The foolish vanity of the later poets of antiquity led some of them into errors much resembling those which now prevail on this point. Still in Polytheistic society artists were at no time looked upon as the leading class, notwithstanding the esthetic character of Greek and Roman religion. If proofs were necessary, Homer’s poems, especially the Odyssey, would show how secondary the influence of the fine arts was upon society, even when the priesthood had ceased to control them. Plato’s Utopia, written when Polytheism was in its decline, represented a state in which the interference of poets was systematically prevented. Mediaeval Monotheism was still less disposed to overrate the importance of Art, though its true value was recognized more generally than it had ever been before. But with the decline of Catholicism, germs of errors showed themselves, from which even the extraordinary genius of Dante was not free. The revolutionary influences of the last five centuries have developed these errors into the delirium of self-conceit exhibited by the poets and literary men of our time. Theology having arrived at its extreme limits before any true conception of the Positive state could arise, the negative condition of the Western Republic became aggravated to an unheard-of extent. Rules and institutions, which had formerly controlled the most headstrong ambition, fell rapidly into discredit. And as the principles of social order disappeared, artists and especially poets, the leading class among them, stimulated by the applause which they received from their uninstructed audience, fell into the error of seeking political influence. Incompatible as all mere criticism must be with true poetry, modern Art since the fourteenth century has participated more and more actively in the destruction of the old system. Until, however, Negativism had received its distinct shape and character from the revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the influence of Art for destructive purposes was secondary to that exercised by metaphysicians and legists. But in the eighteenth century, when negativism began to be propagated boldly in a systematic form, the case was changed, and literary ambition asserted itself more strongly. The speculative thinkers who had hitherto formed the vanguard of the destructive movement, were replaced by mere litterateurs, men whose talents were of a poetical rather than philosophical kind, but who had, intellectually speaking, no real vocation. When the crisis of the Revolution came, this heterogeneous class took the lead in the movement, and naturally stepped into all political offices; a state of things which will continue until there is a more direct and general movement of reorganization. [The political influence of literary men a deplorable sign and source of anarchy]