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The curse of art literature and professional art criticism is art-jargon.

Every department of human activity from sport to science, baseball to philosophy, speedily develops its own jargon and the tendency is for the jargon to become denser and denser and so more and more obscure its subject, until some man with horse-sense—like Huxley in science and William James in philosophy—restores the use of every-day English.

Some jargon like that of the baseball reporter is intensely vivid and amusing, it is language in the making, but the jargon of the art critic is deadly, it is neither vivid nor interesting—it is simply hypnotic. It is only when the critic gets so angry he forgets his jargon that he becomes intelligible—and betrays himself.

The reputation of many a preacher, many an orator, depends wholly upon his command of jargon, his ability to utter endless phrases which are either stock ideas, old as the hills, or which sound as if they meant something but on analysis prove quite barren.