Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/256



§ 61. fundamental facts in literary evolution are the extent of the social group and the characters of the individual units of which it is composed. So long as social and individual life moves within the narrow associations of the clan, or of the city commonwealth, the ideal range of human sympathy is proportionately restricted. It is true that the clan life of the Hebrews supplied in its Beríth or League, in its communal associations of property and descent, the central conceptions of a national ideal. It is true that the city of the Greeks supplied the ideal of Greek centralism as of Greek local patriotism. But before the larger destinies of humanity as a whole could come home to either Hebrew or Greek minds, the associations of the clan and the city commonwealth alike required to be widened by enlarged spheres of social action. This expansion among tribal communities like the Hebrews and Arabs leads to religious cosmopolitanism, to an ideal of human unity deeply social in its character, and strictly confined within the circle of a common creed. A similar expansion in municipal communities like Athens and Rome leads to political cosmopolitanism, to an ideal of human unity within a circle of common culture whose peace is secured by centralised force and whose character