But if the superman is not a possible subject for great art, neither is the crawling earthworm. Many modern authors and critics seem to consider that because tragic passion is always painful, therefore pain is the essential thing in tragedy. It is this grossly false assumption that is responsible for many disasters in contemporary literature; it is the deep-lying error in much of our so-called "intellectual drama" and "intellectual fiction." I have heard authors and critics complain that the public will not read certain books or go to certain plays because they are "painful" or "grim." If it had been because these books or plays were "_passionate_" that the public had refused to attend, I should have understood the complaint. Pain without passion may be scientifically interesting, but it has no artistic content, no high emotional significance. Indeed, it is not true to suppose that the public dislikes the spectacle of the painful or the ugly. All know something of the fascination which disturbed Leontius, the son of Aglaion, who, coming up from the Piræus, observed dead bodies on the ground; and desiring to look at them and loathing the thought opened his eyes wide, exclaiming, "There, you wretches, take your fill of the horrid sight!" If anyone doubts this let him recall that a painful and sordid episode in the law-courts fascinates the public just as it is fascinated by the crude villainies of East-end melodrama; and that the most highly moralised section of the public can be stirred to attend to the persecution of Congo natives or Macedonian Christians only by the most appalling stories of massacre, outrage, and various forms of extreme suffering.