ONE:Slowly Leona Lalage took the speaker in from head to foot. Her face had grown deadly pale. But she could make nothing of Lawrence's face. All the same, it was quite evident that he meant every word that he said.
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neque sodales facilisis. Nullam tempus fermentum lorem nec interdum. Ut id
orci id sapien imperdiet vehicula. Etiam quis dignissim ante. Donec convallis tincidunt
ligula, ac luctus mi interdum a.
ONE:Characters, then, are not introduced that they may perform actions; but actions are represented for the sake of the characters who do them, or who suffer by them. It is not so much a ghostly apparition or a murder which interests us as the fact that the ghost appears to Hamlet, and that the murder303 is committed by Macbeth. And the same is true of the Greek drama, though not perhaps to the same extent. We may care for Oedipus chiefly on account of his adventures; but we care far more for what Prometheus or Clytemnestra, Antigone or Ajax, say about themselves than for what they suffer or what they do. Thus, and thus only, are we enabled to understand the tragic element in poetry, the production of pleasure by the spectacle of pain. It is not the satisfaction caused by seeing a skilful imitation of reality, for few have witnessed such awful events in real life as on the stage; nor is it pain, as such, which interests us, for the scenes of torture exhibited in some Spanish and Bolognese paintings do not gratify, they revolt and disgust an educated taste. The true tragic emotion is produced, not by the suffering itself, but by the reaction of the characters against it; for this gives, more than anything else, the idea of a force with which we can synergise, because it is purely mental; or by the helpless submission of the victims whom we wish to assist because they are lovable, and whom we love still more from our inability to assist them, through the transformation of arrested action into feeling, accompanied by the enjoyment proper to tender emotion. Hence the peculiar importance of the female parts in dramatic poetry. Aristotle tells us that it is bad art to represent women as nobler and braver than men, because they are not so in reality.185 Nevertheless, he should have noticed that on the tragic stage of Athens women first competed with men, then equalled, and finally far surpassed them in loftiness of character.186 But with his philosophy he could not see that, if heroines did not exist, it would be necessary to create them. For, if women are conceived as reacting against outward circumstances at all, their very helplessness will lead to the304 storing of a greater mental tension in the shape of excited thought and feeling debarred from any manifestation except in words; and it is exactly with this mental tension that the spectator can most easily synergise. The wrath of Orestes is not interesting, because it is entirely absorbed into the premeditation and execution of his vengeance. The passion of Electra is profoundly interesting, because it has no outlet but impotent denunciations of her oppressors, and abortive schemes for her deliverance from their yoke. Hence, also, Shakspeare produces some of his greatest effects by placing his male characters, to some extent, in the position of women, either through their natural weakness and indecision, as with Hamlet, and Brutus, and Macbeth, or through the paralysis of unproved suspicion, as with Othello; while the greatest of all his heroines, Lady Macbeth, is so because she has the intellect and will to frame resolutions of dauntless ambition, and eloquence to force them on her husband, without either the physical or the moral force to execute them herself. In all these cases it is the arrest of an electric current which produces the most intense heat, or the most brilliant illumination. Again, by their extreme sensitiveness, and by the natural desire felt to help them, women excite more pity, which, as we have said, means more love, than men; and this in the highest degree when their sufferings are undeserved. We see, then, how wide Aristotle went of the mark when he made it a rule that the sufferings of tragic characters should be partly brought on by their own fault, and that, speaking generally, they should not be distinguished for justice or virtue, nor yet for extreme wickedness.187 The immoderate moderation of the Stagirite was never more infelicitously exhibited. For, in order to produce truly tragic effects, excess of every kind not only may, but must, be employed. It is by the reaction of heroic fortitude, either against unmerited outrage, or against the whole pressure of social law, that our synergetic interest is wound up305 to the intensest pitch. It is when we see a beautiful soul requited with evil for good that our eyes are filled with the noblest tears. Yet so absolutely perverted have mens minds been by the Aristotelian dictum that Gervinus, the great Shakspearian critic, actually tries to prove that Duncan, to some extent, deserved his fate by imprudently trusting himself to the hospitality of Macbeth; that Desdemona was very imprudent in interceding for Cassio; and that it was treasonable for Cordelia to bring a French army into England! The Greek drama might have supplied Aristotle with several decisive contradictions of his canons. He should have seen that the Prometheus, the Antigone, and the Hippolytus are affecting in proportion to the pre-eminent virtue of their protagonists. The further fallacy of excluding very guilty characters is, of course, most decisively refuted by Shakspeare, whose Richard III., whose Iago, and whose Macbeth excite keen interest by their association of extraordinary villainy with extraordinary intellectual gifts.
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neque sodales facilisis. Nullam tempus fermentum lorem nec interdum. Ut id
orci id sapien imperdiet vehicula. Etiam quis dignissim ante. Donec convallis tincidunt
ligula, ac luctus mi interdum a.
ONE:"I have never had that on my conscience," he whispered. "And if we do----""That is like a breath of old times," he growled, as he finished the flask. "Let me light a cigarette and then we'll talk again. I am going to try you high, dear lady. I am going to test your story."
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ONE:The substantial forms of Aristotle, combining as they do the notion of a definition with that of a moving cause and a fulfilled purpose, are evidently derived from the Platonic Ideas; a reflection which at once leads us to consider the relation in which he stands to the spiritualism of Plato and to the mathematical idealism of the Neo-Pythagoreans. He agrees with them in thinking that general conceptions are the sole object of knowledgethe sole enduring reality in a world of change. He differs from them in maintaining that such conceptions have no existence apart from the particulars in which they reside. It has been questioned whether Aristotle ever really understood his masters teaching on the subject. Among recent critics, M. Barthlemy Saint-Hilaire asserts,336 with considerable vehemence, that he did not. It is certain that in some respects Aristotle is not just to the Platonic theory, that he exaggerates its absurdities, ignores its developments, and occasionally brings charges against it which might be retorted with at least equal effect against his own philosophy. But on the most important point of all, whether Plato did or did not ascribe a separate existence to his Ideas, we could hardly believe a disciple of twenty years standing229 to be mistaken, even if the master had not left on record a decisive testimony to the affirmative side in his Parmenides, and one scarcely less decisive in his Timaeus.230 And so far as the controversy reduces itself to this particular issue, Aristotle is entirely right. His most powerful arguments are not, indeed, original, having been anticipated by Plato himself; but as they were left unanswered he had a perfect right to repeat them, and his dialectical skill was great enough to make him independent of their support. The extreme minuteness of his criticism is wearisome to us, who can hardly conceive how another opinion could ever have been held. Yet such was the fascination exercised by Platos idealism, that not only was it upheld with considerable acrimony by his immediate followers,231 but under one form or another it has been revived over and over again, in the long period which has elapsed since its first promulgation, and on every one of these occasions the arguments of Aristotle have been raised up again to meet it, each time with triumphant success. Ockhams razor, Entia non sunt sine necessitate multiplicanda, is borrowed from the Metaphysics; Lockes principal objection to innate ideas closely resembles the sarcastic observation in337 the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics, that, according to Platos theory, we must have some very wonderful knowledge of which we are not conscious.232 And the weapons with which Trendelenburg and others have waged war on Hegel are avowedly drawn from the Aristotelian arsenal.233"You are pleased to say so," Balmayne said smoothly.
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ONE:
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