which shows itself omnipotent against individuals is, in the sense
explained, moral. Still--at any rate for the eye of sight--the evil
against which it asserts itself, and the persons whom this evil
inhabits, are not really something outside the order, so that they can
attack it or fail to conform to it; they are within it and a part of it.
It itself produces them,--produces Iago as well as Desdemona, Iago's
cruelty as well as Iago's courage. It is not poisoned, it poisons
itself. Doubtless it shows by its violent reaction that the poison _is_
poison, and that its health lies in good. But one significant fact
cannot remove another, and the spectacle we witness scarcely warrants
the assertion that the order is responsible for the good in Desdemona,
but Iago for the evil in Iago. If we make this assertion we make it on
grounds other than the facts as presented in Shakespeare's tragedies.

Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or
want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic
character. We do not think of Hamlet merely as failing to meet its
demand, of Antony as merely sinning against it, or even of Macbeth as
simply attacking it. What we feel corresponds quite as much to the idea
that they are _its_ parts, expressions, products; that in their defect
or evil _it_ is untrue to its soul of goodness, and falls into conflict
and collision with itself; that, in making them suffer and waste
themselves, _it_ suffers and wastes itself; and that when, to save its
life and regain peace from this intestinal struggle, it casts them out,
it has lost a part of its own substance,--a part more dangerous and
unquiet, but far more valuable and nearer to its heart, than that which
remains,--a Fortinbras, a Malcolm, an Octavius. There is no tragedy in
its expulsion of evil: the tragedy is that this involves the waste of
good.