lier philosophers, and was indeed foretokened in a general way by the whole course of philosophy.
Philosophy, then, differs from all other products of the human mind in that it concerns itself with concepts which are universal and concrete, unlike the intuitions of art, the ecstasies of mysticism, or the representative generalities of science.
Certain objections are, however, to be brought against Croce's thesis that philosophy must perforce have a method of its own since the other activities of the human spirit (mathematics, natural science, history, art, economics, ethics) have each its own method. In the first place, the methods of the several other activities which he enumerates are not entirely distinct, since mathematical methods are employed in natural science, artistic methods in history, naturalistic or mathematical methods in economics, and so on. Clearly, then, it is by no means true that each particular discipline has always its own specific method.
Furthermore, Croce does not discuss, and apparently has not even considered, a hypothesis which is perfectly possible and in my opinion altogether probable: the hypothesis that philosophy may fairly be considered as consisting of those problems which concern several sciences at the same time, which are, as it were, crossroads or neutral zones of two or three or more
