Shakespearian point of view_.

This truth signifies both gain and loss. The philosophical criticism of
life may vary from the ideal objectivity of absolute truth, to the
subjectivity of a personal religion. Philosophy aims to correct the
partiality of particular points of view by means of a point of view that
shall comprehend their relations, and effect such reconciliations or
transformations as shall enable them to constitute a universe.
Philosophy always assumes the hypothetical view of omniscience. The
necessity of such a final criticism is implicit in every scientific item
of knowledge, and in every judgment that is passed upon life. Philosophy
makes a distinct and peculiar contribution to human knowledge by its
heroic effort to measure all knowledges and all ideals by the standard
of totality. Nevertheless it is significant that no human individual can
possibly possess the range of omniscience. The most adequate knowledge
of which any generation of men is capable, will always be that which is
conceived by the most synthetic and vigorously metaphysical minds; but
every individual philosophy will nevertheless be a premature synthesis.
The effort to complete knowledge is the indispensable test of the
adequacy of prevailing conceptions, but the completed knowledge of any
individual mind will shortly become an historical monument. It will
belong primarily to the personal life of its creator, as the
articulation of his personal covenant with the universe. There is a
sound justification for such a conclusion of things in the case of the
individual, for the conditions of human life make it inevitable; but it
will always possess a felt unity, and many distinct features, that are
private and subjective. Now such a projection of personality, with its
coloring and its selection, Shakespeare has avoided; and very largely as
a consequence, his dramas are a storehouse of genuine human nature.
Ambition, mercy, hate, madness, guilelessness, conventionality, mirth,
bravery, deceit, purity--these, and all human states and attributes save
piety, are upon his pages as real, and as mysterious withal, as they are
in the great historical society. For an ordinary reader, these states
and attributes are more real in Hamlet or Lear than in his own direct
experience, because in Hamlet and Lear he can see them with the eye and
intelligence of genius. But Shakespeare is the world all over again,
and there is loss as well as gain in such realism