may retard or accelerate its effects. Progress is therefore a
law which cannot be abrogated, but which is not invariably obeyed.

Nevertheless, in proportion to the increase of the mass of individuals,
the caprices of chance and of liberty neutralize each other to allow the
providential action that presides over our destinies to prevail. Looking
at the same total of the life of the world, humanity undoubtedly
advances: there are in our time fewer moral miseries, fewer physical
miseries, than were known in the past.

Consequently art and literature, which express the different states of
society, must share in some degree in this progressive march. But there
are two things in literary work: on the one hand the ideas and social
manners which it expresses, on the other the intelligence, the feeling,
the imagination of the writer who becomes its interpreter. While the
former of these elements tends incessantly to a greater perfection, the
latter is subject to all the hazards of individual genius. Accordingly
the progressive literature is only in the inspiration, and so to speak in
the matter; it may and must therefore not be continuous in form.

But more than this: in very advanced societies the very grandeur of
ideas, the abundance of models, the satiety of the public render the task
of the artist more and more difficult. The artist himself has no longer
the enthusiasm of the first ages, the youth of imagination and of the
heart; he is an old man whose riches have increased, but who enjoys his
wealth less.

If all the epochs of literature are considered as a whole it will be seen
that they succeed each other in a constant order. After the period when
the idea and the form combined in a harmonious manner comes another where
the social idea is superabundant, and destroys the literary form of the
preceding epoch.

The middle ages introduced spiritualism in art; before this new idea the
smiling untruths of Greek poetry fled away frightened. The classical
form so beautiful, so pure, cannot contain high Catholic thought. A new
art is formed; on this side the Alps it does not reach the maturity that
produces masterpieces. But at that time all Europe was one fatherland;
Italy completes what is lacking in France and elsewhere.

The renaissance introduces new ideas into civilization; it resuscitates
the traditions of antique science and seeks to unite them to the truths
of Christianity. The art of the middle ages, as a vessel of