errors, which we shall now proceed to examine in detail. Upon their
forms, which represent so many tendencies of the human spirit, is based
this other fact, which is constantly striking us, and which may be
called the _professionalism_ of errors. Every one is disposed to use
in other fields of activity those instruments that are familiar to him
in the field which he knows best. The poet by vocation and profession
dreams and imagines, even when he should reason; the philosopher
reasons even when he should be poetical; the historian seeks authority,
even when he should seek the necessity of the human mind; the practical
man asks himself of what use a thing is, even when he should ask
himself what a thing is; the naturalist constructs classes, even when
he should break through them, in order to think real things; the
mathematician persists in writing formulae, even when there is nothing
to calculate. If the narrowness of the _Esprits mathématiques_ has been
denounced, it must not be believed that the other professions have
not also got their narrownesses. The philosopher's profession is no
exception to this, for he should surpass all one-sided views, but does
not always succeed. It is one thing to say and another to do, and if
a man forewarned is half saved, he is not therefore altogether saved.
That professionalism of error, which we observe in individuals, is also
to be observed on a large scale among peoples. Thus we speak of peoples
as antiartistic, antiphilosophical, or antimathematical: of speculative
Germany, of intellectualist and abstract France, of empiricist
England, of Italy as artistic in the centre and the north, and as
philosophic in the south. But peoples, like individuals, are changeable
and can be educated: so much so that in our days, the traditional
Anglo-Saxon empiricism begins little by little to lose ground before
the speculative education of the English people, due to classical
German thought; France that was abstractionist becomes intuitionist and
mystic. Germany leaves the vast dominion of the skies assigned to her
by Heine for that of industry and commerce, and philosophizes somewhat
unworthily; Italy, which in greater part was a country of artists,
poets and politicians, is traversed in every direction by religious and
philosophic currents. Were it not for this capacity for education of
individuals and peoples, History would not be a free development, but
determinism and mechanism, and each of us would possess less of that
courage for social activity which each one exhibits with great ardour
according to his own convictions.
II
ÆSTHETICISM, EMPIRICISM AND MATHEMATICISM
[Sidenote: _Definition of these forms._]
Æstheticism is the philosophic error which consists in substituting
the form of intuition for the form of the concept, and of attributing
to the former the office and value of the latter. Empiricism is the
analogous substitution of the empirical concept, by means of which
philosophic function and value is attributed to the empirical and
natural sciences. Finally, mathematicism is the presentation of the
abstract concept as concrete concept and of mathematics as philosophy.
[Sidenote: _Æstheticism._]
We have met with æstheticism and with empiricism at the beginning of
our exposition, and again here and there throughout its course; and we
have sufficiently determined the nature of both and demonstrated the
contradictions in which they become involved. In every one of their
movements they presuppose the pure concept and the philosophy of which
they mean to take the place. At the same time, they do not develop the
philosophy which they have presupposed, because they suffocate it in
the vapour of the intuitions and in the chilly waters of naturalistic
concepts. They are not therefore effective thought, but an adulteration
of thought with heterogeneous elements, which by a misuse of words are
said to be furnished with theoretic and logical value.
Æstheticism has few representatives, because complete abstention
from reflection and reason is too obviously contradictory. Even when
art was considered to be a true _instrument_ of philosophy, in the
Romantic period, this affirmation was put forward in a confused manner,
intuition being finally distinguished from intuition, art from art.
This amounted at bottom to a radical change and an abandonment of
the original thesis. We have seen æstheticism reappear in our times
under the name of _intuitionism,_ or again as _pure experience:_ an
experience which is taken to be not posterior, but anterior to every
intellectual category, and should therefore be called nothing but pure
intuition.
[Sidenote: _Empiricism_]
The representatives of empiricism are on the other hand most numerous,
now as in the past; so much so that empiricism sometimes seems to
be the sole adversary of philosophy, and the true origin of all
philosophic errors. This opinion is without doubt inexact, but it finds
support in the fact that philosophy is obliged to defend itself from
the incessant assaults of empiricism, more than from any other enemy.
The confusion between pure and empirical concepts is, indeed, easy,
since both have the form of universality (though the universality of
the second is falsely assumed) and both refer to the concept (though
in the second the concept is something arbitrarily limited). The
empiricist is like the philosopher, in so far as he immerses himself in
facts and constructs concepts.
[Sidenote: _Positivism, philosophy founded upon the sciences, inductive
metaphysic._]
The last great historical manifestation of empiricism is that which,
from the system of Auguste Comte, took the name of _positivism_ and
by its very name expressed the intention of basing itself upon facts
(that is, upon facts historically certified), in order to classify
them, thus reducing philosophy to a classification. This, like all
classifications, proceeded from the poorest to the richest, from the
abstract gradually to the less abstract, though never to the concrete.
Positivism did not seem to be aware that the facts from which it
proposed to proceed and which it believed to be the rough material of
experience, were already _philosophic determinations,_ and could only
in this way be admitted as _historically ascertained. Psychologist_ is
also positivism; positivism, that is to say, more properly applied to
the group of the so-called mental and moral sciences. _Neocriticism_
can be almost altogether identified with positivism, although its
upholders generally possess some knowledge of philosophical history
(which is altogether lacking to the pure positivists), and this
confers a more specious polish on their doctrine. Neocriticism,
indeed, tends to eliminate every speculative element from the Kantian
criticism, and by so doing approaches positivism--so as almost to
become confounded with it. It is no wonder, therefore, that from
the camp of the neocritics should have originated the proclamation
and programme of _a philosophy founded upon the sciences,_ or of
an _inductive metaphysic._ This is simply and solely the reduction
of philosophy to the sciences, because a scientific philosophy, an
inductive metaphysic, is not speculation, but classification, or
as those who advocate it ingenuously declare, a systematization of
the results obtained by the sciences. Here too are kindled the most
comical quarrels between scientists and philosophers. For when it is
only a question of classifying and systematizing those results, the
scientist rightly feels that he can dispense with the labours of the
philosopher, indeed, he feels that he alone, who has obtained the
results, knows what these exactly are and how they should be treated
in order to avoid deformation. And the philosopher, who by making
himself an empiricist, a positivist, a psychologist and a neocritic,
has renounced his autonomy, approaches the scientists and offers with
little dignity services that they refuse. He elaborates scientific
expositions, which they call compilations and mistakes, he proposes
additions or corrections at which they mock as superfluous or foolish.
Nevertheless, the philosopher does not grow weary nor become offended
at these repulses and jests; he returns to the charge and indeed it is
only when someone wishes to redeem him from this voluntary servitude
and abjection that he turns upon him with fury, saying that philosophy
should live on _familiar terms_ with the sciences. As if the relations
that we have faithfully described were relations of reciprocal respect
and harmony! The truth is that the majority of empirical philosophers
are failures in science and unsuccessful in philosophy, who out of
their double incompetence compound a logical theory, thus furnishing
another proof (if further proof were needed) in confirmation of the
practical origin of errors. For our part, we recognise the justice of
the accusation of parasitism, which is brought against a philosophy of
this character, and we will willingly afford our aid to the scientists
in driving out these intruders, who dishonour philosophy in our eyes
not less than in theirs they dishonour the sciences.
[Sidenote: _Empiricism and facts._]
Empiricism owes the greater part of its influence upon the minds of
many to its continual appeal to reality and facts. This leads to the
belief that speculative philosophy wishes to neglect reality and facts
and to build, as the saying is, upon clouds. But we have here an
ambiguity and a sophism with which we must not allow ourselves to be
deceived. Not only does speculative philosophy also base itself upon
facts and have the phenomenal world as its point of departure; but
speculative philosophy truly founds itself upon facts and empiricism
does not. The first considers facts in their infinite variety and
in their continuous development; the second, a certain number of
facts, collected at certain epochs and among certain peoples, or
at all epochs and among all peoples empirically known; chat is to
say, it considers a limited number of facts. Speculative philosophy,
presupposing the pure phenomenon, transforms it into (historical) fact
and is a true _philosophy of fact_; empiricism, without being aware of
it, presupposes the facts that it accepts, which are already, though
with little criticism, historically ascertained and interpreted. This
unconsciousness of what it is doing makes its condition worse, so that
it can give nothing but _a philosophy of classifications,_ which are
taken for facts only through habitual lack of reflection. Speculative
philosophy, therefore, can answer the claim and the boast of empiricism
that it is based upon facts, by accepting the claim but denying the
boast, as one to which empiricism has and can have no right, and by
appropriating this achievement to itself.
[Sidenote: _Bankruptcy of empiricism: dualism, agnosticism,
spiritualism and superstition._]
But the bankruptcy of empiricism in all its forms and under all its
synonyms is clear in the dualism to which it leads, of appearance and
essence, phenomenon and noumenon. For while it professes that there is
nothing knowable but the phenomenon, it also postulates an essence, a
noumenon, something that is beyond the phenomenon and unknowable. It
is all very well to say that this unknowable is not, for it, a proper
object for science and philosophy, but it is not to be driven from the
field of reality merely by removing it from science and philosophy.
Every empiricism, then, recognises side by side with the rights of
thought, the rights of _feeling,_ and thus the circle of reality comes
to be broken at one or more points. When it is wished to continue
working empirically upon the unknowable residue, we have those various
attempts, which can all of them be summarized beneath the name of
_spiritualism._ Here the hidden truth is sought by means of experiments
of a naturalistic type and spirit is reduced to matter more or less
light and subtle. Empiricism ends in superstition. This has always
happened; in the decadence of ancient civilization, when philosophers
took to converting themselves into thaumaturges; at the eve of the
French Revolution, after a century of empiricism and sensationalism,
when all sorts of fanatics and schemers appeared and were the
favourites of a society of most credulous materialists; in our times,
when they have been favoured by a less credulous public of positivists,
or of ex-positivists.
[Sidenote: _Evolutionist positivism and rationalist positivism._]
Empiricism has certainly sought to cure its own insufficiencies, of
which it was more or less conscious, and _evolutionist positivism_
must be numbered among these attempts. This form proposed to correct
the anti-historical character of positivism by providing a _history_
of reality. But this history was always based upon empirical
presuppositions, and was therefore a history of classifications, not
of concrete reality; an extravagant caricature of the philosophy of
becoming, from whose breast comes History rightly and truly so-called.
Another attempt was that of _rationalist positivism,_ which sought to
check the degeneration of positivism toward dualism, sentimentalism
and superstition, by appealing to the absolute rights of reason.
But this reason is nevertheless always empirical reason, limited to
certain series of facts, extrinsic, classificatory, unintelligent.
Absolute authority can well be attributed to it in words, but such an
attribution does not confer the power of exercising it. This kind of
positivism, therefore, meets in our day with favour in freemasonry
(at least of the Franco-Italian sort). This is a sect, which is
annoying, chiefly because, heedless of facts, it preserves and defends
the habit of making use of empty formulas and phrases, and because
when it has insulted some priestly vestment, it believes that it
has successfully destroyed superstition and obscurantism in man, or
when it has declaimed about liberty, it imagines that by this slight
effort, liberty has been won and established. True _reason_ abhors
_rationalism,_ if it be rationalism of that sort.
[Sidenote: _Mathematicism_]
_Mathematicism_ is much rarer than empiricism, because the confusion
between thinking and calculating is less easy than that between
thinking and classifying. Owing to its rarity and paradoxical
character, mathematicism has something aristocratic about it,
resembling in this the other extreme error, of æstheticism; whereas
the intermediate error, empiricism, just because of its mediocrity, is
popular and indeed vulgar.
[Sidenote: _Symbolical mathematics._]
We cannot properly consider as mathematicism that form of philosophy
which appeared in antiquity as _Pythagoreanism_ and _Neopythagoreanism_
and has reappeared in our days as a doctrine of the mathematical
relations of the universe and the harmony of the world. In this
conception, numbers are not numbers, but symbols; the numerical
relations are not arithmetical, but æsthetic. The pretended
mathematical philosophers of this type are neither philosophers nor
mathematicians, nor are they arbitrary combiners of these two methods.
They would be better described as poets or semi-poets.
[Sidenote: _Mathematics as demonstrative form of philosophy._]
Nor again can we consider to be mathematicism the attempt made by some
philosophers to expound their own ideas by a mathematical, algebraical
or geometrical method. If their ideas were ideas and not numbers, the
method to which they had recourse necessarily remained extrinsic, and
possessed no mathematical character beyond the verbal complacency with
which they adopted certain formulae of definitions, axioms, theorems,
lemmas, corollaries and certain numerical symbols, These formulas and
symbols could always be replaced by others, without any inconvenience
whatever. It is possible to discuss, it has indeed been discussed,
whether such modes of exposition are in good or bad literary taste,
or of greater or less didactic convenience. They can be condemned,
as they have been condemned, and caused to fall into disuse, as they
have fallen; but the quality of the philosophic truth thus expressed,
remains unaltered and is never changed into mathematics. Neither the
system of Spinoza, who employed the geometrical method, nor that of
Leibnitz, who desired the universal calculus, are mathematical systems.
If they were so, modern philosophy would not owe some of its most
important idealist concepts to those two systems.
[Sidenote: _Errors of mathematicist philosophy._]
Better examples of mathematicism than the treatises and systems
developed according to its rules are found in the unfulfilled
programmes of such treatises and systems, or in the mathematicist
treatment of certain philosophie problems. Such, for instance, is that
concerning the infinity of the world in space and time, a problem
which, treated mathematistically, becomes insoluble and makes many
people's heads turn. It is impossible to comprehend the world in one's
own mind with the mathematical infinite; and either to give or to
refuse to it a beginning and an end. Hence the exclamations of terror
before that infinite, and the sense of sublimity which seems to arise
in the struggle joined between it, which is indomitable, and the
human mind which wishes to dominate it. It has, however, already been
observed with reason, that such sublimity is not only very near to the
ridiculous, but falls into it with all its weight; and that such terror
could not in truth be anything but terror of the _ennui_ of having
to count and recount in the void and to infinity. The mathematical
infinite is nothing real; its appearance of reality is the shadow
projected by the mathematical power which the human spirit possesses,
of always adding a unit to any number. The true infinite is all before
us, in every real fact, and it is only when the continuous unity of
reality is divided into separate facts, and space and time are rendered
abstract and mathematical, only then, if the complete operation be
forgotten, that the desperate problem arises and the anguish of never
being able to solve it. Another and more actual example of this
mathematicist mode of treatment is that of the dimensions of space.
Here, forgetting that space of three dimensions is nothing real that
can be experienced, but is a mathematical construction, and on the
other hand finding it convenient for mathematical reasons to construct
spaces of less or more than three dimensions, or of _n_ dimensions,
they end by treating these constructions as conceivable realities, and
seriously discuss bi-dimensional beings or four-dimensional worlds.
[Sidenote: _Dualism, agnosticism and superstition of mathematicism._]
With affirmations such as those of infinites incomprehensible to
thought, and of real but not experienceable spaces, mathematicism also
creates a dualism of thought and of reality superior to thought, or
(what amounts to the same thing) of thought which meets its equivalent
in experience and thought without a corresponding experience. The
unknowable here too lies in wait and falls upon the imprudent
mathematicist philosopher, who feels himself lost before a second,
third, fourth and infinite worlds, excogitated by himself, superior
or inferior worlds to those of man, underworlds and overworlds and
over-over worlds. He then becomes even spiritualist and asks with
Zollner, why spiritualist facts should not possess reality and be
produced in the fourth dimension of space, shut off from us. The
contradiction of the mathematicist attempt, like that of the æsthetic
and empiricist, is clearly revealed in the dualistic, agnostic and
mystical consequences to which, as we shall see more clearly further
on, all of them necessarily lead.
III
PHILOSOPHISM
[Sidenote: _Rupture of the unity of the a priori synthesis._]
The three modes of error examined exhaust the possible combinations of
the pure concept with the forms of the theoretic or theoretic-practical
spirit, anterior or posterior to it. Other modes of error arise from
the breaking up of the unity of the concept, from the separation of its
constitutive elements. Each one of these elements, abstracted from the
other, and finding that other before it, annuls, instead of recognizing
the other as an organic part of itself; that is to say, substitutes for
it its own abstract existence.
The concept, as we know, is the logical _a priori_ synthesis, and
so the unity of subject and predicate, unity in distinction and
distinction in unity, affirmation of the concept and judgment of the
fact, at once philosophy and history. In pure and effective thought,
the two elements constitute an indissoluble organism. A fact cannot be
affirmed without thinking; it is impossible to think without affirming
a fact. In logical thought, the representation without the concept is
blind, it is pure representation deprived of logical right, it is not
the subject of a judgment; the concept without representation is void.
[Sidenote:_Philosophism, logicism or panlogism._]
This unity can be severed, practically, in the act which is called
error, where propositions expressing the truth are combined, not
according to their theoretical connection, but according to what is
deemed useful by him who makes the combination. It then happens that
in the first place we have an empty concept, which, being without
any internal rule (owing to this very vacuity), fills itself with a
content which does not belong to it--for this it could have only from
contact with the representation--and gives itself a _false_ subject.
The opposite also occurs, that is to say, a false predicate or concept
is posited, a case which will be considered further on. Limiting
ourselves, meanwhile, to the first and observing that it consists in
the abuse of the logical element, we shall be able to call that mode
of error _logicism_ or _panlogism,_ or also _philosophism_ (since
the abuse of the logical element is identical with the abuse of the
philosophic element).
[Sidenote: _Philosophy of history._]
Logicism, panlogism or philosophism, is the usurpation that philosophy
in the narrow sense wreaks upon history, by pretending to deduce
history a _priori,_ as the process is called. This usurpation is
logically impossible owing to the identity of philosophy and history
already demonstrated, whence bad history is bad philosophy, and
inversely. It may happen that the same individual who at a given moment
creates excellent philosophy (and excellent history at the same time)
may create bad history (and so bad philosophy) the moment after. But
this amounts to saying that he who at one moment has philosophized
well, may philosophize badly and err the moment after, and not by any
means that the two things are possible in the same act. However, the
usurpation, logically impossible, is practically effected, in which
case, it is not strictly speaking usurpation, although it comes to
be so considered from the logical point of view. On the other hand,
the claim for the _a priori_ in history is perfectly just; for to
affirm a fact means to think it, and it is not possible to think
without transforming the representation by means of the concept, and
so deducing it from the concept. But this deduction is an _a priori_
synthesis and therefore also induction, whereas the claim to deduce
history _a priori_ would amount to a deduction without induction,
not _History_ (which is, for that very reason, _Philosophy),_ but a
_Philosophy of History._
[Sidenote: _The contradictions in this undertaking._]