r; so, when it fails to imitate,
we call it trash. But the theory of Aeschylean Tragedy
is the illumination of life. Illumination of life, through
a medium quite unlike life. Art begins on a spiritual plane,
and works down to realism in its decadence; then it ceases
to be art at all, and becomes merely copying what we imagine
to be nature,--nature, often, as seen through a diseased liver
and well-atrophied pineal gland.

True art imitates nature only in a very selective and limited
way. It chooses carefully what it shall imitate, and all to the
end of illumination. It paints a flower, or a sunset, not to
reproduce the thing seen with the eyes, but to declare and set
forth that mood of the Oversoul which the flower or the sunset
expressed. Flower-colors or sunset-colors cannot be reproduced
in pigments; but you can do things with pigments and a brush that
can tell the same story. Or it can be done in words, in a poem;
or with the notes of music;--in both of which cases the medium
used is still more, and totally, unlike the medium through which
the Oversoul said its say in the sky or the blossom.

Nature is always expressing these moods of the Oversoul; but we
get no news of them, as a rule, from our own sight and hearing;
we must wait for the poets and artists to interpret them. Life
is always at work to teach us life; but we miss the grand
lessons, usually, until some human Teacher enforces them. His
methods are the same as those of the artists: between whose
office and his there was at first no difference;--_Bard_
means only, originally, an Adept Teacher. Such a one selects
experiences out of life for his pupils, and illumines them
through the circumstances under which they are applied; just as
the true artist selects objects from nature, and by his manner of
treating them, interprets the greatness that lies beyond.

So the drama-theory of Aeschylus. He took fragments of possible
experience, and let them be seen through a heightened and
interpretative medium; with a light at once intense and somber-
portentous thrown on them; and this not to reproduce the
externalia and appearance of life, but to illumine its inner
recesses; to enforce, in plays lasting an hour or so, the
lessons life may take many incarnations to teach. This cannot be
done by realism, imitation or reproduction of the actual; than
which life itself is always better.

What keeps us from seeing the meanings of life? Personality.
Not only