is capable of producing such an experience in all men. The subject
must be one towards which the artist or spectator is able to take the
sthetic attitude of emotional, yet free, perception. Some people are
unable to lay aside their moral prepossessions towards certain phases
of life or even towards representation of them; the idea affects them
as would the reality. For such people even the genius of a Beardsley
is too feeble to create an experience of beauty out of the material
with which he works. Or again, some people cannot objectify their
sensual egotistic impulses and feelings; for them the reading of a
Boccaccio, for example, is only a substitute for such feelings, not
a means of insight into them. It requires a robust intellectual
attitude, a predominance of mind over feeling and instinct, aesthetically
to appreciate some works of art. But for those who can receive it, the
representation of any phase of life may afford an aesthetic experience,
may create a thing good to know, if only it be mastered by the mind
and embodied in a charming form.

The charm of sense together with the satisfaction of insight are
sufficient to explain the conquest of evil by art. Yet further means
have been employed--the special appeals of the tragic, pathetic, and
comic.

What any one may mean by tragic is largely a matter of personal
definition or tradition; yet there is, I think, a common essence upon
which all would agree. First, tragedy always involves the manful
struggle of a personality in the pursuit of some end, at the cost of
suffering, perhaps of death and failure. The opposition may come from
nature, as in _The Grammarian's Funeral_; from fate, as in the
_Oedipus_; from social and political interests, as in _Antigone_; that
is of little moment; it is important solely that the battle be accepted