Max. (To the Duke.)
If thou hast believed that I shall act
A part in this thy play——
Thou hast miscalculated on me grievously.
My way must be straight on.
True with the tongue,
False with the heart—I may not, cannot be:
Nor can I suffer that a man should trust me—
As his friend trust me—and then lull my conscience
With such low pleas as these:—"I ask him not—
He did it all at his own hazard—and
My mouth has never lied to him."—No, no
What a friend takes me for, that I must be.
—I'll to the Duke; ere yet this day is ended
Will I demand of him that he do save
His good name from the world, and with one stride
Break through and rend this fine-spun web of yours.
He can, he will!—I still am his believer.
Yet I'll not pledge myself, but that those letters
May furnish you, perchance, with proofs against him.
How far may not this Tertsky have proceeded—
What may not he himself too have permitted
Himself to do, to snare the enemy,
The laws of war excusing? Nothing, save
His own mouth shall convict him—nothing less!
And face to face will I go question him.
Ay—this state-policy? O how I curse it!
You will some time, with your state-policy,
Compel him to the measure; it may happen
Because ye are determined that he is guilty,
Guilty ye'll make him. All retreat cut off,
You close up every outlet, hem him in
Narrower and narrower, till at length ye force him—
Yes, ye,—ye force him in his desperation,
To set fire to his prison. Father! father!
That never can end well—it cannot—will not!
Deem of it what thou wilt; but pardon me,
That I must bear me on in my own way.
All must remain pure betwixt him and me;
And, ere the day-light dawns, it must be known
Which I must lose—my father, or my friend.*
* Shiller's Piccolomini, act 3, scene 9.
Had Othello been thus honourable to Desdemona, he would never have murdered her. Incalculable is the evil we bring on ourselves and society, by supposing and surmising facts we ought resolutely to question. The motto of the garter—
Evil be to him who evil thinks,
ought to be,
Evil is to him who evil thinks.
Every man will be his own Lawyer and his own Doctor, and such is the perversity of human nature, he will also be his own Iago, and feed himself with suspicions. Nearly all tragedies hinge on this error.
To avoid being the cause of misunderstanding to others, it is a good rule never to speak critically of others, except in their presence, or in print. When I am obliged to do this in conversation, with persons of unknown or doubtful exactitude, I take care to keep much below the truth in matters of censure, as anything of that kind may gain ten or twenty per cent, in carriage. When with men of just habits of interpretation, I pay them the highest compliment of friendship, and speak to them of others, without reserve.
Notorious are the contumelies put upon the cases of grievance presented from the people in the House of Commons. Nor is it altogether causeless. So prone are the ignorant to mistake their prejudices for facts, and ascribe to others as crimes what exists only in their own surmises, that most popular cases may be stripped of half their pretensions without injuring their truth. Exaggeration is the vice of ignorance. Half the speeches addressed to 'King Mob' are hyperbolic. The sentiments of public meetings minister too often to the prevalent inflation. The people will be powerful when they learn to be exact—and not till then.
The only mode of correcting this evil is to instil into the people the wise rule of Burlamiqui. To reason, (that is, inductively) says this writer, is to calculate, and as it were draw up an account, after balancing all arguments, in order to see on which side the advantage lies. Burlamiqui had law chiefly in view in his remark, but the rule is of immense application. A logician is a secretary or banker's clerk, who keeps an account between truth and error. When a lady once consulted Dr. Johnson on the degree of turpitude to be attached to her son's robbing an orchard—'Madam,' said Johnson, 'it all depends upon the weight of the boy. I remember my schoolfellow, Davy Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbing a dozen orchards with impunity, but the very first time I climbed up an apple tree, for I was always a heavy boy, the bough broke with me, and it was called a judgment. I suppose that is why Justice is represented with a pair of scales.' This may not be the precise reason why Justice has a pair of scales, but the point goes to the root of the matter. Without weighing there can be neither justice nor fair induction.