Benedetto Croce

“ If I may be permitted the use of metaphor and to take the eternal activities of the spirit of man as equivalent to the eternal ideas of Plato, yet far more real than they, because immanent and not transcendental, and if I may push yet further the metaphor and figure these activities of the spirit as planets, then one might say that Croce is the Adams-Leverrier of philosophy, and his Theory of Æsthetic the discovery of the planet Neptune. ”

“ When I first visited Naples, in 1909, I was quite unprepared for making the discovery of a new philosopher, and nothing was further from my mind than to become his prophet to the English-speaking world. ”

“ Croce has disentangled and proved its independence. And just as we can now say that there is no other planet to be discovered in the heavens, so we can say that there is no other activity of the spirit to be discovered. ”