OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 119 



^Esthetics are not equally, or perhaps more, important, 

 but for two special reasons. 



It is always difficult for a writer who deals with the 

 mental labours of several nations, to one of which he 

 himself belongs, to exercise that impartiality which his 

 exposition naturally aims at. In the present chapter we 

 have been almost exclusively occupied with speculations 

 which belong to Germany and originated there. To some 

 of my readers this may have appeared one-sided. I 

 therefore desire to justify my treatment of the subject 

 by quoting what Signor Croce, who occupies an extrane- 67. 



B. Croce. 



ous position, says : " The philosophical movement in 

 Germany during the last quarter of the eighteenth 

 century and the first half of the nineteenth, in spite of 

 its numerous and great faults, which, in the sequel, 

 inevitably provoked a rude reaction, is nevertheless 

 remarkable and imposing enough in its aggregate to 

 rightly predominate in the history of European thought 

 of that period, relegating to the second or the third 

 planes, and to an inferior importance, the contemporary 

 philosophical productions of other nations. This is true, 

 more even than for philosophy in general, for aesthetics 

 in particular. France, still a prey to the sensationalism 

 of Condillac and his school, was, in the beginning of the 

 century, not in a position adequately to appreciate the 

 creative function of art. 1 ... In England the Associa- 

 tion-Psychology continued, as it indeed never had been 

 interrupted : incapable of rising really beyond sensa- 

 tionalism and of understanding imagination." 5 



The second reason which prompts me to draw atten- 



1 B. Croce, ' Esth^tique,' p. 350. 2 Ibid., p. 352. 



