to the supernatural moral judgment; that this judgment is perpetually being expressed explicitly in the works themselves; and, which is far more important, that it is always pre-supposed in us.  In other words, these supreme presentations of life are presentations of men struggling, or failing to struggle, not after natural happiness, but after supernatural right; and it is always pre-supposed on our part that we admit this struggle to be the one important thing.  And this importance, we shall see further, is based, not on the external and the social consequences of conduct, but essentially and primarily on its internal and its personal consequences.

In Macbeth, for instance, the main incident, the tragic-colouring matter of the drama, is the murder of Duncan.  But in what aspect of this does the real tragedy lie?  Not in the fact that Duncan is murdered, but in the fact that Macbeth is the murderer.  What appals us, what purges our passions with pity and with terror as we contemplate it, is not the external, the social effect of the act, but the personal, the internal effect of it.  As for Duncan, he is in his grave; after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.  What our minds are made to dwell upon is not that Duncan shall sleep for ever, but that Macbeth shall sleep no more; it is not the extinction of a dynasty, but the ruin of a character.

We see in Hamlet precisely the same thing.  The action there that our interest centres in, is the hero’s struggle to conform to an internal personal standard of right, utterly irrespective of use to others, or of natural happiness to himself.  In the course of this struggle, indeed, he does nothing but ruin the happiness around him; and this ruin adds greatly to the pathos of the spectacle.  But we are not indignant with Hamlet, as being the cause of it.  We should have been indignant rather with him if the case had been reversed, and if, instead of sacrificing social happiness for the sake of personal right, he had sacrificed personal right for the sake of social happiness.

In Antigone the case is just the same, only there its nature is yet more distinctly exhibited.  We have for the central interest the same personal struggle after right, not after use or happiness; and one of the finest passages in that whole marvellous drama is a distinct statement by the heroine that this is so.  The one rule she says, that she is resolved to live by, and not live by only, but if needs be to die for, is no human rule, is no standard of man’s devising, nor can it be modified to suit our changing needs; but it is

The unwritten and the enduring laws of God, Which are not of to-day nor yesterday, But live from everlasting, and none breathes Who knows them, whence begotten.

In Measure for Measure and Faust we can see the matter reduced to a narrower issue still.  In both these plays we can see at once that one moral