Essays and Lectures — Oscar Wilde

Historical criticism nowhere occurs as an isolated fact in the cildquo civilisation or literature of any people It is part of that complex working vilisation 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 thousphere thought is the parent of philosophy and physical science and its importance as ght 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 materiit material despotisms of Asia or the stationary civilisation of Egypt al The clay cylinders of Assyria and Babylon the hieroglyphics of the pyramids form not history but the material for history