Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/42

 36 Philosophies of Style communion, of making others perhaps imaginary persons come in contact with the writer's personality, admire, and sympathize. As a psychological fact for the writer, there is present almost al- always, I feel safe in saying the reader, real or imaginary. No doubt this is not quite what Spencer meant by communication, but even when definite facts and opinions are to be communicated, there is also present, if there is literature, the emotional element suggested by the word communion. It is entirely true that literature is a social fact, and the presence of practical purposes of bringing about reforms or giving information, as in Ruskin or Arnold or Parkman does not make the work the less a work of art, or litera- ture, at least not necessarily so. But representation, with its emphasis upon truth and a noble subject-matter, also appeals to the average person as a fact of litera- ture. The historian who tells the story of a nation, the novelist who reveals the underlying motives which determine the relations between men and women, the poet who expresses the ideals of an age or nation, if they are artists are representing or expressing. As I have previously stated, the emphasis is here on the relation between the work of art and the original. The representation must be true and the thing represented must be worthy. Can there be any question that there is at least a practical distinction between the content the events of a nation's history, or the actions and feelings of men and women and the form the words with their proper arrangement, presenting plainly or with a nourish, the matter? What else do we mean when we speak of the plain style and the ornate style? An extremely able discussion of the two aspects of literature, expression (which resembles what I have called representation)^ 26 Expression, I suppose, implies a more specific reference to personal feel- ings than does representation. The word "representation" I have used in a popular rather than a technical sense; and I have somewhat avoided the term "expression" because of apossible confusion with the "expressionist theory" of aesthetics. When Pope used the word, he was thinking of language as a me- dium of communication. He thought that something definite existed prior to the "expression." But for modern aesthetics, "expression" is something else. Mr. E. F. Carritt, interpreting Croce's theory of beauty as expression (The Theory oj Beauty, p. 186), says: "What is it that we express (or intuit) before we have expressed (or intuited) it? The simplest answer is that we cannot tell, it is only by expression (or intuition) that it becomes knowable." Expression (and therefore art) does not, according to Croce, imply communication at all.