The Divine Lamp

Article 10.  The Part in Which the System of Reid Holds Good as Against That of His Adversaries.

130.  Nevertheless, from all that has been argued thus far we may see that the system of Reid has in it a very strong point as compared with that of his adversaries.

We will suppose that Reid, having by some means of other discovered the error he had committed through giving an undue extension to his thesis, had wisely corrected himself.  This would have entitled him to speak with force to his adversaries in the following way: “I am willing to acknowledge that the interior judgment by which we affirm the real existence of the things which strike our senses, is composed of to elements-the idea of existence and of sensation.  Still you must on your part admit, that at the very moment in which we receive the sensations, our intellectual nature obliges us to affirm the presence of a being, to make that judgment which I call original, and natural: not, indeed, because it precedes all ideas, for, as I now find, to say this would be a contradiction, but because it precedes all other judgments.”

In truth, the real merit of the system of Reid consists in his having fully grasped the fact that no sooner does our sense happen to be affected by the action of external agents than we necessarily affirm their existence, y “a simple act,” as he says, though he is wrong when he adds “y an act  which cannot be defined.”

What I have said in the preceding article proves that there is no need in this case of admitting a principle wholly sui generis, incapable of explanation, a sort of occult quality, a philosophical arcannum.

131.  If Reid had clearly seen in what consisted the deficiency of the system of his predecessors in the philosophical arena, he, instead of insisting upon the necessity of placing judgments before ideas, would have ascended higher, and, to use his own phrase, brought a “more refined chemical analysis” to bear on those simple apprehensions which are supposed y his adversaries to precede the persuasion and judgment of the existence of external objects.

Even from this side he could have driven them to close quarters by arguing as follows: “You suppose that the simple apprehensions or ideas of things precede the judgment we make on their real existence, and you therefore describe the development of the human mind as proceeding in accordance with this principle.”

Now, I find a great difficulty here; for it seems to me that you cannot have the idea or simple apprehension of a thing except by means of a judgment.

To see whether I am right or not, let us come to particulars.  Let us take, for example, the idea or simple apprehension of a horse,  I ask, “On what condition is it possible for me to have this idea or simple apprehension?  If, as your books positively state, I get it by abstracting from the perception which I now have, or formerly had, of some  particular horse, it is evident that this perception, of the horse in the concrete, together with the affirmation and persuasion of its existence, which this perception implies, has preceded the idea or simple apprehension.  Indeed, how could I make an abstraction if there was nothing for me to abstract?   Therefore, your two assertions-first, that the simple ideas of things precede all the judgments which we make on them; and, second, that these ideas originate in abstraction-are in palpable contradiction with each other.”

132.  Nay, he could have pushed his argument still further, thus: You say “that the simple ideas of things are anterior to all our judgments;” but if you will take pains to analyze any one of these ideas, you will find that it necessarily includes a judgment.  Let us keep to the idea of a horse.  When you conceive a horse, even though apart from its subsistence, present or past, what are you really thinking of?  is the object of your thought so simple that it cannot be decomposed into several distinct ideas, or is it not rather the contrary?  Assuredly, if I think of a horse in the abstract,  I think (1) of a being, and (2) of all those constitutive of it by which the idea of a being in general becomes determined to that particular kind of being which is called  horse.

Therefore, this idea is composed of two kinds of ideas’ (1) the idea of a being in general, and (2) the ideas of of those constitutives whose aggregate gives the idea of the nature of a horse-an idea much less extended than the first.

Let us now see how these two ideas come to be so bound up together as to make but one idea.

A very little reflection will suffice to show that the narrower is conceived by us as existing in the wider idea; which is the same thing as to say that we conceive the horse as belonging to the class of  beings; or, against, that to have the idea of a horse is to have the idea of a being possessed of those determinations which constitute the animal known by the name of horse.  

Now, from this analysis it is easy to see that the idea of horse has in it all the requisites of a complete judgment.

To make a judgment (1) there must be two terms, the one less extended than the other; and (2) the less extended term must be conceived as existing in the more extended.   And both these conditions we have found in the idea of horse as just explained.

Therefore ,the simple apprehension of a finite thing is itself a complex idea, and such as to include a judgment.  It is one of those ideas which cannot be formed except by comparing or joining together other ideas or apprehensions.

Therefore, the proposition that “the simple apprehension of things is anterior to all the judgments which we make on them,” must be considered as altogether untenable.  (Excerpted from The Origin of Ideas, Vol 1 by Antonio Rosmini)