Aesops Fables | Page 8

that it sums up all the higher human activities, including religion, and
that in proper hands it is able to solve any problem. But there is no
finality about problems: the solution of one leads to the posing of
another, and so on. Man is the maker of life, and his spirit ever
proceeds from a lower to a higher perfection. Connected with this view
of life is Croce's dislike of "Modernism." When once a problem has
been correctly solved, it is absurd to return to the same problem.
Roman Catholicism cannot march with the times. It can only exist by
being conservative--its only Logic is to be illogical. Therefore, Croce is
opposed to Loisy and Neo-Catholicism, and supports the Encyclical
against Modernism. The Catholic religion, with its great stores of myth
and morality, which for many centuries was the best thing in the world,
is still there for those who are unable to assimilate other food. Another
instance of his dislike for Modernism is his criticism of Pascoli, whose
attempts to reveal enigmas in the writings of Dante he looks upon as
useless. We do not, he says, read Dante in the twentieth century for his
hidden meanings, but for his revealed poetry.
I believe that Croce will one day be recognized as one of the very few
great teachers of humanity. At present he is not appreciated at nearly
his full value. One rises from a study of his philosophy with a sense of
having been all the time as it were in personal touch with the truth,
which is very far from the case after the perusal of certain other
philosophies.
Croce has been called the philosopher-poet, and if we take philosophy
as Novalis understood it, certainly Croce does belong to the poets,
though not to the formal category of those who write in verse. Croce is
at any rate a born philosopher, and as every trade tends to make its
object prosaic, so does every vocation tend to make it poetic. Yet no

one has toiled more earnestly than Croce. "Thorough" might well be his
motto, and if to-day he is admitted to be a classic without the stiffness
one connects with that term, be sure he has well merited the
designation. His name stands for the best that Italy has to give the
world of serious, stimulating thought. I know nothing to equal it
elsewhere.
Secure in his strength, Croce will often introduce a joke or some
amusing illustration from contemporary life, in the midst of a most
profound and serious argument. This spirit of mirth is a sign of
superiority. He who is not sure of himself can spare no energy for the
making of mirth. Croce loves to laugh at his enemies and with his
friends. So the philosopher of Naples sits by the blue gulf and explains
the universe to those who have ears to hear. "One can philosophize
anywhere," he says--but he remains significantly at Naples.
Thus I conclude these brief remarks upon the author of the Aesthetic,
confident that those who give time and attention to its study will be
grateful for having placed in their hands this pearl of great price from
the diadem of the antique Parthenope.
DOUGLAS AINSLIE.
THE ATHENAEUM, PALL MALL, May 1909.
[1] Napoli, Riccardo Ricciardi, 1909.
[2] The reader will find this critique summarized in the historical
portion of this volume.
[3] La Critica is published every other month by Laterza of Bari.
[4] This translation is made from the third Italian edition (Bari, 1909),
enlarged and corrected by the author. The Theory of Aesthetic first
appeared in 1900 in the form of a communication to the Accademia
Pontiana of Naples, vol. xxx. The first edition is dated 1902, the
second 1904 (Palermo).

I
INTUITION AND EXPRESSION
[Sidenote] Intuitive knowledge.
Human knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or
logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or
knowledge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual
or knowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relations
between them: it is, in fact, productive either of images or of concepts.
In ordinary life, constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge. It is
said to be impossible to give expression to certain truths; that they are
not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intuitively.
The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who is without a
lively knowledge of actual conditions; the pedagogue insists upon the
necessity of developing the intuitive faculty in the pupil before
everything else; the critic in judging a work of art makes it a point of
honour to set aside theory and abstractions, and to judge it by direct
intuition; the practical man professes to live rather by intuition than by
reason.
But this ample acknowledgment, granted