Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/270

 Rh thing-in-itself (L' idealismo nella vecchia speculazione, 1903).

Ardigo likewise applies the theory of the indistinto and of the distinti to the problem of soul and body. The facts given in experience consist of the psychophysical reality in its undifferentiated form. But our investigations must in this case be divided into psychology and physiology, each of which is obliged to deal with abstractions. The psychical and the physical never exist in reality apart from each other; one and the same reality (reale indistinto) underlies both (La psicologia come scienza positiva).—As a psychologist Ardigo reveals a remarkable faculty of describing both the continuity as well as the more refined nuances of psychical phenomena.

Ardigo's fundamental viewpoint likewise has a striking application to ethics. Each individual is a distinto whose real existence is in an indistinto, i.e. in a society. Each individual is evolved within a social body (family, state, etc.), and thus learns to judge human actions from the viewpoint of the whole, which provides for the evolution of an anti-egoistic tendency. It is in this that what Ardigo calls "the social ideality" consists. This tendency assumes the form of a holy affection at its culminating points, which impels to sacrifice and begets a faith in The Eternal despite the tragedy of human life.