98 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



in the larger sense to denote a definite attitude of the 



y inquiring mind towards any subject which is accessible 



to a critical treatment. Accordingly we may look upon 



e- Germany as the real home of the critical spirit and the 



Sermanythe 



home of critical methods in their widest sense and in their most 



criticism in 



w^r. ider unfettered development, as we may look upon France 

 as the birthplace of modern philological and literary 

 criticism. In the former country a philosophy sprang 

 up at the end of the eighteenth century which called 

 itself critical "par excellence," and which, in spite of 

 many brilliant attempts to supersede or dislodge it, still 

 constitutes the rallying-point for most of the systematic 

 thought which has not come under the influence of 

 the scientific or exact methods. Although, therefore, we 



century ago among most critics ; 

 neither is it a question mainly of 

 a psychological sort, to be answered 

 by discovering and delineating the 

 peculiar nature of the poet from 

 his poetry, as is usual with the 

 best of our own critics at present ; 

 but it is, not indeed exclusively, 

 but inclusively of those two other 

 questions, properly and ultimately 

 a question on the essence and 

 peculiar life of the poetry itself." 

 Carlyle also pointed out that 

 Herder, Schiller, Goethe " are men 

 of another staturte of form and 

 movement whom Bossu's scale and 

 compasses could not measure with- 

 out difficulty, or rather, not at all." 

 And yet Carlyle does not use criti- 

 cism in the wider sense in which I 

 am now using it. The representative 

 of the latter usage in this country is 

 Matthew Arnold, who, in various 

 writings, but notably in his ' Essays 

 in Criticism' (1865), took the wider 

 view opened out to him as much by 

 the earlier and the more recent 

 French critics as by Goethe and by 

 the constructive criticism of Nie- 



buhr, introduced into this country 

 by his father, Thomas Arnold, of 

 Rugby. In the first of the Essays, 

 " On the Function of Criticism at the 

 present Time," he defines as "the 

 business of the critical power, in all 

 branches of knowledge, theology, 

 philosophy, history, art, science, 

 to see the object as in itself it 

 really is. Thus it tends, at last, to 

 make an intellectual situation of 

 which the creative power can 

 profitably avail itself. It tends to 

 establish an order of ideas, if not 

 absolutely true, yet true by com- 

 parison with that which it displaces ; 

 to make the best ideas prevail. 

 Presently these new ideas reach 

 society, the touch of truth is the 

 touch of life, and there is a stir 

 and growth everywhere ; out of 

 this stir and growth come the 

 creative epochs of literature " (p. 6). 

 Matthew Arnold also points out 

 how the political and party interest 

 so prevalent in England is detri- 

 mental to this higher form of 

 criticism, " the rule of which should 

 be disinterestedness" (p. 18). 



