And there modern
criticism has stopped. There has been no indication that it was aware of
the necessity of going further. Many influences went to shape the
general conviction that mere presentation was the final function of
criticism, but perhaps the chief of these was the curious contagion of a
scientific terminology. The word 'objectivity' had a great vogue; it was
felt that the spiritual world was analogous to the physical; the critic
was faced, like the man of science, with a mass of hard, irreducible
facts, and his function was, like the scientist's, that of recording
them as compendiously as possible and without prejudice. The unconscious
programme was, indeed, impossible of fulfilment. All facts may be of
equal interest to the scientist, but they are not to the literary
critic. He chose those which interested him most for the exercise of his
talent for demonstration. But that choice was, as a general rule, the
only specifically critical act which he performed, and, since it was
usually unmotived, it was difficult to attach even to that more than a
'scientific' importance. Reasoned judgments of value were rigorously
eschewed, and even though we may presume that the modern critic is at
times vexed by the problem why (or whether) one work of art is better
than another, when each seems perfectly expressive of the artist's
intention, the preoccupation is seldom betrayed in the language of his
appreciation. Tacitly and insensibly we have reached a point at which
all works of art are equally good if they are equally expressive. What
every artist seeks to express is his own unique consciousness. As
between things unique there is no possibility of subordination or
comparison.

That does not seem to us an unduly severe diagnosis of modern criticism,
although it needs perhaps to be balanced by an acknowledgment that the
impulse towards the penetration of an artist's consciousness is in
itself salutary, as a valuable adjunct to the methods of criticism,
provided that it is definitely subordinated to the final critical
judgment, before which uniqueness is an impossible plea. Such a
diagnosis will no doubt be welcomed by those who belong to an older
generation than that to which it is applied. But they should not rejoice
prematurely. We require of them an answer to the question whether they
were really in better case--whether they were not the fathers whose sins
are visited upon the children. Professor Babbitt, at least, has