The perpetuity of change.
The author of a philosophic work is, however, always dissatisfied, for he feels that his book or treatise hardly suffices for an instant, but immediately reveals itself as more or less insufficient. For this reason, to any philosopher, as to any poet, the only works of his own that bring true satisfaction are those that he has still to do. Thus every philosopher and every true artist dies unsatisfied, like Karl Marx, who, when asked in the last year of his life to prepare a complete edition of his works, replied that he had yet to write them. He alone is satisfied who at a certain moment ceases to think and takes to admiring himself, that is to say, the corpse of himself as a thinker, and is careful,not of art or philosophy, but of his own person. Yet to no one can even this give the satisfaction he imagines, for life is no less voracious and insatiable than thought. In any case, to be satisfied, the author must become philosophically immobile in aformula,and the reader must content himself with this formula. Thoughts must become "obtuse and deaf," as Leibnitz called them, who defined such a spiritual condition aspsittacism.The only consolation left to one who does not become immobile is that of reflecting, like Socrates, that his discourses will not be sterile, but fruitful. Other discourses will spring from them in his own soul and in the soul of others, in whom he has sown theseeds[2]He will console himself with the thought that philosophy, like life, is infinite.
Surpassing and continuous progress of philosophy.
The infinity of philosophy, its continuous changing, is not a doing and an undoing, but a continuoussurpassing of itself.The new philosophic proposition is made possible only by the old; the old lives eternally in the new that follows it and in the new that will follow that again and make old that other which is new. This suffices to reassure those minds which are easily led astray and inclined to lamentthe vanity of things. Where everything is vain, nothing is vain; fullness consists precisely in that perpetual becoming vain, which is the perpetual birth of reality, the eternal becoming. Nobody renounces love because love is transitory, nor abandons thinking because his thought will give place to other thoughts. Love passes, but generates other beings, who will love. Thought passes, but generates other thoughts, which, in their turn, will excite other thoughts. In the world of thought also, we survive in our own children: in our children who contradict us, substitute themselves for us and bury us, not always with due piety.
Meaning of the eternity of philosophy.
No other meaning but this is to be found in the vaunted eternity of philosophy in regard to time and space. The eternity of every philosophic proposition must be affirmed against those who materialistically consider all propositions as valueless existences, and fugitives which leave no trace, as phenomena of brute matter, which alone persists. Philosophic propositions, though historically conditioned, are not effects produced and determined by these conditions, but creations of thought, which is continued in and through them. When they appear to be produced determinately, they must be held tobe, not philosophy, but false philosophy, vital interests masquerading as thoughts. That alone can be eternal as philosophy, which is knowledge and truth. But when eternity is misunderstood as isolation from those conditions, it must then be denied, and in place of it the thesis of relativity must be admitted, provided we are careful that it does not assume the erroneous vesture of historical materialism and economic determinism. The thesis that the history of philosophy should be treatedpsychologically,by the attribution of ideas to the temporal conditions and the personal experiences of philosophers, to social history and biography, is reducible (and it is worth while noticing this) to materialism and determinism in its least evident form, namely psychologism. Such a thesis is the failure to recognize spiritual value, or at least (as is the case with some unconscious æstheticists), the logical value of philosophy, whose history, when changed into that of the expressions of states of the soul, comes to coincide altogether with the history of poetry and literature.
The concept of spontaneous, ingenuous, innate philosophy, etc., and its meaning.
The eternity of philosophy is its truth, and the conception which is sometimes brought forward of aspontaneousoringenuousorinnateorcryptic(abdita) philosophy, which alone should bepermanent amid the variations of philosophic opinions, or to which the spirit should return after many wanderings, is nothing but a symbol of this truth. The Platonic theory ofreminiscence (anamneisis)is reducible to this conception. In this theory true knowledge is explained as the recollection of an original state; and it is this reminiscence, as the restitution of the childish soul, that is described by our Leopardi in the following verses:
I believe that to know is very often, if we examine it, nothing but to perceive the folly of beliefs due to habit, and the careful reconquest of the knowledge of childhood, taken from us by age; for the child neither knows nor sees more than we, but he does not believe that he sees and knows.
But such philosophy and such reminiscence are really found only in propositions historically conditioned. Ingenuous philosophy and primitive knowledge are nothing but the concept itself of philosophy, fully realized in all and none. "Platonic reminiscence (explained Schelling) is the memory of that state, in which we are all one with nature." But since we are one with nature in every one of our acts, each one of them demands a special reminiscence and so a new thought. In like manner,the state of nature,celebrated in moral and political doctrines (the doctrines of morality and rights), was a state of perfection which can never be found anywhere in the world or at any moment of time, because it expressed the very concept of the good, of virtue and of justice. Socrates, in another Platonic dialogue, spoke of those true beliefs (doxai aleiteis) as elusive like the statues of Daedalus, that disappear from the soul, unless one binds them with rational arguments, and only when thus bound do they from beliefs become knowledge.[3]Such is ingenuous philosophy, which in reality exists only when bound and never when loose and ingenuous, as the name would suggest; philosophyabditaexists only as philosophyaddita.Certainly, to the consciousness of doctrinaires, obscured with too much labour, we can sometimes oppose ingenuous consciousness, and to the pedantry of scholastic treatises we can oppose the truth of proverbs, of good sense, of children, of the people, or of primitive races. But we must not forget that in all these cases ingenuous is a metaphor which designates truth in contradistinction to what is not truth.
Philosophy as criticism and polemic.
The division of philosophy into ingenuous and learned is due to its convenience and to itsdidactic value, and in like manner philosophy properly so-called, orsystem,is distinguished from philosophy ascriticism.The former is looked upon as the solid and permanent part, the latter as variable and adaptable to times and places, having as its object the defence of the eternal truths conquered by the human spirit, against the wiles and assaults of error. In reality the distinction is empirical: philosophy and philosophical criticism are the same thing; every affirmation is a negation, every negation is an affirmation. The critical or negative side is inseparable from philosophy, which is always substantially apolemic,as can be seen from the examination of any philosophic writing. Peace-loving people are fond of recommending abstention from polemics and the expression of one's own ideas in apositivemanner. But only the artist is capable of expressing his soul without polemic, since it does not consist of ideas. Ideas are always armed with helmet and lance, and those who wish to introduce them among men must let them make war. A philosopher, when he truly abstains from polemics and expresses himself as though he were pouring out his own soul, has not even begun to philosophize. Or, having philosophized upon certain problems, hemakes, as Plato does, the act of renunciation when he is confronted with others, feeling that he has attained to the extreme limit of his powers, and from philosophy he passes to poetry and prophecy.
Identity of philosophy and history.
Philosophy, then, is neither beyond, nor at the beginning, nor at the end of history, nor is it achieved in a moment or in any single moments of history. It is achievedat every momentand is always completely united to facts and conditioned by historical knowledge. But this result which we have obtained and which completely coincides with that of the conditioning of history by philosophy is still somewhat provisional. Were we to consider it definite, philosophy and history would appear to be two forms of the spirit, mutually conditioning one another, or (as has sometimes been trivially remarked) in reciprocal action. But philosophy and history are not two forms, they are one sole form: they are not mutually conditioned, but identical. Thea priorisynthesis, which is the reality of the individual judgment and of the definition, is also the reality of philosophy and of history. It is the formula of thought which by constituting itself qualifies intuition and constitutes history. History does not precede philosophy, nor philosophyhistory: both are born at one birth. If it is desired to give precedence to philosophy, this can only be done in the sense that the unique form of philosophy-history must take the name and character, not of intuition, but of what transforms intuition, that is to say, of thought and of philosophy.
Didactic divisions and other reasons for the apparent duality.
Philosophy and history are distinguished, as we know, for didactic purposes, philosophy being that form of exposition in which special emphasis is accorded to the concept or system, and history as that form in which the individual judgment or narrative is specially prominent. But from the very fact that the narrative includes the concept, every narrative clarifies and solves philosophic problems. On the other hand, every system of concepts throws light upon the facts which are before the spirit. The confirmation of the value of a system resides in the power of interpreting and narrating history, which it displays. It is history which is the touchstone of philosophy. It is true that the two may appear to be different, owing to the external differences of books, in which only one of the two seems to be treated: and it is also true that the didactic division is based upon a diversity of aptitudes, which practice contributes to develop. But, provided alwaysthat the meaning both of a philosophic proposition and of a historical proposition is fathomed to the bottom, their intrinsic unity is indubitable. The fact that is so often cited of conflicts between philosophy and history is in reality a conflict between two philosophies, the one true and the other false, or both partly true and partly false. Some thinkers, for instance, are idealist in recounting history and materialist in their philosophic systems. This means that two philosophies are at strife within them without either being sufficiently aware of it. And does it not also happen that we find in a philosophic exposition propositions that contradict one another and divergent systems capriciously associated in one system?
From intuition, which is indiscriminate individualization, we rise to the universal, which is discriminate individualization, from art to philosophy, which is history. The second stage, precisely because it is second, is more complex than the first, but this does not imply that it is, as it were, split into two lesser degrees, philosophyandhistory. The concept, with one stroke of the wing, affirms itself and takes possession of the whole of reality, which is not different from it, but is itself.
Note.—May I be permitted an explanation concerning the history of my thought (and also of its criticism owing to their unity already demonstrated)? Sixteen years ago I began my studies in philosophy with a memoir entitledHistory beneath the general concept of Art(1893). There I maintained, not that history is art (as others have summarized my thought) but (as indeed the title clearly showed) that history can be placed beneath thegeneralconcept of art. I now maintain, sixteen years after, that, on the contrary, history is philosophy and that history and philosophy are indeed the same thing. The two theories are certainly different; but they are far less different than appears, and the second theory is in any case a development and perfecting of the first.Elle a bien changé sur la route,without doubt; but without discontinuity and without gaps. Indeed, the objects of my memoir were chiefly: (1) to combat theabsorptionof history, which the natural sciences were then attempting more than they are now; (2) the affirmation of thetheoreticcharacter of art and of itsseriousness,art being then regarded as a hedonistic fact by the prevailing positivism; (3) the negation of history as athird formof the theoretic spirit different from the æsthetic form and from that of thought. I still maintain these three theses intact and they form part of myÆstheticand of myLogic.But the proper character of philosophy, so profoundly different from the empirical and abstract sciences, was not clear to meat the time, and therefore neither was the difference between philosophic Logic and Logic of classification. For this reason I was unable completely to solve the problem that I had proposed to myself. Owing to this confusion of the true universality of philosophy and of the false universality of the sciences (which is either mere generality or abstractness) in a single group, it seemed to me that the concreteness of history could enter only the group of art, understood in its greater extension (hence the general concept of art). In this group, by means of the fallacious method of subordination and co-ordination, I distinguished history as therepresentation of the real,placing it without mediation alongside the representation of thepossible(art in the strict sense of the word). When I understood the true relation between Philosophy and the sciences (a slow progress, because to reattain to consciousness of what philosophy truly is has been slow and difficult for the men of my generation), the nature of history also became somewhat clearer to me as I gradually freed myself from the remnants of the intellectualistic and naturalistic method. In theÆstheticI looked upon that spiritual product as due to the intersection of philosophy and of art. In theOutlines of LogicI made another step in advance, history there appearing to me as the ultimate result of the theoretic spirit, the sea into which flowed the river of art, swelled with that of philosophy. The complete identity of history and of philosophy was, however,always half-hidden from me, because in me the prejudice still persisted that philosophy might have a form in a certain way free from the bonds of history, and constitute in relation to it a prior and independent moment of the spirit. That is to say, something abstract persisted in my idea of philosophy. But this prejudice and this abstractness have been vanquished little by little. And not only have my studies in the Philosophy of the practical greatly helped me to vanquish them, but also and above all, the studies of my dearest friend Giovanni Gentile (to whom my mental life owes many other aids and stimulations), concerning the relation between philosophy and history of philosophy (cf. now especiallyCritica,vii. pp. 142-9). In short, I have gradually passed from the accentuation of the character of concreteness, which history possesses in relation to the empirical and abstract sciences, to the accentuation of the concrete character of philosophy. And having completed the elimination of the double abstractness, the two concretenesses (that which I had first of all claimed for history, and that which I have afterwards claimed for philosophy) have finally revealed themselves to me as one. Thus I can now no longer accept without demur my old theory, which is not the new one, but is linked to it by such close bonds.
Such is the road I have travelled, and I wished especially to describe it, in order to leave no misunderstandings which, through my neglect, might lead others into error.
[1]Phædrus,275.
[1]Phædrus,275.
[2]Phædrus,276-7.
[2]Phædrus,276-7.
[3]Meno,97-8.
[3]Meno,97-8.
The natural sciences as empirical concepts, and their practical nature.
The natural sciences are nothing but edifices of pseudoconcepts, and precisely of that sort of pseudoconcept that we have distinguished from the others asempiricalorrepresentative.
This is evident also from the definitions that they assume assciences of phenomena,in opposition to philosophy, the science ofnoumena; and assciences of facts,again in opposition to philosophy, which is taken to be the science ofvalues.But the pure phenomenon is not known to science; it is represented by art: and the noumena, in so far as they are known, are also phenomena, since it would be arbitrary to break up unity and synthesis. In like manner, true values are facts, and, on the other hand, facts without the determination of value and of universality dissolve again into pure phenomena. Hence it is possible to conclude that those sciences offer neither pure phenomena nor mere facts, but, onthe contrary, develop representative concepts, which are not intuitions, but spiritual formations of a practical nature.
Elimination of a misunderstanding concerning this practical character.
The word "practical" having been pronounced, it behoves us to eliminate a misapprehension which leads to the natural sciences (or simplysciences,as they are also called) being said to be practical, in the same sense as those whose aim is action. Bacon was a fervent apostle of the naturalistic movement of modern times and full of this latter idea or preconception. He proclaimed to satiety thatmeta scientiarum non aha est quam ut dotetur vita humana novis inventis et copiis; that they propose to themselvespotentiae et amplitudinis humanae fines in latim proferre; and that, by means of them, realityad usus vitae humanae subigitur[1]But in our day also, many theorists do not tire of repeating that the sciences areordonnées à faction.Now, this does not suffice to describe the natural sciences, because all knowledge is directed to action, art, philosophy, and history alike, which last, by providing knowledge of the actual situation, is the true and complete precedent and fact, preparatory to action.[2]The misapprehension in favourof the natural sciences arises from the vulgar idea that the only practical things in life are eating, drinking, clothes, and shelter. It is forgotten that man does not live by bread alone, and that bread itself is a spiritual food if it increase the force of spiritual life. But further: the natural sciences, just because they are composed of empirical concepts (which are not true knowledge), do notdirectlysubserve action, since in order to act it is necessary to return from them to the precise knowledge of the individual actual situation. That is to say, in ordinary parlance,abstractionsmust be set aside and it must be seenhow thingstruly and properlystand.The patient, the individual patient, is treated, not the malady; Socrates or Callias (as Aristotle said), not man in general: θεραπευτὸν τὸ καθ' ἕκαστον: knowledge ofmateria medicadoes not suffice; theclinical eyeis needed. The natural sciences are not directed to action, butare,themselves, actions: their practical character is not extrinsic, butconstitutive.They are actions, and are therefore not directed to action, but to aid the cognitive spirit. Thus they subserve action (that is, other actions) only in an indirect way. If an action does not become knowledge, it cannot give rise: to a new action.
Impossibility of unifying them in a concept.
The empirical character (and the practical character in the sense already established) of the natural sciences is commonly admitted in the case of such of them as consist in classifications of facts: for example, of zoology, botany, mineralogy, and also of chemistry, in so far as it enumerates chemical species, and of physics, in so far as it enumerates classes of phenomena or physical forces. The universals of all these sciences are quite arbitrary, for it is impossible to find an exact boundary between the concept of animal (the universal of zoology) and that of vegetable (the universal of botany). Indeed it is impossible to find one between the living and the not living, the organic and the material. Finally, the cellule, which is, for the present at any rate, the highest concept of the biological sciences, is differentiated from chemical facts only in an external way. It will be objected that there is in any case no lack of attempts to determine strictly the supreme concepts of the sciences, such, for instance, as those that place theatomat the beginning of all things and attempt to show each individual fact as nothing but a different aggregate of atoms. There are also those who mount to the concept ofetheror ofenergyand declare all individual facts to be nothing but different forms of energy.Or finally, the vitalists recognize as irreducible the two concepts of the teleological and the mechanical, of organic and inorganic, of life and matter. But in all these casesthe natural sciences are deserted,phenomena are abandoned for noumena, and philosophic explanations are offered. These may or may not have value, but they are of no use from the point of view of the natural sciences, or at most ensure to some professor the insipid pleasure of calling an animal "a complex of atoms," heat "a form of energy," and the cellule "vital force."
Impossibility of introducing into them strict divisions.
Since the natural sciences cannot be unified in a concept (hence their ineradicableplurality), and therefore remain unsystematic, a mass of sciences without close relation among themselves, logical distinctions are not possible in any science. No one will ever be able to prove that genera and species must be so many and no more, or describe the truly original character by which one genus may be distinguished from another genus and one species from another species. The animal species hitherto described have been calculated it over four hundred thousand, and those that may yet be described as fifteen millions. These numbers simply express the impotence of the empirical sciences to exhaust the infinite andindividual forms of the real and the necessity in which they are placed of stopping at some sort 1 of number, of some hundreds, of some thousands, or of some millions. Those species, however few or many they may be, flow one into the other owing to the undeniable conceivability of graduated, indeed of continuous intermediate forms, which made evident the arbitrariness of the clean cut made into fact by separating the wolf from the dog or the panther from the leopard.
Laws in the natural sciences, and so called prevision.
But some doubt is manifested where we pass from classification and description or fromsystem(as the lack of system of naturalistic classifications is called, by a curious verbal paradox) to the consideration of the laws that are posited in those sciences. It is then perceived that the classification is certainly a simple labour of preparation, arbitrary, convenient, and nominalistic, but that the true end of the natural sciences is not the class but thelaw.In the compass of the law strict accuracy of its truth is indubitable; so much so that by means of laws it is actually possible to makeprevisionsas to what will happen. This is indeed a miraculous power, which places the natural sciences above every form of knowledge, and endows them with an almost magicalforce, by means of which man, not contented with knowing what has happened (which is yet so difficult to know), is capable of knowing even what has not yet happened, what will happen, or the future!Prevision(there must be a clear understanding of the concepts) is equivalent toseeing beforehand or prophesying,and the naturalist is thus neither more nor less than a clairvoyant.
Empirical character of naturalistic laws.
The miraculous nature of this boasted power should suffice to make us doubt whether the law is truly what it is said to be, a strict truth, quite different from the empirical concept, from the class, and from the description. In reality, the law is nothing but the empirical concept itself, the description, class or type, of which we have just spoken. In philosophy law is a synonym for the pure concept; in the empirical or natural sciences it is a synonym for the empirical concept; hence laws are sometimes calledempiricallaws, or laws of experience. If they were not empirical, they would not be naturalistic, but philosophic universals, which, as we have seen, are unfruitful in the field of the natural sciences. The law of the wolf is the empirical concept of the wolf: granted that in reality there is found one part of the representation corresponding to that concept, it is possible to concludethat the rest is also found. Thus Cuvier (to choose a very trite example), arranging the types of animals and hence the laws of the correlations of organs, was able to reconstruct from one surviving bone the complete fossil animal. In like manner, granted the chemical concept of water, H2O, and given so much of oxygen and double that quantity of hydrogen, O and H2, and submitting the two bodies to the other conditions established by chemistry, it is possible to conclude that water will be seen to appear. All naturalistic laws are of this type. Certain naturalists and theorists have reasonably protested against the division of the natural sciences into descriptive and explicative, sciences of classification and sciences of laws, and have maintained that all have one common character, namely, law. But this is not because the law is superior to the class or to the empirical concept, but because the two things are identical: the law is the empirical concept and the empirical concept is the law.
The postulate of the uniformity of nature, and its meaning.
The postulate of theconstancy or uniformity of natureis the base ofempirical laws or concepts.This, too, is something mysterious, before which many are ready to bow, seized with reverence and sacred terror. But that postulate is not even an hypothesis, somehow conceivable, thoughnot yet explained and demonstrated. Ordinary thought, like philosophical thought, knows that reality is neither constant nor uniform, and indeed that it is perpetually being transformed, evolving and becoming. That constancy and uniformity, which is postulated and falsely believed to be objective reality, is the samepractical necessitywhich leads to the neglect of differences and to the looking upon the different as uniform, the changeable as constant. The postulate of the uniformity of nature is the demand for a treatment of reality made uniform for reasons of convenience.Natura non facit saltusmeans:mens non facit saltus in naturae cogitatione,or, better still,memoriae usus saltus naturae cohibet.
Pretended inevitability of natural laws.
Another consequence of this is the inversion of the assertion (to be found everywhere in the rhetoric of the natural sciences) as to theinexorability and inevitabilityof the laws of nature. Those laws, precisely because they are arbitrary constructions of our own and give the movable as fixed, are not only not inevitable and do sometimes afford exceptions; but thereisabsolutelyno real fact,which is not anexceptionto its naturalistic law. By coupling a wolf and a she-wolf we obtain a wolf cub, which will in time become a new wolf, with the appearance,the strength, and the habits of its parents. But this wolf will not be identical with its parents. Otherwise how could wolves ever evolve with the evolution of the whole of reality, of which they are an indivisible part? By chemical analysis of a litre of water we obtain H2O; but if we again combine H2O, the water that we obtain is only in a way of speaking the same as before. For that combining and recombining must have produced some modification (even though not perceived by us), and in any case changes have occurred in reality in the subsequent moment, from which the water is not separable, and therefore in the water itself taken in its concreteness. We could consequently give the following definition: theinexorablelaws of nature are those thatare violated at every moment,while philosophic laws are by definition those that areat every moment observed.But in what way they are observed cannot be known, save by means of history, and therefore true knowledge knows nothing of previsions; it knows only facts that have really happened; of the future there can be no knowledge. The natural sciences, which do not furnish real knowledge, have, if possible, even less right (if one may speak thus) to talk of previsions.
Yet, it will be objected, it is a fact that we all form previsions, and that without them we should neither be able to cook an egg nor to take one step out of doors. That is quite true, but those alleged previsions are merely the summary of what we know by experience to have happened, and according to which we resolve upon our action. We know what has happened. We do not know, nor do we need to know, what will happen. Were any one truly to wish to know it, he would no longer be able to move and would be seized with such perplexity before life, that he would kill himself in desperation or die of fear. The egg, which usually takes five minutes to cook in the way that suits my taste, sometimes surprises me by presenting itself to my palate after those five minutes, either as too much or too little cooked; the step taken out of doors is sometimes a fall on the threshold. Nevertheless, the knowledge of this does not prevent me from leaving the house and cooking the egg, for I must walk and take nourishment. The laws of my individual being, of my temperament, of my aptitudes, of my forces, that is, the knowledge of my past, make me resolve to undertake a journey, as I did twenty years ago, to begin work upon a statue,as I did ten years ago. Alas! I had not considered that in the meantime my legs have lost their strength and my arm has begun to tremble. By all means call the previsions made use of in these cases true or false; but do not forget that they are nothing but empirical concepts, that is to say, mnemonic devices, founded upon historical judgments. There can be no doubt that they are useful; indeed, what we maintain is that just because they are useful, they are not true. If they possess any truth, it resides in the establishment of the fact. That is to say, it does not reside in the prevision and in the law, but in the historical judgment which forms its basis.
Nature and its various meanings. Nature as passivity and negativity.
Having thus made clear the coincidence of empirical concepts and the natural sciences, we must determine exactly the meaning of the word "natural," which is used as qualifying these sciences. It has not seemed advisable to change it, since its use is so deeply rooted, although we have, on the other hand, already given its synonym in qualifying these sciences as "empirical." What isnature? The first meaning of "nature" is the "opposite" of "spirit," and designates the natural or material moment in relation to the spiritual, the mechanical in relation to the teleologicalmoment, the negative moment in relation to the positive. Thus, in the transition from one form of the spirit to another, the inferior form is like matter, ballast, or obstacle, and so is the negation of the superior form. Hence reality is imagined as the strife of two forces, the one spiritual and the other material or natural. It is superfluous to repeat that the two forces are not two, but one, and that if the negative moment were not, the positive moment could not be. The pigeon (says Kant), which rises to take flight, may believe that had it not to vanquish the resistance of the air, it would fly still better. But the fact is that without that resistance, it would fall to earth. In this sense, there is no science of Nature (of matter, passivity, negation, etc.) distinguishable from that of Spirit, which is the science of itself and of its opposite, and the science of itself only in so far as it is also the science of its opposite.
Nature as practical activity.
But in another sense,natureis, not indeed the opposite of spirit, but something distinctinthe spirit, and especially distinct from the cognitive spirit, as that form of spirituality and activity which is not cognitive. A non-theoretical activity, a spirituality which should not be in itself knowledge, cannot be anything but thepracticalformof the spirit, the will.Man makes himself natureat every moment, because at every moment he passes from knowing to willing and doing and from willing and doing returns to knowing, which is the basis for new will and action. In this sense, the science of nature, or the philosophy of nature, could not be anything but the philosophic science of the will, the Philosophy of the practical.
Nature in the gnoseological sense, as naturalistic or empirical method.
The natural sciences have nothing to do with a philosophic knowledge of nature as will, with a Philosophy of the practical. They are, as has already been said, not knowledge of will, but will; not truth, but utility. In consequence of this, they extend to the whole of reality, theoretic and practical, to the products of the theoretic spirit, not less than to those of the practical spirit; and without knowing any of them, universally or individually, they manipulate and classify them all in the way we have seen. They have not therefore aspecial object,buta special mode of treatment,their object or matter being the presupposed philosophic-historical knowledge of the real. They do not treat of the material and mechanical aspect of the real, nor even of its non-theoretical, practical, volitional aspect (or what is incorrectly called the irrational aspect of it). They turn the theoretical into the practical, and by killingits theoretic life, make it dead, material, and mechanical. Nature, matter, passivity, motionab extra,the inert atom and so on, are not reality and concepts, but natural science itself in action. Mechanism, logically considered, is neither a fact nor a mode of knowing the fact. It is a non-fact, a mode of not-knowing: a practical creation, which is real only in so far as it becomes itself an object of knowledge. This is thegnoseologicalorgnoseopracticalmeaning of the word "nature," a meaning which must be kept carefully distinct from the two preceding meanings. When we speak, for instance, ofmatteror ofnatureas not existing, we mean to refer to the puppet of the naturalists, which the naturalists themselves and the philosophers of naturalism, forgetting its genesis, take for a real if not a living being. That matter (said Berkeley) is an abstraction; it is (say we) an empirical concept, and whoever knows what empirical concepts are will not pretend that matter or nature exists, simply because it is spoken about.
The illusions of materialists and dualists.
We do not claim to have supplied the full solution of the problem concerning the dualism or materialism of the real with this discussion on the theme of Logic. This solution cannot (we repeat) be expected, save from all the philosophicsciences together, that is to say, from the complete system. But we can already see, from the logical point of view, that the dualists and materialists cannot avoid the task of showing that the nature or matter, which they elevate to a principle of the real or to one of the two principles of the real, is not: firstly, the mere negation of the spirit, nor secondly, a form of the spirit, nor thirdly, the abstraction of the natural sciences. They must also show that it answers to something conceivable and existing, outside or above the spirit. Logic can pass onward at this point, saying of materialists and dualists what Dante said of the devils and the damned struggling in the lake of burning pitch: "And we leave them thus encompassed."
Nature as empirical distinction of an inferior in relation to a superior reality.
The word "nature" has yet a fourth meaning (but this time altogether empirical), which is clear in those propositions which distinguish natural life from social life, natural men(Naturmenschen)or savages from civilized men, and again natural from human beings, animals from men, and so on. Nature, in this sense, is distinguished from civilization or humanity, and thus the sole reality is divided into two classes of beings: natural beings and human beings (which are sometimes also called spiritual as compared with the former, whichare called material). The vague and empirical nature of this distinction is at once perceived from the impossibility that we meet with of assigning boundaries between civilization and the state of nature, between humanity and animality. Man can be only empirically distinguished from the animal, the animal from the vegetable, and vegetables from inorganic beings, which are organic in their own way. Certainly, what are calledthingsare not organic, for example a mountain or a plough-share; but they are not organic, because they are not real, but aggregates, that is to say, empirical concepts. In the same way, a forest is not organic, though it is composed of things vegetating, nor a crowd, though composed of men. When we treat of things in the above sense, we can say with some mathematicians thatthingsdo not exist, but only theirrelations.Hence if the dualists feel able to affirm that the two classes of beings, natural and human, are based upon the existence of two different substances and upon the different proportions of these in each of the two classes, the task of proving the thinkability of the two substances and the different proportions of the compound falls upon them.
The naturalistic method and the natural sciences as extended to superior not less than to inferior reality.
The distinction between nature and spirit being therefore, in this last sense, altogether empirical,it is clear that the natural sciences (in the gnoseological or gnoseopractical sense in which we give chem this name) are not restricted to the development of knowledge relating to what is called inferior reality, from the animal downwards, leaving to the sciences of the spirit the knowledge that relates to superior reality from the animal upwards, that is to say, to man. Sciences of nature and sciences of the spirit,orbis naturalisandorbis intellectuals,are also, in this case, partitions and convenient groupings. All do substantially the same thing, that is to say, they provide one single homogeneous practical treatment of knowledge.
Demand for such an extension, and effective existence of what is demanded.
On this unity and homogeneity is based the demand so often made (especially in the second half of the nineteenth century) for the extension ofthe method of the natural sciencesto the sciences of the spirit or moral sciences, theorbis intellectualis,for a naturalistic treatment of the productions of language and of art, or of political, social, and religious life. Thus were originated or prophesied a Psychology, an Æsthetic, an Ethic, a Sociology,methodo naturali demonstratae.It was necessary to draw the attention of those makers of programmes and advisers (apart from the evil philosophic intentions, positivist ormaterialistic, which they nourished in their bosoms) to the superfluity of their demand, and gently to reprove them with the old phrase:Quod petis in manu habes.Since man was man and constructed pseudoconcepts and empirical sciences, these naturalistic classifications have never been limited to animals, plants, and minerals, nor to physical, chemical, and biological phenomena, but have been extended to all the manifestations of reality. Naturalistic Logic, Psychology, Linguistic Sociology and Ethics have not awaited the nineteenth century ere they should open to the sun. And (without going too far back in time, or leaving Europe) they already bore flower and fruit in the Sociology (Politics) of Aristotle, in the Grammatics of the Alexandrians, in the Poetics and Rhetoric of Aristotle himself, or of Hermagoras, of Cicero, or of Quintilian, and so on. The novelty of the nineteenth century has principally consisted in giving the namessocial Physics,or thephysico-acoustic science of languageto what was once more simply, and perhaps in better taste, called otherwise. But in saying this we do not wish to deny that certain naturalistic work has been far more copious in the nineteenth century than in Greece, and that naturalistic methods have not been applied withsingular acumen and exactitude in those fields of study. Linguistic affords a case in point, withits phonetic laws,by reason of which it moves so proudly among its companions.
Historical basis of the natural sciences.
The natural sciences and the empirical concepts which compose them appear therefore like a tachygraphic transcription upon living and mutable reality, capable of complete transcription only in terms of individual representations. But upon what reality? Upon the reality of the poet, or upon the clarified and existentialized reality of—the historian? The constructions of the natural sciences take history for their presupposition, just as judgments of classification take individual judgments. Were this not so, their economic function would have no way of expressing itself, from lack of matter whereon to work. To employ the easy example already given, it would be of no use to the zoologist to construct types and classes of animals that were certainly conceivable, but non-existent. For while those types and classes would distract the attention from the useful and urgent task of summarizing reality historically given and known, they would not exhaust the possibilities, which are infinite And if it appear that imaginary animals are sometimes classified, as for example griffinscentaurs, Pegasi, and sirens, it is easy to see that this is not done in Zoology, but in another naturalistic science,—comparative Mythology, in which not animals but the imaginings of men are really classified. These too are historical facts, because they are imaginings or fancies historically given. They are not combinations of images which no people has ever dreamed of, nor any poet represented, for such, as has already been said, would be infinite in number and food for mere diversion.