Chapter IV: Other Particular Doctrines (3)

This confirms the truth of the ordinary remark to the effect that he who reasons ill, also speaks and writes ill, that exact logical analysis is the basis of good expression. This truth is a tautology, for to reason well is in fact to express oneself well, because the expression is the intuitive possession of one's own logical thought. The principle of contradiction itself is at bottom nothing but the æsthetic principle of coherence. It may be maintained that it is possible to write and to speak exceedingly well, as it is also possible to reason well though starting from erroneous concepts; that some, though lacking the acuteness that makes a great discoverer, are nevertheless exceedingly lucid writers; because to write well depends upon having a clear intuition of one's own thought, even if it be erroneous; not of its scientific, but of its æsthetic truth, which indeed is the same thing as writing well. A philosopher like Schopenhauer can imagine that art is a representation of the Platonic ideas. This doctrine is scientifically false, yet he may develop this false knowledge in excellent prose, æsthetically most true. But we have already replied to these objections, when observing that at that precise point where a speaker or a writer enunciates an ill-thought concept, he is at the same time a bad speaker and a bad writer, although he may afterwards recover himself in the many other parts of his thought which contain true propositions not connected with the preceding error, and therefore lucid expressions following upon confused expressions.

[Sidenote: _Reformed logic._]

All researches as to the forms of judgements and of syllogisms, their conversions and their various relations, which still encumber treatises on Logic, are therefore destined to diminish, to be transformed, to be converted into something else. The doctrine of the concept and of the organism of concepts, of definition, of system, of philosophy and the various sciences, and the like, will occupy the field and alone will constitute true and proper Logic.

Those who first had some suspicion of the intimate connexion between Æsthetic and Logic and conceived Æsthetic as a _Logic of sensible knowledge_ were peculiarly addicted to applying logical categories to the new knowledge, talking of _æsthetic concepts, æsthetic judgements, æsthetic syllogisms,_ and so on. We who are less superstitious as regards the permanence of the traditional Logic of the schools, and better informed as to the nature of Æsthetic, do not recommend the application of Logic to Æsthetic, but the liberation of Logic from æsthetic forms. These have given rise to non-existent forms or categories of Logic, due to the adoption of altogether arbitrary and ill-considered distinctions.

Logic thus reformed will still be _formal_ Logic; it will study the true form or activity of thought, the concept, excluding individual and particular concepts. The old Logic is ill called formal; it would be better to call it _verbal_ or _formalistic._ Formal Logic will drive out formalistic Logic. To attain this object, it will not be necessary to have recourse, as some have done, to a real or material Logic, which is no longer a science of thought, but thought itself in action; not only a Logic, but the whole of Philosophy, in which Logic is also included. The science of thought (Logic) is that of the concept, as that of imagination (Æsthetic) is that of expression. The well-being of both sciences lies in exactly carrying out in every particular the distinction between the two domains.

_Note to the Fourth Italian Edition._--The observations contained in this chapter on Logic, which are not all of them clear or accurate, should be clarified and corrected by means of the further treatment of the theme in the second volume of the _Philosophy of the Spirit,_ dedicated to Logic, where the distinction between logical and historical propositions is again examined and their synthetic unity demonstrated.

VI

THE THEORETIC ACTIVITY AND THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY

The intuitive and intellectual forms contain between them, as we have said, the whole theoretic domain of the spirit. But it is not possible to know them thoroughly, nor to criticize another series of erroneous æsthetic theories, without first establishing clearly the relations of the theoretic spirit with the _practical_ spirit.

[Sidenote: _The will._]

The practical form or activity is the _will._ We do not here employ this word in the sense of some philosophical systems, where the will is the foundation of the universe, the ground of things and the true reality. Nor do we employ it in the wide sense of other systems, which understand by will the energy of the spirit, spirit or activity in general, making of every act of the human spirit an act of will. Neither such metaphysical nor such metaphorical meaning is ours. For us, the will is, as generally understood, that activity of the spirit which differs from the merely theoretical contemplation of things, and is productive, not of knowledge, but of actions. Action is really action, in so far as it is voluntary. It is not necessary to remark that in the will to do, we include, in the scientific sense, also what is usually called not-doing: the will to resist, to reject, the will of a Prometheus, which also is action.

[Sidenote: _The will as an ulterior stage in respect to knowledge._]

Man understands things with the theoretical form, with the practical form he changes them; with the one he appropriates the universe, with the other he creates it. But the first form is the basis of the second; and the relation of _double degree,_ which we have already found existing between æsthetic and logical activity, is repeated between these two on a larger scale. A knowing independent of the will is thinkable, at least in a certain sense; will independent of knowing is unthinkable. Blind will is not will; true will has eyes.

How can we will, without having before us historical intuitions (perceptions) of objects, and knowledge of (logical) relations, which enlightens us as to the nature of those objects? How can we really will, if we do not know the world which surrounds us or how to change things by acting upon them?

[Sidenote: _Objections and explanations._]

It has been objected that men of action, practical men _par excellence,_ are the least disposed to contemplate and to theorize: their energy is not delayed in contemplation, it rushes at once into will. And conversely, that contemplative men, philosophers, are often very mediocre in practical matters, weak willed, and therefore neglected and thrust aside in the tumult of life. It is easy to see that these distinctions are merely empirical and quantitative. Certainly, the practical man has no need of a philosophical system in order to act, but in the spheres where he does act, he starts from intuitions and concepts which are perfectly clear to him. Otherwise the most ordinary actions could not be willed. It would not be possible to will to feed oneself, for instance, without knowledge of the food, and of the link of cause and effect between certain movements and certain satisfactions. Rising gradually to the more complex forms of action, for example to the political, how could we will anything politically good or bad without knowing the real conditions of society, and consequently the means and expedients to be adopted? When the practical man feels himself in the dark about one or more of these points, or when he is seized with doubt, action either does not begin or stops. It is then that the theoretical moment, which in the rapid succession of human actions is hardly noticed and rapidly forgotten, becomes important and occupies consciousness for a longer time. And if this moment be prolonged, then the practical man may become a Hamlet, divided between desire for action and his deficient theoretical clarity as regards the situation and the means to be employed. And if he develop a taste for contemplation and discovery, and leave willing and acting, to a greater or less extent, to others, there is formed in him the calm disposition of the artist, of the man of science, or of the philosopher, who in practice are sometimes incompetent or downright immoral. These observations are all obvious. Their exactitude cannot be denied. Let us, however, repeat that they are founded on quantitative distinctions and do not disprove but confirm the fact that an action, however slight it be, cannot really be an action, that is, an action that is willed, unless it be preceded by the cognitive activity.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of practical judgements or judgements of value._]

Some psychologists, on the other hand, place before practical action an altogether special class of judgements, which they call _practical_ judgements or _judgements of value._ They say that in order to resolve on performing an action there must have been a judgement to the effect: "this action is useful, this action is good." And at first sight this seems to have the testimony of consciousness on its side. But closer observation and analysis of greater subtlety reveal that such judgements follow instead of preceding the affirmation of the will, and are nothing but the expression of the volition already exercised. A good or useful action is an action willed. It will always be impossible to distil a single drop of usefulness or goodness from the objective study of things. We do not desire things because we know them to be good or useful; but we know them to be good and useful, because we desire them. Here too, the rapidity with which the facts of consciousness follow one another has given rise to an illusion. Practical action is preceded by knowledge, but not by practical knowledge, or rather, knowledge of the practical: to obtain this, we must first have practical action. The third moment, therefore, of practical judgements, or judgements of value, is altogether imaginary. It does not come between the two moments or degrees of theory and practice. For the rest, normative sciences in general, which regulate or command, discover and indicate values to the practical activity, do not exist; indeed none exist for any sort of activity, since every science presupposes that activity to be already realized and developed, which it afterwards takes as its object.

[Sidenote: _Exclusion of the practical from the æsthetic._]

These distinctions established, we must condemn as erroneous every theory which annexes the æsthetic activity to the practical, or introduces the laws of the second into the first. That science is theory and art practice has been many times affirmed. Those who make this statement, and look upon the æsthetic fact as a practical fact, do not do so capriciously or because they are groping in the void; but because they have their eye on something which is really practical. But the practical which they aim is not Æsthetic, nor within Æsthetic; it is _outside and beside it_; and although often found united, they are not united necessarily or by the bond of identity of nature.

The æsthetic fact is altogether completed in the expressive elaboration of impressions. When we have achieved the word within us, conceived definitely and vividly a figure or a statue, or found a musical motive, expression is born and is complete; there is no need for anything else. If after this we should open our mouths-_will_ to open them to speak, or our throats to sing, that is to say, utter by word of mouth and audible melody what we have completely said or sung to ourselves; or if we should stretch out_--will_ to stretch out our hands to touch the notes of the piano, or to take up the brush and chisel, thus making on a large scale movements which we have already made in little and rapidly, in a material in which we leave more or less durable traces; this is all an addition, a fact which obeys quite different laws from the former, with which we are not concerned for the moment, although we recognize henceforth that this second movement is a production of things, a _practical_ fact, or fact of _will_. It is usual to distinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminology seems to us infelicitous, for the work of art (the æsthetic work) is always _internal_; and what is called _external_ is no longer a work of art. Others distinguish between _æsthetic_ fact and _artistic_ fact, meaning by the second the external or practical stage, which may follow and generally does follow the first. But in this case, it is simply a question of a linguistic usage, doubtless permissible, though perhaps not advisable.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of content._]

For the same reasons the search for the _end of art_ is ridiculous, when it is understood of art as art. And since to fix an end is to choose, the theory that the content of art must be _selected_ is another form of the same error. A selection among impressions and sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise how could a selection be made among the continuous and indistinct? To choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must be before us, expressed. Practice follows, it does not precede theory; expression is free inspiration.

The true artist, in fact, finds himself big with his theme, he knows not how; he feels the moment of birth drawing near, but he cannot will it or not will it. If he were to wish to act in opposition to his inspiration, to make an arbitrary choice, if, born Anacreon, he should wish to sing of Atreus and of Alcides, his lyre would warn him of his mistake, sounding only of Venus and of Love, notwithstanding his efforts to the contrary.

[Sidenote: _Practical innocence of art._]

The theme or content cannot, therefore, be practically or morally charged with epithets of praise or blame. When critics of art remark that a theme is _badly selected,_ in cases where that observation has a just foundation, it is a question of blaming, not the selection of the theme (which would be absurd), but the manner in which the artist has treated it, the failure of the expression due to the contradictions which it contains. And when the same critics object to the theme or content of works which they proclaim to be artistically perfect as being unworthy of art and blameworthy; if these expressions really are perfect, there is nothing to be done but to advise the critics to leave the artists in peace, for they can only derive inspiration from what has moved their soul. They should rather direct their attention towards effecting changes in surrounding nature and society, that such impressions and states of soul should not recur. If ugliness were to vanish from the world, if universal virtue and felicity were established there, perhaps artists would no longer represent perverse or pessimistic feelings, but calm, innocent and joyous feelings, Arcadians of a real Arcady. But so long as ugliness and turpitude exist in nature and impose themselves upon the artist, to prevent the expression of these things also is impossible; and when it has arisen, _factum infectum fieri nequit._ We speak thus entirely from the æsthetic point of view, and of pure criticism of art.

We are not concerned to estimate the damage which the criticism of "choice" does to artistic production, with the prejudices which it produces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with the conflict to which it gives rise between artistic impulse and critical demands. It is true that sometimes it seems also to do some good, by aiding artists to discover themselves, that is, their own impressions and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness of the task which is, as it were, imposed upon them by the historical moment in which they live, and by their individual temperament. In these cases, criticism of "choice," while believing that it generates, merely recognizes and aids the expressions which are already being formed. It believes itself to be the mother, where, at most, it is only the midwife.

[Sidenote: _The independence of art._]

The impossibility of choice of content completes the theorem of the _independence of art,_ and is also the only legitimate meaning of the expression: _art for art's sake._ Art is independent both of science and of the useful and the moral. There should be no fear lest frivolous or cold art should thus be justified, since what is truly frivolous or cold is so because it has not been raised to expression; or in other words, frivolity and frigidity come always from the form of the æsthetic treatment, from failure to grasp a content, not from the material qualities of the content itself.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the saying: the style is the man_]

The saying: _the style is the man_, can also not be completely criticized, save by starting from the distinction between the theoretic and the practical, and from the theoretic character of the æsthetic activity. Man is not simply knowledge and contemplation: he is will, which contains the cognitive moment in itself. Hence the saying is either altogether void, as when it is taken to mean that the style is the man _qua_ style--is the man, that is, but only so far as he is expressive activity; or it is erroneous, as when the attempt is made to deduce what a man has done and willed from what he has seen and expressed, thereby asserting that there is a logical connexion between knowing and willing. Many legends in the biographies of artists have sprung from this erroneous identification, since it seemed impossible that a man who gives expression to generous feelings should not be a noble and generous man in practical life; or that the dramatist whose plays are full of stabbing, should not himself have done a little stabbing in real life. Artists protest vainly: "_Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba._" They are merely taxed in addition with lying and hypocrisy. How far more prudent you were, poor women of Verona, when you founded your belief that Dante had really descended to hell upon his blackened countenance! Yours was at any rate a historical conjecture.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the concept of sincerity in art._]

Finally, _sincerity_ imposed as a duty upon the artist (a law of ethics also said to be a law of æsthetic) rests upon another double meaning. For by sincerity may be meant, in the first place, the moral duty not to deceive one's neighbour; and in that case it is foreign to the artist. For indeed he deceives no one, since he gives form to what is already in his soul. He would only deceive if he were to betray his duty as an artist by failing to execute his task in its essential nature. If lies and deceit are in his soul, then the form which he gives to these things cannot be deceit or lies, precisely because it is æsthetic. If the artist be a charlatan, a liar, or a miscreant, he purifies his other self by reflecting it in art. If by sincerity be meant, in the second place, fulness and truth of expression, it is clear that this second sense has no relation to the ethical concept. The law, called both ethical and æsthetic, reveals itself here as nothing but a word used both by Ethics and Æsthetic.

VII

ANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL

[Sidenote: _The two forms of the practical activity._]

The double degree of the theoretical activity, æsthetic and logical, has an important parallel in the practical activity, which has not yet been placed in due relief. The practical activity is also divided into a first and second degree, the second implying the first. The first practical degree is the simply _useful_ or _economical_ activity; the second the _moral_ activity.

Economy is, as it were, the Æsthetic of practical life; Morality its Logic.

[Sidenote: _The economically useful._]

If this has not been clearly seen by philosophers; if the correct place in the system of the spirit has not been given to the economic activity, if it has been left to wander about in the prolegomena to treatises on political economy, often vague and but little developed, this is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the useful or economic has been confused, sometimes with the concept of the _technical,_ sometimes with that of the _egoistical._

[Sidenote: _Distinction between the useful and the technical._]

_Technique_ is certainly not a special activity of the spirit. Technique is knowledge; or rather, it is knowledge itself in general which takes this name when it serves as basis, as we have seen it does, for practical action. Knowledge which is not followed, or is supposed not to be easily followed by practical action, is called "pure": the same knowledge, if effectively followed by action, is called "applied"; if it is supposed that it can be easily followed by a particular action, it is called "applicable" or "technical." This word, then, indicates a _situation_ in which knowledge is, or may easily be, not a special form of knowledge. So true is this, that it would be altogether impossible to establish whether a given order of knowledge were, intrinsically, pure or applied. All knowledge, however abstract and philosophical it may be believed to be, may be a guide to practical acts; a theoretical error in the ultimate principles of morality may be reflected and always in some way is reflected in practical life. One can only speak roughly and unscientifically of certain truths as pure and of others as applied.

The same knowledge that is called technical may also be called _useful._ But the word "_useful_" in conformity with the criticism of judgements of value made above, is to be understood as used here in a verbal or metaphorical sense. When we say that water is useful for putting out fire, the word "useful" is used in a non-scientific sense. Water thrown on the fire is the cause of its going out: this is the knowledge that serves for basis to the action, let us say, of firemen. There is a link, not of nature, but of simple succession, between the useful action of the person who extinguishes the conflagration and that knowledge. The technique of the effects of the water is the theoretical activity which precedes; the only useful thing is the _action_ of the man who extinguishes the fire.

[Sidenote: _Distinction of the useful from the egoistic._]

Some economists identify utility, that is to say, merely economic action or will, with the _egoistic,_ that is to say, with what is profitable to the individual, in so far as individual, without regard to and indeed in complete opposition to the moral law. The egoistic is the immoral. In this case Economics would be a very strange science, standing not beside but opposite Ethics, like the devil facing God, or at least like the _advocatus diaboli_ in the processes of canonization. Such a conception is altogether inadmissible: the science of immorality is implied in that of morality, as the science of the false is implied in Logic, science of the true, and a science of unsuccessful expression in Æsthetic, science of successful expression. If, then, Economics were the scientific treatment of egoism, it would be a chapter of Ethics, or Ethics itself; because every moral determination implies, at the same time, a negation of its contrary.

Further, conscience tells us that to conduct oneself economically is not to conduct oneself egoistically; that even the most morally scrupulous man must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he does not wish to act at hazard and consequently in a manner quite the reverse of moral. If utility were egoism, how could it be the duty of the altruist to behave like an egoist?

[Sidenote: _Economic will and moral will._]

If we are not mistaken, the difficulty is solved in a manner perfectly analogous to that in which is solved the problem of the relations between expression and concept, Æsthetic and Logic.

To will economically is to _will an end;_ to will morally is to _will the rational end._ But whoever wills and acts morally, cannot but will and act usefully (economically). How could he will the _rational_ end, unless he also willed it _as his particular end_?

[Sidenote: _Pure economicity._]

The converse is not true; as it is not true in æsthetic science that the expressive fact must of necessity be linked with the logical fact. It is possible to will economically without willing morally; and it is possible to conduct oneself with perfect economic coherence, while pursuing an end which is objectively irrational (immoral), or, rather, an end which would be held to be so at a higher grade of consciousness.

Examples of the economic, without the moral character, are Machiavelli's hero Cæsar Borgia, or the Iago of Shakespeare. Who can help admiring their strength of will, although their activity is only economic, and is developed in opposition to what we hold moral? Who can help admiring the Ser Ciappelletto of Boccaccio, who pursues and realizes his ideal of the perfect rascal even on his death-bed, making the petty and timid little thieves who are present at his burlesque confession exclaim: "What manner of man is this, whose perversity neither age, nor infirmity, nor the fear of death which he sees at hand, nor the fear of God before whose judgement-seat he must stand in a little while, have been able to remove, nor to make him wish to die otherwise than as he has lived?"

[Sidenote: _The economic side of morality._]

The moral man unites with the pertinacity and fearlessness of a Cæsar Borgia, of an Iago, or of a Ser Ciappelletto, the good will of the saint or of the hero. Or, rather, good will would not be will, and consequently not good, if it did not possess, in addition to the side which makes it _good,_ also that which makes it _will._ So a logical thought which does not succeed in expressing itself is not thought, but at the most a confused presentiment of a thought beyond yet to come.

It is not correct, then, to conceive of the amoral man as also anti-economical, or to make of morality an element of coherence in the acts of life, and therefore of economicity. Nothing prevents us from conceiving (an hypothesis which is verified at least during certain periods and moments, if not during whole lifetimes) a man altogether without moral conscience. In a man thus organized, what for us is immorality is not so for him, because it is not felt as such. The consciousness of the contradiction between what is desired as a rational end and what is pursued egoistically cannot arise in him. This contradiction is anti-economicity. Immoral conduct becomes also anti-economical only in the man who possesses moral conscience. The moral remorse which is the indication of this, is also economical remorse; that is to say, sorrow at not having known how to will completely and to attain that moral ideal which was willed at first, instead of allowing himself to be led astray by the passions. _Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor._ The _video_ and the _probo_ are here an initial _volo_ immediately contradicted and overthrown. In the man without moral sense, we must admit a remorse that is _merely economic_; like that of a thief or of an assassin who, when on the point of robbing or of assassinating should abstain from doing so, not owing to a conversion of his being, but to nervousness and bewilderment, or even to a momentary awakening of moral consciousness. When he has come back to himself, such a thief or assassin will regret and be ashamed of his incoherence; his remorse will not be due to having done wrong, but to _not_ having done wrong; it is therefore economic, not moral, since the latter is excluded by hypothesis. But since a lively moral consciousness is generally found among the majority of men and its total absence is a rare and perhaps non-existent monstrosity, it may be admitted that morality, in general, coincides with economicity in the conduct of life.

[Sidenote: _The merely economic and the error of the morally indifferent._]

There need be no fear lest the parallelism that we support should introduce afresh into science the category of the _morally indifferent,_ of that which is in truth action and volition, but is neither moral nor immoral; the category in short of the _licit_ and of the _permissible,_ which has always been the cause or reflexion of ethical corruption, as was the case with Jesuitical morality, which it dominated. It remains quite certain that indifferent moral actions do not exist, because moral activity pervades and must pervade every least volitional movement of man. But far from upsetting the established parallelism, this confirms it. Are there by any chance intuitions which science and the intellect do not pervade and analyse, resolving them into universal concepts, or changing them into historical affirmations? We have already seen that true science, philosophy, knows no external limits which bar its way, as happens with the so-called natural sciences. Science and morality entirely dominate, the one the æsthetic intuitions, the other the economic volitions of man, although neither of them can appear in the concrete, save the one in the intuitive, the other in the economic form.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethics and of Economics._]

This combined identity and difference of the useful and the moral, of the economic and the ethical, explains the success at the present time and formerly of the utilitarian theory of Ethics. Indeed it is easy to discover and to illustrate a utilitarian side in every moral action; as it is easy to reveal the æsthetic side in every logical proposition. The criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot begin by denying this truth and seeking out absurd and non-existent examples of _useless_ moral actions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as the concrete form of morality, which consists in this, that it is _inside_ this form. Utilitarians do not see this inside. This is not the place for the fuller development that such ideas deserve. Ethics and Economics cannot however fail to be gainers (as we have said of Logic and Æsthetic) by a more exact determination of the relations that exist between them. Economic science is now rising to the activistical concept of the useful, as it attempts to surpass the mathematical phase in which it is still entangled; a phase which was in its turn a progress when it superseded historicism, or the confusion of the theoretical with the historical, and destroyed a number of capricious distinctions and false economic theories. With this conception, it will be easy on the one hand to absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pure economics, and on the other, by the introduction of successive complications and additions, to effect a transition from the philosophical to the empirical or naturalistic method and thus to embrace the particular theories expounded in the so-called political or national economy of the schools.

[Sidenote: _Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity._]

As æsthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and the philosophic concept the noumenon or spirit; so the economic activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and the moral activity the noumenon or spirit. _The spirit which wills itself,_ its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will for the true self is _absolute freedom._

VIII

EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS

In this summary sketch that we have given of the entire philosophy of the spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is thus conceived as consisting of four moments or degrees, disposed in such a way that the theoretical activity is to the practical as the first theoretical degree is to the second theoretical, and the first practical degree to the second practical. The four moments imply one another regressively by their concreteness. The concept cannot exist without expression, the useful without both and morality without the three preceding degrees. If the æsthetic fact is in a certain sense alone independent while the others are more or less dependent, then the logical is the least dependent and the moral will the most. Moral intention acts on given theoretic bases, with which it cannot dispense, unless we are willing to accept that absurd procedure known to the Jesuits as _direction of intention,_ in which people pretend to themselves not to know what they know only too well.

[Sidenote: _The forms of genius._]

[Sidenote: _The system of the spirit._]

If the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms of _genius._ Men endowed with genius in art, in science, and in moral will or heroes, have always been recognized. But the genius of pure economicity has met with repugnance. It is not altogether without reason that a category of bad geniuses or of _geniuses of evil_ has been created. The practical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rational end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. To dispute as to whether the word "genius" should be applied only to creators of æsthetic expression or also to men of scientific research and of action would be a mere question of words. To observe, on the other hand, that "genius," of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conception and an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already been explained as regards artistic genius.

[Sidenote: _Non-existence of a fifth form of activity. Law; sociability._]

A fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. It would be easy to show how all the other forms either do not possess the character of activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined, or are complex and derivative facts, in which the various activities are mingled, and are filled with particular and contingent contents.

The _juridical_ fact, for example, considered as what is called objective law, is derived both from the economic and from the logical activities. Law is a rule, a formula (whether oral or written matters little here) in which is fixed an economic relation willed by an individual or by a community, and this economic side at once unites it with and distinguishes it from moral activity. Take another example. Sociology (among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is sometimes conceived as the study of an original element, which is called _sociability._ Now what is it that distinguishes sociability, or the relations which are developed in a meeting of men, and not in a meeting of sub-human beings, if it be not just the various spiritual activities which exist among the former and which are supposed not to exist, or to exist only in a rudimentary degree, among the latter? Sociability, then, far from being an original, simple, irreducible conception, is very complex and complicated. A proof of this would be the impossibility, generally recognized, of enunciating a single law which could be described as purely sociological. Those that are improperly so called are shown to be either empirical historical observations, or spiritual laws, that is to say judgements into which the conceptions of the spiritual activities are translated, when they are not simply empty and indeterminate generalities, like the so-called law of evolution. Sometimes, too, nothing more is understood by "sociability" than "social rule," and so law; thus confounding sociology with the science or theory of law itself. Law, sociability, and similar concepts, are to be dealt with in a mode analogous to that employed by us in the consideration and analysis of historicity and technique.

[Sidenote: _Religion._]

It may seem that _religious_ activity should be judged otherwise. But religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differ from its other forms and sub-forms. For it is in turn either the expression of practical aspirations and ideals (religious ideals), or historical narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma).

It can therefore be maintained with equal truth either that religion is destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, or that it is always present there. Their religion was the whole intellectual patrimony of primitive peoples: our intellectual patrimony is our religion. The content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and become better and more refined in the future also; but its form is always the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion by those who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activity of man, with his art, with his criticism and with his philosophy. It is impossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge, such as religion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved it. Catholicism, which is always consistent, will not tolerate a Science, a History, an Ethics, in contradiction to its views and doctrines. The rationalists are less coherent: they are disposed to allow a little space in their souls for a religion in contradiction with their whole theoretic world.

The religious affectations and weaknesses prevalent among the rationalists of our time have their origin in the superstitious worship so recklessly lavished upon the natural sciences. We know ourselves and their chief representatives admit that these sciences are all surrounded by _limits._ Science having been wrongly identified with the so-called natural sciences, it could be foreseen that the remainder would be sought in religion; that remainder with which the human spirit cannot dispense. We are therefore indebted to materialism, to positivism, to naturalism for this unhealthy and often disingenuous recrudescence of religious exaltation, which belongs to the hospital, when it does not belong to the politician.

[Sidenote: _Metaphysic._]

Philosophy removes from religion all reason for existing, because it substitutes itself for religion. As the science of the spirit, it looks upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychic condition that can be surpassed. Philosophy shares the domain of knowledge with the natural sciences, with history and with art. To the first it leaves enumeration, measurement and classification; to the second, the chronicling of what has individually happened; to the third, the individually possible. There is nothing left to allot to religion. For the same reason, philosophy, as the science of the spirit, cannot be philosophy of the intuitive datum; nor, as has been seen, _philosophy of history,_ nor _philosophy of nature_; and therefore there cannot be a philosophical science of what is not form and universal, but material and particular. This amounts to affirming the impossibility of _Metaphysic._

The methodology or logic of history has supplanted the philosophy of history; an epistemology of the concepts employed in the natural sciences succeeded the Philosophy of Nature. What philosophy can study of history is its mode of construction (intuition, perception, document, probability, etc.); of the natural sciences the forms of the concepts which constitute them (space, time, motion, number, types, classes, etc.). Philosophy as metaphysic in the sense above described would, on the other hand, claim to compete with history and with the natural sciences, which alone are legitimate and effective in their field. Such a challenge could do nothing but reveal the incompetence of those who made it. In this sense we are _anti-metaphysicans,_ while declaring ourselves to be _ultra-metaphysicians,_ when the word is used to claim and to affirm the office of philosophy as self-consciousness of the spirit, distinguished from the merely empirical and classificatory office of the natural sciences.

[Sidenote: _Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect._]

Metaphysic has been obliged to assert the existence of a specific spiritual activity producing it, in order to maintain itself side by side with the sciences of the spirit. This activity, called in antiquity _mental or superior imagination,_ and more often in modern times _intuitive intellect or intellectual intuition,_ was held to unite the characters of imagination and intellect in an altogether special form. It was supposed to provide the means of passing by deduction or dialectic from the infinite to the finite, from form to matter, from the concept to the intuition, from science to history, acting by a method which was held to penetrate both the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete, intuition and intellect. A faculty marvellous indeed and most valuable to possess; but we, who do not possess it, have no means of establishing its existence.

[Sidenote: _Mystical Æsthetic._]

Intellectual intuition has sometimes been considered to be the true æsthetic activity. At others a no less marvellous æsthetic activity has been placed beside, below, or above it, a faculty altogether different from simple intuition. The glories of this faculty have been celebrated, and the production of art attributed to it, or at least of certain groups of artistic production, arbitrarily chosen. Art, religion and philosophy have seemed in turn to be one only, or three distinct faculties of the spirit, sometimes one, sometimes another of them being supreme in the dignity shared by all.

It is impossible to enumerate all the various attitudes assumed or capable of being assumed by this conception of Æsthetic, which we will call _mystical._ We are here in the kingdom, not of the science of imagination, but of imagination itself, which creates its world out of varying elements drawn from impressions and feelings. Suffice it to mention that this mysterious faculty has been conceived, sometimes as practical, sometimes as a mean between the theoretic and the practical, at others again as a theoretic form side by side with philosophy and religion.

[Sidenote: _Mortality and immortality of art._]

The immortality of art has sometimes been deduced from this last conception, as belonging with its sisters to the sphere of absolute spirit. At other times, on the other hand, when religion has been looked upon as mortal and as dissolved in philosophy, then has been proclaimed the mortality, even the death, actual or at least imminent, of art. This question has no meaning for us, because, seeing that the function of art is a necessary degree of the spirit, to ask if art can be eliminated is the same as to ask if sensation or intelligence can be eliminated. But Metaphysic, in the above sense, transplanting itself into an arbitrary world, is not to be criticized in its particulars, any more than we can criticize the botany of the garden of Alcina or the navigation of the voyage of Astolfo. Criticism can only exist when we refuse to join in the game; that is to say, when we reject the very possibility of Metaphysic, always in the sense above indicated.

There is therefore no intellectual intuition in philosophy, as there is no surrogate or equivalent of it in art, or any other mode by which this imaginary function may be called and represented. There does not exist (if we may repeat ourselves) a fifth degree, a fifth or supreme faculty, theoretic or practical-theoretic, imaginative-intellectual, or intellectual-imaginative, or however otherwise it may be attempted to conceive such a faculty.

IX

INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR DEGREES AND CRITICISM OF RHETORIC

[Sidenote: _The characters of art._]

It is customary to give long catalogues of the _characters_ of art. Having reached this point of the treatise, after having studied art as spiritual activity, as theoretic activity, and as special theoretic activity (intuitive), we are able to discover that those varied and numerous determinations of characters, where they refer to anything real, do nothing but represent what we have already met with as genera, species and individuality of the æsthetic form. To the generic are reducible, as we have already observed, the characters, or rather, the verbal variants of _unity,_ and of _unity_ in _variety,_ of _simplicity,_ or _originality,_ and so on; to the specific, the characters of _truth,_ of _sincerity,_ and the like; to the individual, the characters of _life,_ of _vivacity,_ of _animation,_ of _concreteness,_ of _individuality,_ of _characteristicality_. The words may change again, but they will not contribute anything scientifically new. The analysis of expression as such is completely effected in the results expounded above.

[Sidenote: _Non-existence of modes of expression._]

It might, on the other hand, be asked at this point if there be _modes_ or _degrees_ of expression; if, having distinguished two degrees of activity of the spirit, each of which is subdivided into two other degrees, one of these, the intuitive-expressive, is not in its turn subdivided into two or more intuitive modes, into a first, second or third degree of expression. But this further division is impossible; a classification of intuition-expressions is certainly permissible, but is not philosophical: individual expressive facts are so many individuals, not one of which is interchangeable with another, save in its common quality of expression. To employ the language of the schools: expression is a species which cannot function in its turn as a genus. Impressions or contents vary; every content differs from every other content, because nothing repeats itself in life; and the irreducible variety of the forms of expression corresponds to the continual variation of the contents, the æsthetic synthesis of impressions.

[Sidenote: _Impossibility of translations._]

A corollary of this is the impossibility of _translations,_ in so far as they pretend to effect the re-moulding of one expression into another, like a liquid poured from a vase of a certain shape into a vase of another shape. We can elaborate logically what we have already elaborated in æsthetic form only; but we cannot reduce what has already possessed its æsthetic form to another form also æsthetic. Indeed, every translation either diminishes and spoils, or it creates a new expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mingling it with the personal impressions of the so-called translator. In the former case, the expression always remains one, that of the original, the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, not properly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be two expressions, but with two different contents. "Faithful ugliness or faithless beauty" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma with which every translator is faced. Un-æsthetic translations, such as those that are word for word, or paraphrastic, are to be looked upon as simple commentaries upon the original.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the rhetorical categories._]

The illegitimate division of expressions into various grades is known in literature by the name of doctrine of _ornament_ or of _rhetorical categories._ But similar attempts at distinctions in other artistic groups are not wanting: suffice it to recall the _realistic_ and _symbolic_ forms, so often mentioned in relation to painting and sculpture.

_Realistic_ and _symbolic, objective_ and _subjective, classical_ and _romantic, simple_ and _ornate, proper_ and _metaphorical,_ the fourteen forms of metaphor, the figures of _word_ and _sentence, pleonasm, ellipse, inversion, repetition, synonyms_ and _homonyms,_ these and all other determinations of modes or degrees of expression reveal their philosophical nullity when the attempt is made to develop them in precise definitions, because they either grasp the void or fall into the absurd. A typical example of this is the very common definition of metaphor as of _another word used in place of the proper word._ Now why give oneself this trouble? Why substitute the improper for the proper word? Why take the worse and longer road when you know the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is commonly said, because the proper word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as the so-called improper word or metaphor? But if this be so the metaphor is exactly the proper word in that case, and the so-called "proper" word, if it were used, would be _inexpressive_ and therefore most improper. Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the other categories, as, for example, the general one of the _ornate._ Here for instance it may be asked how an ornament can be joined to expression. Externally? In that case it is always separated from the expression. Internally? In that case, either it does not assist the expression and mars it; or it does form part of it and is not an ornament, but a constituent element of the expression, indivisible and indistinguishable in its unity.

It is needless to say how much harm has been done by rhetorical distinctions. Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although there has been rebellion against its consequences, its principles have, at the same time, been carefully preserved (perhaps in order to show proof of philosophic consistency). In literature the rhetorical categories have contributed, if not to make dominant, at least to justify theoretically, that particular kind of _bad writing_ which is called _fine writing_ or writing according to rhetoric.

[Sidenote: _Use of these categories as synonyms of the æsthetic fact._]

The terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools, where we all of us learned them (only we never found an opportunity of using them in strictly æsthetic discussions, or at most of doing so jocosely and with a comic intention), were it not that they can sometimes be employed in one of the following significations: as _verbal variants_ of the æsthetic concept; as indications of the _anti-æsthetic,_ or, finally (and this is their most important use), no longer in the service of art and æsthetic, but of _science_ and _logic._

[Sidenote: _Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories._]

_First._ Expressions considered directly or positively are not divisible into classes, but some are successful, others half-successful, others failures. There are perfect and imperfect, successful and unsuccessful expressions. The words recorded, and others of the same sort, may therefore sometimes indicate the successful expression, and the various forms of the failures. But they do this in the most inconstant and capricious manner, so much so that the same word serves sometimes to proclaim the perfect, sometimes to condemn the imperfect.

For example, some will say of two pictures--one without inspiration, in which the author has copied natural objects without intelligence; the other inspired, but without close relation to existing objects--that the first is _realistic,_ the second _symbolic._ Others, on the contrary, utter the word _realistic_ before a picture strongly felt representing a scene of ordinary life, while they apply that of _symbolic_ to another picture that is but a cold allegory. It is evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic and realistic inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymous with artistic and symbolic with inartistic. What wonder, then, that some hotly maintain the true art form is the symbolic, and that the realistic is inartistic; others, that the realistic is artistic and the symbolic inartistic? We cannot but grant that both are right, since each uses the same words in such a different sense.

The great disputes about _classicism_ and _romanticism_ were frequently based upon such equivocations. Sometimes the former was understood as the artistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and imperfect; at others "classic" meant cold and artificial, "romantic" pure, warm, powerful, truly expressive. Thus it was always possible reasonably to take the side of the classic against the romantic, or of the romantic against the classic.

The same thing happens as regards the word _style._ Sometimes it is said that every writer must have style. Here style is synonymous with form of expression. At others the form of a code of laws or of a mathematical work is said to be without style. Here the error is again committed of admitting diverse modes of expression, an ornate and a naked form, because, if style is form, the code and the mathematical treatise must also be asserted, strictly speaking, to have each its style. At other times, one hears the critics blaming some one for "having too much style" or for "writing a style." Here it is clear that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improper and pretentious expression, a form of the inartistic.

[Sidenote: _Their use to indicate various æsthetic imperfections._]

_Second._ The second not altogether meaningless use of these words and distinctions is to be found when we hear in the examination of a literal composition such remarks as these: here is a pleonasm, here an ellipse, there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an ambiguity. The meaning is: Here is an error consisting of using a larger number of words than necessary (pleonasm); here, on the other hand, the error arises from too few having been used (ellipse), here from the use of an unsuitable word (metaphor), here of two words which seem to say two different things, but really say the same thing (synonym); here, on the contrary, of one word which seems to express the same thing, whereas it says two different things (ambiguity). This depreciatory and pathological use of the terms is, however, less common than the preceding.

[Sidenote: _Their use in a sense transcending æsthetic, in the service of science._]