concepts and judgments. But what we must absolutely deny is that they
differ in any respect from other concepts and theoretical judgments,
and that they deserve to be distinguished from these as practical and
that they have the future for their object. The future, that which
is not, is not an object of knowledge; the material of the judgment,
whether it concern actions or thoughts, does not alter its logical and
theoretical character; the concepts of modes of action are concepts
neither more nor less than those of modes of thought. With this
negation we at the same time deny the possibility of their interposing
themselves between knowledge and will. Those judgments, far from being
anterior to the will, are posterior to it.
Let us state a simple case and observe the course of analysis on
the lines of the theory here criticized. It is winter-time; I am
cold; there is a wood close by, and I know that by cutting wood one
can light a fire and that fire gives heat: I therefore resolve to
cut wood. According to that theory, the spiritual process would be
expressed in the following chain of propositions: I know the actual
situation, that is to say, that I am cold, that wood gives fire and
fire heat, and that there exists wood that can be cut; I possess the
concept that it is a good thing to provide for the health of the body;
I judge that with heat I shall procure health during the winter, and
that in consequence heat is a good thing and the cutting of wood,
without which I cannot procure heat, is also good. Having made all
these constatations, I set in motion the spring of my will, and I
_will_ to cut the wood.--The process as above described seems real
and controllable by every one; but it is, on the contrary, illusory.
The practical judgment: "I shall act well in cutting the wood" really
means, "I will to cut the wood;" "this is a good thing" really means,
"I will this." I may change my will a moment after, substituting for
this volition one that is different or contrary, that does not matter.
At the moment that I formed that judgment, I must have seen myself
in the volitional attitude of a man cutting wood; the will must have
come first. Otherwise the judgment would never have existed. Given the
first actual situation and its complete expression in the judgment, no
other judgment can arise, if the actual situation do not change and
nothing new supervene. This new thing is always my will, which, when
the situation changes (as in the example, if I walk from the house to
the tree, or if I simply move my body in an imperceptible, manner in
the direction of the action willed), by adding to the actual reality
something that was not there before, provides material for a new
judgment. This judgment is called practical, but it is theoretical,
like the others that precede it; a judgment believed to precede the
volition, whereas in reality it follows it; a judgment believed to
condition a future act of will, whereas it is in reality the past act
of will looking at itself in the glass; a judgment that is not really
practical but _historical._
The illusion that things happen differently is caused by the fact
that we possess judgments concerning our past volitions, which are
afterwards collected into abstract formulæ, such as that "it is well
to cut wood." But, on the one hand, those formulæ and judgments are
in their turn formed from previous volitions, and on the other, those
formulæ do not possess any absolute value in the single and concrete
situation, so that they can be modified and substituted for others that
affirm the opposite. The question is not whether cutting wood has been
as a rule a good thing for me in the past, nor whether I have generally
willed it in the past: the question is to will it at this moment, that
is, to posit the cutting of wood at this moment as a good thing.
[Sidenote: _Posteriority of the practical concepts._]
As is the case with the pretended practical judgments and concepts of
classes formed upon them, so the concepts that they imply, of _things
good, of ideals, of ends, of actions worthy of being willed,_ and so
on, do not precede, but follow the volition that has taken place. These
concepts are the incipient reflection, scientific and philosophical,
upon the spontaneous acts of the will, and we cannot practise science
nor philosophize save about facts that have already taken place: if
the fact do not precede, there can be no theory. Certainly theory
does not do other than seek out the already created and give the
real principles of actions in the form of thought principles, in
the same manner as Logic discovers those principles that live and
operate in logical thought. But since the formula of the principle of
contradiction is not necessary for thinking without contradiction, but
presupposes it, so the concepts of ends, of things good, and of ideals
are not necessary for volitions, but presuppose them.
[Sidenote: _Origin of intellectualist and sentimentalist doctrines._]
The thesis of the will as knowledge draws support from the mistaken
belief in the practical principles and judgments that precede volition,
as also does the proposition that he who knows what is good for him
also wishes it, and that he who does not wish it does not know it.
This thesis is to be inverted, because to know what is good for one
means that one has willed it. From the opposite point of view, the
other thesis, of the impossibility of volition unless _feeling_ be
interposed between what is known and the will, is to be attributed to a
like mistaken belief. Feeling is held to give, as it were, a particular
value to facts, and to cause them to be felt as they should be felt, or
to be changed. The customary merit possessed by theories of feeling is
to be recognized in this thesis: that is to say, it has awakened or
reawakened consciousness of the peculiarity of the practical act in
respect to intellectualistic reductions and identifications. This merit
is not altogether lacking to the general theory of practical judgments
itself. These, although called judgments, were classified differently
to all the others, precisely because they were _practical._
[Sidenote: _The concepts of end and means._]
Having thus shown that it is not true that man first knows the end
and then wills it, it is possible to establish with greater precision
what is to be understood by _end._ The end, then, in universal, is the
concept itself of will. Considered in the single act, as this or that
end, it is nothing but this or that determinate volition. Hence is
also to be derived a better definition of its relation to the _means,_
which it is usual to conceive empirically and erroneously as a part of
volition and action at the service of another part. An act of will is
an infrangible unity and can be taken as divided only for practical
convenience. In the volitional act, all is volition; nothing is means,
and all is end. The means is nothing but the actual situation, from
which the volitional act takes its start, and is in that way really
distinguished from the end. Distinction and unification take place
together, because, as has been remarked, the volition is not the
situation, yet, on the other hand, as the volition, so the situation:
the one varies as a function of the other. Hence the absurdity of
the maxim, that _the end justifies the means._ This maxim is of an
empirical character and has sometimes been employed to justify actions
erroneously held to be unjustifiable, and more often to make pass as
just actions that were unjustifiable. As the end, so the means, but the
means is what is given and has no need of justification. The end is
what has been willed and must be justified in itself.
[Sidenote: _Critique of the end as flan or as fixed design._]
The idea that we generally have of finality is to be eliminated, owing
to the continual changeability of the means, that is, of the actual
situation, which would posit the end as something fixed, as a _plan_
to be carried out. The difference between the finality of man and that
of nature has recently been made to reside in nature: which has seemed
to act upon a plan which she changes, remakes, and accommodates at
every moment, according to contingencies, so that the point of arrival
is not for her predetermined or predeterminable. But the same can be
said of the human will and of its finality. The will too changes at
every moment, as the movement of a swimmer or of an athlete changes
at every moment, according to the motion of the sea or of the rival
athlete, and according to the varying measure or quality of his own
strength in the course of the volitional process. Man acts, case for
case and from instant to instant, realizing his will of every instant,
not that abstract conception which is called a plan. Hence also arises
the confirmation of the belief that there do not exist fixed types and
models of actions. He who seeks and awaits such models and types does
not know how to will. He is without that initiative, that creativeness,
that genius, which is not less indispensable to the practical activity
than to art and philosophy.
[Sidenote: _The will and the unknown._]
It will seem that the will thus becomes will of the unknown and is
at variance in too paradoxical a manner with the sayings, so clearly
evident, that _voluntas quae non fertur in incognitum_ and _ignoti
nulla cupido._ But those sayings are true only so far as they confirm
the fact that without the precedence of the theoretical act, the
practical act does not take place. Apart from this signification, it
should rather be maintained that _noti nulla cupido_ and that _voluntas
non fertur in cognitum._ What is known exists, and it is not possible
to _will the existence_ of what _exists_: the past is not a content
of volition. The will is the will of the unknown, that is to say,
is itself, which, in so far as it wills, does not know itself, and
knows itself only when it has ceased to will. Our surprise when we
come to understand the actions that we have accomplished, is often
not small; we realize that we have not done what we thought we had
done, and have on the contrary done what we had not foreseen. Hence
also the fallacy of the explanations that present volitional man as
surrounded with things that he does or does not will; whereas things,
or rather facts are the mere object of knowledge and cannot be willed
or not willed, as it is unthinkable to will that Alexander the Great
had not existed, or that Babylon had not been conquered. That which is
willed is not _things_ but _changes_ in things, that is to say, the
volitions themselves. This fallacious conception also arises from the
substitution of abstractions and classes of volitions for the real will.
[Sidenote: _Critique of the concept of practical sciences and of a
practical philosophy._]
It is to be observed, finally, that the erroneous concept of a form
of science called the _practical_ or _normative_ has its roots in the
concept of _the end, of the good, of concepts and judgments of value_
as original facts. When practical concepts and judgments, as a special
category of concepts and judgments, have been destroyed, the idea
of a practical and normative science has also been destroyed. For
this reason, the _Philosophy of the practical_ cannot be _practical
philosophy,_ and if it has appeared to constitute an exception
among all philosophies and that above all others it should preserve
a practical and normative function, this has arisen from a verbal
misunderstanding that is most ingenuous and most destructive. For
our part we have striven to dissipate it, even in the title of our
treatise, which, contrary to the usual custom, we have-entitled not
_practical,_ but _of the practical._
[1] Bandello, _Novelle,_ i. 40, intro.
IV
INSEPARABILITY OF ACTION FROM ITS REAL BASE AND PRACTICAL NATURE OF THE
THEORETICAL ERROR
[Sidenote: _Coincidence of intention and volition._]
The connection between the actual situation and will, means and
end having been made clear, no distinction that it may be desired
to establish between general and concrete volition, ideal and real
volition, that is to say between _intention and volition,_ is
acceptable. Intention and volition coincide completely, and that
distinction, generally suggested with the object of justifying the
unjustifiable, is altogether arbitrary in both the forms that it
assumes.
[Sidenote: _Volition in the abstract and in the concrete: critique._]
The first form is that of the distinction between abstract and
concrete, or better, between general and particular. It is maintained,
that we can will the good in the abstract and yet be unable to will
it in the concrete, that we may have good intentions and yet behave
badly. But by our reduction of the thing willed to the volition,
to will the abstract is tantamount to _willing abstractly._ And to
will abstractly is tantamount to _not willing,_ if volition imply a
situation historically determined, from which it arises as an act
equally determined and concrete. Hence, of the two terms of the
pretended distinction, the first, volition of the abstract, disappears,
and the second, concrete volition, which is the true and real volition
and intention, alone remains.
[Sidenote: _Thought volition and real volition: critique._]
The second form abandons, it is true, the abstract for the concrete,
but assumes two different volitional acts in the same concrete: the
one real, arising from the actual situation, the other, thought or
imagined, side by side with the former: this would be the volition,
that the intention. According to such a theory, it is always possible
to _direct the intention,_ that is, the real volition can always join
with the volitional act imagined and produce a nexus, in which the
volition exists in one way, the intention in another; the first bad
and the second good, or the first good and the second bad. Thus the
honourable man approved by the Jesuit, of whom Pascal speaks, although
he desire the death of him from whom he expects an inheritance and
rejoice when it takes place, yet endows his desire with a special
character, believing that what he wishes to attain is the prosperity
of his affairs, not the death of his fellow-creature. Or the same man
may kill the man who has given him a blow; but in so doing he will fix
his thought upon the defence of his honour, not upon the homicide.
Since he is not able to abstain from the action, he at least (they say)
purines the intention. The worst of this is that the real situation,
the only one of which we can take account, is the historical, not the
imaginary situation. In the reality of the consequent volition, it is
not a question of his own prosperity and nothing more, but of his own
prosperity coupled with the death of another, or of false prosperity.
It is not a question of his own honour and nothing more, but of his own
honour in conjunction with the violation of the life of another, that
is, of false honour. Thus the asserted fact of prosperity and honour
is changed into two qualified bad actions, and what was honourable
in the imaginary case, becomes dishonourable in the real case, which
is indeed the only one of which it is question. It is of no use to
imagine a situation that differs from reality, because it is to the
real situation that the intention is directed, not to the other, and
therefore it is not possible to direct, that is to say, to change the
intention, if the actual situation do not change.
The antipathy that has been shown for good-hearted and well-intentioned
men in recent centuries, and for practical doctrines with intention
as their principle (the morality of intention, etc.), arises from the
sophisms that we have here criticized. But since it is henceforward
clear to us that those so-called well-intentioned and good-hearted
people have neither good hearts nor good intentions and are nothing
but hypocrites, and because we do not admit any distinction between
intention and will, we are without fear or antipathy in respect to
the use of the word "intention," understanding it as a synonym for
"volition."
[Sidenote: _Critique of volition with base either unknown or
imperfectly known._]
But it will be said that we have here considered the case, in which,
while the real situation is known, there is a hypocritical pretence
of not knowing it, in order to deceive others and maybe oneself, and
that we have justly here declared that in such a case the will and
the intention were inseparable. But there is another case, in which,
though the situation of affairs be not known, yet it is necessary both
to will and to act at once. Here the concrete will is separated at
the beginning from the intention: the will is what it _can_ be, the
intention is as the action _would wish_ to be.
But this instance is equally or even more inconceivable than the
preceding. It has been clearly established that if we do not know, we
cannot will. Before arriving at a resolution, man tries to see clearly
in and about him, and so long as the search continues, so long as the
doubt is not dissipated, the will remains in suspense. Nothing can
make him resolve, where the elements for coming to a resolution are
wanting; nothing can make him say to himself "I know," when he does not
know; nothing can make him say "it will be as if I knew," because that
"as if I knew" would introduce the arbitrary method into the whole of
knowledge, and would cause universal doubt to take the place of doubt
circumscribed. This would disturb the function of knowledge itself,
against which an act of real felony would be committed. From nothing
nothing is born.
[Sidenote: _Illusions among the cases that are cited._]
There are no exceptions to this law, and those that are adduced can be
only apparent. A man is cautiously descending the dangerous side of
a mountain, covered with ice: will he or will he not place his foot
on that surface, of which he does not and cannot know the resistance?
However, there is no time to be lost: he must go on and take the risk.
It seems evident that in a case like this he wills and operates without
complete knowledge. But the case is not indeed unique or of a special
order: every act of life implies risk of the unknown, and if there were
not in us (as they say) _potestas voluntatem nostram extra limites
intellectus nostri extendendi,_ it would be impossible to move a step,
to lift an arm, or to put into one's mouth a morsel of bread, since
_omnia incerta ac periculis sunt plena._ What must be known in order
to form the volition is not that which we should know if we were in a
situation different from that in which we are (in which case, also,
the volition would be different), but that which we can know in the
situation in which we really find ourselves. The man on the glacier has
neither time nor means to verify the resistance of the surface of the
ice; but since he is obliged to proceed further, he does not act in a
rash, but in a very prudent manner, in putting his foot trustfully on
the ice that may be unfaithful to him. He would be acting rashly if,
having the means and the time, he failed to investigate its resistance,
that is to say, if he were in _another and imaginary situation,_ not
in that real and present situation, in which he finds himself. If I
knew the cards of my adversary, as the cheat knows them, I should
play differently, but it cannot be argued that because, as an honest
player, I know only my own, I am therefore playing inconsiderately: I
am playing as I ought, with the knowledge that I possess, that is, with
full knowledge of the real situation in which I find myself.
With this very simple observation is also solved an old puzzle of
the theory of volition. How does it happen that a man can choose
between two dishes of food at an equal distance and moving in the
same manner,[1] or between two objects altogether identical, offered
for sale to him at the same time, at the same price, by the same
individual? First, we must correct the hypothesis, for as two identical
things do not exist in nature, so the two objects in question and the
two possible actions of the example are not identical.
[1] This was an example used by the Schoolmen and by Dante.
Indeed the refined connoisseur always discovers some difference between
two objects, which to the ignorant, the absent-minded, and the hasty
seem to be the same. The question, then, is not of identical objects
and actions, but of those as in which there is neither time nor mode
(_majora premunt_) of recognizing the difference. For this reason,
therefore, we take no account of this difference, or, as is said,
they are looked upon as equal in this respect. But the _adiophora,_
the indifferent, do not exist, and owing to that abstraction, we do
not take account of other differences that always exist in the real
situation, owing to which my volition becomes concrete in a movement
that causes me to take the object on my right, because (let us suppose)
I am wont to turn to the right, or because, owing to a superstition
that is not less a matter of habit, I prefer the right to the left,
or because, through sympathy due to dignity, I prefer the object that
is offered to me with the right hand to a similar object offered with
the left, which, if only for this reason, is, strictly speaking, not
the same, but different, and so on. These minute circumstances are
absent from consciousness and are not felt by the will, not because
they escape as a rule reflection. If we neglect them in analysis as
non-existent, this always occurs, because we substitute for the real
situation another unreal situation imagined by ourselves. Thus it has
also been remarked, as a proof of the irrationality believed to exist
in our volitions and to be the cause of our acting without precise
knowledge, that no reason nor any theoretic precedent can be adduced
as to why, when fixing legal punishments, or in the application of
sentences, we give forty and not forty-one days' imprisonment, a
hundred lire fine instead of a hundred and one. But here, too, it is
clear that the detailed facts are not wanting, the knowledge of which
causes us to will the punishment to be so and so. This knowledge is
to be found in traditions, in the sympathy that we have for certain
numbers, in the ease with which they can be remembered or calculated,
and so on.--To sum up, man forms the volitional act, not because he
possesses some portentous faculty of extending his will outside the
limits of the intellect, but, on the contrary, because he possesses the
faculty of circumscribing himself within the limits of his intellect
on each occasion and of willing on that basis and within those limits.
That he wills, knowing some things and ignorant of infinite other
things, is indubitable. But this means that he is man and not God,
that he is a finite and not an infinite being, and that the sum of his
historical knowledge is on each occasion human and finite, as is on
each occasion the act of will which he forms upon it. Psychologists
would say that this arises from _narrowness_ of consciousness, but
Goethe, on the contrary, remarked with metaphor more apt and thought
more profound, that the true artist is revealed in _knowing how to
limit himself._ God himself, as it seems, cannot act, save by limiting
himself in finite beings.
[Sidenote: _Impossibility of volition with a false theoretic base._]
If the intention cannot be separated from the volition, because this
belongs to the real and not to the imaginary, and proceeds from
the known and never from the unknown, there yet remains a third
possibility, which is, that the will results differently from the
intention, owing to a _theoretical error_; as when we are said to
err _in good faith_ as to the actual situation, that is, we do not
indeed substitute the unknown for the known, nor do we substitute the
imaginary for the known, but we simply make a mistake in enunciating
the historical judgment to ourselves: intending to perform one action,
we perform on the contrary another.
This third possibility is also an impossibility, because it contradicts
the nature of the theoretical error, which, precisely because it is a
question of error and not of truth, cannot be in its turn theoretical
and must be and is practical, conformably to a theory of error of which
many great thinkers have seen or caught sight and which it is now
fitting to restore and to make clear.
[Sidenote: _Forms of the theoretical error and problem concerning its
nature._]