Now do I see ’tis true. Look here, Iago;
All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven. ’Tis gone.—
Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell!
Yield up, O love, thy crown, and hearted throne,
To tyrannous hate! swell, bosom, with thy fraught;
For ’tis of aspics’ tongues! O blood, blood, blood!”
Othello, like most of the characters of Shakspeare, illustrates the historic actual, not the prophetic ideal. The present state of society is so ill adjusted, so full of painful evils, that things cannot always remain as temporary and local habits and mere empirical authority have seemingly settled them. To think they can is the sure mark of a narrow mind, a petty character, and a selfish heart. Nothing is more certain than continuous change. Nothing is, therefore, more characteristic of the genuine thinker than his ability to contemplate other modes of thought, other varieties of sentiment, than those to which he was bred. With the progress of social evolution the hitherto prevalent ideas of love and jealousy may undergo changes amounting in some instances, perhaps, to a reversal. Meanwhile, those who are not prepared to adopt any new opinions in detail should, with hospitable readiness impartially to investigate, consider within themselves which is better, an imperial delicacy and magnanimity in those who love causing them to refuse to know anything that occurs in absence so long as each preserves self-respecting personal fidelity to the ideal of progressive perfection? or, as at present, spiritual mutilation and misery, treacherous concealment, espionage, detection, disgrace, frenzy, and death?
One thing at all events is sure, namely, that of him alone whose love for God, or the universal in himself and others, is superior to his love for the individual, or the egotistic in himself and others, can it ever be safely said, as it was once so mistakenly said of the unhappy Moor,—
“This is a man
Whom passion cannot shake; whose solid virtue