As there are no special philosophical sciences, and then a general philosophy, which should be outside or above them, but whenever we think of reality under one of its aspects or distinctions, we think of the whole of reality in one of its determinations, so there are no special histories, the limits of which can be definitely stated, and above them a general history, which would in a new form revive the myth of universal history. We have seen how literary history, for instance, tends inevitably to become the whole spiritual history of a nation; and the same applies to all special histories, whether political or moral, or philosophical. There are divisions of history, according to the quality of the objects, to time and space, but such divisions are mere empirical classifications, practical instruments or literary expedients; and we can use as the foundation of such divisions even the ideal distinctions of the fundamental forms of spiritual activity. But when these distinctions are understood as actual distinctions of the aspects of the spiritual life, of which we make history, then all the other aspects will inevitably be present in the particular distinction, once we truly apprehend it in the fulness of its relations. In this sense, history is always special or particular, because it is only in the special and particular that we can grasp the effectual and concrete universality, the effectual and concrete unity. Finally, the difference between the history of man and the history of nature is not a difference in the object but in the method of history. The whole of reality is spiritual reality, and nature apprehended in its concreteness and actuality, if we are able to recreate it within ourselves, becomes actual, concrete, contemporary history as much as any part of human history. On the other hand, the application of empirical and abstract concepts, the practical manipulation of the data of human history, transforms the history of man into mere natural history. This difference in method we have already analyzed in studying Croce's logic, and we shall only add here that the reader of Croce may often be tempted to regard Croce's conception of reality as limited to the human spirit only, and therefore to give a metaphysical interpretation to his exclusion of "nature." The correct interpretation is a purely epistemological one, and again and again Croce insists that in the whole of reality, which is development or life, man and nature are but empirical and abstract distinctions. On the other hand, Croce's interests are certainly more human than natural, and not only in the sense in which this is true of every man; in the more precise sense also that the effort to recreate within himself the consciousness of a blade of grass, which he advises the historian of nature to perform, clearly appeals to him so little, that he may even seem doubtful of its success. The accent is continually laid, in Croce's thought, on the