In the English-speaking world, Croce's fame rests emphatically on his æsthetics, and its applications to literary criticism. His influence on English and American critical thought has already gone much deeper than a mere list of writings on his theories would show; especially in England, his ideas are, so to speak, in the air, and appear in many writers who have no direct knowledge of his work. The best exposition of this phase of his philosophy is to be found in E. F. Carritt's book, _The Theory of Beauty_, 1914, chap. XIV. The writings of A. B. Walkley, and of J. E. Spingam, contain the most vigorous prosecution of his thought as applied, respectively, to English and to American scholarship and criticism. For the general history of Italian thought, to which many a reference is made in the course of this book, the best helps, besides Croce's essay on Vico, and B. Spaventa, _La filosofia italiana_, recently reprinted, Bari, 1909, are the historical works of Giovanni Gentile, and especially his _Storia della filosofia italiana_, Milano, n. d. Gentile is one of the most profound and earnest modern European thinkers, and it is desirable that his theoretical works, similar in tendency to, but widely divergent in temper from those of Croce, should become better known to the Anglo-Saxon world. Two of his books, _La Riforma dell' Educazione_ and _Teoria generale dello Spirito_, are soon to appear in English. Croce's judgment on Gentile's Actual Idealism is expressed in _Una discussione tra filosofi amici_, in _Conversazioni Critiche_, II, pp. 67-95. But a complete understanding of the vital relations between the two thinkers can be gathered only through an adequate knowledge of both Croce's and Gentile's work. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Benedetto Croce, by Raffaello Piccoli