Croce is the pope of the new school, and as such ought to be immune from the questioning of the lay intelligence. For a more accessible exposition of the ideas stirring the young modernists, I turn to the distinguished critic and philosopher of Spain, José Ortega y Gasset, and in particular to his essay published under the significant title of _The Dehumanization of Art_.[20] Unless I mistake his language, Señor Ortega finds little satisfaction æsthetically in the extreme products of the movement he describes. But he believes that it is not the function of a critic to value works of art in accordance with his own taste or distaste. And especially to-day, when more than ever before it is a characteristic of art to divide mankind sharply into those who comprehend and those who do not, the business of criticism should be to enter into the intention of the artist, and not to judge his work from some alien point of view, least of all to condemn. Well, Señor Ortega in a sense comprehends; he states the various theories adopted by the _jóvenes_ to justify their adventurous ways with admirable perspicuity and precision--and with that final confusion at the back of his mind which enables him to speak as one who belongs intellectually to the movement, however practically his taste may lag a little behind its utmost advance. The central thesis of Señor Ortega’s book, which at once justifies his title and summarises the most advanced attitude towards art, is exactly this: “To rejoice or suffer with the human lot which a work of art may incidentally suggest or present to us, is a very different thing from the true artistic pleasure. More than that: this occupation with the human element of the work is essentially incompatible with pure æsthetic fruition.”[21]