The student of ideas and their place in history will always be concerned with the patterns of transition, which are at the same time patterns of transformation, whereby ideas pass from one area of activity to another. Let us survey for a moment the development of modern thought -- turning our attention from the Reformation toward the revolutionary and romantic movements that follow and dwelling finally on more recent decades. We may thus trace the notion of individual autonomy from its manifestation in religious practice and theological reflection through practical politics and political theory into literature and the arts. Finally we may note that the idea appears in educational theory where its influence is at present widespread. No one will deny that such broad developments and transitions are of great intrinsic interest and the study of ideas in literature would be woefully incomplete without frequent reference to them. Still, we must remember that we cannot construct and justify generalizations of this sort unless we are ready to consider many special instances of influence moving between such areas as theology, philosophy, political thought, and literature. The actual moments of contact are vitally important. These moments are historical events in the lives of individual authors with which the student of comparative literature must be frequently concerned.

Perhaps the most powerful and most frequently recurring literary influence on the Western world has been that of the Old and New Testament. Certainly one of the most important comments that can be made upon the spiritual and cultural life of any period of Western civilization during the past sixteen or seventeen centuries has to do with the way in which its leaders have read and interpreted the Bible. This reading and the comments that it evoked constitute the influence. A contrast of the scripture reading of, let us say, St. Augustine, John Bunyan, and Thomas Jefferson, all three of whom found in such study a real source of enlightenment, can tell us a great deal about these three men and the age that each represented and helped bring to conscious expression. In much the same way, we recognize the importance of Shakespeare's familarity with Plutarch and Montaigne, of Shelley's study of Plato's dialogues, and of Coleridge's enthusiastic plundering of the writings of many philosophers and theologians from Plato to Schelling and William Godwin, through which so many abstract ideas were brought to the attention of English men of letters.