THE PRESENT CHAPTER ITSELF A KIND OF EXCURSUS—A PARABASIS ON “PHILOSOPHICAL” CRITICISM-MODERN ÆSTHETICS: THEIR FOUNT IN DESCARTES AND ITS BRANCHES-IN GERMANY: NEGATIVE AS WELL AS POSITIVE INDUCEMENTS-BAUMGARTEN-‘DE NONNULLIS AD POEMA PERTINENTIBUS’-AND ITS DEFINITION OF POETRY-THE ‘ALETHEOPHILUS’-THE ‘ÆSTHETICA’-SULZER-EBERHARD-FRANCE: THE PÈRE ANDRÉ, HIS ‘ESSAI SUR LE BEAU’-ITALY: VICO-HIS LITERARY PLACES-THE ’DE STUDIORUM RATIONE’-THE ’DE CONSTANTIA JURISPRUDENTIS’-THE FIRST ‘SCIENZA NUOVA’-THE SECOND-RATIONALE OF ALL THIS-A VERY GREAT MAN AND THINKER, BUT IN PURE CRITICISM AN INFLUENCE MALIGN OR NULL-ENGLAND-SHAFTESBURY-HUME-EXAMPLES OF HIS CRITICAL OPINIONS-HIS INCONSISTENCY-BURKE ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL-THE SCOTTISH ÆSTHETIC-EMPIRICS: ALISON-THE ‘ESSAY ON TASTE’-ITS CONFUSIONS-AND ARBITRARY ABSURDITIES-AN INTERIM CONCLUSION ON THE ÆSTHETIC MATTER. [Sidenote: _The present chapter itself a kind of excursus._] It was announced at the very opening of this History that it would not deal, except incidentally and under _force majeure_, with those vaguer problems of general Criticism or metacriticism which, during the last two centuries, have taken the general name of Æsthetics. [Sidenote: _A parabasis on “philosophical” criticism._] But some of my critics have not been content with this announcement, and it is perhaps permissible in this place to notice certain exceptions which have been taken to the absence of—or rather to the pretty definite abstention from— “philosophical” discussions and speculations in this book. For while in Italy I have been pronounced _digiuno di filosofia_, the huntsmen have been up in America against my “confusion of thought” and my writing about Criticism without defining what criticism is.