348 HISTORY OF LITERATURE 



From this conception of the material as a unit, scholars naturally 

 advance to the consideration of its development, the construction 

 of a theory. If a unity, and an existence approximately contempora- 

 neous with that of society, why not a life, a growth? "We no longer 

 have to examine solely the relations of one nation with another," 

 says one, " but to unfold the simultaneous development of all litera- 

 tures, or, at least, of an important group of literatures." It is the 

 task of comparative literature, according to another, to find whether 

 the same laws of literary development prevail among all peoples or 

 not. The internal and external aspects of literary growth, Mr. 

 Posnett announces to be the objects of comparative inquiry; and 

 accepting as the principle of literary growth the progressive deepen- 

 ing and widening of personality, in other words, the contraction 

 and expansion of Arnold and Texte, with the development of 

 the social unit in which the individual is placed, this author finds a 

 corresponding differentiation of the literary medium from the prim- 

 itive homogeneity of communal art, a gradual individualizing of the 

 literary occasion and an evolution of literary forms. Mr. Posnett 's 

 method is perhaps impaired by the fact that he regards the relation 

 of literary history to the political rather than to the broader social 

 development of a people, but he certainly elaborates a theory; and 

 it is the more instructive because he does not treat literature as 

 organic, developing by reason of a life within itself to a determined 

 end, but as secondary and still developing with the evolution of the 

 organism from which it springs. In this theory of institutional growth 

 result also the methods of Buckle and Ernst Grosse, which may be 

 termed physiological and physiographical ; and the physio-psycho- 

 logical of Schiller, Spencer, and Karl Groos; and the method of Irjo 

 Hirn, and Guyau, which combines the social and psychological in the 

 inquiry into the art-impulse, its history and its effect; and that of 

 Schlegel and Carriere, who, emphasizing one side of Hegel's theory, 

 rest literary development largely upon the development of religious 

 thought. In M. Bruneti&re, on the other hand, we have one who 

 boldly announces his intention to trace the evolution of literary 

 species, not as dependent upon the life of an organism such as 

 society, but in themselves. He frankly proposes to discover the laws 

 of literary development by applying the theory of evolution to the 

 study of literature. When he details the signs of youth, maturity, 

 and decay which the type may exhibit, and the transformation of 

 one type into another as, for instance, the French pulpit oration 

 into the ode according to principles analogous in their operation 

 to the Darwinian struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, and 

 natural selection, we become apprehensive lest the parallel be over- 

 worked. If M. Brunetiere would only complete the national portion 

 of his history, or, at least, try to substantiate his theory, we should 



