BENEDETTO CROCE (continued 2)

Prejudice concerning the representability of the concept.

But another prejudice, perhaps yet more tenacious than the first, accompanies this extravagant idea about demonstration. Accustomed as men are to move among things, to see, to hear, to touch them, while hardly or only fugitively reflecting upon the spiritual processes which produce that vision, hearing and touching; when they come to treat of a philosophic question, and to conceive a concept (and especially when it is necessary to conceive precisely the concept of the concept), they do not know how to refrain from demanding just that which they have been obliged to renounce in their new search, and which they have already renounced, owing to the very fact of their having entered into it: the representative element, something that they can see, hear and touch. It is almost as though a novice, on entering a monastery, and having just pronounced the solemn vow of chastity, should ask, as his first request upon taking possession of his cell, for the woman who is to be his companion in that life. He will be answered that in such a place his spouse cannot be anything but an ideal spouse, holy Religion or holy Mother Church.

Protests of the philosophers against this prejudice.

All philosophers have been compelled to protest against the request, which they have had addressed to them, for an impossible external demonstration and for something representative in a field where representation has been surpassed. "In our system (said Fichte) we must ourselves lay the foundation of our own philosophy, and consequently that system must seem to be without foundation to one who is incapable of accomplishing that act. But he may be assured beforehand that he will never find a foundation elsewhere, if he do not lay such an one for himself, or remain not satisfied with it. It is fitting that our philosophy should proclaim this in a loud voice, in order that it may be spared the pretence of demonstrating to mankind from without what they must create in themselves."[1] Schelling appropriately compared philosophic obtuseness with æsthetic obtuseness: "There are two only ways out of common reality. Poetry, which transports you into an ideal world, and Philosophy, which makes the real world disappear altogether from our sight. One does not see why the sense for Philosophy should be more generally diffused than that for Poetry."[2] And Hegel, giving explanations which precisely meet the present case, says: "What is called the incomprehensibility of Philosophy, arises, in part, from an incapacity (in itself only a lack of habit) to think abstractly, that is to say, to hold pure thoughts firmly before the spirit and to move in them. In our ordinary consciousness, thoughts are clothed in and united with ordinary sensible and spiritual matter; and in our rethinking, reflecting and reasoning we mingle sentiments, intuitions and representations with thoughts: in every proposition whose content is entirely sensible (for example: this leaf is green) there are already mingled categories, such as being and individuality. But it is quite another thing to take as our object thoughts by themselves, without any admixture. The other reason for its incomprehensibility is the impatience which demands to have before it as representation that which in consciousness appears only as thought and concept. And we hear people say that they do not know what there is to think in a concept, which is already apprehended; whereas in a concept there is nothing to be thought but the concept itself. But the meaning of this saying is just that they want a familiar and ordinary representation. It seems to consciousness as if, with the removal from it of the representation, the ground had been removed which was its firm and habitual support. When transported into the pure region of the concepts, it no longer knows what world it is in. For this reason, those writers, preachers and orators are esteemed marvels of comprehensibility who offer their readers or hearers things which they already know thoroughly, things which are familiar to them and which are self-evident."[3]

Reason for their perpetual recurrence.

Thus have all philosophers protested, and thus will all protest still, from age to age, because that intolerance, that immobility, that recalcitrance before the very painful effort of having to abandon the world of sense (though but for a single instant, and in order to reconquer and to possess it more completely) will perpetually be renewed. They are the birth-pangs of the Concept, to escape which no plans for virginity and no manoeuvres to procure abortion are of any avail. They must be endured, because that law of the Concept ("thou shalt bring forth in suffering") is also a law of life.

IV

DISPUTES AS TO THE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT

Disputes of materialistic origin.

Disputes as to the nature of the concept have sometimes had their origin (notably in the recent period of philosophic barbarism, which "renews the fear of thought," whence we have with difficulty emerged) in materialistic, mechanical and naturalistic prejudices. Therefore, as already mentioned, discussion has arisen as to whether the concept should be considered logical or psychological, as the product of synthesis or of association, or of individual or hereditary association. But these are controversies which, for the reasons we gave before, we shall not spend time in illustrating.

The concept as value.

Nor shall we pay attention to the other controversy, as to whether concepts are values or facts, whether they operate only as norms or also as effective forces of the real; because the division between values and facts, between norms and effective existence (between Gelten and Sein, as it is expressed in German terminology), is itself surpassed and unified, implicitly and explicitly, in all our philosophy. If the concept or thought has value, it can have value only because it is; if the norm of thought operate as a norm, that implies that it is thought itself, its own norm, a constitutive element of reality. There is not to be found in any form of spiritual life any value which is not also reality—not in art, where there is no other beauty than art itself; nor in morality, where no other goodness is known than action itself directed to the universal; nor in the life of thought. The concept has value, because it is; and is, because it has value.

Realism and nominalism.

But the greater part of these dissensions, which have existed for centuries and are yet living, rests on the confusion between concepts and pseudoconcepts, and the consequent pretension to define the concept by denying one or other of these two forms. This is the origin of the two opposite schools of realists and nominalists, which are also called in our times rationalists and empiricists (arbitrarists, conventionalists, hedonists). The realists maintain that concepts are real: that they correspond to reality; the nominalists, that they are simple names to designate representations and groups of representations, or, as is now said, tickets and labels placed upon things in order to recognize and find them again. In the former case, no elaboration of representations higher than the universalizing act of the concept is possible; in the latter, the only possible operation is that which has already been described—mutilation, reduction and fiction, directed to practical ends.

Critique of both.

The consequence of these one-sided affirmations has been that the realists have defined as concepts, and therefore as having a universal character, all sorts of rough pseudoconcepts; not only the horse, the artichoke and the mountain, but also, logically, the table, the bed, the seat, the glass, and so on; and they have exposed themselves from the earliest beginnings of philosophy to the sarcastic and irresistible objection that the horse exists, but not horsiness, the table, but not tabularity. This conceptualization of pseudoconcepts is the error of which they have really been guilty, not that of conferring empirical reality on the concepts by placing them as single things alongside of other things, an extravagance which it is doubtful if any man of moderate sense has ever seriously committed. The realists who rendered the concepts real in this sense at the same time rendered them unreal, that is to say, single and contingent, and in need of being surpassed by true concepts. The nominalists, on the other hand, considered as arbitrary and mere names all the presuppositions of their mental life—being and becoming, quality and final cause, goodness and beauty, the true and the false, the Spirit and God. Without being aware of it, they have fallen into inextricable contradictions and into logical scepticism.

True realism.

It is henceforth clear that this secular dispute cannot be decided in favour of one or other of the contending parties, for both are right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny, that is, both are right and wrong. The two forms of spiritual products, of which each of those schools in its affirmations emphasizes only one, both actually exist; the one is not in antithesis to the other, as the rational is to the irrational. The true doctrine of the concept is realism, which does not deny nominalism, but puts it in its place, and establishes with it loyal and unequivocal relations.

Solution of other difficulties concerning the genesis of concepts.

By establishing such relations we emerge from the vicious circle, which has given such trouble to certain logicians, who have striven to explain the genesis of the concepts in terms of nominalism, but were afterwards, when probing their doctrine to the bottom, compelled to admit the necessity of the concepts as a foundation for the genesis of the concepts. They believed that they had got out of the difficulty by distinguishing two orders of concepts, primary and secondary, formative models and formations according to models; and they thus reproduced, in the semblance of a solution, the problem still unsolved. In different words, others admitted the same embarrassment. They attempted to obtain the concepts from experience, but recognized at the same time that all experience presupposes an ideal anticipation. Or they declared that the concept fixes the essential characters of things, and, at the same time, that the essential characters of things are indispensable for fixing the concept. Or, finally, they based the formation of concepts upon categories, which, enumerated and understood as they understood them, were by no means categories and functions, but concepts. Primary concepts, formative models, ideal anticipations, essential concepts, concept-categories, and the like, are nothing but verbal variants of the pure concepts; the necessary presupposition, as we know, for the impure concepts or pseudoconcepts.

Disputes arising from neglect of the distinction between empirical and abstract concepts.

Other disputes, far enough apart in significance and nature, concerning the nature of the concept, acquire a more precise meaning when referred to our subdivision of pseudoconcepts into empirical or representative, and abstract. Thereby we can understand why it has been asked if the concepts are concrete or abstract, general or universal, contingent or necessary, approximate or rigorous; if they are obtained a posteriori or a priori, by induction or deduction, by synthesis or analysis, and so on. This series of disputes likewise cannot be settled, save by admitting that both contending parties are right and wrong, and demonstrating that pseudoconcepts (which are alone here in discussion) are constructed by analysis, and by deduction are a priori, and have the characters of abstractness, rigorousness, universality and necessity, if it be a question of abstract pseudoconcepts, that is to say, of empty fictions, outside experience; while, on the other hand, they are constructed by synthesis, and by induction are a posteriori, and have the characters of concreteness, approximation, mere generality and contingency, if they be empirical or representative pseudoconcepts, that is to say, groups of representations, which do not go beyond representation and experience. Indeed, from this last point of view, no error was made in denying any difference between the (representative) concept and the general representation. It is false that this latter is the result of psychical mechanism or association, and the former of psychical purpose, because there is nothing mechanical in the spirit; and the general representation, if it is a product of the spirit, is as teleological as the other, indeed is absolutely one with the other. It obeys, like it, the law of economy, or, as we have shown, the practical ends of convenience and utility.

Crossing of the various disputes.

But these last disputes have crossed with that which we first examined between realism and nominalism, and have sometimes taken on the same meaning. This must be kept in mind, to serve as a guide in the dense forest. Is the concept a priori or a posteriori, universal or general, necessary or contingent? These questions and others like them were sometimes understood as equivalent to the question: is it real or nominal, truth or fiction?

Other logical disputes.

Certain problems of Logic, not yet solved in a satisfactory manner, arise from the failure to make clear the confusion between concepts and pseudoconcepts, and between empirical and abstract concepts. Is it or is it not true that every concept must have an individual representation, taken from its own sphere, as a necessary support? Are concepts of things possible, or is there a special concept corresponding to every thing? Is a concept of the individual possible? These three questions may be answered in the affirmative, in the negative, and in the affirmative-negative, according as they are referred to the empirical concept, the abstract concept, or the pure concept.

The representative accompaniment of the concept.

For, if we consider the first question, we must resolutely deny that the abstract concept has any need of a particular representation as its necessary support. The geometric triangle, as such, is neither white nor black, nor of any given size; if the representation of a particular triangle unites itself to it, geometry discards it. But we must just as resolutely affirm than an empirical or representative concept has always an image to support it; the concept of a cat needs the image of a cat, and every book on zoology is accompanied with illustrations. The image may be varied, but never suppressed; and it may be varied only within certain limits, because, if these be exceeded, the concept itself loses its form and is dissipated. Thus, for the concept of the cat, we could frame a representation of a white or black or red cat, or a small or big one; but if scarlet colour or the size of an elephant be attributed to the cat, which serves as symbol of the fiction, the concept must be changed. That concept has at its command the images of cats, upon which it has been formed, which, as we know, are always finite in number. Finally, with reference to the pure concept, it must be said that every image and no image is in turn a symbol of it; as every blade of grass (as Vanini said) represents God, and a number of images, however great it be, does not suffice to represent Him.

The concept of the thing and the concept of the individual.

In like manner, as regards the second question, it must be answered that the empirical concept is nothing but a concept of things, or a grouping of a certain number of things beneath one or other of them, which functions as a type; that the abstract concept is by definition, the not-thing, incapable of representation; and that the pure concept is a concept of every thing and of no thing. And as regards the third, we must answer that the abstract concept is altogether repugnant to individuality; the pure concept alights upon every individual, only to leave it again, and in so far as it thinks all individual things, it renders them all, in a certain way, concepts, and in so far as it surpasses them, it denies them as such; while the empirical concept can be the concept of the individual. Because if in reality, the individual be the situation of the universal spirit at a determinate instant, empirically considered the individual becomes something isolated, cut off from the rest and shut up in itself, so that it is possible to attribute to it a certain constancy in relation to the occurrences of the life it lives; so that that life assumes almost the position of the individual determinations of a concept. Socrates is the life of Socrates, inseparable from all the life of the time in which he developed; but empirically and usefully we can construct the concept of a Socrates a controversialist, an educator, endowed with imperturbable calm, of which the Socrates who ate and drank and wore clothes, and lived during such and such occurrences, is the incarnation. Thus we can form pseudoconcepts of individuals as well as of things, or, to express it in terms that are the fashion, we can form Platonic ideas of them.

Reasons, laws, and causes.

It is also well to note that to adduce the reasons, the laws, the causes of things and of reality, is equivalent to establishing concepts, and since the word "concepts" has been applied in turn to pure and to empirical and abstract concepts, laws and causes have been alternately described as truths and as fictions. It belongs to the discussion of terminology to remark that in general the word "reason" has been used only for researches into pure and abstract concepts, "cause" for empirical concepts, and "laws" almost equally for all three, but perhaps a little more for empirical and abstract than for pure concepts. But to the confusion of these three forms of spiritual products is to be attributed the fact that there have been discussions, as, for instance, whether there be concepts of laws in addition to concepts of things, the issue of which was at bottom the desire to ascertain whether there exist abstract and pure concepts, in addition to empirical concepts.

Intellect and Reason.

The profound diversity of the concepts and of the pseudoconcepts suggested (at the time when it was customary to represent the forms or grades of the spirit as faculties) the distinction between two logical faculties, which were called Intellect (or, also, abstract Intellect), and Reason. The first of these formed what we now call pseudoconcepts; the second, pure concepts.

The abstract intellect and its practical nature.

But the proper character of neither of the two faculties was realized by those who postulated them; they fell into the error, which we have already had occasion to criticize, of conceiving the Intellect as a form of knowledge, which either lives in the false, or is limited to preparing the material for the superior faculty, to which it supplies a first imperfect sketch of the concept. But the faculty required for this should be, not of a theoretical nature, but of a practical. It is a terminological question of slight interest, whether the name "Intellect" should be retained for the production of pseudoconcepts, or whether the purely theoretic meaning, which it first had, should be restored to it, and it should thus be made synonymous with "Reason." It can only be observed that it will be very difficult to remove henceforth from "Intellect," from "intellectual formations," and from "intellectualism," the suspicion and discredit cast upon them by the great philosophic history of the first half of the nineteenth century; so much so, that only where a rather popular style is employed, can Intellect and Reason be used promiscuously.

With greater truth, Reason was considered as unifying what the Intellect had divided, and therefore as unifying abstraction and concreteness, deduction and induction, analysis and synthesis. With greater truth, although complete exactness would have demanded here, not so much that to Reason should be given the power of unifying what has been unduly divided, as that to the Intellect, that is to say, to the practical faculty, should be given the power of dividing extrinsically what for Reason is never divided: a power which the Intellect, as a practical faculty, possesses and exercises, not in a pathological, but in a physiological way.

The synthesis of theoretic and practical, and the intellectual intuition.

The incomplete survey of the so-called Intellect, the theoretic character of which was preserved, though in a depreciatory sense, issued in the result that finally to Reason itself was attributed a character, no longer theoretic, or rather, more than theoretic. Knowledge, presenting itself in the form of Intellect, seemed inadequate to truth; to attain to which there intervened Reason, or speculative procedure, the synthesis of theory and practice, a knowledge which is action, and an action which is knowledge. Sometimes, Reason itself, thus transfigured, seemed insufficient, owing to the presence of ratiocinative processes, which came to it from the Intellect, and were absorbed by it; and the supreme faculty of truth was conceived, not as logical reasoning, but as intuition; an intuition differing from the purely artistic and revealing the genuine truth, an organ of the absolute, intellectual Intuition. It was urged against intellectual intuition that it created irresponsibility in the field of truth, and made lawful every individual caprice. But a similar objection could be brought against Reason, which is superior to knowledge, and is the synthesis of theory and practice: while, on the other hand, it cannot be denied, both of intellectual Intuition and of Reason, that on the whole they affirmed or tended to affirm the rights of the pure Concept, as opposed to empirical and abstract concepts.

Uniqueness of thought.

For our part, we have no need to lower the cognitive activity beneath the level of truth, by attributing to it an intellectualiste and arbitrary function; nor, on the other hand (in order to supplement knowledge and intellect thus pauperized), to exalt Reason above itself. Thought (call it Intellect, or Reason, or what you will) is always thought; and it always thinks with pure concepts, never with pseudoconcepts. And since there is not another thought beneath thought, so there is not another thought superior to it. The difficulties which led to these conclusions have been completely explained, when we have distinguished concepts from pseudoconcepts, and demonstrated the heterogeneity which exists between these two forms of spiritual products.

V

CRITIQUE OF THE DIVISIONS OF THE CONCEPTS AND THEORY OF DISTINCTION AND DEFINITION

The pseudoconcepts, not a subdivision of the concept.

Precisely because they are heterogeneous formations, pure concepts and pseudoconcepts do not constitute divisions of the generic concept of the concept. To assume that they did, would be a horrible confusion of terms, not far different (to use Spinoza's example) from that of the division of the dog into animal dog and constellation dog; though poets used at one time to talk of the celestial dog also, as "barking and biting," when the sun implacably burned the fields.

Obscurity, clearness and distinction, not subdivisions of the concept.

And seeing that our point of view is philosophic, we can take no account of another division of the concept, which had great fame and authority in the past: that into obscure, confused, clear and distinct concepts and the like, or of the degrees of perfection to which the concept attains. Such a division can retain at the most but an empirical and approximate value, and under this aspect it will be difficult altogether to renounce it in ordinary discourse; but it has no logical and philosophic value whatever. The concept is what is truly concept, the perfect concept, not at all the encumbered or wandering tendency toward it. Yet that division had great historical importance. By means of it, indeed, the attempt was made to differentiate the concept, under the name of clear and distinct thought, from the intuition, which was clear but confused thought, and both of these from sensation, impression, or emotion, which was called obscure. This was attempted, but without success; the problem was set but not solved; for the solution was only attained when it was seen that, in this case, it was not a question of three degrees of thought, as absolute logic claimed, but of three forms of the spirit: of thought or distinction, of intuition ox clearness; and of the practical activity, obscurity or naturality.

Non-existence of subdivisions of the concept as a logic at form.

Logically, the concept does not give rise to distinctions, for there are not several forms of concept, but one only. This is a perfectly analogous result in Logic to that which we reached in Æsthetic, when we established the uniqueness of intuition or expression, and the non-existence of special modes or classes of expressions (except in the empirical sense, in which we can always establish as many classes as we wish). In distinguishing the forms of the spirit, the two principal forms, theoretic and practical, having been divided, and the theoretic having been subdivided into intuition and concept, there is no place for a further subdivision of the theoretic forms, since intuition and concept are each of them indivisible forms. The reason for this indivisibility cannot be clearly understood, save by the complete development of the Philosophy of the spirit; and it is only to be remarked here in passing, that the division of intuition and concept has as its foundation the distinction between individual and universal. And since in this distinction there is no medium quid nor an ulterius, a third or fourth intermediate form, so there is no subdivision; since we pass from the concept of individuality to single individuality, which is not a concept, and from the concept of the concept to the single act of thought, which is no longer the simple definition of logical thinking, but effective logical thinking itself.

The distinctions of the concept not logical, but real.

Since all subdivision of the logical form of the concept has been excluded, the multiplicity of concepts can be referred only to the variety of the objects, which are thought in the logical form of the concept. The concept of goodness is not that of beauty; or rather, both are logically the same thing, since both are logical form; but the aspect of reality designated by the first is not the same aspect of reality as is designated by the second.

Multiplicity of the concepts, and the logical difficulty arising therefrom. Necessity of overcoming it.

But here arises the difficulty. How can it be that since in the concept we deal with reality, in its universal aspect, we yet obtain so many various forms of reality, that is, so many distinct concepts (for example, passion, will, morality, imagination, thought, and so on), so many universals, whereas the concept should give us the universal. If this variety were not overcome or capable of being overcome by the concept, we should have to conclude that the true universal is not attainable by thought, and to return to scepticism, or at least to that peculiar form of logical scepticism which makes the consciousness of unity an act of the inner life, which cannot be stated in terms of logic; that is, mysticism. The distinction of the concepts, one from another, in the absence of unity, is separation and atomism; and it would certainly not be worth while getting out of the multiplicity of representations if we were then to fall into that of the concepts. For this, no less than the other, would issue in a progressus ad infinitum, for who would ever be able to affirm that the concepts which were discovered and enumerated were all the concepts? If they be ten, why should they not be, if better observed, twenty, a hundred, or fifty thousand? Why, indeed, should they not be just as numerous as the representations, that is to say, infinite? Spinoza, who counted, without mediating between them, two attributes of substance, thought and extension, admitted, with perfect coherence, that two are known to us, but that the attributes of Substance must in reality be considered infinite in number.

Impossibility of eliminating it.

The concept, then, demands that this multiplicity be denied; and we can affirm that the real is one, because the concept, by means of which alone we know it, is one; the content is one, because the form of thought is one. But in accepting this claim, we run into another difficulty. If we jettison distinction, the unity that we attain is an empty unity, deprived of organic character, a whole without parts, a simple beyond the representations, and therefore inexpressible so that we should return to mysticism by another route. A whole is a whole, only because and in so far as it has parts, indeed is parts; an organism is such, because it has and is organs and functions; a unity is thinkable only in so far as it has distinctions in itself, and is the unity of the distinctions. Unity without distinction is as repugnant to thought as distinction without unity.

Unify as distinction.

It follows, therefore, that both terms are reciprocally indispensable, and that the distinctions of the concept are not the negation of the concept, nor something outside the concept, but the concept itself, understood in its truth; the one-distinct; one, only because distinct, and distinct only because one. Unity and distinction are correlative and therefore inseparable.

Inadequateness of the numerical concept of multiplicity.

The distinct concepts, constituting in their distinction unity, cannot, above all, be infinite in number, for in that case they would be equivalent to the representations. Not indeed that they are finite in number, as if they were all alike equally arranged upon one and the same plane, and capable of being placed in any other sort of order, without alteration in their being. The Beautiful, the True, the Useful, the Good, are not the first steps in a numerical series, nor do they permit themselves to be arranged at pleasure, so that we may place the beautiful after the true, or the good before the useful, or the useful before the true, and so on. They have a necessary order, and mutually imply one another; and from this we learn that they are not to be described as finite in number, since number is altogether incapable of expressing such a relation. To count implies having objects separate from one another before us; and here, on the contrary, we have terms that are distinct, but inseparable, of which the second is not only second, but, in a certain sense, also first, and the first not only first, but, in a certain way, also second. We cannot dispense with numbers, when treating of these concepts of the spirit, owing to their convenience for handling the subject; hence we talk, for example, of the ten categories, or of the three terms of the concept, or of the four forms of the spirit. But in this case the numbers are mere symbols; and we must beware of understanding the objects which they enumerate, as though they were ten sheep, three oxen, and four cows.

Relation of the distinct concepts as ideal history.

This relation of the distinct concepts in the unity which they constitute, can be compared to the spectacle of life, in which every fact is in relation with all other facts, and the fact which comes after is certainly different from that which precedes, but is also the same; since the consequent fact contains in itself the preceding, as, in a certain sense, the preceding virtually contained the consequent, and was what it was, just because it possessed the power of producing the consequent. This is called history; and therefore (continuing to develop the comparison) the relation of the concepts, which are distinct in the unity of the concept, can be called and has been called ideal history; and the logical theory of such ideal history has been regarded as the theory of the degrees of the concept, just as real history is conceived as a series of degrees of civilization. And since the theory of the degrees of the concept is the theory of its distinction, and its distinction is not different from its unity, it is clear that this theory can be separated from the general doctrine of the concept with which it is substantially one, only with a view to greater facility of exposition.

Distinction between ideal and real history.

Metaphors and comparisons are metaphors and comparisons and (like all forms of language) their effectiveness for the purposes of dissertation is accompanied, as we know, by the danger of misunderstanding. In order to avoid this, without at the same time renouncing the convenience of such modes of expression, it will be well to insist that the historical series, where the distinct concepts appear connected, is ideal, and therefore outside space and time, and eternal; so that it would be erroneous to conceive that in any smallest fragment of reality, or in any most fugitive instant of it, one degree is found without the other, the first without the second, or the first and the second without the third. Here too, we must allow for the exigencies of exposition, whereby, sometimes, when we intend to emphasize the distinction, we are led to speak of the relation of one degree to another, as if they were distinct existences; as if the practical man really existed side by side with the theoretic man, or the poet side by side with the philosopher, or as if the work of Art stood separate from the labour of reflection, and so on. But if a particular historical fact can in a certain sense be considered as essentially distinct in time and space, the grades of the concept are not existentially, temporally, and spatially distinct.

Ideal and abstract distinction.

An opposite, but not less serious error, would be to conceive the grades of the concept as distinct only abstractly, thus making abstract concepts of distinct concepts. The abstract distinction is unreal; and that of the concept is real; and the reality of the distinction (since here we are dealing with the concept) is precisely ideality, not abstraction. The universal, and therefore also all the forms of the universal, are found in every minutest fragment of life, in the so-called physical atom of the physicists, or in the psychical atom of the psychologists; the concept is therefore all distinct concepts. But each one of them is, as it were, distinct in that union; and in the same way as man is man, in so far as he affirms all his activities and his entire humanity, and yet cannot do this, save by specializing as a scientific man, a politician, a poet, and so on. In the same way the thinker, when thinking reality, can think it only in its distinct aspects, and in this way only he thinks it in its unity. A work of Art and a philosophical work, an act of thought or of will, cannot be taken up in the hand or pointed out with the finger; and it can be affirmed only in a practical and approximate sense that this book is poetry, and that philosophy, that this movement is a theoretic or practical, a utilitarian or a moral act. It is well understood that this book is also philosophy; and that it is also a practical act; just as that useful act is also moral, and also theoretic; and vice versa. But to think a certain intuitive datum and to recognize it as an affirmation of the whole spirit, is not possible save by thinking its different aspects distinctly. This renders possible, for example, a criticism of Art, conducted exclusively from the point of view of Art; or a philosophical criticism, from the exclusive point of view of philosophy; or a moral judgment, which considers exclusively the moral initiative of the individual, and so on. And therefore, here as in the preceding case, it is needful to guard against forcing the comparison with history too far, and conceiving, in history, the possibility of divisions as rigorous as in the concept. If distinct concepts be not existences, existences are not distinct concepts; a fact cannot be placed in the same relation to another fact, as one grade of the concept to another, precisely because in every fact there are all the determinations of the concept, and a fact in relation to another fact is not a conceptual determination.

Certainly distinct concepts can become simple abstractions; but this only happens when they are taken in an abstract way, and so separated from one another, co-ordinated and made parallel, by means of an arbitrary operation, which can be applied even to the pure concepts. The distinct concepts then become changed into pseudoconcepts, and the character of abstraction belongs to these last, not to the distinct concepts as such, which are always at once distinct and united.

Other usual distinctions of the concept, and their meaning, identicals, disparates, primitives, and derivatives, etc.

This is not the place to dwell upon the other forms of concepts met with in Logic, known as identical concepts, which cannot be anything but synonyms, or words;—or upon disparate concepts, which are simply distinct concepts, in so far as they are taken in a relation, which is not that given in the distinction, and is therefore arbitrary, so that the concepts, thus presented without the necessary intermediaries, appear disparate;—or primitive and derived concepts, or simple and compound concepts; a distinction which does not exist for the pure concepts, since they are always simple and primitive, never compound or derived.

Universals, particulars, and singulars. Intension and extension.

But the distinction of concepts into universal, particular, and singular deserves elucidation, for the reason that we are now giving. Concepts, which are only universal, or only particular, or only singular, or to which any one of these determinations is wanting, are not conceivable. Indeed, universality only means that the distinct concept is also the unique concept, of which it is a distinction and which is composed of such distinctions; particularity means that the distinct concept is in a determinate! relation with another distinct concept; and singularity that in this particularity and in that universality it is also itself. Thus the distinct concept is always singular, and therefore universal and particular; and the universal concept would be abstract were it not also particular and singular. In every concept there is the whole concept, and all other concepts; but there is also one determinate concept. For example, beauty is spirit (universality), theoretic spirit (particularity), and intuitive spirit (singularity); that is to say, the whole spirit, in so far as it is intuition. Owing to this distinction into universal, particular, and singular, it is self-evident that intension and extension are, as the phrase is, in inverse ratio, since this amounts to repeating that the universal is universal, the particular particular, and the singular singular.

Logical definition.

The interest of this distinction of universality, particularity, and singularity lies in this, that upon it is founded the doctrine of definition, since it is not possible to define, that is, to think a concept, save by thinking its singularity (peculiarity), nor to think this, save by determining it as particularity (relation with the other distinct concepts) and universality (relation with the whole). Conversely, it is not possible to think universality without determining its particularity and singularity; otherwise that universal would be empty. The distinct concepts are defined by means of the one, and the one by means of the distinct. This doctrine, thus made clear, is also in harmony with that of the nature of the concepts.

Unity, distinction as circle.

But the theory of the distinct concepts and that of their unity still present something irrational and give rise to a new difficulty. Because, if it be true that the distinct concepts constitute an ideal history or series of grades, it is also true that in such a history and series there is a first and last, the concept a, which opens the series, and, let us say, the concept d, which concludes it. Commencement and end thus remain both without motive. But in order that the concept be unity in distinction and that it may be compared to an organism, it is necessary that it have no other commencement save itself, and that none of its single distinct terms be an absolute commencement. For, in fact, in the organism no member has priority over the others; but each is reciprocally first and last. Now this means that the symbol of linear series is inadequate to the concept; and that its true symbol is the circle, in which a and d function, in turn, as first and last. And indeed the distinct concepts, as eternal ideal history, are an eternal going and returning, in which a, b, c, d arise from d, without possibility of pause or stay, and in which each one, whether a or b or c or d, being unable to change its place, is to be designated, in turn, as first or as last. For example, in the Philosophy of Spirit it can be said with equal truth or error that the end or final goal of the spirit is to know or to act, art or philosophy; in truth, neither in particular, but only their totality is the end; or only the Spirit is the end of the Spirit. Thus is eliminated the rational difficulty, which might be urged in relation to this part.

Distinction in the pseudoconcepts.

It is still better eliminated, and the whole doctrine of the pure concepts which we have been expounding is thereby illumined and thrown into clearer outline when we observe the transformation (which we will not call either inversion or perversion), to which it is submitted in the doctrine of the pseudoconcepts. It is therefore expedient to refer rapidly to this for the sake of contrast and emphasis.

Above all, certain distinctions, which in the doctrine of the pure concepts have been seen to be without significance or importance, find their significance in the doctrine of the pseudoconcepts. We understand, for instance, how and why identical concepts can be discussed; since, in the field of caprice, one and the same thing, or one and the same not-thing, can be defined in different ways and give rise to two or more concepts which, owing to the identity of their matter, are thus identical. The concept of a figure having three angles, or that of a figure having three sides, are identical concepts, alike applicable to the triangle; the concept of 3 x 4 and that of 6 x 2 are identical, since both are definitions of the number 12; the concept of a feline domestic animal and that of a domestic animal that eats mice are identical, both being definitions of the cat. It is likewise clear how and why primary and derived, simple and compound concepts are discussed; for our arbitrary choice, by forming certain concepts and making use of these to form others, comes to posit the first as simple and primitive in relation to the second, which are, in their turn, to be considered as compound or secondary.

The subordination and co-ordination of the empirical concepts.

We have already seen that the arbitrary concept differs from the pure concept in that, of necessity, it produces two forms by the two acts of empiricism and emptiness and thereby gives rise to two different types of formations, empirical and abstract concepts. Empirical concepts have this property, that in them unity is outside distinction and distinction outside unity. And it is natural: for if it were the case that these two determinations penetrated one another, the concepts would be, as we have already noted, not arbitrary, but necessary and true. If the distinction is placed outside the unity, every division that is given of it is, like the concepts themselves, arbitrary; and every enumeration is also arbitrary, because those concepts can be infinitely multiplied. In exchange for the rationally determined and completely unified distinctions of the pure concepts, the pseudoconcepts offer multiple groups, arbitrarily formed, and sometimes also unified in a single group, which embraces the entire field of the knowable, but in such a way as not to exclude an infinite number of other ways of apprehending it.

In these groups the empirical concepts simulate the arrangement of the pure concepts, reducing the particular to the universal, that is to say, a certain number of concepts beneath another concept. But it is impossible in any way to think these subordinate concepts, as actualizations of the fundamental concept, which are developed from one another and return into themselves; hence we are compelled to leave them external to one another, simply co-ordinated. The scheme of subordination and co-ordination, and its relative spatial symbol (the symbol of classification), which is a right line, on the upper side of which falls perpendicularly another right line, and from whose lower side descend other perpendicular and therefore parallel right lines, is opposed to the circle and is the most evident ocular demonstration of the profound diversity of the two procedures. It will always be impossible to dispose a nexus of pure concepts in that classificatory scheme without falsifying them; it will always be impossible to transform empirical concepts into a series of grades without destroying them.

The definition in the empirical concepts, and the notes of the concept.

In consequence of the scheme of classification, the definition which, in the case of pure concepts, has the three moments of universality, particularity, and singularity, in the case of empirical concepts has only two, which are called genus and species; and is applied according to the rule, by means of the proximate genus and the specific difference. Its object indeed is simply to record, not to understand and to think, a given empirical formation; and this is fully attained when its position is determined by means of the indication of what is above and what is beside it. In order to determine it yet more accurately, the doctrine of the definition has been gradually enriched with other marks or predicables, which, in traditional Logic, are five: genus, species, differentia, property, accident. But it is a question of caprice upon caprice, of which it is not advisable to take too much account. And as it would be barbaric to apply the classificatory scheme to the pure concepts, so it would be equally barbaric to define the pure concepts by means of marks, that is, by means of characteristics mechanically arranged.

Series in the abstract concepts.

Where the thinker forgets the true function of the empirical concepts and is seized with the desire to develop them rationally, and thus to overcome the atomism of the scheme of classification and of extrinsic definition, he is led to refine them into abstract concepts, in which that scheme and that method of definition are overcome: the classification becomes a series (numerical series, series of geometrical forms, etc.), and the definition becomes genetic. But this improvement not only makes the empirical concepts disappear, and is therefore not improvement but death (like the death which the empirical concepts find in true knowledge when they return or mount up again to pure thought); but such improvement substitutes for empiricism emptiness. Series and genetic definitions answer without doubt to demands of the practical spirit; but, as we know, they do not yield truth, not even the truth which lies at the bottom of an empirical concept or of a falsified and mutilated representation. Hence, here as elsewhere, empirical concepts and abstract concepts reveal their double one-sidedness, and exhibit more significantly the value of the unity which they break up; the distinction, which is not classification, but circle and unity; the definition, which is not an aggregate of intuitive data; the series, which is a complete series; the genesis, which is not abstract but ideal.

VI

OPPOSITION AND LOGICAL PRINCIPLES

Opposite or contrary concepts.

By what has been said, we have made sufficiently clear the nature of distinct concepts, that is to say, unity in distinction and distinction in unity, and we have left no doubt as to the kind of unity which the concept affirms, that it is not in spite of but by means of distinction. But another difficulty seems to arise, due to another order of concepts, which are called opposites or contraries.

Their difference from distincts.

It is indubitable that opposite concepts neither are nor can be reduced to distincts; and this becomes evident so soon as instances of both are recalled to mind. In the system of the spirit, for instance, the practical activity will be distinct from the theoretic, and within the practical activity the utilitarian and ethical activities will be distinct. But the contrary of the practical activity is practical inactivity, the contrary of utility, harmfulness, the contrary of morality, immorality. Beauty, truth, utility, moral good are distinct concepts; but it is easy to see that ugliness, falsehood, uselessness, evil cannot be added to or inserted among them. Nor is this all: upon closer inspection we perceive that the second series cannot be added to or mingled with the first, because each of the contrary terms is already inherent in its contrary, or accompanies it, as shadow accompanies light. Beauty is such, because it denies ugliness; good, because it denies evil, and so on. The opposite is not positive, but negative, and as such is accompanied by the positive.

Confirmation of this given by the Logic of empiria.

This difference of nature between opposite concepts and distinct concepts is also reflected in empirical Logic, that is, in the theory of pseudoconcepts; because this Logic, while it reduces the distinct concepts to species, refuses to treat the opposites in like manner. Hence one does not say that the genus dog is divided into the species live dogs and dead dogs; or that the genus moral man is divided into the species moral and immoral man; and if such has sometimes been affirmed, an impropriety—even for this kind of Logic—has been committed, since the species can never be the negation of the genus. So this empirical Logic confirms in its own way that opposite concepts are different from distinct.

Difficulty arising from the double type of concepts, opposites, and distincts.

It is, however, equally evident that we cannot content ourselves with enumerating the opposite, side by side with the distinct concepts; because we should thus be adopting non-philosophical methods in place of philosophical, and in the philosophical theory of Logic should be lapsing into illogicality or empiricism. If the unity of the concept be at the same time its self-distinction, how can that same unity have another parallel sort of division or self-distinction, which is self-opposition! If it is inconceivable to resolve the one into the other, and to make of the opposites distinct concepts, or of the distincts opposite concepts, then it is not less inconceivable to leave both distincts and opposites within the unity of the concept unmediated and unexplained.

Nature of the opposites; and their identity with the distincts when distinguished from them.

It will possibly serve towards a solution of this difficulty—undoubtedly a very grave one—to go deeply into the nature of the difference between opposite and distinct concepts. These latter are distinguishable in unity; reality is their unity and also their distinction. Man is thought and action; indivisible but distinguishable forms; so much so that in so far as we think we deny action, and in so far as we act we deny thought. But the opposites are not distinguishable in this way: the man who commits an evil action, if he really does something, does not commit an evil action, but an action which is useful to him; the man who thinks a false thought, if he does something real, does not think the false thought, indeed does not think at all, but, on the contrary, lives and provides for his own convenience and in general for a good which at that instant he desires. Hence we see that the opposites, when taken as distinct moments, are no longer opposites, but distincts; and in that case they retain negative denominations only metaphorically, whereas, strictly speaking, they would merit positive. In order, therefore, that the consideration of opposition be not changed when superficially regarded into that of distinction, it is desirable not to make of it a distinction in the bosom of the concept, that is to say, to combat every distinction by opposition, by declaring it to be merely abstract.

Impossibility of distinguishing one opposite from another, as concept from concept.

So true is this, that no sooner are opposite terms taken as distincts than the one becomes the other, that is to say, both evaporate into emptiness. The disputes caused by the opposition of being to not-being and the unity of both in becoming are celebrated in this connection. And we know that being, thought as pure being, is the same as not-being or nothing; and nothing, thought as pure nothingness, is the same as pure being. Thus, the truth is neither the one nor the other, but is becoming, in which both are, but as opposites, and, therefore, indistinguishable: becoming is being itself, which has in it not-being, and so is also not-being. We cannot think the relation of being to not-being as the relation of one form of the spirit, or of reality, to another form. In the latter case we have unity in distinction: in the former, rectified or restored unity, that is to say, reaffirmed against emptiness; against the empty unity of mere being, or of mere not-being; or against the mere sum of being and of not-being.

The dialectic.

The two moments should certainly be synthesized, when we attack the abstract thought, which divides them: taken in themselves, they are, not two moments united in a third, but one only, the third (in this case also the number is a symbol), that is to say, the indistinguishability of the moments. It thus happens (be it said in passing) that Hegel, to whom we owe the polemic against empty being, was content for this purpose neither with the words unity and identity, nor with synthesis, nor with triad, and preferred to call this indistinguishable opposition in unity the objective dialectic of the real. But whatever be the words that we chose to employ, the thing is what has been said. The opposite is not the distinct of its opposite, but the abstraction of the true reality.

The opposites are not concepts, but the unique concept itself.

If this be the fact, the duality and parallelism of distinct and opposite concepts no longer exist. The opposites are the concept itself, and therefore the concepts themselves, each one in itself, in so far as it is determination of the concept, and in so far as it is conceived in its true reality. Reality, of which logical thought elaborates the concept, means, not motionless being or pure being, but opposition: the forms of reality, which the concept thinks in order to think reality in its fullness, are opposed in themselves; otherwise, they would not be forms of reality, or would not be at all. Fair is foul and foul is fair: beauty is such, because it has within it ugliness, the true is such because it has in it the false, the good is such because it has within it evil. If the negative term be removed, as is usually done in abstract thought, the positive also disappears; but precisely because, with the negative, the positive itself has been removed. When we talk of negative terms, or of non-values and so of not-beings as existing, existence really means that to the establishment of the fact we add the expression of the desire that another existence should arise upon that existence. "You are dishonest" means "You are a man that seeks your own pleasure" (a theoretic judgment); "but you ought to be" (no longer a judgment, but the expression of a desire) "something else, and so serve the universal ends of Reality." "You have written an ugly verse" will mean, for example, "You have provided for your own convenience and repose, and so have accomplished an economic act" (a theoretic judgment); "but you ought to accomplish an æsthetic act" (no longer judgment, but the expression of a wish). Examples can be multiplied. But every one has in him evil, because he has good: Satan is not a creature extraneous to God, nor the Minister of God, called Satan, but God himself. If God had not Satan in himself, he would be like food without salt, an abstract ideal, a simple ought to be which is not, and therefore impotent and useless. The Italian poet who had sung of Satan, as "rebellion" and "the avenging force of reason," had a profound meaning when he concluded by exalting God: as "the most lofty vision to which peoples attain in the force of their youth," "the Sun of sublime minds and of ardent hearts." He corrected and integrated the one abstraction with the other, and thus unconsciously attained to the fullness of truth.

Affirmation and negation.

Thought, in so far as it is itself life (that is to say, the life which is thought, and therefore life of life), and in so far as it is reality (that is to say, the reality which is thought, and therefore reality of reality) has in itself opposition; and for this reason it is also affirmation and negation; it does not affirm save by denying, and does not deny save by affirming. But it does not affirm and deny save by distinguishing, because thought is distinction, and we cannot distinguish (truly distinguish i.e., which is a different thing from the rough and ready separations made by the pseudoconcepts) save by unifying. He who meditates upon the connections of affirmation-negation and unity-distinction has before him the problem of the nature of thought, and so of the nature of reality; and he ends by seeing that those two connections are not parallel nor disparate, but are in their turn unified in unity-distinction understood as effective reality, and not as simple abstract possibility, or desire, or mere ought to be.

The principle of identity and contradiction; its true meaning and false interpretation.

If we now wish to state the nature of thought as reality in the form of law (a form which we know to be one with that of the concept, though the first term be adopted by preference for the pseudoconcepts), we can only say that the law of thought is the law of unity and distinction, and therefore that it is expressed in the two formulæ A is A (unity) and A is not B (distinction), which are precisely what is called the law or principle of identity and contradiction. It is a very improper, or, rather, a very equivocal formula, chiefly because it allows it to be supposed that the law or principle is outside or above thought, like a bridle and guide, whereas it is thought itself; and it has the further inconvenience of not placing in clear relief the unity of identity and distinction. But these are not too great evils, because misunderstandings can be made clear, and because—what we will not tire of repeating—all, all words indeed, are exposed to misunderstandings.

Another false interpretation; struggle with the principle of opposition. False application of this principle.

We have a much greater evil, when the principle of identity and contradiction is formulated and understood, not in the sense that A is not B, but in that of A is A only and not also not A, or its opposite; because, understood in this way, it leads directly to placing the negative moment outside the positive, not-being outside or opposite to being, and so, to the absurd conception of reality as motionless and empty being. In opposition to this degeneration of the principle of identity and contradiction, another law or principle has been conceived and made prominent, whose formula is: "A is also not A," or "everything is self-contradicting." This is a necessary and provident reaction against the one-sided way in which the preceding principle was interpreted. But it too brings in its turn the inconvenience of all reactions, because it seems to rise up against the first law, like an irreconcilable rival destined to supplant it. In the first formula we have a duality of principles, which, as has been said, cannot logically be maintained; in the second, a degeneration in the opposite sense, the total loss of the criterion of distinction. To the false application of the principle of identity and contradiction succeeds the false application of the dialectic principle.

This false application has also been manifested in a form which could be called doubly arbitrary; that is to say, when it has attempted to treat dialectically neither more nor less than empirical and abstract concepts, whereas in any case it could not be applied to anything but the pure concepts. The dialectic belongs to opposed categories (or, rather, it is the thinking of the one category of opposition), not at all to representative and abstract fictions, which are based either upon mere representation or upon nothing. As the result of that arbitrary form, we have seen vegetable opposed to mineral, society opposed to the family, or even Rome opposed to Greece, and Napoleon to Rome; or the superficies actually opposed to the line, time to space, and the number two to the number one. But this error belongs to another more general error, which we shall deal with in its place, when discussing philosophism.

Errors of the dialectic applied to the relation of the distincts.

Here it is important to indicate only that false application of the dialectic which tends to resolve in itself and so to destroy distinct concepts, by treating them as opposites. The distinct concepts are distinct and not opposite; and they cannot be opposite, precisely because they already have opposition in themselves. Fancy has its opposite in itself, fanciful passivity, or æsthetic ugliness, and therefore it is not the opposite of thought, which in its turn has its opposite in itself, logical passivity, antithought, or the false. Certainly (as has been said), he who does not make the beautiful (in so far as he does anything, and he cannot but do something) effectively produces another value, for example the useful, and he who does not think, if he does anything, produces another value, the fanciful for instance, and creates a work of art. But in this way we issue from those determinations considered in themselves, from the opposition which is in them and which constitutes them; and from the consideration of effectual opposition we pass to the consideration of distinction. Considered as real, the opposite cannot be anything but the distinct; but the opposite is precisely the unreal in the real, and not a form or grade of reality. It will be said that unless one distinct concept is opposed to another, it is not clear how there can be a transition from one to the other. But this is a confusion between concept and fact, between ideal and therefore eternal moments of the real and their existential manifestations. Existentially, a poet does not become a philosopher, save when in his spirit there arises a contradiction to his poetry, that is to say, when he is no longer satisfied with the individual and with the individual intuition: in that moment, he does not pass into but is a philosopher, because to pass, to be effectual, and to become are synonyms. In the same way, a poet does not pass from one intuition to another, or from one work of art to another, save through the formation of an internal contradiction, owing to which his previous work no longer satisfies him; and he passes into, that is to say he becomes and truly is, another poet. Transition is the law of the whole of life; and therefore it is in all the existential and contingent determinations of each of these forms. We pass from one verse of a poem to another because the first verse satisfies, and also does not satisfy. The ideal moments, on the contrary, do not pass into one another, because they are eternally in each other, distinct, and one with each other.

Its reductio ad absurdum.

Moreover, the violent application of the dialectic to the distincts, and their illegitimate distortion into opposites, due to an elevated but ill-directed tendency to unity, is punished where it sins; that is to say, in not attaining to that unity to which it aspired. The connection of distinct is circular, and therefore true unity; the application of opposites to the forms of the spirit and of reality would produce, on the contrary, not the circle, which is true infinity, but the progressif ad infinitum, which is false or bad infinity. Indeed, if opposition determine the transition from one ideal grade to the other, from one form to the other, and is the sole character and supreme law of the real, by what right can a final form be established, in which that transition should no longer take place? By what right, for instance, should the spirit, which moves from the impression or emotion and passes dialectically to the intuition, and by a new dialectic transition to logical thought, remain calm and satisfied there? Why (as is the contention of such philosophies) should the thought of the Absolute or of the Idea be the end of Life? In obedience to the law of opposition, it would be necessary that thought, which denies intuition, should be in its turn denied; and the denial again denied; and so on, to infinity. This negation to infinity exists, certainly, and it is life itself, seen in representation; but precisely for this reason we do not escape from this evil infinite of representation save through the true infinite, which places the infinite in every moment, the first in the last and the last in the first, that is to say, places in every moment unity, which is distinction.

We must, however, recognize that the false application of the dialectic has had, per accidens, the excellent result of demonstrating the instability of a crowd of ill-distinguished concepts; as we must take advantage of the devastation and overturning of secular prejudices which it has brought about. But that erroneous dialectic has also promoted the habit of lack of precision in the concepts, and sometimes encouraged the charlatanism of superficial thinkers; though this too, per accidens, so far as concerns the initial motive of dialectical polemic is rich with profound truth.

The Improper form of logical principles or laws. The principle of sufficient reason.

The form of law given to the concept of the concept has led to this confusion; for it is an improper form, all saturated with empirical usage. Given the law of identity and contradiction, and given side by side with it that of opposition or dialectic, there inevitably arises a seeming duality; whereas the two laws are nothing but two inopportune forms of expressing the unique nature of the concept, or, rather, of reality itself. The peculiar nature of the concept may rather be said to be expressed in another law or principle, namely that of sufficient reason. This principle is ordinarily used as referring to the concept of cause, or to the pseudoconcepts, but (both in its peculiar tendency and in its historical origin) it truly belonged to the concept of end or reason. That is to say, it was desired to establish that things cannot be said to be known, when any sort of cause for them is adduced, but on the contrary, that cause must be adduced, which is also the end, and which is, therefore, the sufficient reason. But what else does seeking the sufficient reason of things mean but thinking them in their truth, conceiving them in their universality, and stating their concept? This is logical thought, as distinct from representation or intuition, which offers things but not reasons, individuality but not universality.

It is not worth while talking about the other so-called logical principles; because, either they have been already implicitly dealt with, or they are ineptitudes without any sort of interest.

SECOND SECTION

THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT

I.

THE CONCEPT AND VERBAL FORM. THE DEFINITIVE JUDGMENT

Relation of the logical with the Æsthetic form.

With the ascent from the intuition-expression to the concept, and with the concentration upon it of our attention, we have risen from the purely imaginative to the purely logical form of the spirit. We must now, so to speak, begin the descent; or rather consider in greater detail the position that has been reached, in order to understand it in all its conditions and circumstances. Were we not to do this, we should have given a concept of the concept, which would err by abstraction.

The concept as expression.

The concept, to which we have risen from intuition, does not live in empty space. It does not exist as a mere concept, or as something abstract. The air it breathes is the intuition itself, from which it detaches itself, but in whose ambient it continues. If these images seem unsuitable, or somewhat drawn from the sphere of representations, we may choose others, such as that, which we used on another occasion, of the second grade, which, to be second, must rest upon the first, and, in a certain sense, be the first. The concept does not exist, and cannot exist, save in the intuitive and expressive forms, or in what is called language. To think is also to speak; he who does not express, or does not know how to express his concept, does not possess it: at the most, he presumes or hopes to possess it. Not only is there never in reality an unexpressed representation, a pictorial vision unpainted, or a song unsung; but there is never even a concept which is simply thought and not also translated into words.

We have previously defended this thesis against the objections which are wont to be made to it.[1] But in order to recapitulate and thus to avoid the misunderstandings which might arise from the abbreviating formulæ which we use, it will be well to repeat that the concept is not expressed only in the so-called vocal or verbal forms; and if we mention these more than others, it will be by synecdoche, that is to say, when we refer to them, we desire to take them as representative of all the others. Undoubtedly, the affirmation that the concept can also be expressed in non-verbal form may cause surprise. It will be said that geometry itself, in so far as it describes geometrical figures, at the same time employs or implies speech; and we shall be ironically challenged to attempt to set the Critique of Pure Reason to music or to make a building of Newton's Natural Philosophy. But we must carefully beware of breaking up the unity of the intuitive spirit, because errors arise and become incorrigible, precisely through such breaking up. Words, tones, colours, and lines are physical abstractions, and only by abstraction can they be successfully separated. In reality, he who looks at a picture with his eyes also speaks it in words to himself; he who sings an air also has its words in his spirit; he who builds a palace or a church speaks, sings, and makes music; he who reads a poem sings, paints, sculptures, constructs. The Critique of Pure Reason cannot be set to music, because it already has its music; the Natural Philosophy cannot be built in stone, because it is already architectonic; in exactly the same way that the Transfiguration cannot be turned into a symphony in four movements, or the Promessi Sposi into a series of pictures. Thus the challenge, if made, would testify to the lack of reflection on the part of the challengers, for they would confuse physical distinctions with the real and concrete act of the intuitive spirit.

Æsthetic and Æsthetic-logical expressions or expressions of the concept; propositions and judgments.

Owing to the incarnation of the concept or logic in expression and language, language is quite full of logical elements; hence people are often led astray into affirming (we have already made clear the erroneousness[2] of this) that language is a logical function. Water might as well be called wine, because wine has been poured into the water. But language as language or as simple æsthetic fact is one thing, and language as expression of logical thought is another, for in this case, certainly, language remains always language and subject to the law of language, but is also more than language. If the first be termed simple expression, logos seimantikos, as Aristotle said, or judicium æstheticum sive sensitivum, according to the school of Baumgarten, the second must on the contrary be called affirmation, logos apophantikos, judicium logicum or æsthetico-logicum. To this same issue we can reduce, if we understand it properly, the distinction between proposition and judgment, for they are only distinguishable in so far as it is assumed that the second form is dominated by the concept, whereas the first is given as free of such domination.

But we should seek in vain for facts in proof of expressions belonging to either form, because we cannot furnish them without making the proviso that we understand them in the meaning of one or other of the two forms. Taken by themselves, any verbal expressions which we adduce or can adduce as proofs are indeterminate and therefore of many meanings. "Love is life" can be the saying of a poet who notes an impression with which his soul is agitated and marks it with fervour and solemnity; or it can be, equally, the logical affirmation of some one philosophizing on the essence of life. "Clear, fresh, and sweet waters," when uttered by Petrarch, is an æsthetic proposition; but the same words become a logical judgment when, for example, they answer the question as to which is the most celebrated love song of Petrarch, or pseudological when applied by a naturalist to the substance water. A word no longer has meaning, or—what amounts to the same thing—has no definite meaning, when it is abstracted from the circumstances, the implications, the emphasis, and the gesture with which it has been thought, animated, and pronounced. Nevertheless, forgetfulness of this elementary hermeneutic canon, by which a word is a word only on the soil that has produced it and to which it must be restored, has been in Logic the cause of interminable disputes as to the logical nature of this or that verbal phrase, separated from the whole to which it belonged and rendered abstract. It would be much less equivocal to adduce such poems as I Sepolcri, or the song A Silvia, as documents of æsthetic propositions, and philosophical treatises (for examples, the Metaphysics or the Analytics) as documents of æsthetic-logical judgments or propositions. But here, too, we should need to add: "poetry considered as poetry," and "philosophy considered as philosophy," since it is clear that a poem is prose in the soul of him who reflects upon it, and prose is poetry in the soul of a writer vibrating with enthusiasm and emotion in the act of composition. Facts do not constitute proofs in philosophy, save when they are interpreted through the medium of philosophy; and then, too, they become mere examples, which aid in fixing the attention upon what is being demonstrated.

Surpassing of the dualism of thought and language.

The relation between language and thought, conceived as we have conceived it, does not admit the criticism that it creates an insuperable dualism, though that criticism was justly aimed at those who set the two concepts side by side and parallel with one another. In that case the sole means that remained of obtaining unity was to present language as an acoustic fact and declare thought to be the unique psychic reality, and language the physical side of the psychophysical nexus. But no one will henceforth wish to repeat the blasphemy that language (the synonym of fancy and poetry) is nothing but a physical-acoustic fact and merely adherent to thought. We have in the two forms, notwithstanding their clear distinction, not parallelism and dualism, but an organic relation of connection in distinction,—the first form being implied in the second, the second crystallized into the first,—precisely in conformity with that rhythmical movement of the concepts which we have already discussed. And thus, too, when asked if the prius of Logic be the concept or the judgment, we must reply that the judgment, understood as an æsthetic proposition, is certainly a prius; but understood as a logical judgment, it is neither a prius nor a posterius in relation to the concept, since it is the concept itself in its effectuality.

The logical judgment as definition.

This pure expression of the concept, which is the logical judgment, constitutes what is called definitive judgment or definition. This, considered on its verbal side, or as the synthesis of thought and word, does not give rise to any special logical theory in addition to that which we have already stated, when definition showed itself to be one with distinction or conceptual thought; nor does it give rise to any special æsthetic doctrine, since the general doctrine expounded elsewhere includes this also. The dispute, as to whether the definition be verbal or real, finds its solution in the relation we have just established between thought and words; hence definition is verbal because it is real, and vice versa. And as to the other meaning of the question, whether, that is to say, definition be nominal or real, conventional or corresponding with the truth, that finds its solution in the distinction between pseudoconcepts and concepts, the first of which, it is clear, are defined only in a nominalist or conventional way, because they are, in fact, nominalist and conventional.

The indistinguishability of subject and predicate in the definition. Unity of essence and existence.

Greater importance attaches to the other dispute, as to whether the definitive judgment be analysable into subject, predicate, and copula, whether, for example, the definition: "the will is the practical form of the spirit," can be resolved in the terms: "will" (subject), "practical form of the spirit" (predicate), and "is" (copula). Now, the difference between subject and predicate is here illusory, since predicate means the universal which is predicated of an individual, and here both the so-called subject and the so-called predicate are two universals, and the second, far from being more ample than the first, is the first itself. As to the "is," since the two distinct terms which should be copulated are wanting, it is not a copula; nor has it even the value of a predicate, as in the case in which it is asserted of an individual fact that it is, that is to say, that it has really happened and is existing. The "is," in the case of the definition, expresses nothing except simply the act of thought which thinks; and what is thought is, in so far as it is thought; if it were not, it would not be thought; and if it were not thought, it would not be. The concept gives the essence of things, and in the concept essence involves existence. That this proposition has sometimes been contested is due solely to the confusion between the essence, which is existence and therefore concept, and the existence which is not essence and therefore is representation. It is due therefore to the problem to which representations gave rise in this respect, and with which we shall deal further on. Freed from this confusion, the proposition is not contestable, and is the very basis of all logical thought, of which we have to examine the conceivability, or essence, that is, its internal necessity and coherence; and when this has been established, existence has also been established. If the concept of virtue be conceivable, virtue is; if the concept of God be conceivable, God is. To the most perfect concept the perfection of existence cannot be wanting without being itself non-existent.

Alleged emptiness of the definition.

Yet it would seem that though the definition affirms both essence and existence, and therefore the reality of the concept, it is, nevertheless, an empty form; for we have recognized that in every definition subject and predicate are the same, and it is therefore a tautological judgment. Certainly, the definition is tautological, but it is a sublime tautology, altogether different from the emptiness which is usually condemned in that expression. The tautology of the definition means that the concept is equal only to itself and cannot be resolved into another or explained by another. In the definition truth praesentia patet, and if the Goddess does not reveal herself by her simple presence, it is in vain that the priest will strive to discover her to the multitude by comparing her with what is inferior to her: with sensible things, which are particular manifestations of her.

Critique of the definition as fixed verbal form.

As in relation to the concept the definition is not to be held distinguishable, so in its expressive or verbal aspect it must not be understood as a formula separate from the basis of the discourse, as though it were the official garb of truth, the only worthy setting for that gem. Such a conception of its nature has caused pedantry of definition, hatred of and consequent rebellion against definitions. That pedantry, however, like all pedantries, had some good in it; that is to say, it energetically affirmed the need for exactitude; and too frequently the rebellion, denying, like all rebellions, not only the evil but also whatever good there might be in the thing opposed, has, through its hatred of formulæ, made exactitude of thought a negligible matter. But definition, taken verbally, is not a formula, a period or part of a book or discourse; it is the whole book or the whole discourse, from the first word to the last, including all that in it may seem accidental or superficial, including even the accent, the warmth, the emphasis, and the gesture of the living word, the notes, the parentheses, the full stops, and commas of the writing. Nor can we indicate a special literary form of definition, such as the treatise or system or manual, because the definition or concept is given alike in opuscules and in dialogues, in prose and in verse, in satire and in lyric, in comedy and in tragedy. To define, from the verbal point of view, means to express the concept; and all the expressions of the concept are definitions. This might trouble rhetoricians desirous of devoting a special chapter to the form of scientific treatment; but it does not trouble good sense, which quickly recognizes that the thing is just so, and that an epigram may give that precise and efficacious definition in which the ample scholastic volume of a professor sometimes fails, although full of pretence in this respect.

II

THE CONCEPT AND THE VERBAL FORM, THE SYLLOGISM

Identity of definition and syllogism.

The definition not only is not a formula separable or distinguishable from the thread of the discourse, but it cannot even be separated or distinguished from the ratiocinative forms or forms of demonstration, as is implied in the custom of logicians, who make the doctrine of the definition or of the systematic forms, as they usually call them, follow that of the forms of demonstration. They ingenuously imagine that thought, after having had a rough-and-tumble with its adversaries, and after having proclaimed, shouted, and finally vindicated its own right, mounts the rostrum and henceforth calm and sure of itself begins to define. But, in reality, to think is to combat continuously without any repose; and at every moment of that battle there is always peace and security; and definition is indistinguishable from demonstration, because it is found at every instant of the demonstration and coincides with it. Definition and Syllogism are the same thing.

Connection of concepts and thought of the concept.

The syllogism, indeed, is nothing but a connection of concepts; and although it has been disputed as to whether it must be considered so, or rather as a connection of logical propositions or judgments, the dispute is at once solved, so far as we are concerned, by observing :hat precisely because the syllogism is a connection of concepts, and concepts only exist in verbal forms, that is to say, in propositions or judgments, the syllogism is also a connection of judgments. This serves to reinforce the truth that if the effective presence of the verbal form must always be recognized in the logical fact, it must, on the other hand, be forgotten when Logic is being constructed and the nature of Logic and of the concept is being sought. Now, the connection of the concepts represents nothing new in relation to the thinking of the concept. As has already been seen, to think the concept signifies to think it in its distinctions, to place it in relation with the other concepts and to unify it with them in the unique concept. A concept thought outside its relations is indistinct, that is to say, not thought at all.

Therefore, the connection of the concepts, or syllogizing, cannot be conceived as a new and more complex logical act. To syllogize and to think are synonymous; although, in the ordinary use of language, the term "to syllogize" throws into special relief the verbal aspect of thinking, and, more exactly, the dynamic character of verbal exposition, which is indeed the very character of this exposition, for it is with difficulty, or only empirically, that it can be distinguished into static and dynamic, definition and demonstration.

Identity of judgment and of syllogism.

But if the syllogism be thus identified with the concept itself, it may nevertheless seem that it must be distinguished from the judgment of definition seeing that the syllogism is a form of logical thought, and consequently of verbal expression, quite distinct from and incapable of being confounded with any other: a connection of three judgments, two of which are called premisses and the third conclusion, closely cemented by the syllogistic force, which is placed in the middle term. This character of triplicity seems ineradicable and peculiar to the syllogism in contrast with the judgment.

Some question, however, must be raised concerning this characteristic because of another characteristic universally recognized in the syllogism; namely, that the premisses are conclusions of other syllogisms, just as the conclusion becomes, in its turn, a premiss. This being so, it might be said with greater truth that the syllogism is to syllogize or to think; and since this is infinite, so the propositions of which it consists are also infinite. On the other hand, there is no judgment which is not a syllogism, since it is clear that he who affirms a judgment affirms it by some reasoning or syllogism, present and active in his spirit, though more or less understood in the words. And are not other propositions understood in the syllogisms which are properly so-called, not only in the forms, which are called abbreviated (immediate inferences, enthymemes, etc.), but also in all the other forms; since it is admitted that every syllogism, as has just been observed, presupposes other preceding syllogisms, indeed an infinity of others? It will be replied that at the end of the chain there must yet be found the difference between judgment and syllogism, or two first judgments, which are not produced by syllogism, and form the columns, upon which the structure of the first conclusion rests. But such an answer (if it do not imply simply the strange fancy that thought has a beginning and therefore also an end in time) will mean that judgment and syllogism are distinct in intrinsic character, which makes the one the necessary condition of the other. Now, this intrinsic distinctive character is precisely what cannot be found, because it does not exist; and if it be not in every link, it is vain to seek it at the beginning of the chain.

The middle term and the nature of the concept.

Certainly, that venatio medii, that ergo, that unification of triplicity, are things of much importance. But whence comes their importance if not from being the expression of the synthetic force of thought, of thought which unifies and distinguishes, and distinguishes because it unifies and unifies because it distinguishes? And is triplicity truly triplicity, one, two, three, arithmetically enumerable? But if this be so, how is it that we never succeed in counting those three, resolving each one of them into a series of similar terms, or of other propositions and concepts? Upon attentive consideration we perceive that here, too, the number three is symbolical, and that it does no more than designate the distinction, which unifies or thinks the singular concept in the universal through the particular, or determines the universal through the particular, by making it a singular concept, whence it remains perfectly certain that the relation of these three determinations is not numerical. Such a logical operation, not being anything special, but simply logical reasoning itself, is of necessity found also in the judgment.

Pretended non-definitive logical judgments.

A possible objection at this point is that even if the unity of judgment and syllogism can be held to be demonstrated as regards definitions and syllogisms which are the basis of definitions, yet it has not been demonstrated for the other forms of syllogisms and logical judgments, which are not definitive. But if these judgments and syllogisms be logical, they cannot fail to be definitive, or to have for their content affirmations of concepts. "All men are mortal" is a definition of the concept of man, whose mortality is verbally emphasized or his immortality denied. It is without doubt an incomplete definition, because it is torn from the web of thoughts and of speech of which it formed part; and this web will also always be incomplete or capable of infinite completion by means of new affirmations and new negations. But in its incompleteness it is at the same time also complete, because it affirms a concept of reality, of life and death, of finite and infinite, of spirituality and of its forms, and so on; these are all presupposed determinations, and therefore existing and operating in the concepts of man and mortality. "Caius is a man" (which is the second premiss of the syllogism traditionally adduced as an example) is certainly not a definition (though it presupposes and contains many definitions) precisely for the reason that it is not a pure logical judgment. Hence it happens that the conclusion itself: "therefore Caius is mortal," is more than a pure logical conclusion, since it also contains a historical element, the person of Caius. But we shall speak further on of these individual or historical judgments; and then we shall also see in what relation they stand to the universal or pure logical judgments, and if it be truly possible to distinguish between them, otherwise than for the sake of convenience. The distinction is in any case convenient and does no harm at this point; and therefore for didactic reasons we allow it to stand; indeed we make use of it.

The syllogism as fixed verbal form. Its use and abuse.

Just as in the case of definitions, so also in the case of the syllogism, it is to be noted that the verbal expression does not consist of an obligatory formula, but assumes the most varied forms, apparently very remote from syllogizing as commonly understood. The abuse of the syllogism as a formula continued for centuries, notably in mediæval Scholasticism, and notwithstanding the rebellion of the Renaissance, it has persisted among many philosophical schools, its last conspicuous manifestation being the didactic elaboration of the Leibnitzian philosophy, or Wolffianism. Certain of Wolff's demonstrations have remained famous, such as that concerning the construction of windows, contained in his Manual of Architecture. "A window must be large enough for two persons to lean against it, side by side," he developed it in this way: "Demonstration. It is customary to lean against a window with another person in order to look out. But the architect must serve the interests of his employer in everything. Therefore he must make the window large enough for two persons to be able to be there side by side.[1] Q.E.D."

No more such syllogistic pedantries have been seen in our times, but (as has been already remarked in reference to pedantry of definition) contempt for the formula has too often resulted in contempt even for the correctness of the reasoning. So that it has sometimes been necessary to advise a bracing bath of scholasticism, and it has been observed and lamented of certain new civilizations (for example, of Russian culture, or of the Japanese people, who are so little addicted to mathematics), that they have not had a scholastic period, like that of the West, so general with them is the habit of incorrect, loose, and passionately impulsive and fantastic reasoning. Certainly the formula, the exercise of disputation in forma, the logica scholastica utens has its merits; and we must know how to have recourse to it when it is advantageous to do so, and to express thought in the brief and perspicuous formulæ of the syllogism, of the sorites, or of the dilemma. From this point of view the new methods of mathematical Logic or Logistic, upon which some are now working, and even the logical machines which have been constructed, would help; they would help—if they helped. For the point is just this: when formulæ, methods of demonstration, machines and the like, are recommended, expedients and instruments of practical or economic use are thereby proposed; and these cannot make good their existence otherwise than by getting themselves accepted for the utility—the saving of time and space, and so of fatigue, which they effect. Like all technical inventions, those products must be brought to the market; and the market alone decides upon their value and assigns to them their price. At the present time, it seems that logistic methods have no value and price, save for certain narrow circles of people, who amuse themselves with them in their own way and so pass the time.

Erroneous separation of truth and reason of truth in the pure concepts.

Certain erroneous doctrines take their origin from the undue separation of demonstration and definition, conspicuously that particular error which places a difference of degree between truth and reason of truth, and consequently admits that a truth can be known without its reason being known. But a truth, of which the reason is not known, is not even truth; or it is truth only in preparation and in hypothesis. We hear much about the intuition with which men of genius are equipped, and which enables them to go straight to the truth, even when they are not capable of demonstrating it. But this intuition, when it is not that truth in preparation, or that orientation towards a truth still quite hypothetical, must of necessity be thought and thus also be demonstration of truth; it must be truth and also reason of truth; thought and reasoning performed no doubt with lightning rapidity, which is expressed in brief propositions and needs going over again and rethinking, in order that it may afford a more ample and, from the didactic point of view, a more persuasive, exposition; but it is always thought and reasoning.

Things are still worse, when not only is a diversity of degree admitted, but the complete indifference of demonstration to truth is proclaimed, so that many or infinite possible demonstrations of one identical truth would be possible. If by this it were meant merely that one identical truth, or one identical concept, can assume infinite verbal or expressive forms, and if demonstration were understood as "exposition" or "expression," there would be nothing to object. But if by demonstration be meant something truly logical, that which is properly called by that name in Logic, this thesis leads directly to the negation of truth, making the demonstration of truth, or truth itself, an illusion, a sophistical appearance created simply to persuade. Those acquainted with courts of law know that very often when a magistrate has made his decision and pronounced sentence he deputes to a younger colleague the task of "reasoning" it, or of providing an appearance of reasoning to what is indeed not a logical product, but simply the voluntas of a certain provision. But though this procedure be intelligible and useful when it occurs in the field of practice and of law, it cannot be admitted in the theoretical field, where it would be the ruin of thought and indirectly of the will itself.