back to himself, such a thief or assassin will regret and be ashamed of his incoherence; his remorse will not be due to having done wrong, but to not having done wrong; it is therefore economic, not moral, since the latter is excluded by hypothesis. But since a lively moral consciousness is generally found among the majority of men and its total absence is a rare and perhaps non-existent monstrosity, it may be admitted that morality, in general, coincides with economicity in the conduct of life.

economic and

There need be no fear lest the parallelism that we The merely support should introduce afresh into science the category the error of of the morally indifferent, of that which is in truth action the morally indifferent. and volition, but is neither moral nor immoral; the category in short of the licit and of the permissible, which has always been the cause or reflexion of ethical corruption, as was the case with Jesuitical morality, which it dominated. It remains quite certain that indifferent moral actions do not exist, because moral activity pervades and must pervade every least volitional movement of man. But far from upsetting the established parallelism, this confirms it. Are there by any chance intuitions which science and the intellect do not pervade and analyse, resolving them into universal concepts, or changing them into historical affirmations? We have already seen that true science, philosophy, knows no external limits which bar its way, as happens with the so-called natural sciences. Science and morality entirely dominate, the one the æsthetic intuitions, the other the economic volitions of man, although neither of them can appear in the concrete, save the one in the intuitive, the other in the economic form.

utilitarianism

This combined identity and difference of the useful Criticism of and the moral, of the economic and the ethical, explains and the reform the success at the present time and formerly of the of Ethics and of Economics. utilitarian theory of Ethics. Indeed it is easy to discover and to illustrate a utilitarian side in every moral action ; as it is easy to reveal the æsthetic side in every logical proposition. The criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot begin by denying this truth and seeking out absurd and

Phenomenon

activity.

non-existent examples of useless moral actions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as the concrete form of morality, which consists in this, that it is inside this form. Utilitarians do not see this inside. This is not the place for the fuller development that such ideas deserve. Ethics and Economics cannot however fail to be gainers (as we have said of Logic and Esthetic) by a more exact determination of the relations that exist between them. Economic science is now rising to the activistical concept of the useful, as it attempts to surpass the mathematical phase in which it is still entangled; a phase which was in its turn a progress when it superseded historicism, or the confusion of the theoretical with the historical, and destroyed a number of capricious distinctions and false economic theories. With this conception, it will be easy on the one hand to absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pure economics, and on the other, by the introduction of successive complications and additions, to effect a transition from the philosophical to the empirical or naturalistic method and thus to embrace the particular theories expounded in the so-called political or national economy of the schools.

As æsthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or and noumenon nature, and the philosophic concept the noumenon or in practical spirit; so the economic activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and the moral activity the noumenon or spirit. The spirit which wills itself, its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will for the true self is absolute freedom.

VIII

EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS

In this summary sketch that we have given of the entire The system of philosophy of the spirit in its fundamental moments, the the spirit. spirit is thus conceived as consisting of four moments or degrees, disposed in such a way that the theoretical activity is to the practical as the first theoretical degree is to the second theoretical, and the first practical degree to the second practical. The four moments imply one another regressively by their concreteness. The concept cannot exist without expression, the useful without both and morality without the three preceding degrees. If the æsthetic fact is in a certain sense alone independent while the others are more or less dependent, then the logical is the least dependent and the moral will the most. Moral intention acts on given theoretic bases, with which it cannot dispense, unless we are willing to accept that absurd procedure known to the Jesuits as direction of intention, in which people pretend to themselves not to know what they know only too well.

If the forms of human activity are four, four also The forms of are the forms of genius. Men endowed with genius in genius. art, in science, and in moral will or heroes, have always been recognized. But the genius of pure economicity has met with repugnance. It is not altogether without reason that a category of bad geniuses or of geniuses of evil has been created. The practical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rational end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. To dispute as to whether the word “genius

Non-existence

of activity.

Law; sociability.

should be applied only to creators of æsthetic expression or also to men of scientific research and of action would be a mere question of words. To observe, on the other hand, that "genius," of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conception and an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already been explained as regards artistic genius.

A fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. It of a fifth form would be easy to show how all the other forms either do not possess the character of activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined, or are complex and derivative facts, in which the various activities are mingled, and are filled with particular and contingent

contents.

The juridical fact, for example, considered as what is called objective law, is derived both from the economic and from the logical activities. Law is a rule, a formula (whether oral or written matters little here) in which is fixed an economic relation willed by an individual or by a community, and this economic side at once unites it with and distinguishes it from moral activity. Take another example. Sociology (among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is sometimes conceived as the study of an original element, which is called sociability. Now what is it that distinguishes sociability, or the relations which are developed in a meeting of men, and not in a meeting of sub-human beings, if it be not just the various spiritual activities which exist among the former and which are supposed not to exist, or to exist only in a rudimentary degree, among the latter? Sociability, then, far from being an original, simple, irreducible conception, is very complex and complicated. A proof of this would be the impossibility, generally recognized, of enunciating a single law which could be described as purely sociological. Those that are improperly so called are shown to be either empirical historical observations, or spiritual laws, that is to say judgements into which the conceptions of the spiritual activities are translated, when they are not simply empty

and indeterminate generalities, like the so-called law of evolution. Sometimes, too, nothing more is understood by "sociability" than "social rule," and so law; thus confounding sociology with the science or theory of law itself. Law, sociability, and similar concepts, are to be dealt with in a mode analogous to that employed by us in the consideration and analysis of historicity and technique.

It may seem that religious activity should be judged Religion. otherwise. But religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differ from its other forms and sub-forms. For it is in turn either the expression of practical aspirations and ideals (religious ideals), or historical narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma).

It can therefore be maintained with equal truth either that religion is destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, or that it is always present there. Their religion was the whole intellectual patrimony of primitive peoples our intellectual patrimony is our religion. The content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and become better and more refined in the future also; but its form is always the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion by those who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activity of man, with his art, with his criticism and with his philosophy. It is impossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge, such as religion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved it. Catholicism, which is always consistent, will not tolerate a Science, a History, an Ethics, in contradiction to its views and doctrines. The rationalists are less coherent: they are disposed to allow a little space in their souls for a religion in contradiction with their whole theoretic world.

The religious affectations and weaknesses prevalent among the rationalists of our time have their origin in the superstitious worship so recklessly lavished upon the natural sciences. We know ourselves and their chief representatives admit that these sciences are all surrounded by limits. Science having been wrongly identi