external, the social effect of the act, but the personal, the internal
effect of it. As for Duncan, he is in his grave; after life's fitful
fever he sleeps well. What our minds are made to dwell upon is not that
Duncan shall sleep for ever, but that Macbeth shall sleep no more; it is
not the extinction of a dynasty, but the ruin of a character.

We see in _Hamlet_ precisely the same thing. The action there that our
interest centres in, is the hero's struggle to conform to an internal
personal standard of right, utterly irrespective of use to others, or of
natural happiness to himself. In the course of this struggle, indeed, he
does nothing but ruin the happiness around him; and this ruin adds
greatly to the pathos of the spectacle. But we are not indignant with
Hamlet, as being the cause of it. We should have been indignant rather
with him if the case had been reversed, and if, instead of sacrificing
social happiness for the sake of personal right, he had sacrificed
personal right for the sake of social happiness.

In _Antigone_ the case is just the same, only there its nature is yet
more distinctly exhibited. We have for the central interest the same
personal struggle after right, not after use or happiness; and one of
the finest passages in that whole marvellous drama is a distinct
statement by the heroine that this is so. The one rule she says, that
she is resolved to live by, and not live by only, but if needs be to die
for, is no human rule, is no standard of man's devising, nor can it be
modified to suit our changing needs; but it is

_The unwritten and the enduring laws of God,
Which are not of to-day nor yesterday,
But live from everlasting, and none breathes
Who knows them, whence begotten._