This implies, in the first place, that the possible forms of errors,
the logical forms of the illogical, are _so many_ and _no more._
Indeed, the forms of the spirit or concepts of reality, which can
be arbitrarily combined, can be stated as a finite number (where
the process of numbering can be applied to them). Consequently,
the arbitrary combinations or errors which arise from them can
also be similarly numbered. Only the individual forms of error are
infinite, and that for the same reason which we have already given,
as the individual forms of truth are infinite. Problems are always
historically conditioned, and the solutions are conditioned in the same
way; even false solutions, which are determined by feelings, passions,
and interests, also vary according to historical conditions.
[Sidenote: Their logical order.]
In the second place, and as corollary to the preceding thesis, the
possible forms of errors present a necessary order; and this, because
the forms of the spirit or the concepts of reality stand in a necessary
order to one another. They cannot be placed after or before one another
nor changed at will. This necessary order is, as we know, a genetic
order of degrees, and consequently the possible forms of errors
constitute a series of degrees. It is commonly said that _error has
its logic,_ and we must say more correctly, that it cannot constitute
itself as error, save by borrowing logical character from truth.
[Sidenote: _Examples of this order in the various parts of philosophy._]
This is already clearly seen in the exposition given of the forms of
logical error, and more clearly still when, resuming, we consider
that the spirit, when it rebels against the concept, must by this
very act affirm the term which is distinct from the concept, whether
it be called representation, intuition, or pure sensation. Hence the
necessity of the form of error (in a certain sense the first), which is
_æstheticism,_--the affirmation of truth as pure sensation. Below this
stage, the spirit can descend to annul the problem in _dualism;_ or,
going further and abandoning affirmation, it may fall into scepticism;
or, finally, abandoning even expression, it may fall into _dumbness,_
or _mysticism,_ which is the lowest degree. Above æstheticism it
can raise itself to try to take refuge in _empiricism,_ in which
is posited a universal, but one that is merely representative and,
therefore, a false universal. It is the second step, nor can any other
be conceived as second:--we must give a false value either to the pure
representation (æstheticism);--or (taking the second step), to the
representation and the concept together, as is the case in the form of
the empirical concept (empiricism). The third step is the desperate
escape from the insufficiency of the empirical concept, by means of the
abstract concept, which guarantees the universality which the other
lacks, but gives an empty universality (mathematicism). Finding no
refuge in this emptiness from the objections of its adversaries, it is
obliged finally to enter philosophy. But the erring spirit continues
its work in philosophy itself and, once it has taken possession, abuses
it. Now it is not possible to abuse philosophy, save by reducing it
either to a concept without intuition, which is nevertheless taken as a
synthesis of concept and intuition (_philosophism_); or to an intuition
without concept, which, in its turn, is taken as the requisite
synthesis _(mythologism)._ The result of all this process is always the
renunciation of the philosophic problem, disguised by the admission of
the double method (dualism), and hence the descent below the logical
form, either with the affirmation which denies itself (scepticism),
or, again, with that which denies even the possibility of expression
(mysticism) and returns to life, which is not a problem at all, being
life lived.
The same thing occurs with the other errors, when we refer to the other
concepts of the spirit or of reality, although we shall not be able to
give the complete series without summarizing the whole of philosophy,
which is not necessary here, and by its excessive concentration and
extreme brevity would be obscure. Suffice it to say, by way of example,
that the ethical problem, besides being negated by means of erroneous
sensationalist, empiricist, and mycologist solutions, and so on (to
which, in common with all philosophic problems, it is subject), can
be negated by practical intellectualism, which does not recognize a
practical problem side by side with that of the theoretic spirit,
and reduces virtue to knowledge. Hence _ethical intellectualism._
Since ethical intellectualism cannot resist objections, it is obliged
to introduce at least the slightest practical element that can be
admitted, which is that of individual utility, and resolving morality
into this, it then presents itself as _ethical utilitarianism._
This in its turn, finding itself in contradiction with the peculiar
character of morality, which goes beyond individual utility, arranges
to recognize and to substitute for the first a super-individual
utility, which is the universal practical value or morality. And thus,
by negating the first on account of the second concept, it presents
itself as _moralism_ or _ethical abstractionism._ The impossibility of
negating both the first and the second, and the necessity of affirming
both, urge the acceptance of the final form of _practical dualism,_
in which utility and morality appear as co-ordinated or juxtaposed.
Each one of these arbitrary doctrines is critical of the others,
and, by its internal contradictions, of itself. Hence the fall into
scepticism and mysticism. The circle of error can be traversed again,
but it is impossible to alter the place that each of those forms has
in the circle, by placing, for instance, practical dualism before
utilitarianism or intellectualism after moralism.
[Sidenote: _Spirit of error and spirit of search._]
There is no gradual issuing from the infernal circle of error, and
salvation from it is not possible, save by entering at one stroke into
the celestial circle of truth, in which alone the mind rests satisfied
as in its kingdom. The spirit that _errs_ or flees from the light must
be converted into the spirit of _search,_ that longs for the light;
pride must yield to humility; narrow love for one's own abstract
individuality become wider and elevate itself to an austere love, to
an unlimited devotion toward that which surpasses the individual, thus
becoming an "heroic fury," the "_amor Dei intellectualis._"
[Sidenote: _Immanence of error in truth._]
In this act of love and fervour the spirit becomes pure thought and
attains to the true, is indeed transmuted into the true. But as spirit
of truth it possesses truth and also its contrary transfigured in
that. The possessing of a concept is the possession of it in all its
relations, and so are possessed all the modes in which that concept can
be wrongly altered by error. For instance, the true concept of moral
activity is also the concept of utilitarianism, of abstractionism,
of practical dualism, and so on. The two series of knowledge, that
of the true and that of its contrary, are, in truth, inseparable,
because they really constitute one single series. The concept is
affirmation-negation.
[Sidenote: _Erroneous distinction between possession of and search for
truth._]
It will be said that this is perhaps exact in the case of the
_possession_ of truth, but not in that of the _search_ for it, where
the two series may well appear disunited. Truth, to one who searches,
is at the top of the staircase of errors, and as it is possible to
climb a great part of the staircase without reaching what is at the
top of it, so when once the desired place has been reached, it is
possible not to see or not to remember the staircase that is below. But
the possession of truth is never static, as in general no real fact
is static. The possession of and the search for truth are the same.
When it seems that a truth is possessed in a static way and almost
solidified, if we observe closely we shall see that the word expressing
it, the sound of it, has remained, but the spirit has flown away. That
truth was, but is no longer thought, and so is not truth. It will be
truth only when it is thought anew, and thinking and thinking anew are
the same, since each rethinking is a new act of thought. In thinking
the truth is search for truth; it is a most rapid ideal motion which,
starting from the centre, runs through all the possibilities of error,
and only in so far as it runs through and rejects them all does it find
itself at its centre, which is the centre of motion.
[Sidenote: _The search for truth in the practical sense of preparation
for thought; and the series of errors._]
In order to separate truth from the search for truth this latter must
be understood, not as the will for thought and so as thought in action,
but as the _will which lays down the conditions for thought,_ the will
which prepares itself for thought, but does not yet think effectually.
This indeed is the usual meaning of the word "search." To search
is to stimulate oneself for thinking, by employing opportune means
for that purpose. And there is no more opportune means than that of
confronting one with another the various forms of the spirit and the
various concepts; because in the course of that confrontation there is
produced the true combination; that is to say, thought, which is truth,
is aroused. To search means therefore to _run through the series of
errors._
[Sidenote: _Transfiguration, in the search thus understood, of error
into suggestion or hypothesis._]
But the seeker sets to work in quite a different spirit from that of
the assertor of errors. The spirit of research is not the rebel erring
spirit, and therefore the path that both follow is only the same in
appearance; the first was the path of errors, but the second can only
be so called by metaphor. Errors are errors when there is the will for
error. Where, on the other hand, there is the will to unify material
and to prepare the conditions of thought, the improper combination
of ideas is not indeed error, but _suggestion_ or _hypothesis._ The
hypothesis is not an act of truth, because either it is not verified
and so reveals itself as without truth, or it is verified and becomes
truth only at the moment in which it is verified. But neither is it
an act of error, because it is affirmed, not as truth, but as simple
means or aid toward the conquest of truth. In the doctrine of search,
the series of errors is all redeemed, baptized, or blessed anew; the
diabolic spirit abandons it precipitately, leaving it void of truth,
but innocent.
[Sidenote: _Distinction between error as error and error as
hypothesis._]
The distinction between error as _error_ and error as _suggestion,_
between _error_ and _hypothesis_ or heuristic expedients, is of
capital importance. It is found as basis of some common distinctions,
such as those between _mistake_ and _error,_ between error committed
in _good faith_ and error committed in _bad faith,_ and the like.
These and others like them show themselves to be certainly untenable,
because error as error is always in bad faith, and there is no
difference between error and mistake, save an empirical difference,
or a difference of verbal emphasis, for it can be said according to
empirical accidents that an affirmation is either simply erroneous or
altogether a mistake. But although they cannot be maintained as they
are formulated, they nevertheless suggest the desirability and the
anticipation of this true and profound distinction.
[Sidenote: _Immanence of the suggestion in error itself as error._]
On the other hand, error and suggestion, error and heuristic procedure,
since they have in common the practical, extrinsic, and improper
combination of ideas, stand in this relation to one another, that
the suggestion is not error, but _error always contains in itself
willingly or unwillingly a suggestion._ The erring spirit, though
without intending it, prepares the material for the search for truth.
It means to evade that search or to bring it to an arbitrary end; but
in doing so it breaks up the clods of earth, throws them about, ploughs
and fertilizes the field where the truth will sprout. Thus it happens
that many combinations of ideas, proposed and maintained through
caprice and vanity with the lawyer's object of scoring his point, or
of shining and astonishing with paradox, or for pastime and for other
utilitarian reasons, have been adopted by more serious spirits as steps
in the progress of research. The enemies of the truth not only testify
to the truth but come to serve it themselves, through the unforeseen
consequences of their work. A sort of gratitude comes over us at times
and makes us tender toward these adversaries of the truth, because we
feel that from them has come the stimulus to obtain it, as from them
come the strengthening of our hold upon it and the inspiration, the
clear-sightedness, and the warmth of the defence of it that we make
against them.
[Sidenote: _Individuals and error._]
But it is not necessary in yielding to the generous feeling for human
fraternity to exaggerate in this last direction. The gratitude that we
feel is not deserved by them; at the most, it is God or the universal
spirit or Providence who deserves it. They did not wish to serve the
truth and did not serve it, save through consequences which are not
their work. One-sided and abstract optimism has intruded here also;
and perceiving in error the element of suggestion, it has altogether
cancelled the category of error in favour of that of suggestion and
has pronounced that man always seeks the true, as he always wills the
good. Certainly; but there is the man who stops at his individual
good, _fruges consumere natus_; and there is the man who progresses
to the universal good. There is the man who combines words to give
himself and others the illusion of knowing what he does not know and
of being able to attend to his own pleasures without further trouble;
and there is the man who combines words with anxious soul and spirit
intent, _venator medii,_ a hunter of the concept. Here, too, the truth
is neither in the optimism nor in the pessimism, but in the doctrine,
which conciliates and surpasses them both. Nor does it matter that
owing to the defect of abstract optimism that very philosopher, who did
more than any other to reveal the hidden richness of the dialectical
principle, was not able to look deeply into the problem of error.
The conscience of humanity well understood knows how to do justice to
all men, without, on that account, confounding him who seeks with him
who errs, the man of good will with the utilitarian. It does justice
to them, because in every man, indeed at every instant in the life
of every man, it discovers all those various spiritual moments, both
inferior and superior. Error and the search for truth are continually
intertwined. Sometimes a beginning is made with research, and it ends
with an obstinate persistence in the suggestion that has been made,
which is converted into a result and an erroneous affirmation. At
others a beginning is made, with the deliberate intention of escaping
difficulties by means of some sort of a combination of ideas; and that
combination arouses the mind and becomes a suggestion for research,
which is followed until peace is found in the truth. Each one of us is
at every moment in danger of yielding to laziness and to the seduction
of error and has hope of shaking off that laziness and following the
attraction of truth. We fall and rise up again at every instant; we are
weak and strong, cowardly and courageous. When we call another weak and
cowardly, we are condemning ourselves; when we admire another as strong
and courageous, we idolize the strength and courage which is active
within us. When we are in the presence of a complex product, as, for
example, a faith, a doctrine, a book, it would be naïve and fallacious
to look upon it as only error or as only suggestion. For it is both
the one and the other; that is to say, it contains equally the moments
of error properly so-called, and the other moments of suggestion and
search; the voluntary interposition of obstacles to the truth and
the voluntary removal of such obstacles; the disfigured image of the
truth and the outline of the truth. Sometimes we are unable to say of
ourselves whether we are erring or are seeking, whether we believe
that we have found the whole truth or only discovered a ray of it. The
logical criticism which implacably condemns us seems to be unjust,
although we cannot contest its arguments which impose the truth upon
our thought. We feel that that truth was in a way sought, seen for a
moment, and almost possessed in that spiritual state of ours, which has
been summarily and abruptly condemned by others as altogether erroneous.
[Sidenote: _The double aspect of errors._]
For this reason even that which has been rejected and blamed as false
from one point of view must be accepted and honoured from another as
an approach to truth. Empiricism is perverse in so far as it is a
construction opposed to the philosophic universal, but it is innocuous
and indeed beneficial in so far as it is an attempt to rise from
pure sensation and representation to the thinking of the universal.
Scepticism as error annuls the theoretic life; but as suggestion it
is necessary to the demonstration of the impossibility of dwelling in
that desert when all false doctrines have been annulled. Mythologism
presents this double aspect in a yet clearer manner; religion is the
negation of thought, but it is also in another aspect a preparation
for thought; the myth is both a travesty and a sketch of the concept;
hence every philosophy feels itself adverse to myth and born from
myth, an _enemy_ and a _daughter_ of religions. In what is empirically
defined as religion or as a body of religious doctrines, for example,
in Christianity, in its myths and in its theology, there is so much of
truth and suggestion of truth that it is possible to affirm (always
from the empirical point of view) the superiority of that religion
over a well-reasoned but poor, a correct but sterile philosophy.
Nevertheless, a period of reverence, of attentive harkening, of
philosophic study and criticism, which is not pure scepticism,
succeeds to a period of encyclopædism, of irreligious scepticism, of
enlightenment, and of Voltaireism. Those who in the nineteenth or in
this twentieth century have repeated the Voltairean scepticism and have
jibed at religion have with good reason been considered superficial of
intellect and soul, vulgar and trivial people. The philosophy of the
eighteenth century has filled and filled well the office of enemy of
religion; that of the nineteenth century has disdained to give blows
to the dead and has adopted towards religion the attitude of a pious
daughter and diligent heir. For our part we are persuaded that the
inheritance of religion has not been well and thoroughly utilized.
This inheritance is at bottom indistinguishable from the philosophic
inheritance, for is there not religion, in, for instance, the Cartesian
idea of God, which unifies the two substances and guarantees with its
truth the certainty of our knowledge? And is it not also philosophy,
that is to say, the concept (in however gross a form), of the immanent
Spirit which is a self-distinguishing unity and certainty of itself?
[Sidenote: _Last form of the methodological error; Hypothesism._]
We have now attained to the theory of research, yet we cannot abandon
the survey of the necessary forms of error without mentioning a new
form which arises precisely from the confusion between truth and the
search for the conditions preparatory to truth, between truth and
hypothesis. This error, which converts Heuristic into Logic, may be
called _hypothesism._ It asserts that in regard to truth man can do
nothing more than propose hypotheses, which are said to be more or
less probable, so that his fate is not dissimilar to the punishments
which were assigned to Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the Danaids. But in the
kingdom of the True, differently from that of Erebus:
The birds do not feed,
The wheels do not turn,
The stone is not rolled up the high mountain,
Nor water drawn with the sieve from the fountain.
The hypothesis is made, because it serves toward the attainment of the
truth; did it not serve this end it would not be made. The spirit does
not admit waste of time; for it time is always money. Hypothesism is
sometimes restricted to the supreme principles of the real, or to what
is called metaphysics, which would thus be always hypothetical; but for
the reasons given in our discussion of agnosticism, if the principles
of the real were hypothetical, the whole truth would be so, that is to
say, there would not be any truth. For the rest, hypothesism, besides
being internally contradictory, openly reveals that it is so, in
its reference to the greater or lesser _probability_ of hypotheses.
It would be impossible to determine the degree of approximation to
the true without presupposing a criterion of truth, a truth and
consequently the truth. We should hardly have made mention of this
error did it not constitute the fulcrum of some of the most celebrated
and revered philosophies of our times.
VII
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
[Sidenote: _Inseparability of the phenomenology of error from the
philosophic system. _]
The phenomenology of error, in its double sense of error and of
suggestion, coincides therefore with the philosophic system. Both
error and suggestion are improper combinations of philosophic ideas or
concepts. To determine these improper combinations is equivalent to
showing the _obverse_ of that of which the philosophic system is the
_face._ But face and obverse are not separable, for they constitute a
single thought (and single reality), which is positivity-negativity,
affirmation-negation. There is, therefore, no phenomenology of error
outside the philosophic system, nor a philosophic system outside
the phenomenology of error; the one is conceived at the moment when
the other is conceived. And since the philosophic system and the
doctrine of the categories are the same, the phenomenology of error is
inseparable and indistinguishable from the doctrine of the categories.
[Sidenote: _The eternal going and coming of errors._]
As such the phenomenology of error is an ideal and eternal circle, like
the eternal circle of the truth. Its stages are eternally traversed and
retraversed by the spirit, being the stages of the spirit itself. At
every instant of the life of history and of our individual life there
are represented the stages that have been surpassed and must again be
surpassed: the lower stages return and announce beforehand the higher.
[Sidenote: _Returns to anterior philosophies, and their meaning._]