The interest
with which the tragic character is always invested is due not only to
the exceptional experience in which the tragic situation always
culminates, but also to the self-surrender which precedes the penalty
and the expiation.
There is a fallacy at the bottom of the admiration we feel when a rich
nature throws restraint of any kind to the winds and gives itself up
wholly to some impulse or passion,--the fallacy of supposing that by a
violent break with existing conditions freedom can be secured; for the
world loves freedom, even when it is too slothful or too cowardly to
pay the price which it exacts. That admiration arises, however, from a
sound instinct,--the instinct which makes us love both power and
self-sacrifice, even when the first is ill-directed and the second
wasted. The vast majority of men are content to do their work quietly
and in obscurity, with no disclosure of originality, freshness, or
force; they obey law, conform to custom, respect the conventionalities
of their age; they appear to be lacking in representative quality;
they are, apparently, the faithful and uninteresting drudges of
society.
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