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

The following translation of the great work of the lamented James Balmes on Philosophy, was undertaken at my suggestion and recommendation, and thus far I hold myself responsible for it. I have compared a considerable portion of it with the original, and as far as I have compared it, I have found it faithfully executed. The translator appears to me to have rendered the author's thought with exactness and precision, in a style not inferior to his own.

I have not added, as was originally contemplated, any Notes to those of the author. To have done so, would have swelled the volumes to an unreasonable size, and upon further consideration, they did not seem to me to be necessary. They would, in fact, have been an impertinence on my part, and the reader will rather thank me for not having done it. The work goes forth, therefore, as it came from the hands of its illustrious author, with no addition or abbreviation, or change, except what was demanded by the difference between the Spanish and English idioms.

James Balmes, in whose premature death in 1849, the friends of religion and science have still to deplore a serious loss, was one of the greatest writers and profoundest thinkers of Spain, and indeed of our times. He is well and favorably known to the American public by his excellent work on European civilization, – a work which has been translated into the principal languages of Europe. In that work he proved himself a man of free and liberal thought, of brilliant genius, and varied and profound learning. But his work on the bases of philosophy is his master-piece, and, taken as a whole, the greatest work that has been published on that important subject in the nineteenth century.

Yet it is rather as a criticism on the various erroneous systems of philosophy in modern times, than as containing a system of philosophy itself, that I have wished it translated and circulated in English. As a refutation of Bacon, Locke, Hume, and Condillac, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Spinoza, it is a master-piece, and leaves little to desire. In determining the fundamental principles of philosophy, and constructing a system in accordance with the real world, the author is not always, in my judgment, successful, and must yield to his Italian contemporary, the unhappy Abbate Gioberti.

When criticizing the errors of others, the distinguished author reasons as an ontologist, but when developing his own system, he is almost a psychologist. His ontology is usually sound, indeed, and his conclusions are for the most part just, but not always logically obtained. He recognizes no philosophical formula which embraces the whole subject-matter of philosophy, and does not appear to be aware that the primum philosophicum is and must be a synthesis; and hence he falls into what we may call, not eclecticism, but syncretism. This is owing to the fact that his genius is critical rather than constructive, and more apt to demolish than to build up.

What I regard as the chief error of the illustrious Spaniard, is his not recognizing that conceptions without intuitions are, as Kant justly maintains, empty, purely subjective, the mind itself; and hence, while denying that we have intuition of the infinite, contending that we have a real and objectively valid conception of it. Throughout his book the reader will find him maintaining that the human mind may, by discursion, attain to valid conceptions of a reality which transcends intuition. This I regard as an error. Discursion is an act of reflection, and though there is always less there can never be more in reflection than in intuition. If we have no intuition of the infinite, we have and can have no proper conception of it, and what is taken to be a conception of it is simply the human mind itself, and of no objective application or validity.

The excellent author is misled on this point, by supposing that in intuition of the intelligible the mind is the actor and not simply the spectator, and that an intuition of the infinite implies an infinite intuition. In both cases he is mistaken. In intuition we are simply spectators, and the object affirms itself to us. In intuition of the infinite, it is not we who perceive and affirm the infinite, by our own intellectual act, but the infinite that reveals and affirms itself to our intellect. In apprehending the infinite as thus revealed and affirmed, we of course apprehend it in a finite, not in an infinite manner. That which is intuitively apprehended is infinite, but the subjective apprehension is finite. The limitation is on the part of the subject, not on the part of the object.

The error arises from failing to distinguish sharply between intuition and reflection. In intuition the principal and primary actor is the intelligible object. In reflection it is the intellective subject; in the intuitive order the object presents itself as it is, with its own characteristics; in the reflective order it is represented with the limitations and characteristics of the thinking subject. As the subject is limited, its conceptions are limited, and represent the infinite not as infinite, but as the not-finite; and it is in the reflective order, if we operate on our conceptions, instead of our intuitions, only by a discursive process that we can come to the conclusion that the not-finite is the infinite. The author not distinguishing the two orders, and taking conceptions which belong to the reflective order as if they belonged to the intuitive order, supposes that we may have valid conceptions beyond the sphere of intuition. But a little reflection should have taught him that, if he had no intuition, he could have no conception of the infinite.

Following St. Thomas and all philosophers of the first order, the author very properly maintains that it is by the divine intelligibility, or the divine light, that the human mind sees whatever it does see; but he shrinks from saying that we have intuition of God himself. So far as we are to understand intuition of God as intuition, or open vision of him as he is in himself, he is undoubtedly right. But objects are intelligible only in the light of God, and it is only by this light that we apprehend them. Do we ever apprehend objects by the light of God without apprehending the light which renders them apprehensible? In apprehending the object, we apprehend first of all the light which is the medium of its apprehension. The light of God is God, and if we have intuition of the light, we must have intuition of him who is the true light that "enlighteneth every man coming into this world." We cannot see God as he is in himself, not because he is not intelligible in himself, but because of the excess of his light, which dazzles and blinds our eyes through their weakness. So, very few of us can look steadily in the face of the sun without being dazzled, yet not therefore is it to be said we cannot and do not see the sun.

The author does not seem to be aware that substance as distinguished from being or existence is an abstraction, and therefore purely subjective, and no object of intuition. Abstract from a thing all its properties or attributes, and you have remaining simply zero. The substance is properly the concrete thing itself, and in the real order is distinguishable simply from its phenomena, or accidents , – an abstract term, – not from its so-called attributes or properties. Hence, the question, so much disputed, whether we perceive substances themselves, is only the question, whether we see things themselves or only their phenomena. This question the Scottish school of Reid and Sir William Hamilton, have settled forever, and if it had not, Balmes has done it, making the correction I have suggested, in a manner that leaves nothing further to be said.

The author's proofs of the fact of creation are strong and well put, but fail to be absolutely conclusive in consequence of his not recognizing intuition of the creative act. They all presuppose this intuition, and are conclusive, because we in reality have it; but by denying that we have it, the author renders them formally inconclusive. We have intuition of God, real and necessary being, we have also intuition of things or existences, and therefore must have intuition of the creative act, for things or existences are only the external terminus of the creative act itself. Hence it is that Gioberti very properly makes the ideal formula, or