The most recent interpreters have found Corneille's ideal to reside in will for its own sake, the "pure will," superior or anterior to good and evil, in the energy of the will as such, which does not pay attention to particular ends. Thus the false conception of him as animated with the ideal of moral duty or with that of the triumph of duty over the passions has been eliminated, and agreement has been reached, not only with the reality of the tragedies, but also with what Corneille himself laid down in his _Discours_ as to the dramatic personage. Such a personage may indeed be plunged in all sorts of crimes, like Cleopatra in the _Rodogune,_ but in the words of the author, "all his actions are accompanied with so lofty a greatness of soul that we admire the source whence his actions flow, while we detest those actions themselves." On the other hand, the concept of the pure will runs some risk of being perverted at the hands of those who proceed to interpret it by identification with that other "will for power" of Nietzsche, who understood the French poet in this hyperbolical manner and referred to him with fervent admiration on account of this fancy of his. The ideal of the will for power has an altogether modern origin, in the protoromantic and romantic superman, in over-excited and abstract individualism. It did not exist at the time of Corneille, or in the heart of the poet, who was very healthy and simple. The figures of Corneille's tragedies must be looked at through coloured and deforming glasses, as supplied by fashionable literature, in order to see in them such attitudes and gestures. The further definition, which, while it renders the first conception more exact and more appropriate, at the same time shuts the door on these new fancies, is this: that Corneille's ideal does not express the pure will at the moment of violent onrush and actuation, but of ponderation and reflection, that is to say, as _deliberative will._ This was what Corneille truly loved: the spirit which deliberates calmly and serenely and having formed its resolution, adheres to it with unshakeable firmness, as to a position that has been won with difficulty and with difficulty strengthened. This represented for him the most lofty form of strength, the highest dignity of man. _"Laissez-moi mieux consulter mon âme,"_ says one of Corneille's personages, and all of them think and act in the same way. "_Voyons,_" says the king of the Gepidi to the king of the Goths in the _Attila, "--voyons qui se doit vaincre, et s' il faut que mon âme. A votre ambition immole cette flamme. Ou s'il n'est point plus beau que votre ambition. Elle-même s'immole a cette passion."_