and immodest maxims of the " reason of State."
i ii4 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
It is very amusing to assist at the acts of repulsion and of exorcism, which a man like the Abbe* Galiani believes himself obliged to make in his treatise Dei doveri dei principi neutrali (1782). When, having amply discussed this matter from the point of view of morality, he goes on to discuss it from the point of view of politics and of the reason of State, he despatches it in a few pages, abhorring, as he says, that " insidious and wicked science " which formed "the delight, first of Italian and then of almost all European minds of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries." He protests at every step that he is "tired of repeating and of develop ing teachings of cunning and wickedness." But what the Abbot Galiani really abhorred was the robed scholastic treatment of a matter that he who was termed Machiavellino by his French friends, and declared that he did not admit in politics anything but le machiave'lisme pur, sans melange, cru, vert, dans toute son dprete1? handled with very different ability and elegance in his conversations in Parisian salons and in his witty letters to Madame d'Epinay. The rules of the eighteenth century are to be sought in the speeches, essays, political opuscules, tragedies, 1 Letter to the d'Epinay, 5th September 1772.
ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 115 plays dealing with the life of citizens, fiction, history, and books of memoirs. If Aretino and Piccolomini provided for the necessities of the respectable courtesans and procuresses of the Cinquecento, in the Settecento, Giacomo Casanova constructed the type of the perfect adventurer. He began with the rules to be followed as a system of life, the se laisser alter au gr^ du vent qui pousse, and passed to those that were more special and yet funda mental, such as that one should have no scruples de tromper des dtourdis, des fripons et des sots, because they dtfient I esprit and on venge r esprit quand on trompe un sot. There should be still less scruple in deception in affairs of love, for, pour ce qui regarde les femmes, ce sont des tromperies rtciproques, quon ne met pas en ligne de compte; car, quand I amour sen m£le, on est ordinairement diipe de part et dautre? Let us leave to the reader to investigate, if he please, the rules of life that are concealed beneath the most modern forms of literature; these are a continuous, if not always beneficent, guide for daily life.
Another circumstance that has led to the belief Relation \ r between the in the disappearance of books of rules is the arts (collections > of rules} and observation that from those books dealing with philosophical doctrines. 1 Mtmoires, ed. Paris, Gamier, s. a., i pp. 3-4.
ii6 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
the so-called arts, there has come to be a treat ment of the philosophy of their subject-matter, in which those treatises have been dissolved. Thus from Poetics and Rhetorics has come ^Esthetic, from Grammatic the Philosophy of language, from the Art of teaching and of reasoning Logic and Gnoseology, from the historical Art, Historic, from the Arts of economic government, the Science of Economy, from the treatises on Natural Law, the Philosophy of Law.
When such philosophies, then, had appeared, treatises upon the Arts seemed to have become superfluous, and to this is attributed the cause of their diminution or disappearance. But although it be impossible not to recognize the historical process above described from books on the arts to books of systems, it is necessary to be careful to interpret it exactly and not to confuse it with a passing from empiria to philosophy. Thus it will be seen that the part absorbed and dis solved in philosophy has been precisely those philosophical attempts that were mingled with such collections of rules and precepts. For it was very natural that the writers who put them together and had ideas as to what should be done and what avoided, were often led to investigate the principles from which sprung the particular ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 117 rules. Believing that they were strengthening, they really came to surpass them, that is, they passed unwittingly from one form of treatment to another, from Psychology to Philosophy. But not even here has empiricism been refined into philosophy (a refinement which, strictly speaking, is impossible), but a more perfect philosophy has been substituted for one less perfect. The dissolution, then, has not been of the rules, but of that imperfect philosophy, a chemical process which has left the rules in what they possess of original as residuum. Hence their persistence, and indeed the impossibility that they should not persist, side by side with the most pure and perfect of philosophies.
Casuistic has had the same fate as the rules, Casuistic: its nature and and was also at one time responsible for a very utility. copious literary production. Now it is cultivated as literature only by a few Jesuits, who carry on the glories of Escobar and of Sanchez, read only by priests preparing themselves for the post of confessor, whose studies are based for the most part upon old books (such as the Theologia moralis of the Neapolitan Sant' Alfonso de' Liguori). At one time Casuistic was not confined only to profane or theological morality, to the casus conscientiae. There were also books of n8 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
casuistry composed for all aspects of life, for politics, for the life of the courtier (" the Wise Man at Court "), for the art of love. When the literary form of rules fell into discredit, that of Casuistic fell with it. But this does not mean that it is dead; it lives and will live as long as rules live. For Casuistic is nothing but the process of reason ing by which rules are made always more precise, passing from more general cases to those more particular, so that no one will ever be able to do without them. — If we take for rule of life this maxim: to avoid scientific polemics, because they constitute a waste of time, adding little to the progress of knowledge; in what way must we behave if a polemic be such that it enables us to gain on the one hand the time it makes us lose on the other? Shall we maintain the general rule, or shall we waive it on this occasion, if for no other reason than to give variety to our occupations? And how shall we behave if not only we retrieve the time lost but avoid losing more time in the future? Shall we wish to enter upon the polemic at once? But if our future be looked upon as uncertain, if we be far advanced in years or in bad health, will it not be better to renounce the uncertain gain of the future for the certain gain of the present? — This is a very ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 119 simple example of Casuistic, which a critic and writer (let us suppose that he is the writer of these pages) is obliged to propose to himself and to solve. Naturally, no Casuistic will ever furnish the concrete solution (which is the only one that counts), since, as has been said, no rule can ever furnish it. Rules and casuistry do not reach the individuality omnimodo determinates, which is the historical situation; yet if Casuistic aid my action, this will always differ from that, as con crete from abstract; or better, my action will always truly possess the form, the definiteness that abstract casuistry cannot possess. Woe to practical men who rely upon collections of maxims and casuistical reasonings, and woe to those who rely upon them. Those who argue at length upon practical matters and draw subtle distinc tions, are to be avoided in the world of affairs and in the world of action. If they have not yet pro voked some disaster, they are on the road to / doing so now. This, at least, is a good rule; like the supreme rule (which is not a rule but philosophical truth), namely, that we must abandon rules, that is, face the individual case, which, as such, is always irregular.
But if a further proof be wanted of the neces- jurisprudence as casuistry.
sity and perpetuity of maxims and of casuistry, 120 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL observe how these also persist in literary form, as laws, where this form is not eliminable. Laws, as we have seen, are not simple rules, but are based upon formulae of rules, and must of necessity make explicit in them decisions as to doing and not doing. Jurisprudence is the Casuistic of law, or all the labour of so- called interpretation, which is at bottom the excogitation of new rules. All know that not only is Jurisprudence not of itself legislative, but that it cannot even determine the volitional act of the Statesman, nor the sentence, or decision upon the particular case, a decision which the judge creates upon each occasion. But no one would seriously think of suppressing the work and the function of those casuists, or judicial experts, a function which, since it has always existed and continues to exist, cannot but answer to a social need. It is possible to predict a form of social life, less complicated and weighty, in which that function would have less scope, but whatever be the case as regards this prediction, the casuistry of judicial experts will continue so long as there are laws and rules, that is to say, always.
VIII VIII CRITIQUE OF THE INVASIONS BY PHILOSOPHY OF THE DOMAIN OF PRACTICAL DESCRIPTION AND OF ITS DERIVATIVES IN demonstrating the legitimacy and necessity of practical description and of its derivatives, Regolistic and Casuistic, we have not fulfilled, as it were, our whole knightly duty, which binds us to that discipline, which we have been obliged to maltreat so exceedingly, and shall further maltreat, when it has been or shall be presented as a philosophical method. It is now necessary to defend its existence against the invasion of philosophy, or rather of philosophers. We must make it obvious that if the empiricists and psychologists, who swell themselves out to philo sophers, are bunglers, those too are bunglers who claim to solve empirical questions philosophic ally. Perhaps they are bunglers less worthy of pardon, because it is part of philosophy to know itself clearly, and consequently its own limits.
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First form: The first bad effect that philosophy has upon generalize, practical description is the tendency to change it from description and collection of particular descriptions into something that has the air of generality and comprehensiveness. Because, if practical description be closely connected with the historical conditions of definite individuals and societies and with their wants, the more specific and near to the concrete it is, the better it will be, and the more useless by as much as it goes wandering toward the general. We owe to the evil influence of philosophy those verbose treatises upon psychological classes, such as virtue, duties, things good, affections, passions, and human types, to read which nourishes less than fresh water, which at least refreshes.
Let him who wishes to be convinced compare the books of rules and observations that we owe to men of experience and to men of the world, such as the Ricordi of Guicciardini, the Maximes of Larochefoucauld, and the Oraculo Manual of Balthazar Gracian, with the Traitt des passions of Descartes, with that section of the Ethica of Spinoza that relates to this matter, with the - Anthropologia and the Doctrine of Virtue of Kant (we prefer to record great names). He will then see on whose side is the advantage, ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 123 an advantage of originality, of importance, and even of style, which is in this case a revelation. Those books by philosophers contain for the most part definitions of vocabulary and of words which there is no need to define, because every body knows them to such an extent that the definitions, rather than make them more clear, make them obscure. Who, for example, can resist the philosophical triviality of the Aphorisms for the Wisdom of Life of Arthur Schopenhauer? Take the trouble to open a book to learn that good things are to be divided into personal, wealth and imagination, or reputation, and that the first (such as good health and a gay tempera ment) are pre-eminent over the others. Do we not learn more and with greater rapidity and efficacy from such proverbs as " God helps the merry man "? It is superfluous to observe that those books, in so far as they generalize, can never attain to philosophy. They remain at bottom more or less historical.
The good and generous wine of the born Historical elements psychologists and precept-makers is diluted in persisting in generalizaa great deal of water, but that water, however * much there be of it, never becomes pure and is always discoloured and of an unpleasant taste. Thus in classifications of ancient Ethic the i24 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
idea of " virtue" or of "good" was announced as the most important, in Christian Ethic that of "duty," in the same way as in ancient Ethic the political character was dominant, in the modern the individualistic, according to the different character of the corresponding civiliza tions. Historical elements differentiate the Ethic of Aristotle, impregnated with sane Greek life, from that of the Stoics, in which is foretold the decadence of the antique world and the germs of the future discovered (for instance, cosmopolitanism, which precedes the Christian idea of the unity of the human race). The four Platonic virtues retain the name, but are filled with a new content, in the four cardinal virtues of the Christian Ethic; the seven deadly sins are not to be explained in all their settemplicity without the ascetic ideal of the Middle Ages.
Among the various writers of treatises, the foreground is filled, now with the idea of effort or of duty, now with that of enjoyment and satis faction; ideas are now despotic masters, now smiling friends; the dominant idea is in turn that of justice, of benevolence, of enthusiasm, and so on. In the systems of Catholic Ethic are reflected political absolutism and semi -feudal economy; in those of Protestant Ethic, constitu- ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 125 tionalism, liberalism, the industrial and capitalistic world; a strict probity, not indeed without utilitarianism, and a hardness of heart, not indeed without austerity. Modern Ethic is concerned with property, with the struggle of classes, with proletarianism and communism. These are all historical facts and as such most worthy of attention, but for that very reason they should be examined in all their force and value and not through the medium of the pale categories of a universal doctrine, which they disturb and falsify and by which they are very often disturbed and falsified. Whoever undertakes to write general treatises upon the passions, upon the virtues, and upon the other practical classes, will always show the signs of his time in the categories that he establishes, and the result will be at once banal and empirical, that is to say, badly empirical.
But hitherto the chief ill has been that useless second form: literary and tiresome books are written. Matters begin ««**»</ philosophy to look graver when an approach is attempted andemPiria- between philosophical theories and empirical classifications and they are united in one treatise, as the general part and the particular part, the abstract and the concrete part, the theoretical and the historical part. We do not wish to refuse i26 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
recognition to an occasionally just sense of the intimate relations between philosophy and history as among the motives that lead to such unions, the first of which flows into the second, revives it and is by it in turn revived. But the history, to which philosophy applies the torch, is all history in its palpitating reality; it is history represented by all histories that historians have written and will write, and also by those that they have not written and will not write. The history offered by these empirical descriptions is only a very small part of history and (what is worse) abstract and mutilated. This would, however, be an injury of not too grave a nature, even at this point, provided the incongruity were limited to literary unfitness; in which case, it is true, would be added to inutility the ugliness of a union capricious and artificial, but fortunately extrinsic. But by means of that extrinsic approach, the way is opened to the attempt at an intrinsic approach, and thus to the third form of the undue invasion of practical descrip tion by philosophy, which constitutes the morbus pkilosophico-empiricus in all its harmfulness. Third form-. The attempt at intrinsic approach takes place attempt to rr " attempt to rr " place them in when empirical classes are placed in connection intimate with the philosophical concepts or categories, connexion.
ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 127 with pure thought. Nearly all philosophers have fallen into this error, since it is very natural that they should not have wished to leave a hiatus between the first and second parts of their books of Philosophy of the prac tical, between the general and particular parts, and that they should have striven to connect the one with the other by passing logically from the concepts of the first to those of the second. The mistake was indubitably increased owing to their small degree of clearness as to the logical nature of the two orders of concepts (concepts and pseudo-concepts), which is funda mentally diverse, and we shall not further insist upon this matter.
Rather let us note that sometimes there has science of the..._ practical and been something rational in the minds of those Metaphysic: various who have required the Science of the practical significations. or Ethic to be constructed independently of all Metaphysic. In truth, that programme of the independence of the Science of the practical or Ethic of Metaphysic has had various meanings that it will be well to enumerate briefly. The first meaning was that the Science of the practical, in so far as it was philosophy, should be independent of the aggregate of the philo sophical system (Metaphysic). In this case PT.
Damaging consequences of the invasions.
128 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL the claim was not acceptable, as we shall see, because it was at variance with the nature itself of philosophy, which is unity. The second meaning was that the Practical, as science, should be kept remote from every form of faith, or feeling or fancifulness (which has sometimes been called " Metaphysic "); and in this case the proposition was inexpugnable, however con- testable may have seemed the opportunely of the meaning given to that word. The third meaning was that the Science of the practical, in so far as it was descriptive, should stand by itself, in order to afford a base for philo sophical induction. Use was here made of the erroneous idea, already rejected several times, of philosophy as an intensification of the psycho logical method, or as a carrying of it on. But in a fourth sense, it was desired finally to withdraw practical description from the perilous care of the philosophers, and it seems to us that with this fourth meaning was expressed a very just demand.
What are, in fact, the consequences of the care that philosophers have bestowed upon practical description? We would not wish to use an over-coloured simile, but what happens is very much what would happen if a man were ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 129 given a baby to suckle. He would press it violently against his dry and arid breast, incap able of nourishing, but well capable of tormenting it. Philosophy, when it approaches the empirical classes, will either begin to criticize their dis tinctions and abolish them, reducing several classes to one, and then reducing the reduced classes in their turn to a less number, until none are left at all and it finds itself in company with the universal philosophical principle alone, or alone with itself; — or it will contrive to preserve them as classes, deducing them philo sophically, and will thus make them rigid and absolute, removing from them that elasticity and fluidity which they derive from their historical character, and converting them from useful classes that they were, into bad philosophemes, concepts contradictory in themselves.
Both these consequences have occurred, for the books of philosophers are full of examples, empirical concepts.
now of destruction, now of corruption of the empirical classes of the Practical. The treat ment of the doctrine of the virtues or of so-called natural rights affords examples of destruction. Striving to distinguish courage from prudence, or justice from benevolence, or on the other hand, egotism from wickedness, they ended by K 1 30 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
recognizing that true courage is prudence, true prudence courage; that benevolence is justice, justice benevolence; that egotism is wickedness, wickedness egotism, and so on. In this way, all the virtues became one, the virtue of being virtuous, the will for the good, duty. In like manner, by giving philosophical form to the natural rights of life, of liberty, of culture, of property, and so on, they ended by recognizing that all rights merge in one single right, which is that of existence; which latter, indeed, is not a right, but a fact. The passions were reduced from seventy or eighty classes to six or seven fundamental, but these six or seven were in their turn reduced to two only, pleasure and pain, and of these two it was finally dis covered that they constituted one only — life, which is pleasure and pain together. But virtues, rights, passions, possess value in practical description only in so far as they are multiplicity — their value is always plural, never singular. To reduce them to a single class signifies to annul them, as to blow upon a candle signifies to extinguish it and to remain in darkness; darkness is to be understood as without empirical light. Now the philosopher should certainly destroy empirical ideas, but only in so far as ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 131 they present themselves as philosophical dis tinctions, that is, in so far as they are empirico philosophical: and in that case it suffices him to show that they are empirical, without pretending to annul them in their own domain also: debellare superbos, but parcere subjectis; that is, he should spare strangers who remain quietly in their own house.
It might seem desirable to pass in review Examples: all these empirical distinctions and questions property and communism, which the philosophers have thought that they and the like, had satisfactorily solved, when they had, on the contrary, passed beyond them. But the theme is inexhaustible, and we cannot here give even a rich selection, comprising the most frequent and important cases. We must limit ourselves to brief mention. — People discuss every day: whether war be an evil, and if it be possible to abolish it; if community of goods should take the place of private property; if rational government be that of liberty or of authority, of democracy or aristocracy, of anarchism or state organization; whether the State should be in the Church or the Church in the State, or side by side and independent; if freedom of thought should be admitted or restrained; if instruction should be free or undertaken by the State; :32 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
and other similar problems. Now behold the philosopher applying himself to the study of these ideas. Having tested them, he is astonished that people can find in them opposing terms, and make them argument for dispute. In truth (he says), war is intrinsic to reality, and peace is peace in so far as by making an end of one war it prepares another; as Socrates demonstrated in the Phaedo, when, scratching his leg in the place where it had been pressed by the chain, he realized that he could not have experienced that pleasure had he not previously experienced the pain. Nor is property different from com munism: the individual declares himself by an individual taking possession of things and becoming their owner; but by so doing he enters into relations and into communion with other individuals, and does business with them. And liberty excludes subjection the less, since sub lege libertas; nor does aristocracy exclude democracy, since the true aristocrat is the bearer of those universal values that are the substance of democracy; hence the more we are aristocratic the more we are democratic, and inversely. Nor does anarchism exclude State organization,