BENEDETTO CROCE (continued 3)

Third form: attempt to place them in intimate connexion.

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

Science of the practical and Metaphysic: various significations.

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

Damaging consequences of the invasions.

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

1a. Dissolution of the empirical concepts.

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

Examples: war and peace, property and communism, and the like.

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

Other examples.

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

Misunderstanding on the part of philosophers.

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

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

Historical significance of the aforesaid questions.

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

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

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

2a. False deduction of the empirical from the philosophical.

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

Affirmations relating to the contingent changed into philosophemes.

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

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

Reason of the rebellion against rules.

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

Limits between philosophy and empiria.

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

IX

HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS

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

I. Distinction between history of the practiced principle and history of the liberation from the transcendental.

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

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

II. The distinction of the practical from the theoretical.

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

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

III. The mixtures of philosophy of the practical and description.

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

Vain attempts at definitions of empirical concepts.

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

Attempts at eduction.

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

IV. Various questions.

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

The practical nature of error.

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

Practical taste.

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

V. The doctrines of feeling.

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

The Wolfians.

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

Jacobi and Schleiermacher.

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

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

Hegel.

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

Opponents of the doctrine of the three faculties. Krug.

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

Brentano.

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

SECOND SECTION

THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY IN ITS DIALECTIC

I

NECESSITY AND LIBERTY OF THE VOLITIONAL ACT

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

The problem of freedom.

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

Freedom of willing and freedom of action: criticism of such distinction.

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

The volitional act: both free and necessary.

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

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

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

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

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

Comparison with the æsthetic activity.

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

Critique of determinism and of arbitrarism.

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

General form of this antithesis: materialism and mysticism.

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

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

The materialistic sophisms of determinism.

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

But metaphors are not arguments—Statistics prove the determinism of human actions, which always reappear in the same way and in the same quantity whenever certain actual circumstances appear.—But Statistics, if they collect and simplify facts and construct views and tables that are more or less useful, do not thus prove anything; for neither are the instances that they give as equivalent, really so, nor the relation that they declare between certain facts a real relation. If we turn from artificial formulæ to the immediate observation of the real, we find ourselves confronted with nothing but individuated volitional acts, resulting from necessity and liberty.—The individual has a constant character, of which action is the consequence: operari sequitur esse.—But the constant character is nothing but the abstraction of the single acts done by the individual. It is therefore natural that the actions should appear to be referable to the character which is derived from them; but it is not correct to say that there is equivalence, for abstraction is not equivalent to concretion.—The individual, even if he can be conceived as free in respect to his external environment, would be always subject to the law of his own nature.—But the law of his own nature is not a contingent thing, but the law itself of the Spirit, or, precisely, freedom, and it is quite clear that freedom is not free not to be free.—The social organism has its natural laws, which govern the action of the individual.—The social organism is also an abstraction, which is turned into a being only by the false interpretation of a metaphor. In all these examples, and in the many others that could be brought forward, the error is always the same as has been said: the substitution of the naturalistic for the speculative construction, Physic for Metaphysic. And since physical or naturalistic construction has no material other than given historical facts, the doctrines above mentioned, when they are not false, are always tautological and lead to the affirmation that the volitional fact is a fact, or that in it is the moment of necessity.

The mysticism of arbitrarism.

Arbitrarism, on the other hand, arises in the same way as mysticism, from distrust of thought; being unable to dominate the fact that should be explained, recourse is had to the inconceivable, to the absurd, to miracle; subjective and individual ignorance is hypostasized and of it is made a metaphysical reality. Arbitrarism, like mysticism, has its element of truth, in the negation of determinism, that is, in the recognition of the impotence of the naturalistic method and in the affirmation that the truth lies beyond that method, in the concept of creation and of freedom. But freedom separated from its logical and necessary moment becomes transformed into will, just as in mysticism in general God is transformed into the mystery, ready to receive all individual caprices into himself, and to confer upon them an appearance of truth.

The doctrine of necessity-liberty, and idealism.

The concept of freedom (necessity-liberty), which is at once scientific and not mechanical, and if it surpass the categories of Physic, does not surpass those of Metaphysic, is opposed to both these views. As idealist philosophy, it tends in general to conciliate the ideal with the actual, thought with complete reality, philosophy with the whole of experience. With the concept of freedom is eliminated the inertia of determinism, and the unstable springing about of arbitrarism. The gross material conception of the real disappears, because that which seems to be matter is revealed as spirit, the fact as creation, necessity as the product of liberty. But miracle disappears with them. For if the spirit be the eternal, omnipresent, continuous miracle, unattainable by the physical method,-a continual miracle, omnipresent and eternal, is no longer a miracle, but the same simple and ordinary reality, which each one of us contributes to create and each one of us can and does think.

The doctrine of double causality; dualism and agnosticism.

Strict determinism and strict arbitrarism are not, however, the sole adversaries of the concept of liberty-necessity, as rigorous materialism and mysticism are not the only adversaries of idealism. There exists another which must be called more dangerous (if misunderstanding be more dangerous than error). This doctrine, since it goes by the name of dualism, spiritualism, and neocriticism in general philosophy, could be called the doctrine of double practical causality, in the field of the practical problem. The supporters of this line of thought, despite many individual differences, are all agreed in positing two distinct series of facts: one which obeys mechanical causality, another which is initiative and creation, or (as they say) obeys causality through freedom. There are thus two series that interpenetrate one another or alternate at every instant and are mutually blended, the one in the other. Hence there is something of each in the volitional act, something of the strongest motive and something of free choice. Such a solution has some external resemblance with that which we maintain, but is intrinsically most different. Our solution is fusion of liberty and necessity, while this is juxtaposition; our solution is conciliation, this transaction. Like every juxtaposition and transaction it displeases both the contending parties, and falls into the power, now of the one, now of the other. Thus, if, according to the theories of that tendency, it be maintained that freedom exists, but that there are also causes tending to diminish it, or that there exist volitional acts, but that involuntary acts also exist, one does not understand how a series of facts that has its own law in itself (freedom, the will) can ever be subordinated to facts that obey a different law (diminution of freedom, involuntariness of acts). If this happen sometimes or many times, we must suspect that it happens always, and that the surviving freedom is a mask of freedom, illusion. Thus, if it be affirmed that side by side with causality, with equivalence of causes and effects, or with the possibility of foreseeing the effect by means of the cause, there is another causality, in which the effect is not equivalent to the cause, and that not only is it not to be foreseen, but is such that only after it has happened does it allow its cause to be discovered; then the doubt arises that one of the two causalities does not exist, because either the effect is equivalent to the cause, and so it must always be, or it is not equivalent to it, and so it will never be; or it can be foreseen by means of the cause, and so it will always be, or it cannot be foreseen, and never will be foreseen. The strict determinists and arbitrarists have the loyalty of error, and they are rare, because energetic spirits are rare, but the doctrine of double causality is tinged with some of the rouge of truth, and thus seduces the many, and is proper to weak and irresolute spirits, as indeed are dualism, spiritualism, agnosticism, neocriticism, of which this doctrine forms a particular case. When the absurdity of determinism and of arbitrarism has been recognized (and their very presence is an autocriticism), it is necessary to satisfy with a new and single concept the claim that they represent, certainly not with the sum of two errors, and the new single concept is that of true freedom.

Its character of transaction and transition.

The doctrine of double causality has had its historical importance, not because it is a transaction, but rather because it is a transition; that is, a gradual approximation to the true concept, with the introduction into the naturalistic concept of an element of ferment and dissolution: the concept of a causality by means of freedom, that is, of a causality that is so only in name. The concept of freedom cannot tolerate that of causality at its side, and of the two series posited, one of the two is not real in itself, but simply a particular product of the other: mechanical causality is not a fact, nor a conception, but an instrument created for its own ends by spiritual freedom itself. And only in this sense can it be admitted that freedom avails itself of causality for its effectuation, and the truth of the observation be realized, that the classifying of the perceptions in series of cause and effect becomes itself also a presupposition of will and action. The historical knowledge as to the actual situation that precedes the volition, since it includes of necessity philosophical universal in itself, so it can also include empirical universals, concepts, and pseudo—concepts: the consciousness of the productivity of the spirit and the mnemonic formulæ in which this productivity is fixed, and for which it certainly appears to be mechanical, but only to him who forgets that the formulæ themselves are mechanical.

II

FREEDOM AND ITS OPPOSITE. GOOD AND EVIL

Freedom of action as reality of action.

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

Inconceivability of the absolute absence of action.

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

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

Non-freedom as antithesis and contrariety.

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

Nullity and arbitrariness of non-freedom.

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

Good as freedom and reality, and evil as its opposite.

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

Critique of abstract monism and of the dualism of values.

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

Objections to the reality of evil.

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

Evil within and without synthesis.

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

Affirmative judgments of evil as negative judgments.

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

Confirmations of the doctrine.

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