tually exists; and, without aiming here at accuracy, we may say
that an actual poem is the succession of experiences--sounds, images,
thoughts, emotions--through which we pass when we are reading as
poetically as we can. Of course this imaginative experience--if I may
use the phrase for brevity--differs with every reader and every time of
reading: a poem exists in innumerable degrees. But that insurmountable
fact lies in the nature of things and does not concern us now.

What then does the formula "Poetry for poetry's sake" tell us about this
experience? It says, as I understand it, these things. First, this
experience is an end in itself, is worth having on its own account, has
an intrinsic value. Next, its _poetic_ value is this intrinsic worth
alone. Poetry may have also an ulterior value as a means to culture or
religion; because it conveys instruction, or softens the passions, or
furthers a good cause; because it brings the poet fame or money or a
quiet conscience. So much the better: let it be valued for these reasons
too. But its ulterior worth neither is nor can directly determine its
poetic worth as a satisfying imaginative experience; and this is to be
judged entirely from within. And to these two positions the formula
would add, though not of necessity, a third. The consideration of
ulterior ends, whether by the poet in the act of composing or by the
reader in the act of experiencing, tends to lower poetic value. It does
so because it tends to change the nature of poetry by taking it out of
its own atmosphere. For its nature is to be not a part, nor yet a copy,
of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase), but to be a
world by itself, independent, complete, autonomous; and to possess it
fully you must enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the
time the beliefs, aims, and particular conditions which belong to you in
the other world of reality.

Of the more serious misapprehensions to which these statements may give
rise I will glance only at one or two. The offensive consequences often
drawn from the formula "Art for Art" will be found to attach not to the
doctrine that Art is an end in itself, but to the doctrine that Art is
the whole or supreme end of human life. And as this latter doctrine,
which seems to me absurd, is in any case quite different from the
former, its consequences fall outside my subject. The formula "Poetry is
an end in itself" has nothing to say on the various q