of evil" being posited as possible (Spencer), and a definite state of perfection conceived (though transferred from the past into the future), that is to say a Reality that should be Reality, indeed, perfect Reality having ceased to be development, that is to say, itself. [1] _Kr. d. prakt. Vern._ p. 119. [2] _Phil. d. Rechtes,_ §§ 4, 15. [3] Lotze, _Grundzüge der Ethik_ (Leipzig, 1884), pp. 26, 30-31; Wundt, _Ethik_² (Stuttgart, 1892), pp. 463-464. [4] _Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience_ (Paris, 1898). [5] _Tract, theol.-pol._ vi. c. 6; _Ethica,_ p. iv. intr.; _Epist._36 (_Opera,_ pp. 208, 378, 597). [6] _Kr. d. pr. Vernf._ p. 79. [7] _System der Sittenlehre,_ in _Werke,_ iv. pp. 198-205. [8] See my study: _Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto della filosofia di Hegel_ (Bari, 1907). [9] _Médit._ iv. [10] For example, _Compendio di Etica_ (Roma, 1907), p. 56. [11] _Mentor,_ iv. c. 2, § 19 _sqq._ [12] _Hippias minor,_ 375. [13] Pascal, _Provine,_ i, iv.; Hegel, _Phil. d. Rechtes,_ § 40. [14] _Enc._§ 248. [15] _Allg. prakt. Phil._ pp. 121-122; _Einl. i. d. Phil._ (trad, ital.), pp. 118, 171, 224. [16] _Ethic,_ iv. prop. 54, p. 480. [17] _Gesch. d. Phil._ ii. 240-241; _Vorles. üb. Aesth._ ii. 162-163. [18] _Eth. Nicom._ Bk. iii. cc. 2-3, 1111-1113. [19] _Scienza nuova seconda,_ degn. 5. [20] _Phän. d. Geistes,_ pp. 484-486; _Encycl._ § 474; _Phil. d. Rechtes,_ § 124; _Phil. d. Gesch._ pp. 39-41. [21] _Traité des passions,_ iii. § 211. [22] _Maximes,_ n. 182 (Ed. Garnier, p. 43). [23] _Woldemar,_ pp. 112-113. [24] _Monologen,_ in _Werke,_ i. 366-368, 372. [25] See the study of Hegel mentioned. THIRD SECTION UNITY OF THE THEORETICAL AND THE PRACTICAL [Sidenote: _Double result; precedence of the theoretical over the practical and of the practical over the theoretical._] The study of the practical activity in its relations that we made in the first section has removed all doubt as to the thesis that the practical activity presupposes the theoretical, or that _knowledge is the necessary precedent of volition and action._[1] But the succeeding study of the practical activity in its dialectic having led to the result that the practical activity is reality itself in its immediacy, and that no other reality (or we may say _other nature_) is conceivable outside will-action, compels us also to affirm the opposite thesis, that the theoretic activity presupposes the practical, and that _the will is the necessary precedent of knowledge_.[2] And it is a precedent, not indeed in the sense admitted from the beginning, of the necessary implication of the will in every theoretical act, as will to know, by means of the unity of the Spirit[3] (for this will is subsidiary and not constitutive; but if it become constitutive it produces, as has been seen, wilfulness and the theoretical error[4]), but precisely in the sense of a constitutive will, without which no knowledge would be thinkable.