confidence. And the inference would seem clear. If existence in an order
depends on good, and if the presence of evil is hostile to such
existence, the inner being or soul of this order must be akin to good.

These are aspects of the tragic world at least as clearly marked as
those which, taken alone, suggest the idea of fate. And the idea which
they in their turn, when taken alone, may suggest, is that of an order
which does not indeed award 'poetic justice,' but which reacts through
the necessity of its own 'moral' nature both against attacks made upon
it and against failure to conform to it. Tragedy, on this view, is the
exhibition of that convulsive reaction; and the fact that the spectacle
does not leave us rebellious or desperate is due to a more or less
distinct perception that the tragic suffering and death arise from
collision, not with a fate or blank power, but with a moral power, a
power akin to all that we admire and revere in the characters
themselves. This perception produces something like a feeling of
acquiescence in the catastrophe, though it neither leads us to pass
judgment on the characters nor diminishes the pity, the fear, and the
sense of waste, which their struggle, suffering and fall evoke. And,
finally, this view seems quite able to do justice to those aspects of
the tragic fact which give rise to the idea of fate. They would appear
as various expressions of the fact that the moral order acts not
capriciously or like a human being, but from the necessity of its
nature, or, if we prefer the phrase, by general laws,--a necessity or
law which of course knows no exception and is as 'ruthless' as fate.

It is impossible to deny to this view a large measure of truth. And yet
without some amendment it can hardly satisfy. For it does not include
the whole of the facts, and therefore does not wholly correspond with
the impressions they produce. Let it be granted that the system or order