Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/73

 best of human proofs—evidences unconsciously given—the existence of harmonies between idea and sound varying in different states of language and social life. Still, it may be asked, where is the connection between analytic or individualising thought and social conditions? How is the desire to see the individual object in preference to the general idea connected with social evolution? Let social life be decomposed into individual units, let men's sympathies be narrowed into the sphere of self, in a word, let the group be individualised, and we shall find that men's imagination is impaired, that it ceases to pass spontaneously beyond self, that it too becomes individualised. Such imagination may be wondrously inspired by nature, but hardly by human life. Thus the individualising process in social life which thrusts analytic thinking to the front, not only impairs the sympathetic imagination—and there is little imagination without sympathy—but undermines the belief in those harmonies of sound and thought of which poetry so largely consists. We may, therefore, find a very profound relation between what are called "prosaic" ages and individualism in social life, as well as between "poetical" ages and such social conditions as foster imagination by their vigorous sympathies, and do not affect to break the harmony of sound and idea by refined analysis.

But if we turn from men and their languages and life to animal and physical nature, we shall not only find the