[Footnote S:  For this little history of Poussin criticism I am indebted to M. Paul Desjardins:  Poussin (Paris, Librairie Renouard).]

The divergence between the pretexts alleged by our ancestors for their enthusiasm and the reasons given by us, moderns, is easily explained by our intense self-consciousness.  We are deeply interested in our own states of mind:  we are all psychologists now.  From psychology springs the modern interest in aesthetics; those who care for art and the processes of their own minds finding themselves aestheticians willy-nilly.  Now, art-criticism and aesthetics are two things, though at the present moment the former is profoundly influenced by the latter.  By works of art we are thrown into an extraordinary state of mind, and, unlike our forefathers, we want to give some exacter account of that state than that it is pleasant, and of the objects that provoke it some more accurate and precise description than that they are lifelike, or poetical, or beautiful even.  We expect our critics to find some plausible cause for so considerable an effect.  We ask too much.  It is for the aesthetician to analyze a state of mind and account for it:  the critic has only to bring into sympathetic contact the object that will provoke the emotion and the mind that can experience it.  Therefore, all that is required of him is that he should have sensibility, conviction, and the art of making his conviction felt.  Fine sensibility he must have.  He must be able to spot good works of art.  No amount of eloquence in the critic can give form significance.  To create that is the artist’s business.  It is for the critic to put the public in the way of enjoying it.

2. Second Thoughts

It is becoming fashionable to take criticism seriously, or, more exactly, serious critics are trying to make it so.  How far they have succeeded may be measured by the fact that we are no longer ashamed to reprint our reviews:  how far they are justified is another question.  It is one the answer to which must depend a good deal on our answer to that old and irritating query—­is beauty absolute?  For, if the function of a critic be merely to perform the office of a sign-post, pointing out what he personally likes and stimulating for that as much enthusiasm as possible, his task is clearly something less priestlike than it would be if, beauty being absolute, it were his to win for absolute beauty adequate appreciation.

I do not disbelieve in absolute beauty any more than I disbelieve in absolute truth.  On the contrary, I gladly suppose that the proposition—­this object must be either beautiful or not beautiful—­is absolutely true.  Only, can we recognize it?  Certainly, at moments we believe that we can.  We believe it when we are taken unawares and bowled over by the purely aesthetic qualities of a work of art.  The purely aesthetic qualities, I say, because we can be thrown into that extraordinarily lucid and