excessive
generosity ruins Timon, while Antonio's moderate generosity confers
honor; normal ambition makes Henry V. great, whereas it ruins Percy, in
whom it has risen too high; excessive virtue leads Angelo to
destruction, and if, in those who surround him, excessive severity
becomes harmful and can not prevent crime, on the other hand the divine
element in man, even charity, if it be excessive, can create crime.

Shakespeare taught, says Gervinus, that one _may be too good_.

He teaches that morality, like politics, is a matter in which, owing to
the complexity of circumstances and motives, one can not establish any
principles (p. 563), and in this he agrees with Bacon and
Aristotle--there are no positive religious and moral laws which may
create principles for correct moral conduct suitable for all cases.

Gervinus most clearly expresses the whole of Shakespeare's moral theory
by saying that Shakespeare does not write for those classes for whom
definite religious principles and laws are suitable (_i.e._, for nine
hundred and ninety-nine one-thousandths of men) but for the educated:

"There are classes of men whose morality is best guarded by the positive
precepts of religion and state law; to such persons Shakespeare's
creations are inaccessible. They are comprehensible and accessible only
to the educated, from whom one can expect that they should acquire the
healthy tact of life and self-consciousness by means of which the innate
guiding powers of conscience and reason, uniting with the will, lead us
to the definite attainment of worthy aims in life. But even for such
educated people, Shakespeare's teaching is not always without danger.
The condition on which his teaching is quite harmless is that it should
be accepted in all its completeness, in all its parts, without any
omission. Then it is not only without danger, but is the most clear and
faultless and therefore the most worthy of confidence of all moral
teaching" (p. 564).

In order thus to accept all, one should understand that, according to
his teaching, it is stupid and harmful for the individual to revolt
against, or endeavor to overthrow, the limits of established religious
and state forms. "Shakespeare," says Gervinus, "would abhor an
independent and free individual who, with a powerful spirit, should
struggle against all convention in politics and morality and overstep
that union between religion and the State which has for thousands of
years supp