All that has been developed in the preceding book concerns the practical activity _in general:_ therefore no account has been taken of the special distinctions of the practical forms, as though there were none, or they have only been alluded to as something problematical; and when exemplifications have been given, recourse has been had indifferently to one or to the other of the forms commonly admitted, whether or no they are to be held philosophically distinguishable. Now, on the contrary, we affirm in an explicit manner that the spirit, which we have seen distinguished as theoretical and practical, is sub-distinguished as practical spirit, into two forms, of which the first may be called utilitarian or _economic,_ the second moral or _ethical._ [Sidenote: _Insufficiency of the descriptive and psychological distinction._] In affirming this sub-distinction, we are obliged to renounce (as we have already done for the practical in respect to the theoretical) a demonstration by the psychological method, which has already shown itself to be vicious. If indeed it were applicable in this field, we should doubtless be able to strike the intellect and persuade the soul for a moment, by pointing to the spectacle of life as a demonstration of the two forms, economic and ethic, showing on the one hand, farmers, commercial men, speculators, conquerors of men and of territories, wielders of the word or of the sword as instrument of dominion; and, on the other hand, educators, benefactors, disinterested and self-sacrificing men, martyrs and heroes; on the one hand, economic institutions (manufactories, mines, exchanges, exploration companies), and on the other moral institutions (educators and schools, charitable societies, orders of Sisters of Charity, or red, white, or blue Cross Companies, and so on). What can be better proof of the reality of the bipartition enunciated? Cannot we touch it, as with the hand? However (as already in the case of the distinction between the theoretical and the practical), what is touched with the hand is not on that account seized by the intellect, and indeed in a little while it also escapes the hand which had thought to be its master. For when we better observe the individuals who seemed to be merely economic, they seem to be also moral, and inversely;--moral institutions are also economic, and economic moral The benefactor calculates and wishes to attain his object with the same _cupiditas_ as the peasant, all intent upon gain; and the peasant in his turn is ennobled in his chase after lucre by the dignity of labour and by the moral impulses that sustain it;--all charitable institutions are economic undertakings, and economic undertakings are subject to moral laws, so that in drawing up accounts there is no knowing where is that material distinction between the economic and the ethical activities. The truth is that here too it is not possible to start from contingent facts and from their classes