Note 110 — Chapter XVII · ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY.
Reading edition
Milton's description of the poet's function in the Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy contains a fine expansion of the phrase κάθαρσις in these words: "To allay the perturbation of the mind and set the affections in right tune." Milton in his own Samson Agonistes followed the Greek usage closely, and concluded the whole drama with a choric reflection upon the wisdom of God's dealings with the race of men. There, again, he expresses in the very last words of his play the same doctrine of κάθαρσις:
His servants He, with new acquist Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent.
Hegel, in his doctrine of the Versöhnung, or reconciliation of opposite passions in a contemplation which is above them and includes them, seems to have aimed at the same law as Aristotle.