"If to do,"
says Portia in the _Merchant of Venice_,--"if to do were as easy as to
know what 't were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's
cottages princes' palaces." Hamlet knows only too well what 't were good
to do, but he palters with everything in a double sense: he sees the
grain of good there is in evil, and the grain of evil there is in good,
as they exist in the world, and, finding that he can make those
feather-weighted accidents balance each other, infers that there is
little to choose between the essences themselves. He is of Montaigne's
mind, and says expressly that "there is nothing good or ill, but thinking
makes it so." He dwells so exclusively in the world of ideas that the
world of facts seems trifling, nothing is worth the while; and he has
been so long objectless and purposeless, so far as actual life is
concerned, that, when at last an object and an aim are forced upon him,
he cannot deal with them, and gropes about vainly for a motive outside of
himself that shall marshal his thoughts for him and guide his faculties
into the path of action. He is the victim not so much of feebleness of
will as of an intellectual indifference that hinders the will from
working long in any one direction.
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