The extract deals with the tradition's value and the relation between an individual poet and his predecessors.

Eliot presents his thesis inviting the reader to consider the best and originally parts of a new poet's work as personal reworking of what previous poets had already expressed.
He underline that the use's of tradition is not a copy act but asks a hard work to internalize the concepts to create a personal idea about them.
Eliot explain the tradition's deep through two concept: the historical sense and the principle of aesthetic.

The historical sense implies the past's presence in present (simultaneous concept of time) and the awareness for the poet to be who bring with him the weight of Culture, starting from Homer.

The principle of aesthetic is convey starting from a concept: a poet is if there are others with which he is compare. When a poet introduce a new work its destabilizes the order of the pre-existence works. To re-create the order the works' value must interact and in this way there is the relation between the new and the old.

With this awareness Eliot's invites the poet to consider the responsibility to make a new work.