Now, if this truth be admitted (and I do not see how it can be contested) it is not possible to reject an ulterior consequence which, although it is wont to arouse in some the sensation of a paradox, does not do so in us, for we find it altogether in accordance with the conception of the identity of history with, philosophy that we have defended. Is a thought that is not thought conceivable? Is it permissible to distinguish between the _thought of the historian_ and the _thought of the philosopher_? Are there perhaps two different thoughts in the world? To persist in maintaining that the thought of the historian thinks the fact and not the theory is prevented by the preceding admission, if by nothing else: that the historian always thinks at least both the theory of history and the historical fact. But this admission entails his thinking the theory of all the things that he narrates, together with the theory of history. And indeed he could not narrate without understanding them. Fueter extols the merit of Winckelmann, who was the first to conceive a history, not of artists, but of art, of a pure spiritual activity, and that of Giannone, who was the first to attempt a history of the life of jurisprudence. But these writers made the progress they did because they had a new and more accurate conception of art and of rights, and if they went wrong as to certain points, that is because they did not always think those conceptions with equal exactitude. Winckelmann, for instance, materialized the spiritual activity of the artist when he posited an abstract, fixed material ideal of beauty, and gave an abstract history of artistic styles without regard to the temperaments, historical circumstances, and individualities of the artists themselves. Giannone failed to supersede the dualism of Church and State. Without indulging in other too particular examples, it is evident at the first glance that ancient historiography concords with the ancient conception of religion of the state, of ethic, and of the whole of reality; the medieval with Christian theology and ethic; that of the first half of the nineteenth century with the idealistic and romantic philosophy, that of the second half with naturalistic and positivistic philosophy. Thus, _ex parte historicorum_, there is no way of distinguishing historical and philosophical thought, which are perfectly commingled in the narratives. But there is also no possibility of maintaining such a distinction _ex parte philosophorum_ either, because, as all know, or at least say, each period has the philosophy proper to it, which is the consciousness of that period, and as such is its history, at least in germ; or, as we have put it, philosophy and history coincide. And if they coincide, the history of philosophy and the history of historiography also coincide: the one is not only not distinguishable from the other, but is not even subordinate to the other, for it is all one with it.