erritory, where it is
possible to obtain some perception, or _Ahnung_ as a German would say,
of the operation in the life of States of a law which bears directly
upon the problem before us.

Sec. 2. THE LAW OF TRAGEDY AS APPLIED TO HISTORY

In the history of past empires, their rise and decline, in the history
of this Empire of Britain from the coming of Cerdic and Cynric to the
present momentous crisis, there reveals itself a force, an influence,
not without analogy to the influence ascribed by Aristotle to Attic
Tragedy. The function of Tragedy he defined as the purification of the
soul by Compassion and by Terror--+di eleou kai phobou katharsis+.[3]
Critics and commentators still debate the precise meaning of the
definition; but my interpretation, or application of it to the present
inquiry is this, that by compassion and terror the soul is exalted
above compassion and terror, is lifted above the touch of pity or of
fear, attaining to a state like that portrayed by Dante--

Io son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale,
Che la vostra miseria non mi tange
Ne fiamma d' esto incendio non m' assale.[4]

In the tragic hour the soul is thus vouchsafed a deeper vision,
discerns a remoter, serener, mightier ideal which henceforth it pursues
unalterably, undeviatingly, as if swept on by a law of Nature itself.
Sorrow, thus conceived, is the divinest thought within the Divine mind,
and when manifested in that most complex of unities, the consciousness
of a State, the soul of a race, it assumes proportions that by their
very vagueness inspire but a deeper awe, presenting a study the
loftiest that can engage the human intellect.

Genius for empire in a race supplies that impressiveness with which a
heroic or royal origin invests the protagonist of a tragedy, an
Agamemnon or a Theseus. Hence, though traceable in all, the operation
of this law, analogous to the law of Tragedy, displays itself in the
history of imperial cities or nations in grander and more imposing
dimensions. Nowhere, for instance, are its effects exhibited in a more
impressive manner than in the fall of Imperial Athens--most poignantly
perhaps in that hour of her history which transforms the character of
Athenian politics, when amid the happy tumult of the autumn vintage,
the choric song, the procession, the revel of the Oschophoria, there
came a rumour of the disaster at Syracuse, which, swiftly silenced,
started to life again, a wild surmise, then