There are times when we are tempted to dishonour the Greek dramas in which Hardy had immersed himself, and to ask ourselves what is the use of it all: of Aeschylus and Sophocles, of the Shakespearean tragedies, and of the whole gamut of gloom-ridden philosophy which inspires them? We ask why 30 many of our teachers should be concerned, in so many millions of words, to plague us with the horrors of the night, as though in all the twenty-four hours of our day the sun never shone. But we cannot Gishonour these thins. In 80 much as they thy, we refit by them as we learn." We may only hope, but profoandis, rat mankind some day will advance Veyond the need of them.
Meanwhile, we try to discriminate. And Hardy, for example, could not have it both ways. We can be as happy as we were meant to be, or miserable And since this great master was tone of those who, I'ke Goethe, Nietsche and Swift in their different spheres, never knew the meaning of joy in the daily round, it does not follow that his ' painful philosophy was a thing for all of us to take to heart. to confess oneself a philistine,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.