Note † — Chapter X · Poetry for Poetry’s Sake
Reading edition
“Given the conditions I have tried to explain as constituting good art, then if it be devoted further to the increase of men’s happiness, to the redemption of the oppressed, or to the enlargement of our sympathies with each other, or to such presentment of new and old truth about ourselves and our relation to the world as may fortify us in our sojourn here . . . it will also be great art; if, over and above those qualities which I have summed up . . . it has something of the soul of humanity in it, and finds its logical, its architectural place, in the great structure of human life.”† No better brief emotive account of the conditions under which an experience has value could be desired.