30 EVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES 



Such types suggest the analogy of organic growth. If the 

 analogy be not fancifully strained, it may be helpful in 

 keeping our attention fixed upon the salient features of the 

 phenomenon in question. This, to put the matter briefly, is 

 the development of a complex artistic structure out of elements 

 existing in national character, which structure is only com- 

 pleted by the action of successive generations and individual 

 men of genius, all of whom in their turns are compelled to 

 contribute either to the formation of the rudimentary type, or 

 to its perfection, or to its decline and final dissolution. 1 



II 



Criticism has hitherto neglected the real issues of what is 

 meant by development in art and literature. We are indeed 

 familiar with phrases like ' rise and decline,' ' flourishing 

 period,' ' infancy of art.' But the inevitable progression from 

 the embryo, through ascending stages of growth to maturity, 

 and from maturity by declining stages to decrepitude and 

 dissolution, has not been sufficiently insisted on. We are 

 instinctively unwilling to undervalue individual effort. Our 

 pride and sense of human independence rebel against the 

 belief that men of genius obey a movement quite as much as 

 they control it, and even more than they create it. Yet this 

 is the conclusion to which facts, interpreted by historical and 

 scientific methods, lead us ; and the position we seem forced 

 to assume, though it throws personal achievement somewhat 

 into the shade, is concordant with the spirit of a scientific and 

 a democratic epoch. At first sight, the individual lessens ; 

 but the race, the mass, from which the individual emerges, 

 and of which he becomes the spokesman and interpreter, 

 gains in dignity and greatness. After shifting the centre of 



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1 The type so produced might have been compared to a nation's 

 thought projected in art to such a thought as becomes a poem in a 

 single man's work but which can find expression only through a 

 hundred workers. It differs, however, from any particular work of art 

 in this, n that it does not manifest itself as a simple whole. It describes 

 a curve of ascent and descent before it is accomplished. 



