arise from the failure to make clear the confusion between concepts
and pseudoconcepts, and between empirical and abstract concepts.
Is it or is it not true that every concept must have an individual
representation, taken from its own sphere, as a necessary _support_?
Are concepts of _things_ possible, or is there a special concept
corresponding to every thing? Is a concept of the _individual_
possible? These three questions may be answered in the affirmative, in
the negative, and in the affirmative-negative, according as they are
referred to the empirical concept, the abstract concept, or the pure
concept.
[Sidenote: _The representative accompaniment of the concept._]
For, if we consider the first question, we must resolutely deny that
the abstract concept has any need of a particular representation as its
necessary support. The geometric triangle, as such, is neither white
nor black, nor of any given size; if the representation of a particular
triangle unites itself to it, geometry discards it. But we must just
as resolutely affirm than an empirical or representative concept has
always an image to support it; the concept of a cat needs the image of
a cat, and every book on zoology is accompanied with illustrations.
The image may be varied, but never suppressed; and it may be varied
only within certain limits, because, if these be exceeded, the concept
itself loses its form and is dissipated. Thus, for the concept of the
cat, we could frame a representation of a white or black or red cat, or
a small or big one; but if scarlet colour or the size of an elephant
be attributed to the cat, which serves as symbol of the fiction, the
concept must be changed. That concept has at its command the images
of cats, upon which it has been formed, which, as we know, are always
finite in number. Finally, with reference to the pure concept, it must
be said that every image and no image is in turn a symbol of it; as
every blade of grass (as Vanini said) represents God, and a number of
images, however great it be, does not suffice to represent Him.
[Sidenote: _The concept of the thing and the concept of the
individual._]
In like manner, as regards the second question, it must be answered
that the empirical concept is nothing but a concept of things, or a
grouping of a certain number of things beneath one or other of them,
which functions as a type; that the abstract concept is by definition,
the not-thing, incapable of representation; and that the pure concept
is a concept of every thing and of no thing. And as regards the third,
we must answer that the abstract concept is altogether repugnant to
individuality; the pure concept alights upon every individual, only
to leave it again, and in so far as it thinks all individual things,
it renders them all, in a certain way, concepts, and in so far as it
surpasses them, it denies them as such; while the empirical concept
can be the _concept of the individual._ Because if in reality, the
individual be the situation of the universal spirit at a determinate
instant, empirically considered the individual becomes something
isolated, cut off from the rest and shut up in itself, so that it is
possible to attribute to it a certain constancy in relation to the
occurrences of the life it lives; so that that life assumes almost the
position of the individual determinations of a concept. Socrates is the
life of Socrates, inseparable from all the life of the time in which he
developed; but empirically and usefully we can construct the concept of
a Socrates a controversialist, an educator, endowed with imperturbable
calm, of which the Socrates who ate and drank and wore clothes, and
lived during such and such occurrences, is the incarnation. Thus we can
form pseudoconcepts of individuals as well as of things, or, to express
it in terms that are the fashion, we can form _Platonic ideas_ of them.
[Sidenote: _Reasons, laws, and causes._]
It is also well to note that to adduce the _reasons,_ the _laws,_
the _causes_ of things and of reality, is equivalent to establishing
concepts, and since the word "concepts" has been applied in turn to
pure and to empirical and abstract concepts, laws and causes have been
alternately described as truths and as fictions. It belongs to the
discussion of terminology to remark that in general the word "reason"
has been used only for researches into pure and abstract concepts,
"cause" for empirical concepts, and "laws" almost equally for all
three, but perhaps a little more for empirical and abstract than for
pure concepts. But to the confusion of these three forms of spiritual
products is to be attributed the fact that there have been discussions,
as, for instance, whether there be _concepts of laws_ in addition to
concepts of things, the issue of which was at bottom the desire to
ascertain whether there exist abstract and pure concepts, in addition
to empirical concepts.
[Sidenote: _Intellect and Reason._]
The profound diversity of the concepts and of the pseudoconcepts
suggested (at the time when it was customary to represent the forms
or grades of the spirit as faculties) the distinction between two
logical faculties, which were called _Intellect_ (or, also, _abstract_
Intellect), and _Reason._ The first of these formed what we now call
pseudoconcepts; the second, pure concepts.
[Sidenote: _The abstract intellect and its practical nature._]
But the proper character of neither of the two faculties was realized
by those who postulated them; they fell into the error, which we have
already had occasion to criticize, of conceiving the Intellect as a
form of knowledge, which either lives in the false, or is limited to
preparing the material for the superior faculty, to which it supplies
a first imperfect sketch of the concept. But the faculty required
for this should be, not of a theoretical nature, but of a practical.
It is a terminological question of slight interest, whether the name
"Intellect" should be retained for the production of pseudoconcepts,
or whether the purely theoretic meaning, which it first had, should be
restored to it, and it should thus be made synonymous with "Reason."
It can only be observed that it will be very difficult to remove
henceforth from "Intellect," from "intellectual formations," and from
"intellectualism," the suspicion and discredit cast upon them by the
great philosophic history of the first half of the nineteenth century;
so much so, that only where a rather popular style is employed, can
Intellect and Reason be used promiscuously.
With greater truth, Reason was considered as unifying what the
Intellect had divided, and therefore as unifying abstraction and
concreteness, deduction and induction, analysis and synthesis. With
greater truth, although complete exactness would have demanded here,
not so much that to Reason should be given the power of unifying
what has been unduly divided, as that to the Intellect, that is to
say, to the practical faculty, should be given the power of dividing
extrinsically what for Reason is never divided: a power which the
Intellect, as a practical faculty, possesses and exercises, not in a
pathological, but in a physiological way.
[Sidenote: _The synthesis of theoretic and practical, and the
intellectual intuition._]
The incomplete survey of the so-called Intellect, the theoretic
character of which was preserved, though in a depreciatory sense,
issued in the result that finally to Reason itself was attributed a
character, no longer theoretic, or rather, _more than theoretic._
Knowledge, presenting itself in the form of Intellect, seemed
inadequate to truth; to attain to which there intervened Reason, or
speculative procedure, the _synthesis of theory and practice,_ a
knowledge which is action, and an action which is knowledge. Sometimes,
Reason itself, thus transfigured, seemed insufficient, owing to
the presence of ratiocinative processes, which came to it from the
Intellect, and were absorbed by it; and the supreme faculty of truth
was conceived, not as logical reasoning, but as intuition; an intuition
differing from the purely artistic and revealing the genuine truth,
an organ of the absolute, _intellectual Intuition._ It was urged
against intellectual intuition that it created irresponsibility in
the field of truth, and made lawful every individual caprice. But a
similar objection could be brought against Reason, which is superior to
knowledge, and is the synthesis of theory and practice: while, on the
other hand, it cannot be denied, both of intellectual Intuition and of
Reason, that on the whole they affirmed or tended to affirm _the rights
of the pure Concept,_ as opposed to empirical and abstract concepts.
[Sidenote: _Uniqueness of thought._]
For our part, we have no need to lower the cognitive activity beneath
the level of truth, by attributing to it an intellectualiste and
arbitrary function; nor, on the other hand (in order to supplement
knowledge and intellect thus pauperized), to exalt Reason above
itself. Thought (call it Intellect, or Reason, or what you will) is
always thought; and it always thinks with pure concepts, never with
pseudoconcepts. And since there is not another thought beneath thought,
so there is not another thought superior to it. The difficulties
which led to these conclusions have been completely explained, when
we have distinguished concepts from pseudoconcepts, and demonstrated
the heterogeneity which exists between these two forms of spiritual
products.
V
CRITIQUE OF THE DIVISIONS OF THE CONCEPTS AND THEORY OF DISTINCTION AND
DEFINITION
[Sidenote: _The pseudoconcepts, not a subdivision of the concept._]
Precisely because they are heterogeneous formations, pure concepts and
pseudoconcepts do not constitute divisions of the generic concept of
the concept. To assume that they did, would be a horrible confusion of
terms, not far different (to use Spinoza's example) from that of the
division of the dog into _animal_ dog and _constellation_ dog; though
poets used at one time to talk of the celestial dog also, as "barking
and biting," when the sun implacably burned the fields.
[Sidenote: _Obscurity, clearness and distinction, not subdivisions of
the concept._]
And seeing that our point of view is philosophic, we can take no
account of another division of the concept, which had great fame
and authority in the past: that into _obscure, confused, clear_ and
_distinct_ concepts and the like, or of the degrees of _perfection_ to
which the concept attains. Such a division can retain at the most but
an empirical and approximate value, and under this aspect it will be
difficult altogether to renounce it in ordinary discourse; but it has
no logical and philosophic value whatever. The concept is what is truly
concept, the perfect concept, not at all the encumbered or wandering
tendency toward it. Yet that division had great historical importance.
By means of it, indeed, the attempt was made to differentiate the
concept, under the name of _clear_ and _distinct_ thought, from the
intuition, which was _clear_ but _confused_ thought, and both of these
from sensation, impression, or emotion, which was called _obscure._
This was attempted, but without success; the problem was set but not
solved; for the solution was only attained when it was seen that,
in this case, it was not a question of three degrees of thought, as
absolute logic claimed, but of three forms of the spirit: of thought
or _distinction,_ of intuition _ox clearness_; and of the practical
activity, _obscurity_ or _naturality._
[Sidenote: _Non-existence of subdivisions of the concept as a logic at
form._]
Logically, the concept does not give rise to distinctions, for there
are not several forms of concept, but one only. This is a perfectly
analogous result in Logic to that which we reached in Æsthetic, when
we established the uniqueness of intuition or expression, and the
non-existence of special modes or classes of expressions (except
in the empirical sense, in which we can always establish as many
classes as we wish). In distinguishing the forms of the spirit, the
two principal forms, theoretic and practical, having been divided,
and the theoretic having been subdivided into intuition and concept,
there is no place for a further subdivision of the theoretic forms,
since intuition and concept are each of them indivisible forms. The
reason for this indivisibility cannot be clearly understood, save by
the complete development of the Philosophy of the spirit; and it is
only to be remarked here in passing, that the division of intuition
and concept has as its foundation the distinction between individual
and universal. And since in this distinction there is no _medium quid_
nor an _ulterius,_ a third or fourth intermediate form, so there is no
subdivision; since we pass from the concept of individuality to single
individuality, which is not a concept, and from the concept of the
concept to the single act of thought, which is no longer the simple
definition of logical thinking, but effective logical thinking itself.
[Sidenote: _The distinctions of the concept not logical, but real._]
Since all subdivision of the logical form of the concept has been
excluded, the multiplicity of concepts can be referred only to the
variety of the objects, which are thought in the logical form of the
concept. The concept of _goodness_ is not that of _beauty_; or rather,
both are logically the same thing, since both are logical form; but the
aspect of reality designated by the first is not the same aspect of
reality as is designated by the second.
[Sidenote: _Multiplicity of the concepts, and the logical difficulty
arising therefrom. Necessity of overcoming it._]
But here arises the difficulty. How can it be that since in the concept
we deal with reality, in its universal aspect, we yet obtain so many
various forms of reality, that is, so many distinct concepts (for
example, passion, will, morality, imagination, thought, and so on), so
many _universals,_ whereas the concept should give us _the universal._
If this variety were not overcome or capable of being overcome by the
concept, we should have to conclude that the true universal is not
attainable by thought, and to return to scepticism, or at least to
that peculiar form of logical scepticism which makes the consciousness
of unity an act of the inner life, which cannot be stated in terms of
logic; that is, mysticism. The distinction of the concepts, one from
another, in the absence of unity, is separation and atomism; and it
would certainly not be worth while getting out of the multiplicity of
representations if we were then to fall into that of the concepts.
For this, no less than the other, would issue in a _progressus ad
infinitum,_ for who would ever be able to affirm that the concepts
which were discovered and enumerated were all the concepts? If they be
ten, why should they not be, if better observed, twenty, a hundred, or
fifty thousand? Why, indeed, should they not be just as numerous as
the representations, that is to say, infinite? Spinoza, who counted,
without mediating between them, two attributes of substance, thought
and extension, admitted, with perfect coherence, that two are known to
us, but that the attributes of Substance must in reality be considered
infinite in number.
[Sidenote: _Impossibility of eliminating it._]
The concept, then, demands that this multiplicity be denied; and we
can affirm that the real is one, because the concept, by means of
which alone we know it, is one; the content is one, because the form
of thought is one. But in accepting this claim, we run into another
difficulty. If we jettison distinction, the unity that we attain is
an empty unity, deprived of organic character, a whole without parts,
a simple _beyond_ the representations, and therefore inexpressible
so that we should return to mysticism by another route. A whole is a
whole, only because and in so far as it has parts, indeed _is_ parts;
an organism is such, because it has and is organs and functions; a
unity is thinkable only in so far as it has distinctions in itself,
and is the unity of the distinctions. Unity without distinction is as
repugnant to thought as distinction without unity.
[Sidenote: _Unify as distinction._]
It follows, therefore, that both terms are reciprocally indispensable,
and that the distinctions of the concept are not the negation of the
concept, nor something outside the concept, but the concept itself,
understood in its truth; the _one-distinct;_ one, only because
distinct, and distinct only because one. Unity and distinction are
correlative and therefore inseparable.
[Sidenote: _Inadequateness of the numerical concept of multiplicity._]
The distinct concepts, constituting in their distinction unity, cannot,
above all, be infinite in number, for in that case they would be
equivalent to the representations. Not indeed that they are finite in
number, as if they were all alike equally arranged upon one and the
same plane, and capable of being placed in any other sort of order,
without alteration in their being. The _Beautiful,_ the _True,_ the
_Useful,_ the _Good,_ are not the first steps in a numerical series,
nor do they permit themselves to be arranged at pleasure, so that we
may place the beautiful after the true, or the good before the useful,
or the useful before the true, and so on. They have a necessary order,
and mutually imply one another; and from this we learn that they are
not to be described as finite in number, since number is altogether
incapable of expressing such a relation. To count implies having
objects separate from one another before us; and here, on the contrary,
we have terms that are distinct, but inseparable, of which the second
is not only second, but, in a certain sense, also first, and the first
not only first, but, in a certain way, also second. We cannot dispense
with numbers, when treating of these concepts of the spirit, owing to
their convenience for handling the subject; hence we talk, for example,
of the _ten_ categories, or of the _three_ terms of the concept, or of
the _four_ forms of the spirit. But in this case the numbers are mere
_symbols_; and we must beware of understanding the objects which they
enumerate, as though they were ten sheep, three oxen, and four cows.
[Sidenote: _Relation of the distinct concepts as ideal history._]
This relation of the distinct concepts in the unity which they
constitute, can be compared to the spectacle of life, in which every
fact is in relation with all other facts, and the fact which comes
after is certainly different from that which precedes, but is also the
same; since the consequent fact contains in itself the preceding, as,
in a certain sense, the preceding virtually contained the consequent,
and was what it was, just because it possessed the power of producing
the consequent. This is called _history_; and therefore (continuing
to develop the comparison) the relation of the concepts, which are
distinct in the unity of the concept, can be called and has been called
_ideal history_; and the logical theory of such ideal history has been
regarded as the theory of the _degrees of the concept,_ just as real
history is conceived as a series of _degrees of civilization._ And
since the theory of the degrees of the concept is the theory of its
distinction, and its distinction is not different from its unity, it
is clear that this theory can be separated from the general doctrine
of the concept with which it is substantially one, only with a view to
greater facility of exposition.
[Sidenote: _Distinction between ideal and real history._]
Metaphors and comparisons are metaphors and comparisons and (like all
forms of language) their effectiveness for the purposes of dissertation
is accompanied, as we know, by the danger of misunderstanding. In order
to avoid this, without at the same time renouncing the convenience of
such modes of expression, it will be well to insist that the historical
series, where the distinct concepts appear connected, is _ideal,_ and
therefore outside space and time, and eternal; so that it would be
erroneous to conceive that in any smallest fragment of reality, or in
any most fugitive instant of it, one degree is found without the other,
the first without the second, or the first and the second without
the third. Here too, we must allow for the exigencies of exposition,
whereby, sometimes, when we intend to emphasize the distinction, we
are led to speak of the relation of one degree to another, as if they
were distinct existences; as if the practical man really existed side
by side with the theoretic man, or the poet side by side with the
philosopher, or as if the work of Art stood separate from the labour
of reflection, and so on. But if a particular historical fact can in
a certain sense be considered as essentially distinct in time and
space, the grades of the concept are not existentially, temporally, and
spatially distinct.
[Sidenote: _Ideal and abstract distinction._]
An opposite, but not less serious error, would be to conceive the
grades of the concept as distinct only _abstractly,_ thus making
abstract concepts of distinct concepts. The abstract distinction
is unreal; and that of the concept is real; and the reality of the
distinction (since here we are dealing with the concept) is precisely
_ideality,_ not _abstraction._ The universal, and therefore also all
the forms of the universal, are found in every minutest fragment of
life, in the so-called physical atom of the physicists, or in the
psychical atom of the psychologists; the concept is therefore all
distinct concepts. But _each one of them is, as it were, distinct
in that union_; and in the same way as man is man, in so far as he
affirms all his activities and his entire humanity, and yet cannot
do this, save by specializing as a scientific man, a politician, a
poet, and so on. In the same way the thinker, when thinking reality,
can think it only in its distinct aspects, and in this way only he
thinks it in its unity. A work of Art and a philosophical work, an
act of thought or of will, cannot be taken up in the hand or pointed
out with the finger; and it can be affirmed only in a practical and
approximate sense that this book is poetry, and that philosophy,
that this movement is a theoretic or practical, a utilitarian or a
moral act. It is well understood that this book is also philosophy;
and that it is also a practical act; just as that useful act is also
moral, and also theoretic; and _vice versa._ But to think a certain
intuitive datum and to recognize it as an affirmation of the whole
spirit, is not possible save by thinking its different aspects
distinctly. This renders possible, for example, a criticism of Art,
conducted exclusively from the point of view of Art; or a philosophical
criticism, from the exclusive point of view of philosophy; or a moral
judgment, which considers exclusively the moral initiative of the
individual, and so on. And therefore, here as in the preceding case,
it is needful to guard against forcing the comparison with history
too far, and conceiving, in history, the possibility of divisions as
rigorous as in the concept. If distinct concepts be not _existences,_
existences are not _distinct_ concepts; a fact cannot be placed in the
same relation to another fact, as one grade of the concept to another,
precisely because in every fact there are all the determinations of the
concept, and a fact in relation to another fact is not a conceptual
determination.
Certainly _distinct_ concepts can become _simple abstractions_; but
this only happens when they are taken in an abstract way, and so
separated from one another, co-ordinated and made parallel, by means of
an arbitrary operation, which can be applied even to the pure concepts.
The distinct concepts then become changed into _pseudoconcepts,_ and
the character of abstraction belongs to these last, not to the distinct
concepts as such, which are always at once distinct and united.