being worked out in overt form, and this is, as a rule, not in the least to be regretted. For these responses are commonly of the nature of solutions to problems, not of intellectual research, but of emotional accommodation and adjustment, and can usually be best achieved while the different impulses which have to be reconciled are still in an incipient or imaginal stage, and before the matter has become further complicated by the irrelevant accidents which attend overt responses. These imaginal and incipient activities or tendencies to action, I shall call attitudes. When we realise how many and how different may be the tendencies awakened by a situation, and what scope there is for conflict, suppression and interplay—all contributing something to our experience—it will not appear surprising that the classification and analysis of attitudes is not yet far advanced. A thousand tendencies to actions, which do not overtly take place, may well occur in complicated adjustments. For these what evidence there is must be indirect. In fact, the only attitudes which are capable of clear and explicit analysis are those in which some simple mode of observable behaviour gives the clue to what has been taking place, and even here only a part of the reaction is open to this kind of examination. Among the experiences which are by the nature of the case hidden from observation are found almost all those with which criticism is concerned. The outward aspect and behaviour of a man reading _The Prioresses’ Tale_ and _The Miller’s Tale_ may well be indistinguishable. But this should not lead us to overlook how great a part in the whole experience is taken by attitudes. Many experiences which, if examined by introspection for their actual content of sensation and imagery, differ very little, are totally diverse in the kind and degree of implicit activity present. This aspect of experiences as filled with incipient promptings, lightly stimulated tendencies to acts of one kind or another, faint preliminary preparations for doing this or that, has been constantly overlooked in criticism. Yet it is in terms of attitudes, the resolution, inter-inanimation, and balancing of impulses—Aristotle’s definition of Tragedy[46] is an instance—that all the most valuable effects of poetry must be described. [46] “Tragedy is an imitation of an action... effecting through Pity and Terror the correction and refinement (_κάθαρςις_) of such passions.” _Poetics_, VI. Cf. p. 247, _infra_. CHAPTER XVI The Analysis of a Poem Toutes choses sont dites déjà, mais comme personne n’écoute il faut toujours recommencer.—André Gide. The qualifications of a good critic are three. He must be an adept at experiencing, without eccentricities, the state of mind relevant to the work of art he is judging. Secondly, he must be able to distinguish experiences from one another as regards their less superficial features. Thirdly, he must be a sound judge of values.