perhaps, only natural that he should express no admiration for a beauty of style, and a structural perfection, which were elementary characteristics of Greek art, but how can we pardon him for giving no hint of the interpretative power of Eschylus' ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα ; or of the lyric sweetness of Sophocles' 'Love unconquered . . .'; or of the supreme pathos of the death of the faithful hound that raised himself in recognition of his master, Odysseus, and then lay down to die? Why does he tell us nothing of the splendid presentation of the doctrine of retribution for sin given by the Attic tragedians, or of the portraiture of Nausicaa's innocence, and Penelope's constancy, by Homer? Was there no moral purpose to be discerned here? Nevertheless the ideal of a literature which, in point of teaching, is indistinguishable from philosophy, embodies a loftier conception of the functions of poetry than any which is contained in the Poetics, and it is one which, as I have already remarked, is essentially in harmony with our modern aspirations.

How was it, then, that Plato, having got so far, failed in his criticism of Greek poetry to discern the connection between the 'imaginative reason' and the spiritual teachings of philosophy? Probably because the common conception of human life prevalent in the Hellenic era was one in which man's activity was regarded as coterminous with his physical existence, and it was only a reflection of this kind of life that was expected in poetry. It was

just here that his misconception of the character of artistic representation, as shown in the charge of unreality which he brings against poetry and art, was most disastrous. He assumed that poetry and art, being only imitations of material existences, could contain nothing but a reflection of this common conception of the life of man. To adopt the form of a remark of Aristotle, he first assumed that the poets' view of life was material, and then blamed them because their view, being spiritual, did not answer the tests of resemblance to material reality by which alone he measured their work. In short, Plato, in recognizing literature and art as vehicles of knowledge, assumed that their method was identical with the method of his own dialectic: it remained for Aristotle to distinguish between the method of art and the method of logic, and, in so doing, to point out in what respect a resemblance between the productions of art and the external reality upon which they were based was to be expected.

CHAPTER II

ARISTOTLE CONSIDERS POETRY AS A BRANCH OF ART

His

ARISTOTLE takes the subject out of the regions of morals and politics, and confines its scope by limitations which arise naturally in the course of his account of the origin and methods of art. broadest conception of art is, however, to be found in the Ethics,' where he defines an art as 'a union ⚫ of a productive faculty and reason.' In the Poetics he explains the nature of this dual origin. The 'imitation' which he, in common with Plato, finds to be the basis of its manifestations, is traced to a primitive impulse which can be separated from the love of knowledge; and he clearly distinguishes between the method of poetry and the method of history, even when they both employ the same instrument-words without metre or musical accompaniment. The business of the poet,' he says, ‘is · to tell not what has happened, but what could happen, and what is possible, either from its probability, or from its necessary connection with what has gone before. The historian and the poet do not differ in using or not using metre-for the

11140. Ταὐτὸν ἂν εἴη τέχνη καὶ ἕξις μετὰ λόγου ἀληθοῦς ποιητική.

writings of Herodotus could be put into metre without being any the less a history, whether in metre or not-but the difference lies in this fact, ⚫ that the one tells what has happened and the other what could happen. And, therefore, poetry has a wider truth and a higher aim than history; for poetry deals rather with the universal, history with the particular.'1 And in distinguishing between the effects of the incidents and of the dialogue in tragedy, he remarks that 'the effects produced by the incidents should be plain without argument, those produced by speech should be the work of the speaker and arise out of his speech.' These latter effects, therefore, belong more properly to the art of rhetoric.2

Moreover, there are two passages in which it is possible to discern a direct reply to the first of the charges that of 'unreality'-which Plato brought against poetry. In speaking of the complaints of critics he says: 'Since the poet is an imitator just as much as a painter or any other image-maker, he must in all cases reproduce things in one of three aspects as they were or are, as men say they are and they seem to be, or as they ought to be.' And he adds: 'It should also be remembered that the standard of correctness differs in politics and poetry as much as it does in any other art and poetry.'' The other passage contains the statement that, according to the method of poetry, an impossi2 14566.

1 1451b.

3 1460.

bility which is credible is preferable to a possibility which is incredible.' And this is supported by an illustration from the sister art of painting. The characters of Zeuxis were impossible, but their impossibility made them the more correct, 'for the type should be more perfect than the individual.”1

1

He also finds a reply to the second chargethat poetry pleased and fostered the irrational and emotional part of man's nature to the detriment of the nobler intellectual element-in a dry illustration from the science of medicine which he attached to

his definition of tragedy. 'Tragedy. . is an imitation of a serious and complete action which has magnitude. The imitation is effected by embellished language, each kind of embellishment varying in the constituent parts. It is acted not narrated; and it uses the agency of pity and fear to effect a purging of these and the like emotions.' 2 That is to say, just as humours are carried out of the physical system by medical treatment, so the moral system of the spectator is relieved of an excess of emotion, when emotion is artificially excited in the performance of the tragedy. To work upon the emotional element in man was, therefore, part of the of the proper function of the art function of the art of poetry, and the effect of this appeal to the emotions was equally. beneficial and not hurtful.

But these replies to Plato occur incidentally, and in the form of comments upon certain aspects of 2 1449b.

1 1461b.