away the baby with the bath-water"! Close, arduous study and clear
thought are the only key to scientific (philosophical) truth, and Croce
never begins an article for a newspaper without the complete collection
of the works of the author to be criticized, and his own elaborate notes
on the table before him. Schopenhauer said there were three kinds of
writers--those who write without thinking, the great majority; those who
think while they write, not very numerous; those who write after they
have thought, very rare. Croce certainly belongs to the last division,
and, as I have said, always feeds his thought upon complete erudition.
The bibliography of the works consulted for the _Estetica_ alone, as
printed at the end of the Italian edition, extends to many pages and
contains references to works in any way dealing with the subject in all
the European languages. For instance, Croce has studied Mr. B.
Bosanquet's eclectic works on Aesthetic, largely based upon German
sources and by no means without value. But he takes exception to Mr.
Bosanquet's statement that _he_ has consulted all works of importance on
the subject of Aesthetic. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bosanquet reveals his
ignorance of the greater part of the contribution to Aesthetic made by
the Neo-Latin races, which the reader of this book will recognize as of
first-rate importance.

This thoroughness it is which gives such importance to the literary and
philosophical criticisms of _La Critica_. Croce's method is always
historical, and his object in approaching any work of art is to classify
the spirit of its author, as expressed in that work. There are, he
maintains, but two things to be considered in criticizing a book. These
are, _firstly_, what is its _peculiarity_, in what way is it singular,
how is it differentiated from other works? _Secondly_, what is its
degree of purity?--That is, to what extent has its author kept himself
free from all considerations alien to the perfection of the work as an