ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 71 rebuked by the intelligent, or fall into discredit with them. Such illegitimate and transitory applause as they may sometimes obtain at the hands of the unintelligent and of the multitude is but a poor and precarious recompense for them. Literary and artistic criticism always has of necessity, and the more so the better it under stands its office, a practical and moral aspect reconcilable with the purest aestheticity and theoreticity in the intrinsic examination of works.
We certainly have good empirical reasons Empirical tor distinguishing between errors of bad taith errors and philosophical and errors of good faith, errors that are avoidable distinctions. and errors that are unavoidable, pardonable and unpardonable, mortal and venial. No one would wish to deny that there is a wide difference be tween a slight distraction that leads to a wide erroneous affirmation, and such malice as gives rise to a small and almost imperceptible error, to a lie, which, externally considered, is almost harmless. We should be as indulgent in respect to the former as we are severe in respect to the latter. And from the empirical standpoint we should recommend in certain cases tolerance and indulgence in respect to the theoretical error, which should be looked upon rather as ignorance than as sin. We cannot but take count of all 72 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL those affirmations, which, while they do not re present the firm security of the true, are yet offered as points of support, or as provisional affirmations, like those tibicines, props or stakes, those bad verses that Virgil allowed to remain in the Aeneid, with the intention of returning to them again. But it was needful to record the true bases of the theory of error against the illusions arising from empiricism, the more so since the general tendency of our times (for reasons that we need not here inquire into) has led to their not being recognized. Those bases are in the practical spirit, and the practical theory of error is one of the justified forms of pragmatism, although perhaps it be that very truth against which the pragmatists sin.
IDENTITY OF VOLITION AND ACTION AND DISTINC TION BETWEEN VOLITION AND EVENT SUCH are the relations between the practical action: activity and the theoretical, which precedes and intuition and expression.
conditions it.
Asking ourselves now, what are the relations of this same activity with that which seems to follow it and to be outside the spirit, in company with corporeality, naturality, physic and matter (or however else it may be called)? we find ourselves face to face with a problem which we have already treated and solved in another part of the system of the spirit, and which we shall solve here in an analogous manner. What we may now designate as the problem of the relation between volition and action, formerly appeared in the theoretical philosophy as the problem of the relation between intuition and expression. — Are then volitions and actions two distinct terms that may appear now together, now separate? Can 73 74 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
volition remain for its part isolated from action, whereas action is not able to separate itself from volition, or is the opposite true? — We reply, as we did on the former occasion, by denying the problem itself and by identifying intuition with expression, in such a manner that effective intuition became at the same time expression, and it was declared that a so-called expression, which was not at the same time intuition, was declared to be non-existent. — We reply in like manner on this occasion, that volition and action are one, and that volition without action or action without volition is inconceivable.
spirit and Indeed, the relation between spirit and nature (which is a general relation, including the other particulars between intuition and expression, or between volition and action), understood in the way that it is here, is a relation, not between two entities, but only between two different methods of elaborating one unique reality, which is spiritual reality: thus it is not truly a relation. Nor are the two modes of elaboration two co ordinated modes of knowledge, for that would lead back to a duplicity of objects, but the first is cognoscitive elaboration and true science, or philosophy, in which reality is revealed as activity and spirituality, while the other is an abstract nature.
ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 75 elaboration for practical convenience, without cognoscitive character. When this has been posited, the spiritual act of volition has not another reality face to face with it, with which it must join or combine, in order to become concrete, but is itself full reality. That which is called matter, movement, and material modification from the naturalistic point of view, is already included in the volitional spiritual act, of which it might be said without difficulty (as was once said amid much scandal of the Ego) that it is heavy, round, square, white, red, sonorous, and, therefore, physically determinable. The volition is not followed by a movement of the legs or arms; it is those movements themselves that are material for the physical, spiritual for the philosopher, extrinsic for the former, at once intrinsic and extrinsic for the latter, or better, neither extrinsic nor intrinsic (an arbitrary division). As poetry lives in speech and painting in colours, so the will lives in actions, not because the one is in the other as in an envelope, but because the one is the other and without the other would be mutilated and indeed inconceivable.
We cannot affirm the distinction between of volitions volition and action, save in force and as a proof without actions and vice versa.
of a dualistic metaphysical view, of an abstract 76 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
spiritualism, with matter as being and substance for correlative term. But this point of view is eliminated by the idealist view, which recognizes only one unique substance, and that as spirituality and subjectivity. Without, however, now basing ourselves upon such considerations, and according to the order that we follow, applying ourselves to the examination of the facts of consciousness, we affirm that it would be impossible to adduce one volitional fact that should not be also a movement called physical. Those volitional acts, which according to some philosophers are consumed within the will and are in that way distinguished from external facts, are a phantasm. Every volition, be it never so small, sets the organism in motion and produces what are called external facts. The purpose is already an effectuation, a beginning of combat; indeed, simple desire is not without effects, if it be possible to destroy oneself with desires, as is in effect maintained On the other hand, it is not possible to indicate actions without volitions. Instinctive or habitual acts that have become instinctive are adduced; but these too are not set in motion, save by the will, not one by one, in their particulars, but as a whole, in the same way as a single hand sets in motion a most ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 77 complicated machine which a thousand hands have previously constructed. There cannot then be volition without action, nor action without volition, as there cannot be intuition without expression or expression without intuition.
It is well, however, to indicate one among the illusions as to many sources from which is derived the illusion between these terms, of this distinction and separation, effectively in- existent. A volitional act, which is a process of some duration, may be interrupted and substituted for other volitional acts; it may declare itself again and again begin its work (although this will always be more or less modified), and this may give occasion to new interruptions and new beginnings. It seems that in this way the will stands on one side, as something formed and definite, and that on the other execution pursues its way and is subject to the most varied accidents. But volition and execution proceed with equal and indeed with one single step. What we will we execute; the volition changes as the execution changes. In the same way, when we are en gaged upon a work of art, on a long poem for instance, the illusion arises of an abstract con ception or plan, which the poet carries out as he versifies. But every poet knows that a poem is not created from an abstract plan, that the initial 78 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PI.
poetical image is not without rhythm and verse, and that it does not need rhythm and verse applied to it afterwards. He knows that it is in reality a primitive intuition-expression, in which all is determined and nothing is determined, and what has been already intuified is already ex pressed, and what will afterwards be expressed will only afterwards be intuified. The initial intuition is certainly not an abstract plan, but a living and vital germ; and so is the volitional act. Distinction When, therefore, it is affirmed that a volition between action and succession is truly such, only when it produces effects, or or event.
that a volition is to be judged by its results, it is impossible not to assent, as we assent that an unexpressed expression or an unversified verse is neither an expression nor a verse. But in this signification only, because those propositions have sometimes assumed another, which on the contrary it is needful resolutely to reject. This is that in them action (will -action) has been confused with succession or event. Now, if volition coincide with action, it does not and cannot coincide with event, volition and It cannot coincide, because what is action and event.
event.
what is event? Action is the act of the one event, is the act of the whole: will is of man, event of God. Or, to put this proposition in a less ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 79 imaginary form, the volition of the individual is as it were the contribution that he brings to the volitions of all the other beings in the universe, event the aggregate of all the wills and the answer to all the questions. In this answer is included and absorbed the will itself of the in dividual, which we have taken and contemplated alone. If, then, we wished to make the volition depend upon event, action upon succession, we should be undertaking to make one fact depend upon another fact, of which the first is a con stituent part, placing among the antecedents of action what is its consequence, among things given those to be created, the unknown with the known, the future in the past.
The concepts of actions that are successful and successful and unsuccessful of those that are unsuccessful, of actions that actions: criticism.
become fully concrete in the fact, and of those that become concrete only in part or not at all, are therefore inexact. No action (not even those that are empirically said to be most successful, not even the most obvious and ordinary) succeeds fully, in the sense that it alone constitutes the fact: every action diverges by necessity and by definition from succession or happening. If I return home every day by the usual road, my return home is every day new 8o PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL n.
and different from that which might have been imagined. This often amounts to a diversity of particulars which we may call of least importance, but which yet are not for that reason the less real. On the other hand, no action, however vain it be held (if it be action and not velleity of action and intrinsic contradiction, or by as much as it is action and not imagination and contradiction), passes without trace and without result.
If any action could be rendered altogether vain, this same rendering vain would invade all other actions and no fact would happen. Action and The current proposition that we cannot act foresight: critique, without foreseeing is also incorrect. Since the conception of foreseeing is contradictory, and since we cannot know a fact if it be not first a fact, that is, if it have not happened; if the contradictory hypothesis held, it would be im possible to act. But the truth is that what is called foreseeing is nothing but seeing; it is to know the given facts and to reason upon them with the universals. That is to say, it is the invariable theoretical base of action, already illustrated. When we will and act, what we will and do is our own action itself, not that of others or of all the others, and so is ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 81 the resulting event. Voluntas fertur in incog- nitum, but the all intent upon itself does not take count of the unknown, which is in this case relatively unknowable and, therefore, rela tively non-existent. The individual is aware that when he acts, he does not aim at anything but the placing of new elements in universal reality. He takes care that they shall be energetic and vital, without nourishing the foolish illusion that they must be the only ones, or that they alone produce reality. A popular little tale tells how God, who had at first granted to men to know their future lives and the day of their death, afterwards withdrew this knowledge from them altogether, because He perceived from experience that such knowledge made them lazy and inert. The new ignorance, on the other hand, revived and impelled them to vie with one another in activity, as though it had been granted them to obtain and to enjoy everything.1 How can we doubt that our good and energetic work can ever be rendered nugatory in the event? That is unthinkable, and the saying fiat justitia et pereat mundus is rectified by that other saying: fiat justitia ne pereat mundus. Bad is not born from good, nor inaction from action.
1 Arch. p. lo st. d. trad, pop., of Pitre (1882), pp. 70-72.
82 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
Every volitional man, every man active in good ness, is a contradiction to that one-sided attitude in which the will is suppressed to give place to happening, a world unmade is believed to be already made, arms are crossed or the field deserted. But it also contradicts the fatuous security that the future world will conform to the ends of our individual actions taken in isolation; saying with the good sense of the Florentine statesman, that we ourselves control one half of our actions, or little less, Fortune the other half. Hence our trust in our own strength; hence, too, our apprehension of the pitfalls of Fortune, con tinually arising and continually to be conquered. This constitutes the interior drama of true men of action, of the political geniuses who have guided the destinies of man. While the unfit is all anxiety, or bewilderment and depression, the fatuous is all over-confidence or expectation of the impossible, also losing himself in bewilderment when he finally discovers that the reality is not what he imagined. Hence also the serenity of the sage, who knows that whatever happen there will always be opportunity for good conduct. Si fractus ilia- batur orbis, there will always be a better world to construct. Hope and fear are related to action itself in its becoming, not to its result and succession.
ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 83 We can illustrate the fact that no one seriously confirmation . of the inderivathmks ot valuing an action according to its biutyofthe value of action success, but that all value it at its intrinsic value from its success.
as action, from the circumstance that no one recognizes any merit to the action of a marks man who hits the bull's-eye, when shooting at the target with closed eyes; whereas no little merit is recognized to him who, after having taken careful aim, does not hit the mark but goes very near it. We are certainly often deceived in our practical judgments, and fortunate men are continually praised to the skies as men of great practical capacity, while the unfortunate are hurled into the mire as incompetent; for we do not distinguish exactly between action and success. This is not only so as to judgments of the present life: it is also true of the life of the past, of the pages of history, where imbeciles are made heroes and heroes calumniated; to the worst of leaders is attributed the honour of victories, ridiculous statesmen credited with ability. On the other hand, the sins of madmen are attributed to the wise, or they are accused of faults that are nobody's fault, but the result of circumstances. In vain will the Pericleses of all time ask, as did the ancient Pericles of the people of Athens, that the unforeseen misfortunes 84 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
of the Peloponnesian war should be attributed to him, provided that by way of compensation he might have praise for all the fortunate things that should also happen irapa \6yov.1 All this depends upon an imperfect knowledge of facts more than upon anything else: hence the neces sity of criticism. Just as the work of the poet and of the painter is not materially to be laid hold of in the poem or in the picture, but requires a re-evocation that is often very difficult, so the work of the man of action, which is in part fused in events and partly contained in them, as a bud that will open in the future, asks a keen eye and the greatest care in valuation. The history of men of action and of their deeds is easily changed into legend, and legends are never altogether eliminable, because misunderstanding or error is never altogether eliminable. Explanation On the other hand, certain commonplaces of apparently of apparently conflicting seem to be in opposition to the criterion itself: for example, that men are judged by success and that it matters little what we have willed and done, when the result is not satisfactory. There are also certain popular customs that make individuals responsible for what happens outside their own spheres of action, not to mention the ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 85 well - known historical examples of unfortunate leaders crucified at Carthage and guillotined at Paris, for no other cause in reality than that of not having won the victory. And there is also the insistence of certain thinkers upon the necessity of never distinguishing the judgment of the act from that of the fact. But such insistence is nothing but a new aspect of the implacable struggle that it has been necessary to conduct against the morality of the mere intention and against the sophisms and the subterfuges that arise from it; an insistence that has expressed itself in ^^ ^^ paradoxical formulae, as are also paradoxical the trivial remarks of ordinary life that have been mentioned. As to the customs and condemna tions narrated by history, these were without doubt extraordinary expedients in desperate cases, in which people had placed themselves in such a position that it was impossible or most difficult to verify intentions and actions, and to distinguish misfortunes from betrayals; and as all expedients born of like situations sometimes hit the mark, that is to say, punish bad faith, so will others increase with irrationality the evil that they would have wished to diminish, since in those cases there has not been any bad faith to punish and to correct.
VI THE PRACTICAL JUDGMENT, THE HISTORY AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PRACTICAL WITH these last considerations, we are conducted to the theory of practical judgments, that is, to those judgments of which we have demonstrated the impossibility, when their precedence to the voli tional act was asserted; but their conceivability as following it, indeed their necessity, is clear, by the intrinsic law of the Spirit, which consists in always preserving or in continually attaining to full possession of itself. Practical But we must not confound the practical taste and taste and judgment, judgment with what has been called practical taste^ or the immediate consciousness of value, or the feeling of the value of the volitional act. None can doubt that such a taste, consciousness, or feeling is a real fact. The practical act brings with it approbation and disapprobation, joy and sorrow, and like facts of consciousness that are altogether unreflective. By these we explain 86 ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 87 the immediate sympathy that certain actions afford us, and the enthusiasms that are often spread through wide circles of society, and the force of example, which is most successful in arousing imitative efforts. Thus at certain moments the soul of all seems to vibrate in unison with the soul of one, and the actions of many to be prepared and carried out, as though with one accord, without its being possible to say at those moments what is willed, what abhorred and what admired. That taste, or consciousness, or feeling is not, however, dis tinct from the volitional act, and is, indeed, the volitional act itself. It is that internal control of which we have already spoken, that immediate feeling of oneself, that immediate consciousness, which makes of it a spiritual act. Abstract it from the volitional act and the volitional act itself disappears from before you.
If it can take place, not only in the individual who is acting, but also in him who contemplates the action, that is because the individual who contemplates becomes unified in that moment with the individual who acts, he wills imitatively with him, with him suffers and enjoys, as the disc-thrower watches with his eye and with his whole person the disc that has been thrown, 88 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
follows its rapid and direct course and the dangers in the form of obstacles that it seems to be about to strike, its turns and deviations, and seems to become himself a running turning disc. The denomination " practical taste " is very well chosen, because the analogy with the theoretic activity and with aesthetic taste is here most full. But since aesthetic taste is not aesthetic judgment, as the mere reproduction of the aesthetic act is not the criticism of it, as the listener to a poem who sings within himself with the poet, must not be confused with the critic, who analyses and under stands it, any more than the contemplator of a picture, of a statue, or of a piece of architecture, who paints with the painter, sculptures with the sculptor, or ideally raises airy masses with the architect; so we must distinguish practical taste and sympathy (or antipathy) from the practical judgment. Without taste (aesthetic or practical), judgment (aesthetic or practical) is not possible; but taste is not judgment, which demands a further act of the spirit. The practical The practical judgment is, as has already been historical observed, 3. historical judgment;/ so that to judge ^ practical acts and to give their history is really the same thing.) What occurs here is analogous to what was demonstrated of the theoretic and ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 89 aesthetic act, when we illustrated the coincidence of literary and artistic criticism with literary and artistic history. Criticism, be it practical or theoretic, cannot consist of anything but deter mining whether a spiritual act has taken place and what it has been. The differences between the one and the other criticism arise only from the diversity of content present in each case, asking different categories of judgment, but not of logical procedure, which is in both cases the same. Every other conception of the judgment, which should make it consist, not of a his torical judgment, but of heaven knows what sort of measurement upon transcendental models, separated from the real world by a measure ment of which the measure is extraneous to the measured, indeed (as though it were something of the other world) extraneous to the real itself, runs against insuperable contradictions, and makes judgment arbitrary and history grotesque; history would thus have value, not in itself, but outside itself, enjoying it as a loan from others, a gracious concession. But even these contradictions cannot appear in all their crudity, nor the opposite theory in all its unshakable truth, save from what will be seen further on, and we must here be satisfied with the enunciation.
90 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.