ABSTRACT
As for all Richards' promises of the good that art could do us, it is true that he was more rapturous about the condition we could attain than either Tate or Ransom. He advances throughout his books with his eyes fixed on the horizon star of human perfectibility. Tate by contrast is much more in the camp of Hulme and Eliot. Nevertheless Tate and, to a lesser extent, Ransom do argue the reader into valuing poetry on the ground of its effects on us, and these effects are not li mi ted to the appreciation of art or states of mi nd valuable independently of any behaviour that may result from them. As for abstraction, the will, and negative Platonism, Tate could certainly argue that Richards abstracts weIl beyond his experience. For instance, in claiming as a result of certain feelings that follow successful reading of poetry that there is a permanent increased harmonising power within us, Richards' will is wresting what it wants from his experience so as to obtain a kind of dreampower. But Tate is very much such an 'abstractionist' too. This is shown by his considering it sufficient to analyse much poetry in terms of concepts as vague and general as those of 'extension' (denotation) and 'intension' (connotation)l and by his simple generalisations concerning hundreds of years of the history of Western society, which he utilises in support of his aesthetic programmes and philosophy.
