usurpation that philosophy in the narrow sense wreaks upon history, by pretending to deduce history a priori, as the process is called. This usurpation is logically impossible owing to the identity of philosophy and history already demon strated, whence bad history is bad philosophy, and inversely. It may happen that the same individual who at a given moment creates excellent philosophy (and excellent history at the same time) may create bad history (and so bad philosophy) the moment after. But this amounts to saying that he who at one moment has philosophized well, may philosophize badly and err the moment after, and not by any means that the two things are possible in the same act. However, the usurpation, logically impossible, is practically effected, in which case, it is not strictly speaking usurpation, although it comes to be so considered from the logical point of view. On the other hand, the claim for the a priori in history is perfectly just; for to affirm a fact means to think it, and it is not possible to think without transforming the representation by means of the concept, and so deducing it from the concept. But this deduction is an a priori synthesis and therefore also induction, whereas in LOGICISM 423 the claim to deduce history a priori would amount to a deduction without induction, not History (which is, for that very reason, Philosophy], but a Philosophy of History.
The absurdity of this programme must be The contradictions clearly set forth, because those who formulate in this undertaking.
it are wont to concede equivocally that a Philosophy of history must be founded upon actual data, and have induction as its basis. In reality, were those actual data documents to be interpreted, we should not have the Philosophy of history that they desire, but simply History. The actual data, the so-called formless material, in the programme of the Philosophy of history, are at the most already constructed histories, which do not content the philosophers of history. They do not content them, not because they judge them to be false interpretations of the documents (in which case nothing else would be needed but to correct history with history, carrying out the work that all historians do); but because the very method of history does not content them, and they demand something else. History is despised as mere narration, and considered not as a form of thought, but as its material, a chaotic mass of representations. The true form of thought is for them the Philosophy of history, ' 424 LOGIC PART ' 424 LOGIC PART which appears in history and not in documents. And how does it appear? If the documents are removed, the a priori synthesis is no longer possible. It arises, then, by the parthenogenesis of the abstract concept, which history finds in itself, without the spark being struck by con frontation with documents. History is deduced a priori, not in the concrete but in the void. Whatever be the declarations which philosophers of history add to their programme, its essence cannot be changed. Were these declarations made seriously and all their logical consequences accepted, there would be no reason for main taining a Philosophy of history beside and beyond history. The two things would become identical, and the programme itself would be annulled, both for those who propose it, and for us who judge it to be contradictory. This is the dilemma, from which there is no escape: either the Philosophy of history is an interpretation of documents, and in this case it is synonymous with History and makes no new claim; — or it does make a new claim and in that case, being no longer interpretation of documents and intending all the same to think facts, it thinks them without documents and draws them from the empty concept, and we have the Philosophy of history, philosophism, panlogism.
m LOGICISM 425 In order to give itself body, the Philosophy Philosophy of history and history and of history has recourse to analogy. This is a false analogies. legitimate process of thought, which, in its search for truth, seeks analogies and harmonies. But it is legitimate, as we know, only on condition that the analogy does not remain a merely heuristic hypothesis, but is effectively thinkable and thought. Now the concepts that the Philosophy of history deduces cannot be effectively thought, because they are void; they are neither pure concepts nor pure representations, but an arbi trary mixture of the two forms, and therefore contradiction and vacuity. Thus the analogies of which the Philosophy of history avails itself, are false analogies, that is to say, metaphors and comparisons, transformed into analogies and con cepts. It will declare, for instance, that the Middle Ages are the negation of ancient civiliza tion, and that the modern epoch is the synthesis of these two opposites. But ancient civilization is nothing but an unending series of facts, of which each is a synthesis of opposites, real only in so far as it is a synthesis of opposites. And between ancient civilization and the Middle Ages, there is absolute continuity, not less than between the Middle Ages and the modern epoch. Facts cannot stand to one another as opposite LOGIC PART LOGIC PART Distinction between the Philosophy of history, and the books thus entitled. Philosophical and historical merits of these.
concepts, because they cannot be opposed to one another as positive and negative. The fact that is called positive is positive-negative and so, in like manner, is that which is called negative. It will further declare (always by way of example) that Greece was thought and Rome action, and the modern world is the unity of thought and action. But in reality, Greek life was thought and action, like that of Rome, and like modern life. Every epoch, every people, every individual, every instant of life is thought and action, in virtue of the unity of the spirit, whose distinctions are never broken up into separate existences. The affirmations that belong to the Philosophy of history are all of this kind, and when they are not of this kind, it means that they do not belong to the essence of the Philosophy of history.
The last-mentioned case occurs frequently in books that bear the title of Philosophy of history. These certainly cannot be considered to have been refuted when the concept of that science has been refuted. Science is one thing and the book another. The error of a false attempt at science is one thing and the value of books, which usually (especially with great thinkers and writers) have deeper motives and more valuable parts, is another. Among books upon the in LOGICISM 427 in LOGICISM 427 philosophy of history are numbered some masterpieces of human genius, — fountains of truth, at which many generations have quenched their thirst and to which men return perpetually. They have often indeed been marvellous books on history, true history, produced by reaction against superficial, partisan or trifling histories. They have for the first time revealed the true character of certain epochs, of certain events, of certain individuals.1 The sterile form of duality and opposition between Philosophy of history and simple History, concealed the fruitful polemic of a better history against a worse history. Even the formulae, which were falsely regarded as deductions of concepts (for example, that the Middle Ages are the negation of antiquity and the Renaissance the negation of the Middle Ages, or that the Germanic spirit, from the Reformation to the Romantic movement, is the affirmation of inward liberty, or that Italy of the fifteenth century represents Art, France the State, and so on), were at bottom vivacious expressions of predominant characteristics, by means of which the various epochs and events were portrayed. These expressions and truths 1 See my Essay on PIcgel, chap. ix. {What is living, etc., of Hegel, tr. D. Ainslie).
428 LOGIC PART could be accepted without there being any necessity for presupposing clear and fixed oppositions and distinctions, or for denying the extra-temporality of spiritual forms. Besides these historical characteristics, discoveries more strictly philosophical appeared for the first time in those books; hence not only do we find in them the first outlines of a Logic of historical science (a Logic of the individual judgment), but also, some times in imaginative forms, determinations of eternal aspects of the Spirit, which had previously been unknown or ill-known. Such is the case with the concept of progress and providence, and of that other concept concerning the spiritual autonomy of language and of art, which presented itself for the first time as the discovery of the historical epoch, in which man, wholly sense and imagination, without intelligible genera and con cepts, is supposed to have spoken and poetized without reasoning. In an equally imaginary fashion the constancy of the spirit, which eternally repeats itself, also found in those philosophies the formula of the perpetual passing away and returning of the various epochs of civilization. These philosophical truths, like the historical characteristics, must be purged, the first from the representations improperly united with them, the in LOGICISM 429 second from the logical character which they wrongly assumed. But they cannot be discarded, unless we are willing to throw away the gold, through our unwillingness to have the trouble of separating it from the dross. And this necessity for purification further confirms the error of the philosophism, since it is the purification of Philosophy and of History from the Philosophy of History.
Another manifestation of the philosophism, philosophy of somewhat different from the preceding, is the science which assumes the name of Philosophy of nature. Here it is claimed to deduce, not the historical facts themselves, but the general concepts, which constitute the natural sciences. The philosophy of nature can be considered as the converse error to the empiricist error, which claims to induce philosophic categories a posteriori, whereas this claims to deduce empirical concepts a priori.
But the theoretic content of empirical concepts its substantial .. identity with and of the natural sciences is, as we know, nothing the Philosophy of history.
but perception and history. So that, in the final analysis, the Philosophy of nature can be reduced to the Philosophy of history (extended to so- called inferior or subhuman reality), making, like the other, the vain attempt to produce in the 430 LOGIC PART void what thought can produce only in the concrete, that is to say, by synthesizing. And that it tends to become a Philosophy of history is also to be seen from its not infrequent hesitances before abstract concepts, or mathematical science, sometimes declaring that the pure abstractions of the intellect must remain such and are not otherwise deducible and capable of being philoso phized about. The Philosophy of nature has usually been extended to the field of the physical and natural sciences, including also some parts of mechanics. But it has refused to undertake the deduction of the theorems of geometry and still more the operations of the Calculus. The contra- The Philosophy of nature, like the Philosophy Philosophy of of history, has abounded in declarations of the necessity of the historical and empirical method. It has recognized that the physical and natural sciences are its antecedent and presupposition and that it continues and completes their work. But it is not permitted to complete this work because this work extends to infinity. And it would not be able to continue it, save by turning itself into physics and natural sciences, working as these do in laboratories, observing, classifying, and making laws (legislating). Now the Philo sophy of nature does not wish to adopt such a LOGICISM 431 LOGICISM 431 procedure, but to introduce a new method into the study of nature. And since a new method and a new science are the same thing, it does not wish to be a continuation of physics and of the natural sciences, but a new science. And since a new science implies a new object, it wishes to give a new object, which is precisely the philosophic idea of nature. This philosophic idea of nature would therefore be constructed by a method which would not and could not have anything in common with that of the empirical sciences. Yet the Philosophy of nature is not able to dispense with the empirical concepts, which it strives to deduce a priori. And here lies the contradictoriness of its undertaking. The dilemma which confronted the Philosophy of history must be repeated in this case also: — either it has to continue the work of the physical and natural sciences, and in this case there will be progress in the physical and natural sciences and not in the Philosophy of nature; or it has to construct the Philosophy of nature (the physical and natural sciences); and this cannot be done, save by an a priori deduction of the empirical and thus falling into the error of panlogism or philosophism.
The Philosophy of nature, like that of history, 432 LOGIC PART False analogies expresses itself in false analogies. It will say, Philosophy for instance, that the poles of the magnet are the of nature.
of nature.
opposed moments of the concept, made extrinsic and appearing in space; or that light is the ideality of nature; or that magnetism corresponds to length, electricity to breadth and gravity to volume; or again (like more ancient philosophers), that water, or fire, or sulphur, or mercury, is the essence of all natural facts. But these phenomena which are given as essences, those classes of natural facts which are given as moments of the concept and of the spirit, are no longer either scientific phenomena, or the concepts and spiritual forms of philosophy. The first are intuitions and not categories; the second categories and not intuitions; and just because they are so clearly distinguished from one another they mutually mingle in the a priori synthesis. On the other hand, the concepts of the Philosophy of nature are categories, which as such present themselves in their emptiness as intuitions, and intuitions, which in their blindness present themselves as categories. These thoughts are contradictory. They can be spoken, or rather uttered, because it is possible to combine phonetically contradictory propositions, but it is impossible to think them. Such combinations by their ingenuity often give in LOGICISM 433 in LOGICISM 433 rise to surprise or astonishment. But mental satisfaction is never obtained from them merely because the mind is excited and deluded. On the other hand, the Philosophy of nature, in this f labour of ingenuity, runs against limits, which even ingenuity cannot overcome. Then are heard affirmations, which amount to open con fessions of the impossibility of the task. Of this sort is the assertion that nature contains the contingent and the irrational and therefore is incapable of complete rationalization; or that nature in its self-externality is impotent to achieve the concept and the spirit. In like manner, Philosophies of history end by confessing that there are facts which are told and are not deduced, because they are small, contingent and fortuit ous matter for chronicle. Thus, after having announced in the programme the rationality of nature and of history, they recognize in the execution of the programme that the contrary is true. They simply deny the rationality of the world, because they cannot bring themselves to deny the rationality of the pseudo-sciences of philosophism.
Finally, the reservations made in the case of works entitled Philosophy of works dealing with the Philosophy of history nature. are to be repeated for those dealing with the 434 LOGIC PART 434 LOGIC PART Philosophy of nature. In them, too, there is something more than, and something different from, the sterile analogical exercises that we have mentioned. Some of the philosophers of nature, in the pursuit of their illusions, have made occasional scientific discoveries, in the same way that the alchemists seeking the philosopher's stone made discoveries in Chemistry. Those discoveries in physical and natural science cannot serve to increase the value of the theory of the Philosophy of nature any more than those made in chemistry increased the value of alchemy. But they confer value on the books entitled Philosophy of nature, and do honour to their authors as physicists, not as metaphysicians. From the philosophical point of view, those works have had the merit of affirming, though but in imaginative and symbolical ways, the unity and spirituality of nature, opening the path to its unification with the history of man. They have the yet greater merit of contributing effectively in the battle engaged by them against the sciences of making clear the empirical character of the naturalistic concepts and the abstract character of the mathematical. Nevertheless, they drew illegitimate conclusions from such gnoseological truth and carried on a war of LOGICISM 435 LOGICISM 435 conquest, which must be held to be unjust. In virtue of the positive elements that they contain, works on the Philosophy <5f nature have aided the advance both of the sciences and of philosophy, which in their properly philosophico- naturalistic parts they have violated and debased and forced into hybrid unions.
In our day demands for a Philosophy of history contemporary demands for a are rare and received with scant favour; but it Philosophy of nature and seems that those for a Philosophy of nature are their various meanings.
again acquiring vigour. On seeking the inward meaning of this fact, it is seen that on the one hand many of those who demand a Philosophy of nature are empiricists, desirous of a natural science elaborated into a philosophy, and therefore not properly of a Philosophy of nature, but of a view of the natural sciences that may supplant philosophy. Other upholders of a Philosophy of nature echo the only programme of such a philosophy, as it was formulated especially by Schelling and by Hegel, but declare themselves altogether dissatisfied with the attempts to carry it out made by Schelling, by Hegel and by the followers of both. They are dissatisfied, but incapable of setting their dissatisfaction at rest by a new attempt at carrying out the programme. They are also without the intellectual courage 436 LOGIC PART necessary to question and to re - examine the solidity of the programme itself, which is in their judgment plausible and guaranteed by such great names. For what indeed is more plausible upon first inspection than the affirmation that the empirical sciences must be elevated to the rank of philosophy? It seems that too much mental liberty is needed to understand and to distinguish from the preceding, the somewhat different pro position that empiricism (empirical philosophy) must certainly be elevated to the rank of non- empirical philosophy, but that the empirical sciences must be left in peace to their own methods, without any attempt to render perfect by means of extrinsic additions that which has in itself all the perfection of which it is capable. It seems that more intelligence than is usually met with is necessary in order to recognize that this last proposition does not establish a dualism of spirit and nature, of philosophy and the natural sciences, but for ever destroys every dualism by making of the natural sciences a merely practical formation of the spirit, which has no voice in the assembly of the philosophical sciences, as the object which it has created has no reality. An ultimate tendency can be discerned in the complex movement of the day toward a Philosophy of nature. This is LOGICISM 437 the attainment of the consciousness that reality is on this side of the classifications of the natural sciences, and that the natural sciences must be retranslated into history, by means of a historical consideration (concrete and not abstract) of the facts that are called natural. But this tendency is not something that will attain its end in a near or in a distant future. It has always shown its value and shows it also to-day; it can be re commended and promoted, but neither more nor less than every other legitimate form of spiritual activity can be recommended and promoted. Classifications are classifications; and what man really seeks out, what continually enriches the empirical sciences, is always the history of nature, — the series of facts, which, as we know, can be distinguished only in an empirical manner from the history of man, and which along with this constitutes History without genitive or adjective; history, which cannot even be strictly called history of the spirit, for the Spirit is, itself, History.
IV MYTHOLOGISM Rupture of the WHEN by the severance of subject from prediunity of the synthesis a cate, of history from philosophy, the mutilated priori.
subject is given as predicate, mutilated history as philosophy, and consequently a false predicate is posited, which predicate is an abstract subject and therefore mere representation; when this happens, there occurs the opposite error to that which we have just particularly examined. That was called philosophism; this might be called historicism; but since this last term has usually been employed to indicate a form of positivism, it will be more convenient to call it mythologism.
The process of this error (somewhat abstruse in the way that we have stated it) becomes clear at once in virtue of the name that has been assigned to it. Every one has examples of myths present in his memory. Let us take the myths of Uranus and Gaea, of the seven days of crea tion, of the earthly Paradise, and of Prometheus, PART in MYTHOLOGISM 439 of Danae, or of Niobe. Every one is ready to say of a scientific theory which introduces causes not demonstrable either in the experience or in thought, that it is not theory, but mythology, not concept, but myth.
What then is it that is called myth? It is Essence of the myth, certainly not a simple poetic and artistic fancy. The myth contains an affirmation or logical judgment, and precisely for this reason may be considered a hybrid affirmation, half fanciful and erroneous. If it has been confused with art, it is not so much a false doctrine of the myth that should be blamed, as a false aesthetic doctrine, which we have already refuted, and which fails to recognize the original and ingenuous character of art. On the other hand, the logical affirmation does not stand to the myth as something extrinsic, as in the case of a fable or image put forward to express a given concept, where the difference of the two terms and the arbitrariness of the relation between them declares itself more or less openly. In this case there is not myth, but allegory. In myth, on the contrary, the concept is not separated from the representation, indeed it is throughout penetrated by it. Yet the corn- penetration is not effected in a logical manner, as in the singular judgment and in the a priori 44° LOGIC PART 44° LOGIC PART synthesis. The compenetration is obtained capriciously, yet it gives itself out as necessary and logical. For instance, it is desired to explain how sky and earth were formed, how sea and rivers, plants and animals, men and language arose; and behold, we are given as explanations, the stories of the marriage of Uranus and Gaea, and the birth of Chronos and of the other Titans; or the story of a God Creator, who successively drew all things out of chaos in seven days, and made man of clay and taught him the names of things. It is desired to explain the origin of human civilization, and the tale is told of Prometheus, who steals fire and instructs men in the arts; or of Adam and Eve, who eat the forbidden fruit, and driven from the earthly Paradise are forced to till the ground and bathe it with their sweat. It is desired to explain the astronomical phenomena of dawn or of winter, and the story is told of Phoebus, who pursues Daphne, or of the same god who slays one after the other the sons of Niobe. These naturalistic interpretations may pass as examples, however contested and antiquated they may be. In place of the concepts which should illuminate single facts, we are given representations. Hence are derived what we have called false predicates.
MYTHOLOGISM 441 Philosophy becomes a little anecdote, a novelette, a story; history too becomes a story and ceases to be history, because it lacks the logical element necessary for its constitution. The true philo sophic doctrine in the preceding cases, for example, will be that of an immanent spirit, of which stars and sky, earth and sea, plants and animals, constitute the contingent manifestations; the doctrine which looks upon the consciousness of good and evil and the necessity for work, not as the result of a theft made from the gods or of a violation of one of their commands, but as eternal categories of reality; and which regards language, not as the teaching of men by a god, but as an essential determination of humanity, or indeed of spirituality, which is not truly, if it does not express itself. They will also, if we like, be the philosophic doctrines of materialism and of evolutionism; but these, in order to be accepted as philosophic, must prove, like the preceding, that they do not substitute representations for concepts and are strictly founded upon thought and employ its method, that is to say, that they are philosophy and not mythology. For this reason, in philosophical criticism, adverse philo sophies often accuse one another of being more or less mythological, and we hear of the