Passage to Beauty

Extract

Poetic Experience surely provides what Mr. Herbert Read was looking for. And in a more conclusive and final way than the hints and suggestions he found in the works of M. Bergson. The sub-title is An Introduction to Thomist Aesthetic. The claim is amply justified in the argument by its close and constant use of the principles of St. Thomas.

The scope of the book is wide. It deals with poetic experience in general, and seeks to chart its position in the Thomist system. This it does by insisting on a particular aspect and a special relation of familiar Thomist principles. Atmosphere is given by the appearance of such names as Billuart, Cajetan and Durandus, until one is almost led to expect some familiar quotation from Zigliara.

We have become so accustomed, at least in English works on aesthetics, to arguments in a strange and unintelligible idiom. Unrecognizable principles and intangible conclusions are all too familiar. Since Mr. Clive Bell wrote Art a sort of superficial idiom has been established. Prospectuses issued by educational authorities now speak in terms of ‘significant form.’ But there is no generally accepted meaning of these terms. The importance and the great value of this book lies in the fact that its conclusions are related to familiar landmarks. They cannot be dismissed as ‘somewhere in Ruritania.’

In brief, the argument is this. Knowledge in its perfection is union with a concrete thing. In its normal life the reason only partially achieves this end.