Kant supposed. They can be ascertained only by synthetic experiments in thought construction, which fundamentally include the moment of will. For the endeavor to deny them "inevitably implies the reassertion of the very propositions denied." Thus the third motive also issues in a type of voluntarism, reaching a definition of truth "at once voluntaristic and absolute." The principles which it discovers are formal in themselves, expressed in pure logic and pure mathematics, but when they have been found, it is inevitable that ethics and metaphysics as well as science should be thought out in conformity to them. Absolute truth is known to us regarding the form of the rational will.
Croce distinguished five types of æsthetics, empirical," practicistic," intellectualistic, agnostic, and mystical. The serial order of these types is a logical and necessary one, in which the highest includes the rest. Hence a return is demanded to mystical æsthetics, last notably manifested in romanticism. We must return to the romantic æsthetics; but not remain there, since a still higher stage exists, "the æsthetics of pure intuition" or "pure expression." With the romantic æsthetics affirming the theoretical character of art and denying its logical character, the æsthetics of pure intuition makes art the most primitive and simple function of the knowing spirit. Here the objection is raised that not intuition is demanded from art, or not this alone, but feeling, the moved personality of the artist. The theory of impersonality, however, coincides with the theory of personality rightly understood; whence it follows that art has at once intuitive and affective, epic and lyric, classic and romantic, objective and personal character, and is the perfect expression of an emotion or sentiment. The resulting dualism of form and content is to be overcome by showing that pure intuition and the representation of a feeling, that epic and lyric, are the same. This is in fact the true view. The contrary doctrine is intellectualistic, springing from an abstract dualism ot spirit and nature. Art takes hold on a spiritual, not a physical fact, since spirit, not φύσις, is reality.
Boutroux's account of contemporary philosophy in France began with 1867. That year was marked by a real transition in
