"I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth. I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun." Nothing has disturbed him till he appreciates that some agency which he does not control can transplant a forest at his castle gate. The apparition of the witches scarcely lifts his eyebrows. "Speak, if you can," is the calm greeting. When he starts, and seems to fear "things that do sound so fair," it is because the shapes he conjures become suddenly endowed with tongues, and he hears his own ambition syllabled. For a man is not proof against shrinking at the first moment that lends to the "airy nothing" of his desire a distinct name and purpose. He is astonished at the audacious phrasing of his hopes, and he resents at first what seems definite enough to be an impeachment from something not himself; yet not until that moment was it really his Self. What phantoms have thus leaped out of vacuity into the midnight chambers of desire! What voices have drawn the startled answers of a crime that did not suspect this overlooking! But when the man's Self has undergone this real birth, and the secret parturition becomes a breathing child of consciousness, he soon accepts his own new self, and forgets that it was irritated into a cry by the first salutes of the atmosphere. Casting away all repugnance, Macbeth exclaims to his wicked wishes, before they have a chance to vanish,-- "Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more! ... Speak, I charge you!" So the dagger that wavers in the heated air of his soul does not surprise him,--"Come, let me clutch thee!" Really, he expected to grasp it; for it was precisely the kind of instrument he thought of using, the very shape and workmanship thereof. There's nothing to perturb until he draws from his belt its counterpart, yet sees the other still solid in the air. That sets him to pondering: his "Eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest." But, in spite of that, the murder in his brain reddens, sprinkles the blade and dudgeon with drops of blood, "which was not so before." Now when the illusion becomes the most intense, it is dispersed, as if the brain's own climax swelled to breaking. The collapse reminds him that the deed still waits to be accomplished: his dagger is yet clean. But its form is the bloody business which he has on hand to get through with before sweet morning. It seemed so clearly cut in his mind, and stayed so long before he could turn it out, that he thought it worth describing to his wife, as she indicates to us when at the banquet she calls his vision of Banquo "Proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, Led you to Duncan."