3i8 LOGIC PART not of art or philosophy, but of his own person. Yet to no one can even this give the satisfaction he imagines, for life is no less voracious and insatiable than thought. In any case, to be satisfied, the author must become philosophically immobile in a formula, and the reader must content himself with this formula. Thoughts must become " obtuse and deaf," as Leibnitz called them, who defined such a spiritual condition as psittacism. The only consolation left to one who does not become immobile is that of reflecting, like Socrates, that his discourses will not be sterile, but fruitful. Other discourses will spring from them in his own soul and in the soul of others, in whom he has sown the seeds.1 He will console himself with the thought that philosophy, like life, is infinite. Surpassing The infinity of philosophy, its continuous and continuous progress of changing, is not a doing and an undoing, but philosophy.
a continuous surpassing of itself. The new philosophic proposition is made possible only by the old; the old lives eternally in the new that follows it and in the new that will follow that again and make old that other which is new. This suffices to reassure those minds which are easily led astray and inclined to lament 1 Phaedrus, 276-7.
1 Phaedrus, 276-7.
ii PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 319 the vanity of things. Where everything is vain, nothing is vain; fullness consists precisely in that perpetual becoming vain, which is the perpetual birth of reality, the eternal becoming. Nobody renounces love because love is transitory, nor abandons thinking because his thought will give place to other thoughts. Love passes, but generates other beings, who will love. Thought passes, but generates other thoughts, which, in their turn, will excite other thoughts. In the world of thought also, we survive in our own children: in our children who contradict us, substitute themselves for us and bury us, not always with due piety.
No other meaning but this is to be found Meaning of m the vaunted eternity of philosophy in regard of philosophy.
to time and space. The eternity of every philosophic proposition must be affirmed against those who materialistically consider all proposi tions as valueless existences, and fugitives which leave no trace, as phenomena of brute matter, which alone persists. Philosophic propositions, though historically conditioned, are not effects produced and determined by these conditions, but creations of thought, which is continued in and through them. When they appear to be produced determinately, they must be held to 320 LOGIC PART 320 LOGIC PART be, not philosophy, but false philosophy, vital interests masquerading as thoughts. That alone can be eternal as philosophy, which is knowledge and truth. But when eternity is misunderstood as isolation from those conditions, it must then be denied, and in place of it the thesis of relativity must be admitted, provided we are careful that it does not assume the erroneous vesture of historical materialism and economic determinism. The thesis that the history of philosophy should be treated psychologically, by the attribution of ideas to the temporal conditions and the personal experiences of philosophers, to social history and biography, is reducible (and it is worth while noticing this) to materialism and determinism in its least evident form, namely psychologism. Such a thesis is the failure to recognize spiritual value, or at least (as is the case with some unconscious sestheticists), the logical value of philosophy, whose history, when changed into that of the expressions of states of the soul, comes to coincide altogether with the history of poetry and literature. The concept of The eternity of philosophy is its truth, and the spontaneous, ingenuous, conception which is sometimes brought forward innate philosophy, etc., of a spontaneous or ingenuous or innate or cryptic meaning. (abdita) philosophy, which alone should be PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 321 permanent amid the variations of philosophic opinions, or to which the spirit should return after many wanderings, is nothing but a symbol of this truth. The Platonic theory of reminiscence (avd/jLvrjcn,^ is reducible to this conception. In this theory true knowledge is explained as the recollection of an original state; and it is this reminiscence, as the restitution of the childish soul, that is described by our Leopardi in the following verses: I believe that to know is very often, if we examine it, nothing but to perceive the folly of beliefs due to habit, and the careful reconquest of the knowledge of childhood, taken from us by age; for the child neither knows nor sees more than we, but he does not believe that he sees and knows.
But such philosophy and such reminiscence are really found only in propositions historically conditioned. Ingenuous philosophy and primitive knowledge are nothing but the concept itself of philosophy, fully realized in all and none. " Platonic reminiscence (explained Schelling) is the memory of that state, in which we are all one with nature." But since we are one with nature in every one of our acts, each one of them demands a special reminiscence and so a new thought. In like manner, the state of nature, 322 LOGIC PART 322 LOGIC PART celebrated in moral and political doctrines (the doctrines of morality and rights), was a state of perfection which can never be found anywhere in the world or at any moment of time, because it expressed the very concept of the good, of virtue / and of justice. Socrates, in another Platonic dialogue, spoke of those true beliefs (Sogai a\r)6els) as elusive like the statues of Daedalus, that disappear from the soul, unless one binds them with rational arguments, and only when thus bound do they from beliefs become know ledge.1 Such is ingenuous philosophy, which in reality exists only when bound and never when loose and ingenuous, as the name would suggest; philosophy abdita exists only as philosophy addita. Certainly, to the consciousness of doctrinaires, obscured with too much labour, we can sometimes oppose ingenuous consciousness, and to the pedantry of scholastic treatises we can oppose the truth of proverbs, of good sense, of children, of the people, or of primitive races. But we must not forget that in all these cases ingenuous is a metaphor which designates truth in con tradistinction to what is not truth. philosophy The division of philosophy into ingenuous and as criticism and polemic, learned is due to its convenience and to its ii PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 323 didactic value, and in like manner philosophy properly so-called, or system, is distinguished from philosophy as criticism. The former is looked upon as the solid and permanent part, the latter as variable and adaptable to times and places, having as its object the defence of the eternal truths conquered by the human spirit, against the wiles and assaults of error. In reality the distinction is empirical: philosophy and philo sophical criticism are the same thing; every affirmation is a negation, every negation is an affirmation. The critical or negative side is inseparable from philosophy, which is always substantially a polemic, as can be seen from the examination of any philosophic writing. Peace- loving people are fond of recommending abstention from polemics and the expression of one's own ideas in a positive manner. But only the artist is capable of expressing his soul without polemic, since it does not consist of ideas. Ideas are always armed with helmet and lance, and those who wish to introduce them among men must let them make war. A philosopher, when he truly abstains from polemics and expresses himself as though he were pouring out his own soul, has not even begun to philosophize. Or, having philosophized upon certain problems, he 324 LOGIC PART makes, as Plato does, the act of renunciation when he is confronted with others, feeling that he has attained to the extreme limit of his powers, and from philosophy he passes to poetry and prophecy. identity oj Philosophy, then, is neither beyond, nor at the philosophy J and history. beginning, nor at the end of history, nor is it achieved in a moment or in any single moments of history. It is achieved at every moment and is always completely united to facts and conditioned by historical knowledge. But this result which we have obtained and which completely coincides with that of the conditioning of history by philosophy is still somewhat provisional. Were we to consider it definite, philosophy and history would appear to be two forms of the spirit, mutually conditioning one another, or (as has sometimes been trivially remarked) in reciprocal action. But philosophy and history are not two forms, they are one sole form: they are not mutually conditioned, but identical. The a priori synthesis, which is the reality of the individual judgment and of the definition, is also the reality of philosophy and of history. It is the formula of thought which by constituting itself qualifies intuition and constitutes history. History does not precede philosophy, nor philo- PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 325 sophy history: both are born at one birth. If it is desired to give precedence to philosophy, this can only be done in the sense that the unique form of philosophy -history must take the name and character, not of intuition, but of what trans forms intuition, that is to say, of thought and of philosophy.
Philosophy and history are distinguished, as Didactic divisions and we know, for didactic purposes, philosophy being other reasons that form of exposition in which special emphasis a is accorded to the concept or system, and history as that form in which the individual judgment or narrative is specially prominent. But from the very fact that the narrative includes the concept, every narrative clarifies and solves philosophic problems. On the other hand, every system of concepts throws light upon the facts which are before the spirit. The confirmation of the value of a system resides in the power of interpreting and narrating history, which it displays. It is history which is the touchstone of philosophy. It is true that the two may appear to be different, owing to the external differences of books, in which only one of the two seems to be treated: and it is also true that the didactic division is based upon.a diversity of aptitudes, which practice contributes to develop. But, provided always 326 LOGIC PART 326 LOGIC PART that the meaning both of a philosophic pro position and of a historical proposition is fathomed to the bottom, their intrinsic unity is indubitable. The fact that is so often cited of conflicts between philosophy and history is in reality a conflict between two philosophies, the one true and the other false, or both partly true and partly false. Some thinkers, for instance, are idealist in recounting history and materialist in their philosophic systems. This means that two philosophies are at strife within them without either being sufficiently aware of it. And does it not also happen that we find in a philosophic exposition propositions that contradict one another and divergent systems capriciously asso ciated in one system?
From intuition, which is indiscriminate in- dividualization, we rise to the universal, which is discriminate individualization, from art to philosophy, which is history. The second stage, precisely because it is second, is more complex than the first, but this does not imply that it is, as it were, split into two lesser degrees, philosophy and history. The concept, with one stroke of the wing, affirms itself and takes possession of the whole of reality, which is not different from it, but is itself.
ii PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 327 Note. — May I be permitted an explanation concern ing the history of my thought (and also of its criticism owing to their unity already demonstrated)? Sixteen years ago I began my studies in philosophy with a memoir entitled History beneath the general concept of Art(i%9$}. There I maintained, not that history is art (as others have summarized my thought) but (as indeed the title clearly showed) that history can be placed beneath the general concept of art. I now maintain, sixteen years after, that, on the contrary, history is philosophy and that history and philosophy are indeed the same thing. The two theories are certainly different; but they are far less different than appears, and the second theory is in any case a development and perfecting of the first. Elle a bien change sur la route, without doubt; but without dis continuity and without gaps. Indeed, the objects of my memoir were chiefly: (i) to combat the absorption of history, which the natural sciences were then attempting more than they are now; (2) the affirma tion of the theoretic character of art and of its seriousness, art being then regarded as a hedonistic fact by the prevailing positivism; (3) the negation of history as a third form of the theoretic spirit different from the aesthetic form and from that of thought. I still maintain these three theses intact and they form part of my Esthetic and of my Logic. But the proper character of philosophy, so profoundly different from the empirical and abstract sciences, was not clear to me 328 LOGIC PART at the time, and therefore neither was the difference between philosophic Logic and Logic of classification. For this reason I was unable completely to solve the problem that I had proposed to myself. Owing to this confusion of the true universality of philosophy and of the false universality of the sciences (which is either mere generality or abstractness) in a single group, it seemed to me that the concreteness of history could enter only the group of art, understood in its greater extension (hence the general concept of art). In this group, by means of the fallacious method of subordination and co-ordination, I distinguished history as the representation of the real, placing it without mediation alongside the representation of the possible (art in the strict sense of the word). When I under stood the true relation between Philosophy and the sciences (a slow progress, because to reattain to consciousness of what philosophy truly is has been slow and difficult for the men of my generation), the nature of history also became somewhat clearer to me as I gradually freed myself from the remnants of the intellectualistic and naturalistic method. In the ALsthetic I looked upon that spiritual product as due to the intersection of philosophy and of art. In the Outlines of Logic I made another step in advance, history there appearing to me as the ultimate result of the theoretic spirit, the sea into which flowed the river of art, swelled with that of philosophy. The complete identity of history and of philosophy was, however, PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY 329 always half -hidden from me, because in me the prejudice still persisted that philosophy might have a form in a certain way free from the bonds of history, and constitute in relation to it a prior and independent moment of the spirit. That is to say, something abstract persisted in my idea of philosophy. But this prejudice and this abstractness have been vanquished little by little. And not only have my studies in the Philosophy of the practical greatly helped me to vanquish them, but also and above all, the studies of my dearest friend Giovanni Gentile (to whom my mental life owes many other aids and stimulations), concerning the relation between philosophy and history of philosophy (cf. now especially Critica, vii. pp. 142-9). In short, I have gradually passed from the accentuation of the character of concreteness, which history possesses in relation to the empirical and abstract sciences, to the accentuation of the concrete character of philosophy. And having completed the elimination of the double abstractness, the two concretenesses (that which I had first of all claimed for history, and that which I have afterwards claimed for philosophy) have finally revealed themselves to me as one. Thus I can now no longer accept without demur my old theory, which is not the new one, but is linked to it by such close bonds.
Such is the road I have travelled, and I wished especially to describe it, in order to leave no mis understandings which, through my neglect, might lead others into error.
V THE NATURAL SCIENCES The natural THE natural sciences are nothing but edifices of sciences as empirical oseudoconcepts, and precisely of that sort of concepts, and their pseudoconcept that we have distinguished from practical nature. faQ others as empirical or representative.
This is evident also from the definitions that they assume as sciences of phenomena, in opposi tion to philosophy, the science of noumena; and as sciences of facts, again in opposition to philo sophy, which is taken to be the science of values. But the pure phenomenon is not known to science; it is represented by art: and the noumena, in so far as they are known, are also phenomena, since it would be arbitrary to break up unity and synthesis. In like manner, true values are facts, and, on the other hand, facts without the determination of value and of universality dis solve again into pure phenomena. Hence it is possible to conclude that those sciences offer neither pure phenomena nor mere facts, but, on PART ii NATURAL SCIENCES 331 the contrary, develop representative concepts, which are not intuitions, but spiritual formations of a practical nature.
The word " practical " having been pronounced, Elimination of a mis- it behoves us to eliminate a misapprehension understanding concerning this which leads to the natural sciences (or simply P^ticai x *• ' character.
sciences, as they are also called) being said to be practical, in the same sense as those whose aim is action. Bacon was a fervent apostle of the naturalistic movement of modern times and full of this latter idea or preconception. He proclaimed to satiety that meta scientiarum non alia est quam ut dotetur vita humana novis in- ventis et copiis; that they propose to themselves potentiae et amplitudinis humanae fines in latins proferre; and that, by means of them, reality ad usus vitae humanae subigitwr* But in our day also, many theorists do not tire of repeating that the sciences are ordonne'es a Faction. Now, this does not suffice to describe the natural sciences, because all knowledge is directed to action, art, philosophy, and history alike, which last, by pro viding knowledge of the actual situation, is the true and complete precedent and fact, prepara tory to action.2 The misapprehension in favour 1 Nov. Org. I. §§ 81, 116; and II. in fine. 2 See The Philosophy of the Practical, pt. i. sect. i.
PART 332 LOGIC of the natural sciences arises from the vulgar idea that the only practical things in life are eating, drinking, clothes, and shelter. It is for gotten that man does not live by bread alone, and that bread itself is a spiritual food if it in crease the force of spiritual life. But further: the natural sciences, just because they are com posed of empirical concepts (which are not true knowledge), do not directly subserve action, since in order to act it is necessary to return from them to the precise knowledge of the individual actual situation. That is to say, in ordinary parlance, abstractions must be set aside and it must be seen how things truly and properly stand. The patient, the individual patient, is treated, not the malady; Socrates or Callias (as Aristotle said), not man in general: Oepajrevrbv TO Ka& e/caarov: knowledge of materia medica does not suffice; the clinical eye is needed. The natural sciences are not directed to action, but are, themselves, actions: their practical character is not extrinsic, but constitutive. They are actions, and are there fore not directed to action, but to aid the cognitive spirit. Thus they subserve action (that is, other actions) only in an indirect way. If an action does not become knowledge, it cannot give rise to a new action.
NATURAL SCIENCES 333 The empirical character (and the practical impossibility character in the sense already established) of the ^em in a concept.
concept.
natural sciences is commonly admitted in the case of such of them as consist in classifications of facts: for example, of zoology, botany, mineralogy, and also of chemistry, in so far as it enumerates chemical species, and of physics, in so far as it enumerates classes of phenomena or physical forces. The universals of all these sciences are quite arbitrary, for it is impossible to find an exact boundary between the concept of animal (the universal of zoology) and that of vegetable (the universal of botany). Indeed it is impossible to find one between the living and the not living, the organic and the material. Finally, the cellule, which is, for the present at any rate, the highest concept of the biological sciences, is differentiated from chemical facts only in an external way. It will be objected that there is in any case no lack of attempts to determine strictly the supreme concepts of the sciences, such, for instance, as those that place the atom at the beginning of all things and attempt to show each individual fact as nothing but a different aggregate of atoms. There are also those who mount to the concept of ether or of energy and declare all individual facts to be nothing but different forms of energy.
334 LOGIC PART 334 LOGIC PART Or finally, the vitalists recognize as irreducible the two concepts of the teleological and the mechanical, of organic and inorganic, of life and matter. But in all these cases the natural sciences are deserted, phenomena are abandoned for noumena, and philosophic explanations are offered. These may or may not have value, but they are of no use from the point of view of the natural sciences, or at most ensure to some professor the insipid pleasure of calling an animal " a complex of atoms," heat " a form of energy," and the cellule <( vital force." impossibility Since the natural sciences cannot be unified in of introducing of introducing into them a concept (hence their ineradicable plurality), and divisions. therefore remain unsystematic, a mass of sciences without close relation among themselves, logical distinctions are not possible in any science. No one will ever be able to prove that genera and species must be so many and no more, or describe the truly original character by which one genus may be distinguished from another genus and one species from another species. The animal species hitherto described have been calculated at over four hundred thousand, and those that may yet be described as fifteen millions. These numbers simply express the impotence of the empirical sciences to exhaust the infinite and NATURAL SCIENCES 335 individual forms of the real and the necessity in which they are placed of stopping at some sort of number, of some hundreds, of some thousands, or of some millions. Those species, however few or many they may be, flow one into the other owing to the undeniable conceivability of graduated, indeed of continuous intermediate forms, which made evident the arbitrariness of the clean cut made into fact by separating the wolf from the dog or the panther from the leopard.
But some doubt is manifested where we pass Laws in the natural from classification and description or from system sciences, and so called (as the lack of system of naturalistic classifications prevision. is called, by a curious verbal paradox) to the consideration of the laws that are posited in those sciences. It is then perceived that the classification is certainly a simple labour of pre paration, arbitrary, convenient, and nominalistic, but that the true end of the natural sciences is not the class but the law. In the compass of the law strict accuracy of its truth is indubitable; so much so that by means of laws it is actually possible to make previsions as to what will happen. This is indeed a miraculous power, which places the natural sciences above every form of know ledge, and endows them with an almost magical PART 336 LOGIC force, by means of which man, not contented with knowing what has happened (which is yet so difficult to know), is capable of knowing even what has not yet happened, what will happen, or the future! Prevision (there must be a clear understanding of the concepts) is equivalent to seeing beforehand vr prophesying, and the naturalist is thus neither more nor less than a clairvoyant. Empirical The miraculous nature of this boasted power character of