f the ideal in act in
the world of men must be set, implicitly or explicitly, in relation to
the absolute ideal. In subordinating its particular intuitions to the
absolute ideal art is, therefore, merely asserting its own sovereign
autonomy. True criticism is itself an organic part of the whole activity
of art; it is the exercise of sovereignty by art upon itself, and not
the imposition of an alien. To use our previous metaphor, as art is the
consciousness of life, criticism is the consciousness of art. The
essential activity of true criticism is the harmonious control of art by
art. This is at the root of a confusion in the thought of Mr. Eliot,
who, in his just anxiety to assert the full autonomy of art, pronounces
that the true critic of poetry is the poet and has to smuggle the
anomalous Aristotle in on the hardly convincing ground that 'he wrote
well about everything,' and has, moreover, to elevate Dryden to a purple
which he is quite unfitted to wear. No, what distinguishes the true
critic of poetry is a truly aesthetic philosophy. In the present state
of society it is extremely probable that only the poet or the artist
will possess this, for art and poetry were never more profoundly
divorced from the ordinary life of society than they are at the present
day. But the poet who would be a critic has to make his aesthetic
philosophy conscious to himself; to him as a poet it may be unconscious.
This necessary change from unconsciousness to consciousness is by no
means easy, and we should do well to insist upon its difficulty, for
quite as much nonsense is talked about poetry by poets and by artists
about art as by the profane about either. Moreover, it is important to
remember that in proportion as society approaches the ideal--there is no
continual progress towards the ideal; at present society is as far
removed from it as it has ever been--the chance of the philosopher, of
the scientist even, becoming a true critic of art grows greater. When
the aesthetic basis of all humane activity is familiarly recognised, the
values of the philosopher, the scientist, and the artist become
consciously the same, and therefore interchangeable.

Still, the ideal society is sufficiently remote for us to disregard it,
and we shall say that the principle of art for art's sake contains an
element of truth when it is opposed to those who would inflict upon art
the values of science, of metaphysics, or of a morality of mere
convention. We