THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 



337 



"To be, or not to be, — that is the question: 

 Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer 

 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. 

 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 

 And by opposing end them ? To die,— to sleep,— 

 No more; and by a sleep to say we end 

 The heartache and the thousand natural shocks 

 That flesh is heir to, — 't is a consummation 

 Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, — to sleep, — 

 To sleep ! perchance to dream ! ay, there 's the rub ; 

 For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 

 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil. 

 Must give us pause: there's the respect 

 That makes calamity of so long life; 

 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 

 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely. 

 The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay. 

 The insolence of office, and the spurns 

 That patient merit of the unworthy takes. 

 When he himself might his quietus make 

 With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, 

 To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 

 But that the dread of something after death, 

 The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 

 No traveler returns, puzzles the will, 

 And makes us rather bear those ills we have 

 Than fly to others that we know not of?" 



The whole of life thus seems to be interpenetrated 

 with tragedy, with pain. Man can not escape it: and 

 get down among the lower animals, live with them, 

 and be among them, and you will find suffering and 

 misery there also. Men not infrequently cause tragedy 

 in their relations with the rest of the animate world, 

 sometimes knowingly and purposely and remorselessly, 

 and sometimes unwittingly as undesignedly a partner 

 of natural law. Tragedy is indeed inwoven into our 

 very existence. Whenever we mow our lawns the Jug- 



