We shall not follow our author in all his developments of the theory of history. It suffices to say that these developments are obviously but new presentations, made here and there more precise and more coherent, of the various problems already discussed in the preceding volumes of the _Filosofia dello Spirito_. We shall thus recognise in Croce's criticism of the philosophy of history as a special discipline, distinct both from history as such and from a so-called general philosophy, his polemic against transcendence, either metaphysical or naturalistic; and in his claim for the positivity of history, his theory of value, by which the only real values are the positive ones, coinciding with the fact, while negative values are but expressions of feelings and desires. In the light of this theory, since history is obviously concerned with that which is, and not with that which is not, the limits of historical judgment are clearly established, in the way in which we saw them established for literary criticism. As the literary critic is never concerned with anything but with expression, or art, or beauty, non-expression, non-art, non-beauty being as such inexistent, and truly existent only as manifestations of the logical or practical activity of man; so the historian at large will never meet negative values, but positive facts only, which assume the aspect of ugliness, or error, or immorality, only in the dialectic process of reality, in the creation of a higher form of life. His affirmation of the positive fact is sufficient judgment, and it becomes an implicit moral judgment whenever the consciousness of the historian is a moral consciousness, without any need for him to usurp the function of the moralist or of the judge in apportioning praise or blame on the objects of his history. Against the humanistic or pragmatic conception of history, which finds the reasons and motives of history in the abstract individual, as against the opposite view, for which the true history is only that of the collectivity, of the institutions, of the human values, Croce reasserts his concept of the actuality of the spirit, in regard to which the individual is as much of an abstraction as the society or the value which does not entirely realize itself in the fact. The object of history is neither Pericles nor Politics, neither Sophocles nor Tragedy, neither Plato nor Philosophy; but the universal in the individual, that is, Politics, Tragedy, Philosophy, as Pericles, Sophocles, and Plato, or Pericles, Sophocles, and Plato as particular moments of Politics, of Tragedy, and of Philosophy.