428-440) and on Moliere (tome xiii. 51-85):
or again Ranke's _Papste_, i. 486-503 (on Tasso and the artistic
tendencies of the middle of the sixteenth century): _Franzosische
Geschichte_, iii. 345-368 (the age of Louis XIV.).] Witness, again,
Hegel's illustration of the Greek conception of the family from the
_Antigone_ and the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles; or, if we may pass to a
somewhat different field, his "construction" of the French Revolution
from the religious and metaphysical ideas of Rousseau. [Footnote:
Hegel, _Phanomenologie des Geistes_, pp. 323-348, and pp. 426-436.]
So far as it employs literature to give the key to the outward history
of a nation or to the growth of its spiritual faith, it is clear that
the historical method ceases to be, in the strict sense of the word,
a literary instrument. It implies certainly that a literary judgment
has been passed; but, once passed, that judgment is used for ends that
lie altogether apart from the interests of literature. But it is idle
to consider that literature loses caste by lending itself to such a
purpose.
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