Racine 35 



With the modern conceit of personality and its surpassing im- 

 portance, however, such a resolution of the contrarieties of for- 

 tune becomes impossible. What is decisive in such an estimate 

 of character is purity of motive, not precision oi conduct. 

 " Infirmity and misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt. They 

 approach, or recede from the shades of that dark alliance, in 

 proportion to the probable motives and prospect of the offender 

 and to the palliations, known or secret, of the offense." Such, in 

 the heart-felt words of De Quincey at the confessional, is ap- 

 proximately the modern and romantic doctrine of responsibility. 

 Consistently with such a view a formal contravention of pre- 

 scription can not be pleaded in extenuation of that loss of hap- 

 piness to which one is felt to be entitled by virtue of such merit 

 as consists with good intentions. That good intentions alone are 

 no guarantee of prosperity, however, is a depressing certainty of 

 daily observation. With the moral negligibility of conduct the 

 centre of tragedy has begun to shift, and the old explanation is 

 thrown out of focus. And yet the radical detestation of injustice 

 persists unaltered — only it is now impossible to palliate the mis- 

 carriage by convicting the sufferer of involuntary culpability ; 

 he is exonerated by the sense of his personal worthiness. To all 

 appearance, virtue has simply lost the partie ; and there is noth- 

 ing left for tragedy but to affix her signature to the humiliating 

 admission. 



And yet there does remain one way of escaping this recanta- 

 tion of our most earnest professions. While conceding, as now 

 seems unavoidable, that there is but " one event to the righteous 

 and^ the wicked," the dramatist may still claim a spiritual supe- 

 riority for the former, not only in an equality of fortune, but also 

 in an inequality of fortune which is all to the advantage of the 

 latter. In other words, he may still solicit and win approval for 

 a certain sort of character in the face of its material collapse. In 

 this manner it is possible to restore that confidence in the primacy 

 of the individual conscience by which the modern sets such store. 

 In spite of an ineptitude for affairs, an inadequacy to the situa-' 

 tion which the ancient would have construed as the infatuation 

 of guilt, Hamlet, Othello, and Lear are esteemed to have the 



207 



