conforming to the will of God and of the gods, is not intrinsically different from these. Where the idea of the transcendental and of religious mystery is introduced, there is darkness; and anything can be put into darkness. In the first place, nothing but darkness itself can be put there, and in this case the religious solution is agnosticism, confession of ignorance, such as we have hitherto treated, in criticizing theological utilitarianism or abstract ethical rigorism, which, by means of its insoluble contradictions, also leads to the idea of God and of mystery. But one's own will, caprice and individual interests can also be put there; and then religion becomes attachment to a being or to an order of beings, which, though they be imaginary, are not for that reason less individual; attachment to them is love or fear, sympathy or fear of the evil they can do, and tendency to avoid it by pro pitiation with prayers, adulation, gifts, services, worship. Religious principles, then, understood as material principles, also become converted, as all know, and we may add, know all too well, into utilitarian principles; because, through intently fixing the gaze upon this aspect of religion, they have forgotten to look at others more important and certainly more noble.
434 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT. Formal The ethical principle is not adequately exprinciple as affirmation of a pressed, either by the altruistic concept, or by merely logical exigency. that of natural formations and of institutions, or by that of the gods; because all of these are general concepts, or sometimes merely individual repre sentations; they are certainly not universal concepts. And by the necessity of the universal and the insufficiency of the merely general and individual, the ethical principle must be formal and not material. However (and here we enter into the new meaning of this word and into the new debate announced), the formal ethical principle has likewise been understood as not susceptible of extension beyond the enunciation of the character of universality, which the principle itself should possess. Its formula has seemed to be nothing but that of a universal law, to which all men can conform in complete harmony among themselves; of respect towards all beings, in the degree that appertains to each, of that which satisfies the exigencies of reason and of conscience, and so on. Now the formality claimed by this and similar formulae has nothing to do with the formality first claimed; and since in the pre ceding debate we took the side of those who maintain formal as against material Ethic, so n ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 435 here we must defend material against formal Ethic; or better, an Ethic that is not material against an Ethic that is not formal, save in the pretentions of those who thus baptize it.
What does the formality of Ethic mean in critique of a formal ethic in the new sense? Nothing but this: that it is this sense: tautologi sm.
not necessary to inquire what is the ethical principle, but that we must be satisfied with saying that whatever it be, it must be universal. But that it must be universal is a proposition which belongs, not to Ethic, but to Logic; the principles of all philosophical sciences must possess the character of universality, the logical as the aesthetic, the principle of Ethic as that of Economic, the moral categoric imperative as the utilitarian categoric. Thus the thesis of formality in the new meaning is reduced to placing at the head of Ethic, not the ethical principle, but the logical exigency of the ethical principle, in the same way that a similar claim in /Esthetic would result in placing at the head of that science, not the formal aesthetic principle, as for example, Intuition- expression, but a formal aesthetic principle, the claim for a law, so made that no form of beauty could ever be excluded from it. Instead of constructing the science, the affirma- 436 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT. tion of logical necessity, which that construction must obey, is infinitely repeated; but the thesis of formality in the new sense would be better called the thesis of tautologism.
Tautological Besides the formulae to which we have referred, ^fchief namely those of the categoric imperative, of the gand critique of universal law, of the respect for being, of the rational and of conscience, the formulae of the chief good, of duty (or of law], of the ideal, of true pleasure, of constant pleasiire, of spiritual pleasure, of personal dignity, of self-esteem, of the just mean, of harmony, of proportion, of justice, of perfection, of following nature, and so on, also belong to the tautological principles of Ethic; they are all tautologies, because they do not determine to what object those logical claims are applicable. To ask what is the form of will that produces a constant, spiritual and true pleasure, which makes perfect, gives self- esteem, satisfies our conscience, strikes the just mean, answers to what ought to be done, attains to the supreme good, and so on, is tantamount to asking, What is the ethical form? This is precisely what must be answered, if we do not wish to fall into tautology, and the reply cannot be the question itself.
And it is convenient to note here that many ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 437 of the formulae that we have criticized as belong- Tautological meaning of ing to material Ethic, have also been frequently certain formula;, employed as tautological formulae, that is to say, material in appearance.
as symbols and metaphors of the ethical truth to be determined. The others, of which altruism speaks, are at bottom not others as physically distinct from us, but others in an ideal sense, that is, as duty surpassing the empirical ego; God, of which religious Ethic speaks, is that in determinate concept, that logical exigency, which is also called the categoric imperative; the State or Life that one pledges oneself to serve is not this or that State, this or that particular form of life, but the symbol of the ideal; the nature to be followed is that nature, or ethical principle within us, which the speculative reason must determine. Thus do material principles often progress, ceasing to be such, in order to become tautological, that is, abandoning the possession of undue determination, owing to the consciousness of a want, of a lacuna to be filled.
The evil is that tautologism inevitably returns conversion of tautological to that undue possession, because, imagining Ethic into material and that it has established that ethical principle which it has not established at all, and that it has finally constructed Ethic, of which it has not even laid the foundations, it sets to work to 438 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PP.
explain moral and concrete facts by means of that empty form. The consequence of this is that utilitarian motives, as usual, fill the empty space. Why should we not violate a deposit that has been entrusted to us? Perhaps because (as they say) the moral law is a universal law? That does not suffice. Respect for the deposit cannot be deduced from this principle, for a universal law is equally thinkable, according to which is deduced in certain cases a respect for the deposit and in certain other cases the contrary. This then is the fact: that to restore a deposit confided to us may sometimes happen to be a bad action, as, for instance, to restore the weapon entrusted to us, when he who claims it intends to commit suicide or to assassinate. Thus it happens that not knowing how to put an end to the controversy in virtue of the true ethical principle, and wishing nevertheless in some way to use that empty formula, it comes to be filled with the only principle possessed, namely the utilitarian; and the reason given for respecting the deposit is said to be the de sirability of respecting for engagements, for the ends of the individual, failing which (it will be said) no business would thenceforth be effected and the world of affairs would languish.
,. ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 439 Formal Ethic, in the new sense, or as it would in what Ethic should be better called, tautological Ethic, might be be formal and in what other called formalistic, owing to its thus falling back sense material. into material, heteronomous and utilitarian Ethic, since formalism here (as in /Esthetic and Logic) is the caricature of formality, and almost a sort of materiality. In maintaining formal Ethic we do not wish that it should be formalistic; that is, that it should be again covertly material. And we wish that formal Ethic should also be material, always understanding by this that it must give, not the mere logical condition of the ethical principle, but this ethical principle itself in its concreteness, determining what moral volition is in its reality.
II THE ETHICAL FORM AS ACTUATION OF THE SPIRIT IN UNIVERSAL Tautological IF the strange idea of an ethical principle that Ethic and its r r connection -with should be formal, in the sense of its not being known Philosophy t exactlv wnat it: is and how it is justified, has ever been able to arise, this is due to two erroneous philosophical conceptions, of which one can be called partial, the other discontinuous philosophy. According to the first conception, man is capable of knowing something of reality, certainly, but not all: he perceives and arranges the data of experience by means.of the categories, but he is aware of the limitation of his thought and of the impossibility of attaining to the heart of the real, which he does, it is true, end by attaining in a certain way, but only with the heart, not with thought. This being stated, and coming to the case of Ethic, man hears the voice of conscience in himself, the command of the moral law; he cannot think of any sophism to escape it: but FT. ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 441 precisely what that law is, he is unable to say; the idea of a divine ordinance of the world which presents itself to his spirit, may also be affirmed by the heart, but never by thought. The second conception is confounded by some thinkers with the first and becomes partial philosophy or agnosticism; but if we observe closely, it is Distinct from the other. For here it is not actually asserted that the foundation of morality is unknowable, but it is said to be unknowable in the circle of Ethic, or that such knowledge goes beyond that circle. Ethic establishes the moral law, deduces or arranges beneath it ethical precepts and by means of them judges single actions. Ethic is ignorant as to whether that law really exists, or what may be its precise universal content. It hands this problem over to Metaphysic, or to general Philosophy, which solves it in its own way, or is presumed to be capable of solving it. In this conception, then, there arises a question as to competence and hierarchy between thought and thought, between particular and general philosophy; whereas, in the former, is affirmed the absolute incompetence of thought.
But we do not run the risk of colliding with Rejection of both these the obstacle placed before us with these philo- co sophical views, because we have constantly 442 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
rejected them both throughout the whole of our exposition of the Philosophy of the spirit and have demonstrated their falsity. Partial Philo sophy is a contradictory concept: thought either thinks all or nothing; and if it had a limit it would have it as thought and therefore as sur passed. Whoso admits something unknowable, declares everything unknowable, and inevitably falls into total scepticism. Nor is the idea of a discontinuous philosophy divided into a whole and its parts, with the whole outside the parts and the parts outside the whole less incon ceivable; so that, while Ethic is being studied, the whole (complete Philosophy) seems problem atical; and a part (Ethic) can be known to some extent without knowing the whole (the whole of Philosophy). This is a false view, ultimately derived from the empirical sciences, in which it is possible to apprehend one order of phenomena independently of the others; and to apprehend phenomena without explicitly posing or by dismiss ing to another occasion the philosophical problem as to their truth. Philosophy is a circle and a unity and every point of it is intelligible only in relation to all the others. The didascalic con venience of exposing a group of philosophical problems separately from others — or also (if it ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 443 please others, as it has not pleased us) of dividing the exposition into particular philo sophical sciences, and into general Philosophy (also called Metaphysic) — should not lead to the misconception that the indivisible is really being divided. The whole of Philosophy is at once enunciated with the first philosophical proposition; and the others that come after will all be nothing but explanations of the first.
Therefore, since we have never denied faith The ethical form as to thought, nor broken in pieces the unity of volition of the universal.
Philosophy, we have no secret to reveal at this point; not even a poor secret, like the exponents of discontinuous Philosophy, who solemnly make known at the end what they have assumed from the beginning. Our formal ethical principle is never empty form that must only now be filled with a content. It is full form, form in the philosophical and universal sense, which is also content and therefore universal content. We have not restricted ourselves to defining the ethical form as universal form, which would have resulted in tautologism; but we have defined it volition of the universal, thus distinguishing it from the economic form, which is simply volition of the individual. And if we now ask ourselves what is the universal, we must reply 444 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
that the answer has already been given, and that whoever has not yet understood, whoever indeed has not understood it for some time, will never understand it. The universal has been the object of all our Philosophy of the Spirit, and we have always had to keep it before our eyes, in studying, not only the practical function, but any other function of the spirit; just as we cannot have the idea of the branch of a tree without the idea of the trunk from which it springs and without which there would not be the branch of a tree. That concept, then, is not a deus ex machina to appear unexpectedly at the end of the play and hastily bring it to a con clusion, but the force that has animated it from the first to the last scene. The universal What is the universal? It is the Spirit, it is as the Spirit (Reality, Reality, in so far as it is truly real, that is, in so far as it is unity of thought and willing; it is Life, in so far as realized in its profundity as this unity itself; it is Freedom, if a reality so conceived be perpetual development, creation, progress. Outside the Spirit nothing is think able in a truly universal form. ^Esthetic, Logic, Historic, this very Philosophy of the practical, have demonstrated and confirmed this truth in every way. Every other concept brought forward ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 445 reveals itself (and has revealed itself beneath our analysis), either as a feigned universal, or as some thing contingent that has been abstracted and generalized, or as the hypostasis of certain of our particular spiritual products, such as mathemati cal formulae, or as the negation of the Spirit, on which is conferred positive value (first with metaphor and then with metaphysic).
And the moral individual who wills the universal, or that which transcends him as an individual, turns precisely to the Spirit, to real Reality, to true Life, to Liberty. The universal is in concrete the universal individualized, and the individual is real in so far as he is also universal. He is not able to assert one part of himself with out asserting the other (under the penalty of stopping half-way, dimidiatus vir, and so of again becoming nothing). But in order to assert them both, he must first posit the one as explicit and the other as implicit, and then make the other also explicit. Man as economic individual, at the first moment (so to speak) of his revealing himself to life and to existence, cannot will, save individually: will his own individual existence. There is no man, however moral he be, who does not begin in this way. How could he ever surpass and finally deny his own individual life, if 446 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
he had not first affirmed it and did not reaffirm it at every instant? But he who should stop at that affirmation of the individual, regarding the first stage of development as the resting-place, would enter into profound contradiction with himself. He should will, not only his own self individualized, but also that self, which, being in all selves, is their common Father. Thus he promotes the realization of the Real, lives a full life and makes his heart beat in harmony with the universe: cor cordium.
The moral individual has this consciousness of working for the Whole. Every action, however diverse, which conforms to ethical duty, conforms to Life; and if, instead of promoting Life, it should depress and mortify it, for that very reason it would be immoral. Where facts seem to demonstrate the contrary, the interpretation of facts is erroneous, since it affirms as a criterion of judgment a life which is not that true life, which, as we know, we serve even by dying — dying as an individual, as a collectivity, as a social class, or as a people. The most humble moral act can be resolved into this volition of the Spirit in universal. Thus it happens that the soul of a simple and ignorant man, altogether devoted to his rude duty, vibrates in unison with that of ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 447 the philosopher, whose mind receives into it the universal Spirit: what the one thinks at that moment, the other does, thus attaining by his own path to that full satisfaction, that act of life, that fruitful conjunction with the Real, which the other has attained to by a different path. It may be said that the moral man is a practical philosopher and the philosopher a theoretic actor.
This criterion of the Spirit, of Progress, Q{ M0rai<utsas...r. volitions of Reality, is the intimate measure 01 our acts in the the spirit. moral conscience, as it is the foundation, more or less clearly expressed, of our moral judgments. Why do we exalt Giordano Bruno, who allowed himself to be condemned to the stake for assert ing his philosophy? Perhaps for the calmness with which he faced the torture? But many fanatics, even malefactors, are capable of this, and it may sometimes even be a simple sensual desire, of which we have seen examples in history and of which a modern Italian poet has lately sung, exalting the beauty of the flame and the voluptuousness of the pyre. By facing death and refusing to deny his philosophy, Bruno con tributed to the creation of a larger form of civilization, and for this reason he is not only a victim, but also a martyr, in the etymological 448 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL n.
sense of the word: witness and realizer of a demand of the Spirit in universal. — Why do we praise the charitable man? Perhaps because he yields to the emotion caused by the spectacle of suffering. But emotion in itself is neither moral nor immoral, and thus to yield to it materially is weakness, that is, immorality. The charitable man, when he removes or mitigates suffering, relights a life and reconquers a force for the common work, which both he and the person whom he has benefited, must serve. critique of There is indeed nothing more foolish than antiantimoralism.
antimoralism.
moralism, so much the fashion in our day; it is an ugly echo of unhealthy social conditions, of one sided theories ill understood (Marxism, Nietzsche- ianism). Antimoralism is justified, in so far as it combats moral hypocrisy in favour of effective morality instead of that of mere words, but it loses all meaning when it inflates empty phrases or combines contradictory propositions and preaches against morality itself. By so doing, it thinks to celebrate strength, health and freedom, but on the contrary exalts servitude to unbridled passions, the apparent health of the invalid and the apparent strength of the maniac. Morality (begging pardon of literary immoralists), far from being a pedantic fiction or the consolation ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 449 of the impotent, is good blood against bad blood.
We must also declare that this truth concern- confused ten. ing the ethical principle understood as will tautological, material, rethat has for its end the universal or the Spirit, ugious/ormulce, etc., is to some extent confirmed by several of the Coward the J Ethic of the formulae that we have criticized, which have erred stiritonly in defining it, either confusing altogether the universal and the contingent, or have fallen into tautologism. Those who posit Life, or the interest of the Species, Society or the State, as the end of morality, have in view that Life, that Species, that Society, or that ideal State, which is the Spirit in universal, although they are not able to define it clearly. The same may be said of other formulae, which often have a better intention at starting than that realized in the development of the relative doctrines, or, on the contrary, a development superior to their bad initial intention. This function of symbol The Ethic of the Spirit and possessed by idealist Ethic, this affirmation that religious r J Ethic.
the moral act is love and volition of the Spirit in universal, is to be found above all in religious and Christian Ethic, in the Ethic of love and of the anxious search for the divine presence. This is the fundamental characteristic of religious Ethic, which remains unknown to vulgar rationalists and 450 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
intellectualists, to so-called free-thinkers, and to frequenters of masonic lodges, owing to their narrow party passion or lack of mental subtlety. There is hardly an ethical truth (and we have already had occasion to refer to this matter) that cannot be expressed with the words that we have learned as children from traditional religion, and which rise spontaneously to the lips, as the most elevated, the most appropriate and the most beautiful; words which are certainly impregnated with mythology, but are also weighty with pro found philosophical content. There is without doubt an exceedingly strong antithesis between the idealist philosopher and the religious in dividual, but it is not greater than that within ourselves, when, in the imminence of a crisis, we are divided in soul and yet very near to unity and to interior conciliation. If the religious man cannot but see in the philosopher his adversary, his mortal foe, the philosopher, on the other hand, sees in him his younger brother, his very self of a moment past. Hence he will feel himself more nearly allied to an austere, emotional, religious Ethic, troubled with phantoms, than to an Ethic that is superficially rationalistic: for this latter is only in appearance more philosophical than the other, since if it possess the merit of recognizing n ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 451 (verbally only, or with psittacism, as Leibnitz would have said) the supreme rights of reason, yet in plucking thought from the soil in which it has grown and depriving it of vital sap, it exercises them very ill.
Ill HISTORICAL NOTES Merit of the I. IT is the singular merit of Kant to have put an end, once for all, to every material bthic, by proving its utilitarian character: a merit that is not cancelled by the lacunae that exist in other parts of his thought, entangling him unawares in the materialism and in the utilitarianism that he had surpassed. It would be antihistorical to desire to judge a thinker by the contradictions into which he falls and so to declare his work to be a failure and of no importance, when it is only imperfect. There are errors in all the works of man, and error is always contradiction; but he who has the eye of the historian discovers where lies the true strength of a thought and does not deny the light, because of necessity accompanied with shadow. Before Kant, ethic was either openly utilitarian or such that although presenting itself in the deceitful form of Ethic of sympathy, or religious Ethic, was yet reducible to utili- PT. ii ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL FORMS 453 tarianism. Kant conducted an implacable and destructive war, not only against admitted utili tarian forms, but also against those that were masked and spurious, called by him material Ethic.
In this too, his predecessors are to be found in traditional philosophy ot Christian origin, or, if it be preferred, Platonic (opposition of material to formal Ethic can already be observed in the attitude of Aristotle to Plato). If the fathers and the scholastics had been divided as to the question of the relation between moral laws and the divine will, and many of them, especially the mystics, had made that law to depend upon the divine will and upon nothing else, yet views had not been wanting, according to which the power of changing at will the moral laws, that is to say, of changing his own essence, was denied to God, since he could not be supra se. Religious Ethic was cleansed of every admixture of arbitrarism and utilitarianism by this solution, accepted by nearly all religious thinkers of the seven teenth and eighteenth centuries (by Cudworth, by Malebranche, and finally by Leibnitz). On the other hand, we cannot but recognize that many other material formulae used to be understood in an ideal, or, as we have said, in a symbolical manner; and 454 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.