Now a good deal of admiration is usually bestowed on people of good-will and of pure intentions. Here, however, the very existence of such good-will, such pure intentions, is denied. The longing of the man who wishes he could alter the present state of public affairs in his country is not at all to be considered as a will to do so. For he does not will to do so as long as he thinks it is impossible. A wish of this kind has no value either economically or morally. Whatever the circumstances, if he knows them well, he will know that there must be at least one thing that he can do instead of deprecatingly shaking his head as he reads the paper by the fire. When Machiavelli tried to form a Tuscan Militia to free Florence from her trouble, he did not succeed; but when he left his boisterous and rustic friends over their wine and retired to the small library of his modest villa, he did the only civic duty that was left to him to perform; he plunged his lancet into the corrupted body of his country and prepared the way for the coming centuries. Criticism, that is to say negative criticism, when the country is in danger, or suggestion as to the ideal thing to be done, unless they are part of a plan of reform so in keeping with facts that it can be immediately acted upon, are merely pretending to be acts of will. I cannot keep by my fireside or lean at my window deploring the things which are going on and pretend that “I will to alter them.” Yet it is often said that we can will the good in the abstract, while unable to will it in the concrete, and this means simply that we may have good intentions and yet behave badly. The answer to this has been already given; it may be well, however, to state it once more. Willing in the abstract, willing without acting accordingly, is equivalent to not-willing, since, according to Croce, a volition implies a situation historically determined from which it arises as an act equally determined and concrete.