character of naturalistic should suffice to make us doubt whether the laws.
law is truly what it is said to be, a strict truth, quite different from the empirical concept, from the class, and from the description. In reality, the law is nothing but the empirical concept itself, the description, class or type, of which we have just spoken. In philosophy law is a synonym for the pure concept; in the empirical or natural sciences it is a synonym for the empirical concept; hence laws are sometimes called empirical laws, or laws of experience. If they were not empirical, they would not be naturalistic, but philosophic universals, which, as we have seen, are unfruitful in the field of the natural sciences. The law of the wolf is the empirical concept of the wolf: granted that in reality there is found one part of the representation corre sponding to that concept, it is possible to conclude NATURAL SCIENCES 337 that the rest is also found. Thus Cuvier (to choose a very trite example), arranging the types of animals and hence the laws of the correlations of organs, was able to reconstruct from one sur viving bone the complete fossil animal. In like manner, granted the chemical concept of water, H2O, and given so much of oxygen and double that quantity of hydrogen, O and H2, and sub mitting the two bodies to the other conditions established by chemistry, it is possible to conclude that water will be seen to appear. All naturalistic laws are of this type. Certain naturalists and theorists have reasonably protested against the division of the natural sciences into descriptive and explicative, sciences of classification and sciences of laws, and have maintained that all have one common character, namely, law. But this is not because the law is superior to the class or to the empirical concept, but because the two things are identical: the law is the empirical concept and the empirical concept is the law.
The postulate of the constancy or uniformity The postulate oj nature is the base of empirical laws or concepts, uniformity of nature, and This, too, is something mysterious, before which its meaning. many are ready to bow, seized with reverence and sacred terror. But that postulate is not even an hypothesis, somehow conceivable, though 338 LOGIC PART not yet explained and demonstrated. Ordinary thought, like philosophical thought, knows that reality is neither constant nor uniform, and indeed that it is perpetually being transformed, evolving and becoming. That constancy and uniformity, which is postulated and falsely believed to be objective reality, is the same practical necessity which leads to the neglect of differences and to the looking upon the different as uniform, the changeable as constant. The postulate of the uniformity of nature is the demand for a treatment of reality made uniform for reasons of convenience. Natura non facit saltus means: mens non facit saltus in naturae cogitatione, or, better still, memoriae usus saltus naturae cohibet. Pretended Another consequence of this is the inversion inevitability r,..
of natural of the assertion (to be found everywhere in the laws.
rhetoric of the natural sciences) as to the in exorability and inevitability of the laws of nature. Those laws, precisely because they are arbitrary constructions of our own and give the movable as fixed, are not only not inevitable and do sometimes afford exceptions; but there is absolutely no real fact, which is not an exception to its naturalistic law. By coupling a wolf and a she-wolf we obtain a wolf cub, which will in time become a new wolf, with the appearance, NATURAL SCIENCES 339 the strength, and the habits of its parents. But this wolf will not be identical with its parents. Otherwise how could wolves ever evolve with the evolution of the whole of reality, of which they are an indivisible part? By chemical analysis of a litre of water we obtain H2O; but if we again combine H2O, the water that we obtain is only in a way of speaking the same as before. For that combining and recombining must have produced some modification (even though not perceived by us), and in any case changes have occurred in reality in the subsequent moment, from which the water is not separable, and therefore in the water itself taken in its concreteness. We could consequently give the following definition: the inexorable laws of nature are those that are violated at every moment, while philosophic laws are by definition those that are at every moment observed. But in what way they are observed cannot be known, save by means of history, and therefore true knowledge knows nothing of previsions; it knows only facts that have really happened; of the future there can be no knowledge. The natural sciences, which do not furnish real knowledge, have, if possible, even less right (if one may speak thus) to talk of previsions.
340 LOGIC PART 340 LOGIC PART Yet, it will be objected, it is a fact that we all form previsions, and that without them we should neither be able to cook an egg nor to take one step out of doors. That is quite true, but those alleged previsions are merely the summary of what we know by experience to have happened, and according to which we resolve upon our action. We know what has happened. We do not know, nor do we, need to know, what will happen. Were any one truly to wish to know it, he would no longer be able to move and would be seized with such perplexity before life, that he would kill himself in despera tion or die of fear. The egg, which usually takes five minutes to cook in the way that suits my taste, sometimes surprises me by presenting itself to my palate after those five minutes, either as too much or too little cooked; the step taken out of doors is sometimes a fall on the threshold. Nevertheless, the knowledge of this does not prevent me from leaving the house and cooking the egg, for I must walk and take nourishment. The laws of my individual being, of my temperament, of my aptitudes, of my forces, that is, the knowledge of my past, make me resolve to undertake a journey, as I did twenty years ago, to begin work upon a statue, NATURAL SCIENCES 341 as I did ten years ago. Alas! I had not con sidered that in the meantime my legs have lost their strength and my arm has begun to tremble. By all means call the previsions made use of in these cases true or false; but do not forget that they are nothing but empirical concepts, that is to say, mnemonic devices, founded upon historical judgments. There can be no doubt that they are useful; indeed, what we maintain is that just because they are useful, they are not true. If they possess any truth, it resides in the establishment of the fact. That is to say, it does not reside in the prevision and in the law, but in the historical judgment which forms its basis.
Having thus made clear the coincidence of Nature and its various empirical concepts and the natural sciences, we meanings.
Nature as must determine exactly the meaning: of the word P^^ty an negativity.
''natural," which is used as qualifying these sciences. It has not seemed advisable to change it, since its use is so deeply rooted, although we have, on the other hand, already given its synonym in qualifying these sciences as "empirical." What is nature? The first meaning of " nature " is the "opposite" of "spirit," and designates the natural or material moment in relation to the spiritual, the mechanical in relation to the teleo- 342 LOGIC PART logical moment, the negative moment in relation to the positive. Thus, in the transition from one form of the spirit to another, the inferior form is like matter, ballast, or obstacle, and so is , the negation of the superior form. Hence reality is imagined as the strife of two forces, the one spiritual and the other material or natural. It • is superfluous to repeat that the two forces are not two, but one, and that if the negative moment were not, the positive moment could not be. The pigeon (says Kant), which rises to take flight, may believe that had it not to vanquish the resistance of the air, it would fly still better. But the fact is that without that resistance, it would fall to earth. In this sense, there is no science of Nature (of matter, passivity, negation, etc.) distinguishable from that of Spirit, which is the science of itself and of its opposite, and the science of itself only in so far as it is also the science of its opposite. Nature as But in another sense, nature is, not indeed the practical activity. opposite of spirit, but something distinct in the spirit, and especially distinct from the cognitive spirit, as that form of spirituality and activity which is not cognitive. A non-theoretical activity, a spirituality which should not be in itself know ledge, cannot be anything but the practical form ii NATURAL SCIENCES 343 of the spirit, the will. Man makes himself nature at every moment, because at every moment he passes from knowing to willing and doing and from willing and doing returns to knowing, which is the basis for new will and action. In this sense, the science of nature, or the philosophy of nature, could not be anything but the philosophic science of the will, the Philosophy of the practical.
The natural sciences have nothing to do with Nature in the a philosophic knowledge ot nature as will, with a sense, as naturalistic Philosophy of the practical. They are, as has or empirical already been said, not knowledge of will, but will; not truth, but utility. In consequence of this, they extend to the whole of reality, theoretic and practical, to the products of the theoretic spirit, not less than to those of the practical spirit; and without knowing any of them, universally or individually, they manipulate and classify them all in the way we have seen. They have not there fore a special object, but a special mode of treat ment, their object or matter being the presupposed philosophic - historical knowledge of the real. They do not treat of the material and mechanical aspect of the real, nor even of its non-theoretical, practical, volitional aspect (or what is incorrectly called the irrational aspect of it). They turn the theoretical into the practical, and by killing 344 LOGIC PART 344 LOGIC PART its theoretic life, make it dead, material, and mechanical. Nature, matter, passivity, motion ab extra, the inert atom and so on, are not reality and concepts, but natural science itself in action. Mechanism, logically considered, is neither a fact nor a mode of knowing the fact. It is a non-fact, a mode of not -knowing: a practical creation, which is real only in so far as it becomes itself an object of knowledge. This is the gnoseological or gnoseopractical meaning of the word " nature," a meaning which must be kept carefully distinct from the two preceding meanings. When we speak, for instance, of matter or of nature as not existing, we mean to refer to the puppet of the naturalists, which the naturalists themselves and the philosophers of naturalism, forgetting its genesis, take for a real if not a living being. That matter (said Berkeley) is an abstraction; it is (say we) an empirical concept, and whoever knows what empirical concepts are will not pretend that matter or nature exists, simply because it is spoken about. The illusions We do not claim to have supplied the full and dualists, solution of the problem concerning the dualism or materialism of the real with this discussion on the theme of Logic. This solution cannot (we repeat) be expected, save from all the philosophic NATURAL SCIENCES 345 sciences together, that is to say, from the com plete system. But we can already see, from the logical point of view, that the dualists and materialists cannot avoid the task of showing that the nature or matter, which they elevate to a principle of the real or to one of the two principles of the real, is not: firstly, the mere negation of the spirit, nor secondly, a form of the spirit, nor thirdly, the abstraction of the natural sciences. They must also show that it answers to some thing conceivable and existing, outside or above the spirit. Logic can pass onward at this point, saying of materialists and dualists what Dante said of the devils and the damned struggling in the lake of burning pitch: " And we leave them thus encompassed."
The word "nature" has yet a fourth meaning Nature as empirical (but this time altogether empirical), which is clear distinction of an inferior in in those propositions which distinguish natural relation to a superior life from social life, natural men (Naturmenscken) reality- or savages from civilized men, and again natural from human beings, animals from men, and so on. Nature, in this sense, is distinguished from civiliza tion or humanity, and thus the sole reality is divided into two classes of beings: natural beings and human beings (which are sometimes also called spiritual as compared with the former, which PART 346 LOGIC PART 346 LOGIC are called material). The vague and empirical nature of this distinction is at once perceived from the impossibility that we meet with of assigning boundaries between civilization and the state of nature, between humanity and animality. Man can be only empirically distinguished from the animal, the animal from the vegetable, and vegetables from inorganic beings, which are organic in their own way. Certainly, what are called things are not organic, for example a mountain or a plough share; but they are not organic, because they are not real, but aggregates, that is to say, empirical concepts. In the same way, a forest is not organic, though it is composed of things vegetating, nor a crowd, though composed of men. When we treat of things in the above sense, we can say with some mathematicians that things do not exist, but only their relations. Hence if the dualists feel able to affirm that the two classes of beings, natural and human, are based upon the existence of two different substances and upon the different proportions of these in each of the two classes, the task of proving the thinkability of the two substances and the different proportions of the compound falls upon them.
The distinction between nature and spirit being therefore, in this last sense, altogether empirical, NATURAL SCIENCES 347 it is clear that the natural sciences (in the gnoseo- The naturalistic logical or gnoseopractical sense in which we give method and r the natural them this name) are not restricted to the develop- fences as *• extended to ment of knowledge relating to what is called inferior reality, from the animal downwards, leav- ing to the sciences of the spirit the knowledge that relates to superior reality from the animal upwards, that is to say, to man. Sciences of nature and sciences of the spirit, orbis naturalis and orbis intellectualis, are also, in this case, partitions and convenient groupings. All do substantially the same thing, that is to say, they provide one single homogeneous practical treat ment of knowledge.
On this unity and homogeneity is based the Demand/or such an demand so often made (especially in the second extension, and effective half of the nineteenth century) for the extension existence of J ' what is of the method of the natural sciences to the demanded- sciences of the spirit or moral sciences, the orbis intellectualis, for a naturalistic treatment of the productions of language and of art, or of political, social, and religious life. Thus were originated or prophesied a Psychology, an ^Esthetic, an Ethic, a Sociology, methodo naturali demonstratae. It was necessary to draw the attention of those makers of programmes and advisers (apart from the evil philosophic intentions, positivist or 348 LOGIC PART 348 LOGIC PART materialistic, which they nourished in their bosoms) to the superfluity of their demand, and gently to reprove them with the old phrase: Quod petis in manu habes. Since man was man and constructed pseudoconcepts and empirical sciences, these naturalistic classifications have never been limited to animals, plants, and minerals, nor to physical, chemical, and biological phenomena, but have been extended to all the manifestations of reality. Naturalistic Logic, Psychology, Lin guistic Sociology and Ethics have not awaited the nineteenth century ere they should open to the sun. And (without going too far back in time, or leaving Europe) they already bore flower and fruit in the Sociology (Politics) of Aristotle, in the Grammatics of the Alexandrians, in the Poetics and Rhetoric of Aristotle himself, or of Hermagoras, of Cicero, or of Quintilian, and so on. The novelty of the nineteenth century has principally consisted in giving the names social Physics, or the physico-acoustic science of language to what was once more simply, and perhaps in better taste, called otherwise. But in saying this we do not wish to deny that certain natural istic work has been far more copious in the nineteenth century than in Greece, and that naturalistic methods have not been applied with ii NATURAL SCIENCES 349 singular acumen and exactitude in those fields of study. Linguistic affords a case in point, with its phonetic laws, by reason of which it moves so proudly among its companions.
The natural sciences and the empirical con- Historical basis of cepts which compose them appear therefore like the natural 1 \ sciences.
a tachygraphic transcription upon living and mutable reality, capable of complete transcription only in terms of individual representations. But upon what reality? Upon the reality of the poet, or upon the clarified and existentialized reality of the historian? The constructions of the natural sciences take history for their presup position, just as judgments of classification take individual judgments. Were this not so, their economic function would have no way of express-. ing itself, from lack of matter whereon to work. To employ the easy example already given, it would be of no use to the zoologist to construct types and classes of animals that were certainly conceivable, but non-existent. For while those types and classes would distract the attention from the useful and urgent task of summarizing reality historically given and known, they would not exhaust the possibilities, which are infinite. And if it appear that imaginary animals are sometimes classified, as for example griffins, PART 350 LOGIC PART 350 LOGIC centaurs, Pegasi, and sirens, it is easy to see that this is not done in Zoology, but in another naturalistic science, — comparative Mythology, in which not animals but the imaginings of men are really classified. These too are historical facts, because they are imaginings or fancies historically given. They are not combinations of images which no people has ever dreamed of, nor any poet represented, for such, as has already been said, would be infinite in number and food for mere diversion. The question History, which has philosophy for its foundaas to whether J history is \\o\\ becomes in its turn foundation in the natural the foundation sciences- This explains why, with the controversy as to whether history be a science or an art, there has always been inextricably connected the other question as to whether history be the foundation of science or science the foundation of history. The question finds a solution in the solution of the ambiguity of the term " science," which is used indifferently, sometimes in the sense of philosophy, sometimes in that of the natural sciences. If science is understood as philosophy, history is not its foundation, indeed philosophy is the foundation of history. Both mingle and are identified in the sense already explained. If science is understood as naturalistic science, NATURAL SCIENCES 351 then history is its necessary foundation or precedent. Certainly, naturalistic classifications are also reflected in historical narrative; but, as we have seen, they do not perform a constitu tive function in it; they are of merely subsidiary assistance.
But since history is the foundation of the Naturalists and historical natural sciences, and the special treatment of research. perceptive material or historical data by these sciences does not possess theoretic value, but is valuable merely as a convenient classification, it is clear that the whole content of truth of the natural sciences (the measure of truth and reality that at bottom they contribute) is history. Therefore it is not without reason that the natural sciences or some of them have been called in the past natural history. History is the hot and fluid mass, which the naturalist cools and solidifies by pouring it into formal classes and types. Previous to this manipulation, the naturalist must have thought as a historian. The matter thus cooled and solidified for preservation and for transport has no theoretic value, save in so far as it can again be rendered hot and fluid. Similarly, on the other hand, it is necessary to revise continually the classifications adopted, returning to the observation of facts, to simple PART 352 LOGIC PART 352 LOGIC intuitions and perceptions, to the historical consideration of reality. The naturalist who makes a discovery, in so far as he is a discoverer of truth, is a historical discoverer; and revolu tions in the natural sciences represent progress in historical knowledge. Lamarckianism and Darwinism may serve as an example of this. Naturalists (and we use the word in its ordinary meaning, applying it to those who explore this "fair family of plants and animals," and what is called in general the physical world) feel themselves somewhat humiliated when described as classifiers careless of truth. But if such classification is exactly what the natural sciences accomplish from the gnoseological point of view, yet naturalists as individuals and as corporations of students exercise a far more substantial and fruitful function. The historical foundation of the life of the natural sciences is also found in the fact that a change of historical conditions sometimes renders, if not wholly useless, at least less useful, certain classifications made with the object of controlling conditions of life remote from us, or perceptions concerning life that have now been abandoned. This has occurred with regard to the classifications of alchemy and of astrology, and also (passing on to examples from NATURAL SCIENCES 353 other empirical sciences) to the descriptive and / casuistic portions of feudal law. When the book is no longer read, the index also falls into disuse.
The strangest of statements, that nat^tre has The prejudice as to the no history, comes from forgetting the historical non-historicity of nature.
foundation of the natural sciences, from ignorance that it constitutes their sole truth, and from attributing theoretic importance to classifications which have merely practical importance. In this case, nature signifies that reality, from man downwards, which is empirically called inferior reality. But how, if it is reality, is it without history? How, if it is reality, is it not becoming? And further, the thesis is confuted by all the most attentive studies of so-called inferior reality. To limit ourselves to the animal kingdom, a century before Darwin the acute intellect of the Abbe Galiani shook itself free of this prejudice as to the immobility of animals. He remarks in certain places about cats: u A-t-on des naturalistes bien exacts qui nous disent qiie les chats, il y a trots mille ans, prenaient les souris, prdservaient leurs petits, connaissaient la vertu mddicinale de quelques herbes, ou, pour mieux dire, de Iherbe, cotnme Us font a present f...Mes recherches sur les mceurs des chattes mont donnd des soupcons tres forts qiielles sont perfectibles; mais au boitt dune 354 LOGIC PART 354 LOGIC PART longue trainee de siecles, je crois que tous que les chats savent est I'ouvrage de quarante a cinquante . mille ans. Nous riavons que quelques siecles cthistoire naturelle: ainsi le changement quits auront subi dans ce temps, est imperceptible"^ This slight perceptibility of the relative changes of what is called nature or inferior reality has contributed to that prejudice (not to mention the confusion between the fixity that belongs to naturalistic classifications and reality, which is always in motion). Nature appears to be motionless, just because of the slight interest that we take in the shadings of its phenomena and in their continuous variation. But not only is nature not motionless, but it is not even true that it • proceeds (as the poet says) " with steps so slow that it seems to stand still." The movement of nature or inferior reality is fast or slow, neither in less nor greater degree than human reality, according to the various arbitrary constructions of empirical concepts which are adopted, and according to the variable and arbitrary standards of measurement which are applied to them. We watch with vigilant eye every social movement that can cause a variation in the price of grain or the value of Stock Exchange securities; but we NATURAL SCIENCES 355 do not surprise with equally vigilant eye the revolutions that are prepared in the bosom of the earth or among the green-clad herbs of the field.
But if history is the foundation of the natural The philosophic foundation sciences, it follows from this that those sciences of the natural sciences, and are always based upon a philosophy. This is indubitable, for the naturalist, however much he be a naturalist, is above all things a man, and a man without a philosophy (or what comes to the same thing, without a religion) has not yet been found. This does not mean that the natural sciences are philosophy. Their special task is classification, and here they are just as independent and autonomous as philosophy is incompetent. But philosophy is competent in philosophy, and so we see that those naturalists who possess philosophic culture avoid the prejudices, errors, and absurdities that spring from bad philosophies, and to which other naturalists are prone. For instance, if the chemist Professor Ostwald had possessed a better philosophy, he would not have abandoned his good chemistry for that doubtful mixture of things — his Philosophy of Nat^lre. And had Ernest Haeckel made an elementary study of philosophy, he would never have given up his researches upon micro-organisms, in order to solve the riddles of the universe and to falsify 356 LOGIC PART 356 LOGIC PART the natural sciences. Let us limit ourselves to these instances, for our life of to-day supplies innumerable examples of philosophizing men of science, who are as pernicious to science as they are to philosophy and to culture. The antithesis between science and philosophy, of which so many speak, is a dream. The antithesis is be tween philosophy and philosophy, between true philosophy and that which is very imperfect and yet very arrogant, and manifestly active in the brains of many scientists, though it has nothing to do with the discoveries made in laboratories and observatories. Action of The action of philosophy upon the natural the natural...sciences upon sciences is not constitutive of them, but prephilosophy, and errors in. paratory. The action of the natural sciences conceiv ing such