THE ORDER OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
[Sidenote: _Necessary character of the forms of errors. Their definite number._]
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.
[Sidenote: _Examples of this order in the various parts of philosophy._]
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.