2 P. H. Frye 
represent, not necessarily their manner of creating it or our man- 
ner of enjoying it, but merely our manner of disposing of it. No 
one pretends, I suppose, that the physical or mechanical principles 
which help us to make sense of the rainbow, offer any adequate 
equivalent for our joy in it, or even that it was ever made in de- 
liberate demonstration of such principles. And while I should 
hardly care to institute a comparison between scientific and critical 
generalization, there is sufficient analogy between the two cases to - 
illustrate the fact that as the sole condition of dealing intelligently 
with a number of details, we are obliged to gather them into our 
minds in a broad and systematic way. And while again I would 
not be so rash as to say that any dramatist ever harboured any 
such views:as I am about to utter concerning Greek drama; yet I 
do believe that some such conception—if not mine, then that of 
another more happy—is involved in that drama and is a fair ex- 
pression of the manner in which it arranges itself, when it does 
arrange itself, in our heads. For after all it is necessary to re- 
member that the creation of a play and its comprehension are 
two very different things. 
On the other hand I am as far from pretending to say anything 
novel as I am from expressing the visions and raptures of genius. 
Not only has Aristotle occupied this ground before me; but he 
has in some sense told the whole story once for all. Not that 
every just remark which has since been made on the subject, de- 
rives directly from Aristotle. But while it would be ridiculous to 
father all subsequent ideas upon him, yet it is true that whatever 
is justly said in this matter does array itself naturally under his 
authority, almost as an explanation or extension of his teaching. 
If I can only classify the facts, therefore, from a single point of 
view so that they will all hang together and take on that air of 
intellectual consistency which results from the possibility of con- 
sidering a number of particulars in one light and under one angle, 
I shall think my purpose satisfactorily accomplished. The aim of 
criticism must always consist, in the first instance, in making its 
subject intelligible by reducing it to a single set of relationships. 
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