Chapter 27 Emile (Volume V) Section 1

A priest from Savoy My child, do not expect me to tell you any profound knowledge or difficult truths.I'm not a great philosopher, and I don't want to be.But I have some common sense and have always loved the truth.I don't want to argue with you, let alone convince you, I just want to state to you the simple and simple thoughts in my heart.While you listen to my talk, you also ask your own heart. This is what I ask of you.If I'm wrong, I'm honestly wrong, so as long as I'm not guilty of being wrong, I'm fine.If you're also honest, being wrong doesn't do much harm.If I'm right, it's because we share reason, and we share a desire to hear the voice of reason.Why don't you think like I do?

I was born into a poor peasant family, and my origin destined me to work in the fields; but it was thought that it would be better if I should become a clergyman and earn my living by this profession, so a plan was devised to make my living I was able to study pastor.Of course, neither my parents nor I thought very much of the search for good, true, and useful learning in this way, but only of the knowledge a man needs in order to obtain the priesthood.I learn what other people want me to learn; I say what other people want me to say; I do what others want me to do, so I become a priest.But I soon realized that in promising myself not to be a layman, I was making a promise I couldn't keep.

We are told that conscience is the product of prejudice, yet I know from experience that conscience always obeys the order of nature in spite of all man-made laws.It is vain to try to forbid us to do this or that; so long as we do what well-ordered nature permits, and especially what it orders, we are free from a shadowy conscience.Ah, my dear child, may you remain long in this blissful state, before nature has come to enlighten your faculties, for in this state the voice of nature is the voice of innocence.Remember, before it teaches you, it is far more contrary to its will than to resist its teaching; therefore, in order not to sin when you succumb to evil, you must first learn to resist evil .

From my youth I have regarded marriage as the first and holiest of natural institutions.Having renounced the right to marry, I resolve not to desecrate the sanctity of marriage; because, no matter what education I have received or what books I have read, I have always lived an orderly and simple life, so in my heart Still retains the original splendor of wisdom: worldly talk has not deceived them, and my poor life has kept me far from the temptations of sinful sophistry. It was because of this determination that I was ruined; my respect for marriage revealed my fault, and I was punished for my infamy: I was imprisoned and dismissed from office.I have been in this misfortune from my hesitation, not from my inability to restrain myself; and from the reproaches that have been made of my disgrace, I have reason to believe that the greater the blunder the more I escaped. .

A little experience of this kind can produce many thoughts in a thinking man.As pessimistic views shattered my conceptions of justice, honesty, and human duties, I daily discarded some of the ideas I had accepted; there were not enough left in my mind to form a complete system, so I Gradually, I also felt a little fuzzy about the obvious principles, so that in the end I didn't know how to think about it, and I fell into your current situation.The difference is this: my doubts are the result of increasing age, they come after many difficulties, and are therefore the least easily broken. I was uncertain, with the kind of doubts that Descartes believed necessary in order to pursue the truth.This state is not sustainable, it is painful and disturbing, and no one but a sinful inclination and a lazy mind will want to go on like this.My heart is not so corrupt as to be content to be in this state; a man who loves himself more than his wealth can keep the habit of employing his thoughts.

I meditate silently on the sad fate of human beings, and I see them adrift on a sea of ​​human prejudices, without rudder, without compass, tossed about by their stormy desires, and their only navigator is inexperienced , I don't know the route, I don't even know where I came from and where I went.I said to myself: "I love the truth, I pursue it, but I can't find it, please show me where it is, I will follow it closely, why does it hide and evade an eager heart that worships it?" see it?" Although I have often been in great pain, my life has never been so dull as during this chaotic time.During this time, I doubted this and that; and after long meditation, I got nothing but vague uncertainties about the reasons for my existence and the best I could do. Contradictory views of the ways of duty.

What does it take to be a skeptic who is both stubborn and honest?I don't understand this.Such a philosopher, perhaps never, was, if ever, the most unfortunate of men.To cast doubt on what we ought to know is a violent injure to the soul.It cannot endure this abuse for long, it decides one way or the other unconsciously, it would rather be deceived than believe in nothing. I was doubly troubled by the fact that I had been brought up by a church that was dogmatic and intolerant of all doubts, so that denying one point made me deny everything else, and since I could not accept so much absurdity Therefore, I reject even those that are not absurd.When people want me to believe everything, they make me believe nothing, and I don't know what to do.I have consulted many philosophers, I have read their works, I have studied their opinions, and I have found them all to be very proud, dogmatic, self-righteous, and even in their so-called skepticism they say they know everything, That they don't want to get to the bottom of it, that they want to laugh at each other; and this last, which all philosophers have, is, I think, the only thing they're right about.They triumphantly attack others, yet they are powerless to defend themselves.If you weigh their arguments, they are all harmful; if you ask them which one they agree with, each will say that he agrees with himself; they are together for the sake of argument, so listen It is impossible for their set of arguments to dispel my doubts.

I think that the reason why people's opinions are so different is the first reason is the lack of human intelligence, and the second is due to the psychology of pride.We have no measure of this gigantic machine, we cannot calculate its functions; we know neither its most important laws nor its ultimate purpose; we do not know ourselves, we do not understand our nature and our active principle; we do not know whether man is a simple being or a compound being; we are surrounded by inscrutable and mysterious things which are beyond our ken; we think we have Their intellect, whereas all we have is imagination.When everyone walks through this imaginary world, he has to open up a road that he thinks is smooth, but no one knows whether his road can achieve his goal.We want to know everything, to find out.There is only one thing we are unwilling to do, and that is: to admit that we are terribly ignorant of what we cannot understand.We would rather take our chances and believe what is not true than admit that none of us can understand what is true.We are mere fractions of a vast whole which our Creator has left us to dispute, and it is utterly delusional to attempt to determine what it is like and our relation to it.

Even if philosophers have the ability to discover truth, which of them has ever been interested in truth?Everyone knows that his version has no more basis than that of others, but everyone insists that his version is right because it is his own.There is not a single person among them who, after seeing the truth and falsehood, abandons his own absurd arguments and accepts the truth of others.Where is a philosopher to be found who does not deceive mankind for his own honor?Where can one find a philosopher who has no deep-seated intention of making a name for himself?As long as you can stand out, as long as you can win over those who argue with him, how does he care if you are truthful or not?The most important thing is to think differently from others.Among the religious he is an atheist, and among the atheists he is a religious man.

After thinking like this, the first thing I gained was the realization that I should limit my discussion to things that directly concern me, and leave everything else alone, except things that must be known. Besides, if you have doubts about some things, don't bother me. I also learned that instead of alleviating my needless doubts, philosophers multiplied those that haunted me, leaving none of them resolved.So I had to go to another teacher, and I said to myself, "Ask the light within, which keeps me from going as far as the philosophers lead me, or, at least, my mistakes are my own, And, following my own fantasies, I wouldn't be as corrupted as I am by listening to their nonsense.

So we asked ourselves to recall the views that have affected me one after the other since my birth, and I found that although none of them were clear enough to be directly convincing, they had more or less less probabilistic, so our minds approve or disapprove of them to varying degrees.On this basis, I made an unbiased comparison of all the different ideas, and I found that the first most common idea is the simplest and most reasonable idea, as long as it is listed last, it can Obtain the unanimous approval of all.We suppose that all philosophers, ancient and modern, have thoroughly and grotesquely studied Force, Chance, Destiny, Necessity, Atoms, the Living World, Living Matter, and all sorts of materialistic claims. , and after them, the famous Clark finally revealed the master of life and the giver of all things, thus opening the eyes of the world.So great, so consoling, so sublime, so well adapted to the cultivation of the soul and the foundation of morality, and at the same time so touching, so brilliant, so simple, that the new set of sayings is so grand, so reassuring, so sublime, that it is no wonder that it It will be admired and admired by all, and it seems to me that although it contains something incomprehensible to the human mind, it does not contain so much absurdity as other versions!I said to myself: "They all have the same insoluble doubts, and because the human mind is too narrow to solve all the doubts, they cannot be used to explain our rejection of this or that statement; but they are based on The direct evidence of the above is very different! Since the above statement explains everything clearly, and at the same time, it only has less difficulties than the other statements, may we not choose this statement? Since I have made my whole philosophy the love of truth which I cherish in my heart, and since I have adopted as my only method a law which is so simple and easy as to enable me to get rid of empty arguments, I have tested myself again by this law. Of the knowledge I know, I resolve to regard as self-evident those which I cannot but accept with sincerity, and as true those which seem to have a necessary connection with them; and as for the rest, I remain skeptical about them, neither denying nor accepting them. Since they have no practical value, there is no need to spend my mind on researching them. But what kind of person am I?What right do I have to judge things?What determines my judgment this way or that?If they are due to the impressions I have received that I am compelled to judge in that way, I have wasted my energy in all these inquiries; either go into them thoroughly, or leave them alone, and let them come to a conclusion of their own.So I must first turn my eyes to myself in order to understand the tool I am going to use and how sure I am of using it. I exist, I have senses, I feel through my senses.This was the first truth that struck at my heartstrings so that I could not but accept it.Do I have a specific sense of my being, or do I feel my presence only through my senses?This is the first suspicion that I have not been able to resolve until now.For, since I am continuously and continuously affected by sensations, either directly or through memory, how can I know whether "my" sensations are independent of them and not affected by them? Since my senses make me aware of my existence, it follows that they proceed within me; but their cause is outside me, for they affect me whether I accept them or not, and, moreover, they The birth or destruction of all is not up to me.In this way it became clear to me that the sensations in me and their causes (i.e. objects outside me) were not the same thing.Therefore, there are not only I, but other substances, the objects of my perceptions; and even if these objects are only ideas, these ideas are not "I." I call "matter" whatever I feel that acts on my senses outside of me; and it seems to me that all the molecules of matter will combine into a single single entity, so I call the molecules of matter called "objects".In this way I think all the disputes between the idealists and the materialists are moot, as they say the difference between the appearance and reality of objects is entirely imaginary. I am now as convinced of the existence of the universe as I am of my own.Afterwards, I shall further consider the objects of my sensations; and when I discover that I am capable of comparing them, I perceive that I am endowed with a power of living which I did not know I had before. Perception is feeling; comparison is judgment; judgment and feeling are not the same thing.Through sensation, I feel that objects are presented to me individually and scattered, as they are in nature; by comparison, I move them, so to speak. position, I stack them one by one in order to tell their similarities and differences, and at the same time to outline their relationship.It seems to me that the discernment of active or intelligent beings is what gives the word "being" a meaning.I do not find in sentient beings such an intelligence, capable of comparison and judgment, nor in their nature.This passive creature can perceive each object separately, and can even perceive a whole composed of two objects, but since it cannot superimpose objects one on top of the other, it cannot compare them It is impossible to judge them. Seeing two objects at the same time does not mean discovering their relationship or identifying their differences; seeing several unconnected objects does not mean counting them.I can have the idea of ​​a long stick and a short stick at the same moment, though I do not compare them, nor judge that the one is shorter than the other, as I see it all at once. My entire hand is the same without counting how many fingers there are. The comparative ideas of "longer and shorter," and of numbers "one, two, etc.," are certainly not sensations, though I can only have them when I feel them. We are told that sentient beings are capable of distinguishing the various senses from one another by the difference between them, and this requires explanation.When the senses are distinct, the sentient being can distinguish them by their differences; when they are alike, the sentient being can distinguish them by perceiving them as independent of each other. of.How else could it distinguish two equal things in a simultaneous sensation?It necessarily confuses the two things and regards them as one and the same, especially according to the theory that the sense of appearance of space has no extension. When we find two sensations to be compared, we already have an impression of them, we have a feeling for each object, we have a feeling for both objects, but we cannot say that we have felt it. to their relationship.If the judgment of this relation were only a sensation, and derived uniquely from the object itself, our judgment would not be in error, since what I perceive is what I feel, so There is absolutely no error. So why am I confused about the relationship between these two sticks, especially whether they are alike?Why, for example, should I suppose the short stick to be one-third as long as the long stick, when the short stick is only a quarter as long as the long one?Why does the image (that is, the feeling) not match the specimen (that is, the thing)?This is because I am active in judging, but my activity is erroneous in comparing, and my understanding confuses its error in judging relations with the true feeling that reveals the objective thing. Beyond that, I think, if you've ever thought about it, there's something else that's bound to surprise you: If we're completely passive in the use of our senses, then there's no way they can Without communicating with each other, we cannot recognize that the object we touch and the object we see are the same thing.Either we feel nothing outside of us at all, or we perceive five perceptible entities without any means of discerning that they are one and the same. This faculty of generalizing and comparing my sensations, which I have in my mind, does not matter what name it is given by one name or another, whether it is called "attention," or "meditation," or Call it "reflection," or call it what you like, it is always in me and not in things, and, though only when things impress me Produce this ability, but the only one who can produce it is myself.It is not up to me whether I feel or not, but I am more or less free to judge what I feel. I am, therefore, not merely a passive sentient being, but an active intelligent being; and whatever the philosophers may say about this, I am honored that I can think.I only know that truth exists in things but not in my thoughts of judging things. I only know that the less "I" is in my judgments of things, the closer I am to the truth.I have therefore adopted the maxim of feeling more than reason precisely because reason itself has told me that the maxim is true.