[Sidenote: _Relation of the distinct concepts as ideal history._] This relation of the distinct concepts in the unity which they constitute, can be compared to the spectacle of life, in which every fact is in relation with all other facts, and the fact which comes after is certainly different from that which precedes, but is also the same; since the consequent fact contains in itself the preceding, as, in a certain sense, the preceding virtually contained the consequent, and was what it was, just because it possessed the power of producing the consequent. This is called _history_; and therefore (continuing to develop the comparison) the relation of the concepts, which are distinct in the unity of the concept, can be called and has been called _ideal history_; and the logical theory of such ideal history has been regarded as the theory of the _degrees of the concept,_ just as real history is conceived as a series of _degrees of civilization._ And since the theory of the degrees of the concept is the theory of its distinction, and its distinction is not different from its unity, it is clear that this theory can be separated from the general doctrine of the concept with which it is substantially one, only with a view to greater facility of exposition. [Sidenote: _Distinction between ideal and real history._] Metaphors and comparisons are metaphors and comparisons and (like all forms of language) their effectiveness for the purposes of dissertation is accompanied, as we know, by the danger of misunderstanding. In order to avoid this, without at the same time renouncing the convenience of such modes of expression, it will be well to insist that the historical series, where the distinct concepts appear connected, is _ideal,_ and therefore outside space and time, and eternal; so that it would be erroneous to conceive that in any smallest fragment of reality, or in any most fugitive instant of it, one degree is found without the other, the first without the second, or the first and the second without the third. Here too, we must allow for the exigencies of exposition, whereby, sometimes, when we intend to emphasize the distinction, we are led to speak of the relation of one degree to another, as if they were distinct existences; as if the practical man really existed side by side with the theoretic man, or the poet side by side with the philosopher, or as if the work of Art stood separate from the labour of reflection, and so on. But if a particular historical fact can in a certain sense be considered as essentially distinct in time and space, the grades of the concept are not existentially, temporally, and spatially distinct. [Sidenote: _Ideal and abstract distinction._]