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II.] acceptance of worn-out dogmas. But though he seems to hold that some solution was possible—and a solution not of despair, but of hope—he never attempts to offer more rich materials for its attainment. Like the Platonic Socrates in the pursuit of morals, who often discussed all the sides of a question and then stopped without a result, so in his tragedies Euripides seeks to give a complete panorama of all the varieties of human character and of human passion, of human misery and human wickedness, of human devotion and human valour; and from these to suggest all the helps and all the difficulties in forming a new religion, a new society, and a remodelled state. But he never even hints at the reconstruction of the State, though such dreams were common in his day; he seems an advocate for gradual reform, and for the bringing out of the purer elements into better prominence; yet, as I have said, it is not the remedy but the diagnosis which engrosses him. Like some of the greatest physicians of our day, he is more intent on describing the disease than on curing the patient.

22. Side by side with these profound views of life we find another aspect of the poet's mind: the desire to please his audience by all the arts which ordinary playwrights adopt—pathetic situations, striking scenery, ingenious plot, and patriotic commonplace. Nor is there any evidence that he did this against his better judgment, or with any sense that he was lowering a high and solemn calling. The latest novelties in music, the sentimental melodies in the style of Timotheus, were constantly introduced in his monodies, to the great disgust of the older classical school. Whole plays were devoted to tearful situations, where the luxury of pity was indulged without teaching the higher lessons of awe and of indignation. Again, long scenes were occupied with rhetorical argument, in which the actors became pleaders in court, and discussed point after point with pertinacious subtlety, a feature not censured by any ancient critic, and to be found even