Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/41

state at the outset the meaning we intend to convey by that term. It must be evident from what we have already said that by "science" we cannot mean a body of universal truths, that the very evolution of literature is fatal per se to any such literary "science." But by the use of the term we mean to imply that limited truths discoverable in the various phases of literature may, nay, in order to be understood even as limited truths, must be grouped round certain central facts of comparatively permanent influence. Such facts are the climate, soil, animal and plant life of different countries; such also is the principle of evolution from communal to individual life which we shall hereafter explain at length. The former may be called the statical influences to which literature has been everywhere exposed; the latter may be called the dynamical principle of literature's progress and decay. But before we attempt to explain this principle we shall illustrate the dependence of literature on social conditions, and the consequent relativity, or necessary limitation, alike of its creative art and criticism.