THE BREVIARY OF ÆSTHETIC1
I
“WHAT IS ART?”
IN reply to the question, “What is art?”, it might be said
jocosely (but this would not be a bad joke) that art is
what everybody knows it to be. And indeed, if it were not
to some extent known what it is, it would be impossible even
to ask that question, for every question implies a certain
knowledge of what is asked about, designated in the ques-
tion and therefore known and qualified. A proof of this is
to be found in the fact that we often hear expressed just and
profound ideas in relation to art by those who make no pro-
fession of philosophy or of theory, by laymen, by artists
who do not like to reason, by the ingenuous, and even by the
common people: these ideas are sometimes implicit in judg-
ments concerning particular works of art but at others as-
sume altogether the form of aphorisms and of definitions.
Thus it happens that there arises the belief in the possibility
of making blush, at will, any proud philosopher who should
believe himself to have “discovered” the nature of art, by
placing before his eyes or making ring in his ears proposi-
tions taken from the most superficial books or phrases of the
most ordinary conversation, and shewing that they already
most clearly contained his vaunted discovery.
And in this case the philosopher would have good reason
to blush—that is, had he ever nourished the illusion of intro-
ducing into universal human consciousness, by means of his
1 A lecture prepared for the inauguration of the Rice Institute, by
Benedetto Croce, Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, Member of several
Royal Commissions, Editor of “La Critica." Translated from the Italian
by Douglas Ainslie, B.A. Oxon., of The Athenaeum, London, England.