M. Maritain's books, Art and Poetry, is an essay in aesthetics. It is, as he describes it himself, about 'the intermingling of the human and poetic demands in man'. He is concerned with the mysterious nature of poetry, the qualities of which he finds predominant in all real works of art. Thus his book is not about poetics as such so much as about poetics qualities inherent in life, and the purpose of art, which is distinguished at its best principally by the high degree in which it contains these qualities.