These figures are as constant in fiction as they were in
mythology; from the days of the earliest Greek and Oriental stories to
these days of Stevenson and Barrie, they have never lost their hold on
the imagination of the race. When the sense of reality was feeble,
these figures became fantastic, and even ridiculous; but this false
art was the product of an unregulated, not of an illegitimate,
exercise of the imagination; and while "Don Quixote" destroyed the old
romance of chivalry, it left the instinct which produced that romance
untouched. As the sense of reality becomes more exacting and more
general, the action of the imagination is more carefully regulated;
but it is not diminished, either in volume or in potency. Men have not
lost the power of individual action because society has become so
highly developed, and the multiplication of the police has not
materially reduced the tragic possibilities of life. There is more
accurate and more extensive knowledge of environment than ever before
in the history of the race, but temperament, impulse, and passion
remain as powerful as they were in primitive men; and tragedy finds
its materials in temperament, impulse, and passion, much more
frequently than in objective conditions and circumstances.
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