Much of the confusion over "absolute war" is the result of Clausewitz's personal intellectual evolution: the book was unfinished at the time of his untimely death and there are important contradictions between some of his earlier thinking and the most advanced elements, the latter being represented by the last half of Book VIII, Book I (the only part of Clausewitz's unfinished draft that he considered to be in finished form), and the "Note of 1827." He never had the opportunity to bring the discussion of absolute war into accord with these later writings. Thus "absolute war" reflects an earlier conception advocating the more extreme reaches of the forms that Napoleonic warfare had actually achieved. That conception, however, was clearly rejected by the mature Clausewitz. Many analysts have assumed that the powerful description of ideal war in Book I must refer to the same concept, but in fact the two concepts are radically different and, in many respects, opposed. Clausewitz never seems to have resolved whether absolute war was supposed to reflect an achievable form or was instead an ideal to aim at, but just out of reach. Ideal war resolved that confusion by being blatantly unachievable in most of its aspects and reflecting an unrealistic idea of war that "should not" be pursued in real life.