GLOSSARY
The English language, extraordinarily rich and expressive in everything that concerns the practical or the imaginative life, suffers from the poverty and lack of precision of English æsthetic thought. It may therefore be useful to indicate briefly the special sense in which certain terms are used in this essay.
“Spectator: I should say that you have advanced a subtlety that is little more than a play on words.
“Friend: And I maintain that when we are speaking of the operations of the soul, no words can be delicate and subtle enough.”—Goethe.
Art—Any creation of the imagination, whether in the form of imaginative literature or of painting, sculpture, music, etc.
Artist—The creator of a work of art in any of its forms; not used in this essay in the narrower sense of painter or sculptor.
Taste—The faculty of imaginative sympathy by which the reader or spectator is able to re-live the vision of the artist, and therefore the essential pre-requisite to all criticism.
Criticism—Any expression of taste guided by knowledge and thought. (The critic’s training in knowledge is scholarship, and his special field of thought æsthetics.)
Æsthetics—An ordered and reasoned conception of the meaning and purpose of art, intended for the guidance of the critic and not of the artist.
A Literary Theory—An isolated “idea” or theory in regard to imaginative literature, without reference to any ordered and reasoned conception of its meaning and purpose.