【英文原著类】Essays and Lectures(文集与讲座).pdf

Essays and Lectures
Essays and Lectures
by Oscar Wilde

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Essays and Lectures
THE RISE OF HISTORICAL
CRITICISM
CHAPTER I
HISTORICAL criticism nowhere occurs as an isolated fact in the
civilisation or literature of any people. It is part of plex working
towards freedom which may be described as the revolt against authority.
It is merely one facet of that speculative spirit of an innovation, which in
the sphere of action produces democracy and revolution, and in that of
thought is the parent of philosophy and physical science; and its
importance as a factor of progress is based not so much on the results it
attains, as on the tone of thought which it represents, and the method by
which it works.
Being thus the resultant of forces essentially revolutionary, it is not to
be found in the ancient world among the material despotisms of Asia or
the stationary civilisation of Egypt. The clay cylinders of Assyria and
Babylon, the hieroglyphics of the pyramids, form not history but the
material for history.
The Chinese annals, ascending as they do to the barbarous forest life
of the nation, are marked with a soberness of judgment, a freedom from
invention, which is almost unparalleled in the writings of any people; but
the protective spirit which is the characteristic of that people proved as
fatal to their literature as to merce. Free criticism is as
unknown as free trade. While as regards the Hindus, their acute, analytical
and logical mind is directed rather to grammar, criticism and philosophy
than to history or chronology. Indeed, in history their imagination seems
to have run wild, legend and fact are so indissolubly mingled together that
any attempt to separate them seems vain. If we except the identification
of the Greek Sandracottus with the Indian Chandragupta, we have really
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Essays and Lectures
no clue by which we can test the truth of their writings or examine their
method of investigation.
It is among the Hellenic