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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 855 



the " Iphigenia," and Browning the " Alcestis." 

 Eaeine, Goethe and Browning selected 

 Euripides and not Sophocles for their 

 special purposes, owing to the fact so well 

 stated by Perrin that Euripides comes nearer 

 to the modern heart than Sophocles or any- 

 other ancient poet. The best testimony upon 

 this point, however, is that of Racine himself, 

 who, writing in 1676 in the preface to his 

 " Iphigenia," expresses his indebtedness to 

 Euripides as follows : 



As regards the portrayal of the passions I have 

 endeavored to follow Euripides most exactly. I 

 confess that I owe to him a large number of the 

 passages which have been most praised in my 

 tragedy. I have seen with pleasure, from the 

 effect which my imitations of Homer and Eurip- 

 ides have produced upon our audiences, that good 

 sense and judgment are the same m all ages. The 

 taste of Paris conforms to that of Athens. My 

 audiences have been moved by the same things 

 which once moved to tears the most intelligent 

 people of Greece and which made them say that 

 among the poets Euripides was the most tragic 

 of all; that is to say he knew how to excite to a 

 marvellous degree the feelings of pity and fear, 

 which are the true ends of tragedy. 



It is probable that Euripides through his 

 " Iphigenia " alone has exerted a greater influ- 

 ence upon modern thought and feeling than 

 Sophocles with all his plays combined. Eras- 

 mus LQ 1524 translated the " Iphigenia " from 

 Greek into Latin; Dolce gave an Italian 

 rendering iu 1560; Sibilet (1549), Eotrou 

 (1640), Eaeine (1674), Leelerc and Coras 

 (1675) gave different French imitations; 

 many English versions were given in the 

 eighteenth century ; Goethe's " Iphigenia " 

 was completed in 1787 ; Gluck's opera upon the 

 " Iphigenia " was produced in 1774 and since 

 his time over twenty other composers have set 

 music to the same theme. The recent revival 

 of interest in the " Iphigenia " through the 

 choral dances of Miss Duncan is well shown 

 by the increased demand for this and other 

 plays of Euripides at book stores and libraries. 



Many other examples might be given to il- 

 lustrate the much greater historical impor- 

 tance of Euripides as compared with Sopho- 

 cles, but enough has been produced to show 



that as regards the special purposes for which 

 mankind at large read, consult, quote, para- 

 phrase or otherwise make use of a poet Eurip- 

 ides has always been preferred to Sophocles. 

 And the approximate ratio of this preference, 

 according to the five objective methods em- 

 ployed in my previous paper, is over 2 : 1. 



The failure of the adjective method to give 

 a verdict agreeing with that so unmistakably 

 expressed by history and by mankind at large 

 is very evident. The adjective method — ^by 

 which is meant the ratio of the number of ad- 

 jectives of praise against those of dispraise — 

 neglects to give the specific value of the terms, 

 human, sublime, artistic, etc., the summation 

 of which is supposed to constitute fame. The 

 ratio of mere numbers gives each qualifying 

 adjective the same value, when perhaps the 

 number of adjectives expressing humanity and 

 feeling should be raised to the tenth power 

 and those expressing majesty and art only to 

 the second power. 



The mathematical formula for expressing 

 fame {F) in the terms of its components 

 a, h, c, etc., is not F = a-]-h -{- C ••■, but 

 F ^x-a-\- y-h -\-z-c ■■•, in which x, y, z, etc., 

 are unknown and indeterminate functions. 

 That historiometry can never become an exact 

 science is evident from the fact that the values 

 which men give these unknown historiometric 

 functions are different in different ages, races 

 and individuals. The twentieth-century mind 

 would lay more stress upon the scientific, the 

 medieval mind upon the mystical; the Roman 

 would lay more stress upon the legal, the 

 Greek upon the beautiful; the clergyman 

 would lay more stress upon the ideal, the 

 business man upon the practical. Until his- 

 toriometry can develop a set of functions 

 whose values shall be constant for all men in 

 all ages it must remain among the most in- 

 exact of sciences. 



Another objection to the adjective method 

 is that fame is not a mere summation of 

 eulogistic attributes. Napoleon, for example, 

 heads Professor Cattell's well-known list^ of 

 1,000 eminent men, in connection with which 

 list its author makes the following statement: 



-Fop. Science Monthly, February, 1903, p. 362. 



