SECTION I - Of Ideas in General.
Despite the great wealth of words which European languages
possess, the thinker finds himself often at a loss for an expression
exactly suited to his conception, for want of which he is unable to
make himself intelligible either to others or to himself. To coin
new words is a pretension to legislation in language which is seldom
successful; and, before recourse is taken to so desperate an
expedient, it is advisable to examine the dead and learned
languages, with the hope and the probability that we may there meet
with some adequate expression of the notion we have in our minds. In
this case, even if the original meaning of the word has become
somewhat uncertain, from carelessness or want of caution on the part
of the authors of it, it is always better to adhere to and confirm its
proper meaning- even although it may be doubtful whether it was
formerly used in exactly this sense- than to make our labour vain by
want of sufficient care to render ourselves intelligible.
For this reason, when it happens that there exists only a single
word to express a certain conception, and this word, in its usual
acceptation, is thoroughly adequate to the conception, the accurate
distinction of which from related conceptions is of great
importance, we ought not to employ the expression improvidently, or,
for the sake of variety and elegance of style, use it as a synonym for
other cognate words. It is our duty, on the contrary, carefully to
preserve its peculiar signification, as otherwise it easily happens
that when the attention of the reader is no longer particularly
attracted to the expression, and it is lost amid the multitude of
other words of very different import, the thought which it conveyed,
and which it alone conveyed, is lost with it.
Plato employed the expression idea in a way that plainly showed he
meant by it something which is never derived from the senses, but
which far transcends even the conceptions of the understanding (with
which Aristotle occupied himself), inasmuch as in experience nothing
perfectly corresponding to them could be found. Ideas are, according
to him, archetypes of things themselves, and not merely keys to
possible experiences, like the categories. In his view they flow
from the highest reason, by which they have been imparted to human
reason, which, however, exists no longer in its original state, but is
obliged with great labour to recall by reminiscence- which is called
philosophy- the old but now sadly obscured ideas. I will not here
enter upon any literary investigation of the sense which this
sublime philosopher attached to this expression. I shall content
myself with remarking that it is nothing unusual, in common
conversation as well as in written works, by comparing the thoughts
which an author has delivered upon a subject, to understand him better
than he understood himself inasmuch as he may not have sufficiently
determined his conception, and thus have sometimes spoken, nay even
thought, in opposition to his own opinions.
Plato perceived very clearly that our faculty of cognition has the
feeling of a much higher vocation than that of merely spelling out
phenomena according to synthetical unity, for the purpose of being
able to read them as experience, and that our reason naturally
raises itself to cognitions far too elevated to admit of the
possibility of an object given by experience corresponding to them-
cognitions which are nevertheless real, and are not mere phantoms of
the brain.
This philosopher found his ideas especially in all that is
practical,* that is, which rests upon freedom, which in its turn ranks
under cognitions that are the peculiar product of reason. He who would
derive from experience the conceptions of virtue, who would make (as
many have really done) that, which at best can but serve as an
imperfectly illustrative example, a model for or the formation of a
perfectly adequate idea on the subject, would in fact transform virtue
into a nonentity changeable according to time and circumstance and
utterly incapable of being employed as a rule. On the contrary,
every one is conscious that, when any one is held up to him as a model
of virtue, he compares this so-called model with the true original
which he possesses in his own mind and values him according to this
standard. But this standard is the idea of virtue, in relation to
which all possible objects of experience are indeed serviceable as
examples- proofs of the practicability in a certain degree of that
which the conception of virtue demands- but certainly not as
archetypes. That the actions of man will never be in perfect
accordance with all the requirements of the pure ideas of reason, does
not prove the thought to be chimerical. For only through this idea are
all judgements as to moral merit or demerit possible; it
consequently lies at the foundation of every approach to moral
perfection, however far removed from it the obstacles in human nature-
indeterminable as to degree- may keep us.
*He certainly extended the application of his conception to
speculative cognitions also, provided they were given pure and
completely a priori, nay, even to mathematics, although this science
cannot possess an object otherwhere than in Possible experience. I
cannot follow him in this, and as little can I follow him in his
mystical deduction of these ideas, or in his hypostatization of
them; although, in truth, the elevated and exaggerated language
which he employed in describing them is quite capable of an
interpretation more subdued and more in accordance with fact and the
nature of things.
The Platonic Republic has become proverbial as an example- and a
striking one- of imaginary perfection, such as can exist only in the
brain of the idle thinker; and Brucker ridicules the philosopher for
maintaining that a prince can never govern well, unless he is
participant in the ideas. But we should do better to follow up this
thought and, where this admirable thinker leaves us without
assistance, employ new efforts to place it in clearer light, rather
than carelessly fling it aside as useless, under the very miserable
and pernicious pretext of impracticability. A constitution of the
greatest possible human freedom according to laws, by which the
liberty of every individual can consist with the liberty of every
other (not of the greatest possible happiness, for this follows
necessarily from the former), is, to say the least, a necessary
idea, which must be placed at the foundation not only of the first
plan of the constitution of a state, but of all its laws. And, in
this, it not necessary at the outset to take account of the
obstacles which lie in our way- obstacles which perhaps do not
necessarily arise from the character of human nature, but rather
from the previous neglect of true ideas in legislation. For there is
nothing more pernicious and more unworthy of a philosopher, than the
vulgar appeal to a so-called adverse experience, which indeed would
not have existed, if those institutions had been established at the
proper time and in accordance with ideas; while, instead of this,
conceptions, crude for the very reason that they have been drawn
from experience, have marred and frustrated all our better views and
intentions. The more legislation and government are in harmony with
this idea, the more rare do punishments become and thus it is quite
reasonable to maintain, as Plato did, that in a perfect state no
punishments at all would be necessary. Now although a perfect state
may never exist, the idea is not on that account the less just,
which holds up this maximum as the archetype or standard of a
constitution, in order to bring legislative government always nearer
and nearer to the greatest possible perfection. For at what precise
degree human nature must stop in its progress, and how wide must be
the chasm which must necessarily exist between the idea and its
realization, are problems which no one can or ought to determine-
and for this reason, that it is the destination of freedom to overstep
all assigned limits between itself and the idea.
But not only in that wherein human reason is a real causal agent and
where ideas are operative causes (of actions and their objects),
that is to say, in the region of ethics, but also in regard to
nature herself, Plato saw clear proofs of an origin from ideas. A
plant, and animal, the regular order of nature- probably also the
disposition of the whole universe- give manifest evidence that they
are possible only by means of and according to ideas; that, indeed, no
one creature, under the individual conditions of its existence,
perfectly harmonizes with the idea of the most perfect of its kind-
just as little as man with the idea of humanity, which nevertheless he
bears in his soul as the archetypal standard of his actions; that,
notwithstanding, these ideas are in the highest sense individually,
unchangeably, and completely determined, and are the original causes
of things; and that the totality of connected objects in the
universe is alone fully adequate to that idea. Setting aside the
exaggerations of expression in the writings of this philosopher, the
mental power exhibited in this ascent from the ectypal mode of
regarding the physical world to the architectonic connection thereof
according to ends, that is, ideas, is an effort which deserves
imitation and claims respect. But as regards the principles of ethics,
of legislation, and of religion, spheres in which ideas alone render
experience possible, although they never attain to full expression
therein, he has vindicated for himself a position of peculiar merit,
which is not appreciated only because it is judged by the very
empirical rules, the validity of which as principles is destroyed by
ideas. For as regards nature, experience presents us with rules and is
the source of truth, but in relation to ethical laws experience is the
parent of illusion, and it is in the highest degree reprehensible to
limit or to deduce the laws which dictate what I ought to do, from
what is done.
We must, however, omit the consideration of these important
subjects, the development of which is in reality the peculiar duty and
dignity of philosophy, and confine ourselves for the present to the
more humble but not less useful task of preparing a firm foundation
for those majestic edifices of moral science. For this foundation
has been hitherto insecure from the many subterranean passages which
reason in its confident but vain search for treasures has made in
all directions. Our present duty is to make ourselves perfectly
acquainted with the transcendental use made of pure reason, its
principles and ideas, that we may be able properly to determine and
value its influence and real worth. But before bringing these
introductory remarks to a close, I beg those who really have
philosophy at heart- and their number is but small- if they shall find
themselves convinced by the considerations following as well as by
those above, to exert themselves to preserve to the expression idea
its original signification, and to take care that it be not lost among
those other expressions by which all sorts of representations are
loosely designated- that the interests of science may not thereby
suffer. We are in no want of words to denominate adequately every mode
of representation, without the necessity of encroaching upon terms
which are proper to others. The following is a graduated list of them.
The genus is representation in general (representation. Under it
stands representation with consciousness (perceptio). A perception
which relates solely to the subject as a modification of its state, is
a sensation (sensatio), an objective perception is a cognition
(cognitio). A cognition is either an intuition or a conception
(intuitus vel conceptus). The former has an immediate relation to
the object and is singular and individual; the latter has but a
mediate relation, by means of a characteristic mark which may be
common to several things. A conception is either empirical or pure.
A pure conception, in so far as it has its origin in the understanding
alone, and is not the conception of a pure sensuous image, is called
notio. A conception formed from notions, which transcends the
possibility of experience, is an idea, or a conception of reason. To
one who has accustomed himself to these distinctions, it must be quite
intolerable to hear the representation of the colour red called an
idea. It ought not even to be called a notion or conception of
understanding.
