BENEDETTO CROCE (continued 6)

No empire of morality over the forms of the spirit.

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

Inexistence of other practical forms and impossibility of subdivision of the two established.

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

V

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

Problem of the relations between Philosophy and Science of Economy.

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

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

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

Unreality of the laws and concepts of economic science.

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

Economic Science founded upon empirical concepts, but not empirical or descriptive.

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

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

Their mathematical nature.

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

Its principles; their character of arbitrary postulates and definitions. Their utility.

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

Comparison of Economic with Mechanics, and reason for its exclusion from ethical, æsthetic and logical facts.

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

Errors of philosophism and historicism in Economy.

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

The two degenerations: extreme abstracticism and empiristical disaggregation.

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

dance at the History of the various tendencies of Economy.

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

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

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

Signification of the judgment of Hegel upon the Science of Economy.

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

VI

CRITIQUE OF THE CONFUSIONS BETWEEN ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY

Adoption of the method and of definition of Economy by Philosophy.

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

Errors that derive from it.

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

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

1st. Negation of philosophy for economy.

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

2nd. Universal value attributed to empirical concepts. Example: protection and free trade.

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

3rd. Transformation of the functions of the calculus into reality.

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

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

The pretended calculus of pleasures and pains, and the doctrines of optimism and pessimism.

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

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

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

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

VII

HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS

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

Greek Ethic and its ingenuousness.

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

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

Importance of Christianity for Ethic.

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

The three resulting directions: utilitarianism, rigorism, and psychologism.

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

Hobbes, Spinoza.

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

English Ethic.

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

Idealistic Philosophy.

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

Kant and his affirmation of the ethical principle.

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

Self-contradictions of Kant concerning the concept of the useful, of prudence, of happiness, etc.

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

Errors derived from it in his Ethic.

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

Occasions for a philosophy of economy.

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

The problem of politics and Machiavellism.

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

The doctrine of the passions.

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

Hegel and the concept of the useful.

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

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

Fichte and the elaboration of the Kantian Ethic.

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

The problem of the useful and of morality in the thinkers of the nineteenth century.

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

Extrinsic union of Ethic and of economic Science, from antiquity to the nineteenth century.

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

Philosophical questions arising from a more intimate contact between the two.

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

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

The theories of the hedonistic calculus: from Maupertuis to Hartmann.

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

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

SECOND SECTION

THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLE

I

CRITIQUE OF MATERIAL AND OF FORMALISTIC ETHIC

Various meanings of "formal" and "material."

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

The ethical principle as formal (universal) and not material (contingent).

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

Reduction of material to utilitarian Ethic.

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

Rejection of material principles.

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

Benevolence, love, altruism, etc.; and critique of them.

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

Social organism, State, interest of the race, etc. Critique of them.

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

Material religious principles. Critique of them.

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

Formal principle as affirmation of a merely logical exigency.

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

Critique of a formal ethic in this sense: tautologism.

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

Tautological principles: ideal, chief good, duty, etc., and critique of them.

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

Tautological meaning of certain formulæ, material in appearance.

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

Conversion of tautological Ethic into material and utilitarian Ethic.

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

In what sense Ethic should be formal and in what other sense material.

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

II

THE ETHICAL FORM AS ACTUATION OF THE SPIRIT IN UNIVERSAL

Tautological Ethic and its connection with Philosophy, either partial or discontinuous.

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