 Croce—and undoubtedly the political situation in Italy in 1917 played a role in this—was anxious to assert the importance of art for humanity, and his assertion of it is full of feeling. And the claim marks a decisive break from earlier doctrine: form is now linked with universality rather that with particular feelings. But it is difficult to see beyond such metaphors as ‘impressing upon it the character of totality’ (not even with the help of Croce’s Logic). One is reminded of the Kantian dictum that in aesthetics we ‘demand universality’ in our judgements, but there are no explicit indications of such. There is one piece of Crocean philosophy behind it: Since art takes place prior to the intellect, so the logical distinction between subject and predicate collapses; therefore perhaps at least one barrier is removed from speaking of the ‘universality of art’. But that does not indicate what, positively, it means. It obvious that there is something right about speaking of the ‘universal character’ of a Beethoven or a Michelangelo as opposed to the pitiful, narrow little spectacle of this month’s pop band, but Croce doesn’t tell us what justifies or explains such talk (various others have reached a similar conclusion; see Orsini p. 214). Still, that doesn’t mean that he had no right to proclaim it, and perhaps not to count his readers as agreeing to it.