This combined identity and difference of the useful and of the moral, of the economic and of the ethic, explains the fortune enjoyed now and formerly by the utilitarian theory of Ethic. It is in fact easy to discover and to show a utilitarian side in every moral action; as it is easy to show an aesthetic side of every logical proposition. The criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot escape by denying this truth and seeking out absurd and inexistent examples of _useless_ moral actions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as the concrete form of morality, which consists of what is _within_ this form. Utilitarians do not see this within. This is not the place for a more ample development of such ideas. Ethic and Economic cannot but be gainers, as we have said of Logic and Aesthetic, by a more exact determination of the relations that exist between them. Economic science is now rising to the animating concept of the useful, as it strives to pass beyond the mathematical phase, in which it is still entangled; a phase which, when it superseded historicism, was in its turn a progress, destroying a series of arbitrary distinctions and false theories of Economic, implied in the confusion of the theoretical with the historical. With this conception, it will be easy on the one hand to absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pure economy, and on the other, by the introduction of successive complications and additions, and by passing from the philosophical to the empirical or naturalistic method, to include the particular theories of the political or national economy of the schools. [Sidenote] _Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity._ As aesthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and philosophic intuition the noumenon or spirit; so economic activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and moral activity the noumenon or spirit. _The spirit which desires itself_, its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will for the true self is _absolute liberty_. VIII EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS [Sidenote] _The system of the spirit._