Such a refusal (analogous to our analysis of the utilitarian theory) cannot take place, save in three ways: that is, in so far as value is denied to the useful, either as _practical_ concept, or as _positive_ concept, or as _philosophical_ concept. Here too we naturally do not take count of the theses of the materialists or of the intellectualists, which (especially those of the former) have raged in the field of Economy not less than in that of Ethic, giving rise to insane attempts to explain the useful on mechanical principles, or with the contingencies of historical evolution. [Sidenote: _The useful as the means or as theoretical fact._] The useful (it has been said) is nothing but the _means_ to obtain a certain end. For example, if I take a walk every day with a view to keeping myself in good health, the daily walk is the suitable means and is therefore useful; if, on the contrary, I find that it makes me ill, this means that it is not the suitable means and it would be, and I should declare it to be, useless or harmful. Now by the demonstration given above, it is known that means and end are indistinguishable in the _practical,_ for what is called means is nothing but the actual situation (and the knowledge of it), from which arises the practical act, and to which that act corresponds. Thus it is most possible to separate the means from the end; but in so doing, the consideration of the practical act is abandoned, and we pass to that of its theoretical antecedent; and if the mere theoretical antecedent be called "useful" or "practical" in ordinary speech (remembering the practical act, to which it has been or it is presumed that it may be united) then a metaphor is employed, against which there is nothing to be said. Those, then, who define the useful as the means should once for all realize that with such a definition they remove that concept from the circle of the Philosophy of the practical and transport it into Logic, where the relation of means and end is the very same as that of cause and effect, and it again becomes part of the theory of empirical concepts, in which cause and effect are wont to be posited as terms separately conceivable. This has been more or less consciously recognized, when the useful has been defined as the _technical,_ for we know that the technical is nothing but knowledge thus made into a metaphor, owing to the relation that it has or is presumed to be capable of having, with an action that has been done or is about to be done. [Sidenote: _Technical and hypothetical imperatives._]