To bring this thought of Hegel within the focus of the ordinary mind has never been an easy task (I know of no one else who has successfully accomplished it); and Croce's work, _What is living and what is dead of the Philosophy of Hegel,_ as one may render the Italian title of the book which I hope to translate, has enormously aided a just comprehension, both of the qualities and the defects of that philosopher. This work appeared in the Italian not long after the _Æsthetic,_ and has had an influence upon the minds of contemporary Italians, second only to the _Philosophy of the Spirit._ To clear away the débris of Hegel, his false conception of art and of religion, to demonstrate his erroneous application of his own great discovery of the dialectic to pseudo-concepts, and thus to reveal it in its full splendour, has been one of the most valuable of Croce's inestimable contributions to critical thought. I shall not pause here to dilate upon the immense achievement of Croce, the youngest of Italian senators, a recognition of his achievement by his King and country, but merely mention his numerous historical works, his illuminative study of Vico, which has at last revealed that philosopher as of like intellectual stature to Kant; the immense tonic and cultural influence of his review, _La Critica,_ and his general editorship of the great collection of _Scrittori d' Italia._ Freed at last from that hubbub of the laboratory, from the measures and microscopes of the natural scientists, excellent in their place, it is interesting to ask if any other contemporary philosopher has made a contribution to ethical theory in any way comparable to the _Philosophy of the Practical._ The names of Bergson and of Blondel at once occur to the mind, but the former admits that his complete ideas on ethics are not yet made known, and implies that he may never make them entirely known. The reader of the _Philosophy of the Practical_ will, I think, find that none of Bergson's explanations, "burdened," as he says, with "geometry," and as we may say with matter, from the obsession of which he never seems to shake himself altogether free, are comparable in depth or lucidity with the present treatise. The spirit is described by Bergson as memory, and matter as a succession of images. How does the one communicate with the other? The formula of the self-creative life process seems hardly sufficient to explain this, for if with Bergson we conceive of life as a torrent, there must be some reason why it should flow rather in one channel than in another. But life is supposed to create and to absorb matter in its progress; and here we seem to have entered a vicious circle, for the intuition presupposes, it does not create its object. As regards the will, too, the Bergsonian theory of the Ego as rarely (sometimes never once in life) fully manifesting itself, and our minor actions as under the control of matter, seems