Nevertheless, for the purposes of a record, we must write down such pronunciamentos in this lecture, in the addenda to it in _Creative Criticism_ (1917), in his article, _The Seven Arts and the Seven Confusions_, and in his contribution to _Civilization in the United States_ (1921) as bear on the following topics: the essence of art, the function of the artist, the duty of the critic. Literature, he said, pointing to the trend of nineteenth-century criticism, “is an expression of something, of experience or emotion, of the external or internal, of the man himself or something outside the man; yet it is always conceived of as an art of expression.” As for the artist, he bade him know that “madness and courage are the very life of art.... For the madness of poets is nothing more or less than unhampered freedom of self-expression.... To let one’s self go--that is what art is always aiming at, and American art needs most of all.” The duty of the critic? To ask and answer these questions: “What has the poet tried to do, and how has he fulfilled his intention? What is he striving to express and how has he expressed it? What impression does his work make on me, and how can I best express this impression?” With the flourishes of a platform speaker who knows instinctively that it is not straight hard thinking which sways an audience so much as the verve with which possibly dubious generalities are pronounced, Mr. Spingarn exclaimed vehemently that the new critics have done with the whole question of standards, including genres, hierarchies, and moral judgments.