Part 12

The traditional reply is, on the other hand, that existence, in the judgment of existence, is not a predicate, but a knowledge _sui generis,_ sometimes called a knowledge of _position,_ sometimes an act of belief, or _faith;_ two determinations, which are reducible to a single one. Because, if being is conceived as external to the human spirit, and knowledge as separable from its object, so much so that the object could be without being known, it is evident that the existence of the object becomes a position, or something placed before the spirit, given to the spirit, extraneous to it, which the spirit would never appropriate to itself unless it were courageously to swallow the bitter mouthful with an irrational act of faith. But all the philosophy which we are now developing demonstrates that there is nothing external to the spirit, and therefore there are no positions opposed to it. These very conceptions of something external, mechanical, natural, have shown themselves to be conceptions, not of external positions, but of positions of the spirit itself, which creates the so-called external, because it suits it to do so, as it suits it to annul this creation, when it is no longer of use. On the other hand, it has never been possible to discover in the circle of the spirit that mysterious and unqualifiable faculty called _faith,_ which is said to be an intuition that intuites the universal, or a thinking of the universal, without the logical process of thought. All that has been called faith has revealed itself step by step as an act of knowledge or of will, as a theoretic or as a practical form of the spirit.

There is therefore no doubt that existence, if it be something that is affirmed or denied, cannot be anything but a predicate; it can only be asked what sort of predicate it is, that is to say, what is the precise content or concept of existence, and this has already been indicated or at least sketched in the preceding explications. Objections have been made to the conceptual and predicative character of existence, such as that which maintains that if it were a predicate it would be necessary in the judgment "A is" to be able to think the two terms--A and existence--separately, whereas in the thought of A, A is already existentialized. But these objections show themselves to be sophistical; because outside the judgment A is not thinkable, but only representable, and therefore without existentiality, which predicate it only acquires in the act of judgment.

[Sidenote: _Absurd consequences of those doctrines._]

For the rest, the difficulties that befall those who conceive existentiality in the individual judgment as something _sui generis,_ are illustrated by the theory to which they find themselves led, of a double kind of judgment, the existential and the categorical, without their being able to justify this duality. This is at bottom the most apparent manifestation of their more or less unconscious _metaphysical dualism,_ which assumes an object external to the spirit, and makes the spirit apprehend it with an _act of faith_ and afterwards reason about it with an act of _thought._ Why not always continue with an act of faith? Or why not also extend the act of thought to the initial judgment? We have either to continue upon the same path, or to change it altogether--this is the dilemma which imposes itself here.

[Sidenote: _The predicate of existence as not sufficing to constitute a judgment._]

But in rejecting the double form of the individual judgment, the one existential, the other categorical, and in resolving both into the single form, which is the categorical by making existence a predicate among predicates, we must also explain for what reason (in reply to the third of the questions into which we have divided the treatment of existentiality) we now say that the predicate of existence does not suffice to constitute the judgment. How can it fail to suffice? If I say that "Peter is," or that "The Ægean is," have I not before me a perfect judgment? and is it not simply a judgment of existence? But here, too, we must repeat: _cave_; beware of the deceptions of verbalism; think of things, not of words. The judgments adduced as an example are so little judgments of existence that in them we speak of the "Ægean" and of "Peter," and since we speak of them, it is clear that we know that the Ægean, for example, is a sea, and what a sea is, and so on; that Peter is a man, and a man made in this or that way, an Italian and not a Bushman, thirty years old and not a month, and so on. The merely representative element cannot be found in the judgment by fixing it in a word, which, in so far as it forms part of the judgment, is, like all the rest, penetrated with logical character; and when we say that "Peter" is the subject and is representation, and "existing" is the predicate, we speak in a general sort of way and almost symbolically. If we are looking for the formula of the merely existential judgment in relation to a representation, that is, of a judgment which leaves the representation free from all other predicate save that of existence, such a formula could only be _"Something is."_ But upon mature consideration this formula would no longer be an individual judgment, since every logical transfiguration of the individual and every individual determination of the universal would not have been excluded: it would correspond neither more nor less than to a judgment of definition which asserts that "something" (something in general, indeterminate) "is" or that "reality is."

[Sidenote: _The predicate of judgment as the totality of the concept._]

But our theory concerning the indispensability of other predicates in constituting the judgment is not to be understood as an affirmation of the necessity that any _other_ predicate of any sort should be _added_ to the predicate of existence, nor even that _all the others possible_ should be added to it. In the first case, we shall always have an unjustifiable duality of predicates: that of existence and that necessary for essentializing and completing the judgment; in the second, duality would certainly be avoided, since to constitute the judgment all the predicates would be necessary, without their distinction into a double order, and all would be qualitative predicates; but there would remain the idea of a successive addition of predicates. Granted this idea, it is impossible ever to understand what those acts would be, by which the first, or also the second, or also the third predicate, and so on, should be attributed, without yet attaining in such attributions the full totality of truth. They are representations no longer; and not yet judgments: they are then something insufficient and one-sided, whose existence could not be admitted save arbitrarily (as in Psychology), and which, therefore, would be inadmissible in Philosophy. It therefore only remains to conclude that in the judgment, all possible predicates are _given in one act_ alone; that is, that the subject is predicated as existence, and for this very reason determined in a particular way; determined in a particular way, and for this very reason, as existence.

In other words, the concept which is predicated in the individual judgment is not and cannot be a fœtus or a sketch of a concept; but is the whole concept, in its indivisible unity, as universal, particular and singular. And if existence seem to be a first predicate, the reason lies perhaps in this, that the concept of existence as actuality and action, and in its distinction from mere possibility, is perhaps the fundamental concept of the real, although on the other hand it is not truly thinkable save as determined in the particular forms of reality; hence that first predicate is first only in so far as it contains the last, that is to say, is neither last nor first, but the whole. To explain these statements is in any case, as has been said, the task of the whole of Philosophy, not of Logic alone, which here, as elsewhere, must rest satisfied with demonstrating the point that most closely concerns it; that is to say, the impossibility of separating from one another in the judgment, the predicates necessary for the determination of the reality of the fact, the absence of any one of which renders the judgment itself impossible.

[Footnote 1: See the _Philosophy of the Practical,_ pt. i. sect. ii. ch. 6.]

VI

THE INDIVIDUAL PSEUDOCONCEPTS. CLASSIFICATION AND ENUMERATION

[Sidenote: _Individual pseudojudgments._]

As pseudoconcepts imitate pure concepts and the corresponding judgments of definition, so by means of them are imitated pure individual judgments, and spiritual formations are obtained, which can be conveniently called _individual pseudojudgments._

[Sidenote: _Their practical character._]

The character of these pseudojudgments, like that of the pseudoconcepts, is not cognitive, but practical and more properly mnemonic. Fixing our attention upon certain examples of such judgments, if we say of an animal: "It is a squirrel," or "It is a platyrrhine monkey"; if we say of a house: "This house is thirty metres high and forty wide"; if of a painting we say: "The _Transfiguration_ is a sacred picture," or "The _Danaë_ is a mythological picture"; or if of a literary work we say, "The _Promessi Sposi_ is a historical romance";--what have we learned as to the true nature of the _Promessi Sposi,_ of the _Transfiguration,_ of the _Danaë,_ of that house and of those animals? Upon close consideration, nothing at all. The animals have been put into one or another compartment or glass case, decorated with a name which might also be different from what it is, as the compartment and the glass case might also be different; the house has been compared in respect of its dimensions to other houses or to an object arbitrarily assumed as the unit of measurement, which is the metre, but which might be the foot, the palm, and so on; the two pictures and the literary work have been looked at from the visual angle of an arbitrary character, such as the mythological, religious or historical subject. As to what they truly are, as to how all these things came to be and to live, and as to their relation with other things and with the Whole, we have been silent. Their _value,_ as it is called, remains unknown.

[Sidenote: _Genesis of the distinction between judgments of fact and judgments of value; and criticism of them._]

This lack of all determination as to value, which is characteristic of individual pseudoconcepts, gives support to the distinction between judgments of _fact_ (as individual pseudojudgments are sometimes called) and judgments of _value;_ a distinction which makes evident the further need of supplying the spirit with what the first judgments do not give, that is to say, with the meaning or value of things. But since the individual pseudojudgments are not for us what they boast themselves to be, judgments of fact, we have no need to complete them with judgments of value; which would thus be themselves arbitrary (that is to say, conceived extrinsically to the determination of fact). True individual judgments are pure, and in them the universal penetrates the individual and the determination of value coincides with that of fact. In pseudojudgments there takes place no such penetration, but only the mechanical _application_ of a predicate to a subject; so much so, that here is a true occasion for employing words which signify an extrinsic placing side by side, a reunion, combination or aggregation of subject with predicate.

[Sidenote: _Importance of the individual pseudojudgments._]

Having made this clear, it is superfluous to repeat that we do not intend to remove, or even to attenuate, the due importance of individual pseudojudgments, as we did not remove or attenuate that of pseudoconcepts, when we defined them for what they are. And how can we deny their importance, if each one of us create and employ them at every instant, if each one of us strive to keep in order as best he can the patrimony of his own knowledge? It is easier for a student to work without notes and memoranda than for any one not to make use of individual pseudojudgments. If I pass mentally in review the material that must go to form the history of Italian painting or literature, I must of necessity arrange it in works of greater or less importance, in plays and novels, in sacred pictures and landscapes, and so on; save when I wish to understand those facts historically, and then I must abandon those divisions. I must abandon them during that act of comprehension; but I must immediately resume them, if I wish to give the result of my historical research; and in this exposition it will be impossible for me to avoid saying that Manzoni, after having composed _five sacred hymns_ and _two tragedies,_ set to work upon a historical _romance_; or that _landscape painting_ was developed in the seventeenth century. These words are necessary instruments for swift understanding, and only a philosophical pedant could propose to expel them. In like manner, if I wish to buy a house, I shall visit several houses and arrange them in memory, according to the situation, their arrangement, their size and other characteristics, all formulated in pseudojudgments. I shall have to abandon all of these in the act of choice, for then the house that I shall choose will possess one only characteristic: that of being the one that suits my wants, that is to say, the one _that pleases me._ But I shall again have to employ those abstract characteristics, in my conversation with the person who sells it to me and in the contract that I make; there I shall speak, not only of my will and pleasure, but also of a house thirty metres high and forty wide, and so on. The same must be said of the squirrels and platyrrhine monkeys, which I cannot contrive to see in a museum or zoological garden, unless I describe them in that way; and I shall continue so to describe them, although those abstract characteristics have no definite value, either in permitting me to describe those animals with accuracy, or in making me understand their meaning in the universe, or in the history of the cosmos.

[Sidenote: _Empirical individual judgments and abstract individual judgments._]

But in proceeding further to determine the differential characteristics presented by pseudojudgments in contrast with individual judgments, it is necessary to consider them according to the double form, empirical and abstract, assumed by pseudoconcepts, thus distinguishing them as empirical individual judgments and abstract individual judgments.

[Sidenote: _Process of formation of empirical judgments._]

In comparing empirical individual judgments with pure individual judgments--for example, "The _Transfiguration_ is a sacred picture," an empirical judgment, and "The _Transfiguration_ is an æsthetic work," a pure judgment--the first thing to note is that the empirical individual judgment presupposes the pure individual judgment. We already know that pseudoconcepts, empirical or abstract, presuppose the idea of the pure concept; but that idea does not suffice for the formation of determinate empirical concepts, which can be employed as predicates of empirical judgments. We must not only think effectively these or those pure concepts, but they must be translated into individual judgments. Were this not so, where would empirical concepts obtain their material? Before the judgment: "The _Transfiguration_ is a sacred picture," can be pronounced, we must first have the empirical concept of "sacred picture." Now this empirical concept (setting aside the fact that it presupposes other empirical concepts which we do not here take into account, because they would complicate the problem without aiding the solution that we wish to give) presupposes in its turn the pure concept of "æsthetic work"; and it is only when a certain number, more or less large, of artistic works have been recognized as such, that is, when pure individual judgments concerning them have been formed, that we can abstract the characteristics and pass to the formation of the pseudoconcepts: sacred, historical, mythological pictures, landscapes, and so on. Having obtained these, then, and only then when we stand before an æsthetic work, for example, the _Transfiguration,_ and formulate again the pure individual judgment which recognizes it as such ("The _Transfiguration_ is an æsthetic work"), are we enabled finally to apply the pseudoconcept and to pronounce the empirical judgment: "The _Transfiguration_ is a sacred picture."

[Sidenote: _Its foundation in existence._]

The consequence of the process here recognized as to the manner in which individual empirical judgments are formed, and in virtue of which they have pure judgments as their base, is that empirical judgments also in the last analysis are based upon the concept of existentiality. Pseudoconcepts of possibility are not formed, because possibilities are infinite, and it would be vain, or of no mnemonic use, to fix types of them. When, as sometimes occurs, such types seem to be formed outside of all existence, their appearance serves, not a mnemonic purpose, but a purpose of research. This is the case with hypotheses and with other provisional methods of thought. But the empirical judgment is related to the individual or existential judgment, and it also employs pseudoconcepts of existential origin. For this reason, when giving examples of judgments of existence in the preceding chapter, we availed ourselves without scruple of empirical judgments also; for these obey the same law in relation to existentiality. "This animal is a monkey" implies, not only the existence of the animal taken as subject of the judgment; but also of that class of animals, of which the character has been abstracted, and the complex of characteristics which under the name of a monkey fulfil the function of predicate. An animal that does not exist and a class of animals that does not exist are not reducible to subject and predicate, and do not give rise to judgment of any sort.

[Sidenote: _Dependence of empirical judgments upon pure judgments._]

Another consequence is that empirical concepts and judgments are continually originated and modified by pure individual judgments. The object of empirical concepts and judgments is to maintain the possession and the easy use of our knowledge; and this with no other end than that of serving as base for our actions, and thus also as a means of attaining new knowledge. New knowledge is expressed in new pure individual judgments, which in their turn supply material for the elaboration of new empirical concepts and judgments. In this way empirical concepts and judgments must be and continually are renewed, by being dipped in the waters of pure individual judgments, true judgments of reality. From these waters they issue forth with youth renewed. If they do not do this, the worse for them: they fall ill, waste away and die. Given a rapid and profound revolution of thought, or, as it is also called, a transvaluation of all the values of life and reality, we should also have at once a no less rapid and profound transformation of all the empirical concepts and judgments previously possessed and employed. But this is continually occurring in the life of the spirit, if not in cataclysmic form, then in a more modest way. For example, who now employs the empirical concept of phlogiston, or forms judgments based upon it, now that we no longer admit the existence of that element, which was at one time believed to be separated from combustible bodies in the act of combustion? Who now says (save in jest) that such and such a syllogism is in _bramantip_ or in _fresison,_ or that a certain part of a speech is an _ornatum_ or a _hypotyposis,_ now that we no longer believe the facts upon which such concepts of the old Logic and Rhetoric were based? Who still distinguishes human destinies according to the _conjunctions_ of the stars that presided at birth, as was done when astrology was believed?

[Sidenote: _Empirical judgments as classification._]

The empirical judgment, in so far as it applies a predicate to a subject supplied by the pure individual judgment, makes that subject _enter_ that predicate, which is a _type_ or _class_; and therefore it _classifies_ the subjects of individual judgments. Thus we may also call empirical judgments, judgments of _classification._ This explains why the judgment has sometimes been considered to be nothing but a relation of subordination: for the empirical judgment does indeed subordinate a representation (which has first been logically determined by the individual judgment) to an empirical concept; that is, it places it in a class.

[Sidenote: _Classification and intelligence._]

_Classification_ is an essential function, for the reasons already given, which it would be useless to repeat; but to classify is not to _realize intellectually,_ to understand, to grasp, to comprehend. If therefore, in life, we disapprove of those unmethodical people who detest classification, we do not disapprove any the less of the perpetual classifiers, who content themselves with arranging things in classes, when on the contrary the needful thing is to penetrate their nature and peculiar value. It is a very common error to believe that something has been thoroughly understood and every problem relating to it completely solved, when it has simply been put into a drawer, that is, into a class. Thus in the not distant past, instead of establishing whether the _Promessi Sposi_ were or were not an æsthetic work, and what movement of the spirit it represents, it was considered to be the duty of criticism to enquire whether that book were a romance or a novel, a historical or didactic romance, a historical representation of persons or of environment, and so on. The zoologist too, instead of studying the history and transformations of animals, their life and habits, limited himself to adding a rare specimen to a variety, or a variety to a subspecies, or a subspecies to a species, and believed that by so doing he had completely fulfilled the function of science.

[Sidenote: _Interchange of the two, and genesis of perceptive and judicial illusions._]