orted society. According to his views, the practical wisdom of
men could not have a higher object than the introduction into society of
the greatest spontaneity and freedom, but precisely because of this one
should safeguard as sacred and irrefragable the natural laws of
society--one should respect the existing order of things and,
continually verifying it, inculcate its rational sides, not overlooking
nature for the sake of culture, or _vice versa_" (p. 566). Property, the
family, the state, are sacred; but aspiration toward the recognition of
the equality of men is insanity. Its realization would bring humanity to
the greatest calamities. No one struggled more than Shakespeare against
the privileges of rank and position, but could this freethinking man
resign himself to the privileges of the wealthy and educated being
destroyed in order to give room to the poor and ignorant? How could a
man who so eloquently attracts people toward honors, permit that the
very aspiration toward that which was great be crushed together with
rank and distinction for services, and, with the destruction of all
degrees, "the motives for all high undertakings be stifled"? Even if the
attraction of honors and false power treacherously obtained were to
cease, could the poet admit of the most dreadful of all violence, that
of the ignorant crowd? He saw that, thanks to this equality now
preached, everything may pass into violence, and violence into arbitrary
acts and thence into unchecked passion which will rend the world as the
wolf does its prey, and in the end the world will swallow itself up.
Even if this does not happen with mankind when it attains equality--if
the love of nations and eternal peace prove not to be that impossible
"nothing," as Alonso expressed it in "The Tempest"--but if, on the
contrary, the actual attainment of aspirations toward equality is
possible, then the poet would deem that the old age and extinction of
the world had approached, and that, therefore, for active individuals,
it is not worth while to live (pp. 571, 572).

Such is Shakespeare's view of life as demonstrated by his greatest
exponent and admirer.

Another of the most modern admirers of Shakespeare, George Brandes,
further sets forth:[2]

"No one, of course, can conserve his life quite pure from evil, from
deceit, and from the injury of others, but evil and deceit are not
always vices, and even the evil caused to others, is not necessarily a
vice: it is