REMARKS ON THE SOUL'S INTUITION OF ITSELF.
43. The permanent reality of theme, considered in itself and abstracted from the things which pass within it, is a fact which we perceive in our intuition, and which we express in all our words. If this presence, this internal experience, be what is called the intuition of the soul, then we have intuition of our soul. This intuition is reproduced in every particular intuition, and in all internal affections in general; for, although they are isolated phenomena, they imply the intuition of theme, because they imply the consciousness of themselves.
44. The variety of isolated phenomena instead of proving any thing against the unity of the intuition of theme, on the contrary, evidently confirms it. If we conceived only one fixed and identical thought, there would be less necessity of uniting with it the idea of a subject in which it resides; but when there is a multitude of different phenomena, which cannot co-exist without contradiction, we must refer them to something constant, or else the internal world is converted into an absolute chaos.
45. The soul has, therefore, an intuition of itself; that is to say, it is conscious of its unity in multiplicity, of its identity in diversity, of its permanence in succession, of its constant duration in the appearance and disappearance of phenomena. Either we must admit this, or we must renounce the legitimacy of all testimony of consciousness, and embrace the most complete skepticism that ever existed, extending it both to the internal and to the external world.
46. We find within us the realization of the indeterminate conceptions ofbeing,unity,permanence, andsubject ofmodifications; this realization is revealed by consciousness, and is confirmed by the logical analysis of the series of phenomena in their relation to a point of connection.
47. All that is included in the idea of finite substance is contained in these four terms:being,one,permanent, and thesubject of modifications. All this is in our soul, and we perceive by experience that we are internally affected by it. If this perception is called intuition, we have intuition of the substantiality of our soul.
48. The thinking being not only perceives itself but it knows itself as a real object, to which, by means of reflection, it applies the ideas of being, unity, permanence, and the subject of modifications. Therefore the soul may be the true predicate of propositions resting on logic and consciousness.
49. Have we any other intuition of the soul, besides that which has just been explained? To this I answer, that we have not while in this life, and at the same time I ask whether any other than that of consciousness is possible. Accustomed as we are to sensible intuitions which imply extension in space, we ask what the soul is in itself, and we do not seem to be satisfied without seeing its image. Leaving the order of sensibility and rising to the purely intellectual sphere, who knows whether we can say that there is no other intuition of the soul than that which we now have; whether the soul in itself, in the unity and simplicity of its entity, is the force which we perceive; whether this force is the subject of the modifications, the substance, without its being necessary to imagine another support in which this force might reside? Why may not this force be subsistent? Why must we imagine anothersubstratumto support it? If it were so, if we must apply to the substance of the soul what the great Leibnitz thought applicable to all substances, making the idea of substance to consist inthe idea of force; why may we not say that the pressure of the internal sense, the consciousness of itself, is all the intuition of itself which the soul can have?
50. You may ask me, what is the soul separated from the body? What will it perceive and know of itself, when it existsalone? As though it did not now perceive and knowalone, or as though the organs, which it uses, could perceive or think. Does it, perchance, know how it uses them, or even know otherwise than by experience that it uses them at all? Is it not alone in the depths of its activity with its thoughts and the acts of its will, its sentiments, its joy and its sadness, its pleasures and its pains? Say, then, that perhaps we do not form sufficiently clear ideas of themodeof consciousness which we shall have of ourselves after this life; say that perhaps other intuitions of our self are possible; but do not imagine the soul as inconceivable alone. Leave me thought, will, sentiment, all that is internally present to my consciousness, to find myself; I ask no more. Give me communication with other beings, which affect me or are affected by me, which transmit to me thoughts and wills, which cause me pleasure or pain; I need nothing more in order to have a world which I can very well conceive. I am ignorant of the quality of the things, not of their possibility: the soul changes its state, not its nature.