and sculpture, are regarded merely in the light of imitations, owing their origin to the physical constitution of man, which causes him to delight both in imitating himself, and in beholding the imitations of others; and the object of this talent, when exerted in the way of tragedy, is repeatedly said to be merely the pleasure arising from pathetic imitation". With the exception of the doubtful passage under consideration, there is nothing to show that he looked to a moral end as being the object of the drama, any more than it is that of other imitative arts; and this, notwithstanding that its very nature renders it infinitely more capable of being so directed. The whole question, therefore, hangs on the interpretation of the single word κάθαρσις.

Twining, after Heinsius, is of opinion that Aristotle is here tacitly insinuating a defence of imitative poetry (he is clearly not openly stating one), from the objections urged against it by Plato in the tenth book of his Republic". The tenor of Plato's argument certainly lends some little colour to this hypothesis. Contemplating, like Aristotle, mimetic poetry as turning chiefly on the happiness or misery resulting from human actions', he goes on to ascribe to the passions, thus raised by the mimic scene, an influence on the conduct of private life, and a nourishing of those softer emotions which are calculated to unfit us for the severe and manly duties of a citizen. So far the charge relates to the sympathetic emotions, to the raising of which Aristotle confines the purposes of tragedy. Plato, however, does not stop here, but includes the more violent and active passions, as lust, anger, &c. The defence, therefore, to have been complete, should have embraced these objections also. But further, Plato's charge is, not that these emotions should be excited in a gross or unrefined state, but that they should be excited at all. He would banish them entirely from the soul; and therefore the soul ( x) is continually introduced as the object of purgation. But it has been shewn that Aristotle alludes only to the káeapots of such passions or affections

5 See cap. xiii. 13. cap. xiv. 4 & 5. cap. xxiii. 1, &c. (Hermann's Ed.)

6 See his 45th Note. Vol. II. p. 14.

* Πράττοντας ἀνθρώπους μιμεῖται ἡ μιμητικὴ βιαίους ἢ ἑκουσίας πράξεις καὶ ἐκ τοῦ πράττειν ἢ εὖ οἰομένους ἢ κακῶς πεπραγμέναι· καὶ ἐν τούτοις δὴ πᾶσιν ἢ λυπουμένους ἢ χαιρόντας. Resp.

Lib. x. 603 D.

8 Καὶ περὶ ἀφροδισίων δὴ καὶ θυμοῦ καὶ περὶ πάντων τῶν ἐπιθυμητικών τε καὶ λυπηρῶν καὶ ἡδέων ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ ἅ δὴ φαμὲν πάσῃ πράξει ἡμῖν· ἕπεσθαι, ὅτι τοιαῦτα ἡμᾶς ἡ ποιητικὴ μίμησις ἐργάζεται τρέφει γὰρ ταῦτα ἄρδουσα, déov avxμeiv. Resp. Lib. x. p. 606. D.

of the soul. So far from banishing them, all his rules are contrived for the purpose of exciting them in the highest degree. And had he thought that the result of such a process would have been like a sort of homœopathy, to expel such passions from the subject of them, he was surely bound to do more than leave such a doctrine to be inferred by the reader-a doctrine not only diametrically opposed to Plato's, but also to common sense and ordinary experience.

But the method which Twining himself has adopted to establish the true meaning of Kábaporis, and which is the same unexceptionable one which Lessing made use of to explain poßos and cos, leads, apparently, to the overthrow of his own hypothesis. For this purpose he refers to the 8th book of Aristotle's Politics (cap. vii.) where the term is, in some degree, illustrated and explained. The Kábapors, indeed, there alluded to is to be effected by music; but as the passions which are its object are fear and pity as well as enthusiasm, we may infer that the meaning which suits that passage will also be applicable to the present; especially as Aristotle there refers to a passage in the Poetic-either never written, or lost among the ruins of time-for a fuller explanation of the term. Now it is there explained by, pleasurable relief— κουφίζεσθαι μεθ ̓ Kovpíšeσbaι μeľ ÿdovs. No moral end is adverted to, but simply the pleasure arising from the process. Nay, so far from this being the case, κάθαρσις is there expressly opposed to παιδεία instruction or improvement. Φαμὲν δ ̓ οὐ μιας ἕνεκεν ὠφελείας τῇ μουσικῇ χρῆσθαι δεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πλειόνων χάριν· καὶ γὰρ παιδείας ἕνεκεν καὶ καθάρσεως· τί δὲ λέγομεν τὴν κάθαρσιν, νῦν μὲν ἁπλῶς, πάλιν δ ̓ ἐν τοῖς

περὶ Ποιητικῆς ἐροῦμεν σαφέστερον. But this part of the passage Twining has very prudently thought proper to suppress. And in like manner in the preceding chapter κáðapσis is opposed to μάθησις 9.

On these grounds it seems that Batteux arrived at a perfectly just conclusion in confining Aristotle's meaning to the immediate pleasure of the emotion, and in making that pleasure spring from imitation. Now what are Twining's objections to this conclusion? They are

First, the general one (which he calls "a difficulty not easily surmounted," Vol. II. p. 13), that "it supposes all the purgation

9 ἔτι δ ̓ οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ αὐλὸς ἠθικὸν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὀργιαστικὸν, ὥστε πρὸς τοῖς τοις ούτοις αὐτῷ καίροις χρηστέον ἐν οἷς ἡ

θεωρία κάθαρσιν μᾶλλον δύναται ἢ μάτ Onow. Pol. Lib. v111. cap. 6.

to consist merely in rendering the feeling of the passion pleasurable; not in any good effect which the habit of such emotion may produce in correcting, refining, or moderating, such passions when excited by real objects." This, however, is merely saying in other words that he objects to Batteux's interpretation, and supporting his own rather by what he conceives Aristotle ought to have said, than by what he did say. For he admits that "Aristotle has not said any thing directly pointing to such effect," and that "the phrase κουφίζεσθαι μεθ ̓ ἡδονῆς does indeed appear to express the present effect only;" yet he thinks that "the whole turn and cast of his expression (in the passage from the Politics) is such as leads one naturally to conclude that it was his meaning." The words from which this conclusion is deduced, are κáðapois, larpeía, ἐλεήμονας, φοβητικούς, παθητικούς. With regard to the first, Aristotle himself explains it by κουφίζεσθαι μεθ ̓ ἡδονῆς. That the meaning of iarpeía in that passage was not very widely different from that of Kábapσis, we may fairly infer from their being coupled together —ὥσπερ ἰατρείας τυχόντας καὶ καθάρσεως. But there are other turns in the phrase which would lead us to conclude that its operation was regarded as only temporary. Thus we find, öτav xρnowvτaι ὅταν χρήσωνται τοῖς ἐξοργιάζουσι τὴν ψυχὴν μέλεσι Whensoever they may make use of;" pointing plainly to repetition, and therefore no permanent effect. And even the words ελεήμονας, παθητικούς, φοβητικούς which Twining appeals to in confirmation of his idea, as "being all words expressive of habitual excess, requiring correction and moderation,' would seem, if they prove any thing, rather to make against his notion. For, if these passions are habitual and constantly recurring, it shews that the κάθαρσις (or ἰατρεία) has not permanently removed them, but only afforded a temporary relief. They are in the nature of chronic disorders which cannot thoroughly be cured, but which may be palliated when the fit is on.

66

But, secondly, the argument on which Twining mainly relies as overthrowing Batteux's idea is, "That Aristotle is here, as Heinsius and others have well observed, evidently combating the doctrine of Plato, whose great objection to tragedy was, that it feeds and inflames the passions." The force of this argument having been already examined, it is unnecessary again to touch upon it; and therefore it will suffice to remark, first-that this, so far from being evident, is a mere conjecture resting on no very tenable grounds; and secondly, that it is in the nature of a petitio principii, since it assumes that, by kálapois, Aristotle meant the freeing of the soul from certain passions.

Upon the whole matter, it will, perhaps, appear, that Aristotle did not attribute any moral effect to tragedy, but regarded solely the pleasure which it is calculated to produce as a work of art; and that by the κáðapois (or purgation) of pity, fear, and the like passions, he contemplated only the pleasurable relief which follows on the excitement of them. For that such emotions, when awakened by imitative poetry, are capable of affording pleasure, is an undoubted fact in our constitution, however we may be puzzled to account for it.

The reader will see that the conclusions arrived at in the foregoing paper make no pretence to originality, but are merely selected from amongst those of various critics. Thus Lessing is followed in the interpretation of λeos and póßos; Twining in that οι φιλάνθρωπον ; and Batteux in that of κάθαρσις. And it is for him to decide whether this selection brings us nearer to the probable meaning of Aristotle than the version of any single commentator.

of

One objection is obvious enough. The piλáveρwπov, it is said, may be excited where fear and pity are not; how, then, can it be called one of those passions which are purged by their means? But this would be to press the words of the definition too closely. To excite fear and pity, and to afford them a pleasurable relief, is the proper end of tragedy, and therefore they alone are mentioned in the definition. To have included not only its main, but also its collateral and less proper objects, the definition must have 'been extended to an absurd and inconvenient length; and something must be allowed for the brevity of a treatise that is evidently incomplete. We may, however, infer, that the Kábapors of the emotions included under the words τῶν τοιούτων παθηματων, was to be effected in the same manner as that of fear and pity—namely, by the very exercise and excitement of them.

Since the foregoing pages were prepared for publication, the writer of them has had the pleasure of perusing an essay, or rather a series of essays, upon the Poetic, from the pen of Professor Von Raumer, published in the Historisches Taschenbuch (Dritter Jahrgang 1842). The writer was glad to see that the accomplished author of them also adopts Lessing's true and ingenious explanation of eos and póßos; but as he affixes a different meaning to kábapors than the one sought to be established in the above paper, and maintains that a moral end was contemplated by Aristotle, it will, perhaps, be allowable to advert, so

far as time and space will permit, to the more prominent points in his argument

10

Even admitting that κábaporis meant a permanent moderation of the passions, still it is clear that, if Aristotle considered tragedy as working upon fear and pity alone, or, at most on those and a few similar passions-there is very nearly an end of the question, as to its moral effect: for, of all passions, these are the most slightly connected with morality, and have but a slender influence on our social duties, unless it were in the visionary Republic of Plato. M. Von Raumer could not but see this; and as the whole point turns upon how we construe the words T τοιούτων παθημάτων, it becomes a capital object to determine their sense. M. Von Raumer states two interpretations of them: one, of those who take them to signify the like and all other passions; and another, of those who, with Lessing, restrict them to fear and pity alone; and thinks it possible that both may be reconciled 11.

He

But it may be remarked, that this statement contains, not two but three interpretations; viz. "these and the like passions," "these and all other passions," and "these two passions alone," and though one of the first two contains a limited, the other an unlimited predicate, yet M. Von Raumer runs them both into one. justifies this by an appeal to certain passages of the Rhetoric and Poetic (in his note); but these do not seem to bear him out. In the quotation from the Rhetoric (II. i. 8.) ὀργή, ἔλεος, φόβος, καὶ ὅσσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα, Aristotle is alluding to such passions as may influence the judgment of mankind; and as anger may effect this, as well as pity or fear, they are, in that respect, of one kind, and may be classed together. So, again, in the second quotation, B. II. xii. 2.) λέγω δὲ πάθη μὲν ὀργὴν, ἐπιθυμίαν, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα, he is merely alluding to their general nature, as passions; and the rà Tolavra means nothing more than an et cetera. The same remark applies to the passages quoted from the Rhetoric, 1. xi.

10 Had Aristotle used the word κálαρσis in its ordinary sense, he would hardly have referred us (in the passage of the Politics viii. 7) to the Poetic for an explanation of it.

11 Warum soll die Tragödie bloss Mitleid und Furcht, und nicht alle Leidenschaften reinigen? Sie soll, laut Aristoteles, alle reinigen, sagen diejenigen, welche die Worte τῶν τοιούτων übersetzen: "und die ähnlichen, die vorgestellten, alle andere Leidenschaften." Ihnen widerspricht Lessing, nebst allen denen welche übersetzen oder deuten: "eben dieser, dieser beiden Leidenschaften, Mitleid und Furcht." Wir glauben

es ist eine Verständigung und Ausgleichung beider Meinungen möglich." pp. 168, 169.

To which the following note is appended: "Eine Stelle (Rhet. i. 11) wo es heisst: ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ μανθάνειν τε ἡδὺ καὶ τὸ θαυμάζειν, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ἀνάγκη ndéa eivai, &c., liesse sich bei der philologischen Erklärung wohl benutzen und für diese erste Ansicht geltend machen, desgl. ii. l. 8. ὀργή, ἔλεος, φόβος, καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα. Und, λέγω δὲ πάθη μὲν, ὀργήν, ἐπιθυμιάν καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα. ii. 12. 2. ἔλέον, ἢ φόβον, ἢ ὀργὴν, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα, Poet. xix. 4.