For this purpose it is needful to direct our attention to the moment of their formation, which, as has been said, is not at all theoretical, but practical; and to ask ourselves in what way and with what end the practical spirit can intervene in representations and concepts previously produced, manipulate them and make of them conceptual fictions. The view that the work of the practical spirit can give rise to new knowledge, not previously attained, must be resolutely excluded: the practical spirit is such, precisely because it is non-cognitive; as regards knowledge it is altogether sterile. If, then, it accomplishes those manipulations, and says to a cat: "You will represent for me all cats"; or to a rose: "See, I draw you in my treatise on botany, and you will represent all roses"; and to the triangle: "It is true I cannot think you, nor represent you; but I suppose that you are the same as what I draw with rule and compass, and I make use of you to measure the approximate triangles of reality";—in so doing, it recognizes that it does not accomplish any act of knowledge. But does it, in that case, accomplish an act of anti-knowledge—that is, does it make these manipulations and fictions in order to place obstacles in the way of knowledge and to simulate its products, so that it leads astray the seeker for truth? If this were so, the "practical spirit" would be synonymous with the spirit of confusion; and the contriver of conceptual fictions would deserve the reprobation that attaches to forgers of documents, sophists, rhetoricians, and charlatans; whereas, on the contrary, he receives the applause and gratitude of every one. Each one of us, at every instant, would be guilty of a plot against the truth, because at every instant each of us forms and employs those fictions; whereas the moral consciousness, delicate and intolerant though it be, makes no reproof, but indeed offers encouragement. Therefore, the act of forming intellectual fictions is an act neither of knowledge nor of anti-knowledge; it is not logically rational, but neither is it logically irrational; it is rational, indeed, but practically rational.
The practical end and mnemonic utility.
In this case the practical end in view can be but one. We know in order to act; and he who acts is interested only in that knowledge, which is the necessary precedent of his doing. But since our knowledge is all destined to be recalled as occasion serves for action, or to aid us in the search for new knowledge (which in this case is a form of acting), the practical spirit is impelled to provide for the preservation of the patrimony of acquired knowledge. Without doubt, speaking absolutely, everything is preserved in reality, and nothing that has once been done or thought, disappears from the bosom of the cosmos. But the preservation of which we speak, is properly the making easily available to memory, knowledge that has once been possessed, and providing for its ready recall from the bosom of the cosmos or from the apparently unconscious and forgotten. For this purpose there are constructed those instruments, which are conceptual fictions, by means of which armies of representations are evoked with a single word, or by which a single word approximately indicates what form of operation must be resorted to, in order that certain representations may be recovered. The cat of the appropriate conceptual fiction does not enable us to know any single cat, as a painter or a historian of cats makes us know it; but by means of it, many images of animals, which would have remained separate before the memory, or each one dispersed and fused in the complete picture in which it had been imagined and perceived, are arranged in a series and recorded as a whole. This matters little or nothing to one who dreams as a poet or who seeks absolute truth; but it matters a great deal to one whose house is infested by rats, and who must employ some one to obtain a cat; and it matters not less to the seeker for the cat, in that he has to study a new animal, and that he must proceed in that study with some order, though it be artificial, and though he reject the artifice in the final synthesis. Again, the geometrical triangle is of no service either to imagination or to thought, which are developed without it; but it is indispensable to any one measuring a field, in the same way as it may possibly be of service to a painter in his preparatory studies for a picture, or to a historian, who wishes to know well the configuration of a piece of ground where a battle was fought.
Persistence of conceptual fictions side by side with concepts.
This is the real reason why, however perfect rigorous concepts become, conceptual fictions remain ineliminable, and indeed obtain from these fresh nourishment. They cannot be criticized and resolved by means of rigorous concepts, because they are of a different order from them: they cannot act as inferior degrees of the rigorous concept, because they presuppose it. The reason, which we were pledged to give, is given; and henceforward there can no longer arise any misunderstanding as to the relation of the concept to conceptual fictions. It is a relation not of identity, nor of contrariety, but simply of diversity.
Pure concepts and pseudoconcepts.
The terminological question remains, and this, as always, has but slight importance. "Conceptual fictions" is a manner of speech; and no one would wish to combat manners of speech. For brevity's sake we shall call them pseudoconcepts, and for the sake of clearness we shall call the true and proper concepts pure concepts. This term seems to us more suitable than that of ideas (pure concepts), as opposed to logical concepts (pseudoconcepts), as they were at one time called in the schools. It must further be noted, that the pseudoconcepts, although the word "concept" forms part of their name, are not concepts, they do not form a species of, nor do they compete with, concepts (save when forcibly made to do so); and that the pure concepts have not got the impure concepts at their side, for these are not truly concepts. Every word offers, in some degree, a hold for misunderstanding, because it circulates in this base world, which is full of snares; the search for words which should absolutely prevent misunderstandings is vain, for it would be necessary first of all to clip the wings of the human spirit. We may prefer one word to another, according to historical contingencies; and for our part we prefer the words pseudoconcept and pure concept, if for no other reason than to remind the makers of fictional concepts to be modest, and to flash above their heads the light of the only true form of concept, which is logical nature itself in its universality and in its severity. How can we fail to think that the choice has been well made if this title of pure concept please the few, but terrify the many and irritate the most, more than the red cloth shaken before the eyes of the bull; and if, like every efficacious medicine, it provoke a reaction in the organism of the patient?
[1] These relations are examined in the Philosophy of the Practical, first part.