The relationships of tragedy, however, are not confined to the theatre or to literature. That tragedy, like other forms of literature, is an imitation of life, is a platitude whose meaning sometimes fails to impress us. But its truth has a witness in every writer of tragedy. However insignificant or thoughtless, he has been trying to put into his play something of life as he knows it, trying to find some relationships in the world of fact that will carry meaning and interest to his fellows. Whether he has been writing mainly to meet the desires of actors and audience, or has been voyaging alone toward some discovery of beauty and grandeur of human passion, whether he has been building his house of intrigue according to well-conned rules of dramatic structure, or has been copying some tangle of fact, he has been studying the ways and means of human actions. Trivially or greatly, as the case may be, he has been seeking to interpret life. Classicist, romanticist, and realist have been by different processes seeking the same end, the discovery of meaning in the facts of existence. They have all viewed the Art that they have so differently formulated, as a means of approach to Nature, the deity whom they all profess. Neither high seriousness, nor sublime theme, nor a complete philosophy is a necessary accompaniment of Matthew Arnold's definition. Whether the poet write of "the tangles of Neæra's hair" or of that disobedience that first "brought death into the world," he is attempting a criticism of life. This definition does not state the primary aim of literature, for it must first of all interest us, or its sole function, for it seeks beauty as well as truth and cannot always unite them; but it does indicate the most permanent and vitalizing element in the creation of literature, the most organic relationship that connects its many manifestations.