theoryofliteratu00inwell

Literary History 269
dividual reality to a general value, we do not degrade the indi-
vidual to a mere specimen of a general concept but, instead, give
significance to the individual. History does not simply individualize
general values (nor is it, of course, a discontinuous meaningless
flux), but the historical process will produce ever new
forms of value, hitherto unknown and unpredictable. The rela-
tivity of the individual work of art to a scale of values is thus
nothing else than the necessary correlative of its individuality.
The series of developments will be constructed in reference to
a scheme of values or norms, but these values themselves emerge
only from the contemplation of this process. There is, one must
admit, a logical circle here: the historical process has to be judged
by values, while the scale of values is itself derived from his-
tory. 15 But this seems unavoidable, for otherwise we must either
resign ourselves to the idea of a meaningless flux of change or
apply some extra-literary standards—some Absolute, extraneous
to the process of literature.
This discussion of the problem of literary evolution has been
necessarily abstract. It has attempted to establish that the evolu-
tion of literature is different from that of biology, and that it
has nothing to do with the idea of a uniform progress toward
one eternal model. History can be written only in reference to
variable schemes of values, and these schemes have to be ab-
stracted from history itself. This idea may be illustrated by ref-
erence to some of the problems with which literary history is
confronted.
The most obvious relationships between works of art—sources
and influences—have been treated most frequently and consti-
tute a staple of traditional scholarship. Although not literary
history in the narrow sense, the establishment of literary rela-
tionships between authors is obviously a most important prepa-
ration for the writing of such literary history. If, for instance,
we should want to write the History of English Poetry in the
eighteenth century, it would be necessary to know the exact relationships
of the eighteenth-century poets to Spenser, Milton
and Dryden. A book like Raymond Havens' Milton's Influence
on English Poetry? 6 a centrally literary study, accumulates im-
pressive evidence for the influence of Milton, not only assem-
bling the opinions of Milton held by eighteenth-century poets