Analogy between the practical and the theoretical spirit: practical laws and empirical concepts.
Here the analogy between the constitution of the practical and of the theoretical spirit is again shown to be most exact. We meet with theoretical forms in the latter also, which are not really so and are contradictory in themselves, positing representations that function as universals and universals that are representative: arbitrary forms, in which the will undertakes to command what it is not possible to command, that is to say, representations and concepts, things which precede and do not follow the volitional and practical form. But we know that those fictitious concepts, those formulæ, those laws that are not laws, those admitted falsities, which, therefore, are not falsities, serve as a help to memory, and assist thought in finding its way amid the multiform spectacle of the world, which it must penetrate for itself. We do not think them, but they help us to think; we do not imagine them, but they help us to imagine. Thus the philosopher generally fixes his mind upon the pseudo-concepts, that he may afterwards rise to the universals; and the artist also turns his attention to them that he may find beneath them the individual, the lively and ingenuous intuition that he seeks. The same pseudo-concepts, made the object of volition and changed from formulæ to laws, fulfil an analogous office in the practical spirit, making it possible for the will to will in a certain direction, where it afterwards meets the useful action, which is always individuated.
The promotion of order in reality and representation.
Another aspect of the analogy is not less important. The pseudo-concepts would not be possible, if reality did not offer the like side by side with the unlike; which is not the universal and necessary, but the general, a contingent (so to speak) less contingent than others, a relatively constant variable. Pseudo-concepts are arbitrary, not because they posit the like where is the unlike, but because they make that variable rigid, which is only relatively constant, making of it something absolutely constant and changing the like into the identical. Now the practical spirit, which creates reality, has need to create not only the unlike, but also the like; not only that which lasts an instant, but also that which endures almost unchanged for a year, a century, a millennium, or a millennium of millenniums; not only the individual, but also the species, not only the great man, but also the people, not only the actions that do not occur again, but also those that return periodically, similar, though not identical. Laws fulfil this function, for they constitute what is called the social, or cosmic order. This order, however, is always relative and includes instability in itself; it is a rectilinear figure, which, on being closely examined, reveals itself as also curvilinear. For this reason it is necessary to make laws, and it is necessary to violate, though obeying them in their execution.
Origin of the concept of plan or design.
This function of law as an unreal volition, aiding nevertheless and preparing the real, throws light upon a concept that we have had to reject when exposing the nature and method of functioning of the volitional act; that is to say, on the concept of plan or design or model, as proper to the practical activity, which is said to act by carrying out a pre-established design. We have already demonstrated that design and the execution of the design are in reality all one, and that man acts by changing his design at every instant, because reality, which is the basis of his action, changes. And as in the Philosophy of the practical in general, so in particular in Ethic, the concept of pre-established design has no place; because, if it be true than in ethicity the universal is distinguished from the merely individual action, it is also true that the universal does not exist in concrete, save incorporated and individualized as this or that good action. The universal of ethicity is not a design and cannot be willed for itself outside all individuation, in the same way as to fall in love is to fall in love with an individual and not with love. But that concept of design, proposed for action and carried out by its means, though erroneously adopted in Economy and in Ethic, must nevertheless have its legitimate meaning in some special order of facts; otherwise it would not be possible to make even erroneous use of it. This meaning is to be found, as has been seen, in the fact of laws.