condition a future act of will, whereas it is in reality the past act of will looking at itself in the glass; a judgment that is not really practical but _historical._ The illusion that things happen differently is caused by the fact that we possess judgments concerning our past volitions, which are afterwards collected into abstract formulæ, such as that "it is well to cut wood." But, on the one hand, those formulæ and judgments are in their turn formed from previous volitions, and on the other, those formulæ do not possess any absolute value in the single and concrete situation, so that they can be modified and substituted for others that affirm the opposite. The question is not whether cutting wood has been as a rule a good thing for me in the past, nor whether I have generally willed it in the past: the question is to will it at this moment, that is, to posit the cutting of wood at this moment as a good thing. [Sidenote: _Posteriority of the practical concepts._] As is the case with the pretended practical judgments and concepts of classes formed upon them, so the concepts that they imply, of _things good, of ideals, of ends, of actions worthy of being willed,_ and so on, do not precede, but follow the volition that has taken place. These concepts are the incipient reflection, scientific and philosophical, upon the spontaneous acts of the will, and we cannot practise science nor philosophize save about facts that have already taken place: if the fact do not precede, there can be no theory. Certainly theory does not do other than seek out the already created and give the real principles of actions in the form of thought principles, in the same manner as Logic discovers those principles that live and operate in logical thought. But since the formula of the principle of contradiction is not necessary for thinking without contradiction, but presupposes it, so the concepts of ends, of things good, and of ideals are not necessary for volitions, but presuppose them. [Sidenote: _Origin of intellectualist and sentimentalist doctrines._]