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.