easily represent to ourselves sensibly. The necessity for speech begins when the imagination loses the distinct representation of objects, and needs to combine various ideas. Did we not assign to a word the idea of a many-sided polygon, we should be in the greatest confusion, and it would be impossible for us to reason upon it.

190. Since, on the one hand, our perceptive faculties do not create their objects, but are limited to the combining of them; and, on the other hand, our perception is not capable of embracing many at one time, it results that the exercise of our faculties is necessarily successive; the unity of consciousness serving as the bond of union to our perceptions. But consciousness has no other means of knowing what passes within it, than to fix its operations by determinate signs, whence flows the necessity of arbitrary signs, which must be sensible, by reason of the relation uniting our intelligence with the sensitive faculties: and it is to be observed, that for this reason, every sign to which we assign an idea, may be the object of one of the senses. The great number and variety of ideas and their combinations, require an exceedingly variable and flexible sign, and this variety and flexibility require certain characters to simplify it, and thus render its retention in the memory more easy, whence the advantages of language: in the midst of its astonishing variety it lays these characters in radical syllables. The conjugation of a single verb alone offers us a considerable number of very different ideas, the retention of which would be excessively difficult, were they not joined by some tie such as the radical syllable: as in the verb to speak, the syllable speak. We see this by the greater labor the irregular verbs cost us than do the regular verbs when learning a language: and it may be remarked in children also, who blunder on the irregularities. We might compare language to the catalogue of a library, which is the more perfect, the more it unites simplicity with variety, so as to designate exactly the classes of the books and the shelves whereon they are to be found.

191. Succession of ideas and operations ; here, then, originates the necessity of a sign by which to connect and recollect them: relation of our understanding with the sensitive faculties , is the reason why the signs must be sensible; variety and simplicity of language constitutes its merit so far as the sign of ideas. 12 12 See Bk. I., Ch. XXVI.

192. Among the adversaries of innate ideas there exist profound differences. The materialists maintain that man has received every thing through the senses, in such a way as to make our understanding nothing more than the product of an organism which has been advancing in perfection, just as a machine acquires, by use, a greater facility and delicacy of movement. They suppose nothing but the faculty of sensation to pre-exist in the mind; or, to speak more correctly, they admit no mind, but only a corporeal being, whose functions naturally produce what is called the intellectual development.

The sensists who do not attribute to matter the faculty of thinking, do not admit innate ideas; they confess the existence of the mind, but concede to it non-sensitive faculties; all that it owns must have come to it through the senses, and it can be nothing else than a transformed sensation.

Innate ideas counted other adversaries who were neither materialists nor sensists: such were the scholastics, who on the one hand defended the principle that there is nothing in the understanding which has not previously been in the senses; but, on the other hand, combated both materialism and sensism. The difference between the scholastics and the friends of innate ideas would not perhaps have been so great as it was supposed to be, had the question been proposed in another manner.

193. The scholastics regarded ideas as accidental forms, in such a way that an understanding with ideas may be compared to a piece of canvas covered with figures. The defenders of innate ideas said; "The figures already exist upon the canvas; to see them we have only to raise the veil which covers them." This explanation is somewhat forced, since it openly contradicts experience, which testifies: first, the necessity of the understanding being excited by sensations; secondly, the intellectual elaboration which we experience in thinking, and which teaches us that there is within us a kind of production of ideas.

"The canvas," say the adversaries of innate ideas, is all white, "and in proof witness the unceasing labor of the artist to cover it with figures." But does their doctrine, forsooth, suppose that nothing exists before experience? Do they admit man to be the simple work of instruction, of education? Do they maintain that our interior world is nothing more than a series of phenomena caused by impressions, and that it would have been other than what it is, had it had other impressions? Most certainly not. They admit: first, an inward activity excited and improved by sensible experience: secondly, the necessity of first principles as well intellectual as moral: thirdly, an interior light, to enable us to see them when presented, and to assent to them by an irresistible necessity. We find the words, "Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui Domine," cited upon every page of those authors.

194. Saint Thomas says that first principles, as well speculative as practical, must be naturally communicated to us: "Oportet igitur naturaliter nobis esse indita , sicut principia speculabilium, ita et principia operabilium." 13 13 P. I., Q. L. XXIX., A. 12. In another place, inquiring whether the soul knows immaterial things in their eternal reasons, (in rationibus æternis,) he says that the intellectual light which is within us, is nothing else than a certain participated likeness of the uncreated life, in which the eternal reasons are contained: "Ipsum enim lumen intellectuale, quod est in nobis nihil est aliud, quam quædam participata similitudo luminis increati, in quo continentur rationes æternæ." 14 14 Ib. Q. L. XXXIV., A. 5.