Perhaps half a dozen comedies, such, for instance, as _The Ideas of Madame Aubray,_ by M.Dumas, are of the _genre serieux_, but certainly there are not enough of such comedies to constitute a genuine Diderotian school in France.

There is no need therefore to say more about the theory than this, namely, that though the drama is an imitative art, yet besides imitation its effects demand illusion.

What, cries Diderot, you do not conceive the effect that would be produced on you by a real scene, with real dresses, with speech in true proportion to the action, with the actions themselves simple, with the very dangers that have made you tremble for your parents, for your friends, for yourselves?
No, we answer: reproduction of reality does not move us as a powerful work of imagination moves us.

"We may as well urge," said Burke, "that stones, sand, clay, and metals lie in a certain manner in the earth, as a reason for building with these materials and in that manner, as for writing according to the accidental disposition of characters in Nature."[289] Common dangers do not excite us; it is the presentation of danger in some uncommon form, in some new combination, in some fresh play of motive and passion, that quickens that sympathetic fear and pity which it is the end of a play to produce.
And if this be so, there is another thing to be said.

If we are to be deliberately steeped in the atmosphere of Duty, illusion is out of place.