The present clamor against serious poetry [i.e., the symbolists] is based on the assumption that the function of art in society is like that of advertising, to provide assurance and convictions about those things which, regardless of facts, people want to believe. If art has any deeper function than that, if the poetic process is the embodiment and projection of the modes of human cognition themselves, than the present clamor [against the symbolists] is as mistaken as it is ill-conceived.