2 s 8 ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book in case. What is really interesting in human life and 

 in human nature is the universal and typical elements 

 in it, not the exceptional ; and we can show ourselves 

 the truth of this in a very convincing way by looking 

 into the mirror that is held up to nature by art. 

 indeed what is The most famous and interesting characters to be 

 'human" found in fiction or in the drama, though they may 

 partof nave been invested by their creators with exceptional 

 u, not the circumstances and endowed with exceptional gifts, 



exceptional, A 



have interested and appealed both to the world and 

 their creators through the qualities and experiences 

 which they share with human beings generally, not 

 through those which may incidentally make them 

 peculiar. Very few men, for example, are as 

 intellectual as Hamlet ; but Hamlet has interested 

 the world because, as has been well said of him, 

 he is not " a man," but " man." If a great dramatist 

 or novelist makes his heroes exceptional, he does so 

 only because he can, by this device, more easily give a 

 magnified representation of what is universal ; and 

 as we may see the universal elements which he magnifies excite 



by referring to ... . - 



art and poetry, universal interest, not because they are exhibited 

 on more than a common scale, but because they are 

 thus exhibited with a more than common clearness. 

 What are the most beautiful love-poems that have 

 made their writers immortal but an expression of 

 what is felt by millions, though it can be expressed 

 only by a few ? Why is there life still in the two 

 marriage songs of Catullus, if it were not for the 

 living strings in the normal human heart which the 

 magic of his hand still touches ? 



