[Sidenote: _and the thesis of the practical character of history._] By reason of the same erroneous interpretation there has come from philosophers who are not positivists, the theory that history is rendered possible only by the intervention of _the practical_ spirit. On this view, the practical spirit, after establishing practical values, arranges beneath them the formless material and shapes it into historical narrative. But the practical spirit is impotent to produce anything in the field of knowledge; it can act only as the custodian and administrator of what has already been produced. For this reason, the theory here referred to, by appealing to the practical spirit, resolves itself into a complete negation of the value of history as knowledge. And this negation, though it was certainly not foreseen or desired by those who maintain the theory, yet is unavoidable. [Sidenote: _Distinction between historical facts and facts that are not historical, and its empirical value._] In this connection, there has also been maintained the importance of the distinction between historical events and events not worthy of history, between historical and non-historical, or between teleological and ateleological personages. Such a distinction, it has been affirmed, is afforded by the practical spirit. This is true, but for the reason already given, it amounts to removing all theoretical importance from the distinction, by emptying it of all cognitive content. In reality, for the practical economy of social work, for selecting subjects for books, or for being easily understood in our own speech, it is necessary to speak of a definite event or of a definite individual as a thing and person altogether common and unworthy of history. But it asks the brain of a pedant to imagine that the individual or the event has thereby been suppressed, we do not say from the field of reality (which would be too manifestly absurd), but from that of the _narrative of reality,_ or from history. What is understood forms part of what is said; and if we did not always imply a mental reference to the men we call commonplace, and to insignificant facts, which are more or less excluded from our words, great men and significant events would also lose all meaning. Such implications are so little eliminated or eliminable, that they break out and are even verbally expressed, according to the various interests that determine books on history at various times. Thus we have seen domestic and social life, neglected by the old historians, not only gradually assume importance, but throw wars and diplomatic negotiations into the shade. We have seen the so-called masses, neglected in favour of the individual genius, in their turn conquer, and almost eclipse, the heroes (which does not mean that these latter will not have their revenge). We have seen names, once hardly mentioned, become attractive and popular, and others, at one time celebrated, lose their colour and disappear from view. Even