Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept

BENEDETTO CROCE

Douglas Ainslie translation

BY

DOUGLAS AINSLIE

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

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1917

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

The publication of this third volume of the Philosophy of the Spirit offers a complete view of the Crocean philosophy to the English-speaking world.

I have striven in every way to render the Logic the equal of its predecessors in accuracy and elegance of translation, and have taken the opinion of critical friends on many occasions, though more frequently I have preferred to retain my own. The vocabulary will be found to resemble those of the Æsthetic and the Philosophy of the Practical, thereby enabling readers to follow the thought of the author more easily than if I had made alterations in it. Thus the word "fancy" will be found here as elsewhere, the equivalent of the Italian "fantasia" and "imagination" of "immaginazione"; this rendering makes the meaning far more clear than the use of the words in the opposite sense that they occasionally bear in English; this is particularly so in respect of the important distinction of the activities in the early part of the Æsthetic. I have also retained the word "gnoseology" and its derivatives, as saving the circumlocutions entailed by the use of any paraphrase, especially when adjectival forms are employed.

I think that this Logic will come to be recognized as a masterpiece, in the sense that it supplants and supersedes all Logics that have gone before, especially those known as formal Logics, of which the average layman has so profound and justifiable mistrust, for the very good reason that, as Croce says, they are not Logic at all, but illogic—his healthy love of life leads him to fight shy of what he feels would lead to disaster if applied to the problems that he has to face in the conduct of life. It is shown in the following pages that the prestige of Aristotle is not wholly to blame for the survival of formal Logic and for the class of mind that denying thought dwells ever in the ipse dixit. Indeed, one of the chief boons conferred by this book will be the freeing of the student from that confusion of thought and word that is the essence of the old formal Logic—of thought that rises upon the wings of words, like an aviator upon his falcon of wood and metal to spy out the entrenchments of the enemy.

One of the most stimulating portions of the book will, I think, be found in Croce's theory of error and proof of its necessity in the progress of truth. This may certainly be credited to Croce as a discovery. That this theory of the uses of error has a great future, I have no doubt, from its appearance at certain debates on Logic that have taken place at the Aristotelian Society within the last year or two, though strangely enough the name of the philosopher to whom it was due was not mentioned. A like mysterious aposiopesis characterized Professor J. A. Smith's communication to the same Society as to the development of the ethical from the economic activity (degrees of the Spirit) some years after the publication of the Philosophy of the Practical.

It is my hope that this original work, appearing as it does in the midst of the great struggle with the Teutonic powers, may serve to point out to the Anglo-Saxon world where the future of the world's civilization lies, namely in the ancient line of Latin culture, which includes in itself the loftiest Hellenic thought. It is sad to think that the Germans have relapsed to barbarism from the veneer of cultivation that they once possessed, particularly sad when one comes upon the German names that must always abound in any treatise on the development of thought. Their creative moment, however, was very brief, and the really important names can be numbered on the fingers of one hand, that of Emmanuel Kant being corrupted from the Scots Cant. Of recent years the German contribution has been singularly small and unimportant, such writers as Eucken being mere compilers of the work of earlier philosophers, and without originality. The foul-souled Teuton will need a long period of re-education before he can be readmitted to the comity of nations upon equal terms—his bestiality will ask a potent purge.

In conclusion, I can only hope that the fact of this work having been put into the hands of readers a decade earlier than would in all probability have been the case, had I not been fortunate enough to make a certain journey to Naples, will be duly taken advantage of by students, and that it will serve for many as a solid foundation for their thought about thought, and so of their thought about the whole of life and reality in the new world that will succeed the War.

DOUGLAS AINSLIE.

THE ATHENAEUM, PALL MALL,

March 1917.

This volume is, and is not, the memoir entitled Outlines of Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept, which I presented to the Accademia Pontiana at the sessions of April 10 and May 1, 1904, and April 2, 1905, and which was inserted in volume xxxv. of the Transactions (printed as an extract from them by Giannini, Naples, 1905, in quarto, pp. 140).

I might have republished that memoir, and made in it certain corrections, great and small, and especially I might have enriched it with very numerous developments. But partial corrections and copious additions, while they would have injured the arrangement of the first work, would not have allowed me to attain to that more secure and fuller exposition of logical doctrine which, after four years' study and reflection, it now seems to be in my power to offer. I have therefore resolved to rewrite the work from the beginning on a larger scale, with a new arrangement and new diction regarding its predecessor as a sketch, which in a literary sense stands by itself, and only making use of a page, or group of pages, here and there, as suited the natural order of exposition.

Owing to this connection between the present volume with the above-mentioned academic memoir, it will be seen in what sense it may be called, and is called, a "second edition." It is a second edition of my thought rather than of my book.

B. C.

NAPLES,

November 1908.

PREFACE TO THIRD ITALIAN EDITION OF THE LOGIC

On reprinting the present volume, after an interval of seven years, I have reread it with attention to its literary form, but have made no substantial changes or additions to it; because the further development of that part which deals with the logic of Historiography has been collected in a special volume, forming as it were an appendix. This is now the fourth volume of the Philosophy of the Spirit.

It seemed to many, upon the first publication of this volume, that it chiefly consisted of a very keen attack upon Science. Few, above all, discovered what it was: a vindication of the seriousness of logical thought, not only in respect to empiricism and abstract thought, but also to intuitionist, mystical and pragmatistic doctrines, and to all the others then very vigorous, which, including justly combated positivism, distorted every form of logicity.

Nor, in truth, did its criticism of Science favour what is known as a philosophy "detesting facts": indeed, the chief preoccupation of that criticism was meticulous respect of facts, which was neither observed nor observable in empirical and abstract constructions and in the analogous mythologies of naturalism. The character of this Logic might equally be described as affirmation of the concrete universal and affirmation of the concrete individual, as proof of the Aristotelian Scientia est de universalibus and proof of Campanula's Scientia est de singularibus. In this manner those empty generalizations and fictitious riches which are removed from philosophy in the course of treatment, there appear more than amply, infinitely compensated for by the restitution to it of its own riches, of the whole of history, both that known as human and that known as history of nature. Henceforward it can live there as in its own dominion, or rather its own body, which is co-extensive with and indivisible from it. The separation there effected by philosophy from science is not separation from what is true knowledge in science, that is from the historical and real elements of science. It is only separation from the schematic form in which those elements are compressed, mutilated and altered. Thus it may also be described as a reconnection of it with what of living, concrete and progressive exists in those sciences. If the destruction of anything be aimed at in it, that can clearly be nothing but abstract and anti-historical philosophy. This Logic must thus be looked upon as a liquidation of philosophy rather than of science, if abstract science be posited as true philosophy.

That point is dwelt upon in the polemic against the idea of a general philosophy which should stand above particular philosophies, or the methodological problems of historical thought. The distinction of general philosophy from particular philosophies (which are true generality in their particularity) seems to me to be the gnoseological residue of the old dualism and of the old transcendency; a not innocuous residue, for it always tends to the view that the thoughts of men upon particular things are of an inferior, common and vulgar nature, and that the thought of totality or unity is alone superior and alone completely satisfying. The idea of a general philosophy prepares in this way consciously or otherwise for the restoration of Metaphysic, with its pretension of rethinking the already thought by means of a particular thought of its own. This, when it is not altogether religious revelation, becomes the caprice of the individual philosopher. The many examples offered by post-Kantian philosophy are proof of this. Here Metaphysic raged so furiously and to such deleterious effect as to involve guiltless philosophy in its guilt. The latent danger always remains, even if this restoration of Metaphysic does not take place, for if it never becomes effective because it is carefully watched and restrained, the other draw-back persists, namely, that that general philosophy, or super-philosophy or super-intelligence desired, while it does not succeed in making clear particular problems, which alone have relation to concrete life, nevertheless in a measure discredits them, by judging them to be of slight importance and by surrounding them with a sort of mystical irony.

To annul the idea of a "general" philosophy is at the same time to annul the "static" concept of the philosophic system, replacing it with the dynamic concept of simple historical "systemizations" of groups of problems, of which particular problems and their solutions are what remain, not their aggregate and external arrangement. This latter satisfies the needs of the times and of authors and passes away with them, or is preserved and admired solely for æsthetic reasons when it possesses them. But those who retain some superstitious reverence for "General Philosophy" or "Metaphysic" have still a superstitious reverence for what are known as static systems. In so doing they behave in a rational manner, for they cannot altogether free themselves from the claims of a definitive philosophy which is to solve once and for all the so-called "enigma of the world" (imaginary because there are infinite enigmas which appear and are solved in turn, but there is not the Enigma), and is to provide the "true system" or "basis" of the true system. Nevertheless I hope that good fortune will attend the doctrine of the concept here set out, not only because it seems to me to afford the satisfaction proper to every statement of truth, namely, to accord with the reality of things, but also (if I may so express myself) because it carries with it certain immediate and tangible advantages. Above all, it relieves the student of philosophy of the terrible responsibility—which I should never wish to assume—of supplying the Truth, the unique eternal Truth, and of supplying it in competition with all the greatest philosophers who have appeared in the course of centuries. Further, it removes from him together both the hope of the definitive system and the anxious fear of the mortal doom which will one day strike the very system that he has so lovingly constructed, as it has struck those of his predecessors. At the same time it sets him out of reach of the smiling non-philosophers who foresee with accuracy and are almost able to calculate the date of that not distant death. Finally, it frees him from the annoyance of the "school" and of the "scholars"; "school" and "scholars" in the sense of the old metaphysicians are no longer even conceivable, when the idea of "systems" having-their "own principles" has been abolished. All dynamic systems or provisory systemizations of ever new problems have the same principle, namely, Thought, perennis philosophia. There has not been and never will be anything to add to this. And although the many propositions and solutions of problems strive among themselves to attain harmony, yet to each, if it be truly thought, is promised eternal life, which gives and receives vigour from the life of each of the others. This is just the opposite of what takes place with static systems which collapse, one upon the other, only certain portions of good work surviving them in the shape of happy treatment of special problems which are to be found mingled with the metaphysic of every true philosopher. And although there is no longer a field left over to these scholars who merely faithfully echo the master, like adepts of a religion, there is yet a wide field always open to the other type of scholar, men who pay serious attention and assimilate what is of use to them in the thought of others, but then proceed to state and to solve new problems of their own. Finally, the life of philosophy as conceived and portrayed in this Logic, resembles the life of poetry in this: that it does not become effective save in passing from different to different, from one original thinker to another, as poetry passes from poet to poet, and imitators and schools of poetry, although they certainly belong to the world, yet do not belong to the world of poetry.

B. C.

September 1916.

FIRST PART

THE PURE CONCEPT, THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT AND THE A PRIORI LOGICAL SYNTHESIS

FIRST SECTION

THE PURE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS

AFFIRMATION OF THE CONCEPT 3

Thought and sensation—Thought and language—Intuition and language as presuppositions—Scepsis as to the concept—Its three forms—Æstheticism—Mysticism—Empiricism—Redactio ad absurdum of the three forms—Affirmation of the concept.

THE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS 19

Concept and conceptual fictions—The pure concept as ultra- and omnirepresentative—Conceptual fictions as representative without universality, or universals void of representations—Criticism of the doctrine which considers them to be erroneous concepts, or imperfect concepts preparatory to perfect concepts—Posteriority of fictional concepts to true and proper conceptsmdash;Proper character of conceptual fictions—The practical end and mnemonic utility—Persistence of conceptual fictions side by side with concepts—Pure concepts and pseudoconcepts.

III

THE CHARACTERISTICS AND THE CHARACTER OF THE CONCEPT 40

Expressivity—Universality—Concreteness—The concrete-universal and the formation of the pseudoconcepts—Empirical and abstract pseudoconcepts—The other characteristics of the pure concept—The origin of multiplicity and the unity of the characteristics of the concept—Objection relating to the unreality of the pure concept and the impossibility of demonstrating it—Prejudice concerning the nature of the demonstration—Prejudice relating to the representability of the concept—Protests of philosophers against this prejudice—Reason of their perpetual reappearance.

DISPUTES CONCERNING THE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT 58

Disputes of materialistic origin—The concept as value—Realism and nominalism—Critique of both—True realism—Resolution of other difficulties as to the genesis of concepts—Disputes arising from the neglected distinction between empirical and abstract concepts—Intersection of the various disputes—Other logical disputes—Representative accompaniment of the concept—Concept of the thing and concept of the individual—Reasons, laws and causes—Intellect and Reason—The abstract reason and its practical nature—The synthesis of theoretical and practical and intellectual intuition—Uniqueness of thought.

CRITIQUE OF THE DIVISIONS OF THE CONCEPTS AND

THEORY OF DISTINCTION AND DEFINITION 72

The pseudoconcepts, not a subdivision of the concept—Obscurity, clearness and distinction, not subdivisions of the concept—Inexistence of subdivisions of the concept as logical form—Distinctions of the concepts not logical, but real—Multiplicity of the concepts; and logical difficulty arising therefrom. Necessity of overcoming it—Impossibility of eliminating it—Unity as distinction—Inadequacy of the numerical concept of the multiple—Relation of distincts as ideal history—Distinction between ideal history and real history—Ideal distinction and abstract distinction—Other usual distinctions of the concept, and their significance—Identical, unequal, primitive and derived concepts, etc.—Universal, particular and singular. Comprehension and extension—Logical definition—Unity-distinction as a circle—Distinction in the pseudoconcepts—Subordination and co-ordination of empirical concepts—Definition in empirical concepts, and forms of the concept—The series in abstract concepts.

OPPOSITION AND LOGICAL PRINCIPLES 92

Opposite or contradictory concepts—Their diversity from distincts—Confirmation of this afforded by empirical Logic—Difficulty arising from the double type of concepts, opposite and distinct—Nature of opposites; and their identity, when they are distinguished, with distincts—Impossibility of distinguishing one opposite from another, as concept from concept—The dialectic—Opposites are not concepts, but the unique concept itself—Affirmation and negation—The principle of identity and contradiction; true meaning, and false interpretation of it—Another false interpretation: contrast with the principle of opposition. False application of this principle also—Errors of the dialectic applied to the relation of distincts—Its reduction to the absurd—The improper form of logical principles or laws—The principle of sufficient reason.

SECOND SECTION

INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT

THE CONCEPT AND THE VERBAL FORM. THE DEFINITIVE JUDGMENT 108

Relation of the logical with the æsthetic form—The concept as expression—Æsthetic and æsthetic-logical expressions or expressions of the concept: propositions and judgments—Overcoming of the dualism of thought and language—The logical judgment as definition—Indistinction of subject and predicate in the definition—Unity of essence and existence—Pretended vacuity of the definition—Critique of the definition as fixed verbal formula.

THE CONCEPT AND THE VERBAL FORM. THE SYLLOGISM 120

Identity of definition and syllogism—Connection of concepts and thinking of concepts—Identity of judgment and syllogism—The middle term and the nature of the concept—Pretended non-definitive logical judgments—The syllogism as fixed verbal formula—Use and abuse of it—Erroneous separation of truth and reason of truth in pure concepts—Separation of truth and reason of truth in the pseudoconcepts.

III

CRITIQUE OF FORMAL LOGIC 133

Intrinsic impossibility of formal Logic—Its nature—Its partial justification—Its error—Its traditional constitution—The three logical forms—Theories of the concept and of the judgment—Theory of the syllogism—Spontaneous reductions to the absurd of formal Logic—Mathematical Logic or Logistic—Its non-mathematical character—Example of its mode of treatment—Identity of nature of Logistic and formal Logic—Practical aspect of Logistic.

INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT AND PERCEPTION 148

Reaction of the concept upon the representation—Logicization of the representations—The individual judgment; and its difference from the judgment of definition—Distinction of subject and predicate in the individual judgment—Reasons for the variety of definitions of the judgment and of some of its divisions—Individual judgment and intellectual intuition—Identity of individual judgment with perception or perceptive judgment, and with commemorative or historical judgment—Erroneous distinction of individual judgments as of fact and of value—The individual judgment as ultimate and perfect form of knowledge—Error of treating it as the first fact of knowledge—Motive of this error—Individual syllogisms.

THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT AND THE PREDICATE OF EXISTENCE 161

The copula: its verbal and logical significance—Questions relating to propositions without a subject. Verbalism—Confusion between different forms of judgments in the question of existentiality—Determination and subdivision of the question concerning the existentiality of individual judgments—Necessity of the existential character in these judgments—The absolutely and the relatively inexistent—The character of existence as predicate—Critique of existentiality as position and faith—Absurd consequences of those doctrines—The predicate of existence as not sufficient to constitute a judgment—The predicate of judgment as the totality of the concept.

INDIVIDUAL PSEUDOJUDGMENTS. CLASSIFICATION AND ENUMERATION 179

Individual pseudojudgments—Their practical character—Genesis of the distinction between judgments of fact and judgments of value; and critique of it—Importance of individual pseudojudgments—Empirical individual and individual abstract judgments—Formative process of empirical judgments—Their existential basis—Dependence of empirical judgments upon pure concepts—Empirical judgments as classification—Classification and understanding—Substitution of the one for the other, and genesis of perceptive and judicative illusions—Abstract concepts and individual judgments—Impossibility of direct application of the first to the second—Intervention of empirical judgments as intermediate—Reduction of the heterogeneous to the homogeneous—Empirical abstract judgments and enumeration (mensuration, etc.)—Enumeration and intelligence—The so-called conversion of quantity into quality—Mathematical space and time and their abstractness.

THIRD SECTION

IDENTITY OF THE PURE CONCEPT AND THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT THE LOGICAL A PRIORI SYNTHESIS

IDENTITY OF THE JUDGMENT OF DEFINITION (PURE CONCEPT) AND OF THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT 198

Result of preceding enquiry: the judgment of definition and the individual judgment—Distinction between the two: truth of reason and truth of fact, necessary and contingent, etc.; formal and material—Absurdities arising from these distinctions: the individual judgment as ultra-logical; or, duality of logical forms—Difficulty of abandoning the distinction—The hypothesis of reciprocal implication, and so of the identity of the two forms—Objection; the lack of representative and historical element in the definitive—The historical element in the definitions taken in their concreteness—The definition as answer to a question and solution of a problem—Individual and historical conditionally of every question and problem—Definition as also historical judgment—Unity of truth of reason and truth of fact—Considerations in confirmation of this—Critique of the false distinction between formal and material truths—Platonic men and Aristotelian men—Theory of application of the concepts, true for abstract concepts and false for true concepts.

THE A PRIORI LOGICAL SYNTHESIS 218

The identity of the judgment of definition and of the individual judgment, as synthesis a priori—Objections to the synthesis a priori, deriving from abstractionists and empiricists—False interpretation of the synthesis a priori—Synthesis a priori in general and logical synthesis a priori—Non-logical synthesis a priori— The synthesis a priori, as synthesis, not of opposites, but of distincts—The category in the judgment. Difference between category and innate idea—The synthesis a priori, the destruction of transcendency, and the objectivity of knowing—Power of the synthesis a priori remained unknown to its discoverer.

III

LOGIC AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE CATEGORIES 232

The demand for a complete table of the categories—This demand extraneous to Logic—Logical categories and real categories—Uniqueness of the logical category: the concept. The other categories, no longer logical, but real. Systems of categories—The Hegelian system of the categories, and other posterior systems—The logical order of the predicates or categories—Illusion as to the logical reality of this order—The necessity of an order of the predicates not founded upon Logic in particular, but upon the whole of Philosophy—False distinction of Philosophy into two spheres—Metaphysic and Philosophy, rational Philosophy and real Philosophy, etc., derived from the confusion between Logic and Doctrine of the categories—Philosophy and pure Logic, etc.; overcoming of the dualism.

SECOND PART

PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND THE NATURAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

THE FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE DIVISIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 247

Summary of the results relating to the forms of knowledge—Non-existence of technical forms, and of composed forms—Identity of forms of knowledge and of knowing. Objections to them—Empirical distinctions and their limits—Enumeration and determination of the forms of knowing reality, corresponding to the forms of knowledge—Critique of the idea of a special Logic as doctrine of the forms of knowing the external world and of a special Logic as doctrine of the methods—Nature of our treatment of the forms of knowledge.

PHILOSOPHY 261

Philosophy as pure concept; and the various definitions of philosophy—Those which negate philosophy—Those which define it as science of supreme principle, of final causes, etc.; contemplation of death, etc.; as elaboration of the concepts, as criticism, as science of norms; as doctrine of the categories—Exclusion of material definitions from philosophy—Idealism of every philosophy—Systematic character of philosophy—Philosophic significance and literary significance of the system—Advantages and disadvantages of the literary form of the system—Genesis of the systematic prejudice, and rebellion against it—Sacred and philosophic numbers; meaning of their demand—Impossibility of dividing philosophy into general and particular—Disadvantages of the conception of a general philosophy, distinct from particular philosophies.

III

HISTORY 279

History as individual judgment—The individual element and historical sources: relics and narrative—The intuitive faculty in historical research—The intuitive faculty in historical exposition. Resemblance of history and art. Difference between history and art—The predicate or logical element in history—Vain attempts to eliminate it—Extension of historical predicates beyond the limits of mere existence—Asserted unsurmountable variance in judging and presenting historical facts and consequent demand for a history without judgment—Restriction of variance, and exclusion of apparent variances—Overcoming of variances by means of deep study of the concepts—Subjectivity and objectivity in history: their meaning—Historical judgments of value, and normal or neutral values. Critique—Various legitimate meanings of protests against historical subjectivity—The demand for a theory of historical factors—Impossibility of dividing history according to its intuitive and reflective elements—Empiricity of the division of the historical process into four stages—Divisions founded upon the historical object—Logical division according to the forms of the spirit—The empirical division of the representative material—Empirical concepts in history; and the false theory as to the function they fulfil there—Hence also the claim to reduce history to a natural science; and the thesis of the practical character of history—Distinction between historical facts and non-historical facts; and its empirical value—The professional prejudice and theory of the practical character of history.

IDENTITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 310

Necessity of the historical element in philosophy—Historical quality of the culture required of the philosopher—Apparent objections—Communication of philosophy as changing of philosophy—Perpetuity of this changing—The overcoming and continuous progress of philosophy—Meaning of the eternity of philosophy—The concept of spontaneous, ingenuous, innate philosophy, etc.; and its meaning—Philosophy as criticism and polemic—Identity of philosophy and history—Didactic divisions, and other reasons for the apparent duality—Note.

THE NATURAL SCIENCES 330

The natural sciences as empirical concepts, and their practical nature—Elimination of an equivocation concerning this practical character—Impossibility of unifying them in one concept—Impossibility of introducing into them rigorous divisions—Laws in the natural sciences, and so-called prevision—Empirical character of naturalistic laws—The postulate of the uniformity of nature, and its meaning—Pretended impossibility of exceptions to natural laws—Nature and its various meanings. Nature as passivity and negativity—Nature as practical activity —Nature in its gnoseological significance, as naturalistic or empirical method—The illusions of materialists and dualists—Nature as empirical distinction of an inferior reality in respect to a superior reality—The naturalistic method, and the natural sciences as extending to superior not less than to inferior reality -Claim for such extension, and effective existence of what is claimed—Historical foundation of the natural sciences—The question whether history be foundation or crown of thought—Naturalists as historical investigators—Prejudices as to non-historicity of nature—Philosophic foundation of the natural sciences, and effect of philosophy upon them—Effect of natural sciences upon philosophy, and errors in conceiving such relation—Reason of these errors. Naturalistic philosophy—Philosophy as the destroyer of naturalistic philosophy, but not of the natural sciences. Autonomy of these.

MATHEMATICS AND THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE OF NATURE 362

Idea of a mathematical science of nature—Various definitions of mathematics—Mathematical procedure—Apriority of mathematical principles—Contradictoriness of the a priori principles. They are not thinkable, and not intuitive—Identification of mathematics with abstract pseudoconcepts—The ultimate end of mathematics: to enumerate, and, therefore, to aid the determination of the single. Its place—Particular questions concerning mathematics—Rigour of mathematics and rigour of philosophy—Loves and hates between the two forms—Impossibility of reducing the empirical sciences to the mathematical; and the empirical limits of the mathematical science of nature—Decreasing utility of mathematics in the loftiest spheres of the real.

VII

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 378

Theory of the forms of knowledge and doctrine of the categories—Problem of classification of the sciences; its empirical nature—Falsely philosophic character that it assumes—Coincidence of that problem with the search for the categories, when understood with philosophic rigour—Forms of knowledge and literary-didactic forms—Prejudices derived from the latter—Methodical prologues to scholastic manuals, their impotence—Capricious multiplication of the sciences—The sciences and professional prejudices.

THIRD PART

THE FORMS OF ERROR AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

ERROR AND ITS NECESSARY FORMS 391

Error as negativity; impossibility of a special treatment of errors—Positive and existing errors—Positive errors as practical acts— Practical acts and not practical errors—Economically practical acts, not morally practical acts—Doctrine of error, and doctrine of necessary forms of error—Logical nature of all theoretical errors—History of errors and phenomenology of error—Deduction of the forms of logical errors. Forms deduced from the concept of the concept, and forms deduced from the other concepts—Errors derived from errors—Professionally and nationality of errors.

ÆSTHETICISM, EMPIRICISM AND MATHEMATICISM 406

Definition of these forms—Æstheticism—Empiricism—Positivism, the philosophy founded upon the sciences, inductive metaphysic—Empiricism and facts—Bankruptcy of Empiricism: dualism, agnosticism, spiritualism and superstition—Evolutionistic positivism and rationalistic positivism—Mathematicism—Symbolical mathematics—Mathematics as a form of demonstration of philosophy—Errors of mathematical philosophy—Dualism, agnosticism and superstition of mathematicism.

III

THE PHILOSOPHISM 420

Rupture of the unity of the a priori synthesis—Philosophism, logicism or panlogicism—Philosophy of history—Contradictions in its assumptions—Philosophy of history and false analogies—Distinction between Philosophy of history and books so entitled—Merits of these, philosophic and historical—Philosophy of nature—Its substantial identity with Philosophy of history—Contradictions of Philosophy of nature—Books entitled Philosophy of nature—Contemporary seekings for a Philosophy of nature and their various meanings.

THE MYTHOLOGISM 438

Rupture of the unity of the a priori synthesis. The mythologism—Essence of myth—Problems relating to theory of myth—Myth and religion—Identity of the two spiritual forms—Religion and philosophy—Conversion of errors, the one into the other—Conversion of the mythologism into philosophism (theology) and of the philosophism into the mythologism (mythology of nature, historical apocalypses, etc.)—Scepsis.

DUALISM, SCEPTICISM AND MYSTICISM 449

Dualism—Scepsis and scepticism—Mystery—Critique of affirmations of mystery in philosophy—Agnosticism as a particular form of scepticism—Mysticism—Errors in other parts of philosophy—Conversion of these errors into one another and into logical errors.

THE ORDER OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH 462

Necessary character of the forms of errors. Their definite number—Their logical order—Examples of this order in various parts of philosophy—Erring spirit and spirit of search—Immanence of error in truth—Erroneous distinction between possession of and search for truth—Search for truth in the practical sense of preparation for thought; the series of errors—Transfiguration of error into tentative or hypothesis in the search so understood—Distinction between error as error and error as hypothesis—Immanence of the tentative in error itself as error—Individuals and error—Duplicate aspect of errors—Ultimate form of error: the methodological error or hypotheticism.

VII

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 479

Inseparability of phenomenology of error from the philosophical system—The eternal course and recurrence of errors—Returns to anterior philosophies; and their meaning—False idea of a history of philosophy as history of the successive appearance of the categories and of errors in time—Philosophism case in point of this false view, as is the formula concerning the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy—Distinction between this false idea of a history of philosophy, and the books which take it as their title or programme—Exact formula: identity of philosophy and history—History of philosophy and philosophic progress—The truth of all philosophies; and criticism of eclecticism—Researches for authors and precursors of truths; reason for the antinomies which they exhibit.

VIII

"DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE" 493

Logic and defence of Philosophy—Utility of Philosophy and the Philosophy of the practical—Consolation of philosophy, as joy of thought and in the true. Impossibility of a pleasure arising from falsity and illusion—Critique of the concept of a sad truth—Examples: Philosophical criticism and the concepts of God and Immortality—Consolatory virtue, pertaining to all spiritual activities—Sorrow and elevation of sorrow.

FOURTH PART

HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

HISTORY OF LOGIC AND HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 503

Reality, Thought and Logic—Relation of these three terms—Inexistence of a general philosophy outside particular philosophic sciences; and, in consequence, of a general History of philosophy outside the histories of particular philosophic sciences—Histories of particular philosophies and literary value of such division—History of Logic in its particular sense—Works dealing with history of Logic.

THEORY OF THE CONCEPT 512

Question as to the "father of Logic"—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle —Enquiries as to the nature of the concept in Greece. Question of transcendency and immanence—Controversies in Plato concerning the various forms of the concept—Philosophic, empirical and abstract concepts in Aristotle. Philosophy, physics, mathematics—Universals of the "always" and those of "for the most part"—Logical controversies in the Middle Ages—Nominalism and realism—Nominalism, mysticism and coincidence of opposites—Renaissance and mysticism—Bacon—Ideal of exact science and Cartesian philosophy—Adversaries of Cartesianism—Vico—Empiristic logic and its dissolution. Locke, Berkeley and Hume—Exact science and Kant. Concept of the category—Limits of science, and Jacobi—Positive elements in Kantian scepticism—The synthesis a priori—Inward contradiction in Kant. Romantic principle and classic execution—Progress since Kant: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel—Logic of Hegel. The concrete concept or Idea—Identity of Hegelian Idea and Kantian synthesis a priori—The Idea and the antinomies. The dialectic—Lacunæ and errors in Hegelian Logic. Their consequences—Contemporaries of Hegel: Herbart, Schleiermacher and others—Posterior positivism and psychologicism—Eclectics. Lotze—New gnoseology of the sciences. Economic theory of scientific concept. Avenarius, Mach—Rickert—Bergson and the new French philosophy—Le Roy, and others—Reattachment to romantic ideas, and progress upon them—Philosophy of pure experience, of intuition, of action, etc.: and its insufficiency—The theory of values.

III

THEORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT 561

Secular neglect of theory relating to history—Ideas upon history in Græco-Roman world—Theory of history in mediæval and modern philosophy—Writers on historical art in the sixteenth century—Writers on method—Theory of history and G. B. Vico—Anti-historicism of eighteenth century, and Kant—Hidden historical value of synthesis a priori—Theory of history in Hegel—W. von Humboldt—F. Brentano—Controversies as to the nature of history—Rickert; Xénopol. History as science of individual—History as art—Other controversies relating to history.

THEORY OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THOUGHT AND WORD AND FORMALIST LOGIC 583

Relation between history of Logic and history of Philosophy of language—Logical formalism. Indian logic free of it—Aristotelian Logic and formalism—Later formalism—Rebellions against Aristotelian Logic—Opposition by humanists and its motives—Opposition of naturalism—Simplicatory elaboration in eighteenth century. Kant—Refutation of formal Logic. Hegel; Schleiermacher—Its partial persistence, owing to insufficient ideas as to language—Formal Logic in Herbart, in Schopenhauer, in Hamilton—More recent theories—Mathematical Logic—Inexact idea of language among mathematicians and intuitionists.

CONCERNING THIS LOGIC 603

Traditional character of this Logic and its connection with Logic of philosophic concept—Its innovations—I. Exclusion of empirical and abstract concepts—II. Atheoretic character of second, and autonomy of empirical and mathematical sciences—III. Concept as unity of distinctions—IV. Identity of concept with individual judgment and of philosophy with history—V. Impossibility of defining thought by means of verbal forms, and refutation of formal Logic—Conclusion.

FIRST PART

THE PURE CONCEPT, THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT, AND THE A PRIORI LOGICAL SYNTHESIS

FIRST SECTION

THE PURE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS

I

AFFIRMATION OF THE CONCEPT

Thought and sensation.

Presupposed in the logical activity, which is the subject of this treatise, are representations or intuitions. If man had no representations, he would not think; were he not an imaginative spirit, he would not be a logical spirit. It is generally admitted that thought refers back to sensation, as its antecedent; and this doctrine we have no difficulty in making our own, provided it be given a double meaning. That is to say, in the first place, sensation must be conceived as something active and cognitive, or as a cognitive act; and not as something formless and passive, or active only with the activity of life, and not with that of contemplation. And, in the second place, sensation must be taken in its purity, without any logical reflection and elaboration; as simple sensation, that is to say, and not as perception, which (as will be seen in the proper place), so far from being implied, in itself implies logical activity. With this double explanation, sensation, active, cognitive and unreflective, becomes synonymous with representation and intuition; and certainly this is not the place to discuss the use of these synonyms, though there are excellent reasons of practical convenience pointing to the preference of the terms which we have adopted.

At all events, the important thing is to bear clearly in mind, that the logical activity, or thought, arises upon the many-coloured pageant of representations, intuitions, or sensations, whichever we may call them; and by means of these, at every moment the cognitive spirit absorbs within itself the course of reality, bestowing upon it theoretic form.

Thought and language.

Another presupposition is often introduced by logicians: that of language; since it seems clear that, if man does not speak, he does not think. This presupposition also we accept, adding to it, however, a corollary, together with certain elucidations. The elucidations are: in the first place, that language must be taken in its genuine and complete reality; that is to say, it must not be arbitrarily restricted to certain of its manifestations, such as the vocal and articulate; nor be changed and falsified into a body of abstractions, such as the classes of Grammar or the words of the Vocabulary, conceived as these are in the fashion of a machine, which man sets in motion when he speaks. And, in the second place, by language is to be understood, not the whole body of discourses, taken all together and in confusion, into which (as will be seen in its place) logical elements enter; but only that determinate aspect of these discourses, in virtue of which they are properly called language. A deep-rooted error, which springs directly from the failure to make this distinction, is that of believing language to be constituted of logical elements; adducing as a proof of this that even in the smallest discourse are to be found the words this, that, to be, to do, and the like, that is, logical concepts. But these concepts are by no means really to be found in every expression; and, even where they are to be found, the possibility of extracting them is no proof that they exhaust language. So true is this that those who cherish this conviction are afterwards obliged to leave over as a residue of their analysis, elements which they consider to be illogical and which they call emphatic, complementary, colorative, or musical: a residue in which is concealed true language, which escapes that abstract analysis. Finally, the corollary is that if the concept of language is thus rectified, the presupposition made for Logic regarding language is not a new presupposition, but is identical with that already made, when representations or intuitions were discussed. In truth, language in the strict sense, as we understand it, is equivalent to expression; and expression is identical with representation, since it is inconceivable that there should be a representation, which should not be expressed in some way, or an expression which should represent nothing, or be meaningless. The one would fail to be representation, and the other would not even be expression; that is to say, both must be and are, one and the same.

Intuition and language as presuppositions.

What is a real presupposition of the logical activity, is, for that very reason, not a presupposition in Philosophy, which cannot admit presuppositions and must think and demonstrate all the concepts that it posits. But it may conveniently be allowed as a presupposition for that part of Philosophy, which we are now undertaking to treat, namely Logic; and the existence of the representative or intuitive form of knowledge be taken for granted. After all, scepticism could not formulate more than two objections to this position: either the negation of knowing in general; or the negation of that form of knowing which we presuppose. Now, the first would be an instance of absolute scepticism; and we may be allowed to dispense with exhibiting yet again the old, but ever effective argument against absolute scepticism which may be found in the mouths of all students at the university, even of the boys in the higher elementary classes (and this dispensation may more readily be granted, seeing that we shall unfortunately be obliged to record many obvious truths of Philosophy in the course of our exposition). But we do not mean by this declaration that we shall evade our obligation to show the genesis and the profound reasons for this same scepticism, when we are led to do so by the order of our exposition. The second objection implies the negation of the intuitive activity as original and autonomous, and its resolution into empirical, hedonistic, intellectualist, or other doctrines. But we have already, in the preceding volume,[1] directed our efforts towards making the intuitive activity immune against such doctrines, that is to say, towards demonstrating the autonomy of fancy and establishing an Æsthetic. So that, in this way, the presupposition which we now allow to stand has here its pedagogic justification, since it resolves itself into a reference to things said elsewhere.

Scepticism as to the concept.

Facing, therefore, without more ado, the problem of Logic, the first obstacle to be removed will not be absolute scepticism nor scepticism concerning the intuitive form; but a new and more circumscribed scepticism, which does not question the two first theses, indeed relies upon them, and negates neither knowledge nor intuition, but logical knowledge itself. Logical knowledge is something beyond simple representation. The latter is individuality and multiplicity; the former the universality of individuality, the unity of multiplicity; the one is intuition, the other concept. To know logically is to know the universal or concept. The negation of logic is the affirmation that there is no other knowledge than representative (or sense knowledge, as it is called), and that universal or conceptual knowledge does not exist. Beyond simple representation, there is nothing knowable.

Were this so, the treatise which we are preparing to develop would have no subject-matter whatever, and would here cease, since it is impossible to seek out the nature of what does not exist, that is, of the concept, or how it operates in relation to the other forms of the Spirit. But that this is not so, and that the concept really exists and operates and gives rise to problems, undoubtedly results from the negation itself, pronounced by that form of scepticism which we will call logical, and which is, indeed, the only negation conceivable upon this point. Thus, we can speedily reassure ourselves as to the fate of our undertaking; or, if it be preferred, we must at once abandon the hope which we conjured up before ourselves, and resign ourselves to the labour of constructing a Logic; a labour which logical scepticism, by restricting us to the sole form of representation, had, as it seems, the good intention of sparing us.

Its three forms.

Logical scepticism, in fact, can assume three forms. It may affirm simply that representative knowledge is the whole and that unity or universality, whose existence we have postulated, are words without meaning. Or it may affirm that the demand for unity is justified, but that it is satisfied only by the non-cognitive forms of the Spirit. Or, finally, it may affirm that the demand is certainly satisfied by these non-cognitive forms, but only in so far as they react upon the cognitive, that is to say, upon the one admitted form of the cognitive, namely, the representative. It is clear that there is no other possibility beyond these three, either that of being satisfied with representative knowledge; or of being satisfied with something non-cognitive; or of combining these two forms. In the first case, we have the theory of æstheticism (which could also be correctly called sensationalism, if this did not happen to be an inconvenient term, by reason of the misunderstanding which might easily spring from it); in the second, the theory of mysticism; in the third, that of empiricism or arbitrarism.

Æstheticism.

According to æstheticism, in order to understand the real, it is not necessary to think by means of concepts, to universalize, to reason, or to be logical. It suffices to pass from one spectacle to another; and the sum of these, increased to infinity, is the truth which we seek, and which we must refrain from transcending, lest we fall into the void. The sub specie aeterni would be just like that mirror of water which deceived the avidity of the dog of Phædrus, and made it leave the real for the illusory food. For the cold and fruitless quest of the logician there is substituted the rich and moving contemplation of the artist. Truth lies in works of speech, of colour, of line, and not at all in the vain babblings of philosophy. Let us sing, let us paint, and not compel our minds to spasmodic and sterile efforts.

Mysticism.

The æstheticist's attitude may be considered as that of the spirit, which comes out of itself and disperses itself among things, while keeping itself above and aloof from them, contemplating, but not immersing itself in them. Mysticism is not satisfied with this, feeling that no repose is ever accorded to the spirit which abandons itself to this orgy, this breathless adventure of infinitely various spectacles, and that the intimate meaning of them all escapes the æstheticist. It is true that there is no logical knowledge, that the concept is sterile, but the claim for unity is legitimate, and demands to be, and is, satisfied. But in what way is it satisfied? Art speaks, and its speech, however beautiful, does not content us; it paints, and its colours, however attractive, deceive us. In order to find the inmost meaning of life, we must seek, not the light, but the shade, not speech, but silence. In silence, reality raises its head and shows its countenance; or, better, it shows us nothing, but fills us with itself, and gives us the sense of its very being. The unity and universality that we desire are found in action, in the practical form of the Spirit: in the heart, which palpitates, loves, and wills. Knowledge is knowledge of the single, it is representation; the eternal is not a matter of knowledge, but of intimate and ineffable experience.

Empiricism.

If the sceptics of logico-æsthetic type are chiefly artistic souls, the logico-mystical sceptics are sentimental and perturbed souls. These, although they do not usually take an entirely active part in life, yet do to some extent take part in it, vibrating in sympathetic unison with it, and, according to circumstances, suffering, sometimes through taking part, and sometimes through failing so to do. Empiricists or arbitrarists are to be found, on the other hand, among those who, engaged in practical affairs, do not indulge in emotions and sentiments, but aim at producing definite results. Thus, while they are in complete agreement with the æstheticists and the mystics in denying all value to logical knowledge as an autonomous form of knowledge, they are not satisfied, like the former, with spectacles and with works of art; nor are they caught, like the latter, in the madness and sorcery of the One and Eternal. The combination which they effect, of the æstheticist's thesis concerning the value of representation, with the mystical concerning the value of action, strengthens neither, but weakens both; and in exchange for the poetry of the first and for the ecstasy of the second, it offers an eminently prosaic product countersigned with a most prosaic name, that of fiction. There is something (they say) beyond the mere representation, and this something is an act of will; which also satisfies the demand for the universal, not by shutting itself up in itself, but by means of a manipulation of single representations, so concentrated and simplified as to give rise to classes or symbols, which are without reality but convenient, fictitious but useful. Ingenuous philosophers and logicians have allowed themselves to be deceived by these puppets and have taken them seriously, as Don Quixote took the Moorish puppets of Master Peter. Forgetful of the nature and character of the complete operation, they have proceeded to concentrate and to simplify where there is no material for such an undertaking, claiming to group afresh, not only this or that series of representations, but all representations, hoping thus to obtain the universal concept, that is to say, the concept which enfolds in its bosom the infinite possibilities of the real. Thus they have attained the pretended new and autonomous form of knowledge which goes beyond representations; a refined, but slightly ridiculous process of thought, like that of a man who would like to make not only knives of various sizes and shapes, but a knife of knives, beyond all knives which have a definite shape and are made of iron and steel.

Reduction to the absurd of the three forms.

We shall proceed to examine in their places both the errors resulting from these modes of solving, or of cutting, the problem of knowledge, and also the partial truths mingled with them which it is necessary to exhibit in their full efficacy. But, at the point which now occupies us, i.e., the affirmation or negation of the conceptual form of knowledge, let it suffice to observe how all the ranks of those who deny the concept move to the assault armed with the concept. We need simply observe, not strive to confute, because it is a question of something which leaps to the eye at once and does not demand many words; although many would be necessary to illustrate psychologically the conditions of spirit and of culture, the natural and acquired tendencies, the habits and the prejudices, which render such marvellous blindness possible. The æstheticists affirm that truth resides in æsthetic contemplation and not in the concept. But, pray, is this affirmation of theirs perchance song, or painting, or music, or architecture? It certainly concerns intuition, but it is not intuition; it has art for subject-matter, but it is not art; it does not communicate a state of the soul, but communicates a thought, that is to say, an affirmation of universal character; therefore, it is a concept. And by this concept it is sought to deny the concept. It is as if one sought to leap over one's own shadow, when the leap itself throws the shadow, or, by clinging to one's own pigtail, to pull oneself into safety out of the river. The same may be said of the mystics. They proclaim the necessity of silence and of seeking the One, the Universal, the I, concentrating upon themselves and letting themselves live; during which mystical experience it may, perhaps, befall them (as in the Titan of J. P. Richter) to rediscover the I, in a somewhat materialized form, in their own person. Nevertheless in the case of those who recommend silence, non silent silentum, they do not pass it by in silence; rather, it has been said, they proclaim it, and go about explaining and demonstrating how efficacious their prescription is for satisfying the desire for the universal. Were they silent about it, we should not be faced with that doctrine, as a precise formula to combat. The doctrine of silence and of silent action and inner experience is nothing but an affirmation of absolute character and universal content, by means of which are refuted, and it is believed confuted, other affirmations of the same nature. This too, then, is a concept; as contradictory as you will, and therefore, needing elaboration, but always conceptual elaboration and not practical; which last would altogether prevent the adepts in the doctrine from talking. And who, in our day, talks as much as the mystics? Indeed, what could they do, in our day, if they did not talk? And is it not significant that mystics are now found, not in solitudes, but crowded round little tables in the cafés, where it is customary, not so much to achieve inner experiences, as, on the contrary, to chatter? Finally, the theorists of fictions and of toys, in their amiable satire of logic and of philosophy, forget to explain one small particular, which is not without importance; that is to say, whether their theory of the concepts as fiction, is in its turn fiction. Because, were it fiction, it would be useless to discuss it, since by its own admission it is without truth; and if it were not (as it is not), it would have a character of true and not fictitious universality; or, it would be, not at all a simplification and symbol of representations, but a concept, and would establish the true concept at the very moment that it unmasks those that are fictitious. Fiction and the theory of fiction are (and it should appear evident) different things; as the delinquent and the judge who condemns him are different, or the madman and the doctor who studies madness. A fiction, which pretends to be fiction, opens, at the most, an infinite series which it is not possible to close, unless there eventually intervene an act which is not fiction, and which explains all the others, as in the unravelling of a comedy of cross-purposes. And this is the way that the empiricists or arbitrarists also come to profess the faith that they would deny. Salus ex inimicis is a great truth for philosophy not less than for the whole of life; a truth, which on this occasion finds beautiful continuation in the hostility towards the concept, perhaps never so fierce as it is to-day, and in the efforts to choke it, never so great and never so courageously and cleverly employed. But those enemies find themselves in the unhappy condition of being unable to choke it, without in the very act suppressing the principle of their own life.

Affirmation of the concept.

The concept, then, is not representation, nor is it a mixture and refinement of representation. It springs from representations, as something implicit in them that must become explicit; a necessity whose premisses they provide, but which they are not in a position to satisfy, not even to affirm. The satisfaction is afforded by the form of knowledge which is no longer representative but logical, and which occurs continually and at every instant in the life of the Spirit.

To deny the existence of this form, or to prove it illusory by substituting other spiritual formations in its place, is an attempt which has been and is made, but which has not succeeded and does not succeed, and which, therefore, may be considered desperate. This series of manifestations, this aspect of reality, this form of spiritual activity, which is the Concept, constitutes the object of Logic.

II

THE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS

Concepts and conceptual fictions.

By distinguishing the concept from representations, we have recognized the legitimate sphere of representation, and have assigned to it in the system of spirit the place of an antecedent and more elementary form of knowledge. By distinguishing the concept from states of the soul, from efforts of the will, from action, it is intended also to recognize the legitimacy of the practical form, although we are not here able to enlarge upon its relations with the cognitive form.[1] But by distinguishing the concept from fictions, it would almost seem that in their case we have not explicitly admitted any legitimate province, that, indeed, we have implicitly denied it, since we have adopted for them a designation which in itself sounds almost like a condemnation. This point must be made clear; because it would be impossible to go further with the treatment of Logic, if we left doubtful and insecure, that is, not sufficiently distinguished, one of the terms, from which the concept must be distinguished. What are conceptual fictions? Are they false and arbitrary concepts, morally reprehensible? Or are they spiritual products, which aid and contribute to the life of the spirit? Are they avoidable evils, or necessary functions?

The pure concept as ultra- and omnirepresentative.

A true and proper concept, precisely because it is not representation, cannot have for content any single representative element, or have reference to any particular representation, or group of representations; but on the other hand, precisely because it is universal in relation to the individuality of the representations, it must refer at the same time to all and to each. Take as an example any concept of universal character, be it of quality, of development, of beauty, or of final cause. Can we conceive that a piece of reality, given us in representation, however ample it may be (let it even be granted that it embraces ages and ages of history, in all the complexity of the latter, and millenniums and millenniums of cosmic life), exhausts in itself quality or development, beauty or final cause, in such a way that we can affirm an equivalence between those concepts and that representative content? On the other hand, if we examine the smallest fragment of representable life, can we ever conceive that, however small and atomic it be, there is lacking to it quality and development, beauty and final cause? Certainly, it may be and has been affirmed, that things are not quality, but pure quantity; that they do not develop, but remain changeless and motionless; that the criterion of beauty is the arbitrary extension which we make to cosmic reality of some of our narrow individual and historical experiences and sentiments; and that final cause is an anthropomorphic conception, since not "end" but "cause" is the law of the real, not teleology but mechanism and determinism. Philosophy has been and is still engrossed in such disputes; and we do not here present them as definitely solved, nor do we intend to base ourselves upon determinate conceptions in the choice of our examples. The point is, that if the theses which we have just mentioned as opposed to the first, were true, they would furnish, in every case, true and proper concepts, superior to every representative determination, and embracing in themselves all representations, that is to say, every possible experience; and our conception of the concept would not thereby be changed, but indeed confirmed. Final cause or mechanism, development or motionless being, beauty or individual pleasure, would always, in so far as they are concepts, be posited as ultrarepresentative and at the same time omnirepresentative. Even if, as often happens, both the opposed concepts were accepted for the same problem, for example, final cause and mechanism, or development and unmoved substance, it is never intended simply to apply either of them to single groups of representations, but to make them elements and component parts of all reality. Thus, every reality would be, on one side, end, and on the other, cause; on one side, motionless, on the other, changeable; man would have in himself something of the mechanical and something of the teleological; nature would be matter, but urged forward by a first cause which was non-material, that is, spiritual and final, or at least unknown—and so on. When it is demonstrated of a concept that it has been suggested by contingent facts, by this very fact we eliminate it from the series of true concepts, and substitute for it another concept, which is given as truly universal. Or again, we suppress it without substituting another for it, that is to say, we reduce the number of true and proper concepts. Such a reduction is a progress of thought, but it is a progress which can never be extended to the abolition of all concepts, because one, at least, will always remain ineliminable; that of thought, which thinks the abolition; and this concept will be ultra- and omnirepresentative.

Conceptual fictions as representative without universality,

Fictional concepts or conceptual fictions are something altogether different. In these, either the content is furnished by a group of representations, even by a single representation, so that they are not ultrarepresentative; or there is no representable content, so that they are not omnirepresentative. Examples of the first type are afforded by the concepts of house, cat, rose; of the second, those of triangle, or of free motion. If we think of the house, we refer to an artificial structure of stone or masonry or wood, or iron or straw, where beings, whom we call men, are wont to abide for some hours, or for entire days and entire years. Now, however great may be the number of objects denoted by that concept, it is always a finite number; there was a time when man did not exist, when, therefore, neither did his house; and there was another time when man existed without his house, living in caverns and under the open sky. Of course, undoubtedly, we shall be able to extend the concept of house, so as to include also the places inhabited by animals; but it will never be possible to follow with absolute clearness the distinction between artificial and natural (the act of inhabiting itself makes the place more or less artificial, by changing, for instance, the temperature); or between the animals which are inhabitants and the non-animals, which nevertheless are inhabitants, such as plants, which, as well as animals, often seek a roof; admitting that certain plants and animals have other plants and animals as their houses. Hence, in view of the impossibility of a clear and universal distinctive character, it is advisable to have recourse at once to enumeration and to give the name house to certain particular objects, which, however numerous they are, are also finite in number, and which, with the enumeration complete, or capable of completion, exclude other objects from themselves. If it is desired to prevent this exclusion, no other course remains than that of understanding by house any mode of life between different beings; but in that case, the conceptual fiction becomes changed into a universal, lacking particular representations, applicable alike to a house and to any other manifestation of the real. The same may be said of the cat and of the rose, since it is evident that cats and roses have appeared on the earth at a definite time and will disappear at another, and that while they endure, they can be looked upon as something fixed and precise, only when we have regard to some particular group of cats and of roses, indeed to one particular cat or rose at a definite moment of its existence (a gray cat or a black cat, a cat or a kitten; a white rose or a red rose, flowering or withered, etc.), elevated into a symbol and representative of the others. There is not, and there cannot be, a rigorous characteristic, which should avail to distinguish the cat from other animals, or the rose from other flowers, or indeed a cat from other cats and a rose from another rose. These and other fictional concepts are, therefore, representative, but not ultrarepresentative; they contain some objects or fragments of reality, they do not contain it all.

or universals void of representations

The conceptual fictions of the triangle and of free motion have an analogous but opposite defect. With them, it appears, we emerge from the difficulties of representations. The triangle and free motion are not something which begins and ends in time and of which we are not able to state exactly the character and limits. So long as thought, that is to say, thinkable reality, exists, the concept of the triangle and of free motion will have validity. The triangle is formed by the intersection of three straight lines enclosing a space and forming three angles, the sum of which, though they 'vary from triangle to triangle, is equal to that of two right angles. It is impossible to confuse the triangle with the quadrilateral or the circle. Free motion is a motion, which we think of as taking place without obstacles of any sort. It is impossible to confuse it with a motion to which there is any particular obstacle. So far so good. But if those conceptual fictions let fall the ballast of representations, they ascend to a zone without air, where life is impossible; or, to speak without metaphor, they gain universality by losing reality. There is no geometric triangle in reality because in reality there are no straight lines, nor right angles nor sums of right angles, nor sums of angles equal to that of two right angles. There is no free motion in reality, because every real motion takes place in definite conditions and therefore among obstacles. A thought, which has as its object nothing real, is not thought; and those concepts are not concepts but conceptual fictions.

Critique of the doctrine which considers them to be erroneous concepts,

Having made clear, by means of these examples, the character of concepts and of fictional concepts, we are prepared to solve the question as to whether the second are legitimate or illegitimate products, and if they merit the reproach which seems to attach to their name. And certainly, a view which has had and still has force does not hesitate to consider those fictions as nothing but erroneous concepts, and declares a war of extermination against them, in the name of rigorous thought and of truth. If it follows from what we have said, that the cat or the house or the rose are not concepts, and that the geometrical triangle or free motion are not so either, the conclusion seems inevitable that we must free ourselves from these errors or misconceptions, and affirm that there is neither the cat nor the rose nor the house, but a reality all compact (although it is continuously changing) which develops and is new at every instant; nor is there either the triangle or free motion, but the eternal forms of this reality, which cannot be abstracted and fixed by themselves, and deprived of the conditions which are an integral part of them. But a single fact suffices to invalidate this conclusion and to confute the premiss upon which it rests, that conceptual fictions are erroneous concepts. An error once discovered cannot reappear, at least until the discovery is forgotten, and there is a falling back into the conditions of mental obscurity similar to those antecedent to the discovery. When, for example, the position has been attained that morality is not a phenomenon of egoism and that it has value in itself, or one has become certain that Hannibal was ignorant of the disaster that befell his brother Hasdrubal on the Metaurus, it is impossible to continue believing that morality is egoism, or that Hannibal has been informed of the arrival of Hasdrubal and had voluntarily allowed him to be surprised by the two Consuls. But with conceptual fictions similar to those in the example the case is otherwise. Even when we are persuaded that the triangle and free motion correspond to nothing real, and that the rose, the cat, and the house have nothing precise and universal in them, we must yet continue to make use of the fictions of triangles, of free motion; of houses, cats, and roses. We can criticise them, and we cannot renounce them; therefore, it is not true that they are, at least altogether and in every sense, errors.

or imperfect concepts preparatory to perfect concepts.

This indispensability of conceptual fictions to the life of the spirit, finds acknowledgment in a more temperate form of the doctrine which considers them as erroneous concepts; that is, in the thesis that they are erroneous, but at the same time preparatory to, and almost a first step towards, the formation of true and proper concepts. The spirit does not issue all at once from representations and attain to the universal; it issues from them little by little, and prior to the rigorous universal, it constructs others less rigorous, which have the advantage of replacing the infinite representations with their infinite shades, through which reality presents itself in æsthetic contemplation. Conceptual fictions, then, would be sketches of concepts, and therefore, like all sketches, capable of revision and annulment, but useful. Thus it would be explained how they are errors, and errors made for a good reason. But this moderate theory also clashes noisily with the most evident facts. Above all, it is not true that the spirit issues little by little from the representations, passing through a series of grades; the procedure of the spirit, in this regard, is altogether different, and when philosophers have wanted to find a comparison for it, they have been obliged to come back to that very 'leap' which they wanted to avoid: "Spirit (said Schelling, for example,) is an eternal island, which is not to be reached from matter, without a leap, whatever turns and twists be made." And, for this very reason, conceptual fictions are not good passages to rigorous concepts: to think rigorously, we must plunge ourselves again into the flood of representations and think immediate reality, clearing away the obstacles that proceed from conceptual fictions. And always for the same reason, rigorous concepts, when they find themselves confronted with conceptual fictions as rivals in the same problem, do not claim their assistance, nor correct, nor refine upon them, in order partially to preserve them, but combat and destroy them. What the rigorous concepts are unable to do, is to prevent the others from reappearing; because the spirit, as has been seen, preserves, without correcting them, although it has recognized their falsity: it preserves them, that is to say, not fused and rendered true in the rigorous concepts, but outside and after these.

Posteriority of conceptual fictions to true and proper concepts.

In short, we have to abandon entirely the idea that conceptual fictions are errors, or sketches and aids, and that they precede rigorous concepts. Quite the opposite is true: conceptual fictions do not precede rigorous concepts, but follow them, and presuppose them as their own foundation. Were this not so, of what could they ever be fictions? To counterfeit or imitate something implies first knowledge of the thing which it is desired to counterfeit or to imitate. To falsify means to have knowledge of the genuine model: false money implies good money, not vice versa. It is possible to think that man, from being the ingenuous poet that he first was, raised himself, immediately, to the thought of the eternal; but it is not possible to think that he constructed the smallest conceptual fiction, without having previously imagined and thought. The house, the rose, the cat, the triangle, free motion presuppose quantity, quality, existence, and we know not how many other rigorous concepts: they are made with iron instruments great and small, which logical thought has created, and which come to be used with such rapidity and naturalness that we usually end by believing that we have proceeded without them. Whoever makes conceptual fictions, has already taken his logical bearings in the world: he knows what he is doing and reasons about it; progress with his conceptual fictions depending upon progress with his rigorous concepts, and being continuously remade, according to the new needs and the new conditions which are formed. Now that the concept of miracle or witchcraft has been destroyed, the conceptual fictions relating to the various classes and modes of miraculous facts and acts of witchcraft are no longer constructed; and since the destruction of the belief in the direct influence of the stars upon human destinies, the astrological and mathematical fictions, which arose upon those conceptual presuppositions, have also disappeared.

Those who have seen errors or sketches of truth in conceptual fictions have certainly seen something: because (without incidentally anticipating at this point the theory of errors, or that of sketches or aids to the search for truth) it may at once be admitted, that conceptual fictions also sometimes become both errors and obstacles, and suggestions and aids to truth. But because a given spiritual product is adopted for an end different from that which rightly belongs to it (thereby becoming itself different and giving rise to a new spiritual product), we must not omit to search for the intrinsic end, which constitutes the genuine nature of this product. The portrait of a fair lady, white as milk and red as blood, which the prince of the story finds beneath a cushion by the help of the fairy, may serve as an incentive to make him undertake the journey round the world in search of the woman in flesh and blood, who is like the portrait and whom he will make his wife; but that portrait, before it is an instrument in the hands of the fairy, is a picture, that is to say, a work of art, which has come from the hands, or rather from the fancy, of the painter; and must be appreciated as such. Thus conceptual fictions, before they are transmuted into errors or into expedients, into obstacles or into aids to the search for truth, have, before them, a truth already constructed, toward the construction of which, therefore, they cannot serve; whereas that truth has served them, for they would not otherwise have been able to arise. They are, therefore, intrinsically neither obstacles nor aids to truth, but something else, that is, themselves; and what they are in themselves it is still necessary to determine.

Practical character of conceptual fictions.

For this purpose it is needful to direct our attention to the moment of their formation, which, as has been said, is not at all theoretical, but practical; and to ask ourselves in what way and with what end the practical spirit can intervene in representations and concepts previously produced, manipulate them and make of them conceptual fictions. The view that the work of the practical spirit can give rise to new knowledge, not previously attained, must be resolutely excluded: the practical spirit is such, precisely because it is non-cognitive; as regards knowledge it is altogether sterile. If, then, it accomplishes those manipulations, and says to a cat: "You will represent for me all cats"; or to a rose: "See, I draw you in my treatise on botany, and you will represent all roses"; and to the triangle: "It is true I cannot think you, nor represent you; but I suppose that you are the same as what I draw with rule and compass, and I make use of you to measure the approximate triangles of reality";—in so doing, it recognizes that it does not accomplish any act of knowledge. But does it, in that case, accomplish an act of anti-knowledge—that is, does it make these manipulations and fictions in order to place obstacles in the way of knowledge and to simulate its products, so that it leads astray the seeker for truth? If this were so, the "practical spirit" would be synonymous with the spirit of confusion; and the contriver of conceptual fictions would deserve the reprobation that attaches to forgers of documents, sophists, rhetoricians, and charlatans; whereas, on the contrary, he receives the applause and gratitude of every one. Each one of us, at every instant, would be guilty of a plot against the truth, because at every instant each of us forms and employs those fictions; whereas the moral consciousness, delicate and intolerant though it be, makes no reproof, but indeed offers encouragement. Therefore, the act of forming intellectual fictions is an act neither of knowledge nor of anti-knowledge; it is not logically rational, but neither is it logically irrational; it is rational, indeed, but practically rational.

The practical end and mnemonic utility.

In this case the practical end in view can be but one. We know in order to act; and he who acts is interested only in that knowledge, which is the necessary precedent of his doing. But since our knowledge is all destined to be recalled as occasion serves for action, or to aid us in the search for new knowledge (which in this case is a form of acting), the practical spirit is impelled to provide for the preservation of the patrimony of acquired knowledge. Without doubt, speaking absolutely, everything is preserved in reality, and nothing that has once been done or thought, disappears from the bosom of the cosmos. But the preservation of which we speak, is properly the making easily available to memory, knowledge that has once been possessed, and providing for its ready recall from the bosom of the cosmos or from the apparently unconscious and forgotten. For this purpose there are constructed those instruments, which are conceptual fictions, by means of which armies of representations are evoked with a single word, or by which a single word approximately indicates what form of operation must be resorted to, in order that certain representations may be recovered. The cat of the appropriate conceptual fiction does not enable us to know any single cat, as a painter or a historian of cats makes us know it; but by means of it, many images of animals, which would have remained separate before the memory, or each one dispersed and fused in the complete picture in which it had been imagined and perceived, are arranged in a series and recorded as a whole. This matters little or nothing to one who dreams as a poet or who seeks absolute truth; but it matters a great deal to one whose house is infested by rats, and who must employ some one to obtain a cat; and it matters not less to the seeker for the cat, in that he has to study a new animal, and that he must proceed in that study with some order, though it be artificial, and though he reject the artifice in the final synthesis. Again, the geometrical triangle is of no service either to imagination or to thought, which are developed without it; but it is indispensable to any one measuring a field, in the same way as it may possibly be of service to a painter in his preparatory studies for a picture, or to a historian, who wishes to know well the configuration of a piece of ground where a battle was fought.

Persistence of conceptual fictions side by side with concepts.

This is the real reason why, however perfect rigorous concepts become, conceptual fictions remain ineliminable, and indeed obtain from these fresh nourishment. They cannot be criticized and resolved by means of rigorous concepts, because they are of a different order from them: they cannot act as inferior degrees of the rigorous concept, because they presuppose it. The reason, which we were pledged to give, is given; and henceforward there can no longer arise any misunderstanding as to the relation of the concept to conceptual fictions. It is a relation not of identity, nor of contrariety, but simply of diversity.

Pure concepts and pseudoconcepts.

The terminological question remains, and this, as always, has but slight importance. "Conceptual fictions" is a manner of speech; and no one would wish to combat manners of speech. For brevity's sake we shall call them pseudoconcepts, and for the sake of clearness we shall call the true and proper concepts pure concepts. This term seems to us more suitable than that of ideas (pure concepts), as opposed to logical concepts (pseudoconcepts), as they were at one time called in the schools. It must further be noted, that the pseudoconcepts, although the word "concept" forms part of their name, are not concepts, they do not form a species of, nor do they compete with, concepts (save when forcibly made to do so); and that the pure concepts have not got the impure concepts at their side, for these are not truly concepts. Every word offers, in some degree, a hold for misunderstanding, because it circulates in this base world, which is full of snares; the search for words which should absolutely prevent misunderstandings is vain, for it would be necessary first of all to clip the wings of the human spirit. We may prefer one word to another, according to historical contingencies; and for our part we prefer the words pseudoconcept and pure concept, if for no other reason than to remind the makers of fictional concepts to be modest, and to flash above their heads the light of the only true form of concept, which is logical nature itself in its universality and in its severity. How can we fail to think that the choice has been well made if this title of pure concept please the few, but terrify the many and irritate the most, more than the red cloth shaken before the eyes of the bull; and if, like every efficacious medicine, it provoke a reaction in the organism of the patient?

III

THE CHARACTERISTICS AND THE CHARACTER OF THE CONCEPT

The characteristics of the pure concept, or simply, concept, may be gathered from what has previously been said.

Expressivity.

The concept has the character of expressivity; that is to say, it is a cognitive product, and, therefore, expressed or spoken, not a mute act of the spirit, as is a practical act. If we wish to submit the effective possession of a concept to a first test, we can employ the experiment which was advised on a previous occasion:—whoever asserts that he possesses a concept, should be invited to expound it in words, and with other means of expression (graphic symbols and the like). If he refuse to do so, and say that his concept is so profound that words cannot avail to render it, we can be sure, either that he is under the illusion of possessing a concept, when he possesses only turbid fancies and morsels of ideas; or that he has a presentiment of the profound concept, that it is in process of formation, and will be, but is not yet, possessed. Each of us knows that when he finds himself in the meditative depth of the internal battle, of that true agony (because it is the death of one life and the birth of another), which is the discovery of a concept, he can certainly talk of the state of his soul, of his hopes and fears, of the rays that enlighten and of the shadows that invade him; but he cannot yet communicate his concept, which is not as yet, because it is not yet expressible.

Universality.

If this character of expressivity be common to the concept and to the representation, its universality is peculiar to the concept; that is to say, its transcendence in relation to the single representations, so that no single representation and no number of them can be equivalent to the concept. There is no middle term between the individual and the universal: either there is the single or there is the whole, into which that single enters with all the singles. A concept which has been proved not universal, is, by that very fact, confuted as a concept. Our philosophical confutations do not proceed otherwise. Sociology, for instance, asserts the concept of Society, as a rigorous concept and principle of science; and the criticism of Sociology proves that the concept of society is not universal, but individual, and is related to the groupings of certain beings which representation has placed before the sociologist, and which he has arbitrarily isolated from other complexes of beings that representation also placed or could place before him. The theory of tragedy postulates the concept of the tragic, and from it deduces certain necessary essentials of tragedy; and the criticism of literary classes demonstrates that the tragic is not a concept, but a roughly defined group of artistic representations, which have certain external likenesses in common; and, therefore, that it cannot serve as foundation for any theory. On the other hand, to establish a universality, which at first was wanting, is the glory of truly scientific thought; hence we give the name of discoverers to those who bring to light connections of representations or of representative groups, or of concepts, which had previously been separate; that is to say, who universalize them. Thus, it was thought at one time that will and action were distinct concepts; and it was a step in progress to identify them by the creation of the truly universal concept of the will, which is also action. Thus, too, it was held that expression in language was a different thing from expression in art; and it was an advance to universalize the expression of art by extending it to language; or that of language by extending it to art.

Concreteness.

Not less proper to the concept is the other character of concreteness, which means that if the concept be universal and transcendent in relation to the single representation, it is yet immanent in the single, and therefore in all representations. The concept is the universal in relation to the representations, and is not exhausted in any one of them; but since the world of knowledge is the world of representations, the concept, if it were not in the representations, would not be anywhere: it would be in another world, which cannot be thought, and therefore is not. Its transcendence, therefore, is also immanence; like that truly literary language that Dante desired, which, in relation to the speech of the different parts of Italy, in qualibet redolet civitate nec cubat in ulla. If it is proved of a concept that it is inapplicable to reality, and therefore is not concrete, it is thereby confuted as a true and proper concept. It is said to be an abstraction, it is not reality; it does not possess concreteness. In this way, for example, has been confuted the concept of spirit as different from nature (abstract spiritualism); or of the good, as a model placed above the real world; or of atoms, as the components of reality; or of the dimensions of space, or of various quantities of pleasure and pain, and the like. All these are things not found in any part of the real, since there is neither a reality that is merely natural and external to spirit, nor an ideal world outside the real world; nor a space of one or of two dimensions; nor a pleasure or pain that is homogeneous with another, and therefore greater or less than another; and for this reason all these things do not result from concrete thinking and are not concepts.

The concrete universal, and the formation of the pseudoconcepts.

Expressivity, universality, concreteness, are then the three characteristics of the concept derived from the foregoing discussion. Expressivity affirms that the concept is a cognitive act, and denies that it is merely practical, as is maintained in various senses by mystics, and by arbitrarists or fictionists. Universality affirms that it is a cognitive act sui generis, the logical act, and denies that it is an intuition, as is maintained by the æstheticists, or a group of intuitions, as is asserted in the doctrine of the arbitrarists or fictionists. Concreteness affirms that the universal logical act is also a thinking of reality, and denies that it can be universal and void, universal and inexistent, as is maintained in a special part of the doctrine of the arbitrarists. But this last point needs explanation, which leads us to enunciate explicitly an important division of the pseudoconcepts, which has hitherto been mentioned as apparently incidental.

Empirical pseudoconcepts and abstract pseudoconcepts.

The pseudoconcepts, falsifying the concept, cannot imitate it scrupulously, because, if they did, they would not be pseudoconcepts, but concepts; not imitations, but the very reality which they imitate. An actor who, pretending on the stage to kill his rival in love, really did so, would no longer be an actor, but a practical man and an assassin. If, therefore, with regard to the representations, and when preparing to form pseudoconcepts, we should think representations with that universality which is also the concreteness proper to the true concept, and with that transcendence which is also immanence (and is therefore called transcendentalism), we should form true concepts. This, indeed, often happens, as we can see in certain treatises which mean to be empirical and arbitrary, and from which, currente rota, non urceus, sed amphora exit. Their authors, led by a profound and irrepressible philosophic sense, gradually and almost unconsciously abandon their initial purpose, and give true and proper concepts in place of the promised pseudoconcepts: they are philosophers, disguised as empiricists. In order to create pseudoconcepts, we must therefore begin by arbitrarily dividing into two the one supreme necessity of logic, immanent transcendence, or concrete universality, and form pseudoconcepts, which are concrete without being universal, or universal without being concrete. There is no other way of falsifying the concept; whoever wishes to falsify it so completely as to render the imitation unrecognizable, does not falsify, but produces it; he does not remain outside, but permits himself to be caught in its coils; he does not invent a practical attitude, but thinks. That one mode is therefore specified in two particular modes, of which examples have already been given in our analysis of the pseudoconcepts of the house, the cat, the rose, which are concrete without being universal; and of the triangle and of free motion, which are universal without being concrete. There is nothing left to do, therefore, but to baptize them; selecting some of the many names that are applied, and often applied, sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other of the two forms, or indifferently to both, and giving to each of them a particular name, which will be constant in this treatise. We shall then call the first, that is to say, those which are concrete and not universal, empirical pseudoconcepts; and the second, or those which are universal and not concrete, abstract pseudoconcepts; or, taking as understood for brevity's sake, the general denomination (pseudo), empirical concepts and abstract concepts.

The other characteristics of the pure concept.

Thus, of the three characteristics of the concept which we have exhibited, the second and the third constitute, as we can now see, one only, which is stated in a double form, solely in order to deny and to combat these two one-sided forms which we have called empirical and abstract concepts. But, on the other hand, it is easy to see that the characteristics of the concept are not exhausted in the two that remain, namely, in expressivity or cognizability, and in transcendence or concrete universality. Others can reasonably be added, such as spirituality, utility, morality, but we shall not dwell upon these, because either they belong to the general assumption of Logic, that is, to the fundamental concept of Philosophy as the science of spirit, or they are more conveniently made clear in the other parts of this Philosophy. The concept has the character of spirituality and not of mechanism, because reality is spiritual, not mechanical; and for this reason we have to reject every mechanical or associationist theory of Logic, just as we have to reject similar doctrines in Æsthetic, in Economic and in Ethic. A special discussion of these views seems superfluous, because they are discussed and negated, that is to say, surpassed, in every line of our treatise. The concept has the character of utility, because, if the theoretic form of the spirit be distinct from the practical, it is not less true, by the law of the unity of the spirit, that to think is also an act of the will, and therefore, like every act of the will, it is teleological, not antiteleological; useful, not useless. And, finally, it has the character of morality, because its utility is not merely individual, but, on the contrary, is subordinated to and absorbed in the moral activity of the spirit; so that to think, that is, to seek and find the true, is also to collaborate in progress, in the elevation of Humanity and Reality, it is the denial and overcoming of oneself as a single individual, and the service of God.

The origin of the multiplicity and unity of character of the concept.

Certainly, the form in which the order of our discourse has led us to establish the characters of the concept—that of enumeration, the one character being connected with the other by means of an "also"—is, logically, a very crude form, and must be refined and corrected. Above all, if we have spoken of characters of the concept, we have done so in order to adhere to the usual mode of expression. The concept cannot have characters, in the plural, but character, that one character which is proper to it. What this is has been seen; the concept is concrete-universal two words which designate one thing only, and can also grammatically become one: "transcendental," or whatever other word be chosen from those already coined, or that may be coined for the occasion. The other determinations are not characters of the concept, but affirm its relations with the spiritual activity in general, of which it is a special form, and with the other special forms of this activity. In the first relation, the concept is spiritual; in relation with the æsthetic activity, it is cognitive or expressive, and enters into the general theoretic-expressive form; in relation with the practical activity, it is not, as concept, either useful or moral, but as a concrete act of the spirit it must be called useful and moral. The exposition of the characters of the concept, correctly thought, resolves itself into the compendious exposition of the whole Philosophy of spirit, in which the concept takes its place in its unique character, that is to say, in itself.

Objections relating to the unreality of the pure concept and to the impossibility of demonstrating it.

This declaration may save us from the accusation of having given an empirical exposition of the non-empirical Concept of the concept, and so committing an error for which logicians are justly reproved (for they have often believed themselves to possess the right of treating of Logic without logic; perhaps for the same reason that custodians of sacred places are wont, through over-familiarity, to fail in respect towards them). But it lays us open to censure very much more severe; which, if it ultimately prove to be inoffensive, is certainly very noisy and loquacious. The pretended characters of the concepts (it is said) are, by your own confession, nothing but its relations with the other forms of the spirit; and the one character proper to it is that of universality-concreteness, that is, of being itself, since the "concrete-universal" is synonymous with the concept, and vice versa. So it turns out that in spite of all your efforts, your concept of the concept becomes dissipated in a tautology. Give us a demonstration of what you affirm, or a definition which is not tautologous; then we shall be able to form some sort of an idea of your pure concept. Otherwise you may talk about it for ever, but for us it will always be like "Phœnician Araby" of Metastasian memory: "you say that it is; where it is, no one knows."

Prejudice relating to the nature of demonstration.

Beneath such dissatisfaction and the claim it implies, we find first of all a prejudice of scholastic origin concerning what is called demonstration. That is to say, it is imagined that demonstration is like an irresistible contrivance, which grasps the learner by the neck and drags him willy-nilly, whither he does not and the teacher does will to go, leaving him open-mouthed before the truth, which stands external to him, and before which he must, obtorto collo, bow himself. But such coercive demonstrations do not exist for any form of knowledge—indeed, for any form of spiritual life—nor is there a truth outside our spirit. Not that truth presupposes faith, as is often said, so that rationality is subordinated to some unknown form of irrationality; but truth is faith, trust in oneself, certainty of oneself, free development of one's inner powers. The light is in us; those sequences of sounds, which are the so-called demonstration, serve only as aids in discarding the veils and directing the gaze; but in themselves they have no power to open the eyes of those who obstinately wish to keep them closed. Faced with this sort of reluctance and rebellion, the pedagogues of the good old days had recourse, as we know, not to demonstrations, but to the stool of penitence and to the stick; so fully were they persuaded that the demonstration of truth requires good dispositions, i.e. requires those who are disposed to fall back upon themselves and to look into themselves. How can the beauty of the song of Farinata be demonstrated to one who denies it, and will neither appreciate the soul contained in that sublime poem, nor accomplish the work necessary to attain to the possibility of such an appreciation, nor will, on the other hand, humbly confess his own incapacity and lack of preparation,—how can we forcibly demonstrate to him that that song is beautiful? The critical wisdom of Francesco de Sanctis would be disarmed and impotent before such a situation. How can we demonstrate to one who deliberately refuses to believe in any authority or document, and breaks the tradition by which we are bound to the past, that Miltiades conquered at Marathon, or that Demosthenes strove all his life against the power of Macedonia? He will capriciously throw doubt on the pages of Herodotus and the orations of Demosthenes; and no reasoning will be able to repress that caprice. What more can be said? Even in arithmetic, for which calculating machines exist, compulsory demonstration is impossible. In vain you will lift two fingers of the hand, and then the third and the fourth, in order to demonstrate to one who does not wish for demonstration that two and two are four; he will reply that he is not convinced. And indeed he cannot be convinced, if he do not accomplish that inner spiritual synthesis by which twice two" and four reveal themselves as two names of one and the same thing. Therefore, he who awaits a compelling demonstration of the existence of the pure concept, awaits in vain. For our part, we cannot give him anything but that which we are giving: a discourse, directed towards making clear the difficulties, and towards demonstrating how, by means of the pure concept, all problems concerning the life of the spirit are illuminated, and how, without it, we cannot understand anything.

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · See the first volume of this Philosophy as Science of the Spirit; Æsthetic as Science of Expression.Note 2 · These relations are examined in the Philosophy of the Practical, first part.

BENEDETTO CROCE

BY

DOUGLAS AINSLIE

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

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1917

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

ADVERTISEMENT

PREFACE TO THIRD ITALIAN EDITION OF THE LOGIC

CONTENTS

FIRST PART

THE PURE CONCEPT, THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT, AND THE A PRIORI LOGICAL SYNTHESIS

FIRST SECTION

THE PURE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS

I

AFFIRMATION OF THE CONCEPT

II

THE CONCEPT AND THE PSEUDOCONCEPTS

III

THE CHARACTERISTICS AND THE CHARACTER OF THE CONCEPT

Notes in this chapter

Reading settings