The Theory of Greek Tragedy 5 
bitious policy or that of a woman so elevated and disinterested as 
Antigone to state’s reason and municipal convenience, is in itself 
a direct attack upon the observer’s faith in a supreme equity, in a 
just apportionment of human lots. Nor is it otherwise with Mith- 
ridate as compared with l’Avare. The spectacle of a ravenously 
avaricious character like Harpagon in the throes of a passion so 
extravagant as love, presents an extremely curious and amusing 
case of ethical casuistry—nothing more; while the exposure of 
Monime in her maiden decency to the jealous inquisition of her 
tigerish master is enough to confound belief in the equitable reg- 
ulation of mortal affairs. 
It is this sort of thing that I should like to call the tragic qualm 
—this feeling of insecurity and confusion, as it were a sort of 
moral dizziness and nausea, due to the vivid realization, in the 
dramatic fable, of a suspicion which is always lurking uncom- 
fortably near the threshhold of consciousness, that the world is 
somehow out of plumb. Herein lies the genuine “clash” of 
tragedy, as it has been called—not in a mere collision of persons 
or interests or even of ideas within the confines of the play itself, 
but rather in the contradiction life is perpetually opposing to our 
human values and standards. 
To be sure, our sensibility for this sort of thing is rather blunt 
at present. This is not a tragic age. Nor is it essentially a moral 
one. But for all that there are times when the tragic qualm, in- 
herent as it is in the nature of things rather than of art, obtrudes 
itself irresistibly. The wanton assassination of the most inoffen- 
sive of our presidents is a case in point—as is the senseless obliter- 
ation of an entire population by earthquake, volcanic upheaval, or 
other cataclysm. I grant that even these tremendous catastrophes 
are beginning to lose their terors for the popular imagination in the 
rapid extension of a civilization preponderantly material. But at 
the same time, though such matters are not of themselves proper 
for tragedy for a reason that I shall assign in a few minutes, yet 
they do still stir in thoughtful natures the kind of feeling peculiar 
to the tragic fact as such; they raise again the horrifying old dis- 
trust of nature and her dealings with her creature. Like every 
lapse of reason, like every intrusion or irruption of the irrational 
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