The outworn idea of poetic justice is yielding place nowadays to the infinitely more lofty ideal of courageous loyalty to the obligations of life. Nature has no morality: death, as Weismann put it, is only another means of economizing life. The poor are consoled for the injustice of their destitute state in this world by the preacher's assurance that they will receive in the next an exceeding great reward. But the drama, which reflects life, is limited after all to this mundane sphere; and the consolations of prophecy avail not to enable us to meet the inevitable obligations of existence.

"Under the bludgeonings of Chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed-

that is the true, high spirit of our time. We thank whatever Gods may be for our unconquerable souls-recognizing that justice rests, not upon any poetic principle, but within ourselves. We know now that things will not come out right in the long run unless we ourselves labor to that consummate end. Contemporary literature, no matter of what type, progressively exhibits the faith of the pragmatic modern man that we shall create a world where justice reigns only when we ourselves shall embody that justice. The new content of contemporary life and art is epitomized in the two words: Social conscientiousness.

In the words of a great prophet of the new social idealism in art: "However differently in form people belonging to our Christian world may define the destiny of man; whether they see it in human progress in whatever sense of the words, in the union of all men in a socialistic realm, or in the establishment of a commune; whether they look forward to the union of mankind under the guidance of one universal Church, or to the federation of the world-however various in form their definitions of the destination of human life may be, all men in our times already admit that the highest well-being attainable by men is to be reached by their union with one another."

X

THE NEWER TENDENCIES

"The only subject-matter of the art of the future will be either feelings drawing men towards union, or such as already unite them; and the forms of art will be such as will be open to every one. And therefore, the ideal of excellence in the future will not be the exclusiveness of feeling, accessible only to some, but, on the contrary, its universality."-LYOF TOLSTOY.

As we view in perspective the drama to-day in Europe, in Great Britain, and in the United States, we shall not miss the significance of the moment in describing it as the moment of experimentalism. We have witnessed the rise and decline of naturalism, the persistence of realism and its final triumphant domination of the drama as of all other forms of literature, the first groping tentatives of symbolism and mysticism. The period through which we have passed and the period through which we are now passing are distinguished by two remarkable traits. Modern literature is distinguished by evolution in form, revolution in spirit. The motto of the revolution may be found in Ibsen's defiant challenge: "My book is poetry; and if it is not it will be." The con

temporary dramatist boldly affirms that the conception of drama shall be widened, broadened, deepened-shall be made to conform to the practice of modern creative art.

An axiom of dramatic criticism which has remained barren of creative result in the past is the axiom that the drama is the culminating synthesis of all the arts, the esthetic integration of literature, music, painting, and sculpture. The true explanation of the sterility of this axiom is found in the neglect of the dramatist to recognize in the sister arts anything more than auxiliary, ancillary aids in the fortification of emotive, decorative, and plastic effects. In a strictly economic sense, architecture throughout all history has exercised a despotic tyranny over creative individual genius. Investigation now persistently directed toward the drama as a form of art dependent in some measure upon the physical exigencies of the theater is a characteristic feature of contemporary dramatic criticism.

No longer does the dramatic critic venture to consider the drama solely as a branch of literature. Modern research and the spirit of contemporary experimentalism compel the recognition of the drama as, in the mathematical sense, a function of the theater. The fertile germs of the modern spirit are found in the subtle analysis of Lodovico Castelvetro, the Italian critic of the