individual characters form an inconsiderable and feeble part; which
seems to determine, far more than they, their native dispositions and
their circumstances, and, through these, their action; which is so vast
and complex that they can scarcely at all understand it or control its
workings; and which has a nature so definite and fixed that whatever
changes take place in it produce other changes inevitably and without
regard to men's desires and regrets. And whether this system or order is
best called by the name of fate or no,[12] it can hardly be denied that
it does appear as the ultimate power in the tragic world, and that it
has such characteristics as these. But the name 'fate' may be intended
to imply something more--to imply that this order is a blank necessity,
totally regardless alike of human weal and of the difference between
good and evil or right and wrong. And such an implication many readers
would at once reject. They would maintain, on the contrary, that this
order shows characteristics of quite another kind from those which made
us give it the name of fate, characteristics which certainly should not
induce us to forget those others, but which would lead us to describe it
as a moral order and its necessity as a moral necessity.


5

Let us turn, then, to this idea. It brings into the light those aspects
of the tragic fact which the idea of fate throws into the shade. And the
argument which leads to it in its simplest form may be stated briefly
thus: 'Whatever may be said of accidents, circumstances and the like,
human action is, after all, presented to us as the central fact in
tragedy, and also as the main cause of the catastrophe. That necessity
which so much impresses us is, after all, chiefly the necessary
connection of actions and consequences. For these actions we, without