'Mohammed' of Voltaire this is actually expressed in the concluding words which the dying Pelmira addresses to Mohammed: "The world is for tyrants: live!" On the other hand, the demand for so-called poetical justice rests on entire misconception of the nature of tragedy, and indeed of the nature of the world itself. It boldly appears in all its dullness in the criticisms which Dr. Samuel Johnson made on particular plays of Shakespeare, for he very naïvely laments its entire absence. And its absence is certainly obvious; for in what has Ophelia, Desdemona, or Cordelia offended? But only the dull, optimistic, Protestant-rationalistic, or peculiarly Jewish view of life will make the demand for poetical justice, and find satisfaction in it. The true sense of tragedy is the deeper insight that it is not his own individual sins that the hero atones for, but original sin,i. e., the crime of existence itself:

"Pues el delito mayor

Del hombre es haber nacido,”`

("For the greatest crime

Of man is that he was born,")

as Calderon exactly expresses it.

I shall allow myself only one remark more closely concerning the treatment of tragedy. The representation of a great misfortune is alone essential to tragedy. But the many different ways. in which this is introduced by the poet may be brought under three specific conceptions. It may happen by means of a character of extraordinary wickedness, touching the utmost limits of possibility, who becomes the author of the misfortune: examples of this kind are Richard III., Iago in 'Othello,' Shylock in 'The Merchant of Venice,' Franz Moor [of Schiller's 'Robbers'], the Phædra of Euripides, Creon in the 'Antigone,' etc., etc. Secondly, it may happen through blind fate,-i. e., chance and error: a true pattern of this kind is the Edipus Rex of Sophocles, the Trachiniæ also; and in general most of the tragedies of the ancients belong to this class. Among modern tragedies, 'Romeo and Juliet,' Voltaire's Tancred,' and 'The Bride of Messina,' are examples. Lastly, the misfortune may be brought about by the mere position of the dramatis persona with regard to each other, through their relations, so that there is no need either for a tremendous error or an unheard-of accident, nor yet for a character whose wickedness reaches the limits of human possibility; but characters of

ordinary morality, under circumstances such as often occur, are so situated with regard to each other that their position compels them, knowingly and with their eyes open, to do each other the greatest injury, without any one of them being entirely in the wrong.

This last kind of tragedy seems to me far to surpass the other two; for it shows us the greatest misfortune, not as an exception, not as something occasioned by way of circumstances or monstrous characters, but as arising easily and of itself out of the actions and characters of men,-indeed almost as essential to them, and thus brings it terribly near to us. In the other two kinds, we may look on the prodigious fate and the horrible wickedness as terrible powers which certainly threaten us, but only from afar, which we may very well escape without taking refuge in renunciation. But in this last kind of tragedy, we see that those powers which destroy happiness and life are such that their path to us also is open at every moment; we see the greatest sufferings brought about by entanglements that our fate might also partake of, and through actions that perhaps we also are capable of performing, and so could not complain of injustice: then, shuddering, we feel ourselves already in the midst of hell. This last kind of tragedy is also the most difficult of achievement; for the greatest effect has to be produced in it with the least use of means and causes of movement, merely through the position and distribution of the characters: therefore even in many of the best tragedies this difficulty is evaded. Yet one tragedy may be referred to as a perfect model of this kind, a tragedy which in other respects is far surpassed by more than one work of the same great master; it is 'Clavigo.' 'Hamlet' belongs to a certain. extent to this class, as far as the relation of Hamlet to Laertes and Ophelia is concerned. 'Wallenstein' has also this excellence. 'Faust' belongs entirely to this class, if we regard the events connected with Gretchen and her brother as the principal action; also the 'Cid' of Corneille, only that it lacks the tragic conclusion, while on the contrary the analogous relation of Max to Thecla has it. .

Thus between desiring and attaining, all human life flows on throughout. The wish is, in its nature, pain; the attainment soon begets satiety, the end was only apparent; possession takes away the charm: the wish, the need, presents itself under a new form; when it does not, then follow desolateness, emptiness,

ennui,- against which the conflict is just as painful as against want. That wish and satisfaction should follow each other neither too quickly nor too slowly, reduces to the smallest amount the suffering which both occasion, and constitutes the happiest life. For that which we might otherwise call the most beautiful part of life, its purest joy (if it were only because it lifts us out of real existence and transforms us into disinterested spectators of it),—that is, pure knowledge, which is foreign to all willing, the pleasure of the beautiful, the pure delight in art,— this is granted only to a very few, because it demands rare talents; and to these few only as a passing dream. And then even. these few, on account of their higher intellectual powers, are made susceptible of far greater suffering than duller minds can ever feel, and are also placed in lonely isolation by a nature which is obviously different from that of others; thus here also accounts are squared. But to the great majority of men, purely intellectual pleasures are not accessible. They are almost wholly incapable of the joys which lie in pure knowledge. They are entirely given up to willing. If therefore anything is to win their sympathy, to be interesting to them, it must (as is implied in the meaning of the word) in some way excite their will, even if it is only through a distant and merely problematical relation to it; the will must not be left altogether out of the question, for their existence lies far more in willing than in knowing: action and reaction is their one element. We may find in trifles and every-day occurrences the naïve expressions of this quality. Thus, for example, at any place worth seeing they may visit, they write their names, in order thus to react, to affect the place since it does not affect them. Again, when they see a strange rare animal, they cannot easily confine themselves to merely observing it; they must rouse it, tease it, play with it, merely to experience action and reaction: but this need for excitement of the will manifests itself very specially in the discovery and support of card-playing, which is quite peculiarly the expression of the miserable side of humanity.

As far as the life of the individual is concerned, every biography is the history of suffering; for every life is, as a rule, a continual series of great and small misfortunes, which each one conceals as much as possible because he knows that others can seldom feel sympathy or compassion, but almost always satisfaction at the sight of the woes from which they are themselves

for the moment exempt. But perhaps at the end of life, if a man is sincere and in full possession of his faculties, he will never wish to have it to live over again; but rather than this, he will much prefer absolute annihilation. The essential content of the famous soliloquy in 'Hamlet' is briefly this: Our state is so wretched that absolute annihilation would be decidedly preferable. If suicide really offered us this, so that the alternative "to be or not to be," in the full sense of the word, was placed before us, then it would be unconditionally to be chosen as a consummation devoutly to be wished." But there is something in us which tells us that this is not the case: suicide is not the end; death is not absolute annihilation. In like manner, what was said by the Father of History has not since him been contradicted, that no man has ever lived who has not wished more than once that he had not to live the following day. According to this, the brevity of life, which is so constantly lamented, may be the best quality it possesses.

If, finally, we should bring clearly to a man's sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror: and if we were to conduct the confirmed optimist through the hospitals, infirmaries, and surgical operating-rooms, through the prisons, torture chambers, and slave kennels, over battle-fields and places of execution; if we were to open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it hides itself from the glance of cold curiosity, and finally allow him to glance into Ugolino's dungeon of starvation,- he too would understand at last the nature of this "best of possible worlds." For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell, but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it. And when, on the other hand, he came to the task of describing heaven and its delights, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him; for our world affords no materials at all for this. Therefore there remained nothing for him to do, but, instead of describing the joys of Paradise, to repeat to us the instruction given him there by his ancestor, by Beatrice, and by various saints.

is.

But from this it is sufficiently clear what manner of world it Certainly human life, like all bad ware, is covered over with. a false lustre. What suffers always conceals itself. On the other hand, whatever pomp or splendor any one can get, he openly makes a show of: and the more his inner contentment deserts

him, the more he desires to exist as fortunate in the opinion of others, to such an extent does folly go; and the opinion of others is a chief aim of the efforts of every one, although the utter nothingness of it is expressed in the fact that in almost all languages vanity, vanitas, originally signifies emptiness and nothingness. But under all this false show, the miseries of life. can so increase-and this happens every day-that the death which hitherto has been feared above all things is eagerly seized upon. Indeed, if fate will show its whole malice, even this refuge is denied to the sufferer; and in the hands of enraged enemies, he may remain exposed to terrible and slow tortures without remedy. In vain the sufferer then calls on his gods for help: he remains exposed to his fate without grace.

But this irremediableness is only the mirror of the invinci ble nature of his will, of which his person is the objectivity. As little as an external power can change or suppress this will, so little can a foreign power deliver it from the miseries which proceed from the life which is the phenomenal appearance of that will. In the principal matter, as in everything else, a man is always thrown back upon himself. In vain does he make to himself gods, in order to get from them by prayers and flattery what can only be accomplished by his own will-power. The Old Testament made the world and man the work of a god; but the New Testament saw that in order to teach that holiness, and salvation from the sorrows of this world, can only come from the world itself, it was necessary that this god should become man. It is and remains the will of man upon which everything.depends for him. Fanatics, martyrs, saints of every faith and name, have voluntarily and gladly endured every torture, because in them the will to live had suppressed itself; and then even the slow destruction of its phenomenon was welcome to them. But I do not wish to anticipate the later exposition. For the rest, I cannot here avoid the statement that to me, optimism, when it is not merely the thoughtless talk of such as harbor nothing but words under their low foreheads, appears not merely as an absurd, but also as a really wicked way of thinking; as a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of humanity. Let no one think that Christianity is favorable to optimism; for on the contrary, in the Gospels, "world" and "evil" are used as almost synonymous.

All suffering, since it is a mortification and a call to resignation, has potentially a sanctifying power. This is the explanation