Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/126

 M. CABRlfeKE, J&STHET1K. 115 world, or as crushed through resisting it. The same theory is applied by the author to comedy. The reconciliation that is the end of the drama is here brought about in the mind of the spec- tator by the representation of that which is really deserving of contempt as in conflict with the moral order, and in presence of this, the true reality of things, as appearing in its intrinsic no- thingness. A theory such as this is not open to the objection that it is a direct application of ethical canons to art ; and we may admit that Prof. Carriere's theory explains some dramatic effects. To take an example from tragedy, the background of Macbeth is un- doubtedly a moral background. But when we try to apply this theory, say to Hamlet and Lear, especially the last, it seems less adequate. An interpretation of these plays in terms of an ethical theory of things can only be carried out (as Prof. Carriere tries to carry it out in the case of Lear) by the selection of episodes. For in these most of all among modern dramas we are made con- scious that behind "the moral order of the world," the creation of the human spirit, are the elder powers "Fortuna omnipotens et ineluctabile fatum". Perhaps fate is most prominent in the ancient, fortune in the modern drama. And the fate of the Greek dramatists has in general more of an ethical character than the impersonal background of Shakespearean tragedy. An illustra- tion of this distinction may, however, be found in Macbeth, where the ruling conception approaches nearer than elsewhere in Shake- speare to the Greek fate. But in the ancient as well as in the modern drama the ethical character belongs rather to the hero of the tragedy, who is brought into conflict with a non-moral order of things, than to anything in the external order itself. What is said, in this mode of considering it, of tragedy, ought to be appli- cable, in Pro! Carriere's view, to comedy also. Now when we consider the higher kinds of comedy and the humorous treat- ment of things generally as opposed to the tragic, is there not just as much difficulty in reconciling his theory, say, with the treatment of life by Cervantes and Moliere ? Can the non-ethical character of the background of human life be brought out more strongly than it is, for example, in Don Quixote and in The Misanthrope ? This does not mean that the higher forms of art contain no solution of problems that are at least in part ethical. It shows, however, that the view taken of the final questions of aesthetics must depend to some extent on the kind of philosophy we start with. Perhaps the objection may be made here that the ques- tions now touched upon, whether the author's view or that which has been suggested in contrast with it be accepted, are not pro- perly aesthetic questions at all ; that the irrelevant consideration of subject-matter has been introduced in a new shape, if not by the application of ethical tests to art, then by the application of metaphysical tests. The reply to this objection has been partly