Finally, a third opportunity was offered, in the rehabilitation of the passions, begun by the philosophers of the seventeenth century and expressed, as has been said, in a notable manner by Vico. Now if the passions in general be the volitional activity itself, considered in its dialectic, they are also the soul turned to the particular, the useful in respect to the universal, which is sought by morality. This is to be seen especially in Vico and better still in Hegel, very similar to Vico in this respect; he admirably developed this moment of _particularity,_ which is passion, necessary for the concreteness of the universal. As the passions for Vico are human nature itself, which morality directs but does not destroy, and are neither good nor bad in themselves, and _utilitates ex se neque turpes neque honestae, sed earum inaequalitas est turpitudo, aequalitas autem honestas_[16]--so, for Hegel, "passion is neither good nor bad in its formal character and only expresses the fact that a subject has placed all the living interest of his spirit, of his talent, of his character, of his enjoyment, in a single content. Nothing great can or has been accomplished without passion. Only a morality that is dead and too often hypocritical can inveigh against the form of passion as such. ... Ethicity concerns the content, which, as such, is universal, something inactive, and has its active element in the subject: the fact that the content is immanent in it constitutes interest, and in so far as it dominates all the efficient subjectivity, passion."[17] [Sidenote: _Hegel and the concept of the useful._] The same Hegel once observed: "As for what concerns utility, morality must not play the disdainful towards it, for every good action is actually useful, that is to say, possesses reality and produces something good. A good action that were not useful would not be an action, would not possess reality. The inutility of the good in itself, as its unreality, is its abstractness. Not only is it possible to be conscious of utility, but we ought to be conscious of it, since it is true that it is useful to know the good: utility does not mean anything but that we are conscious of our own action. If this be blameworthy, it will also be blameworthy to know the goodness of one's own action."[18] Hegel thus discovered the function of the useful when rehabilitating the passions, though in a fugitive manner. But Kant had not attributed importance to the problem of the passions in Ethic, and had not therefore been in a position to avail himself of the suggestion contained in the doctrine of the passions. [Sidenote: _Fichte and the elaboration of the Kantian Ethic._]