CRITICISM AND THE MAN 101 



far as it expresses a real and vital conception begot- 

 ten by the poet upon the critic's or the actor's 

 mind. The beauty of a poem or any work of art 

 is not an objective something patent to all ; it is 

 an experience of the mind which we each have in 

 different degrees. In fact, the field of our aesthetic 

 perceptions and enjoyments is no more fixed and 

 definite than is the field of our religious percep- 

 tions and enjoyments, and we diverge from one an- 

 other in the one case as much as in the other. This 

 divergence is of course, in both cases, mainly super- 

 ficial ; it is in form and not in essence. Religions 

 perish, but religion remains. Styles of art pass, 

 but art abides. Go deep enough and we all agree, 

 because human nature is fundamentally the same 

 everywhere. All that I mean to say is that the out- 

 ward expressions of art differ in different ages and 

 among different races as much as do the outward 

 expressions of religion. In all these matters the sub- 

 jective element plays an important part. Is Brown- 

 ing a greater poet than Tennyson ? Is Thackeray 

 a greater novelist than Dickens ? Has Newman a 

 better style than Arnold ? Is Poe our greatest poet, 

 as many British critics think ? These and all sim- 

 ilar questions involve the personal equation of the 

 critic, and his answer to them will be given more by 

 his unconscious than by his conscious self. The 

 appeal is not so much to his rational faculties as to 

 his secret affinities or his aesthetic perceptions. You 

 can move a man's reason, but you cannot by any 

 similar process change his taste or his faith. If we 



