PATHOS largely depends upon the helplessness of the characters involved. It is the inability of one of Dickens' characters to respond to the demand to "make an effort" which gives poignancy to the feelings of the reader. The consciousness of insufficient energy and ignorance of the remedy produces in turn "hopeless discouragement." Who that has tried to lift the burden from the back of humanity by some economic scheme has not been overwhelmed by his sense of helplessness in face of the mighty problem to be solved? There was, however, one who faced the whole problem of mortal experience, and having found the source of all strength, had compassion and cried, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
While humanity believes in the efficacy and durability of material energy, and knows not that it is "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked," it cannot respond to the Christ appeal and apply consecrated energy to understand the divine Science which reveals the truth that really recuperates. Tragedy was the first kind of play produced, and this discloses the fact that the ancient Greeks recognized the inevitable failure which must attend the merely human effort to strive against the forces which they termed the "gods" or "fate." So the tragos or goat song, chanted as the helpless animal was led to the sacrificial altar, typified helpless humanity borne willy-nilly to its unavoidable doom.
As defined by the dictionaries, energy is a material force, the cause of activity. The theory of the conservation of energy is an attempt to attribute immortality to the mortal, to locate some form of immutability in the mutable. It is small comfort to the dying man to assure him that the energy which constitutes his physical existence will not be lost, but will change its form and become part of the dust from which he sprang. No wonder that such teaching only brings the cry for "more light" from those whose sense of energy is fast filtering through the hour glass of mortal belief.
