Now with this definition we have succeeded in giving neither more nor less than the true distinction, hitherto sought in vain, between _history_ and _chronicle_. It has been sought in vain, because it has generally been sought in a difference in the _quality_ of the facts which each difference took as its object. Thus, for instance, the record of _individual_ facts has been attributed to chronicle, to history that of _general_ facts; to chronicle the record of _private_, to history that of _public_ facts: as though the general were not always individual and the individual general, and the public were not always also private and the private public! Or else the record of _important_ facts (memorable things) has been attributed to history, to chronicle that of the _unimportant_: as though the importance of facts were not relative to the situation in which we find ourselves, and as though for a man annoyed by a mosquito the evolutions of the minute insect were not of greater importance than the expedition of Xerxes! Certainly, we are sensible of a just sentiment in these fallacious distinctions--namely, that of placing the difference between history and chronicle in the conception of what _interests_ and of what does not _interest_ (the general interests and not the particular, the great interests and not the little, etc.). A just sentiment is also to be noted in other considerations that are wont to be adduced, such as the close bond between events that there is in history and the _disconnectedness_ that appears on the other hand in chronicle, the _logical_ order of the first, the purely _chronological_ order of the second, the penetration of the first into the _core_ of events and the limitation of the second to the superficial or _external_, and the like. But the differential character is here rather metaphorized than thought, and when metaphors are not employed as simple forms expressive of thought we lose a moment after what has just been gained. The truth is that chronicle and history are not distinguishable as two forms of history, mutually complementary, or as one subordinate to the other, but as two different spiritual _attitudes_. History is living chronicle, chronicle is dead history; history is contemporary history, chronicle is past history; history is principally an act of thought, chronicle an act of will. Every history becomes chronicle when it is no longer thought, but only recorded in abstract words, which were once upon a time concrete and expressive. The history of philosophy even is chronicle, when written or read by those who do not understand philosophy: history would even be what we are now disposed to read as chronicle, as when, for instance, the monk of Monte Cassino notes: 1001. _Beatus Dominicus migravit ad Christum_. 1002. _Hoc anno venerunt Saraceni super Capuam_. 1004. _Terremotus ingens hunc montem exagitavit_, etc.; for those facts were present to him when he wept