Aesops Fables | Page 3

Summary will show how many a brave adventurer has
navigated the perilous seas of speculation upon Art, how Aristotle's
marvellous insight gave him glimpses of its beauty, how Plato threw
away its golden fruit, how Baumgarten sounded the depth of its waters,
Kant sailed along its coast without landing, and Vico hoisted the Italian
flag upon its shore.
But Benedetto Croce has been the first thoroughly to explore it, cutting
his way inland through the tangled undergrowth of imperfect thought.
He has measured its length and breadth, marked out and described its
spiritual features with minute accuracy. The country thus won to
philosophy will always bear his name, Estetica di Croce, a new
America.
It was at Naples, in the winter of 1907, that I first saw the Philosopher
of Aesthetic. Benedetto Croce, although born in the Abruzzi, Province
of Aquila (1866), is essentially a Neapolitan, and rarely remains long
absent from the city, on the shore of that magical sea, where once
Ulysses sailed, and where sometimes yet (near Amalfi) we may hear
the Syrens sing their song. But more wonderful than the song of any
Syren seems to me the Theory of Aesthetic as the Science of
Expression, and that is why I have overcome the obstacles that stood
between me and the giving of this theory, which in my belief is the
truth, to the English-speaking world.
No one could have been further removed than myself, as I turned over
at Naples the pages of La Critica, from any idea that I was nearing the
solution of the problem of Art. All my youth it had haunted me. As an
undergraduate at Oxford I had caught the exquisite cadence of Walter
Pater's speech, as it came from his very lips, or rose like the perfume of
some exotic flower from the ribbed pages of the Renaissance.
Seeming to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, he solved it not--only
delighted with pure pleasure of poetry and of subtle thought as he led
one along the pathways of his Enchanted Garden, where I shall always
love to tread.
Oscar Wilde, too, I had often heard at his best, the most brilliant talker

of our time, his wit flashing in the spring sunlight of Oxford
luncheon-parties as now in his beautiful writings, like the jewelled
rapier of Mercutio. But his works, too, will be searched in vain by the
seeker after definite aesthetic truth.
With A.C. Swinburne I had sat and watched the lava that yet flowed
from those lips that were kissed in youth by all the Muses. Neither from
him nor from J.M. Whistler's brilliant aphorisms on art could be
gathered anything more than the exquisite pleasure of the moment: the
monochronos haedonae. Of the great pedagogues, I had known, but
never sat at the feet of Jowett, whom I found far less inspiring than any
of the great men above mentioned. Among the dead, I had studied
Herbert Spencer and Matthew Arnold, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and
Guyau: I had conversed with that living Neo-Latin, Anatole France, the
modern Rousseau, and had enjoyed the marvellous irony and eloquence
of his writings, which, while they delight the society in which he lives,
may well be one of the causes that lead to its eventual destruction.
The solution of the problem of Aesthetic is not in the gift of the Muses.
To return to Naples. As I looked over those pages of the bound
volumes of La Critica. I soon became aware that I was in the presence
of a mind far above the ordinary level of literary criticism. The
profound studies of Carducci, of d'Annunzio, and of Pascoli (to name
but three), in which those writers passed before me in all their strength
and in all their weakness, led me to devote several days to the Critica.
At the end of that time I was convinced that I had made a discovery,
and wrote to the philosopher, who owns and edits that journal.
In response to his invitation, I made my way, on a sunny day in
November, past the little shops of the coral-vendors that surround, like
a necklace, the Rione de la Bellezza, and wound zigzag along the
over-crowded Toledo. I knew that Signor Croce lived in the old part of
the town, but had hardly anticipated so remarkable a change as I
experienced on passing beneath the great archway and finding myself
in old Naples. This has already been described elsewhere, and I will not
here dilate upon this world within a world, having so much of greater
interest to tell in a brief space. I will merely say that the costumes here

seemed more picturesque, the dark eyes flashed more dangerously than
elsewhere, there was a quaint life, an animation about the streets,
different from anything I had