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lar direction under limitations greater or less, but identical in fundamental essence, differing only by limitation; itself likewise by virtue of such identical nature self-acting and self-directing cause so far, coming in from the direction of the supernatural, and rising by gradations in amount of power from the lowest point and last dividing line of mere instinct to the highest grade of human intelligence; and the body of man, or animal, is but a structure-built exhibition of the same power, proceeding from the opposite direction, as it were, of the physical and natural, and ascending by corresponding gradations of structure from the lowest to the highest type of animal organization, investing and closing in the soul, which also comes in from underneath and within the physical web itself as a special stream of power of the nature of the power of thought.

Thus, in this convolution of soul and body, is constituted the individuality of the man as physical object, and his personality as metaphysical subject, and between these foldings in of the divine thought upon itself in the special constitution of a finite soul, there arises therein a certain limited sphere of practical action and effect on the physical and other world external to the soul, and a certain possibility of thinking existence for the soul itself, which is yet that same all possibility in which the universe itself is created; in which limited sphere the finite soul has a certain narrow range of liberty, creative play, and scope of free will, or choice, and a certain given amount of power of thinking and doing, under a special consciousness of its own; all beyond this sphere of liberty and limitation being the order of divine providence in the universe, and, as such, absolute fate (which is also Providence, says Bacon) for this soul and in the collision of the external powers or forces coming in through the senses against the soul, so constituted, as a power acting in an opposite direction against and upon the physical phenomena in these external powers, takes place all sense-perception; and in the crea

tive play of the soul as a special power of thought and a special creator, within its given sphere of liberty and with its given amount of power, take place all its own intellectual conceptions and artistic creations, its inner thought and knowledge, and all its own doings, under its own consciousness, and on its own personal responsibility so far, with a certain definite and proportionate accountability for consequences both to itself and to the Higher Power; first, physical, then juridical, then moral, then æsthetical, and lastly, religious; proceeding in this in the direct order of necessity and in the inverse order of dignity and excellence to the highest perfection of a finite soul; all its acts and doings being the work of the power as cause, done under the direction and in the conscious presence of the thinking person, within the constituted sphere of his liberty; at one time, or in one instance, shrinking down to the instinctive point of bare existence as soul, and at another time, or in another instance, swelling and expanding to a faculty of comprehension, capable of conceiving the known worlds and all conceivable worlds, being in its highest exhibition in man, according to Bacon, as a mirrour or glass, capable of the image of the universal world."

And so it is actually true, that in soul and body,

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made of." - Temp., Act IV. Sc. 1.

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The difference is not so much in the stuff as in the dreamer. The universe itself is but the best waking dream of Him that never sleeps; while our dreams are nothing but the fantastic creations of a soul half awake; and for the most part our waking dreams are not much better: :

"True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;

Which is as thin of substance as the air."

Rom. and Jul., Act I. Sc. 4.

All that which is past, says Bacon, "is as a dream; and he that hopes or depends upon time coming, dreams waking." And Poesy, we remember, was "the dream of knowledge," and "was thought to be somewhat inspired with divine rapture; which dreams likewise present." And thus speaks Imogen in the play :

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For so I thought I was a cave-keeper,

And cook to honest creatures; but 't is not so:
'T was but a bolt of nothing, shot of nothing,
Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes
Are sometimes like our judgments blind.
The dream's here still: even when I wake, it is
Without me, as within me: not imagin'd, felt."
Cymb., Act IV. Sc. 2.

§ 4. CUPID AND NEMESIS.

In Bacon's discussion of the Fables of Cupid and Nemesis, is to be found the whole philosophical foundation of the "Romeo and Juliet." One main object of the play was, to exhibit as in a model, under the dramatic form of artistic creation, the essential nature and character of love, and that Juliet that was "the perfect model of eternity," as being the executive beneficence of the creative power; for, says he, “love is nothing but goodness put in motion or applied," or again, "the original and unique force that constitutes and fashions all things out of matter, it being, next to God, the cause of causes, itself without cause"; or, as a more modern philosopher states it, love is "the essence of God," and "the idealism of Jesus" is but "a crude statement of the fact, that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself"; the Platonic and Christian love, or Milton's

"Bright effluence of bright essence increate";

1 Int. of Nature.

2 Wisd. of the Ancients, Works (Boston), XIII. 122.
8 Emerson's Essays, I. 183, 281.

2

and the same that turns Dante's heaven, and rains its virtue

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"E questo Cielo non ha altro dove,

Che la mente divina, in che s' accende

L'amor che l' volge e la virtu ch' ei piove";

or, as Romeo defines it:

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"Jul. And yet I wish but for the thing I have:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite."- Act II. Sc. 2.

Not only the philosophy, but even the very language and imagery of these Fables of Cupid and Nemesis, as related by Bacon, are distinctly traceable in the play, as in this

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"Jul. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night!

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Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,

And learn me how to lose a winning match,

Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:

Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.

Come, night, come Romeo, come thou day in night;
For thou will lie upon the wings of night,
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back."

Act 111. Sc. 2.

This is the same brooding wing of Night under which Cupid was hatched and born, in the complete antithesis of something and nothing, affirmative and negative, light and darkness; and the same ideas and imagery pervade the following lines:

"Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for Earth too dear!
So shews a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shews.".

-

Act I. Sc. 5.

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“King. O, paradox! Black is the badge of Hell,
The hue of dungeons, and the shade of night;
And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well."

Love's L. L., Act IV. Sc. 3.

And thus the Sonnet, with a color of the same inspira

tion:

"Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited: and they mourners seem
At such, who not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem:

Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,

That every tongue says, beauty should do so."-cxxvii

In like manner, the language and imagery as well as the leading ideas of the fable of Nemesis may be traced in many passages toward the end of the play: the following instances will explain themselves without further comment.

In the interpretation of this fable, in the Wisdom of the Ancients, Bacon says:

....

"They say she was the daughter of Night and Ocean. She is represented with wings and a crown: an ashen spear in her right hand: a phial with Ethiops in it, in her left; sitting upon a stag.. The parents of this goddess were Ocean and Night; that is, the vicissitude of things, and the dark and secret judgment of God. For the vicissitude of things is aptly represented by the Ocean, by reason of its perpetual flowing and ebbing; and secret providence is rightly set forth under the image of Night."

And thus it begins to appear in the play :

"Rom. Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;

Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears."- Act I. Sc. 1.
Cap. How now! a conduit, girl? What! still in tears?
Evermore showering? In a little body

Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind.

For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,

Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,

Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs;
Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,
Without a sudden calm, will overset

Thy tempest-toss'd body." Act III. Sc. 5.

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