THIRD PART
THE FORMS OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
[I]
Error as negativity, and impossibility of treating specially of errors.
Error has sometimes been called privation or negativity. It is commonly defined as a thinking of the false, as the non-conformity of thought with its object, and in other similar ways. These are all reducible to the first, since, for example, thought which is of a different form from its object is false thought, which does not attain to its intrinsic end; and false thought is not thought, but privation of thought, negativity.
As negativity error gives rise to a negative concept, responding to the positive concept, which is truth. True and false, truth and error, are related to one another as opposite concepts. Now we know from the logical doctrines just stated that opposite concepts, far from being separable, are not even distinguishable, and when they are distinguished, they represent nothing but the abstract division of the pure concept, of the unique concept, which is the synthesis or dialectic of opposites. And we know from the whole of Philosophy that Reality, thought in the pure concept and of which the pure concept is also an integral element, genuine and truly real Reality, is a perpetual development and progress, which is rendered possible by the negative term intrinsic to the positive and constituting the mainspring of its development.
If then, error is negativity, it is vain to treat it as something positive. No other positivity or reality belongs to it than just negativity, which is a moment of the dialectic synthesis and outside the synthesis is nothing. A treatment of error in this sense already exists quite complete in the treatment of logical truth; and there is nothing special to add here to that argument. As a fact, a form of the spirit distinguishable from the positive and real forms, error does not exist, and philosophy cannot philosophize upon what is not.
Positive and existing errors.
Nevertheless, we all know errors, distinguishable from truth and existing for themselves. The evolutionist affirms the biological formation of the a priori; the utilitarian resolves duty into individual interest; the Christian says that God the Father sent his son Jesus to redeem men from the perdition into which they had fallen through the sin of Adam; the Buddhist preaches the annulment of the Will. Are not these true and proper errors? Have they perchance no existence? Have they not been expressed, repeated, listened to, believed? Whoever does not admit the validity of the examples adduced can himself find others; there will certainly be no lack of examples in such a field. Do we wish to maintain that these errors do not exist, in homage to the definition of error as negativity and unreality? They may not exist as truth, but they may perfectly well exist as errors.
Positive errors as practical acts.
There is no way of escaping from this antithesis between the inconceivability of the existence of error and the impossibility of denying the existence of errors which the mind recognizes and the fact proves, save by the solution to which we have several times had occasion to refer. That error, which has existence, is not error and negativity, but something positive, a product of the spirit. And since that product of the spirit is without truth, it cannot be the work of the theoretic spirit. And since beyond the theoretic spirit there is nothing but the practical spirit, error, which we meet with as something existing, must of necessity be a product of the practical spirit. If every way of issue is closed, this one is open; it goes to the very bottom and leads to the place of rest.
Indeed, he who produces an error has no power to twist or to denaturalize or stain the truth, which is his thought itself, the thought which acts in him and in all men; indeed, no sooner has he touched thought than he is touched by it: he thinks and does not err. He possesses only the practical power of passing from thought to deed; and his doing, in fact his thinking, is to open his mouth and emit sounds to which there corresponds no thought, or, what is the same thing, no thought which has value, precision, coherence and truth. It is to smear a canvas to which no intuition corresponds; to rhyme a sonnet, combining the phrases of others, which simulate the genius that is absent. Theoretical error, when it is truly so, is inseparable from the life of thought, which to the extent to which it perpetually overcomes that negative moment, is always born anew. When it is possible to separate and consider it in itself, what is before us is not theoretical error, but practical act.
Practical acts not practical errors.
Practical act and not practical error, or Evil; for that practical act is altogether rational. Let him who doubts this cast a glance at those who produce errors. He will be at once convinced that they act with perfect rationality. The dauber produces an object which is asked for in the market by people who wish to have at home pictures of any sort, to cover the walls and to attest to their own easy circumstances or riches, and who are altogether indifferent to the æsthetic significance of those objects. The rhymer wishes to secure an easy success for himself among people who look upon a sonnet as a social amusement. The babbler who emits sounds instead of thoughts, often obtains in virtue of those sounds applause and honour denied to the serious thinker: un sot trouve toujours un plus sot pour l'admirer. If, by means of those so-called errors, provision is made for house, firing, food, children's clothes, or for the satisfaction of self-esteem, ambitions and caprices, who will say that they are irrational acts? Man does not live by bread alone, but he does live by bread; and if, by means of those acts, bread is provided, that is to say, if the wants of each one's individuality are met, they are well-directed, far-sighted, fruitful, and therefore most rational.
Economically practical, not morally practical.
This does not, on the other hand, mean that they are moral; they are rational, economically rational but not moral. Morality demands that man should think the true. Producers of errors evade, or rather, do not elevate themselves to that duty. Still intent upon the demands of practical life qua talis, they do not actualize in themselves the universal life, nor do they create in obedience to this last the ethical will and the will for truth. Therefore there arises in their souls, and in the souls of those who see them at work, the desire for another superior activity, which should supervene upon the preceding and complete it. They demand, not only to live, but to live well, to seek not only bread, but that "bread of the angels" with which, as the divine poet says, we are never sated. The expression of this desire manifests itself in a cry of discontent, of reprobation, of anguish, of longing; and therefore, with negative emphasis, it accuses of irrationality that inferior rationality which has to be surpassed, and gives the name theoretical error to that which considered in itself must be called a simple economic act.
Doctrine of error, and doctrine of the necessary forms of error.
The doctrine here expounded is developed from what has been said above, or from developments given elsewhere in the Philosophy of the Spirit. We shall not therefore enlarge further upon the immanence of values in facts, upon evil as the stimulus and concreteness of the good, on the non-existence of evil in itself, on the practical character of theoretical error, on moral responsibility for such error, on the content of desire exhibited by negative statements accompanying judgments of value, and so on. In an exposition of Logic the genesis of the theoretical error could be set aside as presupposed, for in this didactic sphere any one among the common definitions which present error as a thinking of the false is sufficient.
A task in closer connection with Logic is that of enquiring as to the necessary forms of error, the task, that is to say, not of confuting all errors (which is performed by Philosophy as a whole), but of establishing in how many ways the products of the various forms of knowing and of knowledge can be practically combined, and what therefore are the gnoseological possibilities of error. If error is nothing but an improper combination of ideas (as Vico said), we must see the number to which the fundamental forms of these improper combinations can be reduced. In traditional Logic, the theory of error appears as the doctrine of Sophisms or of sophistical refutations: it has the formalist, verbalist, empirical character common to all that Logic. In our Logic, it must have a philosophic character, that is to say, it must depend upon the already distinguished forms of the theoretic spirit, and deduce from them the arbitrary combinations of the errors which are formally possible. The ideas or concepts of the theoretic and theoretic-practical spirit are so many and no more, and so many and no more must be the possible improper combinations of them and the forms of theoretic error.
Logical nature of all theoretic errors.
That theoretical error is always at bottom logical error. This is an important proposition, which merits explicit statement, because it is customary to speak of æsthetic, naturalistic, mathematical and historical errors side by side with those that are properly logical or philosophical. We too have spoken and will speak thus, when more subtle distinctions and more precise determinations are not necessary. But in truth, a fact like humano capiti cervicem equinam jungere, or simulare cupressum in the sea where the shipwrecked struggles in the waves, does not constitute in itself that practical act, called æsthetic error, unless there be added to it the false affirmation that the object produced is an æsthetic object, that is to say, unless there be added a logical affirmation, so that the practical act becomes, by means of it, logical error. Taken in itself, the union of a human head with a horse's neck, or of a cypress with the sea is a sort of play of the imagination, such as occurs in fancy, in idleness and in dream. The extrinsic combination of a fancy and a concept is also altogether innocent, as in the case of allegory, which, in itself, is not unsuccessful art, but becomes so only when it is affirmed that the two heterogeneous elements form only one; or rather, it then becomes, not unsuccessful art, but bad philosophy. In the same way, a mathematical error (for example, the formula 4 x 4 = 20) is nothing but a flatus vocis, such as is made in jest or to loosen the tongue. Only when we add the logical affirmation that in this flatus vocis an effectual multiplication has been expressed, do we have a mathematical error, which is therefore a logical error. It is not possible to consider and to condemn as a theoretical error a combination which does not intend to deceive any one as to its proper nature; neither those to whom it is shown, nor him who has made it. Thus, among æsthetic, naturalistic, mathematical, historical, logical and practical productions, combinations without cognitive content are quite possible and constantly to be found; but they do not become theoretical errors unless they are crowned with an improper logical affirmation, or rather with an arbitrary judgment formed upon a logical affirmation. Indeed, even illogical combinations of philosophic concepts are not, as such, logical or theoretical errors, since they can be made tentatively, in order to see whether the two concepts combine or no. To make them errors, the arbitrariness of a special act of judgment is necessary. That arbitrariness consists in a lying to others or to ourselves, in order to satisfy an interest of our merely individual life, and it is impossible to lie without employing an affirmation, which is always a logical product.
History of errors and phenomenology of error.
In this way the problem of determining the various forms of theoretical errors, according to the already distinguished forms of knowledge, becomes transformed and circumscribed in the other problem of determining the various forms of logical errors, in relation to the various forms of knowledge, that is to say, of determining the necessary forms of philosophic errors. Certainly, every individual errs in his own way, according to the conditions in which he finds himself; just as every individual according to those conditions discovers truth in his own way. But Philosophy in the strict sense (in the form of a philosophical treatise) cannot complete the examination of all individual errors. This is the task of all philosophies as they are developed in the ages and of the thought of all thinking beings, who have been, are, and will be. Its task is to illuminate the eternal ideal history of errors, which is the eternal ideal history of truth, in its relations with the eternal forms of the practical spirit. The Philosophy of the spirit, as a treatise of philosophy, cannot give the history of errors; but must limit itself to giving their phenomenology. In this sense is to be understood the enquiry concerning the fundamental forms of philosophical errors. These forms may be briefly deduced as follows.
Deduction of the forms of logical errors. Forms deduced from the concept of the concept, and forms deduced from the other concepts.
The pure concept, which is philosophy, can be incorrectly combined and mistaken either for the form that precedes it, pure representation (art), or for that which follows it, the empirical and abstract concept (natural and mathematical sciences); or it can be wrongly divided in its unity of concept and representation (a priori synthesis), and wrongly again combined—either the concept may be taken as representation, or the representation as concept. Hence arise the fundamental forms of errors which it will be useful to denominate as æstheticism, empiricism, mathematicism, philosophism, and historicism (or mythologism). On the other hand, the other distinctions of the concept, or distinct concepts, can be incorrectly combined among themselves in a series of false combinations, corresponding to the series of the other particular philosophic sciences, and hence arise the forms of the other philosophic errors. But in Logic it is sufficient to show the possibility of these last forms of errors, and to adduce certain cases as examples, because a complete determination of them would demand that complete exposition of the whole philosophic system, which cannot be furnished in a treatise on Logic.
Errors arising front errors.
Finally, since it is impossible that any form whatever of these errors, whether specifically logical or generically philosophic, should satisfy the mind, which asks for the true and does not lend itself to deception or mockery, each one of these forms tends to convert itself into the other, owing to its arbitrariety and untenability, and all mutually destroy one another. When the attempt is made to preserve both the true form and the insufficient form, or all the insufficient forms, we have gnoseological dualism; but with the decline to complete destruction, we have the error of scepticism and of agnosticism. Finally, if, having been by these led back to life and being deprived of every concept that should illuminate it back to life as a mystery, we affirm that truth lies in that theoretic mystery, in living life without thought, we have the error of mysticism. Dualism, scepticism (or agnosticism) and mysticism thus extend both to strictly logical problems (that is to say, to the possibility, in general, of knowing reality), and to all other philosophic problems. Hence we can speak of a practical dualism, of an æsthetic or ethical scepticism, and of an æsthetic or ethical mysticism.
Professionalism and nationality of errors.
Such, stated in a summary manner, is the deduction of philosophic errors, which we shall now proceed to examine in detail. Upon their forms, which represent so many tendencies of the human spirit, is based this other fact, which is constantly striking us, and which may be called the professionalism of errors. Every one is disposed to use in other fields of activity those instruments that are familiar to him in the field which he knows best. The poet by vocation and profession dreams and imagines, even when he should reason; the philosopher reasons even when he should be poetical; the historian seeks authority, even when he should seek the necessity of the human mind; the practical man asks himself of what use a thing is, even when he should ask himself what a thing is; the naturalist constructs classes, even when he should break through them, in order to think real things; the mathematician persists in writing formulae, even when there is nothing to calculate. If the narrowness of the Esprits mathématiques has been denounced, it must not be believed that the other professions have not also got their narrownesses. The philosopher's profession is no exception to this, for he should surpass all one-sided views, but does not always succeed. It is one thing to say and another to do, and if a man forewarned is half saved, he is not therefore altogether saved. That professionalism of error, which we observe in individuals, is also to be observed on a large scale among peoples. Thus we speak of peoples as antiartistic, antiphilosophical, or antimathematical: of speculative Germany, of intellectualist and abstract France, of empiricist England, of Italy as artistic in the centre and the north, and as philosophic in the south. But peoples, like individuals, are changeable and can be educated: so much so that in our days, the traditional Anglo-Saxon empiricism begins little by little to lose ground before the speculative education of the English people, due to classical German thought; France that was abstractionist becomes intuitionist and mystic. Germany leaves the vast dominion of the skies assigned to her by Heine for that of industry and commerce, and philosophizes somewhat unworthily; Italy, which in greater part was a country of artists, poets and politicians, is traversed in every direction by religious and philosophic currents. Were it not for this capacity for education of individuals and peoples, History would not be a free development, but determinism and mechanism, and each of us would possess less of that courage for social activity which each one exhibits with great ardour according to his own convictions.
[II]
ÆSTHETICISM, EMPIRICISM AND MATHEMATICISM
Definition of these forms.
Æstheticism is the philosophic error which consists in substituting the form of intuition for the form of the concept, and of attributing to the former the office and value of the latter. Empiricism is the analogous substitution of the empirical concept, by means of which philosophic function and value is attributed to the empirical and natural sciences. Finally, mathematicism is the presentation of the abstract concept as concrete concept and of mathematics as philosophy.
Æstheticism.
We have met with æstheticism and with empiricism at the beginning of our exposition, and again here and there throughout its course; and we have sufficiently determined the nature of both and demonstrated the contradictions in which they become involved. In every one of their movements they presuppose the pure concept and the philosophy of which they mean to take the place. At the same time, they do not develop the philosophy which they have presupposed, because they suffocate it in the vapour of the intuitions and in the chilly waters of naturalistic concepts. They are not therefore effective thought, but an adulteration of thought with heterogeneous elements, which by a misuse of words are said to be furnished with theoretic and logical value.
Æstheticism has few representatives, because complete abstention from reflection and reason is too obviously contradictory. Even when art was considered to be a true instrument of philosophy, in the Romantic period, this affirmation was put forward in a confused manner, intuition being finally distinguished from intuition, art from art. This amounted at bottom to a radical change and an abandonment of the original thesis. We have seen æstheticism reappear in our times under the name of intuitionism, or again as pure experience: an experience which is taken to be not posterior, but anterior to every intellectual category, and should therefore be called nothing but pure intuition.
Empiricism
The representatives of empiricism are on the other hand most numerous, now as in the past; so much so that empiricism sometimes seems to be the sole adversary of philosophy, and the true origin of all philosophic errors. This opinion is without doubt inexact, but it finds support in the fact that philosophy is obliged to defend itself from the incessant assaults of empiricism, more than from any other enemy. The confusion between pure and empirical concepts is, indeed, easy, since both have the form of universality (though the universality of the second is falsely assumed) and both refer to the concept (though in the second the concept is something arbitrarily limited). The empiricist is like the philosopher, in so far as he immerses himself in facts and constructs concepts.
Positivism, philosophy founded upon the sciences, inductive metaphysic.
The last great historical manifestation of empiricism is that which, from the system of Auguste Comte, took the name of positivism and by its very name expressed the intention of basing itself upon facts (that is, upon facts historically certified), in order to classify them, thus reducing philosophy to a classification. This, like all classifications, proceeded from the poorest to the richest, from the abstract gradually to the less abstract, though never to the concrete. Positivism did not seem to be aware that the facts from which it proposed to proceed and which it believed to be the rough material of experience, were already philosophic determinations, and could only in this way be admitted as historically ascertained. Psychologist is also positivism; positivism, that is to say, more properly applied to the group of the so-called mental and moral sciences. Neocriticism can be almost altogether identified with positivism, although its upholders generally possess some knowledge of philosophical history (which is altogether lacking to the pure positivists), and this confers a more specious polish on their doctrine. Neocriticism, indeed, tends to eliminate every speculative element from the Kantian criticism, and by so doing approaches positivism—so as almost to become confounded with it. It is no wonder, therefore, that from the camp of the neocritics should have originated the proclamation and programme of a philosophy founded upon the sciences, or of an inductive metaphysic. This is simply and solely the reduction of philosophy to the sciences, because a scientific philosophy, an inductive metaphysic, is not speculation, but classification, or as those who advocate it ingenuously declare, a systematization of the results obtained by the sciences. Here too are kindled the most comical quarrels between scientists and philosophers. For when it is only a question of classifying and systematizing those results, the scientist rightly feels that he can dispense with the labours of the philosopher, indeed, he feels that he alone, who has obtained the results, knows what these exactly are and how they should be treated in order to avoid deformation. And the philosopher, who by making himself an empiricist, a positivist, a psychologist and a neocritic, has renounced his autonomy, approaches the scientists and offers with little dignity services that they refuse. He elaborates scientific expositions, which they call compilations and mistakes, he proposes additions or corrections at which they mock as superfluous or foolish. Nevertheless, the philosopher does not grow weary nor become offended at these repulses and jests; he returns to the charge and indeed it is only when someone wishes to redeem him from this voluntary servitude and abjection that he turns upon him with fury, saying that philosophy should live on familiar terms with the sciences. As if the relations that we have faithfully described were relations of reciprocal respect and harmony! The truth is that the majority of empirical philosophers are failures in science and unsuccessful in philosophy, who out of their double incompetence compound a logical theory, thus furnishing another proof (if further proof were needed) in confirmation of the practical origin of errors. For our part, we recognise the justice of the accusation of parasitism, which is brought against a philosophy of this character, and we will willingly afford our aid to the scientists in driving out these intruders, who dishonour philosophy in our eyes not less than in theirs they dishonour the sciences.
Empiricism and facts.
Empiricism owes the greater part of its influence upon the minds of many to its continual appeal to reality and facts. This leads to the belief that speculative philosophy wishes to neglect reality and facts and to build, as the saying is, upon clouds. But we have here an ambiguity and a sophism with which we must not allow ourselves to be deceived. Not only does speculative philosophy also base itself upon facts and have the phenomenal world as its point of departure; but speculative philosophy truly founds itself upon facts and empiricism does not. The first considers facts in their infinite variety and in their continuous development; the second, a certain number of facts, collected at certain epochs and among certain peoples, or at all epochs and among all peoples empirically known; chat is to say, it considers a limited number of facts. Speculative philosophy, presupposing the pure phenomenon, transforms it into (historical) fact and is a true philosophy of fact; empiricism, without being aware of it, presupposes the facts that it accepts, which are already, though with little criticism, historically ascertained and interpreted. This unconsciousness of what it is doing makes its condition worse, so that it can give nothing but a philosophy of classifications, which are taken for facts only through habitual lack of reflection. Speculative philosophy, therefore, can answer the claim and the boast of empiricism that it is based upon facts, by accepting the claim but denying the boast, as one to which empiricism has and can have no right, and by appropriating this achievement to itself.
Bankruptcy of empiricism: dualism, agnosticism, spiritualism and superstition.
But the bankruptcy of empiricism in all its forms and under all its synonyms is clear in the dualism to which it leads, of appearance and essence, phenomenon and noumenon. For while it professes that there is nothing knowable but the phenomenon, it also postulates an essence, a noumenon, something that is beyond the phenomenon and unknowable. It is all very well to say that this unknowable is not, for it, a proper object for science and philosophy, but it is not to be driven from the field of reality merely by removing it from science and philosophy. Every empiricism, then, recognises side by side with the rights of thought, the rights of feeling, and thus the circle of reality comes to be broken at one or more points. When it is wished to continue working empirically upon the unknowable residue, we have those various attempts, which can all of them be summarized beneath the name of spiritualism. Here the hidden truth is sought by means of experiments of a naturalistic type and spirit is reduced to matter more or less light and subtle. Empiricism ends in superstition. This has always happened; in the decadence of ancient civilization, when philosophers took to converting themselves into thaumaturges; at the eve of the French Revolution, after a century of empiricism and sensationalism, when all sorts of fanatics and schemers appeared and were the favourites of a society of most credulous materialists; in our times, when they have been favoured by a less credulous public of positivists, or of ex-positivists.
Evolutionist positivism and rationalist positivism.
Empiricism has certainly sought to cure its own insufficiencies, of which it was more or less conscious, and evolutionist positivism must be numbered among these attempts. This form proposed to correct the anti-historical character of positivism by providing a history of reality. But this history was always based upon empirical presuppositions, and was therefore a history of classifications, not of concrete reality; an extravagant caricature of the philosophy of becoming, from whose breast comes History rightly and truly so-called. Another attempt was that of rationalist positivism, which sought to check the degeneration of positivism toward dualism, sentimentalism and superstition, by appealing to the absolute rights of reason. But this reason is nevertheless always empirical reason, limited to certain series of facts, extrinsic, classificatory, unintelligent. Absolute authority can well be attributed to it in words, but such an attribution does not confer the power of exercising it. This kind of positivism, therefore, meets in our day with favour in freemasonry (at least of the Franco-Italian sort). This is a sect, which is annoying, chiefly because, heedless of facts, it preserves and defends the habit of making use of empty formulas and phrases, and because when it has insulted some priestly vestment, it believes that it has successfully destroyed superstition and obscurantism in man, or when it has declaimed about liberty, it imagines that by this slight effort, liberty has been won and established. True reason abhors rationalism, if it be rationalism of that sort.
Mathematicism
Mathematicism is much rarer than empiricism, because the confusion between thinking and calculating is less easy than that between thinking and classifying. Owing to its rarity and paradoxical character, mathematicism has something aristocratic about it, resembling in this the other extreme error, of æstheticism; whereas the intermediate error, empiricism, just because of its mediocrity, is popular and indeed vulgar.
Symbolical mathematics.
We cannot properly consider as mathematicism that form of philosophy which appeared in antiquity as Pythagoreanism and Neopythagoreanism and has reappeared in our days as a doctrine of the mathematical relations of the universe and the harmony of the world. In this conception, numbers are not numbers, but symbols; the numerical relations are not arithmetical, but æsthetic. The pretended mathematical philosophers of this type are neither philosophers nor mathematicians, nor are they arbitrary combiners of these two methods. They would be better described as poets or semi-poets.
Mathematics as demonstrative form of philosophy.
Nor again can we consider to be mathematicism the attempt made by some philosophers to expound their own ideas by a mathematical, algebraical or geometrical method. If their ideas were ideas and not numbers, the method to which they had recourse necessarily remained extrinsic, and possessed no mathematical character beyond the verbal complacency with which they adopted certain formulae of definitions, axioms, theorems, lemmas, corollaries and certain numerical symbols, These formulas and symbols could always be replaced by others, without any inconvenience whatever. It is possible to discuss, it has indeed been discussed, whether such modes of exposition are in good or bad literary taste, or of greater or less didactic convenience. They can be condemned, as they have been condemned, and caused to fall into disuse, as they have fallen; but the quality of the philosophic truth thus expressed, remains unaltered and is never changed into mathematics. Neither the system of Spinoza, who employed the geometrical method, nor that of Leibnitz, who desired the universal calculus, are mathematical systems. If they were so, modern philosophy would not owe some of its most important idealist concepts to those two systems.
Errors of mathematicist philosophy.
Better examples of mathematicism than the treatises and systems developed according to its rules are found in the unfulfilled programmes of such treatises and systems, or in the mathematicist treatment of certain philosophie problems. Such, for instance, is that concerning the infinity of the world in space and time, a problem which, treated mathematistically, becomes insoluble and makes many people's heads turn. It is impossible to comprehend the world in one's own mind with the mathematical infinite; and either to give or to refuse to it a beginning and an end. Hence the exclamations of terror before that infinite, and the sense of sublimity which seems to arise in the struggle joined between it, which is indomitable, and the human mind which wishes to dominate it. It has, however, already been observed with reason, that such sublimity is not only very near to the ridiculous, but falls into it with all its weight; and that such terror could not in truth be anything but terror of the ennui of having to count and recount in the void and to infinity. The mathematical infinite is nothing real; its appearance of reality is the shadow projected by the mathematical power which the human spirit possesses, of always adding a unit to any number. The true infinite is all before us, in every real fact, and it is only when the continuous unity of reality is divided into separate facts, and space and time are rendered abstract and mathematical, only then, if the complete operation be forgotten, that the desperate problem arises and the anguish of never being able to solve it. Another and more actual example of this mathematicist mode of treatment is that of the dimensions of space. Here, forgetting that space of three dimensions is nothing real that can be experienced, but is a mathematical construction, and on the other hand finding it convenient for mathematical reasons to construct spaces of less or more than three dimensions, or of n dimensions, they end by treating these constructions as conceivable realities, and seriously discuss bi-dimensional beings or four-dimensional worlds.
Dualism, agnosticism and superstition of mathematicism.
With affirmations such as those of infinites incomprehensible to thought, and of real but not experienceable spaces, mathematicism also creates a dualism of thought and of reality superior to thought, or (what amounts to the same thing) of thought which meets its equivalent in experience and thought without a corresponding experience. The unknowable here too lies in wait and falls upon the imprudent mathematicist philosopher, who feels himself lost before a second, third, fourth and infinite worlds, excogitated by himself, superior or inferior worlds to those of man, underworlds and overworlds and over-over worlds. He then becomes even spiritualist and asks with Zollner, why spiritualist facts should not possess reality and be produced in the fourth dimension of space, shut off from us. The contradiction of the mathematicist attempt, like that of the æsthetic and empiricist, is clearly revealed in the dualistic, agnostic and mystical consequences to which, as we shall see more clearly further on, all of them necessarily lead.
[III]
PHILOSOPHISM
Rupture of the unity of the a priori synthesis.
The three modes of error examined exhaust the possible combinations of the pure concept with the forms of the theoretic or theoretic-practical spirit, anterior or posterior to it. Other modes of error arise from the breaking up of the unity of the concept, from the separation of its constitutive elements. Each one of these elements, abstracted from the other, and finding that other before it, annuls, instead of recognizing the other as an organic part of itself; that is to say, substitutes for it its own abstract existence.
The concept, as we know, is the logical a priori synthesis, and so the unity of subject and predicate, unity in distinction and distinction in unity, affirmation of the concept and judgment of the fact, at once philosophy and history. In pure and effective thought, the two elements constitute an indissoluble organism. A fact cannot be affirmed without thinking; it is impossible to think without affirming a fact. In logical thought, the representation without the concept is blind, it is pure representation deprived of logical right, it is not the subject of a judgment; the concept without representation is void.
Philosophism, logicism or panlogism.
This unity can be severed, practically, in the act which is called error, where propositions expressing the truth are combined, not according to their theoretical connection, but according to what is deemed useful by him who makes the combination. It then happens that in the first place we have an empty concept, which, being without any internal rule (owing to this very vacuity), fills itself with a content which does not belong to it—for this it could have only from contact with the representation—and gives itself a false subject. The opposite also occurs, that is to say, a false predicate or concept is posited, a case which will be considered further on. Limiting ourselves, meanwhile, to the first and observing that it consists in the abuse of the logical element, we shall be able to call that mode of error logicism or panlogism, or also philosophism (since the abuse of the logical element is identical with the abuse of the philosophic element).
Philosophy of history.
Logicism, panlogism or philosophism, is the usurpation that philosophy in the narrow sense wreaks upon history, by pretending to deduce history a priori, as the process is called. This usurpation is logically impossible owing to the identity of philosophy and history already demonstrated, whence bad history is bad philosophy, and inversely. It may happen that the same individual who at a given moment creates excellent philosophy (and excellent history at the same time) may create bad history (and so bad philosophy) the moment after. But this amounts to saying that he who at one moment has philosophized well, may philosophize badly and err the moment after, and not by any means that the two things are possible in the same act. However, the usurpation, logically impossible, is practically effected, in which case, it is not strictly speaking usurpation, although it comes to be so considered from the logical point of view. On the other hand, the claim for the a priori in history is perfectly just; for to affirm a fact means to think it, and it is not possible to think without transforming the representation by means of the concept, and so deducing it from the concept. But this deduction is an a priori synthesis and therefore also induction, whereas the claim to deduce history a priori would amount to a deduction without induction, not History (which is, for that very reason, Philosophy), but a Philosophy of History.
The contradictions in this undertaking.
The absurdity of this programme must be clearly set forth, because those who formulate it are wont to concede equivocally that a Philosophy of history must be founded upon actual data, and have induction as its basis. In reality, were those actual data documents to be interpreted, we should not have the Philosophy of history that they desire, but simply History. The actual data, the so-called formless material, in the programme of the Philosophy of history, are at the most already constructed histories, which do not content the philosophers of history. They do not content them, not because they judge them to be false interpretations of the documents (in which case nothing else would be needed but to correct history with history, carrying out the work that all historians do); but because the very method of history does not content them, and they demand something else. History is despised as mere narration, and considered not as a form of thought, but as its material, a chaotic mass of representations. The true form of thought is for them the Philosophy of history, which appears in history and not in documents. And how does it appear? If the documents are removed, the a priori synthesis is no longer possible. It arises, then, by the parthenogenesis of the abstract concept, which history finds in itself, without the spark being struck by confrontation with documents. History is deduced a priori, not in the concrete but in the void. Whatever be the declarations which philosophers of history add to their programme, its essence cannot be changed. Were these declarations made seriously and all their logical consequences accepted, there would be no reason for maintaining a Philosophy of history beside and beyond history. The two things would become identical, and the programme itself would be annulled, both for those who propose it, and for us who judge it to be contradictory. This is the dilemma, from which there is no escape: either the Philosophy of history is an interpretation of documents, and in this case it is synonymous with History and makes no new claim;—or it does make a new claim and in that case, being no longer interpretation of documents and intending all the same to think facts, it thinks them without documents and draws them from the empty concept, and we have the Philosophy of history, philosophism, panlogism.
Philosophy of history and false analogies.
In order to give itself body, the Philosophy of history has recourse to analogy. This is a legitimate process of thought, which, in its search for truth, seeks analogies and harmonies. But it is legitimate, as we know, only on condition that the analogy does not remain a merely heuristic hypothesis, but is effectively thinkable and thought. Now the concepts that the Philosophy of history deduces cannot be effectively thought, because they are void; they are neither pure concepts nor pure representations, but an arbitrary mixture of the two forms, and therefore contradiction and vacuity. Thus the analogies of which the Philosophy of history avails itself, are false analogies, that is to say, metaphors and comparisons, transformed into analogies and concepts. It will declare, for instance, that the Middle Ages are the negation of ancient civilization, and that the modern epoch is the synthesis of these two opposites. But ancient civilization is nothing but an unending series of facts, of which each is a synthesis of opposites, real only in so far as it is a synthesis of opposites. And between ancient civilization and the Middle Ages, there is absolute continuity, not less than between the Middle Ages and the modern epoch. Facts cannot stand to one another as opposite concepts, because they cannot be opposed to one another as positive and negative. The fact that is called positive is positive-negative and so, in like manner, is that which is called negative. It will further declare (always by way of example) that Greece was thought and Rome action, and the modern world is the unity of thought and action. But in reality, Greek life was thought and action, like that of Rome, and like modern life. Every epoch, every people, every individual, every instant of life is thought and action, in virtue of the unity of the spirit, whose distinctions are never broken up into separate existences. The affirmations that belong to the Philosophy of history are all of this kind, and when they are not of this kind, it means that they do not belong to the essence of the Philosophy of history.
Distinction between the Philosophy of history, and the books thus entitled. Philosophical and historical merits of these.
The last-mentioned case occurs frequently in books that bear the title of Philosophy of history. These certainly cannot be considered to have been refuted when the concept of that science has been refuted. Science is one thing and the book another. The error of a false attempt at science is one thing and the value of books, which usually (especially with great thinkers and writers) have deeper motives and more valuable parts, is another. Among books upon the philosophy of history are numbered some masterpieces of human genius,—fountains of truth, at which many generations have quenched their thirst and to which men return perpetually. They have often indeed been marvellous books on history, true history, produced by reaction against superficial, partisan or trifling histories. They have for the first time revealed the true character of certain epochs, of certain events, of certain individuals.[1] The sterile form of duality and opposition between Philosophy of history and simple History, concealed the fruitful polemic of a better history against a worse history. Even the formulae, which were falsely regarded as deductions of concepts (for example, that the Middle Ages are the negation of antiquity and the Renaissance the negation of the Middle Ages, or that the Germanic spirit, from the Reformation to the Romantic movement, is the affirmation of inward liberty, or that Italy of the fifteenth century represents Art, France the State, and so on), were at bottom vivacious expressions of predominant characteristics, by means of which the various epochs and events were portrayed. These expressions and truths could be accepted without there being any necessity for presupposing clear and fixed oppositions and distinctions, or for denying the extra-temporality of spiritual forms. Besides these historical characteristics, discoveries more strictly philosophical appeared for the first time in those books; hence not only do we find in them the first outlines of a Logic of historical science (a Logic of the individual judgment), but also, sometimes in imaginative forms, determinations of eternal aspects of the Spirit, which had previously been unknown or ill-known. Such is the case with the concept of progress and providence, and of that other concept concerning the spiritual autonomy of language and of art, which presented itself for the first time as the discovery of the historical epoch, in which man, wholly sense and imagination, without intelligible genera and concepts, is supposed to have spoken and poetized without reasoning. In an equally imaginary fashion the constancy of the spirit, which eternally repeats itself, also found in those philosophies the formula of the perpetual passing away and returning of the various epochs of civilization. These philosophical truths, like the historical characteristics, must be purged, the first from the representations improperly united with them, the second from the logical character which they wrongly assumed. But they cannot be discarded, unless we are willing to throw away the gold, through our unwillingness to have the trouble of separating it from the dross. And this necessity for purification further confirms the error of the philosophism, since it is the purification of Philosophy and of History from the Philosophy of History.
Philosophy of nature.
Another manifestation of the philosophism, somewhat different from the preceding, is the science which assumes the name of Philosophy of nature. Here it is claimed to deduce, not the historical facts themselves, but the general concepts, which constitute the natural sciences. The philosophy of nature can be considered as the converse error to the empiricist error, which claims to induce philosophic categories a posteriori, whereas this claims to deduce empirical concepts a priori.
Its substantial identity with the Philosophy of history.
But the theoretic content of empirical concepts and of the natural sciences is, as we know, nothing but perception and history. So that, in the final analysis, the Philosophy of nature can be reduced to the Philosophy of history (extended to so-called inferior or subhuman reality), making, like the other, the vain attempt to produce in the void what thought can produce only in the concrete, that is to say, by synthesizing. And that it tends to become a Philosophy of history is also to be seen from its not infrequent hesitances before abstract concepts, or mathematical science, sometimes declaring that the pure abstractions of the intellect must remain such and are not otherwise deducible and capable of being philosophized about. The Philosophy of nature has usually been extended to the field of the physical and natural sciences, including also some parts of mechanics. But it has refused to undertake the deduction of the theorems of geometry and still more the operations of the Calculus.
The contradictions of the Philosophy of nature.
The Philosophy of nature, like the Philosophy of history, has abounded in declarations of the necessity of the historical and empirical method. It has recognized that the physical and natural sciences are its antecedent and presupposition and that it continues and completes their work. But it is not permitted to complete this work because this work extends to infinity. And it would not be able to continue it, save by turning itself into physics and natural sciences, working as these do in laboratories, observing, classifying, and making laws (legislating). Now the Philosophy of nature does not wish to adopt such a procedure, but to introduce a new method into the study of nature. And since a new method and a new science are the same thing, it does not wish to be a continuation of physics and of the natural sciences, but a new science. And since a new science implies a new object, it wishes to give a new object, which is precisely the philosophic idea of nature. This philosophic idea of nature would therefore be constructed by a method which would not and could not have anything in common with that of the empirical sciences. Yet the Philosophy of nature is not able to dispense with the empirical concepts, which it strives to deduce a priori. And here lies the contradictoriness of its undertaking. The dilemma which confronted the Philosophy of history must be repeated in this case also:—either it has to continue the work of the physical and natural sciences, and in this case there will be progress in the physical and natural sciences and not in the Philosophy of nature; or it has to construct the Philosophy of nature (the physical and natural sciences); and this cannot be done, save by an a priori deduction of the empirical and thus falling into the error of panlogism or philosophism.
False analogies in the Philosophy of nature.
The Philosophy of nature, like that of history, expresses itself in false analogies. It will say, for instance, that the poles of the magnet are the opposed moments of the concept, made extrinsic and appearing in space; or that light is the ideality of nature; or that magnetism corresponds to length, electricity to breadth and gravity to volume; or again (like more ancient philosophers), that water, or fire, or sulphur, or mercury, is the essence of all natural facts. But these phenomena which are given as essences, those classes of natural facts which are given as moments of the concept and of the spirit, are no longer either scientific phenomena, or the concepts and spiritual forms of philosophy. The first are intuitions and not categories; the second categories and not intuitions; and just because they are so clearly distinguished from one another they mutually mingle in the a priori synthesis. On the other hand, the concepts of the Philosophy of nature are categories, which as such present themselves in their emptiness as intuitions, and intuitions, which in their blindness present themselves as categories. These thoughts are contradictory. They can be spoken, or rather tittered, because it is possible to combine phonetically contradictory propositions, but it is impossible to think them. Such combinations by their ingenuity often give rise to surprise or astonishment. But mental satisfaction is never obtained from them merely because the mind is excited and deluded. On the other hand, the Philosophy of nature, in this labour of ingenuity, runs against limits, which even ingenuity cannot overcome. Then are heard affirmations, which amount to open confessions of the impossibility of the task. Of this sort is the assertion that nature contains the contingent and the irrational and therefore is incapable of complete rationalization; or that nature in its self-externality is impotent to achieve the concept and the spirit. In like manner. Philosophies of history end by confessing that there are facts which are told and are not deduced, because they are small, contingent and fortuitous matter for chronicle. Thus, after having announced in the programme the rationality of nature and of history, they recognize in the execution of the programme that the contrary is true. They simply deny the rationality of the world, because they cannot bring themselves to deny the rationality of the pseudo-sciences of philosophism.
Works entitled Philosophy of nature.
Finally, the reservations made in the case of works dealing with the Philosophy of history are to be repeated for those dealing with the Philosophy of nature. In them, too, there is something more than, and something different from, the sterile analogical exercises that we have mentioned. Some of the philosophers of nature, in the pursuit of their illusions, have made occasional scientific discoveries, in the same way that the alchemists seeking the philosopher's stone made discoveries in Chemistry. Those discoveries in physical and natural science cannot serve to increase the value of the theory of the Philosophy of nature any more than those made in chemistry increased the value of alchemy. But they confer value on the books entitled Philosophy of nature, and do honour to their authors as physicists, not as metaphysicians. From the philosophical point of view, those works have had the merit of affirming, though but in imaginative and symbolical ways, the unity and spirituality of nature, opening the path to its unification with the history of man. They have the yet greater merit of contributing effectively in the battle engaged by them against the sciences of making clear the empirical character of the naturalistic concepts and the abstract character of the mathematical. Nevertheless, they drew illegitimate conclusions from such gnoseological truth and carried on a war of conquest, which must be held to be unjust. In virtue of the positive elements that they contain, works on the Philosophy of nature have aided the advance both of the sciences and of philosophy, which in their properly philosophico-naturalistic parts they have violated and debased and forced into hybrid unions.
Contemporary demands for a Philosophy of nature and their various meanings.
In our day demands for a Philosophy of history are rare and received with scant favour; but it seems that those for a Philosophy of nature are again acquiring vigour. On seeking the inward meaning of this fact, it is seen that on the one hand many of those who demand a Philosophy of nature are empiricists, desirous of a natural science elaborated into a philosophy, and therefore not properly of a Philosophy of nature, but of a view of the natural sciences that may supplant philosophy. Other upholders of a Philosophy of nature echo the only programme of such a philosophy, as it was formulated especially by Schelling and by Hegel, but declare themselves altogether dissatisfied with the attempts to carry it out made by Schelling, by Hegel and by the followers of both. They are dissatisfied, but incapable of setting their dissatisfaction at rest by a new attempt at carrying out the programme. They are also without the intellectual courage necessary to question and to re—examine the solidity of the programme itself, which is in their judgment plausible and guaranteed by such great names. For what indeed is more plausible upon first inspection than the affirmation that the empirical sciences must be elevated to the rank of philosophy? It seems that too much mental liberty is needed to understand and to distinguish from the preceding, the somewhat different proposition that empiricism (empirical philosophy) must certainly be elevated to the rank of non-empirical philosophy, but that the empirical sciences must be left in peace to their own methods, without any attempt to render perfect by means of extrinsic additions that which has in itself all the perfection of which it is capable. It seems that more intelligence than is usually met with is necessary in order to recognize that this last proposition does not establish a dualism of spirit and nature, of philosophy and the natural sciences, but for ever destroys every dualism by making of the natural sciences a merely practical formation of the spirit, which has no voice in the assembly of the philosophical sciences, as the object which it has created has no reality. An ultimate tendency can be discerned in the complex movement of the day toward a Philosophy of nature. This is the attainment of the consciousness that reality is on this side of the classifications of the natural sciences, and that the natural sciences must be retranslated into history, by means of a historical consideration (concrete and not abstract) of the facts that are called natural. But this tendency is not something that will attain its end in a near or in a distant future. It has always shown its value and shows it also to-day; it can be recommended and promoted, but neither more nor less than every other legitimate form of spiritual activity can be recommended and promoted. Classifications are classifications; and what man really seeks out, what continually enriches the empirical sciences, is always the history of nature,—the series of facts, which, as we know, can be distinguished only in an empirical manner from the history of man, and which along with this constitutes History without genitive or adjective; history, which cannot even be strictly called history of the spirit, for the Spirit is, itself, History.
[1] See my Essay on Hegel, chap. ix. (What is living, etc., of Hegel, tr. D. Ainslie).
[IV]
MYTHOLOGISM
Rupture of the unity of the synthesis a priori. Mythologism.
When by the severance of subject from predicate, of history from philosophy, the mutilated subject is given as predicate, mutilated history as philosophy, and consequently a false predicate is posited, which predicate is an abstract subject and therefore mere representation; when this happens, there occurs the opposite error to that which we have just particularly examined. That was called philosophism; this might be called historicism; but since this last term has usually been employed to indicate a form of positivism, it will be more convenient to call it mythologism.
The process of this error (somewhat abstruse in the way that we have stated it) becomes clear at once in virtue of the name that has been assigned to it. Every one has examples of myths present in his memory. Let us take the myths of Uranus and Gæa, of the seven days of creation, of the earthly Paradise, and of Prometheus, of Danaë, or of Niobe. Every one is ready to say of a scientific theory which introduces causes not demonstrable either in the experience or in thought, that it is not theory, but mythology, not concept, but myth.
Essence of the myth.
What then is it that is called myth? It is certainly not a simple poetic and artistic fancy. The myth contains an affirmation or logical judgment, and precisely for this reason may be considered a hybrid affirmation, half fanciful and erroneous. If it has been confused with art, it is not so much a false doctrine of the myth that should be blamed, as a false æsthetic doctrine, which we have already refuted, and which fails to recognize the original and ingenuous character of art. On the other hand, the logical affirmation does not stand to the myth as something extrinsic, as in the case of a fable or image put forward to express a given concept, where the difference of the two terms and the arbitrariness of the relation between them declares itself more or less openly. In this case there is not myth, but allegory. In myth, on the contrary, the concept is not separated from the representation, indeed it is throughout penetrated by it. Yet the compenetration is not effected in a logical manner, as in the singular judgment and in the a priori synthesis. The compenetration is obtained capriciously, yet it gives itself out as necessary and logical. For instance, it is desired to explain how sky and earth were formed, how sea and rivers, plants and animals, men and language arose; and behold, we are given as explanations, the stories of the marriage of Uranus and Gæa, and the birth of Chronos and of the other Titans; or the story of a God Creator, who successively drew all things out of chaos in seven days, and made man of clay and taught him the names of things. It is desired to explain the origin of human civilization, and the tale is told of Prometheus, who steals fire and instructs men in the arts; or of Adam and Eve, who eat the forbidden fruit, and driven from the earthly Paradise are forced to till the ground and bathe it with their sweat. It is desired to explain the astronomical phenomena of dawn or of winter, and the story is told of Phœbus, who pursues Daphne, or of the same god who slays one after the other the sons of Niobe. These naturalistic interpretations may pass as examples, however contested and antiquated they may be. In place of the concepts which should illuminate single facts, we are given representations. Hence are derived what we have called false predicates. Philosophy becomes a little anecdote, a novelette, a story; history too becomes a story and ceases to be history, because it lacks the logical element necessary for its constitution. The true philosophic doctrine in the preceding cases, for example, will be that of an immanent spirit, of which stars and sky, earth and sea, plants and animals, constitute the contingent manifestations; the doctrine which looks upon the consciousness of good and evil and the necessity for work, not as the result of a theft made from the gods or of a violation of one of their commands, but as eternal categories of reality; and which regards language, not as the teaching of men by a god, but as an essential determination of humanity, or indeed of spirituality, which is not truly, if it does not express itself. They will also, if we like, be the philosophic doctrines of materialism and of evolutionism; but these, in order to be accepted as philosophic, must prove, like the preceding, that they do not substitute representations for concepts and are strictly founded upon thought and employ its method, that is to say, that they are philosophy and not mythology. For this reason, in philosophical criticism, adverse philosophies often accuse one another of being more or less mythological, and we hear of the mythology of atoms, the mythology of chance, the mythology of ether, of the two substances, of monads, of the blind will, of the Unconscious, or, if you like, of the mythology of the immanent Spirit.
Problems concerning the theory of myth.
The particular treatment of all the problems that concern the myth does not belong to this place, where it was important solely to determine the proper nature of that spiritual formation. It is customary, for instance, to distinguish between myth and legend, attributing the first name to stories of universal content, and the second to stories with an individual and historical content. This partition is analogous to that between philosophy in the strict sense and history, and as such, though it possesses no little practical importance, it is without philosophic value, because, as has been remarked, in myth the universal becomes history and history becomes legend. Nor is it only legend of the past, but it extends even to the future, and thus appear apocalypses, the legend of the Millennium, and eschatology. Again, myths are usually distinguished as physical and ethical, and this division is in turn analogous to that between the philosophy of the external world and the philosophy of the internal world, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of the spirit, and stands or falls with it. So that by this criticism we can solve the disputes as to whether physical myths precede ethical or inversely, whether the origin of myth is or is not anthropomorphic, and the like.
Myth and religion. Identity of the two spiritual formations.
But the myth can assume another name, which makes yet clearer the knowledge of the logical error of which the analysis has been given: the name of religion. Mythologism is the religious error. Against this thesis various objections have been brought, such as that religion is not theoretical but practical, and has therefore nothing to do with myth; or that it is something sui generis, or that it is not exhausted in the myth, since it consists of the complex of all the activities of the human spirit. But against these objections it must above all be maintained that religion is a theoretic fact, since there is no religion without affirmation. The practical activity, however noble it may be held, is always an operating, a doing, a producing, and to that extent is mute and alogical. It will be said that that affirmation is sui generis and goes beyond the limits of human science. This is most true, if by science we understand the empirical sciences; but it is not true, if by human science we understand philosophy, since philosophy also goes beyond or is outside the limits of the empirical sciences. It will be said that every religion is founded upon a revelation, whereas philosophy does not admit of other revelation than that which the spirit makes to itself as thought. That too is most true; but the revelation of religion, in so far as it is not that of the spirit as thought, expresses precisely the logical contradiction of mythologism: the affirmation of the universal as mere representation, and this asserted as a universal truth on the strength of a contingent fact, a communication which ought to be proved and thought, whereas on the contrary it is taken capriciously, as a principle of proof and as equivalent or superior to an act of thought. The theory of religion as a mixture hardly merits refutation, since that complex of the activities of the spirit is a metaphor of the spirit in its totality; that is to say, it gives not a theory of religion, but a new name of the spirit itself,—the object of philosophic speculation.
Religion and philosophy.
Since then, religion is identical with myth, and since myth is not distinguishable from philosophy by any positive character, but only as false philosophy from true philosophy and as error from the truth which rectifies and contains it, we must affirm that religion, in so far as it is truth, is identical with philosophy, or as can also be said, that philosophy is the true religion. All ancient and modern thought about religions, which have always been dissolved in philosophies, leads to this result. And since philosophy coincides with history, and religion and the history of religion are the same, and myth and religion are strictly speaking indistinguishable, we can see very well the vanity of the attempt that is being made beneath our eyes to preserve a religion or mythological truth side by side with a history of religions, which on the contrary is supposed to be practised with complete mental freedom and with an entirely critical method. This, which is one of the tendencies of so-called modernism, is condemned as contradictory and illogical, by philosophy not less than by the Catholic Church.[1] The history of religions is an integral part of the history of philosophy, and as inseparable from it as error from the history of truth.
Conversion of errors into one another. Conversion of mythologism into philosophism (theology) and of philosophism into mythologism (mythology of nature, historical apocalypses, etc.).
When religion does not dissolve into philosophy and wishes to persist together with it, or to substitute itself for philosophy, it reveals itself as effective error; that is to say, as an arbitrary attempt against truth, due to habit, feelings and individual passions. But the destiny of every form of error is to be unable to persist before the light of truth. Hence the constant change of tactics and the passage of every error into the error from which it had at first wished to disassociate itself, or into which it did not mean to fall. Thus æstheticism, dislodged from its positions, takes refuge in those of empiricism; and empiricism either descends again into pure sensationalism and æstheticism, or becomes volatilized in mysticism. Thus (to stop at the case we have before us) mythologism, which intends to be the opposite of philosophism and to work with blind fancy instead of with empty concepts, is obliged in order to save itself from the attacks of criticism to have recourse to philosophism; and religion is then called theology. Theology is philosophism, because it works with concepts which are empty of all historical and empirical content. Myth becomes dogma; the myth of the expulsion from Paradise becomes the dogma of original sin; the myth of the son of God becomes the dogma of the incarnation and of the Trinity. Nor must it be thought that for its part philosophism does not accomplish the opposite transition. Every philosophy of nature ends by appearing as a mythology of nature, every philosophy of history as an apocalypse. Sometimes even a sort of revelation occurs in them, and we often find that the unthinkable connections of concepts constituting those pseudo-philosophies are obtained and comprehended in virtue of second sight, as the result of a mental illumination, which is the prerogative of but a few privileged persons. Finally, philosophism and mythologism embrace one another and fall embracing into empiricism and into the other forms of error previously described.
Scepsis.
This perpetual transition from one form of error to another gives rise to a scepsis, which promotes the reciprocal dissolution of errors, and scorning illusions and confusions, throws their mental vacuity into clear light. Such a scepsis fulfils an important function. The lies of æstheticism, mathematicism, philosophism, mythologism, cannot resist it. Their little wordy strongholds are broken into; the shadows are dispersed. Especially against mythologism, which in a certain sense may be called the most complete negation of thought, a scepsis is helpful; and owing to the resistance offered here more than elsewhere, by passions and interests, it often takes the form of violent satire. The last great epoch of this strife is what is called the Aufklärung, Encyclopedism or Voltaireism, and was directed against Christianity, especially in its Catholic form. We must make so many reservations in what follows concerning the enlightened Encyclopedist and Voltairean attitude, that here we feel obliged to indicate explicitly its serious and fruitful side.
[1] See with reference to this G. Gentile, Il modernismo e l'enciclica, Critica, vi. pp. 208-229.
[V]
DUALISM, SCEPTICISM AND MYSTICISM
Dualism.
Total scepticism can be reached only through dualism, which, in addition to being a particular error in a given philosophic problem, is a logical error, consisting in the attempt to affirm two methods of truth at the same time—the philosophic method and the non-philosophic method, however the second of these be afterwards determined. Such an error would not be error but supreme truth, if the various methods were given each its due post (which is what has been attempted in this Logic); but it becomes error when the various methods are made philosophical and placed alongside the philosophical. This is the error of those conciliatory people, who, unwilling to seek out where reason stands, admit that reason is operative in all of them, and divide the kingdom of truth amongst all in equal parts. Thus arise those logical doctrines which demand for the solution of philosophic problems, the successive or contemporaneous application of the naturalistic method, of mathematics, of historical research, and so on. At the least they demand the combination of the naturalistic method (empiricism) with the speculative and the use of what they call the double criterion of teleology and causality, or of double causality. To the question, what is reality, they reply with two methods and consequently offer two concurrent and parallel realities. Beneath the appearance of treatment and solution, they abandon the philosophic problem. Instead of conceiving, they describe, and description is given as concept, and concept as description: hence the justifiable intervention of the scepsis.
Scepsis and scepticism.
But the scepsis, which clears the ground of all forms of erroneous logical affirmation, is the negation of error and consequently the negativity of negativity. The negativity of negativity is affirmation, and for this reason, the true scepsis, like every true negation, always contains a positive content in the negative verbal form, which can be also verbally developed as such. If this positive content, instead of being developed, is choked in the bud, if instead of negation, which is also affirmation, a mere negation is given,—an abstract negation, which destroys without constructing, and if this negation claims to pass as truth, the final form of error is obtained, which is no longer called scepsis, but scepticism.
Mystery.
Scepticism is the proclamation of mystery made in the name of thought;—a definition the contradictoriness of which leaps to the eye. It is mortally wounded both by the ancient dilemma against scepticism and by the cogito of Descartes. Nevertheless, since a singular tenderness for the idea of mystery seems to have invaded the contemporary world, it is desirable to leave open no loophole whatever for misunderstanding. The mystery is life itself, which is an eternal problem for thought; but this problem would not even be a problem, if thought did not eternally solve it. For this reason, both those who consider mystery to be definitely penetrated by thought and those who consider it impenetrable are equally wrong. The first we already know: they are the philosophists who reduce reality to pure terms of abstract thought, by breaking up the a priori synthesis and by neglecting the historical element, which is ever new and ever assuming forms not determinable a priori. Thus, they claim to shut up the world for ever in one single act (maybe in some particular philosophic system). Through their excessive love of the infinite they make it finite; the sun and the earth and all the stars, the historical forms of life, and what is called human life, which has been known for some thousands of years, are transformed by them into categories of thought, solidified and made eternal. This conception, which appears (at least as a tendency) in certain parts of the Hegelian philosophy, is narrow and suffocating. The spirit is superior to all its manifestations hitherto known, and its power is infinite. It will never be able to surpass itself, that is to say, its eternal categories, just as God (according to the best theological doctrines) could destroy heaven and earth, but not the true and the good, which are his very essence; yet the spirit is able to surpass, and actually does surpass, its every contingent incarnation. The world, which is abstractly assumed to be more or less constant, is all in movement and becoming. Those who will be raised up to think it will know what worlds will issue from this world of ours. That we cannot know, for we must think this world which exists at our moment, and must act on the basis of it.
Critique of the affirmations of mystery in philosophy.
But if the philosophers incur the guilt of arrogance, the sceptics, who affirm a mystery, that is to say, that reality is impenetrable to thought, fall under the accusation of cowardice. These, when faced with the problems of the real (soluble, we repeat, by the very fact that they are problems), avoid the hard work of dominating and penetrating them, and think it convenient to wrap themselves in abstract negation and to affirm that mystery is. There is mystery, without doubt; and this means that there is a problem, something that invokes the light of thought. And it is a beautiful solution which these mysterious ones and sceptics offer, for it consists in stating the problem and leaving it untouched. In the same way, when a man asks for help, we might claim to have given it to him when we had noticed his request. Charity consists in hastening to render effective aid, not in noting that aid has been asked for and then turning the back. To think is to break up the mystery and to solve the problem, not simply to recognize that there is a problem and a mystery, and to renounce seeking the solution as though it had already been given and the matter settled by that recognition.
It seems strange that it should be necessary to explain these elementary concepts; yet in our time it is necessary, so much have those concepts been darkened for historical reasons, which it would take long to expound here, and which can all of them be summarized as due to a certain moral weakening. And it may be opportune here to give a warning (since we are dealing with a theme that belongs to the elementary school of philosophy) that to inculcate the courage to confront and to solve the problem and to conquer the mystery, is not to counsel the neglect of difficulties, or superficiality and arrogance. Mysteries are covered and must continually be covered by their own shadows; problems torment and must torment, yet it is only through these shadows and by means of those torments that we attain to momentary repose in the true; and only thus does repose not become sloth, but the restoration of our forces to resume the eternal journey. Superficiality, arrogance, neglect of difficulties, belong to the sceptics who deafen themselves with words and contrive to live at their ease in their abstract negation. True thinkers suffer, but do not flee from pain. "Et iterum ecce turbatio (groans St. Anselm amid the anxious vicissitudes of his meditations), ecce iterum obviat maeror et luctus quaerenti gaudium et laetitiam. Sperabat jam anima mea satietatem, et ecce iterum obruitur egestate. Conabar assurgere ad lucem Dei, et recidi in tenebras meas: immo non modo cecidi in eas, sed sentio me involutum in eis...."[1] Such words as these are the pessimistic lyric of the thinker. Sceptics create no such lyric, because they have cut the desire at the root. They are as a rule blissfully calm and smiling.
Agnosticism as a particular form of scepticism.
There is a form of scepticism which would like to appear critical and refined and which takes the name of agnosticism. It is a scepticism limited to ultimate things, to profound reality, to the essence of the world, which amounts to saying that it is limited to the supreme principles of philosophy. Now, since the principles of philosophy are all equally supreme, such agnostic scepticism extends its affirmation of mystery over neither more nor less than the whole of philosophy and consequently over the whole of human knowledge. Its limits would be nothing less than the boundaries of knowledge. Indeed, agnosticism is the spiritual fulfilment sought by all those who negate philosophy, such as æstheticists, mathematicians, and especially empiricists; and agnostics and empiricists are ordinarily so closely connected that the one name is almost synonymous with the other.
Mysticism.
The sceptical error, which consists in stating the problem as solution and mystery as truth, can give way to another mode of error, in which the very affirmation of scepticism is denied and it is recognized that thought cannot explicitly state mystery. But this recognition, which would imply that of the authority of thought, is strangely combined with the most precise negation of such authority. Thought being excluded, either affirmatively or negatively, as in the self-contradiction of scepticism, what remains is life, no longer a problem, or a solution of a problem, but just life, life lived. To affirm that truth is life lived, reality directly felt in us as part of us and we part of it, is the pretension of mysticism. This is the last general form of error that can be thought; and its self-contradiction is evident from the genetic process which we have already expounded. Mysticism affirms, when no affirmation is permitted to it; and it is yet more gravely contradictory than scepticism, which, though forbidding to itself logical affirmation, does not forbid itself speech, that is to say, æsthetic expression. To mysticism not even words can be permissible, because mysticism, being life and not contemplation, practice and not theory, is by definition dumbness. But we shall say no more of mysticism, having had occasion to refer to it, as also to æstheticism and empiricism, at the beginning of this treatise on Logic.
Errors in the other parts of philosophy.
When we consider these errors more closely, it is easy to see that dualism, scepticism, and mysticism manifest themselves not only in the forms of thought, in philosophy as Logic, but also in all the other particular philosophic problems, distinct from those that are peculiar to Logic, and in the errors due to them. The complete enumeration of these and their concrete determination would (as has already been said) require the development of the whole philosophic system, and therefore cannot all be contained in the present treatise. Indeed, they take their name, not from the forms of the spirit, with which the logical form is confused, or from the internal mutilation of the logical form, but from the confusion and mutilation of the remaining spiritual forms. They are no longer called æstheticism, mathematicism, or philosophism, but ethical utilitarianism, moral abstractionism, æsthetic logicism, sensationalism and hedonism, practical intellectualism, metaphysical dualism or pluralism, optimism and pessimism, and so on. It is not those who, as in the previous instances, deny philosophy itself, that fall into such errors, but those who admit it and carry it out more or less badly in its other parts. Without the admission of the method of philosophic thought, and without the assertion of a concept, it is impossible to conceive logical usurpations in the domain of another concept, which is not less necessary than the first to the fulness and unity of the real.
Ethical utilitarianism, for instance, thinks the concept of utilitarian practical activity; but its fallacy consists in arbitrarily maintaining that the concept of utility altogether exhausts that of the practical activity, thus negating the other concept distinct from it, the practical moral activity. Moral abstractionism commits the opposite error, affirming the moral activity, but negating the utilitarian. Æsthetic logicism rightly affirms the reality of the logical mental form, but is wrong in not recognizing the intuitive mental form and in considering it to be resolved in the logical form. Æsthetic sensationalism, directing its attention to crude and unexpressed sensation, emphasises the necessary precedent of the æsthetic activity, but then makes of the condition the conditioned, defining art as sensation. Æsthetic hedonism, utilitarianism or practicism, is true in so far as it notes the practical and hedonistic envelope of the æsthetic activity; but it becomes false in so far as it takes the envelope for the content, and treats art as a mere fact of pleasure and pain. Practical intellectualism perceives that the will is not possible without a cognitive basis, but by exaggerating this, it ends by destroying the originality of the practical spiritual form, and reduces it to a complex of concepts and reasonings. In like manner, metaphysical dualism avails itself of the difference between the concept of reality as spirit and that of reality as nature, the one arising from logical thought, the other from an empirical and naturalistic method of treatment, in order to transmute them into concepts of two distinct forms of reality itself, as spirit and matter, internal and external world, and so on. Pluralism or monadism, confounding the individuality of acts with the substantiality which belongs to the universal subject, makes entities of single acts and turns them into a multiplicity of simple substances. Pessimism and optimism, each one availing itself of an abstract element of reality, which is the unity of opposites, maintain that reality is all evil and suffering, or all goodness and joy. This process of exemplification could be carried much further, and would become, as we see, a deduction of all philosophical concepts and errors.
Conversion of these errors with one another and with logical errors.
Now, each one of those false solutions, obeying the law of errors, is obliged, in order to maintain itself, to pass into that from which it was distinguished, and then to pass back again from that to this. Thus utilitarianism becomes abstract morality and abstract morality utilitarianism. Hence the work of scepsis and the consequent appearance of a particular scepticism of this or that concept. Ethics having vainly struggled with the alternate negations, of utility and of morality, ends in ethical scepticism; Æsthetic torn between sensationalism and utilitarianism and logicism, and other errors, and destroying them all with its scepsis, ends in Æsthetic scepticism; Metaphysics, torn between materialism, abstract spiritualism, dualism, pluralism, pessimism, optimism, and other erroneous views, ends in metaphysical scepticism. And to these errors of particular scepticism, errors of particular mysticism soon succeed. Thus we hear it said that there is no concept of the beautiful, as there is of the true or the good, but that it is only felt and lived; or, again, that there is no possible definition of what is good, since it concerns a thing that must be left to sentiment and to life; or, finally, that thought has value within the limits that abstraction has value, but that it is impotent before complete reality, because life alone is capable of comprehending reality, by receiving it into its very bosom.
On the other hand, it is not possible that any æstheticism, empiricism, mathematicism, philosophism, mythologism, or logicism whatever, should remain limited to a determinate philosophic concept without coming in contact with others, because those forms of error strike at the logical form of thought itself, and therefore equally at all other philosophic concepts. The ethical or æsthetic empiricist, for instance, must logically affirm a general philosophic empiricism if he does not wish to correct himself by contradicting himself (an hypothesis which must be neglected and left to be understood in this consideration of the simple, elementary, fundamental, or necessary forms of error). He who in a particular philosophic problem has committed a confusion of concepts, and has thence arrived at a particular scepticism and mysticism, is led by the systematic and unitary character of philosophy to widen that mysticism and scepticism from particular to general. From this general mysticism and scepticism, he is led to return gradually to mythologism, philosophism, empiricism, and to the other negations of the logical form of philosophy. Everything is connected in philosophy and everything is connected in error, which is the negation of philosophy.
[1] Proslog., c. 18.
[VI]
THE ORDER OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
Necessary character of the forms of errors. Their definite number.
Everything is connected in errors; error has its necessary forms. This implies, in the first place, that the possible forms of errors, the logical forms of the illogical, are so many and no more. Indeed, the forms of the spirit or concepts of reality, which can be arbitrarily combined, can be stated as a finite number (where the process of numbering can be applied to them). Consequently, the arbitrary combinations or errors which arise from them can also be similarly numbered. Only the individual forms of error are infinite, and that for the same reason which we have already given, as the individual forms of truth are infinite. Problems are always historically conditioned, and the solutions are conditioned in the same way; even false solutions, which are determined by feelings, passions, and interests, also vary according to historical conditions.
Their logical order.
In the second place, and as corollary to the preceding thesis, the possible forms of errors present a necessary order; and this, because the forms of the spirit or the concepts of reality stand in a necessary order to one another. They cannot be placed after or before one another nor changed at will. This necessary order is, as we know, a genetic order of degrees, and consequently the possible forms of errors constitute a series of degrees. It is commonly said that error has its logic, and we must say more correctly, that it cannot constitute itself as error, save by borrowing logical character from truth.
Examples of this order in the various parts of philosophy.
This is already clearly seen in the exposition given of the forms of logical error, and more clearly still when, resuming, we consider that the spirit, when it rebels against the concept, must by this very act affirm the term which is distinct from the concept, whether it be called representation, intuition, or pure sensation. Hence the necessity of the form of error (in a certain sense the first), which is æstheticism,—the affirmation of truth as pure sensation. Below this stage, the spirit can descend to annul the problem in dualism; or, going further and abandoning affirmation, it may fall into scepticism; or, finally, abandoning even expression, it may fall into dumbness, or mysticism, which is the lowest degree. Above æstheticism it can raise itself to try to take refuge in empiricism, in which is posited a universal, but one that is merely representative and, therefore, a false universal. It is the second step, nor can any other be conceived as second:—we must give a false value either to the pure representation (æstheticism);—or (taking the second step), to the representation and the concept together, as is the case in the form of the empirical concept (empiricism). The third step is the desperate escape from the insufficiency of the empirical concept, by means of the abstract concept, which guarantees the universality which the other lacks, but gives an empty universality (mathematicism). Finding no refuge in this emptiness from the objections of its adversaries, it is obliged finally to enter philosophy. But the erring spirit continues its work in philosophy itself and, once it has taken possession, abuses it. Now it is not possible to abuse philosophy, save by reducing it either to a concept without intuition, which is nevertheless taken as a synthesis of concept and intuition (philosophism); or to an intuition without concept, which, in its turn, is taken as the requisite synthesis (mythologism). The result of all this process is always the renunciation of the philosophic problem, disguised by the admission of the double method (dualism), and hence the descent below the logical form, either with the affirmation which denies itself (scepticism), or, again, with that which denies even the possibility of expression (mysticism) and returns to life, which is not a problem at all, being life lived.
The same thing occurs with the other errors, when we refer to the other concepts of the spirit or of reality, although we shall not be able to give the complete series without summarizing the whole of philosophy, which is not necessary here, and by its excessive concentration and extreme brevity would be obscure. Suffice it to say, by way of example, that the ethical problem, besides being negated by means of erroneous sensationalist, empiricist, and mycologist solutions, and so on (to which, in common with all philosophic problems, it is subject), can be negated by practical intellectualism, which does not recognize a practical problem side by side with that of the theoretic spirit, and reduces virtue to knowledge. Hence ethical intellectualism. Since ethical intellectualism cannot resist objections, it is obliged to introduce at least the slightest practical element that can be admitted, which is that of individual utility, and resolving morality into this, it then presents itself as ethical utilitarianism. This in its turn, finding itself in contradiction with the peculiar character of morality, which goes beyond individual utility, arranges to recognize and to substitute for the first a super-individual utility, which is the universal practical value or morality. And thus, by negating the first on account of the second concept, it presents itself as moralism or ethical abstractionism. The impossibility of negating both the first and the second, and the necessity of affirming both, urge the acceptance of the final form of practical dualism, in which utility and morality appear as co-ordinated or juxtaposed. Each one of these arbitrary doctrines is critical of the others, and, by its internal contradictions, of itself. Hence the fall into scepticism and mysticism. The circle of error can be traversed again, but it is impossible to alter the place that each of those forms has in the circle, by placing, for instance, practical dualism before utilitarianism or intellectualism after moralism.
Spirit of error and spirit of search.
There is no gradual issuing from the infernal circle of error, and salvation from it is not possible, save by entering at one stroke into the celestial circle of truth, in which alone the mind rests satisfied as in its kingdom. The spirit that errs or flees from the light must be converted into the spirit of search, that longs for the light; pride must yield to humility; narrow love for one's own abstract individuality become wider and elevate itself to an austere love, to an unlimited devotion toward that which surpasses the individual, thus becoming an "heroic fury," the "amor Dei intellectualis."
Immanence of error in truth.
In this act of love and fervour the spirit becomes pure thought and attains to the true, is indeed transmuted into the true. But as spirit of truth it possesses truth and also its contrary transfigured in that. The possessing of a concept is the possession of it in all its relations, and so are possessed all the modes in which that concept can be wrongly altered by error. For instance, the true concept of moral activity is also the concept of utilitarianism, of abstractionism, of practical dualism, and so on. The two series of knowledge, that of the true and that of its contrary, are, in truth, inseparable, because they really constitute one single series. The concept is affirmation-negation.
Erroneous distinction between possession of and search for truth.
It will be said that this is perhaps exact in the case of the possession of truth, but not in that of the search for it, where the two series may well appear disunited. Truth, to one who searches, is at the top of the staircase of errors, and as it is possible to climb a great part of the staircase without reaching what is at the top of it, so when once the desired place has been reached, it is possible not to see or not to remember the staircase that is below. But the possession of truth is never static, as in general no real fact is static. The possession of and the search for truth are the same. When it seems that a truth is possessed in a static way and almost solidified, if we observe closely we shall see that the word expressing it, the sound of it, has remained, but the spirit has flown away. That truth was, but is no longer thought, and so is not truth. It will be truth only when it is thought anew, and thinking and thinking anew are the same, since each rethinking is a new act of thought. In thinking the truth is search for truth; it is a most rapid ideal motion which, starting from the centre, runs through all the possibilities of error, and only in so far as it runs through and rejects them all does it find itself at its centre, which is the centre of motion.
The search for truth in the practical sense of preparation for thought; and the series of errors.
In order to separate truth from the search for truth this latter must be understood, not as the will for thought and so as thought in action, but as the will which lays down the conditions for thought, the will which prepares itself for thought, but does not yet think effectually. This indeed is the usual meaning of the word "search." To search is to stimulate oneself for thinking, by employing opportune means for that purpose. And there is no more opportune means than that of confronting one with another the various forms of the spirit and the various concepts; because in the course of that confrontation there is produced the true combination; that is to say, thought, which is truth, is aroused. To search means therefore to run through the series of errors.
Transfiguration, in the search thus understood, of error into suggestion or hypothesis.
But the seeker sets to work in quite a different spirit from that of the assertor of errors. The spirit of research is not the rebel erring spirit, and therefore the path that both follow is only the same in appearance; the first was the path of errors, but the second can only be so called by metaphor. Errors are errors when there is the will for error. Where, on the other hand, there is the will to unify material and to prepare the conditions of thought, the improper combination of ideas is not indeed error, but suggestion or hypothesis. The hypothesis is not an act of truth, because either it is not verified and so reveals itself as without truth, or it is verified and becomes truth only at the moment in which it is verified. But neither is it an act of error, because it is affirmed, not as truth, but as simple means or aid toward the conquest of truth. In the doctrine of search, the series of errors is all redeemed, baptized, or blessed anew; the diabolic spirit abandons it precipitately, leaving it void of truth, but innocent.
Distinction between error as error and error as hypothesis.
The distinction between error as error and error as suggestion, between error and hypothesis or heuristic expedients, is of capital importance. It is found as basis of some common distinctions, such as those between mistake and error, between error committed in good faith and error committed in bad faith, and the like. These and others like them show themselves to be certainly untenable, because error as error is always in bad faith, and there is no difference between error and mistake, save an empirical difference, or a difference of verbal emphasis, for it can be said according to empirical accidents that an affirmation is either simply erroneous or altogether a mistake. But although they cannot be maintained as they are formulated, they nevertheless suggest the desirability and the anticipation of this true and profound distinction.
Immanence of the suggestion in error itself as error.
On the other hand, error and suggestion, error and heuristic procedure, since they have in common the practical, extrinsic, and improper combination of ideas, stand in this relation to one another, that the suggestion is not error, but error always contains in itself willingly or unwillingly a suggestion. The erring spirit, though without intending it, prepares the material for the search for truth. It means to evade that search or to bring it to an arbitrary end; but in doing so it breaks up the clods of earth, throws them about, ploughs and fertilizes the field where the truth will sprout. Thus it happens that many combinations of ideas, proposed and maintained through caprice and vanity with the lawyer's object of scoring his point, or of shining and astonishing with paradox, or for pastime and for other utilitarian reasons, have been adopted by more serious spirits as steps in the progress of research. The enemies of the truth not only testify to the truth but come to serve it themselves, through the unforeseen consequences of their work. A sort of gratitude comes over us at times and makes us tender toward these adversaries of the truth, because we feel that from them has come the stimulus to obtain it, as from them come the strengthening of our hold upon it and the inspiration, the clear-sightedness, and the warmth of the defence of it that we make against them.
Individuals and error.
But it is not necessary in yielding to the generous feeling for human fraternity to exaggerate in this last direction. The gratitude that we feel is not deserved by them; at the most, it is God or the universal spirit or Providence who deserves it. They did not wish to serve the truth and did not serve it, save through consequences which are not their work. One-sided and abstract optimism has intruded here also; and perceiving in error the element of suggestion, it has altogether cancelled the category of error in favour of that of suggestion and has pronounced that man always seeks the true, as he always wills the good. Certainly; but there is the man who stops at his individual good, fruges consumere natus; and there is the man who progresses to the universal good. There is the man who combines words to give himself and others the illusion of knowing what he does not know and of being able to attend to his own pleasures without further trouble; and there is the man who combines words with anxious soul and spirit intent, venator medii, a hunter of the concept. Here, too, the truth is neither in the optimism nor in the pessimism, but in the doctrine, which conciliates and surpasses them both. Nor does it matter that owing to the defect of abstract optimism that very philosopher, who did more than any other to reveal the hidden richness of the dialectical principle, was not able to look deeply into the problem of error.
The conscience of humanity well understood knows how to do justice to all men, without, on that account, confounding him who seeks with him who errs, the man of good will with the utilitarian. It does justice to them, because in every man, indeed at every instant in the life of every man, it discovers all those various spiritual moments, both inferior and superior. Error and the search for truth are continually intertwined. Sometimes a beginning is made with research, and it ends with an obstinate persistence in the suggestion that has been made, which is converted into a result and an erroneous affirmation. At others a beginning is made, with the deliberate intention of escaping difficulties by means of some sort of a combination of ideas; and that combination arouses the mind and becomes a suggestion for research, which is followed until peace is found in the truth. Each one of us is at every moment in danger of yielding to laziness and to the seduction of error and has hope of shaking off that laziness and following the attraction of truth. We fall and rise up again at every instant; we are weak and strong, cowardly and courageous. When we call another weak and cowardly, we are condemning ourselves; when we admire another as strong and courageous, we idolize the strength and courage which is active within us. When we are in the presence of a complex product, as, for example, a faith, a doctrine, a book, it would be naïve and fallacious to look upon it as only error or as only suggestion. For it is both the one and the other; that is to say, it contains equally the moments of error properly so-called, and the other moments of suggestion and search; the voluntary interposition of obstacles to the truth and the voluntary removal of such obstacles; the disfigured image of the truth and the outline of the truth. Sometimes we are unable to say of ourselves whether we are erring or are seeking, whether we believe that we have found the whole truth or only discovered a ray of it. The logical criticism which implacably condemns us seems to be unjust, although we cannot contest its arguments which impose the truth upon our thought. We feel that that truth was in a way sought, seen for a moment, and almost possessed in that spiritual state of ours, which has been summarily and abruptly condemned by others as altogether erroneous.
The double aspect of errors.
For this reason even that which has been rejected and blamed as false from one point of view must be accepted and honoured from another as an approach to truth. Empiricism is perverse in so far as it is a construction opposed to the philosophic universal, but it is innocuous and indeed beneficial in so far as it is an attempt to rise from pure sensation and representation to the thinking of the universal. Scepticism as error annuls the theoretic life; but as suggestion it is necessary to the demonstration of the impossibility of dwelling in that desert when all false doctrines have been annulled. Mythologism presents this double aspect in a yet clearer manner; religion is the negation of thought, but it is also in another aspect a preparation for thought; the myth is both a travesty and a sketch of the concept; hence every philosophy feels itself adverse to myth and born from myth, an enemy and a daughter of religions. In what is empirically defined as religion or as a body of religious doctrines, for example, in Christianity, in its myths and in its theology, there is so much of truth and suggestion of truth that it is possible to affirm (always from the empirical point of view) the superiority of that religion over a well-reasoned but poor, a correct but sterile philosophy. Nevertheless, a period of reverence, of attentive harkening, of philosophic study and criticism, which is not pure scepticism, succeeds to a period of encyclopædism, of irreligious scepticism, of enlightenment, and of Voltaireism. Those who in the nineteenth or in this twentieth century have repeated the Voltairean scepticism and have jibed at religion have with good reason been considered superficial of intellect and soul, vulgar and trivial people. The philosophy of the eighteenth century has filled and filled well the office of enemy of religion; that of the nineteenth century has disdained to give blows to the dead and has adopted towards religion the attitude of a pious daughter and diligent heir. For our part we are persuaded that the inheritance of religion has not been well and thoroughly utilized. This inheritance is at bottom indistinguishable from the philosophic inheritance, for is there not religion, in, for instance, the Cartesian idea of God, which unifies the two substances and guarantees with its truth the certainty of our knowledge? And is it not also philosophy, that is to say, the concept (in however gross a form), of the immanent Spirit which is a self-distinguishing unity and certainty of itself?
Last form of the methodological error; Hypothesism.
We have now attained to the theory of research, yet we cannot abandon the survey of the necessary forms of error without mentioning a new form which arises precisely from the confusion between truth and the search for the conditions preparatory to truth, between truth and hypothesis. This error, which converts Heuristic into Logic, may be called hypothesism. It asserts that in regard to truth man can do nothing more than propose hypotheses, which are said to be more or less probable, so that his fate is not dissimilar to the punishments which were assigned to Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the Danaids. But in the kingdom of the True, differently from that of Erebus:
The birds do not feed,
The wheels do not turn,
The stone is not rolled up the high mountain,
Nor water drawn with the sieve from the fountain.
The hypothesis is made, because it serves toward the attainment of the truth; did it not serve this end it would not be made. The spirit does not admit waste of time; for it time is always money. Hypothesism is sometimes restricted to the supreme principles of the real, or to what is called metaphysics, which would thus be always hypothetical; but for the reasons given in our discussion of agnosticism, if the principles of the real were hypothetical, the whole truth would be so, that is to say, there would not be any truth. For the rest, hypothesism, besides being internally contradictory, openly reveals that it is so, in its reference to the greater or lesser probability of hypotheses. It would be impossible to determine the degree of approximation to the true without presupposing a criterion of truth, a truth and consequently the truth. We should hardly have made mention of this error did it not constitute the fulcrum of some of the most celebrated and revered philosophies of our times.
[VII]
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
Inseparability of the phenomenology of error from the philosophic system.
The phenomenology of error, in its double sense of error and of suggestion, coincides therefore with the philosophic system. Both error and suggestion are improper combinations of philosophic ideas or concepts. To determine these improper combinations is equivalent to showing the obverse of that of which the philosophic system is the face. But face and obverse are not separable, for they constitute a single thought (and single reality), which is positivity-negativity, affirmation-negation. There is, therefore, no phenomenology of error outside the philosophic system, nor a philosophic system outside the phenomenology of error; the one is conceived at the moment when the other is conceived. And since the philosophic system and the doctrine of the categories are the same, the phenomenology of error is inseparable and indistinguishable from the doctrine of the categories.
The eternal going and coming of errors.
As such the phenomenology of error is an ideal and eternal circle, like the eternal circle of the truth. Its stages are eternally traversed and retraversed by the spirit, being the stages of the spirit itself. At every instant of the life of history and of our individual life there are represented the stages that have been surpassed and must again be surpassed: the lower stages return and announce beforehand the higher.
Returns to anterior philosophies, and their meaning.
In this lies the origin of a fact which cannot fail to attract attention in the history of philosophy: the tendency which is found there, to return to one or other of the philosophies of the past, or, more correctly, to one or other of the philosophic points of view of the past. The thirteenth century returned to Aristotle, the Renaissance to Plato; Bruno revived the philosophy of Cusanus, Gassendi that of Epicurus; Hegel wished to renew Heraclitus; Herbart, Parmenides; in recent times a return has been made to Kant, and in times yet more recent to Hegel. These are spiritual movements, which must be understood in all their seriousness. This consists wholly in the need of the philosophic spirit of a certain moment, which, struggling with an error, discovers the true concept with which it should be corrected, or at least, the superior and more ample suggestion, to which we must pass in order to progress. And since that concept or suggestion had already been represented in an eminent degree in the past by one particular philosopher, or by one particular school, they speak of the necessity of again asserting the superiority of that philosopher and his school against other philosophers and other schools. In reality neither Aristotle nor Plato returns, nor Cusanus nor Epicurus, nor Heraclitus nor Parmenides, nor Kant nor Hegel; but only the mental positions of which these names are, in those cases, the symbols. The eternal Platonism, Aristotelianism, Heracliteanism, Eleaticism are in us, as they were formerly in Plato and in Aristotle, in Heraclitus and in Parmenides. Divested of those historical names, they are called transcendentalism and immanentism, evolutionism and anti-evolutionism, and so on. To the philosophers of the past, as men of the past, no return is made, because no return is possible. The past lives in the present and the pretence of returning to it is equivalent to that of destroying the present, in which alone it lives. Those who understand ideal returns in this empirical sense, do not in truth know what they are saying.
The false idea of a history of philosophy as the history of the successive appearances in time of the categories and of errors.
But just because the phenomenology of error and the system of the categories are outside time, we must also recognize the fallacy of a history of philosophy which expounds the development of philosophic thought as a successive appearance in time of the various philosophic categories and of the various forms of error. On this view the human race seems to begin to think truly philosophically at a definite moment of time and at a definite point of space; for example at a definite year of the seventh or sixth century before Christ, at a definite point of Asia Minor, with Thales, who surpassing mere fancy posits as a philosophic concept the empirical concept of water; or in another year and place, with Parmenides, who posits the first pure concept, that of being. And it seems further to progress in philosophic thinking with other thinkers, each of whom either discovers a concept or offers a suggestion of one. Thus each takes the other's hand and they form a chain which is prolonged to one who, more audacious and fortunate than the others, gives his hand to the first, and unites them all in a circle. After this, there would remain nothing else to do but to dance eternally, as the stars dance in the imaginations of the poets, without any further necessity to devise suggestions and to risk falling into error. All this is brilliant but arbitrary. The categories are outside time, because they are all and singly in every instant of time, and therefore they cannot be divided and impersonated within empirical and individual limits. It is not true that each philosophic system has for its beginning a particular category or a particular suggestion. A philosophic system, in the empirical signification of the word, is a series of thoughts whose unity is the empirical bond of the life of a definite individual. It is therefore without beginning, since it does not constitute a true unity and refers on the one hand to its predecessors, on the other to those who continue it, and on all sides to its contemporaries. In the strict sense, in that system, in so far as it is philosophic, there is always the whole of philosophy; and therefore, as we have previously seen, all philosophic systems (including materialism and scepticism) have, whether they admit it or not, displayed or implied the same principle, which is the pure concept, and every philosophy is idealism. Nor is it true that there is progress in the history of philosophy, in the sense of the passage from one category to another superior category, or from one suggestion to another superior suggestion. Speaking empirically, we should have in this case to admit regress also, because it is a fact that a return is made to inferior categories and suggestions. Philosophically, we can speak in this case, neither of progress nor of regress, seeing that those categories and suggestions are eternal and outside time.
Finally, this conception of philosophic history itself declares its untenability, since in its last term it is logically obliged to posit a definitive philosophy (which is that represented by him who constructs such a history of philosophy), whereas there is nothing definitive in reality, which is perpetual development. Those very historians of philosophy themselves, who have desired and in part attempted to give actuality to that conception, have been perplexed at the assumption of so great a responsibility as to proclaim a definitive philosophy, that is to say, to decree the retirement of Thought and so of Reality.
Philosophism both of this false view and of the formula concerning the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy.
The error which appears in this conception of philosophic history, is the same that we have already studied under the name of philosophism, and which appears here in one of its special applications. The formula of the error is the identity of Philosophy with the History of philosophy. The sense in which this is meant is at once shown by the tendency which exists in this identity of the two terms, to be enlarged into a third term, that is to say, into the recognition of the identity of philosophy and of the history of philosophy with the Philosophy of history. And this Philosophy of philosophic history, like every philosophy of history, converts representations and empirical concepts into pure concepts assigning to each one the function which properly belongs to the categories, corrupting philosophy and history and becoming shipwrecked in a sort of mythologism and propheticism.
Distinction between this false idea of a history of philosophy and the books that are so entitled or profess a like programme.
But, as in the case of the philosophy of history in general, so also in this application of it to the history of philosophy, it is necessary to recognize the elements of truth. These lie in the works of genius in historical characterization, which under this guise have been achieved by various thinkers and in various epochs of philosophy. Certainly Plato is not only transcendental, nor is Aristotle only immanentist; nor Kant only agnostic, nor Hegel only logical, nor Epicurus only materialist, nor Descartes only dualist; nor is Greek thought concerned only with objectivity, nor modern thought with subjectivity alone. But history takes shape as historical narrative, by noting the prominent traits of the various individuals and of the various epochs. Without this process it would be impossible to divide, to summarize, or to record it; without the introduction of empirical concepts, history could not be fixed in the memory.[1] By means of those characterizations, it also happens that historical names can be taken as symbols of truths and errors: all the crudity of dualism is expressed in Descartes, the paradox of determinism in Spinoza, that of abstract pluralism in Leibnitz. We owe (as is admitted by all those competent to judge) the elevation of the history of philosophy from a chronicle or an erudite collection to history properly so-called, to historians of philosophy who were tainted with phiiosophism. And since Hegel was the first and greatest of those historians, we must impute to Hegel the arbitrary act that he committed, but also the merit of having been the first to give a history of philosophy worthy of the name and accord to him all the more merit, in so far as he almost always corrected in execution the errors of his original plan.[2]
Exact formula: identity of philosophy and of history.
This original plan (and in general the position taken up by the system of Hegel) may perhaps be considered as a deviation and aberration from a just impulse, which still awaits its legitimate satisfaction. This satisfaction we have attempted to give, by going deeply into the meaning of the Kantian a priori synthesis and by establishing the identity of philosophy and history. Thus, as regards the question at issue, the formula that we oppose to Hegel's formula of the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy, is that of the identity of philosophy and history. This difference may at first sight seem non-existent or very slight, but yet it is substantial. Philosophy is indeed identical with history, because by solving historical problems it affirms itself, and is in this way identical with the history of philosophy, not because this is separable from other histories, or has precedence over them, but for precisely the contrary reason, that it is altogether inseparable from and completely fused in the totality of history, according to the unity in distinction already explained. Hence it is seen that philosophy does not originate in time, that there are not philosophic men and non-philosophic men, that there are not concepts belonging to one individual which another individual is without, nor mental efforts which one makes and another does not make, and that philosophy, or all the categories, operates at every instant of the spiritual life, and at every instant of the spiritual life operates upon material altogether new, given to it by history, which for its part it helps to create. This amounts to saying that from that concept we obtain the criticism of philosophism and of the formula expressing the identity of Philosophy, History of Philosophy and Philosophy of history; and a more exact idea of the history of philosophy, free from the chains of an arbitrary classification.
The history of philosophy and philosophic progress.
It may seem that in this way we destroy all idea of philosophic progress; and certainly philosophy, taken in itself, that is to say as an abstract category, does not progress any more than the category of art or of morality progresses. But philosophy in its concreteness progresses, like art and the whole of life; it progresses, because reality is development, and development, including antecedents in consequences, is progress. Every affirmation of truth is conditioned by reality and conditions a new reality, which, in turn, is in its progress, the condition of a new thought and of a new philosophy. In this respect it is true that a philosophy which comes later in time, contains the preceding philosophies in itself, and not only when it is truly a philosophy, adequate to the new times, which comprehend ancient times in themselves, but even when it is a simple suggestion, of the kind we have called erroneous and in need of correction. As erroneous suggestion it will be, ideally, inferior to the truths already discovered. The scepticism of David Hume, for instance, is inferior from this point of view, not only to Cartesianism, but even to Scholasticism, to Platonism and to Socraticism. But historically it is superior even to the most perfect of those philosophies, because it is occupied with a problem which they did not propose to themselves and initiates its solution, by forming a first attempt at solution, however erroneous. Those perfect philosophies belong to the past, this, though imperfect, has the future in itself. Thus it is explained how we sometimes find far more to learn in philosophers who have maintained errors than from others who have maintained truths; the errors of the former are gold in the quartz, which when it has been purified will add weight and value to the mass of gold, which is already in our possession and has been preserved by the latter. Fanatics content themselves with truths, however poor they are, and therefore seek those who repeat them, even though they be poor of spirit. True thinkers seek for adversaries, bristling with errors and rich with truth; they learn from them, and while opposing, love and esteem them; indeed, their opposing them is at the same time an act of esteem and of love.
The truth of all philosophies, and critique of eclecticism.
The philosophy which each one of us professes at a determinate moment, in so far as it is adequate to the knowledge of facts and in the proportion in which it is adequate, is the result of all preceding history, and in it are organically brought together all systems, all errors and all suggestions. If some error should appear to be inexplicable, some suggestion without fruit, some concept incapable of adoption, the new philosophy is to that extent more or less defective. But the organic reconciliation, which preceding philosophies must find in those that follow, cannot be the bare bringing them together in time, and eclecticism, as in those superficial spirits, who associate fragments of all philosophies without mediation. Eclecticism (from the historical point of view also, as for instance in the relation of Victor Cousin to Hegel, whom he admired, imitated and failed to understand) is the falsification or the caricature of the vastness of thought, which embraces in itself all thoughts, though apparently the most diverse and irreconcilable. The peace of the lazy, who do not collide with one another, because they do not act, must not be made sublime and confounded with the lofty peace that belongs to those who have striven and have fraternized after strife, or, indeed, during the actual combat.
Researches concerning the authors and precursors of truths: and the reason for the antinomies which they exhibit.
A proof of this constancy of philosophy, which is immanent in all philosophies and in all the thoughts of men, and also of its perpetual variation and novelty of historical form, is to be found in the questions that have been and are raised, concerning the origin or discovery of truth. Hardly has the truth been discovered, when the critics easily succeed in proving that it was already known, and begin the search for precursors. And there can be no doubt that they are right and their researches deserve to be followed up. Every assertion of discovery, in so far as it seems to make a clear cut into the web of history, has something arbitrary about it. Strictly speaking, Socrates did not discover the concept, or Vico æsthetic fancy, or Kant the a priori synthesis, or Hegel the synthesis of opposites; nor even perhaps, did Pythagoras discover the theorem of the square on the hypotenuse, or Archimedes the law of the displacement of liquids. If a discovery is represented as an explosion, this happens for reasons of practical and mnemonic convenience in narrating and summarising history; and, for that matter, the explosion, the eruption and the earthquake are continuous processes. But the rational side of the search for precursors must not cause the acceptance of the irrational side, which is the denial of the originality of discoveries, as though they were to be found point for point in the precursors, or as though they consisted only in the aggregation of elements which pre-existed, or in like insignificant changes of form. To attach oneself to precursors, does not mean to repeat them, but to continue their work. This continuation is always new, original, and creative and always gives rise to discoveries, be they small or great. To think is to discover. The reduction to absurdity of the wrong meaning of the search for precursors is to be found in the fact that every one of the most important thoughts can be discovered in a certain sense in common beliefs, in proverbs, in ways of speech, and among savages and children. This is so much the case that by this path we can return to the Utopia of an ingenuous philosophy, outside history; whereas philosophy is truly ingenuous or genuine only when it is, and it is not, save in History.
[1] See above, Part II. [Chap. III.]
[2] See ch. ix. What is Living and What is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel, by the Author, English translation by Douglas Ainslie.
[VIII]
"DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE"
Logic and the defence of philosophy.
Attacks upon Philosophy and defences of it have been made as more or less academic exercises. But the true defence of it can only be Philosophy itself, and above all, Logic, which, by determining the concept of Philosophy, recognizes its necessity and function. And since Logic itself teaches that a concept is not truly known, save in the system where it is shown in all its relations, the complete defence is obtained in our opinion only, when this treatise dedicated to Logic is placed in relation to the preceding, which treats of Æsthetic, and with that which follows and has for its object the Philosophy of the practical.
The utility of Philosophy and the philosophy of the practical.
To this last must be relegated the complete elucidation of the problem concerning the utility or non-utility of philosophy. It is a problem about which We can here raise no fundamental question, if the equation posited by us be true: philosophy = thought = history = perception of reality. Thus the doubt concerning the utility of philosophy would be of equal value with the extravagant doubt as to the utility of knowledge. The philosophy of the practical also demonstrates that no action is possible, save when preceded by knowledge, and that presupposed in action there is always historical or perceptive knowledge, that is, the knowledge which contains in itself all other knowledge. And it also demonstrates that reality, being always will and action, is always thought, and that therefore thought is not an extrinsic adjunct, but an intrinsic category constitutive of the Real. Reality is action, because it is thought, and it is thought because it is action.
Consolation of philosophy, as joy in thought and in the truth. Impossibility of a pleasure arising from falsity or illusion.
If thought is so useful that without it the Real would not be, the common concept of an unconsolatory philosophy cannot be accepted. Consolation, pleasure, joy, is activity itself, which rejoices in itself. So far as is known, no other mode of pleasure, joy and consolation has yet been discovered. Now, knowledge of the true, whatever it is, is activity and promotes activity, and therefore brings with it its own consolation. "The truth, known, though it be sad, has its delights." Not a few would wish to attribute these delights, not to truth, but to illusion. But illusion is either not recognized as illusion, or it is so recognized. When it is not recognized as such and yet truly satisfies the mind, it cannot be called illusion, but truth, which has its own good reasons, since nothing can be held to be true without good reasons; it is that much of truth which can be noted in the given circumstances and which from the point of view of a more complete truth can only arbitrarily be called illusion: the consolation given by the pretended illusion resides, therefore, in its truth—or it is recognized as illusion, because the actual circumstances have changed; and then it is anguish and desire to attain to the truth. If there is no desire to attain to this truth, and if in order to avoid it, affirmations are brought forward, which are not adequate to the new conditions in which we find ourselves, there is error, which, as such, is always more or less voluntary; and from error, which is self-critical, arise evil conscience, and remorse, and so again anguish and desire for the truth, which dissipates illusion and produces consolation, because ... "the truth though it be sad, yet has its delights."
Critique of the concept of a sad truth.
Yet (it will be said), the true can be sad; true, but sad. This prejudice also should be eliminated. Truth is reality, and reality is never either glad or sad, since it comprehends both these categories in itself, and therefore surpasses them both. To judge reality to be sad, it would have to be admitted that we possessed besides the idea of it, the idea of another reality, which should be better than the reality known to us. But this is contradictory. The second reality would be not real and therefore not thinkable, and so no idea at all of it could be formed. And if we did attempt to form an idea of it, thought, entering into contradiction with itself and striving in a vain effort, would be seized with terror, and would produce, not that ideal reality, but at the most an æsthetic expression of terror, like that of a man who looks upon a bottomless abyss.
Examples: philosophical criticism and the concepts of God and of Immortality.
Once upon a time and even to-day many found and find consolation in the idea of a personal God, who has created and governs the universe, and of an immortal life, above this life of ours, which vanishes at every instant. And this consolation seems to have diminished in our times, or to many of us, owing to Philosophies. But he who does not limit himself to the surface and analyses the state of soul of sincere and noble believers, realizes that the God who comforted them is the same who comforts us and whom our Philosophies call the universal Spirit, immanent in all of us—the continuity and rationality of the universe—just as the Immortality in which they reposed was the immortality which transcends our individual actions, and in transcending them, makes them eternal. All that is born is worthy to perish; but in perishing, it is also preserved as an ideal moment of what is born from it; and the universe preserves in itself all that has ever been thought and done, because it is nothing but the organism of these thoughts and actions. Philosophy has rendered those concepts of God and of Immortality more exact, and has liberated them from impurities and errors and thus at the same time from perplexities and anguish; it has rendered them more, not less, consolatory. On the other hand, the absurdity which mingled with those concepts, has never consoled any one who seriously thought them—and serious thinking of them is an indispensable condition of obtaining consolation from concepts. If they are not thought, but mechanically repeated, the consolation is obtained from something else, from distraction and occupation with life lived, not from the concepts. In the effort to think a God outside the world, a Despot of the world, we are seized with a sense of fear for that God, who is a solitary being, suffering from his omnipotence, which makes activity impossible for him and dangerous for his creatures, who are his playthings. That God becomes an object of maledictions. Equally, in seriously thinking our immortality as empirical individuals, immobilized in our works and in our affections (which are beautiful only because they are in motion and fugitive), we are assailed by the terror, not of death, but of this immortality, which is unthinkable because desolating and desolating because unthinkable. Ideal immortality has generated the poetic representations of Paradise, which are representations of infinite peace; the false concepts of an empirical immortality can generate no other representation than Swift's profoundly satirical picture of the Struldbrugs or immortals, plunged in all the miseries of life, unable to die, and weeping with envy at the sight of a funeral.
Consolatory virtue belonging to all spiritual activities.
But we do not wish to close these new considerations upon the old theme de consolatione Philosophiae, without noting that philosophy is not the sole or supreme consoler, as the philosophers of antiquity believed, and some among the moderns, who assumed the same attitude. It is neither the sole nor the supreme consoler, because thought does not exist alone, nor does it exist above life: thought is outside and inside life; and if on one side it surpasses life, on the other it is a mode of life itself. Philosophy brings consolation in its own kingdom, putting error to flight and preparing the conditions for practical life; but man is not thought alone, and if he has joys and sorrows from thought, other sorrows and joys come to him from the exercise of life itself. And in this exercise action heals the evils of action and life brings consolation for life. The error of Stoicism and of similar doctrines consists in attributing to philosophy a direct action upon the ills of life and of making it in consequence the whole totality of the real. But philosophy has no pocket-handkerchiefs to dry all the tears that man sheds, nor is it able to console unhappy lovers and unfortunate husbands (as sentimental people pretend): it can only contribute to their comfort by healing that part of their pain which is due to theoretic obscurity. Such part is certainly not small: all our sorrows are irritated and made more pungent by mental darkness which paralyses or fetters the purification of action. But it is a part and not the whole. Every form of the activity of the Spirit, art like philosophy, practical life like theoretic life, is a fount of consolation and none suffices alone.
Sorrow and the elevation of sorrow.
"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" is a false saying, because the increase of knowledge is the overcoming of sorrow. But it is true, in so far as it means that the increase of knowledge does not eliminate the sorrows of practical life. It does not eliminate, but elevates them; and to adopt the fine expression of a contemporary Italian writer, superiority is "nothing but the right to suffer on a higher plane." On a higher plane, but neither more nor less than others, who are at a lower level of knowledge,—to suffer on a higher plane, in order to act upon a higher plane.