The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

by Delia Salter Bacon

'So o'er that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes…
…This is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather: but
The art itself is nature.'

That is the Poet's view, but the Philosopher is of the same opinion. 'Man while operating can only apply or withdraw natural bodies, nature internally performs the rest.' Those who become practically versed in nature are the mechanic, the mathematician, the alchemist, and the magician, but all, as matters now stand with faint efforts and meagre success.'… 'The syllogism forces assent and not things.'

'The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the understanding. The syllogism consists of propositions, these of words, words are the signs of notions, notions represent things. If our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground; but they are for the most part improperly abstracted and deduced from things.'

There is the whole of it; there it is in a nut-shell. As we are very apt to find it in this method of delivery by aphorisms; there is the shell of it at least. And considering 'the torture and press of the method,' and the instruments of torture then in use for correcting the press, on these precise questions, there is as much of the kernel, perhaps, as could reasonably be looked for, in those particular aphorisms; and 'aphorisms representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire further;' so this writer of them tells us.

With all his reliance on nature then, and with all his scorn of the impracticable and arrogant conceits of learning as he finds it, and of the quackeries that are practised in its name, this is no empiric. He will not approach that large, complex, elaborate combination of nature, that laboured fruit of time,—her most subtle and efficacious agent, so prolific in results that amaze and confound our art, —he will not approach this great structure with all its unperceived interior adaptations,—with so much of nature's own work in it, —hehas too much respect for her own 'cunning hand,' to approach it without learning,—to undertake its cure with blind ignorant experiments. He will not go to work in the dark on this structure, with drug or surgery. This is going to be a scientific cure. 'Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.' He will inquire beforehand the nature of this particular structure that he proposes to meddle with, and get its normal state defined at the outset. But that will take him into the question of structures in general, as they appear in nature, and the intention of nature in them. He will have a comparative anatomy to help him. This analysis will not stop with the social unit, he will analyze him. It will not stop with him. It will comprehend the principles of all combinations. He will not stop in his analysis of this complexity till he comes to that which precedes all combination, and survives it—the original simplicity of nature. He will come to this cure armed with the universal 'simples;' he will have all the original powers of nature, 'which are not many,' in his hands, to begin with; and he will have more than that. He will have the doctrine of their combinations, not in man only, but in all the kinds;—those despised kinds, that claim such close relationship— such wondrous relationship with man; and he will not go to the primitive instinctive nature only for his knowledge on this point. He will inquire of art,—the empiric art,—and rude accident, what latent efficacies they have detected in her, what churlish secrets of hers they have wrung from her. You will find the gardener's and the farmer's reports, and not the physician's and the surgeon's only, inserted in his books of policy and ethics. The 'nettles' theory of the rights of private life, and his policy of foreign relationships, appears to this learned politician to strengthen his case a little, and the pertinacious refusal of the 'old crab trees' to lend their organizations, such as they are, to the fructification of a bud of nobler kind, is quoted with respect as a decision of nature in another court, on this same question, which is one of the questions here. For the principle of conservation as well as the other principles of the human conduct, appears to this philosopher to require a larger treatment than our men of learning have given it hitherto.

And this is the man of science who takes so much pains to acknowledge his preference for 'good compositions'—who thinks so much of good _natural _compositions and their virtues, who is always expressing or betraying his respect for the happy combinations, the sound results, the luxuriant and beautiful varieties with which nature herself illustrates the secret of her fertility, and publishes her own great volume of examples in the Arts.

First it is the knowledge of the simple forms into which all the variety of nature is convertible, the definitions which account for all—that which is always the same in all the difference, that which is always permanent in all the change; first it is the doctrine of 'those simple original forms, or differences of things, which like the alphabet are not many, the degrees and co-ordinations whereof make all this variety,' and then it is the doctrine of their combinations,—the combinations which nature has herself accomplished, those which the arts have accomplished, and those which are possible, which have not been accomplished,—those which the universal nature working in the human, working in each, from the platform of the human, from that height in her ascending scale of species, dictates now, demands,—divinely orders,—divinely instructs us in.

This, and nothing short of this,—this so radical knowledge, reaching from the summit of the human complexity, to the primaeval depths of nature,—to the simplicity of the nature that is one in all,—to the indissoluble laws of being,—the laws of being in the species,—the law with which the specific law is convertible,—the law which cannot be broken in the species, which involves loss of species,—loss of being in the species,—this so large and rich and various knowledge, comprehending all the varieties of nature in its fields, putting all nature under contribution for its results, this—this is the knowledge with which the man of science approaches now, this grand particular.

The reader who begins to examine for himself, for the first time, in the original books of it, this great system of the Modern Science, impressed with the received notions in regard to its scope and intentions, will be, perhaps, not a little surprised and puzzled, to find that the thing which is, of all others, most strenuously insisted on by this author, in his own person, next to the worthlessness of the conceits which have no correspondence with things, is the fact that the knowledge of the physical causes is altogether inadequate to that relief of the condition of man, which he finds to be the immediate end of science; and that it is a system of metaphysics, a new metaphysics, which he is everywhere propounding to that end,—openly, and with all the latent force of his new rhetoric.

It is 'metaphysical aid' that he offers us; it is magic, but, 'magic lawful as eating'; it is a priestly aid that he offers us, the aid of one who has penetrated to the inner sanctuary of the law,—the priest of nature, newly instructed in her mind and will, who comes forth from his long communing with her, with her own 'great seal' in his hands—with the rod of her enchantments, that old magicians desired to pluck from her, and did not—with the gift of the new and nobler miracles of science as the witness of his anointing—with the reading of 'God's book of power'—with the alphabet of its mystery, as the proof of his ordaining—with the key of it, hid from the foundation of the world until now.