XXVIII. THE ALLUSIVENESS OF MODERN POETRY XXIX. PERMANENCE AS A CRITERION XXX. THE DEFINITION OF A POEM XXXI. ART, PLAY, AND CIVILISATION XXXII. THE IMAGINATION XXXIII. TRUTH AND REVELATION THEORIES XXXIV. THE TWO USES OF LANGUAGE XXXV. POETRY AND BELIEFS APPENDIX A ON VALUE APPENDIX B ON MR. ELIOT’S POETRY PREFACE A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive. This book might better be compared to a loom on which it is proposed to re-weave some ravelled parts of our civilisation. What is most important about it, the interconnection of its several points of view, might have been exhibited, though not with equal clarity, in a pamphlet or in a two-volume work. Few of the separate items are original. One does not expect novel cards when playing so traditional a game; it is the hand which matters. I have chosen to present it here on the smallest scale which would allow me to fit together the various positions adopted into a whole of some firmness. The elaborations and expansions which suggest themselves have been constantly cut short at the point at which I thought that the reader would be able to see for himself how they would continue. The danger of this procedure, which otherwise has great advantages both for him and for me, is that the different parts of a connected account such as this mutually illumine one another. The writer, who has, or should have, the whole position in his mind throughout, may overlook sources of obscurity for the reader, due to the serial form of the exposition. This I have endeavoured to prevent by means of numerous cross-references, forwards and backwards.