Part 21

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legend, attributing the first name to stories of universal content, and the second to stories with an individual and historical content.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.

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.

Since then, religion is identical with myth, and since myth is not distinguishable from philosophy by any positive character, but only as false philosophy from true philosophy and as error from the truth which rectifies and contains it, we must affirm that religion, in so far as it is truth, is identical with philosophy, or as can also be said, that philosophy is the true religion. All ancient and modern thought about religions, which have always been dissolved in philosophies, leads to this result. And since philosophy coincides with history, and religion and the history of religion are the same, and myth and religion are strictly speaking indistinguishable, we can see very well the vanity of the attempt that is being made beneath our eyes to preserve a religion or mythological truth side by side with a history of religions, which on the contrary is supposed to be practised with complete mental freedom and with an entirely critical method. This, which is one of the tendencies of so-called modernism, is condemned as contradictory and illogical, by philosophy not less than by the Catholic Church. The history of religions is an integral part of the history of philosophy, and as inseparable from it as error from the history of truth.

When religion does not dissolve into philosophy and wishes to persist together with it, or to substitute itself for philosophy, it reveals itself as effective error; that is to say, as an arbitrary attempt against truth, due to habit, feelings and individual passions. But the destiny of every form of error is to be unable to persist before the light of truth. Hence the constant change of tactics and the passage of every error into the error from which it had at first wished to disassociate itself, or into which it did not mean to fall. Thus æstheticism, dislodged from its positions, takes refuge in those of empiricism; and empiricism either descends again into pure sensationalism and æstheticism, or becomes volatilized in mysticism. Thus (to stop at the case we have before us) mythologism, which intends to be the opposite of philosophism and to work with blind fancy instead of with empty concepts, is obliged in order to save itself from the attacks of criticism to have recourse to philosophism; and religion is then called theology. Theology is philosophism, because it works with concepts which are empty of all historical and empirical content. Myth becomes dogma; the myth of the expulsion from Paradise becomes the dogma of original sin; the myth of the son of God becomes the dogma of the incarnation and of the Trinity. Nor must it be thought that for its part philosophism does not accomplish the opposite transition. Every philosophy of nature ends by appearing as a mythology of nature, every philosophy of history as an apocalypse. Sometimes even a sort of revelation occurs in them, and we often find that the unthinkable connections of concepts constituting those pseudo-philosophies are obtained and comprehended in virtue of second sight, as the result of a mental illumination, which is the prerogative of but a few privileged persons. Finally, philosophism and mythologism embrace one another and fall embracing into empiricism and into the other forms of error previously described.

This perpetual transition from one form of error to another gives rise to a scepsis, which promotes the reciprocal dissolution of errors, and scorning illusions and confusions, throws their mental vacuity into clear light. Such a scepsis fulfils an important function. The lies of æstheticism, mathematicism, philosophism, mythologism, cannot resist it. Their little wordy strongholds are broken into; the shadows are dispersed. Especially against mythologism, which in a certain sense may be called the most complete negation of thought, a scepsis is helpful; and owing to the resistance offered here more than elsewhere, by passions and interests, it often takes the form of violent satire. The last great epoch of this strife is what is called the Aufklärung, Encyclopedism or Voltaireism, and was directed against Christianity, especially in its Catholic form. We must make so many reservations in what follows concerning the enlightened Encyclopedist and Voltairean attitude, that here we feel obliged to indicate explicitly its serious and fruitful side.

DUALISM, SCEPTICISM AND MYSTICISM

Total scepticism can be reached only through dualism, which, in addition to being a particular error in a given philosophic problem, is a logical error, consisting in the attempt to affirm two methods of truth at the same time--the philosophic method and the non-philosophic method, however the second of these be afterwards determined. Such an error would not be error but supreme truth, if the various methods were given each its due post (which is what has been attempted in this Logic); but it becomes error when the various methods are made philosophical and placed alongside the philosophical. This is the error of those conciliatory people, who, unwilling to seek out where reason stands, admit that reason is operative in all of them, and divide the kingdom of truth amongst all in equal parts. Thus arise those logical doctrines which demand for the solution of philosophic problems, the successive or contemporaneous application of the naturalistic method, of mathematics, of historical research, and so on. At the least they demand the combination of the naturalistic method (empiricism) with the speculative and the use of what they call the double criterion of teleology and causality, or of double causality. To the question, what is reality, they reply with two methods and consequently offer two concurrent and parallel realities. Beneath the appearance of treatment and solution, they abandon the philosophic problem. Instead of conceiving, they describe, and description is given as concept, and concept as description: hence the justifiable intervention of the scepsis.

But the scepsis, which clears the ground of all forms of erroneous logical affirmation, is the negation of error and consequently the negativity of negativity. The negativity of negativity is affirmation, and for this reason, the true scepsis, like every true negation, always contains a positive content in the negative verbal form, which can be also verbally developed as such. If this positive content, instead of being developed, is choked in the bud, if instead of negation, which is also affirmation, a mere negation is given,--an abstract negation, which destroys without constructing, and if this negation claims to pass as truth, the final form of error is obtained, which is no longer called scepsis, but scepticism.

Scepticism is the proclamation of mystery made in the name of thought;--a definition the contradictoriness of which leaps to the eye. It is mortally wounded both by the ancient dilemma against scepticism and by the cogito of Descartes. Nevertheless, since a singular tenderness for the idea of mystery seems to have invaded the contemporary world, it is desirable to leave open no loophole whatever for misunderstanding. The mystery is life itself, which is an eternal problem for thought; but this problem would not even be a problem, if thought did not eternally solve it. For this reason, both those who consider mystery to be definitely penetrated by thought and those who consider it impenetrable are equally wrong. The first we already know: they are the philosophists who reduce reality to pure terms of abstract thought, by breaking up the a priori synthesis and by neglecting the historical element, which is ever new and ever assuming forms not determinable a priori. Thus, they claim to shut up the world for ever in one single act (maybe in some particular philosophic system). Through their excessive love of the infinite they make it finite; the sun and the earth and all the stars, the historical forms of life, and what is called human life, which has been known for some thousands of years, are transformed by them into categories of thought, solidified and made eternal. This conception, which appears (at least as a tendency) in certain parts of the Hegelian philosophy, is narrow and suffocating. The spirit is superior to all its manifestations hitherto known, and its power is infinite. It will never be able to surpass itself, that is to say, its eternal categories, just as God (according to the best theological doctrines) could destroy heaven and earth, but not the true and the good, which are his very essence; yet the spirit is able to surpass, and actually does surpass, its every contingent incarnation. The world, which is abstractly assumed to be more or less constant, is all in movement and becoming. Those who will be raised up to think it will know what worlds will issue from this world of ours. That we cannot know, for we must think this world which exists at our moment, and must act on the basis of it.

But if the philosophers incur the guilt of arrogance, the sceptics, who affirm a mystery, that is to say, that reality is impenetrable to thought, fall under the accusation of cowardice. These, when faced with the problems of the real (soluble, we repeat, by the very fact that they are problems), avoid the hard work of dominating and penetrating them, and think it convenient to wrap themselves in abstract negation and to affirm that mystery is. There is mystery, without doubt; and this means that there is a problem, something that invokes the light of thought. And it is a beautiful solution which these mysterious ones and sceptics offer, for it consists in stating the problem and leaving it untouched. In the same way, when a man asks for help, we might claim to have given it to him when we had noticed his request. Charity consists in hastening to render effective aid, not in noting that aid has been asked for and then turning the back. To think is to break up the mystery and to solve the problem, not simply to recognize that there is a problem and a mystery, and to renounce seeking the solution as though it had already been given and the matter settled by that recognition.

It seems strange that it should be necessary to explain these elementary concepts; yet in our time it is necessary, so much have those concepts been darkened for historical reasons, which it would take long to expound here, and which can all of them be summarized as due to a certain moral weakening. And it may be opportune here to give a warning (since we are dealing with a theme that belongs to the elementary school of philosophy) that to inculcate the courage to confront and to solve the problem and to conquer the mystery, is not to counsel the neglect of difficulties, or superficiality and arrogance. Mysteries are covered and must continually be covered by their own shadows; problems torment and must torment, yet it is only through these shadows and by means of those torments that we attain to momentary repose in the true; and only thus does repose not become sloth, but the restoration of our forces to resume the eternal journey. Superficiality, arrogance, neglect of difficulties, belong to the sceptics who deafen themselves with words and contrive to live at their ease in their abstract negation. True thinkers suffer, but do not flee from pain. "Et iterum ecce turbatio (groans St. Anselm amid the anxious vicissitudes of his meditations), ecce iterum obviat maeror et luctus quaerenti gaudium et laetitiam. Sperabat jam anima mea satietatem, et ecce iterum obruitur egestate. Conabar assurgere ad lucem Dei, et recidi in tenebras meas: immo non modo cecidi in eas, sed sentio me involutum in eis...." Such words as these are the pessimistic lyric of the thinker. Sceptics create no such lyric, because they have cut the desire at the root. They are as a rule blissfully calm and smiling.

There is a form of scepticism which would like to appear critical and refined and which takes the name of agnosticism. It is a scepticism limited to ultimate things, to profound reality, to the essence of the world, which amounts to saying that it is limited to the supreme principles of philosophy. Now, since the principles of philosophy are all equally supreme, such agnostic scepticism extends its affirmation of mystery over neither more nor less than the whole of philosophy and consequently over the whole of human knowledge. Its limits would be nothing less than the boundaries of knowledge. Indeed, agnosticism is the spiritual fulfilment sought by all those who negate philosophy, such as æstheticists, mathematicians, and especially empiricists; and agnostics and empiricists are ordinarily so closely connected that the one name is almost synonymous with the other.

The sceptical error, which consists in stating the problem as solution and mystery as truth, can give way to another mode of error, in which the very affirmation of scepticism is denied and it is recognized that thought cannot explicitly state mystery. But this recognition, which would imply that of the authority of thought, is strangely combined with the most precise negation of such authority. Thought being excluded, either affirmatively or negatively, as in the self-contradiction of scepticism, what remains is life, no longer a problem, or a solution of a problem, but just life, life lived. To affirm that truth is life lived, reality directly felt in us as part of us and we part of it, is the pretension of mysticism. This is the last general form of error that can be thought; and its self-contradiction is evident from the genetic process which we have already expounded. Mysticism affirms, when no affirmation is permitted to it; and it is yet more gravely contradictory than scepticism, which, though forbidding to itself logical affirmation, does not forbid itself speech, that is to say, æsthetic expression. To mysticism not even words can be permissible, because mysticism, being life and not contemplation, practice and not theory, is by definition dumbness. But we shall say no more of mysticism, having had occasion to refer to it, as also to æstheticism and empiricism, at the beginning of this treatise on Logic.

When we consider these errors more closely, it is easy to see that dualism, scepticism, and mysticism manifest themselves not only in the forms of thought, in philosophy as Logic, but also in all the other particular philosophic problems, distinct from those that are peculiar to Logic, and in the errors due to them. The complete enumeration of these and their concrete determination would (as has already been said) require the development of the whole philosophic system, and therefore cannot all be contained in the present treatise. Indeed, they take their name, not from the forms of the spirit, with which the logical form is confused, or from the internal mutilation of the logical form, but from the confusion and mutilation of the remaining spiritual forms. They are no longer called æstheticism, mathematicism, or philosophism, but ethical utilitarianism, moral abstractionism, æsthetic logicism, sensationalism and hedonism, practical intellectualism, metaphysical dualism or pluralism, optimism and pessimism, and so on. It is not those who, as in the previous instances, deny philosophy itself, that fall into such errors, but those who admit it and carry it out more or less badly in its other parts. Without the admission of the method of philosophic thought, and without the assertion of a concept, it is impossible to conceive logical usurpations in the domain of another concept, which is not less necessary than the first to the fulness and unity of the real.

Ethical utilitarianism, for instance, thinks the concept of utilitarian practical activity; but its fallacy consists in arbitrarily maintaining that the concept of utility altogether exhausts that of the practical activity, thus negating the other concept distinct from it, the practical moral activity. Moral abstractionism commits the opposite error, affirming the moral activity, but negating the utilitarian. Æsthetic logicism rightly affirms the reality of the logical mental form, but is wrong in not recognizing the intuitive mental form and in considering it to be resolved in the logical form. Æsthetic sensationalism, directing its attention to crude and unexpressed sensation, emphasises the necessary precedent of the æsthetic activity, but then makes of the condition the conditioned, defining art as sensation. Æsthetic hedonism, utilitarianism or practicism, is true in so far as it notes the practical and hedonistic envelope of the æsthetic activity; but it becomes false in so far as it takes the envelope for the content, and treats art as a mere fact of pleasure and pain. Practical intellectualism perceives that the will is not possible without a cognitive basis, but by exaggerating this, it ends by destroying the originality of the practical spiritual form, and reduces it to a complex of concepts and reasonings. In like manner, metaphysical dualism avails itself of the difference between the concept of reality as spirit and that of reality as nature, the one arising from logical thought, the other from an empirical and naturalistic method of treatment, in order to transmute them into concepts of two distinct forms of reality itself, as spirit and matter, internal and external world, and so on. Pluralism or monadism, confounding the individuality of acts with the substantiality which belongs to the universal subject, makes entities of single acts and turns them into a multiplicity of simple substances. Pessimism and optimism, each one availing itself of an abstract element of reality, which is the unity of opposites, maintain that reality is all evil and suffering, or all goodness and joy. This process of exemplification could be carried much further, and would become, as we see, a deduction of all philosophical concepts and errors.

Now, each one of those false solutions, obeying the law of errors, is obliged, in order to maintain itself, to pass into that from which it was distinguished, and then to pass back again from that to this. Thus utilitarianism becomes abstract morality and abstract morality utilitarianism. Hence the work of scepsis and the consequent appearance of a particular scepticism of this or that concept. Ethics having vainly struggled with the alternate negations, of utility and of morality, ends in ethical scepticism; Æsthetic torn between sensationalism and utilitarianism and logicism, and other errors, and destroying them all with its scepsis, ends in Æsthetic scepticism; Metaphysics, torn between materialism, abstract spiritualism, dualism, pluralism, pessimism, optimism, and other erroneous views, ends in metaphysical scepticism. And to these errors of particular scepticism, errors of particular mysticism soon succeed. Thus we hear it said that there is no concept of the beautiful, as there is of the true or the good, but that it is only felt and lived; or, again, that there is no possible definition of what is good, since it concerns a thing that must be left to sentiment and to life; or, finally, that thought has value within the limits that abstraction has value, but that it is impotent before complete reality, because life alone is capable of comprehending reality, by receiving it into its very bosom.

On the other hand, it is not possible that any æstheticism, empiricism, mathematicism, philosophism, mythologism, or logicism whatever, should remain limited to a determinate philosophic concept without coming in contact with others, because those forms of error strike at the logical form of thought itself, and therefore equally at all other philosophic concepts. The ethical or æsthetic empiricist, for instance, must logically affirm a general philosophic empiricism if he does not wish to correct himself by contradicting himself (an hypothesis which must be neglected and left to be understood in this consideration of the simple, elementary, fundamental, or necessary forms of error). He who in a particular philosophic problem has committed a confusion of concepts, and has thence arrived at a particular scepticism and mysticism, is led by the systematic and unitary character of philosophy to widen that mysticism and scepticism from particular to general. From this general mysticism and scepticism, he is led to return gradually to mythologism, philosophism, empiricism, and to the other negations of the logical form of philosophy. Everything is connected in philosophy and everything is connected in error, which is the negation of philosophy.

THE ORDER OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Everything is connected in errors; error has its necessary forms. This implies, in the first place, that the possible forms of errors, the logical forms of the illogical, are so many and no more. Indeed, the forms of the spirit or concepts of reality, which can be arbitrarily combined, can be stated as a finite number (where the process of numbering can be applied to them). Consequently, the arbitrary combinations or errors which arise from them can also be similarly numbered. Only the individual forms of error are infinite, and that for the same reason which we have already given, as the individual forms of truth are infinite. Problems are always historically conditioned, and the solutions are conditioned in the same way; even false solutions, which are determined by feelings, passions, and interests, also vary according to historical conditions.

In the second place, and as corollary to the preceding thesis, the possible forms of errors present a necessary order; and this, because the forms of the spirit or the concepts of reality stand in a necessary order to one another. They cannot be placed after or before one another nor changed at will. This necessary order is, as we know, a genetic order of degrees, and consequently the possible forms of errors constitute a series of degrees. It is commonly said that error has its logic, and we must say more correctly, that it cannot constitute itself as error, save by borrowing logical character from truth.

This is already clearly seen in the exposition given of the forms of logical error, and more clearly still when, resuming, we consider that the spirit, when it rebels against the concept, must by this very act affirm the term which is distinct from the concept, whether it be called representation, intuition, or pure sensation. Hence the necessity of the form of error (in a certain sense the first), which is æstheticism,--the affirmation of truth as pure sensation. Below this stage, the spirit can descend to annul the problem in dualism; or, going further and abandoning affirmation, it may fall into scepticism; or, finally, abandoning even expression, it may fall into dumbness, or mysticism, which is the lowest degree. Above æstheticism it can raise itself to try to take refuge in empiricism, in which is posited a universal, but one that is merely representative and, therefore, a false universal. It is the second step, nor can any other be conceived as second:--we must give a false value either to the pure representation (æstheticism);--or (taking the second step), to the representation and the concept together, as is the case in the form of the empirical concept (empiricism). The third step is the desperate escape from the insufficiency of the empirical concept, by means of the abstract concept, which guarantees the universality which the other lacks, but gives an empty universality (mathematicism). Finding no refuge in this emptiness from the objections of its adversaries, it is obliged finally to enter philosophy. But the erring spirit continues its work in philosophy itself and, once it has taken possession, abuses it. Now it is not possible to abuse philosophy, save by reducing it either to a concept without intuition, which is nevertheless taken as a synthesis of concept and intuition (philosophism); or to an intuition without concept, which, in its turn, is taken as the requisite synthesis (mythologism). The result of all this process is always the renunciation of the philosophic problem, disguised by the admission of the double method (dualism), and hence the descent below the logical form, either with the affirmation which denies itself (scepticism), or, again, with that which denies even the possibility of expression (mysticism) and returns to life, which is not a problem at all, being life lived.

The same thing occurs with the other errors, when we refer to the other concepts of the spirit or of reality, although we shall not be able to give the complete series without summarizing the whole of philosophy, which is not necessary here, and by its excessive concentration and extreme brevity would be obscure. Suffice it to say, by way of example, that the ethical problem, besides being negated by means of erroneous sensationalist, empiricist, and mycologist solutions, and so on (to which, in common with all philosophic problems, it is subject), can be negated by practical intellectualism, which does not recognize a practical problem side by side with that of the theoretic spirit, and reduces virtue to knowledge. Hence ethical intellectualism. Since ethical intellectualism cannot resist objections, it is obliged to introduce at least the slightest practical element that can be admitted, which is that of individual utility, and resolving morality into this, it then presents itself as ethical utilitarianism. This in its turn, finding itself in contradiction with the peculiar character of morality, which goes beyond individual utility, arranges to recognize and to substitute for the first a super-individual utility, which is the universal practical value or morality. And thus, by negating the first on account of the second concept, it presents itself as moralism or ethical abstractionism. The impossibility of negating both the first and the second, and the necessity of affirming both, urge the acceptance of the final form of practical dualism, in which utility and morality appear as co-ordinated or juxtaposed. Each one of these arbitrary doctrines is critical of the others, and, by its internal contradictions, of itself. Hence the fall into scepticism and mysticism. The circle of error can be traversed again, but it is impossible to alter the place that each of those forms has in the circle, by placing, for instance, practical dualism before utilitarianism or intellectualism after moralism.

There is no gradual issuing from the infernal circle of error, and salvation from it is not possible, save by entering at one stroke into the celestial circle of truth, in which alone the mind rests satisfied as in its kingdom. The spirit that errs or flees from the light must be converted into the spirit of search, that longs for the light; pride must yield to humility; narrow love for one's own abstract individuality become wider and elevate itself to an austere love, to an unlimited devotion toward that which surpasses the individual, thus becoming an "heroic fury," the "amor Dei intellectualis."

In this act of love and fervour the spirit becomes pure thought and attains to the true, is indeed transmuted into the true. But as spirit of truth it possesses truth and also its contrary transfigured in that. The possessing of a concept is the possession of it in all its relations, and so are possessed all the modes in which that concept can be wrongly altered by error. For instance, the true concept of moral activity is also the concept of utilitarianism, of abstractionism, of practical dualism, and so on. The two series of knowledge, that of the true and that of its contrary, are, in truth, inseparable, because they really constitute one single series. The concept is affirmation-negation.

It will be said that this is perhaps exact in the case of the possession of truth, but not in that of the search for it, where the two series may well appear disunited. Truth, to one who searches, is at the top of the staircase of errors, and as it is possible to climb a great part of the staircase without reaching what is at the top of it, so when once the desired place has been reached, it is possible not to see or not to remember the staircase that is below. But the possession of truth is never static, as in general no real fact is static. The possession of and the search for truth are the same. When it seems that a truth is possessed in a static way and almost solidified, if we observe closely we shall see that the word expressing it, the sound of it, has remained, but the spirit has flown away. That truth was, but is no longer thought, and so is not truth. It will be truth only when it is thought anew, and thinking and thinking anew are the same, since each rethinking is a new act of thought. In thinking the truth is search for truth; it is a most rapid ideal motion which, starting from the centre, runs through all the possibilities of error, and only in so far as it runs through and rejects them all does it find itself at its centre, which is the centre of motion.

In order to separate truth from the search for truth this latter must be understood, not as the will for thought and so as thought in action, but as the will which lays down the conditions for thought, the will which prepares itself for thought, but does not yet think effectually. This indeed is the usual meaning of the word "search." To search is to stimulate oneself for thinking, by employing opportune means for that purpose. And there is no more opportune means than that of confronting one with another the various forms of the spirit and the various concepts; because in the course of that confrontation there is produced the true combination; that is to say, thought, which is truth, is aroused. To search means therefore to run through the series of errors.

But the seeker sets to work in quite a different spirit from that of the assertor of errors. The spirit of research is not the rebel erring spirit, and therefore the path that both follow is only the same in appearance; the first was the path of errors, but the second can only be so called by metaphor. Errors are errors when there is the will for error. Where, on the other hand, there is the will to unify material and to prepare the conditions of thought, the improper combination of ideas is not indeed error, but suggestion or hypothesis. The hypothesis is not an act of truth, because either it is not verified and so reveals itself as without truth, or it is verified and becomes truth only at the moment in which it is verified. But neither is it an act of error, because it is affirmed, not as truth, but as simple means or aid toward the conquest of truth. In the doctrine of search, the series of errors is all redeemed, baptized, or blessed anew; the diabolic spirit abandons it precipitately, leaving it void of truth, but innocent.

The distinction between error as error and error as suggestion, between error and hypothesis or heuristic expedients, is of capital importance. It is found as basis of some common distinctions, such as those between mistake and error, between error committed in good faith and error committed in bad faith, and the like. These and others like them show themselves to be certainly untenable, because error as error is always in bad faith, and there is no difference between error and mistake, save an empirical difference, or a difference of verbal emphasis, for it can be said according to empirical accidents that an affirmation is either simply erroneous or altogether a mistake. But although they cannot be maintained as they are formulated, they nevertheless suggest the desirability and the anticipation of this true and profound distinction.