is still the form under which the mind may most clearly and freely contemplate the human situation, its issues unclouded, its possibilities revealed. To this its value is due and the supreme position among the arts which it has occupied in historical times and still occupies; what will happen in the future we can only conjecture. Tragedy is too great an exercise of the spirit to be classed among amusements or even delights, or to be regarded as a vehicle for the inculcation of such crude valuations as may be codified in a moral. But the fuller discussion of Tragedy we must defer. These remarks seemed necessary in order to avoid the impression, which our theory of value might have given, that the arts are merely concerned with happy solutions and ingenious reconciliations of diverse gratifications, “a box where sweets compacted lie.” It is not so. Only a crude psychology, as we shall see, would identify the satisfaction of an impulse with a pleasure. No hedonic theory of value will fit the facts over even a small part of the field, since it must take what is a concomitant merely of a phase in the process of satisfaction as the mainspring of the whole. Pleasure, however, has its place in the whole account of values, and an important place, as we shall see later. But it must not be allowed to encroach on ground to which it has no right. [26] _What is Art?_ Section V. [27] _What is Art?_ Section XVI. [28] “This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful and monstrous: anything like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would be insupportable. The person who would treat such a subject must increase the ideal, and diminish the actual horror of the events.” From Shelley’s preface. The producers, however, were of the contrary opinion. CHAPTER X Poetry for Poetry’s Sake On passe plus facilement d’un extrême à un autre que d’une nuance à une autre nuance. _Attirance de la Mort_. Another possible misapprehension which cannot be left unmentioned arises in connection with the doctrine ‘Art for Art’s sake’, a doctrine definitely and detrimentally dated; it concerns the place of what are called ulterior effects in the valuing of a work of art. It has been very fashionable to turn up the nose at any attempt to apply, as it is said, ‘external canons’ to art. But it may be recalled that of all the great critical doctrines, the ‘moral’, theory of art (it would be better to call it the ‘Ordinary values’ theory) has the most great minds behind it. Until Whistler came to start the critical movements of the last half-century, few poets, artists or critics had ever doubted that the value of art experiences was to be judged as other values are. Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Dante, Spenser, Milton, the Eighteenth Century, Coleridge, Shelley, Matthew Arnold and Pater, to name only the most prominent, all with varying degrees of refinement, held the same view.[29] The last is a somewhat unexpected adherent.