t the heroine arouses our pity depends only on our
weakness in not being able to resist the sense of fear that the
same fate could befall ourselves. And yet it is possible that a
very sensitive spectator might fail to find satisfaction in this
kind of pity, while the man believing in the future might demand
some positive suggestion for the abolition of evil, or, in other
words, some kind of programme. But, first of all, there is no
absolute evil. That one family perishes is the fortune of another
family, which thereby gets a chance to rise. And the alternation of
ascent and descent constitutes one of life's main charms, as
fortune is solely determined by comparison. And to the man with a
programme, who wants to remedy the sad circumstance that the hawk
eats the dove, and the flea eats the hawk, I have this question to
put: why should it be remedied? Life is not so mathematically
idiotic that it lets only the big eat the small, but it happens
just as often that the bee kills the lion, or drives it to madness
at least.

That my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is their own fault.
When we grow strong as were the men of the first French revolution,
then we shall receive an unconditionally good and joyful impression
from seeing the national forests rid of rotting and superannuated
trees that have stood too long in the way of others with equal
right to a period of free growth--an impression good in the same
way as that received from the death of one incurably diseased.

Not long ago they reproached my tragedy "The Father" with being too
sad--just as if they wanted merry tragedies. Everybody is clamouring
arrogantly for "the joy of life," and all theatrical managers are
giving orders for farces, as if the joy of life consisted in being
silly and picturing all human beings as so many sufferers from St.
Vitus' dance or idiocy. I find the joy of life in its violent and
cruel struggles, and my pleasure lies in knowing something and
learning something. And for this reason I have selected an unusual
but instructive case--an exception, in a word--but a great
exception, proving the rule, which, of course, will provoke all
lovers of the commonplace. And what also will offend simple brains
is that my action cannot be traced back to a single motive, that
the view-point is not always the same. An event in real life--and
this discovery is quite recent--springs generally from a whole
series of more or less deep-lying motives, but o