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decay of an art that there must be a corresponding decay in the vitality
and morality of the race. Ruskin, for example, always assumed in his
most brilliant and incisive, but not very conclusive, arguments that men
ceased to paint good pictures simply because they ceased to be good men.
He did not proceed to prove that the moral decline really took place,
and still less to show why it took place. But, without attacking these
large problems, I shall be content to say that I do not see that any
such sweeping conclusions can be made as to the kind of changes in
literary forms with which we shall be concerned. That there is a close
relation between the literature and the general social condition of a
nation is my own contention. But the relation is hardly of this simple
kind. Nations, it seems to me, have got on remarkably well, and made not
only material but political and moral progress in the periods when they
have written few books, and those bad ones; and, conversely, have
produced some admirable literature while they were developing some very
ugly tendencies. To say the truth, literature seems to me to be a kind
of by-product. It occupies far too small a part in the whole activity of
a nation, even of its intellectual activity, to serve as a complete
indication of the many forces which are at work, or as an adequate moral
barometer of the general moral state. The attempt to establish such a
condition too closely, seems to me to lead to a good many very edifying
but not the less fallacious conclusions.

The succession of literary species implies that some are always passing
into the stage of 'survivals': and the most obvious course is to
endeavour to associate them with the general philosophical movement.
That suggests one obvious explanation of many literary developments. The
great thriving times of literature have occurred when new intellectual
horizons seemed to be suddenly opening upon the human intelligence; as
when Bacon was taking his Pisgah sight of the promised land of science,
and Shakespeare and Spenser were making new conquests in the world of
the poetic imagination. A great intellectual shock was stimulating the
parallel, though independent, outbursts of activity. The remark may
suggest one reason for the decline as well as for the rise of the new
genus. If, on the one hand, the man of genius is especially sensitive to
the new ideas which are stirring the world, it is also necessary that he
should be in