l" about the Universe in the manner of these people is
to insult the Christ who died. It is to outrage the "little ones" over
whose bodies the Wheel has passed. When Nietzsche, the martyr of
his own murdered pity, calls upon us to "love Fate," he does not
shout so lustily. His laughter is the laughter of one watching his
darling stripped for the rods. He who would be "in harmony with
Nature." with those "murderous ministers" who, in their blind abyss,
throw dice with Chance, must be in harmony with the giants of
Jotunheim, as well as with the lords of Valhalla. He must be able to
look on grimly while Asgard totters; he must welcome "the Twilight
of the Gods." To have a mind inured to such conceptions, a mind
capable of remaining on such a verge, is, alone, to be, intellectually
speaking, what we call "aristocratic." When, even with eyes like
poor Gloucester's in the play, we can see "how this world wags," it
is slavish and "plebeian" to swear that it all "means intensely, and
means well." It is also to lie in one's throat!

No wonder Shakespeare treats reverently every "superstition," every
anodyne and nepenthe offered to the inmates of this House of the
Incurable. Such "sprinkling with holy water," such "rendering
ourselves stupid," is the only alternative. Anything else is the insight
of the hero, or the hypocrisy of the preacher!

Has it been realized how curiously the interpreters of Shakespeare
omit the principal thing? They revel in his Grammar, his History, his
Biology, his Botany, his Geography, his Psychology and his Ethics.
They never speak of his Poetry. Now Shakespeare is, above
everything, a poet. To poetry, over and over again, as our Puritans
know well, he sacrifices Truth, Morality, Probability, nay! the very
principles of Art itself.

As Dramas, many of his plays are scandalously bad; many of his
characters fantastic. One can put one's finger in almost every case
upon the persons and situations that interested him and upon those
that did not. And how carelessly he "sketches in" the latter! So far
from being "the Objective God of Art" they seek to make him, he is
the most wayward and subjective of all wandering souls.

No natural person can read him without feeling the pulse of extreme
personal passion behind everything he writes.

And this pulse of personal passion is always expressing itself in
Poetry. He will let the probabilities of a character vanish into air, or
dwindle into a wistful note of