imagination: it is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress
others that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We had
rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in
ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to
man: the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed
out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than
abstract right.--Coriolanus complains of the fickleness of the
people: yet the instant he cannot gratify his pride and obstinacy at
their expense, he turns his arms against his country. If his country
was not worth defending, why did he build his pride on its defence?
He is a conqueror and a hero; he conquers other countries, and makes
this a plea for enslaving his own; and when he is prevented from
doing so, he leagues with its enemies to destroy his country. He
rates the people 'as if he were a God to punish, and not a man of
their infirmity'. He scoffs at one of their tribunes for maintaining
their rights and franchises: 'Mark you his absolute SHALL?' not
marking his own absolute WILL to take everything from them, his
impatience of the slightest opposition to his own pretensions being
in proportion to their arrogance and absurdity. If the great and
powerful had the beneficence and wisdom of Gods, then all this would
have been well: if with a greater knowledge of what is good for the
people, they had as great a care for their interest as they have
themselves, if they were seated above the world, sympathizing with
the welfare, but not feeling the passions of men, receiving neither
good nor hurt from them, but bestowing their benefits as free gifts
on them, they might then rule over them like another Providence. But
this is not the case. Coriolanus is unwilling that the senate should
show their 'cares' for the people, lest their 'cares' should be
construed into 'fears', to the subversion of all due authority; and
he is no sooner disappointed in his schemes to deprive the people