on expediency, showing him unbroken throughout. The onslaughts upon Ajax, Antigone, Philoctetes, Œdipus, are not mere stage-rhetoric; they are “sound common-sense,” “appeals to one’s better self”; and no logical denial can be opposed to them. Only one power in man is able to withstand them—the will, taking its stand once for all upon some instinct for clear, simple action. If we never listen to reason we are lost; but if we always listen we are lost equally. That these heroes of the will so often come to misery or death matters little; they have saved their souls alive instead of sinking themselves in a sordid acceptance of a second-hand morality. Over against these figures, to emphasize their defiant grandeur, the poet loves to set persons admirable indeed, but more commonplace, who emerge in the dread hour when the haughty will has brought ruin, and approve themselves as the pivot of the situation. The hero is great and strikes the imagination, but it is on the shoulders of men like Creon in the _Œdipus Tyrannus_, Odysseus, Hyllus, Theseus in the _Œdipus Coloneus_, that the real burden of the world’s work may be safely cast. None the less he loves Antigone better than he loves Ismene, Œdipus rather than Theseus. In one place at least, in his dislike for the “reasonable” spirit of compromise, he suffers himself a malicious little _reductio ad absurdum_. When Chrysothemis finds Electra uttering her resentment at the palace gate she says:—[399] Sister! Again? Why standest at the door Holding this language? Will no span of years Teach thee at length to grudge thy foolish spleen Such empty comfort? Yet mine own heart too Knows how it sorrows for our present state.... I avow That in thy spirit dwelleth righteousness Not in my words. _Yet, if I would be free_ _I must in all things bend to those in power._