The secular mind by and large has always approached art and aesthetics as religion and magic. So it does today. Hence the violent quarrels and exclusive coteries of the art world. Art and poetry are regarded as private religions, secret escape hatches from the sunken submarine or the unguided missile of existence. The Catholic alone can laugh at these antics. He alone need not be deceived by such qualms or pretensions. And what the esoteric cultist proffers as magic he can accept as a simple shaping of natural experience.