The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

by Delia Salter Bacon

And this is the key to this philosophy, not where it touches human nature only, but everywhere where it substitutes for abstract human notions—specific human notions that are powerless in the arts, or narrow observations that are restrained and uncertain in the rules of practice they produce,—powers, true forms, original agencies in nature, universal powers, sure as nature herself, and her universal form.

To abase the specific human arrogance, to overthrow 'the idols of the tribe,' is the ultimate condition of this learning. Man as man, is not a primal, if he be an ultimate, fact in nature. Nature is elder and greater than he, and requires him to learn of her, and makes little of his mere conceits and dogmas.

From the height of that new simplicity which this philosophy has gained—not as the elder philosophies had gained theirs, by pure contemplation, by hasty abstraction and retreat to the à priori sources of knowledge and belief in man,—which it has gained, too, by a wider induction than the facts of the human nature can supply—with the torch of these universal principles cleared of their historic complexities, with the torch of the nature that is formed in everything, it enters here this great, unenclosed field of human life and practice, this Spenserian wilderness, where those old, gnarled trunks, and tangled boughs, and wretched undergrowths of centuries, stop the way, where those old monsters, which the action of this play exposes, which this philosophy is bound to drag out to the day, are hid.

The radical universal fact—the radical universal distinction of the double nature of GOOD which is formed in everything, and not in man only, and the two universal motions which correspond to that, the one, as everything, is a total or substantive in itself, with its corresponding motion; for this is the principle of selfishness and war in nature—the principle which struggles everywhere towards decay and the dissolution of the larger wholes, and not in man only, though the foolish, unscientific man, who does not know how to track the phenomena of his own nature to their causes,—who has no bridge from the natural internal phenomena of his own consciousness into the continent of nature, may think that it is, and reason of it as if it were;—this double nature of good, 'the one, as a thing, is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is, a part or member of a greater body, whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, as it tends to the conservation of a more general form'—this distinction, which the philosopher of this school has laid down in his work on the scientific advancement of the human species, with a recommendation that it should be strongly planted, which he has planted there, openly, as the root of a new science of ethics and policy, will be found at the heart of all this new history of the human nature; but in this play of the true nobility, and the scientific cure of the commonweal, it is tracked openly to its most immediate, obvious, practical application. In all these great 'illustrated' scientific works, which this new school of learning, with the genius of science for its master, contrived to issue, all the universally actual and active principles are tracked to their proper specific modifications in man, and not to their development in his actual history merely; and the distinctive essential law of the human kind—the law whereby man is man, as distinguished from the baser kinds, is brought up, and worked out, and unfolded in all its detail, from the bosom of the universal law—is brought down from its barren height of isolation, and planted in the universal rule of being, in the universal law of kinds and essence. This double nature of good, as it is specifically developed in man, not as humanity only, for man is not limited to his kind in his intelligence, or in his will, or in his affections,—this double nature of good, as it is developed in man, with his contemplative, and moral, and religious grasp of a larger whole than his particular and private nature can comprehend—with his large discourse looking before and after, on the one hand, and his blind instincts, and his narrow isolating senses on the other—with that distinctive human nature on the one hand, whereby he does, in some sort, comprehend the world, and not intellectually only—that nature whereby 'the world is set in his heart,' and not in his mind only—that nature which by the law of advancement to the perfection of his form, he struggles to ascend to—that, on the one hand, and that whereby he is kindred with the lower natures on the other, swayed by a gosling's instinct, held down to the level of the pettiest, basest kinds, forbidden to ascend to his own distinctive excellence, allied with species who have no such intelligent outgoing from particulars, who cannot grasp the common, whose sphere nature herself has narrowed and walled in,—these two universal natures of good, and all the passion and affection which lie on that tempestuous border line where they blend in the human, and fill the earth with the tragedy of their confusion,—this two-fold nature, and its tragic blending, and its true specific human development, whereby man is man, and not degenerate, lies discriminated in all these plays, tracked through all their wealth of observation, through all their characterization, through all their mirth, through all their tempests of passion, with a line so firm, that only the instrument of the New Science could have graven it.

Of all the sciences, Policy is the most immersed in matter, and the hardliest reduced to axiom'; but setting out from that which is constant and universal in nature, this philosopher is not afraid to undertake it; and, indeed, that is what he is bent on; for unless those universal, historical principles, which he has taken so much pains to exhibit to us clearly in their abstract form, 'terminate in matter and construction according to the true definitions, they are speculative and of little use.' The termination of them in matter, and the new construction according to true definitions, is the business here. This, which is the hardliest reduced to axiom of any, is that which lies collected on the Inductive Tables here, cleared of all that interferes with the result; and the axiom of practice, which is the 'second vintage' of the New Machine, is expressed before our eyes. 'For that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

He starts here, with this grand advantage which no other political philosopher or reformer had ever had before; he has the true definition in his hands to begin with; not the specific and futile notions with which the human mind, shut up within itself, seeks to comprehend and predict and order all, but the solid actual universals that the mind of man, by the combination and scientific balance of its faculties, is able to ascend to. He has in his hands, to begin with, the causes that are universal and constant in nature, with which all the historical phenomena are convertible,—the motives from which all movement proceeds, the true original simple powers,—the unknown, into which all the variety of the known is resolvable, or rather the known into which all the variety of the unknown is resolvable; the forms 'which are always present when the particular nature is present, and universally attest that presence; which are always absent when the particular nature is absent, and universally attest that absence; which always increase as the particular nature increases; which always decrease as the particular nature decreases;' that is the kind of definitions which this philosopher will undertake his moral reform with; that is the kind of idea which the English philosopher lays down for the basis of his politics. Nothing less solid than that will suit the turn of his genius, either in speculation or practice. He does full justice to the discoveries of the old Greek philosophers, whose speculation had controlled, not the speculation only, but all the practical doctrine of the world, from their time to his. He saw from what height of genius they achieved their command; but that was two thousand years before, and that was in the south east corner of Europe; and when the Modern Europe began to think for itself, it was found that the Greeks could not give the law any longer. It was found that the English notions at least, and the Greek notions of things in general differed very materially—essentially—when they came to be put on paper. When the 'representative men' of those two corners of Europe, and of those two so widely separated ages of the human advancement, came to discourse together from their 'cliffs' and compare notes, across that sea of lesser minds, the most remarkable differences, indeed, began to be perceptible at once, though the world has not yet begun to appreciate them. It was a difference that was expected to tell on the common mind, for a time, principally in its 'effects.' Everybody, the learned and the unlearned, understands now, that after the modern survey was taken, new practical directions were issued at once. Orders came down for an immediate suspension of those former rules of philosophy, and the ship was laid on a new course. 'Plato,' says the new philosopher, 'as one that had a wit of elevation situate upon a cliff, did descry that forms are the true object of knowledge,' that was his discovery,—'but lost the fruit of that opinion by'—shutting himself up, in short, in his own abstract contemplations, in his little world of man, and getting out his theory of the universe, before hand, from these; instead of applying himself practically and modestly to the observation of that universe, in which man's part is so humble. 'Vain man,' says our oldest Poet, 'vain man would be wise, who is born like a wild ass's colt.'

But let us take a specimen of the manner in which the propounder of the New Ideal Philosophy 'comes to particulars,' with this quite new kind of IDEAS, and we shall find that they were designed to take in some of those things in heaven and earth that were omitted, or not dreampt of in the others,—which were not included in the 'idols.' He tells us plainly that these are the ideas with which he is going to unravel the most delicate questions; but he is willing to entertain his immediate audience, and propitiate the world generally, by trying them, or rather giving orders to have them tried, on other things first. He does not pride himself very much on anything which he has done, or is able to do in these departments of inquiry from which his instances are here taken, and he says, in this connection:—'We do not, however, deny that other instances can perhaps be added.' In order to arrive at his doctrine of practice in general, he begins after the scientific method, not with the study of any one kind of actions only, he begins by collecting the rules of action in general. By observation of species he seeks to ascend to the principles common to them. And he comes to us with a carefully prepared scheme of the 'elementary motions,'—outlined, and enriched with such observations as he and his school have been able to make under the disadvantages of that beginning. 'The motions of bodies,' he observes, 'are compounded, decomposed and combined, no less than the bodies themselves,' and he directs the attention of the student, who has his eye on practice, with great emphasis, to those instances which he calls 'instances of predominance,'—'instances which point out the predominance and submission of powers, compared' [not in abstract contemplation but in action,] 'compared with each other, and which,' [not in books but in action,]—'which is the more energetic and superior, or more weak and inferior.'

'These "elementary notions" direct and are directed by each other, according to their strength,—quantity, excitement, concussion, or the assistance, or impediments they meet with. For instance, some magnets support iron sixty times their own weight; so far does the motion of lesser congregation predominate over the greater, but if the weight be increased it yields.'

[We must observe, that he is speaking here of 'the motions, tendencies, and active powers which are most universal in nature,' for the purpose of suggesting rules of practice which apply as widely; though he keeps, with the intimation above quoted, principally to this class of instances.] 'A lever of a certain strength will raise a given weight, and so far the notion of liberty predominates over that of the greater congregation; but if the weight be greater, the former motion yields. A piece of leather, stretched to a certain point, does not break, and so far the motion of continuity predominates' [for it is the question of predominance, and dominance, and domineering, and lordships, and liberties, of one kind and another, that he is handling]—'so far the motion of continuity predominates over that of tension; but if the tension be greater, the leather breaks, and the motion of continuity yields. A certain quantity of water flows through a chink, and so far the motion of greater congregation predominates over that of continuity; but if the chink be smaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not discharged, in which case the motion of greater congregation overcomes that of matter; but when gunpowder is used, the motion of matter in the sulphur predominates, being assisted by that motion, and the motion of avoidance in the nitre; and so of the rest.'

Our more recent chemists would, of course, be inclined to criticise that explanation; but, in some respects, it is better than theirs; and it answers well enough the purpose for which it was introduced there, and for which it is introduced here also. For this is the initiative of the great inquiry into 'the WRESTLING INSTANCES,' and the 'instances of PREDOMINANCE' in general, 'such as point out the predominance of powers, compared with each other, and which of them is the more energetic and SUPERIOR, or more weak and INFERIOR'; and though this class of instances is valued chiefly for its illustration of another in this system of learning, where things are valued in proportion to their usefulness, they are not sought for as similitudes merely; they are produced by one who regards them as 'the same footsteps of nature, treading in different substances,' and leaving the foot-print of universal axioms; and this is a class of instances which he particularly recommends to inquiry. 'For wrestling instances, which show the predominance of powers, and in what manner and proportion they predominate and yield, must be searched for with active and industrious diligence.'