Page:Criticism and Beauty.djvu/20

14 Many critics, it is true, would be slow to admit this. They are not content with historical and descriptive accounts of art and artists. They long for immutable principles of judgement, based on the essential nature of beauty. It does not suffice them to rejoice over what, in their eyes at least, is beautiful; nor yet to make others rejoice with them. Unless they can appeal to some critical canon, abstract and universal, their personal estimates of aesthetic value seem of small account. Nor is it enough for them that they should be right. To complete their satisfaction, those who differ from them must be wrong.

This is perfectly natural. No one willingly believes that what he greatly admires is admirable only for him. We all instinctively lean to the opinion that beauty has 'objective' worth, and that its expression, whether in nature or in art, possesses, as of right, significance for the world at large. Yet how is this possible? It is not merely that no code of critical legislation seems to be forthcoming. The difficulty lies deeper. If we had such a code, what authority could it claim? To what objective test can judgement about beauty be made amenable? If a picture or a poem stirs my admiration, can there be any meaning in the statements that my taste is bad, and that if I felt