evidently something of which a man can avail himself or not; and
is therefore the result of a law that is merely permissive. ...
The permission is not expressly given by the law and is deduced by
interpretation from its limitation. And the limitation of a law
is shown by the fact of its being something conditioned. It is not
absolutely apparent, therefore, that a permissive law which commands in
an unconditioned manner and therefore extends to all, can be deduced
from the moral law."[48]
[Sidenote: _Schleiermacher._]
What was a mere mention in Fichte became an ample demonstration in the
celebrated memoir of Schleiermacher, _On the Concept of the Licit_
(1826), which resolutely drove the licit out of the field of Ethic,
by demonstrating its altogether juridical nature: "The original seat
of this concept cannot be the domain of Ethic, in which it is not
admissible: it appertains to the domain of law and of positive law; and
there is something originally licit in civil life, precisely in this
sense that there is something half-way between what is commanded and
what is forbidden, the proper object of law."[49]
[Sidenote: _Rosmini._]
Rosmini, owing to having ignored this origin of the lawful, proceeded
to divide human actions into four classes: the prohibited, the
licit, the commanded, and the superogatory; the last three were all
innocent, but the licit was simply innocent, while the commanded and
the superogatory were also furnished with moral value. Hence arose
grave errors in his Ethic and in his Philosophy of law and definitions
that it is impossible to grasp, such as the following relating to
superogatory actions: "The obligatory consists in preserving the moral
order, but the superogatory consists in preserving the said order in
a more excellent and perfect manner, with fuller, more frequent, and
more ardent acts of the will. These second not only preserve the moral
order, but augment it, almost creating a part of it themselves with
their activity; they make themselves not only followers of the good,
but authors of the good itself." Rosmini also considered that the
posing of the question of probabilitism represented progress in Ethic;
that is, upon "what man should do, if he found himself in doubt as
to performing or omitting to perform an action." But the solution of
the question that he gave on his account amounted (be it said to his
honour) to the annihilation of legalism, since for him a doubtful law
does not oblige when it is positive Rights, but it does oblige when
it is moral law, that is, when there is a fear of offending against
the supreme and necessary law, which wills absolutely to be always
fulfilled.[50] In other terms, the true practical law is never (even
when it appears to be so) positive law; and the concept of law, which
always has a positive meaning, is extraneous to Ethic and to the
Philosophy of the practical: a result to which Rosmini does not attain,
or at least is not conscious of attaining.
[1] See above, pp. 286, 287.
[2] _Krit. d. rein. Vern._ (ed. Kirchmann), p. 572.
[3] Lasson, _System der Rechtsphilosophie_ (Berlin, 1882), p. 2.
[4] _Gorgias,_ 476-478.
[5] _Eth. Nicom._ 3, v. c. 1-2.
[6] _Ibid._ v. c. 7, 9; _Magna Moralia,_ i. c. 34.
[7] _De repudi,_ iii. c. 22; _De legibus,_ ii. c. 5.
[8] _De imo univ. jur. princ._ §§41, 43, 86.
[9] _Fundamenta juris nat. et gentium_ (1705).
[10] Windelband, _Geschichte d. Phil._ p. 424.
[11] _Gründl. d. Naturr._ (1796), append., sect. I.
[12] _Metaphys. d. Sitten,_ 1797 (ed. Kirchmann), pp. 31-35.
[13] _Gründl, d. Naturr._ pt. i. sect. 1.
[14] Spinoza, _Tract, pol._ c. 6, § 3; Fichte, _System d. Sittenlehre,_
§ 18 _in fine._
[15] _Phil. d. Rechts,_ passim, concerning force and violence, §§ 3,
57, 94.
[16] _Op. cit._§ 158, _sqq._ 161, 258.
[17] _Werke,_ I., p. 371.
[18] _Allg. prakt. Phil._ pp. 48, 126-128.
[19] _Werke,_ i. 441-445; cf. v. 259-260.
[20] _Fil. d. diritto_ (Napoli, 1844), i. 20-21, 88-89, 94-97.
[21] _Saggio teor. d. dir. nat._ (Palermo, 1857), _in princ._
[22] Stahl, _Rechts-u. Staatslehre_² (Heidelberg, 1845), b. ii. ch. I;
Ahrens, _Naturr._ (It. tr., Napoli, 1860), i. 219 _sq._; Trendelenburg,
_Naturrecht auf d. Grunde d. Ethik_ (Leipzig, 1860).
[23] Kirchmann, _Begr. d. Rechtes u. d. Moral_² (Berlin, 1873), pp.
107114; see Jhering, _Der Zweck i. Reckt_ (i.2, 1883; ii.3, 1886).
[24] Lasson, _op. cit.;_ Steinthal, _Allg. Ethik_ (Berlin, 1885), pp.
135-8; Schuppe, _Ethik u. Rechtsphil._ (Breslau, 1881), pp. 283-4;
Wundt, _Ethik_² (Stuttgart, 1892),.p. 565 _sq._; Cohen, _Ethik d.
reinen Willens_ (Berlin, 1904), p. 567.
[25] Rümelin, _Reden u. Aufsätze,_ new series (Freiburg i. B., 1881),
p. 342; Jellinek, _Allgemeine Staatslehre_ (Berlin, 1900), p. 302
_sq.;_ Stammler, _Lehre v. richtig. Rechte_ (Berlin, 1902); Duguit,
_L'État, le droit objectif et la loi positive_ (Paris, 1901); Fouillée,
_L'Idée moderne du droit en Allem., en Angl. et en France_ (Paris,
1876); Miraglia, _Fil. d. dir._ (Napoli, 1903), p. 80; Vanni, _Lez. d.
fil. d. dir._ (Bologna, 1904), pp. 113-114.
[26] Rümelin, _op. cit._ pp. 176-202. Cp. Lasson, p. 215 _sq._
[27] _Op. cit._ p. 22. Cf. Bergbohm, _Jurisprudenz u.
Rechtsphilosophie_ (Leipzig, 1892), i. 141-147 _n._
[28] _Mem._ i. 2. 40 _sq._
[29] _Eth. Nicom._ Bk. v, c. II.
[30] _Œuvres,_ edit. Assézat et Tourneux, v. (Paris, Gamier, 1875), pp.
307-8.
[31] _Woldemar,_ passim.
[32] _Werke,_ i. 52 _sq.;_ xvi. 21 _sq._
[33] _Phil. d. Rechts,_ sect. II. _passim;_ cf. pp. 150, 153.
[34] _Op. cit._ § 268, _Zus._
[35] An ample exposition of such doctrines is to be found in E.
Zoccoli, _De Anarchia,_ Turin, 1907.
[36] _La Lotta pel diritto,_ It. tr., Milan, 1875.
[37] _La Lotta per la scienza del diritto_ (It. tr., Palermo, 1908);
cf. _Critica,_ vi. pp. 199-201.
[38] _Metaphys. d. Sitt._ p. 40.
[39] _Woldemar,_ pp. in, 416, and _passim._
[40] Bierling, _Juristische Prinzipienlehre_ (Freiburg i. B., 1894-98,
2 vols.).
[41] Sidgwick, _History of Ethics,_ London, 1892, p. III _sq._
[42] A. Bonucci, _La derogabilità del diritto naturale nella
Scolastica,_ Perugia, 1906.
[43] Hist. remarks in dissert., _De casuisticae theologiae originibus,
locis atque praestantia_ (together with De Ligorio, _Theol. mor.,_ ed.
cit., pp. xxiv-lxxvi).
[44] In _Theol. mor._ i. 10-24.
[45] Cathrein, _Moralphilosophie, 4_ i. 428-437.
[46] _Probabilismus vindicatus_ (Freiburg, Bk. i., 1906).
[47] See above, p. 405; cf. also _Krit. d. rein. Vern._ pp. 10-11 _n._
[48] _Gründl. d. Naturr._ introd. § iii. _n._
[49] _Werke,_ sect, iii., vol. ii., pp. 418-445; cf. G. Mayer, _Die
Lehre vom Erlaubten in der Gesch. d. Ethik seit Schleiermacher,_
Leipzig, 1899.
[50] _Compendio di Etica,_ pp. 48, 96, 284-285.
CONCLUSION
[Sidenote: _The Philosophy of the Spirit as the whole of Philosophy._]
With the Philosophy of the practical terminates the exposition that
we had proposed to give of the Philosophy of the Spirit; and the
exposition of the whole of Philosophy also terminates, because the
Spirit is the whole of Reality.
Here at the end, this proposition has no need of such proof or
verification as is customary in calculation. Because the proof
of Philosophy is intrinsic to it and consists of the reciprocal
confronting of the development of thought and its demands, between
the System and Logic. And Logic, as we know, if it be in a certain
sense the whole of Philosophy (philosophy in brief or in idea or in
potentiality), is also a part among the parts of the philosophical
system; so that the confrontation of the System and of Logic, of
thought in act and thought in idea, between thought and the thought
of thought, has been continuously present and active in the course of
the exposition, and the coincidence of the two processes and their
confluence into one has been clearly demonstrated.
[Sidenote: _Correspondence between Logic and System._]
Logic affirms the thinkability of the real and the inconceivability
of any limit that could be put to thought, of every excogitation of
the unknowable. And Philosophy, examining every part of the real,
has not found any place in which to lodge the unknowable in thought.
Logic posits as the ideal of the concept, that it should be universal
and not general, concrete and not abstract; that it should be pure
of intuitions such as those of mathematics and differ from them in
being necessary and not conventional; fruitful in intuitions like
those of the empirical sciences, but differing from them by its
infinite fecundity which dominates every possible manifestation of
the real. And the system has effectively shown that this desideratum
of Logic is not a chimæra and that the Spirit is indeed that concept
which corresponds to the ideal of the concept: there is nothing that
is not a manifestation of the Spirit (an effectual manifestation,
not conventional or metaphorical). Logic, rejecting all dualism or
pluralism, wills that the philosophical concept shall be a unique
concept or of the One, and does not suffer heterogeneous concepts
at its side. And the system has confirmed that the concept of the
Spirit alone fulfils the logical condition of the concept; and that
the concept of Nature, far from being a concept of something real, is
the hypostasis of a manner of elaborating reality, not philosophical
but practical; thus the concept itself of Nature, in so far as it is
effectual, is nothing but the product of a function of the Spirit.
On the other hand, the Logic of the idea of the concept deduces
that it must be a synthesis of itself and of its opposite. For its
opposite, far from being heterogeneous and different, is flesh of the
flesh and blood of the blood of the concept itself, as negation is of
affirmation. And the system has led us before the Spirit or Reality as
development, which is the true reality of the real and synthesis of
opposites. Logic deduces that the concept is synthesis of itself and
of the distinct from itself, of the universal and of the individual,
and that therefore Philosophy must flow into History, and mediate its
comprehension. And the system shows the capacity of its principles for
interpreting the complex reality of History, and above all the history
of philosophy itself, by solving its problems. Logic does not admit
other distinctions of the concept than those that are the outcome
of its own nature, such as the relations of subject-object and of
individual-universal; and the system has confirmed these distinctions,
duplicating itself as Philosophy of knowledge and Philosophy of action,
of theory and of practice; subdividing itself as to the first, into
Æsthetic and Logic; as to the second, into Economic and Ethic. And
since the demand of the concept has been entirely satisfied, when these
divisions have been exhausted, we have not found the possibility of new
subdivisions, for example into various æsthetic or into various ethical
categories among the particular sub-forms of the Spirit.
[Sidenote: _Dissatisfaction at the end of every system, and its
irrational motive._]
Some are seized as with a sense of dissatisfaction and delusion when
they arrive at the end of the philosophical system and at the result
that there is no reality save the Spirit and no other Philosophy save
the Philosophy of the Spirit; and they do not wish to resign themselves
to accepting that and nothing else as Reality, although obliged to do
so by logical necessity. A world beyond which there is no other seems
to them poor indeed; an immanent Spirit, trammelled and far inferior
by comparison with a transcendental Spirit, an omnipotent God outside
the world; a Reality penetrable by thought, less poetical than one
surrounded with mystery; the vague and indeterminate, more beautiful
than the precise and determined. But we know that they are involved in
a psychological illusion, similar to his who should dream of an art
so sublime that every work of art really existing would by comparison
appear contemptible; and the dreamer of this turbid dream, should not
succeed in achieving a single verse. Impotent are those poets most
refined; impotent those insatiable philosophers.
[Sidenote: _Rational motive: the inexhaustibility of Life and of
Philosophy._]
But precisely because we know the genesis of their psychological
illusion, we know that there is in it (and there could not fail to be)
an element of truth. The infinite, inexhaustible by the thought of
the individual, is Reality itself, which ever creates new forms; Life
is the true mystery, not because impenetrable by thought, but because
thought penetrates it to the infinite with power equal to its own. And
since every moment, however beautiful, would become ugly, were we to
dwell in it, so would life become ugly, were it ever to linger in one
of its contingent forms. And because Philosophy, not less than Art, is
conditioned by Life, so no particular philosophical system can ever
contain in itself all the philosophable; no philosophical system is
_definite,_ because Life itself is never _definite._ A philosophical
system solves a group of problems historically given and prepares the
conditions for the posing of other problems, that is, of new systems.
Thus it has always been and thus it will always be.
In such a sense, Truth is always surrounded with mystery, an ascending
to ever higher heights, which are without a summit, as Life is without
a summit. At the end of one of his researches every philosopher just
perceives the uncertain outlines of another, which he himself, or he
who comes after him, will achieve. And with this _modesty,_ which is of
the nature of things themselves, not my personal sentiment; with this
modesty, which is also confidence that I have not thought in vain, I
bring my work to a conclusion, offering it to the well disposed as an
_instrument of labour._
THE END