A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Deel 2. The General Theory of the Modal Spheres

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Chapter II
The modal structures of meaning.

§ 1 - Introduction.

As an introduction to subsequent expositions I will raise a question which, to my knowledge, has never yet been brought to bear on the subject of the present chapter. And yet it is fundamental to our entire view of the structure of the modal aspects of human experience and to the whole method of scientific concept-formation.

This basic question is concerned with the analogical use of fundamental concepts in the different branches of science. The fundamental fields of research of the various special sciences are defined according to the different modal aspects of human experience in its integral sense, though within these modal boundaries there is room for further specializing¹.

At first sight it may seem that the analogical concepts are not bound to these special modal fields of research, but give expression to the inner unity of all scientific thought. But a closer analysis of their specific scientific meaning shows that the latter differs with the different modalities of the scientific viewpoint. Nevertheless, analogy doubtless refers to an inter-modal coherence of meaning between the aspects.

How is this state of affairs to be explained? Here we are confronted with a fundamental problem which has not found due philosophic interest in consequence of the immanence-standpoint as such, and the dialectical basic motives which rule the latter.

It is true that Greek and Scholastic logic and metaphysics paid special attention to the analogical concepts, and distinguished them from the generic and specific ones. In addition, real analogy was sharply distinguished from the mere metaphor of common speech. To the analogical fundamental concept of ‘being’ (ana-

1 General sociology, anthropology etc. are not specific sciences in the sense meant here. The difficult problem concerning the delimitation of their fields of research will be discussed in Vol. III.

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logia entis) all the others were related. This concept, however, was conceived of in a speculative metaphysical sense. It contained no reference to the cosmic order of time in which all modal difference of meaning is founded. The concept of ‘being’ was determined by the Greek dialectical basic motive of form and matter.

The origin of the analogical concept of Being.

Parmenides conceived of the eternal form of Being in a rigid metaphysical opposition to the matter-principle of the eternally flowing stream of becoming and decay. His concept of Being was in itself nothing but an hypostatization of the copula ‘is’ in the analytical relation of identity: ἐστίν εἶναι.

This is evident from Parmenides' identification of true Being with logical thought: τὸ γὰϱ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε ϰαὶ εἶναι, this is to say: all Being is being of thought and thought is thought of Being. But this hypostatization of the analytical relation of identity was ruled by the religious form-motive. It is true that this motive was not conceived here in the pure sense of the cultural religion of the Olympian Gods. Probably under Orphic influence it had been joined with the old ouranic motive of the worship of the celestial sphere. So the eternal Being was conceived of in the ideal spherical form of the firmament. Parmenides says that the powerful Anangkè and Dikè hold it in the ties of this form, preventing it from plunging itself into the deceitful stream of becoming and decay.

Since Anaxagoras and Socrates, however, the Greek form-motive freed itself from this ouranic deformation and regained its original meaning. Form was now conceived of as an ideal πάϱαδειγμα, an ideal pattern for the form-giving activity of the divine Nous, the Demiurge of the world of becoming and decay.

In his dialogues Parmenides and Sophistes, Plato introduced a dialectical Idea of Being which should synthesize the Eleatic conception of the ever resting ideal form of being and the Heraclitean principle of the ever flowing stream of life. This dialectical Idea was nothing but the analytical correlation of identity and diversity; the analytical relation: S is P implies: S is not Q, R, S, T and so on, if the latter exclude P.

Parmenides had absolutized the Idea of Being in conceiving it only in the analytical relation of identity. The principle of becoming and decay was called a not-being, which cannot be

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thought of. Plato's dialectical Idea of Being was intended to synthesize positive and negative Being, the ὄν and the μὴ ὄν, and consequently the principles of form and matter. So the principle of becoming could participate in the dialectical Idea of Being. We have seen that in the dialogue Philebus all genesis is conceived of in the teleological sense of genesis eis ousian, a becoming to a form of being which gives expression to the divine Idea of the good and the beautiful. In this way the Eleatic determinations of Being by unity and verity were completed by those of goodness and beauty, and the dialectical Idea of Being was to embrace the general distinction of form and matter, peras and apeiron. This was the origin of the analogical concept of being which in Aristotelian and especially in scholastic metaphysics acquired a central and fundamental position. But it could not overcome the ultimate antithesis in the religious form-matter motive of Greek thought for lack of a higher point of departure for a real synthesis.

Consequently it lacked any relation to the radical unity of meaning (in the central, religious sphere). This unity, however, is the ultimate point of reference of all modal diversity and inter-modal coherence between the different aspects of temporal experience.

Therefore the analogical fundamental concept of ‘being’ could not offer any guidance to philosophical thought confronted with undeniable states of affairs within the modal structures of meaning.

Analogical concepts in principle lacking any relation to the cosmic time-order and to the radical unity of meaning, cannot be the foundation of our inquiry into these structures. From the outset they inevitably lead theoretical thought to levelling the modal structures of the aspects within which the analogical moments are discovered.

The relation of analogy, expressed in these modal structures, points to the inter-modal coherence of meaning determined by the cosmic order of time. It also points to the radical unity of the human ego as the religious centre of experience, and to the Divine Origin. It has no meaning without an order determining its sense and pointing beyond the modal diversity towards its radical identity transcending theoretical thought. An undetermined analogy of being is meaningless and unable to found any modal determination of a scientific concept.

In the metaphysical doctrine of analogia entis the ‘transcen-

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dental determinations and distinctions’ of the fundamental concept of ‘being’ are themselves of an analogical character¹. This shows that the vicious circle is closed here. The cause is that in this speculative metaphysics, in its pretended autonomy, attempts are made to exceed the limits of meaning. The speculative concept, applied in this procedure, is intended to embrace both the Being of God and the meaning of creation.

It is true that the fundamental difference of meaning implied in the analogical concept of being is related to the essential difference between the things participating in it. But the vicious circle in this metaphysics lies in the fact that this difference is supposed to depend on the analogical concept of ‘being’ itself. This concept is to embrace both the essential differences between the ‘substances’ and those between their ‘accidents’. This means that an undetermined analogy is laid at the foundation of all categorical determinations of being. The latter are consequently involved in the same lack of determinateness, both the fundamental category of substance and each of its accidents. In other words, the ontological analogy is conceived apart from the modal diversity of meaning. This diversity determines the transcendental horizon of theoretical thought itself, and thereby the limits to which the analogical concept is bound, if it is to have any meaning. The ontological analogy cannot be its own foundation; it must be founded in a cosmic order determining its sense in the inter-modal coherence of the different aspects.

For this reason the relation of analogy must be investigated within the cadre of the modal structures of meaning, which are determined by this order. It should be considered on the factual basis of undeniable states of affairs presenting themselves in the fundamental analogical concepts of scientific thought.

1 In his Critique of Pure Reason (Transcendental Logic § 12) Kant has attempted to reduce these transcendental determinations (those of unity, verity and goodness) to the categories of unity, plurality and totality of his transcendental logic. According to him, they are nothing but these categories, conceived apart from their a priori relation to sensory experience and consequently taken in a merely formal-logical sense. This reduction is very artificial, especially the attempt to reduce ‘verity’, as a transcendental determination of Being, to Kant's category of plurality, and ‘goodness’ to the category of totality. In addition, Kant was not aware of the fact that his categories of quantity are nothing but analogical concepts, as will be explained in our further enquiry.

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The latter give theoretical expression to the inter-modal coherence between the different aspects of human experience and empirical reality.

We shall begin with the description of these states of affairs accessible to everybody who is acquainted with theoretical terminology and with the difficulties implied in the theoretical distinction of the different modal aspects of meaning. A special difficulty in this description is the lack of a uniform terminology in the different languages and the linguistic ambiguity of words that may also have a metaphorical sense. This is the reason why, apart from the fundamental problem with which we are concerned here, the idea of a scientific alphabet of thought in the form of a symbolic logic has won so many adherents.

Why symbolic logic is not serviceable in our examination of the analogical concepts.

At first sight symbolic logic seems to be indispensable. It replaces words by a formal symbolic denotation, free from the ambiguities and irregularities of structure inherent in the different languages. It is intended to enable us to give exact formulation to scientific concepts and propositions of any kind, and to provide us with exact criteria as to their meaningfulness or lack of meaning.

But the very fact that this method of denotation can only be related to the logical form of propositions, classes and predicates with abstraction of their non-logical meaning-aspects, renders symbolic logic unserviceable in our present inquiry. We now have to investigate analogical expressions inherent in the denotation of the fundamental scientific concepts related to the inter-modal coherence of the modal aspects. This is to say, the modal meaning-structures and their interrelations are at issue. The inquiry into the latter is fundamental, also for formal logic.

Logistic is in constant danger of disregarding the modal limits of logical meaning, particularly in its inter-modal relation to the mathematical and linguistic aspects. Especially in the different trends of ‘scientific empiricism’ the opinion is defended that there is a logical unity of scientific language¹. The concepts of

1 An important representative of this opinion was O. Neurath († 1945), who stimulated the publication of the Encyclopedia of Unified Science the first part of which appeared in two volumes under the title ‘Foundations of the Unity of Science’. The periodical ‘Erkenntnis’ (publ. since 1930), now continued as ‘Journal of Unified Science’, is the central review of this movement, which also has many adherents in the Warsaw school, the Cambridge school for Analytic Philosophy, and the Berlin Society for Scientific Philosophy.

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the different branches of science are not considered to be of fundamentally different kinds, but to belong to one coherent system. But this opinion depends on an uncritical pre-supposition, inadequately called ‘physicalism’¹. According to it, every descriptive term in the language of science (taken in its widest sense) is connected with terms designating sensorily observable properties of things. This implies that in any description of undeniable states of affairs in the modal structures of the different aspects of human experience, these data are immediately reduced either to metaphors in linguistic expressions, or to formal-analytic relations, or to relations between sensory impressions.

The unity of scientific language intended here is acquired at the cost of a fundamental disturbance of the modal aspects to which the basic concepts of the different sciences are related.

The fundamental problem of the analogical concepts in scientific thought is eliminated in an uncritical manner, if the analysis and verification of these concepts is based on formal logic and the sensory aspect of human experience alone.

An adequate designation of the fundamental analogical concepts should give expression both to the inter-modal coherence and to the modal qualification of the analogical moments manifesting this coherence. Every modern language has found its own ways to designate these fundamental analogical concepts of the different branches of science.

1 Cf. the statement of Ludwig Witgenstein, the author of the famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: ‘The right method, properly speaking, would be the following: to say nothing except what can be said. Consequently propositions of natural science - that is to say something that has nothing to do with philosophy - and if somebody else wants to say something metaphysical we must always show that he has not given meaning to certain signs in his propositions.’ [‘Die richtige Methode der Philosophie wäre eigentlich die: Nichts zu sagen, als was sich sagen lässt, also Sätze der Naturwissenschaft - also etwas, was mit Philosophie nichts zu tun hat -, und dann immer, wenn ein anderer etwas Metaphysisches sagen wollte, ihm nachzuweisen, dass er gewissen Zeichen in seinen Sätzen keine Bedeutung gegeben hat.’ (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London 1922, prop. 6. 53).] I have called the term ‘physicalism’ inadequate for this movement, because its sensualistic interpretation of physics does not agree with the meaning of the scientific propositions of natural science.

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The linguistic ambiguity of words in common parlance seems to be overcome by ascribing to the terms a special scientific meaning. But this does not guarantee real agreement on their signification. For the states of affairs concerning the modal meaning-structures to which the analogical concepts refer, are not explicitly examined in a philosophical manner.

As soon as philosophy attempts to account for these states of affairs, it will arrive at different interpretations depending on the different transcendental basic Ideas which lie at the foundation of philosophical thought. As a matter of fact these philosophical interpretations always rule the scientific use of the analogical concepts, either consciously or unconsciously. But for the sake of an adequate description of the states of affairs to which they really refer, it is necessary to consider them for a moment apart from these interpretations. Otherwise under the influence of philosophical prejudices one runs the risk of prematurely eliminating the problems involved.

The ambiguity of pre-theoretic terminology and the psychological study of the ‘significa’.

It will be clear why the ambiguity in the pre-scientific use of terms does not concern us in this context. Our inquiry exclusively refers to the modal structures of meaning. Pre-theoretical experience does not explicitly distinguish the modal aspects as such; it conceives them only implicitly within the typical total structures of individuality. Therefore pre-theoretical terms are not the subject of our present inquiry.

Neither are we concerned here with a study of the ‘significa’ in a psychological sense, directed to an analysis of the volitional, emotional, indicative and formal elements in the subjective act of designation and to an enquiry into the so-called ‘spreading of signification’. These examinations may be very important, but they cannot give a solution to the problem of the analogical basic concepts in the different branches of science.

For the purpose of our present investigations I shall put down a number of different scientific expressions denoting fundamental analogical concepts. Provisionally I do not make any attempt at systematic arrangement. As a rule these expressions are unhesitatingly used without any account being given of the modal structures of meaning they refer to.

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Some examples of scientific expressions denoting fundamental analogical concepts. The original and the analogical use of numerical terms.

The scientific terms ‘number’ and ‘quantity’ have an original mathematical signification. They can be used in arithmetic without a special qualifying adjective denoting their general modal sense. The arithmetical adjectives ‘rational’, ‘irrational’, ‘negative’, ‘positive’, ‘real’ ‘complex’, etc. do not refer to different modal aspects.

They are related to the same arithmetical sphere.

But when we speak of ‘unity’, ‘multiplicity’ and ‘totality’ in logic, it is necessary to qualify these terms by the adjective ‘logical’. A logical unity and multiplicity is not an arithmetical one, but has an inner coherence with the latter. A concept, viewed in its analytical aspect, is a logical unity in a multiplicity of logical characteristics. This multiplicity can be indicated by a number. By means of the analytical relation of implication¹ this multiplicity is synthesized to the logical unity of a concept. This relation is not an arithmetical one, although it cannot have any logical meaning without its coherence with originally numerical relations.

The same holds good as to the logical ‘totality’ of a propositional form (e.g.: All S imply P).

Jurisprudence also handles the terms ‘unity and ‘multiplicity’ in a special modal sense. In a contract between two persons there are two volitional declarations. They are juridically joined to one juridical fact. There may be a concurrence of two, three, or more legal facts in one real deed. This legal multiplicity does not have an intrinsically quantitative sense, although extrinsically it can be indicated by a number. The legal relations between different facts are no numerical relations proper, since they are ruled by juridical norms. The question whether two or more facts are juridically to be viewed as one or more depends on legal standards alone. A legal subject is a unity in an immeasurable multiplicity of relations. It is always necessary in this case to qualify the terms one, two, three, etc. by the modal adjective ‘juridical’, if the jurist wants to avoid the confusion between his own numerical concept and that of arithmetic.

1 The relation of implication is taken here in a wider sense than is usual in logistic, viz. in the sense of analytical inclusion.

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The reason is that there is an insoluble coherence between the numerical and the juridical aspect, which does not affect their different modal meanings.

In ethics one speaks of a moral bi-unity of husband and wife in the marriage-bond. Social psychology speaks of a feeling of social unity in a multitude of men moved by the same ideal. Theology speaks of the Divine Tri-unity (the Trinity). In all these cases the numerical terms are obviously used in an analogical sense qualified by the modal adjective.

The original and the analogical use of the term space.

The same states of affairs are to be observed in the use of the word ‘space’. It is a little confusing that this word has the form of a substantive. This evokes the idea that space is a thing, or, in the metaphysical turn of thought, that it is a substance.

There can evidently not exist a real thing corresponding to the term ‘space’. There is only a modus, a modality of existence manifesting itself in modal relations of extension. The substantive had better be replaced by the adjective ‘spatial’. But even in scientific usage the term ‘space’ has maintained its noun-form. We shall follow this custom without losing sight of the fact that this noun can only denote a modus, and not a thing. The scientific term ‘space’ as such has a non-analogical modal meaning in pure geometry only. For the present we shall pass over in silence the fact that the formalization of modern geometry has resulted in eliminating ‘space’ in its pure, original modal sense. As a matter of fact, this is only a methodical instrument of formal analysis, whose philosophical pre-suppositions will be examined later on. This formalization does not affect the application of the formal axioms and theorems to spatial functions in their original sense. This is done as soon as mathematics is concerned with the specific spatial subject-matter of geometry. It is, however, a little confusing that formalized geometry has retained the term ‘space’ (‘formal space’, as Carnap says). For here its meaning is only dependent on the formal axioms accepted a priori. It does not at all explicitly refer to the spatial aspect of experience in its original modal sense, although it will appear from our later analysis of the modal structures that formal logic, too, implies a spatial analogy. This purely formal use of the term is unserviceable in an inquiry into the original modal meaning of space. It may be true that the latter is not identical with ‘Euclidean space’, but it does

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not allow of any formalizing which would even eliminate its modal structure.

Therefore it is necessary to abandon any formalization of pure geometry in the descriptive stage of our examination concerning the original and the analogical use of scientific terms denoting fundamental scientific concepts.

In pure, but not formalized geometry the term ‘space’ can be used without an adjective qualifying its modal sense. The adjectives two-, three-, four- or n-dimensional, Euclidean and non-Euclidean do not concern different modal aspects of meaning, no more than the adjectives topological, projective or metrical. They all refer to one and the same modal aspect delimiting the field of pure geometry in its non-formalized sense.

The empiricist trend in mathematics is bound to deny this and to assert that sensory space is the original datum. This epistemological pre-supposition, however, is not relevant to this descriptive stage of our enquiry. For the present the only question is: which branch of science can use the term ‘space’ without an adjective denoting its fundamental modal sense? The answer is that only pure geometry, apart from its formalization, can do so. It is true that we hear of ‘pure’ or ‘mathematical’ space. These adjectives, however, do not add anything to the modal meaning of spatiality in its non-analogical sense. For ‘pure’ geometry (in its non formalized meaning) finds its special modal field of research in the original spatial aspect alone.

Physics, however, cannot use the fundamental concept of ‘space’ without adding the qualifyirig adjective ‘physical’; psychology has to add the qualifying adjective ‘sensory’ (visual, tactile, auditory); jurisprudence speaks of a legal space of validity with reference to legal norms; economics uses the term ‘space’ with a modal economic qualification, etc. In all these cases the word no longer has the same modal signification. Science is here involved in an analogical use of terms which requires a general delimitation of their intended modal sense, if they are to be serviceable.

The fundamental meaning-moment which all the analogical concepts of space refer to, is doubtless that of extension. But the extensive relations are qualified here in different modal ways.

There can be no question of a metaphorical use of the word ‘space’ in these modal qualifications. If there were a metaphor, the term in its scientific use could simply be replaced by another

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word or by a combination of terms without any spatial signification. But this is impossible. Although there is doubtless a modal difference of meaning between purely mathematical and objective sensory space, no psychologist can do without the term in its modal-psychical qualification. Rather he will maintain that sensory psychical space is ‘real’, whereas purely mathematical space is nothing but a logical construction. As observed, this would amount to a philosophical interpretation of the states of affairs we are confronted with. It would be premature in this descriptive phase of our inquiry, and it would disregard the complexity of the theoretical problems implied in the use of analogical concepts. It is not permitted to ignore the great modal diversity of meaning inherent in the word ‘space’ in its analogical scientific use.

As will be shown in more detail in our later investigations, the physical world-space is neither purely mathematical, nor sensory psychical. The same can be said with reference to historical, economical, aesthetic, juridical space, etc. All these modalities of extension cannot be of a sensory psychical character. Physical world-space in principle exceeds the horizon of sensory perception, although it has an inner relation to sensory extension. The remaining modalities mentioned here are no doubt founded in sensory space, but precisely in their special modal meaning they are not perceptible to the eye of sense.

The term territory (German: Gebiet), for instance, has an analogical spatial sense related to human command and legal competence. We can perceive a piece of ground with our eyes, but we cannot perceive in this way a territory of command and competence. The latter can only be signified (for instance through milestones or a national flag). A ship navigating under the Dutch flag is Dutch territory, wherever it may be. We know this only by the flag designating the nationality of the vessel, and from our knowledge of the rules of international law. Here the modal relations of extensiveness disclose a super-sensuous meaning and are subjected to special modal laws¹.

There must exist a close inter-modal meaning-coherence between the different modal significations of the word ‘space’. This coherence finds its terminological expression either in the

1 This will be explained in greater detail later on in our analysis of the modal structures of meaning.

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use of the word with or without special modal qualifications, or in specific nouns denoting space in a particular modal sense.

The original and the analogical use of the term economy.

Another example of the analogical modal use of a scientific term is supplied by the word ‘economy’. Its foundational (non-analogical) scientific meaning is the sparing or frugal mode of administering scarce goods, implying an alternative choice of their destination with regard to the satisfaction of different human needs. The adjectives ‘sparing’ and ‘frugal’ do not have the limited sense of the economical term ‘saving’ (said of money for instance). They are only the correlatives of ‘scarce’ and refer to our awareness that an excessive or wasteful satisfaction of a particular need at the expense of other more urgent needs is uneconomical¹.

Economy demands the balancing of needs according to a plan, and the distribution of the scarce means at our disposal according to such a plan. In this fundamental sense the term is used in the science of economics, in which the word economy requires no further modal qualification.

Logic, however, uses this term in a logical sense, in its ‘principle of logical economy’ (das ‘denkökonomische Prinzip’) and is obliged to denote this analogical meaning by the qualifying modal adjective². In linguistic science we speak of ‘economy of speech’, or ‘linguistic economy’. It is very remarkable that neither logical nor linguistic economy are found in pre-theoretical thought and in primitive languages respectively. They occur in a scientific and developed stage of thought and language only. These states of affairs are highly important to our analysis of the modal structures of meaning, although they have not found the philosophical interest they deserve.

The same remark applies to the use of the term ‘economy’ in its modal qualification by an adjective denoting the aspect of

1 ‘Uneconomical’ is of course not the same as ‘non-economical’. The latter adjective would mean ‘not belonging to the economical sphere’, whereas an ‘uneconomical’ manner of behaviour can occur only within the economical aspect.

2 Ernst Mach has omitted this qualifying adjective in the scientific-logical use of the term ‘principle of economy’. But it cannot be denied that in economics this principle has a quite different meaning and that only here it can disclose its original sense.

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social intercourse: conventional or ceremonial economy is not found in primitive society, but in developed social life only.

In the present context one should also pay attention to the use of the term in a technical sense. Economists make a sharp distinction between economy, in its original scientific meaning, and technique. They deny that the principle of economy which is applied to the solution of a technical problem has a scientific economic sense.

There is indeed a modal difference of meaning between economy in its original scientific sense and in its technical meaning. The latter is not ruled by the economical viewpoint proper but by that of technical control of the material to the highest degree of efficiency. Nevertheless, there is an undeniable coherence of meaning between economy proper and the technical sense of the term. The fundamental meaning-moment which every economical analogy refers to is that of frugality, the avoidance of superfluous or excessive ways of reaching our aim. And again we are confronted with the fact that on the part of technique this inter-modal coherence with the economical aspect is only developed at a higher stage of culture. Primitive technique lacks economy in this analogical sense.

On the other hand the term ‘economy’ is used in a modal aesthetical sense (cf. the Greek adage μηδὲν ἄγαν) irrespective of the difference between the primitive or the higher developed character of works of art. This is also the case with the term ‘legal economy’¹ designating prevention of excessive reactions against tort or crime, and the subjection of these reactions to the principle of juridical proportion. (This is a new analogical term, since proportion has an originally mathematical meaning.) Even the primitive principle of talion implies this juridical economy, and it is thereby sharply distinguished from any form of orderless revenge.

I must again stress the undeniable coherence of meaning between the analogical and the non-analogical use of the term ‘economy’ excluding any idea of arbitrariness. The essential thing in all this is the scientific use of a term which in its proper sense denotes an original modal meaning, but in its analogical sense is qualified by a specific modal adjective. This adjective

1 This term is often used in the sense of legal technique; but this sense is not intended here.

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denotes another modal aspect which, by means of an analogical moment of its structure, reveals its intermodal coherence with the original modus.

The original and the analogical use of the terms control, command, mastery or power.

This introduction will be concluded with a short examination of the analogical scientific use of the term command or control (German: Macht, Beherrschung).

There are many synonyms of these terms. In the first Dutch edition of this work I always used the Dutch words ‘macht’ or ‘beheersing’. In Vol. I of the second (English) edition I choose the English term ‘power’. But the latter is also used in the sense of ‘faculty’, and this latter term has no original modal signification, because it does not refer to a special modal aspect of human experience. In the analysis of the modal meaning-structures I shall therefore avail myself of the word power only in connection with the terms ‘command’, ‘control’, ‘mastery’.

It is very important to choose the right terms in this inquiry, because many readers appear to experience great difficulty in distinguishing accurately between the modal aspects of meaning and the typical structures of individuality embracing and individualizing them. They have a natural inclination to identify the modal aspects with concrete phenomena which function in them. The fundamental difference between the modal ‘how’ and the concrete ‘what’ is easily lost sight of. A Dutch psychologist asked me, for instance, if it would not be necessary to introduce an aspect of human behaviour in my theory of the modal law-spheres. He did not see that human behaviour cannot be a modal aspect, because it is a concrete activity which in the nature of the case functions in all aspects of experience alike.

Such misunderstandings would be increased by using terms in my explanation which can denote either a modal aspect of meaning, or a concrete something, a ‘this’ or a ‘that’. But it is very difficult indeed to evade this ambiguity in every English term employed here. Therefore I must always ask my readers to look behind the words for the states of affairs which I want to denote by them. Just as in the case of the word ‘space’, the term ‘control’ (=command, or power), in its noun-form cannot mean a ‘thing’, but only a modus, viz. a modality of social relationships implying a manner of exercising social in-

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fluence or of controlling things, respectively. In the social sciences the word has different modal significations that should be sharply distinguished from ‘natural force’ and psychical suggestion. But the meaning of ‘mastery’ is foundational; it denotes cultural authority over persons or things, corresponding to a controlling manner of social form-giving according to a free project. In this original sense the term is used in the science of history, where it need not be qualified by an adjective denoting its specific modal meaning. As will be shown later on, the historical aspect of human experience, as such, is related to the development of human mastery, power, command or control in this non-analogical modal sense. The adjectives ‘political’, ‘ecclesiastical’ and the like do not denote other general modalities of meaning. They refer in history only to typical manifestations of command within the same modal aspect. Political power refers to the state, ecclesiastical power to the church. Both, state and church, are typical social structures of individuality, which as such function in all modal aspects of society alike, and can only individualize the modal meaning of the latter.

But when one speaks of logical command or control, the term refers to another modal aspect, viz. the analytical. Now the word acquires an analogical sense qualified by a special modal adjective. And here we again meet with a remarkable state of affairs, viz. the fact that logical control is not found in pre-theoretical thought, and that the analogical term has an indissoluble inter-modal coherence with the development of human command in its non-analogical historical sense.

By systematical theoretical concepts and propositions we really acquire a logical control of the field of inquiry. Pre-theoretical concepts and propositions lack this systematic character. Theoretical logic has its history, because it is involved in a process of logical moulding of the human mind, and in this actual process discloses cultural power in human society. The naïve pre-theoretical formation of concepts and the naïve use of logical principles show a uniform, unskilled character in the course of times and do not interest the student of history. But logical command is not itself mastery in its non-analogical historical sense. It is, as such, a modal logical meaning-figure, not an historical one. We shall return to this point in later examinations.

Jurisprudence handles a fundamental analogical modal concept denoted by the terms ‘competency’, ‘legal power’. The Dutch term ‘rechtsmacht’ is more pregnant in its denotation of

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the specific modal qualification of the analogy, just as the French term ‘pouvoir juridique’ and the German ‘rechtliche Macht’. The modal diversity of meaning between the non-analogical historical term ‘command’ or ‘power’, and the analogical term in its modal-juridical qualification, is not to be denied so long as the historicist or naturalist prejudices are eliminated.

It is a striking case of an evident disregard of the analogical character of the term ‘power’ in its modal-juridical qualification, when the famous German jurist Georg Jellinek identifies it with ‘rechtlich beschränkte Macht’. For in this context he conceives the term ‘Macht’ in its non-analogical historical sense. But the modal qualification ‘juridical’ cannot restrict the modal meaning of power or command in its original historical use. The antinomy in this interpretation of the analogical juridical term manifests itself in Jellinek's well-known construction of legal power as a self-restriction of political power in its historical sense. This is a construction which also implies a confusion between the general modal juridical viewpoint and the sociological one directed to typical structures of individuality.

The fundamental analogical concept denoted by the German term ‘rechtliche Macht’ has a normative legal sense, but it has an undeniable intermodal coherence of meaning with the term ‘Macht’ in its non-analogical, historical-social meaning.

The true state of affairs referred to by this analogical relation is the following: in its modal juridical meaning ‘power’ is unilaterally founded in what is denoted by the general term ‘power’ (i.e. command) in the science of history. In the historical aspect this word has its original, non-analogical modal meaning. This is empirically proved by the fact that no juridical competency can maintain itself when the social¹ organs invested with it lose their social command or mastery in its original historical sense. Every realization of legal power pre-supposes an historical organization of command, and not vice versa.

One should also pay attention to the fact that this coherence of meaning between juridical power and historical command is realized even in primitive society. Consequently this realization is not restricted to the higher developed social order.

The same can be observed with regard to the other analogical

1 The adjective ‘social’ is not used here in the specific modal sense of the aspect of intercourse, but in the general sense embracing all modal aspects of human society alike.

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modal concepts of power denoted by the terms ‘aesthetical control’, ‘moral control’, ‘faith-power’ etc. Their analogical modal significations are not to be confused with typical forms of historical power, if we want to prevent a general mixing up of the different modal aspects of meaning. An accurate analysis of all these significations is necessary. But in the present context every analysis is only provisional, because we have not yet developed our own theory about the modal structures of meaning.

In this introduction the only point is to establish undeniable states of affairs in the analogical use of scientific concepts. In the last analysis they are founded in the modal structures of meaning themselves and, as such, they are independent of subjective philosophical interpretations. The linguistic denotations of the fundamental analogical concepts demanded attention only insofar as they refer to these states of affairs which urge themselves upon the human mind. The latter reflect themselves in the structure of analogical scientific terms which is beyond any arbitrariness. In other words we do not want to develop a merely linguistic theory of significations.

Behind linguistic signification philosophy has to concentrate on the problem of the fundamental analogical modal concepts of the different branches of science.

The complexity of the analogical concepts.

This problem is in fact much more complicated than could appear in our introductory examinations. We have provisionally made a distinction between the analogical and the non-analogical or original scientific significations of the modal terms number, space, economy, command. Naturally this was only an arbitrary selection. The multiplicity of these modal terms is not at all exhausted by these few examples. But, what is still more important, a further analysis will show that the original modal concepts denoted by the non-analogical terms themselves contain analogical conceptual moments. This implies that analogical relationship is applied much more extensively in fundamental scientific concepts than could at first sight be supposed. This extremely complicated state of affairs should not be disregarded under the explicit or implicit influence of philosophical prejudices which demand the reduction of all fundamental concepts of the different branches of science to one and the same fundamental pattern.

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Such prejudices imply a theoretical eradication of the modal structures of the different meaning-aspects, and are bound to lead astray the whole further scientific method of forming concepts and posing problems. Every philosophy must be confronted with the states of affairs to which the analogical modal concepts are related.

From a scientific viewpoint it is not permissible to develop an a priori philosophical theory concerning the coherence of the fundamental concepts of the different branches of science. The full complexity of the relevant states of affairs must first be examined in an accurate, unbiased manner. This is the really empirical way of philosophizing, viz. the attempt to give a philosophical account of the facts without mutilating their real meaning.

An empiricism which neglects the modal meaning-diversity of the different aspects of human experience is not entitled to claim the epithet ‘scientific’, because it eliminates the fundamental problem of the analogical concepts in scientific thought. It is merely a bad kind of a priorism and has nothing to do with symbolic logic, which as such is a splendid instrument of human thought. The question in what way we shall philosophically account for the states of affairs to which this conceptual analogy refers, will to a high degree depend on the transcendental basic Idea directing our theoretical reflection. For the problem of analogy here intended directly concerns the transcendental Idea regarding the inter-modal coherence and the mutual relation between the different modal aspects of human experience set asunder and opposed to one another in the theoretical ‘Gegenstand-relation’.

The provisional elemination of the philosophical prejudices in the description of the ‘states of affairs’ and the influence of the religious starting-points in this stage of the inquiry. No ἐποχή in the phenomenological sense.

The preceding introductory examinations have stressed the necessity of a provisional elimination of philosophical prejudices so long as we are engaged in a pure description of the ‘states of affairs’ to be accounted for by philosophy. But in this context the same objection can be expected encountered in the transcendental critique of theoretical thought, developed in Vol. I. Does this methodical suspension of philosophical prejudices

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imply an elimination of the religious starting-points? If so, it would be necessary to accept a religious neutrality which contradicts at least the universal necessity of a religious basic motive with respect to theoretical inquiry. If not, the ‘states of affairs’ which should provide a common basis for philosophical discussion cannot satisfy this requirement.

My answer to this question is that the states of affairs described in the preceding introductory examinations urge themselves upon the human mind as soon as they have been detected, because they are really the same for everybody. But their discovery and the manner of description are not independent of a religious starting-point. For it is evident that the dialectical basic motives of immanence-philosophy must divert our attention from them, so that we have no concern in an exact description. Therefore I can agree without hesitation that the preceding inquiry into the states of affairs implied in the fundamental analogical concepts was not unprejudiced in a religious sense. But I must at the same time deny that this circumstance detracts from the fact that the ‘states of affairs’ here intended are a common basis for philosophical discussion.

I have granted repeatedly that other undeniable states of affairs have been detected in immanence-philosophy, that is to say under the influence of non-Christian basic motives. With reference to this point I do not claim a privileged position for a Christian philosophy which is ruled by the Biblical basic motive.

The ἐποχή of the philosophical prejudices required in this preliminary stage of our examination is in a certain sense exactly the reverse of the transcendental-phenomenological ἐποχή in Husserl. For the latter pretends to imply a methodological elimination of the natural attitude of experience inclusive of that of the empirical sciences, and in the first place of the religious commitment. The phenomena are considered here as the result of a phenomenological constitution by the transcendental consciousness. In this constitution everything intendable as immanent or transcendent is supposed to be produced as an essentially intentional object (Gegenstand). It is evident that this transcendental-phenomenological ‘reduction’ of the world to an intentional objective correlate of the absolute transcendental ego implies a fundamental philosophical prejudice. In our conception of the methodological ἐποχή this prejudice should be eliminated in the preliminary stage of the inquiry into the states

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of affairs implied in the use of the fundamental analogical concepts.

It is impossible to eliminate the religious starting-point of theoretical thought. But it is not impossible to perform a provisional ἐποχή of all specific philosophical interpretations of the states of affairs which are to be established in a precise way before we try to account for them in a philosophical theory.

§ 2 - The cosmic order of time in the structural coherence.

The cosmonomic Idea directs and leads philosophical thought, and gives it the ὑπόϑεσις without which it would be helplessly dispersed in the modal diversity of meaning. Our cosmonomic Idea postulates the cosmic time-order in the modal law-spheres.

But at what point is philosophic thought to make an entry into this cosmic temporal order, so that we are enabled to acquire theoretical knowledge of the place of the different modal law-spheres in it? Cosmic time appeared to be the pre-supposition of theoretical thought; the latter cannot transcend it; it has to abstract from the cosmic continuity in the temporal coherence of meaning in order to find its ‘Gegenstand’ in the modal structure of the law-sphere that it sets out to investigate.

Consequently, only in the modal structures of the meaning-aspects themselves can theoretical thought enter into the cosmic order of time, though the latter itself can never be grasped in a concept. In the analysis of these modal structures the order of succession of the law-spheres, - be it in a discontinuous process of fixation by logical thought, - must be brought to light.

According to our cosmonomic Idea, each of the law-spheres is a temporal, modal refraction of the religious fulness of meaning. And as such every aspect expresses the whole of the temporal coherence of meaning in its own modal structure. If this is so, the temporal order of succession of the law-spheres must be expressed in this structure. Full justice ought to be done to the specific sphere-sovereignty of the modal law-spheres within their temporal coherence. Our cosmonomic Idea itself here provides philosophic thought with the hypothesis that must demonstrate its correctness in the analysis of the modal meaning-structures.

Nuclear meaning, modal retrocipations and anticipations.

The modal sphere-sovereignty can only be maintained within

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the temporal inter-modal coherence of the different aspects, if the modal meaning of the law-spheres arranged between the initial and the final aspect has the following structure: it must have a nucleus guaranteeing the sphere-sovereignty of the entire aspect; and this kernel must be surrounded by a number of analogical modal moments which partly refer back to the meaning-kernels of all the earlier spheres, and partly refer forward to those of all the spheres that are later in the cosmic arrangement.

Let us represent this structure by a mathematical figure, viz. a circle divided into two equal halves. In the centre is the meaning-kernel; the radii drawn from the centre in the left hand half represent those modal moments of meaning that establish the coherence with the cosmically earlier spheres; and the radii in the right hand half stand for the modal meaning-moments maintaining the coherence with the law-spheres of a later position.

In future the anaphoric modal meaning-moments will be called the modal retrocipations; the modal moments referring forward will be styled the anticipations of the modal structure.

Modal retrocipations and anticipations remain qualifed by the nucleus of the modal meaning.

Both the retrocipatory and the anticipatory moments remain qualified by the nucleus of the modal meaning. They do not adopt the nuclear meaning of the substratum-sphere or the superstratum-sphere respectively, to which they refer.

Since the modal structure of each aspect shows an indissoluble correlation between the law-side and the subject-side, this structure must manifest itself in its meaning-nucleus, its retrocipations and its anticipations, both on the law-side and on the subject-side.

The architectonic differentiation in the modal structure of the law-spheres.

If our Idea of the order of succession of the law-spheres is correct, an architectonic differentiation must be observable in their modal structure. The number of retrocipations must decrease, whereas the number of anticipations must increase in accordance with the number of law-spheres forming the substratum of a particular aspect, i.e. in proportion as its position in the cosmic order of time is earlier. And this again leads to the

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idea that there are two terminal spheres, the first of which has no retrocipatory moments and the second has no anticipations in its modal structure.

The purport of his hypothesis cannot yet be fully realized and will become clear only after further investigations. The fact that the first terminal sphere lacks retrocipatory moments can never be any reason to absolutize its structural meaning, although this aspect is the foundation of all the other law-spheres. Its lack of retrocipations does not render it independent and unconditioned, because the structure of this modality of meaning is not self-determined.

All the modal spheres are founded in the cosmic time-order and are determined and limited by it. The law-spheres do not determine each other; they are only related to one another by this order in the sense of a relation between foundation and superstructure. From this it follows, that only in the foundational direction of the time-order can we state that a law-sphere is more or less complicated than its predecessor. The degree of complication depends here on the position of the sphere in the retrocipatory structure of its meaning. But when the transcendental direction of time is also taken into account, there is no difference in structural complication. For, in proportion to the decrease of the number of retrocipations in the meaning-structure there is an increase of anticipatory moments, and vice versa.

Observation: Perhaps, in this connection the objection may be made that in our analysis of the modal structures of meaning there is a continual use made of quantitative concepts, and even of spatial analogies. Dialectical philosophy will find this a proof of the fact that the theory of the law-spheres has relapsed into the objectifying attitude of special science. On the dialectical standpoint our method should be ‘geisteswissenschaftlich’, otherwise our philosophy has not yet attained to transcendental self-reflection.
How thoroughly unfounded this objection is, can only be shown in the course of our investigations. In the present context it should only be observed that in the theory of the law-spheres we are engaged in a theoretical analysis of the modal structures of meaning. It must be established that it appears to be impossible to do this without our relevant synthetic concepts of meaning containing analogies of number and space. This proves that the logical sphere has its foundation in the aspects of number and space. For the rest our transcendental basic-Idea is a sufficient guarantee that philosophic thought cannot lose its direction to the selfhood, not even in these theoretical analyses.

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The value of the analysis of modal meaning in tracing the original and irreducible nuclei of its modal structure.

The value of an analysis of the different modalities of meaning is this: it reveals the structure of a modality in cosmic time, and compels us to trace the original nuclear meaning-moment.

In its analytical abstraction this nucleus gives the fundamental analogical concepts a definitive modal qualification. It is true, the usual scientific terms for these concepts, examined in our introduction to this chapter, contain a general indication of the modal aspect in which the analogy presents itself. But we have noticed that these terms are handled without a closer analysis of the modal meaning-structures they refer to. The general adjectives giving these analogical terms their modal qualification, e.g. physical, psychical, logical, juridical, asthetical, etc. cannot prevent scientific thought from a false interpretation, so long as any insight into the modal structures of the aspects to which they refer is lacking. We have seen, for instance, how the analogical term ‘juridical power’ has been misunderstood even by famous scholars versed in legal thinking.

In the prevailing method of forming concepts the moments are unified in a relation of thought that has not been unequivocally qualified as to its modal meaning. Any one who has experienced the confusing equivocality of this procedure will at once admit the value of our analysis. Later on these unqualified general concepts will be discussed in greater detail. Logicism as a whole is essentially founded in the translation of the retrocipatory or the anticipatory moments in the structure of the analytical aspect into the original modal meaning-kernels they analogically refer to. For instance, the logicistic concepts of number, of continuity, of dimension, of motion, of ‘pure signification’, of the fundamental jural relations and so on, are entirely based on these essential shiftings of the modal meaning.

The special theory of the modal law-spheres must start with a scrupulously accurate analysis of the modal nuclei of meaning and should point out the non-original character of the modal analogies. This is still unbroken ground.

Merely by way of example I may refer to the dilemma in which modern mathematical thought is caught as regards its view of space.

Immanuel Kant's transcendentally psychologistic conception of pure space as an a priori ‘intuitional form’ of sensibility to which

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geometry is bound, as well as his conception of the exclusive a priori-synthetical character of the Euclidean axioms and theorems had proved to be untenable after the discovery of the non-Euclidean geometries in the 19th century. For mathematics there seemed henceforth to be no alternative but the following: Either pure geometry was to be reduced to the study of a so-called formal space (Carnap)¹ in the logistical sense of a continuous series of propositional functions having two or more dimensions (Russell)² without reference to any meta-logical aspect³; or its propositions were to be construed from the basal intuition of the bare two-one ness after the manner of the intuitionists (Brouwer), as the form of the conceived multiplicity of the intervals of time. The intuitionists confine themselves to a complete arithmeticizing of geometry. But they hold to the quantitative nature of all mathematical entities, whose existence must be proved by the possibility of ‘construction’ from the basic quantitative intuition of time.

Logistic, on the other hand, reduces both pure arithmetic and pure geometry to logic. It speaks contemptuously of the ‘exploded’ view which supposed it had to bind arithmetic to the investigation of ‘quantitative relations’ (Russell). On this point formalism must agree with logistic.

This dilemma has been removed in the philosophy of the cosmonomic Idea. It no longer considers space in its pure original sense as an unqualified a priori ‘form’ of the sensory contents of objective perception. Nor can it attach any meaning to a pretended ‘logical origin’ of the concepts of number, space, dimensionality, and continuity. It must also reject the intuitionist conception that the whole field of pure mathematical research is constructed from a basic intuition of the bare two-oneness in the intervals of time.

It raises the question about the original nuclear modal mean-

1 Cf. R. Carnap, Der Raum (Berlin, 1922) p. 14.

2 Cf. Principles of Mathematics, p. 372.

3 Max Black, The nature of Mathematics (London 1933) p. 158, also eliminates the term ‘formal space’ in his statement:
‘the last reason for restricting geometry to the study of space has disappeared, and the following view of the nature of geometry is generally accepted: a geometry does not deal with space but consists of a series of formulae (a logistician would say: propositional functions) which are deduced from a number of initial formulae (axioms)... and any interpretation of the symbols mentioned in the axioms which converts the latter into true propositions, is an interpretation of the geometry.’

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ing of space and number in the cosmic coherence of the law-spheres. Through this also the confusing unqualified notion of so-called ‘empirical space’ becomes useless in science.

§ 3 - Preliminary analysis of the first three modal structures of meaning.

A - A brief analysis of the original meaning of number.

Although the systematic analysis of the modal structures of meaning can only be treated in the special theory of the law-spheres, we will now put our conception to the test by the analysis of some of them.

The original nuclear meaning of number, and the numerical analogy in the logical modality of meaning.

When we try to analyse the modal meaning of the numerical aspect, it is necessary to start with the natural cardinal numbers, in which this meaning discloses itself in its primitive and irreducible structure. For all the rational, irrational and complex numeral functions in the last analysis pre-suppose the natural numbers¹. Every attempt to reduce the modal meaning of the latter to purely logical relations rests, as will appear, on a confusion between numerical analogies in the structure of the analytical relations and the original kernel of numerical meaning. The latter can be found in nothing but quantity (how much) disclosing itself in the series-principle of the numerical time-order with its + and - directions. This modal time-order itself is determined by the quantitative meaning of this aspect. Kant denatured the nuclear moment of the numerical aspect to a transcendental logical category, though he derived the different

1 Even Max Black (The Nature of Mathematics, p. 38) states in his examination of the formalizing of pure mathematics in logistic: ‘Arithmetic is in a peculiar position, since definite integers occur in all systems of axioms, but even that subject can be arranged as above to begin with axioms whose subject-matter consists of integers and relations between integers.’ And a little further on he says: ‘This apology for formal analysis requires two important reservations in the case of pure mathematics. (1) The natural numbers as we have just seen are in the peculiar position of occurring as constants in all axiom systems, and therefore marks denoting integers must be understood in a sense in which lines, points, etc. need not be understood. (2) No complete axiom system can be set up for “real numbers”. That is to say in the two cases where the fundamental philosophical analysis of mathematics arises it will be found that no “formal” analysis is adequate.’ (p. 39/40).

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numbers from the so-called schematizing of this category in time (as a transcendental form of sensory perception).

The view, however, that arithmetic is no more than a special branch of logic, has indeed been prevalent since the Humanistic science-ideal developed the idea of the ‘mathesis universalis’. Many students of logistic suppose they possess in this splendid instrument of human thought all the requirements to deduce the number concept in a purely analytical way from the general logic of relations.

Now the logical modality of meaning has for its irreducible nucleus the analytical manner of distinction (or distinctiveness, respectively, when the analytical relations are viewed as modal subject-object-relations referring to the analytical characteristics of things). In the structure of this modality there is indeed an analogy of number to be found. This analogy, however, receives its determinateness of meaning only in the nucleus of logical meaning itself. This numerical analogy is the analytical unity and multiplicity, inherent in every analytical relation and in every concept according to its logical aspect. Every concept, viewed logically, is a σύνϑεσις υοημάτων, the logical unification of various logical moments into an identical unity. The unifying-process develops according to the analytical norms of thought, viz. those of identity and contradiction.

Every analytical relation, even that of identity, implies a numerical analogy, because analysis itself is a manner of distinction, and distinction implies at least two terms: the one and the other.

As a numerical analogy the logical unity and multiplicity remain qualified by the analytical nucleus of logical meaning. But they undeniably refer back to the original nuclear meaning of number proper in the coherence of meaning of cosmic time.

The relation between number and logical multiplicity.

Logical unity and multiplicity, just as logical allness, are necessarily founded in the meaning of number, and not vice versa¹.

1 This is involuntarily admitted by A. Riehl (though he takes the view, in accordance with Kant, that an abstract number is an a priori scheme of the logical category of quantity), when he says (Der Phil. Kritizismus, 2e Aufl., 1925, II, S. 15): ‘Durch alle Verschiedenheiten der Vorstellungen hindurch, über alle Unterbrechungen des empirischen Selbstbewusztseins hinweg erhält sich das eine: Ich denke, als numerisch mit sich identisch.’ [Through all varieties of representations, over all the interruptions of the empirical self-consciousness one thing remains intact: ‘I think’, as being numerically identical with itself]. From this it follows, that even Kant's concept of the transcendental-logical unity of apperception, assumed to be the foundation of the ‘category of quantity’, appears not to be detached from the meaning of number. On the other hand, number is called ‘eine Schöpfung unseres Geistes’ [a creature of the mind], (ibid., p. 96).

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The logical characteristics, summarized in the unity of the concept, cannot be a logical multiplicity if they do not have their number. The fact that this cosmic order of time between number and logical multiplicity was lost sight of, can be explained in some writers because they deduced number from the subjective human act of counting. Counting is naturally impossible without analytical distinction. But is number in its original sense only the product of counting? This supposition cannot be correct, since every act of counting pre-supposes an at least implicit pre-theoretic sense of the meaning of number and its inner conformity to law.

Moreover, logical multiplicity is qualified in a modally analytical way. This multiplicity, in any case, is a dependent moment in the modal structure of the analytical aspect, deriving its qualification from the analytical nucleus of meaning.

A modal meaning-moment, lacking the qualifying character of a nucleus, can never be original, but always refers to another meaning-nucleus lying outside the modal aspect concerned. Logical multiplicity is a retrocipation to a substratum, and not an anticipation. This appears from the fact that the analytical meaning-nucleus always pre-supposes a numerical multiplicity, even in pre-theoretical thought. This is why numerical quantity must find its analogy in a modally logical sense in analytical multiplicity. In the pre-theoretic, naïve understanding the first multiplicity to which analytical distinction appeals, is of an objective sensory-psychic nature. Pre-theoretical distinction rests upon a primitive analysis of a perceived sensory multiplicity. But also this sensory multiplicity cannot be the original manifold. It must refer to an original multiplicity in the sense of discrete quantity. Animals cannot arrive at a logical concept of number. But they certainly have a sensory perception of multiplicity, which latter can in no case be of an analytical character.

And finally, the method of antinomy can be applied to the attempt to ascribe the original meaning of number to merely logical multiplicity.

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The proposition: 2 + 2=4 is true in the (theoretically grasped) original numerical meaning. But we should not try to deduce this addition only from analytical thought after the manner of logistic with the aid of the concept of class¹. For then it appears that we get entangled in patent antinomies due to the theoretical attempt at erasing the modal boundaries between analytical and numerical multiplicity. Besides, there arises a vicious circle with respect to the cosmic temporal order of the two modal aspects concerned. The reason is that the extension of a class-concept presupposes number in its original sense².

The antinomy, implied in the attempt here intended, can be demonstrated as follows. The sign + is indeed the linguistic symbol signifying the positive direction of the temporal order in the originally quantitative sense of number. In the successive progress of counting the new addition of numbers in the + direction supposes a greater positional value in the series. The two first integers after 0 are really earlier in a quantitative sense than the two next added to them, because their positional value is smaller. The third added unit has the positional value 3, the fourth the positional value 4. If, however, it were allowed to interpret the + sign in an original analytic sense and not in an original quantitative meaning, the judgment 2 + 2=4 would per se be in conflict with the principium contradictionis. For, whichever way we turn, from a merely logical synthesis of two numbers there can never arise a new number. Kant saw this very clearly³.

If logistic tries to avoid this antinomy by executing the operation of a ‘logical addition’ on classes and not on the numbers themselves, it moves in the vicious circle mentioned above. Let us consider the latter more in detail.

1 Cf.. e.g. B. Russell. The Principles of Mathematics, Vol. I (1903) p. 119: ‘The chief point to be observed is, that logical addition of classes is the fundamental notion, while the arithmetical addititon of numbers is wholly subsequent.’ The deduction of number from the class-concept was first attempted by Frege.

2 That is to say the reduction of the integers to the analytical class-concept is not merely a tautology, which has a quite legitimate function in formal analysis. But it rests upon a fallacious ὕστεϱον πϱότεϱον with regard to the cosmonomic place of the numerical and the analytical aspects.

3 Kr. der reinen Vernunft. Einleitung S. 45 (W.W. vol. V, Grossherz. W.E. Ausg.).

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Number and the class-concept. Russell.

Russell, - with Whitehead one of the best philosophically trained mathematicians of this movement - admits that the logical addition of 1 and 1, according to the principles of symbolic logic, would always yield one as its result. That's why he gives the following definition: ‘1 + 1 is the number of a class -w- which is the logical sum of two classes -u- and -v- which have no common term and have each only one term’¹.

But it may be clear already in the present context that the antinomy Russell tries to avoid by introducing the class-concept, reappears in the vicious circle of his definition.

Russell tries to deduce the concept of number from the extension of the concept of class. But for the simple distinction of the classes he needs number in its original meaning of quantity².

In other words, Russell's definition of the sum 1 + 1 remains burdened with the inner antinomy whose existence he himself admitted in the attempt to deduce the number 2 from a ‘logical addition’ of 1 and 1.

1 Principles, p. 119.

2 This is also argued by Cassirer, Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1923) p. 66, who rightly rejects Russell's defence against this objection.

B - A brief analysis of the original modal meaning of space in its coherence with the meaning of number.

The structure of the original modal meaning of number does not show any retrocipation. Original quantity does not have modal substrata. According to their modal structure of meaning all the other law-spheres are founded in the numerical aspect. This means that the latter is the first modal terminal sphere of our cosmos.

Meinong's ‘Gegenstandstheorie’ and G.H.T. Malan's critique of the first modal law-sphere.

This will be denied by Aristotelian scholasticism, which holds to the view that the ‘ontological category’ πόσον (how much?) pre-supposes numerable ‘matter’ in its spatial extension.

But this metaphysical view is not founded on a real analysis of the modal structures of the different aspects of human experience. The analysis of the modal structure of the spatial aspect will demonstrate that the latter pre-supposes the numerical one.

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From a quite different standpoint my view of the numerical aspect as the first terminal aspect of human experience has been attacked by G.H.T. Malan, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of the Oranje Free State (S. Africa), in his treatise The First Sphere of Dooyeweerd (Die Eerste (Getals-)Kring van Dooyeweerd), published in the Tijdskrif vir Wetenskap en Kuns of the S. African Academy of Sciences and Arts (Oct. 1949), p. 101 ff. This author starts from the so-called ‘Gegenstandstheorie’ of A. Meinong and is of the opinion that the numerical aspect pre-supposes pre-numerical sets of discrete objects which are sensory perceptible, e.g., a pair of shoes, twins, and so on.

He also interprets Russell's class-concept ‘gegenstandstheoretisch’ in this sense, although he agrees that Russell himself has conceived of the concept of class (an ‘incomplete symbol’) as a purely logical notion.

The chief objection raised by him against my conception of the meaning-kernel of the numerical aspect is that I have failed to indicate the original objects which have the quantitative mode of being: ‘The objects which have number lie in altogether different spheres. They are points, stones, apples, movements and so on. But none of them belong to the first (i.e. the numerical) sphere. Dooyeweerd is not aware of this lack of specific substantial objects in the sphere. Nevertheless, he speaks about the latter as if there are such objects and calls them “numbers”. What kind of objects can these numbers be, and from where does he get them? The answer is: he constructs them in a metaphysical way. He postulates first a mode of being or modal meaning, i.e. quantitative discreteness in abstracto. Then he hypostatizes this mode of being or meaning and gets his entity “number”. “Number” as an object is the hypostatized quantitative mode of being. From the mode of being itself “number” is born.’

This whole manner of criticism testifies to the fact that Malan has misunderstood the theory of the modal law-spheres in its fundamentals. Objects which have number have nothing to do with the modal structure of the numerical aspect. And numbers cannot be ‘objects in the sense of Meinong's ‘Gegenstandstheorie’, no more than apples, stones and other concrete things can belong to special modal aspects of meaning.

‘Number’ as such is a theoretical abstraction, a modal function, not a thing. The things in which numerical relations are

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inherent, are not numbers, they have them. A set of things, viewed only according to the numerical aspect, is not itself a thing so that it can be an object of ‘sensory perception’.

Malan acknowledges that numbers are not individual things, but considers them as ‘universal objects’ or objects of the third stage (voorwerpen van die derde orde). Their species are not types of things, but only sets of things: They are to be distinguished from the genera whose species are determined by differentia specifica. A pair of shoes and a pair of twins are identical sets. Two sets are identical if each thing of the first set corresponds to a thing of the second. In other words, this identity is the one-one correspondence between the sets. This statement implies that, as far as their numbers as such are concerned, the things functioning in the sets are indifferent. It also means that in arithmetic the sets can only count for something as quantitative relations. Therefore the whole conception of ‘pre-numeral sets’ as ‘species of universal numbers’ is meaningless. Russell conceived the one-one correspondence of the members of identical classes as a purely logical relation. But it is impossible to derive a quantitative equivalence from a purely analytical correspondence of members.

Malan admits this. But his own view according to which numbers are genera of sensorily perceptible, pre-numeral sets of things is equally untenable. He overlooks the fact that a sensory multiplicity as such, abstracted from its intermodal relation to numeral multiplicity, is no longer quantitative in meaning. Consequently, numbers cannot be the genera of sensorily perceptible sets.

The modal meaning-nucleus of space. Dimensionality and spatial magnitude as arithmetical analogies in the modal meaning of space.

The spatial aspect in its original modality of meaning cannot exist without its substratum, viz. the numerical law-sphere. This will for the present be proved by means of a brief analysis of the modal structure of space in its original mathematical sense as regards its nucleus and its retrocipations.

Its original meaning-kernel can only be conceived as continuous extension in the simultaneity of all its parts within the spatial order of time. From the very beginning it must be clear that modern formal mathematics, in its theory of more-dimensional sets, has eliminated the spatial aspect as such.

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Spatial relations and figures are reduced here to special ‘arguments’ that play no essential rôle in the formalized theory. This has nothing to do with the discovery of the non-Euclidean geometries, but is only the result of the reduction of pure geometry to pure arithmetic, or to pure logic respectively.

From the philosophical point of view this elimination of the spatial aspect results in a premature elimination of the fundamental problem of the inner nature and meaning of pure space. This problem has been the subject of profound discussion since Newton, Hume, Leibniz and Kant. But it has not found its definitive solution for lack of an exact analysis of the modal structures of meaning. The premature elimination of this fundamental problem has prevented the philosophy of mathematics from examining the primordial question concerning the original modal meaning of the spatial aspect of human experience.

In connection with this it is necessary to inquire into the relation between pure space and the analogical meanings of the spatial concepts used in all other sciences. It is the very task of the theory of the modal law-spheres to resume the study of this problem, which cannot be indifferent to mathematical theory.

We must especially warn against the identification of the original spatial meaning-nucleus with the objective sensory space of perception. The original meaning-kernel of the spatial aspect cannot be qualified by sensory qualities. Nevertheless, this modal nucleus cannot reveal its meaning apart from analogical moments which are qualified by it. In the creaturely realm of meaning even original kernels of modal aspects are bound to analogical moments in which they must express themselves. It will appear later on that even the meaning-kernel of the numerical aspect does not escape this universal coherence.

It is only as dimensional extension that we can grasp the original modal meaning of space. This original modal meaning is therefore dimensional continuous extension, so long as no account is taken of its anticipatory structure. Dimensionality, however, is an element of the spatial modality of meaning (viewed from its law-side¹) which cannot exist without its

1 Dimensionality, as such, does not imply a determinate magnitude of lines which, as the coordinates of a point, are constructed in different dimensions. It is only an order of spatial extension, not a determinate spatial figure. Therefore, it belongs to the law-side of the aspect, not to its subject-side.

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coherence with the numerical aspect. As space may have two, three or more dimensions, it always refers to the arithmetical aspect as its substratum. Viewed from the modal subject-side of the spatial aspect, the spatial figure necessarily has its numerical analogy in its spatial magnitude. This retrocipation in the spatial meaning, so closely connected with the spatial point, will be analysed in our discussion of the modal subject-object-relation, because from this point of view it is highly interesting.

Provisionally it may be established that magnitude in the meaning of the space-aspect is only a retrocipatory analogy of number.

The so-called transfinite numbers and the antinomies of actual infinity.

Every attempt to transfer the moment of continuity in its original spatial sense into the modal aspect of number inevitably leads to antinomy. Such an attempt really implies the acceptance of the actual or completed infinity of a series, as was done by Cantor, the founder of the theory of the so-called ‘transfinite numbers’¹.

This antinomy must come to light, if we accept transfinity in the orders of the infinite, and also if this actual infinity is assumed in the orders of the infinitesimal. The latter constitute a domain to which Veronese has extended Cantor's theory of the transfinite numbers in order to obtain a firm foundation for the whole of infinitesimal analysis. And the antinomy is implied in the fundamental concept of completed infinity itself, quite apart from the antinomic character of the different theorems that were supposed to be possible for the ‘transfinite classes of numbers’.

1 G. Cantor, Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, ein mathematisch-philosophischer Versuch in der Lehre des Unendlichen (1883).

The functions in the numerical aspect that anticipate the spatial, kinematic and analytical modi.

In the infinite series, formed by the ‘irrational’ and differential functions of number, the modal meaning of the number-aspect undeniably reveals its anticipatory structure in that it approximates the original meaning of space and movement respectively. But it remains within the meaning-aspect of discrete quantity. The total of the discrete numerical values, functioning in these

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approximative series, can never be actually given in the anticipatory direction of time of the numerical aspect. In its anticipatory functions number can only approximate the continuity of space and the variability of motion, but it can never reach them. These meaning-functions of number are not to be considered as actual numbers. They are only complicated relations between natural integers according to the laws of number, just like the fractions and the so-called complex numbers.

In this sense I agree with the statement made by the intuitionist mathematician Weyl: ‘Mathematics is entirely dependent on the character of the natural numbers, even with respect to the logical forms in which it is developed’¹.

However, this does not entitle us to qualify the anticipatory, approximative functions of number as arbitrary products of the human mind, as is done by the intuitionist mathematician Kronecker². They are rigorously founded in the modal meaning-structure of number and the inter-modal coherence of meaning.

Only the interpretation of these meaning-functions as actual numbers is the work of man, but then work that mis-interprets the modal structure of meaning in the numerical law-sphere.

1 ‘Die Mathematik ist ganz und gar, sogar den logischen Formen nach, in denen sie sich bewegt, abhängig vom Wesen der natürlichen Zahl.’ Cf. Weyl: Über die neue Grundlagenkrise in der Mathematik, in Mathem. Zeitschrift, 10 (1921) p. 70.

2 ‘Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk.’ [Whole numbers have been made by God, all the others are the work of man], quoted by A. Fraenkel, Einleitung in die Mengenlehre (2e Aufl. 1923) p. 172.

Malan's defence of the concept ‘continuous number’.

Malan, in his treatise mentioned above, is of the opinion that discreteness and continuity are qualities which a number shows only in its relation to other numbers. The number 1 for instance can represent either a cardinal number, or a rational, or a real one. Whether a number is discrete or continous, depends on the question, whether it is placed under the laws of discrete numbers or under those of continuous numerical values.

According to him this is only a question of the operator which is chosen. The choice of a particular selecting operator, as, e.g., + 1, is arbitrary. But the result of the operation performed with

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the aid of this operator is necessary, in conformity to the law of the function. The operator can only lay bare this law-conformity. Just as the discrete character of a number is laid bare by a particular operator of juxtaposition, so, according to the author, the continuous character is laid bare by an operator of repeated interposition or insertion.

I fear that Malan has not grasped the point at issue. In the first place I must observe that not the operator itself, but only the choice of a particular operator, can be arbitrary. The operators + 1, + etc. are themselves implied in the quantitative aspect of time-order, and so is the operator of ‘repeated interposition’.

When we choose the latter in order to find the series of ‘real’ numerical functions, it must be possible to indicate the law of the numerical series which is to result from the operation. If, however, this functional law implies that the process of interposition is necessarily infinite, then it implies at the same time that the quantitative series cannot be actually continuous. It will always be possible to insert new values between the members hitherto found. In other words, the fact that the process of insertion is continuous by virtue of the operator of ‘repeated interpositon’, does not guarantee the actual continuity of the series of numerical values resulting from the operation.

And the fact that the principle or law of the numerical series resulting from the irrational ‘numbers’ may be definite, does not imply that the latter have an actual existence as numbers on the same footing as natural integers.

Malan cannot discover any anticipatory relation between the continuity of the process of interposing numerical values in the infinite series and the modal kernel of the spatial aspect: ‘It is inexplicable’, he says, ‘how Dooyeweerd can see something spatial in this continuous series.’ But I can explain why he cannot see it. This is due to the fact that he operates with an analogical space-concept without any critical analysis of the original nucleus of meaning of the spatial aspect as such. This is evident from the following argument which he directs against my analysis of this meaning-kernel: ‘As regards space, there is of course continuity in space. But only an absolutizing metaphysician can declare that all kinds of space are continuous. As we have demonstrated in section I, there are, especially in the world of the sense of touch, discrete perception-spaces.’ I never have said that ‘all sorts of space’ are continuous. In the analysis of the modal meaning-kernel of the spatial aspect we are not concerned

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with sensory space which can have only an analogical meaning, just like physical space, biological space, logical space, historical space and so on. But apparently Malan conceives of the different modal ‘kinds of space’ as species of a genus. And this also shows that he has not understood the theory of the modal law-spheres. The latter is intended to lay bare the inter-modal relation between original kernels of modal meaning and merely analogical moments.

Number and continuity. Dedekind's theory of the so-called irrational numbers.

The introduction of the element of continuity in the concept of number, - if not intended as an anticipatory, approximative moment of meaning, - is primarily to be considered as an effort to do away with the modal boundaries of the meaning-aspects of number, space, motion and logical analysis. Then the law of the continuity of the movement of thought, formulated by Leibniz, is had recourse to for the purpose of rationalizing continuity in its original spatial meaning.

Such was the case in Dedekind's well-known attempt to rationalize the so-called ‘irrational numbers’, which prompted Weierstrass, Cantor, Pasch and Veronese to make much more radical attempts in the same direction. The mathematician Dedekind would not look upon the continuity of the series as an anticipation of the meaning of space by the modal meaning of number. This would imply the recognition that the number-aspect is not self-sufficient in the anticipatory direction of time. By means of a sharp definition Dedekind wanted to introduce the idea of continuity into the concept of number itself as an original moment in the numerical meaning-aspect.

Now the ‘irrational’ function of number, which can never be counted off in finite values in accordance with the so-called Archimedean principle, was defined as a ‘section’ in the system of rational numbers.

How did Dedekind find this definition? At least in the first project of his theory he related all the values of the numbers of the system to points in a spatial line. Next he logicized these points in space into pure points of thought, which logical thinking subsequently again eliminates in the continuity of its movement. This procedure was based on the postulate that there is only one single definite numerical value corresponding to each ‘section’ of the rational system. The insertion of the ‘section’ fills a vacuum in

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the system, so that, if one imagines in thought that in this way all vacancies have been filled up, the whole system of numbers is without any gap, i.e. it is continuous. The modal boundary of meaning between spatial continuity and logical continuity seems to have been broken through in this method.

The complete theoretical elimination of the modal meaning of number, through the giving-up of finite numbers as the basis for the infinitesimal functions. The modal shiftings of meaning in the logicistic view.

Dedekind at least took rational numbers and the Archimedean principle for his starting-point.

Weierstrasz, Cantor, Pasch and Veronese, on the other hand, broke completely with the view that discrete quantity is the modal meaning of number. From the start they held the convergent infinite series, (in Cantor: the fundamental series), to be an arithmetical concept. This they considered in its origin to be completely determined by arithmetical thought only and not bound to a deduction from the rational numbers by means of a ‘theory of sections’.

Pasch introduced the very characteristic term ‘Zahlstrecke’ for the ‘irrational number’. In this way he expressed that from the beginning the idea of original continuity has been included in the concept of number.

The Marburg school of neo-Kantianism has laid bare the inner relation between this whole rationalistic development of arithmetic and the creation-motive in the Humanistic science-ideal.

Natorp, one of the leading thinkers of this school, writes: ‘In the last analysis it is nothing but the basic relation between the continuity of thought and the discretion of the separating act of thought which seeks and finds its definite, scientifically developable expression in the relation between number as a continuum and as a discrete quantity’¹.

What strikes us especially in this statement is the exhaustive way in which this philosophical school logicizes the meaning-aspects of number and space. An elaborate system of shiftings has been applied to the meanings of these different spheres.

1 Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften, p. 188: ‘Es ist zuletzt nichts als das logische Grundverhältnis der Denkkontinuität zur Diskretion der sondernden Setzung im Denken, was in dem Verhältnis der Zahl als Kontinuum zu den Zahldiskretionen seinen bestimmten wissenschaftlich entwickelbaren Ausdruck sucht und findet.’

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The original meanings of space and number are supposed to be deducible from the logical movement of thought in a process of logical creation. In other words, the original meaning-nuclei of number and space are first replaced by their analogies in the logical sphere: the arithmetical analogy of logical multiplicity, and the spatial analogy of logical continuity.

And, once this shift in the meanings of the aspects has been accomplished, it becomes possible to carry through the principle of the continuity of thought across all the modal boundaries of meaning. It stands to reason that in his way the meaning-nucleus of number can no longer be found in discrete quantity.

Then the point is how to find the logical origin of number in creative thought. This origin does not lie in the discrete finite one, but rather in the ‘qualitative all-ness’ (= totality) of the infinite¹.

1 Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften, p. 188.

The rationalistic concept of law in arithmetic.

This tendency in the Humanistic science-ideal to logicize the meaning-aspects of number and space made the rationalistic concept of law also subservient to its purpose. As a consequence the subject-side of the modal meaning of number was in theory completely merged into the law-side. Otherwise, it would never have occurred to anyone that the so-called irrational and the differential functions of the numeral aspect can be looked upon as real, actual numbers, and put on a level with the so-called ‘natural number’.

Still less would the view have arisen that the discrete, finite numbers proper ought to be deduced from the infinite, if the subject-side of the law-sphere of number had not been theoretically merged into the law-side.

As observed above, an infinite series of numbers is no doubt perfectly determined by the law of arithmetical progression. This principle makes it possible a priori to determine the discrete arithmetical value in arithmetical time of any possible finite numerical relation in the series. For the rationalist conception of law this is a sufficient reason to attribute actual, completed infinitude to the series as a totality².

But the identification of the law (in the definite principle of

2 Natorp, op. cit. p. 195/6.

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progression) with the actual subject-side of an endless series, is untenable. This is evident from the fact that in the infinitesimal functions of number the numerical modus in its anticipations approximates other meaning-aspects. But it is never able to exceed its modal boundaries in the anticipatory direction of time. After all, the numerical laws cannot be subjected to the basic arithmetical operations. But in arithmetic we must necessarily start from the natural numbers, if we are to work with irrational, imaginary, differential functions of number. The latter only deepen and open the meaning of the natural numeral values. The cosmic order takes revenge on the rationalistic trend of thought in mathematics which in theory eradicates the modal boundaries of meaning between number, space, movement (in its original mathematical sense) and logical analysis. As a result this thought gets entangled in the notorious antinomies of actual infinitude.

All these points ought to be more elaborately discussed in the special theory of the law-spheres. At this stage of our inquiry, we only wish to give a preliminary illustration of our method of analyzing the modal structures of meaning. The only intention is to shed light on the true nature and the coherence of the different elements of meaning in contrast with the prevailing rationalistic currents in mathematics.

C - A brief analysis of the original (mathematical) meaning of motion in its coherence with the original meanings of number and space.

In the modal structure of the law-sphere of movement (in its original mathematical sense intended in pure kinematics) there are very clear numerical and spatial retrocipations. Neither in the numerical, nor in the spatial aspect can we find movement in its original modal meaning of continuous flowing, which needs no further qualification.

The differential as an anticipation of movement in the original meaning of number.

When a mathematician tries to develop, theoretically, the numerical relations between two variable magnitudes in conformity to the arithmetical laws, he makes use of the concept of function. Then one of two variables is conceived of as a function of the other (the independent variable). In this case discrete quantity is thought of as variable. But neither in the

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logical processus (the movement of thought), guiding the differential and integral calculus, nor in the differential relation between the series of values traversed by the two magnitudes, is there any question of movement in its original modal meaning.

The differences traversed in the course of their changes by the variables -x- and -y- in the functionally coherent series of values, remain discrete arithmetical values. But under the guidance of the theoretical movement of thought¹ the numerical aspect approximates the original continuity of pure movement in the anticipatory function of the differential quotient.

The differential function of number expresses nothing but the limiting value of the quotient , when both differences approximate zero infinitesimally.

A mathematician who is of a rationalistic frame of mind, is apt to deny any necessary connection between the differential function of the numerical meaning-aspect and the original modal meaning of movement. Perhaps he will object that the differential and integral calculus has a pure mathematical value in itself and that its relation to physics is nothing but a particular instance of its applicability. This would doubtless be correct. But it has nothing to do with the point in question.

Our statement that the numerical aspect of meaning in its infinite differential function approximates the original modal meaning-kernel of movement, naturally does not imply that movement could be taken here in the sense of an actual physical process. The word movement in this case is taken to refer to the nucleus of the modal meaning of the aspect which delimits the mathematical field of pure kinematics (phoronomy).

The logicist cannot accept the irreducible character of this modal aspect of meaning. He will try to reduce it to its ‘logical origin’. The logical movement of thought will be a sufficient basis to him for the infinitesimal calculus.

1 This guiding function of theoretical logic will be explained in the discussion of the opening-process of the modal meaning-structures.

The logical movement of thought as a retrocipation of the original aspect of movement.

The logical movement of thought is, however, an analogical figure of meaning. It evidently refers back to its substratum in

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the original aspect of movement. Though remaining what it is, viz. logical processus, it has a retrocipatory character and appeals to the nuclear sense of its foundation.

The concepts ‘variable’ and ‘differential’ would be without any basis, if the cosmic coherence of meaning between the number-aspect and the aspect of movement in their original sense were denied.

As to movement in its original sense, it should be observed that as late as in Kant (who, at least at this point, followed in the steps of Newton) the prevailing view was that movement was something occurring in mathematical space.

This idea was due to a misinterpretation of the original meaning of movement, because it was based on the objective sensory image of space. In our psychical-sensory perception the sensory impression of movement is really found in the objective sensory image of space. The reason why this is necessarily so in accordance with the cosmic temporal order, is a subject for later research. But there can be no question of an original movement in the original meaning of space.

The erroneous view of classical physics concerning the relation between sensory phenomena and absolute space.

It is very important to stress this modal state of affairs, since Newton, led astray by the fact that physical experiments are related to objective sensory phenomena, wrongly supposed that the latter can be conceived as occurring in the ‘absolute’ space of mathematics. It was only a quite natural result of this lack of distinction between the different modal aspects of experience that ‘matter’ was viewed as a ‘filling up’ of this mathematical receptacle¹.

1 The Marburg School among the neo-Kantians, too, has stuck to this opinion. Natorp in his work on the logical foundations of the exact sciences, writes with regard to the modern concept of energy: ‘It is exclusively the logical demand of univocal determinateness of being in relation to time and space which leads to the necessary pre-supposition of a substance of occurrence that maintains itself unchanged. This substance is something “real”, which according to its pure concept must necessarily be conceived of as always identical with itself in its fundamental existence, but as having a movable space-content in space.’ [‘So ergibt sich allein durch die logische Forderung der eindeutigen Bestimmtheit des Seins in Bezug auf Zeit und Raum die notwendige Voraussetzung einer unveränderlich sich erhaltende Substanz des Geschehens, oder eines “Realen”, welches nach diesem seinen reinen Begriff notwendig zu denken ist als in seinem Grundbestand immer sich selbst identischer, dagegen im Raum beweglicher Rauminhalt.’] (Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften, 2e Aufl., 1921, p. 349).
This statement again shows how much the Kantian form-matter scheme is prejudicial to a clear idea of meaning. Kant was already led astray by it, when he wanted to define the relation between space and moving matter.

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According to Newton, this receptacle was conceived as a metaphysical entity: the sensorium Dei. In this metaphysical interpretation of ‘absolute space’ the antinomic character of the conception of sensible ‘matter’ as a ‘filling up’ of the former was sharply accentuated.

It was therefore quite understandable that Kant in his critical period transformed Newton's ‘absolute space’ into a transcendental form of intuition.

But, since this transcendental form was identified with space in its original modal sense, Kant's conception remained burdened with the antinomy that sensory space is to be viewed as subjected to the purely mathematical rules of Euclidean geometry¹.

This view, according to which ‘pure Euclidean space’ is an a priori receptacle of sensory perceptions (‘Anschauungsraum’), had already been refuted by Hume with striking arguments. But even Carnap maintained it in his remarkable treatise Der Raum, although only with respect to the topological space of intuition (not as to the metrical and projective ones, which, according to him, lack a priori necessity).

And it is this first misconception which lies at the basis of the classical physical view that sensible movement of matter is considered as occurring in the cadre of pure mathematical space.

1 The dark schematism-chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason could only mask this antinomy, because it does not deal with sensory space but with an exact Euclidean one, related to a priori intuition, which, as such, cannot be of a sensible nature.
The question how sensible space can be subjected to the a priori rules of Euclidean geometry is neither raised nor solved.
The chief point is that in Kant's exclusively mathematical-physical conception of human experience there was no room for a ‘sensory space’ in its objective psychological meaning. For this very reason his transcendental aesthetics and his schematism-chapter could not refute Hume's psychological critique of ‘exact geometry’.
Sensory perceptions as such can only be related to objective sensory space, not to an a priori mathematical one.

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Movement in its original modal sense and in its analogical meanings.

This misconception is of a very complicated character. This appears as soon as we pay attention to the original modal sense of movement in its inter-modal relation to its analogical meanings in physics and in the psychological theory of perception.

In Aristotelian philosophy the analogical character of the fundamental concept of movement was clearly seen.

The common moment, implied in the different meanings of this concept, was found in ‘change’ (quantitative change, change of place, change of qualities, substantial change). But it was not overlooked that this meaning-moment was itself of an analogical nature.

The very fact that Greek thought was ruled by the dialectical form-matter motive explains its resigning to a fundamental analogy. No further inquiry was made into the original modal meaning-structure of movement to which all its analogical meanings must refer. It was in the last analysis the lack of a radical unity in the religious point of departure that prevented philosophical thought from penetrating to the original meaning-kernels of the modal aspects of human experience.

As soon as religious primacy was ascribed to the form-motive, all attention was directed to the ‘substance’ which must be the πόϑεσις of every movement, the accidental as well as the substantial. But the metaphysical concept of substance could not transcend the modal diversity of meaning implied in the analogical concept of movement.

The ancient Ionian philosophy of nature ascribed primacy to the religious matter-motive. Consequently it reduced all natural movement to the eternally flowing Stream of life as the divine Origin. But for this very reason this original divine movement was not conceived in an original modal sense in which its modal nucleus is contained. Rather it was understood in the analogical sense of vital movement, which was absolutized to the divine Origin of all things appearing in an individual form and therefore subject to decay.

It was only in kinematics as a branch of pure mathematics that the original modal meaning of movement could be grasped. Here movement presents itself in its modal nucleus of continuous flowing in the succession of its temporal moments. It is evident that Newton's well-known circumscription of ‘absolute’

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or ‘mathematical’ time was nothing but a concept of uniform movement in this original modal sense.

It makes no sense to define the latter in the Aristotelian manner as a change of place. For movement in its original modal sense cannot be qualified by spatial positions. A change of place conceived of as an intrinsic characteristic of movement would imply that movement occurs in a statical spatial continuum, and that from moment to moment it has another defined place in it.

But this supposition leads theoretical thought into inescapable antinomies since it cancels the concept of movement. We shall return to these antinomies in a later context.

The spatial analogy in the modal structure of the kinematic aspect.

It is true that the modal meaning-kernel of movement needs an analogy of space in the modal structure of the kinematic aspect itself. But this analogy is qualified by the meaning-kernel of this aspect, not inversely. It is a flowing space in the temporal succession of moments, not a statical one in the simultaneity of all its positions.

This flowing space is founded in the latter but cannot be identified with it. It refers indeed to the meaning-kernel of the spatial aspect, but only in the inter-modal relation of the two modal law-spheres concerned, which is guaranteed by the cosmic time-order. This spatial analogy (flowing extension) also implies an analogy of spatial dimensionality in its original sense, i.e. the directions of movement in flowing space, whose multiplicity in its turn is founded in the numerical aspect.

It must be observed emphatically that this provisional analysis of the modal structure of movement in its original (non-analogical) meaning has nothing to do with a speculative construction inspired by a preconceived system of modal law-spheres. On the contrary, in the first (Dutch) edition of this work I tried to reduce the original sense of movement to the meaning-kernel of the modal aspect which is the specific field of physics. But it appeared later on that this attempt could not satisfy the demands of an exact analysis and must lead philosophical thought into inner antinomies.

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Physical movement as an analogy qualified by energy.

In the first place it must be noted that in physics the concept of movement usually has a restricted application, namely in mechanics only. For this reason it might produce a confusing effect if movement is elevated to the rank of the modal nucleus of meaning of the physical aspect.

It is true that this objection cannot be decisive, because scientific terminology often lacks philosophical precision and the word ‘movement’ does not have an exclusively mechanical sense.

There is, however, a much more cogent argument preventing us from conceiving movement as the original meaning-kernel of the physical aspect. This is the undeniable fact that in its physical use the term movement requires a specific modal qualification. Physics, in all its subdivisions, is always concerned with functions of energy (potential or actual) and energy implies causes and effects. That is to say that physical movement cannot reveal the original nuclear meaning of movement, but must have an analogical sense, qualified by the very meaning-moment of energy. In its original modal sense movement cannot have the meaning of an effect of energy. That is the very reason why kinematics or phoronomy can define a uniform movement without any reference to a causing force and why the physical concept of acceleration does not belong to kinematics but to physics alone. Therefore Galileo could define the principle of inertia in a purely mathematical-kinematical way, which signified a fundamental break with the Aristotelian conception.

Since movement in this original sense cannot be reduced to the numerical, the spatial or the physical aspects, it must be an original modal aspect of human experience, which is at the foundation both of physical movement and of movement in the objective psychical sense of sensory perception. That is to say that human experience of movement can never be exhausted in its objective sensory aspect. It always implicitly (in naïve experience) or explicitly (in theoretical experience) refers to the original aspect of movement which, as such, is of a pre-sensory character. We would not be able to perceive movement with the eye of sense, if this sensory perception was not founded in the original intuition of movement as an irreducible aspect of human experience. The sensualistic view is refuted by a serious analysis of the modal structure of sensory movement-perception which lays bare the analogical and referring character of the latter.

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Therefore Galileo followed the right scientific method when he founded his mechanical theory in a mathematical kinematics. And Newton's conception of ‘mathematical time’ has not lost its scientific value if it is conceived in the original sense of pure kinematics. It is only the metaphysical absolutization of kinematic time-order and its confusion with the physical one which must be abandoned. But this does not imply that the latter may be conceived without any (at least implicit) reference to kinematic time.

Movement in its original modal sense cannot be conceived without its inter-modal reference to the original meaning of space. We would not have an intuition of a flowing extension without its intermodal coherence with a statical space. But it is not true that this intuition needs a sensory perceptible system of reference. Only the objective sensory image of movement demands the latter. But this sensory image appeals to our pure intuition of movement in its original modal meaning. It is founded in this pure intuition by the inter-modal order of cosmic time and cannot be experienced in purely sensory isolation. The sensory image of movement occurs within a sensory space of perception which itself is only an objective sensory analogy of space in its original meaning. Therefore it also appeals to the original spatial aspect of our experience. We shall return to this complicated state of affairs in a later context.

The whole conception of moving matter as a filling up of space is exclusively oriented to the sensory aspect of experience. It has a psychological, not a physical or kinematic content.

Of course it is true that in physical experiments sensory perception is indispensable. But in the theoretical interpretation of the sensory phenomena the latter must be related to the modal aspect of energy which is not of a sensible nature. Fields of gravitation, electro-magnetical fields, quanta, photons, electrons, neutrons, protons, and so on, are not sensory phenomena, although the real events in which they manifest themselves have an objective sensory aspect. They function within the original aspect of energy. But they have an inter-modal relation to the sensory aspect of human experience and in physics the objective sensory phenomena can only be theoretically interpreted as sensory symbols referring to the original physical states of affairs which present themselves to the physical aspect of experience.

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The general theory of relativity and the un-original character of physical space.

The general theory of relativity has made the discovery that the properties of physical space (i.e. essentially energy-space) are really determined by matter (in its physical function of energy), because of the indissoluble coherence of physical space and physical time. This is the reason why no privileged rigid system of co-ordinates for physical movement can be accepted¹.

If the properties of physical space depend on energy, the analogical character of this space is indisputable. The general theory of relativity, in the nature of the case, is unable to conceive of physical space without its intermodal coherence with original space, in so far as the latter anticipates the meaning of energy. Such an anticipation necessarily makes an appeal to the original meaning of energy. Hence it can be admitted, that the geometrical foundations of the general theory of relativity (in the transcendental direction of time) are dependent on the modal meaning of energy.

Einstein formulates this as follows: ‘According to the general theory of relativity the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter’². But this statement can only be correct, if ‘matter’ is not intended as a filling-up of original space but rather in its physical function as qualifying its own extension. The question whether this analogical space is a continuum cannot be answered in an a priori way. It is well known that by accepting the classical view of the continuous character of physical space the theory of relativity does not completely agree with the modern quantum-theory of energy³. In the theory of the modal law-spheres there would be no single difficulty in abandoning this residue of the classical conception. For the analogical character of physical space and

1 The general theory of relativity utilizes the so-called Gaussian co-ordinates, i.e. the four-dimensional (including physical time as the fourth coordinate) system of co-ordinates with curves varying from point to point. They can only be understood as physical anticipations in geometry, in so far as this geometrical pattern is related to physical states of affairs.

2 Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (12. Aufl.), p. 76: ‘Gemäss der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie sind die geometrischen Eigenschaften des Raumes nicht selbständig, sondern durch die Materie bedingt.’

3 Particularly the famous French physicist de Broglie has discussed the philosophical problems implied in this incongruence.

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its qualification by the meaning-kernel of the energy-aspect is here clearly seen.

If the energy-aspect in its factual side appears to have discontinuity, it is quite understandable that physical space is determined by this discontinuous structure.

Only a theoretical view of reality which lacks a clear distinction between the modal aspects of human experience and holds to the Kantian view of Euclidean space as an a priori form of sensory intuition, must reject the conception of a discontinuous space as paradoxical.

If the modal boundaries of meaning between original space and its kinematical, physical and sensory analogies are obliterated, there arises indeed an inner antinomy. That is to say, an antinomy arises if it is assumed that the structure of space is dependent on a matter which itself is ‘enclosed in pure space’, consequently, which itself must be determined by the pure mathematical properties of the latter.

The discretion of spatial positions and the un-original or analogical character of this discretion.

In the original meaning of space the positions of the figures must necessarily retain their discretion in the modal continuity of their extension. This discretion, as an arithmetical analogy, is founded in the original meaning of discrete quantity. It is indeed no original kind of discretion. The discrete magnitude, e.g., of the three sides of a triangle, depends on points that have no actual subjective existence in space themselves, as they have no extension in any dimension.

This discretion is to be understood in the static sense of the original spatial positions, which cannot flow into one another in the original meaning of motion. The totality of the spatial positions, passed through by a point, a line, a plane, merely in imagination, in the mathematical movement of thought, is not subjectively actual in the original spatial aspect of time. No more is the totality of the finite numbers in an approximative series subjectively actual in the modal meaning of arithmetic time.

The original time of the spatial aspect is one of the modal meaning-functions of cosmic time, whereas cosmic time itself has an inter-modal continuity. In space the meaning of time is spatial simultaneity¹, not that of kinematic succession. But in the idea of the totality of the discrete positions of a spatial figure

1 Also Plato in his dialogue Parmenides has stressed the fact that spatial simultaneity is a real modus of time.

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conceived of as being subject to ‘continuous transformation’, original spatial time approximates the meaning of kinematic time, in so far as it anticipates the meaning of kinematic succession.

The antinomies of Zeno are due to the attempt to reduce the modal meaning of motion to that of space.

No attempt should be made to reduce succession in the original meaning of motion to the discrete simultaneity of an infinite series of magnitudes in the original meaning of space. For then theoretical thought will inevitably be entangled in the notorious antinomies, already formulated by Zeno the Eleatic (Achilles and the tortoise; the flying arrow). His dialectical arguments against the possibility of movement could only show that movement can never be construed from an approximative infinite series of discrete spatial magnitudes.

From these antinomies it is at the same time clear, that the opposite procedure is equally impossible: discrete spatial magnitudes cannot flow into one another in the continuous succession of movement.

Cassirer makes the remark that geometry has developed a rigorously systematic treatment of its province and has devised truly universal methods only after changing over from the geometry of measure to the geometry of spatial positions². This development, following Leibniz' programme of an analysis situs, resulted in the theoretical opening of the modal functions of the spatial aspect that anticipate the original meaning of the aspect of motion. But this is bound to the condition that theoretical thought does not attempt to violate the sphere-sovereignty of the modal aspects.

2 Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, p. 99/100.

Analytic and projective geometry viewed in the light of the theory of the law-spheres.

In Descartes' analytic geometry the spatial series of positions anticipating the original meaning of the aspect of motion are not really analyzed in the modal meaning of space, but replaced by the anticipatory functions of number. The different spatial

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forms of the plane curves are conceived as proceeding from the ‘movement’ of a definite point, fixed as their fundamental element. Its position in space has been determined univocally by means of a system of co-ordinates. The points obtained in this way are approximated from the values of the numbers assigned to them.

Leibniz' programme of an ‘analysis situs’ was primarily intended to discover the anticipatory principle of progression in the aspect of space itself. This programme was essentially carried out in Poncelet's founding of projective geometry¹. In the theory of the law-spheres Poncelet's projective geometry is only to be understood as a theoretical attempt to discover the constant correlative functions of spatial figures of the same group that approximate the original meaning of motion in an infinitesimal series of positional variations.

A definite spatial figure is considered to be correlated to another if it can be derived from the other by ‘a continuous transformation’ of one or more of its positional elements in space.

In this process certain spatial basic relations are pre-supposed as the invariants of the whole system of spatial relations.

The most important form of correlation, connecting different spatial figures with one another, is discovered in the projective method. Here geometry has the task of discovering those ‘metrical’ and ‘descriptive’ moments of a figure that remain unaltered in its projection. Accordingly projective geometry now introduces the imaginary spatial figure, and speaks of the imaginary points of intersection in the transformed system.

One thing is at once clear: it must be the subjective spatial limiting functions that we are confronted with in this procedure. This is the same thing that has been found in the imaginary functions of number, which also appeared to be subjective limiting functions.

It was owing to the discovery of these anticipatory spatial limiting functions that the principle of progression was found to establish the functional coherence between spatial systems which are otherwise entirely heterogeneous. It was seen that the invariant, positional relations in conformity to the spatial laws also obtain among the infinite series of discrete positions whose mutual positional difference is ‘infinitesimally small’.

Consider, e.g., two circles in a plane. If they intersect, a

1 S. Poncelet, Traité des propriétés de figures (2ième ed. Paris 1865).

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common chord has been given connecting the two points of intersection. The points of this straight line are such that the tangents that can be construed from these points to the circles are equal.

This spatial relation also obtains in case the extreme limit is reached in the series of the positional changes of the two circles, i.e. when they do not intersect any longer. In this case, too, there is always a straight line - the so-called radical axis of the two circles - possessing the spatial property mentioned above and connecting the two ‘imaginary’ points of intersection.

In the same way it can be proved, e.g., that when three circles are given in a plane, and we construe the ‘radical axes’ for any two of them until they have all been used, the three lines obtained in this way intersect at one point. According to the principle of the invariant relations in the infinite series of positions, the same thing holds good for the special case that the three circles intersect indeed, etc.¹.

On the ground of the same principle of progression the projective view of Euclidean space is entitled to speak of the infinitely distant point in which two parallel lines intersect; or of the infinitely distant straight lines in which two parallel planes intersect.

In the ‘imaginary’ positional functions the original meaning of space indeed approximates that of movement. Projective geometry only violates the specific modal sovereignty of the law-spheres of space and movement, in the further development given to it, e.g., by Cayley and Klein. In their theory conclusions are drawn from the principle of the invariant relations to the effect that an actual continuity is assumed in the series of the transformations of the spatial positions. In other words, they speak of an actual ‘all-ness’ (totality) of the changing positions in this series. This conception implies inescapable antinomies. For in the spatial order of time this totality can no more be actually given than in the numerical order the totality of the numbers in an approximative series. The differential and the integral of the series can no longer have original spatial meaning if the latter is considered to be actually continuous. Only in the original modal meaning-aspect of movement can there be any question of an actual continuity of the changes of position. But

1 Cf. Hankel, Die Elemente der projektivischen Geometrie (Leipzig), p. 7 ff.

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in the meaning of original movement there are no really discrete spatial positions.

When theoretical thought tries to conceive the transition of the spatial positions in the series as ‘actually closed’, or ‘continuous’ (the pseudo-concept of a ‘totality of transformations which is dense in every direction’), it again gets involved in the antinomy of ‘actual infinitude’. A real continuity in the transformations would cancel the original meaning of space; but a real reduction of original movement to an infinite series of discrete spatial positions cancels the original meaning of movement.

The logicistic shiftings of meaning in projective geometry.

The logicistical eradication of the modal boundaries between space and movement must be understood as an unwarranted shifting of meaning. The original sense of movement is then identified with the analogical movement of thought which is actually operative in the analysis of the spatial positions.

According to F. Klein all the geometrical transformations resulting from the arbitrary movements of the elements in an ordinary three-dimensional space, form a group¹.

The ‘movement’ intended here, which overarches the entire series of positions of the ‘group’, is in fact the theoretical movement of thought. This thought conceives the original meaning of space in its anticipatory coherence with the original sense of movement.

This complicated state of things is given a perfectly erroneous interpretation, if it is suggested that the original modal meaning of the static relations of space can be dissolved into a group of ‘Operationen’ (= operations) in the sense of movements of thought.

In mathematics there is a logicistic tendency which poses the dilemma:

One must either acknowledge the purely logical origin of mathematical concepts, - or fall back into the view of space as it is given in sensory experience.

But in this dilemma the cosmological problem of meaning implied in the mathematical concepts, has been obscured fundamentally and essentially.

1 Einleitung in die höhere Geometrie. II. S. 1 ff.

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§ 4 - Some examples of the structural analysis of later modalities of meaning, intended to give an insight into the order of succession of the law-spheres.

In the structural analysis of the first three modalities of meaning, although only intended to be of a provisional character, we followed a systematic method. And it needs no further comment that justice can only be done to the method of analysis indicated by applying it systematically.

But if we go on in the same way in our analysis of the later modalities of meaning, the boundaries between the general theory of the modal law-spheres and the special theory will be cancelled, and we shall land in the problems of the ‘philosophia specialis’. This would not only far exceed the scope of a general theory, but it would set the reader on a road that he has not yet been prepared for. He would repeatedly come upon general problems that ought first to be looked into in a general theory. He has so far been confronted for example, with the modal subject-object relation and the opening-process in the modal meaning, which will prove to be some of the main themes in the general theory. They demand a separate discussion.

In the present stage our enquiry is exclusively concerned with the task of bringing home to the reader the value of the distinction between the three different kinds of structural moments in the modality of meaning. In this way he may get an insight into the strict cosmic law-conformity of the order of the law-spheres. The reader should constantly keep this in mind in order to understand why in the study of the later modalities of meaning we restrict ourselves to some examples of our structural analysis. Even in this restriction the anticipation of later themes cannot be completely avoided.

Meaning-nucleus and retrocipations in the original modal sense of organic life.

We start with the biotic law-sphere, which proves to be founded in the spheres of number, space, movement, and energy, according to the cosmic order of time. For the modal structure of the biotic aspect cannot exist without these substratum-spheres. The irreducible meaning-nucleus of the biotic law-sphere is life.

Biology can attempt to find specific characteristics of life-phenomena, such as autonomous procreation, preservation of the whole in the continuous change of its parts etc. But these characteristics are related to living beings in their sensible

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behaviour. They cannot define life as the irreducible meaning-kernel of the biotic aspect of human experience and empirical reality. This is due to the fact that they are analogical concepts, which presuppose their modal qualification by the irreducible meaning-kernel of the biotic aspect. Life is a fundamental modality, not a concrete phenomenon. It belongs to the fundamental modal horizon of human experience, which lies at the basis of the concrete phenomena considered to be manifestations of life.

Therefore the contest between mechanists and vitalists in biology cannot be decided by experiments. For as soon as we establish the fact that a living being has originated, we appeal to an irreducible modal aspect of experience, and not to phenomena whose scientific interpretation as manifestations of life pre-supposes this fundamental aspect of experience.

Life as such is not perceptible to the eye of sense. It can only manifest itself in sensible phenomena. But this very manifestation cannot be experienced in a merely sensory way. It appeals to the original life-aspect. And the latter cannot transcend human experience since it is one of its fundamental modalities, not a metaphysical substance.

Therefore the mechanistic interpretation of life is the result of a philosophical prejudice, not the outcome of special scientific research. It tries to reduce life in its modal meaning-kernel to another modality of meaning. But at the same time it must appeal to the nucleus of the biotic meaning-aspect as soon as it wishes to establish the presence of life-phenomena¹.

1 This state of affairs is being more and more acknowledged by students of biology. Wilhelm Troll in his Allgemeine Biologie (1948 p. 1/2) summarizes the prevailing view as follows. After having remarked that the attempt to reduce biology to physics and chemistry has furnished many contributions to our knowledge of the phenomena of life, he continues: ‘With respect, however, to the general pretention that in this way we can arrive at a theory of life merely based on the foundations of physics and chemistry, the mechanic conception mentioned has not only failed to stand the test of experience, but it has positively refuted itself.
For the more progress was made with the application of physical and chemical methods on problems of biology, the more clearly it was shown that in this way the essence of life cannot at all be conceived... Much rather we are confronted with an original phenomenon and in perceiving it we enter into a sphere of experience which transcends physics and chemistry.’
In the theory of the modal structures of experience we have only to replace the term ‘original phenomenon’ in the last sentence by ‘original modal aspect’.

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This nucleus expresses itself in an organic relation and this organic relation, as a moment of the biotic modality, is a necessary modal retrocipation in its meaning-structure. The reason is that the ‘organic’ implies the analogy of number, viz. the (biotic) unity in the multiplicity of vital functions.

I must emphatically warn against an identification of organic life as a modality of meaning with a living organism. The latter is a structure of individuality, a typical whole functioning in principle within all the modal aspects alike, though it is typically qualified by the modus of organic living. Its identification with the biotic aspect has caused a lot of disturbance in the discussion between the mechanistic and the vitalistic trends in biology concerning the problem of life. It was to a great extent due to the influence of the metaphysical concept of substance which diverted the attention from the modal horizon of experience¹. The organic moment in the modal structure of the biotic aspect is not itself an organism, but a modal relation of unity and multiplicity of life functions, a numerical analogy qualified by the meaning-nucleus of this modal aspect. It cannot be lacking in the modal structure of the latter.

Neither can a spatial analogy be wanting in the modal meaning-structure of the biotic law-sphere. Not a single instance of organic life can exist without its biotic space, as the (objective) field of biotical action and reaction, the bio-milieu. This retrocipation refers in the first place to a bio-physical space as an anticipatory function of the field of energy-effects. But it is ultimately founded in the original meaning of extension. There can be no doubt now that this biotic spatial sphere cannot express the original spatial meaning. For we have demonstrated the internal antinomy in the view of ‘matter’ as the ‘filling-up of pure space’, and in that of ‘movement’ as ‘space-content’². Consequently, it must be evident that a fortiori biotic effects cannot function within space in its original (pure) sense.

Among the modal retrocipations of the original biotic aspect there must also be an analogy of movement. Organic life can only express itself in ‘biotic movement’.

1 Cf. my treatise Het substantiebegrip in de moderne Natuurphilosophie en de theorie van het enkaptisch structuurgeheel in the quarterly Philosophia Reformata 15 Year, 1950, p. 66-139.

2 Cf. pag. 98-105.

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Static rigidity is incompatible with the original meaning of life. But this biotic movement is not movement in the original sense. It is intensive and qualitative development in the organic unity of life, in the temporal order of the biotic law-sphere itself. It is only founded in the original meaning of movement.

Original movement, in its turn, approximates the modal meaning of life in its biotic anticipations. These biotic anticipations cannot be deprived of their original meaning of movement, although they are directed towards organic life (in the transcendental direction of time).

Meanwhile the modal aspect of movement cannot anticipate the modal meaning of life without the intermediary of the aspect of energy. As explained above, energy itself appeals to the original meaning of movement in an analogical moment of its modal structure, viz. that of cause and effect (operation). Energy-movement in the physical-chemical process can manifest itself either with or without an anticipatory direction towards organic life.

Within the inner structure of individuality of a ‘living organism’ the processes of energy-exchange doubtless disclose biotic anticipations realizing themselves under the direction of organic life-impulses.

The organic moment of life itself implies an analogy of energy. It does not only mean a vital unity in a diversity of biotic functions; in addition it is really an organizing biotic energy directing the physical-chemical processes in their anticipatory potencies.

But this state of affairs is completely misinterpreted when life is conceived of as a ‘substance’ (entelechy in H. Driesch) which directs a purely mechanical constellation of matter, closed in itself in the rigid deterministic sense of classical physics. This neo-vitalistic conception involves itself in inner antinomies and cannot account for the inner coherence of meaning of the biotical and the physical aspects of experience.

Life is not a ‘substance’, but a modal function, just like energy. And the latter is not closed in a rigid mechanical-causal coherence, but because of its modal structure it has anticipatory potencies, which are only opened by the directing impulses of the biotic functions¹.

To ‘biochemistry’, which investigates these anticipatory functions experimentally, (organic) life lies outside the original

1 This is not the same as Nicolai Hartmann's ontological theory of the hierarchy of different ‘layers’ of being (Schichtentheorie) and his opinion that ‘matter’ as a ‘lower layer’ would be completely ‘transformed’ by life. Hartmann does not know the modal structures of meaning and their coherence.

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meaning of the physical-chemical field of research. The concept of life here remains a theoretical limiting concept, and it should remain so.

The modal viewpoint of psychology.

The theoretical field of research of the so-called psychological special science will be delimited univocally only, if the view is given up that the ‘Gegenstand’ (= the modal field of research) of this science is to be found in the ‘soul’ as a collective idea of modal functions. The meaning of this idea is not further defined or delimited. Also the metaphysical conception of the ‘psychè’, which more or less still influences psychology, should be relinquished.

The Biblical meaning of the word ‘soul’, where it is used in its pregnant sense of religious centre of human existence, has nothing to do with a theoretically abstracted complex of modal functions. Neither has it anything to do with the metaphysical Greek conception of the psychè. This must be clear to any one who has discovered that the background of all such views is the immanence standpoint in philosophy. The Bible does not theorize at all about the human soul (let alone theorizing from the philosophical immance standpoint).

If in future we speak of a ‘psychic law-sphere’, we mean a modal aspect of human experience, delimited from all the other aspects by its nuclear moment of feeling. The modal meaning-nucleus of feeling is doubtless original in the cosmic-temporal order, i.e. irreducible to other modal meaning-nuclei.

Feeling as a supposed chief class of psychical phenomena. Felix Krueger's discovery and its interpretation in genetic psychology.

Modern psychology has been led astray by conceiving of feeling as one of the chief classes of ‘Erlebnisse’ and by co-ordinating it with volition and knowing as the two other classes. This misconception is due to the faculty psychology of the XVIII^th century since Rousseau, especially to Tetens and Kant.

It is true that since the decline of this faculty-psychology there

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have been discovered some states of affairs which do not agree with this classification.

Especially the German psychologist Felix Krueger, a disciple of Wilhelm Dilthey, has observed that feeling is implied in every ‘Erlebnis’ as a quality of the totality of our inner experience and that in this totality there is a continuous transition from feeling to the ‘differentiated forms of consciousness’. Attention is also paid to the ‘universality’ of feeling with respect to these states of affairs. But this discovery has been interpreted in the line of a psychologistic transcendental Idea of origin laid at the basis of genetic psychology. Consequently this interpretation within the cadre of genetic psychology has led to the erroneous conclusion that feeling would be the undifferentiated origin of the other ‘classes’ of ‘Erlebnisse’ (the noetic and volitional) which were supposed to rise from it through differentiation. This cannot be true. In the footsteps of Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl the ‘Erlebnis’ is conceived of as an intentional act of human consciousness, in contradistinction to the abstract ‘sensation’. Then it must be evident that feeling, unlike volition and knowing, cannot be an act but only a modal aspect of every act. It is correctly defined by James Drever in his Dictionary of Psychology (1952) as ‘a general term for the affective aspect of experience’, though the adjective ‘affective’ should be replaced by the more general term ‘emotional’.

It is impossible to regard real acts, like the volitional or noetic ‘Erlebnisse’, as modal aspects of experience. On the contrary, every real act functions necessarily in the integral modal horizon of human experience, which embraces the totality of all the modal aspects. This fact cannot be lost sight of except under the influence of the metaphysical dogma concerning the dichotomy of temporal human existence as a composite of a ‘material body’ and a ‘spiritual soul’. The more modern version of this dichotomistic conception (Max Scheler) speaks of an antithesis between a vital-psychical sphere and a ‘Geist’ which can make the former and the entire ‘world’ to its theoretical ‘Gegenstand’. But also this view contradicts the unbreakable meaning-coherence between the aspects.

It is an undeniable fact that in the first life-phase of a suckling baby feeling precedes the first development of logical distinction; the latter precedes the controlling manner of forming sounds, which in its turn precedes the primitive symbolical designation

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of concepts by words etc. But that does not prove that the higher mental functions originate from feeling as their undifferentiated origin. Rather it testifies to the truth of our view of the order of the modal aspects of experience, as a real temporal order, related to subjective duration in the genetic process.

The ‘Erlebnisse’ and the modal delimitation of the psychological viewpoint. Erlebnis and behaviour.

If the ‘Erlebnisse’ as real acts of experience imply the whole horizon of modal aspects, it follows that it is impossible to find in them the specific ‘Gegenstand’ of psychology without a delimitation of the specific modal viewpoint from which they are to be examined.

This specific viewpoint cannot be found in the inner subjective character of the ‘Erlebnis’. For the inner character of the latter does not detract from its encompassing the whole horizon of modal aspects¹ and its subjectivity cannot be examined scientifically without its relation to the different modal laws to which it is subjected. In this respect there is no difference between ‘Erlebnisse’ as inner acts of consciousness and external behaviour. The latter cannot be neglected by psychology insofar as it can be an objectively perceptible expression of the intentional direction of the inner act. On the other hand external behaviour in its objective sensory aspect cannot be a real psychological object of research apart from its relation to the subjective inner experience of which it may be an objectively perceptible expression. Behaviourism is not to be regarded as a trend of psychology proper². But the point in question remains: What

1 The modal horizon of human experience corresponds to the modal aspects of empirical reality. Consequently, the inner act of experience as a concrete ‘Erlebnis’ cannot be restricted to its psychic feeling-aspect. This will appear to be the key to the solution of the epistemological problem which we shall discuss in the third part of this Volume.

2 The thesis that the inner acts of experience cannot be studied by psychology because science is bound to objective sensory phenomena cannot be maintained. We must bear in mind that the aspects of human experience have a modal structure of a universally valid character and that by means of language it is possible to establish a real social contact between our own inner experience and that of our fellow-men. My inner life of experience is not closed within itself. It can only exist in a social exchange of experiences penetrating my own consciousness and sub-consciousness. In a very close community of two persons the inner act-life of the one can often be completely open to that of the other so that they penetrate one another mutually and ‘flow together’.
That is why the psychological method of ‘empathy’ into the inner act-life of the other man has a solid foundation in the inner structure of this life.
As to animal feeling, we must observe that it cannot be completely strange to us. In my anthropology, which will be explained in the third volume of my new trilogy Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy, I have argued that the act-structure of inner human experience is founded in a lower structure qualified by feeling-drives in which the psychical aspect has not yet opened its anticipatory spheres. In the so-called ‘enkaptic structural whole’ of the human body this animal structure is bound by the higher act-structure of human experience. Nevertheless, it is continually present as a sub-conscious under-layer of the latter and it can freely manifest itself in certain limiting situations (Grenzsituationen) in which the controlling function of the higher act-life has become inactive. Depth-psychology has been able to lay this bare.

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is the specific modal determination of the field of psychology, if the latter is to be conceived of as a special science and not as a philosophical anthropology, or as a typical total-science in the sense of positive sociology.

Animal psychology and the unity of the psychological viewpoint.

This question urges itself upon us still more stringently, if we consider the fact that psychology is not restricted to human ‘Erlebnisse’ but that there is also an animal psychology¹. Animals lack the inner human acts of experience, because the latter are necessarily related to the ego as the transcendent centre of human existence. They lack actual subject-functions within the logical and post-logical modal law-spheres which in every real act of experience are essential. Within these modal aspects they can have only object-functions in the subject-object relation of human experience.

If animal psychology is to be regarded as a real branch of psychology, it must have the same general modal viewpoint as the psychology of human ‘Erlebnisse’. This must be clear if it is considered that the unity of the psychological viewpoint is not to be found in typical totality-structures of human experience, but only in a specific modal aspect, which is made the ‘Gegenstand’ of theoretical thought in its logical function.

This does not detract from the fact that psychology has to examine concrete phenomena which present themselves only within typical structures of individual totality, as for instance

1 See the preceding note.

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human acts of thought and remembering, volitional acts, acts of fantasy, and so on. But these totality-structures are not to be viewed as psychological ones if one wants to escape the absolutization of the psychical viewpoint. They can only express themselves in a typical way within the specific modal aspect which delimits the field of psychology.

This aspect has logical, historical, linguistic, social, economical, aesthetical, juridical, and moral anticipations. It also anticipates the ultimate limiting aspect of human experience, that of faith (in the feeling of confidence and certainty in the faith in God's revelation or in the feeling of unbelief, respectively). In other words, psychology has indeed a modal field of research which has real universality in its proper sphere.

The volitional, the intellectual, the fantasy-directions of human act-life, in their individual as well as in their social manifestations, can all be studied in their psychological aspect.

But psychology cannot exceed the modal boundaries of its field without entangling itself in an illegitimate ‘psychologism’.

The pseudo-psychological conception of the human ego and the I-thou relation.

A fortiori the human ego and its relation to other egos cannot be of a psychical character.

There does not exist a ‘psycho-physical ego’, or a ‘transcendental-logical ego’, or an ‘historical-existential ego’, or an ego as ‘psychical’ centre of human ‘Erlebnisse’. All these so-called egos are nothing but idols of an apostate human self-consciousness. The human ego to which all human experience is related is one and the same: it transcends all modal functions and all temporal individuality-structures of human existence referred to it. It is the single central point of reference for all of them, but not any science whatever can make it into its ‘Gegenstand’.

When psychology speaks about self-feeling, self-impulse, self-love or ego-ism, self-preservation, self-control, self-observation or -introspection and so on, it can mean only psychological phenomena which manifest themselves in a concentric direction to the ego. But the ego itself escapes every attempt to grasp it in a psychological view. The human ego expresses itself in the entire temporal human existence, but it recedes as an intangible phantom as soon as we try to localize it in our temporal experience.

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The impossibility of a definition of feeling as the meaning-kernel of the psychical aspect. The psychological distinction between ‘feelings’ and sensations (Empfindungen).

So we must always stress the necessity of a modal delimitation of the psychological field of research.

To my mind the specific aspect embracing the modal viewpoint both of human and animal psychology can be found only within the law-sphere whose modal structure has feeling as its meaning-kernel. I cannot see another possibility unless I can be shown a better way for a truly modal delimitation of the specific psychological viewpoint.

There cannot exist a material criterion oriented to the concrete contents of human experience; for every concrete temporal ‘Erlebnis’ can be viewed theoretically according to its psychical aspect.

If feeling is the original meaning-kernel of the latter, it must be impossible to define it by means of specific qualities designated by analogical terms. There is a German adage: ‘Was man nicht definiren kann, das sieht man als ein Fühlen an.’ [What cannot be defined is called a feeling]. But the same can be said with respect to the meaning-nucleus of every other modal aspect of human experience.

Many psychologists have tried to distinguish feelings from sensations and representations by specific characteristics. In contradistinction to the latter classes of ‘Erlebnisse’, feelings are supposed to be characterized by their polarity. They lack a spatial character, and their actuality excludes every possibility of reproduction. But these theoretical distinctions, apart from their psychological serviceableness, have nothing to do with feeling as the modal meaning-nucleus of the psychical aspect of experience.

The latter is not a concrete ‘Erlebnis’ viewed from its psychical aspect; rather it is the nuclear moment of a modal meaning-structure which determines every concrete phenomenon of consciousness functioning in it with respect to its modal-psychical character. In its modal meaning every psychical phenomenon is characterized by this kernel-moment. Sensations (Empfindungen) are ‘elementary’ subjective feeling-phenomena referring to objective sensory qualities of things or events. They can be moments of the so-called polar feelings of pleasure and pain which project themselves in the sensorily perceived objects.

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They can also be experienced in an attitude of indifference.

But indifference, too, is a feeling-attitude in its modal psychical sense. Interest and indifference are only complementary manifestations of feeling which can be experienced in a continuous transition.

The retrocipatory structure of the modal feeling-aspect.

The structure of the full psychic modality of meaning, considered from its retrocipatory side, necessarily shows analogies of number, space, movement, energy, and organic life. If we want to analyse these retrocipatory meaning-moments theoretically as sharply as possible, it is necessary to start from the psychic aspect in its unopened, restrictive state, as it is realized in animals.

The so-called ‘higher feelings’ will not be considered for the present. The modal psychic meaning in its merely retrocipatory structure is sensory.

Sensibility is an evident analogy of the biotic meaning of organic life in the modal meaning of feeling. ‘Sensory’ means founded (by the cosmic order) in the biotic modality of meaning¹. ‘of the senses’, and sensory feeling is closely bound up with, and It is a structural meaning-moment in the life of feeling, which is not life in its original modal sense, since it is qualified by the meaning-nucleus of the psychic aspect. Though it is necessarily founded in the biotic aspect, it is not subject to biotical laws, but it has its own psychical law-sphere (cf. the laws of association, the law of the polarity of feelings of pleasure and pain etc.).

Sensory feeling reacts on biotic stimuli but this psychic reaction is never biologically, let alone mechanically, explicable. For the sensory psychic reaction is qualified neither by the original nucleus of the biotic nor by that of the physical meaning-aspect. Sensibility, as a biotic retrocipation in the original modal meaning of feeling, in its turn refers back to an analogy of movement in this modal meaning. Sensory feeling necessarily expresses itself in sensory movements of feeling which are called ‘emotions’. But the concept of ‘emotion’ should not be identified with particular types of psychic movement like the ‘af-

1 Scheler has tried to conceive the ‘pure essence’ of feeling entirely isolated from the organic meaning of life. This procedure results in the sublimation of the modal meaning of feeling, because the latter only functions in the intermodal coherence of the aspects.

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fects’, or the ‘passions’. Emotion is necessarily founded in the original meaning of movement but only by the intermediary of biotical and physical analogies. Emotional life is immediately founded in organic and physical-chemical processes which in their turn refer back to the original modal meaning of movement. We shall revert to such complications in the meaning-structure.

Behind this modal analogy of movement, however, a spatial analogy and one of number announce themselves in the structure of the psychic modality of meaning.

The subjective sensory feeling of space, the objective sensory picture of space, and the sensory multiplicity (of impressions) will be examined in a later context.

Some examples will now be given of the structural analysis of the normative law-spheres. This will show that here, too, the cosmic order of time guarantees the law-spheres concerned a fixed place, which cannot be ignored by theoretical thought with impunity.

The retrocipatory structure of the logical aspect¹.

It has been repeatedly observed that the nuclear moment in the modal structure of the logical aspect is the analytic mode of distinction. As a meaning-kernel this central structural moment must express itself in a series of retrocipations which guarantee its inner coherence with the preceding modal aspects.

In the first place there is an analogical moment to be found in the logical aspect which, as such, refers back to the psychical sphere. This is the moment of logical apperception which discloses a retrocipatory meaning-coherence with the perceptive mode of experience inherent in feeling. Leibniz was the first thinker who observed this inner coherence between logical apperception and sensory perception. But he interpreted it in the line of his lex continui, a cosmonomic Idea oriented to his discovery of the differential- and integral calculus.

As a matter of fact conceptual apperception in its first primitive or ‘restrictive’ state is rigidly bound to sensory representation. The analytical relation of identity and diversity is immediately applied to sensory images of things and in these images the logical characteristics are analysed in a primitive way. For

1 How an actual analysis of the modal structure of the analytical aspect is possible will be explained in more detail in the second part of this Volume.

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instance: an animal which has two legs and wings is a bird. A circle is a round thing. Here analytical apperception and sensory feeling-perception seem indeed to pass into one another without sharp limits. Actually the modal boundaries between analytical apperception and sensory perception are implicitly present even in the most primitive concept. They cannot be lost sight of in the analysis of the modal structures without our being involved in theoretical antinomies.

Analytical apperception can only function in the logical life of thought, and here we are confronted with a necessary biotical retrocipation within the modal structure of the logical aspect. The logical life of thought doubtless has a biotic foundation and would be meaningless without this retrocipatory coherence with life in its original modal sense. But it is not reducible to the latter; it is subject to logical and not to biotical laws. It manifests itself in every logical process of thinking, in every act of conceptual analysis, in every logical conclusion.

This biotic analogy in the modal structure of the logical aspect in its turn implies retrocipatory analogies of the physical meaning of energy, of movement, space and number in their original meaning-nuclei.

The analytical principium rationis sufficientis, which rules the logical process of concluding as its norm, is a real analytical principle of causality and shows an inner retrocipatory meaning-coherence with the relation of cause and effect in its original physical sense. This inner coherence urges itself upon human thought to such a degree that in modern philosophy the physical and the logical principles of causality have often been identified.

The empiricist thinker J. Stuart Mill employed the physical concept of causality conceived in the deterministic sense of classical mechanics, in his System of Logic. His theory of causality, called the theory of the condicio sine qua non, was introduced in continental European jurisprudence and was often viewed as an explanation of the logical principle of causality¹. In the second part of Vol. I, I have outlined the rise and the development of the rationalist identification of physical and logical causality, and the reduction of the latter to the logical principle of contradiction.

1 Cf. my treatise De modale structuur van het juridisch causaliteitsverband in the Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Dl. 13 no. 5 (1950).

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Kant made causality into a transcendental logical category implying the ‘pure logical’ concept of force as its ‘predicable’!

The real state of affairs is that the analytical relation of grounds and conclusion has a patent analogical character and cannot disclose the original meaning of the causal relation. Its validity is restricted to the logical process of concluding, which is a real analytical movement of thought, a procedere from premises to conclusion. The retrocipatory coherence of the logical meaning-aspect with the modal aspect of movement here discloses itself in an evident manner.

The movement of logical thought doubtless has an analogical character referring back to movement in its original modal sense of extensive flowing.

But at the same time it implies a spatial analogy. The analytical process of thinking pre-supposes an analytical (formal) space. Analytical space is a logical order of co-existence, a logical extension in which every analytical element can be localized.

Without this logical space no single analysis would be possible.

It can have different ‘analytical dimensions’ which are only logical analogies of the original spatial ones. In logical space we synthesize a one- or more dimensional analytical multiplicity to a logical unity. The numerical analogy in this analytical synthesis has been explained in an earlier context. But it is not superfluous to stress the difference between this analytical synthesis and the inter-modal synthesis of meaning executed in theoretical thought. The former is only the analytical aspect of the latter. The consequences of this distinction will be explained in more detail in the third part of this volume.

The anticipatory structure of the logical aspect. Historical, linguistic and social anticipations.

In pre-theoretical thought the logical aspect is only actualized in its retrocipatory structure examined above. Here it manifests itself in a merely restrictive function. In theoretical thought, however, it opens its anticipatory spheres.

The first anticipation which discloses itself in this opening-process is an historical one, viz. that of logical control or mastery. In our introductory examination of the analogical basic concepts we have remarked that the terms mastery, control or command have different meanings. But the fundamental signification appeared to be cultural authority over persons or things corresponding to a controlling manner of form-giving according to a

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free project. In this original sense it appeared to be used in the science of history, where it needs no further modal qualification.

In the light of our later examinations concerning the modal meaning-structures this is a strong indication that the term control designates the original meaning-kernel of the historical aspect. When in the continuation of our inquiry we shall be engaged in a closer analysis of the modal structure of this aspect, it will appear that this presumption is justified. Provisionally it will be assumed that it is correct.

In theoretical thought we are obliged to give logical form to our concepts and judgments, and because here our analytical activity displays a systematic character we indeed acquire logical control or mastery over our field of inquiry. Pre-theoretical analysis in its unsystematic character remains strictly bound to the sensory images of feeling-perception and shows a rigid uniformity in the course of time. Theoretical logic, on the other hand, has an historical development because it develops power in the process of a free shaping of the human mind.

But the opening of the historical anticipation in the modal structure of the analytical function is not possible without the opening of its linguistic anticipatory sphere. If theoretical thought is to elevate itself to systematic control over its material, it must free itself from the shackles of sensory images and direct itself to general symbols. Theoretical logic discloses a logical symbolism which replaces the sensory images by general signs only representing the abstract terms of analytical relations; it anticipates the lingual symbolism in its analytical process of thought.

Symbolic logic has developed this analytical symbolism to a high degree of perfection. But we must stress the necessity of a clear distinction between logical symbolism in its anticipatory analytical meaning and symbolic denotation in its linguistic sense. The former is not identical with linguistic symbolism but only an anticipatory function of analysis. In the theoretical act of thought logical symbolism cannot be actualized without the means of abstract symbols. But the latter are not themselves logical concepts and analytical relations; they can only denote them in a linguistic sense. Logical symbolism makes the analytical activity explicit, whereas pre-theoretical analysis remains implicit in sensorily founded representations.

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The economic anticipation in the modal meaning of logical analysis.

In the opening-process of the logical law-sphere we also detect a modal anticipation of the original modal meaning of the economic law-sphere in the so-called economy of thought. A better term would be ‘analytical economy’. This meaning-figure has been mentioned in our introductory consideration of the analogical basic concepts. Just like the other moments of the modal structure, analytical economy reveals itself both on the law-side of the sphere (the principle of economy of thought) and on the subject-side (the logical-economic activity of thinking subjected to this principle). It is doubtless a modal anticipation, not a retrocipation. In other words, the economic law-sphere is founded in the logical sphere and not the other way round. This appears convincingly from the fact that the meaning-moment of logical economy can only function in deepened, theoretical thought. In pre-theoretical logical thought - rigidly bound in its analysis to its sensory substratum of feeling as it is - analytical economy cannot develop because the pre-theoretical concept is not systematic.

The principle of economy of thought has played an important part in western logic. It was known, though not explicitly formulated, in Greek thought.

Aristotle appealed to it in his critique of the Platonic Ideas. Especially in medieval and modern nominalism this principle has been given its logical formulation.

Occam formulated it in his well-known adage: ‘Principia praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda.’

It must be clear that both logical control and logical symbolism require economy of thought, and that the latter appeals to the two former. But it must be denied that logical economy would be nothing but an application of the general economic principle¹

1 Probably the older ‘objectivistic’ formulation of this principle in economic theory has favoured its elevation to a general teleological standard of rational human activity. In this formulation it gave only expression to the striving after the highest result at the smallest costs.
This was the formulation of the technical-economic principle of efficiency rather than of the economic principle proper. It lacked the very moment of the alternative destination of scarce goods for the different needs after a scale of urgency, which is essential in a sparing administering of economic goods proper.
The theory of limiting profit has intended to give a better formulation to the principle concerned. But in accordance with its subjectivistic conception of economic value, it gave a circumscription which was psychological rather than economical.
See on this subject: Preiser, Das Rationalprinzip in der Wirtschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik (Jahrbücher f. Nat. Ökonomie, Bnd. 168, 1943; Marchal, Gegenstand und Wesen der Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Zeitschr. f.d. gesamte Staatswissenschaft Bnd, 106, 1950); Michael Kroll, Das Rätsel ‘Volkswirtschaft’ (Schmollers Jahrbuch f. Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, 73. Jrg. 3e Heft 1953, p. 1 fl.); and especially the great work of the Dutch economist P. Hennipman, Economisch Motief en Economisch Principe (1943), who denies that the principle in its proper economical sense has any real signification in economic theory (p. 355 fl.). But this author has arrived at this negative conclusion, because he supposed it could not account for the factual behaviour of man in economic affairs. He observes that also irrational economic behaviour is a real economic activity. This is doubtless right but does not derogate from the fact that it can be an un-economical behaviour. The latter, too, has a modal economic meaning. The principle of economy proper cannot have a causal psychological, but only a normative economical sense.

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to human thought and that it would embrace the single task and ideal of scientific activity.

Mach and Avenarius have absolutized this principle and therefore lost sight of its real place in the modal structure of the logical aspect and overlooked its analogical character. They have neglected its analytical qualification¹. The same must be said with reference to W. James' eulogy of the economy of thought according to which the tendency to frugality, viz. to frugality with respect to the means of thought, would be the philosophical impulse ‘par excellence’.

This absolutizing of the principle should be seen in close connection with the pragmatistic conception of scientific truth.

Kant was certainly no pragmatist, and he saw clearly that economy of thought pre-supposes transcendental conditions of knowledge. Nevertheless in his Critique of Pure Reason he speaks about the ‘economizing of principles’ as ‘a law which is not only an economical principle of human reason, but rather an inner law of nature’. Here, too, the specific logical character of the principle is completely overlooked.

An accurate analysis of the modal structure of the logical aspect is necessary if we want to acquire a clear insight into its true meaning and the boundaries of its applicability.

The principle of economy in its logical qualification pre-

1 This is also the objection raised by M. Schlick against the conception of Mach and Avenarius. He, too, has stressed the logical character of the principle.

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supposes the general logical principles implied in the retrocipatory structure of the analytical law-sphere: those of identity, contradiction and the sufficient ground. Analytic economy can only deepen their modal meaning but becomes meaningless apart from them.

Especially in jurisprudence the principle of economy is often abused to justify the introduction of theoretical fictions which must mask the antinomies caused by the misinterpretation of the juridical basic concepts.

E.g., the figure of the legal person is called a fiction or an artificial construction, because only natural persons are supposed to have a will. But the fact is lost sight of that the concept of the legal subject as such is a concept of a modal function and may never be identified with a real person. In other words, if the juristic person (corporation) is called a fiction, the legal subjectivity of a natural person should be called so as well.

The misconception of this state of affairs began with the introduction of a psychological concept of will. The latter is unserviceable in theoretical jurisprudence because the juridical aspect of volition is different from the psychological one. Even to a natural person we cannot ascribe a will in the psychological sense, when we are theoretically confronted with his function as a juristic subject. One should be aware that the legal concept of will is an analogical basic concept of jurisprudence which can only have a modal-juridical meaning, though it may not be conceived apart from its inter-modal coherence with the psychological concept of volition.

When it is alleged that the ‘psychological will’ is the only real one, we must reply that no single special science, aware of its boundaries, can pretend that its special theoretical view-point is capable of embracing ‘reality’ in an integral sense.

What is called ‘psycho-physical reality’ is an absolutized theoretical abstraction which has eliminated the entire series of normative aspects of human experience and consequently has no room for the normative juridical sphere.

Since the modal juristic meaning of volition cannot be eliminated from the juridical aspect it was called a fiction of ‘legal technique’ which finds its justification only in the principle of economy of thought.

The famous German jurist Rudolph von Jhering held this technique to be the highest development of legal science, though in his last period he has abandoned this view.

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This conception is based upon a twofold misinterpretation of the principle concerned. In the first place the fact is overlooked that it can have only a theoretical-logical character; merely technical fictions can never be ‘economical’ in a logical, but only in a technical sense. Legal technique concerns the formation of law, not legal theory. In the second place the fact is lost sight of that the logical principle of economy because of its analytic character does not permit itself to be employed apart from the principle of the sufficient ground. In its theoretical application it cannot derogate from the primordial scientific requirement to account for the states of affairs met with in the specific modal field of research. It can only imply that this requirement ought to be satisfied in a logical economical way, with the elimination of really superfluous grounds. Theoretical fictions, however, which are introduced in order to mask antinomies caused by a fundamental misinterpretation of the legal basic concepts, can never be justified by means of this anticipatory logical principle¹.

At present von Jhering's view of the juristic technique is no longer generally accepted.

In the footsteps of the French jurist François Geny many modern students of jurisprudence make a sharp distinction between juridical science and juridical technique and deny that in the former fictions may be justified.

But now they have entangled themselves in another misunderstanding of the task of science. According to them, legal science would have to reduce the juristic basic concepts, wrongly conceived by them as ‘technical fictions’, to the ‘only real physico-psychical states of affairs’. The principle of economy of thought was only accepted with respect to legal technique in which, as we saw, it cannot play any rôle.

This may suffice to establish our statement that only an accurate analysis of the modal structure of the logical aspect and

1 When v. Jhering in his famous Geist des römischen Rechtes (Volume II) argues that the juristic conception of the ‘res’ or of personality is nothing but an artificial expanding of the natural naïve concept of a thing or a person respectively, he falls a victim to a fundamental misunderstanding of the relation between naïve experience and theoretical thought. He overlooks the fact that the modal legal concepts of object and subject cannot be artificial expansions of the natural idea of a thing, since they refer only to modal functions, not to concrete things. A human person is never identical with his juristic subject-function. He can only have the latter. And the same holds with respect to the relation of a concrete thing to its juristic function as an object.

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that of its theoretical ‘Gegenstand’ can guarantee a correct insight into the meaning of the principle concerned.

Linguistic economy as an economic anticipation in the modal meaning-aspect of symbolic signification. The ‘Aktionsarten’ (the ‘characters’ and ‘aspects’) and the structure of primitive verbal languages.

The modal structure of the lingual¹ aspect can also express its meaning-coherence with the economical sphere only in its anticipatory moments.

Linguistic economy wards off the superfluous in symbolic signification, but, as we remarked in our introductory examination, it is not yet found in the closed, retrocipatory structure of language². This appears clearly and convincingly in the language of primitive gestures, which can do nothing but point out every intended object separately. Mimic gestures show a deepening of meaning; they also show some symbolic economy instead of the merely deictic function of primitive gestures.

In addition there is a tendency to an ever increasing degree of ‘economization’ in the aspect of symbolic signification at the higher stages of historical development. This becomes evident if we compare modern and primitive verbal languages. The structure of the latter is closely bound up with the structure of primitive (not yet ‘opened’) thought.

Primitive speeches often have an extremely rich vocabulary, but they lack the capacity to express abstract and general relations and states of affairs. The discovery of the so-called ‘Aktionsarten’³ and ‘aspects’ has brought to light that in the development of the Indo-European verbal languages the flexional endings added to the same verb-stem to denote the abstract meaning of external time, viz. the past, the present, and the future, must have been preceded by the distinction of

1 The term ‘lingual’, as a general modal qualification of the aspect of symbolic signifying, is not adequate. It is used only for lack of a better adjective in the English language, denoting the general modal character of the aspect concerned.

2 Cf. Vol. II, p. 67 ff.

3 Translator's note: They are called characters, because they denote intrinsic characteristics (and not subjective appreciations of the stage of development) of an action, a state, or an occurrence. Aspects express a subjective appreciation of the stage of development of an action, state or occurrence. Cf. E. Kruisinga, A Handbook of Present-Day English⁵, vol. II, pp. 232 ff.; H. Jacobsohn, Gnomen II, 379 ff.; Prof. Dr N. v. Wijk, Nieuwe Taalgids, October 1928.

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the internally-qualitative kinds of time of the concrete actions and occurrences, in which the temporal aspect was expressed by different stems. The stem of the verb ‘to arrive’ expresses perfective aspect, i.e. an action that comes to an end¹. The stem of the verb ‘to begin’ denotes inchoative aspect, that of the verb ‘to remain’ denotes durative aspect. The Latin verbal forms: fero, tuli, latum, go back to different stems denoting different ‘Aktionsarten’ (or rather ‘aspects’).

It is assumed that the use of the forms to denote differences of ‘aspect’, i.e. of internal time, has been superseded by an abstract scheme of chronological time-indications as a result of a systematic tendency in linguistic development.

It is obvious that this development is bound to bring about a large measure of economy in the way time is linguistically signified. This process must be connected with the increasing ability of thought to shake off the shackles of the sensory image-world to which it was rigidly tied down at the primitive stage in the formation of concepts.

American native speeches show that the qualitative concrete manner of signifying time and place is more original than the abstract, symbolically economical method².

The artificial languages (esperanto, volapück, etc.) are examples of a deliberate tendency to economize. In another respect the language of science, too, shows its economic anticipations, and at the same time it anticipates the juridical aspect because it requires its symbols to be univocal as a condition of justice in scientific intercourse and discussion.

1 Translator's note: Or it denotes the result of an action, etc.; hence the final stage; the inchoative aspect denotes the initial stage; the imperfective or durative aspect denotes the going on of an action. An example of a genuine ‘character’ is the verb ‘to tremble’, which is called ‘frequentative’ in character. The form: - He was trembling - has both durative aspect and frequentative character. Cf. E. Kruisinga, op. cit. pp. 230 ff.

2 The treatise Die Bildung der Tempora und Modi im Griechischen und Lateinischen (Sprachvergleichende Beiträge I, 1846), by S.G. Curtius was basic for the theory of the ‘Aktionsarten’.

The economic retrocipation in the aesthetic meaning-aspect. The μηδὲν ἄγαν.

In the modal meaning of the logical law-sphere and in that of language the expression of the cosmic coherence of meaning with the economic aspect appeared to be found only in the anticipatory spheres. But in the modal structure of the aesthetic and

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the juridical aspects this cosmic coherence with the economic sphere is expressed in the retrocipatory direction. The nuclear moment of the aesthetic aspect is harmony in its original sense, a modal meaning-moment found in all the other law-spheres only in an unoriginal, retrocipatory or anticipatory function (cf. harmony of feeling, logical-harmony, harmony in social intercourse, linguistic harmony, economic and juridical harmony, etc.). This aesthetic nuclear meaning cannot express itself in the modal structure of the aspect concerned without an economic retrocipation, which may be qualified as aesthetic economy. The aesthetically superfluous, the ‘piling it on’, the ‘overdoing it’, ought to be warded off in harmonic sobriety or economy if the harmony is to remain intact. And this standard is applied not only to a highly cultured work of art but also to a primitive product, because the aesthetic modality of meaning is not possible without economic retrocipation. What is sometimes called aesthetic exuberance or luxuriance is not meaningless in an aesthetic sense provided it is not in conflict with the basic modal principle of aesthetic economy.

This ‘aesthetic exuberance’ is not really ‘superabundant’. It is no overabundance in the sense of ‘disharmony’ but the harmoniously-economic adaptation of the artistic expression to the aesthetic experience of the artist.

In its original meaning harmony always requires aesthetic unity in multiplicity on its law-side, in which the μηδὲν ἄγαν, (nothing to excess) notwithstanding the change of period in history, is of unassailable modal validity.

Only an irrationalist view of aesthetic, denying that an artistic genius is bound by laws and proclaiming him sovereign creator can repudiate this basic principle in the original meaning of harmony. A truly Christian aesthetics can never absolutize the individual aesthetic subjectivity and make it a sovereign creator of beauty not bound by norms of the Divine world-order. A Christian aesthetics will be the first to acknowledge the inspired artist's genius as an individual gift of God. It will be whole-heartedly hostile to rationalistic aesthetics. But it cannot give in to the ὕβϱις of an aesthetic irrationalism that denies any subjection to norms to be incumbent on the artist and works of art.

Such a denial would spell apostasy from the Christian basic Idea. In the Prolegomena we saw that such a view of aesthetics must cancel itself on account of its intrinsic contradiction. An aesthetic subjectivity without any determination by an aesthetic

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norm would be an absolutely chaotic, hence a meaningless, impossible ἄπειϱον which could no longer be called ‘aesthetic’ with any semblance of truth. Only a law can determine and delimit. The absolutely indeterminate cannot be determined by the aesthetic modality.

The modal meaning-kernel of the juridical aspect.

So it appeared that in the Divine world-order the aesthetic law-sphere is founded in the economic sphere. The original aesthetic modal meaning cannot exist without an economic retrocipation. The juridical modal meaning also necessarily has an economic retrocipation in its internal structure. As will be shown later on, this analogy cannot occur without its modal coherence with an aesthetic one. The general character of this complication cannot be further investigated as yet.

But what is the modal meaning-nucleus of the experiential aspect concerned? It is very difficult to render the original kernel of the juridical modality of meaning by a satisfactory term. In the first (Dutch) edition of this work I chose the word retribution (Dutch: vergelding, German: Vergeltung). This term was used in the pregnant sense of an irreducible mode of balancing and harmonizing individual and social interests. This mode implies a standard of proportionality regulating the legal interpretation of social facts and their factual social consequences in order to maintain the juridical balance by a just reaction, viz. the so-called legal consequences of the fact related to a juridical ground. As is easily seen, this provisional explanation of the term appeals to a complex of analogical terms. The modal meaning-kernel proper is not explained by this circumscription.

In itself this is not surprising. For in every previous analysis of a modal structure we were confronted with the same state of affairs. It is the very nature of the modal nucleus that it cannot be defined, because every circumscription of its meaning must appeal to this central moment of the aspect-structure concerned. The modal meaning-kernel itself can be grasped only in an immediate intuition and never apart from its structural context of analogies.

But the term by which this meaning-kernel is designated must be able immediately to evoke this intuition of the ultimate irreducible nucleus of the modal aspect of experience concerned.

In jurisprudence, however, the original modal meaning of the word ‘retribution’ has been often wrongly restricted to criminal

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law, i.e. to a typical manifestion of its general modal sense. And at the same time this concept has become the subject of a vehement contest between the so-called classical school in the theory of criminal law and the modern criminological trends. According to the latter the idea of retribution is nothing but a residue of the unreasonable instinct of revenge; it impedes a rational treatment of criminality. The classical school, on the other, hand, handled a rigid conception of penal retribution which only left room for an abstract delict and eliminated the person of the delinquent and his social environment.

It must be evident that if retribution is to be considered as the nuclear meaning of the juridical aspect, it must be detached from this typical controversy in a special branch of jurisprudence. Retribution is not only exercised in malam but also in bonam partem. Its modal legal measure of proportionality can be applied to every possible legal consequence (Dutch: rechtsgevolg) connected with any juristic fact.

The only material question is: Does this term indeed evoke the intuition of the irreducible meaning-kernel of the juristic aspect in its general structure?

Leo Polak's inquiry into the meaning of the term retribution.

The famous Dutch philosopher and jurist Leo Polak, a disciple of Heymans, has devoted a special inquiry to the signification of this term in Indo-Germanic and Semitic languages in his work: De Zin der Vergelding, Vol. I (Amsterdam 1921), Sect. 1, Ch. II. He did not intend to conceive of retribution as the qualifying meaning-moment of the juridical aspect; his aim was only to treat it in the context of the theory of criminal law. Nevertheless, he begins with the statement that the term is also used to denote a reaction in bonam partem, viz. remuneration or recompense. According to him, the term in its general sense denotes merely a reaction in social life. Only in its strict sense of just retribution, or retribution proper, it necessarily implies the standard of proportionality or equivalency. In criminal law this signifies that punishment must be deserved pain, that the criminal gets his due in it. But also with respect to a contractual remuneration or recompense, retribution, in its pregnant sense, implies this requirement that it must be deserved, that it is a determination in a super-arbitrary way of the (juridical) value of the deed upon which it is intended to react.

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Another essential implication of the pregnant meaning of the term, according to Polak, is to be found in its being a reaction corresponding to egoistic motives. When we say that virtue or vice deserve praise and blame respectively, this is not meant in the strict sense of retribution proper: retributive consequences of the deed are deserved only once. It would be unreasonable to demand the due recompense or punishment for one and the same fact twice. Ethical praise or blame, on the contrary, are deserved continually. This refers to a different function of retributive and ethical reaction. The former means an acquittance, a mutual discharge of debt.

This would be the very reason why most terms denoting a retributive reaction are taken from economic life.

Retribution and economical life.

If this latter observation were right, the term retribution should be positively rejected as a denotation of the original meaning-kernel of the juridical aspect.

For in this case it could have only an analogical sense when referring to jural relations. But here Polak has overlooked the fact that the very implication of a deserved reaction excludes an original economical meaning of the term. In an economical sense wage is only the price of labour, not the indebted recompense of the latter. An analogical meaning can be ascribed only to the juristic term ‘equivalency’ or ‘proportionality’, not to the term ‘retributive’ in its pregnant use¹. The latter is the proper juridical qualification of the former.

It is true that the Dutch words ‘vergelding’ and ‘vergoeding’ cohere with ‘geld (money) and ‘goed’ (good). Nevertheless, at least in scientific language, the term ‘vergelding’ itself lacks an original economical meaning.

Rather in a pregnant way it designates the irreducible meaning-kernel of what is signified by the words διϰή, jus, justice, recht, diritto, droit, etc. For this very reason it can be used in jurisprudence without a general modal juridical qualification, although indeed the typical penal meaning of the word is preponderant.

1 In a later context Polak has explained the essential difference between criminal legal and economic equivalence. Nevertheless, he speaks of ‘indebted’ wage in purely economic relations though he puts ‘indebted’ between inverted commas.

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It is this inner nuclear meaning of the juridical aspect of experience which from the very beginning has struck the human mind, before philosophical thought had found the methodical way to define things by their genus proximum and differentia specifica. The latter method of analysis was introduced by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and applied to the definition of justice. Then the intuitive insight into this modal meaning-kernel was theoretically replaced by analogical concepts detached from the inner meaning-coherence within the modal structure of the legal aspect. For it has appeared that this method is unserviceable in the analysis of the modal structures of meaning.

Justice as suum cuique tribuere and the older cosmological conception of retribution. Dikè, Anangkè, Rita and Tao.

Nevertheless, the whole Greco-Roman, patristic and medieval scholastic tradition preserved some intuitive insight into the retributive character of justice in its strict juridical sense. The characterization of the latter as suum cuique tribuere is based upon an older cosmological conception of justice whose retributive meaning cannot be doubted.

The very earliest reflection on justice in its strict sense has found retribution as its ‘essence’. The old Ionian philosophers of nature, Heraclitus, the Pythagorean thinkers as well as old Indian philosophy, have stressed this meaning. It is true that they expanded justice to a general cosmic order of causality and consequently lacked the insight into the modal boundaries of the jural aspect. But it should not be forgotten that the cosmic order of time itself guarantees the inner coherence of meaning between the juridical aspect and all the other modal law-spheres. It is, consequently, not surprising that the earliest conception of a causal order in nature was inspired by the idea of justice in its original retributive sense, which in the social order urged itself upon the human mind.

The rigid and merciless character of this conception was only due to the fact that it was ruled by a pagan religious motive which led to a deification of the forces of nature not yet opened by human culture. Their retributive operation was viewed as an inescapable necessity. Heraclitus (B. Fragm. 94) says that Dikè which prevents Helios (the sun) from exceeding its measures is assisted by the ´Σϱινύες, i.e. the daughters of the inescapable Anangkè. According to Parmenides Being is bound to its

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spherical form by the Dikè and the latter is identified with the ‘powerful Anangkè’.

The same identification of retributive justice in the order of nature and inescapable necessity is found in the old-Indian conception of Rita explained in the Veda and in the old-Chinese idea of Tao¹.

1 Cf. C. Chardon's treatise Themis in Phil. Ref. 7th Year (1942), p. 6 ff.

Retribution and love in the Christian religion.

As soon, however, as the modal structure of the juridical aspect opens its anticipatory spheres, its retributive meaning-kernel loses these rigid and merciless traits without abandoning its irreducible character.

In its concentric relation to the revelation of Divine Justice in the cross of Christ, it appears to be nothing but a temporal creaturely refraction of meaning of the Divine fulness of Love which is the fulfilment of Justice.

The fact that every human execution of retribution is deformed by sin does not imply that the juridical aspect in the retributive kernel of its modal meaning-structure is of a sinful character. On the contrary, it will appear from our further examinations that in the temporal cosmic order retribution is the irreplaceable foundation of love in its modal moral sense. Only from the modal meaning-structure of the juridical aspect with its indelible retributive nuclear moment can an imperfect and sinful human legal order derive its juridical character and its claim to respect.

A positive legal order is only possible within this structural cadre of meaning. Every attempt to define the juridical nature of positive law by means of external purely phenomenal characteristics moves in a vicious circle.

The retributive character of every juridical relation. Retribution and ultra vires. The retributive meaning of rights.

The retributive mode of ordering social relations is not restricted to the narrow boundaries of penal law and private contracts.

As has been said, every really juridical relation whatever discloses this modal meaning-kernel, which urges itself upon us as soon as we analyse its modal structure.

The delimitation of legal spheres of competency also has a

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necessarily retributive character in its juridical consequences.

Retributive justice, as Heraclitus and Parmenides have rightly observed, reacts against every ‘ultra vires’. It binds every legal power and subjective right to its limits. This is to say that also the attributive-imperative function in which the Russian jurist Petraczicky sought the ultimate distinctive trait of law, in the last analysis is qualified by the retributive meaning-kernel. Apart from the latter it has no specific juridical sense.

Within the modal aspect of social intercourse we meet with privileges attributed by convention to the higher classes; they lack every juridical sense. When, however, the attributive character of law is sought in its attribution of rights, competences, and claims balanced by duties, then the term ‘attributive’ ought to be taken in a retributive sense.

Does retribution essentially imply a reaction corresponding to egoistic motives? Retribution and altruism.

Polak's opinion is that the pregnant meaning of retribution essentially implies a reaction corresponding to egoistic feeling-motives. But this view requires correction. Retribution in its pregnant original modal sense cannot react upon egoistic motives in their psychological sense, since it is not a feeling-drive. Rather it is the specific juristic modality of balancing and harmonizing social relations; it characterizes the juristic manner of interpretating social facts and their factual effects; it qualifies the juridical manner of reaction against every fact which affects this balance, viz. by requiring harmonizing consequences and redress in the case of wrong or ultra vires. In this sense it also determines the specific juristic manner of reacting against excessive factual manifestations of altruism, which threaten the juridical balance of social interests; for instance gifts prejudicing the juridical interests of creditors or legitimate children.

Our conclusion is that we can find no better term to designate the original meaning-kernel of the juridical law-sphere than retribution. Consequently we shall continue to use it.

No single analogical meaning-moment or complex of analogical meaning-moments by which legal philosophy and the general theory of law have tried to replace it, can satisfy the requirement of a real modal definition.

Such concepts as ‘equality’, ‘proportion’, ‘compulsory order of communal life’, etc., are unqualified analogical concepts,

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from which the original meaning-nucleus of the juristic aspect has been eliminated. The moment of equality (τὸ ἴσον) to which Aristotle already tried to reduce the meaning of justice in its strict sense is only a mathematical analogy in the meaning of retribution. This is clear in Aristotle's further differentiation of the principle of equality into arithmetical and geometrical proportions.

The modal meaning-kernel of retribution is indeed an abstraction in itself. It can reveal its modal meaning only in the coherence with quite a series of retrocipatory moments reflecting the cosmic coherence between the juridical aspect and its substratum spheres. But it qualifies the latter and not vice versa.

Aesthetic, economic, and social analogies in the modal structure of the juridical aspect.

The first modal retrocipations expressing the original meaning-nucleus are the aesthetic and the economic analogies. They will be studied a little more closely in this context. In its modal nature retributive meaning must express itself on its law-side in a well-balanced harmony of a multiplicity of interests, warding off any excessive actualizing of special concerns detrimental to others. The multiplicity of interests mentioned should be subjected to a balanced harmonizing process in the modal meaning of retribution. The aesthetic and the economic analogies are unbreakably connected with a modal social retrocipation¹, expressed in a strict correlation between communal interests and those of inter-individual relationships in juridical intercourse.

In a ‘community’ the juridical subjects are united into a solidary, institutional or associational whole according to relations of authority and subjection². In the inter-individual relations, on the other hand, the juridical subjects are co-ordinated, and not grouped into a solidary unity according to relations of authority and subjection.

The modal meaning of retribution on the law-side is expressed in the juridical aspect first of all in a balanced harmonizing of

1 ‘Social’ here means: referring to the modal aspect of human intercourse. Juridical intercourse (Dutch: rechtsverkeer) is only an analogy of intercourse (Dutch: omgang) in its original meaning.

2 Only the natural community implied in the larger circle of natural kinship (which should be sharply distinguished from artificial organisations like sibs or clans) lacks natural relations of authority and subjection.

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communal and inter-individual interests, warding off any excessive, extravagant enforcement of special communal or inter-individual claims.

The analogical meaning-moments, laid bare here, express their cosmic coherence with the modal structures of the aesthetic, the economic and the social law-spheres as retrocipations, not as anticipations. This implies that the juridical law-sphere is necessarily founded in the aesthetic and the economical aspects and in the modal aspect of social intercourse. This fact is convincingly proved by the character of the most primitive juridical systems of law. As a rule, these systems do not show a trace of anticipatory functions in the meaning of retribution. And yet in primitive law retribution expresses itself in anaphoric meaning-moments referring to the aesthetic, the economic, and the social spheres. Also in its as yet non-anticipatory form the modal meaning of retribution appeals to harmony, the economic principle, and social intercourse (all these taken in their original modal nuclear meanings) as its necessary substrata. This is the reason why even primitive retribution, in its special expression of harmonizing reaction against injustice, is something quite different from the expression of a psychic feeling of revenge which is blind to the meaning of justice¹.

In the primitive tribal-laws excess in this reaction is excluded by a doubtless rude standard of proportion, viz. the principle of talion or fixed tariffs of composition.

The legal consequences of a juridical fact are weighed against the juridical grounds in the harmonizing of communal and inter-individual interests while warding off excess. This happens even though there is no knowledge of the theoretical concepts of juridical fact, juridical ground and juridical effects; and although the entire procedure in which retributive harmony is realized bears an extremely primitive character.

This undeniable state of affairs, briefly mentioned in the introduction to this chapter as a philosophical problem, has now found its explanation by means of the theory of the modal structures of meaning. It is bound up with the position of the juridical aspect in the cosmic order of time.

The current modern view, according to which retribution is nothing but an expression of the primitive instinct of revenge,

1 This difference is not affected by the undifferentiated character of primitive society.

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proves to be untenable as soon as the real meaning of this modal nucleus of law in the intermodal coherence of the aspects is laid bare.

The lingual analogy in the modal meaning-structure of retribution.

A continued analysis of the modal structure of the juridical aspect shows that the latter must also have a lingual substratum. The economic, aesthetic, and social retrocipations in the retributive modality necessarily appeal to a lingual analogy.

The analogy meant here gives clear expression to the fact that juridical relations are only possible when signified.

The smashing of a window-pane, the getting into a public means of conveyance, can only function in the legal aspect of temporal reality because they have a juridical signification as a delict, and as an indirect expression of the intention to make an agreement of conveyance respectively. And these legal significations are necessarily founded in the original meaning of symbolic signification (= language). The latter is by no means restricted to verbal language. It may be expressed in all kinds of forms of symbolic designation: in the expression of the face, in a waving of the hand, in written symbols, signals, flags etc.

This is a point that will be made clear after the more detailed discussion of the modal subject-object relation.

The juridical signification as a signified meaning is not qualified by the original meaning-nucleus of language, but by that of retribution. It is a necessary lingual analogy in the modal structure of the juridical aspect. The question, e.g., whether the absence of a so-called ‘customary stipulation’ in a written agreement may be interpreted as a silent acceptance of this stipulation by both parties, is a juridical question, not one of language. The signified juridical meaning of every juridical fact and of every positive juridical norm must be determined by means of a juridical interpretation. Juridical and linguistic interpretation may never be identified, though they cannot occur apart from each other. Through lack of insight into the intermodal meaning-relations between the linguistic and the jural aspect this mistake is often made in legal theories of interpretation.

Jurists have always considered the truly juridical interpretation as belonging to the juridical domain, and rightly so. They have never dreamt of relinquishing it to linguistics, just as theologians have never relinquished their truly theological interpretation

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to the linguists. The original juridical interpretation is primarily a part of the process of law-making in a concrete case, and not of theoretical jurisprudence. The latter can only analyse the principles and method of legal exegesis and interpret the legal norms and facts theoretically after these scientific standards. Juristic life, however, does not allow of an ultimate divergence in the juridical interpretation of norms and facts. It demands a decision which puts an end to uncertainty. A truly binding interpretation can be given by competent legal organs exclusively. If a judge interprets a juristic fact or a legal provision he thereby enacts positive law binding in concreto on the parties concerned, provided that his sentence has been brought to execution.

But the theoretical jurist as such is not competent to give a binding juridical interpretation. His interpretative activity remains of a theoretical juridical nature. It may have a very great de facto influence on the legal praxis on account of the scientific authority of the writer. In view of the increasing complexity of legal relations the scientific theoretical analysis of the juristic meaning of norms and facts is becoming more and more indispensable as a basis for a binding juridical interpretation. But in itself it has no binding legal character. This state of things has been misinterpreted by the Historical School, which wrongly elevated theoretical jurisprudence itself to the rank of a source of law. It must be granted that this misconception was due to Puchta more than to v. Savigny. Nevertheless, von Savigny made classical the erroneous conception that looked upon juridical interpretation proper as something essentially theoretical. He held that it ought to be executed according to grammatical, logical, historical and systematic view-points. The specific juridical viewpoint was lost sight of. His theory of interpretation is one of the causes of the error prevailing in jurisprudence up to our days that juridical interpretation can only be applied to verbal expressions of the will in legal texts, contracts and testaments.

But the structural analysis of the modal juristic meaning shows that nothing can be understood in its juridical aspect - not even an objective juridical fact like the burning down of a house - if it is not interpreted according to its juridical signification. In the latter there is no original lingual sense but only a necessary lingual analogy.

Linguistic interpretation is indeed the basis for juridical interpretation, but the former cannot express the original modal meaning of the latter.

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The lingual analogy in the modal aesthetic meaning.

If it is true that a lingual analogy is essential to the modal meaning-structure of the juristic aspect, then it is implicitly admitted that in the original modal meaning of harmony there is necessarily also a lingual analogy. For it has appeared that the modal meaning of the former is directly founded in the aesthetic modality.

It is generally conceded that aesthetic meaning cannot exist without its symbolic lingual substratum as far as works of art are concerned. But the modal meaning of the aesthetic lawsphere is not only expressed in works of art, but also in the beauty of nature (not subjectively, but objectively). The objective beauty of nature is also founded in a symbolic meaning-substratum. An animal may have a sensory feeling of pleasure when it is impressed by the sight of a sunlit landscape. The aesthetic harmony of the scene, however, can only be apprehended on the basis of an awareness of its symbolic substratum, its symbolizing signification.

The aesthetic harmony of a natural object, or of a complex of natural objects is necessarily a signified meaning.

The beauty of nature is signified to those who are susceptible to aesthetic harmony, in the colours, the effect of light, the sounds, the spatial relations of nature etc. If these sensorily perceptible colours, sounds, etc., do not signify anything to the spectator or the listener he cannot experience the aesthetic harmony of a landscape, because this harmony cannot be apprehended in its original modal meaning by sensory perception alone, although it is indissolubly bound up with the sensory side of the landscape.

The juridical and the aesthetic anticipations in the modal lingual meaning.

The aesthetic law-sphere as well as the juridical aspect have appeared to be founded in the modal lingual sphere, because their modal structure necessarily contains a symbolic retrocipation. In the modal structure of the lingual aspect, on the contrary, the cosmic coherence of meaning with the aesthetic and the juridical modalitities can only find expression in the anticipatory direction of time. In the exact juridical use of language, in which every symbolic expression is to be carefully weighed with respect to its ‘juridical sense’ in order to guarantee a univocal signification, we encounter a modal anticipation on the modal juridical

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meaning-aspect. This is a deepening of language only reached at a higher stage of culture, just as lingual economy and lingual harmony are absent in the merely retrocipatory structure of the lingual aspect.

It is true that in primitive society every juridical act is bound to a strict formalism of symbols. But this proves only that juridical meaning is necessarily founded in the modal aspect of symbolic signification. In primitive symbolism itself, which often shows magic traits, the manner of denoting does not disclose a juridical anticipation.

On the contrary, it binds the lingual function to sensory representations of a strictly prescribed pattern, just because primitive language lacks the juridical anticipation in an abstract symbolism. The latter pre-supposes an opening of the symbolic and juridical anticipations in the logical aspect which makes possible the formation of abstract juridical concepts freed from the primitive sensory representation. That primitive language also lacks aesthetic anticipation, is primarly due to the fact that here the linguistic aspect has not yet opened its economic anticipatory function.

For without a free economic disposal and control of the symbols, language cannot disclose a syntactical harmony in anticipating the meaning-kernel of the aesthetic aspect.

The primitive manner of denoting is strictly bound to sensory representation. Therefore it cannot anticipate the super-sensory meaning of harmony in its original aesthetic sense.

This does not mean that primitive man necessarily lacks the aesthetical aspect of experience. Primitive art testifies to the contrary. We can only say that the primitive manner of symbolic denotation has no aesthetic anticipation. That is the reason why primitive art cannot elevate itself to a free, explicit expression of aesthetic harmony, but remains bound to vital and sensory needs, so that its aesthetical aspect can manifest itself only implicitly. We shall return to this state of affairs in the third Volume.

§ 5 - Juridical and social¹ retrocipations in the modal aspect of love

Finally we shall investigate some retrocipations in the modal structure of the ethical law-sphere to exemplify our

1 The adjective ‘social’ is again used here in the special modal sense of the aspect of intercourse ruled by the norms of courtesy, good manners, tact, sociableness, fashion and so on; not in the comprehensive sense of social life embracing all modal aspects of experience.

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method of analysis and to find the place of the moral aspect in the cosmic order of time.

It is demonstrable that the juridical law-sphere can disclose its inner coherence with the moral aspect only in the anticipatory sphere of its modal structure. For it has appeared that the juridical moment of guilt, the juridical figures of ‘good faith’, of ‘good morals’, of ‘equity’, etc. are obviously anticipatory meaning-figures which are not yet found in a primitive system of law (except for some incidental beginnings of the opening-process of the legal meaning). In such a primitive legal order only the retrocipatory meaning-coherence is expressed. Then it follows that the reverse is also true, viz. that in the modal meaning-structure of the ethical law-sphere we can trace an analogy of the jural aspect.

Rudolph von Jhering called the logical distinction between law and morality the ‘Cape Horn’¹ of legal philosophy. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say that if the modal boundaries between the different law-spheres are neglected, every theoretical distinction of a meaning-aspect from the others is a veritable ‘Cape Horn’ of philosophy. For how is theoretical thought to form a correct notion of these meaning-aspects, if their modal structure in the intermodal coherence of the cosmic time-order is lost sight of?

1 Cape Horn was notorious for its dangerous storms.

The prevailing logical distinction between law and morality.

Under the influence of Kant it has become customary to seek the difference between the jural sphere and morality in external legality in contrast to inner morality, i.e. external conformity to the law versus inner respect for the law. Legal order, according to this view, demands only external behaviour; the moral law, however, as the autonomous categorical imperative, applies to the inner disposition of the will.

This difference is usually expressed by the contrast of heteronomy versus autonomy. Law was supposed to be a heteronomous order, in so far as the inner motive is irrelevant to lawful conduct.

Consequently, the fear of punishment, the hope for some ad-

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vantage are acceptable to the legal order as motives. According to Kant such motives do not originate from the ‘pure moral will’ itself but from outside, from man's sensory nature.

Modern positivistic jurists like Austin and Felix Somlo, who have broken with Rousseau's and Kant's natural law view of statute law as ‘volonté générale’ (the general will), interpret the distinction between heteronomy and autonomy in a different way. They hold that positive law, as a heteronomous order, has not the individual conscience for its source, but is simply imposed on the individual persons by a sovereign power; whereas ideal morality (not to be identified with positive morality) is alleged not to allow of this heteronomy.

Further, as a result of the former distinction, morality is supposed not to brook any compulsion, while compulsion (at least the competence to exercize compulsion) is taken to be a logical characteristic of law.

At present the prevailing conception (but not in the naturalistic sociological view) distinguishes between legal order and morality according to a threefold criterion:

1	- law is an external social order; morality is an internal norm of the individual human conscience;
2	- law is heteronomous, imposed by an external authority; morality is only binding on the individual conscience;
3	- law is a compulsory order sanctioned by organized constraint; morality demands voluntary observance.

A preliminary question. Does there exist a modal ethical law-sphere or moral aspect of experience with an irreducible modal meaning? The distinction between the world of experience and the I-thou relation in Jewish and Christian existentialism.

From our previous analysis of the modal structure of law it has appeared that this distinction is quite unsatisfactory with respect to the inner modal meaning of the juridical aspect.

Does it correspond to the inner modal sense of morality? Here a preliminary question urges itself upon Christian thought. In our earlier investigations it was continually supposed that there exists a specific ethical or moral modal law-sphere. But can this supposition be maintained from the Christian view-point?

In the first place a serious objection may be expected on the part of modern Christian existentialism which from the Jewish

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thinker Martin Buber has taken over the sharp distinction between ‘experience of the world’ and the ‘I-thou-relation’¹. The former would have to do only with ‘impersonal objects’ as things, laws and so on. The latter, on the contrary, is intrinsically personal and existential, the realm of personal freedom and existential responsibility, the sphere of a real meeting between I and thou which does not allow of general rules and laws, nor of boundaries of modal spheres. Since the ethical relations are supposed to show to a high degree this personal and existential character, the idea of an ‘ethical law-sphere’ must be fundamentally rejected by these Christian thinkers.

When, however, we subject this existentialistic view of ethics to a transcendental critique, it appears to be ruled by a dialectical religious motive in which the Humanistic motive of nature and freedom, in its irrationalist conception, is an essential component.

The dialectical distinction between the ‘world of experience’ as an impersonal I-it relation and the existential I-thou relation is nothing but a modern irrationalist version of the dialectical basic-motive of Humanism. It is intrinsically un-Biblical.

It deforms the integral structure of human experience and eliminates its relation to the central religious sphere.

The world of experience seems to be impersonal and non-existential only if we identify it with an absolutized theoretical abstraction (‘nature’ in the sense of the classical Humanist science-ideal). But this absolutized abstraction has nothing to do with the modal horizon of human experience in its integral meaning from which we have started. On the other hand, the real meeting of I and thou is in the deepest sense a central, religious relation, which indeed does not allow of modal boundaries of law-spheres. But if this central relation is sought within the temporal order of human existence, one gives oneself up to an idolatrous illusion.

Nevertheless, it is exactly the relation between Christian religion and ethics which is to be considered as the ‘Cape Horn’ of every Christian view of ‘the moral sphere’. Can there be room for a modal moral aspect of human existence and experience which is to be distinguished from the central religious relation

1 Martin Buber, Ich und Du (1923). The influence of Buber is important, especially among the adherents of dialectical theology who have written ethical works (Emil Brunner, Fr. Gogarten and others).

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of I-we and I-Thou subjected to the central commandment of Love?

Can there be an ethical norm of love which is not identical with this commandment? If so, what is the meaning-kernel of the supposed moral aspect in which this norm functions?

In our provisional delimitation of the ethical law-sphere we have assumed that this nuclear-meaning is to be designated by the word love. But if, according to the Biblical view, love is the very totality of meaning, the religious radical unity of all temporal modal diversity of law-spheres, how can there be room for love as a modal aspect of temporal human experience and empirical reality?

The scholastic distinction between moral theology and natural ethics. Natural ethics and the Greek form-matter motive.

Starting from the scholastic basic-motive of nature and grace, Thomism distinguished between natural and super-natural ethics. In natural ethics it accepted the Aristotelian conception of virtues as the essential content of the ἦϑος (èthos), the moral disposition of man. Love, together with faith and hope, was here conceived of as a super-natural virtue, the subject of moral theology. The norm of natural ethics is given in natural reason, that of moral theology in super-natural Revelation. But the Aristotelian conception of virtue is ruled by the religious form-matter motive of Greek thought, which cannot be really synthesized with the central motive of Biblical Revelation. The dialectical theme of form and matter proved to be destructive to a real insight into the modal structures of the different aspects of experience¹.

In Aristotle the ethical sphere is determined by the idea of the highest good. But in his metaphysics the good, as such, is an analogical concept inherent in the metaphysical idea of being. He rejected the Platonic conception of the transcendent Idea of the good in which the different virtues find their concentric unity. In Aristotelian ethics the idea of the natural good can be determined only by the different essential forms of natural beings. By virtue of its innate entelechy every natural being, as such composed of form and matter, strives after its specific natural good, i.e. the actualizing of its substantial form. Since human nature finds its specific form in the rational soul,

1 Cf. Vol. II, Part. I, Ch. I, § 2.

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behaviour in conformity to natural reason (ψυχῆς ἐνέϱγεια ϰατὰ λόγον) is identical with good or virtuous activity (ψνχῆς ἐνέϱγεια ϰατ᾽ ἀϱετήν)¹.

Ethical virtue consists in the permanent control of the lower sensory functions (particularly the passions) by the will in conformity to the rules of practical reason. It is conceived of as the due mean between two extremes, and its natural consequence is eudaemonia, i.e. happiness. It is a permanent disposition (ἕξις) of the will as the actualizing of an ethical potentiality (dynamis); this disposition can be acquired through continuous training.

1 Eth. Nic. B 5, 1106a 22 fl.: ἡ τοῦ ἀνϑϱώπου ἀϱετὴ ἐίη ἂν ἕξις ἀφ᾽ ἧς ἀγαϑὸς ἄνϑϱωπος γίνεται ϰαὶ ἀφ᾽ ἡς εὖ τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ἔϱγον ἀποδώσει.

The analogical character of the Aristotelian concepts of virtue and of the good.

This entire conception of the good and of ethical virtue is dependent upon the Greek form-matter motive. It is impossible to discover in it a really modal criterion for an ethical law-sphere. Both the concept of virtue and that of the good are analogical notions. The so-called dianoetical or logical virtues (λογιϰαὶ ἀϱεταί) are not dispositions (ἕξεις) of the will, but of the faculty of thought, either in its theoretical or in its practical function (directed to human actions). Virtue must therefore derive its specific ethical meaning from its specific relation to the human will. But the latter is not a modal aspect of experience and human existence. Rather it is a concrete direction of the inner human act-life which functions in the coherence of all the modal aspects. Consequently, the special scientific concept of volition can only be analogical in character. The modal difference between the psychological and the juridical concepts of the will has already been discussed³. What would be its ethical modality? If the latter is sought in a constant disposition of volition to follow the norms of practical reason by controlling the lower sensory functions, the definition moves in a vicious circle. Practical reason as such has no modal-moral delimitation of meaning. The control of our sensory passions and affects is as such a cultural, not an ethical function of
²

3 Cf. pp. 125 ff. of the present volume.

2 Eth. Nic. B 6, 1106b 36 fl.: ἕξις πϱοαιϱετιϰὴ ἐν μεσότητι οὖσα τῇ πϱὸς ἡμᾶς ὡϱισμένῃ λόγὡ ϰαῳ ὡς ἂν ὁ φϱόνιμος ὁϱίσειεν.

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volitional life. It may be made serviceable to very immoral ends, for instance self-worship, imperialism, the destruction of economical competitors etc.

For lack of a really modal criterion it is no wonder that the modal boundaries between the juridical and the ethical spheres are levelled in Aristotelian ethics. Justice is conceived of as an ethical virtue. In its general sense it is the perfect virtue encompassing all the others insofar as they are concerned with our social relations to our fellow-men. In its strict sense it refers to equality and inequality (τὸ ἴσον ϰαὶ ἄνισον) as the specific rational measure of legal order.

In the Aristotelian conception the juridical aspect of the good is thus only a species of the general ethical good and lacks an irreducible modal meaning-nucleus. The legal norm cannot belong here to a law-sphere different from the ethical modus. Only the permanent subjective inclination or disposition of the will to follow the rational norm of justice - not this standard itself - is exclusively ethical and cannot be transferred to the juridical sphere.

So there remains only a single criterion for the distinction between the ethical and the juridical viewpoint: the subjective èthos as a constant disposition of the will to subject itself to the autonomous norms of practical reason. But we have seen that this èthos, as such, lacks a specific modal meaning; it is an analogical concept. Its determination by the rational measure of the due mean between two bad extremes does not detract from this analogical character. This measure was taken from the Pythagorean idea of the peras limiting the apeiron, a mathematical expression of the Greek form-matter motive which has also strongly influenced the ethical conception of Plato's dialogue Philebus.

So it appears that Aristotelian ethics lacks the modal unity of meaning in its enumeration of the different ‘virtues’. This whole conception of ethical virtue as a result of the autonomous human training of the will is unacceptable from the Christian stand-point. It cannot be a natural infra-structure for a really Christian ethics because it contradicts the very basic motive of the latter, that of creation, sin, and redemption.

If there exists a modal ethical law-sphere in the temporal order of creation, there can be no question of autonomous morality with a standard of good and bad derived from natural reason and realized by human volition.

Then the standard of the moral good can only be a modal tem-

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poral refraction of the central commandment of Love as the religious meaning-totality of the whole temporal coherence of modal law-spheres. There cannot exist a moral disposition of the will independent of the central religious disposition of the heart¹. For there does not exist a ‘will’ as an independent and autonomous entity, no more than an independent, autonomous ‘reason’. All our volitional acts are acts of the I-ness which expresses itself in them.

1 This word is meant here in its pregnant Biblical sense.

Ethics and the human character.

What is called the ‘character’ of man is the individual result of a pedagogical shaping of the flexible hereditary factors of disposition of the inner act-life in its confrontation with the influences of social environment. It belongs to the bodily existence of man, as will be explained more in detail in my anthropology. The human body is not at all identical with an abstract ‘physico-psychical soma’; it is the structural whole of temporal human existence in the intermodal coherence of all its modal aspects.

It may be that ‘character’ is to be sought especially in the volitional direction of the inner act-life; nevertheless it cannot be identified with the moral aspect-function of the volitional disposition or -inclination in its individual shape and stamp. Therefore the relating of virtue to character, as is done in modern times by the Dutch philosopher G. Heymans², cannot give a modal delimitation to the field of ethics. Psychology, too, has much to do with the human character³. But the moral aspect is different from that of feeling, although Heymans seeks the origin of the ethical norm in a specific moral feeling. Nevertheless Heymans speaks of ‘character’ in its relation to the standards

2 Einführung in die Ethik, Leipzig (1922).

3 Heymans (op. cit. p. 43) defines character as ‘the totality of the inclinations of the individual in their mutual relations of strength’ (die Gesamtheit der Neigungen dieses Individuums in ihren gegenseitigen Stärkeverhältnissen); or as ‘the whole of the laws, in conformity to which in this individual stronger or weaker motives evoke stronger or weaker wishes and thereby contribute more or less to the determination of the particular volitional decisions’ (die Gesamtheit der Gesetze, nach welchen bei diesem Individuum verschiedene Motive stärkere oder schwächere Wünsche hervorrufen und dadurch mehr oder weniger zur Bestimmung der einzelnen Willensentschlüsse beitragen’.)

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of good and evil as the veritable object of ethical judgment and defines ethics as the ‘science of good and evil’. But it has appeared that in their scientific use the latter terms are analogical ones. They lack, as such, modal delimitation of sense. If we mean moral good and evil we must be able to indicate the modal meaning-kernel of morality in order to escape the vicious circle inherent in every undefined analogy.

Heymans' merely formal ethical criterium of ‘objectivity’ or ‘universality’ has no moral meaning at all.

Only with reference to the central religious sphere may the terms good and evil be used in their fulness of meaning without any modal qualification. As to their ethical sense we must agree with Nietzsche and Nicolai Hartmann: ‘We do not yet know what good and evil may be’¹.

1 Nicolai Hartmann, Ethik (1926, Berlin und Leipzig) p. 40.

Why a moral law-sphere must exist.

Now it cannot be denied that in the cosmic order of time a modal law-sphere must exist which succeeds the juridical and precedes the ultimate limiting aspect, viz. that of faith. This is demonstrated by our previous analysis of the anticipatory moments in the modal structure of the legal law-sphere, which, as soon as they are realized in a positive legal order, appear to open and deepen the retributive meaning of this modal sphere. Modal meaning-figures, such as juridical guilt, good faith, good morals, equity, and so on, undeniably refer to a later modal aspect of experience which cannot be designated by another term than the moral or ethical sphere. The anticipatory meaning-moments concerned refer neither immediately to the faith-aspect, nor immediately to the central religious sphere.

In pre-juridical aspects, such as the psychical, we have also discovered anticipatory relations with an ethical law-sphere.

This does not prove the existence of a natural morality apart from the religious centre of human existence. It proves only that in the temporal modal horizon of experience there exists a modal ethical aspect which is not to be identified with the super-modal sphere of religion, nor with the aspect of faith.

Therefore the conception developed especially by Karl Barth, that there is no room for ethics as a specific science different from theological dogmatics, cannot be maintained. But this does not detract from the extremely difficult problem we are confron-

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ted with, if from the Biblical-Christian standpoint the attempt is made to account for the relation between the ethical aspect and the central commandment of Love. The question of the modal meaning-kernel of this aspect urges itself upon Christian thought as a real ‘Cape Horn’¹ of Christian ethics.

1 Cape Horn was notorious for its dangerous storms.

Criticism of Kant's criterion of morality. Love and the imago Dei.

Before considering this problem in greater detail we must return to Kant's criterion of morality, explained above. It must be established that his ‘Gesinnungsethik’ was really meant to replace the central commandment of Love in its religious fulness of meaning. This commandment requires us to love God and our neighbour with our whole heart. It is the very nature of love in this central religious sense that it implies complete self-surrender. We cannot really love in this fulness of meaning of the word so long as we experience its requirement as a law which urges itself upon us externally, contrary to the inner inclination of our heart. This love must penetrate our inner selves, it must inflame the centre of our existence and permeate it so that it has become one with us, and reflects in our heart the Divine Love as the answer of the human I to the call of its Origin, the Divine Thou.

This is the real meaning of the imago Dei. It explains why the human ego can be nothing in itself as an autonomous being. It explains why the fall into sin has radically obscured this imago Dei, so that it is only revealed in its original sense in the infinite love of Jesus Christ in His complete self-surrender to His heavenly Father and to lost mankind. Only from Him can this love flow into the human heart. Apart from Him we do not know it, nor can there be any volitional disposition worthy of the name of ‘good’ in its proper religious sense.

Kant's ‘Gesinnungsethik’ has secularized this religious state of things. It sought the true self, the real autos of man, in a ‘pure will’ which identifies itself with the ethical law originating from practical reason, so that autos and nomos become one and the same. But love is rejected in this ethics as the real moral motive of human behaviour. It is replaced by the respect for the ethical law in its pure form of categorical imperative, which in the last analysis means nothing but respect for the ‘Idea of Mankind’ in

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the sense of the Humanist personality-ideal. Love, on the contrary, is viewed as a sensory inclination, which is an impure motive because it detracts from the autonomy of morality. Here the dialectical tension between nature and freedom, the Humanist science-ideal and personality-ideal manifests itself in a pregnant sense¹.

The Kantian conception of the freedom-motive seeks the true essence, the ‘noumenon’ of man, behind the temporal sensory reality of nature in the autonomous moral will as the law-giver for human conduct. That is why morality must be conceived of as entirely apart from the reality of nature and traced back to a pure, autonomous moral will. Legal order, however, has to reckon with ‘empirical humanity’ and should be content with the function of an order of external freedom in the coexistence of human individuals. It can be nothing but an order of peace.

But Kant is unable to indicate what modal meaning is to be attached to ‘autonomous morality’. The modal meaning of a law-sphere can only disclose itself in the intermodal coherence of meaning of all the aspects and this very coherence has been torn up in the Kantian conception.

The sharp separation between moral disposition and natural sensuous inclination and the characterization of the impulse to follow the latter as the ‘radical evil’ in man, clearly shows the influence of the Christian conception of sin. But the latter has been secularized and denatured to an irreconcilable antithesis between two aspects of human existence and experience which are arranged by the temporal order of creation in an indissoluble structural coherence of meaning. The moral function of volition is closely connected with the volitional function in the aspect of feeling. There are moral feeling-drives which prevent man from an undisciplined surrender to sexual and other biotically founded impulses. Without the presence of such anticipatory drives in human feeling-life, the rational moral motives would be powerless.

Even the Kantian conception of the moral motive, that of duty or respect for the moral law, if it is to have any moral meaning, pre-supposes a moral feeling-drive. The complete lack of the latter and the presence of a rational idea of duty only is a well-known pathological phenomenon. Kant's rigid separation be-

1 Cf. Vol. I, Part II.

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tween morality and natural feeling-drives is in serious danger of legitimating such pathological desintegrations of the inner act-life. It is inhuman and a-moral in its logicistic formalizing of the meaning of ethical duty and ethical law.

On the other hand the thesis ‘law only regulates external behaviour and is indifferent to motives’¹ is a clear proof that Kant does not only want to distinguish between law and morality, but really separates them. As a result the entire anticipatory structure of the modal meaning of the juridical aspect is misinterpreted. Kant only tries to maintain the connection between law and morality in an external teleological way. He holds that juridical order is merely an order of legality, an order of external peace, which is meant to enable the individual to do his moral duties. But it has already appeared that the principle of guilt in criminal law and other anticipatory juridical concepts necessarily anticipate the moral meaning-aspect! They cannot be understood in their juridical sense without their internal coherence with morality.

The moral meaning-aspect is not itself the super-temporal root of human existence, in spite of Kant's doctrine. It is as temporal and as relative as all the other meaning-sides of temporal reality. But the moral sphere, just like all the others, has a modal meaning that is sovereign within its own boundaries. Kant's logicistic-moralistic view-point inevitably compelled him to eliminate this modal meaning. His ethics is in fact a religion of human personality in a specific Humanistic conception.

1 This criterion was taken over from Thomasius, who made it serviceable to the defence of toleration in his doctrine of natural law.

The original meaning-nucleus of the moral law-sphere. Love in its original modal sense and its analogies in the other aspects.

Every attempt at defining the ethical sphere without indicating its modal meaning-kernel must result in an inescapable conflict with the central religious sphere of human existence.

One may try to solve this conflict either by reducing religion to morality or by reducing the latter to the former. Both attempts, however, are tantamount to a destruction of morality in its temporal meaning and are a serious threat to the central place of the radical commandment of Love in the fulness of its religious sense.

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On the other hand, every serious attempt at an analysis of the modal meaning-structure of the moral relation leads us back to love as its irreducible kernel. There can be no single really moral ‘virtue’ which in the last analysis is not a manifestation of this modal nucleus of the ethical law-sphere¹.

But love in this temporal nuclear meaning cannot be the same as love in its religious fulness. The former is only a temporal modal meaning-refraction of the latter, determined by the whole inter-modal coherence of the different law-spheres in the order of cosmic time. Love, as the moral modality of human experience, cannot exist apart from its immediate foundation in the retributive meaning of the juridical aspect. The preceding modal aspects refer to it in the moral anticipations of their modal structures. In the biotic aspect, for instance, it is anticipated by the human sexual drive in its natural direction to moral unity in love; in the feeling-aspect we meet with the moral feeling of love disclosing itself in different typical ways (cf. the feeling-impulse to help a fellow man who is in distress; the feeling-impulse of filial or parental love etc.). Even in the anticipatory structure of the logical aspect there is an inner coherence with the moral meaning-kernel of love in the theoretical eros which has to direct the whole of our scientific activity and is a guarantee of ‘logical morality’ and integrety. In the cultural (historical) aspect we discover a moral anticipation in cultural love of our form-giving task in human civilization. In the lingual aspect a moral anticipation is implied in the love of a language, a tendency to signify our feelings, volition, thoughts etc. in the linguistically most adequate way inspired by the affection for language in its pure form.

1 This is clearly seen by Calvin in his Comment. in ep. ad Col. 3:14, where he observes that ‘the whole chorus of virtues is summarized in love. For it is the rule of the whole of life and of all actions; everything that is not reduced to it, is wrong, how great the splendour may be it has in another respect.’

Love and the conventions of social intercourse.

In the modal aspect of intercourse the social conventions have an inner anticipatory connection with love in its moral nuclear meaning.

This is clearly shown by Jesus Christ who contrasts the love of the prostitute who had anointed his feet with very costly

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spikenard, with the uncourtly attitude of the pharizee who had invited him but had omitted to observe the eastern forms of courtesy towards the Rabbi of Nazareth. Jesus shows here that courtesy and social convention in general are not indifferent things. They should be directed and animated by love. Nevertheless the conventions of social intercourse as such are not to be reduced to morality in its original modal meaning-nucleus. Therefore it is confusing to call them ‘positive morality’, as is done by the so-called empiricist trends in ethics.

The economic aspect, too, has an anticipatory coherence with the moral meaning-nucleus. The frugal manner of administering scarce things in their alternative destination for the satisfaction of human needs, acquires a positive relation to morality if it is directed by love towards our neighbour. Here it implies a voluntary-restriction of our own needs for the sake of the needs of our fellow-men. In this sense frugality is rightly called a virtue, but only if it is considered from the moral viewpoint of love.

Eros and Agapè.

The aesthetic aspect opens its inner connection with the moral law-sphere in its anticipatory meaning-moment of aesthetic love. This is the eros, as Plato has described it in his splendid dialogue Symposium, an aesthetical love-drive to the beautiful which functions as a mediator between sensory life and the super-sensory Idea of beauty.

Modern Christian ethics has paid much attention to the radical difference between this Greek aesthetical eros and the Christian agapè. Indeed neither Plato, nor any Greek thinker, knew the religious fulness of meaning implied in the central commandment of Love. Nor did Plato know love as the original modal meaning-kernel of morality. His eros is nothing but an analogy of love in the modal structure of the aesthetic aspect. But the Platonic conception of eros should not be criticized from the dialectical viewpoint of modern existentialism. That is to say, we should not think that the aesthetic eros is opposite to the Christian agapè as the contemplative experience with its I - it-relation to the existential sphere of the I - thou relation. On the contrary, it is necessary to stress the inner meaning-coherence between the aesthetical eros and love as the modal meaning-kernel of the moral aspect in order to relate both to the central religious sense of the Agapè.

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It is clearly testified both in the Old and the New Testament that ‘aesthetic love’ has its legitimate place in the entire temporal coherence of the aspects of God's creation and has a concentric relation to the central commandment of Love. In the temporal order of experience the love of God implies the aesthetical enjoyment of the beauty of His creation which is worthy of this human eros. But the latter appeals to love in its modal nuclear meaning and should reflect the central love to God and the neighbour within the modal boundaries of the aesthetical sphere. The very orientation of the Platonic eros to the Greek form-matter motive reveals its apostate direction.

The ‘Cape Horn’ of Christian ethics.

We have called the question concerning the modal meaning-kernel of the ethical aspect the ‘Cape Horn’ (i.e. the most dangerous point) of Christian ethics. In taking cognizance of different attempts to establish the real relation between the ethical sphere and the central commandment of Love we are confirmed in this opinion. We shall mention only two of them.

In his Manual of Ethics¹ the late Dutch theologian W.J. Aalders, who was professor of ethics at the University of Groningen, clearly saw the necessity of a distinction between the ethical and the religious relation. He, too, seeks the qualifying meaning-moment of the former in love². But he sees no other way to distinguish ethical love from the central religious love than by introducing this distinction into the central commandment itself. The love of God, as the summary of the first table of the Decalogue, is considered as the religious relation proper which has directly to do with God. This love has a unilateral character insofar as the creature is dependent on the Creator but not vice versa. The love of the neighbour as the summary of the second table of the Decalogue, is considered as the ethical relation which has directly to do with the creation, especially with our fellow-man, and only indirectly with God. This relation is a real correlation because it is bilateral. So the author concludes that the ethical sphere of love is that of creation³. In this way he thinks he can escape the danger of moralizing religion, on the one hand, and

1 Handboek der Ethiek (Amsterdam 1941). See also his De Grond der Zedelijkheid (Groningen-Den Haag) 1933.

2 Handboek, p. 129.

3 ib., p. 123 fl.

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that of an absorption of morality by religion, on the other. The moral sphere remains dependent on the central religious one without being dissolved into the latter.

Though this intention deserves the greatest respect, it must be denied that Aalders has succeeded in correctly delimiting the ethical aspect in its relation to the Christian religion. In our opinion it is a fundamental mistake to seek the criterion within the central commandment of Love itself. The latter is an unbreakable unity and does not permit itself to be considered as a composite of a religious and a moral part.

In its religious fulness of meaning the love of our neighbour is nothing but the love of God in His image, expressed in ourselves as well as in our fellow-men. This is why Christ said that the second commandment is equal to the first. One can also say that it is implied in it.

If the central commandment of Love is indeed the radical unity of all the temporal modal law-spheres, it must be impossible to delimit within it a specific-ethical aspect. If we see aright Aalders has arrived at his conception under the influence of the existentialistic view of Martin Buber, who considered ethics as the sphere of the I-thou relation in its dialectical opposition to the contemplative I-it-relation of human experience¹.

Here it appears once again that this dialectical existentialism cannot be accepted without detracting from the integral and radical meaning of the Christian religion. Aalders doubtless would positively deny every intention to do so. Nevertheless, in spite of his unsuspected intention, he could not escape from a partial moralization of the central religious sphere in consequence of his acceptance of the dialectical opposition between the existential I-thou relation and the contemplative sphere of human experience. Starting from this opposition, he was unable to conceive of the ethical sphere as a modal aspect of the temporal horizon of experience and reality. In order to avoid its reduction to the religious sphere he could find no way out but a limitation of the latter to the effect that the central commandment of Love was divided into a religious and an ethical part. In addition, a distinction was made between the sphere of religion and the sphere of creation, and this is incompatible with the Biblical conception. The central religious sphere be-

1 Op. cit., p. 125.

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longs to creation as well as the temporal sphere of human existence which embraces the ethical relation.

Together with the existentialistic opposition between the ethical sphere and the contemplative sphere of experience Aalders accepted the dialectical Humanistic motive of nature and freedom. Morality is separated from the ‘lower vegetative and animal functions of human life’, ruled by natural laws, and is localized in the ‘higher sphere’ of freedom or ‘spirit’, ruled by norms¹. This means that the second part of the central religious commandment of Love, which Aalders reserved for ethics, is related to an abstracted complex of normative functions of temporal human existence, instead of being related to the religious centre of the whole of temporal human functions. So it loses its absolute character and is denatured to a specific norm² regulating only the higher temporal volitional life of man.

A second example of a serious confusion of love, as the modal meaning -nucleus of the ethical aspect, with love in the fulness of its central religious sense is to be found in Emil Brunner's famous work Das Gebot und die Ordnungen (Tübingen, 1932).

Already in his definition of Christian ethics: Christian ethics is the science of human conduct determined by divine action³, he reveals his aim to merge Christian morals into the Christian religion, which is diametrically opposed to the moralization of religion in rationalistic Humanism. This leads to a fundamentally erroneous definition of the relation between love and justice.

According to Brunner the love mentioned in the central divine commandment is absolute. It concerns the whole person, and is concrete and not legal. Justice, on the contrary, is universal, legal, ‘vorausgewusst, unpersönlich-sachlich, abstrakt, ratio-

1 Op. cit., p. 84.

2 A ‘norm’ is always a rational standard, founded in the logical manner of distinction. Therefore it is confusing to call the central commandment of Love a norm. In my opinion this term is to be applied only to temporal standards of what ought to be. The religious commandment is identical with what we have called in the Prolegomena: the religious concentration-law of human existence. It cannot be opposed to ‘laws of nature’, as is done with norms.

3 Op. cit., p. 73: ‘Christliche Ethik ist die Wissenschaft von dem durch das göttliche Handeln bestimmte menschliche Handeln’.

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nal’ (known in advance, impersonal, objective, abstract, rational).

That's why, according to this writer, it is a contradictio in terminis to speak of ‘perfect justice’: for what is perfect cannot be justice¹.

Even when we speak of Divine justice we mean nothing concrete and material but ‘jene formale Qualitäten der Entsprechung, der Zuverlässigkeit und Konstanz göttlichen Handelns’ [these formal qualities of the consistency, the reliability and the constancy of divine actions]. For in the idea of justice is implied especially: the idea of the reliability, of the objective and active operation of a rule that has been imposed on us, and which we know as such’².

Here the fundamental error in Brunner's view is laid bare. In this view it is forgotten that the fulness of meaning of love, as revealed in Christ's cross, is at the same time the fulness of justice. If we assign a higher place to Divine love than to Divine justice, this procedure necessarily detracts from God's holiness. In his later work Die Gerechtigkeit Brunner appears to have avoided this error.

In fact Brunner contradicted himself by saying that justice is the pre-supposition of love, and that love which has not passed through justice, is arbitrary, unreal, sentimental. If love requires justice for its pre-supposition, it cannot be absolute, ‘unbedingt’ (unconditioned), in contrast with justice.

Brunner's error is that he opposes love, as the exclusive content of the fulness of God's commandment, to the ‘temporal ordinances’, which owing to the fall show God's will only in a broken state. He wants to build Christian ethics on the basis of the actions proceeding from this love within the formal framework of all the temporal ordinances. This is an after-effect of the dualistic scheme of nature and grace in Luther's world of thought³. It leads to the identification of morality with the Christian religion, and at the same time it leads to a misinterpretation of the temporal moral meaning of love, i.e. of the moral aspect of temporal human experience and existence.

That's why everywhere in this ethics antinomies arise. For Brunner's conception of love as the opposite of justice is not

1 Op. cit., p. 436/7.

2 Ib.: ‘Die Idee der Zuverlässigkeit der objectiven und wirksamen Geltung einer “gesetzten” und als gesetzt bekannten Regel.’

3 Cf. Vol. I, ch. 3.

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really Biblical, but much rather an absolutizing of the temporal modal meaning of love. Only the latter can be significantly opposed to the meaning of justice as another aspect of temporal reality, and to the modal meaning of the other law-spheres. Anyone who tries to do so with the fulness of meaning of love, violates its religious fulness. He has no eye for the new religious root of creation in Christ as the concentration-point and the fulness of all the temporal meaning-aspects.

It is an essentially un-Biblical thought to deny Divine Justice its perfection by calling it a ‘merely formal idea’, and to seek that perfection only in love.

The social retrocipation in the modal meaning of love.

As a result of the primordial confusion of the ethical and the central religious sphere, Brunner opposes love of one's neighbour in an ethical sense, as absolute love, to the love between husband and wife and that between mother and child¹. From the ethical viewpoint as such this opposition is meaningless. Love in its modal-ethical nuclear meaning - just as love in the religious fulness of its sense - implies the relation to the neighbour. But within the ethical aspect this love of one's neighbour occurs in a very rich variety of social forms, in the correlation of communal and inter-individual relations. This correlation is a social retrocipation in the modal structure of morality. It is precisely this retrocipation of the aspect of social intercourse which - in coherence with the typical totality structures of temporal society - occasions a rich diversity and variety in the relations of moral love, which are in principle misinterpreted by individualistic ethics. The universal love of one's neighbour in the moral inter-individual relations is something different from the communal love between parents and children, husband and wife; something different also from the love of one's country; the love of one's mate in a labour-community, etc.

Without this social retrocipation love in its modal ethical sense cannot exist. Only in the religious fulness of meaning is the love of one's neighbour no longer differentiated according to the temporal communal and inter-personal relations of this life. In Jesus Christ there is no difference between Jew and Greek, master and servant, fellow-countryman and foreigner, kin and outsiders.

1 Op cit., p. 315/6.

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In his subjective moral function, however, man is subject to the temporal moral law as a law of love in accordance with the temporal communal relations (Honour thy father and thy mother) and the interindividual relationships.

Brunner, however, in his erroneous abstract conception of the ‘law’, thinks that the commandment of Love cancels the concept ‘law’, as the law is supposed at once to divert our attention from the ‘Legislator’ Himself and to turn it to that which has been commanded. Abstraction, universality is inherent in the ‘law’, according to him, and he thinks that obedience to God's law is mere legality.

As a matter of fact he only strikes a blow here at the rationalistic ‘metaphysical’ idea of law as it is found in scholastic ethics of the XIXth century and in Kantian moral philosophy. He appears not to have overcome it because of his relative recognition of the Divine ordinances conceived of in the sense of rigid, impersonal rules. This is due to the fact that Brunner, just as Aalders, has accepted the dialectical opposition of the existential I-thou relation and the impersonal I-it relation of experience. Within this framework the ‘law’ can only belong to the latter and is interpreted in an impersonal, abstract, and rigid sense. In addition, both this depreciation and relative recognition of the law could appeal to Luther's dialectical conception of the Divine ordinances in the state of sin. But the right relation between the central commandment of Love and the temporal ethical sphere cannot be discovered from this dialectical standpoint.

Within the temporal order of modal aspects the fulness of the meaning of justice can express itself in an non-analogical manner in the relative modality of retribution alone; in the same way the fulness of the meaning of love is expressed unequivocally within this temporal order in its moral modality only.

In their religious fulness love and justice coalesce, just as in this totality of meaning all the modal meaning-aspects of the cosmos find their fulfilment because of their religious concentration on the Divine Origin. In the refractional order of cosmic time they are mutually irreducible modal aspects of meaning, which cannot be reduced to one logical denominator without internal antinomy.

All other known criteria of morality, sought outside of the theoretically analysed meaning-modus of love, prove to fail when the test of the modal analysis of meaning is applied to them.

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In its analogical meanings love functions in all the substratum-spheres of the moral aspect by way of anticipation. In its original modal sense it can only function in the moral law-sphere. As an original meaning-nucleus, however, it can find its expression within the modal structure of this sphere solely in the coherence of all the retrocipations in which the inter-modal coherence of meaning with the substratum-spheres expresses itself. This retrocipatory structure guarantees the temporal relative character of the moral aspect and should be a warning against every confusion of love as its modal nucleus with the fulness of meaning of the religious Agapè. It should also warn us against every identification of love in its original modal sense with an anticipatory feeling-drive.

Moral love has a rational foundation though it also has a feeling-substratum. It is not pre-logical as feeling is. It implies personal responsibility and is regulated by a normative standard. Thus it is understandable that the apostle speaks of the duty of the husband to love his own wife. By the intermediary of the Christian faith this moral duty is directed concentrically to the love of Christ (to His Bride) in its religious fulness of meaning. Nevertheless it retains its logical foundation. In order to elucidate this rational foundation of love in its modal moral sense it is necessary to pay attention to the juridical analogy in its modal structure.

The retributive analogy in the modal meaning of love.

In the modal ethical relation love manifests itself on the normative law-side only in a well-balanced proportion between self-love and love of one's neighbour. This is not the same as the equality of self-love and love of the neighbour in the radical religious commandment. When the latter says that we shall love our neighbour as ourselves, this means that the central love of God implies the love of His image equally in ourselves and in our fellow-men. The I-Thou-relation to God implies the religious I-we relation to our neighbour. In the temporal moral relation, however, it is necessary to seek a just balance in love between our moral duties with respect to our own ethical personality and to that of our fellow-men. In the moral relation to our neighbour love undoubtedly demands self-denial, but not at the cost of our ethical personality, which is a temporal expression of our I-ness, as the religious centre of our existence. In practising love of our neighbour we also have to

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take into account the typical differentiation of the ethical relation of neighbourliness brought about by the social structures of individuality.

There ought to be a moral balance between conjugal love and parental love, between love of one's country and love of foreigners, and in general between love in communal and inter-individual relations.

In the primitive or closed conception of the love-relation, which is not yet opened by the Christian faith, the circle of ‘neighbours’ may still be restricted to the membership of the natural family, the ‘sib’, the ‘tribe’ or the folk; but here, too, the ethical meaning of love can only express itself in an equal measure of self-love and love of one's neighbour in the different social relations. Uncontrolled outbursts of love lacking this balance do not even correspond to the primitive norm of morality. The equality of proportions primarily refers back to the retributive meaning-kernel of the juridical aspect, although it also implies an economical retrocipation¹.

Nobody can truly love his neighbour without observing the exigences of retribution. That is why all the moral commandments of the Decalogue (the second table of the Law)² make an appeal to the legal order. The commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill’, has no ethical meaning of love without this juridical foundation. Anyone who rejects the demands of retribution does harm to his neighbour in the sense condemned by the moral law of love, as it is expressed in the commandment mentioned; for he delivers him up to injustice and violence³.

1 The aesthetic retrocipation manifests itself in the harmonizing of the different duties of love; the economical retrocipation is revealed in the just distribution of the sacrifices demanded by love with respect to the different moral duties.

2 The first table in its temporal (modal) meaning refers to the modal aspect of faith, especially to the worship of God.

3 Calvin continually emphasized this relation between justice and love in the divine world-order. This has been proven by my late friend Prof. Dr. J. Bohatec of the University of Vienna, who presents an elaborate list of sources in his important work Calvin und das Recht (Verlag: Buchdruckerei und Verlagsanstalt G.m.b.H., Feudungen in Westphalen, 1934). This book is partially based on fresh material from the sources. Bohatec writes here: ‘by opposing love and justice, freedom and compulsion, the Anabaptists, as is well-known, have forced a problem on the Reformation. Calvin does not try to get round it. Against the one-sided solution of the Anabaptists who reject the State and law, he argues that it is in the interest of love to maintain justice and the ordinances connected with it. A man who is inspired by true love will not think of harming his brother; on the contrary, he will strive after preserving everybody's rights and after protecting him from injustice.’ [‘durch die Gegenüberstellung von Liebe und Recht, Freiheit und Zwang, hatten bekanntlich die Täufer der Reformation ein Problem aufgedrängt. Calvin weicht dem Problem nicht aus. Gegen die Anabaptistische einseitige, Staat und Recht verneinende Lösung betont er, dass es im Interesse der Liebe liegt, wenn das Recht und die damit zusammenhängende Ordnung aufrecht erhalten bleibe. Wen die echte Liebe beseelt, dem wird es nicht in den Sinn kommen, seinen Bruder zu verletzen; er wird vielmehr trachten, dass jedermann sein Recht unverletzt bleibe und dass alle gegen das Unrecht geschützt werden.’]. Cf. with this Op. 49, 252 ff.; 26, 313 ff.; 27, 556, 564; 27, 560; 26, 502 ff.; 27, 588.
In the passage quoted first Calvin very significantly writes: ‘ergo violat caritatem si quis ἀναϱχίαν inducit, quam statim consequitur rerum omnium perturbatio...’].
In the second passage he observes: ‘St Paul nous rameine à la charité, quand il expose ce commendement d'obeyr aus Magistrats.’ Not, of course, in such a way, that justice could be reduced to love in the temporal meaning of both, but in such a way that love rests on the foundation of justice.

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The internal antinomy arising from the theoretical eradication of the modal boundaries of justice and love.

Whoever tries to read retributive meaning into this commandment itself, after the manner of Aristotelian Scholasticism, gets involved in antinomy. Retribution may demand a man's life, and in principle, it demands satisfaction for injustice committed. The Thomistically orientated Roman Catholic philosopher of ethics, Victor Cathrein, tries to avoid this antinomy by reading the commandment as follows: ‘Thou shalt not kill unlawfully’¹. But then the meaning of the commandment is distorted. In the moral relation of love the norm is fully determined in its modal meaning and allows of no exceptions. The judge passing a death sentence, the soldier shooting at the enemy, they all continue to be subject to the commandment of love: ‘Thou shalt not kill’². No hatred, no enmity against the neighbour may inspire him, although as a consequence of the fall of mankind into sin there may arise nearly intolerable tensions in human conscience between the moral duty of love and the legal duty of retribution. But the addition of the word ‘unlawfully’ deprives the moral commandment of all meaning or makes it contradictory. It becomes meaningless if with this addition it is

1 Recht, Naturrecht und positives Recht (2e Aufl. 1909), p. 223.

2 Cf. Calvin, op. 27, 560; - 26, 502 ff.; - 27, 588.

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understood as a legal principle. All that follows after the word ‘unlawfully’ is redundent, for I ought not to do anything unlawfully. On the standpoint of retribution the most important thing is to know what is to be understood by ‘unlawfully’; and ‘natural law’ cannot appeal to positive legal rules to find out what ‘unlawfully’ means in the context of a principle that has not yet been positivized. The commandment would be rendered contradictory if, in spite of the addition of the world ‘unlawfully’, it is interpreted in the modal meaning of love. For then it would run as follows: ‘Thou shalt not bear hatred to anybody unlawfully, since hatred is the origin of homicide.’ As if it were possible to hate one's neighbour lawfully!

_**_*

All the meaning-structures, very briefly analysed in the preceding paragraphs revealed the temporal order in the coherence of the law-spheres. This temporal order cannot be ignored with impunity by theoretical thought in the formation of its concepts.

§ 6 - Complications in the modal meaning-structure of the law-sphere in both the retrocipatory and the anticipatory direction.

A - Retrocipations.

The structure of the modal meaning becomes extremely complicated because of the fact that a modal retrocipation does not only refer back to the meaning-nucleus of the substratum-sphere in which the analogy finds its ultimate modal point of reference. Indeed it appeals to the modal structure of this substratum-sphere in the complete coherence of its nucleus and its modal retrocipations, at least, in so far as such retrocipations exist in this modus. For this meaning-nucleus does not exist in itself but must express itself in the internal coherence with the retrocipatory and the anticipatory moments respectively, in order to preserve its character of meaning. In this intra-modal coherence the meaning-nucleus points beyond itself to the temporal inter-modal coherence of all the law-spheres.

Thus it appears that the structure of the retrocipatory meaning-moments shows an increasing degree of complication. In every

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modal retrocipation the coherence between the law-spheres finds a further way of expression.

It is true that a modal retrocipation in the last instance is founded in the meaning-nucleus of the law-sphere to which it refers back in particular. But this does not take anything away from the fact that such a retrocipation cannot be conceived as detached from possible retrocipations of earlier law-spheres. The reason is that the meaning-nucleus in which it is ultimately founded, cannot exist apart from its own retrocipatory moments.

The totality of the structure of the meaning-modus.

This insight is of fundamental importance for the formation of a theoretical concept of the meaning-modi. The analysis of the meaning-nucleus, retrocipations and anticipations is the analysis of the modal structure of a totality in which the moments, as meaning-moments, can never be conceived of apart from each other. Every meaning-moment points beyond itself to all the others within the structural totality of the modal meaning, and has meaning only in the structure of the whole. The order of the retrocipatory and anticipatory meaning-moments is determined by the cosmic order of time. A modal retrocipation will be more complicated according as the law-sphere in whose meaning-nucleus it is ultimately founded is further away from the law-sphere in whose modal meaning-structure it functions as a retrocipation. The reason is that such a complicated retrocipation has undergone a successive burdening with meaning, making it much more complicated than a retrocipation which is directly founded in the retrocipated law-sphere.

Simple and complex, directly and indirectly founded retrocipations.

The modal retrocipations can therefore be distinguished into the simple and the complex, and (according to the manner of their foundation) into the directly founded and the indirectly founded retrocipations.

Consider the following examples.

The analogical meaning-moments of dimensionality and of magnitude in the original meaning of space are the only truly simple retrocipations. They are not complex because the original meaning-nucleus of the numerical aspect to which they ultimately refer, is not further connected with retrocipations. At

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the same time these retrocipations are directly founded, being connected with the nucleus of their foundation immediately, and not through the intermediary of intervening law-spheres.

The directly founded, but complex structure of the spatial analogy in the aspect of movement.

Kinematic space is an example of a complex retrocipation founded directly in its ultimate substratum. It is directly founded in the original meaning-nucleus of space because it is a spatial analogy in the modal meaning of pure movement. But its structure is not simple since implicitly it refers back to the retrocipatory moment of dimensionality in the original meaning of space. This implicit reference is expressed in the retrocipatory moment of the direction of movement, implied in kinematic space as a modal retrocipation. The direction of movement, in its turn, is founded in a dimension as an arithmetical analogy in the original meaning of space.

The complex, indirectly founded arithmetical and spatial retrocipations in the modal meaning of the legal aspect.

As examples of very complicated, indirectly founded retrocipations may be mentioned the spatial and arithmetical analogies in the juridical or legal aspect.

On the law-side of this aspect the spatial analogy is expressed in the retrocipatory moment of the extensive area of validity of the legal norms. On the subject-side of this modality the spatial analogy is expressed in the retrocipatory moment of the legal place of the juridical fact¹. It is true, these juridical spatial analogies are ultimately founded in the original meaning-nucleus of space (on its law- and subject-sides). But they are by no means directly founded in the latter. They are heavily charged with additional analogical meaning, because their coherence with the original spatial aspect is mediated through a series of successively intervening law-spheres in the intermodal order of time.

1 That the question concerning the place of a juridical fact is really a legal one, appears from the legal consequences of this localization. In many cases this place is not objectively given but is to be determined in accordance with legal rules. For instance: What is the local definition of a contract when the parties have declared their will by telegraph? The legal place of a fact always lies within the validity-area of a legal order and the latter is not sensorily perceptible.

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The large number of the intervening spheres acting as intermediaries between them and their ultimate foundation make the structure of these retrocipations all the more complicated.

In order to understand the modal structure of the legal validity-sphere it is necessary to consider that this meaning-moment, which is essential to the legal norm, appeals in the first place to the harmonious balance of juridical interests and competences. In this way excessive demands of the law-maker in a specific sphere of competence are warded off. The aesthetic retrocipation disclosed in the harmonizing manner of delimiting the legal validity-spheres refers back to a social analogy¹ expressing itself in the indissoluble correlation between ‘communal’- and ‘inter-individual’ law. So the harmonious delimitation of the extensive spheres of legal validity is specified into a retributive harmonization of the validity-spheres of the legal norms that rule communal and inter-personal relations in their mutual juridical interlacements.

This social analogy refers back to a lingual retrocipation in the juridical aspect, because the structure of the validity-sphere can exclusively function on the foundation of its symbolic substratum. The legal meaning of the limits of the sphere concerned can be found only in the way of a juridical interpretation of their denotation. For they must be signified, they are not given by nature as a sensory phenomenon.

The lingual analogy, in its turn, refers back to the historical retrocipation; for the inner balance between the various ranges of validity of communal law and of interindividual law requires legal organs. These organs are provided with original legal power or competence with respect to the making and realization of law in accordance with the stage of historical development.

In this way the analysis of the modal structure of the extensive legal sphere of validity should be continued in the whole series of retrocipatory analogies, implied in its modal retributive meaning.

Still more complicated than the spatial analogies summarily analysed are the arithmetical retrocipations in the modal meaning of the legal aspect. On the law-side of this aspect the arithmetical analogy reveals itself as the unity of legal order in the multiplicity of the original material spheres of competence in the

1 ‘Social’ is understood here again in the modal meaning of human ‘intercourse’.

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interlacements between communal and inter-individual relations.

On the subject-side it reveals itself in the function of a legal subject as a subjective unity in the multiplicity of communal and inter-individual relations qualified by the meaning-nucleus of retribution. Furthermore, the numerical retrocipation is implied in every legal fact because the question how many legal facts are realized in a concrete event, is dependent on legal norms. In the special figure of the legal personality of a corporation or a foundation this arithmetical analogy assumes an extreme importance and pregnance.

When this analysis is continued, the modal retrocipations concerned appear to refer to the entire intermodal meaning-coherence of the juridical law-sphere with all its substratum spheres.

There can be no question of a direct foundation of the juridical arithmetical retrocipation in the original meaning-nucleus of number; nor can there be question of a direct connection between the juridical spatial analogy and the meaning-nucleus of space functioning as its ultimate foundation.

The mathematical science-ideal of Humanistic philosophy, as manifested in the nominalistic-individualistic doctrine of natural law from Grotius to Rousseau, Kant and the young Fichte, explained these complicated juridical analogies of number by imputing a mathematical meaning to them (the ‘mos geometricus’ in the Humanistic doctrine of natural law!). In this way it tried to eliminate the complication of meaning in the juridical arithmetical analogy and to construe the state, the juridical person and the legal order out of their ‘mathematical elements’: the free and equal individuals (the construction of a social contract!).

This is the same thing that Cohen, the father of the neo-Kantian Marburg School, does when he applies the ‘quantitative categories’ of unity, multiplicity and totality to the legal person, and to the legal relation between state and society. Cohen supposes he can follow the mathematical method, just as Hobbes did before him. Like Hobbes, he arrives at an absolutism of the state which only stops at the inner freedom of thought. But he eliminates the question whether an absolute sovereignty of the state can have a really juridical meaning, and whether the multiplicity of the different typical legal spheres can be really united by reducing them to the absolutized legal order of the state as a mathematical juristic totality.

This is not the way to handle the arithmetical analogies in the modal meaning of the legal aspect.

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A brief analysis of the complicated spatial analogy in the psychical aspect with its indirect foundation.

The spatial analogies in the psychical sphere are less complex than the arithmetical and spatial analogies in the juridical aspect. They will be analysed as a last example of complicated retrocipations. The sensory space of perception (differentiated as tactile, auditory and optical space), is an objective spatial retrocipation in the meaning of the psychic law-sphere. As an objective meaning-moment it is strictly correlated with the subjective feeling of extension. It could not be actualized without this subjective feeling. Previous structural analyses have repeatedly disclosed the modal subject-object relation in connection with the retrocipatory structure of the meaning-modus. But this relation can be dealt with in more detail only in a later context.

Tactile space, together with optic space - both in their coherence with the organic substratum (but of this later on!) -, is three-dimensional in the modal meaning of sensory feeling. This three-dimensionality must not be taken in the sense of original (pure) space, though a three-dimensional extension in its pure mathematical sense is indeed its ultimate foundation in the cosmic order of time. Sensory space is a sensorily qualified extension and has only sensory dimensions, no pure ones.

The whole psychic analogy of space is not a simple one, and is by no means directly connected with the original spatial meaning. In the first place, it refers back to biotic space, itself a complex spatial analogy in the modal meaning of the biotic law-sphere. And behind this latter analogy the psychic spatial retrocipation appeals to the physical space of energy and the kinematic mode of extension. Only behind kinematic space does it refer back to the original nucleus of space, in which it finds its ultimate foundation.

Why do we perceive the sensory images of motion in the objective sensory picture of space?

This also explains how the images of motion can be perceived with the senses only in the objective psychical picture of space, although in an earlier part of this work it appeared that in the original meaning of space no movement is possible.

The explanation is that the objective sensory space of feeling is a modal retrocipation of the original modus of extension. As such it forms the necessary basis within the modal structure of the

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psychical aspect for the sensory image of motion as an analogy that comes later in the modal arrangement. This in its turn is an (objective) modal retrocipation of the original meaning of motion.

Consequently sensory three-dimensional space is indeed the a priori modal condition of all sensory perceptions of the objective images of motion. The modal retrocipations in the meaning-structure of feeling, however, are not really coordinated with one another as the juxta-position of the theoretically grasped meaning-moments in our analysis might suggest. They interpenetrate intensively in the modal coherence of the meaning-aspect. In its complex structure within the modal meaning of psychical feeling objective sensory space is entirely interpenetrated by the physical and kinematic retrocipations. In the same way the subjective feeling of space is entirely interpenetrated by the subjective feeling of energy and motion. The objective sensory images of motion, too, must interpenetrate psychical space itself, and so motion can only be perceived with our senses in objective sensory space.

Similarly, in the reactive space of organic life the biotic spatial analogy is entirely interpenetrated by biotic motion. Biotic motion is only possible in organic-biotic space. Sensibility, again, is a modal retrocipation in the meaning-aspect of feeling immediately referring back to the organic structure of life. This retrocipation is of a complex character as it also refers back to organic development and, in concreto, e.g., shows various degrees of differentiation in higher and lower animals.

Organic development, in its turn, is a complex kinematic analogy in the biotic meaning-aspect which in its organic moment refers back to the arithmetical and spatial meaning- aspects.

B - Anticipations.

Just as in the modal retrocipations, there is an increasing structural complication in the modal anticipations; but here this complication manifests itself in the opposite direction of the cosmic order of time. The modal anticipations of a law-sphere will become more and more complicated according as this law-sphere occupies an earlier place in the temporal order in comparison with another sphere. Whereas retrocipations proved to be either simple or complex, modal anticipations can only be complex.

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The only differentiation to be made here is that between directly and indirectly anticipating meaning-moments.

The reason why a modal anticipation can never have a simple structure is that even the least complicated modal anticipatory sphere, viz. the spatial anticipation in the modality of number, directly points forward to a meaning-modus (that of original space) which has a retrocipatory sphere of its own.

The complex modal structure of the so-called irrational function of number as a direct anticipation, and that of the so-called complex function of number as an indirect anticipation.

In the so-called irrational function of number (√ 2, √ 5, √ 2 + √ 2 etc.) within the series of the ‘real numbers’¹ there proves to be implied a complex anticipation of the spatial meaning-moment of extensive magnitude in the modal meaning of number². For, though this anticipation is a direct one in the sense defined above, it implies the anticipation of the meaning of spatial continuity and dimensionality.

The so-called uni-dimensionality of the infinite basic series of real numbers can therefore not be an original moment, but only an implicitly and directly anticipatory one in the meaning-structure of number. It remains qualified by the meaning-nucleus of discrete quantity. But it cannot be grasped in this modality outside of the coherence with the original continuity of extension and the moments of dimensionality and magnitude implied in the latter. The inadequacy of the infinite series of fractional rational number-values in which the irrational function of number is expressed can never be removed in the meaning of number itself. It is rather the necessary expression of the lack of self-sufficiency of the numerical modality in the anticipatory direction, the expression of its appeal to extensive magnitude in the modal meaning of continuous dimensional extension.

This anticipation of spatial dimensionality and magnitude assumes a further complication in the so-called complex function of number. In this the real numbers are deepened through their connection with the imaginary function (in the ordinary, simple

1 ‘Real numbers’ are all rational numbers in connection with the irrational number-values interpolated between them, whose series is (as appeared, unjustly) considered to be actually continuous.

2 Cf. Hankel, Theorie der complexen Zahlensysteme (1867) p. 59, who, wrongly however, calls the spatial concept of magnitude entirely independent of any number concept.

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form: A + Bi, in which i = √ - 1 or (- 1)½). This is a new complication in the numerical meaning-structure because the symbol - i signifies the approximation of the modal directions of pure movement in the modal function of number. Apart from this inter-modal coherence of meaning the imaginary function of number would remain perfectly meaningless. In this case we are confronted with an indirect anticipation which can only point to directions and intensity in the modal meaning of motion through the intermediary of spatial dimensionality and magnitude, and therefore anticipates movement implicitly.

In the meaning of number proper the imaginary function finds its only starting-point, as Natorp correctly pointed out, in the multiplicative relations of the + and - directions. But these relations remain originally defined by the nucleus of discrete quantity¹. In their anticipatory function they continue to imply the intermodal reference to spatial dimensionality and change of direction in the original aspect of movement. In other words, they should never be conceived in the original meaning of the continuous transformation of direction.

Reckoning with the imaginary function of number made its entrance already in the 17th century. The decisive factor, however, leading to the acknowledgment of the full value of this function of number was Graszmann's ‘Ausdehnungslehre’ in close connection with Hamilton's so-called quaternion-calculus. At first it drew little attention in mathematical circles. Graszmann introduced the complex numbers of an arbitrary order for the approximation of the dimensions of continuous extension. In keeping with Leibniz' idea of a universal method of reckoning, Graszmann considers geometry merely as a species or an ‘example’ of a kind of mathematics which is a pure calculus. And at the same time this method wants to rise above ordinary arithmetic by including the latter in its own domain only as a special case.

But Graszmann did not yet go so far as to introduce the moment of dimension into the number-concept itself. With him direction and dimension are at bottom still only ‘proporties’ of what is countable. In his ‘Ausdehnungslehre’ he merely wanted to create a suitable method of scientific treatment of these properties.

1 Natorp is in principle bound to deny this, in keeping with the logicistic postulate of continuity.

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Logicistical arithmetic, however, found sufficient inducement in this method to attempt a further step. Graszmann had very successfully assumed a close connection between the complex functions of number and the spatial dimensions. Logicistic arithmetic now tried to derive dimensionality as an original meaning-moment from the meaning of number proper, or rather from logical thought. It gained an easy victory over its antagonists, in so far as they regarded number as fundamentally ‘uni-dimensional’, and only opposed the introduction of the moment of multi-dimensional continuity in the number-concept.

In his attempt to derive the moment of multi-dimensionality from the original concept of number, conceived of in a logicist way, Natorp starts from the ‘uni-dimensional’ or ‘linear’ basic series of numbers. He considers it to be a straight line, created in rigid logical continuity from the logical basic relation of isolation and unification. In this straight line the plus- and minus-directions are strictly correlated and determine the place of each member of the series as a counter-member to a basic member, or as a basic member to a counter member. The introduction of linear dimensionality into the number-concept was preceded by the introduction of original continuity into this concept. The latter has been already discussed and found antinomic.

Natorp tries to find the logical transition to the ‘multidimensional’ or complex number in the multiplicative development of the so-called relative functions of number, i.e. the series in which counting (O, 1, 2,... etc.) occurs twice, only differing through the symbols + or -, and connected in the common starting-value, 0¹.

1 Die logischen Grundlagen, p. 248.

The logicistic concept of ‘Dimension überhaupt’ (dimension in general), and the modal shift of meaning in this pseudo-concept.

The logicistic shifts of meaning in Natorp's attempt to derive the so-called imaginary function of number from the fundamental logical relation of isolation and unification may be called palpable. The logicistic principle of the origin does not allow theoretical thought to respect the modal boundaries of meaning between number, space and logical analysis. That is why the logical continuity and direction of the movement of thought, as spatial and

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kinematic analogies, have to do duty as a basis for the inclusion into the number-concept of the moments of continuity and dimension as original logical moments of meaning, without any reference to the original modal sense of space.

The multiplicative relations of the plus- and minus-directions in the modal temporal order of number, which have the meaning of discrete quantity, are interpreted as dimensions. After assuming actual continuity in the basic series Natorp seems really to have derived the concept of dimension from the ‘logical’ meaning of number itself. But this concept of dimension has become a pseudo-logical general notion without any modal definition of its meaning. This is, moreover, proved by Natorp's thesis that in order to be able to think the dimensions of space, it is necessary first to know how to think the ‘Dimensionen überhaupt’ (dimensions in general)¹. The concept: ‘Dimension überhaupt’ has been obtained in a logicistic way from the logical analogy of dimension. But the fact has been overlooked that this analogy cannot exist without its meaning-substratum in the original modal meaning of space.

It is, however, very instructive for our insight into the complex structure of the spatial anticipations within the original meaning-aspect of number that this logicism does not see its way to include the moment of dimension into the number-concept without first introducing extensive continuity into the series of the real numbers.

1 Die logischen Grundlagen, p. 263.

Complex systems of number and the theory of groups. The formalistic conception of the symbol i.

In the complex modal functions of number there is no question of a mere anticipation of spatial dimensions. Rather they anticipate, via these dimensions, modal directions of pure movement, and they do so under the guidance of the movement of theoretical thought.

This holds good both for the system of the so-called ordinary complex functions of number (A + Bi etc.), and for the systematic extensions into the systems of the so-called quaternions, biquaternions and triquaternions. The modern inclusion of the whole of the theory of the complex functions of number into the so-called theory of groups² which investigates the invariant

2 Cf. Dr J. Wolff, Complexe Getallenstelsels (1917, Groningen), p. 15 ff.

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relations in the transformations within the group, only emphasizes this state of affairs which is revealed to us by the structural analysis of the meaning-aspect of number.

Every system of complex numbers is supposed to refer to two interchangeable groups of linear homogeneous transformation, and vice versa. As to this supposition, the intermodal coherence of meaning of the complex function of number with the modal structure of the spatial dimensions and the pure directions of movement cannot be philosophically irrelevant.

In the quaternion-systems consisting of one real and three imaginary units (i, j. k)¹, the absence of the so-called commutative quality of multiplication (entitling us in ordinary algebra to change the product ab into that of ba) cannot be understood unless its connection with the directions of pure movement is taken into account; the quaternion anticipates the latter in the meaning-aspect of number.

The formalistic trend in mathematics erroneously hold the imaginary unit i to be a self-sufficient abstract construction of thought with an unexplained meaning, while it is assumed to be immaterial that this unit i can be adequately represented in a sensory spatial picture of motion. In our treatment of the modal subject-object relation it will appear that a sensory representation pre-supposes a sensory original, and that a non-sensory original can never be depicted in a sensory way.

The point at issue is much more concerned with an (intrinsically cosmological) intermodal coherence of meaning into which the complex function of number has been fitted according to its modal structure. Even nominalistic formalism has to reckon with this, at least implicitly, in its supposedly arbitrary definitions if it is at all to be able to fix the complex functions of number in the theoretical vision².

1 i, j and k are then interpreted as rotations of 90° round three axes, placed vertically on each other, so that their squares are - 1.

2 From a formalistic standpoint Hankel remarks (in his Theorie der complexen Zahlensysteme (1867) p. 66) on the symbol i: ‘It is merely a sign for an imaginary mental object which is called the imaginary unit, whose nature, however, in pure theory remains entirely undetermined and must remain so, as in this we have only to do with its formal relations and complications’ [‘es ist weiter nichts als ein Zeichen für ein eingebildetes mentales Objekt, welches man die imaginäre Einheit nennt, dessen eigentliches Wesen aber in der reinen Theorie ganz unbestimmt bleibt und unbestimmt bleiben musz, da wir uns in dieser nur mit seinen formalen Verknüpfungen zu beschäftigen haben.’] But the imaginary function has not a hidden ‘metaphysical nature’ as Hankel thinks. Its functional side itself is at issue, on which its entire complex of apriori law-conformable relations depend!

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A brief analysis of the complex anticipatory structure of the economy of thought.

This part of our inquiry will be concluded with a brief analysis of the complex structure of two indirect modal anticipations in the later law-spheres, viz. the economy of thought, and the feeling of justice. It has been shown that the ‘economy of thought’ is really an economic anticipation in the aspect of logical analysis. In the present context it will be explained how the cosmic order of time of the law-spheres finds expression in the complex structure of this anticipation. In other words, it will appear that the economic anticipation of thought cannot directly start from the anticipated modal meaning of the economic law-sphere, but only through the intermediary of all the modal aspects lying between the logical and the economic law-spheres. Consequently, in this anticipation there are quite a series of other anticipations implied.

An earlier analysis has shown that the economic anticipation of the logical meaning-aspect can only express itself in deepened, theoretical scientific thought. In scientific thought the modal meaning of analysis acquires a systematic tendency, in which logical distinction is deepened into logical control. In this logical control expressing itself in the systematic character of theoretical thought, the analytical modality in the first place anticipates the aspect of history. This anticipation has been examined in an earlier context. For the present it must be established that the economy of thought is meaningless without the foundation of logical control. All the biologistic misconceptions of the principle of analytical economy in the school of Mach and Avenarius are due to a lack of insight into the anticipatory coherence of meaning in which this principle can only reveal its true meaning. It is in the anticipatory meaning-coherence between the logical and the historical law-spheres alone that also the history of scientific thought can be assigned its true place.

This cosmic meaning-coherence between the logical and the historical law-spheres is misinterpreted by Historism, in its radical form defended by Oswald Spengler. It surreptitiously substitutes the historical modality of meaning for the theoretical logical one. This point will be discussed later on.

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Logical control, as an historical anticipation in the modal meaning of logic, cannot unfold itself into real economy of thought without anticipating the modal meaning of language. Logical control must provide itself with an intermediary basis for deepening its meaning into economy of thought. It does so in the modal anticipation of logical symbolism, which has been explained before. In its turn the economy of thought becomes the modal foundation for logical harmony in which the theoretical system anticipates the nucleus of the aesthetic law-sphere.

In its judicial function theoretical thought inquires after the logical justification of every theoretical judgment, and in this way it anticipates the meaning-nucleus of the legal aspect. Kant has stressed this anticipatory function of analysis with reference to the ‘Gegenstand’ by saying that theoretical reason has to interrogate nature as a judge and not as a pupil. In fact, there is an undeniable coherence of meaning between the judicial function of theoretical analysis and that of jurisdiction in its original retributive sense. In theoretical thought it is necessary to balance the logical grounds and the counter-grounds of an argument just as a judge has to balance the claims of two litigants. Only the modal meaning of the judicial function of theoretical analysis differs from that of jurisdiction in its legal sense. But the aesthetic and juridical anticipations of the modal meaning of analysis are already further away in the anticipatory direction of time than the economic anticipation. The present enquiry is merely intended to show that the economy of thought is necessarily founded in logical control and logical symbolism¹.

1 The social anticipation of the analytical modus will be left alone in this context. A discussion of this analogy would have to anticipate our insight into the relation between the individual and the communal character of science, which cannot be explained before our discussion of the epistemological problem. Here we restrict ourselves to those anticipations that can be shown to exist in the present stage of our enquiry.

A brief analysis of the structure of the feeling of justice as a complex modal anticipation.

Our last example of the complex structure of modal anticipations is the modal meaning-figure of the feeling of justice (Rechtsgefühl). The feeling of justice is a modal anticipation in the meaning-structure of the psychical law-sphere. The psychical aspect here anticipates the meaning-kernel of the legal

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sphere. This modal anticipation in the structure of feeling, however, cannot point forward directly to the latter, but only through the intermediary of the modal structures of all the intervening law-spheres.

Before the feeling-modus can deepen into legal feeling - which is something entirely different from the animal feeling of revenge, rigidly bound up with biotic stimuli, - the psychical aspect must have deepened to logical feeling. Then feeling anticipates analytical distinction, although not necessarily theoretical analysis, which fact will appear to be important in the sequel.

Animals can have no feeling of justice, if only for the reason that they lack the normative analytical function. The deepening of feeling into logical feeling, however, is not a sufficient foundation for the modal anticipation in the feeling of justice. Psychiatric science confirms the fact that logical feeling may have developed even to a striking degree of sharpness while the feeling for social intercourse, the feeling of justice and moral feeling are lacking (cf. the figure of ‘moral insanity’). In modern man this may be a pathological phenomenon, it is nevertheless an indication that the feeling of justice has a very complicated structure. Its complication would be quite inexplicable, if it is assumed that this anticipatory function starts directly from the structure of logical feeling.

In the first place it must be observed that the feeling of justice can only manifest itself in a psychical form which differentiates it clearly from the feeling of social intercourse, from aesthetic feeling, moral feeling and the feeling of faith. This occurs at an historical level of civilization that offers a sufficient foundation for the articulated distinction of social norms of intercourse, aesthetic norms, legal norms, moral norms, and norms of faith. Even among the highly cultured Greeks, beauty, justice and morals were an undifferentiated whole in the popular mind. The ϰαλοϰάγαϑον ‘embodied’ the Greek ideal of personal perfection. In primitive tribes a differentiated feeling of justice will be sought in vain; they have only an inarticulate tribal feeling of what is permissible and what is not. The psychical reaction upon every assault on the tribal order cannot be compared with the modern differentiated feeling of justice.

In a later context we shall revert to this very interesting state of affairs. For the present it should only be stated that the feeling-aspect must first be deepened in its anticipating the historical meaning of culture, if there is to be any question of a differen-

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tiated feeling of justice. It is impossible to disentangle the (essentially modern) feeling of justice from the cultural feeling of modern man. The feeling of justice, as a modal anticipation in the psychical aspect, is founded in the opening of the historical anticipation in the modal structure of feeling.

The low degree of differentiation in the axiological spheres of feeling at a primitive stage of culture.

Modern genetic psychology, which for the rest has by no means univocally delimited its scientific field of research, has thrown a strong light on the low degree of differentiation in the axiological spheres of feeling at a primitive cultural level. It has also shown that at a higher cultural stage there is an increase in this differentiation. There is a very striking parallelism between the life of feeling in primitive man and that in the child.

With regard to a child's emotional life, the Hamburg Professor Heinz Werner¹ observes: ‘The splitting up of the undifferentiated complexes of feeling into specifically different feelings, as Kroh shows, is not yet finished at a child's entry into the Elementary School. The distinction between the evaluating feelings has not yet been accomplished: aesthetical, ethical, and with these also utilitarian moments of feeling are often woven into one complex unit. ‘Not seldom do we observe in young children,’ says Kroh, ‘a more or less complete identification of ethical and aesthetical values: ‘hateful’ and ‘unjust’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘good’ become identical notions. This view leads many children to look upon injustice as a kind of ‘stain’².

Of course, the anticipatory differentiation in the meaning-aspect of feeling at a higher cultural level must be sharply distinguished from the retrocipatory differentiation which is connected with the organic development in the biotic meaning-sphere. The primary error committed by every naturalistic theory of evolution is that it loses sight of this difference.

Genetic psychology has established that the axiological differentiation in human feeling is dependent on the stage of our cultural development. This is a state of affairs which can no

1 Heinz Werner, Einführung in die Enfwicklungspsychologie (2e Aufl., 1933) p. 71. [Introduction to Genetic Psychology]. For the rest I do not at all agree with the strongly constructive way in which this psychology sets to work with its schema of differentiation, and by which, in my opinion, it falsifies in particular primitive thought.

2 Kroh, Psychologie des Grundschulkindes, 1930, p. 248.

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longer be denied after its detection. But it can only be correctly interpreted if we constantly bear in mind the cosmic order of time with regard to the psychical and the historical law-spheres as manifested in their modal meaning-structures. The theory of the modal-spheres lays a solid foundation for the investigations of special science by the analysis of these structures.

The feeling of justice pre-supposes a successive series of intermediate psychical anticipations, not only logical and historical feeling, briefly examined above, but also symbolic feeling, social feeling, economic feeling and aesthetical feeling. We shall not go into all this. For the present it may suffice to refer to the correlation with the retrocipatory structure of the legal meaning in which the previous analysis has shown the symbolic, social, economic and aesthetical analogies.

Some new complications in the anticipatory structure of the modal meaning-aspect. The normative anticipations do not refer to the merely retrocipatory structure of the anticipated aspect.

The meaning-analysis of the feeling of justice has revealed a new complication in the anticipatory modal structure of the law-sphere which in the present context immediately demands the closest attention.

When dealing with the analysis of the historical anticipation in the feeling of justice it must have struck the reader that this anticipation does not simply refer to the modal nucleus of the historical aspect in the context of its retrocipatory structure. It has rather appeared that the differentiated feeling of justice pre-supposes a higher stage of cultural development. This is to say, the historical anticipation appears to start from the anticipated modal meaning-structure of history which has already opened out its own anticipatory spheres.

The same thing holds good with regard to all the other anticipations in the modal aspect of feeling. And so we are confronted with a kind of complexity in the anticipatory structure of this law-sphere which seems to point in the direction of the boundless, the apeiron. The reason is that the historical-cultural aspect in its anticipatory spheres does not yield a resting-point either, but in its turn refers forward to the following anticipatory meaning-structures. And in the last law-sphere, the second terminal sphere of our temporal cosmos, viz. the sphere of faith, the insight into the entire anticipatory movement of

[p. 180]

meaning seems to be brought to a deadlock. No rest is to be found here for the dynamics of meaning. For, if the temporal aspect of faith were indeed the absolute zero-point of the anticipatory movement of meaning, the whole of the dynamics of meaning would come to a standstill within its own structure, and so cease to be meaning at all.

The unrest discovered in meaning as such, and in the modal structure of the normative anticipations in particular, does not suffer rigidity in time. The opening-process in the temporal diversity and coherence of meaning in its entirety now demands attention. Unless philosophic thought maintains its transcendental direction to religious self-reflexion, it cannot succeed in elucidating the profound problem that announces itself here.