verted. Man must live in
society, and consequently submit to rules. And what interest advises,
reason commands: duty calls, and we have to obey the summons. Under
this dual influence has perforce been formed an outward layer of
feelings and ideas which make for permanence, aim at becoming common to
all men, and cover, when they are not strong enough to extinguish it,
the inner fire of individual passions. The slow progress of mankind in
the direction of an increasingly peaceful social life has gradually
consolidated this layer, just as the life of our planet itself has been
one long effort to cover over with a cool and solid crust the fiery
mass of seething metals. But volcanic eruptions occur. And if the earth
were a living being, as mythology has feigned, most likely when in
repose it would take delight in dreaming of these sudden explosions,
whereby it suddenly resumes possession of its innermost nature. Such is
just the kind of pleasure that is provided for us by drama. Beneath the
quiet humdrum life that reason and society have fashioned for us, it
stirs something within us which luckily does not explode, but which it
makes us feel in its inner tension. It offers nature her revenge upon
society. Sometimes it makes straight for the goal, summoning up to the
surface, from the depths below, passions that produce a general
upheaval. Sometimes it effects a flank movement, as is often the case
in contemporary drama; with a skill that is frequently sophistical, it
shows up the inconsistencies of society; it exaggerates the shams and
shibboleths of the social law; and so indirectly, by merely dissolving
or corroding the outer crust, it again brings us back to the inner
core. But, in both cases, whether it weakens society or strengthens
nature, it has the same end in view: that of laying bare a secret
portion of ourselves,--what might be called the tragic element in our
character.

This is indeed the impression we get after seeing a stirring drama.
What has just interested us is not so much what we have been told about
others as the glimpse we have caught of ourselves--a whole host of
ghostly feelings, emotions and events that would fain have come into
real existence, but, fortunately for us, did not. It also seems as if
an appeal had been made within us to certain ancestral memories
belonging to a far-away past--memories so deep-seated and so foreign to
our present life that this latter, for a moment, seems something unrea