Soon after the publication of the Estetica, Croce began to consider his book merely as a programme and a sketch which needed filling in with further developments,—with the investigation of the other forms of human activity, which had been merely postulated in the study of the æsthetic activity; and with a wide cultural work, to be carried on especially by means of a review, through which his ideas should be tested in immediate and constant relation with the problems of contemporary Italian and European thought. The enormous activity of the following years falls easily into this rough division. On one hand we have the completion of the Filosofia dello Spirito, with the Logica come scienza del concetto puro, the first edition of which appeared in 1905 (Lineamenti di una Logica, etc.), and the second, deeply modified by his meditations on the practical activity, in 1909, with the Filosofia della Pratica: Economica ed Etica, written in 1908, but of which some parts had already been given in 1907 in the memoir Riduzione della filosofia del diritto alla filosofia dell' economia; and with the new and fuller formulation of his Æsthetics in a paper read to the International Congress of Philosophy in Heidelberg in 1908, on L'intuizione pura e il carattere lirico dell' arte. To these must be added the two monographs on Hegel (1906) and Vico (1910), which are at the same time an exposition of their philosophies and a restatement of Croce's own main positions, in so far as they coincided with those elements of truth which he still recognized as living in their thought.
On the other hand we have the publication of a bi-monthly review, La Critica, the first number of which appeared in January, 1903, and which is still being published. La Critica announced itself as a review of literature, history and philosophy, but it differed from all other publications in the same fields in two main features: the first, that the number of its contributors was practically limited to two, Croce himself, and his friend Giovanni Gentile, with whom he had first been brought in contact through their common interest in Marxian studies, and who followed for some years at least a line of thought which touched his own at many points; the second, that it imposed upon itself a very definite programme of work, each number containing an essay, or part of an essay, by Croce on some Italian writer of the preceding half-century, and one by Gentile on the Italian philosophers of the same period, besides a number of reviews of new Italian and foreign books, and notes and comments on contemporary questions of culture and moral life. In his own main work for the Critica, Croce was at the same time aiming at giving concrete examples of the application of æsthetic theory in the domain of literary criticism, and at clearing the ground for the work of the new generation, through an appraisement of the literary values of the preceding one. The general temper of the review is clearly expressed in the following words from the already so often quoted autobiographical notes: "The ideal which I cherished was drawn not from my own personality, but from my varied experience, because, having lived sufficiently in the academic world to know both its virtues and its faults, and having at the same time preserved a feeling of real life, and of literature and science as being born from it and renovating themselves in it, I addressed my censures and my polemics on one hand against dilettanti and unmethodical workers, on the other against the academicians resting in their prejudices and idling with the externals of art and science."[2]
The greatest part of the writings contributed by Croce to the Critica during these years were later collected in volumes, of which however only the Problemi d'Estetica (1910), containing, besides the Heidelberg lecture, a large number of essays both on the theory and history of Æsthetics, appeared before the end of the period we are now considering. To intensify the action of both his books and his review, he initiated in 1906, in connection with the publisher Laterza of Bari, the publication of a series of Classici della filosofia moderna, in which he published his own translation of Hegel's Encyclopedia; and in 1909, of the collection Scrittori d' Italia, which is in the way to becoming the standard corpus of Italian Literature. He took also a leading part in the editing of the same publisher's Biblioteca di cultura moderna, which was enriched through his care and advice with reprints of rare works of southern Italian writers of the Risorgimento and of the early years of the Unity, and with translations of books representative of foreign contemporary thought.
If we add to all this, a number of scattered essays and monographs, editions of texts and documents, and bibliographies, and the generous cooperation, extending from the friendly discussion of plans and ideas to the humble reading of proofs, with a host of friends and disciples, we have a fairly complete idea of the significance of Croce in the cultural life of young Italy. He very rapidly became something like an institution; he was hailed as the master and spiritual guide of the new generation. His work and his example, the clarity of his thought and the rhythm of his steady, harmonious, powerful activity, were an element not of the limited life of the intellectual laboratory only, but of the spiritual life of the nation.
[1] Contributo, pp. 40-41.
[2] Contributo, p. 48.
[II. INTUITION AND EXPRESSION][1]
The four grades of spiritual activity—Intuition and conceptual knowledge—The intuitive consciousness—The limits of intuitive knowledge—Identifications of intuition and expression—Art as expression: content and form—Language as expression; the reality of words—Croce's use of the word intuition—The lyrical character of the pure intuition.