^1 
 
 i 
 
A CRITICISM of SOME 
 
 ATTEMPTS TO RATIONALIZE 
 
 TRAGEDY 
 
 tiy 
 
 l.UCIUS WALTER ELDER 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
 
 University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfilment 
 
 of the Requirements for the Deiiree 
 
 of Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 
A CRITICISM of SOME 
 
 ATTEMPTS TO RATIONALIZE 
 
 TRAGEDY 
 
 LUCIUS WALTER ELDER 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
 
 University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfilment 
 
 of the Requirements for the Degree 
 
 of Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 kivy^fsUr C.//ege, J"®"- 1. ''^'^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It is now ten years since the problem of this study 
 took form in my mind. It had its origin in a chance 
 remark which, as I remember it at this distance, was to 
 the effect that in ancient tragedy there was a clear vision 
 of a solution for the difficulties confronting man; but, in 
 modem tragedy there was no such possibility present to 
 the mind of the reflective poet. Ruskin expresses a sim- 
 ilar judgment, quoted hereafter. 
 
 My first attack on the problem was to verify the 
 assertion by an inductive survey of tragic drama, both 
 ancient and modern. The main result of this reading was 
 to give the problem a different form; and the issue then 
 became : Are not the difficulties of a solution of the tragic 
 outlook to be explained as correlates of the theory of 
 knowledge? The essay may therefore be regarded as an 
 attempt to justify putting the problem in that way. The 
 task resolved itself into a search through the literature of 
 Western Europe for an idea : namely, What relation have 
 men found between the causes of tragic disaster and the 
 failure of knowledge to give valid results? Thus, the 
 study, though historical in method, makes no claim to 
 have exhausted the resources; but claims, rather, to be 
 critical of results assumed to be defined with historical 
 accuracy. 
 
 The aim of the thesis is to show that in the better 
 known conceptions of tragedy the failure of the poets and 
 aesthetic philosophers to give us a completely rational 
 theory may be explained by reference to the more inclu- 
 sive theory of knowledge forming the background of the 
 tragic conception. The thesis shows in detail that, when 
 the responsibility for the tragic situation is put on one or 
 the other of the essential factors, the theory about the 
 fact of tragedy is still unsatisfactory. It is further shown 
 that aesthetic speculation, in attempting to remedy the 
 matter, increases the gravity of the conception. The expo- 
 
F. 
 
 sition of this point is developed through three typical 
 moments in the history of thought. These are: 
 
 1. The theory that the mischances of fortune may be 
 overcome by retiring into the self based on the theory of 
 knowledge held by Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics, re- 
 spectively. 
 
 2. The theory that passion, as a source of tragedy, 
 may be avoided by subjecting the emotions to the disci- 
 pline of reason. A basis for this theory is found in the 
 philosophy of Spinoza and Leibniz. 
 
 3. The theory that tragic guilt is inherent in the 
 nature of the finite individual. The explanation of this 
 theory rests on the philosophy of Hegel, Solger, Schell- 
 ing, and others. 
 
 In each of these cases it is pointed out that there is 
 an unknowable element in the universe which passes over 
 into the corresponding conception of tragedy as an ele- 
 ment not amenable to human will; and that, therefore, it 
 is something which cannot be completely rationalized. 
 From a consideration of these matters it seems consistent 
 to suppose that the worlds of tragedy and comedy are 
 metaphysically different; and the attempt to view tragedy 
 as a higher kind of comedy is likewise open to criticism. 
 
 I accept this opportunity to express a sense of indebt- 
 edness to former teachers. To those in the University of 
 Michigan I owe, at least in large part, the very habits of 
 my thought. How unworthily I have profited, they only 
 will be able to to judge; and my vagaries of thought, or 
 inaccuracies of scholarship, must not be laid to their 
 account. As little are my teachers in the University of 
 Pennsylvania responsible for my shortcomings. To them 
 I am indebted for the generous help, the kindly criticism, 
 the patience and forbearance, which made the completion 
 of this essay possible. 
 
 Lucius W. Elder. 
 
 Kingfisher College, January 1, 1915. 
 
 ai 041 1 
 
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 6 
 
 Conception of tragedy and the tragic situation, 
 6; essential factors of the tragic situation, 6; 
 their variable connotation, 7; each subject to a 
 two-fold analysis, 8; point of view outlined, 
 9-10. 
 
 II. RELATIONS OF REFLECTIVE THOUGHT 
 
 TO ART 11 
 
 Conception of beauty, 11-12; philosophy and 
 aesthetic speculation, 13 ; knowledge and human 
 endeavor, 13 ; unknowable element in specula- 
 tion on tragedy, 14-15; difficulty of and ideal- 
 istic view, 16; inadequacy of poetic justice, 17; 
 divergences from the Aristotelian view, 17-19. 
 
 IIL TESTIMONY OF THE POETS 20 
 
 Interpretation of dramatic practice, 20-22 ; Rus- 
 kin's dictum, 23; general outlook of ancient 
 tragedy, 24 ; outlook in modern tragedy : Brown- 
 ing and Ibsen, 25-27; tragic purport of the 
 "dynamic," 27. 
 
 IV. THE MISFORTUNES OF GREAT MEN. ... 28 
 Renaissance criticism of the innate as irra- 
 tional, 28 ; Marlowe and others attack the divine 
 right of kings, 29; tragic element in the falls 
 of princes, 30-32 ; testimony from literature, 
 33-34 ; the conceit of fortune and its remedy, 
 35-36. 
 
 V. OVERCOMING THE OUTER WORLD WITH- 
 IN THE SELF 37 
 
 1. The Idea in the Ancient World 37 
 
 A difficulty in the interpretation of Aris- 
 totle and of the Greek tragic poets, 37-40 ; 
 the defeat of chance for the Stoic, Epi- 
 curean, and for the Skeptic, 40-42. 
 
2. The Idea in the Middle Ages and the Renais- 
 sance 42 
 
 The remedy for Fortune in Boethius, 43 ; in 
 the mathematical thought of the Renais- 
 sance, 45-46. 
 
 3. The Seventeenth Century and the Enlight- 
 enment 47 
 
 Irrationality of emotion, 47-48; illustrated 
 
 in Descartes and Spinoza, 49 ; and by 
 Racine, 50; the testimony of Lessing and 
 Leibniz, 50-51. 
 
 VI. THE SPECULATIVE OUTCOME 52 
 
 Speculation adds to the horror of tragedy, 52- 
 53; consequences of rejecting poetic justice, 
 53-54; tragedy of metaphysical weakness, 55; 
 idea of tragedy in the philosophy of valuation, 
 55; two consequences of tragedy of metaphys- 
 ical weakness, 56-57 ; criticism of Hegel, 58-59 ; 
 and of Solger, 59-60 ; summary of results, 60-61. 
 
 VII. THE IRRATIONAL ELEMENT AND THE 
 
 COMIC CONFLICT 61 
 
 Relations of comedy and tragedy, 61-64; con- 
 trasted on the basis of the theory of knowledge, 
 65-66; the function of knowledge in tragedy, 
 66; in comedy, 67; the higher concrete proc- 
 esses in comedy, 68-70; illustrated by Goethe's 
 Iphigeneia, 69 ; rational and irrational elements 
 in tragedy and comedy, 70-72. 
 
 Vm. GENERAL SUMMARY 72 
 
 NOTES AND REFERENCES 77 
 
I. 
 
 Statement of the Problem. 
 
 The more important, or better known, definitions and 
 conceptions of tragedy are, in this essay, to be considered 
 as so many attempts to rationalize one or another of the 
 elements commonly supposed to constitute the tragic situ- 
 ation. We may accept provisionally as the tragic situa- 
 tion that ethical moment in the life of the finite human 
 individual wherein he finds such an obstacle to the com- 
 plete fruition of his purpose, that, when he would have 
 chosen what seemed to him the better way, he was, never- 
 theless, obliged for some reason to accept the worse". The 
 result, to be tragic to the individual, must be of such a 
 kind as to force the belief that human endeavor is futile. 
 
 Whatever may be the motive that leads to the experi- 
 ence of the insuperable obstacle: namely, conduct moti- 
 vated by passion, by disregard of recognized moral prin- 
 ciples, or by any conscious aspiration; if, in the result, 
 there is suffering and defeat too great to be borne; con- 
 tradiction in ethical principles too fundamental to be 
 resolved ; limitation to human aspirations too definite to be 
 overcome: — then we have a tragic situation. In other 
 words, it may be said that the factors commonly assumed 
 to be essential to the tragic situation are three : 
 
 1. the tragic guilt; j 
 
 2. the reversal of fortune; 
 
 3. the inevitable conditions leading to the catas- 
 trophe. 
 
 These factors, though here given in their traditional 
 phraseology, have received a varying connotation. But in 
 general the first factor, the tragic guilt," has been traced 
 to an origin in human nature. The tragic guilt may be, 
 for example, a wilful disregard for recognized moral prin- 
 
ciples; an irresistible impulse or predisposition to commit 
 lawless acts; an error or frailty of judgment.* In the 
 Nineteenth Century tragic guilt has been extended to cover 
 the necessary limitation of spiritual interest by reason of 
 which the individual gives his allegiance to unworthy ends, 
 or to one interest exclusively ; for in the mere fact that the 
 human being is finite there is a limitation from which no 
 one is free. In any event, whatever constitutes the tragic 
 guilt is a source of suffering and of conflict between the 
 actual and the ideal; between the transitory and the per- 
 manent; between false pretensions to power and its actual 
 possession; between pretended immunity from the neces- 
 sity of destiny and actual subjection to it. Herein, as 
 Schelling pointed out, everyone is guilty; though one may 
 be without true, or ethical, guilt.' 
 
 The second factor, the reversal of fortune, is the 
 change in the status of the individual due to his conflict 
 with the higher powers of the universe.' But the re- 
 versal itself may be hypostatized as Fortune, Fate, Chance, 
 or Destiny ; and when so conceived is the immediate or 
 efficient cause of the tragic guilt as defined above, and the 
 cause of the defeat and suffering. The third factor, the 
 inevitableness of the conditions leading to the catastrophe,' 
 is referred for its origin to the necessary relations of the 
 individual to the world as a whole; or to the relations of 
 the immediate world of actuality to the moral and spiritual 
 world. 
 
 The inevitableness of the catastrophe, as Lessing de- 
 manded," may be a strict causal development from the 
 fault or tragic guilt, which, because it is a violation of 
 the immutable Justice of the world, must entail some pun- 
 ishment or reparation ; even though to preserve the moral 
 harmony of the universe, the punishment may be out of 
 all proportion to the individual's responsibility for his act. 
 That Justice, because it can take no cognizance of the 
 conditions of the act, can make no exemptions. The in- 
 evitable conditions may range in character from the whole 
 complex of circumstances surrounding every common act 
 
consciously determined on to those compelled by causes of 
 which we are ignorant and unconscious. They may range 
 from the results of retributive justice, and legal punish- 
 ment for torts and overt acts against society, to the sac- 
 rifices demanded by the impersonal values of patriotism 
 and religion; or, even to the resignation of the individual 
 will demanded by the pursuit of ideals which are impos- 
 sible of realization. Finally the inevitable conditions may 
 lie in the recognition of the futility of striving against an 
 irrational world. 
 
 Hence it has happened at one time or another that 
 one, or all, of these factors have been regarded as de- 
 mands made on the life of individuals to which it is im- 
 possible to conform and yet live. Each one of them has 
 been subjected to a two-fold analysis in which: 
 
 1. One of the factors has been regarded frankly 
 as an irrational demand, incapable of explanation 
 and unknowable; 
 
 2. One of them at least has been found neces- 
 sary, on the basis of some inclusive View of the world 
 as a whole, to explain the relations of the individual 
 to the universe: particularly that relation defined 
 above as the tragic situation. 
 
 In this respect, then, the conceptions of tragedy may be 
 regarded as attempts to rationalize those facts of exist- 
 ence which in themselves offer no satisfactory explana- 
 tion. For if tragic guilt, reversal of fortune, or inevitable 
 conditions, can be shown to be necessary characteristics 
 of the universe, they may to that degree be called rational 
 and knowable. In other words, to adopt an Aristotelian 
 distinction, whatever follows by logical analysis from 
 general principles, to the extent that it is a deduction, 
 may be regarded as more knowable in itself. 
 
 Criticism of the attempts to rationalize one or all of 
 these factors will include some consideration of the fol- 
 lowing points: 
 
 I. The theoretical or philosophical basis on which 
 the critical attitude depends. Here there falls to be con- 
 
 8 
 
sidered the relation of philosophy, and especially the prob- 
 lem of knowledge, to: 
 
 1. Reflective thought about art, especially dramatic 
 art ; 
 
 2. Art itself, especially tragic art. 
 
 II. Three things concerning the various conceptions 
 of tragedy: 
 
 1. The concept of tragedy is usually found to be 
 consistent with some larger, more inclusive view of the 
 universe, in which that concept answers to some specific 
 demand for a theory of suffering and defeat. 
 
 2. The criticism will attempt to show that however 
 satisfactorily tragedy may be conceived or defined from 
 the point of view of some specific theory about the uni- 
 verse, nevertheless, the acceptance of the definition entails 
 also the acceptance of something in that definition con- 
 trary to our desire or experience. Unless we can accept 
 in its essential outlines the point of view of the poet or 
 aesthetic philosopher, we shall not be able to accept his 
 attempt to make some useful concept out of the "neces- 
 sary limitation of spiritual interest," "arbitrary revolu- 
 tion of Fortune's wheel," or "the highest expression of 
 personality in suffering." Here are ideas at which we 
 revolt; for to admit that we can understand and accept 
 them may require too complete a reorganization of all our 
 experience; and, consequently, they are ideas which can- 
 not be accepted as true descriptions of the world as a 
 whole. We may detect this failure to rationalize com- 
 pletely the whole conception of tragedy in various ways, 
 but especially in two, as follows: 
 
 a. The tragic poet fails to convince us that the 
 catastrophe was necessary; that the disaster needed 
 to have been so overwhelming. The inability of the 
 poet to find a solution of the difficulty is not always 
 obscurity of his spiritual vision; but often subjection 
 to the popular or reflective views of his age. Hence, 
 what the poet portrays for us is, as a matter of in- 
 
terpreting the world, referable for its explanation to 
 the peculiar conditions of the thought of his time. 
 
 b. The failure in the same way of the aesthetic 
 philosopher is due to the fact that he raises the 
 factors of the tragic situation to the status of neces- 
 sary elements of the universe; and in turn refers 
 them for explanation to the principles which, he ad- 
 mits, are for us unknowable because universal. He 
 may, as in the case of Schopenhauer or Bahnsen, 
 adopt a mere conceit or affectation as a metaphysical 
 principle and attempt on that basis to explain the 
 notion of tragedy.* 
 
 3. Concerning the tragic, it must be shown, thirdly, 
 that there not only is, but also must be, an irrational ele- 
 ment present in the conception, in the sense that there 
 is a factor in the universe unknowable to the finite human 
 intellect. This point likewise involves two others: 
 
 a. Inasmuch as theories about art are supposed 
 to have some necessary relation to the philosophy 
 from which they arise, or to the prevalent view of 
 the world at the time to which they are pertinent, 
 it follows that the irrational element in the concepts 
 under consideration may be referred to that phil- 
 osophy for its ground or sufficient reason. 
 
 b. In particular, the irrational element will be 
 regarded as the necessary correlate, in the conception 
 of tragedy, of an unknowable or irrational factor in 
 the corresponding theory of knowledge. 
 
 III. The criticism will also attempt to give some 
 evidence from the poets and the field of reflective thought 
 to illustrate the foregoing points. Some attempt will be 
 made to show that idealistic theory about tragedy has been 
 especially prone to make of it something distasteful which 
 in reality it may not be, 
 
 IV. Finally, there will be some consideration of the 
 attempt made to prove tragedy essentially identical with 
 
 10 
 
comedy. The impossibility of their identity is evident if 
 we regard two opposing theories of knowledge as dividing 
 the labor of explaining the universe. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Relations of Reflective Thought to Art. 
 
 The thesis rests in the first instance on a correlation 
 of philosophy with reflective thought about art, and with 
 art itself. Philosophy in general, it may be presumed, is 
 identical with reflective thought, and especially with what 
 Aristotle called the whole of disinterested knowledge. For 
 the purposes of the present study, however, philosophy 
 will generally be deemed equivalent to the theory of 
 knowledge and the inquiry into the significance of the 
 facts discovered by the special departments of science or 
 experience.'" 
 
 Some of the possible relations of truth and beauty 
 are especially significant. Beauty in literature, or art in 
 general, is known to us in the first instance through con- 
 crete expression." Its immediate cognition is perceptual. 
 From this point of view beauty is largely a matter of 
 construction and sentiment. The fact that beauty can 
 be expressed in terms of perceptual knowledge may be 
 9therwise stated : Beauty has a variable content, not only 
 In point of subject matter, but also in point of the inter- 
 pretation given by the artist to his material. But the 
 beauty of a thing may lie not only in its content, but also 
 in the correspondence of that content to our views of the 
 universe. That is beautiful to us which we find to be in 
 accord with our beliefs. Unlike custom or law, beauty is 
 quite largely a matter of the individual. A work of art 
 is an individual, personal, or subjective interpretation of 
 the universe for the purpose of making clear on the per- 
 ceptual level of knowledge what the ideal of life is. To 
 deduce from any specified work of art just what the 
 artist conceives the ideal of life to be is no easy task ; 
 
 11 
 
for it is largely a matter of interpretation and patching 
 together fragmentary expressions. 
 
 We do not desire to make of the artist a misguided 
 philosopher; nor of the philosopher an unconscious poet; 
 nor is it to be presumed that art is exhausted by a purely 
 inteilectualistic interpretation. But it should not be for- 
 gotten that philosophy may, in its technical fashion, be 
 an expression of the artistic ideals of the period in which 
 it arises." On the other hand, if beauty is in any sense 
 a sensuous expression of those concepts entertained as 
 such by philosophy, the meaning of art or beauty will be 
 ultimately derivable from the same source as the concepts 
 of reflective thought. If conceptual thought has this re- 
 lation to the world of perception, it would follow that the 
 significance of beauty would be disposable in abstract 
 statements whereby the affinity of beauty and reflective 
 thought is enunciated. We would expect to find, accord- 
 ingly, that the reflective thought of any era and the art 
 which is contemporary with it, reveal to us the same 
 world. 
 
 What is true of artists in general is true in some de- 
 gree of dramatists. They are not philosophers ; neverthe- 
 less, could they be self-conscious, what would they say as 
 to their views of the world? There must sometimes be 
 general principles at the background of thought to sug- 
 gest the basis of the artist's work, apart from the specific 
 content of the tragic, or other, motive; something to sug- 
 gest, it may be, what is the infirmity of existence of 
 which man necessarily partakes. The tragic artist may 
 not only give us a portrayal of the tragedy, but also a 
 suggestion of the principle which would account for the 
 occurrence of tragedy in human life." From an external 
 source, man may be represented as subject to chance or 
 fate; from within, as subject to disintegrating emotion 
 or passion." Again, certain dramas of the Renaissance 
 and of the Enlightenment seem to rest on the failure of 
 knowledge, and to imply that the finite and essentially 
 fallible nature of man is to be sought in the intellectual, 
 
 12 
 
rather than in the moral, powers." In general, ought we 
 not to find recognition of such principles in the philosophy 
 pertinent to the time? To put the problem the other way 
 around : In any epoch of thought in which there is recog- l . 
 nized, for example, an irrational element in the concept Jjr ' 
 of knowledge, if it be also an era in which tragic art jj 
 flourishes, we might be able to find that irrational ele- / 
 ment recognized in dramatic concepts. / 
 
 The development of thought does, presumably, show- 
 some such relation : namely, that typical attitudes of 
 thought to the problem of tragedy are in reality logical 
 expressions of some more fundamental questions, like 
 that of knowledge. Some such problem was raised by 
 Ruskin: whether or not tragic art could find a solution 
 of the difficulties confronting man by reason of the 
 menacing aspect of destiny. Is art able to do what the 
 wise man of the ancients had attempted in his specula- 
 tion and moral theory, /. e., escape the world? The ques- 
 tion is that of the vole of knowledge in the vulgar spec- 
 tacle of success or failure. 
 
 Just what do we know, then, of the adequacy of 
 knowledge for the ends of endeavor, especially of the ideal 
 of human endeavor as it is embodied in dramatic art? 
 Is there something in the contradictions of the theory of 
 knowledge to suggest the possibility of self-realization, or 
 its impossibility? The question has not to do here with 
 the occurrence of success or unsuccess as facts of human 
 experience, but as significant for the whole theory of the 
 universe. Speculation on this point has not followed a 
 single path. We know, for example, that the duplicity of 
 thought has served as a scapegoat for many a sin. The 
 dubious character of sensuous knowledge, when it pre- 
 tended to final truth, has been commended to us from 
 antiquity;" and similarly, the untrustworthy character 
 of conceptual knowledge has been commended to us from 
 an equally venerable past." Another historical heritage 
 is the ethical value of knowledge as the basis of virtue 
 and happiness, equally with its dubious character in that 
 
 13 
 
function. The value of knowledge in matters of conduct 
 is quite likely to be merely negative. That is to say, the 
 insight of the wise man of old is that by which he avoids 
 conflict with the world and is withdrawn from the possi- 
 bility of happiness and misery alike, in so far as these 
 depend on the world of change. ' The wisdom of the en- 
 lightened man is a discipline of the emotions and pas- 
 sions: this is what it means to follow reason. But cer- 
 tainly where conduct is thought to be subject to a fortune 
 obscure to knowledge, one would hardly expect the func- 
 tion of knowledge to be more than negative. The ascrip- 
 tion of failure or success, tragedy or comedy, to destiny 
 or chance, may, perhaps must, suffer some attempt at 
 rationalization in the course of history; and it may turn 
 out that fate, fortune, or chance are but hypostatized un- 
 knowable elements in a theory of knowledge. 
 
 It is part of the purpose of this essay to show that 
 there is in the more important or better known concep- 
 tions and definitions of tragedy such an unknowable ele- 
 ment, however consistent the whole definition may be with 
 some allied theory of the universe. The following para- 
 graphs are intended to show how the unknowable element 
 enters the definition ; and to show how speculation, in 
 attempting to rationalize the significance of suffering by 
 reference to an unknowable element, apparently makes 
 matters worse than the facts of experience and the prin- 
 ciples of knowledge will warrant. The attempt to define 
 tragedy as a very plausible and necessary event contrib- 
 utes to that concept a fearsomeness and dreadful possi- 
 bility for human destiny. To the fact of tragedy is added 
 an awfulness which it would be comforting to know arises 
 only from the activity of speculation and not from the 
 necessary constitution of the universe. If this be true, 
 then we might commit to medical science and to beneficent 
 legislation the task of mitigating the facts of suffering 
 which, because they are facts, are difficult to mitigate or 
 assuage by the mere assertion of their illusory character. 
 The horrible things which speculation has made out of the 
 
 14 
 
facts of experience are, like the symptoms of disease, 
 more alarming than the illness itself. It would be a serv- 
 ice to philosophy to show that the deductions concerning 
 human destiny are far from hitting the truth of the mat- 
 ter, and that they cannot be expected to; since these de- 
 ductions are based on definite assumptions suggesting the 
 nature and direction of the conclusions drawn from them. 
 
 Speculation purports to give us a report of an un- 
 known world other than the world of facts; but we are 
 continually denouncing speculation as a false spy. We like 
 to think of its results as monstrous when they contradict 
 our experience or involve us in further difficulties of 
 thought. We must not forget that there is, after all, a 
 rational value to that knowledge which enables us to 
 attain our ends even against obstacles; for there is pres- 
 ent to consciousness, whether the philosophical or the 
 popular, the fact of experience that man may either bend \ 
 the world to his purposes or be defeated. This, then, is -' 
 the possibility of comedy: that the world is subject to 
 laws knowable as such, and in conformity with which man 
 can live happily realizing all legitimate desires. In the 
 realization of our desires, in so far as they are depend- 
 ent on our cognitive relation to the world, the normal 
 relations of knowledge and conduct supply us with the 
 notion that some things are possible to conduct; but that 
 some ideals can never be anything more than ideals. By 
 their very nature, some ideals are outside of the world 
 of actually realizable purposes and may, therefore, never 
 be actualized in so conditional a sphere as this of time 
 and space, of sense and action. Where the external world 
 is adequate to supply us with valid knowledge, or suf- 
 ficiently docile to be bent to our will and purpose, there 
 would seem to be no question of tragedy at all. At any 
 rate, the only possible denial of human success would be 
 the failure of an act to issue in normal results — a thing 
 explicable on the basis of chastened and corrected knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 15 
 
But it seems as though idealistic speculation must 
 land us in a skeptical position with respect to the possi- 
 bility of realizing human purposes here and now. In an 
 idealistic world we are supposed to have power over the 
 issue of actions by the power of thought in that we can 
 interpiet the significance of action and its results. No 
 doubt there is always some gain in the thought which 
 makes suffering less. But in the idealistic picture of the 
 universe, the unknowable reach of infinity makes all right; 
 and unless we are willing to accept this picture, we shall 
 be at a loss to interpret as after all somehow good, the 
 failure of an action to issue in normal results. Not even 
 a philosopher can shift easily and immediately to that 
 standpoint when face to face with failure. When the re- 
 sult of an act is either too much or too little for one's 
 purpose, one is embarrassed not only by the actual fact, 
 but also by the difficulties of thought in reducing the 
 results of experience to the values of conceptual thought.'* 
 
 Idealistic speculation in trying to make some useful 
 concept out of the fact of suffering has precipitated just 
 those difficulties of thought. The rationalization of that 
 practical joker, brutal fate, has usually taken one of two 
 general directions. The first is the notion of poetic jus- 
 tice, assuming an ultimate reality whose fundamental 
 attribute is an ethical majesty that most jealously resents 
 any squint-eyed doubt of its justice. If this is roughly 
 the position of poetic justice, the other is that which may 
 be called transcendental injustice. That is to say, every 
 finite act, even the most virtuous, is fraught with direful 
 possibilities because by the nature of the universe the 
 finite act disturbs the balance of the infinite : it brings 
 discord into the harmony of the absolute. The sponsor 
 of a finite act must pay a penalty for so being. This 
 may be called justice only by a supreme effort of the will 
 and by the abandonment of the most ordinary notions of 
 common sense. 
 
 The old notion of tragic guilt and its accompaniment 
 of poetic justice have latterly fallen under criticism in 
 
 16 
 
some of the great systems of aesthetics.'" The theory has 
 not been found applicable to several great works of art; 
 and the theory has not always been in harmony with the 
 metaphysical basis of aesthetic speculation. The theory 
 of poetic justice as applied to tragedy has sometimes been 
 called the theory of "adequate guilt." The tragic situa- 
 tion for that theory is a compound of elements, moral in 
 their essential nature, between which there is a rigorous 
 reciprocation. Man's relation to the universe is that of a 
 link in an ethico-causal series wherein the occurrence of 
 a particularly human event is adequately evaluated by 
 reference to the moral considerations preceding and fol- 
 lowing the act. Behind every event is a system of values 
 to explain the purposive relations of man and the world. 
 In such a world the tragic guilt or fault must be morally 
 reprehensible, and the catastrophe must be commensurable 
 with the guilt. The result of the tragedy for the aesthetic 
 judgment must conform to, but do no more than confirm, 
 the moral justice of the universe. The theory is retribu- 
 tive in the sense that Justice holds an even balance; for 
 if it were otherwise, we could not assume that our uni- 
 verse were governed by a benevolent moral power; nor 
 would our universe, from the human point of View, be a 
 rational and consistent whole. 
 
 It should not be assumed that the theory of poetic 
 justice has always been dominant in either the popular 
 or the reflective consciousness. It has not always been 
 dominant either in life or in art; and the abandonment 
 of the theory is not distinctively modem. Perhaps the 
 first theory logically divergent is the Aristotelian, or 
 what has sometimes been called the theory of inadequate 
 guilt. This theory is based on a view of beauty which 
 does not include specifically moral situations as part of its 
 field. As Aristotle indicated, the spectacle of a bad man 
 receiving his just deserts, or a good man raised to pre- 
 eminent fortune and happiness, though they may satisfy 
 our moral predilections, do not afford the emotional relief 
 of melodramatic horror demanded by the audience and so 
 
 17 
 
completely afforded by the favorite Oedipus Rex. What 
 Aristotle designed as a practical guide for the dramatist 
 has been taken over into aesthetic theory and has lent 
 itself with facile adaptability to both fact and theory. It 
 is a fact that many persons suffer in a way impossible to 
 equate with their known actions and motives; they are 
 miserable for no assignable cause, except that they are 
 subject to some excusable error, frailty, or defect of judg- 
 ment. The catastrophe, when this theory is applied to the 
 drama, must have a strict causal development from the 
 fault as the dramatic motive ; and even though it is a con- 
 scious fault, the catastrophe must be compelled by in- 
 evitable conditions. 
 
 Whether there are or are not such conditions is not 
 part of the problem; for it is at least a fact that man 
 has at times recognized certain conditions as inevitable. 
 Where the individual assumes such conditions, we have 
 the situation from which is developed the tragedy of 
 moral valor. Here the necessary condition is the perform- 
 ance of a difficult duty knowing that its performance leads 
 to destruction. This is the situation of the sen-ants of 
 Hertha when the necessary ministrations on the goddess 
 entail a penalty of death. The favorite examples are 
 Antigone and Max Piccolomini. It is perhaps a little 
 unfortunate that we have no typically Roman tragedy 
 wherein, as Schlegel pointed out, we should expect to find 
 the binding force of religio motivating the self to make 
 a complete surrender to the state in an act of patriotic 
 devotion. There is a modern analogue in the theory of 
 self-realization. For this theory, tragedy is the limiting 
 case of the sacrifice of purely personal values for what 
 is over-personal. Complete sacrifice is the expression of 
 the individual's power to identify himself with values 
 which are impersonal in the sense that no one can attain 
 them and remain an individual. No merely self-preserva- 
 tive act is competent to attain such ends ; for the over- 
 personal is of such a kind that it abstracts from the in- 
 strumental value of all acts.'' 
 
 18 
 
I 
 
 Another line of divergence from the Aristotelian 
 theory has taken the direction of a reinterpretation of the 
 reversal of fortune. In hypostatized Fortune has been 
 found the cause of the inevitable conditions and the miser- 
 able end of unfortunate men. This theory had widest 
 acceptance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A 
 second line of divergence from Aristotle is found in the 
 modern theories of tragic guilt as based on a meta- 
 physical theory. There are two chief expressions of this 
 idea: 
 
 1. The necessary limitation of the finite indi- 
 vidual to partial moral interests; 
 
 2. The necessary contradiction in the inmost 
 nature of the universe by which aspiration is im- 
 possible. 
 
 These questions receive more extended treatment here- 
 after. But the outcome of this speculation shows little 
 tendency to regard the relation of the individual to the 
 world as other than ethical. Though the contradictions in 
 ethical faith pass with slight criticism, the philosophical 
 implications are not altogether satisfactory. The regroup- 
 ing of the old aesthetic material under the influence of 
 the Nineteenth Century idea of the relation of the indi- 
 vidual to the universe makes his position intolerable and 
 impossible by allowing him no reality and no possibility 
 of finite achievement.'' 
 
 If this can in any sense be regarded as an unsuccess- 
 ful outcome to speculation, it allows us to point out that 
 the conception of tragedy which is based on it is likewise 
 unsuccessful. The outcome is unsuccessful because it in- 
 volves contradictions which are the result of speculation 
 Itself; because they are contradictions which can be over- 
 come only by recourse to some higher standpoint to which 
 we, as finite beings, cannot attain. We cannot attain that 
 higher standpoint without renunciation of one of the con- 
 flicting forces, /. e., ourselves. For so long as thought 
 discovers that our world is only apparently real and con- 
 sistent, it will, in its function as chastener and clarifier 
 
 19 
 
of the human spirit, convince us of a diremption between 
 the world of ideals and that of actuality. It will con- 
 vince us that our ideals have no reality and can have 
 none because this is the wrong kind of a world to cause 
 "our valor to act in safety." By raising the whole ques- 
 tion of the adequacy of human knowledge for the ends 
 of human endeavor we may be able on that basis to point 
 out irrational elements in various conceptions of tragedy — 
 elements we would have disposed of. In that spirit we 
 may be allowed to undertake what part of the task we 
 may. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Testimony of the Poets. 
 
 Poets may often be found to include testimony to gen- 
 eral views of the world and of the ultimate significance 
 of the dramatic facts they portray. How have they suc- 
 ceeded in convincing us that the world is as they have 
 described it? The answer to this question is but a review 
 of a portion of the evidence on which aesthetic specula- 
 tion rests; the other portion being, of course, observation 
 of life on the part of the aesthetic philosopher, and tech- 
 nical philosophy itself. Practically any point in aesthetic 
 speculation may be illustrated by reference to a work of 
 art. The danger of illustrating theories in this way is 
 that of interpretation. What the critic takes to be the 
 meaning of the poet may not be what the poet himself 
 intended ; and the scattered expressions of the poet's own 
 view may be overlooked or ignored. 
 
 All those elements or conditions of human conduct 
 which we could wish were otherwise, have been held re- 
 sponsible, at one time or another, for the tragic situation. 
 The poets have tried to make tragedy intelligible by refer- 
 ence to what are, for most people, obvious causes: sin, 
 impiety, passion, error, and conflict of opposing wills. 
 Sometimes they have despaired of complete and satisfac- 
 
 20 
 
tory explanation, and have fallen back frankly on an un- 
 intelligible power having the mastery of man's will and 
 casting defiance to his reason. What else can be the 
 "divine enmity," Nemesis pursuing the prosperous man, 
 or the indiscriminate strokes of Fortune? 
 
 The dangers of interpretation and the contradictory 
 results to which it leads may be illustrated by reference 
 to the critical estimate of Ruskin," when he points out: 
 
 "The adversary chiefly contemplated by the 
 (Greek) tragedians is Fate, or predestinate misfor- 
 tune, and that under three principal forms: A. 
 Blindness or ignorance not in itself guilty, but in- 
 cluding acts which would otherwise have been guilty; 
 and leading no less than guilt to destruction. B. 
 Visitation on one person of the sin of another. 
 C. Repression by brutal or tyrannous strength of a 
 beneficent will." 
 
 But by comparison with other views we see that what is 
 meant by tragedy is very largely a matter of interpreting 
 works of art from a personal point of view, and in that 
 matter the greatest latitude prevails. At one extreme is 
 the view that sees in Greek tragedy (especially) the 
 processes of irrational destiny." If one must describe 
 this destiny, a near analogy is the diabolical cunning and 
 jealousy of forces which are in themselves impersonal, 
 but which in their results completely disintegrate man's 
 most reasonable views of his world. At the other extreme 
 is the view that the Greek consciousness was able to sur- 
 mount all contradictions between man and the world, or 
 between men and the gods. Consciousness succeeds in 
 so doing by the doctrine that the intelligible forces of the 
 world and the unintelligible decrees of the gods have the 
 same righteousness for their end. But if we abstract 
 from all those motives on which, we flatter ourselves, the 
 failure of purposes is self-explanatory, there is still left 
 to be explained what we mean by the divine malignity; in 
 
 21 
 
a word, what we mean by Fate, Chance, Fortune, or 
 Destiny." 
 
 The examples of Greek tragedy permit us to infer 
 some such things as follows: There are mysteries in 
 human life, for man becomes in the end what he would 
 not be even in intention; and the result of his action is 
 precisely that against which he would have forearmed 
 himself. Though there may be in some cases ultimate 
 reconciliation, whatever that may meanr' though there 
 may be a way out of the difficulty from which it would 
 appear that the supreme powers are beneficent;" yet 
 there is no answer to the question why the gods act thus 
 and not otherwise. The life of man is often one of 
 misery — not necessarily one of penury — but of conflict 
 with abuses of power, wicked policy and evil deeds, or 
 revenge.'' Though it be a fact that individual destiny 
 is one of misery there is no intelligible answer why it 
 is so." 
 
 There are times when the whole spiritual fabric dis- 
 solves : namely, when human destiny is ruin. If the ob- 
 jective organization of the world breaks up, it is equally 
 true that there are monstrous things in the spirit of man 
 himself.'" There is something capricious in the external 
 order of events when human endeavor has to do with 
 them; and there is as well a lawlessness in human pas- 
 sions. In the most laudable zeal there is something irra- 
 tional and unnatural by reason of its very intensity." If 
 it be a fact that no devotion to a specific principle can 
 be inherently worthy, that no dominant emotion can be 
 safely tolerated; yet, why should it be so? How can we 
 conceive the universe to make these facts intelligible, 
 since to do so seems to demand that all that touches the 
 person most closely must be put aside? Is this merely a 
 question of the clarity of artistic vision and can the hero 
 be saved at will, or must he go down in the fight? If 
 the fault lies deeper than the poet's view of the world, 
 then it may be that tragedy implies a view of the world 
 in which there is no guaranty that the conflicts are 
 
 22 
 
^ 
 
 solvable; and no surety that human knowledge is com- 
 petent to explain the nature of such a world. That there 
 is a question here is evidence that the prophecy of the 
 regeneration of mankind by the liberation of Prometheus 
 has its antithesis in the inevitable destiny of Sophoclean 
 tragedy. 
 
 Ruskin finds a wide difference between the classical 
 and the modern conceptions of tragedy in the ability of 
 the poet to find a solution of the difficulty that is at once 
 artistically satisfactory and inoffensive to the belief of the 
 spectator in an orderly world. In modern tragedy, by 
 which Ruskin means Shakespeare, there is no clear vision 
 of a way out that does not involve the spectator in serious 
 diflficulties of thought. To the modern poet the sense of 
 defeat is complete; and in the absence of any dom- 
 inating power to which a rational purpose can be ascribed, 
 there is nothing left but to embrace enthusiastically the 
 immolation of the individual as a sacrifice to a universal 
 moral law. Ruskin says:" 
 
 "The ruling purpose of Greek poetry is the as- 
 sertion of victorj^ by heroism over fate, sin and 
 death. * * * Shakespeare recognizes for deliver- 
 ance no gods nigh at hand; and that by petty 
 chance — momentary folly — by broken message — by 
 fool's tyranny — or traitor's snare, the strongest and 
 most righteous are brought to ruin. * * * At the 
 close of a Shakespearean tragedy nothing remains 
 but dead march and clothes of burial. At the end 
 of Greek tragedy there are far off sounds of a divine 
 triumph, and a glory as of resurrection." 
 
 If a judgment of this kind is to be accepted as a true 
 generalization, it must be based on an inductive survey 
 of the extant body of dramatic art; but the obstacles to 
 a final judgment are naturally those that meet us in a 
 matter of interpretation. We find ourselves confronted 
 with two extremes. Either we must follow our own no- 
 tion of what constitutes a tragedy, and reject those which 
 
 23 
 
do not conform to the definition; or we must adopt some 
 definite principles of Interpretation. In the latter case 
 we may ask, for each period of the drama, and for each 
 example, in what sense there is destruction and in what 
 sense there is salvation. The latter is the method here 
 adopted; and our conclusion is that there is nothing in 
 the formal conditions of the concept of tragedy to guar- 
 antee the continuance of life under the specific conditions 
 of just this or that purpose with which one has identified 
 what is most essential in life, one's individuality. Trag- 
 edy means that there is no way out of the difficulties of 
 existence without some change; and that change is violent 
 and implies an absolute degree of change. We can ask 
 in what sense the sacrifice of the finite being is a satis- 
 factory solution of the situation. What is there to offer 
 the reflective consciousness as compensation, if the pur- 
 poses with which we enter the tangle and struggle with 
 insurmountable difficulties, are not only lost in the solu- 
 tion, but involve the being and personality of the char- 
 acter in the same dissolution? 
 
 If as Ruskin says there are far off sounds as of 
 resurrection, we might find a sense in which this is true. 
 One might find that the Greek poet or spectator, with all 
 his keen sense of the misfortune of life, was nevertheless 
 enthusiastically confirmed in his belief in the still-con- 
 tinued goodness of the gods and in his reluctance to 
 admit that the catastrophe he has just witnessed is any- 
 thing more than an accident. He may be confirmed in his 
 belief that there is a rational principle at work in the 
 world whose purposes, though obscure, are yet righteous ; 
 and that when they victimize a man it is for some pur- 
 pose higher than we can conceive, but one that is also 
 ardently to be desired. The testimony of some modern 
 dramas on this point may or may not bear out Ruskin's 
 dictum, depending on whether or not we are able to 
 accept the fundamental principles which underlie it. 
 
 Dramatic conflict in modern times is the evidence of 
 the reality of the spiritual life. Knowledge and achieve- 
 
 24 
 
ment can be partial only; first, because they are specific; 
 and secondly, because nothing specific can be adequate to 
 express the reality of the whole. The destruction of 
 everything local, the falsity of all particular truths, is the 
 earnest of the reality of all Truth. 
 
 Modern tragedy has often in view the conflict be- 
 tween some new ideal of society, a new institution, and 
 the old ideas. In the dramas of Ibsen this is the case. 
 The hero is sometimes overcome because the new ideal is 
 not sufficiently purified to become a safe guide, and hence 
 cannot replace the old; or, because trust in the old haa 
 not decayed so far that a new ideal may be entertained. 
 If, however, the drama is based on the ideal of the great 
 man or leader as enunciated by Carlyle or Browning the 
 tragic conclusion is shown to be retroactive on the con- 
 servative position. The death of the hero, as the repre- 
 sentative of the new ideal, comes home to the stronger 
 and conservative power as the loss of the very thing for 
 which it was unconsciously striving; but which in its 
 ignorance was not recognized for such. The death of the 
 hero is the defeat of the conqueror. The individual, even 
 a leader of men, represents only a partial truth; and it 
 will continue to be partial as long as it is identified with 
 an individual spirit. The death of the specific person 
 liberates the new ideal from the limitations of a finite 
 consciousness. The ideal embodied in any habit or in- 
 stitution, or conceived as realizable in some definite way, 
 or as a truth to be expressed in just this or that maxim, 
 is given back to the universe to take its place in the 
 whole life-history of creation; and only in that process 
 can it find its proper worth and expression. 
 
 If the defender of the new ideal is overcome in the ^ 
 conflict with traditions, the traged3^ must lie in the pov- 
 erty of man's knowledge to interpret the needs of society ; 
 or the inability of the group to apprehend its own well- 
 being except as identified with immediate physical needs. 
 Modern tragedy, as might be expected from the prevalent 
 view of the dynamic nature of truth, exhibits the inade- 
 
 25 
 
quacy of traditional knowledge on the one hand, and on 
 the other the demand for new truth. The modem world 
 is convinced, however, that the truth of things rests, to a 
 large extent, on personal or subjective factors. If then 
 the individual is to have any voice in shaping and deter- 
 mining what is true, the utility of an idea for the time 
 and circumstances should not bring one under condemna- 
 tion of the law. If the sufficiency of the old ways of 
 thought is the test of truth, it is surely a terrible thing 
 to see an individual destroyed for the sake of society. To 
 decide that one idea or habit is true and another is not, 
 is, after all, an a priori judgment; and to pass such a 
 judgment implies on the part of society a sense for truth 
 which is not only not given to the individual, but also one 
 which cannot be gained by him. Whatever this sense 
 may be called: public opinion, or social mind; it is not 
 subject to the will of* the ordinary mortal ; and it is, 
 therefore, irrational just to the extent of its aloofness 
 from the sphere of our personal and individual knowl- 
 edge. The real leader who can shape the ideals of so- 
 ciety is, in respect of his knowledge, more than mortal 
 and different in kind from the rest of us. 
 
 In Browning's Luria, for example, we have the spec- 
 tacle of a people struggling to the completer life of their 
 leader; but they defeat their own prosperity because they 
 lose faith in his integrity. Luria dies as an individual to 
 live as the universal, the ideal, which he would have ob- 
 tained for the Florentines." The destruction of the indi- 
 vidual is so common in modern tragic drama that we are 
 at a loss how to place such a thing as Ibsen's Doll's House, 
 though we might be sure there is no solution in sight 
 either artistically or practically satisfactory. Here we see 
 a conflict between the new and the old ideas of personal 
 worth. There is a break-up in the traditional views, as 
 there was in the old fashioned home. The heroine dies 
 only in so far as the old mode of life, as a habit, broke 
 down. We fear, however, that she goes forth to her de- 
 struction as she leaves the old home, because society has 
 
 26 
 
nothing to put in its place; we fear to trust the stability 
 of her new ideals which, if they were really vital, would 
 soon secure for her well-being a suitable garb as the habit 
 of respectability. 
 
 The inability of modern tragic art to secure a solu- 
 tion of the difficulties, as suggested by Ruskin, is strictly 
 in accord with the idea mentioned above that tragedy 
 assures us of the reality of the spiritual in some of its 
 functions, such as the social whole. The dramatic artist 
 is face to face with a two-fold issue : 1, the inherent 
 dislike to have all difficulties solved by a return to the old 
 and traditional; and 2, the skepticism of all that pretends 
 to be more than temporary, or toward all that assumes 
 to have more worth than finite things can have. Hence 
 all that is effete, all that is pretentious, must perish. 
 Thereafter, the demands of beauty are quite satisfied with 
 the mere enunciation of the new ideal ; and the artist 
 need not concern himself with working out to its final 
 results the ideal he has championed. The fact that speV\ 
 cific truths, no less than claims to universal truth, are \ 
 denied makes imperative the progressive working out of \ 
 all truth. This is what may be called the reality of the ' 
 life-history. It is the spectacle of the individual sacri- 
 ficing himself for the sake of the ultimately true in order 
 that the ideal with which he has identified himself may 
 contribute its share to the working out of the truth of 
 the universe. Not this, nor that, truth; not this, nor 
 that, belief or conceit, is ultimately true; but there is 
 always truth being accomplished. As we are beginning 
 to realize, this demands that one take up his cross in the 
 cause of truth; but in the pursuit of life's set prize there 
 is for each of us compromise, self-sacrifice and defeat. 
 
 When we stop to ask in what sense a principle of in- 
 terpretation yields valid results, we are forced to take 
 into consideration the testimony of the period under in- 
 vestigation. It may be that the sense in which there is 
 or is not a way out of the difficulty of a tragic situation, 
 is itself an implication of fundamental views of the world. 
 
 27 
 
These views are things which change from epoch to 
 epoch; and their implications change. With this as a 
 guiding thread, what change, if any, takes place in such 
 an idea as that of the "falls of princes" when traced 
 through typical moments of thought? Here we can use 
 the ideas of the tragic poets themselves, of philosophy, 
 and of aesthetic speculation. The starting point of the 
 problem is found in certain dramas of the Renaissance 
 that enunciate the question quite clearly: namely, Mar- 
 lowe's Edward II, Shakespeare's King Richard II, and 
 others referred to in turn. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Misfortunes of Great Men. 
 
 Certain facts in the consciousness and literature of 
 Elizabethan England have been pointed out as indicating 
 a growing sense of the unreal." There is, for example, 
 the fame of the great pirates holding letters of marque 
 from the crown; they have as their counterparts the 
 picaresque heroes of popular story. Within gentle society 
 there was the conceit of pastoralism ; and in contrast to 
 it, the savage deeds of actual daily existence — ^brawling, 
 infamy, and sacrilege. However all these witness to 
 mental qualities out of the ordinary, there is one more 
 to be added to the list: man's loss of conceit with his own 
 power of understanding. As Ruskin pointed out, Eliza- 
 bethan tragedy usually ends in doubt and criticism, not 
 only of the world, but also of the spirit. The early 
 Renaissance was characterized by a searching criticism 
 of the bases of knowledge, of the reality of ideals, of the 
 possibility of realizing ends, and of the superiority of 
 the individual over the world. We can, possibly, find a 
 tragedy of intellectual bankruptcy: a breaking up of 
 knowledge which is a fulfillment of the Middle Ages. The 
 scholastic philosophy had left as a general heritage to 
 mankind certain conceits of pure intellect: credo ut intel- 
 
 28 
 
ligam, and iiniversalia ante res. This faith which is con- 
 stitutive of knowledge is a function of the universe not 
 belonging to finite reason. It is not a mental function 
 at all; but another faculty above reason, a revelation 
 which at first hand apprehends the truths of the universe. 
 The eternal truths are universalia ante res. 
 
 Whatever else the Renaissance may be, it is, for 
 philosophy, a criticism of the conceits of nativism. Those 
 elements of life like dogma and custom and traditional 
 truth, which have risen to the rank of universals, are 
 pretensions and conceits only, aspiring to the constitutive 
 validity of the real universal ideas. Nativism, therefore, 
 is the conceit of pure intellect and it is against this pre- 
 tension that the Renaissance criticism is directed. The 
 thesis of Petrus Ramus was an expression of a symptom 
 of the Renaissance. In 1536 he defended the proposition: 
 Quaecunque ah Aristotele dicta sunt, commentida sunt.*'' 
 Bacon's skeptical clearing of the ground for a new method 
 of knowledge is a tacit assault on the mental habits of 
 the Sixteenth Century. When Descartes retired to his 
 superheated, airtight room for meditation, was it not in 
 default of scholastic learning to guarantee the validity of 
 knowledge ? 
 
 So also Marlowe's Faustus, like Petrus Ramus, passes 
 in review the traditional knowledge of the ^Middle Ages: 
 logic, law, physic, divinity; and finds them all equally im- 
 potent to give him the chiefe.st desire of his heart — con- 
 trol of the world. He covets for a time the occult knowl- 
 edge of an irrational science, the arch-anomoly of an 
 intellectualistic age. By astrology, the last stand of a 
 conceited intellect, he hopes to be armed against vicissi- 
 tude and defeat. There go by the board also, with the 
 traditional bodies of knowledge, some of the peculiarly 
 sacred ideas of the church, unrealities on which the mind 
 had been surfeited. The idea of God and all the sweet 
 old cant of the church are, for Faustus, illusion. Repent- 
 ance and prayer are ''fruits of lunacy that make men 
 foolish that do trust them most. * * * Also thinkest 
 
 29 
 
thou that Faustus is so fond as to imagine that after this 
 life there is any pain? Tush, these are trifles and mere 
 old Wives' tales."" 
 
 Here we have the Renaissance in the first flush of 
 its glorj^ with its criticism of ideas supposed to be the 
 very foundation of knowledge; with its searching of the 
 inner aspects of life without reserve or shame. The 
 whole conceit of transcendental knowledge falls away in 
 balancing the values traditionally ascribed to the realms 
 of grace and sin. Man is unable to obtain by the old 
 theological knowledge what he is promised by faith. 
 Those things, salvation and blessedness, which faith prom- 
 ises, must come here and now if they would be useful to 
 us. Yet the task men set for themselves of rebuilding 
 their view of the world proved too ambitious when limited 
 by the inadequate mental apparatus bequeathed them by 
 the Middle Ages. Man could not save himself by means 
 of that knowledge alone. Hence, we see men out of con- 
 ceit with intellect; for the world without some conceivable 
 reason for being is as useless as the soul of a Faustus 
 without knowledge. 
 
 One of the interesting traditions to come under criti- 
 cism was that of the divine right of kings. For a time 
 men could rationalize the falls of princes. Greatness, for 
 Boethius, was not a good in itself and might be expected, 
 therefore, to bring with it the usual accompaniment of 
 evil. The violation of any one of the pillars of kingship 
 was sufficient cause for calamity when men sought for 
 causes to protect their ideal from attack.'' It was a 
 simple matter of violating the law of God; for sin, as we 
 know, brought punishment. A scapegoat was soon found 
 to explain why it was that the great ones of earth have 
 more than their share of calamity. For the church 
 fathers, the ruler was the vicar of God and, whether 
 right or wrong, His representative. The character of the 
 ruler, according to another idea, was suited to the moral 
 condition of the people over whom he ruled — a vicious 
 application of the principle of retributive justice. This 
 
 30 
 
ideal could not long have been satisfactory. Certainly 
 there are expressed ideas which indicate questioning of 
 the principle. Suppose a king abuses his power or pro- 
 nounces inequitable judgments. If virtue is the goodness 
 of mind which is productive of right living and of no 
 evil, and yet evil overtakes a people, then we have the 
 situation covered by separating the concept of kingship 
 from the king as a person. The judgment of a king may 
 be erroneous; but no doubt can assail the justice of the 
 throne. The state is of divine origin; but rulers cannot 
 be without sin. It is requisite, then, that the king him- 
 self take the first step in Christian virtue — obeying the 
 law. 
 
 There is a law higher than royal edicts to which the 
 king is subject; and his relation to that law stamps him 
 as true prince or tyrant hostile to his people. The ideas 
 of John of Salisbury are typical and luminous. There is 
 a general harmony in things which, if observed, would 
 g'ive to each thing its proper nature and reward. The 
 preservation of a just proportion in matters of the state 
 is governed by what we call equity. It is to this divine 
 law of eternal justice that the prince is subject. The 
 distinction between prince and tyrant turns on conform- 
 ity to this law whose rule is equity.'' It is easy to see 
 that any abuse of power is a tyranny which cannot help 
 causing disaster simply because it is a violation of divine 
 'law. This is an intelligible explanation so long as we 
 consider the matter in a political or ethical way. But 
 this, which is so much a matter of course, comes later to 
 be a source of disaffection and a criticism of Vicegerency. 
 The idea that the king is God's vicar by divine appoint- 
 ment finds a contradiction in the sin of the ruler who is 
 without conscience.'" Though divinity reside in kingship, 
 aptness of man to sin, when the latter can no longer be 
 condoned, must cast suspicion on the divinity. 
 
 The criticism took the form : Why should a king by 
 divine right come to an unhappy end?" Thus, there is a 
 speculative problem, apart from the ethical, the answer 
 
 31 
 
to which is satisfactory except when we remember that 
 the human mind may be incapable of knowing the decrees 
 of that heavenly equity. It is just here that the two sides 
 of the problem meet. The tradition of the divine right 
 of kings has little content in fact for the Renaissance ; the 
 formal tradition has little utility in the idea of the state 
 as a constitutional government. No one can know the 
 ultimate laws of Justice; no one can answer the question 
 why the king by divine right comes to an unhappy end 
 without denying the divinity of the fallen prince. The 
 popular reflection of the idea we find in the dramas of 
 Elizabethan times embodying the question of the king's 
 unhappy end : for example, Marlowe's Edward II, Shakes- 
 peare's Richard II, and King John. 
 
 There is something baffling to the understanding in 
 the fall of a mighty king. He may misrule; but the idea 
 that greatness is in itself somehow hateful to Fortune 
 is a tradition that must justify its claim to our credence, 
 or be discarded — especially so in an age which desired 
 mastery very much for its own sake. Therefore, it is 
 not simply that a king may misrule and thus something 
 is found on which to lay the blame;" but it is the notion 
 that as every point of the wheel of Fortune comes upper- 
 most, so it must immediately descend as the wheel rolls 
 on.*' To a certain extent, indeed, the law contemplated 
 the perversity of royal whim; since the old civil law, hav- 
 ing in view the absolute power of the king, regarded the 
 prince's pleasure as having the force of law.'' But the 
 divinity of kings lies only in their sovereignty, i. e., in 
 those attributes which they have and which subjects have 
 not. The king is an essence which, having more at- 
 tributes than that of ordinary men, is therefore a higher 
 and better being — a good mediaeval notion. A king with- 
 out a kingdom is nothing; and the stars dare be as un- 
 kind to a king as to a peasant." 
 
 If we consider that group of Elizabethan tragedies 
 which is concerned with the doleful falls of princes we 
 find some consciousness of the irrational residue left when 
 
 32 
 
the moral demands have been satisfied. A question is left 
 after retributive justice has done its work. Marlowe's 
 Edward II is a king who presumes upon the narrow 
 margin of legality accorded the king's whim; but Ed- 
 ward's perversity is pushed to an extreme not contem- 
 plated by statesman nor tolerable to subject. The thought 
 that there is within the state so uncontrollable a factor 
 as a king cannot be tolerable where there is any sense 
 of individual worth. There can be a community of inter- 
 est where the king identifies his interest with that of the 
 state; but there can be none where the king is the only 
 real individual in the kingdom. A king is after all only 
 a specific person — one among others; kingship is only one 
 factor in the whole activity of the state. We have here 
 the philosophical problem of how one among others may 
 be the only reality; the difference being that this problem 
 arises within the lines of governmental polity. That in 
 the state, e. g., law, which has more reality than any spe- 
 cific thing by itself, is fundamental to the existence and 
 continuance of even a king. 
 
 Moral consciousness, as far as it is grounded on the 
 conception of law as fundamental, is perfectly satisfied 
 that a king like Edward II should perish for his non- 
 comprehension of the local fitness of things, to say noth- 
 ing of the more fundamental but more vague eternal fit- 
 ness. Moral consciousness finds its contradiction in the 
 popular consciousness of the sympathetic spectator of the 
 drama. ^ The condemnation of the king is sufficient for 
 morality; but the complete change of fortune bringing 
 with it the horrible abuse of power, temporary indeed, 
 and usurped in the name of the state and of justice; 
 and the inhuman misery of the king in his fallen state: 
 all these bring uppermost in mind the irrationality of 
 fortune whose compensation is not payment in kind. 
 "Contempt is transmuted into sympathetic grief that any 
 king could so fall.'"' It is interesting to find a curious 
 confirmation of this revulsion of feeling against fortune 
 in Daniel's drama Philotas, in which the chorus "vulgarly 
 
 33 
 
(according to their affections, carried rather with com- 
 passion on great men's misfortunes than with considera- 
 tion of the cause) frame their imaginations by that 
 square, and censure what is done,"*' 
 
 In Shakespeare's King Richard II the old dogma of 
 kingship is again brought into question. Gaunt quite dis- 
 tinctly says not even a king can act contrary to natural 
 laws, York, though a member of the king's party, implies 
 that because the institutions of the state are the outcome 
 of the whole life of the people, they cannot be set aside 
 at the pleasure of the ruler. The justice of Bolingbroke's 
 claim to the throne rests on the principle that a king's 
 allegiance, like that of any subject, is first of all to the 
 state itself. There is a suggestion as to the true nature 
 and end of the state, as a commercial society, in King 
 John, The conduct of this prince raises the question how 
 far the good of the state can be identified with a king's 
 caprice raised to a superlative degree. It is here that a 
 people filled with a sense of power, commercial and in- 
 tellectual, can give the laugh to a king. It was an ironical 
 laugh at the predicament into which John had fallen by 
 his own shortsighted policy; and it was, moreover, a sit- 
 uation like that of Edward II or Richard II in which the 
 cumbersome and paradoxical logic of the church had no 
 efficacy. It was a situation which gave the lie that quaint 
 but irrational dictum: "When Fortune means to men 
 most good, she looks on them with a threatening eye."" 
 
 It would obviously be impossible to give a summary 
 of all expressions of opinion on the irrationality of for- 
 tune. The number of such expressions is enormous even 
 within a limited period. Attention is here directed to one 
 aspect, viz., Fortune's waywardness and how it is to be 
 overcome. The trend of thought on this point during the 
 Seventeenth Century may be indicated in the following 
 steps : 
 
 1, The falls of princes suggest to man's emotional 
 nature the whim of Fortune rather than man's responsi- 
 bility for his own disaster. 
 
 34 
 
2. The irrationality of fortune, when abstracted 
 from the circumstances of personal character, suggests a 
 world ruled by undiscoverable causes; and there is no 
 equality between the inconstancy of Fortune and the 
 status of her victims. 
 
 3. Since the only semblance of justice discoverable in 
 Fortune is her proneness to wayward action, the only 
 hope of overcoming her is, by a change of mental attitude, 
 to overcome the outer world within the self. 
 
 4. Finally, reflection reaches a stage where reason 
 is able to override not only the emotion which makes us 
 fear the change of fortune; but also to condemn, if not 
 to stifle, those grosser passions to which, it might be sup- 
 posed. Fortune is especially antipathetic. 
 
 What the Enlightenment had achieved by the end of 
 the century as a permanent acquisition is ah-eady pre- 
 figured at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century. 
 From almost any one of numerous expressions in such a 
 thing as Sackville's Induction, or the Complaint of Henry 
 Duke of Buckingham, we may start toward the goal set 
 by reason: namely, a complete rationalization of the 
 world; and specifically, the emancipation of the individual 
 from subjection to the changes of fortune. Henry com- 
 plains that no earthly state is durable. The full signifi- 
 cance is not apprehended till one places his trust in those 
 things usually considered of most worth — in honors, in 
 kingly authority. In such high places there is to be 
 found at last nothing but the false smile of Fortune. 
 There is nothing that man can accomplish by wit or by 
 guile which can be in any sense permanent. The acquisi- 
 tion of life's goods is subject to chance even from the 
 beginning; and once having 
 
 =^ * - "felt the wheel 
 
 Of slipper fortune, stay it maught no stowne. 
 
 The wheel whirls up, but straight it whirleth down."" 
 As the old adage teaches: "All things return to their 
 origin" ; and with this inheritance from oriental antiquity, 
 more than one thoughtful mind has been obsessed. 
 
 35 
 
It is difficult to tell in such expressions how much is 
 mere conceit: how much is sincere. But it is indeed sig- 
 nificant that even among the Elizabethans were some who 
 could couple the idea of Fortune with a solution for its 
 mischances. Nicholas Breton in his dialogue between 
 Wit and Will finds the solution in that person in whom 
 "reason rules wit" ; yet therein we find Will voicing the 
 common sentiment: 
 
 "Believe me, sweet Wit, there is such falling 
 out with Fancy, who shifts all upon Folly. Such 
 exclamation upon Folly, who brings them to For- 
 tune: such cursing and banning of Fortune, for her 
 froward dealing: in gentle helping them up upon her 
 wheel, and then sudden dinging them down (almost 
 to their destruction), that if there be a Hell in this 
 world, there is the place." 
 
 Robert Greene, the pamphleteer, had also learned his 
 lesson from antiquity to good purpose. He not only bor- 
 rowed the conception of fortune as defined by Epicurus; 
 but he divined as well the remedy for her humors.*' He 
 expressed the idea that the remedy for fortune lay with- 
 in the self; and that is what is here called "overcoming 
 the outer world within the self." The idea has had a 
 venerable history which may be recounted for its own 
 sake and not simply to satisfy an historical method. 
 
 36 
 
V. 
 
 Overcoming the Outer World Within the Self. 
 
 1. THE IDEA IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 The beginning of speculation on the remedies for for- 
 tune may, perhaps, be found in Aristotle; but on this 
 point the same latitude of interpretation that was found 
 in the case of the tragic poets recurs. The range of the 
 interpretation lies between what passes for the complete 
 rationalization of the tragic situation, and the ironical 
 destruction of the guiltless hero."" We have in the fol- 
 lowing statement an attempt at rationalization : ' " 
 
 'The tragic idea lies both in the fact that the 
 hero is the agent, the cause of his own ruin, and that 
 the disaster is not simply an accident befalling an 
 individual, but a natural consequence of truly human 
 actions; the hero's fault must represent an error of 
 judgment, the insufficiency of the human mind to 
 cope with the mysterious complex of this world." 
 
 Here we have the statement that the tragic situation is 
 not an accident: hence somehow it is rational; but, error 
 is a universal human trait in a mysterious world. In 
 other words, we may be able to point out the fact of 
 tragedy; but we cannot equate the power of the human 
 mind as adequate to the task of understanding that world. 
 Mind has power neither to correct its own errors, nor to 
 comprehend the purpose of the universe. (f 
 
 It may be, therefore, as Eucken points out," that 
 the problem of tragedy does not lie so much in the con- 
 tradictions within the person, as in his conflicts with the 
 world. But Aristotle gives expression to just the opposite 
 idea." If misery followed as a consequence of non- 
 virtuous activity we would have the ordinary idea of 
 moral retribution. But in so far as Aristotle regards the 
 
 37 
 
J 
 
 life of rational contemplation as the final entelechy of 
 conduct, happiness does not, it would seem, depend on 
 man's relation to the world and its mischances. His 
 happiness does depend on the degree to which he has be- 
 come independent of all that is extraneous, or rather 
 indifferent, to his true life;'' for in fact, luck or chance 
 cannot materially affect either his happiness or his misery. 
 There are, however, difficulties in the attainment of the 
 complete life of virtue which may well enough destroy a 
 man's happiness. A man needs external resources for 
 activity in accordance with virtue, though he need not 
 be lavishly provided with them. He needs moderate 
 wealth and a measure of external prosperity: "for his 
 nature is not sufficient of itself for speculation ; it needs 
 bodily health, food, and care of every kind." He needs 
 leisure. But a greater difficulty lies in choosing a mean 
 state, for which accurate judgment is requisite to sub- 
 sume the particular case under the right rule.'' A man 
 who is not completely virtuous has, therefore, an element 
 of weakness, fallibility of judgment, or incomplete indif- 
 ference to the world. For such a person it is also true 
 that the world has an element of caprice, metaphysical and 
 incomprehensible, reflecting the instability of the person. 
 For chance is an irreducible element from which the 
 external life of man will suffer, and from which he may 
 recover only with difficulty.'" 
 
 If it be true that Greek tragedy represents man's in- 
 ,firmity as a susceptibility to misfortune and unavoidable 
 destiny, there is at least a wide difference between the 
 destruction of the individual as an undifferentiated atom 
 of the world and that of the individual as the most highly 
 organized system of nature. It is very much in the 
 former manner that Greek tragedy recognizes man as 
 subject externally to fate or chance. ' From this point of 
 view there is a near approach to the rationalization of 
 externality as the unrecognized lawfulness of the world. 
 Here in Greece the minds of men are steadily advancing, 
 
 38 
 
for a time at least, toward a consistent view of the law- 
 fulness of nature. Chance and fate are not absolutely- 
 irrational; for they perform functions afterward ascribed 
 to reason : they may be overcome by a right attitude of 
 mind; or they may be but temporary aberrations from 
 the normal order. Thus in Aeschylus, "the paradoxical 
 changes of fortune can be accepted with a child-like faith 
 that they are the decrees of higher but still beneficent 
 powers." When the outcome is in accordance with the 
 accepted legend, and wrong in the world is only tem- 
 porary; or where the possibility of fortunate issue, though 
 not certain, is still contingent, then the artistic taste of 
 neither dramatist nor spectator is offended by the ortho- 
 dox solution. "Evil is not always the work of unquali- 
 fiedly adverse gods, nor of an illogical and hopelessly 
 irrational universe," but sometimes of perverse and ill- 
 minded men. These Kreons, whose understanding is static 
 with their strange ideas, form an irrational element. 
 Ultimately without doubt the universe must answer for 
 the presence of such men ; but the fact that it can be 
 quizzed for an answer has not yet come to clear con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 In literature the gods are often represented as taking 
 the place of reason. The will of the gods is an abstrac- 
 tion for the necessary connection of events. Moreover, 
 what is ascribable to chance or coincidence may be re- 
 garded as the work of a god, whether the incident be 
 lucky or unlucky, and it thus becomes intelligible to a 
 certain type of mind. When the free action of reason in 
 causation is not yet recognized, that which is inexplicable 
 on the basis of purposive action, clearly belongs to what, 
 for the time being, will be an irrational world ; at least 
 to a world other than that of sense. When what is other- 
 wise inexplicable is brought into the sphere of art, it 
 moves as the result of unknown causes in the external 
 world, following on the unpredictable designs of a superior 
 will and reason. The gods who sway all things have a 
 right to be a bit unpredictable and arbitrary as the basis 
 
 39 
 
of securing reconciliation." That, of course, explains 
 nothing, for it explains everything. 
 
 The two-fold suggestion is that Fate is not only a 
 rigorous system working against the plans of men ; but 
 also that it is the artistic representation of the natural 
 necessity of the world recognized by philosophy under 
 various forms. But the remedies for fate and misfortune 
 suggested by the development of thought in the Hellenistic 
 period are mainly of a negative character, and carry with 
 them a confession of helplessness against the world's ad- 
 versity. Resignation of the human powers to chance or 
 fate, and practical wisdom with its maxims, rest upon 
 negative rather than upon positive values. Although man 
 sought for release from superstition about the gods, and 
 from the uncertainties of bodily existence, his philo- 
 sophical calm was purchased at great expense by devo- 
 tion to impossible ideals. If we ask what causes things 
 to happen, and we answer: it was fated to be so, or it 
 was just chance; "the sting of both lies in the denial of 
 human endeavor."'" What man has lost by asking the 
 simple question, he buys back at tremendous sacrifice in 
 the shape of new gods.'" Stoic, Epicurean, and Skeptic 
 worship at the same shrine. 
 
 The defeat of chance for the Stoic lies in the harmony 
 of the self. But if a man would avoid entanglements and 
 misfortune, he must secure his inner harmony b^- con- 
 formity to that Nature so very subject to law, and so 
 very fateful in its results, that it is in effect governed by 
 a necessity which is beyond scrutiny for man's reason. It 
 is in that respect irrational, and it has the consistency 
 of inconstancy. The formative principle is indeed de- 
 scribed as an immanent reason; and if a man would find 
 happiness, let him habituate himself to the necessity and 
 reason which he finds in nature."' The aim of the indi- 
 vidual is, must be, identical with that of the universal 
 reason. This is secured by an apotheosis of will; so that, 
 whatever happens, I would not have it otherwise. Were 
 it to happen otherwise, i. e., in accordance with my 
 
 40 
 
momentary desire, my world would have been irrational 
 and governed by chance. The reality of the universal 
 reason is embodied in the polity of the Roman Empire 
 whose universal purposes hold the individual man in sub- 
 jection. The sting of fate indeed deprives man of action; 
 but the Stoic, by the resignation of his individual will, 
 welcomes both fate and sting. He is not one whit the 
 less subject to vicissitude, though he has received again 
 his right to act; he still suffers defeat, but not at the 
 expense of his spiritual integrity. 
 
 To overcome an outer world over which in fact man 
 has no control, is to overcome the world within the self. 
 In the case of the Epicurean this is accomplished by the 
 elevation of desire. Chance is rife in the world of Epi- 
 curus: even the atoms take on gratuitous motion in their 
 fall through the void. This is something like an inde- 
 pendence of law;"' though, as we saw above, this point 
 was open to another interpretation. The Epicurean seized 
 on this aspect of irresponsible action in the external world 
 in the sense that the world is equally free from final 
 causes and the interference of the deity."' The wise man 
 need not fear the internal consequences to himself of this 
 state of things. The opinions of the masses, who do fear 
 it, are indeed mainly superstition ; but knowledge, virtue, 
 and happiness are independent of change, chance, and for- 
 tune. The "just" man directed by reason is impervious to 
 the chance of fortune, or to the irrationality of change." 
 Science exists solely to ennoble us by banishing our fears 
 on matters of high import : namely, the fear of death, of 
 nature, and of the limitations of desire." 
 
 There is nothing mysterious about nature when she 
 becomes in the light of reason nothing more than what 
 we see in her. Representations and beliefs depend for 
 their truth on perceptions. Again there is no interfer- 
 ence of a deity to which an arbitrary fate could be due; 
 for all things occur by mechanical causes. Hence it is 
 superstition that is irrational;' to it is due the apparent 
 irrationality of the external world. Suppose disaster 
 
 41 
 
should overtake a man: there is nothing irrational about 
 that fact, for it is explicable. If it is not explicable by 
 cause and effect, let a man examine his maxims of con- 
 duct for ignorance of some point which he might have 
 avoided. There can be nothing incomprehensible about a 
 fact; for, as a fact, it is as we perceive it. It is fear 
 itself that is irrational, and not the fearful thing. Fear is 
 something in the heart: something indeed that canonic 
 and ethics can hardly quiet. But if logic has any virtue 
 and cogency, it is demonstrably certain that fear, e. g., the 
 fear of death, is no concern of ours."' 
 
 The Skeptics also undertook to overcome the outer 
 world within the self. From the instability of things 
 and the relativity of perceptions, they argued that nothing 
 possessed any quality absolutely, but only through habit 
 and custom."' Our perceptions are neither true nor false, 
 since real things are inaccessible to us. It is not for us 
 to pass judgment on a world whose nature is so foreign 
 to human necessities of truth; and a matter so foreign 
 to human concerns as truth in the external world may 
 be banished from the mind. Nothing befalling from with- 
 out need disturb the wise man's tranquility ; for he will be 
 one who reserves judgment in any case. If then we have 
 raised ourselves by an act of will to a position of indiffer- 
 ence on all matters of human history, disasters individual 
 or collective, both they and the nature of the external 
 world will be incomprehensible in that they are so thor- 
 oughly alien to man's true self. No longer is the wise 
 man wise by wisdom; but by avoiding life; it is this end 
 that his maxims of conduct serve ; and to doubt his inner 
 security is tragedy. 
 
 2. THE IDEA IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 All the responsibility for overcoming the outer world 
 cannot be put upon the self: some more stable basis for 
 the harmony of the individual and the world must be 
 found. The Middle Ages cast the responsibility for a 
 rational world on the providence of Cod and the ultimate 
 righteousness of His plans for man's destiny. Man neces- 
 
 42 
 
sarily shares in this responsibility since he is the highest 
 end of creation. But in so far as man cannot reconcile 
 his desire for freedom with the plan of divine grace he 
 is himself the author of his own misfortune. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that any one view correctly 
 describes the Middle Ages in their entirety. There was 
 great variety of opinion on this point: The gifts of For- 
 tune are not moral goods and cannot be expected to be 
 other than calamitous." Man can by will choose the ignoble 
 and for that choice shall suffer." Man is by nature evil 
 and cannot make atonement for infinite guilt by means 
 of his finite capacities.'' Yet evil and misfortune are 
 useful disciplines in manifesting the providence of God/' 
 In each of these views is something unexplained. Perhaps 
 for purposes of illustration the views of Boethius will 
 suffice; for in him we have the transition from antiquity 
 to the distinctly Christian view: the conflict between 
 pagan Fortune and Christian Providence. 
 
 The most patent fact of "the external world, for 
 Boethius, as it relates to man's well-being, is the fact of 
 change. In this respect change of fortune, or the change- 
 ableness of the world, means change in personal circum- 
 stances. If any supreme good can be found : if happiness, 
 for example, is a supreme good ; it will not be found in 
 aught that can be taken from us. Happiness, therefore, 
 cannot rest on Fortune whose nature it is to be unstable; 
 nor can any good be found in the gifts of Fortune whose 
 habit it is to withdraw what she has once granted. Her 
 gift heralds its own withdrawal ; and as her only con- 
 stancy is change, good fortune, especially, is but the 
 presage of future calamity. It is characteristic of Fortune 
 that she disposes of her gifts most erratically to the just 
 and the unjust alike. But if powers and dignities, For- 
 tune's gifts, were intrinsically good they would never fall 
 to the lot of the wicked who do not deserve them. We 
 see the wicked in possession of such gifts more especially 
 because it is a law of the universe that like consorts 
 
 43 
 
with like. It should not surprise us then, since the union 
 of opposites is repugnant to nature, that when wicked 
 men should so generally possess the best gifts at the dis- 
 posal of Fortune, that calamity should be their lot. Kings 
 are par excellence the bearers of power and dignity; yet 
 kings have as their lot more misery than felicity. Power, 
 being too weak to preserve itself, commonly promises a 
 reversal of fortune. What is glory or fame compared to 
 eternity? For as there is no comparison between the finite 
 and the infinite, so there is nothing desirable, no natural 
 good in any gift of Fortune; and it is just the indiscrim- 
 inate strokes of Fortune by which kingdoms are over- 
 turned, that tragedy bewails." 
 
 The influence of this idea is traceable long after. It 
 is this to which Chaucer refers, as much as to Aristotle, 
 when he says tragedy is the story of the misery and 
 wretched end of one fallen from high degree and pros- 
 perity." The same idea we find in Puttenham: "Tragedy 
 deals with the doleful falls of unfortunate and afflicted 
 princes for the purpose of reminding men of the mutabil- 
 ity of fortune and of God's just punishment of a vicious 
 life." The irrational element is here too fundamental 
 for a superficial ascription of the falls of princes to 
 mere sin or depravity. The problem is related to the 
 wider one of evil. Where the created world is by nature 
 unreal and imperfect, and man by nature sunk in guilt, 
 we must face an intolerable contradiction with the provi- 
 dence of God.'" Even where thought adhered to the idea 
 of guilt as a free act, there was an unanswered problem 
 in the incompatibility of a world of guilt under the domi- 
 nance of omnipotent goodness. The omnipotent nature of 
 God's goodness is not incompatible with the absorption 
 of a finite amount of evil ; but that would not rationalize 
 the course of history when, as we see later, dramatic art 
 turned a questioning eye upon that very problem of the 
 falls of "unfortunate and aff'licted princes." Not all the 
 responsibility for the condition of the outer world should 
 fall on the self; but the tradition of fate and fortune 
 
 44 
 
must be broken down. Here the burden shifts back to 
 nature to declare herself lawful and subject to reason. 
 
 A renaissance is a challenge to tradition; and if the 
 Renaissance is found to be a warring of traditions, it is 
 also in some sense an emancipation from them. The 
 Renaissance is the essentially new in all departments of 
 thought. The individual in the state is subject, as 
 Machiavelli saw, to untoward chance from the tyranny 
 of warlike and wicked men. Order is the result of the 
 absolute power of a ruler to whom, as Hobbes also 
 thought, the freedom of the individual is transferred 
 irrevocably in order to receive it back as freedom from 
 injustice. On the other hand the individual suffers unwar- 
 rantably from the tyrant whose w'ill is fateful and of 
 universal scope throughout the realm. Here the citizen 
 takes his stand on the rights flowing from that law 
 which is superior to king and subject alike; and to which 
 all positive law is subordinate. 
 
 In the sphere of knowledge, the antimony of certainty 
 and uncertainty is not ultimately prejudicial to the indi- 
 vidual. Human knowledge, for Cusanus, is conjecture; 
 and in fact it is nothing but the knowledge of our ignor- 
 ance. The world itself, in its entirety, is an articulate 
 whole wherein the quantitative aspects at least are evi- 
 dence of reason. Where the universe is a system of regu- 
 larly moved particles of mass, as for Galilei and Kepler, 
 the harmony of the world is made comprehensible mathe- 
 matically by the laws of occurrence and change. Mathe- 
 matics is the rational factor; and the lawfulness of the 
 world itself is its rational consistency. It is a consistency 
 inherent in itself and not one imposed on it from without. 
 Therefore, knowledge is certain so far as it results from 
 measurement or quantitative ratios; but where sense and 
 mathematics go not, as in human passions and ends, there 
 is uncertainty. 
 
 The desire to rule the external world is not only a 
 demand for freedom of thought which the enlightened 
 man claims against the \ Middle Ages; but it is a demand 
 
 45 
 
for a clear and distinct thought claimed from the external 
 world, if that world be truly rational. If nothing beyond 
 reason can be authoritative or true, then commit all 
 nature to scrutiny in the dry light of reason. When 
 nature is rational, when in fact she is reason, and only 
 that nature is rational which is ordered, formal, and 
 abstract; then, as for Berkeley, nature as the external 
 world is not her own existence (is not self-subsistent) , 
 but depends for its existence on an act of judgment as of 
 the divine mind. Likewise the freedom of the human 
 spirit depends on its consistency with external truths 
 which are the fundamental judgments of an orderly world. 
 In so far as conduct may be said to be an action in the 
 body politic (analogous to motion or change in the 
 physical world), that conduct must also be made up of 
 rational acts. But here passion is a disturbing element; 
 and because it is impulsive and irrational it is responsible 
 for disorganized situations in conduct. In another sense, 
 also, impulsive conduct is incapable of complete and true 
 worth or of supplying us with valid knowledge of the 
 external world. Perhaps this is why the dramatic art 
 of the Seventeenth Century scores to the account of pas- 
 sion so much tragic failure; and therefore finds disaster 
 not so terrible, for the causes of that failure have no real 
 part in the structure of truth. Again as in the Hellenistic 
 period, the fact of disaster should have no real effect on 
 the mind disciplined by reason. It was at this point that 
 the Renaissance had arrived in its speculation on the 
 problem of tragedy as a fact in history; and that gave 
 occasion for popular consciousness to regard the instabil- 
 ity of fortune rather than the immediate causes of unhap- 
 piness and failure. 
 
 46 
 
3. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT. 
 
 We saw that the unhappiness of the great men of 
 history suggested the irrationality of Fortune; and that 
 the means of defeating her lay in overcoming the outer 
 world within the self. To have reached this moment in 
 the analysis of the problem implies that further steps had 
 been taken to render the problem somewhat different 
 from that with which the start had been made. The 
 problem of tragedy is no longer for the end of the 
 Seventeenth Century what it had been for the beginning: 
 no longer the fall of great men, but the defeat of great 
 minds. This implies for one thing that unhappiness is 
 to be sought in the irrationality of emotion rather than 
 in that of a mystical fortune. The "clothes of burial" 
 are prepared for the soul caught in its own mazes of 
 passion; and the "glory as of resurrection" is for the 
 rational soul. The death of the hero is but the occasion 
 for a display of greatness of soul; the significance of 
 death is but that of a stage death. For the disciplined 
 soul there is in fact no tragedy at all. Let us see what 
 an analysis of this idea will reveal. 
 
 The Seventeenth Century had partially succeeded 
 in the task begun by the Renaissance. The world had 
 come to be a rational whole in which superstition and 
 emotion are unreal.'' "Nature is a machine whose trans- 
 parent wheelwork allows of no magic and no sorcery."" 
 Emotion is now an irrational element and cannot be 
 reckoned with; nor can intellect and prudence brook 
 compromise with it. Dramatic art in this period is the 
 drama of emotional disintegration. Ordinarily the emo- 
 tional and the intellectual have equal value with us, 
 provided each keeps to its proper sphere. But in the 
 time of Racine a dramatic conflict could hardly have 
 been found between personal emotion and world reason, 
 each having equal right, as for Hegel. But for Corneille, 
 or Racine, the tragic conflict would have been what the 
 
 47 
 
Seventeenth Century would naturally have expected from 
 a personality undisciplined by reason. This epoch 
 regarded conduct motivated by emotion as essentially 
 misleading. That conduct only was safe which flowed 
 from enlightened self-interest and calculated prudence. 
 
 Even before the death of Shakespeare there was a 
 popular counterpart of the philosophical consciousness 
 taking the form of a disaffection with the complexities of 
 life that follow on the unrestrained, unreflective, self- 
 assertive act. The stage had instructed popular con- 
 sciousness only too well in the mysteries of emotion and 
 conduct. They have in fact lost their mysteriousness ; 
 for disaster is now to be traced directly to its source — 
 passion. The loss of seriousness, and an unwillingness 
 to wrestle with the world in its serious aspects, is just 
 the feeling that life at its worst is not tragic but only 
 pathetic; that things might have been otherwise with a 
 little more self-control; and that destructive situations 
 are not ineluctable. It is not only possible, but incumbent, 
 upon the Jacobean and Caroline dramatists to resolve 
 strained situations in accordance with their facile char- 
 acter. Tragedy within the sphere of reason is impossible ; 
 it is pushed out bej^ond ordinary concepts and made 
 fictitious.'" If this be the negative, then there was also 
 a positive side in the widening range of reason in science 
 and philosophy, carrying with it not only a sense of the 
 futility of struggling against the irrational, but also a 
 sense of the calamitous nature of passion (their generic 
 term for all emotional motives). There was also the 
 paradoxical attempt in philosophy to bring emotion within 
 the intellectual scheme of nature, but at the same time 
 to relegate it to the umbral margin of reason. 
 
 The philosophy of the Seventeenth Century is a 
 history of this idea; and within philosophy are numerous 
 expressions of a definite and intense consciousness that 
 not only virtue but safe conduct are functions of knowl- 
 edge; whereas evil and adverse destiny are functions of 
 emotion in its paradoxical position. Descartes points out 
 
 48 
 
that "virtue is ordinarily opposed to pleasures, to appe- 
 tites, and to passions"; but that "the light of reason 
 affording a true knowledge of the good, prevents virtue 
 from becoming false"."" In the development of Cartesian 
 ideas in the field of ethics, Geulincx makes this state- 
 ment:'' 
 
 "The contempt into which the most precious 
 things fall among men when they think them too 
 well known, is especially true of our reason, whose 
 utterances are far less regarded (by the ordinary 
 man), than the shows of sense and phantasy, although 
 these have their seat in the bodily life, radically 
 foreign to the soul, and they can only darken the 
 knowledge of our self and of its true interests." 
 
 In Spinoza's inspiring view of man and his relation 
 to the universe, it is man's littleness and bondage, his 
 insignificance in the scheme of things, for which emotion 
 is accountable; but man's freedom and greatness lie in 
 understanding: in the knowledge and love of God — that 
 is to say: of Reason, of Nature. Spinoza says, for 
 example:*' 
 
 "To act absolutely in obedience to virtue, is to 
 act ... in accordance with the dictates of 
 reason on the basis of seeking what is useful to 
 oneself." But, "human infirmity in moderating or 
 checking the emotions I name bondage; for when a 
 man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own ' 
 master, but lies at the mercy of fortune; so much 
 so, that he is often compelled, while seeking that 
 which is better for him, to follow that which is 
 worse." 
 
 Racine and Moliere may be taken as representatives 
 of opposite phases of the drama of erroneous and dis- 
 integrating emotion. The undisciplined personality of 
 
 49 
 
Racine's tragedy has its counterpart in the onesided 
 person of the satiric comedy. Consider Racine's Phedre 
 for example. Hippolytus is governed throughout by the 
 maxims of a mind seasoned and disciplined by reason. 
 He has a contempt for all acts unmotivated by a good 
 will. In every situation the prudential motives are of 
 more weight than the emotional; for universal laws, 
 rather than feelings, govern the conduct of a man who 
 is eminently virtuous.' Phaedra, while acknowledging 
 that duty makes imperative demands on the character, 
 is ungoverned by reason. She has in her something 
 blamable which no person governed by reason would 
 tolerate. She is one, disintegrated on the emotional side, 
 to whom the eternal verities are as if they were not. 
 One so oblivious to the law of God, or reason (the two 
 are one), is flouting the face of a just governance of the 
 universe. 
 
 A condign punishment is found for this disrupted 
 integrity, a disruption based on a theory of knowledge. 
 Yet we can understand that in the eyes of Racine's 
 auditors she does not suffer unwarrantably — a thing con- 
 trary to the spirit of the age.' We see the significance 
 of Lessing's remark that "it is a horrible conception that 
 there is a person who is unhappy through no fault of 
 his own . . . are we to cherish it, we, whom reason 
 and religion should convince that it is no less blasphemous 
 than untrue?'" It is also clear why Lessing calls the 
 drama of this period a drama of wonder. It inculcates 
 the love and admiration for God's goodness, perhaps 
 unconsciously following Spinoza's tuition. As Leibniz 
 remarks: "The love of God demands that we should 
 acquiesce in all that He has done." Greatness of soul 
 will overcome all obstacles and all expression of pain. 
 The death of Hippolytus is thus meant as a triumph over 
 death. He perishes before the desolating sweep of pas- 
 sion, it is true; but rather as a moral to a fable. Despite 
 change of fortune, he dies 7)i€7is conscia recti; reconciled 
 to the universe by reason of his greatness and as a reward 
 
 50 
 
for his rectitude. The purpose of the universe is accom- 
 plished even though the good man perish, for the sanctity 
 in which he died was but the triumph of reason over 
 emotion and of life on that sordid level. 
 
 This drama represents well the thought of the 
 Enlightenment, dominated by the philosopher Leibniz, 
 who shows that it is unsafe to trust sensuous knowledge 
 for truth. The passions and emotions are not ultimately 
 valid as sources of knowledge. The universal is the 
 rational. All that perceptual knowledge can offer, all 
 intuitions of pain, pleasure, and desire, are blurred 
 accounts of truth — not clear and distinct cognition. 
 Since perception and emotion are debased forms of knowl- 
 edge they cannot be expected to guide men into right 
 ways. Perhaps then we may say, the death of the hero 
 on the stage is the renunciation of the blurred, for clear 
 and universal, knowledge. It is such clear and universal 
 knowledge as we usually identify with law, duty, with 
 the sanction of truth. Thus in affirming the validity 
 of reason there is reconciliation in the French Classic 
 drama. Wisdom makes man superior to the complexities 
 of existence by withdrawing him, in one sense, from 
 them. But erroneous judgments of conduct, since they 
 arise from passion, are mere conceits and irrational." 
 
 Would that speculation had let this solution alone! 
 But there is a moment in the idealistic thought of the 
 Nineteenth Century which has seized on this problem 
 and worked it out to a point where there is little of 
 rationality left in it. The relation of the personal to the 
 ultimately rational has been set forth in certain idealistic 
 systems with some logical success and cogency; though it 
 must be confessed, the solution is ironical. For in 
 demanding that man renounce all that is opposed to a 
 factitious sphere of conduct, idealistic thought has done 
 so only as a punishment for what Calderon called the 
 sin of existence."' 
 
 51 
 
VI. 
 
 The Speculative Outcome. 
 
 The idea that greatness of mind can overcome the deep- 
 seated dualisms of the universe reappears in the thought of 
 the Nineteenth Century. What was a possible idea for the 
 Seventeenth Century: that nature is a system obedient to 
 the laws of reason, has received a twist in the Nineteenth 
 Century by which the individual is submerged in that ver>' 
 system which his reason has constructed. Yet in that fact, 
 that man's reason has constructed the system, aesthetic 
 speculation finds the individual's salvation. The "real" in- 
 dividual, that is, must be the "universal." 
 
 The fact of tragedy may not be as alarming as what 
 speculation may make of it. Some men fear what they are 
 well able to bear, as Boethius remarks ; and the Stoics were 
 right in attempting to rid man of vexations arising from 
 superstition. Man's helplessness before destiny or chance 
 is a pecularly ancient idea, especially in tragedy; but it is 
 a superstition which has by no means been laid in modern 
 times. It may be more than a superstition ; though in our 
 attempts to rationalize it we commonly substitute for it 
 equally irreducible ideas. For von Hartmann the ancient 
 tragedy of fate was but the first step in that of unconquer- 
 able character.' ' It may have even more positive value for 
 Schopenhauer:" 
 
 ( "In tragedy the terrible side of life is presented to us, 
 
 ] the wail of humanity, the reign of chance and error, the 
 
 ^ fall of the just, the triumph of the wicked; thus the 
 
 \ aspect of the world that directly strives against our will 
 
 \ is brought before our eyes." / 
 
 But it is undoubtedly true that for many a "tragedy 
 is always the same thing . . . making us realize the help- 
 lessness of mankind before destiny."" Perhaps from the ex- 
 
 52 
 
temal point of \'iew there is always disaster and ruin,' as 
 a consequence of the conflict of good and evil and of poetic 
 judg-ment on guilt/' 
 
 The rejection of the theory of poetic justice as applying 
 to all tragic situations has led to an attempt to define the 
 rather hazy concept of tragic guilt and to rationalize it as 
 well. The popular notion of tragic guilt is a misinterpreta- 
 tion of guilt as moral culpability. The confusion is not sur- 
 prising in view of the rigorous ethical moments through 
 which the people of Western Europe have passed. To throw 
 the responsibility of the tragic situation on the individual 
 implies the dominance of a rigid system external to man. 
 It is a system to which he must conforai, not because he 
 can, but because he ought. Where there is a gi'eat gulf fixed 
 between realms of nature and grace, it would seem impos- 
 sible that there should be any moral achievement. Man 
 should have a faculty by means of which he could, if he so 
 chose, avoid at least those entanglements that beset the 
 evil will. Then an inevitable accounting for an error in one's 
 maxims of conduct is sure to follow the transgression. 
 Satisfactory as such a result might be for the lover of poetic 
 justice, it disregards some of the merits of the situation ; and 
 it does not satisfy the speculative elements of the problem. 
 The dramatist as well as the philosopher may perceive the 
 tragedy to lie in a man's veiw inability to conform to an 
 external code of conduct. It may be that, after all, just as 
 the individual is not responsible for the tragic situation, so 
 the futility of a struggle with necessary and universal con- 
 ditions is unreasonable just because man's purposes and 
 knowledge are personal and subjective. 
 
 The extension of the idea of tragic guilt to include the 
 metaphysical weakness of the personal has reference to the 
 reality of the person and his relation to the universe. The 
 new view of man and history suggests new problems pe- 
 cularly idealistic or evolutionary. The units or parts of any 
 system are denied crass and discrete reality; they derive 
 reality by their dependence on, and participation in, a uni- 
 versal. The permanence of a specific thing in a certain set of 
 
 53 
 
relations is not a matter of maintaining a thing as just that 
 thing; but rather a question of continuing the function 
 which the unit or atom had temporarily assumed. The inner 
 movement and life of the absolute is the outer movement 
 and death of the parts." The burden of carrying on the work 
 of the universe rests on the parts ; hence the necessary ex- 
 pansion of the latter to meet new demands is supposed to 
 be a usurpation by the parts of the function of the whole. 
 When the particular becomes too much or too exclusively the 
 individual, as the Hegelians say, its life as a specific thing 
 is already of the past. And if the external conflict and ruin 
 is the result of a struggle of right against right, that in 
 itself is an evil;"' but an evil of an entirely different order. 
 Speculation in the Nineteenth Century has left the 
 individual little to hope for. He still lives in a universe to 
 be sure; and he is part and parcel of it. But his desire to 
 be a unique individual is granted only with heavy penalties 
 attached. The rationality of the universe as a whole implies 
 the relative existence only, of each of the parts. The world is 
 real as a whole; its parts are only phenomena. Man as an 
 individual is no less a transgressor against the divinity of 
 the world than he was formerly thought to be a sinner 
 against God's law by Adam's fall. Man is indeed freed from 
 the charge of sin by reason of an immanent rationality in 
 the world; but then all finite desire is readily perverted. 
 If a man's purpose pretends to be more than an idle wish, 
 yet even that wish is a law legislating against the higher 
 purposes of the absolute, and from that the guilt of con- 
 flict results. Precisely those things which make person- 
 ality worth having: hope and aspiration, and the power 
 to reorganize the world from within, are just the things 
 man cannot have and yet live. If tragedy is a fact (and 
 not merely an artistic vision) , this is the explanation we are 
 bound to give it on the basis of distinctly Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury thought. It goes without saying that thinkers have 
 not been content with merely this story. The attack on the 
 old theorj' of tragic guilt as identical with moral guilt 
 has as its object to rationalize those situations in which 
 
 54 
 
no such moral guilt could be imputed to the characters; 
 for much that is clear to the eye of art is hidden from 
 the moralist.'" 
 
 The fact of tragedy aside, the spectacle of conflict is 
 of fundamental value and significance. What we mean by 
 tragic guilt is not moral reprehensibility, but any source 
 of suflFering where the "weight of the tragic fault is not 
 commensurable with the moral transgression.""" What re- 
 sults is simply the maintenance of the moral harmony of 
 the universe." Out of this suffering is supposed to arise 
 the purest expression of personality. The hero must will 
 his outer defeat as the highest expression of abstract 
 spirit, though it need not be the best expression of action 
 or success."" The philosophy of valuation attempts an 
 interpretation of the psychological value to the spectator 
 of the metaphysical guilt of the hero." 
 
 "Where the individual goes to destruction for the 
 worth which he identifies with himself * * * ^j^g 
 absolute personal worth has been realized even if the 
 object for which the sacrifice has been made is from 
 the personal point of view of instrumental judgment, 
 not considered worth the sacrifice." 
 
 But this theory overlooks what the earlier speculation 
 would by no means regard as a merely contingent alter- 
 native. The devotion of the hero to some object of implied 
 worth may be an act of will; but it does not follow that 
 the hero as shortsightedly wills his own destruction with 
 freedom equal to that with which he first wills his desire 
 or ideal. What is described as conflict, or conflict of 
 opposing wills, has as a consequence the necessary surren- 
 der only to the stronger reason, to that which is more 
 nearly universally true. "The voice of reason in the actors 
 is dumb," but there is "a wise providence which may at 
 the last lead to a completely contradictory, but satisfying, 
 conclusion."""' 
 
 55 
 
To Hamann, also, this conclusion is contradictory, but 
 neither satisfactory nor just. He says:"" 
 
 "We speak of the tragic when we experience in 
 the destruction of a personal value, to which we have 
 ascribed a right to exist, a contradiction to our eth- 
 ical standard of what should be and a destiny unjustly 
 prepared for us. A tragedy is the portrayal of an 
 especially flagrant case." 
 
 Yet the conflict may be between right and right, and'"' 
 
 "that which is humanly the weaker is, in the human 
 sense, crushed and ground to powder. But in its very 
 defeat it has found victory and the conqueror himself 
 bows in utter abasement before the divine law which 
 he has obstinately defied." 
 
 One may grant that the individual should learn to 
 know his place and that he should not defy the divine will ; 
 but why should it be that in a rational world the absolute 
 only is real, and all expressions of the absolute are unreal? 
 Man can never understand a world in which the absolute 
 will never be aught but a thing-in-itself, and phenomena 
 never anything at all in themselves. Man desires little 
 here below; and while he does not want it long, it must 
 be real in the interim. Perhaps this is why Hegel and 
 others are reported as dead by certain thinkers; but that 
 the Hegelian interpretation should have lived on so long 
 in many critical judgments is perhaps just the fact that 
 we love the morbid : because the morbid is so very real 
 and commonplace! 
 
 Thought leads in this direction to two farther steps 
 beyond which it may not be possible to go. The meta- 
 physical contingency of the individual and of all that is 
 human leads to a necessary "overstepping of the due 
 bounds of finiteness."" " Human aspiration by overstep- 
 ping the due bounds of finiteness disturbs the equilibrium 
 
 56 
 
of the spiritual world. Secondly, even though there be 
 no such disturbance due to false pretenders to worth and 
 reason, there is a metaphysical diremption in the basis of 
 the universe with which it would be hopeless for man to 
 contend. The universe is so hopelessly irrational at bot- 
 tom that human reason must accept it as final. Because 
 the suffering of an innocent person is utterly monstrous, 
 we must find something to take the place of the guilt 
 which would make the fact intelligible to our habitual 
 form of thought. It is impossible that anyone should be free 
 from guilt,""' for every one is guilty through the necessity 
 of destiny,'" and in the face of the infinitely spiritual every 
 aspiration for finite greatness must disappear.""' Guilt and 
 finitude are at once identified, even though with some change 
 of meaning. It is, to repeat a hackneyed platitude, both a 
 misfortune and a mystery that we are human. We prove 
 our personality by devotion to all that is partial and local ; 
 we believe in all the half-truths: for what else is there to 
 believe? In our devotion to the finite we find tragedy; in 
 renunciation, a destruction which is called victory and suc- 
 cess. Christianity has taught self-sacrifice in an endeavor 
 to gain more permanent values of life;'" and the lesson 
 has not been lost in theory. In a world where all is rela- 
 tive, our fault consists in mistaking the rationality of the 
 finite, which is merely its relativity, for an ideal rationality 
 never found in the specific thing."" Our guilt is that, 
 since we can pay allegiance to but one motivating force at 
 a time, we forget the legitimate claims of others." " We 
 cannot of ourselves "play the part of Providence" as Lotze 
 points out. '" By this he means that we are incapable of 
 "laying hold of the coherent system of the world's course 
 as a formulative and guiding principle." 
 
 The final step is to state the consequences of contra- 
 diction. Not only is the individual divided against itself," 
 in an attempt to serve two masters, one finite and one 
 infinite; but, as with Hegel, the sides to the conflict have 
 equal right.'" At the same time, each in its claim to right 
 must be a denial of the same right in the other. In dra- 
 
 57 
 
matic action we watch this contradiction leading to such 
 results that a resolution of the difficulty is precluded, and 
 duplicity made necessary. The impossibility of reconcil- 
 iation is made by Bahnsen the peculiar property of the 
 "innermost core of reality" which is torn asunder and 
 illogically divided. ' ' ' 
 
 The challenge for a rationalized theory of tragedy 
 has called forth two champions of especial interest, Hegel 
 and Solger.'" Hegel says in the Aesthetik (freely trans- 
 lated) :' 
 
 "The principle of dramatic poesy, in which we 
 have collision of purposes and characters, and in 
 which the necessity for a solution of such a conflict 
 is the central point, can only be the relation of the 
 individual to his purposes and their content. * * * 
 Just as the tragic purpose and character are neces- 
 sarily determined, so the solution of the tragic diffi- 
 culty likewise; and in this solution we have the eter- 
 nal righteousness working through the individual and 
 his purposes in such a way that the unity of the 
 moral Substance is preserved by the destruction of the 
 individual who disturbs its repose" (i. e., by giving 
 his allegiance to one interest only). "It is only the 
 one-sided specialization of interest which is mortified 
 in the tragic conclusion, because it has made itself 
 prejudicial to this harmony; and which now in its 
 tragic activity, if it cannot be resigned, exposes its 
 whole totality to destruction if the hero persists in 
 the prosecution of his one-sided interest." 
 
 Hegel was in a fair way of rationalizing tragedy for- 
 ever by showing that tragedy is conflict and not suffering, 
 for conflict we see and understand. But he goes on to 
 point out that the conflict lies between abstractions of the 
 moral sphere, each having equal right to exist: e. g., insti- 
 tutions like the state and the family." Some of these 
 abstractions are less abstract than others : some are more 
 
 58 
 
nearly universal in the scope of their spiritual interests; 
 and hence they may demand from the moral person a 
 subjection that forces the resignation of all merely per- 
 sonal interests. The individual is the victim of a double 
 paradox: he is never merely an individual and yet he can 
 never be more than one; for he is a complex of finite and 
 infinite factors and is subject to interests controlled now 
 by one and again by the other. Consequently the individ- 
 ual is a member x)f many higher organizations ; and the 
 higher the institution the more does it demand a propor- 
 tionate negation of his purely personal or subjective na- 
 ture. The conflicts which arise from this paradoxical 
 position presuppose a system of values which is not a 
 matter of experience or personal interest; but it is a sys- 
 tem of transvaluations imposed on the world by the oper- 
 ation of the "Idee." The course of the universe, if ra- 
 tional, is consciously present to itself only, working in 
 accordance with universal laws sublimely unconscious of 
 the mere person ; and granting to him as his only right, 
 what is to us, the totally incomprehensible favor of losing 
 the actuality of his being. 
 
 Solger has some remarkable statements in his Vorle- 
 sungen ueber Aesthetik, where he points out that the 
 tragic relation in beauty is a contradiction between tem- 
 poral phenomena and reality. " In tragedy, it is reality 
 itself, under the form of beauty, that is sacrificed ; so 
 that"' 
 
 "tragedy consists of an inner contradiction of human 
 nature, wherein the highest, namely reason, is drawn 
 into the sphere of appearance; * * * therefore, 
 what is negated in tragedy is reason itself, and not 
 merely the temporal appearance. Reason, which is 
 the highest and most venerable in us, cannot exist 
 without contradictions." 
 
 Solger's view of the universe presupposed by his Aes- 
 thetik assumes two metaphysical elements : the spiritual 
 and the physical (which Solger sometimes calls respec- 
 
 59 
 
tively Reason and Appearance). Neither of these aspects 
 is present as such to human cognition; because everything 
 that is a part of the intelligible universe is a combination 
 of both factors. Knowledge is a combination of Form 
 and Content, the universal and the particular. Knowledge 
 and beauty, from one point of view, are identical. Reason 
 is, in itself, the real and true; appearance is but the par- 
 tially real and, in so far, untrue expression of reason. 
 Everything intelligible, therefore, like a work of art con- 
 tains an element of untruth ; because on one side, reason 
 cannot be completely drawn into the world of sense; and, 
 on the other side, things of sense can never be fully ideal- 
 ized. Any apotheosis of knowledge to the dignity of dog- 
 matic truth is as disastrous as is the conflict between per- 
 sonal and universal interests in the sphere of art. The 
 result in both cases is to deny validity to these preten- 
 sions to Reason. When a partial truth is made to do duty 
 for a universal (when a habit is given arbitrary value), 
 the false evaluation is sure to bring with it a sense of its 
 limitation to the world of phenomena. Since all things 
 human are informed by a finite factor, knowledge and 
 human endeavor are always mortified by the apostasy of 
 reason and validity. If knowledge can be no more perfect 
 than this, art will represent the inability of the universe 
 to guarantee the successful accomplishment of our pur- 
 poses. This is just what tragedy does: implying that there 
 is an element in the universe beyond human apprehension. 
 Our motives are invalidated because there is a truth be- 
 yond motive and purpose which is somehow inimical to 
 the act of realization."" 
 
 I have been suggesting that the mystery of tragedy is 
 a necessary fiction arising as a result of those systems of 
 thought which are roughly characterized as idealistic; 
 /. e., those in which the universe is under the sway of an 
 inscrutable element called reason. The metaphysical basis 
 of the world is so-called because the world is apparently 
 governed by a power whose acts are consistent on either 
 one of two bases : 
 
 60 
 
1. That wherein the world is regarded as having a 
 moral constitution accounting for suffering and defeat as: 
 
 a. violation of w^ell-known moral regulations. 
 
 b. inadvertently assuming moral value for our 
 purposes and acts unwarranted by our knowledge. 
 
 2. On the other basis, Reason is a metaphysical real- 
 ity, which 
 
 a. in one case denies the validity of judgments 
 based on emotion or perception ; 
 
 b. and in the other case, denies reality both to 
 the individual and to anything which he could possi- 
 bly identify with his well-being. 
 
 The tragic, then, is man's co nsciousness of his unbea r- 
 able situation; and tragedy__is_its artistic represen tation. 
 Having traced the idea to an impossible ending, where a 
 man must deceive himself to live, or to die, there is an- 
 other possible solution to the problem which must be con- 
 sidered before the present task is done. That other pos- 
 sible solution lies in the assertion sometimes heard, that 
 comedy and tragedy are very close together in their essen- 
 tial nature, and that the outlook from the former is not 
 so black as painted. In other words, we have to consider 
 whether the fictitious element in tragedy is not reducible 
 to a comedy element. Are the contradictions noted in the 
 speculation about tragedy any more serious than the am- 
 biguities of a pun, and may they be laughed away as 
 easily? 
 
 VII. 
 --^ O The Irrational Element and the Comic Conflict. 
 
 Whatever similarities there may be between the spec- 
 ulative contradictions of tragedy and the perceptual con- 
 trasts of comedy go to show that there is still a fiction in 
 tragedy different from that in comedy. The seriousness 
 
 61 
 
of the conflict in comedy is a fiction; for if it were not, 
 the solution of comedy could hardly be regarded as "satis- 
 fying." The similarities of tragedy and comedy are of 
 no more weight than their differences; and the attempt 
 to harmonize their divergent outlooks requires a shifting 
 back and forth between two metaphysically different stand- 
 points. 
 
 There is need for clearing away the confusing rela- 
 tions of the two types of dramatic art, and the miscon- 
 ceptions of the traditional material of the comic. That 
 element of comedy by which it is related to the theory of 
 knowledge, and which makes it the antithesis of tragedy 
 as here defined, will be best grasped by excluding from 
 'Consideration those critical estimates which rest on psycho- 
 logical grounds. It is also expedient to abstract from the 
 traditional artistic idea that the persons of comedy are 
 low-born and commonplace; or the more speculative idea 
 that the persons of tragedy are individuals, and those of 
 comedy types; or that tragedy is subjective, and comedy 
 objective.' ' 
 
 Taken in their entirety, it may be legitimately doubted 
 whether tragedy and comedy are in all points antithetical ; 
 it may be possible to hold a theory- of their essential iden- 
 tity. But as having a basis in the theory of knowledge, 
 tragedy and comedy are the terms of an opposition con- 
 sistently explained by showing that they are functions of 
 fundamentally opposed views of the universe. The gen- 
 eral nature of this opposition is a matter of translating 
 what is true for one view of the universe into what would 
 be true for the opposite view. What was before pointed 
 out as the criticism of the merely innate, would be for 
 comedy merely the unreality of serious problems. The 
 tragedy which results from pretensions to ultimate worth 
 is, from the point of view of an empirical world, merely 
 a contrast. The higher powers of the universe, for ideal- 
 ism, are beyond knowledge and understanding and in their 
 operation necessarily express themselves to us irration- 
 ally. To turn this view to account for comedy, we must 
 
 62 
 
have a world wherein such supernaturalism is not a real- 
 ity but a mere figment of the mind. 
 
 Most comedy lies in the field of conflicting wills; and 
 the chances that result do so because individuals do not 
 always act from necessity, but sometimes from choice. 
 The solution results by finding that purposes are not con- 
 tradictory; that one purpose is not superior to another 
 by nature; that a set purpose may be easily renounced on 
 finding that another serves the end of desire just as 
 well.'" The comedy of humors, for example, is usually 
 solved by the simple resolution of a difficulty which is 
 usually the result of wills working without restraint 
 except that of limitation to time and space. The con- 
 flict shows clearly that knowledge is adequate to solve the 
 difficulty, except that such knowledge is not always forth- 
 coming at the right time to prevent all misunderstand- 
 ing; and, so far as the stage is concerned, depends on 
 what would be, for tragedy, adventitious aid for its solu- 
 tion. This is the reason why the hero of comedy is so 
 often possessed of all the lines of action and appears at 
 the right time to solve all diflficulties. The hero is the 
 abstraction for the deus, but transformed in his nature, 
 since he is no more than what it is possible for the nor- 
 mal human to be. 
 
 There are in general two points of view from which 
 the concept of comedy is regarded. The first is that in 
 which a theory of the comic or laughable predominates; 
 and the other is that in which we have the moral law of 
 the universe in the old role of self-justifier."' In the con- 
 flict of wills we have room for various theories of the 
 comic as a feeling of degradation, baffled expectation, or 
 incongruity;'" i. e., in all of them there is a contrast 
 with the norm which shall be greater than any other 
 term. The theory that all drama is conflict is obliged so far 
 as comedy is concerned, to tone down the conflict to some- 
 thing like mere contrast or to suppose that the conflict is 
 after all unimportant — in fact, no real conflict at all.'"' 
 It is as Muensterberg says: "In comedy the great will 
 
 63 
 
is recognized as really a small one for which true oppo- 
 sition never existed.'"" 
 
 With Schopenhauer the attempt to find a consistent 
 theory of comedy leads one to expect that he will either 
 contradict his view of the world as essentially tragic, or 
 debase the function of comedy to that of a mistaken view. 
 He says:''" 
 
 "If we have found the tendency and ultimate 
 intention of tragedy to be a resignation, a denial of 
 the will to live, we shall easily recognize in its oppo- 
 site, comedy, the incitement to the continued asser- 
 tion of the will. It is true that comedy, like every 
 representation of life without exception, must bring 
 before our eyes suffering and adversity; but it rep- 
 resents it to us as passing, resolving itself into joy, 
 in general mingled with success, victory, and hopes, 
 which in the end predominate. '■" * * Thus in the 
 end it declares that life as a whole is thoroughly 
 good, and especially it is always amusing; * * * 
 and moreover if we once contemplate this burlesque 
 side of life seriously * * * the reflective spectator 
 may become convinced that the existence and action 
 of such things (embarrassed, fearful, angry, envious) 
 cannot of themselves be an end ; that, on the con- 
 trary, they can only have attained to an existence 
 through an error, and what so exhibits itself is some- 
 thing which had better not be." 
 
 On the other hand, the idealism of the Nineteenth 
 Century has explained comedy as a function of the moral 
 order of the universe. Michelet, perhaps, gives the clear- 
 est expression to this idea."' "In comedy the moral rela- 
 tions are so represented that in general the character is 
 not destroyed, but maintains his power over them and is 
 certain of victory from the beginning. '•' * * The col- 
 lision is more a contrast contradicting sense, or of great 
 effort directed toward an insignificant end" (than toward 
 
 64 
 
a conflict of inimical forces). For Krause the moral good 
 forces itself to expression when mere experience is found 
 to be in harmony with reason."" In this he follows Sol- 
 ger, for whom comedy is the lawfulness of the common- 
 place course of events."" 
 
 The recognition of those elements essential to the 
 concepts of tragedy and comedy, whereby their divergent 
 outlooks on the world are explained, may proceed by a 
 symmetrical analysis of these concepts as problems of 
 knowledge wherein both rational and irrational factors 
 may be discovered. What is the contrast between the 
 function of knowledge in a world of tragedy and in one 
 of comedy? 
 
 In these epochs of thought when empirical attitudes 
 prevail; when man asserts that he knows the outer world 
 as it is with finality and absolute truth; or when, in his 
 ethical system he declares that instinct, impulse, and sen- 
 suous interpretation of happiness lead to ultimate good; 
 then his dramatic art will be expressed as comedy. For 
 does not comedy represent a way out of the difficulties 
 of conduct as much by the power of knowledge over 
 events as by the belief in a victorious hero? The reali- 
 zation of personal aims in comedy depends on the fact 
 that the outer world is the very basis and possibility of 
 those aims. Were our purposes strictly of another world, 
 they could not be forced to realization in this world ex- 
 cept by inartistic machinery and metaphysical abstrac- 
 tions. Those eras in which there is for the theory of 
 knowledge only one significant factor, the external, are 
 preeminently eras of comedy. Such are, for example, the 
 age of Aristophanes with his contemporary Democritus, 
 and that attitude (generally the antithesis of Plato's) 
 represented by the Sophists, atomists, and in ethics, the 
 hedonists. Similar periods are, perhaps, the second cen- 
 tury before Christ in Rome; the Seventeenth Century in 
 France, and the later Seventeenth Century in England. 
 It is not accidental that the philosophy of Hobbes de- 
 scribed a world in which comedy is possible. 
 
 65 
 
But those epochs which are skeptical of the world 
 without; when only that is true which is beyond this 
 world, will be given to tragic art in drama. In such 
 epochs of thought the external world is constituted by 
 subjective ideas having illusory value for the world of 
 sense. Man's own personal knowledge is temporary and 
 contingent. The state crushes the citizen; the gods are 
 denizens of a world superior to that of the worshiper; 
 the ultimate good is a demand incapable of realization 
 here and now. Knowledge gives no superiority neither 
 over the world nor over the forces external to man, ex- 
 cept perhaps negatively. Because man cannot understand 
 them, nor accommodate his ends to them, he is crushed 
 by them. There is no way through a situation in which 
 man sets his contingent knowledge in opposition to the 
 eternal; unrighteous purposes and impulsive action alike 
 go down before the larger conceptions of the universe. 
 Such periods have been the Sophoclean, the Renaissance, 
 and the Nineteenth Century. It must be remembered 
 that no epoch is correctly described by one characteristic 
 only; though it is permissible to abstract a dominant 
 tendency for the sake of clarity. Thus, the natural antith- 
 esis of the comedy of Moliere is the tragedy of Racine; 
 and in the Nineteenth Century idealism has an antithesis 
 in evolution and other theories of science. 
 
 By presenting the contrast between comedy and 
 tragedy a little more in detail we can see the antithetical 
 ideas of the two concepts more clearly. What the un 
 knowable is in the sphere of philosophy, that tragedy 
 to the sphere of art. Tragedy is incomprehensible to 
 common sense; but simple disaster is to it but the result 
 of known causes. There is in the concept of tragedy an 
 unknowable element which emerges only on the level of a 
 reflection higher than that of common sense. To make 
 of tragedy a conceit of knowledge (/. e., the cause and 
 purpose hypostatized as knowable) would imply the com- 
 plete reversal of the common sense view; and would imply 
 the evaluation of failure as of ultimate worth. To do so 
 
 66 
 
 ?J 
 
requires a conversion of the individual in which he puts 
 off all particularity and finiteness. The artist who writes 
 a tragedy admits his inability to portray an orderly world 
 in such terms as he has at his command. The aesthetic 
 satisfactoriness of the view of the world presented in the 
 play, as far as the audience is concerned, must lie in the 
 close agreement of audience and author, and their mutual 
 loss of conceit both with their world and with their power 
 of understanding. 
 
 For tragedy, that is, our ideals have no reality and 
 can have none; and it is even more than doubtful if they 
 have ideal value. Knowledge defines but inadequately the 
 relation between will and act, purpose and world-plan. 
 Hence obstacles to human happiness prove insuperable. 
 In brief, tragedy implies an insufficiency somewhere in 
 
 I human knowledge; but in comedy there is no question as 
 
 rf^to the adequacy of knowledge with respect to its object. 
 
 ' The function of knowledge in comedy is that of an 
 
 orderly world. Dramatic art as comedy discovers to us; 
 an external world in which the knowledge we have of it 
 is real. If the hero of comedy takes care that his knowl- 
 edge is strictly certified, he may for that very reason 
 maintain his superiority over external events. The cir- 
 cumvention of the stage villain is possible when his pre- 
 
 I tensions are exposed: not because the hero is good and 
 the villain bad. The orderly knowledge which enables the 
 hero to be such, is not always mere sense perception ; but 
 often a higher process of judgment which enables a man 
 to conceive and execute a successful course of conduct. 
 When our habits are conformable to such knowledge, that 
 is, to first hand knowledge of an orderly world, we may 
 avoid just those entanglements which arise from per- 
 ceptual contradiction familiar to us in the ordinary 
 comic devices. Our ideals in so far as they are specific 
 acts, to be realized in time and space, are easy and cer- 
 tain of accomplishment."" A person may pursue even a 
 mistaken course of conduct, at least one suggested by 
 insufficient knowledge, without fear of ultimate disaster. 
 
 67 
 
This concept is consistent without reference to the moral 
 quality of the act, or to the ethical constitution of the 
 person. 
 
 Satiric comedy directed against the idiosyncrasy of 
 the more or less eminent person finds its solution in the 
 increase of knowledge making the hero conformable to 
 the acknowledged rational order of the world. If comedy 
 reconciles by purging the mind of false knowledge, the 
 chief difficulty that might overtake the hero would be the 
 necessity of changing his body of knowledge. A change 
 of habit is not accomplished without pain ; but it is sig- 
 nificant that art can appreciate and use a view of the 
 world in which it is the obstacles to happiness that are 
 irrational, and not happiness itself. 
 
 The world of comedy is one in which the spiritual 
 world does not exist as an external reality, but only as 
 an abstraction. The spiritual is to be explained in terms 
 of the physical. Perceptual knowledge of such a world, 
 because it is not duplicit, and because knowledge is a 
 copy, is sufficient to carry a man through all ordinary 
 entanglements of life. The validity of knowledge makes 
 a man superior to all complexities ; for in the last analy- 
 sis they are seen to arise from the lack of knowledge, or 
 from confusions in the abstract world of the spirit. Con- 
 fusion which is after all an unreal abstraction could not 
 maintain itself for a moment when confronted by the 
 facts. The facts in tragedy, however, are the very things 
 that aggravate the mystery. But true ratiocination from 
 causes to eff'ects and effects to causes is the basis of all 
 comic solution in a profoundly real world." 
 
 The higher concrete processes of knowledge find a 
 certain revelation in those situations in which the ques- 
 tion of good and evil has given way to one of spiritual 
 integration and disintegration, where the ultimately real 
 is the ultimately moral. Here also comedy recognizes a 
 rational element in the universe, though the hero may be 
 sufficiently onesided to be brought into conflict with the 
 fundamental unity of reality, even though this be merely 
 
 68 
 
the consistency of time and space. In more serious cases, 
 if comedy is to be anything more than warped and inar- 
 tistic didacticism, the solution must preserve in the minds 
 of the persons a right view of the world in so far as 
 science is able to describe it. This is not a supernatural 
 feat, but a solution based on the belief in the actuality 
 of reason in the individual, as well as in the world at 
 large. The interference of the supernatural in the affairs 
 of men, as a deus ex machina, is not to be tolerated either 
 from the point of view of art or that of philosophy. To 
 use anything professedly supra-human in the solution of 
 human entanglements is the bankruptcy of art for an 
 empirical world. The artist admits by so doing that his 
 vision is unclarified in the comprehension of the ordinary 
 affairs of existence, and that his art is deficient by rea- 
 son of his inability to reorganize his material to exhibit 
 the world as after all trustworthy in its external aspects. 
 In fact the deus is a metaphysical monster; since, if it 
 must be used, it can be so only in a situation not amen- 
 able to human reason. That, for an intellectualist, is a 
 deficient view of the world. Because the world is too ir- 
 rational to submit to human power and knowledge the 
 spectator is thrown back on irrational sources of appre- 
 hension. But true knowledge in a world of sense invali- 
 dates the distinction between reality and phenomena and 
 makes knowledge itself the necessary and suflficient instru- 
 ment of truth. 
 
 These references to the serious drama could be illus- 
 trated by Goethe's Iphigeneia in Taurus." The integrat- 
 ing element of the world is the fundamental metaphysical 
 reality. Orestes thought the whole race of Tantalus to be 
 branded with a curse; yet there is within humanity itself 
 a regenerating impulse. "Out of thy passions, man, 
 hast thou made thy gods." When ends and purposes are 
 erected out of purified passions, then man may hope for 
 salvation. The recognition on the part of the author that 
 such things be, as a completely integrated personality, is 
 precisely that which makes his art a testimony to the 
 
 69 
 
ultimate rationality of the universe. Orestes' task is to 
 gain a clear understanding of the fundamental moral law ; 
 and then the drama is a question of the validity of con- 
 duct flowing from a true knowledge of the universe, 
 rather than a question of the moral depravity or exalta- 
 tion of the person. The crass, superstitious point of view 
 had to give way to a refined view of the world: a thing 
 impossible by an abstract moral regeneration, and pos- 
 sible only when the truth of the world fills the mind. 
 That such knowledge was finally gained is evidence for 
 the validity of the world as revealed by the ordinary 
 powers of the mind. But, to be sure, this is not the 
 result of simple observation; for it implies also man's 
 ability to conceive ends in accordance with the laws of 
 the world on which depends the possibility of righteous- 
 ness attending human endeavor. 
 
 Because it is obvious that in the variety of mean- 
 ings attached to the terms comedy and tragedy there will 
 be some contradictory views that cannot be simultaneously 
 held with consistency, it may be possible to sum up the 
 rational and irrational elements in the two concepts. 
 
 Comedy is rational because it means essentially, that 
 on the basis of a lawful world, situations are amenable 
 to solution. The concept of the comic situation implies a 
 world in which the individual is directly in touch wth 
 reality to such an extent, and in such a kind, that his 
 knowledge is sufficient to analyze the conflict into cause 
 and effect. Those complexities of an arbitrary nature, 
 concerning which there is no foreknowing (e. g., the 
 actions of disintegrated mentalities), are easily disposed 
 of by social or scientific discipline. At any rate, they are 
 not imposed on us from without by an alien power. When 
 comedy lies in the field of conflicting wills, acting not 
 from strict necessity but sometimes from choice, the solu- 
 tion lies in finding that such purposes are not ultimately 
 contradictory." 
 
 But there are in the concept of comedy certain ab- 
 stractions for the irrational elements of tragedy." The 
 
 70 
 
comic situation is often, as a whole, irrational because 
 dependent on a misunderstanding that can only be re- 
 garded as a perverse and conscious act of lawlessness. 
 Such a thing is an anomaly in a rational world; and it 
 can result only from an unreal world of fancy or whim ; 
 or from the equally unnecessary condition of ignorance. 
 The limitation of facts to time and space relations; and 
 the oftentimes capricious nature of fancy and emotion, 
 serve as the entering wedge of irrationality into the world 
 of empirical reality."' Mental confusion so inexplicable 
 to common sense can arise from these causes ; or conceiv- 
 ably also from those pretensions to knowledge which we 
 call ignorance. The comic has also a vestige of the tragic 
 solution. The change of habit so often necessary for the 
 solution of comedy is not a little pathetic when pet con- 
 ceits, identified with the ultimate values of life, go by the 
 board. The discipline and suffering of the hero of trag- 
 edy has, as its correlate in comedy, the correction of false 
 knowledge for consistent maxims of conduct.'" If the 
 world is real as we see it, and our knowledge thereof 
 valid; then we can bend the world to our will and retain 
 control over circumstances. If man should succeed in 
 staving off death at will, that would be the most divine 
 comedy the mind of man could conceive. 
 
 The first element of the irrationality of tragedy has 
 already been suggested as the fact that reason, on the 
 basis of certain views of the universe and in certain 
 epochs of history, found itself unable to cope with the 
 complexities of the universe. Tragic difficulties could not 
 obviously be of the making of human wills. The par- 
 tiality of knowledge when it pretended to absolute valid- 
 ity plunged man into conflicts with the so-called moral or 
 universal forces of the universe. Because we fail to rec- 
 ognize this limitation to our knowledge, we are dismayed 
 if our pet conceits, put to the test, prove ineffective to 
 secure our good. If it is our fate that we can pay alle- 
 giance to half-truths only, yet man does not rise to en- 
 thusiasm for the renunciation of those half-truths de- 
 
 71 
 
manded by a dynamic life. The partial failure of meta- 
 physical and moral idealism to rationalize the notion of 
 tragedy lies in the negation of the individual in all decis- 
 ive situations. The very concept seems to imply that the 
 individual has no interests which are not outlawed by the 
 very fact that he has them. Art cannot rise above this 
 contradiction, however skilfully it may be glozed by phi- 
 losophy. But it is undeniable that from the point of 
 view of the great idealistic systems, tragedy is only a 
 revelation of the eternally true, which always wins no 
 matter what specious reasons come up against it. 
 
 The adherent of the false is destroyed as the false 
 and the evil should be. But this universality is an "other- 
 ness" to the individual. The total moral state of the uni- 
 verse is, doubtless, always much richer for tragedy so 
 conceived. Yet to adapt an expression used in another 
 connection:'" "This ethical majesty is not all gain; the 
 apotheosis of the sprit, by undeifying nature, impover- 
 ished man." The transcendent solution can be reconciled 
 to human ends; though, it must be conceded, only by re- 
 nouncing all that is opposed to the supreme law of the 
 world; and this, the ironical destruction of the lesser 
 power of man, too often implies the complete renunciation 
 of our very humanity.'" 
 
 VIII. 
 
 General Summary. 
 
 The conception of tragedy may be regarded as an 
 attempt to make man's position in the world intelligible; 
 especially as an attempt to make rational this position on 
 its more serious side and in its more somber aspects. 
 The tragic situation when regarded as purely an artistic 
 matter has three factors: the tragic guilt; the reversal of 
 fortune; and the inevitable conditions. No one of these 
 factors is satisfactory as an explanation when the respon- 
 sibility for the tragedy is put upon it. The universe does 
 
 72 
 
indeed contain unknowable factors; but if the universe is 
 to be regarded as a completely rational whole, man should 
 not suffer for his ignorance of those elements which are 
 in their nature unknowable. The guiding thread for the 
 discussion of these points was found in the possibility 
 that there might be some relation between the unknow- 
 able element of the world and the factors of the tragic 
 situation. 
 
 None of these factors was satisfactory, nor com- 
 pletely rational; for pertinent questions could be asked 
 for which no answer could be found: 
 
 1. If tragic guilt was not necessarily moral or true 
 guilt : 
 
 a. why, then, should the individual suffer for his 
 acts in fruition of a laudable aspiration? 
 
 b. Why should such acts entail as results pun- 
 ishment and suffering out of all proportion to the 
 quality of the act? 
 
 2. The reversal of fortune was hypostatized, by rea- 
 son of the exaggeration of the emotional effects of that 
 idea, and regarded as a divine malignity, or as an arbi- 
 trary supervision of the conditions of man's happiness 
 and misery. 
 
 a. If there be such a thing as this Fortune, then 
 the world is not subject to the laws of what we would 
 like to think of as Justice. 
 
 b. The idea of reparation for the "too much" of 
 anything by arbitrarily substituting the opposite ex- 
 treme may be good metaphysics but rather cold com- 
 fort. 
 
 3. Finitude as guilt and as inevitably leading to the 
 tragic negation of the individual: 
 
 a. seems to be merely a result of speculation on 
 the relation of the finite to the infinite; 
 
 b. and makes intolerable the position of the indi- 
 vidual in his relation to the universe. 
 
 73 
 
The conceptions and definitions of tragedy seem to 
 , follow general types: e. g., the tragedy of moral valor, of 
 ' poetic justice; the conflict of ethical institutions; conflict 
 in the nature of reality: between appearance and reality, 
 / between the finite and the universal. Testimony to any 
 or all of these conceptions may be found in tragic art. 
 But for the purpose of more minute exposition, in which 
 a relation was to be pointed out between the tragic con- 
 ception and the theory of knowledge characteristic of that 
 conception, typical moments in the history of thought 
 were chosen. The moments of thought chosen for illus- 
 tration were : 
 
 1. The fall of a prince; i. e., misfortune overtaking 
 a king who is king by divine right. 
 
 2. The fall of a great mind; i. e., the ruin of a great 
 mind by reason of devastating passion. 
 
 3. The tragic conception of finitude as guilt. 
 
 The first of these was suggested by certain dramas 
 of the English Renaissance. The Renaissance is regarded 
 A as a time when innate values are under criticism, as in 
 the case of Marlowe's Faustus, who rejects the traditional 
 >. bodies of knowledge. The idea that kingship is sacred is 
 subjected to the same criticism. The prince is himself 
 subject to the laws of equity, and to disregard them is to 
 bring ruin upon himself. But the popular consciousness 
 was more troubled by the sad end and reversal of fortune 
 in such cases, than by any consideration of a true cause 
 of the disaster. The whim of Fortune suggests an un- 
 knowable cause; and to overcome the whimsicalities of 
 Fortune requires the subjection of desire to reason. The 
 Complaint of Henry finds its answer in Greene's pamph- 
 lets, where he indicates that man may overcome the mis- 
 chance of fortune by fortifying himself with philosophi- 
 cal precepts, a lesson which he had learned from antiquity. 
 Or, as Descartes says in his Discourse on Method:'"' 
 
 "My third maxim was to endeavor always to con- 
 quer myself rather than fortune, and change my 
 
 74 
 
desires rather than the order of the world, and in 
 general accustom myself to the persuasion that, ex- 
 cept our own thoughts, there is absolutely nothing in 
 our power." 
 
 The history of this idea of overcoming the outer 
 world by a discipline of the self was traced from Aristotle 
 to the Seventeenth Century. Contemplation as an activ- 
 ity of virtue, though it required external means wherein 
 man might be subject to vicissitudes, was, yet, not mate- 
 rially affected by them. The Stoics and the Epicureans 
 found the defeat of Fortune in the resignation of the 
 will to the Reason of the world, and in the happiness 
 which wisdom affords. Boethius in his Consolation of 
 Philosophy tried to show that no natural good lay in the 
 power of Fortune either to give or to take away. The 
 Seventeenth Century continued in a technical way to 
 break dowm the superstition of chance or fortune by con- 
 ceiving the world as a rational system subject to the laws 
 of reason of which man's mathematical knowledge is a 
 type. This period did not succeed completely in its task 
 of rationalizing passion and emotion and sensuous knowl- 
 edge, and it was to these that misfortune was ascribed. 
 The typical tragedy of this period is that of the fall of a 
 great mind. Spinoza's idea of man's bondage and free- 
 dom was seen to be embodied in and ilustrated by Ra- 
 cine's Phedre. 
 
 In the section called "The Speculative Outcome" the 
 inevitable conditions leading to the catastrophe of a 
 tragedy were shown to be a metaphysical demand. This 
 demand, as interpreted by idealistic thinkers, was traced 
 to the same source as the tragic guilt. The result of this 
 speculation was to make the position of the individual 
 intolerable; for everything to which he could ascribe a 
 right to exist, to which he ought to pay allegiance, in- 
 volved him in insoluble conflicts. This result was re- 
 ferred for its basis to the philosophy of Hegel and Solger. 
 
 Finally, the possibility of reducing the conflicts of 
 
tragedy to the same basis as the conflicts of comedy was 
 discussed in the last section. It was there pointed out 
 that certain essential distinctions between the conceptions 
 of tragedy and comedj'^ must be reckoned with. This 
 point was referred for explanation to the divergent 
 theories of knowledge underlying the aesthetic values of 
 the two kinds of drama. 
 
 76 
 
NOTES. 
 
 1. The conceptions and definitions referred to are as follows: 
 A. Poetic justice, as defended by Reich against Schopenhauer in 
 Schopenhauer als Philos. d. Trag. 1888. B. The Aristotelian concep- 
 tion in the Poetics. On this whole matter see Lessing: Hamburg. 
 Dram. St. 79. The works of Bernays; Bywater; and Butcher: Aris- 
 totle's Philosophy of Fine Art, p. 317, for the interpretation of "amar- 
 tia"; and on this point see also P. van Braam in Class. Quart., Oct., 
 1912, p. 266. C. The Hegelian theory that tragedy is conflict due to 
 onesidedness of interest in moral institutions. Hegel : Vorl. u. d. Aes- 
 thetik III: 526 ff. Michelet: System d. Philos. Ill, 443. See also the 
 translation by Hastie under the title: Philosophy of Art, by Hegel and 
 Michelet, Edinburgh, 1886. D. The theory of conflict between wills. 
 Muensterberg : Eternal Values, p. 230 ff. Urban: Valuation. E. Trag- 
 edy as victory and freedom in suffering. Courtney: Tragedy. Ziegler: 
 Das Gefuhl, S. 140. F. The medieval conception of the fall of great 
 men through the indiscriminate strokes of Fortune. Boethius : Con- 
 solation of Philosophy, Bk. I, met. 5, pr. 5, 6; Bk. II, pr. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. 
 Chaucer: Monk's Prologxie. Puttenham: Arte of English Poesie 
 (Arber), pp. 41, 48. G. Schopenhauer's necessary resignation of the 
 will to live through recognition of the inner irrationality of the uni- 
 verse. World as Will and Idea III: 212 (Eng. trans.). Bahnsen : 
 Das Tragische als Weltgesetz. Ibid. Zur Philos. d. Geschichte. Sully: 
 Pessimism, p. 107. Eisler: Woerterbuch (1904) II: 510. Volkelt: 
 System, etc., II: 294. 
 
 2. The question of valuation cannot yet be determined. What 
 is meant is that a purpose more intimate and personal gives way to 
 one more remote and general. Whether such a movement constitutes 
 tragedy or comedy depends on other considerations. 
 
 3. For a full discussion of tragic guilt see Volkelt: System d. 
 Aesthetik, sub voce. 
 
 4. Motives supplying tragic guilt: A. Conduct motivated by 
 passion. Romeo and Juliet; Othello, and the "revenge" plays in 
 general, e. g., Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy. B. Too great regard for 
 moral principles. Sophocles: Antfgone; and the case of Hippolytus 
 in the dramas by Euripides, Seneca, and Racine. C. Disregard for 
 moral principles. Macbeth. Ford: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Webster: 
 The White Devil, "radiant with evil." In Marlowe's Faustus there 
 is a conscious disiegard for the need of personal righteousness. 
 Faustus sacrifices his integrity as conceived by Christianity for the 
 sake of worldly ends. D. Predisposition to commit lawless acts. 
 This was the infirmity of the House of Atreus and in fact of the 
 
 77 
 
whole race of Tantalus. E. Error or frailty of judgment. The case 
 of King Lear. F. Conspicuous aspiration. Shirley: The Cardinal. 
 Chapman: Bussy D'Ambois. Ibsen: An Enemy of the People. 
 
 5. Extension of the meaning of tragic guilt. A. Allegiance to 
 unworthy ends. The king in Marlowe's Edward II. B. Devotion to 
 one interest exclusively. Michelet, 1. c. so defines. Hebbel: Werke X: 
 13f. 35f. So also among others L. Ziegler, op. c. 45. Krause (see von 
 Hartmann; Aesthetik 1:439). Lotze: Outlines of Aesthetics 104. 
 Vischer: Schoene u. d. Kunst 180. Schelling: Philos. d. Kunst 695. 
 
 6. The reversal of fortune interpreted as divine jealousy. 
 Aeschylus in Agamemnon 750 ff. (Plumptrie) : 
 
 "There lives an old saw framed in ancient days, 
 In memories of men, that high estate 
 Full grown, brings forth its young nor childless dies; 
 
 But that from good success 
 Springs to the race a woe insatiable." 
 
 The translator adds a note: "The dominant creed of Greece at 
 this time was, that the gods were envious of man's prosperity, and 
 this alone, apart from moral evil, was enough to draw down their 
 wrath, and bring a curse upon the prosperous house. So e. g., Amasis 
 tells Polycrates (Herod, iii 40) that the unseen divinity that rules the 
 world is envious, that power and glory are inevitably the precursors 
 of destruction." This idea was popularized in Western Europe by 
 Boethius. Aeschylus himself rejects the notion. Cf. Campbell in his 
 edition of Eschylus, p. xvi. "The poet here diverges from the crude 
 notion of Nemesis and Divine Envy contending that sin and not 
 prosperity is the cause of ruin * * * Justice will triumph but 
 not necessarily now." Fortune is the state of a man with respect to 
 the world and its goods; but it may also be conceived as the cause of 
 a change in that status. Hence "change of fortune" has a double 
 reference. The result is the same whether the tragedy is due to the 
 jealousy of the gods. Nemesis, to moral transgression, or to an ar- 
 bitrary "Fortune." 
 
 7. On the inevitableness Herodotus remarks: "Xerxes works 
 out his own destruction, but he is brought to this by the irresistible 
 leadings of a divine power. 'It was to be so.' When the good counsel 
 of Artabanus had all but prevailed, the dream was sent by God to 
 bring it to nought. The Xerxes of Aeschylus falls under the censure 
 of Darius for his impious recklessness in listening to evil counsellors 
 who had hastened on the desti*uction, which had been prophesied 
 indeed, but which might otherwise have been delayed." (Campbell: 
 Aeschylus xv). 
 
 8. Ivessing: Hamburgische Dramaturgic, St. 1 and 79. 
 
 9. Bahnsen describes the illogical contradictions of the world as 
 a "real dialectic" process. "Nothing but the will rending itself in 
 
eternal self-partition to endless torment." Cf. his Das Tragische, SS. 
 45, 65, 69, etc. Volkelt, op. c. II: 294. Sully: Pessimism, p. 107. 
 Eisler: Woerterbuch, 1. c. 
 
 10. The attempt to view the universe conceptually in all of its 
 aspects allows us to speak of the unity of all philosophical inquiry in 
 somewhat the same sense that we speak of the unity of science. By 
 reason of its conceptual character, philosophy is supposed to be able to 
 view the universe in a way impossible to the specific sciences. This 
 does not deny to mathematics, for example, the conceptual character 
 of a pure science; nor does it deny that science may have a legitimate 
 task in constructing concepts of universal validity. But because phil- 
 osophy is concerned with the significance of facts rather than with 
 their accumulation and classification; because philosophy regards 
 facts as having conceptual significance, it may affirm of them for that 
 reason what is universally true, not merely what is staticly, or tempor- 
 ally true. Within philosophy itself, however, there is a principle of 
 differentiation ; so that philosophy, though having a unity in the sense 
 indicated, may be said to combine a number of departments or dis- 
 ciplines. All disciplines deal with very much the same presupposi- 
 tions; and the principles of one department may be translated into the 
 terms of another. Each may with some restatement or reinterpreta- 
 tion, utilize the concepts of another subsuming them under its own 
 higher and dominating category. 
 
 11. Beauty is known to us through sensuous experience. I have 
 no immediate experience of the "beauty" to be found in such a thing 
 as a mathematical demonstration; nor do I attempt to define what 
 such beauty would be. The perfection, harmony, and congruence of a 
 demonstration, or a type in biology, might turn out to be beauty, and 
 might not happen to be concrete. Still, I might concede so much with- 
 out receding from the statement above concerning the beauty of art. 
 i believe the beauty of ai*t and the so-called beauty of nature are two 
 different things. The question at issue in this discussion is, ulti- 
 mately, whether the beauty of art is not identical with the measure of 
 success or failure to secure a solution of speculative difficulties. In 
 this respect mathematics is no whit better off than any other depart- 
 ment of experience. Mathematics assures us of truth only when it 
 can control its presuppositions and processes. Its speculative suc- 
 cesses and failures challenge the same criticism which I urge against 
 reflective thought about art. 
 
 12. Philosophy even in its form may be an expression of artistic 
 ideals. Spinoza's Ethica may be taken as embodying the artistic ideals 
 of his time; and Schelling's philosophical system that of the Romantic 
 movement. Something of the -same sort may be seen in Spencer: he 
 indeed speaks of his love of system building. Autobiography II : 450. 
 
 79 
 
13. Expressions indicating a principle accounting for the occur- 
 rence of tragedy: 
 
 "Misgoverned kings are cause of all this wreck." 
 
 — Marlowe: Edward II (Everyman), p. 270. 
 "But what is he whom rule and empery 
 Have not in life or death made miserable?" 
 
 —Ibid., p. 274. 
 
 * * * "material instruction, elegant and sententious excita- 
 tion to virtue, and defection from her contrary, being the soul, limbs, 
 and limits of an authentical tragedy." — Chapman: Revenge of Bussy 
 D'Ambois, Dedication (Mennaid), p. 226. 
 
 "The immortal powers 
 Protect a prince, though sold to impious acts, 
 And seem to slumber, till his roaring crimes 
 Awake their justice; but then, looking down. 
 And with impartial eyes, on his contempt 
 Of all religion, and moral goodness, 
 They, in their secret judgments, do determine 
 To leave him to his wickedness, which sinks him 
 When he is most secure." 
 
 — Massinger: Roman Actor III, i. 
 * * * "and on the stage 
 Decipher to the life what honors wait 
 On good and glorious actions, and the shame 
 That treads upon the heels of vice," 
 
 Ibid. I, i. 
 
 "If to express a man sold to his lusts, 
 Wasting the treasure of his time and fortunes 
 In wanton dalliance, and to what sad end 
 A wretch that's so given over does arrive at;" 
 (If this be not the purpose of tragedy) : 
 
 "Why are not all your golden principles, 
 Writ down by grave philosophers to instruct us 
 To choose fair virtue for our guide, not pleasure, 
 Condemn'd into the fire?" 
 
 Ibid. I, iii. 
 
 14. Chance or fate: Oedipus Rex. Passion: Ajax. Cf. Rutilius 
 Lupus (ed. Ruhnken) II, 2. "The mother of inhumanity is avarice; 
 its father passion. And when these are conjoined they bring forth 
 hate, and from thence destruction also arises." Shelley has the idea 
 in Hellas 729 ff. 
 
 "Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind; 
 The foul cubs like their parents are; 
 Their den is in the guilty mind, 
 
 And conscience feeds them with despair." 
 
 80 
 
 
See also Bloomfield: Sept. con. Th. 210. Tollius: Longinus, sec. 
 43. Sophocles: Ajax (ed. Lobeck) 517. Aeschylus: Choephoroe, lines 
 306, 400, 613-651, 1014-1040. 
 
 "Curst be all malice! black are the fruits of spite, 
 And poison first their owners." 
 
 — Middleton: Trick to Catch the Old One, V, ii. 
 
 15. Fallible nature of intellect. Macbeth V, v. Bussy D'Ambois 
 V, i. King John, II, ii last speech; III, i, the conflict between dogma 
 and fact; IV, ii, where John says: 
 
 "Think you I bear the shears of destiny? 
 Have I commandment on the pulse of life?" 
 
 And Faulconbridge in IV, iii : 
 
 "I am amaz'd, methinks; and lose my way 
 Among the thorns and dangers of this world." 
 
 And cf. also act V passim. 
 
 16. The dubious character of sensuous knowledge: Heracleitus 
 frag. 4 (Bywater) R. P. 34. "Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to 
 men, if they have souls that understand not their language." For 
 Socrates, Plato, Pyrrho, even for Democritus, sensuous knowledge 
 was not wholly veracious. 
 
 17. The dubious character of conceptual knowledge was advo- 
 cated by the Sophists; and later by those who undertook to restrict 
 conceptual knowledge to its proper sphere: e. g., Duns Scotus, Bacon, 
 Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Kant. Conceptual knowledge has definite lim- 
 itations. 
 
 18. The withdrawal from pleasure and pain was accomplished 
 for the Stoics and Epicureans by the absence of emotion (apatheia) ; 
 for the Skeptics by suspension of judgment (epoke) resulting in im- 
 perturbability (ataraxia). 
 
 19. The experience of tragedy is reduced to the values of con- 
 ceptual thought in the theories of self-realization for which suffering 
 and defeat are of the highest value for personality. This is the view 
 of Cohn: Allg. Aesth. Courtney: Tragedy. Ziegler: Zur Meta. d. 
 Trag. 
 
 20. Poetic justice was passed under criticism by Lipps and 
 Volkelt. Cf. Tufts in Baldwin's Dictionary II : 709, col. 2, and Cohn : 
 Allg. Aesth. 197 n. 
 
 21. Urban: Valuation, p. 279 defines tragical or heroic elevation 
 as the limiting case of transgredient worth. 1. The point at which the 
 individual having taken an attitude with which he identifies himself 
 (hence a personal worth), sacrifices all "condition worths" for it — 
 even life itself which is the presupposition of all condition worths. 2. 
 
 81 
 
The point where "the individual sets himself in complete opposition to 
 external worth judgments of society and goes to destruction for the 
 worth which he identifies with himself * * * the absolute personal 
 woi'th has been realized even though the object for which the sacrifice 
 has been made is, from the impersonal point of view, not considered 
 worth the sacrifice." 
 
 22. Bosanquet: Value and Destiny of the Individual, has shown, 
 from the metaphysical point of view, that the position of the indi- 
 vidual is not so intolerable. 
 
 23. Ruskin: Modern Painters IX, ch. ii, sec. 14, 15. His refer- 
 ences are: A. The fate of Hippolytus; B. the misfortunes of the 
 house of Atreus; C. Antigone. 
 
 24. Cf. Hartmann : Aesthetik 1 : 435 discussing Schelling. Besides 
 the classification of tragedies of fate as 1. Objective; 2. subjective: 
 the destiny of character; destiny may be interpreted as 1. The failure 
 of an act to obtain moral sanction; 2. artistic retribution (Nemesis) ; 3. 
 moral retribution (Justice); 4. infatuation of the gods with their own 
 sense of justice (from the standpoint of the hero) . 
 
 25. The irony in these concepts is the element that defies ex- 
 planation. The unnatural combat in the story of Oedipus is per- 
 haps the best example of tragic irony. There is a prophecy which 
 has the force of destiny, that the son of Laius will prove his death. 
 The son, Oedipus, is exposed; but being preserved, is just the cir- 
 cumstance needed to fulfill the prophecy in a casual manner. 
 
 26. In Oedipus at Coloneus the king is finally reconciled to 
 the gods, i. e., the personal moral element in his misfortunes is 
 overlooked. 
 
 27. The supreme powers are beneficent in the Eumenides and 
 in the Philoctetes. 
 
 28. Cf . Campbell : Aeschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare p. 60 f. 
 
 29. Aeschylus found an answer intelligible to himself, cf. notes 
 6 and 14 above. 
 
 30. Cf. the characters of Ajax or Medea. 
 
 31. "Yet it is one of Euripides' rooted convictions that an abso- 
 lute devotion to some one principle * * * leads to havoc. The havoc 
 inay be on the whole the best thing: it is clear that Hippolytus "lived 
 well," that his action was kalon; but it did as a matter of fact produce 
 malediction and suicide and murder." Murray: Ancient Greek Lit. 
 p. 270. 
 
 -32. Ruskin: Mod. Paint. 1. c. 
 33. Browning: Luria, Act V. 
 
 "A people is but the attempt of many 
 To rise to the completer life of one; 
 And those who live as models for the mass 
 \ Are singly of more value than they all." 
 
 --^ 34. Thorndike: Tragedy, p. 40. 
 
 82 
 
35. "The propositions of Aristotle are fabrications." See Prantl: 
 Sitz. d. koenig. Bayr. Acad. d. Wissen. phil.-philol. Klasse, Nov. 2, 
 1878, II, 2, p. 157. Taurellus also opposed Aristotelianism, maintaining 
 that the world was temporal and atomic; and Tellesius likewise opposed 
 the current philosophy in the interest of an original investigation of 
 nature. 
 
 36. Marlowe: Faustus (Temple ed.) pp. 19,24. 
 
 37. Similar ideas of Gregory the Great. The eight pillars of 
 kingship: truth in things of the throne; patience in diplomacy; lar- 
 gesse; persuasiveness; correction of wrong; encouragement of right; 
 light taxations; justice between rich and poor. See Carlyle: Political 
 Theories, I: 225 n. 
 
 38. Dunning: Ancient and Mediaeval Political Theories, p. 187. 
 
 39. Abelard: Ethica XIII. Sin is not only a departure from the 
 moral good, but it is also a violence done by the sinner to his own 
 conscience. 
 
 40. Poet Lore, Winter Number 1910, Spring Number 1911, where 
 I have tried to state the problem as a question of the One and the Many 
 in the political sphere. 
 
 41. Sackville: Complaint of Henry, stanza 111: "Who reckless 
 rules, might soon may hap to rue." 
 
 42. Numerous expressions throughout literature, e. g., Marlowe: 
 Ed-ward II (Everyman's Lib.) p. 293. 
 
 "Base Fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel 
 There is a point, to which when men aspire, 
 They tumble headlong down." 
 
 43. Fortesque: De Laudibus Legum Angliae, ch. 9. "Which sort 
 of government (merely regal) the civil laws point out when they 
 declare: 'Quod Principi placuit, leges habet vigorem.' " 
 
 44. Edward II, p. 277. 
 
 "But what ai-e kings, when regiment is gone, 
 But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?" 
 Ibid. p. 274 see note 13 above and cf. the much later expression from 
 Sotherne: Loyal Brother (1682). 
 
 "What is't to be a prince? 
 To have a keener sense of our misfortunes." 
 
 45. Schelling: Elizabethan Drama (2 ed.) I: 268. 
 
 46. Daniel: Works (ed. Grosart) III: 106 Cf. also his drama 
 Philotas, 431 f. 
 
 "And this affliction our compassion draws 
 Which still looks on men's fortunes, not the cause." 
 But cf. Johnson: Sejanus V, x, 349 (referring to Juvenal, Sat. X). 
 
 47. Shakespeare: King John III: iv, 121. 
 
 48. Sackville: Complaint of Henry stanza 36 and passim. 
 
 49. Robert Greene: Works (Huth) III: 129. Fortune was "such 
 a cause (according to Epicurus), as agreed neither to persons, times, 
 
 83 
 
nor manners. * * * ^\\ future events subject to causal in- 
 constancy, because they hang in suspense, and may fall out contrary 
 to deliberation, may be comprehended under the word Fortune." Other 
 expressions showing how to overcome Fortune look backward for their 
 origin and forward to their fulfilment; viz.: "All Fortune's goods with- 
 out knowledge how to use them are prejudicial; and the goods of the 
 mind only, firm and perpetual." Ibid. Ill : 139. "Being assured, there- 
 fore, that there is such uncertainty in all human things, let us * * * 
 apply our wills to all events whose causes are altogether incompre- 
 hensible in respect of our understandings, and quite out of our power 
 * * *. That man which dare stand so with Fortune in defiance 
 trusteth not in exterior contents, but stayeth himself upon philo- 
 sophical precepts." Ibid. Ill: 138. "Canst thou condemn Fortune, 
 which hast warred against nature and Fortune? No, no; in suffering 
 reason to yield unto appetite, wisdom unto will, and wit unto affection, 
 thou hast procured thine own death and thy soldiers' destruction." 
 Ibid. Ill: 219. 
 
 50. Ironical, because fate operates under color of justice: but 
 its acts, from the human point of view, are inconsistent. Fate feigns 
 good- will, ultimate good to man; but as it can be judged only by its 
 results is necessarily thought of as actually malicious. 
 
 51. P. van Braam, Class Quart. Oct. 1912, p. 266. Cf. Butcher: 
 Aristotle's Phil, of Fine Art, p. 317. 
 
 52. "He (Aristotle) finds that the problem of tragedy does not 
 lie so much within the man himself as in his relation to the world: 
 not in the complications and contradictions of his own being, but in the 
 conflict with the world." Eucken: Problem of Human Life, p. 68. 
 
 53. Artistotle: Nic. Eth. 1100a. "Why is it not absurd to suppose 
 that, when a man is happy, the fact will not be true of him?" (It will 
 not be true of him) "Because we do not wish to call the living happy 
 in view of the vicissitudes to which they are liable; and because we 
 have found a conception of happiness as something which is permanent 
 and unchangeable; and because the same persons are liable to many 
 changes of fortune. It is evident that if we consider only the changes 
 of fortune, we shall often call the same person happy at one time and 
 miserable at another, representing the happy man as a chameleon. 
 To take cognizance of the changes of foi'tune cannot be right at all. 
 It is not on these that good and evil depend; they are inseparable ac- 
 cidents of human life as we have said. But it is man's activities in 
 accordance with virtue that constitute his happiness, and the opposite 
 activities that constitute his misery." 
 
 54. Idem. 1178a. "It is only in a secondary sense that the life 
 which accords with non-speculative virtue can he said to be happy; for 
 the virtues of such activity are human : they have no divine element in 
 them * * * But the happiness which consists in the exei'cise of the 
 reason and that of non-speculative virtue are entirely disparate." 
 
 84 
 
55. Idem. 1104a. "For the particular case in the performance of 
 virtuous activities does not fall under the rule by any art or law," for 
 in this respect (1106b.) "virtue, like nature herself, is more accurate 
 and better than any art." 
 
 56. Aristotle: Meta. E. recognizes the impossibility of denying 
 that the accidental exists and the impossibility of a science of the 
 accidental, i. e., of rationalizing it. 
 
 57. I use the word "external" quite innocently and do not deny 
 that man is also subject internally to fate. cf. Goodell in Yale Rev. 
 April, 1913. 
 
 58. The recognition of necessity need not be construed as despair 
 or skepticism. Recognition of the lawfulness of the world is what 
 makes it rational; and this is what gives us the right to hope that 
 the world may be reconciled to man's will. 
 
 59. Murray: Hibbert Journal IX: 19. 
 
 60. Pliny: Natural History II, 5, (ed. Miller 1766) saw this 
 point quite clearly: "Throughout the whole world at every place 
 and time, the name of Fortune alone is spoken and her name invoked. 
 She is the one defendant, the one culprit, the one thought in men's 
 minds, the one object of praise, the one cause. * * * We are so 
 much at the mercy of Fortune that Fortune is our God." 
 
 61. Seneca: Epistles, 65, 2. Eucken, op. c. p. 68. Numerous 
 variations on the same theme are given by Ueberweg: History of 
 Philosophy I, sec. 55. 
 
 62. Lucretius II: 216. Cicero: De, Fin. I, 6. De Nat. Deor. I, 26. 
 
 63. Diogenes Laertius X, 76. 
 
 64. "Fortune but slightly crosses the wise man's path; his 
 greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the 
 course of life." Hicks: Stoic and Epicurean, p. 187, maxim XVI. 
 (trans, from Eusener: Epicurea). 
 
 65. Hicks, p. 186, frag. XI, XII. "If we had never been mo- 
 lested by alarms at celestial and atmospheric phenomena, nor by the 
 misgiving that death somehow affects us, nor by neglect of the proper 
 limits of pain and desires, we should have no need to study natural 
 science." "It would be impossible to banish fears on matters of the 
 highest importance if a man did not know the nature of the whole uni- 
 verse but lived in dread of what legends tell us." 
 
 66. Diog. Laei't. X, passim. Lucretius III: 59-93. Cicero: De 
 Fin. I, 13, 14. Tusc. Disp. I, xl, xlii, xlv. 
 
 67. Hegesias, the Cyrenaic, despaired of rising above change by 
 thought alone: "But mere reflection on our general condition is not 
 sufficient to elevate us above the changes of Fortune, since our gen- 
 eral condition is not under our control." 
 
 68. Diog. Laert. IX. Sextus Empiricus: Ad Math. XI. 
 
 69. Boethius Consolation of Philosophy. Book III is an exami- 
 nation of this problem. 
 
 85 
 
70. Augustine: De Lib. Arbit. II, 19. De Civ. Dei. XI, XII, 
 passim. 
 
 71. Anselm: Proslogium, I. 
 
 72. Augustine, 1. c. 
 
 73. Boethius, Bk. II, pr. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8; Bk III, pr. 5. Cf. 
 Sotherne: Works (1721) I: 38. 
 
 "Greatness (the earnest of malicious fate 
 For future woe) was never meant a good." 
 
 74. Chaucer: Monk's Prologue. This idea dominates a class 
 of literature, e. g., Boccaccio: De casibus virorum illustrium; Lydgate's 
 translation as the Falls of Princes; and its so-called continuation in 
 the Mirrour for Magistrates. 
 
 75. Puttenham: Arte of English Poesie, 1589, Pt. I, ch. xi. Sid- 
 ney: Apology for Poetry (Arber) p. 45. Moulton: Shakespeare as a 
 Dramatic Artist, p. 187. 
 
 76. Eucken: Problem of Human Life (Eng. trans.), p. 136. 
 Schopenhauer: World as Will (Eng. trans.) Ill: 218. 
 
 77. Popular superstition, e. g., witchcraft, I have not dealt with 
 as belongfing specifically to this age. The age believed in witchcraft 
 to the extent that it was irrational and should be stamped out. But 
 every age has such extraordinary popular delusions. Here it is the ir- 
 rationality of emotion that concerns me. 
 
 78. Eucken, op. c. 346. Cf. Dryden: Song for St. Cecilia's Day 
 
 "From Harmony, from heavenly harmony 
 This universal frame began 
 When nature underneath a heap 
 Of jarring atoms lay." 
 
 79. As in the dramas of Ford. 
 
 80. Descartes: Letter to Princess Elizabeth. Oeuvres, IX: 210. 
 
 81. Geulincx, quoted by Land in Mind, XVI : 235. 
 
 82. Spinoza: Ethica, Bk. Ill, prop. xxiv. Bk. IV, preface. 
 
 83. Descartes: Letter to Catherine of Sweden, Oeuvres X: 59. 
 
 84. It is perhaps a commonplace of criticism that in this period 
 reason and morality are coming to be the standard of literai-y judg- 
 ment. (Ristine: English Tragi-Comedy, p. 188). But reason in this 
 case is so often equivalent to poetic justice that a counterblast will 
 be tolerated. Addison: Spectator 40: "But I am sure it (poetic jus- 
 tice) has no foundation in Nature, in Reason, or in the Practice of the 
 Ancients." Cf. Spectator 548. Goldsmith: Art of Poetry, 1761, II: 
 170: "It is a dispute indeed among critics whether virtue should 
 always be rewarded and vice punished in the catastrophe of a tragedy; 
 but the reasons on the negative side seem the strongest." 
 
 85. But cf. Lessing: "If the poet chooses a martyr, let him give 
 to his actions the purest motives and unalterable necessity of taking 
 
 86 
 
the step that places him in danger." Lessing would agree that the 
 sight of the innocent suffering would displace the softer emotions 
 by a sense of outraged justice. Ham. Dram. (Bohn) p. 435. Cf. 
 Butcher, op. c. 309. 
 
 86. Wetz: Shakespeare v. Standpunkt d. vergl. Litt. Pt. I, 
 1890 (Reviewed in Mind, XVI: 296). Wetz points out that Shake- 
 speare's characters act from emotion and affection but never from 
 pure reason. Comeille and Racine cause their characters to act 
 from reasoned principles but in many cases they strive against 
 passions which they cannot resist. In this respect, Shakespeare is 
 nearer to the position of Hume and the later position of Comte and 
 Schopenhauer; while Comeille is nearer to that of Descartes: his 
 characters are Spinozistic casuists. 
 
 87. Calderon: Life a Dream. 
 
 "For the greatest crime of man 
 Is that he was bom." 
 
 88. von Hartmann, op. c. I: 435. 
 
 89. Schopenhauer, op. c. Ill: 212. 
 
 90. Chapman in Hibbert Journal VIII: 865. 
 
 91. Courtney: Tragedy, p. 75. 
 
 92. Campbell: Aeschylus, Sophocles etc. d. 51 f- 
 
 93. Cf. Bradley: Appearance and Reality, ch. xxvi. 
 
 94. Campbell, 1. c. 
 
 95. Cohn: AUg. Aesth. 179 n. Lipps: Streit u. d. Tragoedie and 
 Volkelt: System, for the idea of Guilt. 
 
 96. Lessing, op. c. St. 79. Schiller: Briefe II: 226. Krause dis- 
 cussed in von Hartmann I: 439. Ziegler: Das Gefiihl 2 ed. 138, 140. 
 Cohn, op. c. 199. 
 
 97. Muensterberg: Eternal Values, p. 234 f. Cohn 1. c. reminis- 
 cent of heroic tragedy: "The tragic is the sublimity of suffering and 
 sacrifice, or the suffering of a worthy person, whereby his greatness 
 in sorrow is proved." 
 
 98. Gordon: Aesthetics 278 f. Puffer: Psych, of Beauty. Muen- 
 sterberg 1. c. 
 
 99. Urban. 1. c. 
 
 100. Schelling: Werke, I, x: 118. 
 
 101. Hamann in Zeit. f. Phil. u. philos. Kritik, Bd. 117, S. 231. 
 
 102. Vaughan: Types of Tragic Drama, p. 15. 
 
 103. "Overstepping the due bounds of finiteness" may mean 
 that the spirit in its ideals is capricious and that we fail just be- 
 cause ideals can be nothing more than ideals. 
 
 104. Cohn: Allg. Aesth. S. 198. 
 
 105. Schelling: Philos. d. Kunst S. 695. 
 
 106. Vischer 1. c. 
 
 107. Eucken op. c. pp. 146, 182. 
 
 87 
 
108. Solger: Vorlesungen ueber Aesthetik, S. 309 f. "The ar- 
 bitrariness and contingency of the individual fall into conflict with 
 the laws of universal necessity, by which the particular is lost; but 
 only in so far as everything completely finite and temporal is; while 
 the eternal and essential, ever the same with itself throughout per- 
 petual contradiction, is energized and glorified." 
 
 109. Michelet, op. c. Ill: 443. 
 
 110. Lotze: Outlines of Aesthetics, p. 104. 
 
 111. Bradley in Hibbert Journal II: 667. 
 
 112. Hegel: Vorl. ueber die Aesthetik, III: 529, 480. 
 
 113. Bahnsen's general theoiy in Widerstreit im Wesen and in 
 Das Tragische als Weltgesetz. 
 
 114. Solger in general follows Schelling on this point; Zeising 
 and Krause express similar views. 
 
 115. Hegel: op. c. Ill: 526, 530f. 
 
 116. Ibid. Ill: 550f. Phenomenology of Spirit (Eng. trans.) II: 
 746 ff. 
 
 117. Solger, op. c. SS. 94f, 309f. Michelet: Gesch. der letzten 
 Systeme, II: 560-598. Bosanquet: History of Aesthetic p. 395. 
 
 118. Solger's dialectic is so devious that I have tried to state 
 his position in my own way. 
 
 119. Bahnsen: Zur Philos. d. Geschichte is directed against the 
 rehabilitation of the Hegelian factor of Reason in the universe. See 
 the notes on Bahnsen above. 
 
 120. Kallen in Journal of Phil. Psych, and Sci. Meth. vol. XI, no. 
 11. Comedy "deals not with individuals but with types: it is external 
 and observational, not intei'nal and imaginative. Only averages are 
 its care and the inductive sciences its kin, in that in method and ob- 
 ject its 'observation is always external and the result always gen- 
 eral.' " The significance of this remark I take to be that comedy is 
 possible only in a world in which the inductive method of science gives 
 true results. 
 
 121. Muensterberg op. c. 236. In comedy the "will at first poses 
 as great, but as soon as it has to confine itself under the pressure of 
 the counter will, is just as well satisfied with the smallest bit of ful- 
 filment." 
 
 122. Meredith insists on a polished and complex society for the 
 inilieu of comedy; the function of which is the maintenance of custom 
 and the suppression of vice and follies. This reminds us of Ben Jon- 
 son : the comedy of satire is evidently the only kind here referred to. 
 So for Hegel the world of comedy is a democracy. 
 
 123. Adams: Aesthetic Experience, p. 104. 
 
 124. Puffer, o. c. Gordon, o. c. 
 
 125. Muensterberg, 1. c. 
 
 126. Schopenhauer, o. c. Ill : 218 ff. 
 
 127. Michelet: System etc. Ill: 443. 
 
 8S 
 
128. Krause: Vorl. u. Aesth. sec. 72. 
 
 129. Solger, o. c. 317 ff. 
 
 130. It is with the consistency of the concept that I am here 
 concerned and not with the fact that causes sometimes run counter 
 to the best laid plans. Even in comic di-ama there is much gambling on 
 the unknowable, i. e., chance. To be forearmed with knowledge reduces 
 chance to the mere memory that we experienced some subjective un- 
 certainty. 
 
 131. I need only to refer to those stock situations in which a 
 significant name, a ring, etc., shows that perceptual knowledge of a 
 world which is not duplicit, of which knowledge is a copy, is sufficient 
 to solve many mysterious complexities, at least those which might arise 
 from ignorance of the testimony of the senses. 
 
 132. Cf. Dowden's introduction to this play in the Temple series. 
 
 133. In the English comedy of the Orange period, for example, 
 there is usually a simple resolution of the difficulty which was due 
 to the casualty of human wills working without restraint. The con- 
 flict shows clearly to the spectator that knowledge is adequate to 
 solve the difficulties, except that such knowledge is not always forth- 
 coming at the right time to prevent some misunderstanding, and 
 not always without some reorganization of the plan of action. This 
 is not always possible for the actor within the limits of the time and 
 space relations which he must overcome. Where ordinary understand- 
 ing is able to effect this reorganization, it is evident that the employ- 
 ment of adventitious aids in solving the difficulty is only symbolic. 
 The limitation of time and space and artistic effect sometimes make 
 this use of adventitious aid desirable or necessary. This is the rea- 
 son why the comic hero so often holds all the lines of action in his 
 grasp and can appear on the stage at just the right time. 
 
 134. E. g., the fatality of character when it is exposed on a 
 small scale. Chapman in Hibbert Journal VIII: 865. 
 
 135. A comedy of an utterly capricious world is to me a con- 
 tradiction in terms: such a thing cannot even be conceived. It is 
 true that a comedy in which chance largely figures represents a 
 world seemingly capricious. But this kind of caprice to give us comedy 
 by definition must really be not caprice at all: but merely the shock 
 of orderly knowledge in process of discovery. One might say that the 
 comedies of Ben Jonson are built up of this orderly, through seem- 
 ingly capricious, experience. Yet it is evident that the Jonsonian 
 type of comedy reveals nothing in its solution that blasts our rational 
 faculties or makes it impossible for us to maintain our equilibrium 
 in the world. It is in the utterly capricious world of the hypothesis 
 that an identity would exist between tragedy and comedy. It is signi- 
 ficant therefore that aesthetic speculation, no matter what its theoreti- 
 cal presuppositions, makes a radical differentiation in its dramatic 
 concepts. 
 
 89 
 
136. Remembering Schleiermacher's contention concerning Soc- 
 rates that the consti-uction of complete systems of thought is made 
 possible by the idea of knowledge. 
 
 137. Fairbairn: Place of Christ in Modern Theologj', p. 196 con- 
 cerning Lessing. 
 
 138. Cf. the citations from Michelet, Schopenhauer, and Calderon. 
 
 139. Descartes: Discourse on Method (Open Court ed.) p. 27. 
 
 90 
 
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