LITERARY STUDIES IN NINETEENTH CENTURY 347 



III. THE OUTCOME IN A LITERARY SCIENCE 



The movements of which I have spoken merge in what is frequently, 

 with more or less definiteness of meaning, styled comparative litera- 

 ture, or the comparative study of literature. In order to present the 

 significance of these terms, and to decide whether they convey 

 the idea to be expressed, I must be permitted to recapitulate some 

 portions of an inquiry, entitled "What is Comparative Literature?" 

 published by me in the Atlantic Monthly for July, 1903. Comparative 

 literature, as now cultivated, is, in the first place, understood of 

 a field of investigation, the literary relations existing between dis- 

 tinct nationalities: the study of international borrowings, imitations, 

 adaptations. And to recognize such relations as incidental to national 

 growth is of the utmost importance social as well as literary; 

 (Gaston Paris, Texte, Arnold, Goethe.) This attention to literary 

 relations is, of course, the consequent of the study of literatures as 

 national: first the history of each literature; then the historic 

 relations between literatures. That in turn is naturally followed 

 by the synthesis in literature as a unit. "The nineteenth century," 

 says M. Texte, "has seen the national history of literatures develop 

 and establish itself: the task of the twentieth century will undoubt- 

 edly be to write the comparative history of those literatures." "The 

 scientific view of literature," says Brandes, "provides us with a tele 1 - 

 scope of which the one end magnifies, and the other diminishes; it 

 must be so focused as to remedy the illusion of unassisted eyesight. 

 The different nations have hitherto held themselves SO 4 distinct, as 

 far as literature is concerned, that each has only to a very limited 

 extent been able to benefit by the productions of the rest." Here, 

 again, the way had been marked out by Arnold, when he advocated 

 the comparison of literary classics in one language, or in many, with 

 a view to determining their relative excellence, that is, to displacing 

 personal or judicial criticism by a method more scientific. I am aware 

 that this conception of the study concerns its method and purpose 

 rather than its field. But I mention it here because it implies a more 

 comprehensive and deeper conception underlying all these statements 

 of the material of comparative study: the solidarity of literature. 

 And that is the working premise of the student of comparative 

 literature to-day: literature as a distinct and integral medium of 

 thought, a common institutional expression of humanity; differ- 

 entiated, to be sure, by the social conditions of the individual, by 

 racial, historical, cultural, and linguistic influences, opportunities, 

 and restrictions, but (irrespective of age or guise), prompted by the 

 common needs and aspirations of man, sprung from common fac- 

 ulties psychological and physiological, and obeying common laws of 

 material and mode, of the individual, and of social humanity. 



