CHAPTER I.
THE CLAN GROUP.
§ 25. Chateaubriand, in a remarkable chapter of Le Génie du Christianisme, maintains that "unbelief is the principal cause of the decadence of taste and genius. When people believed nothing at Athens and Rome, talents disappeared with the gods, and the Muses gave up to barbarism those who had ceased to have faith in them." If we put the word "sympathy" where Chateaubriand would have used "belief," and maintain that the decay of sympathy between man and man is one cause of the decay of literature, just as its deepening and expansion immensely contribute to literary progress, we shall exchange a vague theory of dogma for a fact which the social history of the world abundantly illustrates. The prospect of being heard with sympathy or indifference must profoundly affect the makers of verse or prose, the literary artist and even the scientific inquirer; and it would be an interesting question to ask whether the supposed decay of imagination in civilised progress (a favourite theory with Macaulay) does not mark that temporary break-up of sympathy which constantly accompanies the transition from one social stage to another. Whatever pleasure the scientist may derive from his solitary study—and even this generally finds its source
