The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
The _cogito, ergo sum_ is, of course, worthless as an
argument, as has often been shown; but there is in it an
assumption not generally noted; namely, that man suffices for his
own thought, and, therefore, that man is God. God alone suffices,
or can suffice, for his own thought, and needs nothing but
himself for his thought or his science. He knows himself in
himself, and is in himself the infinite Intelligibile, and the
infinite Intelligens. He knows in himself all his works, from
beginning to end, for he has made them, and all events, for he
has decreed them. There is for him no medium of science
distinguishable from himself; for he is, as the theologians say,
the adequate object of his own intelligence. But man being a
creature, and therefore dependent for his existence, his life,
and all his operations, interior and exterior, on the support and
active concurrence of that which is not himself, does not and
cannot suffice for his thought, and he does not and cannot think
in and of himself alone, in any manner, mode, form, or degree, or
without the active presence and concurrence of the object, as
Pierre Leroux has well shown in his otherwise very objectionable
_Réfutation de l'Eclecticisme._ The object being independent
of the subject, and not supplied by the subject, must exist _a
parte rei_, since, if it did not, it could not actually concur
with the subject in the production of thought. There can arise,
therefore, to the true philosopher, no question as to the
credibility or trustworthiness of reason, the validity or
invalidity of thought. The only question for him is, Do we think?
What do we think? He who thinks, knows that he thinks, and what
he thinks, for thought is science, and who knows, knows that he
knows, and what he knows.
The difficulty which Cousin and the reviewer encounter arises
from thus placing the question of method before the question of
principles, as we showed in our former article. No such
difficulty can arise in the path of him who has settled the
question of principles--which are given, not found, or obtained
by the action of the subject without them--and follows the method
they prescribe. The error, we repeat, arises from the
psychological method, which supposes all the activity in thought
is in the subject, and supposes reason to be operative in and of
itself, or without any objective reality, which reality, on
Cousin's system, or by the psychological method, can never be
established.
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