The representative and conceptual elements in historical judgment are not separable or even, strictly, distinguishable unless it is intended to dissolve the historical narrative in order to return to pure intuition. This too is a corollary of what has been said on the individual judgment. For this reason, every division of history, based upon the presence or absence of one or other of these elements, must be held to be without truth. Of this kind is the once popular division into _picturesque_ and _reflective_ or _thinking_ history. But this division designates not two kinds of history, but rather, on the one hand, the return to indiscriminate intuition, and on the other, true history, which is intuition thought or reflected. The same false division is sometimes expressed in the terms _chronicle_ and _history,_ or _narrative_ and _philosophic_ history. [Sidenote: _Empirical nature of the division of the historical process into four stages._] Outside the individual judgment, there is neither subject nor predicate. Outside the narrative, which synthesizes representation and concept, and by representing gives existence and judgment, there is no history. Technical manuals usually divide the process of historical composition into four stages. The first is _heuristic,_ consisting of the collection of historical material; the second _criticism_ or _separation_ of it; the third is _interpretation_ or _comprehension,_ the fourth _exposition_ or _narrative._ These distinctions portray the professional historian's method of work. _First,_ he examines archives and libraries, _then_ he verifies the authenticity of the documents found, _then_ he seeks to understand them, and _finally_ he puts his thoughts on paper and pays attention to the beauty of form of the exposition. These are doubtless useful didactic distinctions. But it must be observed that so long as we do not have a historical source before us (the first stage) the very condition of the birth of history is wanting. Hence the first stage does not belong to historical work, but to the practical stage of him who goes in search of a material object. The second stage is already a complete historical work in itself, since it consists in establishing, whether a given fact, called sincere evidence, has really taken place. The third coincides logically with the second, since it is the same thing to ascertain the value of a piece of evidence and to pronounce on the reality and quality of the facts to which it witnesses. The fourth coincides with the second and third, because it is impossible to think a narrative without speaking it, that is, without giving to it expressive or verbal form. [Sidenote: _Divisions founded upon the historical object._]