This original plan (and in general the position taken up by the system of Hegel) may perhaps be considered as a deviation and aberration from a just impulse, which still awaits its legitimate satisfaction. This satisfaction we have attempted to give, by going deeply into the meaning of the Kantian _a priori_ synthesis and by establishing the identity of philosophy and history. Thus, as regards the question at issue, the formula that we oppose to Hegel's formula of the identity of _philosophy and history of philosophy,_ is that of the identity of _philosophy and history._ This difference may at first sight seem non-existent or very slight, but yet it is substantial. Philosophy is indeed identical with history, because by solving historical problems it affirms itself, and is in this way identical with the history of philosophy, not because this is separable from other histories, or has precedence over them, but for precisely the contrary reason, that it is altogether inseparable from and completely fused in the totality of history, according to the unity in distinction already explained. Hence it is seen that philosophy does not originate in time, that there are not philosophic men and non-philosophic men, that there are not concepts belonging to one individual which another individual is without, nor mental efforts which one makes and another does not make, and that philosophy, or all the categories, operates at every instant of the spiritual life, and at every instant of the spiritual life operates upon material altogether new, given to it by history, which for its part it helps to create. This amounts to saying that from that concept we obtain the criticism of philosophism and of the formula expressing the identity of Philosophy, History of Philosophy and Philosophy of history; and a more exact idea of the history of philosophy, free from the chains of an arbitrary classification. [Sidenote: _The history of philosophy and philosophic progress._]