Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/47

 Creek 41 utilitarian purpose. The theory of representation regards literature as the expression in beautiful language of the images, thoughts, and emotions in the mind of the writer. It recognizes that the writer's mind has transformed the material from the external world which his senses have given him, but it sees a very sharp distinction be- tween this material as it exists in the mind of the writer and the form which it is given when represented in language. The theory of creation emphasizes the transforming nature of the process of composition. There is no pre-existing matter of literature as dis- tinguished from form or style. The matter comes into existence in the process and is present as much in what is called style as in what is called content. One can no more say that literature is pre-existing matter given form than one can say that life is pre- existing matter given form. In criticism we found the theory of representation closely con- nected with the point of view of the classicist and the theory of creation similarly related to the point of view of the romanticist; and saw that if literature is representation, the tests to be applied are largely those applied to the matter of which it is composed that is, objective and moral; while if literature is creation, the tests should be more or less peculiar to this form of life, and primarily aesthetic. The average person to whom we appealed will be disinclined to reject either the theory of representation or the theory of crea- tion. Nor will he feel that either theory can be made quite large enough to include the other. Even communication may be an ele- ment not swallowed up in the impulse to expression, though the impulse to expression not only exists with, but does really include, communication. And the theory of creation, if it implies that literature need not be subject to the moral tests of ordinary com- municative speech, if it implies that there is no sense in which con- tent is not distinguishable from form even in supreme literature, the personal experience from the literary product which makes it permanent for the writer and others, is utterly inadequate. But yet in literature, especially when it is supreme, there is more than copying, there is creation in the sense that life creates more life. The writer is an explorer in unknown regions who may after days of weary tramping over the monotonous plain find himself standing before a Niagara. The comparison is false, because in literature