If the protest against the intrusion of subjectivity into history cannot logically be said to have any legitimate meaning save that of a polemic against false subjectivity in favour of true subjectivity, it may also imply, on the literary side, a question of expediency, namely, that in the historical work of art greater importance should be given to the representation of facts than to the theoretical discussion of concepts. A historical should not be transformed into a philosophical work. But this is a question that must be studied case by case; for what harm could it do, if a historian, beginning by writing a history, were to end by writing a philosophic treatise? Certainly, it would not be a greater evil than if a philosopher, becoming passionate about the facts he gives as instances, were gradually to abandon his first plan and produce a history in place of a system. At bottom it would do no harm, or very little, provided that such philosophy or such historical representation were good; and this is precisely what must be examined case by case. A more appropriate meaning of the polemic against the subjectivity of history is the recommendation that in narrating history, _emphatic, negative,_ and _desiderative_ forms should accompany logical judgments which, as such, are judgments of value, as little as possible. These forms, it is argued, are justifiable in relation to the present or immediate past, because they indicate the direction of the future, but in relation to the remote past they are usually empty and superfluous. Indeed, to rage against Marius or Sulla, Cæsar or Pompey, Frederick Barbarossa or the burgesses of Lombardy, is somewhat vain, because those historical personages have, in general, no near or practical interest. But, on the other hand, it is also true that these characters always have some near and practical interest, and in that measure we cannot prevent history, even of the remote past, being here and there revived with the accents of our present and of our future. Still more legitimate is the significance of that polemic when the intention is to blame the habit of those who assume the functions of praise or blame, in relation not only to men, but to historical events. They applaud paganism, abuse Christianity, weep over the fall of the Roman Empire, deplore the formation of Islamism, regret that Buddhism should not have been disseminated in Europe, sympathize with the Reformation, or disapprove of Catholicism after the Council of Trent. To them was addressed the saying that history is not to be judged but to be narrated. But it would be more accurate to say that history is not to be judged by the categories by which we judge the actions of individuals, which are subject to the dialectic of good and evil, because the action of an individual differs from the historical event, which transcends individual wills. But the definition of individuality and of event goes outside the gnoseology of history,