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Title: Principles of literary criticism

Author: I. A. Richards

Release date: June 14, 2024 [eBook #73827]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Harcourt, Brace and Company

Credits: Lauren Prichard


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCIPLES OF LITERARY CRITICISM ***

“Extraordinarily interesting. . . . He is erudite and he is intelligent;
he makes the courageous attempt to be at the same time scientific
and psychological; and he has the great advantage of having at
his disposal a knowledge of semantics. His terms are clear, useful,
and conveniently few.”—_The Nation_.

“What he has done is to make thinking about art clearer, and
about life, too. This is precisely the merit of Richards’ remarkable
volume.”—_Christian Science Monitor_.

“The book is compact with stimulating criticism of the great
critics of the ages, and with numberless original suggestions
on all phases of the creation and appreciation of art.”—_Springfield
Republican_.

“An important contribution to the rehabilitation of English
criticism—perhaps, because of its sustained scientific nature, the
most important yet made. . . . The principles enunciated are pursued
in more particular aspects of literary criticism, always with a clear
rest and consequent elucidation. Parallel applications to the arts of
painting, sculpture, and music form the subjects of three chapters.
Another important chapter deals with the availability of the poet’s
experience.”—_The Criterion, London_.

“Mr. Richards is an entertaining writer, whose work avoids easily
the tedium of a technical treatise.”—_The British Journal of
Psychology_.




Transcriber’s Note:

This eBook was created from a 1928 edition, scans of which are
available from the Internet Archive. Tildes (~) indicate words
that were set in Fraktur script in the original text.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to
the public domain.




  International Library of Psychology
  Philosophy and Scientific Method



  PRINCIPLES OF
  LITERARY
  CRITICISM

  BY
  I. A. RICHARDS
  FELLOW OF
  MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

  NEW YORK
  HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
  LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD.

  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
  LUND HUMPHRIES
  LONDON · BRADFORD




CONTENTS

       I. THE CHAOS OF CRITICAL THEORIES

      II. THE PHANTOM ÆSTHETIC STATE

     III. THE LANGUAGE OF CRITICISM

      IV. COMMUNICATION AND THE ARTIST

       V. THE CRITICS’ CONCERN WITH VALUE

      VI. VALUE AS AN ULTIMATE IDEA

     VII. A PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF VALUE

    VIII. ART AND MORALS

      IX. ACTUAL AND POSSIBLE MISAPPREHENSIONS

       X. POETRY FOR POETRY’S SAKE

      XI. A SKETCH FOR A PSYCHOLOGY

     XII. PLEASURE

    XIII. EMOTION AND THE CŒNESTHESIA

     XIV. MEMORY

      XV. ATTITUDES

     XVI. THE ANALYSIS OF A POEM

    XVII. RHYTHM AND METRE

   XVIII. ON LOOKING AT A PICTURE

     XIX. SCULPTURE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF FORM

      XX. THE _IMPASSE_ OF MUSICAL THEORY

     XXI. A THEORY OF COMMUNICATION

    XXII. THE AVAILABILITY OF THE POET’S EXPERIENCE

   XXIII. TOLSTOY’S INFECTION THEORY

    XXIV. THE NORMALITY OF THE ARTIST

     XXV. BADNESS IN POETRY

    XXVI. JUDGMENT AND DIVERGENT READINGS

   XXVII. LEVELS OF RESPONSE AND THE WIDTH OF APPEAL

  XXVIII. THE ALLUSIVENESS OF MODERN POETRY

    XXIX. PERMANENCE AS A CRITERION

     XXX. THE DEFINITION OF A POEM

    XXXI. ART, PLAY, AND CIVILISATION

   XXXII. THE IMAGINATION

  XXXIII. TRUTH AND REVELATION THEORIES

   XXXIV. THE TWO USES OF LANGUAGE

    XXXV. POETRY AND BELIEFS

          APPENDIX A ON VALUE

          APPENDIX B ON MR. ELIOT’S POETRY




PREFACE


A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore,
usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive.
This book might better be compared to a loom on which it is proposed
to re-weave some ravelled parts of our civilisation. What is
most important about it, the interconnection of its several points
of view, might have been exhibited, though not with equal clarity,
in a pamphlet or in a two-volume work. Few of the separate items
are original. One does not expect novel cards when playing so
traditional a game; it is the hand which matters. I have chosen
to present it here on the smallest scale which would allow me
to fit together the various positions adopted into a whole of
some firmness. The elaborations and expansions which suggest
themselves have been constantly cut short at the point at which
I thought that the reader would be able to see for himself how
they would continue. The danger of this procedure, which otherwise
has great advantages both for him and for me, is that the different
parts of a connected account such as this mutually illumine one
another. The writer, who has, or should have, the whole position
in his mind throughout, may overlook sources of obscurity for
the reader, due to the serial form of the exposition. This I
have endeavoured to prevent by means of numerous cross-references,
forwards and backwards.

But some further explanation of the structure of the book is
due to the reader. At sundry points—notably in Chapters VI,
VII, and XI-XV—its progress appears to be interrupted by lengthy
excursions into theory of value, or into general psychology.
These I would have omitted if it had seemed in any way possible
to develop the argument of the rest strongly and clearly in their
absence. Criticism, as I understand it, is the endeavour to discriminate
between experiences and to evaluate them. We cannot do this without
some understanding of the nature of experience, or without theories
of valuation and communication. Such principles as apply in criticism
must be taken from these more fundamental studies. All other
critical principles are arbitrary, and the history of the subject
is a record of their obstructive influence. The view of value
implied throughout is one which must be held in some form by
very many persons. Yet I have been unable to discover anywhere
any statement of it to which I might satisfactorily refer the
reader. I had to make a fairly full statement with applications
and illustrations myself. And I had to put in the forefront of
the book where, to the more exclusively literary reader, it will
appear a dry and uninviting tract to be crossed for problematical
advantages. The same remarks apply to the second theoretical
expansion, the psychological chapters; they are to the value
chapters, I fear, as a Sahara to a Gobi. No other choice seemed
open if I did not wish my later, critical, sections to be misunderstood,
than to include as a preliminary what amounts to a concise treatise
on psychology. For nearly all the topics of psychology are raised
at one point or another by criticism, but raised from an angle
which ordinary text-books do not contemplate. These two deserts
passed, the rest of the book accords, I believe, much more closely
with what may be expected of an essay in criticism, although
the language in which some of the more obvious remarks are couched
may seem unnecessarily repellant. The explanation of much of
the turgid uncouthness of its terminology is the desire to link
even the commonplaces of criticism to a systematic exposition
of psychology. The reader who appreciates the advantages so gained
will be forgiving.

I have carefully remembered throughout that I am not writing
for specialists alone. The omissions, particularly as to qualifications
and reservations, which this fact entails, should in fairness
to myself be mentioned.

My book, I fear, will seem to many sadly lacking in the condiments
which have come to be expected in writings upon literature. Critics
and even theorists in criticism currently assume that their first
duty is to be moving, to excite in the mind emotions appropriate
to their august subject-matter. This endeavour I have declined.
I have used, I believe, few words which I could not define in
the actual use which I have made of them, and necessarily such
words have little or no emotive power. I have comforted myself
with the reflection that there is perhaps something debilitated
about a taste for speculation which requires a flavouring of
the eternal and the ultimate or even of the literary spices,
mystery and profundity. Mixed modes of writing which enlist the
reader’s feeling as well as his thinking are becoming dangerous
to the modern consciousness with its increasing awareness of
the distinction. Thought and feeling are able to mislead one
another at present in ways which were hardly possible six centuries
ago. We need a spell of purer science and purer poetry before
the two can again be mixed, if indeed this will ever become once
more desirable. In the Second Edition I added a note on Mr. Eliot’s
poetry which will elucidate what I mean here by purity, and some
supplementary remarks upon Value; in the Third, a few minor improvements
have been made.

It should be borne in mind that the knowledge which the men of
A.D. 3000 will possess, if all goes well, may make all our æsthetics,
all our psychology, all our modern theory of value, look pitiful.
Poor indeed would be the prospect if this were not so. The thought,
“What shall we do with the powers, which we are so rapidly developing,
and what will happen to us if we cannot learn to guide them in
time?” already marks for many people the chief interest of existence.
The controversies which the world has known in the past are as
nothing to those which are ahead. I would wish this book to be
regarded as a contribution towards these choices of the future.

Between the possession of ideas and their application there is
a gulf. Every teacher winces when he remembers this. As an attempt
to attack this difficulty, I am preparing a companion volume,
_Practical Criticism_. Extremely good and extremely bad
poems were put _unsigned_ before a large and able audience.
The comments they wrote at leisure give, as it were, a stereoscopic
view of the poem and of possible opinion on it. This material
when systematically analysed, provides, not only an interesting
commentary upon the state of contemporary culture, but a new
and powerful educational instrument.

                                                    I. A. R.

_Cambridge, May_, 1928.




CHAPTER I

The Chaos of Critical Theories

  O monstrous! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable
    deal of sack!—_The First Part of King Henry the Fourth._


The literature of Criticism is not small or negligible, and its
chief figures, from Aristotle onwards, have often been among
the first intellects of their age. Yet the modern student, surveying
the field and noting the simplicity of the task attempted and
the fragments of work achieved, may reasonably wonder what has
been and is amiss. For the experiences with which criticism is
concerned are exceptionally accessible, we have only to open
the book, stand before the picture, have the music played, spread
out the rug, pour out the wine, and the material upon which the
critic works is presently before us. Even too abundantly, in
too great fullness perhaps: “More warmth than Adam needs” the
critic may complain, echoing Milton’s complaint against the climate
of the Garden of Eden; but he is fortunate not to be starved
of matter like the investigator of psychoplasm. And the questions
which the critic seeks to answer, intricate though they are,
do not seem to be extraordinarily difficult. What gives the experience
of reading a certain poem its value? How is this experience better
than another? Why prefer this picture to that? In which ways
should we listen to music so as to receive the most valuable
moments? Why is one opinion about works of art not as good as
another? These are the fundamental questions which criticism
is required to answer, together with such preliminary questions—What
_is_ a picture, a poem, a piece of music? How can experiences
be compared? What is value?—as may be required in order to approach
these questions.

But if we now turn to consider what are the results yielded by
the best minds pondering these questions in the light of the
eminently accessible experiences provided by the Arts, we discover
an almost empty garner. A few conjectures, a supply of admonitions,
many acute isolated observations, some brilliant guesses, much
oratory and applied poetry, inexhaustible confusion, a sufficiency
of dogma, no small stock of prejudices, whimsies and crotchets,
a profusion of mysticism, a little genuine speculation, sundry
stray inspirations, pregnant hints and random _aperçus_;
of such as these, it may be said without exaggeration, is extant
critical theory composed.

A few specimens of the most famous utterances of Aristotle, Longinus,
Horace, Boileau, Dryden, Addison, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle,
Matthew Arnold, and some more modern authors, will justify this
assertion. “All men naturally receive pleasure from imitation.”
“Poetry is chiefly conversant about general truth.” “It demands
an enthusiasm allied to madness; transported out of ourselves
we become what we imagine.” “Beautiful words are the very and
peculiar light of the mind.” “Let the work be what you like,
provided it has simplicity and unity.” “De Gustibus. . .” “Of
writing well right thinking is the beginning and the fount.”
“We must never separate ourselves from Nature.” “Delight is the
chief, if not the only end; instruction can be admitted but in
the second place.” “The pleasures of Fancy are more conducive
to health than those of the understanding.” “The spontaneous
overflow of powerful feeling.” “The best words in the best order.”
“The whole soul of man in activity.” “Unity in variety.” “The
synthetic and magical power of the imagination.” “The eye on
the object.” “The disimprisonment of the soul of fact.” “The
identification of content and form.” “A criticism of Life.” “Empathy
favourable to our existence.” “Significant form.” “The expression
of impressions,” etc. etc.

Such are the pinnacles, the _apices_ of critical theory,
the heights gained in the past by the best thinkers in their
attempt to reach explanations of the value of the arts. Some
of them, many of them indeed, are profitable starting-points
for reflection, but neither together, nor singly, nor in any
combination do they give what is required. Above them and below
them, around and about them can be found other things of value,
of service for the appreciation of particular poems and works
of art; comment, elucidation, appraisal, much that is fit occupation
for the contemplative mind. But apart from hints such as have
been cited, no explanations. The central question, What is the
value of the arts, why are they worth the devotion of the keenest
hours of the best minds, and what is their place in the system
of human endeavours? is left almost untouched, although without
some clear view it would seem that even the most judicious critic
must often lose his sense of position.



But perhaps the literature of Criticism is the wrong place in
which to expect such an inquiry. Philosophers, Moralists and
Æstheticians are perhaps the competent authorities? There is
certainly no lack of treatises upon the Good and the Beautiful,
upon Value and upon the Æsthetic State, and the treasures of
earnest endeavour lavished upon these topics have not been in
vain. Those investigators who have relied upon Reason, upon the
Select Intuition and the Ineluctable Argument, who have sat down
without the necessary facts to think the matter out, have at
least thoroughly discredited a method which apart from their
labours would hardly have been suspected of the barrenness it
has shown. And those who, following Fechner, have turned instead
to the collection and analysis of concrete, particular facts
and to empirical research into æsthetics have supplied a host
of details to psychology. In recent years especially, much useful
information upon the processes which make up the appreciation
of works of art has been skilfully elicited. But it is showing
no ingratitude to these investigators if we point out certain
defects of almost all experimental work on æsthetics, which make
their results at best of only indirect service to our wider problems.

The most obvious of these concerns their inevitable choice of
experiments. Only the simplest human activities are at present
amenable to laboratory methods. Æstheticians have therefore been
compelled to begin with as simple forms of ‘æsthetic choice’
as can be devised. In practice, line-lengths and elementary forms,
single notes and phrases, single colours and simple collocations,
nonsense syllables, metronomic beats, skeleton rhythms and metres
and similar simplifications have alone been open to investigation.
Such more complex objects as have been examined have yielded
very uncertain results, for reasons which anyone who has ever
_both_ looked at a picture or read a poem _and_ been inside a
psychological laboratory or conversed with a representative
psychologist will understand.

The generalisations to be drawn from these simple experiments
are, if we do not expect too much, encouraging. Some light upon
obscure processes, such as empathy, and upon the intervention
of muscular imagery and tendencies to action into the apprehension
of shapes and of sequences of sounds which had been supposed
to be apprehended by visual or auditory apparatus alone, some
interesting facts about the plasticity of rhythm, some approach
towards a classification of the different ways in which colours
may be regarded, increased recognition of the complexity of even
the simplest activities, these and similar results have been
well worth the trouble expended. But more important has been
the revelation of the great variety in the responses which even
the simplest stimuli elicit. Even so unambiguous an object as
a plain colour, it has been found, can arouse in different persons
and in the same person at different times extremely different
states of mind. From this result it may seem no illegitimate
step to conclude that highly complex objects, such as pictures,
will arouse a still greater variety of responses, a conclusion
very awkward for any theory of criticism, since it would appear
to decide adversely the preliminary question: “How may experiences
be compared?” which any such theory must settle if the more fundamental
questions of value are to be satisfactorily approached.

But just here a crucial point arises. There seems to be good
reason to suppose that the more simple the object contemplated
the more varied the responses will be which can be expected from
it. For it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to contemplate a
comparatively simple object by itself. Inevitably it is taken
by the contemplator into some context, and made part of some
larger whole, and under such experimental conditions as have
yet been devised it seems not possible to guarantee the kind
of context into which it is taken. A comparison with the case
of words is instructive. A single word by itself, let us say
‘night,’ will raise almost as many different thoughts and feelings
as there are persons who hear it. The range of variety with a
single word is very little restricted. But put it into a sentence
and the variation is narrowed; put it into the context of a whole
passage, and it is still further fixed; and let it occur in such
an intricate whole as a poem and the responses of competent readers
may have a similarity which only its occurrence in such a whole
can secure. The point will arise for discussion when the problem
of corroboration for critical judgments is dealt with later (cf.
pp. 166, 178, 192). It had to be mentioned here in order to explain
why the theory of criticism shows no great dependence upon experimental
æsthetics, useful in many respects as these investigations are.




CHAPTER II

The Phantom Æsthetic State

  None of his follies will he repent, none will he wish to repeat; no
    happier lot can be assigned to man.—_Wilhelm Mester_.


A more serious defect in æsthetics is the avoidance of considerations
as to value. It is true that an ill-judged introduction of value
considerations usually leads to disaster, as in Tolstoy’s case.
But the fact that some of the experiences to which the arts give
rise are valuable and take the form they do because of their
value is not irrelevant. Whether this fact is of service in analysis
will naturally depend upon the theory of value adopted. But to
leave it out of account altogether is to run the risk of missing
the clue to the whole matter. And the clue has in fact been missed.

All modern æsthetics rests upon an assumption which has been
strangely little discussed, the assumption that there is a distinct
_kind_ of mental activity present in what are called æsthetic
experiences. Ever since “the first rational word concerning beauty”[1]
was spoken by Kant, the attempt to define the ‘judgment of taste’
as concerning pleasure which is disinterested, universal, unintellectual,
and not to be confused with the pleasures of sense or of ordinary
emotions, in short to make it a thing _sui generis_, has
continued. Thus arises the phantom problem of the æsthetic mode
or æsthetic state, a legacy from the days of abstract investigation
into the Good, the Beautiful and the True.

The temptation to align this tripartite division with a similar
division into Will, Feeling and Thought was irresistible. “All
the faculties of the Soul, or capacities, are reducible to three,
which do not admit of any further derivation from a common ground:
the _faculty of knowledge_, the _feeling of pleasure or
displeasure_, and the _faculty of desire_”[2] said Kant.
Legislative for each of these faculties stood Understanding,
Judgment and Reason respectively. “Between the faculties of knowledge
and desire stands the feeling of pleasure, just as judgment is
intermediate between understanding and reason.” And he went on
to discuss æsthetics as appertaining to the province of judgment,
the middle one of these three, the first and last having already
occupied him in his two other Critiques of Pure and Practical
Reason respectively. The effect was virtually to annex æsthetics
to Idealism, in which fabric it has ever since continued to serve
important purposes.

This accident of formal correspondence has had an influence upon
speculation which would be ridiculous if it had not been so disastrous.
It is difficult even now to get out of ruts which have been seen
to lead nowhere. With the identification of the provinces of
Truth and Thought no quarrel arises, and the Will and the Good
are, as we shall see, intimately connected, but the attempts
to fit Beauty into a neat pigeon-hole with Feeling have led to
calamitous distortions. It is now generally abandoned,[3] although
echoes of it can be heard everywhere in critical writings. The
peculiar use of ‘emotion’ by reviewers, and the prevalence of
the phrase ‘æsthetic emotion’ is one of them. In view, then,
of the objections to Feeling, something else, some special mode
of mental activity, had to be found, to which Beauty could belong.
Hence arose the æsthetic mode. Truth was the object of the inquiring
activity, of the Intellectual or Theoretical part of the mind,
and the Good that of the willing, desiring, practical part; what
part could be found for the Beautiful? Some activity that was
neither inquisitive nor practical, that did not question and
did not seek to use. The result was the æsthetic, the contemplative,
activity which is still defined, in most treatments[4], by these
negative conditions alone, as that mode of commerce with things
which is neither intellectual inquiry into their nature, nor
an attempt to make them satisfy our desire. The experiences which
arise in contemplating objects of art were then discovered to
be describable in some such terms, and system secured a temporary
triumph.

It is true that many of these experiences do present peculiarities,
both in the intellectual interest which is present and in the
way in which the development of desires within them takes place,
and these peculiarities—detachment, impersonality, serenity and
so forth—are of great interest. They will have to be carefully
examined in the sequel.

We shall find that two entirely different sets of characters
are involved. They arise from quite different causes but are
hard to distinguish introspectively. Taken as marking off a special
province for inquiry they are most unsatisfactory. They would
yield for our purposes, even if they were not so ambiguous, a
diagonal or slant classification. Some of the experiences which
most require to be considered would be left out and many which
are without importance brought in. To choose the Æsthetic State
as the starting-point for an inquiry into the values of the arts
is in fact somewhat like choosing ‘rectangular, and red in parts’
as a definition of a picture. We should find ourselves ultimately
discussing a different collection of things from those we intended
to discuss.

But the problem remains—Is there any such thing as the æsthetic
state, or any æsthetic character of experiences which is _sui
generis_? Not many explicit arguments have ever been given
for one. Vernon Lee, it is true, in _Beauty and Ugliness_,
p. 10, argues that “a relation entirely _sui generis_ between
visible and audible forms and ourselves” can be deduced from
the fact “that given proportions, shapes, patterns, compositions
have a tendency to recur in art.” How this can be done it is
hard to divine. Arsenic tends to recur in murder cases, and tennis
in the summer, but no characters or relations _sui generis_
anywhere are thereby proved. Obviously you can only tell whether
anything is like or unlike other things by examining it and them,
and to notice that one case of it is like another case of it,
is not helpful. It may be suspected that where the argument is
so confused, the original question was not very clear.

The question is whether a certain kind of experience is or is
not _like_ other kinds of experience. Plainly it is a question
as to degree of likeness. Be it granted at once, to clear the
air, that there are all sorts of experiences involved in the
values of the arts, and that attributions of Beauty spring from
all sorts of causes. Is there among these one kind of experience
as different from experiences which don’t so occur as, say envy
is from remembering, or as mathematical calculation is from eating
cherries? And what degree of difference would make it specific?
Put this way it is plainly not an easy question to answer. These
differences, none of them measurable, are of varying degree,
and all are hard to estimate. Yet the vast majority of post-Kantian
writers, and many before him, have unhesitatingly replied, “Yes!
the æsthetic experience is peculiar and specific.” And their
grounds, when not merely verbal, have usually been those of direct
inspection.

It requires some audacity to run counter to such a tradition,
and I do not do so without reflection. Yet, after all, the matter
is one of classification, and when so many other divisions in
psychology are being questioned and re-organised, this also may
be re-examined.

The case for a distinct æsthetic species of experience can take
two forms. It may be held that there is some unique kind of mental
element which enters into æsthetic experiences and into no others.
Thus Mr Clive Bell used to maintain the existence of an unique
emotion ‘æsthetic emotion’ as the _differentia_. But psychology
has no place for such an entity. What other will be suggested?
Empathy, for example, as Vernon Lee herself insists, enters into
innumerable other experiences as well as into æsthetic experiences.
I do not think any will be proposed.

Alternatively, the æsthetic experience may contain no unique
constituent, and be of the usual stuff but with a special form.
This is what it is commonly supposed to be. Now the special form
as it is usually described—in terms of disinterestedness, detachment,
distance, impersonality, subjective universality, and so forth—this
form, I shall try to show later, is sometimes no more than a
consequence of the incidence of the experience, a condition or
an effect of communication. But sometimes a structure which can
be described in the same terms is an essential feature of the
experience, the feature in fact upon which its value depends.
In other words, at least two different sets of characters, due
to different causes, are, in current usage, ambiguously covered
by the term ‘æsthetic.’ It is very necessary to distinguish the
sense in which merely putting something in a frame or writing
it in verse gives it an ‘æsthetic character,’ from a sense in
which value is implied. This confusion, together with other confusions,[5]
has made the term nearly useless.

The æsthetic mode is generally supposed to be a peculiar way
of regarding things which can be exercised, whether the resulting
experiences are valuable, disvaluable or indifferent. It is intended
to cover the experience of ugliness as well as that of beauty,
and also intermediate experiences. What I wish to maintain is
that there is no such mode, that the experience of ugliness has
nothing in common with that of beauty, which both do not share
with innumerable other experiences no one (except Croce; but
this qualification is often required) would dream of calling
æsthetic. But a narrower sense of æsthetic is also found in which
it _is_ confined to experiences of beauty and does imply
value. And with regard to this, while admitting that such experiences
can be distinguished, I shall be at pains to show that they are
closely similar to many other experiences, that they differ chiefly
in the connections between their constituents, and that they
are only a further development, a finer organisation of ordinary
experiences, and not in the least a new and different kind of
thing. When we look at a picture, or read a poem, or listen to
music, we are not doing something quite unlike what we were doing
on our way to the Gallery or when we dressed in the morning.
The fashion in which the experience is caused in us is different,
and as a rule the experience is more complex and, if we are successful,
more unified. But our activity is not of a fundamentally different
kind. To assume that it is, puts difficulties in the way of describing
and explaining it, which are unnecessary and which no one has
yet succeeded in overcoming.

The point here raised, and particularly the distinction between
the two quite different sets of characters, on the ground of
which an experience may be described as æsthetic or impersonal
and disinterested, will become clearer at a later stage.[6]



A further objection to the assumption of a peculiar æsthetic
attitude is that it makes smooth the way for the idea of a peculiar
æsthetic value, a pure art value. Postulate a peculiar kind:
of experience, æsthetic experience, and it is an easy step to
the postulation of a peculiar unique value, different in kind
and cut off from the other values of ordinary experiences. “To
appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life,
no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its
emotions.”[7] So runs a recent extreme statement of the Æsthetic
Hypothesis, which has had much success. To quote another example
less drastic but also carrying with it the implication that æsthetic
experiences are _sui generis_, and their value not of the
same kind as other values. “Its nature is to be not a part, nor
yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand that
phrase), but a world in itself independent, complete, autonomous.”[8]

This view of the arts as providing a private heaven for æsthetes
is, as will appear later, a great impediment to the investigation
of their value. The effects upon the general attitudes of those
who accept it uncritically are also often regrettable; while
the effects upon literature and the arts have been noticeable,
in a narrowing and restriction of the interests active, in preciousness,
artificiality and spurious aloofness. ~Art~ envisaged as a mystic,
ineffable virtue is a close relative of the ‘æsthetic mood’,
and may easily be pernicious in its effects, through the habits
of mind which, as an idea, it fosters, and to which, as a mystery,
it appeals.


[1] Hegel’s _dictum, History of Philosophy_, iii, 543.

[2] _Critique of Judgment_, transl. by Meredith, p. 15.

[3] Dr Bosanquet was one of the last adherents. See his _Three
Lectures on Æsthetics_.

[4] E.g. Vernon Lee, _The Beautiful_.

[5] E.g. Any choice for which the chooser cannot give his reasons
tends in the laboratory to be called an ‘æsthetic choice.’

[6] Cf. Chapters X and XXXII, and Impersonality, _Index_.

[7] Clive Bell, _Art_, p. 25.

[8] A.C. Bradley, _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_, p. 5.




CHAPTER III

The Language of Criticism

                . . . . I too have seen
    My vision of the rainbow Aureoled face
    Of her whom men name Beauty: proud, austere:
    Divinely fugitive, that haunts the world. . . .
                                _The Dominion of Dreams_.


Whatever the disadvantages of modern æsthetics as a basis for
a theory of Criticism, the great advance made upon prescientific
speculation into the nature of Beauty must also be recognised.
That paralysing apparition Beauty, the ineffable, ultimate, unanalysable,
simple Idea, has at least been dismissed and with her have departed
or will soon depart a flock of equally bogus entities. Poetry
and inspiration together, it is true, still dignify respectable
quarters with their presence.

“Poetry, like life, is one thing. . . . Essentially a continuous
substance or energy, poetry is historically a connected movement,
a series of successive integrated manifestations. Each poet,
from Homer or the predecessors of Homer to our own day, has been,
to some degree and at some point, the voice of the movement and
energy of poetry; in him, poetry has for the moment become visible,
audible, incarnate; and his extant poems are the record left
of that partial and transitory incarnation. . . . The progress
of poetry, with its vast power and exalted function, is immortal.”[9]

A diligent search will still find many other Mystic Beings, for
the most part of a less august nature, sheltering in verbal thickets.
Construction, Design, Form, Rhythm, Expression . . . are more
often than not mere _vacua_ in discourse, for which a theory
of criticism should provide explainable substitutes.

While current attitudes to language persist, this difficulty
of the linguistic phantom must still continue. It has to be recognised
that all our natural turns of speech are misleading, especially
those we use in discussing works of art. We become so accustomed
to them that even when we are aware that they are ellipses, it
is easy to forget the fact. And it has been extremely difficult
in many cases to discover that any ellipsis is present. We are
accustomed to say that a picture is beautiful, instead of saying
that it causes an experience in us which is valuable in certain
ways.[10] The discovery that the remark, “This is beautiful”,
must be turned round and expanded in this way before it is anything
but a mere noise signalling the fact that we approve of the picture,
was a great and difficult achievement. Even to-day, such is the
insidious power of grammatical forms, the belief that there is
such a quality or attribute, namely Beauty, which attaches to
the things which we rightly call beautiful, is probably inevitable
for all reflective persons at a certain stage of their mental
development.

Even among those who have escaped from this delusion and are
well aware that we continually talk as though things possess
qualities, when what we ought to say is that they cause effects
in us of one kind or another, the fallacy of ‘projecting’ the
effect and making it a quality of its cause tends to recur. When
it does so it gives a peculiar obliquity to thought and although
few competent persons are nowadays so deluded as actually to
hold the mystical view that there is a quality Beauty which inheres
or attaches to external objects, yet throughout all the discussion
of works of art the drag exercised by language towards this view
can be felt. It perceptibly increases the difficulty of innumerable
problems and we shall have constantly to allow for it. Such terms
as ‘construction’, ‘form’, ‘balance’, ‘composition’, ‘design’,
‘unity’, ‘expression’, for all the arts; as ‘depth’, ‘movement’,
‘texture’, ‘solidity’, in the criticism of painting; as ‘rhythm’,
‘stress’, ‘plot’, ‘character’, in literary criticism; as ‘harmony’,
‘atmosphere’, ‘development’, in music, are instances. All these
terms are currently used as though they stood for qualities inherent
in things outside the mind, as a painting, in the sense of an
assemblage of pigments, is undoubtedly outside the mind. Even
the difficulty of discovering, in the case of poetry, what thing
other than print and paper is there for these alleged qualities
to belong to, has not checked the tendency.

But indeed language has succeeded until recently in hiding from
us almost all the things we talk about. Whether we are discussing
music, poetry, painting, sculpture or architecture, we are forced
to speak as though certain physical objects—vibrations of strings
and of columns of air, marks printed on paper, canvasses and
pigments, masses of marble, fabrics of freestone, are what we
are talking about. And yet the remarks we make as critics do
not apply to such objects but to states of mind, to experiences.

A certain strangeness about this view is often felt but diminishes
with reflection. If anyone says that ‘The May Queen’ is sentimental,
it is not difficult to agree that he is referring to a state
of mind. But if he declares that the masses in a Giotto exactly
balance one another, this is less apparent, and, if he goes on
to discuss time in music, form in visual art, plot in drama,
the fact that he is all the while talking about mental happenings
becomes concealed. The verbal apparatus comes between us and
the things with which we are really dealing. Words which are
useful, indeed invaluable, as handy stop-gaps and makeshifts
in conversation, but which need elaborate expansions before they
can be used with precision, are treated as simply as people’s
proper names. So it becomes natural to seek for the things these
words appear to stand for, and thus arise innumerable subtle
investigations, doomed _ab initio_ as regards their main
intent to failure.



We must be prepared then to translate, into phrases pedantic
and uncouth, all the too simple utterances which the conversational
decencies exact. We shall find later, in their peculiar emotive
power the main reason why, in spite of all manner of confusions
and inconveniences, these current ways of speaking are retained.
For emotive purposes they are indispensable, but for clarity,
for the examination of what is actually happening, translations
are equally a necessity.

Most critical remarks state in an abbreviated form that an object
causes certain experiences, and as a rule the form of the statement
is such as to suggest that the object has been said to possess
certain qualities. But often the critic goes further and affirms
that the effect in his mind is due to special particular features
of the object. In this case he is pointing out something about
the object in addition to its effect upon him, and this fuller
kind of criticism is what we desire. Before his insight can greatly
benefit, however, a very clear demarcation between the object,
with its features, and his experience, which is the effect of
contemplating it, is necessary. The bulk of critical literature
is unfortunately made up of examples of their confusion.

It will be convenient at this point to introduce two definitions.
In a full critical statement which states not only that an experience
is valuable in certain ways, but also that it is caused by certain
features in a contemplated object, the part which describes the
value of the experience we shall call the _critical_ part.
That which describes the object we shall call the _technical_
part. Thus to say that we feel differently towards wooden crosses
and stone crosses is a technical remark. And to say that metre
is more suited to the tender passion than is prose would be,
as it stands, a technical remark, but here it is evident that
a critical part might easily be also present. All remarks as
to the ways and means by which experiences arise or are brought
about are technical, but critical remarks are about the values
of experiences and the reasons for regarding them as valuable,
or not valuable. We shall endeavor in what follows to show that
critical remarks are merely a branch of psychological remarks,
and that no special ethical or metaphysical ideas need be introduced
to explain value.

The distinction between technical and critical remarks is of
real importance. Confusion here is responsible for some most
curious passages in the histories of the arts. A certain technique
in certain cases produces admirable results; the obvious features
of this technique come to be regarded at first as sure signs
of excellence, and later as the excellence itself. For a while
nothing, however admirable, which does not show these superficial
marks, gets fair consideration. Thomas Rymer’s denigration of
Shakespeare, Dr Johnson’s view of Milton’s pauses, the aftermath
of the triumph of Pope, archaistic sculpture, the Greek poses
in the compositions of David, the imitations of Cézanne, are
famous instances; they could be multiplied indefinitely. The
converse case is equally common. An obvious technical blemish
in a special case is recognised. It may be too many S’s in a
particular line, or the irregularity and rimelessness of a ‘Pindaric’
Ode; henceforth any line superficially similar,

    The lustre of the long convolvulusses,

any unrhymed lyric, is regarded as defective. This trick of judging
the whole by the detail, instead of the other way about, of mistaking
the means for the end, the technique for the value, is in fact
much the most successful of the snares which waylay the critic.
Only the teacher knows (and sometimes he is guilty himself) how
great is the number of readers who think, for example, that a
defective rime—bough’s house, bush thrush, blood good—is sufficient
ground for condemning a poem in the neglect of all other considerations.
Such sticklers, like those with a scansion obsession (due as
a rule to Exercises in Latin Verse), have little understanding
of poetry. We pay attention to externals when we do not know
what else to do with a poem.

[9] G. W. Mackail, _Lectures on Poetry_. Introduction.

[10] We can diagrammatically represent the delusion as follows.
What actually occurs is that A, a work of art, causes E an effect
_in us_, which has the character b; A _causes_ E[b]. We _speak_
as though we perceived that A has the quality B (Beauty); we are
perceiving A[B]; and if we are not careful we think so too. No one
of our recent revolutions in thought is more important than this
progressive rediscovery of what we are talking about. It is being
inevitably followed by wide changes in our attitudes to the world and
to fellow-creatures. One current in this change is towards tolerance,
another towards scepticism, a third towards far more secure founding
of our motives of action. The startling philosophical changes in the
general outlook sometimes’ predicted for Relativity (or for popular
ideas about it when once they become widespread) appear likely, if
they occur at all, to be engulfed by these more unobtrusive but more
domestic changes.




CHAPTER IV

Communication and the Artist

  Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest
        and best minds.—_The Defence of Poetry_.


The two pillars upon which a theory of criticism must rest are
an account of value and an account of communication. We do not
sufficiently realise how great a part of our experience takes
the form it does, because we are social beings and accustomed
to communication from infancy. That we acquire many of our ways
of thinking and feeling from parents and others is, of course,
a commonplace.

But the effects of communication go much deeper than this. The
very structure of our minds largely determined by the fact that
man has been engaged in communicating for so many hundreds of
thousands of years, throughout the course of his human development
and beyond even that. A large part of the distinctive features
of the mind are due to its being an instrument for communication.
An experience has to be formed, no doubt, before it is communicated,
but it takes the form it does largely because it may have to
be communicated. The emphasis which natural selection has put
upon communicative ability is overwhelming.

There are very many problems of psychology, from those with which
some of the exponents of _Gestalt theorie_ are grappling to those by
which psycho-analysts are bewildered, for which this neglected, this
almost overlooked aspect of the mind may provide a key, but it is
pre-eminently in regard to the arts that it is of service. For the
arts are the supreme form of the communicative activity. As we shall
see, most of the difficult and obscure points about the structures of
the arts, for example the priority of formal elements to content,[11]
or the impersonality and detachment so much stressed by æstheticians,
become easily intelligible as soon as we consider them from this angle.
But a possible misunderstanding must be guarded against. Although it is
as a communicator that it is most profitable to consider the artist,
it is by no means true that he commonly looks upon himself in this
light. In the course of his work he is not as a rule deliberately and
consciously engaged in a communicative endeavour. When asked, he is
more likely than not to reply that communication is an irrelevant or
at best a minor issue, and that what he is making is something which
is beautiful in itself, or satisfying to him personally, or something
expressive, in a more or less vague sense, of his emotions, or of
himself, something personal and individual. That other people are
going to study it, and to receive experiences from it may seem to him
a merely accidental, inessential circumstance. More modestly still, he
may say that when he works he is merely amusing himself.

That the artist is not as a mule consciously concerned with communication,
but with getting the work, the poem or play or statue or painting
or whatever it is, ‘right’, apparently regardless of its communicative
efficacy, is easily explained. To make the work ‘embody’, accord
with, and represent the precise experience upon which its value
depends is his major preoccupation, in difficult cases an overmastering
preoccupation, and the dissipation of attention which would be
involved if he considered the communicative side as a separate
issue would be fatal in most serious work. He cannot stop to
consider how the public or even how especially well qualified
sections of the public may like it or respond to it. He is wise,
therefore, to keep all such considerations out of mind altogether.
Those artists and poets who can be suspected of close separate
attention to the communicative aspect tend (there are exceptions
to this, of which Shakespeare might be one) to fall into a subordinate
rank.

But this conscious neglect of communication does not in the least
diminish the importance of the communicative aspect. It would
only do so if we were prepared to admit that only our conscious
activities matter. The very process of getting the work ‘right’
has itself, so far as the artist is normal,[12] immense communicative
consequences. Apart from certain special cases, to be discussed
later, it will, when ‘right’, have much greater communicative
power than it would have had if ‘wrong’. The degree to which
it accords with the relevant experience of the artist is a measure
of the degree to which it will arouse similar experiences in
others.

But more narrowly the reluctance of the artist to consider communication
as one of his main aims, and his denial that he is at all influenced
in his’ work by a desire to affect other people, is no evidence
that communication is not actually his principal object. On a
simple view of psychology, which overlooked unconscious motives,
it would be, but not on any view of human behaviour which is
in the least adequate. When we find the artist constantly struggling
towards impersonality, towards a structure for his work which
excludes his private, eccentric, momentary idiosyncrasies, and
using always as its basis those elements which are most uniform
in their effects upon impulses; when we find private works of
art, works which satisfy the artist,[13] but are incomprehensible
to everybody else, so rare, and the publicity of the work so
constantly and so intimately bound up with its appeal to the
artist himself, it is difficult to believe that efficacy for
communication is not a main part of the ‘rightness’[14] which
the artist may suppose to be something quite different.

How far desire actually to communicate, as distinguished from
desire to produce something with communicative efficacy (however
disguised), is an ‘unconscious motive’ in the artist is a question
to which we need not hazard an answer. Doubtless individual artists
vary enormously. To some the lure of ‘immortality’ of enduring
fame, of a permanent place in the influences which govern the
human mind, appears to be very strong. To others it is often
negligible. The degree to which such notions are avowed certainly
varies with current social and intellectual fashions. At present
the appeal to posterity, the ‘nurslings of immortality’ attitude
to works of art appears to be much out of favour. “How do we
know what posterity will be like? They may be awful people!”
a contemporary is likely to remark, thus confusing the issue.
For the appeal is not to posterity merely as living at a certain
date, but as especially qualified to judge, a qualification most
posterities have lacked.

What concerns criticism is not the avowed or unavowed motives
of the artist, however interesting these may be to psychology,
but the fact that his procedure does, in the majority of instances,
make the communicative efficacy of his work correspond with his
own satisfaction and sense of its rightness. This may be due
merely to his normality, or it may be due to unavowed motives.
The first suggestion is the more plausible. In any case it is
certain that no mere careful study of communicative possibilities,
together with any desire to communicate, however intense, is
ever sufficient without close natural correspondence between
the poet’s impulses and possible impulses in his reader. All
supremely successful communication involves this correspondence,
and no planning can take its place. Nor is the deliberate conscious
attempt directed to communication so successful as the unconscious
indirect method.

Thus the artist is entirely justified in his apparent neglect
of the main purpose of his work. And when in what follows he
is alluded to without qualification as being primarily concerned
with communication, the reservations here made should be recalled.



Since the poet’s unconscious motives have been alluded to, it
may be well at this point to make a few additional remarks. Whatever
psycho-analysts may aver, the mental processes of the poet are
not a very profitable field for investigation. They offer far
too happy a hunting-ground for uncontrollable conjecture. Much
that goes to produce a poem is, of course, unconscious. Very
likely the unconscious processes are more important than the
conscious, but even if we knew far more than we do about how
the mind works, the attempt to display the inner working of the
artist’s mind by the evidence of his work alone must be subject
to the gravest dangers. And to judge by the published work of
Freud upon Leonardo da Vinci or of Jung upon Goethe (e.g. _The
Psychology of the Unconscious_, p. 305), psycho-analysts tend
to be peculiarly inept as critics.

The difficulty is that nearly all speculations as to what went
on in the artist’s mind are unverifiable, even more unverifiable
than the similar speculations as to the dreamer’s mind. The most
plausible explanations are apt to depend upon features whose
actual causation is otherwise. I do not know whether anyone but
Mr Graves has attempted to analyse _Kubla Khan_, a poem
which by its mode of composition and by its subject suggests
itself as well fitted for analysis. The reader acquainted with
current methods of analysis can imagine the results of a thoroughgoing
Freudian onslaught.

If he will then open _Paradise Lost_, Book IV at line 223,
and read onwards: for sixty lines, he will encounter the actual
sources of not a few of the images and phrases of the poem. In
spite of—

    Southward through _Eden_ went a River large,
    Nor changed his course, but through the shaggie hill
    Pass’d underneath ingulft . . .

in spite of—

    Rose a fresh Fountain, and with many a rill
    Waterd the Garden; thence united fell
    Down the steep glade, and met the neather Flood . . .

in spite of—

    Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold
    With mazie error under pendant shades
    Ran Nectar . . .

in spite of—

    Meanwhile murmuring waters fall
    Down the slope hills, disperst . . .

his doubts may still linger until he reaches

    Nor where _Abassin_ Kings thir issue Guard,
    Mount Amara.

and one of the most cryptic points in Coleridge’s poem, the Abyssinian
maid, singing of Mount Abora, finds its simple explanation. The
closing line of the poem perhaps hardly needs this kind of derivation.

From one source or another almost all the matter of _Kubla
Khan_ came to Coleridge in a similar fashion. I do not know
whether this particular indebtedness has been remarked before,
but _Purchas his Pilgrimage_, Bartram’s _Travels in North
and South Carolina_, and Maurice’s _History of Hindostan_
are well-known sources, some of them indicated by Coleridge himself.

This very representative instance of the unconscious working
of a poet’s mind may serve as a not inapposite warning against
one kind at least of possible applications of psychology in criticism.



The extent to which the arts and their place in the whole scheme
of human affairs have been misunderstood, by Critics, Moralists,
Educators, Æstheticians . . . is somewhat difficult to explain.
Often those who most misunderstood have been perfect in their
taste and ability to respond, Ruskin for example. Those who both
knew what to do with a work of art and also understood what they
were doing, have been for the most part artists and little inclined
for, or capable of, the rather special task of explaining. It
may have seemed to them too obvious to need explanation. Those
who have tried have as a rule been foiled by language. For the
difficulty which has always prevented the arts from being explained
as well as ‘enjoyed’ (to use an inadequate word in default of
an adequate) is language.

    “Happy who can
    Appease this virtuous enemy of man!”

It was perhaps never so necessary as now that we should know
why the arts are important and avoid inadequate answers. It will
probably become increasingly more important in the future. Remarks
such as these, it is true, are often uttered by enthusiastic
persons, and are apt to be greeted with the same smile as the
assertion that the future of England is bound up with Hunting.
Yet their full substantiation will be found to involve issues
which are nowhere lightly regarded.

The arts are our storehouse of recorded values. They spring from
and perpetuate hours in the lives of exceptional people, when
their control and command of experience is at its highest, hours
when the varying possibilities of existence are most clearly
seen and the different activities which may arise are most exquisitely
reconciled, hours when habitual narrowness of interests or confused
bewilderment are replaced by an intricately wrought composure.
Both in the genesis of a work of art, in the creative moment,
and in its aspect as a vehicle of communication, reasons can
be found for giving to the arts a very important place in the
theory of Value. They record the most important judgments we
possess as to the values of experience. They form a body of
evidence which, for lack of a serviceable psychology by which
to interpret it, and through the desiccating influence of abstract
Ethics, has been left almost untouched by professed students
of value. An odd omission, for without the assistance of the
arts we could compare very few of our experiences, and without
such comparison we could hardly hope to agree as to which are
to be preferred. Very simple experiences—a cold bath in an enamelled
tin, or running for a train—may to some extent be compared without
elaborate vehicles; and friends exceptionally well acquainted
with one another may manage some rough comparisons in ordinary
conversation. But subtle or recondite experiences are for most
men incommunicable and indescribable, though social conventions
or terror of the loneliness of the human situation may make us
pretend the contrary. In the arts we find the record in the only
form in which these things can be recorded of the experiences
which have seemed worth having to the most sensitive and discriminating
persons. Through the obscure perception of this fact the poet
has been regarded as a seer and the artist as a priest, suffering
from usurpations. The arts, if rightly approached, supply the
best data available for deciding what experiences are more valuable
than others. The qualifying clause is all-important however.
Happily there is no lack of glaring examples to remind us of
the difficulty of approaching them rightly.

[11] See Chapter XXIV.

[12] This point will be discussed in Chapter XXIV.

[13] Again the normality of the artist has to be considered.

[14] As will be seen, I am not going to identify ‘beauty’ with
‘communicative efficacy’. This is a trap which it is easy to
fall into. A number of the exoteric followers of Croce may be
found in it, though not Croce himself.




CHAPTER V

The Critics’ Concern with Value

    What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
    In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar?
    And cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?
                                _Gerard Hopkins_.


Between the general inquiry into the nature of the good and the
appreciation of particular works of art, there may seem to be
a wide gap, and the discussion upon which we are about to embark
may appear a roundabout way of approaching our subject. Morals
have often been treated, especially in recent times, as a side-issue
for criticism, from which the special concern of the critic must
be carefully separated. His business, so it has been said, is
with the work of art in itself, not with any consequences which
lie outside it. These may be left, it has been supposed, to others
for attention, to the clergy perhaps or to the police.

That these authorities are sadly incompetent is a minor disadvantage.
Their blunderings are as a rule so ridiculous that the effects
are brief. They often serve a useful purpose in calling attention
to work which might be overlooked. What is more serious is that
these indiscretions, vulgarities and absurdities encourage the
view that morals have little or nothing to do with the arts,
and the even more unfortunate opinion that the arts have no connection
with morality. The ineptitudes of censors, their choice of censorable
objects, ignoble blasphemy, such as that which declared _Esther
Waters_ an impure book, displays of such intelligence as considered
_Madame Bovary_ an apology for adulterous wrong, innumerable
comic, stupefying, enraging interferences fully explain this
attitude, but they do not justify it.

The common avoidance of all discussion of the wider social and
moral aspects of the arts by people of steady judgment and strong
heads is a misfortune, for it leaves the field free for folly,
and cramps the scope of good critics unduly. So loath have they
been to be thought at large with the wild asses that they have
virtually shut themselves up in a paddock. If the competent are
to refrain because of the antics of the unqualified, an evil
and a loss which are neither temporary nor trivial increase continually.
It is as though medical men were all to retire because of the
impudence of quacks. For the critic is as closely occupied with
the health of the mind as the doctor with the health of the body.
In a different way, it is true, and with a wider and subtler
definition of health, by which the healthiest mind is that capable
of securing the greatest amount of value.

The critic cannot possibly avoid using some ideas about value.
His whole occupation is an application and exercise of his ideas
on the subject, and an avoidance of moral preoccupations on his
part can only be either an abdication or a rejection under the
title of ‘morality’ of what he considers to be mistaken or dishonest
ideas and methods. The term has a dubious odour, it has been
handled by many objectionable as well as admirable people, and
we may agree to avoid it. But the errors exemplified by censorship
exploits are too common, and misconceptions as to the nature
of value too easy to fall into and too widespread, for useful
criticism to remain without a general theory and an explicit
set of principles.

What is needed is a defensible position for those who believe
that the arts are of value. Only a general theory of value which
will show the place and function of the arts in the whole system
of values will provide such a stronghold. At the same time we
need weapons with which to repel and overthrow misconceptions.
With the increase of population the problem presented by the
gulf between what is preferred by the majority and what is accepted
as excellent by the most qualified opinion has become infinitely
more serious and appears likely to become threatening in the
near future. For many reasons standards are much more in need
of defence than they used to be. It is perhaps premature to envisage
a collapse of values, a transvaluation by which popular taste
replaces trained discrimination. Yet commercialism has done stranger
things: we have not yet fathomed the more sinister potentialities
of the cinema and the loud-speaker, and there is some evidence,
uncertain and slight no doubt, that such things as ‘best-sellers’
(compare _Tarzan_ with _She_), magazine verses, mantelpiece
pottery, Academy pictures, Music Hall songs, County Council buildings,
War Memorials . . . are decreasing in merit. Notable exceptions,
in which the multitude are better advised than the experts, of
course occur sometimes, but not often.

To bridge the gulf, to bring the level of popular appreciation
nearer to the consensus of best qualified opinion, and to defend
this opinion against damaging attacks (Tolstoy’s is a typical
example), a much clearer account than has yet been produced,
of why this opinion is right, is essential. These attacks are
dangerous, because they appeal to a natural instinct, hatred
of ‘superior persons’. The expert in-matters of taste is in an
awkward position when he differs from the majority. He is forced
to say in effect, “I am better than you. My taste is more refined,
my nature more cultured, you will do well to become more like
me than you are.” It is not his fault that he has to be so arrogant.
He may, and usually does, disguise the fact as far as possible,
but his claim to be heard as an expert depends upon the truth
of these assumptions. He ought then to be ready with reasons
of a clear and convincing kind as to why his preferences are
worth attention, and until these reasons are forthcoming, the
accusations that he is a charlatan and a prig are embarrassing.
He may indeed point to years of preoccupation with his subject,
he may remark like the wiseacre Longinus, sixteen hundred years
ago, “The judgment of literature is the final outcome of much
endeavour,” but with him are many Professors to prove that years
of endeavour may lead to nothing very remarkable in the end.

To habilitate the critic, to defend accepted standards against
Tolstoyan attacks, to narrow the interval between these standards
and popular taste, to protect the arts against the crude moralities
of Puritans and perverts, a general theory of value, which will
not leave the statement “This is good, that bad,” either vague
or arbitrary, must be provided. There is no alternative open.
Nor is it such an excursus from the inquiry into the nature of
the arts as may be supposed. For if a well-grounded theory of
value is a necessity for criticism, it is no less true that an
understanding of what happens in the arts is needed for the theory.
The two problems “What is good?” and “What are the arts?” reflect
light upon one another. Neither in fact can be fully answered
without the other.

To the unravelling of the first we may now proceed.




CHAPTER VI

Value as an Ultimate Idea

    Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.—_Aire and Angels_.


It has always been found far more easy to divide experiences[15]
into good and bad, valuable and the reverse, than to discover
what we are doing when we make the division. The history of opinions
as to what constitutes value, as to why and when anything is
rightly called good, shows a bewildering variety. But in modern
times the controversy narrows itself down to two questions. The
first of these is whether the difference between experiences
which are valuable and those which are not can be fully described
in psychological terms; whether some additional distinctive ‘ethical’
or ‘moral’ idea of a non-psychological nature is or is not required.
The second question concerns the exact psychological analysis
needed in order to explain value if no further ‘ethical’ idea
is shown to be necessary.

The first question will not detain us long. It has been ably
maintained[16] and widely accepted that when we say that an experience
is good we are simply saying that it is endowed with a certain
ethical property or attribute not to be reduced to any psychological
properties or attributes such as being desired or approved, and
that no further elucidation of this special ethical property
by way of analysis is possible. ‘Good’ on this view is in no
way a shorthand term for some more explicit account. The things
which are good, it is held, are just good, possess a property
which can be recognised by immediate intuition, and here, since
good is unanalysable, the matter must rest. All that the study
of value can do is to point out the things which possess this
property, classify them, and remove certain confusions between
ends which are good in themselves and means which are only called
good, because they are instrumental in the attainment of intrinsically
good ends. Usually those who maintain this view also hold that
the only things which are good for their own sakes and not merely
as a means are certain conscious experiences, for example, knowledge,
admiring contemplation of beauty, and feelings of affection and
veneration under some circumstances. Other things, such as mountains,
books, railways, courageous actions, are good instrumentally
because, and in so far as, they cause or make possible states
of mind which are valuable intrinsically. Thus the occurrence
of states of mind which are recognised as good is regarded as
an isolated fact of experience, not capable of being accounted
for, or linked up with the rest of human peculiarities as a product
of development in the way made familiar by the biological sciences.

The plausibility of this view derives principally from the metaphysical
assumption that there are properties, in the sense of subsistent
entities, which attach to existent particulars, but which might
without absurdity be supposed to attach to nothing.

These metaphysical entities, variously named Ideas, Notions,
Concepts or Universals, may be divided into two kinds, sensuous
and supersensuous.[17] The sensuous are those which may be apprehended
by the senses, such as ‘red’, ‘cold’, ‘round’, ‘swift’, ‘painful’,
and the supersensuous, those apprehended not in sensuous perception
but otherwise. Logical relations, ‘necessity’ or ‘impossibility,’
and such ideas as ‘willing’, ‘end’, ‘cause’, and ‘being three
in number’, have in this way been supposed to be directly apprehensible
by the mind. Amongst these supersensuous Ideas good is to be
found.

Nothing could be simpler than such a view, and to many people
the subsistence of such a property of goodness appears not surprising.
But to others the suggestion seems merely a curious survival
of abstractionism, if such a term may be defended by its close
parallel with obstructionism. A blind man in a dark room chasing
a black cat which is not there would seem to them well employed
in comparison with a philosopher apprehending such ‘Concepts’.
While ready for convenience of discourse to talk and even to
think as though Concepts and Particulars were separable and distinct
kinds of entities, they refuse to believe that the structure
of the world actually contains such a cleavage. The point is
perhaps undiscussable, and is probably unimportant, except in
so far as the habit of regarding the world as actually so cloven
is a fruitful source of bogus entities, usually hypostatised
words. The temptation to introduce premature ultimates—Beauty
in Æsthetics, the Mind and its faculties in psychology, Life
in physiology, are representative examples—is especially great
for believers in Abstract Entities. The objection to such Ultimates
is that they bring an investigation to a dead end too suddenly.
An ultimate Good is, in this instance, just such an arbitrary
full stop.

It will be agreed that a less cryptic account of good, if one
can be given, which is in accordance with verifiable facts, would
be preferable, even though no means were available for refuting
the simpler theory. Upholders of this theory, however, have produced
certain arguments to show that no other view of good is possible,
and these must first be briefly examined. They provide, in addition,
an excellent example of the misuse of psychological assumptions
in research, for although a psychological approach is often of
the utmost service, it can also be a source of obscurantism and
over-confidence. The arguments against any naturalistic account
depend upon the alleged results of directly inspecting what is
before our minds when we judge that anything is good. If we substitute,
it is maintained, any account of good whatever for ‘good’ in
the assertion, ‘This is good’—for example, ‘This is desired’
or ‘This is approved’—we can detect that what is substituted
is different from ‘good’, and that we are not then making the
same judgment. This result, it is claimed, is confirmed by the
fact that we can always ask, “Is what is desired, or what is
approved, good?” however we may elaborate the account provided,
and that this is always a genuine question which would be impossible
were the substituted account actually the analysis of good.

The persuasiveness of this refutation is found to vary enormously
from individual to individual, for the results of the experiments
upon which it relies differ. Those who have accustomed themselves to
the belief that good is a supersensuous simple Idea readily discover
the fraudulent character of any offered substitute, while those who
hold some psychological theory of value, with equal ease identify
their account with ‘good’. The further question, “When and under what
conditions can judgments be distinguished?” arises, a question so
difficult to answer that any argument becomes suspect which depends
upon assuming that they can be infallibly recognised as different. If
for any reason we wish to distinguish two judgments, we can persuade
ourselves, in any case in which they are differently formulated, that
they are different. Thus it has been thought that ‘_a_ exceeds _b_’ and
‘_a_ is greater than _b_’ are distinguishable, the first being supposed
to state simply that _a_ has the relation ‘exceeds’ to _b_, while the
second is supposed to state that _a_ has the relation ‘is’ to _greater_
which again has the relation ‘than’ to _b_.[18] The conclusion to
be drawn from the application of such methods to the problem of the
meaning of Good would seem to be that they are not competent to decide
anything about it—by no means a valueless result.

Since nothing can be concluded from a comparison of ‘This is
good’ with, let us say, ‘This is sought by an impulse belonging
to a dominant group’, let us see whether light can be gained
by considering analogous instances in which special distinct
ideas have for a time been thought indispensable only to yield
later to analysis and substitution. The case of Beauty is perhaps
too closely related to that of Good for our purpose. Those who
can persuade themselves that Good is an unique irreducible entity
might believe the same of Beauty. An episode in the theory of
the tides is more instructive. It was once thought that the moon
must have a peculiar Affinity with water: When the moon is full
the tides are higher. Clearly the seas swell in sympathy with
the increase of the moon. The history of science is full of mysterious
unique entities which have gradually evaporated as explanation
advanced.

The struggles of economists with ‘utility’, of mathematical philosophers
with ‘points’ and ‘instants’, of biologists with ‘entelechies’,
and the adventures of psycho-analysts with ‘the libido’ and ‘the
collective unconscious’ are instances in point. At present theoretical
psychology in particular is largely made up of the manipulation
of similar suspects. The Act of Judgment, the relation of Presentation,
Immediate Awareness, Direct Inspection, the Will, Feeling, Assumption,
Acceptance, are only a few of the provisional ultimates introduced
for convenience of discussion. Some of them may in the end prove
to be indispensable, but meanwhile they are not, to prudent people,
more than symbolic conveniences; theories dependent upon them
must not be allowed to shut off from investigation fields which
may be fruitful.

[15] Throughout this discussion ‘experience’ will be used in a
wide sense to stand for any occurrence in the mind. It is equivalent
to ‘mental state, or process.’ The term has often unfortunate
suggestions of passiveness and of consciousness, but many of
the ‘experiences’ here referred to would ordinarily be called
‘actions’ and have parts which are not conscious and not accessible
to introspection as important as those which are.

[16] A chief advocate of this view is Dr G. E. Moore, whose _Principia
Ethica_ and _Ethics_ contain brilliant statements of the position.

[17] Cf. F. Brentano, _The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong_,
pp. 12, 46.

[18] Cf. Russell, _The Principles of Mathematics_, p. 100. “On this
principle, from which I can see no escape, that every genuine word
must have some meaning, the _is_ and _than_ must form part of ‘_a_
is greater than _b_’, which thus contains more than two terms and
a relation. The _is_ seems to state that _a_ has to _greater_ the
relation of referent, while the _than_ states similarly that _b_ has to
_greater_ the relation of relatum. But ‘_a_ exceeds _b_’ may be held to
express solely the relation of _a_ to _b_, without including any of the
implications of further relations.” On the introspective comparison of
judgments _The Meaning of Meaning_, by C. K. Ogden and the writer, may
be consulted.




CHAPTER VII

A Psychological Theory of Value

    Hands that can grasp, eyes
    that can dilate, hair that can rise
        if it must, these things are important not because a
  high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them, but because they are
    useful.—_Marianne Moore_.


The method then by which any attempt to analyse ‘good’ has been
condemned is itself objectionable, and yields no sound reason
why a purely psychological account of the differences between
good, bad, and indifferent experiences should not be given. The
data for the inquiry are in part supplied by anthropology. It
has become clear that the disparity among the states of mind
recognised as good by persons of different races, habits and
civilisations is overwhelming. Any observant child, it is true,
might discover in the home circle how widely people disagree,
but the effect of education is to suppress these scientific efforts.
It has needed the vast accumulations of anthropological evidence
now available to establish the fact that as the organisation
of life and affairs alters very different experiences are perceived
to be good or bad, are favoured or condemned. The Bakairi of
Central Brazil and the Tahitians, among others, are reported,
for example, to look upon eating with the same feelings which
we reserve for quite different physiological performances, and
to regard the public consumption of food as a grave breach of
decency. In many parts of the world feelings of forgiveness towards
enemies, for example, are looked upon as low and ignoble. The
experiences which one person values are thought vicious by another.
We must allow, it is true, for widespread confusion between intrinsic
and instrumental values, and for the difficulty of identifying
experiences. Many states of mind in other people which we judge
to be bad or indifferent are no doubt unlike what we imagine
them to be, or contain elements which we overlook, so that with
fuller knowledge we might discover them to be good. In this manner
it may be possible to reduce the reported disparity of value
intuitions, but few people acquainted with the varying moral
judgments of mankind will doubt that circumstances and necessities,
present and past, explain our approval and disapproval. We start,
then, with a hearty scepticism of all immediate intuitions, and
inquire how it is that individuals in different conditions, and
at different stages of their development, esteem things so differently.

With the exception of some parents and nursemaids we have lately
all been aghast at revelations of the value judgments of infants.
Their impulses, their desires, their preferences, the things
which they esteem, as displayed by the psycho-analysts, strike
even those whose attitude towards humanity is not idealistic
with some dismay. Even when the stories are duly discounted,
enough which is verifiable remains for _infans polypervers_
to present a truly impressive figure dominating all future psychological
inquiry into value.

There is no need here to examine in detail how these early impulses
are diverted and disguised by social pressures. The rough outlines
are familiar of the ways in which by growth, by the appearance
of fresh instinctive tendencies, by increase of knowledge and
of command over the world, under the control of custom, magical
beliefs, public opinion, inculcation and example, the primitive
new-born animal may be gradually transformed into a bishop. At
every stage in the astonishing metamorphosis, the impulses, desires,
and propensities of the individual take on a new form, or, it
may be, a further degree of systematisation. This systematisation
is never complete. Always some impulse, or set of impulses, can
be found which in one way or another interferes, or conflicts,
with others. It may do so in two ways, directly or indirectly.
Some impulses are in themselves psychologically incompatible,
some are incompatible only indirectly, through producing contrary
effects in the world outside. The difficulty some people have
in smoking and writing at the same time is a typical instance
of the first kind of incompatibility; the two activities get
in each other’s way by a psychological accident as it were. Interference
of this kind can be overcome by practice to an unexpected degree,
as the feats of jugglers show; some, however, are insurmountable;
and these incompatibilities are often, as we shall see, of supreme
consequence in moral development. Indirect incompatibilities
arising through the consequences of our acts are more easy to
find. Our whole existence is one long study of them, from the
infant’s first choice whether he shall use his mouth for screaming
or for sucking, to the last codicil to his Will.

These are simple instances, but the conduct of life is throughout
an attempt to organise impulses so that success is obtained for
the greater number or mass of them, for the most important and
the weightiest set. And here we come face to face again with
the problem of value. How shall we decide which among these are
more important than: others, and how shall we distinguish different
organisations as yielding more or less value one than another?
At this point we need to be on our guard not to smuggle in any
peculiar ethical, non-psychological, idea under some disguise,
under ‘important’ or ‘fundamental’, for example.

Among those who reject any metaphysical view of value it has
become usual to define value as capacity for satisfying feeling
and desire in various intricate ways.[19] For the purpose of tracing
in detail the very subtle and varied modes in which people actually
value things, a highly intricate treatment is indispensable,
but here a simpler definition will suffice.

We may start from the fact that impulses may be divided into
appetencies and aversions, and begin by saying that anything
is valuable which satisfies an appetency or ‘seeking after.’
The term ‘desire’ would do as well if we could avoid the implication
of accompanying conscious beliefs as to what is sought and a
further restriction to felt and recognised longings. The term
‘want’ used so much by economists has the same disadvantages.
Appetencies may be, and for the most part are, unconscious, and
to leave out those which we cannot discover by introspection
would involve extensive errors. For the same reason it is wiser
not to start from feeling. Appetencies then, rather than felt
appetencies or desires, shall be our starting-point.

The next step is to agree that apart from consequences anyone
_will actually prefer_ to satisfy a greater number of equal
appetencies rather than a less. Observation of people’s behaviour,
including our own, is probably sufficient to establish this agreement.
If now we look to see what consequences can intervene to upset
this simple principle, we shall find that only interferences,
immediate or remote, direct: or indirect, with other appetencies,
need to be considered. The only _psychological_ restraints
upon appetencies are other appetencies.[20]

We can now extend our definition. Anything is valuable which
will satisfy an appetency without involving the frustration of
some equal or _more important_ appetency; in other words,
the only reason which can be given for not satisfying a desire
is that more important desires will thereby be thwarted. Thus
morals become purely prudential, and ethical codes merely the
expression of the mast general scheme of expediency[21] to which
an individual or a race has attained. But we have still to say
what ‘important’ stands for in this formulation. (Cf. p. 51).

There are certain evident priorities among impulses, some of
which have been studied in various ways by economists under the
headings of primary wants and secondary wants. Some needs or
impulses must be satisfied in order that others may be possible.
We must eat, drink, sleep, breathe, protect ourselves and carry
on an immense physiological business as a condition for any further
activities. Some of these impulses, breathing, for example, can
be satisfied directly, but most of them involve us in complicated
cycles of instrumental labour. Man for the most part must exert
himself half his life to satisfy even the primitive needs, and
these activities, failing other means of reaching the same ends,
share their priority. In their turn they involve as conditions
a group of impulses, whose satisfaction becomes only second in
importance to physiological necessities, those, namely, upon
which communication and the ability to co-operate depend. But
these, since man is a social creature, also become more directly
necessary to his well-being.

The very impulses which enable him to co-operate in gaining his
dinner would themselves, if not satisfied, wreck by their mere
frustration all his activities. This happens all through the
hierarchy. Impulses, whose exercise may have been originally
only important as means, and which might once have been replaced
by quite different sets, become in time necessary conditions
for innumerable quite different performances. Objects, again,
originally valued because they satisfy one need, are found later
to be also capable of satisfying others. Dress, for example,
appears to have originated in magical, ‘life-giving,’ ornaments[22],
but so many other interests derive satisfaction from it that
controversy can still arise as to its primitive uses.

The instances of priorities given must only be taken as examples.
It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that for a civilised
man, activities originally valuable as means only, often become
so important through their connections with the rest of his activities,
that life without them is regarded as intolerable. Thus acts
which will debar him from his normal relations with his fellows
are often avoided, even at the cost of death. Total cessation
of all activities is preferred to the dreadful thwarting and
privation which would ensue. The case of the soldier, or of the
conscientious objector, is thus no exception to the principle.
Life deprived of all but the barest physiological necessities,
for example, prison life, is for many people worse than non-existence.
Those who even so incur it in defence of some ‘moral ideal’ do
so because they are so organised, either permanently or temporarily,
that only in this way can their dominant impulses secure satisfaction.
The self-regarding impulses form only a part of the total activities
of social man, and the impulse of the martyr to bear witness
at any cost to what he regards as truth, is only one extreme
instance of the degree to which other impulses often assume supremacy.

For another reason any priorities mentioned must be taken only
as illustrations. We do not know enough yet about the precedences,
the hierarchies, the modes of systematisation, actual and possible,
in that unimaginable organisation, the mind, to say what order
in any case actually exists, or between what the order holds.
We only know that a growing order is the principle of the mind,
that its function is to co-ordinate, and we can detect that in
some of its forms the precedence is different from that in others.
This we could do by observation, by comparing the drunken man
with the sober, but from our own experience of our own activity
we can go much further. We can feel differences between clear
coherent thinking and confusion or stupidity, between free, controlled
emotional response and dull or clogged impassivity, between moments
when we do with our bodies more delicate and dexterous things
than seem possible, and moments of clumsiness, when we are ‘all
thumbs’, have no ‘balance’ or ‘timing’, and nothing ‘comes off’.
These differences are differences in momentary organisation,
differences in precedence between rival possible systematisations.
The more permanent and more specifically ‘moral’ differences
between individuals grow out of differences such as these and
correspond to similar precedences between larger systems.

The complications possible in the systematisation of impulses
might be illustrated indefinitely. The plasticity of special
appetencies and activities varies enormously. Some impulses can
be diverted more easily than others. Sex has a wider range of
satisfactions than hunger, for example; some are weaker than
others; some (not the same necessarily) can be suppressed in
the long run with less difficulty. Some can be modified; some
obey the ‘all or none’ rule—they must either be satisfied specifically
or completely inhibited—well-established habits may have this
peculiarity. In judging the importance of any impulse all these
considerations must be taken into account. The affiliations of
impulses, at present often inexplicable, need especially to be
considered. Within the whole partially systematised organisation,
numerous sub-systems can be found, and what would be expected
to be quite trivial impulses are often discovered to be important,
because they belong to powerful groups. Thus there are reasonable
persons who, without a high polish on their shoes, are almost
incapacitated.

The importance of an impulse, it will be seen, can be defined
for our purposes as _the extent of the disturbance of other
impulses in the individual’s activities which the thwarting of
the impulse involves_. A vague definition, it is true, but
therefore suitable to our at present incomplete and hazy knowledge
of how impulses are related. It will be observed that no special
ethical idea is introduced. We can now take our next step forward
and inquire into the relative merits of different systematisations.

No individual can live one minute without a very intricate and,
so far as it goes, very perfect co-ordination of impulses. It
is only when we pass from the activities which from second to
second maintain life to those which from hour to hour determine
what kind of life it shall be, that we find wide differences.
Fortunately for psychology we can each find wide enough differences
in ourselves from hour to hour. Most people in the same day are
Bonaparte and Oblomov by turns. Before breakfast Diogenes, after
dinner Petronius or Bishop Usher. But throughout these mutations
certain dispositions usually remain much the same, those which
govern public behaviour in a limited number of affairs varying
very greatly from one society or civilisation to another. Every
systematisation in the degree to which it is stable involves
a degree of sacrifice, but for some the price to be paid in opportunities
foregone is greater than for others. By the extent of the loss,
the range of impulses thwarted or starved, and their degree of
importance, the merit of a systematisation is judged. That organisation
which is least wasteful of human possibilities is, in short,
the best. Some individuals, hag-ridden by their vices, or their
virtues, to a point at which the law of diminishing returns has
deprived even these of their appropriate satisfactions, are still
unable to reorganise; they go through life incapacitated for
most of its possible enjoyments.[23] Others, paralysed with their
conflicts, are unable to do anything freely; whatever they attempt
some implicated but baffled impulse is still fitfully and fretfully
stirring. The debauchee and the victim of conscience alike have
achieved organisations whose price in sacrifice is excessive.
Both their individual satisfactions, and those for which they
are dependent upon sympathetic relations with their fellows,
an almost equal group, are unduly restricted. Upon grounds of
prudence alone they have been injudicious, and they may be condemned
without any appeal to peculiarly ‘ethical’ standards. The muddle
in which they are forced to live is itself sufficient ground
for reprobation.

At the other extreme are those fortunate people who have achieved
an ordered life, whose systems have developed clearing-houses
by which the varying claims of different impulses are adjusted.
Their free, untrammelled activity gains for them a maximum of
varied satisfactions and involves a minimum of suppression and
sacrifice. Particularly is this so with regard to those satisfactions
which require humane, sympathetic, and friendly relations between
individuals. The charge of egoism, or selfishness, can be brought
against a naturalistic or utilitarian morality such as this only
by overlooking the importance of these satisfactions in any well-balanced
life. Unfair or aggressive behaviour, and preoccupation with
self-regarding interests to the exclusion of due sensitiveness
to the reciprocal claims of human intercourse, lead to a form
of organisation which deprives the person so organised of whole
ranges of important values. No mere loss of social pleasures
is in question, but a twist or restriction of impulses, whose
normal satisfaction is involved in almost all the greatest goods
of life. The two senses in which a man may ‘take advantage’ of
his fellows can be observed in practice to conflict. Swindling
and bullying, whether in business matters or in personal relations,
have their cost; which the best judges agree to be excessive.
And the greater part of the cost lies of in the consequences
of being found out, in the loss of social esteem and so forth,
but in actual systematic disability to attain important values.

Although the person who habitually disregards the claims of his
fellows to fair treatment and sympathetic understanding may be
condemned, in most cases, upon the ground of his own actual loss
of values in such behaviour, this of course is not the reason
for the steps which may have to be taken against him. It may
very well be the case that a person’s own interests are such
that, _if he understood them_, were well organised in other
words, he would be a useful and charming member of his community;
but, so long as people are about who are not well organised,
communities must protect themselves. They can defend their action
on the ground that the general loss of value which would follow
if they did not protect themselves far outweighs such losses
as are incurred by the people whom they suppress or deport.

To extend this individual morality to communal affairs is not
difficult. Probably the best brief statement upon the point is
the following note by Bentham, if we interpret ‘happiness’ in
his formula not as pleasure but as the satisfaction of impulses.

                                    _June_ 29, 1827.

1. Constantly actual end of action on the part of every individual
at the moment of action, his greatest happiness, according to
his view of it at that moment.

2. Constantly proper end of action on the part of every individual
at the moment of action, his real greatest happiness from that
moment to the end of life.

3. Constantly proper end of action on the part of every individual
considered as trustee for the community, of which he is considered
as a member, the greatest happiness of that same community, in
so far as it depends upon the interest which forms the bond of
union between its members.[24]

But communities, as is well known, tend to behave in the same
way to people who are better organised as well as to people who
are worse organised than the standard of the group. They deal
with Socrates or Bruno as severely as with Turpin or Bottomley.
Thus mere interference with ordinary activities is not by itself
a sufficient justification for excluding from the group people
who are different and therefore nuisances. The precise nature
of the difference must be considered, and whether and to what
degree it is the group, not the exceptional member, which ought
to be condemned. The extent to which alteration is practicable
is also relevant, and the problem in particular cases becomes
very intricate.

But the final court of appeal concerns itself in such cases with
questions, not of the wishes of majorities, but of the actual
range and degree of satisfaction which different possible systematisations
of impulse yield. Resentment at interference and gratitude for
support and assistance are to be distinguished from disapproval
and approval. The esteem and respect accorded to persons with
the social[25] virtues well developed is only in a small degree
due to the use which we find we can make of them. It is much
more a sense that their lives are rich and full.

When any desire is denied for the sake of another, the approved
and accepted activity takes on additional value; it is coveted
and pursued all the more for what it has cost. Thus the spectacle
of other people enjoying both activities without difficulty,
thanks to some not very obvious adjustment, is peculiarly distressing,
and such people are usually regarded as especially depraved.
In different circumstances this view may or may not be justified.
The element of sacrifice exacted by any stable system explains
to a large extent the tenacity with which custom is clung to,
the intolerance directed sea innovations, the fanaticism of converts,
the hypocrisy of teachers, and many other lamentable phenomena
of the moral attitudes. However much an individual may privately
find his personality varying from hour to hour, he is compelled
to join in maintaining a public facade of some rigidity and buttressed
with every contrivance which can be invented. The Wills of Gods,
the Conscience, the Catechism, Taboos, Immediate Intuitions,
Penal Laws, Public Opinion, Good Form, are all more or less ingenious
and efficient devices with the same aim—to secure the uniformity
which social life requires. By their means and by Custom, Convention,
and Superstition, the underlying basis of morality, the effort
to attain maximum satisfaction through coherent systematisation,
is a veiled and disguised to an extraordinary degree. Whence
arise great difficulties and many disasters. It is so necessary
and so difficult to secure a stable and general system of public
behaviour that any means whatever are justifiable, failing the
discovery of better. All societies hitherto achieved, however,
involve waste and misery of appalling extent.

Any public code of behaviour must, it is generally agreed, represent
a cruder and more costly systematisation than those attained
to by many of the individuals who live under the code, a point
obviously to be remembered in connection with censorship problems.
Customs change more slowly than conditions, and every change
in conditions brings with it new possibilities of systematisation.
None of the afflictions of humanity are worse than its obsolete
moral principles. Consider the effects of the obsolete virtues
of nationalism under modern conditions, or the absurdity of the
religious attitude to birth control. The present lack of plasticity
in such things involves a growing danger. Human conditions and
possibilities have altered more in a hundred years than they
had in the previous ten thousand, and the next fifty may overwhelm
us, unless we can devise a more adaptable morality. The view
that what we need in this tempestuous turmoil of change is a
Rock to shelter under or to cling to, pane than an efficient
aeroplane in which to ride it, is comprehensible but mistaken.

To guard against a possible misunderstanding it may be added
that the organisation and systematisation of which I have been
speaking in this chapter are not primarily an affair of conscious
planning or arrangement, as this is understood, for example,
by a great business house or by a railway. (Cf. p. 202.) We pass
as a rule from a chaotic to a better organised state by ways
which we know nothing about. Typically through the influence
of other minds. Literature and the arts are the chief means by
which these influences are diffused. It should be unnecessary
to insist upon the degree to which high civilisation, in other
words, free, varied and unwasteful life, depends upon them in
a numerous society.


[19] E.g., “The value of the object is its capacity of becoming
the object of feeling and desire through actualisation of dispositional
tendencies by acts of presumption, judgment, and assumption.”
Urban, _Valuation_, p. 53.

[20] Or, of course, aversions. In what follows we shall take no
further note of aversions. To do so would introduce inessential
complications. The omission in no way affects the argument, since
for our present purposes they may be counted in with appetencies.

[21] This view plainly has close connections with Utilitarianism.
In fact if Bentham’s editor is to be trusted in his interpretation
of his master’s doctrine, it would be what Bentham intended to
teach. “The term nearest to being synonymous with pleasure is
_volition_: what it pleases a man to do is simply what he
wills to do. . . . What a man wills to do, or what he pleases
to do, may be far from giving him enjoyment; yet shall we say
that in doing it, he is not following his own pleasure? .. .
A native of Japan, when he is offended, stabs himself to prove
the intensity of his feelings. It is difficult to prove enjoyment
in this case: yet the man obeyed his impulses.” John Hill Burton,
_Jeremy Bentham’s Works_, vol. 1, p. 22.

[22] Cf. W. J. Perry, _The Origin of Magic and Religion_,
p. 15.

[23] Both ‘enjoyment’ and ‘satisfaction’ are unsuitable terms
in this connection. An unfortunate linguistic gap must be recognised.
The full exercise of an activity is commonly its own ‘satisfaction’,
and, as we shall see later, what pleasure may accompany it is
derivative and incidental.

“Beatitudo non est virtutis premium, sed ipsa virtus.”

[24] _Works_, Vol. X, p. 560.

[25] Not necessarily ‘social workers.’ Only personal communication
can show who have the virtues here referred to.




CHAPTER VIII

Art and Morals

            Com, no more,
    This is meer moral babble, and direct
    Against the canon laws of our foundation.—_Comus_.


From this excursus let us return to our proper task, the attempt
to outline a morality which will change its values as circumstances
alter, a morality free from occultism, absolutes and arbitrariness,
a morality which will explain, as no morality has yet explained,
the place and value of the arts in human affairs. What is good
or valuable, we have said, is the exercise of impulses and the
satisfaction of their appetencies. When we say that anything
is good we mean that it satisfies, and by a good experience we
mean one in which the impulses which make it are fulfilled and
successful, adding as the necessary qualification that their
exercise and satisfaction shall not interfere in any way with
more important impulses. Importance we have seen to be a complicated
matter, and which impulses are by an extensive inquiry into what
actually happens. The problem of morality then, the problem of
how we are to obtain the greatest possible value from life, becomes
a problem of organisation, both in the individual life and in
the adjustment of individual lives to one another, and is delivered
from all non-psychological ideas, from absolute goods and immediate
convictions, which incidentally help greatly to give unnecessary
stiffness and fixity to obsolescent codes. Without system, needless
to say, value vanishes, since in a state of chaos important and
trivial impulses alike are frustrated.

A minor problem may occur here to the reader. It concerns the
choice between a ‘crowded hour’ and an age without a name, and
the place of the time factor in valuation. There are many very
valuable states which cannot last very long in the nature of
the case, and some of these seem to have disabling consequences.
But, to take merely the most interesting instance, if we knew
more about the nervous constitution of genius we might discover
that the instability from which so many people suffer who are
at times best able to actualise the possibilities of life is
merely a consequence of their plasticity; not in the least a
price which they pay for such ‘high moments,’ but rather a result
in systems of great delicacy of wear and tear at lower levels
of adjustment. It is generally those who have the least refined
views of value who most readily believe that highly valuable
hours must be paid for afterwards. Their conception of a ‘hectic
time’ as the summit of human possibilities explains the opinion.
For those who find that the most valuable experiences are those
which are also most fruitful of further valuable experiences
no problem arises. To the query whether they prefer a long life
to a joyous one, they will reply that they find very satisfactory
a life which is both.

The most valuable states of mind then are those which involve
the widest and most comprehensive co-ordination of activities
and the least curtailment, conflict, starvation and restriction.
States of mind in general are valuable in the degree in which
they tend to reduce waste and frustration. We must be careful
in considering this formulation to remember how varied human
activities are and avoid, for example, undue admiration for practical
efficient persons whose emotional life is suppressed. But, thanks
to the psycho-analysts, we are hardly likely at the moment to
overlook the consequences of suppressions.

It is plain that no one systematisation can claim a supreme position.
Men are naturally different and in any society specialisation
is inevitable. There are evidently a great number of good systematisations
and what is good for one person will not be good for another.
A sailor, a doctor, a mathematician and a poet can hardly have
the same organisation throughout. With different conditions different
values necessarily arise. Doubtless conditions may be, and too
often are, such that no life of high value is possible. With
a naturalistic morality the reasons for altering them and the
way to do so both become clearer. But even with our present resources
and command over nature, it is universally agreed that intelligence
and goodwill could contrive that no man should be so situated
as to be deprived of all the generally accessible values. The
clearing away from moral questions of all ethical lumber and
superstitious interpolations is a step long overdue in this undertaking.
But until it has been carried further, so it is often thought,
to be busied with such apparently ‘unpractical’ activities as
art or criticism is to behave too much like a passenger on a
short-handed ship. This is true enough doubtless of some who
so busy themselves. But it is not true that criticism is a luxury
trade. The rear-guard of society cannot be extricated until the
vanguard has gone further. Goodwill and intelligence are still
too little available. The critic, we have said, is as much concerned
with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of
the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values.
What are the other qualifications required we shall see later.
For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions
of the artist an appraisal of existence. Matthew Arnold when
he said that poetry is a criticism of life was saying something
so obvious that it is constantly overlooked. The artist is concerned
with the record and perpetuation of the experiences which seem
to him most worth having. For reasons which we shall consider
in Chapter XXII, he is also the man who is most likely to have
experiences of value to record. He is the point at which the
growth of the mind shows itself. His experiences those at least
which give value to his work, represent conciliations of impulses
which in most minds are still confused, intertrammelled and conflicting.
His work is the ordering of what in most minds is disordered.
That his _failures_ to bring order out of chaos are often
more conspicuous than those of other men is due in part at least
to his greater audacity; it is a penalty of ambition and a consequence
of his greater plasticity. But when he succeeds, the value of
what he has accomplished is found always in a more perfect organisation
which makes more of the possibilities of response and activity
available.

What value is and which experiences are most valuable will never
be understood so long as we think in terms of those large abstractions,
the virtues and the vices. “You do invert the covenants of her
trust,” said Comus, that disreputable advocate of Utilitarianism,
to the Lady, that enemy of Nature. Instead of recognising that
value lies in the ‘minute particulars’ of response and attitude,
we have tried to find it in conformity to abstract prescriptions
and general rules of conduct. The artist is an expert in the
‘minute particulars’ and _qua_ artist pays little or no
attention to generalisations which he finds in actual: practice
are too crude to discriminate between what is valuable and the
reverse. For this reason the moralist has always tended to distrust
or to ignore him. Yet since the fine conduct of life springs
only from fine ordering of responses far too subtle to be touched
by any general ethical maxims, this neglect of art by the moralist
has been tantamount to a disqualification. The basis of morality,
as Shelley insisted, is laid not by preachers but by poets. Bad
taste and crude responses are not mere flaws in an otherwise
admirable person. They are actually a root evil from which other
defects follow. No life can be excellent in which the elementary
responses are disorganised and confused.




CHAPTER IX

Actual and Possible Misapprehensions

                                    Who
  Saith that? It is not written so on high!—_Cain_.


Every true view, perhaps, has its crude analogues, due sometimes
to a confused perception of the real state of affairs, sometimes
to faulty statement. Often these clumsy or mistaken offshoots
are responsible for the difficulty with which the true view gains
acceptance. Like shadows, reflections, or echoes, they obscure
and baffle apprehension. Nowhere are they more inconvenient than
in the problem of the moral function of art. A consideration
of some instances will help to make clearer what has been said,
to distinguish the view recommended from its disreputable relatives
and to remove possible misapprehensions.

Allusion has several times been made to Tolstoy, and nothing
in the recent history of æsthetic opinion is so remarkable as
the onslaught made by that great artist against all the arts.
No better example could be found of how _not_ to introduce
moral preoccupations into the judgment of values. Blinded by
the light of a retarded conversion, knowing, as an artist, the
extreme importance of the arts, but forgetting in the fierceness
of his new convictions all the experience that had in earlier
years made up his own creations, he flung himself, a Principle
in each hand, upon the whole host of European masterpieces and
left as he believed hardly a survivor standing.

He begins by emphasising the enormous output of energy which is devoted
to Art in civilised countries. He then very rightly asserts that it is
of great importance to know what this activity is about; and he devotes
thirty pages to the various definitions which have been attempted of
Art and Beauty. He concludes, after ransacking the somewhat uncritical
compilations of Schasler and Knight, that æsthetics have been hitherto
an idle amalgam of reverie and phantasy, from which no definition of
Art emerges. Partly he traces this result to the use in æsthetics of
notions of beauty; partly to an anxiety in the critics to justify the
existent forms of Art. They are, he insists, less concerned to discover
what Art is, than to show that those things which are currently termed
Art must in fact be Art. To these sections of _What is Art?_ assent may
be accorded. He then sets out his own definition. “To evoke in oneself
a sensation which one has experienced before, and having evoked it in
oneself, to communicate this sensation in such a way that others may
experience the same sensation . . . so that other men are infected by
these sensations and pass through them; in this does the activity of
Art consist.”[26] So far excellent; if we translate ‘sensation’, the
current æsthetico-psychological jargon of the art schools in Tolstoy’s
day, by some more general term such as experience. But this is only a
first stage of the definition; there are additions to be made. Any Art
which is infective, as he uses that word in the quotation above, is
pure Art as opposed to modern or adulterated Art; but in deciding the
full value of any work of Art we have to consider the nature of its
contents, the nature, that is, of the experiences communicated. The
value of art contents is judged, according to Tolstoy, by the religious
consciousness of the age. For Tolstoy the religious consciousness is
the higher comprehension of the meaning of life, and this, according to
him, is the universal union of men with God and with one another.

When Tolstoy applies his criterion to the judgment of particular
works of art, he is able to deduce striking results: “Christian Art,
that is, the Art of our time, must be catholic in the direct sense
of that word—that is, universal—and so must unite all men. There are
but two kinds of sensations which unite all men—the sensations which
arise from the recognition of man’s filial relation to God and of
the brotherhood of men, and the simplest vital sensations which are
accessible to all men without exception, such as the sensations of joy,
meekness of spirit, alacrity, calm, etc. It is only these two kinds
of sensations that form the subject of the Art of our time, which is
good according to its contents.” Tolstoy in fact denied the value of
all human endeavours except those which tend _directly_ to the union
of men. It may be suspected that his religious enthusiasm was due
to his belief that Religion had this tendency. He distinguished, it
will be remembered, very sharply between Religion and religions; a
distinction with which many besides Tolstoy have consoled themselves.
But his essential aim, his single value, was the union of men. All
other things are of value only in so far as they tend to promote this,
and art shares the general subordination. Even a joke, for Tolstoy, is
only a joke so long as all men may share in it, a truly revolutionary
amendment. The sharing is more important than the merriment. On these
principles he surveys European Art and Literature. With magnificent
defiance of accepted values, and the hardness of heart of a supreme
doctrinaire, one after another of the unassailables is toppled from
its eminence. Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, etc., are rejected; Wagner
in especial is the object of a critical _tour de force_. In their
place are set _A Tale of Two Cities_, _The Chimes_, _Adam Bede_, _Les
Miserables_ (almost the only thing in French literature of which
Tolstoy could approve), and _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_.[27] All art which does
not directly urge the union of men, or whose appeal is suspected to be
limited to cultured and aristocratic circles, is condemned. “All who
are not hand in hand with me are against me,” thought Tolstoy, under
the urgency of his sense of human misery. Any diversion of art from a
single narrow channel seemed to him an irreparable waste. Remembering
no doubt how deeply he had been affected and influenced in the past
by the things which he now deplored, he came in the end to assign
unlimited powers to art when rightly directed. But, if we think of the
other things which he also invoked to the same end, there is a ring of
despair in his final cry: “Art must remove violence, only Art can do
this.”

We may compare with this a famous utterance of another aristocrat,
equally a supreme artist, equally in rebellion against the whole
fabric of conventional civilisation, whose “passion for reforming
the world” was not less than Tolstoy’s, but who differed from
him in the possession of a wider and more complete sense of values
and a mind not riven and distorted by a late conversion.

“The whole objection of the immorality of poetry rests upon a
misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the
moral improvement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements
which poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes
examples of civil and domestic life: nor is it for want of admirable
doctrines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive
and subjugate one another.

“But poetry acts in a diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges
the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand
unapprehended combinations of thought. Whatever strengthens and
purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit
to sense, is useful. It exceeds all imagination to conceive what
would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante,
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon,
nor Milton, had ever existed.”

It is curious how the insertion of particular names here seems
to weaken the argument. The world, we feel fairly certain, would
be on the whole much the same even if there had been no Boccaccio
and no Lord Bacon. Things would not be very different, some people
will think, even if none of these authors had ever bestirred
themselves to write. Shakespeare, as so often, would perhaps
be counted an exception. But this sense that there are, after
all, very few poets who individually make much difference is
not in the least an objection to Shelley’s main thesis. We could
bale a vast amount of water out of the sea without making any
apparent difference to it, but this would not prove that it does
not consist of water. Even if the removal of the influence of
all the poets whose names we know made no appreciable difference
in human affairs, it would still be true that the enlargement
of the mind, the widening of the sphere of human sensibility,
is brought about through poetry.



A too narrow view of values, or a too simple conception of morality
is usually the cause of these misunderstandings of the arts.
The agelong controversy as to whether the business of poetry
is to please or to instruct shows this well. “Poets wish either
to instruct or to delight or to combine solid and useful with
the agreeable.” “It is only for the purpose of being useful that
Poetry ought to be agreeable; pleasure is only a means which
she uses for the end of profit.” So thought Boileau and Rapin.
Dryden, modest and penetrating in his fashion, was “satisfied
if it cause delight: for delight is the chief, if not the only,
end of poetry: instruction can be admitted but in the second
place; for poesy only instructs as it delights.” But he does
not further specify the nature of the delight or the instruction,
an omission in which most critics except Shelley agree. Our view
on the point entirely depends upon this. If we set the sugarcoated-pill
view aside as beneath serious consideration, there still remains
a problem. A reviewer of the recent performance of the _Cenci_
will state it excellently for us.

“It had been better had Shelley’s _Cenci_ remained for ever
banned. It represents three hours of unrelieved, agonising misery.
. . . What excuse is there for the depicting of horrors such
as these? There must be some, for a house packed with literary
celebrities fiercely applauded. If the function of the theatre
is to amuse, then in the presentation of the _Cenci_ it
has missed its aim. If it is to instruct, what moral can be pointed
for the better conduct of our lives by a tragedy such as this?
If Art be the answer, then Art may well be sacrificed.”

No doubt the literary celebrities, with their applause, were
to blame, in part, for this. Our relic of the Age of Good Sense
made a just reaction. He accurately registered the effect to
which bad acting and inept production[28] gave rise. But it is
with his argument not with his reaction that we are concerned.
The celebrities, if they had not been too busy giving vent (though
in a mistaken form) to their loyalty to the memory of Shelley,
and to their sense of triumph over the Censor, might have told
him that neither amusement nor instruction is what the judicious
seek from Tragedy, and referred him to Aristotle. Neither term,
unless we wrench it right out of its usual setting, is appropriate
to the greater forms of art. The experiences which they occasion
are too full, too varied, too whole, too subtly balanced upon
opposing impulses, whether of pity and terror or of joy and despair,
to be so easily described. Tragedy—

            beneath whose sable roof
    Of boughs as if for festal purpose decked
    With unrejoicing berries—ghostly shapes
    May meet at noontide; Fear and Trembling Hope,
    Silence and Foresight, Death the Skeleton
    And Time the Shadow,

is still the form under which the mind may most clearly and freely
contemplate the human situation, its issues unclouded, its possibilities
revealed. To this its value is due and the supreme position among
the arts which it has occupied in historical times and still
occupies; what will happen in the future we can only conjecture.
Tragedy is too great an exercise of the spirit to be classed
among amusements or even delights, or to be regarded as a vehicle
for the inculcation of such crude valuations as may be codified
in a moral. But the fuller discussion of Tragedy we must defer.

These remarks seemed necessary in order to avoid the impression,
which our theory of value might have given, that the arts are
merely concerned with happy solutions and ingenious reconciliations
of diverse gratifications, “a box where sweets compacted lie.”
It is not so. Only a crude psychology, as we shall see, would
identify the satisfaction of an impulse with a pleasure. No hedonic
theory of value will fit the facts over even a small part of
the field, since it must take what is a concomitant merely of
a phase in the process of satisfaction as the mainspring of the
whole. Pleasure, however, has its place in the whole account
of values, and an important place, as we shall see later. But
it must not be allowed to encroach on ground to which it has
no right.


[26] _What is Art?_ Section V.

[27] _What is Art?_ Section XVI.

[28] “This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful and
monstrous: anything like a dry exhibition of it on the stage
would be insupportable. The person who would treat such a subject
must increase the ideal, and diminish the actual horror of the
events.” From Shelley’s preface. The producers, however, were
of the contrary opinion.




CHAPTER X

Poetry for Poetry’s Sake

    On passe plus facilement d’un extrême à un autre
        que d’une nuance à une autre nuance.
                                    _Attirance de la Mort_.


Another possible misapprehension which cannot be left unmentioned
arises in connection with the doctrine ‘Art for Art’s sake’,
a doctrine definitely and detrimentally dated; it concerns the
place of what are called ulterior effects in the valuing of a
work of art. It has been very fashionable to turn up the nose
at any attempt to apply, as it is said, ‘external canons’ to
art. But it may be recalled that of all the great critical doctrines,
the ‘moral’, theory of art (it would be better to call it the
‘Ordinary values’ theory) has the most great minds behind it.
Until Whistler came to start the critical movements of the last
half-century, few poets, artists or critics had ever doubted
that the value of art experiences was to be judged as other values
are. Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Dante, Spenser, Milton, the Eighteenth
Century, Coleridge, Shelley, Matthew Arnold and Pater, to name
only the most prominent, all with varying degrees of refinement,
held the same view.[29] The last is a somewhat unexpected adherent.

“Given the conditions I have tried to explain as constituting
good art, then if it be devoted further to the increase of men’s
happiness, to the redemption of the oppressed, or to the enlargement
of our sympathies with each other, or to such presentment of
new and old truth about ourselves and our relation to the world
as may fortify us in our sojourn here . . . it will also be great
art; if, over and above those qualities which I have summed up
. . . it has something of the soul of humanity in it, and finds
its logical, its architectural place, in the great structure
of human life.”[30] No better brief emotive account of the conditions
under which an experience has value could be desired.

Against all these weighty opinions, the view—supported largely
by a distinction between Form and Content, Subject and Handling,
which will be examined elsewhere,[31] and relying upon the doctrine
of intrinsic, supersensible, ultimate Goods discussed above—that
the values of art are unique, or capable of being considered
in isolation from all others, has held sway for some thirty years
in many most reputable quarters. The reasons for this attempted
severance have already been touched upon; they are of all sorts.
Partly it may be due to the influence of Whistler and Pater,
and of those still more influential disciples who spread their
doctrines. Partly it may be due to a massed reaction against
Ruskin. Partly again we may suspect the influence, rather suddenly
encountered, of Continental and German æsthetics upon the English
mind. Almost from the beginning of scientific æsthetics, the
insistence on the æsthetic experience as an experience, peculiar,
complete, and capable of being studied in isolation, has received
prominence. Often it is no more than an extension into this considering,
whenever possible, one thing at a time. When critics in England,
not very long ago, heard that there was something connected with
art and poetry—namely, the æsthetic experience—which could be
considered and examined in isolation by the methods of introspection,
they not unnaturally leapt to the conclusion that its value also
could be isolated and described without reference to other things.
In some hands the further conclusions drawn were too queer to
outlive their hour of fashion. They amounted often to the postulation
of a ‘specific thrill’ yielded by works of art and nothing else,
unlike and unconnected with all other experiences. “No queerer,”
it was said, “than anything else in this incredibly queer universe.”[32]
But the queerness of the universe is of a different and a more
interesting sort. It may be a curiosity shop but it nowhere seems
to be a chaos.

For our present purposes we need only consider the view as it
is put forward by its ablest exponent, a critic who by his own
explanations of this formula goes very far towards meeting the
objection we urge.

“What then does the formula ‘Poetry for Poetry’s sake’ tell us
about this experience? It says, as I understand it, these things.
First, this experience is an end in itself, is worth having on
ifs own account, has an intrinsic value. Next, its _poetic_
value is this intrinsic worth alone. Poetry may have also have
an ulterior value as a means to culture or religion; because
it conveys instruction or softens the passions, or furthers a
good cause; because it brings the poet fame, or money, or a quiet
conscience. So much the better: let it be valued for these reasons
too. But its ulterior worth neither is nor can directly determine
its poetic worth as a satisfying imaginative experience; and
this is to be judged entirely from within. . . . The consideration
of ulterior ends whether by the poet in the act of composing
or by the reader in the act of experiencing, tends to lower poetic
value. It does so because it tends to change the nature of poetry
by taking it out of its own atmosphere. For its nature is to
be not a part, nor yet a copy of the real world (as we commonly
understand that phrase) but to be a world by itself, independent,
complete, autonomous[33].”

There seem four points well worth close consideration here. The
first is that the things mentioned as possible ulterior values
in Dr Bradley’s list—culture, religion, instruction, softening
of the passions, furtherance of good causes, the poet’s fame,
or money, or quiet conscience—these things are plainly upon quite
different levels. He says of all of them that they cannot possibly
determine the poetic worth of an æsthetic experience; that whether
or no any poetic experience is poetically valuable cannot depend
upon any of these ulterior values. But it is certain that some
of these stand in a quite different relation to the poetic experience
than do others. Culture, religion, instruction in some special
senses, softening of the passions, and the furtherance of good
causes may be directly concerned in our judgments of the _poetic_
values of experiences. Otherwise, as we shall see, the word ‘poetic’
becomes a useless sound. On the other hand, the poet’s fame,
his reward, or his conscience, seem plainly to be irrelevant.
That is the first point.

The second point is that what Dr Bradley says as to the imaginative
experience—that it is to be judged entirely from within—is misleading.
In most cases we do not judge it from within. Our judgment as
to its value is no part of it. In rare instances such a judgment
may be part of it, but this is exceptional. As a rule we have
to come out of it in order to judge it, and we judge it by memory
or by other residual effects which we learn to be good indices
to its value. If by judging it in the experience we mean merely
while these residual effects are fresh, we may agree. In so judging
it, however, it’s “place in the great structure of human life”
cannot possibly be ignored. The value which it has is dependent
upon this, and we cannot judge that value without taking this
place, and with it innumerable ulterior worths, into account.
It is not that we shall evaluate it wrongly if we neglect them,
but that evaluation is just this taking account of everything,
and of the way things hang together.

The third point arises with regard to Dr Bradley’s third position,
that the consideration of ulterior ends, whether by the poet
in the act of composing, or by the reader in the act of experiencing,
tends to lower poetic value. Here all depends upon _which are
the ulterior ends in question_, and what the kind of poetry.
It will not be denied that for some kinds of poetry the _intrusion_
of certain ulterior ends may, and often does, lower their value;
but there seem plainly to be other kinds of poetry in which its
value as poetry definitely and directly depends upon the ulterior
ends involved. Consider the Psalms, Isaiah, the New Testament,
Dante, the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, Rabelais, any really universal
satire, Swift, Voltaire, Byron.

In all these cases the consideration of ulterior ends has been
certainly essential to the act of composing. That needs no arguing;
but, equally, this consideration of the ulterior ends involved
is inevitable to the reader.

Dr Bradley puts this third position forward in a tentative form;
he says that the ulterior _tends_ to lower poetic value,
an important reservation, but it would be better to distinguish
two kinds of poetry, one to which his doctrine applies and one
to which it does not. As illustrations of the cases in which
his doctrine does apply, _The Ancient Mariner_ and _Hartleap
Well_ may be mentioned. Here in both cases the experiences
are of a kind into which no ulterior ends enter in any important
degree. Thus when Coleridge and Wordsworth introduce moral considerations,
the effect is undeniably one of intrusion. As Mrs Meynell comically
remarks, “_The Ancient Mariner_ offends upon a deliberate
plan. It denies the natural function of observation when it invents
sanctions for the protection of a wild bird’s life, and for the
punishment of its slaughter. Coleridge intends to enforce a lesson
by telling us that 200 mariners died of thirst because they had—with
the superstition pardonable in their state of education—supposed
an albatross to be the bringer of foggy weather, and had approved
its slaughter, as almost all men implicitly approve the daily
slaughter of innocent beast and bird.” But this charge against
Coleridge is only reasonable if we make of this ulterior end,
this ‘lesson’ against cruelty to animals, a vital part of the
poem. Mrs Meynell, we may think, takes Coleridge’s moral too
seriously. It may be this possibility which Coleridge had in
mind when he said, long afterwards, that _The Ancient Mariner_
did not contain enough of the moral. As the poem stands, it is
of a kind into which ulterior ends do not enter. If we are to
take this alien element, this lesson, into account in our judgment,
we shall have deliberately to misread the poem, with Mrs Meynell.
The same considerations apply to _Hartleap Well_; and so
far as Dr Bradley is merely enforcing this point, we may agree;
but he fails to notice—it is only fair to say that few critics
seem ever to notice it—that poetry is of more than one kind,
and that the different kinds are to be judged by different principles.
There is a kind of poetry into the judgment of which ulterior
ends directly and essentially enter; a kind part of whose value
is directly derivable from the value of the ends with which it
is associated. There are other kinds, into which ulterior ends
do not enter in any degree, and there are yet other kinds whose
value may be lowered by the intrusion of ends relatively trivial
in value. Dr Bradley is misled by the usual delusion that there
is in this respect only one kind of poetry, into saying far more
than the facts of poetic experience will justify.

The fourth point is of more general importance perhaps than these
three. It is in fact the real point of disagreement between the
view we are upholding and the doctrine which Dr Bradley, together
with the vast majority of modern critics, wishes to maintain.
It is stated in the concluding sentence of the paragraph which
I have quoted. He says of poetry that “its nature is to be, not
a part nor yet a copy of the real world, as we commonly understand
that phrase, but to be a world by itself, independent, complete,
autonomous. To possess it fully, you must enter that world, conform
to its laws, and ignore, for the time being, the beliefs, aims,
and particular conditions which belong to you in the other world
of reality.” This doctrine insists: upon a severance between
poetry and what, in opposition, may be called life; a complete
severance, allowing however, as Dr Bradley goes on to insist—an
‘underground’ connection. But this ‘underground’ connection is
all-important. Whatever there is in the poetic experience has
come through it. The world of poetry has in no sense any different
reality from the rest of the world and it has no special laws
and no other-worldly peculiarities. It is made up of experiences
of exactly the same kinds as those that come to us in other ways.
Every poem however is a strictly limited piece of experience,
a piece which breaks up more or less easily if alien elements
intrude. It is more highly and more delicately organised than
ordinary experiences of the street or of the hillside; it is
fragile. Further it is communicable. It may be experienced by
many different minds with only slight variations. That this should
be possible is one of the conditions of its organisation. It
differs from many other experiences, whose value is very similar,
in this very communicability. For these reasons when we experience
it, or attempt to, we must preserve it from contamination, from
the irruptions of personal particularities. We must keep the
poem undisturbed by these or we fail to read it and have some
other experience instead. For these reasons we establish a severance,
we draw a boundary between the poem and what is not the poem
in our experience. But this is no severance between unlike things
but between different systems of the same activities. The gulf
between them is no greater than that between the impulses which
direct the pen and those which conduct the pipe of a man who
is smoking and writing at once, and the ‘disassociation’ or severance
of the poetic experience is merely a freeing of it from extraneous
ingredients and influences. The myth of a ‘transmutation’ or
‘poetisation’ of experience and that other myth of the ‘contemplative’
or ‘æsthetic’ attitude, are in part due to talking about Poetry
and the ‘poetic’ instead of thinking about the concrete experiences
which are poems.

The separation of poetic experience from its place in life and
its ulterior worths, involves a definite lop-sidedness, narrowness,
and incompleteness in those who preach it sincerely. No one,
of course, would bring such charges against the author of _Shakespearean
Tragedy_; his is that welcome and not unfamiliar case of the
critic whose practice is a refutation of his principles. When
genuinely held the view leads to an attempted splitting up of
the experiencing reader into a number of distinct faculties or
departments which have no real existence. It is impossible to
divide a reader into so many men—an æsthetic man, a moral man,
a practical man, a political man, an intellectual man, and so
on. It cannot be done. In any genuine experience all these elements
inevitably enter. But if it could be done, as many critics pretend,
the result would be fatal to the wholeness and sanction of the
critical judgment. We cannot e.g. read Shelley adequately while
believing that all his views are moonshine—read _Prometheus
Unbound_ while holding that ‘the perfectibility of man is
an undesirable ideal’ and that ‘hangmen are excellent things.’
To say that there is a purely æsthetic or poetic approach to,
let us say, the _Sermon on the Mount_, by which no consideration
of the intention or ulterior end of the poem enters, would appear
to be merely mental timidity, the shrinking remark of a person
who finds essential literature too much for him. Into an adequate
reading of the greater kinds of poetry everything not private
and peculiar to the individual reader must come in. The reader
must be required to wear no blinkers, to overlook nothing which
is relevant, to shut off no part of himself from participation.
If he attempts to assume the peculiar attitude of disregarding
all but some hypothetically-named æsthetic elements, he joins
Henry James’ Osmond in his tower, he joins Blake’s Kings and
Priests in their High Castles and Spires.


[29] It is true that in mechanics one might draw up a formidable
list of names and say “Opposed to all these appeared a certain
Einstein”, but the cases are not parallel. A scientific advance
is different from a change of fashion, and no new facts nor any
new hypothesis—no Michelson-Morley experiment, nor any widened
purview—led up to the separate value theory of art. Although
historians of æsthetics are sometimes pleased to present their
facts as though they represented a progress from cruder to more
refined opinion, from ignorance to wisdom, there is no sound
basis for the procedure. Aristotle was at least as clearly and
fully aware of the relevant facts and as adequate in his explanations
as any later inquirers. Æsthetics in fact has hardly yet reached
the scientific stage, in which succeeding investigators can start
where their predecessors left off.

[30] _An Essay on Style_. The final paragraph.

[31] See Chapters XVI, XVIII and XXXI.

[32] Clive Bell, _Art_, p. 49.

[33] A. C. Bradley, _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_, p. 5.




CHAPTER XI

A Sketch for a Psychology

    “Wot’s wot?” repeated one of the buccaneers in a deep growl. “Ah,
        he’d be a lucky one as knowed that!”—_Treasure Island_.


M. Jules Romains recently observed[34] that psychology hitherto
has merely contrived to say laboriously and obscurely, and with
less precision, what we all know without its aid already. This
is regrettably difficult to deny; any particular remark of a
psychologist, if true, is unlikely to be startling. But at certain
points new light has none the less crept in. Incoherences and
flaws have been found in the common-sense picture, adumbration
rather, of the mind; connections between bits of our behaviour,
 which common-sense had missed, have been noted; and, still more
important, a general outline of the kind of thing a mind is has
begun to take shape. The next age but two, if an oncoming Age
of Relativity is to be followed as Mr Haldane supposes[35] by
an Age of Biology, will be introduced by a recognition on the
part of many minds of their own nature, a recognition which is
certain to change their behaviour and their outlook considerably.
We are still far removed from such an age. None the less enough
is known for an analysis of the mental events which make up the
reading of a poem to be attempted. And such an analysis is a
primary necessity for criticism. The psychological distinctions
which have hitherto served the critic are too few and his use
of them in most cases too unsystematic, too vague, and too uncertain,
for his insight to yield its full advantages.

The view put forward here is in many respects heterodox, a disadvantage
in a sketch. But so many difficulties attend any exposition of
psychology, however orthodox and however full, that the dangers
of misunderstanding are outweighed by the advantages of a fresh
point of view. It is the general outline and in particular the
insistence upon an account of knowledge in terms merely of the
causation of our thoughts which is contrary to received opinion.
The detail of the analysis of poetic experience, the account
of imagery, of emotion, of pleasure, of incipient action and
so forth, although, so far as I am aware, no similar analysis
has before been explicitly set out, may be taken as comparatively
orthodox.

For our immediate purpose, for a clearer understanding of values
and for the avoidance of unnecessary confusions in criticism,
it is necessary to break away from the set of ideas by which
popular and academic psychology alike attempt to describe the
mind. We naturally tend to conceive it as a thing of a peculiar
spiritual kind, fairly: persistent though variable, endowed with
attributes, three in number, its capacities namely for knowing,
willing and feeling, three irreducible modes of being aware of
or concerned with objects. A violent shock to this entity comes
when we are forced by a closer examination of the facts to conceive
it as doing all these three unconsciously as well as consciously.
An unconscious mind is a fairly evident fiction, useful though
it may be, and goings on in the nervous system are readily accepted
as a satisfactory substitute. From this to the recognition of
the conscious mind as a similar fiction is no great step, although
one which many people find difficult. Some of this difficulty
is due to habit. It wears off as we notice how many of the things
which we believed true of the fiction can be stated in terms
of the less fictitious substitute. But much of the difficulty
is emotive, non-intellectual, more specifically religious, in
origin.[36] It is due to desire, to fear, or to exaltation as
the case may be, to emotion masquerading as thought, and is a
difficulty not so easily removed.

That the mind is the nervous system, or rather a part of its
activity, has long been evident, although the prevalence among
psychologists of persons with philosophic antecedents has delayed
the recognition of the fact in an extraordinary fashion. With
every advance of neurology—and a decided advance here was perhaps
the only good legacy left by the War[37]—the evidence becomes
more overwhelming. It is true that as our knowledge of the nervous
system stands at present much of the detail of the identification
is impenetrably obscure, and the account which we give must frankly
be admitted to be only a degree less fictitious than one in terms
of spiritual happenings. But the kind of account which is likely
to be substantiated by future research has become clear, largely
through the work of Behaviourists and Psycho-analysts, the assumptions
and results of both needing to be corrected however in ways which
the recent experimental and theoretical investigations of the
‘_Gestalt_’ School are indicating.

The view that we are our bodies, more especially our nervous
systems, more especially still the higher or more central co-ordinating
parts of it, and that the mind is a system of impulses should
not be described as Materialism. It might equally well be called
Idealism. Neither term in this connection has any scientific,
any strictly symbolic meaning or reference. Neither stands for
any separable, observable group of things, or character in things.
Each is primarily an emotive term used to incite or support certain
emotional attitudes. Like all terms used in the vain attempt
(vain because the question is nonsensical) to say what things
are, instead of to say how they behave, they state nothing. Like
all such terms they change in different hands from banners to
bludgeons, being each for some people an emotive agent round
which attitudes, aspirations, values are rallied, and for other
people a weapon of offence by which persons supposed adverse
to these attitudes, aspirations and values may, it is hoped,
be discomfited. That the Materialist and the Idealist believe
themselves to be holding views which are incompatible with one
another is but an instance of a very widespread confusion between
scientific statement and emotive appeal, with which we shall
in later chapters be much concerned. The Mind-Body problem is
strictly speaking no problem; it is an _imbroglio_ due to
failure to settle a real problem, namely, as to when we are making
a statement and when merely inciting an attitude. A problem simpler
here than in many cases, since the alleged statement is of an
impossible form[38], but complicated on both sides of the controversy
by misunderstanding of the attitudes which the other side is
concerned to maintain. For if mental events are recognised as
identical with certain neural events, neither the attitudes which
ensue towards them nor the attitudes they themselves will warrantably
take up, are changed so much as either Idealists or Materialists
have commonly supposed. To call anything mental or spiritual,
as opposed to material, or to call anything material as opposed
to mental, is only to point out a difference between the two
kinds. The differences which can actually be detected between
a mental event, such as a toothache, and a non-mental event,
such as a sunspot, remain when we have identified the mental
event with a neural change. So recognised, it loses none of its
observable peculiarities, only certain alleged unstatable and
ineffable attributes are removed. It remains unlike any event
which is not mental; it is as unparalleled as before. It retains
its privileges as the most interesting of all events, and our
relations to one another and to the world remain essentially
as they were before the recognition. The extreme ecstasies of
the mystic, like the attitudes of the engineer towards a successful
contrivance, remain just as much and just as little appropriate
with regard to the humblest or the proudest of our acts. Thus
the identification of the mind with a part of the working of
the nervous system, need involve, theology apart, no disturbance
of anyone’s attitude to the world, his fellow-men, or to himself.
Theology, however, is still more implicit in current attitudes
than traditional sceptics suspect.



The nervous system is the means by which stimuli from the environment,
or from within the body, result in appropriate behaviour. All
mental events occur in the course of processes of adaptation,
somewhere between a stimulus and a response. Thus every mental
event has an origin in stimulation, a character, and consequences,
in action or adjustment for action. Its character is sometimes
accessible to introspection. What it feels like, in those cases
in which it feels or is felt at all, is consciousness, but in
many cases nothing is felt, the mental event is unconscious.
Why some events are conscious but not others is at present a
mystery; no one has yet succeeded in bringing the various hints
which neurology may offer into connection with one another. In
some important respects conscious and unconscious mental events
must differ, but what these are no one can as yet safely conjecture.
On the other hand there are many respects in which they are similar,
and these are the respects which are at present most open to
investigation.

The process in the course of which a mental event may occur,
a process apparently beginning in a stimulus and ending in an
act, is what we have called an impulse. In actual experience
single impulses of course never occur. Even the simplest human
reflexes are very intricate bundles of mutually dependent impulses,
and in any actual human behaviour the number of simultaneous
and connected impulses occurring is beyond estimation. The simple
impulse in fact is a limit, and the only impulses psychology
is concerned with are complex. It is often convenient to speak
as though simple impulses were in question, as when we speak
of an impulse of hunger, or an impulse to laugh, but we must
not forget how intricate all our activities are.

To take the stimulus as a starting-point is in some ways misleading.
Of the possible stimuli which we might at any moment receive,
only a few actually take effect. Which are received and which
impulses ensue depends upon which of our interests is active,
upon the general set, that is, of our activities. This is conditioned
in a large degree by the state, of satisfaction or unrest, of
the recurrent and persistent needs of the body. When hungry and
when replete we respond differently to the stimulus of a smell
of cooking. A change in the wind unnoticed by the passengers
causes the captain to reduce sail. Social needs in this respect
are often as important as individual. Thus some people walking
in a Gallery with friends before whom they wish to shine will
actually receive far more stimulus from the pictures than they
would if by themselves.

A stimulus then must not be conceived as an alien intruder which
thrusts itself upon us and, after worming a devious way through
our organism as through a piece of cheese, emerges at the other
end as an act. Stimuli are only received if they serve some need
of the organism and the form which the response to them takes
depends only in part upon the nature of the stimulus, and much
more upon what the organism ‘wants’, i.e. the state of equilibrium
of its multifarious activities.

Thus experience has two sources which in different cases have
very different importance. So far as we are thinking about or
referring to certain definite things our behaviour in all probability
will only be appropriate (i.e. our thoughts true) in so far as
it is determined by the nature of the present and past stimuli
we have received from those things and things like them. So far
as we are satisfying our needs and desires a much less strict
connection between stimulus and response is sufficient. A baby
howls at first in much the same way, whatever the cause of his
unrest, and older persons behave not unlike him. Any occasion
may be sufficient for taking exercise, or for a quarrel, for
falling in love or having a drink. To this partial independence
of behaviour (from stimulus) is due the sometimes distressing
fact that views, opinions and beliefs vary so much with our differing
moods. Such variation shows that the view, belief or opinion
is not a purely intellectual product, is not due to thinking
in the narrower sense, of response that is governed by stimuli,
present or past, but is an attitude adopted to satisfy some desire,
temporary or lasting. Thought in the strictest sense varies only
with evidence: but attitudes and feelings change for all manner
of reasons.

The threefold division between the causes, character and consequences
of a mental event, conscious or unconscious, corresponds, with
certain qualifications, to the usual division in traditional
psychology of thought (or cognition), feeling, and will (or conation).
To be cognisant of anything, to know it, is to be influenced
by it; to desire, to seek, to will anything is to act towards
it. In between these two are the conscious accompaniments, if
any, of the whole process. These last, the conscious characters
of the mental event, include evidently both sensations and feelings.
(Cf. Chapter XVL, pp. 125-128.)

The correspondence is not by any means simple. Many things are included
under knowing, for example, which on this reconstruction of psychology
would have to be counted as willing.[39] Expectation, usually described
as a cognitive attitude, becomes a peculiar form of action, getting
ready, namely, to receive certain kinds of stimuli rather than others.
The opposite case is equally common. Hunger, a typical desire on
the usual account, would become knowledge, giving us, when genuine
hunger, obscure awareness of a lack of nourishment, when habit-hunger,
awareness of a certain phase in a cyclic visceral process. These
illustrations bring out clearly what is everywhere recognised, that the
customary cognition-feeling-conation classification of mental goings on
is not a pigeon-holing of exclusive processes. Every mental event has,
in varying degrees, all three characteristics. Thus expectation as a
preparation for certain stimuli may lower the threshold for them, and
sometimes makes their reception more and sometimes less discriminating;
hunger also is characteristically accompanied by a search for food.

The advantage of substituting the causation, the character and
the consequences of a mental event as its fundamental aspects
in place of its knowing, feeling, and willing aspects is that
instead of a trio of incomprehensible ultimates we have a set
of aspects which not only mental events but all events share.
We have, of course, to introduce qualifications. Stimuli, as
we have mentioned above, are not the only causes of mental events.
The nervous system is specialised to receive impressions through
the organs of sense, but its state at any moment is also determined
by a host of other factors. The condition of the blood and the
position of the head are typical instances. Only that part of
the cause of a mental event which takes effect through incoming
(sensory) impulses or through effects of past sensory impulses
can be said to be thereby known. The reservation no doubt involves
complications. But any plausible account of what knowledge is
and how it happens is bound to be complicated.

Similarly, not all the effects of a mental event are to be counted
as what that event wills or seeks after; apoplectic strokes,
for example, can be ruled out. Only those movements which the
nervous system is specialised to incite, which take place through
motor impulses, should be included.

On all other accounts the relation between an awareness and what
it is aware of is a mystery. We can name the relation as we please,
apprehension, presentation, cognition or knowledge, but there
we have to leave the matter. On this account we make use of the
fact that an awareness, say of a variety of black marks on this
page, is caused in a certain peculiar way, namely through impressions
on a part of the brain (the retina) and various complicated connected
goings on in other parts of the brain. To say that the mental
(neural) event so caused is aware of the black marks is to say
that it is caused by them, and here ‘aware of’ = ‘caused by’.
The two statements are merely alternative formulations.

In extending this account to more complicated situations where
we know or, less ambiguously, _refer to_ things which are
past or future we have to make use of the fact that impressions
are commonly _signs_, have effects which depend not on themselves
alone but upon the other impressions which have co-operated with
them in the past.

A sign[40] is something which has once been a member of a context
or configuration that worked in the mind as a whole. When it
reappears its effects are as though the rest of the context were
present. In analysing complex events of referring we have to
break them up artificially into the simpler sign-situations out
of which they arise; not forgetting meanwhile how interdependent
the parts of any interpretation of a complex sign are.

The detail of this procedure is most easily studied in connection
with the use of words. We shall deal with it therefore in Chapter
XVI, where the reading of a poem is discussed. Here only the
general principle matters that to know anything is to be influenced
by it, directly when we sense it, indirectly when the effects
of past conjunctions of impressions come into play. More will
be added later, in connection with the process of reading, about
the receptive, the knowledge aspect of mental events. The other
two aspects need less explanation. They are also more generally
important for the understanding of poetic, musical and other
experiences. For a theory of knowledge is needed only at one
point, the point at which we wish to decide whether a poem, for
example, is true, or reveals reality, and if so in what sense;
admittedly a very important question. Whereas a theory of feeling,
of emotion, of attitudes and desires, of the affective-volitional
aspect of mental activity, is required at all points of our analysis.


[34] _Eyeless Sight_, p. 22.

[35] _Dedalus, or Science and the Future_, by J. B. S. Haldane.

[36] Compare Chapter XXXIV where the ways in which emotive factors
interfere with thought are considered.

[37] Cf. Piéron, _Thought and the Brain_, Chapter I.

[38] Many apparent questions which begin with the words ‘What’
and ‘Why’ are not questions at all, but requests for emotive
Satisfaction.

[39] ‘Willing’ is a bad word; I would use conation throughout
were it not so likely to increase unnecessarily the difficulty
which this chapter will unavoidably present to readers who are
not familiar with psychological jargon. The essential thing is
to think of willing (desiring, striving towards, trying) as an
unconscious as much as a conscious process.

[40] This topic is discussed at length in _The Meaning of Meaning_.




CHAPTER XII

Pleasure

  The poor benefit of a bewitching minute.—_The Revenger’s Tragedy_.


Sensation, imagery, feeling, emotion, together with pleasure,
unpleasure and pain are names for the conscious characteristics
of impulses: How they may best be sorted out is a problem whose
difficulty is much aggravated by the shortcomings of language
at this point. We speak, for instance, of pleasures and pains
in the same fashion, as though they were of the same order, but,
strictly, although pains as single self-sufficing modifications
of consciousness are easily enough obtainable, pleasures by themselves
do not seem to occur. Pleasure seems to be a way in which something
happens, rather than an independent happening which can occur
by itself in a mind. We have, not pleasures, but experiences
of one kind or another, visual, auditory, organic, motor, and
so forth, which are pleasant. Similarly we have experiences which
are unpleasant. If, however, we call them painful we give rise
to an ambiguity. We may be saying that they are unpleasant or
we may be saying that they are accompanied by pains, which is
a different matter. The use of the term pleasure, as though like
pain it was itself a complete experience, instead of being something
which attaches to or follows along with or after other experiences,
has led to a number of confusions; especially in those critical
theses, to which objection has already been taken in Chapter
IX, which identify value with pleasure.

The twenty or more distinct kinds of sensations, into which modern
psychology has elaborated the old five senses, can be observed
to differ very widely in the degree to which they are susceptible
of and accompanied by pleasantness and unpleasantness. The higher
senses, sight and hearing, in most persons seem to yield sensations
which vary much less from neutrality or indifference than the
others. We must be careful to understand this difference correctly
however. An arrangement of colours and shapes, a sequence of
notes or a musical phrase may, of course, in suitable people,
be as intensely toned, pleasantly or unpleasantly, as any organic
or taste sensations, for example. But even this is not usual.
The right experiment is to compare a single colour, say, or a
single note, with such a sensation as a uniform touch or temperature
gives rise to, a bath for example, or with a simple uniform taste
or smell, or with hunger, or nausea. Fair comparison is difficult,
equivalent levels of simplicity and uniformity being impossible
to discover, but few will doubt that the degree of pleasure-unpleasure
aroused by tastes, for example, far exceeds that which auditory
or visual sensations excite by themselves. We must of course
be careful here to avoid confusing the intrinsic pleasure-unpleasure
of the sensations with that which arises through memory, through
the effects of other sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, which
may have accompanied them in the past, and through expectations
agreeable or disagreeable.

To speak of the intrinsic pleasure-unpleasure of a sensation
is perhaps misleading. The pleasantness of a sensation as we
know is a highly variable thing. It may alter completely while
the strictly sensory characteristics of the sensation remain
as before. The difference in the same smell of liquor, before
and after an alcoholic excess is a striking example. A sound
which is pleasant for a while may become very unpleasant if it
continues and does not lapse from consciousness. And yet indisputably
it may remain _qua_ sensation the same. A sound-sensation
may remain unchanged in tone, volume and intensity yet vary widely
in pleasure-unpleasure. This difference is important. It is one
of the chief reasons which have caused feeling (pleasure-unpleasure)
to be distinguished from sensation as altogether of a different
nature. Tone, volume and intensity are features in the sound
closely dependent upon the stimulus, pleasantness is dependent
not on external stimulus but upon factors, very obscure at present,
in us. All here is conjecture. The close connection of stimulus
with sensation we know because it happens to be comparatively
accessible to experiment. And introspection of sensations of
external origin is for that reason much more easy than introspection
of most visceral or organic sensations. We can practise it freely
and repeat it and so control our results. To a lesser extent
those sensations of internal origin which we can in part consciously
control, those due to voluntary movements, share this double
accessibility. But all the rest of the multifarious conscious
goings on in the nervous system remain obscure. One broad fact,
however, is important. The effects in the body of almost all
stimuli of whatever nature are extraordinarily numerous and varied.
“You cannot show the observer a wall-paper pattern without by
that very fact disturbing his respiration and circulation.”[41]
And no man knows what other disturbances do not join in. The
whole body resounds in what would seem to be a fairly systematic
way. Whether the outpouring of this tide of disturbance makes
up a part of, gives a tone to consciousness, or whether only
the incoming reports of the results can be conscious is a question
upon which no conclusive evidence would seem to be yet available.
The incoming reports of some at least of these disturbances certainly
can become conscious. A lump in the throat, a yearning of the
bowels, horripilation, breathlessness, these are their coarser
and more obvious forms. Usually, they are less salient and fuse
with the whole mass of internal sensations to form the _cœnesthesia_,
the whole bodily consciousness, tinging it, altering its general
character in some one of perhaps a thousand different ways.

It has been much disputed whether pleasure-unpleasure is a quality
of general bodily or organic consciousness, of some part of it
perhaps, or whether it is something quite different from any
quality of any sensation or set of sensations. As we have seen,
it is not a quality of an auditory sensation in the sense in
which its loudness, for instance, is a quality. There seem to
be similar objections to making it a quality of any sensation
of any kind. A sensation is what an impulse at a certain stage
in its development feels like, and its sensory qualities are
characters[42] of the impulse at that stage. The pleasure-unpleasure
attaching to the impulse may be no character of the impulse itself,
but of its fate, its success or failure in restoring equilibrium
to the system to which it belongs.

This is perhaps as good a guess at what pleasure and unpleasure
are as can yet be made, pleasure being successful activity of
some kind, not necessarily of a biologically useful kind, and
unpleasure being frustrated, chaotic, mal-successful activity.
We shall consider this theory again at a later stage (cf. Chapter
XXIV). The point to be made here is that pleasure and unpleasure
are complicated matters arising in the course of activities which
are directed to other ends. The old controversies as to whether
pleasure is the goal of all striving or whether avoidance of
unpleasure the starting-point, are thus escaped. As Ribot pointed
out[43] the exclusive quest of pleasure for itself, _plaisir-passion_,
is a morbid form of activity and self-destructive. Pleasure on
this view is originally an _effect_ signifying that certain
positive or negative tendencies have instinctively attained their
aim and are satisfied. Later through experience it becomes a
cause. Instructed by experience man and animal alike place themselves
in circumstances which will arouse desire and so through satisfaction
lead to pleasure. The gourmet, the libertine, the æsthete, the
mystic do so alike. But when the pleasure which is the result
of satisfying the tendency becomes the end pursued rather than
the satisfying of the tendency itself, then an ‘_inversion_
of the psychological mechanism’ comes about. In the one case
the activity is propagated from below upwards, in the other from
above downwards, from the brain to the organic functions. The
result is often an exhaustion of the tendency, ‘disillusionment’
and the _blasé_, world-wearied attitude.

The evil results, as Ribot remarks, are largely confined to those
individuals in whom the quest for pleasure has the force of an
obsession. But on the view of pleasure which we have indicated
above, it is clear that all those doctrines, very common in critical
literature, which set up pleasure as the goal of activity, are
mistaken. Every activity has its own specific goal. Pleasure very
probably ensues in most cases when this goal is reached, but that
is a different matter. To read a poem for the sake of the pleasure
which will ensue if it is successfully read is to approach it in an
inadequate attitude. Obviously it is the poem in which we should be
interested, not in a by-product of having managed successfully to read
it. The orientation of attention is wrong if we put the pleasure in
the forefront. Such a mistake is perhaps not common among instructed
persons, but to judge by many remarks which appear in reviews and
dramatic notices the percentage of instructed persons among reviewers
and theatre-goers does not seem high. This error, a legacy in part
from the criticism of an age which had a still poorer psychological
vocabulary[44] than Our own, is one reason why Tragedy, for example,
is so often misapproached. It is no less absurd to suppose that a
competent reader sits down to read for the sake of pleasure, than to
suppose that a mathematician sets out to solve an equation with a view
to the pleasure its solution will afford him. The pleasure in both
cases may, of course, be very great. But the pleasure, however great
it may be, is no more the aim of the activity in the course of which
it arises, than, for example, the noise made by a motor-cycle—useful
though it is as an indication of the way the machine is running—is the
reason in the normal case for its having been started.

This very common mistake noted, the significance of pleasure
and unpleasure may be insisted upon without misgiving. They are
our most delicate signs of how our activities are thriving. But
since even the most intense delight may indicate only a local
success and the activity be generally detrimental, they are signs
which need a very wary interpretation.


[41] Titchener, _Text-book of Psychology_, p. 248.

[42] Into conjectures as to what these are, it seems as yet not
profitable to enter.

[43] _Problèmes de Psychologie affective_, pp. 141-144.

[44] It is probable that Wordsworth and certain that Coleridge
if writing to-day would use quite other terms in place of pleasure
for describing poetic values.




CHAPTER XIII

Emotion and the Cœnesthesia

    They are the silent griefs that cut the heart-strings.
                                            _The Broken Heart_.


In alluding to the cœnesthesia we came very near to giving an
account of emotion as an ingredient of consciousness. Stimulating
situations give rise to widespread ordered repercussions throughout
the body, felt as clearly marked colourings of consciousness.
These patterns in organic response are fear, grief, joy, anger
and the other emotional states. They arise for the most part
when permanent or periodical tendencies of the individual are
suddenly either facilitated or frustrated. Thus they depend far
less upon the nature of the external stimulus than upon the general
internal circumstances of the individual’s life at the time the
stimulus occurs. These emotional states, with pleasure and unpleasure,
are customarily distinguished under the head of feeling[45] from
sensations, which are, as we have seen, very closely dependent
for their character upon their stimulus. Thus sensations are
ranked together as cognitive elements, concerned, that is, with
our knowledge of things rather than with our attitude or behaviour
towards them, or our emotion about them. Pleasure, however, and
emotion have, on our view, also a cognitive aspect. They give
us knowledge; in the case of pleasure, of how our activities
are going on, successfully or otherwise; in the case of emotion,
knowledge primarily of our attitudes. But emotion may give us
further knowledge. It is a remarkable fact that persons with
exceptional colour sense apparently judge most accurately whether
two colours are the same, for example, or whether they have or
have not some definite harmonic relation to one another, not
by attentive optical comparison or examination, but by the general
emotional or organic reaction which the colours evoke when simply
glanced at. This is an indirect way of becoming aware of the
specific nature of the external world, but none the less a very
valuable way. A similar method is probably involved in those
apparently immediate judgments of the moral character of persons
met with for the first time which many people make so readily
and successfully. They may be quite unable to mention any definite
feature of the person upon which their judgment could be based.
It is none the less often extraordinarily just and discriminating.
The remarkable sensitiveness to its mother’s expression which
the infant shows is a striking example. The part played by this
kind of judgment in all æsthetic appreciation need not be insisted
upon. It is notable that artists are often pre-eminently adepts
at such judgments. The topic is usually discussed under the wide
and vague heading of intuition; a rubric which completely obscures
and befogs the issues.

For such judgments are not a simpler and more direct way of taking
cognisance of things, but a more indirect and more complex way.
It is not thereby shown to be a less primitive process. On the
contrary, simplified ways of thinking are commonly advanced products.
The ‘intuitive’ person uses his cœnesthesia as a chemist uses
his reagents or a physiologist his galvanometer. As far as the
sensations which the colour stimuli excite can be optically discriminated,
no difference is perceptible. But an actual yet sensorily imperceptible
difference becomes apparent through the difference in organic
reaction. The process is merely one of adding further and more
delicate signs to the situation, it is analogous to attaching
a recording lever to a barograph.

The differences between sensitive or ‘intuitive’ and more ‘rational’
and obtuse individuals may be of two kinds. It may be that the
sensitive person’s organic response is more delicate. This is
a difficult matter to decide. It is certain, however, that the
chief difference (a derivative difference very likely) lies in
the fact that the obtuse person has not learned to _interpret_
the changes in his general bodily consciousness in any systematic
fashion. The changes may occur and occur systematically, but
they mean nothing definite to him.

This kind of intervention of organic sensation in perception
plays a part in all the arts. Much neglected, it is probably
of very great importance. What here needs to be noticed is that
it is not a mode of gaining knowledge which differs in any essential
way from other modes. No unique and peculiar relation of ‘feeling’
towards things needs to be introduced to explain it, any more
than a unique and peculiar mode of ‘cognitively apprehending’
them needs to be introduced to explain ordinary knowing. In both
instances their causes, which have to be assumed in any case,
will suffice. When we sense something our sensation is caused
by what we sense. When we refer to something absent, a present
sensation similar to sensations which in the past have been coincident
with it, is thereby a sign for it, and so on, through more and
more intricate mnemic sign-situations. Here a present colour
sensation gives rise to an organic response which has in the
past accompanied a definite colour; the response becomes then
a sign of that colour which the sensitive and discriminating
person trusts, although he is optically unable to make sure whether
that colour is present or merely one very like it. Other cases
differ from this in complexity but not in principle. If it is
objected that this account of referring or thinking in terms
of causes gives us at best but a very indirect way of knowing,
the reply is that the prevalence of error is itself a strong
argument against a too direct theory of knowledge.

In popular parlance the term ‘emotion’ stands for those happenings
in minds which accompany such exhibitions of unusual excitement
as weeping, shouting, blushing, trembling, and so on. But in
the usage of most critics it has taken an extended sense, thereby
suffering quite needlessly in its usefulness. For them it stands
for any noteworthy ‘goings on’ in the mind almost regardless
of their nature. The true and profound emotions, as spoken of
by critics, are often lacking in all the characteristics which
govern the more refined linguistic usage of common people, and,
as it happens, of psychologists also, for what may perhaps be
regarded now as the standard usage in psychology, sets out from
the very same bodily changes accompanying experience as were
noted above.

Two main features characterise every emotional experience. One
of these is a diffused reaction in the organs of the body brought
about through the sympathetic systems. The other is a tendency
to action of some definite kind or group of kinds. These extensive
changes in the visceral and vascular systems, characteristically
in respiration and in glandular secretion, commonly take place
in response to situations which call some instinctive tendency
into play. As a result of all these changes a tide of sensations
of internal bodily origin comes into consciousness. It is generally
agreed that these sensations make up at least the main part of
the peculiar consciousness of an emotion. Whether they are necessary
to it or not is disputed. It may perhaps be suggested that insufficient
attention has been paid in the theory of emotion to images of
such sensations. The fact that fear, for example, may be felt
in the absence of any detectable bodily changes of the kind described
(a disputed fact) may be explained by supposing images of these
sensations to be taking their place.

These sensations, or images of them, are then a main ingredient
of an emotional experience and account for its peculiar ‘colour’
or tone, for the voluminousness and massiveness as well as for
the extreme acuteness of emotions. But of equal or greater importance
are the changes in consciousness due to reactions in the nervous
systems which control movement, governing muscular response to
the stimulating situation. These range, in the case of fear,
from the awakening of a simple tendency, an impulse to run away
or hide under the table, to such elaborate readjustments as we
make when we prepare to counter a threat against some favourite
opinion. As a rule a process of extraordinary complexity takes
place between perceiving the situation and finding a mode of
meeting it. This complicated process contributes the rest of
its peculiar flavour to an emotional experience.



A more detailed discussion from the same angle of the points
raised in this and the surrounding chapters will be found in
_The Meaning of Psychology_ (1926) by C. K. Ogden, where
the author’s view of mental activity is elaborated.

[45] The fashion in which the term ‘feeling’ shifts about in psychology
is notorious as a source of confusion. It would be convenient
if it could be kept for pleasure-unpleasure, and used no longer
as a synonym for ‘emotion’, since emotions can much more easily
be regarded as built up from organic sensations.




CHAPTER XIV

Memory

    Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river
      Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
    Immovably unquiet, and for ever
      It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
                                Shelley, _Ode to Liberty_.


So far we have alluded only casually to memory, to that apparent
revival of past experience to which the richness and complexity
of experience is due. Every stimulus which is ever received leaves
behind it, so it is said, an imprint, a trace capable of being
revived later and of contributing its quota to consciousness
and to behaviour. To these effects of past experience the systematic,
the organised character of our behaviour is due; the fact that
they intervene is the explanation of our ability to learn by
experience. It is a way peculiar to living tissue by which the
past influences our present behaviour across, as it might appear,
a gulf of time.

How we should conceive this influence is perhaps the most puzzling
point in psychology. The old theory of a kind of Somerset House
of past impressions has given place to an account in terms of
facilitations of neural paths, lowered resistances in synapses,
and so forth. It was natural that as the broad outlines of neural
activity came to be known, psychologists should attempt to make
use of them. But on close examination it is clear that their
interpretations were far too crude. Fixed ‘paths’, one for every
item of experience which has ever taken place, and others for
every kind of connection into which the items come, however multitudinous
we make them, no longer explain what can be observed in behaviour
and experience. As Von Kries and, more recently, Koffka have
insisted, the fact, for example, that we _recognise_ things
in cases where it is certain that quite different paths must
be involved, is fatal to the scheme. And mere multiplication
of the entities invoked leads to no solution. Semon even goes
so far as to say that when we listen to a song for the hundredth
time we hear not only the singer but a chorus of nine and ninety
mnemic voices. This corollary by itself is almost a refutation
of his theory.

We have to escape from the crude assumption that the only way
in which what is past can be repeated is by records being kept.
The old associationists supposed the records to be writ small
inside separate cells. The more modern view was that they were
scored large through a deepening of the channels of conduction.
Neither view is adequate.

Imagine an energy system of prodigious complexity and extreme
delicacy of organisation which has an indefinitely large number
of stable poises. Imagine it thrown from one poise to another
with great facility, each poise being the resultant of all the
energies of the system. Suppose now that the _partial_ return
of a situation which has formerly caused it to assume a stable
poise, throws it into an unstable condition, from which it most
easily returns to equilibrium by reassuming the former poise.
Such a system would exhibit the phenomena of memory; but it would
keep no records though appearing to do so. The appearance would
be due merely to the extreme accuracy and sensitiveness of the
system and the delicacy of its balances. Its state on the later
occasion would appear to be a _revival_ of its state on
the former, but this would not be the case any more than a cumulus
cloud this evening is a revival of those which decorated the
heavens last year.

This imaginary construction can be made more concrete by imagining
a solid with a large number of facets upon any one of which it
can rest. If we try to balance it upon one of its coigns or ridges
it settles down upon the nearest facet. In the case of the neural
system we are trying to suggest each stable poise has been determined
by a definite set, or better, context of conditions. Membership
of this context is what corresponds to nearness to a facet. The
partial return of the context causes the system to behave as
though conditions were present which are not, and this is what
is essential in memory.

That this suggestion in the form here presented is unsatisfactory
and incomplete is evident. It is wildly conjectural no doubt,
but so are the Archival and Pathway Theories. Yet it does avoid
the chief deficiencies of those theories, it does suggest why
only some conjunctions of experiences become ‘associated’, those
namely which yield a stable poise. And it suggests why a thing
should be recognised as the same though appearing in countless
different aspects; every time it appears different conditions
occur which, none the less, lead to one and the same stable poise,
as the polyhedron we imagined may settle down on one and the
same facet from all the surrounding ridges.

One of the collateral advantages of such a view is that it removes
some of the temptations to revert to animism from which psychologists,
and especially literary psychologists, suffer. Dissatisfaction
with current hypotheses as to the mechanism of reflex arcs is
a main cause for the scientifically desperate belief in the soul.
And apart from this, the special emotive factors which disturb
judgment on this point are less obtrusive when this account is
substituted for the usual story of the conditioned reflex, that
sacrilegious contrivance of the mechanists.

There is no kind of mental activity in which memory does not
intervene. We are most familiar with it in the case of images,
those fugitive elusive copies of sensations with which psychology
has been hitherto so much, perhaps too much, concerned. Visual
images are the best known of them, but it is important to recognise
that every kind of sensation may have its corresponding image.
Visceral, kinæsthetic, thermal images can with a little practice
be produced, even by people who have never noticed their occurrence.
But individual differences as regards imagery are enormous, more
in the degree to which images become conscious, however, than
in their actual presence or absence on the needful occasion.
Those people who, by their own report, are devoid of images,
none the less behave in a way which makes it certain that the
same processes are at work in them as in producers of the most
flamboyant images.




CHAPTER XV

Attitudes

    My Sences want their outward motion
            Which now within
            Reason doth win,
    Redoubled by her secret notion.—John Hoskins.


The interventions of memory are not confined to sensation and
emotion. They are of equal importance in our active behaviour.
The acquisition of any muscular accomplishment, dancing or billiards,
for example, shows this clearly. What we have already done in
the past controls what we shall do in the future. If the perception
of an object and the recognition that it is a tree, for example,
involve a poise in the sensory system concerned, a certain completeness
or ‘closure,’ to use the term employed by Kohler, so an act,
as opposed to a random movement, involves a similar poise in
a motor system. But sensory and motor systems are not independent;
they work together; every perception probably includes a response
in the form of incipient action. We constantly overlook the extent
to which all the while we are making preliminary adjustments,
getting ready to act in one way or another. Reading Captain Slocum’s
account of the centipede which bit him on the head when alone
in the middle of the Atlantic, the writer has been caused to
leap right out of his chair by a leaf which fell upon his face
from a tree. Only occasionally does some such accident show how
extensive are the motor adjustments made in what appear to be
the most unmuscular occupations.

This incipient activity stands to overt action much as an image
stands to a sensation. But such ‘imaginal’ activity is, by its
very nature, extraordinarily hard to detect or to experiment
upon. Psychology has only dealt with fringes of the mind hitherto
and the most accessible fringe is on the side of sensation. We
have therefore to build up our conjectures as to the rest of
mental happenings by analogy with the perhaps not entirely representative
specimens which sensation supplies. This limitation has led the
majority of psychologists to see in imaginal movement no more
than images of the _sensations_ from muscle, joint, and
tendon, which would arise if the movement were actually made.

It is certain that before any action takes place a preliminary
organisation must occur which ensures that the parts do not get
in one another’s way. It appears to the writer that these preliminaries
in his case make up part of consciousness, but there is a heavy
weight of authority against him. The point is no doubt exceptionally
hard to determine.

In any case, whether the consciousness of activity is due to
sensations and images of movements alone, or whether the outgoing
part of the impulse and its preparatory organisation help to
make up consciousness, there is no doubt about the importance
of incipient and imaginal movement in experience. The work done
by Lipps, Groos and others on _einfühlung_, or empathy,
however we may prefer to restate their results, shows that when
we perceive spatial or musical form we commonly accompany our
perception with closely connected motor activity. We cannot leave
this activity out of our account of what happens in the experiences
of the arts, although we may think that those who have built
upon this fact what they have put forward as a complete æsthetic—Vernon
Lee, for example—have been far from clear as to what questions
they were answering.

The extent to which any activity is conscious seems to depend
very largely upon how complex and how novel it is. The primitive
and in a sense natural outcome of stimulus is action; the more
simple the situation with which the mind is engaged, the closer
is the connection between the stimulus and some overt response
in action, and in general the less rich and full is the consciousness
attendant. A man walking over uneven ground, for example, makes
without reflection or emotion a continuous adjustment of his
steps to his footing; but let the ground become precipitous and,
unless he is used to such places, both reflection and emotion
will appear. The increased complexity of the situation and the
greater delicacy and appropriateness of the movements required
for convenience and safety, call forth far more complicated goings
on in the mind. Besides his perception of the nature of the ground,
the thought may occur that a false move would be perilous and
difficult to retrieve. This, when accompanied by emotion, is
called a ‘realisation’ of his situation. The adjustment to one
another of varied impulses—to go forward carefully, to lie down
and grasp something with the hands, to go back, and so forth—and
their co-ordination into useful behaviour alters the whole character
of his experience.

Most behaviour is a reconciliation between the various acts which
would satisfy the different impulses which combine to produce
it; and the richness and interest of the feel of it in consciousness
depends upon the variety of the impulses engaged. Any familiar
activity, when set in different conditions so that the impulses
which make it up have to adjust themselves to fresh streams of
impulses due to the new conditions, is likely to take on increased
richness and fullness in consciousness.

This general fact is of great importance for the arts, particularly
for poetry, painting and sculpture, the representative or mimetic
arts. For in these a totally new setting for what may be familiar
elements is essentially involved. Instead of seeing a tree we
see something in a picture which may have similar effects upon
us but is _not_ a tree. The tree impulses which are aroused
have to adjust themselves to their new setting of other impulses
due to our awareness that it is a _picture_ which we are
looking at. Thus an opportunity arises for those impulses to
define themselves in a way in which they ordinarily do not.

This, of course, is only the most obvious and simple instance
of the way in which, thanks to the unusual circumstances in which
things depicted, or in literature described, come before us,
the experiences that result are modified. To take another obvious
example, the description or the theatrical presentation of a
murder has a different effect upon us from that which would be
produced by most actual murders if they took place before us.
These considerations, of vast importance in the discussion of
artistic form, will occupy us later (pp. 145, 237). Here it is
sufficient to point out that these differences between ordinary
experiences and those due to works of art are only special cases
of the general difference between experiences made up of a less
and of a greater number of impulses which have to be brought
into co-ordination with one another. The bearing of this point
upon the problem of the æsthetic mode with its detachment, impersonality,
etc., discussed in the second chapter, will be apparent. (Compare
Chapter XXXII, p. 249.)

The result of the co-ordination of a great number of impulses
of different kinds is very often that no _overt_ action
takes place. There is a danger here of supposing that no action
whatever results or that there is something incomplete or imperfect
about such a state of affairs. But imaginal action and incipient
action which does not go so far as actual muscular movement are
more important than Overt action in the well-developed human
being. Indeed the difference between the intelligent or refined,
and the stupid or crass person is a difference in the extent
to which overt action can be replaced by incipient and imaginal
action. An intelligent man can ‘see how a thing works’ when a
less intelligent man has to ‘find out by trying’. Similarly with
such responses as are aroused by a work of art. The difference
between ‘understanding’ it and failing to do so is, in most cases,
a difference between being able to make the required responses
in an imaginal or incipient degree, adjusting them to one another
at that stage, and being unable to produce them or adjust them
except overtly and at their fullest development. Though the kinds
of activity involved are different, the analogy with the case
of the mathematician is not misleading. The fact that he will
not make half so many marks on paper as a schoolboy does not
show that he is any less active. His activity takes place at
an earlier stage in which his responses are merely incipient
or imaginal. In a similar manner the absence of any overt movements
or external signs of emotion in an experienced reader of poetry,
or concert-goer, compared to the evident disturbances which are
sometimes to be seen in the novice, is no indication of any lack
of internal activity. The response required in many cases by
works of art is of a kind which can only be obtained in an incipient
or imaginal stage. Practical considerations often prevent their
being worked out in overt form, and this is, as a rule, not in
the least to be regretted. For these responses are commonly of
the nature of solutions to problems, not of intellectual research,
but of emotional accommodation and adjustment, and can usually
be best achieved while the different impulses which have to be
reconciled are still in an incipient or imaginal stage, and before
the matter has become further complicated by the irrelevant accidents
which attend overt responses.

These imaginal and incipient activities or tendencies to action,
I shall call attitudes. When we realise how many and how different
may be the tendencies awakened by a situation, and what scope
there is for conflict, suppression and interplay—all contributing
something to our experience—it will not appear surprising that
the classification and analysis of attitudes is not yet far advanced.
A thousand tendencies to actions, which do not overtly take place,
may well occur in complicated adjustments. For these what evidence
there is must be indirect. In fact, the only attitudes which
are capable of clear and explicit analysis are those in which
some simple mode of observable behaviour gives the clue to what
has been taking place, and even here only a part of the reaction
is open to this kind of examination.

Among the experiences which are by the nature of the case hidden
from observation are found almost all those with which criticism
is concerned. The outward aspect and behaviour of a man reading
_The Prioresses’ Tale_ and _The Miller’s Tale_ may well be
indistinguishable. But this should not lead us to overlook how
great a part in the whole experience is taken by attitudes. Many
experiences which, if examined by introspection for their actual
content of sensation and imagery, differ very little, are totally
diverse in the kind and degree of implicit activity present. This
aspect of experiences as filled with incipient promptings, lightly
stimulated tendencies to acts of one kind or another, faint preliminary
preparations for doing this or that, has been constantly overlooked
in criticism. Yet it is in terms of attitudes, the resolution,
inter-inanimation, and balancing of impulses—Aristotle’s definition of
Tragedy[46] is an instance—that all the most valuable effects of poetry
must be described.


[46] “Tragedy is an imitation of an action... effecting through
Pity and Terror the correction and refinement (_κάθαρςις_)
of such passions.” _Poetics_, VI. Cf. p. 247, _infra_.




CHAPTER XVI

The Analysis of a Poem

    Toutes choses sont dites déjà, mais comme personne n’écoute
            il faut toujours recommencer.—André Gide.


The qualifications of a good critic are three. He must be an
adept at experiencing, without eccentricities, the state of mind
relevant to the work of art he is judging. Secondly, he must
be able to distinguish experiences from one another as regards
their less superficial features. Thirdly, he must be a sound
judge of values.

Upon all these matters psychology, even in its present conjectural
state, has a direct bearing. The critic is, throughout, judging
of experiences, of states of mind; but too often he is needlessly
ignorant of the general psychological form of the experiences
with which he is concerned. He has no clear ideas as to the elements
present or as to their relative importance. Thus, an outline
or schema of the mental events which make up the experience of
‘looking at’ a picture or ‘reading’ a poem, can be of great assistance.
At the very least an understanding of the probable structures
of these experiences can remove certain misconceptions which
tend to make the opinions of individuals of less service to other
individuals than need be.

Two instances will show this. There are certain broad features
in which all agree a poem of Swinburne is unlike a poem of Hardy.
The use of words by the two poets is different. Their methods
are dissimilar, and the proper approach for a reader differs
correspondingly. An attempt to read them in the same way is unfair
to one of the poets, or to both, and leads inevitably to defects
in criticism which a little reflection would remove. It is absurd
to read Pope as though he were Shelley, but the essential differences
cannot be clearly marked out unless such an outline of the general
form of a poetic experience, as is here attempted, has been provided.
The psychological means employed by these poets are demonstrably
different. Whether the effects are also dissimilar is a further
question for which the same kind of analysis is equally required.

This separation inside the poetic experience of certain parts
which are means from certain other parts which are the ends upon
which the poetic value of the experience depends, leads up to
our other instance. It is unquestionable that the actual experiences,
which even good critics undergo when reading, as we say, _the
same poem_, differ very widely. In spite of certain conventions,
which endeavour to conceal these inevitable discrepancies for
social purposes, there can be no doubt that the experiences of
readers in connection with particular poems are rarely similar.
This is unavoidable. Some differences are, however, much more
important than others. Provided the ends, in which the value
of the poem lies, are attained, differences in the means need
not prevent critics from agreement or from mutual service. Those
discrepancies alone are fatal which affect the fundamental features
of experiences, the features upon which their _value_ depends.
But enough is now known of the ways in which minds work for superficial
and fundamental parts of experiences to be distinguished. One
of the greatest living critics praises the line:

    The fringed curtain of thine eyes advance,

for the ‘ravishing beauty’ of the visual images excited. This
common mistake of exaggerating personal accidents in the means
by which a poem attains its end into the chief value of the poem
is due to excessive trust in the commonplaces[47] of psychology.

[Illustration: Arcadia, Night, a Cloud, Pan, and the Moon]

In the analysis of the experience of reading a poem, a diagram,
or hieroglyph, is convenient, provided that its limitations are
clearly recognised. The spatial relations of the parts of the
diagram, for instance, are not intended to stand for spatial
relations between parts of what is represented; it is not a picture
of the nervous system. Nor are temporal relations intended. Spatial
metaphors, whether drawn as diagrams or merely imagined, are
dangers only to the unwary. The essential service which pictures
can give in abstract matters, namely, the simultaneous and compact
representation of states of affairs which otherwise tend to remain
indistinct and confused, is worth the slight risk of misunderstanding
which they entail.

We may begin then with a diagrammatic representation of the events
which take place when we read a poem. Other literary experiences
will only differ from this in their greater simplicity.

The eye is depicted as reading a succession of printed words.
As a result there follows a stream of reaction in which six distinct
kinds of events may be distinguished.

     I The visual sensations of the printed words.
    II Images very closely associated with these sensations.
   III Images relatively free.
    IV References to, or ‘thinkings of,’ various things.
     V Emotions.
    VI Affective-volitional attitudes.

Each of these kinds of occurrences requires some brief description
and explanation.

Upon the visual sensations of the printed words all the rest
depends (in the case of a reader not previously acquainted with
the poem); but with most readers they have in themselves no great
importance. The individual shapes of the letters, their size
and spacing, have only a minor effect upon the whole reaction.
No doubt readers differ greatly in this respect; with some, familiarity
plays a great part. They find it unpleasant and disturbing to
read a poem in any but the edition in which they first became
acquainted with it. But the majority of readers are less exigent.
Provided that the print is clear and legible, and allows the
habitual eye-movements of reading to be easily performed, the
full response arises equally well from widely differing sensations.
Those for whom this is true have, in the present state of economic
organisation, a decided advantage over the more fastidious. This
does not show that good printing is a negligible consideration;
and the primary place of calligraphy in the Chinese arts is an
indication to the contrary. It shows merely that printing belongs
to another branch of the arts. In the poetic experience words
take effect through their associated images, and through what
we are, as a rule, content to call their meaning. What meaning
is and how it enters into the experience we shall consider.

_Tied Images_.—Visual sensations of words do not commonly
occur by themselves. They have certain regular companions so
closely tied to them as to be only with difficulty disconnected.
The chief of these are the auditory image—the sound of the words
in the mind’s ear—and the image of articulation—the feel in the
lips, mouth, and throat, of what the words would be like to speak.

Auditory images of words are among the most obvious of mental
happenings. Any line of verse or prose slowly read, will, for
most people, sound mutely in the imagination somewhat as it would
if read aloud. But the degree of correspondence between the image-sounds,
and the actual sounds that the reader would produce, varies enormously.
Many people are able to imagine word-sounds with greater delicacy
and discrimination than they can utter them. But the reverse
case is also found. What importance then is to be attached to
clear, rich and delicate sound imagery in silent reading? How
far must people who differ in their capacity to produce such
images differ in their total reactions to poems? And what are
the advantages of reading aloud? Here we reach one of the practical
problems of criticism for which this analysis is required. A
discussion is best postponed until the whole analysis has been
given. The principal confusion which prevents a clear understanding
of the point at issue does, however, concern images and may be
dealt with here. It is of great importance in connection with
the topic of the following section.

The sensory qualities of images, their vivacity, clearness, fullness
of detail and so on, do not bear any constant relation to their
effects. Images differing in these respects may have closely
similar consequences. Too much importance has always been attached
to the sensory qualities of images. What gives an image efficacy
is less its vividness as an image than its character as a mental
event peculiarly connected with sensation. Lissette way which
no one yet knows how to explain, a relict of sensation and our
intellectual and emotional response to it depends far more upon
its being, through this fact, a representative of a sensation,
than upon its sensory resemblance to one. An image may lose almost
all its sensory nature to the point of becoming scarcely an image
at all, a mere skeleton, and yet represent a sensation quite
as adequately as if it were flaring with hallucinatory vividity.
In other words, what matters is not the sensory _resemblance_
of an image to the sensation which is its prototype, but some
other relation, at present hidden from us in the jungles of neurology.
(Cf. Chapter XIV.)

Care then should be taken to avoid the natural tendency to suppose
that the more clear and vivid an image the greater will be its
efficacy. There are trustworthy people who, according to their
accounts, never experience any imagery at all. If certain views
commonly expressed about the arts are true, by which vivid imagery
is an all-important part of the experience, then these people
are incapable of art experiences, a conclusion which is contrary
to the facts. The views in question are overlooking the fact
that _something_ takes the place of vivid images in these
people, and that, provided the image-substitute is efficacious,
their lack of mimetic imagery is of no consequence. The efficacy
required must, of course, include control over emotional as well
as intellectual reactions. Needless perhaps to add that with
persons of the image-producing types an increase in delicacy
and vivacity in their imagery will probably be accompanied by
increased subtlety in effects. Thus it is not surprising that
certain great poets and critics have been remarkable for the
vigour of their imagery, and dependent upon it. No one would
deny the usefulness of imagery to some people; the mistake is
to suppose that it is indispensable to all.

Articulatory imagery is less noticeable; yet the quality of silent
speech is perhaps even more dependent upon these images than
upon sound-images. Collocations of syllables which are awkward
or unpleasant to utter are rarely delightful to the ear. As a
rule the two sets of images are so intimately connected that
it is difficult to decide which is the offender. In ‘Heaven,
which man’s generation draws,’ the sound doubtless is as harsh
as the movements required are cramping to the lips.

The extent to which interference with one set of images will
change the other may be well seen by a simple experiment. Most
people, if they attempt a silent recitation while opening the
mouth to its fullest stretch or holding the tongue firmly between
the teeth, will notice curious transformations in the auditory
images. How the experiment should be interpreted is uncertain,
but it is of use in making the presence of both kinds of verbal
imagery evident to those who may have overlooked them hitherto.
Images of articulation should not, however, be confused with
those minimal actual movements which for some people (for all,
as behaviourists maintain) accompany the silent rehearsing of
words.

These two forms of tied imagery might also be called verbal images,
and supply the elements of what is called the ‘formal structure’
of poetry. They differ from those to which we now proceed in
being images of words, not of things words stand for, and in
their very close connection with the visual sensations of printed
words.

_Free Imagery_.—Free images, or rather one form of these,
visual images, pictures in the mind’s eye, occupy a prominent
place in the literature of criticism, to the neglect somewhat
of other forms of imagery, since, as was remarked in a preceding
chapter, for every possible kind of sensation there is a corresponding
possible image.

The assumption, natural before investigation, that all attentive
and sensitive readers will experience the same images, vitiates
most of the historical discussions from that of Longinus to that
of Lessing. Even in the present day, when there is no excuse
for such ignorance, the mistake still thrives, and an altogether
too crude, too hasty, and too superficial form of criticism is
allowed to pass unchallenged. It cannot be too clearly recognised
that individuals differ not only in the type of imagery which
they employ, but still more in the particular images which they
produce. In their whole reactions to a poem, or to a single line
of it, their free images are the point at which two readings
are most likely to differ, and the fact that they differ may
very well be quite immaterial. Fifty different readers will experience
not one common picture but fifty different pictures. If the value
of the poem derived from the value _qua_ picture of the
visual image excited then criticism might well despair. Those
who would stress this part of the poetic reaction can have but
crude views on pictures.

But if the value of the visual image in the experience is not
pictorial, if the image is not to be judged as a picture, how
is it to be judged? It is improbable that the many critics, some
of them peculiarly well qualified in the visual arts, who have
insisted upon the importance of imagery, have been entirely wasting
their time. It ought to be possible to give an account of the
place of free imagery in the whole poetic experience which will
explain this insistence. What is required will be found if we
turn our attention from the sensory qualities of the imagery
to the more fundamental qualities upon which its efficacy in
modifying the rest of the experience depends. It has been urged
above that images which are different in their sensory qualities
may have the same effects. If this were not the case the absence
of glaring differences between people of different image-types
would be astonishing. But since images may represent sensations
without resembling them, and represent them in the sense of replacing
them, as far as effects in directing thought and arousing emotion
go, differences in their mimetic capacity become of minor importance.
As we have seen, it is natural for those whose imagery is vivid,
to suppose that vivacity and clearness go together with power
over thought and feeling. It is the power of an image over these
that is as a rule being praised when an intelligent and sensitive
critic appears merely to be praising the picture floating before
his mind’s eye. To judge the image as a picture is judged, would,
as we have seen, be absurd; and what is sought in poetry by those
painters and others whose interest in the world is primarily
visual is not pictures but records of observation, or stimuli
of emotion.

Thus, provided the images (or image-substitutes for the imageless)
have the due effects, deficiencies in their sensory aspect do
not matter. But the proviso is important. In all forms of imagery
sensory deficiencies are for many people signs and accompaniments
of defective efficacy, and the habit of reading so as to allow
the fullest development to imagery in its sensory aspect is likely
to encourage the full development of this more essential feature,
its efficacy, if the freaks and accidents of the sensory side
are not taken too seriously.

Some exceptions to this general recommendation will occur to
the reader. Instances in plenty may be found in which a full
development of the sensory aspect of images is damaging to their
effects. Meredith is a master of this peculiar kind of imagery:—

    Thus piteously Love closed what he begat
    The union of this ever diverse pair!
    These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
    Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.

The emotional as well as the intellectual effects of the various
images here suggested are much impaired if we produce them vividly
and distinctly.

_Impulses, and References_.—We have now to consider those
more fundamental effects upon which stress has been laid above
as the true places of the values of the experience. It will be
well at this point to reconsult the diagram. The vertical lines
which run capriciously downwards from the visual sensations of
the words, through their tied imagery and onward to the bottom
of the diagram, are intended to represent, schematically, streams
of impulses flowing through in the mind.

They start in the visual sensations, but the depiction of the
tied imagery is intended to show how much of their further course
is due to it. The placing of the free imagery in the third division
is intended to suggest that while some free images may arise
from visual words alone, they take their character in a large
part as a consequence of the tied imagery. Thus the great importance
of the tied imagery, of the formal elements, is emphasised in
the diagram.

These impulses are the weft of the experience, the warp being
the pre-existing systematic structure of the mind, that organised
system of possible impulses. The metaphor is of course inexact,
since weft and warp here are not independent. Where these impulses
run, and how they develop, depends entirely upon the condition
of the mind, and this depends upon the impulses which have previously
been active in it. It will be seen then that impulses—their
direction, their strength, how they modify one another—are the
essential and fundamental things in any experience. All else,
whether intellectual or emotional, arises as a consequence of
their activity. The thin trickle of stimulation which comes in
through the eye finds an immense hierarchy of systems of tendencies
poised in the most delicate stability. It is strong enough and
rightly enough directed to disturb some of these without assistance.
The literal sense of a word can be grasped on the prompting of
the mere sight of it, without hearing it or mentally pronouncing
it. But the effects of this stimulation are immensely increased
and widened when it is reinforced by fresh stimulation from tied
images, and it is through these that most of the emotional effects
are produced. As the agitation proceeds new reinforcement comes
with every fresh system which is excited. Thus, the paradoxical
fact that so trifling an irritation as the sight of marks on
paper is able to arouse the whole energies of the mind becomes
explicable.

To turn now to references, the only mental happenings which are
as closely connected with visual words as their tied images are
those mysterious events which are usually called thoughts. Thus
the arrow symbol in the hieroglyph should perhaps properly be
placed near the visual impression of the word. The mere sight
of any familiar word is normally followed by a thought of whatever
the word may stand for. This thought is sometimes said to be
the ‘meaning’, the literal or prose ‘meaning’ of the word. It
is wise, however, to avoid the use of ‘meaning’ as a symbol altogether.
The terms ‘thought’ and ‘idea’ are less subtle in their ambiguities,
and when defined may perhaps be used without confusion.

What is essential in thought is its direction or reference to things.
What is this direction or reference? How does a thought come to be ‘of’
one thing rather than another? What is the link between a thought and
what it is ‘of’? The outline of one answer to these questions has been
suggested in Chapter XI. A further account must here be attempted.
Without a fairly clear, although, of course, incomplete view, it is
impossible to avoid confusion and obscurity in discussing such topics
as truth in art, the intellect-_versus_-emotion _imbroglio_, the scope
of science, the nature of religion and many others with which criticism
must deal.

The facts upon which speculations as to the relations between
thoughts and the things which they are ‘of’ have been based,
have as a rule been taken from introspection. But the facts which
introspection yields are notoriously uncertain, and the special
position of the observer may well preclude success. Introspection
is competent, in some cases, to discover the relations between
events which take place within the mind, but cannot by itself
give information as to the relations of these events with the
external world, and it is precisely this which we are inquiring
into when we ask, What connection is there between a thought
and that which it is a thought of? For an answer to this question
we must look further.

There is no doubt that causal relations hold between events in
the mind and events outside it. Sometimes these relations are
fairly simple. The striking of a clock is the cause of our thinking
of its striking. In such a case the external thing is linked
with the thought ‘of’ it in a fairly direct fashion, and the
view here taken is that to be a thought ‘of’ the striking is
to be merely a thought caused in this fashion by the striking.
A thought of the striking is nothing else and nothing more than
a thought caused by it.

But most thoughts are ‘of’ things which are not present and not
producing direct effects in the mind. This is so when we read.
What is directly affecting the mind is words on paper, but the
thoughts aroused are not thoughts ‘of’ the words, but of other
things which the words _stand for_. How, then, can a causal
theory of thinking explain the relation between these remote
things and the thoughts which are ‘of’ them? To answer this we
must look at the way in which we learn what words stand for.
Without a process of learning we should only think of the words.

The process of learning to use words is not difficult to analyse.
On a number of occasions the word is heard in connection with
objects of a certain kind. Later the word is heard in the absence
of any such object. In accordance with one of the few fundamental
laws known about mental process, something then happens in the
mind which is like what would happen if such an object were actually
present and engaging the attention. The word has become a _sign_
of an object of that kind. The word which formerly was a part
of the cause of a certain effect in the mind is now followed
by a similar effect in the absence of the rest of the previous
cause, namely, an object of the kind in question. This kind of
causation appears to be peculiar to living tissue. The relation
now between the thought and what it is ‘of’ is more indirect,
the thought is ‘of’ something which formerly was part cause,
together with the sign, of similar thoughts. It is ‘of’ the missing
part of the sign, or more strictly ‘of’ anything which would
complete the sign as a cause.

Thoughts by this account are general, they are of anything _like_
such and such things, except when the object thought of and the
thought are connected by direct causal relations, as, for instance,
when we think of a word we are hearing. Only when these direct
relations hold can we succeed in thinking simply of ‘That’. We
have to think instead of ‘something of a kind’. By various means,
however, we can contrive that there shall only be one thing of
the kind, and so the need for particularity in our thoughts is
satisfied. The commonest way in which we do this is by thoughts
which make the kind spatial and temporal. A thought of ‘mosquito’
becomes a thought of ‘mosquito there now’ by combining a thought
of ‘thing of mosquito kind’ with a thought of ‘thing of there
kind’ and a thought of ‘thing of now kind’. The awkwardness of
these phrases, it may be mentioned, is irrelevant. Combined thoughts
of this sort, we may notice, are capable of truth and falsity,
whereas a simple thought—of ‘whatever is now’ for instance—can
only be true. Whether a thought is true or false depends simply
upon whether there is anything of the kind referred to, and there
must be something now. It is by no means certain that there must
be anything there always. And most probably no mosquito is where
we thought it was then.

The natural generality and vagueness of all reference which is
not made specific by the aid of space and time is of great importance
for the understanding of the senses in which poetry may be said
to be true. (Cf. Chapter XXXV.)

In the reading of poetry the thought due simply to the words,
their _sense_ it may be called, comes first; but other thoughts
are not of less importance. These may be due to the auditory
verbal imagery, and we have onomatopœia,[48] but this is rarely
independent of the sense. More important are the further thoughts
caused by the sense, the network of interpretation and conjecture
which arises therefrom, with its opportunities for aberrations
and misunderstanding. Poems, however, differ fundamentally in
the extent to which such further interpretation is necessary.
The mere sense without any further reflection is very often sufficient
thought, in Swinburne, for instance, for the full response—

    There glowing ghosts of flowers
    Draw down, draw nigh;
    And wings of swift spent hours
        Take flight and fly;
    She sees by formless gleams
    She hears across cold streams
        Dead mouths of many dreams that sing and sigh.

Little beyond vague thoughts of the things the words stand for
is here required. They do not have to be brought into intelligible
connection with one another. On the other hand, Hardy would rarely
reach his full effect through sound and sense alone—

    ‘Who’s in the next room?—who?
        I seemed to see
    Somebody in the dawning passing through
        Unknown to me.’
    ‘Nay: you saw nought. He passed invisibly’.

Between these and even more extreme cases, every degree of variation
in the relative importance of sound, sense, and further interpretation,
between form and content in short, can be found. A temptation
to which few do not succumb is to suppose that there is some
‘proper relation’ for these different parts of the experience,
so that a poem whose parts are in this relation must thereby
be a greater or better poem than another whose parts are differently
disposed. This is another instance of the commonest of critical
mistakes, the confusion of means with ends, of technique with
value. There is no more a ‘proper place’ for sound or for sense
in poetry than there is one and only one ‘proper shape’ for an
animal. A dog is not a defective kind of cat, nor is Swinburne
a defective kind of Hardy. But this sort of criticism is extraordinarily
prevalent. The objection to Swinburne on the ground of a lack
of thought is a popular specimen.



Within certain types, needless to say, some structures are more
likely to be successful than others. Given some definite kind
of effect as the goal, or some definite structure already being
used, a good deal can of course be said as to the most probable
means, or as to what may or may not be added. Lyric cannot dispense
with tied imagery, it is clear, nor can we neglect the character
of this imagery in reading it. A prose composition has to be
longer than a lyric to produce an equal definiteness of developed
effect. Poems in which there is much turmoil of emotion are likely
to be strongly rhythmical and to be in metre, as we shall see
when we come to discuss rhythm and metre. Drama can hardly dispense
with a great deal of conjecture and further interpretation which
in most forms of the novel is replaced by analysis and explanation,
and in narrative poetry is commonly omitted altogether; and so
on.

But no general prescription that in great poetry there _must_
always be this or that,—deep thought, superb sound or vivid imagery—is
more than a piece of ignorant dogmatism. Poetry may be almost
devoid even of mere sense, let alone thought, or _almost_
without sensory (or formal) structure, and yet reach the point
than which no poem goes further. The second case, however, is
very rare. Almost always, what seems structureless proves to
have still a loose and tenuous (it may be an intermittent) structure.
But we can for example shift the words about very often in Walt
Whitman without loss, even when he is almost at his best.

It is difficult to represent diagrammatically what takes place
in thought in any satisfactory fashion. The impulse coming in
from the visual stimulus of the printed word must be imagined
as reaching some system in the brain in which effects take place
not due merely to this present stimulus, but also to past occasions
on which it has been combined with other stimulations. These
effects are thoughts; and they in their groupings act as signs
for yet other thoughts. The little arrows are intended to symbolise
these references to things outside the mind.

_Emotions, and Attitudes._

Feeling or emotion is not, we have insisted above, another and
a rival mode of apprehending nature. So far as a feeling or an
emotion does refer to anything, it refers in the way described,
through its origin. Feelings, in fact, are commonly signs, and
the differences between those who ‘see’ things by intuition,
or ‘feel’ them, and those who reason them out, is commonly only
a difference between users of signs and users of symbols. Both
signs and symbols are means by which our past experience assists
our present responses. The advantages of symbols, due to the
ease with which they are controlled and communicated, their public
nature, as it were, are obvious. Their disadvantages as compared
with such relatively private signs as emotions or organic sensations
are perhaps less evident. Words, when used symbolically or scientifically,
not figuratively and emotively, are only capable of directing
thought to a comparatively few features of the more common situations.
But feeling is sometimes a more subtle way of referring, more
dangerous also, because more difficult to corroborate and to
control, and more liable to confusion. There is no inherent superiority,
however, in feeling as opposed to thought, there is merely a
difference in applicability; nor is there any opposition or clash
between them except for those who are mistaken either in their
thinking or in their feeling, or in both. How such mistakes arise
will be discussed in Chapter XXXIV.

As regards emotions and attitudes little need be added to what has
already been said. Emotions are primarily signs of attitudes and owe
their great prominence in the theory of art to this. For it is the
attitudes evoked which are the all-important part of any experience.
Upon the texture and form of the attitudes involved its value depends.
It is not the intensity of the conscious experience, its thrill, its
pleasure or its poignancy which gives it value, but the organisation
of its impulses for freedom and fullness of life. There are plenty of
ecstatic instants which are valueless; the character of consciousness
at any moment is no certain sign of the excellence of the impulses from
which it arises. It is the most convenient sign that is available,
but it is very ambiguous and may be very misleading. A more reliable
but less accessible set of signs can be found in the readiness for
this or that kind of behaviour in which we find ourselves after the
experience. Too great insistence upon the quality of the momentary
_consciousness_ which the arts occasion has in recent times been a
prevalent critical blunder. The Epilogue to Pater’s _Renaissance_ is
the _locus classicus_. The after-effects, the permanent modifications
in the structure of the mind, which works of art can produce, have been
overlooked. No one is ever quite the same again after any experience,
his possibilities have altered in some degree. And among all the agents
by which “the widening of the sphere of human sensibility” may be
brought about, the arts are the most powerful, since it is through them
that men may most co-operate and in these experiences that the mind
most easily and with least interference organises itself.


[47] The description of images belongs to the first steps in psychology,
and it is often possible to judge the rank and standing of a
psychologist by the degree of importance which he attaches to
their peculiarities. On theoretical grounds it seems probable
that they are luxury products (cf. _The Meaning of Meaning_,
pp. 148-151) peculiarly connected with the reproduction of emotion.
For a discussion of some experimental investigations into their
utility, Spearman, _The Nature of Intelligence_, Ch. XII,
may be consulted.

[48] Two kinds of onomatopœia should be distinguished. In one
the sound of the words (actual or imaginal) is like some natural
sound (the buzzing of bees, galloping horses, and so forth).
In the other it is not like any such sound but such as merely
to call up free auditory images of the sounds in question. The
second case is by far the more common.




CHAPTER XVII

Rhythm and Metre

  . . . when it approaches with a divine hopping.
                                _The Joyful Wisdom_.


Rhythm and its specialised form, metre, depend upon repetition,
and expectancy. Equally where what is expected recurs and where
it fails, all rhythmical and metrical effects spring from anticipation.
As a rule this anticipation is unconscious. Sequences of syllables
both as sounds and as images of speech-movements leave the mind
ready for certain further sequences rather than for others. Our
momentary organisation is adapted to one range of possible stimuli
rather than to another. Just as the eye reading print unconsciously
expects the spelling to be as usual, and the fount of type to
remain the same, so the mind after reading a line or two of verse,
or half a sentence of prose, prepares itself ahead for any one
of a number of possible sequences, at the same time negatively
incapacitating itself for others. The effect produced by what
actually follows depends very closely upon this unconscious preparation
and consists largely of the further twist which it gives to expectancy.
It is in terms of the variation in these twists that rhythm is
to be described. Both prose and verse vary immensely in the extent
to which they excite this ‘getting ready’ process, and in the
narrowness of the anticipation which is formed, Prose on the
whole, with the rare exceptions of a Landor, a De Quincey, or
a Ruskin, is accompanied by a very much vaguer and more indeterminate
expectancy than verse. In such prose as this page, for example,
little more than a preparedness for further words not all exactly
alike in sound and with abstract polysyllables preponderating
is all that arises. In short, the sensory or formal effect of
words has very little play in the literature of analysis and
exposition. But as’ soon as prose becomes more emotive than scientific,
the formal side becomes prominent.

Let us take Landor’s description[49] of a lioness suckling her
young—

        On perceiving the countryman, she drew up her feet gently,
    and squared her mouth, and rounded her eyes, slumberous with
    content; and they looked, he said, like sea-grottoes, obscurely
    green, interminably deep, at once awakening fear and stilling
    and suppressing it.

After ‘obscurely green’ would it be possible (quite apart from
sense) to have ‘deeply dark’ or ‘impenetrably gloomy’? Why, apart
from sense, can so few of the syllables be changed in vowel sound,
in emphasis, in duration or otherwise, without disaster to the
total effect? As with all such questions about sensory form and
its effects, only an incomplete answer can be given. The expectancy
caused by what has gone before, a thing which must be thought
of as a very complex tide of neural settings, lowering the threshold
for some kinds of stimuli and raising it for others, and the
character of the stimulus which does actually come, both play
their part.

Even the most highly organised lyrical or ‘polyphonic’ prose raises as
it advances only a very ambiguous expectation. Until the final words
of the passage, there are always a great number of different sequences
which would equally well fit in, which would satisfy the expectancy
so far as that is merely due to _habit_, to the routine of _sensory
stimulation_. What is expected in fact is not this sound or that sound,
not even this kind of sound or that kind of sound, but some one of a
certain thousand kinds of sounds. It is much more a negative thing than
a positive. As in the case of many social conventions it is easier to
say what disqualifies than to say what is required.

Into this very indeterminate expectancy the new element comes
with its own range of possible effects. There is, of course,
no such thing as _the_ effect of a word or a sound. There
is no one effect which belongs to it. Words have no intrinsic
literary characters. None are either ugly or beautiful, intrinsically
displeasing or delightful. Every word has instead a range of
possible effects, varying with the conditions into which it is
received. All that we can say as to the sorting out of words,
whether into the ‘combed’ and ‘slippery’, the ‘shaggy’ and ‘rumpled’
as with Dante, or in any other manner, is that some, through
long use, have narrower ranges than others and require more extraordinary
conditions if they are to change their ‘character’. What effect
the word has is a compromise between some one of its possible
effects and the special conditions into which it comes. Thus
in Shakespeare hardly any word ever looks odd until we consider
it; whereas even in Keats the ‘cold mushrooms’ in the _Satyrs’
Song_ give the mind a shock of astonishment, an astonishment
which is full of delight, but none the less is a shock.

But with this example we have broken down the limitation to the
mere sound, to the strictly formal or sensory aspect of word
sequences, and in fact the limitation is useless. For the effect
of a word as sound cannot be separated from its contemporaneous
other effects. They become inextricably mingled at once.

The sound gets its character by compromise with what is going
on already. The preceding agitation of the mind selects from
a range of possible characters which the word might present,
that one which best suits with what is happening. There are no
gloomy and no gay vowels or syllables, and the army of critics
who have attempted to analyse the effects of passages into vowel
and consonantal collocations have, in fact, been merely amusing
themselves. The way in which the sound of a word is taken varies
with the emotion already in being. But, further, it varies with
the sense. For the anticipation of the sound due to habit, to
the routine of sensation, is merely a part of the general expectancy.
Grammatical regularities, the necessity for completing the thought,
the reader’s state of conjecture as to what is being said, his
apprehension in dramatic literature of the action, of the intention,
situation, state of mind generally, of the speaker, all these
and many other things intervene. The way the sound is taken is
much less determined by the sound itself than by the conditions
into which it enters. All these anticipations form a very closely
woven network and the word which can satisfy them all simultaneously
may well seem triumphant. But we should not attribute to the
sound alone virtues which involve so many other factors. To say
this is not in the least to belittle the importance of the sound;
in most cases it is the key to the effects of poetry. This texture
of expectations, satisfactions, disappointments, surprisals,
which the sequence of syllables brings about, is rhythm. And
the sound of words comes to its full power only through rhythm.
Evidently there can be no surprise and no disappointment unless
there is expectation and most rhythms perhaps are made up as
much of disappointments and postponements and surprises and betrayals
as of simple, straightforward satisfactions. Hence the rapidity
with which too simple rhythms, those which are too easily ‘seen
through’, grow cloying or insipid unless hypnoidal states intervene,
as with much primitive music and dancing and often with metre.

The same definition of rhythm may be extended to the plastic
arts and to architecture. Temporal sequence is not strictly necessary
for rhythm, though in the vast majority of cases it is involved.
The attention usually passes successively from one complex to
another, the expectations, the readiness to perceive this rather
than that, aroused by the one being either satisfied or surprised
by the other. Surprise plays an equally important part here;
and the difference in detail between a surprising and delightful
variation and one which merely irritates and breaks down the
rhythm, as we say, is here, as elsewhere, a matter of the combination
and resolution of impulses too subtle for our present means of
investigation. All depends upon whether what comes can be an
ingredient in the further response, or whether the mind must,
as it were, start anew; in more ordinary language, upon whether
there is any ‘connection’ between the parts of the whole.

But the rhythmic elements in a picture or a building may be not
successive but simultaneous. A quick reader who sees a word as
a whole commonly overlooks misprints because the general form
of the word is such that he is only able at that instant to perceive
one particular letter in a particular place and so overlooks
what is discrepant. The parts of a visual field exert what amounts
to a simultaneous influence over one another. More strictly what
is discrepant does not get through to more central regions. Similarly,
with those far more intricate wholes, made up of all kinds of
imagery and incipient action of which works of art consist. The
parts of a growing response mutually modify one another and this
is all that is required for rhythm to be possible.



We may turn now to that more complex and, more specialised form
of temporal rhythmic sequence which is known as metre. This is
the means by which words may be made to influence one another
to the greatest possible extent. In metrical reading the narrowness
and definiteness of expectancy, as much unconscious as ever in
most cases, is very greatly increased, reaching in some cases,
if rime also is used, almost exact precision. Furthermore, what
is anticipated becomes through the regularity of the time intervals
in metre virtually dated. This is no mere matter of more or less
perfect correspondence with the beating of some internal metronome.
The whole conception of metre as _‘uniformity_ in variety’,
a kind of mental drill in which words, those erratic and varied
things, do their best to behave as though they were all the same,
with certain concessions, licences and equivalences allowed,
should nowadays be obsolete. It is a survivor which is still
able to do a great deal of harm to the uninitiated, however,
and although it has been knocked on the head vigorously enough
by Professor Saintsbury and others, it is as difficult to kill
as Punch. Most treatises on the subject, with their talk of feet
and of stresses, unfortunately tend to encourage it, however
little this may be the aim of the authors.

As with rhythm so with metre, we must not think of it as in the
words themselves or in the thumping of the drum. It is not _in_
the stimulation, it is in our response. Metre adds to all the
variously fated expectancies which make up rhythm a definite
temporal pattern and its effect is not due to our perceiving
a pattern in something outside us, but to our becoming patterned
ourselves. With every beat of the metre a tide of anticipation
in us turns and swings, setting up as it does so extraordinarily
extensive sympathetic reverberations. We shall never understand
metre so long as we ask, ‘Why does: temporal pattern so excite
us’? and fail to realise that the pattern itself is a vast cyclic
agitation spreading all over the body, a tide of excitement pouring
through the channels of the mind.

The notion that there is any virtue in regularity or in variety,
or in any other formal feature, apart from its effects upon us,
must be discarded before any metrical problem can be understood.
The regularity to which metre tends acts through the definiteness
of the anticipations which are thereby aroused. It is through
these that it gets such a hold upon the mind. Once again, here
too, the failure of our expectations is often more important
than success. Verse in which we constantly get exactly what we
are ready for and no more, instead of something which we can
and must take up and incorporate as another stage in a total
developing response is merely toilsome and tedious. In prose,
the influence of past words extends only a little way ahead.
In verse, especially when stanza-form and rime co-operate to
give a larger unit than the line, it may extend far ahead. It
is this knitting together of the parts of the poem which explains
the mnemonic power of verse, the first of the suggestions as
to the origin of metre to be found in the Fourteenth Chapter
of _Biographia Literaria_, that lumber-room of neglected
wisdom which contains more hints towards a theory of poetry than
all the rest ever written upon the subject.

We do great violence to the facts if we suppose the expectations
excited as we read verse to be concerned only with the stress,
emphasis, length, foot structure and so forth of the syllables
which follow. Even in this respect the custom of marking syllables
in two degrees only, long and short, light and full, etc., is
inadequate, although doubtless forced upon metrists by practical
considerations. The mind in the poetic experience responds to
subtler niceties than these. When not in that experience but
coldly considering their several qualities as sounds by the ear
alone, it may well find two degrees all that are necessary. In
Chapter XIII we saw an analogous situation arising in the case
of the discrimination of colours. The obvious comparison with
the difference between what even musical notation can record
in music and the player’s interpretation can usefully be made
here.

A more serious omission is the neglect by the majority of metrists
of the pitch relations of syllables. The reading of poetry is
of course not a monotonous and subdued form of singing. There
is no question of definite pitches at which the syllables must
be taken, nor perhaps of definite harmonic relations between
different sounds. But that a rise and fall of pitch is involved
in metre and is as much part of the poet’s technique as any other
feature of verse, as much under his control also, is indisputable.
Anyone who is not clear upon this point may compare as a striking
instance Milton’s _Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity_
with Collins’ _Ode to Simplicity_ and both with the second
Chorus of _Hellas_ discussed in Chapter XXVIII. Due allowances
made for the natural peculiarities of different readers, the
scheme of pitch relations, in their contexts, of

    That on the bitter cross
    Must redeem our loss;

and of

    But com’st a decent maid,
    In Attic robe array’ɖ,

are clearly different. There is nothing arbitrary or out of the
poet’s control in this, as there is nothing arbitrary or out
of his control in the way in which an adequate reader will stress
particular syllables. He brings both about by the same means,
the modification of the reader’s impulses by what has gone before.
It is true that some words resist emphasis far more than perhaps
any resist change of pitch, yet this difference is merely one
of degree. It is as natural to lower the pitch in reading the
word ‘loss’ as it is to emphasise it as compared with ‘our’ in
the same context.

Here again we see how impossible it is to consider rhythm or
metre as though it were purely an affair of the sensory aspect
of syllables and could be dissociated from their sense and from
the emotional effects which come about through their sense. One
principle may, however, be hazarded. As in the case of painting
the more direct means are preferable to the less direct (see
Chapter XVIII), so in poetry. What can be done by sound should
not be done otherwise or in violation of the natural effects
of sound. Violations of the natural emphases and tones of speech
brought about for the sake of the further effects due to thought
and feeling are perilous, though, on occasion, they may be valuable
devices. The use of italics in _Cain_ to straighten out
the blank verse is as glaring an instance as any. But more liberties
are justified in dramatic writing than elsewhere, and poetry
is full of exceptions to such principles.[50] We must not forget
that Milton did not disdain to use special spelling, ‘mee’, for
example, in place of ‘me’, in order to suggest additional emphasis
when he feared that the reader might be careless.

So far we have been concerned with metre only as a specialised
form of rhythm, giving an increased interconnection between words
through an increased control of anticipation. But it has other,
in some cases even more important powers. Its use as an hypnotic
agent is probably very ancient. Coleridge once again drops his
incidental remark, just beside yet extremely close to the point.
“It tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both of
the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it produces
by the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick reciprocations
of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited, which are
too slight indeed to be at any moment objects of distinct consciousness,
yet become considerable in their aggregate influence. As a medicated
atmosphere, or as wine during animated conversation, they act
powerfully, though themselves unnoticed.” (_Biographia Literaria_,
Chap. XVIII.) Mr Yeats, when he speaks of the function of metre
being to “lull the mind into a waking trance” is describing the
same effect, however strange his conception of this trance may
be.

That certain metres, or rather that a certain handling of metre
should produce in a slight degree a hypnoidal state is not surprising.
But it does so not as Coleridge suggests, through the surprise
element in metrical effects, but through the absence of surprise,
through the lulling effects more than through the awakening.
Many of the most characteristic symptoms of incipient hypnosis
are present in a slight degree. Among these susceptibility and
vivacity of emotion, suggestibility, limitations of the field
of attention, marked differences in the incidence of belief-feelings
closely analogous to those which alcohol and nitrous oxide can
induce, and some degree of hyperæsthesia (increased power of
discriminating sensations) may be noted. We need not boggle at
the word ‘hypnosis’. It is sufficient to say, borrowing a phrase
from M. Jules Romains, that there is a change in the regime of
consciousness, which is directly due to the metre, and that to
this regime the above-mentioned characteristics attach. As regards
the hyperæsthesia, there may be several ways of interpreting
what can be observed. All that matters here is that syllables,
which in prose or in _vers libres_ sound thin, tinny and
flat, often gain an astonishing sonority and fullness even in
verse which seems to possess no very subtle metrical structure.

Metre has another mode of action not hitherto mentioned. There
can be little doubt that historically it has been closely associated
with dancing, and that the connections of the two still hold.
This is true at least of some ‘measures’. Either motor images,
images of the sensations of dancing, or, more probably, imaginal
and incipient movements follow the syllables and make up their
‘movement’. A place for these accompaniments should be found
in the diagram in Chapter XVI. Once the metre has begun to ‘catch
on’ they are almost as closely bound up with the sequence of
the words as the tied ‘verbal’ images themselves.

The extension of this ‘movement’ of the verse from dance forms
to more general movements is natural and inevitable. That there
is a very close connection between the sense and the metrical
movement of

    And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly
    Along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly
    Wheel downward come they into fresher skies,

cannot be doubted whatever we may think of the rime.

It is not less clear in

    Where beyond the extreme sea wall, and between the
                            remote sea gates,
    Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep
                            death waits,

or in

    Ran on embattell’d Armies clad in Iron,

than it is in

    We sweetly curtsied each to each
    And deftly danced a saraband.

Nor is it always the case that the movement takes its cue from
the sense. It is often a commentary on the sense and sometimes
may qualify it, as when the resistless strength of Coriolanus
in battle is given an appearance of dreadful ease by the leisureliness
of the description,

    Death, that dark spirit, in’s nervy arm doth lie
    Which being advanc’d declines, and then men die.

Movement in poetry deserves at least as much study as onomatopœia.

This account, of course, by no means covers all the ways by which
metre takes effect in poetry. The fact that we appropriately
use such words as ‘lulling’, ‘stirring’, ‘solemn’, ‘pensive’,
‘gay’ in describing metres is an indication of their power more
directly to control emotion. But the more general effects are
more important. Through its very appearance of artificiality
metre produces in the highest degree the ‘frame’ effect, isolating
the poetic experience from the accidents and irrelevancies of
everyday existence. We have seen in Chapter X how necessary this
isolation is and how easily it may be mistaken for a difference
in kind. Much which in prose would be too personal or too insistent,
which might awaken irrelevant conjectures or might ‘overstep
itself’ is managed without disaster in verse. There are, it is
true, equivalent resources in prose—irony, for example, very
frequently has this effect—but their scope is far more limited.
Metre for the most difficult and most delicate utterances is
the all but inevitable means.


[49] _Works_, II, 171.

[50] It is worth remarking that any application of critical principles
must be indirect. They are not any the less useful because this
is so. Misunderstanding on this point has often led artists to
accuse critics of wishing to make art a matter of rules, and
their objection to any such attempt is entirely justified.




CHAPTER XVIII

On Looking at a Picture

    Hived in our bosoms like the bag o’ the bee,
    Think’st thou the honey with those objects grew?
                                            _Don Juan_.


The diagram and account given of the processes which make up
the reading of a poem may be easily modified to represent what
happens when we look at a picture, a statue or building, or listen
to a piece of music. The necessary changes are fairly obvious,
and it will only be necessary here to indicate them briefly.
Needless to say the importance to the whole response of different
kinds of elements varies enormously from art to art; so much
so as to explain without difficulty the opinion so often held
by persons interested primarily in one of the arts—that the others
(or some of them) are entirely different in nature. Thus painters
often aver that poetry is so different, so indirect, so second-hand
in the way in which it produces its results, as hardly to deserve
the name of an art at all. But, as we shall see, the differences
between separate arts are sometimes no greater than differences
to be found in each of them; and close analogies can be discovered
by careful analysis between all of them. These analogies indeed
are among the most interesting features which such scrutiny as
we are here attempting can make clear. For an understanding of
the problems of one art is often of great service in avoiding
misconceptions in another. The place of representation in painting,
for example, is greatly elucidated by a sound comprehension of
the place of reference or thought in poetry, just as a crude
view on this latter point is likely to involve unfortunate mistakes
upon the first. Similarly a too narrow view of music which would
limit it to an affair merely of the appreciation of the pitch
and time relations of notes may be corrected most easily by a
comparison with the phenomena of colour in the plastic arts.
Comparison of the arts is, in fact, far the best means by which
an understanding of the methods and resources of any one of them
can be attained. We must be careful of course not to compare
the wrong features of two arts and not to find merely fanciful
or insecurely grounded analogies. The dangers both of too close
assimilation and too wide separation of the structures of different
arts are well illustrated in criticism, both before and since
the days of Lessing. Only a thorough psychological analysis will
allow them to be avoided, and those whose experience leads them
to doubt whether analogies are of service, may be asked whether
their objection is not directed merely to attempts to compare
different arts without a sufficient analysis. With such an analysis,
comparison and the elaboration of analogies involve no attempt
to make one art legislate for another, no attempt to blur their
differences or to destroy their autonomy.

In analysing the experiences of the visual arts the first essential
is to avoid the word ‘see’, a term which is treacherous in its
ambiguity. If we say that we see a picture we may mean either
that we see the pigment-covered surface, or that we see the image
on the retina cast by this surface, or that we see certain planes
or volumes in what is called the ‘picture-space’. These senses
are completely distinct. In the first case we are speaking of
the source of the stimulus, in the second of the immediate effect
of the stimulus on the retina, in the third we are referring
to a complex response made up of perceivings and imaginings due
to the intervention of mental structures left behind by past
experience, and excited by the stimulus. The first case we may
leave out of account as a matter of purely technical interest.
The degree of similarity holding between the second and third,
between the first effect of the stimulus and the whole visual
response, will of course vary greatly in different cases. A perfectly
flat, meticulously detailed depiction of conventionally conceived
objects, such as is so often praised in the Academy for its ‘finish’,
may be very nearly the same from its first impression on the
retina to the last effort which vision can make upon it. At the
other extreme a Cézanne, for example, which to the eye of a person
quite unfamiliar with such a manner of painting may at first
seem only a field or area of varied light, may, as the response
develops, through repeated glances, become first an assemblage
of blots and patches of colour, and then, as these recede and
advance, tilt and spread relatively to one another and become
articulated, a system of volumes. Finally, as the distances and
stresses of their volumes become more definitely imagined, it
becomes an organisation of the entire ‘picture-space’ into a
three-dimensional whole with the characters of the solid masses
which appear in it, their weights, textures, tensions and what
not, very definitely, as it seems, given. With familiarity the
response is of course shortened. Its final visual stage is reached
much sooner, and the stages outlined above become, through this
telescoping, too fleeting to be noticed. None the less the great
difference between the first retinal impression and the complete
_visual_ response remains. The retinal impression, the sign,
that is, for the response, contains actually but a small part
of the whole final product, an all-important part it is true,
the seed in fact from which the whole response grows.

The additions made in the course of the response are of several
kinds. They may, perhaps, for our present purposes be spoken
of without misunderstanding as images, or image-substitutes (see
Chapter XVI). The eye, as is well known, is peculiar among our
sense organs in that the receptor, the retina, is a part of the
brain, instead of being a separate thing connected with the brain
more or less remotely by a peripheral nerve. Moreover there are
certain connections leading from other parts of the brain outwards
to the retina as well as connections leading inwards. Thus there
is some ground for supposing that through these outgoing connections
actual retinal effects may accompany some visual images, which
would thereby become much more like actual sensations than is
the case with the other senses. However this may be, the process
whereby an impression which, if interpreted in one way (e.g.
by a person measuring the pigmented areas of a canvas), is correctly
counted as a sign of a flat coloured surface, becomes, when differently
interpreted, an intricately divided three-dimensional space—this
process is one of the intervention of images of several kinds.

The order of these interventions probably varies from case to
case. Perhaps the most important of the images which come in
to give depth, volume, solidity to the partly imagined and partly
perceived ‘picture-space’ are those which are relicts of eye
movements, kinæsthetic images of the convergence of the eyes
and accommodation of the lenses according to the distance of
the object contemplated. When, as it seems, we look past an object
in a picture to some more distant object, seeming in so doing
to change the focus of our eyes, we do not as a rule actually
make any change. But certainly we feel as though we were focussing
differently and as though the convergence were different. This
felt difference which mainly gives the sense of greater distance
is due to kinæsthetic imagery. Correspondingly the parts of the
‘picture-space’ upon which we seem to be focussing, upon which
we _are_ imaginally focussing, become definite and distinct,
and parts much nearer or much more distant become to some extent
blurred and diffused. This effect is probably due to visual images,
simulating the sensations which would normally ensue were we
actually making a change of focus. The degree to which these
last effects occur appears to differ very greatly from one person
to another. Insufficient attention to the great variation in
the means by which these images are involved by the painting
is responsible for much bad criticism. Thus artists can commonly
be found who are quite unable, when looking at paintings: in
which the means employed are unlike their own, to apprehend forms
over which less specialised persons find no difficulty. In general
most visitors to Galleries pay too little attention to the fact
that few pictures can be instantaneously apprehended, that even
ten minutes’ study is quite inadequate in the case of unfamiliar
kinds of work, and that the capacity for ‘seeing’ pictures (in
sense three), an indispensable but merely an initial step to
appreciating them, is something which has to be acquired. It
is naturally of great assistance if many works by the same painter
or of the same School can be seen together, for then the essential
methods employed become clearer. In a general collection it is
difficult not to look at too great a variety of pictures, and
a confusion results, perhaps unnoticed, which is a serious obstacle
to the coherent building up of any one picture. The fashion in
which most Old Masters are hidden away under grime and glass
and the efforts which are necessary in order to reconstruct them
are additional obstacles. The neglect of these obvious facts
is the chief explanation of the low level of appreciation and
criticism from which the art of painting at present suffers.

Following upon the visual images are a swarm of others varying
from picture to picture: tactile images giving the appearance
of texture to surfaces, muscular images giving hardness, stiffness,
softness, flexibility and so on to the volumes imagined—the lightness
and insubstantiality of muslin, the solidity and fixity of rock
being matters of the intervention of images due originally to
the sensations we have received in the past from these materials.
This muscular imagery is of course called up in differing ways
in different cases. Primarily it is due to the imitation by the
artist of subtleties in the light given off by the materials,
or characteristic peculiarities in their form, but there are,
as we shall see, more indirect but also less stable, less reliable
and less efficacious ways by which they may be evoked. The same
applies to the other images, thermal, olfactory, auditory and
the rest, which may be involved in particular cases. There is
a direct and an indirect way in which they can be evoked. They
may spring up at the visual appeal or they may only respond at
a later stage as a result of roundabout trains of thinking. Thus
a silk scarf may _look_ soft and light; or we may imagine
it as light, it _looking_ all the while iron-hard and heavy,
because we know that it is a scarf and that scarves are soft
and light. The two methods are very different. The second is
a reversal of the natural order of perception and for this reason
the condemnation so often heard from painters, of the literary
or ‘detective’ approach to pictures, of which this would be a
representative specimen, is well merited. We must, however, distinguish
cases in which there is this reversal from those in which it
does not occur, those namely in which by a process of inference
we arrive at conclusions about the represented objects which
could not possibly be directly given. But this question may be
deferred until we come to discuss representation.

Hitherto in considering the growth of the three-dimensional imagined
picture-space we have not explicitly mentioned the part played
by colour nor the equally important effect of this growth in
modifying the original colours of the first retinal impression.
But not only may colour be the chief factor determining form,
i.e. the three-dimensional organisation of space, but it is itself
most vitally modified by form.

Colours as signs, that is to say even at the most optical and
least elaborated stage, have certain very marked spatial characters
of their own. Red, for example, seems to advance towards the
eye and to swell out of its boundaries, while blue seems to retreat
and to withdraw into itself[51]. Degree of saturation may also
give recession in obvious and in more recondite ways. Pure colours
in the foreground and greyed colours in the background are a
simple example. Similarly opposition of colours is one of the
main means by which the stresses and strains of volumes may be
suggested.

These characters of colours, especially when they reinforce and
co-operate with one another, may be made to play a very important
part in determining the way in which the picture-space is constructed
when we look at a picture.

Equally important are the less direct effects upon our picture-space
imagining of the emotional or organic responses which we make
to different colours. Individuals vary greatly in the extent
to which they notice and can reflectively distinguish these responses,
and probably also in the degree to which they actually make different
responses. To persons sensitive in this respect, the colours
excite each a distinct, well-marked emotion (and attitude) capable
of being clearly differentiated from others. The sad poverty
and vagueness of the colour vocabulary, however, misleads many
people with regard to these. Each of the ‘puces’, ‘mauves’, ‘magentas’
etc. has to cover numbers of distinguishable colours, often with
strikingly different effects upon us. Thus people who are content
to say that pink is their favourite colour, or that green always
suits them, are either quite undiscriminating in their attitude
towards colour or little attentive to the actual effects produced
upon them. A similar obtuseness or insincerity is evidenced when
it is maintained, as is often done, that pink and green do not
go together. Some pinks and some greens do not, but some do,
and the test of a colourist is just his ability to feel which
are which. Few if any, in fact, of the colour relations with
which the painter is concerned can be stated with the aid of
such general terms—‘red’, ‘brown’, ‘yellow’, ‘grey’, ‘primrose’,
etc.—as are at present available. Each of these stands for a
number of different colours whose relations to a given colour
will commonly be different.

Taking ‘colour’ in this sense to stand for specific colours,
not for classes or ranges of varying hues, sets of colours, where
in certain spatial proportions and in certain relations of saturation,
brightness and luminosity relatively to one another, excite responses
of emotion and attitude with marked individual characteristics.
Colours, in fact, have harmonic relations, although the physical
laws governing these relations are at present unknown, and the
relations themselves only imperfectly ascertained. For every
colour another can be found such that the combined response to
the two will be of a recognisable kind, whose peculiarities are
due probably to the compatibility with one another of the impulses
set up by each. This compatibility varies in a number of ways.
The result is that for every colour a set of other colours is
discoverable such that the response to each of them is compatible
with the response to the tonic colour in a definite way.[52] A
sensitive colourist feels these compatibilities as giving to
these combinations of colours a definite character, which no
other combinations possess. Similarly relations of incompatibility
between colours can also be felt such that their combination
yields no ordered response but merely a clash and confusion of
responses. Colours which just fail to be complementary are a
typical example. Similarly the primary colours in combination
are offensive; should this precise kind of offensiveness be part
of the artist’s purpose, he will, of course, make use of them.

The fact that roses, sunsets, and so forth are so often found
to present harmonious combinations of colour may appear a little
puzzling by this account. But the vast range of close gradations,
which a rose petal, for example, presents, supplies the explanation.
Out of all these the eye picks that gradation which best accords
with the other colours chosen. There is usually some set of colours
in some harmonious relation to one another to be selected out
of the multitudinous gradations which natural objects in most
lightings present; and there are evident reasons why the eye
of a sensitive person should, when it can, pick out those gradations
which best accord. The great range of different possible selections
is, however, of importance. It explains the fact that we see
such different colours for instance when gloomy and when gay,
and thus how the actual selection made by an artist may reveal
the kind and direction of the impulses which are active in him
at the moment of selection.

Needless to say in the absence of a clear nomenclature and standardisation
of colours the task of describing and recording colour relations
is of great difficulty, but the unanimity of competent, that
is, sensitive persons as to which colours are related in specific
ways to which, is too great to be disregarded. It is as great
as the unanimity among musicians as to the harmonic relations
of notes to one another. The great differences between the two
cases are not likely to be overlooked. The presence of physical
laws in many cases connecting notes harmonically related and
the absence of similar known physical laws connecting colours
is a glaring difference. But it should not be forgotten that
these physical laws are, as it were, an extra-musical piece of
knowledge. What matters to the musician is not the physical connections
between notes but the compatibilities and incompatibilities in
the responses of emotion and attitude which they excite. The
musical relations between the notes would be the same even though
the physical relations between the stimuli which arouse them
were quite different.

Naturally enough the analogy with the harmonic relations of music
has been the chief guide to those who have systematically investigated
colour relations. Whatever may be the precise limits to which
it may profitably be carried, for anyone who wishes to form a
general conception of the emotional effects of colours in combination
it is of very great value.

Colour is of course primarily the cause and controlling factor
of emotional response to painting, but, as we have said, it may,
and commonly does, help to determine form. Parts of a picture
which are through their colour out of all emotional connection
with the rest of the picture, tend, other things being equal,
to fall out of the picture altogether, appearing as patches accidentally
adhering to the surface or as gaps through which something else
irrelevant is seen. This is the extreme instance, but the influence
of colour upon form through the emotional relations of colours
to one another is all-pervading Sometimes colour strengthens
and solidifies the structure, sometimes it fights against it,
sometimes it turns into a commentary, as it were, the colour
response modifying the form response and _vice versa_. The
great complexity of the colour and form interactions needs no
insistence. They are so various that no rule can possibly be
laid down as to a _right_ relation for all cases. All depends
upon what the whole response which the painter is seeking to
record may be. As with attempts to define a universal proper
relation of rhythm to thought in poetry (e.g. the assertion that
rhythm should echo or correspond to thought, etc.), so with general
remarks as to how form and colour should be related. All depends
upon the purpose, the total response to which both form and colour
are merely means. Mistakes between means and ends, glorifying
particular techniques into inexplicable virtues are at least
as common in the criticism of painting as with any other of the
arts.

One other aspect of the picture-space needs consideration. It
is not necessarily a fixed and static construction, but may in
several ways contain elements of movement. Some of these may
be eye movements, or kinæsthetic images of eye movements. As
the eye wanders imaginally from point to point the relations
between the parts of the picture-space change; thus an effect
of movement is induced. Equally important are the fusions of
successive visual images which may be suggested by drawing. As
we watch, for example, an arm being flexed, the eye receives
a series of successive and changing retinal impressions. Certain
combinations of these, which represent not the position and form
of the arm at any instant, but a compromise or fusion of different
positions and forms, have an easily explicable capacity to represent
the whole series, and thus to represent movement. The use of
such fused images in drawing may easily be mistaken for distortion,
but when properly interpreted it may yield normal forms in movement.
Many other means by which movement is given in Painting might
be mentioned. One means by which colour, may suggest it, for
example, is well indicated in the following description by Signac
of _Muley-abd-er Rahman entouré de sa garde_: “la tumulte
est traduit par l’accord presque dissonant du grand parasol vert
sur le bleu du ciel, surexcité déjà par l’orangé des murailles[53]”.
It need hardly be pointed out that the response made to the picture-space
varies enormously according to whether the forms in it are seen
as in rest or in movement.



So far we have merely discussed what may be described as the
sensory elements in the picture, and the responses in emotion
and attitude due to these elements. But in most painting there
are further elements essentially involved. It has been asserted
that all further elements are irrelevant, at least to appreciation;
and as a reaction to common views that seem to overlook the sensory
elements altogether the doctrine is comprehensible and perhaps
not without value. For too many people do look at pictures primarily
with intent to discover what they are ‘of’, what they represent,
without allowing the most important thing in the picture, its
sensory stimulation through colour and form, to take effect.
But the reaction goes too far when it denies the relevance of
the representative elements in all cases. It may be freely granted
that there are great pictures in which nothing is represented,
and great pictures in which what is represented is trivial and
may be disregarded. It is equally certain that there are great
pictures in which the contribution to the whole response made
through representation is not less than that made more directly
through form and colour. To those who can accept the general
psychological standpoint already outlined, or indeed any modern
account of the working of the mind, the assertion that there
is no reason why representative and formal factors in an experience
should conflict, but much reason why they should co-operate,
will need no discussion. The psychology of ‘unique æsthetic emotions’
and ‘pure art values’ upon which the contrary view relies is
merely a caprice of the fancy.

The place of representation in the work o different masters varies
enormously and it is not true that the value of their works varies
correspondingly. From Raphael and Picasso at one extreme to Rembrandt,
Goya and Hogarth at the other, Rubens, Delacroix and Giotto occupying
an intermediate position, all degrees of participation between
non-representative form and represented subject in the building
up of the whole response can be found. We may perhaps hazard,
for reasons indicated already, as a principle admitting of exception,
that what can be done by sensory means should not be done indirectly
through representation. But to say more than this is to give
yet another instance of the commonest of critical mistakes: the
exaltation of a method into an end.

Representation in painting corresponds to thought in poetry.
The same battles over the Intellect-Emotion _imbroglio_
rage in both fields. The views recently so fashionable that representation
has no place in art and that treatment not subject is what matters
in poetry spring ultimately from the same mistakes as to the
relation of thinking to feeling, from an inadequate psychology
which would set up one as inimical to the other. Reinforced as
they are by the illusion, supported by language, that Beauty
is a quality of things, not a character of our response to them,
and thus that all beautiful things as sharing this Beauty must
be alike, the confusion which such views promote is a main cause
of the difficulty which is felt so widely in appreciating both
the arts and poetry. They give an air of an esoteric mystery
to what is, if it can be done at all, the simplest and most natural
of proceedings.

The fundamental features of the experiences of reading poetry
and of appreciating pictures, the features upon which their value
depends, are alike. The means by which they are brought about
are unlike, but closely analogous critical and technical problems
arise, as we have seen, for each. The misapprehensions to which
thought is liable recur in all the fields in which it is exercised,
and the fact that it is sometimes more easy to detect a mistake
in one field than in another is a strong argument for comparing
such closely allied subjects.


[51] This character of blue is the basis of the doctrine of Reynolds,
that blue is unsuitable in foregrounds, which led Gainsborough,
according to the well-known story, to paint The Blue Boy.

[52] This account of harmony also applies to music. Few modern
authorities are content to regard harmony as an affair merely
of the physical relationships of notes.

[53] _D’Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionisme_, p. 39.




CHAPTER XIX

Sculpture and the Construction of Form

    Thus men forgot
    That All Deities reside in the Human breast.
                        _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_.


The initial signs from which the work of art is built up psychologically
in the case of sculpture differ in several respects from the
initial signs of painting. There are of course forms of sculpture
for which the difference is slight. Some bas-reliefs, for example,
can be considered as essentially drawings, and sculpture placed
as a decorative detail in architecture so that it can only be
viewed from one angle has necessarily to be interpreted in much
the same manner. Similarly some primitive sculpture in which
only one aspect is represented may be considered as covered by
what has been said about painting, although the fact that the
relief and the relation of volumes is more completely given and
less supplied by imaginative effort is of some consequence. Further,
the changes, slight though they may be, which accompany slight
movements of the contemplator have their effect. His total attitude
is altered in a way which may or may not be important according
to circumstances.

With sculpture in which a number (four for example) of aspects
are fully treated without any attempt to fill in the intermediate
connecting aspects, the whole state of affairs is changed, since
there arises the interpretative task of uniting these aspects
into a whole.

This connection of a number of aspects into a whole may be made
in varying ways. The signs may receive a _visual_ interpretation
and the form be mainly built up of visual images combined in
sequences or fused. This, however, is an unsatisfactory method.
It tends to leave out or blur too many of the possible responses
to the statue and there is usually something unstable about such
syntheses. The form so constructed is insubstantial and incomplete.
Thus those sculptors whose work primarily asks for such a visual
interpretation are commonly felt to be lacking in what is called
a ‘sense of form’. The reasons for this are to be found in the
nature of visual imagery and in the necessarily limited character
of our purely visual awareness of space.

But the connection may be made, not through visual combination,
but through combination of the various muscular images whereby
we feel, or imaginatively construct the tensions, weights, stresses,
etc. of physical objects. Each sequence of visual impressions
as we look at the statue from varying standpoints calls up a
group of these muscular images, and these images are capable
of much more subtle and stable combinations than the corresponding
visual images. Thus two visual images which are incompatible
with one another may be each accompanied by muscular images (feelings
of stress, tension, etc.) which are perfectly compatible and
unite to form a coherent whole free from conflict. By this means
we may realise the solidity of forms far more perfectly than
if we rely upon visual resources alone, and since it is mainly
through the character of the statue as a solid that the sculptor
works, this muscular interpretation has, as a rule, obvious and
overwhelming advantages.

None the less a place remains for sculpture whose primary interpretation
is in visual terms. Looking at any of the more recent work of
Epstein, for example, a feeling of quick and active intelligence
on the part of the contemplator arises, and this sense of his
own activity is the source of much that follows in his response.
By contrast a work of Rodin seems to be not so much exciting
activity in him as active itself. The correlation of visual aspects,
in other words, is a conscious process compared with the automatic
correlation of muscular image responses. The first we seem to
be doing ourselves, the second seems to be something which belongs
to the statue. This difference as we have described it is of
course a technical difference and by itself involves nothing
as to the value of the different works concerned. A similar difference
may be found in the apprehension of form in painting.

These two modes are not as separate as our account would suggest;
neither occurs in purity. Their interaction is further complicated
through the highly representational character of most sculpture,
and through the interlinking of different interpretations due
to the congruences and incompatibilities of the emotional responses
to which they give rise.

With sculpture perhaps more than with any other of the plastic
arts we are in danger of overlooking the work of the contemplator’s
imagination in filling out and interpreting the sign. What we
transport from Egypt to London is merely a set of signs, from
which a suitable interpreter setting about it rightly can produce
a certain state of mind. It is this state of mind which matters
and which gives its value to the statue. But so obscure to ordinary
introspection are the processes of the interpretation that we
tend to think that none occur. That we interpret a picture or
a poem is obvious upon very little reflection. That we interpret
a mass of marble is less obvious. The historical accident that
speculation upon Beauty largely developed in connection with
sculpture is responsible in great degree for the fixity of the
opinion that Beauty is something inherent in physical objects,
not a character of some of our responses to objects.

From certain visual signs, then, the contemplator constructs,
muscularly as well as visually, the spatial form of the statue.
We have seen that the picture-space is a construction, similarly
the statue-space is a construction, and the proportions and relations
of the volumes which in this statue-space make up the statue
are by no means necessarily the same as those of the mass of
marble from which we receive our signs. In other words, the scientific
examination of the statue and the imaginative contemplation of
it do not yield the same spatial results. Thus the process of
measuring[54] statues with a view to discovering a numerical formula
for Beauty is little likely to be fruitful. And the work of those,
such as Havard Thomas, who have attempted to use this method,
show the features which we should expect. Their merits derive
from factors outside the range of the theory. The psychological
processes involved in the construction of space are too subtle,
and the differences between the actual configuration of the marble
and the configuration of the statue in the statue-space are brought
about in too many ways for any correlation to be established.

Among the factors which intervene in the building up of the imaginative
form the most obvious are the lighting, and the material.

With change of lighting, change of form follows at once through
change in the visual signs, and since stone is often a translucent
not an opaque material, lighting is by no means such a simple
matter as is sometimes supposed. More is involved than the avoidance
of distracting cast shadows and the disposal of the brightest
illumination upon the right portions of the statue. The general
aim should obviously be to reproduce the lighting for which the
sculptor designed his work, an aim which requires very sensitive
and full appreciation for its success. An aim, moreover, which
in the case of works transported from North to South and _vice
versa_ is sometimes impossible of realisation.

The interpretation of form is an extraordinarily complex affair.
The consequences of the asymmetricality of space as we construct
it must be noted. Up and down have distinct characters which
differ from those of right and left, which differ again from
those of away and towards us. A measured vertical distance does
not seem to us the same as an equal horizontal distance. Nor
does a equal distance away from us seem equal to either. These
effects are modified again, sometimes reinforced, sometimes reduced,
by effects due to quite a different source, to the relative ease
or difficulty with which the eye follows certain lines. The greater
and less compatibility of certain eye movements with others is
the cause of much of what is confusedly called Rhythm in the
plastic arts. After certain lines we expect others, and the success
or failure of our expectation modifies our response. Unexpectedness,
of course, is an obvious technical resource for the artist. The
intervention here of the representational factor cannot be overlooked.
An eye movement which encounters difficulty for any of a number
of possible reasons, among which so-called rhythmical factors
deserve special notice, is interpreted as standing for a greater
distance than an equal but more easy movement. This is only a
rough rule, for yet other psychological factors may come in to
nullify or even reverse the effect; for example, an explicit
recognition of the difficulty. Yet another determining condition
in our estimation of intervals of space is the uniformity of
their filling. Thus a line one inch long hatched across will
generally seem longer than an equal line unhatched, and a modulated
surface seem larger than a smooth one.

These instances of the psychological factors which help to make
the imaginatively constructed statue-space different from the
actual space occupied by the marble will be enough to show how
intricate is the interpretation by which we take even the first
step towards the appreciation of a statue. Our full response
of attitude and emotion is entirely dependent upon how we perform
the initial operations. It is of course impossible to make these
interpretations separately, consciously and deliberately. Neural
arrangements over which we have little or no direct control perform
them for us. Thanks to their complexity the resultant effect,
the imagined form of the statue, will vary greatly from individual
to individual and in the same individual from time to time. It
might be thought therefore that the hope that a statue will be
a vehicle of the same experience for many different individuals
is vain. Certain simplifications, however, save the situation.

Form, we have seen, is, through our selection among the possible
signs present, within certain limits what we like to make it.
As it varies, so do our further or deeper responses of feeling
and attitude vary. But just as there are congruences and compatibilities
among the responses we make, in the case of colour, which tend,
given certain colours, to make us pick out of a range of possible
colours one which will give us a congruent (or harmonious) response,
so it is with form. Out of the multitude of different forms which
we might construct by stressing certain of the signs rather than
others, the fixing even temporarily of a part of the form tends
to bias us towards so interpreting the rest as to yield responses
accordant with those already active. Hence a great reduction
of the disparity of the interpretations which arise, hence also
the danger of an initial misapprehension which perverts the rest
of the interpretation.



This Chapter, like the last, is intended as an indication, merely,
of the ways in which a psychological analysis may assist the
critic and help to remove misconceptions. The usual practice
of alluding to Form as though it were a simple unanalysable virtue
of objects—a procedure most discouraging to those who like to
know what they are doing, and thus very detrimental to general
appreciation—will lapse when a better understanding of the situation
becomes general. None the less there are certain very puzzling
facts as to the effects of forms when apprehended which in part
explain this way of talking. These are perhaps best considered
in connection with Music, the most purely formal of the arts.


[54] This remark applies equally strongly to the attempts which
are from time to time made to find formulæ for the proportions
of buildings. No one with an adequate idea of the complexity
of the factors which determine our responses is likely to attach
great importance to these investigations, interesting though
they are. The interpretation of the results is not within sight
of even the most optimistic of psychologists.




CHAPTER XX

The _Impasse_ of Musical Theory

    Will twenty chapters render plain
    Those lonely lights that still remain
    Just breaking over land and main?


For fairly obvious reasons the psychology of Music is often regarded
as more backward than that of the other arts, and the _impasse_
which has here been reached more baffling and more exasperating.
But such advance as has been possible in the theory of the other
arts has been mainly concerned with them as representational
or as serviceable. For poetry, for painting, for architecture
there still remain problems as perplexing as any which can be
raised about music. For example, what is the difference between
good and bad blank verse in its formal aspect, between delightful
and distressing alliteration, between euphony and cacophony,
between metrical triumph and metrical failure? Or in the case
of Painting, why do certain forms excite such marked responses
of emotion and attitude and others, so very like them geometrically,
excite none or produce merely confusion? Why have colours their
specific responses and how is it that their combinations have
such subtle and yet definite effects? Or what is the reason that
spaces and volumes in Architecture affect us as they do? These
questions are at present as much without answers as any that
we can raise about Music; but the fact that in these arts other
questions arise which can in part be answered, whereas in Music
questions about the effects of form overwhelmingly preponderate,
has in part obscured the situation.

Other effects are of course also involved; in programme music
something analogous to representation in painting; in opera and
much other music, dramatic action; and so forth. But these effects,
although often contributing to the total value, are plainly subordinate
in music to its more direct influence as sound alone. The difficulties
which they raise have such close analogies in painting and poetry
that a separate discussion may be omitted. The problem of ‘pure
form’ arises, however, with peculiar insistence in music.

More than forty years ago Gurney summed up the state of musical
theory as follows: “When we come to actual forms, and to the
startling differences of merit which the very simplest known
to us present, the musical faculty defies all explanation of
its action and its judgements. The only conceivable explanation
indeed would be an analogy, and we know not where to look for
it[55]”. And the work done since has added remarkably little.
As he so admirably insisted, even though we confine ourselves
to the responses of one individual, all general explanations
of the musical effect apply equally to the ineffective, to the
distressing and the delightful, to the admirable and the atrocious
alike. But the same is true of all attempts to explain the effects
upon us of any forms which neither represent something nor are
in obvious ways serviceable. Whether they are forms seen or heard,
whether they are made up of notes or of movements, of intervals
of time or of images of speech, the same is true of them all.

Whatever effects cannot be traced to some practical use we might
make of them (as we use a plate to eat from or a house to live
in), or to some interference with or threat against the ways
in which we might act, or to some object practically interesting
to us, which they represent—all such effects are necessarily
very difficult to explain.

There is nothing in the least mysterious, however, about the
difficulty of explaining them. The facts required happen to be
beyond our present powers of observation. They belong to a branch
of psychology for which we have as yet no methods of investigation.
It seems likely that we shall have to wait a long while, and
that very great advances must first be made in neurology before
these problems can profitably be attacked. But however regrettable
this may be, there is no justification whatever for the invention
of unique faculties and ultimate, analysable, indefinable entities.
To say that a thing is unanalysable may be to assert either that
it is simple or that we do not know yet how to analyse it. Musical
effects, like the effects of forms in general, are inexplicable
in the second sense only. To pretend that they are inexplicable
in the first sense is mere mystery-mongering. To take two parallel
cases, trade booms and fine weather were until recently inexplicable,
and are doubtless still in many respects difficult to account
for. But no one would pretend that these blessings require us
to assume unique _sui generis_ tendencies in economic or
meteorological affairs.

But the practice of describing the ‘musical faculty’ and the
formal effects of the arts in general as _sui generis_ has
another cause in addition to intellectual bewilderment. Many
people think that to say that a mental activity is unique, or
_sui generis_, in some way gives it a more exalted standing
than if it were recognised as merely too complicated or too inaccessible
to experiment to be at present explained. In part this is a relic
of the old opinion that explanation is itself derogatory, an
opinion which only those who are, in this respect, uneducated,
still entertain. Partly also this preference for ‘unique’ things
is due to confusion with the sense in which St Paul’s may be
said to be unique. But the experience of ‘seeing stars’ after
a bang on the nose is just as ‘unique’ as any act of musical
appreciation and shares any exalted quality which such uniqueness
may be supposed to confer.

Every element in a form, whether it be a musical form or any other,
is capable of exciting a very intricate and widespread response.
Usually the response is of a minimal order and escapes introspection.
Thus a single note or a uniform colour has for most people hardly any
observable effect beyond its sensory characteristics. When it occurs
along with other elements the form which they together make up may have
striking consequences in emotion and attitude. If we regard this as an
affair of mere summation of effects it may seem impossible that the
effect of the form can be the result of the effects of the elements,
and thus it is natural and easy to invent ultimate properties of
‘forms’ by way of pseudo-explanation. But a little more psychological
insight makes these inventions appear quite unnecessary. The effects
of happenings in the mind rarely add themselves up. Our more intense
experiences are not built up of less intense experiences as a wall is
built up of bricks. The metaphor of addition is utterly misleading.
That of the resolution of forces would be better, but even this does
not adequately represent the behaviour of the mind. The separate
responses which each element in isolation would tend to excite are so
connected with one another that their combination is, for our present
knowledge, incalculable in its effects. Two stimuli which, when
separated by one interval of time or space, would merely cancel one
another, with another interval produce an effect which is far beyond
anything which either alone could produce. And the combined response
when they are suitably arranged may be of quite another kind than that
of either. We may, if we like, think of the effects of impulses at
various intervals of time upon a pendulum, but this metaphor is, as
we have suggested, insufficient. It is over simple. The intricacies
of chemical reactions come nearer to being what we need. The great
quantities of latent energy which may be released by quite slight
changes in conditions suggest better what happens when stimuli are
combined. But even this metaphor incompletely represents the complexity
of the interactions in the nervous system. It is only by conjecture
that its working can as yet be divined. What is certain is chat it is
the most complex and the most sensitive thing of which we know.

The unpredicable and miraculous differences, then, in the total
responses which slight changes in the arrangement of stimuli
produce, can be fully accounted for in terms of the sensitiveness
of the nervous system; and the mysteries of ‘forms’ are merely
a consequence of our present ignorance of the detail of its action.
We have spoken above of the ‘elements’ of a form, but in fact
we do not yet know which these are. Any musical sound, for example,
is plainly complex, though how complex it is from the point of
view of its musical effects is still very uncertain. It has pitch,
it has _timbre_, the characters which change as it is played
upon one kind of instrument or another, the characters which
are sometimes called its colour. Its effects also vary with its
loudness and with its volume. It may be far more complex still.
Its relations again to other musical sounds may be of at least
three kinds: pitch relations, harmonic relations and temporal
relations, complicated, all of them, in the utmost degree by
Rhythm. Possibly other relations still are involved. There would
be no advantage here in entering into the detail of the analysis
of these qualities and relations. The one point of importance
for our present purpose is the immense scope for the resolution,
interinanimation, conflict and equilibrium of impulses opened
up by this extraordinary complexity of musical sounds and of
their possible arrangement. It is not in the least surprising
that so few invariable correspondences between stimuli and total
responses have as yet been discovered.

The same state of affairs recurs wherever forms by themselves,
dissociated from all practical uses and from all representation
produce immediate effects upon the mind. In painting, in sculpture,
in architecture and in poetry, we need equally to be on our guard
against those who would attribute peculiar, unique and mystic
virtues to forms in themselves. In every case their effect is
due to the interplay (not the addition) of the effects which
their elements excite. Especially we do well to beware of empty
speculations upon ‘necessary and inevitable relations’ as the
source of the effect. Of course in a given case a certain relation,
a certain arrangement, may be necessary, in the sense that the
elements if differently disposed would have a quite different
combined effect. But this is not the sense in which necessity
is usually claimed. It is necessity, in the metaphysical sense,
some here utterly obscure kind of ‘logical necessity’ which is
the favourite toy of a number of art critics. To those who have
some familiarity both with Logic and with Psychology the regular
appearance of the term ‘logical’ in describing these relations
is the clearest indication that nothing definite or adequately
considered is being said. The fact that, given certain elements
arranged in a certain way, a certain further element can usually
be introduced in one way and one way only _if a certain total
effect is to be produced_, does, it is true, give a certain
‘inevitability’ to the artist’s work. But what the effect is
and whether the effect is worth while have still to be considered,
and this inevitability has nothing to do with _a priori_
rightness and is a matter simply of cause and effect. The salt
required to make a soup palatable is ‘logically necessitated’
in this sense as much as any relation in a picture. The value
lies not in the apprehension, conscious or subconscious, of the
rightness of the relations, but in the total mental effect which,
since they are right (i.e. since they work), they produce.


[55] _The Power of Sound_, p. 176.




CHAPTER XXI

A Theory of Communication

    For surely once, they feel, we were
      Parts of a single continent.
                            _Matthew Arnold._


Artificial mysteries are as prevalent in unreflecting and even
in elaborately excogitated opinion upon communication as elsewhere.
On the one hand are some who define communication as the actual
transference of experiences in the strictest possible sense of
transference—the sense in which a penny can be transferred from
one pocket to another—and are led to most fantastic hypotheses.
Blake seems sometimes to have believed that one single, the same,
identical state of mind, imagined as a being or power, can occupy
now one mind, now another, or many minds at once. Other thinkers,
in less picturesque manners, have fallen back upon no less transcendental
considerations as necessities in the explanation of communication.
We must suppose, it is alleged, that human minds are wider than
we ordinarily believe, that parts of one mind may pass over to
become parts of another, that minds interpenetrate and intermingle,
or even that particular minds are merely an illusory appearance
and the underlying reality one mind whose facets or aspects are
many. In this way it is easy to enter the maze. Probably some
wanderings in it are unavoidable for all speculative persons
at some period of their mental development. The only escape from
it is by the original entrance.

For communication defined as strict transference of or participation
in identical experiences does not occur. This is not a heart-breaking
conclusion. No general theory, in fact, as to the nature or conditions
of experiences can affect their value. For value is prior to
all explanations. If actual transference and participation did
occur we should of course be compelled to adopt a transcendental
theory. It does not occur[56] and no arguments which assume it
have the least weight.

All that occurs is that, under certain conditions, separate minds
have closely similar experiences. Those who are unable to accept
this view reject it not on grounds of evidence, not through the
ways in which the world influences them, but on grounds of desire,
due to the influence of the contrary opinion on their attitudes
to their fellows. At moments anyone may wish it otherwise; severance
seems a deprivation; caught in a moment of maladjustment we feel
that our essential insularity is a blight and a defect, and to
accept the facts and upon them to found a new and more perfect
adjustment is for all sensitive people in some situations difficult.
But the true belief does not, and perhaps no true belief can,
really deprive anyone of any values. Sad cases of bad systematisations
there doubtless are, for which no readjustment is possible. A
false belief may become an indispensable condition for the most
important activities of individuals who without it break down
into confusion. So it is with many religious beliefs; and in
saying that the removal of such beliefs need involve no loss,
and may involve great gains in values, we do not say that there
are not certain individuals whose values will be destroyed in
the process. We say only that adaptable people will find that
most of their values can be retained after rejecting their errors,
that compensations and equivalents for their losses are available,
and that whole sets of fresh values become open to them through
their better adjustment to the actual world in which they live.
This is the justification for the opinion which has so often
been held, that knowledge is the greatest of all goods. The opinion
appears to be warranted. Knowledge _is_, we are slowly finding
out, an indispensable condition for the attainment of the widest,
most stable, and most important values.

We start then from the natural isolation and severance of minds.
Their experiences at the best, under the most favourable circumstances,
can be but similar. Communication, we shall say, takes place
when one mind so acts upon its environment that another mind
is influenced, and in that other mind an experience occurs which
is like the experience in the first mind, and is caused in part
by that experience. Communication is evidently a complicated
affair, and capable of degrees at least in two respects. The
two experiences may be more or less similar, and the second may
be more or less dependent upon the first. If A and B are walking
in the street together and A touches B and says, “There is the
Lord Chief Justice,” B’s experience while he contemplates the
dignitary is only adventitiously dependent upon A’s experience.
But if A, having met the Lord Chief Justice, describes him to
a friend afterwards in a quarry at Portland, for example, his
friend’s experience will depend very largely upon the particular
judges he may himself have encountered, and for the rest will
derive its special features from A’s description. Unless A has
remarkable gifts of description and B extraordinarily sensitive
and discriminating receptive ability, their two experiences will
tally at best but roughly. They may completely fail to tally
without either being clearly aware of the fact.

In general, long and varied acquaintanceship, close familiarity,
lives whose circumstances have often corresponded, in short an
exceptional fund of common experience is needed, if people, in
the absence of special communicative gifts, active and receptive,
are to communicate, and even with these gifts the success of
the communication in difficult cases depends upon the extent
to which past similarities in experience can be made use of.
Without such similarities communication is impossible. Difficult
cases are those in which the speaker must himself supply and
control a large part of the causes of the listener’s experience;
in which correspondingly the listener has to struggle against
the intrusions of elements from his own past experience which
are irrelevant. When A can point and B gaze, the matter is sometimes
easy; although, as is well known, a complex object, for example
a landscape, where many different selections are possible corresponding
to different emphases of interest, cannot be dealt with in so
simple a manner. Less complex things in which the interesting
feature is more salient, for example, a gentleman asleep in Church,
may be merely indicated with more confidence of communication,
although here again one person may feel indignation and another
amusement at the sight.

In difficult cases the vehicle of communication must inevitably
be complex. The effect of a word varies with the other words
among which it is placed. What would be highly ambiguous by itself
becomes definite in a suitable context. So it is throughout;
the effect of any element depends upon the other elements present
with it. Even in such shallow communication as is involved in
merely making out the letters in a handwriting this principle
is all-important, and in the deepest forms of communication the
same principle holds good. To this is due the superiority of
verse to prose for the most difficult and deepest communications,
poetry being by far the more complex vehicle. A similar instance
is the increased ambiguity of a monochromatic reproduction as
compared with the original painting. What _difficulty_ of
communication depends upon we have already considered. It should
not be confused with the difficulty of the matter communicated,
although the two are often connected. Some very difficult calculations,
for example, can be communicated with ease. _Depth_ of communication
likewise is not necessarily connected with difficulty. It is
a name for the degree of completeness in the response required.
A glance at the diagram on p. 116 will make this use of the term
clear. Communications involving attitudes are deeper than those
in which references alone are concerned. Abstract and analytic
prose, in fact, depends for its success upon the shallowness
of its draught. It must avoid any stirring of the emotions lest
its required distinctions become obscured.


[56] The very strange and important phenomena of apparent telepathy,
and the feats of some ‘psychometrists’ and ‘clairvoyants’, although
they may call for a great extension of our ideas as to how minds
influence one another, do not require any such desperate devices
as transference of, or participation in, _identical_ experiences.
If they did, the possibility of investigating them by the only
technique with which anything has ever been successfully investigated
would be remote. On any ‘identity’ or ‘participation’ theory,
communication becomes an ineffable and irremovable mystery. There
may, of course, be any number of strange events occurring about
which we cannot know, but to discuss such events is unprofitable.




CHAPTER XXII

The Availability of the Poet’s Experience

    That he is the wisest, the happiest and the best, inasmuch
  as he is a poet, is equally incontrovertible; the greatest poets
  have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate
  prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives,
  the most fortunate of men.—_The Defence of Poetry_.


The special communicative gifts, either active or passive, which
have been alluded to, are no peculiar irreducible abilities.
They can be described in terms of activities already mentioned.
The use of past similarities in experience and the control of
these elements through the dependence of their effects upon one
another, make up the speaker’s, the active communicator’s gift.
Discrimination, suggestibility, free and clear resuscitation
of elements of past experience _disentangled from one another_,
and control of irrelevant personal details and accidents, make
up the recipient’s gift. We may now consider these more closely.

Certain favourable and unfavourable special circumstances in
the temperaments or characters of the persons concerned may be
set aside. Thus courage or audacity, enterprise, goodwill, absence
of undue pride or conceit, honesty, humaneness, humility in its
finest sense, humour, tolerance, good health, and the Confucian
characteristics of the ‘superior man’ are favourable general
conditions for communication. But we will assume them present
in sufficient degree and pass on to the less evident because
more fundamental conditions. In the first place all those which
we have enumerated as desirable in the recipient are also necessary
in the artist. He is pre-eminently accessible to external influences
and discriminating with regard to them. He is distinguished further
by the freedom in which all these impressions are held in suspension,
and by the ease with which they form new relations between themselves.
The greatest difference between the artist or poet and the ordinary
person is found, as has often been pointed out, in the range,
delicacy, and freedom of the connections he is able to make between
different elements of his experience. “All the images of nature
were still present to him,” says Dryden, with felicity, of Shakespeare,
“and he drew them not laboriously but luckily.” It is this available
possession of the past which is the first characteristic of the
adept in communication, of the poet or the artist.

Availability, not mere possession, however, is what is essential.
Many people are endowed with memories of marble upon which time
can do little to efface even the slightest mark, but they benefit
little from their endowment. A merely repetitive retention is
rather a disability than an asset in communication, since it
makes the separation of the private and irrelevant from the essential
so difficult. Persons to whom the past comes back as a whole
are likely to be found in an asylum.

What is in question here is not memory, in the stricter sense
in which past experience is dated and placed, but free reproduction.
To be able to revive an experience is not to remember when and
where and how it occurred, but merely to have that peculiar state
of mind available. Why some experiences are available and others
not is unfortunately still a matter for conjecture merely. The
difficulty upon most accounts, Semon’s for example, is to explain
why _all_ our past experience is not being revived all the
time. But some plausible conjectures are not difficult to make,
and the absence of clear evidence or conclusive proof should
not prevent our making them if they are recognised for conjectures.

How far an experience is revivable would seem to depend in the
first place upon the interests, the impulses, active in the experience.
Unless similar interests recur its revival would seem to be difficult.
The original experience is built upon a number of impulses; it
came about only through these impulses. We may even say that
it is those impulses. The first condition for its revival is
the occurrence of impulses similar to _some_ of these.

The patient in the asylum occupied in reliving the same piece
of experience indefinitely does so (if he does) because he is
limited very strictly in the range of his possible impulses,
other impulses not being allowed to intervene. Hence the completeness
with which he is said to reconstruct the past. Most revival is
distorted because only some of the original impulses are repeated,
new impulses being-involved and a compromise resulting.

The impulses implicated in experiences may be many and varied
or few and alike. An experience which has a very simple impulse
structure will, we may suppose, tend to come back only when these
impulses are again relatively dominant. Other things being equal
it will have less chance of revival than an experience with a
more complex structure. Recalling the illustration used in Chapter
XIV, the broader the facet the more numerous are the positions
from which the polyhedron will settle down on that facet. It
is a first principle of psychology that the partial return only
of a situation may reinstate the whole, and since most impulses
have belonged in the past to many varied wholes there must evidently
be much rivalry as to which wholes do actually recur. What seems
to decide the dispute more than anything else is the character
of the original connections between the parts. As has recently
been emphasised by the exponents of _Gestalt-psychologie_,
mere original contiguity or simultaneity is comparatively powerless
to control revival. Compare the learning of a geometric theorem
by heart with understanding it, or even a brief study of some
building with mere daily familiarity.

What then is the difference between understanding a situation
and the more usual reactions to it? It is a difference in the
degree of organisation of the impulses which it arouses. It is
the difference between a systematised complex response, or ordered
sequence of responses, and a welter of responses. We must not
take ‘understanding’ in too specialised a sense here, or we shall
overlook the immense importance of this difference in determining
revival. We are accustomed to make an artificial distinction
between intellectual or theoretical and non-intellectual or emotional
mental activities. To understand a situation in the sense here
intended is not necessarily to reflect upon it, to inquire into
its principles and consciously distinguish its characters, but
to respond to it as a whole, in a coherent way which allows its
parts their due share and their proper independence in the response.
Experience which has this organised character, it is reasonable
to suppose, has more chance of revival, is more available as
a whole and in parts, than more confused experience.

Contrast the behaviour of the sleepy and the fully awake, of
the normal man with the lightly and the more deeply anæsthetised
patient, of the starved or fevered with the healthy. To describe
these differences in neural potency, and to mark the degree of
physiological efficiency, Dr Head has recently[57] suggested the
term _vigilance_, a useful addition to our symbolic machinery.
In a high state of vigilance the nervous system reacts to stimuli
with highly adapted, discriminating, and ordered responses; in
a lowered state of vigilance the responses are less discriminating,
less delicately adapted. Whether we are considering the decerebrate
preparation or the intact poet, the simplest automatisms or the
most highly conscious acts, what happens in a given stimulus
situation varies with the vigilance of the appropriate portion
of the nervous system. The point as regards revival can be put
conveniently by saying that experiences of high vigilance are
the most likely to be available. The degree of vigilance of the
individual at the moment at which revival is attempted is, of
course, equally but more evidently an important factor.

The answer then, at least in part, to the problem of how the
poet’s experience is more than usually available to him is that
it is, as he undergoes it, more than usually organised through
his more than usual vigilance. Connections become established
for him which in the ordinary mind, much more rigid and exclusive
in its play of impulses, are never effected, and it is through
these original connections that so much more of his past comes
to be freely revivable for him at need.

The same explanation may be put in another way. In order to keep
any steadiness and clarity in his attitudes the ordinary man
is under the necessity on most occasions of suppressing the greater
part of the impulses which the situation might arouse. He is
incapable of organising them; therefore they have to be left
out. In the same situation the artist is able to admit far more
without confusion. Hence the fact that his resultant behaviour
is apt to cause dismay, irritation or envy, or to seem incomprehensible.
The wheeling of the pigeons in Trafalgar Square may seem to have
no relation to the colour of the water in the basins, or to the
tones of a speaker’s voice or to the drift of his remarks. A
narrow field of stimulation is all that we can manage, and we
overlook the rest. But the artist does not, and when he needs
it, he has it at his disposal.

The dangers to which he is exposed, the apparent inconsequence,
the difficulty on many occasions of co-operating with him, of
relying upon him, of predicting what he will do, are evident
and often expatiated upon. His superficial resemblance to persons
who are merely mental chaoses, unorganised, without selective
ability and of weak and diffused attention, is likewise clear.
Essentially he is the opposite of these.


[57] Henry Head, ‘The Conception of Nervous and Mental Energy’
in the _British Journal of Psychology_, Oct. 1923, Vol.
XIV, p. 126.




CHAPTER XXIII

Tolstoy’s Infection Theory

  Beauty is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in the
            mind which contemplates them.—_Hume_.


It is strange that speculations upon the arts should so rarely
have begun from the most obvious fact about them. Mr Roger Fry,
in his interesting Retrospect, records the shock with which Tolstoy’s
insistence upon communication struck contemporary students in
England. “What remained of immense importance was the idea that
a work of art was not the record of beauty already existent
elsewhere, but the expression of an emotion felt by the artist
and conveyed to the spectator.”[58] It will be useful to examine
Tolstoy’s account. He formulates his theory[59] as follows: “Art
becomes more or less infectious in consequence of three conditions:

      (i) In consequence of a greater or lesser
          peculiarity of the sensation conveyed.

     (ii) In consequence of a greater or lesser
          clearness of the transmission of this
          sensation.

    (iii) In consequence of the sincerity of the
          artist, that is, of the greater or lesser
          force with which the artist himself
          experiences the sensation which he is
          conveying.”

He adds, in curious contradiction to his other view which we
have already discussed, “Not only is the infectiousness a certain
sign of art, but the degree of the infection is the only standard
of the value of art.”

This contradiction we may perhaps remove or at least mitigate
if we notice that ‘degree of infection’ is a highly ambiguous
phrase. It may be equivalent to—

     (i) the number of persons who may be infected,

    (ii) the completeness with which the experience is reproduced
         in them.

These are the two most relevant senses here, and both are involved
in Tolstoy’s exposition. The first would bring this view into
connection with his doctrine that only so far as art is accessible
to all men is it valuable. The second, however, cannot be reconciled
with that view, but that he held it cannot be doubted. “The more
the sensation to be conveyed is special,” he goes on, “the more
strongly does it act upon the receiver; the more special the
condition of the mind is, to which the reader is transferred,
the more willingly and the more powerfully does he blend with
it.”

This is plainly untrue. What Tolstoy would have said with more
reflection is that some special experiences are interesting and
owe their attraction partly to their strangeness, their unusual
character. But many unusual and special experiences are unattractive
and repellent. Dyspeptics, amateurs of psycho-analysis, fishermen,
and golfers, have very often most remarkable things to recount.
We shun having to listen precisely because they are so special.
Further, many experiences by their very oddness are incommunicable.

Only so far as common interests are aroused does the ease and
completeness of transmission depend upon the rarity and strangeness
of the experience communicated. With this proviso Tolstoy’s remark
is obviously justified. That he should have stressed it is an
indication of his sincerity and candour. So much of his doctrine
is a simple denial that special experiences are a fit subject
for art. A division between experiences which though special
are yet in the main path of humanity and accessible to all men
if they are sufficiently finely developed in normal directions,
and those other special experiences which are due to abnormality,
disease, or eccentric and erratic specialisation, is what he
would have added if his attention had been drawn to the point.
He would have enjoyed classifying the fashionables and intellectuals,
the etiolate cultured classes, among the insane.

The second condition of infectiousness, the greater or less clearness
of the transmission of the sensation, is more important. How
to obtain clear transmission is precisely the problem of communication.
We have seen that it is a matter of the availability of common
experiences, the elicitation of these by a suitable vehicle,
and the control and extrusion of irrelevant elements, so far
as they arise, through the complexity of the vehicle.

The third condition, the sincerity of the artist, is more obscure.
Tolstoy’s own elucidation carries us but a little way. What is
this force with which an experience occurs? Certainly experiences
may be of the utmost intensity without thereby being any more
easy to convey. A lightning flash, for example, which just misses
one upon a summit, is much more difficult to describe than the
same flash seen from the valley. Tolstoy, however, is speaking
of the experience as evoked by the artist in the course of communication,
of the “emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject
of contemplation”, which then “is gradually produced and does
itself exist in the mind”, to quote Wordsworth’s celebrated account
of the source of poetry. He is speaking of the fullness, steadiness
and clearness with which the experience to be communicated develops
in the mind of the communicator at the moment of expression.
Inrushes of emotion, accompanied by scraps and odd bits of imagery,
thought and incipient activity, are not uncommon, and the process
of jotting down what comes to mind at the moment is all that
the would-be poet can achieve.

    Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,
    Much future ode and abdicated play:
    Nonsense precipitate like running lead,
    Which slipped through cracks and zigzags of the head.

Opposed to him is the poet who “described in _ideal_ perfection,
brings the whole soul of man into activity. . . .” His is “a
more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order;
judgment ever awake, and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm
and feeling profound or vehement[60].” As so often, Coleridge
drops the invaluable hint almost inadvertently. The wholeness
of the mind in the creative moment is the essential consideration,
the free participation in the evocation of the experience of
all the impulses, conscious or unconscious, relevant to it, without
suppressions or restrictions. As we have seen, this completeness
or wholeness is the rarest and the most difficult condition required
for supreme communicative ability. How it works we have also
seen, and if this is, as doubtless it must be, what Tolstoy meant
by sincerity, however queer some of his tests for it were, we
have found yet another indication of how great his contribution
to critical theory, under happier circumstances, might have been.


[58] _Vision and Design_, p. 194.

[59] _What is Art_, Sect. XV.

[60] _Biographia Literaria_, Vol. 11, Ch. XIV, p. 12.




CHAPTER XXIV

The Normality of the Artist

  Prose is an uninterrupted, polite warfare with poetry . . .
    every abstraction wants to have a jibe at poetry and wishes
    to be uttered with a mocking voice.—_The Joyful Wisdom_.


If the availability of his past experience is the first characteristic
of the poet, the second is what we may provisionally call his
normality. So far as his experience does not tally with that
of those with whom he communicates, there will be failure. But
both the sense in which it must tally and the sense in which
the artist is normal need to be carefully considered.

Within racial[61] boundaries, and perhaps within the limits of
certain very general types,[62] many impulses are common to all
men. Their stimuli and the courses which they take seem to be
uniform. At the same time there are many other impulses which
are not uniform. It is difficult to give instances, since there
are so few names for impulses, but sounds are fairly uniform
while words used in isolation are fairly ambiguous stimuli. Impulses
could, if we knew enough, be arranged in an order of general
uniformity or stability. Some impulses remain the same, taking
the same course on the same occasions, from age to age, from
prehistoric times until to-day. Some change as fashions change.
Between the two extremes are the vast majority; neither, when
the nervous system is vigilant, very fixed nor very erratic;
set off by a given stimulus and taking the course they do because
other impulses are also active or have just been active.

For successful communication a number of impulses with their
effective stimuli must be common to the communicators, and further
the general ways in which impulses modify one another must be
shared. We evidently cannot expect that many total situations
and responses will have been common, and it is not necessary
that they should be. Within limits the disparities can be overcome
by what is called imagination.

There is nothing peculiarly mysterious about imagination. It
is no more marvellous than any other of the ways of the
mind. Yet it has so often been treated as an arcanum that we
naturally approach it with caution. It is desirable at least
to avoid part of the fate which befell Coleridge,[63] and our
account will be devoid of theological implications.

Given some impulses active others are thereby aroused in the
absence of what would otherwise be their necessary stimuli. Such
impulses I call imaginative, whether images occur or not, for
image-production is not at all essentially involved in what the
critic is interested in as imagination. Which other impulses
are brought in is in part determined by which were co-operative
together originally when all the impulses had their own stimuli,
that is to say, in the non-imaginary experiences from which the
imaginary experience derives. In so far as this factor comes
in the imagination may be said to be _repetitive_. The imagination
we are concerned with may be called _formative_[64] by way
of distinction. For present circumstances are at least as important.
Remember in a changed mood a scene which took place under a strong
emotion. How altered is its every aspect! The selection of the
impulses which take effect is changed; the impulses are distorted,
they run in different courses. The imaginative construction is
always at least as much determined by what is going on in the
present as by what went on in the past, _pasts_ rather,
whence it springs.

Many of the most curious features of the arts, the limitation
of their number, their formal characteristics and the conditions
of impersonality, detachment and so forth, which have given rise
to much confused discussion of the ‘æsthetic’ state for example,
are explained by this fact. In difficult communication the artist
must find some means of so controlling a part of the recipient’s
experience that the imaginative development will be governed
by this part and not left to the accidents of repetition which
will differ naturally from individual to individual. As a basis
for every art, therefore, will be found a type of impulse which
is extraordinarily uniform, which fixes the framework, as it
were, within which the rest of the response develops. These are
among the most uniform impulses, among those which come nearest
to having a one-one correlation with their stimuli, of all those
which we experience.

In poetry, rhythm metre and tune or cadence; in music, rhythm
pitch timbre and tune; in painting, form and colour; in sculpture,
volume and stress; in all the arts, what are usually called the
formal elements are the stimuli, simple or complex, which can
be most depended upon to produce uniform responses. It is true
that these responses are not so uniform as the reflexes, as sneezing
or blinking for example. But even these are to a considerable
extent subject to interference and modification by impulses of
higher levels. What communication requires is responses which
are uniform, sufficiently varied, and capable of being set off
by stimuli which are physically manageable. These three requisites
explain why the number of the arts is limited and why formal
elements have such importance.

They are the skeleton or scaffolding upon or within which the
further impulses involved in the communication are supported.
They supply the present dependable part of the experience by
which the rest, the more erratic, ambiguous part of the imaginative
development, is controlled. By themselves (although there has
been a natural tendency in criticism to maintain the contrary
opinion) they are often quite inadequate. As we have seen, differences
of all degrees, both between and within the arts, exist.

The fashion in which the poet’s impulses must tally with those
of his readers, will now be moderately clear. The poet is in
the least favourable position, perhaps, among the artists, but
as a compensation the range and fullness of the communications
open to him is, if he can overcome the difficulties, very great.
But evidently the least eccentricity on his part, either in the
responses which he makes to rhythms and verbal tunes, or in the
ways in which these govern and modify his further responses or
are modified by them, will be disastrous. It is the same for
all the arts. A defective or eccentric colour sensibility, a
common defect as is well known, may play havoc with an artist’s
work, _qua_ communication, without necessarily involving
any deficiency of value in his own experience. It is theoretically
possible for an individual to develop in himself states of mind
of very high value and yet to be so unusual in his own sensibility
as to seem ridiculous or be incomprehensible to others. The question
then arises as to which is in the right, the artist or his uncomprehending
critics. This frequent dilemma raised alike by great innovating
artists and by nincompoops brings us back to the problem of normality.

To be normal is to be a standard, but not, as things are and
are likely to remain, an average; and to inquire into the characters
of the norm or to ask who are normal is to raise a question as
to value. The artist departs from the average, but so do other
people. His departure, however, is one of the reasons why we
attend to his work; other people’s departures may be reasons
why we should not. What are the main differences which decide
whether a departure is a merit or a defect?

The theory of value outlined above indicates some of these differences.
If the artist’s organisation is such as to allow him a fuller
life than the average, with less unnecessary interference between
its component impulses, then plainly we should do well to be
more like him, _if we can_ and as far as we can. But the
qualification, _if we can_, has far-reaching consequences.
Politically it _might_ be better for the community to be
organised on the model of ant and bee communities, but, since
it cannot, the question whether we should try to make it so does
not arise. Similarly, if the artist’s organisation[65] is so eccentric
as to make general approximation to it impossible, or if a general
approximation would involve (people being what they are) greater
losses than gains, then however admirable it may be in itself,
we shall be justified in neglecting it. The case, if it indeed
occurs, is exceptional but instructive theoretically. What is
excellent and what is to be imitated are not necessarily the
same. But it is interesting to note that mentalities to which
the usual and ordinary man is not capable of approximating without
loss can almost always be shown to be defective, and that the
defects themselves are the barrier to approximation. Certain
mystical poets are perhaps as good an example of this as any.
However admirable the experience of a Boehme or a Blake, of a
Nietzsche or of the Apocalypst, the features which prevent general
participation in it, the barriers to communication, are not the
features upon which its value chiefly depends. It is the inchoate
part of Blake’s personality which makes him incomprehensible,
not the parts which were better organised than those of every
one else.

The explanation of the rarity of admirable though utterly eccentric
experience is not difficult. The metaphorical remark that we
are all branches of the same tree is its most compendious form.
So much must be alike in the nature of all men, their situation
in the world so much the same, and organisation building upon
this basis must depend upon such similar processes, that variation
both wide and successful is most unlikely. That we are apt to
exaggerate the differences between men is well known. If we consider
what is usually called mind, alone, we may well suppose that
minds may differ _toto cœlo_, but if we look more carefully,
taking account of the whole man, including his spinal reflexes
for example, seeing his mind as but the most delicate and most
advanced part of his total organisation, we shall not be tempted
to think him so diverse. People of course do seem extraordinarily
different in the ways in which they think and feel. But we are
specialised to detect these differences. Further, we tend constantly
to overlook differences in situation which would explain differences
in behaviour. We assume to a ridiculous extent that what is stimulating
us will stimulate others in the same way, forgetting that what
will happen depends upon what has happened before and upon what
is already happening within, about which we can usually know
little.

The ways then in which the artist will differ from the average
will as a rule presuppose an immense degree of similarity. They
will be further developments of organisations already well advanced
in the majority. His variations will be confined to the newest,
the most plastic, the least fixed part of the mind, the parts
for which reorganisation is most easy. Thus his differences are
far less serious obstacles to communication than, shall we say,
such differences as divide the hypochondriac from the healthy.
And, further, so far as they require reorganisation there will
commonly be good reasons why this should be carried out. We should
not forget that finer organisation is the most successful way
of relieving strain, a fact of relevance in the theory of evolution.
The new response will be more advantageous than the old, more
successful in satisfying varied appetencies.

But the advantages may be localised or general, minor as well
as major. The artist stands at the parting of a multitude of
ways. His advance may be and often is in a direction which if
followed up would be generally disadvantageous although for the
moment it leads to an increase of value. The metaphor is of course
insufficient. We can improve it by substituting a manifold of
many dimensions for the cross-roads. Which way is the mind to
grow and which ways are compatible with which is the question.
There are specialist and universal poets, and the specialist
may be developing in a manner either consistent or inconsistent[66]
with general development, a consideration of extreme importance
in judging the value of his work. Its bearing upon the permanence
of his work will be discussed later.

At any moment, in any situation, a variety of attitudes is possible.
Which is the best is decided not only by the impulses which gain
organised satisfaction in the attitude but also by the effect
of the attitude upon the rest of the organisation of the individual.
We should have to consider the whole system and all the possibilities
of all probable situations which might arise if we were to be
sure that any one attitude is the best. Since we cannot do this,
but can only note the most obvious objections to some, we have
to be content if we can avoid those attitudes which are most
evidently wasteful.

For the normality of the poet is to be estimated in terms of
waste. Most human attitudes are wasteful, some to a shocking
degree. The mind which is, so far as can be seen, least wasteful,
we take as a norm or standard, and, if possible, we develop in
our degree similar experiences. The taking of the norm is for
the most part done unconsciously by mere preference, by the shock
of delight which follows the release of stifled impulse into
organised freedom. Often the choice is mistaken, the advantage
which leads to preference is too localised, involves losses in
the end, losses round the next corner as it were.

Little by little experience corrects such illusory preference,
not through reflection—almost all critical choices are irreflective,
spontaneous, as some say—but through unconscious reorganisation
of impulses. We rarely change our tastes, we rather find them
changed. We return to the poems which made us weep tears of delight
when we were young and find them dusty rhetoric. With a tender
hurt inside we wonder what has happened.

Sometimes, of course, experience corrects nothing. There may
be nothing which needs correcting, or too much. The localised
advantage, the sweet aching thrill of the Boosey Ballad—

    I have a rose, a white, white rose,
      ’Twas given me long ago,
    When the winds had fallen to silence,
      And the stars were dim and low.
    It lies in an old book faded,
      Between the pages white,
    But the ages cannot dim the dream
      It brings to me to-night!

The localised advantage may be irresistible in its appeal; the
personality will not surrender it, no matter what, of greater
worth is forgone for its sake, or what possibilities passing
by are lost, unglimpsed in the enthralment.


[61] The degree of racial difference is peculiarly difficult to
estimate. In view of the extent of mixture which has taken place
it may be of great importance in considering even the art of
one culture or tradition alone. Cf. F. G. Crookshank, _The
Mongol in our Midst_.

[62] These types if they must be admitted, have not yet been described
satisfactorily. The defects of such attempts as those of Jung,
for example, are shown by the fact that individuals change so
readily and so freely from ‘type’ to ‘type’, being extrovert
one hour and introvert the next, rationalist and intuitive from
moment to moment. This is of course denied by the Zurich School
but not by the majority of observers. To point it out is not
to overlook much that is valuable in these distinctions. A satisfactory
classification would doubtless be very complex, and perhaps of
the form: An individual of Type A is extrovert under these conditions,
introvert under those, etc.

[63] _Biographia Literaria_, Ch. XIII. “The primary IMAGINATION
I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human perception,
and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of
creation in the infinite I AM.” The luminous hints dropped by
Coleridge in the neighbourhood of this sentence would seem to
have dazzled succeeding speculators. How otherwise explain why
they have been overlooked.

[64] Coleridge’s distinction between IMAGINATION and Fancy was
in part the same as this. But he introduced value considerations
also, Imagination being such combination or fusion of mental
elements as resulted in certain valuable states of mind, and
Fancy being a mere trivial playing with these elements. The discussion
of this distinction will be postponed to Chapter XXXII, where
the different uses of the term ‘imagination’ are separated.

[65] It is useful in this discussion to distinguish between the
artist’s personality as involved in his work and such other parts
of it as are not involved. With these last we are not here concerned.

[66] A weakness of the modern Irish school (even at its best,
in Mr Yeats) or of the exquisite poetry of Mr De la Mare, may
be that its sensibility is a development out of the main track.
It is this which seems to make it minor poetry in a sense in
which Mr Hardy’s best work or Mr Eliot’s _The Waste Land_
is major poetry.




CHAPTER XXV

Badness in Poetry

    Il faut dissiper un malentendu: nous sommes pourris d’art!
                                    _Le Corbusier-Saugnier_.


The theory of badness in poetry has never received the study
which it deserves, partly on account of its difficulty. For with
bad art even more than with good unless we are careful to distinguish
the communicative from the value aspects, even when these are
connected, we shall find the issues obscured. Sometimes art is
bad because communication is defective, the vehicle inoperative;
sometimes because the experience communicated is worthless; sometimes
for both reasons. It would perhaps be best to restrict the term
bad art to cases in which genuine communication does to a considerable
degree take place, what is communicated being worthless, and
to call the other cases defective art. But this is not the usual
practice of critics, any work which produces an experience displeasing
to the critic being commonly called bad, whether or not this
experience is like that responsible for the work.

Let us begin by considering an instance of defective communication;
choosing an example in which it is likely that the original experience
had some value.

                            THE POOL
                    Are you alive?
                    I touch you.
                    You quiver like a sea-fish.
                    I cover you with my net.
                    What are you—banded one?

I take a complete work to avoid possible unfairness. Here we
have the whole of the link which is to mediate between the experiences
of the author and of the reader. Aristotle, in a different connection,
it is true, and for different reasons, affirmed that a work of
art must possess a certain magnitude, and we can adapt his remark
here. Not the brevity only of the vehicle, but its simplicity,
makes it ineffective. The sacrifice of metre in free verse needs,
in almost all cases, to be compensated by length. The loss of
so much of the formal structure leads otherwise to tenuousness
and ambiguity. Even when, as here, the original experience is
presumably slight, tenuous and fleeting, the mere correspondence
of matter to form is insufficient. The experience evoked in the
reader is not sufficiently specific. A poet may, it is true,
make an unlimited demand upon his reader, and the greatest poets
make the greatest claim, but the demand made must be proportional
to the poet’s own contribution. The reader here supplies too
much of the poem. Had the poet said only, “I went and poked about
for rocklings and caught the pool itself”, the reader, who converts
what is printed above into a poem, would still have been able
to construct an experience of equal value; for what results is
almost independent of the author.

To pass to a case in which communication is successful, where
the objection lies to what is communicated:

    After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
        Has burned itself to ashes and expires
        In the intensity of its own fires,
    Then come the mellow, mild, St Martin days
    Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
        So after Love has led us, till he tires
        Of his own throes and torments, and desires,
    Comes large-eyed Friendship: with a restful gaze
    He beckons us to follow, and across
        Cool, verdant vales we wander free from care.
        Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
    Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
        We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
        And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.

As to the success of the communication there can be no question.
Both the popularity of the author, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, of whose
work this is a favourable specimen, and records of the response
made by well-educated persons, who read it without being aware
of the authorship, leave this beyond doubt. It reproduces the
state of mind of the writer very exactly. With a very numerous
class of readers pleasure and admiration ensue. The explanation
is, probably, in the soothing effect of aligning the very active
Love-Friendship groups of impulses with so settled yet rich a
group as the Summer-Autumn simile brings in. The mind finds for
a moment an attitude in which to contemplate a pair of situations
(Love and Friendship) together, situations which are for many
minds particularly difficult to see together. The heavy regular
rhythm, the dead stamp of the rimes, the obviousness of the descriptions
(‘mellow, mild, St Martin’; ‘cool verdant vales’) their alliteration,
the triteness of the close, all these accentuate the impression
of conclusiveness. The restless spirit is appeased, one of its
chief problems is made to seem as if, regarded from a lofty,
all-embracing standpoint, it is no problem but a process of nature.



This reconciliation, this appeasement, is common to much good
and to much bad poetry alike. But the value of it depends upon
the level of organisation at which it takes place, upon whether
the reconciled impulses are adequate or inadequate. In this case
those who have adequate impulses as regards any of the four main
systems involved, Summer, Autumn, Love, Friendship, are not appeased.
Only for those who make certain conventional, stereotyped maladjustments
instead, does the magic work.

The nature and source of these stock conventional attitudes is
of great interest. Suggestion is very largely responsible for
them. The normal child under the age of ten is probably free
from them, or at least with him they have no fixity or privileged
standing. But as general reflection develops the place of the
free direct play of experience is taken by the deliberate organisation
of attitudes, a clumsy and crude substitute. ‘Ideas’, as they
are commonly called, arise. A boy’s ‘Idea’ of Friendship or of
Summer or of his Country is not, though the name would seem to
imply it, primarily an intellectual affair. It is rather an attitude,
or set of attitudes, of tendencies to act in certain fashions
rather than others. Now reflection, unless very prolonged and
very arduous, tends to fix the attitude by making us dwell in
it, by _removing us from experience_. In the development
of any attitude there are stages, points of rest, of relatively
greater stability. These, as we dwell in them, become more and
more difficult to pass, and it is not surprising that most people
remain all their lives in various halfway houses.

These stages or levels of emotional adjustment seem, for the
most part, to be fixed not by any special suitability to circumstances,
certainly not to present circumstances, but much more by social
suggestion and by accidents which withdraw us from actual experience,
the one force which might push us further. At present bad literature,
bad art, the cinema, etc., are an influence of the first importance
in fixing immature and actually inapplicable attitudes to most
things. Even the decision as to what constitutes a pretty girl
or a handsome young man, an affair apparently natural and personal
enough, is largely determined by magazine covers and movie stars.
The quite common opinion that the arts have after all very little
effect upon the community shows only that too little attention
is being paid to the effects of bad art.

The losses incurred by these artificial fixations of attitudes
are evident. Through them the average adult is worse, not better
adjusted to the possibilities of his existence than the child.
He is even in the most important things functionally unable to
face facts: do what he will he is only able to face fictions,
fictions projected by his own stock responses.

Against these stock responses the artist’s internal and external
conflicts are fought, and with them the popular writer’s triumphs
are made. Any combination of these general Ideas, hit at the
right level or halting point of development, is, if suitably
advertised, certain of success. Best-sellers in all the arts,
exemplifying as they do the most general levels of attitude development,
are worthy of very close study. No theory of criticism is satisfactory
which is not able to explain their wide appeal and to give clear
reasons why those who disdain them are not necessarily snobs.

The critic and the Sales Manager are not ordinarily regarded
as of the same craft, nor are the poet and the advertising agent.
It is true that some serious artists are occasionally tempted
into poster designing. It is, however, doubtful whether their
work pays. But the written appeals which have the soundest financial
prospects as estimated by the most able American advertisers
are such that no critic can safely ignore them. For they do undoubtedly
represent the literary ideals present and future of the people
to whom they are addressed.[67] They are tested in a way which
few other forms of literature are tested, their effects are watched
by adepts whose livelihood depends upon the accuracy of their
judgment, and they are among the best indices available of what
is happening to taste. Criticism will justify itself as an applied,
science when it is able to indicate how an advertisement may
be profitable without necessarily being crass. We shall see later
under what conditions popularity and possible high value are
compatible.

The strongest objection to, let us say, the sonnet we have quoted,
is that a person who enjoys it, through the very organisation
of his responses which enables him to enjoy it, is debarred from
appreciating many things which, if he could appreciate them,
he would prefer. We must not, of course, forget those variations
in psychological efficiency discussed in Chapter XXII as degrees
of vigilance. Even a good critic at a sufficiently low ebb of
neural potency might mistake such a sonnet for one of Shakespeare’s
or with more ease for one of Rossetti’s. But when vigilance was
restored he would see, or at least feel, the differences. The
point is that a reader who, at a high degree of vigilance, thoroughly
enters into and enjoys this class of verse, is necessarily so
organised that he will fail to respond to poetry. Time and much
varied experience might change him sufficiently, but by then
he would no longer be able to enjoy such verse, he would no longer
be the same person.

A general statement such as this about the incompatibility of
inexpressibly complex adjustments must naturally be incapable
of strict proof. Individuals with alternating personalities and
subject to fugues would have to be considered. So would the phenomena
of ‘mutations of regime’ unaccompanied by change of vigilance
if such occur. None the less very much evidence substantiates
the statement. The experience of all those who have passed through
the stages in the development of attitudes presupposed by great
poetry is probably conclusive.

Even though the intricacies of the nervous system should be capable
of getting round this objection, there remain sufficient other
reasons why indulgence in verse of this character should be condemned.
There can be no doubt whatever that the value of the experience
which results from it is small. On a pleasure theory of value
there might well be doubt, since those who do enjoy it certainly
appear to enjoy it in a high degree. But on the theory here maintained,
the fact that those who have passed through the stage of enjoying
the _Poems of Passion_ to that of enjoying the bulk of the
contents of the _Golden Treasury_, for example, do not return,
settles the matter. We must bear in mind, of course, the conditions
which have to be satisfied before this test is conclusive. That
a man who has passed through the stage of drinking nothing but
beer to the stage of drinking nothing but brandy rarely returns,
does not prove that brandy is the better drink. It merely proves
that it is the more efficient intoxicant. We have to ask in applying
the test what the responses in question are, and in the case
of poetry they are so varied, so representative of all the activities
of life, that actual universal preference on the part of those
who have tried both kinds fairly is the same (on our view) as
superiority in value of the one over the other. Keats, by universal
qualified opinion, is a more efficient poet than Wilcox, and
that is the same thing as saying that his works are more valuable.


[67] A specimen: “The thoughtful man, the man on business bent,
wends his way to Wembley with definite purpose. He seeketh knowledge,
desireth increase of commerce or willeth to study new epoch-making
inventions.”—_Official Advertisement_.




CHAPTER XXVI

Judgment and Divergent Readings

  _The Prime Minister_—The misunderstanding—in so far as it is a
    misunderstanding—is purely a misunderstanding. . . .

  _The Leader of the Opposition_—With the utmost goodwill on this
    side, I find myself with far less grasp of the whole subject than
    I had. . . .—_The Times_, 8th July 1924.


Ambiguity in a poem, as with any other communication, may be
the fault of the poet or of the reader. The ambiguities due to
erratic reading are as important for criticism as others, and
practically more troublesome. There are strong social incentives
for overlooking them. Talking to one another we assume, in nine
cases out of ten like the merest simpletons, that our readings
agree, and that when we differ in our opinions it is something
else, not our experiences but our judgments about them which
are at variance. Most discussion about works of art is waste
of time _as communication_ for this reason. It may, of course,
have great value as a means by which people may severally develop
their own reactions.

These assumptions which so densely obscure the issue raise innumerable
practical difficulties both for criticism and for the construction
of a theory of criticism. It is well worth while to analyse typical
situations a little further.

The closing lines of the Fifth Sonnet of Wordsworth’s River Duddon
series will afford a convenient instance:—

    Sole listener, Duddon! to the breeze that played
    With thy clear voice, I caught the fitful sound
    Wafted o’er sullen moss and craggy mound,
    Unfruitful solitudes that seemed to upbraid
    The sun in heaven!—but now, to form a shade
    For thee, green alders have together wound
    Their foliage; ashes flung their arms around;
    And birch trees risen in silver colonnade.
    And thou hast also tempted here to rise,
    Mid sheltering pines, this cottage rude and grey;
    Whose ruddy children, by the mother’s eyes
    Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day,
    Thy pleased associates—light as endless May
    On infant bosoms lonely nature lies.

Two readers who found themselves, as they thought, in entire
agreement as to the excellence of this sonnet, and especially
as to the beauty of its close, were surprised shortly afterwards
to discover that they had been reading quite different poems.
By the one the last sentence was interpreted as saying that the
gloom of lonely nature, of sullen moss and craggy ground, however
it might seem later on in life, had no oppressive effect upon
the children. By the other it was read as saying that however
barren and gloomy might be the scene, actually lonely nature
there in itself had no such character, but was, as it were, floating
“light as endless May on infant bosoms”. The two readings, by
throwing their effect back upon what had preceded and in addition
completely altering the rhythm of the close, produced what it
is no exaggeration to describe as two different poems. Neither
would be uncharacteristic of Wordsworth, although doubtless the
first reading is the one to be accepted.

This exemplifies what is perhaps the rarest case,[68] that in
which agreement as to value covers an actual grave difference
in the experiences valued. More usually there is some genuine
source for the agreement, to be found in some common character
of the experiences. What this common character is may be difficult
to discover. It may be merely the rhythm, or the cadence of some
phrase, or the form of a sequence of references. But sometimes,
if it is a more obvious part, such as a description or metaphor,
a discussion between critical readers, who are aware that their
experiences differ, will bring it to light.

Another common case is exemplified by some famous discussions
of _Hamlet_. It is curious that people with such different
conceptions of the character of Hamlet himself and of the action
of the play, have been able to agree none the less as to its
value as a whole, apart, of course, from its incidental values.
Much has to be discounted in estimating this agreement. On some
interpretations praise of the play as a whole is certainly insincere.
On the interpretation which makes Claudius the hero, whose tragic
frailty lies in the fact that his long-suffering patience with
the baseless suspicions of the crazy nuisance Hamlet breaks down
in the end and brings the noble monarch to disaster, there would
be little beyond the playwright’s subtlety which could honestly
be commended. But with all allowances it seems certain that widely
different interpretations have seemed to good critics to result
in the same peculiar high value of tragedy. The explanation is
that tragic value is a general not a specific character of responses.
Just as a collision between motorcars and a collision between
ships are equally collisions, so the impulses whose equilibrium
produces the _catharsis_ of tragedy may be very varied,
provided that their relations to one another are correct.

Very many of the values of the arts are of this general kind.
Besides the experiences which result from the building up of
connected attitudes, there are those produced by the breaking
down of some attitude which is a clog and a bar to other activities.
From Blake’s “Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce”,[69] to Voltaire’s
“Bon père de famille est capable de tout”, such works can be
found in all degrees. It matters little what the detail of the
impulses which make up the obstructing attitude for different
people in each case may be. This often varies, but when the attitude
collapses the effect can be agreed upon. The great masters of
irony—Rabelais and the Flaubert of _Bouvard et Pécuchet_—are
the chief exponents of this kind of exorcism.


[68] For another instance see Browning, _Parting at Morning_.

[69] _The Keys of the Gates: To the Accuser who is the God of
this World_.




CHAPTER XXVII

Levels of Response and the Width of Appeal

  L’art n’est pas chose populaire, encore moins ‘poule de luxe’. . . .
       L’art est d’essence hautaine.—_Le Corbusier-Saugnier_.


There still remains the most interesting of the cases in which apparent
agreement disguises real differences, that in which a work occasions
valuable responses of the same kind at a number of different levels.
_Macbeth_ is as good an example as any. Its very wide popularity is due
to the fact that crude responses to its situations integrate with one
another, not so well as more refined responses, but still in something
of the same fashion. At one end of the scale it is a highly successful,
easily apprehended, two-colour melodrama, at the other a peculiarly
enigmatic and subtle tragedy, and in between there are various stages
which give fairly satisfactory results. Thus people of very different
capacities for discrimination and with their attitudes developed in
very different degrees can join in admiring it. This possibility
of being enjoyed at many levels[70] is a recognised characteristic
of Elizabethan Drama. _The Pilgrim’s Progress_, _Robinson Crusoe_,
_Gulliver’s Travels_, the Ballads, are other instances. The differences
between such things and, for example, the work of Donne, Milton, Blake,
Landor, Stendhal, Henry James, Baudelaire raise some of the most
interesting of critical problems.

There is a common opinion, sometimes very strongly held, that
a work which appeals to all kinds and all degrees of men is thereby
proved to be greater, more valuable, than one which appeals only
to some. There may be a confusion in this opinion. The sum of
value yielded, since men actually are of different degrees, the
social value that is to say of such work, will naturally be greater.
But it does not follow that the maximum value for the reader
of the highest level need be greater. The common belief that
it is necessarily greater, that the work of wide appeal must
be in itself a more admirable thing than work which appeals only
to those who discriminate finely, is due to the assumption that
it appeals everywhere for the same reasons and thus is shown
to touch something essential and fundamental in human nature.
But no one in a position to judge, who has, for example, some
experience of the teaching of English, will maintain that Shakespeare’s
appeal, to take the chief instance, is homogeneous. Different
people read and go to see the same play for utterly different
reasons. Where two people applaud we tend to assume, in spite
of our better knowledge, that their experiences have been the
same: the experience of the first would often be nauseous to
the second, if by accident they were exchanged, and the first
would be left helpless, lost and bewildered. On this false assumption
it is easy to build up a formidable theory about art’s concern
with the basic elements of human nature and to arraign modern
art for superficiality. But there have always been these two
kinds, work with the wide, and work with only the special appeal.
What actually are the differences between them?

The one, the art which keeps the child from play and the old
man from his chimney-corner, evidently builds up its attitudes
with the simplest, most aboriginal impulses, and it handles them
so that the undeveloped mind can weave them into some sort of
satisfying fabric while the more mature mind, qualifying and
complicating them until they perhaps lose all likeness to their
earlier form, still finds them serve its needs. The other is
built up from impulses which, except in a personality capable
of very nice adjustments, do not unite in any valuable way, and
often the impulses themselves are of a kind of which only a highly
developed mind or one with special experience is capable. This
last point, however, is separable, and raises a question which
will be discussed later.

Plainly each of the two methods has its advantages. The poet
of wide appeal, it is tempting to suppose, has an advantage in
that the impulses involved are general, have been interested
all through life and are very representative of experience. And
he has the further advantage perhaps of avoiding a certain dangerous
finality. Impulses which adjust themselves at so many levels
may go on doing so perhaps indefinitely. There may be something
in the suggestion that Shakespeare wrote better than he knew.
Certainly it is a serious charge against much of Henry James,
for example, that when the reader has once successfully read
it there is nothing further which he can do. He can only repeat
his reading. There is often a point at which the parts of the
experience click together, the required attitude is achieved,
and no further development is possible. Together with this goes
the sense in the reader that all had to be just as it is and
not otherwise, whereas with much of Shakespeare we feel that
anything might have been different and the result the same. “Not
laboriously but luckily.”

But this is only sometimes true of the sophisticated poet who makes no
appeal below a certain level. It is not true of Pope, for example, or
of Walt Whitman, to choose two unlike authors who at their best are not
generally appreciated. And as a counterbalancing advantage for such
poets their greater freedom must be noticed. Perhaps the chief reason
for the decline of drama in the seventeenth century (social factors
apart) was the exhaustion of the best themes which could be used in
order to appeal at all levels. Drama, to secure audiences large enough
to be encouraging, must make a wide-spread appeal; but the limitations
which this condition imposes upon action are very strict. There are no
similar restrictions for lyric poetry, and it is significant that the
greatest lyrics have so often a high-level appeal only. The _Mad Song_
of Blake, _The Phœnix and the Turtle_, _The Hymn of Pan_, most great
sonnets, are instances in point.

There is, too, no good reason why impulses which only begin to
make up valuable attitudes in highly organised and discriminating
minds should lead to attitudes less valuable or more fragile,
more fixed and final than others. We must not allow the unique
instance of Shakespeare to weigh too heavily; after all, _King
Lear_, the most inexhaustible of his works, is not a thing
which has great popular appeal.


[70] We must, of course, distinguish art of this kind from the
Christmas party or magazine kind of production, in which the
author provides something (different and in a different place)
for everybody. The works of Dickens might be cited as examples.




CHAPTER XXVIII

The Allusiveness of Modern Poetry

    Tehee! Tehee! O sweet delight!
      He tickles this age who can
    Call Tullia’s ape a marmosyte,
      And Leda’s goose a swan!
                                _Anon_.


We have distinguished between impulses which are involved at
all stages of development, their course and fate naturally varying
with the stage, and those which do not go off at all except in
developed minds. The responses of the non-mathematical and the
mathematical mind to a formula illustrate the difference. It
is the use of responses not available without special experience,
which more than anything else narrows the range of the artist’s
communication and creates the gulf between expert and popular
taste.

In the second chorus of _Hellas_ in the middle of the second
stanza the rhythm, tune, and handling, though not the metre,
become suddenly uncharacteristic of Shelley. A fullness of tone,
a queer, gentle cadence, and a leisurely ease of movement belong
to the fifth and following lines:

        A mortal shape to him
        Was like the vapour dim
    Which the orient planet animates with light.
        Hell, sin, and slavery, came,
        Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
    Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight.

And this tone and movement are in clear contrast with the fever,
the impetuosity, the shrillness and rapidity of the first stanza,
or of the closing lines of the second:

        The moon of Mahomet
        Arose, and it shall set:
    While, blazoned as on heaven’s immortal noon,
    The Cross leads generations on.

The difference is difficult to describe except perhaps: by the
aid of a musical notation. It is like the difference between
two voices, and in spite of the highly characteristic matter[71]
of the lines, the reader feels that not Shelley but some other
poet is speaking. What Shelley is doing becomes unmistakable
in the third and last stanza. The corresponding lines, again
in clear contrast with the lines surrounding them, have the same
strange modulation:

        So fleet, so faint, so fair,
        The Powers of Earth and Air
    Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem.
        Apollo, Pan and Love,
        And even Olympian Jove,
    Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them.

In a manner more familiar perhaps in music than in poetry Shelley
is echoing another poem, borrowing, as it were, Milton’s voice
though not his words, making in fact a musical quotation, a poetical
allusion of an exquisite felicity.

But by so doing he is necessarily restricting the number of the
readers who will fully appreciate him.

Such allusions are a normal and regular part of the resources
of all poets who belong to the literary tradition, that is to
say, of the vast majority of poets in modern times. They are
not often so unobtrusive and the place which they are given in
the structure of the poem varies. Sometimes, as in this instance,
a failure on the part of the reader has no important consequences.
One familiar with the _Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity_
will respond more fully and with a deeper sense of the situation;
but a reader unfamiliar with it is not deprived of any major
part of the poem. In other cases the loss is more serious. Another
instance from Shelley will illustrate this, and it is interesting
for its own sake. The Shape which guides the Chariot in the _Triumph
of Life_ is described and identified for the reader in a large
degree through another Miltonic quotation or allusion:

                                        A Shape
    So sate within, as one whom years deform,
    Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,
    Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
    And o’er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
    Was bent.

Shelley, it is known, crystallised much of his philosophy in
the sentence: ‘Death is the veil which those who live call life’,
and the reference[72] here to the guardian of Hell Gate,

                     What seem’d his head
    The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on,

is not accidental or unimportant for the understanding of the
poem.

Some care is needed in considering the problem of allusions.
There may be worthy and unworthy motives behind their employment
ad their enjoyment. There are some to whom a familiarity with
literature occasions a sense of superiority over others which
is trivial and mean. The pleasure of recognition, proportional
as it is to the difficulty or unobtrusiveness of the allusion
is a thing of slight value, not to be confused with literary
or poetic values. It is perfectly possible for a reader, familiar
with the _Nativity Hymn_, for example, to receive all that
Shelley intended without ever noticing the allusion, without,
that is to say, any recognition. But the erudite often forget
that this happens. To turn the capacity of recognising recondite
references into a shibboleth by which culture may be estimated
is a perversion to which scholarly persons are too much addicted.
The point is worth mentioning, since this snobbishness, percolating
down (or, if the metaphor be preferred, by repercussion) is responsible
for much insincerity and timidity, for wrong attitudes of many
kinds towards literature, for irritation and oppression developing
into distaste and neglect of poetry. Allusion is a trap for the
writer almost as effective as for the academic critic. It invites
insincerity. It may encourage and disguise laziness. When it
becomes a habit it is a disease. But these dangers form no ground
for denying to allusion, and the similar resources of which it
is typical, a fit and justifiable place in poetry.

Allusion is the most striking of the ways in which poetry takes
into its service elements and forms of experience which are not
inevitable to life but need to be specially acquired. And the
difficulty which it raises is merely a special instance of a
general communicative difficulty which will probably increase
for the poetry of the future. All the thought and feeling of
recent man goes on in terms of experience which is much more
likely to be special and peculiar to the individual, than, let
us say, the experience of medieval man. The survival of medieval
man on such a vast scale among us should not mislead in this
matter. The people who are most keenly and variously interested,
that is to say, the people whose lives are most valuable on our
theory of value, the people for whom the poet writes and by his
appeal to whom he is judged, inevitably build up their minds
with far more varied elements than has ever been the case before.
And the poet, in so far as he is equal to his opportunities,
does the same. It is hard, and, in fact, impossible, to deny
him his natural and necessary resources on the ground that a
majority of his readers will not understand. This is not his
fault but the fault of the social structure. Given present conditions
and future developments in the directions indicated by the changes
of the last two hundred years, it is extremely probable that
poets will become not less but more allusive, that their work
will depend more and more not only upon other poetry but upon
all manner of special fields of familiarity.[73] Many of the finest
and most widely significant experiences, and those therefore
most suitable for poetry, come nowadays, for example, through
reading pieces of advanced research. There is nothing new in
this, of course, nothing that was not happening when Donne wrote.
The difficulty springs from the fact that research is so much
further ahead than it used to be.


[71] Cf. _Prometheus Unbound_, Act 1:

                                      ‘the air around them
                looks radiant as the air around a star’;

also _Triumph of Life_: ‘as veil by veil the silent splendour drops
                                    From Lucifer’.

[72] _Paradise Lost_, Bk. II, line 672.

[73] A very interesting contemporary example in connection with
which the problem arises perhaps more acutely than ever before
is Mr Eliot’s _The Waste Land_ already mentioned. The impatience
of so many critics and the fact that they have complained of
the presence and necessity of notes well illustrates the confusion
which prevails upon this question. A more reasonable complaint
would have been that Mr Eliot did not provide a larger apparatus
of elucidation. (See Appendix).




CHAPTER XXIX

Permanence as a Criterion

        Wherewith being crown’d,
    Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight.
                                Shakespeare, _Sonnet LX_.


The permanence of poetry is a subject closely connected with
the foregoing. Just as there is a prejudice in favour of work
with a wide popular appeal, so there is another in favour of
work which lasts, which has “stood the verdict of the centuries”,
or is thought likely to stand it. Both are in part due to critical
timidity; if we cannot decide ourselves, let us at least count
hands and go with the majority.

But circumstances which have nothing to do with value sometimes
determine survival, and work which is of great value must often perish
for that very reason. It never gets printed, none will look at it or
listen to it. And immortality often attaches itself to the bad as
firmly as to the good. Few things are worse than _Hiawatha_ or _The
Black Cat_, _Lorna Doone_ or _Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard_, and some
of the greatest favourites[74] of the anthologies figure there through
their ‘bad eminence’.

There are, however, reasons for connecting persistence of appeal
with a certain type of structure, and, which is more interesting,
instant fame with a failure to appeal to subsequent generations.
Work which relies upon ready-made attitudes, without being able
to reconstitute similar attitudes when they are not already existent,
will often make an appeal to one generation which is a mystery
to the generations with different attitudes which follow. But
this disadvantage from the point of view of permanence of communication
does not necessarily involve any lack of value for those to whom
the experiences are accessible. Very often, of course, it will
accompany low value; but this need not be so.

The permanence of some art has often been an excuse for fantastic
hypotheses. Such art has been thought to embody immortal essences,
to reveal special kinds of ‘eternal’ truths. But such debilitating
speculations here no less than elsewhere should be avoided. Those
are not the terms in which the matter may best be discussed.
The uniformity of the impulses from which the work of art starts
is a sufficient explanation of its permanence. Where the impulses
involved are only accidentally touched off through being temporarily
in a heightened state of excitability, we may reasonably expect
that there will be little permanence. As a catchword will work
one year like magic, since certain attitudes are for social reasons
ready poised on a hair-trigger adjustment, and the next year
be inoperative and incomprehensible, so, on a larger scale and
in less striking degree, men’s special social circumstances often
provide opportunities for works of art which at other times are
quite inadequate stimuli. There are fashions in the most important
things as in the least, but for the artist to profit by them
is usually to forgo permanence. The greater the ease of communication
under such conditions the greater the danger of obsolescence.

Far more of the great art of the past is actually obsolete than
certain critics pretend, who forget what a special apparatus
of erudition they themselves bring to their criticism. The _Divina
Commedia_ is a representative example. It is true that for
adequately equipped readers who can imaginatively reproduce the
world outlook of Aquinas, and certain attitudes to woman and
to chastity, which are even more inaccessible, there is no obsolescence.
But this is true of the most forgotten poems. Actual obsolescence
is not in general a sign of low value, but merely of the use
of special circumstances for communication. That a work reflects,
summarises and is penetrated by its age and period is not a ground
for assigning it a low value, and yet this saturation more than
anything else limits the duration of its appeal. Only so far
as a work avoids the catchword type in its method, and relies
upon elements likely to remain stable, formal elements for example,
can it escape the touch of time. That Dante is neglected is due
only indirectly to his present-day obscurity; he is still as
accessible as ever through his formal side. It is the labour
required from readers who are not content with a partial approach
which explains why he is so little read even by the scholarly.
What can be translated in: him, the content, is precisely what
is of least present and future interest, and at the same time
most difficult to understand.


[74] E.g. ‘_When lovely woman stoops to folly,’ Heraclitus,
The Millers Daughter, Alexander Selkirk_, and (its best known
parts at least) _The Skylark_.




CHAPTER XXX

The Definition of a Poem

  Men take the words they find in use among their neighbours, and that
    they may not seem ignorant what they stand for use them confidently
    without much troubling their heads about a certain fixed
    meaning. . . . it being all one to draw these men out of their
    mistakes, who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a Vagrant
    of his habitation, who has no settled abode. This I guess to be
    so; and every one may observe in himself or others whether it
    be so or not.
                                                            Locke.


It may be useful to collect here some of the results of the foregoing
sections and consider them from the point of view of the practising
critic. The most salient perhaps is the desirability of distinguishing
clearly between the communicative and the value aspects of a
work of art. We may praise or condemn a work on either ground
or upon both, but if it fails entirely as a vehicle of communication
we are, to say the least, not well placed for denying its value.

But, it may be said, it will then have no value for _us_
and its value or disvalue for us is all that we as critics pretend
or should pretend to judge. To make such a reply, however, is
to abdicate as a critic. At the least a critic is concerned with
the value of things for himself and for people like him. Otherwise
his criticism is mere autobiography. And any critic worth attention
makes a further claim, a claim to sanity. His judgment is only
of general interest in so far as it is representative and reflects
what happens in a mind of a certain kind, developed in a certain
fashion. The services of bad critics are sometimes not less than
those of good critics, but that is only because we can divine
from their responses what other people’s responses are likely
to be.

We must distinguish between standard or normal criticism and
erratic or eccentric criticism. As critics Lamb or Coleridge
are very far from normal; none the less they are of extraordinary
fertility in suggestion. Their responses are often erratic even
when of most revelatory character. In such cases we do not take
them as standards to which we endeavour to approximate, we do
not attempt to see eye to eye with them. Instead we use them
as means by which to make quite different approaches ourselves
to the works which they have characteristically but eccentrically
interpreted.

The distinction between a personal or idiosyncratic judgment
and a normative is sometimes overlooked. A critic should often
be in a position to say, “I don’t like this but I know it is
good”, or “I like this and condemn it”, or “This is the effect
which it produces upon me, and this quite different effect is
the one it should produce.” For obvious reasons he rarely makes
any such statements. But many people would regard praise of a
work which is actually disliked by the praiser as immoral. This
is a confusion of ideas. Any honest reader knows fairly well
the points at which his sensibility is distorted, at which he
fails as a normal critic and in what ways. It is his duty to
take these into consideration in passing judgment upon the value
of a work. His rank as a critic depends at least as much upon
his ability to discount these personal peculiarities as upon
any hypothetical impeccability of his actual responses.

So far we have been considering those cases in which the vehicle
is sufficiently adequate and the critic sufficiently representative
and careful for the response to be a good index of the value
of the poem. But these cases are comparatively rare. The superstition
which any language not intolerably prolix and uncouth encourages
that there is something actual, _the poem_, which all readers
have access to and upon which they pass judgment, misleads us.
We naturally talk about poems (and pictures, etc.) in a way which
makes it impossible for anybody to discover what it is we are
talking about. Most critical discussion, in other words, is primarily
emotive with only a very loose and fourfold equivocal reference.
We may be talking about the artist’s experience, such of it as
is relevant OF about The experience of a qualified reader who
made no mistakes, or about an ideal and perfect reader’s possible
experience, or about our own actual experience. All four in most
cases will be qualitatively different. Communication is perhaps
never perfect, so the first and the last will differ. The second
and third differ also, from the others and from one another,
the third being what we ought unrestrictedly to experience, or
the best experience we could possibly undergo, whereas the second
is merely what we ought to experience as things are, or the best
experience that we can expect.

Which of these possible definitions of a poem shall we adopt?
The question is one of convenience merely; but it is by no means
easy to decide. The most usual practice is to mean by _the
poem_ either the first or the last; or, by forgetting what
communication is, to mean both confusedly together. The last
involves the personal judgment to which exception was taken on
the previous page, and has the further disadvantage that there
would be for every sonnet as many poems as readers. A and B,
discussing _Westminster Bridge_ as they thought, would unwittingly
be discussing two different things. For some purposes, for the
disentanglement of some misunderstandings, it is convenient
to define a poem temporarily in this manner.

To define the poem as the artist’s experience is a better solution.
But it will not do as it stands since nobody but the artist has
that experience. We must be more ingenious. We cannot take any
single experience as the poem; we must have a class of more or
less similar experiences instead. Let us mean by _Westminster
Bridge_ not the actual experience which led Wordsworth on
a certain morning about a century ago to write what he did, but
the class composed of all actual experiences, occasioned by the
words, which do not differ within certain limits from that experience.
Then anyone who has had one of the experiences comprised in the
class can be said to have read the poem. The permissible ranges
of variation in the class need (of course) very careful scrutiny.
To work them out fully and draw up a neat formal definition of
a poem would be an amusing and useful occupation for any literary
logician with a knowledge of psychology. The experiences must
evidently include the reading of the words with fairly close
correspondence in rhythm and tune. Pitch difference would not
matter, provided that pitch relations were preserved. Imagery
might be allowed to vary indefinitely in its sensory aspect but
would be narrowly restricted otherwise. If the reader will run
over the diagram of a poetic experience given in Chapter XVI
and consider in what respects his and his friends’ experiences
must agree if they are to be able to refer to them indifferently
as though they were one and the same without confusion or misunderstanding,
he will see what kind of thing a detailed definition of a poem
would be.

This, although it may seem odd and complicated, is by far the
most convenient, in fact it is the only workable way of defining
a poem; namely, as a class of experiences which do not differ
in any character more than a certain amount, varying for each
character, from a standard experience. We may take as this standard
experience the relevant experience of the poet when contemplating
the completed composition[75].

Anyone whose experience approximates in this degree to the standard
experience will be able to judge the poem and his remarks about
it will be about some experience which is included in the class.
Thus we have what we want, a sense, namely, in which a critic
can be said to have not read the poem or to have misread it.
In this sense unrecognised failures are extremely common.



The justification for this outbreak of pedantry, as it may appear,
is that it brings into prominence one of the reasons for the
backwardness of critical theory. If the definition of a poem
is a matter of so much difficulty and complexity, the discussion
of the principles by which poetry should be judged may be expected
to be confused. Critics have as yet hardly begun to ask themselves
what they are doing or under what conditions they work. It is
true that a recognition of the critic’s predicament need not
be explicit in order to be effective, but few with much experience
of literary debate will underestimate the extent to which it
is disregarded or the consequences which ensue from this neglect.
The discussions in the foregoing chapters are intended as no
more than examples of the problems which an explicit recognition
of the situation will admit and of the ways in which they will
be solved.


[75] Difficulties even here arise, e.g. the poet may be dissatisfied
without reason. Coleridge thought _Kubla Khan_ merely ‘a
psychological curiosity’ without poetic merits, and may have
been justified in some degree. If he was not, it is his dream
experience which we should presumably have to take as our standard.




CHAPTER XXXI

Art, Play, and Civilisation

    L’heure est & la construction, pas au badinage.
                                _Le Corbuster-Saugnier_.


The value of the experiences which we Seek from the arts does
not lie, so we have insisted, in the exquisiteness of the moment
of consciousness; a set of isolated ecstasies is not a sufficient
explanation. Its inadequacy is additional evidence that the theories
of value and of the mind upon which it rests are defective. We
must now consider what wider explanations are made possible by
the theory of value and the outline account of mental activity
and of communication above indicated. The ground, in part at
least, is cleared. What now can be said as to why the arts are
important and why good taste and sound criticism are not mere
luxuries, trivial excrescences grafted upon an independent civilisation?

A number of accounts of varying adequacy each in some degree
interesting but needing careful interpretation have been put
forward. The arts communicate experiences, it has been said,
and make states of mind accessible to the many which otherwise
would be only possible to few. To this it might be added that
the arts are also a means by which experiences arise in the mind
of the artist which would never otherwise come about. Both as
an occasion for a collectedness and concentration difficult to
attain in the ordinary course of life, and as the means by which
human effort may acquire a continuity analogous to but more subtle
than the continuity of science, the study and practice of the
arts can give immensely increased power to the artist, preserving
him from that diffusion of his energies which is perhaps his
greatest danger. All this is true, but it does not go to the
root of the matter.

Again the educational aspect of the arts is constantly being
stressed, sometimes in a manner which does them disservice. ‘Message’
hunting—the type of interest which discovers in _Macbeth_
the moral that ‘Honesty is the best policy’; in _Othello_
a recommendation to ‘Look before you leap’, in _Hamlet_
perhaps a proof that ‘Procrastination is the Thief of Time’,
or in _King Lear_ an indication that ‘Your sins will find
you out[76]’, in Shelley an exhortation to Idealism, in Browning
comfort for the discouraged and assurances as to a future life;
but in Donne or Keats no ‘message’—this mode of interpreting
the phrase ‘a criticism of life’, though to a minute degree on
the right lines, is probably more damaging than those entirely
erratic theories, of which ‘Art for Art’s sake’ is an example,
with which we have been more concerned.

None the less but in subtler ways the educational influence of
the arts is all-pervasive. We must not overlook bad art in estimating
it. “I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my own
confraternity” wrote a novelist of the 19th century “if I were
to declare that the bulk of the young people in the upper and
middle classes receive their moral teaching chiefly from the
novels that they read. Mothers would no doubt think of their
own sweet teaching; fathers of the examples which they set; and
schoolmasters of the excellence of their instructions. Happy
is the country which has such mothers, fathers and schoolmasters!
But the novelist creeps in closer than the father, closer than
the schoolmaster, closer almost than the mother. He is the chosen
guide, the tutor whom the young pupil chooses for herself. She
retires with him, suspecting no lesson . . . and there she is
taught how she shall learn to love; how she shall receive the
lover when he comes; how far she should advance to meet the joy;
why she should be reticent and not throw herself at once into
this new delight.”

The influence is also exerted in more indirect ways. There need
be, we must remember, no discernible connection or resemblance
whatever between the experience due to the work of art and the
later behaviour and experience which is modified through it.
Without such resemblance the influence may easily be overlooked
or denied, but not by anyone who has a sufficient conception
of the ways in which attitudes develop. No one who has repeatedly
lived through experiences at the level of discrimination and
co-ordination presupposed by the greater writers, can ever, when
fully ‘vigilant’, be contented with ordinary crudities though
a touch of liver may of course suspend these superior responses.
And conversely, keen and vigilant enjoyment of Miss Dell, Mr
Burroughs, Mrs Wilcox or Mr Hutchinson, when untouched by doubts
or the joys of ironic contemplation, is likely to have as a consequence
not only an acceptance of the mediocre in ordinary life, but
a blurring and confusion of impulses and a very widespread loss
of value.

These remarks apply even more evidently to the Cinema. People
do not much imitate what they see upon the screen or what they
read of in best-sellers. It would matter little if they did.
Such effects would show themselves clearly and the evil would
be of a manageable kind. They tend instead to develop stock attitudes
and stereotyped ideas, the attitudes and ideas of producers:
attitudes and ideas which can be ‘put across’ _quickly_
through a medium that lends itself to crude rather than to sensitive
handling. Even a good dramatist’s work will tend to be coarser
than that of a novelist of equal ability. He has to make his
effects more quickly and in a more obvious way. The Cinema suffers
still more than the stage from this disability. It has its compensating
advantages in the greater demands which it makes of the audience,
but hitherto very few producers have been able to turn them to
account. Thus the ideas and attitudes with which the ‘movie fan’
becomes familiar tend to be peculiarly clumsy and inapplicable
to life. Other causes, connected with the mentality of producers,
increase the effect.

The danger lies not in the fact that school-girls are sometimes
incited to poke revolvers at taximen, but in much subtler and
more insinuating influences. Most films indeed are much more
suited to children than to adults, and it is the adults who really
suffer from them. No one can intensely and whole-heartedly enjoy
and enter into experiences whose fabric is as crude as that of
the average super-film without a disorganisation which has its
effects in everyday life. The extent to which second-hand experience
of a crass and inchoate type is replacing ordinary life offers
a threat which has not yet been realised. If a false theory of
the severance and disconnection between ‘æsthetic’ and ordinary
experience has prevented the value of the arts from being understood,
it has also preserved their dangers from recognition.

Those who have attempted to find a place in the whole structure
of life for the arts have often made use of the conception of
Play; and Groos and Herbert Spencer are famous exponents of the
theory. As with so many other Æsthetic Doctrines the opinion
that Art is a form of Play may indicate either a very shallow
or a very penetrating view. All depends upon the conception of
Play which is entertained. Originally the view arose in connection
with survival values. Art, it was thought, had little practical
value of the obvious kinds, so some indirect means must be found
by which it could be thought to be of service. Perhaps, like
play, it was a means of harmlessly expending superfluous energy.
A more useful contribution was made when the problem of the value
of play itself was seriously attacked. The immense practical
utility of most forms of play then became evident. Characteristically
play is the preparatory organisation and development of impulses.
It may easily become too narrowly specialised, and the impulses
active may be such as never to receive ‘serious’ exercise. None
the less with our present understanding of the amazingly recondite
interactions between what appear to be totally different activities
of the nervous system, the importance of play is not likely to
need much insistence.

There are many human activities which, fortunately or unfortunately
as the case may be, are no longer required of or possible to
civilised man. Yet their total discontinuance may lead to grave
disturbances. For some of these play serves as an opportunity.
The view that art provides in some cases an analogous outlet
through vicarious experience has naturally been put forward,
notably by Mr Havelock Ellis. “We have lost the orgy, but in
its place we have art[77].” If we do not extend the ‘sublimation’
theory too far or try to bring under this Safety-valve heading
work with which it has no concern, it may be granted that in
some cases the explanation is in place. But the temptation to
extend it, and so to misconceive the whole matter, is great.

The objection to the Play Theory, unless very carefully stated,
lies in its suggestion that the experiences of Art are in some
way incomplete, that they are substitutes, meagre copies of the
real thing, well enough for those who cannot obtain better. “The
moralising force of Art lies, not in its capacity to present
a timid imitation of our experiences, but in its power to go
beyond our experience, satisfying and harmonising the unfulfilled
activities of our nature.”[78] The Copy View, with the antithesis
between Life and Literature which so often accompanies it, is
a devastating misconception. Coupled with the suggestion involved
by the word ‘Play,’ that such things are for the young rather
than for the mature, and that Art is something one grows out
of, it has a large share of the responsibility for the present
state of the Arts and of Criticism. Its only rival in obscuring
the issues is its close cousin the Amusement or Relaxation Theory.

The experiences which the arts offer are not obtainable, or but
rarely, elsewhere. Would that they were! They are not incomplete;
they might better be described as ordinary experiences completed.
They are not such that the most adequately equipped person can
dispense with them and suffer no loss, and this loss is not momentary,
but recurrent and permanent; the best equipped are precisely
the people who most value these experiences. Nor is Art, as by
way of corollary is sometimes maintained, a thing which had its’
function in the youth of the world, but with the development
of Science becomes obsolete. It may very possibly decline and
even disappear, but if it does a biological calamity of the first
order will have occurred. Nor again is it something which may
be postponed while premillennial man grapples with more immediate
problems. The raising of the standard of response is as immediate
a problem as any, and the arts are the chief instrument by which
it may be raised _or lowered_.

Hitherto we have been concerned chiefly with more or less specific
effects of the experiences of the arts, with the effects, upon
single definite groups or systems of impulses, of their exercise
in these experiences. The Play Theory tends to limit us to these
consequences. Important though they are, we must not overlook
the more general effects which any well-organised experience
produces. They may in certain cases be extraordinarily widespread.
Such an apparently irrelevant test as the ability to stand upon
one foot without unsteadiness has recently been employed, by
Mr Burt, as an index to mental and especially to emotional organisation.
All our activities react upon one another to a prodigious extent
in ways which we can only as yet conjecture.

Finer adjustment, clearer and more delicate accommodation or
reconciliation of impulses in any one field tends to promote
it in others. A step in mathematical accomplishment, other things
being equal, facilitates the acquisition of a new turn in ski-ing.
Other things are rarely equal it should perhaps be remarked.
If this is true even of such special narrowly restricted impulses
as are involved in a scientific technique, it is far more evident
when the major, the most widespread systems, those active in
our responses to human beings and to the exigences of existence,
are engaged.

There is abundant evidence that removal of confusion in one sphere
of activity tends to be favourable to its removal elsewhere.
The ease with which a trained mind approaches a new subject is
the plainest example, but equally a person whose ordinary emotional
experience is clear, controlled and coherent, is the least likely
to be thrown into confusion by an unheard-of predicament. Complications
sometimes obscure this effect: a mathematician approaching psychology
may attempt to apply methods which are inappropriate, and the
sanest people may prove stupid in their dealings with individuals
of other races. The specialist, either intellectual or moral,
who is helpless outside his own narrow field is a familiar figure
in inferior comedy. But what would have to be shown before the
principle is invalidated is that, granted equal specialisation,
the successful specialist is not better fitted for life in general
than his unsuccessful _confrère_. Few people, however, will
dispute the assertion that transference of ability frequently
occurs although the mode by which it comes about may be obscure.

When very widespread and very fundamental impulses are implicated,
where attitudes constantly taken up in ordinary life are aroused,
this transference effect may be very marked. Everybody knows
the feeling of freedom, of relief, of increased competence and
sanity, that follows any reading in which more than usual order
and coherence has been given to our responses. We seem to feel
that our command of life, our insight into it and our discrimination
of its possibilities, is enhanced, even for situations having
little or nothing to do with the subject of the reading. It may
be a chapter of _Gösta Berling_ or of _The ABC of Atoms_,
the close of the _Vanity of Human Wishes_, or the opening
of _Harry Richmond_; whatever the differences the refreshment
is the same. And conversely everybody knows the diminution of
energy, the bafflement, the sense of helplessness, which an ill-written,
crude, or muddled book, or a badly acted play, will produce,
unless the critical task of diagnosis is able to restore equanimity
and composure.

Neither the subject nor the closeness of correspondence between
the experience and the reader’s own situation has any bearing
upon these effects. But indeed, to anyone who realises what kind
of a thing an experience is, and through what means it comes
about, the old antithesis between subject and treatment ceases
to be of interest (cf. Chapter XVI). They are not separable or
distinct things and the division is of no service. In this case
the effects we are considering depend only upon the kind and
degree of organisation which is given to the experiences. If
it is at the level of our own best attempts or above it (but
not so far above as to be out of reach) we are refreshed. But
if our own organisation is broken down, forced to a cruder, a
more wasteful level, we are depressed and temporarily incapacitated,
not only locally but generally. It is when what we are offered,
and inveigled into accepting, is only slightly inferior to our
own developed capacity, so that it is no easy matter to see what
is wrong, that the effect is greatest. Stuff of an evident and
extreme badness is exhilarating rather than depressing when taken
from a discriminating standpoint; and there need be nothing snobbish
or self-congratulatory in such reading. What is really discomposing
and damaging to the critical reader is the mediocre, the work
which falls just below his own standards of response. Hence the
rage which some feel at the productions of Sir James Barrie,
Mr Locke, or Sir Hall Caine, a rage which work comparatively
devoid of merits fails to excite.

These effects are not merely momentary or evanescent; if we would
understand the place of the arts in civilisation we must consider
them more closely. An improvement of response is the only benefit
which anyone can receive, and the degradation, the lowering of
a response, is the only calamity. When we take into account not
merely the impulses actually concerned in the experience but
all the allied groups which thrive or suffer with it, and all
the far-reaching effects of success or failure upon activities
which may seem to be independent, the fact that some people feel
so keenly about the arts is no longer surprising.

Underestimation of the importance of the arts is nearly always
due to ignorance of the workings of the mind. Experiences such
as these, into which we willingly and whole-heartedly enter,
or into which we may be enticed and inveigled, present peculiar
opportunities for betrayal. They are the most formative of experiences,
because in them the development and systematisation of our impulses
goes to the furthest lengths. In ordinary life a thousand considerations
prohibit for most of us any complete working out of our response;
the range and complexity of the impulse-systems involved is less;
the need for action, the comparative uncertainty and vagueness
of the situation, the intrusion of accidental irrelevancies,
inconvenient temporal spacing—the action being too slow or too
fast—all these obscure the issue and prevent the full development
of the experience. We have to jump to some rough and ready solution.
But in the ‘imaginative experience’ these obstacles are removed.
Thus what happens here, what precise stresses, preponderances,
conflicts, resolutions and interinanimations, what remote relationships
between different systems of impulses arise, what before unapprehended
and inexecutable connections are established, is a matter which,
we see clearly, may modify all the rest of life. As a chemist’s
balance to a grocer’s scales, so is the mind in the imaginative
moment to the mind engaged in ordinary intercourse or practical
affairs. The comparison will bear pressing. The results, for
good or evil, of the untrammelled response are not lost to us
in our usual trafficking.


[76] Even Coleridge was not exempt from this failing. Cf. his
comments on Gloster.

[77] Essay on Casanova, in _Affirmations_, p. 115.

[78] _Affirmations_, p. 115.




CHAPTER XXXII

The Imagination

    Reason, in itself confounded,
    Saw division grow together;
    To themselves yet either neither,
    Simple were so well compounded.
                    _The Phœnix and the Turtle._


At least six distinct senses of the word ‘imagination’ are still
current in critical discussion. It is convenient to separate
them before passing on to consider the one which is most important.

    (i) The production of vivid images, usually visual images,
        already sufficiently discussed, is the commonest and the
        least interesting thing which is referred to by imagination.

   (ii) The use of figurative language is frequently all that is
        meant. People who naturally employ metaphor and simile,
        especially when it is of an unusual kind, are said to
        have imagination. This may or may not be accompanied
        by imagination in the other senses. It should not be
        overlooked that metaphor and simile—the two may be
        considered together—have a great variety of functions in
        speech. A metaphor may be illustrative or diagrammatical,
        providing a concrete instance of a relation which would
        otherwise have to be stated in abstract terms. This is the
        most common scientific or prose use of metaphor. It is
        rare in emotive language and in poetry; Shelley’s “Dome
        of many-coloured glass” is almost the only example which
        springs to mind. More usually the elucidation is a mere
        pretence; some attitude of the speaker to his subject
        or to his audience is using the metaphor as a means of
        expression. “The freedom of my writings has indeed provoked
        an implacable tribe” said Gibbon, “but as I was safe from
        the stings, I was soon accustomed to the buzzing of the
        hornets”. But metaphor has yet further uses. It is the
        supreme agent by which disparate and hitherto unconnected
        things are brought together in poetry for the sake of the
        effects upon attitude and impulse which spring from their
        collocation and from the combinations which the mind then
        establishes between them. There are few metaphors whose
        effect, if carefully examined, can be traced to the logical
        relations involved. Metaphor is a semi-surreptitious method
        by which a greater variety of elements can be wrought
        into the fabric of the experience. Not that there is any
        virtue in variety by itself, though the list of critics who
        seem to have thought so would be lengthy; a page of the
        dictionary can show more variety than any page of poetry.
        But what is needed for the wholeness of an experience is
        not always naturally present, and metaphor supplies an
        excuse by which what is needed may be smuggled in. This
        is an instance of a very strange phenomenon constantly
        appearing in the arts. What is most essential often seems
        to be done as it were inadvertently, to be a by-product,
        an accidental concomitant. Those who look only to the
        ostensible purposes for the explanation of the effects, who
        make prose analyses of poems, must inevitably find them
        a mystery. But why overt and evident intention should so
        often destroy the effect is certainly a difficult problem.

  (iii) A narrower sense is that in which sympathetic reproducing
        of other people’s states of mind, particularly their
        emotional states, is what is meant. “You haven’t enough
        imagination,” the dramatist says to the critic who
        thinks that his persons behave unnaturally. This kind of
        imagination is plainly a necessity for communication, and
        is covered by what has already been said in Chapter XXIV.
        It has no necessary connection with senses of imagination
        which imply value. Bad plays to be successful require it as
        much as good.

   (iv) Inventiveness, the bringing together of elements which are
        not ordinarily connected, is another sense. According to
        this Edison is said to have possessed imagination, and any
        fantastic romance will show it _in excelsis_. Although
        this comes nearer to a sense in which value is implied, it
        is still too general. The lunatic will beat any of us at
        combining odd ideas: Dr Cook outstrips Peary, and Bottomley
        outshines Sir John Bradbury.

    (v) Next we have that kind of relevant connection of things
        ordinarily thought of as disparate which is exemplified in
        scientific imagination. This is an ordering of experience
        in definite ways and for a definite end or purpose, not
        necessarily deliberate and conscious, but limited to a
        given field of phenomena. The _technical_ triumphs of the
        arts are instances of this kind of imagination. As with
        all ordering, value considerations are very likely to be
        implied, but the value may be limited or conditional.

   (vi) Finally we come to the sense of imagination with which we
        are here most concerned. The original formulation[79] was
        Coleridge’s greatest contribution to critical theory, and
        except in the way of interpretation, it is hard to add
        anything to what he has said, though, as we have already
        noted in Chapter XXIV, some things might be taken away from
        it with advantage.

  “That synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively
        appropriated the name of imagination . . . reveals itself
        in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant
        qualities . . . the sense of novelty and freshness, with
        old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of
        emotion, with more than usual order; judgement ever awake
        and steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling
        profound or vehement.” “The sense of musical delight . . .
        with the power of reducing multitude into unity of effect,
        and modifying a series of thoughts by some one predominant
        thought or feeling[80]” these are gifts of the imagination.
        It was natural, we shall shortly see why, for Coleridge to
        carry his further speculations upon Imagination into the
        realms of Transcendentalism, but setting this aside, there
        is enough in this description and in the many applications
        and elucidations scattered through the _Biographia_ and
        the _Lectures_ to justify Coleridge’s claim to have put
        his finger more nearly than anyone else upon the essential
        characteristic of poetic as of all valuable experience.

In describing the poet we laid stress upon the availability of
his experience, upon the width of the field of stimulation which
he can accept, and the completeness of the response which he
can make. Compared with him the ordinary man suppresses nine-tenths
of his impulses, because he is incapable of managing them without
confusion. He goes about in blinkers because what he would otherwise
see would upset him. But the poet through his superior power
of ordering experience is freed from this necessity. Impulses
which commonly interfere with one another and are conflicting,
independent, and mutually distractive, in him combine into a
stable poise. He selects, of course, but the range of suppression
which is necessary for him is diminished, and for this very reason
such suppressions as he makes are more rigorously carried out.
Hence the curious local callousness of the artist which so often
strikes the observer.

But these impulses active in the artist become mutually modified
and thereby ordered to an extent which only occurs in the ordinary
man at rare moments, under the shock of, for example, a great
bereavement or an undreamt-of happiness; at instants when the
“film of familiarity and selfish solicitude”, which commonly
hides nine-tenths of life from him, seems to be lifted and he
feels strangely alive and aware of the actuality of existence.
In these moments his myriad inhibitions are weakened; his responses,
canalised—to use an inappropriate metaphor—by routine and by
practical but restricted convenience, break loose and make up
a new order with one another; he feels as though everything were
beginning anew. But for most men after their early years such
experiences are infrequent; a time comes when they are incapable
of them unaided, and they receive them only through the arts.
For great art has this effect, and owes thereto its supreme place
in human life.

The poet makes unconsciously a selection which outwits the force
of habit; the impulses he awakens are freed, through the very
means by which they are aroused, from the inhibitions that ordinary
circumstances encourage; the irrelevant and the extraneous is
excluded; and upon the resulting simplified but widened field
of impulses he imposes an order which their greater plasticity
allows them to accept. Almost always too the chief part of his
work is done through those impulses which we have seen to be
most uniform and regular, those which are aroused by what are
called the ‘formal elements’. They are also the most primitive,
and for that reason commonly among those which are most inhibited,
most curtailed and subordinated to superimposed purposes. We
rarely let a colour affect us purely as a colour, we use it as
a sign by which we recognise some coloured object. Thus our responses
to colours in themselves become so abbreviated that many people
come to think that the pigments painters use are in some way
more colourful than Nature. What happens is that inhibitions
are released, and at the same time mutual interactions between
impulses take place which only sunsets seem to evoke in everyday
experience. We have seen in discussing communication one reason
for the pre-eminence of ‘formal elements’ in art, the uniformity
of the responses which they can be depended upon to produce.
In their primitiveness we find another. The sense that the accidental
and adventitious aspect of life has receded, that we are beginning
again, that our contact with actuality is increased, is largely
due to this restoration of their full natural powers to sensations.

But this restoration is not enough; merely looking at a landscape
in a mirror, or standing on one’s head will do it. What is much
more essential is the increased organisation, the heightened
power of combining all the several effects of formal elements
into a single response, which the poet bestows. To point out
that “the sense of musical delight is a gift of the imagination”
was’ one of Coleridge’s most brilliant feats. It is in such resolution
of a welter of disconnected impulses into a single ordered response
that in all the arts imagination is most shown, but for the reason
that here its operation is most intricate and most inaccessible
to observation, we shall study it more profitably in its other
manifestations.

We have suggested, but only by accident, that imagination
characteristically produces effects similar to those which accompany
great and sudden crises in experience. This would be misleading. What
is true is that those imaginative syntheses which most nearly approach
to these climaxes, Tragedy for example, are the most easy to analyse.
What clearer instance of the “balance or reconciliation of opposite and
discordant qualities” can be found than Tragedy. Pity, the impulse to
approach, and Terror, the impulse to retreat, are brought in Tragedy to
a reconciliation which they find nowhere else, and with them who knows
what other allied groups of equally discordant impulses. Their union
in an ordered single response is the _catharsis_ by which Tragedy is
recognised, whether Aristotle meant anything of this kind or not. This
is the explanation of that sense of release, of repose in the midst of
stress, of balance and composure, given by Tragedy, for there is no
other way in which such impulses, once awakened, can be set at rest
without suppression.

It is essential to recognise that in the full tragic experience
there is no suppression. The mind does not shy away from anything,
it does not protect itself with any illusion, it stands uncomforted,
unintimidated, alone and self-reliant. The test of its success
is whether it can face what is before it and respond to it without
any of the innumerable subterfuges by which it ordinarily dodges
the full development of experience. Suppressions and sublimations
alike are devices by which we endeavour to avoid issues which
might bewilder us. The essence of Tragedy is that it forces us
to live for a moment without them. When we succeed we find, as
usual, that there is no difficulty; the difficulty came from
the suppressions and sublimations. The joy which is so strangely
the heart of the experience is not an indication that ‘all’s
right with the world’ or that ‘somewhere, somehow, there is Justice’;
it is an indication that all is right here and now in the nervous
system. Because Tragedy is the experience which most invites
these subterfuges, it is the greatest and the rarest thing in
literature, for the vast majority of works which pass by that
name are of a different order. Tragedy is only possible to a
mind which is for the moment agnostic or Manichean. The least
touch of any theology which has a compensating Heaven to offer
the tragic hero is fatal. That is why _Romeo and Juliet_
is not a Tragedy in the sense in which _King Lear_ is.

But there is more in Tragedy than unmitigated experience. Besides
Terror there is Pity, and if there is substituted for either
something a little different—Horror or Dread, say, for Terror;
Regret or Shame for Pity; or that kind of Pity which yields the
adjective ‘Pitiable’ in place of that which yields ‘Piteous’—the
whole effect is altered. It is the relation between the two sets
of impulses, Pity and Terror, which gives its specific character
to Tragedy, and from that relation the peculiar poise of the
Tragic experience springs.

The metaphor of a balance or poise will bear consideration. For
Pity and Terror are opposites in a sense in which Pity and Dread
are not. Dread or Horror are nearer than Terror to Pity, for
they contain attraction as well as repulsion. As in colour, tones
just not in harmonic relation are peculiarly unmanageable and
jarring, so it is with these more easily describable responses.
The extraordinarily stable experience of Tragedy, which is capable
of admitting almost any other impulses so long as the relation
of the main components is exactly right, changes at once if these
are altered. Even if it keeps its coherence it becomes at once
a far narrower, more limited, and exclusive thing, a much more
partial, restricted and specialised response. Tragedy is perhaps
the most general, all-accepting, all-ordering experience known.
It can take anything into its organisation, modifying it so that
it finds a place. It is invulnerable; there is nothing which
does not present to the tragic attitude _when fully developed_
a fitting aspect and only a fitting aspect. Its sole rivals in
this respect are the attitudes of Falstaff and of the Voltaire
of _Candide_. But pseudo-tragedy—the greater part of Greek
Tragedy as well as almost all Elizabethan Tragedy outside Shakespeare’s
six masterpieces comes under this head—is one of the most fragile
and precarious of attitudes. Parody easily overthrows it, the
ironic addition paralyses it; even a mediocre joke may make it
look lopsided and extravagant.

This balanced poise, stable through its power of inclusion, not
through the force of its exclusions, is not peculiar to Tragedy.
It is a general characteristic of all the most valuable experiences
of the arts. It can be given by a carpet or a pot or by a gesture
as unmistakably as by the Parthenon, it may come about through
an epigram as clearly as through a Sonata. We must resist the
temptation to analyse its cause into sets of opposed characters
in the object. As a rule no such analysis can be made. The balance
is not in the structure of the stimulating object, it is in the
response. By remembering this we escape the danger of supposing
that we have found a formula for Beauty.

Although for most people these experiences are infrequent apart
from the arts, almost any occasion may give rise to them. The
most important general condition is mental health, a high state
of ‘vigilance’; the next is the frequent occurrence of such experiences
in the recent past. None of the effects of art is more transferable
than this balance or equilibrium.

Despite all differences in the impulses concerned, a certain
general similarity can be observed in all these cases of supremely
fine and complete organisation. It is this similarity which has
led to the legends of the ‘æsthetic state’, the ‘æsthetic emotion’
and the single quality Beauty, the same in all its manifestations.
We had occasion in Chapter II to suggest that the characteristics
by which æsthetic experience is usually defined—that impersonality,
disinterestedness and detachment so much stressed and so little
discussed by æstheticians—are really two sets of quite different
characters.

One set we have seen (Chapters X and XXIV) to be merely conditions
of communication having nothing essentially to do with value,
conditions involved in valueless and valuable communications
alike. We have suggested above, however, that this kind of detachment
and severance from ordinary circumstances and accidental personal
interests may be of special service in these supremely valuable[81]
communications, since it makes the breaking down of inhibitions
more easy. This same facilitation of response is also, it should
be added, the explanation of the peculiarly pernicious effect
of bad but competent art.

We may now turn to consider that other set of characters which have
been confused with these communicative conditions, and which may
justifiably be taken as defining a special field for those interested
in the values of experience. There are two ways in which impulses
may be organised; by exclusion and by inclusion, by synthesis and by
elimination. Although every coherent state of mind depends upon both,
it is permissible to contrast experiences which win stability and
order through a narrowing of the response with those which widen it.
A very great deal of poetry and art is content with the full, ordered
development of comparatively special and limited experiences, with
a definite emotion, for example, Sorrow, Joy, Pride, or a definite
attitude, Love, Indignation, Admiration, Hope, or with a specific mood,
Melancholy, Optimism or Longing. And such art has its own value and
its place in human affairs. No one will quarrel with ‘Break, break,
break,’ or with the _Coronach_ or with _Rose Aylmer_ or with _Love’s
Philosophy_,[82] although clearly they are limited and exclusive. But
they are not the greatest kind of poetry; we do not expect from them
what we find in the _Ode to the Nightingale_, in _Proud Maisie_, in
_Sir Patrick Spens_, in _The Definition of Love_ or in the _Nocturnall
upon S. Lucie’s Day_.

The structures of these two kinds of experiences are different,
and the difference is not one of subject but of the relations
_inter se_ of the several impulses active in the experience.
A poem of the first group is built out of sets of impulses which
run parallel, which have the same direction. In a poem of the
second group the most obvious feature is the extraordinarily
heterogeneity of the distinguishable impulses. But they are more
than heterogeneous, they are opposed. They are such that in ordinary,
non-poetic, non-imaginative experience, one or other set would
be suppressed to give as it might appear freer development to
the others.

The difference comes out clearly if we consider how comparatively
unstable poems of the first kind are. They will not bear an ironical
contemplation. We have only to read _The War Song of Dinas Vawr_ in
close conjunction with the _Coronach_, or to remember that unfortunate
phrase ‘Those lips, O slippery blisses’! from _Endymion_, while reading
_Love’s Philosophy_, to notice this. Irony in this sense consists in
the bringing in of the opposite, the complementary impulses; that is
why poetry which is exposed to it is not of the highest order, and why
irony itself is so constantly a characteristic of poetry which is.

These opposed impulses from the resolution of which such experiences
spring cannot usually be analysed. When, as is most often the
case, they are aroused through formal means, it is evidently
impossible to do so. But sometimes, as in the above cited cases,
they can, and through this accident literary criticism is able
to go a step further than the criticism of the other arts.

We can only conjecture dimly what difference holds between a
balance and reconciliation of impulses and a mere rivalry or
conflict. One difference is that a balance sustains one state
of mind, but a conflict two alternating states. This, however,
does not take us very far. The chief misconception which prevents
progress here is the switchboard view of the mind. What conception
should be put in its place is still doubtful, but we have already
(Chapters XIV and XX) discussed the reasons which make a more
adequate conception imperative. The rest of the difficulty is
due merely to ignorance; we do not yet know enough about the
central nervous system.

With this preliminary disavowal of undue certainty we may proceed.
The equilibrium[83] of opposed impulses, which we suspect to be
the ground-plan of the most valuable æsthetic responses, brings
into play far more of our personality than is possible in experiences
of a more defined emotion. We cease to be orientated in one definite
direction; more facets of the mind are exposed and, what is the
same thing, more aspects of things are able to affect us. To
respond, not through one narrow channel of interest, but simultaneously
and coherently through many, is to be _disinterested_ in
the only sense of the word which concerns us here. A state of
mind which is not disinterested is one which sees things only
from one standpoint or under one aspect. At the same time since
more of our personality is engaged the independence and individuality
of other things becomes greater. We seem to see ‘all round’ them,
to see them as they really are; we see them apart from any one
particular interest which they may have for us. Of course without
some interest we should not see them at all, but the less any
one particular interest is indispensable, the more _detached_
our attitude becomes. And to say that we are _impersonal_
is merely a curious way of saying that our personality is more
_completely_ involved.

These characters of æsthetic experiences can thus be shown to
be very natural consequences of the diversity, of their components.
But that so many different impulses should enter in is only what
may be expected in an experience whose ground-plan is a balance
of opposites. For every impulse which does not complete itself
in isolation tends to bring in allied systems. The state of irresolution
shows this clearly. The difference between any such welter of
vacillating impulses and the states of composure we are considering
may well be a matter of mediating relations between the supporting
systems brought in from either side. One thing only perhaps is
certain; what happens is the exact opposite to a deadlock, for
compared to the experience of great poetry every other state
of mind is one of bafflement.

The consciousness which arises in these moments of completed
being lends itself inevitably to transcendental descriptions.
“This Exstasie doth unperplex”, we seem to see things as they
really are, and because we are freed from the bewilderment which
our own maladjustment brings with it,

        The heavy and the weary weight
    Of all this unintelligible world
    Is lightened.

Wordsworth’s Pantheistic interpretation of the imaginative experience
in _Tintern Abbey_[84] is one which in varying forms has
been given by many poets and critics. The reconciliation of it
with the account here presented raises a point of extreme importance,
the demarcation of the two main uses of language.


[79] Coleridge’s debt here to Schelling has been over-estimated.
Such borrowings as he made were more hampering to him than helpful.

[80] _Biographia Literaria_, II, pp. 12, 14.

[81] It may perhaps be desirable to point out that this description
of the effects of art follows from the theory of value outlined
in Chapter VII. They are the most valuable experiences because
they are the least wasteful. Thus the place assigned to them
is not a mere personal expression of preference.

[82] May I assume that references here will not distress the reader?
Tennyson, Scott, Landor, Shelley, Keats, Scott, Anon; Marvell,
Donne, Peacock. I am anxious to facilitate the actual detailed
comparison of these poems.

[83] This topic is discussed from a slightly different angle in
_The Foundations of Æsthetics_ (Allen and Unwin, 1922).

[84] I will quote the familiar passage for the reader’s convenience:

                            I have felt
    A presence that disturbs me with the joy
    Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
    Of something far more deeply interfused,
    Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
    And the round ocean and the living air,
    And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
    A motion and a spirit that impels
    All thinking things, all objects of all thought
    And rolls through all things.

Not itself an instance of imaginative utterance, although some
instances _can_ be found in the poem.




CHAPTER XXXIII

Truth and Revelation Theories

    Oh never rudely will I blame his faith
    In the might of stars and angels! ’Tis not merely
    The human being’s pride that peoples space
    With life and mystical predominance;
    Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love
    This visible nature, and this common world
    Is all too narrow . . . .
                                    Coleridge, _Piccolomini_.


Knowledge, it is recognised, is good, and since the experiences
which we have been discussing may readily be supposed to give
knowledge, there is a strong tradition in criticism which seeks
to derive their value from the worth of knowledge. But not all
knowledge is equally valuable: the kind of information which
we can acquire indefinitely by steady perusal of Whitaker or
of an Encyclopædia is of negligible value. Therefore a special
kind of knowledge has been alleged.

The problem which ensues is for many people the most interesting
part of critical theory. That so many capital-letter words—such
as Real, Ideal, Essential, Necessary, Ultimate, Absolute, Fundamental,
Profound, and many others—tend to appear in Truth doctrines is
evidence of the interest. This heavy artillery is more than anything
else a mode of emphasis, analogous to italics, underlining and
solemn tones of utterance. It serves to impress upon the reader
that he would do well to become serious and attentive, and like
all such devices it tends to lose its effect unless cunningly
employed.

We may most conveniently begin by considering a range of representative
doctrines chosen from the writings of famous critics with a view
to illustrating chiefly their differences. Some, it is true,
will hardly repay investigation. It is far too easy to write,
with Carlyle “All real art is the disimprisonment of the soul
of fact[85]” or “The infinite is made to blend itself with the
finite; to stand visible, and, as it were, attainable there.
Of this sort are all true works of art; in this (if we know a
work of art from the daub of artifice) we discern eternity looking
through time, the God-like rendered visible[86]”.

All the difficulty begins when this has been written, and what
has been said is of no assistance towards its elucidation. Nor
is Pater, for all his praise of clarity and accuracy, of much
better quality. “Truth! there can be no merit, no craft at all,
without that. And, further, all beauty is in the long run only
fineness of truth or what we call expression, the finer accommodation
of speech to that vision within”[87]. It would perhaps be difficult,
outside Croce,[88] to find a more unmistakable confusion between
value and communicative efficacy. But the _Essay_ is a veritable
museum of critical blunders.

The extracts which follow are arranged approximately in order
of obscurity. They rise from the most matter of fact to the most
mystical uses of truth-notions in criticism. All might be taken
as glosses upon the phrase ‘Truth to Nature’; they serve to show
what different things may be meant by what is apparently simple
language.

We may begin with Aristotle. He makes three remarks which bear
upon the matter. The first is in connection with the antithesis
between Tragedy and History.

“Poetry is a more philosophical and a more serious thing than
History: for Poetry is chiefly conversant about general (universal)
truth, History about particular. In what manner, for example,
any person of a certain character would speak or act, probably
or necessarily—this is universal; and this is the object of Poetry.
But what Alcibiades did, or what happened to him—this is particular
truth.” (_Poetics_, IX).

His second remark is made in connection with the requisites of
Tragic Character:—

“The third requisite (in addition to goodness in a special sense,
appropriateness, and consistency) of Character is that it have
_verisimilitude_[89]”. (_Poetics_, XV).

Aristotle’s third observation is in the same chapter:—

“The poet when he imitates passionate or indolent men and such,
should preserve the type and yet ennoble it[90]”.

Wordsworth’s interpretation carries us a definite stage nearer
to the mystical:—

“Aristotle, I have been told, has said that poetry is the most
philosophic of all writing. It is so. Its object is truth—not
individual and local, but general and operative. Not standing
upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by
passion: truth which is its own testimony; which gives competence
and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives
them from the same tribunal[91]”.

Wordsworth remains still on the hither side of the gap, as does
Goethe in suggesting that “The beautiful is the manifestation
of secret laws of nature which, but for this disclosure, had
been for ever concealed from us[92]”. But Coleridge, from whom
Wordsworth probably heard about Aristotle, takes the step into
mysticism unhesitatingly:—

“If the artist copies the mere nature, the _natura naturata_,
what idle rivalry!—if he proceeds only from a given form which
is supposed to answer to the notion of beauty—what an emptiness,
what an unreality, there always is in his productions. Believe
me, you must master the essence, the _natura naturans_,
which presupposes a bond between nature in the higher sense and
the soul of man[93]”.

But Coleridge held many mystical views, not always easy to reconcile
with one another. In the same Essay he continues:—

“In the objects of nature are presented as in a mirror all the
possible elements, steps and processes of intellect antecedent
to consciousness, and therefore to the full development of the
intelligential act; and man’s mind is the very focus of all the
rays of intellect which are scattered throughout the images of
nature. Now so to place these images, totalised and fitted to
the limits of the human mind, as to elicit from and to superinduce
upon the forms themselves the moral reflections to which they
approximate, to make the external internal, the internal external,
to make nature thought and thought nature—this is the mystery
of genius in the Fine Arts.”

Even when Coleridge is most ‘the God-intoxicated man’ his remarks
to a careful reader suggest that if they could be decoded, as
it were, they would provide at the least a basis for interesting
speculation. Many adumbrations of this mystical view might be
quoted. “There is a communication between mystery and mystery,
between the unknown soul and the unknown reality; at one particular
point in the texture of life the hidden truth seems to break
through the veil”, writes Mr Middleton Murry in an Essay[94]
which as an emotive utterance disguised to resemble an argument
is of interest. How this feeling of insight arises we have seen
in the foregoing chapter; the sense of immediate revelation of
which he treats as “the primary stuff out of which literature
is created” is certainly characteristic of the greater kinds
of art. And there must be few who have not by one arrangement
or another contrived from these visionary moments a philosophy
which, for a time, has seemed to them unshakable because for
a time emotionally satisfying. But emotional satisfaction gained
at the cost of intellectual bondage is unstable. When it does
not induce a partial stupor it breaks down. The freely inquiring
mind has a fatal way of overthrowing all immediate and mystical
intuitions which, instead of being duly subordinate, insist on
giving it orders.

For the inquiring mind is simply the human being’s way of finding
a place and function for all its experiences and activities,
a place and function compatible with the rest of its experience.
When the mystical insight is understood, and its claims fitly
directed, although it may seem to those who still misunderstand
it to have lost all the attributes for which they have sought
to retain it, and to be no longer either mystical or an insight,
it does not lose but gains in value. But this further adjustment
is often very difficult to make.

These Revelation Doctrines, when we know what they are really
about, come nearer, we shall see, to supplying an explanation
of the value of the arts than any of the other traditional accounts.
But the process of translation is no easy matter. They are not
what they seem, these utterances apparently about Truth. In interpreting
them we shall find ourselves forced to consider language from
an angle and with a closeness which are not usual, and to do
so, certain very powerful resistances and deeply ingrained habits
of the mind have first to be broken down.


[85] _Shooting Niagara_.

[86] _Sartor Resartus_.

[87] _Essay on Style_.

[88] A discussion of Croce’s doctrines might seem advisable at
some point. But all that is strictly necessary has already been
said in _The Foundations of Æsthetics_. It may be repeated
here in the vigorous terms of Giovanni Papini (_Four and Twenty
Minds_): “If you disregard critical trivialities and didactic
accessories, the entire æsthetic system of Croce amounts merely
to a hunt for pseudonyms of the word ‘art’, and may indeed be
stated briefly and accurately in this formula: art = intuition
= expression = feeling = imagination = fancy = lyricism = beauty.
And you must be careful not to take these words with the shadings
and distinctions which they have in ordinary or scientific language.
Not a bit of it. Every word is merely a different series of syllables
signifying absolutely and completely the same thing.” When you
are not careful the amalgam of confusions and contradictions
which ensues is very remarkable. It is interesting to notice
that Croce’s appeal has been exclusively to those unfamiliar
with the subject, to the man of letters and the dilettante. He
has been ignored by serious students of the mind. How many of
those for example who have been impressed by his dicta as to
expression and language have been aware of how the problem has
been discussed before, or have ever heard of the ‘imageless thought’
controversy? Upon the ways in which Croce’s strategy has inveigled
the guileless into supposing him to be saying something, Papini
is excellent. ‘The Barabbas of art, the Thug of philosophy, the
Apache of culture’—Papini so describes himself—has here rendered
a notable service to those who have been depressed by the vogue
of ‘Expressionism’.

[89] _ὅμοιον_. This word is variously translated ‘resemblance’
(Twining), and ‘truth to life’? (Butcher). Its usual meaning
in the _Poetics_ is ‘the quality of _being like ourselves_’,
‘_average_ humanity’.

[90] Cf. Eastlake, _Literature of the Fine Arts_.

“The elephant with his objectionable legs and inexpressive hide
may still be supposed to be a very normal specimen and may accordingly
be a fit object for artistic imitation.”

[91] Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_.

[92] Compare Thomas Rymer, _A Short View of Tragedy_.

“A little preparation and forecast might do well now and then.
For his Desdemona’s Marriage, he might have helped out the probability
by figuring how that some way or other a Blackamoor woman had
been her nurse and suckled her; or that once upon a time some
_Virtuoso_ had transfused into her veins the Blood of a
Black Sheep.” We may take it such are not the secret laws of
nature to which Goethe was alluding.

[93] _On Poesy or Art_.

[94] ‘Literature and Religion’ in _The Necessity of Art_,
published by The Student Christian Movement, p. 155.




CHAPTER XXXIV

The Two Uses of Language

    The intelligible forms of ancient poets
    The fair humanities of old religion . . .
    They live no longer in the faith of reason:
    But still the heart doth need a language, still
    Doth the old instinct bring back the old names.
                                    Coleridge, _Piccolomini_.


There are two totally distinct uses of language. But because
the theory of language is the most neglected of all studies they
are in fact hardly ever distinguished. Yet both for the theory
of poetry and for the narrower aim of understanding much which
is said about poetry a clear comprehension of the differences
between these uses is indispensable. For this we must look somewhat
closely at the mental processes which accompany them.

It is unfortunate but not surprising that most of the psychological
terms which we naturally employ tend to blur the distinction.
‘Knowledge’, ‘belief’, ‘assertion’, ‘thought’, and ‘understanding’,
for, example, as ordinarily used, are ambiguous in a fashion
which disguises and obscures the point which must be brought
out. They record distinctions which are oblique to the distinctions
required, they are cross-cuts of analysis made in the wrong place
and in the wrong direction, useful enough for some purposes no
doubt, but for this present purpose very confusing. We shall
do well to put them out of mind for a while if possible.

The chief departure made from current conceptions in the sketch of the
mind given in Chapter XI lay in the substitution of the _causes_, the
_characters_ and the _consequences_ of a mental event, for its aspects
as _thought_, _feeling_ and _will_. This treatment was introduced with
a view to the analysis which now occupies us. Among the causes of most
mental events, we urged, two sets may be distinguished. On the one hand
there are the present stimuli reaching the mind through the sensory
nerves, and, in co-operation with these, the effects of past stimuli
associated with them. On the other hand is a set of quite different
factors, the state of the organism, its needs, its readiness to respond
to this or that kind of stimulus. The impulses which arise take their
character and their course from the interaction of these two sets. We
must keep them clearly distinguished.

The relative importance of the two sets of factors varies enormously.
A sufficiently hungry man will eat almost anything which can
be chewed or swallowed. The nature of the substance, within these
limits, has very little effect upon his behaviour. A replete
person, by contrast, will only eat such things as he expects
will taste pleasant, or regards as possessing definite beneficial
properties, for example, medicines. His behaviour, in other words,
depends almost entirely upon the character of his optical or
olfactory stimulation.

So far as an impulse owes its character to its stimulus (or to
such effects of past accompanying or connected stimuli as are
revived) so far is it a _reference_, to use the term which
we introduced in Chapter XI, to stand for the property of mental
events which we substitute for thought or cognition.[95] It is
plain that the independent internal conditions of the organism
usually intervene to distort reference in some degree. But very
many of our needs can only be satisfied if the impulses are left
undistorted. Bitter experience has taught us to leave some of
them alone, to let them reflect or correspond with external states
of affairs as much as they can, undisturbed as far as possible
by internal states of affairs, our needs and desires.

In all our behaviour can be distinguished stimuli we receive,
and the ways in which we use them. What we receive may be any
kind of stimulus, but only when the reaction we make to it tallies
with its nature and varies with it in quasi-independence of the
uses we make of it does reference occur.

Those to whom visual images are of service in considering complex
matters may find it convenient at this point to imagine a circle
or sphere constantly bombarded by minute particles (stimuli).
Within the sphere may be pictured complex mechanisms continually
changing for reasons having nothing to do with the external stimuli.
These mechanisms by opening little gateways select which of the
stimuli shall be allowed to come in and take effect. So far as
the subsequent convulsions are due to the nature of the impacts
and to lingering effects of impacts which have accompanied similar
impacts in the past, the convulsions are referential. So far
as they are due to the independent motions of the internal mechanisms
themselves, reference fails. This diagrammatic image may possibly
be of convenience to some. By those who distrust such things
it may with advantage be disregarded. It is not introduced as
a contribution to neurology, and is in no way a ground for the
author’s view.

The extent to which reference is interfered with by needs and
desires is underestimated even by those who, not having yet forgotten
the events of 1914-1918, are most sceptical as to the independence
of opinions and desires. Even the most ordinary and familiar
objects are perceived as it pleases us to perceive them rather
than as they are, whenever error does not directly deprive us
of advantages. It is almost impossible for anyone to secure a
correct impression of his own personal appearance or of the features
of anyone in whom he is personally interested. Nor is it perhaps
often desirable that he should.

For the demarcation of the fields where impulse should be as
completely as possible dependent upon and correspondent with
external situation, those in which reference should take prior
place from those in which it may be subordinated to appetencies
with advantage, is not a simple matter. On many views of the
good and of what should be, themselves results of subordinating
reference to emotional satisfactions, there could be no question.
Truth, it would be said, has claims prior to all other considerations.
Love not grounded upon knowledge would be described as worthless.
We ought not to admire what is not beautiful and if our mistress
be not really beautiful when impartially considered we ought,
so the doctrine runs, to admire her, if at all, for other reasons.
The chief points of interest about such views are the confusions
which make them plausible. Beauty as an internal quality of things
is usually involved, as well as Good the unanalysable Idea. Both
are special twists given to some of our impulses by habits deriving
ultimately from desires. They linger in our minds because to
think of a thing as Good or Beautiful gives more _immediate_
emotional satisfaction than to _refer_ to it as satisfying
our impulses in one special fashion (cf. Chapter VII) or another
(cf. Chapter XXXII).

To think about Good or Beauty is not necessarily to refer to
anything. For the term ‘thinking’ covers mental operations in
which the impulses are so completely governed by internal factors
and so out of control of stimulus that no reference occurs. Most
‘thinking of’ includes reference in some degree, of course, but
not all, and similarly much reference would not commonly be described
as thinking. When we drop something which is too hot to hold
we would not usually be said to have done so through thinking.
The two terms overlap, and their definitions, if there be a definition
of ‘thinking’ as commonly used, are of different types. This
is why ‘Thought’ was on an earlier page described as marking
an oblique distinction.

To return, the claims of reference are by no means easy to adjust
with other claims. An immense extension of our powers of referring
has recently been made. With amazing swiftness Science has opened
out field after field of possible reference. Science is simply
the organisation of references with a view solely to the convenience
and facilitation of reference. It has advanced mainly because
other claims, typically the claims of our religious desires,
have been set aside. For it is no accident that Science and Religion
conflict. They are different principles upon which impulses may
be organised, and the more closely they are examined the more
inevitable is the incompatibility seen to be. Any so-called reconciliation
which is ever effected will involve bestowing the name Religion
upon something utterly different from any of the systematisations
of impulses which it now denotes, for the reason that the belief
elements present would have a different character.

Many attempts have been made to reduce Science to a position
of subjection to some instinct or emotion or desire, to curiosity
for example. A special passion for knowledge for its own sake
has even been invented. But in fact all the passions and all
the instincts, all human needs and desires may _on occasion_
supply the motive force for Science. There is no human activity
which may not on occasion require undistorted reference. The
essential point, however, is that Science is autonomous. The
impulses developed in it are modified only by one another, with
a view to the greatest possible completeness and systematisation,
and for the facilitation of further references. So far as other
considerations distort them they are not yet Science or have
fallen out of it.

To declare Science autonomous is very different from subordinating
all our activities to it. It is merely to assert that so far
as any body of references is undistorted it belongs to Science.
It is not in the least to assert that no references may be distorted
if advantage can thereby be gained. And just as there are innumerable
human activities which require undistorted references if they
are to be satisfied, so there are innumerable other human activities
not less important which equally require distorted references
or, more plainly, _fictions_.

The use of fictions, the imaginative use of them rather, is not
a way of hoodwinking ourselves. It is not a process of pretending
to ourselves that things are not as they are. It is perfectly
compatible with the fullest and grimmest recognition of the exact
state of affairs on all occasions. It is no make-believe. But
so awkwardly have our references and our attitudes become entangled
that such pathetic spectacles as Mr Yeats trying desperately
to believe in fairies or Mr Lawrence impugning the validity of
solar physics, are all too common. To be forced by desire into
any unwarrantable belief is a calamity. The state which ensues
is often extraordinarily damaging to the mind. But this common
misuse of fictions should not blind us to their immense services
provided we do not take them for what they are not, degrading
the chief means by which our attitudes to actual life may be
adjusted into the material of a long-drawn delirium[96].

If we knew enough it might be possible that all necessary attitudes
could be obtained through scientific references alone. Since
we do not know very much yet, we can leave this very remote possibility,
once recognised, alone.

Fictions whether aroused by statements or by analogous things
in other arts may be used in many ways. They may be used, for
example, to deceive. But this is not a characteristic use in
poetry. The distinction which needs to be kept clear does not
set up fictions in opposition to verifiable truths in the scientific
sense. A statement may be used for the sake of the _reference_,
true or false, which it causes. This is the _scientific_
use of language. But it may also be used for the sake of the
effects in emotion and attitude produced by the reference it
occasions. This is the _emotive_ use of language. The distinction
once clearly grasped is simple. We may either use words for the
sake of the references they promote, or we may use them for the
sake of the attitudes and emotions which ensue. Many arrangements
of words evoke attitudes without any reference being required
_en route_. They-operate like musical phrases. But usually
references are involved _as conditions_ for, or _stages
in_, the ensuing development of attitudes, yet it is still
the attitudes not the references which are important. It matters
not at all in such cases whether the references are true or false.
Their sole function is to bring about and support the attitudes
which are the further response. The questioning, verificatory
way of handling them is irrelevant, and in a competent reader
it is not allowed to interfere. “Better a plausible impossibility
than an improbable possibility” said Aristotle very wisely; there
is less danger of an inappropriate reaction.

The differences between the mental processes involved in the
two cases are very great, though easily overlooked. Consider
what failure for each use amounts to. For scientific language
a difference in the references is itself failure: the end has
not been attained. But for emotive language the widest differences
in reference are of no importance if the further effects in attitude
and emotion are of the required kind.

Further, in the scientific use of language not only must the
references be correct for success, but the connections and relations
of references to one another must be of the kind which we call
logical. They must not get in one another’s way, and must be
so organised as not to impede further reference. But for emotive
purposes logical arrangement is not necessary. It may be and
often is an obstacle. For what matters is that the series of
attitudes due to the references should have their own proper
organisation, their own emotional interconnection, and this often
has no dependence upon the logical relations of such references
as may be concerned in bringing the attitudes into being.

A few notes of the chief uses of the word ‘Truth’ in Criticism
may help to prevent misunderstanding:—

1. The scientific sense that, namely, in which references, and
derivatively statements symbolising references, are true, need
not delay us. A reference is true when the things to which it
refers are actually together in the way in which it refers to
them. Otherwise it is false. This sense is one very little involved
by any of the arts. For the avoidance of confusions it would
be well if the term ‘true’ could be reserved for this use. In
purely scientific discourse it could and should be, but such
discourse is uncommon. In point of fact the emotive power which
attaches to the word is far too great for it to be abandoned
in general discussion; the temptation to a speaker who needs
to stir certain emotions and evoke certain attitudes of approval
and acceptance is overwhelming. No matter how various the senses
in which it may be used, and even when it is being used in no
sense whatever, its effects in promoting attitudes will still
make it indispensable; people will still continue to use the
word with the same promiscuity as ever.

2. The most usual other sense is that of acceptability. The ‘Truth’ of
_Robinson Crusoe_ is the acceptability of the things we are told, their
acceptability in the interests of the effects of the narrative, not
their correspondence with any actual facts involving Alexander Selkirk
or another. Similarly the falsity of happy endings to _Lear_ or to _Don
Quixote_, is their failure to be acceptable to those who have fully
responded to the rest of the work. It is in this sense that ‘Truth’
is equivalent to ‘internal necessity’ or rightness. That is ‘true’
or ‘internally necessary’ which completes or accords with the rest
of the experience, which co-operates to arouse our ordered response,
whether the response of Beauty or another. “What the Imagination seizes
as Beauty must be Truth”, said Keats, using this sense of ‘Truth’,
though not without confusion. Sometimes it is held that whatever is
redundant or otiose, whatever is not required, although not obstructive
or disruptive, is also false. “Surplusage!” said Pater, “the artist
will dread that, as the runner on his muscles[97]” himself perhaps
in this instance sweating his sentence down too finely. But this
is to make excessive demands upon the artist. It is to apply the
axe of retrenchment in the wrong place. Superabundance is a common
characteristic of great art, much less dangerous than the preciousness
that too contrived an economy tends to produce. The essential point
is whether what is unnecessary interferes or not with the rest of the
response. If it does not, the whole thing is all the better probably
for the extra solidity which it thereby gains.

This internal acceptability or ‘convincingness’ needs to be contrasted
with other acceptabilities. Thomas Rymer, for example, refused
to accept Iago for external reasons: “To entertain the audience
with something new and surprising against common sense and nature,
he would pass upon us a close, dissembling rascal, instead of
an open-hearted, frank, plain-dealing Souldier, a character constantly
born by them for some thousands of years in the World.” “The
truth is” he observes “this authors head was full of villainous,
unnatural images”[98].

He is remembering no doubt Aristotle’s remark that “the artist
must preserve the type and yet ennoble it”, but interpreting
it in his own way. For him the type is fixed simply by convention
and his acceptances take no note of internal necessities but
are governed merely by accordance with external canons. His is
an extreme case, but to avoid his error in subtler matters is
in fact sometimes the hardest part of the critic’s undertaking.
But whether our conception of the type is derived in some such
absurd way, or taken, for example, as from a handbook of zoology,
is of slight consequence. It is the taking of any _external_
canon which is critically dangerous. When in the same connection
Rymer objects that there never was a Moorish General in the service
of the Venetian Republic, he is applying another external canon,
that of historic fact. This mistake is less insidious, but Ruskin
used to be particularly fond of the analogous mistake in connection
with the ‘truth’ of drawing.

3. Truth may be equivalent to Sincerity. This character of the
artist’s work we have already touched upon briefly in connection
with Tolstoy’s theory of communication (Chapter XXIII). It may
perhaps be most easily defined from the critic’s point of view
negatively, as the absence of any apparent attempt on the part
of the artist to work effects upon the reader which do not work
for himself. Too simple definitions must be avoided. It is well
known that Burns in writing ‘_Ae fond kiss_’ was only too
anxious to escape _Nancy’s_ (Mrs Maclehose’s) attentions,
and similar instances could be multiplied indefinitely. Absurdly
naive views upon the matter[99] exemplified by the opinion that
Bottomley must have believed himself to be inspired or he would
not have moved his audiences, are far too common. At the level
at which Bottomley harangued any kind of exaltation in the orator,
whether due to pride or to champagne, would make his stuff effective.
But at Burns’ level a very different situation arises. Here his
probity and sincerity _as an artist_ are involved; external
circumstances are irrelevant, but there is perhaps internal evidence
in the poem of a flaw in its creating impulse. Compare as a closely
similar poem in which there is no flaw, Byron’s ‘_When we two
parted_’.


[95] The reader who is a psychologist will notice many points
in this statement at which elaboration and qualifications are
required. For example, when we are ‘introspecting’ factors normally
belonging to the second set may enter the first. But he will
be able, if he grasps the general theory, to supply these complications
himself. I did not wish to burden the text with unnecessary intricacies.

[96] Revelation Doctrines when once given a foothold tend to interfere
everywhere. They serve as a kind of omnipotent major premise
justifying any and every conclusion. A specimen: “Since the function
of Art is to pierce through to the Real World, then it follows
that the artist cannot be too definite in his outlines, and that
good drawing is the foundation of all good art.”—Charles Gardner,
_Vision and Vesture_, p. 54.

[97] _Essay on Style_, p. 19.

[99] _Short View of Tragedy_.

[99] Cf. A. Clutton-Brock, _The Times_, 11th July 1922, p.
13.




CHAPTER XXXV

Poetry and Beliefs

  What I see very well is the wide-spread, infinite harm of putting
    fancy for knowledge (to speak like Socrates), or rather of
    living by choice in a twilight of the mind where fancy and
    knowledge are indiscernible.—_Euripides the Rationalist_.


It is evident that the bulk of poetry consists of statements
which only the very foolish would think of attempting to verify.
They are not the kind of things which can be verified. If we
recall what was said in Chapter XVI as to the natural generality
or vagueness of reference we shall see another reason why references
as they occur in poetry are rarely susceptible of scientific
truth or falsity. Only references which are brought into certain
highly complex and very special combinations, so as to correspond
to the ways in which things actually hang together, can be either
true or false, and most references in poetry are not knit together
in this way.

But even when they are, on examination, frankly false, this is
no defect. Unless, indeed, the obviousness of the falsity forces
the reader to reactions which are incongruent or disturbing to
the poem. And equally, a point more often misunderstood, their
truth, when they are true, is no merit[100]. The people who say
‘How True!’ at intervals while reading Shakespeare are misusing
his work, and, comparatively speaking, wasting their time. For
all that matters in either case is acceptance, that is to say,
the initiation and development of the further response.

Poetry affords the clearest examples of this subordination of
reference to attitude. It is the supreme form of _emotive_
language. But there can be no doubt that originally all language
was emotive; its scientific use is a later development, and most
language is still emotive. Yet the late development has come
to seem the natural and the normal use, largely because the only
people who have reflected upon language were at the moment of
reflection using it scientifically.

The emotions and attitudes resulting from a statement used emotively
need not be directed towards anything to which the statement
refers. This is clearly evident in dramatic poetry, but much
more poetry than is usually supposed is dramatic in structure.
As a rule a statement in poetry arouses attitudes much more wide
and general in direction than the references of the statement.
Neglect of this fact makes most verbal analysis of poetry irrelevant.
And the same is true of those critical but emotive utterances
about poetry which gave rise to this discussion. No one, it is
plain, can read poetry successfully without, consciously or unconsciously,
observing the distinction between the two uses of words. That
does not need to be insisted upon. But further no one can understand
such utterances about poetry as that quoted from Dr Mackail in
our third chapter, or Dr Bradley’s cry that “Poetry is a spirit”,
or Shelley’s that “A poem is the very image of life expressed
in its eternal truth”, or the passages quoted above from Coleridge,
without distinguishing the making of a statement from the incitement
or expression of an attitude. But too much inferior poetry has
been poured out as criticism, too much sack and too little bread;
confusion between the two activities, on the part of writers
and readers alike, is what is primarily responsible for the backwardness
of critical studies. What other stultifications of human endeavour
it is also responsible for we need not linger here to point out.
The separation of prose from poetry, if we may so paraphrase
the distinction, is no mere academic activity. There is hardly
a problem outside mathematics which is not complicated by its
neglect, and hardly any emotional response which is not crippled
by irrelevant intrusions. No revolution in human affairs would
be greater than that which a wide-spread observance of this distinction
would bring about.

One perversion in especial needs to be noticed. It is constantly
present in critical discussion, and is in fact responsible for
Revelation Doctrines. Many attitudes, which arise without dependence
upon any reference, merely by the interplay and resolution of
impulses otherwise awakened, can be momentarily encouraged by
suitable beliefs held as scientific beliefs are held. So far
as this encouragement is concerned, the truth or falsity of these
beliefs does not matter, the immediate effect is the same in
either case. When the attitude is important, the temptation to
base it upon some reference which is treated as established scientific
truths are treated is very great, and the poet thus easily comes
to invite the destruction of his work; Wordsworth puts forward
his Pantheism, and other people doctrines of Inspiration, Idealism
and Revelation.

The effect is twofold; an appearance of security and stability
is given to the attitude, which thus seems to be justified; and
at the same time it is no longer so necessary to sustain this
attitude by the more difficult means peculiar to the arts, or
to pay full attention to form. The reader can be relied upon
to do more than his share. That neither effect is desirable is
easily seen. The attitude for the sake of which the belief is
introduced is thereby made not more but less stable. Remove the
belief, once it has affected the attitude; the attitude collapses.
It may later be restored by more appropriate means, but that
is another matter. And all such beliefs are very likely to be
removed; their logical connections with other beliefs scientifically
entertained are, to say the least, shaky. In the second place
these attitudes, produced not by the appropriate means but, as
it were by a short cut, through beliefs, are rarely so healthy,
so vigorous and full of life as the others. Unlike attitudes
normally produced they usually require an increased stimulus
every time that they are reinstated. The belief has to grow more
and more fervent, more and more convinced, in order to produce
the same attitude. The believer has to pass from one paroxysm
of conviction to another, enduring each time a greater strain.

This substitution of an intellectual formula for the poem or
work of art is of course most easily observed in the case of
religion, where the temptation is greatest. In place of an experience,
which is a direct response to a certain selection of the possibilities
of stimulation, we have a highly indirect response, made, not
to the actual influences of the world upon us, but to a special
kind of belief as to some particular state of affairs.[101] There
is a suppressed conditional clause implicit in all poetry. If
things were such and such then . . . and so the response develops.
The amplitude and fineness of the response, its sanction and
authority, in other words, depend upon this freedom from actual
assertion in all cases in which the belief is questionable on
any ground whatsoever. For any such assertion involves suppressions,
of indefinite extent, which may be fatal to the wholeness, the
integrity of the experience. And the assertion is almost always
unnecessary; if we look closely we find that the greatest poets,
as poets, though frequently not as critics, refrain from assertion.
But it is easy, by what seems only a slight change of approach,
to make the initial step an act of faith, and to make the whole
response dependent upon a belief as to a matter of fact. Even
when the belief is true, the damage done to the whole experience
may be great, in the case of a person whose reasons for this
belief are inadequate, for example, and the increased temporary
vivacity which is the cause of perversion is no sufficient compensation.
As a convenient example it may be permissible to refer to the
Poet Laureate’s anthology, _The Spirit of Man_, and I have
the less hesitation since the passages there gathered together
are chosen with such unerring taste and discrimination. But to
turn them into a statement of a philosophy is very noticeably
to degrade them and to restrict and diminish their value. The
use of verse quotations as chapter headings is open to the same
objection. The experiences which ensue may seem very similar
to the experiences of free reading; they feel similar; but all
the signs which can be most trusted, after-effects for example,
show them to be different. The vast differences in the means
by which they are brought about is also good ground for supposing
them to be dissimilar, but this difference is obscured through
the ambiguities of the term ‘belief’.

There are few terms which are more troublesome in psychology
than belief, formidable though this charge may seem. The sense
in which we believe a scientific proposition is not the sense
in which we believe emotive utterances, whether they are political
‘We will not sheathe the sword’, or critical ‘The progress of
poetry is immortal’, or poetic. Both senses of belief are complicated
and difficult, to define. Yet we commonly appear to assume that
they are the same or that they differ only in the kind and degree
of evidence available. Scientific belief we may perhaps define
as readiness to act as though the reference symbolised by the
proposition which is believed were true. Readiness to act in
_all_ circumstances and in _all_ connections into which
it can enter. This rough definition would, of course, need elaborating
to be complete, but for our present purposes it may suffice.
The other element usually included in a definition of belief,
namely a feeling or emotion of acceptance, the ‘This is sooth,
accept it!’ feeling, is often absent in scientific belief and
is not essential.

Emotive belief is very different. Readiness to act as though
some references were true is often involved, but the connections
and circumstances in which this readiness remains are narrowly
restricted. Similarly the extent of the action is ordinarily
limited. Consider the acceptances involved in the understanding
of a play, for example. They form a system any element of which
is believed while the rest are believed and so long as the acceptance
of the whole growing system leads to successful response. Some,
however, are of the form ‘Given this then that would follow’,
general beliefs, that is to say, of the kind which led Aristotle,
in the passage quoted above, to describe Poetry as a more philosophical
thing than history because chiefly conversant of universal truth.
But if we look closely into most instances of such beliefs we
see that they are entertained only in the special circumstances
of the poetic experience. They are held as conditions for further
effects, our attitudes and emotional responses, and not as we
hold beliefs in laws of nature, which we expect to find verified
on all occasions. If dramatic necessities were actually scientific
laws we should know much more psychology than any reasonable
person pretends that we do. That these beliefs as to “how any
person of a certain character would speak or act, probably or
necessarily”, upon which so much drama seems to depend, are not
scientific, but are held only for the sake of their dramatic
effect, is shown clearly by the ease with which we abandon them
if the advantage lies the other way. The medical impossibility
of Desdemona’s last speech is perhaps as good an example as any.

The bulk of the beliefs involved in the arts are of this kind,
provisional acceptances, holding only in special circumstances
(in the state of mind which is the poem or work of art) acceptances
made for the sake of the ‘imaginative experience’ which they
make possible. The difference between these emotive beliefs and
scientific beliefs is not one of degree but of kind. As feelings
they are very similar, but as attitudes their difference in structure
has widespread consequences.

There remains to be discussed another set of emotive effects
which may also be called beliefs. Instead of occurring part way
in, or at the beginning of a response, they come as a rule at
the end, and thus are less likely to be confused with scientific
beliefs. Very often the whole state of mind in which we are left
by a poem, or by music, or, more rarely perhaps, by other forms
of art, is of a kind which it is natural to describe as a belief.
When all provisional acceptances have lapsed, when the single
references and their connections which may have led up to the
final response are forgotten, we may still have an attitude and
an emotion which has to introspection all the characters of a
belief. This belief, which is a consequence not a cause of the
experience, is the chief source of the confusion upon which Revelation
Doctrines depend.

If we ask what in such cases it is which is believed, we are
likely to receive, and to offer, answers both varied and vague.
For strong belief-feelings, as is well known and as is shown
by certain doses of alcohol or hashish, and pre-eminently of
nitrous oxide, will readily attach themselves to almost any reference,
distorting it to suit their purpose. Few people without experience
of the nitrous-oxide revelation have any conception of their
capacity for believing or of the extent to which belief-feelings
and attitudes are parasitic. Thus when, through reading _Adonais_,
for example, we are left in a strong emotional attitude which
feels like belief, it is only too easy to think that we are believing
in immortality or survival, or in something else capable of statement,
and fatally easy also to attribute the value of the poem to the
alleged effect, or conversely to regret that it should depend
upon such a scientifically doubtful conclusion. Scientific beliefs,
as opposed to these emotive beliefs, are beliefs ‘_that_
so and so’. They can be stated with greater or less precision,
as the case may be, but always in some form. It is for some people
difficult to admit beliefs which are objectless, which are not
about anything or in anything; beliefs which cannot be stated.
Yet most of the beliefs of children and primitive peoples, and
of the unscientific generally seem to be of this kind. Their
parasitic nature helps to confuse the issue. What we have to
distinguish are beliefs which are grounded in fact, i.e., are
due to reference, and beliefs which are due to other causes,
and merely attach themselves to such references as will support
them.

That an objectless belief is a ridiculous or an incomplete thing
is a prejudice deriving only from confusion. Such beliefs have,
of course, no place in science, but in themselves they are often
of the utmost value. Provided always that they do not furnish
themselves with illicit objects. It is the objectless belief
which is masquerading as a belief in this or that, which is ridiculous;
more often than not it is also a serious nuisance. When they
are kept from tampering with the development of reference such
emotional attitudes may be, as revelation doctrines in such strange
forms maintain, among the most important and valuable effects
which the arts can produce.

It is often held that recent generations suffer more from nervous
strain than some at least of their predecessors, and many reasons
for this have been suggested. Certainly the types of nervous
disease most prevalent seem to have changed. An explanation not
sufficiently noticed perhaps is the break-down of traditional
accounts of the universe, and the strain imposed by the vain
attempt to orient the mind by belief of the scientific kind alone.
In the pre-scientific era, the devout adherent to the Catholic
account of the world, for example, found a sufficient basis for
nearly all his main attitudes in what he took to be scientific
truth. It would be fairer to say that the difference between
ascertained fact and acceptable fiction did not obtrude itself
for him. To-day this is changed, and if he believes such an account,
he does not do so, if intelligent, without considerable difficulty
or without a fairly persistent strain. The complete sceptic,
of course, is a new phenomenon, dissenters in the past having
commonly disbelieved only because they held a different belief
of the same kind. These topics have, it is true, been touched
upon by psycho-analysts, but not with a very clear understanding
of the situation. The Vienna School would merely have us away
with antiquated lumber; the Zurich School would hand us a new
outfit of superstitions. Actually what is needed is a habit of
mind which allows both reference and the development of attitudes
their proper independence. This habit of mind is not to be attained
at once, or for most people with ease. We try desperately to
support our attitudes with beliefs as to facts, verified or accepted
as scientifically established, and by so doing we weaken our
own emotional backbone. For the justification of any attitude
_per se_ is its success for the needs of the being. It is
not justified by the soundness of the views which may seem to
be, and in pathological cases are, its ground and causes. The
source of our attitudes should be in experience itself; compare
Whitman’s praise of the cow which does not worry about its soul.
Opinion as to matters of fact, knowledge, belief, are not necessarily
involved in any of our attitudes to the world in general, or
to particular phases of it. If we bring them in, if, by a psychological
perversion only too easy to fall into, we make them the basis
of our adjustment, we run extreme risks of later disorganisation
elsewhere.

Many people find great difficulty in accepting or even in understanding
this position. They are so accustomed to regarding ‘recognised
facts’ as the natural basis of attitudes, that they cannot conceive
how anyone can be otherwise organised. The hard-headed positivist
and the convinced adherent of a religion from opposite sides
encounter the same difficulty. The first at the best suffers
from an insufficient material for the development of his attitudes;
the second from intellectual bondage and unconscious insincerity.
The one starves himself; the other is like the little pig in
the fable who chose to have his house built of cabbages and ate
it, and so the grim wolf with privy paw devoured him. For clear
and impartial awareness of the nature of the world in which we
live and the development of attitudes which will enable us to
live in it finely are both necessities, and neither can be subordinated
to the other. They are almost independent, such connections as
exist in well-organised individuals being adventitious. Those
who find this a hard saying may be invited to consider the effect
upon them of those works of art which most unmistakably attune
them to existence. The central experience of Tragedy and its
chief value is an attitude indispensable for a fully developed
life. But in the reading of _King Lear_ what facts verifiable
by science, or accepted and believed in as we accept and believe
in ascertained facts, are relevant? None whatever. Still more
clearly in the experiences of some music, of some architecture
and of some abstract design, attitudes are evoked and developed
which are unquestionably independent of all beliefs as to fact,
and these are exceptional only in being protected by accident
from the most insidious perversion to which the mind is liable.
For the intermingling of knowledge and belief is indeed a perversion,
through which both activities suffer degradation.

These objectless beliefs, which though merely attitudes seem
to be knowledge, are not difficult to explain. Some system of
impulses not ordinarily in adjustment within itself or adjusted
to the world finds something which orders it or gives it fit
exercise. Then follows the peculiar sense of ease, of restfulness,
of free, unimpeded activity, and the feeling of acceptance, of
something more positive than acquiescence. This feeling is the
reason why such states may be called beliefs. They share this
feeling with, for example, the state which follows the conclusive
answering of a question. Most attitude-adjustments which are
successful possess it in some degree, but those which are very
regular and familiar, such as sitting down to meat or stretching
out in bed, naturally tend to lose it. But when the required
attitude has been long needed, where its coming is unforeseen
and the manner in which it is brought about complicated and inexplicable,
where we know no more than that formerly we were unready and
that now we are ready for life in some particular phase, the
feeling which results may be intense. Such are the occasions
upon which the arts seem to lift away the burden of existence,
and we seem ourselves to be looking into the heart of things.
To be seeing whatever it is as it really is, to be cleared in
vision and to be recipients of a revelation.

We have considered already the detail of these states of consciousness
and their conjectural impulse basis. We can now take this feeling
of a revealed significance, this attitude of readiness, acceptance
and understanding, which has led to so many Revelation Doctrines,
not as actually implying knowledge, but for what it is—the conscious
accompaniment of our successful adjustment to life. But it is,
we must admit, no certain sign by itself that our adjustment
is adequate or admirable. Even the most firm adherents to Revelation
Doctrines admit that there are bogus revelations, and on our
account it is equally important to distinguish between ‘feelings
of significance’ which indicate that all is well and those which
do not. In a sense all indicate that _something_ is going
well, otherwise there would be no acceptance, no belief but rejection.
The real question is ‘What is it?’ Thus after the queer reshuffling
of inhibitions and releases which follows the taking of a dose
of alcohol, for example, the sense of revelation is apt to occur
with unusual authority. Doubtless this feeling of significance
is a sign that as the organism is for the moment, its affairs
are for the moment thriving. But when the momentary special condition
of the system has given place to the more usual, more stable
and more generally advantageous adjustment, the authority of
the vision falls away from it; we find that what we were doing
is by no means so wonderful or so desirable as we thought and
that our belief was nonsensical. So it is less noticeably with
many moments in which the world seems to be showing its real
face to us.

The chief difficulty of all Revelation Doctrines has always been
to discover what it is which is revealed. If these states of
mind are knowledge it should be possible to state what it is
that they know. It is often easy enough to find something which
we can suppose to be what we know. Belief feelings, we have seen,
are _parasitic_, and will attach themselves to all kinds
of hosts. In literature it is especially easy to find hosts.
But in music, in the non-representative arts of design, in architecture
or ceramics, for example, the task of finding something to believe,
or to believe in, is not so easy. Yet the ‘feeling of significance’
is as common[102] in these other arts as in literature. Denial
of this is usually proof only of an interest limited to literature.

This difficulty has usually been met by asserting that the alleged
knowledge given in the revelation is non-intellectual. It refuses
to be rationalised, it is said. Well and good; but if so why
call it knowledge? Either it is capable of corroborating or of
conflicting with the other things we usually call knowledge,
such as the laws of thermodynamics, capable of being stated and
brought into connection with what else we know; or it is not
knowledge, not capable of being stated. We cannot have it both
ways, and no sneers at the limitations of logic, the commonest
of the resources of the confused, amend the dilemma. In fact
it resembles knowledge only in being an attitude and a feeling
very similar to some attitudes and feelings which may and often
do accompany knowledge. But ‘Knowledge’ is an immensely potent
emotive word engendering reverence towards any state of mind
to which it is applied. And these ‘feelings of significance’
are those among our states of mind which most deserve to be revered.
That they should be so obstinately described as knowledge even
by those who most carefully remove from them all the characteristics
of knowledge is not surprising.

Traditionally what is said to be known thus mystically through
the arts is Beauty, a remote and divine entity not otherwise
to be apprehended, one of the Eternal Absolute Values. And this
is doubtless emotively a way of talking which is effective for
a while. When its power abates, as the power of such utterances
will, there are several developments which may easily be used
to revive it. “Beauty is eternal, and we may say that it is already
manifest as a heavenly thing—the beauty of Nature is indeed an
earnest to us of the ultimate goodness which lies behind the
apparent cruelty and moral confusion of organic life. . . . Yet
we feel that these three are ultimately one, and human speech
bears constant witness to the universal conviction that Goodness
is beautiful, that Beauty is good, that Truth is Beauty. We can
hardly avoid the use of the word ‘trinity’, and if we are theists
at all we cannot but say that they are one, because they are
the manifestation of one God. If we are not theists there is
no explanation.”[103]

Human speech is indeed the witness, and to what else does it
not witness? It would be strange if in a matter of such moment
as this the greatest of all emotive words did not come into play.
“In religion we believe that God is Beauty and Life, that God
is Truth and Light, that God is Goodness and Love, and that because
he is all these they are all one, and the Trinity in Unity and
Unity in Trinity is to be worshipped.”[104] No one who can interpret
emotive language, who can avoid the temptation to illicit belief
so constantly presented by it need find such utterances ‘meaningless.’
But the wrong approach is easy and far too often pressingly invited
by the speakers, labouring themselves under misconceptions. To
excite a serious and reverent attitude is one thing. To set forth
an explanation is another. To confuse the two and mistake the
incitement of an attitude for a statement of fact is a practice
which should be discouraged. For intellectual dishonesty is an
evil which is the more dangerous the more it is hedged about
with emotional sanctities. And after all there is another explanation,
which would long ago have been quietly established to the world’s
great good had men been less ready to sacrifice the integrity
of their thought and feeling for the sake of a local and limited
advantage.






The last movement of this machine to think with is now completed.
I am too well acquainted with it, and have spent too many hours
putting it together to suppose that it can be worked equally
well by every reader. Half these hours have in fact been spent
in simplifying its structure, in taking out reservations and
qualifications, references to other views, controversial matter,
and supernumerary distinctions. From one point of view, it would
be a better book with these left in, but I wished to make it
manageable by those who had not spent a quite disproportionate
amount of energy in reflection upon abstract matters. And if
to some readers parts of it appear unnecessary—either _irrelevant_,
in the one case; or _over-obvious_ in the other—I have nothing
to add which would make them change their opinion. The first
I can only ask to look again, with the hope that a connection
which has been missed will be noticed. The second, I would remind
that I write in an age when, in the majority of social circles,
to be seriously interested in art is to be thought an oddity.

[100] No merit, that is, _in this connection_. There may be
some exceptions to this, cases in which the explicit recognition
of the truth of a statement as opposed to the simple acceptance
of it, is _necessary_ to the full development of the further
response. But I believe that such cases will on careful examination
be found to be very rare with competent readers. Individual differences,
corresponding to the different degrees to which individuals have
their belief feelings, their references, and their attitudes
entangled, are to be expected. There are, of course, an immense
number of scientific beliefs present among the conditions of
every attitude. But since acceptances would do equally well in
their place they are not _necessary_ to it.

[101] In view of a possible misunderstanding at this point, compare
Chapter X, especially the final paragraph. If a belief in Retributive
Justice, for example, is fatal to _Prometheus Unbound_,
so in another way is the belief that the Millennium is at hand.
To steer an unperplexed path between these opposite dangers is
extremely difficult. The distinctions required are perhaps better
left to the reader’s reflection than laboured further in the
faulty terminology which alone at present is available.

[102] Cf. Gurney, _The Power of Sound_, p. 126. “A splendid melodic
phrase seems continually not like an object of sense, but like an
affirmation; not so much prompting admiring ejaculation as compelling
passionate assent.” His explanation, through association with speech,
seems to me inadequate. He adds that the use of terms such as
“_expressiveness_ and _significance_, as opposed to meaninglessness and
triviality, may be allowed, without the implication of any reference to
transcendental views which one may fail to understand, or theories of
interpretation which one may entirely repudiate.”

[103] Percy Dearmer, _The Necessity of Art_, p. 180.

[104] A.W. Pollard, _ibidem_, p. 135.




APPENDIX A. On Value


A friendly reviewer, Mr. Conrad Aiken, complains that my theory
of value is not sufficiently relativistic, that it inevitably
involves the surreptitious re-entrance of the ‘absolute’ value
which we had been at such pains to exclude. Except for the word
‘surreptitious’ and the suggestion that the ‘absolute’ value
we arrive at is the same thing as the ultimate idea discussed
in Chapter VI., I agree to this. The purpose of the theory is
just to enable us to compare different experiences in respect
of their value; and their value, I suggest, is a quantitative
matter. To put it briefly the best life is that in which as much
as possible of our possible personality is engaged. And of two
personalities that one is the better in which there is more which
can be engaged without confusion. We all know people of unusually
wide and varied possibilities who pay for their width in disorder,
and we know others who pay for their order by narrowness. What
the theory attempts to provide is a system of measurement by
which we can compare not only different experiences belonging
to the same personality but different personalities. We do not
yet know how to make the measurements required. We have to use
the roughest kinds of estimates and very indirect indications.
But to know at least what would have to be measured if we were
to reach precision and how to make the comparison is a step towards
the goal. The parallel, though I am not fond of it, between the
new absolutism which Relativity has reached and this quantitative
way of comparing the experiences and preferences of individuals
may perhaps be helpful. But whereas the physicist has measurements
to work from, the psychologist as yet has none. And further,
it is likely that modes of mental organisation which are at present
impossible or dangerously unstable may become possible and even
easy in the future with changes in social structure and material
conditions. This last consideration might give any critic a nightmare.
Nothing less than our whole sense of man’s history and destiny
is involved in our final decision as to value.




APPENDIX B.

THE POETRY OF T. S. ELIOT


We too readily forget that, unless something is very wrong with
our civilisation, we should be producing three equal poets at
least for every poet of high rank in our great-great-grandfathers’
day. Something must indeed be wrong; and since Mr. Eliot is one
of the very few poets that current conditions have not overcome,
the difficulties which he has faced, and the cognate difficulties
which his readers encounter, repay study.

Mr. Eliot’s poetry has occasioned an unusual amount of irritated
or enthusiastic bewilderment. The bewilderment has several sources.
The most formidable is the unobtrusiveness, in some cases the
absence, of any coherent intellectual thread upon which the items
of the poem are strung. A reader of ‘Gerontion,’ of ‘Preludes,’
or of ‘The Waste Land,’ may, if he will, after repeated readings,
introduce such a thread. Another reader after much effort may
fail to contrive one. But in either case energy will have been
misapplied. For the items are united by the accord, contrast,
and interaction of their emotional effects, not by an intellectual
scheme that analysis must work out. The value lies in the unified
response which this interaction creates in the right reader.
The only intellectual activity required takes place in the realisation
of the separate items. We can, of course, make a ‘rationalisation’
of the whole experience, as we can of any experience. If we do,
we are adding something which does not belong to the poem. Such
a logical scheme is, at best, a scaffolding that vanishes when
the poem is constructed. But we have so built into our nervous
systems a demand for intellectual coherence, even in poetry,
that we find a difficulty in doing without it.

This point may be misunderstood, for the charge most usually
brought against Mr. Eliot’s poetry is that it is overintellectualised.
One reason for this is his use of allusion. A reader who in one
short poem picks up allusions to _The Aspern Papers_, _Othello_,
‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s,’ Marston, _The Phœnix and the Turtle_,
_Antony and Cleopatra_ (twice), ‘The Extasie,’ _Macbeth_,
_The Merchant of Venice_, and Ruskin, feels that his wits
are being unusually well exercised. He may easily leap to the
conclusion that the basis of the poem is in wit also. But this
would be a mistake. These things come in, not that the reader
may be ingenious or admire the writer’s erudition (this last
accusation has tempted several critics to disgrace themselves),
but for the sake of the emotional aura which they bring and the
attitudes they incite. Allusion in Mr. Eliot’s hands is a technical
device for compression. ‘The Waste Land’ is the equivalent in
content to an epic. Without this device twelve books would have
been needed. But these allusions and the notes in which some
of them are elucidated have made many a petulant reader turn
down his thumb at once. Such a reader has not begun to understand
what it is all about.

This objection is connected with another, that of obscurity.
To quote a recent pronouncement upon ‘The Waste Land’ from Mr.
Middleton Murry: ‘The reader is compelled, in the mere effort
to understand, to adopt an attitude of intellectual suspicion,
which makes impossible the communication of feeling. The work
offends against the most elementary canon of good writing: that
the immediate effect should be unambiguous.’ Consider first this
canon. What would happen, if we pressed it, to Shakespeare’s
greatest sonnets or to _Hamlet_? The truth is that very
much of the best poetry is necessarily ambiguous in its immediate
effect. Even the most careful and responsive reader must reread
and do hard work before the poem forms itself clearly and unambiguously
in his mind. An original poem, as much as a new branch of mathematics,
compels the mind which receives it to grow, and this takes time.
Anyone who upon reflection asserts the contrary for his own case
must be either a demigod or dishonest; probably Mr. Murray was
in haste. His remarks show that he has failed in his attempt
to read the poem, and they reveal, in part, the reason for his
failure—namely, his own overintellectual approach. To read it
successfully he would have to discontinue his present self-mystifications.

The critical question in all cases is whether the poem is worth
the trouble it entails. For ‘The Waste Land’ this is considerable.
There is Miss Weston’s _From Ritual to Romance_ to read,
and its ‘astral’ trimmings to be discarded—they have nothing
to do with Mr. Eliot’s poem. There is Canto xxvi of the _Purgatorio_
to be studied—the relevance of the close of that canto to the
whole of Mr. Eliot’s work must be insisted upon. It illuminates
his persistent concern with sex, the problem of our generation,
as religion was the problem of the last. There is the central
position of Tiresias in the poem to be puzzled out—the cryptic
form of the note which Mr. Eliot writes on this point is just
a little tiresome. It is a way of underlining the fact that the
poem is concerned with many aspects of the one fact of sex, a
hint that is perhaps neither indispensable nor entirely successful.

When all this has been done by the reader, when the materials
with which the words are to clothe themselves have been collected,
the poem still remains to be read. And it is easy to fail in
this undertaking. An ‘attitude of intellectual suspicion’ must
certainly be abandoned. But this is not difficult to those who
still know how to give their feelings precedence to their thoughts,
who can accept and unify an experience without trying to catch
it in an intellectual net or to squeeze out a doctrine. One form
of this attempt must be mentioned. Some, misled no doubt by its
origin in a Mystery, have endeavoured to give the poem a symbolical
reading. But its symbols are not mystical, but emotional. They
stand, that is, not for ineffable objects, but for normal human
experience. The poem, in fact, is radically naturalistic; only
its compression makes it appear otherwise. And in this it probably
comes nearer to the original Mystery which it perpetuates than
transcendentalism does.

If it were desired to label in three words the most characteristic
feature of Mr. Eliot’s technique, this might be done by calling
his poetry a music of ideas. The ideas are of all kinds, abstract
and concrete, general and particular, and, like the musician’s
phrases, they are arranged, not that they may tell us something,
but that their effects in us may combine into a coherent whole
of feeling and attitude and produce a peculiar liberation of
the will. They are there to be responded to, not to be pondered
or worked out. This is, of course, a method used intermittently
in very much poetry, and only an accentuation and isolation of
one of its normal resources. The peculiarity of Mr. Eliot’s later,
more puzzling, work is his deliberate and almost exclusive employment
of it. In the earlier poems this logical freedom appears only
occasionally. In ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ for example,
there is a patch at the beginning and another at the end, but
the rest of the poem is quite straightforward. In ‘Gerontion,’
the first long poem in this manner, the air of monologue, of
a stream of associations, is a kind of disguise, and the last
two lines,

            Tenants of the house,
    Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season,

are almost an excuse. The close of ‘A Cooking Egg’ is perhaps
the passage in which the technique shows itself most clearly.
The reader who appreciates the emotional relevance of the title
has the key to the later poems in his hand. I take Pipit to be
the retired nurse of the hero of the poem, and _Views of the
Oxford Colleges_ to be the, still treasured, present which
he sent her when he went up to the University. The middle section
of the poem I read as a specimen of the rather withered pleasantry
in which contemporary culture has culminated and beyond which
it finds much difficulty in passing. The final section gives
the contrast which is pressed home by the title. Even the most
mature egg was new laid once. The only other title of equal significance
that I can recall is Mrs. Wharton’s _The Age of Innocence_,
which might well be studied in this connection. ‘The Waste Land’
and ‘The Hollow Men’ (the most beautiful of Mr. Eliot’s poems,
and in the last section a new development) are purely a ‘music
of ideas,’ and the pretence of a continuous thread of associations
is dropped.

How this technique lends itself to misunderstandings we have
seen. But many readers who have failed in the end to escape bewilderment
have begun by finding on almost every line that Mr. Eliot has
written—if we except certain youthful poems on American topics—that
personal stamp which is the hardest thing for the craftsman to
imitate and perhaps the most certain sign that the experience,
good or bad, rendered in the poem is authentic. Only those unfortunate
persons who are incapable of reading poetry can resist Mr. Eliot’s
rhythms. The poem as a whole may elude us while every fragment,
as a fragment, comes victoriously home. It is difficult to believe
that this is Mr. Eliot’s fault rather than his reader’s, because
a parallel case of a poet who so constantly achieves the hardest
part of his task and yet fails in the easier is not to be found.
It is much more likely that we have been trying to put the fragments
together on a wrong principle.

Another doubt has been expressed. Mr. Eliot repeats himself in
two ways. The nightingale, Cleopatra’s barge, the rats, and the
smoky candle-end, recur and recur. Is this a sign of a poverty
of inspiration? A more plausible explanation is that this repetition
is in part a consequence of the technique above described, and
in part something which many writers who are not accused of poverty
also show. Shelley, with his rivers, towers, and stars, Conrad,
Hardy, Walt Whitman, and Dostoevski spring to mind. When a writer
has found a theme or image which fixes a point of relative stability
in the drift of experience, it is not to be expected that he
will avoid it. Such themes are a means of orientation. And it
is quite true that the central process in all Mr. Eliot’s best
poems is the same; the conjunction of feelings which, though
superficially opposed,—as squalor, for example, is opposed to
grandeur,—yet tend as they develop to change places and even
to unite. If they do not develop far enough the intention of
the poet is missed. Mr. Eliot is neither sighing after vanished
glories nor holding contemporary experience up to scorn.

Both bitterness and desolation are superficial aspects of his
poetry. There are those who think that he merely takes his readers
into the Waste Land and leaves them there, that in his last poem
he confesses his impotence to release the healing waters. The
reply is that some readers find in his poetry not only a clearer,
fuller realisation of their plight, the plight of a whole generation,
than they find elsewhere, but also through the very energies
set free in that realisation a return of the saving passion.





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