easy to understand how artists would be pleased with this view, since for them rules and laws and standards have generally proved chafing restrictions. The surprising thing is that, even among critics, it should find strong adherents. With them, however, it is the voice of despair, a despair to give us infinite hope, for it is the cry of the conscientious critic, who has become aware of the doublesidedness of his function, who has seen that it is his duty not only to give an opinion but to give the right opinion, who has sought for the standard by which to judge the right, has failed to find it, and makes a clean confession, saying that his judgment is his individual opinion only, his feelings in the presence of the work of art. So Spingarn, referring to Anatole France, tells us that criticism is "a sensitive soul detailing his 'adventures among masterpieces,'" and the replacing of "one work of art by another," and he enumerates the standards critics have used in the past, the rules and conventions and techniques, genres and divisions, and the references to morality and history and race and the law of evolution, and he says "we have done with them all"; in the future, to criticize is to "re-dream the poet's dream." He casts off his priest's robes and steps down from the altar, and says "I am no nearer God than any man," and he shouts back at the other priests to come down and do as he has done.

We cannot help admiring Spingarn and his revolt against an intolerable situation. For here is the critic suspended between the public and a science that does not exist. There are but two things he can do. One is to throw up a scaffolding of pretense or self-deception in place of the science that does not exist; the other is to let himself drop, as Spingarn has done, to the level of the people. But if he lets himself drop, he ceases to be a critic. Spingarn may call his revolt "new criticism" if he pleases, but in reality it is no criticism at all. For criticism comes into existence, as we have seen, from

public doubt, from the public's loss of confidence in matters of taste, and the function of criticism on its side toward the public is to resolve that doubt by certainty. Criticism is the obverse of doubt, which is equivalent to saying that it must be certain. Therefore, when a critic confesses doubt, or when he convinces the public that their doubt is as good as any critic's certainty, from that moment the function of the critic ceases. To state the situation in cruel simplicity (a knife-edge simplicity that is never quite true), a critic today must be either a charlatan or nobody.

The only salvation for honest criticism is the establishment of a true science of aesthetics. Therefore much depends on the answer to our question, Can there be a science of aesthetics? For my own part I see no reason whatever why there cannot be. Opponents of science diligently search out dusty niches and unopened closets of experience, triumphantly showing that here are corners the broom of science has never swept, and implying that for some reason of inaccessibility no brooms of science will ever have handles long enough to reach. But science stopped using brooms some time ago; it now uses vacuum cleaners. One after another the dusty corners have been cleaned out and aired, and there remain only two or three closets still hung in cobwebs. One of these is the closet of values. For over a century the opponents of science have found consolation in the darkness of this closet. But the door has already been thrown open. There now exists a well established science of economics, actually a science of value conducted like other sciences by a body of trained men coöperating with a common technique of observation, classification, and analysis that brings veritable results. And now the cry is, not that all values are inaccessible to science (for of course the carnal economic values which are measurable in coin are capable of scientific treatment), but only that the spiritual values are inaccessible, the religious, moral, and aesthetic values.

I have faith enough in science to believe that even these will be scientifically treated some day. For if I read the history of science aright, the secret for bringing masses of recalcitrant experience under the discipline of scientific method is the discovery of some fruitful organizing principle, a penetrating unit of classification or a wide embracing law. Think how chemistry has developed since the determination of the atom as the unit of matter; how biology has leaped forward by bounds since the discovery of the organic cell as the unit of life; how psychology came to birth as a science when it began to use the sensation as the unit of consciousness, and how it is making a new spurt today with the use of the reflex arc as a new unit. If we could only find such a fruitful unit for aesthetics, the science would be born, and important regularities and laws would spring up like mushrooms.

Attempts have been made in aesthetics, I know. Mathematical relations have been employed but only with tantalizing results. There are some men today experimenting with instinct, but that has been abandoned as a unit even in psychology. Imitation, suggestion, and the latest child of this wriggling progeny, empathy, have been tried, but not, I feel, with great promise. The fruitful unit for aesthetics is still to be found; yet until it is found all work among the arts will be fragmentary, groping, and uncertain. Even historical work will be of doubtful value, doubtful in almost direct proportion to its minuteness, for history is far more than the recording of bare facts, dates, and circumstances; it is the recording of some of these in the interests of a governing purpose. And the value of the history will depend on the value of the purpose that governs it. If the purpose is trivial and capricious, so will be the history-so has been the family gossip of kings and prime ministers that until recently has gone by the name of history. The recent birth of genuine social sciences-economics, political

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science, and sociology-has suddenly made it evident that social history will have to be rewritten from the bottom up. Details of wars and intrigues tickle our love of romance, but they are so much trash in the eyes of the scientist hunting for social laws. Even the history of art, therefore, cannot be worked out with the assurance that the results will be of lasting value until first a science of aesthetics has been established to give the history a governing purpose. All knowledge of art waits for this science of aesthetics, and the science of aesthetics waits for a fruitful analytical unit. Yet all we can do, we who are interested in knowing about art, is to try this, and try that, and try the other concept in the hope, and in the firm belief, that sooner or later we shall hit upon a unit whose discovery will be rich in results. All other work on art, unless it is ancillary to sciences already established, such as philology, anthropology, psychology, or economics, is almost surely wasted.

In the meantime, what of the critic? If there were an established aesthetics, his function would be easy to define. The established aesthetics would be a pure science like psychology, a science that is developed for its own sake under the impulse of intellectual curiosity; criticism would be an applied science like education utilizing the principles of the pure science for a practical application. As education is to psychology, engineering to physics, medicine to physiology, criticism would be to aesthetics. Critics would learn the principles of art from aesthetics, would apply these principles to particular works of art upon which judgment was desired, and would publish the results for the benefit of the public. Under these conditions the judgment of a critic on a work of art would be of exactly the same order as a doctor's diagnosis of a case.

But as these conditions do not exist, what can the critic of today do? We passed harsh judgment on him a moment ago. We said he must be either a charlatan

or nobody. But there is one escape from this dilemma: he may be conceited. If he can convince himself and others that his personal opinion is better than that of most persons, not because he knows the principles of art (nobody knows them), but merely because his taste is more sensitive, then he can still conscientiously be a critic today. He founds his judgment not on an impersonal standard, but on his innate superiority. Even Spingarn must qualify the souls that detail their "adventures among masterpieces." Only the "sensitive" souls have that privilege. The dull souls must stand aloof and listen. The one justification for the critic of today is his self-conceit.