Even
when the catastrophe depends upon some so-called accident, it must be
made to appear necessary that our human purposes should sometimes be
caught and strangled in the web of natural fact which envelops them.
The reasons for our acceptance of tragedy are not difficult to find
and have been noted, with more or less clearness, by all students. We
accept it much as the hero accepts his own struggle--he believes in
the values which he is fighting for and we sympathetically make his
will ours. Moreover, we discover a special value in his courage which,
we feel, compensates for the evil of his suffering, defeat, or death.
So long as we set any value on life, it is impossible for us not to
esteem courage; for courage is at once the defense against attack of
all our possessions and the source, in personal initiative and
aggressive action, of newer and larger life. And any shrinking that
we may feel against the sternness of the struggle is quenched both by
the hero's example and by our recognition of its necessity. Since we
are not participants of it, our protest would be futile, and even if
we played a part in it, we should be as foolish as we should be weak,
not to recognize that the will which opposes us is as inflexible as
our own--"such is life"--that is our ultimate comment. An appreciation
of tragedy involves, therefore, a sure discernment of the essential
disharmony of existence, yet at the same time, a feeling for the moral
values which it may create; neither the optimist nor the utilitarian
can enter into its world.
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