such good effects, whether they were already present in him or not. All
criticism is therefore moral, since it deals with benefits and their
relative weight. Psychological penetration and reconstructed biography
may be excellent sport; if they do not reach historic truth they may at
least exercise dramatic talent. Criticism, on the other hand, is a
serious and public function; it shows the race assimilating the
individual, dividing the immortal from the mortal part of a soul.

[Sidenote: Need of knowing and loving the subject rendered.]

Representation naturally repeats those objects which are most
interesting in themselves. Even the medium, when a choice is possible,
is usually determined by the sort of objects to be reproduced.
Instruments lose their virtue with their use and a medium of
representation, together with its manipulation, is nothing but a
vehicle. It is fit if it makes possible a good rendition. All
accordingly hangs on what life has made interesting to the senses, on
what presents itself persuasively to the artist for imitation; and
living arts exist only while well-known, much-loved things imperatively
demand to be copied, so that their reproduction has some honest
non-aesthetic interest for mankind. Although subject matter is often said
to be indifferent to art, and an artist, when his art is secondary, may
think of his technique only, nothing is really so poor and melancholy as
art that is interested in itself and not in its subject. If any remnant
of inspiration or value clings to such a performance, it comes from a
surviving taste for something in the real world. Thus the literature
that calls itself purely aesthetic is in truth prurient; without this
half-avowed weakness to play upon, the coloured images evoked would have
had nothing to marshall or to sustain them.

[Sidenote: Public interests determine the subject of art, and the
subject the medium.]

A good way to understand schools and styles and to appreciate their
respective functions and successes is to consider first what region of
nature preoccupied the age in which they arose. Perception can cut the
world up into many patterns, which it isolates and dignifies with the
name of things. It must distinguish before it can reproduce and the
objects which attention distinguishes are of many strange sorts. Thus
the single man, the hero, in his acts of prowess or in his readiness,
may be the unit and standard in discourse. It will then be his im