theoryofliteratu00inwell

282 Theory of Literature
gaps in the scheme discovered by older methods. We must seek
to elaborate a new ideal of literary history and new methods
which would make its realization possible. If the ideal here out-
lined seems unduly "purist" in its emphasis on the history of
literature as an art, we can avow that no other approach has been
considered invalid and that concentration seems a necessary anti-
dote to the expansionist movement through which literary his-
tory has passed in the last decades. A clear consciousness of a
scheme of relationships between methods is in itself a remedy
against mental confusion, even though the individual may elect
to combine several methods.