be able to indicate with precision the principle of the Philosophy
of the practical, and all are more or less convenient _synecdoches,_
for this reason none of those concepts are to be treated as rigorous
concepts. If they be so treated, there is not one of them, however
justified it may seem to be, that is not able to cause rebellions and
has not done so. The type of the dutiful man has been reproached with
being so much preoccupied with duty that he does not really perform
it, because he forgets the impulse of the heart; of the type of the
virtuous man it is said that he, as it were, ceases from being so by
the very fact that virtue becomes in him a profession; of the type of
the honest man, that there is nothing more base than the race of honest
men; of the type of the _pious Aeneas,_ that his piety is egoism; and
in general of all these cases it has been recalled that a little vice
is necessary for virtue, as alloy for metals. Repentance and remorse,
too, although they be highly recommended as means of purification,
have had their detractors; does it not suffice (they say) that an evil
deed has been committed? Must the offence be aggravated by losing
time over it, as though anything could be remedied with sorrowing and
lamentation? But others have replied that, given human iniquity, it is
better to exceed in the matter of remorse than to pass rapidly over
it. Humility has been opposed with the _sume superbiam_ as being more
virile, and with the _laudum immensa cupido_ as being more noble; the
habit of self-tormenting with the _servite domino in laetitia,_ as, on
the other hand, the over-confident has been admonished with that other
not less biblical dictum: _beatus homo qui semper est pavidus._ These
are objections and replies that may all of them have value for the
empirical situations to which they refer; but they have neither truth
nor value in philosophy, for which they are all of them false, because
the distinctions from which they derive are not philosophical. Remorse,
for instance, has a value, not in itself, but as a passage to activity,
without which such passage would not take place; the virtuous habit has
a value, not in itself, but in so far as it is practised and constantly
preserved; duty cannot differ from the aspiration of the soul, and
both cannot differ from the volitional act; confidence is at the same
time trepidation, and humility must be one with the pride of merit. To
sum up, for, the philosopher, the dialectic of the will is all in the
concept of will, with its polarization of good and evil, which is the
actuality and concreteness of that concept.
[1] Rom. vii 19.
[2] Rom. vii.
III
THE VOLITIONAL ACT AND THE PASSIONS
[Sidenote: _The multiplicity of volitions and the struggle for unity._]
If the volitions followed one another, so to speak monadistically,
each one shut up in itself, simple, impenetrable, indecomposible, it
would be impossible to understand the moment that there is in them
of arbitrary choice, of evil, of contradiction. But it is not so.
The individual is solicited simultaneously by many or, more exactly,
by infinite volitions, because the individual is at every moment a
microcosm and in him is reflected the whole cosmos, and he reacts
against the whole cosmos by willing in all directions. This infinity of
volitions that is in every individual, can be proved by a very obvious
fact: by what occurs in the contemplation of works of art, in which
the same individual is able to reconstruct in himself the most various
actions and psychological situations, and to feel himself in turn
mild and sanguinary, austere and voluptuous, Achilles and Thersites.
This would not happen, had he not to some extent in himself the
experience of all these various volitional attitudes. But even if we
wish to restrict ourselves to those volitions that are the most closely
connected with the historical situation, thus limited as well as may
be (every historical situation is in reality a cosmic situation),
restricting ourselves to what are called volitions of the moment, we
have always, if not a chaos, certainly a multiplicity, or at the least
a duality, of volitions. Were the individual to abandon himself to that
chaos, to that multiplicity, to that duality, he would instantly be
lacerated, broken in pieces, destroyed. But he does not abandon himself
to it, for he is an individual, volitional and operating just because
he renounces that feigned richness of the infinite and that pernicious
richness of multiplicity or duality, limiting himself on each occasion
to one single volition, which is the volition corresponding to the
given situation.
[Sidenote: _Multiplicity and unity as bad and good._]
This volition is consequently the result of a struggle in which the
individual drives back all the other infinite volitions, to attach
himself to that one alone which the given situation must and does
arouse in him. And when the given volition does not affirm itself fully
in this struggle, he falls a victim to multiplicity, in which is found
that arbitrary choice attached to a volition which is not the one
that should be willed, which he feels he wills and that he does will
in a way. Hence the will becomes split up in different directions and
contradictory, action not positive but negative, not truly action, but
rather passivity.
The multiplicity of volitions explains then the moment of arbitrary
choice, of evil, in the practical activity. This could be defined as
the _volition that conquers the volitions,_ as its contrary arbitrary
choice is _the contest of volitions with volition._
[Sidenote: _Excluded volitions and the passions or desires._]
The volitions that are driven back on every occasion and excluded, to
make way for the volitional act, are variously denominated in ordinary
speech and by psychologists as _appetites, tendencies, impulses,
affections, wishes, velleities, desires, aspirations, passions._ But,
as is usual with us, we do not intend to compose and defend such
classes in a naturalistic and psychological sense, nor consequently
to distinguish appetite from desire, or affection from passion, with
boundaries that must of necessity be arbitrary and undulating. What is
of real importance is only the distinction and the precise boundary,
not arbitrary but real, between the volition and volitions, or, as we
can now say, the relation between true and proper _volition_ and _the
passions or desires._
[Sidenote: _Passions and desires as possible volitions._]
Passions or desires are and are not volitions: they are not volitions
in respect to the volitional synthesis, which, by excluding, annuls
them as such; they are on the other hand volitions, if considered in
themselves, for they are capable of constituting the centre of new
syntheses in changed conditions. It has been said that we cannot _will
the impossible,_ but that we can perfectly well _desire it._ That is
not exact, because the impossible, the contradictory, cannot even be
the object of desire. No one wishes to find himself at the same moment
in two different places, or to construct a triangle that should be at
the same time a square: and even if such absurd wishes be manifested
in words, the words will be absurd, but the desires will either be
different from what is stated, or they will not exist even as desires.
In a certain aspect all desires are desires of the impossible (and not
only some of them), if, that is to say, we consider them as volitions
that have not been realized and which cannot be realized at that
moment: but from another point of view, they are all possible, and can
indeed be precisely defined as _possible volitions._ This is proved by
their becoming gradually actual as the actual situation changes. If (to
choose a very simple illustration) an individual engaged in a certain
work repel the desire for food and sleep with his volition and action,
that desire is nothing at that point, as actual volition; but it does
not for that reason lose its intrinsic volitional character, for
when the hour for the repast or for sleep has struck, it passes from
possibility to actuality and becomes the will for food and sleep. The
sophism previously criticized, by means of which a bad and unsuccessful
act, that is to say one that is dominated by passion and caprice, is
justified by proving that it has had a legitimate motive and answers to
a good intention, appeals to this character of possibility, possessed
by all desires, and artfully changes it into a character of actuality,
thus substituting for the given the imagined situation.
[Sidenote: _Volition as conflict with the passions._]
The relation that we have defined between volition and passions or
desires explains why the will has often seemed to be nothing but
a conflict with the passions, and life itself a battle (_vivere
militare est,_) and at other times itself nothing but passions. The
will is indeed homogeneous with the passions, and is opposed, not
to the nature of the passions, which is its own nature, but to their
multiplicity. For this reason, it has been said that only passion acts
upon the passions: for the will is a passion among passions. Even
the poet or the philosopher, who frees himself from the passions by
objectifying them and making them material for æsthetic contemplation
or for speculative research, succeeds in so doing, only because he is
able to affirm the passion over the passions: the passion for poetry or
for philosophy.
[Sidenote: _Critique of the freedom of choice._]
We must however beware of enunciating this relation in a false form,
as happens with the theory called _freedom of choice,_ where the will
is conceived as the faculty that chooses one volition from among
others and makes it its own. The will does not choose a volition
(save metaphorically), but so to speak chooses the choice itself, or
makes itself will among the desires which are not will. Nor should
the possible actions that are excluded be looked upon as constituting
a graduation in respect to the spirit, which should will _a_ and not
_b, c, d, e,_ and so on, attributing to them, nevertheless, different
values, which can be symbolized by the declining series of numbers,
passing downward from the will which is 10, to 9, 8, 7, 6, and so on.
In reality, the volitions that are excluded (_b, c, d, e_) have no
actual value, for the very reason that they are excluded. They may
acquire it in other situations different from the one analyzed, but it
is not possible to present the various situations together in one, and
far less to determine them quantitatively and numerically, otherwise
than in a symbolical manner. The propositions that present the will
sometimes as the _strongest_ volition in respect to the passions or
desires, and sometimes as the _weakest_ in respect to the passions,
which seem to be the strongest, that is, according as we consider the
active or the passive moment of the will, its victory or defeat, are
also metaphorical and symbolical.
[Sidenote: _Significance of the so-called precedence of feeling over
the volitional act._]
The relation established receives further light from the generally
admitted theory of the necessary precedence of the _feelings_ as
condition for the volitional act. The volitional act is preceded by a
jostling multiplicity of volitions, by a swarm of passions and desires,
which it dominates; and therefore it may seem that it follows, not
the volition, but something different from the volition, to be called
_feeling._ It is certainly different, but only because it is the
_plural_ of that _singular._ The nature of the passions and desires in
respect to the volitional act has not been clearly elucidated, and
this is another of the reasons that have caused the customary category
of "feeling" to appear and to be retained.
[Sidenote: _Polipathicism and apathicism._]
Finally and always through the established relation, the two opposed
theories concerning the passions are excluded: that which makes the
efficacious explanation of practical life to consist in giving free
course to the passions, holding them all to be sacred as such: this
theory could be called _polipathicism_; the other, which makes it
consist of the eradication and destruction of all the passions, in
order to give place to the exclusive domination of reason, of rational
will, or of the will that really is will, and could therefore be called
_apathicism._
Polipathicism has the defect of not taking account among the passions
of that which is passion _par excellence,_ and which alone becomes
actual, driving away the others: the will. Apathicism naturally
possesses the opposite defect and takes account only of the will,
and therefore not of that either, for the will becomes impotent when
alone, just as in the other case it becomes a chaotic jumble of all the
passions.
[Sidenote: _Erroneousness of both opposed theses._]
Such views as these are so openly unsustainable that they hardly appear
at all in their strictness and purity, in the course of the history of
philosophy, and then fugitively. But it is desirable to be attentive
not to identify the theoretic formulæ given above with the programmes
of certain groups, sects, associations, or individuals who have
verbally proclaimed polipathicism and apathicism, whereas they have
implied something very different, and could not have done otherwise.
Complete polipathicism and complete apathicism could only be attained
by the individual at the cost of disaggregation and annihilation. At
the most, sects, groups, societies, and individuals have been able to
conform to those formulæ as the simple expression of _tendencies;_
or those formulæ are applicable to them by _hyperbole,_ in the
condemnation that it has been held desirable to inflict upon certain
unhealthy tendencies. Certainly there are individuals whose passions
are in such slight control as to suggest the absence of will; they
run after every one of their desires, or leave their soul open to the
onset of the passions that devastate it as the wind and the hail do the
fields. Lorenzo the Magnificent (symbolizing with his wonted finesse
a profoundly philosophical conflict) said to his son Piero, who was
addicted to every pleasure and caprice: "And I never have any wish but
you realize it for yourself."[1] The young rake whose adventures were
sung by De Musset may afford an example of the same disaggregation,
composed of the most violent kind of passions:
Ce n'était pas Rolla qui gouvernait sa vie:
C'étaient ses passions; il les laissait aller,
Comme un pâtre assoupi regarde l'eau couler....
But even in these extreme and typical cases the will and the dominion
of the passions are never altogether absent: otherwise it would be
impossible to live, not only a lifetime, but a day, an hour, a minute.
Thus too on the other hand, no individual, be he ever so apathetic
and ascetic, ever frees himself altogether from the dominion of
the passions and the desires. We read in the life of some saint or
beatified personage, whose name escapes me, how he had attained to so
great a degree of perfection that whatever food he put into his mouth,
he tasted nothing but dry straw. Leaving to specialists the inquiry
as to how a stomach of so slight a capacity for distinguishing one
aliment from another could perform its function, and also as to the
consequences for social productiveness of so strangely perfected an
individual, it is certain that in order to nourish himself and live,
the saint in question must have had the periodical appetite or desire
of straw for his food, if for nothing else. Apathy too is often nothing
but a most violent and tenacious, though disordered, passion for ease.
Activity in any case reasserts itself with the dissolving of apathy,
a state nigh to inertia and to death, when it dissolves _grata vice
veris et Favoni,_ that is, with the appearance of the desires, of those
"suave impulses," those "heart-beats," that pain, and that pleasure,
which Giacomo Leopardi depicted in his _Risorgimento,_ overcome with
astonishment, as though face to face with the mystery of life.
[Sidenote: _Their historical and contingent meanings._]
The formulæ of polipathicism and of apathicism have had other
contingent and historical meanings, but of a positive nature, which
it is fitting to examine, in order to prevent the usual passage, so
fruitful of errors, from philosophical to empirical theses. The return
to the world and to nature, which is one of the characteristics of the
Renaissance and of the Reformation itself; the rights of the passions,
which is one of the traits of Romanticism in its initial period;
neo-paganism, which has given to the Italy of our day its most lofty
poetry in the work of Giosuè Carducci, were each in their turn nothing
but beneficial reactions against the lazy monastic life of the Middle
Ages, against Protestant pedantry, against degenerate Romanticism,
which despised the real world and dreamed of contradictory ideals.
On the other hand, in different times and circumstances, Christian
ascesis, Franciscan poverty, and Puritan strictness were beneficial
reactions. So true is this, that we are wont to unite in our admiration
heroes of abstinence and heroes of the passions, assertors of the
spirit and assertors of the flesh, for all, in different ways, because
in different historical situations, willed always the elevation of
humanity. Every one of those historical manifestations can be and has
been blamed and satirized, but only in its decadence, where it has
exhausted its proper function, and is no longer truly itself, but its
own mask.--The friars of the stories of the sixteenth century are not
the companions of St. Francis, as the indecent Italians of the late
Renaissance are not the active merchants, philologists, and artists who
promoted it, nor is there a greater lack of historical sense than the
transference of the characteristics of the one to the other, as is the
way of vulgar detractors and apologists. One and the same historical
fact (as has been brilliantly said) always shows itself twice: the
first time as _tragedy,_ the second as _comedy._
[Sidenote: _The domination of the passions and the will._]
The cases that we have recorded, which have seemed to represent
unbridled or exhausted passion, possess not a pathological but a
physiological character, in so far as they really consist of a
domination, a volitional synthesis, which conquers and contains
divergent and ruinous passions. And with this we have answered the
question as to whether or no the passions can be dominated, and whether
man be slave or free. We can dominate them, and in that domination is
life; if we do not dominate them, we advance to meet death; to dominate
or not to dominate them are the very poles of the will, positive and
negative, and we cannot think of the one as being abolished without
thinking of the other as also abolished.
But the labour of dominating them is hard, as all life, "sweet life,"
is hard. The passions, driven back and restrained again and again by
the will, yet rage within us, tumultuous, though conquered. We tear
out the cumbersome plants, but not their roots and seeds. The man who
considers himself hardened to the trials of life, still feels and
suffers: the man who seems calm is yet always agitated within. As the
labour that is called physical deposits poison at the base of the
organism; so does the labour called spiritual in the depths of the
soul. Hence the bitterness in those men who have willed and laboured
much; hence their _cupio dissolvi,_ their aspiration for that bourne
where all is peace. The poet sublimely imagines old Luther, after his
victories, in the midst of the people awakened by him to a new life:
Yet with a backward look, he sighed:
Call me, O God, to thee, for I am tired,
Nor without malediction can I pray!
[1] L. Domenichi, _Della scelta de motti, burle et facetie_ (Firenze,
1566), p. 14.
IV
VOLITIONAL HABITS AND THE INDIVIDUALITY
[Sidenote: _Passions and states of the soul._]
Just because the passions are possible volitions and therefore
always have a definite content, it is no slight error on the part
of writers of treatises, to consider joy and sorrow, enthusiasm and
depression, content and discontent, tranquillity and remorse, and
other antithetical couples, as passions. These couples are empirical
concepts constructed upon the dialectical distinction of freedom and
anti-freedom, of good and evil; but the groups of the passions must on
the contrary be empirical concepts formed upon the basis of the varying
determination of the volitional activity, according to _objects,_ that
is to say, in its _particular_ determinations. Thus we can talk of the
passion for celebrity, for science, for art, for politics, for riches,
for luxury, for women, for the country, for the city, for sport, for
fishing, and so on, with infinite subdivisions and complications.
[Sidenote: _Passions understood as volitional habits._]
The distinction usually drawn between the affections, the impulses,
the desires on the one hand and the passions on the other, is on the
contrary justified, though it always has an empirical character; these
being considered, not as the single and instantaneous desire or impulse
that prompts to a single action, but as an inclination or habit of
wishing and of willing in a certain direction. In this sense, passion
would be a generic concept (always empirical), which could be divided
(empirically) into the classes of the virtues and vices; for virtue
is nothing but the passion or habit of rational actions, and vice the
contrary.
[Sidenote: _Their importance._]
These passions and volitional habits are not rigidly fixed, for nothing
in the field of facts is rigidly fixed. As the bed of the river
regulates the course of the river and is at the same time continuously
modified by it, so is it with the passions and volitional acts, which
reality keeps forming and modifying, and in modifying, forms anew
and in forming modifies. For this reason there is always something
arbitrary in defining habits as though they corresponded to a distinct
and limited reality; and for this reason the concepts of them are
arbitrary and empirical. Habits are not categories, nor do they give
rise to distinct concepts; but they are the like in the unlike,
unlike, itself also, in itself, although discernible in a certain way
from other groups of dissimilar facts. Their importance is great,
because they constitute, as it were, the bony structure of the body of
reality. In them _individuality_ understood as an empirical concept,
has its foundation, for which, if it be not substance, neither is it a
complex of casually divergent states.
[Sidenote: _The control of the passions in so far as they are
volitional habits._]
The nature of the passions as volitional habits to be both fixed and
mobile, that is to say, only relatively fixed and relatively mobile,
is the principle that aids the solution of several much-debated and
certainly important questions of the Philosophy of the practical. And
in the first place, the passions being understood as habits, the answer
to the question as to whether or no they can be controlled, and if the
answer be in the affirmative, then in what limits, receives a somewhat
different meaning, which explains the interest which that question
has always aroused. Nothing, in fact, removes our consciousness of
freedom and personality in so brutal a manner and makes us feel our
impotence and misery in so depressing a way, as to find ourselves with
our good intention and action hardly begun, face to face with the
unchained forces of our passions and of the habits that oppose it,
which drown with their deafening clamour the weak and timid voice of
the incipient action, vex it with their arrogance, and drag it along
paths well known and abhorred. We fall then into mistrust and baseness,
believe ourselves lost for ever; freedom and will seem to be fables
for the adornment of sermons and the books of moralists. The sage who
recalls to man the absolute empire that he possesses over his passions
and exhorts him never to be troubled and to repeat the twenty or
four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, so that the spirit may have
time to recuperate its strength, to resist and to conquer, seems to
utter the insipid babble of one who has never truly loved and hated,
and to measure the full and overflowing souls of others on the model of
his own empty or almost empty soul. We laugh freely at the "short legs"
of ideals and good intentions, and read again with satisfaction not
undiluted with bitterness, some little story like Voltaire's _Memnon ou
la sagesse humaine,_ which bears as motto the very appropriate epigraph:
Nous tromper dans nos entreprises,
C'est à quoi nous sommes sujets:
Le matin je fais des projets,
Et le long du jour des sottises;
or at the most they conclude that there is no way to free oneself from
a bad passion save with another one equally bad, from a vice with a
vice, "as from a plank we pluck with nail a nail."
[Sidenote: _Difficulty and reality of dominating them._]