y. In our mental life suggestion
plays an important and perhaps unrecognized part. In a certain frame
of mind we can be persuaded into believing anything and into liking
anything. When, under the influence of authority or fashion, we
think we care for that which has no vital and consciously realized
relation to our own experience, we are the victims of a kind of
hypnotism, and there is little hope of our ultimate adjustment over
against art. It is far better honestly to like an inferior work and know
why we like it than to pretend to like a good one. In the latter case
no real progress or development is possible, for we have no
standards that can be regarded as final; we are swayed by the
authority or influence which happens at that moment to be most
powerful. In the former case we are at least started in the right
direction. Year by year, according to the law of natural growth, we
come to the end of the inferior work which up to that time has been
able to minister to us, and we pass on to new and greater works that
satisfy the demands of our deepening experience. It is sometimes
asked if we ought not to try to like the best things in art. I should
answer, the very greatest things we do not have to _try_ to like; the
accent of greatness is unmistakable, and greatness has a message for
every one. As regards the lesser works, we ought to be willing to
grow up. There was a time when I enjoyed "Robinson Crusoe" in
words of one syllable. If I had _tried_ then to like Mr. George
Meredith, I should not really have enjoyed him, and I should have
missed the fun of "Robinson Crusoe." Everything in its time and
place. The lesser works have their use: they may be a starting-point
for our entrance into life; and they furnish a basis of comparison by
which we are enabled to realize the greatness of the truly great. We
must value everything in its own kind, affirming what it is, and not
regretting what it is not. But the prerequisite of all appreciation,
without which our contact with art is a pastime or a pretense, is that
we be honest with ourselves. In playing solitaire at least we ought
not to cheat.

So the layman must face the situation squarely and accept the
responsibility of deciding finally for himself. On the way we may
look to criticism to guide us to those works which are meant for us.
In art as in the complex details of living, there is need of selection;
and criticism helps toward that. In literature alone, to name but