PHILOSOPHY OF THE PRACTICAL ECONOMIC AND ETHIC TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO CROCE BY DOUGLAS AINSLIE B.A. (OXON.), M.R.A.S. MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1913 Benedetto Croce's Philosophy of the Spirit, in the English translation by Douglas Ainslie, consists of 4 volumes (which can be read separately): 1. Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic. (Second augmented edition. A first ed. is also available at Project Gutenberg.) 2. Philosophy of the practical: economic and ethic. 3. Logic as the science of the pure concept. 4. Theory and history of historiography. --Transcriber's note. NOTE Certain chapters only of the third part of this book were anticipated in the study entitled _Reduction of the Philosophy of Law to the Philosophy of Economy,_ read before the Accademia Pontaniana of Naples at the sessions of April 21 and May 5, 1907 (_Acts,_ vol. xxxvii.); but I have remodelled them, amplifying certain pages and summarizing others. The concept of economic activity as an autonomous form of the spirit, which receives systematic treatment in the second part of the book, was first maintained in certain essays, composed from 1897 to 1900, and afterwards collected in the volume _Historical Materialism and Marxist Economy_ (2nd edition, Palermo, Sandron, 1907). B. C. NAPLES, 19_th April_ 1908. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE "A noi sembra che l' opera del Croce sia lo sforzo più potente che il pensiero italiano abbia compiuto negli ultimi anni."--G. DE RUGGIERO in _La Filosofia contemporanea,_ 1912. "Il sistema di Benedetto Croce rimane la più alta conquista del pensiero contemporaneo."--G. NATOLI in _La Voce,_ 19th December 1912. Those acquainted with my translation of Benedetto Croce's _Æsthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic_ will not need to be informed of the importance of this philosopher's thought, potent in its influence upon criticism, upon philosophy and upon life, and famous throughout Europe. In the Italian, this volume is the third and last of the _Philosophy of the Spirit, Logic as Science of the Pure Concept_ coming second in date of publication. But apart from the fact that philosophy is like a moving circle, which can be entered equally well at any point, I have preferred to place this volume before the _Logic_ in the hands of British readers. Great Britain has long been a country where moral values are highly esteemed; we are indeed experts in the practice, though perhaps not in the theory of morality, a lacuna which I believe this book will fill.