The Theory of Greek Tragedy 35 
his crimes—so long have they lain concealed that they would 
seemed entitled to a measure of immunity, as by a kind of unwrit- 
ten statute of limitations, were it not for the fact that he himself 
is the one who finally unearths them. Had he been brought 
to account by another, it would have appeared little better than a 
divine inequity. I do not believe that any one can read the trag- 
edy intelligently without being sensible of presumption, of gross 
moral impropriety in the bias whereby Oedipus is impelled to 
seek for himself the solution of his own problematic existence. 
It is no correction of institutions that will mend his case— 
nothing but a reformation of the entire character. 
With all this I am puzzled to understand why the Oedipus has 
never received the same sort of philosophical rating as the 
Prometheus. Its significance is, if anything, more profound and 
is certainly much more general. It is the very type of life 
universal. While lending itself with equal readiness to “sym- 
bolic” interpretation, it has never been surpassed as a figure of 
human responsibility in particular. We are all of us without 
exception in Oedipus’ case—rounded like him with ignorance and 
mystery, and yet obliged to act incessantly and at our own hazard, 
so that our every step seems a presumption deserving of disaster 
and our every judgment an arrogance inviting rebuke and humili- 
ation. Of all Greek tragedy the Oedipus Tyrannus seems to me 
not only the most characteristic of the genius which produced it 
but also most applicable to our hapless human lot. 
At the same time I must confess to a particular affection for 
the Electra. Perhaps it is the situations that especially please 
me—Orestes at the gate of the palace overhearing his sister’s 
lamentation; Electra herself with the funeral urn in her hands; 
the recognition with its sudden revulsion of feeling. In the face 
of the impending abomination there is something singularly 
affecting in the attachment of these two ill-starred children of 
a murdered father—the dependence of the one, the assurance 
of the other. But however this may be, the important matter 
for the inherence of Sophoclean tragedy is the shift of the 
traditional center of interest from Orestes himself to his sister. 
However it may be with him, she at least is under no divine com- 
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