ncidental and a means.

And the meaning of it all? Well, the meaning is as vast as the
scheme of evolution itself, I suppose. It is _Hamlet_ over
again, and treated differently; that which wrote _Hamlet_
through Shakespeare, wrote this Trilogy through Aeschylus. I
imagine you are to find in the _Agamemnon_ the symbol of the
Spirit's fall into matter--of the incarnation (and obscuration)
of the Lords of Mind--driven thereto by ancient Karma, and the
result--of the life of past universes. Shakespeare deals with
this retrospectively, in the Ghost's words to Hamlet on the
terrace. The 'death' of the Spirit is its fall into matter.

And just as the ghost urges Hamlet to revenge, so Apollo urges
Orestes; it is the influx, stir, or impingement of the Supreme
Self, that rouses a man, at a certain stage in his evolution,
to lift himself above his common manhood. This is the most
interesting and momentous event in the long career of the soul:
it takes the place, in that drama of incarnations, that the
marriage does in the modern novel. Shakespeare, whose mental
tendencies were the precise opposite of Aeschylus's--they ran to
infinite multiplicity and complexity, where the other's ran to
stern unity and simplicity (of plot)--made two characters of
Polonius and Gertrude: Polonius,--the objective lower world,
with its shallow wisdom and conventions; Gertrude,--Nature, the
lower world in it subjective or inner relation to the soul
incarnate in it. Aeschylus made no separate symbol for the former.
Shakespeare makes the killing of Polonius a turning-point;
thenceforth Hamlet must, will he nill he, in some dawdling
sort sweep to his revenge. Aeschylus makes that same turning-point
in the killing of Clytemnestra, whereafter the Furies are let
loose on Orestes. If you think well what it means, it is
that "leap" spoken of in _Light on the Path,_ by which a
man raises himself "on to the path of individual accomplishment
instead of mere obedience to the genii which rule our earth."
He can no longer walk secure like a sheep in the flock; he
has come out, and is separate; he has chosen a captain within,
and must follow the Soul, and not outer convention. That
step taken, and the face set towards the Spirit-Sun--the
life of the world forgone, that a way may be fought into
the Life of the Soul:--all his past lives and their errors
rise against him; his passions are roused to fight for their
lives, and easy living is no longer possi