Principles of literary criticism

by I. A. Richards

M. Jules Romains recently observed[†] 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[†] 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.[*] 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[†]—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[*], 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.