y _ought to be benefited_. As the killing
of Caesar stands in his purpose, he and his associates are to be
"sacrificers, not butchers." But that the deed may have the effect he
hopes for, his countrymen generally must regard it in the same light as
he does. That they will do this is the very thing which he has _in fact_
no reason to conclude; notwithstanding, because it is so _in his idea_,
therefore he trusts that the conspirators will "be called purgers, not
murderers." Meanwhile, the plain truth is, that if his countrymen had
been capable of regarding the deed as a sacrifice, they would not have
made nor permitted any occasion for it. It is certain that, unless so
construed, the act must prove fruitful of evil; all Rome is full of
things proving that it cannot be so construed; but this is what Brutus
has no eye to see.

So too, in his oration "to show the _reason_ of our Caesar's death," he
speaks, in calm and dispassionate manner, just those things which he
thinks ought to set the people right and himself right in their eyes,
forgetting all the while that the deed cannot fail to make the people
mad, and that popular madness is not a thing to be reasoned with. And
for the same cause he insists on sparing Antony, and on permitting him
to speak in Caesar's funeral. To do otherwise would be unjust, and so
would overthrow the whole nature of the enterprise as it lives in his
mind. And because in his idea it ought so to be, he trusts that Antony
will make Caesar's death the occasion of strengthening those who killed
him, not perceiving the strong likelihood, which soon passes into a
fact, that in cutting off Caesar they have taken away the only check on
Antony's ambition. He ought to have foreseen that Antony, instead of
being drawn to their side, would rather make love to Caesar's place at
their expense.

Thus the course of Brutus serves no end but to set on foot another civil
war, which naturally hastens and assures the very thing he sought to
prevent. He confides in the goodness of his cause, not considering that
the better the cause, the worse its chance with bad men. He thinks it
safe to trust others because he knows they can safely trust him; the
singleness of his own eye causing him to believe that others will see as
he sees, the purity of his own heart, that others will feel as he feels.

Here then we have a strong instance of a very good man doing a very bad
thing; and, withal, of a wise man acting most unwisel