which represented the dissolution of ancient philosophy and the germ
of a new life (especially in Christian mythologism, which had absorbed
elements of ancient philosophy and was accompanied by a very developed
theology), we must pass on to note the progress which the logical
problem made in the schools of the Middle Ages. To look upon mediæval
philosophy (as many do) as a negligible episode, a mere detritus of
ancient culture quite unconnected with the later spiritual activity, is
now no longer possible. Certainly in the disputes of the nominalists
and realists, the problem of transcendence and of immanence was
neglected. It could not be solved on the presumptions of a philosophy
which had at its side a theology, of which it constituted itself the
handmaiden. The Platonic transcendence was incurable in Christianity,
and those who even to-day seek to purify Christianity from survivals
of Greek thought, do not perceive that, in this purification effected
by their philosophies of action and of immanence, they are destroying
Christianity itself.[9]
[Sidenote: _Nominalism and realism._]
But in those disputes, besides the question of the place that belongs
to science in relation to religious faith, or to mundane science in
relation to revealed and divine science, the question of the nature
of the concept was also raised; that is to say, they continued the
Platonic-Aristotelian enquiry into the doctrine of the concept in
the second of the meanings that we have distinguished. But no true
conclusion was reached in this enquiry. The conciliatory formula of
the Arabic interpreters of Aristotle, accepted by Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas, in which the universals were affirmed as existing
_ante, in_ and _post rem,_ in so far as it is possible to confer
upon it an exact meaning, was understood in a superficial manner,
and therefore it has not unreasonably seemed too easy and too
expeditious.[10] A dispute of this sort cannot be solved by summarizing
discordant opinions, as in the formula we have mentioned, or by fixing
a mean, as in conceptualism. But the realists, bravely maintaining
the truth of the philosophic universal, maintained the rights of
rational thought and of philosophy; and the nominalists, on their part,
asserting in contradiction to the former, the nominalist universal,
prepared the modern theories of natural science. Realism produced
philosophic thought of high importance, as in the so-called ontological
argument of Anselm of Aosta, which (though through the myth of a
personal God) asserts the unity of Essence and Existence, the reality
of what is truly conceivable and conceived. Gaunilo, who confuted and
satirized that concept, by employing the example of a "most perfect
island," thinkable yet non-existent, seems an anticipation of Kant;
at least of the Kant who employed the example of the hundred dollars
to illustrate the same case--if it is not more accurate to say that
Kant was, in that case, a late Gaunilo. Anselm replied (as Hegel did to
Kant) that it was not a question of an island (or of a hundred dollars
of something imaginable that is not at all a concept), but of the being
than which it is impossible to think a greater and a more perfect (the
true and proper concept). On the other hand, the nominalists, who
like Roscellinus maintained that the _universelles substantiae_ were
_nonnisi flatus vocis,_ performed the useful office of preventing the
sciences of experience from being absorbed and lost in philosophy.
In Roger Bacon we see clearly the connection of nominalism with
naturalism. He considered individual facts, so-called external
experience, in its immediacy, as the true and proper object of science.
Concepts were for him a simple expedient, directed towards the mastery
of the immense richness of the individual. "_Intellectus est debilis_
(he said); _propter eam debilitatem magis conformatur rei debili, quae
est universale, qitam rei quae habet multum de esse, ut singulare._"
[Sidenote: _Nominalism, mysticism and coincidence of opposites._]
But the nominalists, _dialecticae haeretici_ (as Anselm called them),
were heretics only in the circle of the dialectic. The truth remained
for them something beyond; the concept, the _secunda intentio,_ was
certainly something arbitrary and _ad placitum instituta_; it was
"_forma artificialis tantum, quae per violentiam habet esse,_" but
beyond it were always faith and revelation. God is the truth, and in
God the ideas are real; hence Roger Bacon gave to inner light (as
the positivists or neocritics of to-day give to feeling) a place
beside sensible experience. Mysticism, being developed from mediæval
philosophy, both from one-sided realism and from one-sided nominalism,
extends its hand at the dawn of the new Era to the philosophy of
Cusanus, to scepticism, to _docta ignorantia._ This was not a mere
negation; so much so that in it (though in a negative form and
mixed with religion) there appears in outline nothing less than the
theory of the _coincidence of opposites,_ that is to say, the cradle
of that modern logical movement, which was destined definitely to
conquer transcendence. The coincidence of opposites is the germ of
the dialectic, which unifies value and fact, ideal and real, what
ought to be and what is. This important thought reappears in German
mysticism; and (significantly for its future destinies) rings out upon
the lips of Martin Luther, who declared that virtue coexists with its
contrary, vice, hope with anxiety, faith with vacillation, indeed with
temptation, gentleness with disdain, chastity with desire, pardon with
sin; as in nature, heat coexists with cold, white with black, riches
with poverty, health with disease; and that _peccatum manet et non
manet, tollitur et non tollitur,_ and that at the moment a man ceases
to make himself better, he ceases to be good.[11] And before it became
dominant in Jacob Böhme it was stripped of its religious form and
eloquently defended in Italy by Giordano Bruno.[12]
[Sidenote: _The Renaissance and naturalism. Bacon._]
This realist, mystical and dialectical current of thought was destined
to yield its best fruits some centuries later. For the time being, in
the seventeenth century, and yet more in the century that followed,
the victory seemed to rest with nominalism, that is to say, with
naturalism. In Italy, Leonardo da Vinci laughed at theological and
speculative disputes and celebrated, not the mind, but the _eye_ of
man, that is, the science of observation. The same tendency appeared
in the anti-Aristotelians and naturalists, who placed the natural
sciences above scholasticism. In England, the other Bacon, however
slight his importance both as philosopher and naturalist, yet has
much importance as the symptom and spokesman of the self-assertion
of naturalism. In the _Novum Organum,_ the universal of the _for the
most part_ claims its rights as against the universal of the necessary
and eternal. He does not wish, however, to do away with the latter,
but rather to complete it; the syllogism is insufficient, induction
also is needed. Philosophy and theology are well where they are, but a
science of physics is also needed; philosophic induction, which goes
at a leap to first causes, must be accompanied by a gradual induction
(the only one that interests the naturalist), which connects particular
facts by means of laws more and more general; final causes must be
banished from the study of nature, and only efficient causes admitted.
_Anticipationes naturae,_ that is to say, the invasions of philosophism
into the natural sciences, are to be prohibited. These utterances are
far more discreet than those that have so often since been heard.
[Sidenote: _The ideal of exact science and the Cartesian philosophy._]
By another school of this period, on the other hand, the pure concept
was wrongly identified with the abstract concept. Thus speculative
rationalism took the form of mathematical rationalism and the ideal
of philosophy was confused with the ideal of _exact science._ This
tendency is also to be found in Leonardo, who exalted "reason"
alone, that is calculation, as outside of and sometimes superior to
experience. Galileo expressed similar thoughts later. The Cartesian
philosophy is animated with it, that is to say, the philosophy of
Descartes and of his great followers, especially Spinoza and Leibnitz.
Thus this is especially an intellectualist philosophy, full of empty
excogitations and rigid divisions, developed by a mechanical or by
a teleological method, which always operated by means of mechanism.
It is true that even under these improper forms, philosophic thought
progressed. The consciousness of the inner unity of philosophy
progressed with Descartes, that of the unity of the real by means of
Spinoza's concept of substance, and that of spiritual activity by means
of the dynamism of Leibnitz; but Logic remained as a whole the old
scholastic logic. The purity of the concept was asserted at the expense
of concreteness; thus the concept, in the Logic of those writers, is
always something abstract, although its reality is so far recognized
that it is thought possible to think with it the most real (the God
of Descartes, the substance of Spinoza, the Monad of Leibnitz). The
eighteenth century, mathematical, abstractionist, intellectualist
ratiocinative, anti-historical, illuminist, reformist, and finally
Jacobin, is the legitimate issue of this Cartesian philosophy, which
confuses the Logic of philosophy with the Logic of mathematics. France,
which was the country of its birth and where it became most firmly
rooted and most widely disseminated, owes to it, perhaps even more than
to Scholasticism, the mental imprint which it still bears and which
the strong Germanic influence that has made itself felt there also in
the last century has not sufficed to eradicate. It is only in our day
that the country which is the type of the abstract intellect strives
to become philosophically more concrete. It is now occupied with
æstheticism or intuitionism, and, unless the movement is suffocated or
dissipated, it may effect a true revolution in the traditional French
spirit.
[Sidenote: _Adversaries of Cartesianism. Vico._]
The opposition to abstractionism had no representatives in the
seventeenth century and for a great part of the eighteenth, except
among thinkers of but slight systematic powers, with whom it did
not progress beyond the logical form of the presentiment and the
literary form of the aphorism. In France, Blaise Pascal was one of
these, with his anti-Cartesianism, his restriction of the value of
mathematics, and his celebration of the reasons of the heart which
reason does not know. In Germany there was Hamann, who possessed such
a strong sense of tradition, of history, of language, of poetry and
of myth, and finally of the truth contained in the principle of the
_coincidence of opposites_ which he had met with somewhere in Bruno.
The Italian Giambattista Vico was the only great systematic thinker
to express opposition to abstractionism and Cartesianism. Prior to
and more clearly than Hamann, he perceived the unity of philosophy
and history, or as he called it, of _philosophy and philology._ He
conceived thought as an _ideal history_ of reality, immanent in the
real history which occurs in time; he abolished the distinctions of the
concept as separate species and substituted the notion of degrees or
moments, which (as Schelling did after him) he called _ideal epochs_;
he considered the abstractionist and mathematical century which he saw
rising before him, as a period of philosophic decadence, and foretold
the evil effects of Cartesian anti-historicism. (His presage was
fulfilled.) In this way, he sketched a new Logic, very different from
that of Aristotle or of Arnaud which was the most recent, a Logic in
which he attempted to satisfy Plato and Bacon, Tacitus and Grotius, the
idea and the fact. But if the other opponents of abstractionism had
very little effect, because of their immaturity and want of system,
Vico also was ineffectual, because he was born in Italy precisely at
the time when Italy as a productive country was definitely issuing from
the circle of European thought and was beginning passively to accept
the more popular forms of foreign thought. Finally, Naples, the little
country of Vico, was then becoming encyclopædist and sensationalist,
and did not really begin to know until a century later the remedy for
such evils composed in anticipation by Vico.
[Sidenote: _Empiricist Logic and its dissolution--Locke, Berkeley and
Hume._]
The surpassing of the Logic of the abstract concept and the achievement
of that of the concrete concept or pure concept or idea, was realized
in other ways, primarily by a sort of reduction to the absurd of
empiricist and mathematical Logic, in the scepticism which was its
result. This reduction to the absurd, this final scepticism, is to
be observed in the movement of English philosophy, beginning with
Locke or even with Hobbes, to Hume. Locke, starting from perception
as his presupposition, derived all ideas from experience, with the
sole instrument of reflection; and rejecting innate ideas and looking
upon others as more or less arbitrary, he preserved some objectivity
to mathematical ideas alone, which relate to what are called primary
qualities. Berkeley denies objectivity even to the primary qualities.
All concepts, naturalist and mathematical alike, are for him abstract
concepts and to that extent without truth. The only truth is the
"idea," which means here nothing but sensation or the representation
of the individual. His Logic is not empiricist, because it is in no
respect Logic. At the most it is an Æsthetic substituted for and
given as Logic. It is true, notwithstanding his complete denial of
universals--of empirical and abstract, no less than of philosophic,
which he never even mentions--that he deludes himself into thinking
that he has overcome scepticism; and it is true also that he laid the
foundations of a spiritualist and voluntarist conception of reality,
which in our opinion should be preserved and adopted by modern thought.
But this proves only that his philosophy does not wholly agree with
his Logic, and not that his Logic is not the complete denial of the
concept and of thought. The logical consequence of Berkeley could not,
then, be anything but the scepticism of David Hume, who shakes the very
foundation upon which the whole of the science of nature rests, namely,
the principle of causality.
[Sidenote: _Exact science and Kant. The concept of the category._]
As the effect of this extreme scepticism, the surpassing of empiricist
and abstractionist Logic had to be begun with the restoration of that
Logic itself (because that which does not exist cannot be surpassed),
that is to say, with the demonstration, against Hume, that the exact
science of nature is possible. Such is the principal task of the
_Critique of Pure Reason_, which contains the Logic of the natural
and mathematical sciences, thought no longer by an empiricist, but by
a philosopher who has surpassed empiricism and recognized that the
concepts of experience presuppose the human intellect, which originally
constructed them. Leibnitz had already travelled this road, when in
a polemic against Locke he maintained that reflection to which Locke
appealed, referred back to the innate ideas: for if reflection (he
said) is nothing but "_une attention à ce qui est en nous et les sens
ne nous donnent point ce que nous portons déjà avec nous,_" how can
it ever be denied "_qu'il y est beaucoup d'inné en nous, puisque nous
sommes, pour ainsi dire, innés à nous mêmes? Peut-on nier qu'il y ait
eu nous être, unité, substance, durée, changement, action, perception,
plaisir et mille autres objets de nos idées intellectuelles?_"[13] The
_New Essays,_ in which theses and other similar themes were developed,
remained for a time unedited, but appeared opportunely in 1765 to
fecundate German thought, and acted upon Kant, together with English
empiricism and scepticism, the latter giving the problem and the former
almost an attempt at a solution. But the innate ideas of Leibnitz
are profoundly transformed in the Kantian concept of the _category,_
which is the formal element and really exists only in the very act
of judgment, which it effects. Mathematics are thus secured in their
possession, no longer by means of the primary qualities of Locke, but
because they arise from the _a priori_ forms of intuition, space and
time. The natural sciences are also secured, because the concepts of
them are constituted by means of the categories of the intellect,
on the data of experience. In other words, mathematical and natural
science have value, in so far as they are a necessary product of the
spirit.
[Sidenote: _The limits of science and Kantian scepticism._]
But a limitation of value due also to Kant, accompanies this theoretic
reinforcement of exact science. That science is necessary, because
produced by the categories; but the categories cannot develop their
activity except upon the data of experience; so that exact science is
limited to experience, and whenever it makes the attempt to surpass it,
it becomes involved in antinomies and paralogisms and gesticulates in
the void. Science moves among phenomena and can never penetrate beyond
them and attain to the "Thing in itself."
[Sidenote: _The limits cf science and Jacobi._]
It would seem from this that Kant was bound to end in a renovated
nominalism and mysticism, and indeed such is partly the case.
Contemporaneously with him, Jacobi also observed the limit in which
is enclosed the mechanical and determinist science of nature (the
highest philosophic expression of which was then found in the _Ethic_
of Spinoza), since it works with the principle of causation and is
impotent, unless it wishes to commit suicide, to leave the finite
which it describes in a causal series, and Jacobi concluded in favour
of mysticism and of _feeling,_ the organ of the Knowledge of God.
Kant, like Jacobi, in his turn has recourse to the non-theoretic
form of the spirit, to the practical reason and its postulates, to
provide that certitude of God, of immortality, and of human freedom,
which is not evident to the theoretic reason. But in Kant there are
other positive elements which are not in Jacobi, and these elements,
although not sufficiently elaborated by him and not harmonized with
one another, confer upon his philosophy the value of a new Logic,
more or less sketched. For he recognizes not only a theoretic but
also a practical reason, which cannot be called simply practical, if
it in any way produce (although only under the title of postulates),
knowledge (and knowledge of supreme importance). He recognises also an
æsthetic judgment, which, although developed without concepts, does
not belong to the sphere of practical interests; and a teleological
judgment, which is regulative and not constitutive, but not on this
account arbitrary or without meaning. Finally, the very contradictions,
in which the intellect becomes involved, when it wishes to apply the
categories beyond experience, could not reasonably be considered by
him to be mere errors, because they constitute serious problems, if
the intellect becomes involved in them, not capriciously, but of
_necessity._ All this presages the coming of a new Logic, which shall
set in their places these scattered elements of truth and solve the
contradictions.
[Sidenote: _The a priori synthesis._]
But the Kantian philosophy also contains, in addition to these elements
and these stimulations, the concept of the new Logic in the _a priori_
synthesis. This synthesis is the unity of the necessary and the
contingent, of concept and intuition, of thought and representation,
and consequently is the pure concept, the _concrete_ universal.
[Sidenote: _The intimate contradiction of Kant. Romantic principle and
classical execution._]
Kant was not aware of this; and instead of developing with a mind free
from prejudice the thought of his genius, he also allowed himself
to be vanquished by the abstractionism of his time and out of the
logical and philosophical _a priori_ synthesis he made the more or
less arbitrary _a priori_ synthesis of the sciences. In this way, the
apriority of the intuition led him, not to art, but to mathematics
(transcendental Æsthetic)[14] the apriority of the intellect led
him, not to Philosophy, but to Physics (abstract intellect): hence
the impotence which afflicted that synthesis, when confronted with
philosophic problems. When he discovered the _a priori_ synthesis,
Kant had laid his hand upon a profoundly _romantic_ concept; but his
treatment of it became afterwards _classicist_ and _intellectualist._
The synthesis is the palpitating reality which makes itself and knows
itself in the making: the Kantian philosophy makes it rigid again in
the concepts of the sciences; and it is a philosophy in which the sense
of life, of imagination, of individuality, of history, is almost as
completely absent as in the great systems of the Cartesian period.
Whoever is not aware of this intimate drama and fails to understand
this contradiction; whoever, when confronted with the work of Kant, is
not seized with the need, either of going forward or of going backward,
has not reached the heart of that soul, the centre of that mind. The
old philosophers who condemned Kant as sceptical and as a corrupter of
philosophy, and who confined themselves strictly to Wolfianism and to
scholasticism, and the new who greeted him as a precursor and made of
him a stepping-stone on which to mount higher,--these alone came truly
into contact with Kant's philosophy. For in his case there are but two
alternatives: abhorrence or attraction, loathing or love. In the midst
of a battle one must flee or fight: to sit still and take one's ease is
the attitude of the unconscious and the mad. Certainly it is better to
fight than to flee, but it is better to flee than to sit inactive. He
who flees, saves at least his own skin, or, to abandon metaphor, saves
the old philosophy, which is still something; but the inactive man
loses both life and glory, the old philosophy and the new.
[Sidenote: _Advance upon Kant: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel._]
The new philosophy was that of the three great post-Kantians, Fichte,
Schelling and Hegel. With Fichte, all trace of the thing in itself has
disappeared and the dominating concept is that of the Ego, that is,
of the Spirit, which creates the world by means of the transcendental
imagination and recreates it in thought. In Schelling is found the
concept of the Absolute, the unity of subject and object, which has, as
its instrument, intellectual intuition. In Hegel, there is this same
concept, but it has itself as instrument, that is to say, it is truly
logical. All three are Kantians, but all three (and especially the last
two) are not simply Kantian. They employed elements which Kant ignored
or employed timidly, and in particular the mystical tradition and the
new tendencies of æsthetic and historical thought. Thus they pass
beyond the abstractionism and intellectualism of the Kantian period,
and inaugurate the nineteenth century. They are connected ideally with
Vico (Hamann was the little German Vico), and they enrich him with the
thoughts of Kant.
[Sidenote: _The Logic of Hegel. The concrete concept or Idea._]