passing into the lives of other men, in sharing their joys, in taking on
ourselves the burden of humanity, we escape from our self-prison, we
leave individuality behind, we unite with man in common; so we die to
ourselves in order to live in lives not ours. In literature, sympathy
and that imagination by which we enter into and comprehend other lives
are most trained and developed, made habitual, instinctive, and quick.
It begins to appear, I trust, that ideal art is not only one with our
nature intellectually, but in all ways; it is the path of the spirit in
all things. Moreover, emotion is in itself simple; it does not need
generalization, it is the same in all. It is rather a means of
universalizing the refinements of the intellect, the substantive
idealities of imagination, by enveloping them in an elementary,
primitive feeling which they call forth. Poetry, therefore, especially
deals, as Wordsworth pointed out, in the primary affections, the
elementary passions of mankind; and, whatever be its intellectual
contents of nature or human events, calls these emotions forth as the
master-spirit of all our seeing. Emotion is more fundamental in us than
knowledge; it is more powerful in its working; it underlies more
deliberate and conscious life in the mind, and in most of us it rules,
as it influences in all. It is natural, therefore, to find that its
operation in art is of graver importance than that of the intellectual
faculty so far as the broad power of art over men is concerned.

Another special point arises from the fact that some emotions are
painful, and the question is raised how in literature painful emotions
become a pleasure. Aristotle's doctrine in respect to certain of these
emotions, tragic pity and terror, is well known, though variously
interpreted. He regards such emotions as a discharge of energy, an
exhaustion and a relief, in consequence of which their disturbing
presence is less likely to recur in actual life; it is as if emotional