Racine 25 



character of its own. And if we are reluctant, on the contrary, 

 to condemn the well-meaning mischief-maker, it is so for much 

 the same reason. The attitude may be due wholly or in part to 

 our sentimentality. Our interest has come to be ethic rather 

 than moral ; it has come to centre in the characters, tempers, and 

 dispositions of men and in conventions for accommodating and 

 reconciling them, rather than in the great fundamental principles 

 of humanity — the dypaiTTa Ka(r(f>a\ri Oecov vo^iyua.^'^ With this 

 shift of attention to the ethic as distinguished from the moral 

 our final verdict is swayed by the intention, for which alone we 

 hold ourselves answerable, while we have ceased to acknowledge 

 a like responsibility for our actions. With Pilate we wash our 

 hands and protest the purity of our conscience. Our sympathies, 

 like Racine's, are with the well intentioned ; and we excuse the 

 deed readily enough on the strength of the motive. Of course, 

 this is nothing but casuistry pure and simple; it is nothing but a 

 modern variation of the Jesuitical "direction of the intention," 

 whereby a man might be absolved of the murder of his father 

 provided only he killed him not with the idea of committing 

 assassination but merely of securing his inheritance. But such 

 is our modern emotional reaction ; and it has already begun to 

 affect our administration of justice so called, which a sane in- 

 stinct of self-preservation has hitherto counselled us to leave 

 intact. And since literature and especially tragedy is appreciated 

 emotionally, it is in such manner that we apply ourselves now- 

 adays to the appreciation of this kind of subject. 



For the Greek, on the other hand, the act as such was neither 

 indifferent nor negligible — on the contrary it had a distinct moral 

 quality in itself. It was right or wrong, independently of inten- 

 tion, as it did good or harm — that is, as it respected or violated 

 the institution of the supreme human polity, the a<^pairTa voyniia f^ 

 and as such its initiator was responsible for it — he was wicked 

 as it was evil , innocent as it was just. His intention was his own 



2"a- Sophocles, Antigone, 454-455. 



28 For this conception of a moral constitution superior tO' the conventions 

 of social ethics, an idea we appear to have lost, see Xenophon's Memo- 

 rabilia, IV, iv. 



197 



