Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/40

 34 Philosophies of Style So this opposition between two definitions of literature leads to another opposition the opposition between objective and formal criticism on the one hand and subjective and personal criticism on the other. The one, of course, naturally applies the moral test, since the supreme test of conduct is moral. The questions asked are: Is the given work of art true? Does it give moral uplift? Does it give one a broader and more intimate outlook on life? Is the philosophy of life sane and wholesome? Is the line of conduct suggested one that will meet the test of use? The ques- tion "Is the work beautiful?" may also be asked, but the answer depends chiefly on the answers to the questions which precede. The subjective and personal that is, the impressionistic critic asks to what division of human life the work of literature belongs, and himself gives the answer that it is a work of art and appeals to the aesthetic side of man's nature. Consequently, he says, the only appeal possible is to the aesthetic judgment. Not "Is the work true?" but "Does it produce the aesthetic thrill?" 22 To quote again from Lord Haldane: "In the concrete fact of art, we can never value a poem merely for its cadence, or only for its mean- ing. It is an end in itself, and is to be valued for its own sake, and not for that of some end or standard beyond . . . Art can never be explained in terms of anything else, for that would mean that as a form of reality it was derivative only, and not self-subsisting. " If the critic who is working upon this assumption is a hedonist and 22 Perhaps I am simplifying too much in resolving the problem of the im- pressionistic and aesthetic critic into the one question. Professor Spingarn, whose recent book entitled Creative Criticism contains a radical statement of the aesthetic (and romantic) view, gives the following as the "questions that modern critics have been taught to ask when face to face with the work of a poet"; "What has the poet tried to do, and how has he fulfilled his intention? What is he striving to express, and how has he expressed it? What impression does his work make on me, and how can I best express that impression?" In order to answer these questions the critic must become one with the author that is, must himself be a creator; otherwise he cannot know whether the author has succeeded or failed. So far as I can see the appeal is to the feeling of beauty for critic as well as for author. In any case Professor Spingarn rejects absolute- ly any judgment not aesthetic. What this position means for style is shown by the following sentence: " But the theory of styles has no longer a real place in modern thought; we have learned that it is no less impossible to study style as separate from the work of art than to study the comic as separate from the work of the comic artist." (Creative Criticism, p. 31).