ty, destiny, the justice of things. We find ideas
which will soon turn into feelings; those that treat of the law of the
species, evolution, selection, the will-power of the race, &c. And,
finally, we discover ideas which still are purely ideas, too uncertain
and scattered for us to be able to predict at what moment they will
become feelings, and thus materially influence our actions, our
acceptance of life, our joys, and our sorrows.

9

If in actual life this confusion is not so apparent, it is only because
actual life will but rarely express itself, or condescend to make use
of image or formula to relate its experience. This state of mind,
however, is clearly discernible in all those whose self-imposed mission
it is to depict real life, to explain and interpret it, and throw light
on the hidden causes of good and evil destiny. It is of the poets I
speak, of dramatic poets above all, who are occupied with external and
active life; and it matters not whether they produce novels, tragedies,
the drama properly so called, or historical studies, for I give to the
words poets and dramatic poets their widest significance.

It cannot be denied that the possession of a dominant idea, one that
may be said to exclude all others, must confer considerable power on
the poet, or "interpreter of life;" and in the degree that the idea is
mysterious, and difficult of definition or control, will be the extent
of this power and its conspicuousness in the poem. And this is
entirely legitimate, so long as the poet himself has not the least
doubt as to the value of his idea; and there are many admirable poets
who have never hesitated, paused, or doubted. Thus it is that we find
the idea of heroic duty filling so enormous a space in the tragedies of
Corneille, that of absolute faith in the dramas of Calderon, that of
the tyranny of destiny in the works of Sophocles.

10

Of these three ideas, that of heroic duty is the most human and the
least mysterious; and although far more restricted to-day than at the
time of Corneille--for there are few such duties which it would not now
be reasonable, and even heroic, perhaps, to call into question, and it
becomes ever more and more difficult to find one that is truly
heroic--conditions may still be imagined under which recourse thereto
may be legitimate in the poet.

But will he discover in faith--to-day no more than a shadowy memory to
the most fervent believer--that inspiration and