My own rather extended acquaintance of the art-galleries of the world has heretofore inclined me to believe that Italy has been more sinned against than sinning in this regard--and that in Italy, itself, such stolen masterpieces as are to be seen were largely stolen from the Church and placed in galleries belonging to an anti-clerical state. But perhaps I am mistaken--and mistaken also in thinking that since 1870 the Pope has been self-imprisoned in the Vatican when in reality he has been roaming for the (until very recently) irreligious Italian Government abroad, stealing pictures. Or was it before 1870 that the thieving from foreigners was done--during the days when Italy was overrun with foreign armies, and the term Italy was a mere “geographical expression?” Does he refer to the marble treasures of the Vatican rescued from war and neglect in Greece and elsewhere? Or were the thefts of a still earlier date, when most of Europe was comparatively barbarian? I can think of one such instance. Some of the decorations for St. Mark’s, Venice, were brought by the Venetian merchants from the Orient--as was the body of their patron saint. But Durant continues: “So Italy remained loyal to the old faith, and contented itself with the ‘Summa’ of Aquinas for philosophy.” When? Why, until Giambatista Vico came. He “stirred the Italian mind again; but Vico went, and philosophy seemed to die with him. Rosmini thought for a time that he would rebel; but he yielded. Throughout Italy men became more and more irreligious, and more and more loyal to the Church. Benedetto Croce (born in 1866) is an exception.”[217] What Durant must mean is that the more irreligious one becomes the more loyal one naturally is to the Catholic Church. If that be true, the Italian _Risorgimento_ (the political movement which led to the union of Italy under an anti-clerical government) was certainly most loyal--and it expressed its loyalty by taking the Church’s temporal empire away from it! But in what respect was Croce an exception to this devotion and this irreligion? For one thing, he was nearly killed beneath the ruins of a house at Casamicciola during the earthquake of 1883. For another, he was “given so thorough a training in Catholic theology that at last, to restore the balance, he became atheist.” But this, apart from the training, was precisely what the _Risorgimento_ did, so there is no exception here. The exception, then, must lie in the fact that he did not remain loyal. He could not get enough of the Catholic theology out of his system to be loyal to the Catholic Church--though he could be loyal enough to imitate the _Risorgimento_ in repudiating it! This, as Durant himself says[218] of Croce’s philosophy in general, “is as clear as a starless night.” I wish to record my entire agreement with this final verdict as to the Croce philosophy. From the most absurd premises in the world, Durant has somehow arrived at a correct and satisfactory conclusion.