204 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



forth in an organised and unique whole that gives us 

 the sense of actual life, and the verity as if of a per- 

 sonal identity; and into the treatment of this theme 

 no motive may enter except the aim to set it forth 

 in the form its own nature determines. In fact, the 

 essence of poetic form, in common with that of all 

 other artistic form, lies just in this intimate corre- 

 spondence between theme and expression ; and it is 

 this that is the secret of that impression of living 

 reality which marks the work of art and the genuine 

 poem. Form, in this sense, is the very life of poetry, 

 as of all art. For though rationality of contents is in- 

 dispensable to art, and the degree of this is a main 

 criterion of the rank of a work, this still belongs to 

 art in common with science and religion, and art only 

 obtains its sufficing differential quality in this trait of 

 appropriate and adequate form. 



But all that we have thus far determined leaves us 

 still on the ground of art in general. We have as 

 yet no canon of poetry distinct from a canon of art 

 universally. Our passage to this must be effected by 

 ascertaining the basis of distinction among the dif- 

 ferent orders of art. Starting with the common dis- 

 tinction of the arts into the useful and the fine, we 

 might do better, for the sake of clearness, to call the 



