has
already been said by repeating it upon occasion, but shall express my
dissent positively and briefly, without involving myself in a conflict
of opinions. Let us, then, take up the first point.

I

SHAKESPEARE AS A POET IN GENERAL

The highest that man can attain is the consciousness of his own thoughts
and feelings, and a knowledge of himself which prepares him to fathom
alien natures as well. There are people who are by nature endowed with
such a gift and by experience develop it to practical uses. Thence
springs the ability to conquer something, in a higher sense, from the
world and affairs. The poet, too, is born with such an endowment, only
he does not develop it for immediate mundane ends, but for a more
exalted, universal purpose. If we rate Shakespeare as one of the
greatest poets, we acknowledge at the same time that it has been
vouchsafed to few to discern the world as he did: to few, in expressing
their inward feelings of the world, to give the reader a more realizing
sense of it. It becomes thoroughly transparent to us; we find ourselves
suddenly the confidants of virtue and vice, of greatness and
insignificance, of nobility and depravity--all this, and more, through
the simplest means. If we seek to discover what those means are, it
appears as if he wrought for our eyes; but we are deceived.
Shakespeare's creations are not for the eyes of the body. I shall
endeavor to explain myself.

Sight may well be termed the clearest of our senses, that through which
transmissions are most readily made. But our inward sense is still
clearer and its highest and quickest impressions are conveyed through
the medium of the word; for that is indeed fructifying, while what we
apprehend through our eyes may be alien to us and by no means as potent
in its effects. Now, Shakespeare addresses our inward sense, absolutely;
through it the realm of fancy created by the imagination is quickened
into life and thus a world of impressions is produced for which we can
not account, since the basis of the illusion consists in the fact that
everything seems to take place before our eyes. But if we examine
Shakespeare's dramas carefully, we find that they contain far less of
sensuous acts than of spiritual expressions. He allows events to happen
which may be readily imagined; nay, that it is better to imagine than to
see. Hamlet's ghost, the witches in _Macbeth_, many deeds of horror,
produce their effect through the imagination