A MODERN PHYSICIAN OF THE SOUL

The Conduct of Life. By Benedetto Croce. (Harrup. 7s. 6d.) BENEDETTO CROCE, the Italian philosopher, was born in 1866, and has lived for the greater part of his life in Naples.

He began his career as a student of literature and history, biit after his thirtieth year devoted himself to those philosophical studies which have given him his chief fame.

He has one great originality in his method of thought. He contemplates life as dynamic, as u series of beings, events, and conditions, in motion. Other philosophers have con- templated them as static, as life brought to a standstill in order that it might be analysed and elassified more absolutely and definitely.

At once we see clearly the line of demarcation between Croce and his predecessors. They withdraw themselves from life, and look upon it as a picture, in which different kinds and degrees of persons and things are the concise expression of special ideas. These ideas are rigid, and fit together, each in its place in the general pattern whose complete design may be called the Universe. It follows that this scheme of existence has a formalising, or conservative effect on our conception of the events by which it is expressed.

The history of all human thought has shown the influence of this fixity of philosophic outlook. Its evils were many. It gave mankind a false idea of security and certainty. Everything, apparently, was placeable. The universe was run on a system of logic, in which God, the angels, Man, and beasts were graded on a sort of social scale. Man again was divided by rigid classifications according to social and tem- peramental types. The Feudal System was the political, and the Roman Church was the religious expression of that conception of life. We all know its hideous defects. We must recognize, however, its advantages. It gave man a sense of certainty, and was a support to faith, morality, and human dignity ; factors that are very valuable stimuli in our practical life, which is one long struggle with the powers of Chaos.

Croce, coming to life firsthand, refuses to believe in that cast-iron system of the past. He is thus doing in philosophy what the chemists, biologists, and physicists are doing in the world of fact. He sees that in actual life the artificial fences are constantly being jumped ; that Being does not evolve along parallel channels, but interflows, so that species mix and reform themselves, mountains crumble, stars disappear, and human character and society interweave themselves inextricably.

The effect of these disquieting observations is remarkable. Here is a philosopher whose system is to believe in no system. He repudiates the formal. The result is that when we demand from him the fruit of all philosophy—an architecture of the universe—he is unable to give it. His conclusions are like the novels of Henry James—inconclusive, and thus irritating and unsatisfactory. He is afraid to believe either in forms or in conclusions.

So we find him, as an art critic, denying the existence of such a thing as the ideal epic. He even says that Dante's "Divine Comedy "—perhaps the most perfectly shaped human conception—is no more than a series of passionate lyrical masterpieces strung together on a chain of irrelevant incident. He says that Goethe's life and art have no intimate relationship to each other.

This means that Croce admits a certain inconsequence in life. He sees factors existing side by side and not influencing each other. His definitions again and again suggest this possibility of duality. Yet the whole tendency of his nature is to establish the truth that Spirit—what Mr. Shaw calls the Life Force—percolates and informs all things. Here then is a philosopher divided against himself. His method is not in harmony with his temperament. Wherever that discord exists, the observer notices a sense of strain, an effort to cover up the inconsistency. With Croce this effort takes the form of a rather Jesuitical subtlety, especially when the huge realities of modern social and political life threaten to expose his weakness.

Here, for instance, is an inconclusive definition. " A man who cannot live up to his • juridical obligations is not prepared to- meet his moral obligations." That would be true of a man living in a community in which he had a hand in the making of the laws. But in a society where, either by ignorance or by economic compulsion, he permits the laws to be made above his head, it is dishonest and chauvinist to condemn him for not meeting his " juridical obligations."

Do we think, for example, of Pym and Cromwell as men not prepared to face their moral obligations ?

Again, Croce is led to condone the existence of the undesir- ables of humanity. Here is his reason :-

" To overcome certain obstacles in its path, to pass certain points in its onward march, the world has often relied upon the so-called dregs of humanity. But for these no Bastilles would have fallen, nor would any of the glorious revolutions of modern peoples have attained success. The armies of Europe have written luminous pages in the history of mankind, yet in times past armies were not recruited from respectable citizens but from the outcasts of the social system. From the same sources governments of all ages have drawn the high priests of their solemn ceremonies of justice. . . . And nowadays, where do we get the intriguers and the unscrupulous politicians without whom, it seems, States cannot transact their necessary business ? "

This might be construed as an apologetic for the existence of any parasitic body in the social organism..

it would be unfair, however, to leave Croce involved in the meshes of his own subtlety.. That very quality also makes him valuable and stimulating. His minute skill in probing into the little and most obscure weaknesses of the human mind is wonderful, and he brings out the pieties and personal prides, to show them to be nothing more than pruderies, self-pityings, and other such fruit of cowardice.

To sum up, we feel that though we can profit by the stimu- lating quickness and variety of Croce's mind, we cannot find in him that fundamental unity of character which is necessary in a man who is to add something to the scaffolding by which we prevent the universe from falling about our ears.

R. C.