the whole of life in a typical example, and the tragic artist as one who can sum up the lessons of human vicissitude through the delineation of a particular crisis. And this, although hardly involved in the primary motive of tragedy, has certainly proved inseparable from the art in its most perfect realisations. The greatest tragic artists have been those "who saw life steadily and saw it whole," and the finest tragedies are those in which the interest is most comprehensive and universal.
We are thus led to expand the definition with which we began, and to say that the "aim of tragedy" is to express and call forth a collective sympathy with ideal sorrow, and thus, while relieving and enlarging the heart, and refining and elevating its emotions, to infix and deepen the truths of human experience. We are also led to observe that the emotion called forth by tragedy is not adequately described, as in the old formula, by the words "pity" and "fear." There is another class of feelings, more nearly allied to intellect, which are not less appealed to. These may be roughly indicated as "wonder and awe," and are awakened in those who are led to the brink of some great mystery.
4. The definition thus modified may be too narrow to include all that deserves the name of tragedy, but it is also widened so as to apply to pieces like the Eumenides, Philoctetes, Alcestis, and others that in the common phrase "end happily." For while no work can typify the whole of life that does not include the struggle with evil, the mind that enters fully into the depths of sorrow is alone competent to test the reality of joy.
5. The question has been debated, sometimes with acrimony, whether the tragic poet is necessarily a moral teacher. In answering this question in the affirmative, it is by no means meant that the author is to be judged by the maxims, wise or unwise, which in the mouths of his dramatis personæ serve to point the
