in; and sin
that amends is but patched with virtue. If that _this simple
syllogism_ will serve, so; if it will not, what remedy?]

Such a theory of human life is first-rate poetry; it is an
illuminating figure of poetic speech. But the simplicity with which
the theme is presented, to the exclusion of many material issues, puts
the statement out of the plane of metaphysical disquisition, which
involves subtle conflict of argument and measured resolution of doubt,
rather than imaginative certainty or unconditional assertion. Nor is
Hamlet's famous soliloquy on the merits and demerits of suicide
conceived in the spirit of the metaphysician. It is a dramatic
description of a familiar phase of emotional depression; it explains
nothing; it propounds no theory. It reflects a state of feeling; it
breathes that torturing spirit of despondency which kills all hope of
mitigating either the known ills of life or the imagined terrors of
death.

The faint, shadowy glimpses which Shakespeare had of scientific
philosophy gave him small respect for it. Like the typical hard-headed
Englishman, he doubted its practical efficacy. Shakespeare viewed all
formal philosophy much as Dr Johnson's Rasselas, whose faith in it
dwindled, when he perceived that the professional philosopher, who
preached superiority to all human frailties and weaknesses, succumbed
to them at the first provocation.

There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.[27]

For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.[28]

[Footnote 27: _Hamlet_, I., v., 166-7.]

[Footnote 28: _Much Ado About Nothing_, V., i., 35-6.]

Such phrases sum up Shakespeare's habitual bearing to formal
philosophy. The consideration of causes, first principles, abstract
truths, never, in the dramatist's opinion, cured a human ill. The
futility of formal philosophy stands, from this point of view, in no
further need of demonstration.

II

But it is permissible to use the words philosopher and philosophy,
without scientific precision or significance, in the popular
inaccurate senses of shrewd observer and observation of life. By
philosophy we may understand common-sense wisdom about one's
fellow-men, their aspirations, their failures and successes. As soon
as we employ the word in that significance, we must allow that few men
were better philosophers than Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is what Touchstone call