Part 26

The last-mentioned case occurs frequently in books that bear the title of Philosophy of history. These certainly cannot be considered to have been refuted when the concept of that science has been refuted. Science is one thing and the book another. The error of a false attempt at science is one thing and the value of books, which usually (especially with great thinkers and writers) have deeper motives and more valuable parts, is another. Among books upon the philosophy of history are numbered some masterpieces of human genius,--fountains of truth, at which many generations have quenched their thirst and to which men return perpetually. They have often indeed been marvellous books on history, true history, produced by reaction against superficial, partisan or trifling histories. They have for the first time revealed the true character of certain epochs, of certain events, of certain individuals.[1] The sterile form of duality and opposition between Philosophy of history and simple History, concealed the fruitful polemic of a better history against a worse history. Even the formulae, which were falsely regarded as deductions of concepts (for example, that the Middle Ages are the negation of antiquity and the Renaissance the negation of the Middle Ages, or that the Germanic spirit, from the Reformation to the Romantic movement, is the affirmation of inward liberty, or that Italy of the fifteenth century represents Art, France the State, and so on), were at bottom vivacious expressions of predominant characteristics, by means of which the various epochs and events were portrayed. These expressions and truths could be accepted without there being any necessity for presupposing clear and fixed oppositions and distinctions, or for denying the extra-temporality of spiritual forms. Besides these historical characteristics, discoveries more strictly philosophical appeared for the first time in those books; hence not only do we find in them the first outlines of a Logic of historical science (a Logic of the individual judgment), but also, sometimes in imaginative forms, determinations of eternal aspects of the Spirit, which had previously been unknown or ill-known. Such is the case with the concept of _progress_ and _providence,_ and of that other concept concerning the spiritual autonomy of _language_ and of _art,_ which presented itself for the first time as the discovery of the historical epoch, in which man, wholly sense and imagination, without intelligible genera and concepts, is supposed to have spoken and poetized without reasoning. In an equally imaginary fashion the constancy of the spirit, which eternally repeats itself, also found in those philosophies the formula of the perpetual _passing_ away and returning of the various epochs of civilization. These philosophical truths, like the historical characteristics, must be purged, the first from the representations improperly united with them, the second from the logical character which they wrongly assumed. But they cannot be discarded, unless we are willing to throw away the gold, through our unwillingness to have the trouble of separating it from the dross. And this necessity for purification further confirms the error of the philosophism, since it is the purification of Philosophy and of History from the Philosophy of History.

[Sidenote: _Philosophy of nature._]

Another manifestation of the philosophism, somewhat different from the preceding, is the science which assumes the name of _Philosophy_ of _nature._ Here it is claimed to deduce, not the historical facts themselves, but the general concepts, which constitute the natural sciences. The philosophy of nature can be considered as the converse error to the empiricist error, which claims to induce philosophic categories _a posteriori,_ whereas this claims to deduce empirical concepts _a priori._

[Sidenote: _Its substantial identity with the Philosophy of history._]

But the theoretic content of empirical concepts and of the natural sciences is, as we know, nothing but perception and history. So that, in the final analysis, the Philosophy of nature can be reduced to the Philosophy of history (extended to so-called inferior or subhuman reality), making, like the other, the vain attempt to produce in the void what thought can produce only in the concrete, that is to say, by synthesizing. And that it tends to become a Philosophy of history is also to be seen from its not infrequent hesitances before abstract concepts, or mathematical science, sometimes declaring that the pure abstractions of the intellect must remain such and are not otherwise deducible and capable of being philosophized about. The Philosophy of nature has usually been extended to the field of the physical and natural sciences, including also some parts of mechanics. But it has refused to undertake the deduction of the theorems of geometry and still more the operations of the Calculus.

[Sidenote: _The contradictions of the Philosophy of nature._]

The Philosophy of nature, like the Philosophy of history, has abounded in declarations of the necessity of the historical and empirical method. It has recognized that the physical and natural sciences are its antecedent and presupposition and that it continues and completes their work. But it is not permitted to complete this work because this work extends to infinity. And it would not be able to continue it, save by turning itself into physics and natural sciences, working as these do in laboratories, observing, classifying, and making laws (legislating). Now the Philosophy of nature does not wish to adopt such a procedure, but to introduce a new method into the study of nature. And since a new method and a new science are the same thing, it does not wish to be a continuation of physics and of the natural sciences, but a new science. And since a new science implies a new object, it wishes to give a new object, which is precisely the _philosophic idea of nature._ This philosophic idea of nature would therefore be constructed by a method which would not and could not have anything in common with that of the empirical sciences. Yet the Philosophy of nature is not able to dispense with the empirical concepts, which it strives to deduce _a priori._ And here lies the contradictoriness of its undertaking. The dilemma which confronted the Philosophy of history must be repeated in this case also:--either it has to continue the work of the physical and natural sciences, and in this case there will be progress in the physical and natural sciences and not in the Philosophy of nature; or it has to construct the Philosophy of nature (the physical and natural sciences); and this cannot be done, save by an _a priori_ deduction of the empirical and thus falling into the error of panlogism or philosophism.

[Sidenote: _False analogies in the Philosophy of nature._]

The Philosophy of nature, like that of history, expresses itself in false analogies. It will say, for instance, that the poles of the magnet are the opposed moments of the concept, made extrinsic and appearing in space; or that light is the ideality of nature; or that magnetism corresponds to length, electricity to breadth and gravity to volume; or again (like more ancient philosophers), that water, or fire, or sulphur, or mercury, is the essence of all natural facts. But these phenomena which are given as essences, those classes of natural facts which are given as moments of the concept and of the spirit, are no longer either scientific phenomena, or the concepts and spiritual forms of philosophy. The first are intuitions and not categories; the second categories and not intuitions; and just because they are so clearly distinguished from one another they mutually mingle in the _a priori_ synthesis. On the other hand, the concepts of the Philosophy of nature are categories, which as such present themselves in their emptiness as intuitions, and intuitions, which in their blindness present themselves as categories. These thoughts are contradictory. They can be _spoken,_ or rather _tittered,_ because it is possible to combine phonetically contradictory propositions, but it is impossible to think them. Such combinations by their ingenuity often give rise to surprise or astonishment. But mental satisfaction is never obtained from them merely because the mind is excited and deluded. On the other hand, the Philosophy of nature, in this labour of ingenuity, runs against limits, which even ingenuity cannot overcome. Then are heard affirmations, which amount to open confessions of the impossibility of the task. Of this sort is the assertion that nature contains the contingent and the irrational and therefore is incapable of complete rationalization; or that nature in its self-externality is impotent to achieve the concept and the spirit. In like manner. Philosophies of history end by confessing that there are facts which are told and are not deduced, because they are small, contingent and fortuitous matter for chronicle. Thus, after having announced in the programme the rationality of nature and of history, they recognize in the execution of the programme that the contrary is true. They simply deny the rationality of the world, because they cannot bring themselves to deny the rationality of the pseudo-sciences of philosophism.

[Sidenote: _Works entitled Philosophy of nature._]

Finally, the reservations made in the case of works dealing with the Philosophy of history are to be repeated for those dealing with the Philosophy of nature. In them, too, there is something more than, and something different from, the sterile analogical exercises that we have mentioned. Some of the philosophers of nature, in the pursuit of their illusions, have made occasional scientific discoveries, in the same way that the alchemists seeking the philosopher's stone made discoveries in Chemistry. Those discoveries in physical and natural science cannot serve to increase the value of the theory of the Philosophy of nature any more than those made in chemistry increased the value of alchemy. But they confer value on the books entitled Philosophy of nature, and do honour to their authors as physicists, not as metaphysicians. From the philosophical point of view, those works have had the merit of affirming, though but in imaginative and symbolical ways, the unity and spirituality of nature, opening the path to its unification with the history of man. They have the yet greater merit of contributing effectively in the battle engaged by them against the sciences of making clear the empirical character of the naturalistic concepts and the abstract character of the mathematical. Nevertheless, they drew illegitimate conclusions from such gnoseological truth and carried on a war of conquest, which must be held to be unjust. In virtue of the positive elements that they contain, works on the Philosophy of nature have aided the advance both of the sciences and of philosophy, which in their properly philosophico-naturalistic parts they have violated and debased and forced into hybrid unions.

[Sidenote: _Contemporary demands for a Philosophy of nature and their various meanings._]

In our day demands for a Philosophy of history are rare and received with scant favour; but it seems that those for a Philosophy of nature are again acquiring vigour. On seeking the inward meaning of this fact, it is seen that on the one hand many of those who demand a Philosophy of nature are empiricists, desirous of a natural science elaborated into a philosophy, and therefore not properly of a Philosophy of nature, but of a view of the natural sciences that may supplant philosophy. Other upholders of a Philosophy of nature echo the only programme of such a philosophy, as it was formulated especially by Schelling and by Hegel, but declare themselves altogether dissatisfied with the attempts to carry it out made by Schelling, by Hegel and by the followers of both. They are dissatisfied, but incapable of setting their dissatisfaction at rest by a new attempt at carrying out the programme. They are also without the intellectual courage necessary to question and to re--examine the solidity of the programme itself, which is in their judgment plausible and guaranteed by such great names. For what indeed is more plausible upon first inspection than the affirmation that the empirical sciences must be elevated to the rank of philosophy? It seems that too much mental liberty is needed to understand and to distinguish from the preceding, the somewhat different proposition that empiricism (empirical philosophy) must certainly be elevated to the rank of non-empirical philosophy, but that the _empirical sciences_ must be left in peace to their own methods, without any attempt to render perfect by means of extrinsic additions that which has in itself all the perfection of which it is capable. It seems that more intelligence than is usually met with is necessary in order to recognize that this last proposition does not establish a _dualism_ of spirit and nature, of philosophy and the natural sciences, but for ever destroys every dualism by making of the natural sciences a merely practical formation of the spirit, which has no voice in the assembly of the philosophical sciences, as the object which it has created has no reality. An ultimate tendency can be discerned in the complex movement of the day toward a Philosophy of nature. This is the attainment of the consciousness that reality is on this side of the classifications of the natural sciences, and that the natural sciences must be retranslated into _history,_ by means of a historical consideration (concrete and not abstract) of the facts that are called natural. But this tendency is not something that will attain its end in a near or in a distant future. It has always shown its value and shows it also to-day; it can be recommended and promoted, but neither more nor less than every other legitimate form of spiritual activity can be recommended and promoted. Classifications are classifications; and what man really seeks out, what continually enriches the empirical sciences, is always the history of nature,--the series of facts, which, as we know, can be distinguished only in an empirical manner from the history of man, and which along with this constitutes _History_ without genitive or adjective; history, which cannot even be strictly called history of the spirit, for the Spirit is, itself, History.

[Footnote 1: See my _Essay on Hegel,_ chap. ix. (_What is living, etc., of Hegel,_ tr. D. Ainslie).]

IV

MYTHOLOGISM

[Sidenote: _Rupture of the unity of the synthesis a priori. Mythologism._]

When by the severance of subject from predicate, of history from philosophy, the mutilated subject is given as predicate, mutilated history as philosophy, and consequently a false predicate is posited, which predicate is an abstract subject and therefore mere representation; when this happens, there occurs the opposite error to that which we have just particularly examined. That was called philosophism; this might be called historicism; but since this last term has usually been employed to indicate a form of positivism, it will be more convenient to call it _mythologism._

The process of this error (somewhat abstruse in the way that we have stated it) becomes clear at once in virtue of the name that has been assigned to it. Every one has examples of myths present in his memory. Let us take the myths of Uranus and Gæa, of the seven days of creation, of the earthly Paradise, and of Prometheus, of Danaë, or of Niobe. Every one is ready to say of a scientific theory which introduces causes not demonstrable either in the experience or in thought, that it is not theory, but mythology, not concept, but myth.

[Sidenote: _Essence of the myth._]

What then is it that is called myth? It is certainly not a simple poetic and artistic fancy. The myth contains an affirmation or logical judgment, and precisely for this reason may be considered a hybrid affirmation, half fanciful and erroneous. If it has been confused with art, it is not so much a false doctrine of the myth that should be blamed, as a false æsthetic doctrine, which we have already refuted, and which fails to recognize the original and ingenuous character of art. On the other hand, the logical affirmation does not stand to the myth as something extrinsic, as in the case of a fable or image put forward to express a given concept, where the difference of the two terms and the arbitrariness of the relation between them declares itself more or less openly. In this case there is not myth, but _allegory._ In myth, on the contrary, the concept is not separated from the representation, indeed it is throughout penetrated by it. Yet the compenetration is not effected in a logical manner, as in the singular judgment and in the _a priori_ synthesis. The compenetration is obtained capriciously, yet it gives itself out as necessary and logical. For instance, it is desired to explain how sky and earth were formed, how sea and rivers, plants and animals, men and language arose; and behold, we are given as explanations, the stories of the marriage of Uranus and Gæa, and the birth of Chronos and of the other Titans; or the story of a God Creator, who successively drew all things out of chaos in seven days, and made man of clay and taught him the names of things. It is desired to explain the origin of human civilization, and the tale is told of Prometheus, who steals fire and instructs men in the arts; or of Adam and Eve, who eat the forbidden fruit, and driven from the earthly Paradise are forced to till the ground and bathe it with their sweat. It is desired to explain the astronomical phenomena of dawn or of winter, and the story is told of Phœbus, who pursues Daphne, or of the same god who slays one after the other the sons of Niobe. These naturalistic interpretations may pass as examples, however contested and antiquated they may be. In place of the concepts which should illuminate single facts, we are given representations. Hence are derived what we have called false predicates. Philosophy becomes a little anecdote, a novelette, a story; history too becomes a story and ceases to be history, because it lacks the logical element necessary for its constitution. The true philosophic doctrine in the preceding cases, for example, will be that of an immanent spirit, of which stars and sky, earth and sea, plants and animals, constitute the contingent manifestations; the doctrine which looks upon the consciousness of good and evil and the necessity for work, not as the result of a theft made from the gods or of a violation of one of their commands, but as eternal categories of reality; and which regards language, not as the teaching of men by a god, but as an essential determination of humanity, or indeed of spirituality, which is not truly, if it does not express itself. They will also, if we like, be the philosophic doctrines of materialism and of evolutionism; but these, in order to be accepted as philosophic, must prove, like the preceding, that they do not substitute representations for concepts and are strictly founded upon thought and employ its method, that is to say, that they are philosophy and not mythology. For this reason, in philosophical criticism, adverse philosophies often accuse one another of being more or less mythological, and we hear of the mythology of _atoms,_ the mythology of _chance,_ the mythology of _ether,_ of the _two substances,_ of _monads,_ of the _blind will,_ of the _Unconscious,_ or, if you like, of the mythology of the _immanent Spirit._

[Sidenote: _Problems concerning the theory of myth._]

The particular treatment of all the problems that concern the myth does not belong to this place, where it was important solely to determine the proper nature of that spiritual formation. It is customary, for instance, to distinguish between _myth_ and _legend,_ attributing the first name to stories of universal content, and the second to stories with an individual and historical content. This partition is analogous to that between philosophy in the strict sense and history, and as such, though it possesses no little practical importance, it is without philosophic value, because, as has been remarked, in myth the universal becomes history and history becomes legend. Nor is it only legend of the past, but it extends even to the future, and thus appear _apocalypses,_ the legend of the _Millennium,_ and _eschatology._ Again, myths are usually distinguished as _physical_ and _ethical,_ and this division is in turn analogous to that between the philosophy of the external world and the philosophy of the internal world, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of the spirit, and stands or falls with it. So that by this criticism we can solve the disputes as to whether physical myths precede ethical or inversely, whether the origin of myth is or is not anthropomorphic, and the like.

[Sidenote: _Myth and religion. Identity of the two spiritual formations._]

But the myth can assume another name, which makes yet clearer the knowledge of the logical error of which the analysis has been given: the name of _religion._ Mythologism is the _religious error._ Against this thesis various objections have been brought, such as that religion is not theoretical but practical, and has therefore nothing to do with myth; or that it is something _sui generis,_ or that it is not exhausted in the myth, since it consists of the complex of all the activities of the human spirit. But against these objections it must above all be maintained that religion is a theoretic fact, since there is no religion _without affirmation._ The practical activity, however noble it may be held, is always an operating, a doing, a producing, and to that extent is mute and alogical. It will be said that that affirmation is _sui generis_ and goes beyond the limits of human science. This is most true, if by science we understand the empirical sciences; but it is not true, if by human science we understand philosophy, since philosophy also goes beyond or is outside the limits of the empirical sciences. It will be said that every religion is founded upon a _revelation,_ whereas philosophy does not admit of other revelation than that which the spirit makes to itself as thought. That too is most true; but the revelation of religion, in so far as it is not that of the spirit as thought, expresses precisely the logical contradiction of mythologism: the affirmation of the universal as mere representation, and this asserted as a universal truth on the strength of a contingent fact, a communication which ought to be proved and thought, whereas on the contrary it is taken capriciously, as a principle of proof and as equivalent or superior to an act of thought. The theory of religion as a mixture hardly merits refutation, since that complex of the activities of the spirit is a metaphor of the spirit in its totality; that is to say, it gives not a theory of religion, but a new name of the spirit itself,--the object of philosophic speculation.

[Sidenote: _Religion and philosophy._]