Poetry and the individual Author:Hartley Burr Alexander Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE WORTH OF LIFE I—MAN THE MEASURE IT is no easy task to interpret in the rational way what is conceived and expressed in the aesthetic. To do t... more »his we are forced to remove from their native province, and so to pervert, the experiences with which we have to deal. At the same time perhaps the only justification of critical study of any aesthetic product is to be found in such transformation, and certainly there comes a point when the criticism must either proceed by conceptual analysis or cease to be profitable. First of all there must be some precise notion of the conditions which determine our standards of worth and of the qualities which make up its substance. For the ascertainment of this, there is no method better than that inquisitive portrayal of customary conceptions in which the Greek mind so delighted; and accordingly my analysis aims but at exposition of what is latent in our thought and more especially of what is implied in the character and design of those common activities which constitute the business of life and form our ultimate confession of faith in its meaning. Such activities are of three general types. First and most obvious is the type of action prompted by appetite, social instinct, or utilitarian calculation,—action tending to preserve and perpetuate life. Second is the type which designs to render life satisfying or bring to realisation whatever ideal we consider to be the fitting end and aim of human existence. The third type is constituted by impedimenta: for just as the body is burdened by useless vestiges of outworn organs, so among the body's activities are to be found many dissipations of energy which have long ceased, or possibly have not yet begun, either to serve any discoverable utility or to meet any creditable need. In est...« less