CHAPTER IV

CRITIQUE OF THE ONTOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

For our purpose the importance of Brownson's ontological theory lies in the fact that it tries to explain how ideas originated, and therefore how man arrived at the idea of the beautiful. It not only does this but goes farther. In accounting for the origin of our idea of the beautiful, or of any other idea, it would give us also some intimation of the content of that idea. Thus he who holds that our idea of the beautiful is derived from, or ultimately equal to, the idea of the All-Perfect will have a view of art and aesthetics widely different from that of the man who believes that his idea of the beautiful arose, say, from the contemplation of nature. Considered in this light the examination of Brownson's ontology, which is really ontologism, should give us some indication of the value of what he says about art; surely some comprehension of his reason for saying that which he does say.

Stoeckl remarks that for idealistic minds ontologism with its immediate knowledge of God has something attractive.7 Throughout the history of thought we find great names connected with the theory of the intuition either of ideas that are innate or of the idea of God. Is it that such minds have a more penetrating perception than those of ordinary men? Surely, a refutation of their contention is often made by the statement that men in general are not aware of any such intuition. It should be an easy matter for all men to entertain a distinct notion of God and a conviction of His presence through mere reflection, Father Boedder says, if it were a natural endowment of the human soul to have a direct intuition of God and of His relation to creatures.8 But the consciousness of men in general opposes such a supposition. They are not aware of comparing the finite with the infinite, the relative with the absolute, in order to recognize the finite and the

7 Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, ii, 583. Mainz 1883. 8 Natural Theology, p. 15. New York 1910.

relative. The claim cannot be established psychologically, and therefore it rests on a weak footing and is scientifically unjustifiable.9 However, the dictum that their theories are based on a mere assumption will hardly convince ontologists, and certainly does not meet them directly, since they do not refer to inner consciousness as a proof of their doctrine.

This is the position of Brownson. He does not fall back on psychological evidence for his ontologism, but rather on a priori principles. He rests his theory on the fact that no other explanation of the origin of ideas is adequate, or logically sound; and he might have answered the objectors that appealed to experience, by asking what actual consciousness they did possess with regard to their first ideas. If his ontologism is false, the error in it should also be recognizable in the principles on which it rests, or in the process of deduction from these principles. A more positive way of meeting Brownson will be an attempt to disqualify his contention that any other method than his for explaining the origin of ideas is inadequate. A mere demonstration of the possibility or logicalness of some other method will show his a priori deductions to be false.

It will not be sufficient to apply another general refutation, opposed as a rule to the so-called ontological proof for the existence of God, to Brownson's theory, namely, that it jumps the chasm between the ideal and the real-in other words, that the formula, Being creates existences, is after all only in our mind, and that from it alone as something ideal we can never proceed to the actually existing. This Brownson does not hold. He admits that our knowledge arises through or with sense-perception, and he does not deny that in each object perceived by the senses there is that which gives us the right to classify it as a thing and predicate being of it.10 But he does assert that man would not be able to recognize this fact unless he previously had in his mind the idea of being, without which idea no number of sense-perceptions could result in knowledge. Moreover, even if sense-perception could do so, he claims, there would still be the impossible step of arriving at the idea of God, the idea of the infinite, possessed by men. The assertions

9 Stoeckl, Op. cit., p. 584.

10 Works, i and ii, passim. Detroit, 1882-7.

in the last two sentences it is that we wish to examine more closely.

In order to arrive at intellectual knowledge through senseperception, nothing more seems necessary than the recognition of similarity and of difference between several objects that present themselves through the senses. The growing consciousness in a child's mind of a similarity between several objects despite some differences, in other words, the consciousness of a common note in all of them, is in reality the acquisition of the idea of being in its vaguest form. If, as Brownson says, we have the idea of being previous to any sense-perception, then it would still be necessary to recognize the identity or similarity between this idea and a something in the object perceived; and it is hard to see why this step is less difficult and less improbable than the simple recognition of a common note in several objects in themselves. But Brownson might have conceded, for the sake of argument merely, that the idea of being may be thus attained. For the important point was that such an explanation cannot account for the idea in us of the necessary, universal being-from which the notion of beauty is acquired—as that would be deriving an effect from a smaller, an inadequate cause. Here Brownson confuses the ontological order with the logical, the realm of ideas with the realm of fact. In the world of the actual a universal, necessary, unlimited being is incomparably greater than a limited, contingent being; but not so in the realm of the idea. Our notion of a contingent being consists of two things at least, being plus limitation; while the notion of infinite being consists simply of essential being, without the addition of limitaton. Thus the latter notion is simpler that the former, it has fewer qualifications of content, and can be derived from the former by taking away the attribute of limitation. In this way the origin of the idea of the infinite from that of the finite was already explained by the Schoolmen, with whom Brownson is here crossing swords. The idea thus obtained is therefore rather negative than positive and is identical with the ideal that Brownson claimed to find in the minds of all men according to his own description of it.

The above discussion may seem superfluous to some and would indeed be so if our purpose were not to examine the

The nature of our

theories of Brownson to their foundation. task demands first of all logical completeness, and this necessitated the preceding paragraphs, which have a vital bearing on our matter. If man has an intuition of what is identical with the all-perfect Creator, then surely there is no excuse for not knowing and pursuing the highest form of beauty, there is in fact no excuse for striving after any form of beauty but this ideal. Especially would this ideal beauty be the standard according to which the critic should have to form his judgment. It was from this standpoint of the critic that Brownson made all his statements, and tried to apply his standard. His initial error was that he did not recognize the negative nature of the ideal which forms the core of his art theories. The idea of the infinite, since it has no positive content, can tell us nothing positive. Even if we call God the all-beautiful, it means in content rather the absence of all imperfections, and at most teaches us that the concretely beautiful must conform negatively with the idea of God-thus indicating no more than the general tendency that all activities must pursue. The same holds with regard to the good and the true. In ultimate ontological analysis the true and the good and the beautiful are the same, and identical with God. But further this analysis cannot take us. It tells us that goodness and truth in God mean conformity with Himself; but we learn nothing from this with regard to the world of the concrete; and for a positive morality and truth we must examine nature-especially that of rational manwhich as creature bears the impress of its Creator.

This is just where Brownson stopped short. It may have

been as a recoil from Transcendentalism that he seemed to recognize nothing good or beautiful in pure nature, and thought that nature in any aspect could be countenanced only in as far as it was brought directly into relation with the supernatural. He depreciated nature-the statements that seem to indicate the contrary are negligible over against a host of others-and he depreciated natural reason. He could not see that nature produced the ideal that he found in mankind; and he forgot that, outside of revelation, nature alone tells us whatever we know positively of truth, morality, and beauty. In the last article of his life he tells us:

The whole principle and scope of the teleological order, or