Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/89

 Rh the powers of good and of evil to ourselves. Could a poet deal with a problem of more compelling and everlasting interest to us? The reader who focuses his attention upon the human beings in "Paradise Lost" will do what the poet did, and will, though accidental details may elude him, follow Milton's essential thought. The descriptions of heaven and hell, which may not correspond precisely to the reader's notions of the states of bliss and of misery, will recede into the background, where they belong; and gradually there will rise before him Milton's idea of the true meaning of human life.

MILTON'S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE To reduce that idea to a prose formula would be to impoverish and debase it; but a hint or two concerning its general character may suggest its importance to the individual conscience. On the one hand, no poet, not even Shakespeare, has thought more nobly of the glorious capacities of man. Man is to Milton no miserable puppet of chance, no slave of his environment (Adam and Eve sin despite ideal surroundings), but an unhampered master of his fate, God himself endowing him with freedom of the will, and all the spirits of the universe interested in the use he may make of that liberty. On the other hand, no poet has felt more profoundly the constant peril of man's exalted state. Unless he in his freedom throws off all worldly temptations, even the most seductive, punishment for his disloyalty to spiritual laws is visited not only upon himself but upon his innocent fellow men. The grave moral predicaments of the Lady in "Comus," of Adam and Eve, of Christ in "Paradise Regained," and of Samson, are not exceptional, but typify the real state of man in every moment of his life. Here a sublime opportunity, there a fatal danger, the decision absolutely in his own hands! Yet there is no panic, no wild cry for relief; the spirit is as serene as the utterance is restrained. Uncompromising independence in earthly concerns, patient humility before God—these are the virtues that will redeem us at last.

Hasty as this glance at Milton's ideas must be, it reminds us of the source of his power. In his first good poem, the "Nativity Ode,"