ABSTRACT
Criticism is essentially a science practised as a craft. Literary criticism has a slight advantage over art criticism here; but it is slight only, and the odds in favour of any piece of art criticism. Aristotle by himself invented more than all the critics together. There is nothing surprising about this. Philosophers perform this service for all the mental crafts. The result is that the tools have now passed almost out of all possibility of restoration to their original uses. Philosophers invented criticism by inventing the tools by which it is carried on. Those with fewer gifts we have in plenty with us. Meanwhile, it becomes the fashion at one time to do everything with the plane and plumb-line, at another with a spoke-shave, with good taste, at another with the romantic axe, sometimes with a gimlet, and latterly with the resonant and emotional muffled mallet.
