beauty in statue or painting by the impossibility of possession. The world of art is thus thought of as one of pure contemplation, a place of escape from the difficulties, the pangs, and the incompleteness that beset all action. It is true that the imagined world creates special conditions for emotion, and that the will does not act in respect to that world; but does this imply any radical difference in the emotion, or does it draw after it the consequence that the will does not act at all? Checked emotion, emotion dying in its own world, is common in life; and so, too, is contemplation as a mode of approach to beauty, as in landscape, or even in human figures where there is no thought of any other possession than the presence of beauty before the eye and soul; escape, too, into a sphere of impersonality, in the love of nature or the spectacle of life, is a common refuge. Art does not give us new faculties, generate unknown habits, or in any way change our nature; it presents to us a new world only, toward which our mental behaviour is the same as in the rest of life. Why, then, should emotion, the most powerful element in life, be regarded as a fruitless thing in that ideal art which has thus far appeared as a life in purer energy and higher intensity of being than life itself?

The distinction between emotion depicted and that felt in response must be kept in mind to avoid confusion, for both sorts are present at the same time. In literature emotion may be set forth as a phase of the character or as a term in the plot; it may be a single moment of high feeling as in a lyric or a prolonged experience as in a drama; it may be shown in the pure type of some one passion as in Romeo, or in the various moods of a rich nature as in Hamlet; but, whether it be predominant or subordinate in any work, it is there treated in the same way and for the same purpose as other materials of life. What happens when literature gives us, for instance, examples of moral experience? It informs the mind of the normal course of certain lines of action, of the inevitable issues of life; it breeds habits of right thinking in respect to these; it is educative, and though we do not act at once upon this knowledge, when the occasion arises we are prepared to act. So, when literature presents examples of emotional experience, it informs us of the nature of emotion, its causes, occasions, and results, its value in character, its influence on action, the modes of its expression; it breeds habits of right thinking in respect to these, and is educative; and, just as in the preceding case, though we do not act at once upon this knowledge, when the occasion arises we are prepared to act. Concurrently with emotions thus objectively presented 

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