es a full share of
our censure. Her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of
tenderness. Why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and
be unwilling to give him what he so obviously craved? We see in the old
king "the over-mastering desire of being beloved, selfish, and yet
characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone."
His eagerness produces in us a strange pity for him, and we are
impatient that his youngest and best-beloved child cannot feel this,
even in the midst of her search for truth and her newly acquired sense
of a higher duty. It seems to us a narrow conception that would break
thus abruptly with the past and would assume that her father had no part
in the new life. We want to remind her "that pity, memory, and
faithfulness are natural ties," and surely as much to be prized as is
the development of her own soul. We do not admire the Cordelia who
through her self-absorption deserts her father, as we later admire the
same woman who comes back from France that she may include her father in
her happiness and freer life. The first had selfishly taken her
salvation for herself alone, and it was not until her conscience had
developed in her new life that she was driven back to her father, where
she perished, drawn into the cruelty and wrath which had now become
objective and tragic.

Historically considered, the relation of Lear to his children was
archaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning of a family life
since developed. His paternal expression was one of domination and
indulgence, without the perception of the needs of his children, without
any anticipation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that
they could have a worthy life apart from him. If that rudimentary
conception of family life ended in such violent disaster, the fact that
we have learned to be more decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate
that by following the same line of theory we may not reach a like
misery.

Wounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be reduced to a
modicum if we could preserve a sense of the relation of the individual
to the family, and of the latter to society, and if we had been given a
code of ethics dealing with these larger relationships, instead of a
code designed to apply so exclusively to relationships obtaining only
between individuals.

Doubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most keenly are those
which occur when