This same situation is duplicated in art and in it we find the reason for the existence of an art section corresponding to the fashion section in newspapers. In art we discover the same loss of confidence on the part of buyers, the same appeal to an authority, creating a new demand which is satisfied by the newspapers in the same way; that demand being reflected as before to the producers, and thus bringing about a similar threecornered relationship in substitution for the normal twoended relationship of buyer and seller. The crux of the situation is that the individual buyer and seller no longer trust their own taste, but recognize the existence of a standard which each wishes should be applied before he risks acting on his own judgment. He does not wish to buy a picture unless he is sure it is aesthetically right, any more than a woman wishes to buy a dress unless she is sure it is in style.

Of course, I have oversimplified the situation. The dignity of art, and its prestige, bring in a number of complicating elements which appear only in slight degree in dressmaking. They bring in a good deal of hypocrisy. There is a sort of mystical theory of good taste that has permeated society. Every man or woman, and especially every gentleman or lady, is supposed to be born with an unerring sense of what is right and wrong in art. To confess doubts about art in polite society is like confessing doubts as to one's table manners. Two gentlemen conversing about art always assume that each other's aesthetic judgment is final and certain. They show their dependence upon critics only by their copious contempt of them. Even when buying a work of art the same pretense is maintained. A prospective buyer goes to an artist's exhibition and examines the pictures as if their direct appeal were the only consideration of weight. The artist politely assumes the same attitude. But on a table in a corner of the gallery will perhaps be found a number of clippings from

newspapers pasted on cardboard. These are read, it is understood, only from curiosity to find out the critic's opinion, which, of course, is of no importance.

Moreover, in art the emphasis is moved from the actual buying and selling to opinions about what ought to be bought and sold. There are two reasons, one the exact opposite of the other, for this shift of emphasis. Works of art are either too expensive or too cheap to make the actual purchase of them a very important factor. Buildings, statues, and paintings are too expensive for the ordinary public, so that people pass judgment on them not for the purpose of buying them but to decide whether they ought to be bought by anybody; but books, theater tickets, and concert tickets are so cheap that people buy them any way and decide afterwards whether they ought to have been bought. In both cases, the critical judgment becomes separated from the economic conditions, and lives an isolated life.

And critical judgment thrives vigorously in its isolated life, because of two additional causes. One of these is the natural love of judging among competitors. Who is the greatest poet in the world? Who is the greatest poet in America? Who is the greatest poet in California? These are the sort of questions on which every young lover of poetry, and some old, have wasted many precious hours, and the social concretion of these absurd discussions is the institution in various parts of the world of "poet laureateships." Prizes and medals are absurdities of the same sort especially when offered in open competition. For these questions are of a very different kind from such questions as, Who are the good poets? or, Is so and so a good poet? The first kind of question is prompted by the spirit of competition (the same spirit that makes us discuss which is the champion football team of America); the second kind of question is prompted by the spirit of aesthetic curiosity. Questions of this latter kind are rarely discussed outside of

scientific circles. But questions of the former kind, fanned by the competitive spirit, have much to do in keeping critical judgment on works of art alive among the people.

The second additional cause that keeps the critical judgment alive is social prestige. As I have pointed out already, every gentleman is supposed to know something about art-indeed, not only something but everything. After the latest town scandal has been discussed at the tea table, and the most recent sensations of science and philosophy (Freud and Einstein and New Thought), the next topic to come up is art, and woe to the man who calls himself a gentleman, or the woman who considers herself a lady, if he or she have not some opinion about Rodin, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It is easy to become cynical over this phase of art; but rightly viewed it is one of the most promising and hopeful signs that society exhibits, for it shows-in a queer way to be sure, but still it shows-that at bottom society believes the most valuable things in the world are science and art. And this belief, strangely exhibiting itself in a stilted prestige, is the second additional cause that gives vitality to the critical judgment.

Now we can understand why there is an art section in the newspapers handled by an expensive staff of art critics. The art section supplies a powerful demand that has its origin negatively in the public's loss of confidence in its aesthetic judgment and positively in the public's desire to know what its aesthetic judgment ought to be. This desire is founded upon several interweaving and dimly discernible motives; but, ultimately, it is for authority in matters of art, and that authority is furnished by the critic. We see then at once what is the critic's function. It is to be an authority for the public regarding good taste, an expert on good taste.

But our problem is by no means solved. We see what the critic's function is; but how is he to execute it? It

is all very well for the public to find its authority in the critic, but where does the critic obtain his authority to judge for the public? It is a standard that is wanted. The individuals composing the public have lost confidence in their personal likes and dislikes and seek the judgment of the critic in the belief that he must have access to the standard. But the judgments of critics differ, and that fact gives a new angle to our problem. For a critic should not only be an authority but a true authority; or, rather-for the distinction is ridiculous and tautologous-a critic is of course an authority and an authority is of course a true authority. A critic who is not a true authority is an impostor. But the fact remains that the judgments of critics differ.

Here arises a new problem on a higher level leading to a new study, the criticism of criticism, which would not be a bad definition of aesthetics. For one of the principal problems of aesthetics is to find the standard of art, or, if there are many standards, to find their origins and to learn the laws governing their appearance and growth. Accordingly, the critic stands in a position midway between the aesthetician and the public, and his function is two-sided. On the one side, he faces the public and gives his opinion as an authority on works of art; on the other side, he should face the scientist, the aesthetician, and obtain from him the standards by means of which alone he can conscientiously act as an authority for the public.

Now the question arises as to whether there is such a thing as a science of aesthetics to which critics may turn for information, and, if there is not, whether there can be. In answer to the first part of the question I think we must say in all frankness that there is no such science. There is a great deal of written matter that goes by the name of aesthetics, but very little of it can be called scientific in anything approaching the modern significance of the term. It is not built up from the

observation of facts, but droops down, a luxuriant, bloated, parasitic growth from the boughs of metaphysics, full of logical subtleties and cosmic issues, a tangle which only a metaphysician can examine intelligently. It has not arisen out of practical problems, nor out of the love of art and of pure curiosity to understand the principles that underlie art just for the sake of understanding them. It has arisen out of the metaphysical problem of finding an adequate explanation of the whole universe, which involved the subsidiary problem of finding where, in the rounded system, the anomalous mass of experience called art should come.

I do not mean to disparage philosophical aesthetics. As a metaphysical study, it will long be of interest and value, just as the metaphysics of the self is still needed even though we have a fairly well established science of psychology. Furthermore, I am convinced that, if a true science of aesthetics is born, it will be thrust into existence by philosophers rather than by artists, critics, or scientists of sciences now established. For metaphysics is the womb of the sciences; physics and chemistry, economics and psychology, have all come from philosophy, so that it is hardly rash to prophesy that the science of aesthetics (if there ever is to be one) will also come out of philosophy. I am saying only that a science of aesthetics does not at present exist.

Then can it exist? There are many who think it cannot, who believe that a science of art is a self-contradiction. For a science implies laws-or to put it more harshly, rules-but art is free. There may be laws for facts, but there are no laws for inspiration or for the charms of beauty. Strangely enough, in spite of the dependence of the general public upon critics, this sort of aesthetic pessimism is most fashionable. It is a view that fits in very prettily with the theory of the infallibility of gentlemen's taste and is part of the polite hypocrisy of society regarding all things artistic. It is