But metaphors are not arguments—Statistics prove the determinism of human actions, which always reappear in the same way and in the same quantity whenever certain actual circumstances appear.—But Statistics, if they collect and simplify facts and construct views and tables that are more or less useful, do not thus prove anything; for neither are the instances that they give as equivalent, really so, nor the relation that they declare between certain facts a real relation. If we turn from artificial formulæ to the immediate observation of the real, we find ourselves confronted with nothing but individuated volitional acts, resulting from necessity and liberty.—The individual has a constant character, of which action is the consequence: operari sequitur esse.—But the constant character is nothing but the abstraction of the single acts done by the individual. It is therefore natural that the actions should appear to be referable to the character which is derived from them; but it is not correct to say that there is equivalence, for abstraction is not equivalent to concretion.—The individual, even if he can be conceived as free in respect to his external environment, would be always subject to the law of his own nature.—But the law of his own nature is not a contingent thing, but the law itself of the Spirit, or, precisely, freedom, and it is quite clear that freedom is not free not to be free.—The social organism has its natural laws, which govern the action of the individual.—The social organism is also an abstraction, which is turned into a being only by the false interpretation of a metaphor. In all these examples, and in the many others that could be brought forward, the error is always the same as has been said: the substitution of the naturalistic for the speculative construction, Physic for Metaphysic. And since physical or naturalistic construction has no material other than given historical facts, the doctrines above mentioned, when they are not false, are always tautological and lead to the affirmation that the volitional fact is a fact, or that in it is the moment of necessity.
The mysticism of arbitrarism.
Arbitrarism, on the other hand, arises in the same way as mysticism, from distrust of thought; being unable to dominate the fact that should be explained, recourse is had to the inconceivable, to the absurd, to miracle; subjective and individual ignorance is hypostasized and of it is made a metaphysical reality. Arbitrarism, like mysticism, has its element of truth, in the negation of determinism, that is, in the recognition of the impotence of the naturalistic method and in the affirmation that the truth lies beyond that method, in the concept of creation and of freedom. But freedom separated from its logical and necessary moment becomes transformed into will, just as in mysticism in general God is transformed into the mystery, ready to receive all individual caprices into himself, and to confer upon them an appearance of truth.
The doctrine of necessity-liberty, and idealism.
The concept of freedom (necessity-liberty), which is at once scientific and not mechanical, and if it surpass the categories of Physic, does not surpass those of Metaphysic, is opposed to both these views. As idealist philosophy, it tends in general to conciliate the ideal with the actual, thought with complete reality, philosophy with the whole of experience. With the concept of freedom is eliminated the inertia of determinism, and the unstable springing about of arbitrarism. The gross material conception of the real disappears, because that which seems to be matter is revealed as spirit, the fact as creation, necessity as the product of liberty. But miracle disappears with them. For if the spirit be the eternal, omnipresent, continuous miracle, unattainable by the physical method,-a continual miracle, omnipresent and eternal, is no longer a miracle, but the same simple and ordinary reality, which each one of us contributes to create and each one of us can and does think.
The doctrine of double causality; dualism and agnosticism.
Strict determinism and strict arbitrarism are not, however, the sole adversaries of the concept of liberty-necessity, as rigorous materialism and mysticism are not the only adversaries of idealism. There exists another which must be called more dangerous (if misunderstanding be more dangerous than error). This doctrine, since it goes by the name of dualism, spiritualism, and neocriticism in general philosophy, could be called the doctrine of double practical causality, in the field of the practical problem. The supporters of this line of thought, despite many individual differences, are all agreed in positing two distinct series of facts: one which obeys mechanical causality, another which is initiative and creation, or (as they say) obeys causality through freedom. There are thus two series that interpenetrate one another or alternate at every instant and are mutually blended, the one in the other. Hence there is something of each in the volitional act, something of the strongest motive and something of free choice. Such a solution has some external resemblance with that which we maintain, but is intrinsically most different. Our solution is fusion of liberty and necessity, while this is juxtaposition; our solution is conciliation, this transaction. Like every juxtaposition and transaction it displeases both the contending parties, and falls into the power, now of the one, now of the other. Thus, if, according to the theories of that tendency, it be maintained that freedom exists, but that there are also causes tending to diminish it, or that there exist volitional acts, but that involuntary acts also exist, one does not understand how a series of facts that has its own law in itself (freedom, the will) can ever be subordinated to facts that obey a different law (diminution of freedom, involuntariness of acts). If this happen sometimes or many times, we must suspect that it happens always, and that the surviving freedom is a mask of freedom, illusion. Thus, if it be affirmed that side by side with causality, with equivalence of causes and effects, or with the possibility of foreseeing the effect by means of the cause, there is another causality, in which the effect is not equivalent to the cause, and that not only is it not to be foreseen, but is such that only after it has happened does it allow its cause to be discovered; then the doubt arises that one of the two causalities does not exist, because either the effect is equivalent to the cause, and so it must always be, or it is not equivalent to it, and so it will never be; or it can be foreseen by means of the cause, and so it will always be, or it cannot be foreseen, and never will be foreseen. The strict determinists and arbitrarists have the loyalty of error, and they are rare, because energetic spirits are rare, but the doctrine of double causality is tinged with some of the rouge of truth, and thus seduces the many, and is proper to weak and irresolute spirits, as indeed are dualism, spiritualism, agnosticism, neocriticism, of which this doctrine forms a particular case. When the absurdity of determinism and of arbitrarism has been recognized (and their very presence is an autocriticism), it is necessary to satisfy with a new and single concept the claim that they represent, certainly not with the sum of two errors, and the new single concept is that of true freedom.
Its character of transaction and transition.
The doctrine of double causality has had its historical importance, not because it is a transaction, but rather because it is a transition; that is, a gradual approximation to the true concept, with the introduction into the naturalistic concept of an element of ferment and dissolution: the concept of a causality by means of freedom, that is, of a causality that is so only in name. The concept of freedom cannot tolerate that of causality at its side, and of the two series posited, one of the two is not real in itself, but simply a particular product of the other: mechanical causality is not a fact, nor a conception, but an instrument created for its own ends by spiritual freedom itself. And only in this sense can it be admitted that freedom avails itself of causality for its effectuation, and the truth of the observation be realized, that the classifying of the perceptions in series of cause and effect becomes itself also a presupposition of will and action. The historical knowledge as to the actual situation that precedes the volition, since it includes of necessity philosophical universal in itself, so it can also include empirical universals, concepts, and pseudo—concepts: the consciousness of the productivity of the spirit and the mnemonic formulæ in which this productivity is fixed, and for which it certainly appears to be mechanical, but only to him who forgets that the formulæ themselves are mechanical.