Let not the reader think we have imagined a system for the sake of combatting it; the doctrine which we have here exposed, is the doctrine of Schelling.
88. One cause of this error is the obscurity of the problem of knowing. To know, is an immanent action, having, at the same time, relation to an external object, excepting those cases in which the intelligent being becomes, by a reflex act, its own object. In order to know a truth, whatever it may be, the mind does not quit itself; it does not operate beyond itself; its own consciousness tells it that it remains, and that its activity is developed, within itself.
This immanent action extends to objects the most distant in time and place, and the most unlike in their nature. How is the mind to come in contact with them? How is it to ascertain whether their representation conforms to reality? There can be no cognition without this representation; without conformity, there is no truth, cognition is a pure illusion to which nothing corresponds, and the human understanding is unceasingly the sport of vain appearances.
Undeniably this problem is liable to very serious difficulties, which perhaps the science of man, while in this life, cannot solve. Here arise all the ideological and psychological questions ever treated by the most eminent metaphysicians. However, as it is not our intention to anticipate what is to be hereafter considered, we shall confine ourselves to the point of view indicated by our present question of certainty and its fundamental principle.
89. Consciousness attests the fact of representation; without this there is no thought; and the affirmation _I think_ is, if not the origin of all philosophy, at least its indispensable condition.
90. Whence comes the representation? How is a being placed in such communication with other beings, and this not by a transient but by an immanent act? How explain the conformity between the representation and the object? Does not this mystery indicate that there is unity, identity, at the bottom of all things, that the being which knows, is the very being known, which appears to itself under a distinct form, and that what we call realities are only phenomena of one and the same being, always identical, infinitely active, which develops its strength in various ways, and forms by its development what we call the universe? No! This neither is nor can be! It is an absurdity which the most extravagant reason cannot accept: it is a resource as desperate as it is impotent to explain a mystery, if you will, but one a thousand times less obscure than the system which pretends to clear it up.