In spite of our feeling that the literal and naive reading of the analogy was probably after all nearer Aristotle's meaning, we may accept the words of Professor Butcher as its modern formulation. They sound, indeed, all but a truism: yet they are seen on examination to glide lightly over some psychological difficulties. Firstly, the step is a long one from the pity and fear felt by the Greek toward or about the actors, to a sharing of their emotion. The one is a definite external relation, limited to two emotions; the other, the "sympathetic ecstasy," opens the door to all conceivable emotions, and needs at least to be justified. But, secondly, even suppose the step taken; suppose the "sympathetic imitation" conceded as a fact: the objections to Aristotle's interpretation are equally applicable to this. Why should this "transport of sympathetic feeling" not take the form of a transport of pain? Why should the net result be "a noble emotional satisfaction?" If pity and fear remain pity and fear, whether selfish or unselfish, it doth not yet appear why they are emotionally satisfactory. The "so transformed" of the passage quoted assumes the point at issue and begs the question. That is, if this transformation of feeling does indeed take place, there is at least nothing in the nature of the situation, as yet explained, to account for it. But explanation there must be. To this, the lost passage on the Katharsis must have been devoted; this, every thorough-going study of the theory of the drama must make an indispensable preliminary. What there is in the nature of tragic art capable of transforming painful to pleasurable emotion must be made clear. Before we can accept Professor Butcher's view of the function of Tragedy, its possibility as a psychological experience must be demonstrated. For the immediately pleasurable aesthetic effect of Tragedy, a certain kind of pity and fear, operating in a special way, are required. It must be thus only in the peculiar character of the emotions aroused that the distinctive nature of the tragic experience consists. What is this peculiar character? III A necessary step to the explanation of our pleasure in supposedly painful emotions is to make clear how we can feel any emotion at all in watching what we know to be unreal, and to show how this emotion is sympathetic, that is, imitative, rather than of an objective reference. In brief, why do we feel WITH, rather than toward or about, the actors?