of "Rodogune," or Franz
Moor in "The Robbers," are so many proofs in support of this assertion.
A poet who understands his real interest will not bring about the
catastrophe through a malicious will which proposes misfortune as its
end; nor, and still less, by want of understanding: but rather through
the imperious force of circumstances. If this catastrophe does not come
from moral sources, but from outward things, which have no volition and
are not subject to any will, the pity we experience is more pure, or at
all events it is not weakened by any idea of moral incongruity. But then
the spectator cannot be spared the disagreeable feeling of an incongruity
in the order of nature, which can alone save in such a case moral
propriety. Pity is far more excited when it has for its object both him
who suffers and him who is the primary cause of the suffering. This can
only happen when the latter has neither elicited our contempt nor our
hatred, but when he has been brought against his inclination to become
the cause of this misfortune. It is a singular beauty of the German play
of "Iphigenia" that the King of Tauris, the only obstacle who thwarts the
wishes of Orestes and of his sister, never loses our esteem, and that we
love him to the end.

There is something superior even to this kind of emotion; this is the
case when the cause of the misfortune not only is in no way repugnant to
morality, but only becomes possible through morality, and when the
reciprocal suffering comes simply from the idea that a fellow-creature
has been made to suffer. This is the situation of Chimene and Rodrigue
in "The Cid" of Pierre Corneille, which is undeniably in point of
intrigue the masterpiece of the tragic stage. Honor and filial love arm
the hand of Rodrigue against the father of her whom he loves, and his
valor gives him the victory. Honor and filial love rouse up against him,
in the person of Chimene, the daughter of his victim, an accuser and a
formidable persecutor. Both act in opposition to their inclination, and
they tremble with anguish at the thought of the misfortune of the object
against which they arm themselves, in proportion as zeal inspires them
for their duty to inflict this misfortune. Accordingly both conciliate
our esteem in the highest sense, as they accomplish a moral duty at the
cost of inclination; both inflame our pity in the highest degree, because
they suffer spontaneously for a motive that renders them in the hig