him peculiarly strange.

What are we to say of the world which contains these five beings,
Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall, Oswald? I have tried to answer this
question in our first lecture; for in its representation of evil _King
Lear_ differs from the other tragedies only in degree and manner. It is
the tragedy in which evil is shown in the greatest abundance; and the
evil characters are peculiarly repellent from their hard savagery, and
because so little good is mingled with their evil. The effect is
therefore more startling than elsewhere; it is even appalling. But in
substance it is the same as elsewhere; and accordingly, although it may
be useful to recall here our previous discussion, I will do so only by
the briefest statement.

On the one hand we see a world which generates terrible evil in
profusion. Further, the beings in whom this evil appears at its
strongest are able, to a certain extent, to thrive. They are not
unhappy, and they have power to spread misery and destruction around
them. All this is undeniable fact.

On the other hand this evil is _merely_ destructive: it founds nothing,
and seems capable of existing only on foundations laid by its opposite.
It is also self-destructive: it sets these beings at enmity; they can
scarcely unite against a common and pressing danger; if it were averted
they would be at each other's throats in a moment; the sisters do not
even wait till it is past. Finally, these beings, all five of them, are
dead a few weeks after we see them first; three at least die young; the
outburst of their evil is fatal to them. These also are undeniable
facts; and, in face of them, it seems odd to describe _King Lear_ as 'a
play in which the wicked prosper' (Johnson).

Thus the world in which evil appears seems to be at heart unfriendly to
it. And this impression is confirmed by the fact that the convulsion of
this world is due to evil, mainly in the worst forms here considered,
partly in the milder forms which we call the errors or defects of the
better characters. Good, in the widest sense, seems thus to be the
principle of life and health in the world; evil, at least in these worst
forms, to be a poison. The world reacts against it violently, and, in
the struggle to expel it, is driven to devastate itself.

If we ask why the world should generate that which convulses and wastes
it, the tragedy gives no answer, and we are trying to go beyond tragedy
in seeking one. But the world,