BENEDETTO CROCE (continued 5)

Alleged insuperable variation in judging and presenting historical facts, and consequent claim for a history without judgments.

But the fact here stated seems to lead straight to despair as to the fate of history, or at least as to its fate, so long as it is bound to the logical element, to convictions about the concepts. When it is observed that the same facts are narrated in the most different way; that what for some is the work of God is for others the work of the Devil; that what for some is the manifestation of spiritual forces is for others the product of material movements of the brain, according as it is well or ill-nourished; that to some the good of life lies in every explosion and revolt, while to others it lies only in regular work under the tutelage of laws rigorously observed and made to be observed,—we arrive at the conclusion of historical scepticism, namely, that history as usually narrated is nothing but a story woven from such a state of degeneration seems to be a return to the pure and simple reproduction of the document, or at least to the pure intuition, which introduces no element of judgment, or of what is called subjective. But this salvation is only a figure of speech, for pure intuition is poetry and not history, and to return to it is equivalent to abolishing history. This, however, is clearly impossible, for the human race has always narrated its doings, and none of us can dispense with establishing at every instant how things have happened, what has really happened, and in what actual or historical conditions he finds himself.

Restriction of variations and exclusion of apparent variations.

Historical scepticism is, however, as inexact and one-sided in the observation of fact as it is puerile in the suggestion of a remedy. Certainly, there are divergences between the various accounts of the same fact; but (setting aside apparent divergences, derived from the different interest taken in a given fact, owing to which verbal prominence is given to one or to another aspect of it, and limiting ourselves here to real differences) we must, for the sake of exactitude, take account of all the no less real agreements, to be found side by side with these divergences. In virtue of them, for instance, Protestant and Catholic are unanimous in recognizing that Luther and Leo X. existed, that the one produced a definite movement in Germany and that the other had recourse to certain definite prohibitions; and, finally, both Protestant and Catholic recognize (now at least) the corruption of the ecclesiastical orders at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the mundane and political interests of the German princes in the wars of religion. In like manner no one, however revolutionary or conservative he is, will question the bad condition of French finances at the eve of the Revolution; or that Louis XVI. convoked the States General; or that he attempted flight and was stopped at Varennes; or that he was guillotined on the 21st of January 1793; or that the French Revolution was an event which profoundly changed the social and moral life of the whole of Europe. Owing to this substantial agreement between two historians in very many points, and indeed in the greater part of the narrative, it happens that we can often read and advise others to read histories that are tainted with the passions of the partisan, while merely recommending the reader to make a mental allowance for these passions. In like manner, we can usefully employ a defective instrument of measurement, provided we include in the calculation the coefficient of aberration.

The overcoming of variations by means of deepening the concepts.

As to the remedy, it is clear that if the divergences as to the concepts arise from ignorance, prejudice, negligence, illegitimate private or national interests, and from other disturbing passions, that is to say, from insufficient conceiving of the concepts, or from inexact thought, the remedy is certainly not to be sought in the abandonment of concepts and of thought, but in correcting the former and making perfect the latter. Abandonment would not only be cowardly, but impossible. Having left the Eden of pure intuition and entered the field of history, it is not given us to retrace our steps. There is no returning to blessed and ingenuous ignorance; innocence is lost for ever, and we must no longer aspire to it, but to virtue, which is neither innocent nor ingenuous. Why does what seems good to the Protestant seem bad to the Catholic? Evidently, owing to the different conception that each forms as to this world and the world above us, death and life, reason and revelation, criticism and authority, and so on. It is necessary, then, to open the discussion with the enquiry as to whether the truth is with the Protestants or with the Catholics, or whether it be not found rather in a third view, which goes beyond both. Once a definite result has been obtained, perplexity will be at an end (at least for him who has attained it), and the narrative can be constructed with as much security as the available historical sources permit. The way indicated will seem hard; but it is the only way. Whoever decides to retain his own opinions, received without criticism, will perhaps provide for his own convenience, but he will renounce history and truth. For the rest, we do not here draw up a programme for the future, but simply establish what history is in its true nature, and consequently how it is manifested and has always been manifested. Men in every age have discussed the concepts with which historical reality has been interpreted and have agreed upon very many points, as to which there is no longer any discussion. Both Catholics and Protestants, Revolutionaries and conservatives are, as has been already remarked, more in agreement than they were formerly; because something has passed and penetrated from each to each, or rather the humanity, which is in both, has become elevated. Scepticism accomplishes an easy task, but uses an illusory argument, in history as in philosophy, when it catalogues the points of disagreement. These are before the eyes of all, just because they represent the problems which it is important to solve. Would it not be worth while to keep in view as of equal importance the points already solved, and to say, for example, that historians are henceforth agreed that Anchises did not sleep with Aphrodite, that the wolf did not suckle Romulus and Remus, and that William Tell did not establish the liberty of the Swiss Cantons? In short, it would not be easy to find either those who support or those who deny Mary's immaculate conception. The Catholic writers who insist upon such disputes are rare, and those who deny are found only in little democratic journals of the inferior sort or of degraded taste.

Subjectivity and objectivity in history: their meaning.

To drive subjectivity out of history, in order to obtain objectivity, cannot therefore mean to drive away thought to obtain intuition, or worse still, to obtain brute matter, which is altogether inexpressible; but to drive away false thought, or passion that usurps the place of truth, and to mount to true thought, rigorous and complete. If we attain to intuition, instead of saving ourselves from passion we shall burn in its flames. For intuition says nothing but what we as individuals experience, suffer, and desire. It is just intuition which, when unduly introduced into history, becomes subjectivity sensu deteriori; whereas thought is true subjectivity, that of the universal, which is at the same time true objectivity.

Historical judgments of value, and normal or neutral values. Critique.

We have thus also solved the question (so much discussed in our day) as to the criterion of value in history, and whether judgments of values, as well as judgments of fact belong to the province of the historian. It is solved, because true judgments of fact, individual judgments, are precisely judgments of value, or determinations of the proper quality, and therefore of the meaning and value of the fact. We admit no other criterion of value than the concept itself. For this reason, we must also reject the distinction of the history of fact and the criticism (or valuation) of it. Every history is also criticism, and every criticism is also history; to say that a thing is the fact which we call the Divine Comedy is to say what its value is, and so to criticize it. To think normal or neutral values, as to which (according to the most modern historical theories) men of different points of view should agree, seems at the most a mere symbol of that agreement which men are constantly seeking and realizing in the subjectivity objectivity of thought. This will never be a fact completely agreed upon, because it is a perpetual fieri. It cannot be expected of the future, because it will belong to the future, as it belongs and has belonged to the present and to the past.

Various legitimate meanings of the protests against historical subjectivity.

If the protest against the intrusion of subjectivity into history cannot logically be said to have any legitimate meaning save that of a polemic against false subjectivity in favour of true subjectivity, it may also imply, on the literary side, a question of expediency, namely, that in the historical work of art greater importance should be given to the representation of facts than to the theoretical discussion of concepts. A historical should not be transformed into a philosophical work. But this is a question that must be studied case by case; for what harm could it do, if a historian, beginning by writing a history, were to end by writing a philosophic treatise? Certainly, it would not be a greater evil than if a philosopher, becoming passionate about the facts he gives as instances, were gradually to abandon his first plan and produce a history in place of a system. At bottom it would do no harm, or very little, provided that such philosophy or such historical representation were good; and this is precisely what must be examined case by case. A more appropriate meaning of the polemic against the subjectivity of history is the recommendation that in narrating history, emphatic, negative, and desiderative forms should accompany logical judgments which, as such, are judgments of value, as little as possible. These forms, it is argued, are justifiable in relation to the present or immediate past, because they indicate the direction of the future, but in relation to the remote past they are usually empty and superfluous. Indeed, to rage against Marius or Sulla, Cæsar or Pompey, Frederick Barbarossa or the burgesses of Lombardy, is somewhat vain, because those historical personages have, in general, no near or practical interest. But, on the other hand, it is also true that these characters always have some near and practical interest, and in that measure we cannot prevent history, even of the remote past, being here and there revived with the accents of our present and of our future. Still more legitimate is the significance of that polemic when the intention is to blame the habit of those who assume the functions of praise or blame, in relation not only to men, but to historical events. They applaud paganism, abuse Christianity, weep over the fall of the Roman Empire, deplore the formation of Islamism, regret that Buddhism should not have been disseminated in Europe, sympathize with the Reformation, or disapprove of Catholicism after the Council of Trent. To them was addressed the saying that history is not to be judged but to be narrated. But it would be more accurate to say that history is not to be judged by the categories by which we judge the actions of individuals, which are subject to the dialectic of good and evil, because the action of an individual differs from the historical event, which transcends individual wills. But the definition of individuality and of event goes outside the gnoseology of history, and more properly belongs to the Philosophy of the Practical.[1]

The demand for a theory of historical facts.

The conviction that has been gained as to the necessity of the logical element, of concepts, criteria, or values, for the formation of narrative, has induced some to demand, not only that the historian should continually have clearly and firmly in mind the concepts that he employs and his intention in employing them, but that a theory of historical factors or, as others call it, a table of values, should be constructed, which should serve as foundation for historical narrative in general. The demand is exactly similar to that of the man who, observing that electricians or metal-founders employ physical forces, demands the construction of a physical theory to serve as the basis of industry; as if Physics did not exist and supply the basis for industry; or as if the sciences changed their nature, according to the men who employ them. The theory of historical factors, or the table of values, exists, and is called Philosophy, whose precise business it is to define universals, which are factors and not facts, and to give the table of values, which are categories. At the most this demand might be taken to suggest the recommendation of a popular philosophy, for the use of professional historians; but this too exists and is natural good sense. A historian who entertains doubts as to the deliverances of good sense begins to philosophize (in the restricted and professional sense of the word), and once he has done this, what is called popular philosophy no longer suffices him, or serves only to make his mental condition worse, with its insufficient nourishment. Books on the teaching of history which abound in our literature of to-day are proof of this. Disquisitions as to the predominance or the fundamental character of this or that historical factor belong to this popular and more or less dilettante literature. In strict philosophy, such problems do not arise, or are promptly dissolved, because it is known that, since every fact of reality depends upon another fact, so also every factor, or every constitutive element of the spirit and of reality, is such only in union with other factors and elements. None of them predominates, because measures of greater or less are not used in philosophy, and none is fundamental, because all are fundamental.

Impossibility of dividing history according to its intuitive and reflective elements.

The representative and conceptual elements in historical judgment are not separable or even, strictly, distinguishable unless it is intended to dissolve the historical narrative in order to return to pure intuition. This too is a corollary of what has been said on the individual judgment. For this reason, every division of history, based upon the presence or absence of one or other of these elements, must be held to be without truth. Of this kind is the once popular division into picturesque and reflective or thinking history. But this division designates not two kinds of history, but rather, on the one hand, the return to indiscriminate intuition, and on the other, true history, which is intuition thought or reflected. The same false division is sometimes expressed in the terms chronicle and history, or narrative and philosophic history.

Empirical nature of the division of the historical process into four stages.

Outside the individual judgment, there is neither subject nor predicate. Outside the narrative, which synthesizes representation and concept, and by representing gives existence and judgment, there is no history. Technical manuals usually divide the process of historical composition into four stages. The first is heuristic, consisting of the collection of historical material; the second criticism or separation of it; the third is interpretation or comprehension, the fourth exposition or narrative. These distinctions portray the professional historian's method of work. First, he examines archives and libraries, then he verifies the authenticity of the documents found, then he seeks to understand them, and finally he puts his thoughts on paper and pays attention to the beauty of form of the exposition. These are doubtless useful didactic distinctions. But it must be observed that so long as we do not have a historical source before us (the first stage) the very condition of the birth of history is wanting. Hence the first stage does not belong to historical work, but to the practical stage of him who goes in search of a material object. The second stage is already a complete historical work in itself, since it consists in establishing, whether a given fact, called sincere evidence, has really taken place. The third coincides logically with the second, since it is the same thing to ascertain the value of a piece of evidence and to pronounce on the reality and quality of the facts to which it witnesses. The fourth coincides with the second and third, because it is impossible to think a narrative without speaking it, that is, without giving to it expressive or verbal form.

Divisions founded upon the historical object.

If history be not divisible on the basis of the presence or absence of the reflective or representative element, it may well be divided by taking as basis, either the concept that determines the particular historical composition, or the representative material that enters into it.

Logical division according to the forms of the spirit.

The first mode of distinction is rigorous, because founded upon the character of unity-in-distinction, proper to the pure concept. Thus, the human mind cannot think history as a whole, save by distinguishing it at the same time into the history of doing and the history of knowing, into the history of the practical activity and the history of æsthetic production, of philosophic thought, and so on. In like manner, it cannot think any one of these distinctions, save by placing it in relation with the others, or with the whole, and thinking it in complete history. Naturally, this intimate, logical unity and distinction has nothing to do with the books which are called histories of the practical, philosophic, artistic activities, and the like. There the correspondence with the division of which we speak is only approximate, owing to the operation of what we called practical or economic motives. But every historical proposition, like every individual judgment, qualifies the real according to one aspect of the concept, and excludes another, or it qualifies it indeed according to all its aspects, but distinguishes them, and therefore prevents the one from intruding upon the other. The literary division of books into books of practical, philosophic, and artistic history, and so on, gets its importance from this fundamental distinction, according to which are also divided the different points of view of historians and the various interests of their readers.

Empirical division of representative material.

The second mode is, of necessity, empirical, and cannot be carried out without the introduction of empirical concepts. For otherwise it would not be possible to keep the representations of reality separate, since they constitute a continuous and compact series. By means of empirical concepts, history is divided into the history of the State, of the Church, of society, of the family, of religion (as distinct from philosophy), or of philosophy (as distinct from religion). Or, as the history of philosophy, it is divided into the history of idealism, of materialism, of scepticism; or as the history of art, into the history of painting, of poetry, of the drama, of fiction. Or again, as the history of civilization, it is divided into oriental history—history of Greece, of Rome, of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, of the Reformation, and so on. Even these last mentioned criteria (Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, etc.) are empirical concepts and not representations, because, as we know,[2] the representation is individual, and when it is made constant and general it is changed into a concept of the individual, the summary and symbol of several representations, in fact, the empirical concept. Each one of these divisions is valid in so far as it is useful; and equally valid, under a like condition, are all the divisions that have been conceived, and the infinite number that are conceivable.

Empirical concepts in history and the false theory as to the function that they have there.

But the failure to understand that the true function of the introduction of empirical concepts is to divide the mass of historical facts and to regroup them conveniently for mnemonic purposes, has greatly interfered with the ideas of logicians as to the writing of history. Just as the individual judgment presupposes neither the empirical concept, nor the judgment of classification, nor the abstract concept, nor the judgment of enumeration, whereas all these forms presuppose just the individual judgment; so history does not presuppose classifications conducted from the practical point of view, or enumerations and statistics, whereas on the other hand all of these do presuppose history, and without it could not appear. We should not be deceived by finding them fused in historical works (which continually have recourse to such aids to memory), nor allow ourselves to forget that their function is subservient, not constitutive. There can be no abstract idea of the Greek, unless we have first known the individual life of the men called Pericles and Alcibiades. Nor can there be any enumeration of the Three Hundred of Thermopylæ or of the Three Hundred of Cremera, except in so far as each was known in his individual features, and then classified as a citizen of Sparta or a Roman of the Fabian gens. To avail oneself of these simplifications is not to narrate history, which is already present to the spirit, but to fix it in the memory and to communicate it to others in an easier way. Those others, if they have not the capacity to recover the individual fact beneath those concepts of class and of number, will understand nothing of history, thus simplified and reduced to a skeleton for the purposes of communication.

Hence comes also the claim to reduce history to a natural science;

The positivist fiction that history can be reduced to a science (natural science is of course meant) arises from the false interpretation of the subsidiary character of the pseudoconcepts in history and from making them a constitutive part of it. History, on this view, would be rendered a perfect example of what it has hitherto been only in imperfect outline, a classification and statistical table of reality. The many practical attempts at such a reduction have damaged contemporary historical writing not a little, by substituting colourless formulæ and empty abstractions which are applicable to several epochs at once or to all times, for the narration of individual reality. The same tendency appears in what is called sociologism, and in its polemic against what it calls psychological or individual history, and in favour of institutional or social history. Against these materialistic reductions of history, the doctrines of accident or of little causes which upset the effects of great causes, are efficacious and valuable, for these and suchlike absurdities have the merit of reducing that false reduction to absurdity.

and the thesis of the practical character of history.

By reason of the same erroneous interpretation there has come from philosophers who are not positivists, the theory that history is rendered possible only by the intervention of the practical spirit. On this view, the practical spirit, after establishing practical values, arranges beneath them the formless material and shapes it into historical narrative. But the practical spirit is impotent to produce anything in the field of knowledge; it can act only as the custodian and administrator of what has already been produced. For this reason, the theory here referred to, by appealing to the practical spirit, resolves itself into a complete negation of the value of history as knowledge. And this negation, though it was certainly not foreseen or desired by those who maintain the theory, yet is unavoidable.

Distinction between historical facts and facts that are not historical, and its empirical value.

In this connection, there has also been maintained the importance of the distinction between historical events and events not worthy of history, between historical and non-historical, or between teleological and ateleological personages. Such a distinction, it has been affirmed, is afforded by the practical spirit. This is true, but for the reason already given, it amounts to removing all theoretical importance from the distinction, by emptying it of all cognitive content. In reality, for the practical economy of social work, for selecting subjects for books, or for being easily understood in our own speech, it is necessary to speak of a definite event or of a definite individual as a thing and person altogether common and unworthy of history. But it asks the brain of a pedant to imagine that the individual or the event has thereby been suppressed, we do not say from the field of reality (which would be too manifestly absurd), but from that of the narrative of reality, or from history. What is understood forms part of what is said; and if we did not always imply a mental reference to the men we call commonplace, and to insignificant facts, which are more or less excluded from our words, great men and significant events would also lose all meaning. Such implications are so little eliminated or eliminable, that they break out and are even verbally expressed, according to the various interests that determine books on history at various times. Thus we have seen domestic and social life, neglected by the old historians, not only gradually assume importance, but throw wars and diplomatic negotiations into the shade. We have seen the so-called masses, neglected in favour of the individual genius, in their turn conquer, and almost eclipse, the heroes (which does not mean that these latter will not have their revenge). We have seen names, once hardly mentioned, become attractive and popular, and others, at one time celebrated, lose their colour and disappear from view. Even Italian histories of the most recent events afford instances of such fluctuations. For instance, in the period of the Risorgimento, the prevailing interest regarded as supremely important and historical, the formation of Italian nationality, the constitution of the middle class and of the commune, and popular rebellions against foreigners or against tyrants. Now it is the social problem and the socialist movement that dominate, and preference is given to histories of economic facts, of class struggles and of movements of the proletariat.

Professional prejudice and the theory of the practical character of history.

Practical preoccupations are so strong with any one engaged in a given trade, even though it is that of a maker of books of history, as to suggest almost inevitably the strange doctrine of the practical character of history, or the non-theoretic character of that form, which is the crowning result of the theoretic spirit, and which alone gives full truth—if truth is the Knowledge of Reality, and if Reality is history.

IV

IDENTITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY

Necessity of the historical element in philosophy.

The necessity of philosophy as a condition of history has been made evident from the preceding considerations. It is now necessary to affirm with no less clearness the necessity of history for philosophy. If history is impossible without the logical, that is, the philosophical, element, philosophy is not possible without the intuitive, or historical element.

For a philosophic proposition, or definition, or system (as we have called it), appears in the soul of a definite individual at a definite point of time and space and in definite conditions. It is therefore historically conditioned. Without the historical conditions that demand it, the system would not be what it is. The Kantian philosophy was impossible at the time of Pericles, because it presupposes, for instance, exact natural science, which developed from the Renaissance onward. And this presupposes geographical discoveries, industry, capitalist or civil society, and so on. It presupposes the scepticism of David Hume, which in its turn presupposes the deism of the beginning of the eighteenth century, which in its turn is connected with the religious struggles in England and in all Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and so on. On the other hand, if Kant were to live again in our time, he could not write the Critique of Pure Reason without modifications so profound as to make of it, not only a new book, but an altogether new philosophy, though containing within itself his old philosophy. Stiff with old age, he was even capable of ignoring the interpretations and developments of Fichte, and of ignoring Schelling. But to-day he could not ignore either of these, nor Hegel, nor Herbart, nor Schopenhauer. He could not even ignore the representatives of the mediæval philosophy, which followed the classical period of modern philosophy; the authors of positivist myths, Kantian and Hegelian scholastics, the new combinations of Platonism and Aristotelianism, that is, of pre-Kantian with post-Kantian philosophy, the new sophists and sceptics, the new Plotinians and Mystics, nor the states of soul and the facts, which condition all these things. For the rest, Kant truly lives again in our days, with a different name (and what is individuality, countersigned with the name, save a juxtaposition of syllables?) He is the philosopher of our times, in whom is continued that philosophic thought, which once took, among others, the Scoto-German name of Kant. And the philosopher of our day, whether he will it or no, cannot abandon the historical conditions in which he lives, or so act as to make that not to have happened which happened before his time. Those events are in his bones, in his flesh and blood, and it is impossible to drive them out. He must therefore take account of them, that is, know them historically. The breadth of his philosophy will depend upon the breadth of his historical knowledge. If he did not know them, but merely carried them in him as facts of life, his condition would not differ from that of any animal (or of ourselves in so far as we are animals or beings that are, or rather seem to be, completely immersed in will and practice). For the animal is precisely conditioned by the whole of nature and the whole of history, but does not know it. The meaning of the demand must therefore be understood that a truthful answer may be obtained. History must be known in order to obtain the truth of philosophy.

Historical quality of the culture required in the philosopher.

This demand is usually expressed in the formula that the philosopher must be cultured, though it is not clear what is the quality of this culture that is said to be requisite. Some, especially in our own days, would wish the philosopher to be a physiologist, a physicist, a mathematician, that is, that his brain should be full of abstractions, which are certainly not useless (everything is worth knowing, even the triviality of girls, for even that is a part of life and of reality), but which are in no direct relation to that form of knowledge which must be the condition of philosophy. This form of knowledge is, on the contrary, history; or, as it is said (with an a potiori intention), the history of philosophy, which of necessity as the history of a moment of the spirit, includes all history in itself, as we have shown above, when criticizing the divisions of history. That is to say, it is necessary to know the meaning of the problems of our own time, and this implies knowing also those of the past, in order not to take the former for the latter and so cause inextricable confusion. And to the extent that they can be of use according to the requirements of the problem, we must know also the natural, physical, and mathematical sciences. But we must not know them as stick and develop them as such, but rather as historical knowledge concerning the state of the natural sciences, of physics, and of mathematics, in order to understand the problems that they help to raise for philosophy.

Apparent objections.

It is vain to set against this the example of great philosophers without historical culture, as it is vain in the case of the necessity of historical knowledge for æsthetic criticism to bring forward instances of those who, although without any historical knowledge, have yet given far more true and more profound judgments upon art than the historically learned. If those judgments are true, then the critic supposed to be ignorant of history is not ignorant of it. He has somehow absorbed, scented in the air, divined with rapid perception those actual facts that were applicable to the given case. And, on the other hand, the so-called learned man will not be cultured, because his erudition is not lively and synthetic. The same happens in the case of those acute philosophers, who are said to be ignorant of the world and of history and of the thoughts of other philosophers. It cannot be denied that much or little history may be learned outside the usual course of teaching by manuals and by orderly mnemonic methods. But here, too, the exceptional mode of learning confirms the rule and does not obviate the usefulness for the majority of the customary modes of learning. On the other hand, if he who is said empirically to be without historical knowledge, but is not so in a given instance, should nevertheless prove really ignorant in other instances, where his unusual way of learning is not open to him, his philosophy also suffers. For this reason, those philosophers who are ignorant of history exhibit deficiencies that have often been deplored. They burst open doors already opened, they do not avail themselves of important results, they ignore grave difficulties and objections, they fail to probe certain problems sufficiently deeply, and show themselves too insecure and too superficial in others, and so on. Thus is the customary learning of history avenged upon them: and Herbert Spencer, who would never read Plato or Kant, is rejected, while Schelling and Hegel are again in the hands of students.

Communication of history as changing of history.

Philosophy also changes with the change of history, and since history changes at every moment, philosophy at every moment is new. This can be observed even in the fact of the communication of philosophy from one individual to another by means of speech or writing. Change at once takes place in that transmission. When we have simply created again in ourselves the thought of a philosopher, we are in the same condition as he who has enjoyed a sonnet or a melody, by suiting his spirit to that of the poet or composer. But this does not suffice in philosophy. We may attain to ecstasy by the recitation of a poem or the execution of a piece of music, just as it is, without altering it anywhere. But it does not seem possible to possess a philosophic proposition, save when we have translated it, as we say, into our own language, when in reality, relying upon its results, we formulate new philosophic propositions and solve new problems that have presented themselves in our souls. For this reason no book ever completely satisfies us. Every book quenches one thirst, only to give us a new one. So true is this, that when we have finished reading or are in course of reading, we often regret that it is impossible to speak with the author. We are led to say, like Socrates in the Phædrus,[1] that written discourses are like pictures and do not answer questions, but always repeat what has already been said. Or we lose patience, like that Paduan professor of the fifteenth century, who, commenting on the jurist Paolo, and annoyed at the difficulties, exclaimed at a certain point: "Iste maledictus Paulus tam obscure loquitur ut, si haberem eum in manibus, eum per capillos interrogarem!" But if instead of the dumb book, we had before us a living man, a Paolo obliged to be clear, the process would still be the same: his speech would be translated into our speech, his problem would arouse in our spirit our own problem.

The perpetuity of change.

The author of a philosophic work is, however, always dissatisfied, for he feels that his book or treatise hardly suffices for an instant, but immediately reveals itself as more or less insufficient. For this reason, to any philosopher, as to any poet, the only works of his own that bring true satisfaction are those that he has still to do. Thus every philosopher and every true artist dies unsatisfied, like Karl Marx, who, when asked in the last year of his life to prepare a complete edition of his works, replied that he had yet to write them. He alone is satisfied who at a certain moment ceases to think and takes to admiring himself, that is to say, the corpse of himself as a thinker, and is careful, not of art or philosophy, but of his own person. Yet to no one can even this give the satisfaction he imagines, for life is no less voracious and insatiable than thought. In any case, to be satisfied, the author must become philosophically immobile in a formula, and the reader must content himself with this formula. Thoughts must become "obtuse and deaf," as Leibnitz called them, who defined such a spiritual condition as psittacism. The only consolation left to one who does not become immobile is that of reflecting, like Socrates, that his discourses will not be sterile, but fruitful. Other discourses will spring from them in his own soul and in the soul of others, in whom he has sown the seeds[2] He will console himself with the thought that philosophy, like life, is infinite.

Surpassing and continuous progress of philosophy.

The infinity of philosophy, its continuous changing, is not a doing and an undoing, but a continuous surpassing of itself. The new philosophic proposition is made possible only by the old; the old lives eternally in the new that follows it and in the new that will follow that again and make old that other which is new. This suffices to reassure those minds which are easily led astray and inclined to lament the vanity of things. Where everything is vain, nothing is vain; fullness consists precisely in that perpetual becoming vain, which is the perpetual birth of reality, the eternal becoming. Nobody renounces love because love is transitory, nor abandons thinking because his thought will give place to other thoughts. Love passes, but generates other beings, who will love. Thought passes, but generates other thoughts, which, in their turn, will excite other thoughts. In the world of thought also, we survive in our own children: in our children who contradict us, substitute themselves for us and bury us, not always with due piety.

Meaning of the eternity of philosophy.

No other meaning but this is to be found in the vaunted eternity of philosophy in regard to time and space. The eternity of every philosophic proposition must be affirmed against those who materialistically consider all propositions as valueless existences, and fugitives which leave no trace, as phenomena of brute matter, which alone persists. Philosophic propositions, though historically conditioned, are not effects produced and determined by these conditions, but creations of thought, which is continued in and through them. When they appear to be produced determinately, they must be held to be, not philosophy, but false philosophy, vital interests masquerading as thoughts. That alone can be eternal as philosophy, which is knowledge and truth. But when eternity is misunderstood as isolation from those conditions, it must then be denied, and in place of it the thesis of relativity must be admitted, provided we are careful that it does not assume the erroneous vesture of historical materialism and economic determinism. The thesis that the history of philosophy should be treated psychologically, by the attribution of ideas to the temporal conditions and the personal experiences of philosophers, to social history and biography, is reducible (and it is worth while noticing this) to materialism and determinism in its least evident form, namely psychologism. Such a thesis is the failure to recognize spiritual value, or at least (as is the case with some unconscious æstheticists), the logical value of philosophy, whose history, when changed into that of the expressions of states of the soul, comes to coincide altogether with the history of poetry and literature.

The concept of spontaneous, ingenuous, innate philosophy, etc., and its meaning.

The eternity of philosophy is its truth, and the conception which is sometimes brought forward of a spontaneous or ingenuous or innate or cryptic (abdita) philosophy, which alone should be permanent amid the variations of philosophic opinions, or to which the spirit should return after many wanderings, is nothing but a symbol of this truth. The Platonic theory of reminiscence (anamneisis) is reducible to this conception. In this theory true knowledge is explained as the recollection of an original state; and it is this reminiscence, as the restitution of the childish soul, that is described by our Leopardi in the following verses:

I believe that to know is very often, if we examine it, nothing but to perceive the folly of beliefs due to habit, and the careful reconquest of the knowledge of childhood, taken from us by age; for the child neither knows nor sees more than we, but he does not believe that he sees and knows.

But such philosophy and such reminiscence are really found only in propositions historically conditioned. Ingenuous philosophy and primitive knowledge are nothing but the concept itself of philosophy, fully realized in all and none. "Platonic reminiscence (explained Schelling) is the memory of that state, in which we are all one with nature." But since we are one with nature in every one of our acts, each one of them demands a special reminiscence and so a new thought. In like manner, the state of nature, celebrated in moral and political doctrines (the doctrines of morality and rights), was a state of perfection which can never be found anywhere in the world or at any moment of time, because it expressed the very concept of the good, of virtue and of justice. Socrates, in another Platonic dialogue, spoke of those true beliefs (doxai aleiteis) as elusive like the statues of Daedalus, that disappear from the soul, unless one binds them with rational arguments, and only when thus bound do they from beliefs become knowledge.[3] Such is ingenuous philosophy, which in reality exists only when bound and never when loose and ingenuous, as the name would suggest; philosophy abdita exists only as philosophy addita. Certainly, to the consciousness of doctrinaires, obscured with too much labour, we can sometimes oppose ingenuous consciousness, and to the pedantry of scholastic treatises we can oppose the truth of proverbs, of good sense, of children, of the people, or of primitive races. But we must not forget that in all these cases ingenuous is a metaphor which designates truth in contradistinction to what is not truth.

Philosophy as criticism and polemic.

The division of philosophy into ingenuous and learned is due to its convenience and to its didactic value, and in like manner philosophy properly so-called, or system, is distinguished from philosophy as criticism. The former is looked upon as the solid and permanent part, the latter as variable and adaptable to times and places, having as its object the defence of the eternal truths conquered by the human spirit, against the wiles and assaults of error. In reality the distinction is empirical: philosophy and philosophical criticism are the same thing; every affirmation is a negation, every negation is an affirmation. The critical or negative side is inseparable from philosophy, which is always substantially a polemic, as can be seen from the examination of any philosophic writing. Peace-loving people are fond of recommending abstention from polemics and the expression of one's own ideas in a positive manner. But only the artist is capable of expressing his soul without polemic, since it does not consist of ideas. Ideas are always armed with helmet and lance, and those who wish to introduce them among men must let them make war. A philosopher, when he truly abstains from polemics and expresses himself as though he were pouring out his own soul, has not even begun to philosophize. Or, having philosophized upon certain problems, he makes, as Plato does, the act of renunciation when he is confronted with others, feeling that he has attained to the extreme limit of his powers, and from philosophy he passes to poetry and prophecy.

Identity of philosophy and history.

Philosophy, then, is neither beyond, nor at the beginning, nor at the end of history, nor is it achieved in a moment or in any single moments of history. It is achieved at every moment and is always completely united to facts and conditioned by historical knowledge. But this result which we have obtained and which completely coincides with that of the conditioning of history by philosophy is still somewhat provisional. Were we to consider it definite, philosophy and history would appear to be two forms of the spirit, mutually conditioning one another, or (as has sometimes been trivially remarked) in reciprocal action. But philosophy and history are not two forms, they are one sole form: they are not mutually conditioned, but identical. The a priori synthesis, which is the reality of the individual judgment and of the definition, is also the reality of philosophy and of history. It is the formula of thought which by constituting itself qualifies intuition and constitutes history. History does not precede philosophy, nor philosophy history: both are born at one birth. If it is desired to give precedence to philosophy, this can only be done in the sense that the unique form of philosophy-history must take the name and character, not of intuition, but of what transforms intuition, that is to say, of thought and of philosophy.

Didactic divisions and other reasons for the apparent duality.

Philosophy and history are distinguished, as we know, for didactic purposes, philosophy being that form of exposition in which special emphasis is accorded to the concept or system, and history as that form in which the individual judgment or narrative is specially prominent. But from the very fact that the narrative includes the concept, every narrative clarifies and solves philosophic problems. On the other hand, every system of concepts throws light upon the facts which are before the spirit. The confirmation of the value of a system resides in the power of interpreting and narrating history, which it displays. It is history which is the touchstone of philosophy. It is true that the two may appear to be different, owing to the external differences of books, in which only one of the two seems to be treated: and it is also true that the didactic division is based upon a diversity of aptitudes, which practice contributes to develop. But, provided always that the meaning both of a philosophic proposition and of a historical proposition is fathomed to the bottom, their intrinsic unity is indubitable. The fact that is so often cited of conflicts between philosophy and history is in reality a conflict between two philosophies, the one true and the other false, or both partly true and partly false. Some thinkers, for instance, are idealist in recounting history and materialist in their philosophic systems. This means that two philosophies are at strife within them without either being sufficiently aware of it. And does it not also happen that we find in a philosophic exposition propositions that contradict one another and divergent systems capriciously associated in one system?

From intuition, which is indiscriminate individualization, we rise to the universal, which is discriminate individualization, from art to philosophy, which is history. The second stage, precisely because it is second, is more complex than the first, but this does not imply that it is, as it were, split into two lesser degrees, philosophy and history. The concept, with one stroke of the wing, affirms itself and takes possession of the whole of reality, which is not different from it, but is itself.

Note.—May I be permitted an explanation concerning the history of my thought (and also of its criticism owing to their unity already demonstrated)? Sixteen years ago I began my studies in philosophy with a memoir entitled History beneath the general concept of Art (1893). There I maintained, not that history is art (as others have summarized my thought) but (as indeed the title clearly showed) that history can be placed beneath the general concept of art. I now maintain, sixteen years after, that, on the contrary, history is philosophy and that history and philosophy are indeed the same thing. The two theories are certainly different; but they are far less different than appears, and the second theory is in any case a development and perfecting of the first. Elle a bien changé sur la route, without doubt; but without discontinuity and without gaps. Indeed, the objects of my memoir were chiefly: (1) to combat the absorption of history, which the natural sciences were then attempting more than they are now; (2) the affirmation of the theoretic character of art and of its seriousness, art being then regarded as a hedonistic fact by the prevailing positivism; (3) the negation of history as a third form of the theoretic spirit different from the æsthetic form and from that of thought. I still maintain these three theses intact and they form part of my Æsthetic and of my Logic. But the proper character of philosophy, so profoundly different from the empirical and abstract sciences, was not clear to me at the time, and therefore neither was the difference between philosophic Logic and Logic of classification. For this reason I was unable completely to solve the problem that I had proposed to myself. Owing to this confusion of the true universality of philosophy and of the false universality of the sciences (which is either mere generality or abstractness) in a single group, it seemed to me that the concreteness of history could enter only the group of art, understood in its greater extension (hence the general concept of art). In this group, by means of the fallacious method of subordination and co-ordination, I distinguished history as the representation of the real, placing it without mediation alongside the representation of the possible (art in the strict sense of the word). When I understood the true relation between Philosophy and the sciences (a slow progress, because to reattain to consciousness of what philosophy truly is has been slow and difficult for the men of my generation), the nature of history also became somewhat clearer to me as I gradually freed myself from the remnants of the intellectualistic and naturalistic method. In the Æsthetic I looked upon that spiritual product as due to the intersection of philosophy and of art. In the Outlines of Logic I made another step in advance, history there appearing to me as the ultimate result of the theoretic spirit, the sea into which flowed the river of art, swelled with that of philosophy. The complete identity of history and of philosophy was, however, always half-hidden from me, because in me the prejudice still persisted that philosophy might have a form in a certain way free from the bonds of history, and constitute in relation to it a prior and independent moment of the spirit. That is to say, something abstract persisted in my idea of philosophy. But this prejudice and this abstractness have been vanquished little by little. And not only have my studies in the Philosophy of the practical greatly helped me to vanquish them, but also and above all, the studies of my dearest friend Giovanni Gentile (to whom my mental life owes many other aids and stimulations), concerning the relation between philosophy and history of philosophy (cf. now especially Critica, vii. pp. 142-9). In short, I have gradually passed from the accentuation of the character of concreteness, which history possesses in relation to the empirical and abstract sciences, to the accentuation of the concrete character of philosophy. And having completed the elimination of the double abstractness, the two concretenesses (that which I had first of all claimed for history, and that which I have afterwards claimed for philosophy) have finally revealed themselves to me as one. Thus I can now no longer accept without demur my old theory, which is not the new one, but is linked to it by such close bonds.

Such is the road I have travelled, and I wished especially to describe it, in order to leave no misunderstandings which, through my neglect, might lead others into error.

V

THE NATURAL SCIENCES

The natural sciences as empirical concepts, and their practical nature.

The natural sciences are nothing but edifices of pseudoconcepts, and precisely of that sort of pseudoconcept that we have distinguished from the others as empirical or representative.

This is evident also from the definitions that they assume as sciences of phenomena, in opposition to philosophy, the science of noumena; and as sciences of facts, again in opposition to philosophy, which is taken to be the science of values. But the pure phenomenon is not known to science; it is represented by art: and the noumena, in so far as they are known, are also phenomena, since it would be arbitrary to break up unity and synthesis. In like manner, true values are facts, and, on the other hand, facts without the determination of value and of universality dissolve again into pure phenomena. Hence it is possible to conclude that those sciences offer neither pure phenomena nor mere facts, but, on the contrary, develop representative concepts, which are not intuitions, but spiritual formations of a practical nature.

Elimination of a misunderstanding concerning this practical character.

The word "practical" having been pronounced, it behoves us to eliminate a misapprehension which leads to the natural sciences (or simply sciences, as they are also called) being said to be practical, in the same sense as those whose aim is action. Bacon was a fervent apostle of the naturalistic movement of modern times and full of this latter idea or preconception. He proclaimed to satiety that meta scientiarum non aha est quam ut dotetur vita humana novis inventis et copiis; that they propose to themselves potentiae et amplitudinis humanae fines in latim proferre; and that, by means of them, reality ad usus vitae humanae subigitur[1] But in our day also, many theorists do not tire of repeating that the sciences are ordonnées à faction. Now, this does not suffice to describe the natural sciences, because all knowledge is directed to action, art, philosophy, and history alike, which last, by providing knowledge of the actual situation, is the true and complete precedent and fact, preparatory to action.[2] The misapprehension in favour of the natural sciences arises from the vulgar idea that the only practical things in life are eating, drinking, clothes, and shelter. It is forgotten that man does not live by bread alone, and that bread itself is a spiritual food if it increase the force of spiritual life. But further: the natural sciences, just because they are composed of empirical concepts (which are not true knowledge), do not directly subserve action, since in order to act it is necessary to return from them to the precise knowledge of the individual actual situation. That is to say, in ordinary parlance, abstractions must be set aside and it must be seen how things truly and properly stand. The patient, the individual patient, is treated, not the malady; Socrates or Callias (as Aristotle said), not man in general: θεραπευτὸν τὸ καθ' ἕκαστον: knowledge of materia medica does not suffice; the clinical eye is needed. The natural sciences are not directed to action, but are, themselves, actions: their practical character is not extrinsic, but constitutive. They are actions, and are therefore not directed to action, but to aid the cognitive spirit. Thus they subserve action (that is, other actions) only in an indirect way. If an action does not become knowledge, it cannot give rise: to a new action.

Impossibility of unifying them in a concept.

The empirical character (and the practical character in the sense already established) of the natural sciences is commonly admitted in the case of such of them as consist in classifications of facts: for example, of zoology, botany, mineralogy, and also of chemistry, in so far as it enumerates chemical species, and of physics, in so far as it enumerates classes of phenomena or physical forces. The universals of all these sciences are quite arbitrary, for it is impossible to find an exact boundary between the concept of animal (the universal of zoology) and that of vegetable (the universal of botany). Indeed it is impossible to find one between the living and the not living, the organic and the material. Finally, the cellule, which is, for the present at any rate, the highest concept of the biological sciences, is differentiated from chemical facts only in an external way. It will be objected that there is in any case no lack of attempts to determine strictly the supreme concepts of the sciences, such, for instance, as those that place the atom at the beginning of all things and attempt to show each individual fact as nothing but a different aggregate of atoms. There are also those who mount to the concept of ether or of energy and declare all individual facts to be nothing but different forms of energy. Or finally, the vitalists recognize as irreducible the two concepts of the teleological and the mechanical, of organic and inorganic, of life and matter. But in all these cases the natural sciences are deserted, phenomena are abandoned for noumena, and philosophic explanations are offered. These may or may not have value, but they are of no use from the point of view of the natural sciences, or at most ensure to some professor the insipid pleasure of calling an animal "a complex of atoms," heat "a form of energy," and the cellule "vital force."

Impossibility of introducing into them strict divisions.

Since the natural sciences cannot be unified in a concept (hence their ineradicable plurality), and therefore remain unsystematic, a mass of sciences without close relation among themselves, logical distinctions are not possible in any science. No one will ever be able to prove that genera and species must be so many and no more, or describe the truly original character by which one genus may be distinguished from another genus and one species from another species. The animal species hitherto described have been calculated it over four hundred thousand, and those that may yet be described as fifteen millions. These numbers simply express the impotence of the empirical sciences to exhaust the infinite and individual forms of the real and the necessity in which they are placed of stopping at some sort 1 of number, of some hundreds, of some thousands, or of some millions. Those species, however few or many they may be, flow one into the other owing to the undeniable conceivability of graduated, indeed of continuous intermediate forms, which made evident the arbitrariness of the clean cut made into fact by separating the wolf from the dog or the panther from the leopard.

Laws in the natural sciences, and so called prevision.

But some doubt is manifested where we pass from classification and description or from system (as the lack of system of naturalistic classifications is called, by a curious verbal paradox) to the consideration of the laws that are posited in those sciences. It is then perceived that the classification is certainly a simple labour of preparation, arbitrary, convenient, and nominalistic, but that the true end of the natural sciences is not the class but the law. In the compass of the law strict accuracy of its truth is indubitable; so much so that by means of laws it is actually possible to make previsions as to what will happen. This is indeed a miraculous power, which places the natural sciences above every form of knowledge, and endows them with an almost magical force, by means of which man, not contented with knowing what has happened (which is yet so difficult to know), is capable of knowing even what has not yet happened, what will happen, or the future! Prevision(there must be a clear understanding of the concepts) is equivalent to seeing beforehand or prophesying, and the naturalist is thus neither more nor less than a clairvoyant.

Empirical character of naturalistic laws.

The miraculous nature of this boasted power should suffice to make us doubt whether the law is truly what it is said to be, a strict truth, quite different from the empirical concept, from the class, and from the description. In reality, the law is nothing but the empirical concept itself, the description, class or type, of which we have just spoken. In philosophy law is a synonym for the pure concept; in the empirical or natural sciences it is a synonym for the empirical concept; hence laws are sometimes called empirical laws, or laws of experience. If they were not empirical, they would not be naturalistic, but philosophic universals, which, as we have seen, are unfruitful in the field of the natural sciences. The law of the wolf is the empirical concept of the wolf: granted that in reality there is found one part of the representation corresponding to that concept, it is possible to conclude that the rest is also found. Thus Cuvier (to choose a very trite example), arranging the types of animals and hence the laws of the correlations of organs, was able to reconstruct from one surviving bone the complete fossil animal. In like manner, granted the chemical concept of water, H₂O, and given so much of oxygen and double that quantity of hydrogen, O and H₂, and submitting the two bodies to the other conditions established by chemistry, it is possible to conclude that water will be seen to appear. All naturalistic laws are of this type. Certain naturalists and theorists have reasonably protested against the division of the natural sciences into descriptive and explicative, sciences of classification and sciences of laws, and have maintained that all have one common character, namely, law. But this is not because the law is superior to the class or to the empirical concept, but because the two things are identical: the law is the empirical concept and the empirical concept is the law.

The postulate of the uniformity of nature, and its meaning.

The postulate of the constancy or uniformity of nature is the base of empirical laws or concepts. This, too, is something mysterious, before which many are ready to bow, seized with reverence and sacred terror. But that postulate is not even an hypothesis, somehow conceivable, though not yet explained and demonstrated. Ordinary thought, like philosophical thought, knows that reality is neither constant nor uniform, and indeed that it is perpetually being transformed, evolving and becoming. That constancy and uniformity, which is postulated and falsely believed to be objective reality, is the same practical necessity which leads to the neglect of differences and to the looking upon the different as uniform, the changeable as constant. The postulate of the uniformity of nature is the demand for a treatment of reality made uniform for reasons of convenience. Natura non facit saltus means: mens non facit saltus in naturae cogitatione, or, better still, memoriae usus saltus naturae cohibet.

Pretended inevitability of natural laws.

Another consequence of this is the inversion of the assertion (to be found everywhere in the rhetoric of the natural sciences) as to the inexorability and inevitability of the laws of nature. Those laws, precisely because they are arbitrary constructions of our own and give the movable as fixed, are not only not inevitable and do sometimes afford exceptions; but there is absolutely no real fact, which is not an exception to its naturalistic law. By coupling a wolf and a she-wolf we obtain a wolf cub, which will in time become a new wolf, with the appearance, the strength, and the habits of its parents. But this wolf will not be identical with its parents. Otherwise how could wolves ever evolve with the evolution of the whole of reality, of which they are an indivisible part? By chemical analysis of a litre of water we obtain H₂O; but if we again combine H₂O, the water that we obtain is only in a way of speaking the same as before. For that combining and recombining must have produced some modification (even though not perceived by us), and in any case changes have occurred in reality in the subsequent moment, from which the water is not separable, and therefore in the water itself taken in its concreteness. We could consequently give the following definition: the inexorable laws of nature are those that are violated at every moment, while philosophic laws are by definition those that are at every moment observed. But in what way they are observed cannot be known, save by means of history, and therefore true knowledge knows nothing of previsions; it knows only facts that have really happened; of the future there can be no knowledge. The natural sciences, which do not furnish real knowledge, have, if possible, even less right (if one may speak thus) to talk of previsions.

Yet, it will be objected, it is a fact that we all form previsions, and that without them we should neither be able to cook an egg nor to take one step out of doors. That is quite true, but those alleged previsions are merely the summary of what we know by experience to have happened, and according to which we resolve upon our action. We know what has happened. We do not know, nor do we need to know, what will happen. Were any one truly to wish to know it, he would no longer be able to move and would be seized with such perplexity before life, that he would kill himself in desperation or die of fear. The egg, which usually takes five minutes to cook in the way that suits my taste, sometimes surprises me by presenting itself to my palate after those five minutes, either as too much or too little cooked; the step taken out of doors is sometimes a fall on the threshold. Nevertheless, the knowledge of this does not prevent me from leaving the house and cooking the egg, for I must walk and take nourishment. The laws of my individual being, of my temperament, of my aptitudes, of my forces, that is, the knowledge of my past, make me resolve to undertake a journey, as I did twenty years ago, to begin work upon a statue, as I did ten years ago. Alas! I had not considered that in the meantime my legs have lost their strength and my arm has begun to tremble. By all means call the previsions made use of in these cases true or false; but do not forget that they are nothing but empirical concepts, that is to say, mnemonic devices, founded upon historical judgments. There can be no doubt that they are useful; indeed, what we maintain is that just because they are useful, they are not true. If they possess any truth, it resides in the establishment of the fact. That is to say, it does not reside in the prevision and in the law, but in the historical judgment which forms its basis.

Nature and its various meanings. Nature as passivity and negativity.

Having thus made clear the coincidence of empirical concepts and the natural sciences, we must determine exactly the meaning of the word "natural," which is used as qualifying these sciences. It has not seemed advisable to change it, since its use is so deeply rooted, although we have, on the other hand, already given its synonym in qualifying these sciences as "empirical." What is nature? The first meaning of "nature" is the "opposite" of "spirit," and designates the natural or material moment in relation to the spiritual, the mechanical in relation to the teleological moment, the negative moment in relation to the positive. Thus, in the transition from one form of the spirit to another, the inferior form is like matter, ballast, or obstacle, and so is the negation of the superior form. Hence reality is imagined as the strife of two forces, the one spiritual and the other material or natural. It is superfluous to repeat that the two forces are not two, but one, and that if the negative moment were not, the positive moment could not be. The pigeon (says Kant), which rises to take flight, may believe that had it not to vanquish the resistance of the air, it would fly still better. But the fact is that without that resistance, it would fall to earth. In this sense, there is no science of Nature (of matter, passivity, negation, etc.) distinguishable from that of Spirit, which is the science of itself and of its opposite, and the science of itself only in so far as it is also the science of its opposite.

Nature as practical activity.

But in another sense, nature is, not indeed the opposite of spirit, but something distinct in the spirit, and especially distinct from the cognitive spirit, as that form of spirituality and activity which is not cognitive. A non-theoretical activity, a spirituality which should not be in itself knowledge, cannot be anything but the practical form of the spirit, the will. Man makes himself nature at every moment, because at every moment he passes from knowing to willing and doing and from willing and doing returns to knowing, which is the basis for new will and action. In this sense, the science of nature, or the philosophy of nature, could not be anything but the philosophic science of the will, the Philosophy of the practical.

Nature in the gnoseological sense, as naturalistic or empirical method.

The natural sciences have nothing to do with a philosophic knowledge of nature as will, with a Philosophy of the practical. They are, as has already been said, not knowledge of will, but will; not truth, but utility. In consequence of this, they extend to the whole of reality, theoretic and practical, to the products of the theoretic spirit, not less than to those of the practical spirit; and without knowing any of them, universally or individually, they manipulate and classify them all in the way we have seen. They have not therefore a special object, but a special mode of treatment, their object or matter being the presupposed philosophic-historical knowledge of the real. They do not treat of the material and mechanical aspect of the real, nor even of its non-theoretical, practical, volitional aspect (or what is incorrectly called the irrational aspect of it). They turn the theoretical into the practical, and by killing its theoretic life, make it dead, material, and mechanical. Nature, matter, passivity, motion ab extra, the inert atom and so on, are not reality and concepts, but natural science itself in action. Mechanism, logically considered, is neither a fact nor a mode of knowing the fact. It is a non-fact, a mode of not-knowing: a practical creation, which is real only in so far as it becomes itself an object of knowledge. This is the gnoseological or gnoseopractical meaning of the word "nature," a meaning which must be kept carefully distinct from the two preceding meanings. When we speak, for instance, of matter or of nature as not existing, we mean to refer to the puppet of the naturalists, which the naturalists themselves and the philosophers of naturalism, forgetting its genesis, take for a real if not a living being. That matter (said Berkeley) is an abstraction; it is (say we) an empirical concept, and whoever knows what empirical concepts are will not pretend that matter or nature exists, simply because it is spoken about.

The illusions of materialists and dualists.

We do not claim to have supplied the full solution of the problem concerning the dualism or materialism of the real with this discussion on the theme of Logic. This solution cannot (we repeat) be expected, save from all the philosophic sciences together, that is to say, from the complete system. But we can already see, from the logical point of view, that the dualists and materialists cannot avoid the task of showing that the nature or matter, which they elevate to a principle of the real or to one of the two principles of the real, is not: firstly, the mere negation of the spirit, nor secondly, a form of the spirit, nor thirdly, the abstraction of the natural sciences. They must also show that it answers to something conceivable and existing, outside or above the spirit. Logic can pass onward at this point, saying of materialists and dualists what Dante said of the devils and the damned struggling in the lake of burning pitch: "And we leave them thus encompassed."

Nature as empirical distinction of an inferior in relation to a superior reality.

The word "nature" has yet a fourth meaning (but this time altogether empirical), which is clear in those propositions which distinguish natural life from social life, natural men (Naturmenschen) or savages from civilized men, and again natural from human beings, animals from men, and so on. Nature, in this sense, is distinguished from civilization or humanity, and thus the sole reality is divided into two classes of beings: natural beings and human beings (which are sometimes also called spiritual as compared with the former, which are called material). The vague and empirical nature of this distinction is at once perceived from the impossibility that we meet with of assigning boundaries between civilization and the state of nature, between humanity and animality. Man can be only empirically distinguished from the animal, the animal from the vegetable, and vegetables from inorganic beings, which are organic in their own way. Certainly, what are called things are not organic, for example a mountain or a plough-share; but they are not organic, because they are not real, but aggregates, that is to say, empirical concepts. In the same way, a forest is not organic, though it is composed of things vegetating, nor a crowd, though composed of men. When we treat of things in the above sense, we can say with some mathematicians that things do not exist, but only their relations. Hence if the dualists feel able to affirm that the two classes of beings, natural and human, are based upon the existence of two different substances and upon the different proportions of these in each of the two classes, the task of proving the thinkability of the two substances and the different proportions of the compound falls upon them.

The naturalistic method and the natural sciences as extended to superior not less than to inferior reality.

The distinction between nature and spirit being therefore, in this last sense, altogether empirical, it is clear that the natural sciences (in the gnoseological or gnoseopractical sense in which we give chem this name) are not restricted to the development of knowledge relating to what is called inferior reality, from the animal downwards, leaving to the sciences of the spirit the knowledge that relates to superior reality from the animal upwards, that is to say, to man. Sciences of nature and sciences of the spirit, orbis naturalis and orbis intellectuals, are also, in this case, partitions and convenient groupings. All do substantially the same thing, that is to say, they provide one single homogeneous practical treatment of knowledge.

Demand for such an extension, and effective existence of what is demanded.

On this unity and homogeneity is based the demand so often made (especially in the second half of the nineteenth century) for the extension of the method of the natural sciences to the sciences of the spirit or moral sciences, the orbis intellectualis, for a naturalistic treatment of the productions of language and of art, or of political, social, and religious life. Thus were originated or prophesied a Psychology, an Æsthetic, an Ethic, a Sociology, methodo naturali demonstratae. It was necessary to draw the attention of those makers of programmes and advisers (apart from the evil philosophic intentions, positivist or materialistic, which they nourished in their bosoms) to the superfluity of their demand, and gently to reprove them with the old phrase: Quod petis in manu habes. Since man was man and constructed pseudoconcepts and empirical sciences, these naturalistic classifications have never been limited to animals, plants, and minerals, nor to physical, chemical, and biological phenomena, but have been extended to all the manifestations of reality. Naturalistic Logic, Psychology, Linguistic Sociology and Ethics have not awaited the nineteenth century ere they should open to the sun. And (without going too far back in time, or leaving Europe) they already bore flower and fruit in the Sociology (Politics) of Aristotle, in the Grammatics of the Alexandrians, in the Poetics and Rhetoric of Aristotle himself, or of Hermagoras, of Cicero, or of Quintilian, and so on. The novelty of the nineteenth century has principally consisted in giving the names social Physics, or the physico-acoustic science of language to what was once more simply, and perhaps in better taste, called otherwise. But in saying this we do not wish to deny that certain naturalistic work has been far more copious in the nineteenth century than in Greece, and that naturalistic methods have not been applied with singular acumen and exactitude in those fields of study. Linguistic affords a case in point, with its phonetic laws, by reason of which it moves so proudly among its companions.

Historical basis of the natural sciences.

The natural sciences and the empirical concepts which compose them appear therefore like a tachygraphic transcription upon living and mutable reality, capable of complete transcription only in terms of individual representations. But upon what reality? Upon the reality of the poet, or upon the clarified and existentialized reality of—the historian? The constructions of the natural sciences take history for their presupposition, just as judgments of classification take individual judgments. Were this not so, their economic function would have no way of expressing itself, from lack of matter whereon to work. To employ the easy example already given, it would be of no use to the zoologist to construct types and classes of animals that were certainly conceivable, but non-existent. For while those types and classes would distract the attention from the useful and urgent task of summarizing reality historically given and known, they would not exhaust the possibilities, which are infinite And if it appear that imaginary animals are sometimes classified, as for example griffins centaurs, Pegasi, and sirens, it is easy to see that this is not done in Zoology, but in another naturalistic science,—comparative Mythology, in which not animals but the imaginings of men are really classified. These too are historical facts, because they are imaginings or fancies historically given. They are not combinations of images which no people has ever dreamed of, nor any poet represented, for such, as has already been said, would be infinite in number and food for mere diversion.

The question as to whether history is the foundation or the crown of thought.

History, which has philosophy for its foundation, becomes in its turn foundation in the natural sciences. This explains why, with the controversy as to whether history be a science or an art, there has always been inextricably connected the other question as to whether history be the foundation of science or science the foundation of history. The question finds a solution in the solution of the ambiguity of the term "science," which is used indifferently, sometimes in the sense of philosophy, sometimes in that of the natural sciences. If science is understood as philosophy, history is not its foundation, indeed philosophy is the foundation of history. Both mingle and are identified in the sense already explained. If science is understood as naturalistic science, then history is its necessary foundation or precedent. Certainly, naturalistic classifications are also reflected in historical narrative; but, as we have seen, they do not perform a constitutive function in it; they are of merely subsidiary assistance.

Naturalists and historical research.

But since history is the foundation of the natural sciences, and the special treatment of perceptive material or historical data by these sciences does not possess theoretic value, but is valuable merely as a convenient classification, it is clear that the whole content of truth of the natural sciences (the measure of truth and reality that at bottom they contribute) is history. Therefore it is not without reason that the natural sciences or some of them have been called in the past natural history. History is the hot and fluid mass, which the naturalist cools and solidifies by pouring it into formal classes and types. Previous to this manipulation, the naturalist must have thought as a historian. The matter thus cooled and solidified for preservation and for transport has no theoretic value, save in so far as it can again be rendered hot and fluid. Similarly, on the other hand, it is necessary to revise continually the classifications adopted, returning to the observation of facts, to simple intuitions and perceptions, to the historical consideration of reality. The naturalist who makes a discovery, in so far as he is a discoverer of truth, is a historical discoverer; and revolutions in the natural sciences represent progress in historical knowledge. Lamarckianism and Darwinism may serve as an example of this. Naturalists (and we use the word in its ordinary meaning, applying it to those who explore this "fair family of plants and animals," and what is called in general the physical world) feel themselves somewhat humiliated when described as classifiers careless of truth. But if such classification is exactly what the natural sciences accomplish from the gnoseological point of view, yet naturalists as individuals and as corporations of students exercise a far more substantial and fruitful function. The historical foundation of the life of the natural sciences is also found in the fact that a change of historical conditions sometimes renders, if not wholly useless, at least less useful, certain classifications made with the object of controlling conditions of life remote from us, or perceptions concerning life that have now been abandoned. This has occurred with regard to the classifications of alchemy and of astrology, and also (passing on to examples from other empirical sciences) to the descriptive and casuistic portions of feudal law. When the book is no longer read, the index also falls into disuse.

The prejudice as to the non-historicity of nature.

The strangest of statements, that nature has no history, comes from forgetting the historical foundation of the natural sciences, from ignorance that it constitutes their sole truth, and from attributing theoretic importance to classifications which have merely practical importance. In this case, nature signifies that reality, from man downwards, which is empirically called inferior reality. But how, if it is reality, is it without history? How, if it is reality, is it not becoming? And further, the thesis is confuted by all the most attentive studies of so-called inferior reality. To limit ourselves to the animal kingdom, a century before Darwin the acute intellect of the Abbé Galiani shook itself free of this prejudice as to the immobility of animals. He remarks in certain places about cats: "A-t-on des naturalistes bien exacts qui nous disent que les chats, il y a trois mille ans, prenaient les souris, préservaient leurs petits, connaissaient la vertu médicinale de quelques herbes, ou, pour mieux dire, de l'herbe, comme ils font à présent? ... Mes recherches sur les mœurs des chattes m'ont donné des soupçons très forts qu'elles sont perfectibles; mais au bout d'une longue traînée de siècles, je crois que tous que les cliats savent est l'ouvrage de quarante à cinquante mille ans. Nous n'avons que quelques siècles d'histoire naturelle: ainsi le changement qu'ils auront subi dans ce temps, est imperceptible."[3] This slight perceptibility of the relative changes of what is called nature or inferior reality has contributed to that prejudice (not to mention the confusion between the fixity that belongs to naturalistic classifications and reality, which is always in motion). Nature appears to be motionless, just because of the slight interest that we take in the shadings of its phenomena and in their continuous variation. But not only is nature not motionless, but it is not even true that it proceeds (as the poet says) "with steps so slow that it seems to stand still." The movement of nature or inferior reality is fast or slow, neither in less nor greater degree than human reality, according to the various arbitrary constructions of empirical concepts which are adopted, and according to the variable and arbitrary standards of measurement which are applied to them. We watch with vigilant eye every social movement that can cause a variation in the price of grain or the value of Stock Exchange securities; but we do not surprise with equally vigilant eye the revolutions that are prepared in the bosom of the earth or among the green-clad herbs of the field.

The philosophic foundation of the natural sciences, and the efficacy of the philosophy that they contain.

But if history is the foundation of the natural sciences, it follows from this that those sciences are always based upon a philosophy. This is indubitable, for the naturalist, however much he be a naturalist, is above all things a man, and a man without a philosophy (or what comes to the same thing, without a religion) has not yet been found. This does not mean that the natural sciences are philosophy. Their special task is classification, and here they are just as independent and autonomous as philosophy is incompetent. But philosophy is competent in philosophy, and so we see that those naturalists who possess philosophic culture avoid the prejudices, errors, and absurdities that spring from bad philosophies, and to which other naturalists are prone. For instance, if the chemist Professor Ostwald had possessed a better philosophy, he would not have abandoned his good chemistry for that doubtful mixture of things—his Philosophy of Nature. And had Ernest Haeckel made an elementary study of philosophy, he would never have given up his researches upon micro-organisms, in order to solve the riddles of the universe and to falsify the natural sciences. Let us limit ourselves to these instances, for our life of to-day supplies innumerable examples of philosophizing men of science, who are as pernicious to science as they are to philosophy and to culture. The antithesis between science and philosophy, of which so many speak, is a dream. The antithesis is between philosophy and philosophy, between true philosophy and that which is very imperfect and yet very arrogant, and manifestly active in the brains of many scientists, though it has nothing to do with the discoveries made in laboratories and observatories.

Action of the natural sciences upon philosophy, and errors in conceiving such relation.

The action of philosophy upon the natural sciences is not constitutive of them, but preparatory. The action of the natural sciences upon philosophy is not even preparatory, but merely incidental and subsidiary, having for its end simplicity of exposition and of memorizing, just as in history. A very common error, derived from a too hasty analysis of the forms of spiritual life, is that of looking upon the empirical and natural sciences as a preparation for philosophy. But in the achievement of the natural sciences, philosophy has been cold-shouldered, and to recover it we must seek pure intuition, which is the necessary and only precedent of logical thought.

Still worse is it, when the natural sciences are considered, not only as preparation, but just as a first sketch, or a chiselling of the marble block, from which philosophy will carve the statue. For this view denies without being aware of it, either the autonomy of the natural sciences, or that of philosophy, according as either the philosophic method or the naturalistic method is held to be the method of truth.

Indeed, in the first case, if the natural sciences be of a philosophic nature and represent a first approximation to philosophy, they must disappear when philosophy is evolved, as the provisional disappears before the definite, as the proof before the printed book. This would mean that natural sciences as such do not exist and that what really exists is philosophy. In the second case, if philosophy have the same nature as the natural sciences, the further development of the first sketch will always be the work of the naturalistic method, however refined and however increased in power we may please to imagine it. Thus, what would really exist would never be philosophy, but always the natural sciences. This erroneous conception therefore reduces itself to a denial, either of the natural sciences or of philosophy; either of the pseudoconcepts or of the pure concepts; a negation that need not be confuted, because the whole of our exposition of Logic is its explicit confutation.

Motive of these errors: naturalistic philosophy.

The genesis of such a psychological illusion resides in the fact that the natural sciences seem to be tormented with the thirst for full and real truth, and philosophy, on the other hand, to be intent solely upon correcting the perversions and inexactitudes of the empirical and natural sciences. But it is a question of likeness or appearance only, because the thirst for truth belongs not to the natural sciences, but to philosophy, which lives in all men, and also in the naturalist. And the philosophic perversions and inexactitudes which have to be corrected do not form part of the natural sciences (which as such affirm neither the true nor the false), but to that philosophy which the naturalist forms and into which he introduces the prejudices derived from his special business.

Philosophy as destroyer of naturalistic philosophy, but not of the natural sciences. Autonomy of these.

The proof of the theory here maintained is that even when philosophy engages in strife with naturalistic prejudices, it dissolves those prejudices, but does not and could not dissolve the sciences which had suggested them. Indeed, a philosopher becoming again a naturalist, cultivates those sciences successfully, just as his philosophizing does not forbid his going into the garden and there scenting and pruning the plants. The naturalistic sciences of language and of art, of morality, of rights and of economics (to take instances from the intellectual world, which seem to have closer contact with philosophy), are not only what is called the empirical stage of the corresponding philosophic disciplines, but persist and will persist side by side with them, because they render services which cannot be replaced. Thus there is no philosophy of language and of art which can expel from their proper spheres, even if it does expel them from its own, empirical Linguistic, Grammar, Phonetics, Morphology, Syntax, and Metric, with their empirical categories, which are useful to memory. Nor can they eliminate the classifications of artistic and literary kinds, and those of the arts according to what are called means of expression, by means of which it is possible to arrange books on shelves, statues and pictures in museums, and our knowledge of artistic-literary history in our memories. Psychology, an empirical and natural science, certainly does not make us understand the activity of the spirit; but it permits us to summarize and to remember very many effective manifestations of the spirit, by classifying as well as may be the species or classes of facts of representation (sensations, intuitions, perceptions, imaginings, illusions, concepts, judgments, arguments, poems, histories, systems, etc.), facts of sentiment, and volitional facts (pleasure, pain, attraction, repulsion, mixed feelings, desires, inclinations, nostalgias, will, morality, duties, virtue, family, judicial, economic, political, religious life, etc.), or by classifying these same facts according to groups of individuals (the Psychology of animals, of children, of savages, of criminals, and of man, both in his normal and abnormal conditions). This wholly extrinsic mode of consideration, which is now prevalent in Psychology, is the source of the remark that it has risen (or has sunk?) to the level of a natural science, and that its method is mechanical, determinist, positive, antiteleological. Sociology, understood not as a philosophic science (—there is no such thing—), but as an empirical science, classifies as well as may be the forms of family and the forms of production, the forms of religion, of science and of art, political and social forms, and constructs series of classifications to summarize the principal forms which human history has assumed in the course of its development. The philosopher expels these classifications from philosophy, as extraneous elements causing pathological processes; but that same philosopher, in so far as he is a complete man, and in so far as he provides for the economy of his internal life and for more easy communication with his fellows, must fashion and avail himself of the empirical. Having ideally destroyed the adjective and the adverb, the epic and the tragic kinds, the virtues of courage and of prudence, the monogamous and the polygamous family, the dog and the wolf, he must yet speak when necessary of adjectives and adverbs, of epics and tragedies, of courage and of prudence, of families formed in this or that way, of the species "dog," as though it were clearly distinguished from the species "wolf."

Thus is confirmed the autonomy and the peculiar nature of the empirical or natural sciences, indestructible by philosophy as philosophy is indestructible by them.

VI

MATHEMATICS AND THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE OF NATURE

The idea of a mathematical science of nature.

The conception of a mathematical science of nature is at variance with the thesis that recognizes the ineliminable historical foundation of the natural sciences and the consequences which follow from it. It is claimed that this mathematical science, in expressing the ideal and end of the natural sciences, would express also their true nature, which is not empirical but abstract, not synthetic but analytic, not inductive but deductive. The mathematical conception of the natural sciences would imply perfect mechanism, the reduction of all phenomena to quantity without quality, the representation of each phenomenon by means of a mathematical formula, which should be its adequate definition.

Various definitions of mathematics.

But the nature of mathematics cannot be considered a mystery in our time. Mathematics (as has lately been said with a subtlety equal to its truth) is a science "in which it can never be known what we are talking about, nor whether what we are talking about be true" These affirmations are made one after the other by all mathematicians who are conscious of their own methods. In what sense can a process that merits such a description be called a science? A science that states no sort of truth does not belong to the theoretic spirit, since it is not even poetry; and a science which is not related to anything is not even an empirical science, which is always related to a definite group of representations. For this reason, others incline to consider mathematics sometimes as language, sometimes as logic. But mathematics is neither language in general nor any special language; it is not language in the universal sense, co-extensive with expression and with art; nor is it a historically given language, which would be a contingent fact; nor a class of languages (phonetic, pictorial, or musical language, etc.), which would be an approximate and empirical definition, inapplicable in a function like mathematics, which expresses its own original nature. It is not logic, because there is only one logic, and thought thinks always as thought. If it is maintained, on the other hand, that the human spirit has also a special logic, which is that of mathematicizing, a return is made to the problem to be solved, namely, what is mathematicizing? that is to say, this logic, which is not the logic of thought, because it does not give truth, and is not the logic of the empirical sciences, because it does not depend upon representations.