the work of artists whose activity has long ceased? And if, again, approaching the process from the other end, we regard the "physical" picture or statue as no more than a stimulus to the sensibility of the critic, a mere point de repère round which his intuition crystallizes, are we not practically denying the possibility of communication, since the work of art which the critic in these conditions reconstructs will be in all essentials his own creation and not that of the artist? The exigencies of Croce's general metaphysical theory-criticism of which falls outside the scope of this work-have opened a fissure in his æsthetic which, for the present writer at least, remains unbridged.

III

This fissure extends further than the immediate problem of the communication of æsthetic experience from artist to critic. Our examination of that problem has led us to claim for the "physical" work of art a reality and an inherent significance beyond what Croce will allow. But if the attempt to exclude the objective element from our experience of Art, and to find in it pure spiritual self-expression, ultimately breaks down, does not the parallel contention concerning our experience of Nature also invite modification? Croce has urged convincingly that the appreciation of a sunset is not different in kind from the appreciation of a statue. If then the statue possesses a positive character which governs our intuition of it, if its expressiveness is not entirely created by the beholder but in some measure found by him, we may reasonably expect this to hold good in some degree for the sunset also.

Such a suggestion need not involve a return to the romantic notion of Nature as the divine work of art, the veil and symbol of a transcendent reality. It is equally compatible with the Crocean conception of "an im

manent spirit, of which stars and sky, earth and sea, plants and animals, make up the contingent manifestations." 1 To such a philosophy "dead" Nature appears as Mind at its most rudimentary level of organization; plant and animal life as Mind at a less rudimentary level. Now it is a cardinal principle of Croce's thought that each of the activities of Mind involves the others, and that all are present, at least in germ, at every stage of development. To inorganic Nature he appears in fact to ascribe only a rudimentary form of will or desire; but by his own principle he can hardly do so without granting a rudimentary expressiveness also.

2

"Dead" Nature is perhaps the limiting case of expression, as of mental activity in general. It may be suggested with rather more confidence that an organic body, human, animal, or even plant, is not only an expression for the mind which contemplates it (as the statue is for the critic's), but also an expression of the mind which informs it (as the statue is of the artist's): "For soul is form, and doth the body make."

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In such unconscious and instinctive making it is impossible sharply to distinguish the expressive from the practical element. The body is of course primarily an instrument for doing. But it is unsafe in the present state of our knowledge to assume that the colour of an animal, or even of a flower, does not serve an expressive as well as a practical function. And popular speech seems to be right in recognizing the continuous subtle modelling of a man's features by his inner experience— sometimes by experience of which he is not himself conscious as a genuine activity of expression.3

It appears probable to the present writer that in all Logica, p. 307.

2 Cf. the passage quoted above, Chap. II, p. 20.

3 Cf. the passage from Coleridge quoted above, Chap. IV, p. 106.

R.T.P.

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experience of beauty, whether in Nature or in Art, there is both an objective and a subjective moment, an element which we find and an element which we make. What we find is always already in some degree, however rudimentary, an expression; and in proportion to its inherent expressiveness it governs, in the manner suggested above, the development of the new expression which we create. In the works of Nature the expressive element is blurred and inchoate; it has accordingly less power to guide our intuition than has the more articulate product of conscious Art, and we do not scruple to remodel it to the expression of feelings which we never seriously attribute to Nature. But the difference is one of degree. If every artist projects his own individuality into Nature, so also does every critic express his own individuality in his interpretation of a work of art. Pope's "Nature" is not more unlike our "Nature than Pope's Homer is unlike our Homer.

The romantic conception of Art emphasized the element of discovery at the expense of the element of creation-with the consequences which we have traced in the preceding chapters. This theory has been replaced by one which reverses the emphasis, denying reality to the given until it emerges transfigured in the creative act of self-expression. Neither theory succeeds in being completely self-consistent or completely intelligible; in each case the rejected element takes its revenge. But it would be a mistake to treat the two merely as equal and opposite errors. The movement of philosophic thought resembles that of a pendulum; but with this difference, that at each return the pendulum cuts a little deeper into the nature of reality than it did before. Philosophic progress is marked not by the discovery of definitive answers to old questions but by a clearer understanding of the questions themselves. Croce has not said the last word on the problem of æsthetic; but he has given us a new

and more profound conception of the nature of the problem, and has done much to elucidate its terms; above all, he has vindicated the autonomy of æsthetic experience against the hedonistic, moralistic and intellectualist interpretations of earlier writers.