THE IDEA OF TKAGEDY 693 



Skepticism is, of course, the first result. Much learned contro- 

 versy exists as to whether Euripides was really a skeptic ; but there is 

 no manner of doubt that his handling of the older myths and his 

 treatment of the divinities of Greece were conceived in a skeptical 

 vein. Listen to the nai've way in which Ion coming out of the tem- 

 ple in the early morning light, rebukes his patron god Apollo for the 

 treatment he had meted out to his mother. " I must needs rebuke 

 Phoebus," he says. " He betrays virgins and abandons them, and 

 allows his own children to perish. Not so, Phoebus: since you have 

 the power, try to be virtuous. The gods -punish a man who conducts 

 himself badly. Is it just that the authors of the laws imposed on 

 mortals should themselves transgress them ? " Listen in " Andro- 

 mache " to the words of the messenger who has told us of the death 

 of Neoptolemus. " The god who inspires oracles, who reveals to all 

 men the rules of justice, see how he has treated the son of Achilles. 

 Like a villain he has wreaked vengeance for an ancient quarrel. Where 

 then, is his wisdom ? " But, indeed, I need not quote examples which 

 are familiar to all those who have read the plays of Euripides. No 

 one was more daring than he in making the characters rebuke the 

 gods for their extraordinarily low ethical standard. One of the ap- 

 parent exceptions is furnished by the " Bacchantes," in which Euri- 

 pides seems to recommend the worship of Dionysus. But he was 

 writing for a Macedonian Court, and the meaning of the " Bacchan- 

 tes " is one of the most contested points among Euripidean com- 

 mentators. 



Skepticism is the half sister of pessimism, and the thinker who 

 has adopted the one glides almost insensibly into the other. Here 

 we reach a point which is of peculiar importance to us in reference 

 to the idea of tragedy, and I must be pardoned for dilating a little 

 on this subject. It is obvious that tragedy itself is born of pessimism, 

 and could scarcely be conceived as having any other origin. Unless a 

 poet is keenly alive to the sufferings of humanity, unless he feels to 

 the full the irony of mortals whose everyday dream is of happiness, 

 and whose everyday experience is of disappointment and unhappiness, 

 he would hardly adopt tragic themes for the exercise of his muse. 

 Everything, however, turns on the meaning that we attach to this 

 word pessimism, and the particular form in which it becomes the 

 inspirer of dramatic efforts. In a previous lecture, when speaking of 

 the pessimism that was in Shakespeare, I attempted to distinguish be- 

 tween the pessimism which despaired of human happiness and the 

 pessimism which despaired of human virtue. That is looking at the 

 matter from the point of view of the moralist. Now we must occupy 

 ourselves with the standpoint of the artist. 



There are some forms of the philosophic theory of pessimism which 

 appear to cut at the very root of the artistic impulse. If they ever 



