or its course, in order to avail itself of the field now
opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The
rules may be given in one word; by being _disinterested_. And how is it to
be disinterested? By keeping aloof from practice; by resolutely following
the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all
subjects which it touches; by steadily refusing to lend itself to any of
those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas, which
plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often
to be attached to them, which in this country, at any rate, are certain to
be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism has really
nothing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the
best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making
this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is
to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but its business is
to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences
and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence
given to them. Else criticism, besides being really false to its own
nature, merely continues in the old rut which it has hitherto followed in
this country, and will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For what
is at present the bane of criticism in this country? It is that practical
considerations cling to it and stifle it; it subserves interests not its
own; our organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having
practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the first
thing and the play of mind the second; so much play of mind as is
compatible with the prosecution of those practical ends is all that is
wanted.

* * * * *

It must needs be that men should act in sects and parties, that each of
these sects and parties should have its organ, and should make this organ
subserve the interests of its action; but it would be well, too, that
there should be a criticism, not the minister of these interests, not
their enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of them. No other
criticism will ever attain any real authority or make any real way toward
its end--the creating a current of true and fresh ideas.

It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual
sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, has