ABSTRACT
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. 1 The last is a somewhat unexpected adherent.
Given the conditions I have tried to explain as constituting good art, then if it be devoted further to the increase of men’s happiness, to the redemption of the oppressed, or to the enlargement of our sympathies with each other, or to such presentment of new and old truth about ourselves and our relation to the world as may fortify us in our sojourn here… it will also be great art; if, over and above those qualities which I have summed up… it has something of the soul of humanity in it, and finds its logical, its architectural place, in the great structure of human life. 1
No better brief emotive account of the conditions under which an experience has value could be desired.[71] {54} [72] {55}