which is sometimes left to be understood in the words, but whose effective presence transforms the pure intuition into the individual judgment and makes _history_ of a _poem._ [Sidenote: _Vain attempts to eliminate it._] The necessity of the logical element has been several times denied, and it has been affirmed that the historian must let things speak for themselves and put into them nothing of his own. This fine phrase may have some reference to a-certain truth, as we shall see. But if it is understood as the exclusion of the logical element in favour of pure intuition (and worse still, if it intends to exclude also the category of intuition, for in that case we have simple _muteness),_ it proclaims the death of history. Without the logical element it is not possible to say that even the smallest, the most ordinary fact, belonging to our individual and everyday life, has _occurred;_ as, for instance, that I rose this morning at eight o'clock and took luncheon at twelve. For (to give no other reasons) these historical propositions imply the concept of existence or actuality and the correlative concept of non-existence or possibility, since in affirming them I also deny that I only dreamed of rising at eight or of taking luncheon at twelve. All will agree that we cannot speak of a historical fact if we do not know that it is a fact, that is to say, something that has happened; even stories become the object of history, in so far as their existence as stories is attributed to them. A story, told without knowing or deciding whether it be or be not a story, is poetry; perceived and told as a story, it is mythography, that is to say, history; the author of the _Iliad_ or the author of the _Niebelungen_ is not Adalbert Kuhn, Jacob Grimm or Max Müller. [Sidenote: _Extension of historical predicates beyond that of mere existence._]