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.