 Third, Herder argues that literature started out predominantly sensuous in character but then became increasingly intellectual as history proceeded. In the early essays On the Ode (1764/5) and Attempt at a History of Lyric Poetry he explains this development in terms of a diminution of strong feelings (e.g., fear) and an increase in mental complexity and science, and he regards it as a sort of decline. Later on, in the Letters for the Advancement, he retains the descriptive part of this account, but revises its conception that a decline is involved: the more sensuous poetry of the ancients and the more intellectualized poetry of the moderns are two different but equally legitimate types of poetry. (This new position would strongly influence the Romantics.)