The Reform of Education

O

ectures which constitute the present volume. At my request Signor Gentile has rewritten the first chapter, eliminating some of the more local of the allusions which the nature of the original occasion called forth, and Senatore Croce has very generously contributed his illuminating Introduction. The volume as it stands is more than

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undertook-he a very young man, and I somewhat his senior-to shake Italy out of the doze of naturalism and positivism back to i

engaged in many lively controversies. And it seems indeed as though we really succeeded in laying hold of and again firmly re-establishing in Italy th

nd of division of labour between us. So that whereas I by preference have devoted my attention to the history of literature, Gentile has dedicated himself more particularly to the history of philosophy and especially of Italian philosophy, not only as a thinker but as a scholar too, and as a philologist. He may be said to have covered the entire field from the Middle Ages to the present time by his works on Schol

re, exposing both the inner contradictions and the scanty sincerity of the movement. His handling of this question was shown to be effective by the fact, among others, that the authors of the encyclical Pa

criticised the educational theory of Herbart. As far back as 1900 he published a monograph of capital importance, in which he showed that pedagogy in so far as it is philosophical resolves i

ional science alone, but the practice of it and its political aspects have been thoroughly recast and amply developed. And this, too, is due pre-eminently to t

of us. Identity is impossible in this field, for philosophy, like art, is closely bound up with the personality of the thinker, with his spiritual interests, and with his experiences of lif

ome and submerged in the concreteness of the act of Thought; whereas for me philosophy is essentially methodology of the one real and concrete Thinking-of historical Thinking. So that while he strongly emphasises unity, I no less energetically insist on the distinction and diale

vers have perhaps not failed to notice that the World War, in addition to every thing else, has been a strife of religions, a clash of conflicting conceptions of life, a struggle of opposed philosophies. It is surely not the duty of thinkers to settle economic and political contentions by ineffective appeals to the universal brotherhood of man; but it is rather their duty to compose mental differences and antagonisms, and thus form the new faith of humanity-a new Chr

etto

April,