The importance of the practical judgment for practical life is of the greatest, and when we are warned: _nolite judicare_ or _noli nimium judicare,_ what are meant are not true acts of judgment, but certain psychical conditions, which reveal slight spiritual seriousness. And the importance is of the greatest, precisely because the nature of the judgment is historical, and as we know already, historical knowledge, knowledge, that is, of actual situations, is the basis of future actions. For this reason every man who is strongly volitional is continually submitting himself and others to judgment; for this reason we feel the need of talking to others about our own actions, in order to be upheld by the spirit of others in forming a just judgment. This is the origin of such social institutions as the confessional, or of poems such as the _Divina Commedia._ The only judgment without meaning is that _final judgment_ made in the valley Jehoshaphat, because what object can there be in giving oneself the trouble of judging a world looked upon as ended? We judge in order to continue to act, that is, to live, and when universal life is at an end, judgment is vain (vain praise or paradise, vain cruelty or hell). [Sidenote: _Difference between the practical judgment and the judgment of the event._] The value of the volitional act is therefore, as has been demonstrated, in the act itself, and we must not expect and derive it from succession or event. The practical judgment always concerns the volitional act, the intention, the action (which are all one), and never the result or happening. With this distinction we annul one of the most disputed, intricate, and difficult questions: if it be possible to judge, or as they say, to try history. Since we know well that judgment and historical narrative coincide, we must reply in general, as we have replied, in the affirmative. We must in consequence deny all the absurd claims of an objectivity, which is the irrealizable aspiration to the abstention from thought and from history itself. We must also deny to the historian that frivolous privilege by which he is allowed to judge, almost tolerating in him an original sin or an incorrigible vice, provided he clearly distinguish between the serious and the facetious, between the narrative and the judgment, as though the distinction were ever possible. But the prejudice against those who make out a case against history on the ground that it should have happened in a manner different from what actually took place, and describe how this should have been, is well justified. Whoever possesses historical sense, or even simple good sense, cannot but agree to this. The question should in reality be asked differently, and in this manner: Is it correct to apply to history the categories of judgment that we apply to volitions and single acts? Is it correct to judge in a utilitarian or moral manner historical events and the whole course of history?