Even Nordau does not seem to have discovered an authority on this subject. He himself will not serve as an authority, because he has shown himself too apt to fall into the error of newspaper critics, that of judging a work or a piece, not according to its merits, but according to the author who has produced it. He would praise in Goethe what he would condemn in Wagner. If we were to indiscriminately ask people how far we may go in representing human passion on the stage, we should get a mass of replies all differing according to the bias of the respondents. The Ultramontane abbé, the zealous Methodist, would differ enormously from the Bohemian artist; the prudish old maid would differ from the poet. Nay, even two artists, both painters of the nude, or two ballet girls appearing in the same costume, might hold almost opposite opinions on this subject. How then shall we judge? By leaving out of court all the extremists—those who object to theatres, ballets, and nature in art—as well as those who would clamour for indecent and obscene representations, we might considerably narrow the ground for inquiry, and elicit certain rules likely to meet the suffrage of the majority within these limits. It might be argued that emotions, playing by far the most important _rôle_ in the human drama, and lying as they do at the root of all our actions, educational agencies, and amusements, ought to be appealed to by the arts. Also that art, in affording us opportunities of giving expression to our emotions, elevates and ennobles our lives: consequently, that the passive, objective contemplation of human emotions which the stage affords us helps us to study our own emotions and to bring them into harmony with our noblest aspirations, our future happiness, our judgment, and our will. In order to accomplish their mission, such representations should be as true to life as possible, whether they be beautiful or not. On this plea, it would be legitimate to represent on the stage erotic emotions in the full strength in which we meet with them in reality among sound-minded people. A good deal of exaggeration may be permitted to the actor as he is under the difficulty of having to convey by actions, gestures, or facial expression a distinct representation of emotions which may rage in the consciousness of a human being without betraying themselves in physical signs. From this it must be concluded that the purity of the stage depends more on what is acted than how it is acted. The author who does not wish to desecrate the drama is therefore bound to represent emotions which are the outcome of natural life, and acted upon by incidents such as we see around us and to avoid the representation of, even if he cannot avoid the reference to, emotions which spring from a diseased mind or a morbid moral state.