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PHILOSOPHY OF THE

PRACTICAL

ECONOMIC AND ETHIC

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF


BENEDETTO CROCE


BY

DOUGLAS AINSLIE

B.A. (OXON.), M.R.A.S.


MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1913




Benedetto Croce's Philosophy of the Spirit, in the English translation
by Douglas Ainslie, consists of 4 volumes (which can be read separately):
1. Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic. (Second augmented
   edition. A first ed. is also available at Project Gutenberg.)
2. Philosophy of the practical: economic and ethic.
3. Logic as the science of the pure concept.
4. Theory and history of historiography.
--Transcriber's note.




NOTE


Certain chapters only of the third part of this book were anticipated
in the study entitled _Reduction of the Philosophy of Law to the
Philosophy of Economy,_ read before the Accademia Pontaniana of Naples
at the sessions of April 21 and May 5, 1907 (_Acts,_ vol. xxxvii.);
but I have remodelled them, amplifying certain pages and summarizing
others. The concept of economic activity as an autonomous form of the
spirit, which receives systematic treatment in the second part of the
book, was first maintained in certain essays, composed from 1897 to
1900, and afterwards collected in the volume _Historical Materialism
and Marxist Economy_ (2nd edition, Palermo, Sandron, 1907).

B. C.

NAPLES,

19_th April_ 1908.




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE


"A noi sembra che l' opera del Croce sia lo sforzo più potente che il
pensiero italiano abbia compiuto negli ultimi anni."--G. DE RUGGIERO in
_La Filosofia contemporanea,_ 1912.

"Il sistema di Benedetto Croce rimane la più alta conquista del
pensiero contemporaneo."--G. NATOLI in _La Voce,_ 19th December 1912.


Those acquainted with my translation of Benedetto Croce's _Æsthetic
as Science of Expression and General Linguistic_ will not need to be
informed of the importance of this philosopher's thought, potent in its
influence upon criticism, upon philosophy and upon life, and famous
throughout Europe.

In the Italian, this volume is the third and last of the _Philosophy
of the Spirit, Logic as Science of the Pure Concept_ coming second in
date of publication. But apart from the fact that philosophy is like
a moving circle, which can be entered equally well at any point, I
have preferred to place this volume before the _Logic_ in the hands of
British readers. Great Britain has long been a country where moral
values are highly esteemed; we are indeed experts in the practice,
though perhaps not in the theory of morality, a lacuna which I believe
this book will fill.

In saying that we are experts in moral practice I do not, of course,
refer to the narrow conventional morality, also common with us, which
so often degenerates into hypocrisy, a legacy of Puritan origin; but
apart from this, there has long existed in many millions of Britons a
strong desire to live well, or, as they put it, cleanly and rightly,
and achieved by many, independent of any close or profound examination
of the logical foundation of this desire. Theology has for some
taken the place of pure thought, while for others, early training
on religious lines has been sufficiently strong to dominate other
tendencies in practical life. Yet, as a speculative Scotsman, I am
proud to think that we can claim divided honours with Germany in the
production of Emmanuel Kant (or Cant).

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed with us a great
development of materialism in its various forms. The psychological,
anti-historical speculation contained in the so-called Synthetic
Philosophy (really psychology) of Herbert Spencer was but one of the
many powerful influences abroad, tending to divert youthful minds
from the true path of knowledge. This writer, indeed, made himself
notorious by his attitude of contemptuous intolerance and ignorance
of the work previously done in connection with subjects which he was
investigating. He accepted little but the evidence of his own senses
and judgment, as though he were the first philosopher. But time has
now taken its revenge, and modern criticism has exposed the Synthetic
Philosophy in all its barren and rigid inadequacy and ineffectuality.
Spencer tries to force Life into a brass bottle of his own making, but
the genius will not go into his bottle. The names and writings of J. S.
Mill, of Huxley, and of Bain are, with many others of lesser calibre,
a potent aid to the dissolving influence of Spencer. Thanks to their
efforts, the spirit of man was lost sight of so completely that I
can well remember hearing Kant's great discovery of the synthesis _a
priori_ described as moonshine, and Kant himself, with his categoric
imperative, as little better than a Prussian policeman. As for Hegel,
the great completer and developer of Kantian thought, his philosophy
was generally in even less esteem among the youth; and we find even the
contemplative Walter Pater passing him by with a polite apology for
shrinking from his chilly heights. I do not, of course, mean to suggest
that estimable Kantians and Hegelians did not exist here and there
throughout the kingdom in late Victorian days (the names of Stirling,
of Caird, and of Green at once occur to the mind); but they had not
sufficient genius to make their voices heard above the hubbub of the
laboratory. We all believed that the natural scientists had taken the
measure of the universe, could tot it up to a T--and consequently
turned a deaf ear to other appeals.

Elsewhere in Europe Hartmann, Haeckel, and others were busy measuring
the imagination and putting fancy into the melting-pot--they offered
us the chemical equivalent of the wings of Aurora. We believed them,
believed those materialists, those treacherous neo-Kantians, perverters
of their master's doctrine, who waited for guileless youth with mask
and rapier at the corner of every thicket. Such as escaped this ambush
were indeed fortunate if they shook themselves free of Schopenhauer,
the (personally) comfortable philosopher of suicide and despair, and
fell into the arms of the last and least of the Teutonic giants,
Friedrich Nietzsche, whose spasmodic paragraphs, full of genius but
often empty of philosophy, show him to have been far more of a poet
than a philosopher. It was indeed a doleful period of transition for
those unfortunate enough to have been born into it: we really did
believe that life had little or nothing to offer, or that we were all
Overmen (a mutually exclusive proposition!), and had only to assert
ourselves in order to prove it.

To the writings of Pater I have already referred, and of them it may
justly be said that they are often supremely beautiful, with the
quality and cadence of great verse, but mostly (save perhaps the volume
on _Plato and Platonism,_ by which he told the present writer that he
hoped to live) instinct with a profound scepticism, that revelled in
the externals of Roman Catholicism, but refrained from crossing the
threshold which leads to the penetralia of the creed.

Ruskin also we knew, and he too has a beautiful and fresh vein of
poetry, particularly where free from irrational dogmatism upon Ethic
and Æsthetic. But we found him far inferior to Pater in depth and
suggestiveness, and almost devoid of theoretical capacity. Sesame for
all its Lilies is no Open Sesame to the secrets of the world. Thus,
wandering in the obscure forest, it is little to be wondered that we
did not anticipate the flood of light to be shed upon us as we crossed
the threshold of the twentieth century.

It was an accident that took me to Naples in 1909, and the accident
of reading a number of _La Critica,_ as I have described in the
introduction to the _Æsthetic,_ that brought me in contact with the
thought of Benedetto Croce. But it was not only the _Æsthetic,_ it was
also the purely critical work of the philosopher that appeared to me at
once of so great importance. To read Hegel, for instance, after reading
Croce's study of him, is a very different experience (at least so I
found it) to reading him before so doing.

Hegel is an author most deeply stimulative and suggestive, but any
beginner is well to take advantage of all possible aid in the difficult
study.

To bring this thought of Hegel within the focus of the ordinary
mind has never been an easy task (I know of no one else who has
successfully accomplished it); and Croce's work, _What is living
and what is dead of the Philosophy of Hegel,_ as one may render the
Italian title of the book which I hope to translate, has enormously
aided a just comprehension, both of the qualities and the defects of
that philosopher. This work appeared in the Italian not long after the
_Æsthetic,_ and has had an influence upon the minds of contemporary
Italians, second only to the _Philosophy of the Spirit._ To clear away
the débris of Hegel, his false conception of art and of religion, to
demonstrate his erroneous application of his own great discovery of
the dialectic to pseudo-concepts, and thus to reveal it in its full
splendour, has been one of the most valuable of Croce's inestimable
contributions to critical thought.

I shall not pause here to dilate upon the immense achievement of Croce,
the youngest of Italian senators, a recognition of his achievement
by his King and country, but merely mention his numerous historical
works, his illuminative study of Vico, which has at last revealed that
philosopher as of like intellectual stature to Kant; the immense tonic
and cultural influence of his review, _La Critica,_ and his general
editorship of the great collection of _Scrittori d' Italia._ Freed
at last from that hubbub of the laboratory, from the measures and
microscopes of the natural scientists, excellent in their place, it is
interesting to ask if any other contemporary philosopher has made a
contribution to ethical theory in any way comparable to the _Philosophy
of the Practical._ The names of Bergson and of Blondel at once occur to
the mind, but the former admits that his complete ideas on ethics are
not yet made known, and implies that he may never make them entirely
known. The reader of the _Philosophy of the Practical_ will, I think,
find that none of Bergson's explanations, "burdened," as he says, with
"geometry," and as we may say with matter, from the obsession of which
he never seems to shake himself altogether free, are comparable in
depth or lucidity with the present treatise. The spirit is described by
Bergson as memory, and matter as a succession of images. How does the
one communicate with the other? The formula of the self-creative life
process seems hardly sufficient to explain this, for if with Bergson we
conceive of life as a torrent, there must be some reason why it should
flow rather in one channel than in another. But life is supposed to
create and to absorb matter in its progress; and here we seem to have
entered a vicious circle, for the intuition presupposes, it does not
create its object. As regards the will, too, the Bergsonian theory of
the Ego as rarely (sometimes never once in life) fully manifesting
itself, and our minor actions as under the control of matter, seems
to lead to a deterministic conception and to be at variance with the
thesis of the self-creation of life.

As regards Blondel, the identification of thought and will in the
philosophy of action leads him to the position that the infinite is not
in the universal abstract, but in the single concrete. It is through
matter that the divine truth reaches us, and God must pass through
nature or matter, in order to reach us, and we must effect the contrary
process to reach God. It is a beautiful conception; but, as de Ruggiero
suggests, do we not thus return, by a devious and difficult path, to
the pre-Hegelian, pre-Kantian, position of religious platonicism?[1]

This, however, is not the place to discourse at length of other
philosophies. What most impresses in the Crocean thought is its
profundity, its clarity, and its _completeness,--totus teres atque
rotundus._ Croce, indeed, alone of the brilliant army of philosophers
and critics arisen in the new century, has found a complete formula for
his thought, complete, that is, at a certain stage; for, as he says,
the relative nature of all systems is apparent to all who have studied
philosophy. He alone has defined and allocated the activities of the
human spirit; he alone has plumbed and charted its ocean in all its
depth and breadth.

A system! The word will sound a mere tinkling of cymbals to many
still aground in the abstract superficialities of nineteenth-century
scepticism; but they are altogether mistaken. To construct a system
is like building a house: it requires a good architect to build
a good house, and where it is required to build a great palace it
requires a great genius to build it successfully. Michael Angelo
built the Vatican, welding together and condensing the works of many
predecessors, ruthlessly eliminating what they contained of bad or of
erroneous: Benedetto Croce has built the Philosophy of the Spirit.
To say of either achievement that it will not last for ever, or that
it will need repair from time to time, is perfectly true; but this
criticism applies to all things human; and yet men continue to build
houses--for God and for themselves. Croce is the first to admit the
incompleteness, the lack of finality of all philosophical systems, for
each one of them deals, as he says, with a certain group of problems
only, which present themselves at a definite period of time. The
solution of these leads to the posing of new problems, first caught
sight of by the philosopher as he terminates his labours, to be solved
by the same or by other thinkers.

And here it may be well to state very briefly the basis on which rests
the _Philosophy of the Spirit,_ without attempting to do anything more
than to give its general outline. The reader should imagine himself
standing, like bold Pizarro, on his "peak of Darien," surveying at a
great distance the vast outline of a New World, which yet is as old as
Asia.

The Spirit is Reality, it is the whole of Reality, and it has two
forms: the theoretic and the practical activities. Beyond or outside
these _there are no other forms of any kind._ The theoretic activity
has two forms, the intuitive and individual, and the intellectual or
knowledge of the universal: the first of these produces images and is
known as _Æsthetic,_ the second concepts and is known as _Logic._ The
first of these activities is altogether independent, self-sufficient,
autonomous: the second, on the other hand, has need of the first, ere
it can exist. Their relation is therefore that of double degree. The
practical activity is the _will,_ which is thought in activity, and
this also has two forms, the economic or utilitarian, and the ethical
or moral, the first autonomous and individual, the second universal,
and this latter depends upon the first for its existence, in a manner
analogous to _Logic_ and to _Æsthetic._

With the theoretic activity, man understands the universe, with the
practical, he changes it. There are no grades or degrees of the Spirit
beyond these. All other forms are either without activity, or they are
verbal variants of the above, or they are a mixture of these four in
different proportions.

Thus the Philosophy of the Spirit is divided into _Æsthetic, Logic,
and Philosophy of the Practical_ (Economic and Ethic). In these it is
complete, and embraces the whole of human activity.

The discussion of determinism or free will is of course much more
elaborated here than in the Æsthetic, where exigencies of space
compelled the philosopher to offer it in a condensed form. His solution
that the will is and must be free, but that it contains two moments,
the first conditioned, and that the problem should be first stated in
terms of the Hegelian dialectic, seems to be the only one consonant
with facts. The conclusion that the will is autonomous and that
therefore we can _never_ be obliged to do anything against our will may
seem to be paradoxical, until the overwhelming argument in proof of
this has been here carefully studied.

Croce's division of the practical activity into the two grades of
Economic and Ethic, to which Kant did not attain and Fichte failed
fully to perceive, has for the first time rendered comprehensible much
that was hitherto obscure in ancient history and contemporary history.
The "merely economic man" will be recognised by all students of the
_Philosophy of the Practical,_ where his characteristics are pointed
out by the philosopher; and a few years hence, when Croce's philosophy
will have filtered through fiction and journalism to the level of
the general public, the phrase will be as common as is the "merely
economic" person to-day.

For indeed, all really new and great discoveries come from the
philosophers, gradually filtering down through technical treatises and
reviews, until they reach the level of prose fiction and of poetry,
which, since the _Æsthetic,_ we know to be one and the same thing with
different empirical manifestations. In truth, the philosophers alone
go deeply enough into the essence of things to reach their roots. Thus
some philosophy, generally in an extremely diluted form, becomes part
of every one's mental furniture and thus the world makes progress and
the general level of culture is raised. Thought is democratic in being
open to all, aristocratic in being attained only by the few--and that
is the only true aristocracy: to be on the same level as the best.

Another discovery of Croce's, set forth in this volume for the first
time in all the plenitude of its richness, is the theory of Error.
The proof of the practical nature of error, of its necessity, and of
the fact that we only err because we will to do so, is a marvel of
acute and profound analysis. Readers unaccustomed to the dialectic may
not at first be prepared to admit the necessary forms of error, that
error is not distinct, but opposed to truth and as such its simple
dialectic negation, and that truth is thought of truth, which develops
by conquering error, which must always exist in every problem. The full
understanding of the Crocean theory of error throws a flood of light
on all philosophical problems, and has already formed the basis of at
least one brilliant study of contemporary philosophy.

To the reduction of the concept of law to an economic factor, which
depends upon the priority and autonomy of Economic in relation to
Ethic, is devoted a considerable portion of the latter part of the
_Philosophy of the Practical,_ and it is easy to see that an elaborate
treatment of this problem was necessary, owing to the confusion as
to its true nature that has for so long existed in the minds of
thinkers, owing to their failure to grasp the above distinction. In
Great Britain indeed, where precedent counts for so much in law,
the ethical element is very often so closely attached as to be
practically indistinguishable from it, save by the light of the
Crocean analysis. In the _Logic as Science of the Pure Concept_ will
be found much to throw light upon the _Philosophy of the Practical,_
where the foreshortening of certain proofs (due to concentration upon
other problems) may appear to leave loopholes to objection. Thought
will there be found to make use of language for expression, though
not itself language; and it will be found useless to seek logic in
words, which in themselves are always æsthetic. For there is a duality
between intuition and concept, which form the two grades or degrees of
theoretic knowledge, as described also in the _Æsthetic._ There are
two types of concept, the _pure_ and the _false_ or _pseudo-concept,_
as Croce calls it. This latter is also divided into two types of
representation--those that are concrete without being universal (such
as the cat, the rose), and those that are without a content that can
be represented, or universal without being concrete, since they never
exist in reality (such are the triangle, free motion). The first
of these are called empirical pseudo-concepts, the second abstract
pseudo-concepts: the first are represented by the natural, the second
by the mathematical sciences.

Of the _pure concept_ it is predicated that it is ineliminable, for
while the pseudo-concepts in their multiplicity are abolished by
thought as it proceeds, there will always remain one thought namely,
that which thinks their abolition. This concept is opposed to the
pseudo-concepts: it is ultra or omni-representative. I shall content
myself with this brief mention of the contents of the _Philosophy of
the Practical_ and of the _Logic_ upon which I am now working.

Since the publication of _Æsthetic as Science of Expression and General
Linguistic,_ there has been some movement in the direction of the study
of Italian thought and culture, which I advocated in the Introduction
to that work. But the Alps continue to be a barrier, and the thought of
France and of Germany reaches us, as a rule, far more rapidly than that
of the home of all the arts and of civilization, as we may call that
Italy which contains within it the classical Greater Greece. A striking
instance of this relatively more rapid distribution of French thought
is afforded by the celebrated _Lundis_ of Sainte-Beuve, so familiar to
many readers; yet a critic, greater in depth than Sainte-Beuve, was
writing at the same period--greater in philosophical vision of the
relations of things, for the vision of Sainte-Beuve rarely rose above
the psychological plane. For one reader acquainted with the _History
of Italian Literature_ of De Sanctis, a hundred are familiar with the
_Lundis_ of Sainte-Beuve.

At the present moment the hegemony of philosophical thought may be
said to be divided between Italy and France, for neither Great Britain
nor Germany has produced a philosophical mind of the first order.
The interest in Continental idealism is becoming yearly more keen,
since the publication of Bergson's and of Blondel's treatises, and of
Croce's _Philosophy of the Spirit._ Mr. Arthur Balfour, being himself
a philosopher, was one of the first to recognise the importance of
the latter work, referring to its author in terms of high praise in
his oration on Art delivered at Oxford in the Sheldonian Theatre. Mr.
Saintsbury also has expressed his belief that with the _Æsthetic_ Croce
has provided the first instrument for scientific (_i.e._ philosophical,
not "natural" scientific) criticism of literature. This surely is well,
and should lead to an era of more careful and less impartial, of more
accurate because more scientific criticism of our art and poetry.

I trust that a similar service may be rendered to Ethical theory and
practice by the publication of the present translation, which I believe
to be rich with great truths of the first importance to humanity,
here clearly and explicitly stated for the first time and therefore
(in Vico's sense of the word) "created," by his equal and compatriot,
Benedetto Croce.

 Then leaning upon the arm of time came Truth, whose radiant face,

 Though never so late to the feast she go, hath aye the foremost place.

DOUGLAS AINSLIE.

ATHENAEUM CLUB, PALL MALL, _January_ 1913.


[1] G. de Ruggiero, _La Filosofia contemporanea,_ Laterza, Bari, 1912.




CONTENTS


FIRST PART

THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN GENERAL


FIRST SECTION

THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS RELATIONS


I

THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY AS A FORM OF THE SPIRIT 3

Practical and theoretic life--Insufficiency of descriptive distinctions
--Insufficiency of the psychological method in philosophy--Necessity of
the philosophical method--Constatation and deduction--Theories which
deny the practical form of the spirit--The practical as an unconscious
fact: critique--Nature and practical activity--Reduction of the
practical form to the theoretical: critique--The practical as thought
in action--Recognition of its autonomy.

II

NEGATION OF THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF FEELING 21

The practical and the so-called third spiritual form: feeling--Various
meanings of the word: feeling, a psychological class--Feeling as a
state of the spirit--Function of the concept of feeling in the History
of philosophy: the indeterminate--Feeling as forerunner of the æsthetic
form--In Historic: preannouncement of the intuitive element--In
philosophical Logic: pre-announcement of the pure concept--Analogous
function in the Philosophy of the practical--Negation of
feeling--Deductive exclusion of it.

III

RELATION OF THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY WITH THE THEORETICAL 33

Precedence of the theoretical over the practical--The unity of
the spirit and the co-presence of the practical--Critique of
pragmatism--Critique of psychological objections--Nature of theoretic
precedence over the practical: historical knowledge--Its continual
mutability--No other theoretic precedent--Critique of practical
concepts and judgments--Posteriority of judgments to the practical
act--Posteriority of practical concepts--Origin of intellectualistic
and sentimentalistic doctrines--The concepts of end and means--Critique
of the end as plan or fixed design--Volition and the unknown--Critique
of the concept of practical sciences and of a practical Philosophy.

IV

INSEPARABILITY OF ACTION FROM ITS REAL BASE AND PRACTICAL NATURE OF THE
THEORETIC ERROR 53

Coincidence of intention and volition--Volition in the abstract
and in the concrete: critique--Volition thought and real volition:
critique--Critique of volition with unknown or ill-known base
--Illusions in the instances adduced--Impossibility of volition with
erroneous theoretical base--Forms of the theoretic error and problem
as to its nature--Distinction between ignorance and error: practical
origin of latter--Confirmations and proofs--Justification of the
practical repression of error--Empirical distinctions of errors and the
philosophic distinction.

V

IDENTITY OF VOLITION AND ACTION AND DISTINCTION BETWEEN VOLITION AND
EVENT 73

Volition and action: intuition and expression--Spirit
and nature--Inexistence of volitions without action and
inversely--Illusions as to the distinctions between these
terms--Distinction between action and succession or event--Volition
and event--Successful and unsuccessful actions: critique--Acting
and foreseeing: critique--Confirmation of the inderivability of the
value of action from success--Explanation of facts that seem to be at
variance.

VI

THE PRACTICAL JUDGMENT, HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE PRACTICAL 86

Practical taste and judgment--Practical judgment as historical
judgment--Its Logic--Importance of the practical judgment--Difference
between practical judgment and judgment of event--Progress in action
and progress in Reality--Precedence of the Philosophy of the practical
over the practical judgment--Confirmation of the philosophic incapacity
of the psychological method.

VII

PRACTICAL DESCRIPTION, RULES AND CASUISTIC 103

Justification of the psychological method and of empirical and
descriptive disciplines--Practical Description and its literature
--Extension of practical description--Normative knowledge or
rules: their nature--Utility of rules--The literature of rules and
its apparent decadence--Relation between the arts (collections
of rules) and philosophic doctrines--Casuistic: its nature and
utility--Jurisprudence as casuistic.

VIII

CRITIQUE OF THE INVASIONS OF PHILOSOPHY INTO PRACTICAL DESCRIPTION AND
INTO ITS DERIVATIVES 121

First form: tendency to generalize--Historical elements that
persist in the generalizations--Second form: literary union of
philosophy and empiria--Third form: attempt to put them in close
connection--Science of the practical, and Metaphysic: various
meanings--Injurious consequences of the invasions--1st, Dissolution of
empirical concepts--Examples: war and peace, property and communism,
and the like--Other examples--Misunderstandings on the part of the
philosophers--Historical significance of such questions--2nd, False
deduction of the empirical from the philosophic--Affirmations as to
the contingent changed into philosophemes--Reasons for the rebellion
against rules--Limits between philosophy and empiria.

IX

HISTORICAL NOTES 144

I. Distinction between history of the practical principle and history
of liberation from the transcendental--II. Distinction of the practical
from the theoretical--III. Minglings of the Philosophy of the
practical with Description--Vain attempts at a definition of empirical
concepts--Attempts at deduction--IV. Various questions--Practical
nature of error--Practical taste--V. Doctrines of feeling--The
Wolfians--Jacobi and Schleiermacher--Kant--Hegel--Opponents of the
doctrine of the three faculties. Krug--Brentano.


SECOND SECTION

THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS DIALECTIC


I

NECESSITY AND FREEDOM IN THE VOLITIONAL ACT 173

The problem of freedom--Freedom of willing and freedom of action:
critique of such distinction--The volitional act, both necessary and
free--Comparison with the æsthetic activity--Critique of determinism
and arbitrarism--General form of this antithesis: materialism and
mysticism--Materialistic sophisms of determinism--Mysticism of doctrine
of free will--Doctrine of necessity-liberty and idealism--Doctrine
of double causality; of dualism and agnosticism--Its character of
transaction and transition.

II

FREEDOM AND ITS OPPOSITE. GOOD AND EVIL 192

Freedom of action as reality of action--Inconceivability of
the absolute absence of action--Non-freedom as antithesis and
contrariety--Nothingness and arbitrariness of non-liberty--Good as
freedom and reality, and evil as its opposite--Critique of abstract
monism and of dualism of values--Objections to the irreality of
evil--Evil in synthesis and out of synthesis--Affirmative judgments
of evil as negative judgments--Confirmations of the doctrine--The
poles of feeling (pleasure and pain); and their identity with the
practical opposites--Doctrine relating to pleasure and happiness:
critique--Empirical concepts relating to good and evil--To have to
be, ideal, inhibitive, imperative power--Evil, remorse, etc.; good,
satisfaction, etc.--Their incapacity for serving as practical
principles--Their character.

III

THE VOLITIONAL ACT AND THE PASSIONS 215

The multiplicity of volitions and the struggle for unity--Multiplicity
and unity as good and evil--Excluded volitions and passions or
desires--Passions and desires as possible volitions--Volition as
struggle with the passions--Critique of the freedom of choice--Meaning
of the so-called precedence of feeling over the volitional
act--Polipathicism and apathicism--Erroneity of both the opposed
theses--Historical and contingent meaning of these--The domination of
the passions, and the will.

IV

VOLITIONAL HABITS AND INDIVIDUALITY 229

Passions and states of the soul--Passions understood as volitional
habits--Importance and nature of these--Domination of the passions
in so far as they are volitional habits--Difficulty and reality of
dominating them--Volitional habits and individuality--Negations of
individuality for uniformity and criticism of them--Temperament
and character--Indifference of temperament--Discovery of one's
own being--The idea of "vocation"--Misunderstanding of the right
of individuality--Wicked individuality--False doctrines as to the
connection between virtues and vices--The universal in the individual,
and education.

V

DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS 246

Multiplicity and unity: development--Becoming as synthesis of
being and not-being--Nature as becoming. Its resolution in the
Spirit--Optimism and pessimism: critique--Dialectic optimism--Concept
of cosmic progress--Objections and critique--Individuals and
History--Fate, Fortune, and Providence--The infinity of progress
and mystery--Confirmation of the impossibility of a Philosophy of
history--Illegitimate transference of the concept of mystery from
History to Philosophy.

VI

TWO EXPLANATIONS RELATING TO HISTORIC AND ÆSTHETIC 262

Relation between desires and actions; and two problems of Historic
and Æsthetic--History and art--The concept of existentiality in
history--Its origin in the Philosophy of the practical: action and
the existing, desires and the non-existent--History as distinction
between actions and desires, and art as indistinction--Pure fancy and
imagination--Art as lyrical or representation of feelings--Identity
of ingenuous reality and feeling--Artists and the will--Actions and
myths--Art as pure representation of becoming, and the artistic form of
thought.

VII

HISTORICAL NOTES 273

I. The problem of freedom--II. The doctrine of evil--III. Will
and freedom--Conscience and responsibility--IV. The concept of
duty--Repentance and remorse--The doctrine of the passions--Virtues
and vices--V. The doctrine of individuality: Schleiermacher--Romantic
theories and most modern theories--VI. The concept of development and
progress.


THIRD SECTION

UNITY OF THE THEORETICAL AND THE PRACTICAL

Double result: precedence of the theoretical over the practical, and
of the practical over the theoretical--Errors of those who maintain
the exclusive precedence of the one or the other--Problem of the
unity of this duality--Not a duality of opposites--Not a duality of
finite and infinite--Perfect analogy of the two forms: theoretic and
practical--Not a parallelism, but a circle--The circle of Reality:
thought and being, subject and object--Critique of the theories as
to the primacy of the theoretical or of the practical reason--New
pragmatism: Life conditioning Philosophy--Deductive confirmation of the
two forms, and deductive exclusion of the third (feeling).


SECOND PART

THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS SPECIAL FORMS


FIRST SECTION

THE TWO PRACTICAL FORMS: ECONOMIC AND ETHIC


I

DISTINCTION OF THE TWO FORMS IN THE PRACTICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 309

The utilitarian or economic form, and the moral or ethical
form--Insufficiency of the descriptive and psychological
distinction--Deduction and necessity of integrating it with
induction--The two forms as a fact of consciousness--The
economic form--The ethical form--Impossibility of eliminating
them--Confirmations in fact.

II

CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ETHICAL FORM 323

Exclusion of materialistic and intellectualistic criticisms--The
two possible negations--The thesis of utilitarianism against the
existence of moral acts--Difficulty arising from the presence of
these--Attempt to explain them as quantitative distinctions--Criticism
of it--Attempt to explain them as facts, either extraneous to the
practical or irrational, and stupid--Associationism and evolutionism.
Critique--Desperate attempt: theological utilitarianism and mystery.

III

CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ECONOMIC FORM 337

The thesis of moral abstractionism against the concept of the
useful--The useful as means, or as theoretic fact--Technical and
hypothetical imperatives--Critique: the useful is a practical fact
--The useful as the egoistic or the immoral--Critique: the useful
is amoral--The useful as ethical minimum--Critique: the useful
is premoral--Desperate attempt: the useful as inferior practical
conscience--Confirmation of the autonomy of the useful.

IV

RELATION BETWEEN ECONOMIC AND ETHICAL FORMS 348

Economic and ethic as double degree of the practical--Errors
arising from conceiving them as co-ordinated--Disinterested
actions: critique--Vain polemic conducted with such Supposition
against utilitarianism--Actions morally indifferent, obligatory,
supererogatory, etc. Critique--Comparison with the relation between
art and philosophy--Other erroneous conceptions of modes of
action--Pleasure and economic activity, happiness and virtue--Pleasure
and pain and feeling--Coincidence of duty with pleasure--Critique of
rigorism or asceticism--Relation of happiness and virtue--Critique of
the subordination of pleasure to morality--No empire of morality over
the forms of the spirit--Non-existence of other practical forms; and
impossibility of subdivision of the two established.

V

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY AND THE SO-CALLED SCIENCE OF ECONOMY 364

Problem of the relations between Philosophy and Science of economy
--Unreality of the laws and concepts of economic Science--Economic
Science founded on empirical concepts but not empirical or
descriptive--Absoluteness of its laws--Their mathematical
nature--Its principles and their character of arbitrary postulates
and definitions--Its utility--Comparison of Economy with Mechanic,
and reason for its exclusion from ethical, æsthetic, and logical
facts--Errors of philosophism and historicism in Economy--The
two degenerations: extreme abstractism and empiristical
disaggregation--Glance at the history of the various directions of
Economy--Meaning of the judgment of Hegel as to economic Science.

VI

CRITIQUE OF THE CONFUSIONS BETWEEN ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF
ECONOMY 382

Adoption of the economic method and formulæ on the part of
Philosophy--Errors that derive from it--1st, Negation of philosophy
for economy--2nd, Universal value attributed to empirical concepts.
Example: free trade and protectionism--3rd, Transformation of the
functions of calculation into reality--The pretended calculus of
pleasures and pains; and doctrines of optimism and pessimism.

VII

HISTORICAL NOTES 391

I. Greek Ethic and its ingenuousness--II. Importance of Christianity
for Ethic--The three tendencies that result from it: utilitarianism,
rigorism, and psychologism--Hobbes, Spinoza--English Ethic--Idealistic
Philosophy--III. E. Kant and his affirmation of the ethical
principle--Contradictions of Kant as to the concept of the useful,
of prudence, of happiness, etc.--Errors that derive from it in
his Ethic--IV. Points for a Philosophy of Economy--The inferior
appetitive faculty--Problem of politics and Machiavellism--Doctrine
of the passions--Hegel and the concept of the useful--Fichte and the
elaboration of the Kantian Ethic--V. The problem of the useful and of
morality in the thinkers of the nineteenth century--Extrinsic union
of Ethic and of economic Science, from antiquity to the nineteenth
century--Philosophic questions arising from a more intimate contact
between the two--VII. Theories of the hedonistic calculus: from
Maupertuis to Hartmann.


SECOND SECTION

THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLE


I

CRITIQUE OF MATERIALISTIC AND OF FORMALISTIC ETHIC 425

Various meanings of "formal" and "material"--The ethical principle
as formal (universal) and not material (contingent)--Reduction
of material Ethic to utilitarian Ethic--Expulsion of material
principles--Benevolence, love, altruism, etc.; and critique of
them--Social organism, State, interest of the species, etc. Critique
of them--Material religious principles. Critique of them--"Formal" as
statement of a merely logical demand--Critique of a formal Ethic with
this meaning: tautologism--Tautological principles: ideal, chief good,
duty, etc. Critique of them--Tautological significance of certain
formulæ, material in appearance--Conversion of tautological Ethic into
material and utilitarian Ethic--In what sense Ethic should be formal;
and in what other sense material.


II

THE ETHICAL FORM AS ACTUALIZATION OF THE SPIRIT IN UNIVERSAL 440

Tautological Ethic, and its partial or discontinuous connection with
Philosophy--Rejection of both these conceptions--The ethical form
as volition of the universal--The universal as the Spirit (Reality,
Liberty, etc.)--Moral actions as volitions of the Spirit--Critique of
antimoralism--Confused tendency of tautological, material, religious
formulæ in relation to the Ethic of the Spirit--The Ethic of the Spirit
and religious Ethic.

III

HISTORICAL NOTES 452

I. Merit of the Kantian Ethic--The predecessors of Kant--Defect of
that Ethic: agnosticism--Critique of Hegel and of others--Kant and the
concept of freedom--Fichte and Hegel--Ethic in the nineteenth century.


THIRD PART

LAWS


I

LAWS AS PRODUCTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL 465

Definition of law--Philosophical and empirical concept of society--Laws
as individual product: programmes of individual life--Exclusion of
the character of constriction: critique of this concept--Identical
characters of individual and social laws--Individual laws as the sole
real in ultimate analysis--Critique of the division of laws into
judicial and social, and into the sub-classes of these. Empiricity of
every division of laws--Extension of the concept of laws.

II

THE CONSTITUTIVE ELEMENTS OF LAWS. CRITIQUE OF PERMISSIVE LAWS AND OF
NATURAL LAW 481

The volitional character and the character of class--Distinction of
laws from the so-called laws of nature--Implication of the second
in the first--Distinction of laws from practical principles--Laws
and single acts--Identity of imperative, prohibitive, and permissive
laws--Permissive character of every law and impermissive character
of every principle--Changeability of laws--Empirical considerations
as to modes of change--Critique of the eternal Code or natural
right--Natural right as the new right--Natural right as Philosophy
of the practical--Critique of natural right--Theory of natural right
persisting in judicial judgments and problems.

III

UNREALITY OF LAW AND REALITY OF EXECUTION. FUNCTION OF LAW IN THE
PRACTICAL SPIRIT 497

Law as abstract and unreal volition--Ineffectually of laws
and effectuality of practical principles--Exemplificatory
explanation--Doctrines against the utility of laws--Their
unmaintainability--Unmaintainability of confutations of them--Empirical
meaning of these controversies--Necessity of laws--Laws as preparation
for action--Analogy between practical and theoretical Spirit: practical
laws and empirical concepts--The promotion of order in reality and in
representation--Origin of the concept of plan or design.

IV

CONFUSION BETWEEN LAWS AND PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL
LEGALISM AND OF JESUITIC MORALITY 511

Transformation of principles into practical laws: legalism--Genesis
of the concept of the practically licit and indifferent--Its
consequence: the arbitrary--Ethical legalism as a simple special case
of the practical--Critique of the practically indifferent--Contests
of rigorists and of latitudinarians and their common error--Jesuitic
morality as doctrine of fraud on moral law--Concept of legal
fraud--Absurdity of fraud against oneself and against the
moral conscience--Jesuitic morality not explainable by mere
legalism--Jesuitic morality as alliance of legalism with theological
utilitarianism--Distinction between Jesuitic practice and doctrine.

V

JUDICIAL ACTIVITY AS GENERICALLY PRACTICAL ACTIVITY (ECONOMIC) 526

Legislative activity as generically practical--Vanity of disputes as to
the character of institutions, whether economic or ethical: punishment,
marriage, State, etc.--Legislative activity as economic--Judicial
activity: its economic character: its consequent identity with economic
activity--Non-recognition of economic form, and meaning of the problem
as to distinction between morality and rights--Theories of co-action
and of exteriority, as distinctive characteristics: critique of
them--Moralistic theories of rights: critique--Duality of positive and
ideal rights, historical and natural rights, etc.; absurd attempts at
unification and co-ordination--Value of all these attempts as confused
glimpse of amoral character of rights--Confirmations of this character
in ingenuous conscience--Comparison between rights and language.
Grammar and codes--Logic and language; morality and rights--History
of language as literary and artistic history--History of rights as
political and social history.

VI

HISTORICAL NOTES 543

I. Distinction between morality and rights, and its importance
for the history of the economic principle--Indistinction
lasting till Tomasio--II. Tomasio and followers--Kant and
Fichte--Hegel--Herbart and Schopenhauer--Rosmini and others--III.
Stahl, Ahrens, Trendelenburg--Utilitarians--IV. Recent writers
of treatises--Strident contradictions. Stammler--V. Value of
law--In antiquity--Diderot--Romanticism--Jacobi--Hegel--Recent
doctrines--VI. Natural rights and their dissolution--Historical
school of rights--Comparison between rights and language--VII.
Concept of law, and studies of comparative rights and of the general
Doctrine of law--VIII. Legalism and moral casuistic--Probabilitism
and Jesuitic morality--Critique of the concept of the
licit--Fichte--Schleiermacher--Rosmini.


CONCLUSION 586

The Philosophy of the Spirit as the whole of Philosophy--Correspondence
between Logic and System--Dissatisfaction at the end of every system
and its irrational motive--Rational motive: inexhaustibility of Life
and of Philosophy.




TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

This translation of Benedetto Croce's _Philosophy of the Practical_
(Economic and Ethic) is complete.




FIRST PART


THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN GENERAL




FIRST SECTION


THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS RELATIONS




I


THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY AS A FORM OF THE SPIRIT


[Sidenote: _Practical and theoretic life._]

A glance at the life that surrounds us would seem more than sufficient
to establish, without the necessity of special demonstration, the
existence of a circle of practical activity side by side with the
theoretical. We see in life men of thought and men of action, men of
contemplation and of action, materially distinct, as it were, from one
another: here, lofty brows and slow dreamy eyes; there, narrow brows,
eyes vigilant and mobile; poets and philosophers on the one side; on
the other, captains and soldiers of industry, commerce, politics, the
army, and the church. Their work seems to differ as do the men. While
we are intent upon some discovery just announced, in chemistry or
in physic, or upon some philosophy that comes to shake old beliefs,
upon a drama or a romance that revives an artist's dream, we are
suddenly interrupted and our attention is called to spectacles of an
altogether different nature, such as a war between two states, fought
with cannon or with custom-house tariffs; or to a colossal strike, in
which thousands upon thousands of workmen make the rest of society feel
the power of their numbers and of their strength, and the importance
of their work in the general total; or a potent organization which
collects and binds together the forces of conservative resistance,
employing interests and passions, hopes and fears, vices and virtues,
as the painter his colours, or the poet his words, sometimes making
like them a masterpiece, but of a practical nature. The man of action
is from time to time assailed as it were with nausea at his orgies of
volitional effort and eyes with envy the artist or the man of science
in the same way as polite society used to look upon the monks who had
known how to select the best and most tranquil lot in life. But as a
general rule they do not go beyond this fleeting feeling, or if they
do resolve to cease their business on the Ides, they return to it on
the Kalends. But the contemplative man in his turn also sometimes
experiences this same nausea and this same aspiration; he seems to
himself to be idle where so many are working and bleeding, and he cries
to the combatants: "Arms, give me arms,"[1] for he too would be a miner
with the miners, would navigate with the navigators, be an emperor
among the kings of coal. However, as a general rule, he does not make
more out of this than a song or a book. Nobody, whatever his efforts,
can issue from his own circle. It would seem that nature supplies men
made precisely for the one or for the other form of activity, in the
same way as she makes males and females for the preservation of the
species.

[Sidenote: _Insufficiency of descriptive distinctions._]

But this mode of existence with which the practical activity manifests
itself in life, as though physically limited, has no certainty, when
separated from the theoretical life, nor is it, as might be believed,
a fact that imposes itself. Facts never impose themselves, save
metaphorically: it is only our thought which _imposes_ them upon
_itself,_ when it has criticized them and has recognized their reality.
That existence and that distinction, which seem so obvious that one
can touch them with one's hand, are at bottom nothing but the result
of primary and superficial philosophic reflection, which posits as
essentially distinct that which is so only at a first glance and in
the mass. Indeed, if we continue to meditate with the same method and
assumptions as in the first instance, we shall find that those very
distinctions, which reflection had established, are by reflection
annulled. It is not true that men are practical or theoretical.

The theoretical man is also practical; he lives, he wills, he acts
like all the others. The so-called practical man is also theoretical;
he contemplates, believes, thinks, reads, writes, loves music and the
other arts. Those works that had been looked upon as inspired entirely
by the practical spirit, when examined more closely, are found to
be exceedingly complex and rich in theoretic elements--meditations,
reasonings, historical research, ideal contemplations. Those works
on the other hand that had been assumed to be manifestations of the
purely artistic or philosophic spirit, are also products of the will,
for without the will nothing can be done; the artist cannot prepare
himself for his masterpiece for years and years, nor the thinker bring
to completion his system. Was not the battle of Austerlitz also a
work of thought and the _Divine Comedy_ also a work of will? From
such reflections as these, which might be easily multiplied, arises
a mistrust, not only of the statement first made, but also of the
inquiry that has been undertaken. It is as though one had filled a
vessel with much difficulty and were then obliged to empty it anew
with a like effort, to find oneself again facing the vessel, empty as
before. Or one adheres to the conclusion that neither the theoretic
nor the practical exists as distinct, but that they are one single
fact, which is one or other of the two, or a third to be determined,
manifesting itself concretely in infinite shades and gradations, which
we arbitrarily attempt to reduce to one or more classes, separating and
denominating them as distinct in a not less arbitrary manner.

[Sidenote: _Insufficiency of the psychological method in philosophy._]

By describing this process of ordinary reflection, in relation to
reality and by demonstrating its philosophic impotence, has at the
same time been demonstrated the nature and the _impotence_ of the
_psychological method,_ applied to philosophical problems. For
psychological philosophy, though contained in ponderous treatises
and in solemn academical lectures, does not really achieve more than
ordinary reflection, or rather, is nothing but ordinary reflection.
Having classified the images of the infinite manifestations of human
activity, placing, for instance, will and action side, by side with
thought and imagination, it looks upon this classification as reality.
But classes are classes and not philosophical distinctions: whoever
takes them too seriously, and understands them in this second sense,
finds himself eventually obliged to admit that they possess no reality.
Thereupon he declares with shouts and protestations the non-existence
of the _faculties of the soul,_ or rather their existence as a mere
mental artifice, without relation to reality. He may do more than this
and throw overboard the criterion or distinction itself, together with
those false distinctions, proclaiming that all spiritual manifestations
are reducible to a single element. This element turns out in the end
to be precisely one of the rejected classes; hence the attempt to show
that facts of volition are nothing but facts of _representation,_ or
that those of representation are nothing but facts of _volition,_ or
that both are nothing but facts of _feeling,_ and so on.

[Sidenote: _Necessity of the philosophical method._]

We must then remain perfectly indifferent to the affirmations or
negations of this psychological philosophy. If it affirm the existence
of the practical activity, we must not put faith in it until we have
recognized its existence by the philosophical method, and equally
so in case it should deny it. The philosophical method demands
complete abstraction from empirical data and from their classes, and
a withdrawal into the recesses of the consciousness, in order to fix
upon it alone the eye of the mind. It has been affirmed that by this
method the individual consciousness is made the type and measure of
universal reality, and it has been suggested, with a view to obviate
this restriction and danger, that we should extend observations, so
as to include the soul of other individuals, of the present and of
the past, of our own and of other civilizations, thus completing (in
the accustomed phrase) the psychological with the historical and the
ethnographical methods. But there is no need to fear, because the
consciousness which is the object of the philosophical inquiry is not
that of the individual as individual, but the universal consciousness,
which is in every individual the basis of his individual consciousness
and of that of other individuals. The philosopher who withdraws into
himself is not seeking his own empirical self: Plato did not seek the
son of Aristo and of Perictione, nor Baruch Spinoza the poor sickly
Jew; they sought that Plato and that Spinoza, who are not Plato or
Spinoza, but man, the spirit, universal being. The remedy proposed
will therefore seem not only useless, but actually harmful; for in
an inquiry whose very object is to surpass the empirical itself, is
offered the aid of a multiplicity of selves, thus increasing the tumult
and the confusion, where there should be peace and silence; offering,
in exchange for the universal that was sought, something worse than the
individual, namely, the _general,_ which is an arbitrary complex of
mutilated individualities.

[Sidenote: _Constatation and deduction._]

It may seem, however, that the result of such an inquiry as to the form
and the universality of consciousness would merely possess the value of
a statement of fact, not different from any other statement, as when
we say, for instance, that the weather is rainy, or that Tizio has
married. If these two last facts be indubitable, because well observed,
in like manner indubitable, because likewise well observed, will be
an affirmation concerning the universal consciousness. And since both
affirmations are true, there is certainly no difference between them,
or between truth and truth, considered as such. But since single and
contingent facts, like the two adduced in the example, are single
and contingent, precisely because they have not their own reason in
themselves, and because the universal is the universal, precisely
because it is a sufficient reason to itself, it clearly results that
we cannot assume that truth has been definitely established from the
universal standpoint of consciousness, save when the reason for this
also has been seen, that is to say until that aspect has been simply
enunciated and asserted, as in the case of a single fact. To affirm
the existence of the practical form of activity, side by side with the
theoretical, means to deduce the one from the other, and both from
the unity of the spirit and of the real. We do not intend to withdraw
ourselves from this duty and exigency; and if we limit ourselves
here at the beginning to the assertion of its existence and to the
demonstration that the arguments brought against it are unfounded, we
do so for didascalic reasons, certain that in due course we shall be
able to free this assertion from what it may contain of provisional,
that is to say, from the character itself of assertion.

[Sidenote: _Theories which deny the practical form of the spirit._]

The doctrines which deny the practical form of the spirit are and
cannot but be of two fundamental kinds, according to the double
possibility offered by the proposition itself which they propose to
refute. The first doctrine affirms that _the practical form is not
spiritual activity,_ the second that although it be spiritual activity,
_yet it is not in any way distinguishable from the already recognized
theoretic form of the spirit._ The second, so to speak, denies to it
specific, the first generic character.

[Sidenote: _The practical as a fact of unconsciousness._]

Those who maintain the first of these theses say:--We are unconscious
of the will at the moment of willing and during its real development.
This consciousness is only attained after one has willed, that is to
say, after the volitional act has been developed. Even then, we are not
conscious of the will itself, but of our representation of the will.
Therefore the will, that is to say the practical activity, is not an
activity of the spirit. Since it is unconscious, it is nature and not
spirit. The theoretic activity which follows it is alone spiritual.

[Sidenote: _Critique._]

Were we, however, to allow this argument to pass, the result would be
that none of the activities of the spirit would belong to the spirit,
that they would all be unconscious and all, therefore, nature. Indeed,
the activity of the artist, at the moment when he is really so, that
is to say in what is called the moment of artistic creation, is not
conscious of itself: it becomes conscious only afterwards, either in
the mind of the critic or of the artist who becomes critic of himself.
And it has also often been said of the activity of the artist, that it
is unconscious; that it is a natural force, or madness, fury, divine
inspiration. _Est Deus in nobis_; and we only become conscious of the
divinity that burns and agitates us when the agitation is ceasing and
cooling begun. But what of the activity of the philosopher? It may
seem strange, but it is precisely the same with the philosopher. At
the moment in which he is philosophizing, he is unconscious of his
work; in him is God, or nature; he does not reflect upon his thought,
but thinks; or rather the thing thinks itself in him, as a microbe
living in us nourishes itself, reproduces itself and dies: so that
sometimes the philosopher has also seemed to be seized with madness.
The consciousness of his philosophy is not in him at that moment; but
it is in the critic and in the historian, or indeed in himself a moment
after, in so far as he is critic and historian of himself. And will the
critic or the historian at least be conscious? No, he will not be so
either, because he who will afterwards criticize the historico-critical
work is conscious of it, or he himself, in so far as he criticizes
himself, and by objectifying himself occupies a place in the history of
criticism and of historiography. In short, we should never be conscious
in any form of the spiritual activity.

But this negation is founded on a false idea of consciousness:
spontaneous is confused with reflex consciousness, or that which is
intrinsic to one activity with that which is intrinsic to another,
which surpasses the first and makes of it its object. In such a
sense we can certainly not be conscious of the will, save in the
representation which follows it, as we are not conscious of a poem,
save at the moment of criticizing it. But there is also consciousness
in the act itself of him who reads or composes a poem, and he "is
conscious" (there is no other expression) of its beauty and of its
ugliness, of how the poem should and of how it should not be. This
consciousness is not critical, but is not therefore less real and
efficacious, and without it internal control would be wanting to the
formative act of the poet. Thus also there is consciousness in the
volitional and practical act as such: we are not aware of this act
in a reflex manner, but we feel, or, if you will, we possess it.
Without it there would be no result. It is therefore developed in
moments or alternatives of happiness and of unhappiness, of well-being
and of malaise, of satisfaction and of remorse, of pleasure and of
pain. If this be unconsciousness, we must say that unconsciousness is
consciousness itself.

[Sidenote: _Nature and practical activity._]

The practical activity may appear to be nature in respect of the
theoretical, but not as something without the spirit and opposed to
it, but as a form of the spirit opposed to another form, esthetic
contemplation has in like manner, as has already been mentioned,
appeared to be a natural force creating the world of intuition, which
the philosophical activity of man afterwards understands and recreates
logically. Hence art can be called nature (and has indeed been so
called), and conversely philosophy has been called spirituality. This
gives rise to the further problem: whether it be correct to consider
nature (it is convenient so to call it) that which has afterwards
been recognized in substance as spiritual activity; or whether the
concept and the name of spirit should not be reserved for that which
is truly altogether outside the spirit, and whether this something
placed altogether outside the spirit truly exists. This point does
not concern us here, although we are much disposed to admit that
one of the mainstays of that absurd conception of nature as of the
extra-spiritual is precisely the practical or volitional form of the
spirit, so conspicuously different from the theoretical form and from
the sub-forms of the same. We do not therefore hold those philosophers
to have been so completely in the wrong, who have identified nature and
will, for they have thus at any rate discovered one aspect of the truth.

[Sidenote: _Reduction of the practical form to the theoretical._]

Passing to the second thesis, which does not place the will outside
the spirit, but denies to it the distinction between practical and
the theoretical forms and affirms that the will is thought, there is
nothing to be objected to it, provided that, as is often the case,
"thought" be taken as synonymous with "spirit." In this case, as in
that where it is affirmed that art is thought, we need only inquire,
what form of thought is the will, as in the other what form of thought
is art. It is not, for instance, logical or historical thought, and
the will is neither imaginative, logical nor historical thought: if
anything, it must be _volitional thought._

But we have the genuine form of this thesis in the affirmation that
the will is the intelligence itself, that to will is to know, and that
action practically well conducted is truth. This thesis would not have
arisen, had it not found support in the real situation of things (and
what this support is will be seen when studying the relation of the
practical with the theoretic activity, and the complicated process of
deliberation). But, when tested here independently, it proves to be
unsustainable.

[Sidenote: _Critique._]

We must not oppose to it the usual observations as to the lack of
connection between great intellectual and great volitional development,
or the cases of those theoreticians who are practically quite
ineffectual, of philosophers who are bad governors of States, of the
"very learned" who are not "men" and the like; for the reason already
given, that an observation is not a philosophical argument, but a
fact which itself has need of an explanation, and when this has been
done, it may serve as proof of the philosophical theory, but can never
be substituted for it. But it is well to recall to memory the quite
peculiar character of the will and the practical activity in respect
of knowledge, intellectual light is cold, the will is hot. When we
pass from theoretic contemplation to action and to the practical, we
have almost the feeling of generating, and sons are not made with
thoughts and words. With the greatest intellectual clearness, we yet
remain inert, if something does not intervene that rouses to action,
something analogous to the inspiration that makes run a shiver of joy
and of voluptuousness through the veins of the artist. If the will
be not engaged, every argument, however plausible it may seem, every
situation, however clear, remains mere theory.

The education of the will is not effected with theories or definitions,
æsthetic or historical culture, but with the exercise of the will
itself. We teach how to will as we teach how to think, by fortifying
and intensifying natural dispositions, by example, which suggests
imitation, by difficulties to be solved (practical problems), by
rousing energetic initiative and by disciplining it to persist. When
an act of will has taken place, no argument will extinguish it. As an
illness is not to be cured with reasons, so an affective and volitional
state cannot be altered by these means. Reasoning and knowledge may
and certainly do assist, but they do not constitute the ultimate and
determining moment. The will alone acts upon the will, not in the sense
that the will of one individual can act upon that of another (which
is merely a fact among the facts perceived by him), but in the sense
that the will of the individual himself, causing the previous volition
to enter upon a crisis, dissolves it and substitutes for it a new
practical synthesis, with a new volition.

[Sidenote: _The practical as thought which realizes itself. Recognition
of its autonomy._]

The evident paradox of the thesis which identifies without any
distinction thought and will, theory and practice, has caused it to
be modified and to be produced in another form, expressed in the
definition; that the will is thought in so far as it _is translated
into act,_ thought in so far as it is _imprinted_ upon nature, thought
when _held_ so _firmly_ before the mind as to _become action,_ and
so on. Now it remains to determine what may be the relation between
thought and will, and when this has been done, we shall see what
is exact and what inexact in the above formulæ, of translating,
imprinting, and holding fast. These formulæ are all logically vague,
however imaginative they may be. But what is important to note here is
that with the new turn given to the thesis that denies the peculiarity
of the practical activity, this same peculiarity is unconsciously
affirmed, because that transforming, that imprinting, that holding
fast, which did not exist in the simple theory, conceal precisely the
will. Thus the ultimate form of the negation comes to join hands with
that of the affirmation, and we can consider undisputed the existence
of a particular form of the spirit, which is the practical activity. We
must now examine the relation of this form with the other from which it
has been distinguished.


[1] Allusion to a verse of Leopardi in _Canzone all' Italia._




II


NEGATION OF THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF FEELING

[_Sidenote: The practical activity and the so-called third spiritual
form: feeling._]

In affirming the existence of the practical form of activity, we have
had in view only the theoretical form and have demonstrated that
the one cannot be absorbed and confused in the other, and we have
referred only to the theoretic form, when announcing our intention of
determining the relations of the practical with the other forms of the
spirit. This seems but little correct, and in any case not exhaustive,
because there are or may be other non-theoretical forms of the spirit,
into which the practical form could be resolved. Of these it would be
necessary to take account. And not to beat too long about the bush,
that of which in this case it is question, is the form of _feeling,_
the last or intermediary of the three forms into which it is customary
to divide the spiritual activity: representation, feeling, tendency;
thought, feeling, will. Attempts have not been wanting to reduce
tendency or will to feeling, or, as is said, to a sentimental reaction
from perceptions and thoughts. In fact there is hardly a treatise
of philosophy of the practical without a preliminary study of the
relations between the will and feeling. We cannot, then, escape from
the dilemma; either we must recognize the omission into which we have
fallen and hasten to correct it, or else make explicit the supposition
that may be contained in that omission (which would thus be intentional
and conscious), that _a third general form of the spirit, or a form of
feeling, does not exist._ We have adopted precisely this last position,
and it therefore becomes incumbent upon us briefly to expose the
reasons for which we hold that the concept of feeling must disappear
from the system of the spiritual forms or activities.

[Sidenote: _Various meanings of the word feeling, as a psychological
class._]

Feeling may and has been understood in various ways, some of which do
not at all concern our thesis. In the first place, the word "feeling"
has been used to designate a class of psychical facts constructed
according to the psychological and naturalistic method. Thus it
has happened that, with various times and authors, all the most
rudimentary, tenuous, and evanescent manifestations of the spirit have
been called "feelings," slight intuitions (or sensations as they are
called), not yet transformed into perceptions, slight perceptions,
slight tendencies and appetites, in fact all that forms, as it were,
the base of the life of the spirit. The name has thus, on the other
hand, also been given to psychical processes and conditions, in which
various forms follow one another or alternate in relation to a material
empirically limited. Such are what are called feelings of "fatherland,"
"love," "nature," "the divine." Nothing forbids the formation of such
classes and the use of that denomination, but as has already been
declared in relation to the psychological method, they are of no use
to philosophy, which not only does not receive them within its limits,
but does not occupy itself with them at all, save to reject them when
they present themselves, as philosophical psychology or psychological
philosophy. To classify is not to think philosophically, and philosophy
on the one hand does not recognize criteria of small and great, of
weak and strong, of more and of less, and a small or smallest thought,
a small or smallest tendency, is for it thought and tendency and not
feeling at all; on the other, it does not admit complicated processes
without resolving these into their simple components. Thus the feeling
of love or of patriotism, and the others made use of in the example,
are revealed to philosophy as series of acts of thought and of will,
variously interlaced. Let the psychologists, then, keep their classes
and sub-classes of feeling. We, for our part, not only do not dream of
di-possessing them of such a treasure, but shall continue to draw from
it, when necessary, the small change of ordinary conversation.

[Sidenote: _Feeling as a state of the spirit._]

There also exists another meaning of the word "feeling," of which,
at present at any rate, we do not take account. This appears when
the word is used to designate _the state_ of the spirit or of one of
the special forms of the spirit; we should indeed term these more
correctly the _states,_ since the spirit in this case, as is known,
is polarized in two opposite terms, usually denominated _pleasure and
pain._ Indubitably these two terms can also be taken as psychological
(and are thus included in the preceding case). Hence it results that
pleasure and pain are represented by psychologists as the two extremes
of a continuous series, in which there is a passage from the one to
the other term by insensible increases and gradations. But we must
also recognize that this psychological representation is not the only
one possible, and indeed is not truly the real one, and that the two
terms have their place and their proper meaning in the philosophy
of the spirit. They are, as has been said, _opposites;_ and are
differentiated, not only by a more and a less, by a greatest and a
least, but also by the special character of distinction that opposites
possess. The doctrine of opposites and of opposites in the practical
activity of the spirit does not, however, appertain to this part of our
exposition. In denying feeling, we do not here deny the doctrine of
opposites, and that psychology of the _states_ of the spirit which is
founded upon it, but the doctrine of feeling considered as a particular
_form_ of _activity._

[Sidenote: _Function of the concept of feeling in the History of
philosophy; the indeterminate._]

The conception of feeling as a spiritual activity has answered to a
want of research, which may be described as _provisional excogitation._
Whenever thought has found itself face to face with a form or subform
of spiritual activity, which it was not possible either to eliminate
or to absorb in forms already recognized, the problem to be solved
has been endorsed with that word "feeling." With many this has passed
for a solution. Feeling, in fact, has been the indeterminate in the
history of philosophy, or rather the not yet fully determined, the
_half-determined._

Hence its great importance as an expedient for the indication of
new territories to conquer, and as a stimulus against remaining
obstinately shut up in old and insufficient formulæ. But hence also
its fate: the problem must not be exchanged for its solution, the
indeterminate or semi-determinate must be determined. Whenever the
determination of the forms and sub-forms of the spirit has not been
given in a complete manner, the category of feeling will reappear (and
it will be beneficial); but at the same time will reappear the duty of
exploring it and of understanding what is concealed beneath it, or at
least what unsolved difficulty has caused it to reappear afresh.

Now we have already met with the concept of feeling on more than one
occasion, when investigating the philosophy of the theoretic spirit,
as something supplying a theoretical need outside the theoretic forms
generally admitted, or as a special form of theoretic activity. Every
time that we have done this, an attentive examination has caused it
to disappear before our eyes, and has generally helped us, either to
discover something previously unknown, or to confirm the necessity of
contested categories.

[Sidenote: _Feeling as herald of the æsthetic form;_]

Thus it happened that when a special _æsthetic_ function was
not recognized and it was attempted to explain it, either
intellectualistically, as nothing but an inferior form of philosophy,
or historically, as a reproduction of the historical and natural datum,
or almost as the satisfaction of certain volitional wants (hedonistic
theory), the view of art as neither a form of the intellect nor of
perception nor of will, but of _feeling,_ was an advance, as also
was the appeal to men of _feeling_ to recognize and to judge it.
As a result of this insistence, it was eventually discovered that
art possessed an absolutely simple and ingenuous theoretic form,
without either intellectual or historical contents, the form of the
pure intuition which is that of the æsthetic and artistic activity.
Whoever returns to treat of art as a product of feeling, after this
discovery of the pure intuition, falls back from the determinate to the
semi-determinate, and is at the mercy of all the dangers which arise
from it.

[Sidenote: _As herald of the intuitive element in Historiography._]

The theory of historiography owes its progress in like manner to the
demonstration that it is impossible to deduce the historical statement
from concepts, but that we must deduce it in final analysis from an
immediate _feeling_ of the real, that is to say, from the _intuitive_
element, which inevitably exists in every historical reconstruction,
as in every perception. On the other hand, and in altogether another
sense, reacting against the false idea of an extra--subjective
historical objectivity, to be found in the mere reproduction of the
datum, it was made evident that no historical narration is possible
without the _reaction of feeling_ in respect to the datum. Thus was
discovered the indispensability of the _intellective_ element in the
historical affirmation. Whoever has recourse to feeling as a factor
in historiography, after this complete constitution of the historical
judgment, returns from the clear to the confused, from light, if not to
darkness, then to twilight.

[Sidenote: _Feeling as herald of the pure concept in philosophical
Logic._]

The concept of feeling has also been of capital importance in the
progress of the Logic of philosophy. For how could we begin to explain
that philosophy is constructed with a method altogether different from
that of the exact disciplines (natural sciences and mathematics),
without denying to those sciences the capacity of conquering the
supreme truth, the true truth, full reality, and recognizing such
capacity on the other hand to a special function called _feeling_
or _immediate_ knowledge? That function was void, that is to say,
undetermined, because defined in a negative and not in a positive
manner: feeling was something different from the abstract and arbitrary
procedure of the exact sciences, from the abstract intellect, but its
true nature was unknown. When this was at last known it was discovered
that it was not a question of "feeling" or of "immediate knowledge,"
but of the intellect itself, in its genuine and uncontaminated nature,
its pure and free activity, of intellect as _reason,_ of thought as
_speculative_ thought, of that "immediate knowledge," which is true,
intrinsic, perpetual _mediation._ Whoever henceforth returns to
feeling, after the discovery of the pure or speculative concept, and
believes it to be the creator of philosophy and of religion, fighting
with it against the natural and mathematical sciences, behaves as he
who should wish to return to-day to the flint-lock, for the excellent
reason that it was an advance upon the bow and the catapult. Thus those
who invoke feeling in philosophy are henceforth a little ridiculous.
This does not imply that they were not at one time to be taken
seriously, for this concept has been of great provisional assistance
and has been as it were the compass of the new idea of philosophy.

[Sidenote: _Analogous function in the Philosophy of the practical._]

The same will be the case in the investigation that we have begun of
the practical form of the spirit and of the problems to which it gives
rise. This concept of feeling has been mingled with them all, and
propositions have been formed, of which we shall indicate the true
significance in the proper places. Beginning at once and limiting
ourselves solely to the question of the existence of a peculiar
practical form, it is easy to understand why it has so often been
maintained against the intellectual and theoretical exclusivists, that
the will consists, not of knowledge, but of feeling; that the principle
of action, far from being an intellectual principle, is sentimental
emotion; that in order to produce a volition, reason, ideas, and facts
perceived do not suffice, but that it is necessary that all these
things be transformed into feelings, which must take possession of the
soul; that the base of life lived, that is, of practical life, is not
thought, but feeling, and so on. With these formulæ was recognized
the peculiarity of the practical activity. The theory of feeling in
respect of the practical represents progress as compared with the
intellectualistic theory, because the appearance of indeterminateness
is progress as compared with bad determinateness, and contains in
itself the new and more complete determinateness.

[Sidenote: _Negation of feeling._]

But in this very way of ours of understanding the value of these
formulæ, is implied their resolute negation, when they tend to
persist, after having accomplished their function, and to maintain
side by side with the theory of the practical a third general form
of the spirit, namely feeling. No spiritual fact or manifestation of
activity can be adduced, which, examined without superficiality, is
not reducible to an act of fancy, intellect and perception, that is,
of theory (when it is not at once revealed as an abstraction or as a
merely psychological class of these acts); or to an act of utilitarian
or ethical volition (when it is not here too a psychological class,
variously designated as aspirations, passions, affections, and the
like). Let him who will search his spirit and attempt to indicate one
single act, differing from the above, as something new and original and
deserving of the special denomination of feeling.

[Sidenote: _Its deductive exclusion._]

This constatation of fact (we repeat the warning) is but the first
step in the complete philosophical demonstration, which demands that
we show not only that a third form does not exist, but that _it cannot
exist._ This demonstration will be given further on, and will coincide
with that of the demonstration of the necessity of the two forms,
theoretical and practical; a duality that is unity and a unity that is
duality. Recognizing the legitimacy of the demand for a philosophical
deduction of the forms of the spirit, and therefore of a deductive
exclusion of those that are spurious and wrongly adopted, it seems that
if it be somewhat delayed, such a mode of exclusion will also yield
clearer results.




III


RELATION OF THE PRACTICAL TO THE THEORETIC ACTIVITY


[Sidenote: _Precedence of the theoretical activity._]

Freed from the equivocal third term, which is feeling, and now passing
to the problem of the relation between the theoretical and the
practical activity enunciated, we must in the first place declare the
thesis that _the practical activity presupposes the theoretical._ Will
is impossible without knowledge; as is knowledge, so is will.

[Sidenote: _The unity of the spirit and the co-presence of the
practical._]

In recognizing this precedence of knowledge to will, we do not wish to
posit as thinkable a theoretical man or a theoretical moment altogether
deprived of will. This would be an unreal abstraction, inadmissible
in philosophy, which operates solely with real abstractions, that is,
with universal concretes. The forms of the spirit are distinct and
not separate, rand when the spirit is found in one of its forms, or
is _explicit_ in it, the other forms are also in it, but _implicit,_
or, as is also said, _concomitant._ If theoretical and cognoscitive
man were not at the same time volitional, he would not even be able to
stand on his feet and look at the sky, and, literally speaking, if he
were not alive, he would not be able to think (and thinking is both
an act of life and an act of will, which is called _attention)._ Were
he not to will, he would be unable to pass from waking to sleep and
from sleep to waking. Thus in order to be purely theoretical, it is
necessary to be at the same time in some degree practical; the energy
of pure fancy and of pure thought springs from the trunk of volition.
Hence the importance of the will for the æsthetic and intellectual
life; the will is not theory, nor is it the force that makes grain to
grow or guides the course of rivers, but as it assists the culture of
grain or restrains the destructive impetus of rivers, so it assists and
restrains the force of fancy and of thought, causing them to act in
the best way, that is, to be as they really ought to be, namely, fancy
and thought in their purest manifestation. The practical activity,
therefore, acts in this way, and as it drags the man of science from
his study and the artist from his studio, if it be necessary to defend
his country or to watch at the bedside of his sick father, so it
commands the artist and the man of science to fulfil their special
mission and to be themselves in an eminent degree.

[Sidenote: _Critique of pragmatism._]

All the arguments that have been used in the past and that are used in
the present, to maintain the dependence of the theoretical upon the
practical activity, are of value for what of truth they contain, that
is, only to demonstrate this unity of the spiritual functions that
we have recognized, and the indispensability of the volitional force
for the health of the cognoscitive spirit. But the passage from this
thesis to the other, that the true is the production of the will, is
nothing but a sophism, founded on the double signification of the word
"production." It should be clear that to _assist_ the work of thought
with the will is one thing and that to _substitute_ the will for the
work of thought is another. To claim to substitute the will for the
work of thought, is equivalent to the negation of that force that
should be assisted; it is the most open proclamation of scepticism,
the most complete distrust of the true and of the possibility of
attaining to it. This attempt is now called _pragmatism,_ or is at
any rate one of the meanings of the word, with which the school of
the greatest confusion that has ever appeared in philosophy adorns
itself in our day. This school mixes together the most divergent
theses--that of the stimulating effect that the will has upon thought,
that other of the volitional or arbitrary moment, by means of which
perceptions and historical data are reduced to abstract types in the
natural disciplines, or postulates laid down for the construction
of mathematical classes. The third form, which might be called the
Baconian prejudice, maintains the exclusive utility of the natural
sciences and mathematics for the well-being of life. The fourth
thesis is positivistic: here it is maintained that we cannot know
anything save what we ourselves arbitrarily compress into the formula
and classes of mathematics and of naturalism. The fifth thesis is
a romantic exaggeration of the principle of creative power in man,
substituting the caprice of the individual for the universal spirit.
The sixth, something between silliness and Jesuistry, recommends
the utility of making one's illusions and believing them to be
true. The seventh is superstitious, occultist and spiritistic--and
there are others that we omit. If pragmatism has had and preserves
any attraction, it owes this to the truth of its first and second
theses and to the half truth of the fifth. All the three are however
heterogeneous in themselves and unreconcilable with the others, which
are most fallacious. But we repeat with the old philosophers that
whoever in thinking says, "Thus I will it," is lost for truth.

[Sidenote: _Critique of psychological objections._]

Certain reservations that are made to the above truth from the point
of view of that philosophy, which we have called psychological, are
scarcely deserving of brief mention. We find in treatises of Psychology
that knowledge does precede the practical act, but only in the higher
forms of volition, whereas in its lower forms are found only impulses,
tendencies, appetites, altogether blind of any knowledge. Thus they
are able to talk of involuntary forms of the practical activity, of
a will that is not a will, when once the true will has been defined,
as precisely appetition illumined by previous knowledge. The _blind
will_ of certain metaphysicians is derived from such excogitations of
psychologists, who make of it a practical act without intelligence.
They have here attributed the value of reality to a crude concept of
class, a thing that happens not infrequently. A blind will is however
unthinkable. Every form of the practical activity, be it as poor and
rudimentary as you like (and let as many classes and gradations as you
will be formed), presupposes knowledge of some sort. In animals too?
will be asked. In animals too, provided they be, and in so far as they
are centres of life, and so of perceptions and of will. This is also
true of vegetables and of minerals, always with the above hypothesis.
We must banish every form of _aristocracy_ from the Philosophy of the
practical, as we have banished it from Æsthetic, from Logic, from
Historic, esteeming it most harmful to the proper understanding of
those activities. The aristocratic illusion is closely allied to that
one which makes us believe that we, shut up in the egotism of our
empirical individuality, are alone aware of the truth, that we alone
feel the beautiful, that we alone know how to love, and so on. But
reality is democratic.

From the psychological point of view yet another objection has been
raised. Knowledge (it is affirmed) cannot be the indispensable base of
the will, if, as is the case, the ignorant are often far more effective
than many learned men and philosophers. These latter, they say,
although possessing very great knowledge, and no less a stock of good
intentions, yet do not know how to direct their lives successfully.
But it is evident that in these cases the so-called ignorant possess
just that knowledge which is necessary for the purpose and is lacking
to the learned and to the philosopher, who would themselves be the
ignorant in such a case. Nicholas Macchiavelli was ignorant as compared
with Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, when he kept the spectators waiting two
hours in the sun, while he was attempting to dispose three thousand
infantry according to the directions that he had written. This he would
never have succeeded in doing, had not Signor Giovanni, with the help
of drummers and in the twinkling of an eye caused them to execute the
various manœuvres and afterwards carried Master Nicholas to dine, who,
save for him, would not have dined at all that day.[1]

[Sidenote: _Nature of the theoretical precedence of the practical:
historical knowledge._]

The knowledge required for the practical act is not that of the artist,
nor of the philosopher, or rather, it is these two also, but only in so
far as both are to be found as elements co-operating in that ultimate
and complete knowledge which is _historical._ If the first be called
intuition, the second concept, and the third perception, and the third
be looked upon as the result of the two preceding, it will be said
that the knowledge required for the practical act is _perceptive._
Hence the common saying that praises the sure eye of the practical man;
hence, too, the close bond between historical sense and practical and
political sense; hence, too, the justifiable diffidence of those who,
unable to grasp effectual reality, hope to attain to it by force of
mere syllogisms and abstractions, or believe that they have attained to
it, when they have erected an imaginary edifice. They prove by so doing
that they can never be practical men, at least in the sphere of action
at which they are then aiming.

Such knowledge is not of itself the practical act. The historian as
such is a contemplative, not a practical man or politician. If that
spark which is volition, do not spring forth, the material of knowledge
does not catch fire and is not transformed into the material of the
practical. But that knowledge is the condition, and if the condition
be not the conditioned, yet one cannot have the conditioned without
the condition. In this last signification, it is true that action
is knowledge, will, and wisdom, that is to say, in the sense that
willing and acting presuppose knowledge and wisdom. In this sense, and
considered solely in the stage of the cognoscitive investigation which
will form the base of action, the deliberation is a theoretical fact.
The customary expressions of logical, rational, judicious actions,
are metaphors, because action may be weak or energetic, coherent or
incoherent; but it will not have those predicates which are proper to
theoretical acts that precede actions, on which the metaphors aforesaid
are founded. As are these acts, so originate the practical act, will,
and action. We can act in so far as we have knowledge. Volition is not
the surrounding world which the spirit perceives; it is a beginning,
a new fact. But this fact has its roots in the surrounding world,
this beginning is irradiated with the colours of things that man has
perceived as a theoretical spirit, before he took action as a practical
spirit.

[Sidenote: _Its continual changeability._]

It is important to observe, as much to prevent an equivoke into which
many fall, as because of the consequences that will follow from holding
it, that we must not look upon the perceptive knowledge of reality
that surrounds us as a firm basis, upon which we act, by translating
the formed volition into act. For were this so, we should have to
assume that the surrounding world, perceived by the spirit, stops after
the perceptive act, which is not the case. That world changes every
second, the perceptive act perceives the new and the different, and the
volitional act changes according to that real and perceived change.
Perception and volition alternate every instant; in order to will, we
must touch the earth at every instant, in order to resume force and
direction.

[Sidenote: _No other theoretic precedent._]

Continuous perception and continuous change, that is the necessary
theoretic condition of volition. It is necessary and unique. No other
theoretical element is needed, because every other is contained in it,
and beyond it no other is thinkable.

[Sidenote: _Critique of concepts and practical judgments._]

But if this be true and no other theoretic element save that precede
the volition, then we find in the aforesaid theory the criticism of a
series of other theories, generally admitted in the Philosophy of the
practical, not less than in ordinary thought, none of which can be
retained without alterations and corrections.

Or better, there are not so many various theories to criticize; there
is rather one theory, which presents itself under different aspects and
assumes various names. This theory consists substantially in affirming
that with the complex of cognitions, of which we have hitherto treated
(all of which are summed up in the historical judgment), we do not
yet possess that one which is necessary, before we can proceed to
volition and action. A special form of concepts and judgments which
can be called _practical,_ must, it is said, appear; these render
the will possible, by interposing themselves between the previous
merely historical judgment and the will. Is it not indubitable that we
possess practical concepts, that is, concepts of classes of action or
of supreme guides to action, concepts of things _good, of ideals, of
ends,_ and that we effect _judgments_ of value by the application of
those concepts to the image of given actions? Is it not indubitable
that those judgments and those concepts refer, not to the simple
present fact, but to the future? How could we will, if we did not know
what is good to will, and that a given possible action corresponds to
that concept of good?

[Sidenote: _Posteriority of judgments to the practical act._]

Now it is undeniable that we in fact possess the above-mentioned
concepts and judgments. But what we must absolutely deny is that they
differ in any respect from other concepts and theoretical judgments,
and that they deserve to be distinguished from these as practical and
that they have the future for their object. The future, that which
is not, is not an object of knowledge; the material of the judgment,
whether it concern actions or thoughts, does not alter its logical and
theoretical character; the concepts of modes of action are concepts
neither more nor less than those of modes of thought. With this
negation we at the same time deny the possibility of their interposing
themselves between knowledge and will. Those judgments, far from being
anterior to the will, are posterior to it.

Let us state a simple case and observe the course of analysis on
the lines of the theory here criticized. It is winter-time; I am
cold; there is a wood close by, and I know that by cutting wood one
can light a fire and that fire gives heat: I therefore resolve to
cut wood. According to that theory, the spiritual process would be
expressed in the following chain of propositions: I know the actual
situation, that is to say, that I am cold, that wood gives fire and
fire heat, and that there exists wood that can be cut; I possess the
concept that it is a good thing to provide for the health of the body;
I judge that with heat I shall procure health during the winter, and
that in consequence heat is a good thing and the cutting of wood,
without which I cannot procure heat, is also good. Having made all
these constatations, I set in motion the spring of my will, and I
_will_ to cut the wood.--The process as above described seems real
and controllable by every one; but it is, on the contrary, illusory.
The practical judgment: "I shall act well in cutting the wood" really
means, "I will to cut the wood;" "this is a good thing" really means,
"I will this." I may change my will a moment after, substituting for
this volition one that is different or contrary, that does not matter.
At the moment that I formed that judgment, I must have seen myself
in the volitional attitude of a man cutting wood; the will must have
come first. Otherwise the judgment would never have existed. Given the
first actual situation and its complete expression in the judgment, no
other judgment can arise, if the actual situation do not change and
nothing new supervene. This new thing is always my will, which, when
the situation changes (as in the example, if I walk from the house to
the tree, or if I simply move my body in an imperceptible, manner in
the direction of the action willed), by adding to the actual reality
something that was not there before, provides material for a new
judgment. This judgment is called practical, but it is theoretical,
like the others that precede it; a judgment believed to precede the
volition, whereas in reality it follows it; a judgment believed to
condition a future act of will, whereas it is in reality the past act
of will looking at itself in the glass; a judgment that is not really
practical but _historical._

The illusion that things happen differently is caused by the fact
that we possess judgments concerning our past volitions, which are
afterwards collected into abstract formulæ, such as that "it is well
to cut wood." But, on the one hand, those formulæ and judgments are
in their turn formed from previous volitions, and on the other, those
formulæ do not possess any absolute value in the single and concrete
situation, so that they can be modified and substituted for others that
affirm the opposite. The question is not whether cutting wood has been
as a rule a good thing for me in the past, nor whether I have generally
willed it in the past: the question is to will it at this moment, that
is, to posit the cutting of wood at this moment as a good thing.

[Sidenote: _Posteriority of the practical concepts._]

As is the case with the pretended practical judgments and concepts of
classes formed upon them, so the concepts that they imply, of _things
good, of ideals, of ends, of actions worthy of being willed,_ and so
on, do not precede, but follow the volition that has taken place. These
concepts are the incipient reflection, scientific and philosophical,
upon the spontaneous acts of the will, and we cannot practise science
nor philosophize save about facts that have already taken place: if
the fact do not precede, there can be no theory. Certainly theory
does not do other than seek out the already created and give the
real principles of actions in the form of thought principles, in
the same manner as Logic discovers those principles that live and
operate in logical thought. But since the formula of the principle of
contradiction is not necessary for thinking without contradiction, but
presupposes it, so the concepts of ends, of things good, and of ideals
are not necessary for volitions, but presuppose them.

[Sidenote: _Origin of intellectualist and sentimentalist doctrines._]

The thesis of the will as knowledge draws support from the mistaken
belief in the practical principles and judgments that precede volition,
as also does the proposition that he who knows what is good for him
also wishes it, and that he who does not wish it does not know it.
This thesis is to be inverted, because to know what is good for one
means that one has willed it. From the opposite point of view, the
other thesis, of the impossibility of volition unless _feeling_ be
interposed between what is known and the will, is to be attributed to a
like mistaken belief. Feeling is held to give, as it were, a particular
value to facts, and to cause them to be felt as they should be felt, or
to be changed. The customary merit possessed by theories of feeling is
to be recognized in this thesis: that is to say, it has awakened or
reawakened consciousness of the peculiarity of the practical act in
respect to intellectualistic reductions and identifications. This merit
is not altogether lacking to the general theory of practical judgments
itself. These, although called judgments, were classified differently
to all the others, precisely because they were _practical._

[Sidenote: _The concepts of end and means._]

Having thus shown that it is not true that man first knows the end
and then wills it, it is possible to establish with greater precision
what is to be understood by _end._ The end, then, in universal, is the
concept itself of will. Considered in the single act, as this or that
end, it is nothing but this or that determinate volition. Hence is
also to be derived a better definition of its relation to the _means,_
which it is usual to conceive empirically and erroneously as a part of
volition and action at the service of another part. An act of will is
an infrangible unity and can be taken as divided only for practical
convenience. In the volitional act, all is volition; nothing is means,
and all is end. The means is nothing but the actual situation, from
which the volitional act takes its start, and is in that way really
distinguished from the end. Distinction and unification take place
together, because, as has been remarked, the volition is not the
situation, yet, on the other hand, as the volition, so the situation:
the one varies as a function of the other. Hence the absurdity of
the maxim, that _the end justifies the means._ This maxim is of an
empirical character and has sometimes been employed to justify actions
erroneously held to be unjustifiable, and more often to make pass as
just actions that were unjustifiable. As the end, so the means, but the
means is what is given and has no need of justification. The end is
what has been willed and must be justified in itself.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the end as flan or as fixed design._]

The idea that we generally have of finality is to be eliminated, owing
to the continual changeability of the means, that is, of the actual
situation, which would posit the end as something fixed, as a _plan_
to be carried out. The difference between the finality of man and that
of nature has recently been made to reside in nature: which has seemed
to act upon a plan which she changes, remakes, and accommodates at
every moment, according to contingencies, so that the point of arrival
is not for her predetermined or predeterminable. But the same can be
said of the human will and of its finality. The will too changes at
every moment, as the movement of a swimmer or of an athlete changes
at every moment, according to the motion of the sea or of the rival
athlete, and according to the varying measure or quality of his own
strength in the course of the volitional process. Man acts, case for
case and from instant to instant, realizing his will of every instant,
not that abstract conception which is called a plan. Hence also arises
the confirmation of the belief that there do not exist fixed types and
models of actions. He who seeks and awaits such models and types does
not know how to will. He is without that initiative, that creativeness,
that genius, which is not less indispensable to the practical activity
than to art and philosophy.

[Sidenote: _The will and the unknown._]

It will seem that the will thus becomes will of the unknown and is
at variance in too paradoxical a manner with the sayings, so clearly
evident, that _voluntas quae non fertur in incognitum_ and _ignoti
nulla cupido._ But those sayings are true only so far as they confirm
the fact that without the precedence of the theoretical act, the
practical act does not take place. Apart from this signification, it
should rather be maintained that _noti nulla cupido_ and that _voluntas
non fertur in cognitum._ What is known exists, and it is not possible
to _will the existence_ of what _exists_: the past is not a content
of volition. The will is the will of the unknown, that is to say,
is itself, which, in so far as it wills, does not know itself, and
knows itself only when it has ceased to will. Our surprise when we
come to understand the actions that we have accomplished, is often
not small; we realize that we have not done what we thought we had
done, and have on the contrary done what we had not foreseen. Hence
also the fallacy of the explanations that present volitional man as
surrounded with things that he does or does not will; whereas things,
or rather facts are the mere object of knowledge and cannot be willed
or not willed, as it is unthinkable to will that Alexander the Great
had not existed, or that Babylon had not been conquered. That which is
willed is not _things_ but _changes_ in things, that is to say, the
volitions themselves. This fallacious conception also arises from the
substitution of abstractions and classes of volitions for the real will.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the concept of practical sciences and of a
practical philosophy._]

It is to be observed, finally, that the erroneous concept of a form
of science called the _practical_ or _normative_ has its roots in the
concept of _the end, of the good, of concepts and judgments of value_
as original facts. When practical concepts and judgments, as a special
category of concepts and judgments, have been destroyed, the idea
of a practical and normative science has also been destroyed. For
this reason, the _Philosophy of the practical_ cannot be _practical
philosophy,_ and if it has appeared to constitute an exception
among all philosophies and that above all others it should preserve
a practical and normative function, this has arisen from a verbal
misunderstanding that is most ingenuous and most destructive. For
our part we have striven to dissipate it, even in the title of our
treatise, which, contrary to the usual custom, we have-entitled not
_practical,_ but _of the practical._


[1] Bandello, _Novelle,_ i. 40, intro.




IV


INSEPARABILITY OF ACTION FROM ITS REAL BASE AND PRACTICAL NATURE OF THE
THEORETICAL ERROR


[Sidenote: _Coincidence of intention and volition._]


The connection between the actual situation and will, means and
end having been made clear, no distinction that it may be desired
to establish between general and concrete volition, ideal and real
volition, that is to say between _intention and volition,_ is
acceptable. Intention and volition coincide completely, and that
distinction, generally suggested with the object of justifying the
unjustifiable, is altogether arbitrary in both the forms that it
assumes.

[Sidenote: _Volition in the abstract and in the concrete: critique._]

The first form is that of the distinction between abstract and
concrete, or better, between general and particular. It is maintained,
that we can will the good in the abstract and yet be unable to will
it in the concrete, that we may have good intentions and yet behave
badly. But by our reduction of the thing willed to the volition,
to will the abstract is tantamount to _willing abstractly._ And to
will abstractly is tantamount to _not willing,_ if volition imply a
situation historically determined, from which it arises as an act
equally determined and concrete. Hence, of the two terms of the
pretended distinction, the first, volition of the abstract, disappears,
and the second, concrete volition, which is the true and real volition
and intention, alone remains.

[Sidenote: _Thought volition and real volition: critique._]

The second form abandons, it is true, the abstract for the concrete,
but assumes two different volitional acts in the same concrete: the
one real, arising from the actual situation, the other, thought or
imagined, side by side with the former: this would be the volition,
that the intention. According to such a theory, it is always possible
to _direct the intention,_ that is, the real volition can always join
with the volitional act imagined and produce a nexus, in which the
volition exists in one way, the intention in another; the first bad
and the second good, or the first good and the second bad. Thus the
honourable man approved by the Jesuit, of whom Pascal speaks, although
he desire the death of him from whom he expects an inheritance and
rejoice when it takes place, yet endows his desire with a special
character, believing that what he wishes to attain is the prosperity
of his affairs, not the death of his fellow-creature. Or the same man
may kill the man who has given him a blow; but in so doing he will fix
his thought upon the defence of his honour, not upon the homicide.
Since he is not able to abstain from the action, he at least (they say)
purines the intention. The worst of this is that the real situation,
the only one of which we can take account, is the historical, not the
imaginary situation. In the reality of the consequent volition, it is
not a question of his own prosperity and nothing more, but of his own
prosperity coupled with the death of another, or of false prosperity.
It is not a question of his own honour and nothing more, but of his own
honour in conjunction with the violation of the life of another, that
is, of false honour. Thus the asserted fact of prosperity and honour
is changed into two qualified bad actions, and what was honourable
in the imaginary case, becomes dishonourable in the real case, which
is indeed the only one of which it is question. It is of no use to
imagine a situation that differs from reality, because it is to the
real situation that the intention is directed, not to the other, and
therefore it is not possible to direct, that is to say, to change the
intention, if the actual situation do not change.

The antipathy that has been shown for good-hearted and well-intentioned
men in recent centuries, and for practical doctrines with intention
as their principle (the morality of intention, etc.), arises from the
sophisms that we have here criticized. But since it is henceforward
clear to us that those so-called well-intentioned and good-hearted
people have neither good hearts nor good intentions and are nothing
but hypocrites, and because we do not admit any distinction between
intention and will, we are without fear or antipathy in respect to
the use of the word "intention," understanding it as a synonym for
"volition."

[Sidenote: _Critique of volition with base either unknown or
imperfectly known._]

But it will be said that we have here considered the case, in which,
while the real situation is known, there is a hypocritical pretence
of not knowing it, in order to deceive others and maybe oneself, and
that we have justly here declared that in such a case the will and
the intention were inseparable. But there is another case, in which,
though the situation of affairs be not known, yet it is necessary both
to will and to act at once. Here the concrete will is separated at
the beginning from the intention: the will is what it _can_ be, the
intention is as the action _would wish_ to be.

But this instance is equally or even more inconceivable than the
preceding. It has been clearly established that if we do not know, we
cannot will. Before arriving at a resolution, man tries to see clearly
in and about him, and so long as the search continues, so long as the
doubt is not dissipated, the will remains in suspense. Nothing can
make him resolve, where the elements for coming to a resolution are
wanting; nothing can make him say to himself "I know," when he does not
know; nothing can make him say "it will be as if I knew," because that
"as if I knew" would introduce the arbitrary method into the whole of
knowledge, and would cause universal doubt to take the place of doubt
circumscribed. This would disturb the function of knowledge itself,
against which an act of real felony would be committed. From nothing
nothing is born.

[Sidenote: _Illusions among the cases that are cited._]

There are no exceptions to this law, and those that are adduced can be
only apparent. A man is cautiously descending the dangerous side of
a mountain, covered with ice: will he or will he not place his foot
on that surface, of which he does not and cannot know the resistance?
However, there is no time to be lost: he must go on and take the risk.
It seems evident that in a case like this he wills and operates without
complete knowledge. But the case is not indeed unique or of a special
order: every act of life implies risk of the unknown, and if there were
not in us (as they say) _potestas voluntatem nostram extra limites
intellectus nostri extendendi,_ it would be impossible to move a step,
to lift an arm, or to put into one's mouth a morsel of bread, since
_omnia incerta ac periculis sunt plena._ What must be known in order
to form the volition is not that which we should know if we were in a
situation different from that in which we are (in which case, also,
the volition would be different), but that which we can know in the
situation in which we really find ourselves. The man on the glacier has
neither time nor means to verify the resistance of the surface of the
ice; but since he is obliged to proceed further, he does not act in a
rash, but in a very prudent manner, in putting his foot trustfully on
the ice that may be unfaithful to him. He would be acting rashly if,
having the means and the time, he failed to investigate its resistance,
that is to say, if he were in _another and imaginary situation,_ not
in that real and present situation, in which he finds himself. If I
knew the cards of my adversary, as the cheat knows them, I should
play differently, but it cannot be argued that because, as an honest
player, I know only my own, I am therefore playing inconsiderately: I
am playing as I ought, with the knowledge that I possess, that is, with
full knowledge of the real situation in which I find myself.

With this very simple observation is also solved an old puzzle of
the theory of volition. How does it happen that a man can choose
between two dishes of food at an equal distance and moving in the
same manner,[1] or between two objects altogether identical, offered
for sale to him at the same time, at the same price, by the same
individual? First, we must correct the hypothesis, for as two identical
things do not exist in nature, so the two objects in question and the
two possible actions of the example are not identical.

[1] This was an example used by the Schoolmen and by Dante.

Indeed the refined connoisseur always discovers some difference between
two objects, which to the ignorant, the absent-minded, and the hasty
seem to be the same. The question, then, is not of identical objects
and actions, but of those as in which there is neither time nor mode
(_majora premunt_) of recognizing the difference. For this reason,
therefore, we take no account of this difference, or, as is said,
they are looked upon as equal in this respect. But the _adiophora,_
the indifferent, do not exist, and owing to that abstraction, we do
not take account of other differences that always exist in the real
situation, owing to which my volition becomes concrete in a movement
that causes me to take the object on my right, because (let us suppose)
I am wont to turn to the right, or because, owing to a superstition
that is not less a matter of habit, I prefer the right to the left,
or because, through sympathy due to dignity, I prefer the object that
is offered to me with the right hand to a similar object offered with
the left, which, if only for this reason, is, strictly speaking, not
the same, but different, and so on. These minute circumstances are
absent from consciousness and are not felt by the will, not because
they escape as a rule reflection. If we neglect them in analysis as
non-existent, this always occurs, because we substitute for the real
situation another unreal situation imagined by ourselves. Thus it has
also been remarked, as a proof of the irrationality believed to exist
in our volitions and to be the cause of our acting without precise
knowledge, that no reason nor any theoretic precedent can be adduced
as to why, when fixing legal punishments, or in the application of
sentences, we give forty and not forty-one days' imprisonment, a
hundred lire fine instead of a hundred and one. But here, too, it is
clear that the detailed facts are not wanting, the knowledge of which
causes us to will the punishment to be so and so. This knowledge is
to be found in traditions, in the sympathy that we have for certain
numbers, in the ease with which they can be remembered or calculated,
and so on.--To sum up, man forms the volitional act, not because he
possesses some portentous faculty of extending his will outside the
limits of the intellect, but, on the contrary, because he possesses the
faculty of circumscribing himself within the limits of his intellect
on each occasion and of willing on that basis and within those limits.
That he wills, knowing some things and ignorant of infinite other
things, is indubitable. But this means that he is man and not God,
that he is a finite and not an infinite being, and that the sum of his
historical knowledge is on each occasion human and finite, as is on
each occasion the act of will which he forms upon it. Psychologists
would say that this arises from _narrowness_ of consciousness, but
Goethe, on the contrary, remarked with metaphor more apt and thought
more profound, that the true artist is revealed in _knowing how to
limit himself._ God himself, as it seems, cannot act, save by limiting
himself in finite beings.

[Sidenote: _Impossibility of volition with a false theoretic base._]

If the intention cannot be separated from the volition, because this
belongs to the real and not to the imaginary, and proceeds from
the known and never from the unknown, there yet remains a third
possibility, which is, that the will results differently from the
intention, owing to a _theoretical error_; as when we are said to
err _in good faith_ as to the actual situation, that is, we do not
indeed substitute the unknown for the known, nor do we substitute the
imaginary for the known, but we simply make a mistake in enunciating
the historical judgment to ourselves: intending to perform one action,
we perform on the contrary another.

This third possibility is also an impossibility, because it contradicts
the nature of the theoretical error, which, precisely because it is a
question of error and not of truth, cannot be in its turn theoretical
and must be and is practical, conformably to a theory of error of which
many great thinkers have seen or caught sight and which it is now
fitting to restore and to make clear.

[Sidenote: _Forms of the theoretical error and problem concerning its
nature._]

We have elsewhere amply demonstrated how theoretical errors arise
from the undue transference of one theoretical form to another, or
of one theoretical product into another distinct from it. Thus, the
artist who substitutes for the representation of the affections,
reasoning on the affections, mingling art and philosophy, or he who
in the composition of a work, fills the voids that his fancy has left
in the composition, with unsuitable elements taken from other works,
commits the artistic error, ugliness. Thus too, the philosopher, who
solves a philosophical problem in a fantastic way, as would an artist,
or, instead of a philosopheme, employs the historical, naturalistic
or mathematical method, and so produces a myth, or a contingent fact
universalized, or an abstraction in place of concreteness, that is
to say, a philosophical error. It is also a philosophical error to
transport philosophical concepts from one order to another and to
treat art as though it were philosophy or morality as though it were
economy. This also happens in an analogous manner with the historian,
the natural scientist, and the mathematician, all of whom are wrong, if
they interweave extraneous methods with those that are their own, and
with the views, conceptions, and classification of one order, those of
another.--But if this be the way in which particular errors and general
forms of theoretical error arise, what is the origin of the theoretical
error in universal? We have not asked this question explicitly
elsewhere, because only now can it receive the most effective reply.

[Sidenote: _Distinction between ignorance and error: practical genesis
of the latter._]

Error is not ignorance, lack of knowledge, obscurity or doubt. An error
of which we are altogether without consciousness is not error at all,
but that inexhaustible field which the spiritual activity continues to
fill to infinity. True and proper error is the affirmation of knowing
what we do not know, the substitution of a representation for that
which we do not possess, an extraneous conception for the one that
is wanting. Now affirmation is thought itself, it is truth itself.
When an inquiry has been completed, a process of cogitation closed,
the result is the affirmation that a man makes to himself, not with
a new act added to the foregoing, but with the act itself of thought
that has thought. It is therefore impossible that in the circle of the
pure theoretical spirit error should ever arise. Man has in himself
the fountain of truth. If it be true that on the death-bed there is
no lying, because man transcends the finite and communicates with
the infinite, then man who thinks is always on his bed of death, the
death-bed of the finite, in contact with the infinite. We may know that
we are ignorant, but this consciousness of ignorance is the cogitative
process in its _fieri,_ not yet having attained to its end, certainly
not (as has been said) error. Before this last can appear, before
we can affirm that we have reached a result, which the testimony of
the conscience says has not been reached, something extraneous to
the theoretical spirit must intervene, that is to say, a practical
act which simulates the theoretical. And it simulates it, not indeed
intrinsically (one does not lie with the depth of oneself or on one's
death-bed), but in taking hold of the external means of communication,
of the word or expression as sound and physical fact, and diverting
it to mean what, in the given circumstances, it could not mean. The
erroneous affirmation has been rendered possible, because something
else has followed the true affirmation, which is purely theoretical,
something that is improperly called affirmation in the practical sense,
whereas it is only _communication,_ which can be substituted in a
greater or less degree for the truth and falsely represent it. Thus the
theoretical error _in general_ arises, as do its particular forms and
manifestations, from the substitution for, or the illegitimate mating
of two forms of the spirit. These cannot be both theoretical here, but
must be the theoretical and the practical forms, precisely because we
are here in the field of the spirit in general and of the fundamental
forms of its activity. We are ignorant, then, because it is necessary
to be ignorant and to feel oneself ignorant, in order to attain to
truth; but we err only because _we wish to err._

[Sidenote: _Proofs and confirmation._]

Like all true doctrines, this of the practical nature of the
theoretical error, which at first sight seems most strange (especially
to professed philosophers), is yet found to be constantly confirmed
in ordinary thought. For all know and all continually repeat that
(immoderate) passions and (illegitimate) interests lead insidiously
into error, that we err, to be quick and finish or to obtain for
ourselves undeserved repose, that we err by acquiescence in old ideas,
that is to say, in order not to allow ourselves to be disturbed in our
repose that has been unduly prolonged, and so on. We do not mention
those cases in which it is a question of solemn and evident lies,
the brazen-faced manifestation of interests openly illegitimate. Let
us limit ourselves to the modest forms of error, to the venial sins,
because if these be proved to be the result of will, by so much the
more will this be proved of the shameless forms, the deadly sins. It is
also said that we err in _deafening_ ourselves and others with words,
with the verse that sounds and does not create, with the brush that
charms but does not express, with the formulæ that seem to contain a
thought but contain the void. In this way we come to recognize that
will has been rendered possible, owing to the communication being a
practical fact, of which a bad use can be made by means of a volitional
act. For the rest, if this were not so, what guarantee would truth
ever possess? If it were possible to err even once in perfect good
faith and that the mind should confuse true and false, embracing the
false as true, how could we any longer distinguish the one from the
other? Thought would be radically corrupt, whereas it is incorrupt and
incorruptible.

It is vain, therefore, to except the existence or the possibility of
errors of good faith, because truth alone is of good faith, and error
is always in a greater or less or least degree, of bad faith. Were
this not so, it would be incorrigible, whereas it is by definition
corrigible. Consequently, the last attempt to differentiate intention
from volition fails, since it posits an intention that is frustrated in
the volition, as the effect of a theoretical error, a good intention
that becomes, through no fault of its own, a bad volition. The
intention, being volition, takes possession of the whole volitional
man, causing the intellect to be attentive and indefatigable in the
search for truth, the soul ready to accept it, whatever it be, pure of
every passion that is not the passion for truth itself, and eliminates
the possibility, or assumes the responsibility of error.

A proof of this is afforded by the fact that to exquisite and delicate
souls, to consciences pure and dignified, even what are called their
theoretical errors are a biting bitterness, and they blame themselves
with them. On the other hand, in the presence of the foolish and the
wicked, one is often in doubt as to whether their folly and wickedness
come from the head or from the heart, whether it be madness rather
than set purpose. The truth is that all this evil, which seems to
arise from defective vision, comes really from the heart, for they
have themselves forged those false views with their sophisms, their
illegitimate internal affirmations and suggestions, that they may be
more free in their evil inclinations, thus obtaining for themselves
and for others a false moral _alibi._ We must applaud the former and
exhort them to continue to persevere in their scruple, the condition
of theoretical and practical health: we must inculcate to the second
a return to themselves and the removal of the mask that they have
assumed' as a disguise from themselves, before assuming it towards
others.

[Sidenote: _Justification of the practical repression of error._]

A consequence of the principle established is the justification of the
use of practical measures to induce those who err theoretically to
correct themselves, castigating them, when this is of assistance, for
admonition and example. It will be replied that these are measures of
other times, and that we are now in an epoch of liberty, when their
use is no longer permissible, and that we should now employ only the
persuasive power of truth. But those who say this are without eyes to
look within upon themselves. The Holy Inquisition is truly _holy_ and
lives for that reason in its _eternal_ idea. The Inquisition that is
dead was nothing but one of its contingent historical incarnations.
And the Inquisition must have been justified and beneficial, if whole
peoples invoked and defended it, if men of the loftiest souls founded
and created it severely and impartially, and its very adversaries
applied it on their own account, pyre answering to pyre. Thus Christian
Rome persecuted heretics as Imperial Rome had persecuted Christians,
and Protestants burned Catholics as Catholics had burned Protestants.
If certain ferocious practices are now abandoned (are they definitely
abandoned, or do they not persist in a different form?), we do not for
that reason cease from practically oppressing those who promulgate
errors. No society can dispense with this discipline, although the
mode of its application is subject to practical, utilitarian and moral
deliberation. We begin with man as a child, whose mental education is
at once and above all practical and moral education, education for
work and for sincerity (and no one has ever been seriously educated
who has not received at the least a provident slap or two or had his
ears pulled). This education is continued with the punishments for
culpable negligence and ignorance threatened in the laws, and so on
until we reach the spontaneous discipline of society, by means of which
the artist who produces the ugly and the man of science who teaches
the false are rebuked by the intelligent, or fall into discredit with
them. Such illegitimate and transitory applause as they may sometimes
obtain at the hands of the unintelligent and of the multitude is but
a poor and precarious recompense for them. Literary and artistic
criticism always has of necessity, and the more so the better it
understands its office, a practical and moral aspect reconcilable with
the purest æstheticity and theoreticity in the intrinsic examination of
works.

[Sidenote: _Empirical distinctions of errors and philosophical
distinctions._]

We certainly have good empirical reasons for distinguishing between
errors of bad faith and errors of good faith, errors that are avoidable
and errors that are unavoidable, pardonable and unpardonable,
mortal and venial. No one would wish to deny that there is a wide
difference between a slight distraction that leads to a wide erroneous
affirmation, and such malice as gives rise to a small and almost
imperceptible error, to a lie, which, externally considered, is almost
harmless. We should be as indulgent in respect to the former as we are
severe in respect to the latter. And from the empirical standpoint
we should recommend in certain cases tolerance and indulgence in
respect to the theoretical error, which should be looked upon rather
as ignorance than as sin. We cannot but take count of all those
affirmations, which, while they do not represent the firm security
of the true, are yet offered as points of support, or as provisional
affirmations, like those _tibicines,_ props or stakes, those bad verses
that Virgil allowed to remain in the _Aeneid,_ with the intention of
returning to them again. But it was needful to record the true bases
of the theory of error against the illusions arising from empiricism,
the more so since the general tendency of our times (for reasons that
we need not here inquire into) has led to their not being recognized.
Those bases are in the practical spirit, and the practical theory of
error is one of the justified forms of pragmatism, although perhaps it
be that very truth against which the pragmatists sin.




V

IDENTITY OF VOLITION AND ACTION AND DISTINCTION BETWEEN VOLITION AND
EVENT


[Sidenote: _Volition and action: intuition and expression._]

Such are the relations between the practical activity and the
theoretical, which precedes and conditions it.

Asking ourselves now, what are the relations of this same activity with
that which seems to follow it and to be outside the spirit, in company
with corporeality, naturality, physic and matter (or however else it
may be called)? we find ourselves face to face with a problem which
we have already treated and solved in another part of the system of
the spirit, and which we shall solve here in an analogous manner. What
we may now designate as the problem of the relation between _volition
and action,_ formerly appeared in the theoretical philosophy as the
problem of the relation between _intuition_ and _expression._--Are then
volitions and actions two distinct terms that may appear now together,
now separate? Can volition remain for its part isolated from action,
whereas action is not able to separate itself from volition, or is the
opposite true?--We reply, as we did on the former occasion, by denying
the problem itself and by identifying intuition with expression,
in such a manner that effective intuition became at the same time
expression, and it was declared that a so-called expression, which was
not at the same time intuition, was declared to be non-existent.--We
reply in like manner on this occasion, that _volition and action_ are
_one,_ and that volition without action or action without volition is
inconceivable.

[Sidenote: _Spirit and nature._]

Indeed, the relation between spirit and nature (which is a general
relation, including the other particulars between intuition and
expression, or between volition and action), understood in the way
that it is here, is a relation, not between two entities, but only
between two different methods of elaborating one unique reality,
which is spiritual reality: thus it is not truly a relation. Nor are
the two modes of elaboration two co-ordinated modes of knowledge,
for that would lead back to a duplicity of objects, but the first is
cognoscitive elaboration and true science, or philosophy, in which
reality is revealed as activity and spirituality, while the other is an
abstract elaboration for practical convenience, without cognoscitive
character. When this has been posited, the spiritual act of volition
has not another reality face to face with it, with which it must join
or combine, in order to become concrete, but is itself full reality.
That which is called matter, movement, and material modification from
the naturalistic point of view, is already included in the volitional
spiritual act, of which it might be said without difficulty (as was
once said amid much scandal of the Ego) that it is heavy, round,
square, white, red, sonorous, and, therefore, physically determinable.
The volition is not followed by a movement of the legs or arms; it
is those movements themselves that are material for the physical,
spiritual for the philosopher, extrinsic for the former, at once
intrinsic and extrinsic for the latter, or better, neither extrinsic
nor intrinsic (an arbitrary division). As poetry lives in speech and
painting in colours, so the will lives in actions, not because the one
is in the other as in an envelope, but because the one is the other and
without the other would be mutilated and indeed inconceivable.

[Sidenote: _Inexistence of volitions without actions and vice versa._]

We cannot affirm the distinction between volition and action, save in
force and as a proof of a dualistic metaphysical view, of an abstract
spiritualism, with matter as being and substance for correlative
term. But this point of view is eliminated by the idealist view,
which recognizes only one unique substance, and that as spirituality
and subjectivity. Without, however, now basing ourselves upon such
considerations, and according to the order that we follow, applying
ourselves to the examination of the facts of consciousness, we affirm
that it would be impossible to adduce one volitional fact that should
not be also a movement called physical. Those volitional acts, which
according to some philosophers are consumed within the will and are
in that way distinguished from external facts, are a phantasm. Every
volition, be it never so small, sets the organism in motion and
produces what are called external facts. The purpose is already an
effectuation, a beginning of combat; indeed, simple desire is not
without effects, if it be possible to destroy oneself with desires,
as is in effect maintained On the other hand, it is not possible to
indicate actions without volitions. Instinctive or habitual acts that
have become instinctive are adduced; but these too are not set in
motion, save by the will, not one by one, in their particulars, but
as a whole, in the same way as a single hand sets in motion a most
complicated machine which a thousand hands have previously constructed.
There cannot then be volition without action, nor action without
volition, as there cannot be intuition without expression or expression
without intuition.

[Sidenote: _Illusions as to the distinction between these terms._]

It is well, however, to indicate one among the many sources from which
is derived the illusion of this distinction and separation, effectively
inexistent. A volitional act, which is a process of some duration,
may be interrupted and substituted for other volitional acts; it may
declare itself again and again begin its work (although this will
always be more or less modified), and this may give occasion to new
interruptions and new beginnings. It seems that in this way the will
stands on one side, as something formed and definite, and that on the
other execution pursues its way and is subject to the most varied
accidents. But volition and execution proceed with equal and indeed
with one single step. What we will we execute; the volition changes as
the execution changes. In the same way, when we are engaged upon a work
of art, on a long poem for instance, the illusion arises of an abstract
conception or plan, which the poet carries out as he versifies. But
every poet knows that a poem is not created from an abstract plan, that
the initial poetical image is not without rhythm and verse, and that
it does not need rhythm and verse applied to it afterwards. He knows
that it is in reality a primitive intuition-expression, in which all
is determined and nothing is determined, and what has been already
intuified is already expressed, and what will afterwards be expressed
will only afterwards be intuified. The initial intuition is certainly
not an abstract plan, but a living and vital germ; and so is the
volitional act.

[Sidenote: _Distinction between action and succession or event._]

When, therefore, it is affirmed that a volition is truly such, only
when it produces effects, or that a volition is to be judged by
its results, it is impossible not to assent, as we assent that an
unexpressed expression or an unversified verse is neither an expression
nor a verse. But in this signification only, because those propositions
have sometimes assumed another, which on the contrary it is needful
resolutely to reject. This is that in them action (will-action) has
been confused with _succession or event._ Now, if volition coincide
with action, it does not and cannot coincide with _event._

[Sidenote: _Volition and event._]

It cannot coincide, because what is action and what is event? Action
is the act of the one; event, is the act of the whole: will is of man,
event of God. Or, to put this proposition in a less imaginary form,
the volition of the individual is as it were the contribution that he
brings to the volitions of all the other beings in the universe, event
the aggregate of all the wills and the answer to all the questions. In
this answer is included and absorbed the will itself of the individual,
which we have taken and contemplated alone. If, then, we wished to make
the volition depend upon event, action upon succession, we should be
undertaking to make one fact depend upon another fact, of which the
first is a constituent part, placing among the antecedents of action
what is its consequence, among things given those to be created, the
unknown with the known, the future in the past.

[Sidenote: _Successful and unsuccessful actions: criticism._]

The concepts of actions that are successful and of those that are
unsuccessful, of actions that become fully concrete in the fact, and of
those that become concrete only in part or not at all, are therefore
inexact. No action (not even those that are empirically said to be most
successful, not even the most obvious and ordinary) succeeds fully, in
the sense that it alone constitutes the fact: every action diverges by
necessity and by definition from succession or happening. If I return
home every day by the usual road, my return home is every day new and
different from that which might have been, imagined. This often amounts
to a diversity of particulars which we may call of least importance,
but which yet are not for that reason the less real. On the other hand,
no action, however vain it be held (if it be action and not velleity of
action and intrinsic contradiction, or by as much as it is action and
not imagination and contradiction), passes without trace and without
result.

If any action could be rendered altogether vain, this same rendering
vain would invade all other actions and no fact would happen.

[Sidenote: _Action and foresight: critique._]

The current proposition that we cannot act without _foreseeing_ is
also incorrect. Since the conception of foreseeing is contradictory,
and since we cannot know a fact if it be not first a fact, that is, if
it have not happened; if the contradictory hypothesis held, it would
be impossible to act. But the truth is that what is called foreseeing
is nothing but seeing; it is to know the given facts and to reason
upon them with the universals. That is to say, it is the invariable
theoretical base of action, already illustrated. When we will and act,
what we will and do is _our own action_ itself, not that of others or
of all the others, and so is the resulting event. _Voluntas fertur in
incognitum,_ but the all intent upon itself does not take count of the
unknown, which is in this case relatively unknowable and, therefore,
relatively non-existent. The individual is aware that when he acts, he
does not aim at anything but the placing of new elements in universal
reality. He takes care that they shall be energetic and vital, without
nourishing the foolish illusion that they must be the only ones, or
that they alone produce reality. A popular little tale tells how
God, who had at first granted to men to know their future lives and
the day of their death, afterwards withdrew this knowledge from them
altogether, because He perceived from experience that such knowledge
made them lazy and inert. The new ignorance, on the other hand, revived
and impelled them to vie with one another in activity, as though it
had been granted them to obtain and to enjoy everything.[1] How can we
doubt that our good and energetic work can ever be rendered nugatory
in the event? That is unthinkable, and the saying _fiat justitia et
pereat mundus_ is rectified by that other saying: _fiat justitia ne
pereat mundus._ Bad is not born from good, nor inaction from action.
Every volitional man, every man active in goodness, is a contradiction
to that one-sided attitude in which the will is suppressed to give
place to happening, a world unmade is believed to be already made,
arms are crossed or the field deserted. But it also contradicts the
fatuous security that the future world will conform to the ends of our
individual actions taken in isolation; saying with the good sense of
the Florentine statesman, that we ourselves control one half of our
actions, or little less, Fortune the other half. Hence our trust in our
own strength; hence, too, our apprehension of the pitfalls of Fortune,
continually arising and continually to be conquered. This constitutes
the interior drama of true men of action, of the political geniuses
who have guided the destinies of man. While the unfit is all anxiety,
or bewilderment and depression, the fatuous is all over-confidence or
expectation of the impossible, also losing himself in bewilderment when
he finally discovers that the reality is not what he imagined. Hence
also the serenity of the sage, who knows that whatever happen there
will always be opportunity for good conduct. _Si fractus illabatur
orbis,_ there will always be a better world to construct. Hope and fear
are related to action itself in its becoming, not to its result and
succession.

[Sidenote: _Confirmation of the inderivability of the value of action
from its success._]

We can illustrate the fact that no one seriously thinks of valuing
an action according to its success, but that all value it at its
intrinsic value as action, from the circumstance that no one recognizes
any merit to the action of a marks-man who hits the bull's-eye, when
shooting at the target with closed eyes; whereas no little merit is
recognized to him who, after having taken careful aim, does not hit
the mark but goes very near it. We are certainly often deceived in our
practical judgments, and fortunate men are continually praised to the
skies as men of great practical capacity, while the unfortunate are
hurled into the mire as incompetent; for we do not distinguish exactly
between action and success. This is not only so as to judgments of the
present life: it is also true of the life of the past, of the pages of
history, where imbeciles are made heroes and heroes calumniated; to
the worst of leaders is attributed the honour of victories, ridiculous
statesmen credited with ability. On the other hand, the sins of madmen
are attributed to the wise, or they are accused of faults that are
nobody's fault, but the result of circumstances. In vain will the
Pericleses of all time ask, as did the ancient Pericles of the people
of Athens, that the unforeseen misfortunes of the Peloponnesian war
should be attributed to him, provided that by way of compensation he
might have praise for all the fortunate things that should also happen
παρὰ λόγον.[2] All this depends upon an imperfect knowledge of facts
more than upon anything else: hence the necessity of criticism. Just as
the work of the poet and of the painter is not materially to be laid
hold of in the poem or in the picture, but requires a re-evocation that
is often very difficult, so the work of the man of action, which is in
part fused in events and partly contained in them, as a bud that will
open in the future, asks a keen eye and the greatest care in valuation.
The history of men of action and of their deeds is easily changed
into _legend,_ and legends are never altogether eliminable, because
misunderstanding or error is never altogether eliminable.

[Sidenote: _Explanation of apparently conflicting facts._]

On the other hand, certain commonplaces seem to be in opposition to
the criterion itself: for example, that men are judged by success and
that it matters little what we have willed and done, when the result
is not satisfactory. There are also certain popular customs that make
individuals responsible for what happens outside their own spheres
of action, not to mention the well-known historical examples of
unfortunate leaders crucified at Carthage and guillotined at Paris, for
no other cause in reality than that of not having won the victory. And
there is also the insistence of certain thinkers upon the necessity of
never distinguishing the judgment of the act from that of the fact. But
such insistence is nothing but a new aspect of the implacable struggle
that it has been necessary to conduct against the morality of the mere
intention and against the sophisms and the subterfuges that arise from
it; an insistence that has expressed itself in paradoxical formulæ,
as are also paradoxical the trivial remarks of ordinary life that
have been mentioned. As to the customs and condemnations narrated by
history, these were without doubt extraordinary expedients in desperate
cases, in which people had placed themselves in such a position that it
was impossible or most difficult to verify intentions and actions, and
to distinguish misfortunes from betrayals; and as all expedients born
of like situations sometimes hit the mark, that is to say, punish bad
faith, so will others increase with irrationality the evil that they
would have wished to diminish, since in those cases there has not been
any bad faith to punish and to correct.


[1] _Arch. p. lo st. d. trad, pop.,_ of Pitré (1882), pp. 70-72.

[2] Thuc. ii. 64.




VI


THE PRACTICAL JUDGMENT, THE HISTORY AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PRACTICAL


With these last considerations, we are conducted to the theory of
practical judgments, that is, to those judgments of which we have
demonstrated the impossibility, when their precedence to the volitional
act was asserted; but their conceivability as following it, indeed
their necessity, is clear, by the intrinsic law of the Spirit; which
consists in always preserving or in continually attaining to full
possession of itself.

[Sidenote: _Practical taste and judgment._]

But we must not confound the practical judgment with what has been
called _practical taste, or the immediate consciousness of value, or
the feeling_ of the value of the volitional act. None can doubt that
such a taste, consciousness, or feeling is a real fact. The practical
act brings with it approbation and disapprobation, joy and sorrow,
and like facts of consciousness that are altogether unreflective. By
these we explain the immediate sympathy that certain actions afford
us, and the enthusiasms that are often spread through wide circles of
society, and the force of example, which is most successful in arousing
imitative efforts. Thus at certain moments the soul of all seems to
vibrate in unison with the soul of one, and the actions of many to be
prepared and carried out, as though with one accord, without its being
possible to say at those moments what is willed, what abhorred and what
admired. That taste, or consciousness, or feeling is not, however,
distinct from the volitional act, and is, indeed, the volitional act
itself. It is that internal control of which we have already spoken,
that immediate feeling of oneself, that immediate consciousness, which
makes of it a spiritual act. Abstract it from the volitional act and
the volitional act itself disappears from before you.

If it can take place, not only in the individual who is acting, but
also in him who contemplates the action, that is because the individual
who contemplates becomes unified in that moment with the individual
who acts, he wills imitatively with him, with him suffers and enjoys,
as the disc-thrower watches with his eye and with his whole person
the disc that has been thrown, follows its rapid and direct course
and the dangers in the form of obstacles that it seems to be about to
strike, its turns and deviations, and seems to become himself a running
turning disc. The denomination "practical taste" is very well chosen,
because the analogy with the theoretic activity and with æsthetic taste
is here most full. But since æsthetic taste is not æsthetic judgment,
as the mere reproduction of the æsthetic act is not the criticism of
it, as the listener to a poem who sings within himself with the poet,
must not be confused with the critic, who analyses and understands
it, any more than the contemplator of a picture, of a statue, or of a
piece of architecture, who paints with the painter, sculptures with
the sculptor, or ideally raises airy masses with the architect; so we
must distinguish practical taste and sympathy (or antipathy) from the
practical judgment. Without taste (æsthetic or practical), judgment
(æsthetic or practical) is not possible; but taste is not judgment,
which demands a further act of the spirit.

[Sidenote: _The practical judgment as historical judgment._]

The practical judgment is, as has already been observed, a _historical_
judgment; so that to judge practical acts and to give their history
is really the same thing. What occurs here is analogous to what was
demonstrated of the theoretic and æsthetic act, when we illustrated
the coincidence of literary and artistic criticism with literary and
artistic history. Criticism, be it practical or theoretic, cannot
consist of anything but determining whether a spiritual act has taken
place and what it has been. The differences between the one and the
other criticism arise only from the diversity of content present
in each case, asking different categories of judgment, but not of
logical procedure, which is in both cases the same. Every other
conception of the judgment, which should make it consist, not of a
historical judgment, but of heaven knows what sort of measurement upon
transcendental models, separated from the real world by a measurement
of which the measure is extraneous to the measured, indeed (as though
it were something of the other world) extraneous to the real itself,
runs against insuperable contradictions, and makes judgment arbitrary
and history grotesque; history would thus have value, not in itself,
but outside itself, enjoying it as a loan from others, a gracious
concession. But even these contradictions cannot appear in all their
crudity, nor the opposite theory in all its unshakable truth, save from
what will be seen further on, and we must here be satisfied with the
enunciation.

[Sidenote: _Its logic._]

In order to avoid repetition, we must refer to the analysis of the
single or historical judgment already given and assume its result,
namely, that it is the only judgment in which there is a true and
proper distinction between subject and predicate, and that it is
composed of an intuitive element (subject) and of an intellectual
element (predicate). In like manner the practical judgment is not
possible without a clear representation of the act to be judged and
a conception not less clear of what the practical act is in its
universality and in its particular forms, and so on, specifying in its
various sub-forms and possibilities of individuation. The judgment is
the compenetration of the two elements, the historical synthesis which
establishes: Peter has accomplished a useful act in tilling a piece
of land of such and such dimensions; Paul has accomplished an action
that is not useful in opening a new manufactory of boots, more costly
and not better than those already on the market; -Pope Leo III. acted
wisely, as custodian of the universal character of the Church of Rome,
in consecrating Charles the Frank emperor, thus restoring the empire of
the West;--Louis XVI. acted foolishly in not deciding upon a prompt and
profound change of the French political constitution, and in allowing
himself to be afterwards dragged unwilling whither he had not known
how to go of his own will. And so on. There are therefore two ways of
sinning against the exactitude of the practical judgment: either by not
having exact information as to the content of the volitional act to be
judged and understood, or by not having an exact criterion of judgment.
The first of these errors can be exemplified by those judgments that
are so frequently pronounced, without knowledge as to the true sequence
of events or without placing oneself in the precise conditions in
which the person to be judged found himself. Hence it happens not less
often, that when the facts are really known, the precise conditions
understood, and the defence of the accused has been heard, the judgment
must be altered. A cause of the second error is the substitution
(likewise a very common occurrence) of one category of judgment for the
other, as when a moral act is praised and admired for its cleverness,
or the gestures and the felicitous utterance of a practical man are
praised, as though it were a question of judging an actor or reciter.
As in art, so in life, differences of judgment arise, not so much from
difference of understanding, as from these oscillations and undue
transpositions of judgments and concepts.

It is likewise superfluous to enter into disputes as to the
absoluteness or relativity of the practical judgment, because these
have been superseded by the concept of the historical judgment, which
is _both absolute and relative:_ absolute for the categories that it
applies, relative for the matter, always new, to which it applies them.

[Sidenote: _Importance of the practical judgment._]

The importance of the practical judgment for practical life is of the
greatest, and when we are warned: _nolite judicare_ or _noli nimium
judicare,_ what are meant are not true acts of judgment, but certain
psychical conditions, which reveal slight spiritual seriousness.
And the importance is of the greatest, precisely because the nature
of the judgment is historical, and as we know already, historical
knowledge, knowledge, that is, of actual situations, is the basis of
future actions. For this reason every man who is strongly volitional is
continually submitting himself and others to judgment; for this reason
we feel the need of talking to others about our own actions, in order
to be upheld by the spirit of others in forming a just judgment. This
is the origin of such social institutions as the confessional, or of
poems such as the _Divina Commedia._ The only judgment without meaning
is that _final judgment_ made in the valley Jehoshaphat, because what
object can there be in giving oneself the trouble of judging a world
looked upon as ended? We judge in order to continue to act, that is,
to live, and when universal life is at an end, judgment is vain (vain
praise or paradise, vain cruelty or hell).

[Sidenote: _Difference between the practical judgment and the judgment
of the event._]

The value of the volitional act is therefore, as has been demonstrated,
in the act itself, and we must not expect and derive it from succession
or event. The practical judgment always concerns the volitional act,
the intention, the action (which are all one), and never the result or
happening. With this distinction we annul one of the most disputed,
intricate, and difficult questions: if it be possible to judge, or
as they say, to try history. Since we know well that judgment and
historical narrative coincide, we must reply in general, as we have
replied, in the affirmative. We must in consequence deny all the absurd
claims of an objectivity, which is the irrealizable aspiration to the
abstention from thought and from history itself. We must also deny to
the historian that frivolous privilege by which he is allowed to judge,
almost tolerating in him an original sin or an incorrigible vice,
provided he clearly distinguish between the serious and the facetious,
between the narrative and the judgment, as though the distinction were
ever possible. But the prejudice against those who make out a case
against history on the ground that it should have happened in a manner
different from what actually took place, and describe how this should
have been, is well justified. Whoever possesses historical sense,
or even simple good sense, cannot but agree to this. The question
should in reality be asked differently, and in this manner: Is it
correct to apply to history the categories of judgment that we apply
to volitions and single acts? Is it correct to judge in a utilitarian
or moral manner historical events and the whole course of history?
Rectified in these terms, the question becomes clear, and requires a
negative answer. When we narrate artistic or philosophical, economic
or ethical history, we place ourselves at the point of view of the
individual activity. As we expose æsthetic or philosophical products,
useful or moral actions, we judge them at the same time æsthetically,
philosophically, economically, morally, and we know in every case if
the action has been such as it ought. Who would hesitate to affirm that
(at least, as an affirmative method) the _Africa_ of Petrarch was not
what he wished it to be, a poetic work; or that Emmanuel Kant did not
succeed in establishing from his practical postulates, according to his
intention, the existence of a personal God and the immortality of the
soul; or that Themistocles behaved in an undecided manner as regards
Xerxes, not knowing how to resolve to sacrifice his ambitions to the
safety of Greece, nor to inflict a grave loss upon his country, in
order to satisfy his desire for vengeance; or that Napoleon ignored the
rights of man, and behaved as one without scruples, when he ordered the
arrest and shooting of the Duc d'Enghien? But what can be the advantage
of asking if the arrest of the Persian expansion in Europe were a bad
thing or a good? if the creation of the Roman Empire deserve blame?
if the Catholic Church were wrong in concentrating Western religion
in herself? if the English revolution of the seventeenth century, the
French of the eighteenth, or the Italian of the nineteenth, could have
been avoided? if Dante could have been born in our day and have sung
the Kantian rather than the Thomist philosophy? if Michael Angelo
might have painted the victories of the modern industrial world, which
Manzotti has made into a ballet in his _Excelsior,_ instead of the
visions of the Last Judgment? Here we have before us, not individual
spirits, whose work we examine in given circumstances, but facts that
have happened, and these are the work, not of the individual, but of
the Whole. They are (as has already been said) the work of God, and God
is not to be judged, or rather He is to be judged, but not from the
visual angle at which individual works and actions are to be judged. He
is not to be judged as a poet or as a philosopher, as a statesman or
a hero, as a finite being working in the infinite. The contemplation
of His work is at the same time judgment. _Die Weltgeschichte das
Weltgericht_: the history itself of the world is the judgment of the
world, and in recounting the course of history, while not applying the
judgment of the categories above indicated, which are inapplicable, we
do, however, apply a judgment, which is that of necessity and reality.
That which has been had to be; and that which is truly real is truly
rational.

But we cannot give the justification of this supreme judgment, of this
world-embracing judgment (we repeat the refrain), until further on. Let
it suffice for the present that in discussing the practical judgment
we have limited it to all that part of history which contemplates
actions, that is, to individual activity, to biography and to the
biographical element, which is the material of all history. In it,
the practical judgment is active and energetic, but is silent before
the event, and every history is like an impetuous river of individual
works, which flows into a sea, where it is immediately restored to calm
serene. The rush of actions and of their vicissitudes, of victory and
of defeat, of wisdom and of folly, of life and of death, are set at
rest in the solemn peace of the "historical event."

[Sidenote: _Progress of action and progress of Reality._]

As we have distinguished the practical judgment from the judgment of
the event, the historical-individual from the historical-cosmic, so we
must distinguish the concept of progress, as the progress which belongs
to the volitional act and that which belongs to the event. The concept
of progress (according to the explanations given elsewhere) coincides
with the concept of activity. There is progress whenever an activity
declares itself, whenever (not to leave the circle of the practical) we
pass from irresolution to resolution, from conflict to the volitional
synthesis, from suspense to action. But the event, which is no longer
action but result, that is to say, is action, not of the individual
but of the Whole, is not to be judged with that concept of progress,
and in it progress coincides with the fact. That which follows
chronologically, if it be truly real, represents a progress upon what
precedes. Even illness is progress, if there were a latent crisis of
health, and getting over it gives rise to more vigorous health. Even
apparent regression (invasion of barbarians) is progress, if it lead to
the ripening of a wider civilization. What is death for the individual
is life for the Whole.--Hence the insipidity of the question, often
proposed and still discussed by writers of treatises, whether there be
practical progress, or as is said when limiting the question, moral
progress.

From the individual point of view, at every new volitional act,
practicality and the relative impulse of progress are once more born,
and they are extinguished with that act, to be born again in a new
one, and so on in a circle of infinite changes. As to cosmic reality,
we must declare, as in the previous example of the course of history,
that it is itself progress (which is also confirmed by the positivist
philosophy, when it declares that reality is evolved), but this is
progress of reality and therefore progress without adjective, or at
least without practical or moral adjective.

[Sidenote: _Precedence of the philosophy of the practical over the
practical judgment._]

The intellectual element, which is constitutive in the practical
judgment as in every other historical judgment, can also be called
the philosophical element. Hence the consequence that a philosophy of
the practical activity is a necessary condition of every practical
judgment. This is another thesis of paradoxical appearance, which,
however, it is not difficult to make plausible with suitable
reflections, plausible at least to those who do not refuse to reflect.
For what is philosophy but the thinking of the concept, and in this
case the concept of the practical? The conclusion, then, that a
philosophy is necessary for a judgment is irrefutable. The difficulty
in admitting it comes from the false association of ideas, for which
the sound of the word "philosophy" suggests the disputes of the
schools, the treatise, the manual, or the academic lecture whereas
we should think of philosophy in all its extension and profundity,
inborn in the human spirit (we have elsewhere called this _ingenuous
philosophy_) before its more complicated forms Every man has his
own philosophy, more or less developed or rudimentary, more or less
defective no one is without any philosophy. The first judgment on the
practical activity is already guided by the light of a philosophical
concept which, if it does not give a light, gives at least a glimmer,
if not straight and certain, at the least undulating and tremulous,
producing therefore tremulous and undulating judgments. Ingenuous
philosophy and philosophy in the specific sense are not, therefore,
separable from one another, with a clear-cut distinction, and if there
exist a disability in pronouncing a judgment as to many people and
to many actions, that arises from difficulties consequent upon the
philosophy of the time, which must first of all be solved, before
passing to the effective judgment. Hence long researches into doctrine
are sometimes necessary. Thus it is difficult to do justice to the
work of a rebel or of a revolutionary, without first clearing away
prejudices and understanding what a revolution is, and the relative
value of what is called obedience to the existing order of things.
Thus it would be naive to condemn as faithless the Saxon regiments
which deserted Napoleon on the field of Leipzig, or Marshal Ney, who
returned to the service of Napoleon from that of Louis XVIII., unless
we previously make clear the meaning and the limits of the political
treaty and of the military oath, which cannot be the only unconditioned
things in a world where nothing is unconditioned save the world itself.

[Sidenote: _Confirmation of the philosophical incapacity of the
psychological method._]

From the recognized precedence of philosophy over the practical
judgment arises the confirmation of the impossibility of the
psychological method as the foundation of a Philosophy of the
practical. Descriptive psychology is based upon practical facts
historically ascertained, or upon practical judgments. Hence, by
proceeding from particular to particular, it is not only incapable of
exhausting the infinite and of attaining to the real universal, but by
the very choice of particular examples, which should be the foundation
of philosophical research relating to the practical, it is under the
necessity of first possessing a concept of the practical. Hence it
stands between Scylla and Charybdis, between a vicious _progressus ad
infinitum_ and a not less vicious circle.

In this way is eliminated the problem, monstrous from whatever point
of view it may arise, as to the historical origin of the practical
activity (economy or morality). If these activities be categories,
which constitute fact and judge it reflected in the spirit, they
cannot have arisen historically, as contingent facts. When we prove
the historical origin of anything, with that very proof we destroy
its universal value. The fears of certain moralists lest, with the
indication of the historical origin of morality, its value should
come to be denied, have therefore been wrongly mocked. Certainly, if
morality had a historical origin, it would also have an end, like all
historical formations, even the most grandiose, the Empire of the
East or the Empire of the West, the Hunnish Empire of Attila or the
Mongolian Empire of Gengiskhan. The fear manifested by the moralists
in question was then an instinctive horror of the incorrect method
of philosophical psychology, which now presupposes, now destroys the
categories that it would wish to establish.




VII


THE PRACTICAL METHOD, RULES AND CASUISTRY


[Sidenote: _Justification of the psychological method and of empirical
and descriptive disciplines._]


In repeatedly rejecting the psychological method, as at the end
of the last chapter, we have been very careful to make use of a
cautious phraseology. Thus we have employed such expressions as
"psycho-philosophical method," "speculative-descriptive method,"
and the like, in order to make it quite clear that our hostility is
directed against that mixture, or rather against its introduction into
Philosophy, but is not directed against Psychology itself, that is,
descriptive psychology. This psychology has always been practised,
since the world was world, and we all practise it at every instant, and
could not propose to banish it from the spirit, save at the risk of
going mad.

If indeed we know that the true and proper knowledge of theoretical
philosophy is resolved into the cycle of art, philosophy, and history,
and that we possess no other means of knowing the individual, both
ingenuous and reflective, outside the knowledge of the universal given
by philosophy, then we also know that the spirit needs to arrange and
to classify the infinite intuitions and perceptions given to it by art
and history, and to reduce them to classes, the better to possess and
to manipulate them. We also know that the method called _naturalistic
or positive_ performs this function, and that hence arise natural
disciplines or sciences. These do not, as is the popular belief,
deal only with so-called inferior reality (minerals, vegetables, and
animals), but with all manifestations of reality, including those most
strictly termed spiritual.

Thus we can at this point reduce to a more correct meaning a claim
that has been usually maintained by those who have treated of the
Practical and of the Ethical in our day. They demand that a science of
the practical and of morality should be preceded by a wide historical
inquiry and have a great mass of facts as its foundation. If such
science be understood as a Philosophy of the practical and as an Ethic,
such a demand is an irrational pretension, because the true relation is
exactly the opposite: from philosophy to history, not from history to
philosophy. But if, on the other hand, this science be understood as a
naturalistic and empirical discipline, the claim is rational, because
it is not possible to construct a discipline of that sort, save with
material that has been historically-verified.

Sidenote: _Practical description and its literature._

The practical discipline that arranges in groups and classifies the
spiritual facts concerning man, is _Psychology._ But the writer or the
professor is not the only psychologist. Man himself is a psychologist;
even the savage constructs in some sort of way his psychology of types
and classes. And to remain within the circle of volitional acts, their
psychology or description by types has always existed. A conspicuous
example of this was the Comedy of Menander or the New Comedy in Greece.
This partly received and gave artistic form to the results of the
observations of the moralists and partly served as material for the
elaboration of treatises, to such an extent that the _Characters_
of Theophrastus have been looked upon as a repertory or summary of
theatrical types. In the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, a whole book is
devoted to a description of affections, passions, and habits. In modern
times, Descartes lamented the insufficiency of ancient treatises on the
subject, and presented as quite a new thing his _Traité des passions._
In this treatise, six _primitive_ passions being distinguished
(admiration, love, hate, desire, joy, and sadness), he maintained that
all the others were derived from them: esteem, contempt, generosity,
pride, humility, baseness, veneration, disdain, hope, fear, jealousy,
certainty, desperation, irresolution, courage, hardihood, emulation,
cowardice, terror, remorse, mockery, piety, satisfaction, repentance,
favour, gratitude, indignation, anger, glory, shame, and so on.
Spinoza, following the example of Descartes and correcting his
theories, devoted the third part of his _Ethic_ to the affections or
passions, considering them _perinde ac si quaestio de lineis planis aut
de corporibus esset._ Let it suffice to mention the _Anthropologia_ of
Kant among the other most celebrated treatises upon the argument.

[Sidenote: _Extension of practical description._]

But although we have recorded as examples these general treatises on
the passions, it would be impossible to continue the enumeration,
because descriptive psychology is carried out, so to speak, with
the widest divergences and is infinitely subdivided. An ample
bibliography would not suffice to catalogue all the books dealing
with this discipline. These are sometimes arranged in chronological
divisions (Psychology of the Renaissance, of the eighteenth century,
of the Middle Ages, even including prehistoric man!). Sometimes
they contain geographical divisions (Psychology of the Englishman,
of the Frenchman, of the Russian, of the Japanese, and so on),
with subdivisions according to regions. Sometimes they combine the
two methods (Psychology of the ancient Greek, of the Roman of the
Decadence), and sometimes according to their psychical content
(Psychology of the priest, of the soldier, of the politician, of the
poet, of the man of science), and so on. And when the treatises that
bear a title of the kind above mentioned had been catalogued, it would
be also necessary to trace a great mass of descriptive psychology
(and of the best sort) in the books of historians, novelists,
dramatists, in memoirs and confessions, in maxims and advice for the
conduct of life in the sketches of satirists and caricaturists. And
when all these had been catalogued (a very difficult task), it would
be necessary to take account of all the other psychology, which,
formed in the spirit of individuals who are not writers, is poured
forth in speech. This is found, but in small part, in collections of
proverbs. It would also be necessary not to neglect (an altogether
desperate enterprize) everything that each one of us does and forgets
and substitutes continually in life, according to his own needs and
experiences. _Tantae molis_ would be a complete account, precisely
because psychological construction, having for its object actions and
individuals in action, is of such common use.

[Sidenote: _Normative knowledge or rules: their nature._]

There is another class of mental forms intimately connected with
Psychology, and of this also we have denied the justification in the
foregoing chapters, but only in the philosophical field, and not at
all outside it. These are the _norms,_ or _normative_ knowledge and
science, _maxims, rules, and precepts._ In truth, if philosophy,
which commands and wills and judges, when its task is on the contrary
to understand willing and commanding, and to make possible correct
judgment--if such a philosophy be a contradiction in terms, there
is yet nothing to prevent our taking the psychological classes, of
which we have indicated the formation, and separating them from one
another, according as they do or do not lead to certain other classes,
which are called _ends_ and are _abstract ends._ This is done when
those classes are selected which are more efficacious for practical
action. Psychological classes and rules are therefore the same, save
that in the second the character possessed by knowledge as prior to
action is placed in relief, that is to say, its _technical_ character.
This is proved by the easy convertibility of rules into psychological
observations, and of the latter into the former. It suffices to add
the imperative to the first and to remove it from the second. "Do
everything so as to seem good, for that helps in many things; but since
false opinions do not last, you will have difficulty in seeming good
for a long period, if you are not so in reality." That is a rule of
Francesco Guicciardini[1] (or rather of the father of Guicciardini,
quoted by him). Now if we transfer this proposition from the imperative
to the indicative mood and remove the predicate of exhortation, we
have a mere psychological observation: "To seem good helps in an
infinite number of things; but since false opinions do not last, it is
difficult to seem good for long, unless one really be so." Here is a
psychological observation of Vico upon seeming and being: "It happens
naturally that man speaks of nothing but what he affects to be and is
not."[2] This can be turned into a maxim: "Watch yourselves, in order
that by talking too much of a given advantage, you may not let it be
seen clearly that you do hot possess it." Or in relation to moral
classes it can be turned thus: "Try to be that which you would like to
appear to others," and so on.

[Sidenote: _Usefulness of rules._]

Of rules it can be said that they do not possess absolute value. This
is to be found written at the beginning of one of the best books of
rules: _Peu de maximes sont vraies à tous égards_ (Vauvenargues),
and he might have said, "no maxim"; for if it were ever possible
to produce one that was absolutely true, by that alone would it be
demonstrated not to be a true maxim. But criticism prevails against
the distortion of empirical rules into philosophical principles, or
against the confusion between, the psychological and the speculative
methods, to which attention has already been drawn. If this distortion
be not committed, then rules are altogether innocuous. Not only are
they innocuous, they are indispensable. Each of us is constantly
making them for use in his own life. To live without rules would be
impossible. Certainly, the man of action makes no practical rule, nor
does he indicate how we should will and act in definite circumstances,
nor does the poet make any rule of Poetic. Guicciardini himself,
whom we have just quoted, and who formulated stupendous maxims, warns
us: "These memories are rules that can be written down in books;
but special cases, which, since they have a different cause, ask a
different treatment, can ill be written down _elsewhere than in the
book of discretion._" Action depends upon the quickness of the eye,
upon the perception of the situation historically given, which has
never occurred before, and never will occur again, precisely identical.
But it is useful to possess these types of actions to encourage and
of actions to avoid, in order to sharpen the attention and to find
one's way in the world of action, to facilitate and to discipline the
examination of the concrete fact. If, therefore, individual rules are
more or less transitory, the formation of rules is immortal.

[Sidenote: _The literature of rules and its apparent decadence._]

The condition of literature in recent times would seem to be in
disagreement with this affirmation, since as a fact there is a great
falling off in the appearance of books of rules, compared with the
enormous mass that remains in our libraries as an inheritance of the
past. At one time rules of conduct were compiled for everything, not
only for the moral life, in the multiplication of treatises relating
to vice and virtue, to merits and to sins, to things good and evil,
to duties and to rights, dividing these and entering into minutiae,
and again, summaries, catechisms, and various "decalogues," relating
to every part of life. The literature of the Cinquecento gives rules
even for the procuress and the courtesan, in most elegant little
books, which bear the names of Piccolomini and of Aretino. In this
same century, too, Ignatius of Loyola formulated rules for "tying up"
the will, and for the reduction of the docile individual _perinde ac
cadaver,_ for the ends of "sanctity." We must further remark that
all rules, including those on poetry and the arts, have at bottom a
practical--character. That is to say, they are directed to the will, if
only as intermediary. Thus it is necessary to add to the great mass of
practical rules the unnumbered and innumerable treatises of Grammar,
Rhetoric, Poetry of the figurative arts, of music, of dancing, and so
on. But it is a fact that there are now hardly any treatises containing
rules, either for morality, politics, or for the arts. Has the world by
chance become learned on the subject, through inherited aptitude, or
rather has the inutility of rules been discovered?

Neither the one nor the other. The rules still live in books and
treatises; they have only changed their literary form. In literature
they have reabsorbed that imperative which they used at first to
display and to boast of, not only mentally but literally. That has
been made possible by the already established convertibility of rules
into psychological classes. Hence in modern times the literary form
of the psychological observation is preferred to that of rules. This
was indeed redundant, pedantic, and at the same time ingenuous, as
for instance in the Italian Seicento. It is difficult to restrain
a smile when reading the many books on what was called the _reason
of State,_ elaborated by the Italians of that day and imitated by
foreigners, especially Spaniards and Germans. Those _arcana imperii,_
those "secret strokes," those impostures, mysteriously inculcated on
the printed page, are a true and real æsthetic contradiction. The
eighteenth century therefore began to give up this form of treatise,
and as it happens that men are accustomed to attribute to moral virtue
that which is necessity or virtue of another kind, the writers of that
century boasted of the moral progress which had set them free from the
pernicious and immodest maxims of the "reason of State."

It is very amusing to assist at the acts of repulsion and of exorcism,
which a man like the Abbé Galiani believes himself obliged to make in
his treatise _Dei doveri dei principi neutrali_ (1782). When, having
amply discussed this matter from the point of view of morality, he goes
on to discuss it from the point of view of politics and of the reason
of State, he despatches it in a few pages, abhorring, as he says,
that "insidious and wicked science" which formed "the delight, first
of Italian and then of almost all European minds of the fifteenth and
seventeenth centuries." He protests at every step that he is "tired
of repeating and of developing teachings of cunning and wickedness."
But what the Abbot Galiani really abhorred was the robed scholastic
treatment of a matter that he who was termed _Machiavellino_ by his
French friends, and declared that he did not admit in politics anything
but _le machiavélisme pur, sans mélange, cru, vert, dans toute son
âpreté,_[3] handled with very different ability and elegance in his
conversations in Parisian _salons_ and in his witty letters to Madame
d'Épinay. The rules of the eighteenth century are to be sought in
the speeches, essays, political opuscules, tragedies, plays dealing
with the life of citizens, fiction, history, and books of memoirs. If
Aretino and Piccolomini provided for the necessities of the respectable
courtesans and procuresses of the Cinquecento, in the Settecento,
Giacomo Casanova constructed the type of the perfect adventurer. He
began with the rules to be followed as a system of life, the _se
laisser aller au gré du vent qui pousse,_ and passed to those that
were more special and yet fundamental, such as that one should have no
scruples _de tromper des étourdis, des fripons et des sots,_ because
they _défient l'esprit_ and _on venge l'esprit quand on trompe un
sot._ There should be still less scruple in deception in affairs of
love, for, _pour ce qui regarde les femmes, ce sont des tromperies
réciproques, qu'on ne met pas en ligne de compte; car, quand l'amour
s'en mêle, on est ordinairement dupe de part et d'autre_.[4] Let us
leave to the reader to investigate, if he please, the rules of life
that are concealed beneath the most modern forms of literature; these
are a continuous, if not always beneficent, guide for daily life.

[Sidenote: _Relation between the arts (collections of rules) and
philosophical doctrines._]

Another circumstance that has led to the belief in the disappearance
of books of rules is the observation that from those books dealing
with the so-called _arts,_ there has come to be a treatment of the
philosophy of their subject-matter, in which those treatises have been
dissolved. Thus from Poetics and Rhetorics has come Æsthetic, from
Grammatic the Philosophy of language, from the Art of teaching and of
reasoning Logic and Gnoseology, from the historical Art, Historic,
from the Arts of economic government, the Science of Economy, from the
treatises on Natural Law, the Philosophy of Law.

When such philosophies, then, had appeared, treatises upon the Arts
seemed to have become superfluous, and to this is attributed the cause
of their diminution or disappearance. But although it be impossible not
to recognize the historical process above described from books on the
arts to books of systems, it is necessary to be careful to interpret
it exactly and not to confuse it with a passing from empiria to
philosophy. Thus it will be seen that the part absorbed and dissolved
in philosophy has been precisely those philosophical attempts that
were mingled with such collections of rules and precepts. For it was
very natural that the writers who put them together and had ideas as
to what should be done and what avoided, were often led to investigate
the principles from which sprung the particular rules. Believing
that they were strengthening, they really came to surpass them, that
is, they passed unwittingly from one form of treatment to another,
from Psychology to Philosophy. But not even here has empiricism been
refined into philosophy (a refinement which, strictly speaking, is
impossible), but a more perfect philosophy has been substituted for one
less perfect. The dissolution, then, has not been of the rules, but of
that imperfect philosophy, a chemical process which has left the rules
in what they possess of original as residuum. Hence their persistence,
and indeed the impossibility that they should not persist, side by side
with the most pure and perfect of philosophies.

[Sidenote: _Casuistic: its nature and utility._]

_Casuistic_ has had the same fate as the rules, and was also at one
time responsible for a very copious literary production. Now it is
cultivated as literature only by a few Jesuits, who carry on the
glories of Escobar and of Sanchez, read only by priests preparing
themselves for the post of confessor, whose studies are based for
the most part upon old books (such as the _Theologia moralis_ of the
Neapolitan Sant' Alfonso de' Liguori). At one time Casuistic was
not confined only to profane or theological morality, to the _casus
conscientiae. _ There were also books of casuistry composed for all
aspects of life, for politics, for the life of the courtier ("the
Wise Man at Court"), for the art of love. When the literary form of
rules fell into discredit, that of Casuistic fell with it. But this
does not mean that it is dead; it lives and will live as long as rules
live. For Casuistic is nothing but the process of reasoning by which
rules are made always more precise, passing from more general cases to
those more particular, so that no one will ever be able to do without
them.--If we take for rule of life this maxim: to avoid scientific
polemics, because they constitute a waste of time, adding little to the
progress of knowledge; in what way must we behave if a polemic be such
that it enables us to gain on the one hand the time it makes us lose
on the other? Shall we maintain the general rule, or shall we waive
it on this occasion, if for no other reason than to give variety to
our occupations? And how shall we behave if not only we retrieve the
time lost but avoid losing more time in the future? Shall we wish to
enter upon the polemic at once? But if our future be looked upon as
uncertain, if we be far advanced in years or in bad health, will it not
be better to renounce the uncertain gain of the future for the certain
gain of the present?--This is a very simple example of Casuistic,
which a critic and writer (let us suppose that he is the writer of
these pages) is obliged to propose to himself and to solve. Naturally,
no Casuistic will ever furnish the concrete solution (which is the only
one that counts), since, as has been said, no rule can ever furnish
it. Rules and casuistry do not reach the individuality _omnimodo
determinata,_ which is the historical situation; yet if Casuistic
aid my action, this will always differ from that, as concrete from
abstract; or better, my action will always truly possess the form, the
definiteness that abstract casuistry cannot possess. Woe to practical
men who rely upon collections of maxims and casuistical reasonings,
and woe to those who rely upon them. Those who argue at length upon
practical matters and draw subtle distinctions, are to be avoided in
the world of affairs and in the world of action. If they have not yet
provoked some disaster, they are on the road to doing so now. This, at
least, is a good rule; like the supreme rule (which is not a rule but
philosophical truth), namely, that we must abandon rules, that is, face
the individual case, which, as such, is always irregular.

[Sidenote: _Jurisprudence as casuistry._]

But if a further proof be wanted of the necessity and perpetuity of
maxims and of casuistry, observe how these also persist in literary
form, as laws, where this form is not eliminable. _Laws,_ as we have
seen, are not simple rules, but are based upon _formulæ of rules,_
and must of necessity make explicit in them decisions as to doing and
not doing. Jurisprudence is the Casuistic of law, or all the labour
of so-called interpretation, which is at bottom the excogitation of
new rules. All know that not only is Jurisprudence not of itself
legislative, but that it cannot even determine the volitional act of
the Statesman, nor the sentence, or decision upon the particular case,
a decision which the judge creates upon each occasion. But no one would
seriously think of suppressing the work and the function of those
_casuists,_ or judicial experts, a function which, since it has always
existed and continues to exist, cannot but answer to a social need.
It is possible to predict a form of social life, less complicated and
weighty, in which that function would have less scope, but whatever be
the case as regards this prediction, the casuistry of judicial experts
will continue so long as there are laws and rules, that is to say,
always.


[1] _Ricordi politici e civili,_ n. xliv. (in _Opere inedite_(2),
Firenze, 1857; p. 97).

[2] _Scritti inediti,_ ed. Del Giudice, Napoli, 1862, p. 12.

[3] Letter to the d'Épinay, 5th September 1772.

[4] _Mémoires,_ ed. Paris, Gamier, s.a., i pp. 3-4.




VIII


CRITIQUE OF THE INVASIONS BY PHILOSOPHY OF THE DOMAIN OF PRACTICAL
DESCRIPTION AND OF ITS DERIVATIVES


In demonstrating the legitimacy and necessity of practical description
and of its derivatives, Regolistic and Casuistic, we have not
fulfilled, as it were, our whole knightly duty, which binds us to that
discipline, which we have been obliged to maltreat so exceedingly,
and shall further maltreat, when it has been or shall be presented as
a philosophical method. It is now necessary to defend its existence
against the invasion of philosophy, or rather of philosophers. We must
make it obvious that if the empiricists and psychologists, who swell
themselves out to philosophers, are bunglers, those too are bunglers
who claim to solve empirical questions philosophically. Perhaps they
are bunglers less worthy of pardon, because it is part of philosophy to
know itself clearly, and consequently its own limits.

[Sidenote: _First form: tendency to generalize._]

The first bad effect that philosophy has upon practical description
is the tendency to change it from description and collection of
particular descriptions into something that has the air of generality
and comprehensiveness. Because, if practical description be closely
connected with the historical conditions of definite individuals and
societies and with their wants, the more specific and near to the
concrete it is, the better it will be, and the more useless by as much
as it goes wandering toward the general. We owe to the evil influence
of philosophy those verbose treatises upon psychological classes, such
as virtue, duties, things good, affections, passions, and human types,
to read which nourishes less than fresh water, which at least refreshes.

Let him who wishes to be convinced compare the books of rules and
observations that we owe to men of experience and to men of the
world, such as the _Ricordi_ of Guicciardini, the _Maximes_ of
Larochefoucauld, and the _Oraculo Manual_ of Balthazar Gracian,
with the _Traité des passions_ of Descartes, with that section
of the _Ethica_ of Spinoza that relates to this matter, with the
_Anthropologia_ and the _Doctrine of Virtue_ of Kant (we prefer to
record great names). He will then see on whose side is the advantage,
an advantage of originality, of importance, and even of style, which
is in this case a revelation. Those books by philosophers contain for
the most part definitions of vocabulary and of words which there is no
need to define, because everybody knows them to such an extent that the
definitions, rather than make them more clear, make them obscure. Who,
for example, can resist the philosophical triviality of the _Aphorisms
for the Wisdom of Life_ of Arthur Schopenhauer? Take the trouble to
open a book to learn that good things are to be divided into personal,
wealth and imagination, or reputation, and that the first (such as
good health and a gay temperament) are pre-eminent over the others.
Do we not learn more and with greater rapidity and efficacy from such
proverbs as "God helps the merry man"? It is superfluous to observe
that those books, in so far as they generalize, can never attain to
philosophy. They remain at bottom more or less historical.

[Sidenote: _Historical elements persisting in generalizations._]

The good and generous wine of the born psychologists and precept-makers
is diluted in a great deal of water, but that water, however much
there be of it, never becomes pure and is always discoloured and of an
unpleasant taste. Thus in classifications of ancient Ethic the idea of
"virtue" or of "good" was announced as the most important, in Christian
Ethic that of "duty," in the same way as in ancient Ethic the political
character was dominant, in the modern the individualistic, according to
the different character of the corresponding civilizations. Historical
elements differentiate the Ethic of Aristotle, impregnated with sane
Greek life, from that of the Stoics, in which is foretold the decadence
of the antique world and the germs of the future discovered (for
instance, cosmopolitanism, which precedes the Christian idea of the
unity of the human race). The four Platonic virtues retain the name,
but are filled with a new content, in the four cardinal virtues of the
Christian Ethic; the seven deadly sins are not to be explained in all
their settemplicity without the ascetic ideal of the Middle Ages.

Among the various writers of treatises, the foreground is filled, now
with the idea of effort or of duty, now with that of enjoyment and
satisfaction; ideas are now despotic masters, now smiling friends;
the dominant idea is in turn that of justice, of benevolence, of
enthusiasm, and so on. In the systems of Catholic Ethic are reflected
political absolutism and semi-feudal economy; in those of Protestant
Ethic, constitutionalism, liberalism, the industrial and capitalistic
world; a strict probity, not indeed without utilitarianism, and
a hardness of heart, not indeed without austerity. Modern Ethic
is concerned with property, with the struggle of classes, with
proletarianism and communism. These are all historical facts and as
such most worthy of attention, but for that very reason they should
be examined in all their force and value and not through the medium
of the pale categories of a universal doctrine, which they disturb
and falsify and by which they are very often disturbed and falsified.
Whoever undertakes to write general treatises upon the passions, upon
the virtues, and upon the other practical classes, will always show the
signs of his time in the categories that he establishes, and the result
will be at once banal and empirical, that is to say, badly empirical.

[Sidenote: _Second form: literary union of philosophy and empiria._]

But hitherto the chief ill has been that useless and tiresome books are
written. Matters begin to look graver when an approach is attempted
between philosophical theories and empirical classifications and they
are united in one treatise, as the _general_ part and the _particular_
part, the _abstract_ and the _concrete_ part, the _theoretical_ and
the _historical_ part. We do not wish to refuse recognition to an
occasionally just sense of the intimate relations between philosophy
and history as among the motives that lead to such unions, the first of
which flows into the second, revives it and is by it in turn revived.
But the history, to which philosophy applies the torch, is all history
in its palpitating reality; it is history represented by all histories
that historians have written and will write, and also by those that
they have not written and will not write. The history offered by these
empirical descriptions is only a very small part of history and (what
is worse) abstract and mutilated. This would, however, be an injury of
not too grave a nature, even at this point, provided the incongruity
were limited to literary unfitness; in which case, it is true, would be
added to inutility the ugliness of a union capricious and artificial,
but fortunately extrinsic. But by means of that extrinsic approach,
the way is opened to the attempt at an intrinsic approach, and thus
to the third form of the undue invasion of practical description by
philosophy, which constitutes the _morbus philosophico-empiricus_ in
all its harm fulness.

[Sidenote: _Third form: attempt to place them in intimate connexion._]

The attempt at intrinsic approach takes place when empirical
classes are placed in connection with the philosophical concepts or
categories, with pure thought. Nearly all philosophers have fallen
into this error, since it is very natural that they should not have
wished to leave a _hiatus_ between the first and second parts of
their books of Philosophy of the practical, between the general and
particular parts, and that they should have striven to connect the
one with the other by passing logically from the concepts of the
first to those of the second. The mistake was indubitably increased
owing to their small degree of clearness as to the logical nature of
the two orders of concepts (concepts and pseudo-concepts), which is
fundamentally diverse, and we shall not further insist upon this matter.

[Sidenote: _Science of the practical and Metaphysic: various
significations._]

Rather let us note that sometimes there has been something rational
in the minds of those who have required the Science of the practical
or Ethic to be constructed independently of all Metaphysic. In truth,
that programme of the independence of the Science of the practical
or Ethic of Metaphysic has had various meanings that it will be well
to enumerate briefly. The first meaning was that the Science of the
practical, in so far as it was philosophy, should be independent of
the _aggregate_ of the philosophical system (Metaphysic). In this
case the claim was not acceptable, as we shall see, because it was
at variance with the nature itself of philosophy, which is unity. The
second meaning was that the Practical, as science, should be kept
remote from every form of faith, or feeling or fancifulness (which has
sometimes been called "Metaphysic"); and in this case the proposition
was inexpugnable, however contestable may have seemed the opportuneity
of the meaning given to that word. The third meaning was that the
Science of the practical, in so far as it was descriptive, should stand
by itself, in order to afford a base for philosophical induction. Use
was here made of the erroneous idea, already rejected several times,
of philosophy as an intensification of the psychological method, or
as a carrying of it on. But in a fourth sense, it was desired finally
to withdraw practical description from the perilous care of the
philosophers, and it seems to us that with this fourth meaning was
expressed a very just demand.

[Sidenote: _Damaging consequences of the invasions._]

What are, in fact, the consequences of the care that philosophers
have bestowed upon practical description? We would not wish to use an
over-coloured simile, but what happens is very much what would happen
if a man were given a baby to suckle. He would press it violently
against his dry and arid breast, incapable of nourishing, but well
capable of tormenting it. Philosophy, when it approaches the empirical
classes, will either begin to criticize their distinctions and abolish
them, reducing several classes to one, and then reducing the reduced
classes in their turn to a less number, until none are left at all and
it finds itself in company with the universal philosophical principle
alone, or alone with itself;--or it will contrive to preserve them
as classes, deducing them philosophically, and will thus make them
rigid and absolute, removing from them that elasticity and fluidity
which they derive from their historical character, and converting them
from useful classes that they were, into bad philosophemes, concepts
contradictory in themselves.

[Sidenote: _1a. Dissolution of the empirical concepts._]

Both these consequences have occurred, for the books of philosophers
are full of examples, now of destruction, now of corruption of the
empirical classes of the Practical. The treatment of the doctrine
of the virtues or of so-called natural rights affords examples of
destruction. Striving to distinguish courage from prudence, or justice
from benevolence, or on the other hand, egotism from wickedness, they
ended by recognizing that true courage is prudence, true prudence
courage; that benevolence is justice, justice benevolence; that egotism
is wickedness, wickedness egotism, and so on. In this way, all the
virtues became one, the virtue of being virtuous, the will for the
good, duty. In like manner, by giving philosophical form to the natural
rights of life, of liberty, of culture, of property, and so on, they
ended by recognizing that all rights merge in one single right, which
is that of existence; which latter, indeed, is not a right, but a fact.
The passions were reduced from seventy or eighty classes to six or
seven fundamental, but these six or seven were in their turn reduced
to two only, pleasure and pain, and of these two; it was finally
discovered that they constituted one only--life, which is pleasure
and pain together. But virtues, rights, passions, possess value in
practical description only in so far as they are multiplicity--their
value is always plural, never singular. To reduce them to a single
class signifies to annul them, as to blow upon a candle signifies to
extinguish it and to remain in darkness; darkness is to be understood
as without empirical light. Now the philosopher should certainly
destroy empirical ideas, but only in so far as they present themselves
as philosophical distinctions, that is, in so far as they are empirico
philosophical: and in that case it suffices him to show that they are
empirical, without pretending to annul them in their own domain also:
_debellare superbos,_ but _parcere subjectis;_ that is, he should spare
strangers who remain quietly in their own house.

[Sidenote: _Examples: war and peace, property and communism, and the
like._]

It might seem desirable to pass in review all these empirical
distinctions and questions which the philosophers have thought that
they had satisfactorily solved, when they had, on the contrary, passed
beyond them. But the theme is inexhaustible, and we cannot here give
even a rich selection, comprising the most frequent and important
cases. We must limit ourselves to brief mention.--People discuss every
day: whether war be an evil, and if it be possible to abolish it;
if community of goods should take the place of private property; if
rational government be that of liberty or of authority, of democracy
or aristocracy, of anarchism or state organization; whether the State
should be in the Church or the Church in the State, or side by side and
independent; if freedom of thought should be admitted or restrained;
if instruction should be free or undertaken by the State; and other
similar problems. Now behold the philosopher applying himself to the
study of these ideas. Having tested them, he is astonished that people
can find in them opposing terms, and make them argument for dispute.
In truth (he says), war is intrinsic to reality, and peace is peace in
so far as by making an end of one war it prepares another; as Socrates
demonstrated in the _Phaedo,_ when, scratching his leg in the place
where it had been pressed by the chain, he realized that he could not
have experienced that pleasure had he not previously experienced the
pain. Nor is property different from communism: the individual declares
himself by an individual taking possession of things and becoming their
owner; but by so doing he enters into relations and into communion with
other individuals, and does business with them. And liberty excludes
subjection the less, since _sub lege libertas;_ nor does aristocracy
exclude democracy, since the true aristocrat is the bearer of those
universal values that are the substance of democracy; hence the more we
are aristocratic the more we are democratic, and inversely. Nor does
anarchism exclude State organization, because a collection of men,
however free we suppose it to be, must nevertheless govern itself
according to some laws, and these laws are the State. Then, the ideal
State, being the best government of men for their perfectionment, both
material and spiritual, accomplishes the work of the Church itself,
which is neither above, nor below, nor beside the State, because it is
the State. Thus in like manner, no one can grant or abolish freedom of
thought, since thought is by definition freedom, and the restraint is
thought itself, because liberty coincides with necessity. And finally
State instruction cannot but correspond with rational demands, and the
free instruction of citizens, if it be really so and not arbitrary and
capricious, will be the same as that of the State, or will be changed
into the instruction of the State.

[Sidenote: _Other examples._]

Passing to other orders of fact that are less political, but are also
argument for practical discussions, we shall refer to the so-called
conflicts between duty or interest, as symbolized in the legendary
Titus Manlius, when offered the alternative _aut reipublicae aut sui
suorumque obliviscendi_;--or to the so-called question of the two
moralities, private and public, in support of which the not legendary
Camillo Cavour said in 1860, that if he had done in his private
interest what he had done for Italy, he would have deserved the
galleys;--or we can refer to questions of classification, and ask
whether the kind of man who is socially harmless should be placed side
by side with the criminal;--or to those others, famous in Casuistic,
relating to capital punishment, homicide, suicide, lies, whether and
when they should be permitted, and other similar questions. Here, too,
the philosopher will smilingly observe that duties and interests can
never be in conflict, because in every given case duty is always one
only, and interest is always one only, that of the given case;--he
will deny that there is one public and one private morality, because
in man, the private person and the citizen, family relations, or
those of friendship, and those of political life, are inseparable and
indistinguishable;--that every man is bad and good, inoffensive and
criminal, and that in the so-called criminal there must also be the
non-criminal, if he be given the name of man;--that every punishment is
a punishment of death, that is, it causes something to die, and that it
is impossible to find a clear distinction between shutting a man up in
prison and thus taking from him a more or less large slice of physical
life, and taking it from him altogether by hanging or shooting
him;--that homicide, as such, is so little a crime that in war it is a
duty to commit it;--that a lie, which is silence as to what one knows,
is in itself so innocent that no one in the world, save a foolish
prater, tells all he knows, and that if it be admitted that one can
and should be silent, that is to say, let others be deceived by our
silence (though this is eloquent), there is no reason for not admitting
that we can also betray them with speech (often less eloquent), as is
done with children in order to send them to bed, and with sick persons
in order to comfort them;--that, finally, culpable suicide is not
the material act of depriving oneself of physical life (a thing done
without incurring blame, and indeed with praise and glory, by those who
sacrifice themselves for others in war, in epidemics, in dangers of all
sorts, and by every one who consumes his own vital strength in a worthy
cause), but the killing of the moral life in oneself.

[Sidenote: _Misunderstanding on the part of philosophers._]

In all these answers to questions, we have not made our imaginary
philosopher commit any blunder; we have indeed put into his mouth
things that we believe to be all of them most true and irrefutable,
because we believe them ourselves. And we hold that it is necessary to
profess them against those who arbitrarily make questions philosophical
whose terms are not philosophical. But when the philosopher offers
those solutions to the empirical disputants, he behaves like him who,
hearing a speech in a language of which he knows little, makes a reply
that is in itself most reasonable, but without relation to the previous
speech. The empiricist, if he have studied philosophy, will be able
to reply, as did King Theodore, worn with misery, in the old _opéra
bouffe_ of the Abbé Casti, to him who recalls to him the miseries
suffered by Marius, Themistocles, and Darius:--

    Good my son, I know them well,
      For I have heard these tales before;
    But just at present, truth to tell,
      'Tis money interests me more.

[Sidenote: _Historical significance of the aforesaid questions._]

Money, that is, ready money to spend in definite situations
historically given, in order to find one's way in them; for all those
questions are without universal signification, but have arisen from
political and individual problems, to which they do and must belong.
Certainly they are insoluble in the abstract, and this is the defect,
or rather the nature of empirical questions, which, if they admitted
of rigorous solution, would not be any longer empirical. Therefore it
is a foolish thing to discuss them philosophically, as is seen in the
conspicuous example of certain casuistical enquiries (the homicide of
the unjust aggressor, the lie, incest, etc.) which have been treated by
nearly all philosophers and have been dragged about for centuries in
discussions on Ethic, although every century has left them at the same
point as they were in the one preceding.

But if it be not possible to solve, we can at least _state_ them
in abstract terms, in the same way as drill and the sham-fight are
abstract, though certainly of use when the battle is really fought. We
can and we should bear in mind these abstract solutions, in order that
we may be the better able to solve a series of concrete cases, which
are not identical, certainly, because identical cases do not exist, but
more or less similar, and therefore require solutions that are more or
less similar.--Can war be done away with? This question refers not to
the elimination' of the category "war," but to the possibility or the
reverse of avoiding in the twentieth century and in European countries
that empirical war which is waged with cannons and cruisers, that
costs milliards when it is not waged, and tens of milliards when it
is waged, and out of which the conqueror comes conquered. It is well
understood that some form of war will always continue, because war is
inherent to life.--Can private property be done away with? This does
not mean to ask if it be possible to prevent man from taking possession
of things, of his food, or of the material that he requires for dress,
or from inhabiting a house; but whether it be possible to alter, to
the advantage of mankind, the proportion that now obtains between
production with private capital and production with collective capital,
giving the preference to the latter.

And so on, for it would be tiresome to continue to state the historical
problems that are grouped beneath each of the recorded formulæ, which
indeed are easily to be found. Thus when we absolutely forbid the
telling of lies, as indecorous and degrading, as that which severs the
ties of human community and of reciprocal faith, as the vice (said
Herbart) that has the special faculty of stirring up against it all
the five moral ideas--justice, benevolence, equity, perfection, and
internal liberty--the intention is to forbid what is usually called
lying; but it is certainly not intended to institute a speculative
enquiry as to the relation between knowing and making known, between
the theoretic act of thought and the practical act of its communication
to other individuals. Thus again, the prohibition of suicide has in
view suicide through egoism, which is the most frequent form, and it is
therefore useless to identify this with the universal relation between
death and life, and with the proposition that life is preserved by
means of death. Thus too, finally, the conception of the delinquent
has been a beneficent rectification of common prejudices relating to
the efficacy of certain laws and penalties applied to certain classes
of individuals who are led to crime as though through unrestrainable
natural tendency. For the rest, the wisdom of life teaches us usually
to take individuals as we find them, with their virtues and vices, and
without claiming to set them violently right, and to remake them from
top to bottom. We should rather adapt them in the best way possible
for our own ends, or for those of society. This does not, however,
imply that they are fixed beings, and that each of those classes is
heterogeneous in respect of the others. If, with the help of a foolish
positivist philosophy, we make of the idea of the delinquent something
necessary, a natural being, as it is called, confounding naturalistic
with natural and incorrectly hypostasizing gnoseological procedure,
then, and then alone, are we right in reacting and in denying.

[Sidenote: _2a. False deduction of the empirical from the
philosophical._]

And yet those solutions of philosophers, who think that they are
solving empirical questions by annulling or ignoring them, do not yet
represent the worst that happens when philosophy usurps the function
of empiria. Such misunderstanding, such hardness of hearing, may be
proof of a spirit so energetically directed to universale that it is
unable to see anything else, and may even for that reason possess
some sympathetic quality. The worst of the worst is the entering upon
empirical questions, not in order to annul, but to take sides in them
and to solve them philosophically.

[Sidenote: _Affirmations relating to the contingent changed into
philosophemes._]

This cannot be done, save by supporting empirical concepts with
rigorous and philosophical concepts, confounding the one with the other
by a trick of thought, and sometimes of words, making use of synonyms
and homonyms, and pronouncing in the name of philosophy arbitrary
solutions suggested only by caprice or self-interest. This is the
complete corruption, alike of philosophy and of empiria. Not satisfied
with making practical classes follow philosophical concepts of the
practical, it is then sought to deduce the former from the latter,
and behold them now deriving virtues and duties from the universal
concept of practical moral activity, by means of the divisions of
internal and external, of part and whole, of individual and society.
These are concepts of relations, not susceptible of division, and
therefore incapable of serving as base for empirical divisions. Or
they have recourse to the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,
which is the universal concrete itself, constituting unity, and
therefore incapable of serving as basis for division. Or they will
deduce the moral virtues according to the three faculties, as virtues
of representation, feeling and thought, or according to the two of the
will and the intellect, as dianoetic and ethical virtues; as though the
base of the division of the _practical_ could be that of _theoretical_
and _practical._ Empirical concepts become in this way all false,
whereas, in their real nature, they are neither false nor true.

There is no thesis, however absurd, which cannot be defended with
such a method. All know that there are aristocratic and democratic
philosophers, libertarian and authoritarian, anarchical and
organicist, socialistic and anti-socialistic, bellicose and pacific,
feminist and antifeminist; and there are others who maintain the
right to lie, the right to suicide, the right to prostitution, the
right to incest, to making of themselves caterers for the scaffold,
the right to the penalty of death. These solutions can be morally and
politically justified in certain definite and particular cases. There
are other solutions rationally unjustifiable in the individual case
and put forward only through passion, wickedness, or prejudice, but in
both hypotheses, they are outside philosophy and within it so false as
to be odious, as that is odious which is maintained, not by means of
intrinsic reason, but by imposition altogether extrinsic and external.

[Sidenote: _Reason of the rebellion against rules._]

Such hatefulness explains the rebellion against moral rules and
concepts that has often taken place. This, together with that against
literary classes and rules and others of the same sort, forms part
of the vast movement of rebellion against empirical or empiricized
philosophy. In truth, when those rules and ideas are taken by
themselves, no rebellion is possible, because they do not exert any
pressure and obey the orders of the man who has made them. But it
happens otherwise, when they become rigid and philosophical, and
as is said, absolute, claiming to substitute themselves as such for
philosophy and to provide a base for judgments. In addition to this,
from the enforced union of philosophemes with rules, has arisen the
false idea of philosophizing about the practical (about an Ethic,
for example), which showed itself to be _practical,_ or, as is said,
_normative._

[Sidenote: _Limits between philosophy and empiria._]

Philosophy, by taking part in empirical questions, ruins both itself
and them, because it loses the serenity, the dignity, and the utility
that are intrinsic to it. In like manner, the empirical disciplines
ruin themselves and philosophy when they claim to philosophize with
their classes, which are not categories, with their pseudo-concepts,
which are not concepts, with their _generalia,_ which are not
_universalia._ Here too, safety lies in distinction: the observation of
distinction alone makes possible beneficent co-operation.




IX


HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS


A history of the general theories relating to the practical activity
is still to write, although we have several relating to particular
theories of Ethic. The mode in which such a historical narration should
be conducted results from the historical explanations themselves,
which we have exposed and shall continue to expose. Here we cannot
even offer a rapid summary. We shall limit ourselves to making a--few
remarks on the subject, and we shall give some historical account of
certain problems of the philosophy of the practical, that have had, to
some extent, profound treatment, or have at least been sufficiently
discussed (for not a few others are virgin, or almost so), with the
sole object of serving as a guide.

[Sidenote: _I. Distinction between history of the practiced principle
and history of the liberation from the transcendental._]

I. A first warning to bear in mind concerns the historical inquiry as
to the varying _recognition of, or failure to recognize_ the _practical
reason_ in respect to the other forms of the spirit. This series of
thoughts is not to be confounded with that _other historical process,_
so long and so intricate, which had its origin in the debate between
St. Augustine and Pelagius (or perhaps rather in the opposition between
Platonic mysticism and Aristotelian humanism), and through analogous
debates, arising afresh during the Middle Ages and onward to modern
times, culminating in the strife for the independence of morality and
the practical reason in general from religion, which took place in
the seventeenth century. The account of the various incidents of that
debate perhaps occupies a larger space and a different place in the
special histories of Ethic than it deserves. For it is not concerned
with an entirely ethical or practical problem, but with that general
philosophical movement which produced the progressive elimination of
the transcendental and founded the immanentistic consideration of
the real: a necessary condition for the conceivability of philosophy
itself. In this lay the great importance of the affirmation that the
practical and the moral spirit of man reveals itself as constant in the
midst of the most various and opposed religious beliefs. This amounts
to saying that it is independent of religion and knowable naturally and
humanly, without the necessity of having recourse to the authority of
revelation and of making shipwreck in mystery. It is customary to say
that in the seventeenth century free-thought definitely won the victory
upon the point most ardently contested, and in this connection are
recorded the names of Charron, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pierre Bayle. To
these could be added that of G. B. Vico, who conceived of Providence
as immanent and considered that morality arose from "a sense common to
all men," from a judgment "without any sort of reflection," foundation
of the natural rights of man. But should the word "definite" be really
used here? Whenever the idea of the transcendental reappears, even in
the timid form of agnosticism, the autonomy of the practical reason is
denied, or at least again put in doubt (and with it that of the whole
human spirit).

Two examples only of this must suffice, but they are conspicuous.
Emmanuel Kant, not having been able to surpass the mystery that he
had formulated--the principle of the practical reason--the categoric
imperative remained suspended in the void, and in that void it invokes
in relation to itself faith in a personal God and in a transcendental
future life, which shall conciliate virtue and happiness, at variance
in the life lived upon earth. This scrap of mystery which Kant
allowed to remain in his system, suffices to obscure that autonomy
of the practical reason and that concept of spiritual productivity
which he had affirmed with so much energy. Another example, perhaps
even more characteristic, is furnished by the Ethic that was prevalent
for three centuries in the English School. It was a utilitarian Ethic
and therefore incapable of truly founding moral reason. What was the
consequence of that incapacity when recognized as such? Nothing but
the renewed introduction of mystery, the explanation obtained by means
of the idea of a personal God, assuming that most extravagant form
known as "theological utilitarianism." By this theory, moral actions
that in this life do not receive adequate recompense and seem to be
unjustified from the utilitarian point of view, are rewarded by God
in another life, thus finding their economic motive for being carried
out in the present life. In our theoretic treatment of the subject, we
do not concern ourselves with the controversy, already mooted in the
_Eutyphron,_ as to whether sanctity be loved by the gods as sanctity,
or whether it be sanctity because it is beloved by the gods[1]--a
question that in the Middle Ages was transformed into that other one,
differently solved by Abélard, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus: whether the
moral law be given by divine decree, or whether the idea of God does
not of necessity coincide with the idea of moral law. We do not treat
of this, since we are occupied with the practical, not with theology
or antitheology, and consider that the contest between philosophy
and theology has been already solved and surpassed in the theory of
knowledge. For the same reason, it seems to us that we should not trace
its history in the History of the Philosophy of the Practical.[2]

[Sidenote: _II. The distinction of the practical from the theoretical._]

II. The true and proper history of the practical principle, conceived
as autonomous, and of the problem concerning the identity or the
distinction of the practical from theory, has a different line of
development. As a rule this problem is referred back to the celebrated
sayings of Socrates, that virtue is knowledge and vice ignorance, and
to the corrections that Aristotle, while accepting, proposes in them,
when he takes note of the part that belongs to the non-cognoscitive
element. But, as often happens, those sayings and those corrections
have been taken as being more profound than they genuinely were and
could be. This, if it have not aided the exactness of historical
interpretation, has nevertheless stimulated and fecundated thought.
On reading without prejudice the parts of the _Memorabilia,_ of the
Platonic dialogues, of the _Nicomachean Ethics,_ and of the _Magna
Moralia_ that relate to it, it appears evident that what is treated
of in them is the altogether empirical question of the importance
that mental development has for practical life, and whether knowledge
suffices for this, or natural dispositions and discipline of the
passions be not also necessary. Aristotle replied to Socrates, who had
insisted upon the element of knowing, conceiving virtue as knowledge
(λόγος), by modifying the statement with the assertion that virtue is
not indeed simply knowledge, but is _with_ knowledge (μετὰ λόγου).
In these very ingenuous considerations is to be found at the most
implicitly, but certainly not explicitly, the problem that was only
stated later on; and it would be rash to classify Socrates as an
intellectualist and Aristotle as a voluntarist. It is certain that the
Aristotelian philosophy, in accordance with good sense, preserved the
distinction between the two forms of the spirit, the theoretical and
the practical, the reason and the will, a distinction that has also
passed into the scholastic philosophy (_ratio cognoscibilis, ratio
appetibilis_) and into that of the Renaissance. But it remained always
vague, sometimes brought into prominence, sometimes, on the other hand,
attenuated. Almost dissipated in those who conceive the principles of
the practical as something similar or analogous to mathematical truths
(Cudworth, Clarke, Wollaston, etc.), it always reaffirms itself when
importance is given to the affections and passions, as is the case with
many thinkers of the seventeenth century (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza,
Vico); and the doctrines of the Scottish school of sensationalists
contributed not a little to keep it alive.

It seems indubitable that Emmanuel Kant is to be connected to
some extent rather with this last tradition than with that of the
intellectualists: with Kant the practical reason possessed a domain of
its own altogether distinct from and almost antithetical to the domain
of the theoretical. But it is erroneous to present the successors
of Kant as forgetful of the practical reason and as resolving every
spiritual manifestation in the theoretical form of the spirit.
For instance, Fichte, who had a very strong consciousness of the
peculiarity of the practical activity, did not do this, nor did Hegel,
though as commonly as unjustly accused of being a cold intellectualist.
It should suffice to recall how Hegel always opposed that view of
Plato and of other thinkers (for example Campanella) who assigned the
government of the State to philosophers, a view in which the resolution
of the practical into the theoretical spirit and of the will into
knowledge seemed to become concrete. For Hegel, on the contrary, the
domain of _history_ is different from that of _philosophy;_ history
is indeed the idea, but the idea that shows itself in a _natural and
unconscious_ manner, and _philosophical_ genius is not _political_
genius. Nor must we forget the importance that he accorded to passion,
to custom, to what is called the heart and is wont to be opposed to
the brain and to argument. For Hegel, the will is not thought, but
a special kind of thought, that is to say, thought which translates
itself into existence, the impulse to give oneself existence. Whereas
in the theoretical process, the spirit takes possession of the object
and makes it its own by thinking, that is by universalizing it, in
the practical process a difference is also stated and determined,
which on the other hand consists of its own determinations and ends.
The theoretical is contained in the practical, since there cannot be
will without intelligence; but, on the other hand, the theoretical
contains the practical, since to think is also to act. Hegel, in short,
distinguishes the practical from the theoretical and unifies them,
while retaining the distinction.[3] What is not perhaps altogether
clear to him, notwithstanding his view that history is the idea in a
natural and unconscious mode, is the unreflective character of willing.
To have given relief to this character, although in the exaggerated and
inacceptable form of the will as blind and unconscious, is the merit of
Arthur Schopenhauer, who is indeed far from standing alone in assigning
an eminent place to the will, but connects himself with all the Kantian
and post-Kantian philosophy, and in the first place with Fichte and
Schelling.

[Sidenote: _III. The mixtures of philosophy of the practical and
description._]

III. The mixture of philosophical concepts with empirical concepts and
with rules is a vice common to nearly all treatises of the Philosophy
of the practical, beginning with the _Nicomachean Ethic,_ which,
although in certain places loftily philosophical, should be placed in
greater part rather at the head of the history of the works of the
moralists and of writers on the practical, than of Ethic. The author
himself recognized this practical character when he wrote, _πάς ὁ περὶ
τῶν πρακτῶν λόγος τύπῳ καὶ οὐκ ἀκριβῶς ὀφείλει λέγεσθαι.[4]_ And in
this appears the prejudice that practical philosophy should be occupied
with the practical: ἐπεὶ οὖν ἡ παροῦσα πραγματεία οὐ θεωρίας ἕνεκά
ἐστιν ὥσπερ αἱ ἅλλαι (οὐ γὰρ ἵνα εἰδῶμεν τί εστιν ἡ ἀρετὴ σκεπτόμεθα
άλλ' ἵν' ἀγαθοὶ ηινώμεθα, ἐπεὶ ούδὲν ἃν ἧν ὄφελος αὐτῆς), κτλ.[5]
Even the greatest thinkers of modern times are not exempt from that
characteristic. Emmanuel Kant, while recognizing that the division and
treatment of duties do not belong to the Critique of the Sciences (he
should therefore have excluded them from philosophy, which is always
_criticism),_ finally relegates them to what he calls the "system"
(and is in truth the anti-systematic)[6] and writes the _Metaphysic of
Customs,_ divided into the doctrines of law and of the virtues. Fichte,
in his _System of Ethic,_ makes the applied follow the theoretical
part. Hegel gives the doctrine of duties in the third part of his
_Philosophy of Law,_ which is entitled Of Ethicity (_Sittlichkeit_.)
The Ethic of Herbart is intrinsically descriptive, for the author
himself professed to wish simply "to describe the ideal of virtue,"[7]
and the five practical ideas that he takes as principles were at bottom
nothing but classes of virtue refined into ideas. Treatises of to-day
are overflowing with empirical elements, as can be seen from those in
English by Ladd and Seth, and by those in German of Paulsen, Wundt, and
Cathrein. Sometimes a more concrete historical element is coupled in
those treatises with the empirical classification of practical examples
and institutions: as, for instance, in Cathrein, a modernized Jesuit,
who exposes at length the moral views, not only of civilized people,
ancient and modern, but also of the savages of Oceania, of Asia, of
Cochin China, of the Hottentots and Boschimans, of the Botocudis, and
so on. Questions of casuistry also survive in these treatises, such as
whether and on what occasions it is permissible to tell a lie; this
question is notably represented in the history of ideas, from the
Socrates of the _Memorabilia_ to Kant and Schopenhauer.[8] Kant added
questions of casuistry to the various sections of the _Metaphysic of
Customs,_ as scholia to the system and examples of the way in which the
truth of particular questions should be sought.[9]

[Sidenote: _Vain attempts at definitions of empirical concepts._]

But the efforts of ancient and modern philosophers rigorously to
define empirical concepts afford more interest than the external form
of treatment, as do their efforts to modify or to simplify, or indeed
finally to deduce them rationally. The Platonic dialogues, such as the
_Charmides,_ the _Lachetes,_ the _Protagoras,_ are most instructive
in this respect. Here it is sought to define sophrosune, andreia and
the other virtues, without arriving at any precise result, or rather
arriving at the contradictory one, that each of these virtues is _the
whole of virtue,_ whereas it should only be a _part_ of it. In the
_Republic_ is sought the relation of the four virtues, or rather of
three of them, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, with justice, which
forms as it were the foundation and unity of the whole. From such
discussions arose the affirmation, to be found also in Cicero, that
the virtues are inseparable from one another: _virtutes ita copulatae
connexaeque sunt, ut omnes participes sint, nec alia ab alia possit
separari._[10] The difficulty of the Platonic inquiry is renewed with
all those who have given definitions of the virtues and of the other
empirical concepts, because, when they have achieved with much labour
a definition which appears satisfactory, it is afterwards always found
to be too narrow or too wide. Thus the definition given by Kant and by
others (Fichte, Schopenhauer) of egoism, consisting in their view, of
considering other individuals as means and not ends, is the definition,
not of egoism, but of any form of immorality which debases the Spirit
that should be the end, by means of its own caprices. The same is to
be said of the definitions given by Fichte as to the duties inherent
to this or that condition and state: the duties, for instance, of the
learned, who should love truth, communicate it to others, rectify
errors, promote culture,[11] and so on. These are all things that
form part of the duty, not only of the learned, but of every man. The
simplifiers are not more fortunate in their attempts to reduce the
number of empirical concepts, for the concepts excluded by them have
neither more nor less right to recognition than the others that they
have accepted. Schopenhauer, for instance, when he rejects the class
of duties toward oneself,[12] should also reject that of duties toward
others. For others and ourselves are correlative terms, and we cannot
be benevolent to others and malevolent to ourselves, just to others
and unjust to ourselves. If this be met with the objection that the
empirical self is not the object of duties, we must reply that neither
are the empirical "others," but only that Spirit which is in all and
constitutes all. In reacting against these unifiers and simplifiers,
other philosophers (as for example Herbart) have maintained the
indeducibility of the virtues or duties from a single principle, which
means that they have received those concepts into their philosophy
atomistically, and left them there as something not digested and not
digestible, an extraneous element. If they had openly admitted this and
drawn from it the legitimate consequence, and for that reason excluded
those concepts from philosophy, they would really have contributed
toward simplifying and unifying, by making it homogeneous. But Herbart,
if he have no other merit, has at any rate declared that the Philosophy
of the practical is not capable of solving all the problems that occur
in life, and that we must always rely upon the answer of the heart,
upon the delicacy of individual tact. And, therefore, while Kant still
preserved casuistic questions in Ethic and professed to solve them
rationally, Herbart showed that they lack the determinations that are
of true importance in real cases, and that such questions are therefore
as a rule either without meaning or insoluble (_entweder gar keiner
Fragen, oder im Allgemein unauflöslich_).[13]

[Sidenote: _Attempts at eduction._]

As concerns the attempt to connect and to deduct the empirical part of
treatises from the philosophical, the first example is the Aristotelian
division of the virtues into the dianoetic and ethic, with their
consequent determination by means of the concept of mediacy (μεσότης)
between two extremes. But this Aristotelian method, which was continued
by the Scholastics, seemed to others (as for example Schleiermacher)
nothing but "a heap of virtues," without any rule and without any
certainty; hence he made constant attempts at new classifications and
new deductions. Kant recognized that the ethical obligation, that is,
respect for the law, is something unique and indivisible, and that to
attain from that to duties or _ethica officia,_ which are many, it
is necessary to introduce the consideration of objects.[14] Here he
should have stopped, because objects have infinite determinations, are
infinite. Hence the enumeration, division and deduction of duties,
should be simply pronounced impossible. Instead of doing this, he
passed at a bound, how far logical we know not, from the general
ethical obligation, to the division of duties into two great classes:
of man toward man, and of man toward beings that are not human. He
divided the first into duties toward oneself and duties toward other
men, the second into that of the duties toward beings beneath man
(animals) and those toward beings above him (God).[15] The strangeness
of these divisions, which sometimes verge on the comic, can already
be seen, though abridged, in the first class of the duties toward
oneself, subdivided in its turn into duties toward oneself as an animal
or physical being, and duties toward oneself as a moral being; as
though human duties are not always to be referred to spirituality and
can ever concern physicality or animality. In their first aspect they
receive a tripartite division, into the duty of self-preservation,
which is violated by suicide, by allowing oneself to be castrated (in
order to sing soprano, as used to be done at that time at the San Carlo
of Naples and at the Opera of Berlin), by allowing a healthy tooth
to be pulled out in order to sell it (as does poor Fantine in the
story of the _Misérables_); into the duty of preserving the species
(violation: unnatural use of the sexual impulse);--into the duty of
preserving the use of one's own strength (violation: gluttony). The
duty of preserving the dignity of man is contained beneath the second
heading (violation, lying, covetousness, abjection, etc.[16]). The
fact is that the duty of preserving the dignity of man comprises
in itself, not only the class that stands first, of duties toward
oneself, but also all the other duties toward men, animals, or gods.
Fichte feels the difficulty, because he sees that conscience is that
which determines our duty on each occasion; but he adds: "This is not
enough for science: either we must be able to determine _a priori_
that which our conscience will affirm in universal, or we must admit
that an Ethic, as a pure applied science, is impossible."[17] The
second horn of the dilemma was precisely that of the truth, but
Fichte, like Kant, bowed to the supreme power of tradition and clung
to the first. He divides duties into mediate and conditioned (toward
oneself) and immediate and unconditioned (toward others), and into
general and special (those of various states and conditions), deducing
from this the fourfold division, resulting from the meeting of general
conditioned duties, particular conditioned, general unconditioned,
and particular unconditioned. Hegel, who in his youthful writings had
denied absolute value to the virtues, and consequently the possibility
of collisions between the virtues (for example, in the _Life of Jesus,_
recently published), well defines the altogether empirical character
of that treatise, calling it, by reason of its natural element and of
the quantitive considerations upon which it is founded, "a natural
history of the spiritual world" (_eine geistige Naturgeschichte_); but
since he did not perceive the identity of the concept of duty with that
of virtue, he believes in the possibility of a philosophical theory
of duties.[18] This is developed by him, as has been said, in the
section of Ethicity, applying to it the dialectical rhythm proper to
the philosophical universal, and distinguishing in it three moments: of
the immediate natural spirit, which is the family, of the dissension
from which arises civil society, and of conciliation, whence arises
the State. But notwithstanding the external dialectical form, there
is to be found in all this section of the Ethicity at every point,
not so much the philosopher properly so-called, as the historian who
describes and narrates, the acute and well-balanced politician and
moralist. The merit of such a treatise resides precisely, therefore,
in the abhorrence of a sham philosophy; with but slight modifications
of literary form, it could be developed into a series of excellent
historico-political essays. Certain of the propositions of the writing
on _Natural Law_ (1802-3)[19] would tend to show that Hegel inclined
to look upon the treatment of duties and institutions as nothing
more than a provisional classification of historical and changeable
material, a thought that is in any case suggested by his whole system.
Schleiermacher was among the philosophers of that time who laboured,
perhaps, with the greatest tenacity upon the empirical classes, with
a view to reducing them to philosophical form; but the results were
unhappy, only revealing, by their contradictions persisting after
such efforts, the impossibility of the task. In fact, Schleiermacher
sees and does not see the unity of the three spheres of things good,
of duties, and of virtues; hence they appeared to him to be three
aspects of the same object, and he strangely placed them in analogical
connection with three spheres of the natural world, the mechanical, the
chemical, and the organic. He, too, starting from a double division and
a double antithesis, ideal and temporal, of knowledge and exposition
(_Darstellen,_) arrived at a quadruple division of the virtues, into
wisdom and love, discretion and perseverance, which seemed to him to
coincide with the four Platonic virtues, of φρόνησις, δικαιοσύνη,
σωφροσύνη, and ἀνδρeίa, or with the four cardinal virtues derived from
them, to which would correspond the four duties: of right, of vocation,
of love, and of conscience.[20] After this, it would be superfluous to
proceed to enumerate the ethical systems of contemporary philosophy,
noteworthy neither for the ingenuity of their artificial deductions nor
for the grandeur of their paradoxes.[21]

[Sidenote: _IV. Various questions._]

IV. The very copious empirical element that fills the books on
the Philosophy of the practical and the attempt to treat it
philosophically have also had the injurious effect of distracting
their authors from entering deeply into the problems of true and
proper philosophy, to which the practical activity gives rise. Thus
a history of the aforesaid aberrations would be as rich as a history
of the speculation as to the will would be poor. The problem of the
theoretic element in the volitional act, or of the theoretic phase
of deliberation, has not been developed as it deserved, and as
the important pages of the third and seventh books of the _Ethica
Nicomachea_ seemed to augur. The question, too, of the priority of
the will over the concepts of the useful and of the good and of the
practical judgments, is hardly touched by a philosopher here and there,
and the Herbartian theory of practical judgments failed to excite
any fervour of examination, criticism, or opposition. The concept
of good will and of good intention, to which Kant gave a prominent
place, is not discussed profoundly, save by Hegel, who goes deeply
into the difficult problems of abstract and concrete intention in the
introduction and in the second section of the _Philosophy of Law._
The other problem, as to the possibility or impossibility of willing
without full knowledge, was not adequately treated after Descartes and
Spinoza.

[Sidenote: _The practical nature of error._]

In Descartes are also to be found the most acute observations as to the
practical nature of error. After having stated that it is impossible
that God should have given to man any faculty that was not perfect of
its kind, he asks himself: "_D'où est-ce donc que naissent mes erreurs?
C'est à savoir, de cela seul que la volonté, étant beaucoup plus ample
et plus étendue que l'entendement, je ne la contiens pas dans les mêmes
limites, mais que je l'étends aussi aux choses que je n'entends pas;
auxquelles étant de soi indifférente, elle s'égare fort aisément, et
choisit le faux pour le vrai et le mal pour le bien: ce qui fait que
je me trompe et je pèche._" Errors arise from the concourse of two
causes, the faculty of knowing and the faculty of choice: "_car pour
l'entendement seul je n'assure ni ne nie aucune chose, mais je conçois
seulement les idées des choses que je puis assurer ou nier._"[22] For
Descartes the affirmation was an act of the will, and here perhaps lies
his mistake and the mistake of those who have followed him in this
theory (Rosmini for example); that is to say, they have _mistaken_
the _affirmation,_ which is theoretical, for the _communication,_
which is practical, or they have taken as being of the same degree the
general will that is in affirmation through the unity of the spirit,
and the particular will that is in error. Spinoza opposes Descartes'
theory of error, but in conformity with the deterministic nature of
his philosophy, his criticism relates only to the point as to whether
the will can be the cause of error when it is not more than a mere
abstraction or _ens rationis;_ hence errors or the _particulares
volitiones_ can be determined, not indeed by the will and by liberty,
but _a causis externis_[23] The consciousness of the introduction of
the will into the theoretical spirit as production of error has been
affirmed by Schleiermacher as well as by Rosmini:[24] "It is the will
(he writes) that conceals men from themselves: the judgment cannot err
if it turn its gaze really upon itself."[25] Baader frankly reduced
incredulity to ill-will and moral corruption.[26]

[Sidenote: _Practical taste._]

As to the concept of an immediate form of practical discrimination,
independent of the intellectual judgment, it is to be remarked
that the faculty of _taste_ in Gracian and in other thinkers of the
seventeenth century[27] has a practical rather than a theoretical
origin, and that the sentimentalists of Ethic (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson
and others) were led to posit a moral tact sense. Before Herbart talked
of a _moral taste (sittlicher Geschmack[28])_ Jacobi, who saw better
than others the analogy between practical and æsthetic facts, had
written: "The science of the good, like the science of the beautiful,
is subject to the condition of _taste,_ without which nothing can be
decided, and beyond which nothing can be carried. The taste for the
good, like that for the beautiful, is formed by means of models of
excellence, and original acts are always the work of genius. By means
of genius, nature gives laws to art, both as regards the good and the
beautiful. Both are _liberal_ arts; they do not allow themselves to be
lowered to the level of mechanical arts and placed at the service of
industry."[29]

[Sidenote: _V. The doctrines of feeling._]

V. With the mention of a few facts and names, it can be proved that
the function of the term "feeling" in the history of philosophy has
been as shown above. We have already said that the peculiarity of the
practical form has been asserted by the use of the word "feeling" or
similar denominations ("moral sense," "conscience," and the like),
especially by the Scottish School, in opposition to intellectualist
reductions. Jacobi appealed to the feeling of duty (_Gefühl der
Pflicht_) or conscience in his ethical discussions. In our day, too, it
has been affirmed (by Simmel[30] and others), in opposition to abstract
and imperative Ethics, that the practical decision is the product of
feeling and is not definable by theoreticians. But the principal cause
of the importance attached to feeling in the eighteenth century was
the æsthetic problem. This is seen in Dubos's book, in the English
sentimentalists (who approach the ideas of virtue and of beauty,
treating of the moral sense and of the beautiful), and, finally, in
the doctrines of Leibnitz himself and of his school, as to _confused
cognition,_ which led to the _Aesthetica_ of Baumgarten.

[Sidenote: _The Wolfians._]

We owe the word and the concept of _feeling_ (_Gefühl_ and sometimes
also _Empfindung_) principally to the Leibnitzian-Wolfians and to
the German thinkers under the influence of Wolff (Mendelssohn,
Tetens, Sulzer, Riedel).

[Sidenote: _Jacobi and Schleiermacher._]

By means of the speculation of Jacobi, on the other hand, feeling
was called upon to fulfil the functions of a true and proper
metaphysical organ. He had demonstrated in a rigorous and irrefutable
manner that the form of the empirical sciences and of the abstract
intellect, since it proceeds by nexus of cause and effect, is incapable
of attaining to the infinite, and had assigned the affirmation of
God to the "sense of the supersensible," to "immediate knowledge,"
and to "feeling." After Jacobi, the same position was assumed by
Schleiermacher, who maintained that it was impossible to know God by
means of the intellect and to treat Him as an object, since He is
indifference of thought and being. He can be known only by feeling,
which is indifference of all determinate functions of ideal and real,
of thought and being. The neocriticists and agnostics of to-day, with
their appeal to feeling in all truly philosophical questions, are
followers, often unconscious and certainly less coherent, of Jacobi and
Schleiermacher.

The concept of feeling in the Kantian philosophy can be said to derive
its importance from the meeting of two unsatisfied wants, namely,
that which sought a concept for the æsthetic activity and that which
sought a _forma mentis_ proper to philosophy. Indeed, the _Critique
of Judgment_ corresponds to feeling, the first part of which consists
of an inquiry into the nature of the beautiful and of art. The second
part (critique of the theological judgment) is an anticipation of the
_concrete concept,_ or of that organ of speculative thought which the
_Critique of Pure Reason_ had not discovered.

[Sidenote: _Hegel._]

Feeling, therefore, cannot but lose importance in the Hegelian
philosophy, which makes of art a form of knowledge, and of the
teleological judgment the logic of the idea or philosophical logic,
resolving also in it the demand of Jacobi, whose feeling or immediate
knowledge is shown to be logical knowledge and supreme mediation. In
Hegel feeling is nothing but a class of spiritual facts, the lowest
of all, that in which theory and practice are still indistinct.
But this class has a merely psychological value in his system, not
philosophical and real (which is not clearly recognised by him).
Indeed, feeling, which was absolute knowledge for Jacobi and for
Schleiermacher, is placed, not in the sphere of the absolute spirit,
nor in that of the objective or practical spirit, but in the subjective
spirit, or Psychology. The "doctrine of the three faculties"
(_Dreivermögenslehre_), as was called that elaborated from Mendelssohn
to Kant and promulgated in the Kantian philosophy, did not, however,
remain without opponents in the nineteenth century; from Krug (1823) to
the youthful Fichte, and in more recent times Brentano (1874).

[Sidenote: _Opponents of the doctrine of the three faculties. Krug._]

Krugs confutation is wrongly combated by Hamilton and discredited by
Brentano, for it proceeds with perfect correctness, and is founded on
the correct philosophical principle that' there are no other activities
of the spirit conceivable, save those directed either inwardly or
outwardly (immanent or theoretical and transcendent or practical),
and that therefore there is no place for feeling, which would be a
mixture of the two activities, and consequently a failure of direction
or inactivity, nothing, therefore, but a poor, rudimentary knowing or
willing, that is, a psychological class, not a philosophical category.

[Sidenote: _Brentano._]

Brentano, returning in a measure to Descartes, constructs the
doctrine of the three faculties in a different way, determining them
as representation (to which he makes art and the æsthetic activity
correspond), judgment (to which corresponds science), and love and
hate (to which corresponds the practical). Feeling, therefore, does
not find a place of its own in the psyche, and that which is wont to
be called feeling is either representation, or love and hate. Brentano
shows himself inferior to Krug in the philosophical demonstration of
the inconceivability of this form of the spirit, but he has the merit
of having substituted certain positive elements for the indeterminate
word "feeling," although the function exercised by feeling in the
development of philosophical thought is more important than Brentano
succeeds in perceiving, for among other things he ignores and fails
to recognize the relation of the concept of feeling to the demands of
speculative thought.[31]



[1] _Eutyphron,_ 10.

[2] The history of the enfranchising of Ethic from Religion has
been done with especial care by Jodl, _Gesch. d. Ethik als philos.
Wissensch._ vol. I². (Stuttgart--Berlin, 1906). For Vico, cf. my book,
_The Philosophy of G. B. Vico_ (Bari, 1911).

[3] _Phil. d. Rechts,_ § 4, Zus.; _Gesch. d. Philos._ ii. pp. 66, 169.

[4] _Eth. Nicom._ 1103.

[5] See above.

[6] _Kritik d. prakt. Vern.,_ ed. Kirchmann, pp. 7-8.

[7] _Allg. prakt. Phil.,_ ed. Hartenstein, p. 107.

[8] _Memor._ iv., c. 2, §§ 14-16. Schopenhauer also exhaustively,
_Gründl. d. Moral,_ in _Werke,_ ed. Grisebach, iii. pp. 603-607.

[9] _Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ ed. Kirchmann, p. 248.

[10] _De Finibus,_ v, c. 23.

[11] _System der Sittenlehre,_ § 29, in _Werke,_ iv. 346-347.

[12] _Gründl. d. Moral,_ ed., cit., iii. pp. 506-508.

[13] _Allg. prakt. Philos.,_ ed. Hartenstein, pp. 29-30.

[14] _Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ pp. 247-248.

[15] _Op. cit._ p. 251.

[16] _Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ p. 255 _sqq._

[17] _System d. Sittenlehre,_ pp. 208.

[18] _Philos. d. Rechts,_ §§ 148, 150.

[19] _Werke,_ i. 323-423.

[20] In the _Entwurf e. Systems d. Sittenlehre_ (in _Werke,_ sec. iii.
vol. v.), and cf. the collected writings in _Werke,_ iii. I.

[21] For example, F. Paulsen, _System der Ethik,_ Leipzig, 1906.

[22] _Médit._ iv.; and _Réponses aux 3mes et aux 3mes object_.

[23] Epist. in _Opera,_ ed. Gfrörer, p. 523.

[24] Cf., among other places, _Logica,_ §§ p. 278 _sq.; Fil. d.
diritto_ (Napoli, 1844), I. p. 50.

[25] _Monologen,_ in _Werke,_ i. 363.

[26] Cf. Jodl, _Gesch. d. Eth._ ii. pp. 131-132.

[27] _Estetica_ 4, p. 222.

[28] _Allg. pract. Phil._ pp. 9-22.

[29] _Woldemar_(1779, 1794-95), in _Werke,_ v. p. 78.

[30] _Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft,_ Berlin, 1892-93.


[31] For the doctrine of feeling see, chiefly, Volkmann, _Lehrb. d.
Psychol._ (Cothen, 1885), ii. pp. 301-311; F. Brentano, _Psychol._
(Leipzig, 1874), 1., ii. c. 5; cf. _Ursprung sitt. Erkennt._ (Leipzig,
1889) pp. 51-55; A. Palme, _Sulzer's Psychol, u. d. Anfänge d.
Dreivermögenslehre_ (Berlin, 1905). Cf. also Croce, _Estetica,_ pp.
226-228, 4th ed.




SECOND SECTION


THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS DIALECTIC




I


NECESSITY AND LIBERTY OF THE VOLITIONAL ACT


The relations of the practical form with the other forms of the spirit
having been examined, it is now necessary to re-enter, so to speak, the
interior of the volitional activity, and enclose ourselves within it,
that we may study its mode of development, its rhythm, its dialectic.
We shall no longer ask, therefore, whether the practical activity
precede or follow knowledge, or exactly what knowledge it follows and
what it precedes, what the volition is in relation to events, what the
practical concept or judgment, and the like. But we shall ask what are
good and evil, the passions and the forces that dominate them, desires
and aspirations; and in the first place (this being the problem that
opens the series and gives the key for the solution of the others) what
are the _freedom and necessity_ of the volitional act.


[Sidenote: _The problem of freedom._]

This problem of freedom and necessity (that is to say, whether the will
be free or determined) has seemed to be and is, from a certain point of
view, most weighty and complicated, and we shall soon see why this is
so. But at this point, owing to the premises that we have already laid
down in our preceding treatises, and also in the part of the present
treatise that has already been developed, it will be convenient to
solve it with relative expedition.

[Sidenote: _Freedom of willing and freedom of action: criticism of such
distinction._]

First of all, we have been able to eliminate the distinction that is
wont to be made between freedom of willing and freedom of action,
with the duplicity of the problem thus entailed. Indeed we know that
volition and action coincide, and that it is impossible to conceive
either a volition which is not at the same time action, or an action
which is not at the same time volition, and that in consequence there
cannot be freedom of willing on the one hand and freedom of action
on the other. All the instances of the one that are brought forward
can be reduced to the other, provided that the word "freedom" be not
used in an improper and metaphorical manner. For example, a paralytic
(they say) wills to get up and run; his spirit is free, but his
action is restrained; he has freedom of willing, but not of action.
But in reality the paralytic does not seriously will to get up and
run; that is, he does not really will anything at all. Were he really
and seriously to will, that might happen to him which happened to a
paralytic gentleman in the Neapolitan revolt of 1547. This gentleman
had himself carried into the square on the arms of his servants, but he
was found, after the tumult, to the great astonishment of all, on the
top of the campanile of San Lorenzo, whither he had climbed with his
own legs; such had been his terror and such his will to be saved.[1]
As a rule, on the other hand, the paralytic does not will, because he
knows that he cannot; at the most, he _would wish_ or desire to find
himself in different conditions to those in which he finds himself, in
order that he may be able to will otherwise than he does now, which is
to remain quiet. This confirms the identity of volition and action,
and proves that the two supposed freedoms are one only. Thus, he who
is threatened and yields to the threat declares that he is deprived of
freedom of action, but that this is not exact is already affirmed in
the formula: _coacti tamen volunt._ Enforced actions not only do not
exist, but are not even conceivable. The demand for greater freedom of
action, such as new political liberties, is nothing but the demand for
certain _new conditions of fact_ for future volitions and actions. But
it is a question of more or less, since, as we know, no countenance of
imminent tyrant can extinguish the freedom of the soul; no ruler, be he
ever so strong and violent, can prevent a rebellion, or, when all else
fails, a fine death that affirms externally the freedom within. "The
will that wills not cannot be subdued."[2]

[Sidenote: _The volitional act: both free and necessary._]

The question that we have here to treat is, then, single, and concerns
only the will, which, as such, includes in itself action. In replying,
however, we cannot accept the dilemma, that the volitional act must
be free or determined, and cling to one of the two horns: we must on
the contrary deny the form of the question itself and say that the
volitional act is _at once free and determined._

Volition, in fact, as has been seen, does not arise in the void, but
in a definite situation, in unchangeable historical conditions, in
relation to an event, which, if it be, is necessary. The volition
corresponds to that situation and it is impossible to separate it: when
the situation changes, the volition changes; as the situation, so the
volition. This amounts to saying, that it is _necessitated_ or always
conditioned by a situation, and precisely by that situation in which it
arises.

But this also means that the volition is free. Because if the actual
situation be its condition, the volition is not the condition, but the
conditioned, for it does not remain fixed in the actual situation,
nor repeats and makes a duplicate of it, which would be superfluous
and therefore impossible in the effective development of the real,
which does not allow of superfluity. The volition produces something
different, that is, something new, something that did not exist
previously and that now comes into existence: it is initiative,
creation, and therefore act of _freedom._ Were this not so, volition
would not be volition, and reality would not change, would not become,
would not grow upon itself.

And since without necessity there cannot be liberty, because without
an actual situation there cannot be volition, so without liberty there
cannot be necessity, the actual situations are not formed, which are
always new and always necessary in respect to the new volitions. Actual
situations are events, and events are the result of the concourse of
individual volitions. The two terms cannot be separated, for if one
be removed, so is the other; but neither can they be looked upon as
identical or synonymous. They are the two moments of the volitional
act, distinct and united, which act is the _unity_ of both, and
therefore, as was said, is at once free and determined.

This consciousness of necessity and liberty inseparably united is found
in all men of action, in all political geniuses, who are never inert or
reckless: they feel themselves at once bound and unbound; they always
conform to facts, but always to surpass them. The fatuous, on the other
hand, oscillate between the passivity of the given situation and the
sterile attempt to overleap it, that is, to leap over their own shadow.
They are consequently now inert, now forward. They do not therefore fix
or conclude anything, they do not act; or, if they do, it is always
according to what of the actual situation they have understood, and
what of initiative they have displayed.

[Sidenote: _Comparison with the æsthetic activity._]

The best comparison is afforded on this occasion also by the æsthetic
activity. No poet creates his poem outside definite conditions of
space and time, and even when he appears to be and is proclaimed "a
soul of other times," he belongs to his own time. The historical
situation is given to him. The world of his perceptions is such, with
those men, those customs, those thoughts, those works of art. But
when the new poem has appeared, there is in the world of reality (in
the contemplation of reality) something that was not there before,
which, although connected with the previous situation, yet is not
identical with it, is indeed a new form, and therefore a new content,
and so the revelation of a truth previously unknown. So true is this,
that in its turn the new poem conditions a spiritual and practical
movement, becomes part of the situation given for future actions and
for future poems. He is a true poet who feels himself at once bound
to his predecessors and free, conservative and revolutionary, like
Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, who receive into themselves centuries of
history, of thought and of poetry, and add to those centuries something
that is the present and will be the future: _chargés du passé, gros de
l'avenir._ The false poet, on the other hand, is now a blind follower
of tradition and imitator, now a charlatanesque innovator, and if in
the vacuity in which he labours he sometimes does produce a fragment of
poetry, this happens only when he is made to look into himself and to
have a vision, be it great or small, of a world that arises.--But the
comparison instituted is rather an analogy than a comparison, for that
which happens in the practical sphere happens in that of poetry and in
all the other spheres of the spiritual activity. The Spirit is freedom,
and in order to be so, not in the abstract, but in the concrete, it
must also be necessity.

[Sidenote: _Critique of determinism and of arbitrarism._]

This indissoluble connection of necessity and liberty confutes both the
partial theories which dispute the field in the problem of freedom:
the _deterministic_ theory and that of _free will._ The determinists
do not see in the volitional act anything but the actual situation;
the followers of the theory of free will see nothing but the moment of
freedom. These conceive a volition that is as it were a duplication,
triplication, quadruplication of the given fact, and so on to the
infinite; those a volition that bursts forth from nothing, or rains
down from above and then inserts itself, no one knows how, into the
course of the real. Both exaggerate, and since exaggerations are called
in science errors in sense, both err, and being one-sided are proved
false. But since, on the other hand, it is a quality of errors opposed
to one another, to become identified and to pass, the one into the
other, it is given to us to assist at a like spectacle in this case
also, and to see the determinists change into arbitrarists and the
believers in free will into determinists. The first, in fact, passing
from cause to cause, abandon the concept of cause at the end of the
chain, as though (to use the expression of Schopenhauer), they were
dismissing the hired carriage, made use of during the day for their own
affairs, and return to free will. The others, being unable to justify
freedom in the world of reality and of experience, justify it in a
transcendental way, as the effect of a divine cause, which excludes
free will, and excludes it also when it concedes it; for by the very
fact of conceding, it determines, limits, and produces it.

[Sidenote: _General form of this antithesis: materialism and
mysticism._]

But with this explanation of our thesis, and of the two theses opposing
it, we are transported into the heart of one of the greatest problems
of Gnoseology, so great in fact as to appear to contain in it the whole
problem of philosophy. In fact, that which is called determinism and
free will in the Philosophy of the practical is the same antithesis
that in Gnoseology is called _materialism and mysticism._ And that
which we here oppose to the two one-sided theses, as theory of that
liberty which is also necessity, is called in Gnoseology, _idealism._
The thesis and antithesis are therefore to be found in all the
particular problems of philosophy, since they concern the logical form
in universal. This, then, is the reason why the question of freedom of
willing has become so grave and complicated as to appear insoluble. To
obtain a solution, it was necessary to construct a Logic of philosophy,
and intrinsically necessary to renew the whole system of philosophy.
Herbart wisely counselled never to discuss the freedom of the will with
the laity, in order not to be misunderstood.[3]

Had this advice been followed, we should not have seen both determinism
and free will torn asunder by advocates in the law courts, dragging
in the one or the other to suit their purposes, and thus insulting
good sense, which should alone rule in those places. The freedom of
the will is doubted and discussed among philosophers, as the reality
of the external world is doubted and discussed, but this is not done
because it is wished to set in doubt the existence of the boots of
this gentleman or of that gentleman's overcoat. If a confirmation be
sought that the question of the freedom of willing is, as was said, the
universal gnoseological or metaphysical question, let it be observed
how the determinists and the advocates of free will affirm or deny the
freedom of willing, not only in that field, but in all fields. Indeed,
whoever, for instance, should admit spiritual activity to knowledge and
deny it to the will, would not, properly speaking, be a determinist,
but an intellectualist or an æsthetician. That is to say, he would be
a theoretician, who, in denying the freedom of the will, would simply
mean to deny the existence of a practical activity side by side with
the theoretic; for freedom is the very essence of every spiritual form,
and with the denial of the freedom of that form is denied the form
itself. Determinism, arbitrarism, libertarianism reflect, then, the
universal gnoseological thesis of naturalism and mechanicism in the
special practical field.

[Sidenote: _The materialistic sophisms of determinism._]

Determinism of the will, like materialism and mechanicism in general,
consists in nothing but the transference to philosophical speculation
of the form proper to the physical disciplines. By dint of classifying
practical facts and presenting them as empirical concepts, and thus
as merely related by cause and effect, they end by forgetting that
those formulæ are not thoughts and that their content is not real
reality; and causes or motives (abstractive transformation of the
actual situation) are given as agents of the will, and thus the agent
is destroyed for the cause, the form for the abstract material. Hence
these timid phrases that on close inspection turn out to be tautologies
or mistakes: "Freedom is an illusion; what prevails is always the
strongest motive." But if we ask what is the strongest motive, we are
told (and no other reply is possible) it is _that which prevails._
This, translated into our language, amounts to saying that the actual
situation is the actual situation, and conditions the will, which is
what it is and can be no other than it is.--Virtue is a mere product,
like vitriol. Certainly, vitriol is also in its way a creation, a
manifestation of the spirit, as is virtue, and if it be permitted to
falsify vitriol by changing it into something material and mechanical,
nothing forbids doing the same for virtue. Virtue, too, can be produced
just like vitriol, that is to say, by setting in motion the spontaneous
forces of the spirit and of so-called nature, which itself is also
spirit, and nothing forbids endowing educators with the title of
chemists and apothecaries of virtue.

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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.



[1] Summonte, _Historia di Napoli,_ ed. 1675, iv. 205, "Miracle caused
by fear."

[2] Dante, _Parad._ iv. 76.

[3] _Einleit. in die Phil._ § 128, trad. Vidossich, p. 169.




II


FREEDOM AND ITS OPPOSITE. GOOD AND EVIL


[Sidenote: _Freedom of action as reality of action._]


Since, then, the volitional act is freedom, the question as to whether
in a given case an individual has or has not been free, is equivalent
to this other question: _Has there really been volition_ (action) in
that case? This question can have and has (as any one who lends an
ear to such discussions as are frequently heard can verify) but two
meanings. The first is, whether the case under discussion be _action_
or _event,_ and, therefore, if it be or be not accurate to present it
as an individual act. For example:--Was Jacobinism the crime or the
glory of Voltaire and Rousseau? Was the defeat of Waterloo the fault of
Marshal Grouchy? The second is, if it be really a question of _action,_
what, _precisely,_ has that action been? For example:--What were the
respective parts of Voltaire and of Rousseau in the propaganda of the
revolutionary spirit and of the Jacobin mode of thought? What did
Marshal Grouchy really know and will when, instead of listening to
Exelmans and to others of his generals and marching whither the cannon
was thundering, he obeyed to the letter the order he had received and
attacked the Prussian army corps of Thielman?

[Sidenote: _Inconceivability of the absolute absence of action._]

There is a third meaning that is to be excluded: namely, as to whether
at a given moment of time there has been any sort of action or, on
the contrary, a void and total absence of action. For the only case
in which the individual does not act is that in which he is dead or
partially dead, be the death physiological or spiritual, that of a
corpse or of a madman. The glory of putting poor madmen on a level
with the guilty and the delinquent is to be left to the thinkers of
the "new school of penal law." In every other case, man always acts,
always wills, and is always responsible and free, because life, so long
as it lasts, is nothing but a web of volitions and therefore of free
acts. He is also responsible for the acts that contribute to put man
in such conditions as amount to madness more or less transitory, and
so of irresponsibility: such is the case of drunkenness and of moral
dangers imprudently sought, and so on. At no point of life does the
_practically indifferent_ exist.

Those actions, too, that appear to be neither willed nor free,
because they have become habitual, mechanicized, instinctive, are
willed and free, not indeed because (though this be true enough in
itself) habitual acts were once acts of will, but because (as we have
already had occasion to remark), although they have become facts
almost external to the individual willing, yet it is always the will
that permits them to act and can always arrest their action: they
are therefore to be looked upon as conditions of fact that every new
volition modifies, even when it accepts them. A machine is not the
work of the arm that moves it, but of hundreds and thousands of other
arms that were previously moved in order to construct it. But once
constructed, that which sets in motion the machinery is always the
work of one arm, an act of will, just as an act of will can stop its
movement and finally cause its disaggregation and destruction.

[Sidenote: _Non-freedom as antithesis and contrariety._]

But excluding the absolute absence of freedom of action (and of
existence in so far as it is action), and on the other hand the
presence of something different from it called causality having been
previously excluded from the idea of freedom, it remains nevertheless
indubitable that in the very bosom of freedom, there is _non-freedom.
_ Every volition is at the same time nolition, as every affirmation
is negation. Volition is love, nolition hate; and, as we know, every
love is hate, and the more we love, the more we hate. Antigone was
born to love intensely, and for that very reason, to hate profoundly.
What can be that which we hate in love and abhor in volition? What can
this internal enemy be, which does not consist either in the absence
of volition or in the presence of an extraneous and indifferent
element?--Since it is neither absent nor indifferent, it cannot be
anything but the _opposite or contrary_ of freedom, anti-freedom, which
constitutes the contradiction in its effective concretion.

[Sidenote: _Nullity and arbitrariness of non-freedom._]

Freedom is an indissoluble nexus of necessity and freedom: the force
that tends to annul it is anti-freedom, the scission of that nexus, the
analysis of that synthesis. On the one hand it aims at making liberty
fall into nothingness, by compelling it to the inertia of the fact,
and on the other, to make a leap into the void, by impelling it to
will, a sterile endeavour--two movements that are one-sided and absurd,
and become identified through the considerations already established
in relation to determinism and arbitrarism. Therefore the opposite
of freedom is qualified indifferently, either as the _passive,_
taken by itself, opposed to the active, the fact that resists the new
creation, or as the _active,_ taken by itself and abstract, opposed
to the passive: will opposed to liberty. Anti-freedom is either the
material fact or arbitrary choice, but the first is resolved into will,
the second into material fact. Only by an act of will can the fact
that should continue to develop be fixed as a fact and so appear as a
material fact, and only by a persistence in that fact, which should
be surpassed, can will give itself the appearance of a content. The
undertaking is contradictory, and the solution, the absence of freedom,
is a contradiction.

[Sidenote: _Good as freedom and reality, and evil as its opposite._]

Freedom and its opposite, freedom and its internal contradiction,
freedom and will, are what is designated by the terms _good and evil._
With us these terms are given an altogether generic meaning, as they
are taken as the representatives of all the other couples of opposites
that are wont to be enunciated in the field of practical activity,
as helpful and harmful, useful and useless, honest and dishonest,
meritorious and blameworthy, pious and impious, lawful and sinful, and
so on. All these formulæ either answer to the sub-distinctions of the
practical activity (which we shall study further on), or are the same
distinction, variously formulated, with reference to psychological
classes. But all are to be reduced to those of good and evil for
the purposes of the philosophical study of the practical activity
in general, without ulterior determinations of them as moral or
utilitarian good, moral or utilitarian evil, or any other form there
may be, and without regard to the various empirical material, with
which they may be filled.

[Sidenote: _Critique of abstract monism and of the dualism of values._]

That practical good and evil are to be conceived as will and anti-will,
and the good, therefore, as the reality and the bad as the irreality
of the will, the good as something positive and the bad as something
negative,--is the solution imposed by the impossibility of thinking
the two others that differ from it: namely, that which considers the
distinction between good and bad as inexistent (abstract monism of
values), and that which considers the good as transcendent in respect
of reality, which is always evil, unless the good deign to descend
and modify it (abstract dualism of values). For the criticism of
the abstract monistic view, it is necessary to distinguish between
those doctrines that deny, not only the distinction between good
and evil, but also all the analogous distinctions in every field of
activity, including that of thought, and the doctrines that allow
the distinction to subsist in other fields, but deny it in that of
the practical. The first, which deny the distinction between true
and false, are the suicide of Philosophy, the second, which deny it
only between good and evil, are the suicide of the Philosophy of the
practical: that is to say, both are founded upon errors that we have
already criticized and surpassed, and upon which it would therefore
be otiose to insist. As to the dualistic view (still common among
right-thinking professors of philosophy, that is, among the lazy and
the most lazy) it will be requisite to discuss this point seriously,
when it has been demonstrated in what way Reality can place itself
beneath the yoke of Value and of Goodness, which would be inferior
to it by hypothesis, through the very fact that they were _unreal._
Reality living, these others dead; Reality like "the four bedevilled"
of Giusti bent upon _doing so,_ they, like the "two hundred simpletons"
of the same poet, bent upon _saying_ no. For if Value and Goodness be
real, they will be the true Reality; and that which was first called
by the name will be feigned reality, altogether identical with what we
have indicated as the moment of contradiction and of will, arising in
the very bosom of the practical activity.

[Sidenote: _Objections to the reality of evil._]

An instance that is always formidable has certainly been cited against
the thesis of evil as something negative and unreal, and of good as
itself the only positive and real: it has actually been affirmed that
this thesis offends against good sense. What? Is evil unreal? Is it
nothing? Unreality and nothingness are then the knavish trick of some
wicked person who starts a calumny, which, being received and believed,
injures an honest man? Unreality and nothing, the passion that drags
the gambler into economic ruin and moral abjection? So the world is all
good, all rose-coloured, all sweet; and crimes, cowardice, foolishness,
and baseness are illusions, and there is no reason to lament; so the
feeling of life should be expressed with a perpetual smile, like that
upon the lips of the wounded warriors in the marbles of Aegina? -But
let good sense and its advocates remain tranquil. If evil be a nothing,
that does not mean that it is nothing; if the vanity that seems to be
a person, be vanity and not a person, that does not mean that it has
not really the appearance of a person and should not be really combated
and dissipated. The wise, who having defined evil, deny toothache,
or like the stoical Posidonio forget the gout that transfixes them,
need Giambattista Vico to remind them how no philosophy is able to
save them from anxiety on behalf of "their wives in childbirth" and
of "their sons who languish in disease"! The world is precisely that
mixture of good and evil, which good sense says it is, and the sweet
is always tempered with the _amari aliquid._ It cannot be adequately
expressed either with lamentations only, or only with laughter. The
thesis that we have enunciated wishes to abolish, not the consciousness
of evil, but the false belief that this is something substantial, and
thus prevent one evil from being increased by another, evil by error,
_moral_ trouble by _mental_ confusion.

[Sidenote: _Evil within and without synthesis._]

Evil is either felt as evil, and in this case it means that it is not
realized, but that in its place is realized the good. The gambler of
the example, at the moment he knows he is doing himself economic harm,
does not play; his hand is held; and it is held, because to _know,_
in the practical sense, equals to _will_; and to know the harm of
gambling means to know it as harm, and so to dislike gambling. If he
take to dice or cards again, this arises because that knowledge is
obliterated in him, that is, because he changes his mind; and in this
case play is not looked upon any longer as harmful; it is willed,
and so at that instant again becomes the good for him, because it
satisfies one of his wants. The calumniator, if he understand the
idea that is passing through his mind, or rather the impulse that has
seized him, as calumny, is for that very reason repugnant to it and
does not pronounce those evil words: in that case indeed he is not
a calumniator, but an honest man who resists a temptation (and no
other definition of an honest man can be given). But if he pronounce
them, this means that the opposing repugnance was not present or is
no longer present: and therefore those words are no longer for him a
wicked act of calumny, but a simple satisfaction of a desire to amuse
himself, or to reject the evil that has been done to him, and therefore
a good. In the same way, he who asserts what is false, he who renders
himself guilty of error, if he be aware of himself as frivolous or a
charlatan or disloyal, would be silent: if he talk and write and print
false insinuations, this happens either because the will for truth
does not exist in him, or is for the time being suppressed, and with
it the desire to seek it out and to diffuse it; that is to say, for
that will has been substituted the other of withdrawing from a painful
labour, or of obtaining easy praise and gain; so, for one good has been
substituted another. As a rule, it is admitted that we will the good
and do evil. "I do not do the good that I will, and I do the evil
that I do not will" (οὐ γὰρ ὂ θέλω ποιῶ ἀγαθόν, ἀλλὰ ὂ οὐ θέλω κακὸν
τοῦτο πράσσω), said St. Paul.[1] But it is a question of psychological
confusion, owing to which a series of moments and alternatives is
simplified into one single act, inexistent because contradictory.

[Sidenote: _Affirmative judgments of evil as negative judgments._]

Thus evil, when real, does not exist save in the good, which opposes
and conquers it, and therefore does not exist as a positive fact. When
on the contrary it exists as a positive fact, it is not evil, but
good (and in its turn has for shadow an evil, with which it strives
and conquers). The judgments that we give when we judge an action to
be foolish or wicked, a statement false, a work of art ugly, are all
metaphorical. In delivering them we do not mean to say that there is an
_existence_ called error, ugliness, foolishness, but only that there is
a given existence and that another is wanting. He who has launched a
calumny, dissipated his property, soiled a canvas, printed a worthless
book, does not, strictly speaking, deserve negative denominations,
because to judge means to place oneself in the conditions of the person
judged, and in those conditions there was neither evil nor ugliness
nor error nor folly; otherwise the acts that are the objects of the
judgment would not have been accomplished, and in so far as they are
accomplished they deserve positive judgment. But what is meant by the
negative form of those judgments is that such an act is this and not
another, that it is utilitarian and not moral, a commercial and not a
literary or scientific fact, and so on.

[Sidenote: _Confirmations of the doctrine._]

There is a very ancient saying to the effect that every one seeks
his own good and that no one deliberately wills his own evil, and,
therefore, that if the practically good man be the wise, then the
bad man can but be the ignorant. Now if we remove from the thesis
its intellectualist veneer, and translate wisdom and ignorance into
practical terms, we see that wickedness is here looked upon as a limit,
as a tendency toward the good, that has failed, not as the will for an
evil. The dispute as to who sins the more, he who is conscious of the
evil, or he who has no consciousness of it, is also illumined by the
theory that we have here exposed, which declares that both parties to
the dispute are right and wrong. For instance, he who is completely
without moral consciousness, is morally innocent, whereas he who is
more or less possessed of one, is also more or less of a sinner, for
the law itself makes him so (τὴν ἀμαρτίαν οὐκ ἔγνων εἰ μὴ διὰ νόμου,
also said St. Paul[2]). But with this saying it is not desired to put
the innocent above the sinner, but the contrary. That declaration of
ignorance is the gravest condemnation, for it is thus recognized that
the individual in question is unable to sin, and therefore unable to do
right, since the possibility of sinning is all one with that of doing
right. The poet inspires admiration, but he who does not know how to
be anything but a poet, and is therefore unable to reason and to act,
is deficient. The shrewd man is praised, but he who is _only_ shrewd
cannot be praised. The animal is a being, worthy of all esteem, but to
call a man an animal, that is, to tell him that he is nothing but an
animal, is to do him a great injury. In other words, while we recognize
as good all that a man effectively does, we do not intend to cancel
the distinction between one form and another of human activity, and
between one act and another, between the utilitarian and the moral man,
between fanciful and logical production, between animal and man. Nor
do we mean that those emphatic expressions of negative character that
we continually utter to one another and to ourselves, and by means of
which we urge ourselves and others to more lofty modes of existence,
are to be abandoned.

[Sidenote: _The poles of feeling (pleasure and pain) and their identity
with their practical opposites._]

Here occurs an opportunity of tying a thread that we had left loose
when discussing the theory of feeling, or rather the distinction of
feeling into the two poles of _pleasure and pain,_ understood, not as
a psychological distinction of greater or less, or of _mixed states,_
but as a philosophical distinction of _pure states,_ or of terms that
are truly opposed. When the vague and indeterminate term of "feeling"
is directed toward theoretical facts and is determined by theoretical
philosophy as æsthetic activity or speculative thought, or in some
other way, the terms of pleasure and pain are, strictly speaking, not
applicable to it. The pure theoretic activity considered in itself,
cannot be polarized, as has been seen; it will always attain to the
beautiful, always to the true. Only in so far as the theoretic activity
is also practical activity, by the law of the unity of the spirit,
will the polarization of good and evil, which in that case are called
beautiful and ugly, true and false, take place through it if not in it.
If the term "feeling" be on the contrary directed to practical facts,
and its synonymity with the practical activity (of which feeling would
be a distinguishing characteristic) made clear by the Philosophy of
the practical, it is clear that to it belongs immediately and no longer
mediately that polarity of good and evil. Good and evil then become
what theoreticians of feeling _call pleasure and pain._ These terms are
identical with the preceding, as feeling is a fact identical with the
practical activity, generically considered.

[Sidenote: _Doctrines concerning pleasure and happiness: critique._]

This theory of pain and pleasure, as the synonyms of the practical
positive and negative, helps to put an end to a long series of
questions arising in connection with such concepts. Above all, the
dispute as to whether pleasure be positive or negative will appear
to be unfounded, and, therefore, whether pain have a positive or a
negative value, or, finally, whether both be negative: unfounded,
since "pleasure" means "positive" and "pain" "negative." At the most,
it may be admitted that pain has also a positivity, which is however
nothing but the positivity of the negative, that is the real existence
of the negative pole.--The theory that man always proposes to himself
pleasure as an end is, on the contrary, not only not unfounded, but of
such evident truth as not to require enunciation, much less efforts
to prove it. If pleasure be nothing but activity, it is natural that
man should have no other end save pleasure, that is, activity, life
itself. The correction that has been suggested by others, to the
effect that man wills, not indeed pleasure, but activity, of which
the outcome is pleasure, has but slight exactitude, for the two terms
are not distinguishable, and the result is not separable from the
activity; the pleasure of travelling is not separable from travelling.
That polemic has value at the most against empiricism, which limits
pleasure to an arbitrarily determined group of pleasurable facts, that
is to say, circumscribes activity to certain particular manifestations
of activity, collected in groups or classes, and substituted for
the universal concept. Finally, by means of the identification
of pleasure and pain with good and evil in general which we have
given, all disputes as to the concept of _happiness_ disappear, as
to whether it be or be not distinct from that of the good action,
practically coherent, and if man propose to himself _happiness_ as an
end. "Happiness" is equal to "pleasure," and "pleasure" is equal to
"activity." To will the good (that is, to will well and energetically),
and to be happy, are the same. The objection raised by some, that man
does not will happiness, but a certain happiness, that he does not
will pleasure, but a certain pleasure, not the good, but a certain
good, is valid; but this only amounts to distinguishing volitional
man in the act, from the theory of the will, constructed by the
philosopher. If Tizio wishes at this moment to go to bed and Caio
to take a moonlight walk, bed and walk are the affairs of Tizio and
of Caio; for the philosopher there is no Tizio, no Caio, but man in
universal; there is neither bed nor moon, but pleasure and the good.

[Sidenote: _Empirical concepts relating to good and evil._]

The practical activity, the will, which is also strife between good
and evil, can be illuminated now from this side and now from that by
that indivisible unity, according to the accidents of discourse and the
varying situations of life. In this way arises a series of concepts
which, in so far as they are unilateral, are empirical, and only
become again philosophical in the thought of the unity of which they
form part. Thus, to make use of a comparison, space in geometry can be
analyzed and split up into a first, second, and third dimension; but
as spatiality, it is a _unicum,_ which does not possess either one or
two or three dimensions; and when in measuring or constructing plans
of measurement, we proceed to think one of these dimensions, we become
aware that we cannot think them, save all three together, or not as
three, but as one. The empirical, practical concepts that arise upon
the antithetical and dialectical nature of the will, have had much
importance, and it is fitting, therefore, that we should mention and
explain at least the principal among them.

[Sidenote: _Duty of being, ideal, inhibitive, and imperative power._]

If the situations of life lead to the directing of the attention
chiefly to the aspect of the will striving against inaction and
arbitrary choice, it is posited in this strife, in this becoming, as
something that _is not_ but _must be,_ not as _real,_ but as _ideal._
If the greatness of the ideal that is to be and to fill the soul with
joy, be set in relief in this struggle, then the ideal appears sweet
and smiling, as a _joy-bringing and beatific vision._ If, on the
other hand, the effort of its becoming be set in relief, the ideal
can be made into a metaphor, as will opposed to will, as legitimate
against rebellious will; and then it assumes a sour, rough, and hard
appearance, and the names of _inhibitive or imperative power,_ in so
far as it impedes the will, or promotes liberty.

There is no less opportunity and interest in making clear that
relation, from the point of view of the negative term, or of evil.
A series of descriptive concepts then appears, which present the
consciousness of evil, now as obstinate _blindness (cor induratum),_
now as _disquiet_ and _scruple,_ which induce vigilance and
circumspection, now as _humility,_ which does not permit forgetting
how easy it is to slip into evil. But it is worthy of note that the
series of words and empirical concepts that serve to illuminate
the _satisfaction_ of the good, the _victory_ won over oneself,
_tranquillity_ of conscience, is far less rich. Perhaps this arises
precisely because there is less practical interest in celebrating
the pleasure of victory than in the inculcation of the necessity for
strife and the abhorrence of evil. Why draw attention to joy and to
repose when man is already too much inclined to allow himself joy and
repose; does not Life allow them to itself and cause other problems
to follow on each solution, new perils to follow perils overpast, and
the necessity for new struggles? It is therefore of importance to
direct the greater sum of attention to those aspects from which the eye
is most frequently turned aside. Finally, these various aspects can
be placed in relation with the greater or less frequency with which
each appears in individuals, thus arriving at the construction of the
concepts of _virtue and vice,_ and of the models of _the virtuous
man, the honest man, the deliberate man, the clever man,_ and their
opposites, _the vicious, the dishonest, the unreflective, the incapable
man,_ and so on.

[Sidenote: _Their incapacity for setting as practical principles._]

The same thing happens with these empirical practical concepts as
with all the other empirical concepts, of which we have spoken in
general. They have been stiffened into philosophical concepts, for
the hasty satisfaction of the philosophical need of man. Hence, among
others, many of the disputes as to the principle of the Philosophy of
the practical. Some indeed maintain that such a principle is to be
found in _duty or the imperative; others in the idea or the ideal,
others in the joy of good, others in the abhorrence of pain, others in
virtue, others in enthusiasm,_ and so on. Each of the above-mentioned
theoreticians has the sharpest eyes for the discovery of the defects in
the theories of others, but is short-sighted as regards his own. Those
who maintain the ideal satirize the form of the categoric imperative
as suggestive of police or _gendarmerie;_ those of the imperative and
of duty deride the quietist form and the insipid ecstasy proper to the
contemplation of ideals; those of the avoidance of pain do not spare
their sarcasms for the hunters of joy; those of joy call these plunged
in sorrow hypocrites, who also obtain enjoyments for themselves, if in
no other way, then secretly: _si non caste, caute._ The truth is that
all are wrong as philosophers, because they all find the principle of
the will, not in itself but in an empirical concept, which gives to it
an abstract and mutilated appearance. And, on the other hand, all are
right, because those aspects are all real, and in each one of them the
others can be implicitly shown. The categoric imperative, for instance,
contains in itself both the will, which, in so far as it commands
itself, is the true will, the joy of being and the sorrow of not being
what we wish to be, the ideal, and the necessity of self-realization,
and so of entering into strife against irreality, thus becoming
imperative, and so on.

[Sidenote: _Its characteristics._]

If none of the formulæ given above, owing to their empirical character,
be able to indicate with precision the principle of the Philosophy
of the practical, and all are more or less convenient _synecdoches,_
for this reason none of those concepts are to be treated as rigorous
concepts. If they be so treated, there is not one of them, however
justified it may seem to be, that is not able to cause rebellions and
has not done so. The type of the dutiful man has been reproached with
being so much preoccupied with duty that he does not really perform
it, because he forgets the impulse of the heart; of the type of the
virtuous man it is said that he, as it were, ceases from being so by
the very fact that virtue becomes in him a profession; of the type of
the honest man, that there is nothing more base than the race of honest
men; of the type of the _pious Aeneas,_ that his piety is egoism; and
in general of all these cases it has been recalled that a little vice
is necessary for virtue, as alloy for metals. Repentance and remorse,
too, although they be highly recommended as means of purification,
have had their detractors; does it not suffice (they say) that an evil
deed has been committed? Must the offence be aggravated by losing
time over it, as though anything could be remedied with sorrowing and
lamentation? But others have replied that, given human iniquity, it is
better to exceed in the matter of remorse than to pass rapidly over
it. Humility has been opposed with the _sume superbiam_ as being more
virile, and with the _laudum immensa cupido_ as being more noble; the
habit of self-tormenting with the _servite domino in laetitia,_ as, on
the other hand, the over-confident has been admonished with that other
not less biblical dictum: _beatus homo qui semper est pavidus._ These
are objections and replies that may all of them have value for the
empirical situations to which they refer; but they have neither truth
nor value in philosophy, for which they are all of them false, because
the distinctions from which they derive are not philosophical. Remorse,
for instance, has a value, not in itself, but as a passage to activity,
without which such passage would not take place; the virtuous habit has
a value, not in itself, but in so far as it is practised and constantly
preserved; duty cannot differ from the aspiration of the soul, and
both cannot differ from the volitional act; confidence is at the same
time trepidation, and humility must be one with the pride of merit. To
sum up, for, the philosopher, the dialectic of the will is all in the
concept of will, with its polarization of good and evil, which is the
actuality and concreteness of that concept.



[1] Rom. vii 19.

[2] Rom. vii.




III


THE VOLITIONAL ACT AND THE PASSIONS


[Sidenote: _The multiplicity of volitions and the struggle for unity._]

If the volitions followed one another, so to speak monadistically,
each one shut up in itself, simple, impenetrable, indecomposible, it
would be impossible to understand the moment that there is in them
of arbitrary choice, of evil, of contradiction. But it is not so.
The individual is solicited simultaneously by many or, more exactly,
by infinite volitions, because the individual is at every moment a
microcosm and in him is reflected the whole cosmos, and he reacts
against the whole cosmos by willing in all directions. This infinity of
volitions that is in every individual, can be proved by a very obvious
fact: by what occurs in the contemplation of works of art, in which
the same individual is able to reconstruct in himself the most various
actions and psychological situations, and to feel himself in turn
mild and sanguinary, austere and voluptuous, Achilles and Thersites.
This would not happen, had he not to some extent in himself the
experience of all these various volitional attitudes. But even if we
wish to restrict ourselves to those volitions that are the most closely
connected with the historical situation, thus limited as well as may
be (every historical situation is in reality a cosmic situation),
restricting ourselves to what are called volitions of the moment, we
have always, if not a chaos, certainly a multiplicity, or at the least
a duality, of volitions. Were the individual to abandon himself to that
chaos, to that multiplicity, to that duality, he would instantly be
lacerated, broken in pieces, destroyed. But he does not abandon himself
to it, for he is an individual, volitional and operating just because
he renounces that feigned richness of the infinite and that pernicious
richness of multiplicity or duality, limiting himself on each occasion
to one single volition, which is the volition corresponding to the
given situation.

[Sidenote: _Multiplicity and unity as bad and good._]

This volition is consequently the result of a struggle in which the
individual drives back all the other infinite volitions, to attach
himself to that one alone which the given situation must and does
arouse in him. And when the given volition does not affirm itself fully
in this struggle, he falls a victim to multiplicity, in which is found
that arbitrary choice attached to a volition which is not the one
that should be willed, which he feels he wills and that he does will
in a way. Hence the will becomes split up in different directions and
contradictory, action not positive but negative, not truly action, but
rather passivity.

The multiplicity of volitions explains then the moment of arbitrary
choice, of evil, in the practical activity. This could be defined as
the _volition that conquers the volitions,_ as its contrary arbitrary
choice is _the contest of volitions with volition._

[Sidenote: _Excluded volitions and the passions or desires._]

The volitions that are driven back on every occasion and excluded, to
make way for the volitional act, are variously denominated in ordinary
speech and by psychologists as _appetites, tendencies, impulses,
affections, wishes, velleities, desires, aspirations, passions._ But,
as is usual with us, we do not intend to compose and defend such
classes in a naturalistic and psychological sense, nor consequently
to distinguish appetite from desire, or affection from passion, with
boundaries that must of necessity be arbitrary and undulating. What is
of real importance is only the distinction and the precise boundary,
not arbitrary but real, between the volition and volitions, or, as we
can now say, the relation between true and proper _volition_ and _the
passions or desires._

[Sidenote: _Passions and desires as possible volitions._]

Passions or desires are and are not volitions: they are not volitions
in respect to the volitional synthesis, which, by excluding, annuls
them as such; they are on the other hand volitions, if considered in
themselves, for they are capable of constituting the centre of new
syntheses in changed conditions. It has been said that we cannot _will
the impossible,_ but that we can perfectly well _desire it._ That is
not exact, because the impossible, the contradictory, cannot even be
the object of desire. No one wishes to find himself at the same moment
in two different places, or to construct a triangle that should be at
the same time a square: and even if such absurd wishes be manifested
in words, the words will be absurd, but the desires will either be
different from what is stated, or they will not exist even as desires.
In a certain aspect all desires are desires of the impossible (and not
only some of them), if, that is to say, we consider them as volitions
that have not been realized and which cannot be realized at that
moment: but from another point of view, they are all possible, and can
indeed be precisely defined as _possible volitions._ This is proved by
their becoming gradually actual as the actual situation changes. If (to
choose a very simple illustration) an individual engaged in a certain
work repel the desire for food and sleep with his volition and action,
that desire is nothing at that point, as actual volition; but it does
not for that reason lose its intrinsic volitional character, for
when the hour for the repast or for sleep has struck, it passes from
possibility to actuality and becomes the will for food and sleep. The
sophism previously criticized, by means of which a bad and unsuccessful
act, that is to say one that is dominated by passion and caprice, is
justified by proving that it has had a legitimate motive and answers to
a good intention, appeals to this character of possibility, possessed
by all desires, and artfully changes it into a character of actuality,
thus substituting for the given the imagined situation.

[Sidenote: _Volition as conflict with the passions._]

The relation that we have defined between volition and passions or
desires explains why the will has often seemed to be nothing but
a conflict with the passions, and life itself a battle (_vivere
militare est,_) and at other times itself nothing but passions. The
will is indeed homogeneous with the passions, and is opposed, not
to the nature of the passions, which is its own nature, but to their
multiplicity. For this reason, it has been said that only passion acts
upon the passions: for the will is a passion among passions. Even
the poet or the philosopher, who frees himself from the passions by
objectifying them and making them material for æsthetic contemplation
or for speculative research, succeeds in so doing, only because he is
able to affirm the passion over the passions: the passion for poetry or
for philosophy.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the freedom of choice._]

We must however beware of enunciating this relation in a false form,
as happens with the theory called _freedom of choice,_ where the will
is conceived as the faculty that chooses one volition from among
others and makes it its own. The will does not choose a volition
(save metaphorically), but so to speak chooses the choice itself, or
makes itself will among the desires which are not will. Nor should
the possible actions that are excluded be looked upon as constituting
a graduation in respect to the spirit, which should will _a_ and not
_b, c, d, e,_ and so on, attributing to them, nevertheless, different
values, which can be symbolized by the declining series of numbers,
passing downward from the will which is 10, to 9, 8, 7, 6, and so on.
In reality, the volitions that are excluded (_b, c, d, e_) have no
actual value, for the very reason that they are excluded. They may
acquire it in other situations different from the one analyzed, but it
is not possible to present the various situations together in one, and
far less to determine them quantitatively and numerically, otherwise
than in a symbolical manner. The propositions that present the will
sometimes as the _strongest_ volition in respect to the passions or
desires, and sometimes as the _weakest_ in respect to the passions,
which seem to be the strongest, that is, according as we consider the
active or the passive moment of the will, its victory or defeat, are
also metaphorical and symbolical.

[Sidenote: _Significance of the so-called precedence of feeling over
the volitional act._]

The relation established receives further light from the generally
admitted theory of the necessary precedence of the _feelings_ as
condition for the volitional act. The volitional act is preceded by a
jostling multiplicity of volitions, by a swarm of passions and desires,
which it dominates; and therefore it may seem that it follows, not
the volition, but something different from the volition, to be called
_feeling._ It is certainly different, but only because it is the
_plural_ of that _singular._ The nature of the passions and desires in
respect to the volitional act has not been clearly elucidated, and
this is another of the reasons that have caused the customary category
of "feeling" to appear and to be retained.

[Sidenote: _Polipathicism and apathicism._]

Finally and always through the established relation, the two opposed
theories concerning the passions are excluded: that which makes the
efficacious explanation of practical life to consist in giving free
course to the passions, holding them all to be sacred as such: this
theory could be called _polipathicism_; the other, which makes it
consist of the eradication and destruction of all the passions, in
order to give place to the exclusive domination of reason, of rational
will, or of the will that really is will, and could therefore be called
_apathicism._

Polipathicism has the defect of not taking account among the passions
of that which is passion _par excellence,_ and which alone becomes
actual, driving away the others: the will. Apathicism naturally
possesses the opposite defect and takes account only of the will,
and therefore not of that either, for the will becomes impotent when
alone, just as in the other case it becomes a chaotic jumble of all the
passions.

[Sidenote: _Erroneousness of both opposed theses._]

Such views as these are so openly unsustainable that they hardly appear
at all in their strictness and purity, in the course of the history of
philosophy, and then fugitively. But it is desirable to be attentive
not to identify the theoretic formulæ given above with the programmes
of certain groups, sects, associations, or individuals who have
verbally proclaimed polipathicism and apathicism, whereas they have
implied something very different, and could not have done otherwise.
Complete polipathicism and complete apathicism could only be attained
by the individual at the cost of disaggregation and annihilation. At
the most, sects, groups, societies, and individuals have been able to
conform to those formulæ as the simple expression of _tendencies;_
or those formulæ are applicable to them by _hyperbole,_ in the
condemnation that it has been held desirable to inflict upon certain
unhealthy tendencies. Certainly there are individuals whose passions
are in such slight control as to suggest the absence of will; they
run after every one of their desires, or leave their soul open to the
onset of the passions that devastate it as the wind and the hail do the
fields. Lorenzo the Magnificent (symbolizing with his wonted finesse
a profoundly philosophical conflict) said to his son Piero, who was
addicted to every pleasure and caprice: "And I never have any wish but
you realize it for yourself."[1] The young rake whose adventures were
sung by De Musset may afford an example of the same disaggregation,
composed of the most violent kind of passions:

    Ce n'était pas Rolla qui gouvernait sa vie:
    C'étaient ses passions; il les laissait aller,
    Comme un pâtre assoupi regarde l'eau couler....

But even in these extreme and typical cases the will and the dominion
of the passions are never altogether absent: otherwise it would be
impossible to live, not only a lifetime, but a day, an hour, a minute.
Thus too on the other hand, no individual, be he ever so apathetic
and ascetic, ever frees himself altogether from the dominion of
the passions and the desires. We read in the life of some saint or
beatified personage, whose name escapes me, how he had attained to so
great a degree of perfection that whatever food he put into his mouth,
he tasted nothing but dry straw. Leaving to specialists the inquiry
as to how a stomach of so slight a capacity for distinguishing one
aliment from another could perform its function, and also as to the
consequences for social productiveness of so strangely perfected an
individual, it is certain that in order to nourish himself and live,
the saint in question must have had the periodical appetite or desire
of straw for his food, if for nothing else. Apathy too is often nothing
but a most violent and tenacious, though disordered, passion for ease.
Activity in any case reasserts itself with the dissolving of apathy,
a state nigh to inertia and to death, when it dissolves _grata vice
veris et Favoni,_ that is, with the appearance of the desires, of those
"suave impulses," those "heart-beats," that pain, and that pleasure,
which Giacomo Leopardi depicted in his _Risorgimento,_ overcome with
astonishment, as though face to face with the mystery of life.

[Sidenote: _Their historical and contingent meanings._]

The formulæ of polipathicism and of apathicism have had other
contingent and historical meanings, but of a positive nature, which
it is fitting to examine, in order to prevent the usual passage, so
fruitful of errors, from philosophical to empirical theses. The return
to the world and to nature, which is one of the characteristics of the
Renaissance and of the Reformation itself; the rights of the passions,
which is one of the traits of Romanticism in its initial period;
neo-paganism, which has given to the Italy of our day its most lofty
poetry in the work of Giosuè Carducci, were each in their turn nothing
but beneficial reactions against the lazy monastic life of the Middle
Ages, against Protestant pedantry, against degenerate Romanticism,
which despised the real world and dreamed of contradictory ideals.
On the other hand, in different times and circumstances, Christian
ascesis, Franciscan poverty, and Puritan strictness were beneficial
reactions. So true is this, that we are wont to unite in our admiration
heroes of abstinence and heroes of the passions, assertors of the
spirit and assertors of the flesh, for all, in different ways, because
in different historical situations, willed always the elevation of
humanity. Every one of those historical manifestations can be and has
been blamed and satirized, but only in its decadence, where it has
exhausted its proper function, and is no longer truly itself, but its
own mask.--The friars of the stories of the sixteenth century are not
the companions of St. Francis, as the indecent Italians of the late
Renaissance are not the active merchants, philologists, and artists who
promoted it, nor is there a greater lack of historical sense than the
transference of the characteristics of the one to the other, as is the
way of vulgar detractors and apologists. One and the same historical
fact (as has been brilliantly said) always shows itself twice: the
first time as _tragedy,_ the second as _comedy._

[Sidenote: _The domination of the passions and the will._]

The cases that we have recorded, which have seemed to represent
unbridled or exhausted passion, possess not a pathological but a
physiological character, in so far as they really consist of a
domination, a volitional synthesis, which conquers and contains
divergent and ruinous passions. And with this we have answered the
question as to whether or no the passions can be dominated, and whether
man be slave or free. We can dominate them, and in that domination is
life; if we do not dominate them, we advance to meet death; to dominate
or not to dominate them are the very poles of the will, positive and
negative, and we cannot think of the one as being abolished without
thinking of the other as also abolished.

But the labour of dominating them is hard, as all life, "sweet life,"
is hard. The passions, driven back and restrained again and again by
the will, yet rage within us, tumultuous, though conquered. We tear
out the cumbersome plants, but not their roots and seeds. The man who
considers himself hardened to the trials of life, still feels and
suffers: the man who seems calm is yet always agitated within. As the
labour that is called physical deposits poison at the base of the
organism; so does the labour called spiritual in the depths of the
soul. Hence the bitterness in those men who have willed and laboured
much; hence their _cupio dissolvi,_ their aspiration for that bourne
where all is peace. The poet sublimely imagines old Luther, after his
victories, in the midst of the people awakened by him to a new life:

    Yet with a backward look, he sighed:
    Call me, O God, to thee, for I am tired,
    Nor without malediction can I pray!


[1] L. Domenichi, _Della scelta de motti, burle et facetie_ (Firenze,
1566), p. 14.




IV


VOLITIONAL HABITS AND THE INDIVIDUALITY


[Sidenote: _Passions and states of the soul._]

Just because the passions are possible volitions and therefore
always have a definite content, it is no slight error on the part
of writers of treatises, to consider joy and sorrow, enthusiasm and
depression, content and discontent, tranquillity and remorse, and
other antithetical couples, as passions. These couples are empirical
concepts constructed upon the dialectical distinction of freedom and
anti-freedom, of good and evil; but the groups of the passions must on
the contrary be empirical concepts formed upon the basis of the varying
determination of the volitional activity, according to _objects,_ that
is to say, in its _particular_ determinations. Thus we can talk of the
passion for celebrity, for science, for art, for politics, for riches,
for luxury, for women, for the country, for the city, for sport, for
fishing, and so on, with infinite subdivisions and complications.

[Sidenote: _Passions understood as volitional habits._]

The distinction usually drawn between the affections, the impulses,
the desires on the one hand and the passions on the other, is on the
contrary justified, though it always has an empirical character; these
being considered, not as the single and instantaneous desire or impulse
that prompts to a single action, but as an inclination or habit of
wishing and of willing in a certain direction. In this sense, passion
would be a generic concept (always empirical), which could be divided
(empirically) into the classes of the virtues and vices; for virtue
is nothing but the passion or habit of rational actions, and vice the
contrary.

[Sidenote: _Their importance._]

These passions and volitional habits are not rigidly fixed, for nothing
in the field of facts is rigidly fixed. As the bed of the river
regulates the course of the river and is at the same time continuously
modified by it, so is it with the passions and volitional acts, which
reality keeps forming and modifying, and in modifying, forms anew
and in forming modifies. For this reason there is always something
arbitrary in defining habits as though they corresponded to a distinct
and limited reality; and for this reason the concepts of them are
arbitrary and empirical. Habits are not categories, nor do they give
rise to distinct concepts; but they are the like in the unlike,
unlike, itself also, in itself, although discernible in a certain way
from other groups of dissimilar facts. Their importance is great,
because they constitute, as it were, the bony structure of the body of
reality. In them _individuality_ understood as an empirical concept,
has its foundation, for which, if it be not substance, neither is it a
complex of casually divergent states.

[Sidenote: _The control of the passions in so far as they are
volitional habits._]

The nature of the passions as volitional habits to be both fixed and
mobile, that is to say, only relatively fixed and relatively mobile,
is the principle that aids the solution of several much-debated and
certainly important questions of the Philosophy of the practical. And
in the first place, the passions being understood as habits, the answer
to the question as to whether or no they can be controlled, and if the
answer be in the affirmative, then in what limits, receives a somewhat
different meaning, which explains the interest which that question
has always aroused. Nothing, in fact, removes our consciousness of
freedom and personality in so brutal a manner and makes us feel our
impotence and misery in so depressing a way, as to find ourselves with
our good intention and action hardly begun, face to face with the
unchained forces of our passions and of the habits that oppose it,
which drown with their deafening clamour the weak and timid voice of
the incipient action, vex it with their arrogance, and drag it along
paths well known and abhorred. We fall then into mistrust and baseness,
believe ourselves lost for ever; freedom and will seem to be fables
for the adornment of sermons and the books of moralists. The sage who
recalls to man the absolute empire that he possesses over his passions
and exhorts him never to be troubled and to repeat the twenty or
four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, so that the spirit may have
time to recuperate its strength, to resist and to conquer, seems to
utter the insipid babble of one who has never truly loved and hated,
and to measure the full and overflowing souls of others on the model of
his own empty or almost empty soul. We laugh freely at the "short legs"
of ideals and good intentions, and read again with satisfaction not
undiluted with bitterness, some little story like Voltaire's _Memnon ou
la sagesse humaine,_ which bears as motto the very appropriate epigraph:

    Nous tromper dans nos entreprises,
    C'est à quoi nous sommes sujets:
    Le matin je fais des projets,
    Et le long du jour des sottises;

or at the most they conclude that there is no way to free oneself from
a bad passion save with another one equally bad, from a vice with a
vice, "as from a plank we pluck with nail a nail."

[Sidenote: _Difficulty and reality of dominating them._]

Nevertheless, he who torments himself and gets angry, or laughs and
draws such conclusions as these, is not in the right. That is to say,
he is right to laugh at ingenuous sages and at odious preachers and
moralists, for their theories are certainly simplicist and false. But
he is wrong in not understanding that his own theory is also simplicist
and false, for it runs into the opposite extreme.--Habits and passions
are habits and passions, because slowly formed: it is therefore a vain
illusion to attempt to destroy them at a blow. Perhaps it is believed
that the passions are tender flowerets or grasses that a child has
attached to the surface of the soil? They are a rank growth, strong
oaks whose roots dive deep into the earth!--That is most true, but it
is not for this reason impossible to modify and destroy them. They are
indeed actually modified, for that very pain, that very disappointment,
are a beginning of modification; since we do not persist in what we
abhor and follow, dragged along by force; and little by little we
end by freeing ourselves. The process of freeing ourselves from
the passions, or from vicious habits, then, is effective, but slow,
as the formation of those habits has been slow. We do not cure an
illness with a sudden act of will, but nevertheless the will guides
and directs the process of healing, and can open or close the entrance
to the medicinal forces of nature. Now the passions or vicious habits
are maladies that must follow their course, which, in order to be
beneficial, must coincide with the cure. The sages who give receipts
for freeing ourselves from them immediately are the Dulcamaras of moral
maladies; but the existence of the Dulcamaras should not impel us to
deny the existence of doctors, and above all of ourselves as doctors
of ourselves. And we should certainly adopt a very bad and illusory
method of cure, were we to accept the method so often recommended, of
destroying passion with passion, or vice with vice, thus adding vice to
vice, as those who treat the illnesses of the body with narcotics or
with stimulants often add malady to malady.

[Sidenote: _Volitional habits and individuality._]

Habits, then, not less than single volitional acts, of which they were
and are composed, can be and are continually conquered and modified,
in so far as they are opposed to the new volitional syntheses. This
confirms what has already been said in criticizing the polipathetic
view, which ignores the volition for the volitions, as the virtuous
habit is ignored in favour of vicious habits. But the theory of
apathicism is also to be found in this field, and it is needful
to assert in opposition to it, the great importance proper to the
volitional habits in giving concrete form to virtue. This second
critical thesis is that which affirms the value of _individuality or
peculiarity_ in the practical field.

[Sidenote: _Negations of individuality for uniformity and their
critique._]

Every individual is furnished by mother nature with certain definite
habits, according to the contingencies of reality among which he enters
the world; and he acquires yet others in the course of life, owing
to the actual conditions through which he passes and to the works
that he accomplishes. Those habits which he has from birth are called
aptitudes, dispositions, natural tendencies: the others acquired. The
individual in his reality is, as has been said, nothing but these
groups of habits and changes as they change. Now is it rational and
possible (the two questions here form one) that the individual in his
willing and acting should rid himself of such habits? Is it possible
to consider them as things without value? Is it possible to establish
an antithesis between individuality and rational action, as between
good and evil?--The levellers who claim to impose the same task upon
all and wish to make of the female a male, of the poet a reasoner,
of the man of science a warrior, of the saint a man of business, and
thus to give to every one a part of the task of others;--the dreamers
of a future society, in which all this shall have been done, and the
poet should attend to his poem, after having played the philosopher
for a couple of hours, for another couple of hours the tailor, and for
yet another two the waiter at an inn;--all the pedants of abstract
regularity, whom we meet to our great annoyance in life;--behold the
apathicists appear anew, for, as in the theory of the volitional act,
they advocated an abstract action, conducted by the rational will
alone in the void of the passions; so here, they advocate an abstract
rational habit, in the theory of volitional habits, a model of human
activity, to which all individuals would be obliged to conform. Perhaps
some such sensible observation as this of Vauvenargues should suffice
to confute them: _Il ne faut pas beaucoup de réflexion pour faire cuire
un poulet; et, cependant, nous voyons des hommes qui sont toute leur
vie mauvais rôtisseurs: tant il est nécessaire dans tous les métiers,
d'y être appelé par un instinct particulier et comme indépendant de
la raison._ But since it might be said that we wish to solve a grave
question with a joke, we will recall that the volitional acts and the
passions, volition and the volitions, are of the same nature (though
the one is actual and the others only possible), and that the nature of
willing implies actual definite situations, and that for this reason
we never will in universal but always in particular. In the same way
virtue, the virtuous habit of the will, is not of a different nature to
the volitional habits in general, to the passions, but is particular
and individual as they are. Those who make war upon individual habits
never succeed in substituting for them a universal habit, which is
inconceivable, but at the most other habits, equally particular and
individual. The poet who will play the farmer, the tailor, and the
waiter, in the imagined society of the future, will do all these things
as a poet. This may perhaps be an advantage, but may also perhaps be
the contrary, as future consumers of grain, of garments, and of repasts
will become aware. For the rest, do we not even now see women devoting
themselves to the severe studies of philology, of philosophy, and
of mathematics? But with the rarest exceptions, they remain always
women: their production, which is without originality, is not like
that of man, done with the complete dedication of the whole being to
the search for truth and of artistic perfection; and if in the midst
of the most abstruse inquiry, the image of themselves as wife or
mother pass through their minds, they desert, at the critical moment,
the philosophical categories, the formulæ of flexions, the ruled or
tangential spaces, and sigh for their unborn sons and for the husband
that they have not found. Is this distortion of natural habits useful?
Generally speaking, it is not. It is a doing and an undoing, a despisal
of the riches wisely accumulated and capitalized by Reality in the
course of its evolution.

[Sidenote: _Temperament and character. Indifference of temperament._]

Certainly the disposition natural or acquired is not virtue, and
the _temperament_ (since temperament is nothing but the sum of
habits and aptitudes) is not _character._ But virtue and character
presuppose habits and passions, of which they give the rational and
volitional synthesis: they are the form of that matter. And as matter
considered in the abstract is neither good nor bad, so the habits and
the passions (as has been very well observed) are not in themselves
either virtues or vices: they are facts. And it is necessary to take
account of facts; otherwise, they revenge themselves. On the other
hand, habits and passions certainly change; but not all of a sudden
and capriciously, rather, little by little, and always on the basis of
existing habits and passions.

[Sidenote: _The discovery of the proper self._]

The first duty of every individual who wishes to act effectively,
consists, therefore, in seeking for himself, in exploring his own
dispositions, in establishing what aptitudes have been deposited in
him by the course of reality, both at the moment of his birth, and
during the development of his own individual life: in knowing, that
is to say, his own habits and passions, not in order to make of them
a _tabula rasa,_ but to use them. The search is not easy and the
preparatory part of life, namely youth, is spent upon it. Few are the
fortunate individuals who have at once a clear and certain knowledge
of their own being and of their duty; the majority seek and find
it after many wanderings; and if such wanderings sometimes (as is
written in the dedication of the _Scienza nuova_) "seem misfortunes
and are opportunities," at others they are but a fruitless moving to
and fro; hence those that are undecided during the whole of their
lives, the eternal youths, those who aspire to all or to many of the
directions of human activity and are incapable in all. But when our own
being unveils itself and we see our path clearly, then to disordered
agitation succeeds the calm of sure and regular work, with its defeats
and victories, its joys and sorrows, but with the constant vision of
the Aim, that is, of the general direction to be followed. Vainly will
he who is endowed and prepared for guiding mankind in political strife
and has a clear and lively perception of human strength and weakness,
of what can and of what cannot be done, and is furnished, so to speak,
with practical sense (with the sense of complications and slight
differences), will try (save in the rarest and most exceptional cases,
and this reserve is to be understood in all that we are saying here) to
acquire a place among those who cultivate the abstract and universal,
operations demanding almost opposite aptitudes; vainly will he who was
born to sing attempt to calculate; vainly will he whose mind and soul
were made to accentuate dissensions in their bitter strife bend himself
to be a conciliator and a peacemaker. It is worse than superfluous, it
is stupid to weep over one's choleric or phlegmatic temperament. There
have been choleric saints that have even used the stick, and phlegmatic
saints who have succeeded admirably in patient persuasion: the mild
Francis, "all seraphic in his ardour," and the impetuous Dominic "whose
blows fell on the boughs of heresy." Reality is diversity and has need
of both, and each is praiseworthy if he do that well to which he has
been _called._

[Sidenote: _The idea of "vocation."_]

This concept of the _vocation_ has a mystical and religious origin and
preserves that form; but it is clear that by means of the previous
considerations we have divested it of that form and reduced it to a
scientific concept. The individual is not a "monad" or a "real," he
is not a "soul" created by a God all in a moment and all of a piece;
the individual is the historical situation of the universal spirit at
every instant of time, and, therefore, the sum of the habits due to
the historical situations. Those modes of conceiving and talking of
one _and the same_ individual in two _different_ situations, or of two
_different_ individuals in the _same_ situation, are to be avoided,
because individual and situation are all one. But when the individual
has been thus defined, it remains none the less true that each
individual must direct his life according to pre-existing habits and
personal dispositions, and thus we discover the true meaning of the
mythologies and religions that have been mentioned, and the struggles
to find the suitable employment can be expressed with the words that
religion has taught us when we were children: the "vocation" and the
special "mission" that is allotted to us in life, until the last giving
of accounts and the words of dismissal and repose: _Nunc dimitte servum
tuum, Domine!_ We are the children of that Reality which generates us
and knows more than we, the Reality of which religions have caught a
glimpse and called it God, father, and eternal wisdom.

[Sidenote: _Misunderstandings as to the rights of individuality. Evil
individuality._]

The affirmation of the rights that belong to individuality in the
practical field has several times assumed and still assumes (in our
time, more than in the past, owing to materialism and naturalism) a
form, no longer symbolical and mystical, but wrong and irrational, that
it is desirable to remark upon here, always in order to avoid possible
equivoques. Indeed many look upon the respect due to their own beings
as due to their caprice, that is to say, to what is on the contrary
the negation of being: the right of the individual as the right to
commit follies, or to a disaggregate individuality. The declared
necessity of temperament for character is exchanged for admiration of
temperament considered in itself, which, as such, is neither admirable
nor blameworthy; but when separated from character becomes vice and
folly. Hence the admiration that has even become a literary fashion,
for the dissolute, for the violent, for homicides, for the criminals of
the public prisons, illustrated by a few courageous and energetic souls
among them, whereas they are as a rule weak, vile, and turbid.

[Sidenote: _False doctrines as to the connection of virtues and vices._]

Various theories are also erroneous, in which it has been sought to
establish the relation between the passions and the will, temperament
and character, passions and temperament being understood as vicious
passions and evil temperament; that is, not in themselves, but in
their antithesis to the rational will: hence the vain and paradoxical
attempts to join together and harmonize virtue and vice. Thus it has
been maintained that in certain vices are foreshadowed the virtues
which will or can be developed from them; for instance, military
valour in ferocity, industrial capacity in greed; whereas ferocity
and greed are wilful acts and contradictions incapable of generating
any virtue, as is seen in the customary cowardice of the ferocious
and the ineptitude of the greedy and covetous. Such a connection of
virtues and vices has on other occasions been presented as a mixture
or co-temperament, and it has been affirmed that the vices enter into
the composition of the virtues, as do poisons into the composition
of medicines. Finally, virtue and vice have been placed in causal
relation, and the causes of civil progress have been found in human
vices. But the vices, as they are not the antecedents, so are they
neither the ingredients nor the causes of the virtues. These are
strength, those the lack of strength. It is generally affirmed that
in every individual the virtues are accompanied by their correlative
vices, but if this possess some approximate value as an empirical
observation, strictly speaking it has none, because men can be
conceived and are actually found, whose virtue, far from yielding to
excesses and to vices, is eurythmic and temperate. But perhaps that
common saying aims at something else that it fails of explaining
well; namely, that every power has its impotence and every individual
his limit; but this does not mean vice or defect; it is nothing but
the tautological affirmation that the part is not the whole and the
individual not the universal.

[Sidenote: _The universal in the individual and education._]

But if the individual do not exhaust the universal, the universal
lives in individuals; Reality in each of its particular manifestations.
Therefore the affirmation of the right of individuality does not deny
the right of universality; or it denies it only in that abstract form
in which, to tell the truth, it is by itself denied. The individual
is under the obligation to seek himself, but in order to do this he
has also the obligation of cultivating himself as man in universal. A
school that represented simply a cultivation of individual aptitudes,
would be a training, not an education, a manufactory of utensils, not
a nursery of spiritual and creative activities. The true specialism
is universalism, and inversely, which means that if the universal do
not act without specializing itself, yet specialization is not really
specialization if it do not contain universality. If the two terms that
are by nature indissoluble be divided, there remains only fruitless
generalization or stupid particularization, and if our times have
sinned in this latter respect, other times have sinned in the opposite.
He is well-balanced who between these two forms of degeneration both
knows and fills his own proper and individual mission so perfectly
that he fulfils at the same time with it and through it the universal
mission of man.




V.


DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS


[Sidenote: _Multiplicity and unity: development._]

The demonstration hitherto developed, that evil is negativity or
contradiction, and that this contradiction takes place owing to the
multiplicity of the desires in respect to the singleness of character
of the volitional act, gives rise to the further question: Why should
there be such a multiplicity, concurrent with the demand for unity, and
thus be generated strife and contradiction? Here it would be fitting
to observe that we must have filled our mouths very uselessly for a
century with the word evolution, if such a question as this be renewed,
or we remain bewildered and embarrassed before it. For the reason of
that fact, which seems without a reason, is to be found precisely in
the concept of _"evolution."_ This concept resumes most ancient views,
and has been substituted in modern times for that of an immovable
Reality, of a God who exists perfect and satisfied in himself, and
creates a world for his own transitory pleasure; or for a complex of
beings, eternally the same, with variations that are only apparent.
The concept of evolution has entered so profoundly into the blood and
bones of modern man that even those repeat it who would be incapable
of analyzing and understanding it; even the least acute of all, the
positivist philosophers who like to call themselves "philosophers of
evolution."

[Sidenote: _Becoming as synthesis of being and not-being._]

But before it acquired, as a vague and confused formula, so great a
publicity as quite to amount to popularity, a philosopher of genius had
analyzed and synthetized it, induced and deduced it in an unsurpassable
manner, with the speculative formula of reality as _becoming_; that
is, as synthesis of being and not-being, being and not-being being
thus unthinkable separately, and only thinkable in their living
connection, which is becoming and _development_ (evolution). Reality is
development, that is, infinite possibility that passes into infinite
actuality and from the multiplicity of every instant takes refuge in
the one, to break forth anew in the multiple and produce the new unity.
The inquiry into the dialectic of the volitional act enters in this
way into the very heart of reality. In order to deny multiplicity,
contradiction, evil and not-being, it would be necessary to deny at
the same time unity, coherence, good and being.

[Sidenote: _Nature as becoming. Its resolution in the spirit._]

But if by the theory that has been recorded we have explained the
necessity of evil for good, or the necessity of the not necessary for
the necessary in the volitional act of man, the identification of the
volitional act, which is man's, with reality which is of the universal
whole, might seem to be too audacious. For (it will be said) the
complex of other beings, that we are wont to separate from the complex
of human beings and to oppose to it as nature, either is motionless
and does not develop, or develops without any consciousness of good
and evil, of pleasure and pain, of value and disvalue. Both theses
have been maintained and nature has been represented, now as _without
history, now as developing itself in an unconscious or mechanical
manner._ But the contradictions and absurdities of both theses have
been together perceived. "Motionless beings" is a phrase without
meaning, to such a degree that even empirical science has everywhere
pushed its way into history, and has talked of the evolution of animals
and vegetables, of the chemical elements, and even of a history of
light and heat. The other expression, "unconscious beings," is not
less empty, because being and activity are not otherwise conceivable
save in the way that we know our being, which is consciousness;
and although empirical science certainly points to more and more
rudimentary and tenuous forms of consciousness in beings, always
differently individualized, yet it has never been able to demonstrate
the absolutely unconscious. If so-called nature be, it develops, and if
it develop, cannot do so without some consciousness. This deduction is
not a matter of conjecture, but a logical and irrefutable consequence.
What is there, then, that persists in men's souls, as an obstacle to
the acceptance of this consequence, in accordance with the profound
belief of humanity in a community of all beings with one another and
with the Whole, as manifested in philosophies and in religions, in
the speculations of the learned and in ingenuous popular beliefs? A
scholastic prejudice, an idol of the intellect, the hypostasis of
that concept of "nature" that Logic has taught us is nothing but the
abstract, mechanicizing, classifying function of the human spirit; a
prejudice arising from the substitution of the naturalistic method for
reality, by which a function is changed and materialized into a group
of beings. Those idealists were also slaves of the error of a like
hypostasis, who, though they thought everything as an activity of the
spirit, yet stopped when face to face with _Nature,_ making of it an
inferior grade of the Spirit, or, metaphorically, a spirit alienated
from itself, an unconscious; consciousness, a petrified thought, and
creating for it a special philosophy (as though all the other did
not suffice), entitled precisely, _Philosophy of nature._ But modern
thought knows henceforth how man creates for his use that skeleton or
_mannequin_ of an immobile, external mechanical nature, and he is no
longer permitted to fall back into equivoque and substitute this for
entity or for a complex of entities. Nor should he find any difficulty
in discovering everywhere activity, development, consciousness, with
its antitheses of good and evil, of joy and sorrow. Certainly the stars
do not smile, nor is the moon pale for sorrow: these are images of
the poets. Certainly animals and trees do not reason like men; this,
when it is not poetry, is gross anthropomorphism. But nature, in her
intimate self, longs for the good and abhors the evil, she is all wet
with tears and all a-shiver for joy; strife and victory is everywhere
and in every moment of universal life.

[Sidenote: _Optimism and pessimism; critique._]

This conception of reality, which recognizes the indissoluble link
between good and evil, is itself beyond good and evil, and consequently
surpasses the visual angles of optimism and pessimism--of optimism
that does not discover the evil in life and posits it as illusion, or
only as a very small and contingent element, or hopes for a future
life (on earth or in heaven) in which evil will be suppressed; and
of pessimism, that sees nothing but evil and makes of the world an
infinite and eternal spasm of pain, that rends itself internally and
generates nothing. It confronts the first with the fact that evil is
truly the original sin of reality, ineliminable so long as reality
exists, and therefore absolutely ineliminable as a category: the
second, with the other category the good, equally ineliminable, for
without it evil could not be. And it is easy to show how the optimist
declares himself a pessimist, the pessimist an optimist, out of
their own mouths. The setting free from individuality and from will,
which the pessimist proposes as a radical remedy, is the remedy that
reality itself applies at every moment, for we free ourselves from the
contradiction of individuality and of wilfulness by the affirmation
of the rational will, with which the same pessimist cannot dispense,
for the effectuation of his programme of ascesis or of suicide, which,
according as it is understood, is either not a programme, or a
programme altogether capricious and without universal value. In truth,
there is no need to oppose a eulogy of Life with a eulogy of Death,
since the eulogy of Life is also a eulogy of Death; for how could we
live, if we did not die at every instant?

[Sidenote: _Dialectic optimism._]

The dialectic conception of reality as development, that is, as a
synthesis of being and not-being, can certainly be termed optimistic,
but in a very different signification to that of abstract optimism. The
synthesis is the thesis enriched with its antithesis, and the thesis is
the good, being, not the bad or not-being. But who will wish seriously
to oppose this logical consequence? Is it not a fact that men hope and
live, although in the midst of their sorrows? Is it not a fact that the
world is not ended and does not appear to have any intention of ending?
And how would that be possible, if the moment of the good did not
prevail, just because the positive prevails upon the negative and Life
constantly triumphs over Death?

[Sidenote: _Concept of cosmic progress._]

This continuous triumph of Life over Death constitutes _cosmic
progress._ Progress, from the point of view whence we have hitherto
regarded it, that of individualized activity, is identical with
activity; it is the unfolding of this upon passivity. Every volitional
act, like every theoretical act, is therefore to be considered in
itself, that is, only in relation to the given situation from which it
breaks forth. In every new situation the individual begins his life
all over again. But from the cosmic point of view, at which we now
place ourselves, reality shows itself as a continuous growing upon
itself; nor is a real regress ever conceivable, because evil being
that which is not, is irreal, and that which is is always and only the
good. The real is always rational, and the rational is always real.
Cosmic progress, then, is itself also the object of affirmation, not
problematic, but apodictic.

[Sidenote: _Objections and critique of them._]

The difficulties that can be and are opposed to this thesis all arise
from the confusion of the truly rational with that which is falsely so
called, between the true real and that which improperly assumes this
name, that is, between the real and the unreal. Thus will be remembered
the instance of the end of the great Græco-Roman civilization, without
adequate parallel in universal history, followed by the return of
barbarism in the Middle Ages; or the common example of the shipwreck
of noblest enterprises; or (to remain in the field that more nearly
interests us) the philosophic decadence, owing to which, a mean
positivism was able to follow the idealism of the beginning of the
nineteenth century, which stands to the former as the eloquence of
an Attic orator to the stuttering of an ignorant school-boy. Did the
Middle Age, then, represent an advance upon that Rome, whose memory
lingered in the fancy as an image of lost dignity during that same
Middle Age? Was the victory of European reaction over the citizen
civilization of the Revolution and of the Empire progress? and in
Lombardy, the new Austrian domination following upon the Kingdom of
Italy? or in the Neapolitan provinces the Bourbon restoration after the
Republic of 1799 and the French Decanate? Was Comte an advance upon
Kant, Herbert Spencer upon Hegel? But different points of view are
confused under the same name in these questions, and, therefore, we do
not succeed in immediately arranging those facts beneath the principle
that has been established. It is therefore necessary to analyze. It
will then be immediately seen that ancient civilization, in what it
possessed of truly real, did not die, but was transmitted as thought,
institutions, and even as acquired aptitudes; hence it kept reappearing
in the course of the centuries and still keeps reappearing: it
certainly died in what it had of unreal, that is to say, in its
contradictions, for instance, in its incapacity to find political and
economic forms answering to the changed conditions of spirits. In like
manner, the Middle Age, which was evidently in part progress, because
it solved problems left unsolved by the preceding civilization, posed
others that it did not solve and that were solved in the succeeding
centuries; but if the posing of these new problems, which, while
destroying the old, failed to substitute provisionally anything, was
apparently not progress, neither was it regress, but the beginning of
new progress. The same is to be said of precursors, conquered in their
time, but conquerors in history, of the restorations and reactions
that are so only in name, because they contain in themselves that with
which they contend, if for no other reason, then for the very reason
that they contend: of heroes and initiators, who were conquered and
martyrized, yet knew that they were triumphing and did triumph in
dying; the cross and the pyre will become symbols of victory: _in hoc
signo vinces._ And finally, if the positivism of the second half of the
nineteenth century seem as a whole so greatly inferior to idealism,
that comes from its not being philosophy at all, but a hybrid jumble
of natural sciences and metaphysic, thus intensifying an error that
already existed in germ in idealism, and fecundating the problem
for a better solution. Many philosophers living to-day are inferior
to Socrates, because they have not even risen to the knowledge of
the concept; but those who in our day have attained to the level of
Socrates, are superior to him, because besides his thought they contain
in themselves something that Socrates had not; and those philosophers
who are logically on a level with Protagoras, surpass him, just because
they are the Protagorases of the twentieth century. There is therefore
never real regression in history; but only contradictions that follow
upon solutions given, and prepare new ones.

[Sidenote: _Individuals and History._]

The solutions, once attained, are acquired for ever; the problems that
have once been solved, do not again occur, or, which is the same thing,
they recur in a different way to those of the past. The web of History
is composed of such labours, to which all individuals collaborate;
but it is not the work and cannot be the purpose of any of them in
particular, because each one is exclusively intent on his particular
work, and only in _rem suam agere,_ does he also do the business of
the world. History is happening, which, as has been seen, is not to
be judged practically, because it always transcends individuals, and
to these and not to history is the practical judgment applicable.
The judgment of History is in the very fact of its existence: its
rationality is in its reality.

[Sidenote: _Fate, Fortune, and Providence._]

This historical web, which is and is not the work of individuals,
constitutes, as has been said, the work of the universal Spirit, of
which individuals are manifestations and instruments. In this way are
implicitly excluded those views which attribute the course of things
to Fate, to Fortune, or to Chance, that is, to mechanism or caprice,
both of them insufficient and one-sided, like determinism and free
will, each one invoking the other when it becomes aware of its own
impotence. The idea of mechanical origin, of an evolution that takes
place by the addition of very minute elements, is now being abandoned,
even for that fragment of history called _History of Nature_ (the
only true and possible Philosophy of Nature), in which is beginning
to reappear the theory of successive crises and revolution, and the
idea of freedom, whose creations are not to be measured or limited
mathematically. But the supreme rationality that guides the course of
history, should not, on the other hand, be conceived as the work of a
transcendent Intelligence or Providence, as is the case in religious
and semi-fanciful thought, which does not possess other value than that
of a confused presentiment of the truth. If History be rationality,
then a Providence certainly directs it; but of such a kind as becomes
actual in individuals, and acts, not on, but in them. This affirmation
of Providence is not conjecture or faith, but evidence of reason.
Who would feel in him the strength of life without such intimate
persuasion? Whence could he draw resignation in sorrow, encouragement
to endure? Surely what the religious man says, with the words "Let us
leave it in God's hands," is said also by the man of reason with those
other words: "Courage, and forward"?

[Sidenote: _The infinity of progress and mystery._]

The Spirit, which is infinite possibility passing into infinite
actuality, has drawn and draws at every moment the cosmos from chaos,
has collected diffused life into the concentrated life of the organ,
has achieved the passage from animal to human life, has created and
creates modes of life ever more lofty. The work of the Spirit is not
finished and never will be finished. Our yearning for something higher
is not vain. The very yearning, the infinity of our desire, is proof
of the infinity of that progress. The plant dreams of the animal, the
animal of man, man of superman; for this, too, is a reality, if it be
reality that with every historical movement man surpasses himself. The
time will come when the great deeds and the great works now our memory
and our boast will be forgotten, as we have forgotten the works and the
deeds, no less great, of those beings of supreme genius who created
what we call human life and seem to us now to have been savages of
the lowest grade, almost men-monkeys. They will be forgotten, for the
documents of progress is in _forgetting_; that is, in the fact being
entirely absorbed into the new fact, in which, and not in itself,
it has value. But we cannot know what the future states of Reality
will be, in their determined physiognomy and succession, owing to the
"dignity" established in the Philosophy of the practical, by which the
knowledge of the action and of the deed follows and does not precede
the action and the deed. _Mystery_ is just _the infinity of evolution_:
were this not so, that concept would not arise in the mind of man,
nor would it be possible to abuse it, as it has been abused by being
transported out of its place, that is to say, into the consciousness
of itself, which the spiritual activity should have and has to the
fullest degree, that is, the consciousness of its eternal categories.

[Sidenote: _Illegitimate transportation of the concept of mystery from
history to philosophy._]

The neglect of the moment of mystery is the true reason of the error
known as the _Philosophy of history,_ which undertakes to portray the
plan of Providence and to determine the formula of progress. In this
attempt (when it does not affirm mere philosophemes, as has very often
happened), it makes the vain effort to enclose the infinite in the
finite and capriciously to decree concluded that evolution which the
universal Spirit itself cannot conclude, for it would thus come to deny
itself. In Logic that error has been gnoseologically defined as the
pretension of treating the individual as though it were the universal,
making the universal individual; here it is to be defined in other
words as the pretension of treating the finite as though it were the
infinite, of making the infinite finite.

[Sidenote: _Confirmation of the impossibility of a Philosophy of
history._]

But the unjustified transportation of the concept of mystery from
history, where it indicates the future that the past prepares and does
not know, into philosophy, causes to be posited as mysteries which
give rise to probabilities and conjectures, problems that consist of
philosophical terms, and should therefore be philosophically solved.
But if the infinite progress and the infinite perfectibility of man
is to be affirmed, although we do not know the concrete forms that
progress and perfectibility will assume (not knowing them, because now
it imports not to _know,_ but to _do_ them), then there is no meaning
in positing as a mystery the immortality of the individual soul, or the
existence of God; for these are not _facts_ that may or may not happen
sooner or later, but _concepts_ that must be proved to be in themselves
thinkable and not contradictory, or to determine in what form they are
thinkable and not contradictory. Their thinkability will indeed be
a mystery, but of the kind that it is a duty to make clear, because
synonymous with obscurity or mental confusion. What has so far been
demonstrated has been their unthinkability in the traditional form.
Nor is it true that they correspond to profound demands of the human
soul. Man does not seek a God external to himself and almost a despot,
who commands and benefits him capriciously; nor does he aspire to an
immortality of insipid ease: but he seeks for that God which he has in
himself, and aspires to that activity, which is both Life and Death.




VI


TWO ELUCIDATIONS RELATING TO HISTORIC AND ÆSTHETIC


[Sidenote: _The relation of desires and actions; and two problems of
Historic and of Æsthetic._]

From the consideration of the practical activity in its dialectic, and
in particular from the theory relating to desire and to action, shines
forth, if we mistake not, the full light that has hitherto perhaps been
invoked in vain upon certain capital points of Historic and Æsthetic,
which, when treating of those disciplines, we were obliged either
hardly to touch upon, or to develop in a manner altogether inadequate.
The reason of this was that an adequate development, to be convincing,
demanded as presupposition, a minute exposition as to the nature, the
relations and the constitution of the practical activity, all of them
things that could not be treated incidentally.

[Sidenote: _History and art._]

History or historical narrative is, as we know, very closely related
to art, in contradistinction to the abstract sciences, since both
art and history do not construct concepts of class, but represent
concrete and individuated facts. History, however, is not art pure and
simple, but is distinguished from it, because artistic representation
is in it continually illuminated with the critical distinction
between the real and the possible, what has happened and what has
been imagined, the existing and the inexisting, with the consequent
determinations connected with them, as to this or that particular mode
of reality, event, and existence, that have taken place. In every
historical narrative are always to be found, understood or implied, the
affirmations that the narrative is real, that a different narrative
would be imaginary, that the reality of the event in question properly
belongs to this or that concept of politics, rights, war, diplomacy,
economy, and so on. All this is quite absent from art, which is by
nature ingenuous and free of critical discernment; so much so, that
hardly have its representations become objects of reflection, than they
are dissolved as art, to reappear with a changed appearance (no longer
youthful, but virile or senile), as history.

[Sidenote: _The concept of existentiality in history._]

But if this distinction between art and history be precisely determined
gnoseologically, when it has been said that in history the predicate
of existentiality is added to mere representation (and, therefore,
all the other predicates connected with the case, referring to the
various forms of existence), and that therefore, the representative
and artistic form of history contains in itself rational and
philosophical method as precedent, yet there always remains the
ulterior philosophical problem: What is the origin of that predicate
of reality or existentiality on which all the others lean? We have
already demonstrated that it was altogether inadmissible to derive it
from a mysterious faculty called _Faith,_ or to consider it as the
apprehension of something extraneous to the spirit in universal, as _a
datum or position._ And we also stated that if the spirit recognize
its existence, yet it cannot attain to the criterion elsewhere than
from itself; which criterion was nothing but the first reflection of
the spirit upon the practical activity itself, giving rise to the
duplication of reality that has happened and reality only desired, or
of reality and irreality, of existing and inexisting.

[Sidenote: _Its origin in the Philosophy of the practical: action and
the existing, desires and the unexisting._]

All this now becomes a simple consequence of the connection that
has been made clear between desire and action. The cognoscitive
spirit, when it apprehends and ideally remakes this connection, has,
in enunciating it, also enunciated for the first time the couples
of terms that we have already mentioned and that variously express
the criterion of existence. To distinguish desires from actions is
tantamount to distinguishing the unreal from the real, the existing
from the unexisting, and to think the practical act is tantamount
to thinking the concept of existence and of effectual reality. For
the determination of the relation between desire and action, and
only for that, the criterion of existence is not necessary, because
that relation is itself that criterion. To say "this is a desire"
means, "this does not exist"; to say "this is an action" means, "this
exists." The desires are possibility; the resolutive and volitional
act or action, is actuality. And it is also evident that existent
and inexistent are not separable, as though the inexistent were
heterogeneous to the existent; the inexistent exists in its way, as
possibility is possible reality; the phantasm exists in the fancy and
desire in the spirit that desires. Thus the posing of the one term is
also the posing of the other, as correlative. What is repugnant and
contradictory is the introduction of the one term into the other. This
takes place, for instance, when in narrating the history, reality that
has happened is mingled as one single thing with reality dreamed of or
desired, and history is turned into _legend._

[Sidenote: _History as distinction between actions and desires, and art
as indistinction._]

It can be said that history always represents actions, and in this is
implicit that it represents at the same time also desires, but only in
so far as it distinguishes them from actions: history, therefore, is
perception and memory of perception, and in it fancies and imaginations
are also perceived as such and arranged in their place. And it would
also be possible to say that art represents only desires, and is
therefore all fancy and never perception, all possible reality and
never effectual reality. But since to art is wanting the distinctive
criterion between desires and actions, it in truth represents actions
as desires and desires as actions, the real as possible, and the
possible as real; hence it would be more correct to say that art is
on the near side of the possible and the real, it is pure of these
distinctions, and is therefore pure imagination or _pure intuition._
Desires and actions are, we know, of the same stuff, and art assumes
that stuff just as it is, careless of the new elaboration that it will
receive in an ulterior grade of the spirit, which is indeed impossible
without that first and merely fantastic elaboration. Likewise when art
takes possession of historical material, it removes from it just the
historical character, the critical elements, and by this very fact
reduces it once more to mere intuition.

[Sidenote: _The purely fantastic and the imaginary._]

It must further be noted that the purely fantastic, which is the
representation of a desire, must not be confounded with the mechanical
combination of images, that can be made idly, for amusement, or for
practical ends. This operation (analogous to that of the intellect upon
the pure concepts and representations, when it arbitrarily combines
them in the pseudo-concepts), is secondary and derivative; and it
presupposes the first, which provides it with the material that it cuts
up and combines. Nothing is more extraneous and repugnant to poetry
than this artificial _imagining,_ precisely because it is external and
repugnant to reality. Hence his would be a vain objection who should
coldly and capriciously combine the most different images and ask for
an explanation of the whole, with desire as the fundamental principle.
Such combinations as these, since they do not belong to poetry, are
void of real psychical content.

[Sidenote: _Art as lyrical or representation of feelings._]

But if the relation between desire and action be the ultimate reason
for the distinction between art and history, and this distinction be
the theoretical reflection of that real relation, the conception of
art as representation of volitional facts, taken in their quite general
and indeterminate nature, in which desire is as action and action as
desire, reveals why art affirms itself as _representation of feeling,_
and why a work of art does not seem to possess and does not possess
value, save from its _lyrical_ character and from the imprint of the
artist's personality. The work of art that reasons or instructs as
to things that have happened, and finds a substitute for intimate
and lyrical connections in historical reasonings and connections, is
justly and universally condemned as cold and ineffectual. We do not
ask the artist for a philosophical system nor for a relation of facts
(if all this is to be found in his work it is _per accidens),_ but
for a dream of his own, for nothing but the expression of a world
desired or abhorred, or partly desired and partly abhorred. If he
make us live again in this dream the rapture of joy or the incubus of
terror, in solemnity or in humility, in tragedy or in laughter, that
suffices. Facts and concepts, and the question as to the metaphysical
constitution of reality and how it has been developed in time, are all
things that we shall ask of others.

[Sidenote: _Identity of ingenuous reality and feeling._]

It may seem that in this way the field of art has been much restricted
and the ingenuous representation of the real excluded from it. But
this ingenuous representation is just the representation of reality as
dream. For reality is nothing (as we henceforth know) than becoming,
possibility that passes into actuality, desire that becomes action,
from which desire springs forth again unsatiated. The artist who
represents it ingenuously, produces the lyric for this very reason. For
him there is no necessity to reach it from without, as a new element:
if he do this, he is a bad artist, and will be blamed as a hunter of
emotions, emphatic, convulsive, wearisomely sentimental, forcedly
jocose, an introducer of his own caprice into the coherence of the
work, a confounder of his empirical with his artistic personality,
which exists in the empirical individual, but is not equivalent to it.
The feeling that the true artist portrays is that of things, _lacrymae
rerum_; and by the identity of feeling and volition, of volition and
reality already demonstrated in the Philosophy of the practical, things
are themselves that feeling. The characteristic that Schelling and
Schopenhauer noted in music, of reproducing, not indeed the ideas, but
the ideal rhythm of the universe, and of objectifying the will itself,
belongs equally to all the other forms of art, because it is the
essence itself of Art, or of pure intuition.

[Sidenote: _Artists and the will._]

An obvious confirmation of this theory is also the empirical
observation often made, that the men who lose themselves in desires
are rather poets than men of action, dreamers rather than actors; and
in respect to this, that poets who seem to have the soul overflowing
with energetic plans, magnanimous loves, and fierce hatreds are the
most incapable in the field of action, and the worst of captains in
practical struggles; because those plans, those loves and hates, are
not will, but desires, and desires already weakened as such, because
they are no longer in process of volitional synthetization, but have
become the objects of contemplation and of dream. He who reads the
biographies of artists, or has dealings with artists in daily life,
almost always has the impression that their gusts of passion are
nothing but poetry _about to break forth,_ as a green bud that opens
and breaks the brown sheath. And if this process be painful, that
is because every travail of birth is painful. One sees, indeed, how
everything generally ends _par des chansons._ A fine poem and the
sufferer is calm again.

[Sidenote: _Actions and myths._]

This also explains why individual actions and practical collective
movements are accompanied with hopes, beliefs, and _myths._ These have
no logical or historical truth, but it is on the other hand impossible
to criticize them, because they are not error, but fantastic projection
of the state of soul of individuals and groups of individuals in
action, and testify to the existence of desires ready to transform
themselves into will and action. Utopias are poetry, they are not
practical acts; but beneath that poetry there is always the reality
of a desire that is a factor of future history. Hence it also happens
that poets are thought of as _seers,_ when the utopia of to-day becomes
the reality of the morrow. The Utopian and semi-poetic Address of the
Italian patriots to the Directory of June 18, 1799,[1] the not less
Utopian Proclamation of Rimini of 1815, the song of Manzoni, in which
rang out the fateful verse,

    We shall not be free if we are not one,

will become, for the Italians of 1860, effective action and _historical
event._

[Sidenote: _Art as the pure representation of becoming and the artistic
form of thought._]

Pure intuition, ingenuous representation of reality, representation
of feeling, lyricism and personal intonation, are then all equivalent
formulæ, all of them definitions of the æsthetic activity and of art.
And it would be superfluous to repeat that art thus characterized
remains the concrete form of the superior theoretical grades of the
spirit. In fact, logical thought or concept is also volition, owing to
the unity of the spirit, and the representation of such volition is the
logos made flesh, the concept that incorporates itself in language,
palpitating with the drama of its becoming. What word of man is there
that is not personally and lyrically coloured, whether he communicate
the truth of science or narrate the incidents of life? And how could we
deny a place among the dramas that agitate human life and art portrays,
to that drama of dramas, which is the drama of thought and of the
historical comprehension of the real?


[1] B. Croce, _Relazioni dei patrioti napoletani col Direttorio e col
Consolato e l' idea dell' unità italiana,_ Napoli, 1902, pp. 69-73.




VII


HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS


[Sidenote: _The problem of freedom._]

I. For the reasons stated in their place, a history of the concept of
freedom would end by becoming almost a general history of philosophy.
Denied in different ways in the mechanistic and deterministic
conceptions (from the Stoics to Spinoza), and in the theological and
arbitraristic (from Epicurus to St. Augustine and the mystics), that
concept afterwards continually assumed a more and more conciliatory
form; an indication that the question must be put in an altogether
different way. This movement culminated in the Kantian theory, in
which freedom, defended against the psychologists, is withdrawn from
natural causality and affirmed _a priori,_ as causality by means
of freedom; but, at the same time, Kant did not succeed in fully
justifying it, owing to his failure in the solution of the antitheses,
the defect of the Kantian philosophy, which never really became a
system. The embarrassments and absurdities to which the unsolved
antithesis between liberty and causality gives rise, are sufficiently
exemplified in a proposition to be found in the _Critique of Practical
Reason_: "It would be possible to foresee what man will do in the
future, if we possessed all the facts; yet he would be perfectly
free."[1] But notwithstanding these contradictions and embarrassments,
the energetic affirmation of the principle of freedom by Kant (which
had an altogether special certitude in Kant, in respect to the other
two postulates of the practical reason, God and immortality, from
which in this respect it was distinguished) helped to make prevalent
the conviction of the impossibility of eliminating that concept or
of escaping from it, and made of it the field of battle, where the
fortunes of philosophy were decided. The problem of the freedom of
willing is really solved or near to a solution, in those philosophies
which do not fatigue themselves with it as a particular problem, but
treat of it as something to be understood of itself, provided there
be a non-mechanistic conception of reality, such as would not need
special defence. This happens, not only with sentimentalists and
mystics such as Jacobi and Schleiermacher, but also and above all in
the Hegelian philosophy. Perhaps no philosopher has been less occupied
with the problem of liberty than Hegel, just because he was always
occupied with it. The will is free (he contents himself with saying);
freedom is the fundamental determination of the will, as gravity is
of matter; thus as gravity is matter itself, so is freedom the will.
Hegel consequently saw true in the contest between arbitrarism and
determinism, recognizing in determinism the merit of having given
its value to the content, the datum, in opposition to the certainty
of abstract auto-determination, so that freedom understood as free
will is considered to be illusion. Free will is both determined and
indetermined.[2] But how Hegel could conciliate this theory of freedom
with the mechanistic concept of nature that persists in him is another
question. His failure to attain to this conciliation was perhaps among
the reasons that made his profound solution of the antithesis between
determinism and indeterminism seem a vain playing with words.

After Hegel, a return was made to the Kantian doctrine, variously
modified, in which is posited, now a double causality, now a
composition of diverging forces, now a double point of view, now two
worlds, the one included in the other and dominated, the one by the
principle of the conservation of energy, the other by that of increase.
Such contradictory doctrines are to be found for example in Lotze
and Wundt, to the latter of whom belongs the formula that the causal
explanation is certainly to be applied to spiritual facts, but _a parte
post,_ not _a parte ante_[3] The philosophy of Bergson represents in a
certain way a return to the sound idealistic view, which declares that
the dilemma of determinism and indeterminism is surpassed.[4]

[Sidenote: _The doctrine of evil._]

II. The conception of the relation between bad and good, as reality
opposed to reality, is mythological and religious (Parseeism,
Manichæism, Jewish-Christian doctrine of the devil, etc.). But evil had
already begun to reveal itself to the philosophical reflection of the
ancients as the unreal, the not being; and this is explicitly affirmed
in Neoplatonism. It was not, however, possible to understand this
function of unreality, real in its way, without a general dialectical
conception, which became very slowly mature. Without a dialectic
conception, evil, conceived as unreality, becomes mere illusion, not
so much a moment of the real as an equivocation of man philosophizing.
This is clearly to be seen in Spinoza, who opposes the full laws of
reality to the narrow laws of human nature, saying: _Quidquid nobis
in natura ridiculum, absurdum aut malum videtur, id inde venit quod
res tantum ex parte novimus, totiusque naturae ordinem et cohaerentium
maxima ex parte ignoramus, et quod omnia ex usu nostrae rationis
dirigi volumus, cum tamen id, quod malum esse dictat, non malum sit
respectu ordinis et legum universae naturae; sed tantum solius nostrae
naturae legum respectu._ For indeed, if evil, error and wickedness
were something that had essence, God, who is the cause of all that
has essence (continues Spinoza), would also be the cause of evil, of
error, and of wickedness. But this is not so, because evil is nothing
real. _Neronis matricidium_ (he observes) _quatenus aliquid positivum
comprehendebat, scelus non erat: nam facinus externum fecit, simulque
intentionem ad trucidendam matrem Orestes habuit, et tamen, saltem ita
uti Nero, non accusatur. Quodnam ergo Neronis scelus? Non aliud quam
quod hoc facinore ostendit se ingratum, immisericordem ac inobedientem
esse. Certum autem est, nihil horum aliquid essentiae exprimere, et
idcirco Deum eorum non fuisse catisam, licet causa actus et intentionis
Neronis fuerit_[5] But Spinoza was not able to determine in what sense
Nero was really ungrateful, implacable, and disobedient, nor in what
way such a judgment could be justified, owing to his idea of Substance,
not as subject, spirit, activity, but as cause.

Kant did not succeed in understanding the nature of evil; for him good
and evil were "the categories of freedom,"[6] and the view of Fichte
who makes the radical evil to be _vis inertiae,_ laziness (_Trägheit,_)
which is in nature and in man as nature,[7] represents progress in
respect to the Kantian position. But only with the Hegelian dialectical
view of evil, understood as negation, is evil at the same time given
its right place; and its unreality, contradiction, which is no longer
the product of illusion of thought, but of things themselves, in
intimate contradiction with one another, if it be a blemish, is shown
to be the blemish, not of human thought, but of reality.[8]

[Sidenote: _Decision and freedom._]

III. Free will, too, is not considered as a quality and character of
complete liberty, but as its negation, will as contradiction, in the
Hegelian philosophy. It was preceded in this respect, not only by Kant,
but also by Descartes. Descartes wrote of the decision of indifference:
_Cette indifférence que je sens lorsque je ne suis point porté vers
un côté plutôt que vers un autre par le poids d'aucune raison est
le plus bas degré de ma liberté, et fait plutôt paraître un défaut
dans la connaissance qu'une perfection dans la volonté: car si je
connaissais toujours clairement ce qui est vrai et ce qui est bon, je
ne serais jamais en peine de délibérer quel jugement et quel choix je
devrais faire; et ainsi je serais entièrement libre, sans jamais être
indifférent._[9]

Among the false formulæ of the _freedom of choice_ can be mentioned
that of Rosmini, who calls it _bilateral_ freedom, or that of
performing or not performing a given action.[10] But since the spirit
cannot be reduced to complete passivity, not to perform a given action
is equivalent to performing a different one; and if this other action
that presents itself before us be also not willed by us, then it will
be another, and so on. Thus it is not a question of bilaterality, but
of multiplicity of tendencies: not of the choice between two volitions,
but of the synthesis of many appetites in one, which is the will or
freedom.

[Sidenote: _Conscience and responsibility_]

We may mention the disputes that have been preserved in the
_Memorabilia_ as to the greater responsibility of him who knows more
(or wills more), as compared with him who knows less (or wills less),
as to whether he that acts voluntarily be more unjust than he who
acts involuntarily (ὁ ἑκὼν ἤ ὁ ἄκων). In this connection it is to
be observed that he who voluntarily does not write or read well is
certainly more grammatical than he who reads and writes ill through
ignorance; and therefore that he who commits injustice while knowing
what is just, is more just than he who commits it because he does not
know what is just; and that he is better, who says what is false when
he knows what is true, than he who says what is false, not knowing what
is true. The dispute leads to the celebration of knowledge of self, or,
as we should say, of knowing and possessing oneself.[11]

These thoughts are discussed anew in the _Hippias minor,_ where
the multiple difficulties are placed in relief and a conclusion
reached that does not even satisfy those who propose it.[12] It is
henceforward clear that the question must be solved in the sense that
he who is conscious of sinning is certainly a sinner, whereas he who
is not conscious of so doing, does not sin at all; but this being even
incapable of sinning is in itself a sin, and places the man who is in
such a condition yet a degree lower. In the polemic of Pascal with the
Jesuits--who maintained that in order to sin it was necessary to be
conscious of one's own infirmity and of the suitable remedy, the wish
to be healed and to ask it of God--the Jesuits were theoretically on
the side of reason. _Croira-t-on, sur votre parole_ (wrote Pascal),
_que ceux qui sont plongés dans l'avarice, dans l'impudicité, dans
les blasphèmes, dans le duel, dans la vengeance, dans les vols, dans
les sacrilèges, aient véritablement le désir d'embrasser la chasteté,
l'humilité et les autres vertus chrétiennes?_ Nevertheless, it is
inevitably so, if those acts of theirs are to be judged to be vices
(and if they really are so). Hegel places himself on the side of
Pascal, who accepts and refers to the following argument and reduction
to the absurd: _Ils seront tous damnés ces demi-pécheurs qui ont
quelque amour pour la vertu. Mais pour ces francs-pécheurs, sans
mélange, pleins et achevés, l'enfer ne les tient pas: ils ont trompé le
diable à force de s'y abandonner._[13]

A reduction to the absurd which is not such: because the formula given
as absurd expresses at bottom a very simple truth, which Hegel too
stated in his own way, when he said that it was necessary to prefer
self-will, evil, the erring Spirit, to the innocence of plants and
animals, or of Nature.[14]

[Sidenote: _The concept of duty._]

IV. A classical example of the disputes as to the principle of the
Philosophy of the practical, arising from the consideration of this
principle in its empirical formulations, can be furnished from the
polemic of Herbart against Kant on the subject of _duty._ Herbart
demonstrated that duty is not an original but a derived concept,
and that it appears only when there is disagreement between the
practical _ideas_ and the _will_.[15] But it would be possible to
demonstrate with the same method that the practical ideas are derived
concepts, because they do indeed presuppose the moral will, from the
manifestations of which they are constituted by means of abstraction.
Herbart was in the right against Kant, but he afterwards let the axe
fall on his own feet. The hard formula of the imperative preferred by
Kant had already been combated by Frederick Schiller, who accentuated
the moment of pleasure, sympathy and enthusiasm in the good action.

[Sidenote: _Repentance and remorse._]

As to the other concepts and to the disputes to which they gave rise,
it will be opportune to mention repentance and remorse. Spinoza does
not see that it has value as a necessary negative moment, for he
declared: _Poenitentia virtus non est, sive ex ratione non oritur; sed
is qui facti poenitet bis miser, seu impotens est. Nam primo prava
cupiditate, dein tristitia vinci se patitur;_ and he concludes by
assigning to it value for altogether empirical motives. Men rarely
live (he says) _ex dictamine rationis_; and yet repentance and other
similar affections do more good than harm, and if it be necessary to
sin _in istam partem potius peccandum. Terret vulgus, nisi metuat._[16]
But it was Hegel who instituted a regular persecution of the concept
of repentance and remorse. There are certain passages in his works
that should be read in connection with this question, in order that
we may clearly see how he had an eye to contingent and historical
events in his criticism. "In the Christian world in general (he writes)
there is in force an ideal of the perfect man, who cannot exist as
multitude in a people; and if this ideal is found realized in monks,
quakers, and such-like pious folk, it must be remarked that a mass of
these sad creatures does not constitute a people, just as lice and
parasitic plants cannot exist by themselves, but only on an organic
body. In order to constitute a people, it would be above all desirable
to destroy that lamblike gentleness of theirs, that vanity which is
occupied solely with their own persons, the caring for them and holding
them dear, and has always before it the image and consciousness of
its own excellence. For life in the universal and for the universal
demands, not such vile and listless gentleness, but an energetic
gentleness, not a thinking of oneself and one's own sins, but of the
universal and of what should be done for it. To him who nourishes so
false an ideal, men must always appear to be affected with weakness
and corruption, and that ideal to be so constituted that it can never
be translated into reality. They attribute importance to trifles, to
which no reasonable person pays special attention, and believe that
such weaknesses and defects exist, even when they are not remarked.
Nor should we admire their greatness of soul, but note rather that
their corruption lies precisely in standing still and looking at that
which they call weaknesses and errors, and in making out of nothing
something that exists. A man with such weaknesses and defects is
immediately quit of them, if he do not attach to them importance." The
observations that Hegel makes in his _Æsthetic,_ regarding the type of
the Magdalen in Italian art, are in this respect especially curious.
"In Italian painting the Magdalen appears, both within and without,
as the _beautiful sinner;_ sin in her is as seductive as conversion.
But here neither sin nor sanctity are to be taken too seriously. She
was pardoned, because she had loved much; she sinned through love and
beauty; and the affecting element lies in this, that she has scruples
about her love, and beautiful and sensible as she is, sheds torrents of
tears. But her error is not that she has loved so much; her beautiful
and moving error is precisely that she believes herself to be a sinner,
whereas her sensitive beauty gives the impression that she could not
have been otherwise than noble and of lofty senses in her love."[17]

[Sidenote: _The doctrine of the passions._]

V. The relation between the passions or desires and the will has rather
been studied at the moment of strife between the will and the passions,
than for itself and within its two terms, although Aristotle had
already begun an analysis as to the diversity of appetites or βούλησις
in respect to the intention or προαίρεσις, observing that the intention
relates only to what can be done, whereas the appetition relates also
to things that are impossible.[18] The opposed schools of the Cynics
and Cyrenaïcs, Stoics and Epicureans, and others such, were chiefly
concerned with the antithesis of the passions and the rational will;
but the formulæ of all these schools, if they have some empirical value
as precepts of life more or less suitable for definite individuals,
classes and times, possess none or very little for philosophy. Cynics
and Cyrenaïcs, Stoics and Epicureans, they seem rather to be monks
following this or that rule than philosophers. The question as to the
mode of freeing oneself from the passions and of dominating them,
which lingered till the treatises of Descartes and Spinoza, has
also a chiefly empirical character. G. B. Vico took up a position
opposed to the two opposed degenerations arising from those practical
tendencies, that of "quenching the senses," and of "making a rule of
them." He despised both Stoics and Epicureans as "monastic or solitary
philosophers," and maintained as "a philosopher politician," that it is
needful "not to tear away his own nature from man, nor to abandon him
in his corruption," but "to moderate the human passions and to make of
them human virtues."[19] Rarely has the defence of the passions enjoyed
an equally limpid philosophical enunciation; as a rule, and even in
Hegel, it has been directed chiefly against certain social tendencies,
rather than against philosophical doctrines.[20] The absolute
abandonment to the passions or their absolute destruction, are theories
that have not had true and proper representatives.--The confusion
between the various meanings of the word "passion," understood now
as appetition, or concrete and actual passion, now as a state of the
soul (joy and sorrow), now as volitional habit, is to be found in the
various treatises that we have already had occasion to record. It is
natural that their character of indifference when understood as habits
should have often been observed. Thus for Descartes, _elles sont toutes
bonnes de leur nature et nous n'avons rien à éviter que leurs mauvais
usages ou leur excès._[21]

[Sidenote: _Virtues and Vices._]

On the other hand, the erroneous form of the defence of the passions,
consisting of making them the preparation or cause of the virtues, is
already to be found in the English philosophers of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries (More, Shaftesbury, etc.); and in the
celebrated _Fable of the Bees_ of Mandeville, it assumes the aspect of
a paradoxical theory, in which the vices are looked upon as promoters
and factors of progress, morality as inefficacious and harmful for this
purpose. And La Rochefoucauld had written: "_Les vices entrent dans
la composition des vertus comme les poisons dans la composition des
remèdes._"[22]

[Sidenote: _The doctrine of individuality: Schleiermacher._]

All these are false or crude forms, in which is involved the doctrine
of the right to individuality, and they have always constituted and
still constitute its danger. This doctrine received its most energetic
expression in the romantic and preromantic period, thanks above all to
Schleiermacher, after it had been referred to in a rather vague way by
Jacobi.[23]

"For some time" (writes Schleiermacher in the _Monologues_) "I too was
satisfied that I had discovered Reason; and venerating equality with
the _Unique Being_ as that which is most lofty, I believed that there
was one single measure for every case, that action should be in all of
them the same, and that each one is distinguished from the other only
in so far as it occupies a place of its own in space. I believed that
humanity manifested itself differently only in the variety of external
facts; but that the internal man, the individual, was not a being
peculiarly (_eigenthümlich_) constructed, and that each was everywhere
equal to the other." "But afterwards was revealed to me that which
instantly raised me to a high state of exaltation: it became clear that
every man must represent humanity in his own way, in an altogether
individual combination of its elements, in order that it may manifest
itself in every mode, and that everything most different may issue from
its bosom and become effectual in the fulness of time and space....
Owing to this thought, I felt myself to be a work individually willed
and therefore elected by the Divinity and such that it must enjoy a
particular form and culture; and the free act to which this thought
belongs has collected and intimately joined together the elements of
human nature in a peculiar existence."

"While I now do whatever I do according to my spirit and sense,
my fancy places before me as very clear proof of the internal
determination, a thousand other modes, in which it would be possible to
act otherwise without offending the laws of humanity: I rethink myself
in a thousand different forms, in order to discover with the greater
certainty that which is especially mine."[24]

[Sidenote: _Romantic and very modern theories._]

But this peculiarity (_Eigenthümlichkeit,_) opportunely placed in
relief by Schleiermacher, and a thought much loved by the Romantics
(Herder, Jacobi, G. Humboldt, the Schlegels, etc.), is often seen to
degenerate into individual caprice, even in those times, as may be
observed in the sort of caricature which Frederick Schlegel made of the
Fichtian I, become the individual I, and in the notorious _Lucinde,_
to which the same Schleiermacher inconsiderately devoted a series of
letters of comment and defence. The last offshoots of the Romantics
were Max Stirner and Frederick Nietzsche: in the former the value
of individuality becomes changed into an affirmation of spasmodic
egotism; in the second there is a continuous mixture of true and false,
of good and of bad individuality, as is natural in a writer whose
_Eigenthümlichkeit_ was rather that of a poet than of a thinker.

[Sidenote: _The concept of development and progress._]

VI. We have discussed elsewhere Hegel's concept of development, and
his thought as synthesis of opposites, which essentially belongs to
the Hegelian philosophy and has been superficially treated and adopted
by other philosophical schools, and this is not the place either to
retrace their history or to demonstrate into what errors Hegel fell
through abusing the truth that he had discovered. Among the errors of
that philosophy (as for that matter of all contemporary philosophies
and of those that have followed one another down to our own day), is
to be noted the persistence of the concept of Nature as a mode of
reality opposed to the mode of the Spirit, whence came a dualism that
was not effectually surpassed, save in appearance. The doctrine of
development by opposites is to be understood as accepted and maintained
here, with the correction of the concept of nature, and also the
doctrine of the synthesis of opposites, free from the use or abuse
of it by Hegel for distinct concepts (and worse still, for empirical
concepts). As for the concept of Providence, which is neither Fate
nor Fortune, nor the work of a transcendent God, this, in its modern
form, goes back to the _Scienza nuova_ of Vico and is not to be
confounded with the personal religious beliefs that Vico held and kept
distinct from his philosophical concept as to immanent Providence.
The same concept reappears in the Hegelian philosophy under the form
of the Idea, or of the _astuteness of Reason,_ which avails itself
of men as its instruments and managers of business.[25] Finally, the
conception of cosmic progress was extraneous to the oriental world,
to the Græco-Roman, and to the Christian worlds, prevailing in turn
in the latter that of decadence from an original state of perfection
and of circles or returns. In its modern form it takes its origin from
thinkers free of these religious views, who merge in the philosophies
of becoming and of evolution. But the concept of progress destroyed
itself in many of these rationalistic philosophies, the "disappearance
of evil" being posited as possible (Spencer), and a definite state
of perfection conceived (though transferred from the past into the
future), that is to say a Reality that should be Reality, indeed,
perfect Reality having ceased to be development, that is to say, itself.



[1] _Kr. d. prakt. Vern._ p. 119.

[2] _Phil. d. Rechtes,_ §§ 4, 15.

[3] Lotze, _Grundzüge der Ethik_ (Leipzig, 1884), pp. 26, 30-31; Wundt,
_Ethik_² (Stuttgart, 1892), pp. 463-464.

[4] _Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience_ (Paris, 1898).

[5] _Tract, theol.-pol._ vi. c. 6; _Ethica,_ p. iv. intr.; _Epist._36
(_Opera,_ pp. 208, 378, 597).

[6] _Kr. d. pr. Vernf._ p. 79.

[7] _System der Sittenlehre,_ in _Werke,_ iv. pp. 198-205.

[8] See my study: _Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto della filosofia di
Hegel_ (Bari, 1907).

[9] _Médit._ iv.

[10] For example, _Compendio di Etica_ (Roma, 1907), p. 56.

[11] _Mentor,_ iv. c. 2, § 19 _sqq._

[12] _Hippias minor,_ 375.

[13] Pascal, _Provine,_ i, iv.; Hegel, _Phil. d. Rechtes,_ § 40.

[14] _Enc._§ 248.

[15] _Allg. prakt. Phil._ pp. 121-122; _Einl. i. d. Phil._ (trad,
ital.), pp. 118, 171, 224.

[16] _Ethic,_ iv. prop. 54, p. 480.

[17] _Gesch. d. Phil._ ii. 240-241; _Vorles. üb. Aesth._ ii. 162-163.

[18] _Eth. Nicom._ Bk. iii. cc. 2-3, 1111-1113.

[19] _Scienza nuova seconda,_ degn. 5.

[20] _Phän. d. Geistes,_ pp. 484-486; _Encycl._ § 474; _Phil. d.
Rechtes,_ § 124; _Phil. d. Gesch._ pp. 39-41.

[21] _Traité des passions,_ iii. § 211.

[22] _Maximes,_ n. 182 (Ed. Garnier, p. 43).

[23] _Woldemar,_ pp. 112-113.

[24] _Monologen,_ in _Werke,_ i. 366-368, 372.

[25] See the study of Hegel mentioned.




THIRD SECTION


UNITY OF THE THEORETICAL AND THE PRACTICAL


[Sidenote: _Double result; precedence of the theoretical over the
practical and of the practical over the theoretical._]


The study of the practical activity in its relations that we made in
the first section has removed all doubt as to the thesis that the
practical activity presupposes the theoretical, or that _knowledge is
the necessary precedent of volition and action._[1] But the succeeding
study of the practical activity in its dialectic having led to the
result that the practical activity is reality itself in its immediacy,
and that no other reality (or we may say _other nature_) is conceivable
outside will-action, compels us also to affirm the opposite thesis,
that the theoretic activity presupposes the practical, and that
_the will is the necessary precedent of knowledge_.[2] And it is a
precedent, not indeed in the sense admitted from the beginning, of
the necessary implication of the will in every theoretical act, as
will to know, by means of the unity of the Spirit[3] (for this will
is subsidiary and not constitutive; but if it become constitutive it
produces, as has been seen, wilfulness and the theoretical error[4]),
but precisely in the sense of a constitutive will, without which no
knowledge would be thinkable.

Knowledge, indeed, is knowledge of something: it is the remaking of
a fact, an ideal recreation of a real creation. If there have not
previously been a desire, an aspiration, a nostalgia, there cannot be
poetry; if there have not been an impulse or a heroic deed, the epic
cannot arise; if the sun do not illumine a landscape, or a soul invoke
a ray of sunlight upon the countryside, the picture of a luminous
landscape cannot exist. And if there be not a world of reality that
generates a world of representations, Philosophy, which is the search
for the universal, is not conceivable, nor History, the understanding
of the individual.

[Sidenote: _Error of those who maintain the exclusive precedence of
either._]

The indubitability of this affirmation, which no force of sophistry
can destroy, renders fallacious both the opposite theses, which have
several times been variously proposed and maintained: the exclusive
priority of the theoretic, and the exclusive priority of the practical.

Those who maintain them enter into so desperate a contest with
reality, that in order to issue from it without too much dishonour,
they are finally compelled to call in the aid of a third term, which is
in turn either thought that is not thought, or will that is not will,
or something grey that contains in itself thought and will, without
being either the one or the other, nor the unity of that duality. On
the one hand is postulated a Logos, a thought _in se_ (one does not
understand how this can ever think and be thought), and it is made to
adopt the resolution (which one does not understand how it can ever
adopt) of coming forth _from itself_ and creating a nature, in order
to be able to return finally to itself, by means of this alienation,
and to be henceforth _per se,_ that is to say, able to think and to
will. The defect of this artificial construction, its mythological and
religious origin, can be said to have been already revealed, in the
comparison employed with reference to it by the author who maintained
it (Hegel), to the effect that the Logos is God _before_ the creation
of the world: a God, that is to say, altogether unreal and absurd.
On the other hand, the excogitation of a _blind Will_ (Schelling,
Schopenhauer) completely tallies with this Thought that does not think
because it has not previously willed, and that does not truly will
because it has not previously thought, and all of a sudden fashions
for itself the instrument of knowledge, to succeed in surpassing
itself in this alienation from itself, by means of liberation from
willing obtained in the contemplation of the ideas and in asceticism.
Here, too, we must repeat that the one error passes over and converts
itself into the other, and this inevitable conversion causes the other
secondary and hybrid forms of theory to have but slight interest, those
in which the priority has been conceived as that of fancy, or feeling,
or the unconscious, or the indifferentiated, and the like, all of which
represent vain efforts to suppress one of the two fundamental forms of
the spirit, or to derive them from a third, which consciousness does
not reveal.

[Sidenote: _Problem of the unity of this duality._]

This however does not mean that the demand to conceive the link of that
duality, or the unity of the theoretical and the practical, manifested
in all these erroneous attempts, is not legitimate. But in order to
conceive this, it is necessary to insist above all upon the reality of
this duality, of which is sought the connection and the unity.

[Sidenote: _Not the duality of opposites._]

This connection cannot be the relation or synthesis of opposites. The
theoretical is not the opposite of the practical, nor the practical
the opposite of the theoretical: the opposite of the theoretical is
error or the false, as the opposite of the practical is the volitional
contradiction or evil. The theoretical, far from being negative, is
positive, not less than the practical, and inversely. Neither form can
therefore be in any way debased to a simple opposite. Opposition is
intrinsic to the spirit and is to be found in each one of its forms:
hence the general value of the spirit (activity against passivity,
rationality and reality against irrationality and unreality, being
against not-being) and that of its special forms (beautiful against
ugly, true against false, useful against useless, good against evil).
But precisely for this reason, it cannot constitute the character of
one form in respect to the other: neither that of the true against the
good, nor that of the beautiful against the useful, and so on.

[Sidenote: _Not duality of finite and infinite._]

Nor can the connection be thought as are thought the subdivisions of
the theoretic and the practical forms, or according to the relations
of individual to universal, of finite to infinite, the first of
which terms conditions the second, but is conditioned by it only in
an implicit manner. Of the two theoretical forms (and we shall see
further on that the forms of the practical are also two), the æsthetic
precedes the logical and is autonomous: a song, a story, a statue, do
not express any concept; but the philosophy that gives the concept, is
at the same time fancy, expression, word: the prose of the philosopher
is his song. The æsthetic form is the knowledge of the individual;
the logical that of the universal, which is also individual. But this
relation that arises within the theoretic, as within the practical
form, cannot be transported to the relation of the two forms without
logical incoherence: the subdivision, so to speak, is not the
division. Thought is not the finite in respect of willing, which is
the infinite; nor is the will the finite in respect of thought, which
is the infinite. Thought and will are both of them at once finite
and infinite, individual and universal. He who passes from action to
thought, does not limit his own being by becoming finite; nor does he
limit it by passing from thought to action; or better, in both cases he
makes himself finite to attain to the infinite; poet to open to himself
the way to the thought of the eternally true; man of action, that he
may dedicate his work to the eternal good.

[Sidenote: _Perfect analogy of the two forms, theoretic and practical._]

The two forms, theoretical and practical, both positive, both a
connection of finite and infinite, correspond in everything, as has
already appeared from our exposition, in which the appeal to the one
from the problems of the other has always aided a better penetration
of the nature of such problems and the finding of their solution.
Thus in both there is genius and creation (geniuses of art and of
thought, and geniuses of action); in both, reproduction and judgment
take place in the same way (æsthetic taste, practical taste; history
of art and history of philosophy, history of actions); in both arise
representative concepts and empirical rules. The analogy will be
better illustrated by what is to follow, when will be demonstrated the
correspondence between art and economic, logical thought and ethicity,
historical discrimination and ethical discrimination, empirical
concepts and laws of action, and so on.


[Sidenote: _Not a parallelism, but a circle._]

If this analogy exclude the possibility of the two forms being
_unequal,_ it must not, on the other hand, be perverted with the
object of conceiving them _parallel,_ as would perhaps be pleasing
to the parallelists of spirit and nature, soul and body; this is an
expedient that is certainly easy, but certainly not satisfying. They
are not parallel, but are on the contrary bound, the one to the
other, in such a way that the one proceeds from the other. From the
æsthetic apprehension of reality, from philosophical reflection upon
it, from historical reconstruction, which is its result, is obtained
that knowledge of the actual situation, on which alone is formed and
can be formed the volitional and practical synthesis, the new action.
And this new action is in its turn the material of the new æsthetic
figuration, of the new philosophical reflection, of the new historical
reconstruction. In short, knowledge and will, theory and practice,
are not two parallels, but two lines, such that the head of the one
is joined to the tail of the other; or, if a geometric symbol also be
desired, such that they constitute, not a parallelism, but a _circle._

[Sidenote: _The circle of Reality: thought and being, subject and
object._]

They constitute therefore the circle of reality and of life, which is
duality-unity of thought and being, of subject and object, in such
a way that to think the subject is the same as to think the subject
of an object, and to think an object is the same as to think the
object of a subject. In truth, it sometimes seems strange and almost
impossible that such hard and difficult questions should have arisen
as to the objectivity of knowledge, and as to whether thought attains
to being, or whether there be a being beyond thought. Thought is such,
precisely because it affirms being, and being is such, precisely
because it is generated by a thought. It is only when we remember
that in those questions were included others of a very difficult and
intricate nature, concerning divine transcendency and the content of
the concept of nature (gnoseological questions, which it is the glory
of modern philosophy to have asked and solved);--it is only then that
we understand how the relation of thought and being, of knowing and of
willing, has also become obscure. Kant was forced to come to a stop
before the mystery of reality, because he had not altogether conquered
transcendency, nor altogether surpassed the false conception of nature
as _ens,_ given by the naturalists. It revealed itself to him, not
as a circle, but as an assemblage of lines diverging or joining to
infinity. Hegel made two of will and nature, owing to the insufficiency
of his gnoseological theory relating to the natural sciences, and was
led to posit a Philosophy of nature in opposition to a Philosophy of
the spirit, thus permitting to exist a form of non-mediate dualism,
after he had destroyed so many, or making it mediate in the artificial
manner to which we have referred. The shadows of that gnoseology having
been dispersed, the relation between theory and practice, subject and
object, appears in full light; and the answer becomes very simple to
the question as to how, when everything is unconvertible relation of
condition and conditioned, thought and being are reciprocally condition
and conditioned, and as to how the vicious circle is avoided. The
criticism of vicious circles includes in itself and affirms the idea
of a circularity that is not vicious; thought and being are not a
succession of two finites, but an absolute relation, that is, the
Absolute itself. To express ourselves mythologically, if the creation
of the world be the passage from chaos to cosmos, from not-being to
being, this passage does not begin either with the theoretic or with
the practical, with the subject, or with the object, but with the
Absolute, which is the absolute relation of the two terms. _In the
beginning was neither the Word nor the Act; but the Word of the Act and
the Act of the Word._

[Sidenote: _Critique of the theories as to the primacy of theoretical
or of practical reason._]

It is well to state again that in consequence of the relation and
correlation established, all the questions as to the primacy of
thought or will, of the contemplative or active life, and speaking
more empirically, of the thinker or the man of action, disappear.
To pose such problems is as though one were to ask which of the two
semicircles of a circle has precedence. Similar questions, always
insoluble or badly solved, have their origin in internal obscurity as
to the fundamental correlation. When man has attained to the summit of
knowledge (a summit that is certainly not Art; nor, strictly speaking,
Philosophy, but History, the knowledge of the concrete real, that
is, the actuality of philosophy), when he has completely penetrated
the actual situation, can he perhaps stop at this point and say _hic
manebimus optime?_ Can he arrest life which is raging and demanding
to be continued? And if he succeed in suspending it for an instant in
thought, why has he suspended, if not to continue it? Knowledge is
not an end, but an instrument of life: knowledge that did not serve
life would be superfluous and harmful.--On the other hand, when a man
has willed and has thrown himself into action, when he has produced
another piece of life, can he blindly continue to produce life for
ever? Would not blindness impede the production itself? Therefore he
must rise from life to knowing, if he wish to look in the face the
product that he has lived, and surpass it with thought, for which life
is now means and instrument. Knowledge serves life and life serves
knowledge; the contemplative life, if it do not wish to become insipid
ease, must lead to activity, and that activity, if it do not wish to
become an irrational and sterile tumult, must lead to contemplation.
Reality, in specifying aptitudes, has formed men of thought and men
of action, or of prevailing thought or prevailing action, these not
superior to those, for they are collaborators.--Thus the discussions
as to whether human progress be moral or intellectual, or whether the
propelling force be the practical and economic activity, or philosophy,
or religion (Buckle, Kidd, etc.), are shown to be vain.

[Sidenote: _New pragmatism: life conditioning Philosophy._]

It is rather to be considered that from this bond between theory
and practice is obtained a pragmatism of a new sort, of which the
pragmatists have never thought, or at least have not been able to
distinguish from the others and to give it value. If Life condition
Thought, we have in this the apodictic demonstration of the always
historically conditioned form of every thought; not only of Art, which
is always the art of a time, of a soul, of a moment; but also of
Philosophy which can solve only those problems presented by Life. Every
philosophy reflects and cannot but reflect the preoccupations, as
they are called, of a definite historical moment; and this, not in the
quality of its _solutions_ (in which case it would be and is indeed bad
philosophy), but in the quality of its _problems._ Thus it is at once
contingent and eternal, mortal and immortal, extratemporal and living
only in time and history.

[Sidenote: _Deductive confirmation of the two forms and deductive
exclusion of the third feeling._]

Finally, with the establishment of the duality-unity of the theoretical
and the practical, we have demonstrated that which at the beginning
of the exposition had only been asserted and presupposed: namely,
why a _practical_ form of the spirit must be placed beside the
theoretical,[5] and why there is no _third_ form beyond these, whether
it be called _feeling_ or by any other name.[6] The theoretical form
postulates the practical, because the subject postulates the object;
but the spirit does not postulate a third form intermediate between the
two, or unity of the two, because it is itself precisely mediator and
unity of itself, _subject-object._



[1] Section I.

[2] Section II.

[3] Section I. c. 3.

[4] Section I. c. 4.

[5] Section I. c. 1.

[6] Section I. c. 2.




SECOND PART

THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS SPECIAL FORMS




FIRST SECTION


THE TWO PRACTICAL FORMS: ECONOMIC AND ETHIC




I


DISTINCTION OF THE TWO FORMS IN THE PRACTICAL CONSCIOUSNESS


[Sidenote: _The utilitarian or economic form, and the moral or ethical
form._]

All that has been developed in the preceding book concerns the
practical activity _in general:_ therefore no account has been taken of
the special distinctions of the practical forms, as though there were
none, or they have only been alluded to as something problematical;
and when exemplifications have been given, recourse has been had
indifferently to one or to the other of the forms commonly admitted,
whether or no they are to be held philosophically distinguishable.
Now, on the contrary, we affirm in an explicit manner that the spirit,
which we have seen distinguished as theoretical and practical, is
sub-distinguished as practical spirit, into two forms, of which the
first may be called utilitarian or _economic,_ the second moral or
_ethical._

[Sidenote: _Insufficiency of the descriptive and psychological
distinction._]

In affirming this sub-distinction, we are obliged to renounce (as we
have already done for the practical in respect to the theoretical) a
demonstration by the psychological method, which has already shown
itself to be vicious. If indeed it were applicable in this field, we
should doubtless be able to strike the intellect and persuade the soul
for a moment, by pointing to the spectacle of life as a demonstration
of the two forms, economic and ethic, showing on the one hand, farmers,
commercial men, speculators, conquerors of men and of territories,
wielders of the word or of the sword as instrument of dominion;
and, on the other hand, educators, benefactors, disinterested and
self-sacrificing men, martyrs and heroes; on the one hand, economic
institutions (manufactories, mines, exchanges, exploration companies),
and on the other moral institutions (educators and schools, charitable
societies, orders of Sisters of Charity, or red, white, or blue Cross
Companies, and so on). What can be better proof of the reality of the
bipartition enunciated? Cannot we touch it, as with the hand? However
(as already in the case of the distinction between the theoretical
and the practical), what is touched with the hand is not on that
account seized by the intellect, and indeed in a little while it also
escapes the hand which had thought to be its master. For when we better
observe the individuals who seemed to be merely economic, they seem to
be also moral, and inversely;--moral institutions are also economic,
and economic moral The benefactor calculates and wishes to attain his
object with the same _cupiditas_ as the peasant, all intent upon gain;
and the peasant in his turn is ennobled in his chase after lucre by
the dignity of labour and by the moral impulses that sustain it;--all
charitable institutions are economic undertakings, and economic
undertakings are subject to moral laws, so that in drawing up accounts
there is no knowing where is that material distinction between the
economic and the ethical activities. The truth is that here too it is
not possible to start from contingent facts and from their classes
with empirical limitations, to attain to philosophical distinctions,
but that it is necessary to start from these, in order to interpret
contingent facts, and finally to understand also the mode of formation
of empirical classes. For this reason the psychological method revolves
in a circle that is effectively vicious.

[Sidenote: _Deduction and the necessity of integrating it with
induction._]

Neither is it possible to proceed with the method that we shall call
deductive solely; that is, we see the necessity of the two sub-forms
of the practical activity, which, being the object of the subject and
therefore in every way analogous to the activity of the subject, that
is, to the theoretical, must have a duplication of forms answering
to the duplication of the theoretical activity into æsthetic and
logical, and cannot posit the universal practical without positing the
individual that shall be its vehicle. This deduction, although in every
way correct and rigorous, cannot be convincing, save when it is also
demonstrated that it responds to fact as revealed by observation, that
is, when deduction is also induction, as the speculative method demands.

[Sidenote: _The two forms as a fact of consciousness._]

Leaving, therefore, on this occasion also, the deductive proof to the
complete development of the theory, we shall begin by appealing to
observation of self, in order that every one may verify in himself
the existence of the two different forms of volitional acts, termed
by us economic and ethic. The economic activity is that which wills
and effects only what corresponds to the conditions of fact in which
a man finds himself; the ethical activity is that which, although
it correspond to these conditions, also refers to something that
transcends them. To the first correspond what are called individual
ends, to the second universal ends; the one gives rise to the judgment
concerning the greater or less coherence of the action taken in itself,
the other to that concerning its greater or less coherence in respect
to the universal end, which transcends the individual.

[Sidenote: _The economic form._]

If we wish to recognize only the moral form of activity, we soon
perceive that it draws with it the other, from which it is distinct;
for our action, although universal in its meaning, cannot but be
something concrete and individually determined. What is put in practice
is not morality in universal, but always a determinate moral volition:
as Hegel remarked in a different connection, we do not eat fruit in
general, but cherries, pears, plums, or, these cherries, these pears,
these plums; we hasten to comfort in this or that way an individual,
made in this or that way, who finds himself in this or that state of
misfortune; we do justice at this or that point of time and space to
individual beings on a definite matter. If a good action be not solely
our individual pleasure, it must become so: otherwise, how could we
carry it out? Thus, by closer examination, we realize that our action
always obeys a rational law, even when its moral law is suppressed, so
that, when every inclination that transcends the individual has been
set aside, we do not on that account remain the prey of caprice. We
shall desire only our own will, we shall follow only our own individual
inclination; but, even so, it is necessary to will this will and this
inclination coherently, not to undulate between two or more volitions
at the same time. And if we succeed in really obtaining our desire,
if, while the moral conscience is for a moment suspended within us,
we abandon ourselves to the execution of a project of vengeance and
attain to it in spite of many obstacles, thus executing a masterpiece
of ability, a practical masterpiece; even when, in this case, _populus
non plaudit,_ we for our part certainly _nos nobis plaudimus,_ and feel
most satisfied, at least so long as lasts the suspension of the moral
consciousness; for we have done what we willed to do, we have tasted,
though but for a little while, the pleasure of the gods. Whereas if,
although we follow our desire, we do something different from it, or
mingle several mutually exclusive desires with one, and having decided
not to drink wine, for example, in order to obey the advice of the
doctor and to remain in good health, we yet yield to the wish to drink
it, that pleasure is, so to say, poisoned by preoccupation, the taste
is at the same time distaste, unless we succeed in forgetting for some
moments the advice of the doctor, or think that very possibly he does
not know what he is saying. We continually apply the same criterion
to the incidents of life; actions and individuals, of whom we cannot
morally approve, drag from us sometimes cries of admiration for the
ability with which they have conducted themselves, for the firmness
that they display, worthy (as is said) of a better cause. The Epicurean
Farinata, who raised himself erect on his red-hot bed, or the impious
Capaneus who cursed Jove beneath the rain of punishing fire, obtain
from us that esteem which we refuse to those sad souls who lived
without infamy and without praise. Art has celebrated in tragedies and
poems the strong characters of great criminals, but it has turned to
ridicule in comedies little criminals, the violent who show themselves
timid, the astute who let themselves be cheated.

[Sidenote: _The ethical form._]

As we cannot fail to recognize this form of the practical activity,
quite individual, hedonistic, utilitarian, and economic, and the
importance that it possesses, joined to or separated from morality,
as the case may be, and the special practical judgments that have
their origin in it (the judgment of convenience, whether it be called
utilitarian or economic), so it would be impossible not to recognize
the moral form. Yes, the volitional act satisfies us as individuals
occupying a definite point of time and space, but if it fail to
satisfy us at the same time as beings transcending time and space,
our satisfaction will be ephemeral and will rapidly be changed into
dissatisfaction. To one desire succeeds another, and to this another,
and so on to infinity; but the one is different from the other, and
the new either condemns the old or is by it condemned. If we succeed
in arranging our pleasures in series and classes, and in subordinating
and connecting them, certainly there will be some gain; but the gain
will not have been a true one on this occasion either. We shall at
the most be able to guide our life according to some plan, and for a
certain time that has not the exactitude of the moment; instead of the
instantaneous will to which succeeds a different will, we shall have
general ends for which we shall work. We shall propose, for instance,
to do certain work and to abstain from doing certain other work, in
order to marry a loved one, to win a seat in Parliament, or to obtain
literary fame. But those ends are also merely contingent (they are
general, not universal), and consequently cannot assuage our thirst.
When we all have attained to them, we shall experience _le déboire_
that _la cueillaison d'un rêve au cœur qui l'a cueilli_ always leaves
behind. The company of the fair beloved will weary, the political
ambition realized will leave the soul empty, literary fame will seem
the shadow of vanity. Perhaps too, we shall change our side, like
the sick man who cannot rest on his bed of feathers, and begin to
follow other ends; the lover deluded with matrimony will turn to other
loves; the ambitious man, weary of political life, will think of new
ambitions, or of that of not having any, and of retiring to so-called
domestic peace; the seeker for literary fame will long for ease,
silence, and forgetting. But in vain: dissatisfaction persists. And it
will always persist, and pallid Care will always sit behind us, on the
croup of our horse, if we are not able to tear from the contingent its
character of contingent, breaking its spell, and bringing ourselves to
a full stop in that _progressus ad infinitum_ from thing to thing, from
pleasure to pleasure, to which it impels us, if we be not able to place
the eternal in the contingent, the universal in the individual, duty
in desire. Then only do we acquire that internal peace, which is not
in the future, but in the present, because eternity is in the moment,
for him who knows how to place it there. Our actions will always be
new, because reality always places new problems before us, but if we
accomplish them with lofty souls, and with purity of heart, seeking in
them that which surpasses them, we shall on every occasion possess the
Whole. Such is the character of the moral action, which satisfies us,
not as individuals, but as men, and as individuals only in so far as
we are men; and in so far as we are men, only by means of individual
satisfaction.

[Sidenote: _Impossibility of eliminating it._]

Those men in whom the moral consciousness is wanting, or is confused
and intermittent, make us fearful--fearful for ourselves, obliged to be
on our guard against them and to ward off their snares and injuries,
and fearful for them, for if they have not already fallen the prey to
the most terrible torments, they certainly will do so. They are like
people dancing unconsciously upon ground that has been mined; the
conscious spectator trembles for them, they do not; but if by chance
they escape the danger, they will be retrospectively horrified when
they look back. The inebriation evaporates and the clear outlines of
reality reappear, but that which restores form to those outlines is
the eternal, not the contingent, morality, not desire. We see this take
place in an intense form in what are called _conversions,_ followed by
the intention of leaving the world and its false joys and retiring to a
cloister; or, without metaphor, of becoming regenerated, of beginning
a new life with new ideal presuppositions. But intensive conversions
are catastrophes which occur, like popular revolutions, when continuous
evolution is impeded. The wise man is converted and renewed at every
moment, without the solemnity of a conversion, and with the _memorare
novissima_ he retains in the contingent, his contact with the eternal.
He knows that he must love things and creatures one by one, each in
its individuality, for he who does not love thus is neither good nor
bad, not even being a man. He will wish for literary fame, political
power, matrimony, according to his aptitudes and to the conditions in
which he finds himself; but he will wish for all these things without
wishing for them; he will wish for them, not for themselves, but for
that which they contain of universal and constant; he will love them
in God, ready to abandon them immediately their ideal content shall
have left them; he will seriously desire them with all ardour for
themselves, but only when their self is also "his other self." No
thing, no creature possesses unconditioned value, which belongs only to
that which is neither thing nor creature. The value of our individual
life is conditioned for each of us, and we must guarantee and defend
it as vehicle of the universal, and we must be ready to throw it
away, as a useless and pernicious thing, when it does not serve this
end, or rebels. But the value of every being dear to us is not less
conditioned, and Jesus said with reason, when preparing himself for
his divine mission, that he had come to separate men from their wives,
their sons, their friends, and from their native land. That separation
in union, that union in separation, is the moral activity, individual
and universal.

[Sidenote: _Confirmed by facts._]

Thus it happens that art, which has celebrated strong characters, able
men and affairs well conducted, has also celebrated, and with greater
liveliness, those strong men who have placed their strength at the
service of that other strength which surpasses them and makes them
eternal. For this reason, no embittered soul, no sceptic and pessimist
remains long firm in his negation of all moral light; such negations
are indeed as a rule true _amantium irae. _ The singer of the lesser
Brutus who had thus ferociously imprecated:

    Foolish Virtue, hollow mists and fields
              Of restless ghosts
    Are thy schools, and Repentance turns her back upon
        thee,...

is the same who, on witnessing a slight act of generosity, exclaims
with emotion:

    Fair Virtue, when my spirit becomes aware of thee,
    It exults, as at a joyous event....

The coldest and most self-contained philosophers, when they speak of
it, find themselves sometimes impelled to adopt a poetic tone, and
Aristotle will say of Justice that it is "a more wonderful thing than
Hesperus or the Morning Star,"[1] and Emmanuel Kant will compose an
apostrophe to Duty, and will write at the end of the _Critique of
Practical Reason_: "Two things fill the soul with ever new and ever
increasing veneration and admiration the more often and the longer
reflection is occupied with them: _the starry heaven_ above me, and
_the moral law_ within me." And even the great mass of rhetoric that
has for its object virtue or the moral law is a homage rendered to this
supreme force of life, reality of reality.

The impossibility of suppressing the economic or the moral form of the
activity in our practical consciousness, the continual appeal that the
one makes to the other, the revolving of our practical judgment about
the two aspects, both of them necessary, of the useful and the honest,
energy and goodness, pleasure and duty, explain why the Psychology
and the Description of practical life have constituted the two kinds
of types and classes, of economic and of moral men, of economic and
of moral institutions. Such rough and approximate distinctions have
however at bottom, in this as in other cases, an intimate and rigorous
distinction, which every one will find evident in himself, if he look
inward upon himself and fix his gaze persistently on the universal
forms of the spirit that acts within him.



[1] _Eth. Nicom._1. v. c. i, 1129 b.




II


CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ETHICAL FORM


[Sidenote: _Exclusion of materialistic and of intellectualistic
criticisms._]

The distinction of the two forms, well known to the inner
consciousness, will appear more clearly when we examine the reasons
for which the one or the other of them has been denied. We say the one
or the other, because we have now freed ourselves from the obligation
of refuting the theses that have their origin in presuppositions,
both materialistic and intellectualiste, and therefore deny the moral
and economic activities, either because they do not admit the concept
of spiritual activity itself, or because they do not admit the more
special conception of practical activity. The greater number of
those who deny morality are nothing but mechanicists, empiricists,
materialists, and positivists, to whose brains not only do economy and
morality appear inconceivable, but also art and science and, in short,
every spiritual value. They ask: Where is this moral principle of which
you discourse? Point it out to us with your finger. But they also ask:
Where are the categories or the pure concept? Where is the æsthetic
synthesis and the pure intuition? Where is the _a priori_ of perception
and of history? Where are all these fine things you talk of as though
they existed, and that we neither see nor touch?--And for our part, we
can henceforth let them say what they will, only praying in our hearts
that God may illuminate them and make them discover (at least when they
are near to death and the dense veil of their bodies has become more
thin) that if the universals were _things_ that it was possible to
perceive as we do individual things, they would not be universals.

[Sidenote: _The two possible negations._]

When the double assumption of a spiritual activity and of a practical
form of it has been admitted, it is not possible to do otherwise
than either to deny the economic for the moral form, or the moral
for the economic. What might seem to be a third possibility, that of
denying the two forms, is reducible to the first, because, when the
distinction of the terms has been suppressed, there remains nothing
but the practical activity considered in general, which coincides with
the individual and economic activity. We shall begin then with the
examination of the negation of morality for economy, which is the
thesis of _utilitarianism._ Those same materialists have recourse to
utilitarianism when they wish to present some sort of a Philosophy
of the practical, but with what little right they avail themselves
of such aid, is clear from what has already been said: the useful is
always value and teleology, and materialism, in all its sub-forms and
varieties, is incapable of positing the smallest concept of value and
finality.

[Sidenote: _The thesis of utilitarianism against the existence of moral
acts._]

Utilitarianism affirms that no other volition exists save that
which answers to the merely individual determination, or, as it is
also expressed, to the pleasure of the individual, understanding
by pleasure, not the generic pleasure that also accompanies moral
satisfaction in the individual, but that which is exclusively
individual. Actions, therefore, as it says, are what concern it, not
their motives, that is, the motive of the individuality of the act
abstractly conceived, not that of the spirit become concrete in it;
thus, not killing for fear of punishment and not killing because
repugnant to one's own conscience, become the same thing. They are the
consequences of different conditions, but in both cases of the same
motive, which is personal convenience. And as there does not exist
a pleasure that cannot be and is not substituted for a different
pleasure, so there is not an action, however moral it be called, that
cannot be interrupted and changed, when different conditions present
themselves. Every action, every man has his price: it is all a matter
of discovering what that price is. He who seems to place the glory
of his country above all other aspirations, although he cannot, for
example, be corrupted by money, by vanity, or by pleasure, will yet
always have in him some weak point that a more expert corrupter will
discover or be able to discover; and when the discovery has been made
and the suitable transaction proposed, the glory of his country will be
abandoned, because it has been well compensated for by something else.
This way of looking upon human actions has appeared to be concrete,
exact, rational; and the utilitarian theory, if it have often been
called _hedonistic,_ and sometimes even _æsthetic_ (understanding by
æsthetic, individual pleasure), is also wont to be decorated with the
name of ethical or practical _rationalism, rational morality._

[Sidenote: _Difficulties arising from the presence of these._]

All would go very well, and the practical activity would in this way be
entirely explained and unified, if we did not at every moment of life
run against the distinction between mere pleasure and duty, between
the useful and the honest action, and if there did not arise in our
conscience an invincible distinction between the things that have a
price and those that have none, and if an abyss did not differentiate
among apparently similar actions that which has a merely utilitarian
from that which has a moral motive. The utilitarians even (who,
although bad philosophers, are men, and as such carry at the bottom of
their souls a far better philosophy than they profess in books and in
the schools) are not able to suppress that distinction in themselves
and to deny all recognition to the power of morality, to which, as men,
they submit at every moment. How then are they to behave? How are they
to explain the genesis of that distinction which, by the premises that
they have posited, cannot be other than illusion? What is there that
gives effective existence to the fallacious category of morality, side
by side with the veracious one of utility?

[Sidenote: _Attempt to explain them as quantitative distinctions._]

There have been several attempts to solve that hard resisting term
of morality. The first, which was logically bound to present itself,
was that of considering facts called moral as nothing but empirical
groups of utilitarian facts, and of explaining the false category as
an hypostasis of those empirical groups, arbitrarily reduced to a
rigorous and philosophical concept. Banking, usury, commerce, industry,
agriculture, and labour are empirically distinguished, yet are all
economic facts. Courage, prudence, temperance, chastity, justice,
modesty are empirically distinguished, yet are all moral facts. Why
not unite the two series, and recognize the unity and continuity of
nature by the insertion among them of other types and terms? Morality
is also utility, but the utility of the _greater number_; interest is
interest, but _well understood_; pleasure is pleasure, but pleasure of
_greater duration and quantity,_ preferred to another less intense, or
more fugitive; egoism, egoism of family, of race, of human race, egoism
of _species,_ altruism; eudemonism, but _social_ eudemonism, enjoyment,
but enjoyment of _sympathy,_ utility, but utility of conforming, not
to one's own individual judgment, but to that of _public opinion._
Thus are moral facts included in utilitarian, in the same way as the
number a hundred thousand is not less a number than two or three and
the others inferior to it, because it is composed of three and of two
and of other numbers less than itself. Cæsar Borgia murders his brother
and thus gets rid of a rival both in love and in politics, that is, he
seeks his advantage; but Giordano Bruno also seeks his own advantage,
and nothing else, when he allows himself to be burned in order to
assert his philosophy, because, for one constituted as he, with that
demoniacal fury of his for philosophical truth, the pyre must have
seemed a very miserable and negligible thing, just as his brother's
blood seemed to Cæsar Borgia. Call the one of these actions utility
of a complexity of ten and the other utility of a complexity of a
hundred, or give to the complexity a hundred the name of morality, of
well-understood self-interest, of sympathy, of altruism, and so on, and
to the complexity of ten that of utility, of individual interest, of
egoism: the two actions will not thus have been declared of a different
nature.

[Sidenote: _Critique._]

But the fact is that they have already been declared of a _different
nature_ by the utilitarians themselves. No one, indeed, will have been
deceived with the ingenious phraseology excogitated: _well-understood_
interest is no longer mere self-interest; the egoism of _species_ is
not egoism, _durable_ pleasure is not mere pleasure. The difference
between the one term and the other is not quantitative, and even where
a _greater_ quantity is talked of, a _greater_ duration, a _greater_
number, arithmetical definitions are not posited, but symbols pointing
to qualitative differences. There is a difference, not of complexity
but of nature, between the action of Cæsar Borgia and that of Giordano
Bruno; there is no common measure between baseness and moral elevation
as there is between undulating plains and mountains. The two series, of
empirical utilitarian concepts and of empirical moral concepts, are not
only irreducible to a single series, but remain obstinately distinct
and irreducible. All that can be done, and has been done, is to unify
them verbally; and in this the utilitarians have shown themselves as
bold as it was possible to be in so miserable an enterprise. But the
identity or similarity of words does not suffice to cancel the profound
distinctions of things.

[Sidenote: _Attempt to explain them as facts either extraneous to the
practical or irrational and stupid._]

There would have been an immediate passage from the consciousness
of the puerility of such identifications to the recognition of
a distinct ethical form, if purpose and prejudice had not made
resistance, prompting, on the contrary, the search for new expedients
for setting themselves free in theory from the tedious and recurring
phantom of morality. On this occasion also these expedients must have
been just two: that is, to declare morality or concept _extraneous_
to the practical, or intrinsic to it indeed, but _contrary._ The
first was attempted, but feebly, when morality was spoken of as the
fantasticality of poets, as the dream or rosy illusion caressed in
life. No attention was paid to the fact that what the poet imagines
cannot be contradictory and absurd, but must indeed be founded in the
reality of life and in the nature of things; and that morality is
not the æsthetic form in which it is reproduced and represented, but
practical form or action. But the unmaintainability of this attempt
was too evident for its success. The other expedient, on the contrary,
has always had and still has great success. This turns morality into
a practical contradictory concept, that is, into something certainly
practical, but without motive, incoherent, and in contradiction to the
healthy development of the practical. It is true that it is usually
enunciated in very different words from those used by us. They speak
as follows: What is called a good and virtuous action is nothing but
the product of the association between certain acts that are for us
the means to a pleasure, and that pleasure itself; so that gradually,
even where the primitive pleasure is absent, those acts are sought
and repeated for themselves, as though in themselves pleasurable.
The savage fought against the enemies who assailed his tribe, that
he might not be made a slave or sacrificed to the idol of another
tribe, that is to say, in order to defend his personal liberty or his
life; but later on, man, forgetting that the tribe or the city or the
State were simple means for protecting life and goods, defends them
for themselves and allows himself to be despoiled and slain for his
country. In the same way (to employ the classical example), money
is first sought as a means to enjoyment, and to form a supply for
procuring a life more comfortable and secure; but by degrees he who
amasses money turns in his soul the means into the end, and becomes
avaricious, that is, he finds delight in the mere possession of money,
and sacrifices for that all his other joys, even an easy life, food,
house and sleep, which he originally intended that money should obtain
for him. Morality arises entirely from a similar process of association
between means and end, and the case of the miser explains by analogy
every act of virtue that cannot be directly reduced to simple pleasure
and individual utility.

[Sidenote: _Associationism and evolutionism. Critique._]

Now the association here discussed is neither that of logic nor
of æsthetic, nor valid association, synthesis, but irrational and
fallacious association. It is only possible to exchange means for end
as the result of a bad association of ideas: therefore that association
is folly and stupidity, as the miser adduced as an example is stupid
and foolish, being called "miser" precisely for this reason, with the
intention of blaming him (for this word does not mean "economic" or
"provident"). And behold! morality should be defined as that which
is practically irrational, foolish, stupid, the product of illusion
and confusion, or the _contrary_ of the practical activity, which is
clear-sightedness, rationality, wisdom. Thus defined, it is at the
same time annulled. Indeed, irrationality is that which is condemned
to be perpetually subjected to the rational; and what is called the
moral man, if he were nothing but a false associator of ideas, would be
constantly confuted by the man of good sense, by the utilitarian, who
would prevent him from committing the stupidity of sacrificing himself
for his children, for his country, or for knowledge; or, were he to
persist, would cover him with contempt and ridicule. The fear that to
discover its origin would be tantamount to abolishing morality would
therefore be perfectly justified in this new sense also; or better,
it would not be a question of a fear, but of a fact: morality would
be in a state of progressive annulment, as the effect of increasing
instruction, both in the individual and in society. It has been replied
that neither this fear nor this fact arises, because that false
association is _indissoluble,_ being a product of _heredity,_ or, to
speak of it in proper terms, it is hereditary stupidity (evolutionistic
utilitarianism). But whether inherited or acquired, it is so dissoluble
as to be dissolved in the theory proposed: _lux facta est,_ and no
one succeeds in obscuring it any longer. If, notwithstanding that
pretended light, morality be not dissipated, if recourse be had to the
miserable subterfuge of insuperable heredity (which is surpassed at
the very moment in which its origin is made clear), this means to say
that, for the moralist himself, morality is not the irrational, but
something very rational. He does not succeed in identifying it with the
merely individually useful, but neither can he reject it as the pure
and simple negative of this. And since he does not wish to abandon the
utilitaristic hypothesis, there is no other path open to him but that
of recourse to _mystery._

[Sidenote: _A desperate attempt: theological utilitarianism and
mystery._]

This is precisely what happens in the last form of utilitarianism,
which has seemed to be capricious and extravagant, but is on the
contrary profoundly auto-critical, since it reveals the ultimate
essence and defect of the doctrine: what is known as _theological
utilitarianism._ Human actions are always inspired by what is merely
useful to the individual, and if a number of these seems to diverge
from this criterion, this happens because account is not taken of
an actual fact, by means of which even the actions which seem to be
divergent are reduced to the common measure. This given fact is the
life beyond this world, in which God rewards or punishes him who has
obeyed or disobeyed his will, in the life of this world. He who in this
life seems to resist the impulse of his personal advantage and performs
sacrifices of every sort, even to that of his own life, follows equally
with the others his personal advantage; and believing in God, in the
immortality of the soul, and in the reward and the punishment that
await him, he regulates his action according to these actual facts.
_Intuitionistic_ Ethic, which places a moral duty at the side of
individual pleasure, but indeducible from it, is in reality deduced
from individual pleasure, and is likewise turned into _rational_ or
utilitarian Ethic by means of the transcendental datum. In this way the
solution makes shipwreck in mystery; since God, immortality, the other
life, the divine command, punishments and rewards, cannot be defined
and justified by means of thought and concept. When utilitarianism
becomes theological, it abandons the philosophical field, confessing by
so doing its philosophical defeat. And to philosophical consideration
the distinction between the individually useful and that which is
also superindividual shines out ever more clearly after the many vain
attacks of utilitarianism, the affirmation of the moral form, as united
and distinct from the utilitarian; the _autonomy_ of Ethic against
every form of _utilitarianism_ and every _heteronomous Ethic._




III


CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ECONOMIC FORM


[Sidenote: _The thesis of moral abstracticism against the concept of
the useful._]

If in the course of philosophical history, the theory of utility has
sought to cause the disappearance of the other practical term, which
is morality, by swallowing it up, we are not to believe that morality
has been for its part more modest and discreet and has not in its
turn attempted to devour its companion. One exaggeration has been met
with another; to utilitarianism has been opposed that error which may
be called _moral abstracticism,_ by means of which is refused to the
concept of utility the place that belongs to it in the organism of the
spirit.

Such a refusal (analogous to our analysis of the utilitarian theory)
cannot take place, save in three ways: that is, in so far as value is
denied to the useful, either as _practical_ concept, or as _positive_
concept, or as _philosophical_ concept. Here too we naturally
do not take count of the theses of the materialists or of the
intellectualists, which (especially those of the former) have raged in
the field of Economy not less than in that of Ethic, giving rise to
insane attempts to explain the useful on mechanical principles, or with
the contingencies of historical evolution.

[Sidenote: _The useful as the means or as theoretical fact._]

The useful (it has been said) is nothing but the _means_ to obtain a
certain end. For example, if I take a walk every day with a view to
keeping myself in good health, the daily walk is the suitable means and
is therefore useful; if, on the contrary, I find that it makes me ill,
this means that it is not the suitable means and it would be, and I
should declare it to be, useless or harmful. Now by the demonstration
given above, it is known that means and end are indistinguishable in
the _practical,_ for what is called means is nothing but the actual
situation (and the knowledge of it), from which arises the practical
act, and to which that act corresponds. Thus it is most possible to
separate the means from the end; but in so doing, the consideration of
the practical act is abandoned, and we pass to that of its theoretical
antecedent; and if the mere theoretical antecedent be called "useful"
or "practical" in ordinary speech (remembering the practical act,
to which it has been or it is presumed that it may be united) then a
metaphor is employed, against which there is nothing to be said. Those,
then, who define the useful as the means should once for all realize
that with such a definition they remove that concept from the circle
of the Philosophy of the practical and transport it into Logic, where
the relation of means and end is the very same as that of cause and
effect, and it again becomes part of the theory of empirical concepts,
in which cause and effect are wont to be posited as terms separately
conceivable. This has been more or less consciously recognized, when
the useful has been defined as the _technical,_ for we know that the
technical is nothing but knowledge thus made into a metaphor, owing to
the relation that it has or is presumed to be capable of having, with
an action that has been done or is about to be done.

[Sidenote: _Technical and hypothetical imperatives._]

The theoretical character of the technical has, on the contrary,
been obscured, when technical knowledge has received the name
of _hypothetical imperatives,_ distinct and ranged beside the
_categorical._ The imperative is will, and is therefore always both
categoric and imperative: _a_ is willed (categorically), but _a_ would
not be willed if the condition of fact and situation _b_ did not exist
(hypothetically). The merely hypothetical imperative is the knowledge,
that remains when abstraction is made of the practical act or of the
will; and is no longer an imperative, but a theoretic affirmation.
Where effective will is not, imperatives cannot be talked of.

[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is a practical fact._]

Having made clear that the definition of the useful as _means_ implies
the negation of the useful as a practical fact and its reduction to a
theoretical category already known, we must exclude the possibility
of such a reduction, for in the useful, the practical character, the
effectivity of the will, is ineliminable. "It is useful for me to take
a walk" means, "It pleases me to take a walk," "I will to do it." It
is a question, not of contemplation or of reasoning, but of volitional
movement. The knowledge that precedes the utilitarian act is one thing,
the act itself is another. The old man has the same knowledge as the
young man, he has indeed much more (_si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse
pouvait!_), but he does not will what the young man wills: he knows
that by traversing so many kilometers he will arrive at a certain
definite point; but it is not useful for him to go there, because it is
not useful for him to traverse those kilometers, or to submit to that
exertion at the risk of an illness. The utilitarian will is expressed,
not in merely hypothetical imperatives, but in those categoric
imperatives that are at the same time hypothetical. The general formula
is "will!" or "will that you will!" or "be coherent in your willing!"
as the individuated forms are those that we are continually repeating
to ourselves, "now, to bed!" "now, up you get!" and the like; which,
when developed, mean: "go to bed" (if you wish to rest yourself), "get
up" (if you wish to work), and so on. The distinction between the
cognoscitive and the volitional theses is here evident.

[Sidenote: _The useful as the egoistic or immoral._]

Since then, owing to the unalterably practical character of the
utilitarian fact, it was not possible to insist upon its reduction to
the technical, and since, on the other hand, it was not desired to
recognize it as a practical category side by side with the practical
category of morality, they have tried to think of it as something
certainly practical, but at the same time of little value, to beware
of it, to combat it, to free ourselves from it. "Useful" has in this
way become synonymous with wilfulness, with individual caprice, with
will more or less perverted, and (looking upon immorality as the
individual I, shut up in itself and rebelling against the universal)
with _egoism._ This theory is supported by certain common modes of
speech, in which the moral man is opposed to the man intent upon what
is useful to him as an individual, the ethical to the economic life.
But it is a question of phrases, true,' perhaps, in a certain sense,
but inexact when understood or interpreted as affirmations of a contest
between morality and utility.

[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is amoral._]

We discover at once that the contest is inexistent, by merely thinking
of the case already mentioned, of the man in whom the moral conscience
is not developed or has been suppressed, or of the case--limit
called _innocence._ What is done in innocence responds, no doubt, to
individual pleasure, and so to what is useful for the individual, as
he feels it in the given circumstances: were this not so, what is done
would not be done. But innocence is not immoral on this account. It
will be _amoral,_ because it is merely individual volition deprived
of the light of the eternal; it will never be _immoral._ Thus (to
make use of the comparison and analogy of the theoretic activity) the
images that the poet creates will be without philosophy, but will not
for this reason be anti-philosophical. Because, were that so, they
would have to be partially philosophical, that is to say, to enter into
strife with philosophy; but there is no such strife, and, therefore,
those images, although philosophically not true, are none the less not
philosophically false. Yet they are theoretical acts, in the same way
that philosophy is a theoretical act. The philosophical innocence of
the poet does not change his intuitive knowledge into bad philosophical
knowledge, into a negative of philosophy.--Further, the useful not
only is not the negative of morality, but, as we know, is also a fact
that unites itself very well with morality, as the word is joined to
the thought, making it concrete and palpable, so much so that thought
without words is impossible. What honourable man would tolerate being
judged disuseful? What moral action would be truly moral, were it not
at the same time useful? The good action is good, because it is not
bad, that is, it absolutely excludes the bad at the point in which
it becomes effective; but certainly it is not so, because disuseful;
indeed, in being good, it is also useful, because it absolutely
comprehends the useful in itself at the point in which it becomes
effective. The union of morality with utility suffices to eliminate the
concept of the useful as a negative. Certainly negative and positive
do unite to give rise to becoming and to development; but their union
is that of strife, not of concord.

[Sidenote: _The useful as ethical minimum._]

The third way of eliminating the concept of the useful from Philosophy,
or from the Philosophy of the practical, is that which makes of it
a concept of ethical description, or an empirical and psychological
concept designating certain groups of very minute ethical facts, the
rudimentary ethical consciousness. Hence the illusion of the existence
of volitional acts indifferent in respect to morality. These acts are
really indifferentiated for the mind that is examining them, which
sometimes does not take the trouble to do so minutely, save when such
an examination is seriously undertaken, and then they are always
differentiated into good or bad. Thus it generally said that eating and
sleeping, playing at cards or at billiards, are things that appertain,
not to morality, but to individual utility, and that each one may
conduct himself as he wills in respect to them, whereas individual
choice is excluded when it is necessary to fulfil one's own obligations
of social work or of respecting the life of one's neighbour. But if
we observe attentively, we see that also in eating or in sleeping, in
playing cards or billiards, one acts morally or immorally, since, for
example, it is immoral to ruin one's health with eating too much,
or with sleeping too little, or to corrupt soul and intellect with
card-playing and dawdling in billiard-rooms, when one can do something
better.

[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is premoral._]

But the useful is none of all these things; it is not the complex of
ethical micro-organisms, in which we discover with the microscope the
same facts of life and of death that we observe with the naked eye in
macro-organisms. No microscope will ever discern in it the oppositions
of moral good and evil, because these oppositions are not really there;
there are only those of utilitarian or economic good and evil. For the
useful is not the moral minimum, but the _premoral._ In this case it
is a question, not of approximative, but of rigorous difference; not
psychological, but philosophical.

[Sidenote: _A desperate attempt: the useful as inferior practical
conscience. Confirmation of the autonomy of the useful._]

Finally, it is necessary to consider the attempt to present the
utilitarian conscience as a moral conscience, _different and inferior_
to another moral conscience placed over it, not as a new mode of
eliminating the concept of the useful, by absorbing it in that of
morality, but as a confession of the autonomy of that moment of the
spirit. It would be moral, because there is no contradiction to be
found in it that can cause it to be judged immoral, and if it be so
judged, this happens because it is looked at from the point of view
of the superior conscience, or because the superior conscience is
erroneously transported into the inferior. But this has importance
precisely because it is not moral, and because the value that it is
admitted to possess, far from being morality, is spirituality; that
is to say, it constitutes a peculiar spiritual value, different from
morality. "Better a will of some sort than no will at all" is a common
saying which means that prior to morality, there is another and more
elementary spiritual demand. The distinction of the two consciences,
then, is philosophical, not one of more or less, a distinction of
degrees, but not of empirical degrees, which coincides with our
conclusion. Thus, to return to the usual comparison, the poetical
figuration is true, and can only be judged false by him who looks upon
it from a philosophical point of view, or himself falsifies it by
turning it into a bad philosopheme. But the truth of that figuration
is not philosophical, and remains purely and simply poetical truth.
It will be said that morality is implied in utilitarian volition,
because, when the individually useful is posited, the universal, which
will dominate and correct it, is promoted, in the same way as it has
been said that philosophy is implied in the æsthetic intuition,
since by positing the individual imagination is posited the claim of
the universal, which surpasses and renders it untrue. But since the
æsthetic conscience is distinguished from the philosophical, precisely
because that which in the latter is _explicit_ is only _implicit_
in the former, so, in like manner, the utilitarian conscience is
distinguished from the moral conscience, because that morality which
becomes explicit and effective in the second, is only implicit or
actually inexistent in the first. The difference between _implicit_ and
_explicit_ is another way of enunciating the distinction between the
two consciousnesses or practical forms, the autonomy of both being thus
recognized.




IV


RELATION BETWEEN THE ECONOMIC AND ETHICAL FORMS


[Sidenote: _Economic and ethic as the double degree of the practical._]


The respective distinction and autonomy of the two forms, economic and
ethic, as we have hitherto been expounding it, and as results from the
words "inferior" and "superior" just now used, is that of two degrees,
at once distinct and united, such that the first can stand without
the second, but the second cannot stand without the first. The moment
of distinction lies in that possibility of existence independent of
the first; the moment of unity is in the impossibility of independent
existence of the second. If the first were wanting, there would be
identity; if the second, there would be abstract distinction or
separation. For this reason we have insisted upon showing that there
are actions without morality, yet which are perfectly economical,
whereas moral actions that are not also perfectly useful or economical
do not exist. Morality lives in concrete, in utility, the universal
in the individual, the eternal in the contingent. Hence our reason
for reducing the theses that denied the distinction between the two
practical forms to an exclusive affirmation of the economic form, this
latter being as it were the general form, which of itself involves both
itself and the other.

[Sidenote: _Errors arising from conceiving them as coordinated._]

Even when both the practical forms, economic and ethic, utility and
morality, are admitted, the gravest errors arise from failing to
understand the connection of unity-distinction that exists between
them, conceiving them as juxtaposed or parallel, and the respective
concepts as coordinated.

[Sidenote: _Disinterested actions. Critique._]

In truth, if utility and morality were coordinate concepts, each
included as species beneath the general concept of practical activity,
the first consequence that could be drawn from this (and it has been
drawn) is that morality is conceivable without utility. This has given
rise to the absurd concept of _disinterested_ actions, that is, of
those moral actions that should hold themselves aloof from any sort
of impure contact with utility. But disinterested actions would be
foolish actions, that is to say, wilful acts, caprices, non-actions.
Every action is and must be interested; indeed, the more profoundly it
is interested, so much the better. What interest is stronger and more
personal than that which impels the man of science to the search for
truth, which is his life? Morality requires that the individual should,
in every case, make his individual interest that of the universal; and
it reproves those who engage themselves in an insoluble contradiction
between the individual interest of the universal and that which is
merely individual. But it cannot claim to suppress the interest, that
is, itself, in the same way that the volitional act dominates the
passions, but cannot eradicate them without eradicating itself. Hence,
as the volitional act triumphs over the passions as the _supreme
passion,_ so morality triumphs over interests as the _supreme interest._

[Sidenote: _Vain polemic conducted with such an assumption against
utilitarianism._]

The polemic of autonomous Ethic against the heteronomous Ethic of
utilitarianism has had a false and fruitless beginning, owing to this
fiction of disinterested actions. In the belief of conquering and more
than conquering, it has been attempted to show that man accomplishes
some actions without any personal interest, whereas on the contrary
an easy victory has in this way been prepared for the adversary.
Utilitarianism, in fact, has always been able triumphantly to make
the counter-demonstration that there is no action, be it as lofty as
you will, that does not answer to a personal end. It is evident that
the hero has his personal interest in the _pro patria mori,_ just as
the saint, who wishes to direct his soul toward humility, finds his
own account in allowing himself to be abused, beaten and splashed
with mud ("in this is perfect joy," said Francesco of Assisi to Frate
Leone). Correct polemic should not enter upon the useless task of
denying this evidence; it should on the contrary admit, as was admitted
above, that there is no action which does not answer to an individual
desire, since it is the individual that performs it, and the universal
is always obliged to avail itself of individuals. But when this point
has been conceded and admitted, it will prove, as was proved above,
that the useful action can either remain merely personal or progress
to the action that is universal-personal, ethical-useful. And the
ethical-useful action itself is precisely the new spiritual category
that the utilitarian does not see.

[Sidenote: _Actions morally indifferent, obligatory, supererogatory,
etc. Critique._]

A second erroneous but unavoidable consequence of the conception of
useful and moral as coordinated concepts is that while, according to
that theory, there can be ethical actions economically disinterested
or indifferent, so there can be actions that are useful and _morally
indifferent._ The indifferent would not be those that are merely
economic, and, therefore, neither moral nor immoral, which we have
recognized as the necessary precedent of moral actions, reappearing
always when a return is made to the state of innocence, or as soon
as the moral conscience is abolished or suspended. They would on the
contrary be economic actions that should persist as such, that is, as
ingenuous and amoral, when the moral consciousness is already kindled,
and consequently in the very circle of such a conscientiousness.
They are altogether inadmissible when thus conceived, and to have
admitted them is equivalent to annulling morality, as the recognition
of the right of subjects to rebel at their pleasure would be to annul
sovereignty, or a burlesque contract containing the clause that each
party should be free not to observe the other clauses agreed upon, at
his pleasure. Indifferent actions do not exist, either for economy
or for morality, and those to which such a character is generally
attributed are, as we know, indifferentiated, not indifferent, and
always differentiable when more closely examined. Only he who places
the useful and the moral, side by side with one another, separate
and impenetrable, is of necessity led to conceive of useful actions
morally indifferent, and as such _licit or permissible._ Hence it
also happens that moral actions also seem to be _obligatory_ compared
with the first; and that, in order to obtain equilibrium at the other
extremity, ultramoral or more than moral actions, called _meritorious
or supererogatory,_ are placed side by side with obligatory actions
that hold the mean. But morality does not grant leave _not to do,_ nor
prizes for _doing more than was required_; it simply imposes _doing,_
doing always what is morally good, always realizing the universal, in
ordinary as in extraordinary life, on the occasions that occur every
day, every hour, every minute, as in those that occur every year, every
ten years, every century. Nothing is indifferent to economy in its
sphere and nothing to morality in its sphere: in it, economic actions
with their premoral character do not persist, but only moral actions
subsist. Economicity is certainly the concrete form of morality; but it
is never an element that possesses a value of its own in the moral life.

[Sidenote: _Comparison with the relation of art and philosophy._]

A comparison with the theoretic activity will serve to make clearer
this criticism of the _licit_ or morally indifferent. Artistic
intuitions or expressions are neither true nor false philosophically,
so much so that Philosophy, if it wish to exist, must also become
concrete itself, as living speech, æsthetic form, intuition-expression,
and place itself as an intuition among intuitions, though it be
an intuition _portans mysteria,_ that is, enclosing in itself the
universal. But the appearance of philosophy reacts upon the pure
intuitions, or upon the poetic representation of the world, in which
existent and inexistent were indistinct; and the world of intuition
transforms itself into the world of perceptions, in which those that
once were poetic intuitions, are now all of them critical or reflective
images penetrated by the concepts, divided into images of existence
and images of possibility. In the world of perception or of history,
no poetical element can subsist as such; what was a bewitching truth
in the field of art, were it introduced into history, would give rise
to disharmony and become changed into a repugnant lie, as we see is
actually the case in history mingled with inventions and fables.
History too assumes artistic form; but it cannot tolerate in its bosom
art as an element standing alone. Utilitarian or economic volitions and
the moral-economic volitions (universal and historical perceptions
or representations of the practical) proceed in a manner perfectly
analogous (intuitions of the practical). Moral indifference belongs
to the first, when they are on this side of the moral conscience,
but within this conscience they lose the right to innocence, as in
history the pure intuitions, when they have become perceptions, lose
the privilege that they possessed as pure intuitions. The ethical
discrimination of the economic volitions, which takes place through the
moral conscience, is then in full correspondence with the historical
discrimination of the æsthetic intuitions, which takes place through
the logical conscience.

[Sidenote: _Other erroneous conceptions of modes of action._]

We owe to the false conception by coordination, not only the two
monstrous little concepts of _disinterested actions_ and of those that
are morally _indifferent, licit, or permissive,_ but others also, which
have been deduced by means of a somewhat different casuistic from the
same general hypothesis. Indeed, in the preceding case, useful and
moral, posited as apart and parallel, were maintained one extraneous
to the other and at peace between themselves. But nothing forbade that
warlike plans should be attributed to those two entities, just as when
two coordinate animal species are posited, we may suppose, either
that the individuals of each one mind their own affairs and allow
the individuals of the other species to live and to prosper in peace,
or that the one takes to persecuting the other, sometimes injuring
or destroying it and sometimes being by it injured or destroyed.
Thus were and are obtained concepts of _moral anti-economic_ actions
and of _anti-economic moral_ actions, of _immoral economic_ actions,
and of _economic immoral_ actions, four concepts which are all four
to be rejected. Moral action can never be accomplished at a loss:
morality is for the moral man the supreme advantage in the situation
in which he finds himself, and it would be erroneous to measure it
by comparison with what an individual without morality would do in
the same situation, for, as we know, individual and situation are
all one, in such a way that a like comparison is impossible. In a
similar manner, an anti-economic action can never be moral; at the
most it will not even be amoral, or will not even posit the primary
and generic condition of morality, that is, it will not be action,
but inert contemplation. An immoral action can never be economic,
because immorality implies internal disagreement and strife between
one volition directed to the universal and another directed to the
merely individual, hence the result will be practical inconclusion
and infecundity, dissatisfaction and remorse; that is to say, just
the opposite of utility and economicity. In like manner, an economic
action can never be immoral: at the most (when it is merely an economic
action), it will be amoral.

[Sidenote: Pleasure and the economic activity, happiness and virtue.]

The bond of unity and distinction that exists between the concepts of
the useful and the moral and the consequent negation of the formula of
coordination, help to solve in a definite way the intricate questions
relating to _pleasure and morality, happiness and virtue._

[Sidenote: _Pleasure, pain and feeling._]

First of all, we can here give yet another meaning to the indeterminate
category of _feeling_ with its poles of pleasure and pain, for it is
clear that when feeling was distinguished from moral activity and set
at variance with it, we had in view nothing but the pure economic
activity. And in truth, of all the tendencies included in that concept
as sketched out, this of economicity seems on the whole to prevail
over the others, so much so that we shall henceforth be disposed to
give to the word "feeling" the name of economic activity. Thus it
was reasonably maintained, with implied reference to this meaning,
that pleasure and pain are _proper_ to feeling and _extraneous_ to
the other spiritual forms, and that they only act in the others as
_concomitants._ For if the theoretical forms give rise to the dialectic
of true and false, in so far as the practical spirit can be introduced
into them, it is clear that pleasure and pain come to those forms from
the practical spirit, with which the theoretic spirit is always in
unity. In the practical spirit too, the moral activity divides into
pleasure and pain, in so far as it has concrete or economic form; and
therefore in so far as it is economic, not in so far as it is moral.
Pleasure and pain belong to feeling alone, because they belong to the
economic activity alone, which is the practical in its general form,
involving of itself all the other forms, practical and theoretic.

[Sidenote: _Coincidence of duty with pleasure._]

When this has been established, pleasure or economic feeling or
economic activity as positive cannot be at strife with duty or with
the moral activity in its positivity, for the two terms coincide.
The divergence existed only when they were conceived, not in unity
and distinction, but in coordination. When we speak of a good action
accompanied with pain, we make an inexact statement, or better, we make
use of a mode of expression that must be understood, not literally,
but in its spirit. The good action, as such, always brings with it
satisfaction and pleasure, and the pain said to accompany it, either
shows that the action is not yet altogether good, because it has not
been willed with complete internal accord, or that a new practical
problem, still unsolved and therefore painful, lies beyond the
pleasurable moral action.

[Sidenote: _Critique of rigorism or asceticism._]

The other false idea, of _rigoristic or ascetic_ Ethic, which makes war
upon pleasure as such, derives from the plan of coordination, through
the already mentioned casuistic of the conflict between the coordinated
terms. Indeed, if it be legitimate to combat this or that pleasure,
which enters into a contest with the moral act, it is not possible to
abolish the category of pleasure, for the reason already given, that
in this way the category itself of morality, which has its reality and
concreteness in pleasure (in economicity), would be abolished: the
concrete and real moral act is also pleasurable. The attempt to abolish
pleasure is as insane as would be the wish to speak without words or
any other form of expression, preserving thought pure of such sensual
contacts, that is to say, producing an inexpressed and inexpressible
thought. This last attempt has been made by _mysticism,_ which either
does not give thoughts at all, or, contradicting itself, gives them
expressed and logical, like those of all other doctrines. Asceticism
provides a complete counterpart to this in the practical field, for it
might be called _mysticism of the practical_ in the same way as the
name of _asceticism of the theoretical_ would not be unsuitable to
mysticism.

[Sidenote: _Relation of happiness and virtue._]

What has been said of the relation between pleasure and morality, is
to be repeated of the other between happiness and virtue, a relation
that is identical with the preceding, from which it diners only because
expressed by means of empirical concepts of class. Happiness is not
virtue, as pleasure is not morality, because there exist the pleasure
of the innocent or of the mentally deficient, and the happiness of the
child or the brute, who are without moral conscience. But virtue is
always happiness, as morality is always pleasure. It will be said that
a virtuous man may be unhappy, because he suffers atrocious physical
pain or is in financial difficulties, and, therefore, that virtue and
happiness do not coincide. But this is a vulgar sophism, because the
virtuous man, who should be also happy, must be truly and altogether
virtuous; that is to say, he must cure and conquer the ills of the body
and of fortune with his energy, if he can, or, if it be impossible
to conquer them, he must resign himself and take them into account
and develop his own activity within the limits that they lay down.
Every individual, not only the unfortunate individual of the example,
has his limits; and everyone can transform his limits into pains by
being dissatisfied with them, just as every one can, with resignation,
transform his pains into limits and conditions of activity. It will be
said that sometimes the evils that assail the virtuous man are not only
incurable, but so intolerable as to render all resignation impossible.
But he who does not effectively and absolutely resign himself, that is,
does not accommodate himself to life, dies; and the occurrence of the
death of the individual is neither happiness nor unhappiness: it is a
fact or event.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the subordination of pleasure to morality._]

Finally, the theory that _subordinates_ pleasure or happiness, utility
or economy, to duty, to virtue, to moral activity, is to be rejected.
The subordination of the one term to the other is not possible on this
side of morality, because only one of the two terms is present; and
in like manner it is impossible in the moral circle, because, though
the terms are certainly two, they are two in one, not one above and
the other below; that is to say, they are distinct terms that become
unified. Morality has complete empire over life, and there is not an
act of life, be it as small as you will, that morality does not or
ought not to regulate. But morality has no _absolute empire over the
forms or categories of the spirit,_ and as it cannot destroy or modify
itself, so it cannot destroy or modify the other spiritual forms, which
are its necessary support and presupposition.

[Sidenote: _No empire of morality over the forms of the spirit._]

Hence is apparent the remarkable fatuity of those who pretend to
regulate morally the _function_ of art, of science, or of economy and
profess _moralistic_ theories of art and philosophy and a _moralized_
economic science. The poet, the man of science, the business man, must
be as honest as others, but it is not given to them to tear in pieces
the nature of poetry, of science and of industry, in the madness of
honesty. Indeed, were this done or attempted, and the poet were to
introduce extraneous elements into his work of art, through his failure
to understand morality, or the philosopher to veil or alter the purity
of truth, or the man of business foolishly to bring his own business
to ruin, then and only then, would they be dishonest. To substitute
the _single acts_ of life that appertain to morality, for _the
universal forms of the spirit,_ and to predicate of these what should
be predicated only of those, is so evident an absurdity that it could
not be committed by anyone accustomed to philosophical distinctions.
But what nonsense is so evident that idle babblers and elegant men of
letters do not know how to cover with their ratiocinative and æsthetic
flowers and to present to society or to the academic world as truth, or
at least as a theory worthy of reflection and discussion?

[Sidenote: _Inexistence of other practical forms and impossibility of
subdivision of the two established._]

Such, then, are the two forms of the practical activity, and such their
relation; and as it is not possible to reduce them to one alone, so
it is not possible to multiply them beyond the two, which altogether
exhaust the nexus of finite and infinite. Hence, too, we perceive that
the economic and also the ethic-economic activity do not each of them
give rise to new subdivisions, because other terms of subdivision are
not conceivable beyond the duality of finite and infinite. As there
are no philosophical and ethical classes, nor categories of expression
(rhetoric), nor categories of concepts (formalistic logic), so there
are no economic categories and ethical categories beyond those that
constitute utility (volition of the individual) and morality (volition
of the universal).




V


THE PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY AND THE SO-CALLED SCIENCE OF ECONOMY

[Sidenote: _Problem of the relations between Philosophy and Science of
Economy._]

Internal observation, confirming at all points rational necessity,
has rendered clear the existence of a special form of practical
activity, the utilitarian or economic, and of a correlative Economic
or Philosophy of economy. But however irrefutable may seem the
demonstration that we have given, yet it will never be altogether
satisfactory, while a very important point is left obscure: the
relation between our _Philosophy of economy_ and the _Science of
economy._

This is a system of doctrine that takes various names and forms, and
is presented in turn as political, national, pure, or mathematical
Economy; it is a system of doctrines which, although not without
precedents in antiquity, has been gradually formed, especially in
recent centuries, and is now in fullest flower. A saying of Hegel is
often recorded, not without satisfaction, for even in his time he
praised Economy as "a science that does much honour to thought, because
it extracts the laws from a mass of accidentally."[1]

Has it the same object as our Philosophy of economy? If the reply be
in the affirmative, how does it ever arrive at concepts altogether
different? Or is it an empirical science, and if so, from what source
does it derive the rigour and absoluteness by which it is removed
from all empiricism and formulates truths of universal character? Two
strict sciences with the same object are inconceivable; and yet as
it seems, there must here be precisely two: hence the perplexity and
disorientation that the affirmation of a Philosophy of economy must and
does produce.

[Sidenote: _Unreality of the laws and concepts of economic science._]

If the economic actions of man be considered, in their uncontaminated
and undiminished reality, with an eye free from all prejudice, it
is never possible to establish even a _single one_ of the concepts
and laws of economic science. Every individual is different at every
moment of his life: he wills always in a new and different way, not
comparable with the other modes of his or of others' willing. If A
spent seven soldi to buy a loaf of bread yesterday, and to-day he
spend the same amount in making the same purchase, the seven soldi of
to-day are not for this reason those of yesterday, nor is the bread
the same as that of yesterday, nor the want that A satisfies to-day
the same as that of yesterday, nor is the effort that his action
costs him identical with that of yesterday. If the individual B also
spend seven soldi for a loaf of bread, the action of B is different
from that of A, as that of the A of to-day was different from that
of yesterday. If we lead the economist on to this ground of reality
(or rather to the side of this Heraclitean river, in which it is not
possible to dip the same hands twice in the same water), he will feel
himself impotent, for he will not find any point of support for the
edification of any of his theories.--The value of a piece of goods
(says a theorem of Economy) depends upon the quantity of it and of all
the other goods that are upon the market.--But what does "goods" mean?
Bread, for example, or wine? In reality, abstract bread and wine do
not exist, but a given piece of bread, a given glass of wine, with a
given individual who will give a treasure or nothing in order to eat
the one or to drink the other, according to the conditions in which he
finds himself.--Any sort of enjoyment, when protracted, decreases and
finally becomes extinguished.--That is the law of Gossen, one of the
foundation--stones of economic theory. But what are these enjoyments
that are protracted, decrease, and end by becoming extinguished? In
reality there exist only actions, which assume different positions
at every moment, owing to the continual changing of surrounding
reality, in which the volitional individual operates. The difference
is qualitative, not quantitative: if the individual A eat the bread
that he has bought for seven soldi, when swallowing the second or the
tenth or the last mouthful, he has a pleasure, not inferior to that
which he had when swallowing the first, but different: the last was
not less necessary for him, in its way, than the first; otherwise he
would have remained unsatisfied in his normal want, in his habit, or in
his caprice.--The economic man seeks the maximum of satisfaction with
the least effort.--That is the very principle of Economy, but neither
does this principle correspond with reality, most simple and general
though it be. The individual A disputes for an-hour, in order to save
two soldi in the purchase of an object, for which he has been asked
ten lire, thus attaining the maximum satisfaction for himself with the
least means that is naturally at his disposal on that occasion. The
individual B, making boast of his magnificence, lights his cigarette
with a banknote of a hundred lire, thus likewise attaining for himself
the greatest satisfaction to which he aspired, with the least means
that he possessed, namely, by burning that paper money. But if this
be so, we have here a question, not of greatest and least, but of
individual ends and of relative means adopted, or (owing to the unity
of means and ends already noted), of actions individually different.

[Sidenote: _Economic Science founded upon empirical concepts, but not
empirical or descriptive._]

Certainly, it is quite possible to abstract in a greater or less
measure from the infinite variety of actions and to construct a
series of types or concepts of classes and of empirical laws, thus
rendering uniform the formless, within certain limits. Thus is
obtained the concept of bread and of the consumption of bread, and
of the various portions of bread and of other objects, for which a
portion of bread can be exchanged, and so on. In this way are full
philosophico-historical reality and the method of logical necessity
and of realistic observation of facts abandoned for a feigned reality
and for a method of arbitrary choice, which, as we know, has its good
reasons for existing in the human spirit, and does great service by
the swift recall and easy control of the requisite knowledge. And
if Economy consisted in the establishment of a series of laws and
examples in the above sense (or when understood in this way), it would
join the number of the descriptive disciplines; and in that case there
would be no necessity for us to speak of it further, for it would
suffice to refer back to what has already been said of the relations of
the Philosophy of the practical with practical Description, classes,
rules, and casuistic. But economic Science is not descriptive, and is
not developed according to the following formula: goods are divided
into the classes _a, b, c, d, e,_ etc., and the class _a_ is exchanged
with the class _b_ in the proportion of I to 3, the class _b_ with the
class _c_ in the proportion of I to 5, etc. In such a formula is always
understood the _up and down,_ the _for the most part,_ and _the very
nearly:_ the classes _with their ups and downs_ are as stated; the
exchanges take place _for the most part_ in the proportions stated; if
things are to-day _very nearly_ thus, to-morrow they will be so _very
nearly,_ in a different way.

On the contrary, the propositions of the Science of Economy are
rigorous and necessary. "Granted that soils of different degrees of
fertility are cultivated, their possessors will all obtain, besides
the absolute rent, a differential rent, with the exception of the
possessor of the least fertile soil" (Ricardo's law). "Bad money drives
out good" (Gresham's law). Now, it is not conceivable in any case that
soils of different fertility, all of them cultivated, should not give
a differential rent. It will be said that the State can confiscate the
differential rent, or that the possessor, owing to his bad cultivation
or to his bad administration, may lose it; but the proposition does
not remain less sound on this account. Nor is it possible that, when
an unchangeable paper money is in circulation, gold coins should also
circulate indifferently and on a par with it, when the total of the
money in circulation lowers the value of the monetary unit beneath
the metallic value of the better money. A madman who might be in
possession of a hoard of gold pieces at the time of the circulation of
the declining paper money (which causes poverty) would perhaps give it
in exchange for the inferior money; but the wise man will keep it in
his safe. The economic proposition expresses the rational necessity,
not the madness, which is irrational. Those propositions, like all the
others of economic science, are therefore certainly not descriptions,
but _theorems._

[Sidenote: _Their mathematical nature._]

The denomination "theorems" makes us think at once of the mathematical
disciplines, among which alone can economic Science find a place.
The propositions of that science being excluded from philosophical,
historical, or naturalistic science, there remains nothing that they
can be, save _mathematical._ Yes, they are mathematical, but not pure
mathematics, for in that case they would be nothing but arithmetic,
algebra, or the calculus, that is, they would belong to the kind of
mathematical disciplines called _applied,_ because they introduce into
the paradigms of the calculus certain data taken from reality, that is
to say, taken from without the purely numerical conception. Economic
Science, then, is a mathematic applied to the concept of human action
and to its sub-species. It does not inquire what human action is; but
having posited certain concepts of action, it creates formulæ for the
prompt recognition of the necessary connections.

[Sidenote: _Its principles; their character of arbitrary postulates and
definitions. Their utility._]

It is not surprising that such propositions examined in their truth
appear in one respect arbitrary and in another tautological. But it is
not thus that they are examined, and it is not thus that propositions
of mathematics are ever examined, for their value lies solely in the
service that they render. Certainly Ricardo's law relating to land of
varying fertility is nothing but the definition of lands of various
fertility, in the same way that Gresham's law relating to bad money is
nothing but the definition of bad money. The same may be said of any
other economic law, as, for example, that every protective tariff is
destruction of riches, or that a demand for commodities is not a demand
for labour, since these, like the preceding, are simply definitions
of the protective tariff, of the demand for commodities, and of the
demand for labour. And it could be proved of all of them that they are
arbitrary, because the concepts of land, tariffs, commodities, money,
and so on, are arbitrary, and because they become necessary only when
that arbitrariness has been admitted as a postulate. But the same
demonstration can be given of any theorem in Geometry; since it is not
less arbitrary and tautological, that the measure of a quadrilateral
should be equal to the base multiplied by the height, or that the
sum of the squares of a cathetic should be equal to the square of
the hypotenuse. This does not prevent Geometry from being Geometry,
or negate the fact that without it we should not have been able to
build the house in which we dwell, nor to measure this star upon which
we live, nor the others that revolve around it or around which we
revolve. Thus, it would be impossible to find one's way in empirical
reality without these economic formulæ, and that would happen which
happened when economic science was still in its infancy; namely, that
by its means measures of government were adopted, which were admirably
suited to produce in the highest degree those evils which it was
thought could be avoided by its help, a misfortune of which the Spanish
government in Lombardy or in the Province of Naples in the seventeenth
century, with its _cries_ and its _pragmatics_ in economic and
financial matters, has left most excellent examples. Or what happens
now, when ignorance, or deceitful interest, which profits by ignorance,
proposes or causes to be adopted ruinous measures under the appearance
of _publica salus,_ arguing that they are good, or that they are good
for different reasons than those for which they could be maintained.
Such, for instance, would be the proposal for fresh expenditure on
public works that are useless or of little use during a period of
economic depression in a country, and instead of relieving, increase
the general depression; or the increase of protective tariffs, when
industrial progress is slow, which ought to encourage industry, but on
the contrary produce an industry that is unstable and artificial, in
place of one that is spontaneous and durable.

[Sidenote: _Comparison of Economic with Mechanics, and reason for its
exclusion from ethical, æsthetic and logical facts._]

The special form of application of mathematics, which we find in
economic Science, has been compared on several occasions with that
which takes place in Mechanics. "The economic man" of the first has
seemed to be altogether like the "material point" of the second, and
Economy has been called "a sort of Mechanics," or simply "Mechanics."
All this is very natural, for Mechanics are nothing but the complex
of formulæ of calculation constructed on reality, which is Spirit and
Becoming in Metaphysic, and may be abstracted and falsified in Science,
so as to assume the aspect of Force or a system of forces, for the
convenience of calculation. Economy does the same thing, when it cuts
off from the volitional acts certain groups, which it simplifies and
makes rigid with the definition of the "economic man," the laws of
"least means," and the like. And owing precisely to this mechanicizing
process of economic Science, it is ingenuous to ask oneself why
ethical, logical, or æsthetic facts are not included in Economy, and
in what way they can be included. Economic science is the sum of
abstractive operations effected upon the concept of Will or Action,
which is thus _quantified._ Now since moral facts are also will and
action, and since economic Science is not occupied with qualitative
distinctions, not even with the quality itself of that economic fact
which it employs as its material, it is clear that Science cannot
lay any stress upon moral distinguished from economic facts, nor can
it receive them in a special class, because its assumption is the
indistinction of the two orders of facts, and they are included in that
indistinction. As to æsthetic or scientific facts, these, taken by
themselves, are not facts, but representations and thoughts of facts,
and as such escape economic calculation: considered in the unity of the
spirit, they are certainly facts, that is to say, volitional products,
but as such are already found included with these in the indistinction
of economic Science.

[Sidenote: _Errors of philosophism and historicism in Economy._]

As a mathematical discipline, economic Science is ultimately
_quantitative,_ and it remains so, even when it makes use of the
smallest possible number of numerical and algebraical signs (even when
it is not _mathematical Economy_ in the strict sense of the word). The
attempts, both of philosophism and historicism, which claim to deny
Economy, by criticizing its abstractness and its arbitrariness, and to
make it philosophical (or as they say _psychological_) and historical
are therefore to be reproved. If Economy do not give the universal
truth of Philosophy, nor the particular truth of History, Philosophy
and History are in their turn incapable of making the smallest
calculation: if Economy have not eyes for the true, Philosophy and
History have not arms to break and to dominate the waves of fact, which
would oppress man with their importunity and finally prevent him from
seeing. Hence the absurdity of _philosophism_ and _historicism_; hence
too, the sound tendency of Economy to constitute itself _pure_ Economy,
free of _practical_ questions, which are also, it is clear, historical,
not abstract and scientific questions.

[Sidenote: _The two degenerations: extreme abstracticism and
empiristical disaggregation._]

But economy has in itself other enemies besides these that are
external, in so far as it is certainly a mathematical discipline, but
an applied mathematic, that is to say, one that assumes empirical
data. These empirical data can be infinitely multiplied, and hence
result infinite economic propositions, each distinct from the other;
and on the other hand, they can be regrouped, simplified and unified,
so as finally to return to the indistinct _x._ If the first tendency
prevail, we have what is called economic empiricism, a cumbrous
mass of disaggregated propositions; if the second, a very general
formula, which sometimes does not even preserve the smallest vestige
of that concept of human action from which it started, and becomes
altogether confounded with the formulæ of arithmetic, of algebra and
of the calculus. Sound economic Science must be at once abstract and
empirical, in accordance with its nature, connecting and unifying
disaggregate propositions; but it must not allow distinction to be
lost in unity, for the one is as necessary as the other. Those who
are unacquainted with the generalities of Economic Science, and those
acquainted only with its details, are alike incapable, though for
different reasons, of calculating the economic consequences of a
fact. The first see all the facts as one single fact, the second, all
the facts as different, without any arrangement by similarities and
hierarchies. The question as to the relative proportion of generalities
and particulars to be given in treatises, is one that has been
much discussed, but since this has only a didascalic and pedagogic
importance, it is only possible to answer it, case for case, according
to the nature of the various scholastic institutions that are held in
view. To maintain that Economy must stop short at this or that degree
of abstraction, and for example be limited to what are called external
goods or riches, excluding services; or to capital, as a concept
distinct from land and human labour, without striving to unify these
three concepts, is altogether capricious. Every unification, like every
specification, can be useful, and haters of abstracticism are also
abstracticists, but only half so.

[Sidenote: _dance at the History of the various tendencies of Economy._]

All those acquainted with economic studies will have recognized in
the concepts that we have explained, the _logical motives_ of the
history of Economy, the divisions, the polemics, the defeats and the
victories of this or that school and the progress of that branch of
studies. The quantitative character of economic science already appears
in its classics; in the inquiries of Aristotle as to prices and value
(_Politic_ and _Nichomachean Ethic_); and this is apparent also in
the rare mentions by Mediæval and Renaissance writers. Economists
have always been mathematicians, even when they have not spoken of
mathematical Economy. Our writers of the nineteenth century, Galiani,
Genovesi and Verri, were mathematicians in their methods; Francesco
Ferrara, the greatest Italian economist of the nineteenth century, was
a mathematician. The economic principle, which is all one with the
excogitation of the economic man, was formulated by the head of the
physiocratic school, Quesnay; and if the title of _political Economy,_
first given to the discipline by Montchrétien in 1615, prevailed,
that of _social Arithmetic_ also sometimes made its appearance. Its
progress has consisted, not only in the discovery of new economic
theorems, but also in the connection and unification of those that had
previously been posited in isolation, of material and immaterial goods,
of the cost of production and of rarity, of gross and net produce, of
agricultural rents and of all the others that are not agricultural, of
the production, distribution and circulation of riches, of economic and
financial laws, of social and isolated economy, of the value of utility
and of the value of exchange. It has even been possible to unite with
the body of admitted economic doctrines those of Marx, which seemed
revolutionary, for these are only definitions of a particular casuistry
founded upon the comparison of different types of economic constitution.

But to conquer empiricism was not enough; economic Science was menaced
in its existence by the so-called _historical School,_ which refused
to recognize abstract definitions and set up against them the infinite
variety of historical facts; hence the strife with historicism
conducted by Menger and the Austrian school. A consequence of the
struggle against the political degeneration of economic science was
the constitution of Economy as a _pure_ science (Cairnes). This was
all the more necessary, inasmuch as by confounding the abstract with
the concrete, and in the concrete itself, Economy with Ethic, there
was a desire manifested upon several occasions among German economists
(ethical school), and among Catholics of all countries, for an economic
Science that should have as its base Ethic. The conception of Economy
as a science deduced from the _egoistic_ hypothesis, has been the
extreme form of the reaction against ethicism (for example in the
treatise of Pantaleoni). The dangers arising from philosophism have
been less, because recent times, in which that discipline has most
flourished, have not sinned through excessive philosophy.

Of late, owing to the works of Jevons and of other Englishmen, of
Gossen, of the Italians of the school of Ferrara, and of the Austrians,
Economy has become at once more and more complicated and more simple,
owing to the applications, extensions, and reductions that it has
effected. But if with its progress it be able to become ever more exact
and perspicuous, yet it will never for that reason become _organic;_
its character of a quantitative discipline, of an applied mathematic,
in which the atomism of the postulates and of the definitions is
insuperable, does not allow of such metamorphoses.

[Sidenote: _Signification of the judgment of Hegel upon the Science of
Economy._]

In this connection and as the seal upon what we have just been saying,
it is fitting to observe that the phrase of Hegel referred to above
can only have been interpreted as expressing admiration for the degree
of truth attained by Economy, owing to the ignorance of Hegelian
philosophy that has become usual; as though Hegel meant that Economic
science did much honour to the _thought,_ that is, to the speculative
reason. Hegel wished to say, on the contrary, that Economy does much
honour to the intellect, that is, to the intellect alone, to that
_abstractive_ and arbitrary _intellect_ which he hunted down in all
his philosophy: that it is not indeed true and philosophical science,
but a simple descriptive or quantitative discipline treated with much
elegance. This praise also contained the demand for a delimitation,
which, however, he did not expressly enunciate, develop and execute.


[1] _Philos, d. Rechtes,_ § 189. _Zus._




VI


CRITIQUE OF THE CONFUSIONS BETWEEN ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF
ECONOMY


[Sidenote: _Adoption of the method and of definition of Economy by
Philosophy._]

There is no disagreement, then, between the Philosophy of Economy
described by us and economic Science or Calculus, of which we have just
defined the nature, since there cannot be any between two altogether
heterogeneous forms, the one moving within the categories of truth, the
other outside them, with objects of a practical order. This reciprocal
tolerance can be disturbed only by Philosophy, when it compels itself,
either to invade the field of economic Science, or to receive within
itself, to a greater or less extent, the method and the formulæ
proper to the latter. We have already referred to the first, when we
noted the inadmissibility of the economic attempts of philosophism
and historicism, and we will say no more on the subject. But it is
opportune to draw attention to the fact that we must distinguish
among these attempts those that we are accustomed to meet with in
many treatises on economy, pure or political, and in the Science of
finance (especially in the prologues), which labour to discover what
economic action may be, and in what way it differs from morality, what
are pleasure and pain, utility and value; whether the State be rational
will that levies a portion of the riches of the citizens for the ends
of civilization, or a simple fact resulting from general economic laws
and the like. In all these efforts of the writers of treatises, we have
an example of the gradual passage from empiria to philosophy, which is
to be observed in all the other fields of knowledge, and if it be only
possible to say in general that the Philosophy of Economy is derived
from economic Science, it is certain, on the other hand, that it finds
no small incentive in the philosophical doubts and discussions which
economic Science supports. On the other hand, the claim to resolve
philosophically and historically the economic Science or Calculus
is, as we have seen, altogether sterile, or contradicts itself in
development.

[Sidenote: _Errors that derive from it._]

From the second of the cases stated above, that is to say, from the
mixture of economic with philosophic methods, arises a series of errors
that are very common and very grave, and of which it is opportune to
take some notice here.

These errors can be divided into three groups, according as they
consist of _(a)_ considering economic Science or Calculus as a method
exclusive of every other, and alone capable of bestowing upon man all
the truth that can ever be attained in the field of human actions;
_(b)_ in attributing the value of universal thought to the empirical
thoughts upon which economic calculation is based; _(c)_ in changing
into reality the fictions excogitated for the establishment of the
Calculus.

[Sidenote: _1st. Negation of philosophy for economy._]

Of the three groups, the first, which represents the most extended
and radical form of the error, is, as usual, the least harmful, for
the reason previously given, that the precise and loyal positions are
those that are the most completely surpassed. Several cultivators
of economic Science, among the most strict and mathematical, enter
upon this desperate struggle against philosophy, which they ridicule
as empty chatter and do not merely wish to subdue but altogether to
destroy, substituting for it the methods of empirical observation and
of mathematical construction, thus favouring a particular empirical and
mathematical philosophy of their own, however much they may protest
to the contrary. That the pretension is unsustainable, is to be seen,
both from the contradictions in which they become entangled and from
the very fury that animates them, which is, at bottom, vexation at not
being able to free themselves from the contradictions in which they
have become involved. For our part, we should like to say to those
excellent economists, alike pure and mathematical, did this not appear
to be pouring oil upon the flames:--Spare yourselves the trouble of
philosophizing. Calculate, and do not think!

[Sidenote: _2nd. Universal value attributed to empirical concepts.
Example: protection and free trade._]

The other group is represented by a particular case of the empiristical
error that we have already several times criticized, and many
propositions of the kind that one hears in ordinary conversation,
against which simple good sense has often rebelled, are to be reduced
to it. Thus the empirical consideration of certain human actions as
constituting richness and happiness, causes those individuals and
peoples who possess property of that sort to be called rich and happy;
but to this is opposed, with evident truth, that every one is happy
in his own way and that external conditions are not proof of internal
satisfaction, which is alone real and effective. The great dispute on
free trade is also to be reduced to the same misunderstanding, for when
we undertake to demonstrate that wealth is destroyed by protection, the
demonstration is efficacious only if the wealth, said to be destroyed,
is precisely that of which it was desired to assure the increase by
protection; but nothing has been proved if it be a different quality
of wealth that it may be desirable to acquire, even with the loss
and the destruction of the other. For example, a people may find it
advantageous from a political and military point of view to maintain in
its territories the cultivation of grain or the construction of ships,
even if that were to cost more than to provide itself with grain and
ships from abroad; in this case, we should, strictly speaking, talk,
not of the destruction of wealth, but rather of the acquisition of
wealth (presumed national security), paid for with dear grain and dear
naval construction. When the empirical ideas of free trade were raised
to the dignity of _laws of nature_ (reason), there was a rebellion
against the economists, by which it was made clear that those laws
of nature were laws, not absolute, but empirical, that is to say,
historical and contingent facts, and that the economists who propounded
them as absolute, were not at all men of science, but politicians,
and represented (if not seriously, at least by unconscious suggestion,
or, if it be preferred, by mere chance) the interests of certain
definite classes or of certain definite peoples. And the rebellion was
right, although it afterwards degenerated into the inconclusiveness
of historicism, and absolutely denied to those false practical
applications the formulæ and laws of Economy, which are _natural_ in
quite another sense, as nominal and therefore irrefutable definitions.
Abstract principles, which are always inadequate to grasp the richness
of reality, supply with a simple instrument him who passes from them
to historical and sociological observation, which requires altogether
different methods. Hence, for instance, the meaning of the school of
Le Play, which in studying concrete economic conditions took note of
religion, of family and political feelings, and of all the other things
connected with the first; hence the admitted necessity of completing
the analytic method (as it is called) with the synthetic, or (as it
would be preferable to say) of neglecting abstractions when dealing
with the problems of life and of directly intuiting life itself.

[Sidenote: _3rd. Transformation of the functions of the calculus into
reality._]

But what is particular to a philosophy that enters into hybrid wedlock
with economic Science, is the transformation of those quantitative
principles, of which we have seen the artificial origin, into effective
reality. As a result, when this origin has not been observed, or has
been forgotten, we may chance to hear the theories of Gossen on the
decline of pleasures, as though they were "fundamental laws of human
sensibility"; or that some _homo economicus_ has appeared, constructor
of diagrams and calculator of degrees of utility and of curves of
satisfaction, as though these were real things. Some false conceptions
derive from economic principles transported into the philosophy of the
practical, which we have already had occasion to refute, such as that
of a _scale of values,_ which the volitional man is supposed to have
before him whenever he deliberates, and that other of the embarrassment
he experiences in choosing between _two equal goods;_ and finally the
belief that man _wills things,_ whereas what he wills in reality is not
things but actions.

The comparisons, metaphors and symbols, taken from Economy and used
in ordinary conversation, lead to the false belief that mathematical
constructions and those of the economic calculus are the real processes
of the psyche or of the Spirit.

[Sidenote: _The pretended calculus of pleasures and pains, and the
doctrines of optimism and pessimism._]

The quantification of volitional acts, taken as a real fact and
introduced into philosophy, has given origin to the idea of a _calculus
of pleasures and pains and of a balance of life,_ to be established
with the pleasures on the profit side of the account and the sorrows
on the side of loss. And there have even been ravings about a double
mensuration of pleasures, to be based upon their _intensity_ and
_duration._ But the real man, at the moment he enjoys, has before him
only his own enjoyment, and at the moment that he suffers, only his
own sorrow: the past is past and life is not to be described like the
profit and loss account of a business. The true economic man says to
himself what Fra Jacopone sang in one of his lauds:

    So much is mine
    As enjoyed and bestowed for the love divine!

The sophisms that assume consistency owing to this false conception,
are most strange. Let the little dialogue of Leopardi with the seller
of almanacs suffice for all. No one would wish to live his life again,
not because the sorrows always exceed the pleasures, as that dialogue
suggests, but rather because man is not, as he believes, a consumer
of pleasures. He is a creator of life, and for this reason the idea
of doing again what has already been done, of retreading the same
path, of reliving the already past, is repugnant to him, even were it
all made up of pleasures as suggested, because he aspires only and
always to the future. _Optimism and pessimism,_ being each of them
respectively unable altogether to deny pleasure and pain, are obliged
to have recourse to these calculations and balances, in order to defend
their preconceived conclusions: but in so doing they fall from Scylla
into Charybdis and each reveals its own sophistical nature.

Indeed, a philosophy that calculates is a philosophy that toys
or dotes, and if we have certainly advised the economists and
mathematicians to calculate and not to think, we must, on the contrary,
cry to the philosopher:--Think, and do not calculate! _Qui incipit
numerare, incipit errare!_




VII


HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS


The concepts of the useful and of the moral and the various attempts
either to absorb the one in the other or to distinguish them, while
recognizing their relations, are the problem on which has laboured the
Philosophy of the practical as Ethic and Economic. Has this problem
ever been fully solved? It will be permissible to doubt it, when we
observe that a philosophical concept of the useful has been wanting
until our own days; and that in consequence one of morality must also,
strictly speaking, have been wanting, for it could not have been
understood in its fulness and purity, owing to the obscure position of
the term with which it is united.

[Sidenote: _Greek Ethic and its ingenuousness._]

I. The utilitarian character of Greek Ethic has been affirmed on
several occasions; but one experiences a certain repugnance in applying
so precise a term to the documents of ancient thought that remain to
us. Socrates, it is true, posited the useful as the supreme concept
of morality, and identified the good life with eudæmonia; but for him
that useful was nevertheless distinct from the merely pleasing, since
it consisted in what is useful to man as man, and his eudæmonia bore
much resemblance to the tranquil conscience of him who fulfils his
proper duties. Plato (for example, in the _Protagoras_) expounds the
doctrine that good things are nothing but pleasant things, and bad
things painful; but this doctrine is enunciated in order to place in
relief the thesis that man does not do wrong, save through ignorance,
and because the bad seems to him to be the good; without saying that
in other dialogues the distinction between pleasure and the good is
recognized. Nor can the most systematic of the ancient philosophers,
Aristotle, be called without reserve a hedonist, a eudæmonist, or a
utilitarian, on the strength of his doctrine of happiness. Happiness
is the supreme good, it is an end for itself; but virtue is already
included for Aristotle in happiness, virtue which is found there, not
as an adjunct, but intrinsic, for which exterior goods are indeed
necessary, but only as instruments. The virtuous man must be a lover
of himself (φίλαυτος), that is to say, just, temperate, liberal of his
possessions, ready to yield honours and offices to his friends; lover
of himself, then, in the lofty signification of the word (lover, not of
the empirical, but of the metempirical ego), as opposed to the wicked
man, who is his own enemy. Even Epicurus could not be included among
the hedonists, since for him pleasure is not an end, but a means for
_calm,_ which is the true good, and calm is tranquillity of the spirit,
which only the virtuous man can enjoy.

It is therefore more exact to consider Greek Ethic in its general
character, not as eudæmonistic and utilitarian, but here also, in
relation to the new problem that we now have before us (in the same
way as was done above, in respect to practical intellectualism), as
_ingenuous_; for in truth that problem did not constitute the centre
of inquiries and discussions, as they present themselves in our times,
nor were the different schools divided upon it. They were distinguished
from one another (as has been already noted in respect to the doctrine
of the passions), rather by the different rules of life respectively
laid down by each as preferable. The antitheses of the Cynics and
Cyrenaïcs, of the Epicureans and the Stoics, have but a superficial
resemblance to those of the ethical rigorists or abstractionists,
hedonists or utilitarians, which have appeared as the result of the
antithesis between pleasure and pain explicitly stated in modern times.
It would be difficult to point out ethical rigorists and utilitarians
among thinkers truly and properly so called. In order to discover the
utilitaristic attitude at that period of history, it would be necessary
to have recourse to some rhetorician, such as Carneades, ready to
maintain indifferently the most opposed paradoxes, or to Callicles and
Thrasymachus, so magnificently portrayed in the Platonic dialogues.
These were rather men of the world than philosophers, giving the
immediate and violent impression of the struggle for life, and for this
reason they were at conflict with Socrates, the philosopher, whom they
sometimes treated as a clown and utterer of paradoxes, sometimes pitied
as a child, a "suckling" child, and objected to him that philosophers
do not understand one iota about politics (as often has been and often
will be objected by politicians, not altogether without reason). If it
be wished, all the same, to find a reference to later utilitarianism
among the sophists, the hedonists and the Epicureans, or among the
Stoics, with their conception of life as a war against the passions,
something of future rigorism and asceticism, or in certain discussions
among the Platonic dialogues as to the relation between pleasure and
pain, a first trace of the discussions upon the same argument that have
become most complicated in modern times, by all means let this be done,
provided it be never forgotten that it is an affair of glimmers, rather
than of vivid light, of antitheses hardly accentuated, not of those
that are well defined and stand out clearly.

[Sidenote: _Importance of Christianity for Ethic._]

II. The precise and it may be said violent affirmation of the
antithesis, was the work of Christianity, which, conceiving pleasure
and duty, nature and morality to be heterogeneous elements, did
great service, both to the progress of civilization in general and
in particular to Ethic. It is necessary to insist upon this, for the
modern world was bound afterwards to react against this antithesis,
and necessarily to assume an Antichristian, even a pagan attitude,
and modern art and poetry are often inspired with an abhorrence of
the tenebrous Middle Ages and of sad Christianity, and give a sigh of
regret for Greece as for a lost Paradise, or a shout of jubilation
as for a Paradise regained. But reactions are reactions and poetry
is poetry: humanity never retraces its footsteps, though it is often
wont to adorn the future with memories of the past. The Greece of our
hearts is a new Greece, profoundly modified by Christianity; the
Greece of Goethe and of Hegel is no longer the Greece of Sophocles and
of Aristotle, but a Greece far richer and more intense. Thought, like
life, never turns back, and if it be necessary eventually to attain to
a theoretic conciliation between pleasure and duty, between the useful
and morality, such a conciliation will be very different from that of
still ingenuous Greek Ethic.

[Sidenote: _The three resulting directions: utilitarianism, rigorism,
and psychologism._]

The spectacle afforded by modern Ethic, from the Renaissance to the
beginning of the nineteenth century, and also (with few exceptions) in
the later periods is still altogether dominated by that antithesis, and
therefore two currents are to be discerned in it: one that attaches
itself to the first term of the antithesis, the useful, and denies the
second, or resolves it in the first, the other, which denies the useful
and retains moral duty as the exclusive form of the practical activity.
This latter is _rigoristic_ Ethic, child of Christianity and of ascetic
oriental sources, which flowed into it together by direct filiation;
the other is _utilitarianism,_ child also, though illegitimate, of
the distinction or rending asunder of the ancient unity of duty
and pleasure, virtue and happiness, effected by Christianity. The
antithesis sometimes seems to be solved and a Philosophy of the
practical appears, which, without clinging exclusively to one term or
the other, receives both into itself. But this philosophy, when it
does not reveal itself at bottom (which generally happens), as masked
utilitarianism, or (a less frequent case) rigorism attenuated in
expression, has the defect of being, not philosophy, but an empirical
description of the so-called principles of the practical, placed one
beside the other, without a profound definition or deduction of either.
This third direction may be called _intuitionism_ or _psychologism._

[Sidenote: _Hobbes, Spinoza._]

Utilitarianism is principally represented by English thought, to which
belongs Hobbes, the greatest of all utilitarians, who proclaimed, _in
statu naturae_ (that is to say, in genuine reality) _mensuram juris
esse utilitatem._[1] Similar doctrines are to be found in Spinoza, who
has also been looked upon and criticized as a pure utilitarian. But the
matter is rather more complicated as regards Spinoza. Of him it should
rather be said that he would have been the most resolute of ethical
rigorists, had he ever been able to construct an Ethic. His determinism
was an insuperable obstacle to this, for it does not admit distinctions
of values, but considers the good. like being, in its abstractness,
and therefore, the being of each one as _suum essere conservare_; hence
the appearance of utilitarianism, assumed by the Ethic of Spinoza.

[Sidenote: _English Ethic._]

From Hobbes descend Locke, Hartley, Hume, Adam Smith, Warburton,
Paley, and others such; they are all less courageous and less coherent
philosophers than he. Indeed, if Hobbes himself could not but be
incoherent and could not avoid causing a desire for and therefore
a state of peace to arise from a state of nature or of war, whence
is discovered to the mind a source of the practical, altogether
different from that of the useful alone, which was presupposed; with
the mean and sophistical efforts of his successors, the incoherence
becomes altogether irritating. The aid sought from associationism
is among these efforts, and the excogitation of the example of the
miser (found for the first time in 1731, in a discourse of the Rev.
John Gay),[2] and also the admission of the principle of sympathy
beside that of egoism, a principle which with a cast of the dice is
made to disappear again, and to become absorbed in egoism itself. The
inanity of utilitarianism, which has already in Hobbes a tendency to
disavow itself, by recognizing as true laws not those of nature, but
those revealed by God (_in Scripturis sacris latae_),[3] and in Locke
retained the divine side by side with the civil laws and those of
public opinion,[4] became evident in the theological utilitarianism of
Warburton and of Paley. As for intuitionists and psychologists, such as
Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, these either left an unsolved dualism
(as was above all the case with the last), or, although possessing the
most lively consciousness of moral force, they yet strove to deduce
it in some way from the egoistical and utilitarian principle. The
French materialists of the eighteenth century, such as Helvétius and
D'Holbach, though less subtle, are more consequent.

[Sidenote: _Idealistic Philosophy._]

Rigoristic Ethic displayed its strength against anti-ethical
utilitarianism and anti-philosophical psychologism, not only in
traditional scholastic, but also in the explicit polemic undertaken by
Cudworth, Cumberland, Clarke and Price, against Hobbes, Locke, and the
other utilitarians who followed them. The makers of great systems, too,
attached themselves to ethical rigorism, Descartes (and in a certain
sense Spinoza), Malebranche, Leibnitz, and the philosophy of the
school of Leibnitz, as the moral consciousness declared itself in its
true nature in Jean Jacques Rousseau against the French materialists.
But rigorism also ended by contradicting itself in the same way as
utilitarianism, owing to its one-sidedness, when it recognized a
principle that was not merely utilitarian or that lost itself in
mystery, either by reasoning with the utilitarian principle in the
course of its development, or by receiving utilitarianism into itself,
without any mediation, in the form of the morally indifferent. This is
an old evil, which had already appeared in the _ἀδιάφορα_ of Stoicism,
and in all those exceptions to the rigorous moral law, which ascetic
Christianity had been obliged to allow, in order to exist side by side
with the worldly life.

[Sidenote: _Kant and his affirmation of the ethical principle._]

III. The strength and the weakness of rigorism are to be clearly seen
in the greatest ethical system to which it led: the moral doctrine of
Emmanuel Kant. It was time that the principle of Christian Ethic should
be reaffirmed, duty as clearly distinguished from pleasure, giving to
it that relief which it had been without in the systems of Descartes
and of Leibnitz, after the materialistic and utilitarian orgy that had
lasted for more than a century, and after the equivocal attempts at an
approach and fusion of the useful and the moral. Kant did not indeed in
this respect oppose Wolffian Leibnitzianism; and although the ethical
concept of _perfectio_ seemed to him to be empty and indeterminate, yet
he was never able to prove that it was a eudæmonistic and utilitarian
concept.[5] But that concept certainly had not the energy of duty and
of the Kantian categoric imperative, which are true declarations of war
against every heteronomous morality. This is the merit of Kant, after
whom no serious philosopher can be anything but a Kantian in Ethic, as,
after Christianity, to no one, not a wind-bag or an extravagant, is it
given to be anything but a Christian. Moral action has no other motive
than morality itself: to promote one's own happiness (said Kant) can
never be _immediately_ duty, and even less the principle of all duties.

[Sidenote: _Self-contradictions of Kant concerning the concept of the
useful, of prudence, of happiness, etc._]

But the mistake of Kant lies in not having well analyzed the concepts
of pleasure, of happiness and of the useful, and in having thought that
he could free himself from them, by placing them among another set of
principles, which he called _hypothetical_ imperatives and opposed to
the _categoric. _ We know that the imperative of those concepts is
not less categoric than that of morality: it is a true imperative,
not to be confounded with the knowledge of experience, metaphorically
called imperative, because it assumes the appearance of a technique
dealing with the practical. Kant was to some extent aware of this, for
he sub-distinguishes the hypothetical imperatives into _problematical_
and _assertorial._ The first of these are technical and give rise to
maxims of _cleverness_ (_Geschicklichkeit_); the second are _pragmatic_
and consist of maxims of _prudence._ Observe the difficulties in which
he becomes involved, through not wishing to recognize the autonomous
character of these imperatives compared with the moral imperatives,
that is to say, the categoricity of both. The imperatives of prudence
and of happiness are concerned (he says) "with an end which can be
assumed as real among all rational beings (in so far as the imperatives
can be applied to them in their quality of dependent beings); and,
therefore, an intention, which not only they _may_ possess, but which
it is assumed with certainty that they _do_ possess, according to a
necessity of nature, which is the intention of happiness." We should
therefore conclude that they are concerned with an end not less
serious than that of morality. But Kant perceives the poison in the
argument and strives to turn them again into imperatives concerning
means: "ability" (he continues) "in the choice of the means of one's
own well-being, may be called _prudence;_ therefore the imperative
relating to the choice of the means for one's own happiness, namely the
precept of prudence, is always hypothetical; the action is ordered, not
absolutely, but only as means for another purpose." It is clear that to
be able to call that knowledge or ability "prudence" is not sufficient
to change the imperative of happiness into mere ability and knowledge.
Kant perceives this also: "If it were easy to give a definite concept
of happiness, the imperatives of prudence would altogether coincide
with those of ability and would also be analytic. For it would be
said in the one case as in the other, that he who wishes the end also
wishes (necessarily, in conformity with reason) the only means for the
purpose within his power. The concept of happiness is unfortunately
so indeterminate, that although every one wishes to attain to it, he
is nevertheless unable ever to say definitely and in accordance with
himself exactly what he desires and wishes. The reason is that the
elements which belong to the concept of happiness are all empirical
and must therefore all be taken from experience; quired an absolute
whole, a maximum of well-being in my present state and in every future
state." In what shall happiness be placed? In riches? In knowledge? In
long life? In good health? None of these things is without dangers. In
short, it is impossible to determine with full certainty, according
to any principle whatever, what would make man truly happy; therefore
it is not possible to act according to a definite principle, but only
according to empirical concepts; and the imperatives of prudence,
strictly speaking, command nothing.--As we see, the only effective
argument of Kant against the admission of the categoric imperatives of
well-being, of utility, of happiness, is that he does not know exactly
what they are. This did not authorize him to exclude those imperatives
and reduce them to pseudo--imperatives, to hypothetic imperatives,
or to empirical rules. In other passages of his works, Kant tends to
the other solution of excluding the maxims of prudence from the pure
practical reason, because they are maxims of self-love (_Selbstliebe,_)
or of the practical reason empirically or _pathologically_
conditioned, since for him every pleasure that precedes the moral law
and is independent of it, is pathological, that is to say, it belongs
to the senses, to the inferior appetitive faculty, not to that which
is superior and to reason. Kant often returns to this point and always
experiences the same embarrassments and contradictions, as is proved by
the variety of the arguments to which he has recourse.[6]

[Sidenote: _Errors derived from it in his Ethic._]

But the unrecognized autonomy of the useful, of happiness, of
well-being, generally revenges itself; because, surreptitiously
introduced, it causes itself to be unduly recognized afterwards. Thus
it comes about that Kant creates, on the one hand, the monster of
disinterested actions, and on the other, does not altogether exclude
the concept of actions morally indifferent or permissible.[7] Thus,
too, it happens that owing to the discord that he preserves between
virtue and happiness, thinking vain the pretence of the Stoics and
Epicureans to reconcile them in this life, he is led to postulate
the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul, and to
make of virtue a means of rendering oneself worthy of happiness in
another life. "The cold duty of Kant" (wrote Hegel) "is the last
undigested morsel given by revelation to reason, and it weighs
upon its stomach."[8] Consequently, the Ethic of Kant, although
so different in tendencies and inspiration, yet joined hands with
theological utilitarianism, ending at length by also declaring that
moral obligation is inconceivable, without the idea of a God, who
rewards and punishes in another life, and by declaring that God and the
immortality of the soul cannot be otherwise affirmed than by means of
moral exigencies. Moral rigorism, like utilitarianism, makes shipwreck
in mystery.

[Sidenote: _Occasions for a philosophy of economy._]

IV. Occasions and opportunities for a philosophical concept of the
useful were not, to tell the truth, wanting to the thought anterior
to Kant; but Kant let them all slip. Without attributing too much
suggestive power to certain classes of virtues, such as _fortitude_
or _prudence_ (virtues that are generically economic, not exclusively
moral), which had passed from the Greek into the Christian Ethic,
nor to certain acute aphorisms of psychologists and moralists (for
instance: _Il y a des héros en mal comme en bien;--Ce n'est pas
assez d'avoir des grandes qualités, il en faut avoir l'économie;--La
souveraine habilité consiste à bien connaître le prix des choses,
etc.[9]),_ a first opportunity was certainly afforded by that inferior
faculty of appetition, which the Wolffian philosophy had inherited
from the Platonic, Aristotelian, and scholastic tradition.[10] That
faculty was parallel with the inferior faculty of knowledge, which
that same philosophy had with Baumgarten attempted to develop into an
independent science, _Aesthetica,_ a development that should have led
to the thought of an analogous transformation of the corresponding
practical faculty, which might have become an _Oeconomica_ or _Ethica
inferior,_ as from Æsthetic had been made a _Gnoseologia inferior._ But
Kant also rejected Æsthetic, as science of a special theoretic form,
science of intuition or fancy, conceiving instead, on the one hand
a transcendental Æsthetic or doctrine of space and time, and on the
other, a Critique of judgment, or doctrine of finality and morality,
symbolized in nature;[11] thus he fell into other difficulties, when
he wished to establish an analogy between the other forms of the
practical reason and that of the theoretical.[12] Although he preserved
the division of the faculty of appetition into inferior and superior
(_untere und obere Begehrungsvermögen,_) he failed to realize, as we
have seen, the true philosophical concept of the _inferior._

[Sidenote: _The problem of politics and Machiavellism._]

A second opportunity was presented by the series of treatises, which,
from Machiavelli onward, had come to conceive of politics as a fact
independent of morality, elaborating in particular those precepts and
maxims of the "reason of state," of which we have already had occasion
to expose the empirical character. But however empirical they were,
those mental products gave rise to the problem of the relations between
morals and politics, that is to say, as to whether the two terms could
be considered as immediately identifiable. The thought of Machiavelli,
in particular, constituted an enigma that all attempted to interpret
in the most different ways, most by vituperating, some by defending it
with strange reasons (Spinoza was among the defenders[13]), though they
never succeeded in freeing themselves from its difficulties, for to
that end would have been necessary the understanding of the spiritual
value of the utilitarian will, even if amoral. It was only when this
difficult concept was to some extent caught sight of (by De Sanctis)
that Machiavelli appeared at once justified and criticized; but while
that concept remained obscure, the point of view of Machiavelli was
never attained and the work was condemned for reasons of a moralistic
character (Villari).[14] Kant, too, in his work on _Perpetual Peace,_
treated the problem of the relations between morality and politics,
affirming that no disagreement is possible between them, unless by
politics is meant a _doctrine_ of prudence, that is, "a theory of
maxims for the selection of the means best adapted for the objects of
individual advantage; that is, when the existence of morality is not
altogether denied."[15] Here too, he was right, when he claimed that
concrete political actions should be submitted to morality; but, on the
other hand, he did not perceive that submission and identity presuppose
a previous independence and distinction.

[Sidenote: _The doctrine of the passions._]

Finally, a third opportunity was offered, in the rehabilitation of the
passions, begun by the philosophers of the seventeenth century and
expressed, as has been said, in a notable manner by Vico. Now if the
passions in general be the volitional activity itself, considered
in its dialectic, they are also the soul turned to the particular,
the useful in respect to the universal, which is sought by morality.
This is to be seen especially in Vico and better still in Hegel, very
similar to Vico in this respect; he admirably developed this moment
of _particularity,_ which is passion, necessary for the concreteness
of the universal. As the passions for Vico are human nature itself,
which morality directs but does not destroy, and are neither good
nor bad in themselves, and _utilitates ex se neque turpes neque
honestae, sed earum inaequalitas est turpitudo, aequalitas autem
honestas_[16]--so, for Hegel, "passion is neither good nor bad in its
formal character and only expresses the fact that a subject has placed
all the living interest of his spirit, of his talent, of his character,
of his enjoyment, in a single content. Nothing great can or has been
accomplished without passion. Only a morality that is dead and too
often hypocritical can inveigh against the form of passion as such. ...
Ethicity concerns the content, which, as such, is universal, something
inactive, and has its active element in the subject: the fact that the
content is immanent in it constitutes interest, and in so far as it
dominates all the efficient subjectivity, passion."[17]

[Sidenote: _Hegel and the concept of the useful._]

The same Hegel once observed: "As for what concerns utility, morality
must not play the disdainful towards it, for every good action is
actually useful, that is to say, possesses reality and produces
something good. A good action that were not useful would not be an
action, would not possess reality. The inutility of the good in itself,
as its unreality, is its abstractness. Not only is it possible to be
conscious of utility, but we ought to be conscious of it, since it is
true that it is useful to know the good: utility does not mean anything
but that we are conscious of our own action. If this be blameworthy, it
will also be blameworthy to know the goodness of one's own action."[18]

Hegel thus discovered the function of the useful when rehabilitating
the passions, though in a fugitive manner. But Kant had not attributed
importance to the problem of the passions in Ethic, and had not
therefore been in a position to avail himself of the suggestion
contained in the doctrine of the passions.

[Sidenote: _Fichte and the elaboration of the Kantian Ethic._]

Fichte, in re-elaborating the Kantian philosophy, showed the relation
between pleasure and duty in a manner that came very near to the
truth. He gave precedence to what he called the _empirical_ over the
moral man, the former corresponding entirely to the merely utilitarian
or economic. What, asks Fichte, will be his maxim of action at this
stage? "As there is no other impulse in his consciousness save the
natural, and as this is directed only toward enjoyment and has pleasure
for its motive, that maxim cannot but be to choose what promises the
maximum of pleasure in intensity and extension; that is, the maxim
of his own happiness. This may likewise be sought in the pleasure of
others by means of the sympathetic impulses; but the ultimate scope
of his action always remains the satisfaction of those impulses and
pleasures which arise from it, and therefore, his own happiness. Man
at this stage is an intelligent animal." "But," he continues, "it is a
fault to remain here, and man must raise himself to a stage at which
he enjoys an altogether different liberty; he must be free, not only
_formaliter,_ but also _materialiter,_ that is, he must attain to the
moral stage."[19] That first stage, then, is formal freedom, and is no
longer considered a pathological condition of the spirit, or as that
merely technical knowledge of which Kant speaks. This would constitute
no small progress, if Fichte had been conscious of all the richness of
the concept of which he had caught a glimpse, and had made it fructify.
But it seems that he was not aware of this, and certainly he took no
advantage of it whatever.

[Sidenote: _The problem of the useful and of morality in the thinkers
of the nineteenth century._]

V. The inventive genius of modern Ethic is exhausted with these
thinkers. Their successors have reproduced the old situations, one
after the other. Some, while accepting the Kantian morality, wished
to temper and correct its exaggerations, which was not possible,
save by a more profound speculative vision of the relation between
pleasure and good, the useful and the moral; whereas they believed that
they could attain to it by _also_ taking account of pleasure and of
happiness, and by conceiving a doctrine of happiness or eudæmonology
side by side with Ethic, but subordinate to it (in Italy: Galluppi
and Rosmini). Schiller had already recognized in Kant's time the
unilaterality of Kant, and had made it the object of criticism and of
epigram, which, however, does not mean that he had truly and properly
corrected its errors. Others occupied themselves in various ways
with the enumeration and juxtaposition of the principles: thus, for
instance, Schopenhauer makes compassion arise beside egoism, which
then divides into benevolence and justice; and Herbart, although he
excludes the useful, because, according to him, "it refers to a point
external to itself,"[20] enumerates five practical ideas that are not
all truly moral. The affinity both of Herbart and of Schopenhauer,
with Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and English and Scottish psychologism,
is clear. The study of the practical ideas of Herbart is not without
interest as an unconscious affirmation of the necessity of the
economic principle. The first of these, indeed, _internal freedom,_
consists in being able to achieve with our own strength the model
that we propose to ourselves, and is liberty, but not yet moral
liberty. "To be able to decide _according to motives_" (says Herbart
on one occasion) "is already a sign of psychical health: to decide
_according to the best motives_ is the condition of morality."[21]
The second of the practical ideas, that of _perfection,_ is concerned
precisely with the strength of the will, taken in itself, and resembles
a combination of the Hellenic virtues of fortitude and temperance.
Here willing is considered in itself, independently of its objects,
and in this consideration there is no other difference, save their
strength, between the various Willings: the greater this is, the more
it is admired; weakness displeases and strength pleases the practical
judgment, and this even when it is unjust, iniquitous and wicked, and
notwithstanding such vices.[22] Lotze, following Herbart, determines
as requisites of actions, that they must be possible, energetic,
conscientious on the one hand, and on the other, consequent, habitual,
individual, stating that these two series of predicates apply equally
to moral and immoral actions.[23]--He does not think it worth while to
take count of the English utilitarians and post-Kantian intuitionists,
or of their French, Italian, and German imitators; because, just as the
appearance of a Hobbes, of a Hume, or of a Shaftesbury, is important
in their time, so the appearance of a Bentham or of a Spencer out of
their time is insignificant, for these latter amuse themselves with
the useful, with association and evolution (which according to them
should become the socially useful), and with the double principle of
egoism and of altruism. Stuart Mill alone can afford some interest,
when he says (with that mental inconclusiveness which has seemed to
many to be acuteness and equilibrium) that moral pleasures differ from
the sensual, not only in degree, but also in genus and in quality (_in
kind_); and that justice is a class of socially useful actions that
arouses feelings themselves also different, not only in degree, but
also in genus and in quality (_in kind_), from those caused by useful
actions. In short, the philosophy of the nineteenth century has not
only been unable to progress, but has not even been able to maintain
itself on a level with the practical doctrines of Fichte and of Hegel,
in which a glimpse was caught of the relation of first and second
practical degree, and there was a tendency to reconcile passion and
ethicity.

[Sidenote: _Extrinsic union of Ethic and of economic Science, from
antiquity to the nineteenth century._]

VI. Certainly economic science, owing to its empirico-quantitative
character, already noted, was not made to fill the void and to furnish
a more positive and exact concept of the useful. The contact between
Economy and Philosophy remained for a time extrinsic, since economic
Science appeared in treatises upon the Philosophy of the practical,
together with the other juridical and historical matter, which it was
customary to include with it. The precedent for such a union could be
found even in Aristotle's _Nichomachean Ethic,_ which supplies certain
notions as to the concept of price and value. Considerations on the
same argument abound in the Scholastics, especially in St. Thomas,
whose _Oeconomica_ always forms part of his Ethic, as the doctrine for
the government of the family. Finally, there is an ample discussion
of the subject in the treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, which took the name of _natural Rights._ It happened that
the English moralists of the eighteenth century were also led to
occupy themselves with Economy and the economists with Ethic, owing
to the juxtaposition of the two concepts for didascalic reasons and
for University convenience. Thus Hutcheson developed Economy, in his
_Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy_ (1747); and the _Essays_ of
Hume are occupied with moral and economic questions; and Adam Smith
is the author, not only of _The Wealth of Nations,_ but also of _The
Theory of the Moral Feelings,_ almost two parts of a Philosophy of the
practical. The importance of economic studies had become so palpable at
that time, that toward the end of the century, Buhle was led to include
them in the history of philosophy (and we believe that he was the
first). He exposes at length in his work the ideas of Hume, of Smith,
of Stewart, attributing it as a merit to the English writers to have
reduced that material to philosophy by a method of treatment without
example (he said) in previous centuries.[24] Finally, Hegel dedicated
certain important paragraphs of his _Philosophy of Law,_ in the section
dealing with civil society,[25] to the "system of wants," or Economy.
The cult of Economy has rather increased than diminished in the
nineteenth century and the much-discussed social problem (especially
capitalism and socialism) has not been without a certain influence
upon treatises of Ethic, where, if we rarely find statements that are
strictly economic, there is always plenty of chatter about property and
production and the relations between the working and capitalistic class.

[Sidenote: _Philosophical questions arising from a more intimate
contact between the two._]

But a more intimate bond could not take place, save when attempts to
understand the material of science and to place it in the system of
the spirit were united with economic Science, properly so called. For
since that science is occupied with human actions and appears to give
advice as to conduct, in what relation can it possibly stand to Ethic,
which is also occupied with actions and also gives advice?--Such a
question was in a certain way already implied in the mediæval idea of
a _justum pretium,_ to be placed beside the effective price, which is
realized according to the knowledge and convenience of each; it forms
the kernel of the debate between the _subjective and the objective_
concept of value, that is, between the purely economic consideration
and another resulting from moral exigencies, between the value that
is, and that which in a certain way should be. It began to wax ardent,
with the accusation, of being theoreticians of egoism, hurled at the
great English economists, Smith and Ricardo; this accusation, taken
up and modified by others, became accepted as the true and proper
designation of the function of Economy, which should accordingly be
that of studying human actions in their exclusively abstract, egoistic
aspect. But, since abstraction is not full reality, the false task
assigned to Economy called for the aid of the doctors. Such were
the French economists, seized with the mania of teaching generosity
to the cold Britons (Blanqui, etc.); such too were the Germans, who
wished to induce Economy to mend its ways and to become conscious of
its lofty duties towards the human race (Knies); such, finally, were
the Christians and Catholics, who thought to purify or to exorcise
that worldly and diabolical science by mingling with it ethical and
economical considerations. It was rarely suspected that economic
facts, as such, are neither egoistic nor altruistic, neither moral nor
immoral; and when it was desired to philosophize the subject, some one
got out of the difficulty by enumerating five groups of human actions,
four egoistic and only one moral: the search for the satisfaction
of one's own conscience, with the fear of blame attached (Wagner).
The problem, especially in Austria, passed from the hands of the
mathematicians into those of the psychologists. These have undertaken
to seek out the resemblance and the difference between economic and
ethical values. But on the psychological ground (as we have already
remarked when discussing intuitionistic solutions), far from solving
the antithesis, philosophy is dissolved. The mathematicians on the
other hand, that is to say the economists, who employ the quantitative
method, fascinated with the evidence of this procedure and failing
to realize that it is empty evidence, instead of limiting themselves
to the construction of their most useful formulæ, increase the
confusion by beginning to philosophize in the strangest manner; as
is to be observed in the case of Pareto, one of the most acute and
learned of contemporary economists. In one of his recent writings he
exposes the method of economic science with a string of propositions
such as these: "_Il faut faire une opération de séparation.... Cette
première opération accomplie, ... il est nécessaire de substituer par
abstraction, des conceptions simples, au moins relativement, aux objets
réels extrêmement complexes.... Mais la science n'est réellement liée
à une abstraction plutôt qu'à une autre.... Pour peu qu'on y trouve un
avantage.... Cela ne suffit pas encore: il faut continuer à séparer et
à abstraire...._"

And after having thus advised us to treat facts without pity,
mutilating them, grinding them down, substituting for them names or
abstractions, Pareto continues undisturbed, as though all this were
nothing: these theories, "_telles, au moins que nous les concevons, se
séparant des anciens en ce qu'elles s'attachent aux faits et non aux
mots_"![26] If such be the facts, what will be the words?

[Sidenote: _The theories of the hedonistic calculus: from Maupertuis to
Hartmann._]

VII. It is all the more necessary to understand the diversity
between economic Science and the Philosophy of economy, between the
quantitative and the qualitative processes, owing to the fact that
since economic studies first flourished, in the eighteenth century,
absurd ideas were introduced into the books of philosophers, as
to the calculus of pleasures and the balance of life. Maupertuis'
book, _Essai de philosophie morale_ (1749), had a great influence
in this direction. Here, a balance is presented, showing a deficit
on the side of pleasures; and, following this lead, many Italian
philosopher-economists of the same period occupied themselves with such
calculations and balances (Ortes, Verri, Briganti, etc.), arriving at
results, now optimistic, now pessimistic.[27] Galluppi, too, accepted
the method as a good one,[28] and it is no marvel that the poet
Leopardi made it his, steeped as he was in the sensualistic philosophy
of the preceding century. But not only are the trivial optimistic
sophisms of the utilitarians founded upon it, but likewise many of the
pessimistic arguments of Schopenhauer and especially of Hartmann, the
latter quite unconscious (being in other respects closely connected
with the German idealist tradition) that he was accepting an element
of an altogether anti-idealistic, that is, of a mechanistic origin.

For all these reasons, it is important to oppose the concept of the
useful (which is not indeed a concept, but an abstraction), given by
economic Science, with its philosophic concept. This we have attempted
to do in the preceding theory of Economy, as at once distinct from
and united with Ethic. In that theory, we have especially striven to
collect stray threads of aphorisms and observations of good sense
as to the value of the will, even when amoral; as to the doctrines
of happiness and of pleasure, of the inferior appetitive faculty,
of others dealing with politics and the arts of prudence, of the
new conception of the passions, considered as the spirit in its
individuality;--we have striven to attach to these that which is as
it were the philosophical result drawn from economic Science, that
is to say, the idea of a form of value that would be neither the
intellectual, the æsthetic, nor the ethical, and cannot by any means
be resolved into an ethical anti-value or egoism;--and finally, we
have attempted to unite all these threads into one, in order to form
the bond that ethical rigorism has hitherto been unable to place
between itself and reality, between the universal and the practical
individual, at the same time justifying utilitarian, activity in its
autonomy. We believe that this historical sketch will have contributed
to make clear the necessity of our attempt.


[1] _De cive,_ c. i. § 10.

[2] E. Albee, _A History of English Utilitarianism,_ London, 1902, pp.
26-27.

[3] _De cive,_ c. iii. § 33.

[4] _Essay on Human Understanding,_ Book II. c. 28, § 7 _sqq._

[5] _Gründl. d. Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ p. 70.

[6] _Gründl,_ p. 36 _sq.; Kr. d. prakt. Vernft._ pp. 15, 21-28, 43,
145; cf. _Metaph. d. Sitt._ pp. 208-209.

[7] _Metaph. d. Sitt._ pp. 22, 23, 246.

[8] _Gesch. d. Phil._ iii. p. 535.

[9] La Rochefoucauld, _Maximes_ (ed. Gamier), nn. 159, 185, 224.

[10] Wolf, _Psych, emp.,_ Frankfort and Leipzig, 1738, §§ 584, 880.

[11] Croce, _Estetica,_ pp. 324-328.

[12] _Kr. d. prakt. Vern._ pp. 79, 108.

[13] _Tract. theol._ c. iv. § 7.

[14] Cf. Croce, in De Sanctis, _Scritti vari_ (Napoli, 1898), i. pp.
xiv-xvi, pref.

[15] _Zum ewigen Friede,_ in _Werke_ (ed. Rosenkranz-Schubert), vol.
vii. pt. i. p. 370.

[16] _De uno univ. juris principio,_ § 46.

[17] _Encykl._ § 474, and cf. other passages: _Phän. d. Geistes,_ pp.
484-486; _Encykl._ § 474; _Phil. d. Rechtes,_ § 124; _Phil. d. Gesch._
pp. 39-41.

[18] _Gesch. d. Phil._ ii. pp. 405-6.

[19] _System der Sittenlehre,_ p. 180 _sq._; cf. p. 15.

[20] _Einleitung,_ § 82 (Italian transl. p. 102).

[21] _Op. cit._ § 128 (It. tr. p. 172).

[22] _Allg. prakt. Phil._ p. 35.

[23] _Grundzüge der Ethik,_ §§ 12, 14.

[24] _Gesch. d. neueren Philos._ (1796-1804), sect. iv. cap. 18 (Fr.
tr., Paris, 1816, v. 432-753)

[25] _Phil. d. Rechts,_ § 189 _sqq._

[26] "L'Économie et la sociologie au point de vue scientifique" in
_Rivistetele Scienza,_ i. (1907) 293, 312.

[27] See M. Losacco, _Le dottrine edonistiche italiane del secolo
XVIII_ (Napoli, 1902).

[28] Galluppi, _Elementi di filosofia_ (Napoli, 1846), ii. 265-266, 406
_sqq._




SECOND SECTION


THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLE




I


CRITIQUE OF MATERIAL AND OF FORMALISTIC ETHIC


[Sidenote: _Various meanings of "formal" and "material."_]

It is a much-disputed question whether the Principle of Ethic should be
conceived as _formal_ or _material._ The question, already difficult in
itself, has become yet more difficult, so as almost to cause despair
of its solution, owing to the fact that those terms, "formal" and
"material," are understood (as often happens in philosophy) in a double
sense. Hence, those who win assent to their thesis as to the formality
of the ethical principle are afterwards wont to avail themselves of
this assent, in order stealthily to introduce another thesis, which,
although it be also beneath the banner of the "formal," yet has nothing
to do with the first and is as false as that is true. And since those
who maintain the material principle do the same thing, both alike
come to expose their flanks to one another's blows. In the process of
unravelling this tangled skein, we shall begin by giving to those two
words the meaning that they usually bear in philosophical terminology,
meaning by "formal" the universal and by "material" the contingent. And
in this signification we affirm, above all, that the principle of Ethic
is _formal_ and certainly not _material._

[Sidenote: _The ethical principle as formal (universal) and not
material (contingent)._]

Were it material, it would express itself by means of propositions
indicating a single volition or a group of single volitions as the true
and proper essence of the moral volition; and the moral activity would
consist of a determinate action or of a determinate group of actions.
But the moral act is always that which surpasses the single or the
groups of singles: to will and to effect the single and the series of
singles as such, does not appertain to the ethical, but to the merely
economic form. He who loves things for things' sake (be they such, and
as many as you will, of this or that kind, one, many, infinite) does
not yet love the universal, which is everywhere, and is not exhausted
in any particular thing, nor in any number of things, however immense.

[Sidenote: _Reduction of material to utilitarian Ethic._]

If we posit a material principle for Ethic, we relapse as a
consequence into _utilitarianism,_ from which we thought we had
escaped; because, after having asserted the universal, it is now
determined, either as a single or (which amounts to the same thing) as
a feigned universal, a simply general concept of group or series. This
vicissitude, however, presents itself in every sphere of philosophy:
when the universal and formal principle of that sphere is materialized,
we return to the sphere immediately, below it. For example, an
esthetic that posits as its principle certain single forms of art,
thus substituting matter for form, relapses from art to life lived,
which is the condition that precedes art and upon which art raises
itself in order to intuite and to dominate life. Material Ethic has
therefore been with reason discredited as heteronomous and utilitarian.
Not indeed that it is so directly and admits itself so to be: on
the contrary, it professes to be anti-utilitarian and does nothing
directly, save to point to a given object as the true content of
morality. But that object, being single, implies a merely utilitarian
volition; and material Ethic is utilitarian, because, whatever it may
do or say, it is logically reducible to utilitarianism.

[Sidenote: _Rejection of material principles._]

The rejection of all material character from the ethical principle
is of the greatest importance, for it frees Ethic from a long series
of concepts, each one of which has been proposed in turn as the true
ethical principle, and several still find many supporters, both in
ordinary thought and in treatises called scientific. For us, those
concepts should not be examined comparatively, so as to arrive at
preferring the one to the other, or a new one of the same type to all
the concepts previously enunciated; but they are all false, for one and
the same reason, as any other that may in future be excogitated will be
false, if it contain in it anything material.

[Sidenote: _Benevolence, love, altruism, etc.; and critique of them._]

A first group of such material principles is found in relation to
the general concept of an action, directed toward the welfare of
individuals, other than the individual acting. Morality (they say)
is _sacrifice of self, benevolence, love, altruism, compassion,
humanitarianism,_ or simply _naturalism_ of the Franciscan sort,
which commands us to respect, protect, and love the animals also,
since they too are God's creatures (brother Wolf, sister Fox). Such
formulæ, especially those of _benevolence and altruism,_ have been and
continue to be successful; and hardly a doubt is harboured but that
they determine in the most complete and satisfactory manner the proper
principle of morality. But in truth _others,_ as individuals, have no
rights that I too do not possess as an individual: I am another for
the other, and he is an I for himself; and if each one provided for
the good of others, neglecting and trampling upon his own good, the
result would be perfectly identical to what would happen, were each one
to provide for himself without concern for others. Morality demands
the sacrifice of me for the universal end, but of me only in my merely
individual ends; and, therefore, in this case, of me as of others. It
has no particular animosity against me, so as to wish to sacrifice me
at all costs to others. We must be severe, not only with ourselves, but
with others also; exigent, not only with ourselves, but with others
also; and so, on the contrary, benevolent not only toward others,
but also toward ourselves; compassionate, not only toward others,
but also towards this instrument of labour that we carry about with
us and of which we sometimes demand too much; that is, our empirical
individuality. Reality is neither democratic nor aristocratic, but
both together; it abhors the privilege of some over others as much as
that equality, according to which each one must have the same value
as the other at every moment. All are in turn masters and servants;
worthy of respect as bearers and representatives of good, worthy of
punishment and reprehension as clouding and impeding the good. Morality
never considers individuals in themselves, but always in their relation
to the universal; and in this respect there is no one who does not
deserve to be saved or to be suppressed; there is no animal or other
being of any kind that should not now be favoured in its existence,
now annihilated. No individual is treated as an _end,_ but all as
_means_ for universal morality; and they only obtain the dignity of
ends, in so far as they are means for universal morality. The rights of
animals have been written for and against; but in truth, a lamb has now
the duty of being slaughtered, now the right of being left in peace,
according to circumstances; in the same way that a man has now the
right to go for a walk with his friends and to sing serenades beneath
the windows of fair ladies, now the duty of putting on a uniform and
of betaking himself beneath the walls of a citadel, where he will be
blown in pieces by the enemy's grape-shot. Altruism is as insipid as
egoism, and is reducible at bottom to egoism; in much the same way as
sensual love, which has justly been called "egoism for two." Indeed,
why should we be ready to sacrifice ourselves for others, and to
promote their desire in every case and in spite of everything? For what
reason, save for the blind and irrational attachment to them which
makes a man throw away his life or descend to abjection for a wicked
woman furiously loved, suffer every shame and torment for an unworthy
son, or yield to the impulses of sympathy inspired by an individual?
This blind and irrational attachment to others is at bottom attachment
to ourselves, to our nerves, to our fancies, to our convenience, to our
habits. It is utility, not morality; for morality wills us to be ready
to separate ourselves from others as from ourselves, when the occasion
arises, to leave wives and sons and brothers, and follow duty which
transcends them all. "Thou only, O ideal, art true,..." or rather, by
means of the ideal and of the universal, all things are true; without
the ideal, there is not one of them that does not become false, as
there is not an organism that does not become vile clay, when abandoned
by life.

[Sidenote: _Social organism, State, interest of the race, etc. Critique
of them._]

There is another group of material principles which seems to surpass
individuals, because it makes morality to consist of promoting either
so-called _laws of nature_ or so-called _institutions._ Of such kind
are those that place morality in the service of the _social organism
and of the State, or of the interest of the Species and of Life_ (this
being understood as animal life or very near to animality). But if it
seem that contingent facts are thus escaped, that is not really so.
For none of these concepts expresses the universality of the real, but
this or that group of its particular manifestations: the life called
social or political, this or that animal species, this or that vital
manifestation. And none of these facts can be ethically willed without
exceptions. The moral man sacrifices the State to the Church, or the
Church to the State, atrophies certain organs and suppresses certain
vital functions for universal ends, or for the ends of what is called
civilization; he defends, preserves and increases certain aptitudes
of the human race, but lets others disappear or modifies them, always
adapting the interest of the species to that of the ideal. Were he to
do otherwise, he would again be substituting utility for morality,
his immediate affection for certain things or for certain single and
individual facts, to the affection for them that should always be
_mediated,_ that is to say, mediated by the universal.

[Sidenote: _Material religious principles. Critique of them._]

A third group of material principles, called religious, which make
morality to consist of conforming to the will of God and of the
gods, is not intrinsically different from these. Where the idea of
the transcendental and of religious mystery is introduced, there is
darkness; and anything can be put into darkness. In the first place,
nothing but darkness itself can be put there, and in this case the
religious solution is agnosticism, confession of ignorance, such as
we have hitherto treated, in criticizing theological utilitarianism
or abstract ethical rigorism, which, by means of its insoluble
contradictions, also leads to the idea of God and of mystery. But one's
own will, caprice and individual interests can also be put there;
and then religion becomes attachment to a being or to an order of
beings, which, though they be imaginary, are not for that reason less
individual; attachment to them is love or fear, sympathy or fear of
the evil they can do, and tendency to avoid it by propitiation with
prayers, adulation, gifts, services, worship. Religious principles,
then, understood as material principles, also become converted, as all
know, and we may add, know all too well, into utilitarian principles;
because, through intently fixing the gaze upon this aspect of religion,
they have forgotten to look at others more important and certainly more
noble.

[Sidenote: _Formal principle as affirmation of a merely logical
exigency._]

The ethical principle is not adequately expressed, either by the
_altruistic_ concept, or by that of _natural formations_ and of
_institutions,_ or by that of the _gods;_ because all of these are
general concepts, or sometimes merely individual representations; they
are certainly not universal concepts. And by the necessity of the
universal and the insufficiency of the merely general and individual,
the ethical principle must be _formal_ and not _material._ However (and
here we enter into the new meaning of this word and into the new debate
announced), the formal ethical principle has likewise been understood
as not susceptible of extension beyond the enunciation of the character
of universality, which the principle itself should possess. Its formula
has seemed to be nothing but that of a _universal law,_ to which all
men can conform in complete harmony among themselves; of _respect
towards all beings,_ in the degree that appertains to each, of that
which satisfies _the exigencies of reason and of conscience,_ and so
on. Now the formality claimed by this and similar formulæ has nothing
to do with the formality first claimed; and since in the preceding
debate we took the side of those who maintain formal as against
material Ethic, so here we must defend material against formal Ethic;
or better, an Ethic that is not material against an Ethic that is not
formal, save in the pretentions of those who thus baptize it.

[Sidenote: _Critique of a formal ethic in this sense: tautologism._]

What does the formality of Ethic mean in the new sense? Nothing
but this: that it is not necessary to inquire _what is the ethical
principle,_ but that we must be satisfied with saying that _whatever
it be, it must be universal._ But that it must be universal is a
proposition which belongs, not to Ethic, but to Logic; the principles
of all philosophical sciences must possess the character of
universality, the logical as the æsthetic, the principle of Ethic as
that of Economic, the moral categoric imperative as the utilitarian
categoric. Thus the thesis of formality in the new meaning is reduced
to placing at the head of Ethic, not the ethical principle, _but the
logical exigency of the ethical principle,_ in the same way that a
similar claim in Æsthetic would result in placing at the head of
that science, not the formal æsthetic principle, as for example,
Intuition-expression, but a formal æsthetic principle, the claim for
a law, so made that no form of beauty could ever be excluded from
it. Instead of constructing the science, the affirmation of logical
necessity, which that construction must obey, is infinitely repeated;
but the thesis of formality in the new sense would be better called the
thesis of _tautologism._

[Sidenote: _Tautological principles: ideal, chief good, duty, etc., and
critique of them._]

Besides the formulæ to which we have referred, namely those of the
_categoric imperative, of the universal law, of the respect for being,
of the rational and of conscience,_ the formulæ of the _chief good,
of duty (or of law), of the ideal, of true pleasure, of constant
pleasure, of spiritual pleasure, of personal dignity, of self-esteem,
of the just mean, of harmony, of proportion, of justice, of perfection,
of following nature,_ and so on, also belong to the tautological
principles of Ethic; they are all tautologies, because they do not
determine to what object those logical claims are applicable. To ask
what is the form of will that produces a _constant, spiritual and
true_ pleasure, which makes _perfect, gives self-esteem, satisfies our
conscience, strikes the just mean,_ answers to what _ought_ to be done,
attains to _the supreme good,_ and so on, is tantamount to asking,
_What is the ethical form?_ This is precisely what must be answered,
if we do not wish to fall into tautology, and the reply cannot be the
question itself.

[Sidenote: _Tautological meaning of certain formulæ, material in
appearance._]

And it is convenient to note here that many of the formulæ that
we have criticized as belonging to material Ethic, have also been
frequently-employed as tautological formulæ, that is to say, as symbols
and metaphors of the ethical truth to be determined. The _others,_ of
which altruism speaks, are at bottom not others as physically distinct
from us, but others in an ideal sense, that is, as duty surpassing
the empirical ego; _God,_ of which religious Ethic speaks, is that
indeterminate concept, that logical exigency, which is also called the
_categoric imperative; the State or Life_ that one pledges oneself
to serve is not this or that State, this or that particular form of
life, but the symbol of the ideal; the _nature_ to be followed is that
nature, or ethical principle within us, which the speculative reason
must determine. Thus do material principles often progress, ceasing
to be such, in order to become tautological, that is, abandoning the
possession of undue determination, owing to the consciousness of a
want, of a lacuna to be filled.

[Sidenote: _Conversion of tautological Ethic into material and
utilitarian Ethic._]

The evil is that tautologism inevitably returns to that undue
possession, because, imagining that it has established that ethical
principle which it has not established at all, and that it has finally
constructed Ethic, of which it has not even laid the foundations, it
sets to work to explain moral and concrete facts by means of that
empty form. The consequence of this is that utilitarian motives, as
usual, fill the empty space. Why should we not violate a deposit that
has been entrusted to us? Perhaps because (as they say) the moral law
is a universal law? That does not suffice. Respect for the deposit
cannot be deduced from this principle, for a universal law is equally
thinkable, according to which is deduced in certain cases a respect for
the deposit and in certain other cases the contrary. This then is the
fact: that to restore a deposit confided to us may sometimes happen to
be a bad action, as, for instance, to restore the weapon entrusted to
us, when he who claims it intends to commit suicide or to assassinate.
Thus it happens that not knowing how to put an end to the controversy
in virtue of the true ethical principle, and wishing nevertheless in
some way to use that empty formula, it comes to be filled with the only
principle possessed, namely the utilitarian; and the reason given for
respecting the deposit is said to be the desirability of respecting for
engagements, for the ends of the individual, failing which (it will
be said) no business would thenceforth be effected and the world of
affairs would languish.

[Sidenote: _In what sense Ethic should be formal and in what other
sense material._]

_Formal_ Ethic, in the new sense, or as it would be better called,
tautological Ethic, might be called _formalistic,_ owing to its thus
falling back into material, heteronomous and utilitarian Ethic, since
_formalism_ here (as in Æsthetic and Logic) is the caricature of
formality, and almost a sort of materiality. In maintaining _formal_
Ethic we do not wish that it should be _formalistic_; that is, that it
should be again covertly material. And we wish that formal Ethic should
also be material, always understanding by this that it must give, not
the mere logical condition of the ethical principle, but _this ethical
principle itself_ in its concreteness, determining what moral volition
is in its reality.




II


THE ETHICAL FORM AS ACTUATION OF THE SPIRIT IN UNIVERSAL


[Sidenote: _Tautological Ethic and its connection with Philosophy,
either partial or discontinuous._]

If the strange idea of an ethical principle that should be formal,
in the sense of its not being known exactly what it is and how it is
justified, has ever been able to arise, this is due to two erroneous
philosophical conceptions, of which one can be called _partial,_ the
other _discontinuous_ philosophy. According to the first conception,
man is capable of knowing something of reality, certainly, but not
all: he perceives and arranges the data of experience by means of the
categories, but he is aware of the limitation of his thought and of the
impossibility of attaining to the heart of the real, which he does, it
is true, end by attaining in a certain way, but only with the heart,
not with thought. This being stated, and coming to the case of Ethic,
man hears the voice of conscience in himself, the command of the moral
law; he cannot think of any sophism to escape it: but precisely what
that law is, he is unable to say; the idea of a divine ordinance of
the world which presents itself to his spirit, may also be affirmed by
the heart, but never by thought. The second conception is confounded
by some thinkers with the first and becomes partial philosophy or
agnosticism; but if we observe closely, it is distinct from the other.
For here it is not actually asserted that the foundation of morality
is unknowable, but it is said to be unknowable in the circle of Ethic,
or that such knowledge goes beyond that circle. Ethic establishes the
moral law, deduces or arranges beneath it ethical precepts and by means
of them judges single actions. Ethic is ignorant as to whether that
law really exists, or what may be its precise universal content. It
hands this problem over to Metaphysic, or to general Philosophy, which
solves it in its own way, or is presumed to be capable of solving it.
In this conception, then, there arises a question as to competence
and hierarchy between thought and thought, between particular and
general philosophy; whereas, in the former, is affirmed the absolute
incompetence of thought.

[Sidenote: _Rejection of both these conceptions._]

But we do not run the risk of colliding with the obstacle placed
before us with these philosophical views, because we have constantly
rejected them both throughout the whole of our exposition of the
Philosophy of the spirit and have demonstrated their falsity. Partial
Philosophy is a contradictory concept: thought either thinks all
or nothing; and if it had a limit it would have it as thought and
therefore as surpassed. Whoso admits something unknowable, declares
everything unknowable, and inevitably falls into total scepticism. Nor
is the idea of a discontinuous philosophy divided into a whole and
its parts, with the whole outside the parts and the parts outside the
whole less inconceivable; so that, while Ethic is being studied, the
whole (complete Philosophy) seems problematical; and a part (Ethic)
can be known to some extent without knowing the whole (the whole
of Philosophy). This is a false view, ultimately derived from the
empirical sciences, in which it is possible to apprehend one order
of phenomena independently of the others; and to apprehend phenomena
without explicitly posing or by dismissing to another occasion the
philosophical problem as to their truth. Philosophy is a circle and a
unity and every point of it is intelligible only in relation to all the
others. The didascalic convenience of exposing a group of philosophical
problems separately from others--or also (if it please others, as
it has not pleased us) of dividing the exposition into particular
philosophical sciences, and into general Philosophy (also called
Metaphysic)--should not lead to the misconception that the indivisible
is really being divided. The whole of Philosophy is at once enunciated
with the first philosophical proposition; and the others that come
after will all be nothing but explanations of the first.

[Sidenote: _The ethical form as volition of the universal._]

Therefore, since we have never denied faith to thought, nor broken in
pieces the unity of Philosophy, we have no secret to reveal at this
point; not even a poor secret, like the exponents of discontinuous
Philosophy, who solemnly make known at the end what they have assumed
from the beginning. Our formal ethical principle is never empty form
that must only now be filled with a content. It is full form, form
in the philosophical and universal sense, which is also content and
therefore universal content. We have not restricted ourselves to
defining the ethical form as universal form, which would have resulted
in tautologism; but we have defined it _volition of the universal,_
thus distinguishing it from the economic form, which is simply volition
of the individual. And if we now ask ourselves what is the universal,
we must reply that the answer has already been given, and that whoever
has not yet understood, whoever indeed has not understood it for some
time, will never understand it. The universal has been the object of
all our Philosophy of the Spirit, and we have always had to keep it
before our eyes, in studying, not only the practical function, but
any other function of the spirit; just as we cannot have the idea
of the branch of a tree without the idea of the trunk from which it
springs and without which there would not be the branch of a tree. That
concept, then, is not a _deus ex machina_ to appear unexpectedly at the
end of the play and hastily bring it to a conclusion, but the force
that has animated it from the first to the last scene.

[Sidenote: _The universal as the Spirit (Reality, Liberty, etc.)._]

What is the universal? It is the Spirit, it is Reality, in so far as
it is truly real, that is, in so far as it is unity of thought and
willing; it is Life, in so far as realized in its profundity as this
unity itself; it is Freedom, if a reality so conceived be perpetual
development, creation, progress. Outside the Spirit nothing is
thinkable in a truly universal form. Æsthetic, Logic, Historic, this
very Philosophy of the practical, have demonstrated and confirmed
this truth in every way. Every other concept brought forward reveals
itself (and has revealed itself beneath our analysis), either as a
feigned universal, or as something contingent that has been abstracted
and generalized, or as the hypostasis of certain of our particular
spiritual products, such as mathematical formulæ, or as the negation of
the Spirit, on which is conferred positive value (first with metaphor
and then with metaphysic).

And the moral individual who wills the universal, or that which
transcends him as an individual, turns precisely to the Spirit, to
real Reality, to true Life, to Liberty. The universal is in concrete
the universal individualized, and the individual is real in so far as
he is also universal. He is not able to assert one part of himself
without asserting the other (under the penalty of stopping half-way,
_dimidiatus vir,_ and so of again becoming nothing). But in order to
assert them both, he must first posit the one as explicit and the other
as implicit, and then make the other also explicit. Man as economic
individual, at the first moment (so to speak) of his revealing himself
to life and to existence, cannot will, save individually: will his
own individual existence. There is no man, however moral he be, who
does not begin in this way. How could he ever surpass and finally
deny his own individual life, if he had not first affirmed it and
did not reaffirm it at every instant? But he who should stop at that
affirmation of the individual, regarding the first stage of development
as the resting-place, would enter into profound contradiction with
himself. He should will, not only his own self individualized, but also
that self, which, being in all selves, is their common Father. Thus he
promotes the realization of the Real, lives a full life and makes his
heart beat in harmony with the universe: _cor cordium._

The moral individual has this consciousness of working for the Whole.
Every action, however diverse, which conforms to ethical duty, conforms
to Life; and if, instead of promoting Life, it should depress and
mortify it, for that very reason it would be immoral. Where facts seem
to demonstrate the contrary, the interpretation of facts is erroneous,
since it affirms as a criterion of judgment a life which is not that
true life, which, as we know, we serve even by dying--dying as an
individual, as a collectivity, as a social class, or as a people. The
most humble moral act can be resolved into this volition of the Spirit
in universal. Thus it happens that the soul of a simple and ignorant
man, altogether devoted to his rude duty, vibrates in unison with that
of the philosopher, whose mind receives into it the universal Spirit:
what the one thinks at that moment, the other does, thus attaining
by his own path to that full satisfaction, that act of life, that
fruitful conjunction with the Real, which the other has attained to by
a different path. It may be said that the moral man is a _practical
philosopher_ and the philosopher a _theoretic actor._

[Sidenote: _Moral acts as volitions of the Spirit._]

This criterion of the Spirit, of Progress, of Reality, is the intimate
measure of our acts in the moral conscience, as it is the foundation,
more or less clearly expressed, of our moral judgments. Why do we exalt
Giordano Bruno, who allowed himself to be condemned to the stake for
asserting his philosophy? Perhaps for the calmness with which he faced
the torture? But many fanatics, even malefactors, are capable of this,
and it may sometimes even be a simple sensual desire, of which we
have seen examples in history and of which a modern Italian poet has
lately sung, exalting the beauty of the flame and the voluptuousness of
the pyre. By facing death and refusing to deny his philosophy, Bruno
contributed to the creation of a larger form of civilization, and
for this reason he is not only a victim, but also a _martyr,_ in the
etymological sense of the word: witness and realizer of a demand of
the Spirit in universal.--Why do we praise the charitable man? Perhaps
because he yields to the emotion caused by the spectacle of suffering.
But emotion in itself is neither moral nor immoral, and thus to yield
to it materially is weakness, that is, immorality. The charitable man,
when he removes or mitigates suffering, relights a life and reconquers
a force for the common work, which both he and the person whom he has
benefited, must serve.

[Sidenote: _Critique of antimoralism._]

There is indeed nothing more foolish than antimoralism, so much the
fashion in our day; it is an ugly echo of unhealthy social conditions,
of one-sided theories ill understood (Marxism, Nietzscheianism).
Antimoralism is justified, in so far as it combats moral hypocrisy
in favour of effective morality instead of that of mere words, but
it loses all meaning when it inflates empty phrases or combines
contradictory propositions and preaches against morality itself. By so
doing, it thinks to celebrate strength, health and freedom, but on the
contrary exalts servitude to unbridled passions, the apparent health of
the invalid and the apparent strength of the maniac. Morality (begging
pardon of literary immoralists), far from being a pedantic fiction or
the consolation of the impotent, is _good blood against bad blood._

[Sidenote: _Confused tendencies of tautological, material, religious
formulæ, etc., toward the Ethic of the Spirit._]

We must also declare that this truth concerning the ethical principle
understood as will that has for its end the universal or the Spirit,
is to some extent confirmed by several of the formulæ that we have
criticized, which have erred only in defining it, either confusing
altogether the universal and the contingent, or have fallen into
tautologism. Those who posit Life, or the interest of the Species,
Society or the State, as the end of morality, have in view that Life,
that Species, that Society, or that ideal State, which is the Spirit
in universal, although they are not able to define it clearly. The
same may be said of other formulæ, which often have a better intention
at starting than that realized in the development of the relative
doctrines, or, on the contrary, a development superior to their bad
initial intention.

[Sidenote: _The Ethic of the Spirit and religious Ethic._]

This function of symbol possessed by idealist Ethic, this
affirmation that the moral act is love and volition of the Spirit
in universal, is to be found above all in religious and Christian
Ethic, in the Ethic of love and of the anxious search for the divine
presence. This is the fundamental characteristic of religious Ethic,
which remains unknown to vulgar rationalists and intellectualists, to
so-called free-thinkers, and to frequenters of masonic lodges, owing to
their narrow party passion or lack of mental subtlety. There is hardly
an ethical truth (and we have already had occasion to refer to this
matter) that cannot be expressed with the words that we have learned
as children from traditional religion, and which rise spontaneously
to the lips, as the most elevated, the most appropriate and the most
beautiful; words which are certainly impregnated with mythology, but
are also weighty with profound philosophical content. There is without
doubt an exceedingly strong antithesis between the idealist philosopher
and the religious individual, but it is not greater than that within
ourselves, when, in the imminence of a crisis, we are divided in
soul and yet very near to unity and to interior conciliation. If the
religious man cannot but see in the philosopher his adversary, his
mortal foe, the philosopher, on the other hand, sees in him his younger
brother, his very self of a moment past. Hence he will feel himself
more nearly allied to an austere, emotional, religious Ethic, troubled
with phantoms, than to an Ethic that is superficially rationalistic:
for this latter is only in appearance more philosophical than the
other, since if it possess the merit of recognizing (verbally only, or
with _psittacism,_ as Leibnitz would have said) the supreme rights of
reason, yet in plucking thought from the soil in which it has grown and
depriving it of vital sap, it exercises them very ill.




III


HISTORICAL NOTES


[Sidenote: _Merit of the Kantian Ethic._]

I. It is the singular merit of Kant to have put an end, once for all,
to every material Ethic, by proving its utilitarian character: a
merit that is not cancelled by the lacunæ that exist in other parts
of his thought, entangling him unawares in the materialism and in the
utilitarianism that he had surpassed. It would be anti-historical to
desire to judge a thinker by the contradictions into which he falls
and so to declare his work to be a failure and of no importance, when
it is only imperfect. There are errors in all the works of man, and
error is always contradiction; but he who has the eye of the historian
discovers where lies the true strength of a thought and does not deny
the light, because of necessity accompanied with shadow. Before Kant,
ethic was either openly utilitarian or such that although presenting
itself in the deceitful form of Ethic of sympathy, or religious Ethic,
was yet reducible to utilitarianism. Kant conducted an implacable and
destructive war, not only against admitted utilitarian forms, but also
against those that were masked and spurious, called by him material
Ethic.

[Sidenote: _The predecessors of Kant._]

In this too, his predecessors are to be found in traditional philosophy
of Christian origin, or, if it be preferred, Platonic (opposition
of material to formal Ethic can already be observed in the attitude
of Aristotle to Plato). If the fathers and the scholastics had been
divided as to the question of the relation between moral laws and the
divine will, and many of them, especially the mystics, had made that
law to depend upon the divine will and upon nothing else, yet views
had not been wanting, according to which the power of changing at
will the moral laws, that is to say, of changing his own essence, was
denied to God, since he could not be _supra se._ Religious Ethic was
cleansed of every admixture of arbitrarism and utilitarianism by this
solution, accepted by nearly all religious thinkers of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries (by Cudworth, by Malebranche, and finally by
Leibnitz). On the other hand, we cannot but recognize that many other
material formulæ used to be understood in an ideal, or, as we have
said, in a symbolical manner; and certainly that very eudæmonism
of Aristotle, toward which Kant showed himself too severe, was not
the pleasure and happiness of the hedonists and utilitarians, and the
mediety (μεσότης) proposed as the distinctive character of virtue,
although without doubt empty and often incoherent, was already almost
a formal principle. The same is to be said of the Stoic principle of
_following nature_; and coming to the immediate predecessors of Kant,
of that _perfectio_ already mentioned, which Kant, after wavering a
little, reduced to happiness, not, however, without stating that it is
a more indeterminate concept than any other. With Kant, however, the
point was admitted, that the moral law is not to be expressed in any
formula, which contains representative and contingent elements.

[Sidenote: _Defect of that Ethic: agnosticism._]

The defect of the Kantian Ethic is the defect of his whole philosophy:
agnosticism, which prevents his truly surpassing either the phenomenon
or the thing in itself, leading him, on the one hand, toward
empiricism, on the other toward that transcendental metaphysic, which
no one had done more to discredit than himself. He combated the concept
of the good or supreme good as the principle of Ethic, and he was right
in so far as he understood it as object of any sort, of "a good," as of
a "thing." But this did not exempt him from the duty of defining the
supreme good as that which is not exhausted in any particular object,
or of determining the universal. Now his philosophy was incapable of
attaining to the universal.

[Sidenote: _Critique of Hegel and of others._]

Hence the involuntary return to utilitarianism, clearly stated by Hegel
in his youthful essay upon natural Right. The practical principle of
Kant (remarked Hegel) is not a true but a negative absolute; hence
with him the principle of morality becomes converted into immorality:
since every fact can be thought in the form of universality, it is
never known what fact should be received into the law. In the famous
example of the deposit, Kant had said that it is necessary to keep
faith as regards the deposit, otherwise there would no longer be
deposits.[1] But if there were no more deposits, how would this
constitute a contradiction to the form of the law? There would perhaps
be contradiction and absurdity for material reasons, but it is already
agreed that this is not to be brought up in the argument. Kant wishes
to justify property, but he does not attain to more than the tautology,
that property, if it be property, must be property, opening the way
to the free choice of conceiving at will as duties these or those
contingent definitions of property. The moral maxims of Kant, owing to
the empirical determinations that they assume, are contradictory, not
only of one another, but of themselves. This inevitable degeneration
of the Kantian Ethic was called by Hegel _tautology and formalism_.[2]
Other thinkers were also affected by the utilitarianism of the
Kantian Ethic: Schopenhauer even declared that his doctrine has no
other foundation than egoism, since it can be reduced to the concept
of reciprocity, and he protested against the Kantian theory that we
should be compassionate to animals, in order to exercize ourselves
in the virtue of compassion, judging it to be the effect of the
Judæo-Christian views of Kant.[3] Schopenhauer was in some respect
right in these observations, although as regards animals we must note
that the same attitude is found in Spinoza and in other thinkers and
that it derives from material and utilitarian Ethic; and for the rest
that it would be very unjust to see nothing but egoism in the categoric
imperative of Kant, for this, we repeat, though it constitute its
danger, does not constitute its essential character.

[Sidenote: _Kant and the concept of freedom._]

Nevertheless, in Kant himself, in this thinker, so rich in
contradictions and suggestions, was indicated the concept which, when
elaborated, was to constitute the principle, not merely of tautological
and formalistic, but of concrete and formal Ethic, the concept of
_freedom._ By means of this concept Kant enters into the heart of the
real and reaches that region of which mysticism and religion had from
time to time caught a glimpse and had here and there attained. As the
origin of the rigid Kantian ethical conception and of his abhorrence
for the material and mundane is to be found in Christianity (and in
Paganism), so the origin of the concrete moral idea is to be sought in
St. Augustine, and also in St. Paul, in the mystics and in the great
French Christians of the seventeenth century; in that virtue of which
Pascal wrote as _plus haute que celle des pharisiens et des plus sages
du paganisme,_ and it operates with omnipotent hand, by means of which
alone is it possible _dégager l'âme de l'amour du monde, la retirer
de ce quelle a de plus cher, la faire mourir à soi-même, la porter et
l'attacher uniquement et invariablement à Dieu._[4] The successors
of Kant, especially Fichte and Hegel, closed the circle which he had
left open, and altogether excluding transcendency, they made of God
freedom and of freedom reality. Fichte, who expelled the phantom of the
thing in itself from theoretical philosophy, removed from the categoric
imperative the appearance of _qualitas occulta,_ which it had borne in
the Philosophy of the practical, illuminating that tenebrous region,
ready to receive any sort of phantasm or superstition, such as belief
in a moral law arbitrarily imposed by the divinity.[5] Hegel does not
recognize duty and the categoric imperative, but freedom only, and as
he says, the free spirit is that in which subject and object coincide
and freedom is freely willed.

[Sidenote: _Ethic in the nineteenth century._]

II. After the classical epoch of modern philosophy, in the general
regression of Ethic, the concept of the concreteness and universality
of the practical principle was also lost. Omitting the utilitarians,
who no longer have a place here, it must suffice to record how there
was a return either to the formalistic principles, which Hegel
criticized in Kant (for instance the principle of the Ethic of Rosmini,
the _respect for being,_ afterwards combated by Gioberti), or directly
to those material principles which Kant had already excluded. Such
are the _compassion_ of Schopenhauer, the _five practical ideas_ of
Herbart, the love of Feuerbach, _benevolence_ as the supreme ethical
idea of Lotze, the _theological_ morality of Baader, the _life_ of
Nietzsche, and the like.

The principles of the first were completed with a religious conception
(here too Rosmini may afford an example), and those of the second, when
they did not reveal themselves as utilitarian or tautological, showed
an obscure tendency toward the Ethic of Freedom. This must not be
overlooked in the Ethic of Nietzsche, which despite the rocks and mud
that the thought of Nietzsche drags with it, is yet anti-hedonistic and
anti-utilitarian and quite full of the sense of Life as activity and
power. Positivistic evolutionism is also often unconscious idealism;
and the moral actions, united to evolution, can be interpreted as
those which correspond to the Spirit in universal. The concepts of the
pessimists alone are altogether incapable of idealistic interpretation
(for example, Schopenhauer), and those of the semi-pessimist and
semi-idealist Hartmann are strangely contradictory. He makes morality
to consist of the promotion of civilization, whence so lofty a
condition of the spirit can be attained that it will be possible to
decree universal suicide by means of the vote of all the world.

The question asked after Kant, whether Ethic should be formal
or material, is one that we have made more precise in the other
form, whether Ethic should be abstract or concrete, full or empty,
tautological or expressive--that is (with even greater precision),
whether Ethic can be established before and without a philosophical
system and even be reconciled with agnosticism, has no longer been
understood, even by its pretended followers, the Neocriticists or
Neokantians. These have either believed they had solved it by means of
moderate utilitarianism, or by going outside it and denying the most
secure result of the Kantian critique of Ethic; or they have discussed
it tiresomely, without making a step in advance. Progress indeed was
possible on one condition alone: that a philosophical system should
be constructed not inferior to that of the postkantian idealists. But
this would have been tantamount to demanding the death of neokantianism
or neocriticism, which has not only not attempted to surpass the
idealistic systems, but has even maintained that we should philosophize
without a system, declaring that a system is altogether inconceivable.
The Neokantians can thus be recognized as the descendants of Kant; but
in the same way as the last descendant of the Hapsburgs in Spain,
who was neither emperor, king, soldier, nor man, could be recognized
as the descendant of Charles the Fifth, who was man, soldier, king,
and emperor: because, like his great predecessor, he possessed the
deformed, hanging lip of the Hapsburgs.


[1] _Krit. d. prakt. Vern._ pp. 30-31.

[2] _Ueb. d. wissensch. Behandlungsarten d. Naturrechts,_ in _Werke,_
i. 353; cf. _Gesch. d. Phil._ iii. 533 sqq.

[3] _Gründl, d. Moral,_ in _Werke,_ ed. cit., iii. 538, 542-543.

[4] _Lettres prov._ 1. 5.

[5] _System d. Sittenlehre,_ pp. 49-51.




THIRD PART


LAWS




I


LAWS AS PRODUCTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL


[Sidenote: _Definition of law._]

_Law_ is a volitional act, which has for content a _series_ or _class_
of actions.

[Sidenote: _Philosophical and empirical concepts of society._]

This definition excludes above all from the concept of law a
determination that is generally considered essential to it, the
determination of _society_; this amounts to saying that it also extends
the concept of law to the case of the _isolated individual._ But in
order that there may be no misunderstanding in relation to a point
like this of the highest importance, it will be well to show that the
word "society" has a double meaning, philosophical and empirical, and
if we exclude its empirical sense from the concept of law, it would
neither be possible nor our wish, to exclude its philosophical sense.
Reality is unity and multiplicity together, and an individual is
conceivable, in so far as he is compared with other individuals, and
the process of reality is effective, in so far as individuals enter
into relations with one another. Without multiplicity there would not
be knowledge, action, art or thought, utility or morality; therefore
the isolated individual, torn from the reality that constitutes him
and that he constitutes, is something abstract and absurd. But he
is no longer absurd, when understood in another way, with polemical
intention against a false concept; as an individual not absolutely,
but relatively isolated, in respect to certain contingent conditions
which had wrongly been held essential: in which case the concept of
society is conversely itself abstract and unreal. "Society," indeed,
is also used to mean a multiplicity of beings of the same species, and
it is evident that here an arbitrary element enters into the problem,
for the naturalistic concept of sameness of species is arbitrary
and approximative; hence the pretended sameness might fail and the
society yet exist all the same. A man may not be able to find those
who resemble him among a multitude of men and conduct himself as if
they did not exist; but this does not prevent his living in the society
of beings that are called natural, with his dog, his horse, with
plants, with the earth, with the dead and with God. When he is placed
in solitude or isolated from the other beings, said to belong to the
same species as himself, that other society, or the communion with
what remains to him of reality, will always continue, thus enabling
him to continue his life of contemplation, of thought, of action and
of morality. In order to understand the Spirit in its universality,
we must separate it from contingencies, and society in the empirical
sense is contingency, which the concept of the isolated individual
(isolated from it and not from reality, from the _societas hominum,_
not from the _societas entium_), enables us to surpass. The great
services which this concept has rendered to Logic, to Æsthetic and
especially to Economy, are known, for the latter only began to develop
the philosophical spirit in itself, when it conceived economic facts
as they take place in the individual, prior to what is called society,
thus positing the concept of an isolated economy. Conversely, Economic,
Æsthetic, Ethic and all philosophical problems and sciences lost their
true nature and became bastardized, when gross _sociologism_ replaced
among social contingencies those universals, which philosophers had
with great labour removed from them and thought in their purity.
Defining laws, then, as facts that occur, not only in society,
but also in the isolated individual, our intention is simply to
concentrate attention upon the concept of _true society,_ which is _all
reality,_ and not allow it to be diverted and confused with accidental
determinations, of the kind that may and may not be.

[Sidenote: _Laws as individual product: programmes of individual life._]

No great art is required to find instances of individuals who make
laws for themselves, carry them out and change them, grant rewards to
themselves and inflict upon themselves punishments; nor is there any
need to incommode the worthy Robinson of the economists to this end.
Without being obliged to make the effort of imagining ourselves cast
upon a desert island and provided only with a sack of corn and the
Bible, it suffices to have eyes and to observe our daily life, for
numbers of examples of internal legislation to present themselves.
Those laws, made for our use and consumption, are called _programmes
of life._ Who can live without programmes? Who does not decide that he
will desire certain actions and avoid certain others? From youth onward
we begin to legislate in this way and this production of internal laws
is interrupted only by death. We say, for instance:--"I shall devote
my life to agriculture: I shall live in the country every year from
June to November; from December to February I shall come to town,
that I may not lose touch with political or social life; from March
to May I shall travel, for pleasure and instruction." This programme
is subdivided and completed with other programmes, according to the
various conditions and possibilities taken into consideration; and laws
are established as to the way one should conduct oneself in respect to
religion, family, friends, the State, the Church and also in respect to
this or that individual; for (as is observed by Logic) the individual
conceived as a fixed being, also becomes a concept, abstraction, group,
series, or class. He who wished it, would be able to establish a
parallel between programmes or individual laws and laws that are called
social: in the individual would be found fundamental statutes, laws,
rules, ordinances, temporary arrangements, contracts, single laws and
all the other legal forms found in societies. Now in what conceivable
way do the programmes of the individual differ from those of society?
Are not those laws _programmes,_ and are not those programmes _laws?_

[Sidenote: _Exclusion of the character of compulsion and critique of
this concept._]

To this interrogation of ours, which does not express a doubt within
us, but states what seems to be an undeniable fact, defying any sort
of contradiction, may be objected (and it is a common objection)
that there is a great difference between individual laws and those of
society or of the State: these are compulsory, those are not; and for
this reason these are true laws, while the others are mere programmes.
But we cannot attach any importance to this objection, at least as thus
formulated; because, having now traversed the whole of the Philosophy
of the practical, general, and special, we have never met with what
is called compulsion in the circle of willing and doing, save in the
negative sense of deficiency of will and action. No action can ever
be compulsory; every action is free, because the Spirit is freedom;
there may not be action in a certain case, but a compulsory action
is inconceivable, since it is a question of terms that exclude one
another. Does the fact give the lie to our assertion? Let us examine
the fact for a little, face to face and without preconceptions. Let us
for this purpose take an extreme case: for instance, that of the law of
a most powerful despot, who, being in command of police, should order a
group of men to bring their first-born to sacrifice to the god in whom
he believes, but they do not. Are the men who hear this manifestation
of will constrained by it? What menace can make him who wishes to say
no, say yes? That group of men will rebel, will take up arms, will
rout the troops of the despot, will put him to death, or render him
incapable of harming; and in this hypothesis the law will not reveal
any character, of compulsion. But in the other hypothesis also, where
they do not rebel and in the meantime bow to the will of the despot,
either that they may not risk their own lives, or because they defer
their rebellion to a more propitious moment and consign their sons
to death; they will not have suffered any compulsion, but will have
freely willed: they will have willed to preserve their own lives at
the expense of their sons'; or to sacrifice some of them in order to
have the time to put themselves into such a position that they may be
able to rebel with the hope of victory. Thus we find in social laws,
now observance, now inobservance of the law; but both occur in freedom.
Inobservance may be followed by what is called punishment (that is to
say, the legislator who has imposed a given class of actions, will
adopt certain definite measures against those who do not obey them; to
wit: he will will another class of actions, destined to render possible
the first, because the punishment is a new condition of things set
before the individual, according to which he must alter his previous
mode of action); but the punishment always finds itself face to face
with the freedom of the individual. He will be able freely to observe
the law in order to avoid the punishment or its recurrence; but he will
also be able freely to rebel against it, as in the instance adduced.

[Sidenote: _Identical characteristics of individual and social laws._]

If compulsion be wanting to individual laws, this is because it is
also always wanting to social laws: while, on the contrary, what is
really present in social laws is equally present in the observances and
rebellions, rewards and punishments of individual laws.

To return to the former example: the individual who has decided to
devote himself to agriculture as programme of life, may be seized
all of a sudden with a great desire to devote himself to painting or
to music; and what had previously pleased may henceforward displease
him: that intimacy with mother earth, with harvests and vintages,
which seemed to be the very life for him, his true ideal, may come to
seem to him tiresome and repugnant. But if he be a serious person,
if he do not will and not will at every moment, if he do not present
in his own individuality a complete resemblance to those peoples
who change in mid-November the laws made in October and proceed
from revolution to revolution, he will examine his situation and
will recognize, for instance, that the desire arisen in his soul is
a velleity that does not answer to his true vocation and that the
first programme must remain intact; hence will take place in him a
struggle between that programme and the new rebellious volition. It
may happen that in this case the individual will sometimes neglect
the programme traced, in order to abandon himself to the temptations
of his pictorial or musical dilettanteism; but since this will happen
against his individual law, and since force must remain on the side of
law, this breach of observance will be followed by special measures,
such as the throwing away of brushes and violin, or by his forbidding
to himself those moments of recreation in such amusements, which he
used to allow himself and which have now become dangerous. In other
words, the individual inflicts punishments on himself in case of the
non-observance of his law, and these punishments must be held to be
such in the strictest sense of the term. And if we accept the other
hypothesis, analogous to that made in the case of social laws, should
the individual find himself possessed with so vehement a desire of
becoming a painter or a musician, as to be compelled to believe that
the original programme, the original law of his individuality, did
not correspond, or no longer corresponded with his true temperament,
he will rebel against the law and destroy it in himself, in the same
manner as in the other example the people destroyed the law of the
despot, by fighting with him, imprisoning, or slaying him.

[Sidenote: _Individual laws as in ultimate analysis alone real._]

Individual programmes or laws then are laws, and this concept includes
the isolated individual as well as society; and therefore the character
of sociality is not essential to the concept of law. Thus, to be more
precise, the only laws that really exist are individual laws and it is
not possible to conceive of social and individual laws as two forms
of the general concept of laws; unless individual and society be both
understood in the empirical sense, thus abandoning philosophical
consideration. If the individual be understood in the philosophical
sense, in which he is the Spirit concrete and individualized, it
is clear that what are called social laws can also be reduced to
individual laws; because, in order to observe a law, we must make
it our own, that is to say, individualize it, and in order to rebel
against it, we must expel it from our own personality, in which it
wished unduly to remain or to introduce itself.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the division of laws into judicial and social
and into their sub-classes. Empiricity of every division of laws._]

The exclusion of the character of sociality from the concept of law
frees philosophy from a series of problems, grafted upon that pretended
character. The principal of these was that of the distinction of social
laws into political and judicial, on the one hand and merely social
on the other; and the further distinction of judicial law into public
and private, civil and penal, national and international, into laws
properly so called and regulations, and so on. If the concept itself of
social law be empirical, then all the distinctions and sub-distinctions
of it proposed must also be empirical, and altogether without
philosophical value. So true is this that it is impossible to decide
for one distinction or definition against another, or to correct those
hitherto given by proposing new ones. Whoever undertakes to examine
any one of these distinctions, at once realizes the aphilosophical
character affirmed of them _a priori._ Thus judicial or political laws
have been distinguished from the merely social, with the affirmation
that those are compulsory, these conventional; whereas compulsion is
impossible in both cases, for the reasons given, and if by compulsion
be meant the threat of a penalty, this is to be found in merely social
laws, not less than in judicial. The law against the falsification
of public money is usually described as judicial: he who falsifies
it runs the risk of undergoing some years' imprisonment. It is a law
called social that we must answer a salutation with a salutation: he
who does not do this runs the risk of being held ill-bred and excluded
from the society of the well-bred. What essential difference is there
between the two laws? An attempt has been made to differentiate them by
saying that the former has emanated from and is sustained by a _supreme
power,_ vigilant as to its observance, the second from particular
circles of individuals. But where is the seat of this supreme power?
Certainly not in a superindividual, who dominates individuals, but in
individuals themselves. And in this case its power and value correspond
with the power of the individuals who compose it; that is to say,
it is the law of a circle, empirically considered to be larger and
stronger, but whose volitions are realized in so far as the individuals
composing it spontaneously conform to them, because they recognize the
convenience of doing so. Monarchs who believed themselves to be most
powerful, have realized at certain moments that the power did not at
all reside in their persons or title, but in a universal consensus
of opinion, failing which their power vanished, or was reduced to a
gesture of solitary command, not far removed from the ridiculous. Laws
that seem to be excellent remain unapplied, because they meet with
tacit general resistance, or as is said, do not accord with custom:
this should suffice to enlighten the mind as to the inseverable unity
of what is called the State and what is called society. The State
is not a being, but a mobile complex of varied relations between
individuals. It may be convenient to limit this complex as well as
possible, to make a being of it to oppose other complexes: of this
there can be no doubt; and let us leave to jurists the excogitation
of these and other similar distinctions, fictitious but opportune;
nor let us consider that their work should be declared in the least
absurd. We only say that it must not be forgotten that the fictitious
is fictitious, as is the claim made to reason about it as rational
and philosophical, and to fill volumes and volumes with tiresome
disquisitions, which are necessarily vain, though the distinctions that
form their object are not vain in their circle. We who are not jurists
but philosophers, and to whom it is therefore not permitted to produce
and adopt practical distinctions, must conceive as laws and include
equally in the same category, alike the English _Magna Charta_ and
the statute of the Sicilian _Mafia,_ or of the Neapolitan _Camorra;_
the _Regula monachorum_ of Saint Benedict and that of the _brigata
spendereccia_ that was sung in sonnets by Folgore di San Geminiano and
Cene della Chitarra and is recorded by Dante in the _Inferno;_ the
canon law and the military code, and that _droit parisien,_ which a
certain personage of Balzac had studied for three years in the blue
boudoir of one lady and in the rosy drawing-room of another, and which,
although no one ever speaks of it, yet constitutes (says the great
novelist) _une haute jurisprudence sociale, qui, bien apprise et bien
pratiquée, mène à tout._[1] What more can be said? Even those _literary
and artistic laws are laws_ which express the will to produce works,
possessing this or that other kind of argument and arrangement, as
would be the law that drama should be divided into five or three acts
or _days,_ and that romances must not exceed four or five hundred
pages, 16mo, and that a monumental statue must be nude or heroically
clad. It is evident that if anybody violate these laws, he may be
excluded (and he was indeed excluded) from the academies of good
taste, which did not prevent his being received for that very reason
into the anti-academies of the independents: in just the same way as
to have incurred punishments announced by the penal code is a title of
admission to certain criminal societies.

[Sidenote: _Extension of the concept of law._]

These examples that we have selected among the most extraordinary
and the most apt to scandalize, help to make it quite clear that the
concept of law must be taken in its full logical extension, when
we wish to philosophize about it. Among the many obstacles that
philosophy meets with is a curious sort of false shame, which looks
upon contact with certain arguments as injurious to the dignity of
philosophy: a contact which is avoided by arbitrarily narrowing and
therefore falsifying philosophical concepts. That of law especially
has a tradition of _solemnity,_ and brings with it associations that
must be broken in pieces. Otherwise it is impossible even to understand
what are those _firm and unwritten laws_ of the gods, which Antigone
opposed to the decrees of men and how they exercise their efficiency;
or _the sayings of Lacedaemon,_ in obedience to which fell the three
hundred at Thermopylae; or _the laws of the fatherland,_ which, with
their irresistible authority, caused Socrates to remain at the moment
when others counselled and facilitated his flight. Life is composed of
big and little actions, of least and greatest, or better, of a very
dense web of very diverse actions; and it is not a too brilliant idea
to cut that web in pieces and to throw away some of the pieces as less
beautiful, in order afterwards to contemplate in those pieces only that
have been thus selected, cut out and disconnected, the web that no
longer exists.


[1] Balzac, _Le Père Goriot_ (ed. Paris, Calman Lévy, 1891), p. 85.




II


THE CONSTITUTIVE ELEMENTS OF LAWS. CRITIQUE OF PERMISSIVE LAWS AND OF
NATURAL LAW


[Sidenote: _The volitional character and the character of class._]

The undue restrictions and empirical divisions of the concept of
laws having been destroyed, if our attention be now directed to the
character that has been determined as properly belonging to them,
we have the means of distinguishing them from the other spiritual
forms with which they are often confused, partly as the result of the
metaphors and homonyms usual in ordinary speech. Laws, as has been
said, are _volitional acts_ concerning _classes_ of actions. Therefore,
where the volitional element or the element of class is wanting, there
cannot be law, save in name and by metaphor.


[Sidenote: Distinction of laws from the so-called laws of nature.]

So-called _laws of nature_ or _naturalistic laws_ are not laws,
owing to the absence of the volitional element: they consist of
simple enunciations of relations between empirical concepts, that
is, of rules. This is an instance of what is called a natural law:
platinum melts at a temperature of 1780 degrees; or this other of a
grammatical law: that in the Greek language masculine nouns of the
second declension have the genitive in _ου_(with exceptions, in this
as in the other case). But they are laws in about the same way as
the King of Cups is king; and indeed it is known historically that
this denomination was transported by the Stoics from the domain of
politics, where it had first appeared, to that of nature. Empirical
concepts and rules may, as we know, assume an imperative literary form;
hence it will be said: "If you wish to melt platinum, heat it to 1780
degrees"; "If you wish to speak Greek, decline masculine nouns of the
second declension with an _ου_ in the genitive." But the literary form
does not change anything of their true nature: those imperatives are
hypothetical imperatives, that is, false imperatives, improper laws.
Grammatical and chemical laws will remain mere formulæ, instruments
of knowledge, and not at all of action, until some one obliges me or
I oblige myself to talk Greek, or to open a chemical laboratory where
platinum is melted. The jurist who elaborates cases and rules is not
the legislator: the latter alone (with a sword in one hand) can endow
the excogitations cf the other with the character of law.

[Sidenote: _Implication of the second in the first._]

Certainly an act of will is necessary in order to construct empirical
concepts, formulæ, and rules (as indeed we know), an act of will
which is not that of the will implied in every act of thought, but
is a special and explicit act which, by manipulating representations
and concepts, makes a _quid medium,_ which is neither representation
nor concept, and although altogether irrational from the theoretical
point of view, is of use in the economy of the spirit. But the law in
its true meaning is a volitional act, which _assumes_ that primary
volitional act whence are formed the pseudo-concepts or concepts of
class _as already completed;_ precisely because it is the will which
has for its _object_ a _class_ of objects. It is not possible to
impose speaking according to the rule of the Greek language, or to
melt platinum according to its chemical formula, before these rules
have been laid down. And here appears very clearly the difference
between those two kinds of spiritual products, which the imperative
literary form, given to classes and rules, darkens and confuses. This
difference can be recognized in concrete cases by means of a most
simple expedient: if the rule (as we have already had occasion to
prove) can be converted into a statement of class, then the law is
inconvertible. "If you wish to melt platinum, heat it to 1780 degrees"
is a proposition that is exactly equal to "platinum melts at 1780
degrees." But the law, "Let there be opened in every city a chemical
laboratory where platinum is to be melted," is not to be converted from
the imperative to the indicative, whatever efforts we make.

[Sidenote: _Distinction of laws from practical principles._]

If the volitional element be wanting to naturalistic laws, it is
certainly present in other spiritual formations also denominated and
considered as laws: but not that of _class,_ therefore neither are
these laws. Such is the case with economic and moral law, and through
them, with logical and æsthetic laws. The moral law says, "Will the
universal"; that is to say, "Will the good, the useful, the true, the
beautiful." Therefore (considered in reality and not in scientific
theory, where it appears as the concept of itself) it is a volitional
act. But this volitional act has the spirit itself for object, which
is and exists, in so far as it wills and affirms itself; it has for
object a form or a _universal,_ whereas laws have for object something
material and at the same time not instantaneous, something more or less
fixed, something _general:_ a _class,_ not an _idea._ Universal laws
(that would better be called _principles_) are the Spirit or producer;
true and proper laws are the special product of the spirit; therefore
the first can certainly be called laws, but for an altogether different
reason to the second.

[Sidenote: _Laws and single acts._]

Owing to the absence of the element of generality or of class, no
one would describe a single individuated act as law. The resolution
and action by which I do not rise from my seat at this moment and go
eagerly to meet the friend whose coming at the wrong moment interrupts
me at my work, is a volitional act, not a law; such as on the other
hand would be the volitional act that I might form within myself,
consisting in the intention or the programme of receiving my friends
seated and in a lukewarm way, whenever they should come to visit me in
the hours before noon, in order to make them understand by this act of
mine that they disturb me at my work, and that they should abstain from
their inopportune visits, unless they wish to submit to the penalty of
meeting with anything but a cordial reception from their friend.

[Sidenote: _Identity of imperative, prohibitive, and permissive laws._]

From the general but not universal character that we must recognize
to the content of laws, we have the solution of certain controversies
of the greatest importance which have been and are much discussed,
hitherto without a satisfactory or duly demonstrated conclusion. In
the first place, we must mention the dispute as to whether or no there
exist _permissive_ laws, and whether the formula that the law _aut
jubet aut vetat aut permittit_ is to be accepted. It has generally been
admitted that the law _aut jubet aut vetat,_ and that the permission
is nothing but the removal of a previous inhibition, that is, the
partial or total abrogation of a law. But in reality, the law, since it
is a volitional act, _jubet_ only; to command is to will: to command
that a chemical laboratory be opened in every city means to will that
one should be opened. And since every willing is at the same time a
not-willing, as every affirmation is at the same time a negation, every
command is at the same time an inhibition, and every _jubeo_ is a
_veto_ (whether the will be expressed in the literary form of positive
or negative, of command or of inhibition, is here without importance).

[Sidenote: _Permissive character of every law, and impermissive
character of every principle._]

As to permissive laws, these are inconceivable side by side with the
imperative or prohibitive, not indeed because no law ever permits, but
because by the very fact that those are imperative or prohibitive,
they are at the same time permissive: every _jubeo_ or _veto_ is at
the same time a _permitto._ Principles, as universal volitions, never
permit, because nothing escapes their command; but a single volitional
act, affirming itself, does not exclude for that reason the possibility
that other volitional acts, indeed infinite acts, should be affirmed;
for the singular never exhausts its universal. And laws are volitions
of class, they impose groups of single acts--groups that are more or
less rich, but always contingent: hence a law always leaves all the
other actions and classes of action that can be the object of will
unwilled (that is, neither commanded nor prohibited), and, therefore,
_permitted._ And even if we take all the laws formulated up to a
given moment, all together they do not exhaust the universal; and if
new laws be accumulated, one upon the other, be divided and split up
"with panting breath," to obtain complete exhaustion, a _progressus in
infinitum_ will certainly be attained, but never exhaustion, which is
unattainable. This amounts to saying that outside law or laws, there
is always _the permitted, the lawful, the indifferent, the privilege,
the right,_ or whatever be termed the concept correlative to that
of command, veto, or duty, a duality of terms that expresses the
_finitude_ of law; hence, when a determined privilege, a determined
legal right, a determined right, has been annulled by a new law, when
something previously indifferent has been differentiated, privilege,
the permitted, the indifferent, right, always arise from the bosom of
the new law.

[Sidenote: _Mutability of laws._]

Another contingent character of the content of laws is their
_mutability._ Laws are changeable, whereas principles, or laws of
the universal content, are unchangeable, and ready to give form to
all the most various historical material. Since actual conditions
are constantly changing, it is necessary to add new laws to the old,
to retouch and correct these, or to abolish them altogether. This is
to be seen equally in the programmes of individual lives, as in the
programmes of social and political laws.

[Sidenote: _Empirical concepts as to the modes of change._]

The question as to the number of modes of changing that laws possess
does not concern us, because, philosophically speaking, there is never
but one mode: the free will that produces the new law in new conditions
of fact. Involuntary changing can only be a formula for indicating
certain changes, always voluntary, that occur in a less solemn way
than others; but from these, can never be absent the solemnity of the
human will that celebrates itself. Thus, in like manner, the question
as to whether we should recognize conservation or revolution as the
fundamental concept of practical life, does not concern us; for every
conservative is at the same time a revolutionary, since he is always
obliged to adapt the law that he wishes to preserve to the new facts;
and every revolutionary is also a conservative, since he is obliged to
start from certain laws that he preserves, at any rate provisionally,
that he may change others and substitute for them new laws, which he
in his turn intends to preserve. Revolution for revolution's sake, the
cult of the Goddess Revolution, is an insane effort, which is so none
the less because it has sometimes appeared in History and like all
insane efforts it ends with suicide. Revolution revolutionizes itself
and turns into reaction. Thus when revolutionaries and conservatives
are distinguished and opposed to one another, an empirical distinction
is made there also, the meaning of which is to be found in the
historical circumstances among which it has arisen. Count Cavour was
a conservative in respect to certain problems and revolutionary in
respect to certain others, to such a degree that he seemed to the
Mazzinians to be a conservative and to the clericals and legitimists
a revolutionary. Robespierre, if he were a revolutionary for the
Girondins and at last even for the neo-moderate Danton, yet to the eyes
of Hébert and of Chaumette seemed to be a conservative, enemy of the
free development of the rights of man.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the eternal Code or natural Right._]

We should on the other hand be very careful as to the demand so
often made and also so far as possible put into execution, for _an
eternal code, a limit-legislation or model, a universal, rational, or
natural_ justice, as it has been variously termed. Natural justice,
universal legislation, eternal code, claim to fix the transitory
and are therefore a contradictory concept: contradictory precisely
to the principle of the mutability of laws, which is the necessary
consequence of their contingent and historical character. Were natural
Right permitted to do what it announces, were God to permit that the
affairs of Reality should be carried on according to the ill-assorted
ideas of writers and professors, we should witness with the formation
and application of the eternal Code, the cessation _ipso facto_ of
Development, the end of History, the death of Life and the dissolution
of Reality.

[Sidenote: _Natural justice as the new justice._]

This world-ending does not take place, because, though it be possible
to dwell in contradiction, it is impossible to make it concrete and
actual: God, that is to say Reality, does not permit this. Thus it
happens that under the name of natural justice, two sorts of products
have existed in turn, or sometimes a mixture of those two different
products, which have nothing to do with the programme announced. On the
one hand, projects of new laws that seemed better than the old or good
by comparison with these judged more or less bad, have been proposed
as natural or rational justice, and precisely for this reason the old
laws were called unnatural and irrational and the new _rational and
natural._ Just as passionate and erotic temperaments, uninstructed by
the experience of their past, swear with the utmost seriousness that
their new love will be _constant, eternal and their last,_ so man, when
he creates new laws, is often seized with the illusion that his laws
will not change as did the old ones, forgetting that the old ones were
once young and that they "satisfied divers" in their heyday, to express
oneself in the words of the old carnavalesque song. Those natural
laws are historical, those eternal laws are transitory, like all the
others. All know how in certain times and places, religious tolerance,
freedom of trade, private property, constitutional monarchy, have been
proclaimed eternal; and in others, the extirpation of unbelievers,
commercial protection, communism, the republic, and anarchy.

[Sidenote: _Natural justice as philosophy of the practical._]

Universal concepts, which were nothing but the Principles of the
philosophy of the practical themselves, have on the other hand had a
tendency to be classed as natural justice and to surpass the transitory
and contingent. They are certainly eternal and unchangeable, but no
longer laws, for they are formal and not material. Thus treatises of
natural justice have sometimes become simply treatises (sometimes
very valuable) of the Philosophy of the practical and especially of
Ethic.--When (as to tell the truth has generally been the case) a
practical description has accompanied a general treatment of Ethic,
leading to a series of proposals for social, judicial or political
reform, there has then occurred a _mingling_ of two different
productions, which we have mentioned, philosophy and casuistic. But a
natural justice has always remained unachieved, because unachievable
and contradictory.

[Sidenote: _Critique of natural justice._]

In our times, owing to the increase of the historical sense, the
constructions of natural justice and of the eternal Code have almost
altogether lost the attraction they once exercized. But absurd problems
having their origin in those contradictory concepts still persist
and absurd methods of treating problems of similar origin legitimate
when taken in their true terms. An example of the first of these two
kinds of diseased residues is the treating of the _natural rights_ of
man and the attempt to establish what rights belong to man by nature
and what by historical contingencies. Among the first are enumerated
the right to life, to liberty, to work, to the family and so on; and
among the second, those that have their origin in the Italian State
or in special contracts that have been concluded. But no right of any
sort belongs to man outside society (which in this case means outside
history), that is to say, considered as spirit in universal, save that
of existing as spirit, which indeed is not a right, but necessary
reality. Catalogues of natural rights are either tautologies, which
repeat that man as spirit has the right (and therefore at the same
time the duty) of developing himself as spirit (and he does develop
in this manner, if he be man and be alive); or they are arbitrary
rationalizations of historical contingencies, such as the right to
work, which is nothing but the formula of the workpeople of the
_ateliers nationaux_ in forty-eight, or of the insurgents of Lyons; or
the right to private property, which was the formula of the burghers
against the bonds of feudalism and is again their formula against the
modern proletariat movement.

[Sidenote: _Jusnaturalism persisting in judgments and juridical
problems._]

We must recognize examples of the second kind of error in the
discussions constantly held as to social or political institutions,
when instead of combating them as irrational, or of defending them as
rational in historical circumstances, they are defended and combated
because they differ from or conform to the true idea of right or to
the true idea of those particular institutions, recourse being thus
had to abstract reasons, as has very well been said. A reformer will
maintain the recognition of the right of women to the administrative
or political vote, because women also form part of the State and
have general and particular interests, which they wish to guarantee
directly, without the inter-position of men, whose interests are
sometimes at variance with theirs: an argument that a conservative
will deny altogether, making appeal to the function of woman, enclosed
by eternal law in the circle of the family. A reformer will propose
divorce as the natural complement to matrimony, because, where
spiritual agreement ends, there too should end every other tie, whereas
a conservative will oppose the argument as contradictory to the very
essence of matrimony, comparing such a proposal with concubinage,
or with what is called free love. And so on.--When such arguments
are heard, it is remarked that natural rights are not dead. But
the question as to the political vote for women may be serious or
ridiculous, according to place and time; as divorce is loftily moral or
profoundly immoral, according to time and place, and it is only mental
narrowness or ignorance that can place outside humanity, or believe to
be living or persisting in immorality, peoples that practise divorce
or indissoluble matrimony, or those of to-day, who refuse the vote to
women or those of the future who will recognize their right to it, if
they do recognize it. But even polygamy or free love is not immoral,
irrational and unnatural, once it has been an institution considered
legitimate in certain times and places; nor even, we insist upon saying
it (however repugnant to our hearts and to our stomachs of civilized
Europeans), anthropophagy, for even among the anthropophagi were men
(we hope it will be admitted), who felt themselves to be most virtuous
in their clearest consciousness of self, and who nevertheless ate their
like with the same tranquillity that we eat a roast chicken, without
hatred of the chicken, but being quite well aware, for the moment
at any rate, that we are not able to do otherwise. The unconscious
reasoners on the basis of natural law must have forgotten that
page of Cornelius Νepos, which, however, they must certainly have
translated in their first years at the gymnasium: _Expertes literarum
Graecarum nihil rectum nisi quod ipsorum moribus conveniat putabunt.
Hi, si didicerint non eadem omnibus esse honesta atque turpia, SED
OMNIA MAJORUM INSTITUTIS JUDICARI, non admirabuntur nos in Graiorum
virtutibus exponendis mores eorum secutos. Neque enim Cimoni fuit turpe
Atheniensium summo viro, sororem germanam habere in matrimonium: quippe
quum ejus cives eodem uterentur instituto; at id quidem nostris moribus
nefas habetur. Laudi in Graecia ducitur adolescentulis quam plurimos
habere amatores. Nulla Lacedaemoni tam est nobilis vidua quae non ad
scenam eat mercede conducta..._. And he continues to give further
examples.[1] So ancient are the unreasonable tendency to be scandalized
and the reasonable defence of the variety of customs made by good sense.

[1] _Vitae excell. imper.,_ pref.




III


UNREALITY OF THE LAW AND REALITY OF ITS EXECUTION. FUNCTION OF LAW IN
THE PRACTICAL SPIRIT


[Sidenote: _Law as abstract and unreal volition._]

Since law is the volition of a class of actions, it is the volition
of an _abstract._ But as we already know, to will an abstract is
tantamount to willing abstractly. And to will abstractly is not truly
to will, for we will only in concrete, that is, in a determined
situation and with a volitional synthesis corresponding to that
situation, such that it is immediately translated into action, or
better, is at the same time effective action. Consequently it seems
that we should declare the volition that is law to be a pretended
volition: contradictory, because lacking a single, unique and
determined situation; ineffectual, because springing from the insecure
ground of an abstract concept; a volition, in fact, that is not willed;
a volitional act, not real, but _unreal._

[Sidenote: _Ineffectuality of laws and effectuality of practical
principles._]

Such indeed it is. What is really wanted is not the law, but the
single act, done _under_ the law, as it is called, that is to say,
the _execution_ of the law. The single volition is the only one that
is carried out: the execution of the law is the only thing really
and truly willed and done. When the law has been formulated, life
continues ceaselessly to propound its problems, and these either do not
enter into the provisions of the law and are solved simply and solely
with universal practical principles (economic and ethic), or they do
enter into them and then it is necessary _to apply_ the law, unless
it be held to be more convenient to change it, or (this would be a
pathological case) action be not taken against it, although there be
consciousness that this is ill done.

But even when we are in the situations foreseen by the law and act in
accordance with it, or, as is said, _apply or carry out_ the law, we
must not allow ourselves to be misled by all these metaphors; for we
must consider that the single situations in which we will and act can
never be foreseen by the law, nor is it possible to act in accordance
with it, to follow it out and to apply it. Situations are not foreseen,
because nothing is foreseen, and the real fact is always a surprise,
something that happens once only and we can only know it as it is
after it has happened. For the new fact a new measure is necessary;
for the new body a new suit of clothes. The measure of the law, on the
other hand, since it is abstract, hesitates between the universal and
the individual and is without the strength of either. To carry out the
law? But it is only the pedant of life who proposes to do such a thing,
as it is only the pedant of art who attempts to apply the rules of art.
The true artist follows the impulse of his æsthetic conscience, the
practical man the initiative of his practical genius. What is called
the single act, observance and execution of the law, obeys, not the
law, but the ethical or practical principle, and obeys it individually.
The man who has his head full of laws that he has made for himself or
has accepted from others, makes a deep reverence to the Ladies' Law
when the time comes for action, and proceeds on his own initiative.

[Sidenote: _Exemplificatory clarification._]


It is the law that at the age of twenty we must present ourselves in
our district and do military service for a certain time. Let us for
the moment set aside the case in which those called upon to serve
rebel and, having seized the power of the government, abolish the law
of conscription, and re-establish that of voluntary enlistment. And
let us likewise set aside the other case, in which the conscripts
violate the law by deserting and going abroad, or hide in a cave, like
a hero of Padre Bresciani, or (like a good Tolstoian who applies the
principle of non-resistance to evil) allow themselves to be put in
prison rather than touch arms. Let us select the case of the peaceful
burgess who becomes a warrior that he may not go to prison; or of the
good citizen who recognizes his duty of serving his country and for
that reason obeys the law. In presenting himself in his district and
in the regiment, he has obeyed, not the voice of the law (which is a
voice), but his moral conscience, or simply his economic conscience.
This has already been demonstrated and we need not insist upon it.
But how can he ever obey the law, which directs him to do military
service of precisely this or that nature? Each individual has his own
temperament, his own talent, his own particular physical strength, and
each one will lend his services entirely in his own way, different from
that of another. And (be it noted) he will not do so only more or less
well or observing the law more or less, but really in a different way,
even when all observe the law with equal diligence and scrupulosity.
It may seem as if all carry out a military exercise at the same
moment, but the fact is that each man moves in a different way to the
others; or that in a parade march all walk in the same way, but, as a
matter of fact, all (even in the Prussian army) walk in a different
way. If we look at it as a whole and from a distance, there seems to
be uniformity; if we look at it from near at hand we discover the
difference. If we could make the experiment of comparing a regiment
of fifty years before with one of fifty years after, leaving military
regulations, arms, accoutrements, and everything else unaltered in
the interval, the lack of uniformity of the apparent uniformity would
leap to the eyes, a lack of uniformity that would have been rendered
possible by the changes that had taken place in the surrounding life,
in the culture, the moral education, the political conscience, the
mode of nourishment, the dwellings, and so on. But the experiment is
possible, if not in time, then in space, that is to say, by observing
the application of the same military regulations upon two different
populations. Thus one seems to have in hand one book written in two
different languages; which is literally no longer the same book,
but two different books. Giusti translated into Milanese and Porta
translated into Florentine are no longer Porta or Giusti, but two new
poets.

[Sidenote: _Doctrines against the utility of laws. Their
unmaintainability._]

This indubitable truth, as to the impossibility of applying the law and
of incorporating it in facts, and as to the necessity of acting in each
case, according to historical exigencies, is the true reason for the
turning of so many people's heads at different times and in different
places, causing them to proclaim nothing less than the inutility
of laws and to ask for their abolition. If it be necessary to come
eventually to the individual action, and if deliberation and execution
must be remitted to the action of the individual, what is the object of
binding ourselves with bonds, which it is afterwards necessary to tear
off and to break, that we may act? What is the object of laboriously
constructing instruments, which we are obliged to throw away when we
come to practical action, that we may use our naked hands? Owing to
such ingenuous reasonings as these, people have come to long for a
society without laws, in which each will do his own share of work, on
account of its attractiveness alone, as we find among the Harmonicists
of Fourier and in many other anarchical Utopias. Or they have sighed
for the absolute paternal government of the good old days, for the
geniality of a good-hearted tyrant, untrammelled with laws, who will
be able to follow the best dictates of his heart. Or, to descend to
less strange and more actual examples, it has been proposed that the
judge should on each occasion create the law, according to the case
before him; that is to say, that he should cease to be a judge (not
having a law to apply, and properly speaking not being able to give
judgment) and be a free decider of litigation and corrector of customs;
or at least that he should free himself from _legal fictions_ and judge
according to the individual reality of each individual case.

[Sidenote: _Unsustainability of such confutations._]

These theories are without doubt unsustainable, not excluding the last,
which has the appearance of being moderate; because the so-called
judicial fiction is intrinsic to the law and exists even when we
think that it is not present, for it is always a fiction to place a
concrete case in an abstract category. But defenders of the utility of
law have met these erroneous doctrines with the bad argument that law
does not admit of individual solutions, and demands strict obedience,
because the moment of individuality, of inobservance, and of violation
that may be called legitimate, does actually exist in the law and is
intrinsic to its very nature. Both adversaries and defenders of law
are therefore philosophically wrong, those who assert its inutility and
those who claim for it an impossible utility.

[Sidenote: _Empirical meanings of those controversies._]

And we say "philosophically," for it is well known that in this case,
as in so many other disputes of philosophic appearance, are often
concealed disputes of a practical and political nature, in which right
and wrong are divided and connected in an altogether different manner.
The adversaries of laws are often nothing but adversaries of too many
laws, or legitimately demand a less pedantic and mechanical office
for the judge than that which he often has at present; whereas the
maintainers of laws are opposed to revolutionaries, who would wish
to abrogate the definite laws, on which civil progress rests, or to
discredit all laws, and cause society to enter upon a terrible crisis
that would not promise good results. But all this is extraneous to the
philosophic problem.

[Sidenote: _Necessity of laws._]

If the defenders of the utility of laws had wished to make use of an
argument of good sense against their adversaries, of the sort that
imposes, even when it does not rigorously demonstrate their contention,
they might have simply noted the demand for laws, for ordinances,
for justice, for the State, which appears at all points of human
history.--Better a bad government than no government at all; better
laws that are mediocre, but stable, than the frantic pursuit for
better and better laws, with the instability that is the inevitable
consequence! And on the other hand, may God save us from genial
despots, from inspired judges, from tribunals that dive into treasures
of equity!--These are the utterances that we hear in history. Battles
have been fought for _legality,_ and rivers of blood have been shed for
it; for legality are faced the troubles of litigation, and energetic
action is displayed, which only superficial intellects can consider
a waste of time and trouble; for no trouble is superfluous when we
are protecting our own rights, and none is more sacred, since it also
guards the offended majesty of the law, the rights of all. Those who
declaim against laws can well do so with a light heart, for the law
surrounds, protects, and preserves their life for them. No sooner had
all laws disappeared than they would lose the wish to declaim:

    In such wise as when sometimes in the wood
    The shepherd spies the wolf, and straight has lost
    Spirit and sense, and words die on his tongue;

and he would be obliged to have speedy recourse to the remedy and make
laws of some sort again, whatever they be, that he may again resume
his calm, his work and his gossip.

[Sidenote: _Laws as preparation for action._]

Passing from consideration _ad oculos_ to the philosophical, it is to
be said, on the other hand, that the utility of law does not at all
reside in its effectuality, which is something impossible, since the
single act of the individual is alone effectual; but in this, that in
order to will and to carry out the single act, it is usually necessary
to address oneself to the general, of which that individual is a single
case; that is, to address oneself to the group, of which the individual
is a component part, just as in aiming we generally begin by aiming at
the region where is the point upon which the aim will be fixed. Law is
not a real and effectual volition; it is without doubt an imperfect and
contradictory volition, but for that very reason a preparation for the
synthetic and perfect volition. Law, in short, since it is the volition
of an abstract, is not a real volition, but an _aid_ to real volition;
as (to employ the usual comparison) wooden bridges and scaffoldings are
aids to the construction of a house and have not been useless, because
they must be pulled down when the house has been built.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.

[Sidenote: _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.




IV


CONFUSION BETWEEN LAWS AND PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL
LEGALISM AND OF JESUITIC MORALITY


[Sidenote: _Transformation of principles into practical laws:
legalism._]

Nothing perhaps better makes clear the true nature of laws than the
examination of the very grave errors introduced by their means into
the Philosophy of the practical: for, owing to the failure to perceive
the character of mere _aid_ proper to their function, laws have been
confused with practical principles, these being looked upon as laws and
those as principles.

[Sidenote: _Genesis of the concept of the practically licit and
indifferent._]

We always live surrounded by innumerable laws, although these are
always finite in number. The Decalogue also admonishes: "Take not
the name of God in vain"; "Honour thy father and thy, mother"; "Thou
shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt commit no murder"; "Thou shalt not covet
thy neighbour's house, nor his wife, nor his man-servant, nor his
maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his"; etc.
The decalogue or hectalogue of prudence admonishes us: "Raise not up
against thee too many enemies "; "Mind your own business"; "Conciliate
him who is more powerful than thou"; "Hurt him who hurts thee"; etc.
Those laws that are so many and so minute easily lead to the false
belief that they suffice together to regulate our economic action and
our moral life, and that practical principles can be substituted for
and be fully represented by a Decalogue or code, which should be the
true and proper regulator of human life.

But the Decalogue, the code, the _Corpus juris,_ ample and minute
though they be, are not, as we know, capable of exhausting the infinity
of actions conditioned by the infinite variety of facts. Every law
brings with it, as its necessary correlative, as the shadow of its
light, actions that are indifferent and indifferentiable, the legally
indifferent, the licit, the permissible, the right, the faculty of
doing or of not doing. As an inevitable consequence of this, practical
principles having been conceived as a series or complex of laws, the
concept of the _practically indifferent_ must also be posited and the
_licit_ changed from _legal_ to _practical._

[Sidenote: _Consequence of this: the arbitrary._]

And this is what happens. At every moment of life we find ourselves
face to face with actual situations, to which the laws that we possess
either do not apply at all, or apply only in the approximative way
that we have seen; at every moment of life, we find ourselves without
the guidance of the law, face to face with the indifferent and the
indifferentiated. The practical man knows well that the laws were a
mere help, merely a preparatory stage to action, and that he must in
each case face the actual situation as it arises, intuite and perceive
it in its originality, and perform his own action with originality.
But he who has accepted the _legalitarian_ conception of the practical
activity and has abandoned practical principles as useless or looked
upon them as non-existent, now that he finds himself abandoned also by
the laws, in which he had put too much trust, has no other guide on
which to fall back save his own _will._

And will is not a guide but _the lack of a guide_; it is not action
but inaction, that is to say, contradictory action; not activity, but
passivity, not prudence and good, but imprudence and evil.

Thus the legalitarian conception of practical principles produces
neither more nor less than the death of the practical, installing
passivity in the place of activity, evil in the place of good.

The legalitarian theory, which proposes to fix and to determine with
precision the true concept of freedom, arrives at just the opposite
result: the will.

[Sidenote: _Ethical legalism as simply a particular case of practical
legalism._]

It is opportune to remark here that moral legalism, which has hitherto
alone occupied the attention of critics, is nothing but a particular
case of general practical legalism, and if the particular and not
the general case has been observed, this has depended upon the
failure to recognize the economic form in its autonomy, so common
with philosophers. But from the examples that we have given, it has
clearly resulted that legalism is an error which embraces alike
Economy and Ethic, introducing into both the philosophic absurdity of
the _practically indifferent._ Even a man without moral conscience,
or one deprived of it for a moment, if he conceive the guidance of
his utilitarian action in the form of laws, loses the compass of his
utilitarianism and falls into the arbitrary, which is the ruin of his
own individuality. If (to resume the usual example) I impose upon
myself the not drinking of wine as a hygienic law, and it happen to me
to find myself at a certain moment in such physiological conditions
that a glass of wine can accelerate the beating of the heart and
restore to me the strength of which I am in need; and if, through faith
in the established law, I forget that the law is conditional and not
absolute and that the only absolute law is to do at a given moment
what is useful at that moment; it is evident that by so reasoning and
acting, I am substituting superstition and therefore the arbitrary for
prudence and that I am causing injury to myself.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the practically indifferent._]

It is necessary to maintain against the morally and practically
indifferent, that it is a concept altogether external to Ethic and
Economic and devastates it terribly whenever it penetrates into it,
or (what is worse) subtly corrupts it. In Economic as in Ethic, in
the true and proper practical field, there is no _faculty_ that is
not also _obligation_; there is no _right_ that is not at the same
time a _duty;_ there is nothing _licit_ that is not _forbidden;_ nor
_permitted_ that is not turned into a _command._ πάντα ἔξεστιν, ἀλλ' οὐ
πάντα συμφέρει, said St. Paul,[1] in obscure but suggestive language
that has been much discussed--all is allowed to us but we do not allow
anything--we should say in explanation; everything can and should be
spiritually elaborated by the will and receive the form of freedom.
But in order to destroy that paradoxical concept at the roots, it
is necessary to reach the point underground where the concept of
_practical legalism_ is to be found, and to show, as we have done, its
origin, in the confusion between _principles and laws._

[Sidenote: _Contests between rigorists and latitudinarians and their
common error._]

In vain have the _rigorists,_ becoming aware of the ruin that menaced
the theory of Ethic, struggled against the theoreticians of the morally
indifferent, or _latitudinarians._ So long as neither party left the
legalitarian field, one side was right against the other and both were
equally wrong, Pharisees and Sadducees, Jansenists and Molinists.
The rigorists clung desperately to the law, refusing to admit that
it could be _doubtful_ and give rise to the morally indifferent; the
law was _certain._ But the law is never really either doubtful or
certain: revolving upon empirical concepts, it never limits anything
with precision and therefore is not certain; having for its object,
not concrete action, but only preparation for it, does not propose to
limit the illimitable and so is neither uncertain nor doubtful: it
stands on this side or the other of such categories. Thus the rigorists
also found themselves face to face with the morally indifferent, and
had no way of vanquishing it. They could advise the choice of the
most painful and repugnant action, self-denial, self-tormenting; but
this too was a kind of wilfulness and evil. The latitudinarians, on
the other hand, could enlarge the field of the morally indifferent
at their pleasure, placing in evidence the dubiety of law and its
consequent impotence as a practical principle; but since they did not
recognize any practical principle outside the form of law, they were
finally obliged to have recourse to it, that they might have some
point of orientation in the guidance of their lives. And since they
could not find it in the law itself, recognized as doubtful, they were
obliged to place it in the authority of its interpreters; and when
these authorities were at variance, in the adding up of authorities
(just as is done for the Roman jurists in the law of citation made
by Theodosius II.); and since, finally, two or three or four or a
hundred authorities, when they are uncertain, are not of greater value
than one who is equally uncertain, any sort of authority finally had
to suffice them as justification for an action. _Probabilitism,_ far
from being merely an illegitimate degeneration of legalism, is its
logical consequence. Reduced as they were to authority, why should
one be of more account than another, when all are estimable people
worthy of credence? Why should the precedence be given to Papinian
over Paul or over Ulpian? If Villalobos be of opinion that a priest
who has committed a moral sin cannot say mass the same day, Sanchez,
on the other hand, Jopines that he can: why, then, should a priest who
finds himself in that case follow Villalobos rather than Sanchez? It
is true that if he make a blind choice between Villalobos and Sanchez,
he becomes the prey of self-will; but self-will and legalism are
indissoluble, and the more carefully he tries to free himself from the
bond, the more tightly it winds itself around him.

[Sidenote: _Jesuitic morality as doctrine of fraud against the moral
law._]

Practical legalism can also give rise to a monstrously absurd theory,
which we shall call _Jesuitic morality,_ not because it is peculiar
to the Jesuits or to Catholicism, but as dutiful homage to the most
conspicuous and likewise the most celebrated in literature of its
historical incarnations. The theory of Jesuitic morality admits that we
can rationally _defraud_ ethical law.

[Sidenote: _Concept of legal fraud._]

That the law is _defrauded or eluded_ every day, taken in itself, is
neither moral nor immoral, since it is an expedient of social strife
like another, and in certain cases may be a legitimate act of war and
a fraud only in name. A law held to be iniquitous should be combated
openly; but if the imposer of the iniquitous law, or he who wishes to
profit by it, have committed a mistake in drafting it, so that it can
be interpreted in such a way as to become good, or at least better, it
is very natural that the adversary should profit by the mistake, if
for no other reason than that he may discredit the law as equivocal
and lacking in precision and compel society to discuss it again. Who
does not applaud the fraud of Portia, when it is a question of saving
the life of the noble Antonio from a Shylock? And if even the _ferox
animus_ of Shylock has found defenders, as symbol of the tenacity with
which we must make our own rights respected, yet Portia also will
always find her supporters, as symbol of ingenious rebellion against an
unjust law.

[Sidenote: _Absurdity of the fraud against ones self and against the
moral law._]

But what is altogether irrational and yet seems to be admitted by
Jesuitic morality, is _the fraud against oneself,_ and so against one's
own moral conscience. To defraud one's own conscience, to rebel against
it with violence or with artifice, is contradiction, wilfulness, evil.
It sometimes happens that we exert ourselves to still what is called
the internal voice of admonition, the Socratic demon, or the guardian
angel. This happens in the utilitarian, not less than in the moral
field; when, for instance, we yield to a pleasure which we know to be
harmful and had intended to avoid for that reason, and when by dint of
subtleties we try to persuade ourselves that it differs from that which
we had recognized as harmful. We attempt, but we never really succeed;
we may be able to obscure our conscience for an instant, but we can
never permanently and altogether darken it; the effort itself calls for
the light that we would avoid.

[Sidenote: _Jesuitic morality not explainable as mere legalism._]

But that pretension of Jesuitic morality cannot on the other hand
derive from mere ethical legalism, because legalism produces the
contradictions that we have already placed in relief; it generates the
morally indifferent and at the same time suppresses it; and when it
has suppressed again generates, in order again to suppress it; and so
on to infinity, an anxious and sterile doing and undoing. But it never
authorizes fraud. Simple legalism will never justify our pretending to
ourselves when a definite action is willed or when we have a definite
intention, that we will another action and have a different intention;
or, as they say, _direction of the intention_: the intention is that
which it is and it does not allow itself to be directed at will. To
obey the letter of the law with the clear intention of breaking it in
spirit will never be justified.

[Sidenote: _Jesuitic morality as alliance between legalism and
theological utilitarianism._]

The pretension of Jesuitic morality becomes illuminated and transparent
to the intellect, only when we make the hypothesis of an alliance
between _practical legalism and theological utilitarianism_; that is
to say, when not only do we conceive morality as a series or complex
of legislative decisions, but when we likewise consider these to
be nothing less than the product of the will of God. They are not
in themselves moral as such, and to observe them does not arise of
intrinsic necessity; but they are obeyed as the lesser evil, through
fear of worse or in hope of future advantage. In this case there is a
silent struggle between God the legislator and man, a struggle between
the weak and the overbearing, in which the strength of the weak lies in
ingenuity, their tactic in fraud. Hence the dominant concept of Jesuit
morality: to get the better of the divine laws as far as possible, to
do the least possible of what they command; and when called upon to
give an account of one's own actions before the tribunal of confession,
or before the universal judgment, so to subtilize upon the law, that
from the interpretation thus put upon it, what has been done seems to
belong to the licit and permissive. God forbids man to kill man; but
does he intend to forbid this, when the motive for this killing is the
glory of God himself? When the slayer acts as though he were the hand
of God himself and is all one with him? Without doubt, no: so that
it will be lawful for the Jesuit to kill or cause to be killed his
Jansenist adversary, who injures divine interests by disclosing the
defects of the holy Company, which is the image of God upon earth: that
killing, then, is not only lawful, but ordained. But if he want to kill
his adversary, not through zeal for the divine glory, but because of
the injury that he causes to the personal and immoral interests of the
Jesuit? This too is permitted, provided that when killing him, though
animated with personal hate, he withdraw his regard from the real
motive, and _directing_ his intention to the divine glory, thus justify
the _means_ by the _end._

[Sidenote: _Distinction between the doctrine and the practice of the
Jesuits._]

Such is the monstrous logical product, born of the union between
_legalism_ and the theory of _theological utilitarianism_; such is
the essence of Jesuitic morality, which has justly aroused horror and
disgust. And we call it _logical_ (or illogical) product, because
we wish to make it clear that here as elsewhere we are occupied with
theories only and are criticizing them alone. In practical action
Jesuitic morality was often better than the theory would imply; even
the Padre Caramuel, who put the question as to the right possessed by
the Jesuits of slaying the Jansenists, must have been at bottom a good
man; because, having almost arrived at an affirmative conclusion to
his inquiry by dint of perverting the moral law, he was seized by pity
and defrauded his own fraud, concluding negatively that the Jansenists
_occidi non possunt quia nocere non potuerunt,_ because (said he)
they are poor devils, unable to obscure the glorious brilliance of
the Company, as the owl does not conceal the light of the sun.[2] And
Saint Alphonso dei Liguori, who is usually looked upon as an example
of that lurid morality in our day, when he set to work to stir up
afresh the ugliness of casuistic in connection with the sixth and ninth
commandments, experienced all the repugnance of the gallant gentleman
that he was, at such a task, imposed upon him by the traditional mode
of treating Ethic, as is to be seen by his declarations, exclamations,
and exhortations: _Nunc aegre materiam illam tractandam aggredimur,
cujus vel solum nomen hominum mentes infidi. Det mihi veniam, quaeso,
castus lector!... Ora studiosos ... ut ... eo tempore saepius mentem
ad Deum elevent et Virgini immaculatae se commendent, ne dum aliorum
animos Deo student acquirere, ipsi suarum detrimentum patiantur._[3]
If Jesuitism were also moral corruption, this was not due to its
abstract theories, but to the education that it practised, which was
depressing, servile, and directed to mortify the strength of the will
and of the intelligence, to reduce a man to be like _senis baculus,_
a docile and passive instrument in the hands of others; and to the
confusion in consciences as to the real motives of actions, which it
not only preserved but increased, lulling souls to sleep with sophisms
and allurements of devotion _aisées à pratiquer,_ by means of which the
gates of Paradise could be unlocked, and with _chemins de velours_ on
which one could mount to the sky with every indulgence. The rigorists
and latitudinarians are philosophically equivalent; but it is a fact
that in practice the rigorists were generally energetic and austere
souls; which should not cause us to forget that the latitudinarians
also, amid their distorted theories, sometimes had a lucid vision of
the _complications_ of reality and felt the necessity of a morality
less abstract and less disharmonic in relation to life, however
incorrectly they may nevertheless have developed its theory.


[1] 1 Cor. x. 23.

[2] Pascal, _Prov._ 1. 7.

[3] _Theol. moralis_ 7, Bassano, 1773, i. 168.




V


JUDICIAL ACTIVITY AS AN ACTIVITY GENERICALLY PRACTICAL (ECONOMIC)


[Sidenote: _Legislative activity, as generically practical._]

The will that wills classes of actions, or the activity that makes
laws and that we can henceforward term _legislative activity_ without
fear of misunderstanding, is either moral or merely economic; and
therefore, when dialecticized, is either moral or immoral, economic or
anti-economic. It is true that this will is abstract and indeterminate;
but that does not prevent it from being, and from being obliged to be,
either moral or merely economic; and, therefore, abstractly moral and
abstractly economic, and so also abstractly immoral and anti-economic.
A programme of action will be conceived, as they say, wisely or
foolishly, to a good or to a bad end, for mere reasons of utility, or
with a lively desire for good. The legislator is a volitional man, and
as such to be judged both utilitarianly and morally. The laws that
are his volitional product are useful or injurious, good or bad. This
judgment is also without doubt abstract, for it is necessary first to
see the legislator engaged in the practical act of the application of
his law, in order to recognize what he can do and who he is. We know
many (others or ourselves?) who make plans for the most beautiful
lives, legislating admirably for themselves and for others; yet these
show themselves mean and bad in action: and we not infrequently find
the opposite case of men who calumniate themselves and who, after they
have declared the most dishonest, or at least the most amoralistic, of
intentions, when they find themselves face to face with the bad action,
ugly with the ugliness of sin, say, as the old man in the fable said to
Death: "I have not called thee!"

[Sidenote: _Vanity of disputes as to the character of institutions,
economic or ethic: punishment, matrimony, the State, etc._]

From these considerations, which seem to be most obvious, a not
obvious consequence is to be drawn; namely, that it is perfectly vain
to descant upon the utilitarian or moral character of laws, or of
these or those laws; to ask oneself, for instance, whether the object
of _punishment_ be _deterritio_ or _emendatio_; if _matrimony_ be an
exchange of services or a sacrament, a union of interests or a society
with moral ends; if the _State_ be the result of a contract or of a
moral idea, and so on. These questions have an immense literature
devoted to them, which has been accumulated for centuries, and although
they be vain for us, yet they cannot be so for one who has not yet
become clear as to the special forms of the practical activity and as
to the nature of law. For him they are not vain, since they represent
as it were in a concentrated form, the complete philosophical problem
concerning the practical; although they must of necessity turn out
to be insoluble. Punishment can be conceived and willed as a mere
utilitarian menace, to prevent others from performing certain classes
of actions, even if they be ethically of the highest value; or as
moral solicitude for the amelioration of society and the individual
himself who has erred, by obliging him to re-enter himself and change
his mind. Even the pain of death can be directed to this end and death
that has given or restored to the guilty a day, an hour, an instant
of that human life, of that contact with the infinite, which he had
lost, may be held not to have been in vain. Matrimony may be instituted
for the more regular satisfaction of the sexual instinct and for
other similar interests of utilitarian life; and also to secure, that
interpénétration of souls, which is the great mover of the moral life.
The State may arise from a mere contract which draws together isolated
individuals and groups and unites them for defence and offence; and
also form the profound moral aspiration of the individuals, who
recognize the universal in themselves and are attentive to realize it
in modes ever more rich and more lofty. All institutions, all laws may
receive this double form; and although there be laws that are merely
utilitarian, those that are moral are also, as is clear, utilitarian
or economic, and therefore not useless but useful. An amoral man will
make for himself amoral laws; and between an amoral man and an amoral
woman no other marriage but that of interest is possible; and between
a hundred amoral individuals, no other State is possible but that
established by contract; and no other punishment will be applicable in
such a State save that of mere _deterritio._ It will be objected that
amoral individuals and multitudes do not exist, and it may be true that
they do not exist in a continuous manner: but they do exist at certain
moments; and this as we know, suffices to justify, indeed to prove
necessary, our theory.

[Sidenote: _Legislative activity as economic._]

Thus no other answer is possible to the question asked as to whether
the legislative activity be moral or merely economic, save that it may
be the one or the other, and therefore, that it is not of necessity
moral; thus, defining it in its full extension, it must be called
_generically practical,_ or taken in itself, _merely economic._

[Sidenote: _Juridical activity: its economic character._]

Passing now from the legislative activity to that of him who realizes
and executes the law (an activity that we may call _juridical,_ in
order not to confound it with the other), and asking whether juridical
activity be moral or distinct from morality and if distinct, what is
its distinctive characteristic, the answer cannot but be most simple
for us who have attained to our present position. So simple indeed,
that to give it would seem to be almost superfluous. Not only must the
activity of carrying out the law not be intrinsically diverse from the
activity of legislating, but as has been seen, it obeys exclusively
practical principles, economic and ethic. Hence the 'juridical activity
can be merely economic and it can be moral; and seeing that economicity
is the general form that of itself involves the other, the juridical
activity is generically practical, or _economic. _ As such and in so
far as it is such, it is at once distinct from and united with the
moral form.

[Sidenote: _Its consequent identity with the economic activity._]

But juridical activity does not merely enter the economic activity;
it is exactly identical with it: juridical activity and economic
activity are _synonyms._ Legislative activity enters economy and
nevertheless distinguishes itself from it, as volition of the abstract,
indeterminate volition. The juridical activity is on the other hand
concrete and determined, like the other, nor is it distinguished from
it by any secondary character. It might be attempted to subdistinguish
the economic and juridical activity, while admitting the generic
identification, and to look upon the latter as such that although
obeying the economic principle, it is yet developed _under the laws;_
whereas the former would exist even where _laws were wanting._ But the
distinction would be empirical, of undulating boundaries. Strictly
speaking, man is surrounded with laws in all his actions, and he always
acts under all the laws, and at the same time he effectually acts under
none of them, save that of his own practical conscience.

If the identity and synonymity of law, understood as juridical activity
with economy, has not been discovered, that too is connected with the
lack of recognition of the practical utilitarian category on the part
of philosophers and with their considering it, as they erroneously
did, either as egotism and immorality, or as an altogether empirical
division, to which was added a concept, also empirical, of the
juridical activity itself, which should be limited to what are called
laws emanating from the State, sometimes graciously including in them
social laws, and always altogether ignoring the fundamental form,
individual laws.

[Sidenote: _The failure to recognize the economic form and the meaning
of the problem concerning the distinction between morality and law._]

But this failure of recognition has not prevented the appearance and
persistence of the problem of the _combined unity and distinction of
law and morality,_ which has been the most frequent though the most
complicated mode of affirming the claim of a special Philosophy of
economy. A serious beginning of meditation upon law had hardly begun,
when something was observed in it that it was impossible to resolve
into the concepts of Ethic. Hence the generally admitted recognition
of the distinction between law and morality and the many attempts
at determining of what the peculiar character of the former exactly
consisted.

[Sidenote: _Theories of compulsion and exteriority, as distinctive
characters: critique._]

This character was placed most frequently and with greater insistence
in the two determinations of _compulsion_ and of _exteriority._ And it
was said that law is distinguished from morality because it is possible
to exercize compulsion in the juridical, but not in the moral field;
or that law deals with the field of external relations, morality with
the internal; or that one is the _psychical,_ the other the _physical_
side of action. But as to the first determination, we have already
shown that it has no meaning at all when applied to the forms of the
spiritual activity, where nothing is compulsory and everything is at
once free and necessary: the juridical activity, if it be activity,
must likewise always be determined by free agreement. The second, which
is the determination of exteriority, is not less inconceivable; for it
is not given to separate the external from the internal, since they are
both one, nor the word from its meaning, nor the body from its spirit.
Compulsion and exteriority, taken strictly as concepts, are therefore,
in this case, void and contradictory formulæ. To fill them somehow with
a thought, it would be necessary to understand as compulsion certain
modes of action, as opposed to certain other modes; for instance,
compulsion would be the action by which an accused person was conducted
to prison by two policemen and non-compulsion that of him who should
be induced to go and constitute himself a prisoner through the
persuasion of others; and as exteriority, certain classes of actions
opposed to certain others; so that, for example, the deportment of
an individual as communal or provincial councillor would belong to
external life, his relations with his confessor or with his Æsculapius
to internal life. But compulsion and exteriority, reduced to these
meanings, become gross and empirical concepts, of which no use can be
made in philosophy and which therefore cannot be of the least value as
qualifying and distinguishing law from morality.

In the same way, no value is to be attached to such a distinction,
when determined from what is licit to what is commanded, from rights
to duties, from what is permitted to what is obligatory; because licit
and commanded, rights and duties, from what is permitted to what is
obligatory, are correlative concepts constituting an indissoluble nexus
and it is not possible to separate and to oppose them to one another.

[Sidenote: _Moralistic theories of rights: critique._]

The difficulty of conveniently fixing the distinction with the
characters indicated, leads one to think of a different sort of
tentative, according to which rights would certainly be distinguished
from ethicity, not placed above or beside it, but rather in the
very sphere of morality itself, as the species in respect to the
genus or the part in respect of the whole. Juridical action would be
moral, but it would belong to the inferior levels of morality; it
would be occupied with the execution of simple _justice,_ with the
establishment of order, proportion, equality; whereas morality would
represent _more than justice,_ and would upset the equilibrium of
rights with benevolence, generosity, sacrifice, heroism. Rights (it
is also said) are limited to the _ethical minimum,_ while morality
strives for the _maximum;_ rights are concerned with strict rights or
_perfect_ duties, morality with meritorious and supererogatory actions,
_imperfect_ duties. But these determinations also pretend to separate
the inseparable, by drawing an arbitrary line of division between small
and great actions, between least and greatest, and they employ concepts
that are altogether empirical, as, for instance, that of justice
as distinct from benevolence, of the strictly obligatory from the
meritorious and supererogatory; and worse still than this, metaphors
and symbols, such as equality, order, regularity; or they operate
directly with the arithmetical and geometrical proportion of actions.
And consciously or unconsciously a return is made to Ethic pure and
simple, with the theories that make juridical activity to consist of
the recognition of others as _persons,_ or with the search for _general
utility_ (superindividual). When we act in view of the _person_ in
other individuals (or in oneself), or of the useful, which is not the
useful for the individual, but although it comprehends, yet transcends
it:--the merely juridical conscience has already been surpassed, it has
been filled with a moral content, that is to say, an ethical form has
been given to the practical activity. The double sense of the terms
"rights" and "morality" is in this way preserved in words but denied in
fact.

[Sidenote: _Duality of positive and ideal, historical and natural
rights, etc.; and absurd attempts at unification and co-ordination._]

The dual sense of the terms is also affirmed by the very ancient
distinction between _positive and ideal, historical_ and _natural_
rights, _right_ and _justice,_ or, as it has also been formulated,
between the _two different justices,_ realistic and idealistic,
fruitful in conjunction. Natural rights, with their homonyms just
stated, besides the generically practical significations that we have
already examined, have also had the narrower one of ethical ideal or
morality; and therefore it cannot cause astonishment that it should
appear now conjoined with, now detached from positive rights. But how
joined and disjoined? For us it is a question of degrees, whence the
positivity of both forms is recognized: the second of these is included
in the first: the ideal right or morality (if it be right, and not
simply abstract excogitation willed by no one, or vague desire) is
both positive and historical. But those who posited the distinction
without being able to make it definite and so to dominate it were led
to conceive one or the other term as negative; and therefore both as
negative between themselves and existing only in a third: which meant
to reannul the distinction by reducing it to abstract contradiction.
If one of the two were conceived as negative, either the ideal justice
(that is, the seriousness of moral strength) was denied and turned to
ridicule, or positive justice, that is, the seriousness of volitional
strength, was presented as something turbid and impure and at best
as a human imperfection, to which it was advisable to resign oneself
since it would disappear in a society of perfect men or in a future
life of perfection. Juridical activity became something contingent
and mortal. Matters were even worse, if it were found impossible to
eliminate it with similar religious, apocalyptic, or millenary fancies.
The negative was then conceived as positive or co-ordinated with the
positive: hence incredible logical divisions of rights into forms or
species of _moral_ and _immoral rights, of just_ and _unjust_ rights,
in which the species has the function of _negation of the genus,_
almost as though the race of horses were to be divided into two kinds:
_dead_ and _living_ horses! Unjust or immoral rights are not rights,
but a contradiction of them, and if we sometimes describe in this way
a real and effective juridical act (an economic act), it is necessary
to observe that the denomination is given from the point of view of a
superior form of activity. Rights in themselves as rights, understood
positively, are never immoral, but only _amoral._

[Sidenote: _Value of all these theories as confused perception of the
amoral character of justice._]

All these errors, all these sterile tentatives have their origin, as
has been said, in the lively consciousness of a distinction existing
between right and morality and at the same time of the impossibility
of determining this correctly, owing to lack of clarity as to the
purely economic form of the practical activity. When the juridical
activity has been identified with the economic and when juridical
(economic) activity has in consequence been conceived as at once united
with and distinct from morality, we are able to recognize that these
attempts have nevertheless fulfilled a very useful function; that is
to say, they have more or less energetically asserted and defended
the position that there existed a characteristic distinction between
right and morality and that it was necessary to seek for it. They are
therefore far superior, notwithstanding their errors, to that confused
ethical conception, which receives rights and morality indistinctly
into its bosom, or to the utilitaristic conception, which arrives by a
different route at the same indistinction. This merit belongs to the
theories of the moral minimum, of justice, of the two justices and of
the contest between positive and ideal rights; but in a much greater
degree to that of compulsion, of exteriority, of the licit. With these
last was almost unconsciously set in relief the fact that right obeys
a law different from that of Ethic, and may be called _compelled and
not free by comparison with it,_ because not founded upon the necessity
of the universal; that in respect to the supreme _interiority_ of
Ethic it can be considered as something _exterior;_ that in respect
to the ethical imperative, it appears as something indifferentiated
or _licit._ These are without doubt symbols, tautologies, vague and
imprecise phrases, but efficacious in keeping the attention alert and
in promoting doubt and research.

[Sidenote: _Confirmations of this character in the ingenuous
consciousness._]

But the impossibility of absorbing rights into Ethic altogether and
without leaving residues is proclaimed or confessed, not only in the
theories of philosophers, but by simple thought, and especially by the
consciousness we have of the real world being governed, not by abstract
morality, but, as is said, by _force,_ or by the will in action.
"Disarmed prophets" will be efficacious in poetry, but ridiculous in
practical reality: _la force prime le droit,_ precedes it and is always
of greater value than an unreal and contradictory ethical right and
aspiration, afterwards dissolved in the empty and arbitrary. We will
not recall proverbs, maxims, historical examples, though this would be
easy; that little story of Franco Sacchetti which preserves "a fair
speech" of Messer Ridolfo da Camerino, will suffice for all. One of his
nephews had been at Bologna studying law for a good twelve years, and
when, having become an excellent lawyer, he returned to Camerino, he
went to pay a visit to Messer Ridolfo. When he paid the visit, Messer
Ridolfo said, "And what didst thou do at Bologna?" He replied, "My
Lord, I have learned _reason._" Said Messer Ridolfo, "Thou hast spent
thy time ill." The young man replied that the saying seemed to him to
be very strange. "Why was it ill spent, my Lord?" And Messer Ridolfo
said, "_Because thou shouldst have learned force, which is worth two
of the other._" The youth began to smile, and thinking it over again
and again, both he and the others that heard, perceived that what
Messer Ridolfo had said, was true.[1]

[Sidenote: _Comparison between right and language. Grammars and codes._]

And here too we are at last able to establish a parallel between
the practical and theoretic activity, between the problems of the
Philosophy of right and those of Logic and Æsthetic. The comparison of
right and language has been several times attempted, with very great
correction of thought, although necessarily defective execution, since
it was customary to conceive both language and right in an abstract
and empirical manner. Whoever should wish to take up the inquiry
again would do great service, were he to insist upon the fact that
since it has been impossible to understand what language really is,
so long as grammars and vocabularies were taken as its reality, so it
is impossible to understand anything of rights, so long as the eye is
fixed upon laws and codes, or what is even worse, upon the commentaries
of jurists, or upon the abstract volitional fact, or altogether upon
what is not a true and proper volitional fact, but the elaboration of
formulæ and of general concepts.

[Sidenote: _Logic and language; morality and rights._]

Only when rights appear as individual and continually new work of
individuals, only when the attention is directed to the spectacle of
real life and not to the abstractions of legislators and dispenses with
the dissertations of jurists, is it possible to state the problem:
how does this juridical work coincide with, and how does it differ
from moral work? And here too the comparison with language is fitting,
although language be not logicity, yet logical thought cannot become
concrete, save in speaking; so moral activity cannot live, save by
translating itself into laws and institutes, and in the realization of
laws and institutes, that is, in the juridical and economic activity.

Finally, just as the history of a language is always arbitrary and
abstract, so long as it is considered alone, outside the works in which
the language is incarnate and the true history of a language is its
poetry and literature, so _the true history of the rights of a people_
(of the rights that have really been executed and not merely formulated
in laws and codes, be often proved to be a dead letter) cannot but be
altogether one with _the social and political history of that people:_
an altogether juridical or economic history; a history of _wants_ and
of _labour._


[1] Novelle, xl.




VI


HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS


[Sidenote: _Distinction between morality and rights, and its importance
for the history of the economic principle._]

I. The history of the distinction between morality and rights is very
important, precisely because, as has been said, it is the manifestation
of the very strongly--felt desire to posit in some way a philosophy of
the aethical or amoral practical form: a manifestation which is the
most conspicuous of all those that we have had occasion to note on the
subject (theory of politics, theory of the inferior appetitive faculty,
theory of the passions, etc.).[1] And owing to the impossibility of
satisfying that exigency with the intellectual data possessed, the
problem of the relation between rights and morality has become anything
but an amusing puzzle, a theme for true vain eloquence.

Emmanuel Kant in the _Critique of Pure Reason,_ wishing to give a
characteristic example of the difficulty of definitions, found nothing
better to record than that jurists were always seeking a definition
of rights, but had never succeeded in finding one.[2] And a jurist
philosopher of our times (Jhering) has called the definition of rights,
in their difference from morality, the "Cape Horn," or the Cape of
tempests (or shipwrecks?) of juridical science.

[Sidenote: _Indistinction up to the time of Thomas._]

The problem of that distinction is on the other hand relatively recent
and therefore the history of the Philosophy of rights has rightly been
placed not further back than the end of the seventeenth century, or not
much beyond Christian Thomas.[3] Up to that time, it is not possible to
speak strictly of a Philosophy of rights. Treatises of jurisprudence,
of rights and of the State, in regard to what of philosophical they
contained, were nothing but treatises of Ethic; not indeed because
the two sciences were (as they were) materially united in the same
books, but precisely because the two concepts were indistinct. The
speculations of antiquity for this part also of the Philosophy of the
practical have the character of ingenuousness already noted. It would
be incorrect to reconstruct a moralistic philosophy from the rights
of Plato, founding it, for example, upon the theory developed in the
_Gorgias_ as to the eagerness to purge his punishment that should exist
in the criminal, similar, in this respect, to the sick man, who knows
that the medicine will free him from his disease.[4] The researches
of Aristotle also as to justice (perhaps the best the classical world
has left us on the subject), look upon justice in a narrow sense, as
a virtue among virtues,[5] which should not intrinsically possess any
greater reason for distinguishing itself from the other virtues than
they for distinguishing among themselves. The pompous definitions
of the Roman jurists, still the joy of schools of jurisprudence and
of judges' rhetoric, have no philosophical weight and would in any
case confirm the identity of rights with Ethicity, if not absolutely
with the entire knowable and practical universe. There is hardly a
ray of the distinction to be traced in the discussions as to whether
rights exist by nature or by convention and in the concept of a _ἁπλῶς
δίκαιον,_ opposed to that of _πολιτικὸν δίκαιον_ found in Plato, and
more explicitly in Aristotle,[6] and rendered popular by Cicero when
speaking of the _recta ratio, naturae congruens, diffusa in omnes,
constans, sempiterna_; of rights not drawn from the Twelve Tables or
from the pretorian Edict, but _ex intima philosophia_; and of rights
that on the other hand are _varie et ad tempus descriptae populis,_
whence they have the name of laws _favore magis quam re._[7]

This rough distinction between natural and positive, absolute and
relative rights; this concept of an ideal right placed face to face
with real rights, or of which the real should be an imperfect and
partial translation, also reappears in St. Thomas Aquinas and in other
scholastics. And there is nothing more than this in those thinkers who
founded what was called natural rights in the seventeenth century,
such as Grotius and his followers. It is true that the boast of having
distinguished rights from morality and religion has usually been
attributed to that historical period. But it is hardly necessary to
repeat that what was meant by these formulæ were the great social and
political questions which took the form of wars of religion in the
Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; that so-called
distinction, therefore, the result of long strife, though it have great
practical value as a sign of social transformation, has no doctrinal
value. The idea of autonomy, proper to the juridical activity, is
absent even in the profound treatise of Vico on universal rights, for
this contains only an altogether empirical distinction between _virtus_
and _justitia_; of these the first _cum cupiditate pugnai,_ and the
second _utilitates dirigit et exaequat;_ and both derive their origin
from the _vis veri_ or _ratio humana;_ and as all the virtues are
connected and none of them can exist alone (_nulla virtus solitaria_),
so _virtus_ and _justitia_ are at bottom one.[8] The work of Vico,
which gives a new conception of the relation between ideal and history
and most original applications of Roman history, turns out to be
nothing but Ethic, when considered beneath the aspect of Philosophy of
Rights. Nor on the other hand could the problem of the nature of rights
truly form the object of enquiry on the part of utilitarians (Hobbes
and others); with whom, if the absorption of rights in morality was not
found, this did not arise because the one was distinguished from the
other, but because morality itself was denied in what was proper to
itself: the problem of the distinction disappeared, because its terms
disappeared.

[Sidenote: _Thomas and his followers._]

II. Thomas provided the apple of discord, or as might also be said,
cast the leaven of progress into the treatment of rights, when
he distinguished three forms of the _rectum_: the _justum,_ the
_honestum,_ the _decorum,_ placing the first in opposition to the other
two, the _forum externum_ to the _internum,_ and attributing to rights
and justice the character of coercibility.[9] The formula had a rapid
and unsuspected fortune, and became current in the schools. Gundling,
for instance, defined right as the "ordering of external relations."[10]

[Sidenote: _Kant and Fichte._]

It was completely developed and reasoned out, with all the strictness
that its erroneity permitted, in the doctrines of Kant and Fichte, who
were the greatest of Thomas's scholars for this part of the study.
Kant opposed _legality_ to morality; the juridical imperative is
expressed with the formula, "act externally" (_handle äusserlich_);
right is conjoined with the faculty of compulsion (_zwingen._) Hence
his doctrines are often amoralistic or economic as regards individual
juridical institutions, and this is especially the case when he deals
with the State, with matrimony, and with punishment; these were
followed by Fichte, who made some reservations for matrimony alone,
considering it an institution not only juridical, but also natural
and moral.[11] On the other hand rights were for Kant something that
surpassed the individual will and utility; it was the sum of the
conditions by means of which the will of the one can be united with
the will of another, according to a universal law of liberty.[12]
Fichte in like manner conceived of rights as altogether free of every
admixture of morality; as an objective order, arising from the fact
of the individual who coherently affirms himself and his own liberty,
thus also affirming other individuals and their liberty.[13] Both
philosophers thus preserve the moralistic concept of the legal and
the _justum_; rights, although armed with compelling power, are never
force alone, but the external ordering of freedom, namely, justice.
For this reason, Kant explicitly excludes force, in so far as it is
constitutive of rights and speaks of a "force without law"; and both
he and Fichte make coercibility to flow, not from the nature of the
volitional force itself, but from the violation of order. It is just,
says Kant, to repel force with force, when it would interfere with
liberty. The right of coercion (repeats Fichte) is founded solely upon
the violation of the original right. But it remains obscure what this
poor legality, justice, coexistence, and harmony of wills may be;
what force may be and why and how it is connected with the preceding
definition is not investigated. The distinction of the juridical from
the moral sphere is announced and proclaimed more loudly than perhaps
was ever done before or since; but to announce and to proclaim is not
to carry out. If rights be changed into an ordinance more or less
rational, to be identified with the concept of justice, one does not
see how they can exist independently of morality. Kant and Fichte
were prevented from conceiving the juridical function free from every
element of morality or immorality, by the function which they assigned
to compulsion (symbol of law), submitting it to ethical exigencies.
In this uncertainty, there cannot be wanting and there is not wanting
the thought that rights are not indeed an eternal category, but a
historical and transitory fact; and as Spinoza had already said, _si
cum humana natura ita comparatum esset ut homines id quod maxime utile
est maxime cuperent, nulla esset opus arte ad concordiam et fidem_;
Fichte thus looked upon the juridical State simply as a _State of
necessity_ opposed to the _State of reason_: and when perfection has
been attained and there is complete accord of all in the common end,
"the State" (he said) "disappears as a legislative and compulsive
force."[14]

In the ulterior phase of his thought, Fichte _Hegel_ afterwards took
further steps toward a closer union between morality and rights. But
the complete resolution of the first in the second is effected in the
system of Hegel, though it is customary to blame this philosopher for
the opposite fault, namely, that he resolves morality in right. Above
all, Hegel would hear nothing of the concept of force in right: facts
of force and of violence, as, for instance, the relation between a
slave and his master, appertain, according to him, to a circle, which
lies on this side of right, to the subjective spirit, to a world in
which wrong can still be right. The fact that violence and tyranny are
met with in positive rights is an accidental thing and does not affect
its real nature. For Hegel, as for his predecessors, co-operation
arises only as reaction from the violation of what is just, and is
violence preservative of liberty, suppression of the previous violence.
"To define abstract and rigorous rights as law which we can be
compelled to obey, means" (writes Hegel) "to see them as a consequence
of what takes place only by the cross road of wrong." But there is
more: abstract rights, which form the first moment of the Philosophy
of the practical in Hegel, are unreal; he opposes to them the second
moment, morality, which also is abstract and unreal, consisting of the
good intention, which has not yet been incorporated in action and life:
thus concrete reality is realized only in the third moment, in the
ethos, which synthetizes the abstract rights and the abstract morality
of the intention in social life.[15] From this it is clear that the
purely juridical moment does not possess effective spiritual autonomy
for Hegel; _so_ much so, that it is placed by him upon the same plane
as abstract and unreal morality. In consequence of his identification
of rights with ethicity, Hegel is opposed to Kant and Fichte in his
definitions of single rights; he rejects the compulsory and contractual
theory of the State and (the Kantian) theory of matrimony as a strict
contract made between individuals as to the reciprocal use of their
bodies.[16] The compulsory theory of punishment seemed to him to reduce
the latter to a mere economic fact, by means of which "the State as
judging power, opens a business with goods called crimes exchangeable
for other goods, and the code is _the list of prices._"[17]

[Sidenote: _Herbart and Schopenhauer._]

Herbart too denies the originality of the character of compulsion
in the idea of rights, and this is one of his five practical ideas,
or, "the agreement of many wills, thought as a rule that eliminates
strife." But even in this superficial moralistic reduction, force
reappears all of a sudden, one knows not how: society has need of an
external bond, in order to subsist; force and power (_Macht_) are
added to society and _the State_ arises.[18] The same contradictions
are to be found in Schopenhauer: after he has posited the two virtues
of justice and benevolence, he makes a chapter of morality out of the
pure doctrine of law. The science of rights in the specific sense
borrows this chapter in order to study its opposite: all the limits
that morality looks upon as not to be passed without intention of
wrong-doing, on the contrary are considered by the science of rights
as limits, of which violation by others is not to be tolerated and
from which one has the right to expel others. Thus the distinction
between internal and external is in this way reproduced in all
its unmaintainability under the denomination of _rights and their
opposite._ But the bridge of asses is always the junction of rights
with force, that is to say, with the element extraneous to Ethic; and
in this connection Schopenhauer has nothing better to offer than a
comparison. "As there are certain chemical substances never to be found
pure and isolated, but always in some sort of combination with another
element, which gives to them the necessary consistency; so rights, when
they must set foot in the real world and dominate it, have need of a
small adjunct of will and force, in order to be able (notwithstanding
its nature, which is really ideal and therefore ethereal) to operate
and persist in this real and material world, without evaporating and
flying to heaven, as was the case with Hesiod."[19]

[Sidenote: _Rosmini and others._]

Rosmini presents the two elements not well harmonized, as the
eudæmonological and the ethical. Rights for him are not mere
eudæmonism, but a eudæmonistic fact, produced by moral right and
receiving form from it; hence the science of rights "stands between
Eudæmonology and Ethic, so that one of its ends extends to the one
and the other to the other." It would not be easy to explain and to
justify what he calls a mediate science, composed of Eudæmonology
and Ethic; and it would be far less easy to explain how this science
comes to be "completely distinct" as regards its components. If rights
have a moral form, they are moral and not eudæmonological. Owing to
this difficulty Rosmini was led to introduce the concept of the licit
as criterion of differentiation, defining right as "a personal faculty
and power of enjoying, acting and being able to act, a lawful good
that must not be impeded by others."[20] Juridically understood this
constitutes a tautology, ethically something worse. Other Catholic
authors (Taparelli, for example) deplore the separation of _ethos_ from
_jus,_ introduced (they say) by Protestant doctrines and the limitation
of right to what a man can externally exact from others according to
law; "whence it happens that in the enumeration of laws, actions are
sometimes posited that are real moral faults in the agent"; maintaining
on the contrary the necessity of treating morality and rights together,
"for rights are part of morality in the same way that trigonometry and
conic sections are a part of geometric theories."[21]

[Sidenote: _Stahl, Ahrens, Trendelenburg._]

III. If Catholic doctrines deserve mention for their conservativism, it
is necessary to record the names of Stahl, Ahrens, and Trendelenburg,
for no other reason than the great popularity that they enjoyed in
the schools. Stahl divides the ethical action of man into two domains,
differing in content and character. This dualism is founded upon the
double relation of human existence, individual and social, which gives
rise to two forms of imperatives: to the imperative of the individual
will, of religion, and of morality, and to that which aims at moulding
social life and is the imperative of rights. This theory, which has
a varied terminology, can be reduced to the theory of exteriority
(sociality, rights), and interiority (individuality, morality). In
a very similar way Ahrens includes law in the science of the good
or Ethic--the fundamental science. He remarks that good intention,
virtue, are not sufficient to secure to man that complex of material
and spiritual goods of which he has need, and therefore there must be
a second mode of effecting in the good, which what is of importance
would be, not the motives of the will, but the pursuit of the good and
its real existence in life. Trendelenburg (who regrets the classical
concept of the identity of Ethic and Law and looks upon the time
when they began to be distinguished as a beginning of degeneration)
discovers three sides to rights: the _logical,_ the _ethical,_ and
the _physical_ (compulsion),[22] of which none, as we see, is truly
judicial.

[Sidenote: _Utilitarians._]

For the reasons already indicated, it is not necessary to pause
over the juridical ideas of the utilitarians of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, whose last celebrated representatives were,
in England, Bentham, Austin and Spencer. The German Kirchmann is to
be identified with the utilitarian tendency. He reduces morality to
the _respect_ inspired, not by the law, but by the _person_ of the
legislator, a respect afterwards converted into respect for the law
"owing to a peculiarity of human nature, as the result of long custom
and exercise." According to this view, rights are defined as "a union
of pleasure and morality, whether the first calls the second to its
aid or the second the first, in cases when the isolated efficacy of
either should prove insufficient." Thus rights are declared to be, not
an original principle, but the simple union of two different elements.
Jhering failed to surpass utilitarianism, notwithstanding his profound
juridical knowledge and his lively intellect. He attempted to impart
an original character to his utilitarian theory, by declaring that it
was _objective_ in respect to the usual utilitarian theories, but
he always remained under the obligation that he had undertaken, of
showing how the purest ideality of Ethic could be fortified with such,
a conception. The distinctions drawn by Jhering between recompense,
compulsion, duty, and love, since they lack a foundation, vacillate and
prove but little convincing.[23]

[Sidenote: _Recent writers of treatises._]

IV. Running rapidly through other recent philosophers of Rights, we
do not meet with original thoughts that compare with those of Kant,
of Fichte, and of Hegel. Lasson conceives of the philosophy of Rights
as a part of Ethic and co-ordinates with it three other parts--the
philosophy of custom, of morality or doctrine of the virtues and the
doctrine of the ethos or of the ethical personality. Rights are the
first of these three ethical moments and is concerned with the willing
of man as a willing still essentially natural; reason joins it as a
force essentially determining and limiting, at first only external; the
object of rights is to guarantee the conditions of the common life, in
so far as it is the condition for all human ends.--Steinthal recognizes
that rights undoubtedly "possess an exteriority altogether opposed to
the interiority of Ethic; hence, if they be not apprehended in their
profound nature, they may easily be repugnant to moral feeling": they
are "the system of modes of compulsion, by means of which are secured
social ethical ends." But (we repeat) since the external cannot be
separated from the internal, we do not see in what way ethical ends can
be distinguished from their modes of realization. Steinthal also says
that "Ethic is like a river and Rights like the bed of the river": a
comparison that can be variously interpreted, like all comparisons and
which for our part we should be disposed to find excellent, were it
admitted that as the bed of the river, when it runs dry, yet remains
always the bed of a possible river, so Rights can remain without Ethic
and yet be always Rights. But the signification in which Steinthal
employs that comparison is simply the same as the diad of external and
internal; that is to say, he in his turn wishes to distinguish the
indistinguishable, so that it would on the contrary be necessary to
reply that the bed of the river and the river are not two things but
one, because a river without a bed cannot exist and a bed without a
river is not the bed of a river.--Schuppe denies that Rights and the
State can claim what is immoral, but affirms that all the same they
are inferior to the exigencies of morality, because Rights and the
State concern individuals in their spatial-temporal concretion, but
do not attain to the profundity afforded by conscience in universal.
The ethical concept of rights preponderates in Wundt, for he does not
conceive of any other object of rights, subjective and objective, save
morality. Cohen, in like manner, does not admit other independence
to the science of rights save that, of writing in concepts, and of
organizing as a system of concepts the rights that is eternally
unwritten, the moral law.[24]

As we see, if the names of the writers and sometimes their phraseology
change, the thoughts that alternate or combine are always the same.
Rümelin, who undertook to criticize a series of definitions of rights,
from that of Kant onwards, reproved Kant for having drawn too great a
distinction between rights and morality, and others (Ahrens, Stahl,
Trendelenburg) for having drawn too little. Finally, he gives his
definition in a provisional and tentative manner: "juridical ordinance
has the task of assuring to a people that part of the good adapted
for realization by a social force, according to universal norms."
Jellinek distinguishes the norms of rights from those of religion, of
ethicity and of custom, by a triple character: _(a)_ because they are
norms for the external conduct of men among themselves; _(b)_ because
they derive from a recognized external authority; _(c)_ because their
obligatoriness is guaranteed by external powers.--Stammler attaches
secondary importance to the element of compulsion, and although he does
not explicitly identify justice and morality, assigns to them the same
territory, where they should act with different methods, since the
perfectionment of the soul, the character and the thought are distinct
from right behaviour. And adopting the turn of phrase of a famous
proposition of the _Critique of Pure Reason,_ he ends by formulating
the following statement: "Justice without love is empty; compassion
without a right rule is blind." The Frenchman Duguit transports with
greater frankness the centre of rights into morality: he conceives of
rights as altogether different from force; not as _political,_ but
as _limit_ of force; as consciousness of human solidarity, beneath
whose rule we are all placed, State and individual, strong and weak,
governors and governed. French philosophers of rights generally oppose
the German school, in which the character of force is prominent, so
that French juridical philosophy sometimes assumes (for example, in
Fouillée) an attitude analogous to that assumed, as we know, by the
"generous" French economic school toward the English economists. And
merely that some Italian name should not be absent from this review of
recent writers, we will record Miraglia, who repeats the old Kantian
division, making it yet more empirical: "Morality and rights are part
of Ethic, because the good can be chiefly developed in the intimate
relations of the conscience, or on the contrary can be developed
by preference in the external relations between man and man and
between man and thing";--and Vanni, who mixes a little positivistic
evolutionism with this empirical reduction, affirming that rights are
not originally distinct from morality, but that afterwards they were
gradually differentiated, and rights now have the special function of
guardianship and guarantee: "that is to say, the ethical minimum alone
has been guaranteed, that much of the ethical field as is most directly
necessary for the maintenance of life in common, leaving to other
forces the task of regulating what is most individual in life." And so
on, though it seems that this is enough.[25]

[Sidenote: _Strident contradictions. Stammler._]

Such are the contradictions in which the Philosophy of rights has
struggled for about two centuries. Rights do not seem to be identical
with Ethic, but they also do not seem to be simply different; they
seem to be at once identical and different, but yet it has been found
impossible to fix the element of difference with the concepts of
external, of compulsion and others such. The thought of a difference
between the two forms of activity has not been further eliminated;
but neither has it been transformed and absorbed. This is a morbid
condition, of which the gravest symptom is the logical absurdity of
the aforesaid two rights and two justices. Rümelin talks of the pure
ideal justice, which selects from the evidence and judges on the basis
of immediate impressions of feeling; and of a realistic, rational,
empirical, disciplined and developed justice: two justices that must
however act together.[26] Others, seeking relations between those two
concepts from a single fact and failing to conquer the difficulty,
force logic by distinguishing between _concept_ and _ideal_ of rights,
or (as Vanni said) between _logical_ concept and concept of the
_rational exigencies_ of rights: as though a concept could be truly
logical, if it do not derive from rational exigencies, and as if these
can be valid, if they be not the concept itself. Worse still, Stammler
affirms the identity of rights with moral rights, and of rights alone
with immoral rights, arriving at the already criticized division of
effective rights (_Gesetzes_) into two classes. It "is either right
rights (_richtiges Recht_) or not; and right rights are effective,
whose content of will possesses the property of being _right._ Hence,
right rights stand to effective rights as _species to genus._"[27]
To meditate upon this plan of division is more than sufficient to
produce the conviction of the failure of the Philosophy of rights, as
it has been developed and as it could be developed with the practical
presuppositions hitherto admitted. As the result of the direction of
studies, from Thomas to the most recent, there remains nothing but
the problem itself, as originated by the definitions of Thomas, and
become certainly more acute and difficult, owing to later disputes and
inquiries, but never solved.

[Sidenote: _The value of law._]

V. Less attention has been bestowed upon the concept of _law,_ upon
which it was impossible to obtain full light, on the one hand before
the theory of abstract concepts had been developed (representative of
class) in their difference from the universal, and on the other before
preconceptions as to the necessary social and political character of
laws had been discarded.

[Sidenote: _In antiquity._]

But the difficulties contained in that concept had several times been
observed in antiquity. In a dialogue between Alcibiades and Pericles,
preserved in the _Memorabilia,_ it is asked if all laws be laws, or
only those that are just; and it is shown that it does not suffice
that a law should be a law, in order to ensure its observance.[28]
No true solution, however, was reached in this, as in many questions
discussed at this period by Greek philosophy. The _Crito_ is rather a
stupendous work of art than a philosophical thesis, for it shows to
the life the state of soul of Socrates, and the importance that he
attributed to the laws and to the social order: the reason alleged for
obedience to them, being placed in the fact that we have tacitly or
explicitly agreed to remain within the boundaries of a given state,
has in it something of the sophistical. Even in antiquity was seen the
necessity of tempering the rigidity of laws by means of the equable,
το ἐπιεικέç, which Aristotle defined as the correction of the law
where it sins through its character of generality (ἐπανόρθωμα νόμου ᾗ
ἐλλείπει διὰ τὸ καθόλου).[29] But it was not possible to escape from
empiricism by means of the concept of equity. The law sins, not once,
but always, through abstractness, or better, it never sins at all,
because its function resides precisely in that abstractness.--In modern
times Diderot felt and expressed all the gravity of the conflicts that
arise, alike from the observance and from the inobservance of the law,
and he expresses this in his _Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants sur
le danger de se mettre au-dessus des lois. "Mon père_ (remarks one
of the sons at the end of the dialogue), _c'est qu'à la rigueur il
n'y a pas de lois pour le sage.... Parlez plus bas.... Toutes étant
sujettes à des exceptions, c'est à lui qu'il appartient de juger des
cas où il faut s'y soumettre ou s'en affranchir.--Je ne serais pas trop
fâché_ (concludes the father), _qu'il y eût dans la ville un ou deux
citoyens, comme toi; mais je n'y habiterais pas, s'ils pensaient tous
de même._"[30]

[Sidenote: _Romanticism._]

The attitude of rebellion to the laws showed itself in German thought
and literature in the preromanticism of the _Sturm und Drang_ (for
instance in the _Räuber_ of Schiller), and in Romanticism properly
so called, when among others appeared the theories that limited the
State, such as those of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and theories of sexual
relations, such as those of Friedrich Schlegel. In the _Lucinde_ is
displayed great horror for _bourgeois_ customs and for every sort of
constraint, sexual relations being advocated with woman, family, love
and fidelity, but without matrimony.

[Sidenote: _Jacobi._]

Jacobi represents this attitude in several of his writings, with great
elevation of soul, and especially in the _Woldemar_ (1779, 1794-96),
the most lively protest that has ever been made against law in the name
of the individual. Here the question treated is precisely whether we
should follow the inspirations of our own conscience or the laws of
our own people. Sides are taken against "the compulsion and violence
exercised by usages, customs, habits, and against those who do not
think, save by means of those laws, holding them sacred, with resolute
soul and mind inert"; and "that audacious heroic spirit is celebrated,
which raises itself above the laws and common morality that it may
produce a new order of things." "His heart alone tells man immediately
what is good; his heart alone, his instincts only, can tell him
immediately: to love it is his life. Reflection teaches him to know and
to practise what leads to good. Habit assures and makes his the wisdom
that he has acquired." "But this individual initiative," he observes,
"may be the cause of abuse and misunderstandings." "Without doubt,"
replied Jacobi, "but what cannot be misunderstood has little meaning,
and what cannot be abused has but little force in use." Men may be
divided into two classes; the one exaggerates fear, the other hope and
courage. The former are circumspect, always in doubt, they fear the
truth because it may be misunderstood, they fear great qualities, lofty
virtue, because of the aberrations to which it may give rise; and they
have evil always before their eyes. The latter are the bold (who could
be called the irreflective in the Platonic sense) and they behave with
less exactitude; they are not so perplexed, they trust rather to the
voice of their heart than to any word from without; they build rather
upon courage than upon virtue, which generally keeps them waiting too
long. They sometimes ask themselves with Young: Is virtue then alone
baptized and are the passions pagan? "If," says Jacobi, "I must keep
to one of these classes, I choose the second." "Yes," he exclaims
elsewhere, opposing the abstractness of Kant,--"yes, I am atheist and
impious, yes, I will to lie, in opposition to the will that wills
nothing, as Desdemona lied when dying, I will to lie and to deceive
like Pylades, when he slew himself for the sake of Orestes; I will to
slay like Timoleon; to break laws and oaths like Epaminondas and John
de Witt; to commit suicide like Otho; to despoil the temple like David;
to pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath day, if only because I am hungry
and the law is made for man, not man for the law. By the sacrosanct
conscience that I have within me, I know that the _privilegium
aggratiandi_ for such crimes against the pure letter of the law,
rational, absolute and universal, is the sovran right of man himself,
the seal of his dignity, of his divine nature."[31] But it must be
remarked upon reading these effusions (most sincere, as all that came
from the pen of Jacobi), that they are rather manifestations of states
of the soul than theories, and therefore, strictly speaking, not to be
theoretically censured, as is the case with all affirmations that place
in relief one side of reality, without denying the others by doing so.

[Sidenote: _Hegel._]

Hegel discovered this, observing in relation to our last extract:
"Neither of the two sides can be wanting to moral beauty, neither
its liveliness as individuality, by which it does not obey the
dead concept, nor the form of concept and of law, universality and
objectivity, which is the side exclusively considered by Kant, by means
of the absolute abstraction to which he submitted liveliness, thereby
suffocating it. The passage cited as to the liveliness and freedom
of the moral life does not exclude objectivity, but does not express
it either." Hence the danger of the romantic attitude, which had no
need of exhortations such as those of Jacobi, for it already too much
preferred _magnanimous_ to _honest, noble_ to _moral_ action; and was
much inclined to free itself of the law itself under the pretext of
freeing itself from the _letter_ of the law. Meeting empirical with
empirical observations, Hegel also remarked that the examples of the
violation of laws due to the divine majesty of man, adduced by Jacobi,
were conditioned by the natural temperament, by actual situations, and
especially by circumstances of supreme misfortune, of supreme and rare
necessity, in which few individuals find themselves. "It would be very
sad for liberty if it could only prove its majesty and become actual
in extraordinary cases of cruel laceration of the moral and natural
life and in extraordinary individuals. The ancients, on the other hand,
found the highest morality in the life of a well-ordered State." Hegel
admitted that the affirmation of Jacobi, "The law is made for man, not
man for the law," contained a great truth, when it was intended to
allude in this way to the positive or statutory law. But the opposite
was also true, when the allusion was to the moral law, taken as
universal, outside of which, when the individual was separated from it,
there was nothing but appetites and sensible impulses, which can only
be means for the law.[32]

But we must not fail to recognize that Hegel does not avail himself of
this most exact distinction in his philosophy, for there the dominating
motive is respect for the laws and the tendency to attack individual
initiative. Hegel repeats many times with complacency the saying of
the Pythagorean, that the best way of educating a young man is to
make him citizen of a State ruled by good laws; and he remarks that
Herculeses belong to primitive and barbarous times, and that individual
valour has but a small field in times of culture. He was most averse
to criticism of and rebellion against the authority of the State; for
these did not seem to him to correspond to the reality of the spirit.
That surface is not the reality; at bottom all desire order; and it is
necessary to distinguish apparent political sentiment from that which
men really will, for within them they will the thing, but hesitate as
to particulars, and enjoy the vanity of censuring.[33] Men believe
that the State exists and that in it alone are particular interests
realized; but habit makes invisible to them that upon which our entire
existence depends. There is in short in Hegel, besides the philosopher,
a politician and moralist regretful of the excesses of revolutionaries
and of unbridled romanticism; and there is also in him the desire for
an exact inquiry into the function and limits of positive law.[34]

[Sidenote: _Recent doctrines._]

In recent times there have been many and very various manifestations
connected with the concept of this function and of its limits, and
it would occupy much space to enumerate and to illustrate them all.
We shall mention three, very distant and different. The first, which
belongs to the political and social field, is the doctrine of anarchy
and is opposed to laws of all sorts; it is a not purely philosophical
doctrine, though it involves philosophical questions.[35] The other
two, which more properly belong to the juridical field, are, the
assertion of the importance of laws and of the duty of defending their
existence, even where their violation by others does not interfere
with our individual interests, or when their defence costs individual
sacrifices (this was the argument of a vigorous little book by
Jhering);[36]--and by way of contrast the demand for a free creation of
the law by the judge (_die freie Rechtsfindung,_) which has given rise
to discussions that are yet burning, more directly provoked by a little
book of Kantorowicz (Gnaeus Flavius).[37]

[Sidenote: _Natural rights and their dissolution. The historical school
of rights._]

VI. If then there has not been a great gain in clearness of
fundamental concepts, as regards this part of the subject, there has on
the contrary been an indubitable advance in consciousness acquired as
to the mutability of laws and as to the consequent contradictoriness of
the idea of natural Rights. This, with its complement, the catalogue
of innate natural and inalienable rights of man, had great success in
the seventeenth century for political and social reasons, attaining
its highest development in the century following. But it may be said
that the doctrine of innate rights was liquidated by Kant in the
_Metaphysic of Custom,_ when he wrote the proposition that liberty is
the only original and innate rights, which belong to man through his
very humanity,[38] at the very moment when it was most energetically
affirmed in a practical form in the _Declaration of the Rights of
Man._ In the system of Hegel the constructions of natural rights began
to lose their rigidity; becoming indeed historical categories of
Ethicity or _Sittlichkeit,_ determinations of the spirits of various
peoples (_Volksgeister,_) which are in their turn determinations of
the Absolute or of the Idea. Owing to this view (without taking into
account his error of wishing to philosophize and to make dialectical
what is historical and empirical), Hegel connected himself closely
with the historical school of rights (Hugo, Savigny, etc.). This,
notwithstanding the exaggeration by which he seemed to deny the value
of the ideal demands made of rights, had the merit of shaking the old
conception of natural rights. This has retained its place in treatises
from that time onward in a more or less worm-eaten and unstable
condition by the force of inertia; or it has been preserved by Catholic
writers (by Rosmini not less than by the Padre Taparelli), whose
conception is of necessity but little historical; or it has reappeared
in those curious Catholics and anti-historians, the positivists
(Spencer, Ardigò). But that natural rights are nothing but _new_
historical rights in the struggle of their becoming, is a conviction
that has penetrated the general consciousness.

[Sidenote: _The comparison between rights and language._]

We also owe to the historical school the comparison between the
life of rights and the life of language; this was prepared by the
discoveries of comparative linguistic, which although substantially
correct, yet had, as we have observed, the defect of limiting itself
to the _grammatical_ form of both facts, not to their genuine and
direct reality. Jacobi, in the already quoted effusions of _Woldemar,_
had recourse to the same comparison, for other reasons and with a
more exact understanding of its terms; speaking there of the moral
infraction of laws, he wrote: "For such exceptions, for such _licences
of lofty poetry,_ the grammar of virtue has no definite rules and
therefore does not mention them No grammar, least of all the general
and philosophical, could contain in itself all that appertains to a
living language, and teach how, in every epoch, every dialect must be
formed. But it would be unwise to affirm that every one may speak as
they feel inclined." And again, "Virtue is free art; and as artistic
genius gives laws to art by its creations, so moral genius gives laws
to human conduct: just, good, noble, excellent, is what the just, good,
noble, and excellent man practises, achieves and produces in conformity
with his character; he _invents virtue,_ procures and generates
adequate expression for human dignity."[39]

[Sidenote: _The concept of law, and the studies of comparative Rights
and of the general Doctrine of Rights._]

VII. The study of the concept of law is also progressing, and
henceforth is not confined to so-called juridical laws and to
legislations and codes. Researches into primitive rights and into
those of savage and barbarous peoples, known as juridical Ethnography
or comparative rights, have greatly contributed to destroy many
prejudices; as also the attention that has been directed to facts
called social, that is to say, not strictly political. A school that
has had independent yet partly similar manifestations in England
(Austin, Sumner Maine, etc.) and in Germany, where it has taken
the name of school of _the general Doctrine of Rights (allgemeine
Rechtslehre,_ according to the denomination given to it by Adolph
Merkel), studies in particular the concept of law in its various
classes and subclasses; and from it there cannot but issue a more
correct understanding of the concept of law, as from the refinement
of political Economy into pure Economy has come, first Psychology and
then the Philosophy of economy. Meanwhile (and as far as we know)
the literature of the school, dominated as it is by the needs of
jurisprudence, maintains an empirical or _intellectualistic_ character;
and jurists, rather than philosophers themselves, are those that most
cultivate it. The distinctions and sub-distinctions of the laws are
conducted with subtlety, but are without solid foundation, because the
concept posited as basis of law is uncertain and arbitrary. Limiting
ourselves to a single example, let us mention Bierling, perhaps the
most philosophical of those various writers. Bierling first of all
excludes from the concept of law the modes of man's conduct toward
God, toward himself, and toward animals; but he gives no serious
reason for this. He then arrives, by a mere arbitrary act, at the
limiting of the concept of law to the manner of men's conduct among
themselves, and defines rights in the juridical sense (as he calls it:
"in general, all that men living together in any sort of community
reciprocally recognize as a norm and rule of this living together"). He
then introduces into the concept thus defined, not by deduction, but
as the result of a second arbitrary act, the concept of exteriority,
adding that, "the object of law is a definite _external_ procedure
of man toward man."[40] In all this is evident the bad influence of
jurisprudence and of its empirical preoccupations.

[Sidenote: _legalism and moral casuistic._]

VIII. Ethical legalism became a bitter question for Christianity,
precisely because of the contest between lofty Christian morality and
its legalitarian form, chiefly inherited from Judaism. In the ancient
world there is almost no trace of the question, just because the
struggle was never acute.[41] Hence the difficulties debated among the
patristics and the scholastics as to derogability from divine laws
and the consequent distinctions between a perfect and an imperfect
moral life, between precepts and counsels; and as recourse is had to
precedents in judicial questions, so here with these ethical problems
concerning exceptions made by God to the moral law, to the precepts
of the Bible (where some were not beautiful).[42] The practical needs
of confession give origin to books on casuistic, of which collections
exist dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The
Reformation manifested aversion to these treatises: Luther said that
moral theologians had first extinguished in men the fear of God and had
then placed soft cushions beneath their hands and feet; and Melanchthon
lamented that the Christian Republic was honoured _theologastrorum
sententiis de conscientiae casiobus, inestricabilibus, ubi nunquam
non ex quaestione quaestio nascitur,_ and called them _conscientiarum
cauteria._[43]

[Sidenote: _Probabilitism and Jesuitic morality._]

The inconclusiveness of legalism was converted into a most powerful
poison by the Jesuits, with their _probabilitism,_ of which precursors
were not wanting in the Middle Ages, but it received definite form
from the Dominican Bartolomeo Medina in 1577. From that time onward
probabilitism began to be surrounded with a copious literature, which
continually increased in the course of the seventeenth century, to
decline in the century following. The opposition originated by the
Jansenists, whose capital literary document, the _Provinciales_ of
Pascal also dates from the seventeenth century (1656), was the period
of the greatest vigour of the doctrine. But if the most perfect
and most Christian moral conscience dwelt in the Jansenists and in
Pascal and if the absurd consequences to which probabilitism led
became clearly evident in that polemic, yet it cannot be said that
philosophically the error was finally superseded. Ere this could have
happened, it would have been necessary, on the one hand to destroy
all possibility of theological utilitarianism (which was impossible
to carry out in a religious and transcendental Ethic, owing to its
mystical and irrationalistic character) and on the other to destroy
legalism. Pascal himself (and St. Augustine, to whom he appeals) was
always confined in the legislative conception of morality; hence
he speaks of the laws of "not slaying," which it was necessary to
obey strictly, save in the cases established by God or when he gives
particular orders to put certain persons to death. The Catholic
Church, always astutely political, condemned without hesitation the
extreme _rigorists,_ who wish that the law should always be followed
and the extreme _latitudinarians,_ who think that any sort of
reasons, however slight and improbable, suffice for not observing the
law; allowing intermediate sects to discuss among themselves until
they were out of breath, that is to say, _the moderate rigorists,
the probabiliorists or tutiorists, the equiprobabilitists and the
probabilitists._ Sant Alfonso dei Liguori adhered to these last, who
were of opinion that it is always permissible to do what we wish,
provided always that there be probable reasons, though less probable
than those that militate in favour of the law. In his _Dissertatio de
usu moderato opinionis probabilis,_[44] he thus exposed the principal
argument of his thesis: _Peto ab adversariis ut indicent (si possunt)
tibinam legem hanc esse scriptam invenerint, quod teneamur inter
opiniones probabiles probabiliores sequi? Haec lex quidem, prout
universalis, deberet omnibus esse nota et certa: at quomodo ista lex
certa dici potest, cum communis sententia doctorum, saltem longe major
illorum pars, post tantum discrimen absolute asserant, hanc legem non
adesse? Usque dum igitur de tali lege dubitatum, opinio quod adsit haec
lex sequendi probabiliora, quamvis alicui videatur probabilior, nunquam
tamen lex dici potest, sed appellanda erit mera opinio, utpote ex
fallibili motivo deducta, quae vim nequaquam habet, ut lex, obligandi._
This doctrine still retains in our day very firm supporters among the
Jesuits (Cathrein,[45] Lehmkuhl,[46] etc.).

[Sidenote: _Critique of the concept of the licit._]

But if the destruction of theological utilitarianism has been brought
about by the criticism of the transcendental and by idealistic Ethic,
that of legalism, with its expression as the licit, the permissible,
or morally indifferent, appears in Fichte and in Schleiermacher. Kant
did not treat the question explicitly and, as observed, we can deduce
from certain of his utterances that he did not altogether abandon the
concept of the licit.[47]

[Sidenote: _Fichte._]

But Fichte, in a note to his _Natural Rights,_ wrote: "A right is
evidently something of which a man can avail himself or not; and
is therefore the result of a law that is merely permissive. ...
The permission is not expressly given by the law and is deduced by
interpretation from its limitation. And the limitation of a law
is shown by the fact of its being something conditioned. It is not
absolutely apparent, therefore, that a permissive law which commands in
an unconditioned manner and therefore extends to all, can be deduced
from the moral law."[48]

[Sidenote: _Schleiermacher._]

What was a mere mention in Fichte became an ample demonstration in the
celebrated memoir of Schleiermacher, _On the Concept of the Licit_
(1826), which resolutely drove the licit out of the field of Ethic,
by demonstrating its altogether juridical nature: "The original seat
of this concept cannot be the domain of Ethic, in which it is not
admissible: it appertains to the domain of law and of positive law; and
there is something originally licit in civil life, precisely in this
sense that there is something half-way between what is commanded and
what is forbidden, the proper object of law."[49]

[Sidenote: _Rosmini._]

Rosmini, owing to having ignored this origin of the lawful, proceeded
to divide human actions into four classes: the prohibited, the
licit, the commanded, and the superogatory; the last three were all
innocent, but the licit was simply innocent, while the commanded and
the superogatory were also furnished with moral value. Hence arose
grave errors in his Ethic and in his Philosophy of law and definitions
that it is impossible to grasp, such as the following relating to
superogatory actions: "The obligatory consists in preserving the moral
order, but the superogatory consists in preserving the said order in
a more excellent and perfect manner, with fuller, more frequent, and
more ardent acts of the will. These second not only preserve the moral
order, but augment it, almost creating a part of it themselves with
their activity; they make themselves not only followers of the good,
but authors of the good itself." Rosmini also considered that the
posing of the question of probabilitism represented progress in Ethic;
that is, upon "what man should do, if he found himself in doubt as
to performing or omitting to perform an action." But the solution of
the question that he gave on his account amounted (be it said to his
honour) to the annihilation of legalism, since for him a doubtful law
does not oblige when it is positive Rights, but it does oblige when
it is moral law, that is, when there is a fear of offending against
the supreme and necessary law, which wills absolutely to be always
fulfilled.[50] In other terms, the true practical law is never (even
when it appears to be so) positive law; and the concept of law, which
always has a positive meaning, is extraneous to Ethic and to the
Philosophy of the practical: a result to which Rosmini does not attain,
or at least is not conscious of attaining.



[1] See above, pp. 286, 287.

[2] _Krit. d. rein. Vern._ (ed. Kirchmann), p. 572.

[3] Lasson, _System der Rechtsphilosophie_ (Berlin, 1882), p. 2.

[4] _Gorgias,_ 476-478.

[5] _Eth. Nicom._ 3, v. c. 1-2.

[6] _Ibid._ v. c. 7, 9; _Magna Moralia,_ i. c. 34.

[7] _De repudi,_ iii. c. 22; _De legibus,_ ii. c. 5.

[8] _De imo univ. jur. princ._ §§41, 43, 86.

[9] _Fundamenta juris nat. et gentium_ (1705).

[10] Windelband, _Geschichte d. Phil._ p. 424.

[11] _Gründl. d. Naturr._ (1796), append., sect. I.

[12] _Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ 1797 (ed. Kirchmann), pp. 31-35.

[13] _Gründl, d. Naturr._ pt. i. sect. 1.

[14] Spinoza, _Tract, pol._ c. 6, § 3; Fichte, _System d. Sittenlehre,_
§ 18 _in fine._

[15] _Phil. d. Rechts,_ passim, concerning force and violence, §§ 3,
57, 94.

[16] _Op. cit._§ 158, _sqq._ 161, 258.

[17] _Werke,_ I., p. 371.

[18] _Allg. prakt. Phil._ pp. 48, 126-128.

[19] _Werke,_ i. 441-445; cf. v. 259-260.

[20] _Fil. d. diritto_ (Napoli, 1844), i. 20-21, 88-89, 94-97.

[21] _Saggio teor. d. dir. nat._ (Palermo, 1857), _in princ._

[22] Stahl, _Rechts-u. Staatslehre_² (Heidelberg, 1845), b. ii. ch. I;
Ahrens, _Naturr._ (It. tr., Napoli, 1860), i. 219 _sq._; Trendelenburg,
_Naturrecht auf d. Grunde d. Ethik_ (Leipzig, 1860).

[23] Kirchmann, _Begr. d. Rechtes u. d. Moral_² (Berlin, 1873), pp.
107114; see Jhering, _Der Zweck i. Reckt_ (i.2, 1883; ii.3, 1886).

[24] Lasson, _op. cit.;_ Steinthal, _Allg. Ethik_ (Berlin, 1885), pp.
135-8; Schuppe, _Ethik u. Rechtsphil._ (Breslau, 1881), pp. 283-4;
Wundt, _Ethik_² (Stuttgart, 1892),.p. 565 _sq._; Cohen, _Ethik d.
reinen Willens_ (Berlin, 1904), p. 567.

[25] Rümelin, _Reden u. Aufsätze,_ new series (Freiburg i. B., 1881),
p. 342; Jellinek, _Allgemeine Staatslehre_ (Berlin, 1900), p. 302
_sq.;_ Stammler, _Lehre v. richtig. Rechte_ (Berlin, 1902); Duguit,
_L'État, le droit objectif et la loi positive_ (Paris, 1901); Fouillée,
_L'Idée moderne du droit en Allem., en Angl. et en France_ (Paris,
1876); Miraglia, _Fil. d. dir._ (Napoli, 1903), p. 80; Vanni, _Lez. d.
fil. d. dir._ (Bologna, 1904), pp. 113-114.

[26] Rümelin, _op. cit._ pp. 176-202. Cp. Lasson, p. 215 _sq._

[27] _Op. cit._ p. 22. Cf. Bergbohm, _Jurisprudenz u.
Rechtsphilosophie_ (Leipzig, 1892), i. 141-147 _n._

[28] _Mem._ i. 2. 40 _sq._

[29] _Eth. Nicom._ Bk. v, c. II.

[30] _Œuvres,_ edit. Assézat et Tourneux, v. (Paris, Gamier, 1875), pp.
307-8.

[31] _Woldemar,_ passim.

[32] _Werke,_ i. 52 _sq.;_ xvi. 21 _sq._

[33] _Phil. d. Rechts,_ sect. II. _passim;_ cf. pp. 150, 153.

[34] _Op. cit._ § 268, _Zus._

[35] An ample exposition of such doctrines is to be found in E.
Zoccoli, _De Anarchia,_ Turin, 1907.

[36] _La Lotta pel diritto,_ It. tr., Milan, 1875.

[37] _La Lotta per la scienza del diritto_ (It. tr., Palermo, 1908);
cf. _Critica,_ vi. pp. 199-201.

[38] _Metaphys. d. Sitt._ p. 40.

[39] _Woldemar,_ pp. in, 416, and _passim._

[40] Bierling, _Juristische Prinzipienlehre_ (Freiburg i. B., 1894-98,
2 vols.).

[41] Sidgwick, _History of Ethics,_ London, 1892, p. III _sq._

[42] A. Bonucci, _La derogabilità del diritto naturale nella
Scolastica,_ Perugia, 1906.

[43] Hist. remarks in dissert., _De casuisticae theologiae originibus,
locis atque praestantia_ (together with De Ligorio, _Theol. mor.,_ ed.
cit., pp. xxiv-lxxvi).

[44] In _Theol. mor._ i. 10-24.

[45] Cathrein, _Moralphilosophie, 4_ i. 428-437.

[46] _Probabilismus vindicatus_ (Freiburg, Bk. i., 1906).

[47] See above, p. 405; cf. also _Krit. d. rein. Vern._ pp. 10-11 _n._

[48] _Gründl. d. Naturr._ introd. § iii. _n._

[49] _Werke,_ sect, iii., vol. ii., pp. 418-445; cf. G. Mayer, _Die
Lehre vom Erlaubten in der Gesch. d. Ethik seit Schleiermacher,_
Leipzig, 1899.


[50] _Compendio di Etica,_ pp. 48, 96, 284-285.




CONCLUSION


[Sidenote: _The Philosophy of the Spirit as the whole of Philosophy._]

With the Philosophy of the practical terminates the exposition that
we had proposed to give of the Philosophy of the Spirit; and the
exposition of the whole of Philosophy also terminates, because the
Spirit is the whole of Reality.

Here at the end, this proposition has no need of such proof or
verification as is customary in calculation. Because the proof
of Philosophy is intrinsic to it and consists of the reciprocal
confronting of the development of thought and its demands, between
the System and Logic. And Logic, as we know, if it be in a certain
sense the whole of Philosophy (philosophy in brief or in idea or in
potentiality), is also a part among the parts of the philosophical
system; so that the confrontation of the System and of Logic, of
thought in act and thought in idea, between thought and the thought
of thought, has been continuously present and active in the course of
the exposition, and the coincidence of the two processes and their
confluence into one has been clearly demonstrated.

[Sidenote: _Correspondence between Logic and System._]

Logic affirms the thinkability of the real and the inconceivability
of any limit that could be put to thought, of every excogitation of
the unknowable. And Philosophy, examining every part of the real,
has not found any place in which to lodge the unknowable in thought.
Logic posits as the ideal of the concept, that it should be universal
and not general, concrete and not abstract; that it should be pure
of intuitions such as those of mathematics and differ from them in
being necessary and not conventional; fruitful in intuitions like
those of the empirical sciences, but differing from them by its
infinite fecundity which dominates every possible manifestation of
the real. And the system has effectively shown that this desideratum
of Logic is not a chimæra and that the Spirit is indeed that concept
which corresponds to the ideal of the concept: there is nothing that
is not a manifestation of the Spirit (an effectual manifestation,
not conventional or metaphorical). Logic, rejecting all dualism or
pluralism, wills that the philosophical concept shall be a unique
concept or of the One, and does not suffer heterogeneous concepts
at its side. And the system has confirmed that the concept of the
Spirit alone fulfils the logical condition of the concept; and that
the concept of Nature, far from being a concept of something real, is
the hypostasis of a manner of elaborating reality, not philosophical
but practical; thus the concept itself of Nature, in so far as it is
effectual, is nothing but the product of a function of the Spirit.

On the other hand, the Logic of the idea of the concept deduces
that it must be a synthesis of itself and of its opposite. For its
opposite, far from being heterogeneous and different, is flesh of the
flesh and blood of the blood of the concept itself, as negation is of
affirmation. And the system has led us before the Spirit or Reality as
development, which is the true reality of the real and synthesis of
opposites. Logic deduces that the concept is synthesis of itself and
of the distinct from itself, of the universal and of the individual,
and that therefore Philosophy must flow into History, and mediate its
comprehension. And the system shows the capacity of its principles for
interpreting the complex reality of History, and above all the history
of philosophy itself, by solving its problems. Logic does not admit
other distinctions of the concept than those that are the outcome
of its own nature, such as the relations of subject-object and of
individual-universal; and the system has confirmed these distinctions,
duplicating itself as Philosophy of knowledge and Philosophy of action,
of theory and of practice; subdividing itself as to the first, into
Æsthetic and Logic; as to the second, into Economic and Ethic. And
since the demand of the concept has been entirely satisfied, when these
divisions have been exhausted, we have not found the possibility of new
subdivisions, for example into various æsthetic or into various ethical
categories among the particular sub-forms of the Spirit.

[Sidenote: _Dissatisfaction at the end of every system, and its
irrational motive._]

Some are seized as with a sense of dissatisfaction and delusion when
they arrive at the end of the philosophical system and at the result
that there is no reality save the Spirit and no other Philosophy save
the Philosophy of the Spirit; and they do not wish to resign themselves
to accepting that and nothing else as Reality, although obliged to do
so by logical necessity. A world beyond which there is no other seems
to them poor indeed; an immanent Spirit, trammelled and far inferior
by comparison with a transcendental Spirit, an omnipotent God outside
the world; a Reality penetrable by thought, less poetical than one
surrounded with mystery; the vague and indeterminate, more beautiful
than the precise and determined. But we know that they are involved in
a psychological illusion, similar to his who should dream of an art
so sublime that every work of art really existing would by comparison
appear contemptible; and the dreamer of this turbid dream, should not
succeed in achieving a single verse. Impotent are those poets most
refined; impotent those insatiable philosophers.

[Sidenote: _Rational motive: the inexhaustibility of Life and of
Philosophy._]

But precisely because we know the genesis of their psychological
illusion, we know that there is in it (and there could not fail to be)
an element of truth. The infinite, inexhaustible by the thought of
the individual, is Reality itself, which ever creates new forms; Life
is the true mystery, not because impenetrable by thought, but because
thought penetrates it to the infinite with power equal to its own. And
since every moment, however beautiful, would become ugly, were we to
dwell in it, so would life become ugly, were it ever to linger in one
of its contingent forms. And because Philosophy, not less than Art, is
conditioned by Life, so no particular philosophical system can ever
contain in itself all the philosophable; no philosophical system is
_definite,_ because Life itself is never _definite._ A philosophical
system solves a group of problems historically given and prepares the
conditions for the posing of other problems, that is, of new systems.
Thus it has always been and thus it will always be.

In such a sense, Truth is always surrounded with mystery, an ascending
to ever higher heights, which are without a summit, as Life is without
a summit. At the end of one of his researches every philosopher just
perceives the uncertain outlines of another, which he himself, or he
who comes after him, will achieve. And with this _modesty,_ which is of
the nature of things themselves, not my personal sentiment; with this
modesty, which is also confidence that I have not thought in vain, I
bring my work to a conclusion, offering it to the well disposed as an
_instrument of labour._


THE END