Discussion of the new criticism must start with Mr. Richards. The new criticism very nearly began with him. It might be said also that it began with him in the right way, because he attempted to found it on a more comprehensive basis than other critics did. (p. 3)

Richards approaches poetry as a psychologist. A psychologist, I should judge, is a thinker who invades our discussions by telling us that what we think is knowledge testifies less to any objective referent than to our own subjective emotions and desires…. [He] asserts that the cognitions we have in the arts are not autonomous, and more often than not could not stand up under the rigorous standards of science, and that the real values of art are not cognitions at all, but the affective states which art induces and expresses. Richards is a psychologist in taking just this general position...