(ββ) Further, inasmuch as in the cases we are now discussing the conflict arises from a spiritual violation of spiritual forces through human action, the collision more generally appropriate to the type will consist in a violation which is perpetrated with full consciousness proceeding out of such and the intention it implies. The point of departure here may centre again in passion, violence, folly, and other similar qualities. The Trojan war, for example, originates in the rape of Helen. Agamemnon afterwards sacrifices Iphigenia, and so violates the feelings of her mother, slaying thus the darling of her womb. Clytemnestra, in consequence, murders her spouse. Orestes avenges the murder of his father and king by assassinating his mother. In a similar way in "Hamlet" the father is sent to his grave by a stratagem, and the mother of Hamlet insults the manes of the dead man by a precipitate marriage with his murderer.
In the case of these collisions as in those already considered, the main point is this, that humanity is engaged in a self-imposed conflict with what is intrinsically moral, true, and worthy of reverence. If this is not so, then, for all who are really conscious of what is moral and right, such a conflict can only appear without worth or material significance, as is the case, for example, in the famous episode of the Mahâ-Bhârata, with reference to Nalas and Damayanti. King Nalas marries the princess Damayanti, who is allowed the privilege of making a free choice among her sisters. All the other suitors are genii floating in the air; Nalas stands on the Earth alone as a man, and she has the good sense to select him. The genii are consequently much enraged, and watch for the moment when they may find King Nalas tripping. For many years they can bring to his charge no offence, as he is capable of none. At last, however, they obtain power over him, for he commits a great crime; the crime is this, namely, that after making water, he treads with his foot upon the earth thus watered. According to Indian ideas this is a severe offence which cannot escape punishment. From that moment the genii have him in their power; one renders all his amatory desires abortive, another excites his brother against him, and finally poor Nalas, after forfeiting his throne and being reduced to beggary, is driven forth a wanderer in wretchedness with Damayanti. At length he is even compelled to part with her, until, as the tale will have it, after many adventures, he is once more set on the throne of his original happiness. The real conflict upon which for the Indians of old days the whole of this story was supported was an essential desecration of a sacred thing: according to our notions the tale is absurd from beginning to end.
(γγ) Thirdly, it is not necessary that the disruption should be direct, or, in other words, that the action taken solely by itself should be an act of collision; the fact of collision may well appear out of relations and circumstances of opposition and antagonism which are forced upon the mind during the process of that action's execution. Juliet and Romeo are in love with one another. In the mere fact of their love there is nothing to suggest disunion. But they are aware that their families are living in mutual hate and hostility, that their parents will never consent to the marriage, and they are carried into collision by virtue of this preassumed situation of antagonistic forces.
We must content ourselves here with these very general remarks upon the relation which the determinate situation occupies in its opposition to the universal world-condition. Were we to extend our inquiry into all the divergent aspects, modifications, and nuances of the subject, attempting thereby to express an opinion upon every possible form of situation, this chapter would alone present us with sufficient matter for discussions of endless prolixity and diffuseness. The discovery of different situations implies a content of exhaustless possibilities; and in every particular example the essential question involved is how such may be adapted to the treatment of any specific art, in true subordination to the principles and character of such an art. To the fairy story much is permitted which is forbidden to a more stringent mode of artistic representation. And we may say that generally the discovery[322] of the situation is a critical point in the process of art-production which often presents great difficulty to artists. In our own days the difficulty of obtaining a suitable subject-matter as a source for the circumstances and situations which the artist requires is a common complaint. At first sight it may appear to us more in keeping with our notion of poet if he borrow from his own resources, and invent situations himself; but such independence does little to increase his claims as a creative artist. For the situation does not directly constitute the spirituality of his work nor indeed give us its true artistic form: all that it does is to supply the external material in which as its appropriate medium a character or temperament is unfolded before us. It is only after working into this external material in which actions and characters find their starting-point that the true genius of the artist is actively displayed. The poet consequently has little or no claim to our thanks for merely having himself invented this least of all poetical aspects of his production. He is, in fact, fully entitled to draw as much and as frequently as he pleases from anything that comes to his hand, whether it be history, saga, mythos, or chronicle, nay, even from material and situations which have already been artistically treated. Just as we find in the art of painting the external matter of the situation is borrowed from legends of saints, and the process has been repeated on similar lines over and over again. To discover the real artistic significance of such artistic work we must penetrate far beyond the mere invention of particular situations. The same remarks will apply in full force to the entire wealth of the circumstances and developments artistically handled. In reference to this it is frequently claimed as a virtue of modern art in contrast with that of the ancients that we find in it an infinitely more exuberant imagination. As a matter of fact, we do find in the artistic creations of the Middle Ages and our modern world the most extraordinary variety and interfusion of situations, events, and occurrences, whether tragic or otherwise. This fulness of detail, however, does not take us far. In spite of it all we have very few dramas or epics of the first excellence. For the main point is not the external course and interchange of a variety of events, when we find such events and histories merely complete the entire content of our work of art; rather it is the ethical and spiritual form which embodies them, and the masterful movements of temperament and character which are exposed and unveiled during the entire process of this artistic embodiment.
Glancing now at the main position we have arrived at, and from which our inquiry will proceed, we have found that circumstances, conditions, and relations, whether determined with a reference to the external world or the subjective consciousness, only create the situation by virtue of the temperament or passion which experiences them and derives its nutriment through them. We have further seen that the situation breaks up this determinate form in opposition, obstruction, development, and disruption, so that the emotional life feels itself compelled by the force of the affecting circumstances to react with energy against this disturbing and restraining influence, which stands in the way of its objects and passions. It is here, in truth, that the action, strictly speaking, commences, when, that is to say, the contradiction has fully asserted itself, which was already implied in the fully defined situation. Inasmuch as, however, the action which is based on this collision disturbs the unity of that which is opposed to it, it calls into being by its antagonism the opposing force of that which it confronts, and consequently the action is immediately associated with the reaction. With this analysis of the forces rendered necessary by dramatic action, we have at length arrived at the notion of the Ideal as a fully defined process. For we are here presented with two distinct spheres of interest, both of which have been rent, as it were, from the harmony they originally possessed, and confront each other in conflict. Such, by the contradiction which is involved in them, make a resolution of the discord necessary. This movement, regarded as a homogeneous whole, belongs no more to the province of the mere situation and its conflicts; we are carried now into that portion of our inquiry to which we have already given the name of the genuine action.
3. The Action
In the development of the subject under consideration, the action immediately follows after the universal world-condition and the particular situation. In considering the action in its external relation to that portion of our inquiry we have just concluded it will be well to bear in mind the result we arrived at, that it presupposes circumstances which necessitate collisions, action, and reaction. It is impossible to determine at what point in the circumstances thus presupposed the action will begin. For that which in one aspect will appear as commencement will very possibly present itself in another as the result of earlier developments, and to that extent will postpone the real starting-point. And in like manner this, too, we may regard as a fact resulting from former collisions. To take an example; in the house of Agamemnon Iphigenia in Tauris expiates the guilt and misfortune of her family. The commencement here of this deliverance on the part of Iphigenia is the fact that Diana carries her to Tauris. This circumstance is, however, merely the result of earlier stages of the story, such as the sacrifice in Aulis, which is again conditioned by the injury done to Menelaus in the rape of Helen by Paris, and so on, ever backward, until we come to the famous egg of Leda. In the same way the events which are the subject-matter of the Iphigenia in Tauris presuppose the murder of Agamemnon, and all the crimes associated with the house of Tantalus. An analysis of much the same character might be applied to the Theban circle of mythos. If an action is to be represented with all the facts that condition it, poetry is the only real art that can attempt this. Such a complete exposition of historical fact has already become, as a certain proverb reminds us, rather a wearisome business; it is, in fact, more within the province of simple prose, and, in contrast with such completeness, poetry will rather consider its true function to be that of taking its audience at once into the heart of the matter. There is a further important reason why it should not be to the interest of art to make its commencement from that point where we find the action under consideration is in the first instance externally conditioned, and it is this: such a point of departure is, after all, only related to the process regarded as natural or historical fact[323]. The association of the action with this commencement merely concerns the empirical unity of its appearance; it may, however, in itself be of no significance at all to the real content of the action. This external unity of historical sequence remains just as it was, however it may chance that one particular person is affected by the involved threads of a varying series of fact. No doubt the entirety of the facts of life, its actions and fatalities, tends to make the individual what he is; but for all that his true nature, the real core of his thoughts and capacities, is manifested in one great situation and action independently of them. It is the progress of these which reveals to us really what a character is made of, a character which previously to their occurrence had been known merely in a nominal way, that is the name of one more fact among the external facts of experience.
We must therefore not look for the commencement of the action in that empirical source of it; we must rather centre the attention upon those circumstances which have taken a hold upon the particular nature with which we are dealing, and created or satisfied its needs; we must, in fact, reveal the particular collision in whose conflict and resolution the action in question consists. Homer, for example, in the "Iliad," makes a start at once with the particular fact on which his entire epic is founded, that is to say, with the wrath of Achilles. He tells us nothing of earlier history of the life of Achilles, but emphasizes at once the critical collision, and, moreover, does it in a way which unfolds a background of the greatest interest to his picture.
The representation, then, of the action as a process complete in itself, in which action, reaction, and resolution are constituent elements, is, above all, the function of the poetic art; all the other arts can at most only seize upon and secure in their presentation one moment of this process. It is quite true that if we direct our attention to that aspect of the medium they employ which is richest, they may appear to have an advantage over poetry; in painting especially[324] we find a control asserted not merely over the entire external form, but also over the expression of external demeanour and the play of such relatively to other objects grouped around it. Such a means of expression, however, cannot compare as an interpreter of truth with human speech. The action itself is the clearest means of unfolding to us individual character, whether we view it relatively to the entire emotional life[325] or the objects of mind. All that a man is at the very root of his nature is first revealed to us through his acts; and action, for the reason that it is an expression of spirit, finds its ultimate expression as such most clearly and concisely in speech alone. When we speak in general terms of human action we are apt to figure to ourselves an incalculable variety of mode. For Art, however, the sphere of action suitable to artistic representation is, generally speaking, limited. Her province is wholly restricted to the type of action which is conformable to the necessary configuration of the Idea.