The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

'As waves before a vessel under sailSo men obeyed him, and fell below his stern,''If he would but incline to the people, there never was aworthier man.'

Not to the natural private affections and instincts, touched with the nobility of human sense, – not to the loyalty of the husband, – not to the filial reverence and duty of the son, true to that private and personal relationship at least; not to the gentleness of the patrician, true to that private patricianship also, must England owe her weal– such weal as she could beg and wheedle from her lord and ruler then. Not from the conquering hero with his fresh oakleaf on his brow, and the command of the god who led him in his speech and action, – and not from his lineal successor merely, must England beg her welfare then. It was not the venerable mother, or the gentle wife, with her dove's eyes able to make gods of earth forsworn, who could say then, 'The laws of England are at my commandment.'

Crimes that the historic pen can only point to, – not record, – low, illiterate, brutish stupidities, mad-cap folly, and wanton extravagancies and caprices, in their ideal impersonations —these were the gods that England, in the majesty of her State, in the sovereignty of her chartered weal, must abase herself to then. To the vices of tyranny, to low companions and their companions, and their kindred, the State must cringe and kneel then. To these, – men who meddled with affairs of State, – who took, even at such a time, the State to be their business, – must address themselves; for these were the councils in which England's peace and war were settled then, and the Tribune could enter them only in disguise. His veto could not get spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in under-tones and circumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent, human appeals, could the soul of power be reached and conquered then – the soul of him 'within whose eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,' the man of the thirty legions, to whom this argument must be dedicated. 'Ducking observances,' basest flatteries, sycophancies past the power of man to utter, personal humiliations, and prostrations that seemed to teach 'the mind a most inherent baseness,' these were the weapons, – the required weapons of the statesman's warfare then. From these 'dogs of the commonalty' men who were indeed 'noble,' whose 'fame' did indeed 'fold in the orb o' the world,' must take then, as a purchase or a gift, deliverance from physical restraint, and life itself. These were the days when England's victories were 'blubbered and whined away,' in such a sort, that 'pages blushed at it, and men of heart looked wondering at each other.'

And, when science began first to turn her eye on history, and propose to herself the relief of the human estate, as her end, and the scientific arts as her means, this was the spectacle she found herself expected to endure; this was the state of things she found herself called upon to sanction and conserve. She could not immediately reform it – she must produce first her doctrine of 'true forms,' her scientific definitions and precepts based on them, and her doctrine of constructions. She could not openly condemn it; but she could criticise and reject it by means of that method which is 'sometimes necessary in the sciences,' and to which 'those who would let in new light upon the human mind must have recourse.' She could seize the grand hieroglyphic of the heroic past, and make it 'point with its finger' that which was unspeakable, – her scorn of it. She could borrow the freedom of the old Roman lips, to repronounce, in her own new dialect, – not their anticipation of her veto only, but her eternal affirmation, – the word of her consulship, the rule of her nobility, – the nobility of being, – being in the human, – the nobility of manliness, —the divinity of State, the true doctrine of it; – and, to speak truly, 'Antiquitas seculi, juventus mundi.'

CHAPTER VIII

METAPHYSICAL AID

'I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say they

are Persian attire; but let them be changed.' —

The King to Tom o' Bedlam.

'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?

Against him first.'

It is the cure of the Common-weal which this author has undertaken, for he found himself pre-elected to the care of the people and to the world's tribuneship. But he handles his subject in the natural, historical order, in the chronological order, – and not here only, but in that play of which this is a part, – of which this is the play within the Play, – in that grand, historical proceeding on the world's theatre, which it was given to the author of this play to institute.

He begins with the physical wants of men. The hunger, and cold, and weariness, and all the physical suffering and destitution of that human condition which is the condition of the many, has arrested his human eye, with its dumb, patient eloquence, and it is that which makes the starting point of his revolution. He translates its mute language, he anticipates its word. He is setting in movement operations that are intended to make 'coals cheap'; he proposes to have corn at his own price. He has so much confidence in what his tongue can do in the way of flattery, that he expects to come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. He will 'cog their hearts from them,' and get elected consul yet, with all their voices.

'Scribbling seems to be the sign of a disordered age,' says the philosopher, who finds so much occasion for the use of that art about these days. 'It seems as if it were the season for vain things when the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do nothing but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my comfort that I shall be one of the last that are called in question; and, whilst the greater offenders are calling to account, I shall have leisure to amend; for it would be unreasonable to punish the less troublesome, whilst we are infested with the greater. As the physician said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who, he perceived, had an ulcer in his lungs, "Friend," said he, "it is not now time to concern yourself about your fingers-ends". And yet– [and yet] – I saw, some years ago, a person whose name and memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there was neither law nor justice put in execution, nor magistrate that performed his office – no more than there is now– publish, I know not what pitiful reformations, about clothes, cookery, and law chicanery. These are amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill-used, to show that they are not totally forgotten.'

That is the account of it. That is the history of this innovation, beginning with books, proposing pitiful reformations in clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery. That would serve to show an ill-used people that there was some care for them stirring, some tribuneship at work already. 'What I say of physic generally, may serve AS AN EXAMPLE OF ALL OTHER SCIENCES,' says this same scribbler, under his scribbling cognomen. 'We certainly intend to comprehend them all,' says the graver authority, 'such as Ethics, Politics, and Logic.'

That is, where we are exactly in this so entertaining performance, which was also designed for the benefit of an ill-used people; for this candidate for the chief magistracy is the Aedile also, and while he stands for his place these spectacles will continue.

It is that physical suffering of 'the poor citizens' that he begins with here. It is the question of the price of corn with which he opens his argument. The dumb and patient people are on his stage already; dumb and patient no longer, but clamoring against the surfeiting and wild wanton waste of the few; clamoring for their share in God's common gifts to men, and refusing to take any longer the portion which a diseased state puts down for them. But he tells us from the outset, that this claim will be prosecuted in such a manner as to 'throw forth greater themes for insurrection's arguing.'

Though all the wretched poor were clothed and fed with imperial treasure, with imperial luxury and splendour – though all the arts which are based on the knowledge of physical causes should be put in requisition to relieve their need – though the scientific discoveries and inventions which are pouring in upon human life from that field of scientific inquiry which our men of science have already cultivated their golden harvests, should reach at last poor Tom himself – though that scientific movement now in progress should proceed till it has reached the humblest of our human kin, and surrounded him with all the goods of the private and particular nature, with the sensuous luxuries and artistic elegancies and refinements of the lordliest home – that good which is the distinctive human good, that good which is the constitutional human end, that good, that formal and essential good, which it is the end of this philosophy to bring to man, would not necessarily be realised.

For that, and nothing short of that, the 'advancement' of the species to that which it is blindly reaching for, painfully groping for – its form in nature, its ideal perfection – the advancement of it to something more noble than the nobility of a nobler kind of vermin – a state which involves another kind of individual growth and greatness, one which involves a different, a distinctively 'human principle' and tie of congregation, is that which makes the ultimate intention of this philosophy.

The organization of that large, complex, difficult form in nature, in which the many are united in 'the greater congregation'; that more extensive whole, of which the units are each, not simple forms, but the complicated, most highly complex, and not yet subdued complexity, which the individual form of man in itself constitutes; this so difficult result of nature's combinations and her laws of combination, labouring, struggling towards its consummation, but disordered, threatened, convulsed, asking aid of art, is the subject; the cure of it, the cure and healthful regimen of it, the problem.

And it is a born doctor who has taken it in hand this time; one of your natural geniuses, with an inward vocation for the art of healing, instructed of nature beforehand in that mystery and profession, and appointed of her to that ministry. Wherever you find him, under whatever disguise, you will find that his mind is running on the structure of bodies, the means of their conservation and growth, and the remedies for their disorders, and decays, and antagonisms, without and within. He has a most extraordinary and incurable natural bent and determination towards medicine and cures in general; he is always inquiring into the anatomy of things and the qualities of drugs, analysing them and mixing them, finding the art of their compounds, and modifying them to suit his purposes, or inventing new ones; for, like Aristotle, to whom he refers for a precedent, he wishes 'to have a hand in everything.'

But he is not a quack. He has no respect for the old authoritative prescriptions, if they fail in practice, whether they come in Galen's name, or another's; but he is just as severe upon 'the empiricutics,' on the other hand, and he objects to 'a horse-drench' for the human constitution in the greater congregation, as much as he does in that distinctively complex delicate structure which the single individual human frame in itself constitutes.

Menenius [speaking of the letter which Volumnia has told him of, and putting in a word on this Doctor's behalf, for it is not very much to the purpose on his own] says, 'It gives me an estate of seven years' health, during which time I will make a lip at the physician.' A lip —a lip– and 'what a deal of scorn looks beautiful on it,' when once you get to see it. But this is the play of 'conservation with advancement.' It is the cure and preservation of the common-weal, to which all lines are tending, to which all points and parentheses are pointing; and thus he continues: 'The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and to this preservative of no better report than a horse-drench.' So we shall find, when we come to try it —this preservative, – this conservation.

This Doctor has a great opinion of nature. He thinks that 'the physician must rely on her powers for his cures in the last resort, and be able to make prescriptions of them, instead of making them out of his own pre-conceits, if he would not have of his cure a conceit also.' His opinion is, that 'nature is made better by no mean, but she herself hath made that mean;' —

'So o'er that artWhich you say adds to nature, is an artThat nature makes……This is an artWhich 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.

The first difference between this metaphysics, and all the metaphysics that ever went before it or came after it, is, that it is practical. It carries in its hand, gathered into the simplicity of the causes that are not many, the secret of all motivity, the secret of all practice. It tells you so; over and over again, in so many words, it dares to tell you so. It opens that closed palm a little, and shows you what is there; it bids you look on while it stirs those lines but a little, and new ages have begun.

It is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech is to forbid abstractions – your abstractions. It sets out from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal in nature.' It sets out from that which is fixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: 'forms' not 'ideas.' The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which the historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are the terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific experience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the causes 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible terms – the practically convertible terms of the known – practically – that is the difference.

In that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things constitutes; in that converging ascent to the original simplicity and identity of nature, beginning at that broad science which makes its base – the science of Natural History – beginning with the basis of the historical complexity and difference; in that pyramid of science, that new and solid pyramid, which the Inductive science – which the inquiry into causes that are operant in nature builds, this author will not stop, either on that broad field of the universal history of nature, which is the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the platform of 'the physical causes' makes. The causes which lie next to our experience – the causes, which are variable and many, do not satisfy him. He gains that platform, and looks about him. He finds that even a diligent inquiry and observation there would result in many new inventions beneficial to men; but the knowledge of these causes 'takes men in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the founding of his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions, secures the result, which gives the widest possible command of means. He refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of his philosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great human scorn on all the possible arts and solutions which lie on that platform, when the proposal is to stop his philosophy of speculation and practice there. It is not for the scientific arts, which that field of observation yields, that he begs leave to revive and re-integrate the misapplied and abused name of natural magic, which, in the true sense, is but natural wisdom, or 'PRUDENCE.'

He can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture of that field does yield for the relief of the human estate. His eye is uplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an historical metaphysics, which the inductive method builds. His eye is intent always on that higher stage of knowledge where that which is common to the sciences is found. He takes the other in passing only. Beginning with the basis of a new observation and history of nature, he will found a new metaphysics – an objective metaphysics – the metaphysics of induction. His logic is but a preparation for that. He is going to collect, by his inductive method, from all nature, from all species, the principles that are in all things; and he is going to build, on the basis of those inducted principles, – on the sure basis of that which is constant, and eternal, and universal in nature, the sure foundations of his universal practice; for, like common logic, the inductive method comprehends 'all.' That same simplicity, which the abstract speculations of men aspire to, and create, it aspires to and attains, by the rough roads, by the laboured stages of observation and experiment.