same time that Croce is quite as independent of Hegel as of Kant, of
Vico as of Spinoza. Of course he has made use of the best of Hegel, just
as every thinker makes use of his predecessors and is in his turn made
use of by those that follow him. But it is incorrect to accuse of
Hegelianism the author of an anti-hegelian _Aesthetic_, of a _Logic_
where Hegel is only half accepted, and of a _Philosophy of the
Practical_, which contains hardly a trace of Hegel. I give an instance.
If the great conquest of Hegel be the dialectic of opposites, his great
mistake lies in the confusion of opposites with things which are
distinct but not opposite. If, says Croce, we take as an example the
application of the Hegelian triad that formulates becoming (affirmation,
negation and synthesis), we find it applicable for those opposites which
are true and false, good and evil, being and not-being, but _not
applicable_ to things which are distinct but not opposite, such as art
and philosophy, beauty and truth, the useful and the moral. These
confusions led Hegel to talk of the death of art, to conceive as
possible a Philosophy of History, and to the application of the natural
sciences to the absurd task of constructing a Philosophy of Nature.
Croce has cleared away these difficulties by shewing that if from the
meeting of opposites must arise a superior synthesis, such a synthesis
cannot arise from things which are distinct _but not opposite_, since
the former are connected together as superior and inferior, and the
inferior can exist without the superior, but _not vice versa_. Thus we
see how philosophy cannot exist without art, while art, occupying the
lower place, can and does exist without philosophy. This brief example
reveals Croce's independence in dealing with Hegelian problems.

I know of no philosopher more generous than Croce in praise and
elucidation of other workers in the same field, past and present. For
instance, and apart from Hegel, _Kant_ has to thank him for drawing