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174 thoroughly, the phenomenon he is discussing: whereas Croce, as his too extensive excursions into literary criticism make evident, has not the slightest artistic sensitiveness nor the slightest taste beyond that which is merely scholastic and traditional. There are no works in which the sense of art is more completely lacking than in those of Croce. That is why he has brought himself to consider the theory of art as a closed circle of six or seven Siamese twins, so identical one with the other that no one of them gives any help in the understanding of another. And that is why he has had to cover the banality of his commonplaces with a sophistical counterpoint of arbitrary abstractions.

At a certain point in his book Croce expresses the belief that some of his theories, because of their novelty, will at first produce a sort of bewilderment. The illustrious theorist is right, but he need not worry. The reader’s bewilderment, when he comes really to understand the situation, is merely the bewilderment that comes with each new proof of the fact that enormous popularity may be won at any time by the utterance of the most bromidic of truisms, provided they be furbished up with a little coquetry and a little mystery.