And without occupying further space with the ex-position of a doctrine that would entail too wide a digression,[1] I shall observe that a glance at the history of history proves the salutary nature of error, which is not a Caliban, but rather an Ariel, who breathes everywhere, calling forth and exciting, but can never be grasped as a solid thing. And with a view to seeking examples only in those general forms that have been hitherto examined, polemical and tendencious historiography is certainly to be termed error. This prevailed during the period of the enlightenment, and reduced history to a pleading against priests and tyrants. But who would have wished simply to return from this to the learned and apathetic history of the Benedictines and of the other authors of folios? The polemic and its direction expressed the need for living history, though not in an altogether satisfactory form, and this need was followed by the creation of a new historiography during the period of romanticism. The type of merely philological history, promulgated in Germany after 1820, and afterward disseminated throughout Europe, was also certainly error; but it was likewise an instrument of liberation from the more or less fantastic and arbitrary histories improvised by the philosophers. But who would wish to turn back from them to the 'philosophies of history'? The type of history, sometimes tendencious, but more often poetical, which followed in the wake of the national Italian movement, was also error--that is to say, it led to the loss of historical calm. But that poetical consciousness which surpassed itself when laying claim to historical truth was bound sooner or later to generate (as had been the case on a larger scale in the eighteenth century) a history linked with the interests of life without becoming servile and allowing itself to be led away by the phantoms of love and hate suggested by them. Further examples could be adduced, but the example of examples is that which happens within each of us when we are dealing with historical material. We see our sympathies and antipathies arise in turn as we proceed (our poetical history), our intentions as practical men (our rhetorical history), our chroniclistical memories (our philological history); we mentally supersede these forms in turn, and in doing so find ourselves in possession of a new and more profound historical truth. Thus does history affirm itself, distinguishing itself from non-histories and conquering the dialectical moments which arise from these. It was for this reason that I said that there is never anything of anything to reform in the _abstract,_ but _everything of everything_ in the _concrete_. [1] See _Logic as Science of Pure Concept._--D. A. III HISTORY AS HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSAL CRITICISM OF 'UNIVERSAL HISTORY I