If indeed we know that the true and proper knowledge of theoretical philosophy is resolved into the cycle of art, philosophy, and history, and that we possess no other means of knowing the individual, both ingenuous and reflective, outside the knowledge of the universal given by philosophy, then we also know that the spirit needs to arrange and to classify the infinite intuitions and perceptions given to it by art and history, and to reduce them to classes, the better to possess and to manipulate them. We also know that the method called _naturalistic or positive_ performs this function, and that hence arise natural disciplines or sciences. These do not, as is the popular belief, deal only with so-called inferior reality (minerals, vegetables, and animals), but with all manifestations of reality, including those most strictly termed spiritual. Thus we can at this point reduce to a more correct meaning a claim that has been usually maintained by those who have treated of the Practical and of the Ethical in our day. They demand that a science of the practical and of morality should be preceded by a wide historical inquiry and have a great mass of facts as its foundation. If such science be understood as a Philosophy of the practical and as an Ethic, such a demand is an irrational pretension, because the true relation is exactly the opposite: from philosophy to history, not from history to philosophy. But if, on the other hand, this science be understood as a naturalistic and empirical discipline, the claim is rational, because it is not possible to construct a discipline of that sort, save with material that has been historically-verified. Sidenote: _Practical description and its literature._