mythos_.

Apart from these historical causes of misunderstanding, a good teacher
who uses this book with a class will hardly fail to point out numerous
points on which two equally good Greek scholars may well differ in
the mere interpretation of the words. What, for instance, are the 'two
natural causes' in Chapter IV which have given birth to Poetry? Are
they, as our translator takes them, (1) that man is imitative, and (2)
that people delight in imitations? Or are they (1) that man is imitative
and people delight in imitations, and (2) the instinct for rhythm, as
Professor Butcher prefers? Is it a 'creature' a thousand miles long, or
a 'picture' a thousand miles long which raises some trouble in Chapter
VII? The word _zoon_ means equally 'picture' and 'animal'. Did the older
poets make their characters speak like 'statesmen', _politikoi_, or
merely like ordinary citizens, _politai_, while the moderns made theirs
like 'professors of rhetoric'? (Chapter VI, p. 38; cf. Margoliouth's
note and glossary).

It may seem as if the large uncertainties which we have indicated
detract in a ruinous manner from the value of the _Poetics_ to us as
a work of criticism. Certainly if any young writer took this book as
a manual of rules by which to 'commence poet', he would find himself
embarrassed. But, if the book is properly read, not as a dogmatic
text-book but as a first attempt, made by a man of astounding genius, to
build up in the region of creative art a rational order like that
which he established in logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics,
psychology, and almost every department of knowledge that existed in his
day, then the uncertainties become rather a help than a discouragement.
They give us occasion to think and use our imagination. They make us, to
the best of our powers, try really to follow and criticize closely the
bold gropings of an extraordinary thinker; and it is in this process,
and not in any mere collection of dogmatic results, that we shall find
the true value and beauty of the _Poetics_.

The book is of permanent value as a mere intellectual achievement; as
a store of information about Greek literature; and as an original or
first-hand statement of what we may call the classical view of
artistic criticism. It does not regard poetry as a matter of unanalysed
inspiration; it makes no concession to personal whims or fashion or
_ennui_. It tries by rational methods to find out what is good in art
and what