362 PSYCHOLOGY. 



"And as when a Mseonian or a Carian woman stains ivory with 

 purple to be a cheek-piece for horses, and it is Icept in the chamber, and 

 many horsemen have prayed to bear it off ; but it is kept a treasure for 

 a king, both a trapping for his horse and a glory to the driver — in such 

 wise were thy stout thighs, Menelaos, and legs and fair ankles stained 

 with blood."* 



A man in whom all the accidents of an analogy rise up 

 as vividly as this, may be excused for not attending to the 

 ground of the analogy. But he need not on that account 

 be deemed intellectually the inferior of a man of drier mind, 

 in whom the ground is not as liable to be eclipsed by the 

 general splendor. Rarely are both sorts of intellect, the 

 splendid and the analytic, found in conjunction. Plato 

 among philosophers, and M. Taine, who cannot quote a 

 child's saying without describing the * voix cJiantante, 

 etonnee, heureuse ' in which it is uttered, are only excep- 

 tions whose strangeness proves the rule. 



An often-quoted writer has said that Shakespeare pos- 

 sessed more intellectual poiver than any one else that ever 

 lived. If by this he meant the powder to pass from given 

 premises to right or congruous conclusions, it is no doubt 

 true. The abrupt transitions in Shakespeare's thought 

 astonish the reader by their unexpectedness no less than 

 they delight him by their fitness. Why, for instance, does 

 the death of Othello so stir the spectator's blood and leave 

 him with a sense of reconcilement? Shakespeare himself 

 could very likely not say why ; for his invention, though 

 rational, was not ratiocinative. Wishing the curtain to fall 

 upon a reinstated Othello, that speech about the turbaned 

 Turk suddenly simply flashed across him as the right end of 

 all that went before. The dry critic who comes after can, 

 however, point out the subtle bonds of identity that guided 

 Shakespeare's pen through that speech to the death of the 

 Moor. Othello is sunk in ignominy, lapsed from his 

 height at the beginning of the play. What better way 

 to rescue him at last from this abasement than to make 

 him for an instant identify himself in memory with the old 

 Othello of better days, and then execute justice on his pres- 

 ent disowned body, as he used then to smite all enemies of 



* Translated by my colleague. Professor G. H. Palmer. 



