Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/163

Rh in tragedy. In conception it is supreme art, despite the faults of the lesser painter who finished it. The mother of Jesus looks on the body of her son with the deep, calm grief of heroic character; Joseph of Arimathea, a strong man of the formal sect of the Pharisees, is on his knees looking into the face of Jesus with the tenderness of a woman; Mary Magdalene, in uncontrolled passion. Brings into relief the self restraint and power of the Virgin; and the marble statues of the Old and New Dispensations are raised in cold contrast with the human emotions below. We are not simply shown a harrowing incident; we are led into the experience of profound love, impossible to know without this suffering and expressed in monumental power. We feel each character in relation to the others, and the incident itself becomes inseparable from these characters.

In looking on this picture we live much, live deeply and rightly. We see far more than we ever could with our own eyes. We are lifted out of the circle of our habitual thoughts, and experience the deepest emotions that have led mankind from the animal into his high estate.

In great dramatic pictures, closely associated with this principle of constructive emotions there is the element of heightened mental power. The easy grasp of the relations among the persons, and between them