In Homer[360], for example, every hero is the living focus of a whole congeries of qualities and traits. Achilles is the most youthful hero in the host, but his youthful exuberance is represented as quite compatible with all other entirely human qualities, and Homer unfolds before us this variety through situations which offer the finest contrast. He loves his mother, Thetis, he weeps for Briseis, when she is snatched from him, and his violated sense of honour drives him into the conflict with Agamemnon, which is the original fount of all the events that follow after it in the "Iliad." Add to this he is the truest friend of Patroclus and Antilochus; moreover, he is the most blooming, fiery youth, swift of foot, brave, yet full of reverence for gray hairs; the faithful Phoenix and trusty servant are at his feet, and at the funeral of Patroclus the hoary Nestor is treated with the highest deference and honour. And, in contrast to all this, Achilles is represented as inflammable to a degree, effervescent, revengeful, and full of the most brutal austerity when face to face with the foe. He binds the slain Hector to his chariot, trails the corpse in fell hunter's fashion three times round the walls of Troy; yet stays his anger when the old Priam comes to his tent, and, as he thinks within his heart of his own old father, reaches to the weeping king the hand which has done to death his son. Of Achilles we may well exclaim: "here is a man indeed, and human nature, ay, noble human too, in all the length and breadth of its riches, is unveiled before us in this one man!" It is just the same with all the other Homeric characters—-Odysseus, Diomedes, Ajax, Agamemnon, Hector, Andromache—every one of them is a whole, a world in itself, a complete and living member of humanity, something very different at least from your allegorical abstract of some one particular trait. What frosty, faded personalities, despite all their vigour and rigour, are the horned Siegfried, Hagen of Troy, nay, even Volker, the musician, in comparison.
It is this variety of characterization, and this alone, which can give to a character the interest of life. At the same time this fulness of detail must really appear as included in the personality itself, that is, it must not strike us as the mere diversion, passing freak, or suggestion of an excited fancy, such as we see in the case of children who will take up everything in turn, and even make something out of it, yet, for all that, are without essential character. Character in this latter sense will penetrate and make itself a home in the most diverse phases of the emotional life of man, will steep itself to overflowing with that abundance, and, at the same time, not remain thus immersed, but throughout all the congeries of interest, objects, qualities, all the traits that distinguish or arrest it, maintain the form of its self-exclusive and alert subjectivity intact.
For the representation of such exhaustive types of character epic poetry is, above all others, adapted, dramatic and lyrical poetry are less so.
(β) Art, however, will not be content to remain at the point which the course of our inquiry has reached, namely, the notion of character as a mere congeries of traits. For the object we have before us now is the Ideal in its specific determination, and singularity, or, rather, concrete individuality, are both of them prominent and necessary features. Action, more than anything else, in its conflict and reaction is impossible without some restriction and clear definition of form. For this reason the heroes of dramatic poetry are for the most part of simpler definition than those of epic poetry. And the way we get at a clear definition is through some pathos out of the ordinary which is so portrayed as to make some essential trait of character stand out in bold relief, and itself to be the stimulus to particular objects, resolves, and actions. If, however, this simplification is carried so far that any character appears as though it were pared down to a mere shadow-like semblance of any form of pathos, such as love or honour, all real vitality and spiritual depth must necessarily vanish, and the representation, as is not unfrequently the case in the French school of drama for this very reason, can only offer us a cold and jejune result. We may therefore conclude that in this aspect of particularity the prominent feature which asserts itself pre-eminently will be this, that within the borders of this very limitation the fulness of life is completely preserved, so that the personality in question has free scope allowed it for further expansion in many directions, a power to adapt itself to every variety of situation, and, in short, is able to unfold and express in every possible way the wealth of a truly complete spiritual life[361]. Despite the supreme simplicity of their pathos the characters in the Sophoclean drama possess this intrinsic vitality. We may indeed compare them in their plastic self-seclusion to the figures of sculpture. For it is also quite possible that sculpture express very various delineations of character despite all the tenacity of its definition. In contrast to the bluster of overpowering passion, which concentrates all its forces upon one single point, it exhibits out of its tranquillity and speechlessness that predominant neutrality, which peacefully envelops all powers within itself; but this unperturbed unity does not, however, persist in any indissoluble union with mere formal definition, but, rather, in virtue of its beauty, suffers at the same time the birth-throes of all that pertains to it to disrobe itself as through a cloud of immediate possibility into fresh relations of every variety. In the finest figures of sculpture we behold a tranquil depth, which unfolds, as it were, the pregnant womb, from which all other potencies may be born. In contrast with sculpture it is yet of more vital importance to the arts of painting, music, and poetry, that they should display the inmost complexity of character, and real artists of every age have recognized this. In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," for example, the most pathetic characteristic of Romeo is his love: but he is also placed before us under relations of the greatest contrast, whether it be in reference to his parents, his friends, his love troubles, or his affair of honour in which he fights with Tybalt, his attitude of deference and trust to the monk, nay, even on the verge of the grave his conversation with the apothecary, from whom he purchases the poison. Throughout he is the same worthy and noble man of deep emotions. In the same way the character of Juliet is unfolded throughout the range of her relations to father, mother, nurse, the Count Paris, and father Lawrence. And, despite of this, she is as deeply immersed[362] in her one preoccupation as she is in every one of these situations, and her entire character is transpierced with and carried away by the one single emotion, her passionate love for her lover, which is as deep and broad as the unbounded sea, so that it is but the simple truth when she exclaims, "The more I give, the more I possess, both are infinite."
From all this it appears that even when there is but one pathos visible, it must unfold itself as the wealth of all it possesses. And this is what really happens even in lyrical poetry, where we find the pathos is not attached to actions determined by positive circumstances and conditions. For in this latter case the pathos can only assert itself as the spiritual state of an emotional nature otherwise complete in itself, which is, that is to say, free to express itself in any other conceivable circumstance and situation which may confront it. The use of words of vital significance, an imagination which can associate itself with all the world, can restore the Past to the Present, can transform the entire external environment of man's life to a symbolical expression of his spirit, can bravely adventure into the depths of comprehensive thought, and, while doing so, reveal an exuberant, capacious, clear, exalted, and noble nature—a wealth of character such as this, freely expressing such a world, is a prize indeed for the Lyric Muse. No doubt a purely logical reflection may find it impossible that such, variety of character should co-exist with a masterful clearness of type. We may be asked, for instance, in reference to the heroic character of Achilles, whose strength of youth is the pre-eminent, trait of his beauty, how it is possible to reconcile the tender heart so manifest in his relations to his father and his friend with the cruel act of revenge wherewith he drags Hector round the walls. Precisely the same kind of inconsequence is to be met with in Shakespeare's clowns. They are, with scarcely an exception, bubbling over with wit and the humour of genius. And, no doubt, there will always be fools enough to ask us how men thus spiritually gifted could ever betake themselves to such tomfooleries. The truth is that the reflection of the formal logic is sure to emphasize one aspect of a character, and conclude that the entire man is minted under its impression to the exclusion of all others. To such everything that asserts itself as alien to the hallmark of its beggarly mintage can only appear as an inconsequence. In the truely rational contemplation of the whole as distinct from the parts, and thereby of the living thing, that which appears as inconsequent will be precisely that which brings all into fit co-ordination. For our humanity is just this very paradox. We have not merely to carry[363] the contradictions of our complex nature, but to suffer the load[363] with patience, and throughout prove staunch to our burden.
(γ) We may conclude, then, that character must fuse together its particularity in the element of its spiritual substance; it should possess a definite type, and at the same time retain in this distinction the force and stability of a single fully self-consistent pathos. Where we find our humanity represented without such a centre of unity, the different aspects of such variety it may possess will lose all relative meaning or significance and fall away from each other. In art we shall find that what we distinguish in our conception of personality as infinite or the Divine is just this self-consistency in unity. If this view be a just one it is obvious that such characterizations as stability and determination are of great importance in the ideal representation of character. And we shall only obtain such a result, as already observed, in so far as the universality of the powers inherent in our humanity are permitted to transpierce the mere particularity of the individual character and, by virtue of the unity thus set up, create a subjective and at the same time individual life which supplies its own principle of unity and self-identity.
Such a condition is all important, and we must now advert to a number of artistic compositions, more particularly of later times, in express relation to it.
In the "Cid" of Corneille, for example, the collision between the opposing principles of love and honour is a match, no doubt, of brilliant effects. A pathos of this kind, involved as it is in the opposition of distinct forces may, no doubt, be the operative ground of conflicts; but when we find such portrayed as the spiritual struggle of one and the same character, though such antagonism may very readily supply us with the material for brilliant rhetoric and effective monologue, the cataclysm which is here presented in the emotional life of one person driven thus by turns from its abstract subjection to honour into the equally abstract one of love, and forthwith hounded back again, is not favourable to the portrayal of a character of genuine stability and homogeneousness.
It is equally inconsistent with the delineation of resolute personality when a leading character, already under the predominant influence of some specific pathos, is portrayed as one overmastered by the direction or persuasion of a subordinate character, such is thus enabled to shift the responsibility upon other shoulders. This is what actually takes place in the "Phedra" of Racine when the mind of Phedra is depicted as entirely motived by the words of Oenone. A character of real distinction acts out of its own initiative, and will not suffer the views of a mere stranger to be that which determines its own resolution. Only when action is the direct result of its own reflections do we get that clear relation between personal initiative and the consequent result which carries with it the full weight of guilt or responsibility.