20 P. H. Frye 
This impression, composed of the two emotions, pity and hor- 
ror, by which Aristotle defines tragedy—just these two and no 
others—is to be accounted for in the same way and by the same 
order of considerations as before. Not that Greek tragedy might 
not produce other emotions too—as a matter of fact Aristotle 
himself has arranged for others; but such others are adscititious 
and incidental. Pity and horror alone are inherent in the idea of 
the species and essential to its formula. Since the action of the 
protagonist itself bears a double face or interpretation, in qualm 
and catharsis, the emotions of the audience are twofold also. In 
as far as it is well intended and directed to an end commendable 
enough in itself, it arouses pity for its devoted author upon 
whose head it recoils with such fatal effect; while in as far as it 
is mischievous in fact, as it violates the celestial canon and jeop- 
ardizes the established order, it must needs arouse an equal horror 
for the rash and impious agitator who has ventured to trouble 
the tranquillity of men and gods. For the blind and passive suf- 
ferer of a fate so dismaying as that required to produce the 
tragic qualm, pity is the only possible emotion; as is horror for 
the malefactor convicted of a felony sufficiently monstrous to 
justify the judgment which overtakes him and so to work the 
revulsion of feeling necessary to the catharsis. 
I do not wish to insist upon the moral import of tragedy un- 
duly: I know how reproachful such remarks must seem to my 
own generation. At the same time I can not leave this topic 
without a protest. While I do not think that tragedy ought to 
preach a sermon or read a lesson, it does seem to me that nothing 
can be more preposterous than the contention that Aristotle, in 
defining the genre by the emotions of pity and horror, meant to 
imply that its being is exclusively esthetic, in the modern accepta- 
tion of the term, and devoid entirely of moral purpose or concern. 
As though pity and horror were necessarily immoral or amoral 
emotions! As though it were not a kind of misnomer to speak 
of them as esthetic emotions at all! That there are emotions 
which are exclusively esthetic even in the straightened signifi- 
cance now given to the word, I have no doubt. But no one whose 
judgment has not been warped by the perversions of a latter day 
318 
