The course of events again, so far as they stand in direct connection with human life, may be thought of as the expression of the individual’s own will, or of that of his environment.  The will of the environment may be divided into three varieties, the will of nature, the will of other men, and the will of God.  In each case it is will embodied in events.  If these ideas be all merged in the conception of the world as a totality whose course is the unfolding of one Divine will operant throughout it and called Fate or Providence, then the individual will, through which, as through nature also, the Divine will works, is only its servant.  Action so conceived, the march of events under some heavenly power working through the mass of human will which it overrules in conjunction with its own more comprehensive purposes, is epic action; in it characters are subordinate to the main progress of the action, they are only terms in the action; however free they may be apparently, considered by themselves, that freedom is within such limits as to allow entire certainty of result, its mutations are included in the calculation of the Divine will.  The action of the Aeneid is of this nature:  a grand series of destined events worked out through human agency to fulfil the plan of the ruler of all things in heaven and earth.  On the other hand, if the course of events be more narrowly attended to within the limits of the individual’s own activity, as the expression primarily and significantly of his personal will, then the successive acts are subordinate to the character; they are terms of the character which is thereby exhibited; they externalize the soul.  Action, so conceived, is dramatic action.  If in the course of events there arises a conflict between the will of the individual and that of his environment, whether nature, man, or God, then the seed of tragedy, specifically, is present; this conflict is the essential idea of tragedy.  In all these varieties of action, the scene is the external world; plot lies in that world, and sets forth the order, the causal principle, obtaining in it.

It is necessary, however, to refine upon this statement of the matter.  The course of external events, in so far as it affects one person, whether as proceeding from or reacting upon him, reveals character, and has meaning as an interpretation of inward life.  It is a series outward indeed, but parallel with the states of will, intellect, and emotion which make up the consciousness of the character; and it is interesting humanly only as a mirror of them.  It is not the murderous blow, but the depraved will; not the pale victim, but the shocked conscience; not the muttered prayer, the frantic penance, the suicide, but remorse working itself out, that hold our attention.  Plot here manifests the law of character outwardly; but the human reality lies within, and to be seen requires the illumination which only our own hearts can give.  All fiction is such a shadowing forth of the soul.  The constancy, the intimacy, the profundity with which Shakspere felt this, from the earliest syllables of his art, and the frequency with which he dwells upon it, mark a characteristic of genius.  Says Richard II:—­