The study of fighting play has thus led us from its rough and cruel manifestations to the culminating point of tragedy. What Volkelt says in a general way of the supreme moment we may apply to our own position: “Even in suffering and grief, in fear and defeat, must the tragic personage, if he would not fall below the requirements of his art, always appear great. When a man quails in the hour of extreme suffering or wavers before the severest test, however superior he may have appeared previously, there is an end of tragic effect. But let him display greatness of soul at the crucial moment, he then makes an elevating impression which is subverting to pessimism and encouraging to the idea that the severest and most outrageous attacks of Fortune can not make a man small, that the human spirit bears within itself a principle of growth and of supremacy which is able to cope with the might of Fate itself.”[501] I close with the remark that this study of the tragic is advanced with a full sense of its inadequacy. My main intention is to indicate the scope of my conception of fighting play. The general idea of play has been developed by others and applied advantageously in the treatment of contrast of ideas in the tragic. Tragedy, like all other sources of higher æsthetic pleasure, extends beyond the sphere of play because, to put it briefly in the words of Schiller, we can descry through the veil of beauty the majestic form of truth. II. LOVE PLAY Is there such a thing as playful application of the sexual impulse? Views of this subject differ widely, and the remarks on it of animal observers show that many hesitate to use the term “play” in this connection. Wundt says: “The distinction has been made between fighting play and love play, and such actions and expressions as, for instance, the cooing of doves, the calls of singing birds, etc., have been interpreted as wooings. But these wooings are quite seriously intended by the bird, and I do not think that we can regard them as in any sense playful.”[502] On the other hand, others can be cited who assure us that most observers agree in ascribing to singing birds, besides their regular courtship arts of song and flight, actions which have all the marks by which Wundt himself characterizes play—namely, enjoyment, repetition, and pretence. However, we shall find that it is in man that play with the function in question is most clearly exhibited, and, as its connection with art has already been referred to, it will be sufficient to dwell on one aspect of it here—namely, its relation to poetry. However derogatory it may be considered to condition poetic art on such stimuli, the fact is incontestable that, deprived of their influence, the tree of poetry would be stripped of its verdant living dress.