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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: The course of the study of the spirit of historical criticism has
not been a profitless investigation into modes and forms of thought
now antiquated and of no account. The only spirit which is
entirely removed from us is the mediaeval; the Greek spirit is
essentially modern. The introduction of the comparative method of
research which has forced history to disclose its secrets belongs
in a measure to us. Ours, too, is a more scientific knowledge of
philology and the method of survival. Nor did the ancients know
anything of the doctrine of averages or of crucial instances, both
of which methods have proved of such importance in modern
criticism, the one adding a most important proof of the statical
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