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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.

In saying that we are experts in moral practice I do not, of course,
refer to the narrow conventional morality, also common with us, which
so often degenerates into hypocrisy, a legacy of Puritan origin; but
apart from this, there has long existed in many millions of Britons a
strong desire to live well, or, as they put it, cleanly and rightly,
and achieved by many, independent of any close or profound examination
of the logical foundation of this desire. Theology has for some
taken the place of pure thought, while for others, early training
on religious lines has been sufficiently strong to dominate other
tendencies in practical life. Yet, as a speculative Scotsman, I am
proud to think that we can claim divided honours with Germany in the
production of Emmanuel Kant (or Cant).

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed with us a great
development of materialism in its various forms. The psychological,
anti-historical speculation contained in the so-called Synthetic
Philosophy (really psychology) of Herbert Spencer was but one of the
many powerful influences abroad, tending to divert youthful minds
from the true path of knowledge. This writer, indeed, made himself
notorious by his attitude of contemptuous intolerance and ignorance
of the work previously done in connection with subjects which he was
investigating. He accepted little but the evidence of his own senses
and judgment, as though he were the first philosopher. But time has
now taken its revenge, and modern criticism has exposed the Synthetic
Philosophy in all its barren and rigid inadequacy and ineffectuality.
Spencer tries to force Life into a brass bottle of his own making, but
the genius will not go into his bottle. The names and writings of J. S.
Mill, of Huxley, and of Bain are, with many others of lesser calibre,
a potent aid to the dissolving influence of Spencer. Thanks to their
efforts, the spirit of man was lost sight of so completely that I
can well remember hearing Kant's great discovery of the synthesis _a
priori_ described as moonshine, and Kant himself, with his categoric
imperative, as little better than a Prussian policeman. As for Hegel,
the great completer and developer of Kantian thought, his philosophy
was generally in even less esteem among the youth; and we find even the
contemplative Walter Pater passing him by with a polite apology for
shrinking from his chilly heights. I do not, of course, mean to suggest
that estimable Kantians and Hegelians did not exist here and there
throughout the kingdom in late Victorian days (the names of Stirling,
of Caird, and of Green at once occur to the mind); but they had not
sufficient genius to make their voices heard above the hubbub of the
laboratory. We all believed that the natural scientists had taken the
measure of the universe, could tot it up to a T--and consequently
turned a deaf ear to other appeals.

Elsewhere in Europe Hartmann, Haeckel, and others were busy measuring
the imagination and putting fancy into the melting-pot--they offered
us