It is the immortal quality in the human spirit
playing like sunshine on the hardest and most tragic facts of
experience. It often suggests no explanation of these facts; it is
content to present them with relentless veracity; but even when it
offers no solution of the tragic problem, the tireless interest which
it feels, the force with which it illustrates and describes, the power
of moral organisation and interpretation which it reveals, carry with
them the conviction that the spirit of man, however baffled and
beaten, is superior to all the accidents of fortune, and
indestructible even within the circle of the blackest fate. As
OEdipus, old, blind, and smitten, vanishes from our sight, we think
of him no longer as a great figure blasted by adverse fate, but as a
great soul smitten and scourged, and yet still invested with the
dignity of immortality. The dramatist, even when he throws no light on
the ultimate solution of the problem with which he is dealing, feels
so deeply and freshly, and discloses such sustained strength, that the
vitality with which the facts are exhibited and the question stated
affirms its superiority over all the adversities and catastrophes of
fortune.
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