The emphasis has been laid upon the uniqueness of the
individual, and the unconscious or avowed aim of the modern 'critic' has
been to persuade us to understand, to sympathise with and in the last
resort to enter into the whole psychological process which culminated
in the artistic creation of the author examined. And there modern
criticism has stopped. There has been no indication that it was aware of
the necessity of going further. Many influences went to shape the
general conviction that mere presentation was the final function of
criticism, but perhaps the chief of these was the curious contagion of a
scientific terminology. The word 'objectivity' had a great vogue; it was
felt that the spiritual world was analogous to the physical; the critic
was faced, like the man of science, with a mass of hard, irreducible
facts, and his function was, like the scientist's, that of recording
them as compendiously as possible and without prejudice. The unconscious
programme was, indeed, impossible of fulfilment. All facts may be of
equal interest to the scientist, but they are not to the literary
critic.
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