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IV.] less sceptical than Euripides, he acknowledges in each event a revelation of the divine will, which he regards as just even when inscrutable. But his strongest lights are thrown upon the human figures themselves, which appear out of the darkness and go into darkness again. So far as this can be achieved by art, the predestined catastrophe is brought about by the natural effect of circumstances on character, according to the saying of Heraclitus in the previous century, "Man's character is his destiny." The gods are for the most part withdrawn to their unseen Olympus, whilst their will is done on earth by seemingly accidental means. The tradition of a fore-determined doom is used by the poet as an instrument for evoking fear and pity; the blindness of the agents makes us feel doubly for their fate, and gives a deeper impression of the feebleness and nothingness of man. And yet this Man, who is nothing, a shadow passing away, is the central object of our sympathies, and this life of his, so feeble in the sight of heaven, yet seems with every drama of Sophocles that is seen or read, more rich in noble possibilities.

2. For there was another conception, besides that of human nature to which the age of Pericles was giving shape and currency, and which appears for the first time in Sophocles and Thucydides. This was the notion of an Unwritten Law, to which Pericles himself refers in his funeral oration, and which Sophocles had previously expressed in his Antigone. Not only will the same passions have their course while man is man, but to the dispassionate observer the same principles of action will have similar issues. The persistent tendency of things is one that "makes for righteousness," and that vindicates the pure and pious soul, however deeply it may suffer. This thought is always present with Sophocles when in his highest mood, but it is not to be assumed that, like his sympathy with humanity, it has been everywhere combined with his dramatic motive. In the Ajax, the Antigone, and the two Œdipus plays, it is manifestly apparent. In the Electra, the conception of justice is more traditional;