rought 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 highest
degree to be respected. It results from this that our pity is in this
case so little modified by any opposite feeling that it burns rather with
a double flame; only the impossibility of reconciling the idea of
misfortune with the idea of a morality so deserving of happiness might
still disturb our sympathetic pleasure, and spread a shade of sadness
over it. It is besides a great point, no doubt, that the discontent
given us by this contradiction does not bear upon our moral being, but is
turned aside to a harmless place, to necessity only; but this blind
subjection to destiny is always afflicting and humiliating for free
beings, who determine themselves. This is the cause that always leaves
something to be wished for even in the best Greek pieces. In all these
pieces, at the bottom of the plot it is always fatality that is appealed
to, and in this there is a knot that cannot be unravelled by our reason,
which wishes to solve everything.

But even this knot