Page:Andreyev - A Dilemma (Brown, 1910).djvu/13

Rh how beautiful, how powerful it seemed! But no one may look on God's countenance and live. For the ways of Reason are labyrinthine, its clearness are abysses, its eyes gaze on ageless canyons blinding with sunlight and maddening, and its outlook is on time and space. Men's minds snap in trying to see too clearly. And though the world had never thought more clearly than now, never was it more confused. Everywhere is unrest. Men are groping, women are in revolt, children commit suicide. Our souls are sick.

Like Hamlet, our hero is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;" like him, too, he feigns insanity to carry out his subtle schemings, yet here is the vital difference: in spite of his modernity, Dr. Kerzhentseff harks back to the primitive for the motive of his murder. Practically he seeks revenge, while Shakespeare's hero is unquestionably the more noble (and more lovable), for he seeks justice itself. But that is another hair-splitting distinction.