1 86 Shakspcare 



of insight, his extent of ontsight, his world-wide 

 multipolar assimilation, his large-reaching reflec- 

 tion, and the cool self-detachment and indulgent 

 humour with which he took survey of all the 

 world, seeing all as one and all in the one. 



In the seeming contrast between the ordinary 

 routine of his life as a man of business and 

 pleasure and his poetic work as a man of genius, 

 there is nothing incompatible to wonder at \ 

 examples of similar startling contrasts between 

 the material man, plodding through his daily 

 labours and pursuing his pleasures in the world, 

 and the ideal man of his chamber, as he works 

 imaginatively and others imagine him, are notable 

 enough in the lives of other men of genius. Is 

 there ever a great character that does not exhibit 

 apparent inconsistencies ? u The web of our 

 life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together," 

 and the one as constituent a part of its structure 

 as the other. Having his two poles of being, so 

 to speak, he displayed a two-fold function in 

 relation to two different orders of impression \ 

 not a dual being really, but two seeming incon- 

 sistents whose contrary features, marking quite 

 different functions in relation to different circum- 

 stances, we cannot duly correlate because we 

 know nothing yet of the subconscious mental 

 workings of the physiological being which holds 

 them in vital unity. Is not that the full stop to 

 which the psychologist must always come who 

 is content to count science the little that he can 



