In "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) T. S. Eliot argues that if tradition consisted of little more than following the way of a previous generation it should be positively discouraged--if for no other reason than novelty is better than mere repetition. He goes on, however, to add that tradition, properly understood, is of much wider significance, for it embodies "the historical sense," not merely in the sense of the pastness of the past, but more important, in the recognition of its abiding presences. Eliot was talking, of course, about modern poets in general and of himself in particular, but he was well aware that "no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead."

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