indeterminate of all possible concepts. Appropriate, if I mistake not, means adapted, and adapted brings us back to the idea of purpose. But what is the purpose of art? To move? There are works which move many people, and yet are not beautiful. To reveal? But there are some to whom a single epithet reveals the whole, and others to whom a whole series of descriptions will not convey the gift of vision. And what is the meaning of determinateness? Certainly not logical clearness, for there are poems which are great precisely because of their undefined suggestiveness; not completeness—else a notary’s inventory would be more beautiful than a swift poetic image. And if we turn to the standard set up by Croce in the Æsthetics itself—the standard of success and failure—we are no better off. The idea of success is indissolubly associated with the idea of a model (an object or an action) which the artist approaches more or less closely or not at all. But where and what are the models to which the critic may refer in judging the success, that is, the beauty, of a work of art? Surely not the ideal images that may arise in critics’ heads: for if they really had images superior to existing works they would at once express them—and then they would be no longer critics, but artists.
And yet a standard for the estimate of beauty in art is absolutely necessary if, as Croce admits,
