The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

the individual.
I would give as an example of what I mean Ernst
Toller’s Massemensch. I do not maintain that this
work is as good as the best that has been done in
the best ages in the past, but I do maintain that it is
justly comparable; it is noble, profound and actual,
concerned with heroic action, and ‘purging the
reader through pity and terror’, as Aristotle said it
should. There are as yet few examples of this
modern kind of tragedy, since the old technique
and the old traditions have to be abandoned
without being replaced by mere educated
commonplace. To write tragedy, a man must feel
tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of
the world in which he lives, not only with his
mind, but with his blood and sinews. Mr Krutch
talks throughout his book at intervals about
despair, and one is touched by his heroic
acceptance of a bleak world, but the bleakness is
due to the fact that he and most literary men have
not yet learnt to feel the old emotions in response
to new stimuli. The stimuli exist, but not in literary