Numberless are the shocks that the artistic consciousness receives from such a method as this. Gervinus, who professed "an even firmer belief in Shakespeare's infallibility in matters of morality than in his lack of aesthetic defects," is indignant with readers disposed to find hard and cruel Prince Henry's repulse on coming to the throne, of his old friend Falstaff, the companion of his merry adventures. He gravely declares that this proves modern readers to be "far inferior both to Prince Henry and to Shakespeare in nobility and ethical fervour"; whereas it is evident that the poor readers are right, because we have to deal here with poetical images, not with practical and moral acts, and readers justly feel that Shakespeare was on this occasion obeying certain ends outside the province of art. Falstaff is sympathetic to every reader: even Gervinus does not dare to declare him antipathetic, but sets about finding plausible explanations for this illicit attractiveness. He produces three: the artistic perfection of the representation, the logical perfection of the type, and the struggle between the will for pleasure that always stimulates Falstaff, and his old age and his paunch, which hinder or make him impotent, and according to Gervinus, are bestowed upon him, in order to appease or mitigate our shocked sense of ethical severity. But the only and obvious explanation of Falstaff's sympathetic attractiveness is the sympathy which the poet himself felt in his genial way for him as a human force. In like manner, what we have held to be an error of composition, such as the story of Gloucester and his sons forming a parallel with that of Lear, is held to be a miracle by the professors aforesaid, because, as says Ulrici, the poet wished to teach us that "moral corruption is not isolated, but diffused among the most noble families, representative of all the others." Vischer holds a similar view, to the effect that Shakespeare "intended to show that, if impiety is widely diffused, society becomes impossible, and the world rocks to its foundation; but one instance of this did not suffice, so he had to accumulate the most terrifying confirmation of the fact."