The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

by Delia Salter Bacon

'There exists nothing in nature except individual bodies, exhibiting distinct individual effects, according to individual laws.' The concrete is very carefully guarded there against that 'pernicious habit'; it is saved at the expense of the human species, at the expense of its arrogance. Nobody need undertake to abstract those laws, whatever they may be, for this master has turned his key on them. They are in their proper place; they are in the things themselves, and cannot be taken out of them. The utmost that you can do is to attain to a scientific knowledge of them, one that exactly corresponds with them. That correspondence is the point in the new metaphysics, and in the new logic;—that was what was wanting in the old. 'The investigation, discovery, and development of this law, in every branch of learning, are the foundation both of theory and practice. This law, therefore, and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term FORM.' The distinction is very carefully made between the 'cause in nature,' and that which corresponds to it, in the human mind, the parallel to it in the sciences; for the notions of men and the notions of nature are extremely apt to differ when the mind is left to form its notions without any scientific rule or instrument; and these ill-made abstractions, which do not correspond with the cause in nature, are of no efficacy in the arts, for nature takes no notice of them whatever.

There is one term in use here which represents at the same time the cause in nature, and that which corresponds to it in the mind of man—the parallel to it in the sciences. When these exactly correspond, one term suffices. The term 'FORM' is preferred for that purpose in this school. The term which was applied to the abstractions of the old philosophy, with a little modification, is made to signalise the difference between the old and the new. The 'IDEAS' of the old philosophy, the hasty abstractions of it, are 'the idols' of the new—the false deceiving images—which must be destroyed ere that which is fixed and constant in nature can establish its own parallels in our learning. 'Too untimely a departure, and too remote a recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is manifest that Plato, in his opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.' 'Lost the fruit of that opinion'—this is the author who talks so 'pressly.' Two thousand years of human history are summed up in that so brief chronicle. Two thousand years of barren science, of wordy speculation, of vain theory; two thousand years of blind, empirical, unsuccessful groping in all the fields of human practice. 'And so,' he continues, concluding that summary criticism with a little further development of the subject, 'and so, turning his opinion upon theology, wherewith all his natural philosophy is infected.' Natural philosophy infected with 'opinion,'—no matter whose opinion it is, or under what name it comes to us, whatever else it is good for, is not good for practice. And this is the philosophy which includes both theory and practice. 'That which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

But that which distinguishes this from all others is, that it is the philosophy of 'HOPE'; and that is the name for it in both its fields, in speculation and practice. The black intolerable wall, which those who stopped us on the lower platform of this pyramid of true knowledge brought us up with so soon—that blank wall with which the inquiry for the physical causes in nature limits and insults our speculation—has no place here, no place at all on this higher ground of science, which the knowledge of true forms creates—this true ground of the understanding, the understanding of nature, and the universal reason of things. 'He who is acquainted with forms, comprehends the unity of nature in substances apparently most distinct from each other.' Neither is that base and sordid limit, with which the philosophy of physical causes shuts in the scientific arts and their power for human relief, found here. For this is the prima philosophia, where the universal axioms, the axioms that command all, are found: and the precepts of the universal practice are formed on them. 'Even the philosopher himself—openly speaking from this summit—will venture to intimate briefly to men of understanding' the comprehension of its base, and the field of practice which it commands. 'Is not the ground,' he inquires, modestly, 'is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them is to reduce them ad principia, a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration?' There is the 'administrative reform' that will not need reforming, that waits for the science of forms and constructions. But he proceeds: 'Was not the Persian magic' [and that is the term which he proposes to restore for 'the part operative' of this knowledge of forms], 'was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architecture of nature to the rules and policy of governments?' There is no harm, of course, in that timid inquiry; but the student of the Zenda-vesta will be able to get, perhaps, some intimation of the designs that are lurking here, and will understand the revived and reintegrated sense with which the term magic is employed to indicate the part operative of this new ground of science. 'Neither are these only similitudes,' he adds, after extending these significant inquiries into other departments of practice, and demonstrating that this is the universality from which all other professions are nourished: 'Neither are these only similitudes, as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters.'

'It must, however, be observed, that this method of operating' [which considers nature as SIMPLE, though in a concrete body] ['I the first of any, by my universal being.' Michael de Montaigne.] 'sets out from what is constant, eternal, and universal in nature; and opens such broad paths to human power, as the thought of man can in the present state of things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself,'

Yes, it is the Philosophy of Hope. The perfection of the human form, the limit of the human want, is the limit of its practice; the limit of the human inquiry and demand is the limit of its speculation.

The control of effects which this higher knowledge of nature offers us—this knowledge of what she is beforehand—the practical certainty which this interior acquaintance with her, this acquaintance that identifies her under all the variety of her manifestations, is able to command—that comprehensive command of results which the knowledge of the true causes involves—the causes which are always present in all effects, which are constant under all fluctuations, the same under all the difference—the 'power' of this knowledge, its power to relieve human suffering, is that which the discoverer of it insists on most in propounding it to men; but the mind in which that 'wonder'—that is, 'the seed of knowledge'—brought forth this plant, was not one to overlook or make light of that want in the human soul, which only knowledge can appease—that love which leads it to the truth, not for the sake of a secondary good, but because it is her life.

'Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an identity between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling upon abstractions, it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division, and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical.' Something like that the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke of making 'the art and practic part of life, the mistress to its theoric;'—'let that mark out and limit the theoretical.'

That inveterate and pernicious habit, which makes this course the safest one, is one that he speaks of in the Advancement of Learning, as that which has been of 'such ill desert towards learning,' as 'to reduce it to certain empty and barren generalities, the mere husks and shells of sciences,' good for nothing at the very best, unless they serve to guide us to the kernels that have been forced out of them, by the torture and press of the method,—the mere outlines and skeletons of knowledges, 'that do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are no more aiding to practice,' as the author of this universal skeleton confesses, 'than an Ortelius's universal map is, to direct the way between London and York.'

The way to steer clear of those empty and barren generalities, which do but offer learning to the scorn of the men of practice is, he says, to begin on the practical side, and that is just what we are doing here now in this question of the consulship,—that so practical and immediately urgent question which was, threatening then to drive out every other from the human consideration. If learning had anything to offer on that subject, which would not excite the scorn of practical men, then certainly was the time to produce it.

We begin on the practical side here, and as to theory, we are rigidly limited to that which the question of the play requires,—the practical question marks it out,—we have just as much as is required for the solution of that, and not so much as a 'jot' more. But mark the expression:—'it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences'—the particular sciences,—the branches of science—from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division. We begin with a great practical question, and though the treatise is in a form which seems to offer it for amusement, rather than instruction, it has at least this advantage, that it does not offer it in the suspicious form of a theory, or in the distasteful form of a learned treatise,—a tissue of barren and empty generalities. The scorn of practical men is avoided, if it were only by its want of pretension; and the fact that it does not offer itself as a guide to practice, but rather insinuates itself into that position. We begin with the practical question, with its most sharply practical details, we begin with particulars, but that which is to be noted is, 'the foundations' of the universal philosophy are under our feet to begin with. At the first step we are on the platform of the prima philosophia; the last conclusions of the inductive science, the knowledge of the nature of things, is the ground,—the solid continuity—that we proceed on. That is the ground on which we build this practice. That is the trunk from which this branch of sciences is continued:—that trunk of universality which we are forbidden henceforth to scorn, because all the professions are nourished from it. That universality which the men of practice scorn no more, since they have tasted of its proofs, since they have reached that single bough of it, which stooped so low, to bring its magic clusters within their reach. Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the divinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, 'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.' Clasping on the magic robes for which they have not toiled or spun, sitting down by companies,—not of fifties,—not of hundreds,—not of thousands—sitting down by myriads, to this great feast, that the man of science spreads for them, in whose eye, the eye of a divine pity looked forth again, and saw them faint and weary still, and without a shepherd,—sitting down to this feast, for which there is no sweat or blood on their brows, revived, rejoicing, gazing on the bewildering basketfuls that are pouring in, they cry, answering after so long a time, for their part Pilate's question: This, so far as it goes at least, this is truth. And the rod of that enchantment was plucked here. It is but a branch from this same trunk—this trunk of 'universality,' which the men of practice will scorn no more, when once they reach the multitudinous boughs of this great tree of miracles, where the nobler fruits, the more chosen fruits of the new science, are hidden still.