Practical and theoretic life.
A glance at the life that surrounds us would seem more than sufficient to establish, without the necessity of special demonstration, the existence of a circle of practical activity side by side with the theoretical. We see in life men of thought and men of action, men of contemplation and of action, materially distinct, as it were, from one another: here, lofty brows and slow dreamy eyes; there, narrow brows, eyes vigilant and mobile; poets and philosophers on the one side; on the other, captains and soldiers of industry, commerce, politics, the army, and the church. Their work seems to differ as do the men. While we are intent upon somediscovery just announced, in chemistry or in physic, or upon some philosophy that comes to shake old beliefs, upon a drama or a romance that revives an artist's dream, we are suddenly interrupted and our attention is called to spectacles of an altogether different nature, such as a war between two states, fought with cannon or with custom-house tariffs; or to a colossal strike, in which thousands upon thousands of workmen make the rest of society feel the power of their numbers and of their strength, and the importance of their work in the general total; or a potent organization which collects and binds together the forces of conservative resistance, employing interests and passions, hopes and fears, vices and virtues, as the painter his colours, or the poet his words, sometimes making like them a masterpiece, but of a practical nature. The man of action is from time to time assailed as it were with nausea at his orgies of volitional effort and eyes with envy the artist or the man of science in the same way as polite society used to look upon the monks who had known how to select the best and most tranquil lot in life. But as a general rule they do not go beyond this fleeting feeling, or if they do resolve to cease their business on the Ides, they return to it on theKalends. But the contemplative man in his turn also sometimes experiences this same nausea and this same aspiration; he seems to himself to be idle where so many are working and bleeding, and he cries to the combatants: "Arms, give me arms,"[1]for he too would be a miner with the miners, would navigate with the navigators, be an emperor among the kings of coal. However, as a general rule, he does not make more out of this than a song or a book. Nobody, whatever his efforts, can issue from his own circle. It would seem that nature supplies men made precisely for the one or for the other form of activity, in the same way as she makes males and females for the preservation of the species.
Insufficiency of descriptive distinctions.
But this mode of existence with which the practical activity manifests itself in life, as though physically limited, has no certainty, when separated from the theoretical life, nor is it, as might be believed, a fact that imposes itself. Facts never impose themselves, save metaphorically: it is only our thought whichimposesthem uponitself,when it has criticized them and has recognized their reality. That existence and that distinction, which seem so obvious thatone can touch them with one's hand, are at bottom nothing but the result of primary and superficial philosophic reflection, which posits as essentially distinct that which is so only at a first glance and in the mass. Indeed, if we continue to meditate with the same method and assumptions as in the first instance, we shall find that those very distinctions, which reflection had established, are by reflection annulled. It is not true that men are practical or theoretical.
The theoretical man is also practical; he lives, he wills, he acts like all the others. The so-called practical man is also theoretical; he contemplates, believes, thinks, reads, writes, loves music and the other arts. Those works that had been looked upon as inspired entirely by the practical spirit, when examined more closely, are found to be exceedingly complex and rich in theoretic elements—meditations, reasonings, historical research, ideal contemplations. Those works on the other hand that had been assumed to be manifestations of the purely artistic or philosophic spirit, are also products of the will, for without the will nothing can be done; the artist cannot prepare himself for his masterpiece for years and years, nor the thinker bring to completion his system. Was not the battle ofAusterlitz also a work of thought and theDivine Comedyalso a work of will? From such reflections as these, which might be easily multiplied, arises a mistrust, not only of the statement first made, but also of the inquiry that has been undertaken. It is as though one had filled a vessel with much difficulty and were then obliged to empty it anew with a like effort, to find oneself again facing the vessel, empty as before. Or one adheres to the conclusion that neither the theoretic nor the practical exists as distinct, but that they are one single fact, which is one or other of the two, or a third to be determined, manifesting itself concretely in infinite shades and gradations, which we arbitrarily attempt to reduce to one or more classes, separating and denominating them as distinct in a not less arbitrary manner.
Insufficiency of the psychological method in philosophy.
By describing this process of ordinary reflection, in relation to reality and by demonstrating its philosophic impotence, has at the same time been demonstrated the nature and theimpotenceof thepsychological method,applied to philosophical problems. For psychological philosophy, though contained in ponderous treatises and in solemn academical lectures, does not really achieve more than ordinary reflection, or rather, is nothingbut ordinary reflection. Having classified the images of the infinite manifestations of human activity, placing, for instance, will and action side, by side with thought and imagination, it looks upon this classification as reality. But classes are classes and not philosophical distinctions: whoever takes them too seriously, and understands them in this second sense, finds himself eventually obliged to admit that they possess no reality. Thereupon he declares with shouts and protestations the non-existence of thefaculties of the soul,or rather their existence as a mere mental artifice, without relation to reality. He may do more than this and throw overboard the criterion or distinction itself, together with those false distinctions, proclaiming that all spiritual manifestations are reducible to a single element. This element turns out in the end to be precisely one of the rejected classes; hence the attempt to show that facts of volition are nothing but facts ofrepresentation,or that those of representation are nothing but facts ofvolition,or that both are nothing but facts offeeling,and so on.
Necessity of the philosophical method.
We must then remain perfectly indifferent to the affirmations or negations of this psychological philosophy. If it affirm the existenceof the practical activity, we must not put faith in it until we have recognized its existence by the philosophical method, and equally so in case it should deny it. The philosophical method demands complete abstraction from empirical data and from their classes, and a withdrawal into the recesses of the consciousness, in order to fix upon it alone the eye of the mind. It has been affirmed that by this method the individual consciousness is made the type and measure of universal reality, and it has been suggested, with a view to obviate this restriction and danger, that we should extend observations, so as to include the soul of other individuals, of the present and of the past, of our own and of other civilizations, thus completing (in the accustomed phrase) the psychological with the historical and the ethnographical methods. But there is no need to fear, because the consciousness which is the object of the philosophical inquiry is not that of the individual as individual, but the universal consciousness, which is in every individual the basis of his individual consciousness and of that of other individuals. The philosopher who withdraws into himself is not seeking his own empirical self: Plato did not seek the son of Aristo and of Perictione, nor Baruch Spinozathe poor sickly Jew; they sought that Plato and that Spinoza, who are not Plato or Spinoza, but man, the spirit, universal being. The remedy proposed will therefore seem not only useless, but actually harmful; for in an inquiry whose very object is to surpass the empirical itself, is offered the aid of a multiplicity of selves, thus increasing the tumult and the confusion, where there should be peace and silence; offering, in exchange for the universal that was sought, something worse than the individual, namely, thegeneral,which is an arbitrary complex of mutilated individualities.
Constatation and deduction.
It may seem, however, that the result of such an inquiry as to the form and the universality of consciousness would merely possess the value of a statement of fact, not different from any other statement, as when we say, for instance, that the weather is rainy, or that Tizio has married. If these two last facts be indubitable, because well observed, in like manner indubitable, because likewise well observed, will be an affirmation concerning the universal consciousness. And since both affirmations are true, there is certainly no difference between them, or between truth and truth, considered as such. But since single and contingent facts, like thetwo adduced in the example, are single and contingent, precisely because they have not their own reason in themselves, and because the universal is the universal, precisely because it is a sufficient reason to itself, it clearly results that we cannot assume that truth has been definitely established from the universal standpoint of consciousness, save when the reason for this also has been seen, that is to say until that aspect has been simply enunciated and asserted, as in the case of a single fact. To affirm the existence of the practical form of activity, side by side with the theoretical, means to deduce the one from the other, and both from the unity of the spirit and of the real. We do not intend to withdraw ourselves from this duty and exigency; and if we limit ourselves here at the beginning to the assertion of its existence and to the demonstration that the arguments brought against it are unfounded, we do so for didascalic reasons, certain that in due course we shall be able to free this assertion from what it may contain of provisional, that is to say, from the character itself of assertion.
Theories which deny the practical form of the spirit.
The doctrines which deny the practical form of the spirit are and cannot but be of two fundamental kinds, according to the doublepossibility offered by the proposition itself which they propose to refute. The first doctrine affirms thatthe practical form is not spiritual activity,the second that although it be spiritual activity,yet it is not in any way distinguishable from the already recognized theoretic form of the spirit.The second, so to speak, denies to it specific, the first generic character.
The practical as a fact of unconsciousness.
Those who maintain the first of these theses say:—We are unconscious of the will at the moment of willing and during its real development. This consciousness is only attained after one has willed, that is to say, after the volitional act has been developed. Even then, we are not conscious of the will itself, but of our representation of the will. Therefore the will, that is to say the practical activity, is not an activity of the spirit. Since it is unconscious, it is nature and not spirit. The theoretic activity which follows it is alone spiritual.
Critique.
Were we, however, to allow this argument to pass, the result would be that none of the activities of the spirit would belong to the spirit, that they would all be unconscious and all, therefore, nature. Indeed, the activity of the artist, at the moment when he is really so, that is to say in what is called the moment of artisticcreation, is not conscious of itself: it becomes conscious only afterwards, either in the mind of the critic or of the artist who becomes critic of himself. And it has also often been said of the activity of the artist, that it is unconscious; that it is a natural force, or madness, fury, divine inspiration.Est Deus in nobis; and we only become conscious of the divinity that burns and agitates us when the agitation is ceasing and cooling begun. But what of the activity of the philosopher? It may seem strange, but it is precisely the same with the philosopher. At the moment in which he is philosophizing, he is unconscious of his work; in him is God, or nature; he does not reflect upon his thought, but thinks; or rather the thing thinks itself in him, as a microbe living in us nourishes itself, reproduces itself and dies: so that sometimes the philosopher has also seemed to be seized with madness. The consciousness of his philosophy is not in him at that moment; but it is in the critic and in the historian, or indeed in himself a moment after, in so far as he is critic and historian of himself. And will the critic or the historian at least be conscious? No, he will not be so either, because he who will afterwards criticize the historico-critical work is consciousof it, or he himself, in so far as he criticizes himself, and by objectifying himself occupies a place in the history of criticism and of historiography. In short, we should never be conscious in any form of the spiritual activity.
But this negation is founded on a false idea of consciousness: spontaneous is confused with reflex consciousness, or that which is intrinsic to one activity with that which is intrinsic to another, which surpasses the first and makes of it its object. In such a sense we can certainly not be conscious of the will, save in the representation which follows it, as we are not conscious of a poem, save at the moment of criticizing it. But there is also consciousness in the act itself of him who reads or composes a poem, and he "is conscious" (there is no other expression) of its beauty and of its ugliness, of how the poem should and of how it should not be. This consciousness is not critical, but is not therefore less real and efficacious, and without it internal control would be wanting to the formative act of the poet. Thus also there is consciousness in the volitional and practical act as such: we are not aware of this act in a reflex manner, but we feel, or, if you will, we possess it. Without it there would be no result. It istherefore developed in moments or alternatives of happiness and of unhappiness, of well-being and of malaise, of satisfaction and of remorse, of pleasure and of pain. If this be unconsciousness, we must say that unconsciousness is consciousness itself.
Nature and practical activity.
The practical activity may appear to be nature in respect of the theoretical, but not as something without the spirit and opposed to it, but as a form of the spirit opposed to another form, esthetic contemplation has in like manner, as has already been mentioned, appeared to be a natural force creating the world of intuition, which the philosophical activity of man afterwards understands and recreates logically. Hence art can be called nature (and has indeed been so called), and conversely philosophy has been called spirituality. This gives rise to the further problem: whether it be correct to consider nature (it is convenient so to call it) that which has afterwards been recognized in substance as spiritual activity; or whether the concept and the name of spirit should not be reserved for that which is truly altogether outside the spirit, and whether this something placed altogether outside the spirit truly exists. This point does not concern us here, although weare much disposed to admit that one of the mainstays of that absurd conception of nature as of the extra-spiritual is precisely the practical or volitional form of the spirit, so conspicuously different from the theoretical form and from the sub-forms of the same. We do not therefore hold those philosophers to have been so completely in the wrong, who have identified nature and will, for they have thus at any rate discovered one aspect of the truth.
Reduction of the practical form to the theoretical.
Passing to the second thesis, which does not place the will outside the spirit, but denies to it the distinction between practical and the theoretical forms and affirms that the will is thought, there is nothing to be objected to it, provided that, as is often the case, "thought" be taken as synonymous with "spirit." In this case, as in that where it is affirmed that art is thought, we need only inquire, what form of thought is the will, as in the other what form of thought is art. It is not, for instance, logical or historical thought, and the will is neither imaginative, logical nor historical thought: if anything, it must bevolitional thought.
But we have the genuine form of this thesis in the affirmation that the will is the intelligence itself, that to will is to know, and that actionpractically well conducted is truth. This thesis would not have arisen, had it not found support in the real situation of things (and what this support is will be seen when studying the relation of the practical with the theoretic activity, and the complicated process of deliberation). But, when tested here independently, it proves to be unsustainable.
Critique.
We must not oppose to it the usual observations as to the lack of connection between great intellectual and great volitional development, or the cases of those theoreticians who are practically quite ineffectual, of philosophers who are bad governors of States, of the "very learned" who are not "men" and the like; for the reason already given, that an observation is not a philosophical argument, but a fact which itself has need of an explanation, and when this has been done, it may serve as proof of the philosophical theory, but can never be substituted for it. But it is well to recall to memory the quite peculiar character of the will and the practical activity in respect of knowledge, intellectual light is cold, the will is hot. When we pass from theoretic contemplation to action and to the practical, we have almost the feeling of generating, and sons are not made with thoughts and words. Withthe greatest intellectual clearness, we yet remain inert, if something does not intervene that rouses to action, something analogous to the inspiration that makes run a shiver of joy and of voluptuousness through the veins of the artist. If the will be not engaged, every argument, however plausible it may seem, every situation, however clear, remains mere theory.
The education of the will is not effected with theories or definitions, æsthetic or historical culture, but with the exercise of the will itself. We teach how to will as we teach how to think, by fortifying and intensifying natural dispositions, by example, which suggests imitation, by difficulties to be solved (practical problems), by rousing energetic initiative and by disciplining it to persist. When an act of will has taken place, no argument will extinguish it. As an illness is not to be cured with reasons, so an affective and volitional state cannot be altered by these means. Reasoning and knowledge may and certainly do assist, but they do not constitute the ultimate and determining moment. The will alone acts upon the will, not in the sense that the will of one individual can act upon that of another (which is merely a fact among the facts perceived by him), but in the sense thatthe will of the individual himself, causing the previous volition to enter upon a crisis, dissolves it and substitutes for it a new practical synthesis, with a new volition.
The practical as thought which realizes itself. Recognition of its autonomy.
The evident paradox of the thesis which identifies without any distinction thought and will, theory and practice, has caused it to be modified and to be produced in another form, expressed in the definition; that the will is thought in so far as itis translated into act,thought in so far as it isimprintedupon nature, thought whenheldsofirmlybefore the mind as tobecome action,and so on. Now it remains to determine what may be the relation between thought and will, and when this has been done, we shall see what is exact and what inexact in the above formulæ, of translating, imprinting, and holding fast. These formulæ are all logically vague, however imaginative they may be. But what is important to note here is that with the new turn given to the thesis that denies the peculiarity of the practical activity, this same peculiarity is unconsciously affirmed, because that transforming, that imprinting, that holding fast, which did not exist in the simple theory, conceal precisely the will. Thus the ultimate form of the negation comes to join hands with that of theaffirmation, and we can consider undisputed the existence of a particular form of the spirit, which is the practical activity. We must now examine the relation of this form with the other from which it has been distinguished.
[1]Allusion to a verse of Leopardi inCanzone all' Italia.
[1]Allusion to a verse of Leopardi inCanzone all' Italia.
The practical activity and the so-called third spiritual form: feeling.]
In affirming the existence of the practical form of activity, we have had in view only the theoretical form and have demonstrated that the one cannot be absorbed and confused in the other, and we have referred only to the theoretic form, when announcing our intention of determining the relations of the practical with the other forms of the spirit. This seems but little correct, and in any case not exhaustive, because there are or may be other non-theoretical forms of the spirit, into which the practical form could be resolved. Of these it would be necessary to take account. And not to beat too long about the bush, that of which in this case it is question, is the form offeeling,the last or intermediary of the three forms into which it is customary to divide the spiritual activity: representation, feeling, tendency; thought, feeling, will. Attempts have not been wanting to reduce tendency or will tofeeling, or, as is said, to a sentimental reaction from perceptions and thoughts. In fact there is hardly a treatise of philosophy of the practical without a preliminary study of the relations between the will and feeling. We cannot, then, escape from the dilemma; either we must recognize the omission into which we have fallen and hasten to correct it, or else make explicit the supposition that may be contained in that omission (which would thus be intentional and conscious), thata third general form of the spirit, or a form of feeling, does not exist.We have adopted precisely this last position, and it therefore becomes incumbent upon us briefly to expose the reasons for which we hold that the concept of feeling must disappear from the system of the spiritual forms or activities.
Various meanings of the word feeling, as a psychological class.
Feeling may and has been understood in various ways, some of which do not at all concern our thesis. In the first place, the word "feeling" has been used to designate a class of psychical facts constructed according to the psychological and naturalistic method. Thus it has happened that, with various times and authors, all the most rudimentary, tenuous, and evanescent manifestations of the spirit have been called "feelings," slight intuitions (or sensations asthey are called), not yet transformed into perceptions, slight perceptions, slight tendencies and appetites, in fact all that forms, as it were, the base of the life of the spirit. The name has thus, on the other hand, also been given to psychical processes and conditions, in which various forms follow one another or alternate in relation to a material empirically limited. Such are what are called feelings of "fatherland," "love," "nature," "the divine." Nothing forbids the formation of such classes and the use of that denomination, but as has already been declared in relation to the psychological method, they are of no use to philosophy, which not only does not receive them within its limits, but does not occupy itself with them at all, save to reject them when they present themselves, as philosophical psychology or psychological philosophy. To classify is not to think philosophically, and philosophy on the one hand does not recognize criteria of small and great, of weak and strong, of more and of less, and a small or smallest thought, a small or smallest tendency, is for it thought and tendency and not feeling at all; on the other, it does not admit complicated processes without resolving these into their simple components. Thus the feeling of love or of patriotism, and the othersmade use of in the example, are revealed to philosophy as series of acts of thought and of will, variously interlaced. Let the psychologists, then, keep their classes and sub-classes of feeling. We, for our part, not only do not dream of di-possessing them of such a treasure, but shall continue to draw from it, when necessary, the small change of ordinary conversation.
Feeling as a state of the spirit.
There also exists another meaning of the word "feeling," of which, at present at any rate, we do not take account. This appears when the word is used to designatethe stateof the spirit or of one of the special forms of the spirit; we should indeed term these more correctly thestates,since the spirit in this case, as is known, is polarized in two opposite terms, usually denominatedpleasure and pain.Indubitably these two terms can also be taken as psychological (and are thus included in the preceding case). Hence it results that pleasure and pain are represented by psychologists as the two extremes of a continuous series, in which there is a passage from the one to the other term by insensible increases and gradations. But we must also recognize that this psychological representation is not the only one possible, and indeed is not truly the real one, and that the two terms have their place and their propermeaning in the philosophy of the spirit. They are, as has been said,opposites;and are differentiated, not only by a more and a less, by a greatest and a least, but also by the special character of distinction that opposites possess. The doctrine of opposites and of opposites in the practical activity of the spirit does not, however, appertain to this part of our exposition. In denying feeling, we do not here deny the doctrine of opposites, and that psychology of thestatesof the spirit which is founded upon it, but the doctrine of feeling considered as a particularformofactivity.
Function of the concept of feeling in the History of philosophy; the indeterminate.
The conception of feeling as a spiritual activity has answered to a want of research, which may be described asprovisional excogitation.Whenever thought has found itself face to face with a form or subform of spiritual activity, which it was not possible either to eliminate or to absorb in forms already recognized, the problem to be solved has been endorsed with that word "feeling." With many this has passed for a solution. Feeling, in fact, has been the indeterminate in the history of philosophy, or rather the not yet fully determined, thehalf-determined.
Hence its great importance as an expedient for the indication of new territories to conquer,and as a stimulus against remaining obstinately shut up in old and insufficient formulæ. But hence also its fate: the problem must not be exchanged for its solution, the indeterminate or semi-determinate must be determined. Whenever the determination of the forms and sub-forms of the spirit has not been given in a complete manner, the category of feeling will reappear (and it will be beneficial); but at the same time will reappear the duty of exploring it and of understanding what is concealed beneath it, or at least what unsolved difficulty has caused it to reappear afresh.
Now we have already met with the concept of feeling on more than one occasion, when investigating the philosophy of the theoretic spirit, as something supplying a theoretical need outside the theoretic forms generally admitted, or as a special form of theoretic activity. Every time that we have done this, an attentive examination has caused it to disappear before our eyes, and has generally helped us, either to discover something previously unknown, or to confirm the necessity of contested categories.
Feeling as herald of the æsthetic form;
Thus it happened that when a specialæstheticfunction was not recognized and it was attempted to explain it, either intellectualistically, as nothingbut an inferior form of philosophy, or historically, as a reproduction of the historical and natural datum, or almost as the satisfaction of certain volitional wants (hedonistic theory), the view of art as neither a form of the intellect nor of perception nor of will, but offeeling,was an advance, as also was the appeal to men offeelingto recognize and to judge it. As a result of this insistence, it was eventually discovered that art possessed an absolutely simple and ingenuous theoretic form, without either intellectual or historical contents, the form of the pure intuition which is that of the æsthetic and artistic activity. Whoever returns to treat of art as a product of feeling, after this discovery of the pure intuition, falls back from the determinate to the semi-determinate, and is at the mercy of all the dangers which arise from it.
As herald of the intuitive element in Historiography.
The theory of historiography owes its progress in like manner to the demonstration that it is impossible to deduce the historical statement from concepts, but that we must deduce it in final analysis from an immediatefeelingof the real, that is to say, from theintuitiveelement, which inevitably exists in every historical reconstruction, as in every perception. On the other hand, and in altogether another sense, reactingagainst the false idea of an extra—subjective historical objectivity, to be found in the mere reproduction of the datum, it was made evident that no historical narration is possible without thereaction of feelingin respect to the datum. Thus was discovered the indispensability of theintellectiveelement in the historical affirmation. Whoever has recourse to feeling as a factor in historiography, after this complete constitution of the historical judgment, returns from the clear to the confused, from light, if not to darkness, then to twilight.
Feeling as herald of the pure concept in philosophical Logic.
The concept of feeling has also been of capital importance in the progress of the Logic of philosophy. For how could we begin to explain that philosophy is constructed with a method altogether different from that of the exact disciplines (natural sciences and mathematics), without denying to those sciences the capacity of conquering the supreme truth, the true truth, full reality, and recognizing such capacity on the other hand to a special function calledfeelingorimmediateknowledge? That function was void, that is to say, undetermined, because defined in a negative and not in a positive manner: feeling was something different from the abstract and arbitrary procedure of theexact sciences, from the abstract intellect, but its true nature was unknown. When this was at last known it was discovered that it was not a question of "feeling" or of "immediate knowledge," but of the intellect itself, in its genuine and uncontaminated nature, its pure and free activity, of intellect asreason,of thought asspeculativethought, of that "immediate knowledge," which is true, intrinsic, perpetualmediation.Whoever henceforth returns to feeling, after the discovery of the pure or speculative concept, and believes it to be the creator of philosophy and of religion, fighting with it against the natural and mathematical sciences, behaves as he who should wish to return to-day to the flint-lock, for the excellent reason that it was an advance upon the bow and the catapult. Thus those who invoke feeling in philosophy are henceforth a little ridiculous. This does not imply that they were not at one time to be taken seriously, for this concept has been of great provisional assistance and has been as it were the compass of the new idea of philosophy.
Analogous function in the Philosophy of the practical.
The same will be the case in the investigation that we have begun of the practical form of the spirit and of the problems to which it gives rise. This concept of feeling has been mingled withthem all, and propositions have been formed, of which we shall indicate the true significance in the proper places. Beginning at once and limiting ourselves solely to the question of the existence of a peculiar practical form, it is easy to understand why it has so often been maintained against the intellectual and theoretical exclusivists, that the will consists, not of knowledge, but of feeling; that the principle of action, far from being an intellectual principle, is sentimental emotion; that in order to produce a volition, reason, ideas, and facts perceived do not suffice, but that it is necessary that all these things be transformed into feelings, which must take possession of the soul; that the base of life lived, that is, of practical life, is not thought, but feeling, and so on. With these formulæ was recognized the peculiarity of the practical activity. The theory of feeling in respect of the practical represents progress as compared with the intellectualistic theory, because the appearance of indeterminateness is progress as compared with bad determinateness, and contains in itself the new and more complete determinateness.
Negation of feeling.
But in this very way of ours of understanding the value of these formulæ, is implied theirresolute negation, when they tend to persist, after having accomplished their function, and to maintain side by side with the theory of the practical a third general form of the spirit, namely feeling. No spiritual fact or manifestation of activity can be adduced, which, examined without superficiality, is not reducible to an act of fancy, intellect and perception, that is, of theory (when it is not at once revealed as an abstraction or as a merely psychological class of these acts); or to an act of utilitarian or ethical volition (when it is not here too a psychological class, variously designated as aspirations, passions, affections, and the like). Let him who will search his spirit and attempt to indicate one single act, differing from the above, as something new and original and deserving of the special denomination of feeling.
Its deductive exclusion.
This constatation of fact (we repeat the warning) is but the first step in the complete philosophical demonstration, which demands that we show not only that a third form does not exist, but thatit cannot exist.This demonstration will be given further on, and will coincide with that of the demonstration of the necessity of the two forms, theoretical and practical; a duality that is unity and a unity that is duality.Recognizing the legitimacy of the demand for a philosophical deduction of the forms of the spirit, and therefore of a deductive exclusion of those that are spurious and wrongly adopted, it seems that if it be somewhat delayed, such a mode of exclusion will also yield clearer results.
Precedence of the theoretical activity.
Freed from the equivocal third term, which is feeling, and now passing to the problem of the relation between the theoretical and the practical activity enunciated, we must in the first place declare the thesis thatthe practical activity presupposes the theoretical.Will is impossible without knowledge; as is knowledge, so is will.
The unity of the spirit and the co-presence of the practical.
In recognizing this precedence of knowledge to will, we do not wish to posit as thinkable a theoretical man or a theoretical moment altogether deprived of will. This would be an unreal abstraction, inadmissible in philosophy, which operates solely with real abstractions, that is, with universal concretes. The forms of the spirit are distinct and not separate, rand when the spirit is found in one of its forms, or isexplicitin it, the other forms are also in it,butimplicit,or, as is also said,concomitant.If theoretical and cognoscitive man were not at the same time volitional, he would not even be able to stand on his feet and look at the sky, and, literally speaking, if he were not alive, he would not be able to think (and thinking is both an act of life and an act of will, which is calledattention).Were he not to will, he would be unable to pass from waking to sleep and from sleep to waking. Thus in order to be purely theoretical, it is necessary to be at the same time in some degree practical; the energy of pure fancy and of pure thought springs from the trunk of volition. Hence the importance of the will for the æsthetic and intellectual life; the will is not theory, nor is it the force that makes grain to grow or guides the course of rivers, but as it assists the culture of grain or restrains the destructive impetus of rivers, so it assists and restrains the force of fancy and of thought, causing them to act in the best way, that is, to be as they really ought to be, namely, fancy and thought in their purest manifestation. The practical activity, therefore, acts in this way, and as it drags the man of science from his study and the artist from his studio, if it be necessary to defend his country or to watch at the bedsideof his sick father, so it commands the artist and the man of science to fulfil their special mission and to be themselves in an eminent degree.
Critique of pragmatism.
All the arguments that have been used in the past and that are used in the present, to maintain the dependence of the theoretical upon the practical activity, are of value for what of truth they contain, that is, only to demonstrate this unity of the spiritual functions that we have recognized, and the indispensability of the volitional force for the health of the cognoscitive spirit. But the passage from this thesis to the other, that the true is the production of the will, is nothing but a sophism, founded on the double signification of the word "production." It should be clear that toassistthe work of thought with the will is one thing and that tosubstitutethe will for the work of thought is another. To claim to substitute the will for the work of thought, is equivalent to the negation of that force that should be assisted; it is the most open proclamation of scepticism, the most complete distrust of the true and of the possibility of attaining to it. This attempt is now calledpragmatism,or is at any rate one of the meanings of the word, with which the school of the greatest confusion that has ever appeared inphilosophy adorns itself in our day. This school mixes together the most divergent theses—that of the stimulating effect that the will has upon thought, that other of the volitional or arbitrary moment, by means of which perceptions and historical data are reduced to abstract types in the natural disciplines, or postulates laid down for the construction of mathematical classes. The third form, which might be called the Baconian prejudice, maintains the exclusive utility of the natural sciences and mathematics for the well-being of life. The fourth thesis is positivistic: here it is maintained that we cannot know anything save what we ourselves arbitrarily compress into the formula and classes of mathematics and of naturalism. The fifth thesis is a romantic exaggeration of the principle of creative power in man, substituting the caprice of the individual for the universal spirit. The sixth, something between silliness and Jesuistry, recommends the utility of making one's illusions and believing them to be true. The seventh is superstitious, occultist and spiritistic—and there are others that we omit. If pragmatism has had and preserves any attraction, it owes this to the truth of its first and second theses and to the half truth of the fifth. All the three are however heterogeneousin themselves and unreconcilable with the others, which are most fallacious. But we repeat with the old philosophers that whoever in thinking says, "Thus I will it," is lost for truth.
Critique of psychological objections.
Certain reservations that are made to the above truth from the point of view of that philosophy, which we have called psychological, are scarcely deserving of brief mention. We find in treatises of Psychology that knowledge does precede the practical act, but only in the higher forms of volition, whereas in its lower forms are found only impulses, tendencies, appetites, altogether blind of any knowledge. Thus they are able to talk of involuntary forms of the practical activity, of a will that is not a will, when once the true will has been defined, as precisely appetition illumined by previous knowledge. Theblind willof certain metaphysicians is derived from such excogitations of psychologists, who make of it a practical act without intelligence. They have here attributed the value of reality to a crude concept of class, a thing that happens not infrequently. A blind will is however unthinkable. Every form of the practical activity, be it as poor and rudimentary as you like (and let as many classes and gradations as you will be formed), presupposes knowledgeof some sort. In animals too? will be asked. In animals too, provided they be, and in so far as they are centres of life, and so of perceptions and of will. This is also true of vegetables and of minerals, always with the above hypothesis. We must banish every form ofaristocracyfrom the Philosophy of the practical, as we have banished it from Æsthetic, from Logic, from Historic, esteeming it most harmful to the proper understanding of those activities. The aristocratic illusion is closely allied to that one which makes us believe that we, shut up in the egotism of our empirical individuality, are alone aware of the truth, that we alone feel the beautiful, that we alone know how to love, and so on. But reality is democratic.
From the psychological point of view yet another objection has been raised. Knowledge (it is affirmed) cannot be the indispensable base of the will, if, as is the case, the ignorant are often far more effective than many learned men and philosophers. These latter, they say, although possessing very great knowledge, and no less a stock of good intentions, yet do not know how to direct their lives successfully. But it is evident that in these cases the so-called ignorant possess just that knowledge which is necessary for thepurpose and is lacking to the learned and to the philosopher, who would themselves be the ignorant in such a case. Nicholas Macchiavelli was ignorant as compared with Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, when he kept the spectators waiting two hours in the sun, while he was attempting to dispose three thousand infantry according to the directions that he had written. This he would never have succeeded in doing, had not Signor Giovanni, with the help of drummers and in the twinkling of an eye caused them to execute the various manœuvres and afterwards carried Master Nicholas to dine, who, save for him, would not have dined at all that day.[1]