Now we have already treated of the question as to the categories
of Logic and have solved it, partly affirmatively, partly in the
negative. That is to say, we have denied to Logic a multiplicity
of categories, since the three fundamental categories, usually
given as concept, judgment, and syllogism, have been revealed to be
identical. The others, derived from formalist Logic and relating to
classes of concepts, to forms of judgments and to figures of the
syllogism (and even these three preceding, if they are taken as
separable or distinguishable), have been shown to be empirical and
arbitrary. Finally, those that were based upon the gnoseology of the
pseudoconcepts have shown themselves to be extraneous to pure Logic.
On the other hand, we have affirmed the category proper to Logic,--the
unique category to which it gives rise. It has been defined as the
pure concept, at once judgment of definition and individual judgment,
the logical _a priori_ synthesis. Thus the enquiry can be looked upon
as exhaustive as regards this part of the subject.
[Sidenote: _The other categories. No longer logical, but real. Systems
of categories._]
A glance at the tables of categories that have appeared in the course
of the history of philosophy, from that of Aristotle, which is the
first, at least among the conspicuous, to that of Stuart Mill, or if
it be preferred, to the Kategorienlehre of E. von Hartmann, which is
the last, or among the last, shows at once that the other categories,
which have been described as logical categories, can be reduced to
verbal variants of this unique one of the pure concept, or belong to
other aspects of the spirit and of reality, as distinct from that of
logical thought. For if in the Aristotelian table the _ousia_ and the
_poion,_ substance and quality, to some extent denote the subject and
the predicate of the judgment, that is to say, the abstract elements
of the _a priori_ synthesis: the _poson,_ on the other hand, appeals
to the processes of enumeration and of measurement, the _pou_ and
the _poté_ to the determination of space and time, the _poiein_ and
the _paschein_ to the principles of practical activity, and so on.
The Kantian table seems to refer, or to mean to refer, to logical
thought; but that does not prevent the appearance in it of traces of
the principles of mathematical, naturalistic, heuristic, and other
processes. Furthermore, in the Kantian philosophy, the whole system
of the categories is to be deduced, not from the transcendental Logic
alone, but also from the transcendental Æsthetic (space and time), and
from the Critique of Practical Reason and Judgment, which all lead to
functions or forms, operating as spiritual syntheses and reappearing
as categories in judgments. Finally, we must not neglect the Kantian
metaphysical categories of Physics.
[Sidenote: _The Hegelian system of the categories and other later
systems._]
All this becomes clearer in the doctrine of Hegel, where the categories
are not only those of logical thought or subjective thought, concept,
judgment, syllogism; but also those of quality, quantity and measure,
essence, phenomenon and reality, with their subforms and transitions,
and those of the objective concept, mechanism, chemism, and teleology,
and those of the Idea, life, knowing, and the absolute Idea. The
Hegelian, Kuno Fischer, makes certain declarations in his _Logic_
to which it is expedient to give heed. Following the example of the
master, he was induced to include knowing and willing among the
categories; "It may at first sight seem strange (he says), that
knowing and willing should appear here as logico-metaphysical concepts,
as categories. Knowledge has need of categories; but is knowledge
itself a category? Willing belongs to Psychology and Morality, not
to Logic and Metaphysic. It seems, then, that the categories lose
themselves now in Physics or Physiology, by means of concepts such
as those of mechanism and organism, now in Psychology and Ethics,
with the concepts of knowing and of willing. Objections of this sort
have often been made. We have shown that the concept must be thought
as object, and that the concept of object demands that of mechanism:
the justification of the thing resides in this proof. Willing and
knowing are indeed categories. If the test, by which we recognize the
categories, consists in that they are valid, not only for certain
objects, but for all, and in that they should express the universal
nature of things, it is not difficult to see in what a profoundly
significant way knowing and willing emerge triumphantly from such a
test. They belong not only to what are called the faculties of the
human spirit, but in truth to the _very conditions of the world._ If
the world must be understood as end it must also be understood as
willing; for the end without the willing is nothing. ... If knowing
and willing were only a small human province of the world, they
would certainly not be categories. Their concept would belong not to
metaphysic, but to the anthropological sciences. Since they are, on the
contrary, both of them cosmic principles, universal concepts, without
which the concept of objects and of the world cannot be thoroughly
thought and known, for that reason they necessarily have the value of
categories. And since, in truth, they compose the concept of the world,
they are the supreme categories."[1] This argument amounts to saying,
that whenever a concept is truly universal (not restricted to this
or that class of manifestations of reality and therefore empirical),
whenever a concept is a pure concept, it is always a category. This
thesis is most exact, but it amounts to excluding such a search from
pure Logic, which does not give the concepts or concept of reality,
but only the _concept of the concept._ The attempt of Hegel to embrace
the totality of the categories was not understood and was abandoned
at a later date, and a return was made in some sort to the categories
of the theoretic and practical--theoretic spirit alone--(von Hartmann
gives them in his fundamental tripartition of the categories into
sensibility, reflective thought and speculative thought). But the
tendency to totality reappeared, in an elementary form, in Stuart
Mill, who opposed to the Aristotelian table his own, divided into
the three classes of _sentiments_ (sensations, thoughts, emotions,
volitions), of _substances_ (bodies and spirits), and of _attributes_
(quality, relation, quantity): a vertiginous regression to an infantile
conception, which yet sought to embrace in its own way the whole of
reality.
[Sidenote: _The logical order of the predicates or categories._]
The doctrine of the categories has been introduced and retained in
Logic, not only because of the confusion between the thought of thought
and thought in general, which has just been explained, but also because
of another confusion, which must now be explained, as it has far
deeper roots and far greater importance. It has been and may be argued
in this way. It is true that the categories are nothing but simply
the concepts of reality; but these concepts, acting as predicates,
are presented in logic in a necessary order, which it is the task of
logical Science to deduce. In determining reality by means of thought,
we begin with a first predicate, for instance _being,_ judging that
reality is. This judgment immediately shows itself insufficient,
whence it becomes necessary to determine it with a second predicate
and to judge that reality both is and is not, or is _becoming._ This
predicate of becoming appears in its turn vague and abstract, and it
becomes necessary to determine reality as _quality,_ then as _quantity,
measure, essence, existence, mechanism, teleology, life, reflexion,
will, idea,_ in short with all the predicates that exhaust the concept
of reality.
[Sidenote: _Illusion as to the logical reality of this order._]
But we know that this order, this supposed succession, is illusory and
is simply the product of abstract analysis. In the predicate to which
verbal prominence is given, there is concentrated or understood every
predicate, because in every judgment complete reality[2] is predicated
of the subject. Moreover this is shown just by the observation, which
reveals the insufficiency of an isolated and abstract predicate,
and requires for sufficiency nothing less than the totality of the
predicates, the full concept of the Real, of the Spirit or of the Idea.
The concept of Reality, of Spirit or the Idea, can without doubt be
developed, in its unity and in its distinctions; but (let us yet again
repeat) logical Science has for its object, not the effective unity and
distinction of the Real, but the _concept_ of unity and distinction..
[Sidenote: _The necessity of the order of the predicates, not founded
in Logic in particular, but in the whole of Philosophy._]
The ordering of the variety of the predicates, their gradation
according to their greater or less adequacy to reality, arises from
the fact that disputes as to reality show themselves as one-sided
affirmations of this or that predicate or group of predicates,
coupled with the neglect or negation of others, which are not less
indispensable. When, therefore, we attack such one-sidedness and
affirm the complete indivisibility of the predicates, the single
predicates, the objects of the one-sided affirmations, are scrutinized
one after the other, in order to demonstrate their insufficiency, and
for this very reason a certain order is given to them. This order is,
without doubt, necessary, because the possibility of errors, or of
one-sided thoughts, is a consequence of the distinctions, in which
the unity of the Real lives, and which are necessary to it. But for
this very reason the order must be sought, not in logical Science,
but in the total conception of Reality. For instance, in researches
concerning the ethical concept, only he who thinks, not the concept
of the concept (logical science), but the concept of ethical activity
(ethical science), will be able to determine what one-sided concepts
are there possible and what is their order. Only he who thinks a
whole philosophy will be able to determine how many and what and how
connected are the one-sided and erroneous modes of philosophy. This
cannot be found in the concept of the concept; or rather only those
erroneous modes are there found which derive from a one-sided thinking
of the concept of the concept. This we shall see in its place. The
order of the categories in the sense indicated is certainly not
subjective and arbitrary, as a didactic ordering of them would be, a
_πρότερον prὸs ἡμᾶς_; it is a _πρότερον φύσει._ But since this first by
nature is identical with the whole concept of Reality, it is not wholly
contained in the concept of Logic.
[Sidenote: _False distinction of philosophy into two spheres,
Metaphysic and Philosophy, rational philosophy and real philosophy,
etc., due to the confusion between Logic and doctrine of the
categories._]
If the confusion between Logic and the Doctrine of the Categories, or
between the thinking of the logical category and the thinking of the
other categories, had produced no other effect than that of introducing
into books of Logic a method of treatment that exceeds their bounds,
the evil would not be great. It would chiefly affect literary harmony
and clarity of didactic exposition. But from that confusion there has
sometimes as _rational Philosophy and real Philosophy,_ sometimes as
_Gnoseology and Anthropology (or Cosmology,)_ sometimes as _Logic and
System of Philosophy,_ and so on. The conception of Reality is thus
twice described: once as part of Logic (the Doctrine of the Categories,
Ontology, etc.); and again as effective or applied Philosophy.
Philosophy is divided into a Prologue to Philosophy and Philosophy,
or into Philosophy and a Conclusion to Philosophy. But Philosophy,
although it is distinguishable into philosophies (for example,
Æsthetic, Logic, Economic and Ethic), _is this distinction itself,_
or the unity immanent in it. It never gives rise to a duality of
grades. It is never prologue, development and conclusion, being, at its
every point, prologue, development and conclusion. As from empirical
and formalist Logic arose the idea of a Logic which should not be
philosophy, but an organ or instrument or rule or law for the rest of
philosophy; so from the confusion of Logic with the Doctrine of the
Categories has arisen the idea of a Logic, or Metaphysic, or general
Philosophy, or whatever else it may be called, which should be _opposed
to or above_ the rest of philosophy. But the Science of thought, Logic,
is at once thought and effective philosophy; it is thought itself
which in thinking the Real, thinks itself and places itself, as logical
Science, in the place which belongs to it in the system of the Real.
[Sidenote: _Philosophy and pure logic: overcoming of the duality._]
It may seem that in this way thought and reality are again divided and
a metaphysical dualism created. But the exact opposite is the truth.
When Philosophy is distinguished into general and particular, into
rational and real, into pure and applied, into Logic-metaphysic and
into Philosophy of nature and of man, an irreparable breach is made,
which can only be concealed or attenuated in a more or less ingenious
manner. But when that doubleness of degree is destroyed (and thought
thinking the real thereby thinks itself), and in the construction of
Philosophy, the Philosophy of philosophy, namely Logic, is constructed,
the dualism is for ever overcome. This thought is the thinking of the
distinctions, which the real presents; but to think distinctions and to
think unity is, as has been already demonstrated, the same thing.
[Footnote 1: _Logik,_ pp. 532-3.]
[Footnote 2: See above Sect. II. Chap. V.]
SECOND PART
PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND THE NATURAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
I
THE FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE DIVISIONS OF KNOWLEDGE
[Sidenote: _Summary of results as to the forms of acquaintance._]
The result of the preceding enquiries into the constitution of the
cognitive spirit can be resumed, for mnemonic purposes, by saying
that there are _two pure theoretic_ forms, _the intuition_ and
_the concept,_ the second of which is subdivided into _judgment
of definition and individual judgment,_ and that there are two
modes of _practical_ elaboration of knowledge, or of formation of
pseudoconcepts, the _empirical concept and the abstract concept,_ from
which are derived the two subforms of judgment of _classification_ and
of judgment of _enumeration._ If the methods in use in the mediæval
schools or in those of Port-Royal (which were not without their
utility) were still in vogue, we should be able to embody these results
in a few _mnemonic verses,_ which would render the distinctions we have
made easy to impart.
Easy to impart, but not understood, or worse, ill understood; because,
as we know, both the scheme of classification here adopted and the
arithmetical determination of two or more forms are not truly logical
thoughts adequate to the representation of the process of the real
and of thought. Our grouping constructed to help the memory must
therefore be interpreted with the aid of the developments offered
above, and not only corrected, but altogether resolved in them. In
these developments, the intuition and the concept have appeared as two
forms, not capable of co-ordination, but both distinct and united. The
judgment of definition and the individual judgment have appeared as
logically identical, divisible only from an external or literary point
of view, that is to say, by the greater or less importance attached
either to the predicate or to the subject. Further, the formation of
the pseudoconcepts is outside theory, although founded upon theoretic
elements; it belongs essentially, not to the cognitive spirit, but
to the practical spirit. And if their subdivision into empirical and
abstract concepts is necessary, the necessity is founded upon the fact,
that only in these two modes can the concept be practically developed,
when its synthetic unity is arbitrarily split up into two one-sided
forms. Finally, the two fundamental forms of the spirit themselves, the
theoretic and the practical, are not co-ordinate with one another, nor
capable of arithmetical enumeration. The one is in the other, the one
is correlative to the other, because the one presupposes the other.
[Sidenote: _Non-existence of technical forms, and of composite forms._]
No other cognitive or practical-cognitive forms, or other subforms,
beyond those which we have defined, are conceivable. The _technical
knowledge,_ which is discussed in some treatises on Logic, is nothing
but knowledge itself, which is always and entirely technical, preceding
and conditioning the action and practice of life. The same may be
said of _normative_ knowledge, by which, as with technical, it is
especially meant in ordinary language to designate the whole of the
pseudoconcepts. But this is erroneous, when we consider that such
knowledge constitutes the true immediate precedent condition of action.
The pseudoconcepts must be retranslated into individual judgments, in
order that they may be able to form the basis of action, for which,
as is justly remarked, we require direct and concrete perceptions of
actual situations. Formulæ and abstractions aid perception only in an
indirect and subsidiary manner.
The so-called combined or _composite_ forms in which two or more
original forms are brought together, must also be rejected, for the
reason already given, that composite concepts do not exist in pure
Logical thought, and consequently cannot exist in the Science of
Logic, which is the science of that thought. The composite form, then,
is an empirical and arbitrary determination, as may be observed, for
instance, in the case in which we speak of an empirico-philosophic
concept, that is, of the union (which is a successive enunciation) of
an empirical concept and a philosophic concept.
[Sidenote: _Identity of cognitive forms and forms of knowledge.
Objections to it._]
The cognitive forms having thus been established, we pass on to
the question, what and how many and of what kind are the _forms of
knowledge._ The reply must be that the forms of knowledge (for example,
History and the natural Sciences) cannot be anything but identical with
the cognitive forms, and of the same kind and same number as they. The
first of these statements finds itself at once at issue with common
thought, in which a profound distinction is drawn between the ordinary
and the scientific man, the profane and the philosopher, the poet and
the non-poet, the ignorant and the learned, layman and clergy; and
again, between conversation and science, effusion of the soul and
art, collection of facts and history, good sense and philosophy. It
is thought that acquaintance belongs to all: every one communicates
his sentiments, narrates his experiences and those of others, reasons,
classifies and calculates. But art, philosophy, history and science are
believed to belong to the few. That alone deserves those solemn names,
which is the result of exceptional moments, when man is more than man,
or at least when he is no longer one of the crowd, but belongs to an
aristocracy.
[Sidenote: _Empirical distinctions and their limits. _]
And, certainly, these distinctions are useful, and therefore necessary
in practice. We all feel the need of creating an aristocracy of men and
things; of distinguishing the word that a sergeant whispers in the ear
of a maid-servant from a sonnet or a symphony; the proverbs of Sancho
Panza from a treatise on Ethics; and the report of a police-agent from
the history of Rome or of England. We distinguish the classification
of the glasses and bowls in use at home from that of Mineralogy or
of Zoology; the reckoning of our daily expenses from the calculation
of the astronomer; and, finally, Tom, Dick and Harry from Aeschylus,
Plato, Thucydides, Hippocrates and Euclid. The _odi profanum vulgus_ is
a motto that should be appropriated by whosoever labours to promote
the life of thought and of art, yet not without adding to it Ariosto's
post-script: "Nor do I wish to absolve any from the name of vulgar,
save the prudent."
But, admitting all this, we must recognize not less energetically
that these distinctions, imposed by the necessities of life, have in
philosophy no value at all, and that their introduction there, if it
has some excuse in professional custom, is nevertheless the way to shut
off from us for ever all understanding both of the forms of knowledge
and of those of acquaintance. Man is complete man at every instant
and in every man; the spirit is always whole in every individuation
of itself. The philosopher in the highest sense (in the philosopher
worthy of the name) could be defined as one who raises doubts, collects
difficulties, and formulates problems, intent upon clearing up doubts,
upon levelling difficulties, and upon solving problems; the artist as
a man who limits himself to looking and to recording the significance
of what he has seen. In this case, the ordinary man would be he who
encounters no theoretic difficulties and is unaware of spectacles
worthy of contemplation. But in reality the ordinary man also sets
himself problems and solves them, contemplates and expresses the
spectacle of the real. The distinction has value, therefore, only in
descriptive Psychology, which passes in review types of reality and
the perfected organs, so to speak, which reality creates for itself in
great philosophers and great poets. But what empiricism always divides,
philosophy must always unite. To be scandalized when some one speaks of
the poetry, philosophy, science, mathematics, which are in every one's
mouth; to mock those who unify and identify; to appeal to good sense
and to threaten the madhouse, are things that reveal much pedantry
but no humanity, or, at most, very little. It is foolish to fear that
such an identification as we propose will lessen the importance of the
forms of knowledge and render trivial divine Poetry, lofty Philosophy,
severe History, serious Science and ingenious Mathematics. As the hero
is not outside humanity, but is he in whom the soul of the people is
concentrated and made powerful, so poetry, philosophy, science and
history, aristocratically circumscribed, are the most conspicuous
manifestations attained by the elementary forms of acquaintance
themselves. Such they could not be, were they not all one with them,
just as the mountains could not be, were it not for the earth upon
which they are raised and of which they are constituted.