ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 355 ceptions or representations of the practical) pro ceed in a manner perfectly analogous (intuitions of the practical). Moral indifference belongs to the first, when they are on this side of the moral conscience, but within this conscience they lose the right to innocence, as in history the pure in tuitions, when they have become perceptions, lose the privilege that they possessed as pure intuitions. The ethical discrimination of the economic voli tions, which takes place through the moral conscience, is then in full correspondence with the historical discrimination of the aesthetic intui tions, which takes place through the logical conscience.
We owe to the false conception by coordination, other erroneous conceptions of not only the two monstrous little concepts of modes of action, disinterested actions and of those that are morally indifferent, licit, or permissive, but others also, which have been deduced by means of a some what different casuistic from the same general hypothesis. Indeed, in the preceding case, useful and moral, posited as apart and parallel, were maintained one extraneous to the other and at peace between themselves. But nothing forbade that warlike plans should be attributed to those two entities, just as when two coordinate animal species are posited, we may suppose, either that 356 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
the individuals of each one mind their own affairs and allow the individuals of the other species to live and to prosper in peace, or that the one takes to persecuting the other, sometimes injuring or destroying it and some times being by it injured or destroyed. Thus were and are obtained concepts of moral anti- economic actions and of anti-economic moral actions, of immoral economic actions, and of economic immoral actions, four concepts which are all four to be rejected. Moral action can never be accom plished at a loss: morality is for the moral man the supreme advantage in the situation in which he finds himself, and it would be erroneous to measure it by comparison with what an individual without morality would do in the same situation, for, as we know, individual and situation are all one, in such a way that a like comparison is im possible. In a similar manner, an anti-economic action can never be moral; at the most it will not even be amoral, or will not even posit the primary and generic condition of morality, that is, it will not be action, but inert contemplation. An immoral action can never be economic, because immorality implies internal disagreement and strife between one volition directed to the universal and another directed to the merely ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 357 individual, hence the result will be practical inconclusion and infecundity, dissatisfaction and remorse; that is to say, just the opposite of utility and economicity. In like manner, an economic action can never be immoral: at the most (when it is merely an economic action), it will be amoral.
The bond of unity and distinction that exists pleasure and between the concepts of the useful and the moral activity, happi ness, and and the consequent negation of the formula of virtue.
coordination, help to solve in a definite way the intricate questions relating to pleasure and morality, happiness and virtue.
First of all, we can here give yet another mean- pleasure, pain ing to the indeterminate category of feeling with its poles of pleasure and pain, for it is clear that when feeling was distinguished from moral activity and set at variance with it, we had in view nothing but the pure economic activity. And in truth, of all the tendencies included in that con cept as sketched out, this of economicity seems on the whole to prevail over the others, so much so that we shall henceforth be disposed to give to the word " feeling " the name of economic activity. Thus it was reasonably maintained, with im plied reference to this meaning, that pleasure and pain are proper to feeling and extraneous to the 358 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
other spiritual forms, and that they only act in the others as concomitants. For if the theoretical forms give rise to the dialectic of true and false, in so far as the practical spirit can be introduced into them, it is clear that pleasure and pain come to those forms from the practical spirit, with which the theoretic spirit is always in unity. In the practical spirit too, the moral activity divides into pleasure and pain, in so far as it has concrete or economic form; and therefore in so far as it is economic, not in so far as it is moral. Pleasure and pain belong to feeling alone, because they belong to the economic activity alone, which is the practical in its general form, involving of itself all the other forms, practical and theoretic. coincidence of When this has been established, pleasure or duty with duty with pleasure. economic feeling or economic activity as positive cannot be at strife with duty or with the moral activity in its positivity, for the two terms co incide. The divergence existed only when they were conceived, not in unity and distinction, but in coordination. When we speak of a good action accompanied with pain, we make an inexact statement, or better, we make use of a mode of expression that must be understood, not literally, but in its spirit. The good action, as such, always brings with it satisfaction and pleasure, and the ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 359 pain said to accompany it, either shows that the action is not yet altogether good, because it has not been willed with complete internal accord, or that a new practical problem, still un solved and therefore painful, lies beyond the pleasurable moral action.
The other false idea, of rigoristic or ascetic critique of rigorism or Ethic, which makes war upon pleasure as such, asceticism. derives from the plan of coordination, through the already mentioned casuistic of the conflict between the coordinated terms. Indeed, if it be legitimate to combat this or that pleasure, which enters into a contest with the moral act, it is not possible to abolish the category of pleasure, for the reason already given, that in this way the category itself of morality, which has its reality and concreteness in pleasure (in eco- nomicity), would be abolished: the concrete and real moral act is also pleasurable. The attempt to abolish pleasure is as insane as would be the wish to speak without words or any other form of expression, preserving thought pure of such sensual contacts, that is to say, producing an inexpressed and inexpressible thought. This last attempt has been made by mysticism, which either does not give thoughts at all, or, con tradicting itself, gives them expressed and logical, 360 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
like those of all other doctrines. Asceticism provides a complete counterpart to this in the practical field, for it might be called mysticism of the practical in the same way as the name of asceticism of the theoretical would not be unsuit able to mysticism. Relation of What has been said of the relation between happiness and •virtue. pleasure and morality, is to be repeated of the other between happiness and virtue, a relation that is identical with the preceding, from which it differs only because expressed by means of empirical concepts of class. Happiness is not virtue, as pleasure is not morality, because there exist the pleasure of the innocent or of the mentally deficient, and the happiness of the child or the brute, who are without moral conscience. But virtue is always happiness, as morality is always pleasure. It will be said that a virtuous man may be unhappy, because he suffers atrocious physical pain or is in financial difficulties, and, therefore, that virtue and happiness do not coincide. But this is a vulgar sophism, because the virtuous man, who should be also happy, must be truly and altogether virtuous; that is to say, he must cure and conquer the ills of the body and of fortune with his energy, if he can, or, if it be im possible to conquer them, he must resign himself ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 361 and take them into account and develop his own activity within the limits that they lay down. Every individual, not only the unfortunate in dividual of the example, has his limits; and everyone can transform his limits into pains by being dissatisfied with them, just as every one can, with resignation, transform his pains into limits and conditions of activity. It will be said that sometimes the evils that assail the virtuous man are not only incurable, but so intolerable as to render all resignation impossible. But he who does not effectively and absolutely resign himself, that is, does not accommodate himself to life, dies; and the occurrence of the death of the individual is neither happiness nor un- happiness: it is a fact or event.
Finally, the theory that subordinates pleasure critique of . the subordinaor happiness, utility or economy, to duty, to tim of ple to morality.
virtue, to moral activity, is to be rejected. The subordination of the one term to the other is not possible on this side of morality, because only one of the two terms is present; and in like mariner it is impossible in the moral circle, because, though the terms are certainly two, they are two in one, not one above and the other below; that is to say, they are distinct terms that become unified. Morality has complete empire 362 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
over life, and there is not an act of life, be it as small as you will, that morality does not or ought not to regulate. But morality has no absolute empire over the forms or categories of the spirit, and as it cannot destroy or modify itself, so it cannot destroy or modify the other spiritual forms, which are its necessary support and pre supposition. NO empire of Hence is apparent the remarkable fatuity of morality over morality over the forms of those who pretend to regulate morally the function of art, of science, or of economy and profess moralistic theories of art and philosophy and a moralized economic science. The poet, the man of science, the business man, must be as honest as others, but it is not given to them to tear in pieces the nature of poetry, of science and of industry, in the madness of honesty. Indeed, were this done or attempted, and the poet were to introduce extraneous elements into his work of art, through his failure to understand morality, or the philosopher to veil or alter the purity of truth, or the man of business foolishly to bring his own business to ruin, then and only then, would they be dishonest. To substitute the single acts of life that appertain to morality, for the universal forms of the spirit, and to predicate of these what should be predicated only of those, ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 363 is so evident an absurdity that it could not be committed by anyone accustomed to philosophical distinctions. But what nonsense is so evident that idle babblers and elegant men of letters do not know how to cover with their ratiocinative and aesthetic flowers and to present to society or to the academic world as truth, or at least as a theory worthy of reflection and discussion?
Such, then, are the two forms of the practical inexistence of .. other practical activity, and such their relation; and as it \S forms and im possibility of not possible to reduce them to one alone, so it subdivision of the two estabis not possible to multiply them beyond the two, lished- which altogether exhaust the nexus of finite and infinite. Hence, too, we perceive that the economic and also the ethic-economic activity do not each of them give rise to new subdivisions, because other terms of subdivision are not con ceivable beyond the duality of finite and infinite. As there are no philosophical and ethical classes, nor categories of expression (rhetoric), nor cate gories of concepts (formalistic logic), so there are no economic categories and ethical categories beyond those that constitute utility (volition of the individual) and morality (volition of the universal).
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY AND THE SO-CALLED SCIENCE OF ECONOMY Problem of the relations between Philosophy and Science of Economy.
INTERNAL observation, confirming at all points rational necessity, has rendered clear the exist ence of a special form of practical activity, the utilitarian or economic, and of a correlative Economic or Philosophy of economy. But how ever irrefutable may seem the demonstration that we have given, yet it will never be altogether satisfactory, while a very important point is left obscure: the relation between our Philosophy of economy and the Science of economy.
This is a system of doctrine that takes various names and forms, and is presented in turn as political, national, pure, or mathematical Economy; it is a system of doctrines which, although not without precedents in antiquity, has been gradually formed, especially in recent centuries, and is now in fullest flower. A saying of Hegel is often recorded, not without satisfaction, for PT. ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 365 even in his time he praised Economy as " a science that does much honour to thought, because it extracts the laws from a mass of accidentally."1 Has it the same object as our Philosophy of economy? If the reply be in the affirmative, how does it ever arrive at concepts altogether different? Or is it an empirical science, and if so, from what source does it derive the rigour and absoluteness by which it is removed from all empiricism and formulates truths of universal character? Two strict sciences with the same object are inconceivable; and yet as it seems, there must here be precisely two: hence the perplexity and disorientation that the affirmation of a Philosophy of economy must and does produce.
If the economic actions of man be considered, unreality of in their uncontaminated and undiminished reality, concepts of with an eye free from all prejudice, it is never pos sible to establish even a single one of the concepts and laws of economic science. Every individual is different at every moment of his life: he wills always in a new and different way, not comparable with the other modes of his or of others' willing. If A spent seven soldi to buy a loaf of bread yesterday, and to-day he spend the same amount economic science.
366 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
in making the same purchase, the seven soldi of to-day are not for this reason those of yesterday, nor is the bread the same as that of yesterday, nor the want that A satisfies to-day the same as that of yesterday, nor is the effort that his action costs him identical with that of yesterday. If the individual B also spend seven soldi for a loaf of bread, the action of B is different from that of A, as that of the A of to-day was different from that of yesterday. If we lead the economist on to this ground of reality (or rather to the side of this Heraclitean river, in which it is not possible to dip the same hands twice in the same water), he will feel himself impotent, for he will not find any point of support for the edification of any of his theories. — The value of a piece of goods (says a theorem of Economy) depends upon the quantity of it and of all the other goods that are upon the market. — But what does " goods " mean? Bread, for example, or wine? In reality, abstract bread and wine do not exist, but a given piece of bread, a given glass of wine, with a given individual who will give a treasure or nothing in order to eat the one or to drink the other, according to the conditions in which he finds himself. — Any sort of enjoyment, when protracted, decreases and finally becomes extinguished. — That is the law ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 367 of Gossen, one of the foundation - stones of economic theory. But what are these enjoy ments that are protracted, decrease, and end by becoming extinguished? In reality there exist only actions, which assume different positions at every moment, owing to the continual changing of surrounding reality, in which the volitional individual operates. The difference is qualitative, not quantitative: if the individual A eat the bread that he has bought for seven soldi, when swallow ing the second or the tenth or the last mouthful, he has a pleasure, not inferior to that which he had when swallowing the first, but different: the last was not less necessary for him, in its way, than the first; otherwise he would have remained unsatisfied in his normal want, in his habit, or in his caprice. — The economic man seeks the maximum of satisfaction with the least effort— That is the very principle of Economy, but neither does this principle correspond with reality, most simple and general though it be. The individual A disputes for an hour, in order to save two soldi in the purchase of an object, for which he has been asked ten lire, thus attaining the maximum satisfaction for himself with the least means that is naturally at his disposal on that occasion. The individual B, making boast 368 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL «•.
of his magnificence, lights his cigarette with a banknote of a hundred lire, thus likewise attaining for himself the greatest satisfaction to which he aspired, with the least means that he possessed, namely, by burning that paper money. But if this be so, we have here a question, not of greatest and least, but of individual ends and of relative means adopted, or (owing to the unity of means and ends already noted), of actions individually different. Economic Certainly, it is quite possible to abstract in a Science founded..
upon empirical greater or less measure from the infinite variety concepts, but not empirical of actions and to construct a series of types or or descriptive, concepts of classes and of empirical laws, thus rendering uniform the formless, within certain limits. Thus is obtained the concept of bread and of the consumption of bread, and of the various portions of bread and of other objects, for which a portion of bread can be exchanged, and so on. In this way are full philosophico-historical reality and the method of logical necessity and of realistic observation of facts abandoned for a feigned reality and for a method of arbitrary choice, which, as we know, has its good reasons for existing in the human spirit, and does great service by the swift recall and easy control of the requisite knowledge, And if Economy consisted ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 369 in the establishment of a series of laws and examples in the above sense (or when under stood in this way), it would join the number of the descriptive disciplines; and in that case there would be no necessity for us to speak of it further, for it would suffice to refer back to what has already been said of the relations of the Philosophy of the practical with practical Description, classes, rules, and casuistic. But economic Science is not descriptive, and is not developed according to the following formula: goods are divided into the classes a, b, c, d, e, etc., and the class a is exchanged with the class b in the proportion of i to 3, the class b with the class c in the proportion of i to 5, etc. In such a formula is always understood the up and down, the for the most part, and the very nearly. the classes with their ups and downs are as stated; the exchanges take place for the most part in the proportions stated; if things are to-day very nearly thus, to-morrow they will be so very nearly, in a different way.
On the contrary, the propositions of the Absoluteness Science of hconomy are rigorous and necessary. " Granted that soils of different degrees of fertility are cultivated, their possessors will all obtain, besides the absolute rent, a differential rent, with 370 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
the exception of the possessor of the least fertile soil" (Ricardo's law). " Bad money drives out good" (Gresham's law). Now, it is not con ceivable in any case that soils of different fertility, all of them cultivated, should not give a differential rent. It will be said that the State can confiscate the differential rent, or that the possessor, owing to his bad cultivation or to his bad administration, may lose it; but the proposition does not remain less sound on this account. Nor is it possible that, when an un changeable paper money is in circulation, gold coins should also circulate indifferently and on a par with it, when the total of the money in circula tion lowers the value of the monetary unit beneath the metallic value of the better money. A mad man who might be in possession of a hoard of gold pieces at the time of the circulation of the declining paper money (which causes poverty) would perhaps give it in exchange for the inferior money; but the wise man will keep it in his safe. The economic proposition expresses the rational necessity, not the madness, which is irrational. Those propositions, like all the others of economic science, are therefore certainly not descriptions, but theorems.
The denomination " theorems " makes us think n ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 371 at once of the mathematical disciplines, among Their mathe matical nature. which alone can economic Science find a place.
The propositions of that science being excluded from philosophical, historical, or naturalistic science, there remains nothing that they can be, save mathematical. Yes, they are mathematical, but not pure mathematics, for in that case they would be nothing but arithmetic, algebra, or the calculus, that is, they would belong to the kind of mathematical disciplines called applied, because they introduce into the paradigms of the calculus certain data taken from reality, that is to say, taken from without the purely numerical conception. Economic Science, then, is a mathematic applied to the concept of human action and to its sub species. It does not inquire what human action is; but having posited certain concepts of action, it creates formulae for the prompt recognition of the necessary connections.
It is not surprising that such propositions its principles / _.. their character examined in their truth appear in one respect of arbitrary postulates and arbitrary and in another tautological. But it definitions.
Their utility.
is not thus that they are examined, and it is not thus that propositions of mathematics are ever examined, for their value lies solely in the service that they render. Certainly Ricardo's law relating to land of varying fertility is nothing 372 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
but the definition of lands of various fertility, in the same way that Gresham's law relating to bad money is nothing but the definition of bad money. The same may be said of any other economic law, as, for example, that every protective tariff is destruction of riches, or that a demand for commodities is not a demand for labour, since these, like the preceding, are simply definitions of the protective tariff, of the demand for commodities, and of the demand for labour. And it could be proved of all of them that they are arbitrary, because the concepts of land, tariffs, commodities, money, and so on, are arbitrary, and because they become necessary only when that arbitrariness has been admitted as a postulate. But the same demonstration can be given of any theorem in Geometry; since it is not less arbitrary and tautological, that the measure of a quadrilateral should be equal to the base multi plied by the height, or that the sum of the squares of a cathetic should be equal to the square of the hypotenuse. This does not prevent Geometry from being Geometry, or negate the fact that without it we should not have been able to build the house in which we dwell, nor to measure this star upon which we live, nor the others that revolve around it or around which we revolve.