altogether foreign to the moral consciousness and of a purely practical and judicial nature; setting aside these facts, which are generally considered unworthy of discussion and jeered at in the most recent criticism, as the ridiculous survivals of a bygone age, even if we make the attempt to translate these statements into a less illogical form, and assume that there really existed in Shakespeare an inclination for problems of that sort, they shew themselves to be at variance with simple reality. Shakespeare caressed no ideals of any sort and least of all political ideals; and although he magnificently represents political struggles also, he always went beyond their specific character and object, attaining through them to the only thing that really attracted him; life. This _sense of life_ is also extolled in his work, which for that reason is held to be eminently _dramatic,_ that is to say, animated with a sense of life considered in itself, in its eternal discord, its eternal harshness, its bitter-sweet, in all its complexity. To feel life potently, without the determination of a passion or an ideal, implies feeling it unilluminated by faith, undisciplined by any law of goodness, not to be corrected by the human will, not to be reduced to the enjoyment of idyllic calm, or to the inebriation of joy; and Shakespeare has indeed been judged in turn not religious, not moral, no assertor of the freedom of the will, and no optimist. But no one has yet dared to judge him to be irreligious, immoral, a fatalist, or a pessimist, for these adjectives are seen not to suit him, as soon as they are pronounced.