Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/118

C. RENOUVIEB, DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. 105 sonality, is essentially finite. The " doctrine of consciousness " requires that phenomena should have a beginning, but not neces- sarily that they should have an end ; for the absence of a begin- ning implies a past eternity filled with events, that is, a " com- pleted infinite " ; but future eternity is supposed never to be completed ; the series of phenomena, even if it should never have an end, will always be capable of expression by a finite number. Phenomena have had their beginning in a personality, which, like other personalities, is necessarily finite. The universality of law the resemblance of the order of phenomena in different persons requires that there should be one supreme Deity : M. Eenouvier now regards this argument as conclusive against the possibility he had formerly left open for polytheism. The Deity must be held to be limited in knowledge by " the real contingency of futures". For, corresponding to creation in the universe as a whole, there is a real beginning of a new series of phenomena, a cause that is not also an effect, in certain decisions of the human will. Thus the doctrines of the finite, of creation and of indeter- ininism form a connected group opposed to the doctrines of the infinite, of evolution and of the absolute determination of all phenomena as parts of an eternal series ; and these groups of doctrines attach themselves on the one side to " the doctrine of consciousness," on the other side to " the doctrine of the thing ". By " evolution " M. Eenouvier understands here " philosophi- cal " as distinguished from " scientific " evolution. The special evolution-theories of the sciences, like other special scientific theories, cannot logically, he holds, be extended under the name of " science to the whole order of the world. " Science," when it is anything more than a collective name for " the sciences," means one of the two opposing philosophies ; and this philosophy has no right to claim for itself, as it does by assuming the name of " science, the certainty that each of the special sciences has within its own limits. Of the philosophical doctrine of evo- lution there are two forms the "statical" and the "dynami- cal ". Spinoza's doctrine of modes is a real evolution-theory of the first kind, although it makes no attempt to express in a single formula the law of the series, which it assumes, of absolutely determined and eternally changing phenomena. Theories that are evolutionist in the more special " dynamical" sense, such as that of Leibniz which was the first to combine the ideas of physical evolution and of human progress introduce the concep- tion of an end towards which the evolution of the world is the necessary movement. They are less consequent than Spinozism ; since they have to borrow the idea of end from the doctrine of consciousness. Immediately connected with the antinomy of necessity and liberty is that of happiness and duty. No doctrine of necessity, M. Eenouvier contends, is consistent with a morality that makes the correlative conceptions of " duty" and " right " fundamental.