{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\uc1 \deff0\deflang1033\deflangfe1033{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fcharset0\fprq2{\*\panose 02020603050405020304}Times New Roman;}{\f1\fswiss\fcharset0\fprq2{\*\panose 020b0604020202020204}Arial;} {\f3\froman\fcharset2\fprq2{\*\panose 05050102010706020507}Symbol;}{\f19\froman\fcharset0\fprq0{\*\panose 00000000000000000000}Xerox Serif Wide;}{\f172\froman\fcharset238\fprq2 Times New Roman CE;}{\f173\froman\fcharset204\fprq2 Times New Roman Cyr;} {\f175\froman\fcharset161\fprq2 Times New Roman Greek;}{\f176\froman\fcharset162\fprq2 Times New Roman Tur;}{\f177\froman\fcharset186\fprq2 Times New Roman Baltic;}{\f178\fswiss\fcharset238\fprq2 Arial CE;}{\f179\fswiss\fcharset204\fprq2 Arial Cyr;} {\f181\fswiss\fcharset161\fprq2 Arial Greek;}{\f182\fswiss\fcharset162\fprq2 Arial Tur;}{\f183\fswiss\fcharset186\fprq2 Arial Baltic;}}{\colortbl;\red0\green0\blue0;\red0\green0\blue255;\red0\green255\blue255;\red0\green255\blue0;\red255\green0\blue255; \red255\green0\blue0;\red255\green255\blue0;\red255\green255\blue255;\red0\green0\blue128;\red0\green128\blue128;\red0\green128\blue0;\red128\green0\blue128;\red128\green0\blue0;\red128\green128\blue0;\red128\green128\blue128;\red192\green192\blue192;} {\stylesheet{\widctlpar\adjustright \fs20\cgrid \snext0 Normal;}{\*\cs10 \additive Default Paragraph Font;}}{\info{\author Leroy F. Searle}{\operator Leroy F. Searle}{\creatim\yr2000\mo5\dy1\hr3\min3}{\revtim\yr2000\mo5\dy1\hr3\min6}{\version2}{\edmins3} {\nofpages22}{\nofwords9737}{\nofchars55506}{\*\company University of Washington}{\nofcharsws68165}{\vern89}}\margl1440\margr1440 \widowctrl\ftnbj\aenddoc\hyphcaps0\viewkind4\viewscale100 \fet0\sectd \sbknone\linex0\headery1440\sectdefaultcl {\*\pnseclvl1 \pnucrm\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxta .}}{\*\pnseclvl2\pnucltr\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxta .}}{\*\pnseclvl3\pndec\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxta .}}{\*\pnseclvl4\pnlcltr\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxta )}}{\*\pnseclvl5 \pndec\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta )}}{\*\pnseclvl6\pnlcltr\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta )}}{\*\pnseclvl7\pnlcrm\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta )}}{\*\pnseclvl8\pnlcltr\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang {\pntxtb (}{\pntxta )}}{\*\pnseclvl9\pnlcrm\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta )}}\pard\plain \nowidctlpar\adjustright \fs20\cgrid {\cgrid0 ALLEN TATE: From }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades}{\cgrid0 (New York: William Morris, 1970) \par \par \par \par \par \par \par \par \par \par \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx3492\adjustright {\fs36\cgrid0 Literature as Knowledge \par \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx3492\adjustright {\i\f1\fs18\cgrid0 Comment and Comparison \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx3492\adjustright {\i\f1\fs18\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx3492\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 I \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx3492\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx691\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 MATTHEW ARNOLD\rquote S }{\fs24\cgrid0 war on the Philistines was fought, as everybody knows; but nobody thinks that it was won. Arnold conducted it in what he considered to be the scientific spirit. The Philistines had a passion for \ldblquote acting and instituting,\rquote but they did not know \ldblquote what we ought to act and to in\-stitute.\rdblquote This sort of knowledge must be founded upon \ldblquote the scientific passion for knowing.\rdblquote But it must not stop there. Culture, which is the study of perfection and the constant effort to achieve it, is superior to the scientific spirit because it includes and passes beyond it. Arnold was, in short, looking for a principle of unity, but it must be a unity of experience. There was before him the accumulating body of the inert, descriptive facts of science, and something had to be done ab out it. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx975\tx3764\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Yet if it is true, as T. S. Eliot said many years ago, that were Arnold to come back he would have his work to do over again, he would at any rate have to do it very differ\- ently. His program, culture added to science and perhaps correcting it, has been our program for nearly a century, and it has not worked. For the facts of science are not inert facts waiting for the poet, as emblematic guardian of culture, to bring to life in the nicely cooperative enterprise of scien\-}{\fs22\cgrid0 72 \par }{\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2517\tqdec\tx6695\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs24\cgrid0 73 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx447\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 tist and poet which the nineteenth century puts its faith in. In this view the poet is merely the scientist who achieves completeness. \ldblquote It is a result of no little culture, \rdblquote Arnold says, \ldblquote to attain to a clear perception that science and reli\-gion are two wholly different things.\rdblquote Religion had yielded to the \ldblquote fact\rdblquote of science, but poetry on a positive scientific base could take over the work of religion, and its future was \ldblquote immense." The \ldblquote fact\rdblquote had undermined religion, but it could support poetry. \par }\pard \qj\fi244\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx447\tx691\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Although Arnold betrayed not a little uneasiness about this easy solution, it was his way of putting literature upon an equal footing with science. If Arnold failed, can we hope to succeed? Whether literature and science considered philo\- sophically, as Coleridge would phrase it, are the same thing, or different but equal, or the one subordinate to the other, has become a private question. It does not concern the public at large. While Arnold\rquote s poet was extending the hand of fellowship to t he scientist, the scientist did not return the greeting; for never for an instant did he see himself as the inert and useful partner in an enterprise of which he would not be permitted to define the entire scope. He was not, alas, confined to the inertia of fact; his procedure was dy\-namic all along, and it was animated by the confident spirit of positivism which has since captured the modern world. \par Had he been what Arnold thought he was, how con\-veniently the partnership would have worked! For what was Arnold\rquote s scientist doing? He was giving us exact observation and description of the external world. The poet could give us that, and he could add to it exact observation and descrip\-tion of man\rquote s inner life, a realm that the positivist would never be so bold as to invade. But the poet\rquote s advantage was actually twofold. Not only did he have this inner field of ex\- perience denied to the scientist, he had a resource which was his peculiar and hereditary right\emdash figurative language and the power of rhetoric. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx447\tx691\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx924\tx2823\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \tab 74\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\fi284\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx691\tx975\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 if the inert fact alone could not move us, poetic diction could make it moving by heightening it; for poetry is \ldblquote thought and art in one.\rdblquote This is an injustice to Arnold; he was a great critic of ideas, of currents of ideas, of the situa\- tion of the writer in his time; and from this point of view his theory of poetry is of secondary importance. But since I am now interested in the failure, ours as well as his, to undlerstand the relation of poetry and science, it has been necessary to put his poetic theory in terms that will bring out its defects. On one side it is an eighteenth-century view of poetic language as the rhetorical vehicle of ideas; and it is connected with Arnold\rquote s famous definition of religion as \ldblquote morality touched with emotion.\rdblquote Poetry is descriptive sci ence or experience at that level, touched with emotion. \par If Arnold had taste, he had very simple analytical powers, and we are never quite convinced by his fine quotations from the poets. Why is this so? Because he admires good things for bad reasons; or because at any rate his reasons invariably beg the question. In the famous passage on Dryden and Pope }{\fs22\cgrid0 iii }{\fs24\cgrid0 \ldblquote The Study of Poetry\rdblquote these poets are not poetic be\- cause they are not }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 poetic. }{\fs24\cgrid0 (Arnold himself is responsible for \par }\pard \qj\fi-397\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx294\tx691\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 \tab the italics.) And he looks to us for immediate assent to a dis\-tinction between a \ldblquote prose\rdblquote classic and a \ldblquote poetic\rdblquote classic that has not been actually made. He cites his \ldblquote touchstones\rdblquote for the purpose of moving us, and the nice discrimin ation of feeling which awareness of the touchstones induces will permit us to judge other passages of verse in terms of feet\rquote . ing. The \ldblquote high seriousness\rdblquote is partly the elevated tone, a tone which is a quality of the poet \rquote s feeling about his subject it is the poet\rquote s business to communicate it to the reader. \par }\pard \qj\fi284\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx691\tx975\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 This attitude, this tone, centers in emotion. But its rela tion to what it is about, whether it is external to the subject or inherent in it, Arnold refuses to make clear. The high seriousness may be sai d to reflect the subject, which must have Aristotelian magnitude and completeness. Arnold had \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx6117\tx11281\adjustright {\b\f1\fs40\cgrid0 \tab I\tab }{\f1\fs42\cgrid0 \emdash \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2057\tqdec\tx6695\adjustright {\f1\fs42\cgrid0 \tab }{\i\cgrid0 Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs24\cgrid0 75 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx204\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 a shrewd sense of the disproportions of tone and subject which he developed into a principle in the Preface to the 1853 edition of his poems. He was suppressing the very fine \ldblquote Empedocles on Aetna\rdblquote because, he said, it has no action; it is all passive suffe ring; and passive suffering is not a proper subject for poetry. (A view that has been revived in our time by the late W. B. Yeats.) Action, then, is the subject of the greatest poetry. This conviction is so strong\emdash who will ques\- tion its rightness, }{\i\cgrid0 as far as it goes?\emdash that }{\fs24\cgrid0 he actually puts into quotation marks words which are not quoted from anybody at all but which represent for him the consensus of the an\-cients on the importance of action: \ldblquote \lquote All depends upon the subject; choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situations; this done, everything else will fol\-low.\rquote \rdblquote But will everything else follow? Does a great style follow? To a gift for action Shakespeare \ldblquote added a special one of his own; a gift, namely, of happy, abundant, and ingen\-ious expression. }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . .\ldblquote }{\fs24\cgrid0 I think we should attend closely here to the words \ldblquote added\rdblquote and \ldblquote ingenious,\rdblquote for they reveal Ar\-nold\rquote s view of the function of language. And suppose you have lyric poetry which may be, like Arnold\rquote s own fine lyrics, more meditati ve than dramatic, and more concerned with the futility of action than with action itself? It has never, I believe, been pointed out that the Preface of 1853 cuts all the props from under lyric poetry. The lyric at its best is \ldblquote dramatic, \rdblquote but there is no ev idence that Arnold thought it so; for the lyric, though it may be a moment of action, lacks magnitude and completeness; it may be the beginning, or the middle, or the end, but never all three. What, then, is the subject of the lyric? Is it all feeling, no thing but feeling? It is feeling about \ldblquote ideas,\rdblquote not actions; and the feeling com\-municates \ldblquote power and joy.\rdblquote \par }\pard \qj\fi351\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 This gross summary of Arnold\rquote s poetics omits all the sensi\-tive discriminations that he felt in reading the poets; it omits \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx204\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 all but the framework of his thought. Yet the framework \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx204\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx742\tx2653\adjustright {\i\f1\fs18\cgrid0 \tab 76\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx566\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 alone must concern us on this occasion. Arnold is still the great critical influence in the universities, and it is perhaps not an exaggeration -of his influence to say that debased Arnold is t he main stream of popular appreciation of poetry. It would be fairer to say that Arnold the critic was superior to his critical theory; yet at the distance of three generations we may look back upon his lack of a critical dialectic\emdash he even had a certain contempt for it in other critics\emdash as a calamity for that culture which it was his great desire to strengthen and pass on. \par }\pard \qj\fi171\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx566\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 His critical theory was elementary, and if you compare him with Coleridge a generation earlier, he represents a loss. His position is nea rer to the neoclassicism of Lessing, whom he praises in }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Culture and Anarchy }{\fs24\cgrid0 for humanizing knowledge, a leveling-off of distinctions of which Lessing as a matter of fact was not guilty. He shares with Lessing the belief \emdash but not its dialectical basis\emdash that the language of poetry is of secondary importance to the subject, that it is less difficult than the medium of painting, and that, given the action, all else follows. \par This remnant of neoclassicism in Arnold has been ably discerned by Mr. Cleanth Brooks in }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Modern Poetry and the Tradition. }{\fs24\cgrid0 I go into it here not to deny that action is nec\-essary to the long poem; for Arnold\rquote s view contains a funda\-mental truth. But it is not the whole truth; asserted in his terms, it may not be a truth at all. The important question goes further. It is: What is the relation of language to the \ldblquote subject,\rdblquote to the dramatic and narrative subject as action, or to the lyrical subject as \ldblquote idea\rdblquote ? The question may be pushed even further: Is it possible finally to distinguish the language from the subject? Are not subject and language one? \par For Arnold the subject is what we commonly call the prose subject; that is to say, as much of the poetic subject as we can put into ordinary prose. The poet takes it up at the level at which the scientist\emdash or Arnold\rquote s simulacrum of him \emdash takes \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx566\tx737\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2517\tqdec\tx6695\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs24\cgrid0 77 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 it: the level of observation and description. The poet now puts it into language that will bring the inert facts to life and move us. The language is strictly what Mr. Richards calls the \ldblquote vehicle\rdblquote \emdash it does not embody the subject; it conveys it and remains external to it. \par }\pard \qj\fi386\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 For what are action and subject? The positivists have their own notion of these terms; and their language of physical determinism suits that notion better than the poet \rquote s. The poet\rquote s language is useless. \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 II \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\fi244\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx447\tx691\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Is it not easy to see how such a poetics gives the case for poetry away to the scientist? Not to Arnold\rquote s straw scientist, who politely kept to his descriptive place and left to litera\-ture man\rquote s evaluation of his experience; but to the scientist as he is: a remarkably ingenious and dyn amic fellow whose simple fanaticism brooks no compromise with his special projects. Whatever these on occasion may be, he demands an exact one-to-one relevance of language to the objects and the events to which it refers. In this relevance lies the \ldblquote mean\-ing\rdblquote of all terms and propositions insofar as they are used for the purpose of giving us valid knowledge. It is, of course, knowledge for action; and apart from this specific purpose, the problem of meaning is not even a real problem. \par }\pard \qj\fi386\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \ldblquote Meaning\rdblquote has been replaced by a concept of \ldblquote operational validity\rdblquote \emdash that is to say, the \ldblquote true" meaning of a term is not its definition; it is the number of statements containing it which can be referred to empirically observed events. Along with meaning and definition, universal s also disappear; and with universals, cognition. A proposition does not represent an act of knowing by a knower\emdash that is, a mind; it is, in a chemical metaphor, the expression of an interaction among certain elements of a \ldblquote situation. \rdblquote \par This advanced position in the philosophy of science has \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx436\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 been set forth in the new }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 International Encyclopedia of Uni\- \par }{\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx958\tx2862\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \tab 78\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\fi171\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx566\tx737\adjustright {\i\fs24\cgrid0 fled Science, }{\fs24\cgrid0 which is being published serially at the Uni\- versity of Chicago. Of great interest from the point of view of literary criticism are the brilliant studies of \ldblquote semiosis,\rdblquote or the functioning of language as \ldblquote signs.\rdblquote Mr. Charles W. Morris\rquote s \ldblquote Foundations for the Theory of Signs,\rdblquote }{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 1 }{\fs24\cgrid0 is a model of exact exposition in a field of enormous complication. This field is popularly known as \ldblquote semantics,\rdblquote but semantics in any exact sense is only one \ldblquote dimension\rdblquote of semiosis. In this brief glance at the aesthetic and critical implications of Mr. Morris\rquote s writings, his theory as a whole cannot be set forth. \par }\pard \qj\fi272\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Semiosis is the actual functioning of language in three dimensions which are located and described by means of the science of \ldblquote semiotic.\rdblquote Semiotic, then, is the study of semiosis. The three dimensions in which all language, verbal, or mathematical, functions are: }{\fs22\cgrid0 (i) }{\fs24\cgrid0 the semantical, }{\fs22\cgrid0 (2) }{\fs24\cgrid0 the syntactical, and }{\fs36\cgrid0 (3) }{ \fs24\cgrid0 the pragmatical; and the respec\- tive studies in these dimensions are semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics. It must be borne in mind that in semiosis the three dimensions are never separate; in semiotic they are distinguished abstractly for study. Semiotic looks towards the formation of rules which will govern the use of all language (signs), and it lays claim to an ultimate unification of all \ldblquote knowledge.\rdblquote \par }\pard \qj\fi284\sl-481\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx691\tx975\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 That need not concern us here. Let us take a simple declar\-ative sentence: \ldblquote This county has an annual rainfall of fifty-one inches.\rdblquote F rom the semantical point of view the sentence designates certain conditions, or a situation: it is the \ldblquote sign\-vehicle\rdblquote for that designation. If upon investigation we find that the situation actually exists, then it has not only been designated; it has also been }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 denoted. }{\fs24\cgrid0 From the syntactical point of view we are not concerned with what the sign\-vehicle points to; for syntactics deals with the formal struc\-}{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 1 }{\i\cgrid0 International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, }{\fs22\cgrid0 Vol. I, No. }{ \b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 2. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx691\tx975\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2517\tqdec\tx6774\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab 79 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 ture of the sentence, the relations of the words. From the pragmatical point of view the meaning of the sentence is the \par }{\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 effect it has upon somebody who hears it or reads it. If I am about to buy a farm in this county, and learn that \ldblquote this county has an annual rainfall of fifty-one inches,\rdblquote I may go elsewhere; at the moment I hear the sentence I may light a cigarette, or look the other way, or laugh, or swear. All this behavior would be the functioning of the sign in the prag \-matic dimension. \par }\pard \qj\fi244\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx447\tx691\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The complex possibilities of semiotic may not be evident in this crude summary. Mr. Morris says: \ldblquote The sign vehicle itself is simply one object.\rdblquote It is an object that may function in other sign-vehicles; it may be designated, denoted, or re\-acted to; and the process is infinite. The identification of signs and their relations is equally complex. There are, for example, a characterizing sign, a symbolic sign, an indexical sign, and an iconic sign; and any of these, in certain contexts, may function as any other. I shall return to them presently. \par }\pard \qj\fi171\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx566\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The only philosophic criticism of this system that I have seen is Howard D. Roelofs\rquote s article in the symposium on the \ldblquote New Encyclopedists,\rdblquote published in }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 The Ken yon Review }{\fs24\cgrid0 (Spring, }{\fs22\cgrid0 1 }{\fs24\cgrid0 939). Mr. Roelofs is concerned with Mr. Morris\rquote s rejection of the problem of universals and of cognition. It ought to be plain from my brief exposition of the prag\-matic dimension of semiosis that the significant factor is what I }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 do, }{\fs24\cgrid0 not what I }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 think } {\fs24\cgrid0 leading to what I do; and that thus the bias of the science of semiotic is pragmatic in the ordinary sense, and even behavioristic. For Mr. Morris says: \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 \ldblquote A \lquote concept\rquote [i.e., a universal] may be regarded as a se\- mantical rule determining the use of characterizing signs.\rdblquote Mr. Roelofs\rquote s comment is interesting: \par \par Morris has no trouble with this problem [i.e., the problem of universals]. It is simply a rule of our language that such a term as \ldblquote man\rdblquote can be used as often as the conditions stated in its \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx538\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx924\tx2828\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \tab 8o\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx583\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 definition are fulfilled. That makes the term a universal. If we \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx5198\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 in fac \par }\pard \qj\sl-266\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx623\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 then ask how it happens those conditions }{\fs22\cgrid0 are }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 4}{\fldrslt\f3\fs8}}}{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 }{\fs22\cgrid0 t }{ \fs24\cgrid0 frequently fulfilled, we are informed, \ldblquote It can only be said the world is such.\rdblquote And those who are t empted by this fact to believe that universals are somehow objective, functioning in nature, are silenced with a threat: to talk as if universals were entities in the world is \ldblquote to utter pseudo-thing sentences of }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 4}{\fldrslt\f3\fs8}}}{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 }{\fs24\cgrid0 the quasi-semantical type.\rdblquote }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . . }{\fs24\cgrid0 the heart of the problem is dismissed with a phrase and a language rule offered-as a solution. \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The bearing of Mr. Roelofs\rquote s criticism will be plainer in a moment. Now Mr. Morris, in discussing the syntactical di\-mension, says: \ldblquote Syntactics, as the study of the syntactical relations of signs to one another }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 in abstraction }{\fs24\cgrid0 from the rela\-tions of signs to objects or to interpreters [persons], is the best developed of all the branches of semiotic. \rdblquote Exactly; because syntactics comes out of traditional formal logic and grammar, and because it \ldblquote deliberately neglects what has here been called the semantical and the pragmatical dimensions of semiosis. \par }\pard \qj\fi380\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx583\tx963\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The role of syntactics in the semiotic science remains somewhat obscure; it seems to consist in a number of \ldblquote trans\-formation rules\rdblquote \emdash that is, in formulas by which given ex\-pressions in words, numbers, or symbols can be changed into equivalent but formally different expressions. What power }{\fs22\cgrid0 of }{\fs24\cgrid0 the mind there may be which enables us in the first pla ce to form these expressions nowhere appears. (I daresay this statement is of the quasi-semantical type.) But Mr. Morris tells us how we are to think of the rules of the three dimensions of semiotic: \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx583\tx963\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx583\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Syntactical rules determine the sign relations between sign ve\- hicles; semantical rules correlate sign vehicles with other objects; pragmatical rules state the conditions in the interpreters under which the sign vehicle is a sign. Any rule when actually in use operates as a type of behavior, and in this sense there is a prag\-matical component in all rules. \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx6117\tx11281\adjustright {\b\f1\fs40\cgrid0 \tab I\tab }{\f1\fs42\cgrid0 \emdash \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2057\tqdec\tx6695\adjustright {\f1\fs42\cgrid0 \tab }{\i\cgrid0 Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs22\cgrid0 8i \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx204\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 If we imagine with Mr. Roelofs a situation in which semi\-osis is functioning, we shall see pretty clearly the behavior\- istic tendency of the science of semiotic; and we shall also see in what sense \ldblquote there is a pragmatical component in all rules.\rdblquote A simplified process of semiosis, or the actual func\- tioning of signs, is very easy to state. There is first of all the sign, wh ich we get in terms of a sign-vehicle. It looks two ways; first, it points to something, designates something; and, secondly, what is designated elicits a response from persons who are present. The thing pointed to is thus the }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 designa\- turn; }{\fs24\cgrid0 the response is the }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 interpretant. }{\fs24\cgrid0 By implication there }{\fs22\cgrid0 is an interpreter, a person, a }{\fs24\cgrid0 mind; but Mr. Morris is con\- sistently vague about him: he is not a technical factor, he is a superfluous entity, in semiosis. That is to say, not only is he not needed in order to expla in the functioning of signs; he would embarrass the explanation. Mr. Roelofs makes this clear, as follows: \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx204\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The innocent reader will take the analysis of the use of signs to be the analysis of a cognitive process. The correctness of the analysis as far as it goes conceals the fact that cognition itself has been eliminated. Consider this illustration. A maid enters the room and says to the three persons present, \ldblquote The doctor called.\rdblquote One person thereupon takes a pen and writes a line in a diary; the }{\fs22\cgrid0 second goes to a telephone and makes a call; the third says, \ldblquote Did he?\rdblquote Accordling to the analysis offered by Morris, the words ut\- tered by the maid are the sign-vehicle. The actual call of the doctor is the denotatum.2 The three persons are the interpreters, }{\fs24\cgrid0 and their three different actions are the interpretants. the re\- sponses of the interpreters to the denotatum via the sign-vehicle. }{\fs22\cgrid0 No one is likely to deny these factors are present. It should be }{\fs24\cgrid0 noted that the interpretants, to the extent that they are a sequence }{\fs22\cgrid0 of physical actions, can be perceived. It should also be noted that \par \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx204\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 2 }{\i\cgrid0 Denotata }{\fs22\cgrid0 are real things; }{\i\cgrid0 designata }{\fs22\cgrid0 may be pointed to, but they are not \par necessarily real. For example. the Phoenix\rquote s \ldblquote spicy nest.\rdblquote The doctor\rquote s call is \par }{\i\cgrid0 a designaturn }{\fs22\cgrid0 which is also a }{\i\cgrid0 denotatum\emdash it\rquote s }{\fs22\cgrid0 \ldblquote real.\rdblquote \par }{\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx952\tx2862\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \tab 82\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-255\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx765\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 such sequences of action are not cognitions }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . . }{\fs22\cgrid0 they are \ldblquote inter\-}{\fs24\cgrid0 I)retants, but their being such depends upon the cognitions of }{\fs22\cgrid0 the interpreters. These responses are not themselves knowledge. }{\fs24\cgrid0 They (10 }{\fs22\cgrid0 depend upon knowledge, and that is precisely what Morris leaves out. }{ \f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . }{\fs22\cgrid0 Morris objects to the term \ldblquote meaning. This is not surprising. His }{\fs24\cgrid0 analysis leaves out meaning in the pri\-mary sense of meaning. This is not to say that meanings are \ldblquote like }{\fs22\cgrid0 marbles\rdblquote [Morris\rquote s phrase]. Meanings, indeed, like knowledge in general, are a unique kind of thing. There is literally nothing like knowledge except knowledge itself. \par \par }\pard \qj\fi272\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 I have }{\fs24\cgrid0 quoted Mr. Roelofs at length because what he has to say about the problem of cognition bears directly upon }{\fs22\cgrid0 the semiotic version of the aesthetic problem. He sums up his argument: \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx765\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 The procedure culminates in eliminating not only universals, \par -but cognition itself. Just as the answer to the problem of univer\-sals is that they (10 not exist [that is, they are only a semantical rule], the answer to the problem of knowledge is that there is no such thing. There are responses, but no cognition; there is a language, but not knowledge. Knowledge cannot be reduced to exclusively perceptual terms. Therefore it does not exist. This is not empiricism. }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 It is }{\i\cgrid0 positivism. }{\fs22\cgrid0 [Italics mine.] \par \par In this positivist technique }{\fs24\cgrid0 for the analysis }{\fs22\cgrid0 of language, the interpreting mind, the cognizing intelligence, is lost in the perceptual account of its external behavior. Mr. Morris says: \par \ldblquote In general, from the point of view of behavior, signs are \lquote true\rquote insofar as they correctly determine the expectations of the users, and so release more fully the behavior which is }{\fs24\cgrid0 implicitly aroused in the expectation or interpretation.\rdblquote \par }\pard \qj\fi272\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 In Mr. Morris\rquote s aesthetics there is an aesthetic sign. Does it implicitly\emdash or explicitly\emdash arouse expectations in terms of behavior? Does it correctly determine our expectations? Is the aesthetic sign \ldblquote true\rdblquote in that it is a determinant of our behavior? Mr. Morris is not unequivocal in his answers to these questions. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\i\fs24\cgrid0 Literature as Knowledge \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\i\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 III \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\fi199\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 No\emdash and yes, replies Mr. Morris, in two essays}{\fs24\super\cgrid0 3 }{\fs24\cgrid0 the cun\-ning and scholastic ingenuity of which make even the beauti\- ful essay on the general theory of signs look amateurish. No, he says, because the aesthetic sign is a special sort of sign: it is }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 iconic. }{\fs24\cgrid0 It does not correctly determine our behavior. Yes, be\- cause it bears the formidable responsibility of showing us what we ought to. try to get out of our behavior. The func\-tion of the aesthetic sign is nothing less than the \ldblquote vivid presentation\rdblquote of }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 values, }{\fs24\cgrid0 a presentation that is not only vivid, but }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 immediate\emdash without }{\fs24\cgrid0 mediation\emdash for direct apprehension. The iconic sign, in other words, designates without denoting; or if it does denote anything its }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 denotatum }{\fs24\cgrid0 is already in its own \ldblquote properties.\rdblquote \ldblquote In certain kinds of insanity,\rdblquote writes Mr. Morris, \ldblquote the distinction between the designatum and \par }\pard \qj\fi-187\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 \tab the denotatum vanishes; the troublesome world of exist\- ences is pushed aside, and the frustrated }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 interests }{\fs22\cgrid0 [italics \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 mine] get what satisfaction they can in the domain of signs. \par }\pard \qj\fi601\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\tx1139\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Likewise }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 designata }{\fs24\cgrid0 and }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 denotata }{\fs24\cgrid0 become in aesthetics the same thing; but in this logical shuffle, worthy of a thir\-teenth-century }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 doctor sub tilis, }{\fs24\cgrid0 the aesthetic sign is never con\-fused \ldblquote with the object it designates.\rdblquote It is that alone which saves it from the ignominy of insanity. \par }\pard \qj\fi199\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The difficulties of this theory must already be apparent. First, the difference between insanity and art is the hairs-breadth line, in the interpreter\rquote s response to the sign, be\-tween substituting the sign for reality and maintaining the distinction between sign and reality. The first question that one must ask, then, is this: With what does the interpreter make this distinction? If the distinction is not inherent in the nature of the sign, does the interpreter not perform an act \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx464\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 S }{\fs24\cgrid0 \ldblquote Esthetics and the Theory of Signs,\rdblquote }{\i\cgrid0 The Journal of Unified Science, }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 VIII, }{\fs24\cgrid0 s\emdash i, pp. }{ \b\f19\fs12\cgrid0 131\emdash 150; }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 and \ldblquote Science, Art and Technology,\rdblquote }{\i\cgrid0 The Kenyon Review, }{\fs24\cgrid0 Autumn, }{\b\f19\fs12\cgrid0 1939, }{\fs24\cgrid0 pp. }{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 409-423. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx464\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx924\tx2828\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab 84\tab Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 of cognition? If the distinction is a mere interpretant, a be\- havioristic response,. why do we not respond to a work of art uniformly; and why is that uniform response in every case not insane }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 unless we are capable of a primary act of knowl\-edge, }{\fs24\cgrid0 of simply knowing the difference? \par }\pard \qj\fi272\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Secondly, if art is the realm of values\emdash that is, if the pe\-culiar nature of the aesthetic sign is that it shall convey val\-ues\emdash the values must be inherent in the aesthetic sign, and. must therefore compel in the interpreter the distinction be\-tween value and insanity; so that there is no poss ibility that the interpreter, who is incapable of cognition, will confuse the mere sign with reality. For the nature of the sign must }{\fs22\cgrid0 determine the interpretant, or response. \par }\pard \qj\fi244\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx765\tx1009\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 There must therefore be a special \ldblquote differentia\rdblquote for the }{\fs24\cgrid0 aesthetic sign that distinguishes }{\fs22\cgrid0 it from all other signs what\- ever. \ldblquote Lyric poetry,\rdblquote Mr. Morris says, \ldblquote has a syntax and }{\fs24\cgrid0 uses terms which designate things, but the syntax and the terms are so used that what stand out for the reader are values and evaluations.\rdblquote \rquote Does not Mr. Morris confess his difficulty when he uses the vague metaphorical expression, \ldblquote stand out,\rdblquote and the even more vague \ldblquote so used\rdblquote ? Just what is this use? It is significant that in Mr. Morris\rquote s two articles on aesthetics, in which the word poetry frequently appears, \par }\pard \qj\fi-386\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 \tab there is no actual analysis of a passage or even of a line of verse; and not even a quotation from any poem in any language. He contents himself with assertions that the fu\-ture of semiotic in the field of poetry is immense, and tha t only the work has to be done. \par }\pard \qj\fi158\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx805\tx963\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Now, if the contradiction that I have pointed out in gen\-eral terms exists, we may see its origin if we examine further Mr. Morris\rquote s idea of the aesthetic sign. It is a special va\-riety of the iconic sign. To illustrate this it will be sufficient to relate the iconic to the characterizing sign, and to dis\rquote }{\fs22\cgrid0 tinguish the icon from the symbol. \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx805\tx963\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \ldblquote \lquote Foundations for the Theory of Signs.\rdblquote }{\i\cgrid0 op. cit., }{\fs24\cgrid0 p. 58. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx782\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2426\tqdec\tx6661\adjustright {\i\fs24\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs22\cgrid0 85 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 A characterizing sign [he says] characterizes that which it can de\- note. Such a sign may do this by exhibiting in itself the properties an object must have to be denoted by it, and in this case the characterizing sign is an }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 icon; }{\fs24\cgrid0 if this is not so, the characterizing sign may be called a } {\i\fs24\cgrid0 symbol. }{\fs24\cgrid0 A photograph, a star chart, a model, a chemical diagram, are icons, while the word \ldblquote photograph,\rdblquote the names of the stars and of chemical elements are symbols. \par \par }\pard \qj\fi386\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The terminology is quite special. Icon is the Greek (Eik on) for a sculptured figure. Ordinarily a symbol is what Mr. Morris claims for the icon: it exhibits in itself the qualities it stands for\emdash like Christ on the Cross\emdash or it represents by convention something other than itself, like 2 pi r for the cir\-circumference of a circle. But here the terms are roughly equivalent, icon to image, symbol to concept; but only toughly, since in Mr. }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 4}{\fldrslt\f3\fs8}}}{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 }{\fs24\cgrid0 Morris\rquote s list of symbols \ldblquote photo\-graph\rdblquote is not any particular photograph, while the name of a star must be the name of a particular star. There is a fundamental obscurity, that we shall have to pass over, in attributing to verbal language a thoroughly }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 iconic }{\fs24\cgrid0 prop\-erty. In the list of icons, there are }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 a }{ \fs24\cgrid0 photograph, }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 a }{\fs24\cgrid0 star chart, }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 a }{\fs24\cgrid0 model, }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 a }{\fs24\cgrid0 chemical diagram\emdash all of them spatial and per\-ceptual objects\emdash but while language is always used in a spa\-tial setting, words appear in temporal sequence and have only the spatial character of their occasion. We cannot }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 see }{\fs24\cgrid0 the properties of words in the words. We have simply got to know }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 what }{\fs24\cgrid0 the words convey. The phrase \ldblquote a star chart\rdblquote is not a star chart itself. Mr. Morris appears to have found in the term }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 icon, }{\fs24\cgrid0 at any rate so far as it pertains to }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 aes\-thetics, merely a convenient evasion of the term image; for image would doubtless have held him to the old ontological aesthetics. \par }\pard \qj\fi255\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx425\tx680\adjustright {\f1\fs8\cgrid0 The essay, \ldblquote Esthetics and the Theory of Signs,\rdblquote deals with the specific problem \ldblquote of stating the differentia of the esthetic sign.\rdblquote Mr. Morris is constantly reminding us that iconic signs appear in all discourse, and that all discourse is by \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx425\tx680\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx924\tx2828\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \tab 86\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx805\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 no means aesthetic discourse. Yet the special function of the iconic sign makes it possible for us to use it as the aesthetic sign; and that function is stated in a \ldblquote semantical rule\rdblquote : \par \par The semantical rule for the use of an iconic sign is that it denotes any o1)je(:t which has the properties (in practice, a selection from the properties) which it itself has. Hence when an interpreter am prehends an iconic sign-vehicle he apprehends direc tly what is (lesignated; here mediated and unmediated taking account of cer\-tain properties both occur; put in still other terms, every iconic sign has its own sign-vehicle among its denotata. \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 This is a difficult conception; perhaps it can be illustrated \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 with a few lines of verse: \par \par }\pard \qj\fi516\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1298\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 That time of year thou mayst in me behold \par When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang \par Upon those boughs which shake against the cold }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1298\adjustright {\f1\fs8\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 According to Mr. Morris, the sign-vehicle here would be the leaves hanging on the boughs. This verbal sign-vehicle has the \ldblquote properties\rdblquote of the natural objects which it designates; and that which it denotes is in the designation itself. That is, leaves-bough does not point to a definite situation or condi\-tion beyond itself: we get \ldblquote directly what is designated\rdblquote be\- cause it is of the nature of the iconic sign to contain its own }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 denotaturn. }{\fs24\cgrid0 (I have simplified this analysis by ignoring \ldblquote That time of year,\rdblquote which I believe would make it im\- possible to apply Mr. Morris\rquote s terms coherently.) \par }\pard \qj\fi284\sl-408\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx691\tx975\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The treatment of\rquote the iconic sign in semiotic is myste\- rious. If any generalization about it is legitimate, we may surmise that certain terms, which Mr. Morris calls \ldblquote pri\-mary terms,\rdblquote are untranslatable; that is to say, they cannot be handled by any principle of reduction; they have a cer \-tain completeness and finality. They denote themselves; certain iconic signs seem to be such terms. They are sign\-}{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 5 }{\fs22\cgrid0 There seems to be evidence in this clause that Mr. Morris is not interested \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx788\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 in syntactics. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx788\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2432\tqdec\tx6695\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs22\cgrid0 87 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 vehicles for images, and our apprehension of them is direct. For while the iconic sign may denote something beyond it\- self, its specific character as an iconic sign is that part of what it denotes is the sign itself. \ldblquote These facts,\rdblquote says Mr. Morris, \ldblquote ta ken alone, do not delimit the esthetic sign, for blueprints, photographs, and scientific models are all iconic signs\emdash but seldom works of art.\rdblquote He continues in a passage of great interest: \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx357\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 If, however, the designatum of an iconic sign be a }{\i\cgrid0 value }{\fs24\cgrid0 [italics m ine] (and of course not all iconic signs designate values), the situation is changed: there is now not merely the designation of value properties (for such designation takes place even in science), nor merely the functioning of iconic signs (for these as such need not be esthetic signs), but there is the direct apprehension of value properties through the very presence of that which itself has the value it designates. \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 There are thus three steps in the \ldblquote delimitation\rdblquote of the aes\-thetic sign: First, it is an iconic sign; secondly, it is an iconic sign which designates a value; thirdly, it is an iconic sign which designates a value in the sign itself, so that our \ldblquote apprehension\rdblquote of that value is unmediated, that is, }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 direct. }{\fs24\cgrid0 The difficulties created by this aesthetic doctrine are slip\-pery and ambiguous. We may, for convenience, see them in two ways. The first set of problems lies in the term \ldblquote appre\-hension\rdblquote ; the second, in the term \ldblquote value.\rdblquote \par }\pard \qj\fi187\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The primary meaning of apprehension is a grasping or a taking hold of. Wh at does Mr. Morris mean? If it means taking hold of by means of perception, we are asked to see ourselves }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 perceiving a value; }{\fs24\cgrid0 but a value cannot be an object of perception. If, however, apprehension means a direct, un\- mediated knowledge of a value, then there is an act of evalu\-ation involved which implies the presence of a knowing mind. For the implied \ldblquote semantical rule\rdblquote for the aesthetic sign obviously forbids us to check the value wholly in terms of a situation external to the properties of the sign itself. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx538\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx1014\tx2925\adjustright {\b\fs18\cgrid0 \tab 88\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx827\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 We have got to }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 know }{\fs24\cgrid0 the value in itself; and only in an act of cognition can we know it. But if Mr. Morris means by apprehension the response, or mere \ldblquote interpretant,\rdblquote of semi\-osis, it is difficult to see how a mere response can be se\- mantically correct unless the sign-vehicle points to a situation outside itself in terms of which the response is relevant. If there is no such situation, is not the interpretant a piece of insanity? \par }\pard \qj\fi159\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx816\tx975\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 I cannot see how there can be any direct apprehension unless there is an agency to do the apprehending; and the interpretant is not an agent, it is a response. \ldblquote One additional point may be noted to confirm the sign status of the work of art: The artist often draws attention to the sign-vehicle in such a way as to prevent the interpreter from merely reacting to it as an object and not as a sign. }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . .\ldblquote }{\fs24\cgrid0 Mr. Morris\rquote s phrases, \ldblquote in such a way,\rdblquote \ldblquote so used that,\rdblquote remain painfully evasive. What is that way? Now, if the preventive factor is inherent in the work of art, why did not the birds refrain from trying to eat the grapes in Zeuxis\rquote s picture? The citizens of Athens did not mistake the sign-vehicle for an object. Why? Because they }{\i\cgrid0 knew }{ \fs24\cgrid0 the difference. \par }\pard \qj\fi238\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx799\tx1037\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Mr. Mbrris\rquote s theory of value will further illuminate his difficulty. It is an \ldblquote interest\rdblquote theory of value for which he acknowledges an indebtedness to the pragmatic tradition of Mead and Dewey. Objects, according to this ancient theory, have value in relation to interests. \ldblquote Values,\rdblquote says Mr. Morris, are consummatory properties of objects or situations which answer to the consummation of interested acts.\rdblquote If I satisfy my hunger by eating a banana, the banana has value in rela\-tion to the specific interest, hunger. Do es it follow that we have similar aesthetic interests, which we similarly satisfy? No specific aesthetic interest appears in semiosis. The aes\-thetic satisfaction proceeds from the frustration of \ldblquote real\rdblquote in\- terests, from the blockage of interests as they drive onward to real \ldblquote consummations.\rdblquote The aesthetic sign is a value that \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx799\tx1037\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2432\tqdec\tx6695\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Lirerature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs22\cgrid0 89 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx436\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 has not been consummated. Art is the expression of what \par men desire but are not getting. \par }\pard \qj\fi301\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx436\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 There are two passages in \ldblquote Esthetics and the Theory of Signs\rdblquote which reveal the fundamental ambiguity in Mr. Mor\-ris\rquote s conception of the aesthetic sign as a \ldblquote value.\rdblquote We shall be struck, I believe, by the remarkable parallel between Mr. Morris\rquote s view of the aesthetic medium and the neo\-classical view, which we saw in Matthew Arnold. \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx436\tx737\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx464\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Even though the complexity of the total icon is so very great that no denotatum (other than the esthetic sign vehicle itself) can in actuality be found, the work of art can still be }{ \fs22\cgrid0 consideredl a sign\emdash }{\fs24\cgrid0 for there can be designation without dienotation. \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx436\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 But can the aesthetic sign\emdash and this is the center of the prob\-lem\emdash designate an interest \ldblquote value\rdblquote if it does not point to an interest? It seems to me that it cannot be a value in any \ldblquote interest\rdblquote theory of value whatever. And when the aesthetic sign is so complex that it does not lead to denotation, is not this complexity a semantical failure so great that Mr. Morris actually ought to take it to an institution for the insane? \par }\pard \qj\fi255\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx425\tx680\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The traditional prestige of }{\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 the arts is formidable; so, rather than commit himself to his logic of the aesthetic sign as a designation of a value which cannot be located and which thus cannot be an interest value, he offers us the ordinary procedure of positivism; that is to say, he shows us how we may reduce the aesthetic sign to a }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 denotatum }{\fs24\cgrid0 after all. \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx425\tx680\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx425\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Since a statement must say something about something, it must involve signs for locating what is referred to, and such signs are ultimately indexical signs [i.e., \ldblquote pointing \rdblquote signs]. An iconic sign in isolation cannot then be a statement, and a work of art, con\-ceived as an iconic sign, cannot be true in the semantical sense of the term. Nevertheless, the statement that a work of art is \ldblquote true\rdblquote might under analysis turn out to be an elliptical form of syntac\-tical, semantical, or pragmatical statements. Thus semantically }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 it \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx425\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx963\tx2891\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 \tab 90\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx759\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 might be intended to affirm that the work in question actually is \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx805\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 iconic of the value structure of a certain object or situation. }{\f1\fs10\cgrid0 . }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 - \-}{\fs24\cgrid0 The work of art is elliptical and iconic; that is, it is an image from which the semantical dimension is omitted, or in which it remains vague. By translating the icon, by ex\-panding it and filling it in with a }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 denotatum, }{\fs24\cgrid0 we construct a situation external to the work of art: a situation which replaces it. In the usual terms of literary criticism, this situ\-ation is tile \ldblquote subject\rdblquote which exists outside the language of the poem. For the language is merely \ldblquote iconic of\rdblquote this ordinary prose subject. \par }\pard \qj\fi243\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx805\tx1048\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 So }{\fs24\cgrid0 a neoclassical theory of poetic language not only gave the case for poetry away to the scientist; it has become the foundation of the scientists\rquote theory of poetry. When Mr. Richards remarked, in }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Science and Poetry, }{\fs24\cgrid0 that we were now getting on a large scale \ldblquote genuine knowledge\rdblquote which would soon reduce poetry to the level of the \ldblquote pseudo-state\-ment,\rdblquote we could not see how right he was: right\emdash from the point of view of neoclassical theory. So long as the scienti\-fic procedu re was observation, description, and classification, it was not very different from the procedure of common sense and, its feeling for the reality of ordinary experience. As late as the first edition }{\fs22\cgrid0 (1892) }{\fs24\cgrid0 of }{ \i\fs24\cgrid0 The Grammar of Sci\-ence, }{\fs24\cgrid0 Karl Pearson said: \ldblquote The aesthetic judgment pro\-nounces for or against the interpretation of the creative im\-agination according as that interpretation embodies or con\- tradicts the phenomena of life, which we ourselves have ol)served.\rquote But from the point of view of Unified Sci ence, this principle of common-sense observation will no longer serve; it does not go far enough. And so we have a dilemma. Since the language of poetry can be shown to be not strictly relevant to objects and situations as these are presented by the posit ivist techniques, poetry becomes either nonsense or hortatory rhetoric. \par }\pard \qj\fi272\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The semiotic approach to aesthetics \ldblquote has the merit of \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2432\tqdec\tx6627\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 91 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx436\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 concreteness\rdblquote ; yet we have seen that Mr. Morris never quite \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx334\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 gets around to a specific work of art. In \ldblquote Science, Art, and Technology,\rdblquote he distinguishes three primary forms of dis\-course and relates them to the three dimensions of semiosis: \par }\pard \qj\fi-380\nowidctlpar\tx583\tx963\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 (i)\tab Scientific discourse: semantical dimension. \par }{\fs22\cgrid0 (2)\tab }{\fs24\cgrid0 Aesthetic discourse: syntactical dimension. \par }\pard \qj\fi-278\nowidctlpar\tx685\tx963\adjustright {\fs36\cgrid0 (3)\tab }{\fs24\cgrid0 Technological discourse: pragmatical dimension. \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx334\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 We have seen that the iconic sign is semantically weak; so the aesthetic sign, a variety of iconic sign, must function primarily at the syntactical level; that is, if we look at it \ldblquote indexically\rdblquote it \ldblquote points\rdblquote first of all to itself. Looking at the aesthetic" sign from this point of view, we are forced to see that it wholly lacks cognitive content, and it is subject to the operation of \ldblquote transformation rules.\rdblquote Does the \ldblquote concreteness\rdblquote of the semiotic app roach to art consist in this? Again, is the syntactical dimension that in which direct apprehension of the aesthetic sign is possible? Once more it must be said that this direct apprehension seems impossible unless there is an agency of apprehension \emdash a knowing mind; without this we get only an \ldblquote interpretant,\rdblquote which is conceivable only at the pragmatic level; and if the interpretant is intelligible, it is so in terms, of semantical relevance, or of the scientific form of discourse. For Mr. Morris himself confesses: }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . . }{\fs24\cgrid0 in so far as the knowledge of value which art gives is the more than the having of value [i.e., is the }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 knowing }{\fs24\cgrid0 of value] there is no reason to suppose that this knowledge is }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 other than scientific in character.\rdblquote \par }\pard \qj\fi187\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 It is significant here that Mr. Morris conceives the char\- acter of poetry in the relation of pragmatics and semantics. What is our response to poetry and how do we behave when we read it: what, in a word, does it lead to? There is a certain uneasy piety in the extravagant claim that poet ry is the realm of values; and there is no way, I think, to get around the conclusion that, since the values are not attached to reality, they are irresponsible feelings. They are, in fact, rhetoric. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx538\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx924\tx2828\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \tab 92\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 And it is also significant that for Mr. Morris the study of rhetoric is a branch of pragmatics; it is even a kind of techno\-logical instrument. For, in the essay, \ldblquote Science, Art, and Tech\-nology,\rdblquote poetry seems to acquire its main responsibility in the technological function of telling us what we }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 ought }{\fs24\cgrid0 to want and do. Here again neoclassical didacticism appears in terms of a rigorous instrumentalism. \par }\pard \qj\fi238\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1020\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Does the language of poetry mean what it says, or does it mean the \ldblquote situation\rdblquote that we get from it in a proces s of reduction? Although we have seen Mr. Morris\rquote s bias, we have also seen that he has not made up his mind: he would like to have it both ways. The origin of this dilemma is remote. But there is always \ldblquote the sad ghost of Coleridge beckoning from the shades.\rdblquote \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1020\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1020\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 IV \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1020\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\fi278\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx685\tx963\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The famous Chapter XIV of }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Biographia Literaria }{\fs24\cgrid0 has been the background of the criticism of poetry for more than a hundred years. Its direct influence has been very great; its indirect influence, through Poe upon Baudelaire, and through the French s ymbolists down to contemporary English and American poets, has perhaps been even greater. This chapter is the most influential statement on poetry ever formulated by an English critic: its insights, when we have them, are ours, and ours too its contradict ions. Yet the re\-markable \ldblquote definition\rdblquote of poetry, which I shall now quote, is not, as we shall presently see, the chief source of the aesthetic dilemma that we inherit today. (That source is another passage.) Here is the definition: \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx685\tx963\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx714\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 A }{\fs22\cgrid0 poem is }{\fs24\cgrid0 that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 immediate }{\fs24\cgrid0 object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species\emdash (having this object in common with it)\emdash it is distinguished by proposing to itself such delight }{\fs22\cgrid0 from }{\fs24\cgrid0 the }{\i\cgrid0 whole, }{\fs24\cgrid0 as is compatible with a distinct gratification from }{\fs22\cgrid0 each component }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 part. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx714\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2432\tqdec\tx6627\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs22\cgrid0 93 \par \par }\pard \qj\fi277\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx306\tx583\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Much of the annoyance and misunderstanding caused by this passage has not been Coleridge\rquote s fault; but is rather due to the failure of literary men to observe the accurate use of }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 species. }{\fs24\cgrid0 For Coleridge is giving us a strict Aristotelian defini\-tion of a }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 species }{\fs24\cgrid0 within a given }{ \i\fs24\cgrid0 genus. }{\fs24\cgrid0 It is not a qualitative statement, and it does not answer the question: }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 What }{\fs24\cgrid0 is poetry? The }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 whatness }{\fs24\cgrid0 of poetry does not come within the definition; and I believe that nowhere else does Coleridge offer us an explicit qualitative distinction between poetry and other \ldblquote species of composition\rdblquote which may be \ldblquote opposed\rdblquote to it. \par }\pard \qj\fi187\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 For what is Coleridge saying? (I have never seen a literal reading of the passage by any critic.) There is the generic division: composition. A poem is a species within the genus; but so is a work of science. How are the two species distin\-guished? By th eir immediate objects. It is curious that Cole\-ridge phrases the passage as if a poem were a person \ldblquote pro\-posing\rdblquote to himself a certain end, pleasure; so for }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 object }{\fs24\cgrid0 we have got to read }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 effect. }{\fs24\cgrid0 A poem, then, differs from a work of science in its immediate effect upon us; and that immedi\- ate effect is pleasure. But other species of composition may aim at the effect of pleasure. A poem differs from these in the relation of part to whole: the parts must give us a dis\-tinct pleasure, moment by moment, and they are not to be conceived as subordinate to the whole; they make up the whole. \par If there is an objective relation of part to whole, Cole\-ridge does not say what it is; nor does he distinguish that relation in terms of any specific poetic work. It is strictly a q uantitative analogy taken, perhaps, from geometry. And the only purpose it serves is this: in the paragraph following the \ldblquote definition\rdblquote he goes on to say that \ldblquote the philosophic critics of all ages coincide\rdblquote in asserting that beautiful, isolated lines or distichs are not a poem, and that neither is \ldblquote an unsustained composition\rdblquote of uninteresting parts a }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 \ldblquote legitimate }{\fs24\cgrid0 poem.\rdblquote \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx6117\tx11281\adjustright {\b\f1\fs40\cgrid0 \tab I\tab }{\f1\fs42\cgrid0 \emdash \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx1082\tx2993\adjustright {\f1\fs42\cgrid0 \tab }{\i\cgrid0 94\tab Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx204\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 What we have here, then, is a sound but ordinary critical insight; but because it is merely an extension of the pleasure principle implicit in the \ldblquote definition,\rdblquote we are not prepared by it to distinguish objectively a poem from any other form of expression. The distinction lies in the effect, and it is a psy\-chological effect. In investigating the differentia of poetry\emdash as Mr. Morris would put it\emdash we are eventually led away from }{\fs22\cgrid0 the poem into what }{\fs24\cgrid0 has been known since Coleridge\rquote s time as the psychology of poetry. \par }\pard \qj\fi306\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx306\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The difficulties of this theory Coleridge seems not to have been aware of; yet he illustrates them perfectly. In the second paragraph after the famous definition he writes this remarkable passage: \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx306\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx204\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The first chapter of Isaiah\emdash (indeed a very large portion of the }{\fs22\cgrid0 whole book)\emdash is poetry in the most emphatic sense; yet it would be no less irrational than strange to assert, that pleasure, not truth, was the immediate object of the prophet. In short, whatever spe\-cific import we attac h to the word, Poetry, there will be found involved in it, as a necessary consequence, that a poem of any }{\fs24\cgrid0 length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry. Yet if an har\- monious whole is to be produced, the remaining parts must be preserved in keeping with the poetry; and this can no otherwise be effected than by such a studied selection and artificial arrange\- ment, as will partake of one, though not a peculiar property of }{\fs22\cgrid0 poetry. And this again can be no other than the property of ex\-}{\fs24\cgrid0 citing a more continuous and equal attention than the language }{\fs22\cgrid0 of prose aims at, whether colloquial or written. \par \par }\pard \qj\fi277\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx277\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 This is probably the most confused statement ever uttered by a great critic, and it has probably done more damage to critical thought than anything else said by an y critic. Isaiah is poetry in \ldblquote the most emphatic sense,\rdblquote although his immediate object (effect) is truth. It will be observed that, whereas in the definition our attention is drawn to a species of composition, a poem, we are here confronted with the \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx277\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2517\tqdec\tx6774\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\fs22\cgrid0 95 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx436\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 personage, Isaiah, who does have the power of proposing an object; and Isaiah\rquote s immediate object is truth. But are we to suppose that the effect of the poem and the object of the prophet are to be apprehended in the same way? Is our ex\- perience of truth the same as our experience of pleasure? If there is a difference between truth and pleasure, and if an immediate effect of pleasure is the specific \ldblquote property\rdblquote of poetry (how a property can be an effect it is difficult to see), how can the first chapter of Isaiah be poetry at all? It cannot be, looked at in these terms; and as a matter of fact Coleridge rather slyly withdraws his compliment to Isaiah when he goes on to say that a \ldblquote poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry.\rdblquote Isaiah is not all poetry; he is partly truth, or even mostly truth. And the ele\- ment of truth, while it is strictly speaking insubordinate and unassimilable, can be used by means of an artificial arrange\-ment\emdash meter. There is no doubt that meter does on the whole what Coleridge attributes to it: it demands a \ldblquote continuous and equal attention.\rdblquote Does he mean to say that the insub\-ordinate element of truth\emdash insubordinate to the immediate effect of pleasure\emdash should be given such conspicuous em\-phasis? Or does he perhaps mean that the attention will be fixed upon the metrical pattern, so that the nonpoetic ele\-ment will be less conspicuous? \par }\pard \qj\fi351\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx334\tx685\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Coleridge\rquote s theory of meter is not quite pertinent here: \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx334\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 in the later and more elaborate discussion of meter in }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Bi\-ographia Literaria }{\fs24\cgrid0 there is the general conclusion that meter is indispensable to poetry. In Chapter XIV, now being exam\-ined, he speaks of meter as \ldblquote an artificial arrangement }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . \par }{\fs24\cgrid0 not a peculiar property of poetry.\rdblquote \par }\pard \qj\fi187\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 There is, then, in Coleridge\rquote s poetic theory a persistent dilemma. }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 He cannot make up his mind whether the spe\- cifically poetic element is an objective feature of the poem, or is distinguishable only as a subjective effect. }{\fs24\cgrid0 He cannot, \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx351\tx538\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx958\tx2862\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \tab 96\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx759\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 in short, choose between metaphysics and psychology. His general emphasis is psychological, with metaphysical am\-}{\fs22\cgrid0 biguities. \par }\pard \qj\fi238\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1020\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The distinction between Fancy and Imagination is ul\-timately a psychological one: he discusses the problem in }{\fs22\cgrid0 terms of separate facu lties, and the objective poetical prop\-erties, presumably resulting from the use of these faculties, }{\fs24\cgrid0 are never defined, but are given only occasional illustration. (I have in mind his magnificent analysis of \ldblquote Venus and Adonis, \rdblquote the value of which lies less perhaps in the critical principles he supposes he is illustrating, than in the perfect taste with which he selects the good passages for admiration.) }{\fs22\cgrid0 When Coleridge speaks of the }{\fs24\cgrid0 \ldblquote esemplastic power\rdblquote of the Imagination, it is always a \ldblquote faculty\rdblquote of the mind, not an objective poetic order. When he says that a poem gives us \ldblquote a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order,\rdblquote we acknowledge the fact, without being able to dis\-cern in the merely comparative degree of the adjective the fundamental difference between the poetic and the philo\- sophic powers }{\fs22\cgrid0 which Coleridge frequently asserts, but which }{\fs24\cgrid0 he nowhere objectively establishes. The psychological bias of his \ldblquote system\rdblquote is perfectly revealed in this summary passage }{\fs22\cgrid0 of Chapter XIV: \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1020\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx788\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 My own conclusio ns on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of the word, have been in part anticipated in some of the remarks on the Fancy andl Imagination in the early part of this work. What is l)oetry?\emdash is so nearly the same question with, what is a }{ \fs24\cgrid0 poet?\emdash that the answer to the one is involved in the solution to }{\fs22\cgrid0 the other. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius }{\fs24\cgrid0 itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, and emo\- tions of the poet\rquote s own mind. \par \par }\pard \qj\fi272\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 There can be little doubt that Coleridge\rquote s failure to get \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx799\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 out of the dilemma of Intellect-or-Feeling has been passed \par on to us as a fatal legacy. If the first object of poetry is an \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx799\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx799\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 Literature as Knowledge \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx6650\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 97 \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 effect, and if that effect is pleasure, does it not necessarily follow that t ruth and knowledge may be better set forth in some other order altogether? It is, true that Coleridge made extravagant claims for a poetic order of truth, and it is upon these claims that Mr. I. }{\fs22\cgrid0 A. Richards has based his fine book, }{ \i\fs24\cgrid0 Coleridge on Imagination: }{\fs24\cgrid0 Mr. Richards\rquote s own testimony is that the claims were not coherent. The coherent part of Coleridge\rquote s theory is the fatal dilemma that }{\fs22\cgrid0 I have described. Truth is only the secondary consideration of the poet, and }{\fs24\cgrid0 from the point of view of positivism the knowledge, or truth, that poetry gives us is immature and inadequate. What of the primary consideration of the poet \emdash pleasure? \par }\pard \qj\fi222\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx583\tx805\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Pleasure is the single qualitative feature of Coleridge\rquote s famous definition; but it is not }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 in }{\fs22\cgrid0 the definition objectively. }{ \fs24\cgrid0 And with the }{\fs22\cgrid0 development of modern psychology it has }{\fs24\cgrid0 ceased to be qualitative, even subjectively. It is a }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 response. }{\fs24\cgrid0 The fate of Coleridge\rquote s system, then, has been its gradual extinction in the terminology of experimental psychology. The poetry has been extinguished in the poet. The poetic \ldblquote effect\rdblquote is a \ldblquote response\rdblquote to a \ldblquote stimulus\rdblquote ; and in the early works of Mr. Richards we get for the first time the questions, rigorously applied: Is the poetic response relevant to the real world? Is it relevant to action? Poetry has come under the general idea of \ldblquote operational validity. \rdblquote So we must turn briefly to Mr. Richards. \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx583\tx805\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx583\tx805\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 V \par }\pard \qj\fi244\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx447\tx691\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 In }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Science and Poetry }{\fs22\cgrid0 (i }{\fs24\cgrid0 926) Mr. Richards condensed in untechnical language the position that he had set forth in detail earlier, in }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 The Principles of Literary Criticism. }{\fs24\cgrid0 The positivist side of Mr. Richards\rquote s thought at that time is plainly revealed in a passage like this: \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx447\tx691\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx538\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 You contrive not to laugh [in church]; but there is no doubt about the activity of the impulses in their restricted form. The much more subt le and elaborate impulses which a poem excites are not \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx538\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx924\tx2828\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \tab 98\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx788\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 different in principle. }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 They do not show themselves as a rule, they do not come out into the open, largely because they are so com\-plex. }{\fs24\cgrid0 [Italics mine.] When they have adjusted themselves to one another and become organized into a coherent whole, the needs concerned may be satisfied. }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 In }{\i\cgrid0 a fully developed man a state of }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 readiness for action will take the place of action when the full appropriate situation for action is not present.}{\i\fs24\super\cgrid0 6 }{\fs24\cgrid0 [Mr. Richards\rquote s }{\fs22\cgrid0 italics.] \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx759\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 The mere state of readiness for action is the poetic experi\-ence in terms of value and relevance. The readiness points to the \ldblquote direct apprehension\rdblquote of an interest value in Mr. }{\fs22\cgrid0 Morris\rquote s sense; but the failure of the action to come off, the }{\fs24\cgrid0 lack of the \ldblquote full appropriate situation for action,\rdblquote indicates the absence of a }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 denotatum. }{\fs24\cgrid0 We receive the designation of a value without being provided with a situation in which we can act upon it. The remarkable parallel between Mr. Rich\-ards\rquote s early theories of poetry and the recent theories of Mr. Morris need not detain us. It is enough to point out that Mr. Richards anticipated fifteen years ago everything that Mr. Morris\rquote s science of semiotic has to say about the language of poetry. \par }\pard \qj\fi272\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 I have italicized a sentence, in the quotation from Mr. Richards, for two reasons: first, the vagueness of the lan\-}{\fs22\cgrid0 guage is significant; secondly, the idea of the coherent whole }{\fs24\cgrid0 into which the \ldblquote impulses\rdblquote are organized has no experimental }{\fs22\cgrid0 basis in terms of impulses. Mr. }{\fs24\cgrid0 John Crowe Ransom remarks that Mr. Richards never shows us }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 how }{\fs22\cgrid0 this ordering act of }{\fs24\cgrid0 poetry upon our minds takes place, and then proceeds to discern the reason for Mr. Richards\rquote s vague statements about the conduct of poetic stimulation and response: \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx737\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx788\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 Most readers will retort, of course, that in the very large majority }{\fs24\cgrid0 of cases the spiritual happenings are the only happenings we have }{\fs22\cgrid0 observed, and }{ \i\fs24\cgrid0 the neural happenings are simply what the be- \par \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx759\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 6 }{\i\cgrid0 Science and Poetry, }{\fs24\cgrid0 pp. }{\fs22\cgrid0 28\emdash 29. \par }{\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2517\tqdec\tx6774\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 99 \par \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx436\adjustright {\i\fs24\cgrid0 haviorists would like to observe. }{\fs22\cgrid0 [Italics mine.] At present the \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx589\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 mental datum is the fact and the neural datum is the inference.}{\fs22\super\cgrid0 7}{\fs22\cgrid0 \par \par }\pard \qj\fi318\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx464\tx782\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 In throwing out the mental fact Mr. Richards in his early writings preceded Mr. Morris in his rejection of the cogni\- tive powers of the mind. I do not suggest any direct influence from Mr. Richards upon Mr. Morris, although Mr. Morris has acknowledged the work of his predecessor: it is easier to relate these men to a much wider movement. That move\- ment is positivism, and it is more than a strict scientific method. \par }\pard \qj\fi255\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx425\tx680\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 It is a general attitude towards experience. If it is not, why should Mr. Richards have attempted in his early criti\- cism to represent the total poetic experience and even the structure of poetry in one of the positivist languages\emdash ex\-perimental psychology? It was representation by anal6gy. The experimental basis for such a representation was wholly lacking. Mr. Richards, had we listened hard enough, was saying in }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 The Principles of Literary Criticism }{\fs24\cgrid0 and }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Science and Poetry }{\fs24\cgrid0 that here at last is what poetry would be if we could only reduce it to the same laboratory technique that we use in psychology; and without warning to the unwary reader, whose credulity was already prepared by his own positivist }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 zeitgeist, }{\fs24\cgrid0 Mr. Richards went on to state \ldblquote results\rdblquote that looked like the results of an experiment; but the ex\-periment had never been made. It had been inferred. The \ldblquote impulses\rdblquote that we feel in response to a poem, says Mr. Richards, \ldblquote do not show themselves as a rule\rdblquote There is no scientific evidence that they have ever shown themselves to Mr. Richards or to anybody else. Mr. Richards like a good positivist was the victim of a deep-seated compulsive analogy, an elusive but all-engrossing assumption that all experience \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx425\tx680\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\fi176\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx311\tx487\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 7 }{\fs22\cgrid0 \ldblquote A Psychologist Looks at Poetry.\rdblquote }{\i\cgrid0 The World\rquote s Body, }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 p. }{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 147. }{ \b\fs18\cgrid0 This essay is \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx425\adjustright {\b\fs18\cgrid0 the most searching examination of Mr. Richards\rquote s position\emdash or positions\emdash that \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx419\adjustright {\b\fs18\cgrid0 I have seen; but it does somewhat less than full justice to Mr. Richards\rquote s \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx425\adjustright {\b\fs18\cgrid0 insights. \par }{\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx963\tx2715\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 \tab 100\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx691\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 can be reduced to what is actually the very limited frame of reference supplied by a doctrine of correlation, or of the }{\fs22\cgrid0 relevance of stimulus to response. This early procedure of Mr. Richards\rquote s was not even empiricism, for in empiricism }{\fs24\cgrid0 the cognitive intelligence is not eliminated in the pursuit of }{\fs22\cgrid0 verifiable facts. Mr. Richards, like } {\fs24\cgrid0 Mr. Morris after him, }{\fs22\cgrid0 eliminated cognition without de.monstrating experimentally the }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 data }{\fs22\cgrid0 of his behavioristic poetics. So this doctrine was not empiricism: }{\fs24\cgrid0 it came out of the demireligion of positivism. The poetry had been absorbed into a pseudo-scientific jargon, no more \ldblquote relevant\rdblquote to poetry than the poetic pseudo-state\- ment was relevant to the world: the net result was zero from both points }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 of }{\b\fs16\cgrid0 view \par }\pard \qj\fi193\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx589\tx782\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 I have put this }{\fs24\cgrid0 brief conunentary on Mr. Richards\rquote s early }{\fs22\cgrid0 poetics in the past tense because }{\fs24\cgrid0 it is no longer his poetics. }{\fs22\cgrid0 From 1q26, }{\fs24\cgrid0 the year of }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Science and Poetry, }{\fs22\cgrid0 he has come a long way. It is perhaps not an extravagant claim to make for Mr. Richards\rquote s intellectual history, that it will probably turn out to be the most instructive, among critics, of our age. His great intellectual powers, his learning, his devotion }{\fs24\cgrid0 to poetry\emdash a devotion somewhat frustrated but as marked }{ \fs22\cgrid0 fifteen years ago as now\emdash are qualities of an intellectual hon\-esty rare in any age. In exactly ten years, from 1926, he }{\fs24\cgrid0 arrived, in }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 The Philosophy of Rhetoric }{\fs24\cgrid0 (1936), at such a }{ \fs22\cgrid0 statement as this: \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx589\tx782\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx589\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 So }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 far }{\fs22\cgrid0 from verbal language being a \ldblquote compromise for a language of intuition\rdblquote \emdash a thin, but better-than-nothing, substitute for real expericnce\emdash language, well used, is a }{\i\cgrid0 completion }{\fs22\cgrid0 and does what the intuitions of sensation by themselves cannot do. Words are the }{\fs24\cgrid0 meeting points at which regions of experience which can never }{\fs22\cgrid0 combine in sensation or intuition, come together. They are the occasion and means of that growth which is the mind\rquote s endless }{\fs24\cgrid0 endeavor to order itself. That is why we have language. }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 It is no }{\i\cgrid0 mere signalling }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 system. }{\fs24\cgrid0 [Italics mine.] It is the instrument of all our distinctively human development, of everything in which we go beyond the animals. [pp. 130\emdash 131.] \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx589\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx589\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 101 \par }{\i\cgrid0 Literature as Knowledge \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx589\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx306\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 These words should be read and reread with the greatest care by critics who still cite the early Richards as the con\- tinuing head of a positivist tradition in criticism. There is, in this passage, first of all, an implicit repudiation of the leading doctrine of }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 The Principles of Literary Criticism. }{\fs24\cgrid0 The early doctrine did look upon poetic language as a \ldblquote substitute for real experience,\rdblquote if by experience is meant responses relevant to scientifically ascertained facts and situ\-ations: this early doctrine, as I have i ndicated, anticipated in psychological terms Mr. Morris\rquote s poetic doctrine of desig\-nation without }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 denotatum, }{\fs24\cgrid0 of value without consummation of value, of interpretant without an interpreter. Mr. Rich\-ards\rquote s more familiar equivalents of the semiotic terms were: \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx272\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 pseudo-statement without referents; poetry as the orderer of our minds, as the valuer, although the ordering mysteriously }{\fs24\cgrid0 operated in fictions irrelevant to the real world; a response, a }{\fs22\cgrid0 behavioristic \ldblquote readiness for action,\rdblquote without a knowing mind. \par }\pard \qj\fi148\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx277\tx425\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Language, says Mr. Richards, \ldblquote is no mere signalling sys\-tem.\rdblquote With that sentence the early psychological doctrine is discreetly put away. Is it too much to assume that the ad\-jective }{\fs22\cgrid0 \ldblquote signalling\rdblquote may indicate the relation of Mr. Rich\-}{\fs24\cgrid0 ards\rquote s present views t o the pragmatic bias of Mr. Morris\rquote s aes\-thetics? He speaks of the inadequacy of \ldblquote sensation\rdblquote and \ldblquote in\-tuition,\rdblquote and of the equal inadequacy of \ldblquote intuitions of sensa\-tion.\rdblquote Is not the mere sensation Mr. Morris\rquote s interpretant, the intuition of sensation his iconic sign? What is the \ldblquote com\-pletion\rdblquote which language \ldblquote well used\rdblquote can achieve beyond sensation and intuition? \par It is doubtless knowledge of a kind that we can discuss only if we assume the action of a knowing mind. Of what is it the completion? In the paragraph following the passage that I have just quoted, Mr. Richards cites Coleridge: \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx277\tx425\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx277\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Are not words parts and germinations of the plant? And what is the law of their growth? In something of this sort I would destroy the old antithesis of Words and Things: eleva ting, as it were, Words into Things and living things too. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx277\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx1094\tx2891\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 \tab 102\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par \par }\pard \qj\fi250\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx759\tx1009\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 This attribution to the. language of poetry of a special kind of \ldblquote life\rdblquote goes back to Mr. Richards\rquote s }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Coleridge on Imagina\-tion } {\b\fs18\cgrid0 (1935 }{\fs24\cgrid0 ), the most ambitious attempt of a modern critic to force into unity the antithesis of language and subject, of pleasure and truth. It is an antithesis which, as we have seen, }{\fs22\cgrid0 has harassed critical theory since the time of Coleridge. Mr. Richar(lss book may be looked upon as }{\fs24\cgrid0 an effort to finish }{\fs22\cgrid0 Coleridge\rquote s own }{\fs24\cgrid0 uncompleted struggle with this neoclassical dilemma. This is not the place to describe the entire nature }{\fs22\cgrid0 and scope of his effort, or to estimate }{\fs24\cgrid0 it. A single chapter of the book, }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 The Wind Harp, }{ \fs24\cgrid0 contains the clearest presentation of the antithesis that I have seen by a modern critic. \par }\pard \qj\fi238\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx799\tx1037\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 There are \ldblquote two doctrines,\rdblquote he says, which have tended to \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx691\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 flourish independently\emdash \rdblquote And yet, neither is intelligible, \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx799\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 apart from Imagination.\rdblquote tie continues: \par \par The two (loctrines can be stated as follows: \par }\pard \qj\fi284\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx691\tx975\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 i. }{\fs24\cgrid0 The mind of the poet at moments }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 - . . }{\fs24\cgrid0 gains an insight into }{\fs22\cgrid0 reality, rea(ls Nature as a symbol of something behindl or within \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx771\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 Nature not ordinarily perceived. \par }\pard \qj\fi221\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx771\tx992\tx1252\adjustright {\b\fs16\cgrid0 2.\tab }{\fs22\cgrid0 The mind of the poet creates a Nature into which his own feelings, his aspirations and apprehensions, are projected. \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx771\tx992\tx1252\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx799\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Now the positivist sciences have denied all validity to the first doctrine: as a proposition, in the many forms in which it may be stated, it is strictly meaningless. For the sole ef\- fective procedure towards nature is the positivist. The sec\- ond doctrine is the standard poetics of our time: projection oE feeling. The confusion and contradiction that we saw in Mr. Morris and in the early Richards came of trying to square a theory of interest value with a theory of emo\-tional projecti on which was not firmly based upon positivist knowledge. That contradiction is the clue to the \ldblquote unintel\-ligibility\rdblquote of the doctrines if held separately. If you take the first alone, eliminating the second, you eliminate the \ldblquote mind,\rdblquote and you get pure positivism: in thus eliminating \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx799\adjustright {\cgrid0 \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2432\tqdec\tx6627\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 103 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx334\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 cognition you lose \ldblquote everything in which we go beyond the animals.\rdblquote If you take the second alone, and eliminate the external world in any of the four meanings that Mr. Rich-. ards gives to the phrase, you have a knowing mind without anything that it can know. \par }\pard \qj\fi295\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx277\tx572\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Before the development of the positivist procedures to\- wards nature, the pressure of this dilemma was not seriously felt. We have seen in Matthew Arnold (the determined anti\-dialectician) the belief that the subject is external to the language\emdash a merely common-sense view inherited from neo\- classical theory. The poetic subject was the world of ordinary experience; but as soon as the subject\emdash Nature\emdash became the field of positivism, the language of poetry ceased to repre\- sent it; ceased, in fact, to have any validity, or to set forth anything real. (The world of positivism is a world without minds to know the world; and yet Mr. Morris does not hesi\-tate to assert that his Unified Sci ence will save the world. For whom will it be saved?) \par }\pard \qj\fi176\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx311\tx487\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 What is this Imagination which Mr. Richards says will }{\fs24\cgrid0 make the two doctrines intelligible? No doubt it becomes in his hands something different from Coleridge \rquote s conception of it: it closely resembles an Hegelian synthesis, which joins the opposites in a new proposition in which their truths, no longer contradictory, are preserved. \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx311\tx487\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx294\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 They are [says Mr. Richards of the two doctrines] neither conse\-quences of }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 a priori }{\fs24\cgrid0 decisions, nor verifiable as the empirical state\- ments of science are verifiable; and all verifiable statements are independent of them. But this does not diminish in the least their interest, or that of the other senses in which they may be true. \par }\pard \qj\fi351\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx334\tx685\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 With that we are almost ready to leave Mr. Richards, who offers no final solution of the problem of the unified imagina\-tion. \ldblquote It is the privilege of poetry, \rdblquote he says finely, \ldblquote to pre\-serve us from mistaking our notions either for things or for \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx334\tx685\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx294\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 8 }{\i\f1\fs18\cgrid0 Coleridge }{\i\fs16\cgrid0 on Imagination, }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 pp. }{\b\fs16\cgrid0 157\emdash 8. \par }{\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tqdec\tx1094\tx2891\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 \tab 104\tab }{\i\cgrid0 Essays of Four Decades \par \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-277\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx788\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 ourselves. }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Poetry is the corn pletest mode of utterance.\rdblquote \rquote }{\fs24\cgrid0 It is neither the world of verifiable science nor a projection of ourselves; yet it is }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 complete. }{\fs24\cgrid0 And because it is complete knowledge we may, I think, claim for it a unique kind of re sponsibility, and see in it at times an irresponsibility equally distinct. The order of completeness that it achieves in the great works of the imagination is not the order of }{\fs22\cgrid0 experimental completeness aimed at by the positivist sci\- ences, whose responsibility is directed towards the verifica\-tion of limited techniques. The completeness of science is an abstraction covering an ideal of cooperation among spe\-cialized methods. No one can have an experience of science, }{\fs24\cgrid0 or of }{\fs22\cgrid0 a single science. For the completeness of }{\i\fs24\cgrid0 Hamlet }{\fs22\cgrid0 is not }{\fs24\cgrid0 of the experimental order, but of the experienced order: it is, in short, of the mythical order. And here Mr. Richards \par \par }\pard \qj\fi-193\nowidctlpar\tx589\tx782\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 {\field{\*\fldinst SYMBOL 183 \\f "Symbol" \\s 12}{\fldrslt\f3\fs24}}}{\fs24\cgrid0 \tab can give us a final insight. Myths, he says, \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx589\tx782\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\fi516\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1298\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 are no amusement or diversion to be sought as a relaxation and an escape from the hard realities of life. They are these hard realities in projection, tleir symbolic recognition, co-ordination and acceptance. }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . . }{\fs24\cgrid0 The opposite and discordant qualities in }{\fs22\cgrid0 things }{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 in }{\fs24\cgrid0 them ac(luire a form. }{\f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . . }{\fs24\cgrid0 Without his mythologies }{\fs22\cgrid0 man is only a cruel animal without a soul }{ \f1\fs8\cgrid0 . . . }{\fs24\cgrid0 a congeries of }{\fs22\cgrid0 possibilities without order andl aim.\rquote }{\fs22\super\cgrid0 0}{\fs22\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx782\tx1298\adjustright {\fs22\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\fi243\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx805\tx1048\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 Man, without his mythologies, is an interpretant. Mr. Richards\rquote s books may be seen together as a parable, as a mythical and dramatic projection, of the failure of the mod\-ern mind to understand poetry on the assumptions under\- lying the demireligion of positivism. We do not need to reject the positive and rational mode of inquiry into poetry; yet even from Mr. Morris we get the warning lest we sub\-stitute the criticism for the poem, and thus commit our\-selves to a \ldblquote learned ignorance.\rdblquote We must return to, we must \par }\pard \qj\sl-283\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx805\tx1048\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx759\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 9 }{\i\cgrid0 Ibid., }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 p. 163. \par }\pard \qj\nowidctlpar\tx805\adjustright {\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 10 }{\i\cgrid0 Ibid., }{\b\fs18\cgrid0 pp. }{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 171\emdash 2. \par }{\cgrid0 \par \par \par \par }\pard \nowidctlpar\tx2432\tqdec\tx6627\adjustright {\i\cgrid0 \tab Literature as Knowledge\tab }{\b\f19\fs14\cgrid0 105 \par \par }\pard \qj\sl-289\slmult0\nowidctlpar\tx425\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 never leave, the poem itself. Its \ldblquote interest\rdblquote value is a cog\- nitive one; it is sufficient that here, in the poem, we get knowledge of a whole object. If rational inquiry is the only mode of criticism, we must yet remember that the way we employ that mode must always powerfully affect our ex\- perience of the poem. I have been concerned in this com\-mentary with the compulsive, almost obsessed, application of an all-engrossing principle of pragmatic reduction to a formed realm of our experience, the distinction of which is its complete knowledge, the full body of the experience that it offers us. However we may see the completeness of po\-etry, it is a problem less to be solved than, in its full import, to be preserved. \par }\pard \qc\nowidctlpar\tx425\adjustright {\fs24\cgrid0 }{\b\fs16\cgrid0 1941 \par }}