Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/23

8 doctrine of destiny, no one more pitilessly tore aside this veil from the features for wickedness. Edgar in Lear, says: “This is the excellent foppery of the world ! That when we are sick

in fortune [often the surfeit of our own behaviour] we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion ; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance ;

drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by a forced obedience of pla– netary influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on : an admirable evasion

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To the Christian moralist, Macbeth's guilt is so dark that its degree cannot be estimated, as there are no shades in black. But to the mental physiologist, to whom nerve rather than

conscience is an object of study, the functions of the brain rather than the powers of the will, it is impossible to omit from calculation the influences of the supernatural event,

which is not only the starting point of the action, but the remote cause of the mental phenomena.

The professed moralist is slow to accept the teaching of the drama; but where shall we find a more impressive lesson of the manner in which the infraction of the moral law works

out its own punishment, than in the delineation of the ago nizing soul torture of Macbeth In this, as in all other instances, the true psychological is not opposed to the true moral doctrine of human life. In the attempt to trace conduct

to its earliest source or motive, and to deduce the laws of emotional progression, the psychological, or to use the stricter and better term, the physiological moralist teaches the impor tance of establishing an early habit of emotional action, which may tend to virtuous conduct, and form a prepared defence against temptation; by shewing how invariably in the moral world evil leads on to evil, he teaches in the best manner the

wisdom of opposing the beginnings of evil, and he developes the ethical principle laid down by our Great Teacher, that an

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