Fundamental Philosophy (Vol. 1&2). Jaime Luciano Balmes

Philosophers teach that the sources of certainty are the internal sense or consciousness of acts, the external senses, common sense, reason, and authority. A few examples will show us that there is reflection in all these, and how most men, and even philosophers, when they act like men and not like philosophers, think.

      25. Suppose a clear-headed person, one however who is ignorant of the questions of certainty, has just seen some monument, the Escurial for instance, which leaves a lively and lasting impression on his mind, and while he recollects his gratification on seeing it, try to make him doubt the existence of this recollection in his mind, and its correspondence as well with the act of seeing as with the edifice itself, and he will very certainly think you are in jest, or will be astounded, and will suspect you of being out of your senses. He discovers no difference between things different as are the actual existence of his recollection, its correspondence with the past act of seeing, and the agreement of both with the edifice seen. He knows in this case no more than a child of six years: "I recollect it, I saw it, it is as I recollect it." This is all his science: he neither reflects, nor separates; all is direct and simultaneous.

      No matter what suppositions you make, you can never get from the majority of men any better account of the phenomena of the internal sense, than you got from the supposed individual's recollection of the Escurial: "all that I know is that it is so." There are here no reflex acts; certainty attends the direct act, and no philosophical considerations can add one iota to the security given by the very force of things, and the instinct of nature.

      26. Example of the testimony of the senses.

      If we see any object, no matter what, at a proper distance and in sufficient light, we judge of its size, figure, and color, and we are very confident of the truth of our judgment, although we may never, in all our life, have thought of a theory of sensation, or of the relations of our organs, either to each other or to external objects. No reflex act accompanies the formation of our judgment; all is done instinctively, and without the intervention of philosophical considerations. We see it, and nothing else: this is enough for certainty. It is only after having handled books in which the question of certainty is agitated, that we turn our attention to our own acts; but this attention, it is to be remarked, lasts only so long as we are engaged in the scientific analysis; when this is forgotten, which it very soon is, we return to our general routine, and seldom recur to philosophy.

      Note well that we speak here of the certainty of the judgment formed in consequence of sensation only in so far as it is connected with the uses of life, and not at all of its greater or less exactness with respect to the nature of things. Thus it matters little that we consider colors as inherent qualities of bodies, although in reality they are not; it is sufficient that the judgment formed does not in any sense change our relations to objects, whatever may be the philosophical theory.

      27. Example of common sense.

      In the presence of a numerous assembly, throw a quantity of printer's types at random upon the ground, and tell the bystanders that their names will all be found printed. They will all with one accord laugh at your folly. But what is the reason of this? Have they all reflected upon the basis of their certainty? Assuredly they have not.

      28. Example of reason.

      We all reason, and in many cases rightly. Without art or reflection of any kind, we often distinguish the solid from the futile, the sophistical from the conclusive. This does not require us to regard the course of our understanding; without scarcely noticing it we follow the right road; and a man may, in his life, have formed a thousand rigorous and exact ratiocinations without ever having once attended to his method of reasoning. Even those most versed in the dialectic art, repeatedly forget it; they perhaps follow it very correctly in practice, but they pay no express attention to any one of its rules.

      29. Ideologists have written whole volumes on the operations of our understanding, and the simple rustic performs these operations without thinking that he performs them. How much has been written on abstraction, generalization, and universals! Yet this is all well regulated in the mind of every man, ignorant as he may be of a science which examines it. In his language you will find the universal and the particular expressed, and every thing occupying its proper place in his discourse: he encounters no difficulty in his direct acts. But call his attention to these acts themselves, to abstraction for example; and what was in the direct act so clear and lucid, becomes a chaos the moment it passes to the reflex order.

      Thus we see that reflection, whose object is the act performed, is of very little importance even in reasoning, its most reflective medium.

      30. Example of authority.

      All civilized people know the existence of England, but most of them know this only from having heard or read of it, that is, by authority. Their certainty of the existence of England evidently is not surpassed by that of objects of their own vision; and yet how many of them have ever thought of analyzing the foundations of such a certainty? Yet is the certainty of those who have examined it greater than that of those who have not examined it? In the present case, as in an infinity of others analogous to it, there is no intervention of reflex acts: certainty is here formed instinctively, and needs no medium invented by philosophers.

      31. These examples show that philosophers take a very different road to certainty from that taught by nature. He who created all things out of nothing, has provided them with all that is necessary to the exercise of their functions according to their respective positions in the universe; and one of the first necessities of an intelligent being is the certainty of some truths. What would become of us, if before beginning to receive impressions, and before the germination of primary ideas in our understanding, we were obliged to perform the painful task of elaborating some system capable of saving us from uncertainty? Were it thus, our intellect would perish at its very birth, for no sooner would it open its eyes to the light than it would be involved in the chaos of its own cavils, and it could never, with its scattered forces, succeed in dissipating the clouds which would arise on all sides, and which would finally sink it in total darkness.

      If the greatest philosophers, the most clear and acute intellects, the strongest and most vigorous geniuses have labored to so little purpose to establish solid principles, such as might serve for the foundations of science, what would have happened had not the Creator succored us in this necessity, and given certainty to the tender intellect, just as he prepared for the preservation of the body the milk that nourishes and the air that vivifies it?

      32. If any part of science ought to be regarded as purely speculative, it is undoubtedly the part which concerns certainty; and this proposition, paradoxical as it may seem at first sight, is true, and can be easily demonstrated.

      33. What does philosophy here propose to do? To produce certainty? But it exists independently of all philosophical systems, and mankind were certain of many things before ever any one thought of such questions. Moreover, since the question was first raised, few, compared with the whole human race, have examined it; so it is now, and so it will be; and all the theories invented on this point can have no effect upon the fact of certainty. What has been said of its production may be said of the attempt to consolidate it. When have the generality of men had, or when will they have, time and opportunity to examine these questions?

      34. Philosophy could here have produced nothing but skepticism, for the variety and opposition of systems were more calculated to create than to dissipate doubts. Happily nature is the most invincible opponent of skepticism; the sage's dreams pass not from his library to the every day uses of the life of ordinary men, or even of those who labor under or imagine them.

      35. Philosophy here can propose to itself no more reasonable object than simply to examine the foundations of certainty, with the sole view of more thoroughly knowing the human mind, not of making any change in practice; just as astronomers observe the course of the stars, investigate and determine the laws to which they are subject, without therefore presuming to be able to modify them.

      36. But even this supposition places philosophy in a very unsatisfactory position; for if we recollect what we have already established, we shall see that science observes a real and true phenomenon, but gives it a gratuitous explanation, by making an imaginary analysis of it.

      Experience