CONCLUSION.
§ 100. Here, at an effort perhaps uncouth, certainly in form but rudely rhythmical, to gather into song all that Nature on a scale stupendous, social life in forms most various, individuality most profound because realised as distinct from all groups and all Nature's wonders, we close our task. Very imperfectly have we essayed to follow the effects of social and individual evolution on literature from the rudest beginnings of song down to the poetry of the great Western Republic. We have but glanced at the progress of prose in place of those metrical forms which in the absence of writing supplied supports for the memory; the influence of conversation public and private—its character largely depending on the forms of social communion in which men meet—on such progress in the East and West; the influence of individualised thinking, of philosophy, in fact, upon the form and spirit of prose in Athens and Rome and Modern Europe. We have omitted the varying aspects of animal life as reflected in the literatures of different countries and climates. We have omitted the comparison of satire in different social conditions, though we willingly allow that "there is no outward expression, be it in literature, sculpture, painting, or any other art, which more openly tells of a nation's character and exhibits it to all eyes than caricature"—not that all satire is caricature, but, like caricature, it is a negative index to an ideal consciously or unconsciously upheld. In fine, want of room has also forced us to omit the development of criticism as itself illustrating the influences of social and individual evolution on literary ideals. To reduce the immense study which we have named Comparative Literature within the compass of a handy volume without losing completeness and minuteness of detail, it would be needful to separate the descriptive from the scientific treatment of literature. But to devote an introductory work like the present to the scientific treatment alone, would not only cut away many interesting illustrations, but convey an altogether false impression of the study as bare and uninviting. If, in spite of our willingness to sacrifice completeness to attractiveness, our readers should carry away this unpleasant impression, the fault is certainly in the writer and not in his subject.
Another word of apology may be also needed. It will be clear to any reader of this book that its author is far from regarding literature as the mere toy of stylists, far from advocating the "moral indifference" of art. In his eyes literature is a very serious thing, which can become morally indifferent only in ages of moral indifference. "Let the world go its way, and the kings and the peoples strive, and the priests and philosophers wrangle; at least to make a perfect verse is to be out of time, master of all change, and free of every creed."[1] Such was Gautier's view; but it is stamped false by the whole history of literary development. Whether men like it or not, their literary efforts at ideal beauty in prose or verse must involve ideals of human conduct. Action, speech, and thought are too subtly interwoven to allow their artistic severance aught but fancied truth; if it were otherwise, literature might indeed have been the product of a Cloud-cuckoo-town in which historical science and morality would be equally out of place. But, it may be said, your science cuts at the roots of moral conduct by treating the individual as made by conditions over which he has no control. Far from it. Our science traces a growth of social and individual freedom so far as the conditions of human life have hitherto allowed them to grow together. Nothing is really gained for morality or religion by assuming that the life with which they deal is unlimited, unconditioned; nay, such limitless pretensions have hitherto proved very fatal to morality by fostering suicidal extremes of social and individual thinking. How are these suicidal extremes to be best kept in check? By insisting on the individual and social, physical, and the physiological limits within which man moves and has moved; by answering the admirers of universal shadows, in which morality itself becomes shadowy, in the words of the Hebrew prophet: "Who hath heard such a thing? What hath seen such things? Shall a land bring forth in a day? or a people be born in a moment?"
Footnotes edit
- ↑ Dowden, Studies in Literature, 1789–1877, p. 401.