force only
makes him more repulsive. How is it then that we can bear to contemplate
him; nay, that, if we really imagine him, we feel admiration and some
kind of sympathy? Henry the Fifth tells us:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out;

but here, it may be said, we are shown a thing absolutely evil,
and--what is more dreadful still--this absolute evil is united with
supreme intellectual power. Why is the representation tolerable, and why
do we not accuse its author either of untruth or of a desperate
pessimism?

To these questions it might at once be replied: Iago does not stand
alone; he is a factor in a whole; and we perceive him there and not in
isolation, acted upon as well as acting, destroyed as well as
destroying.[117] But, although this is true and important, I pass it by
and, continuing to regard him by himself, I would make three remarks in
answer to the questions.

In the first place, Iago is not merely negative or evil--far from it.
Those very forces that moved him and made his fate--sense of power,
delight in performing a difficult and dangerous action, delight in the
exercise of artistic skill--are not at all evil things. We sympathise
with one or other of them almost every day of our lives. And,
accordingly, though in Iago they are combined with something detestable
and so contribute to evil, our perception of them is accompanied with
sympathy. In the same way, Iago's insight, dexterity, quickness,
address, and the like, are in themselves admirable things; the perfect
man would possess them. And certainly he would possess also Iago's
courage and self-control, and, like Iago, would stand above the impulses
of mere feeling, lord of his inner world. All this goes to evil ends in
Iago, but in itself it has a great worth; and, although in reading, of
course, we do not sift it out and regard it separately, it inevitably
affects us and mingles admiration with our hatred or horror.

All this, however, might apparently co-exist with absolute egoism and
total want of humanity. But, in the second place, it is not true that in
Iago this egoism and this want are absolute, and that in this sense he
is a thing of mere evil. They are frightful, but if they were absolute
Iago would be a monster, not a man. The fact is, he _tries_ to make them
absolute and cannot succeed; and the traces of conscience, shame and
humanity, though faint, are discernible. If his e