In order to give itself body, the Philosophy of history has recourse to analogy. This is a legitimate process of thought, which, in its search for truth, seeks analogies and harmonies. But it is legitimate, as we know, only on condition that the analogy does not remain a merely heuristic hypothesis, but is effectively thinkable and thought. Now the concepts that the Philosophy of history deduces cannot be effectively thought, because they are void; they are neither pure concepts nor pure representations, but an arbitrary mixture of the two forms, and therefore contradiction and vacuity. Thus the analogies of which the Philosophy of history avails itself, are _false analogies,_ that is to say, _metaphors_ and _comparisons,_ transformed into analogies and concepts. It will declare, for instance, that the Middle Ages are the negation of ancient civilization, and that the modern epoch is the synthesis of these two opposites. But ancient civilization is nothing but an unending series of facts, of which each is a synthesis of opposites, real only in so far as it is a synthesis of opposites. And between ancient civilization and the Middle Ages, there is absolute continuity, not less than between the Middle Ages and the modern epoch. Facts cannot stand to one another as opposite concepts, because they cannot be opposed to one another as positive and negative. The fact that is called positive is positive-negative and so, in like manner, is that which is called negative. It will further declare (always by way of example) that Greece was thought and Rome action, and the modern world is the unity of thought and action. But in reality, Greek life was thought and action, like that of Rome, and like modern life. Every epoch, every people, every individual, every instant of life is thought and action, in virtue of the unity of the spirit, whose distinctions are never broken up into separate existences. The affirmations that belong to the Philosophy of history are all of this kind, and when they are not of this kind, it means that they do not belong to the essence of the Philosophy of history. [Sidenote: _Distinction between the Philosophy of history, and the books thus entitled. Philosophical and historical merits of these._]