SOURCE: An introduction to The Reform of Education, by Giovanni Gentile, translated by Dino Bigongiari, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922, pp. vii-xi.

In the following essay, which was published as the Introduction to Gentile's study The Reform of Education, Croce discusses the work he did with Gentile and Gentile's contribution to the field of Italian philosophy.

The author of this book [The Reform of Education] has been working in the same field with me for over a quarter of a century, ever since the time when we undertook—he a very young man, and I somewhat his senior—to shake Italy out of the doze of naturalism and positivism back to idealistic philosophy; or, as it would be better to say, to philosophy pure and simple, if indeed philosophy is always idealism.

Together we founded a review, the Critica, and kept it going by our contributions; together we edited...