Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened.
Wordsworth’s Pantheistic interpretation of the imaginative experience in Tintern Abbey[*] 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.
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[†]” 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[†]”.
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”[†]. It would perhaps be difficult, outside Croce,[*] to find a more unmistakable confusion between value and communicative efficacy. But the Essay is a veritable museum of critical blunders.