w one
of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the
moral quality of a man, what is this but another _side_ of the one vital
Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of
him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings;
his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in
the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is
_one_; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways.

Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider
it--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly
immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we
can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing, sympathise with it:
that is, be _virtuously_ related to it. If he have not the justice to
put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the
dangerous true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all of
them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth,
remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a
sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small;
for the uses of the day merely. But does not the very Fox know something
of Nature? Exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge! The human
Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know
but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered too, that if
the Fox had not a certain vulpine _morality_, he could not even know
where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he spent his time in
splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by
Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage,
promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces,
he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality
and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same
internal unity of vulpine life! These things are worth stating; for the
contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this
time: what limitations, modifications they require, your own candour
will supply.

If I say, therefore, that Shakespeare is the greatest of Intellects, I
have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's
intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious
intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of.
Novalis