This creative power works with elements, with materials; what if it has not those materials, those elements, ready for its use?  In that case it must surely wait till they are ready.  Now, in literature,—­ I will limit myself to literature, for it is about literature that the question arises,—­the elements with which the creative power works are ideas; the best ideas on every matter which literature touches, current at the time.  At any rate we may lay it down as certain that in modern literature no manifestation of the creative power not working with these can be very important or fruitful.  And I say current at the time, not merely accessible at the time; for creative literary genius does not principally show itself in discovering new ideas:  that is rather the business of the philosopher.  The grand work of literary genius is a work of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself in them; of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them in the most effective and attractive combinations,—­making beautiful works with them, in short.  But it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself amidst the order of ideas, in order to work freely; and these it is not so easy to command.  This is why great creative epochs in literature are so rare, this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the productions of many men of real genius; because, for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment; the creative power has, for its happy exercise, appointed elements, and those elements are not in its own control.

Nay, they are more within the control of the critical power.  It is the business of the critical power, as I said in the words already quoted, “in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is.”  Thus it tends, at last, to make an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself.  It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail.  Presently these new ideas reach society, the touch of truth is the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth everywhere; out of this stir and growth come the creative epochs of literature.

Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considerations of the general march of genius and of society,—­considerations which are apt to become too abstract and impalpable,—­every one can see that a poet, for instance, ought to know life and the world before dealing with them in poetry; and life and the world being in modern times very complex things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great critical effort behind it; else