In order properly to understand this new point of view, it must be borne in mind that the lyrical character of the poetry does not however coincide with the practical passion of the poet: the relation between the emotion and the intuition is not a deterministic one, as of cause and effect, but a creative one, as of matter and form. The poetical vibration is different in kind from the practical one. If I grasp Croce's meaning correctly, the feeling and movement which we find in art is something that belongs intrinsically to the intuitive activity--it is the dynamic of the creative process itself. And in fact, what we look for in the works of art is not the empirical personality of the artist, but the tonality of his individual æsthetic activity, which is always new and always unmistakably his own,--not the rhythm of his passion but that of his vision or contemplation, of his intuition of the passion. Any other way of considering this relation would inevitably lead us back to the conventional distinction of form and content, to the attribution of æsthetic characters to the emotions themselves, and to a definition of intuition not as a simple and primitive fact, but as a combination of the practical and the theoretical, of will and knowledge. I consider this deduction of the lyrical character of intuition as one of the points of Croce's æsthetics which opens the way to new problems and stand in need of further elaboration; but what is important in it, and already firmly established, is the recognition of this character, through which the whole doctrine of intuition gains a deeper and richer meaning, and becomes more apt to deal with the concrete facts of our æsthetic experience. [Footnote 1: This chapter and the following two are founded especially on the _Estetica_, pp. 1-171; the essay on _L'intuizione pura e il carattere lirico dell' arte_, in _Problemi_, pp. 1-30; and the _Breviario_, in _Nuovi Saggi_, pp. 1-91.] III. THE CONCEPT OF ART Further determinations of the concept of art--Theoretical and practical activity--The progress of æsthetic theories--An American instance: morality and art--The typical--The ends of art--The process of æsthetic production--Relations of the æsthetic with the practical activity--The delusion of objective beauty--Æsthetic hedonism--The æsthetic value.