CHAPTER I



HISTORICAL criticism nowhere occurs as an isolated fact in the
civilisation or literature of any people. It is part of that
complex 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 their commerce. 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