THE MEANING OF THE ^aESTHETIC IMPULSE. 



223 



I think that this is really a pretty good test of the value of a 

 discovery in the realm of thought. And in my opinion Croce's 

 theory satisfies the test. 



Nevertheless, when I think of his philosophy as a whole I 

 find that it brings me unerringly to a threshold and then stops 

 dead, saying that there is no threshold really, nor anything 

 beyond. Croce himself tells me (I am using the first personal 

 pronoun quite impersonally, by the way !) that this is because 

 I confuse mystery, which is the infinity of evolution, with 

 history : that life is without a summit. But still I am not 

 satisfied. He tells me that I still need a God only because I 

 persistently hug this false philosophy of History. And still 

 I am not satisfied with a pantheistic monism. I do want a God, 

 and I further want to find out why he does not. I think it was 

 Poe who pointed out that if you are hunting for place-names 

 on a map, the ones you cannot find are those in the largest print ! 

 At last it dawns on me that in his system there is no room for 

 the peculiar quality of personality — that individual, permanent 

 capacity for fellowship which lies at the root of love, redeeming 

 it from hopeless transience. I accept his account of the inter- 

 lacing theoretic and practical activities of life ; I accept his 

 aesthetic intuition as the first contact with reality, its expressions 

 and its subsequent logical development ; I accept his statement 

 of the dependence of the practical activities on these, and his 

 division of the practical activities themselves into the primary 

 economic one and the consequent ethical ; but still, I am I, 

 and I love. To me the fundamental relation with Keality is a 

 personal one ; nay, the fundamental reality is personal relation. 

 This, I believe, must represent the criticism of each of us as 

 we soak ourselves in the wonderful work of Croce. And 

 fortunately, as far as my poor judgment goes, we can hold this 

 view, and yet scrap nothing of value in Croce's philosophy. 

 Let us but add to Croce's definition of Beauty as the expression 

 of our intuition of Reality, the words " of relationship " : let 

 us but extend his shortened definition that " Beauty is the 

 expression of an intuition " into " Beauty is the expression of 

 an intuition of relationship," and we have all we need. 



Obviously, before we begin to apply the thought contained 

 in this definition of Beauty we must first, and very briefly, 

 justify its choice. 



Now, when we are faced with something that is insistently 

 beautiful, its immediate effect upon us is to produce a sense 



Q 



