A true and proper concept, precisely because it is not representation, cannot have for content any single representative element, or have reference to any particular representation, or group of representations; but on the other hand, precisely because it is universal in relation to the individuality of the representations, it must refer at the same time to all and to each. Take as an example any concept of universal character, be it of _quality,_ of _development,_ of _beauty,_ or of _final cause._ Can we conceive that a piece of reality, given us in representation, however ample it may be (let it even be granted that it embraces ages and ages of history, in all the complexity of the latter, and millenniums and millenniums of cosmic life), exhausts in itself quality or development, beauty or final cause, in such a way that we can affirm an equivalence between those concepts and that representative content? On the other hand, if we examine the smallest fragment of representable life, can we ever conceive that, however small and atomic it be, there is lacking to it quality and development, beauty and final cause? Certainly, it may be and has been affirmed, that things are not quality, but pure quantity; that they do not develop, but remain changeless and motionless; that the criterion of beauty is the arbitrary extension which we make to cosmic reality of some of our narrow individual and historical experiences and sentiments; and that final cause is an anthropomorphic conception, since not "end" but "cause" is the law of the real, not teleology but mechanism and determinism. Philosophy has been and is still engrossed in such disputes; and we do not here present them as definitely solved, nor do we intend to base ourselves upon determinate conceptions in the choice of our examples. The point is, that if the theses which we have just mentioned as opposed to the first, were true, they would furnish, in every case, true and proper concepts, superior to every representative determination, and embracing in themselves all representations, that is to say, every possible experience; and our conception of the concept would not thereby be changed, but indeed confirmed. Final cause or mechanism, development or motionless being, beauty or individual pleasure, would always, in so far as they are concepts, be posited as ultrarepresentative and at the same time omnirepresentative. Even if, as often happens, both the opposed concepts were accepted for the same problem, for example, final cause and mechanism, or development and unmoved substance, it is never intended simply to apply either of them to single groups of representations, but to make them elements and component parts of all reality. Thus, every reality would be, on one side, end, and on the other, cause; on one side, motionless, on the other, changeable; man would have in himself something of the mechanical and something of the teleological; nature would be matter, but urged forward by a first