subject is, that a spiritual and invisible power can only be measured by
the opposition which it encounters from some external force capable of
being appreciated by the senses. The moral freedom of man, therefore, can
only be displayed in a conflict with his sensuous impulses: so long as no
higher call summons it to action, it is either actually dormant within
him, or appears to slumber, since otherwise it does but mechanically
fulfil its part as a mere power of nature. It is only amidst difficulties
and struggles that the moral part of man's nature avouches itself. If,
therefore, we must explain the distinctive aim of tragedy by way of
theory, we would give it thus: that to establish the claims of the mind to
a divine origin, its earthly existence must be disregarded as vain and
insignificant, all sorrows endured and all difficulties overcome. With
respect to everything connected with this point, I refer my hearers to the
Section on the Sublime in Kant's _Criticism of the Judgment_ (_Kritik der
Urtheilskraft_), to the complete perfection of which nothing is wanting
but a more definite idea of the tragedy of the ancients, with which he
does not seem to have been very well acquainted.

I come now to another peculiarity which distinguishes the tragedy of the
ancients from ours, I mean the Chorus. We must consider it as a
personified reflection on the action which is going on; the incorporation
into the representation itself of the sentiments of the poet, as the
spokesman of the whole human race. This is its general poetical character;
and that is all that here concerns us, and that character is by no means
affected by the circumstance that the Chorus had a local origin in the
feasts of Bacchus, and that, moreover, it always retained among the Greeks
a peculiar national signification; publicity being, as we have already
said, according to their republican notions, essential to the completeness
of every important transaction. If in their compositions they reverted to
the heroic ages, in which monarchical polity was yet in force, they