[Sidenote] _The system of the spirit._
In this summary sketch that we have given, of the entire philosophy of
the spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is conceived as
consisting of four moments or grades, disposed in such a way that the
theoretical activity is to the practical as is the first theoretical
grade to the second theoretical, and the first practical grade to the
second practical. The four moments imply one another regressively by
their concretion. The concept cannot be without expression, the useful
without the one and the other, and morality without the three preceding
grades. If the aesthetic fact is alone independent, and the others more
or less dependent, then the logical is the least so and the moral will
the most. Moral intention operates on given theoretic bases, which
cannot be dispensed with, save by that absurd practice, the jesuitical
_direction of intention_. Here people pretend to themselves not to know
what at bottom they know perfectly well.
[Sidenote] _The forms of genius._
If the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms of
genius. Geniuses in art, in science, in moral will or heroes, have
certainly always been recognized. But the genius of pure Economic has
met with opposition. It is not altogether without reason that a category
of bad geniuses or of _geniuses of evil_ has been created. The
practical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rational
end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. It would be a
mere question of words, were we to discuss whether the word "genius"
should be applied only to creators of aesthetic expression, or also to
men of scientific research and of action. To observe, on the other hand,
that genius, of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conception
and an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already been
explained as regards artistic genius.
[Sidenote] _Non-existence of a fifth form of activity. Law;
sociality._
A fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. It would be easy to
demonstrate how all the other forms, either do not possess the character
of activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined,
or are complex and derived facts, in which the various activities are
mingled, or are filled with special contents and contingent data.
The _judicial_ fact, for example, considered as what is called objective
law, is derived both from the economic and from the logical activities.
Law is a rule, a formula (whether oral or written matters little here)
in which is contained an economic relation willed by an individual or by
a collectivity. This economic side at once unites it with and
distinguishes it from moral activity. Take another example. Sociology
(among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is sometimes
conceived as the study of an original element, which is called
_sociality_. Now what is it that distinguishes sociality, or the
relations which are developed in a meeting of men, not of subhuman
beings, if it be not just the various spiritual activities which exist
among the former and which are supposed not to exist, or to exist only
in a rudimentary degree, among the latter? Sociality, then, far from
being an original, simple, irreducible conception, is very complex and
complicated. This could be proved by the impossibility, generally
recognized, of enunciating a single sociological law, properly
so-called. Those that are improperly called by that name are revealed as
either empirical historical observations, or spiritual laws, that is to
say judgments, into which are translated the conceptions of the
spiritual activities; when they are not simply empty and indeterminate
generalizations, like the so-called law of evolution. Sometimes, too,
nothing more is understood by sociality than social rule, and so law;
and thus sociology is confounded with the science or theory of law
itself. Law, sociality, and like terms, are to be dealt with in a mode
analogous to that employed by us in the consideration of historicity and
technique.
[Sidenote] _Religiosity._
It may seem fitting to form a different judgment as to _religious_
activity. But religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differ
from its other forms and subforms. For it is in truth and in turn either
the expression of practical and ideal aspirations (religious ideals), or
historical narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma).
It can therefore be maintained with equal truth, both that religion is
destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, and that it is always
present there. Their religion was the whole patrimony of knowledge of
primitive peoples: our patrimony of knowledge is our religion. The
content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and
become better and more refined in the future also; but its function is
always the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion by
those who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activity
of man, with his art, with his criticism, and with his philosophy. It is
impossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge, like
religion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved it.
Catholicism, which is always coherent, will not tolerate a Science, a
History, an Ethic, in contradiction to its views and doctrines. The
rationalists are less coherent. They are disposed to allow a little
space in their souls for a religion which is in contradiction with their
whole theoretic world.
These affectations and religious susceptibilities of the rationalists of
our times have their origin in the superstitious cult of the natural
sciences. These, as we know and as is confessed by the mouth of their
chief adepts, are all surrounded by _limits_. Science having been
wrongly identified with the so-called natural sciences, it could be
foreseen that the remainder would be asked of religion; that remainder
with which the human spirit cannot dispense. We are therefore indebted
to materialism, to positivism, to naturalism for this unhealthy and
often disingenuous reflowering of religious exaltation. Such things are
the business of the hospital, when they are not the business of the
politician.
[Sidenote] _Metaphysic._
Philosophy withdraws from religion all reason for existing, because it
substitutes itself for religion. As the science of the spirit, it looks
upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychic
condition that can be surpassed. Philosophy shares the domain of
knowledge with the natural disciplines, with history and with art. It
leaves to the first, narration, measurement and classification; to the
second, the chronicling of what has individually happened; to the third,
the individually possible. There is nothing left to share with religion.
For the same reason, philosophy, as the science of the spirit, cannot be
philosophy of the intuitive datum; nor, as has been seen, _Philosophy of
History, nor Philosophy of Nature_; and therefore there cannot be a
philosophic science of what is not form and universal, but material and
particular. This amounts to affirming the impossibility of _metaphysic_.
The Method or Logic of history followed the Philosophy of history; a
gnoseology of the conceptions which are employed in the natural sciences
succeeded natural philosophy. What philosophy can study of the one is
its mode of construction (intuition, perception, document, probability,
etc.); of the others she can study the forms of the conceptions which
appear in them (space, time, motion, number, types, classes, etc.).
Philosophy, which should become metaphysical in the sense above
described, would, on the other hand, claim to compete with narrative
history, and with the natural sciences, which in their field are alone
legitimate and effective. Such a competition becomes in fact a labour
spoiling labour. We are _antimetaphysical_ in this sense, while yet
declaring ourselves _ultrametaphysical_, if by that word it be desired
to claim and to affirm the function of philosophy as the
autoconsciousness of the spirit, as opposed to the merely empirical and
classificatory function of the natural sciences.
[Sidenote] _Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect._
In order to maintain itself side by side with the sciences of the
spirit, metaphysic has been obliged to assert the existence of a
specific spiritual activity, of which it would be the product. This
activity, which in antiquity was called _mental or superior
imagination_, and in modern times more often _intuitive intellect or
intellectual intuition_, would unite in an altogether special form the
characters of imagination and of intellect. It would provide the method
of passing, by deduction or dialectically, from the infinite to the
finite, from form to matter, from the concept to the intuition, from
science to history, operating by a method which should be at once unity
and compenetration of the universal and the particular, of the abstract
and the concrete, of intuition and of intellect. A faculty marvellous
indeed and delightful to possess; but we, who do not possess it, have no
means of proving its existence.
[Sidenote] _Mystical aesthetic._
Intellectual intuition has sometimes been considered as the true
aesthetic activity. At others a not less marvellous aesthetic activity
has been placed beside, below, or above it, a faculty altogether
different from simple intuition. The glories of this faculty have been
sung, and to it have been attributed the fact of art, or at the least
certain groups of artistic production, arbitrarily chosen. Art,
religion, and philosophy have seemed in turn one only, or three distinct
faculties of the spirit, now one, now another of these being superior in
the dignity assigned to each.
It is impossible to enumerate all the various attitudes assumed by this
conception of Aesthetic, which we will call _mystical_. We are here in
the kingdom, not of the science of imagination, but of imagination
itself, which creates its world with the varying elements of the
impressions and of the feelings. Let it suffice to mention that this
mysterious faculty has been conceived, now as practical, now as a mean
between the theoretic and the practical, at others again as a theoretic
grade together with philosophy and religion.
[Sidenote] _Mortality and immortality of art._
The immortality of art has sometimes been deduced from this last
conception as belonging with its sisters to the sphere of absolute
spirit. At other times, on the other hand, when religion has been looked
upon as mortal and as dissolved in philosophy, then the mortality, even
the actual death, or at least the agony of art has been proclaimed.
These questions have no meaning for us, because, seeing that the
function of art is a necessary grade of the spirit, to ask if art can be
eliminated is the same thing as asking if sensation or intelligence can
be eliminated. But metaphysic, in the above sense, since it transplants
itself to an arbitrary world, is not to be criticized in detail, any
more than one can criticize the botany of the garden of Alcina or the
navigation of the voyage of Astolfo. Criticism can only be made by
refusing to join the game; that is to say, by rejecting the very
possibility of metaphysic, always in the sense above indicated.
As we do not admit intellectual intuition in philosophy, we can also not
admit its shadow or equivalent, aesthetic intellectual intuition, or any
other mode by which this imaginary function may be called and
represented. We repeat again that we do not know of a fifth grade beyond
the four grades of spirit which consciousness reveals to us.