NIHILISM
92
NIHILISM
convincing l<nowlcclge bj- thought. In the philosophy of I'lato, which has exercised a large and lasting infiu- ence upon Christian thought, the Idea, his fundamental conception, is pure archetypal essence, having an ob- jective and real existence, and not merely an existence in thought. In Plato's philosophy appears the logically legitimate recognition of a relation in the subjective con- ception to objective reality, which is the one refutation of all nihilism. But there were poetical, fanciful ele- ments in his philosophy, which by some were trans- formed into scientific, dogmatic formulas, and led to a sceptical reaction, and to nihilism, such as that of Pyr- rho. See Pyrrhonism. According to him, real things were inaccessible to human knowledge, and it is our duty to abstain from judging. His folloAvers taught that "our perceptions and representations are neither true nor false, and can therefore not be relied upon. The grounds of every proposition and its contradictory show themselves equalh^ strong." But then all these principles, after being applied to the assertions of those who believed in the truth and reality of knowledge and existence, were finally to be applied to their own prin- ciples in order that in the end not even these should retain the character of truthfid and fixed assertions; so that those propositions, in which they professed to assert truthfully the falsity or uncertainty of other propositions, were themselves equally false and untrust- worthy'. Thus this nihilistic scepticism destroys it- self at last by its own principles. Augustine, early in his life, passed through a period of this scepticism, and subsequently, after having been led by Ambrosius to an acceptance of catholic Christianity, earnestly and con- vincingly argued for certitude in human knowledge as a necessary element in it. He urges as an introductory consideration that the possession of truth is one of our wants, that it is necessary to our happiness, as no one can be happy who is not in possession of that which he wishes to possess, and he who seeks the truth without finding it cannot be happy. In his De Beata Vita he lays down the principle, which has been so fruitful in philosophy, that it is impossible to doubt one's own liv- ing existence — a principle which in the SoUloquia, writ- ten immediately afterwards, is expressed in this form : Thought, and therefore the existence of the thinker, are the most certain of all things. This reminds us at once of the famous formula upon which Descartes found a solid place for his feet in the midst of nihilistic doubts : " Cogito, ergo sum." Augustine finds a foundation for all our knowletlge — a foundation invulnerable against every doubt — in the consciousness we have of our sensations, our feelings, our willing and thinking ; in short, of all our psychical processes. He makes being, life, and thought co-ordinate. The existence of nihilism in the thought of the centuries subsequent to Augustine is evinced by the arguments with which theologians were constantlj' opposing it, and by the scepticism apparent in the writ- ings of philosophizing theologians, as of Duns Scotus, who doubted in philosophy, but who j'et in religion re- ceived the teachings of the Church on faith indepen- dently of philosophical reasoning. Descartes was led — by comparing the different notions and customs of dif- ferent nations and parties, by general philosophical meditations, and more especialh' bj' his observation of the great remoteness of all demonstrations in philoso- phy from mathematical certainty — to doubt the truth of all propositions received at second hand. He began his philosopliizing with universal doubt, with a nihilism which refused to acknowledge the certaintj- of any pre- suppositions or trailitional o|iinions. He then set him- self at work to discover if possible one proposition which is fully certain and beyond all doubt. One thing in the midst of Ids universal doubt was certain, and that, he says, is the fact that I do really doubt, or, as doubt- ing is a species of thinking, that I do really think; and therefore that I do exist. Even admitting the exist- ence of a powerful being bent on deceiving me, yet I must exist in order to be able to be deceived. When I
think that I exist, this very act of thinking proves that I really exist; Cogito, ergo sum. From the clearness and distinctness which belong to this first truth, and which alone make us assuredly certain of it, Descartes deduced clearness and distinctness of perception as a criterion of the truth and certainty of knowledge. Ob- jection, indeed, may justly be made to this criterion of certainty; but the fact of existence, given to us even in universal doubt, as Descartes found it and formu- lated it, is one, at least, of the starting-points of real knowledge, and an impregnable fortress against doubt- ing nihilism itself. AVith Hume, again, we find scepti- cism and the limitation of knowledge extending very nearly to pure nihilism. Knowledge consists in im- pressions and ideas or thoughts, all derived from the senses and from experience, and so subjective as to give us little or no knowledge of objective realities or exist- ences. So the only reality that we know in the rela- tion of cause and eifect is simple, bare succession. There is in the idea no knowledge of a real necessary causal nexus, either in its nature or as a fact. We onlj' know that certain things are connected according to a con- stant rule, and that is all that the idea of cause and ef- fect can contain. " The ultimate grounds of things arc utterly inaccessible to the curiosity and investigation of man."