nor are the practical motives that have determined them apparent.
Around them has grown up a dense forest of philosophemes, of capricious
distinctions, of false definitions, of imaginary sciences, of
prejudices of every sort. Any one who has succeeded in discerning the
genuine connections and attempts to separate the interlaced boughs,
to isolate the trees and to show the different roots, any one who
sets an axe to those wild tree-trunks, is horrified by cries and
complaints, not less resonant than those that drove Tancred from the
enchanted wood. And there is the traditionalist who admonishes us
severely not to divide _natural_ groupings and not to introduce among
them our own _caprice._ Thus he calls the capricious natural and the
natural capricious. "What?" (has recently written the shocked Professor
Wundt) "for the excellent reason that the search for the individual
is historical search, must Geology be considered history and research
relating to the glacial epoch be abandoned to the amiable interest of
the historian?" And others lament that the ancient _richness_ of the
sciences is destroyed by these simplifications, and call the confusion
richness.
[Sidenote: _Methodical prologues to Scholastic Manuals and their
powerlessness._]
It is true that in order to obviate the evil of confusion and the
defective consciousness of the various kinds of research which have
been mingled together, many authors are in the habit of prefixing to
their books theoretic introductions, about the _method,_ as they call
it, of their science. The special logic of the individual disciplines
is to be sought (they say) in the books that treat of these. Manuals
in the German language are especially notable for this arrangement,
preceded, as they are, by the heaviest introductions, which occupy a
great part of the volume or of the volumes of the book. They present a
contrast to French and English books, which usually enter at once _in
medias res._ This arrangement seems preferable: the German type has
against it the sensible observation of Manzoni, that one book at a time
is enough, when it is not more than enough. He who opens a historical
book in order there to learn the particulars of an event, or a book on
economics in order to learn how an economic institution works, should
not be obliged to read the theory of historica events and disquisitions
on the place of Economics in the system of the sciences. _"Il s'agit
d'un chapon et non point d'Aristote,"_ as the judge in the _Plaideurs_
said to the advocate who went back in his speech to the _Politics_ of
Aristotle. But, besides the literary contamination, there is also here
the other inconvenience, that science and the theory of the sciences
being different operations and demanding different aptitudes and
preparations, the specialist who is competent in the first is usually
not at all competent in the second; though he may be believed to be so,
owing to a confusion of names. Why, indeed, should an expert on banking
and Stock Exchange business be versed in the gnoseology of economic
science? The affirmation of competence in the one on the strength of
competence in the other constitutes a true and proper sophism _a dicto
simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid._
[Sidenote: _The capricious multiplication of the sciences._]
Further, the specialist has his pride, which leads him to exaggerate
what he practises and fail to recognize its true nature and limits. The
multiplication of the _Sciences_ in our days has no other origin than
this; the philosopher contemplates it with astonishment; it is a truly
miraculous multiplication of the seven loaves of bread and five small
fishes. A _new science_ is announced, whenever a crude idea passes
through the brain of a professor. We are made glad with _Sociologies,
social Psychologies, Ethnopsychologies, Anthropogeographies,
Criminologies, comparative Literatures,_ and so on. Some years ago,
an eminent German historian, having observed that some use might be
made of genealogical and heraldic studies, generally abandoned to the
cultivators and purveyors of the mania for birth and titles, instead
of limiting himself to publishing his little collection of minute
observations at once proclaimed Genealogy as a science, _Genealogie
als Wissenschaft,_ and provided the appropriate manual. This begins
by determining the _concept_ of Genealogy, and proceeds to study its
relations with history, with the natural sciences, with zoology, with
physiology, with psychology and psychiatry, and with the knowable
universe.
[Sidenote: _The sciences and academic prejudices._]
Finally, the specialist is generally a teacher, and therefore
accustomed to identify eternal ideal science with his real and
contingent chair, and the organism of knowledge with that of the
university faculties. Hence arises a fashion of conceiving the nature
and scope of the sciences that has become habitual in the academic
world. It consists of _personifying_ science, and telling this
imaginary person what he has to do, without regard to whether the
assignment of the task accords or no with the quality of the function.
"Logic will be occupied with this, but yet will not neglect this other
thing; it will benefit by casting a look on this third thing also,
which is extraneous to its task, but not to its interest; nor will
it fail to aid, with due regard, the student of an analogous matter,
by giving to him suggestions, if not even rules." Whoever reads the
scientific books of our times will recognize in this example, not
a caricature, but a plan constantly repeated and applied. It was
said of the poet Aleardo Aleardi that he treated the Muse like his
maid-servant, since he was at every instant addressing himself to her
and asking her something. The professor ends by treating Science like
his steward, or at least his respectable consort, with whom he naively
comes to an agreement regarding the portions that are to form the meals
of the day, and other matters concerning the management of the family.
THIRD PART
THE FORMS OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
I
[Sidenote: _Error as negativity, and impossibility of treating
specially of errors._]
Error has sometimes been called privation or _negativity._ It is
commonly defined as a thinking of the false, as the non-conformity
of thought with its object, and in other similar ways. These are all
reducible to the first, since, for example, thought which is of a
different form from its object is false thought, which does not attain
to its intrinsic end; and false thought is not thought, but privation
of thought, negativity.
As negativity error gives rise to a negative concept, responding
to the positive concept, which is truth. True and false, truth and
error, are related to one another as opposite concepts. Now we know
from the logical doctrines just stated that opposite concepts, far
from being separable, are not even distinguishable, and when they are
distinguished, they represent nothing but the abstract division of
the pure concept, of the unique concept, which is the synthesis or
dialectic of opposites. And we know from the whole of Philosophy that
Reality, thought in the pure concept and of which the pure concept
is also an integral element, genuine and truly real Reality, is a
perpetual development and progress, which is rendered possible by the
negative term intrinsic to the positive and constituting the mainspring
of its development.
If then, error is negativity, it is vain to treat it as something
positive. No other positivity or reality belongs to it than just
negativity, which is a moment of the dialectic synthesis and outside
the synthesis is nothing. A treatment of error in this sense already
exists quite complete in the treatment of logical truth; and there is
nothing special to add here to that argument. As a fact, a form of the
spirit distinguishable from the positive and real forms, error does not
exist, and philosophy cannot philosophize upon what is not.
[Sidenote: _Positive and existing errors._]
Nevertheless, we all know errors, distinguishable from truth and
existing for themselves. The evolutionist affirms the biological
formation of the _a priori_; the utilitarian resolves duty into
individual interest; the Christian says that God the Father sent
his son Jesus to redeem men from the perdition into which they had
fallen through the sin of Adam; the Buddhist preaches the annulment of
the Will. Are not these true and proper errors? Have they perchance
no existence? Have they not been expressed, repeated, listened to,
believed? Whoever does not admit the validity of the examples adduced
can himself find others; there will certainly be no lack of examples in
such a field. Do we wish to maintain that these errors do not exist, in
homage to the definition of error as negativity and unreality? They may
not exist as truth, but they may perfectly well exist as errors.
[Sidenote: _Positive errors as practical acts._]
There is no way of escaping from this antithesis between the
inconceivability of the existence of error and the impossibility of
denying the existence of errors which the mind recognizes and the
fact proves, save by the solution to which we have several times had
occasion to refer. That error, which has existence, is not error and
negativity, but something positive, a product of the spirit. And since
that product of the spirit is without truth, it cannot be the work
of the theoretic spirit. And since beyond the theoretic spirit there
is nothing but the practical spirit, error, which we meet with as
something existing, must of necessity be a product of the practical
spirit. If every way of issue is closed, this one is open; it goes to
the very bottom and leads to the place of rest.
Indeed, he who produces an error has no power to twist or to
denaturalize or stain the truth, which is his thought itself, the
thought which acts in him and in all men; indeed, no sooner has he
touched thought than he is touched by it: he thinks and does not err.
He possesses only the practical power of passing from thought to
_deed_; and his doing, in fact his thinking, is to open his mouth and
emit sounds to which there corresponds no thought, or, what is the same
thing, no thought which has value, precision, coherence and truth.
It is to smear a canvas to which no intuition corresponds; to rhyme
a sonnet, combining the phrases of others, which simulate the genius
that is absent. Theoretical error, when it is truly so, is inseparable
from the life of thought, which to the extent to which it perpetually
overcomes that negative moment, is always born anew. When it is
possible to separate and consider it in itself, what is before us is
not theoretical error, but practical act.
[Sidenote: _Practical acts not practical errors._]
Practical act and not practical error, or Evil; for that practical act
is altogether rational. Let him who doubts this cast a glance at those
who produce errors. He will be at once convinced that they act with
perfect rationality. The dauber produces an object which is asked for
in the market by people who wish to have at home pictures of any sort,
to cover the walls and to attest to their own easy circumstances or
riches, and who are altogether indifferent to the æsthetic significance
of those objects. The rhymer wishes to secure an easy success for
himself among people who look upon a sonnet as a social amusement. The
babbler who emits sounds instead of thoughts, often obtains in virtue
of those sounds applause and honour denied to the serious thinker: _un
sot trouve toujours un plus sot pour l'admirer._ If, by means of those
so-called errors, provision is made for house, firing, food, children's
clothes, or for the satisfaction of self-esteem, ambitions and
caprices, who will say that they are irrational acts? Man does not live
by bread alone, but he does live by bread; and if, by means of those
acts, bread is provided, that is to say, if the wants of each one's
individuality are met, they are well-directed, far-sighted, fruitful,
and therefore most rational.
[Sidenote: _Economically practical, not morally practical._]
This does not, on the other hand, mean that they are moral; they are
rational, economically rational but not moral. Morality demands that
man should think the true. Producers of errors evade, or rather, do
not elevate themselves to that duty. Still intent upon the demands
of practical life _qua talis,_ they do not actualize in themselves
the universal life, nor do they create in obedience to this last the
ethical will and the will for truth. Therefore there arises in their
souls, and in the souls of those who see them at work, the desire for
another superior activity, which should supervene upon the preceding
and complete it. They demand, not only to live, but to live well, to
seek not only bread, but that "bread of the angels" with which, as the
divine poet says, we are never sated. The expression of this desire
manifests itself in a cry of discontent, of reprobation, of anguish,
of longing; and therefore, with negative emphasis, it accuses of
irrationality that inferior rationality which has to be surpassed, and
gives the name theoretical error to that which considered in itself
must be called a simple economic act.
[Sidenote: _Doctrine of error, and doctrine of the necessary forms of
error._]
The doctrine here expounded is developed from what has been said above,
or from developments given elsewhere in the Philosophy of the Spirit.
We shall not therefore enlarge further upon the immanence of values
in facts, upon evil as the stimulus and concreteness of the good,
on the non-existence of evil in itself, on the practical character
of theoretical error, on moral responsibility for such error, on
the content of desire exhibited by negative statements accompanying
judgments of value, and so on. In an exposition of Logic the genesis of
the theoretical error could be set aside as presupposed, for in this
didactic sphere any one among the common definitions which present
error as a thinking of the false is sufficient.
A task in closer connection with Logic is that of enquiring as to the
necessary forms of error, the task, that is to say, not of confuting
all errors (which is performed by Philosophy as a whole), but of
establishing in how many ways the products of the various forms
of knowing and of knowledge can be practically combined, and what
therefore are the gnoseological possibilities of error. If error is
nothing but an _improper combination_ of ideas (as Vico said), we
must see the number to which the fundamental forms of these improper
combinations can be reduced. In traditional Logic, the theory of error
appears as the doctrine of _Sophisms_ or of sophistical refutations:
it has the formalist, verbalist, empirical character common to all
that Logic. In our Logic, it must have a philosophic character, that
is to say, it must depend upon the already distinguished forms of the
theoretic spirit, and deduce from them the arbitrary combinations of
the errors which are formally possible. The ideas or concepts of the
theoretic and theoretic-practical spirit are so many and no more, and
so many and no more must be the possible improper combinations of them
and the forms of theoretic error.
[Sidenote: _Logical nature of all theoretic errors._]
That theoretical error is always at bottom logical error. This is an
important proposition, which merits explicit statement, because it
is customary to speak of æsthetic, naturalistic, mathematical and
historical errors side by side with those that are properly logical
or philosophical. We too have spoken and will speak thus, when more
subtle distinctions and more precise determinations are not necessary.
But in truth, a fact like _humano capiti cervicem equinam jungere,_
or _simulare cupressum_ in the sea where the shipwrecked struggles in
the waves, does not constitute in itself that practical act, called
æsthetic error, unless there be added to it the false affirmation that
the object produced is an æsthetic object, that is to say, unless there
be added a logical affirmation, so that the practical act becomes,
by means of it, logical error. Taken in itself, the union of a human
head with a horse's neck, or of a cypress with the sea is a sort of
play of the imagination, such as occurs in fancy, in idleness and in
dream. The extrinsic combination of a fancy and a concept is also
altogether innocent, as in the case of allegory, which, in itself, is
not unsuccessful art, but becomes so only when it is affirmed that
the two heterogeneous elements form only one; or rather, it then
becomes, not unsuccessful art, but bad philosophy. In the same way, a
mathematical error (for example, the formula 4 x 4 = 20) is nothing
but a _flatus vocis,_ such as is made in jest or to loosen the tongue.
Only when we add the logical affirmation that in this _flatus vocis_ an
effectual multiplication has been expressed, do we have a mathematical
error, which is therefore a logical error. It is not possible to
consider and to condemn as a theoretical error a combination which
does not intend to deceive any one as to its proper nature; neither
those to whom it is shown, nor him who has made it. Thus, among
æsthetic, naturalistic, mathematical, historical, logical and practical
productions, combinations without cognitive content are quite possible
and constantly to be found; but they do not become theoretical errors
unless they are crowned with an improper logical affirmation, or rather
with an arbitrary judgment formed upon a logical affirmation. Indeed,
even illogical combinations of philosophic concepts are not, as such,
logical or theoretical errors, since they can be made tentatively,
in order to see whether the two concepts combine or no. To make them
errors, the arbitrariness of a special act of judgment is necessary.
That arbitrariness consists in a lying to others or to ourselves, in
order to satisfy an interest of our merely individual life, and it is
impossible to lie without employing an affirmation, which is always a
logical product.
[Sidenote: _History of errors and phenomenology of error._]
In this way the problem of determining the various forms of theoretical
errors, according to the already distinguished forms of knowledge,
becomes transformed and circumscribed in the other problem of
determining the various forms of _logical errors,_ in relation to
the various forms of knowledge, that is to say, of determining the
necessary forms of philosophic errors. Certainly, every individual
errs in his own way, according to the conditions in which he finds
himself; just as every individual according to those conditions
discovers truth in his own way. But Philosophy in the strict sense (in
the form of a philosophical treatise) cannot complete the examination
of all individual errors. This is the task of all philosophies as they
are developed in the ages and of the thought of all thinking beings,
who have been, are, and will be. _Its_ task is to illuminate the
eternal ideal history of errors, which is the eternal ideal history
of truth, in its relations with the eternal forms of the practical
spirit. The Philosophy of the spirit, as a treatise of philosophy,
cannot give the history of errors; but must limit itself to giving
their _phenomenology._ In this sense is to be understood the enquiry
concerning the fundamental forms of philosophical errors. These forms
may be briefly deduced as follows.
[Sidenote: _Deduction of the forms of logical errors. Forms deduced
from the concept of the concept, and forms deduced from the other
concepts._]
The pure concept, which is philosophy, can be incorrectly combined and
mistaken either for the form that precedes it, pure representation
(art), or for that which follows it, the empirical and abstract
concept (natural and mathematical sciences); or it can be wrongly
divided in its unity of concept and representation _(a priori_
synthesis), and wrongly again combined--either the concept may be
taken as representation, or the representation as concept. Hence
arise the fundamental forms of errors which it will be useful to
denominate as _æstheticism, empiricism, mathematicism, philosophism,_
and _historicism_ (or _mythologism_). On the other hand, the other
distinctions of the concept, or distinct concepts, can be incorrectly
combined among themselves in a series of false combinations,
corresponding to the series of the other particular philosophic
sciences, and hence arise the forms of the other philosophic errors.
But in Logic it is sufficient to show the possibility of these last
forms of errors, and to adduce certain cases as examples, because a
complete determination of them would demand that complete exposition of
the whole philosophic system, which cannot be furnished in a treatise
on Logic.
[Sidenote: _Errors arising front errors._]
Finally, since it is impossible that any form whatever of these errors,
whether specifically logical or generically philosophic, should
satisfy the mind, which asks for the true and does not lend itself to
deception or mockery, each one of these forms tends to convert itself
into the other, owing to its arbitrariety and untenability, and all
mutually destroy one another. When the attempt is made to preserve
both the true form and the insufficient form, or all the insufficient
forms, we have gnoseological dualism; but with the decline to complete
destruction, we have the error of _scepticism_ and of _agnosticism._
Finally, if, having been by these led back to life and being deprived
of every concept that should illuminate it back to life as a mystery,
we affirm that truth lies in that theoretic mystery, in living life
without thought, we have the error of _mysticism._ Dualism, scepticism
(or agnosticism) and mysticism thus extend both to strictly logical
problems (that is to say, to the possibility, in general, of knowing
reality), and to all other philosophic problems. Hence we can speak of
a practical dualism, of an æsthetic or ethical scepticism, and of an
æsthetic or ethical mysticism.
[Sidenote: _Professionalism and nationality of errors._]