The most valuable states of mind then are those which involve the widest and most comprehensive co-ordination of activities and the least curtailment, conflict, starvation and restriction. States of mind in general are valuable in the degree in which they tend to reduce waste and frustration. We must be careful in considering this formulation to remember how varied human activities are and avoid, for example, undue admiration for practical efficient persons whose emotional life is suppressed. But, thanks to the psycho-analysts, we are hardly likely at the moment to overlook the consequences of suppressions. It is plain that no one systematisation can claim a supreme position. Men are naturally different and in any society specialisation is inevitable. There are evidently a great number of good systematisations and what is good for one person will not be good for another. A sailor, a doctor, a mathematician and a poet can hardly have the same organisation throughout. With different conditions different values necessarily arise. Doubtless conditions may be, and too often are, such that no life of high value is possible. With a naturalistic morality the reasons for altering them and the way to do so both become clearer. But even with our present resources and command over nature, it is universally agreed that intelligence and goodwill could contrive that no man should be so situated as to be deprived of all the generally accessible values. The clearing away from moral questions of all ethical lumber and superstitious interpolations is a step long overdue in this undertaking. But until it has been carried further, so it is often thought, to be busied with such apparently ‘unpractical’ activities as art or criticism is to behave too much like a passenger on a short-handed ship. This is true enough doubtless of some who so busy themselves. But it is not true that criticism is a luxury trade. The rear-guard of society cannot be extricated until the vanguard has gone further. Goodwill and intelligence are still too little available. The critic, we have said, is as much concerned with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values. What are the other qualifications required we shall see later. For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions of the artist an appraisal of existence. Matthew Arnold when he said that poetry is a criticism of life was saying something so obvious that it is constantly overlooked. The artist is concerned with the record and perpetuation of the experiences which seem to him most worth having. For reasons which we shall consider in Chapter XXII, he is also the man who is most likely to have experiences of value to record. He is the point at which the growth of the mind shows itself. His experiences those at least which give value to his work, represent conciliations of impulses