The poles of feeling (pleasure and pain) and their identity with their practical opposites.
Here occurs an opportunity of tying a thread that we had left loose when discussing the theory of feeling, or rather the distinction of feeling into the two poles ofpleasure and pain,understood, not as a psychological distinction of greater or less, or ofmixed states,but as a philosophical distinction ofpure states,or of terms that are truly opposed. When the vague and indeterminate term of "feeling" is directed toward theoretical facts and is determined by theoretical philosophy as æsthetic activity or speculative thought, or in some other way, the terms of pleasure and pain are, strictly speaking, not applicable to it. The pure theoretic activity considered in itself, cannot be polarized, as has been seen; it will always attain to the beautiful, always to the true. Only in so far as the theoretic activity is also practical activity, by the law of the unity of the spirit, will the polarization of good and evil, which in that case are called beautiful and ugly, true and false, take place through it if not in it. If the term "feeling" be on the contrary directed to practical facts, and its synonymity with the practical activity (of which feeling would be adistinguishing characteristic) made clear by the Philosophy of the practical, it is clear that to it belongs immediately and no longer mediately that polarity of good and evil. Good and evil then become what theoreticians of feelingcall pleasure and pain.These terms are identical with the preceding, as feeling is a fact identical with the practical activity, generically considered.
Doctrines concerning pleasure and happiness: critique.
This theory of pain and pleasure, as the synonyms of the practical positive and negative, helps to put an end to a long series of questions arising in connection with such concepts. Above all, the dispute as to whether pleasure be positive or negative will appear to be unfounded, and, therefore, whether pain have a positive or a negative value, or, finally, whether both be negative: unfounded, since "pleasure" means "positive" and "pain" "negative." At the most, it may be admitted that pain has also a positivity, which is however nothing but the positivity of the negative, that is the real existence of the negative pole.—The theory that man always proposes to himself pleasure as an end is, on the contrary, not only not unfounded, but of such evident truth as not to require enunciation, much less efforts to prove it. If pleasure be nothing but activity, it is naturalthat man should have no other end save pleasure, that is, activity, life itself. The correction that has been suggested by others, to the effect that man wills, not indeed pleasure, but activity, of which the outcome is pleasure, has but slight exactitude, for the two terms are not distinguishable, and the result is not separable from the activity; the pleasure of travelling is not separable from travelling. That polemic has value at the most against empiricism, which limits pleasure to an arbitrarily determined group of pleasurable facts, that is to say, circumscribes activity to certain particular manifestations of activity, collected in groups or classes, and substituted for the universal concept. Finally, by means of the identification of pleasure and pain with good and evil in general which we have given, all disputes as to the concept ofhappinessdisappear, as to whether it be or be not distinct from that of the good action, practically coherent, and if man propose to himselfhappinessas an end. "Happiness" is equal to "pleasure," and "pleasure" is equal to "activity." To will the good (that is, to will well and energetically), and to be happy, are the same. The objection raised by some, that man does not will happiness, but a certain happiness, that he does not willpleasure, but a certain pleasure, not the good, but a certain good, is valid; but this only amounts to distinguishing volitional man in the act, from the theory of the will, constructed by the philosopher. If Tizio wishes at this moment to go to bed and Caio to take a moonlight walk, bed and walk are the affairs of Tizio and of Caio; for the philosopher there is no Tizio, no Caio, but man in universal; there is neither bed nor moon, but pleasure and the good.
Empirical concepts relating to good and evil.
The practical activity, the will, which is also strife between good and evil, can be illuminated now from this side and now from that by that indivisible unity, according to the accidents of discourse and the varying situations of life. In this way arises a series of concepts which, in so far as they are unilateral, are empirical, and only become again philosophical in the thought of the unity of which they form part. Thus, to make use of a comparison, space in geometry can be analyzed and split up into a first, second, and third dimension; but as spatiality, it is aunicum,which does not possess either one or two or three dimensions; and when in measuring or constructing plans of measurement, we proceed to think one of these dimensions, we become aware that we cannotthink them, save all three together, or not as three, but as one. The empirical, practical concepts that arise upon the antithetical and dialectical nature of the will, have had much importance, and it is fitting, therefore, that we should mention and explain at least the principal among them.
Duty of being, ideal, inhibitive, and imperative power.
If the situations of life lead to the directing of the attention chiefly to the aspect of the will striving against inaction and arbitrary choice, it is posited in this strife, in this becoming, as something thatis notbutmust be,not asreal,but asideal.If the greatness of the ideal that is to be and to fill the soul with joy, be set in relief in this struggle, then the ideal appears sweet and smiling, as ajoy-bringing and beatific vision.If, on the other hand, the effort of its becoming be set in relief, the ideal can be made into a metaphor, as will opposed to will, as legitimate against rebellious will; and then it assumes a sour, rough, and hard appearance, and the names ofinhibitive or imperative power,in so far as it impedes the will, or promotes liberty.
There is no less opportunity and interest in making clear that relation, from the point of view of the negative term, or of evil. A series of descriptive concepts then appears, whichpresent the consciousness of evil, now as obstinateblindness (cor induratum),now asdisquietandscruple,which induce vigilance and circumspection, now ashumility,which does not permit forgetting how easy it is to slip into evil. But it is worthy of note that the series of words and empirical concepts that serve to illuminate thesatisfactionof the good, thevictorywon over oneself,tranquillityof conscience, is far less rich. Perhaps this arises precisely because there is less practical interest in celebrating the pleasure of victory than in the inculcation of the necessity for strife and the abhorrence of evil. Why draw attention to joy and to repose when man is already too much inclined to allow himself joy and repose; does not Life allow them to itself and cause other problems to follow on each solution, new perils to follow perils overpast, and the necessity for new struggles? It is therefore of importance to direct the greater sum of attention to those aspects from which the eye is most frequently turned aside. Finally, these various aspects can be placed in relation with the greater or less frequency with which each appears in individuals, thus arriving at the construction of the concepts ofvirtue and vice,and of the models ofthe virtuous man, the honestman, the deliberate man, the clever man,and their opposites,the vicious, the dishonest, the unreflective, the incapable man,and so on.
Their incapacity for setting as practical principles.
The same thing happens with these empirical practical concepts as with all the other empirical concepts, of which we have spoken in general. They have been stiffened into philosophical concepts, for the hasty satisfaction of the philosophical need of man. Hence, among others, many of the disputes as to the principle of the Philosophy of the practical. Some indeed maintain that such a principle is to be found induty or the imperative; others in the idea or the ideal, others in the joy of good, others in the abhorrence of pain, others in virtue, others in enthusiasm,and so on. Each of the above-mentioned theoreticians has the sharpest eyes for the discovery of the defects in the theories of others, but is short-sighted as regards his own. Those who maintain the ideal satirize the form of the categoric imperative as suggestive of police orgendarmerie;those of the imperative and of duty deride the quietist form and the insipid ecstasy proper to the contemplation of ideals; those of the avoidance of pain do not spare their sarcasms for the hunters of joy; those of joy call these plunged in sorrow hypocrites, who also obtainenjoyments for themselves, if in no other way, then secretly:si non caste, caute.The truth is that all are wrong as philosophers, because they all find the principle of the will, not in itself but in an empirical concept, which gives to it an abstract and mutilated appearance. And, on the other hand, all are right, because those aspects are all real, and in each one of them the others can be implicitly shown. The categoric imperative, for instance, contains in itself both the will, which, in so far as it commands itself, is the true will, the joy of being and the sorrow of not being what we wish to be, the ideal, and the necessity of self-realization, and so of entering into strife against irreality, thus becoming imperative, and so on.
Its characteristics.
If none of the formulæ given above, owing to their empirical character, be able to indicate with precision the principle of the Philosophy of the practical, and all are more or less convenientsynecdoches,for this reason none of those concepts are to be treated as rigorous concepts. If they be so treated, there is not one of them, however justified it may seem to be, that is not able to cause rebellions and has not done so. The type of the dutiful man has been reproached with being so much preoccupiedwith duty that he does not really perform it, because he forgets the impulse of the heart; of the type of the virtuous man it is said that he, as it were, ceases from being so by the very fact that virtue becomes in him a profession; of the type of the honest man, that there is nothing more base than the race of honest men; of the type of thepious Aeneas,that his piety is egoism; and in general of all these cases it has been recalled that a little vice is necessary for virtue, as alloy for metals. Repentance and remorse, too, although they be highly recommended as means of purification, have had their detractors; does it not suffice (they say) that an evil deed has been committed? Must the offence be aggravated by losing time over it, as though anything could be remedied with sorrowing and lamentation? But others have replied that, given human iniquity, it is better to exceed in the matter of remorse than to pass rapidly over it. Humility has been opposed with thesume superbiamas being more virile, and with thelaudum immensa cupidoas being more noble; the habit of self-tormenting with theservite domino in laetitia,as, on the other hand, the over-confident has been admonished with that other not less biblical dictum:beatushomo qui semper est pavidus.These are objections and replies that may all of them have value for the empirical situations to which they refer; but they have neither truth nor value in philosophy, for which they are all of them false, because the distinctions from which they derive are not philosophical. Remorse, for instance, has a value, not in itself, but as a passage to activity, without which such passage would not take place; the virtuous habit has a value, not in itself, but in so far as it is practised and constantly preserved; duty cannot differ from the aspiration of the soul, and both cannot differ from the volitional act; confidence is at the same time trepidation, and humility must be one with the pride of merit. To sum up, for, the philosopher, the dialectic of the will is all in the concept of will, with its polarization of good and evil, which is the actuality and concreteness of that concept.
[1]Rom. vii 19.
[1]Rom. vii 19.
[2]Rom. vii.
[2]Rom. vii.
The multiplicity of volitions and the struggle for unity.
If the volitions followed one another, so to speak monadistically, each one shut up in itself, simple, impenetrable, indecomposible, it would be impossible to understand the moment that there is in them of arbitrary choice, of evil, of contradiction. But it is not so. The individual is solicited simultaneously by many or, more exactly, by infinite volitions, because the individual is at every moment a microcosm and in him is reflected the whole cosmos, and he reacts against the whole cosmos by willing in all directions. This infinity of volitions that is in every individual, can be proved by a very obvious fact: by what occurs in the contemplation of works of art, in which the same individual is able to reconstruct in himself the most various actions and psychological situations, and to feel himself in turn mild and sanguinary, austere and voluptuous, Achilles and Thersites. Thiswould not happen, had he not to some extent in himself the experience of all these various volitional attitudes. But even if we wish to restrict ourselves to those volitions that are the most closely connected with the historical situation, thus limited as well as may be (every historical situation is in reality a cosmic situation), restricting ourselves to what are called volitions of the moment, we have always, if not a chaos, certainly a multiplicity, or at the least a duality, of volitions. Were the individual to abandon himself to that chaos, to that multiplicity, to that duality, he would instantly be lacerated, broken in pieces, destroyed. But he does not abandon himself to it, for he is an individual, volitional and operating just because he renounces that feigned richness of the infinite and that pernicious richness of multiplicity or duality, limiting himself on each occasion to one single volition, which is the volition corresponding to the given situation.
Multiplicity and unity as bad and good.
This volition is consequently the result of a struggle in which the individual drives back all the other infinite volitions, to attach himself to that one alone which the given situation must and does arouse in him. And when the given volition does not affirm itself fully in this struggle,he falls a victim to multiplicity, in which is found that arbitrary choice attached to a volition which is not the one that should be willed, which he feels he wills and that he does will in a way. Hence the will becomes split up in different directions and contradictory, action not positive but negative, not truly action, but rather passivity.
The multiplicity of volitions explains then the moment of arbitrary choice, of evil, in the practical activity. This could be defined as thevolition that conquers the volitions,as its contrary arbitrary choice isthe contest of volitions with volition.
Excluded volitions and the passions or desires.
The volitions that are driven back on every occasion and excluded, to make way for the volitional act, are variously denominated in ordinary speech and by psychologists asappetites, tendencies, impulses, affections, wishes, velleities, desires, aspirations, passions.But, as is usual with us, we do not intend to compose and defend such classes in a naturalistic and psychological sense, nor consequently to distinguish appetite from desire, or affection from passion, with boundaries that must of necessity be arbitrary and undulating. What is of real importance is only the distinction and the precise boundary, notarbitrary but real, between the volition and volitions, or, as we can now say, the relation between true and propervolitionandthe passions or desires.
Passions and desires as possible volitions.
Passions or desires are and are not volitions: they are not volitions in respect to the volitional synthesis, which, by excluding, annuls them as such; they are on the other hand volitions, if considered in themselves, for they are capable of constituting the centre of new syntheses in changed conditions. It has been said that we cannotwill the impossible,but that we can perfectly welldesire it.That is not exact, because the impossible, the contradictory, cannot even be the object of desire. No one wishes to find himself at the same moment in two different places, or to construct a triangle that should be at the same time a square: and even if such absurd wishes be manifested in words, the words will be absurd, but the desires will either be different from what is stated, or they will not exist even as desires. In a certain aspect all desires are desires of the impossible (and not only some of them), if, that is to say, we consider them as volitions that have not been realized and which cannot be realized at that moment: but from another point of view, they are all possible, and can indeed be precisely defined aspossiblevolitions.This is proved by their becoming gradually actual as the actual situation changes. If (to choose a very simple illustration) an individual engaged in a certain work repel the desire for food and sleep with his volition and action, that desire is nothing at that point, as actual volition; but it does not for that reason lose its intrinsic volitional character, for when the hour for the repast or for sleep has struck, it passes from possibility to actuality and becomes the will for food and sleep. The sophism previously criticized, by means of which a bad and unsuccessful act, that is to say one that is dominated by passion and caprice, is justified by proving that it has had a legitimate motive and answers to a good intention, appeals to this character of possibility, possessed by all desires, and artfully changes it into a character of actuality, thus substituting for the given the imagined situation.
Volition as conflict with the passions.
The relation that we have defined between volition and passions or desires explains why the will has often seemed to be nothing but a conflict with the passions, and life itself a battle (vivere militare est,) and at other times itself nothing but passions. The will is indeed homogeneous with the passions, and is opposed, notto the nature of the passions, which is its own nature, but to their multiplicity. For this reason, it has been said that only passion acts upon the passions: for the will is a passion among passions. Even the poet or the philosopher, who frees himself from the passions by objectifying them and making them material for æsthetic contemplation or for speculative research, succeeds in so doing, only because he is able to affirm the passion over the passions: the passion for poetry or for philosophy.
Critique of the freedom of choice.
We must however beware of enunciating this relation in a false form, as happens with the theory calledfreedom of choice,where the will is conceived as the faculty that chooses one volition from among others and makes it its own. The will does not choose a volition (save metaphorically), but so to speak chooses the choice itself, or makes itself will among the desires which are not will. Nor should the possible actions that are excluded be looked upon as constituting a graduation in respect to the spirit, which should willaand notb, c, d, e,and so on, attributing to them, nevertheless, different values, which can be symbolized by the declining series of numbers, passing downward from the will which is 10, to 9, 8, 7, 6, and so on. In reality, thevolitions that are excluded (b, c, d, e) have no actual value, for the very reason that they are excluded. They may acquire it in other situations different from the one analyzed, but it is not possible to present the various situations together in one, and far less to determine them quantitatively and numerically, otherwise than in a symbolical manner. The propositions that present the will sometimes as thestrongestvolition in respect to the passions or desires, and sometimes as theweakestin respect to the passions, which seem to be the strongest, that is, according as we consider the active or the passive moment of the will, its victory or defeat, are also metaphorical and symbolical.
Significance of the so-called precedence of feeling over the volitional act.
The relation established receives further light from the generally admitted theory of the necessary precedence of thefeelingsas condition for the volitional act. The volitional act is preceded by a jostling multiplicity of volitions, by a swarm of passions and desires, which it dominates; and therefore it may seem that it follows, not the volition, but something different from the volition, to be calledfeeling.It is certainly different, but only because it is thepluralof thatsingular.The nature of the passions and desires in respect to the volitional act has not been clearly elucidated,and this is another of the reasons that have caused the customary category of "feeling" to appear and to be retained.
Polipathicism and apathicism.
Finally and always through the established relation, the two opposed theories concerning the passions are excluded: that which makes the efficacious explanation of practical life to consist in giving free course to the passions, holding them all to be sacred as such: this theory could be calledpolipathicism; the other, which makes it consist of the eradication and destruction of all the passions, in order to give place to the exclusive domination of reason, of rational will, or of the will that really is will, and could therefore be calledapathicism.
Polipathicism has the defect of not taking account among the passions of that which is passionpar excellence,and which alone becomes actual, driving away the others: the will. Apathicism naturally possesses the opposite defect and takes account only of the will, and therefore not of that either, for the will becomes impotent when alone, just as in the other case it becomes a chaotic jumble of all the passions.
Erroneousness of both opposed theses.
Such views as these are so openly unsustainable that they hardly appear at all in theirstrictness and purity, in the course of the history of philosophy, and then fugitively. But it is desirable to be attentive not to identify the theoretic formulæ given above with the programmes of certain groups, sects, associations, or individuals who have verbally proclaimed polipathicism and apathicism, whereas they have implied something very different, and could not have done otherwise. Complete polipathicism and complete apathicism could only be attained by the individual at the cost of disaggregation and annihilation. At the most, sects, groups, societies, and individuals have been able to conform to those formulæ as the simple expression oftendencies;or those formulæ are applicable to them byhyperbole,in the condemnation that it has been held desirable to inflict upon certain unhealthy tendencies. Certainly there are individuals whose passions are in such slight control as to suggest the absence of will; they run after every one of their desires, or leave their soul open to the onset of the passions that devastate it as the wind and the hail do the fields. Lorenzo the Magnificent (symbolizing with his wonted finesse a profoundly philosophical conflict) said to his son Piero, who was addicted to every pleasure and caprice: "And I never have any wish but yourealize it for yourself."[1]The young rake whose adventures were sung by De Musset may afford an example of the same disaggregation, composed of the most violent kind of passions:
Ce n'était pas Rolla qui gouvernait sa vie:C'étaient ses passions; il les laissait aller,Comme un pâtre assoupi regarde l'eau couler....
But even in these extreme and typical cases the will and the dominion of the passions are never altogether absent: otherwise it would be impossible to live, not only a lifetime, but a day, an hour, a minute. Thus too on the other hand, no individual, be he ever so apathetic and ascetic, ever frees himself altogether from the dominion of the passions and the desires. We read in the life of some saint or beatified personage, whose name escapes me, how he had attained to so great a degree of perfection that whatever food he put into his mouth, he tasted nothing but dry straw. Leaving to specialists the inquiry as to how a stomach of so slight a capacity for distinguishing one aliment from another could perform its function, and also as to the consequences for social productiveness of so strangely perfected an individual, it is certain that in order to nourishhimself and live, the saint in question must have had the periodical appetite or desire of straw for his food, if for nothing else. Apathy too is often nothing but a most violent and tenacious, though disordered, passion for ease. Activity in any case reasserts itself with the dissolving of apathy, a state nigh to inertia and to death, when it dissolvesgrata vice veris et Favoni,that is, with the appearance of the desires, of those "suave impulses," those "heart-beats," that pain, and that pleasure, which Giacomo Leopardi depicted in hisRisorgimento,overcome with astonishment, as though face to face with the mystery of life.
Their historical and contingent meanings.
The formulæ of polipathicism and of apathicism have had other contingent and historical meanings, but of a positive nature, which it is fitting to examine, in order to prevent the usual passage, so fruitful of errors, from philosophical to empirical theses. The return to the world and to nature, which is one of the characteristics of the Renaissance and of the Reformation itself; the rights of the passions, which is one of the traits of Romanticism in its initial period; neo-paganism, which has given to the Italy of our day its most lofty poetry in the work of Giosuè Carducci, were each in their turn nothing but beneficial reactions against the lazy monastic life of the Middle Ages,against Protestant pedantry, against degenerate Romanticism, which despised the real world and dreamed of contradictory ideals. On the other hand, in different times and circumstances, Christian ascesis, Franciscan poverty, and Puritan strictness were beneficial reactions. So true is this, that we are wont to unite in our admiration heroes of abstinence and heroes of the passions, assertors of the spirit and assertors of the flesh, for all, in different ways, because in different historical situations, willed always the elevation of humanity. Every one of those historical manifestations can be and has been blamed and satirized, but only in its decadence, where it has exhausted its proper function, and is no longer truly itself, but its own mask.—The friars of the stories of the sixteenth century are not the companions of St. Francis, as the indecent Italians of the late Renaissance are not the active merchants, philologists, and artists who promoted it, nor is there a greater lack of historical sense than the transference of the characteristics of the one to the other, as is the way of vulgar detractors and apologists. One and the same historical fact (as has been brilliantly said) always shows itself twice: the first time astragedy,the second ascomedy.
The domination of the passions and the will.
The cases that we have recorded, which have seemed to represent unbridled or exhausted passion, possess not a pathological but a physiological character, in so far as they really consist of a domination, a volitional synthesis, which conquers and contains divergent and ruinous passions. And with this we have answered the question as to whether or no the passions can be dominated, and whether man be slave or free. We can dominate them, and in that domination is life; if we do not dominate them, we advance to meet death; to dominate or not to dominate them are the very poles of the will, positive and negative, and we cannot think of the one as being abolished without thinking of the other as also abolished.
But the labour of dominating them is hard, as all life, "sweet life," is hard. The passions, driven back and restrained again and again by the will, yet rage within us, tumultuous, though conquered. We tear out the cumbersome plants, but not their roots and seeds. The man who considers himself hardened to the trials of life, still feels and suffers: the man who seems calm is yet always agitated within. As the labour that is called physical deposits poison at the base of the organism; so does the labour called spiritual in the depths of the soul. Hence the bitternessin those men who have willed and laboured much; hence theircupio dissolvi,their aspiration for that bourne where all is peace. The poet sublimely imagines old Luther, after his victories, in the midst of the people awakened by him to a new life:
Yet with a backward look, he sighed:Call me, O God, to thee, for I am tired,Nor without malediction can I pray!
[1]L. Domenichi,Della scelta de motti, burle et facetie(Firenze, 1566), p. 14.
[1]L. Domenichi,Della scelta de motti, burle et facetie(Firenze, 1566), p. 14.
Passions and states of the soul.
Just because the passions are possible volitions and therefore always have a definite content, it is no slight error on the part of writers of treatises, to consider joy and sorrow, enthusiasm and depression, content and discontent, tranquillity and remorse, and other antithetical couples, as passions. These couples are empirical concepts constructed upon the dialectical distinction of freedom and anti-freedom, of good and evil; but the groups of the passions must on the contrary be empirical concepts formed upon the basis of the varying determination of the volitional activity, according toobjects,that is to say, in itsparticulardeterminations. Thus we can talk of the passion for celebrity, for science, for art, for politics, for riches, for luxury, for women, for the country, for the city, for sport, for fishing, and so on, with infinite subdivisions and complications.
Passions understood as volitional habits.
The distinction usually drawn between the affections, the impulses, the desires on the one hand and the passions on the other, is on the contrary justified, though it always has an empirical character; these being considered, not as the single and instantaneous desire or impulse that prompts to a single action, but as an inclination or habit of wishing and of willing in a certain direction. In this sense, passion would be a generic concept (always empirical), which could be divided (empirically) into the classes of the virtues and vices; for virtue is nothing but the passion or habit of rational actions, and vice the contrary.
Their importance.
These passions and volitional habits are not rigidly fixed, for nothing in the field of facts is rigidly fixed. As the bed of the river regulates the course of the river and is at the same time continuously modified by it, so is it with the passions and volitional acts, which reality keeps forming and modifying, and in modifying, forms anew and in forming modifies. For this reason there is always something arbitrary in defining habits as though they corresponded to a distinct and limited reality; and for this reason the concepts of them are arbitrary and empirical. Habits are not categories, nor do they give riseto distinct concepts; but they are the like in the unlike, unlike, itself also, in itself, although discernible in a certain way from other groups of dissimilar facts. Their importance is great, because they constitute, as it were, the bony structure of the body of reality. In themindividualityunderstood as an empirical concept, has its foundation, for which, if it be not substance, neither is it a complex of casually divergent states.
The control of the passions in so far as they are volitional habits.
The nature of the passions as volitional habits to be both fixed and mobile, that is to say, only relatively fixed and relatively mobile, is the principle that aids the solution of several much-debated and certainly important questions of the Philosophy of the practical. And in the first place, the passions being understood as habits, the answer to the question as to whether or no they can be controlled, and if the answer be in the affirmative, then in what limits, receives a somewhat different meaning, which explains the interest which that question has always aroused. Nothing, in fact, removes our consciousness of freedom and personality in so brutal a manner and makes us feel our impotence and misery in so depressing a way, as to find ourselves with our good intention and action hardly begun, face toface with the unchained forces of our passions and of the habits that oppose it, which drown with their deafening clamour the weak and timid voice of the incipient action, vex it with their arrogance, and drag it along paths well known and abhorred. We fall then into mistrust and baseness, believe ourselves lost for ever; freedom and will seem to be fables for the adornment of sermons and the books of moralists. The sage who recalls to man the absolute empire that he possesses over his passions and exhorts him never to be troubled and to repeat the twenty or four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, so that the spirit may have time to recuperate its strength, to resist and to conquer, seems to utter the insipid babble of one who has never truly loved and hated, and to measure the full and overflowing souls of others on the model of his own empty or almost empty soul. We laugh freely at the "short legs" of ideals and good intentions, and read again with satisfaction not undiluted with bitterness, some little story like Voltaire'sMemnon ou la sagesse humaine,which bears as motto the very appropriate epigraph:
Nous tromper dans nos entreprises,C'est à quoi nous sommes sujets:Le matin je fais des projets,Et le long du jour des sottises;
or at the most they conclude that there is no way to free oneself from a bad passion save with another one equally bad, from a vice with a vice, "as from a plank we pluck with nail a nail."
Difficulty and reality of dominating them.
Nevertheless, he who torments himself and gets angry, or laughs and draws such conclusions as these, is not in the right. That is to say, he is right to laugh at ingenuous sages and at odious preachers and moralists, for their theories are certainly simplicist and false. But he is wrong in not understanding that his own theory is also simplicist and false, for it runs into the opposite extreme.—Habits and passions are habits and passions, because slowly formed: it is therefore a vain illusion to attempt to destroy them at a blow. Perhaps it is believed that the passions are tender flowerets or grasses that a child has attached to the surface of the soil? They are a rank growth, strong oaks whose roots dive deep into the earth!—That is most true, but it is not for this reason impossible to modify and destroy them. They are indeed actually modified, for that very pain, that very disappointment, are a beginning of modification; since we do not persist in what we abhor and follow, dragged along by force; and little by little we end by freeing ourselves. The process of freeingourselves from the passions, or from vicious habits, then, is effective, but slow, as the formation of those habits has been slow. We do not cure an illness with a sudden act of will, but nevertheless the will guides and directs the process of healing, and can open or close the entrance to the medicinal forces of nature. Now the passions or vicious habits are maladies that must follow their course, which, in order to be beneficial, must coincide with the cure. The sages who give receipts for freeing ourselves from them immediately are the Dulcamaras of moral maladies; but the existence of the Dulcamaras should not impel us to deny the existence of doctors, and above all of ourselves as doctors of ourselves. And we should certainly adopt a very bad and illusory method of cure, were we to accept the method so often recommended, of destroying passion with passion, or vice with vice, thus adding vice to vice, as those who treat the illnesses of the body with narcotics or with stimulants often add malady to malady.
Volitional habits and individuality.
Habits, then, not less than single volitional acts, of which they were and are composed, can be and are continually conquered and modified, in so far as they are opposed to the new volitional syntheses. This confirms what has already beensaid in criticizing the polipathetic view, which ignores the volition for the volitions, as the virtuous habit is ignored in favour of vicious habits. But the theory of apathicism is also to be found in this field, and it is needful to assert in opposition to it, the great importance proper to the volitional habits in giving concrete form to virtue. This second critical thesis is that which affirms the value ofindividuality or peculiarityin the practical field.
Negations of individuality for uniformity and their critique.
Every individual is furnished by mother nature with certain definite habits, according to the contingencies of reality among which he enters the world; and he acquires yet others in the course of life, owing to the actual conditions through which he passes and to the works that he accomplishes. Those habits which he has from birth are called aptitudes, dispositions, natural tendencies: the others acquired. The individual in his reality is, as has been said, nothing but these groups of habits and changes as they change. Now is it rational and possible (the two questions here form one) that the individual in his willing and acting should rid himself of such habits? Is it possible to consider them as things without value? Is it possible to establish an antithesis between individualityand rational action, as between good and evil?—The levellers who claim to impose the same task upon all and wish to make of the female a male, of the poet a reasoner, of the man of science a warrior, of the saint a man of business, and thus to give to every one a part of the task of others;—the dreamers of a future society, in which all this shall have been done, and the poet should attend to his poem, after having played the philosopher for a couple of hours, for another couple of hours the tailor, and for yet another two the waiter at an inn;—all the pedants of abstract regularity, whom we meet to our great annoyance in life;—behold the apathicists appear anew, for, as in the theory of the volitional act, they advocated an abstract action, conducted by the rational will alone in the void of the passions; so here, they advocate an abstract rational habit, in the theory of volitional habits, a model of human activity, to which all individuals would be obliged to conform. Perhaps some such sensible observation as this of Vauvenargues should suffice to confute them:Il ne faut pas beaucoup de réflexion pour faire cuire un poulet; et, cependant, nous voyons des hommes qui sont toute leur vie mauvais rôtisseurs: tant il est nécessaire dans tous lesmétiers, d'y être appelé par un instinct particulier et comme indépendant de la raison.But since it might be said that we wish to solve a grave question with a joke, we will recall that the volitional acts and the passions, volition and the volitions, are of the same nature (though the one is actual and the others only possible), and that the nature of willing implies actual definite situations, and that for this reason we never will in universal but always in particular. In the same way virtue, the virtuous habit of the will, is not of a different nature to the volitional habits in general, to the passions, but is particular and individual as they are. Those who make war upon individual habits never succeed in substituting for them a universal habit, which is inconceivable, but at the most other habits, equally particular and individual. The poet who will play the farmer, the tailor, and the waiter, in the imagined society of the future, will do all these things as a poet. This may perhaps be an advantage, but may also perhaps be the contrary, as future consumers of grain, of garments, and of repasts will become aware. For the rest, do we not even now see women devoting themselves to the severe studies of philology, of philosophy, and of mathematics?But with the rarest exceptions, they remain always women: their production, which is without originality, is not like that of man, done with the complete dedication of the whole being to the search for truth and of artistic perfection; and if in the midst of the most abstruse inquiry, the image of themselves as wife or mother pass through their minds, they desert, at the critical moment, the philosophical categories, the formulæ of flexions, the ruled or tangential spaces, and sigh for their unborn sons and for the husband that they have not found. Is this distortion of natural habits useful? Generally speaking, it is not. It is a doing and an undoing, a despisal of the riches wisely accumulated and capitalized by Reality in the course of its evolution.
Temperament and character. Indifference of temperament.
Certainly the disposition natural or acquired is not virtue, and thetemperament(since temperament is nothing but the sum of habits and aptitudes) is notcharacter.But virtue and character presuppose habits and passions, of which they give the rational and volitional synthesis: they are the form of that matter. And as matter considered in the abstract is neither good nor bad, so the habits and the passions (as has been very well observed) are not in themselves either virtues or vices: theyare facts. And it is necessary to take account of facts; otherwise, they revenge themselves. On the other hand, habits and passions certainly change; but not all of a sudden and capriciously, rather, little by little, and always on the basis of existing habits and passions.