i. 8.-CRITIC AND ESTHETIC.

Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. By Ingram Bywater. xford: The Clarendon Press, 1909.

Aristotle. By W. D. Ross. Methuen, 1923.

The Dialogues of Plato. By Benjamin Jowett. Oxford: 'he Clarendon Press, 1875.

Plato or Protagoras? By F. C. S. Schiller. Oxford: Blackwell, 1908.

The Construction of the World in Terms of Fact and Value. By C. T. H. Walker. Oxford: Blackwell, 1920. Essai sur l'Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs. 'ar Émile Egger. Paris, 1886.

Le Chemin de Velours. Par Remy de Gourmont. Paris: Mercure de France, 1911.

one were to ask a critic of literature to define his object, would reply probably that his aim was to appreciate aesthetic value, which any particular work might 7e for him. We are somewhat indifferent, nowadays, the use of terms. The method of scholastic disputaa, or even of a Platonic dialogue, seems to us little ter than a vain logomachy. It is reasonable, however, ask our critic to define the term aesthetic. He might conceivably a disciple of Aristippus; but, not to age in any mimic strife with shadows, assume that would reply in the words of Remy de Gourmont, a d of modern Aristippus, somewhat fashionable at sent. In 'Le Succès et l'Idée de Beauté,' Remy de armont has the following passage:

'Le jugemente de l'artiste en matière d'art est un amalgame sensations et de superstitions. La foule ingénue n'a que sensations. Son jugement n'est pas esthétique. Ce n'est même un jugement. C'est l'aveu naïf d'un plaisir. Il s'en ¡ necessairement que seule la caste esthétique a qualité r juger de la beauté des œuvres et leur déférer cette lité. La foule crée la succès; la caste crée la beauté. it équivalent, si l'on veut, puisqu'il n'y a de hiérarchie ni s les sensations ni dans les actes, et que tout n'est que ivement; c'est équivalent, mais différent. Voilà donc un it acquis. En matière d'art, à l'opinion de la sensibilité pose l'opinion de l'intelligence. La sensibilité ne se soucie du plaisir; qu'à ce plaisir se joigne un élément inteluel, et voilà l'esthétique.'

So easy and fluent it is, so graceful, that one is almo inclined to accept it, to agree; and yet, even from th standpoint of Gourmont's own sensationalism, how u satisfactory it is: the opposition of intelligence sensibility, of the intellectual element to the eleme of pleasure; the judgment, that is not a judgment, b a confession; and finally, that undefined difference, easily acquired! One minor inconvenience, from l sensational point of view, might have been avoided the word 'tradition' had been substituted for the wed 'intelligence'; or if tradition,' by the moral implicati which it carries with it, be offensive to a disciple Nietzsche, perhaps memory' would have served; or eh those words which Gourmont and his master used re frequently superstition, mensonge; anything, surro but intelligence or intellect. But the chief difficu consists in the use, or misuse, of the term esthétiq given sensibility, which is itself ato@nois, why shoulder be necessary to add to it un élément intellectuel in or to attain to esthétique?

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The term alo0nois is used by Plato in the Theæteta where he discusses the Protagorean doctrine of seri In the 'Sophist,' which may be considered as a sequel of the 'Theætetus,' the fine arts are used to illustrate vari problems, of being and not-being, of truth and errork true appearance and false appearance, but no theory in fine art is formulated or discussed, except casually, y by the way. Art is accepted as a sort of dream crea 'a cread by man for those who are awake'; and it is agreed th the business of artists is with 'magic, and mimicry, he the making of images.' But the doctrine of Protagor raised the whole question of knowledge, for as Plato sa le 'if truth is only sensation, and one man's discernment is th good as another's, and no man has any superior right determine whether the opinion of any other is true or fat but each man, as we have several times repeated, is to has self the sole judge, and everything that he judges is true right, why should Protagoras be preferred to the place wisdom and instruction, and deserve to be well paid, and poor ignoramuses have to go to him, if each one is measure of his own wisdom?'

The question of how Protagoras explained or int preted his own doctrine remains obscure. It has be

intended that Plato did not understand the doctrine of rotagoras, that he neither refuted it, nor even met it irly, and that the Socrates of the 'Theætetus' is a latonic Socrates to whom Plato has attributed his own tellectualism. At the same time it is claimed that the fence of Protagoras, undertaken by Socrates in the urse of the dialogue, is a substantially accurate reprentation of the Protagorean doctrine. Socrates argues, attacking the doctrine, that if truth is only sensation, ad one man's discernment is as good as another's, we ve no need of Protagoras or any other teacher; and en later in defending it, he says that Protagoras would ply, that each of us is a measure of existence and of n-existence, yet one man may be a thousand times tter than another in proportion as things are and pear different to him. . . in this way one man is iser than another, and yet no one thinks falsely.'

But as the result of another series of critical arguents, one may accept the Platonic Socrates as in all sentials an historical portrait; since from one point view Plato, and, from another, Aristophanes give us e same characteristic features of the man, of his ctrine, and of his method. It would be idle, if it were t laughable, in any discussion, however brief, of the lativity of knowledge to fix the measure of truth ere may be in the various portraits of Socrates left by ristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle. Probably e would be driven to adopt the Protagorean defence, d allow that Plato may be a thousand times better an the others, 'in proportion as things are and appear ferent to him.' He is, in any case, the primary source our knowledge of Protagoras, and of his teaching. reover, if the case for Protagoras has been put fairly the Platonic Socrates, and so much is generally mitted, it was surely because Plato fully understood at that case was. He refuted it in so far as it related knowledge as fact, that is, in so far as it embodied at Dr Schiller describes as an extreme form of sationalism. If he did not attempt to refute it in so as it related to knowledge as value, it is more reasonle to infer that he accepted it in this connexion, rather in that he misunderstood it. The general effect proced on our minds by Plato's account of Protagoras, Vol. 242.-No. 480.

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and his teaching, is one of sympathy with the philosophe of Abdera. It is admitted that his case is put fairly perhaps even in his own words, by the Platonic Socrate Yet there is a widely spread opinion that the argument used against it are unfair and misleading; that whil the true doctrine of Protagoras is given in Socrate defence of him, it is perverted in the previous an subsequent discussion, as, for instance, by attributin to Protagoras an esoteric doctrine imparted only to h disciples,' and akin, or at least allied, to the Her cleiteanism of the day. If Plato, in the defence Protagoras which he puts into the mouth of Socrate was restrained from perverting the doctrine by th knowledge that his audience were familiar with the book, would not the same restraint hold good at oth parts of the dialogue? Socrates and his teaching we equally, or even more, familiar to Plato's audience; y Plato is accused of attributing his own intellectuali bias to Socrates. These difficulties are resolved a disappear if the reference to an esoteric doctrin imparted by Protagoras only to his 'disciples,' is take as it should be taken, ironically. The irony is direct not against Protagoras, but against his disciples, wh ly alone possess The Truth in its original purity. Dr Schill the contends that these disciples are imaginary and invente by Plato for his own sinister purposes. It is unnecessar to imagine a school of Protagoreans founded by an carrying on the traditions of Protagoras; but it natural to suppose that he interested his age, an impressed his friends; and that some of these friend nd perhaps themselves Heracleiteans, saw in the dictum whom a thing seems, that thing is' the necessary corolla to the saying of Heracleitus, that 'all is flux.' Or w it only the genius of Plato, as Jowett suggested, whic discerned the connexion ? Possibly the defence o Protagoras by the Platonic Socrates gives us the re position of Protagoras; or possibly the notion of valu that each man's opinion is equally true, but that th opinion of one man may be better than the opinion another, emerged as a result of the Platonic criticia of the original dictum; in either case it is inconceivab that Plato misunderstood the theory, or that so gree a literary artist should have perverted it so obvioushit

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urther, it is more than probable that the theory of rotagoras did not have, either for its author or for lato, the same implications which it has for a modern ind. A short passage from Dr Schiller's pamphlet akes the point clear:

It is noticeable, however, that Protagoras is represented declining to call these superior values "truths." They are better" but not "truer." If so he did not yet perceive that "truths" are "values," and therefore "goods." . . . Nor n he have seen that the same ambiguity which pervades uth-values pervades also all the rest. Many things are dged "good" which are not really good. . . . But it is also ssible either that Plato has not here reproduced the full btlety of Protagoras's argument, or that Protagoras was ndered from expressing himself only by the poverty of reek philosophic language, not yet enriched by the genius Plato.'

he last clause vindicates Plato from the charge of aving ignored the scope of the Protagorean argument. The problem of the 'Theætetus' and its sequel in the Sophist' only concerns us here for the light it throws a the term alo@nois in its natural connexion with the octrine of the relativity of truth, and in its casual Connexion with the fine arts. It refers to the whole inge of our sense perceptions without distinguishing le real from the illusory, or those of which the cause to be found in nature, from those of which the cause to be found in art. If we compare the theory of sthetic formulated by Pater in England with that rmulated in France by Gourmont, it is apparent that oth have the same origins, following the same line of velopment: the Heracleitean flux, the homo mensura eory of Protagoras, the hedonism of Aristippus, which ms at the ἡδωνὴ ἐν κινήσει, and not at the Epicurean wvn v oráo, the pleasure of desire and satisfaction, it that of freedom from desire and repose. Quite art from the inconveniences caused by the association the term with kindred terms, such as anaesthetic or peraesthetic, and the fact that every neurotic, eccentric, id even merely vulgar tendency in art or letters seeks justify itself on aesthetic grounds, the term when plied to a theory of fine art is insufficiently accurate