It has sometimes been made a reproach to critics--more often, I fear, by those who hold, like myself, that beauty and excellence in art are identical--that they discourse too little of form in literature, and too much of content. But all our taking thought will have been vain, if it is not now patent that the first beauty of literature is, and must be, its identity with the central flame of life,--the primal conditions of our being. Thus it is that the critic is justified in asking first of all, How does this man look on life? Has he revealed a new--or better--the eternal old meaning? The Weltanschauung is the critic's first consideration, and after that he may properly take up that secondary grasp of the conditions of our being in mental processes, revealed in the structure, march of incidents, suspense, and climaxes, and the beauty or idiosyncracy of style. It is then literally false that it does not matter what a man says, but only how he says it. What he says is all that matters, for it will not be great thought without some greatness in the saying. Art for art's sake in literature is then art for life's sake, and the "informing purpose," in so far as that means the vision of our deepest selves, is its first condition. And because the Beauty of Literature is constituted by its quality as life itself, we may defer detailed consideration of the species and varieties of literature. Prose and poetry, drama and novel, have each their own special excellences springing from the respective situations they had, and have, to meet. Yet these but add elements to the one great power they all must have as literature,--the power to give the perfect experience of life in its fullness and vividness, and in its identity with the central meanings of existence,--unity and self-completeness together,--in a form which offers to our mental functions the perfect moment of stimulation and repose. VII THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA VII THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA I THAT psychologist who, writing on the problems of dramatic art, called his brochure "The Dispute over Tragedy," gave the right name to a singular situation. Of all the riddles of aesthetic experi8ence, none has been so early propounded, so indefatigably attempted, so variously and unsatisfactorily solved, as this. What is dramatic? What constitutes a tragedy? How can we take pleasure in painful experiences? These questions are like Banquo's ghost, and will not down.