theoryofliteratu00inwell

CHAPTER XVIII
Evaluation
It is convenient to distinguish between the terms "value" and
"evaluate." Through history, mankind has "valued" literature,
oral and printed, that is, has taken interest in it, has assigned
positive worth to it. But critics and philosophers who have
"evaluated" literature, or specific literary works, may come to a
negative verdict. In any case, we pass from the experience of
interest to the act of judgment. By reference to a norm, by the
application of criteria, by comparison of it with other objects
and interests, we estimate the rank of an object or an interest.
If we attempt in any detail to describe mankind's concern with
literature, we shall get into difficulties of definition. Only very
gradually does literature, in any modern sense, emerge from
the culture cluster of song, dance, and religious ritual in which
it appears to originate. And if we are to describe mankind's at-
tachment to literature, we should analyze the fact of attachment
into its component parts. What, as a matter of fact, have men
valued literature for? What kinds of value or worth or interest
have they found in it? Very many kinds, we should answer:
Horace's summary dulce et utile we might translate as "enter-
tainment" and "edification," or "play" and "work," or "terminal
value" and "instrumental value," or "art" and "propaganda"
or art as end in itself and art as communal ritual and culture
binder.
If now we ask for something- normative—how ought men to
value and evaluate literature?—we have to answer with some
definitions. Men ought to value literature for being what it is;
they ought to evaluate it in terms and in degrees of its literary
value. 1 The nature, the function, and the evaluation of literature
must necessarily exist in close correlation. The use of a thing—its
habitual or most expert or proper use—must be that use to which
its nature (or its structure) designs it. Its nature is, in potence,
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