Neither the subject nor the closeness of correspondence between the experience and the reader’s own situation has any bearing upon these effects. But indeed, to anyone who realises what kind of a thing an experience is, and through what means it comes about, the old antithesis between subject and treatment ceases to be of interest (cf. Chapter XVI). They are not separable or distinct things and the division is of no service. In this case the effects we are considering depend only upon the kind and degree of organisation which is given to the experiences. If it is at the level of our own best attempts or above it (but not so far above as to be out of reach) we are refreshed. But if our own organisation is broken down, forced to a cruder, a more wasteful level, we are depressed and temporarily incapacitated, not only locally but generally. It is when what we are offered, and inveigled into accepting, is only slightly inferior to our own developed capacity, so that it is no easy matter to see what is wrong, that the effect is greatest. Stuff of an evident and extreme badness is exhilarating rather than depressing when taken from a discriminating standpoint; and there need be nothing snobbish or self-congratulatory in such reading. What is really discomposing and damaging to the critical reader is the mediocre, the work which falls just below his own standards of response. Hence the rage which some feel at the productions of Sir James Barrie, Mr Locke, or Sir Hall Caine, a rage which work comparatively devoid of merits fails to excite. These effects are not merely momentary or evanescent; if we would understand the place of the arts in civilisation we must consider them more closely. An improvement of response is the only benefit which anyone can receive, and the degradation, the lowering of a response, is the only calamity. When we take into account not merely the impulses actually concerned in the experience but all the allied groups which thrive or suffer with it, and all the far-reaching effects of success or failure upon activities which may seem to be independent, the fact that some people feel so keenly about the arts is no longer surprising.