Phelps's single-handed effort brought the people of London for eighteen years face to face with the great English drama at his playhouse at Sadler's Wells. "I made that enterprise pay," he said, after he retired; "not making a fortune certainly, but bringing up a large family and paying my way." Private troubles and illness compelled him suddenly to abandon the enterprise at the end of eighteen years, when there happened to be none at hand to take his place of leader. All that was wanting to make his enterprise permanent, he declared, was some public control, some public acknowledgment of responsibility which, without impeding the efficient manager's freedom of action, would cause his post to be filled properly in case of an accidental vacancy. Phelps thought that if he could do so much during eighteen years by his personal, isolated, and independent endeavour, much more could be done in permanence under some public method of safeguard and guarantee. Phelps's services to the literary drama can hardly be over-estimated. His mature judgment is not to be lightly gainsaid. It is just to his memory to put his faith to a practical test. VII ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PHILOSOPHY[24] [Footnote 24: This paper, which was originally prepared in 1899 for the purposes of a popular lecture, is here printed for the first time.] I A French critic once remarked that a whole system of philosophy could be deduced from Shakespeare's pages, though from all the works of the philosophers one could not draw a page of Shakespeare. The second statement--the denial of the presence of a page of Shakespeare in the works of all the philosophers--is more accurate than the assertion that a system of philosophy could be deduced from the plays of Shakespeare. It is hopeless to deduce any precise system of philosophy from Shakespeare's plays. Literally, philosophy means nothing more recondite than love of wisdom. Technically, it means scientifically restrained speculation about the causes of human thought and conduct; it embraces the sciences of logic, of ethics, of politics, of psychology, of metaphysics. Shakespeare's training and temper unfitted him to make any professed contribution to any of these topics. Ignorant persons argue on hazy grounds that the great avowed philosopher of Shakespeare's day, Francis Bacon, wrote Shakespeare's plays. There is no need to confute the theory, which confutes itself. But, if a confutation were needed, it lies on the surface in the conflicting attitudes which Shakespeare and Bacon assume towards philosophy. There is no mistaking Bacon's attitude. The supreme aim of his writings was to establish the practical value, the majestic importance, of philosophy in its strict sense of speculative science. He sought to widen its scope, and to multiply the ranks of its students.