The Church of St. Bunco Part 10

Mind, then, in its lowest state, is what Kant, "to distinguish it from sensibility," ent.i.tled "unconscious understanding." There used to be an old saw in philosophy--still, indeed, at work--to the effect that "there is nothing in the mind that was not first in sense." Leibnitz, adding a piece to the saw, said: "Except mind itself." Leibnitz affirmed, that is, that sense always _contains_ mind--that mind is _in_ sense as a component of it, and that without mind there is no sense at all. What Leibnitz perceived and a.s.serted, Kant _proved_ by "observation and induction"--by a.n.a.lyzing phenomena under the law of scientific idealism. Mind in sense--the mind of sense--is just _automatic animal awareness_, just "simple apprehension," undeveloped, and in the lowest animal life not to be developed, into "apperception," the _conscious_ stage of understanding, capable of forming a _concept_.

Well, in the genesis of a stone, or any other material object, certain effects on sense are merged in the unit they compose, by reception into the "synthetical unity of apprehension." The stone is _created_ in this way. Its own objective unity--its wholeness, or "_form_" as a stone--is thus the derivation, the manufactured product, of _subjectivity as a cosmic element_, an element "_a priori_" to the existence of any possible phenomenon.

The stone, however, _is_ unmistakably objective--is just the palpable thing that everybody takes it to be, out there in s.p.a.ce. This is a given _fact of perception_--something, as Kant said, "never questioned in experience." As such _fact_, how can it be accounted for, when we know, at the same time, that the stone is nothing but a plexus of subjective states? How does the bunch of _internal impressions_ get _externalized_?

What is the cause of this reflex, this "_re_-presentation"? It must be something inherent in the principle of _apprehension itself_, or the plexus of impressions would necessarily stay within us. Being wrought internally, it would remain internal. Hence, this "apprehension"--this element of instinctive synthetical awareness--must be in its nature a _double_--an ent.i.ty which reproduces, or throws out before itself, whatever lot of sense-effects it receptively synthesizes, or binds together in a sheaf, known as some object. But all this, summed up, means only that mind, even in its lowest form of "unconscious understanding"--the simple automatic apprehension which shuts together certain effects on sense into a totality of them--must, _as being apprehension_, necessarily, though instinctively, apprehended its own product. Here is the full explanation of the amusing, iron-clad conception of Hobbes, that an "image," or a "color," is but an apparition unto us of "motion, agitation, or alteration" in some "internal substance of the head."

The self-reflexiveness of "apprehension" is precisely the same thing, _in germ_, that the self-reflexiveness of "apperception" is, in _full self-consciousness_.

The self-reflexiveness of apprehension, in the manufacture of phenomena, was named by Kant "_the transcendental synthesis of imagination_"--the word "imagination" standing on its roots, and meaning _the image-making faculty_. Phenomena, as reflex-conjuncts of sense-effects, are "produced"--put out--by this second function of apprehension; so Kant said he sometimes called it "productive imagination." It is that function of pure elemental, or _a priori_ awareness, which "_re_-presents" itself in the const.i.tution of every object, as its _unity_, but a unity _shaped_ according to some object's filling of senses-effects. Hence Kant says:

"This synthesis of the manifold of sensuous intuition, which is possible and necessary _a priori_, may be called figurative synthesis (_synthesis speciosa_)."

Thus Kant found mind in sense, "unconscious understanding," the instinctive awareness of animal susceptibility, as it existed in himself, to be the literal objective basis of all phenomena--the first "material"

unity of every "material thing." And he found this elemental source of all unity to be an innate self-activity--a self-seeing mirror, as it were--a double of receptiveness and reflectiveness. Here, at last, was the actual, _living thing_, of which Locke's "blank-tablet" had long been the still-born, stone figure.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his remarkable investigation of "The Principles of Psychology," posits "mind" as always implied in sentiency, and as necessary to the genesis of any phenomenon, even the "first nervous shock"

of a sensitive being. Recognizing the law of scientific idealism, he has seen, too, that our objective world is made up, at the perceptional outset, of such shocks. Again, he has proved, with great detail, that the action of mind is always of one general nature, whether in the lowest animal instinct or the highest conscious reason. But back at the first nervous shock, Mr. Spencer _stops_ with mind, and says that at the next regress it becomes "unknowable." Yet nearly a hundred years before this investigation Kant showed precisely what this so-called "unknowable" _is_.

He showed that mind, in all stages and states--mind in itself--is a synthetical unity of awareness. In germ, as "unconscious understanding"--as the mind of sense--its function is to be simply apprehensive of, and thus to conjoin in its instinctive cognizance, some "manifold" contained in a "nervous shock," or in various sense-effects, into some _unity_; which then, as _itself apprehended_, or _made a reflex_, becomes an impression, an image, an object.

CHAPTER XIII.

A SPECIAL LOOK AT s.p.a.cE AND TIME.

Through scientific idealism, fully examined, Kant proved that matter is a manufacture of sense. We have not followed the order of his work, but have gone straight to the heart of it. His own beginning was the dissection of s.p.a.ce and time. Still, he implied therein, if only in one remark, all that has here been stated.

"If I take [says Kant] from our representation of a body, all that the understanding thinks as belonging to it, as substance, force, divisibility, and also whatever belongs to sensation, as impenetrability, hardness, color, there is still something left us from this empirical intuition, namely _extension and shape_. These belong to pure intuition, which exists _a priori_ in the mind, as a mere form of sensibility, and without any real object of the senses or any sensation."

Students of Kant have known, in a general way, that he attributed "extension" to "bodies," as derived by them from _a priori_ mind. _s.p.a.ce_ is so derived; hence all things _in_ s.p.a.ce, which is the "form," the "condition" of their existence, must partake of its nature, which is pure extension, pure "given quant.i.ty," as he designates it. But why does the _shape_ of a material body belong to "pure intuition," and _come from mind_? Simply because the shape (let it be of a stone) is merely the _objected_ "_synthesis of apprehension_," in which the properties of the stone, as impressions of sense, are _unified_, but in accordance with their special variety. The shape is their "figurative synthesis," their "_synthesis speciosa_." Now, in the meaning of Kant, and in the nature of the case, s.p.a.ce is _made_ in precisely the same _manner_ as a stone; only the stone is full of diverse properties--special effects on sense, got from some impinging background of matter--some "noumenon"--while s.p.a.ce has no properties at all, except additions and divisions of _itself_--s.p.a.ces.

In other words, the stone is a _special_ relation between mental synthesis and sensuous susceptibility, the latter being in particular impact with some noumenal non-ego, and being definitely _filled_ from it. s.p.a.ce, on the other hand, is a _general_ relation between the same mental synthesis and the same sensuous susceptibility, the latter holding _no contents_ from any noumenon, yet being recipient to _all_ possibility of noumenal impact. Hence, s.p.a.ce is just "the synthesis of apprehension" itself, set in self-reflex, objected, phenomenated. The stone, in its unity, its form, its "shape," is this objected synthesis of apprehension, _filled_ with certain sensuous effects. The synthesis of apprehension, again, as the condition of any special "shape" into which it may be stuffed, is of course _a priori_ to _the_ stuffed shape; so s.p.a.ce is _a priori_ to the stone in s.p.a.ce. Once again, s.p.a.ce is the outward representation, the very double to the eye, of the synthesis of apprehension; for s.p.a.ce is just the _visible synthesis of the apprehended_--the transparent base of co-existence for all external things.

It must be remembered that the synthesis of apprehension, as the "mind" of "sense," is itself a _double_, containing the pure conjunctive unity of "unconscious understanding" as an active factor, and susceptibility to impact as a pa.s.sive factor. In the conjoined relation of these two factors every material phenomenon gets to exist; so there must be _some_ relation of s.p.a.ce to _every_ external object, and to _all_ external objects--which is to say at once that s.p.a.ce is _infinite_, both in extent and divisibility, so far as it can apply to objects _at all_.

And here, too, is the reason that the contained character, the const.i.tuent quality, of s.p.a.ce--meaning what Kant termed the "form of the intuition"--is essentially plural. This const.i.tuent quality of s.p.a.ce is a _re_-presentation of mind, as at once active and pa.s.sive, receptive and reflexive--as fundamental _a priori_ self-separateness. But _s.p.a.ce itself_, as a _whole_, is the _synthesis_ of this self-separateness. It is self-unity of self-separateness, _materialized_. s.p.a.ce, made of s.p.a.ces, is a thing identical in form and contents. Kant said:

"s.p.a.ce _re_-presented as an _object_ (as geometry really requires it to be) contains more than the mere _form of the intuition_; namely, a combination of the manifold given according to the form of sensibility into a representation that can be intuited; so the _form of the intuition_ gives us merely the manifold, but the _formal intuition_ gives unity of re-presentation. In the 'aesthetic,' [the first division of _The Critique of Pure Reason_], I regarded this unity as belonging entirely to sensibility, for the purpose of indicating that it antecedes all conceptions, although it presupposes a synthesis which does not belong to sense, through which, however, all our conceptions of s.p.a.ce and time are possible.... By means of this unity alone (the understanding determining the sensibility) s.p.a.ce and time are given as intuitions."

It is easy enough to follow out the genesis of time, in the same way as the genesis of s.p.a.ce. The const.i.tuent quality of s.p.a.ce and time is the same in both, and is subject in both to the same act of synthesis, in order that the essential plurality of "the form of intuition" may be created into the unity of "the formal intuition" itself--the single thing, s.p.a.ce or time. But time is the "form" of "_in_-ternal sense," as Kant put it, while s.p.a.ce is the "form" of "_ex_-ternal sense"--sense being to Kant not its physical organs (which are matter), but mental _susceptibility_ as distinguished from mental _synthesis_. Every phenomenon in s.p.a.ce is made of active subjective-synthesis, pa.s.sive subjective-susceptibility, and noumenal impact. s.p.a.ce and time themselves are made of the synthesis and the susceptibility alone. But pure synthesis, which means just pure ident.i.ty of awareness, can _have_ no "susceptibility," cannot be _occupied_, without _change of state_; and any change of state in a pure general awareness forms succession of states, or, as Kant said, "_generates time_." But conjunction, again, of synthesis and susceptibility must be the relating of separates, with reference to the objective as well as the subjective factor. As objective effect this relation is pure co-existence of separates in time, through outness from each other--s.p.a.ce. All objects, impressions, "effects of sense," must take the order of time; but "objects of internal sense" (feelings, or emotions), having no direct filling from noumena, are not objects in s.p.a.ce. Thus, while s.p.a.ce is pure synthesis of apprehension _ex_-ternally objected, time is the same pure synthesis of apprehension _in_-ternally objected.

CHAPTER XIV.

CREATIVE MIND FURTHER PROBED.

The inmost secret of the universe lies in Kant's four words, "the synthesis of apprehension," or what he more elaborately termed "the transcendental synthesis of the image-making faculty."

"It is an operation [he says] of the understanding on sensibility, and the _first_ application of the understanding to objects of possible intuition, and at the same time _the basis for the exercise of the other functions of that faculty_."

It has been intently presented to view in these pages, because it focalises and explains the whole law of scientific idealism, and is the one most important as well as abstruse fact in the genesis of things.

But having duly dealt with this point, it must now be said that "the synthesis of apprehension," _alone_ and _ungrown_, is altogether inadequate to give form to an object, in the full import of that word. For an _object_ is something held distinct by itself, in connection with another object, or with various objects. "_Unconscious_ understanding"

cannot form such connection and distinction, but can only blindly manufacture single intuitions, affording at most what Kant termed "a rhapsody of perceptions," in which no one would be first or last, or anything at all when past. A fish-worm, perhaps, has such a "rhapsody of perceptions" for its objective world. In the world of man the _a priori_ element of intelligence which shapes it must be objected in the phase of consciousness proper, or "apperception," as well as "simple apprehension."

In noting the difference between the synthesis of apprehension and the synthesis of apperception, Kant said:

"It is one and the same spontaneity which, at one time under the name of imagination, at another under that of understanding, produces conjunction in the manifold of intuition."

"Apperception" is simply apprehension _apprehended_, or mind adequate to self-conception and so to conceptions in general. That there can be a stone, as known to a _human being_, there must be a synthesis of sense-effects (its properties), in which they are distinguished among themselves, and of which objects as wholes are distinguished from each other. A synthesis of this kind presupposes not merely "unconscious understanding," but understanding that recognizes _itself_ in connecting all things else.

"I am conscious [said Kant] of my identical self in relation to all the variety of representations given to me in intuition, because I call all of them _my_ representations.... The thought, 'These representations, given in intuition, belong all of them to me,' is just the same as 'I unite them in one self-conscious.'... Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuition, as given _a priori_, is therefore the foundation of the ident.i.ty of apperception itself, which antecedes _a priori_ all determinate thought.

But the conjunction of representations into a conception is not to be found in objects themselves ... but is on the contrary, an operation of the understanding itself, which is nothing more than the faculty of conjoining _a priori_, and of bringing the variety of given representations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the highest in all human cognition."

So, to the _existence_ of any _distinguishable object_, there must _pre-exist_ the element of mind in the phase of _self_-consciousness as well as _sub_-consciousness. Both must enter the object. Hence, when Kant talked of "_the objective unity of self-consciousness_"--another of his profoundest deductions--he meant literally that "the synthetical unity of apperception," as well as "the synthetical unity of apprehension," is _materialized_ in all _conceivable things_. To form the sense-effects of a stone into a single "intuition," they must be merged in a synthesis of apprehension; but to _set_ the intuition as thus created--to make it remain _itself_ in the midst of _others_, it must be merged with them in a higher synthesis--a common connective consciousness, which, distinguis.h.i.+ng them in itself, re-presents them as distinguished.

It was here that Kant reached his famous "_Categories_," which are merely reflexes of the pure synthetical unity of mind, as forming the unity of all things and of all connection among them.

The principle of mind, beginning, as we have seen, even with the instinctive mind of sense, is a spontaneous self-activity, receptive, reflexive, and resumptive of its doubles. By being the first, it unifies any and every manifold of sense-effects; by being the second, it _re_-presents the product--throws it _out_; by being the third, it apprehends the externalisation, and a percept is born. Apperception, or full consciousness, is the same self-activity, self-reflex, self-sight, transformed into "understanding." Thus, mind is essentially a _triad_ as well as a _unit_. But, if so, it must reflect itself to conception as a "_Quant.i.ty_"--a sum of its own phases; and in these phases, it is a "Unity," a "_Plurality_," and a "_Totality_."

Mind, again, as just _a-priori_ principle and basis of all things, is manifestly their universal "Quality." But, as self-reflexive, self-resumptive, it is at once a "_Reality_," a "_Negation_," and a "_Limitation_," which means it is that which, in its double, contraposes one state to another, while, as a whole, it is the limit of both states.

It goes without saying that a principle of self-reflex is the "Relation"

of its reflexes, and in this relation is a "_Substance_ with _Dependence_," a "_Cause_ with _Effect_," and a "_Reciprocity_" of its separates.

This is a very short cut to the Kantian Categories, but sufficient, perhaps, if we bear in mind that, while _implicit_ in the mind of sense, they are reflexes of conscious, not "unconscious" understanding. The synthesis of mind through conceptions proceeds, not by the formation of sense-effects into units of intuition, but by the formation of these already-made units (objects or their properties) into species, genera, and ultimate universals--the pure unity of these groupings, without regard to the things grouped, being just the pure _a priori_ unity of self-conscious awareness. Thus, those ultimate universals, the categories, are objective reproductions of pure conceptive synthesis, without which there could be _no connection of things in thought_--which would amount precisely to no _realised objects_ and no _objective experience_.

One of Kant's industrious reviewers, Sir William Hamilton, fancied that Aristotle's categories were "genera of real things," while Kant's categories were "determinations of thought," and, as mere "_entia rationis_," must "be excluded from the Aristotelic list." But there are no "genera of real things" except _as_ "determinations of thought"; and, in making an experimental cla.s.sification of objects, Aristotle found some of the Kantian categories, because the synthetical unity of mind had put those categories into the objects at the creation of them. To Kant an _object_ meant something of which Sir William Hamilton had no boding.

CHAPTER XV.

THE GENESIS OF "TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS."

It must now be easy to see that mind, in its general form, is three-in-one--a triad. It is a self-reflexive, self-related unit, of three phases. The first phase is automatic "apprehension." The second is conscious "understanding." The third, which we touch here, is "reason." In reason, mind is still the general cosmic principle of awareness, with the function of synthesis, or conjunction. As intuition, it has perceived things. As conception, it has cla.s.sified them. As a last synthetical unity of awareness, it must include, or "comprehend" them--must relate them to its conjunctive unity in their full scope, which means simply in the ultimate reflexes, or forms, of its own nature and action. As process, this can only be done by referring all things to pure synthesis, or connective ident.i.ty, as _final cause_.

_Seeing_ things, and then _thinking_ them, we always end by asking, "_Why?_" They _are_, each and all so and so; but what is the "_reason_"

for it? The pure _form_ of answer, apart from all contents, is "_because_"--on account of _cause_. Thus reason forms its synthesis of comprehension by referring the particular to the general for a cause--a process that can never stop short of including all things in ultimate unities of cause. It is evident that ultimate unities of cause must contain all subordinate causes or conditions under them. There can be just three such ultimate unities; for there are just three possible kinds of being and conditions that relate to their universals: subjective being and conditions to subjective unity of them; objective being and conditions to objective unity of them; and all being and conditions, both subjective and objective, to the universal unity of being and conditions. These final unities, again, _as_ final--as totalities of conditions with none beyond--are themselves "unconditioned."

Reason, then, as an _a-priori_ synthetical unity, necessarily refers all conditions of things to their final or absolute unities, which are in reality nothing but conceptional reflexes of Reason's _own constructive_ synthetical ident.i.ty. To _be_ an ident.i.ty of mind, for instance, to the conditions of subjectivity, reason must receive _them_ into _its_ unity, which thus becomes _their_ totality. Now what is the objective re-presentation, the rational conception of the totality of subjective conditions? It is simply the "transcendental idea" of pure subjectiveness, or Soul. In the same way the totality of objective phenomenal conditions, is the idea of the Universe; while the totality of _all_ conditions, both subjective and objective, is the idea of that in which all mind and all matter are related as their final cause or reason--G.o.d.