The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/ Summary: Fouillée - Les engines de notre structure intellectuelle et cérébrale
There are three responses possible to the question of the active and proper force of the intelligence in face of the world; pure naturalism, pure idealism (both of these have the common error of intellectualism the seeking to explain our ideas and mental structure in the nature of intelligence, whether active or passive), and the theory of F., which finds an explanation to a great extent of the forms of thought in the functions of will and in those necessities of life to which Lamarck and Darwin have drawn the attention of philosophers. Instead of "returning to Kant," let us pass Kant, pass Schopenhauer even, pass Spencer too; according to a true evolutionism ideas ought to become the supreme forms of life and volition, instead of remaining inactive in a world ruled by material laws. The question of idea-forces (des idées-forces) lies underneath the question of the origin of ideas. The point of this paper is to show the inadequacy of the a-priority by which Kant explains the forms of knowledge, whether he considers the negative character of a-priority or independence of experience, or the positive character — spontaneity of the thinking subject. The criteria of irreducibility and necessity are also inadequate. The Kantists can never prove that the matter of thought will with docility take on the forms they want to give it. Nothing but the mere form of identity can be got out of intellectual spontaneity; intellectual spontaneity too instead of explaining causality presupposes it. Whence the activity of thought for Kant? Hegel's creative thought is the natural explanation, but Hegelism is anthropocentric; Kant too is a Ptolemy rather than a Copernicus. In the theory of ideas, as in nature, we must introduce a point of view akin to that of Laplace, which believes in one substance universally extended which includes everything in itself; under form more or less implicit, sensibility and will of ideas are only the condensations in luminous centres and in conscious hearths of that which exists everywhere as sensation and desire; physical movement becomes conscious desire, and nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu et voluntate. F. at once draws from and embraces Schopenhauer. II. L'Evolutionisme. The cerebral structure may have several origins: 1st. The direct action of environment on the brain and consciousness by means of the senses; 2d. Acquired habit which is then transmitted by heredity; 3d. Natural selection; 4th. The fundamental laws of life; 5th. The universal constitution of elements from the physical and psychical point of view. All systems which neglect one or other of these causes are incomplete, and cannot explain the genesis of cerebral and mental forms. Spencer's theory of the explanation of the structural forms of the brain and thought by association of ideas strengthened by heredity, takes firstly, only account of sensations and not of other mental functions such as emotions and volitions, and secondly, accounts only for superficial mental forms and not for essential forms such as time, space, cause, etc. The second theory of the hereditary transmission of acquired habits is now disputed by some biologists, e.g. Weissmann. Thirdly, we cannot grant that happy molecular accidents suffice to explain the roots of universal and necessary beliefs; the characteristic, too, of the mind is not passivity but reaction — vital necessity is the mother of intellectual industry. We must now show the intimate relations which bind necessary beliefs, chiefly those of identity and sufficient reason, to biological laws of motor reactions, and to psychological laws of desire or volition. Life has for its first law that of preserving itself (root of principle of identity), for its second that of developing itself (root of principle of sufficient reason — every being reacting on nature in an intelligent anticipatory manner). These two laws also apply to social science, wherein we may observe a logical determinism. Thus in all its aspects thought though individual is yet collective; though subjective, it is yet objective. It is so because the forms of our thought are the functions of a primæval and normal will, to which correspond the essential functions of the physiological life. The will which is spread throughout all the universe has only to reflect inself progressively on itself, and to acquire a greater intensity of consciousness to become in us sentiment and thought. The movements of intelligent will are constitutive idea-forces.