my thought (and also of its criticism owing to their unity already
demonstrated)? Sixteen years ago I began my studies in philosophy with
a memoir entitled _History beneath the general concept of Art_ (1893).
There I maintained, not that history is art (as others have summarized
my thought) but (as indeed the title clearly showed) that history
can be placed beneath the _general_ concept of art. I now maintain,
sixteen years after, that, on the contrary, history is philosophy
and that history and philosophy are indeed the same thing. The two
theories are certainly different; but they are far less different
than appears, and the second theory is in any case a development and
perfecting of the first. _Elle a bien changé sur la route,_ without
doubt; but without discontinuity and without gaps. Indeed, the objects
of my memoir were chiefly: (1) to combat the _absorption_ of history,
which the natural sciences were then attempting more than they are
now; (2) the affirmation of the _theoretic_ character of art and of
its _seriousness,_ art being then regarded as a hedonistic fact by the
prevailing positivism; (3) the negation of history as a _third form_
of the theoretic spirit different from the æsthetic form and from that
of thought. I still maintain these three theses intact and they form
part of my _Æsthetic_ and of my _Logic._ But the proper character of
philosophy, so profoundly different from the empirical and abstract
sciences, was not clear to me at the time, and therefore neither was
the difference between philosophic Logic and Logic of classification.
For this reason I was unable completely to solve the problem that I had
proposed to myself. Owing to this confusion of the true universality
of philosophy and of the false universality of the sciences (which is
either mere generality or abstractness) in a single group, it seemed
to me that the concreteness of history could enter only the group of
art, understood in its greater extension (hence the general concept of
art). In this group, by means of the fallacious method of subordination
and co-ordination, I distinguished history as the _representation of
the real,_ placing it without mediation alongside the representation of
the _possible_ (art in the strict sense of the word). When I understood
the true relation between Philosophy and the sciences (a slow progress,
because to reattain to consciousness of what philosophy truly is has
been slow and difficult for the men of my generation), the nature of
history also became somewhat clearer to me as I gradually freed myself
from the remnants of the intellectualistic and naturalistic method.
In the _Æsthetic_ I looked upon that spiritual product as due to the
intersection of philosophy and of art. In the _Outlines of Logic_ I
made another step in advance, history there appearing to me as the
ultimate result of the theoretic spirit, the sea into which flowed the
river of art, swelled with that of philosophy. The complete identity of
history and of philosophy was, however, always half-hidden from me,
because in me the prejudice still persisted that philosophy might have
a form in a certain way free from the bonds of history, and constitute
in relation to it a prior and independent moment of the spirit. That is
to say, something abstract persisted in my idea of philosophy. But this
prejudice and this abstractness have been vanquished little by little.
And not only have my studies in the Philosophy of the practical greatly
helped me to vanquish them, but also and above all, the studies of my
dearest friend Giovanni Gentile (to whom my mental life owes many other
aids and stimulations), concerning the relation between philosophy
and history of philosophy (cf. now especially _Critica,_ vii. pp.
142-9). In short, I have gradually passed from the accentuation of the
character of concreteness, which history possesses in relation to the
empirical and abstract sciences, to the accentuation of the concrete
character of philosophy. And having completed the elimination of the
double abstractness, the two concretenesses (that which I had first of
all claimed for history, and that which I have afterwards claimed for
philosophy) have finally revealed themselves to me as one. Thus I can
now no longer accept without demur my old theory, which is not the new
one, but is linked to it by such close bonds.
Such is the road I have travelled, and I wished especially to describe
it, in order to leave no misunderstandings which, through my neglect,
might lead others into error.
[Footnote 1: _Phædrus,_ 275.]
[Footnote 2: _Phædrus,_ 276-7.]µ
[Footnote 3: _Meno,_ 97-8.]
V
THE NATURAL SCIENCES
[Sidenote: _The natural sciences as empirical concepts, and their
practical nature._]
The natural sciences are nothing but edifices of pseudoconcepts, and
precisely of that sort of pseudoconcept that we have distinguished from
the others as _empirical_ or _representative._
This is evident also from the definitions that they assume as _sciences
of phenomena,_ in opposition to philosophy, the science of _noumena_;
and as _sciences of facts,_ again in opposition to philosophy, which
is taken to be the science of _values._ But the pure phenomenon is not
known to science; it is represented by art: and the noumena, in so far
as they are known, are also phenomena, since it would be arbitrary to
break up unity and synthesis. In like manner, true values are facts,
and, on the other hand, facts without the determination of value and of
universality dissolve again into pure phenomena. Hence it is possible
to conclude that those sciences offer neither pure phenomena nor mere
facts, but, on the contrary, develop representative concepts, which
are not intuitions, but spiritual formations of a practical nature.
[Sidenote: _Elimination of a misunderstanding concerning this practical
character._]
The word "practical" having been pronounced, it behoves us to eliminate
a misapprehension which leads to the natural sciences (or simply
_sciences,_ as they are also called) being said to be practical, in the
same sense as those whose aim is action. Bacon was a fervent apostle
of the naturalistic movement of modern times and full of this latter
idea or preconception. He proclaimed to satiety that _meta scientiarum
non aha est quam ut dotetur vita humana novis inventis et copiis_;
that they propose to themselves _potentiae et amplitudinis humanae
fines in latim proferre_; and that, by means of them, reality _ad
usus vitae humanae subigitur_[1] But in our day also, many theorists
do not tire of repeating that the sciences are _ordonnées à faction._
Now, this does not suffice to describe the natural sciences, because
all knowledge is directed to action, art, philosophy, and history
alike, which last, by providing knowledge of the actual situation, is
the true and complete precedent and fact, preparatory to action.[2]
The misapprehension in favour of the natural sciences arises from
the vulgar idea that the only practical things in life are eating,
drinking, clothes, and shelter. It is forgotten that man does not
live by bread alone, and that bread itself is a spiritual food if
it increase the force of spiritual life. But further: the natural
sciences, just because they are composed of empirical concepts (which
are not true knowledge), do not _directly_ subserve action, since
in order to act it is necessary to return from them to the precise
knowledge of the individual actual situation. That is to say, in
ordinary parlance, _abstractions_ must be set aside and it must
be seen _how things_ truly and properly _stand._ The patient, the
individual patient, is treated, not the malady; Socrates or Callias
(as Aristotle said), not man in general: θεραπευτὸν τὸ καθ' ἕκαστον:
knowledge of _materia medica_ does not suffice; the _clinical eye_ is
needed. The natural sciences are not directed to action, but _are,_
themselves, actions: their practical character is not extrinsic, but
_constitutive._ They are actions, and are therefore not directed to
action, but to aid the cognitive spirit. Thus they subserve action
(that is, other actions) only in an indirect way. If an action does not
become knowledge, it cannot give rise: to a new action.
[Sidenote: _Impossibility of unifying them in a concept._]
The empirical character (and the practical character in the sense
already established) of the natural sciences is commonly admitted in
the case of such of them as consist in classifications of facts: for
example, of zoology, botany, mineralogy, and also of chemistry, in so
far as it enumerates chemical species, and of physics, in so far as
it enumerates classes of phenomena or physical forces. The universals
of all these sciences are quite arbitrary, for it is impossible to
find an exact boundary between the concept of animal (the universal
of zoology) and that of vegetable (the universal of botany). Indeed
it is impossible to find one between the living and the not living,
the organic and the material. Finally, the cellule, which is, for the
present at any rate, the highest concept of the biological sciences,
is differentiated from chemical facts only in an external way. It will
be objected that there is in any case no lack of attempts to determine
strictly the supreme concepts of the sciences, such, for instance, as
those that place the _atom_ at the beginning of all things and attempt
to show each individual fact as nothing but a different aggregate of
atoms. There are also those who mount to the concept of _ether_ or of
_energy_ and declare all individual facts to be nothing but different
forms of energy. Or finally, the vitalists recognize as irreducible
the two concepts of the teleological and the mechanical, of organic
and inorganic, of life and matter. But in all these cases _the natural
sciences are deserted,_ phenomena are abandoned for noumena, and
philosophic explanations are offered. These may or may not have value,
but they are of no use from the point of view of the natural sciences,
or at most ensure to some professor the insipid pleasure of calling an
animal "a complex of atoms," heat "a form of energy," and the cellule
"vital force."
[Sidenote: _Impossibility of introducing into them strict divisions._]
Since the natural sciences cannot be unified in a concept (hence their
ineradicable _plurality_), and therefore remain unsystematic, a mass of
sciences without close relation among themselves, logical distinctions
are not possible in any science. No one will ever be able to prove that
genera and species must be so many and no more, or describe the truly
original character by which one genus may be distinguished from another
genus and one species from another species. The animal species hitherto
described have been calculated it over four hundred thousand, and those
that may yet be described as fifteen millions. These numbers simply
express the impotence of the empirical sciences to exhaust the infinite
and individual forms of the real and the necessity in which they are
placed of stopping at some sort 1 of number, of some hundreds, of some
thousands, or of some millions. Those species, however few or many they
may be, flow one into the other owing to the undeniable conceivability
of graduated, indeed of continuous intermediate forms, which made
evident the arbitrariness of the clean cut made into fact by separating
the wolf from the dog or the panther from the leopard.
[Sidenote: _Laws in the natural sciences, and so called prevision._]
But some doubt is manifested where we pass from classification and
description or from _system_ (as the lack of system of naturalistic
classifications is called, by a curious verbal paradox) to the
consideration of the laws that are posited in those sciences. It is
then perceived that the classification is certainly a simple labour
of preparation, arbitrary, convenient, and nominalistic, but that the
true end of the natural sciences is not the class but the _law._ In the
compass of the law strict accuracy of its truth is indubitable; so much
so that by means of laws it is actually possible to make _previsions_
as to what will happen. This is indeed a miraculous power, which places
the natural sciences above every form of knowledge, and endows them
with an almost magical force, by means of which man, not contented
with knowing what has happened (which is yet so difficult to know), is
capable of knowing even what has not yet happened, what will happen,
or the future! _Prevision_(there must be a clear understanding of the
concepts) is equivalent to _seeing beforehand or prophesying,_ and the
naturalist is thus neither more nor less than a clairvoyant.
[Sidenote: _Empirical character of naturalistic laws._]
The miraculous nature of this boasted power should suffice to make us
doubt whether the law is truly what it is said to be, a strict truth,
quite different from the empirical concept, from the class, and from
the description. In reality, the law is nothing but the empirical
concept itself, the description, class or type, of which we have
just spoken. In philosophy law is a synonym for the pure concept; in
the empirical or natural sciences it is a synonym for the empirical
concept; hence laws are sometimes called _empirical_ laws, or laws of
experience. If they were not empirical, they would not be naturalistic,
but philosophic universals, which, as we have seen, are unfruitful in
the field of the natural sciences. The law of the wolf is the empirical
concept of the wolf: granted that in reality there is found one part
of the representation corresponding to that concept, it is possible to
conclude that the rest is also found. Thus Cuvier (to choose a very
trite example), arranging the types of animals and hence the laws of
the correlations of organs, was able to reconstruct from one surviving
bone the complete fossil animal. In like manner, granted the chemical
concept of water, H2O, and given so much of oxygen and double that
quantity of hydrogen, O and H2, and submitting the two bodies to the
other conditions established by chemistry, it is possible to conclude
that water will be seen to appear. All naturalistic laws are of this
type. Certain naturalists and theorists have reasonably protested
against the division of the natural sciences into descriptive and
explicative, sciences of classification and sciences of laws, and have
maintained that all have one common character, namely, law. But this
is not because the law is superior to the class or to the empirical
concept, but because the two things are identical: the law is the
empirical concept and the empirical concept is the law.
[Sidenote: _The postulate of the uniformity of nature, and its
meaning._]
The postulate of the _constancy or uniformity of nature_ is the
base of _empirical laws or concepts._ This, too, is something
mysterious, before which many are ready to bow, seized with reverence
and sacred terror. But that postulate is not even an hypothesis,
somehow conceivable, though not yet explained and demonstrated.
Ordinary thought, like philosophical thought, knows that reality is
neither constant nor uniform, and indeed that it is perpetually being
transformed, evolving and becoming. That constancy and uniformity,
which is postulated and falsely believed to be objective reality,
is the same _practical necessity_ which leads to the neglect of
differences and to the looking upon the different as uniform, the
changeable as constant. The postulate of the uniformity of nature is
the demand for a treatment of reality made uniform for reasons of
convenience. _Natura non facit saltus_ means: _mens non facit saltus in
naturae cogitatione,_ or, better still, _memoriae usus saltus naturae
cohibet._
[Sidenote: _Pretended inevitability of natural laws._]
Another consequence of this is the inversion of the assertion (to be
found everywhere in the rhetoric of the natural sciences) as to the
_inexorability and inevitability_ of the laws of nature. Those laws,
precisely because they are arbitrary constructions of our own and give
the movable as fixed, are not only not inevitable and do sometimes
afford exceptions; but there _is_ absolutely _no real fact,_ which is
not an _exception_ to its naturalistic law. By coupling a wolf and a
she-wolf we obtain a wolf cub, which will in time become a new wolf,
with the appearance, the strength, and the habits of its parents. But
this wolf will not be identical with its parents. Otherwise how could
wolves ever evolve with the evolution of the whole of reality, of which
they are an indivisible part? By chemical analysis of a litre of water
we obtain H2O; but if we again combine H2O, the water that we obtain
is only in a way of speaking the same as before. For that combining
and recombining must have produced some modification (even though not
perceived by us), and in any case changes have occurred in reality
in the subsequent moment, from which the water is not separable, and
therefore in the water itself taken in its concreteness. We could
consequently give the following definition: the _inexorable_ laws of
nature are those that _are violated at every moment,_ while philosophic
laws are by definition those that are _at every moment observed._
But in what way they are observed cannot be known, save by means of
history, and therefore true knowledge knows nothing of previsions;
it knows only facts that have really happened; of the future there
can be no knowledge. The natural sciences, which do not furnish real
knowledge, have, if possible, even less right (if one may speak thus)
to talk of previsions.
Yet, it will be objected, it is a fact that we all form previsions,
and that without them we should neither be able to cook an egg nor
to take one step out of doors. That is quite true, but those alleged
previsions are merely the summary of what we know by experience to
have happened, and according to which we resolve upon our action. We
know what has happened. We do not know, nor do we need to know, what
will happen. Were any one truly to wish to know it, he would no longer
be able to move and would be seized with such perplexity before life,
that he would kill himself in desperation or die of fear. The egg,
which usually takes five minutes to cook in the way that suits my
taste, sometimes surprises me by presenting itself to my palate after
those five minutes, either as too much or too little cooked; the step
taken out of doors is sometimes a fall on the threshold. Nevertheless,
the knowledge of this does not prevent me from leaving the house and
cooking the egg, for I must walk and take nourishment. The laws of my
individual being, of my temperament, of my aptitudes, of my forces,
that is, the knowledge of my past, make me resolve to undertake a
journey, as I did twenty years ago, to begin work upon a statue, as I
did ten years ago. Alas! I had not considered that in the meantime my
legs have lost their strength and my arm has begun to tremble. By all
means call the previsions made use of in these cases true or false;
but do not forget that they are nothing but empirical concepts, that
is to say, mnemonic devices, founded upon historical judgments. There
can be no doubt that they are useful; indeed, what we maintain is that
just because they are useful, they are not true. If they possess any
truth, it resides in the establishment of the fact. That is to say, it
does not reside in the prevision and in the law, but in the historical
judgment which forms its basis.
[Sidenote: _Nature and its various meanings. Nature as passivity and
negativity._]
Having thus made clear the coincidence of empirical concepts and the
natural sciences, we must determine exactly the meaning of the word
"natural," which is used as qualifying these sciences. It has not
seemed advisable to change it, since its use is so deeply rooted,
although we have, on the other hand, already given its synonym in
qualifying these sciences as "empirical." What is _nature_? The first
meaning of "nature" is the "opposite" of "spirit," and designates
the natural or material moment in relation to the spiritual, the
mechanical in relation to the teleological moment, the negative moment
in relation to the positive. Thus, in the transition from one form of
the spirit to another, the inferior form is like matter, ballast, or
obstacle, and so is the negation of the superior form. Hence reality is
imagined as the strife of two forces, the one spiritual and the other
material or natural. It is superfluous to repeat that the two forces
are not two, but one, and that if the negative moment were not, the
positive moment could not be. The pigeon (says Kant), which rises to
take flight, may believe that had it not to vanquish the resistance of
the air, it would fly still better. But the fact is that without that
resistance, it would fall to earth. In this sense, there is no science
of Nature (of matter, passivity, negation, etc.) distinguishable from
that of Spirit, which is the science of itself and of its opposite, and
the science of itself only in so far as it is also the science of its
opposite.
[Sidenote: _Nature as practical activity._]
But in another sense, _nature_ is, not indeed the opposite of spirit,
but something distinct _in_ the spirit, and especially distinct from
the cognitive spirit, as that form of spirituality and activity
which is not cognitive. A non-theoretical activity, a spirituality
which should not be in itself knowledge, cannot be anything but the
_practical_ form of the spirit, the will. _Man makes himself nature_
at every moment, because at every moment he passes from knowing to
willing and doing and from willing and doing returns to knowing, which
is the basis for new will and action. In this sense, the science of
nature, or the philosophy of nature, could not be anything but the
philosophic science of the will, the Philosophy of the practical.
[Sidenote: _Nature in the gnoseological sense, as naturalistic or
empirical method._]
The natural sciences have nothing to do with a philosophic knowledge
of nature as will, with a Philosophy of the practical. They are, as
has already been said, not knowledge of will, but will; not truth, but
utility. In consequence of this, they extend to the whole of reality,
theoretic and practical, to the products of the theoretic spirit, not
less than to those of the practical spirit; and without knowing any
of them, universally or individually, they manipulate and classify
them all in the way we have seen. They have not therefore a _special
object,_ but _a special mode of treatment,_ their object or matter
being the presupposed philosophic-historical knowledge of the real.
They do not treat of the material and mechanical aspect of the real,
nor even of its non-theoretical, practical, volitional aspect (or what
is incorrectly called the irrational aspect of it). They turn the
theoretical into the practical, and by killing its theoretic life,
make it dead, material, and mechanical. Nature, matter, passivity,
motion _ab extra,_ the inert atom and so on, are not reality and
concepts, but natural science itself in action. Mechanism, logically
considered, is neither a fact nor a mode of knowing the fact. It is a
non-fact, a mode of not-knowing: a practical creation, which is real
only in so far as it becomes itself an object of knowledge. This is the
_gnoseological_ or _gnoseopractical_ meaning of the word "nature," a
meaning which must be kept carefully distinct from the two preceding
meanings. When we speak, for instance, of _matter_ or of _nature_
as not existing, we mean to refer to the puppet of the naturalists,
which the naturalists themselves and the philosophers of naturalism,
forgetting its genesis, take for a real if not a living being. That
matter (said Berkeley) is an abstraction; it is (say we) an empirical
concept, and whoever knows what empirical concepts are will not pretend
that matter or nature exists, simply because it is spoken about.
[Sidenote: _The illusions of materialists and dualists._]
We do not claim to have supplied the full solution of the problem
concerning the dualism or materialism of the real with this discussion
on the theme of Logic. This solution cannot (we repeat) be expected,
save from all the philosophic sciences together, that is to say, from
the complete system. But we can already see, from the logical point
of view, that the dualists and materialists cannot avoid the task of
showing that the nature or matter, which they elevate to a principle of
the real or to one of the two principles of the real, is not: firstly,
the mere negation of the spirit, nor secondly, a form of the spirit,
nor thirdly, the abstraction of the natural sciences. They must also
show that it answers to something conceivable and existing, outside
or above the spirit. Logic can pass onward at this point, saying of
materialists and dualists what Dante said of the devils and the damned
struggling in the lake of burning pitch: "And we leave them thus
encompassed."
[Sidenote: _Nature as empirical distinction of an inferior in relation
to a superior reality._]
The word "nature" has yet a fourth meaning (but this time altogether
empirical), which is clear in those propositions which distinguish
natural life from social life, natural men _(Naturmenschen)_ or savages
from civilized men, and again natural from human beings, animals
from men, and so on. Nature, in this sense, is distinguished from
civilization or humanity, and thus the sole reality is divided into two
classes of beings: natural beings and human beings (which are sometimes
also called spiritual as compared with the former, which are called
material). The vague and empirical nature of this distinction is at
once perceived from the impossibility that we meet with of assigning
boundaries between civilization and the state of nature, between
humanity and animality. Man can be only empirically distinguished
from the animal, the animal from the vegetable, and vegetables from
inorganic beings, which are organic in their own way. Certainly,
what are called _things_ are not organic, for example a mountain or
a plough-share; but they are not organic, because they are not real,
but aggregates, that is to say, empirical concepts. In the same way,
a forest is not organic, though it is composed of things vegetating,
nor a crowd, though composed of men. When we treat of things in the
above sense, we can say with some mathematicians that _things_ do not
exist, but only their _relations._ Hence if the dualists feel able to
affirm that the two classes of beings, natural and human, are based
upon the existence of two different substances and upon the different
proportions of these in each of the two classes, the task of proving
the thinkability of the two substances and the different proportions of
the compound falls upon them.
[Sidenote: _The naturalistic method and the natural sciences as
extended to superior not less than to inferior reality._]
The distinction between nature and spirit being therefore, in this last
sense, altogether empirical, it is clear that the natural sciences
(in the gnoseological or gnoseopractical sense in which we give chem
this name) are not restricted to the development of knowledge relating
to what is called inferior reality, from the animal downwards, leaving
to the sciences of the spirit the knowledge that relates to superior
reality from the animal upwards, that is to say, to man. Sciences
of nature and sciences of the spirit, _orbis naturalis_ and _orbis
intellectuals,_ are also, in this case, partitions and convenient
groupings. All do substantially the same thing, that is to say, they
provide one single homogeneous practical treatment of knowledge.
[Sidenote: _Demand for such an extension, and effective existence of
what is demanded._]