As you read [Practical Criticism], a feeling grows that it was not one man who wrote it, but a whole committee: on which were serving a semanticist, an educationalist, a philosopher, a psychologist, a sociologist, a mystic and a moralist—and also (I had almost forgotten him) a literary critic. The members of the committee do not always, by any means, find themselves in agreement. The chairmanship changes hands with bewildering rapidity; now the critic sits at the head of the table, now he is under it. The philosopher has an engaging habit of donning the robes of Confucius and intoning with oracular gravity: 'What is true grows light; what is light grows true'…. The semanticist rises to proclaim his view that 'an enquiry into language' must 'be recognised as a vital branch of research'…. The educationalist, backing him up, adds the rider that 'in all ordinary schools'...