The interests among which this type of comedy moves are not necessarily taken from the opposed spheres of religion, morality, and art. On the contrary the old Greek comedy remains no doubt within the limits of this positive and substantive content of human life; but it is the individual caprice, the vulgar folly and perversity, by reason of which the characters concerned bring to nought activities which in their aim have a finer significance. And in this respect an ample and very pertinent material is supplied Aristophanes partly by Greek gods, and partly by the life of the Athenian people. In other words, the configuration of the divine in human impersonation itself possesses, in its mode of presentation and its particularization, to the extent at least that it is further enforced in opposition to that which is merely one-sided and human, the contradiction that is opposed to the nobility of its significance; it is thus permitted to appear as a purely empty extension of this personal life which is inadequate wholly to express it. More particularly, however, Aristophanes revels in the follies of the common folk, the stupidities of its orators and statesmen, the blockheadedness of war, and is eager, above all, and with all the politeness of his satire and the full weight of his ridicule, but also not without the profoundest meaning, to hand over the new tendencies of the tragedies of Euripides to the laughter of his fellow-citizens. The characters he has imported into the substance of his amazing artistic creations he runs into the mould of fool from the start with a sportive fancy that seems inexhaustible, so that the very idea of a rational result is impossible. He treats all alike, whether it be a Strepsiades, who will join the ranks of philosophers in order to be rid of his debts, or a Socrates, who offers to instruct the aforesaid Strepsiades and his son, or Bacchus, whom he makes descend into the lower world, in order to bring up a genuine tragic poet, and in just the same way Cleon, the women and the Greeks, who would like to pump up the goddess of Peace from the well. The key-note that we find in all these various creations is the imperturbable self-assurance of such characters one and all, which becomes all the more emphatic in proportion as they prove themselves incapable of carrying into effect that which they project. Our fools here are so entirely unembarrassed in their folly, and also the more sensible among them possess such a tincture of that which runs contrary to the very course upon which they are set, that they all, the more sensible with the rest, remain fixed to this personal attitude of prodigious imperturbility, no matter what comes next or where it carries them. It is in fact the blessed laughter of the Olympian gods, with their untroubled equanimity, now at home in the human breast, and prepared for all contingences. And withal we never find Aristophanes merely a cold or evil-disposed mocker. He was a