Macbeth we may well pass by; not need we linger over Cordelia's
father, for his absence of consciousness is all too manifest; but
Hamlet, Hamlet the thinker--is he wise? Is the elevation sufficient
wherefrom he looks down on the crimes of Elsinore? He seems to
regard them from the loftiest heights of his intellect; but in the
light-clad mountain range of wisdom there are other peaks that tower
far above the heights of the intellect--the peaks of goodness and
confidence, of indulgence and love. If he could have surveyed the
misdeeds of Elsinore from the eminence whence Marcus Aurelius or
Fenelon, for instance, had surely surveyed them, what would have
resulted then? And, first of all, does it not often happen that a
crime which is suddenly conscious of the gaze of a mightier soul
will pause, and halt, and at last crawl back to its lair; even as
bees cease from labour when a gleam of sunshine steals into the
hive?

The real destiny, the inner destiny would in any event have followed
its course in the souls of Claudius and Gertrude; for these sinful
ones had delivered themselves into its hands, as must needs be the
case with those whose ways are evil; but would it have dared to
spread its influence abroad if one of those sages had been in the
palace? Would it have dared to overstep the shining, denouncing
barrier that his presence would have imposed, and maintained, in
front of the palace gates? When the sage's destiny blends with that
of men of inferior wisdom, the sage raises them to his level, but
himself will rarely descend. Neither on earth nor in the domain of
fatality do rivers flow back to their source. But to return: let us
imagine a sovereign, all-powerful soul--that of Jesus, in Hamlet's
place at Elsinore; would the tragedy then have flown on till it
reached the four deaths at the end? Is that conceivable? A crime may