The Athenaeum, 4710 (6 Aug 1920) 190
Sir, – Mr. Hannay doubts whether I have justified my distinction between the critic and the philosopher, and suspects that I am making a distinction between a kind of philosophical criticism of which I approve and another kind of which I disapprove. 1 If I havemade this distinction between kinds to Mr. Hannay’s satisfaction, and not merely shown that I like some critical writings and not others, then I ought to be content. The frontier cannot be clearly defined; at all events I trust that Mr. Hannay would agree that Hegel’s Philosophy of Artadds very little to our enjoyment or understanding of art, though it fills a gap in Hegel’s philosophy. 2 I have in mind a rather celebrated passage towards the end of Taine’s History of English Literature(I have not the book by me) in which he compares Tennyson and Musset. 3 Taine is a person for whom I have considerable respect, but this passage does not seem to me to be good as criticism; the comparative vision of French and English life does not seem to me to issue quite ingenuously out of an appreciation of the two poets; I should say that Taine was here philosophizing rather than “developing his sensibility into a generalized structure.”
I do not understand Mr. Hannay’s request that I should quote an instance of “this generalization which is neither itself poetry nor discursive reasoning.” I find in Chambers (the only dictionary within reach) that “discursive” means “desultory,” “rational,” or “proceeding regularly from premises to conclusion.” 4 Surely I have not pretended that criticism should avoid “discursive reasoning” in this last sense?
As to the question whether my article on “The Perfect Critic” was itself philosophy or perfect criticism, I need only refer Mr. Hannay to the Principia MathematicaChap. II., especially page 65 (The Theory of Types and the Cretan Liar: “Hence the statement of Epimenides does not fall within its own scope, and therefore no contradiction emerges”). 5
I am, Sir, Your obliged obedient servant, t. s. eliot
