xcuse these crimes
or passions demand. And yet, for all that, so deeply is this craving
for mysterious excuse implanted within us, so satisfied are we that man
is, at bottom, never as guilty as he may appear to be, that we are
still fully content, when considering passions or crimes of this
nature, to admit some kind of fatal intervention that at least may not
seem too manifestly unacceptable.

This excuse, however, will be sought by us only when the persons guilty
of crimes which are contrary to human nature, when the victims of
misfortunes which they could not foresee, and which seem undeserved to
us, inexplicable, wholly abnormal, are more or less superior beings,
possessed of their fullest share of consciousness. We are loath to
admit that an extraordinary crime or disaster can have a purely human
cause. In spite of all, we persistently seek in some way to explain
the inexplicable. We should not be satisfied if the poet were simply
to say to us: "You see here the wrong that was done by this strong,
this conscious, intelligent man. Behold the misfortune this hero
encountered; this good man's ruin and sorrow. See, too, how this sage
is crushed by tragic, irremediable wickedness. The human causes of
these events are evident to you. I have no other explanation to offer,
unless it be perhaps the indifference of the universe towards the
actions of man." Our dissatisfaction would vanish if he could succeed
in conveying to us the sensation of this indifference, if he could show
it in action; but, as it is the property of indifference never to
interfere or act, that would seem to be more or less unachievable.

16

But when we turn to the by no means inevitable jealousy of Othello, or
to the misfortunes of Romeo and Juliet, which were surely not
preordained, we discover no need of explanation, or of the purifying
influence of fatality. In another drama, Ford's masterpiece, "'Tis
Pity She's a Whore," which revolves around the incestuous love of
Giovanni for his sister Annabella, we are compelled either to turn away
in horror, or to seek the mysterious excuse in its habitual haunt on
the shore of the gulf. But even here, the first painful shock over, we
find it is not imperative. For the love of brother for sister, viewed
from a standpoint sufficiently lofty, is a crime against morality, but
not against human nature; and there is at least some measure of
palliation in the youth of the pair, and in the passion t