is judgment is true, it is
by no means conclusive as respects Shakespeare's relation to the
philosophical type of thought. For there can be universality without
philosophy. Thus, to know the groups and the marks of the vertebrates is
to know a truth which possesses generality, in contradistinction to the
particularism of Whitman's poetic consciousness. Even so to know well
the groups and marks of human character, vertebrate and invertebrate, is
to know that of which the average man, in his hand to hand struggle with
life, is ignorant. Such a wisdom Shakespeare possessed to a unique
degree, and it enabled him to reconstruct human life. He did not merely
perceive human states and motives, but he understood human nature so
well that he could create consistent men and women. Moreover,
Shakespeare's knowledge was not only thus universal in being a knowledge
of general groups and laws, but also in respect of its extensity. His
understanding was as rich as it was acute. It is true, then, that
Shakespeare read human life as an open book, knowing certainly the
manner of human thinking and feeling, and the power and interplay of
human motives. But it is equally true, on the other hand, that he
possessed no unitary conception of the meaning and larger relations of
human life. Such a conception might have been expressed either by means
of the outlook of some dominating and persistent type of personality, or
by a pervading suggestion of some constant world-setting for the
variable enterprise of mankind. It could appear only provided the poet's
appreciation of life in detail were determined by an interpretation of
the meaning of life as a whole. Shakespeare apparently possessed no such
interpretation. Even when Hamlet is groping after some larger truth that
may bear upon the definite problems of life, he represents but one, and
that a strange and unusual, type of human nature. And Hamlet's
reflections, it should be noted, have no outcome. There is no
Shakespearian answer to the riddles that Hamlet propounds. The poet's
genius is not less amazing for this fact; indeed, his peculiar
distinction can only be comprehended upon this basis. Shakespeare put no
construction upon life, and by virtue of this very reserve accomplished
an art of surpassing fidelity and vividness. The absence of philosophy
in Shakespeare, and the presence of the most characteristic quality of
his genius, may both be imputed by the one affirmation, that _there is
no