a beautiful humanity is not exhausted by
either, but can only be presented in the union of both.

THE STAGE AS A MORAL INSTITUTION.

Sulzer has remarked that the stage has arisen from an irresistible
longing for the new and extraordinary. Man, oppressed by divided cares,
and satiated with sensual pleasure, felt an emptiness or want. Man,
neither altogether satisfied with the senses, nor forever capable of
thought, wanted a middle state, a bridge between the two states, bringing
them into harmony. Beauty and aesthetics supplied that for him. But a
good lawgiver is not satisfied with discovering the bent of his people--
he turns it to account as an instrument for higher use; and hence he
chose the stage, as giving nourishment to the soul, without straining it,
and uniting the noblest education of the head and heart.

The man who first pronounced religion to be the strongest pillar of the
state, unconsciously defended the stage, when he said so, in its noblest
aspect. The uncertain nature of political events, rendering religion a
necessity, also demands the stage as a moral force. Laws only prevent
disturbances of social life; religion prescribes positive orders
sustaining social order. Law only governs actions; religion controls the
heart and follows thought to the source.

Laws are flexible and capricious; religion binds forever. If religion
has this great sway over man's heart, can it also complete his culture?
Separating the political from the divine element in it, religion acts
mostly on the senses; she loses her sway if the senses are gone. By what
channel does the stage operate? To most men religion vanishes with the
loss of her symbols, images, and problems; and yet they are only pictures
of the imagination, and insolvable problems. Both laws and religion are
strengthened by a union with the stage, where virtue and vice, joy and
sorrow, are thoroughly displayed in a truthful and popular way; where a
variety of providential problems are solved; where all secrets are
unmasked, all artifice ends, and truth alone is the judge, as
incorruptible as Rhadamanthus.

Where the influence of civil laws ends that of the stage begins. Where
venality and corruption blind and bias justice and judgment, and
intimidation perverts its ends, the stage seizes the sword and scales and
pronounces a terrible verdict on vice. The fields of fancy and of
history are open to the stage; great criminals of the past live over
again