What kind of plays do the people want? It wants "good" plays, in the sense in which the word "good" is used by Tolstoi when he speaks of "good books." It wants plays which are easy to understand without being commonplace; those which stimulate faith without leading the spirit astray; those which appeal, not to sensuality, not to the love of sight-seeing, but to the powerful idealistic instincts of the masses. These plays must not treat of minor conflicts; but, in the spirit of the antique tragedies, they must display man in the struggle with elemental forces, man as subject to heroic destiny. "Let us away with complicated psychologies, with subtle innuendoes, with obscure symbolisms, with the art of drawing-rooms and alcoves." Art for the people must be monumental. Though the people desires truth, it must not be delivered over to naturalism, for art which makes the masses aware of their own misery will never kindle the sacred flame of enthusiasm, but only the insensate passion of anger. If, next day, the workers are to resume their daily tasks with a heightened and more cheerful confidence, they need a tonic. Thus the evening must have been a source of energy, but must at the same time have sharpened the intelligence. Undoubtedly the drama should display the people to the people, not however in the proletarian dullness of narrow dwellings, but on the pinnacles of the past. Rolland therefore opines, following to a large extent in Schiller's footsteps, that the people's theater must be historical in scope. The populace must not merely make its own acquaintance on the stage, but must be brought to admire its own past. Here we see the motif to which Rolland continually returns, the need for arousing a passionate aspiration towards greatness. In its suffering, the people must learn to regain delight in its own self. With marvelous vividness does the imaginative historian display the epic significance of history. The forces of the past are sacred by reason of the spiritual energy which is part of every great movement. Reasoning persons can hardly fail to be revolted when they observe the unwarranted amount of space allotted to anecdotes, accessories, the trifles of history, at the expense of its living soul. The power of the past must be awakened; the will to action must be steeled. Those who live to-day must learn greatness from their fathers and forefathers. "History can teach people to get outside themselves, to read in the souls of others. We discern ourselves in the past, in a mingling of like characters and differing lineaments, with errors and vices which we can avoid. But precisely because history depicts the mutable, does it give us a better knowledge of the unchanging."