[Sidenote: _Critique of the concept of practical sciences and of a practical philosophy._] It is to be observed, finally, that the erroneous concept of a form of science called the _practical_ or _normative_ has its roots in the concept of _the end, of the good, of concepts and judgments of value_ as original facts. When practical concepts and judgments, as a special category of concepts and judgments, have been destroyed, the idea of a practical and normative science has also been destroyed. For this reason, the _Philosophy of the practical_ cannot be _practical philosophy,_ and if it has appeared to constitute an exception among all philosophies and that above all others it should preserve a practical and normative function, this has arisen from a verbal misunderstanding that is most ingenuous and most destructive. For our part we have striven to dissipate it, even in the title of our treatise, which, contrary to the usual custom, we have-entitled not _practical,_ but _of the practical._ [1] Bandello, _Novelle,_ i. 40, intro. IV INSEPARABILITY OF ACTION FROM ITS REAL BASE AND PRACTICAL NATURE OF THE THEORETICAL ERROR [Sidenote: _Coincidence of intention and volition._] The connection between the actual situation and will, means and end having been made clear, no distinction that it may be desired to establish between general and concrete volition, ideal and real volition, that is to say between _intention and volition,_ is acceptable. Intention and volition coincide completely, and that distinction, generally suggested with the object of justifying the unjustifiable, is altogether arbitrary in both the forms that it assumes. [Sidenote: _Volition in the abstract and in the concrete: critique._] The first form is that of the distinction between abstract and concrete, or better, between general and particular. It is maintained, that we can will the good in the abstract and yet be unable to will it in the concrete, that we may have good intentions and yet behave badly. But by our reduction of the thing willed to the volition, to will the abstract is tantamount to _willing abstractly._ And to will abstractly is tantamount to _not willing,_ if volition imply a situation historically determined, from which it arises as an act equally determined and concrete. Hence, of the two terms of the pretended distinction, the first, volition of the abstract, disappears, and the second, concrete volition, which is the true and real volition and intention, alone remains. [Sidenote: _Thought volition and real volition: critique._]