Summary of the inquiry--Identity of Linguistic with Aesthetic-- Aesthetic formulation of linguistic problems. Nature of language-- Origin of language and its development--Relation between Grammatic and Logic--Grammatical categories or parts of speech--Individuality of speech and the classification of languages--Impossibility of a normative Grammatic--Didactic organisms--Elementary linguistic elements, or roots--The aesthetic judgment and the model language-- Conclusion. HISTORICAL SUMMARY Aesthetic ideas in Graeco-Roman antiquity--In the Middle Age and at the Renaissance--Fermentation of thought in the seventeenth century--Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism, Leibnitzianism, and in the "Aesthetic" of Baumgarten--G.B. Vico--Aesthetic doctrines in the eighteenth century--Emmanuel Kant--The Aesthetic of Idealism with Schiller and Hegel--Schopenhauer and Herbart--Friedrich Schleiermacher--The philosophy of language with Humboldt and Steinthal--Aesthetic in France, England, and Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century--Francesco de Sanctis--The Aesthetic of the epigoni--Positivism and aesthetic naturalism--Aesthetic psychologism and other recent tendencies--Glance at the history of certain particular doctrines--Conclusion. APPENDIX Translation of the lecture on Pure Intuition and the lyrical nature of art, delivered by Benedetto Croce before the International Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg. INTRODUCTION There are always Americas to be discovered: the most interesting in Europe. I can lay no claim to having discovered an America, but I do claim to have discovered a Columbus. His name is Benedetto Croce, and he dwells on the shores of the Mediterranean, at Naples, city of the antique Parthenope. Croce's America cannot be expressed in geographical terms. It is more important than any space of mountain and river, of forest and dale. It belongs to the kingdom of the spirit, and has many provinces. That province which most interests me, I have striven in the following pages to annex to the possessions of the Anglo-Saxon race; an act which cannot be blamed as predatory, since it may be said of philosophy more truly than of love, that "to divide is not to take away." The Historical Summary will show how many a brave adventurer has navigated the perilous seas of speculation upon Art, how Aristotle's marvellous insight gave him glimpses of its beauty, how Plato threw away its golden fruit, how Baumgarten sounded the depth of its waters, Kant sailed along its coast without landing, and Vico hoisted the Italian flag upon its shore. But Benedetto Croce has been the first thoroughly to explore it, cutting his way inland through the tangled undergrowth of imperfect thought. He has measured its length and breadth, marked out and described its spiritual features with minute accuracy. The country thus won to philosophy will always bear his name, _Estetica di Croce_, a new America.